Category Archives: national news

national news, political news

MAGA did it! Elections are work of demons!

If I were wearing a cap at this moment, I might be inclined to doff it in salute to the MAGA cult that comprises the bulk of what remains of the Republican Party.

Why the salute … even though it is a left-handed, fingers crossed tribute?

The MAGA morons seem to have successfully cast the American electoral process into enough doubt as to bring whole sale changes in the way many states conduct them. Texas is one of them. We’ve returned to paper ballots in Texas, tossing out the electronic ballots that used to streamline vote counting. We also have to provide photo ID when we go to the polls to vote.

It’s all been in the messaging and MAGA’s stern discipline in staying on message as it tells lie after lie after lie about the 2020 presidential election being “stolen” from Donald J. Trump. The MAGA cult is continuing the lies and they stick in the gullible minds of millions of Americans.

What saddens me endlessly is the damage that MAGA has done to the millions of hard working local and county officials across the nation who ensure that these elections are conducted freely, fairly and legally. I’ve worked some of the finest public officials in two states over the years covering elections and I have found them all to be men and women of good conscience. They did their jobs well and in accordance with state and federal laws.

MAGA is having none of it. Neither is their MAGA moron in chief, Trump, who just this week assailed the conduct the 2020 election. It is no coincidence, I should add, that the local jurisdictions Trump cited are those run by Black officials. Racism, anyone … anyone?

I believe the midterm election will be run legally. I place my faith in the men and women I know who are on the front line protecting our right to free and fair elections.

And the only election rigging I have seen has occurred in the Oval Office.

national news

ICE is making me very angry!

The more images I see of immigration thugs roughing up American citizens while searching for people to deport to Timbuktu, the angrier I become.

The testimony of Americans victimized by these goons is piling up. They have killed at least two Americans who were protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics. One of them, Alex Pretti, was shot at least 10 times by ICE goons while lying face down on the pavement. He was motionless.

These tales of horror are going on unabated. The president of the United States is saying nothing about the mistreatment being leveled against U.S. citizens. Donald Trump and his chief aides are condemning the protesters who, I should mention, are acting within the rights of free speech and expression guarenteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Yet this repression continues. ICE is kidnapping children, separating them from their parents. ICE agents dressed like hooded and masked goons are injuring Americans because they are operating with the full endorsement of the dipshit in chief.

I am not one to march in the street to protest. I prefer to make my protests known through this venue. I speak often and with considerable passion about what I perceive to be the wrong direction we are heading. If I see more ICE continue to harangue Americans in this horrific fashion, I just might be tempted to join a protest against ICE.

These goons have gone too far.

national news

Resignation possible?

Let us explore briefly something that virtually no one is saying out loud, but which lurks as a possibility as we ponder the future of the Donald Trump administration.

First, I’ll set the table.

The midterm election in November is shaping up as a possible blowout victory for Democrats. They might flip 30 House seats or more. If they capture the Senate majority, well, that’s just more gravy. Donald Trump then would stand a good chance of being impeached for a third time. He survived the first two impeachments because Republican senators by and large stood with him in the trials that emerged from the House impeachment actions.

Although, 57 senators voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment. It didn’t meet the two-third threshold required for conviction as stipulated by the Constitution.

Just suppose the House impeaches him again. Just suppose it goes to trial. Just suppose there might emerge a core of GOP senators who could tell Trump what many of us want to hear from them. That he cannot win a third trial. He will get the boot.

What does the president do? Does he follow the course that President Nixon did in 1974 when confronted by a group of Republican wise men … and resign?

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution says an impeachment article could be brought against the entire executive branch. Indeed, many of them have lied through their teeth to protect the president just in the first year of his second term in office. Article II refers to “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The article says impeachment proceedings could be launched against “all Civil officers of the United States.” That would mean the president and vice president. Who takes over were such a stunning event to occur? The speaker of the House would become president. Presuming it would be a Democrat, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest it would be Hakeem Jeffries.

I have no clue on this good Earth as to whether that would happen. I am just tossing it out there for discussion purposes.

Who in the name of sanity knows what Trump will seek to do to continue his usurping of congressional power? I cannot answer that one. Except that if I were a member of Congress I would be outraged at what I see happening to the framework our nation’s founders laid out when they created the United States of America.

national news, political news

Vote to avoid impeachment?

Donald J. Trump reportedly now is telling supporters he needs their vote to dodge what many have said from the get-go, which is that Democrats are sure to impeach Trump a third time if they regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm election later this year.

I will continue to insist that impeachment isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sure, it seemingly could stop legislation from moving forward if lawmakers get caught up in the drama of a presidential impeachment. Then again, legislation has all but sputtered and died as legislators have battled openly with the administration over matters that have little to do with policy.

So … what’s the diff?

What astounds me is that a sitting POTUS would appeal to his supporters on such a shallow level. Never mind the idiocy that keeps flowing from the administration. He wants to seize Greenland from Denmark; he believes Canada should become an American state; he has taken a sovereign leader captive and vowed to take over Venezuela. He put his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; he cheers the notion of Americans losing their jobs; he says not a damn thing about millions of Americans being stripped of their health insurance.

Impeachable offense, anyone? Anyone at all? There are a few of them in the list of misdeeds I have just mentioned.

And, of course, he continues to lie. Bald-faced lies. He says he won the 2024 election in a landslide. He says inflation was the worst in U.S. history when he took office. Holy crap! Dude cannot tell the truth on any issue. Nothing is beyond the liar in chief’s reach!

I think Trump is correct that Democrats will seek to impeach him in 2027. Their failure to do all they can to get this guy out of office will stigmatize them for the rest of time.

John Edwards, national news, Rielle Hunter

Don’t brag about fidelity, dudes

The next time I hear a male political candidate boast on the campaign trail about how he has kept his vow of fidelity to his wife will be the first time I likely will throw a heavy object at whatever device I heard this idiotic statement.

I am seeing pictures of men posing with their wife and children. I have heard statements from them proclaiming they are devoted husbands, fathers and grandfathers who have family members who adore them beyond measure.

It’s the kind of crap that makes me feel like puking in my lap.

I never have considered marital fidelity to be something about which one should boast. It is a part of a holy relationship one assumes when he marries the person of his dreams. I am directing these remarks, I hope you understand, to the male politicians out there who are beginning to ask for our votes, our money to help them campaign and our trust that they are who they say they are.

We’ve been burned by these clowns before. I shall reintroduce you to John Edwards, the former Democratic senator from North Carolina who campaigned for vice president in 2004 on a ticket led by John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Edwards was married to Elizabeth. He appeared on the campaign trail with his wife, who was suffering from cancer. He proclaimed his love for her. He acted for all the world like a faithful husband.

Except he was leading a secret life as a Romeo involved in an affair with another woman … with whom he would produce a child. Edwards sought to persuade the voting public that he was a faithful husband when he was nothing more than a marital cheater.

John Edwards makes me sick to this day. His wife died of the disease from which she suffered. Edwards has disappeared from public life. His legacy as a cheat, a liar and a philanderer is etched in stone. He is one of many men who have been caught betraying that sacred oath they took.

So I remain suspicious of any man who makes marital faithfulness a bragging point in a campaign for public office.

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Wackiness keeps building

Our fragile world is getting wackier by the day, week, month or whatever measurement of time you choose to identify.

For instance, I saw a poll this weekend — and I believe it’s a reputable one — that said 41% of Americans approve of the job Donald J. Trump is doing as he pretends to run the country. OK, you’ll know by that previous statement that I am not one of the 41 percenters. Those who oppose Trump number in the mid-50s.

Yes, 41% of Americans would still vote for Trump, I presume, even as his retribution tour in his second term as POTUS picks up steam. You’ll recall that he telegraphed that punch during the 2024 campaign when he said he would be the “revenge” and “your retribution” were he elected president.

He has delivered … and then some.

It absolutely astounds me that the dipshit in chief continues to reap the support of 41% of those surveyed. I have been a “never Trumper” since before he entered the political arena in the summer of 2015. He and Melania rode down the escalator and the candidate then announced his intention to ban travelers from Muslim countries from entering the United States and said Mexico is sending rapists, murderers, thieves, drug dealers and sex traffickers to this country.

He’s out of control. He is off his well-coiffed rocker. He is as unfit — maybe more so — to be POTUS as he ever has been. That is just my view. He apparently appeals to other Americans who have swallowed the swill he offers promising them things he cannot possibly do … you know, things like lowering the price of food, ending a savage war in Ukraine and producing a health insurance plan that actually works.

Dude is a con artist.

Donald Trump, national news

Time to pray … for our leaders and our nation

I am going to enter into a period of prayer … yes, even for an individual I happen to detest with every fiber of my being.

That would be Donald J. Trump.

Why pray? Why now? The first answer is easy. I am a man of faith. I am a baptized Christian and I adhere to the notion that prayer isn’t the “least I can do,” but rather it is the “most I can do.” I don’t proclaim my faith loudly. I merely seek to live it quietly.

It could be argued that Trump is the most immoral, amoral, conscience-lacking man ever to hold the nation’s highest political office. Therefore, one might surmise he doesn’t deserve the prayers of the nation he’s been elected twice to lead. I’ll disagree with that view.

You see, the consequences of praying for Trump could bode well for those who watch him from afar. President George W. Bush famously told his successor, President Barack Obama, that despite their deep political differences that he would pray for the new president’s success. The reason was because prayer could produce results that benefit us all.

It must have worked. The new president enacted policies in 2009 that helped lift the nation out of a deep economic recession.

I will admit I haven’t prayed much for Trump over the course of his time in office. He has angered me beyond all I can grasp. The insults, the lack of dignity, the heartlessness, lack of humanity — all of it — have made me an angry American patriot. I think I have peaked out on my anger quotient.

That means I can now pray for success that the nation can grasp. Is Trump capable of change? Not a chance!

I am going to pray, though, for success. Trump might not deserve it. The rest of us certainly do.

national news

Life lesson bites suddenly

Most of us likely are guilty of this from time to time. It’s a form of projection, where we project our own life experience into situations that have no tangible meaning to the here and now.

For example: How many of you have said, “I could never do what the pioneers did in the 19th century, which is pack up everything I own, throw it into a covered wagon and travel way out west to an unknown destination, battling Mother Nature and people who don’t want us mingling among them.”

How does one make that determination? They make it based on the creature comforts they enjoy right now in the 21st century. What we all need to do is take the long view and understand that the pioneers did not experience what we have today, that they knew nothing but the life they had. I have to remind myself that moving across country in a bumpy, flimsy wagon was just part of their life. Do you suppose they thought: Gosh, I wish I could transport myself into the future where I had all those comforts that I would have to leave behind just to fulfill this manifest destiny.

Why am I venturing into this realm? Hell, I don’t know. I just am taking a breather from the daily political barrage I am absorbing … and then passing along to readers of High Plains Blogger.

My point of this post, I suppose, is to advise everyone that they cannot control either the past or the future. So, let’s avoid spending a moment wondering how we would fare if thrust into situations with which we have no connection, or which we never will have a connection.

My life today presents plenty of challenges for this old fella.

crime news, military news, national news

Impeachment: good for nation

If the midterm election produces the result many millions of us want, I am quite sure we are going to get a needed boost to our constitutional democracy … which has taken a battering for the past year under the heavy hand of Donald J. Trump.

The boost well could come in the form of an impeachment of Trump. Yes, it is going to produce plenty of vicious anger. But I am OK with it. Why? Because we are going to have what I hope is an open debate on the usurping of power we have witnessed in real time since Trump took office in January 2025.

That power grab is in itself grounds for impeaching a president who, in my view, has violated the oath he took when he returned to the Oval Office for a second time.

He wants to censure a sitting U.S. senator for speaking the truth about following — or not following — unlawful orders. Trump wants the Justice Department to investigate the Fed chairman on the pretext that he oversaw cost overruns on remodeling the Federal Reserve Board. Trump has sent military personnel into harm’s way against Venezuela without seeking congressional approval. Trump appointed a U.S. attorney unlawfully to launch investigations into a former FBI director and the attorney general for the state of New York.

And this just happened in 2025, the year that has just passed into history’s dust bin.

Democrats appear poised to regain control of the House. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Senate control could flip, too, when they count the votes for the midterm election.

The debate over the charges that could come forth will be spirited. Probably angry. Maybe even vicious and personal. The Constitution will see us through the pending rough ride.

Our founders built a government that is resilient enough to bend a great deal … without breaking. It is strong enough to endure a presidential impeachment while allowing Congress to do the rest of the work to which the Constitution empowers it.

crime news, legal news, local news, national news

Impeachment coming? Sure, bring it!

Let’s assume for a moment that the political smart money is telling us the truth, that the next Congress is going to flip to Democratic control and that the House of Reps is going to launch an impeachment against Donald Trump.

We all have heard that Democrats might gain 30 seats on the Republicans who now control Congress. I can’t say whether the pundits think the 30-seat gain is at the top of their projection, at the bottom … or somewhere in the middle. If Trump continues on his slap-dash course it well could exceed the 30-seat turnover by a significant margin.

Is an impeachment necessary? I will allow my bias to peek through the haze and declare: Damn right it’s necessary! I will offer this caveat: I want Democrats to assure us that they can more than one thing at a time, that they can proceed with impeaching Trump and resume their constitutional role of making laws.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York is likely to be elected speaker and he ought to take a page from the book followed in Texas by then-Speaker Pete Laney. The West Texas cotton farmer said he always simply allowed “the will of the House” to have its way. And so it went during the years that Laney served as the Man of the House.

The will of the U.S. House should be allowed to play the hand it is dealt. If most members believe — as I do — that Trump has committed an impeachable offense or three, then it should act. It also should not allow the legislative process to get caught in a political vise that will clamp down around the White House.

We’ve all heard them say that lawmakers can “do more than one thing at a time.” Impeaching a president is serious business. So is legislating.