Category Archives: national news

national news

Cease-fire? Really?

The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential ticket has made a pledge it might have difficulty keeping.

They have declared a “partisan cease-fire” while Donald Trump is mourning the death of his brother, Robert. It’s a grand gesture, showing a brand of empathy and compassion we complain has been lacking in the current president.

But how are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris going to avoid taking shots at Trump while their political party stages its virtual convention in Milwaukee beginning on Monday?

Presidential nominating conventions by definition are the most partisan events imaginable. Speakers usually spend their podium time trashing the folks in the other party. You know?

Well, let’s just see how this plays out.

Donald Trump certainly is entitled to an appropriate amount of time to mourn his brother’s death. However, politics awaits.

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The general is correct

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.”

—U.S. Marine Corps Gen. (Retired) James Mattis

Back when James Mattis served our nation a defense secretary, I along with many other observers, noted that he emerged immediately as the rare grownup serving in the Cabinet in the Donald Trump administration.

Then he got fired. Why? Because he differed with Trump on a whole array of defense and foreign policy decisions.

His highly critical assessment of Trump, delivered in this widely circulated quote, speaks volumes about what Gen. Mattis saw up close during his time as defense secretary.

Tragically, Trump is campaigning for re-election as president by continuing to divide the nation. He is campaigning exclusively to the base of voters who propelled him to the White House by virtue of the Electoral College majority he eked out over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For the ever-lovin’ life of me I don’t understand how this process is supposed to work as he fights for re-election in a campaign against Joseph R. Biden Jr. Trump’s approval rating stands in the low 40 percent range. The average of public opinion polling puts Biden up by about 8 to 9 percent. The former vice president figures to get a big bump from the virtual Democratic National Convention that convenes Monday.

Trump is going to campaign for re-election by telling us about all the ills that continue to plague the nation. But … wait a minute! Didn’t he declare that “I, alone” can solve those woes? Hasn’t he served as our chief executive for nearly four years? Didn’t he pledge to “drain the swamp” and “make America great again”?

Instead, Trump is going to proceed according to the Mattis Mantra that the retired Marine Corps general identified earlier this year. He will try to divide the nation he pledged to unite.

Go figure.

national news

No more name-calling

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Joseph R. Biden Jr. has vowed to restore “decency” to the White House if he’s elected president of the United States.

That is a noble goal. I endorse the former vice president’s appeal to the better angels among us. He has summoned them to me.

Accordingly, I am making a command decision regarding High Plains Blogger. I hereby declare an end to the name-calling that has peppered many of my recent blog posts criticizing Donald J. Trump.

You know what I mean, right? I have at times used the term “So and So in Chief” when referring to Trump. That’s now over. Officially.

This blog will continue to criticize Trump harshly when the need arises. I figure it will arise often. So there you have it.

As for the name-calling, I won’t go there.

I figure if I am going to endorse one presidential candidate’s demand for decency, I ought to practice what my preferred candidate preaches. It’s the right thing to do.

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This is class personified

In an earlier, more genteel time this kind of message wouldn’t call much attention to itself. You can read it here.

Donald Trump’s brother died this weekend and the man against whom he will run for president sent this message to the president and his family.

It’s the kind of message that should be sent. Indeed, it should go without mentioning, but we live in callous, coarse times. Donald Trump as often as not has led the chorus of callousness with his reaction — or non-reaction — to personal tragedies that befall other politicians, particularly those with whom he has disagreements.

When the former vice president talks about “restoring decency” to the presidency, I will conclude that messages such as the one he sent to Donald Trump define what he means.

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Reprehensible response!

Donald Trump received a grooved pitch straight into the strike zone … and he whiffed.

On purpose!

Trump today was asked to disavow a racist rant that Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not qualified to run because her parents are immigrants.

“If she has a problem you would have thought she would have been vetted by Sleepy Joe (Biden),” Trump said.

Do you get it? Trump won’t say the right thing, which is:

“Of course I disavow this rant. It has no place in a discussion of presidential politics. The Constitution stipulates that candidates for president and vice president must be ‘natural born’ U.S. citizens, either by their birthplace or the citizenship of their parents. Sen. Harris was born in Oakland, Calif., and she certainly qualifies. Now, let’s squash this nonsense.”

But … the Racist in Chief didn’t go there.

Donald Trump is consciously, deliberately appealing to the very worst in his base of supporters. He is an utter disgrace!

national news

Recess context is appalling

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Surely I am not the only red-blooded American patriot who finds the current congressional recess appalling.

Why? Because of the job that the House and Senate have left undone before they shoved off on their lengthy time away from doing the people’s work.

Both legislative chambers — which are getting no help from the White House — have so far failed to provide relief for Americans caught in the pandemic vise. What makes this so terrible, so galling, so appalling is that while Americans are suffering from job loss, the loss of their medical coverage and possibly even their homes, members of Congress have jobs to which they will retain even while they are cavorting through their districts or perhaps jetting off on those infamous “junkets” to glamor spots around the world.

Do you get my drift here?

Americans are hurting because of the economic hardship brought to them by the pandemic. They depend on their elected representatives and, yes, even the president, to help them with assistance from a government that is assigned to look out for them and to provide for the “general welfare” of the public.

They are failing. Who pays the price? The public is paying grievously.

Let me be clear on this point: My wife and I are not among those who are suffering. We are retired from our careers and we live a quiet but comfortable life in Collin County, Texas. We don’t get out much, owing to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 viral pandemic.

Other Americans aren’t nearly as fortunate as we have been.

They are looking for unemployment compensation assistance. Republicans want to scale it way back; Democrats are fighting for more money.

Oh, and Donald Trump? He’s threatening to gut the U.S. Postal Service because he doesn’t want mail-in voting — believing it will hurt his re-election chances. The upshot is to stall any sort of legislation that would assist Americans in need of help from the government during this perilous time.

This is yet another example of disgraceful demagoguery.

Meanwhile, Congress is failing as well. House members and senators are leaving their constituents in the lurch while they take time away from doing their job.

Their job is to legislate.

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Why discuss this … at all?

I cannot believe we are engaging in yet another discussion of “birtherism” involving a prominent American politician.

The defamation of Sen. Kamala Harris shouldn’t even be discussed at any level, except for one major point: One of the principals involved in this matter happens to be Donald John “Fake News Master in Chief” Trump.

Harris came into this world in Oakland, Calif. Her Indian mother delivered her after conceiving her with her Jamaican husband. Donald Trump has given this hideous matter a bit of air simply by stating he would “look at” whether she is qualified to run for vice president on the Democratic Party ticket.

This is ridiculous. It also is a blatantly racist attack on a woman who has risen dramatically to national stature after assuming her U.S. Senate seat in 2017.

One might have hoped, albeit naively, that the birther issue had died when Barack Obama left the presidency. It hasn’t, quite obviously. What does the Obama birther matter have in common with Kamala Harris? Donald Trump was part of the Birther Brigade that spread the lie about Obama, just as he has joined the crew that is smearing Kamala Harris with the same defamatory idiocy.

I would say that we “deserve better” from the president of the United States. However, I have to remind myself that the racist managed to get elected to the office he occupies. We just cannot mess up a second time around.

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Not so strange after all

Media pundits continue to make something of a ruckus over the recent political history involving Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris, that Harris roughed up Biden in a couple of debates before she dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.

They’re now on the same Democratic ticket. So I am left to wonder: Why the fascination? It’s hardly the first time political rivals have hooked up, buried the hatchet and locked arms in the fight against a common opponent.

In 1960, Sens. Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy fought for the Democratic nomination. They spoke harshly of each other. LBJ pulled out at the end of that primary fight. JFK was looking for someone to help strengthen him in the South. So he turned to Sen. Johnson. They won that race. Fate, though, tragically intervened when JFK died from an assassin’s bullet in November 1963.

In 1980, former Gov. Ronald Reagan and former CIA director/U.N. ambassador/former congressman/former special envoy to China George H.W. Bush butted heads for the Republican nomination. Bush chided Reagan’s fiscal policy as “voodoo economics.” Reagan survived and then selected Bush to be his VP. The two of them served together through two successful terms.

In 2008, for heaven’s sake, Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden fought for their party’s nomination. Biden didn’t last long. He took his shots at Obama, who fired back at his foe. Obama got nominated and had Biden at his side for two terms.

So now it’s Sen. Harris who’s being examined. Is she loyal enough? Does the presumptive nominee trust her to be a team player?

Biden has been through the VP vetting process. He knows what to ask, where to look.

Harris’s selection is historic. Many have made much of that fact, given her racial and ethnic background. Biden’s decision to select her, though, doesn’t look like much of a gamble. LBJ, George H.W. Bush and Biden himself already have blazed recent trails that led them all to the vice presidency.

Let’s worry less about the recent past between these two politicians and concern ourselves more with the policy positions they share and will take to the fight against Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

It’s game on, man!

national news

Where is the GOP hiding?

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What used to be known as a great American political party has gone into hiding.

They call themselves “Republicans,” but they aren’t really anything of the kind. They are “Trumpkins” beholden to some guy who ran for president in 2016 under the Republican banner. He isn’t an actual Republican. He just portrays one while sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

I ask the question about where the GOP is hiding because Donald Trump — the aforementioned POTUS masquerading as a Republican — is seeking to undermine a free and fair election. He speaks for Republicans, he says, because they would be harmed by an effort to allow voters to cast their ballots by mail this November.

Republicans should be joining their Democratic colleagues in Congress in bellowing their displeasure at what is trying to do to the U.S. Postal Service. They aren’t. They are silent. Democrats are doing all the griping. They note that efforts to inhibit the USPS violates the U.S. Constitution, which mentions the “Post Office” specifically in Article I. The “Postal Clause” was added “to facilitate interstate communication as well as to create a source of revenue for the early United States,” according to Wikipedia.

So, why aren’t congressional Republicans upset at what Donald Trump is trying to do? He is seeking to usurp the Postal Service’s duties delineated by the Constitution.

State election officials stand by their staffs’ ability to conduct elections without the “rampant fraud” that Trump — without evidence — keeps alleging.

And yet, congressional Republicans continue to stand by the phony Republican in the White House who has admitted in plain sight to anyone who cares to listen that he is trying to protect his backside at the expense of allowing voters to perform their civic responsibility.

The GOP silence is deafening in the extreme.

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Welcome back, Mr. POTUS 44

Barack Obama appears to be getting back into the game.

He’s been out of action since leaving the presidency in January 2017. I reckon he has seen and heard enough from Donald J. Trump to bring him back into the action.

President Obama is all in with the man who served as vice president during his two terms in office. He is thoroughly and completely behind Joe Biden. That is no surprise, of course. The two men, Obama and Biden, forged a remarkably close personal and professional relationship for eight years in the White House.

I have learned recently that their friendship didn’t materialize immediately after they took office, but that it evolved and developed over time. At the end of his time as president, Obama was referring to himself and his family as “honorary Bidens.” He has called Joe Biden his “brother.”

So it has developed and matured.

After nearly four years of Donald Trump, though, and listening to Trump’s constant drumbeat of denigration of his time in office, I figure President Obama believes he needs to do what he can to remove Trump from an office he never should have won in the first place.

To be fair, Trump did win. Along the way to the White House, Trump continued to belittle Obama’s record. Since taking office, Trump has sought specifically to erase Obama’s name from legislative accomplishments. Target No. 1 has been the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic legislative achievement. The ACA remains in effect, more or less, but Trump continues to vow to remove it forever. Is there a replacement? Umm. No.

As one American voter who wants Trump defeated, I am going to welcome Barack Obama back into the fight. He remains a U.S. citizen and is entitled to speak his mind whenever he pleases. Yes, it is not “normal” for a former president to weigh in so heavily.

But … what the hey. Let’s watch the battle be joined.