Category Archives: national news

national news

No, Mr. POTUS, this isn’t a time to cheer

I am fed up with Donald John Trump.

I have had enough of his happy talk. I have heard all I can stomach from the cheerleader in chief, who ignores the reality that presents itself daily.

The nation is getting sicker by the day from the pandemic that has swept around the world. It is killing thousands of Americans daily. Our infection rate is setting dubious records each day.

We need a leader, not a cheerleader. We won’t have a leader as long as Donald Trump reports for work in the White House.

Bloomberg News reported: More than 128,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, and on Wednesday, the country eclipsed 50,000 new cases in a single day, a record high. In 45 states, the seven-day average of infections is higher than it was a week ago. As a result of the country’s high infection rate, more than two dozen European countries have banned Americans from traveling there.

And yet …

There was Donald Trump this morning declaring that the economy was roaring back stronger than ever. He was crowing about the jobs report that came out today. He said he now understands the gravity of the “terrible disease” that has killed so many Americans.

But does he? Does he understand anything? Or does he care sincerely about the misery that has befallen so many Americans?

Trump doesn’t acknowledge the hideous consequence of Russia putting bounties on the heads of our men and women in uniform. He calls reporting of it a “hoax,” saving his anger for the media that are reporting it while giving Vladimir Putin a pass on what has now become known.

Each day I hear Donald Trump lie to us about the impact of the pandemic, each day that he dissembles and deceives us fills me with rage at the notion that this unfit carnival barker got elected to the most exalted office in the nation if not the world.

I just have to vent and I will continue to do so on this blog for as long as this clown continues to sit in the Oval Office. This clown needs to be stripped of the power he possesses.

national news

Trump’s got to change? How?

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Chris Christie is a seasoned political hand who purports to know what it takes to win a presidential election.

The former Republican New Jersey governor, though, came up empty in 2016 when he sought the GOP nomination for president, losing that battle to a guy who now is fighting for his political survival. Christie offered some words of advice to Donald Trump:

Change what you’re doing or else you’re going to lose. Period. End of story.

I did chuckle a bit when Christie referred to “President Michael Dukakis” who was leading Vice President George H.W. Bush by 18 percentage points about this time during the 1988 campaign. Bush went on to defeat Dukakis handily.

What did the underdog, Bush, do to reverse the tide? He went on the attack. Full bore. Frontal assault. He savaged Dukakis over the flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and his furloughing of a murderer who then committed a heinous crime while he was away from prison.

Dukakis never fought back. He let Bush’s team beat him bloody.

That’s how Bush turned the tide.

Does Donald Trump have that kind of weaponry in his arsenal? Hardly. Trump already has established his brand. He won election by waging one of the nastiest campaigns in history. He is going to do the same thing again against Joseph Biden. He is incapable of changing course, changing his methods, doctoring his message.

I also would add that any attempt by Donald Trump to change his approach will look like what it is: a makeover that only makes a candidate look good, but doesn’t change whatever churns inside the candidate’s gut.

Americans now have taken a full measure of what Donald Trump offers to them as president. My hope is that enough Americans have had their fill of what they have seen and will demand change at the top of our governmental chain of command.

national news

In love with the high office

High Plains Blogger critics ask me on occasion: Why do you disrespect the presidency with your constant criticism of our president?

The question comes in many forms, but that’s the crux of it. Those critics think I hate the office as much as I hate the man who sits in that big chair in the Oval Office.

I will set the record straight, clear the air and set the table for future discussion.

I do not hate Donald John Trump. I despise, detest and loathe the background he brought to the only public office he ever sought, let alone held. He is a huckster, a con man, a fraud, philanderer, sexual assailant, a phony and a pathological liar.

He just happens to occupy the most exalted office in the land. It is arguably the most important office on Earth.

I happen to revere the presidency. I adore the pomp and pageantry associated with the office. I love inaugural celebrations and the trappings of those events that surround them.

Accordingly, I want the individual who sits in that exalted office to treat it with the dignity it deserves and which it has earned over the 240 years of the world’s greatest republic. I subscribe to the notion put forth by the late Robert F. Kennedy, who said that politics “should be a noble profession.” Donald Trump does not treat the presidency or politics with the nobility that RFK said they deserve.

My criticism of Trump isn’t based on intense animosity for the man. I based instead on the intense love I have for the office he occupies. I want it restored. I want the individual who sits in that big chair behind the Resolute Desk to behave in a manner befitting the high office. Donald Trump is failing in that part of his job performance … not to mention damn near everything else he is doing.

I want Donald Trump removed from an office I believe he is unfit to hold. The office of the presidency is far bigger and more important than any individual who goes to work in the Oval Office. I simply want that individual to measure up to the majesty of that high office.

national news

We need compassion, empathy from Oval Office

I’ve given you a wish list of things I hope a President Joe Biden would do were he to take office next January … but I have one more item to add.

We have witnessed a president who is fully incapable of expressing genuine, sincere empathy and sadness over the plight of Americans and Lord knows we have endured plenty of tragedy during Donald Trump’s tenure in office.

The pandemic. Repeated gun violence. The deaths of African-Americans at the hands of rogue cops. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

Where in the name of humanity has the compassion gone from the office of president? Donald Trump is incapable of exhibiting it.

I want the next president – and I do hope it is Joseph R. Biden Jr. – to return empathy to the office. I want the next president to lead a nation that is suffering.

Joe Biden isn’t uniquely qualified to offer such compassion and empathy. I mean, many of us have experienced tragedy in our lives. Donald Trump, for heaven’s sake, lost a brother to alcohol abuse, so he, too, has suffered grievous loss. Trump, though, just isn’t wired to convey that grief into meaningful and authentic mourning on behalf of others.

Biden, though, has gone through hell. His first wife and daughter died in a tragic automobile accident in 1972; his two sons were seriously injured. Young Joe had just been elected to the U.S. Senate and he considered giving it up to care for his sons. He decided to stay in office. He endured loss and powered through it, raising his sons as a single dad … until he met the next love of his life, Jill, who – as Biden has said – “saved our life.”

Then his older son Beau became ill with cancer. He would die and then force the vice president to bury a second child. As has been said many times already, that is a parent’s worst nightmare.

I want a president who is able to convey that loss in a way that translates across the land. The nation is hurting. Illness is sickening and killing too many of us. I want a president who’s been tested by intense grief and has learned the lessons of how to cope, to survive and to seek restoration of his own human spirit.

A president of the United States can use that knowledge to lead a nation out of its collective grief.

national news

Here’s a wish list for you, Joe Biden

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

I have spent a lot of blog space griping about Donald John Trump.

I now want to devote a bit of forward-looking energy to what I expect from the individual I hope sends Trump packing after the November presidential election.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.? Listen up. I am talking to you.

I want the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to do a number of things the moment he takes the oath of office next January.

I want Biden to make good on his pledge to issue an immediate executive order restoring the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals for U.S. residents who came here as children when their parents smuggled them into the country illegally. DACA residents do not deserve to be rounded up and sent to the country of their birth. They know only the U.S. of A. Many of them built productive lives as de facto Americans. Yes, they need to legalize their status. A President Biden should give them the chance to do so without fear of deportation.

I also want Biden to restore the U.S. role in the Iran de-nuclearization agreement hammered out by President Obama and other allied nations. Donald Trump pulled us out of that agreement, paving the way for Iran to proceed with its ghastly nuclear ambitions.

Speaking of nukes, I hope Biden re-states this nation’s intense desire to assure that North Korea ends its own nuclear ambition. I want an end to ridiculous talk from the Oval Office about a “love affair” between the president and North Korean murderer/strongman Kim Jong Un.

Joe Biden needs to restore our international alliances. I want the former VP to return to the Paris Climate Accord; I want Biden to dial down the anti-NATO volume and assure our Western European allies that the nation recognizes the immense value of the world’s most important military alliance. Donald Trump’s threats to de-fund NATO only embolden the Russians.

Speaking of Russia, I want Joe Biden to lay down in plain language that even Vladimir Putin understands: Do not interfere with our electoral process; if you do you will face intense economic sanction by the world’s greatest economic power. He also should remind Putin that Russia’s standing as a third-rate economic power does not entitle it to have a seat at the negotiating table occupied by the world’s industrialized nations.

I want Joe Biden to restore environmental regulations that incentivize the development of alternative energy sources to augment the nation’s already immense fossil-fuel development.

And I want Joe Biden to speak to the entire nation at once. No more of the divisive rhetoric that keeps spewing forth from White House.

It’s a full plate, Mr. VP. You’ve been involved with government for a long time. You can do this.

national news

‘Most corrupt election in history?’ Really, Mr. POTUS?

Donald J. “Tweeter in Chief” Trump has made a ridiculous prediction, which of course isn’t all that unusual.

He says the 2020 presidential election will be the “most corrupt” in U.S. history.

There you have it. Does the imbecile masquerading as president offer a scintilla of evidence to back up his allegation? Of course not! He just tweets this idiocy out there.

Donald Trump is running a campaign of division, of anger, of suspicion. This is the guy who promised to “unify” the nation after the 2016 campaign, which was pretty damn divisive. He never even tried to unify anything or anyone. As former Defense Secretary James Mattis noted, Trump’s aim is to divide the nation.

So now he campaigns for re-election by issuing blind threats of corrupt election results.

I only am presuming that he is going to issue the corruption charge if former Vice President Joe Biden manages to win the election in November. If hell freezes over and Trump wins, well, my strong hunch is that he won’t say a word about “corruption” or “fraudulent voting” or “phony ballot counts.”

What is most disturbing about Trump’s latest allegation about ballot “corruption” is the absolute absence of any evidence. That is Donald Trump’s modus operandi. He blurts out these allegations, giving his base reason to cheer his nonsense; the allegations grow legs and somehow keep circulating, casting doubt over a process where none should exist. I should add that in the process Trump casts aspersions on the dedicated county and local election officials who toil to preserve the integrity of our electoral process.

Indeed, the only “corruption” I can see will occur when the Russians, the Chinese or some other hostile foreign power attacks our process as the Russians did in 2016.

If this is the best that Donald Trump can do to persuade voters to return him to office for another four years, then I submit we have an incumbent president with no plan for the future, no constructive agenda, no sense of how he intends to lead the nation or where he wants to lead us.

What’s more, if enough American voters are foolish or stupid enough to buy into this idiot’s shtick to re-elect him, then our revered system of government is far more seriously damaged than any of us ever imagined.

national news

Trump = law and order? Bwahahaha!

When I hear Donald J. “Criminal in Chief” Trump proclaim himself to be the “law and order president,” I cannot stop thinking of all the individuals who helped elect him and who served in the government who are, um, fighting to stay out of prison … or who actually are serving prison terms.

He channels another crooked president, Richard Nixon, who made many of the same proclamations while running for president in 1968 and again in 1972. It didn’t work out well for President Nixon, whose attorney general went to prison along with his chief of staff, chief domestic policy adviser and an assortment of campaign flunkies. Nixon, of course, quit the presidency just as the House of Representatives was preparing to impeach him. The Senate was sure to convict him as well of obstruction of justice and abuse of power. So the president, cutting his losses, high-tailed it to San Clemente, Calif.

So, I guess Trump is channeling Nixon, all right. You see, he is facing the same sorry outcome for his various minions, too. Yet he continues to declare he is going to bring “law … and order” to America “right here and right now.” Give me a break, dude.

I actually am believing that Donald Trump is outperforming Richard Nixon in the Crooked Presidency Sweepstakes. Good grief, I have lost count of the criminal indictments that have landed in the laps of Trump toadies. Some of them have resulted in guilty pleas and prison time.

So, when Donald Trump makes his “law and order” declarations, I am inclined to suppress derisive laughter. Except that it isn’t funny. The presidential imposter is a disgrace to the office he occupies.

medical news, national news

Pence continues the Trump lie about COVID-19 fight

Vice President Mike Pence stood before the nation … and lied through his pearly whites.

It was edifying and instructive that he had some medical experts on the podium with him to set the record straight about the condition of the nation that is fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Pence – filling in for the Liar in Chief – had the brass to tell us the pandemic is under control, that states have corralled the killer virus, “thanks to the leadership” of Donald J. Trump. It was the first “briefing” from the coronavirus task force in two months and to be candid we didn’t need to hear the nonsense that Pence spewed forth.

He uttered the lie on the same day that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order shutting down bars, ordering restaurants to operate at 50 percent of capacity and pushing local authorities to insist on stricter enforcement of social distancing. That’s how Pence defines “under control”?

Meanwhile, Drs. Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx and Robert Redfield – the nation’s top medical pros fighting this pandemic – had to the good sense to issue much more dire warnings about what lurks ahead of us. They didn’t contradict Pence directly, but they certainly cast the peril in more, um, accurate terms … at least the way I see the trend developing.

I was struck, too, by the vapid response Pence gave to reporters who asked him to explain how Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla. – which went forward with thousands of Trumpkins sitting shoulder to shoulder without face masks – isn’t contributing to the spike in infection we are seeing. His answer? The people’s right to assemble peaceably “is enshrined in the Constitution” and “we have an election coming up.” He said that medical emergencies do not negate people’s civil liberties. Well, actually they should if people’s very lives are endangered by irresponsible behavior at campaign rallies.

So, the charade continues, even without the Carnival Barker in Chief. His No. 1 sycophant showed once again that he is fully capable of parroting Donald Trump’s lies.

Shameful.

national news

It’s not about civil liberties … fools!

The yammering from anti-face-mask loons who say the government has “no right” to force them to protect themselves and others from the pandemic is driving me just this side of batty.

You’ve heard ‘em at Donald Trump rallies, telling the media that government mask-wearing mandates infringe on their liberties. They have the right to go mask-free. It’s a civil liberties issue with them, or so they say.

Let’s take this idiocy a step or two further, shall we?

If we buy into that nonsense, then the government shouldn’t require motorcycle riders to wear helmets; they shouldn’t require us to buckle up while driving a motor vehicle; the government shouldn’t prohibit public indecency; cities, counties and states shouldn’t prohibit motorists from talking on cell phones while driving through school zones.

I think I’ll stop there. You get my drift, or so I presume.

The mask-wearing mandates are part of governmental responsibility to provide for the “general welfare” of the public. Yes, citizens are being asked to do things they don’t like doing. Too damn bad, man! If they won’t care for themselves – or more to the point, care for others around them – then government has a responsibility to act.

We are in the midst of a fight against a global coronavirus pandemic. It has killed more than 120,000 Americans. More of our citizens will die. They surely will get sick.

So, spare me the bullsh** about mask-wearing mandates infringing on our civil liberties.

national news

He’s worse than I thought!

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I would like to take credit for being among those observers who predicted that Donald Trump would be a disaster as president of the United States.

But I cannot.

That is, I didn’t envision the level of ineptitude, incompetence and abject idiocy we would witness during the course of the time Trump was masquerading as head of state and commander in chief.

He actually is worse than I thought he would be.

Then again, I didn’t foresee a global pandemic storm ashore in this country, wiping out tens of thousands of Americans, sickening many more than that. Nor could I foresee the absolute ineptitude from the top of our governmental chain of command.

I had this notion up front that Donald Trump is incapable of exhibiting empathy or compassion. I mean, I recall writing early and often that Trump geared his entire professional life toward enriching himself. What has been stunning to me has been that Trump doesn’t even pretend to care about those who are suffering from the pandemic. My goodness, he speaks almost exclusively about the economic damage being done while virtually ignoring any mention of the human damage in terms of lives lost, families shattered by illness.

He is running for re-election on a platform that is virtually identical to the one on which he ran in 2016, which is to say he has no forward-looking plan.

I had harbored this thought – which I kept mostly to myself – that if Trump were to win that he might craft some sort of message on which to seek re-election. What, I have to ask, has happened to the message?

He had boasted about the economy. That is now off the table. He had bragged about how he would “put America first.” He tossed our intelligence community under a freight train by siding with Vladimir Putin’s stated denial that Russia interfered in our 2016 election; that ain’t putting America first, man.

I have said damn little about how Trump has (mis)handled the racial tumult that has erupted since the death of George Floyd.

And all of this has come after a series of blunders, gaffes, key staff firing and assertions from former Cabinet officials that Trump has behaved in a manner ranging from disinterested bystander to fu**ing moron.

I wish I could have predicted all this. I cannot. Nor can damn near anyone else.