Category Archives: national news

national news

Please, please … no repeat of 2016!

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All these public opinion polls showing Joe Biden trouncing Donald Trump in the November election for president of the United States are beginning to tempt me beyond my strength.

I have to keep reminding myself: The polling said Hillary Clinton would cruise to victory over Trump in 2016; she didn’t cruise to the victory circle, but ended up making the concession phone call to the celebrity TV host/real estate developer/beauty pageant operator/rich kid who got the stake from Daddy. He was the guy who won!

I look back on that fiasco and I keep having to remind myself about this, too: If Joe Biden repeats the mistakes that Clinton made in ’16, then Trump is going to thumb his nose at the country once more … and we get this Bozo for another four years!

It is my fondest political hope at this moment that Biden’s team is smarter than Hillary’s team. That it knows to put the candidate front and center in “battleground states” that Clinton ignored as the candidates headed down the home stretch four years ago. I recall watching the returns in 2016 when Trump was declared the winner in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Bill Clinton’s election guru, James Carville, telling the nation that he didn’t like what he was seeing. Neither did many others, James.

The RealClearPolitics average of the reputable polls puts Biden up by 10 points. He’s been inching up and away from Trump ever since the president blew the pandemic response to smithereens and then threatened peaceful protesters with “thousands and thousands of heavily armed troops” as they marched against police brutality. I need to mention here that the RCP poll average called Hillary Clinton’s margin over Trump accurately in 2016; it just didn’t figure the Electoral College trickery – albeit all legal and constitutional – that Trump pulled off to win the election.

Oh, how I hope we don’t see a repeat of that fiasco, disaster, fluke .. and profound mistake that the nation made when it cast its electoral votes for someone who is unfit for the only public service office he ever sought.

International news, medical news, national news

EU bans travel from U.S.? Wow!

Donald Trump can yap and yammer all he wants about all the “success” he is scoring against the COVID-19 virus.

His “allies” in the European Union have a different and damning view.

The EU is going to open its borders next week, but will ban travel from three key countries that it says haven’t done enough to stem the killer tide sweeping around the world. Those countries? Russia, Brazil … and the United States of America.

Axios.com reports: It’s an international rebuke of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic. Millions of American tourists travel to the EU every summer, but that’s unlikely to happen until the U.S. gets the virus under control.

So, if you want to pack up and head for Paris, or to Rome, or the Greek Isles … forget about it! You ain’t going if you’re planning to depart from the U.S. of A.

It’s a preliminary recommendation to date. My hunch, though, is that the United States isn’t going to wrestle the pandemic to the ground between now and July 1, when the EU lifts its travel ban.

Infection and hospitalization rates are spiking in nearly half of our states, Texas included. Donald Trump’s response? He said we need to “slow down testing” because too many COVID tests produce too many positive infection results. We can’t have that in the middle of a presidential campaign, in Trump’s view of the world.

The EU’s decision isn’t going to sit well within the West Wing of the White House. Too damn bad! The EU wants to protect itself against further infection, just as Donald Trump wanted to protect this country when he banned travel from China when it dawned on him that the pandemic was a serious threat, except that he acted too late.

EU nations by and large have turned the tide against the medical nightmare. They want to ensure that COVID-19 remains suppressed, which the United States so far is failing to do.

national news

Trump campaign strategy has taken form

Donald Trump’s campaign theme has taken form. It is clear now what Trump intends to do while seeking re-election as president of the United States.

He is going to denigrate, degrade, disparage his Democratic Party foe, Joseph Biden. Donald Trump will not offer a clear vision for the future. He won’t tell us what he intends to do during a second term. Trump likely won’t even boast about what he allegedly accomplished during the term he is serving.

I have seen the TV ads that Donald Trump has approved. They speak to Biden’s mental acuity. They say the former vice president “is slipping.”

Well, I am not going to defend Joe Biden’s mental snap, other than to say that I believe he has plenty left in the tank to compete head to head against the Liar in Chief.

I have no intention of offering this critique of Trump to prompt him to develop a winning strategy. I do not believe he is capable of crafting a theme on which to run for re-election. He instead is wired to pummel straw men. He continually lambasted Hillary Clinton in 2016 over the email matter, suggesting nefarious motives for her use of a personal server while she was secretary of state.

Trump likely will copy that page from his winning playbook strategy in 2020. Joe Biden’s team must be aware of it — and I have no doubt it is — must be prepared to answer every single innuendo that Trump intends to hurl against the proverbial wall.

Donald Trump’s political career by all rights should come to a screeching halt once they count all the voters’ ballots cast on or before Nov. 3.

How might Biden respond? I hope he intends to tell us how he would react to crises and pledge to improve on the feckless, reckless and pointless response to the COVID-19 crisis we’ve seen from the Trump administration. I also hope he intends to speak passionately to the issue of civil rights, which is a topic that is foreign to Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is likely to bring the nastiness to a full boil quickly and will sustain it during the length of what looks to me to be the most vile presidential campaign in memory.

national news

Smooth transition? Will it occur?

I am resisting the temptation to get too far ahead of myself as I ponder the upcoming presidential election.

It is hard, given my intense desire to see Joe Biden beat Donald Trump like a drum and boot the POTUS’s sorry behind out of the White House.

Still, I am prone these day to wonder what the next presidential transition will look like. Will it be the “smooth, peaceful transition” that presidents and former presidents talk about when they sing the praises of our form of government?

The good news is that Donald Trump won’t be president forever, despite the reported claims that he wishes it could happen. The best news is that he’ll exit the Oval Office for the final time on Jan. 20, 2021.

I have watched a number of videos in the YouTube archive of such events. I have seen the manner in which President Clinton handed over the reins of power to George W. Bush; how President Bush did the same to Barack Obama; and how President Obama did as well to Donald Trump.

All those outgoing presidents spoke well of their successors. They wished them good luck and Godspeed. They all embodied the uniqueness of our form of government, how presidents of opposing political parties can set aside their differences and work toward something that resembles a smooth transition.

How in the world is the current president going to react when his challenger defeats him? Yes, I shudder to think of this, but how might he react to the ascent of the next president in 2025?

I believe it is fair to speculate that if Biden beats Trump this November that the incumbent ain’t going to go quietly, with dignity, with grace and with good wishes for his successor. Has there been any example of that kind of comportment from this president? I haven’t seen it. Have you? 

Either scenario — whether the transition occurs next January or four years from now — is enough to send chills up my spine.

I’ve spent a good deal of blog space trashing former national security adviser John Bolton for refusing to tell us what he saw “In the Room Where It Happened” when it really mattered. However, he was asked how Donald Trump should be remembered.

Bolton said he hopes he will be remembered as a “one-term president” who didn’t damage the office beyond repair. I want to add that I also hope that Donald Trump would accept voters’ decision quietly … and just disappear.

national news

Next stop: Arizona … another embarrassment on tap?

Donald John Trump went to Tulsa, Okla., to restart his re-election campaign. He bragged about all the folks who would jam the BOK Arena. They didn’t. He stood in a venue that was two-thirds empty.

Now he heads for Arizona to look at the construction of The Wall along our border with Mexico. He’s going to speak at a church, or so I have heard.

The Tulsa gathering was stunted reportedly over fear of the pandemic, the lack of social distancing. Maybe, too, Trump’s shtick is wearing thin.

What’s going to happen in Arizona, an actual swing state that Trump might lose to Joe Biden this fall? I guess I should mention that COVID-19 infections are spiking through the Arizona roof at this moment.

I want yet another humiliation for Donald Trump, who invites this kind of scorn simply because of the ridiculous boasting that precedes these events.

medical news, national news

Trump was joking about ‘less testing’? Sure, I believe it … hah!

Donald John “Knee-Slapper in Chief” Trump has no discernible sense of humor that any of us can detect.

He rarely guffaws. From what I have read he doesn’t watch movies. He lacks any semblance of self-deprecation. However, the dude does have this annoying habit of relying on others’ excuses for the stupidity that flows out of his pie hole.

He told that sparse gathering in Tulsa, Okla., over the weekend that we ought to have “less testing” of the COVID-19 virus because it would drive down the number of people being infected. I saw him say it. He didn’t wink at the audience. He didn’t say, “Just kidding, folks.” He let the idiocy stand.

Oh, but then comes that trade “expert” who comments on matters far from his wheelhouse. Peter Navarro said Trump’s remark was “clearly tongue in cheek.”

We’ve heard this dodge before from Trumpkins who seek to cover The Donald’s ample backside. He blurts out something stupid and his team of sycophants says, “Aww, he was just kidding. Making a joke. He was being ‘sarcastic.'”

We are asked to buy into that baloney. This guy says so many stupid utterances, he lies with such astonishing frequency that we cannot believe anything, not a single thing that he says. Nor can we believe the efforts of his team to cover his a** when he blurts the idiocy out.

This is the same guy who said he preferred that a cruise ship full of passengers remain stranded off shore because letting them come ashore would drive up his COVID-19 infection “numbers.” He said that, too, with a straight face!

So we’re asked to believe that this Tulsa trash talk about “less testing” to detect the killer virus is a joke?

national news

Trump practices a form of political levitation

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

This brand of levitation we keep witnessing from Donald John Trump continues to astound me.

He has returned to the political campaign trail. He convened a rally in Tulsa, Okla., telling us 1 million people sought tickets to the arena. He had the rally, but it was attended by something fewer than 7,000 die-hard Trumpkins.

Trump’s base continues to hold at around 42 percent and yet the man himself doesn’t tell them anything new. He offers no vision of any sort into what he intends to do if — God forbid! — he gets re-elected on Nov. 3.

How in the name of political illusion does this guy pull it off?

I am left to agree with others’ conclusion, which is that Donald Trump has created a cult of personality among Republican faithful voters.

I listened to former national security adviser John Bolton’s interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz in which Bolton said Donald Trump is “not a conservative Republican” and that Trump doesn’t adhere to any discernible political philosophy other than what benefits him politically.

The Trump cult of personality has co-opted a once-great political party and turned into something none of what remains of the GOP establishment recognizes. Even the “real Republicans” who serve in elected office seem smitten by the cult.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Donald Trump promised to shake up the establishment when he ran for president in 2016. He has delivered on that promise, even as so many other campaign pledges have face-planted along the way.

It appears that the shakeup has produced this continuing levitation among the hard-core faithful of Trump’s base.

It gives me pause when I consider whether Joe Biden actually can defeat this fraudulent politician. I am hoping for all I am worth that we can send this clown packing.

national news

Toss in ‘hate’ to replace ‘heritage’ and ‘history’

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So much for the “heritage” and “history” argument for flying the Confederate flag.

Let’s consider “hate” as well, shall we?

NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, the only African-American driver among the top tier of drivers in the popular sport, recently led the call for NASCAR to remove the Confederate flag from its events. NASCAR listened and issued an order banning the flag that is the symbol of the Confederacy, the group of states that seceded from the Union in 1861 and went to war with the U.S. of A. They went to war because they wanted to preserve states’ rights to sanction the enslavement of human beings.

Not all of NASCAR’s base of fans is happy with the removal of the flag. They disagree that it symbolizes racism, that it merely reflects people’s respect for their “heritage” and the “history” of the nation.

Well, what do you suppose happened over the weekend?

Someone got into Wallace’s garage at a Southern track and left a noose. Hmm. Heritage and history … my a**!

You know what the noose represents. It represents hate in a raw, despicable form.

Let’s quit the crap about the Confederate flag symbolic importance to people’s heritage and the nation’s history. The flag represents a disgraceful chapter in America’s story.

national news

Bolton joins line of national security advisers in trashing POTUS

James Mattis pounded Donald Trump, saying he is intentionally seeking to divide the nation.

John Kelly said the nation needs to do a better job of assessing the character and competence of those who seek elective public office.

John Bolton says Donald Trump is unfit for public office and says he endangers our national security by looking first at his re-election chances and how any decision affects them.

Mattis and Kelly are former Marine Corps generals; Mattis served as defense secretary and Kelly served as homeland security secretary and then White House chief of staff. Bolton is a former U.N. ambassador and a longstanding conservative foreign policy hawk.

These are just the latest in a long line of national security officials who once worked for Trump. What do they have in common? They are trashing a sitting U.S. president. They are telling us that Donald Trump is dangerous, uninformed, unwilling to become informed.

Let’s not forget, too, that Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, once called Trump a “fu**ing moron.”

As I look at a reasonably big picture, I see an executive government branch in a state of absolute chaos and pandemonium. This is all a function of a president who now wants to win a second term. My goodness! There can be no way in the world we should allow this to continue.

And I can say that even while setting aside that the Nitwit in Chief has committed at least two impeachable offenses and should have been convicted in that Senate trial that acquitted him.

God help us if this clown wins the upcoming election!

national news

Why the sparse crowd in Tulsa? Here’s a thought or two

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Donald J. “Blame Placer in Chief” Trump was quick to lay out some excuses for the poor showing at his big-time campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla.

He blamed the media; he blamed Democrats for putting out “fake news” about the pandemic. I have a couple of other thoughts to ponder.

One is that Oklahomans and others who thought to attend got cold feet because of the coronavirus pandemic that is still sickening and killing Americans each day. They decided to heed the warnings of medical experts who said an indoor rally with thousands of folks packed in next to each presented too great a risk.

The other is that just maybe Donald Trump’s shtick is wearing out. I listened to parts of his rant. I didn’t hear a single new initiative. I didn’t hear him offer a single fresh idea of where he wanted to lead the country in a second term. Trump didn’t offer anything that sounded like a vision for the future.

No, instead he regurgitated almost the entire story line from the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton. He just changed the name from “Clinton” to “Biden,” as in Joe Biden, the presumed 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee.

It well might be that the Trump “base” has grown weary of the tired rant that keeps pouring forth from the guy who promised to “tell it like it is,” that he would “drain the swamp” and that “I, alone” can repair what he said ails the nation.

He skulked off of Marine One after it landed on the White House lawn after the rally looking like he’d been rode hard and put up wet. Indeed, reports have surfaced today about how Trump is “furious” with the turnout and he just can’t find enough people to blame for the fact that the  presidency under his watch has been exposed as a fraud.

We can all rest assured that Donald Trump will keep looking for others to blame for the miserable shortcomings he has revealed since pilfering the presidency.