Category Archives: national news

Counsel heaves new grenade into Trump’s lap

You just had to know that special counsel Jack Smith would have more to say about Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 uprising.

Today, Smith delivered the goods in a stunning 165-page filing that chronicles what many with the government told Trump in advance of the assault on the government.

According to ABC News: Trump intentionally lied to the public, state election officials, and his own vice president in an effort to cling to power after losing the election, while privately describing some of the claims of election fraud as “crazy,” prosecutors alleged in the 165-page filing.

Do you get what Smith is suggesting? It is that Trump knew right after the 2020 election that he had lost to Joe Biden … but he insisted anyway on contesting the results of what has been described as the “cleanest election in U.S. history.”

Vice President Mike Pence told Trump the truth.  So did others within the Justice Department, his key campaign aides and advisers and others within the White House national security staff.

Trump blew it all off.

This filing only makes me return to a question I keep asking of my Republican friends, many of whom say they intend to vote for Trump this time around: How in the name of all that is righteous and holy can you vote for an individual who knowingly sought to commit a criminal act by overturning a legal, fair presidential election?

Pardon the traitors?

Of all the things Donald J. Trump has pledged to do if hell freezes over and he wins the next presidential election, one of them stands out as genuinely spine-chilling and dangerous in the extreme.

He vows to issue blanket presidential pardons to the hundreds of traitors who stormed the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 while attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

There you have it, kids. The mob that sh** on the floor of the Capitol, threatened to murder Vice President Mike Pence, who injured dozens of Capitol cops, who inflicted serious damage to our sacred public property could get a pardon from the idiot who called on them to do what they did.

I cannot think of a single more compelling reason to vote against this Republican monster than that.

What in the world does such an act signal to any other traitor who would plot such a heinous act?

It gets more difficult for this patriot — that would be me — to watch video of what happened on that day. Trump praised the mob, has called them political prisoners. He let them storm the Capitol for more than two hours before issuing a tepid request for them to go home.

And then he called them “special people” who he “loves.”

Good grief! They were traitors to the nation. Every …. damn … one … of … them!

Please ponder the consequences of endorsing an individual who embodies such visceral loathing for the rule of law.

What does the VP do?

Critics of Kamala Harris continue to knock me out, bowl me over and simply slay me with their line of criticism.

It goes something like this: What has she done in the nearly four years she has served as VP in the Biden administration?

They contend that she’s been little more than a potted plant in Cabinet meetings, in the Situation Room, or any Oval Office conference led by President Biden.

Biden, of course, says she has been a vital member of his inner circle.

Here’s something we all need to ponder: The US Constitution purposely created the vice presidency with no actual power. All the VP can do under the law is break tie votes in the US Senate, where the VP serves as presiding officer. Vice President Harris has been called upon to break those tie votes when a sharply divided, even-steven Senate cannot find a majority vote to enact legislation.

President Obama has said many times over the years that Vice President Biden often was the last person to leave a Cabinet meeting and Biden often would tell Obama where he disagreed with a policy decision. Obama said he valued that disagreement, as it helped him maintain some level of perspective.

Biden has said much the same thing about Harris.

Biden has asked Harris to be his point person on reproductive rights and on border security issues. As near as I can tell, she has done well on both matters.

Does she have any real authority? No more than any of the men who preceded her. I will say, though, that the office is far more than what that crusty Texan, Vice President John Nance Garner, described of the office he held under FDR.

It is far more worthwhile than a “bucket of warm piss.”

And it has prepared Kamala Harris for the next — and final — step toward the pinnacle of power.

He defies the odds … again!

I keep asking: How is this presidential campaign so dadgum close?

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris advises her staff to run this campaign as if she’s the underdog. The polling data I keep seeing suggest that it might not be as close as we are being led to believe.

Republican nominee Donald J. Trump keeps trotting out the same grievances that wore well in 2016, not so well in 2020.

I have concluded that Trump has managed to remake the Republican Party into something only he could admire. The holier-than-thou wing of the GOP gives Trump a pass on his sexual assaults, his philandering, his denigration of people with handicaps, his disrespect of war heroes captured and tortured during the Vietnam War.

GOP faithful are being led to believe him when he calls Biden the worst president in U.S. history. Yet they dismiss his multiple felony convictions, his admitting to cheating on all of his wives. The GOP holy rollers once disqualified candidates who didn’t meet the “character test.” Not now!

Kamala Harris stormed onto the political stage when President Biden performed that rarest of political acts: he gave up the enormous power of his office. Yes, there has been a surge of excitement over Harris’s 11th-hour candidacy. Trump, though, continues to pretend as if he has a chance of winning.

The GOP nominee’s pretense seems to play well among the gullible gang who comprise his base.

How in the world does this guy manage to make this a contest? I cannot find the answer.

Once is enough for this clown

Kamala Harris has accepted CNN’s invitation to participate in a second presidential debate with Donald J. Trump.

Trump, though, said he isn’t going to do it. Once is enough, he reportedly said. You know what? I actually agree with the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. Americans do not need to know any more about this former POTUS, the serial liar, the ex-philanderer in chief.

We know that Trump is a fraudulent numbskull. We know he’s been convicted of 34 felony counts, that he stands indicted on more criminal counts. He’s been impeached twice already by the House of Representatives.

He has admitted to grabbing women by their genitals because he’s “famous” and can get away with it.

Vice President Harris delivered an old-fashioned whoopin’ to Trump in their earlier encounter. What more can he do to alienate voters who already fear the possibility that he could return to power?

I am one American patriot who doesn’t need a single reason to hear another word from this loser.

Americans used to insist that our candidates for president embodied the best in those who comprise this great nation. Donald Trump embodies the worst in us.

I have heard enough from this guy’s overfed yapper.

Trump-Vance’s racism on full display

Let it never be denied that the 2024 Republican Party presidential ticket is virulently racist to its core … meaning to what passes for the hearts of the two men who are leading that political enterprise, Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance.

For them to single out Haitian refugees for committing a heinous act of barbarism in an Ohio city that has welcomed them only drives home the point of the men’s racist core.

Haiti is a country that comprises a Black population. Thousands of Haitians have moved into Ohio. Then, during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump asserted that Haitian refugees are eating pet dogs and cats.

Proof of it happening? Trump produced not a shred of it. Indeed, Ohio officials have declared it to be a vicious rumor.

However, this brand of idiotic racism goes straight into Trump’s wheelhouse. He has singled out ethnic and racial groups — and individuals — for this kind of “fake news.” Remember the Barack Obama “birther” malarkey? How about recently when Trump wondered out loud “when Kamala Harris became Black.”

This idiot has no place preparing to knock on the White House door yet again.

Trump is racist to his rotten core. And Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, is just following the racist in chief’s lead.

No on launch code access

The advent of social media in our lives has brought us an unanticipated treat: memes that go “viral” and bear repeating.

Such as this one … and I am paraphrasing; Those who promoted lies about immigrants eating dogs and cats need to have their head examined, not receive access to our nation’s nuclear launch codes.

That’s pretty good, right? But Donald Trump is now doubling down on that idiocy he offered the other night while debating Vice President Kamala Harris. He said Springfield, Ohio, is the place where this lunacy is occurring. He’s going there soon to repeat it.

This individual is nuttier than a Snicker’s Bar. Dude can’t help himself … I reckon. I am certain as sure as I am sitting here that that he’ll never provide a scintilla of proof to back any of it up. He’ll just keep repeating it and the MAGA cultists will swallow it.

A quick post script: I met a family from Brisbane, Australia the other day while whiting for a ferry ride to Pireaus, Greece, from a charming place called Naxos. The Au,ssie dad was as certain as I am about Trump …. that the loon is off his rocker. What he cannot get, nor can I, is how Trump continues to make this presidential race a competitive affair.

My answer: Ignorance is tough to scrub away.

Trump says ‘no mas!’

Can you really blame Donald Trump for not wanting any more of Kamala Harris than what he got the other evening?

I totally get what he might be thinking: I’ve got too much to lose and probably not much to gain by standing toe-to-toe with the former district attorney/former California attorney general/and current vice president of the United States.

One debate whoopin’ is enough for the former POTUS.

The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees now will slug it out at a distance. We’ll get to hear Trump spit out his lies, his fabrications about such things as dogs and cats being eaten by immigrants. We won’t see a scintilla of grace from the GOP nominee who gets to run for POTUS for the third consecutive election cycle, despite his multiple felony convictions and other felony indictments awaiting trial.

He gets to join the ranks of “quitters” to go along with his membership in the club of losers.

Harris wins by TKO

NAXOS, Greece — I awoke this morning in time to watch Vice President Kamala Harris extend her hand to Donald Trump prior to the candidates engaging in a. 90-minute debate.

I cannot tell you whether the encounter will prove decisive in this campaign for the presidency. I will say, though, that I believe Harris has delivered a stunning message to Trump and his MAGA cultists … which is that the GOP nominee can’t hold a candle to the VP while facing her on a debate stage.

She delivered the goods bigly to the former POTUS who once again felt compelled to fall back on his litany of lies, even going so far as to say that undocumented immigrants are eating our puppies and kitties.

Post-debate analysis suggests that Harris was successful in re-introducing herself to American voters.

What now? Hit the road, Mme. Veep. Keep the heat under Trump’s backside … and keep looking forward to a brighter day,

Trump: small and old

NAXOS, Greece — Of all the analysis I read after watching the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate, one media observation stands out.

Kamala Harris managed to make Trump look and sound “small and old” during their 90-minute insult fest.

The decisive moment likely came when she mentioned how Trump rally-goers have been leaving his rallies early out of boredom. Trump was having none of that, contending that his rallies are the greatest in human history; then he fires back with Harris being a “low IQ vice president” serving the “worst president in history.”

Well, there you go. Trump is 78 years of age, the oldest presidential nominee in the history of the republic. He also no longer has the presidential seal behind which he can hide.

Small and old? Yep … that’s Trump.