Category Archives: national news

national news

Some matters escape me

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Try as I do to stay ahead of the public policy curve, it continues to boggle my occasionally thick-skulled noggin just how Donald Trump continues to manipulate the MAGA cult that follows him off the cliff and into the sewer.

I told a dear friend today that Trump’s duplicity and hypocrisy seems to go over the vacuous heads of the MAGAites who think the guy is the best thing in politics since pockets on shirts.

Consider two elements in this moron’s narrative. Fake news and “rigged elections.”

He routinely blasts the media for putting “fake news” into print and on the air. And yet … this the very dimwit who fomented the former Big Lie about Barack Obama’s place of birth. He rode that pony until he realized, I reckon, that it was no longer useful to him. He accused Obama of being from Kenya and, thus, was constitutionally ineligible to run for president.

I shook my head in disbelief … not so much that he kept saying it but at the cult’s willingness to buy into it. They weren’t smart enough to call the dipsh** out on his lie.

Now for the rigged election. He said the 2020 result that elected Joe Biden over Trump was “rigged.” He said it was corrupt. He sicced the mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration.

And yet … here he is four years later plotting to rig this very election through the use of 2020 election deniers holding key state and local election offices.

What’s more, he still won’t commit categorically to accepting the 2024 election results even if Kamala Harris defeats him soundly.

Politicians generally are thought to shade the truth on occasion, I get it. This guy? I cannot believe a single, solitary sentence that pours out of his overfed pie hole as the truth.

Trump is the embodiment of fake news and rigged elections. We must not forget that when we troop to our polling stations later this year.

media news, national news

Harris, Walz seek to clear the air

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Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic Party presidential ticket, have been criticized unfairly because they haven’t been interviewed extensively by the national media.

Oh, my ….

Republicans have seized on this as a campaign talking point, suggesting that Harris and Walz are too afraid to field “tough questions” from the media on their various policy positions.

They will be put to the test Thursday when they sit with CNN anchor Dana Bash.

This is a bit of a gamble for Harris and Walz. Why? Because Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, their GOP foes, are going to allege — and you can take this to the bank — that they were given softball questions. Trump plays that joker card all the time. Vance, the loyal VP nominee, no doubt will buy into that specious notion.

I continue to hold Harris and Walz in the highest esteem. They have energized their Democratic Party. Harris’s sudden and dramatic emergence as the frontrunner after President Biden ended his candidacy has been a sight to behold.

If I were to place a wager on why the delay, I would suggest that Harris and Walz needed some time to hone their policy positions before facing the national media. Harris only has been running for president for a few weeks and Walz, well, came out of virtual nowhere to emerge as her VP running mate.

Will Bash challenge Harris and Walz if they lie to us? You can bet your oldest child that she will.

I long have thought of Dana Bash as a journalism pro. She is there to seek the truth. Whether the candidates deliver the whole truth likely will be determined by the bias of those Americans who will watch … and listen.

national news

It’s the brevity … stupid!

Just suppose for a moment or two what the public reaction to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign would be had she been in the hunt for, oh, the past year and a half.

Do you think we’d still be as excited about the energy the vice president has brought to the race? Would she wear us out with her exuberance, her enthusiasm, her energy?

I want to offer a notion that might not go over well among some readers of this blog. It is that Harris’s late entry into the campaign after President Biden pulled out of the race has filled the air with excitement that might not have the staying power that many of the VP’s allies say it would.

Vice President Harris launched her campaign from a dead stop with fewer than 100 days to go before Election Day. Joe Biden’s horrible debate performance got tongues wagging about his mental acuity. He stood firm, said he would stay in, then, in an instant he was gone.

Harris stepped up with the wind blowing hard at her back.

Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are in a dead sprint toward the finish line, which is just 70 days from now. My strong hope is that Harris and Walz win, that they vanquish Donald Trump and JD Vance to history’s dust bin and then deliver on the myriad promises they are making.

A part of me, though, just might always wonder if the brevity of this campaign could have been the decisive factor in her victory.

Whatever. A win is a win.

national news

RFK Jr. betrays his family

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Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. should be damn glad his father cannot emerge from the ground at Arlington National Cemetery and give his son the whoopin’ he has earned.

Kennedy decided to suspend his presidential campaign and then did the unthinkable: He endorsed the Republican Party’s twice-impeached, four-times-indicted, convicted felon nominee for president of the United States … Donald Trump.

Junior, the scion of the nation’s premier family of partisan Democrats, turned his back on the principles championed by his forebears, namely his father, Robert F. Kennedy, his uncles JFK and Sen. Edward Kennedy and a host of aunts, siblings and cousins.

I am scratching my noggin over this endorsement. So help me, it makes zero sense.

RFK Jr. long has fancied himself as a man of action. He developed a nice environmental law practice and has been at the forefront of environmental causes almost since his graduation from law school. Trump doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about the environment.

And yet RFK Jr. is now backing the disgraced former POTUS.

What does RFK Jr.’s endorsement mean in terms of the election outcome? Probably not enough to matter. I won’t waste any time seeking to evaluate that particular consequence.

I only can imagine what Junior’s sainted mother, Ethel, must be thinking as she watches her son spit in the face of her beloved husband and throw his support behind a moron who stands before the nation and the world as the Republicans’ only nominee ever convicted of multiple felonies.

I may never catch my breath over this one!

national news

Run from behind!

Michelle and Barack Obama laid it out in plain language last night; indeed Kamala Harris has been saying it since the moment she emerged as the Democrats’ frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election.

Do not believe for a second that Donald Trump, their Republican foe, is going away quietly as this campaign revs up.

Yes, Democrats are feeling high and mighty right now as the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket takes shape and prepares its fight plan for the White House. And, yes, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have floundered, flailed and flubbed their way along since Joe Biden dropped out of the contest.

Let us all remember 2016. Every politician and pundit on Planet Earth “knew” that Hillary Clinton was going to win that election. Then, suddenly, she didn’t.

This sudden and invigorating reversal of fortune does feel different. It does feel unique, as if it’s something none of us has ever experienced. If it is the real thing, then Harris, Walz and their enthusiastic army of supporters need to just remember how we thought we would welcome President Hillary Clinton to power in January 2017.

Yes, last night was inspiring in the extreme. Just a word of caution: Do not count Donald Trump out until after every ballot is counted!

national news, political news

Yep. the man is unfit

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Dawn  finally is breaking over the pundit class that is covering the third presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Ever since he announced his bid for the presidency the first time in 2015, some of us have been saying that Trump’s zero experience with public service would render him unfit for the presidency. Now, others are seeing the proverbial light.

Consider what the numbskull said about those who receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and how it compares to the Medal of Honor. He put them on an equal footing, suggesting further that the Medal of Freedom is “more important” because Medal of Honor recipients “always are wounded” and some have died to earn the recognition.

What an absolute crock of bull dookie!

The Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor; it goes to those who contribute greatly to our cultural life, through athletics, art, music, drama. The Medal of Honor is our nation’s top military honor; it is awarded to those who perform heroically on the battlefield.

Both medals are big deals.

However, for the former POTUS to put down Medal of Honor recipients because they are “wounded or killed” betrays a profound lack of understanding or appreciation of those don the nation’s uniform in service to their country.

It also reveals what I have noted many times on this blog, which is that Trump never has committed a single moment of his existence on this Earth to public service.

I am running out of ways to say this … but this moron is unfit for public office at any level, let alone as commander in chief.

national news

What about Trump’s laugh?

True story: I really hate “what aboutism,” which often surfaces when your candidate gets jabbed by a foe and you respond with, “Well, what about your guy?”

Kamala Harris’s reportedly annoying laughter has been drawing some flak from foes of the vice president who’s running for the presidency. Rather than picking apart policy matters, her foes have taken to reminding us of the laugh that annoys them.

Here comes the “what aboutism.”

What about Donald J. Trump? What about his laugh? Indeed, has anyone ever heard him laugh out loud? That’s the rejoinder making the rounds on social media.

I confess I haven’t heard anything that sounds like laughter coming from the indicted/convicted/twice-impeached former president.

I have long thought that Trump had zero discernible humor. He’s a crabby sorehead who cannot stop relitigating matters over which he has zero control. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is having the time of her life … and this is an American patriot who enjoys seeing a presidential candidate exhibit such joy.

Keep laughing, Mme. Vice President.

national news, political news

GOP has no governing platform

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Anyone who believes today’s Republican Party has a governing platform that is worth a damn needs to pay careful attention to what is being reported all around the world.

It is that the GOP is — and has been — the exclusive property of a one-time real estate developer and a former TV “reality show” host who in 2016 stumbled into the U.S. presidency.

Put another way, Donald J. Trump has no policy, no guiding principles, no moral compass to guide him. He makes policy up as he goes along and that “policy,” and I use the term with an abundance of caution, somehow becomes the policy of the MAGA cult that is running the once-great political party.

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is on the verge of unveiling her economic policy. She will present it perhaps before Democrats meet next week in Chicago to send her into the fight with Trump as their party’s nominee.

I met someone today who expressed support for the “Republican Party platform.” I answered that the party “doesn’t have one.” This individual wouldn’t buy that idea. We changed the subject.

This is the kind of stubborn notion that is so damn hard to expunge from Republicans’ noggins.

Of course, this all ignores the deep moral failings that Trump has exhibited his entire adult life.

I have been impressed by the rant offered by Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz, who reminds us that “public service” is a foreign concept to Trump. I have been saying since the day his political career began that Trump has spent his entire professional life focused on one thing: enriching himself. He purports to be a populist but doesn’t give a damn about the millions of disenfranchised Americans who need a real champion, not one who portrays himself as a populist on the campaign stump.

So, when Republicans tout their party platform, they should add a caveat that reminds us that it’s all a creation of Donald Trump’s demented mind.

national news

A landslide in the making?

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Let’s get to the first thing I must say … which is that I dare not even try to predict the outcome of the 2024 election for president of the United States.

I can, however, offer an opinion of what I believe might be playing out as we speak.

What was beginning to look like a Donald Trump rout over President Biden might be turning in a 180-degree reversal, with Vice President Kamala Harris coming out on the long end of an electoral landslide.

The landslide might manifest itself only in the Electoral College. What do I mean? I am going to speculate that the popular vote of all Americans might not meet or exceed landslide proportions, which generally is about a 10% or greater margin of victory.

The Electoral College could be a different matter. Polling data released since Biden ceded the nomination to Harris tells us the VP is making serious headway in many swing states, that she is either tied or leading Trump that the GOP nominee was leading over Biden.

Political experts across the spectrum who once said the race was “Trump’s to lose” now say the tide is turning dramatically in Harris’s favor.

I am just a spectator to all of this in the middle of what once was called Trump Country.  I am not going to venture any guesses on what I think will happen, I am left only to offer what I hope occurs on Election Day …. and my hope is looking more realistic all the time.

A landslide might be developing, but not in the manner to which many of us have grown accustomed.  All eyes will be turned on the Electoral College.

national news, political news

GOPers for Harris channels an earlier mutiny

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They call themselves Republicans for Harris, believing that the Democratic nominee for POTUS is suited better to hold the job than the Republicans’ own presidential nominee.

It is far too early — and the view from my perch doesn’t allow me to predict anything with accuracy — to know what this means in terms of determining the outcome of the election.

This Republicans for Harris movement designed to bolster the election of Kamala Harris over Donald J. Trump has a certain ring that I recall vividly from my first political campaign.

Flash back for a moment to 1972. Democrats nominated Sen. George McGovern for president. He ran against President Richard Nixon. McGovern wanted to end the Vietnam War. So did I, so I signed on as a campaign worker. I was aligned with the Democratic Party in my early years. My wife, Kathy Anne, and I were newly married and we both became involved.

Not all Democrats were enamored of the effort the nominee was making to obtain an early-as-possible exit from the bloodshed in Vietnam.

Thus, the Democrats for Nixon movement was born. One of its leaders was the late Big John Connally, the former Texas governor who was wounded seriously that day in Dallas when President Kennedy was murdered. Democrats for Nixon grew to a huge following of disaffected Democrats.

Nixon won that election with 520 electoral votes to McGovern’s 17; Nixon carried 49 of 50 states, winning 61% of the popular vote.

I smile these days when I recall those results, hoping that this Republicans for Harris movement could contribute to the same level of victory for the candidate I want to become president, Kamala Harris.

I cannot predict an outcome, even though Harris’s momentum continues to build. Trump continues to struggle.

Maybe it’s a long shot, but I am going to cling to some notion that history just might be able to repeat itself.