Category Archives: national news

Let the trial begin … and end

Eight days from now a judge in New York City is going to bang a gavel and call for the beginning of a trial.

It won’t be an ordinary trial. The criminal defendant will be a former president of the United States. He will make history by being the first ex-POTUS ever to stand trial.

The ex-POTUS has three more trials awaiting him once this one concludes. The others are more consequential in terms of the charges leveled against him. First things first, though.

The NYC trial is going to take the former POTUS off the campaign trail for as long as it takes to reach a conclusion. He’ll be in court listening to testimony alleging how he misused campaign funds to pay off an adult film actress to keep quiet about a one-night stand the two of them had, but which the former POTUS said didn’t happen.

Go figure.

The defendant cut a check for the actress totaling 130 grand to shut her up.

This might not be the biggest legal deal facing the former POTUS. Still, it’s pretty damn big. District Attorney Alvin Bragg has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did what has been alleged. It’s a criminal case, after all, so the bar is set high.

I will not shy away from — or apologize for — my hope that DA Bragg delivers the goods to the jury that will decide this matter. I want the former POTUS to be convicted of the crime that has been alleged. I also want him locked up and kept out of public view. He is an existential menace to the nation he seeks to lead once more.

God help us if there are enough stupid Americans out there to put him back into the Oval Office.

In many crucial ways, this is the most important trial in U.S. history. It’s going to make for the highest political drama any of have ever witnessed.

Get out of the way, RFK Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is really pissing me off … in a serious sort of way.

Now he’s talking smack about the traitors who are jailed for storming the Capitol building on 1/6, refusing to call them what they are, criminals who were caught seeking to overturn the results of a free, fair, legal and moral election.

Democratic Party officials — many of whom with fond memories of Junior’s father and uncles — now want the independent presidential candidate to drop out of the race. I join them in their anger at RFK Jr., who’s sounding more like a crackpot than a serious candidate for POTUS.

Man, I never thought I was say these things about the scion of one of America’s great political families, and the second-oldest son of my first political hero.

The great Robert F. Kennedy no doubt would climb out of his Arlington National Cemetery grave — if he could — and deliver a serious ass-kicking to his son.

Does Junior not understand what this treasonous mob sought to do and does not appreciate the consequence he could bring to the result of an election he has zero chance of winning?

RFK Jr. has gone bonkers

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s butter has slipped off its noodles … to borrow a phrase I heard long ago to question someone’s mental capacity.

RFK Jr., who once professed great admiration and affection for Joe Biden, now says the president is a greater threat to democracy than the presumed Republican presidential nominee, aka POTUS No. 45.

What the hell has Junior — an independent candidate for president — been swilling?

It is the former Moron in Chief who says he would become a dictator on his first day in office if — God forbid! — he’s elected this fall. The Former Guy is the one who’s pals with dictators around the world, calling them “sharp” and “strong leaders” and wishing he could rule with the same iron fist.

RFK Jr., to say it bluntly, is a disgrace to the name he carries … that of his late father. Something deep inside me tells me Bobby Kennedy would be aghast at the garbage pouring out of his son’s pie hole.

Keep blathering, ex-POTUS

POTUS No. 45 continues to exhibit loudly and clearly why he is so horribly unfit for public office.

He launched a tirade against Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., because Cassidy cast a vote to convict the former POTUS of inciting an insurrection on 1/6. He called him the “worst senator in the United States.” He labeled him a “lamebrain.”

Bear in mind that the former Moron in Chief endorsed Cassidy’s re-election in 2020.

Trump rages against Louisiana Republican: ‘One of the worst Senators in the United States’ (msn.com)

Cassidy was one of seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict the ex-Liar in Chief on the impeachment filed against him by the House.

All of this just goes to show the astonishing petulance and petty boorishness that resides in what passes for the heart of the former POTUS.

Keep this in mind, too: After the Senate acquitted President Clinton of impeachment charges leveled against him in 1999, the president got to work — with Republicans in Congress — on a budget compromise that produced the first balanced federal budget in decades. That is how you govern. You take your lumps, then after that fight, you get back to work.

Does anyone with half a brain believe that is possible with this idiot?

Choices are widening

Americans are facing a critical decision that by all rights should be a no-brainer, one that requires hardly more than a scintilla of thought.

It is this: Do Americans want to elect a certifiable overfed, overhyped and over-publicized juvenile fu**ing delinquent to the presidency or do we re-elect a known grownup, someone with years of public service under his belt, someone who has a clear priority list of beliefs and principles?

In a normal context, there would be no debate. We wouldn’t allow our children to behave in the manner displayed by the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee. But here is, standing on the precipice of an astonishing political comeback, on the verge of securing the GOP presidential nomination for the third election cycle in a row!

The former Moron in Chief authorized the distribution of a video showing President Biden hogtied in a rope. What the hell?

He continues to foment the Big Lie about electoral theft in 2020 that did not occur. Didn’t we teach our children to take their lumps when they lose, dust themselves off and go about their next task? My wife and I taught our sons those lessons in life.

The misdeeds are too many to enumerate here. You get my drift.

Joe Biden is the grownup in this contest. The other guy is a petulant little dipsh**.

Are we headed for the crapper?

I am going to refuse to believe this great nation of ours is going to elect someone who stands a better than decent chance of being convicted of a felony.

Thus, the crapper destination is not in our nation’s future. Or so my gut is telling me.

I see the polling data that tell me the incumbent president, Joe Biden, trails his likely Republican opponent. I also notice that the polls also show the two men within striking distance of each other. The data all contain a “margin of error” that varies from 3 to 6 percentage points.

OK, I am not going to rely on polls to buoy my spirits. They can change. They can be wrong.

What does lift my spirits is my undying belief in the intelligence of average Americans. And I am not going to include the MAGA nimrods who comprise the bulk of the base that continues to support the former Liar in Chief in my category of “average American.” They ain’t average. Not by a long shot.

I want to harken back to the ex-POTUS’s inaugural speech on Jan. 20, 2017. Do you recall the most memorable line from that speech? To me it was: “The American carnage stops right here, right now.”

Did it stop? No. It didn’t! No president should make such a prediction knowing he cannot make it happen because he says it.

It was just one of many promises this dipsh** made that he didn’t keep. Now he’s running for a third time. It’s all different now. Forget the two impeachments. He stands as a four-times-indicted criminal defendant awaiting trial for an assortment of felonies he has been accused of committing.

I am going to lay my faith at the feet of American voters who cannot stomach the notion of electing a potentially convicted criminal to the nation’s highest office.

We are better than that. We are definitely better than the candidate.

How does he maintain this grip?

The afterlife awaits every one of us, as no one gets out of here alive.

When my day arrives — and I hope for damn sure it’s no time soon — I will head there with many political questions jostling through my noggin.

Chief among them will be trying to grasp how the 45th POTUS manages to maintain the grip he has secured around the throats of the MAGA cult he has created.

To be sure, it’s seemingly not as large a cult as it once was, but it’s every bit as vocal. The cultists so far are outshouting the rest of the Republican Party faithful … and I mean to say the “real Republicans” who cannot seem to shake loose the grip that the former Liar in Chief has on the MAGA crowd.

My belief in the goodness of humanity is being challenged daily by the ignorance demonstrated by those who glom onto the moron’s every statement. Even when he mangles words or confuses individuals (such as when he recently confused Joe Biden with Barack Obama), they still whoop and holler. Go … figure, man.

I will have to dish out some off-handed praise to the former Idiot in Chief. He has found the audience that adheres to his nonsense, and he speaks plainly to them in a language that only they seem to comprehend.

The rest of us?

We’re left in the dark … and the candidate doesn’t give a sh**!

What is RFK Jr. doing?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bizarre campaign for the presidency has me baffled and bamboozled.

He announced his candidacy first as a Democrat; then he became an independent. This week he selected an entrepreneur/lawyer, Nicole Shanahan, as his vice-presidential running mate.

Why the bafflement? Well, RFK Jr.’s father, the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was my first political hero. I had the pleasure of shaking Bobby Kennedy’s hand in late May 1968, one week before his own presidential bid ended with an assassin’s bullet in Los Angeles.

I am struck by the notion that RFK Jr. would abandon the Democratic Party, given his family’s long affiliation with the party. I am certain his father would be aghast.

What’s more, RFK Jr. professed profound admiration and affection for President Biden even as he was announcing his Democratic presidential campaign. What the … ?

I am puzzled by the reason he wants to become the next POTUS. His conspiracy theories regarding the murder of his father and his idiotic refusal to accept the vaccine offered to battle the COVID 19 pandemic simply send me into orbit.

Will his campaign harm Biden more than the Republican nominee-in-waiting? I haven’t a clue. I have seen polling data that suggest an even draw-down of votes for both major-party candidates. I don’t necessarily believe those polls.

I remain baffled that Bobby Jr. would do this … and to what end.

I also am convinced that his father would take the kid to the proverbial woodshed …

NBC pulls its head out

Just when I thought the world was going to hell, a major TV network has delivered the goods and thought better about a horrible hiring decision it had made.

NBC News withdrew its decision to hire former Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel as an on-air political contributor.

I want to stand and cheer out loud! So … I will.

You see, NBC erred in hiring McDaniel after the former party chair had been complicit in the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election; after she denied President Biden had been elected fairly; after she promoted The Big Lie put forth by the 2020 Republican Party presidential nominee.

She is far from just someone who once led a major political party. She is a purveyor lies and deception. That a TV network would put her on the air to offer political commentary was just too much to swallow. It drew tremendous blowback from its own employees and journalists everywhere.

The network today thought better of its own stupidity … and pulled Ronna McDaniel’s name off the table.

Can it get worse for speaker?

I have asked a question in the headline atop this post that I believe I can answer.

Yes. It can get worse. It seems to be worsening daily for U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose majority in the congressional chamber is now down to a single member. Meaning that the dude has virtually no governing majority.

Johnson is facing an insurrection — if you’ll pardon the use of the term — within his own party. The MAGA caucus led by Marjorie Taylor Greene wants him booted out. The reason escapes me. The guy is one of them! Still, MTG wants him gone, but hasn’t yet taken the final legislative step to get him removed, which would be to call for a vote of House members.

GOP congressmen are fleeing the chamber. Ken Buck of Colorado said so long, saying he can’t work in such a chaotic atmosphere.

The late Sen. John McCain used to demand that the Senate follow “regular order.” He should have spoken those words to the House, too. Regular order establishes a procedure for legislating that can seem boring, cumbersome and arcane. It sure beats the hell out of the madness we are witnessing these days with MAGA nitwits blathering constantly about how the House cannot allow Democrats to have any say in how the place functions.

The MAGA clowns are not interested in governing. Their only interest appears to be seeing their names in bold print in headlines across the country.

Speaker Johnson is presiding over all of this. He cannot control the House. The MAGA cultists are running amok and are running roughshod over the guy they chose when they booted his immediate predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, out of the speaker’s office.

Boy howdy, Mike Johnson is occupying the worst political office in D.C. It’s likely to get even worse.