Category Archives: national news

national news

Senators exhibit wear and tear

Recent episodes involving two prominent U.S. senators have thrust me into a serious quandary.

I do not believe in term limits for members of Congress, but I do believe that those members should exercise proper judgment when it becomes apparent — if not obvious — that they are unable to fulfill all the complicated aspects of their job.

Perhaps you have seen the recent video of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell freezing, unable to answer a question about his re-election plans in 2026. It is the second such episode we have seen of the Kentucky senator in recent weeks.

Then we have Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California missing several months because she was battling shingles and assorted other ailments. She has returned to her post, but she clearly — according to observers — is nowhere near at the top of her game.

Feinstein 90 years of age; McConnell is 81.

You hear it said in recent times about the need for age limits for senators and House members. Not necessary, any more than slapping term limits on these individuals. Nor is it necessary for the presidency, which does have a two-term limit for anyone elected to that office. I remain somewhat conflicted about whether we need term limits for the presidency.

Over the course of history of our Congress and our presidency we have seen multiple examples of individuals who have stayed in office for far too long. Perhaps the most prominent among them is Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the senator who served as a Democrat, an independent and a Republican. At the end of his lengthy stint in office, Thurmond was hardly able to communicate, let alone speak cogently about public policy.

There comes a time when all of us should realize when we no longer have the snap required to do our jobs. When you are an elected official representing the interests of millions of other people, such self-awareness becomes even more critical. You must have all your faculties and must be in full command of your wits to make decisions based on (a) your own principles or (b) the will of those you represent.

It looks to me that Sens. McConnell and Feinstein — two of the Senate’s heaviest hitters — are no longer able to fulfill the obligations of their high offices.

Therein lies a stern — but essential — lesson for people in public life at all levels of government.

national news

No moral equivalence

The “whataboutism gang” is alive and functioning fully in this age of deflection and distraction.

I wrote to a critic of my blog who challenged my assertion that the Republican Party has become the “party of rage.” He said Democrats and progressives remained silent when rioters burned office buildings and marched in city streets to protect government policies.

I wrote this: I have condemned the rioting that occurred. Let me be clear on this point: There can be no possible moral equivalence between what the street rioters did and what the traitorous mob did on Jan. 6. The Jan. 6 mob launched a full-on frontal assault on our nation’s government at the behest of the POTUS. Do not equate the events. Therein lies the reason for my description of the GOP as the “party of rage.”

My critic no doubt will respond. That’s his right and I welcome the exchange. I just have lost patience, though, with those who use the “whataboutism” dodge as a justification for what their guy says or does. They seek to point fingers away from their own heroes and toward those on the other side. It’s a distraction, pure and simple.

The whataboutism strategy generally comes from those who are desperate to make a case — any case! — in favor of their guy. That’s what I can surmise in this instance. Absent any credible defense against the charges leveled against their hero, the Donald Trump MAGA moron crowd is left to hurl epithets at those who demonstrate their own anger.

Except that in the instance to which I have referred, they aren’t even close to the same thing.

Joe Biden, national news

GOP: Party of rage

Donald John Trump telegraphed the message on Jan. 20, 2017 during his astonishing inaugural speech to a nation that waited to hear what kind of president he would become.

The only memorable line from that speech came when he declared that “the American carnage ends right here, right now.”

Well, it didn’t end. However, it did signal an element of rage that Trump has used to foment throughout many Americans’ hearts. He spoke like an angry man, never mind that he had pulled off one of the great American political upsets in U.S. history.

The Republican Party that nominated Trump in 2016, and again in 2020 — and is possibly going to do so in 2024 — is now the party of rage. It feeds on some Americans’ anger at … well, you name it.

At the federal government, at “woke policy,” at immigrants, at Black people, at gay people, at the media, at local elections officials, at medical experts who mandated vaccines against a killer virus … for God’s sake!

I am thinking at this moment of President Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign theme, that “morning in America” had dawned over the country. The president parlayed that warm-and-fuzzy feeling into a 49-state landslide over his opponent that year, Walter Mondale.

Morning in America has become a thing of the increasingly distant past, if you listen — and heed — the rhetoric coming from the MAGA morons who now run the Republican Party.

I won’t suggest that a new morning has dawned over the United States. We still have plenty of issues and problems with which the current president, Joe Biden, is trying to deal.

However, this should be a nation far removed from the rage that dominated the four-year term of his immediate predecessor. Therein lies — except for the obvious criminality for which he soon will stand trial — Donald John Trump’s lasting legacy.

national news

Impeachment inquiry … of what?

Congressional Republicans are getting ready to launch what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy calls the next logical step toward an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s conduct.

Which begs the question: What in the hell are they seeking to learn?

President Biden’s conduct as president, as VP and as a senator has been investigated beyond all that is reasonable. The man’s been at or near the political center stage almost from the day he assumed his Senate office in January 1973. That’s 50 years worth of digging and scratching for dirt on the guy.

Have they come up with anything? No! They haven’t!

Now he’s president of the United States and is running for re-election. The GOP is desperate to find something — anything! — they can hang round POTUS’s neck.

An impeachment inquiry is going to end up in the trash bin along with the other allegations of wrongdoing that have been the subject of social media chatter. However, it won’t stop the MAGA clowns who populate House committee chairs from continuing their futile search.

And so … much of the rest of the work that Congress must tend to will remain undone.

national news

Biden fluffs Maui response

I am going to join President Biden’s critics who are scolding him for his oddly tone-deaf response to the wildfires that wiped out a historic community in Hawaii.

The president was far off his game when the fires began ravaging the island of Maui. The town of Lahaina, known for its historic exhibits and artifacts, at this moment no longer exists. Joe Biden’s first response when asked if he planned to visit the state and examine the damage was a terse “no comment.” Then he said he would go at the right time.

Americans have every right to expect their president to rise to occasions such as the one brought on by the horrific fire that destroyed a town, killed more than 100 citizens and has all but wiped out a local economy by rendering its tourist trade almost non-existent.

I heard some chatter about the president not wanting to get in the way of rescue and recovery efforts. That’s nonsense.

Yes, President Biden did issue an emergency declaration, clearing the way for federal aid to be rushed to help the residents of Maui. And, yes, he and first lady Jill Biden did take time away from their family vacation this past week to walk among the ruins to offer their moral support to a grieving community.

The deadliest wildfire in our nation’s history deserved far more than the tepid response it produced from the president of the United States.

crime news, national news

Mug shot, fingerprints …

As I write these words, Donald J. Trump is being booked at the Fulton County, Ga., jail on charges that he sought to overturn a duly constituted federal election in 2020.

He will deliver his fingerprints, will get his picture taken, will post bail and then will go to wherever he intends to go.

It sounds all so very routine. Except that it isn’t. The defendant in this matter is a former president of the United States of America who allegedly sought to steal an election from the guy who defeated him, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Trump will be treated just like every other criminal defendant who’s been processed in this fashion. Which brings me to the beauty of our criminal justice process.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has declared many times that “no one is above the law.” He also has implied that no one should be treated more harshly than others. Donald Trump is getting precisely the treatment he deserves from Georgia officials who are running the show with this latest set of indictments against the ex-president.

I happen to be OK with the way this is being played out.

Let’s remember, too, that Donald Trump always has sought to portray himself of being charge of all he sees, does and touches.

Not … this … time!

What is remarkable — to my way of looking at it — is that the individual in charge of the proceedings happens to be a Black woman. Given the ex-POTUS’s open disdain for Black people and for women, it is remarkable that District Attorney Fani Willis would be the one to dictate the terms of what the former president is having to endure.

The irony is remarkable. Don’t you think?

So it will go as Donald Trump surrenders to the authorities on a charge of racketeering. His face is likely to be plastered on every newspaper on Earth the next morning, not because what he went through is so extraordinary, but because of who he is and what he has been charged with doing to the very government he once took an oath to “defend and protect.”

Let the due process continue.

national news

GOP group shows cowardice

Admission time: I did not watch the initial Republican Party presidential “debate” in Milwaukee.

There. That said, I cannot comment on what I didn’t witness in real time. I can, however, offer a brief response to what I understand happened when a Fox Propaganda Channel moderator asked of the group of eight whether they would pledge to support the GOP nominee if it happens to be Donald Trump, who could be convicted of felonies against the U.S. government.

Six of them raised their hands, meaning they would support Trump if he’s the nominee. Two of them declined: former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

What does that tell me? It says that most of the individuals running for president are cowards, in that they cannot bring themselves to be critical of the prohibitive frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.

Sickening.

crime news, legal news, national news, political news

GOP awash in contradiction

An astonishing array of competing opinions has gripped the Republican Party by the throat as its presidential stable of candidates prepares to debate on an Iowa stage.

The “star of the show” is a twice-impeached, four-times-indicted candidate for POTUS, Donald Trump … who isn’t even going to be there for the opening round of Q&A.

He’s the talk of the event in absentia. Imagine had he decided to take part. He’d be the talk of the event in that context as well.

I am going to presume this is what Trump has wanted. He is a media hog, even as he proclaims the media to be “the enemy of the people.” The truth is he loves the media and the media love him despite rumors to the contrary about media bias against Trump.

His presence on the political stage has thrown the entire process into chaos, which was one of the hallmarks of the time he held the office of president. His alleged “style” of governing hardly ever contained a moment of research of actual scholarship. He thrived on his “hunch” and his “belief” in what someone had told him.

What continues to astound me, truth be told, is that all of this is OK with the gullible MAGA morons who continue to back this clown’s latest presidential candidacy.

We are left, then, with circumstances in which Trump becomes the story. He’s not at the debate? He’s the story. Would he show up? He is still the story.

This is the environment that makes Donald Trump most comfortable. It saddens me to say it, but it also demonstrates most graphically one more reason why he is patently unfit to hold the office he is seeking.

national news

Are we in that much trouble?

This much is absolutely certain to me as I watch the 2024 presidential election campaign and its cast of characters play out.

Which is that if a once-great political party is willing to nominate someone who has been indicted four times for felonies against the very government he swore to “defend and protect” then we are in worse shape than I ever imagined.

I say that believing two things. One is that I do not believe Donald J. Trump will be nominated by the Republican Party; the other is that he is nominated, he will go down in flames in a Democratic Party landslide … current poll numbers notwithstanding.

I have seen the polls in Iowa, where the GOP is going conduct its caucus at the beginning of the new year. Polling data show Trump with a sizable lead among Republicans seeking the party nomination. The polls tell me that the MAGA base that Trump courts is energized. The gullible goons who comprise that base cannot — or will not — grasp the reality that their guy could be sentenced to prison before they count the votes in Iowa.

Prosecutors have asked for a January 2024 trial on the indictment stemming from his role in inciting the assault on our government on 1/6. Think about that just a moment. Donald Trump could campaign for the presidency after being convicted of a federal felony crime! Dude could spend the rest of his miserable life in prison!

But at this moment in our nation’s otherwise glorious history, we stand on the verge of a criminal defendant being nominated by a major political party to become POTUS … again, after being impeached twice by the House of Representatives the first time he held the office.

I am shaking my noggin vigorously.

crime news, national news, political news

Why not debate ’em … Trump?

You know, it doesn’t really matter to me whether Donald J. Trump will be on a Republican Party primary presidential debate stage with the other guys who want to knock him off.

Truth is, I don’t give a royal rat’s rear end about Trump, or today’s version of the GOP. However, his reported absence from the upcoming debate stage does pose a question or two for me, which I would like to speak to briefly. So … I will.

Some of the GOP frontrunner’s foes are taking aim at him. Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson all have spoken critically of him, his conduct, his lack of “vision” for the future.

I want someone to ask Trump this question: What in the world do you have in the way of agenda for the next four years and beyond? This individual has none. He doesn’t speak to the future. Instead, he chooses to relitigate the 2020 election … which he lost to President Biden!

Let’s not be coy, either, about the indictments. He’s got four of them stacked up, waiting for trials. The feds have indicted him twice; two states, New York and Georgia, have indicted twice as well.

Trump can spare us all the BS about “not wanting to elevate” the others’ standing. The truth is he has no solutions. He cannot speak coherently about the future. He vows to be his fans’ “retribution.”

He is the frontrunner among the MAGA morons who dominate the GOP. And why is that? Because his “base” is too damn ignorant and gullible to realize how seriously damaged he has become and how much damage he brings to a once-great political party.

OK, I fibbed about not giving a “rat’s rear end” about Trump. Of course, I do, which is evident in the frequency of my writing about him. I care about Trump’s future only because I love my country and I do not want it sucked down the toilet drain of Donald Trump’s so-called “ideology.”

As to whether he belongs on the stage with the other GOP presidential candidates … sure he does, but only because he needs to be held accountable politically for the nonsense he continues to barf onto the public stage.