Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

What does Biden’s courage mean?

1 Comment

Time gives us a chance for reflection, and so just a few hours after hearing gut-wrenching news of President Biden’s decision to bow out of the 2024 presidential race, I want to reflect briefly on what I believe it means.

And not just for the candidate, but for the country he loves.

Every strand of Joe Biden’s being seemed to pull him toward staying in the race. I mean, he ran for the presidency twice before actually winning the 2020 contest. He sought the 1988 Democratic nomination, but got derailed over a plagiarism scandal. He ran again in 2008, but fell to the Barack Obama buzzsaw.

He had a horrible debate performance in mid-June. He vowed to stay in. Democrats bailed on him. The money spigot dried up.

Then this past weekend came the announcement: He would end his candidacy and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination.

Biden likely knew he couldn’t defeat Donald Trump. He stepped aside to let a young, more intellectually agile public servant, VP Harris, make her effort to keep Trump out of the White House.

He said he did it out of love for his country, which he wants to shield from the evil impulses that Trump would deploy if he gets the chance at another presidential term.

Joe Biden served his country honorably for more than 50 years … as a senator, vice president and president. He left his most indelible imprint on our nation by walking away from a fight he knew he couldn’t win.

That’s how you define patriotism.

national news, political news

Stop the ‘quit now’ diatribes

Leave a comment

MAGA cultists who are foaming at the mouth over President Biden’s decision to cease his re-election campaign need to take a breather and cast an eye toward realism … if that is possible.

They are proclaiming that since Biden said he is “unfit to run for re-election, he is unfit to hold the office,” and therefore he must resign immediately. Give me a fu**ing break! We all know what happened Sunday. I applaud Joe Biden for reaching a conclusion he believes is best for the country. He won’t seek a second term and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the next Democratic Party presidential nominee. He said he will continue to serve as president and will work when he can to elect Harris if she’s nominated in Chicago later this summer. The MAGA cult members, led by their supreme leader Donald Trump, have lapped the field already in declaring that Biden must go. Trump issued a typically tasteless, crass, boorish response to Biden’s announcement; his followers have climbed aboard the Trump clown car. If a medical doctor examines the president and concludes he must resign, then I’ll listen. Short of that … the MAGA goons should just shut the hell up!
Joe Biden, national news, political news

Does Joe stay … or go?

1 Comment

My mind has been flip-flopping like a fish out of water on the issue of President Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate in 2024.

I believe I have reached a conclusion on this matter, so I will share it with you right now.

The president needs to step aside. He needs to hand the top spot on the Democratic ticket to Vice President Kamala Harris, who needs then to find a suitable running mate to carry the fight forward against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

I will offer only one caveat. If the president stays in, I’ll be with him until hell freezes over. Which ain’t gonna happen.

The foremost issue must be to keep Donald Trump from darkening the Oval Office’s door ever again.

I have been watching many of VP Harris’s speeches over the past few days and to my aging but still perceptive ears, she has found her voice. One hears no quiver in her voice. She is certain on where she stands and she delivers her views with vigor and conviction. The vice president relies heavily on her years as a prosecutor, telling cheering audiences, “Let’s look at the facts.”

When I watch the vice president recite chapter and verse how Trump and Vance are wrong, on, say, women’s reproductive rights, I see a stand-up champion. When she talks about how the GOP talks out of both sides of its mouth on seeking “unity,” I see a fierce fighter.

Sadly, the Joe Biden I grew to admire from his first days in the US Senate — the ferocious and occasionally garrulous advocate he became — no longer exists. Make no mistake, though, on this key point: Joe Biden has been one of the better presidents of the past century and he accomplished plenty during his time in office. He will leave office, whether this coming January or in January 2029, with his head held high.

However … the Democratic Party leadership is bailing on him. The source of the money the party will need to defeat Trump has dried up. President Biden should step aside.

Joe Biden chose well when he picked Kamala Harris to run with him in 2020. It’s her turn now.

political news

Unity message: MIA

5 Comments

I tried to listen to Donald Trump’s acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention, but when he kept going on and on with his embellished version of the assassination attempt on his life, I threw in the towel.

Still, I managed to read a good bit of the text of his speech and discovered that he threw out the word “unity” many times, but the message he delivered sounded very much like his two previous GOP acceptance speeches.

He talked about wanting to be president for all Americans, not just the portion of us who cling his words. Fine. Good deal. How will he deliver on that promise? He didn’t say. I reckon he doesn’t know what he would do … if anything!

For many Republican presidential primaries dating back to around the 1976 season, abortion has been top-of-mind stuff for GOP delegates. Not this year. Did you notice the absence of any mention of the practice? I did. It’s because Trump and his cult followers know they are on the wrong side of that issue.

Unity is essential for anyone who wants to govern. It’s no different for Donald Trump. His problem, though, is that he has built his political career on the notion of dividing and conquering.

 

 

Joe Biden, national news, political news

Most important … ever!

1 Comment

My active involvement in presidential elections goes back a while, to 1972, when I cast my first vote for president.

And just as surely as the sun rises in the morning, every election cycle has contained the phrase “the most important election in our lifetime.”

I believe the 2024 election fits the bill. It’s the real thing. It appears to be the most important election in our nation’s storied history.

The candidates for president aren’t the best we can offer. The consequence of electing one of these men is what gives the result the heft it deserves.

Where do we stand? The Democratic Party nominee appears to be the incumbent, Joe Biden. Then again …

The president had that debate a few days ago and everything seems to have changed. The party of which he has been a faithful member might be turning on him. Or it might stand firm. He looked and sounded like a doddering old man in that debate and the party faithful is full of doubting members who are concerned about whether he’s up to the job.

The Republican Party nominee? Oh, brother. He is a former POTUS who got impeached twice while in office. He’s now a convicted felon. There might be more convictions on the way. Donald Trump has vowed to sic the Justice Department on his political foes. He well could end our support for Ukraine, which is fighting the Russian invaders. He vows to reverse virtually every law that Biden has signed. Trump has threatened to toss the U.S. Constitution into the shi**er on the first day of his administration.

Consequential election? The most important in US history?

It damn sure looks that way to me.

Are we really and truly ready to throw the very foundation of our government — the one other nations use as their model for freedom and liberty — away because a newly elected president wants to make friends with killers, despots and tyrants?

If we are then … God help us!

national news, political news

How can GOP go through this change?

1 Comment

Never, not ever in a zillion years, will I understand what has become of the modern Republican Party.

It has gone from being a party that prided itself on moral rectitude, on so-called “family values” and on insisting that character matters in selecting candidates for our cherished public offices to a cult-following mob of miscreants who tie their hay wagon to the heels of a man named Donald John Trump.

Trump stood before us this week and launched into a never-ending tirade of lies that will not draw a single rebuke from what passes as leadership within the once-Grand Old Party.

His brazenness defies logic.

I’ve already discussed briefly the abysmal performance turned in by President Biden. However, I am not going to join the amen chorus calling on him to step aside.

I am, however, going to call attention to the moral decline of the Republican Party. For the third presidential election cycle in a row, the GOP is nominating a convicted felon, an admitted sexual assailant, a serial philanderer, someone who has been found liable in a court of law for the rape of a woman.

There once was a time when the parties sought to nominate the best among us for our nation’s highest office. Donald Trump represents the worst of us.

If we Americans are so damn stupid to give this guy the keys to the White House once again, then we are in far worse condition as a nation than I ever thought possible.

national news, political news

Waiting anxiously for debate

For a long time I have been cautious about referring to events when two or more politicians stand on a stage as “debates.”

They aren’t, really. they have allowed the candidates to pontificate and excoriate their foes. But they do occasionally bring moments of excitement. They even have helped turn elections in favor of candidates.

Do you remember the time in 1976 when President Ford said Eastern Europe was “not dominated” by the Soviet Union? Of course it was! He lost the election that year. Or when Ronald Reagan asked us in 1980 whether we were “better off than you were four years ago.” We weren’t. Reagan won in a landslide.

The format for the Thursday appearance with President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump will be without a studio audience and will have a sound cutoff when the candidates exceed the time limit or when they tell a lie knowingly.

I am one American patriot who will wait anxiously to see how Trump handles the mike sound issue. He and his MAGA cult followers already are saying the debates is rigged. Who knew?

Something tells me we might see more than our share of meltdowns as Trump seeks to lie his way past the silent mikes. Will it influence the end of this miserable campaign? I damn sure hope so.

political news

Stakes are um … huge!

1 Comment

One week out and I am trying to recall the last time I looked forward to a presidential debate with such trepidation.

I cannot remember when that occurred. Maybe it never did.

President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump will go toe-to-toe next week in the first of two planned joint appearances.

Biden and Trump are running neck-and-neck. Why is that? That’s beyond me. However, the polling suggests a photo finish this election cycle.

Here is my hope for a debate outcome.

My hope is that President Biden brings his “A” game. That he remains cool, calm and collected. That he reminds viewers of what lies ahead if voters are dumb enough to send the former numbskull in chief back to the Oval Office. That he reminds us that we cannot possibly elect convicted felon to the nation’s most glorious public office. That he tells us of the existential threat to our democracy if Trump is able to give Russian goon Vladimir Putin a free hand in his immoral invasion of Ukraine.

And that he just lets Trump zoom into orbit with his nonsensical rants about The Big Lie and how much “love” was shown during the violent assault on our Capitol on Jan. 6.

This debate could be the game changer that many of us hope occurs.

military news, national news, political news

What would Ike think?

2 Comments

Today and other days this week have my mind flashing back to the first president I remember during my tine on this Earth.

I was born in 1949, during the second term of Harry Truman’s administration. My initial memory of the president begins with Dwight Eisenhower.

I want to preface my brief remarks by reminding readers of these facts. Eisenhower led the World War II Allied forces to victory in Europe in 1945. The victory march began 80 years ago today when Ike ordered the D-Day invasion of northern France to begin. He achieved General of the Army status. He ran for the presidency in 1952 and won in a landslide; he would repeat the landslide victory four years later.

Ike was a Republican and today I am wondering: What in the name of all that is holy would President Eisenhower think of what has become of the party he once led to the pinnacle of power?

Ike wasn’t a career politician when he decided to run for president. He had spent his professional life in the military, arguably the least political job one can hold in service to the public. His concerns didn’t rely on political considerations.

Eisenhower led by example and was adamantly faithful to the oath he took to protect and defend the Constitution. He took the oath while wearing his uniform and then as president of the United States.

I cannot help but wonder what Ike would think of the great political party he once led in this era of fealty to one man. Gen. Eisenhower died in 1969, just eight years after leaving the presidency in the hands of the “next generation” led by President John F. Kennedy.

He warned us in his farewell speech of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.” He knew those dangers better than almost any other living American in that moment.

This man was a leader. He wore his military uniform with pride and was far from the “sucker” and “loser” that one of his presidential successors has proclaimed others who choose that career to be.

That successor, himself a sucker and loser and now a convicted felon, would be unfit to carry Eisenhower’s briefcase. Yet here is, leading Ike’s once-great political party.

What has happened to the Grand Old Party?

national news, political news

Bizarre season awaits

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friend and foe we all are standing on the doorstep of the craziest, most bizarre and unexplainable political season in history.

That is no hyperbole. It is for real. It is a sickening reality of the state of the American political system and how it has transformed from a process that selects only the very best men and women among us to run for president to one that perverts the rule of law and allows for a major-party POTUS candidate to challenge the very integrity of the system he could take an oath to defend and protect.

Oh, my. Pass the Pepto.

Donald Trump will face a sentencing hearing on July 11 after being convicted on 34 felony counts of paying a porn actress illegally to keep her quiet about a sexual encounter she said the two of them had in 2006. The 45th POTUS denies it took place. The actress, Stephanie Clifford — aka Stormy Daniels — said it did. The jury believed her account and handed down the 34-count guilty verdict.

Less than a week after the hearing, Republicans will gather in Milwaukee to nominate their next candidate for president. It will be — yes, that’s right — the aforementioned convicted criminal.

Is this utterly bizarre, or what?

I was thinking recently of a long-ago time when a vice-presidential candidate was forced to withdraw because of reports he had electro-shock therapy to treat him for depression. The VP nominee was Thomas Eagleton, whom the 1972 presidential nominee George McGovern had selected to run on the Democratic ticket with him. I remember at the time that the media went ballistic over the revelation of treatment; it was successful, by the way. The party, though, got the nervous nellies over it and forced Eagleton to step away. McGovern and the new VP nominee, Sargent Shriver, lost to President Nixon in a historic 49-state landslide.

Now we have this prospect awaiting the next major-party candidate. The POTUS candidate is now convicted of a felony. He is awaiting trial on two federal charges and a third charge in another state court. He has been accused of inciting the assault on our government on Jan. 6, 2021; of hiding classified documents taken illegally from the White House; and of pressuring Georgia officials to “find” enough votes for him to declare victory in that state in 2020.

Are these the kinds of things we now should expect in our presidential candidate? Are we now set to elect this convicted criminal to another term as POTUS?

What in the name of Almighty God have we become if that is the case?

Let us all hold on, gang, for the roughest political ride we’ve ever seen … or likely will ever see.