Category Archives: political news

media news, national news, political news

How does POTUS battle back?

For the ever-lovin’ life of me, I don’t understand a lot of things, such as public opinion polling that seems to fly directly against the winds of success of a particular politician.

The pol I have in mind is the president of the United States of America, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. By an overwhelming measure, Joe Biden has enjoyed a successful presidency.

Jobs are up; inflation is in check; the economy is the strongest on Earth; infrastructure is being improved; we are battling climate change; our international alliances are stronger than ever; we have gotten past the COVID pandemic.

Is the world a perfect place? Of course not! We cannot possibly produce a perfect world. Immigration is in crisis; war has erupted in Ukraine and in Israel and Gaza.

Biden is taking plenty of heat for all that has gone wrong on his watch and virtually none of the credit for all that has gone right. The RealClearPolitics poll average places Biden at a 39.7% approval rating.

What the hell is going on?

I know the polling is a static measure. It gauges the public mood in the moment. It is the proverbial snapshot of our feelings right now.

Still, it annoys me to no end in sight that President Biden continues to fight this perception — fed by the right-wing mainstream media — of a public that is uncertain about our future. The MAGA media are clinging to the coattails of Biden’s presidential predecessor, the former Idiot in Chief who wants his old job back.

They are swallowing the swill he peddles, believing the nation is going straight to hell. It damn sure isn’t!

I have no advice to offer the president and his re-election campaign team on how to revive the president’s standing. I guess perhaps the president ought to just keep hammering at his predecessor — the GOP nominee-in-waiting — by reminding everyone about the chaos that accompanied him throughout his sole term in office.

Only the idiotic former POTUS actually pledges to make matters worse if the worst happens and he is elected this November.

Polling takes a lot of hits. I am not going to concede that the polls we see today will hold up until Election Day. Still, they are enough to drive me out of my mind!

national news, political news, religious news

We are a ‘secular government,’ dammit!

I keep hearing about how U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson cloaks himself in the New Testament, about how he is pushing the doctrine of “Christian nationalism.”

Sigh … I want to remind the speaker and those who adhere to his reported view of how government should function of this irrefutable fact: You won’t find the word “God” anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. Why is that? Because the men who wrote it consciously avoided using such language because they had fled religious oppression in Europe. They wrote a secular document that establishes that human beings should determine our laws and that they should not be influenced by a specific religion. Yes, I am talking about Christianity. The founders established in Article VI that there must be “no religious test” to determine who should run for public office. The First Amendment to the Constitution lays out a number of civil liberties that deserve protection from government interference; the first one of them is religion, as the amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law” that establishes a state religion. Speaker Johnson needs to put a sock in his proclamation of faith. It is admirable that he is a man of strong faith. That is as far he should go, and he must end this rhetoric that attaches references to God to legislation enacted by fallible men and women.
crime news, national news, political news

Biden inquiry: waste of time … and money

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Congressional Republicans approved the President Biden impeachment inquiry a few months ago.

Their aim — and, yes, their desire — is to find something on which to impeach the president. They have come up empty. There’s no “there, there,” to borrow a phrase from the late Gertrude Stein.

It just appears to me that there never will be evidence of a “high crime” or a “misdemeanor” on which to impeach the president.

If ever we are witnessing a vendetta, this is it. Republicans still are steaming over the House’s impeachment — twice, in fact — of the president who most recently wore the GOP label. (Be advised that I won’t mention the moron’s name on this blog). 

Yeah, I know the Senate acquitted him but only because the GOP majority in the upper chamber lacked the guts to convict him of (a) soliciting a political favor from a foreign head of state and (b) inciting the mob to storm the Capitol Building on Jan. 6. I point out, too, that on the second impeachment, the Senate recorded 57 votes to convict the POTUS of inciting the mob, but the constitutional standard required the Senate to find 67 votes to boot the president from office.

In both cases, you had actual high crimes on which to convict, but it didn’t happen.

Republicans are launching their own inquiry into whether to impeach Joe Biden. I am still scratching my noggin and wondering: What in the name of vengeance is the crime? What has Joe Biden done, specifically, to merit this phony inquiry? 

Has anyone produced anything resembling a crime, or an allegation of a crime? No! They have not! Instead, we now hear that a key witness who was supposed to produce the goods has been indicted for lying to the FBI. Pretty damn credible, eh?

This matter will produce the same result that the GOP witch hunt into “Benghazi” produced. Not a damn thing!

It is a monumental waste of time. Indeed, it is a waste of money that Republicans keep telling us we cannot afford to spend on important issues that matter.

national news, political news

Hey, it wasn’t a blowout!

Time for an admission from yours truly. I have been misrepresenting the nature of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

So, today I am going to offer a mea culpa and set the record straight. It’s important to set the table for the probable rematch between President Biden and the fool he defeated four years ago.

Biden captured 306 electoral votes in 2020; he needed 270 of them to win. I took a quick look at the results from four key states that will be contested heavily this time around.

Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Biden’s margin of victory in all four states was around 123,000 votes … total!

Had his opponent flipped 64,000 or so votes in those four states in 2020, he would have captured the 65 electoral votes that went to President Biden, who would have finished with 241 electoral votes, with 297 of them going to the former Idiot in Chief.

Imagine, too, that even with Biden’s 7 million popular vote cushion, he still would have lost to The Former Guy.

This is worth mentioning because the stakes in 2024 are even more grim than they were in 2020. The one-time Moron in Chief has vowed to be his supporters’ “retribution.” He has actually pledged to sic the Department of Justice on his foes … and to think he and his MAGA cult followers have accused President Biden of “weaponizing” the DOJ.

This idiot has yet to concede that he actually lost the 2020 election and vows to assume dictatorial powers “if only for a day” if he darkens the Oval Office door yet again.

Americans must not let this guy anywhere near the center of power ever again. Not … ever!

national news, political news

Haley would pardon traitors? Wow!

Nikki Haley had me for a little while … then she lost me with a bizarre proclamation.

She said this past weekend that if she’s elected president should pardon the guy she’s trying to beat for the GOP nomination if he’s convicted of federal crimes, including one that alleges he tried to overthrow the federal government in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

Wow, man! That is some leap for a candidate who doesn’t appear to stand a chance of being nominated by the Republican Party let alone being elected by all Americans this fall.

Ponder for a moment what the former South Carolina governor and former U.N. ambassador is promising. She would issue a full presidential pardon to an individual who could be convicted of siccing the traitorous mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6; the mob threatened to “hang Mike Pence!” if the VP went through with his constitutional task of certifying the results of the vote that elected Joe Biden president.

All of this is pure speculation, of course. Haley is trailing the criminal defendant running for POTUS in every poll being conducted; the margins are astronomical.

I actually pondered whether I would vote for her were she to somehow be nominated this summer. That pondering moment has now officially passed, given the absurd pledge she made to pardon the idiot she wants to defeat for the GOP nomination.

It was nice knowin’ ya, Nikki Haley.

national news, political news

Haley faces last stand

Nikki Haley is facing a potential last stand in South Carolina, where she once served as governor and where she appears to be headed for a drubbing by an individual who has no business running for — let alone occupying — the presidency of the United States.

Haley says she isn’t quitting, regardless of where she ends up when the votes are counted Saturday. She’ll continue to battle the GOP frontrunner all the way to the finish, she said.

We’ll see about that.

The former POTUS is facing a court date in March. Another one might loom soon after that one. Then there might be a major court battle for the former Liar in Chief to wage. That’s the one alleging that he instigated a hostile takeover attempt of the government, by blocking the counting of 2020 electoral votes that determined that Joe Biden had been elected president.

The former POTUS has been living the Big Lie since Biden defeated him. He has been convicted of sexually assaulting an author, been levied fines totaling nearly a half-billion dollars. There’s more to come.

Still, he’s the GOP frontrunner in a contest where character no longer matters.

He leads Haley by 20-something or nearly 30 percentage points. How the former governor justifies staying in the race is a mystery.

She said she’s in it for the duration. It might be that she cannot stomach the idea of remaining faithful to the pledge she made to support the GOP nominee if it isn’t her.

Time is about to tell us the truth about that pledge … and whether Nikki Haley is in it for keeps.

business news, economic news, national news, political news

Loathe the man and his standing

My noggin cannot comprehend a lot of things in life, so to be clear I want to stipulate that at times I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Among the more incomprehensible elements of life that puzzles me is the standing that the 45th POTUS continues to have among Americans who think he deserves another term in the White House.

I won’t regurgitate the many negative comments I have made about him since the moment he and his wife rode down the NYC office tower escalator in June 2015 as he announced his first run for the presidency.

I’ll make one exception, though. I want to remind every reader of this blog of this fact, which is beyond dispute: This bozo spent his entire adult professional life — every … waking … minute of it — with one goal in mind: self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. He did not devote a single moment of his miserable life to public service.

Yet he stood there and proclaimed himself to be the champion of the “little guy,” the individual he personally loathed as a “loser” and a chump. He called himself a populist, even though he likely doesn’t know the definition of the type of pol he proclaimed himself to be.

His goal in life was to make lots of money for himself. It has been revealed now in court proceedings brought against him that he is as Mitt Romney described him: a “phony and a fraud.”

Anyone human being who feels the need to declare out loud the he is “really rich” and “really smart” never achieves such wealth, nor is he smart enough to know that undeniable fact.

Yet here this guy stands. He was impeached twice by the U.S. House. He has been indicted four times by federal and state grand juries on 91 criminal counts. He vows to be “your retribution” if he’s elected later this year.

And they still believe in this guy?

God help us if this all comes to pass.

business news, crime news, national news, political news

He still can become POTUS?

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The numbskull who wants to become the next president of the United States has been determined unfit to run a business in New York.

A judge has fined him $355 million because he defrauded investors over his supposed vast wealth. This is on top of the $88 million he’s been ordered to pay a journalist for (a) raping her and (b) defaming her character.

And yet … the U.S. Constitution apparently continues to clear the way for this idiot to campaign for the Republican Party presidential nomination and then — if nominated — run for the U.S. presidency.

What in the world is wrong with this picture?

legal news, national news, political news

Thomas fails integrity test

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Clarence Thomas had the perfect opportunity today to do the right thing by recusing himself from a key hearing on the former POTUS’s standing in the 2024 campaign for president.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, didn’t recuse himself. He sat there with his colleagues and will take part in a ruling involving whether the ex-POTUS is eligible to run for office in accordance with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

The conflict of interest is as clear as it gets.

Thomas’s wife, Virginia, is a member of the MAGA cult that embraces the rants of the 45th POTUS. She attended a gathering that developed on the D.C. Ellipse the morning of Jan. 6, 2021. The Former Guy exhorted the crowd — after Mrs. Thomas had left — to take back the government.

They stormed the Capitol and damn near overran the U.S. government in the process.

Colorado supreme court justices ruled that the ex-POTUS was ineligible to run for office because he took part in the effort to overthrow the government and gave ”aid and comfort” to those who stormed the Capitol.

Mrs. Thomas was part of the mob. She clearly had to have spoken to her husband, Justice Thomas, about the events of that day. In my view, Justice Thomas’s judicial integrity was compromised by his wife’s presence in the crowd.

He damn sure should have recused himself. But … he did no such thing.

Justice Thomas has ruled in favor of the ex-POTUS’s arguments already, even when he has been in the minority among justices. Of course, I have no hard knowledge that his decisions were influenced by his wife. Still, his participation in these legal matters just doesn’t pass the proverbial smell test.

Indeed, it stinks to high heaven … and beyond!

The court will decide soon whether the Colorado ruling will stand. My sense is that the court will side with the former POTUS and allow his name to return to that state’s ballot.

The very notion, though, of Justice Clarence Thomas taking part in this judicial matter simply makes me sick.

local news, political news

Any other kind?

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Driving around North Texas as I do damn near daily, I see street corners and highway intersections festooned with campaign signs promoting candidates for this or that public office.

It’s election time, after all.

One mantra is part of almost all the signs I see crowing for the benefits of Republicans seeking election this year.

They call themselves, almost to a person, “conservative Republican.”

I am compelled to ask myself: Is there any other kind of Republican?

Suppose you happen to be a Republican who, say, is pro-choice on abortion. You believe a woman should be able to determine — with advice and counsel from her partner, her doctor, her clergy — whether she wants to carry a pregnancy to birth. Does that wipe away any other conservative views you might have on, say, taxation, or gun-owners’ rights or government spending? What about same-sex marriage or whether schools should be allowed to display the Ten Commandments?

In this day of political rigidity, any variation from every conservative tenet labels one, apparently, a “woke” liberal, a squishy progressive who secretly believes in socialist economic policy.

When I see these “conservative Republican” captions on campaign signs, I am left to presume the candidate also adheres to the MAGA dogma promoted by the most recent POTUS. My presumption, therefore, allows me to believe that to be a “conservative Republicans” means you endorse the idiocy preached by the former POTUS.

I recall when a Republican president, Richard Nixon, endorsed the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Another Republican POTUS, George H.W. Bush, promoted the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1991. Still another Republican, President George W. Bush, invested more public money to fight HIV/AIDS than the rest of the world combined.

On the Democratic side, some of you might recall that U.S. Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson was a staunch supporter of the Vietnam War effort in the late 1960s. That didn’t make him less of a Democrat than any of his colleagues who opposed the war effort.

“Conservative Republican” these days looks for all the world to describe just about anyone willing to run on the GOP ticket for public office. In North Texas, the political playing field is swarming with them.