Biden is no far-left lackey

We had better steel ourselves for the onslaught of demagogic attacks from Donald J. Trump’s campaign against Joseph R. Biden.

The current theme is laughable and disgraceful all at once.

Trump is contending that Joe Biden is a puppet of the far left, that he is intent on “defunding” local police departments and creating a lawless society.

Stop! Whoa! Hold it!

Joe Biden has said categorically that he does not favor any effort to “defund” police departments. He has said they should be examined and that police practices perhaps need to be reformed and improved. That, I want to assert, has nothing to do with whatever garbage is coming from Trump’s political campaign.

Biden also has argued that he does not favor “Medicare for All,” which has been a favorite talking point among the progressive movement. Instead, he has taken a more reasonable approach, which is to tinker with the Affordable Care Act, to improve the legislation he helped create.

Donald Trump is facing someone  I consider a traditional Democrat. Joe Biden comes from a working-class background. His legislative legacy is full of efforts to lend a hand to aid working families. His alliance with traditional Democratic constituencies has become legendary in political circles.

Donald Trump will not dissuaded from facing political reality. His poll standing very well is filling him with some sense of urgency to say damn near anything he believes will drag down the frontrunning challenger. So … he’s settled on the “far left lackey” argument.

It won’t work. It shouldn’t work. My hope is that Joe Biden’s team will ensure that it is ready to respond with equal or greater force to any demagogic lie that Donald Trump is willing to throw.

Game on!

Amusing or disgusting?

I am trying to decide whether Donald Trump’s assorted campaign strategies amuse me or disgust me.

I’ll say it’s possibly a bit of both … but mostly disgusting.

I watched Trump try to suggest the other day that Joseph R. Biden is intent on destroying the “suburbs.” To which I raised my eyebrows and thought, “Huh? What in the world is the Demagogue in Chief saying?” Then it dawned on me.

He accuses the former vice president, as I understand what passes for logic in POTUS’s noggin, of creating a lawless inner city, which will drive people out of the city and into the ‘burbs. Thus, we have a situation, according to the No. 1 demagogue, where suburbs are populated by those who formerly lived in the inner city.

It’s a thinly disguised code for racial politics, my friends.

It ain’t funny, so I’ll cease being amused by that tactic. It’s downright disgusting, vile, venal and vicious. It is precisely the kind of trait that Trump demonstrates routinely, such as when he called the Klansmen and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville “fine people.” Or how about when he continued to insist that the nation’s first black president wasn’t born in the United States and that he was constitutionally ineligible to campaign for the nation’s highest office?

You get the idea, yes?

So now Donald Trump says Joe Biden is going to destroy the ‘burbs.

Disgraceful.

Hey … what about the victims?

The depths of Donald Trump’s heartlessness has yet to be discovered.

Consider this bit of nauseating information: When a reporter asked him recently about Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend/confidante of convicted sexual assailant Jeffrey Epstein, he said he wanted to “wish her well.”

Maxwell, I hasten to add, is accused of finding underage girls for Epstein to rape. Epstein, of course, hanged himself in a New York jail cell a few months ago. Maxwell now is the premier character in this hideous act.

So, what about the victims of Epstein’s lecherous behavior? Don’t they deserve “well wishes” from the president of the United States?

Trump has yet to offer a single public word of horror over what happened to these people at Epstein’s demand. He has yet to condemn anything his old friend did.

Oh, no. He offers Ghislaine Maxwell his good wishes and hope she is “well.” How can the president remain silent on the ghastly accusation that has been leveled at her and then offer the lame, tepid and moronic statement that “I wish her well”?

Mother Nature deals cruel blow

Mother Nature can be the cruelest of elements.

Our friends and fellow Texans in Nueces County have been struggling against the COVID-19 virus. Reports of a spike in infections among infants has been particularly alarming. They’re running out of morgue space and are receiving refrigerated trucks to store the remains of those who have died from the virus. Good grief.

Then comes Hurricane Hanna, which blasted ashore south of Corpus Christi on Saturday. It was a Cat 1 storm, which isn’t catastrophic by definition … but it might as well have been a Cat 5 or worse, given the heartache that has struck that part of the state.

I am left while sitting up yonder in North Texas to offer my sympathy, condolences and, yes, “thoughts and prayers” to those who suffer from the pandemic and now to those who are battling storm surge, flash flooding and 100-mph wind.

What’s more, we should lift up first responders and the medical professionals who have been risking their health, their lives and those of their loved ones even before Hanna blew down the front door along the Gulf Coast.

Will any of this ever end? Can we get some help from our government and, by all means, from Mother Nature herself?

Still committing impeachable offenses?

I am acutely aware that Donald Trump’s impeachment and Senate trial are now part of our nation’s history, that Trump will be remembered forever as the nation’s third impeached president of the United States.

I cannot get past the cowardice demonstrated by all but one of the Senate’s 53 Republican members in giving this corrupt narcissist a pass on what he did, which was to extort the leader of another country into providing political dirt on Joe Biden, the man now in position to defeat Trump in the upcoming election.

Nor can I understand the logic behind that Senate acquittal, given that since then Trump has committed — allegedly — at least two more heinous acts.

One is that he reportedly sought to move the British Open golf tournament to a resort he owns, thus seeking actively to flout the clause in the Constitution that prohibits the president from profiting materially from his public office. It’s called the Emoluments Clause and this reported solicitation is simply the latest such example of this blatant corruption.

The other is the hideous betrayal of his oath as commander in chief to care for the troops under his command. I refer to the allegation that Russia paid Taliban terrorists bounties for every American serviceman and woman killed in Afghanistan. If there is a more “impeachable offense” than that, I am totally unaware of it.

This is the bargain that every House Republican and all but one Senate Republican delivered when they decided that the “perfect phone call” to the Ukrainian president in July 2019 wasn’t enough to toss Trump out of office.

I am enough of a realist to know that impeaching Trump again is likely out of the question. I also am enough of an idealist to hope that the election this November will take care of the corruption that has influenced damn near every political decision Trump has made while sitting in the Oval Office.

Of course, an election result doesn’t prevent criminal prosecution of Donald Trump once he quick-steps out of the White House for the final time. Oh, allow me to wish once again that the day comes after this next election.

What if it’s Biden?

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Let’s play a game of “What if?” … shall we?

Bear in mind that I am not predicting any sort of presidential election outcome. I merely am pondering the possibilities if my preferred result occurs at the end of ballot counting on Nov. 3.

  • What if Joe Biden beats Donald Trump in a landslide? Trump has indicated he might “not accept” the results of a free and fair election. He will suggest it was “rigged.” Will the president-elect summon the Secret Service to escort the previous first family out out of the White House? I would pay real American money to see that occur.
  • What if Biden is given the chance to “lead” the nation through the coronavirus pandemic? Trump has failed at virtually every level possible, no matter what VP Mike “The Sycophant” Pence says to the contrary. How will that leadership present itself? My hope is that the new president starts simply by expressing sincere compassion and empathy for the suffering of millions of Americans.
  • What if Joe Biden inherits an economy in absolute free fall? The nature and scope of our economic collapse makes the 2009 mess that Biden and President Obama inherited when they took over resemble a walk in the park. It’s related directly to the pandemic. Millions of Americans have been tossed out of their jobs. Where does the new president find the money to boost an economy that already is teetering on the precipice of a depression?
  • What if Joe Biden takes over as head of the world’s most indispensable nation and finds that our allies are laughing at us? The wreckage that Trump has brought to those alliances is epic in its scope. Trump has scolded our European allies for not doing enough to defend themselves against Russia. He has chided our continental neighbors in Canada and Mexico personally. Joe Biden, the master of diplomacy, needs to mend those fences in a major hurry.
  • What if Joe Biden gets to sit down face to face with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin? This is where the new president needs to wag his finger in Putin’s mug and warn him about the economic and diplomatic consequences that await him if (a) he continues to interfere in our elections and (b) continues to pay bounties to the Taliban for killing our troops.

A new president will have a monumental repair job awaiting him after the wreckage that Donald Trump has brought.

Follow the Nixon lead, Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump just cannot commit to accepting the election results in November … if he loses to Joe Biden.

He sought to justify his skepticism of the results, casting doubt on their legitimacy, in an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

Simply by refusing to accept those results, Donald Trump is seeking to undermine the work done at the state and local levels of government to ensure that our elections are safe, free and secure. That’s how the president rolls. He said the same thing prior to the 2016 election, that he might challenge the results if Hillary Clinton won that contest. It turned out that Trump won; I don’t recall Clinton holding out for a possible challenge after she conceded defeat to Trump.

This is part and parcel of Trump’s background, starting with the obvious lack of public service experience. He was bred on the notion that everyone in business is out to cut someone else’s throat; therefore, they weren’t to be trusted. Had he an ounce of public service experience, Trump might take a different, more magnanimous approach to election results.

I harken to the 1960 presidential election. Vice President Richard Nixon lost that contest by a whisker to Sen. John F. Kennedy. JFK’s plurality totaled 112,000 votes nationally. Questions arose about the vote count in Illinois, where Kennedy won that state’s 27 electoral votes by just a handful. Republican operatives urged the VP to challenge the Illinois vote count, to tally up the ballots all over again. Nixon chose instead to let the vote count stand, to allow the president-elect to begin his transition to the most exalted office in the land.

Nixon put the country ahead of any personal political gain. To be sure, had Illinois’ electoral votes gone to Nixon, he still would have lost the electoral vote. But my point is that the vice president didn’t want to subject the nation to additional and, to his mind, pointless turmoil. His eight years as VP in the Eisenhower administration and his time in Congress taught him something about the value of public service.

Donald Trump has zero understanding of that need and will do all he can to sow seeds of doubt and discord in an electoral process that we all cherish.

This is winning the COVID war?

The rate of infection in the United States from the coronavirus pandemic is increasing.

Yep. We’re getting sick at a faster rate now than we were at the beginning of the pandemic. Consider this tidbit from U.S. News and World Report:

The United States took 98 days to reach one million confirmed cases of COVID-19 but just 16 days to increase from 3 million to 4 million, the tally showed. The total suggests at least one in 82 Americans have been infected at some point in the pandemic.

The average number of new cases is now rising by more than 2,600 per hour nationwide, the highest rate in the world.

Roll that around for a moment. It took more than three months to record 1 million COVID-19 cases, but just 16 days to log another million to reach the 4 million mark.

Is that how you define “success” in the fight against this killer virus? Donald Trump says he is doing a great job. His team is doing a fantastic job of fighting the virus. He tells us that our testing program is the best in the world; I do not quarrel with that final point.

But wait! How can we declare we are winning this fight when the infection rate is accelerating? Meanwhile, other parts of the world, in Europe and in Asia, are reporting virtually zero new infections from the virus.

How is it that the world’s most advanced nation, with the world’s most skilled medical and scientific researchers is still logging more infections from this virus than the rest of the entire planet?

We are not winning this fight. We are losing it. Hopefully, though, the losing won’t continue forever.

Wishing to hurry up Election Day

Mom always told me to “stop wishing your life away.”

She was right, of course, but that doesn’t stop me from wishing we could get through these next 101 days in rapid-fire time.

Nov. 3 is Election Day. Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump by, oh, anywhere from 10 to 15 percentage points nationally. He is leading in all the key “swing states” Trump won in 2016 while pilfering the election from the previous presumed odds-on favorite for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That leads me straight to my point. I would be foolhardy to the max to underestimate — in the words of filmmaker/pundit Michael Moore — the evil genius that lurks inside Trump’s combed-over skull.

Let us not forget that Clinton held a similarly wide lead over Trump at roughly this time during the 2016 campaign. Then it vanished. She still pulled more actual votes than Trump, but the lead vaporized down the stretch; she ended up with a 2.09 percent lead over Trump in the “popular vote,” only to lose the Electoral College by a small amount.

Do you get my point here? If Biden is unable to hold onto the current lead, the door could remain open just enough for Trump to sneak back into the Oval Office for another four years. I shudder at the thought.

Can it happen? Sure. Do I want it to happen? Hah! Are you kidding?

Therefore, I want the next 101 days to zoom past us so we can start to restore the nation’s soul, restart its heart and return it to the respect it once had around the world.

I know, Mom. I am wishing my life away. I hope you understand.

They’re playing ball in Hodgetown!

I have to say good word or three to my friends up yonder in Amarillo.

Minor league baseball — the organized version of it affiliated with Major League Baseball — is on the shelf for this season. That dang pandemic has scuttled minor league ball in cities all across the nation.

But in Amarillo, they have cobbled together a “league” with college players suiting up to play in the city’s shiny new ballpark named Hodgetown.

Amarillo has a couple of teams: Sod Dogs and Sod Squad. The name of the city’s AA baseball team is the Sod Poodles, and are affiliated with the National League’s San Diego Padres. The Sod Poodles are on the bench this season, which denies the Sod Poodles the chance to defend the Texas League championship they won in 2019 … in their first year of existence!

Not to be denied baseball, they put together a season featuring these young men. What’s cool — and which might not be getting the attention it deserves — is that the college players are swinging wooden bats. Yep, they aren’t wielding those metal instruments when they stride to the plate to take their cuts.

The NCAA plays baseball with those metal bats, which makes that annoying tinny sound when players hit a baseball with them.

I presume they’re sitting at an appropriate “social distancing” fashion at Hodgetown. Keep it up, friends.

I’m glad and happy for you that you are enjoying some hardball at the downtown Amarillo ballpark.