Fright is setting in

I don’t want to sound alarmist.

However, I am getting filled with astonishing feelings of fright at the prospect of a second presidential term with Donald John Trump sitting in the Oval Office.

I don’t scare easily, so this isn’t some sort of Chicken Little screed. The very notion that Donald Trump could actually win a second term is filling me with dread. It’s the real thing, man. I mean it!

Trump took office without a single moment of public service experience under his belt. His entire adult life was aimed at self-enrichment, self-aggrandizement and self-promotion. He took that experience with him into the White House.

The man doesn’t possess an ounce of empathy or compassion. I mean, my goodness, he admits to preferring to trample over people than to hold them up.

Trump’s lack of public service experience has been coupled with his abject ignorance of the government over which he presides. He talks about enacting “bills” all by himself. Remember when he told the Republican convention in Cleveland that “I, alone” can solve the nation’s ills? He cannot. That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to imply such a moronic strategy.

We’re now well into the 2020 presidential campaign. I have not yet heard a single coherent statement that speaks to how he wants to govern during a second term. He continues to spend his entire re-election campaign effort at denigrating his Democratic foe, Joe Biden. Where’s the plan for governing, Donald? It ain’t there.

So are we going to expose ourselves to four more years of the kind of (non)leadership we’ve gotten during the past four years? Are we going to hand this president an invitation to do anything he thinks he can do without recrimination?

My goodness, we cannot allow this guy to send in federal “agents” to put down protests in our cities. We can’t allow him to “dominate the streets” with “heavily armed” troops. We cannot allow this individual to assault his foes using language that to my ears sounds overtly racist.

This clown snookered too many of us in 2016. A lot of us saw this disaster coming the moment he announced his candidacy at Trump Tower. I happen to one of those who now is frightened at the possibility that this guy could fool too many of us once again.

AOC is earning her stripes

I have taken a shot or two at first-term U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the past few months, suggesting she’s still a bit too green to be getting all the media attention and hype she gets.

Well, I think AOC has turned an important corner.

She stepped to the microphone during a U.S. House of Representatives session this week and took to task a veteran Republican colleague, Ted Yoho, for blurting out a profane epithet at her during a confrontation on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

AOC spoke on behalf of women across the country who are verbally abused and accosted by men in power and said, in effect: We are not going to take it any longer!

To which I say: Stand tall, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez!

The event occurred after Yoho and AOC exchanged a few heated words on the Capitol steps. She reportedly walked away and then heard Yoho call her a “fu**ing bitch.” The Hill newspaper reported the incident. Yoho then took to the floor to deliver what I like to call a “non-apology apology.” He didn’t say he was sorry for using such crass language. He said something about being married for a long time and for having daughters, which makes him aware of how he should talk to women.

Ocasio-Cortez stood on the House floor and said the following, according to the Chicago Tribune: “This issue is not about one incident. It is cultural,” said Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., calling it a culture “of accepting a violence and violent language against women, an entire structure of power that supports that.”

I should point, too, that AOC happens to be part of the so-called progressive “squad” of four legislators who have been singled out by Donald Trump, who once told them to “go back” to where they came from. Hmm. The other three are Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ihan Omar and Rashida Tlaib; AOC, Pressley and Tlaib all were born in the United States, while Omar is a naturalized U.S. citizen. They all are women of color and they all deserve to be treated with respect as elected American politicians.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered a serious dose of truth to power in a 10-minute speech on the floor of the U.S. House.

I’ll leave you with this, from AOC: “Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man.”

Hideous POTUS, but legitimate nonetheless

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I want to clear the air a bit on Donald John Trump’s tenure as president of the United States.

No one wants to see him run out of office more than I do. I am using this blog to the best of my ability to declare his unfitness for the office he won in the biggest political fluke in American history.

However, I disagree with those who contend he is an “illegitimate” president. I have many social media friends who contend he was elected illegally. That the Russians’ electoral chicanery in 2016 resulted directly in his election, that the undermined Hillary Clinton’s candidacy sufficiently to guarantee Trump’s Electoral College victory.

I just cannot buy that notion.

I haven’t seen evidence that suggests that the Russians effort to undermine Clinton’s candidacy was decisive. It might have contributed to the defeat, but so did a number of huge tactical errors down the stretch by the Clinton team contribute to Trump’s shocking victory. Clinton ignored key battleground states in the Great Lakes region that Trump managed to peel away. There also was that horrendous announcement from FBI Director James Comey that he was taking a fresh look at the email matter that had dogged Clinton for months and months.

Sure, Trump received nearly 3 million fewer votes than Clinton. He won the Electoral College, though, which is where the Constitution prescribes the way we elect presidents. It was all done legally. The guy is legit.

I say all this while gritting my teeth so hard that they are hurting. The 2016 election produced precisely the wrong outcome. The wrong candidate got elected. However, the Constitution worked in this case, just as it did in 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency after facing certain impeachment and conviction on high crimes and misdemeanors and just as it did in 2000 when the Supreme Court awarded George W. Bush the presidency by disallowing the recount of ballots in Florida.

It worked in 2016 even as Donald Trump stumbled onto the nation’s highest office and is threatening to destroy the world’s greatest nation.

It will work one more time — I hope — when Americans vote this clown out of office.

Is there a surprise VP pick coming?

This is just me, so take it for what it’s worth. Don’t laugh and suggest it’s not worth a damn. Maybe so, but here it is anyhow.

I am wondering in the deepest recesses of my gut whether Joseph R. Biden Jr. is going to pull a serious surprise out of his fedora when he announces who he wants to run with him as the vice presidential nominee.

I keep hearing about the “top four” contenders in the veep sweepstakes: Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, Stacy Yates of Georgia and Susan Rice of D.C. They all have something in common. They are “women of color.”

But are they the best candidates Biden could select? I don’t know. I just keep thinking that with a nation as huge and diverse as this one, does it make sense for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to go with the “conventional wisdom” candidate?

I cannot help but wonder whether there is someone lurking in the tall grass, perhaps someone few of us have heard of, let alone considered as a VP candidate.

Joe Biden has guaranteed the VP nominee will be a woman. He is getting plenty of heat to select a woman of color. 

This waiting game is getting a bit tense … don’t you think?

Can’t make the leap to attach title to Trump’s name

Well, here we are. We’re about 100 days away from the next presidential election.

My hope springs eternal that Americans will have learned from the big mistake they made when they elected Donald John Trump to the presidency and that we will elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to succeed him.

If that is the case, then I likely will be able to declare victory in one of my campaigns against Trump. It will be that I might have survived the current presidency without ever placing the word “President” in front of Trump’s name.

I cannot make that leap.

I won’t apologize for it. I have believed since long before Trump took the oath of office that he didn’t deserve to occupy it. He is unqualified. He is unfit at every level possible. I want him gone far away from the Oval Office inside “my White House.” Thus, it is time to evict this imposter and Election Day provides us with the best chance we will have.

I say all this with plenty of trepidation. I do not relish expressing this form of protest. Nor do I express it with an ounce of disrespect for the presidency. I revere the office. I merely detest the man who sits at the Resolute Desk. Thus, I take no pleasure in refusing to attach “President” in front of “Trump,” to publish those words consecutively, with nothing between them.

Members of my family will acknowledge that I have spoken those words in that order. I just cannot write them down, to put it on the record in this blog.

What will I do if Trump somehow wins a second term? The same thing. I just will need to suck it up for another four years. I might not have the stamina right now. If it comes to pass and we are stuck with this disgrace, I’ll find what it takes to continue my protest to the bitter end.

Cancel the RNC, but send kids to school?

The Stable Genius continues to baffle me.

Donald J. Trump insists that our children must attend school in classrooms. It’s better to put the students in classrooms than to require them to study at home via online instruction.

What, then, shall we do about the scheduled Republican National Convention that will nominate Trump for a second term as president? He cancelled the RNC in Jacksonville, Fla., citing health concerns. “It’s not the right time” to have a convention with delegates crammed into the same arena, he said.

Mixed messaging anyone? Anyone?

This is part of a much larger problem associated with the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. At one level, Trump says one thing. At another level, he says something quite different.

He scoffed at masks. Now he’s all for them … more or less. He called the pandemic a “Democrat hoax.” Now he says the worst of the pandemic is yet to come before it gets better.

Trump ignores advice from medical experts. Then listens to talk show hosts and acts on their “advice.”

Trump says he’s doing a “fantastic” job, but the rate of infection is accelerating, not slowing down.

The latest bit of news involves the GOP nominating convention. Trump is concerned about potential health hazard to politicians and delegates. I applaud his decision to forgo the in-person gathering in Jacksonville.

If only, though, he would express as much concern about the health and safety of our children, their friends and families and the teachers who educate them.

This guy confuses the daylights out of me.

Trump makes my hometown a spectacle … disgusting!

Donald Trump is turning my beloved hometown into a spectacle and it is making me sick.

Portland, Ore., is all over the news and for all the reasons it does not deserve this kind of attention.

Donald Trump has sent in federal agents to quell protests in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement. The agents are wearing camo fatigues, armed to the teeth with tear gas cannisters and assorted firearms, they are hauling protesters off the streets. Now comes word that Trump wants to do the same thing in Albuquerque and Chicago, maybe also in Kansas City and Miami.

What the hell is going on here?

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is calling out the president on this heavy-handed response to what is happening in my hometown. Good for Sen. Wyden!

Trump’s response has done the opposite of what he says it has done. It has worsened the public mood, inflamed the city known more for its myriad coffee shops, craft beer and some of the finest downtown dining establishments anywhere in the country.

Now it is being perceived as a city that is erupting in anger. At whom? At the federal agents who have swooped in to crush a few skulls and to smother crowds under clouds of tear gas.

This is making me — a proud son of the City of Roses — sick to my stomach.

Biden needs to be held to his own campaign pledges

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is making his share of campaign promises as he seeks to unseat Donald J. Trump Sr. from the presidency.

I am extremely cautious in my hope that he’ll be able to fulfill them. I man, Trump does have a way of pulling rabbits out of his hat … if not his a**. He could do so again down the stretch toward Election Day.

Biden is making some promises that I want to see him keep. For example:

He vows to improve the Affordable Care Act, not scrap it; he vows to rescind Trump executive orders removing us from the Paris Climate Accords and the Iranian nuclear arms deal; Biden promises to work closely with our worldwide allies and cease scolding them; he pledges to hold Russia accountable for the attacks it has launched on our political system and to force answers on the issue of paying bounties for the combat deaths of American service personnel; he vows an energy policy that stresses “clean” sources of energy.

Biden wants to restore our nation’s “soul.” I’m all in. Our soul has been co-opted by the fraud who occupies the Oval Office. Biden vows to lead the entire nation, not just the base that is most loyal to him … which is a promise we never have heard from Donald Trump.

Once the dust settles and Biden — or so I am hoping — is elected the nation’s 46th president, I am going to insist that the new guy keep faith with the myriad pledges he has made.

I am acutely aware that I won’t be alone in that effort. Good. The more of us the better … for the nation.

What happened to bounty outrage?

It’s been clear to me for many years that yesterday’s outrage too often becomes today’s afterthought.

Such as it is with the story that got the media’s attention regarding reports that Russian intelligence officials had placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers fighting Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan.

Yep, we were filled with rage over the notion that Vladimir Putin’s goons were paying money for every soldier the Taliban killed. What’s more, we became even more outraged at Donald John Trump’s lack of outward anger at the reports.

Instead, Trump attacked the media outlets that were reporting this stunning news. He called it “fake.” He became angry at whoever it was who leaked the information to the Associated Press, to the New York Times and to CNN. His anger at the Russians? Silence, man!

I happen to be mad as hell — still! — at Donald Trump over this story. Sure, there are plenty of things Trump has done to incur my wrath: the insults, the hideous pandemic response, the incessant lying.

The idea, though, that the president of the United States would ignore briefing material that had landed on his desk that told him of bounties being paid to Taliban fighters who kill Americans is the utmost betrayal of the oath he took to become commander in chief.

However, the outrage that we heard from all across the country seems to have subsided. Granted, it has been overtaken by another huge event, one that has worsened on Donald Trump’s watch as president of the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic demands our national attention. So do the reports of bounties paid by a hostile power to our battlefield enemies who kill the men and women our president sends into harm’s way.

We cannot let up in our demand for accountability at what many of us consider a hideous dereliction of duty by a man who vowed to protect the men and women who serve under his command.

Texas becomes battleground

To be candid, I didn’t think this day would arrive so soon.

But it has. A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Joe Biden with a statistically insignificant 1 point lead over Donald Trump … in Texas!

It’s a dead heat, according to Quinnipiac. An earlier poll from the Dallas Morning News/University of Texas has Biden with a 5 percentage point lead. Other surveys all suggest the same thing, that it’s anyone’s game here.

Jimmy Carter was the latest Democrat to carry Texas, winning the state’s electoral votes in 1976 while defeating President Gerald Ford’s bid for election. I’ve long thought that Carter’s victory wasn’t the “last” time a Democrat would carry this state.

Now, though, it appears that Joe Biden has a puncher’s chance of making a serious contest for Texas’s 38 electoral votes.

We moved to Texas in 1984, settling in Beaumont, one of the state’s last Democratic Party bastions. Much of the rest of the state had turned Republican by that time, but the Golden Triangle remained heavily Democratic. That has changed in the years since then.

The new Democratic bastion now appears to be Dallas County, which borders Collin County, where my wife and I now reside.

My own Democratic leanings are well-known to readers of High Plains Blogger. No need to belabor that point.

However, I am heartened by former Vice President Biden’s strong showing in this state, given its heavy GOP leaning over many years.

The coronavirus pandemic is going to preclude any big campaign rallies between now and Election Day. That’s a bit of a bummer. I would love to attend a Biden rally, just as I attended a Trump rally in the summer of 2019 in downtown Dallas.

Whatever. We can now expect to buried/swamped/inundated with a flood of campaign ads on our TV screens. I’m guessing they’ll begin in September.

I used to complain that Democrats had given up on this state and that Republicans had taken us granted.

It looks as though that has changed … bigly!