Monthly Archives: August 2020

national news

Wish list for next POTUS

I want the next president of the United States to undo the damage done by Donald J. Trump. My to-do wish list is a lengthy one.

And by the way, I hope the next president is Joseph R. Biden Jr.

So, for the record and in no particular order of importance, I want the next president to:

  • Reinstate our participation in key international agreements, such as the Iran nuclear arms deal; the Paris Climate Accords; remaining a part of the World Health Organization.
  • Issue a new executive order reviving the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals for those undocumented immigrants who were brought here illegally as children by their parents.
  • Look Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the eye and tell him he faces severe economic and diplomatic sanctions if he continues to interfere in our electoral process.
  • Restore environmental protections seeking cleaner air and water.
  • Revive our alliances within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
  • Start working immediately on comprehensive immigration reform. Accordingly, I also want the next president to strengthen border security without erecting a wall along our southern border.
  • Restore policies that welcome gay men and women who want to serve in our nation’s armed forces.
  • Stop the effort to kill the Affordable Care Act and instead work immediately to improve it and make it truly more “affordable” for millions of Americans.
  • Develop a sensible and comprehensive national strategy to fight the pandemic that continues to kill and sicken too many Americans every day.
  • Redeploy resources to developing clean energy.

I am sure there are other initiatives worth pursuing once we get a new president.

My hope remains that the day will arrive next Jan. 20 and not four years after that date.

national news

Where’s the second-term message?

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Donald J. Trump continues to flail and flounder not only on the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic but also on the president’s re-election message.

I suppose the two things are connected, given that he can’t craft one strategy let alone two at the same time.

Truth be told, I care only about the first thing, the response to the coronavirus that has killed more than 160,000 Americans. I don’t give a sh** about the second matter, the re-election effort. I want his butt tossed out of the White House.

However, I want to look briefly at the consequences of Trump’s failure to craft a message worthy of re-election.

He is running against himself. Trump continues to paint a gloomy and forbidding picture of life in America. He’s been president for nearly four years. He was going to “drain the swamp,” provide health care for everyone, unify the nation, make America great again, put America first. He said that “I, alone” can do all those wonderful things.

He has failed to deliver the goods.

What’s left for him to promise? More of the same?

That ain’t a winning strategy. Again, it’s not that I want him to craft a vision for a second term. I want him kicked out. I want him as far away from the seat of power as he can possibly get.

One way for him to ensure his earliest possible departure — short of resigning from office in the next 15 minutes — is to continue on the clumsy path he has blazed for himself. That’s fine with me.

Joe Biden stands poised at this moment of relieving the nation of the misery that Trump has brought upon us all. That, of course, will depend on whether he can withstand the withering assault that is coming his way.

Look, the former vice president wasn’t my first choice to challenge Trump. Biden did survive a grueling primary process. He’s now the only choice we have. I now am all in.

The campaign will unfold –, given the pandemic’s effect on political life — in a way we haven’t seen ever before. Be smart, Joe. Be restrained. Be presidential, which I know you can do.

Just let Trump be Trump.

legal news

Count the ‘persons in each state’

It’s a given that Donald J. Trump doesn’t know the U.S. Constitution, the document he swore on oath to defend and protect.

With that established, let’s understand that when Trump says that census counters are not to count undocumented immigrants as part of the 2020 census, he is violating the Constitution … which he doesn’t understand.

Trump wants to limit the count of those who are living here to just citizens, actual Americans. No can do, Mr. POTUS. That 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the one that talks about equal protection under the law, has this to say about how states must be represented in Congress:

“Section 2: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States, according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State … “

If you look throughout the 14th Amendment, you will not find a word in it that stipulates that only citizens can be among the “whole number of persons” counted in each state. The framers threw open the counted to be “persons.” Citizens or non-citizens, documented or undocumented immigrants. They all count the same, according to the U.S. Constitution.

That is the basis for progressive groups complaining about the restrictions that Trump is seeking to place on the census takers.

This kind of ham-handedness would have an impact on Texas, which stands to gain as many as three new representatives once the census is taken. The state also is home to quite a large number of undocumented immigrants, which you know about already. Many of those immigrants happen to be “dreamers,” the folks brought here as children when their parents sneaked into the country to pursue a better life for themselves and their families.

Trump is trifling with the Constitution in a way that is going to do harm to communities and to states. He must not be allowed to get away with this attempt to pilfer power from states that deserve a loud and clear voice within the halls of government.

national news

Waiting on you, Trumpkins

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I have a number of friends and family members who voted for Donald J. Trump in November 2016.

I love them all. I don’t let their politics interfere with my personal feelings toward them.

I also keep hearing in media reports about those members of the Trumpkin Corps who are changing their mind, how they are (a) going to write in the name of a candidate or (b) going to vote for Joseph R. Biden Jr. this coming November.

My network of friends and family members is fairly extensive. So I am entitled to express puzzlement why I am unaware of any of them doing what I keep reading about others. I haven’t heard a word from any of my Trumpkin pals if they are abandoning their hero.

Are they just so loyal to this guy that they cannot understand the damage he has done to the office he sought four years ago? Have they swilled the Trump Kool-Aid, becoming members of the “cult of personality” that Trump has formed within what used to be known as the Republican Party?

I’ll be candid. My hope has been that as they have read my musings about Trump that they might have changed their mind. Perhaps my friends are loyalists to a cause they deem to be worth their loyalty.

Oh, well. I cannot get too critical of their beliefs or their adherence to them. I, too, am an equally loyal Never Trumper. 

Still … I can hope.

media news

‘Fake news’ from its originator

I continue to be astonished that Donald J. “Fake News Purveyor in Chief” Trump continues to hurl epithets at the media in that petulant fashion he has adopted.

He calls the media “fake news.” My ever-lovin’ goodness, the man has no shame, no self-awareness.

He did so again today during that campaign riff disguised as a “news conference” in Bedminster, N.J. He said the media don’t report the progress he supposedly is making against the pandemic, calling them “fake news.”

I feel the need to call Trump out because he, alone, is responsible for more than 20,000 reported instances of misleading statements and outright lies since becoming president, according to the Washington Post. He lies and lies some more. His “base” gives him a pass because, in their twisted view, he is “telling it like it is.”

The most egregious act of fake news, of course, came when Trump kept alive the lie that Barack Obama was born in Africa and wasn’t qualified to run for president. It was a blatantly racist attack on the first African-American ever elected president. He followed that up by questioning President Obama’s academic credentials at Harvard University.

Trump’s familiarity with fake news is well-known to everyone on Earth … except him. A certifiably pathological liar is prone to say things without any realization that he’s lying. That’s what Trump does. He blurts statements out. He gets fact-checked and he is told that what he says is untrue. He doesn’t care.

He recently told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that Democratic nominee-in-waiting Joe Biden wants to “defund the police,” which Wallace challenged on the spot. Trump ignored what Wallace said.

Fake news, anyone? Anyone?

The upshot of all this, maddeningly, is that those who continue to endorse Trump also continue to buy into his claptrap nonsense about “fake news.” They applaud the president for his declaration that the media are the “enemy of the people.” They, too, see the media as peddlers of “fake news.”

I never thought such idiocy would be contagious. Silly me. I was wrong.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump keeps peddling his own version of fake news. The difference between what he seeks to pawn off on us and what he accuses the media of peddling is that Trump is dealing in the real thing.

Donald Trump is a liar.

Sports news

Why not just scrap the season?

A part of the Lone Star Conference decision to “postpone” certain athletic activities has me puzzled.

The LSC has decided to postpone intercollegiate football and other sports until the spring, meaning that the student-athletes can start blocking and tackling for real during, oh, baseball season.

The COVID-19 pandemic has rattled LSC officials. They aren’t comfortable letting the athletes participate in the fall when their regular sporting events occur. Who in the world can blame them?

Why not just scrap the entire season? Just call it good. Football, soccer, volleyball and basketball will be there next academic year. So, why not just tell the student-athletes they will have to wait. Perhaps there’s a way to extend their eligibility a year to enable them to play these sports even if they have completed their academic work at their schools.

The impact is going to disrupt a lot of activity in communities where these LSC’s 18 schools are located. I am saddened for those who like attending football games on Saturday afternoons and evenings.

There will be some economic impact as well on the schools that derive income from attendance at football contests.

The overarching issue is the safety of the student-athletes. Allowing them close contact with fellow competitors while the nation is fighting a deadly infectious virus exposes them to too great a risk.

Let’s just call it a season. Wait until the next academic year … and hope we have this virus contained a whole lot better than we do at this moment.

religious news

Yeah, but what about … ?

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They call it “what about-ism.” It’s when someone makes a critical statement about someone and you respond with “what about” the time so-and-so did something worse.

Donald Trump has accused Joe Biden of being “against the Bible” and “against God.” That he wants to “hurt God.”

I want to revisit that idiocy for just a moment.

You see, that Donald Trump — of all people! — would say such a thing is laughable on its face … except that it isn’t funny.

Biden is a lifelong practicing Roman Catholic. Trump has no religious experience that anyone has been able to identify.

Then there’s this:

Trump has admitted to never asking for God’s forgiveness; he once had a one-night stand with a porn star (allegedly) and then paid her 130 grand to keep quiet about an event he said never occurred; Trump also boasted to a TV host that he grabbed women by their genitals because he was a “celebrity” and that his celebrity status enabled him to “move on them like a bit**.”

Trump’s assertion about the presumed Democratic Party presidential nominee must be judged for what it is: a cheap, tawdry political stunt.

Donald Trump

Why does he want this job?

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

I have been pondering something privately that I now want to share publicly. It is this: Why does Donald J. Trump want to keep doing a job I believe he hates doing? 

I long have believed that Trump accepted the notion in 2016 that he was going to lose the presidential election to Hillary Clinton. The polls had him trailing all the way to Election Day; it turned out he lost the actual vote, but won the Electoral College by a narrow margin … but you know all that.

I do not believe in my gut that Donald Trump likes going to work every day. I long have thought that he detests the notion of answering to Congress, or even to voters, you know, the folks who are actually in charge of matters involving government. He isn’t wired that way.

Trump spent his entire adult life being his own boss. He pushed people around and bullied them. He keeps doing it today. Trump doesn’t grasp the limitations of his office or understand why the framers wrote the Constitution the way they did, giving Congress and the judiciary equal doses of power.

Forgive the psychobabble, but it appears to me — sitting out here in Flyover Country — that Trump merely relishes being at the center of attention. Even when it casts him in hideously negative terms. It’s a form of masochism, I suppose. He doesn’t like being told he’s an a**hole, but getting that kind of negative bounce means he has our attention.

So now he wants another four years in the hottest seat on Earth. How come?

He can’t speak intelligently or with any nuance or detail about legislation. Trump doesn’t study. He doesn’t read. Trump admits to being bored with “presidential daily briefing” papers. Watch him read from prepared text and you well might get the sense — as I do — that he sounds like a prisoner of war being told to read a propaganda statement.

I am totally, completely and categorically prepared to give this guy the boot from my White House. He doesn’t like living in the place he once called a “dump” and he damn sure doesn’t like doing the job to which he was elected to do.

national news

Voter fraud lie creates more secure system?

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It occurs to me that Donald Trump’s incessant, relentless lying about “rampant voter fraud” involving mail-in voting might have a positive outcome.

Trump’s fraudulent assertion has alerted state and local election officials to do all they can to ensure voting security.

Indeed, Trump’s aim is to suppress voter turnout. More voters, in Trump’s view, means less likelihood that he’ll be re-elected on Nov. 3. That’s OK with me. I also favor greater turnout because is spreads electoral power among more people, diluting the power and influence of special interests.

I tend to favor in-person voting. I likely will vote in person on Election Day. However, I have no qualms about voting by mail if Texas election officials hand me that option in time for the presidential election. Am I concerned that my vote won’t count? No. Not in the least.

Indeed, all this attention being paid to Trump’s specious and malicious assertions of “rampant fraud” is likely to make mail-in voting even more secure than it already is in the states that allow or require it.

I have been able to watch local election officials do their job with professionalism. My career in print journalism gave me an up close look at county clerks in Oregon and in Texas, where I practiced my craft for nearly 37 years. They all performed their duties with professionalism. They were conscientious about the integrity of the system they managed.

Now that Donald Trump has raised a phony specter of “rampant voter fraud,” it stands to reason that he has alerted the officials on the front line of this process to be sure it remains safe and secure.

Thanks, Mr. President.

Now … shut the hell up!

national news

Fool me twice?

You know how it goes: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Are we really ready to fool ourselves once again by sending Donald Trump back to the White House for another four years?

I see these compilations of public opinion surveys and notice Trump continues to rake in about 42 percent approval among registered voters. I am left to ask: Who in the name of political sanity is actually continuing to support this guy?

Are they not paying attention to the idiocy that pours forth from this individual? Are they giving him a pass on his dismissal of the coronavirus pandemic, when he called it a “Democrat hoax”? Or when he stands before TV cameras as recently as this week and pokes fun at the name of the virus, while it is killing 1,000 Americans every single day?

I am left to scream at the prospect of this guy keeping the keys to the White House for another four years. This is a dangerous, perilous time. We must exercise some wisdom in deciding who leads us out of this nightmare. 

It ain’t Donald Trump.