Monthly Archives: March 2024

2016 election, International news, media news, military news, national news

The moment still sickens me

Time for an admission, which is that every reference to the 2016 presidential election outcome fills me with the same level of revulsion I felt when the TV networks called it for the former Moron in Chief.

Case in point: I just finished watching a nine-part Netflix documentary series on the cold war, titled, “Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War.” It is well-done, thorough and it walks us through the period from World War II to the present day. The images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are heart-breaking and stark, to be sure.

Then it walks us to the here and now. The Soviet Union has imploded and the new president, Vladimir Putin, is filled with delusions of grandeur and longs for a return to the Stalinesque era of repression.

He invades Ukraine in February 2022 and there he is, plastered on the TV screen, along with the 45th POTUS and his buddy-buddy relationship with Putin.

Netflix felt obliged to show the candidate-to-be riding down the escalator in the office tower that bears is name with his wife to announce his run for the presidency. It also replayed the moment when the GOP nominee was declared the winner of the 2016 contest.

So help me, I cannot help but feel sickened beyond measure at the idea of replaying that scenario this coming November.

The documentary made no editorial comment on what occurred in 2016. The producers delivered it straight and for that I applaud them.

Critics of this blog accuse me of suffering from the “Derangement Syndrome” associated with the once and likely future GOP presidential nominee. I plead guilty! Yes, I suffer from it.

But … so should all Americans who give a damn about preserving democracy and scorning the dictatorial impuses of the moron who aspires to re-take control of our nuclear arsenal.

national news, political news

Stand down, Kari Lake

Kari Lake should have her noggin examined for signs of any life other than that which foments the idiocy that flies out of her mouth.

Lake is the Arizona Republican who is running for the U.S. Senate. She is an avid 2020 election denier and someone who has refused to concede she lost the Arizona governor’s race in 2022.

She wants the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that electronic voting is — get ready for it — unconstitutional!

According to MSN.com: The petition to the court alleges new evidence showing false statements made by defendants regarding the safeguards ensuring vote accuracy. Lake and Finchem’s lawyers argue for an amendment to their allegations on standing, aiming to demonstrate a likelihood of recurring harms in future elections similar to those alleged in the 2022 election.

Hang on a moment. The guy hired by the 45th POTUS to monitor the 2020 election declared it to be “the most secure election in U.S. history.” The former POTUS then fired him because he didn’t get the finding he desired.

Kari Lake Petitions US Supreme Court to Declare Electronic Voting Unconstitutional (msn.com)

What the hell is Lake trying to do? It is baffling in the extreme to believe this is a serious person who well could be elected to the Senate and, thus, be empowered to enact legislation that affects all of us.

That’s you and me, man.

Kari Lake is nuttier than a Snickers bar.

local news, political news, State news

Non-GOP observers feeling the pain

The fight that is developing in Texas between non-believers of certain politicians and those who adhere to their every proclamation gives us non-Republicans considerable angst.

How come? Because I, as one of them, find myself rooting for the non-believers in their scrap with those who follow the will of the crooks who happen to hold high public office.

I want to point directly to the troubles that continue to dog Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The AG has taken dead aim at several pols who had the temerity to favor his impeachment in the House. His slate of candidates in this month’s Republican Party primary did pretty well.

One of Paxton’s “enemies” hails from a city I once called home. He is House Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont. Phelan faces a runoff against some political newbie, a guy named David Covey. Paxton recruited Covey to run against Phelan. He finished first in the GOP primary, but the two of them are headed for a runoff to see who gets the nomination. Covey finished first and Phelan finished second, but Covey didn’t get the 50% margin he needed to win outright.

I am rooting for Phelan to win the runoff. Not that I care about his politics, per se. I just favor the stance he took in voting to impeach the crooked AG and the manner in which he conducted the House proceedings that led to Paxton’s impeachment. Phelan is a conservative and, frankly, not my ideal politician. Yet the AG refers to him as the “liberal speaker.” What a fu**ing crock!

This intraparty squabbling is playing out in states across the country. I drive through Collin County, where I live, and I see signs for politicians proclaiming themselves to be a “conservative Republican” running for office. How do they define “conservative”? Everyone’s a conservative Republican, yes? You have one conservative Republican running against another of the same ilk. How does a GOP voter choose?

The election season is playing itself out a little at a time. Those of us who sit on the sidelines watching this GOP internecine battle being fought are left to cheer silently for those who respect the system and who put the law above party loyalty.

national news, political news

Accusations aren’t ‘false’

A critic of High Plains Blogger has accused me of saying things about the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee that are false.

Well, I am going to challenge that allegation with this brief post.

He writes: You bash Trump with false accusations and give credit to Biden where’s there’s very little credit to be given.

Nothing I have said about the presumptive GOP nominee is “false.” As for “credit” being given to President Biden, I’ll save that comment for another post.

I have said for as long as I have been writing this blog — and it’s been many years — that I do not mind criticism of its content; just don’t ascribe impure motives to me for expressing these views. They are mine alone and I take responsibility for them. As for my motivation, some folks over the years have questioned my faith, and my patriotism. I take a back seat to no one on either matter.

My accusations against the 45th POTUS are based on what juries have determined, what legally constituted prosecutors have said in criminal indictments and even on the visual record of video and audio recordings the world has seen and heard with its own eyes and ears.

The falsehood or the truth about any of it has yet to be determined in courts of law. My sincere and fervent hope is that we get to those determinations sooner rather than later.

I am just going to make this point one more time — and it likely won’t be the final time: The idiot whom Republicans will nominate for POTUS is unfit for any public office in the land.

local news, national news, political news

Democrats seek ‘all-blue vote’

National Democratic Party officials are asking those of us who fear the possibility of a Republican return to power in the White House to do something I find objectionable.

They want us to “vote all blue” throughout the ballots we are going to get on Nov. 5.

I am afraid I cannot do that. Voting straight-Democratic Party line at election time runs counter to my firmly held belief that voters need to examine every race individually and determine who is the better candidate for every position being contested.

I am planning to endorse the Democratic nominees for POTUS and for U.S. Senate in Texas. That’s no surprise to those who read this blog. What might surprise some of you is that I likely will cast my vote for Republican candidates farther down the ballot. Moreover, I am keeping an open mind on the race for the 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House.

I happen to be acquainted with several candidates running for public office in Collin County, where I reside. They belong to both major parties. Am I going to punch the straight-party spot on the ballot without even considering the candidates who represent the other party? I cannot do that in good conscience.

Good government requires voters to exercise their due diligence. I consider myself to be a good-government progressive, which requires me — according to my own definition — to ensure I know the candidates’ stands on issues pertinent to the office they seek.

We have many good men and women running for public office in this county; many of them happen to be Republicans.

Do I want the Democrats to retain the White House? Yes! Do I want the Dems to strengthen their grip on the U.S. Senate? Again, yes. Do I want them to take control of the U.S. House? Ditto on that, too.

There are compelling issues at stake at the presidential and congressional levels. That is as far as it goes. Voting “all blue” means casting aside worthy candidates for the Texas Legislature and for countywide offices that in reality shouldn’t even be considered on partisan ballots.

I’m in on the “all blue” initiative … to a point.

national news, political news

Head-spinning begins

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My 74-year-old noggin is spinning like Linda Blair’s in the “The Exorcist.” At times it feels as if it’s going 360 degrees.

That is what this presidential election season is doing to me.

Republicans are set to nominate an individual they have selected twice already to run for president. He won the first time in one of the most bizarre flukes in American political history, capturing the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by 3 million ballots. He lost the second time fair and square, only to declare the election was rigged and was stolen from him.

Now the GOP is going to nominate him one more time? His platform sounds like the 2020 theme, which is that it is short on ideas for the future and long on made-up grievances.

Except that he has persuaded enough Americans that his dubious gripes are real enough for them to climb aboard his clown car.

Democrats have a successful incumbent running as an underdog, for God’s sake! President Biden’s term so far has produced far more successes than failures, and yet the MAGA minions seek to persuade us that the Joe Biden presidency has been an abject failure.

What the hell … ?

Republicans are hell bent on suppressing voter turnout. Democrats want the turnout to break the records set in 2020. By my own barometer, I long have believed that democracy works best when more — rather than fewer — voters take part.

I won’t even get into the felony trials involving the GOP nominee’s criminal allegations. He is wanting to delay them past the election and then is hoping for all he can to be elected so he can just crumple them up and toss ’em into the crapper.

I do not intend to allow that to happen, if this blog has any pull at all.

First things first, though. I have to get my head to stop spinning.

crime news, national news, political news

Pence ignores the obvious

Mike Pence says he won’t endorse the man in whose administration he served as vice president.

Oh, and why is that? Well, the former VP says he and the ex-POTUS have fundamental policy differences. Therefore, he won’t endorse the guy who also incited a mob to seek out the VP while carrying signs that said “Hang Mike Pence!”

Or that he said Pence was a coward for refusing to discount votes that elected Joe Biden president of the U.S. in 2020.

Or that he did nothing to call off the traitors who stormed the Capitol on the Sixth of January.

No, Pence said he cannot endorse the former Moron in Chief because of “policy differences.”

What … a … coward!

Joe Biden, national news, political news

Let the campaign commence

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The strangest presidential campaign in my memory has begun in earnest … and the two major-party candidates haven’t even been nominated yet by their respective parties.

President Biden is running for re-election against the nimrod he defeated in 2020. For reasons that I cannot explain or understand, he is running — for the time being — as the underdog in this contest.

I don’t get it. The economy is rocking along. Americans clearly are better off than they were when he took office in January 2021. He campaigned on a pledge to restore our nation’s “soul,” and I believe he has succeeded. He’s got more work to do and in my view he has earned the right to finish the job.

But, oh my … this campaign is as weird as any I have seen in all my years watching and, in some cases, covering these events. In fact, it’s the weirdest campaign I can remember.

The Republican nominee-in-waiting is cozying up to dictators. He calls the Hungarian thug/despot a “strong leader” and sounds as if he wants to govern the United States the way his good pal governs Hungary. Oh, my God in heaven. Please … no!

He threatens to dismantle NATO, all but pledges to look the other way while Russian thug Vladimir Putin “does whatever the hell he wants” by attacking a NATO ally while he prosecutes the war in Ukraine.

All of that and more run totally counter to American ideals. Yet the dipsh** continues to lead in public opinion polling.

Are we that stupid, that ignorant, that cynical as a nation to let this guy have his way? May we all come to our senses between now and Nov. 5, when Election Day arrives.

crime news, local news, national news, political news

Fani Willis is in the clear

1 Comment

Leave it to a disgraced former Navy flag officer to engage in partisan hyperbole in reaction to a judge’s ruling on a Georgia district attorney seeking to prosecute a former POTUS for election interference crimes.

Ronny Jackson, whom the Navy inspector general demoted to captain after determining allegations of misconduct were true, said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be “disbarred.” Why? Because she had a romantic relationship with a prosecutor on her team.

The judge in the case hearing the matter involving the ex-POTUS’s alleged interference has determined Willis can stay on the job but the lead prosecutor must go.

Jackson, who now represents the Texas Panhandle in the U.S. House, said the judge’s ruling only proves he’s a partisan. He wants Willis’s law license revoked.

Well, sh**! The doc should have his medical license revoked for his liberal dispensing of controlled drugs to clients who request them. That’s why he’s got the pejorative nickname of “Candy Man.”

Whatever. Willis will continue to do her work as prescribed by Georgia law and the state’s constitution.

As for Rep. Jackson, he ought to just butt the hell out and tend to the business of the Texas Panhandle … if he can figure out what’s important to the district and the region he hardly knows.

political news, religious news

No … God didn’t do this!

Of all the histrionics I have heard about why the MAGA crowd is so in love with the former POTUS who wants to return to office, only one proclamation actually offends me.

It goes like this: It was God’s will that put him in the office and God wants him to return.

Let us ponder that for a moment, or maybe two.

When you rely on the Almighty to justify your earthly political beliefs, you immediately run into serious trouble. Where in the world does it say that God looks the other way at someone breaking his sacred vow of fidelity to his wife? Don’t the evangelicals who back the former POTUS stand firm on the biblical view that cheating on one’s spouse is a sin worthy of high scorn?

Moreover, where does the Good Book allow for someone to on one side of his mouth proclaim to be someone of deep faith and then declare with the other side of his pie hole that he has never sought forgiveness for any sin he has committed?

Citing Scripture is a dangerous gambit. God also must have decreed that Joe Biden be elected president in 2020. That’s why he’s there now, in the office, making decisions on our behalf!

Those of us out here in Voter Land who also worship God understand the teaching laid out in the Bible far more than the guy who pretends to be faithful.

A critic of this blog ID’s himself (I presume it’s a guy) as Psalm 109:8. I looked that passage up. I says: “Let his years be few; let someone else take his position.” He believes President Biden should lose his job because the Bible suggests as much. Such devotion to Scripture. You know what the next verse says? “Let his children be fatherless; let his wife become a widow.” 

You want a reason to take great offense at some phony notion that God intended for the former Idiot in Chief to be elected? That is why one should never mix religion with politics.