Monthly Archives: July 2024

2016 election, national news

More unsolicited advice for the VP

Let there be not a hint of doubt that Vice President Kamala Harris is getting loads of unsolicited advice from experts, faux experts and just plain folks who want her to be elected president this fall.

You may count me as one of those folks.

If there is a lesson to be learned about why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, one need look no further than to the grievous strategic and tactical errors Clinton made down the stretch.

National polling had Clinton leading Trump by 2 to 3 percentage points; that polling, by the way, turned out to be accurate, as that was the margin of the popular vote victory Hillary scored against Trump.

But ….

She erred in refusing to visit three key battleground states down the stretch: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all of which went for Trump on Election Day and sealed his Electoral College victory. Clinton took voters in those states for granted, thinking they were in the bag for her. So, why bother?

Clinton learned the bitterest lesson imaginable. She most certainly should have bothered.

What might be the advice that Vice President Harris receives as the 2024 campaign ramps up? Do not, under any circumstance, take the voters of any state for granted. Harris will have plenty of polling experts in her corner. She’d better heed their advice.

And if that advice tells her to visit certain states that might appear to be too close for comfort, she’d damn well better heed it.

national news

Praise for the unspoken

President Biden today deserves a bouquet for something he didn’t mention in his brief remarks to the nation.

He never mentioned — not a single time — any reference to the difficulty that led to his decision to withdraw his bid for re-election to the nation’s highest office.

I want to offer a hearty congratulations to the president for sticking to his script and for declining to enter the viper’s pit with the critics who continue to insist he has lost his edge, that he no longer is fit to hold the office to which we elected him in 2020.

He surrendered his campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his worthy successor, presuming she wins the election this November. Biden spoke of the high honor he earned by “serving as your president” and said the time has come to “pass the torch” to younger leaders.

Joe Biden will face history’s judgment in due course. I believe historians will treat his time as president with the dignity it deserves. He has been a consequential president with a lengthy list of accomplishments for which he can take credit.

I am proud of him and am proud to have cast my vote for Joe Biden as our commander in chief.

national news

By all means, force another debate

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Social media chatter not only is annoying, it can be instructive.

Therefore, when I hear on social media that Donald Trump might wiggle/slither/dodge his way out of a second presidential debate, I am urged to shout: Don’t let him off the hook!

The Trump bowing out reports surfaced immediately as President Biden dropped out of the race for re-election and he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

I know what you’re thinking. Trump wants no part of sharing a debate stage with someone as ferocious as Harris … a former prosecutor and ex-state attorney general. Harris already has laid down a stump-speech mantra about “knowing Donald Trump’s type,” given that she has prosecuted rapists, fraudsters and con artists.

I can’t blame Trump for not wanting to expose himself to his opponent’s long knives. Then again, I am a voter who wants the whole world to know about the enormous load of baggage he is carrying into his third straight campaign for the U.S. presidency.

Harris must never let up in the effort to bring Trump to a debate stage in September, as planned already.

I merely am one American patriot who is waiting anxiously to see how this new presidential frontrunner handles the onslaught of lies and smears that are sure to come her way.

crime news

Accountability at the top!

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You want accountability at the top of our personal security chain of command?

Well, we got it this week when the head of the Secret Service, Kimberley Cheatle, resigned after a gunman tried to kill Donald Trump. Calls for her resignation or firing came from both sides of the great congressional chasm.

Let’s say, though, that such demand for immediate action hasn’t always been the case.

In 1901, a gunman shot President William McKinley to death; in 1963, a shooter murdered President Johin F. Kennedy; in 1975, two women — on separate occasions — shot at President Gerald Ford; in 1981, President Ronald Reagan was wounded in an assassination attempt.

What do those instances have in common? The Secret Service directors all kept their jobs, despite the obvious failures to protect our commander in chief.

I am old enough to remember the JFK, Ford and Reagan incidents. I do not recall anyone in authority raising a stink about failures in the security system designed to protect our president from madmen.

Frankly, I am glad we have ratcheted up calls for accountability when these events occur.

national news

Blog to chart new course

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Now that we have dramatically reset the 2024 presidential campaign — with Vice President Harris taking over from President Biden as the Democrats’ new standard bearer — I want to announce a new strategy for High Plains Blogger as we move toward Election Day.

This blog intends to concentrate more on the new energy that Harris brings to the campaign and less on the blathering and yammering of the GOP nominee, Donald J. Trump.

That doesn’t mean your blogger is going to ignore the idiocy that flies out of Trump’s potty mouth. It means only that I will save my comments for those mutterings the media deem newsworthy.

To be honest, I am more engaged now in this campaign than I was prior to the president’s exit from it. I didn’t want to engage in the silly crap about whether he has dementia … which he doesn’t! But, yes, he has slowed a step or two since 2020. He is 81 years of age. Now that he’s stood down, that leaves Trump as holder of the title of “Oldest Man Ever Nominated for U.S. President.” We’ll need to listen carefully to how the GOP nominee handles himself when the heat gets turned up.

Harris’s ascent to Democratic nominee in waiting was only logical. Biden chose her to be VP because he wanted someone who is able to step in as POTUS. We’re far from that event occurring. However, it makes complete sense that she step in to succeed the president as the party’s nominee, given that he has taken himself out of the game.

I intend to focus this blog on Vice President Harris’s progress as this campaign gets fired up.

national news

Get ready for emotions at DNC

This blog post is aimed at Democratic partisans who are energized by the massive change at the top of the party’s presidential ballot.

I am one of them.

The Democratic National Convention that convenes soon in Chicago is going to contain several emotional moments. One of them is guaranteed to occur the night President Biden speaks to the conventioneers gathered before him.

Someone will introduce “the president of the United States” to the crowd and, you can take this to the bank, they will explode in a torrent of emotion toward the podium. They will be thanking Joe Biden for standing down in the wake of the torrent of criticism he received after that terrible debate performance with Donald Trump.

They will cheer, shouting his name … and it will take them several minutes to collect themselves and listen to whatever the president has to say.

I look forward to watching this display of affection play out. I might even join them from my living room in North Texas.

I know that not every American will rejoice in that moment. There will be ration of MAGA soreheads among us who will find it all disgusting. To them I say: it’s too damn bad.

Joe Biden’s presidency has been a rousing success and he will earn the affection that will shower on him at the Democratic National Convention.

national news

Harris moves quickly into top spot

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Well … that didn’t take long, given the notion that some had posited that next month’s Democratic National Convention would devolve into a chaotic floor fight to determine the next presidential nominee.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who inherited the role of 2024 Democratic frontrunner when President Biden dropped out of the race, has enough pledged delegates for her to secure the nomination before they bang the gavel in Chicago.

The hunt is on for a vice-presidential running mate. Harris has named former Attorney General Eric Holder as head of a task force to vet potential nominees, looking for any possible skeletons in their closets that could damage the ticket.

VP Harris is moving with cool dispatch as she secures the nomination. She has earned Joe Biden’s ringing endorsement, declared that she and her husband Doug Emhoff “love Joe and Jill Biden” and is preparing a breakneck schedule of campaign events in “battleground states,” sone of which were thought to be in Donald Trump’s hip pocket.

I don’t know about you, but I am feeling newly invigorated by what I believe is occurring in the race for the White House.

national news, political news

What does Biden’s courage mean?

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Time gives us a chance for reflection, and so just a few hours after hearing gut-wrenching news of President Biden’s decision to bow out of the 2024 presidential race, I want to reflect briefly on what I believe it means.

And not just for the candidate, but for the country he loves.

Every strand of Joe Biden’s being seemed to pull him toward staying in the race. I mean, he ran for the presidency twice before actually winning the 2020 contest. He sought the 1988 Democratic nomination, but got derailed over a plagiarism scandal. He ran again in 2008, but fell to the Barack Obama buzzsaw.

He had a horrible debate performance in mid-June. He vowed to stay in. Democrats bailed on him. The money spigot dried up.

Then this past weekend came the announcement: He would end his candidacy and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination.

Biden likely knew he couldn’t defeat Donald Trump. He stepped aside to let a young, more intellectually agile public servant, VP Harris, make her effort to keep Trump out of the White House.

He said he did it out of love for his country, which he wants to shield from the evil impulses that Trump would deploy if he gets the chance at another presidential term.

Joe Biden served his country honorably for more than 50 years … as a senator, vice president and president. He left his most indelible imprint on our nation by walking away from a fight he knew he couldn’t win.

That’s how you define patriotism.

national news

Where is boorishness written?

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I am quite sure that there is no written rule that requires members of Congress to conduct themselves like a**holes when questioning witnesses on sensitive topics.

Therefore, I must ask: Where does Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, get off treating the head of the Secret Service as crassly as he did this morning?

Kimberly Cheatle testified today about her department’s failure to protect a former president of the United States against someone who fired off several rifle shots at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.

Cheatle admitted the Secret Service committed many grievous efforts while seeking to secure the rally site for Donald J. Trump. She said her department is in the midst of an investigation into what went wrong. She told Jordan she intends to repair the damage.

Jordan, though, wouldn’t let up, He wouldn’t let answer questions before launching another barrage of belittling Cheatle. He said Cheatle didn’t answer “a single question.” Well, no sh**, Sherlock. He wouldn’t let her answer them!

Don’t misunderstand me. I, too, am angry over the Secret Service’s failure to protect Trump from the gunman. However, if you’re going to summon a principal in that near-tragedy to testify … then give her the chance to explain!

national news, political news

Stop the ‘quit now’ diatribes

MAGA cultists who are foaming at the mouth over President Biden’s decision to cease his re-election campaign need to take a breather and cast an eye toward realism … if that is possible.

They are proclaiming that since Biden said he is “unfit to run for re-election, he is unfit to hold the office,” and therefore he must resign immediately. Give me a fu**ing break! We all know what happened Sunday. I applaud Joe Biden for reaching a conclusion he believes is best for the country. He won’t seek a second term and has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the next Democratic Party presidential nominee. He said he will continue to serve as president and will work when he can to elect Harris if she’s nominated in Chicago later this summer. The MAGA cult members, led by their supreme leader Donald Trump, have lapped the field already in declaring that Biden must go. Trump issued a typically tasteless, crass, boorish response to Biden’s announcement; his followers have climbed aboard the Trump clown car. If a medical doctor examines the president and concludes he must resign, then I’ll listen. Short of that … the MAGA goons should just shut the hell up!