Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

No more name-calling

2 Comments

Joseph R. Biden Jr. has vowed to restore “decency” to the White House if he’s elected president of the United States.

That is a noble goal. I endorse the former vice president’s appeal to the better angels among us. He has summoned them to me.

Accordingly, I am making a command decision regarding High Plains Blogger. I hereby declare an end to the name-calling that has peppered many of my recent blog posts criticizing Donald J. Trump.

You know what I mean, right? I have at times used the term “So and So in Chief” when referring to Trump. That’s now over. Officially.

This blog will continue to criticize Trump harshly when the need arises. I figure it will arise often. So there you have it.

As for the name-calling, I won’t go there.

I figure if I am going to endorse one presidential candidate’s demand for decency, I ought to practice what my preferred candidate preaches. It’s the right thing to do.

national news

This is class personified

In an earlier, more genteel time this kind of message wouldn’t call much attention to itself. You can read it here.

Donald Trump’s brother died this weekend and the man against whom he will run for president sent this message to the president and his family.

It’s the kind of message that should be sent. Indeed, it should go without mentioning, but we live in callous, coarse times. Donald Trump as often as not has led the chorus of callousness with his reaction — or non-reaction — to personal tragedies that befall other politicians, particularly those with whom he has disagreements.

When the former vice president talks about “restoring decency” to the presidency, I will conclude that messages such as the one he sent to Donald Trump define what he means.

national news

Not so strange after all

Media pundits continue to make something of a ruckus over the recent political history involving Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris, that Harris roughed up Biden in a couple of debates before she dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.

They’re now on the same Democratic ticket. So I am left to wonder: Why the fascination? It’s hardly the first time political rivals have hooked up, buried the hatchet and locked arms in the fight against a common opponent.

In 1960, Sens. Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy fought for the Democratic nomination. They spoke harshly of each other. LBJ pulled out at the end of that primary fight. JFK was looking for someone to help strengthen him in the South. So he turned to Sen. Johnson. They won that race. Fate, though, tragically intervened when JFK died from an assassin’s bullet in November 1963.

In 1980, former Gov. Ronald Reagan and former CIA director/U.N. ambassador/former congressman/former special envoy to China George H.W. Bush butted heads for the Republican nomination. Bush chided Reagan’s fiscal policy as “voodoo economics.” Reagan survived and then selected Bush to be his VP. The two of them served together through two successful terms.

In 2008, for heaven’s sake, Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden fought for their party’s nomination. Biden didn’t last long. He took his shots at Obama, who fired back at his foe. Obama got nominated and had Biden at his side for two terms.

So now it’s Sen. Harris who’s being examined. Is she loyal enough? Does the presumptive nominee trust her to be a team player?

Biden has been through the VP vetting process. He knows what to ask, where to look.

Harris’s selection is historic. Many have made much of that fact, given her racial and ethnic background. Biden’s decision to select her, though, doesn’t look like much of a gamble. LBJ, George H.W. Bush and Biden himself already have blazed recent trails that led them all to the vice presidency.

Let’s worry less about the recent past between these two politicians and concern ourselves more with the policy positions they share and will take to the fight against Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

It’s game on, man!

national news

Welcome back, Mr. POTUS 44

Barack Obama appears to be getting back into the game.

He’s been out of action since leaving the presidency in January 2017. I reckon he has seen and heard enough from Donald J. Trump to bring him back into the action.

President Obama is all in with the man who served as vice president during his two terms in office. He is thoroughly and completely behind Joe Biden. That is no surprise, of course. The two men, Obama and Biden, forged a remarkably close personal and professional relationship for eight years in the White House.

I have learned recently that their friendship didn’t materialize immediately after they took office, but that it evolved and developed over time. At the end of his time as president, Obama was referring to himself and his family as “honorary Bidens.” He has called Joe Biden his “brother.”

So it has developed and matured.

After nearly four years of Donald Trump, though, and listening to Trump’s constant drumbeat of denigration of his time in office, I figure President Obama believes he needs to do what he can to remove Trump from an office he never should have won in the first place.

To be fair, Trump did win. Along the way to the White House, Trump continued to belittle Obama’s record. Since taking office, Trump has sought specifically to erase Obama’s name from legislative accomplishments. Target No. 1 has been the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature domestic legislative achievement. The ACA remains in effect, more or less, but Trump continues to vow to remove it forever. Is there a replacement? Umm. No.

As one American voter who wants Trump defeated, I am going to welcome Barack Obama back into the fight. He remains a U.S. citizen and is entitled to speak his mind whenever he pleases. Yes, it is not “normal” for a former president to weigh in so heavily.

But … what the hey. Let’s watch the battle be joined.

national news

When Trump departs …

2 Comments

I cannot believe I am thinking about this, but I am.

My thoughts are wandering toward that blessed day when Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States. My thoughts deal specifically with this blog.

What will be its future? Well, it looks bright no matter when Trump departs the White House for the final time. It could be this coming January. Or — and I have to swallow hard right about now — it could come four years from January.

High Plains Blogger has been my vehicle for venting about Trump. I used this platform relentlessly during the 2016 campaign. I had high hopes almost until the very end that Hillary Clinton would defeat Trump. I went to an election night “watch party” with friends in Amarillo. We were prepared to uncork the bubbly in celebration.

Then came some words I didn’t want to hear. When Pennsylvania swung to Trump, I heard the great Democratic political operative James Carville say, “I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

The night didn’t end well for our friends or for wife and me.

My blog has been my release ever since.

Now we’re on the cusp of another election. Joe Biden is positioned at this moment to unseat Donald Trump. If the former VP wins and sends Trump packing, then I this blog likely will need to fill cyberspace with commentary on a whole array of non-Trump issues.

I am prepared to deliver that to readers of High Plains Blogger.

There might be a caveat to add: Some of that will depend on what the former president (I hope) does as he slinks off into a non-political life. I fear he’ll keep blathering, blabbing and bloviating about public matters, mostly I am certain dealing with his election loss. The good news for you and for me is that he becomes entirely irrelevant once he returns to private citizenship.

We’ll just have to await the returns. I’m prepared to stand watch until they come in.

I do look forward to commenting on policy matters emanating from a shiny new administration that has a lot of cleaning up to perform. I hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

national news

‘I’ll look at it’

There you go. The president of the United States had a chance this week to shoot down in flames the latest lie about a politician who happens to be “of color,” that she somehow isn’t constitutionally qualified to run for public office.

Instead, Donald Trump said “I’ll look at it.” The “it” being reports that U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who is now set to be nominated as her party’s vice-presidential candidate, was born somewhere other than the United States.

This is a racist rant that needs to be plowed under. Why in the name of presidential statesmanship doesn’t Donald Trump do so? Well, I know why. It’s because he is no statesman. Trump is a racist chump who trades on innuendo and invective.

Moreover, Trump is a card-carrying member of the lunatic/wack job/fruitcake/racist wing of what used to be a great political party.

Trump, you’ll recall fomented a similar lie about President Obama. Then he surrendered, offering a tepid “He’s a citizen of the United States” response to a question about the birther lie.

For the record, Sen. Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican man and an Indian woman. They met in California. They got married and they produced a daughter. Little Kamala came into this world in Oakland. Calif., in 1964. There. She’s a U.S. citizen. She is fully qualified. End of argument, yes?

Hardly. It will continue for as long as Donald Trump gives such idiocy any sort of currency, which is what he did with his “I’ll look at it” non-answer.

I like the response given by Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who called the birther baloney a “racist, ignorant lie.”

It’s all of that … and I also would call it “hate speech.”

national news

It’s no ‘hoax,’ Mr. POTUS

Joe Biden vows to restore our nation’s soul.

The presumed Democratic Party presidential nominee wants to lead the nation into a battle against the pandemic. I get it. I want him to take the reins of power soon.

His first order of business if he is able to assume the presidency in January is to wipe out the “h-word” from our political glossary of phony, fraudulent terms.

Donald Trump has called the pandemic a “hoax,” cooked up by Democrats, the “enemy of the people fake news” media. He refuses to enact a national strategy. He has sent myriad mixed messages, all of which do nothing but confuse governors, city and county officials, school administrators, and just plain folks like, um, you and me.

Trump’s initial response to the pandemic was to declare it would vanish like a “miracle.” The warm weather of the spring and summer would kill those nasty germs. Kill ’em dead.

Well, here we are, with 165,000 Americans gone forever. That number will climb and, so help me, we have no idea on Earth where it will top out.

Trump continues to boast about the job he and his response team are doing. Therein, I submit, lies the hoax. Trump’s so-called “success” is every bit the hoax.

Joe Biden promises to lead the nation. He vows to take charge. He promises to heed the science at every turn.

I am going to hold him to all of that. As you should, too. We all must demand that the new president deliver on this promise. The stakes for letting this status quo continue are too grim to even ponder.

The former VP wants to restore our national soul. I support that noble goal and want him to keep that promise.

The place to start is to eradicate the word “hoax” from the context of the grievous battle against a killer viral infection.

environmental news

Let’s start with climate change

1 Comment

Donald Trump has labeled a number of existential threats as a “hoax.” Thus, he has refused to deal with those threats.

If he gets the boot on Election Day and vacates the presidency next January, I am hoping the new president, Joe Biden, will take charge of those so-called “hoax” issues and start to deal forthrightly with them.

Let me start with climate change.

It’s real, man. Earth’s climate is changing to the detriment of every living creature inhabiting this fragile planet. Donald Trump has refused to recognize the threat. He continues to push for fossil fuel development, which necessarily spews more carbon emissions into the air.

Trump decided shortly after taking office to roll back the water and air quality regulations enacted by President Obama. He just could not stand the idea of Obama’s imprint being left on anything.

Trump doesn’t discuss climate change. He doesn’t feel the need to call our collective attention to the reality that Earth’s average annual temperature is rising; that the polar ice caps are melting; that sea level is rising; that coastal communities are being threatened; that nations’ deforestation endangers nature’s habitat and deprives the world of vegetation needed to replace the oxygen being consumed.

Joe Biden pledges to return the United States to the Paris Climate Accords. He promises to put climate change front and center on his agenda of issues with which to tackle. I intend to hold him to those pledges, although I have far greater faith in Biden keeping his word than anything that flies out of Trump’s mouth.

We have just one planet, ladies and gentlemen. We need to care for it. We need to cherish it. A new president can deliver on the need to deal head-on with a serious existential threat to our very existence.

national news

Battle is now joined

2 Comments

We have just witnessed the first exchange in what is going to be more than likely the most miserable campaign for the U.S. presidency that many of us can remember.

Maybe in all of American history.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris spoke to us back to back about the abject failures of the Donald Trump-Mike Pence administration.

My initial takeaway, though, has to do with a personal aspect of the relationship between the members of the Democratic Party presidential team.

It is that Joe Biden does not carry a grudge. It was Harris, you’ll remember, who drew a bit of Biden’s blood during a Democratic presidential joint appearance when she hit him hard over his Senate opposition to federally mandated busing of school children.

The fact that Biden would select Harris to run with him tells me in stark terms: That’s OK; you took your best shot and I survived. Now, join me in this fight to the finish.

I am looking forward to watching this campaign unfold, even though the misery we can expect will be deep and will be intensely personal. That’s how Trump rolls.

national news

Welcome to the show, Sen. Harris

There once was a time when candidates joined national campaigns and their opponent would offer them a tepid “Welcome to the fight” greeting.

Not these days.

U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris became former VP Joe Biden’s running mate this week and Donald Trump began a Twitter torrent lambasting the California Democrat for being a weak Democratic primary presidential opponent.

Trump said Harris is the kind of candidate he dreams about. He calls her a champion of the “far left.” Hah! I’ll go instead with some of the progressive outfits who complain that Harris isn’t “far left” enough for them.

In reality, the more I consider Harris’s candidacy, the more I buy into her mainstream moderate approach to governance.

She is a former prosecutor, meaning she hunted down bad guys and put ’em in the slammer. She is no one’s fool. Harris is tough, resilient and vows to work as hard as she can to elect Biden as the next president of the United States.

Harris teamed up once with the late Beau Biden, the former VP’s son, in pursuing fraudulent bankers. Beau Biden happened to be attorney general in Delaware while Harris ran the California justice department.

The old days of common courtesy are gone. Donald Trump is lying in wait (pun kind of intended here, if you get my drift). He is going to cast every possible aspersion he can on Sen. Harris, not to mention what he plans for the former vice president.

Neither of them needs to respond in kind. They have plenty of political action organizations ready to do their own version of the kind of dirty work they can expect from the Donald Trump-Mike Pence team.