Tag Archives: 2024 election

Are we better off these days?

What in the world is it going to take to persuade Americans to shed their gloomy-Gus outlook on the U.S. economy?

You don’t need to answer that one. Just hear me out for a brief moment while I vent a bit of my frustration.

Here we are now officially in an election year. President Joe Biden is seeking another term, but he is facing headwinds that befuddle me. He is unable to persuade Americans that we are better off now than we were when he took office in January 2021.

Joblessness is down; employers are hiring tens of thousands of employees each month; inflation is down; interest rates are beginning to inch downward as well; retirement accounts are healthy; the stock market is setting records.

OK, I am going to set aside commenting on the border crisis and the phony investigations into alleged corruption involving the president.

Joe Biden has plenty of goods to sell Americans as he seeks re-election. He cannot seem to shake loose from Republicans who continue to feed the lie about the state of our economy.

They said we would plunge into recession. That the Dow would plummet. That inflation would gobble up Americans’ hard-earned savings accounts.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I am doing far better economically today than I was doing in 2020.

Should the president re-purpose the query that Ronald Reagan posed during the 1980 campaign against President Carter? He shouldn’t even consider it. I am certain that a similar question can be presented this year that would produce a far different response than the one Reagan used to devastating effect.

The very future of our nation depends on whether President Biden can find a way to vanquish forever the forces that keep lying to us about our nation’s economic health.

No arguing with MAGAites

Command decisions come easily for me these days as a lone wolf who runs his own blog.

So … I am proud to announce that beginning this very moment I no longer am going to argue with the MAGA cultists who continue to back the idiocy preached by Donald Trump.

I just visited with a West Texas friend, who is far from a MAGA adherent, and we determined that there is no avenue of reason available when we engage a MAGA moron on policy matters.

They have swilled the Kool-Aid offered by Trump. It has seeped into their brain’s soft tissue. They are contaminated by the lies, the absolute lack of authenticity, the distortions blathered by Trump.

What, then, is the point of even trying to persuade them that their guy is a crook, who likely will be convicted (eventually!) of felonies relating to his denial of the 2020 presidential election, his theft of classified documents and the conspiracy to “find 11,780 votes” that would enable him to steal the electoral result in Georgia.

Does anyone see the irony? Trump accuses Democrats of trying to steal the 2020 election, but the only thievery taking place comes from Republicans!

From this moment forward, I no longer am going to debate with the MAGA morons. See y’all in the next life.

Biden is now engaged … fully

Joe Biden has decided to engage the individual who is believed to be his likely opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

As a chump bystander perched in North Texas, I merely want to say: Bring it, Mr. President!

President Biden marked the 1/6 assault on our federal government in a most fascinating way. He traveled to Valley Forge, Pa., where George Washington was encamped with his chilled revolutionary forces who were battling the British while trying to create a new democracy.

President Biden spoke on behalf of democratic principles and draw a straight line between those principles and the authoritarian theme sung by the presumed Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. Biden said Trump poses a direct and existential threat to democracy.

I am one American patriot who wants us to continue on the democratic path forged by our founders and continued through the two centuries-plus since the American Revolution.

Biden told us in 2020 that he was campaigning for our nation’s soul. Sadly, much of that soul has been hijacked by Trump’s idiocy. Biden plans to seek to recover it, breathe new life into it and expose Trump — as if he needs the exposure — for the fraud he has shown us to be.

Go for it, Mr. President!

OK to change my mind …

Let me be clear: I am not changing my mind one bit on whether Donald Trump should be elected to the office from which he was drummed out nearly four years ago.

I am, though, going to pivot on the notion on whether states should boot his sorry ass off the GOP primary ballot this coming year.

Colorado has done so. The case is under appeal. Other states are considering it, too. My own thought is tracks along two trails.

One is that the courts should leave it up to voters to decide whether Trump is fit for public office. This voter has decided already he is not fit in the least for the office he seeks.

The other is that Trump well could be a convicted felon by the time the GOP primary season gets ramped up to full speed. Analysts are suggesting that Trump’s poll numbers well could plummet if a jury decides to convict Trump on any one of the four trials that are pending.

I happen to believe that Trump is unelectable. He is a madman masquerading as a Republican. He has admitted he wants to be a dictator on “Day One” of an administration were he elected. Gulp! I am choking on the thought.

This election should revolve around whether we want to remain a democratic republic or whether we want to hand the POTUS the authority to, oh … seek to execute the former Joint Chiefs chairman, pardon all the 1/6 traitors who stormed the Capitol; pardon himself for anything he did wrong.

Let the numbskull run once more and try to sell his idiocy to voters who’ve already seen what he can do. It would get many times worse a second time around.

Let’s all chew on what might lie ahead. I shudder at the frightening prospect.

Mojo creeping back

As it becomes evident, but far from certain, that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024, I am feeling the pangs of my political mojo stirring in my gut.

I have had to set that all aside as I deal with personal grief and mourning. But … this is a blog born initially as a political forum. I am starting to feel the urge to dust off my rhetorical weaponry and weigh in more frequently on the happenings as they develop on the campaign trail.

Yeah, a lot of it will have to deal with that GOP moron seeking a third run at the presidency.

The English language doesn’t have verbiage that describes adequately the visceral feelings I harbor toward Trump. I have ranted, raved, skewered and slashed at Trump every way I know how during two previous presidential election cycles. A third one might await, although I am going to withhold judgment until we get the first criminal trials in which Trump is a defendant out of the way.

My political juices, though, are beginning to flow.

You know what? It feels kinda good.

Trump’s standing defies all logic

I am likely to go to my grave never grasping what appears to be developing on our nation’s political landscape. What, pre-tell, is about to happen?

My trick knee has failed me once again, or so it seems. A former POTUS, a man impeached twice by the House of Representatives, who’s been indicted on 91 felony counts and is about to stand trial in a criminal court, who was defeated for re-election four years ago, now stands on the verge of being nominated for another run for the office he lost.

I had relied on my trick knee to predict that Donald Trump never would be nominated by what is left of the Republican Party. Silly me. It now appears evident that rank-and-file Republicans indeed are too stupid, too gullible, too smitten by the cult of personality to reject this idiot’s potential return to power.

What’s more, Trump has all but declared that democratic governance as we have known it will be tossed into the crapper if he happens to take the oath of office in January 2025. He has pledged in a loud voice to seek revenge against his political foes. He will sic the FBI on those who oppose him. Yes, he intends to “weaponize” the Justice Department.

The reasons for his being rejected in 2020 are too numerous to itemize here. You know them as well as I do. What this moron is doing, though, is adding even more grist to kick his sorry ass to the curb by vowing to be the nation’s “retribution.”

He plans to issue pardons for the traitors who stormed the Capitol on 1/6. Trump has avoided arguing his points with his GOP campaign competitors.

Trump’s record during his four years in office is the stuff of condemnation. He is amoral, yet he curries favor with the evangelical Christian movement. He cannot — under any circumstance you can name — tell the truth. He is without humanity, without grace, without any semblance of decency.

He has denigrated war heroes, people with physical challenges and told us he can grab women by their genitals because he is “famous.”

What on this good Earth am I not getting?

Waiting for political mojo

Political junkies such as me usually start getting excited about pending presidential campaigns at this time of the year.

We’re on the cusp of welcoming a presidential election season. This should be an invigorating time. Candidates are supposed to be tossing out ideas, principles, policy pronouncements.

What are we getting on the eve of the 2024 presidential election? Hmm. Let’s see: We have an incumbent president seeking re-election with poll numbers reportedly in the crapper; I want the incumbent, Joe Biden, to be re-elected. His leading challenger?

Oh, brother. It’s the guy he defeated in the 2020 election, who then refused to acknowledge that he lost, stormed out of D.C. prior to Biden’s inaugural. Then came the investigations into his theft of classified documents, his role in the assault on our government, his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, his business dealings in New York City.

Good grief, man.

Normally, I would be gnashing at the prospect of two candidates getting ready to square off.

Not this year. The prospect of an incumbent president facing a known and demonstrable fraud in the upcoming election sickens me to my core. Why? President Biden is well past his prime and I acknowledge it. The moron who stands poised to be nominated by the Republican Party, though, is nothing more than a dispsh** with bad hair. He has no ideas, no moral compass, no guiding philosophy.

But, by God, he has that cult following consisting of election deniers and morons who believe that it’s time to “make America great again,” ignoring the obvious fact that this nation remains the greatest nation on Earth.

Sigh … maybe my political mojo will get juiced up in time to give a damn. My fear, though, is that it won’t.

Sticking with Biden

Just so you know, I am standing firmly behind President Biden’s effort to win re-election to a second term in office.

Yes, I have read the polling data. I have heard the talking heads worrying their little noggins out over the polls that show the president trailing his Republican opponents. I have heard the concerns about his age.

I acknowledge fully the age issue is a serious one to be sure. He is about to turn 81. Life can go south in a hurry at that age. Believe me when I say that I have felt the crushing pain of watching a loved gone o from healthy to seriously unhealthy virtually overnight … and she was in her early 70s when we lost her.

However, I am not going to accept any arguments about mental acuity or loss of intellectual capacity in the president.

Joe Biden is fit for the job. I want him to stay at his post.

Girding already for … the grind

Make no mistake about this undeniable fact: The next presidential election is likely to drive me to the loony bin.

The Republican Party’s presidential primary field is winnowing down already. Tim Scott is out. So is Mike Pence. Others ought to take a powder as well. Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley got into a beef the other evening when Ramaswamy mentioned Haley’s daughter as a TikTok user, prompting Haley to call the loudmouth pretender “just scum.”

Meanwhile, President Biden is taking hits from within his Democratic Party over whether he ought to seek a second term. He is 80 years of age; the oldest man to occupy the presidency. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has abandoned the Democratic Party and is running for POTUS as an independent. Another guy has decided to run for the presidency too as a Democrat.

If I could manipulate the system, I would much rather see someone other than Donald Trump nominated by the GOP to run against the president. If it’s not meant to be, then we can kiss the Republican Party we’ve all known goodbye.

Trump doesn’t have a single policy principle he can tout as his own. He is pledging a scorched-Earth campaign to “eliminate” everyone who’s ever opposed him.

And … how in this ever-lovin’ world will Biden and Trump fare if we are forced to listen to them debate each other on the world stage? Do you remember the 2020 campaign, when Biden told the blathering Trump to “just shut up, man”?

I am going to offer a prayer to myself that I am able to keep my sanity as this campaign unfolds. While I’m at it, I’ll pray for anyone who’s having the same feelings of anxiety about the future of this great country. So much of that future is going to depend on whether Americans can reject the nonsense touted by the former POTUS.

Here’s hoping for the best.

What’s point of GOP debates?

I’ll concede I haven’t watched much of the three so-called “debates” among the Republican presidential candidates seeking their party’s 2024 nomination.

My disinterest boils down to two words: Donald Trump.

The prohibitive (ye gads!) frontrunner for the nomination hasn’t bothered to show up. Why should he? The MAGA cult continues to swoon over the twice-impeached, multiple indicted former POTUS … who stands a good chance of being a convicted felon before the 2024 GOP nominating convention.

The men and one woman who have shown up for these joint appearances have sought at varying levels to explain why they are better than Trump. I actually like what I hear from a couple of them: former Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Nikki Haley of South Carolina are beginning to float my boat.

They remain far behind the frontrunner.

The GOP field is left, therefore, to blather on about this and that with little chance of winning the party’s nomination.

Which brings me back to my original thought: What is the point of these debates? These all are pretenders, not actual contenders for the presidency.

The GOP clown show will go on without the Clown in Chief. We all know what would occur were he to show up at one of these events. Every question posed would result in a litany of accusations from the pretenders aimed at the Big Man … who then would turn the event into a blizzard of epithets and personal insults.

We are left, therefore, with a pointless series of joint appearances that contribute virtually nothing to the election outcome.

What a waste of time!