Tag Archives: MAGA

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Counsel heaves new grenade into Trump’s lap

You just had to know that special counsel Jack Smith would have more to say about Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 uprising.

Today, Smith delivered the goods in a stunning 165-page filing that chronicles what many with the government told Trump in advance of the assault on the government.

According to ABC News: Trump intentionally lied to the public, state election officials, and his own vice president in an effort to cling to power after losing the election, while privately describing some of the claims of election fraud as “crazy,” prosecutors alleged in the 165-page filing.

Do you get what Smith is suggesting? It is that Trump knew right after the 2020 election that he had lost to Joe Biden … but he insisted anyway on contesting the results of what has been described as the “cleanest election in U.S. history.”

Vice President Mike Pence told Trump the truth.  So did others within the Justice Department, his key campaign aides and advisers and others within the White House national security staff.

Trump blew it all off.

This filing only makes me return to a question I keep asking of my Republican friends, many of whom say they intend to vote for Trump this time around: How in the name of all that is righteous and holy can you vote for an individual who knowingly sought to commit a criminal act by overturning a legal, fair presidential election?

national news

What does the VP do?

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Critics of Kamala Harris continue to knock me out, bowl me over and simply slay me with their line of criticism.

It goes something like this: What has she done in the nearly four years she has served as VP in the Biden administration?

They contend that she’s been little more than a potted plant in Cabinet meetings, in the Situation Room, or any Oval Office conference led by President Biden.

Biden, of course, says she has been a vital member of his inner circle.

Here’s something we all need to ponder: The US Constitution purposely created the vice presidency with no actual power. All the VP can do under the law is break tie votes in the US Senate, where the VP serves as presiding officer. Vice President Harris has been called upon to break those tie votes when a sharply divided, even-steven Senate cannot find a majority vote to enact legislation.

President Obama has said many times over the years that Vice President Biden often was the last person to leave a Cabinet meeting and Biden often would tell Obama where he disagreed with a policy decision. Obama said he valued that disagreement, as it helped him maintain some level of perspective.

Biden has said much the same thing about Harris.

Biden has asked Harris to be his point person on reproductive rights and on border security issues. As near as I can tell, she has done well on both matters.

Does she have any real authority? No more than any of the men who preceded her. I will say, though, that the office is far more than what that crusty Texan, Vice President John Nance Garner, described of the office he held under FDR.

It is far more worthwhile than a “bucket of warm piss.”

And it has prepared Kamala Harris for the next — and final — step toward the pinnacle of power.

media news

Editorial endorsements … do they matter?

One of the aspects of a presidential election that I do not miss is having to go through the editorial endorsement process for the candidates who are lined up in spots along a lengthy ballot.

I went through that process seemingly every year for nearly four decades. We’d do it every even-numbered year for legislative and congressional races. We would do the same thing every four years when the time arrived for us to decide on whom to endorse for president.

I worked for editors and publishers who would shy away from the word “endorse.” They preferred to call it a “recommendation.” Yeah, I get it. Newspapers hardly ever are able to swing the tide of an audience that has its mind made up. So, I guess we did only offer our “recommendation” for readers to consider.

But we would go through the motions of considering which of the candidates were the better choice.

The 1980 presidential election presented us at our newspaper in Oregon with a dilemma. My staff and I weren’t nuts about President Carter or former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. So, I drafted an editorial recommending independent candidate John Anderson, the congressman from Illinois. I presented it to the publisher who, without even blinking, handed it back to me and said, “We’re going to back Reagan.”

The rest is history.

Newspaper editorials no longer have the clout they once enjoyed. Readers depend on newspapers’ guidance less today than ever.  They rely on myriad sources.

Then again, did we really have the impact we sought? Ohhhh … probably not.

national news

Trump-Vance’s racism on full display

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Let it never be denied that the 2024 Republican Party presidential ticket is virulently racist to its core … meaning to what passes for the hearts of the two men who are leading that political enterprise, Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance.

For them to single out Haitian refugees for committing a heinous act of barbarism in an Ohio city that has welcomed them only drives home the point of the men’s racist core.

Haiti is a country that comprises a Black population. Thousands of Haitians have moved into Ohio. Then, during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump asserted that Haitian refugees are eating pet dogs and cats.

Proof of it happening? Trump produced not a shred of it. Indeed, Ohio officials have declared it to be a vicious rumor.

However, this brand of idiotic racism goes straight into Trump’s wheelhouse. He has singled out ethnic and racial groups — and individuals — for this kind of “fake news.” Remember the Barack Obama “birther” malarkey? How about recently when Trump wondered out loud “when Kamala Harris became Black.”

This idiot has no place preparing to knock on the White House door yet again.

Trump is racist to his rotten core. And Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, is just following the racist in chief’s lead.

national news

Trump says ‘no mas!’

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Can you really blame Donald Trump for not wanting any more of Kamala Harris than what he got the other evening?

I totally get what he might be thinking: I’ve got too much to lose and probably not much to gain by standing toe-to-toe with the former district attorney/former California attorney general/and current vice president of the United States.

One debate whoopin’ is enough for the former POTUS.

The Democratic and Republican presidential nominees now will slug it out at a distance. We’ll get to hear Trump spit out his lies, his fabrications about such things as dogs and cats being eaten by immigrants. We won’t see a scintilla of grace from the GOP nominee who gets to run for POTUS for the third consecutive election cycle, despite his multiple felony convictions and other felony indictments awaiting trial.

He gets to join the ranks of “quitters” to go along with his membership in the club of losers.

political news

Far from politics

NAXOS, Greece — I have told a joke on occasion that starts with Mrs. Bear Bryant moving back to College Station, Texas, where Bear coached the Texas A&M Aggies before becoming head football coach at the U of Alabama.

Bear died and Mrs. Bryant, according to the joke, moved back to Aggieland to “get as far away from football as possible.”

Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Well, I have gotten as far away from politics as I could by visiting Naxos, in the middle of the Aegean Sea. It feels quite cleansing. I don’t read my cell phone news feed too often, nor do I open my laptop to catch up on the political news of the day. For a political junkie that might seem like a mighty hill to climb. The truth is … it’s not been nearly so difficult.

I have spent the vast bulk of my day catching up on family matters with my cousin and her son; I have been fetching compliments on my ballcap that says “Pappou,” which is a Greek colloquialism for “grandpa.” I pay for items with a credit card and the vendor wants to know when he or she sees my name, “Are you Greek?” Then they mention the obvious, which is that I have a Greek name.

My answer to the last part? Uhh, yeah …  I know.

It has been a marvelous time away from the hustle, bustle, humdrum and occasional hassle of my wonderful North Texas life.

Am I ready for it to end? Not … just … yet.

national news

Trump: small and old

NAXOS, Greece — Of all the analysis I read after watching the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate, one media observation stands out.

Kamala Harris managed to make Trump look and sound “small and old” during their 90-minute insult fest.

The decisive moment likely came when she mentioned how Trump rally-goers have been leaving his rallies early out of boredom. Trump was having none of that, contending that his rallies are the greatest in human history; then he fires back with Harris being a “low IQ vice president” serving the “worst president in history.”

Well, there you go. Trump is 78 years of age, the oldest presidential nominee in the history of the republic. He also no longer has the presidential seal behind which he can hide.

Small and old? Yep … that’s Trump.

Uncategorized

Patience runs thin

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Patience is a virtue people tell me I possess and I am grateful for the kind words and, of course, for the quality they say I have.

I have to tell you, though, that some followers of this blog surely do test whatever patience I deploy.

One guy offers a good example. He is a critic of High Plains Blogger. He wails on me whenever I have something negative to say about Donald Trump or something positive I have to offer about Kamala Harris; my earlier support for Joe Biden also drew barbs.

FYI, this individual keeps insisting he isn’t a Trump cultist.

But … he is!

Sometimes this guy offers commentary that the Word Press platform approves automatically as a blog response. Others require me to approve them individually … which I generally do. I say “generally,” because I am beginning to axe some commentary that either is repetitive, or is patently false or provides criticism I might deem to be defamatory. Defaming someone exposes a lot of folks to litigation and as I have told critics over the years who insist that I publish such material: I don’t care if you get sued, but I damn sure care if I get sued. 

My blog also contains non-political material as well. I comment on goings-on in the community I call home and also speak to what I call “slice of life” matters of a more personal nature, Does my critic bother to respond to any of those commentaries? Hah! Which leads me to believe he is “trolling” me.

My patience has its limits. This guy — and some others as well — are testing it mightily. I shall remain strong.

national news

Some matters escape me

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Try as I do to stay ahead of the public policy curve, it continues to boggle my occasionally thick-skulled noggin just how Donald Trump continues to manipulate the MAGA cult that follows him off the cliff and into the sewer.

I told a dear friend today that Trump’s duplicity and hypocrisy seems to go over the vacuous heads of the MAGAites who think the guy is the best thing in politics since pockets on shirts.

Consider two elements in this moron’s narrative. Fake news and “rigged elections.”

He routinely blasts the media for putting “fake news” into print and on the air. And yet … this the very dimwit who fomented the former Big Lie about Barack Obama’s place of birth. He rode that pony until he realized, I reckon, that it was no longer useful to him. He accused Obama of being from Kenya and, thus, was constitutionally ineligible to run for president.

I shook my head in disbelief … not so much that he kept saying it but at the cult’s willingness to buy into it. They weren’t smart enough to call the dipsh** out on his lie.

Now for the rigged election. He said the 2020 result that elected Joe Biden over Trump was “rigged.” He said it was corrupt. He sicced the mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6 to stop the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration.

And yet … here he is four years later plotting to rig this very election through the use of 2020 election deniers holding key state and local election offices.

What’s more, he still won’t commit categorically to accepting the 2024 election results even if Kamala Harris defeats him soundly.

Politicians generally are thought to shade the truth on occasion, I get it. This guy? I cannot believe a single, solitary sentence that pours out of his overfed pie hole as the truth.

Trump is the embodiment of fake news and rigged elections. We must not forget that when we troop to our polling stations later this year.

media news, national news

Harris, Walz seek to clear the air

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Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic Party presidential ticket, have been criticized unfairly because they haven’t been interviewed extensively by the national media.

Oh, my ….

Republicans have seized on this as a campaign talking point, suggesting that Harris and Walz are too afraid to field “tough questions” from the media on their various policy positions.

They will be put to the test Thursday when they sit with CNN anchor Dana Bash.

This is a bit of a gamble for Harris and Walz. Why? Because Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, their GOP foes, are going to allege — and you can take this to the bank — that they were given softball questions. Trump plays that joker card all the time. Vance, the loyal VP nominee, no doubt will buy into that specious notion.

I continue to hold Harris and Walz in the highest esteem. They have energized their Democratic Party. Harris’s sudden and dramatic emergence as the frontrunner after President Biden ended his candidacy has been a sight to behold.

If I were to place a wager on why the delay, I would suggest that Harris and Walz needed some time to hone their policy positions before facing the national media. Harris only has been running for president for a few weeks and Walz, well, came out of virtual nowhere to emerge as her VP running mate.

Will Bash challenge Harris and Walz if they lie to us? You can bet your oldest child that she will.

I long have thought of Dana Bash as a journalism pro. She is there to seek the truth. Whether the candidates deliver the whole truth likely will be determined by the bias of those Americans who will watch … and listen.