Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news

Wanted: Basic human decency … please!

Of all the areas where Donald Trump is deficient in the only office he ever has sought and held, I have settled finally on the one aspect of this individual’s being I find most lacking.

Basic human decency!

Trump lacks any semblance of the kind of humanity we have grown to expect from the person sitting in the Oval Office of the White House. Trump has demonstrated his lack of decency in the most profound ways imaginable in the wake of the deaths of Rob and Michelle Reiner.

Instead of remaining silent or at least offering a boiler-plate response that offers good wishes to the loved ones of the acclaimed filmmaker and his wife, Trump exhibited a level of abject boorishness millions of us never have seen in a U.S. president. On top of that, he followed his Reiner response with a hideous reaction to the passing of the daughter of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Tatiana Schlossberg, who died of cancer just the other day.

This is the kind of thing too many Americans have grown to expect from Trump. He actually declared in that ghastly Truth Social message that Rob and Michelle Reiner died of what he called Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yep … that’s where it ended for Reiner who admittedly was a stern and ferocious critic of Trump.

Rather than leave the dispute in the dust where it belongs, Trump chose to rub the wound raw while the Reiners’ loved ones were mourning their horrific murders.

This is the kind of individual Americans elected not once, but twice, as president of the United States. What in the world does this say about us, not just about the moron chosen to lead the world’s most indispensable nation?

We are facing an opportunity this coming November to begin to right the ship of state by turning Congress over to the loyal opposition Democrats who stand an excellent chance of seizing back one of the three co-equal branches of government.

Maybe then we might see a return of basic human decency … in the Capitol Building.

national news

Year ends in frustration

I hereby declare that the final post on High Plains Blogger in 2025 will end with my hands thrown into the air accompanied by the sigh of frustration from an American patriot who still cannot grasp what has become of the country he loves more than life itself.

That would be me, of course.

The year that is drawing to a merciful close will give way soon to many new opportunities to correct what has gone so terribly wrong. I await 2026 with undying optimism that we’re going to snap out of it, we’ll come to our senses and we will begin charting the corrective course that will save us all.

Donald John Trump was elected in 2024 to another term as the White House gatekeeper. I am finding it difficult these days even to refer to him as president. I vowed after the 2016 election that I would decline to attach the word “President” directly in front of Trump’s name. I have been faithful to that pledge. I accept your congratulations.

Now that we’re one year into the second term, I cannot even refer to his second victory as a “re-election.” The dude did get his melon thumped in 2020 by President Biden and he debased the office even more by declaring his refusal to accept the result and then incited the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

The individual is a disgrace.

The year was spent hiring incompetent boobs to run multibillion-dollar government agencies. The more I think about it, the more logical it seems that the imbecile in chief would surround himself with agency heads who at some level make the man in charge seem smarter than he is. It really hasn’t worked.

What is the remedy? Midterm election. We’re going to elect the entire and House one-third of the Senate in November 2026. The notion that the House is likely to flip from R to D when the ballots are counted gives me hope that a competent House speaker will be able to steer that congressional chamber back to doing what we expect of it. The House will return to governing!

We also have to consider that a third Trump impeachment may occur. I don’t want that to happen. If it does, I want the House to produce proof that could persuade enough GOP House members that they have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump has violated his oath of loyalty to the Constitution.

The reconstruction of our democratic principles can begin in this new year. I will use this blog to do my tiny part to ensure the project gets completed.

national news, political news

How did we come to this?

For as long as I draw breath on this good Earth, I likely never will be able to understand the question that comes to me from my friends around the world.

They ask: What has happened to you Americans? How did you manage to elect Donald Trump twice to the presidency?

I guess my answer to Trump’s first election in 2016 would address the quirkiness of the U.S. electoral system that enables a candidate to be elected despite drawing fewer actual votes than the winner. Hillary Clinton finished that campaign with several million more votes than Trump, who won the election because he collected more than enough Electoral College votes than Clinton.

The second election, though, in 2024, is harder to explain. I mean, the guy was impeached twice by the House in his first term, he was found liable for rape against several women, he has demeaned his foes as “enemies” and the press as the purveyors of “fake news.” He told us he was going to seek revenge on those he said had done him wrong. He never said a word about hiring the world’s richest human being and ordering him to eliminate programs aimed at feeding the needy around the world. The individual has 34 felony counts tacked onto his criminal record.

My friends all tell me they have great respect for Americans. The love this country and those of us who call it home. They are baffled beyond measure at the tolerance of Trump’s petulance by Republican toadies who still stand with this clown.

I am left to admit to them: So am I.

media news

Cure for writer’s block?

I am suffering at this moment from a mild case of writer’s block. How do I know it? Because I am writing about it … that’s how!

I never heard this tip from the source himself. It came to me via a fellow editorial writer and editor. He’s a dear friend and he told me that Paul Greenberg, the late, great editorial writer who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 writing for the PIne Bluff (Ark.) Commercial, that the “best way to cure writer’s block is to read the Psalms.”

You’re thinking: How does reading Old Testament Scripture cure writer’s block? My answer? Beats the stuffing out of me. I cannot ask Paul now, sadly, because he’s gone to his great reward.

I figure it will pass. I have gotten them before. They fade away eventually. To be honest, the events of 9/11 I thought had all but cured me of writer’s block. That terrible day unleashed a torrent of responses that demanded commentary, which I was doing in September 2001 writing for the Globe-News in Amarillo, Texas.

I know the president provides grist. To be candid, Donald Trump is boring me. The commentary I hear online and on TV also bores me.

I said the other day I was returning to my bash-Trump self. I still intend to do so.

Just not today.

 

political news

Donning the brass knucks … again

Maybe you have noticed that High Plains Blogger went a little soft on Donald Trump and his gang over the past couple of days.

I did so to honor the birth of Jesus Christ and to enjoy the holiday we commemorate in his honor.

The holiday is passed. I am back to my normal fare that some might refer to as a revival of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It’s a crock of dookie!

I merely am calling attention to the existential threat Trump poses to the existence of our democratic republic. I figure if I stir up enough concern, there might be a few thousand voices willing to join in the chorus to get this pretender/charlatan/fraud to cease his assault on the rule of law.

I expect to get some blowback from a handful of critics of this blog. They are dyed-in-wool MAGA cultists, although one fellow insists he dislikes the way Trump conducts himself but stands by the message he delivers. Whatever …

We’re about to complete the first year of Trump’s second term in office. Only three more years to go before we show him out of the White House … for keeps!

legal news

Constitution is showing its mettle

All right, boys and girls, this might be wishful thinking on my part, but I damn sure hope it’s for real because it feels like the real thing to me.

I am beginning to believe that our Constitution is beginning to flex its considerable muscle just in time to put the brakes on Donald Trump’s headlong dash toward establishing an autorcracy where the nation’s founders set forth a democratic republic.

The federal judiciary is leading the way, just as the founders sought when they created a three-branch government in which the courts serve as co-equally along side the legislative and executive branches of government.

Trump surely has left us gasping for breath from the moment he took office on Jan. 20. It was his second time around the presidential pea patch. The good news? There will be no third go-round. The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment limits presidents to two elected terms. Period. Full stop.

The courts keep issuing rulings that are giving Trump fits. To which I say, good on ’em! We see even judges nominated for the federal bench by Trump himself issuing decisions that are stripping away legal options bit by bit.

If the president were ever to read the Constitution, he would understand that the founders sought an independent judiciary that is relatively free of political pressure. Yes, Trump has three justices on the Supreme Court who have joined a six-justice conservative super majority. However, they are not following Trump in lockstep over the proverbial cliff.

Thus, the Constitution works … just as President Ford said in the moments after he took office at the end of our “long national nightmare.”

entertainment news

Trump’s narcissism flies off the rails

Donald J. Trump’s latest exhibition of narcissism goes so far off the rails that I am struggling with strong enough words to condemn it.

He slapped his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a D.C. structure built to honor the memory of the slain President John F. Kennedy. What galls millions of Americans, though, is how Trump’s name appears ahead of JFK’s name on what Trump wants to be known as the “Donald Trump John Kennedy Center … “

Leave it to Maria Shriver, JFK’s niece, to drive home the family’s outrage. She said that if Trump’s name remains on the building the Kennedy family is going to withdraw all contributions to anything that occurs under the center’s name. The family, she said, also intends to sue to get Trump’s name off the edifice and it will pull every dollar from the family to the center.

The Kennedy Center was named by congressional fiat. It is inscribed in federal statute, which means that Trump’s decision to add his own name is nothing more than a symbolic demonstration of his greed and his monstrous ego.

I want to send my expression of supreme outrage into cyberland and to offer my heartfelt thanks to Maria Shriver for standing up to the megalomaniac in chief whose name on a building erected to honor her Uncle Jack only proves this pretender’s unfitness for the office he occupies.

national news

Trump: Proof that ‘anyone can get elected’

Surely you recall that when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008 that he proclaimed that “nowhere can my story be told.”

He intended to remind us that that a young man with a “funny name,” with parents of different races, his being raised by his mother as a single parent could be elected president. Millions of rejoiced at the prospect that, yes, “anyone can get elected” to the nation’s highest office.

Well, let’s fast-forward to 2024. Donald Trump was running for a second term as POTUS. Joe Biden defeated him in 2020. Yet there he stood, nominated by a political party that is willing to give him a pass on all his transgressions.

  • He had been impeached twice during his first term. The second time was for inciting the horrific assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 that sought to overturn the 2020 election result.
  • Trump had been convicted on 34 felony counts associated with mistreatment of women.
  • His business exploits have been exposed as failures.
  • He has been shown to be a pathological liar who can’t tell the truth under any circumstance.
  • Trump has been exhibiting signs of mental decline.

I hasten to add that the notion that “anyone can get elected” has taken on a different tone than what we relished when Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

“Anyone” now means a convicted felon, a serial philanderer, a liar, an insurrectionist.

Pretty damn ugly … y’know?

entertainment news

Is White House next for Trump brand?

A little more than a decade ago, President Barack Obama stood before the White House Correspondents Dinner audience and joked that Donald Trump might want to hang a huge “Trump” sign on the White House were he elected president of the United States.

The quip drew uproarious laughter. Trump, who was in the audience, wasn’t laughing.

Now, it seems that the joke isn’t so funny. Trump has just agreed to plaster his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The center board has voted to call it the “Trump Kennedy Center … “

Roll that around for a moment and consider why this is so horribly wrong. Trump’s name would appear in front of the slain president for whom the center was named … in his honor! Moreover, it’s not at all clear that the decision is legal, given that the center was named through a congressional act; therefore, it well could require an act of Congress to change the name.

Trump continues to insult the intelligence of Americans — and those around the world — through his callously disrespecful acts. Placing his name on a building intended to honor those who contribute to society’s art is beyond hideous. JFK honored the arts, along with his wife, Jacqueline. The Kennedy name alone should stand forever on the center that seeks to honor a slain — and beloved — leader of this great nation.

I am going to ask something I once thought was unthinkable: Is the White House really immune from this type of PR chicanery?

national news

Too early to assess Trump’s place in history

Let me be crystal clear on a key point: Although I remain a fierce critic of Donald Trump in his role as president, I am not going to join many other critics in assigning his place in history among all the men who have served in the office.

Why not? Because I am willing to give the guy the tiniest benefit of the tiniest smidgen of doubt as to where he will end up.

The guy still has three years to go before he is shown the door out of the White House for the final time. He isn’t likely to don the statesman’s garb and act like a president. Events, though, could break in this guy’s favor.

There could be a peace agreement that ends the Russia-Ukraine war. There could be a treaty hammered out between Israel and Hamas, ending the siege in Gaza. China and other industrialized giant nations could find a way to end the burgeoning trade war that Trump launched with his tariffs on everything we import into the United States.

Whatever role Trump might play in all of this remains to be seen.

His utterly callous remarks in the wake of Rob and Michele Reiners’ murder were too much for many critics. I agree that Trump demonstrated a level of crassness that defies description. Many critics have gone on social media to declare Trump to be the worst president in U.S. history as a result.

I don’t expect any of what I have to might actually occur.

However …

They might take place. With that I am going to withhold final judgment just in case.