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Dubya looking better all the time

A dear friend and I today visited the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. It was my fourth visit; it was her first.

I want to stipulate something I believe is quite significant, given that I think this is the second time I’ve been to the Bush center during one of Donald Trump’s administration. It is that I cannot help but compare the incumbent POTUS to the 43rd president. With each comparison that comes to mind, Dubya comes off looking better than the previous time.

I didn’t vote for President Bush in either of his presidential elections; nor did I cast a ballot for him for governor in 1994. I will not apologize for opposing his election to the governor’s office or the presidency or his re-election to the White House.

But I’ll be deep-fried and damned if he doesn’t look like the Second Coming compared to Trump. The Bush library contains many images of President Bush huddled with children while touting his education reforms. Today I noticed a hand-written letter from the late Sen. Ted Kennedy thanking the president for his work to help children learn to read. There is quite an exhibit explaining Bush’s efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, notably through his federal initiative known as PEPFAR, which stands for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Indeed, I learned in 2004 while attending the international AIDS conference in Bangkok, that PEPFAR has pumped more money into AIDS research than all other worldwide government programs … combined!

The Bush center also puts this man’s humanity on display. We see it through his care for families whose lives were destroyed by the events of 9/11 and by his concern for poverty that continues to strike all families across the land.

Quite naturally, the Bush center says nothing about the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq in 2003 or the economic freefall that struck the nation at the end of his presidency.

I just look at George W. Bush’s life of public service and I am filled with the desire to thank him personally for all he sought to do to make this a better world. I compare that to what Donald Trump continues to do to destroy the very fabric of our great nation. I simply shake my head out of disgust and rage.

military news

Trump ruins a presidential act

Donald Trump today performed a supreme presidential act by going to Dover, Del., to receive the remains of three American service personnel who died in our nation’s Iran war.

Then he ruined the moment by lying about what he said was coursing through the souls of these valiant American servicemen and women. He said all of them “said that Iran should not have nuclear weapons.”

My first reaction was one of horror. How in this war-ravaged world does the commander in chief know what fallen warriors believed to be right about the war that Trump started for reasons to be revealed? How in the name of God Almighty can he pretend to make such a declaration?

He doesn’t know and he cannot possibly speak for these brave warriors … because he made it up!

Allow me to speak briefly for the millions of Americans who have gone to war for our country. There could not possibly be unanimous in support for the policy that sends them to war. There damn sure wasn’t in 1969 when I reported for duty as part of an Army aviation unit at Marble Mountain, Da Nang, South Vietnam. I was confused about the war. My beliefs about the correctness of the policy we were following to prosecute that war were still forming. By the time I returned home in 1970, those feelings became clear: I opposed the Vietnam War.

I strongly believe such is the case now, decades later, with young Americans being ordered to do battle with an adversary. And yet, Trump decided in this moment of grief and mourning to put words into the mouths of young Americans he didn’t know and declare that they support his policy of going to war with no clear strategy for conducting it … and no idea of how to end it.

national news, political news

TDS is real … and I’ve got it!

My name is John and I suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

There. I’ve come clean. Critics of this blog might rejoice in my acknowledgement of what they have accused me of having. Fine. Let ’em crow all they want.

Donald Trump has afflicted me with a condition I’ve never experienced before. Richard Nixon didn’t do it. If Tricky Dick couldn’t bring about an NDS — Nixon Derangement Syndrome — I figured I might have been free of the affliction. Silly me.

Yep, Trump has done seemingly the impossible. I’m a pretty cool customer most of the time. But when it comes to this guy, well, just toss the playbook out the window.

He speaks in mindless platitudes. Trump is unable to offer a significant reason for endorsing or condemning an individual or a policy. He prattles on and on with nonsense. He makes promises he knows he cannot keep. Indeed, he has no intention of keeping them.

Remember the crap he said about ending “forever wars?” Dude just started one. He said he would end the Ukraine-Russia War on “day one” once he took office the second time. He couldn’t possibly do a thing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Besides, the POTUS admires the Russian thug Vlad Putin who invaded Ukraine.

One High Plains Blogger critic has suggested I seek treatment for TDS. Hah! I have no intention of being “cured” of a condition I am proud to wear.

I detest Donald Trump. He has no business sitting in the Oval Office. He should be kept far away from the nuclear codes. Why in the world should I seek a cure for understanding the obvous?

local news, national news, political news

Nationwide electoral theft? Impossible!

Let’s visit briefly — shall we? — Donald Trump’s continual harping about the 2020 presidential election and how the result, a victory by Joe Biden over Trump, was an act of electoral theft.

It didn’t happen. Here’s how I know that to be so.

To suggest that a federal election was orchestrated to produce a winner ignores this undeniable fact, which is that our elections are conducted by individual states. Each state operates independently from other states. They all have their own system of counting ballots. They abide by rules set by their legislatures, and signed into law by governors.

Collin County, Texas, where I have lived for the past seven years, has a perfectly fine election system. It’s modern, it’s secure, and it’s free of the kind of corruption that Trump seems to believe exists in counties throughout the nation. He’s full of mule dookey.

The county’s election system is run by Stacey Kemp, a competent county clerk who oversees a staff of deputy clerks who are committed to upholding the oath they all take to defend and protect the Consitution of the United States.

Trump, though, sees this issue as a national matter. Indeed, he is looking for crimes that simply cannot exist in our electoral system.

I also should point out that our state electoral systems are not connected to the Internet, which Trump alleges is a prime source of the shenanigans he says occurs.

The POTUS went on the air the other night to relitigate a six-year-old gripe that has been tossed out in more than 60 lawsuits filed in courts from coast to coast. Let me also note here that many of the federal judges who have ruled against Trump have been nominated for their seats by Donald Trump … which tells me quite clearly that these men and women understand the law far more clearly than the dimwit who sits in the Oval Office.

national news

ICE goons are back at it

The individuals who comprise the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency do not deserve to be called “law enforcement officers,” as they routinely break the law with actions that result in the deaths of innocent U.S. residents.

I’ll stick with terms I believe more closely describe the character of these masked, heavily armed and unidentifiable individuals.

You know, terms like goons, thugs, creeps, crooks … and toss in a**holes.

These ICE goons keep killing people they should never have stopped in the first place. At last count, I’ve heard 11 people have died at the hands of ICE thugs. This also shouldn’t surprise a single American patriot, which is that Donald Trump — the POTUS who elevated ICE to the front of our discussion on immigration — never says a word that is remotely critical of what we can know about the deaths of these victims.

ICE agents continue to run amok among us. They continue to pounce on residents hiding behind those masks while adorned with body armor and carrying weapons designed to inflict maximum pain on those who dare to resist. Many of them don’t bother to inform the arrested the reason they are being detained. Their task, seemingly as defined by the Homeland Security department, is to intimidate the public.

Nothing I say on this blog will change anything. Trump will continue to deploy the thugs to seek migrants from sh**hole countries. Just know that ICE only disgraces itself in the eyes of Americans who are repulsed by the behavior of individuals who break the law while pretending to enforce it.

local news, national news, political news

Lowering flags for this clown?

Someone will have to explain why flags all over Collin County, Texas, have lowered to half-staff … and I damn sure hope it isn’t to honor the memory of a piss-ant partisan who died over the weekend.

I have concluded that the flags are flying at half-staff because Sen. Lindsey Graham — a Republican from South Carolina — has passed away.

Now, I must ask: What in the name of politics has Graham done to benefit Texas, other than to fall in line with his Big Daddy, Donald J. Trump? Graham once had the balls to tell the truth about Trump … when he was running against him for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. He called Trump a “race-baiting” nitwit; he called the future POTUS an individual who is unfit for public office, let alone the presidency.

He fell in line about the time Trump secured the party’s nomination that year and has been licking the liar in chief’s boots ever since.

And for that — and virtually nothing else — he’s being honored with businesses, government offices and individual property owners flying flags at half-staff.

Give me a … break.

national news

Sen. Graham is gone, but damage is done

I wish I could speak well of Sen. Lindsey Graham now that he’s dead … but the hard truth is that I cannot in good conscience speak of him without tossing out a qualifier or two.

Graham was a South Carolina Republican who became one of Donald Trump’s fiercest allies in the Senate. And this was after he portrayed himself as one of Trump’s most ferocious critics. It makes me wonder: Which Lindsey Graham is the real thing and which one is the phony baloney fraud.

I will say this about Graham: He bucked Trump by becoming a close friend of Ukraine President Volodymr Zellensky, who had drawn Trump’s wrath because he had the temerity to stand up to Russian strongman/goon/thug Vladimir Putin’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. OK, that’s one positive thing.

Graham, though, became a shill for Trump, even after declaring “I’m out” when it came to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the capital.

Graham also maintained close friendships with politicians on the other side. He was dear friends with former President Joe Biden and the late Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Graham once declared that Biden was the finest man ever knew in politics. Then he would remain silent as Trump trashed Biden repeatedly. What gives with that?

So, Lindsey Graham is gone. History will record that he was a complicated man driven by complex motives.

Still, I will wish him a peaceful rest in eternity.

military news

Redefining ‘winning’ and ‘losing’

It seems safe to say that Donald J. Trump has reinforced something I have believed for the past 50 years or so, which is that we have redefined winning and losing wars.

I took part briefly in the Vietnam War, which is generally considered to be a conflict that the United States lost to a determined enemy. We won virtually every major engagement on the battlefield. We inflicted far more casualties on the enemy than they inflicted on us.

But we ended the war because we ran out of patience. We ran out of time. Vietnam was fighting to preserve its existence against a foreign power. I now accept the idea that we actually lost the Vietnam War. I am no less proud that I spent some time there doing my duty as ordered by my government.

Trump launched a war with Iran a few months ago. He decided to bomb the crap out of the place. Our aviators along with those from Israel sent bombs crashing into military facilities. Trump declared the war essentially to be over a few weeks after he started it. He kinda/sorta declared victory as well.

Then we entered talks to end the war. The sides emerged with a “memorandum of understanding” that they would stop the fighting. Iran wouldn’t obtain nuclear weapons, according to the MOU. Iran also would be able to sell its oil on the open market. The United States would lift the sanctions it imposed on Iran during the Barack Obama administration.

I have to ask: Is that winning?

Trump’s strategy looks more like that of a loser than a winner.

Now we’re back to bombing Iran. The Iranians have shut down the Strait of Hormuz — again! The price of oil is inching back up. We might lose more American lives; to date, 14 Americans service personnel have died.

To make matters even more maddening to American patriots … such as me: We don’t yet have a detailed explanation from the commander in chief as to our strategy for going to war, nor do we know of an exit strategy that Trump has cooked up in his feeble brain.

national news

Still waiting for that ‘atta boy!’ moment

I believe I once wrote on my blog that I would welcome the opportunity to offer praise to Donald Trump when the moment presented itself.

It might have been during his first term as POTUS. I’m still waiting for that moment.

Believe me when I say this, even though many of you might doubt my sincerity, but I truly want Trump to succeed at something, anything that advances the nation’s cause. However, the longer it goes without such an occurrence, the more difficult it becomes.

We’re now fairly deep into this individual’s second term in the White House. He promised it would be worse for many Americans than his first go-round. He vowed to be take revenge against those who have wronged him, that he would be the nation’s “retribution.” You remember that? Sure you do. Because he has delivered on that pledge. The way I figure it, that is about the only promise he made that he’s kept. The rest of ’em? Fuhgetaboutit!

Dude promised to end wars. He said he would end the Ukraine war on the first day of his second term. He said prices would come down immediately. He vowed to cure all our nation’s ills by executive fiat. During his first inaugural, he said the “the American carnage” on our streets ends “right here, right now.”

The guy is zero for whatever on his agenda.

Meanwhile, critics like me are waiting to offer him praise. Dang it, but it’s getting harder each week that goes by.

I’m a patient old man. However, everything has its limits.

political news

Wanting a return to good wishes

I have been watching a video that went viral years ago, and it’s still making the rounds.

It shows President George W. Bush welcoming his successor, President-elect Barack Obama to the Oval Office. Joining them were three former presidents: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The men are standing tall and straight and President Bush is addressing the cameras gathered.

He turns to the president-elect and tells him that despite their political differences, all these men have the same thing in common. They want the new president to succeed. Bush offered Obama those good wishes on behalf of all the men gathered.

And every time I watch the video, I cannot help but think — or believe — that we’ll likely won’t see that kind of presidential fellowship for the foreseeable future. I try like the dickens to imagine Donald Trump taking part in such an event one day near the end of his time in office. My mind’s eye just cannot capture that moment.

I wish for all my might to see that kind of gathering to return. When President Biden won the 2020 election, we saw an angry mob storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. You know what happened. Donald Trump never conceded that he lost. He still carries that complaint with him, alleging that the 2020 election was stolen.

So, what might we expect to occur if a Democrat happens to win the 2028 election? Will the incumbent fling open the White House doors to all his predecessors and stage the kind of rapprochement we saw in 2009? Do not hold your breath.

I cannot predict, either, what might occur if a Republican wins the 2028 election. I suppose it might depend on which end of the GOP the winner might emerge. I still enjoy seeing video evidence of how it used to be in this country, where a peaceful transition of power allowed grown politicians to put their anger aside and wish the very best to the new person who will take the reins.