Tag Archives: MAGA

Donald Trump

How is this contest still close?

20 Comments

I consider myself to be reasonably well-educated, with above-average intelligence, one who is still alert at my advanced age and who has a deep love of the country of my birth.

OK, now … someone will have to explain to me how a twice-impeached former POTUS who wants his old job back is still in the race to win the 2024 election.

Bear with me while I review where we stand.

He served a single disastrous term as president; he lost re-election in 2020; he had been impeached twice by the House for high crimes and misdemeanors. He then was convicted on 34 felony criminal counts, found liable in the sexual assault of a journalist. Federal and state grand juries in four jurisdictions have indicted him on a range of alleged criminal acts, including the Jan. 6 assault on the government that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

All the while, he has hurled insults at veterans, Gold Star families, immigrants, gay people, women of all stripes, a physically challenged reporter for the New York Times and admitted to grabbing women by their private parts because he’s a “celebrity.”

These issues don’t even touch the myriad cluster-fu** acts that he committed as POTUS.

We fired this guy four years ago. We told him he wasn’t fit the job he had. Now he wants it back.

How in the name of all that is sacred, holy and sane does this add up?

I’m sure some High Plains Blogger critics will see fit to tell me I don’t get it. They are right.

I don’t.

national news, political news

Yep. the man is unfit

8 Comments

Dawn  finally is breaking over the pundit class that is covering the third presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Ever since he announced his bid for the presidency the first time in 2015, some of us have been saying that Trump’s zero experience with public service would render him unfit for the presidency. Now, others are seeing the proverbial light.

Consider what the numbskull said about those who receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and how it compares to the Medal of Honor. He put them on an equal footing, suggesting further that the Medal of Freedom is “more important” because Medal of Honor recipients “always are wounded” and some have died to earn the recognition.

What an absolute crock of bull dookie!

The Medal of Freedom is the nation’s highest civilian honor; it goes to those who contribute greatly to our cultural life, through athletics, art, music, drama. The Medal of Honor is our nation’s top military honor; it is awarded to those who perform heroically on the battlefield.

Both medals are big deals.

However, for the former POTUS to put down Medal of Honor recipients because they are “wounded or killed” betrays a profound lack of understanding or appreciation of those don the nation’s uniform in service to their country.

It also reveals what I have noted many times on this blog, which is that Trump never has committed a single moment of his existence on this Earth to public service.

I am running out of ways to say this … but this moron is unfit for public office at any level, let alone as commander in chief.

national news

What about Trump’s laugh?

True story: I really hate “what aboutism,” which often surfaces when your candidate gets jabbed by a foe and you respond with, “Well, what about your guy?”

Kamala Harris’s reportedly annoying laughter has been drawing some flak from foes of the vice president who’s running for the presidency. Rather than picking apart policy matters, her foes have taken to reminding us of the laugh that annoys them.

Here comes the “what aboutism.”

What about Donald J. Trump? What about his laugh? Indeed, has anyone ever heard him laugh out loud? That’s the rejoinder making the rounds on social media.

I confess I haven’t heard anything that sounds like laughter coming from the indicted/convicted/twice-impeached former president.

I have long thought that Trump had zero discernible humor. He’s a crabby sorehead who cannot stop relitigating matters over which he has zero control. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is having the time of her life … and this is an American patriot who enjoys seeing a presidential candidate exhibit such joy.

Keep laughing, Mme. Vice President.

national news, political news

Crowd size doesn’t matter

2 Comments

Donald J. Trump keeps crowing — apparently falsely — about the size of the crowds to which he has been speaking.

He calls them “the largest anyone’s ever seen.” His critics, led by Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz, accuse him of (what else?) lying about the size of the crowds.

Allow me for just a brief moment to put the issue into another perspective.

Crowd size doesn’t matter. Size might matter in a lot of different contexts — if you’ll take a moment to ponder them — but not the size of crowds.

When I returned home from the Army in 1970, I got politically active. I guess you could call me a member of the “Vietnam Vets Against the War” in Vietnam. In 1972, we rallied behind a candidate who vowed, if elected POTUS, he would end the war.

Sen. George McGovern spoke to huge crowds all across the land. They were gigantic. They set unofficial records, as I recall.

In Portland, Ore., where I grew up, McGovern held a rally in downtown Portland. Huge crowd, man! Thousands of people gathered. I was one of them.

McGovern got us all fired up. We were ready to kick ass and take names … you know?

You’ll remember what happened on that Election Day. Sen. McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to President Nixon.

This is my way of saying that Donald Trump’s empty boast about big crowds means absolutely nothing …. particularly when he lies about it!

crime news, national news

Who’s dumber?

8 Comments

The dumbest individual to ever be elected president of the United States never should question another public figure’s intelligence.

Never! Not ever should he go there. But … Donald Trump has ventured down that blind alley.

He said this week that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris isn’t intelligent enough to stage a press conference with national media. He said President Biden is “smarter” than the person he wants to succeed him in the White House.

This, of course, comes from an individual without a single forward-looking policy agenda. He has offered no plan on how he intends to govern, other than to exact revenge on his political foes by siccing the Justice Department on them.

He hasn’t developed a single constructive thought. He doesn’t understand how government works.

Republicans have nominated a certifiable dumbass — oh, and a convicted felon — to be their nominee for president of the United States.

I believe I am going to scream!

media news

Go for it, Lawrence O’Donnell

2 Comments

Lawrence O’Donnell has earned a gold star, a blue ribbon and a hearty “you go, young man” from High Plains Blogger.

The MSNBC host of “The Last Word” decided Thursday night to devote the first half of his broadcast to take down all the news networks that were on hand to ostensibly “cover” a press conference called by Donald J. Trump.

According to O’Donnell, they did nothing of the sort. They allowed Trump to lie to the public without ever fact-checking the GOP presidential nominee on the lies that flew out of his overfed pie hole.

And, yes, he included his own network in the criticism.

I watched O’Donnell’s takedown likely with a stunned look on my puss. I should not have been surprised. In 2016, when Trump was campaigning for POTUS the first time, O’Donnell emerged as the first national news anchor to call Trump’s falsehoods what they were, and what they are today: They are lies told deliberately by a politician who feels somehow protected by the media he despises.

Imagine that for just a moment.

O’Donnell said it was difficult to find a single sentence that Trump uttered during his hour-long presser that didn’t contain a lie. And yet … the reporters gathered at Trump’s estate never saw fit to challenge a single lie.

The reporters’ negligence forced O’Donnell to slam his papers on his desk out of disgust. I must add that O’Donnell wore his anger openly.

“It is 2016 all over again,” O’Donnell kept repeating.

Let us hope that the 2024 election campaign produces a vastly different outcome than what we got eight long years ago.

national news

Walz is the one!

4 Comments

As is always the case, the person to whom I directed an unsolicited recommended ignored my advice … but I am not crestfallen over it.

Vice President Kamala Harris this morning revealed that she has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her 2024 Democratic Party running mate on a ticket she — and millions of others – hopes will remove Donald Trump from our political landscape forever.

Walz has been described in terms used for another well-known Minnesotan. He’s been called a “happy warrior,” which is a title worn with pride by the late Vice President and Sen. Hubert Humphrey.

I preferred Sen. Mark Kelly among the finalists under consideration. But … Harris went in another direction.

That’s OK with me. Gov. Walz will acquit himself in a stellar fashion. Of that I feel comfortable in asserting. He’s the author of the “weird” quip now being used to describe the policies espoused by Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.

May this campaign now begin in earnest and may it produce an outcome for which many millions of us are hoping.

local news, media news

Blogging gets new life

1 Comment

I resigned from my final full-time journalism job on Aug. 31, 2012, having been informed by my publisher that I no longer would do what I had done for the Amarillo Globe-News for the past 18 years …. and I thought I was pretty good at it.

Silly me.

I would learn later that the publisher had me in his crosshairs when he announced that everyone’s job description had been changed. I fought for my job fiercely, telling the publisher ultimately that the industry I entered in 1976 bore no resemblance to what it had become by 2012. And that he was asking me to do things only a little different.

It didn’t work.

Immediately, I. began focusing my attention full time to High Plains Blogger, a platform I created a few years earlier.

I have mentioned many times on this blog how much I enjoy writing on it, offering my assorted views on this and/or that policy issue.

I have boasted from time to time that writing comes easily to me. I won’t brag about the quality of the prose I produce, just say that it does flow fairly easily off the tips of my fingers.

The subject matter helps determine the ease. I’ll be candid. Prior to President Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential campaign, it was becoming a bit problematic to find issues on which to comment.

Up stepped ‘vice President Kamala Harris. Biden endorsed the VP. She launched a full-frontal campaign from a virtual dead stop, raised a few tons of cash and injected this campaign with an energy level I haven’t seen since, oh, 2008 when Barack Obama took the nation by storm.

What does this mean for your friendly blogger? It means the proverbial chest where I store my ideas is full again.

I intend to remain engaged fully in this campaign. The blog is the only venue I have to offer commentary on the status of the effort.

So … I will weigh in. It feels good to be relevant.

national news

‘Our Constitution works’

Gerald Ford became president of the United States nearly 50 years ago as the nation was struggling through a then-unprecedented constitutional crisis.

His predecessor resigned as the House was preparing to impeach him for covering up the Watergate scandal.

President Ford declared on Aug. 9, 1974, that “our long national nightmare is over” and then said with equal conviction, “Our Constitution works.”

I take great comfort in the former president’s words today as we watch the nation undergo yet another tumultuous time. Another former POTUS wants his job back. The current vice president is challenging as well for the title of next president.

VP Kamala Harris has laid out a fight plan: This is a fight to preserve our democratic principles against an egomaniac who would take us into a dark age of tyranny. Will that really happen? Will we actually succumb to the notions of a maniac such as Donald Trump? Or will a system built to resist such impulses come to our rescue once again, just as it did 50 years ago when Gerald Ford ascended to the Oval Office?

I am going to place my faith in the founders’ constitutional document, that it really does work and that it will perform its duties once again.

But … first things first. We need to ensure that Trump keeps his tiny but grimy hands off the levers of power. We can do that simply by performing the simplest act of citizenship.

We must vote to keep him out of office … an act that would affirm President Ford’s wisdom once again that “our Constitution works.”

national news, political news

Feeling energized by campaign revival

I cannot recall the last time I felt such a palpable, tangible and visceral re-energizing of a political campaign.

The current campaign for president of the United States falls into a unique category of an effort once thought to be DOA but is now a living, breathing organism.

Thank you, Vice President Kamala Harris, for giving life to this effort.

She had help, of course. It came mostly from President Biden, who ended his re-election effort after it became clear to him — reportedly — that he couldn’t defeat Donald J. Trump, the moron he defeated in the 2020 election.

I had hoped Biden would stay the course, but he chose otherwise … and I chose to back whatever decision he made.

Up stepped VP Harris. She is now the Democrats’ nominee for POTUS. She is taking the fight directly to Trump. Her fundraising effort has been spectacular, raising $300 million in the first month.

Harris and Trump now reportedly will debate in September. I am rubbing my mitts together in anticipation of that event. I look forward to seeing how Harris might respond to Trump’s “stalking” of her on a debate stage, a la what he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

I am acutely aware that Harris still has to catch Trump, who still, inexplicably, continues to cling to a narrow lead. Oh, how I hope she does.

I quit watching polls during election campaigns, as they tend to reflect the nation’s mood of the moment. The mood during this campaign, is of a highly energized electorate.

It’s contagious, too!