Tag Archives: Kamala Harris

national news

He defies the odds … again!

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I keep asking: How is this presidential campaign so dadgum close?

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris advises her staff to run this campaign as if she’s the underdog. The polling data I keep seeing suggest that it might not be as close as we are being led to believe.

Republican nominee Donald J. Trump keeps trotting out the same grievances that wore well in 2016, not so well in 2020.

I have concluded that Trump has managed to remake the Republican Party into something only he could admire. The holier-than-thou wing of the GOP gives Trump a pass on his sexual assaults, his philandering, his denigration of people with handicaps, his disrespect of war heroes captured and tortured during the Vietnam War.

GOP faithful are being led to believe him when he calls Biden the worst president in U.S. history. Yet they dismiss his multiple felony convictions, his admitting to cheating on all of his wives. The GOP holy rollers once disqualified candidates who didn’t meet the “character test.” Not now!

Kamala Harris stormed onto the political stage when President Biden performed that rarest of political acts: he gave up the enormous power of his office. Yes, there has been a surge of excitement over Harris’s 11th-hour candidacy. Trump, though, continues to pretend as if he has a chance of winning.

The GOP nominee’s pretense seems to play well among the gullible gang who comprise his base.

How in the world does this guy manage to make this a contest? I cannot find the answer.

economic news

Rich will remain rich!

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Kamala Harris is starting to talk in detail about an economic policy she plans to invoke if she’s elected president of the United States in just a tad less than six weeks.

She wants to cut middle-class income tax; she wants to offer first-time homebuyers a $25,000 boost to get them into their version of the American Dream; Harris wants to make sure that the mega-wealthy among us “pay their fair share of taxes.”

Let’s stop briefly on that final point.

The vice president is understandably enraged that the wealthiest Americans pay less in income tax than those who earn a tiny fraction of the rich folks earn. So am I. So should the rest of us be enraged.

Here is a message I do not hear enough and which I believe Harris and her running mate Tim Walz need to press further.

Even if the richest Americans pay their fair share of taxes — an act that would lighten the load on the rest of us — the richest Americans are still going to be filthy rich! They will not lose their fortune! Billionaires will continue to count their assets in the billions of dollars! They’ll still live in fancy houses, be driven around in fancy cars and they still be able to send their children to the most exclusive schools.

This argument, in my humble view, would make it difficult for the Billionaire Rich Guy/Gal Category to argue that it’s OK for them to skip out from under their tax burden.

I just have to ask: Why is this argument so difficult to sell to an overtaxed, overburdened voting public?

political news

If only we could repeat this

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The relatively brief nature of this presidential campaign has been refreshing in one critical aspect.

We have had little time to grow tired of the Democratic presidential nominee, given that she didn’t enter the contest until President Biden dropped out of it.

Of course, we cannot say the same of the Republican Party’s nominee, because we all know him too well. He’s been on the political scene only since the summer of 2015, but we knew about him beforehand by virtue of his TV show and his various high-profile social exploits.

Vice President Kamala Harris, if you believe the polls, has taken a slim — but growing — lead over Donald Trump. She is starting to apply even more pressure to Trump. Harris wants a second debate with him. To be honest, I don’t think a second debate is necessary, other than perhaps to enable her to finish off the former POTUS.

Trump actually said he won’t run again if he loses to Harris. To which I only can laugh. You see, this guy cannot tell the truth on any issue, on any level, at any time, or in any location.

We’re heading into the home stretch of a dramatically abbreviated campaign. For that I am grateful. The VP does represent a welcome change, even as she runs as the current vice president.

May she continue to tighten the vise around her foe and send him packing for the rest of his miserable life.

national news, political news

Once is enough for this clown

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Kamala Harris has accepted CNN’s invitation to participate in a second presidential debate with Donald J. Trump.

Trump, though, said he isn’t going to do it. Once is enough, he reportedly said. You know what? I actually agree with the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. Americans do not need to know any more about this former POTUS, the serial liar, the ex-philanderer in chief.

We know that Trump is a fraudulent numbskull. We know he’s been convicted of 34 felony counts, that he stands indicted on more criminal counts. He’s been impeached twice already by the House of Representatives.

He has admitted to grabbing women by their genitals because he’s “famous” and can get away with it.

Vice President Harris delivered an old-fashioned whoopin’ to Trump in their earlier encounter. What more can he do to alienate voters who already fear the possibility that he could return to power?

I am one American patriot who doesn’t need a single reason to hear another word from this loser.

Americans used to insist that our candidates for president embodied the best in those who comprise this great nation. Donald Trump embodies the worst in us.

I have heard enough from this guy’s overfed yapper.

Uncategorized

‘Greatest selfless act’

George Clooney is known for a lot of things: accomplished actor and filmmaker, bona fide “hunk,” noted family man in an industry not known for such a lifestyle.

Political scholarship doesn’t come to mind when I think of George Clooney.

Yet the actor has offered what I believe is a spot-on critique of President Biden when he calls the president’s decision to step down from his re-election campaign the “greatest selfless act” perhaps since the time George Washington decided that two terms as POTUS was enough.

Biden’s withdrawal from the campaign and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris is the rarest of all acts, given that Biden surrendered the enormous power he possessed as POTUS.

That act of selflessness is going to ensure, in my mind, historians’ verdict on Biden’s presidency and his willingness to surrender the power that goes with occupying it.

Biden did not want to step aside after that debate performance that prompted the tongue-wagging that questioned his mental acuity. He faced enormous pressure from Democrats, his friends and allies … and from George Clooney, whose op-ed column in the New York Times shook the political world at its core.

It is President Biden, though, who deserves the bouquet, as his decision to surrender power well might save this country from madness and mayhem.

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.

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.

national news, political news

Harris seeks to continue ‘normal behavior’

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Joe Biden promised us in 2020 when he decided to run for president a return to what we all think of as “normal behavior” in our head of state.

The former vice ;president was appalled at the Charlottesville, Va., riot launched by Klansmen and Nazis and declared he would campaign for the “soul of our country.”

By and large the president has succeeded in restoring normal behavior and in recapturing our national soul.

He now wants to hand those tasks off to Vice President Kamala Harris, the current Democratic presidential nominee.

I, too, share in the desire for Harris to continue to trek toward normal behavior and I want her also to keep the scrub brush handy as she fights to restore a national soul damaged so egregiously by Donald Trump’s hot pursuit of an authoritarian presidency.

When you watch and listen to Harris and Trump side by side, it becomes — to my ear — literally impossible to believe that Trump’s inarticulateness ever can lead to anything good. Donald Trump does not have an original thought in that brainless skull of his.

I have to mention, too, that Trump cannot string enough sentences together to deliver any sort of cogent thought. Kamala Harris is fully capable of weaving thoughts into the fabric of sensible policy. That ability by itself sets her apart from the incompetent foe she faces as this campaign winds down to its finish.

Uncategorized

Don’t demean your foes

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Hillary Clinton committed a potentially fatal mistake during her 2016 race for president against Donald J. Trump.

She referred to the MAGA cultists as “deplorables,” a description that energized the Trump voter base down the home stretch of a highly competitive contest.

My hone boy, Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times, says it would be a terrible mistake to denigrate the 2024 version of the mob hangs on Trump’s every word.

Do not sell them short, Kristoff writes.

Good advice, Nick. The question always becomes, “Will the voting public buy into it? And will the Kamala Harris campaign staff treat the Trumpkins with the respect they deserve? Indeed, they deserve a lot.

Kristoff hails from the Yamhill Valley of Oregon, not far from my hometown of Portland. He writes for the New York Times these days and has earned his spurs for many years writing for the Old Gray Lady.

My fond hope is that Harris won’t commit the egregious rhetorical error that Clinton committed.

Kristoff writes: By all means denounce Trump, but don’t stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him.

Hillary Clinton learned that lesson the hard way. Kamala Harris no doubt is paying serious attention.

national news, political news

Harris ‘most qualified’ ever?

Michelle Obama could be excused for getting caught up in the cheering moment as she delivered her speech recently at the Democratic National Convention.

She called DNC nominee Kamala Harris the “most qualified” person ever to seek the presidency. The former first lady basked in the cheering endorsement of the 20,000 or so attendees … and she surely has earned the nation’s admiration as an accomplished first lady and ambassador on behalf of children everywhere.

But … is the 2024 Democratic nominee the “most qualified” presidential candidate? I’ll stick to my own guns and declare that my candidate for most qualified is a Republican, former President George H.W. Bush.

I now will tick off GHW Bush’s pre-presidential experience:

  • US Navy aviator serving in World War II; he was shot down in the Pacific Theater of Operations.
  • Business owner immediately after being discharged from the Navy.
  • Two terms as a congressman representing Houston from 1967 until 1970.
  • CIA director.
  • United Nations Ambassador.
  • Special envoy to the People’s Republic of China.
  • Vice president for two terms during the Reagan administration.

Pretty impressive background, don’t you think?

All that moxey he earned prior to being elected president in 1988 didn’t result in his re-election in 1992. Indeed, I do happen to notice one significant shortcoming in President Bush’s background: no government executive experience, although I could understand an argument that serving as CIA director required plenty of executive management know-how.

Fast-forward to the present day. Vice President Harris does bring plenty of her own skill to the office she is seeking. Prosecuting attorney, San Francisco County district attorney, California attorney general, U.S. senator and vice president.

I also believe her experience will serve her well if she — and we — are able to benefit from her election in November as the next president of the United States.