Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

Trumpkins are locked in; time for Hillary to talk about herself

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My wife and I live in the heart of Trump Country, the Texas Panhandle.

Donald J. Trump is likely to carry this part of the world by a wide margin. We’ve just returned from more parts of Trump Country. We visited Enid, Okla.; North Platte, Neb.; Rapid City, S.D.; Lusk, Wyo.; and Colorado Springs, Colo.

We’re home now, recuperating from two weeks on the road.

Of all the locations where we stayed, we found something interesting in Lusk and Colorado Springs: both cities are served by Colorado media outlets; Colorado is a “battleground state”; therefore TV is full of ads from both Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I want to focus for a moment on the Clinton ads.

She’s going after Trump hard. The bulk of the TV ads we saw dealt with Trump’s feelings about women. You know to which I refer.

My thought is this: Trump’s hard-core supporters are locked in. Nothing that Clinton says about the hideous statements Trump has made about women is going to move them.

Three days out from Election Day, and it occurs to both of us that it’s time for Clinton to tell us what she intends to do if she’s elected president next Tuesday.

Trump’s advertising has been decidedly anti-Clinton. No surprise there. Trump doesn’t have a program. He doesn’t have any ideas that go beyond the usual platitudes and demagoguery.

Clinton, though, does have a record of working on behalf of children; she has worked to reform health care; she has served at the center of American foreign policy.

I think it would be helpful for her to tell us how she intends to improve our nation’s economic performance; how she intends to improve the Affordable Care Act; how she would strengthen our alliances.

I happen to believe that Trump is unfit to serve as president. Hillary doesn’t need to persuade me of anything regarding Trump — and she doesn’t have a prayer of converting the 40-plus percent of voters who already are aligned with Trump, who’ve stuck with him and will be with him for the duration.

Aw, what the heck. I’m not her campaign manager. She’s got a crack team already on board. Maybe they know what they’re doing, even if two voters who happen to live in the midst of Trump Country can’t figure them out.

Get ready for election night

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They say there’s a first time for everything … as in, well, everything.

I need not be too specific … if you get my drift.

My wife and I are going to do something for the first time — if my memory hasn’t failed me — on Tuesday.

We’re going to an election-night watch party.

Some friends of ours in Amarillo invited us to their home along with several dozen perhaps of their best friends to watch the returns roll in on this most consequential presidential election.

Our friends know of my utter, complete, well-documented disdain for the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. They figure I’m all in with the Democratic nominee.

I’m not really. Neither is my wife.

But here’s the thing. Americans are facing a dismal choice as they select the next president of the United States. One of these two people will take the oath of office next January.

Am I happy about the choices we have?

As I told friends my wife and I met for lunch Friday in Colorado Springs, Colo., if the choices had been, say, Vice President Joe Biden and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, that would have presented me with a much happier decision-making exercise. If Kasich had been the GOP nominee this fall instead of the clown the party nominated, then I likely would be casting my first-ever presidential vote for the Republican nominee.

Our friends say they want to surround themselves Tuesday night with friends who will want Hillary Clinton to be elected.

From my perspective, that might be overstating — in a fairly nuanced sort of way — my own preference.

Given the miserable nature of the GOP nominee, I would prefer Hillary to be elected.

With that in mind — and in my heart — we will go to our friends’ home in a couple of days and hope that Americans will make the right call in selecting the next head of state, commander in chief and leader of the greatest nation on Earth.

‘Scandals’ won’t end? Of course they won’t!

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The headline from the Washington Post was funny when I saw it.

Then I noticed who wrote the essay over which the headline was posted. Then I chuckled out loud.

“The Clinton scandals will never stop,” the headline blared. The byline belongs to Ed Rogers, a noted Republican operative.

If you add two plus two, you come up with four. So, if you believe what Rogers theorizes, then it all adds up. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “scandals” won’t die because Republicans like Rogers won’t allow it … ever!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/11/03/the-clinton-scandals-will-never-stop/

Clinton has been in the public eye since before her husband, Bill Clinton, was elected president in 1992. The foes of the two politicians have been digging for dirt for longer than most of us can remember.

Whitewater, Vince Foster, sexual misbehavior, the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, e-mails, “pay for play.”

I am sure I have missed something, but you get the idea.

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell once produced a video called “The Clinton Chronicles” that alleged that the Clintons were responsible for the murders of their political foes. How in the world he got away without being sued for defamation is beyond me.

If Clinton wins the election in three days, you can bet some serious American money that the “scandals” will stay in the news.

Republicans will make damn sure of it.

Trump’s ‘record’ demands his defeat

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Donald J. Trump’s reported rally in the closing days of this desultory presidential campaign is relying on the ignorance of those who seem to have forgotten what he’s said throughout his astonishing quest for the nation’s highest office.

He has lied … repeatedly. He has praised dictators. He has declared himself to be above the law. Trump has ignored due process as it relates to his political opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has mocked disabled Americans, a notable prisoner of war, women, immigrants, a Gold Star family.

Check this out from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-only-way-trump-can-win/2016/11/02/1512d15c-a07c-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html

From the Post: “Most politicians are caught in falsehoods from time to time. Mr. Trump revels in them, and when caught simply repeats the lie, more loudly. Similarly, he trades in conspiracy theories that he must know to be false, the more lurid the better: that President Obama was born in Kenya, that Vincent Foster and Antonin Scalia were murdered, that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.”

In recent days, FBI Director James Comey has said he has uncovered more e-mails involving Clinton. He has presented zero hard evidence of anything untoward. Trump has convicted Clinton of corruption and of committing crimes.

The Trumpkins have bought into it … all of it.

As the Post notes, Americans who have been so critical of President Obama for an alleged lack of love of country have become infatuated with the notion that Trump vows to “make America great again.” More from the Post:

“It is mystifying that so many Republicans, after criticizing Mr. Obama for eight years for showing insufficient pride in the United States, would attach themselves to someone who has such contempt for the country, its institutions and its values. U.S. generals have been ‘reduced to rubble,’ the U.S. Army cannot fight, U.S. cities are ‘hell,”’U.S. wealth has been ‘stripped‘ away by global interests, the electoral system is ‘one big, ugly lie.’ To each of these disasters, Mr. Trump offers phony solutions (Mexico will pay to build a wall) or none at all. He has neither the interest nor the capacity to suggest actual policies.”

I hope Americans haven’t forgotten completely how this clown has behaved, the insults he has hurled in every direction and at everyone who opposes him. Is this the kind of individual we want representing the greatest nation on Earth?

Obscene tweet a ‘breaking point’? If only …

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s obscene tweet about Hillary Rodham Clinton is the “breaking point” for at least one Texas voter.

Is it for others who have been entrenched in the Donald J. Trump camp since the zillionaire business mogul announced his Republican presidential candidacy?

Do not take it to the bank.

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2016/11/02/agriculture-commissioner-sid-millers-c-word-tweet-hillary-clinton-breaking-point

A tweet that went out under Miller’s name referred to Clinton as the “c-word.” It’s too vulgar to repeat. As Jacquielyne Floyd of the Dallas Morning News writes in her blog, Miller came up with a package of lame excuses: a staffer did it; someone hacked his account.

Miller said he didn’t do such a thing. The tweet was pulled down right away, which I guess is saying something about the commissioner.

Then again, this guy has been making a spectacle of himself ever since he took over the TDA office from fellow Republican Todd Staples in 2015. I wish Staples was still on the job, frankly.

Miller has emerged as Trump’s chief Texas cheerleader.

Floyd writes: “My weary, overworked outrage meter is idling in low gear, like persistent background static on the radio. I can only summon a tired wonder that Miller, whose newest contretemps is perhaps the most egregious but far from being the first rodeo of disgrace and embarrassment he has attended, is the kind of damage Texas keeps inflicting on itself.”

Texas, though, seems bent on inflicting these wounds. We have sent a number of folks to Congress who keep spouting off without engaging what passes for their brains.

Now we have an agriculture commissioner — who ought to be focused primarily on promoting Texas farm and ranch products and helping them improve their harvest yields and getting the most money they can from the livestock they send to market.

The voter — Kathleen Lyle of Rowlett — who was offended beyond measure by the tweet, wrote a letter to Miller. According to Floyd: “Lyle demanded an apology for every woman and every schoolchild in the state of Texas: “‘You are obligated to behave decently in public once elected,’ she told him.”

Floyd continued: “It was a letter that summed up not only one woman’s frustration over one elected official’s outrageous violation, but spoke for countless Americans who are appalled by the ugliness, the unhinged vulgarity, the puerile bullying shoutdown to which the political conversation has devolved.”

The tweet that went out under Sid Miller’s name is just the latest example of all the above.

If only more of us would feel as outraged as Kathleen Lyle.

World Series dominates the news … thank goodness!

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I awoke this morning, turned on the TV, surfed the major networks’ morning talk shows and discovered the following: The Chicago Cubs won the World Series!

The election? That desultory exercise in democracy? The miserable contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump? It took a back seat to the really big news of the previous night.

What a wonderful relief from the home stretch of this campaign!

To be candid, I didn’t have a dog in the World Series fight. I didn’t particularly care which team won. I get that Cubs fans waited 108 years since their team’s last World Series win. The Cleveland Indians have their own futility streak; the Indians haven’t won since 1948.

The joy in Chicago is overwhelming. Good for them!

And good for the rest of us who have been given a slight — and all too brief — respite from the hideous campaign for the presidency.

Ag commissioner roiled in controversy once more

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is mighty careless with his social media outlets.

Someone — maybe it was Miller, maybe it wasn’t — sent out a tweet this week that refers to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in a highly offensive term. It’s a term used to describe women — and I won’t repeat it here.

The tweet was taken down shortly after it was posted.

The accusation went immediately to the agriculture commissioner, who has emerged as one of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s strongest boosters in Texas.

Miller said he didn’t do it. He blamed it on a staffer.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/11/02/the-brief/

OK, then. So what if it wasn’t Miller? Then the staffer needs to lose his job; I’ll assume it was a male, given the nature of the hideous reference made to Clinton.

How do we know with absolute certainty that a TDA staffer did the deed? I haven’t a clue, other than for the boss — that would be Miller, the elected official — to tell the public the name of the culprit.

They all work for you and for me. I’d like to know who sent out that terrible message and if he thought he was doing it in my name — as a member of the Texas public that pays this clown’s salary.

If Commissioner Miller cannot — or will not — tell us who did this … well, what are we supposed to believe regarding the actual culprit?

Chaotic campaign becomes even more chaotic

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You want chaos on the election trail? Pandemonium in the board room? Shock in our living rooms?

Welcome to Presidential Election 2016, which is heading for what looks like the wildest finish in history. Why, this might even top the 2000 election, where Al Gore won more popular votes than George W. Bush, but lost the presidency because Bush got one more Electoral College vote than he needed.

I’m not going to predict that this campaign will end with that scenario. The grenade that FBI Director James Comey tossed into the middle of this fight has the potential of upsetting everything we thought about the bizarre nature of this bizarre campaign.

He said he’s found more e-mails that might have something to do with Hillary Clinton’s on-going e-mail controversy. We don’t know what’s in them. We don’t even know if she sent them.

Donald Trump calls it the “mother lode.”

I keep hearing two things: (1) The polls are tightening and (2) few voters’ minds have been changed because of what Comey has said.

Are we really and truly going to elect someone — Trump — who has admitted to behaving boorishly? Are we going to elect an individual with a string of failed businesses, lawsuits, allegations of sexual assault leveled against him?

We’re going to do this because the FBI director has inserted himself and his agency into the middle of a presidential campaign while saying virtually nothing of substance about what he might — or might not — have on one of the candidates?

Am I happy with the choices we face? No. I wish the major parties had nominated different candidates for president. We’re stuck, though, with these. We’re left with a choice. Of the two major-party nominees, the choice is clear — to me.

If only we could rid ourselves of the chaos.

KKK newspaper ‘endorses’ Trump: enough said

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Hillary Rodham Clinton has loaded up on newspaper endorsements.

Donald J. Trump has gotten, well, just a few of them.

Then he received a most telling send-off from — I trust y’all are sitting down for this one — the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan.

This one takes my breath away.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11/01/the-kkks-official-newspaper-has-endorsed-donald-trump-for-president/

Check this out from the Washington Post:

“While Trump wants to make America great again, we have to ask ourselves, ‘What made America great in the first place?’ ” the article continues. “The short answer to that is simple. America was great not because of what our forefathers did — but because of who our forefathers were.

“America was founded as a White Christian Republic. And as a White Christian Republic it became great.”

I guess the publisher of the Crusader needs to read the U.S. Constitution, which he obviously hasn’t read. The “forefathers” created a secular nation … but I digress.

The Crusader speaks for the Klan, arguably the nation’s most infamous hate group.

The guy who runs the Crusader said the paper isn’t “endorsing” Trump. OK, but the paper sure likes what the Republican presidential nominee is peddling.

I’m out.

Trump has concluded: Hillary’s guilty of everything

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Politics too often enables public figures to say the damnedest things about their opponents.

Donald J. Trump has concluded, therefore, that based on what he has heard about FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress — Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States.

What does the Republican nominee know? Not a damn thing! What evidence does he have to pre-judge Clinton’s guilt? Nothing at all, man!

Comey has said only that he has some more material to review regarding some missing e-mails. Has he revealed the goods on Clinton? Has he declared any intention to seek an indictment? Has he told the nation anything of substance about what he has uncovered? No to all of it.

Trump, though, is not to be dissuaded by anything resemblance fairness, due process or any presumption of anything but absolute guilt.

He’s called the e-mail controversy a “bigger scandal” than Watergate. Good bleeping grief!

The Trumpkins throughout the country keep insisting that Clinton deserves to be tossed into prison. For what?

Trump the demagogue/liar is ignoring willfully this fact: Comey already has determined that Clinton did not commit any crimes while using her personal e-mail account while serving as secretary of state.

What the FBI director has revealed at the 11th hour of the most miserable presidential campaign in anyone’s memory does not suggest one iota of criminality.

None of that, however, is going to give Donald Trump pause. His response to Comey’s so-called “October surprise” has been nothing short of reprehensible.