Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news

Who’s lost his mind?

All that idiocy about whether President Biden’s butter has slipped off his noodle seemingly ignored a more critical issue facing voters in this presidential election year.

It is whether the guy nominated by the Republican Party has flipped his wig, gone ’round the bend, booked a one-way ticket to la-la land.

Biden resolved the issue about whether he was a drag on the Democratic ticket by stepping away from his re-election bid. He handed the frontrunner mantle to Vice President Kamala Harris, whose rollout was flawless; she has picked an outstanding running mate in Tim Walz and the two of them have been wowing the faithful ever since.

Then comes this nugget of nonsense from Donald Trump: He accuses Harris and Walz of faking the huge crowd sizes at all those rallies through the use of artificial intelligence. Yep, those thousands of cheering partisans were AI creations. They weren’t real, according to the Madman in Chief.

I don’t know what part of that moronic declaration is most astonishing.

  • That Trump would say it out loud.
  • That he would believe anyone would take it seriously.
  • That millions of Americans would swallow that bait.

I’ll go with all three.

The Republican Party nominee for POTUS has lost his mind.

national news

Harris reshapes election

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Kamala Harris’s stunning 11th-hour arrival in the center of the US political conversation drives home a point I want to make about the length of our election process.

It need not drag on for months and months!

It’s almost impossible to comprehend, but the vice president has been campaigning for president for less than a month. Less than one month!

She and her team have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, she has picked a vice-presidential candidate to run with her, she and Donald J. Trump have agreed to a debate on Sept. 10, Harris is formulating an economic strategy.

All of this and more has occurred in less than a month.

Circumstances overwhelmed the previous presumptive Democratic frontrunner, President Joe Biden. He pulled out and endorsed Harris to take over the top spot. If there has been a more perfect roll-out of a presidential campaign, then someone will have to show it to me. Because this one looked like perfection in real time.

It all just goes to demonstrate that we need not drag this process out forever and then some!

I’ve never wondered aloud how we could shorten the length of time we devote to political campaigning. Would it require a federal law enacted by Congress? An amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Does each state have the power to ban campaign activity?

We ought to look at all of the above.

local news, media news

Blogging gets new life

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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, 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!

national news

Be on guard, Democrats

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A certain level of smugness appears to be creeping into coverage of the 2024 presidential campaign.

Just as Republicans were feeling all gooey about Donald Trump’s chances against President Biden, the tide has turned significantly in favor of Kamala Harris, who succeeded Biden as the Democrats’ frontrunner for the party nomination.

A word to the wise: Republican campaign hatchet men (and women) have turned “negative campaigning” into an art form. The most recent incarnation of it goes back to around 1988. I got to cover that campaign while working in Beaumont, Texas, at the Beaumont Enterprise.

You remember it, right? Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis was riding high on a 17 percentage point lead over Vice President Bush. He came out of his party’s Atlanta convention ready to rock ‘n roll once he got into the White House. Then the attacks came from Bush and his team. Dukakis was deemed soft on crime because he opposed the death penalty; he granted a furlough to a killer who, while on that furlough, committed another violent crime.

Let’s not forget that disastrous “photo op” of Dukakis in the tank.

The Democrat’s lead shrank to zero, then Bush won the election in a landslide over Dukakis.

I’m just sayin’, Democrats … do not get smug over Kamala Harris’s remarkable rollout of her campaign.

national news, political news

Let’s get busy, Mme. VPOTUS

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Vice presidents rarely, if ever, can run on the accomplishments achieved by the presidents whom they serve.

Thus, it becomes imperative that Vice President Kamala Harris build a program for the future as she prepares to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party.

Harris and her team have conducted a flawless, seamless, perfect transition from VP running mate to becoming the top half of a presidential ticket. It happened, quite literally, overnight … when President Biden ended his re-election campaign and handed the party banner to his governmental partner.

Another truism is that campaigns always are about the future, not the past. While the GOP nominee Donald Trump keeps trying to relitigate The Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, Harris should look forward and tell Americans what they need to hear.

President Biden talks about making rich Americans pay their fair share of taxes; VP Harris needs to remind us all that the uber rich won’t end up in the poor house if they have to carry their share of the tax burden. Will the VP carry forth Biden’s infrastructure package, his climate change initiative, his efforts to reduce inflation, his superb job creation efforts?

We shouldn’t be consumed about complaints that have no basis in fact. We should look ahead to the future that, from my vantage point, looks pretty bright.

Mme. Vice President, it is time to get busy.

national news

Campaign suddenly sizzles

When was the last time a presidential campaign thought to be mired in moribund monotony has sprung to life literally overnight with the emergence of a new candidate?

Do you give up? No worries. I can’t think of an earlier time, either.

President Biden, the former oldest man to seek the presidency, surrendered his re-election campaign. He anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as his heir apparent … and then it hit the fan!

Harris raised $120 million in a single day. She has scarfed up thousands of endorsements, not to mention enough delegates to secure her nomination as the Democratic Party nominee next month.

Young voters tell pollsters they are excited again. So are women who are still furious over the Supreme Court decision that ended the right to an abortion.

VP Harris, meanwhile, is beginning to hone her attack rhetoric against Donald Trump, reminding voters that as a career prosecutor, she has taken on sexual assailants, crooks and frauds. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she tells campaign rallies.

It has been a remarkable, not to mention rapid, acceleration of Democratic enthusiasm for the top of their party’s presidential ticket. The party was worried about whether its presumptive nominee has the wattage to stay in the race.

He vows to stay the course. Then … he declares that his reverence for the office he is “honored” to serve is eclipsed only by his “love of country.” The time has come, Joe Biden said, to hand the reins to a younger group of leaders.

Thus, a new campaign was given life instantly by a simple act of patriotism.

May the new frontrunner maintain her high energy for the next 100 days. This blogger looks forward to typing the words “President Kamala Harris.”

Uncategorized

Harris needs to keep climbing

Kamala Harris, to state the obvious, has a huge mountain to climb as she campaigns for the presidency of the United States.

It is easy to fall into a public relations trap being laid by those who are enamored of the huge push the vice president has received since President Biden handed her the frontrunner’s torch the other day. Biden surrendered his re-election campaign, endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee and as POTUS. Thousands of other endorsements have poured in, giving Democrats a gigantic emotional boost as Harris prepares to accept her party nomination.

The mountain she must climb rests in the person of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Trump continues to cling to a razor-thin polling lead, despite all the missteps, gaffes, the lies, the disjointed campaign blunders … you name, Trump has done it.

Yet — for the life of me — he remains strong politically. I am holding out the greatest hope I can muster that Trump will not hold up under the intense scrutiny that awaits him.

Let’s remember a key point. Trump and his MAGA cultists were fond of reminding us that Joe Biden, at 81 years of age, would be the oldest party nominee ever. Biden didn’t get that far. “The oldest ever nominee” tag now falls on Trump, who’s 78 years old and is showing every one of those years each time he takes the stump and flies off the rails with his nonsense.

I will encourage the vice president to never surrender as she continues to carry her message forward. She has energized millions of Americans just by agreeing to carry the Democrats’ banner into the next great political battle.

I happen to be just one newly engaged American patriot who wants to see her make history once more. All she has to do is win this election.

national news

Praise for the unspoken

President Biden today deserves a bouquet for something he didn’t mention in his brief remarks to the nation.

He never mentioned — not a single time — any reference to the difficulty that led to his decision to withdraw his bid for re-election to the nation’s highest office.

I want to offer a hearty congratulations to the president for sticking to his script and for declining to enter the viper’s pit with the critics who continue to insist he has lost his edge, that he no longer is fit to hold the office to which we elected him in 2020.

He surrendered his campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his worthy successor, presuming she wins the election this November. Biden spoke of the high honor he earned by “serving as your president” and said the time has come to “pass the torch” to younger leaders.

Joe Biden will face history’s judgment in due course. I believe historians will treat his time as president with the dignity it deserves. He has been a consequential president with a lengthy list of accomplishments for which he can take credit.

I am proud of him and am proud to have cast my vote for Joe Biden as our commander in chief.

national news

By all means, force another debate

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Social media chatter not only is annoying, it can be instructive.

Therefore, when I hear on social media that Donald Trump might wiggle/slither/dodge his way out of a second presidential debate, I am urged to shout: Don’t let him off the hook!

The Trump bowing out reports surfaced immediately as President Biden dropped out of the race for re-election and he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

I know what you’re thinking. Trump wants no part of sharing a debate stage with someone as ferocious as Harris … a former prosecutor and ex-state attorney general. Harris already has laid down a stump-speech mantra about “knowing Donald Trump’s type,” given that she has prosecuted rapists, fraudsters and con artists.

I can’t blame Trump for not wanting to expose himself to his opponent’s long knives. Then again, I am a voter who wants the whole world to know about the enormous load of baggage he is carrying into his third straight campaign for the U.S. presidency.

Harris must never let up in the effort to bring Trump to a debate stage in September, as planned already.

I merely am one American patriot who is waiting anxiously to see how this new presidential frontrunner handles the onslaught of lies and smears that are sure to come her way.