Tag Archives: Kamala Harris

business news

Looking for votes? Well … yeah!

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A brief lesson in political context seems to be in order, as I must respond to a statement from a frequent critic of this blog.

I wrote something the other day calling attention to Kamala Harris’s support of an idea first pitched by Donald Trump: to end the rule requiring taxes on income received from tips for service workers.

My critic just couldn’t leave the issue well enough alone. He couldn’t just endorse Harris’s support of an idea first promoted by her presidential campaign opponent and then move on to the next point of contention.

No … instead he said something about how Democrats blasted Trump for the idea, saying he was just angling for votes.

In an election year? A candidate is looking for ways to win favor with voters? Who knew?

Here is the lesson. Listen up. In an election cycle, every single proposal offered by candidates is done with one primary goal in mind: to win votes! It makes no difference which politician does it, or which party to which he or she belongs. They all do it and they all have the same motive in mind.

I just want to make clear that we should understand the context at play here. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are of like minds on the principle of banning taxes for tips. They both want voters to believe them over the other person.

As for my critic. Pipe down, dude!

national news, political news

GOPers for Harris channels an earlier mutiny

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They call themselves Republicans for Harris, believing that the Democratic nominee for POTUS is suited better to hold the job than the Republicans’ own presidential nominee.

It is far too early — and the view from my perch doesn’t allow me to predict anything with accuracy — to know what this means in terms of determining the outcome of the election.

This Republicans for Harris movement designed to bolster the election of Kamala Harris over Donald J. Trump has a certain ring that I recall vividly from my first political campaign.

Flash back for a moment to 1972. Democrats nominated Sen. George McGovern for president. He ran against President Richard Nixon. McGovern wanted to end the Vietnam War. So did I, so I signed on as a campaign worker. I was aligned with the Democratic Party in my early years. My wife, Kathy Anne, and I were newly married and we both became involved.

Not all Democrats were enamored of the effort the nominee was making to obtain an early-as-possible exit from the bloodshed in Vietnam.

Thus, the Democrats for Nixon movement was born. One of its leaders was the late Big John Connally, the former Texas governor who was wounded seriously that day in Dallas when President Kennedy was murdered. Democrats for Nixon grew to a huge following of disaffected Democrats.

Nixon won that election with 520 electoral votes to McGovern’s 17; Nixon carried 49 of 50 states, winning 61% of the popular vote.

I smile these days when I recall those results, hoping that this Republicans for Harris movement could contribute to the same level of victory for the candidate I want to become president, Kamala Harris.

I cannot predict an outcome, even though Harris’s momentum continues to build. Trump continues to struggle.

Maybe it’s a long shot, but I am going to cling to some notion that history just might be able to repeat itself.

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.

economic news

Harris, Trump agree? Wow!

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Who’da thunk this could happen, that Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump would agree on a significant public policy issue?

Both candidates for POTUS agree that service workers who rely on tips shouldn’t have to be taxed on that portion of their income.

Trump tossed the idea out there first. Harris has followed suit. Trump, though, is contending that Harris “stole” the idea from him and is trying to win favor with voters by casting this notion as her own.

Holy taxman!

I happen to agree that tip income need not be taxed. If you’re working as a server in a restaurant, you’re already earning something below the national minimum wage. Tips are meant to supplement the meager wage these folks are earning.

Harris wants to take the issue a step further. She wants to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, something that Trump opposes. Spoiler alert: I support Harris’s idea.

But really, there’s no “theft” involved in one candidate endorsing an idea pitched by an opponent. Then again, I tend to believe Donald Trump is going to take a lot more credit that he doesn’t deserve on issues that Harris endorses along the way.

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.

national news

Walz is the one!

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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

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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, State news

C’mon back, candidates!

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Every election cycle for as long as I can remember, I issue the same call to the candidates for president of the United States.

Come on back to Texas and campaign in person, tell us to our faces, that you want our votes!

Why do they avoid the state? Well, we’re not a “battleground” location for the major-party candidates for POTUS. Democrats have all but given up on us, while Republicans take us for granted.

Let’s see. How is that changing? Well, Vice President Kamala Harris’s entry into the campaign has fired up Democratic loyalists across land …. including in Texas!

Recent history suggests that we well could become a battleground in 2024. I know we’ve said that before, only to be disappointed.

Donald Trump won Texas’s electoral votes in 2020 by just a little more than 5%. In 2016, Trump’s margin was 9%. Mitt Romney carried the state with a 15% majority in 2012 and John McCain won in 2008 with 12%. Do you see a pattern? If not, I’ll tell you that the GOP margin has shrunk over the past three election cycles.

Joe Biden pulled out of the contest believing his re-election chances had sunk to near zero., In stepped the vice president. She has raised hundreds of millions of campaign dollars in just two weeks! She is firing up the Democratic base! Thus, it appears to me that the candidates would not waste their time by visiting us in North Texas during this election season.

Look, I like politics. I like retail politics, when candidates have to look voters in the eye and tell us what they intend to do if we elect them.

I realize I am likely piddling into the wind on this request, but I’ll make it anyway.

Texas provides a huge pool of votes. My preference would be for VP Harris to win most of them. Based on what might be transpiring, there seems to be a shot — I’ll measure its probability later — that Kamala Harris could break through this barrier.

national news

Trump challenges Harris’s ethnicity? What the … ?

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Who in this world of ours does Donald J. Trump think he’s bamboozling?

The Republican presidential nominee today sat before the National Association of Black Journalists and said — and you can’t make this stuff up — that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris only recently identified herself as Black. It was his crass and boorish manner in which he actually questioned whether the vice president of the United States is who she has contended she is for as long as anyone can remember.

What the hell is the matter with this idiot?

Harris is the product of a Black father and an Indian mother. That means she is the first VP of Black and South Asian descent.

Trump’s cowardly attack, of course, drew the expected response from Harris, who in a few days will accept the Democratic nomination for president. She told a rally crowd in Atlanta, “If you’re going to say something about me, say it to my face!”

That was Harris’s way of challenging Trump’s waffling on his pledge to debate the Democratic candidate on Sept. 10. He and his campaign agreed to do so. Now he’s chickening out.

Just as Trump sought to foment the lie in 2008 about Barack Obama’s birthplace, questioning whether the future president was eligible to run for the office, he has launched yet another chickensh** effort to cast aspersions on another rival’s ethnicity.

This individual’s cowardice simply takes my breath away.