Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Are we really that stupid?

A member of my family and I disagree on the potential outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

My family member believes the 45th president is poised to regain the presidency. I disagree. He and I had an exchange that went something like this:

Family member: I think he’s going to win.

Me: No. He won’t win.

FM: You said the same thing in 2016 and look what happened.

Me: We have learned from the mistake we made as a nation. We aren’t going to make it again.

FM: I am not so sure about that. I don’t think we’ve learned anything. Besides, Biden didn’t win in 2020 by a landslide.

Me: I know. A few hundred thousand-vote switch in three states would have produced a vastly different result.

The exchange ended shortly after that. My family member does not want the 45th POTUS to win. He doesn’t exactly line up strongly in President Biden’s camp.

I do wish my family member had more faith in the collective intelligence of American voters. But … he doesn’t and I’ll accept his view that we are collection of gullible dummies. I, however, am going to stand on my wellspring of belief that we are smarter than we have demonstrated.

The former POTUS tapped into a heretofore mine of resentment in Americans’ hearts. He now vows to be “your retribution” for misperceived wrongs that have been committed against the former POTUS. He is going to unleash the Justice Department on his foes … and to think he accuses Biden of “weaponizing” the DOJ.

Are we really ready to welcome a return of this kind of political vengeance into the halls of power?

I think not.

Choices are widening

Americans are facing a critical decision that by all rights should be a no-brainer, one that requires hardly more than a scintilla of thought.

It is this: Do Americans want to elect a certifiable overfed, overhyped and over-publicized juvenile fu**ing delinquent to the presidency or do we re-elect a known grownup, someone with years of public service under his belt, someone who has a clear priority list of beliefs and principles?

In a normal context, there would be no debate. We wouldn’t allow our children to behave in the manner displayed by the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee. But here is, standing on the precipice of an astonishing political comeback, on the verge of securing the GOP presidential nomination for the third election cycle in a row!

The former Moron in Chief authorized the distribution of a video showing President Biden hogtied in a rope. What the hell?

He continues to foment the Big Lie about electoral theft in 2020 that did not occur. Didn’t we teach our children to take their lumps when they lose, dust themselves off and go about their next task? My wife and I taught our sons those lessons in life.

The misdeeds are too many to enumerate here. You get my drift.

Joe Biden is the grownup in this contest. The other guy is a petulant little dipsh**.

What is RFK Jr. doing?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s bizarre campaign for the presidency has me baffled and bamboozled.

He announced his candidacy first as a Democrat; then he became an independent. This week he selected an entrepreneur/lawyer, Nicole Shanahan, as his vice-presidential running mate.

Why the bafflement? Well, RFK Jr.’s father, the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was my first political hero. I had the pleasure of shaking Bobby Kennedy’s hand in late May 1968, one week before his own presidential bid ended with an assassin’s bullet in Los Angeles.

I am struck by the notion that RFK Jr. would abandon the Democratic Party, given his family’s long affiliation with the party. I am certain his father would be aghast.

What’s more, RFK Jr. professed profound admiration and affection for President Biden even as he was announcing his Democratic presidential campaign. What the … ?

I am puzzled by the reason he wants to become the next POTUS. His conspiracy theories regarding the murder of his father and his idiotic refusal to accept the vaccine offered to battle the COVID 19 pandemic simply send me into orbit.

Will his campaign harm Biden more than the Republican nominee-in-waiting? I haven’t a clue. I have seen polling data that suggest an even draw-down of votes for both major-party candidates. I don’t necessarily believe those polls.

I remain baffled that Bobby Jr. would do this … and to what end.

I also am convinced that his father would take the kid to the proverbial woodshed …

NBC makes a bad hire

Ronna Romney McDaniel once held the job as chair of the Republican National Committee, which by definition is a legitimate political occupation.

Were she just the RNC chair before NBC News hired her as a paid consultant, I would be fine with it, as would other journalists who today are howling like wolves at news of this hiring decision.

However, she brings some serious baggage to her new gig. You see, she also fomented the Big Lie put forth by the 45th president, who lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden but who has refused to accept his defeat in a free, fair and legal election.

Oh, there’s more to untangle in McDaniel’s background.

She also was a co-conspirator in the 1/6 assault on our government, calling the traitorous mob’s smashing of windows and threats against Vice President Mike Pence a form of “legitimate political discussion.”

McDaniel worked hand in glove with the outgoing administration to undermine the results of the election.

Now she is employed by a major television network as a “paid political consultant.” This is a travesty of the first order.

Veteran NBC journalist Chuck Todd took his network to task over the weekend, asking out loud whether McDaniel will be speaking for herself or for her employer. She has said she “took one for the team” by endorsing The Big Lie and only now says that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States.

It’s one thing for a network to hire political contributors of varying points of view. Liberal-leaning networks have conservatives on the air frequently and conservative-leaning networks do the same with liberal commentators.

It’s quite another for a network to give credibility to a known liar and purveyor of hideous falsehoods.

Ronna McDaniel has no business offering points of view on matters where she has displayed a disgraceful willingness to lie to the public.

Compromise: it works

President Biden signed into a law a $1.2 trillion spending bill that arrived at his desk after a deadline had lapsed.

The president didn’t hesitate for a nano-second to sign the bill and issued a statement that stated the obvious: Not everyone is totally pleased with what’s in it, but Congress got the job done thanks to some serious compromise.

Therein lies at the heart of what I call “good government.” Compromise works. It results in laws being enacted that are going to anger some folks, make others happy but in the end will keep our government running so that it can deliver needed services to those who need it.

The current rabble-rousers who seek to control Congress — the MAGA cultists who insist that it’s their way or the highway — don’t follow that truism. Oh, no. They continue to resist things in this latest spending package that threaten our allies, such as Israel or the Ukrainians who are fighting against Russian invaders.

Joe Biden sees government through an entirely different prism. He is, in reality, a creature of the government over which he now presides. He has worked in the federal system since January 1973, when he took office as a 30-year-old U.S. senator from Delaware. He served in the Senate until 2009, when he moved into the vice president’s office, where he worked for another eight years. He took four years off and then was elected president in 2000.

I am going to continue to embrace the view that compromise need not be synonymous with surrender of one’s principles.

If only the MAGA cultists and, yes, the far-left progressives would learn that there are times when they can accept compromise as an avenue to keep government functioning for the betterment of all Americans.

ISIS rears its evil head

Joe Biden has been handed yet another crisis … as if he needs anything else to occupy his time.

The Islamic State is taking “credit” for a massive shooting spree in Moscow that has killed at least 60 people; they were attending a music festival in the Russian capital.

What does the president do? He’s already on record opposing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. He has labeled Putin a war criminal for the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets.

He now might be forced to decide whether to send aid to Russia as it seeks to clean up the carnage left by ISIS’s ghastly goons. The victims were innocent civilians. Does the president commit U.S. intelligence professionals to help the Russians identify the source of this horrific deed?

All that said, I am left only to offer my deep sympathy to the family members and loved ones of those who were killed or injured by terrorists. As for what President Biden might do, I offer my sincere good wishes that his power of discernment doesn’t fail him now.

Accusations aren’t ‘false’

A critic of High Plains Blogger has accused me of saying things about the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee that are false.

Well, I am going to challenge that allegation with this brief post.

He writes: You bash Trump with false accusations and give credit to Biden where’s there’s very little credit to be given.

Nothing I have said about the presumptive GOP nominee is “false.” As for “credit” being given to President Biden, I’ll save that comment for another post.

I have said for as long as I have been writing this blog — and it’s been many years — that I do not mind criticism of its content; just don’t ascribe impure motives to me for expressing these views. They are mine alone and I take responsibility for them. As for my motivation, some folks over the years have questioned my faith, and my patriotism. I take a back seat to no one on either matter.

My accusations against the 45th POTUS are based on what juries have determined, what legally constituted prosecutors have said in criminal indictments and even on the visual record of video and audio recordings the world has seen and heard with its own eyes and ears.

The falsehood or the truth about any of it has yet to be determined in courts of law. My sincere and fervent hope is that we get to those determinations sooner rather than later.

I am just going to make this point one more time — and it likely won’t be the final time: The idiot whom Republicans will nominate for POTUS is unfit for any public office in the land.

Head-spinning begins

My 74-year-old noggin is spinning like Linda Blair’s in the “The Exorcist.” At times it feels as if it’s going 360 degrees.

That is what this presidential election season is doing to me.

Republicans are set to nominate an individual they have selected twice already to run for president. He won the first time in one of the most bizarre flukes in American political history, capturing the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by 3 million ballots. He lost the second time fair and square, only to declare the election was rigged and was stolen from him.

Now the GOP is going to nominate him one more time? His platform sounds like the 2020 theme, which is that it is short on ideas for the future and long on made-up grievances.

Except that he has persuaded enough Americans that his dubious gripes are real enough for them to climb aboard his clown car.

Democrats have a successful incumbent running as an underdog, for God’s sake! President Biden’s term so far has produced far more successes than failures, and yet the MAGA minions seek to persuade us that the Joe Biden presidency has been an abject failure.

What the hell … ?

Republicans are hell bent on suppressing voter turnout. Democrats want the turnout to break the records set in 2020. By my own barometer, I long have believed that democracy works best when more — rather than fewer — voters take part.

I won’t even get into the felony trials involving the GOP nominee’s criminal allegations. He is wanting to delay them past the election and then is hoping for all he can to be elected so he can just crumple them up and toss ’em into the crapper.

I do not intend to allow that to happen, if this blog has any pull at all.

First things first, though. I have to get my head to stop spinning.

Let the campaign commence

The strangest presidential campaign in my memory has begun in earnest … and the two major-party candidates haven’t even been nominated yet by their respective parties.

President Biden is running for re-election against the nimrod he defeated in 2020. For reasons that I cannot explain or understand, he is running — for the time being — as the underdog in this contest.

I don’t get it. The economy is rocking along. Americans clearly are better off than they were when he took office in January 2021. He campaigned on a pledge to restore our nation’s “soul,” and I believe he has succeeded. He’s got more work to do and in my view he has earned the right to finish the job.

But, oh my … this campaign is as weird as any I have seen in all my years watching and, in some cases, covering these events. In fact, it’s the weirdest campaign I can remember.

The Republican nominee-in-waiting is cozying up to dictators. He calls the Hungarian thug/despot a “strong leader” and sounds as if he wants to govern the United States the way his good pal governs Hungary. Oh, my God in heaven. Please … no!

He threatens to dismantle NATO, all but pledges to look the other way while Russian thug Vladimir Putin “does whatever the hell he wants” by attacking a NATO ally while he prosecutes the war in Ukraine.

All of that and more run totally counter to American ideals. Yet the dipsh** continues to lead in public opinion polling.

Are we that stupid, that ignorant, that cynical as a nation to let this guy have his way? May we all come to our senses between now and Nov. 5, when Election Day arrives.

No … God didn’t do this!

Of all the histrionics I have heard about why the MAGA crowd is so in love with the former POTUS who wants to return to office, only one proclamation actually offends me.

It goes like this: It was God’s will that put him in the office and God wants him to return.

Let us ponder that for a moment, or maybe two.

When you rely on the Almighty to justify your earthly political beliefs, you immediately run into serious trouble. Where in the world does it say that God looks the other way at someone breaking his sacred vow of fidelity to his wife? Don’t the evangelicals who back the former POTUS stand firm on the biblical view that cheating on one’s spouse is a sin worthy of high scorn?

Moreover, where does the Good Book allow for someone to on one side of his mouth proclaim to be someone of deep faith and then declare with the other side of his pie hole that he has never sought forgiveness for any sin he has committed?

Citing Scripture is a dangerous gambit. God also must have decreed that Joe Biden be elected president in 2020. That’s why he’s there now, in the office, making decisions on our behalf!

Those of us out here in Voter Land who also worship God understand the teaching laid out in the Bible far more than the guy who pretends to be faithful.

A critic of this blog ID’s himself (I presume it’s a guy) as Psalm 109:8. I looked that passage up. I says: “Let his years be few; let someone else take his position.” He believes President Biden should lose his job because the Bible suggests as much. Such devotion to Scripture. You know what the next verse says? “Let his children be fatherless; let his wife become a widow.” 

You want a reason to take great offense at some phony notion that God intended for the former Idiot in Chief to be elected? That is why one should never mix religion with politics.