Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Joe Biden, national news, political news

Does Joe stay … or go?

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My mind has been flip-flopping like a fish out of water on the issue of President Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate in 2024.

I believe I have reached a conclusion on this matter, so I will share it with you right now.

The president needs to step aside. He needs to hand the top spot on the Democratic ticket to Vice President Kamala Harris, who needs then to find a suitable running mate to carry the fight forward against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

I will offer only one caveat. If the president stays in, I’ll be with him until hell freezes over. Which ain’t gonna happen.

The foremost issue must be to keep Donald Trump from darkening the Oval Office’s door ever again.

I have been watching many of VP Harris’s speeches over the past few days and to my aging but still perceptive ears, she has found her voice. One hears no quiver in her voice. She is certain on where she stands and she delivers her views with vigor and conviction. The vice president relies heavily on her years as a prosecutor, telling cheering audiences, “Let’s look at the facts.”

When I watch the vice president recite chapter and verse how Trump and Vance are wrong, on, say, women’s reproductive rights, I see a stand-up champion. When she talks about how the GOP talks out of both sides of its mouth on seeking “unity,” I see a fierce fighter.

Sadly, the Joe Biden I grew to admire from his first days in the US Senate — the ferocious and occasionally garrulous advocate he became — no longer exists. Make no mistake, though, on this key point: Joe Biden has been one of the better presidents of the past century and he accomplished plenty during his time in office. He will leave office, whether this coming January or in January 2029, with his head held high.

However … the Democratic Party leadership is bailing on him. The source of the money the party will need to defeat Trump has dried up. President Biden should step aside.

Joe Biden chose well when he picked Kamala Harris to run with him in 2020. It’s her turn now.

Donald Trump

What has happened to us?

You want any graphic example of just how topsy-turvy the US political system has become? Look at what is happening in Milwaukee this very evening.

Republican convention delegates have nominated a former POTUS who was impeached twice during his term in office, who is accused of instigating an attack on our government and of trying to overturn a free and fair election, who has been convicted of 34 felony counts, is indicted on four additional felonies, been deemed liable for the rape of a woman and has admitted to being a sexual assailant.

What’s more, GOP delegates are standing tall, firm and foursquare behind Donald Trump. They are united behind this man’s candidacy.

Meanwhile, Democratic political leaders are turning on the incumbent president, Joe Biden, because of a poor debate performance, many of them calling on him to forgo his re-election campaign. They are splintered and Biden is in actual danger of losing the election to the guy he defeated four years ago.

Many of us who have been around long enough remember earlier times when we wondered whether our system could survive tempest and tumult.

But …. nothing like this!

I am at a total loss to understand what has happened to my beloved United States of America.

International news, military news

Russia about to gain a WH friend?

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Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his 2024 Republican Party presidential running mate should send chills up the spine of every “real Republican” out there.

Why is that? Because Vance, a freshman U.S. senator from Ohio, has emerged as Russia’s most vocal ally in the ridiculous debate over whether we should continue to assist Ukraine in its valiant fight against the Russian invaders.

Vance has made it clear: If he has any say in the matter, the United States won’t spend another dollar to assist Ukraine as it fights for its life against the immoral, illegal and unprovoked invasion by the Russian armed forces.

There has been plenty of talk about this election being a fight for democracy. That fight is playing itself out on the battlefields of Ukraine, which is fighting to preserve its democratic government against. the authoritarians in Moscow who want to take Ukraine back as a “Russian state.”

President Biden has been steadfast in his support of Ukraine, vowing to keep the United States engaged by sending money for military hardware essential for Ukraine to defeat the Russian aggressors.

Now, though, Trump and his “friendship” with Vladimir Putin stands in the way. Moreover, Trump now has a vocal running mate who is standing openly and foursquare with Putin’s designs on spreading his dictatorial regime beyond Russia’s borders.

Republican political orthodoxy used to stand against Russian aggression. We engaged in a decades-long cold war with the Soviet Union to keep them from advancing beyond their territorial limit. Two presidents named Bush, and others named Nixon, Eisenhower and Reagan stood strong against the tyrants.

We must not let the Russians win this fight!

Donald Trump

Things I don’t get

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The world is chock full of matters that pass my occasionally meager understanding. Donald Trump’s standing in the current public opinion polls is one of them.

With that I must make an admission: I do not understand the thinking of Americans who can justify their backing of a man with the kind of morality, the record of lying, the examples of fraudulent behavior that Trump continues to exhibit.

Family members who say they value my opinion on such matters keep asking me why Trump continues to hold this standing. I have no answer. I do not understand it. I cannot fathom anyone backing a candidate for president with so many personal and moral failures as this individual.

He speaks of his “populism.” He is no more of a populist than, say, King Louis XVI. He talks about caring for the little guy. When has anyone seen him showing up unannounced to work in a soup kitchen? He talked about losing all those friends in the 9/11 attacks. Yet … he never attended a single funeral or memorial service for anyone who died on that horrific day.

His many moral failures are too many to mention here. You know what they are.

And yet, here he is set to capture the Republican Party presidential nomination for the third consecutive election cycle. He won the first time, lost the second go-round and well might win the 2024 election.

Is this nation really so gullible, so prone to this man’s phony promises to elect him a second time to an office about which he knows absolutely nothing?

I cannot even begin to grasp what might lie ahead for this great land if our worst nightmare comes true.

national news

J.D. Vance: ‘Never Trumper’ runs with Trump

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J.D. Vance’s decision to run with Donald Trump is an eye-opener to be sure.

The freshman U.S. senator from Ohio — whose public service career spans the two years he has served in the Senate — once called himself an irrevocable “never Trumper.” He sounded pretty solid when he made that declaration in front of TV cameras.

Now he’s in Trump’s camp. All the way, he indicates. So, Trump chose him to run as VP on a GOP president ticket led — for the third straight election cycle — by Donald Trump.

It’s not that the GOP field of VPOTUS hopefuls lacked candidates who at one time or another spoke ill of the presidential nominee. So did Sen. Marco Rubio, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Sen. Tim Scott. They were passed over for Vance.

I don’t know what to make of this selection. If Trump follows past patterns, he’ll sing Vance’s praises until Vance says or does something that displeases Trump. Then he’ll become the “worst human being ever to walk the Earth” …. or words to that effect.

Today’s odds suggest Trump is going to win the presidency. I am not going place that bet just yet. We still have some time to go. President Biden has his own convention to get through. He still has time to sharpen his daggers. Yes, he’s got that assassination attempt hanging over his temptation to resume recounting all the lies, the criminal activity for which Trump has been convicted and truckloads of negativity that accompany Trump wherever he goes.

Trump also reportedly is going to speak to the GOP convention to propose a theme of unity. I am going to hold my breath on that one. I do not expect him to follow the theme he is going to set.

What the hell … he might not even find unity between himself and the fellow he chose to run with him!

national news

Time for ‘unity’ … do ya think?

Word out of Donald J. Trump’s campaign headquarters is that the presumed Republican Party presidential nominee is re-writing his acceptance speech.

Reports say he is going to seek to strike a theme of national “unity” in the wake of what we all saw unfold in Butler, Pa., over the weekend.

A gunman opened fire on Trump, grazing his right ear with a bullet. Another man died while protecting his family from the gunfire, two more bystanders were seriously injured … and the Secret Service killed the shooter where he stood with his rifle.

Trump issued a statement immediately after being transported for treatment of his injury. He spoke of the need to stand as one nation and to work to quell the violence that too often is a result of heated political rhetoric.

On Thursday night he will stand before the nation, accept his party’s nomination and reportedly will deliver his unification remarks.

For the ever-lovin’ life of me, I hope the man is sincere, that he means what he says that he will do his part to cool the atmospherics that surround this political season.

President Biden, his opponent in the election, has said the same thing, calling on the nation to step back and to reflect on a fundamental tenet of American politics. It is that we can differ strongly on issues but that we’re all still Americans, we all love the country and that we are not each other’s “enemy.”

Yes, I oppose Donald Trump’s election. I remain grateful and glad that he didn’t suffer a more serious injury from the moron who opened fire.

Now we will get to measure just how much — if at all — this incident might have changed him.

national news

Political violence ‘has no place’

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Politicians of every imaginable stripe and conviction are saying the same thing tonight in the wake of an incident at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pa.

Political violence “has no place” in our system of government and politicking, they have said.

Trump spoke today at an outdoor rally. Then he flinched, grabbed at his right ear and sank to the ground. The Secret Service detail assigned to protect the former president were on him in an instant, shielding him from further harm.

Medical personnel rushed Trump to a center where he was treated for what looked like minor injuries to his ear and possibly the right side of his face. The Secret Service issued a statement declaring the former POTUS to be “safe” and “doing fine.”

For that we all should be relieved.

A shooter reportedly is dead. Eyewitnesses reported hearing several noises that sounded like gunshots. The district attorney then announced the authorities are treating this incident as an “assassination attempt.”

Now comes the difficult part of this commentary. How do we stop the kind of hateful rhetoric we’ve been hearing on the campaign trail? Too many speakers have spoken of doing violence to political protesters. They have lamented the presence of protests, even though the Constitution protects such activity as legitimate free speech.

I would advise Donald Trump himself to take stock of what he has said on the stump and wish for all I can that he cease the kind of rhetoric he has bellowed.

This incident, I fear, is a consequence of the deep divisions that have fractured this great nation.

Joe Biden, national news

‘Vote shaming’ has commenced

There appears to be a tide of “vote shaming” that is swelling across the land as Democrats are now rallying behind their presumptive presidential nominee.

We now are hearing it more loudly and clearly than at any time during the past three presidential cycles. A vote for Donald J. Trump for president is going to relegate the presidency and the nation into a spiral from which neither can recover.

And it is to the ever-lasting shame of those who today remain dedicated to casting their presidential vote for a convicted felon, an admitted philanderer, a man found liable for rape and an individual who admits to groping women.

Democrats are ramping up their message machine to cast shame and embarrassment on the MAGA cultists and the Republican Party leadership who continue to back a man who has been shown to be a fraud, someone who isn’t even close to being the smartest businessman in the room. Indeed, as President Biden has been saying, Trump has filed for bankruptcy “six times, even for a casino” in which had invested. “I didn’t know that was possible,” Biden has said.

President Biden and the Democrats are making Donald Trump the issue in their battle to keep him away from the Oval Office.

They damn sure should make Trump the No. 1 issue in this campaign.

But here we are, wringing our hands over whether Joe Biden is too old and too mentally infirm to run for president. I am teetering on this issue myself and I am not comfortable admitting that. However, you may count me as one American patriot who will gladly cast my ballot for Joe Biden if the choice happens to be Donald Trump.

Those who are standing behind a moral reprobate who is now a convicted felon, someone who embraces tyrants over small-d democrats, well … you deserve the shame you are getting.

Joe Biden

My mission: defeat Trump!

OK, kids. Here comes the latest proclamation from High Plains Blogger, which is that my public policy mission in life is to defeat Donald John Trump and end forever this reprobate’s lust for political power.

How does that happen? Beats me. I have this forum. I intend to light it up with every known lie, defamatory epithet, bizarre pronouncement that has flown out of this megalomaniacal moron’s piehole. I am going to remind readers of this blog that this POTUS wannabe has been convicted of multiple felonies!

Trump is a tangible, existential threat to our way of life, to our democratic system of governance, to our existence as the world’s pre-eminent nation.

I am going to get grief for this declaration from critics who accuse me of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

You know what? I admit that I do! Bring it, MAGA cultists!

I am concerned about whether President Biden is able to carry that message forward on our behalf. And, no, I do not believe he is incapacitated. I fear that the rumor mongering is going to overtake his candidacy. He might be unable to shake loose the political hyenas who have gripped him in their jaws.

Who should replace him as the Democrats’ standard bearer? I don’t have a clue. I do know this: Whoever emerges at the top of the Democratic ticket will have my support over the former Dipsh** in Chief who continues to masquerade as a Republican.

And, yes, that support extends to President Joe Biden should he stay in this race for its duration.

Joe Biden

Stop the armchair diagnoses!

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Everyone’s a doctor, a scientist, someone with inside knowledge on what makes total strangers tick.

You hear it especially when a prominent individual is forced to answer questions about his or her mental acuity. The most prominent person on Earth, President Biden, is facing those questions these days. He endured that hideous debate performance the other evening and now is being pressured to drop out of his race for re-election to the presidency.

Biden says he ain’t going to do it. He says he plans to soldier on. He says only he can defeat Donald J. Trump, which he did four years ago. A whole host of things now work in his favor: Trump’s convictions on felony counts; the nation’s economic revival; Trump’s continuing blather about The Big Lie; Biden’s ability to rally international support against the immoral Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Then the 81-year-old president stumbled badly in that debate against the consummate liar.

I’ll lay out my bias for you. Biden is not diminished to where he cannot do the job to which we elected him. Trump is patently unfit at any level one can imagine for the job he seeks. I base my assertions about Biden on what I have witnessed, albeit from a distance. I concluded long before he won the 2016 election that Trump’s professional experience and his personal proclivities render him unfit for public office.

I am going to hang with the president until he decides all by himself whether he wants to keep fighting for his job … and fighting for you and me.