Tag Archives: Donald Trump

crime news, legal news, local news, national news

Impeachment coming? Sure, bring it!

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Let’s assume for a moment that the political smart money is telling us the truth, that the next Congress is going to flip to Democratic control and that the House of Reps is going to launch an impeachment against Donald Trump.

We all have heard that Democrats might gain 30 seats on the Republicans who now control Congress. I can’t say whether the pundits think the 30-seat gain is at the top of their projection, at the bottom … or somewhere in the middle. If Trump continues on his slap-dash course it well could exceed the 30-seat turnover by a significant margin.

Is an impeachment necessary? I will allow my bias to peek through the haze and declare: Damn right it’s necessary! I will offer this caveat: I want Democrats to assure us that they can more than one thing at a time, that they can proceed with impeaching Trump and resume their constitutional role of making laws.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York is likely to be elected speaker and he ought to take a page from the book followed in Texas by then-Speaker Pete Laney. The West Texas cotton farmer said he always simply allowed “the will of the House” to have its way. And so it went during the years that Laney served as the Man of the House.

The will of the U.S. House should be allowed to play the hand it is dealt. If most members believe — as I do — that Trump has committed an impeachable offense or three, then it should act. It also should not allow the legislative process to get caught in a political vise that will clamp down around the White House.

We’ve all heard them say that lawmakers can “do more than one thing at a time.” Impeaching a president is serious business. So is legislating.

economic news

Fed boss becomes latest Trump target

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Jerome Powell is the new man of the hour, designated victim in Donald Trump’s campaign against those who disagree with him on matters that go way over the pointed head of the president of the United States.

Powell is the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the nation’s central bank that is charged with making fiscal policy based solely on economic evidence and trends. The Justice Department issued subpoenas this week to Powell about remarks he made during testimony before the Senate Banking Committee … except the subpoenas have nothing to do with Powell’s testimony.

Oh, no. They have everything to do with Trump wanting the Fed to reduce interest rates. Powell is pushing back, to which I say, “You go, Mr. Chairman!”

Powell insists that the Fed remain independent and free from political pressure. The Fed was created to be immune from the pressure of the moment. It must act on trends it identifies and helps the board of governors decide when or if to adjust interest rates … up or down!

Trump believes it’s time to reduce interest rates. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Jerome Powell is the fiscal expert here, not Trump, who is nothing more than a tinhorn politician seeking to score points with the hope of staving off what looks like an oncoming wipeout in the midterm election later this year.

Some experienced political hands are suggesting that Trump compiling impeachable offenses at a breathtaking rate. I believe abuse of presidential power fits nicely into what Trump is trying to do with Jerome Powell.

national news

Trump: consquential POTUS

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Donald Trump declared almost at the moment he became a politician that he intended to become a “consequential” president of the United States. Nearly one year into this second term, I am going to declare that he has become a president of consequence.

Bear with me as I seek to chronicle some of the consequences of his actions.

  • Trump has added more to the national debt that all of his predecessors combined.
  • The annual budget deficit now numbers in the trillions of dollars.
  • He is the second man to be elected to two non-consecutive terms as president.
  • Trump is the only president to be impeached twice by the U.S. House and, by golly, he is staring at the prospect of a third impeachment — or more — once the next Congress takes office a year from now. That’s all pretty consequential, don’t you think? There’s more.
  • He hired the world’s richest human being to oversee the destruction of several government programs, including USAID, the Affordable Care Act and is threatening to slash Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security payments.
  • Trump has taken aim at critics who have spoken the plain truth about following orders, ensuring that military personnel only are bound to follow lawful orders. He wants to demote one senator, a retired Navy captain, combat aviator, former astronaut and then subject him to a court martial for speaking that truth.
  • He has threatened to go to war with Venezuela, he wants to seize Greenland from Denmark and has talked openly about Canada becoming the 51st U.S. state.
  • And speaking of war, Trump is the first U.S. president to openly switch our alliance from a nation that was attacked by an aggressor state to the aggressor state. You want consquence? Trump’s got it in spades.

I won’t cheer any of these consequential acts. I will acknowledge, though, that Trump has delivered on his stated desire to be a consequential president.

We’ll be talking about Trump long after he’s gone. That’s consequential, too.

Uncategorized

Ohhh … the lack of humanity!

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Donald Trump’s lack of humanity, grace and forgiveness are on full display with every eruption of politically inspired violence that erupts in communities across this land of ours.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot a woman to death as she was fleeing a scene in her car. The jury is still out on whether the ICE officer committed a murderous act or whether he acted in self-defense. The video evidence suggests strongly the former.

The woman was the mother of three small children. She was present to protest ICE’s rounding up of residents for possible deportation. Minneapolis has been shaken to its muncipal core.

So, where is Trump? Has he weighed in with a comment expressing any sort of concern for the children of the woman whose death has left them as orphans? He hasn’t even offered a tepid platitude expressing regret over the incident.

One of the unwritten rules that falls on every president is to lend some level of comfort in times of tragedy, or duress, or tumult. Someone who gets shot to death by an agent of the government, it seems to me, is one of those tragic events that requires a president to step up and say something — anything! — that could lend a modicum of comfort to the nation.

He is silent while chief White House aides and at least two Cabinet officials have determined that the ICE officer was defending himself … against a woman who was driving away from him.

The current POTUS didn’t deliver. No, I am not surprised. I am still angered.

media news, national news

Change of heart on pledge

A few years ago — I cannot remember precisely when — I pledged to no longer make a resolution to begin the new year.

Why promise to do something that I didn’t expect to be able to do, or so I thought in the moment. Today I am taking back that pledge and declaring a new year resolution for 2026. I believe I can keep this one alive and functioning. I am pledging to use High Plains Blogger to make life as miserable as possible for Donald J. Trump, his administration of yes men and women and the MAGA crowd that remains loyal (for reasons that escape me) to the pretender in chief. I am acutely aware that my reach is somewhat limited. I don’t have a huge audience that reads my rants. I’ll start by asking those who do read them and who agree with my view that Trump is a threat to this country, that he is unfit for the office he occupies and he must be stopped … well, you can share those thoughts on your social media network of friends and acquaintances. Those of you who read this blog but who continue to support the dipshit in chief, you can react to my rants any way you see fit. It’s your call. I’ll be commenting throughout the year on issues that present themselves. My immediate aim is to flip the U.S. House from Republican to Democrat when the ballots are counted for the midterm election. One more word on this issue. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents knock on my door, I’ll have my birth certificate and passport handy to prove that I am an American patriot who has read the Constitution … and who understands the free speech liberty it grants for all citizens of this great country.
economic news, military news, national news

Trump: RINO in chief

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, the American Republican Party stood for principles the party deemed to be hard and fast … not to be trifled with.

Republicans opposed adding to the national debt. They opposed deficit spending each year on the federal budget. The GOP stood firm against “nation-building” wars overseas. Republicans stood with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in passing the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts of 1964 and 1965. The GOP saw the Soviet Union as a national enemy and committed to the destruction of the tyranny preached in the Kremlin.

Hmmm. Those days are gone. Likely forever. Never to be seen again.

Donald Trump is now what I call the Republican In Name Only in chief. He is leading a party that bears no resemblance to the party of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon.

I am trying to imagine President Reagan allowing the national debt to balloon to trillions of dollars. Or President Lincoln allowing the party to embrace white supremacists. Or President Nixon defending the USSR’s direct descendants, Russia, in disputes involving U.S. intelligence findings.

What we have now in charge in D.C., ladies and gents, is a party that has betrayed all those core values. It’s not just the president. He has GOP members of Congress, who are standing with him.

They all — not just Donald Trump — deserve our everlasting condemnation for the direction they have taken this great country.

International news

Words are failing me

Allow me this brief admission, which is that my meager command of English is failing me as I search for expressions to condemn the actions of the charlatan who sits in the Oval Office.

I am running out of ways to knee-cap Donald Trump’s efforts to disobey international law, to ignore the federal courts and to seize control of a sovereign government because its leader follows policies that Trump abhors.

Get this, kids. Now Trump appears to be ratcheting up the chatter associated with a possible takeover of Greenland, an Arctic island that exists as a territory of Denmark.

Greenland is no speck in the Arctic Ocean. It covers about 836,000 square miles, or about three times as much land mass as Texas. Someone will have to explain to me — in language I can understand — precisely why Trump would want Greenland. It’s covered in ice most of the year. Almost no human being lives there. But Trump seems to suggest he wants it. What the ever-lovin’ hell has POTUS been swilling?

The Danes aren’t going to surrender Greenland. Denmark, just like Venezuela, is a sovereign nation and it has held Greenland for several hundred years.

I cannot grasp whatever reason is rattling around Trump’s vacuous skull about why he wants Greenland. I am going to have to settle on a conclusion that Trump’s delusions of godhood and grandeur need to be reined in … right now!

military news

MAGA loses its original meaning

MAGA is an acronym that’s become a word, kind of like SCUBA, FUBAR, ZIP code and TEA Party … but it has morphed into a new meaning that is getting hammered beyond recognition by the current numbskull in chief.

MAGA means Make America Great Again, as if this nation has lapsed into non-greatness, which it hasn’t.

These days you hear MAGA minions say it means simply to put “America first” over other nations’ interest. What in the world. therefore, is up with the United States sending Army special forces into Caracas to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro? How in the world is that putting America first? Someone tell me, please.

So, we have Maduro and his wife in custody. They have been indicted on drug charges. They’ll stand trial. Any bets on whether they get convicted?

Donald Trump has violated international law by seizing a sovereign head of state and then vowing to “run” a sovereign nation until a reasonable transition can occur. The irony of the transition statement is too rich to ignore, given what he attemped to do on Jan. 6, 2021 by inciting the frontal attack on Congress as it sought to certify the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election … which Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, an effort to seize and sell oil from that nation’s rich reserves, is an affront to this nation. He hasn’t made America great in any form or fashion. He has committed this nation possibly to the kind of “endless war” he said he wanted to end.

When in this world is Congress to awaken to what so many of us are witnessing in real time, which is the fundamental usurping of congressional authority to declare war?

national news

Wanted: Basic human decency … please!

Of all the areas where Donald Trump is deficient in the only office he ever has sought and held, I have settled finally on the one aspect of this individual’s being I find most lacking.

Basic human decency!

Trump lacks any semblance of the kind of humanity we have grown to expect from the person sitting in the Oval Office of the White House. Trump has demonstrated his lack of decency in the most profound ways imaginable in the wake of the deaths of Rob and Michelle Reiner.

Instead of remaining silent or at least offering a boiler-plate response that offers good wishes to the loved ones of the acclaimed filmmaker and his wife, Trump exhibited a level of abject boorishness millions of us never have seen in a U.S. president. On top of that, he followed his Reiner response with a hideous reaction to the passing of the daughter of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Tatiana Schlossberg, who died of cancer just the other day.

This is the kind of thing too many Americans have grown to expect from Trump. He actually declared in that ghastly Truth Social message that Rob and Michelle Reiner died of what he called Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yep … that’s where it ended for Reiner who admittedly was a stern and ferocious critic of Trump.

Rather than leave the dispute in the dust where it belongs, Trump chose to rub the wound raw while the Reiners’ loved ones were mourning their horrific murders.

This is the kind of individual Americans elected not once, but twice, as president of the United States. What in the world does this say about us, not just about the moron chosen to lead the world’s most indispensable nation?

We are facing an opportunity this coming November to begin to right the ship of state by turning Congress over to the loyal opposition Democrats who stand an excellent chance of seizing back one of the three co-equal branches of government.

Maybe then we might see a return of basic human decency … in the Capitol Building.

national news

Year ends in frustration

I hereby declare that the final post on High Plains Blogger in 2025 will end with my hands thrown into the air accompanied by the sigh of frustration from an American patriot who still cannot grasp what has become of the country he loves more than life itself.

That would be me, of course.

The year that is drawing to a merciful close will give way soon to many new opportunities to correct what has gone so terribly wrong. I await 2026 with undying optimism that we’re going to snap out of it, we’ll come to our senses and we will begin charting the corrective course that will save us all.

Donald John Trump was elected in 2024 to another term as the White House gatekeeper. I am finding it difficult these days even to refer to him as president. I vowed after the 2016 election that I would decline to attach the word “President” directly in front of Trump’s name. I have been faithful to that pledge. I accept your congratulations.

Now that we’re one year into the second term, I cannot even refer to his second victory as a “re-election.” The dude did get his melon thumped in 2020 by President Biden and he debased the office even more by declaring his refusal to accept the result and then incited the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

The individual is a disgrace.

The year was spent hiring incompetent boobs to run multibillion-dollar government agencies. The more I think about it, the more logical it seems that the imbecile in chief would surround himself with agency heads who at some level make the man in charge seem smarter than he is. It really hasn’t worked.

What is the remedy? Midterm election. We’re going to elect the entire and House one-third of the Senate in November 2026. The notion that the House is likely to flip from R to D when the ballots are counted gives me hope that a competent House speaker will be able to steer that congressional chamber back to doing what we expect of it. The House will return to governing!

We also have to consider that a third Trump impeachment may occur. I don’t want that to happen. If it does, I want the House to produce proof that could persuade enough GOP House members that they have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump has violated his oath of loyalty to the Constitution.

The reconstruction of our democratic principles can begin in this new year. I will use this blog to do my tiny part to ensure the project gets completed.