Tag Archives: Flyover Country

No, Mr. POTUS, economy doesn’t hinge on your re-election

Mr. President, you need to stop the braggadocio. As in right now!

I know you don’t heed this advice, but I have to get it off my chest.

You have declared that the fate and future of our nation’s economic well-being depends on your re-election. I read where you tweeted some nonsense about how the market will crash in unprecedented ways if you lose the election next year.

C’mon! Knock it off! If the economy craters it will do so on the basis of a lot of factors that have nothing to do with your re-election. It might have everything to do with the idiotic policies you seek to enact. Starting with those tariffs on imported goods from Mexico.

Your delusion is sounding more like desperation, if you want my humble view of it.

You’ve boasted about having that “big brain,” about how you know the “best words,” how you cut the “best deals,” how you surround yourself with the “best people” and how you are a “stable genius” who attended the “best schools” in human history.

If you were as great and glorious as you say you are, why do so many of us out here — even in Flyover Country — want to see you walk out of the Oval Office for the final time?

Yeah, I know. You have your supporters. God bless ’em. They see things differently than I do, or the way most Americans apparently do.

Just cool it with the bragging and self-aggrandizement. You work for us, Mr. President. Let us decide how you are doing. I am one of your bosses who wants you replaced.

Just remember: Trump actually won in 2016

It is useful to put a few things in perspective as we watch the 2018 midterm election campaign reach its merciful conclusion.

The “Blue Wave” that everyone is saying will happen well might develop. A lot of Republican-held seats in the House of Representatives are going to flip to Democratic control. I am willing to buy into that notion. What I am not yet certain about is whether there will be enough of a flip to hand control of the lower chamber to the Democrats.

Yeah, I know. All the pundits, experts, prognosticators and talking heads say the wave will sweep the GOP out of control of the House. Democrats will take the gavel for the first time since 2011, they say.

Sure. I hope so. I do not like the direction that Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are taking the country. I want at least one congressional chamber to belong to the other party.

The Senate remains even more iffy for Democrats.

I had some hope that Beto O’Rourke was going to win a Senate seat in Texas from Ted Cruz. My throbbing trick knee tells me it ain’t gonna happen. It’ll be close, or so they say. I’m not predicting anything, mind you. My predicting days are over. They should have ended long before the 2016 presidential election.

Which brings me to the final point.

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 upset all the predictors’ expectations. How in the name of Electoral College victory he did it remains a bit of a mystery to me. I do recognize that he tapped into some wellspring of resentment that had been gathering in voters’ hearts. He talked their language. He spoke directly to them.

Not to me. I am just a single voter sitting out here in Flyover Country/Trump Land.

But I am going to recognize that for a first-time politician — remember that Trump never campaigned for a single public office before seeking the presidency — Trump is beginning to master the art of revving up his base. Moreover, he has hijacked the heart and soul of a once-great political party and turned it into something no one recognizes as the actual Republican Party.

It’s a sickening development. However, it’s real. And it gives me pause as the midterm campaign staggers to its finish.

I am hoping for the best. I won’t fear for the worst. I just believe the country might have to settle for something in between. What should be a Democratic tsunami could become something less formidable.

Why? Because the Republicans are led by a demagogue who has persuaded them that it’s somehow OK to have a president who doesn’t know what the hell he is doing.

Happy to make this guy laugh

It should surprise no one that High Plains Blogger isn’t universally loved, admired, worshiped, glorified … whatever.

It has its critics. I heard from one of them this week. He lives in Amarillo, Texas. He is a Trumpkin/Trumpster/Trump-o-file.

He doesn’t like my continual barrage that this blog keeps leveling at the president of the United States, Donald John Trump Sr.. I once told him he was free to read others’ blogs, that he wasn’t obligated to read High Plains Blogger.

He acknowledged that and said he reads High Plains Blogger for the “humor” it provides.

Great! I am happy to put smiles on readers’ faces. I don’t know if he’s grinning when he reads my spewage.

This is no surprise, either: I have no intention of relenting on my criticism of the president. It goes with the territory. It goes with this blog’s territory … and … it goes with the president’s territory, too.

Except that the 45th president of the United States doesn’t like reading criticism, not that he sees these blog posts. I doubt he does. I’m just a little ol’ blogger out here in Flyover Country, far beyond the Beltway. Then again, maybe someone on his staff clips this stuff for him.

I once pledged to write positive blog posts when the president deserves them. I have done so, although I admit the positive musings have been few compared to the negativity that comes from High Plains Blogger as it pertains to Donald Trump.

I suppose I should lay down the predicate here and now for all who read this blog. I cannot in good faith demand that you read this blog if you disagree with yours truly’s world view.

I am glad that you do. I am glad that the fellow with whom I am vaguely acquainted does, too, even if it only makes him laugh.

What is POTUS trying to hide?

I keep circling back to this question regarding “the Russia thing,” the investigation into whether the Donald Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who meddled in our 2016 election.

If Donald J. Trump is innocent of the allegations that have been leveled against him and his team, why is he angry at U.S. senators for not doing enough to “protect” him from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of legal eagles?

The president reportedly is steamed at congressional Republicans who won’t rush to his defense. He is angry about efforts to protect Mueller from any presidential effort to get rid of him. One Republican senator, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, is defending pending legislation aimed at shielding Mueller from Trump’s vengeance.

If the president is innocent, if he has done not a single thing wrong, then why is he acting like someone with something to hide?

Hey, I have no inside info here. I’m just watching all this drama from the peanut gallery in Flyover Country.

That gnawing in my gut is beginning to cause some rumbles of discomfort. Donald Trump is working pretty damn hard to discredit everyone seeking to learn the truth.

My sense simply is this: If the truth is as Donald Trump says it is, then let the special counsel do his job, and let him come up empty.

Trumpcare in trouble … put on hold

Trumpcare is in trouble. There’s no way to spin this any differently.

Nine Senate Republicans are now on the record that they oppose their party leadership’s version of the alternative to the Affordable Care Act. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is as adept at tea-leaf reading as anyone in Washington, delayed the vote on the GOP plan until after the Fourth of July recess.

I live out here in Flyover Country, in the heart of Trump Land, where the president polled something like 80 percent over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

But my gut tells me that rank-and-file Trumpkins are none too happy about what the GOP Senate leadership has come up with.

We’ve got a lot of folks out here who depend on Medicaid to cover the cost of medical care. The GOP plan guts Medicaid. A lot of those same folks voted for Donald J. Trump on his promise that he wouldn’t touch Medicaid, or Medicare, and would ensure a better, cheaper, more efficient health insurance plan than the one provided by the ACA. He isn’t delivering the goods, based on what the House of Representatives has approved and what’s on the table in the Senate.

Republicans can afford to lose just two votes in order to approve a Senate version of Trumpcare. They hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate; two “no” votes means Vice President Pence casts the tie-breaking vote to approve Trumpcare.

McConnell said today that Democrats have no intention of working with Republicans to craft an ACA replacement. Really!

How about this, Mr. Majority Leader? How about agreeing to preserve the good aspects of the ACA and work to improve those elements that need work? I’ve heard Democrats say they would be willing to with Republicans to mend the ACA. One of them happened to be the former president, Barack H. Obama, who has said repeatedly that if Republicans can improve the ACA he’d be willing to work with them.

Obama is out of office now. Republicans are in complete charge. They control Congress and the White House. They had eight years to come up with a reasonable alternative to the ACA. They dickered, dawdled and dissed the Democrats for that entire time and then came up with a plan that cannot please enough Republicans to make it law.

Cue music. The dance goes on.