Tag Archives: Joe Biden

national news, political news

Trump earns title of ‘loser’

One of Donald J. Trump’s favorite epithets appears to be “loser,” which he bestows on anyone he deems to be, um, well … not worthy of any description other than that one.

I want to hang the label round the flabby neck of the current POTUS, for he has assumed the title of loser in chief.

He keeps harping on an election he lost to Joe Biden. He has filed 60-some lawsuits and lost every one of them in various courts of law. Trump continues to tease us with the half-baked notion of running for a “fourth term” in the White House. Why four? He won the first race in 2016, claims to have won the second one in 2020, captured the presidency in 2024 and suggests the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution doesn’t apply to him … so he might run again. The amendment says he’s only able to win twice. He did so. At the end of the current term, he’s out. For keeps. Forever!

He backs candidates who win their Republican primaries. So, he can claim victories there. The test of success has come in general elections when his MAGA morons face real opposition. Then they lose. I am suggesting strongly they’ll keep losing throughout the 2026 midterm election season.

What does make the 47th POTUS? It makes him a loser. Pure and simple.

His legislative agenda — such as it is — is dead. He’s heading for certain impeachment once Democrats reclaim control of the House of Reps. Then it will fall on the Senate to determine if he stays in office. If the GOP keeps control of the Senate, he might hold on until the end of his term. If not, well, then the fun really begins.

The loser in chief’s legacy will be cast in stone.

local news, national news, political news

Nationwide electoral theft? Impossible!

Let’s visit briefly — shall we? — Donald Trump’s continual harping about the 2020 presidential election and how the result, a victory by Joe Biden over Trump, was an act of electoral theft.

It didn’t happen. Here’s how I know that to be so.

To suggest that a federal election was orchestrated to produce a winner ignores this undeniable fact, which is that our elections are conducted by individual states. Each state operates independently from other states. They all have their own system of counting ballots. They abide by rules set by their legislatures, and signed into law by governors.

Collin County, Texas, where I have lived for the past seven years, has a perfectly fine election system. It’s modern, it’s secure, and it’s free of the kind of corruption that Trump seems to believe exists in counties throughout the nation. He’s full of mule dookey.

The county’s election system is run by Stacey Kemp, a competent county clerk who oversees a staff of deputy clerks who are committed to upholding the oath they all take to defend and protect the Consitution of the United States.

Trump, though, sees this issue as a national matter. Indeed, he is looking for crimes that simply cannot exist in our electoral system.

I also should point out that our state electoral systems are not connected to the Internet, which Trump alleges is a prime source of the shenanigans he says occurs.

The POTUS went on the air the other night to relitigate a six-year-old gripe that has been tossed out in more than 60 lawsuits filed in courts from coast to coast. Let me also note here that many of the federal judges who have ruled against Trump have been nominated for their seats by Donald Trump … which tells me quite clearly that these men and women understand the law far more clearly than the dimwit who sits in the Oval Office.

medical news

Candidates’ health is of major concern

I can’t claim this as an original thought, because I am stealing it from a friend of mine, but candidates’ health must become a major issue in determining their fitness for a job.

We’ve had too many presidents of the United States taking office while hiding serious illness. My friend notes that President Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke during his second term, President Cleveland suffered from cancer, President Franklin Roosevelt sought to conceal his wheelchair, President Kennedy suffered from Addison’s disease.

All those ailments were serious enough to consider even now, so many years after these men served in the highest office in the land. Indeed, FDR won election to a fourth term in 1944 while suffering from an ailment that would kill him a month after taking office in 1945. He was virtually a dead man when he planned the final assault on the Axis Powers near the end of World War II.

We had those phony questions about President Biden’s mental acuity during his term in office. Leading that charade was former White House physician and current Texas Panhandle congressman and loudmouth Ronny Jackson.

But my point is that a candidate’s health must be front and center on the issue to be discussed and examined. The candidates ought to be required to present physicians statements as to their physical well-being … as well as their mental alertness. And they should be prepared to refute any claims of ill health if they arise during the campaign.

national news

Sen. Graham is gone, but damage is done

I wish I could speak well of Sen. Lindsey Graham now that he’s dead … but the hard truth is that I cannot in good conscience speak of him without tossing out a qualifier or two.

Graham was a South Carolina Republican who became one of Donald Trump’s fiercest allies in the Senate. And this was after he portrayed himself as one of Trump’s most ferocious critics. It makes me wonder: Which Lindsey Graham is the real thing and which one is the phony baloney fraud.

I will say this about Graham: He bucked Trump by becoming a close friend of Ukraine President Volodymr Zellensky, who had drawn Trump’s wrath because he had the temerity to stand up to Russian strongman/goon/thug Vladimir Putin’s illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. OK, that’s one positive thing.

Graham, though, became a shill for Trump, even after declaring “I’m out” when it came to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the capital.

Graham also maintained close friendships with politicians on the other side. He was dear friends with former President Joe Biden and the late Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Graham once declared that Biden was the finest man ever knew in politics. Then he would remain silent as Trump trashed Biden repeatedly. What gives with that?

So, Lindsey Graham is gone. History will record that he was a complicated man driven by complex motives.

Still, I will wish him a peaceful rest in eternity.

national news

Come clean, old timer

Mitch McConnell has a few million “bosses” in Kentucky who have every right to know whether he’s able to represent their interests in the U.S. Senate.

McConnell, who is more than 80 years of age, is hospitalized with an undisclosed illness. He’s been out of action for several weeks. His family isn’t talking about his condition. There actually has been some discussion that he might have died. I don’t think that’s the case.

But this matter brings to mind the issue of elderly men and women in public office and whether they are able to serve the public they were elected to represent. McConnell, the former Republican leader of the Senate, once was a formidable political figure who controlled legislative flow.

This matter spreads across party lines. You’ll recall how the late Diane Feinstein, a California Democrat, missed many months of votes in the Senate. She died from her ailments. Then we have the case of President Biden, who was running for re-election in 2024 when he stumbled badly during a debate with Donald Trump. Questions arose about the president’s mental acuity. Biden said he had all the snap he needed to govern, but he pulled out of his re-election effort.

McConnell’s condition needs to be dealt with openly by the senator. If he is incapable of speaking for himself, his bosses in Kentucky need to know. He is drawing a healthy six-figure salary to make decisions on behalf of the people of his state.

This matter won’t go away … until Mitch McConnell comes clean.

national news

Obama center is now open!

Barack H. Obama today opened his presidential library, museum and educational center in Chicago … and it seems to carry an extra layer of significance.

It’s likely not the contents within this center, but rather the atmospherics surrounding its opening.

The Obamas — Barack and former first lady Michelle — invited three former presidents and their wives to the event. They stood proudly with the 44th president. They were President Bill and Hillary Clinton, President George and Laura Bush and President Joe and Jill Biden. And, yes, there was a conspicuous absence. There was no sign of Donald and Melania Trump.

Therein lies the atmospherics that tend to give this presidential museum opening its special significance.

Donald Trump, through his hideous conduct over the course of more than a term in office, has disqualified himself from event of such joy and accomplishment. Now we have the war he started with Iran, which is about to end (in a fashion) and the belief by many Republican pols and leaders that this country got taken to the cleaners. Think for a moment about this notion: Trump started a war, then backed away from it without gaining anything from the stated goals Donald Trump sought when he started dropping bombs and firing missiles.

Trump’s absence from this joyous event should serve notice to him — not that he’ll pay a shred of attention — that the world is going to function without him. He is becoming more of a lame duck every single day he remains in office.

national news, political news

How’d we go from best to worst?

This point deserves to be repeated, so … therefore I will do so.

I will go to the Great Beyond never understanding how the American voting public could stop insisting on selecting the best among us for high office and settle for the worst among us.

Our values have been turned on their ears. We no longer care if our president is a serial philanderer, or that he is a convicted felon, lacks any semblance of a moral compass, or mocks war heroes, disabled Americans.

We set aside his lies as long as he tells us what we want to hear.

I am not going to give up on the idea that our quest for the best of us is a lost cause. It can return. Indeed, it did briefly with the election in 2020 of President Biden. Then he was gone. We got the nimrod he defeated in 2020 back for a second term after he pledged in plain English that his next term would be run with a vengeance.

Many of us said, “Hey, that’s OK! As long as he delivers the goods.” Donald Trump hasn’t delivered a damn thing!

national news

Waiting for ‘restoration’

Joe Biden’s presidency is going to be measured favorably, I believe, by those who earn a living making such judgments. President Biden’s single term likely won’t be held up against the likes of those who won re-election, but a single word does come to mind when I ponder Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office.

The term is “restorative.” Biden was able during his four years in office to restore much of what we came to expect in our head of state, head of government and commander in chief. Biden respects and honors the trappings of the office. He inherited an office in 2021 that had been all but ruined by the term of Donald J. Trump.

I want another restorative presidency to take hold in the 2028 election. Trump will be gone … thankfully.

One of the key tasks of the next president will be to return the decorum and dignity that the U.S. presidency deserves. Such a restoration can come from any one of the individuals in both parties who will seek the office in a couple of years. It might be that Joe Biden, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, is the godfather of D.C. decorum. He has been at or near the center of power for more than five decades.

The good news of the 2028 election includes he guarantee that Donald Trump will be gone. The bad news will be that the MAGA movement he created will take some to disappear. I sense along with others that the MAGA cabal is beginning to fall apart. I have noted on this blog many times that America doesn’t need to be “made great again.” The U.S. of A. has been great all along.

May the next president of the United States restore the dignity Americans deserve in their highest elected office. And may the next president represent the very best of us, not the worst of us.

Uncategorized

‘Weaponization’ resumes

FBI Director Kash Patel lacks the gene that compels him to ponder the hypocrisy of his actions and statements.

Why else would he choose to launch a criminal probe into former CIA Director John Brennan’s actions relating to the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019?

The same can be said of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who’s going after many top officials who got swept up in Trump’s first impeachment.

These two people are doing precisely what they have accused the Biden administration of doing … and wrongly, I should add. They are using national security assets to seek revenge against Donald Trump’s foes and they have said all along that President Biden did the same thing to Trump’s foes. There stands no greater example of weaponizing the Justice Department than what we’re seeing unfold in real time.

It is striking in the extreme to realize how Trump has surrounded himself with hypocrites. Indeed, they are mirror images of the POTUS himself.

He wanted loyalty among his top advisors, the “best people”? He got loyalty, all right. The cost to our cherished American system is horrific.

economic news, Joe Biden

Trying to un-boggle my mind

My mind is in a constant state of bogglement as I watch Donald J. Trump try to blunder his way through the maelstrom he keeps creating.

I am left with a question that has no obvious answer: How does this individual look himself in the mirror and pass all this chaos, confusion and catastrophe off as someone else’s problems that he inherited upon being elected to a second term as POTUS?

The economy was rocking along under President Biden’s firm hand. Now it’s on its heels, thanks to Trump.

The nation was at peace (more or less) with the rest of the world. Then Trump goes to war with Iran.

Fuel prices were inching down under Biden. Now they’re spiraling into deep space.

Inflation was in check under Biden. Today, well … enough said about that.

And still, Trump’s delusion continues to dictate what flies forth from his yammering puss. Ah, but good news can be found if we look for it. It rests with a public that is seeing through the lies, the deception, the hypocrisy.

Donald Trump, to quote former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — and one-time Trumpkin — is committing political suicide. Christie’s advice to the rest of us? Leave the POTUS the hell alone!