Tag Archives: Joe Biden

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.

‘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.

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!

Listen to your predecessors, Donald!

Barack H. Obama and Joseph R. Biden have been laying waste to Donald Trump’s performance in the office they once held … and with ample reason.

They both left legacies worth cherishing and emulating. Trump has called them two of the worst presidents in U.S. history. I beg to differ. I consider them both two of the best men to serve as commander in chief and head of state.

Obama has been particularly eloquent in his assessment of Trump. He chastises the POTUS for feigning toughness by being “rude to people” and denigrating others. A third Democratic former president, Bill Clinton, has been a bit quieter than his successors. Clinton did speak about some of the subjects he covered in a closed-door congressional committee hearing. It is clear that Clinton thinks next to nothing about the mess that Donald Trump has concocted.

The fourth living ex-president, George W. Bush, has been relatively quiet. He once told a TV talk show host, Ellen Degeneres, that he wouldn’t “be chirping” his criticism of presidents who follow him. He said that presidents hear enough criticism during the normal flow of business during the work week. He said a president needs to be strong to lead this massive, diverse and sophisticated nation. Criticism only weakens that person.

In a way, I kind of prefer the George Bush method. Sure, he can think ill thoughts of Trump. He needs not express those thoughts out loud. It’s always been understood that presidents walk away not just from the residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. They also turn their back on the debates that rage on.

Those who speak out, though, have wisdom to back them up. If only Trump would listen and heed them.

Trump’s damage will last longer than the POTUS

Donald Trump’s time in the Oval Office has an end date, and I am grateful for that deadline.

However, the damage Trump has done — and is doing — is likely to last longer than his time in office. That consequence saddens me to no end. The damage is being done to the public perception of our electoral process.

He has been hammering at the credibility of that process since he lost his re-election bid during the 2020 election. Joe Biden beat his sorry behind but Trump never accepted the beating he took. His constant yammering about electoral credibility has sown plenty of doubt among too many Americans.

I believe none of the nonsense that Trump has fomented since 2020. Too many state legislatures, though, are controlled by Republicans and they have acted to make voting an arduous task for many citizens. They call it “voter suppression” and it appears to be working.

I hear from friends and aquaintances in North Texas about the doubt they say lingers over the election process. I have heard too many of them say something like “if it counts” when describing the act of voting. My answer always is, “Yes … it counts!”

The lasting damage to the public’s perception of our cherished voting process is troubling in the extreme and it serves as a damning testament to the harm committed to our public service by an imbecile who has no understanding or appreciation of the work done to further our democratic process.

Border crisis need not produce this solution

Critics of this blog have long accused its author — that would be me — of being a “yes man” to all policies Democratic and a “hatchet man” to ideas that come from Republicans.

Wrong! As in really wrong!

I was the rare President Biden supporter who said long ago that the president needed to call the situation along our southern border what I believed it was: a crisis. He refused to do so. Instead, the president masked the situation in gauzy terms meant to disguise the reality along our southern flank, which was that people were continuing to seek refuge in the “land of opportunity, freedom and good fortune.”

Donald Trump came along and then sicced the Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons on our cities and border towns. The result of their heavy hand has made us even less safe. I want, therefore, to declare that Trump’s answer to the crisis is the wrong answer.

If the current POTUS had an ounce of compassion coursing through his overfed body he would have told the ICE agents to use extreme discernment in rooting out the bad guys. He didn’t. The ICE goons have picked up on the message from the top, which is that it’s OK to roust everyone, to beat many of them to within an inch of their lives, to separate children from their parents.

I like quoting one of my favorite philosophers, who happens to be fictional character on a once-popular TV show. You remember Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick who used to tell the world that “Two wrongs don’t make it right.”

Tonto is correct. It was wrong for President Biden to avoid declaring the southern border mess a “crisis.” It is wrong for Donald Trump to hire heavily armed and masked thugs to beat the living daylights out of U.S. citizens while searching for criminals.

It no longer matters what we call the border mess. We can fix the second problem and force ICE to rethink the way it enforces the law.

Trump: Proof that ‘anyone can get elected’

Surely you recall that when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008 that he proclaimed that “nowhere can my story be told.”

He intended to remind us that that a young man with a “funny name,” with parents of different races, his being raised by his mother as a single parent could be elected president. Millions of rejoiced at the prospect that, yes, “anyone can get elected” to the nation’s highest office.

Well, let’s fast-forward to 2024. Donald Trump was running for a second term as POTUS. Joe Biden defeated him in 2020. Yet there he stood, nominated by a political party that is willing to give him a pass on all his transgressions.

  • He had been impeached twice during his first term. The second time was for inciting the horrific assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 that sought to overturn the 2020 election result.
  • Trump had been convicted on 34 felony counts associated with mistreatment of women.
  • His business exploits have been exposed as failures.
  • He has been shown to be a pathological liar who can’t tell the truth under any circumstance.
  • Trump has been exhibiting signs of mental decline.

I hasten to add that the notion that “anyone can get elected” has taken on a different tone than what we relished when Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

“Anyone” now means a convicted felon, a serial philanderer, a liar, an insurrectionist.

Pretty damn ugly … y’know?

MAGA festers in ignorance

The ignorance of the morons who comprise many of Donald Trump’s MAGA base continues to astonish me in ways I never thought possible.

New York City voters elected a Muslim, a democratic socialist as its next mayor. What was the reaction among some of the MAGA cultists who heard this news?

One of them, a member of Congress, said out loud that he wants Zohair Mamdani deported. Yep. He wants to banish him to the country of his birth. I believe it’s Sudan.

One little problem with that idiotic notion. Mamdani has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since he was boy. You can’t deport a U.S. citizen. Good grief, the man wants to live in the United States. He wants to pay his taxes here. He wants to educate his children here. He wants to govern the nation’s largest, most sophisticated, most cosmopolitan city.

This MAGA idiocy reminds of when Nikki Haley, the Republican governor South Carolina, agreed to take down the Confederate flags in her state, drawing calls for her deportation. Wait! She was born in South Carolina to parents of Indian descent. I guess her parentage made the all-American governor a deportation target.

You cannot negotiate with a political movement that comprises so many of these morons!

Is Trump in decline?

The headline on top of this blog post demands an immediate answer … I have no clue as to whether Donald J. Trump is suffering any loss of mental acuity.

My reluctance to declare Trump to be off his rocker is more complicated than it seems. Consider the four years when Joe Biden was president of the United States. Critics asserted without a hint of ambiguity that they were certain the 46th president’s butter had slipped off its noodle. Did they have access to medical exams? Had they seen any test results? Were they fluent in body language that often gives away symptoms of mental decline?

No, no and no. Yet they persisted. I resisted the urge to join them. Why? For starters, I am a Joe Biden supporter. Second, I had no access to medical records. Third, I was not qualified to make any assertions about a high-profile politician’s mental fitness.

I am going to apply all those standards to Biden’s immediate successor.

Let me be clear on key point: I am likely to comment on the huge verbal gaffes that appear to be happening with stunning frequency. I cannot in good conscience, though, declare that Donald Trump needs a one-way ticket to the Funny Farm. Still, he does make me scratch my head when he said he ended a war between Azerbaijan and Albania.

Fair is fair. In fairness to the White House incumbent, I’ll let others talk among themselves about whether he belongs in the loony bin. I won’t join them.

Wishing POTUS well carries self interest

If we’re honest with ourselves, and most Americans fall into that category, we would carry a significant self-interest load while wishing the president of the United States success as he seeks to lead the country.

Where am I going with this? Here it comes.

I want Donald Trump to succeed in the office he will occupy for the next three years and some. I want him to succeed — particularly on economic issues — because it will have a direct impact more than likely on my retirement.

I’m long in the tooth, heading soon for my 76th birthday. I am semi-retired, working part time as a freelance reporter for a group of weekly newspapers in Collin County, Texas, where I have lived for six years. I also am drawing my retirement income from Social Security.

I have entrusted my retirement account to the care of a wise investment counselor who has taken good care of me, helped in large part by the performance of the stock market, which reacts almost daily to the whims of the president, be he a Democrat or Republican. The market did well during the terms of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but my support for their success went far beyond self-interest motivations.

So, when I declare my good wishes on the current POTUS, I do so with more than a twinge of self-interest. I detest the man for who he is, what he did before being elected to the only public office he ever has sought, for the lives he has destroyed, for the lies he has told, for his absolute lack of character, empathy and compassion.

I do wish him success as he seeks to manage the nation’s economic policy. It’s not because I have faith that his decisions will fatten my retirement investments … but because if he makes the right call — somehow! — good fortune will come my way.