Tag Archives: POTUS

local news, media news

Who gets the next insult?

Do you remember a time when you cast your eyes on the president of the United States? You felt good about whom you were seeing … is that right?

I want that feeling to return to me. Honest. I do!

I also remember expecting the president to be better than the people he leads. These days? We’re getting much worse. It comes in the form of an insult to the person asking the question. He or she is not a messenger for the “worst people” of the media world.

These are just a few of the qualities I want in the next POTUS.

I used to believe we produced the best among us at election time. I have been profoundly disappointed and saddened by the results of two of the past three election cycles. In 2016, we elected a guy through a fluke in our system that enables a candidate to win with fewer votes than his opponent. We fired that candidate in 2020 … only to bring him back four years later after swallowing a gut full of lies and promises he made.

And it has gotten worse the second time.

Don’t label me a “snowflake.” I have seen my share of scoundrels over many years covering these events.

The current POTUS, I have to concede, is the worst among them.

Donald Trump, International news

Who gets the next insult?

Do you remember a time when you cast your eyes on the president of the United States? You felt good about whom you were seeing … is that right?

I want that feeling to return to me. Honest. I do!

I also remember expecting the president to be better than the people he leads. These days? We’re getting much worse. It comes in the form of an insult to the person asking the question. He or she is not a messenger for the “worst people” of the media world.

These are just a few of the qualities I want in the next POTUS.

I used to believe we produced the best among us at election time. I have been profoundly disappointed and saddened by the results of two of the past three election cycles. In 2016, we elected a guy through a fluke in our system that enables a candidate to win with fewer votes than his opponent. We fired that candidate in 2020 … only to bring him back four years later after swallowing a gut full of lies and promises he made.

And it has gotten worse the second time.

Don’t label me a “snowflake.” I have seen my share of scoundrels over many years covering these events.

The current POTUS, I have to concede, is the worst among them.

national news

Time to wish for a brighter future

Donald J. Trump has worn this old man out. I am pooped, man. All the negativity I can muster has failed the move any needle in determining whether POTUS 47 has heard me, let alone taken any steps to follow the advice I have laid out for him.

So … with that as a predicate, I am announcing a new tactic in my ongoing campaign to get through the POTUS’s thick, vacuous skull. I am going to post what I wish in a future president of the United States.

You probably can guess that one of my goals will be seek a kinder, gentler administration. This bullying, lying, hostile approach hasn’t worked. It hasn’t produced a form of governance that works for the nation. It hasn’t given this blogger an opening through which I can appeal to whatever semblance that might exist within what passes for a heart in the POTUS.

I want a president who knows how to govern. I want someone who is faithful to the sacred oath he or she will take on inauguration. I want a president who understands working with a team around him or her. I want a president who will listen and heed dissent. For that matter, I want a president who will honor dissent as an essential element of how to govern with the limitations of a democratic republic. I want to elect someone who won’t demonize critics as “the enemy within.”

Over the course of next several months I intend to touch on those topics. I intend to relate the future blog topics to probable idiocy we will see from Trump. I won’t spend much energy criticism the incumbent,  but will look forward to what I hope the future brings that will address those concerns of the moment.

I hope you’ll join me. See ya down the road.

national news

Playtime for POTUS about to end

From my seat in Flyover Country, it looks as though Donald Trump’s recess is about to end and we’ll be returning soon to the very issues that are driving in him out of his vacuous skull.

We’ve had our attention ripped away by the Artemis II mission. Major League Baseball began its season. The NBA playoffs have begun. Rory McIlroy has just won his second straight Masters green jacket.

But wait. We have those Epstein files lurking. The Iran war is still blazing. Inflation is out of control. The POTUS makes less sense every time he opens his yapper.

What’s next? Beats the stuffing out of me. I am going to enjoy watching Donald Trump writhe and wriggle as he seeks an escape strategy from the myriad crises are gripping the office.

I have enjoyed the break from the daily dosage of D.C. rubbish. Gotta get back, I reckon, to paying attention to the issues that threaten our democracy. I remain confident our Constitution will withstand this assault.

However, I am far less comfortable making that assertion.

media news

No more bitching about Trump’s behavior

Once, a long time ago, when my sons were teenagers, I pledged to them I wouldn’t offer them unsolicited advice. I made the declaration for two reasons.

One was that I was tired of repeating myself, as I would tell them the same thing over and over; it did no good. Second, I said that if they wanted advice they would have to ask for it and if I gave it I wanted them to take my advice seriously and act on it.

I have more or less found myself in the same position these days with the president of the United States. I am on the verge of declaring I am finished complaining about his boorish behavior. Two reasons stand out.

One is that he is unlikely to read the comments of a chump blogger in North Texas who has been saying for more than a decade that Donald Trump is unfit to be POTUS. He is unfit morally, temperamentally, and experience-wise. What’s the point? Second, even if he were to read my blog posts, he is highly unlikely to act on anything I have to say.

I more than likely have said more than I need to say about Trump’s hideous reaction to the death of former FBI director Robert Mueller. I likely also have repeated myself a bit. What’s the point, therefore, in stating the obvious about Donald Trump. Most of us know he’s a slug, that he lacks humanity.

I suppose I’ll have to concentrate on the POTUS’s deeds. Or his misdeeds … you know?

Then again, someone without a scintilla of shame won’t be moved by anything anyone would say about the actions he takes.

International news

Clown show has gotten serious

Well, kids … the Donald John Trump clown show has crossed a key threshold that separates the ridiculous from the tragic.

American service personnel have died because the commander in chief decided to launch a war seemingly for no apparent reason. Families have been wounded permanently with a hole in their hearts that cannot be repaired and yet the POTUS still calls their mission an “excursion” that he’s conducting “for the fun of it.”

Iran has hit back hard against the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes aimed at military targets. The Iranians are firing rockets and drones at U.S. bases and Israeli neighborhoods. Trump says he’ll know when to stop bombing when he feels it “in my bones.” What the hell … ?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continues to demonstrate an appalling lack of sobriety when talking to us about the war. He keeps yapping and yammering as if he’s still a weekend right-wing TV talk show host, which is what he was doing when Trump tapped him to lead the world’s premier military force.

The two of them, Trump and Hegseth, keep bellowing about the success of our military operation. Make no mistake, our warriors have performed magnificently. I join the POTUS and the defense boss in praising their work. However, the cost of success is becoming more grave every day. Men and women are dying. Families are grieving. The public has no stomach for this war, which Trump vowed he never would pursue were he elected POTUS in 2024.

Joe Kent once led the nation’s counterterrorism effort until he quit this week, citing the absence of any “imminent treat” from Iran. Trump’s response was to dismiss Kent as an afterthought. Good grief! Trump appointed this fellow to the critical office.

Here we are: We’ve gone to war against a sworn enemy of the United States; we have no stated reason for it; we have heard of no exit strategy; we don’t know what will happen when we stop the bombardment; and men and women have died while carrying out a mission with no end in sight.

Do you feel safer today than we were before we started this war? Neither do I.

national news

Boycott still standing

I am feeling the need to offer readers of High Plains Blogger a brief update on one of the boycotts I announced the time Donald Trump became POTUS in January 2017.

Furthermore, I should acknowledge that the boycott has seen some strain and I have been tempted to forgo it when I saw him acting (more or less) presidential.

The boycott was to never attach the word “President” directly in front of Donald Trump’s name. I don’t consider him to be my president. Indeed, he acts as though he doesn’t give a Texas ruby red damn about me, my politics, my beliefs. Indeed, he seems to govern as if the only the people who matter to him are those who voted for him.

I ain’t one of them.

I am not alone in that view. I heard a U.S. senator grilling a Trump Cabinet official and he referred to Trump to the official as “your president.” There you have it. I am not the only American patriot who believes Trump doesn’t care to be president for all Americans.

There have been times when I have agreed with Trump. Those times occasionally have caused me to rethink for just a fleeting moment whether I should maintain that boycott. The moment flashes before me and then disappears, usually when Trump says something so ridiculously unpresidential … which he does with flair and panache.

I have begun watching TV news, but only sparingly. It’s usually during prime time. During the day? Nope. TV stays off most days.

I don’t like refusing to refer to Donald Trump with the title to which he was elected. My conscience tugs hard at me when I start to teeter. My best guess is that the boycott will stay put until the day Trump heads for the door from the White House for the final time.

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Wackiness keeps building

Our fragile world is getting wackier by the day, week, month or whatever measurement of time you choose to identify.

For instance, I saw a poll this weekend — and I believe it’s a reputable one — that said 41% of Americans approve of the job Donald J. Trump is doing as he pretends to run the country. OK, you’ll know by that previous statement that I am not one of the 41 percenters. Those who oppose Trump number in the mid-50s.

Yes, 41% of Americans would still vote for Trump, I presume, even as his retribution tour in his second term as POTUS picks up steam. You’ll recall that he telegraphed that punch during the 2024 campaign when he said he would be the “revenge” and “your retribution” were he elected president.

He has delivered … and then some.

It absolutely astounds me that the dipshit in chief continues to reap the support of 41% of those surveyed. I have been a “never Trumper” since before he entered the political arena in the summer of 2015. He and Melania rode down the escalator and the candidate then announced his intention to ban travelers from Muslim countries from entering the United States and said Mexico is sending rapists, murderers, thieves, drug dealers and sex traffickers to this country.

He’s out of control. He is off his well-coiffed rocker. He is as unfit — maybe more so — to be POTUS as he ever has been. That is just my view. He apparently appeals to other Americans who have swallowed the swill he offers promising them things he cannot possibly do … you know, things like lowering the price of food, ending a savage war in Ukraine and producing a health insurance plan that actually works.

Dude is a con artist.

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

Ex-POTUSes united in opposition to current guy

We have four living former presidents of the United States, three Democrats and one Republican.

The Democrats all have spoken out loudly and clearly against the policies pitched by the incumbent, a Republican. The current GOP former president hasn’t spoken lately, but we all know that he cannot stomach Donald Trump.

Why is this important? It means that the ex-presidents are forgoing the custom of not speaking ill of their successor. They usually pretend to stand united behind the incumbent. The gloves are off. Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden all have spoken of the destruction that Trump has brought to the economy, to our international alliances and to our national security. President Bush has made his feelings known over the years about Trump, particularly as Trump has criticized the “Thousand Points of Light” program pitched by Bush the Elder.

The former presidents, in my view, are on the right side of history, which I believe is going to provide ample evidence that Trump will stand at the end of his term as arguably the most unfit, unqualified, ill-equipped man ever to take the presidential oath of office.

The former presidents club is among the most exclusive such collections in the world. No one knows the struggles that presidents endure better than the men who have endured them.

They also know a buffoon when they see one. Trump’s buffoonery is in a class by itself.