Category Archives: 2024 Election

09/13/2024
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2024 Election, Donald Trump

563 Words: Jump!

Now we have bomb threats, harassment, and physical attacks directed against ethnic Haitians in Springfield, Ohio following the Stable Genius’s demented charge during the presidential debate Tuesday that immigrants of that stripe are busy dining on people’s pet cats and dogs.

The thankfully-ex-president has been spewing this kind of mouth toxin since he first announced his run for the presidency back in the summer of 2015. You may recall, early on in his then-seemingly quixotic campaign to become the Leader of the Free World, he swore up and down he saw on TV in the hours after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11 hordes of Arabs dancing in the New Jersey streets in celebration. Like the cats & dogs charge, the dancing in the streets rap was a product of the man’s pathologically unhealthy imagination.

Even allies of The Only One Who Can Fix It know he’s full of shit in this case. Republican activist and rhetorical arsonist Christopher Rufo has offered a $5000 reward for evidence that Haitians in the Ohio town indeed have prepared poodle casseroles, inasmuch as no such confirmation exists in the world sane people occupy. Rufo so badly wants this gross gustatory phenomenon to be true he’s willing to shell out real dough for it. No one, as yet, has claimed the prize.

The clear pattern has been established over the last nine years that when Donald J. Trump says jump, the most unhinged among his fanboys reply, How High? And, while I’m up in the air, will I still be physically capable of throwing acid in a dark-skinned person’s face?

A decent human being might conclude after seeing, for instance, the reactions of the motley crew Trump addressed the afternoon of January 6, 2021 that there’s a direct link between his words and anti-social and  criminal lashing out by a significant portion of his political base. That decent human being might say to himself, Hmm. Maybe I oughtta tone it down a tad.

Donald J. Trump is not a decent human being.

And, of course even after the fact, Trump pats his most felonious followers on the back when they go so far as to try to take the lives of anybody not as enthralled with No. 45 as they are. To wit, Trump’s “some very fine people on both sides” quote after one of his idolators plowed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters at Charlottesville, Virginia’s Unite the Right Rally in 2017.

So, both before and after, Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric eggs on the most volatile among his base.

There can only be two possibilities for this:

  1. Trump is blithely oblivious to the effect of his words
  2. Trump knows precisely what he’s doing

Now, Trump is no intellectual. He lacks discipline in his thinking. He loves moving and shaking and so is too impatient to sit down and read a book. His thought processes are all viscerally-based. Yet, he’s quick, he’s clever, and he’s bright. He’s got enough on the ball to recognize patterns. He speaks, his followers act.

Trump’s no Nazi but. like Hitler, he’s a small man who finds himself able to move masses. Imagine being so powerful that all you have to do is utter a few words and thousands, even millions of people jump.

They jumped on that January day in Washington, DC. They’ll jump again the day after this November’s election no matter who wins the race.

08/21/2024
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2024 Election, Kamala Harris

777 Words: Cry, Babies!

The Loved One cried last night.

She doesn’t do that too much anymore inasmuch as, like many her age, she’s seen her share of setbacks and endured many wrongs, so tears don’t flow as they did, say, when she was 22 years old. Back when she still operated under the misconceptions that the world would be fair and bad people always got what was coming to them.

But, yeah, she was all misty-eyed and her voice wavered a bit when I came into the living room. The reason? She was watching the Democratic National Convention on YouTube (on our big screen, to boot). They’d just cut away to the arena in Milwaukee where Kamala Harris was hosting a huge rally and her supporters, thousands of them, were rattling the rafters and Harris herself was prowling the stage with more self-assurance and glee than Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, and Mick Jagger collectively could muster.

Harris is riding a wave the likes of which I haven’t seen since Barack Obama greeted that huge election night crowd on Chicago’s lakefront in November 2008. She’s taken a Democratic presidential campaign that barely more than a month ago looked like a catastrophe in slow motion and has transformed it into a winning lottery ticket. Fingers crossed.

Like me, TLO finds the idea of King Trump, redux, as palatable as swallowing a jugful of chlorine bleach. And, like me, she’s thrilled that this holy land appears ready to elect its first woman president — eight years too late and thanks to the Founding Fathers’ fatheaded inclusion of the Electoral College in the nation’s president-making process.

My sturdy life partner choking up reminded me of a similar scene I’d witnessed way back in the spring of 2014. I was recording the second episode of my then-brand new radio program, Big Talk. My guest was Bloomington’s grande dame of local politics, Charlotte Zietlow. The first female president of the Bloomington city council and the first such boss of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners, Charlotte’s the person ambitious citizens seek an audience with and even a benediction from when they contemplate running for office. Charlotte has won elections and lost them, so she knows the highs and lows of the game.

I asked her that afternoon in the WFHB studio, “Charlotte, how will you feel when the first woman president is sworn in?”

I asked because, at that moment, Hillary Clinton looked to be a shoo-in in 2016 and her prospects would become even brighter. The man who’d beaten her for the Dem nomination eight years before would give her his blessing and the pack of Republican contenders seemed as formidable as newborn chimps. Hell, even Donald Trump joined the GOP fray, and wasn’t that the biggest hoot you’d ever heard?

Well, the voting populace of this benighted democracy had an ever bigger hoot in store for us, thanks to the aforementioned Constitutional technicality. But no matter, when I asked Charlotte the question we both assumed the Clinton campaign was a runaway train.

Charlotte couldn’t respond for a few moments because…, well, she had started crying. And, believe me, Charlotte was — and still is — no fragile lamb. She cried then for the same reasons The Loved One did last night. The two cried in relief, in celebration; their tears a festa*, a simkhe**, a release of pent-up frustration.  They were like wrongly accused convicts suddenly being pardoned by the governor. Hillary Clinton’s and Kamala Harris’ ascendence to the heights was theirs. If an American woman could attain the presidency, how for could Charlotte Zietlow and The Loved One go in this world? Glass ceiling? Hah!

[ *Italian; **Yiddish ]

Well, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. A lot can happen in the next 75 days. There may be surprises. After all, who could have guessed good old Joe Biden would do the right thing this past July? But if Harris continues to play her cards as masterfully as she has thus far, the White House will be hers for the taking.

By the way, I watched the convention Monday night, when Clinton and Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke. And guess what! The tears flooded into my eyes that night too.

I’d been feeling so down about the direction of this nation just a scant few weeks ago and now, as if somebody flipped a switch, the future looks so bright I think I need two pairs of sunglasses.

It’s enough to make you wanna cry.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy autumn-fields….,

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

08/06/2024
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2024 Election, Bill Maher, Presidential Campaigns

802 Words: Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop It

I’ve been reading Bill Maher’s new book, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You. I like Bill Maher. I don’t agree with everything he says; let’s call it a 75/25 percent split, my liking/disliking his bits. A friend of mine calls himself a “Bill Maher Democrat,” which seems to be a good a descriptor as can be imagined for a certain type.

There’s not another human being on this planet with whom I agree about every single thing. That includes even The Loved One, to whom I’ve been hitched up since 2008. That’s what’s most troubling about the MAGA crowd; too many of them treat the former president’s pronouncements as divine gospel. And while the Republican traditional tendency to “fall in line” has reached its apotheosis re: the convicted former Commander-in-Chief, a growing number of folks on my side of the fence have also become knee-jerk devotees to whatever the latest liberal, progressive, or Democratic Party orthodoxy is. Maybe they’re doing so in reaction to the Republicans marching in lockstep since the time of Nixon. Me? I don’t like it no matter who’s doing it.

In his book, Maher talks about this holy land’s presidential campaigns, marathons that now can span up to two years. In fact, it can be argued the 2028 presidential campaign will begin the morning after this year’s Election Day. Maher posits that American presidential races last so long because, essentially, we’re stupid. He points out that the UK’s prime minister contests typically last just five weeks or so and France’s races for its leaders are even shorter.

Whenever anybody suggests we truncate our presidential campaigns, Maher argues, the best counter to it is we need so much time because we’re woefully uninformed, intentionally dumb, and way too busy paying attention to diversions like sports and celebrity-watching to spend any decent amount of time on stuff like world affairs, social justice, economics, and other real world matters. The British and the French, the argument goes, entertain such weighty thoughts as a matter of course. We have to have those concerns hammered into our heads over months and years.

I don’t buy it. Take the British, for example. If you’d canvass the crowd at a football match in, say, West Bromwich you’d find the typical partisan there as lunkheaded and oblivious about the wider world as any in the crowd at baseball’s Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. Sure, Americans are spectacularly dimwitted, but then again, so is the rest of the world.

The truth of the matter is our presidential races last so long because they’ve become sports contests. Games. My side against yours. We’re better, smarter, more patriotic than you are. We’re gonna win!

US presidential campaigns are analogous to baseball seasons inasmuch as they last forever and there’s a result virtually every single day. How close are we to victory? Today we’re optimistic because of last night’s good news. Tomorrow we may be discouraged depending on the latest polls or gaffes committed by our candidates or even the highs and lows of the stock market.

Tune in to a TV or radio news report on any given day and you’re bound to hear a report from some obscure outpost in the hinterlands, a diner or a church basement, where just plain folks gab about who they want for president. If it’s in, say Iowa, you’ll likely be depressed because they’ll be Trumpists. If it’s in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, they’ll be cheering for Harris. Like last night’s box score, each of these reports is a tiny snippet edging you closer to the end of the season, adding to your team’s won-lost record.

Media corporations love this day to day drama because it hooks us. We eat it all up. You have to listen or watch because you have to know what the future holds.

It’s in the best insterests of CNN, ABC, NPR, CNBC, and the rest for this long season to grow ever lengthier.

The thing is, whatever tick up or down our candidate experiences in last night’s or today’s polls doesn’t matter one iota to the vast majority of us. It would if we were campaign managers or political consultants, sure. But there are 333 million of us, the political non-professionals, some 175 million of whom will vote in November. We ain’t all strategizing national campaigns, for chrissakes!

I’m not suggesting we ignore honest analyses about the candidates’ positions or reports on real conditions here and abroad. That’s the kind of stuff we have to keep tabs on in order to be responsible citizens.

But whenever any of these poll updates or reports from Iowa diners come on I leap up to turn the radio off. They only serve to manipulate my mood and I’m bipolar enough already, thanks.

I bet you’d be happier doing the same.

 

 

07/23/2024
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2024 Election, Bigotry, Kindness

639 Words: Random Thoughts

● I dunno about you, but I feel as though I can breathe again. Joe Biden announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race marked the first time I’ve felt upbeat about the November election.

● Kamala Harris is a spectacularly uninspiring speaker. That said, she just may be the perfect foil for Donald Trump, inasmuch as she’s a calm, cool, collected former prosecutor. Her best play over the next three-plus months is to hammer away at the ex-president’s lengthy record of spewing misinformation and outright fabrications, his criminal conviction, the civil judgements against him, his history of stiffing contractors, his numerous business failures, and his fraudulent “university” and “charitable” foundation. If she does this in an understated, relentless manner, she just might drive him to start raving like a maniac again.

● Secret Service boss Kimberley Cheatle has just resigned. Good. The single most important job of the Secret Service is to protect the president and candidates for the office. It didn’t do that on July 13th. And while nobody or no agency is perfect, the Secret Service’s miscue in allowing a lunatic kid armed with a high-powered rifle to take up a straight shot position on a roof overlooking the platform where Trump was speaking was inexcusable.

● Sticking with the assassination attempt, Biden flubbed it when he immediately declared confidence in Cheatle in the aftermath of the shot. That was as dumb as George W. Bush’s, “Brownie, you’re doin’ a heckuva job” remark even as millions tried to recover from Hurricane Katrina despite FEMA’s blunders.

● One last thought on the shot that bloodied Trump: I don’t buy that it was a bullet that hit his ear. A bullet fired by a high-powered rifle travels so fast, creates such a powerful localized field of atmospheric turbulence, and is accompanied by such a powerful sonic blast that if perchance the bullet did strike DT’s earflap, it would have knocked him clear off his feet, caused significant damage to that side of his face and head, sent him snoring with at very least the mother of all concussions, and even possibly causing potentially fatal brain damage. No, my guess is one of the bullets fired by the little bastard struck an object — perhaps a teleprompter screen — that shattered, with a shard hitting Trump.

● I’m betting Kamala Harris tabs PA Gov. Josh Shapiro as her VP running mate. Imagine: between the two of them, the 2024 Democratic pair will be Black, Indian, female, and Jewish. And you thought the most deplorable of the Trump basketful went apeshit over a nice, suburban, Anglo presidential candidate like Hillary Clinton in 2016. Just watch how they react to this year’s melting pot ticket!

● JB Pritzker, governor of my home state of Illinois, also has been mentioned as a possible Harris veep. Ain’t gonna happen, though. Fat people do not do well in national politics. In fact, the last two generally tolerated bigotries in this holy land are those targeting fatties and atheists. Anyway, have you heard Pritzker’s commencement address at Northwestern University in 2023? He speaks plainly and boldly about the different between kind people and, in his word, idiots. Here it is:

● Pritzker, Part II: I like him a lot. And I wouldn’t hold his girth against him. I just don’t like the idea of another billionaire running things.

● Tomorrow will mark the 55th anniversary of the splashdown of Apollo 11. Fifty five freaking years, people! For perspective, 55 years before that event in 1969 would have been — hold on a minute while I whip out my calculator — 1914. That was the year the first regularly scheduled airplane passenger service was initiated, connecting St. Petersburg and Tampa, a 23-mile air trek. Oh, and some loony Bosnian Serb nationalist shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, setting off the first of the 20th century’s two world wars. We are, to be sure, a confounding species.

 

07/19/2024
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2024 Election, Donald Trump, Joe Biden

440 Words: American Exceptionalism

As much of the rest of the world rejects strongmen, totalitarian regimes, right wing reactionaries, and outright jerks, our holy land look to be hurtling headlong into a second, non-consecutive term for the unlikeliest president of my — or your — lifetime.

And, make no mistake, Donald J. Trump is nothing if not a wannabe strongman, aspiring boss of a totalitarian regime, currently a right wing reactionary, and, yeah, an outright jerk.

Somehow, some way, by the weirdest, most unforeseen sequence of events, the largely innocuous presidency of Joe Biden has become indelibly etched into the minds of most American voters as a failure, a disaster, or at least an administration led by a doddering old coot with a foot in the grave and a mind in the grip of severe senility. Image is everything and that picture of the sitting prez is the one tens of millions of folks’ll be bringing into the voting booth this coming November.

That is, if Old Joe stays in the race, a potentiality growing less likely with every passing day.

Or not. Maybe — just maybe — Biden will stay in for the long haul. The result may be a real haul for the Trump Party (forget calling  it the Republican Party anymore because it’s his and his alone). The TP may just snatch the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate this fall.

My brother emailed me a few days ago asking if I thought the shooting attempt at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally last Saturday was the tipping point for the race this year. I responded that I won’t make any predictions as I’d learned my lesson in 2016. The very idea of a numbskull like Donald Trump eight years ago becoming President of the United States of America, that bright shining light on a hill, the arsenal of democracy, the melting pot, this unique experiment in representative government…, and,  hell, whatever other grandiose descriptor you can think of, was a joke. Yep. Matt Groening got yuks out of cartooning a future America wherein Trump had become president in a 2000 episode of “The Simpsons.”

What a riot! And I’m not referring to the January 6th Insurrection at the US Capitol in the wake of Trump throwing a tantrum because he’d lost the 2020 election.

Lo and behold, Donald Trump appears a good bet to become the 47th President.

Again, how in the hell did this all come about? As France, the UK, and Iran have snubbed far right candidates this year, and Poland and Brazil have done the same previously, we Americans seem to be ready to embrace one. I guess contrarianism is in the American DNA.