Trump Indictment?

It’s looking more and more that Donald Trump may indeed get indicted by the Department of Justice over the whole Mar-a-Lago raid thing. And while that doesn’t intimate that he’s going to be found guilty at all, it does throw a little bit of a monkey wrench into the 2024 presidential campaign, doesn’t it?

I mean, if Trump is indicted for any crime between now and November 2024, there is a good chance it will turn off a portion of the electorate. What does that mean? Well, I would suggest that a certain percentage, and I’m not going to speculate on what that is, would turn their nose up at him and go with someone else for their presidential choice. I’m NOT saying that person would be Joe Biden or any other Democrat by the way. There WILL be a primary prior to the general election!

But let’s look at this in a little greater detail.

If Trump were to get indicted one of two things will happen. First, the Republican Trumpers will rally around him. It will energize his base twenty times what the Mar-a-Lago raid did. Second, it will damper the enthusiasm of independents to vote for him. Will it be enough to bring him the nomination? Not sure. But there is a third option out there that people are indeed starting to talk about.

It’s Ron DeSantis.

With DeSantis being hit this past week with a class action lawsuit over flying 50 illegals to Martha’s Vineyard, as a “human trafficking” scheme, (which Biden did like 200 times as many), the public is overwhelmingly backing the Florida governor against the Democrats. 72% of the people surveyed in a Rasmussen poll said they were happy to see what DeSantis, Abbott, and Ducey were doing.

DeSantis is a rock-ribbed conservative that’s not afraid to rock the boat to get his message across. He’s inventive and creative when it comes to how he gets that message across. Does that sound like another possible Republican candidate? Put another way, if Trump were to face indictment, do you think that most Trump fans could find comfort in a Ron DeSantis candidacy? My thoughts would tend to sway to yes.

The question is, would DeSantis be able to beat a Democrat. Again, my thoughts are that he would, and rather handedly. DeSantis is currently running for reelection against former Florida governor and current US Representative, Charlie Crist (a former Republican who flipped parties). DeSantis is ahead handedly in every single poll that’s been taken. Floridians love him, even against one of their former governors! And I feel that he’s not quite as loud-mouthed as Trump is. He can act more presidential, which has been one of the biggest knocks on Trump all along.

Besides, who are the Democrats going to throw at him? K-baby Harris? Pete Buttigieg? Gavin Newsome? C’mon. There isn’t anyone on their bench strong enough. And Biden is making it more and more clear that he’s not going to be running for reelection. He all but said that in his 60 Minutes interview. Republicans don’t need to worry if Trump gets thrown under the bus. There is someone with all of his policies, all of his showmanship, and not nearly the baggage as Trump waiting in the wings. Should be a good time through 2028 and beyond!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Charging DeSantis

If you were a Democrat, and you were facing what Joe Biden is facing with the southern border catastrophe, how would you handle it? Especially seeing how three southern border governors (Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Doug Ducey) are arranging transportation for those folks illegally crossing into out country, that don’t want to stay in southern Texas, Florida, or the deserts of Arizona. It’s got Democrats in a lather.

Now they want to charge Ron DeSantis with “human trafficking” for sending 50 illegals to Martha’s Vineyard. How dare he!

Well, he dared. But the Democrats have a real problem on their hands. The people that are being shuttled around the country after some have made a 4,000 hike to get to the southern border, don’t really care where they end up, as long as it’s in the US. If asked, “Hey, do you want to go to Washington DC?” or New York, or Chicago? They’d of course say “YES!” (or Si!), so long as it wasn’t Caracas, or Managua, or Guatemala City. So, what do they care if they get a free flight to Martha’s Vineyard, and then shipped off to Cape Cod? At least they didn’t have to walk!

But Biden and his minions are facing an even bigger problem. If they choose to have the DOJ file federal human trafficking charges against Ron DeSantis for moving the illegals from his state (claiming he did so without their permission, or he mis-led them), can’t the same thing happen to Joe Biden and K-baby Harris because they had not one, but 900 flights in the middle of the night from the southern border to areas scattered all over the country. I doubt those illegals actually were asked where they wanted to go. So, people in Des Moines, Iowa, or Fargo, North Dakota woke up one day and had a plane load of people (far more than 50) sitting in their front yards.

I would submit that Joe Biden and K-baby Harris are just as guilty as DeSantis, or Abbott or Ducey. In fact, I’d submit they are MORE guilty because at least the governors sent the illegals to “sanctuary cities”. These are supposed to be places that welcome illegals and don’t want ICE to come knocking at their doors asking to see their papers! How dare Lori Lightfoot, Muriel Bowser, Eric Adams, and even Massachusetts Governor, Charlie Baker turn those people down. What are they? Hypocrites?

Look, what Ron DeSantis and Abbott and Ducey have done is something Fox News just hasn’t been able to do on it’s own. They’ve raised illegal immigration and the border catastrophe to the height that it needs to be. And their argument to those that scream they are derelict in their duties need to realize that it’s not their fault. If they don’t like where these folks are being bussed and flown to, they are preaching to the wrong choir. They should be focusing their angst at Biden and Harris. After all, Trump had this thing pretty well under control when he left office.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Winning Isn’t Enough

Republicans are excited about the midterm elections and have been since Joe Biden took office. Democrats are worried and are already throwing down the gauntlet as to what the country will look like under a split Congress at best. According to several Democrats, nothing will get done (usually not necessarily a bad thing!) and there will be more and more government shutdowns as Congress disagrees with itself as to what the spending priorities and amounts should be.

Five Thirty Eight has the Republicans winning the House of Representatives with a 70% likelihood. They have the Democrats maintaining control of the Senate with the same percentage.

So, if that’s the case, it’s not enough for the Republicans to play defense. They need to get on offense and tell the country exactly what they will do if they become the majority party in Congress. So far, Dems have been able to control the message, making Donald Trump the foe, and talking January 6th protest and abortion. They say the GOP is going to “take away” Social Security, which is a lie because all the GOP is doing is suggesting that Social Security be privatized as a way to maintain it past 2035 when it goes bankrupt. That’s really nothing more than investing in the stock market, something that every single person with a 401k account currently does.

But it’s not enough for the GOP to react to that. They need to come up with a plan on what they are going to do if elected to lead in the House. Democrats think the GOP will hold all sorts of hearings on Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and the like. They will hold hearings on Critical Race Theory and Climate Change. They’ll tackle hearings on overspending. But that’s not enough. America needs answers, not hearings.

Here’s what I’d do if I were in charge…

First fix the friggin’ border. Finish the wall, hire 87,000 Border Patrol agents, not IRS agents. I’d defund that IRS plan in a heartbeat and send the money to fix the border. Then I would come up with a comprehensive immigration reform package that basically says who is allowed into this country, who isn’t, and what the punishment is, if you come in illegally for any reason.

Next up, we tackle over-spending. I’d get a Constitutional Amendment for a balanced budget. If Dems want to crank up the Bureau of Engraving’s printing presses 24/7, then they have to find a way to pay for it. That means raising taxes on everyone. If that’s done, you’ll see inflation come down.

I would also put the size of the Supreme Court into a Constitutional Amendment. It should be nine people. That’s what it’s been at for the majority of time the Supreme Court has been around. The Judiciary Act of 1869 states that the Supreme Court should have a Chief Justice and eight associate justices. It’s already federal law. It needs to be a Constitutional Amendment so Democrats (or Republicans) can’t pack the court.

I would make it a federal law that for the safety of the nation, all communities must hire and pay the wages of a police force and keep them trained. Not a token cop or two, but a force! Put more blue on the streets, and watch the crime rate decline.

Next up, I’d make it illegal to fund programs with questionable data, like Climate Change. It’s not that the climate isn’t changing. It’s that they keep changing the models saying humans are the cause of it and what the catastrophic results would be.

I would make it illegal for anyone in Congress to buy or sell stock, and the same goes for anyone in their families. You can’t hide behind your spouse’s trades anymore. We all know you’re giving them inside information! If Martha Stewart can go to jail for it, so can Nancy and Paul Pelosi. And yes, that would include Republicans that trade on it as well (there are a lot on each side of the aisle).

Finally, I would put term limits into effect. We have them for the President. We have them in 35 states. We should have them in Congress as well.

That should be enough to keep everyone busy for two years until we win back the White House and take control of the Senate!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

So, Would YOU Make This Trade?

I was reading a piece by Larry O’Connor this morning. All across the country, there is a move by Democrats hoping to make abortion the most talked about and most important issue this midterm election cycle. So far, the kitchen table items like inflation, the economy, and crime are winning out, and probably will. But O’Connor had an interesting take on all of it.

He would gladly trade a ban on abortions for losing the Senate this time around.

And it got me to thinking…how important IS abortion to the GOP? It’s been a half century or so that abortion was legal and relatively easy to obtain in this country. We are one of 70 countries in the world that had that ease. But, when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, stating instead of being a federal law, it needs to be sent to the states to decide (NOT making it illegal as Democrats claim), it gave the Dems a campaign issue.

So, the question is, would YOU make the trade of losing a chance to take over the Senate in 2022 if it means a ban on abortions (or at least a federal ban!)

I’m certainly pro-life and have a very difficult time understanding how a woman can decide to have an abortion and kill a life that’s growing inside of her. To me, it’s more of a religious thing, a moral and ethical thing than a “legal choice” that women make as far as what to do with their bodies. We’re not talking about getting a tattoo here. We’re talking about ending a life before it gets started. But would I end the Republicans’ chances to take over the Senate?

I don’t think I have to choose. I think both could very well still happen. But if forced to choose, I’m still not sure. I think of the damage a deranged idiot like Joe Biden can do by nominating justices to federal benches, only if he has the US Senate to confirm and they are on his side. God forbid we start losing people like Clarance Thomas on the Supreme Court! On the other side, and this is the point I can’t understand about Democrats who’s religion is politics…we are going to allow a lot of those fetuses that otherwise would have been aborted to live. Why Democrats wanted to chop their numbers down in the first place is beyond me. If there was no abortion, if we never aborted 63 million babies over the past 49 years, I think it’s safe to say the Democrats would never lose another election!

But still, if I HAD to choose, what would I do? I have wrangled this one around for a while. I think the sanctity of life is far more important than a two year possibility of Joe Biden using his mental deficiencies to nominate people. After all, what value to YOU put on human life? I guess to even have to wrangle it, I should be ashamed. But it is a difficult decision if you get right down to it.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

All Political Debates To End?

If you look at the political landscape right now, and you take into account the hesitancy of political candidates, especially those that think they are in the lead at the moment, to want to skip debates, the answer to the question looks easy.

Yes.

Debating has been a part of the American political scene since probably the 1850’s with the Lincoln/Douglas debates. Those debates though were for the Senate, but both Lincoln and Douglas wouldn’t be able to understand the current format used by the various debate sanctioning bodies today. And that’s what has caused a lot of the rift.

Currently, several candidates up for election in the midterms are refusing to debate their rivals. Democrats don’t want to share the stage with Republicans they claim are nothing more than conspiracy theorists. Republicans don’t want to have debates moderated by media that has an extreme left-wing bias and poses “gotcha” questions to them.

Frankly, I think the days of the “Great Debates” are gone. None have lived up to the hype of the Roosevelt/Wilkie debates of 1940, or the Kennedy/Nixon debate twenty years later. Today, they have devolved into a shouting match, and points are only awarded on the number of zingers that one candidate can throw on the other. Can you think back to two of the most famous lines in recent debate history? How about, “I knew Jack Kennedy. I was a friend of Jack Kennedy, and you are no Jack Kennedy!”? Or maybe, “Well, there you go again!”

Nowadays we get name calling, derision, and a lack of substantive answers because when asked a question they don’t like, candidates merely dodge the question and talk about something else entirely. That’s the moderator’s fault.

Speaking of the moderator, we’ve seen a terrible list of them over the past few years. People like Chris Wallace, who has absolutely no place on a debate stage (or in national media for that matter) are terrible. Wallace’s moderation of the Biden/Trump debate was a debacle of epic proportions. And to think Fox News would put their credibility on the line by calling him one of the best debate moderators in history? What a crock!

No, debates as they exist today are terrible. They aren’t worth watching, and even less worth when it comes to deciding which candidate could do a better job. I sincerely doubt, in this age of total partisanship, debates change all but maybe 1% of the minds out there. And those are the people that probably shouldn’t be voting in the first place because they have no minds!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Random Thoughts…

As I sit here looking out the window at the beautiful sunshine and the cool 75 degree temperatures this morning, a bunch of different thoughts hit me.

I wonder if the world would react to any previous US President in the same manner that they have reacted to the death of Queen Elizabeth II? My guess is not. Oh, there’ll be the pomp and circumstance associated with state funerals, but the outpouring? Nah. I can’t think of one living president that would reach that level.

Will Hunter Biden ever get what’s coming to him? I can’t think of many people that are pure scum, but this guy sure seems to fit the bill. How any woman can stay with him is beyond me.

Can we PLEASE stop talking about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. Yes, it was an atrocity that the FBI and DOJ took part in. It doesn’t do a damn thing to help elect better Representatives and Senators. We are letting Donald Trump steal the message that was handed to Republicans on a silver platter. We can’t let that happen!

How the Supreme Court isn’t coming after Joe Biden to follow the law he swore to uphold and do something on the southern border is beyond me. You can’t ignore the law when your oath says you ” will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Seems pretty clear to me, Biden has violated that oath!

I’m all for a “truth in politics” law that says you can’t just smear a candidate, but you’ve got to be telling the truth. I’m watching political ads that are nothing more than blatant lies. Enough already!

As a person that spent his career in the media, I’d really like to know how Karine Jean-Pierre got her job. She has to be the absolute worst Press Secretary in our country’s history. Is this what we get when we put racial quota systems in place above competence? I mean, look at the Vice President. Look at the newest Supreme Court Justice. Look at the Press Secretary. All were chosen because of the color of their skin and their gender. Experience and competence doesn’t matter anymore.

Haven’t we reached the time in our history when we can abandon unions for school teachers? Reagan did it with air traffic controllers. Are we saying the future generations of our country are any less important than the safety of flying? It’s EVERYTHING! They need to stop this gobbledy-gook education crap and start teaching the three R’s.

If Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are treated differently than Donald Trump in the way the DOJ handles them, why aren’t the Republicans demanding the firing of all DOJ and FBI employees?

Can someone explain to me how Millennials came to want to “self-identify” as something other than male or female? There are two genders. That’s it. Innies, and Outies. But if I COULD self-identify, I’d identify as a taco.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

SHUT IT DOWN!

You may not have heard about this. House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) yesterday told the members of his party that he wants to make sure that the playbook that Newt Gingrich tried a generation ago is brought back up and hopes the Contract With America’s 21st Century version is able to have the same results. He’s going to go about it in a different way though.

Between now and the end of the month, Congress must either pass a budget for fiscal year 2023, or pass a Continuing Resolution to kick the can down the road. McCarthy outlined his plan for his House members saying that the GOP in both houses of Congress are going to vote no on any budget deal that doesn’t solve the border issue.

That means that the Republicans are forcing the hand of the Democrats to do the following. They want to end Catch & Release entirely, reintroduce the “Stay In Mexico” policy that keeps illegal immigrants in Mexico while they wait for their asylum hearing. And they want to finish the border wall started by Donald Trump. Now, the Biden administration is claiming to be finishing at least a part of the wall, but they say they are doing it “to fix problems left behind by the Trump administration.” Well, that probably would include allowing some two million fewer illegals into our country than Biden has done this year!

If Democrats don’t want to play ball with immigration reform, Republicans are going to shut down the government, saying that they don’t need to run a government when they can’t even run a border.

It will be interesting to see what happens on this front. Democrats love to blame Republicans for shutting down the government and “taking money out of the mouths of the poor and needy”. But in reality, the high cost of allowing two million illegals into the country is a lot higher than the cost of some folks not being able to tour the Capitol building or stop by some national park this fall.

Democrats need to learn that if you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country. And I personally would hope that the Republicans once they take Congress back, would force these illegals to be deported. It’s the only way to deal with the situation.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

EXTRA! Putin’s Gamble

Put yourself in Vladimir Putin’s place for a minute. You decided it was so easy to retake Crimea and give your people a very nice area to vacation in along the Black Sea. Warm, almost tropical breezes. So, why not decide to retake the rest of Ukraine and get it back into Mother Russia?

Only this time, Bobo Obama isn’t president. Instead, his VP is running the US (or at least that’s what SHOULD be happening!) and he figures that Obama had a lot more on the ball than Biden ever did. This should be a cakewalk. It turns out, that with an unlimited bank account from the US and other European countries, the Ukrainians are better fighters than Putin ever imagined. He never thought that over 45,000 of his own soldiers would be killed or wounded.

So, Putin throws down a gambit. If he has to, he will use nuclear weapons to take back Ukraine. He recalls some 300,000 reservists, as many of them as possible buy plane tickets to anywhere that doesn’t have “Russia” in its name. So, Putin cancels all travel for men ages 18-65. Now there’s a run for the border situation.

Putin had a gamble to take and he took it. He figured all along that Joe Biden wasn’t strong enough of a leader to do much, if anything, when it came to his taking back Ukraine, and he’s probably right. But there was that little thing that Joe loves to spend other people’s money. And that figure to date is about $54 billion!

I’m not crediting Joe Biden for doing this though. This does not have HIS fingerprints on it, but maybe that of Ron Klain. You also have to credit Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukranian president for his bravery and heroism. And throw in the token approach that Europe has taken, as they have realized they are facing a very cold winter without Russian natural gas.

But what I find interesting is that Putin is ready to drop nukes in order to end this thing. Now, I’m not sure that’s really what’s happening. Putin is a sick man, both physically and mentally. Rumor has it he has cancer and is dying. But he also doesn’t want Russia to be seen as losing to some third-rate former Soviet republic.

As far as Biden is concerned, to keep spending money on something that most Americans aren’t backing, only adds to the inflation rate and the recession economy that we find ourselves in. Biden has no concept of economics, so to him, he just keeps spending like the minimum waged wife that can’t stop shopping on 5th Avenue in New York City. After all, he has spent over 3 trillion in executive orders alone since taking office. And you and I are on the hook for that number.

Putin must realize he’s in a pickle. He can’t lose to Ukraine, but he knows if he drops a big one there, it’s going to probably force an all out nuclear World War III. I doubt he’s willing to take that big of a gamble, but then again, he doesn’t have any respect for Joe Biden’s lack of backbone.

Hopefully cooler heads prevail. I really would like to take a nice cruise next year!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

What The Republicans Are Lacking

As we head down to the last six weeks prior to the midterms, it hit me that the Republicans certainly have a number issues on their side. But they are lacking one important thing.

They don’t have a positive message.

Think back to Ronald Reagan. After the catastrophe that was Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter’s presidential years, Reagan came out with a speech he had developed for General Electric years before. It was the “Morning in America” speech. It was positive. It was patriotic. It made you feel good about yourself and your country.

Now compare that to what we are looking at for a Republican message out there now. It’s basically, Joe Biden sucks (no argument there!), crime is through the roof, you’re paying too much because of inflation, our economy is in the toilet, we’ve got a supply chain problem that is still haunting us, and our southern border is leakier than a tin can with no bottom.

And Republicans have no ideas how to fix any of that other than to stop spending so much money on crappy ideas like climate change and electric vehicles.

What Republicans need is to tie the negatives together with their positive. They need a brand new Morning in America type of approach. Yes, crime sucks. Yes, you’re paying too much for stuff, and the economy is in the toilet because of overspending. Yes, you can’t buy formula for your baby still today, and yes, we’re allowing more and more illegals into the United States. But what are the Republicans going to do that is different?

What they need to do is come out and paint that patriotic picture of America that makes you feel good about going to the polls on November 8th. They need to give you hope. They need to bring forth a message that yes, Democrats have put us into this mess because they control Congress and the White House, but WE can fix it because we have solid ideas that are going to bring us back to positive territory.

They need to talk about how we’ve faced adversity before and come through it with tenacity and verve. We can certainly do it again, but we all have to pull together. We’ve seen that the current folks in power have had two years to get things done, and your life isn’t better off today than it was two or three years ago. And we can make it that way all over again. I’d stay away from Trump’s line of “Make America Great Again” because that feeds into the whole anti-MAGA thing. But it’s along those lines. Be proud to be an American. Be happy knowing that we have a way out of this. We’re going to fix immigration. We’re going to stop the overspending to lower the inflation rate, and boost the economy through the marketplace, not the federal government. We’re going to fix the supply chain that’s been torn apart and get store shelves stocked again.

To not have the positivity added to the current message of “The Democrats have screwed everything up”, is to avoid the chance to really make this a red wave!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Railroad Strike May Still Happen

One of the many “victory laps” Joe Biden has loved to take recently has to deal with his getting involved with a labor negotiation. Now, normally, a president won’t get involved unless there are severe consequences if a strike happens. It’s really rare. But Biden felt, and most agree that a rail strike that cripples the moving of goods across this great country of ours, would be devastating to an economy already in recession (and yes…regardless what the administration says, we ARE in a recession).

But not all is happy in railroad land.

According to The Hill, the strike may still happen. Tomorrow, 125,000 union railroad workers spanning not one, but twelve separate unions will vote on the Biden-backed contract. If only one of those 12 unions decide against it, the strike is back on and rail traffic grinds to a halt.

The deal includes a 24% raise over five years, scheduled cash bonuses, back pay, a mandate for two-person crews, a cap on healthcare costs, and time off for medical appointments.

However, several of the workers according to Ron Kaminkow from the Railroad Workers United group says that there are several angry groups. They feel the language is too broad, it was not well negotiated, and they have several questions that need to get answered before they vote yes on a new agreement.

In short, this is a long way from getting done.

Biden’s victory lap on this one may end up crashing into the turn one wall if he’s not careful. According to one worker on Norfolk Southern, “Workers are pissed off and this time we actually have a lot of leverage. I know I’m not going to accept anything less than what we deserve.”  The main problem according to the two largest unions are unsafe working conditions, unpredictable scheduling, and a lack of sick-leave time.

Wait and see…the vote is tomorrow!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!