EXTRA: Debt Ceiling Bingo

I appears that sometime today, Democrats and Republicans are going to reach “a compromise” on the debt ceiling extension. As you probably know (because you’re informed!), on October 18th, the government runs out of money without an increase in the amount of debt it can incur. That’s like you going to your credit card company that you already owe $50,000 to and pay interest only payments on each month, and want them to give you an unlimited credit card limit for a specified period of time. That’s what the Democrats want.

Republicans are set to cave on this. Mitch McConnell has hinted he won’t stand in the way. Democrats are asking that the debt ceiling be waived until December, 2022 (after the midterm elections). That would allow Democrats to spend whatever they want, and run the debt up as high as they want with no consequence (at least to them…for you and me that’s another story).

Some Republicans are asking that there be a limit as to how high the debt ceiling can go, and others are insisting that the Democrats can only go past the debt ceiling a certain number of times. Let’s call that like you won’t buy the Chevy or the Ford on your credit card, but you’re heading to the Bentley dealer. Same difference.

We have reached the point in our existence where we don’t really have two political parties that are bi-polar. They are more like a few feet apart, but certainly not miles apart. It’s all how they appeal to their base, and how they can keep their base from leaving them. And it’s hurting our opinion of them. Gallup has just released a poll saying that less than half of us have confidence in the people that hold or even run for public office.

I have to be honest and say that at one point, I considered a run for Congress, with no actual political experience. When I was told by the chair of the party in my county that I would have to spend the next 12 years (6 terms) running, I thought he was nuts and decided against it. Today? I wouldn’t even consider running for political office. Not that my wife would let me in the first place.

The damage has already been done by Congress and this president, hell bent on sending the debt higher and higher. And it’s not just been Democrats. Donald Trump raised the debt pre-COVID 16.8% (until March, 2020). It went up another 18% from March, 2020 to the end of his term. That sounds like a lot, but it’s not. Bobo Obama increased the debt 69.98% during his two terms in office, and George W. Bush raised it a whopping 105.08% during his eight years in the Oval.

So, you can’t sit back and blame just the Democrats. Republicans as well have been guilty of this. And it appears that both sides in the Senate are heading toward this “compromise” which the Democrats are spewing that “McConnell caved”. Yup. I would probably be inclined to agree with them. All of this with 52% of Americans saying that the federal government needs to spend less money, not more, and cut programs in light of the increase in inflation and the higher debt ceiling.

The big question is, is there anyone in DC listening to Americans?

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Is Trump The “UN-Candidate”?

Donald Trump was all set to announce his candidacy for the presidency in 2024. He had the script written, the balloons were purchased, and the press was notified. But in the end, he did not announce. It was more of a “wink and a nod” type of announcement. And there was good reason.

First of all, if Trump were to announce his candidacy this early, it triggers how funds can be raised and more importantly, how they can’t be raised. It also triggers up the road an equal time provision. If someone like Fox News or Newsmax is going to show a Trump rally, they’re going to need to show a Biden rally at some point. Trust me, the conservative networks don’t want to do that (nor do the liberal networks!) But there is probably something more important than those two things.

That very important thing is called optics. If Trump were to announce today that he’s running for president in 2024, then 2022 could be seen as a referendum on Trump. That would be great if the Republicans take back the House and Senate. But what if they didn’t? Then it seems like the country is souring on Trump, and they didn’t want him running. That’s a pretty big matzah ball hanging out there.

Not to mention that if Trump, as arguably the best known “candidate” on the docket in 2024 announces this early, what does that do to the potential other candidates that are sitting in the wings waiting to see if he’s going to announce or not. People like a Ron Desantis, who has cooled his ambitions slightly. Or a Nikki Haley, who could very well be the first female president in our country’s history. Or Ted Cruz, who finished second to Trump in 2016.

The last thing to consider is that if Trump announces too early, he becomes another “Hillary” candidate. Remember what happened to her in 2016? She thought she had the election sewn up because “it was her time”. In the end, no one of consequence ran against her (sorry Bernie Bros, but you need to know the truth), and she didn’t have the support she thought she had. If Trump announces early, clears out the field so no one of consequence runs, and for whatever reason, still doesn’t beat Biden in 2024, what does that do to not only Trump, but the Republican party?

So, Trump has decided to wait. And to be honest, three years out from an election is much too early to announce that you’re running anyway. The only people that announce this early are people you’ve never heard of and probably never will. Wait until the time is right. Wait until the midterms are over and the GOP has won Congress back. True, you won’t be able to take credit for it, but who cares about that? Only one person. Donald J. Trump.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Can Trump Win If He Runs?

I hadn’t talked about this one in a while. So, I thought before I jumped into the fray with both feet, a little research may be in order. We are a solid three years out from the 2024 presidential elections, and that means that pretty much anything that we talk about today isn’t very topical because what the campaign issues are in 2024 are going to be markedly different than what we see today. But let’s jump into the pool anyway.

Donald Trump has always had a problem with popularity. According to Real Clear Politics, his current favorability rating is 42.5, which is slightly less than most people have Joe Biden’s (which hovers around 43%. Trump’s negative popularity outweighs his positives by about 9.5% at this point. While that may seem like it’s not very good, it has been moving in a positive direction over the past month. As Biden is watching his numbers go down quite a bit, Trump’s numbers are starting to edge up.

But there are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The first is, can Trump win the Republican primary? You know he’s going to have some competition. The out of power party always has a flurry of people wanting to sit behind the Resolute Desk. And 2024 won’t be any different. There are quite a few people (none of them named “Bush” by the way) that feel they could do better than Trump against Biden. Last time around, Trump was able to defeat some 17 other Republicans, all with vast political experience, and run as an outsider businessman who gets results. And for the most part he did, all the while being one of the most unpresidential leaders we’ve ever had. That said, he can’t be an “outsider” any longer.

Trump has a nice sized base that hasn’t ever left him. But there has been a relatively large group of independents and some Republicans that have jumped off the Trump bandwagon since his loss to Biden. That said, he will probably be the favorite for the nomination in 2024.

That means we go on to the general election. And that is where it gets sticky. Today, Biden is going to run for reelection. If he doesn’t, you know K-baby Harris will throw her high heeled shoe into the ring. But Harris isn’t well liked by the Democrats, as was evident with her having to withdraw from the 2020 race before 2020 even got here! The only reason she is the Vice President today is that Biden made the promise at a debate that he would pick a woman of color as his running mate.

So, let’s assume Biden decides to run for reelection. Harris probably wouldn’t go up against him, and there might be one or two Dems’ that would challenge him, but not many. It would be Biden’s nomination basically for the asking. He would probably have a very difficult time defending his positions and his job performance to Donald Trump, who would nail him to a tree faster than Usain Bolt can run the 100 meters. I have a hunch at this point in time, unless something major league positive happens for Biden between now and then, America will want to change him out for a newer model.

If Biden doesn’t run, it’ll be a free-for-all. You’ll see all the old players from 2020 because nothing has changed and there really hasn’t been a new face shining bright in the Democrats’ camp. You’ll see Yang, and Buttigieg, and Harris, and Sanders, and Warren, et al. And I think Trump could beat them, especially if the progressives keep getting their way and inflation is up and the economy is down. It’s all about past performance at that point.

But the question still remains, will Donald Trump run? My gut tells me yes for two reasons. He’s an egomaniac, and loves the attention. Nothing fills that pot more than going to two or three rallies a day and speaking to 10,000 people or more at each one! The other is, he feels he got cheated out of a victory in 2020 and wants revenge. In fact, I’ve already seen “2024 Revenge Tour” flags flying around the neighborhood. He still has something to prove. Whether or not he can, is something we’ll have to wait a couple years to answer.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Most Popular President?

You have to wonder, don’t you? Joseph Robinette Biden got over 81 million votes less than a year ago in the presidential election. He beat Donald Trump by some 7 million votes. When you look at history, and granted, the population was a lot different in the figures I’m going to show you, but it’s a pretty amazing feat.

Let’s look at a few presidents from the past and contrast and compare, shall we?

Let’s go to the election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln was elected President that year with 1.8 million votes. The population in the country was 31.4 million people, which means one of the most important and successful presidents of all time got 5.7% of the nation’s vote. In 1864 when he ran for reelection, he received 2.2 million votes or about 7.0% of the country’s vote total.

Fast forward to what Democrats call their “icon president”, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1932, Roosevelt garnered 22.8 million votes out of a population of 122.7 million people. That was good for 18.6% of the nation’s votes. In 1936, he got 27.7 million votes out of the same 122.7 million people, which was good for 22.6%. And in 1940, he got 27.3 million votes, which counted as 22.2% of the nation.

Let’s check one or two more. In 1980, the election that saw what the Republicans call their last “icon president”, Ronald Reagan got 43.9 million votes out of a population of 226.5 million people. That was good for 19.3% of the nation. In 1984, he garnered 54.4 million votes for 24.0% which at the time was the highest percentage any president since George Washington had received.

Now lets go to 2020. Joe Biden won 81 million votes out of a population of 331.5 million people. That is 24.4%! So, Biden received a greater percentage of votes than anyone in history, including Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, or any other president you care to name.

Is that possible?

My hunch is no. Let’s look at some very unscientific data from YouTube. If you look at just five at random posts from the past week and a half, from various sites (networks, local TV stations), look at the number of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” that are received:

In each of these cases, Biden has received a whopping “thumbs down” vote, even though some of the examples don’t show that many folks taking time to register one way or another.

Further proof will come in the latest Quinnipiac poll that was released on 9/15. It shows Biden’s approval rating now at 42%, less than where Donald Trump was in September of 2017, his first year in office (Trump was at 43%). And this from a guy that has 20% of his voters claiming that they were duped and they regret voting for Biden in the first place (that’s 16 million votes if you’re counting at home).

What does this show? Biden’s performance in office has been worse than any other president in recent history…and we’ve got several that were terrible in the last 50 or 60 years. I know Dems’ love JFK, but let’s face it, his presidency wasn’t all that successful. You’ve got LBJ, who never ran for reelection because his poll numbers were upside down due to the Vietnam War. You’ve got Richard Nixon who was forced to resign, followed by Gerald Ford, one of the most inept presidents we’ve ever had…and then Jimmy Carter, the Democrats’ answer to Ford who was equally if not more inept. Then you’ve got the abortion known as Bobo Obama, who’s entire presidency was pretty well wiped out with a few signatures of Donald Trump’s pen.

That’s a lot of miserable presidents, folks! We’ve done a pretty terrible job of electing our leaders over the past half century or so. Six of the twelve presidents dating back to 1960 would have to be thrown in the “terrible” category. I’m including both parties here because both parties should hang their heads in shame. And Joe Biden is the worst of all of them? So, how does this guy get 81 million votes?

My only answer can be that yes, there was some voter fraud, I’ve never denied that. But it wasn’t enough to change the outcome of the election. My personal feeling was that the animosity toward Donald Trump was so rampant among Democrats and Independents that Trump actually energized Biden’s base and the undecideds. No one can deny that Trump was unpresidential and toxic when it came to his leadership style. That has always been my take. More people voted against Trump than for Biden.

The question is, will we see the same thing happen in 2024 or will America be fed up with Jokin’ Joe?

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Latest Poll: Biden “Cratering”

The Gallup Poll was the very first presidential poll to hit the public occurred back in the fall of 1935. Since that time the organization was the “go to” polling group when it came to elections, and what Americans thought about, well, about anything, really.

But back in 2016, the organization made a decision to stop the “horse race” polling as to who they thought would win the election. Of course, Donald Trump upended Hillary Clinton in that one, and very few saw it coming. So, maybe it was a good idea for Gallup to sit that one out as well. Two years later, Gallup quit the “daily presidential approval poll” that so many firms like FiveThirtyEight, and Rasmussen are still doing today.

But Gallup does do monthly presidential approval polling. And typically, though not always, if you drill down into the numbers, you’ll see that more Democrats are sampled and the weighting does favor the Democrats. Until now.

In August, Gallup had Joe Biden at 49% approving of his overall handling of his job, and 48% disapproving. That went underwater this month. Now, as of their September poll, Gallup says that Biden has 43% approval, and 53% disapproval.

What should that tell you? It should tell you that whatever he’s trying isn’t working. Biden has spent most of the month of September trying to get rid of the nasty taste that a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan would leave on anybody’s lips. Add to that the fact that Biden claimed he had this remarkable plan to end COVID, which has come roaring back with the Delta variant over the summer, and that there is absolutely nothing being done on the southern border to stem the tide of illegals pouring into our country. Add to that an economy that has been slowing down for the past five months, and an inflation rate that is at 5.25% for the past 12 months ending August 31s (which includes about five months of Trump administration policies). If you take out Trump’s part (which was about 1.3%), Biden’s number soars to over 7%. That’s scary.

It’s not just Gallup that shows Biden in trouble. Every single polling outfit out there shows the president in negative numbers. In fact, most of them are now showing him behind Donald Trump at this point in Trump’s presidency, and that makes Biden the weakest president in the eyes of Americans in the last 50 years!

What is troubling is that Biden doesn’t seem to have any answers for the above issues that Americans seem to be most concerned about. The press, even the liberal press like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC are starting to question whether or not Biden can even rebound from this abyss he’s put himself in. When pressed on things like the southern border, or stranded Americans still in Afghanistan, Biden just turns and walks away from the podium. That’s not what I would call leadership. That’s called cowardism. And it’s his in spades.

K-baby Harris doesn’t fare much better. She’s been hiding out at the Naval Observatory all summer long, and hasn’t been making many public speeches. She was moot when the Supreme Court refused to block Texas’ new abortion law from going into effect, which I would have thought being a liberal woman of color she would have jumped at the chance to nail them. She didn’t. She hasn’t done anything on the southern border in two months. And every job she has been given has come up as a failure. Harris’ is at 49% approval, which is astonishingly lenient.

Biden needs a win in order to stop the slide, but to be honest I can’t see one coming soon. Oh, there’s talk the Democrats may be able to save his $3.5 trillion package of liberal Christmas decorations and pork, but nothing is for certain as the progressive and moderate sides of the Democrat party continue to fight that one out. And there’s still no concrete decision on whether or not the debt ceiling will be able to be raised. Democrats are going to have to do the heavy lifting on that one as Republicans aren’t coming to their rescue.

The odds of Biden’s approval ratings slipping into the 30’s are growing each and every day. And that would top Donald Trump’s low point at 41.1%.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Biden’s Latest Faux Pas Hasn’t Killed Anyone…YET

I don’t know if you’ve been following the latest problem to collapse upon the Biden administration, but it seems Jokin’ Joe just can’t seem to get anything right in the area of foreign policy. Remember the old line that Biden had been on the wrong side of every foreign policy issue over the last 50 years? He’s apparently keeping the streak going.

And this time, he’s pissing off our own allies.

Biden had announced a new defense initiative between Britain, the US, and Australia. It was seen as a way to deter China from over-reaching it’s power, and claiming southeast Asia as it’s own (much of it already is). And part of the agreement with Britain and Australia was to share nuclear submarine technology with the two countries. That upset the French because the Aussies just entered into a contract with the French for their nuclear subs. And after the announcement Biden made, Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison cancelled the contract saying that for months he had severe doubts on the issue.

Well, that obviously upset the French, and they immediately pulled their Ambassadors from the US and Australia “for consultations”. They felt Biden stabbed them in the back, along with the Aussies, and the Biden and Morrison was to blame. Biden is trying to smooth things over, but it won’t be easy. It was the first time in history that France recalled Ambassadors from either country.

And while Biden’s latest move could be viewed as good for the US, it does in fact kick one of our own allies in the teeth. The US has more nuclear subs than the rest of the world combine. We’ve got 72 of them. Russia has 32, and China has 12. Britain has 11, France 8, and India has a pair. That’s all the nuclear subs in the world. You can understand why the French would be so upset. They thought they had a deal with Morrison to sell their technology to Canberra, and it got yanked out from under them by the Biden administration.

It’s being viewed by France as a slap in the face, a major disgrace on the world stage, and another lie by both Joe Biden, who never should have put himself in the middle of France’s deal, and Australia, who is reneging on their commitment to buy a bunch of French nuclear powered subs.

With all that’s been happening on the foreign policy front, you would have thought Joe Biden would have been smart enough to try and see if there were any hidden nuclear bombs waiting to blow up in his face. Apparently, the thought of scoring a victory in the foreign policy department, after the much maligned and much criticized withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the stranding of American citizens in that country, was enough to encourage Biden to try and get a win. All he ended up with was egg on his face. Lots of egg.

Now, let’s do a little contrasting and comparing. Had this been last year and Donald Trump was in charge, it probably wouldn’t have gone down quite as poorly. That’s because Trump had been very vocal about “America First”. And while that could have been argued that Biden actually did put the needs of the US ahead of France’s wish for a major submarine contract, Biden has always played himself to be this world leader that knew all of the players and could talk to them in a way they’d understand. Apparently Emmanuel Macron didn’t buy into that argument.

So, it’s yet another “lie” if you want to believe the French, that Joe Biden has his name attached to. What’s that now? I think I’ve got this listed as number 20 as far as lies and scandals in the administration in the past nine months. That’s more than two per month, which is quite unheard of. Biden could end up going down in history as the most corrupt president ever if he keeps that string up! Four years in office could yield more than 100 scandals and lies! Unheard of, even by Bobo Obama’s standards. Oh…wait…Obama never thought he had one scandal, did he?

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Is Trump The Answer?

I think every American outside the Beltway realizes that Joe Biden can’t do what he said he’d be able to do in the campaign. He has done absolutely nothing to bring the country together. His “plan” for fixing the COVID mess was abandoned within days of inauguration. And he’s exacerbated the situation on the southern border by basically inviting illegals to come marching through customs unabated. He’s also made an abortion of the withdrawal in Afghanistan and stranded hundreds of Americans still there. Their only hope of survival rests on the former military and conservative media types that are using private funds to attempt to get them out.

But there is one over-riding question that seems to haunt me.

Is Donald Trump the answer to the mess that’s going on?

I’m not so sure, and a new poll out by CNN, no fan of Trump, it needs to be mentioned, sort of agrees with that. Basically, the poll says that 63% of Republicans feel that Trump should be the head of the Republican party. Now, what’s surprising is that the number is only 63%. Usually when a party’s president loses re-election, he remains that party’s titular head until someone comes up and takes over that mantle, usually by winning the presidency or at the very least becoming that party’s nominee. What’s interesting here is that number is down from about 80% only a few months ago.

What’s even more interesting was another question in the same poll. When asked if Republicans’ chances were better with Donald Trump as the candidate, only 51% said yes. That’s down from 79% that said yes in March of 2019, at the height of his popularity.

This tells me that there are a lot of Republican voters that may have to do what a lot of us did this past election…vote for Trump if he’s the nominee while holding their nose. There is no doubt in pretty much everyone’s mind that Trump was the better of the two candidates now, even though Joe Biden looked and acted more presidential to a point (gaffes not included). But it’s only taken about eight and a half months for the rest of the country to realize that Biden is nothing but a clown and is not capable of serving out his term. Republicans seemed to know that back in November of last year, but Democrats, eager to get rid of Trump, and Independents who bought into Biden’s fake promises, didn’t.

Another telling problem for Democrats is that 20% of Biden voters now regret voting for him and wish they could have voted for someone else (not necessarily Trump). That would have meant that one in five voters for Biden, some 16.2 million of them in all, regret voting for him. So the 81 million votes he got really would come in closer to 65 million today. And that would have certainly been enough to change the outcome of the election (Trump ended up with 74.1 million votes).

If Trump is indeed going to run in 2024, and he hinted at it during the 9/11 memorials he attended, he has some fence-mending to do. He can’t come at the public like he did in 2016 and 2020 and just start calling Biden names. He needs to be more presidential, something that if he would have taken that advice last year, he’d still be in the White House. But dropping 28% as far as favorability with his own party is not a good thing. It’s going to be a tough slog, especially since there will most assuredly be a million Republicans out there that think they can beat either Joe Biden if he runs again, or certainly K-baby Harris. In fact, probably you or I could also fit into that number!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Economy, Meet Toilet

It’s not going well for Joe Biden as far as the domestic policies are concerned. Of course, we know he’s an utter failure on the world stage through his monumental screw ups in Afghanistan and other foreign polcy foibles. But the latest job numbers should be worrying a lot of Americans right about now.

In case you missed it last Friday, the jobs numbers came in at 235,000 jobs created during the month. Now, why in the world would almost a quarter million jobs be added to the roles be bad? After all, it dropped the unemployment rate from 5.4% to 5.2%! Well, they were expecting 720,000 new jobs to be created in August. Yeah, that’s like a half million jobs less. It’s like taking a test, and instead of acing it, you pulled a D-.

There is more bad news that should haunt every American. Wages grew at a rate of 4.3% year over year. Why is that bad? Because for the last two months our inflation rate has been 5.2%. That means that yes, you got a raise…congratulations. So instead of making $100, you’re now making $104.30. But that loaf of bread that you want to buy at the grocery store, that last year was $1 is now $1.06. You are getting a raise but still losing money. Your buying power just headed south by 0.9% in August. Now how good do you feel?

Since Biden took over, we’ve seen inflation that had been coming in at about 1.3% per year increase to a rate of about 5.2%. There’s a simple explanation as to why that’s happening. When you print a lot of money, more than say, you’re replacing because the dollars are getting old and ragged, you are adding more pressure to the inflation rate to rise. That’s simply because more money means more supply. More supply means the dollar is worth less. And that means it’s going to cost more to buy what you want than it did last year at this time.

Say what you will about Donald Trump. He wasn’t a “savior” by any means, but he was able to keep inflation in check. He had it in a very manageable state. You recall hearing Democrats saying recently that “some inflation is a good thing”? Well, they’re actually right. You need some inflation to maintain our economy. However, you don’t want runaway inflation. And when something costs you 5% more this month than last month, you’re looking for trouble. You can’t sustain this pace.

And that is the problem with all of Joe Biden’s domestic agenda. He wants to spend trillions on “stimulus” due to COVID. He wants to spend $3.5 trillion on his bloated budget next year. And he’s looking at trillions more with infrastructure, which is basically been redefined so Democrats can call anything they want “infrastructure”.

That’s the problem we face in today’s society. We’ve certainly got our problems overseas in our foreign policy department. And we were just slapped across the face with the news that not only aren’t we putting people back to work quick enough, but we’re printing way too much money. And the solution is simple. You need to stop rewarding people with unemployment benefits if they can at all work. We’ve got over 10 million jobs out there waiting to be filled. 5.2% of our population is sitting on the couch watching Oprah Winfrey rather than finding those jobs. And Joe Biden wants to reward them for doing that by sending them more money every month in their unemployment checks. Hell, I would have stayed home too if I could make more money without doing anything. I’m not an idiot. But you have to stop that in order to get the employment figures in line, and you’ve got to stop printing money in order to get the inflation numbers in line.

The big question is, does Joe Biden even realize what he’s doing? More and more people think not. The good news for people like Jimmy Carter, and Bobo Obama is they are about to add another member below them to the worst presidents in history list.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

What Is It With July Phone Calls?

I’ve always known that August should be the month that presidents should dread. If you think back through the last few presidents we’ve had, there have been problems for all of them in the month of August. It seems like it has a whammy on them. I mean, it was in August that George W. Bush learned that there was an attack being planned on the World Trade Centers. It was in August that Bill Clinton ended up testifying in the whole Monica Lewinsky affair. Go back to 1964 and you’ve got Lyndon Johnson having the Gulf of Tonkin affair during the Vietnam War in August. Of course, you’ve got Joe Biden’s abortion of a pullout of Afghanistan that basically has ruined his presidency. And who can forget that Richard Nixon resigned in August of 1974?

Well, it’s starting off that July is also a pretty bad month for presidents to be making phone calls. You’ll remember it was in July that Donald Trump made a phone call to Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. That led to the whole big investigation the Democrats wanted to hold to see if there was any “quid pro quo” in trying to hang a mess on Joe and Hunter Biden. Remember that it had to do with Trump withholding funds from Ukraine if they didn’t help out with it? And of course it was the exact same thing that happened when Joe Biden threatened to withhold funds from the country if they didn’t fire the prosecutor that was looking into the firm Hunter Biden was on the Board of Directors of.

It’s happening again. Apparently, there is a phone call that Joe Biden made to Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, back in July. At that time, Biden was trying to get Ghani to “change the narrative” on the Taliban. Biden spent 14 minutes on the phone with Ghani, and the bulk of that time had Joe focusing in on the optics of the Taliban taking back Afghanistan. As he put it:

“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said. “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

Oops. And that’s something that is in a transcript. That’s not something that the communications team at the White House can easily dismiss, especially in light of the fact that Biden has stranded thousands of Americans in Afghanistan with no way to get home!

So, it bears the question…should US sitting presidents just not take phone calls for the month of July and pick another month rather than August to go on vacation and not respond to events happening around the world? Or is it something else?

I would contend it’s the latter. I don’t think that Donald Trump’s call to Zelenskiy, or Biden’s call to Ghani were smart moves on their parts at all. Trump was acting very vindictive and thought he could get political dirt on an upcoming rival. Biden was hoping to escape what looked like at the time, and turned out to be an absolute sh*t show. Neither of these guys really fully understood the optics of what they were dealing with. Trump was a neophyte politician, and I guess you can sort of excuse him for that. Biden is just a mental case. The knock on him even before the election was that he was not mentally capable of running the country, and he certainly hasn’t given any reason to believe that opinion was anything but 100% valid.

Trump’s call to Zelenskiy was a part of his downfall, along with the COVID response that he kept making day after day. I wrote here in this blog that he needed to stop with the daily briefings and let Mike Pence take over and run them, since he was doing nothing more than playing cheerleader. That and the obvious reference to trying to get dirt on Biden hurt him. With Biden it was much worse. We are now only beginning to learn of the incompetence of this guy and the screwed up plan that he approved and put in place. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have realized that he did things entirely backwards. If you’re going to leave a country you’ve occupied for any length of time, the first thing you do is get the civilians out. Then you get the Embassy personnel out . Then you get the military out. Biden did the opposite, and it will cost him. His term is basically over unless there is something up the road that he can do to rectify this.

Any attempt to try and explain away what happen, or to try and take a victory lap that you’ve succeeded in getting the troops home, while stranding thousands of American citizens, and Afghani’s that had spent a lot of their lives helping America out is worthless. Images of planes leaving Kabul with Afghans hanging on to the side of them hoping to get to freedom will be the legacy of this president for time immemorial.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

RNC Looking For 2024 Candidate

The Republican National Committee is currently looking for a good man (or woman) to be their next presidential candidate. Qualifications? None really, except you should be conservative, you should be decisive, popular, able to sway people into your way of thinking. Basically they are looking for Donald Trump.

Oh…they would prefer it if you didn’t have a Twitter account.

It’s become public that the RNC would love to see a Donald Trump-like candidate in 2024, but without all of the stuff that made Trump so damn unpresidential. If you could combine the politics of Trump with say the deportment of someone like a Ronald Reagan, you’d probably have the perfect Republican candidate. I guess if you were on the RNC search committee right now, and were looking for someone to run in 2024, that’s about as close a guess as to the ideal candidate as you could get.

It got me wondering. Basically, the RNC is looking for someone that I’ve said all along should be president. If Donald Trump only had not been so damn bold in his tweets and in his name-calling. It’s one thing to slam your political opponent when you’re running, or to let those on the other side in Congress know you disagree with them once elected. But you can’t call people names. You need to be somewhat presidential. And deep down, I think THAT is why Joe Biden was elected in the first place.

It wasn’t that Biden was a better leader than Trump. It’s obvious just seven months into his term he can’t hold a candle to any of the previous presidents except maybe Jimmy Carter in that regard. Well, maybe Gerald Ford as well. But that wasn’t the reason Biden was elected. Regardless what the political pundits tell you, Joe Biden was elected President because America was tired of Trump’s demeanor. I think they loved his politics. Until COVID shot things down, the economy was humming along, jobs were incredibly available to anyone that wanted one, incomes were on the rise, inflation was pretty much non-existent, and the southern border issue was all but solved. From a policy standpoint, Trump pretty much held all aces in his hand.

It was his behavior that killed him. Americans wanted someone that actually LOOKED more presidential. Someone that didn’t argue with the media quite as much (though Biden has failed at that point), and someone that actually carried themselves better than Trump did. He didn’t have the respect of world leaders because he wasn’t like anything they had seen before. Now, more and more of them are wishing they had Trump back.

So, as we start to see over the next two years all of the potential candidates for the GOP nomination for president come forward, we have to see if any of them can fit that bill. Possibly at this point, Ron DeSantis could. And he’s got Trump’s support if Trump doesn’t run. If he does, and he wants DeSantis as his Veep, he’s going to have to change residences, probably to Nevada. But for a guy that has billions of dollars, that shouldn’t be a problem.

The question isn’t, and shouldn’t be WHAT the GOP is looking for, but can Trump BECOME a complete candidate. Yes, he was refreshing calling Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary”, and demanding that she be thrown in jail. We all agree with that. But he never got that done. And his incessant tweets droned on forever. He also needs to put the ego in check. There was a reason that the sex predator, Andrew Cuomo had better ratings on his COVID updates every day than Trump had. Trump was nothing more than a cheerleader and grandstander. If he could keep the ego in his back pocket for four years, he’d make a great president. As it was, he was good. Not great…but good.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!