Showing posts with label Kamala Harris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kamala Harris. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Mamas, Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up to be Babies: Willie Nelson Performs at a Kamala Harris Rally

 Kamala Harris held a rally in Houston over the weekend. Someone in the Harris camp promised an appearance by Beyonce, and thousands of Beyonce fans showed up in anticipation of a musical performance.

Beyonce did indeed appear briefly, but she didn't sing. Instead, the crowd heard Willie Nelson, the legendary country singer. Same difference, right?

Apparently not. Feeling victimized by a bait-and-switch, thousands of rally attendees booed Kamala when she appeared on stage to diffuse her politics of joy.

I love Willie Nelson. I am the last living fan to have attended his first 4th of July music festival in Dripping Springs, Texas, in 1973. I wore the grooves off my antique vinyl record of "The Red Headed Stranger" album. 

I sympathize with the Kamala supporters who were angered by the Beyonce debacle. If I had shown up to attend a Kamala rally expecting to hear Willie Nelson's golden voice, I would have been miffed to be treated to Beyonce instead. 

Nevertheless, what makes Kamala Harris think she can win votes by snagging celebrity endorsements? Who gives a shit about George Clooney's political stance, or an endorsement by Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, or Julia Roberts? 

I'm casting my presidential vote based on global events. Which presidential candidate will help bring the Ukraine war to a close so my grandkids don't get drafted to fight in Eastern Europe? Which candidate will honor our nation's commitment to guarantee Israel's right to exist?

In these volatile times, when the world is on fire, Americans who cast their vote for Kamala Harris because a celebrity endorsed her are behaving like infants.

Let's grow up to be babies. Photo credit: Amazon.com





Friday, October 25, 2024

Progressive Democrats Despise Rural America and Don't Care Who Knows It

Kamala Harris's frenzied minions hate rural America and have written it off in their frantic campaign to put their addled candidate into the White House. In their fevered minds, the battle for control of America's soul is not a conflict between blue states and red streets; it's a war between Democratically run cities and the rural and small-town heartland.

It is true that the Dems tried to sell Tim Walz, Kamala's running mate, as a common-sense Midwesterner, but the hayseeds smoked him out as a buffoon who can't load a shotgun. They derisively mock him as "TamponTim," a moniker that may or may not be fair.

The progressive Dems showed their hand years ago when Obama referred to rural Americans as bitter rubes clinging to their religion and their guns, and Hillary referred to them sneeringly as "a basket of deplorables." 

Indeed, today's Democratic party bosses are much like the Russian Bolsheviks, whose idea of ideal proletarians were urban factory workers too dumb to realize they were being manipulated by their Communist overseers.

Robert Conquest, in his study of the Bolsheviks' ruthless suppression of the Russian peasants, wrote that Stalin considered the peasants to be mere "scum" and that Marx compared them to "a sack of potatoes."

The Soviet apparatchiks in Moscow simply could not understand the Russian peasantry--people who lived close to the land, dwelled in small, close-knit villages, and had a mystical devotion to their religion and Mother Russia. 

 

Thus, Stalin falsely defined the Russian kulaks as anti-revolutionary capitalists and deliberately starved millions of them to death. In Stalin's mind, Russian peasants were a basket of deplorables who should be wiped from the face of the earth.  One might say the Russian peasants were getting in the way of Stalin's politics of joy.

 In two weeks, the election will be over, and America will either return to sanity or the nation will descend into the mind-fuckery that brought the nation transgender school sports and Venezuelan drug gangs. 

 
If Americans are stupid enough to elect Kamala as president, then America is done. We will no longer be the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

If Kamala is sworn in as our nation's commander and chief, in my view, rural and small-town America will become more of a backwater than it already is--a land of rising mortality rates, drug dependecy, joblessness, and suicide.

But who cares? Kamala's fawning press corps refers to the people in the Heartland as "white Christian nationists, which, of course is a code word for fascists.

I'll have a word salad to go and a basket of deplorable fries..





Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Will the President of Joy Improve the Lives of Ordinary American Men?

 I edit most of my writing through Grammarly. Whenever I type ‘elderly,' my faithful editor reminds me that some people are offended by the word and suggests I substitute the word 'older.'

This is the world we live in. Our society is sensitive about what we call old people, but we're not concerned about the quality of their lives.  In particular, we aren’t interested in the health and welfare of older men.

Richard V. Reeves published an op-ed essay yesterday about a health crisis among American men. According to Reeves, "The life expectancy gap between men and women widened from less than five years in 2010 to nearly six years in 2002."

Why are men dying at an earlier age? Reeves reports that men's life expectancy is going down due to "deaths of despair," most notably suicide and drug poisoning, and to higher death rates from COVID-19.

Men take their own lives at four times the rate of women, and this disparity in suicide rates increases with age. Among people aged 75-84, men's suicide rate is 7 times higher than the rate for women.

Alcohol abuse also contributes to “deaths of despair” among American men. The Centers for Disease Control reported that male deaths attributed to alcohol abuse increased by 26.8 percent between 2016-2017 and 2020-2021.

The Biden-Harris administration has done virtually nothing to address the growing disparity between mortality rates for American men and women and the high suicide rate for men, and older men in particular. President Biden and VP Harris have shown more concern about the right of gender-confused boys to play girls' basketball than the rising mortality rate for the nation's male citizens.

If Harris is elected "the president of joy, " things may change. Perhaps she'll distribute some of her joy to ordinary American men. 

Somehow, I doubt it. If Harris becomes president, her joy zone will be restricted to her base: Hollywood, the intellectual and media elites, the financial class, and the DEI crowd.  Average American men will see their quality of life continue to deteriorate. And suicide rates for elderly men will remain high.

Cheer up! The President of Joy will solve all your problems.






Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Harris-Trump Bring Excitement and Ectasy to Presidential Campaign: The Russians Aren't Feeling the Joy

You got no right to take my joy, I want it back.

Joy by Lucinda Williams

Posing as vaudeville comedians, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz wrapped up the Democratic convention last week. Harris waved her arms like a seance conjurer, and Walz strutted and gesticulated around the DNC stage like a game show host.

What was the convention’s theme? Not the economy, not crime, not the nation’s border. No, the theme was joy. 

Kamala Harris is “the president of joy,” Bill Clinton told the convention delegates. He knows a lot about joy. He spilled some of it on a blue dress when he was president

New York Times columnist Patrick Healy observed that joy is not a strategy for winning an election, but Healy may be wrong. Harris is ahead of Donald Trump in the polls, even though she hasn’t granted an interview with a real journalist since becoming the Dems' presidential candidate.

Harris is dodging the press because she's afraid a reporter might ask an inconvenient question, which is this: What the fuck are we doing in Ukraine? Such a question might dampen the joy that currently infuses Harris’s frenzied supporters.

Americans whose minds have been turned to Jello by the New York Times, WaPo, and CNN are enthralled by Harris’s clownish behavior, but the Russians aren't feeling the joy. They've suffered over a half million casualties inflicted by NATO weapons, including American cluster bombs, Abrams tanks, uranium-depleted artillery shells, and Bradley fighting vehicles.

If Harris wins the November election, she will find that joy doesn't travel well. 
I doubt Harris’s cackle will charm Vladimir Putin into surrendering Crimea. 

The politics of joy in Ukraine


Monday, July 22, 2024

I ain't voting for Kamalama Ding Dong. The Democrats are contemptous of ordinary Americans

 Four years ago, the Democrats nominated Joe Biden, a demented grifter, for President and dragged him over the finish line. This summer, the Dems threw Biden under the bus and will likely nominate Kamala Harris, a race-hustling idiot, to replace Biden. 

It has long been evident that the Democratic Party's insiders despise Americans and are picking our pockets while their donors get richer by the day. The Dems don't care about having a secure border, they don't care about urban crime, and they don't care about inflation. And Kamala Harris, the presumed Democratic Party nominee, is the poster child for the Democratic Party's arrogance, its intellectual vacuity, and its racism.

I ain't voting for Kamalama Ding Dong to be our next President. I'm not willing for America to giggle its way into the future under the leadership of a goofball. What do you think will happen if President Kamala cackles at Vladimir Putin like she cackles at the American people?

The Democrats have insulted working Americans for years while pandering to racial minorities. Apparently, they think minorities and transgendered athletes form an electoral base strong enough to wreck the country. I think they are wrong.

With the exception of Jewish kapo politicians who are undermining Israel in its life-or-death struggle with Hamas, I don't think a single Jewish American will vote for the Ding Dong. 

Although it will surprise Nancy Pelosi, a great many Hispanic Americans are alarmed by illegal immigration, and most of them don't like being labeled as Latinx, a wokedom insult to the Spanish language. She'll be surprised at the number of Hispanics who will vote for Trump in November. 

How about Asian Americans, who've been discriminated against by America's elite universities, most of which are infested with so-called progressive Democrats? Many Asian Americans will abandon the lunatic Democrat Party this November.

The Dems have bleated about their commitment to preserving American democracy while they rig the election process to nominate a fool who has never won a single primary election. They're about as democratic as the Russian KGB.

I don't believe Kamala will defeat Trump in November, but I won't feel sorry for her when she loses. Harvard will probably ask her to be its next president—that's another part-time job that pays good wages.

Note: I can't take credit for inventing the term Kamalama Ding Dong. I heard a television commentator use that term, but I can't remember who it was. The word appears in a Jestwire commentary.

Why won't Kamala let us in on the joke?




Friday, July 5, 2024

Kamala Harris is the real-world Furiosa after Immortan Joe's bad night

 Let me begin by admitting that I had a bad night. I had a cold that I might have taken Nyquil for, and I was suffering from prolonged jet lag from a trip to Florida a couple of years ago when I crossed into the Eastern Time Zone.

I have always enjoyed dystopian stories, so I settled into my Lazy Boy recliner and rented Furiosa to watch on my home TV. It only cost $25.

Furiosa is two and one-half hours long, but it seemed interminable. I got confused and lost the plot line. The movie is a story about a bewildering cast of people obsessed with the lust for power and a thirst for revenge. There was an old white guy named Immortan Joe, who appeared to be hooked up to an oxygen machine, and a young woman named Furiosa, who seemed to be attracted to chaos and never said anything coherent.  Furiosa may or may not have been a woman of color. Furiosa spent the whole movie plotting to kill Dr. Dementus, a strangely sentimental psychopath.  (Back story: Dr. Dementus received his doctorate from Delaware State University.)

When the movie ended, I switched on to CNN, which was breathlessly reporting that Joe Biden, an old white guy on oxygen, was being pushed out of the presidential race. Kamala Harris, CNN averred, remained fiercely loyal to Biden but was waiting in the wings to replace him to fight the epic election battle against Donald Trump, our present-day Dr. Dementus.

I'm embarrassed to confess that I got Furiosa and the CNN news coverage mixed up (head cold, jet lag, etc.). 

Then I realized that the CNN news coverage was really the trailer for the sequel to Furiosa. Kamala Harris is cast in the title role. Joe Biden will play the part of Immortan Joe. and Donald Trump signed on for the role of Dementus.

Furiosa has a host of minor players who will reappear in Furiosa II. Pete Buttigieg is cast as Bommyknocker Warboy, and Alejandro Mayorkas will play Pissboy and is already rehearsing.


Immortan Joe had a bad night.





Monday, June 17, 2024

Pax Americana will die in the wheatfields of Ukraine: The American Century is over

 About 100 nations attended a peace summit on the Ukraine war last week, held at a 5-star resort in Switzerland. Ukraine wasn't invited, and several invitees—including China—did not attend. Most attending nations signed a communique on the Ukraine conflict, but some important countries did not: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Mexico, Indonesia, India, Brazil, and India. 

Hmmm. The BRIC nations, which are working to undermine the status of the dollar, were all nonsigners. What do you suppose that means?

The United States--far more interested in cramming a Gaza ceasefire down Israel's throat than peace in Ukraine--sent VP Kamala Harris as its official representative, and she only attended briefly. Meanwhile, President Biden spent time with George Clooney and Julia Roberts out in Califonia, raising money for his reelection campaign.

None of these world leaders proposed a plausible plan to end the Ukraine war. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it won't be time to discuss a peace plan until Ukraine's military position is more robust.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a "saneceasefire proposal that would require the West to renounce Ukraine's membership in NATO and cede the Donbas and Crimea to Russia. Ukraine dismissed Putin's offer as a nonstarter.

The Ukraine war has only three possible outcomes: First, Russia will win the conflict and absorb the Donbas into the Russian Federation. It already has a firm hold on most of the territory it demands.

Second, the United States, ever more desperate to defeat the Russkies, will escalate the conflict, eventually pushing Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons, which he has repeatedly threatened to do.

Third, the Ukraine war will simply drag on for several more years until Ukraine is a wasteland and Uncle Sam is dead broke.

The third possibility is most likely. If the Ukraine war drags on for a few more years, the U.S. will no longer be a world power. In other words, Pax Americana is in its twilight years and will end as the BRICs accede to world dominance.

Personally, I think the collapse of America's status as the world's leader is a high price to pay for fucking with the Russians in the wheatfields of Ukraine.







Sunday, March 26, 2023

Froma Harrop Has Spoken: The Democrats Will Show Kamala Harris the Exit Door

 Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop is a faithful spear carrier for the Democratic Party. It was Harrop who publicly suggested that Bernie Sanders was a racist ("racist lite")when he was battling Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party's presidential primaries in 2016.  Harrop's views seldom depart from those of the Democratic Party's insiders.

Thus, I was startled to read Harrop's scathing criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris in a recent op-ed essay. Harris, Harrop wrote, has a "record of problematic conduct" and gaffes "and doesn't understand that California swagger married to identity politics is not universally loved by American voters."

Harrop professes to be mystified by Biden's choice of Harris as vice president. "Why Biden made her his running mate floors me to this day." 

Harrop even goes so far as to challenge Harris's status as a member of an oppressed minority. "Harris'[s] mother was a medical researcher from India and her father a Jamaica-born professor of economics at Stanford," Harrop observed. "She was hardly a disadvantaged victim of Jim Crow." Ouch!

In my mind, Froma Harrop's flaming denunciation of Kamala Harris is a clear signal that the Democrats are dumping Harris before the 2024 presidential race. I certainly hope so.

Perhaps President Biden could find a quiet post for Kamala to get her off the national stage. She'd make a great U.S. Ambassador to Chad.









Monday, September 16, 2019

Higher education leaders oppose Democrats' proposal for free college: Why?

College tuition has risen faster than the rate of inflation for the past quarter-century. While wages have remained stagnant, the cost of going to college has shot through the roof. According to Forbes writer Camilo Maldonado, tuition rose 8 times faster than wage growth during the years 1989 to 2016. Eight times faster!

Why? The colleges say they are forced to raise tuition rates because the states are providing less support for higher education. But this lame explanation--repeated ad nauseam--is mostly bullshit. The colleges don't mention the explosion in administrative positions-the profusion of assistant vice presidents, executive associate deans, etc. It is not uncommon for senior administrators at public and private universities to draw salaries that exceed a quarter-million dollars a year.

In any event, everyone agrees that rising tuition costs have forced millions of American students to take out student loans, which now total $1.6 trillion. Something must be done to alleviate the distress.

Several Democratic candidates for the presidency have proposed making college education free at all public colleges and universities. You would think the higher education community would love that idea. But it doesn't. Vassar president Catharine Hill criticized Bernie Sanders's free-college idea when he ran for president in 2016. Her lame-brained solution was to expand long-term income-based repayment plans. And that's basically what we've done--creating repayment plans deliberately structured so that students can never pay off their college loans.

Now we are in the early stages of the 2020 presidential election season, and more Democratic hopefuls have joined Bernie in proposing a free college education for everyone. Senators  Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand (who recently dropped out of the presidential race) have all endorsed a free-college proposal.

But the higher education community still opposes the idea. Just a few days ago, Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester College, published an op-ed essay in Chronicle of Higher Education, in which he cited a couple of liberal tropes to justify his opposition to free college.

A free college education would hurt low-income students, Rosenberg argues, because they would be "squeezed out" in the application process that would become more competitive if tuition were free. And he also contends that free college would exacerbate the nation's already low graduation rate.

Huh? How could free college be bad for low-income students? How could it make graduation rates go down?

Mr. Rosenberg is the president of Macalester College, a very good liberal-arts school in Minnesota, but he does not mention that free college at public institutions would severely disadvantage the private colleges. Who would pay $54,000 a year in tuition and fees to attend Macalester College if they could enroll at the University of Minnesota tuition-free?

 I'm sure Mr. Rosenberg's arguments against free college are sincere and his commitment to private liberal-arts education is genuine. But a great many university presidents and higher-education policy wonks simply don't care about the student-loan crisis, which has motivated political leaders to propose a free college education.  They want to preserve the status quo in higher education, with the federal government spewing more than a $100 billion a year to support the present system.

How many elite-college presidents have come out in favor of a free college education? I don't think any of them have. Unlike Mr. Rosenberg, most college leaders are keeping silent about their qualms, but rest assured they will fight tooth and nail if a Democrat is elected President and tries to get a free-college plan through Congress.

Meanwhile, I don't think any of these arrogant college presidents have lifted a finger to ease the student-debt crisis.  The status quo works just fine for them.

Macalester College: $54,000 in tuition and fees
(the bagpipe music is complimentary)



Sunday, February 24, 2019

Congressman John Katko introduces bill to make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. Will presidential candidates endorse the bill?

Last month, John Katko, a Republican congressman from New York, filed H.R. 770, a bill that would make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy like any other consumer debt.

Titled the "Discharge Student Loans in Bankruptcy Act," Katko's bill is quite simple. It merely strikes the "undue hardship" clause from Section 523(a) of the Bankruptcy Code.

Congressman Katko filed the same bill two years ago. When he filed the bill in 2017, it had ten co-sponsors, including Maryland Congressman John Delaney. When Katko refiled the bill last month, he only had two co-sponsors.

If H.R. 770 becomes law, millions of Americans who are overwhelmed by student loans will get relief in the bankruptcy courts. They will have an opportunity to start families and buy homes. They will get the fresh start that bankruptcy is intended to provide.

Let's make Katko's bill the litmus test for everyone who is running for president or is thinking about running. Let's ask them one simple question: Do you support Katko's bill or not?

  • President Donald Trump, do you support H.R. 770?
  • Senator Elizabeth Warren, do you support Katko's bill?
  • Senator Kamala Harris, do you support H.R. 770?
  • Senator Bernie Sanders, do you support Katko's bill?
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden, do you support H.R. 770?
  • Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, do you support Katko's bill?
  • Senator Amy Klobuchar, do you support H.R. 770?
  • Michael Bloomberg, do you support Katko's bill?
  • Beto O'Rourke, do you support H.R. 770?
  • John Delaney, former Maryland congressman who co-sponsored Katko's bankruptcy-relief bill in 2017, you are now running for president. Do you support Congressman Katko's bill?
Our federal legislators are fond of holding committee hearings where they bully witnesses by demanding yes-or-no answers to all their hectoring questions.

Well, here is a question to everyone who wants to be president, and we should demand a yes-or-no answer. Unless a presidential candidate can say "Yes, I support H.R. 770 without qualification," that person is nothing more than a windbag who doesn't care about average Americans and does not deserve our vote.

*****

Note: I am grateful to Phil Uhrich for calling this bill to my attention.  Mr. Uhrich wrote a provocative essay on national politics in 2016 that is still timely.

Representative John Katko (R-NY)