I need to get this off my 70+ year old scrawny chest, because if I see one more comment, meme, cartoon, or op ed slamming VP Kamala Harris, especially from Democrats, I’m going to lose it. She’s been proclaimed inadequate from the get go. Many naysayers rely only on their info silos or no info at all, just perceptions. So many times I’ve answered the ‘what’s Kamala Harris actually doing, it doesn’t seem like much’ question with “plenty”. Do you follow her social media? I have since the beginning. Do you actually look for information or wait for it to be fed to you by a mainstream media that retains so much misogyny it reminds me of 2016 all over again? Here is where I confess to my 2016 PTSD. Heck, they’re even criticizing the way Kamala laughs. Can’t wait for the canckles comments to start. And when did you ever ask what Mike Pence was doing during the 45 era (not including post election when he got plenty of attention)?

Fortunately for me there have been a few pieces in the last few weeks that give me hope, despite all the hand wringing. Mark Jacobs (Stop the Presses) sums it up. There are 3 main problems with Kamala Harris that send people into a tizzy. She is a Democrat, a person of color, and a woman, the trifecta of GOP hatred. Choose either of the other two for hesitant Democrats. The heck with her incredible experience and credentials, which rise far above many former VPs, because, you know, DEI.

In their effort to be ‘balanced’, the WaPo put up Kathleen Parker’s hit piece, after Jennifer Rubin addressed the VP issue, calling her ‘underrated’, with FACTS. She’d written last fall about the calls to replace Harris. VP Harris is certainly hitting her stride in her position, staying on message, supporting her POTUS and their vision for America, and not shying away from speaking her mind on important issues. She’s been in the room with POTUS in times of crisis. By the end of 2023, she had traveled on four official trips to Asia (Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Singapore, Viet Nam, Indonesia, and South Korea). She has made official trips to Guatemala, Mexico, France, Germany, Poland, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, Honduras and the Bahamas. Harris has represented the US at the Munich Security Conference THREE times. She has criss-crossed the country in defense of reproductive rights and health care, and has been welcomed at colleges campus all over the nation, engaging with young voters on issues that matter to them. She stands up for Joe Biden without upstaging him, and was brilliant in her defense in the wake of Special Counsel Hur’s “lapse in judgement”, calling his comments regarding Biden’s age “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.” NPR published this today, thank you very much.

So stop, please, with the moaning about how Joe should replace her on the ticket. As the highest ranking woman in US government EVER, she is more than ready to step in should anything befall POTUS in the next 4 years. This is the ticket we have, and it’s been a successful team. A lot of us out here really like what she brings to the table. Otherwise, you’ll help propel a repeat of 2016. I’m looking at you, Jill Stein voters, Bernie or Busters, and stay at homes. We need all hands on deck to banish TFG and his MAGAts.

Bill Clinton once said “Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line.” We have to fall in line for the biggest Blue Wave ever in November. And that’s a FACT.

NBC pulled a fast one this weekend, hiring Trumpist liar Ronna McDaniel, former RNC chair liar and insurrectionist, as a paid political “analyst”.  She debuted on Meet the Press yesterday and it was a Shit Show with McDaniel lying while tripping over her lies while Kristen Welker did her best to hold her feet to the fire.  McDaniel’s performance was typical just repeating herself while pretending to be the slightest bit credible.  The real star of the show, though, as Chuck Todd took a flamethrower to not just McDaniel, but NBC itself.  He told Welker that the bosses of NBC owed her an apology for making her interview such a prolific liar.  Have a look:

It gets better, though.  Joe Scarborough launched this morning condemning NBC and Nicole Wallace followed suit.  The blowback is so bad the MSNBC has told parent company NBC that they won’t give McDaniel airtime on any show.  Boom.

Keep in mind that McDaniel chaired the RNC up until TFG’s daughter in law took over 2 weeks ago.  She led the way on The Big Lie, played a key role in the fake elector scam and tried to get Michigan to not certify the 2020 election.  She’s essentially an unindicted co-conspirator in the insurrection; rather than being on NBC, she should be on bail for federal felony charges.  She’s the worst of the worst, and Todd was right – you can’t trust a word out of her mouth.  NBC has made a huge mistake and I predict a short tenure for Ms. McDaniel at the network.

Sometimes, Juanita Jean puts me to work with the push broom to swamp out the beauty shop after an especially busy week.

Like this one.

But before dumping the dust pan, I picked out a note I found and read it. It was from Alfredo at the Dairy Queen. I went back in and showed it to her: “Oh, yeah,” she said, “that’s a real interesting story about Ted Cruz that hasn’t gotten any real attention. Go ahead and do something with it if you want.”

I took that to mean she wanted me to tell you about it, so here goes.

It seems that Texas Senator Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz has a podcast. A podcast is a digital medium that allows people who otherwise encounter insurmountable barriers to enter the media market a simple way to do so.

But it seems Ted’s podcast, Verdict With Ted Cruz, got a leg up in the form of production services from media giant iHeartMedia.

From Forbes (12/1/22):

“The Texas Republican and his co-host announced in the Oct. 7 episode of ‘Verdict with Ted Cruz’ that their three-year-old, bootstrapped podcast…had recently received an intriguing offer from iHeartMedia: ‘iHeart can fund the whole thing, fund production, dump a whole bunch of money into marketing,’ said co-host Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire. ‘This is incredible. It will make this show sustainable, not just for the next few months going into the midterms but for the next years.’ The deal also calls for iHeartMedia to market and air the show on some of its 860 radio stations, supply Cruz with a new co-host and increase production from once to three times a week.”

Now that’s what I call surmounting the insurmountable.

That’s a podcast on steroids.

But wait…isn’t that sort of like an in-kind donation from a registered lobbyist?

According to the same Forbes article:

“iHeartMedia lobbied on two bills that appeared before one of Cruz’s committees last quarter.”

Conflict of interest, anyone?

According to Ted Cruz’s spokesman, there is nothing wrong with this deal. “Senator Cruz receives no financial benefit from Verdict. There is no difference between Sen. Cruz appearing on a network television show, a cable news show or a podcast airing on iHeartMedia.”

According to Senate Ethics rules, senators cannot accept honoraria for oral presentations transmitted electronically. That being the case, Cruz himself cannot benefit from his podcast, and he doesn’t. According to a most recent (March 20, 2024) Forbes article, Cruz’s independent superpac, Truth and Courage PAC, however, has no such restriction (click to make bigly):

That’s $214,752.98 in American money.

Those were proceeds from radio advertisements aired during his podcasts.

That’s money that the PAC can use to independently ensure “that Ted Cruz is re-elected to the United States Senate in 2024” (from their website).

They tell me that the US Senate has an Ethics Committee, and they say, on their website, that the committee doesn’t comment on matters before them.

I do hope that this is one of those matters, but I am a glass half empty sort of guy.

I have to give credit where credit is due. William Kristol came up with a thought on the campaign that I had not really considered. The idea was essentially for Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump by ignoring him. Of course, tactics can be heavily debated and they probably will be between now and the conventions when things really start ramping up.

The idea (for those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole) is that traditional campaign tactics will backfire. Engaging with Trump treats him like any other candidate and simply becomes a traditional race between two traditional candidates. Admittedly, this is risky. Denying a debate could be seen as ducking your opponent. Such a gambit would have to involve every effort to make Biden seem more than viable. If he appears to be energetic, coherent, and working for the people then he can overcome the obvious slings and arrows for a failure to engage.

That means not only not debating him but also not even addressing him. Honestly, what does anyone think they will get out of a debate anyway? Trump speeches are degenerating into a river of word salad. His voters aren’t really weighing two coherent candidates with competing visions for the country. Those that are undecided on Biden are undecided based on his age. Watching him stand next to another old man isn’t going to move the needle that much.

One of the things I’m thankful for is discussing politics with my wife. She is a dedicated independent so she holds no punches. Her frustration is she got the feeling that Biden was supposed to be a one term president, but no one from the Democratic party stepped up to take the mantle. That is likely because everyone was waiting for Biden to step aside.

The image you get is of three fielders standing around an easy pop fly and waiting for one of the other fielders to take the reigns and catch it. The ball hilariously drops to the ground with three fielders all staring at each other. In this case it’s not that hilarious. I’m not really certain who that person would be. One of the problems is that we so readily poke holes in every possible candidate that we end up with a bench of people no one seems to want.

So, what you have are two candidates that few people inside the party seem to want. Yet, no one wants to do anything about it. The fear is that if they do something they are handing the election to the other party or ending their own political career. So, we have three or four fielders standing around and hoping someone else catches the easy fly ball.

It’s too late now. This is the matchup we have. One thing is certain. We cannot treat this like any other race. The press always loves a good horse race and if they have any excuse to turn this into one they will. Biden needs to make this a referendum on his health, vitality, and effectiveness because for undecided voters it is. In a sense, it isn’t even about undecided voters but people that are undecided about whether they want to vote in the first place. It’s not as much a gap between two men but an enthusiasm gap. People aren’t going to get more enthusiastic watching Biden tell us how awful Trump is. If you don’t know that by now you aren’t voting for Biden anyway.

I start off hating this argument that I am about to make. You hear people say that this election is the most important in our nation’s history. Of course, that’s always true until the next one. Hyperbole doesn’t do anyone any good. It conjures up images of a Shepard boy clearing his throat about some wolf he may have seen.

However, it is impossible to ignore the rhetoric. The GOP nominee for president of the United States is predicting a bloodbath if he loses. We can try as hard as we can to normalize this. He is just a raving lunatic. He is just joking. He is speaking figuratively and nothing he says is to be taken seriously. He really didn’t say it and if he said he didn’t really mean it. Even if he did mean it who cares?

We’ve seen this all before and we saw January 6th. Whether or not he is really serious doesn’t even matter at this point. He’s activated hundreds if not thousands of people to not only believe the words he is saying, but also do something about it. This is nut crunching time folks. If we want to keep democracy around we have to defeat this man and defeat him soundly.

In the backdrop we have the burgeoning presidential runs or RFK Jr., Cornel West, and whatever No Labels wants to throw up there. We should talk for a minute about what third party candidates are there to do. Usually they are there because there is dissatisfaction with the two major parties. It can come down to the platforms or the candidates themselves.

In this case, you have two old men that weren’t particularly popular last time that are running again. Very few people wanted this matchup again. Yet, here we are. However, we need to be very clear about what third party candidates do. They don’t win. They’ve never won and they likely never will win. They do two things. They syphon votes from one or both of the major parties and they get at least one of the major parties to adopt some of their policy planks.

RFK is known for two things. He’s a Kennedy and he’s anti=vax. Maybe Trump adapts the second plank but RFK isn’t likely to siphon votes from Trump. Biden is not adopting an anti-vax stance anytime soon. West doesn’t have any major policy initiatives that we know of. His is more of a protest run based on dissatisfaction with the two major parties.

Under normal circumstances that would be fine. Yet, that is calling for us to normalize Trump. We can’t. We shouldn’t. The press has been carrying that water for over eight years probably because Trump is good for business. Outrage is good for business. It creates page views, likes, comments, and sells ad space. Yet, Trump has not been artful about where this is going. He is openly broadcasting it at this point.

Maybe he is playing ten dimensional chess. Maybe he has done a thorough analysis of the electorate and the press environment and determined that this is the best way to position himself to gain power. Maybe he is just a damn lucky fool that stumbled into this because no one wants to be the bad guy and tell him no. That dirty job goes to the American people.

We start with Kennedy, West, and No Labels. I don’t know what you think you are doing. Maybe you think you are representing a portion of the electorate that is dissatisfied with the choices they have. Maybe you think you are raising issues neither major party is raising. Maybe you are a bought and sold stooge for the Russians or Trump himself. Whether your motives be pure or sinister (or somewhere in between) it doesn’t matter. You need to bow out and you need to bow out now. Let that son of a bitch be dead and buried and then you can tilt at your windmills.

One of the common refrains from the left and from those not religious is the separation of church and state. The general idea is that politics gets perverted by religion. Centuries of history teach us this and in the grand tradition of our own country, the first immigrants were those escaping religious persecution.

It has been 50 years since Roe v. Wade and also nearly that amount of time since the Christian Coalition and Religious right got its start. Even without going into the origins of the movement and the potentially cynical motives behind it, we can look at what this movement has wrought.

So, I’m reversing it. We shouldn’t be worried about religion perverting our politics but about our politics perverting our religion. Let’s ignore the cynical adoption of abortion as the most important issue of the day. Let’s take most people at their word and assume they are deeply concerned about the issue and want to see it become truly rare.

History has clearly shown that deeply religious people can accomplish great things independent of the government. The Catholics have the Gabriel Project. Unfortunately, it is not as common as it used to be, but it essentially took scared mothers to be and offered counseling, financial assistance, and prayerful options that did not include abortion. Instead of making it illegal, condemning these young women, or preaching against it in the pulpit, they simply eliminated the need by helping them.

Our faith or lack of faith has a direct impact on our beliefs about how government should resolve or not resolve our problems. Jesus even said the poor would always be with us. The only possible way to remain sane is to separate those religious beliefs from our political ones. How can we best assist the poor? What standard of living should every human be guaranteed? How can we possibly mandate and make sure everyone is getting this standard of living?

These are all valuable and important political questions that should be independent of how we individually approach the problem. It is possible to be personally generous and politically selfish. It is possible to be personally pro life and politically pro choice. So, these opinions cannot be the full content of our character. We cannot allow it to define us. We must get back to a world where what we do and what we say matters much more than who we vote for in November.

It shouldn’t be boiled down to a singular issue. In the 1990s, the battle cry of the Republican party was that character matters. No matter what you think of Joe Biden politically, cognitively, or personally, there can be no doubt that he wins a character competition with Donald Trump. Even if Joe Biden isn’t a good man he still wins easily. It’s hard to imagine too many people on this planet that Trump would win a character battle with.

When you allow your fervor over one issue to blind you to the glaring gap in character you have allowed your politics to overwhelm your religion. When you allow one issue to overshadow all of the other ones your faith holds dear you have allowed politics to overwhelm your religion. When you allow your political beliefs to cause you to hate others that have opposing political beliefs then you have allowed politics to overwhelm your religion.

I will not presume to speak for God, but I am reasonably certain he will not ask me who I voted for. A wrong vote is not going to keep me out of heaven or anyone else for that matter. The bigger test is how I treated those around me. If our politics causes us to treat others worse it is time to separate ourselves from politics. So, others might say separate church and state. I say separate state and church.