What can possibly be next?

Do you follow the news?  Are you paying attention to what’s happening in politics, world affairs, the economy and other things that are important to all of us?

There are times when I think I maybe a little overinformed but lately I actually have begun to feel that’s not the case.

In the past week, we had the earliest modern presidential debate ever.  Neither candidate performed well, as President Biden came across like an 81 year old person sometimes does….tired, somewhat disoriented, having difficulty expressing himself, and confusing one set of facts or specifics for another.  Will come back to the President in a moment.

And then there was the former President, Donald Trump, who performed largely as expected.  Bombastic, misleading, unsympathetic and unrepentant for anything of which he has been found guilty in a court of law.  He also persisted in his claims that the 2020 election was not contested fairly, which is consistent with his public position on that subject.  And in typical Trump fashion, he falsely claimed that the racially charged riots in Charlottesville, VA, in which a local woman died, never happened and that on January 6 he offered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Capitol, but that she declined the offer.

Trump loudly claimed victory afterward, again, as expected.  Biden came out swinging in a scheduled rally the following day, but not before a host of media pundits from an equally broad spectrum of news sources came out with handwringing remarks about how the debate performance illustrates clearly that Biden simply doesn’t have “it” any longer and needs to withdraw from the campaign.  Liberal media members have claimed daily from the end of the debate until about five minutes ago that “senior party leaders” are saying privately that he must withdraw from the race for the good of the party, that he isn’t up to the job, and at it’s time to move on.

The general apathy of voters nationwide indicates that a rematch of the 2020 race isn’t exciting enough to many, and that the election comes across as picking the lesser of two evils.

Biden’s record as President is there for all to see, and there are notable accomplishments that all have to acknowledge.  Trump’s record is also self-evident, but are you familiar with Project 2025, a comprehensive plan for Trump to execute if he regains the presidency?  Look that up and see what it entails, including astronomical numbers of deportations of migrants, the defunding of the FBI, the dissolution of numerous federal agencies and much more.

And then there’s the Supreme Court, which ruled that Trump enjoys “some” immunity from prosecution for “official” acts.  This means that at least a portion of the indictment against him for January 6 will now be removed from consideration.  Another decision will now allow courts, including the Supreme Court, to use their own judgment in deciding things that were for many years left to the presumed expertise of federal agencies and their personnel.  Lots more came out of the Court’s recent decisions.

A well informed electorate is necessary to preserve democracy, but as long as people prefer getting their news from Facebook or Tik Tok, if at all, our eligible voters will decide who they prefer to be President in something of a vacuum.

The information is there, we just all need to make sure we get it and use it.


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