Two Independence Days

 

by Pa Rock

Elder Patriot

For nearly two-and-a-half centuries our nation recognized July 4th as our "Independence Day," the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence by fifty-six of our founding fathers, an historic document that severed our fledgling nation from the British Empire.  In addition to recognizing the day as a marker of this country's independence form Great Britain, the day also came to reflect the words of the Declaration itself and marked the "independence" of the American people as free in mind, body, and character - and able to make their own way in the world.

But, of course, in July of 1776 not every resident of the new "United States" was a free person.  Women were subjugated to the wills of their fathers or husbands, the natives of the land whose ancestors had been here centuries before the arrival of the Europeans were being relentlessly pushed from their lands and routinely exterminated.  And black slaves, whose families originated in Africa and who had no rights at all, numbered in the hundreds of thousands.  (The first national census of 1790 recorded just under 700,000 slaves in the United States.)

Some of that has changed,

Women now have the right to vote and hold office, but many national debates still rage regarding opportunities for women in society and their rights and abilities to control their own bodies.  Native Americans have also attained the right to vote and hold office - one has even served as Vice President of the United States - but many still live in abject poverty and lead marginalized lives while surviving on the scraps of white society.

The black slaves were freed by an executive order (the Emancipation Proclamation) issued by President Lincoln in 1863 as a response to the southern insurrection and Civil War.  Two years later Congress ratified Lincoln's bold act when it passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery in our nation once and for all.  The states quickly ratified that Amendment.  Black Americans were finally "free" with their own sense of independence.

Supposedly the last slaves in the United States to learn of their independence were in Galveston Bay, Texas, where US troops brought the news to them on June 19th, 1865.  That date quickly became known as "Juneteenth," or "Freedom Day" for Black Americans.  On June 19th, 2021, President Biden officially recognized that special day by signing the "Juneteenth National Independence Day Act." 

Now we have two Independence Days - and that is a very good thing.  I am proud and pleased to celebrate both.

But we also have many more political and social miles to travel before all Americans will be able to feel the same level of independence and freedom from tyranny that our fifty-six white founding fathers did on July 4th, 1776.  Independence and freedom for all is a dream worth having and a goal worth pursuing.

Have a wonderful Independence Day - and don't forget to check on your homebound neighbors, friends, and relatives.

Get Out of the Way, Joe. Do It for your Country.

 

by Pa rock

Concerned Democrat

Joe Biden has been an established figure in national politics ever since he was first elected to the US Senate at the age of twenty-nine more that a half-century ago.  He sought the presidency twice, in 1988 and 2008, and both times was denied the prize as he failed to successfully navigate the Democratic Party's byzantine nominating process.  He was quietly nudged aside by the Obama administration in 2016 so that a presumed stronger candidate, Hillary Clinton, could run, but after the Trump victory that year and four years of an inept and corrupt administration, Biden was chomping at the bit to get back in the race.   In 2020 he developed a storyline that he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump, and an early victory in South Carolina put him on a path to the nomination and winning the general election.

At seventy-eight Joe Biden was too old to be President by almost any metric, but he served four years and chalked up some major accomplishments.  He was almost two years into his eighth decade when he made the decision to run for a second term.  His health and stamina had held up during his first term, or at least there had been no obvious lapses to alert and concern the general public, and if he could prevail with voters a second time, and his health held, her could have four more years of public adulation and the opportunity to make his stamp on America even more indelible.  

Biden once again compared himself to the alternative, Donald Trump, and repeated his declaration that he was the only person capable of defeating the orange menace.  Yes, Biden was getting older, but dang it, his country needed him and he was ready to keep sacrificing for the national good.

Biden's team leaned on the Democratic National Committee to rearrange the caucus and primary schedules so that he stood less chance of being embarrassed by some young upstart, and after getting the schedule that he wanted, the aging President was able to run the table and quickly garner enough delegates to own the nomination.

The nomination was in the bag.   All he had to do was keep reminding the country of Trump's many faults while not doing anything to endanger his own chances of re-election.  Yes, he was old, but so was Trump.  If Biden could maintain just a few more months and exude competent leadership, Trump would eventually implode and Biden would be re-elected.

Then last Thursday night happened, and now the nation seems to have paused in order to rethink the situation.  Trump's supporters aren't rethinking anything;  they are where they always were.  But Biden's voters and other Democrats are having serious thoughts about the viability of the man who already had locked up their nomination.  Should Joe Biden stay in the race, or should he release his delegates and go sit on the beach in Delaware?

Biden and his team have been bustling about trying to convince big-money and small-dollar donors that he is still the only person who can beat Trump, and that his poor debate performance was due to inadequate preparation, too much preparation, or fatigue from travel.  His rambling and mental fadeouts were situational and not a symptom of some medical condition.

Biden has said that he will not leave the race, presumably for the good of the country and not his own vanity.  

Now, however, that wall of bravado is beginning to show some cracks.  A Democratic congressman from Texas has bravely stepped forward and said that Biden should remove himself from the race.  News reports today indicate that as many as twenty-five other Democratic members of Congress are also preparing to encourage the President to withdraw from the race.  Nancy Pelosi, another prominent Democratic geriatric, has signaled that it is acceptable to have a "conversation" about what transpired in Atlanta last Thursday night.    Biden himself, in speaking at a private fundraiser yesterday, joked that he had actually almost fallen asleep at the debate, and some in the room laughed when he said that, while other supporters out in the real world groaned.  He is also reportedly saying that the race may not be "salvageable" at this point.

Today some polling that took place after last week's debate is beginning to make its way into the press. A poll by Suffolk University and USA Today that was published yesterday which looked at Biden and Trump in a six-person national race had showed the two major candidates tied a month ago, but now Trump has a 3-point lead.  That could easily be a decisive margin in November.

Another new poll, this one conducted for CNN, shows Trump up by six points over Biden, the exact amount that the same poll had predicted during an earlier sampling - but - this time the poll also asked Democratic-leaning voters if they thought their party stood a better chance of winning with a candidate other than Joe Biden, and 56% answered "yes."

The tide is turning, slowly, but it is turning.  Enthusiasm for Biden is waning.

Get out of the way, Joe - and give us a chance to win this thing.  Do it for yourself, and do it for your country.

Bannon in the Slammer

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

One of the great villains of the Trump era was finally force-fed his just desserts yesterday when when a prison door in Danbury, Connecticut, slammed shut behind his sorry behind.   Steve Bannon, the former presidential adviser and current political podcaster, finally, and very reluctantly, entered FCI Danbury, a minimum security federal prison that has housed other social miscreants like Rev. Sung Myung Moon and hotelier Leona Helmsley.   Bannon began serving a four-month sentence over two misdemeanor counts of contempt of Congress because he had refused to appear before Congress and testify when subpoenaed.  

Bannon fought valiantly to avoid paying for his crimes, but he ran out of legal options last Friday when the US Supreme Court refused to delay his sentence while he exhausts his appeals over the conviction.

Too bad, so sad.  If he could have only held on a few more months until his fat, incontinent friend returned to the White House, surely he would have been granted a pardon.   Why the heck didn't his buddy issue some sort of preemptive pardon back when he was in the White House the first time?  Obviously he knew that his loyal rodent would never rat him out.  The lack of a preemptive pardon was an oversight of cataclysmic consequence!

(Fortunately Bannon did get a presidential pardon from Trump over his involvement in the "We Build the Wall" ripoff that sent his partners-in-crime to prison.  Small mercies.)

Marjorie Taylor Greene showed up in Danbury yesterday to see Bannon off as he entered into incarceration.  Perhaps he will be able to amuse himself with thoughts of her "bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body" as he lies on his bunk listening fearfully for Bubba's stealthy stroll past his blessedly-barred-and-locked cell door.

Enjoy your free government housing, Steve-O, even if it is only temporary, and, oh yes, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Ain't freedom grand!

Pack it in, Joe. Release those Delegates!

 

by Pa Rock

Democrat

We begin aging the minute we are born.  That's just the way it is.

It seems as though Joe Biden's political history has always been entangled with his age.   The Constitution sets a minimum age of thirty for US Senators, and Biden was just barely thirty when he was first sworn into the US Senate in January of 1973 - more than half-a-century ago.  He has related that he looked so young that he was challenged for stepping onto an elevator reserved for the use of senators.  Today, of course, no one would challenge Joe's right to be almost anywhere, but they might offer an arm for support.

The whole world seems to be buzzing over what to do about Joe following his humiliating performance at last Thursday night's debate in Atlanta.  Pundits, politicians, and the public-at-large are expressing collective shock that an eighty-one-year-old man had trouble moving about and expressing himself clearly.  It's a problem that many in America have been quietly stepping around and trying to ignore for multiple election cycles, but now, after last week's televised debacle, Biden's advanced age must be acknowledged and addressed.

Joe Biden was sixty -five when Barack Obama lifted him from the Senate and made him his running mate in 2008.   Biden had sought the presidency himself in 1988 and 2008, but the prize had eluded him.  The fact that he would age beyond a viable age range for President while serving as Vice President probably figured into the political calculus that Obama used in selecting him for the ticket.  He would be sixty-nine after one Obama term and seventy-three after two, clearly too old in either case to pursue the top job.   In 2016 at the end of two terms, Obama gave his veep the Presidential Medal of Freedom and deftly nudged him out of the way in favor of the somewhat younger former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

But, as we all know, Biden was back in 2020 after America's catastrophic four years of the Donald Trump presidency, and he promoted himself as the only Democrat who could beat Trump - and at the well-advanced age of seventy-seven he managed to do just that.  One of his selling points during that campaign was the quiet notion spread through Democratic circles that he was an emergency fix and would obviously step down after one term.  That, of course, did not happen, and now here we are, post Atlanta, with an enfeebled candidate who has a lock on the Democratic nomination and whose ego won't let him leave the race.

Since last Thursday night when Joe Biden mumbled and stumbled his way through a critical televised showdown with this country's most prominent loud-mouthed liar (who is also way too old to be serving as President), the nation has been struggling with what to do about Joe.  Should we sit idly by and allow him to remain at the helm, even though his hands are shaky and his commands are weak and garbled. or should we encourage him to step aside and take our chances with someone else?  Joe is still prattling on that he is the only one who can beat Trump.  Can he beat Trump?  And even if he does beat Trump, what will his leadership skills look like in three or four years on into his next term?

At this point there is still time to replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket.   The Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago August 19-22, and it is there that the delegates will officially select this year's presidential and vice-presidential ticket.  If Biden were to release his delegates, as I understand it, two scenarios are possible:  1.  He could announce that he was stepping aside in favor of Vice President Harris, and the convention would most likely feel obligated to nominate her;  or, 2. He could simply announce that he was leaving the race and freeing his delegates  to vote their conscience for whomever they pleased - and a general melee would likely ensue.

Bringing in a last-minute presidential nominee would limit the time for a proper vetting and open up the possibility that something could be unearthed about that candidate prior to the election that would wind up throwing the race to Trump, especially if the candidate was someone other than the well-vetted Vice President Harris.  It could also serve to shift party positions on certain issues depending on who the new candidate turned out to be.   But a new candidate would (or at least should) revitalize the race and increase the odds of winning the general election in November.

If Joe keeps the nomination for himself, the Democratic Party is further behind now than it was a week ago, especially by the metric of enthusiasm.

As of this morning Joe says he is staying in the race.  He met with his family at Camp David over the weekend and says the decision to remain in the race was a family consensus.  But the defeat of Donald Trump and the preservation of democracy is serious business and should involve more than just a Biden family conflab.  Listen to America, Joe.  This isn't about you, it's about us.

Stand down, Joe - so that somebody else can stand up.

Donald Trump is too dim-witted, mean-spirited, cruel, and dishonest to be our leader - and he is too old.  Help us get rid of him once of for all by clearing the path for someone else who can take him out.  The Democratic team is bursting with talent.  Let somebody else have a turn.

Pack it in, Joe.  Release those delegates!

The Dog and his Hippie

 

by Pa Rock

Friend of Animals

As I was leaving the store yesterday pushing a cart of groceries toward my car, I came across a young man (forty-something or perhaps fifty) of the hippie persuasion who had just gotten off his adult tricycle and was headed into the store.  He had parked his contrivance in the narrow lane for carts that had a sign posted saying “No Parking.”  The fellow was supporting a broad smile and was overtly friendly, saying to me, a total stranger, as we passed one another, “Hello.  How are you this fine day?”  He smelled of weed, and I assumed that he had just ridden into town on a munchies run and had been expanding his consciousness as he peddled.
 
The big trike had a large wire basket behind the seat with a custom-fitted cushion on which a small passenger could sit.  In this case the passenger was a brown-with-black-spots mutt who smiled at me as I walked by pushing the grocery cart.  The dog looked very chill, and since he had been seated behind the man peddling the trike, I reasoned that he was probably as high as his hippie, or at least headed in that direction.  The dog and I acknowledged one another and then I proceeded on to my car to deposit the groceries.
 
After returning the cart a couple of minutes later, I again walked past the dog who was still waiting patiently in his basket while his hippie was inside the store undoubtedly sharing witticisms and joy with the other shoppers.  The small dog again smiled up at me as he sat listening to a long, narrow sound system that was connected vertically to the trike’s steering column.   The music was a jazzy little number by the “Stray Cats.”
 
When I got home, Alexa and I decided that “Stray Cats” was the perfect choice for our afternoon’s entertainment while I did laundry and got caught up from my two-week adventure out west.    The dog and his hippie had good taste in music!