Uncle Sam Wants You— If you can afford to get elected to public office! The more I think about how I make my decisions about who I want to be President or Governor or Senator or in the U.S. House of Representatives, it strikes me that it is not really about politics. It’s about humanity. I want men and women in office who seem to be in it for the noblest reason of all, public service. We’ve [...] READ MORE
Campaign slogans with and without exclamation points! Slogans have been a part of presidential campaigns since George Washington was fitted for his first set of wooden teeth. Washington himself didn’t need a slogan. He was, after all, the “Father of Our Country.” How could he lose? Then there was the I-cannot-tell-a-lie story that we now know was itself a lie dreamed up by a biographer. As we’re seeing in the preliminary rounds of the 2024 Presidential Election, [...] READ MORE
Doctors used to endorse smoking as healthful and smokers kept puffing. What do vitamins and memory-enhancing supplements have to do with campaign ads and federal laws protecting us from false advertising claims? It all comes down to this: We all get to believe what we want to believe. Never has it been truer than during the opening years of this decade. Why? Because an amazing number of U.S. citizens want things to coincide with and confirm their [...] READ MORE
It’s one of the things that has made America great. Humor can be the great equalizer— from the wisecracking GI coping with wartime stress to the disaster victim refusing to submit to self-pity. It’s even prevalent in politics and government, though carefully rendered in political campaigns with mixed results. We think of Ronald Reagan, 73, and the oldest person ever to run for President at the time (both Trump and Biden were older in the last election) in the [...] READ MORE
Despite jokes about dead people voting, election security is strong. It’s been quiet on the American front for many years now. Or so it seems. Even as I absorb the reality of observing three quarters of a century of a blessed life, I don’t think of myself as having lived through any great historical movements that dramatically changed the course of American life. Looking back, I guess when something is part of your past you don’t think [...] READ MORE
Winks and nudges to keep the woke mob at bay. The most highly sought state-level office across these United States —27 state races with 119 Republican and Democratic candidates from Alabama to Wyoming as we approach the dreaded 2022 Primary Elections—is that of Secretary of State. It is a battle for control of our democratic process—namely, the sanctity of our votes—with Republican Conservative candidates blatantly anointing Trump as the party savior while continuing to promulgate the election [...] READ MORE
Does it? In a true Democracy, three Presidents since 1988 would have lost. In a simple system of majority rule, Mr. Biden’s thumping margin of more than seven million votes would have been the last word. For that matter, so would Hillary Clinton’s national margin of nearly three million votes in 2016: Mr. Trump would not have had a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address in which to barricade himself in 2020. — Jedediah Britton-Purdy in the January 2, [...] READ MORE
As the charges of voter fraud run their course, some party loyalists have stood their ground. I can’t think of a time when so many people — people who regard themselves as patriots are as distrustful of our democracy as today. Having a president who fuels that mistrust to the extent where supporters view everything around them as a conspiracy is certainly a big part of it. The election has been portrayed as a massive fraud with [...] READ MORE
Wailing in the White House won’t help bring us together. I must confess I resisted following the blow-by-blow coverage of the presidential election, which required much of last week to project a winner. My attitude was just let me know when it is all over but the shouting. Well, the election part is over, anyway. As usual the shouting, better described as wailing, comes from a president who fears becoming something he detests above all things— a [...] READ MORE
It’s time to zip up my lip and wait for what the voters have already decided. My plan for this week was to write about anything but politics, particularly presidential politics. I figured by mid-Wednesday morning when I posted this, there would still be no victory proclamation. It is time to move on, whatever happens, even if it means enduring a numbing four more years of fibs, fiction and factionalism. I suppose I can endure whatever happens. [...] READ MORE
