Category Archives: Elections

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I subscribe to The Philadelphia Inquirer so that you don’t have to The newspaper wants to protect democracy, but was so very upset when people had a democratic choice

My most frequently read newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, published another of the typical end-of-the-year articles, this headlined “16 opinions that caught your attention in 2024: Looking back on our most-read opinions of the year” I loved this one in particular:

To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race | Editorial

Biden had a horrible night Thursday. But the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.

by The Editorial Board | Saturday, June 29, 2024 | 4:30 PM EDT

President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.

In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.

The Editorial Board not only did not get their wish that Mr Trump withdraw from the race, but they really didn’t get their wish when he won.

Their headline was a riff from the one The New York Times used the previous day, “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race, which had said:

President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy,

hoping the Democrats would nominate another candidate.

The Washington Post editorialized similarly.

But for all of the angst of the editorialists, former President Trump is now future President Trump as well, scheduled to be inaugurated 23 days from now, because the country was given a democratic choice two months ago. Too bad for the various editorial boards that the voters chose differently from what the pundits and columnists and editorialists told them they should.

On Tuesday, November 7, 2028, the American people will be voting for President again, and President Trump will not be on the ballot; His constitutional limit of two terms will have been reached. The editorial boards will be able to fuss and fume and support the Democrats again in four years. That’s you know, democracy!

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Journolism: Even now, the credentialed media try to blame their laziness on Joe Biden’s staffers

At 2:55 PM EST on December 17th, I asked the question to which The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal admitted the answer on the 19th: “Why didn’t the press play its ‘adversarial role’ when it came to Joe Biden?”

How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge

Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.

Continue reading →

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My local Bishop really, really doesn’t like Donald Trump

The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington

While I cannot say that I am friends with His Excellency, the Most Reverend John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv., Bishop of Lexington, we are at least acquainted with each other. The Bishop at least recognizes me when he sees me, though I cannot be certain he remembers my name. We have had some pleasant conversations the few times he has visited our small parish.

I have written about him, or at least mentioned him, on this poor site, in 17 previous articles, not always charitably. Bishop Stowe is an excellent homilist, one who can really connect with a congregation, and I have no doubts at all about his faith. But, as a Catholic priest, he chooses the wrong things far too often for me.

Kentucky prelate calls lack of election response from American Church ‘disappointing’

by John Lavenburg | Tuesday, December 3, 2024

NEW YORK – In the month or so since former President Donald Trump was elected to occupy the White House for a second term, the majority of American bishops have either not commented on the election publicly, or issued a generic statement about the importance of civility, unity, and democracy.

That extends to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, where – outside of responses to Trump’s stated plan for mass deportations – not much has been said. Bishop John Stowe, in a recent conversation with Crux, said that reality isn’t surprising considering how American Church leaders have handled the presidency of Joe Biden over the last four years.

“It was not surprising coming from the USCCB. What was surprising was the attitude when Joe Biden was elected, a Catholic president four years ago, and there was such an uproar in the conference about that election, and because of that, I really had no expectation that there would be much said about the Trump election,” said Stowe, the bishop of Lexington in Kentucky.

His Excellency the Bishop does not like former and future President Donald Trump. Speaking in August of 2020, before the 2020 election, the Bishop let us know, let all of his Catholic parishioners know, that he was opposed to President Trump’s re-election. Bishop Stowe was appalled by Mr Trump’s anti-illegal immigration policies, calling them “anti-life.” Continue reading →

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No matter how much you hate the credentialed media, you do not hate them enough! The legacy media rarely lie outright, but their biases can be seen in their editorial choices of what to cover, and what to ignore

One thing I saw frequently on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — in the weeks before the election were claims, unsourced claims, that Kamala Harris Emhoff’s campaign had internal polling which was showing that she was losing to former President Donald Trump. Those were cheering, no doubt about that, but I am heavily biased toward verifiable claims, claims that I can back up on The First Street Journal. I make no claim that my site should be considered part of the credentialed media, nor do I claim it to be unbiased; my occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach, and I are both definitely politically conservative, even though we have some disagreements on a few issues.

But while the credentialed media have long told us that the contest between Vice President Emhoff and Mr Trump was a close one, one thing I never saw, in any of the credentialed media sources I do check — The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, to name just a few — was any hint that the Emhoff campaign knew they were behind. Yet someone, at the very least, was leaking that information, leaked it well enough that some conservative sites heard it. Continue reading →

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John Podesta makes commitments for our government that President Trump will not keep

Yeah, this might not work out!

Conservatives actually love John Podesta. Thanks to his lax computer security, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks was able to hack into many of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, the exposure of which helped her to her strong second-place finish in that election. Mr Podesta helped, in his own inimitable way, to elect Donald Trump!

Cop29: wealthy countries agree to raise climate finance offer to $300bn a year

EU and nations including the UK, US and Australia indicate they will make the increase in exchange for changes to a draft text, sources say

Adam Morton, Fiona Harvey, Patrick Greenfield and Dharna Noor in Baku and Damian Carrington | Saturday, November 23, 2024 | 2:45 AM EST

Major rich countries at UN climate talks in Azerbaijan have agreed to lift a global financial offer to help developing nations tackle the climate crisis to $300bn a year, as ministers met through the night in a bid to salvage a deal.

The Guardian understands the Azeri hosts brokered a lengthy closed-door meeting with a small group of ministers and delegation heads, including China, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the UK, US and Australia, on key areas of dispute on climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels. Continue reading →

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Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and hate!

It is entirely possible that I have been, believe it or not, too charitable to our friends on the left. In my recent article, Will Bunch uses his Freedom of Speech and of the Press to tell us that he hates Freedom of Speech and of the Press, I mocked The Philadelphia Inquirer’s far-left columnist Will Bunch for his tirade against MSNBC’s (supposed) journalists, Joe and Mike Scarborough for having gone to Mar-a-Lago and meeting with former and future President Donald Trump. Mr Bunch told his readers about the brave “journalists left who do plan, in a moment of increased risk, to keep asking the tough questions in this muddled new era,” but trashes two (purported) journalists who have gone to cover a story about the next President of the United States as somehow “supplicants,” showing fealty and making obeisance to him. Uhhh, you can’t “keep asking the tough questions” to Mr Trump if you are unwilling to talk to him in the first place.

I would have thought that a journolist, oops, sorry, journalist like Mr Bunch would appreciate freedom of the press and the willingness of journalists to go into hostile territory, to get their stories, to report the news, even from people who didn’t like or respect them. Continue reading →

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Bob Casey and his minions are desperately trying to cheat

Screen capture from Philadelphia Inquirer website main page, 8:45 PM EST on Monday, November 18, 2024.

We have been told, ever since the election of 2020, that no, of course not, there are no attempts to cheat on election results or vote counting!

Pa. Supreme Court again rules that Philly and other counties cannot count undated mail ballots

The ruling comes after several Philly-area counties defied the court’s previous guidance. The issue has come under close scrutiny as the race between Bob Casey and Dave McCormick undergoes a recount.

by Sean Collins Walsh, Gillian McGoldrick, and Fallon Roth | Monday, November 18, 2024 | 4:30 PM EST

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday issued a ruling reiterating its previous stance that undated or misdated mail ballots should not be counted in the 2024 election, dealing a blow to Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey’s hopes that a recount and litigation will help him overcome his just over 17,000-vote deficit to Republican Dave McCormick as of Monday evening. Continue reading →

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The Philadelphia Inquirer keeps up with the hate of Donald Trump even after the election

Wouldn’t the answer be, to children who might ask why former and future President Donald Trump beat current Vice President and future private citizen Kamala Harris Emhoff in the election, that the United States held a free and fair election, and as in every election, one serious candidate won, and one serious candidate lost? But no, the American left, having gone off the rails in their #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, think something else is required.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

How do we explain this election to our children?

Children need us to accept their gift of hope, even if we aren’t feeling it, and they need us to use it to fight for them.

by Gwen Snyder, For The Inquirer | Wednesday, November 13, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

The past two months have been a whirlwind of autumnal novelty and stimulation for my preschooler. There was Sesame Place, then her 3rd birthday, then her first day of school. Just as things began to settle, we launched into a cascade of Halloween activities. And then, fast on their heels came the election.

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Let them eat cake!

This site noted, two days after the election, that the college-educated elites who supported Kamala Harris Emhoff just couldn’t understand how a majority of Americans didn’t just love her to death and cast the vast majority of their votes for her. We pointed out on Friday that working class voters along the Mexican border in Texas were casting their votes for Donald Trump because the economy that the Democrats told us was so very great wasn’t so great for them.

The following article from The Philadelphia Inquirer wasn’t about the election at all, but it seems to me that it says a lot about it:

$500 hair appointments are becoming the norm as the cost of cuts and colors rise

The increased costs of color and other products, as well as the greater complexity of trending hairstyles, have led many salon owners to raise their prices over the past five years.

Continue reading →