Oh, be quiet, J.B. You're confusing us!

All the more reason we ought to hear less chatter from officials about presidential impeachment who aren’t directly involved in the process. Because it all too often seems like they don’t have any comprehension what it is they’re talking about.

Everybody has opinion on Trump outcome, … 

Take the case of Illinois’ governor, J.B. Pritzker, who back in April engaged in rhetoric that tried to make it seem as though he has long been a supporter of those people who want Donald Trump removed from office by force of Congress.

BUT THEN LAST week, the Politico newspaper published a Pritzker interview in which it seemed our governor was not quiet as hard-line on the impeachment issue. Perhaps he’d rather see Trump lose the 2020 general election and be removed from office that way.

But now, the Capitol Fax newsletter points out that J.B. may be backing away from that stance. Or as the Springfield-based newsletter phrased it, he’s “backing away from backing away.”

As the newsletter quotes the governor, “I think he should be out of office as soon as humanly possible. The only question to me is, is that gonna happen with an impeachment process or is that gonna happen with an election?”

Huh?!?

IT SEEMS TO me that Pritzker wants to be in the camp of people who don’t think much of Donald Trump (which according to the most-recent Gallup Organization poll includes 51 percent of the country). But the ranks of people who think it a national embarrassment that The Donald was ever permitted to occupy the Oval Office are split on this issue.

Pritzker not being able to take a definitive stance on presidential impeachment does nothing more than clutter the public discourse with more vague pronouncements that don’t do a thing to make the issue more clear to the public.

Personally, I’m amongst the ranks of people who’d see the impeachment process as a complete waste of time – largely because even if the House of Representatives with its Democratic Party majority votes to impeach the man, he’d still have to go on trial before the Senate.

… but does Pritzker know enough for it to matter?

Which has a Republican Party majority loaded with officials who are determined to protect the presidential reputation no matter how stupid he gets.

I REALIZE THAT the pro-impeachment types argue they’re making a political statement and that they want to be on the record as wanting to Dump Trump from the White House. They talk of putting the Senate on the record as being for The Donald, because they want to believe it will hold the GOP up to shame and ridicule.

Which, if you want to be honest, is nonsense. Largely because I’m convinced the Trump political backers have no shame. They’re also more than willing to spin the process into a claim that Trump has been vindicated – a word they’d prefer to use over “acquitted.”

Which they’ll hate to use because it would imply there was legitimacy to the charges against Trump to begin with.

Pushing for impeachment could do little more than create a lengthy process that ends with Trump remaining in office – and further motivating the ideologues into thinking they’re morally superior for backing Trump to begin with.

IF ANYTHING, IT’S going to take an outright electoral defeat to actually get Trump out of office (although it wouldn’t shock me if Trump backers were to think in terms of a coup ‘d etat to remain in office beyond January 2021, regardless of what the people say).

Yes, these are irrational political times, and we have to think in such terms, which are appalling but honest and truthful.

So Pritzker might have been right when he told Politico that there might not be enough time to work our way through the impeachment process and actually remove Trump from office. It doesn’t help matters if his stance keeps switching on the issue.

Could Trump return just like Smith did?

But if we look at Illinois political history, there’s an even more-embarrassing scenario – take the case of former state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago, who was expelled from the Illinois House in August 2012 following a criminal indictment. Only to get re-elected in the November election that year. Don’t put it past the Trump-ites to vote for the man out of spite to any impeachment attempt!

  -30-

Send Trump back? Who’d want him!

President Donald Trump is an ethnic mixture of Scottish and German – the latter of which cause some people to deride him by reminding us at every chance they get that the family name originally was ‘Drumpf.’

TRUMP: Deport Donald? Who'd want him!

Back in the days when they were the immigrants, and the name change was made to come up with something they thought sounded more “American.”

SO NOW THAT the president is on a rhetorical kick of wanting to deride members of Congress whom he thinks aren’t American-enough to belong in this country – literally saying they should “go back to the broken and crime-infested countries they came from” – perhaps we ought to give it a thought.

Should we take this sorry excuse of a U.S president, revoke his American citizenship, and ship him off to either Scotland or Germany? Send him back “home,” so to speak!

Actually, that would be a ludicrous fantasy – and not because of the fact that Trump by birth is a Noo Yawker from the borough of Queens (even though he’d like us to think he’s the ultimate in Manhattan sophistication).

More it’s ludicrous because I suspect that neither Scotland nor Germany would want anything to do with The Donald or anyone in his pompous, egotistical family. They probably think they dodged a bullet of sorts by having his family emigrate away from them all those generations ago.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Not easily silenced

EITHER THAT, OR maybe they’d concoct some sort of scheme by which they could confiscate his immense family wealth for themselves – thereby reducing the Trump family to penniless status.

Not that I expect this to happen either. I suspect our society is stuck with the Trump ego – and is going to have to live with the shame of knowing it really was possible for a vocal minority of voters to actually prevail in the 2016 election cycle.

PRESSLEY: Deport her to … Cincinnati?

A vocal minority that probably thinks it is entirely clever for Trump to go around using his Twitter account to spew nonsense like he did this past weekend – where he derided four outspoken members of the Democratic caucus of Congress for, basically, not treating their own ethnic and racial origins as something they ought to be greatly ashamed of.

TLAIB: Serving Michigan proudly

For what it’s worth, he was talking about Rep. Ilan Omar, D-Minn., who was born in Somalia and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to this country as a 12-year-old and ultimately settling in Minneapolis.

BUT THEN HE lumped in three other members of Congress – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – as others who don’t really belong here.

All are U.S.-born, and in the case of Ocasio-Cortez may be Puerto Rican-ethnic but was raised in the suburbs of New York City. Only in the mini-mind of Donald Trump would they somehow not belong here, where I suspect his real objection to them having a prominence in society is due to the fact he regards many women as being decorative objects – and nothing else.

Think about it seriously. What are we going to do – deport Pressley back to her birth city of Cincinnati? It’s nonsense-talk like this that causes many to deride him as the “twit who Tweets” and to regard his constant use of Twitter as a true social embarrassment on our society – far worse than anything that any of the Congressional women has had to say.

ALTHOUGH IF YOU really want the truth, I suspect his attack on the Congresswomen was a deliberate tactic in its’ timing – as in Sunday, the day that was supposed to see federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducting many raids to deport all kinds of foreigners whom he also thinks don’t really belong “here.”

OMAR: Learned English off American TV

It seems the raids fizzled out, and really didn’t amount to much of anything.

Yet instead of now wondering how full of hot air Trump is for all his immigration raid trash talk, the focus is instead going toward Trump wanting to kick Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of the continental U.S.

Although even that wouldn’t achieve much – because Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth. Meaning even if she were sent back to the Caribbean island, she’d still be within U.S. reach and more than capable of speaking out against Trump nonsense on oh so many issues. Nobody silences AOC that easily!

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: It's worth pointing out that everybody here is standing before, and serving the interests of, the very same U.S. flag.

Ideologue inconsistences on issues like smoking, abortion – what else is new?

It seems we have inconsistencies on a pair of social issues now pending before Illinois state government. Yet that’s really nothing new – ideologues often don’t have a consistent train of thought in determining when they want to meddle with someone else’s life.

PRITZKER: Fear of J.B. scares ideologues. Good!

I refer to a bill now pending before Gov. J.B, Pritzker – the one approved last week by the General Assembly that says people ought to be 21 years old in order to legally buy tobacco products and other items for vaping. As in inhaling fumes from tobacco-less products.

THEN, THERE’S A pair of bills that will be pending before the state Legislature this spring – ones that would eliminate many of the restrictive measures that anti-abortion legislators have tried to impose throughout the years.

They’re going to screech “bloody murder!!!!” (literally, I kid you not) in claiming they’re somehow looking out for a life that has yet to be born, thereby justifying the taking into account of a mother’s sentiments about her own body into irrelevance.

But when it comes to efforts to reduce the legal availability of smoking-related products to young people, the ideologues amongst us are going to claim their opposition is meant to protect the rights of personal choice of young people.

It’s almost like they’re claiming the right of a 16-year-old girl to develop a smoking habit – claiming that it’s her own body she’s hurting. It’s her choice.

YET THEY’RE PREPARED to screech and scream the “murderer” and “baby killer” labels at a young girl who thinks she’s not ready for a baby, and is under the (as the ideologues would view it) the misguided belief that it’s her own body being impacted by the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

It was nearly a half-century ago that the Supreme Court of the United States issued the larger ruling that struck down measures criminalizing abortion. The strategy throughout the years is to accept the general concept, but have legislatures impose so many restrictions so as to make it next to impossible for some women to actually have access to abortion.

The two bills now pending (one in the Illinois House of Representatives and the other in the state Senate) would eliminate many of the restrictions they’ve tried to enact – even up to the final days of a pregnancy.

Their desire to meddle with the desires of a mother seem to be to the extreme they’d want to require the paramedics to be on the scene of an abortion to try to revive the fetus.

THEY TALK ABOUT denying unborn children “independent rights,” but it really comes across as meddling with the mother’s desires – even though hers is the existing life that ought to be the priority.

But then on a real public health issue such as smoking, we’re going to hear the nonsense rhetoric of how absurd it is to tell someone they have to be 21 in order to smoke.

Maybe we’ll even hear the argument made that people can enlist in the army and die for their country at age 18 – why not let them smoke?

As it was, the General Assembly passed a measure just last year calling for this same age increase – only to have then-Gov. Bruce Rauner wield the “veto” pen to the measure.

THE FACT THAT smoking is a foul habit that impacts everybody around you somehow doesn’t matter to the ideologues who want to view it solely as a personal choice. Whereas the baby forced into life because of the denial of a personal choice is something we all wind up having to cover the cost of caring for.

I find it amusing that the ideologues seem to fear Pritzker is going to push the abortion measure erasing generations of restrictions into law, while also giving his approval to a smoking age boost.

They’re going to get all hysterical with their rhetoric because government basically is going to prevent them from meddling into the lives of others – the young girl who really shouldn’t have a pregnancy now and the people who have to breathe in the fumes of the nitwit smokers amongst them.

But then again, hysteria and nonsense is oft the way of politics in Illinois!

  -30-

Friendly around political tables? At best, they manage to tolerate each other

Something I learned early on about dealing with government officials is that they really don’t like each other very much.

 

MENDOZA: Will she still be welcome at da Hall?

At best, they tolerate each other – particularly when there’s something to the advantage of the individual politicians. But they’re also quick to throw each other under the bus. People who think their government is a cohesive batch in cahoots with each other really are missing the point.

THAT CONCEPT COULDN’T have been made more obvious by anybody who happened to watch the WTTW-TV mayoral forum held earlier this week – the one in which Susana Mendoza, currently the Illinois state comptroller, made it clear she’s not all that united with her Democratic Party partisan colleagues.

Even though the Mendoza background is clearly one of somebody who managed to work her way through the legislative and City Hall ranks to get to her current position of running for mayor, she was quick to dump on everybody in sight.

Particularly that of mayoral opponent William Daley and his “first family” of Chicago politics.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the point in which Mendoza was vehemently lambasting the youngest of all the Daley sons for the infamous deal involving Chicago parking meters.

 

Mendoza managed to attack both William ... 

THE ONE IN which management of the downtown parking meters was leased off to a private company, which will operate them for 99 years. Meaning the city isn’t getting any of the proceeds from those ridiculously-high rates you pay every time you stick your credit cards into the modern devices that replaced the old parking meters you’d dump change into.

It was Mayor Richard M. Daley who negotiated that deal, which Mendoza openly accused brother Bill of having helped to put together.

“It was good business for your family, but it was terrible business for Chicagoans,” Mendoza shrieked. “That’s about as big a lie as you telling Chicagoans right now that you were not a key adviser to your brother during his key caretaker years as mayor.

 

… and Richard M. Daley

“Of course you were,” she said. Which may well be true, since the man who advised Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and served a stint as chief of staff to Barack Obama as president reached those levels because of his experience advising the family on electoral matters.

BUT FOR MENDOZA to come out so bluntly in making such an accusation was, to say the least, over-the-top.

Particularly because Mendoza is one who has become a part of the political establishment. Not the kind who spouts off the activist-type rhetoric about how corrupt everybody was.

This was the woman who, during the candidate forum, was called out for having her wedding ceremony officiated by Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke – the spouse of long-time Alderman Edward M. Burke, who these days faces allegations from federal investigators of criminal behavior.

Mendoza takes her shots at Toni, … 

To which Mendoza offers up explanations of how she has had to work with various people in politics, even if she didn’t quite agree with everything they did or said.

IN ALL, IT means Mendoza likely is engaging in many acts of rhetorical suicide that will cost her political friendships and alliances. It’s kind of reminiscent of the 1992 election cycle between congressmen Bill Lipinski and Marty Russo – who used to regard themselves as close friends, until they got pitted against each other.

The politicking got personal, and the friendship withered away.

… while both are distancing self from Burke

Likely to happen this time between Mendoza and the Daleys, or the Burkes, or Toni Preckwinkle (who claimed this week she's never truly been allied with the Burkes) or countless other Democrats – whom, of course, the Republican ideologues will insist on saying are really in cahoots with each other.

Because spewing out trash talk about all Democrats being in a cabal with each other is easier for them to understand than the reality – that the egos and self-interest often cause them to dump all over each other in the most petty of political manners.

  -30-

Would anybody really miss not hearing a political speech by Donald Trump?

One of the things I used to like about the old television series “The West Wing” was the way the show’s writers could work in trivial tidbits about politics and government for our amusement.

TRUMP: Wants to say how wonderful he is!

I remember one old episode where the Bartlet Administration faced a potential problem – he was expecting to use the upcoming State of the Union address to deliver a message he was eager to get out to the public, but the Congress headed by the opposition party didn’t formally invite him to do so.

WHICH SOUNDS ABSURD that conditions could really devolve to such a situation. Yet Donald Trump is the master of a presidency that seeks to be absurd in every aspect.

Meaning that scenario actor Martin Sheen played for laughs over a decade ago is now the reality of the state of our nation.

In theory, Trump is expected on Tuesday to deliver his annual address before Congress to tell us exactly where things stand within our government.

It is expected his speech would be loaded with ridiculous rhetoric and pompous talk about how every thing that is wrong with our nation is the Democrats’ fault – and how the key to our salvation is to follow The Donald’s lead and just shut up and do what he tells us to do!

BUT BECAUSE WE still have a federal government engaged in a shutdown that will reach a month long (and counting) pretty soon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did the unthinkable. At least in Trump’s mind.

She revoked his invitation. Unless Trump knocks off his nonsense that has prolonged the shutdown and allows things to get back to operating as they’re supposed to, she’s not going to give him the platform to talk.

Which is something that I guess hurts the Trump ego. I have no doubt that the man is looking forward to being on national television – with his speech pre-empting programming everywhere so he can put on his “show.”

PELOSI: Denying Trump the chance to blather

You know the one I’m talking about. Democratic members of Congress will sit silently, while Republicans will get all worked up in cheers and applause at all the pre-ordained moments meant to make it appear that they’re spontaneously acknowledging the man’s genius.

IT WILL FEED his ego. It will make Trump think he’s truly a significant historic figure – instead of a man who truly makes former President George W. Bush look like a mighty intellect by comparison.

But Pelosi is denying him the opportunity to do so. Which has the Trumpsters all worked up, and the head cheese himself plotting how to stage an event that he’ll bill as an alternative to the State of the Union.

Most likely, something similar to those events he had during the 2016 election cycle – where he spews some trivial blather, finds a person or two to single out for the partisan crowd’s abuse then gets someone to offer after-the-fact reaction claiming that Trump is a political genius of the highest magnitude.

If you get the feeling I’m finding the whole situation worthy of mockery, you’d be correct. The reality is that these political addresses always contain a touch of phoniness regardless of who speaks.

BUT IN THE case of Trump, the level of blather will reach intense levels of b.s. I really don’t think anybody will miss the speech if it turns out that Trump doesn’t present it on Tuesday.

SHEEN (as Bartlet): More presidential than The Donald

If anything, Pelosi will be doing the nation a favor by not allowing an event that would pre-empt programming people would rather watch. We won’t have all those people swearing at their television sets Tuesday night when their favorite show isn’t on because Trump wants to tell us just how great he truly is.

Of course, if my mind is correct, that old “The West Wing” episode resulted in the president ultimately getting his invitation to give his speech. Life went on in that television presidential administration.

We’ll have to wait and see if reality turns out the same – or if the level of national inanity reaches a new high and political commentators are denied their chance to get Trumpsters all worked up with their allegations of presidential ignorance. Because those people may well be the only ones who truly will care about this ultimate non-issue.

  -30-

EXTRA: Rauner, forever bitter?

“I am very scared for the people of Illinois. I believe that the folks who put Illinois into a financial quagmire are now back in complete control of the government. The policies that have created the financial mess for the state of Illinois are now the policies that will be dominating completely without any resistance whatsoever.”
--Bruce Rauner, Illinois governor, 2015-19

  -0-

RAUNER: Still peeved about electoral loss

Bruce Rauner let it be known this week that he’s not about to take the high road politically with regards to his Election Day loss earlier this month.

While Rauner wasn’t ready (still) to say much of anything about how President Donald Trump and his presence impacted the soon-to-be-former governor politically, he’s going to forever go about trashing the Democrats whom he seems to want to believe have a whole lot of nerve for challenging him in the first place.

PERSONALLY, I’M INCLINED to view the issue as one where a whole lot of Illinois people voted the way they did to replace Rauner because they saw all his politically partisan actions as the reason why our state’s financial problems got exacerbated into a calamity of historic proportions. They were “very scared” of “four more years” of partisan-motivated nothingness within our government.

Not that the actions of Rauner should have been shocking. This was a man who campaigned back in 2014 on the idea that he wanted to undermine the influence of organized labor in our government, and that IT was to blame for not kowtowing to the self interests of business and corporate America.

Of course, considering the fact that we in Illinois have a state Legislature with leadership who are protective of working people and their interests, the activity of the past few years shouldn’t have been at all surprising.

The only real shock, if you think about it, is that Rauner (who had never before held political office) ever got elected in the first place. Although that’s most likely due to apathy felt about then-Gov. Pat Quinn, and a not-so-realistic thought that ANYBODY who replaced him would be better.

NOW, WE KNOW that we were deluded in our political apathy, and took the first chance we could get to remove Rauner – regardless of what we truly think of Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker.

I don’t doubt that Republican partisans are peeved about the Election Day results in Illinois, although I suspect what really bothers them is the fact that back in 1994 when the GOP managed to take control of all the state constitutional offices and General Assembly, the Republican period of domination only lasted two years.

ROGERS: Not organized, just Democrats

By comparison, this modern-day Democrat domination of Illinois government lasted 12 years, became one of Democrat control for four years, and now has been restored to Democrat domination. It sounds more like political jealousy to me!

And to those people I know who have fantasies of Ronald Reagan-like resuscitation in Illinois, I say to keep in mind the words of Will Rogers, who once said, “the difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal they have to live off each other. While the Republicans, why they live off the Democrats." Perhaps a majority of us were tired of Rauner trying to enrich himself and his business colleagues at the expense of the rest of us.

  -30-

Is Kifowit’s trash talk any more crude than Trump-era Republican rhetoric?

Yes, Stephanie Kifowit, the state representative from Oswego who implied this week that one of her Republican colleagues ought to have his family infected with Legionnaire’s Disease, was rude and tacky in her comments.

KIFOWIT: Her moment of 'infamy?'

It was good to learn that after an entire day of trying to defend herself (claiming she was misinterpreted), she came out with an apology to the family of state Rep. Peter Breen – the legislator whose family was supposed to be infected and drop dead!

YET I HAVE to admit that hearing all the self-righteous GOP rhetoric condemning Kifowit for her trash talk was even more sickening than anything the representative said.

For these are often the same people who are so eager to defend their Republican colleagues, and President Donald Trump himself, every time they spew something stupid and crude.

Particularly with regards to the president, they try to claim his crude talk on oh so many issues is just The Donald being blunt-spoken and honest. Saying it the way it really is, they’ll try to claim.

It’s almost enough to make me think they deserve to be smacked about with Kifowit-style trash talk. In this era our society is now in, we’re going to have many people saying stupid things. We’re all going to be owed many apologies.

BREEN: Really a victim?

I ALSO HAVE no doubt that the next generation is going to look back on my own and wonder just how we all could have been pathetic enough to think that such behavior was acceptable.

Probably similar to how many of us in society these days look back on old segregationist attitudes and ponder just how anyone could ever have been so backward as to think such thoughts were civilized and proper.

All of this was triggered Tuesday by activity at the Statehouse in Springfield, where the big issue being discussed was a bill meant to raise the financial limits that exist for how much the families of seniors who lived at a veterans’ home in Quincy could sue the state to compensate them for the loss of a loved one.

Breen, a Lombard Republican, said he thinks there are too many questions, and that raising the limits (from $100,000 to $2 million) could be financially damaging to the state.

SCHNEIDER: A little too self-righteous!

THAT IS WHAT offended Kifowit to the point where she said how bad it would be if a “broth of Legionella” were to be put into the water supply of Breen’s family.

Kifowit initially tried defending herself by saying she meant her statement as a theoretical example, and not as a hard-and-fast outcome that she was wishing for. But she got buried under mounds of harsh rhetoric implying how cruel and heartless she was for even suggesting the death of a political colleague’s family.

“Kifowit should be ashamed of her remarks,” said state Republican Chairman Tim Schneider. “Since Rep. Kifowit has refused to apologize to Rep. Breen she should resign from office, as these remarks are unfit for someone serving public office.”

Of course, Kifowit later came up with an apology. When combined with the fact that Schneider’s own political influence these days is minimal (he couldn’t even win re-election earlier this month to his government post on the Cook County Board), it’s not likely that anybody is resigning from anything.

FOR IF WE truly expected resignations from political people every time they said or thought something stupid, we likely wouldn’t have any officials left to fill government posts.

TRUMP: How many apologies does he owe us?

It may be the ultimate truth about comprehending the ways of government and politics – it’s all a matter of trying to avoid saying something stupid. Then again, one’s idea of what is stupid or offensive all-too-often depends on one’s own partisan political leanings.

Going back to the example of our president, who has made so many rude and crude comments on so many issues that I’ve lost count, he’s not about to resign because of his mouth. His Republican colleagues in Congress enjoy the fact that Trump’s presence strengthens their own political status, so they’re not about to hold him accountable.

Which means that on a certain level, Kifowit probably deserves a bit of praise for the fact that she apologized for her bout of diarrhea of the mouth that she suffered from Tuesday.

  -30-

Any worthwhile reporter doesn’t want to be friendly w/ Trump and his toadies

There are times when I think one of my professional strengths is that personally, I’m an anti-social sort of individual.

TRUMP: He wants to be worshipped

I can be rude and pushy when need be, and I certainly don’t get offended when a person whom I deal with in my work as a reporter-type person decides they didn’t like something I wrote.

IT’S AN OCCUPATIONAL hazard that there are going to be people who are going to take offense to the notion that you’d bother to report something they’d just as soon downplay. Personally, I’ve lost count of the number of government-type geeks who have told me they’d never speak to me again!

For what it’s worth, most of them got over whatever caused them to have a tantrum in the first place. And for the ones who really did cut me off, I found they were usually the ones so interested in feeding me nothing but political “spin” that I was better off not hearing from them anymore.

They really didn’t have anything worth saying in the first place. Which some might argue applies just as much to President Donald Trump.

These thoughts have been running through my mind in recent days, as some people seem determined to make an issue out of the post-election hissy fit that Trump had in dealing with a CNN broadcaster.

THE REALITY IS that I suspect Trump was eager to want to dump all over someone that day. Election 2018 results weren’t a total loss for Trump, but they also revealed that a certain segment of our society continues to think of “the Donald” as an insipid buffoon.

And there’s nothing more that Trump thinks he has a right to demand of the American people than our eternal respect. As in we all should kneel before him – just like in that “Superman” movie where “General Zod” forces the U.S. president in the Oval Office to pledge loyalty to him.

I suspect Trump watched that film all those years ago, thought it a cool bit, and then figured Zod would kneel before he and all his money!

So should the reporter take Trump’s rant the least bit seriously? It was so staged by him that I think it shows all the more how unfit for political office he truly is.

WHEN I HEAR people try to make an issue of it, and whether or not a reporter was disrespectful toward our national “commander in chief,” I can’t help but snicker.

it is all pure theater meant to play to those ideologues who are the outspoken minority who cheer on his every idiotic comment on just about every issue.

I couldn’t help but snicker when I received in my daily e-mail load the latest poll being taken by the Trumpsters – asking us if we approve of the presidential behavior in all this issue. But going so far as to tell us outright that, “President Trump will NOT put up with the media’s liberal bias and utter disrespect for this Administration.”

This quickie poll by Trump will be as ludicrous as all the previous ones he has taken where he asks people if they merely approve of his job performance, or if they absolutely admire him.

THAT LINE ABOUT Trump not liking bias and utter disrespect truly shows the man has no clue about what is going on. Here’s the blunt truth – a reporter-type is going to refuse to be submissive toward anyone in a position of power; which us what Trump thinks he's entitled to. Anybody who thinks that’s the way it ought to be is being downright ridiculous, if not un-American.

I don’t know of any government official at any level or of any political party who thinks the reporter-types they encounter are “friends.” I don’t know of any serious reporter-type who’d want to be too friendly with government officials.

If anything, Trump needs to learn that questions about his policies aren’t personal. It’s informational, and the impression he gives off with his behavior (and making an issue of revoking access to the White House, even though I know many reporter-types who think White House access is oh so overrated) is of a sniveling, whiny child.

Butch and Woim -- Trump's idea of a great America?

With the people who want to support him coming across as toadies overly-anxious to be aligned with the schoolyard bully. Think of the old “Little Rascals” film shorts, with Trump as bully “Butch” and his supporters being the equivalent of “Woim.” Is that really the image we want for our society?

  -30-

Political thugs trying to scare people from voting for Democrats come Nov. 6

It shouldn’t be surprising that the bulk of political candidates for whom I’ve cast ballots for throughout the years have been Democrats – I’m urban in orientation and the modern-day Republican Party is largely a collection of rural types who are openly hostile to my existence.

A sentiment many of us should follow this year on Election Day

But I have to admit that in this year’s election cycle, I’m feeling extra-compelled to vote for Dem politicos – even if they don’t exactly bring to mind fond memories of JFK or FDR.

I MAY WELL go down the line and pick out a straight-ballot ticket. Even though Illinois a couple of decades ago did away with the option of allowing for a straight party-line vote with a single punch. An action, by the way, that was a product of the two-year mid-1990s time period when Republicans had full control of the mechanisms of Illinois government.

Yes, I can appreciate the flaws of the eight years we had of Barack Obama (he wasn’t tough enough in dealing with Republican ideologues who smacked him around all over the place, even though GOP partisans want to believe he was somehow running roughshod over everybody’s rights).

High-minded ideals … 

I’m not an apologist for Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter – the two other Democrats to serve as president in my lifetime. As for LBJ, I was just a newborn back when he was the boss whose record of supporting civil rights reforms offended conservative ideologues, and U.S. involvement in Vietnam managed to offend everybody else.

But I find the bullying nature of President Donald Trump to be so offensive that I feel the need to take whatever ballot action I can to try to undermine it. And realize fully that it will take a great majority of similar-minded voters to do so in order to create a balancing presence within the federal government.

… and actions of the past, or … 

NOT EVEN JUST a slim majority (remember the 3 million-plus more voters Hillary Clinton had in ’16, yet still lost?). It will take many people expressing their outrage at the ballot box.

Because we really need to make a statement come Election Day that a real majority of our society finds this Age of Trump to be downright appalling.

It feeds into the ideologue mentality, which is that everybody who isn’t like them ought to just “Shut the f*** up!!!” and do what we’re told by their like-minded souls.

… more present-day thuggery?

That certainly is how I’m perceiving the actions of recent days during which dangerous packages were sent to former presidents Clinton and Obama, one-time Vice President Joe Biden and even actor Robert DiNiro – who has had the nerve (as they want to perceive it) to express his own opposition.

THERE EVEN WAS an incident Thursday where the Statehouse in Springfield was on “lockdown” status – and a powdery substance in a baggie was found in a public restroom. Maybe some crackpot who thinks he can hit the halls where Democrats led by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, do their work?

It seems to be that the thugs of our society are crawling out of the woodwork to try to terrify people into “voting the ‘right’ way” come Election Day.

And many of those individuals are the ones who get all riled up every time Trump feels compelled to talk up more trash. More “fake news” rants. In fact, I won’t be the least bit surprised if someone feels compelled to respond to this commentary with a ridiculous rant or two.

It actually has me wondering what would happen if the 2020 election cycle were to end with a Trump defeat in the Electoral College – would Trump try to concoct a scheme by which he refuses to leave the White House, and his supporters would mentally justify a coup d’etat on the grounds that we “need” The Donald to complete the chaos he has wrought in recent years.

IT WOULD CERTAINLY be in character with the kind of people who think the recent day’s actions are in any way justifiable.

It even fits in with the concepts being espoused by a new television spot funded by a Ricketts family-funded political committee (Todd is, after all, a Republican National Committee finance chairman); one that says “voting for any Democrat” will cause all kinds of chaos within our society.

Even though many would argue that all it would really do is bring to an end the chaos that has been wrought during these Trump Years.

But when you’re an ideologue inclined to believe everybody not like yourself is evil, then perhaps you’re willing to talk such trash. Which is something we all ought to be opposing in coming days as Step One in making our nation truly great again.

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Illinois F***ed? So admits Rauner!

This may well become the election cycle of the candidate who openly admitted what a mess Illinois government has become.

Of course, there also are those who will say the reason Illinois has become so f***ed up is because of Bruce Rauner himself.

SO YES, I find it sort of amusing to learn of the governor’s latest re-election campaign ad – the one called “Unholy Union” that portrays a clergyman presiding over the “wedding” of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and his “bride,” J.B. Pritzker.

With said clergyman ending the service by proclaiming “Illinois f***ed” (with the beep blipping out the use of the obscenity). Implying that a vote for J.B. instead of Bruce come Nov. 6 will be to support a political union that will unleash all kinds of bad things upon the people of the Land of Lincoln.

Kind of odd in the use of gay marriage imagery, since there are those ideologues amongst our state who want to believe Rauner himself has been too lax in fighting against certain moralistic issues such as gay marriage.

But I’m sure Rauner is gambling that many ideologues will view the idea of two men being married, hear the names of “Madigan” and “Pritzker” and will become so grossed out that they will automatically vote “no” to notion of J.B. as governor.

AS FOR THOSE people who will become offended with Rauner for mocking a gay marriage image? He probably figures those people weren’t going to vote for him no how. No real loss there!

Let’s be honest; things did become significantly worse in Illinois during the Age of Rauner – largely because he came in with a solidly anti-union agenda. He wanted to play hardball against organized labor to try to reduce the influence of unions within Illinois government.

That is why we had nothing accomplished for those first two years of Rauner’s time in office, and why most political people have put the concept of dumping Bruce Rauner from office as their priority in this year’s election cycle.

If Madigan were truly the hard-core obstructionist that Rauner has consistently tried to portray him as being, we’d likely have countless horror stories from the many other GOP-oriented governors the House speaker has had to work with. Which we don’t.

SO YES, ILLINOIS is “F***ed.” We heard it from Bruce himself.

Perhaps a step in the right direction to fixing that is to dump Rauner and put people in charge who are interested in operating government – instead of trying to score political points for themselves at the expense of the unions and behaving as though everyone who disagrees with their ideology IS the problem.

Of course, all this “Dump Madigan” rhetoric isn’t new. It was the basis of gubernatorial campaigns in 2010 and 2014. Rauner is merely upping the ante of the campaign tactics that he thinks were successful when he first ran for election. He thinks he won, so it must have worked. Ignoring that he has been a Republican serving as governor, having to deal with a whole batch of Democrats in other political posts.

In fact, one theme I oft have heard from Republican partisans this election cycle is that we need to have Rauner in office to hold in check the actions that other officials might try to do.

ONE COULD ARGUE just as strong that we needed all those Democrats in place to hold in check Rauner’s own ideological leanings – which actually were very clear and open when he first ran for office. He’s anti-union. Everything else (including all those social issues the ideologues get so worked up over) is of lesser importance.

All this anti-Madigan rhetoric is spread throughout the campaigning; from the television spots proclaiming Madigan and congressional candidate Sean Casten to be “two sides of the same coin” to Republican attorney general candidate Erika Harold proclaiming, “I’ll never take orders from Mike Madigan.”

Seriously, what’s she going to do if she wins, then finds her office as the defense attorney for the Illinois House speaker? As much as some want to think of the Illinois AG as a super-prosecutor, she’s actually more likely to find herself defending Illinois when things get screwed up.

Unless she’s also more interested in playing partisan politics, rather than governing for the people. A concept that, to be honest, is “F***ed” up.

  -30-

Is it worth it to cast one’s ballot in advance of Election Day? I’d say so

I’m going to be headed to an early voting center some time this week to cast my ballot in advance of the Nov. 6 general election, yet I realize there are some people who do not approve.

Imagery dated, but sentiment the same

And not just because they realize I’m highly unlikely to support the re-election bid of Bruce Rauner – or anybody whose campaign is predicated on the notion of wanting to strengthen the political hand of Donald Trump during the next two years.

THERE ARE THOSE who believe we honestly need to wait until the absolute last minute to learn every single bit of information they can about the candidates before deigning to cast a ballot for anybody.

They actually see merit in the last-minute disclosures in the final weeks, sometimes even days, of the campaign. Usually nasty and spiteful in nature, they want to know these bits of dirt that can sway people to vote against someone.

They’d argue I might wind up voting for someone for whom a scuzzy bit of detail exists. As though there’s anything legitimate about these tidbits of trivial detail.

You may have figured out by now that I don’t think much of these “October Surprise” tactics – which mostly are meant to discourage people who are contemplating support for a particular candidate.

IN SHORT, I’M convinced that anybody who’s seriously holding out detail until the final days of the election cycle is more interested in playing partisan political games rather than disclosing information that truly has any significance.

And I say that regardless of which political party is waiting until the final minute before disclosing their gossipy tidbit. Because I truly admit all political parties are capable of such nonsense tactics.

Seriously, we in Illinois had our primary elections back in March. We’ve had seven months to study the candidates and figure out what they stand for – and who they’d be supportive of if they were to get elected.

Just as much nonsense rhetoric as there was a century or so ago

Which, in all honestly, is what most of us base our ballot actions upon. Most of us are nowhere near as high-minded idealistic as we’d like to claim to be.

TAKE THE RECENT lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against the J.B. Pritzker campaign, claiming mistreatment of its campaign workers who happened to be of racial or ethnic backgrounds (a.k.a., non-white).

The idea of J.B., the Democrat, being a closet bigot was supposed to be what took him down to defeat despite the huge leads he had in the polls.. Yet there has been such skepticism over the lawsuit’s merits that the people behind the legal action felt forced to have a press conference Monday, trotting out the disgruntled campaign workers, to try to sway the public.

Excuse me for thinking that any accusations that come out in future days will be of even less legitimacy than this lawsuit. Anybody who seriously is waiting to learn something significant is waiting for nothing.

As in they might as well go ahead and cast that ballot of theirs now. Because ultimately, every ballot we cast is a gamble. Everybody is going to have candidates with whom we placed too much faith in, and other instances where it turns out that the opposition candidate was probably deserving of our vote.

Anything more to know about either … 

BESIDES, WHAT HAPPENS if we wind up learning something on Nov. 7, or 10 or perhaps in December? Do we start demanding a “do over,” with the option of changing our vote to the person whom we wished we had voted for? Just as there's no crying in baseball, there's no do-overs in elections!

I really don’t think there would be anything gained by holding out until Nov. 6 before casting my ballot. If anything, this is an election cycle where I wish I could have cast a ballot some two months ago so it would be over and done with by now.

… of these candidates that's relevant?

So I’m likely to show up at a polling place this week to cast my vote – because I can time my vote to when the lines to wait are miniscule and because I’m a firm believer that people who don’t vote have no riht to complain about government actions.

Anybody who really knows me knows full well I’m a malcontent who insists on complaining about everyone and anything I encounter in life. If anything, such active thought is how we truly “make America great again,” not by holding out ‘til the last minute for any trivia that in the long run may turn out to be totally irrelevant to public policy.

 -30-