Miscellaneous

Joe Biden may be getting senile, but like all old pols he’s cunning.  He doesn’t want the call from Obama, the one telling him he’s got to step down.  The one replacement who works best is CA Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fresh, vigorous face, with none of Sleepy Joe’s baggage (or Cuomo’s) and the ability to excite the donors and the base.

If Harris is the VP pick, then she would have to go, along with Biden, if Newsom is the new pick for President.  Harris and Newsom are both from CA, and the Constitution prohibits such a ticket.  Harris will not want to go.  She’ll be the presumptive pick for Pres. in 2024 if she stays, and that’s what she really wants.

So Joe picks Harris, and she protects him from Newsom.

Could be.  Who knows?

He doesn’t want his name made public, he doesn’t want to be a hero.  But a full blood sheep dog In Ben Lomond saved lives a couple days ago.

This is the story.  Babbie and I have family and friends in this area, and we know it well.  We thought of moving there when we left Alaska 20 years ago.  You never know about people.  This is one of the most liberal parts of California.  But there are sheepdogs everywhere in this country, I guess.

If they succeed in defunding the police, there better be a whole lot of sheepdogs around.

Things don’t look too promising for President Trump’s reelection.  He’s down by eight points in the RCP poll average (41.6 to 49.6), 538.com has his approval rating at 41.3, and the betting odds have his chances at 45%, vs. Biden’s 50%.  Unemployment is somewhere between 13% and 16%, the Covid-19 pandemic remains a deadly threat, rioting has destroyed significant sections of urban America, and outrage over the death of George Floyd continues unabated.

This is all actually good news for Trump.  The only real threat to his reelection is from an articulate, young Democratic politician of substance and accomplishment taking Biden’s place at the head of the ticket.  Someone like California Governor Gavin Newsom.  If Biden is forced out, and replaced by someone like Newsom, Trump might have something to worry about.

Not so with Sleepy Joe Biden.  Early stage Alzheimer’s, or some other variation of senility, eliminates him as a serious presidential candidate.  He not only can’t hold his own in a debate, he can barely deliver a coherent speech from a prepared script.  His penchant for gaffes, inappropriate behavior with young girls and women, and short, nasty temper are all flaws that predate his mental decline.  He’s a walking disaster of a candidate.

His record in public office is abominable.  He’s been flat wrong on every major foreign policy debate in the last 30 years, was the champion of the predatory credit card companies headquartered in his home state of Delaware, and was an architect of the 1994 Crime Bill which black voters despise.

He and his family have grown rich at the public trough, using his political status to get money for the family out of corrupt deals in China and the Ukraine.  China has clearly emerged as our principal geopolitical foe, and his record on Sino-American relations is appalling.

‘But he’s leading in all the polls!’, his apologists cry, and how can you remove a duly nominated presidential candidate who seems to be on the road to victory?  You can’t, and that means Donald Trump will have the opportunity, once the campaign begins in earnest, to destroy Joe Biden.  This is the kind of politics Trump excels at, and it won’t be for the faint of heart.

There are, of course, any number of other factors that will help with Trump’s reelection.  He had some things going for him in 2016 as well, but the real reason he won was that Hillary Clinton was actually more disliked than he was.

In the 2020 election people won’t dislike Biden.  They’ll pity him, which is even worse.

[This is in today’s American Thinker]

 

(This appears in today’s American Thinker)

Not everyone in law enforcement is a good guy.  There are rogue cops, as every American now surely knows.  There are also rogue DA’s, rogue judges and rogue federal agents.  And sad to say we have to include lawless Attorneys General of the United States, lawless heads of the FBI, and traitorous CIA directors.  George Floyd died at the hands of a bad Minneapolis cop.  David Koresh and 75 Branch Davidians died at Waco in 1993 at the hands of the FBI and ATF.

The plot against Donald Trump is not horrific in the way brutal killings like George Floyd and Waco are.  In those cases, individual Americans were the victims.  In the plot to take down Trump we were all victims, because they were attacking the Constitution of the United States.

Justice will come to the killer of George Floyd, but the macho boys of the FBI and ATF never paid a price for Waco.  Are these agencies absolutely necessary?  Aren’t there ways to shift their assets to other parts of the federal government?  All the FBI really amounts to is investigators working for the Attorney General.  But with the arrival of the contemptible J. Edgar Hoover in 1924 the empire building began, and the FBI is now an institution in itself.

FBI heads seem to think they’re something special, and are independent of the President through whom they derive their only authority.  This confused, messianic thinking results in books like “A Higher Authority.” by James Comey.  Higher than what, the Constitution?  Higher than the duly elected President?

For his crimes against the law and the Constitution, James Comey should go to jail. He belongs there, right along with the killers of George Floyd and the Branch Davidians.

When Babbie and I arrived in Alaska in 1974, I had political ambitions.  I wanted to be a United States Senator, and incumbent Democrat Mike Gravel was my obvious target.  Gravel was a whack job.  He went to the Democratic Convention in 1972 and openly campaigned to get himself nominated as George McGovern’s Vice Presidential candidate.  He made a complete nuisance of himself, and actually cried on camera when his scheme went nowhere.

Gravel had no business being a United States Senator from Alaska.  Any decent Republican could take him out.  Half the Democrats in the state couldn’t stand him.  But in 1974 the Republicans nominated State Senator C. R. Lewis, a member of the national board of directors of the John Birch Society.  Lewis was nuttier than Gravel, and never had a chance.

Which brings me to Montana.  How is it that a phony lightweight like Jon Tester represents Montana in the United States Senate?  Pure luck.  In 2018 his Republican opponent was State Auditor Matt Rosendale, one of the worst senatorial candidates I have seen in my lifetime.  In the Republican primary he beat State Senator Al Olszewski, who would have kicked Tester’s butt.  Rosendale was only able to do that because he was the establishment pick, supported by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  McConnell knew he could count on Rosendale’s support, which wasn’t true of Olszewski.

But Tester’s luck is going to run out next time, in 2024.  Former Speaker of the House Austin Knudsen of Culbertson, Montana just won the Republican nomination for Attorney General.  Knudsen is a superstar  —  young, smart as hell, accomplished, principled, affable, and a natural politician.  Four years from now, Austin will, at last,  relieve Montana from the embarrassment of  having Jon Tester as their United States Senator.

Austin comes from good Danish stock.  His grandfather emigrated from Denmark to sparsely populated northeast Montana early in the 20th century, and then volunteered for service in World War I.  The Danes are good people.  Of all the people of Europe, no one hated the Nazis more than they did.  They’re pro-American to this day, because they remember well who it was that liberated them.

In a way, one of them was my father, F. S. Pettyjohn of the 82nd Airborne.  He jumped at Arnhem, just south of Denmark, in September of 1944.  This battle is better known as “The Bridge Too Far”, and was the bloodiest airborne operation of World War II.  In my office I have a memento of that battle that he gave me.  It’s a small parachute, and was dropped carrying the additional ammunition the troopers needed to fight off the Waffen SS, which had them surrounded.  He was a staff sergeant and a squad leader, and he wrote his name, and the names of his squad on the parachute, along with their status (KIA, MIA), and a list of the battles each of them had fought in.  He was badly wounded before the Canadians finally broke through the German lines to rescue them, and was sent back to the states to recuperate.  He got back to his unit in time to take part in the Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of Berlin.

23 years later,  in the early winter of 1967, someone in Copenhagen repaid the Pettyjohn family the favor.  On the trolley back to the youth hostel where I was staying , after a night on the town, I lost my wallet.  I was screwed.  It had what little money I carried, and my Eurail pass.  Without that pass, I’d have to go back to hitchhiking, which was very difficult.

On a hope and a prayer I went to the police station the next day to see if someone had turned it in.  Lo and behold, there it was.  I not only had my Eurail pass back,  but all the cash that it contained.  I’ve liked the Danish people ever since.  And when I look at that little parachute on my wall, I see the explanation of my good fortune.