JerryBaumchen

Hi Joe, I'm with your dad; I would also disagree. When war vets come home & do not want to talk about what they went thru; well, that is a good sign that things were not 'beautiful.' Somebody once said, 'War is hell,' I think that they are correct; never BTDT. Jerry Baumchen PS) My dad served in the US Navy in the Pacific. He really never talked about any of what he did or went thru.

Hi Wendy, In complete agree with one caveat: Reversing the Trump disaster. IMO it will take a bi-partisan effort. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Bill, It baffles me how anyone, who pays any attention at all, cannot understand this. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Wendy, I think it is more of a 'do not want to see it' thing. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Phil, You lay down with dogs, you get fleas. I have no sympathy for them, not one iota. If they get turned out of office, they have deserved it. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Bill, And they look the other way* when it is a R doing the same things. Jerry Baumchen * Or maybe they wish it were them.

Hi Phil, Re: 'So how did trump's "great negotiating" , "maximum pressure" all turn out?' Just like all of his other 'deals,' that's why he has gone bankrupt so many times. https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J/dp/0399594493 Jerry Baumchen

Hi Terry, I've been shaking my head for so long, over the crazy rigging that I've seen, that people think I've got Parkinson's. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Phil, Of course, this is all over our local news. Re: 'Hero.' On tonite's local evening news, he said that he was not 'any ironman, any superman,' as some people are calling him. He said that he was just a 53 yr-old, fat guy, who takes blood thinners. He also said that he would like to sit down & have a cup of coffee with the federal officer who beat him with the baton. Yup, that's a Hero. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Mark, Now they can really put those law degrees to work. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Bigfalls, While I quite liked Gerald Ford, I considered him more of a 'stopgap' president. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Keith, Whether you agree or not; officially, I am a Vietnam Vet. Just never been in Vietnam. Take it up with your congresscritter. Jerry Baumchen

Hi jakee, IMO this is exactly what he almost always does. Remember how rushmc used to do the same thing? Jerry Baumchen

Hi Bill, IMO it is more like putting your head in the sand. They simply do not want to know the truth. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Mark, As do I: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-story-behind-the-surreal-photos-of-portland-protester-naked-athena/ar-BB16WhI5?li=BBnb7Kz Jerry Baumchen

Hi folks, Re: ' in the last century, voters have fired only three elected presidents: Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. In all of those cases . . . there came a point where people just stopped listening to the president and essentially gave up on him.' https://www.npr.org/2020/07/18/892239364/sleepy-joe-trump-s-insult-may-reveal-biden-s-advantage Jerry Baumchen

Hi John, Actually, a couple of years later; it takes time to buy the raw materials needed. :) Jerry Baumchen PS) Yes, I am an old guy; and happy to be one.

Hi Phil, IMO the 'wealthy' will not be voting for Trump. And, 'those who can't' are his base. His efforts are working against him. He is simply too stupid to understand this. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Joe, While in the Air Force, I worked for two different E-9's; neither of them ever looked that stupid. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Keith, I have yet to see any reason why local/state LEO need to wear camo to do their job. Jerry Baumchen

Hi Joe, Basic military philosophy; it is easier to defend than to attack. Every grunt knows that; or should know it. Jerry Baumchen

Hi folks, Some more info: 'Federal officers, deployed by US President Donald Trump' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53453077 Jerry Baumchen

Hi Joe, https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/ Jerry Baumchen PS) My son sent it to me earlier today. At first, I could not believe it.

Hi Robert, Just another idiot in a long list of idiots. Jerry Baumchen

Hi folks, For those of you who cannot read the link, here is what he wrote: GEORGE WILL: This is what national decline looks like WASHINGTON — Because of his incontinent use of it, the rhetorical mustard that the president slathers on every subject has lost its tang. The entertainer has become a bore, and foretelling his defeat no longer involves peering into a distant future: Early voting begins in two states (South Dakota and Minnesota) 61 days from Sunday, which is 107 days before Election Day. Never has a U.S. election come at such a moment of national mortification. In April 1970, President Richard Nixon told a national television audience that futility in Vietnam would make the United States appear to the world to be “a pitiful, helpless giant.” Half a century later, America, for the first time in its history, is pitied. Not even during the Civil War, when the country was blood-soaked by a conflict involving enormous issues, was it viewed with disdainful condescension as it now is, and not without reason: Last Sunday, Germany (population 80.2 million) had 159 new cases of COVID-19; Florida (population 21.5 million) had 15,300. Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office, this nation is in a downward spiral. This spiral has not reached its nadir, but at least it has reached a point where worse is helpful, and worse can be confidently expected. The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump. By commuting Stone’s sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omerta (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking, but much lying. Because the pandemic prevents both presidential candidates from bouncing around the continent like popcorn in a skillet, the electorate can concentrate on other things, including Trump’s selection of friends such as Stone and Paul Manafort, dregs from the bottom of the Republican barrel. “Longing on a large scale is what makes history,” wrote Don DeLillo in his sprawling 1997 novel “Underworld” about America in the second half of the 20th century. Today, there is a vast longing for respite from the 21st century, which — before the pandemic, two inconclusive wars, and the Great Recession — began with a presidential election that turned on 537 Florida votes and was not decided until a Dec. 12 Supreme Court decision. Given the president’s reckless lying and the supine nature of most Republican officeholders, it is imperative that the Nov. 3 result be obvious that evening. This year, the pandemic will be an accelerant of pre-existing trends: There will be a surge of early and mail voting. So, an unambiguous decision by midnight Eastern time Nov. 3 will require (in addition to state requirements that mailed ballots be postmarked, say, no later than Oct. 31) a popular vote tsunami so large against the president that there will be a continentwide guffaw when he makes charges, as surely he will, akin to those he made in 2016. Then he said he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million because “millions” of undocumented immigrants voted against him. Making a pre-emptive strike against civic confidence, Trump has announced that the 2020 election will be the “most corrupt” in U.S. history. The 2020 presidential selection process began with Iowa’s shambolic Democratic caucuses, a result not of corruption but incompetence, an abundant commodity nowadays. It is scandalous that in many places casting a ballot requires hours of standing in line. Larry Diamond of the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford discerns another scandal: “The hard truth is that there has been a rising tide of voter suppression in recent U.S. elections. These actions — such as over-eager purging of electoral registers and reducing early voting — have the appearance of enforcing abstract principles of electoral integrity but the clear effect (and apparent intent) of disproportionately disenfranchising racial minorities. One example was the decision of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State (now governor) Brian Kemp to suspend 53,000 predominantly African American voter registration applications in 2018 because the names did not produce an ‘exact match’ with other records.” This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like. George F. Will received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1977. His email address is georgewill@washpost.com. Jerry Baumchen