Here are my observations and opinions of my selected news of the day.

BIDEN BLOWS BID – All of the attention on Joe Biden focuses on his inappropriate touching, feeling and kissing of women, with members of Democrat Party split on it disqualifying him to run for president. Two letters to the editor of the Arizona Republic today, one from a man and the other from a woman, said the issue was being “blown out of proportion,” and “C’mon, enough already, lighten up.”

Lost in the piling on by previous victims of Biden’s roving hands and the media with its archives of video clips, was a serious character flaw showing the ease in which he was able to take back his statement that Vice President Pence was “a decent guy.” When former “Sex in the City” actress Cynthia Nixon assailed him for that comment on Twitter, he quickly apologized to her and dissed Pence, saying, “There is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights, and that includes the Vice President.”

You just know that Biden truly believes Pence to be “a decent guy,” but he folded to party pressure. What a guy.

SPEAKING OF BIDEN – I think the latest charge by Nevadan Lucy Flores lifted a major burden off the shoulders of none other than former President Obama, who may see this as the end of Biden. I just don’t see him as a Biden fan. He’s been silent on a Biden bid for the presidency, and I believe that could be the main reason Biden has not declared. How could he run without Obama’s endorsement? Just asking.

NOTE TO DEMOCRATS – Are you aware that 34 percent of the people who attended President Trump’s rally in Grand Rapids last week were registered Democrats?

WORDS OF WISDOM – Shelby Steele, the accomplished conservative author and commentator, wrote an insightful op-ed, “The Right and the Moral High Ground,” in Monday’s Wall Street Journal worth quoting.

While reviewing President Trump’s successes – a booming economy, tax reform, low unemployment, increased oil production, the abandonment of terrible treaties, new and better trade deals – “(they) have brought him little goodwill from his own party.”

And from the left he relates that “President Trump – and conservatives generally – no matter what they achieve, they are always guilty of larger sins. Make the economy grow if you must, but you are still a racist.”

After a brief review of the 1960s, leading to Nancy Pelosi’s declaration of the “immorality” of the border wall, Steele says “she was smearing him with the evil of racism.”

Steele believes there is a way conservatives can overcome this vulnerability that hangs over us, saying of racism – “America has already delegitimized it.”

“Today, minorities suffer from underdevelopment, not racism. And here, at last, is conservatism’s great opportunity.

“Conservativism is the perfect antidote to underdevelopment. It’s commitment to individual responsibility, education, hard work, personal initiative, traditional family values and free markets is a universal formula for success in a free society.

“Coming at the end of 60 years of liberal failure, conservatism is now ‘the new thing’ in many minority communities. Liberalism’s greatest sin was to incentivize minorities to reject these values and urge them into dependency.

“Not coincidentally, Mr. Trump’s approval among blacks has risen; one poll; had it at 40 percent.”

Reminiscent of candidate Trump’s encouragement to black voters – “what have you got to lose?” – Steele concludes his piece with, “Why not go back to that perpetually workable thing, the American dream.”

FROM OUT OF THE PAST – “Imagine there is a movie about a meteor heading toward earth. It will be here 12 years,” writes Jonah Goldberg, “Following Hollywood convention, once you got past the part where the maverick scientist or precocious kid discovering it struggles to convince the world about the threat, you would expect the president or the military to leap into action.”

That was Goldberg’s opening paragraph of his piece, “The perils of the ‘Chicken Little’ approach to fighting climate change,” and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s end of the world as we know it in 12 years.

It brought back memories of when I was an “extra” in the 1978 Columbia Pictures movie, “A Fire in the Sky,” a story of a comet headed for Phoenix. The scientist was played by actor Richard Crenna. In the movie the president, played by Andrew Duggan, orders the launching of a Titan-Centaur rocket with nuclear warheads in an attempt to destroy the comet. It failed, and Phoenix was devastated. In one scene, the revolving restaurant atop the Hyatt Regency hotel is shown looking like a flying saucer as it whirls to the ground.

“Climate change is a real concern, but if we did absolutely nothing to stop it,” writers Goldberg, “the planet would still be here in a dozen years.” He reminds readers of the 1989 UN prediction that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea level if global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Taking readers back to his imaginary movie plot about using a nuclear weapon to stop the meteor, he suggests that his heroes would end up insisting that nuclear weapons would be “too icky” to use, even to save the planet.

Instead, protagonists would propose a sweeping government effort to stop the meteor and then, when given the opportunity to vote for it, congress voted “present” in protest.

In “A Fire in the Sky,” the comet was predicted to hit Phoenix in eight days. Congress has never done anything in eight days … except recess.

ANOTHER AOC LAUGHER – The socialist darling tweeted that “Croissants at LaGuardia are going for SEVEN DOLLARS A PIECE. Yet some people think getting a whole hour of personal, dedicated human labor for $15 is too expensive??”

As you can imagine, she was appropriately slammed on social media for her lack of microeconomic theory, minimum wage (it’s $19 at New York’s airports) the cost to produce a croissant and the increased prices due to the minimum wage increase. Then there were those who questioned why she was flying back and forth to Washington instead of taking Amtrak.

One rider said she could get a bagel with cream cheese for $2.50 and a cinnamon roll or blueberry muffin for $2.75 on the train.

THOUGHT-FOR-THE-DAY – A friend noted that in this country, if you cheat to get into college you go to jail. If you cheat to get into this country, you go to college for free.

      May God bless the United States of America.