Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Trump Now the Presumptive Republican Nominee

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Former President Donald Trump (R) is now the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee. Although he has not yet attained the necessary 1,215 delegates, Trump’s last opponent—former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R)—announced today that she is suspending her campaign. Barring any unusual developments, Trump is now all-but-certain to win the nomination. He is expected to be formally nominated at the Republican National Convention in July.

Trump is a real estate businessman who was elected president in 2016 with no previous political experience. He served one term and was defeated by now-President Joe Biden (D) in 2020. Trump is a controversial figure; he was impeached (and acquitted) twice during his presidency and has faced numerous criminal charges since leaving office.

On the Democratic side, incumbent President Joe Biden (D) is widely expected to win his party’s nomination, but he still faces two minor challengers and has not yet won the necessary 1,968 delegate majority. The Democratic National Convention, where Biden is likely to be formally nominated, will be held in August.

Virginia Presidential Primaries, 2024

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Seal of Virginia
Seal of Virginia

Virginia’s presidential primary elections will be held on Tuesday, March 5, 2024. The Democratic and Republican parties are both holding primaries this year. Off on a Tangent makes recommendations to primary voters in state- and federal-level races in Virginia and local elections in Loudoun County whenever nominees will be chosen through a contested public primary. Primaries for offices other than president will be held later in the year.

Political parties are private organizations that should have no formal standing in our political system. As private organizations, they are free to choose their nominees through whichever process they wish—common methods include conventions, caucuses, private “firehouse primaries,” and direct nomination by party leaders. But in Virginia and many other states, the Democratic and Republican party duopoly has given itself permission to hold public primaries at the taxpayers’ expense.

Public primaries in Virginia are “open.” Any registered voter may vote in any single party primary held on a given day, regardless of whether they are an actual member of that party.

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Whales
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And now for some more photos from my backlog.

Melissa and I made two trips to New England over the last year and a half. The first took us to Providence, Rhode Island; Lost River Gorge, New Hampshire; Mount Washington, New Hampshire; and Plymouth, Massachusetts. The second took us to various sites in Maine, including Bangor, Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park, Cadillac Mountain, and the waters between Maine and Nova Scotia, Canada.

Enjoy!

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I’m still working through processing a huge backlog of photos for posting to the site. These are from two Caribbean Cruises in early 2023.

The first cruise was a short February getaway to the Bahamas on the Norwegian Sky out of Miami, Florida. The planned itinerary included stops in Freeport and at Norwegian’s private island, Great Stirrup Cay. The weather did not cooperate and the plan changed multiple times; ultimately, we ported in Nassau (which was not even on the original plan) and had an extra at-sea day.

The second cruise was a ten-day journey on the Norwegian Sky out of Panama. The journey began in Colon, Panama, went to the islands of Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire, then to Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, transited the Panama Canal to the Pacific Ocean, and finally arrived in Panama City, Panama. This one went exactly to plan—and it was amazing.

Enjoy!

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Jim Gilmore
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Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore (R) ran for President of the United States in 2016. I thought that was funny.

Gilmore won his 1997 gubernatorial race by promising to get rid of Virginia’s car tax. That’s the one thing we asked him to do. He didn’t do it. I’m still paying that idiotic, useless tax every year, and I curse the name “Gilmore” each time I do. Other than that he was an okay governor, I guess.

His presidential campaign did not make any sense, and he generally polled well below 1%, but he lasted longer than most of the other bottom-tier candidates. Later in the campaign season, I amused myself by imagining absurd scenarios that would put Gilmore in the White House.

What if the Gilmore campaign never ended?

Visit GilmoreForAmerica.net

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.