International news

What does Kim Jong Un want? Part 5

This concludes my brief examination of the five demands that Kim Jong Un  has made on a world seeking to lessen tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

USA Today has listed five of them. Kim wants the United Nations to lift the sanctions it has imposed on North Korea. Good luck with that one, Mr. Dictator/Goofball.

The only way the sanctions could go away would be if Kim agrees with U.N. and U.S. demands that he cease making nuclear weapons and cease testing the missiles he hopes would deliver them.

Kim has brought a lot of misery to his people by spending so much of his nation’s Gross Domestic Product on militarization. North Korea is bristling with artillery pieces, tanks, fighter jets — but its people are starving. The sanctions imposed by the U.N. ban the export of coal, iron ore, lead and lead ore, depriving the nation of about $1 billion annually.

There needs to be concessions by North Korea for the sanctions to be lightened, or eliminated.

All of this circles back, in my view, to the issue of “containment and deterrence.” If the United States and the rest of the world would accept the notion that Kim is going to keep his nukes and then rely on the threat of immense destruction that would be delivered to his country if he launches any kind of strike, then this crisis might be allowed to settle down.

I have little faith that anyone — whether inside the North Korean government hierarchy or anywhere else — will be able to talk sense to Kim.

Now, if we could just get the president of the United States to keep his trap shut and let the diplomats do their work.

local news, State news

There are Klan rallies, then we have what happened at UVa

I feel as though I’ve dodged a bullet or two, having watched the tragic events unfold in Charlottesville, Va.

Now for the explanation.

My former life as a full-time journalist enabled me to two attend two Ku Klux Klan rallies. The first one was in Orange, Texas, way down yonder on the Gulf Coast, just west of the Louisiana state line; the second was right here in Amarillo, Texas.

Why the feeling of relief? They both were peaceful. Unlike the pandemonium that erupted in Charlottesville, the rallies in Orange and Amarillo were tame — although one was far tamer than the other one.

The Orange rally occurred without incident of any kind. Some Klansmen showed up to protest the racial integration of a federal housing project in nearby Vidor, Texas, a community full of fine folks but also a town known to be a sort of KKK haven. There were no counter protests; just a lot of fiery and ignorant hate speech coming from the podium.

The Amarillo rally was a bit different. A Klan chapter sought permission to gather at City Hall; the city granted it. The head Klansman started to speak, only to be drowned out by a large procession of cymbal-bashing, drum-beating, horn-blaring and shouting counter protesters who marched onto the City Hall parking lot. They drowned out the KKK speakers.

There was no physical confrontation. There were no fights. No violence. Indeed, the Amarillo Police Department, the Potter County Sheriff’s Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety were out in force to ensure a peaceful outcome … although they couldn’t guarantee a quiet one.

I’ll stand by my previous posts in asserting that the “white nationalists” who gathered in Charlottesville were the provocateurs. They instigated the violence merely showing up. Then to have someone mow down counter protesters with his motor vehicle? I believe I would call that a terrorist act.

We well might have witnessed a horrifying symptom of a deteriorating national mood.

I never want to see anything like that again, let alone up close.

national news

Name the ‘enemy,’ Mr. President

Oh, how quickly some of us forget what we say.

Donald John Trump Sr., while campaigning for the presidency, excoriated President Barack Obama for his refusal to say three words in sequence: radical Islamic terrorists.

How can we know against whom we are fighting, he said, if we don’t call them out by name? The former president said he didn’t want to associate the terrorists with a religious faith, saying that they ignored the teachings of Islam, that they are thugs and murderers.

Well, guess what, dear reader. The 45th president of the United States committed precisely the same error of omission by refusing to call out the goons who provoked the riots in Charlottesville, Va. over the weekend and who themselves committed acts of domestic terrorism against their fellow Americans.

Trump instead equivocated in a disgusting manner by condemning what he called “violence and hatred on many sides.”

Mr. President, you failed yet another key test of leadership by failing to acknowledge that the white supremacists who gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee were the provocateurs. They were the instigators of the riots. Their message drips with hate, with intolerance, with bigotry.

The president needed to call them out. He needed to mention the words “white supremacist hate groups.” The president needed to do the very thing for which he was critical of his predecessor.

If we’re going to fight against hate groups, then call them all out! By name! Can the president make the same argument to shield white supremacists and racists that his predecessor did regarding international terrorist organizations?

Does he dare do so?

International news, military news

What does Kim Jong Un want? Part 4

The United States of America has followed a nuclear policy that, so far, has worked pretty well.

Call it a policy of “containment and deterrence.”

Thus, is it possible for the United States to get North Korea to toss its budding nuclear stockpile into the crapper? Hardly.

Which brings me to one of Kim Jong Un’s demands: He wants to keep his nuclear arsenal. USA Today’s list of five demands contains this one, which might be central to the current tensions that have escalated between the United States and North Korea.

Check it out here.

You’ve heard of “mutually assured destruction,” aka MAD. It kept the United States and the Soviet Union from nuking each other during the Cold War. The world is full of trouble spots occupied by nuclear-powered nations: India and Pakistan; Israel has them, too; South Africa has been thought to possess nuclear weapons.

Yes, we negotiated an agreement designed to rid Iran of its nuclear weapon capability and the jury is still out on whether that will work ultimately.

North Korea presents a tremendously different situation for us. Donald Trump is blustering, bellowing and bloviating about what he intends to do if Kim’s regime keeps making “overt threats” against the United States and our allies. A “threat” doesn’t constitute military action, so the president is treading on some highly dangerous ground if he intends to hit the North Korean’s first.

My advice to the president — which he won’t ever see, let alone heed — would be to dial back the fiery and furious rhetoric and possibly accept the notion that North Koreans are going to do what they intend to do, no matter how many threats we level against them.

However, the commander in chief can make it known — through back channels — what Kim knows already: Don’t even think about using those nukes.

national news

Here is how to respond to violence

There’s been no shortage of outrage being expressed today over the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va.

It has come from across the partisan divide. Republicans and Democrats alike have spoken eloquently about their outrage at the violence perpetrated by the white supremacists who gathered there to make whatever statements they want to make. They have spoken as one.

I want to share a statement that came from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who’s been a target of this blog on many occasions over the years. Today, though, I want to applaud Sen. Cruz for speaking eloquently and passionately about an incident that has consumed the nation.

It’s tragic and heartbreaking to see hatred and racism once again mar our great Nation with bloodshed. Heidi’s and my prayers are with the loved ones of those killed and injured in the ongoing violence in Charlottesville. The First Amendment protects the rights of all Americans to speak their minds peaceably, but violence, brutality, and murder have no place in a civilized society.

The Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists are repulsive and evil, and all of us have a moral obligation to speak out against the lies, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred that they propagate. Having watched the horrifying video of the car deliberately crashing into a crowd of protesters, I urge the Department of Justice to immediately investigate and prosecute this grotesque act of domestic terrorism.

These bigots want to tear our country apart, but they will fail. America is far better than this. Our Nation was built on fundamental truths, none more central than the proposition “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.

Well said, sir. Thank you.

national news

Trump fails leadership test with tepid response to violence

We hear it all … the … time.

Someone takes the heat for a political error or for acting badly and they seek to deflect the harsh negative light by saying, “Yes, but both sides are guilty of it, too.”

Both sides do it. All sides do it. Don’t blame me. Or the people on my side. Look at the other guys, too.

It’s a dodge. A ruse. A rhetorical escape hatch.

So it was just like that when the president of the United States spoke about the violence in Charlottesville, Va. Three people are known to have died in the violence. The president’s remarks came before the death toll had risen to that level.

But he did that equivocation thing. He condemned the violence that was provoked by the presence of white nationalists/supremacists in Charlottesville; they were there to protest the taking down of Confederate monuments. All hell broke loose.

Did the president condemn the hate mongers? Oh, not precisely. He watered it down by saying “many sides” are to be condemned.

Many sides? Are you bleeping kidding me?

Compare that with what Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said. He told the white supremacists to “go home.” They have no place in Virginia. He belittled their claim to be “patriots,” saying they are “anything but” patriots.

An equally strong and unequivocal statement should have come also from Donald J. Trump. It didn’t. The president has failed yet another leadership test.

State news

This Senate campaign could be a scream … really!

Go, Dan, go!

Dan McQueen is running for the U.S. Senate now held by Ted Cruz, aka the Cruz Missile.

McQueen is not exactly new to politics. He was mayor of Corpus Christi for all of 37 days. Then he quit amid a huge splash of bad publicity, a social media feud via Facebook with constituents and the media.

Now he’s decided to go after Cruz, who’s going to seek a second Senate term in 2018.

Read Texas Monthly’s report of McQueen’s candidacy.

McQueen was new to politics when he was elected mayor in 2016.

Then questions emerged about his academic credentials and his business expertise. He fought with the media and with city council members. McQueen got entangled in a clean water dispute. Then came questions about a relationship he was having with a business associate.

He had enough. So he walked away from his mayor’s job after a little more than month.

Is he the right person for Republicans to nominate next spring when he runs against Cruz? I have no clue.

But a guy who couldn’t stand the heat at City Hall now wants to step straight into the white-hot fire of Capitol Hill. How in the world is he going to withstand the scrutiny he is going to get as he campaigns against Cruz?

But you know what? The more I think about it, the more Dan McQueen sounds like he’d be a good fit in that zoo we call Congress.

national news

POTUS becomes ‘equivocator in chief’

I was delighted to learn that the president of the United States would comment on the violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Va.

And for a moment, Donald Trump had me riveted to his statement. He talked about the need for us to unite as one nation, that “we’re all Americans.”

Then he went off the rails. Big surprise? Not really, I’ll concede.

The president talked vaguely about “all sides” being responsible for the violence. All sides? Let’s see: White nationalists, including some Ku Klux Klan members, started marching to protest the taking down of Confederate statues. You know what kind of response KKK members evoke, correct?

Then came the counter protesters who despise what the Klan stands for, not to mention the white nationalists who essentially stand for the same thing.

“All sides” are responsible? I’m still waiting for the president to issue a full-throated condemnation of the “alt right” movement and the white nationalists/supremacists whose presence at the rally provoked the response in the first place.

Then, during his remarks, he launched into another one of those nonsensical riffs about “record low” joblessness and how everything is going so darn well in the United States of America. The implication — to my ears — was that all this good news was the result of his becoming president.

Even some Republican lawmakers were critical of Trump’s response.

The president once again missed a tremendous opportunity to speak with passion and eloquence about a segment of our society that needs a serious presidential condemnation. His predecessors — all of them, regardless of party affiliation — have risen to the occasion when it has presented itself.

Not the guy who’s now sitting in The Big Chair.

If I could borrow a term we hear so often via Twitter from the president: sad.

national news

Let’s try again, Mr. President

1 Comment

How about this: David Duke has given Donald Trump a chance to rectify a seriously fluffed response to something Duke said.

Duke is the former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon who’s been in Charlottesville, Va., to participate in a white nationalist protest against attempts to remove Confederate statues.

Duke called the protest in Charlottesville a sort of “victory,” saying that Trump’s election has given people such as the Klansman a voice in current policy discussions. “That’s why we voted for Donald Trump,” Duke said.

Let’s flash back for just a moment. Duke aligned himself during the 2016 presidential campaign with Donald Trump’s “law and order” rhetoric. The Republican candidate was asked to respond to comments from Duke. Trump said “I don’t know Duke” and said he didn’t even know anything about him, his history, let alone his affiliation with the KKK.

Astounding, yes? Sure it is.

Here’s chance for the president of the United States to offer a full-throated condemnation of all that this fire-breathing extremist stands for.

I just wonder, though, if the president has studied up on David Duke and knows any more about him now than what he said he knew during the campaign.

Or was he just lying?

International news

What does Kim Jong Un want? Part 3

Kim Jong Un has a list of demands he is laying at the feet of the U.S. president.

Most of them seem to present intractable circumstances for Donald J. Trump to ponder.

Such as this one: Removal of all U.S. troops from South Korea.

It’s not going to happen, Mr. North Korean Dictator. It won’t happen at least until North and South Korea sign a peace treaty that comes with ironclad assurances that North Korea won’t ever — ever! — attack South Korea. The agreement also needs to include a denuclearization component, meaning that Kim needs to dismantle and abandon his ambitions to become a nuclear power.

Our troops commitment to South Korea was purchased with lots of blood. The Korean War’s hostilities ended in 1953 after more than 50,000 American personnel were killed in action. We came to South Korea’s defense after North Korea invaded its neighbors three years earlier. Indeed, Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, sent the troops south. So, that means the current North Korean dictator bears a bit of personal responsibility for what transpired, given that he is kin to the man who launched the aggression in the first place.

The ceasefire that both sides signed in 1953 included a commitment from the United States to defend South Korea against the North, given that the two Koreas are technically still in a state of war; no peace treaty means they cannot put their guards down.

There are roughly 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. That’s just part of the defense network. We have heavily armed naval vessels throughout the region and immense air power assets in places such as Guam and Japan — not to mention in South Korea.

Should we give all that up without a serious commitment to peace from North Korea?

The boy with the bad haircut — that would be Kim — surely knows we cannot do anything of the sort.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience