Category Archives: national news

national news

RNC: one and done

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OK, ladies and gentlemen.

I’ve seen all of the Republican National Convention I can stomach. I won’t be watching any more of it. I saw a good bit of it Monday night.

It’s one and done for yours truly.

Now, none of this is a surprise to anyone who reads this blog. My mind is made up. I do not need to see Donald Trump make his special appearances each night of the four-night convention. I won’t listen to his allies proclaim that life is good on his watch. I know better. So do you … I hope.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Donald Trump didn’t cause it. However, the deaths of 177,000 Americans should be on his hands. Why? His pitiful initial response to the pandemic has produced far greater rates of infection, illness and death than imaginable in the world’s most technically advanced nation.

We’re all but isolated these days. At least my wife and I are living almost like recluses out of fear of getting infected by a virus that, um, can kill us!

So, you see, life ain’t so good on Donald Trump’s watch.

Of course, there’s also all the rest of it. The lying. The innuendo. The trashing of our international alliances. The name-calling. The incessant Twitter tirades. The bizarre revolving door in the administration.

Nope. I’m done with this RNC.

I now intend to do whatever I can to ensure this guy loses the election and that we can elect Joe Biden as the next president. And spare me the dark, dismal predictions of dark days ahead. No way it can get any worse than what we’re experiencing at this very moment.

International news, national news, political news

What about the ‘water’s edge,’ Mr. Secretary?

The late great Republican U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg coined the maxim that “politics stops at the water’s edge.”

That was his way of saying that in the pursuit of foreign policy, we shouldn’t quibble over partisan matters, that we’re all Americans regardless of political affiliation.

I want to extend that notion a bit farther. Secretaries of state shouldn’t engage in partisan politicking while they are representing U.S. interests abroad, either.

Listen up, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, I’m talking about you!

Pompeo is going to speak to the Republican National Convention tonight while he is in Jerusalem, ostensibly talking to Israeli leaders about this and that … such as crafting a comprehensive Middle East peace.

What the hell is he doing talking to the RNC about a partisan political matter, such as re-electing Donald J. Trump?

I know there’s nothing illegal about what Pompeo will do. Legality, though, doesn’t make it right. Thus, the secretary of state speaking to a partisan convention about a political matter just doesn’t pass the proverbial smell test.

This, I submit, is just one more time-honored tradition that Donald Trump has managed to destroy.

national news, religious news

Falwell is out, then he’s in, now he’s out … again

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

See ya around, Jerry Falwell Jr. Whatever this guy does, I hope he doesn’t hurry back.

Falwell got kicked out of his job as president of Liberty University, one of the nation’s leading faith-based institutions of higher learning. Why? Because he posed in a tacky picture with his pants unzipped in the presence of a woman who reportedly is an associate of Jerry Falwell’s wife. It was conduct unbecoming of a religious leader, said the Liberty governing board.

Then we hear that Falwell got entangled in a weird sexual threesome with, get this, his wife and a pool guy who is a whole lot younger than Mrs. Falwell. It seems that Jerry Falwell liked to watch his wife and the pool guy engage in sex acts … allegedly.

Falwell then resigned from Liberty; then he said he did no such thing; now he says he is out.

First of all, I believe the allegation of the three-way with the Falwells and the pool guy. If there was nothing to it, do you think Jerry Jr. would quit without a fight, that he wouldn’t want to clear what’s left of his name and that of his formerly adoring wife?

Second, given that I believe the reports about this sickening story, I am not the least bit surprised that Jerry Jr. would be such an adamant supporter of the moral reprobate who now serves as president of the United States, Donald Trump. It’s like these two individuals are made for each other: one guy who gets his kicks watching his wife take a tumble with another man, the other guy — a serial philanderer — who once bragged about how he could grab women by their genitals.

Third, this story only goes to show how the fruit really doesn’t fall far from the tree. I mean, Junior’s dad, the late Jerry Falwell Sr. — the founder of Liberty University — sought to defame the character of two notable politicians by alleging that Bill and Hillary Clinton were complicit in the deaths of close aides, friends and associates. The elder Falwell, indeed, gave evangelical Christianity a bad name.

And so … this disgusting story has taken yet another weird turn.

Is there more to learn about the conduct of this so-called “religious leader”? I am all ears.

national news

Biden a ‘far lefty’? Huh?

Stop it, Mr. President. You’re killin’ me!

You’re now trying to paint Joe Biden as some sort of squishy far-left, socialist-leaning, open-borders guy who will take our guns from us and appoint wacky loons to the federal judiciary.

Forgive the candor, Mr. President … but I think you’re off your rocker.

The first signs of the kind of campaign you are going to wage against the former vice president are coming into sharper focus now that the Republican National Convention has commenced.

I don’t listen to you when you speak on my TV. If I don’t turn the TV off I’ll mute the volume, given that you have nothing — not a single damn thing — to say that I want to hear.

However, the media report what you say and I do read media reports. They say you’re accusing Biden — an establishment Democrat if there ever was one — of adhering to some far-left idiocy.

I think of all the things you have accused Biden of supporting, I laugh the hardest at the open-borders assertion. Jumpin’ jiminy, Mr. POTUS, no reasonable American wants to throw open our borders. Indeed, the term “open borders” implies no enforcement of immigration laws, no intercepting of undocumented immigrants. Has the former VP ever said anything that suggests such nonsense? Umm. Let me think. No. He hasn’t.

Yet you keep yapping that he wants open borders. That he’s now a tool of the far left.

You seek to denigrate Biden the way you did to Hillary Clinton. The former vice president is trading on his decency, on his compassion, on the very virtues that you lack. That will be his staunchest defense against the scurrilous attacks you are going to launch against him.

So, I cannot wish you “luck” in your effort to defame a decent — and knowledgeable — political foe. I will turn away from you whenever you spout that nonsense and I intend fully to call attention to the lies you spew whenever they fly out of your mouth.

See you in the funny papers, Mr. President.

national news

Wanting to respect POTUS

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

I am not proud to admit what I am about to admit … but here it comes.

I detest feeling as I do whenever Donald Trump shows his face on my TV screen. Accordingly, it is my sincere hope that we can — and will — elect a president who doesn’t turn me off the way the current president does.

Joe Biden has spoken at length and quite eloquently about the need to restore decency to the presidency. He wants to infuse the office with a sense of compassion that has been missing for about, oh, the past three-plus years.

Thus, when I see Donald Trump on my TV screen, my first impulse is to turn away. I no longer want to hear anything he has to say. I don’t trust him to tell me the truth. I figure when a politician loses my trust in his or her truthfulness then there is utterly no point in devoting a moment of my attention to anything he says.

I want to trust the president to tell me the truth. I want that individual — and I do hope it is Joe Biden after the next election in November — to speak candidly and honestly to me.

The Republican National Convention today nominated Trump for a second term as president. That’s the RNC’s call.

I am not going to listen to Donald Trump. My mind is made up. To be candid, Trump lost me the moment he declared his presidential candidacy in June 2015. I had harbored plenty of hope that some legitimate Republicans would defeat him in the GOP primary. I retained the hope that Hillary Clinton would defeat him in the general election.

Silly me.

I am left now to hope for the moment when respect returns to the presidency.

national news

Good luck, Mr. and Mrs. Conway

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

I am not generally inclined to speak well of Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway.

However, I want to extend sincere good wishes to her as she steps away from the White House, from politics, and from Donald J. Trump’s chaos to tend to family needs.

I have been watching and listening to Conway try to defend Donald Trump’s policy lunacy over the course of the past four years. I also have been listening with considerable interest the rants of her husband, high-powered lawyer George Conway, who co-founded the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. I long have wondered: How do these two individuals manage to stay married, given the vast political differences that they air almost daily. I know that their marriage is no one’s business, but they both have been heavily involved in public affairs over the years, so their status as public figures opens up aspects of their lives that they otherwise might prefer to keep private.

It is not being reported heavily with the news that Kellyanne Conway is stepping away from her policy role at the White House and George Conway from the Lincoln Project that they are seeking to mend their marriage and tend to their children’s needs. Indeed, their teenaged daughter Claudia said recently she is seeking “emancipation” from her parents. As National Public Radio reported: In a series of tweets that followed, she said that her mother’s job had “ruined my life” and that she and her father “agree on absolutely nothing,” politically.

As the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney once noted, “There is more to life than politics.”

I wish the Conways well.

national news

Let’s await the ‘phony’ and ‘fraud’

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Mitt Romney told the nation midway through the 2016 presidential campaign all about Donald John Trump.

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee spelled it out in a 17-minute speech. He said Donald Trump is a “phony” and a “fraud.” Yet the 2016 GOP nominee won that year’s presidential election by offering phony promises and running on a fraudulent background.

Trump is going to try to sell a nation once more on the phony, fraudulent past and seek to persuade Americans that what they have seen and heard is part of some mysterious Deep State “fake news” media conspiracy.

The Republican National Convention will unfold Monday in Charlotte, N.C. It will be a virtual event just as the Democratic Convention turned out to be.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden awaits the nomination of Donald Trump, who is going to tell the nation that life is good on his watch, that his administration is conquering the coronavirus pandemic, that the economy is just swell, that the United States enjoys the respect of the rest of the world and that he is protecting our troops who are waging war against international terrorists.

It’ll all be lies. He will lie and lie again and again.

The most astonishing aspect of his lying will be that about 40 percent of voting public will believe every lie he tells.

Donald Trump’s fraudulent term as president has been brought into the sharpest relief possible.

The economic collapse caused by the pandemic has wiped out every bit of job growth we have experienced over the past decade. Our troops face additional threats abroad because of the bounties that Russians are paying to Taliban terrorists for every American they kill on battlefields in Afghanistan. The pandemic itself is continuing to sicken and kill Americans daily. Most of the rest of the industrialized world has contained the virus and world leaders now look at Americans with pity.

Get ready for the convention/clown show that will unfold in Charlotte. I will grit my teeth and recall that Mitt Romney pegged Donald Trump perfectly when he warned us of what we would get were he ever elected president.

If only all of us had paid attention.

national news

Words of wisdom

I want to share the following message on my blog. It comes from a well-known actor/director/social activist. He makes his case for voting for Joe Biden for president of the United States.

Take a look at it. It’s a nicely crafted essay. I’m out:

“I have a lot of vivid memories of growing up in Los Angeles in the 1940s, but one in particular keeps coming back to me today, in these troubled times. I remember sitting with my parents — actually, my parents were sitting; I was lying on the floor, the way kids do — and listening to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt talking to us over the radio. He was talking to the nation, of course, not just to us, but it sure felt that way. He was personal and informal, like he was right there in our living room.
I was too young to follow much of what he was saying — something about World War II. But what I did understand was that this was a man who cared about our well-being. I felt calmed by his voice. It was a voice of authority and, at the same time, empathy. Americans were facing a common enemy — fascism — and FDR gave us the sense that we were all in it together. Even kids like me had a role to play: participating in paper drives, collecting scrap metal, doing whatever we could do. That’s what it was like to have a president with a strong moral compass. It guided him, gave him direction, and helped him point the nation toward a better future.
Maybe this strikes you as simple nostalgia. I’ve got a touch of that, sure (who doesn’t right now?). But I’m too focused on the future to sit around pining for the old days. For me, the power of FDR’s example is what it says about the kind of leadership America needs — and can have again, if we choose it.
But one thing is clear: Instead of a moral compass in the Oval Office, there’s a moral vacuum. Instead of a president who says we’re all in it together, we have a president who’s in it for himself. Instead of words that uplift and unite, we hear words that inflame and divide. When someone retweets (and then deletes) a video of a supporter shouting “white power” or calls journalists “enemies of the state,” when he turns a lifesaving mask against contagion into a weapon in a culture war, when he orders the police and the military to tear gas peaceful protestors so he can wave a Bible at the cameras, he sacrifices — again and again — any claim to moral authority.
Another four years of this would degrade our country beyond repair. The toll it’s taking is almost biblical: fires and floods, a literal plague upon the land, an eruption of hatred that’s being summoned and harnessed, by a leader with no conscience or shame. Four more years would accelerate our slide toward autocracy. It would be taken as free license to punish more so-called “traitors” and wage more petty vendettas — with the full weight of the Justice Department behind them. Four more years would mean open season on our environmental laws. The assault has been ongoing — it started with abandoning the historic agreement that the world made in Paris to combat climate change, and continued, just last month, with using the pandemic as cover to let industries pollute as they see fit. Four more years would bring untold damage to our planet — our home.
America is still a world power. But in the past four years, it has lost its place as a world leader. A second term would embolden enemies and further weaken our standing with our friends.
When and how did the United States of America become the Divided States of America? Polarization, of course, has deep roots and many sources. President Donald Trump didn’t create all of our divisions as Americans. But he has found every fault line in America and wrenched them wide open.
Without a moral compass in the Oval Office, our country is dangerously adrift. But this November, we can choose another direction. This November, unity and empathy are on the ballot. Experience and intelligence are on the ballot. Joe Biden is on the ballot, and I’m confident he will bring these qualities back to White House.
I don’t make a practice of publicly announcing my vote. But this election year is different. And I believe Biden was made for this moment. Biden leads with his heart. I don’t mean that in a soft and sentimental way. I’m talking about a fierce compassion — the kind that fuels him, that drives him to fight against racial and economic injustice, that won’t let him rest while people are struggling.
As FDR showed, empathy and ethics are not signs of weakness. They’re signs of strength. I think Americans are coming back to that view. Despite Trump — despite his daily efforts to divide us — I see much of the country beginning to reunite again, the way it did when I was a kid. You can see it in the peaceful protests of the past several weeks — Americans of all races and classes coming together to fight against racism. You can see it the ways that communities are pulling together in the face of this pandemic, even if the White House has left them to fend for themselves.
These acts of compassion and kindness make our country stronger. This November, we have a chance to make it stronger still — by choosing a president who is consistent with our values, and whose moral compass points toward justice.”
– Robert Redford, July 8, 2020
national news

Who’s the lawless POTUS?

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(Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Let’s set the record straight on how we define lawlessness.

Steven Bannon has just been indicted on fraud charges related to the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign; he is the seventh member of Trump’s team to be indicted, to have pleaded guilty to criminal activity or convicted at trial.

Trump got a question from a reporter to explain why so many of these key associates have run afoul of the law.

Trump then blurted out the lie he keeps repeating about the Barack Obama administration. He called President Obama and Vice President Biden — Trump’s 2020 opponent — corrupt and “lawless.” He said the Obama administration “spied” on his campaign.

Hmm. The record, though, tells us that zero members of the Obama administration were indicted, convicted or pleaded guilty to criminal activity. Furthermore, the Justice Department on President Obama’s watch was reacting to reports that Russians were working with the Trump campaign while interfering with the 2016 election. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report has just confirmed that very fact.

Lawlessness, Mr. President? Look inward.

national news

How to watch the RNC?

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It pains me greatly to ask this, but I must.

How in the world am I going to watch the Republican National Convention after having my spirits lifted from the Democratic National Convention?

The RNC is set to nominate the most loathsome individual I have seen in my lifetime to the office of president. They anointed Donald Trump their party’s nominee in 2016 and then he surprised practically every political pundit/analyst/observer on Earth by actually winning the election.

He is likely to deliver the same hideous sort of speech late in the week when he accepts the nomination a second time. The speakers will seek to paint this individual as something he most certainly is not: a statesman, a leader. He is nothing of the sort.

Indeed, when Democratic nominee Joe Biden pledged on Thursday to be a “president for all Americans,” my mind drifted immediately to the horror being brought at this moment to our friends and family members in California. Fires are threatening lives up and down the state.

Where is Donald Trump’s expression of support? When has he said he would devote all federal help possible to assist those Americans? Trump does not see himself, in my view, as their president. He is president only to the base that stands with him and his ghastly pronouncements.

I’ve never had to deal with this immense gulf between candidates of opposing parties competing for the presidency. To be candid, it makes me quite uncomfortable.

In 2008 and again in 2012, I watched the RNC with considerable interest as the GOP nominated, respectively, two fine men with stellar records of public service: the late John McCain and Mitt Romney.

In 2000 and 2004, I was able to watch the RNC nominate George W. Bush.

It is remarkable, indeed, to think that President Bush and Gov. Romney, two of the GOP’s three most recent nominees will not take part in this year’s virtual convention. Sen. McCain, were he around, certainly would want to stay far away from any political event having to do with Donald Trump.

I’ll suck it up and watch at least part of the RNC that’s coming up. However, I might have to clear the room of any objects I could throw at my TV.