Category Archives: national news

national news

Hideous POTUS, but legitimate nonetheless

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I want to clear the air a bit on Donald John Trump’s tenure as president of the United States.

No one wants to see him run out of office more than I do. I am using this blog to the best of my ability to declare his unfitness for the office he won in the biggest political fluke in American history.

However, I disagree with those who contend he is an “illegitimate” president. I have many social media friends who contend he was elected illegally. That the Russians’ electoral chicanery in 2016 resulted directly in his election, that the undermined Hillary Clinton’s candidacy sufficiently to guarantee Trump’s Electoral College victory.

I just cannot buy that notion.

I haven’t seen evidence that suggests that the Russians effort to undermine Clinton’s candidacy was decisive. It might have contributed to the defeat, but so did a number of huge tactical errors down the stretch by the Clinton team contribute to Trump’s shocking victory. Clinton ignored key battleground states in the Great Lakes region that Trump managed to peel away. There also was that horrendous announcement from FBI Director James Comey that he was taking a fresh look at the email matter that had dogged Clinton for months and months.

Sure, Trump received nearly 3 million fewer votes than Clinton. He won the Electoral College, though, which is where the Constitution prescribes the way we elect presidents. It was all done legally. The guy is legit.

I say all this while gritting my teeth so hard that they are hurting. The 2016 election produced precisely the wrong outcome. The wrong candidate got elected. However, the Constitution worked in this case, just as it did in 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency after facing certain impeachment and conviction on high crimes and misdemeanors and just as it did in 2000 when the Supreme Court awarded George W. Bush the presidency by disallowing the recount of ballots in Florida.

It worked in 2016 even as Donald Trump stumbled onto the nation’s highest office and is threatening to destroy the world’s greatest nation.

It will work one more time — I hope — when Americans vote this clown out of office.

national news

Is there a surprise VP pick coming?

This is just me, so take it for what it’s worth. Don’t laugh and suggest it’s not worth a damn. Maybe so, but here it is anyhow.

I am wondering in the deepest recesses of my gut whether Joseph R. Biden Jr. is going to pull a serious surprise out of his fedora when he announces who he wants to run with him as the vice presidential nominee.

I keep hearing about the “top four” contenders in the veep sweepstakes: Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, Stacy Yates of Georgia and Susan Rice of D.C. They all have something in common. They are “women of color.”

But are they the best candidates Biden could select? I don’t know. I just keep thinking that with a nation as huge and diverse as this one, does it make sense for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to go with the “conventional wisdom” candidate?

I cannot help but wonder whether there is someone lurking in the tall grass, perhaps someone few of us have heard of, let alone considered as a VP candidate.

Joe Biden has guaranteed the VP nominee will be a woman. He is getting plenty of heat to select a woman of color. 

This waiting game is getting a bit tense … don’t you think?

national news

Can’t make the leap to attach title to Trump’s name

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Well, here we are. We’re about 100 days away from the next presidential election.

My hope springs eternal that Americans will have learned from the big mistake they made when they elected Donald John Trump to the presidency and that we will elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to succeed him.

If that is the case, then I likely will be able to declare victory in one of my campaigns against Trump. It will be that I might have survived the current presidency without ever placing the word “President” in front of Trump’s name.

I cannot make that leap.

I won’t apologize for it. I have believed since long before Trump took the oath of office that he didn’t deserve to occupy it. He is unqualified. He is unfit at every level possible. I want him gone far away from the Oval Office inside “my White House.” Thus, it is time to evict this imposter and Election Day provides us with the best chance we will have.

I say all this with plenty of trepidation. I do not relish expressing this form of protest. Nor do I express it with an ounce of disrespect for the presidency. I revere the office. I merely detest the man who sits at the Resolute Desk. Thus, I take no pleasure in refusing to attach “President” in front of “Trump,” to publish those words consecutively, with nothing between them.

Members of my family will acknowledge that I have spoken those words in that order. I just cannot write them down, to put it on the record in this blog.

What will I do if Trump somehow wins a second term? The same thing. I just will need to suck it up for another four years. I might not have the stamina right now. If it comes to pass and we are stuck with this disgrace, I’ll find what it takes to continue my protest to the bitter end.

national news

Trump makes my hometown a spectacle … disgusting!

Donald Trump is turning my beloved hometown into a spectacle and it is making me sick.

Portland, Ore., is all over the news and for all the reasons it does not deserve this kind of attention.

Donald Trump has sent in federal agents to quell protests in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement. The agents are wearing camo fatigues, armed to the teeth with tear gas cannisters and assorted firearms, they are hauling protesters off the streets. Now comes word that Trump wants to do the same thing in Albuquerque and Chicago, maybe also in Kansas City and Miami.

What the hell is going on here?

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is calling out the president on this heavy-handed response to what is happening in my hometown. Good for Sen. Wyden!

Trump’s response has done the opposite of what he says it has done. It has worsened the public mood, inflamed the city known more for its myriad coffee shops, craft beer and some of the finest downtown dining establishments anywhere in the country.

Now it is being perceived as a city that is erupting in anger. At whom? At the federal agents who have swooped in to crush a few skulls and to smother crowds under clouds of tear gas.

This is making me — a proud son of the City of Roses — sick to my stomach.

national news, political news

Biden needs to be held to his own campaign pledges

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is making his share of campaign promises as he seeks to unseat Donald J. Trump Sr. from the presidency.

I am extremely cautious in my hope that he’ll be able to fulfill them. I man, Trump does have a way of pulling rabbits out of his hat … if not his a**. He could do so again down the stretch toward Election Day.

Biden is making some promises that I want to see him keep. For example:

He vows to improve the Affordable Care Act, not scrap it; he vows to rescind Trump executive orders removing us from the Paris Climate Accords and the Iranian nuclear arms deal; Biden promises to work closely with our worldwide allies and cease scolding them; he pledges to hold Russia accountable for the attacks it has launched on our political system and to force answers on the issue of paying bounties for the combat deaths of American service personnel; he vows an energy policy that stresses “clean” sources of energy.

Biden wants to restore our nation’s “soul.” I’m all in. Our soul has been co-opted by the fraud who occupies the Oval Office. Biden vows to lead the entire nation, not just the base that is most loyal to him … which is a promise we never have heard from Donald Trump.

Once the dust settles and Biden — or so I am hoping — is elected the nation’s 46th president, I am going to insist that the new guy keep faith with the myriad pledges he has made.

I am acutely aware that I won’t be alone in that effort. Good. The more of us the better … for the nation.

national news

What happened to bounty outrage?

It’s been clear to me for many years that yesterday’s outrage too often becomes today’s afterthought.

Such as it is with the story that got the media’s attention regarding reports that Russian intelligence officials had placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers fighting Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan.

Yep, we were filled with rage over the notion that Vladimir Putin’s goons were paying money for every soldier the Taliban killed. What’s more, we became even more outraged at Donald John Trump’s lack of outward anger at the reports.

Instead, Trump attacked the media outlets that were reporting this stunning news. He called it “fake.” He became angry at whoever it was who leaked the information to the Associated Press, to the New York Times and to CNN. His anger at the Russians? Silence, man!

I happen to be mad as hell — still! — at Donald Trump over this story. Sure, there are plenty of things Trump has done to incur my wrath: the insults, the hideous pandemic response, the incessant lying.

The idea, though, that the president of the United States would ignore briefing material that had landed on his desk that told him of bounties being paid to Taliban fighters who kill Americans is the utmost betrayal of the oath he took to become commander in chief.

However, the outrage that we heard from all across the country seems to have subsided. Granted, it has been overtaken by another huge event, one that has worsened on Donald Trump’s watch as president of the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic demands our national attention. So do the reports of bounties paid by a hostile power to our battlefield enemies who kill the men and women our president sends into harm’s way.

We cannot let up in our demand for accountability at what many of us consider a hideous dereliction of duty by a man who vowed to protect the men and women who serve under his command.

national news

Unwillingness vs. inability?

I keep struggling with how to describe Donald J. Trump’s lack of empathy in time of crisis.

Two words keep tugging at me. One of them is “inability.” The other is “unwillingness.” My struggle occurs as I ponder how to define what we witness in Trump’s demeanor while he speaks publicly about any number of issues that pull and pound our hearts.

Whether it’s race relations, or natural disaster, or medical crises I find myself torn between defining Trump’s lack of empathy and compassion as his “inability” to exhibit it or his “unwillingness” to show it.

The nation has heard in recent days from one of Trump’s nieces, Mary Trump, who writes in a new tell-all about Uncle Donald that he was brought up in a sociopathic household led by a domineering father, Fred Trump Sr.

Grandpa Fred instilled in his children an ethic that required them to be always tough and to not let the world see a softer side of them. Apologizing for mistakes is a sign of weakness, Mary Trump writes.

Did this upbringing create, as Mary Trump’s book title suggests, “the most dangerous man in the world”? I am left to wonder whether Trump is who he is because he just cannot find the empathy and compassion that he lacks or is it because he is unwilling to search for it, to apply it to the job he inherited when he became president of the United States in January 2017.

I’ve known many men and women who have been brought up in trying circumstances. Yet they power through it. They become better human beings because they are able to search for — and eventually find — the trait that instills some sense of kindness in them.

Thus, I am left to rely on the belief that Trump is merely “unwilling” to show us compassion, to demonstrate a semblance of empathy toward those who are hurting. He says the words, as he did Tuesday when he spoke to us about the COVID-19 pandemic. He speaks to us as though he is reading from a statement written under duress. I hear him speak those words as if he is being punished by a schoolteacher who caught him cheating on an exam.

Could this guy ever find a way to exhibit genuine, authentic compassion or empathy? I do not believe he is willing to look deeply enough for it within himself.

national news

He wishes her ‘well’

Donald Trump needs to follow the news, as in the real news … not the “fake news” that floods right-wing cable TV and talk radio.

He might, then, understand why his “well wishes” for a suspect accused of sex trafficking seems so stunning.

Today, Trump said he wishes Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend and confidante of notorious sexual assailant Jeffrey Epstein “well” as she fights the charges being leveled against her. Epstein hanged himself in his New York City jail cell.

Just to refresh your memory, Maxwell is accused of recruiting underage girls for Epstein to pleasure himself. I know she’s entitled to a presumption of innocence, but the allegations seem so very credible to many of us.

According to USA Today: Trump said he had met Maxwell “numerous times” over the years because he lived in Palm Beach. But he said he knows nothing about the charges against her, including an allegation that she arranged an assignation between a young girl and Prince Andrew of Great Britain.

Still, Trump wishes her “well”?

Let’s not forget, too, that there appear to be plenty of pictures of Epstein and Trump … along with a few shots of the two of them with Ghislaine Maxwell.

Trump today wished Maxwell “well.” I wanted to gag the moment I heard him say it.

medical news, national news

It’s worse than ’embers,’ Mr. POTUS

Donald Trump keeps using the term “embers” to describe what is happening in the country with regard to the coronavirus pandemic.

He tells us that the “embers” stay hot while infections continue to spiral upward. I want to suggest that the problem is far worse than “embers.” It is, as Fox News reporter noted in an interview with Trump, like a “forest fire.”

Donald Trump has just concluded his “briefing” on the response to the outbreak, a term I use guardedly. I don’t even like the word, as these White House appearances turn immediately into a campaign-style riff from the president.

I will Trump credit for this, however: He did say the pandemic is going to worsen before it gets better. Good. At least he is acknowledging what scientists have been saying for, oh, months!

It’s also clear to me why Trump didn’t invite Dr. Anthony Fauci to attend this event. Reporters gathered in the room would have asked Fauci to comment on the performance of the White House response task force and I am quite certain he would say something quite different than what Trump keeps saying. We can’t have that now, can we.

I am not clear about why I bothered to watch and listen to the Liar in Chief’s statement today. He didn’t offer a single nugget of new information, he didn’t tell me something we haven’t heard ad nauseum about the “fantastic” job he is doing.

So, Trump has returned to the White House briefing room to tell us … nothing. Stay tuned. We’ll have more of the same.

national news

Politics intersects with principle

I hate it when this happens, when principle runs headlong into partisan political interests … such as when presidents might be handed an opportunity to make a key appointment.

I refer to the U.S. Supreme Court and to Donald J. Trump.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly in early 2016, creating a vacancy on the high court. President Obama, serving his final full year in office, then nominated Merrick Garland to succeed the brilliant conservative jurist. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed the brakes on that effort, saying that the Senate wouldn’t confirm an appointment from a lame-duck president in an election year.

Many of us — including me — raised holy hell. We argued that presidential prerogative allowed Obama to make that appointment. We argued on the principle that the Constitution granted him the authority to act. I also argued that McConnell was playing a shameful game of politics with this principle. The 2016 election occurred, Trump got elected, Garland’s nomination was tossed aside.

Here we are, four years later. Another Supreme Court justice, liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, revealed recently she is battling liver cancer. I now am asking myself: What happens if she can no longer serve on the court? Does Donald Trump deserve the same sort of presidential deference many of us in the peanut gallery said was due Barack Obama?

With gritted teeth and a tight jaw, I have to say: yes, he does.

Let me be crystal clear. I do not want Justice Ginsburg to leave the court until well after the November election. There’s a decent chance at this moment that Trump is going to lose to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. It is my fondest political hope that Justice Ginsburg can continue to serve on the court, can continue to write opinions and can be a full partner in the court’s deliberations. It also is my hope that should she decide to retire from the court that she can wait until after President Biden takes his oath of office in January and then is free to nominate someone of his choice.

However, if fate takes the court in another direction, I will be saddened beyond measure at what is likely to transpire as Trump wages war against those in the Senate who will fight to stall any confirmation process until after the voters have their say at the ballot box.

Yes, occasionally politics can be based on high principle. I fear that politics and principle might be pointed in opposite directions in this most volatile election year.