Category Archives: national news

military news, national news

‘Beautiful’ World War II? Seriously?

(CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Question of the Moment: Who in their right mind would ever place the adjective “beautiful” in front of the words “World War … “?

Answer: No one in their right mind would ever say that, which leads me to conclude that Donald John “Best Wordsmith in Chief” Trump is out of his mind. He’s gone loony. Bonkers.

He was asked on Fox News Sunday about the issue of renaming U.S. military bases that currently carry the names of Confederate army officers. He then launched into yet another incoherent rant about how those installatons had sent young Americans off to fight in two world wars … which he then described as “beautiful.” 

Yes, he told Chris Wallace that World Wars I and II were “beautiful” conflicts.

They were hideous, ghastly, monumentally tragic at every level imaginable. World War I veterans were subject to mustard gas while dug into trenches along a line facing their enemy.  World War II veterans were sent to battlefields that spanned the globe. The remaining WWII vets are in the 90s now, but ask any of them if they thought that conflict was a “beautiful” endeavor.

Yet the president of the United States, who sought to avoid service during the Vietnam War by claiming to have bone spurs in his feet, now calls the two global conflicts “beautiful.”

Donald J. Trump is batsh** crazy.

national news

Trump to resume ‘briefing’ clown show

Well, let’s all get ready for it.

Donald Trump is going to take the podium once again in the White House press briefing room to provide daily updates on the government’s feckless response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Wow. What could go wrong?

Oh, wait! At one of the final such “briefings” that Trump delivered you might recall he talked about ingesting “disinfectants” as a way to cleanse the body of the killer virus. You know, snort a little Lysol or Clorox and you’ll be as good as new … just like that!

It didn’t go well, as you also might remember. That’s when Trump stopped delivering the hocus-pocus “briefings” in front of actual experts such as Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci.

Trump is about to come back. The clown show resumes.

national news

Support the flag … and what it ‘represents’

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Check out this social media meme that showed up today. Read the text carefully … and then bear with me while I offer a brief interpretation of what it means to me.

First of all, I am a huge fan and supporter of Gary Sinise. I honor his commitment to our nation’s veterans and as an Army veteran myself — one who went to war for my country in the late 1960s — I thank him for his support; it means a great deal to me.

Now comes the “however.” He stands for the flag, puts his hand over his heart and salutes “what that flag represents.” It represents a lot of things to me as well.

It represents liberty, freedom, honor, sacrifice and the right of citizens to dissent, to oppose government policy.

So, when individuals choose to, um, “take a knee,” they do so in full compliance with what the U.S. Constitution allows them to do. The flag, thus, represents the Constitution, it symbolizes the greatness of this land.

One of the elements of our nation’s greatness rests in the rights we have as citizens to protest peacefully without recrimination from our government.

national news

Portland is hurting … and so am I

It hurts me terribly to watch the city of my birth going through what is occurring at this moment.

Portland, Ore., has become the scene of a terrible, heavy-handed and tyrannical response from some sort of secret security force that is rounding up protestors and taking them … oh, somewhere.

The Oregon attorney general has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, saying that the secretive security force is violating the civil rights of those who are protesting peacefully.

At issue, of course, has been the response to the death of George Floyd, the man who died at the hands of police of Minneapolis, Minn. Portland became one of the cities where protestors rose up in a “defund the police” movement.

In recent days, though, the situation has gotten out of hand. Security forces wearing unidentified uniforms have been collecting protestors, throwing them into motor vehicles and taking them to undisclosed locations; the protestors then are released.

It’s a bizarre, frightening and dangerous response from the federal government. Donald Trump has referred to the protestors as “anarchists” and hurled assorted other epithets at them.

Why does this trouble me so much? Well, for starters Portland in many ways no longer resembles the once-sleepy city where I spent the first 34 years of my life … minus a couple of years I was away serving in the U.S. Army.

I got married there. We brought our sons into this world in Portland. We moved away in 1984 to pursue my journalism career in Texas. My family and I have been back many times over the years and I have watched my hometown become a cosmopolitan, vibrant, busy and socially conscious city.

Now this has occurred. We have the president of the United States declaring his intention to “dominate” the streets to make sure the “anarchists” no longer protest. Really? This is happening in the city of my birth?

Watching this kind of jack-booted tyranny erupting in Portland simply hurts my heart.

national news

How will history judge this guy?

It is not too early to start wondering how historians are going to write the saga associated with Donald John Trump’s time as president.

I hope they can start their drafts soon, as in right after the November 2020 election. I am not a historian, although I’ve witnessed enough presidential history to see how some men have grown into more respected, if not revered, individuals in the years since they left office.

How will Trump fare? My goodness, I cannot fathom how this guy can redeem himself.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed for all the world to see clearly how this man is unprepared to lead a nation. He was elected in 2016 to “drain the swamp,” and to deploy his business executive’s skill to manage the massive government machinery. The pandemic struck at the beginning of this year and — boom!– just like, the nation collapsed.

Still, this clown keeps yapping about the “success” he has enjoyed. He tells us that he’s doing a “fantastic” job. My goodness gracious, he has done precisely the opposite .

This, though, is just the latest example of the trashing that has occurred on Trump’s watch as president. He has destroyed our alliances, he has turned us from the most indispensable nation into an international laughingstock. Trump has lied continually, incessantly, gratuitously. He is caught telling lies and then tells us he isn’t lying, that the “fake news” is reporting falsehoods.

How does a historian portray all of this? How do the men and women who write our history tell that story for generations that will come along and read about the aberration that occurred in 2016 and — I do hope — ends in just a few weeks from today.

I don’t envy historians the task that awaits them.

national news

Stop the happy talk!

Donald Trump’s denial about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic is placing the nation he was elected to lead in dire peril.

He said once again that we’re defeating the pandemic. We aren’t.

He said on “Fox News Sunday” that we’re putting out “embers,” only to be told by moderator Chris Wallace that it’s a “forest fire.”

Trump continues to demand that schools open up per normal this fall, while disputing the evidence of continued infection in such a circumstance; moreover, he continues to threaten to withhold money to school districts that refuse to follow his edict.

This guy is out of control. He is unhinged. Trump is the most dangerous American politician I have witnessed in, oh, just about my entire life.

I’m glad, though, that Fox News gave him the forum today … and that Chris Wallace challenged Trump directly on the many misstatements and outright lies he told about the self-imagined “progress” we are making against the pandemic.

If the nation’s effort was as successful as Trump contends, then someone needs to explain why the European Union has banned travel from this country to the EU.

national news

POTUS won’t commit to accepting results if he loses? Wow!

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a presidential candidate, let alone the incumbent president, say he cannot commit to accepting the results of a free and fair election if he loses.

OK, I’ll concede that we’ve heard it said once: Donald Trump made the same threat four years ago when he was one of two non-incumbents running for the office.

There he was today, on Fox News Sunday, telling reporter Chris Wallace that he cannot commit to accepting the results if he loses to Joseph R. Biden Jr. this fall.

As I think of that statement, all I hear is the president of the United States saying he doesn’t trust a government system of which he is in charge.

Trump told Wallace that since he didn’t commit to accepting the 2016 results if he lost that his saying the same thing now is no big deal. Actually, it is a big bleeping deal.

Trump has been hurling unfounded and unwarranted allegations of voter fraud for as long as he has been president. He declared that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in 2016, which provided her with the 3 million popular vote lead over Trump. He is asserting much the same thing this time, with Biden’s team conspiring to collect illegal votes.

Trump alleges that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption, even though the states that conduct such balloting now stand firmly behind the integrity of their electoral systems.

Trump wants to suppress the vote. He doesn’t want to open the system up to every eligible voter. He has said that mail-in voting would make it damn near impossible for Republicans to win the presidency … ever again!

Donald Trump is sowing the seeds of suspicion on a system that works. For the president to in effect condemn that system by refusing to commit to accepting the results is yet another exercise in shameful demagoguery.

Still, I chuckled when I read the response from the Biden campaign. The Biden campaign responded: “The American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”

You know, that might be worth waiting to see if it occurs.

national news

Not so fast on ‘moving on,’ Mr. POTUS

Donald J. “Buck Passer in Chief” Trump reportedly is trying to change the subject from the coronavirus pandemic that has grabbed the attention of the entire planet.

No such luck, Mr. President. He’s got a full-blown crisis on his hands and we expect our head of state/commander in chief to take charge and to, um, lead us.

Oh, wait! This guy can’t do it. Dang! I damn near forgot. That must explain why he wants to change the subject. Why he wants to move on to other matters that have nothing to do with death, disease, heartache, misery, mourning. He wants to talk about the economy, which certainly is serious stuff. It doesn’t have as much to do about stemming the pandemic infection as dealing directly with strategies aimed at quelling the infection rate.

I will concede that devoting the vast bulk of Trump’s attention to this crisis requires him to acknowledge — in some fashion — that his strategy to date has failed. He won’t do that, either. He cannot admit failure, even when statistics demonstrate categorically that he has failed.

At some level, I happen to agree with Trump that we need to get the economy rolling again. I am with him … to a point! The first priority must be stemming the infection/hospitalization/death rate from the coronavirus. He isn’t listening to those who agree with my point of view. He is listening instead to those who have bought into the claptrap that the virus is a “hoax,” and that the media are employing scare tactics to frighten American needlessly.

Donald Trump needs to get to work — finally! — to assemble a coherent national strategy.

Aww, what the hell. He won’t heed these words, either. I just had to get them off my chest.

national news

No surprise that POTUS would be muted in honoring this icon

I am not surprised in the least that Donald Trump has been so reticent in honoring the life of the late civil rights icon John Lewis.

Yes, he offered a brief statement via Twitter, offering thoughts and prayers for “he and his family.”

Other presidents have been much more, um, fulsome in their praise for the hard work and the blood that Lewis shed on behalf of justice and civil rights. Presidents Carter, Clinton, Bush and Obama all spoke with heartfelt anguish at Lewis’s death. Trump? Well, he didn’t go there. He isn’t wired that way. Trump isn’t equipped with the rhetorical tools one can find even in politicians who disagree with other politicians.

Oh, no. Not this guy.

Indeed, Lewis and Trump did get into a nasty spat a couple of years ago. Lewis referred to Trump as an “illegitimate president,” because of the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump called Lewis a man who is all talk and no action; I guess Trump forgot about the time Lewis had his skull fractured by the police during a civil-rights march in Selma, Ala.

This, I submit, is another failing of Donald Trump. A president who feels aggrieved by a political foe surely could set aside those grievances and offer a significant tribute that recognizes that foe’s contributions to the social fabric, not to mention the political life of the nation we all love.

Isn’t that part of the job, Mr. President?

national news

Another icon passes from scene

Americans have been yanked into a long-held reality with the deaths of African-American men at the hands of police officers, which is that justice too often is applied unevenly in this country.

So now, here we are. The nation is mourning a giant of a great cause to bring equal justice, equal rights to all citizens. John Lewis has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 80 years of age.

U.S. Rep. Lewis comes from an era of great struggle. It was a violent time and Lewis, tragically, was the victim of that violence. Police in Alabama beat Lewis to a pulp as he marched along with other black citizens for equal rights. He recovered. Lewis continued to stand tall alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and other activists of the time seeking justice and liberty for all Americans … regardless of their racial makeup.

“He loved this country so much that he risked his life and his blood so that it might live up to its promise,” former President Barack Obama wrote in his statement. “And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom and justice but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to his example.”

Lewis took his struggle to the floor of the U.S. House, where he served with honor representing the people of Georgia as a Democratic congressman.

Andrew Young also rose to prominence as well, becoming U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and mayor of Atlanta. He spoke today of his friend’s death and the belief that despite the deaths of so many great civil rights icons, their work and their legacies live on.

The live through their spirit that remains among us, Young said.

So it will be as the nation gets past its time of mourning the death of a real-life, authentic American hero.

Rest in peace, Rep. Lewis. You have done well, but the hard work will continue in your memory.