Category Archives: national news

Is this how you ‘unify’ the nation? I think not

FILE - In this Jan. 24, 2013 file photo, Executive Producer Stephen Bannon poses at the premiere of "Sweetwater" during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Republican Donald Trump is overhauling his campaign again, bringing in Breitbart News' Bannon as campaign CEO and promoting pollster Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager. Trump told The Associated Press in a phone interview early Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016, that he has known both individuals for a long time. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP, File)

Steve Bannon is about to become one of the new president’s closest advisers.

Big deal? Uh, yeah! It’s a real big deal.

Donald J. Trump has done two things that are fundamentally at odds with each other. The president-elect vows to “unify” the country torn asunder by one of the most acrid — and putrid — presidential campaigns in its history.

Then he picks someone like Bannon to become his chief political adviser in the White House. Bannon is a virtually avowed white supremacist who ran the Breitbart News outfit before joining the Trump campaign this summer as its chief political strategist.

Bannon’s views about Muslims, gays, immigrants, African-Americans and other racial minorities are well-known. They are ugly, pernicious and totally unacceptable in someone who is advising the president of the United States of America.

Trump is about to become president of a nation that perhaps is more divided than at any time since, oh, the Civil War!

How in the name of all that is holy does the president-elect put someone of Bannon’s ilk in the West Wing of the White House, the people’s house?

Trump selected as well a White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, who has been generally praised. Tradition holds that the chief of staff is the second most powerful person in the White House. Trump, though, said that Bannon and Priebus will work in tandem, with co-equal clout between them.

This is how you unify a nation?

The president-elect is sending precisely the wrong message.

Gay marriage is ‘settled law’ … how about abortion?

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Donald J. Trump says the U.S. Supreme Court has settled the issue of gay marriage, ruling that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides “equal protection” under the law to gay couples, thus allowing them to marry legally.

The president-elect made the right call there.

But wait a second!

What about abortion? The High Court also has ruled that women have a constitutional right to make decisions regarding their own bodies, that they are allowed to terminate a pregnancy. They cited the same 14th Amendment’s “right of privacy” provision, as noted in Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion.

Is it settled law? One would think so.

Trump, though, has said he’s going to find someone to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court who opposes abortion, who would help overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.

Isn’t the Roe v. Wade decision “settled law” as well, just as much as the gay marriage decision of just a couple of years ago?

I should note, I suppose, that Trump once was adamantly pro-choice on the abortion issue. Now he is just as adamantly pro-life on the matter.

Trump now plans to apply the abortion litmus test to whomever he selects to the court post vacated by the death earlier this year of longtime conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia.

Presidents normally say they don’t set up such tests for potential Supreme Court nominees … but of course they do. I’ll give Trump credit at least for all but admitting out loud he has established one critical benchmark for whomever he chooses to fill the court vacancy.

The credit, though, must be tempered by the “settled law” notion that the president-elect applies to one key social issue of our time while refusing to apply it to another.

Once more about those tax returns

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Donald J. Trump says he’s going to pocket a dollar a year while serving as president of the United States.

How will we know that? I guess we’ll just have to take him at his word.

The public hasn’t seen his income tax returns, after all. Trump said on “60 Minutes” Sunday night that a “routine audit” precludes him from releasing those returns, which he said he’ll do at the appropriate time.

I am sick and tired of hearing this refrain from the president-elect.

A routine audit doesn’t prevent the release of those returns. Moreover, the public still has no demonstrable proof that Trump is actually even being audited in the first place; the Internal Revenue Service does not comment on such matters.

This is one of the many — likely countless — baffling elements of the election that we’ve just endured.

Trump says he’ll forgo virtually all of the $400,000 annual salary the president earns. Perhaps we can take the $399,999 he won’t accept to the bottom line each year.

At one level, I applaud his pledge to skip the salary.

At another level, I just wish I could take him at his word completely that he’ll do what he says he’ll do.

Gay marriage, where Trump and GOP base part company

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Here it comes.

The millions of Republican voters who stood by their man, Donald J. Trump, during the acrid presidential campaign might be feeling the first of many pangs of regret over one of their guy’s core beliefs.

Trump has told “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl that gay marriage is the law of the land and that he’s “fine” with that. The U.S. Supreme Court decided it, legalized gay marriage in all the states. The issue is done, said Trump — quite correctly. There, you see? I actually can say something complimentary of the president-elect.

I almost could hear the teeth-gnashing while sitting in my study at home when he said that.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/305803-trump-diverts-from-gop-fine-with-supreme-courts-gay-marriage

Do you think the president-elect has upset those among his base, the folks who stood by him while he insulted prisoners of war, mocked a disabled reporter, admitted to groping women, denigrated a Gold Star family?

All of those things, taken separately, should have been enough to disqualify this guy from being nominated by a major political party, let alone from being elected president.

The GOP base — the true believers — stood by the nominee despite not even understanding what he believed.

Trump has vowed to appoint a conservative to the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The court, though, has settled the gay marriage issue, citing the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and its “equal protection under the law” clause.

Trump tonight has indicated — finally! — that he understands the concept of “settled law.” The base of his party will be unhappy with the man they backed to the hilt.

Two picks: one works, the other one, well …

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Donald J. Trump has made two of his first key picks for his presidential administration.

Reince Priebus will become the White House chief of staff. Good call there for the president-elect. Priebus is the Republican national chairman, a mainstream GOP guy, well-connected within the party.

Oh, but it gets weirder.

Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News head, is going to assume the role of chief political adviser for the new president.

Why does this one cause alarm? Bannon ran an organization that published some pretty hateful dogma about Jews, about African-Americans, about gay people. When this guy took over as chief strategist for Trump’s campaign, a lot of folks — me included — became worried about the kind of rhetoric that would come out of Trump’s mouth.

Now he’s going to be advising the president on political strategy? The new president is going to bring this fellow into the White House, next to the Oval Office, place him at this right hand?

Oh, my.

My hope for the Trump administration is that the chief of staff assumes his rightful place as the second most powerful individual in the White House.

Smooth transition under way

President Obama met the man who will succeed him in the Oval Office and said something I found most interesting — and revealing.

The president turned to Donald J. Trump and offered his full support during the transition. “If you succeed, the country succeeds,” the president said.

Imagine that. The man who called Trump “unfit to be president” now is wishing him success as he prepares to seize the levers of power.

Holy cow, man!

Why is that worthy of comment? Consider the kind of things that many conservatives said in 2009 as Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush as president.

A lot of them — namely many of them talk-radio blowhards — were actually urging failure for the president. They didn’t care about the consequences of failure. They failed to connect the nation’s fate with the president’s performance. They didn’t understand — or refused willfully to understand — that the nation suffers if the president fails.

The Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, declared that his No. 1 priority was to make Obama a one-term president. How does he do that? By ensuring failure at every step.

President Obama deserves high praise for insisting that Donald Trump’s success bodes well for the nation.

Is a presidential pardon out of the question?

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Donald J. Trump said many crazy things while campaigning successfully for the presidency of the United States.

Take, for instance, his statement to Hillary Rodham Clinton that “You’d be in jail” if he were president.

His crowds chanted the “Lock her up!” mantra continually at his rallies. Trump didn’t silence the madness from his followers.

The FBI director, James Comey, concluded in July that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring criminal charges against Clinton over her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. Then he told Congress 11 days before the election that he found more e-mails that deserved his agency’s attention; eight days after that he said, “Nope. Nothing has changed.”

Trump continued to hammer “crooked Hillary” with accusations that she broke the law.

So, here’s a nutty idea. Would the new president issue a blanket pardon, clearing his opponent of any potential future prosecution?

Trump isn’t saying. Neither is his transition staff.

Hey, this notion has precedent. President Ford granted a pardon for his immediate predecessor,  former President Nixon, a month after Nixon quit the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974, over the Watergate scandal. No criminal charges had been brought against Nixon, yet Ford sought to prevent a further political fracturing that would occur had any prosecution had been allowed to proceed.

It turned out that the pardon opened up a whole new set of fissures.

But, the nation moved on.

Might there be such an action in our nation’s immediate future?

I wouldn’t oppose such an action. How about you?

Protests turn violent … to the shame of many

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I guess none of us should be surprised.

Protesters angry at the result of the 2016 presidential election hit the streets to march, chant and display signs.

Then it turned violent. My attention tonight is turning to my hometown of Portland, Ore., where the police and the mayor are blaming the violent turn on those who have “infiltrated” the city, criminals who are inciting the violence and damage.

I am horrified, mortified and embarrassed by what is occurring in the city of my birth and where I spent the first 34 years of my life.

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2016/11/mayor_police_hold_press_confer.html#incart_big-photo

I get that many Americans didn’t want Donald J. Trump elected president of the United States. Count me as one who is unhappy with the result.

But for crying out loud, man, why in the world does that unhappiness have to turn to destruction of property and personal bodily injury?

As I’ve noted before on this blog, marching in the streets ain’t my style. It’s not how I roll. I prefer to register my protest using this venue; I’ll sit at my desk at home, fire up my computer and gripe until I run out of strength in my fingers.

This idea of marchers turning destructive and violent, though, is inconsistent with so-called American values. Indeed, when one thinks of my hometown, one thinks usually of coffee shops, craft beer, the world’s largest used-bookstore, a bustling downtown district, Mount Hood, a lovely riverfront and tall timber.

One shouldn’t think of Portland — or any city in America — as a place prone to violent protest over a free and fair election.

The ‘system’ elected Donald Trump

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The irony of the 2016 presidential election outcome is too good to let go.

Donald J. Trump bitched continually about the possibility of losing the presidential election to a “rigged electoral system.” He even threatened to forgo accepting the result if he came up on the short end of the count.

Then he won. He was elected president of the United States with a healthy Electoral College majority. It stands currently at 290 electoral votes, with more likely to come in once they declare that he won in Michigan, which is still “too close to call.”

But wait! Hillary Rodham Clinton has collected nearly a million more actual votes than Trump. That number is likely to increase once they finish counting all the scattered ballots … and there appear to be many more to be counted in California.

So …

As someone has pointed out already on social media, the people voted for Hillary, but the system elected Trump.

There goes ‘divided government’

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Republicans in Congress used to extol the virtues of “divided government,” when they controlled Capitol Hill while a Democrat and his family were residing down the street in the White House.

Guess what. Divided government is about to be tossed into the crapper. On Jan. 20, a Republican — Donald J. Trump — will take the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States; meanwhile, the GOP will retain control of Congress, although with slightly diminished majorities.

But we’re going to have one party in charge of everything.

Oh, boy!

The last time one party ran the whole show was from 2009 to 2011. Democrats were the big dog. What did they do when they ran the government? Oh, the 111th Congress — along with the president — managed to save the nation from total economic collapse, despite many Republicans’ best efforts to stop them.

Then the GOP took over both congressional chambers and began obstructing just about everything the Democratic president, Barack Obama, sought to do.

What lies in store for the new GOP president and his fellow Republicans who run Congress? That might depend on how well Democrats learned the obstructionist practices of their “friends on the other side of the aisle.”

Trump intends to do a few things that are anathema to Democrats. He wants to repeal environmental protection laws; he wants to toss aside the Affordable Care Act — although he now says he hopes to save the strongest portions of it; he intends to “build a wall” across our southern border; he hopes to ban Muslims from entering the United States of America.

I believe Trump once also said he intends to make department store owners force their employees to wish their customers a “Merry Christmas” during the holidays. Government overreach? Uh, yeah!

In each of these cases, I am all for a little obstruction. I trust Democrats have learned their lessons well from their Republican colleagues.