Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Typical weekend for Trump: Fore!

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I am not going to criticize a president simply for playing a round of golf.

I’ve noted many times that the president of the United States is never not the president. He’s on call 24/7 and is just one instant message away from being alerted to a national/international crisis.

OK, that said … Donald J. Trump keeps demonstrating that he is not a man of his word as it relates to his constant golf outings.

The president said while campaigning for the office that he never would take time away from the White House to play golf. He criticized President Barack H. Obama for playing too much golf while he was on duty.

I stood up for Barack Obama then. I’ll stand up for Donald Trump now if he wants to play golf.

However …

It’s that constant harping while campaigning for the office that makes criticism of the president an irresistible temptation.

If only he hadn’t lied about his intention. Had he told us the truth — that he planned to play golf at one of his posh resorts while serving as president and still got elected! — then I wouldn’t be saying anything at this moment.

He didn’t. He flapped his yap while making a false promise to stay on the job in the White House. That makes his golf outings targets for criticism.

national news, political news

Yep, the founders got it (mostly) right

Two hundred forty-one years later, it’s good to look back on what the nation’s founding fathers signed.

They stated in that document of independence declaration that “all men are created equal.” They put their names on the Declaration of Independence, many of them picked up their muskets and then went to war against the British Empire.

The fighting stopped in 1781. Then the founders went to work crafting a governing document we now know as the U.S. Constitution.

Did they get it 100 percent right when they signed off on that framework? Not really. I can think of two egregious errors of omission in that document.

The founders did not grant “all men” equal rights. Black men were enslaved. They were considered to be three-fifths of a human being. All men were created equal? No. The Emancipation Proclamation would set the slaves free in 1863, but it would take the nation two more years to ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery once and for all.

Nor did the founders grant women full rights of citizenship, although they likely thought they were doing so at the time. Women couldn’t vote. They were mere spectators. It took the government a good bit longer to correct that error. In August 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting suffrage to women.

Thirty or 40 years ago, I might be inclined to dwell on those negative elements of our nation’s history. Today, I choose to concentrate on what the founders did right.

Their forebears came to this new land to escape religious persecution. Thus, the founders created a secular Constitution. They granted every citizen religious freedom, which also means they were free to not worship if they chose.

The founders separated the government into three co-equal branches, granting equal power to each of them. The president proposes laws; Congress disposes of them; the courts ensure their constitutionality.

The great Winston Churchill famously declared that representative democracy is the worst form of government ever created, but is superior to anything else. The founders, of course, didn’t anticipate such wisdom coming from the British Bulldog.

I also am quite certain they would agree with him.

Therefore, I choose to salute the founders’ success today. Their government is being tested yet again. I remain confident it will continue to function as those great men intended.

national news, political news

Why should we care about one governor’s hubris?

I live a long way from New Jersey. I have no particular vested interest in public policy in that state, given that I live half a nation away, out here in Flyover Country.

However, I do care when that state’s governor agrees to shut down its government, closes its parks, and then takes his wife and children to the Jersey Shore for a little sunshine, surf and family fellowship.

Gov. Chris Christie remains defiant. He is chiding the media for reporting on the notion that the governor is using a public park that has been shut down to the very public that pays for it.

It’s the optics, dude! All politicians should be aware of how things look to those who are watching.

I suppose I care about this issue because Christie, the bellicose former Republican presidential candidate, thinks he casts a shadow that goes far beyond the state’s borders. He sees himself as a major player. He thinks he matters to the rest of the country.

On this score, he’s right. So now he gets all juiced up because the media are reporting on his public policy pronouncements and how they square with his actual conduct as governor.

Give me a break, Gov. Christie!

Christie said: “If the Legislature would pass a budget then the park would be open.”

OK, fine. Here’s an idea, governor. Until the New Jersey Legislature does that very thing, stay the hell out of your state parks.

national news, political news

Donald John Trump: Grifter?

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The term “grifter” isn’t one that I toss around as a matter of routine.

It’s a fairly new addition to the English lexicon. I found a definition that read: “Someone who swindles others.”

Grifter equals swindler. Got that? Good.

Well, I heard a contemporary political pundit the other day use the term to describe Donald John Trump, the nation’s 45th president of the United States. My first reaction was “ouch, man!”

The guy on TV didn’t articulate in precisely what context Trump is a “grifter.” I’ll make a bit of a leap right here. I am going to presume he means that the president has swindled Americans into believing the things he said he would do right away if he were elected to the very first office he ever sought.

He’d toss out the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something else; he’d negotiate a deal to secure peace in the Middle East; he would pull the United States out of the North American Free Trade Act; he would act more “presidential” and stop using Twitter as much as he did while running for the presidency; he would stay on the job at the White House and forgo golfing outings at any of his many luxurious resorts.

By my count that would be zero for five — and just on those particular pledges he made! Were there others? Sure. Let’s just stick with those for a moment. They’re pretty major things.

I haven’t (yet) mentioned the Trump University matter in which he settled with some plaintiffs who said they were, um, swindled out of money they paid for Trump’s defunct school. How about the money he said he would donate to veterans’ causes, but still hasn’t done so?

I’m not yet certain that the term “grifter” is going to become a regular part of my vocabulary. I get what it means and what it implies about the president of the United States.

It does seem to fit this individual’s modus operandi — as a businessman, TV celebrity and now as our head of state and commander in chief.

national news, political news, State news

Texas playing ball with vote fraud panel … sort of

I was hoping the Texas secretary of state would follow the lead of his fellow Republican colleague in Mississippi and tell the feds to go “jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

He didn’t. Instead, the state is going to hand over some voter records to that idiotic voter fraud commission named by Donald J. Trump to root out the hordes of illegal votes — he says — that were cast in the 2016 presidential election.

Good luck with that.

The panel led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is called the Election Integrity Commission. The president has asserted — with zero evidence at hand — that “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, giving her the popular vote margin over Trump.

So he cobbled together this group to find a problem in search of a solution.

The Texas secretary of state is the state’s top elections officer. According to the Texas Tribune: “Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said he plans to respond to the request, but it’s not entirely clear how much data he’ll be handing over. Pablos said his agency would treat Kobach’s letter like any other public information request, and would only hand over information that’s considered public under Texas law.

“’The Secretary of State’s office will provide the Election Integrity Commission with public information and will protect the private information of Texas citizens while working to maintain the security and integrity of our state’s elections system,’ Pablos said in a statement. ‘As always, my office will continue to exercise the utmost care whenever sensitive voter information is required to be released by state or federal law.’”

Social Security numbers are private and as I understand it, that’s about the extentof the information Pablos’s office will withhold from this commission.

Check out the Texas Tribune explanation here.

The voter fraud panel’s request has been met with considerable resistance around the country. Officials in states that voted for Trump have said “no” to requests, as have those in states that voted for Clinton.

Honestly, this semi-acquiescence from Rolando Pablos makes me a bit nervous … and I’m a U.S. citizen.

I also wonder about something. Why is the president so damn intent on looking for widespread voter fraud that few local officials believe exist while he continues to ignore the assertion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in our electoral process?

media news, national news, political news

Trump changes presidency … not for the better!

Here’s another broken campaign promise from Donald John Trump.

He said he would change his approach if he were elected president of the United States, that he would become “more presidential.”

It hasn’t happened. The 71-year-old man who now is president isn’t going to change. He has demonstrated with graphic clarity his unwillingness to lend dignity to his comportment.

Indeed, this individual is changing the office he occupies.

Think of this for a moment. He goes to war with his foes, critics — and, yes, the media. He does so via Twitter. He has elevated a certain social medium to the level of venue for his policy pronouncements. The Trump White House acknowledges that his tweets become the official word of the president of the United States, our head of state, our commander in chief, the most powerful man on the planet.

Do you get it? He is lowering the office to his level! Rather than elevating his own standing to that of the exalted office to which he was elected, Trump is reducing the office a sort of playground, one populated by an overaged juvenile delinquent.

The president has disgraced his office. I would rue the day that he disgraces the great nation he is supposed to lead. However, the rest of us are better than the man who purports to be our leader.

national news, political news

A ‘malignant presidency’?

Carl Bernstein knows a political malignancy when he sees one.

The famed journalist and author believes he is witnessing one at the moment that well might be metastasizing before our eyes.

Those of us of a certain age who pursued journalism as a career owe that choice in large part to the work that Bernstein did along with his Washington Post colleague and pal Robert Woodward. Together they uncovered the Mother of All Scandals that erupted in the wake of that “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate office complex in June 1972.

That was then. Bernstein is still in the game, although now as an author and TV news pundit/contributor.

Bernstein takes a hyper-dim view of what is transpiring with Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States. According to CNN.com: “We’re in foreign territory,” Bernstein said, speaking on CNN’s “New Day.” “We have never been in a malignant presidency like this before. It calls on our leaders, it calls on our journalists to do a different kind of reporting, a different kind of dealing with this presidency and the President.”

Bernstein sounds fearful of where this might all end up with the president. The Russia probe, the alleged conflicts of business interest, the nepotism, the failure to unite the nation, the incessant tweeting and the tirades against the media, the incessant stream-of-consciousness lying … it’s all part and parcel of Trump’s still-developing presidency.

How does Trump govern? That seems to be the major question shadowing the president as he lurches from crisis to crisis.

He threatens members of his own party who don’t support his effort to replace the Affordable Care Act. Upon whom can he depend in Congress to have his back if he unleashes his venom against fellow Republicans? The president is about to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man he’s never seen up close. Still, Trump continues to refuse to accept what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded, which is that Putin and his gang of goons sought to influence the 2016 election outcome.

I’m pretty sure he carries a substantial anti-Trump bias as he offers his analysis of the current political climate. However, I am not going to dismiss this guy’s view out of hand.

Instead, I accept his challenge to the media in this country to stand up to the president and to do the job they are entitled to do, which is to hold the president accountable for his words and deeds.

As Bernstein said: “We have to … be kind of medical reporters right now. I don’t mean about the president’s psyche, but rather about every aspect of his presidency, and how and whether it is functioning, because many aspects are not functioning.”

International news, national news, political news

POTUS and Putin: time for ‘frank’ talk

In short order, the president of the United States is going to shake hands with the president of Russia. They’ll sit down in a room and start talking about, oh, this and/or that.

Here will be the perfect opportunity for Donald J. Trump to look straight into Vladimir Putin’s steely eyes and give him holy hell for what numerous U.S. intelligence agencies have said: that Russian computer hackers sought to meddle in the U.S. presidential election this past year — and that they did so on orders from Putin himself.

Is this going to occur? Will the U.S. president have the moxie, the savvy, the guts to face down this other head of state?

And to think that such a discussion would just be a starting point in these two men’s relationship.

Of course, I am not privy to what the president will say to Putin. I am entitled, though, to offer an opinion or two on what he should say. My gut — along with my proverbial trick knee — tell me he needs to get directly to that point immediately.

History tells us that U.S.-Russian summit meetings are fraught with peril. In 1961, another rookie U.S. president traveled to Vienna to meet with the head of what then was known as the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev thought he had taken the full measure of John F. Kennedy; he pushed the young president around, bullied him, threatened him.

It was reported at the time that President Kennedy made too many rookie mistakes in his first face-to-face meeting with the cantankerous Soviet leader. It turned out that the world’s leading communist made the rookie error.

Khrushchev miscalculated badly Kennedy’s resolve. The Soviets started building those missile bases the following year in Cuba. The president got word of it, huddled with his national security team, made a decision and then told the world of our reaction and what the cost would be to the Soviets if they were to launch an attack against any nation in the Western Hemisphere.

The cost? Annihilation. 

Check out JFK’s speech here:

Donald Trump isn’t prone to study history, so it’s not likely he’ll be interested in understanding that dangerous chapter.

The Russian meddling in our election, though, is on the minds of a lot of smart folks. It’s in all the papers, you know?

My hope would be for the president to talk directly and — in diplomatic parlance — “frankly” to his Russian colleague directly about what has consumed this nation since the election.

My fear is that Donald Trump will choke.

Prove me wrong, Mr. President.

national news, political news

Voter fraud probe runs into trouble … good deal!

States across the nation aren’t playing ball with a task force created to find a problem that likely doesn’t exist.

To which I say, “Good for them.”

Donald J. Trump alleged — without foundation — that voter fraud was rampant across the land during the 2016 presidential election. You’ll recall that he said “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton, thus giving her a substantial popular vote margin over the president. This has been one of the countless lies that the president has told since he launched his political career in the summer of 2015.

So, he sought the formation of a task force to get to the root of the problem. States, though, aren’t giving in to this — if you’ll allow me to use this term — witch hunt in search of problem.

The White House commission led by Vice President Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach have asked all the states and the District of Columbia to turn over records of voters, including birth dates, the last four Social Security digits and party affiliation. Roughly half the states have said “no.” Even Texas, as friendly toward Trump as any state, has agreed only to turn over certain publicly held information; Social Security information and dates of birth won’t be turned over.

A good number of states refusing to comply, incidentally, happen to states that Trump won. So this isn’t a strictly partisan boycott of this ridiculous notion. As The Hill reported: “In the event I were to receive correspondence from the Commission … My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said in a Friday statement.

The voter fraud commission is trying to reel in a red herring. Indeed, Kris Kobach is known to be something of a conspiracy theorist who believes voter fraud has reached epidemic proportions in his state and across the land.

Independent studies have revealed only minuscule numbers of people voting illegally, certainly not in numbers sufficient to decide electoral outcomes nationally.

I’m sensing a showdown is on the horizon. I’m going to pull for the states to stand their ground. As Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Grimes, a Democrat, has noted, the commission was formulated on a “sham premise.”

national news, political news

Time to say it again: Trump is unfit for the presidency

I feel compelled to share a blog I wrote slightly more than two years ago.

I posted it immediately after Donald John Trump declared his candidacy for president of the United States.

It posits the notion that Trump was unfit for the office he sought.

Here it is:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/06/the-impossible-has-happened-now-what/

OK, I couldn’t actually believe that Trump announced. I couldn’t believe he would be nominated by the Republican Party. Nor could I believe, once nominated, that he could be elected president.

Silly me. I was so very wrong on his nomination and then his election.

Events of the past 24 hours, though, have affirmed my initial thought about Donald Trump’s fitness for the very first public office he ever sought. He is not fit for the job. He is unfit to be the nation’s leader. He has no understanding of the dignity that the presidency requires of the people who hold the office.

He has tweeted something hideous about a TV news talk show host. It’s only the latest example of this individual’s view of (a) women, (b) the media and (c) the presidency itself.

The public record is full of statements from Trump that denigrate women. He fat-shames them, which perhaps is about the most ironic aspect of this man’s utter lack of self-awareness, if you get my drift.

He has declared the media to be the “enemy of the American people.” He cannot stand criticism, which I have noted many times already in this forum is part of the job of being president. His predecessors all have taken their share of criticism from the media; most of them have reacted well, others, well, not so well. But the media do their job, which is to hold public officials accountable for their statements and actions. That is most essential when it regards the nation’s head of state.

Finally, Trump’s constant berating of critics via Twitter demonstrates as clearly as is humanly possible that he doesn’t appreciate the office he occupies. He denigrates the presidency. He vows to “make America great again,” but his social media petulance weakens this already-great country.

I admit readily to being wrong about how this guy ever got elected president. I take small comfort only knowing that almost everyone in America got it wrong, too.

However, I stand foursquare behind the view that this clown is unfit for the presidency. Donald Trump shames this nation’s greatest office, even if he is without any capacity for personal shame.