Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Suddenly, Montana election looms as a referendum of sorts

Quite suddenly, and unexpectedly, thanks to a reported outburst from a politician seeking election to Congress, a special election might loom as a referendum for the nation.

Republican Greg Gianforte is running against Democrat Rob Quist for Montana’s at-large congressional district; they are seeking to succeed Ryan Zinke, who now serves as Interior secretary in the Trump administration.

Then something happened to potentially place this election on the national stage. Gianforte “body slammed” a reporter, Ben Jacobs, who was questioning him about the Republican health care alternative to the Affordable Care Act. Gianforte reportedly attacked Jacobs, busting the young man’s eyeglasses and possibly injuring one of the Jacobs’ elbows.

Here’s what we ought to look for: Gianforte’s alleged outburst could produce one of two results. Voters could be so outraged that he would assault a reporter that they’ll elect Quist; or they’ll cheer the politician’s outburst against a so-called “liberal reporter” seeking to upend the political equilibrium in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

This special election was supposed to be a slam-dunk for Republicans in Montana. It doesn’t look like one tonight.

Then again …

I think we should watch the returns come in Thursday night under the Big Sky.

national news, political news

Did this politician attack a media ‘enemy’?

Just how testy is the political climate getting in these United States of America?

Let’s consider this for a moment: A Republican candidate for Montana’s at-large congressional seat allegedly assaulted a reporter, “body slamming” him, breaking his eyeglasses and possibly inflicting some injury to one of the reporter’s elbow.

Montanans are going to vote Thursday to decide who should replace Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in the U.S. House of Representatives. The GOP candidate is Greg Gianforte; the Democrat is Rob Quist.

A reporter for the Guardian, Ben Jacobs, wanted to question Gianforte at an event in Bozeman, Mont., about the Congressional Budget Office scoring of the GOP health care overhaul legislation. Gianforte didn’t want to talk to Jacobs, which is when he assaulted him, according to eyewitnesses, telling Jacobs to “get the hell out of here!”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/24/greg-gianforte-bodyslams-reporter-ben-jacobs-montana

I worked in daily journalism for nearly 37 years. I had my share of strained relationships with news sources over that time. They included individuals of both political parties. They were members of Congress, judges, county commissioners, city council members, school board trustees. We would have strained exchanges caused by some difficult questions I would ask them.

No one ever, not a single time, ever so much as threatened to attack me — even though I once angered a Texas state district judge enough that he looked for more than a year for a way to sue me for libel; he came up empty when he couldn’t find a lawyer to represent him. For the life of me, this apparent encounter between a congressional candidate and a member of the media seems to suggest that the coarsening of media-politician relations has reached some sort of undefined level of hostility.

What do you suppose is the source of this intense anger? I’ll venture a guess. It might be a result of the kind of atmosphere prevalent at Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign rallies in 2016. You’ll recall the kind of response Trump would elicit from crowds when he spoke of the media, which he labeled “dishonest.”

Once elected, the president then referred to the media as the “enemy of the American people.”

Might this have been the response of an American politician lashing out at an “enemy”?

medical news, national news, political news

CBO verdict: Not good for GOP repeal of ACA

A jury — if not the jury — has weighed in on the Republicans’ version of health care reform.

It doesn’t look good for legislation designed to replace the Affordable Care Act.

The verdict comes from the notably non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which says that under the GOP plan 23 million Americans will lose their health insurance by 2026. That’s a 1 million-person “improvement” over the bill that didn’t even get a vote in the Republican-led House of Representatives.

The latest version of Trumpcare got a vote, but it came before the CBO weighed in with its analysis of it. Hey, why wait when you’ve got a political agenda to fulfill?

Deficit reduction? It’s not as good as the initial bill. Again, House members didn’t bother to wait for the nitty-gritty before sending it to the Senate.

Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other prominent Republicans all promised — pledged, crossed their hearts and swore on a stack of Bibles — that Americans wouldn’t lose their health insurance if the GOP replaced the Affordable Care Act with something of their own making. The ACA, of course, was President Barack Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation, which of course is why congressional Republicans want to get rid of it.

They contend it is failing. The president calls it a “disaster.” After the failed vote on the initial repeal/replacement bill, the president said he was willing to wait for the ACA to collapse, leaving Americans in the health-care lurch. I guess he wanted to say “I told you so.”

The Hill reports: “Over time, it would become more difficult for less healthy people (including people with preexisting medical conditions) in those states to purchase insurance because their premiums would continue to increase rapidly,” the report said.

The ACA repeal effort was shoved down Democratic House members’ throats, much in the manner the GOP said of the ACA’s enactment in 2010. Hey, turnabout is fair play … isn’t that the name of the game?

It still stinks.

national news, political news

Impeachment? Not likely with this Congress

John Podesta knows a thing or two about impeachment. He served as White House chief of staff for a president who was impeached by the House of Representatives and put on trial in the Senate.

Podesta has looked at the political landscape and reports that he doesn’t see impeachment on the horizon for Donald J. Trump.

I have to agree with his assessment.

The issue is the makeup of the body that would file articles of impeachment.

Podesta seems to think, according to his comments to the Washington Post, that Trump might deserve to be impeached, but he doesn’t think the current House has the guts to do it. He allegedly sought to quash an FBI investigation into his campaign’s relationship with Russia. The Justice Department has assigned a special counsel to look at the matter.

Consider the 20th century’s two big impeachment moments.

* One of them occurred in 1974. The House was in control of Democrats. The president, Richard Nixon, was a Republican. Nixon stood accused of obstructing justice in the Watergate scandal. The House Judiciary Committee, with its Democratic majority, approved articles of impeachment and referred them to the full House.

President Nixon’s impeachment was a done deal. It took a stern lecture from the late Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater to persuade the president to give up the fight; Nixon quit the presidency the next day.

* The other occurred in 1998. Republicans controlled the House and the Senate. The special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, began his probe by looking at a real estate matter involving President Clinton and his wife, Hillary — both of whom are Democrats. He expanded it to include an extramarital dalliance the president was having with a young woman. He summoned the president to testify before a federal grand jury; the president was untruthful.

He was impeached on obstruction and perjury charges. The Senate acquitted him. Again, politics — just as it did in 1974 — played a role in moving the impeachment forward.

Would the Republicans who control Congress have the stones to impeach a fellow Republican who also happens to be president? Podesta doesn’t think so. Neither do I.

Impeachment is a political exercise in the extreme. Sure, the members of Congress talk a good game about seeking justice, to punish the president for committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The reality is that it all rests on politics.

The previous century provided ample evidence of the politics associated with this serious matter. I have no reason to believe — at least not yet — that anything has changed.

national news, political news

Trump budget: DOA … of course!

Donald J. Trump’s proposed budget brings to mind a couple of thoughts about the president and the campaign he ran in 2016.

First, the president really is just another politician despite what he and his supporters said to the contrary during his amazing presidential election campaign. That is, he has made promises he cannot — or will not — keep to those who supported him.

Trump promised to leave the social safety net alone. His budget does nothing of the kind. It provides deep cuts to Medicaid, Meals on Wheels and other social programs upon which millions of Americans rely.

What’s more, he hits hard at farm subsidies important to rural Americans who turned out by the millions in 2016 to cast their votes for the flashy New York business mogul/reality TV celebrity.

His populist message, which he foisted on Americans who were willing to listen to it? Forget about it!

His budget provides big tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And, oh yes. He also is proposing big spending increases in the defense budget — all while pledging to balance the budget in just 10 years.

The document sits at $4.1 trillion. Democrats hate it, quite naturally. Many congressional Republicans dislike it as well. It’s the GOP side of Congress that is more interesting to watch, given the peril they face as the 2018 mid-term election approaches.

Both sides are declaring the president’s budget to be “dead on arrival.” That’s standard operating rhetoric for members of Congress, no matter the party affiliation of the president who sends them a budget.

This much is clear: Donald Trump is going to get yet another real-time lesson on how the federal government works. As the saying goes, the president proposes, while Congress disposes of budgets.

national news, political news

‘I, alone … ‘ should have been given us a clue

1 Comment

Donald J. Trump’s time as president has lasted all of about 122 days — give or take — yet it seems like forever already.

As I look back on this man’s stunning political ascent, I am struck by one moment that I believe in hindsight should have given us a clue on what we might expect.

He stood before the Republican National Convention this past summer in Cleveland and declared that “I, alone” can repair all the things he said are ailing the country.

Setting aside for a moment or two the myriad problems that are bedeviling this man and his administration — and which might cost him his office — that particular statement suggested to me at that moment that this fellow really doesn’t get it.

He doesn’t understand one of the principal tenets of governing, which is that he is participating in a team sport. It’s so critical to understand that notion at the federal level, where the founders established a triple-layered governmental system where one branch holds no more power than the other two.

The presidency is but one branch; it must work in tandem with the Congress. Waiting in the wings to ensure that the executive and legislative branches don’t violate the Constitution are the federal courts, comprising actual judges, not the “so-called” types who render decisions that might go against whatever the president wants to do.

Donald Trump ignores political decorum, custom and practice. As some have noted, he does so either out of ignorance or does so willfully. I’ll take Trump at his word that he is a “smart person,” which means he is invoking a willful disregard for how the federal government is supposed to work.

The concept of governing by oneself does not work. It cannot work. The president is getting a real-time civics lesson in how the nation’s founders established this government of ours. He has vowed to run the country like his business. Yeah, good luck with that.

A business mogul can fire people at will. He can order underlings around, make them do this or that task. He can threaten, bully and coerce others.

When he takes the reins of the executive branch of the federal government, all of that prior experience gets thrown out the window.

How does the president tell Congress — comprising 535 individuals with constituencies and power bases of their own — to do his bidding? And how does the president actually defy the federal judiciary, which the founders established to be an independent check on every single thing the president and Congress enact?

Yes, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee gave it all away when he stood there in Cleveland and bellowed “I, alone” can fix it.

No, Mr. President. You cannot. Nor should you have ever tried.

Moreover, I believe his repeated efforts to trample over Congress and the federal courts are going to bite him hard in the backside as he seeks to defend himself against the other troubles that are threatening him.

legal news, national news, political news

It keeps getting deeper and darker for POTUS

The hits just keep on piling up on Donald John Trump.

The latest batch of them involves more media reporting that the president asked intelligence officials to push back on the FBI investigation into that “Russia thing.” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers said, um, “No can do.”

The FBI is looking into allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who were hacking into our electoral system, seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome — in Trump’s favor!

Trump keeps denying any collusion. Yet these reports keep piling up suggesting something quite different.

The Washington Post has reported this latest live grenade to blow up in the president’s face as he travels through the Middle East and Europe on his first overseas venture as leader of the free world.

A special counsel, Robert Mueller, already is on the job. Senate and House intelligence committees are at work as well in the hunt for the truth.

And, yes, so are the media — the scorned “enemy of the American people” and purveyors of “fake news.”

I am not going to predict with — as the late PBS talking head John McLaughlin would say — any “metaphysical certitude” that the president is heading straight for impeachment. But certain elements of the progression of events keep suggesting something such as that might occur.

Michael Flynn is going to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination as the FBI looks into the former national security adviser’s Russia involvement; former FBI director James Comey is going to talk publicly with congressional committees about memos he wrote chronicling some alleged attempts by Trump to obstruct justice; and Mueller is going to talk to a current senior White House aide who has been deemed a “person of interest” in this ongoing investigation.

Just think: Donald Trump’s time in the only political office he ever sought is just beginning.

International news, legal news, national news, political news

Invoking the Fifth usually doesn’t imply innocence

What in the world are we to make of this bit of news, that former national security adviser Michael Flynn will reject a U.S. Senate committee subpoena and invoke his Fifth Amendment rights protecting him against self-incrimination?

Let me think. My takeaway is that Gen. Flynn doesn’t want the world to know certain things about, um, certain foreign governments.

Flynn’s role in the still-burgeoning controversy surrounding Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign and its potential relationship with the Russian government has taken another, apparently far more serious, turn.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ap-source-says-flynn-will-invoke-fifth-amendment/ar-BBBowHX?li=BBnb7Kz

The Associated Press is reporting that Flynn won’t appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee and that he’ll clam up under his constitutional protection.

If someone were to ask me, I’d say that he doesn’t want to say something that’s going to get him tossed into prison. What might that be?

Hmm. It might be that he did do something potentially illegal when he went to work for Turkey’s government, drawing a substantial stipend for the Turks as a lobbyist while also serving as the president’s national security adviser.

Gen. Flynn, who also served on Trump’s transition team, also might have said something to say about Russian officials who had worked to undermine the 2016 presidential election. There well might be some collusion between the Trump team and the Russians to be revealed … yes? Well, maybe.

Flynn also reportedly sought immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony after the president fired him as national security adviser.

I’m smelling something terribly foul. Do you smell it, too?

International news, national news, political news

Rep. Chaffetz spoils possible role as truth-seeker

I had thought Jason Chaffetz might emerge in the U.S. House of Representatives as a lame duck with some bite.

The Utah Republican for now chairs the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. He’s about to surrender that chairmanship and apparently his congressional seat as he heads back home to ponder what he wants to do next.

My hope had been that Chaffetz would be unafraid of political blowback as the congressional probe of Donald J. Trump’s relationship with Russian government officials picked up steam. The committee he chairs plays a principal role in the search for the truth.

Thus, I figured that Chaffetz — free from the pressure of seeking re-election — would be unleashed as he pursued all the facts.

But he’s going to leave the House of Reps at the end of June. His committee chairmanship will go to someone else.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-watch-their-step-in-a-slow-retreat-from-trump/ar-BBBmjUS?li=BBnbcA1

In the meantime, there’s reporting now that congressional Republicans are beginning to pull back from the president as his domestic political troubles deepen even as he continues his first overseas trip as president. Trump’s journey to the Middle East got off to a good start with his speech at the Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His trip continues in Israel, where he well might face a rockier reception, given the trouble he got into regarding his release of Israeli intelligence information to visiting Russian dignitaries at the White House the other day.

There well might come a moment if the FBI probe deepens into the president’s Russia connections, or as the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller picks up steam when key congressional Republicans tell the president the political truth. That his support is dwindling to dangerous levels.

I had thought that Chairman Chaffetz might emerge as that GOP go-to guy, given that he won’t face a re-election in 2018. That’s not going to happen.

At issue, of course, is whether Russian hackers sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Chaffetz lamented today that the president has been eerily silent about those allegations, other than to dismiss them and disparage the intelligence agencies that have concluded that the Russians did try to manipulate the election.

“You would like, I would think, the president to kind of beat (Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov) over the head with the fact that, if they actually did interfere in any way, shape or form, how wrong that is and how outraged America is on both sides of the aisle,” Chaffetz said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The president hasn’t done such a thing. Instead, he bragged about the “great intel” he had and spilled many of the beans about what he had regarding certain Islamic State activities in the Middle East.

No can do, Mr. President.

As for Chaffetz, he’s nearly a goner and he’ll hand over a key congressional committee gavel to a politician who won’t nearly be as candid as the lame-duck chairman.

national news, political news

No matter the result, blowback will be ugly

Donald J. Trump’s current political troubles are likely to end one of two ways.

The special counsel and two congressional committees will find criminal conduct involving the president, his campaign and the Russian government — and he’ll be impeached and possibly convicted.

Or …

The special counsel and those committees will come up empty and will decide there’s no “there” there. The president will be absolved of wrongdoing and he’ll complete his term in office.

Either outcome bodes ugly for those of who have an interest in government, in politics and in public policy. The ugliness will be the result of the president’s reaction to either outcome.

History already has shown that Trump cannot — or will not — let go of the past. Witness his continual recitation of his stunning, shocking victory in the 2016 presidential election.

Consider the potential outcomes:

Trump gets impeached and then convicted. The president will not go quietly. He will not leave office as President Nixon did in August 1974 and then disappear for years. We won’t see Trump fly away aboard Marine One from the White House lawn, grinning broadly, waving to his friends, White House staff and political supporters.

Oh, no. He’ll be angry. He’ll be lashing out continually against the media, Democrats, turncoat Republicans, Congress in general. He might even call for the abolition of the U.S. Constitution for all I know.

Once in some form of retirement, he’ll be tweeting his fingers to the bone. He’ll be dishing out insults by the minute, let alone the hour. He’ll threaten to sue anyone for any reason that comes to mind.

And the media he hates — allegedly — will lap it up, report it dutifully and give him all the platform he needs to seek some form of revenge against the system that “betrayed” him.

If the president is impeached and then acquitted by the Senate, well, ratchet all of the previous up by a factor of, oh, several thousand.

The president is clean. This outcome could be just as ugly as the other one.

Think of how the president is going to play this one out. He’ll stage campaign-style rallies. He’ll savage the media and his political enemies. He likely could re-tell the story of his “historic” electoral victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton. The president is not likely to accept victory like a gentleman, praise the system for doing its job, thank the special counsel, Robert Mueller, for his service to the country and wish him well as he returns to private law practice.

The president will seethe and stew over the very idea that he would be the subject of an FBI probe, of an investigation by the legislative branch of government.

Moreover, he’ll do all of it in public. He likely would seize the limelight at every opportunity. He’ll create opportunities when they don’t present themselves.

All of this is my way of telling you that no matter the outcome of these investigations, we — the American public — are going to be disserved by the president of the United States.

Just as he showed during the 2016 GOP primary campaign, he exhibited a clearly defined “sore loser” trait. When he won the whole thing, he has shown as well that he is a “sore winner.”

Thus, I am not looking forward to the end of this investigation, no matter how it turns out.