Category Archives: political news

national news, political news

Twitter tirade shows danger of Trump presidency

constitution-burningb

Donald J. Trump’s propensity for popping off on social media came into amazing, sharp focus with his latest rant about flag burning.

And it demonstrates why the president-elect’s on-the-job training for the office he is about to assume is so troubling to many of us … who didn’t vote for him.

Trump went on another Twitter tirade and said that those who burn the flag out of protest should spend time in the clink and possibly lose their citizenship.

Really, Mr. President-elect?

This goonish statement underscores as well as anything he’s muttered or sputtered during the course of his fledgling political career how — in a normal election year — he wouldn’t have won the presidency.

His ridiculous assertion ignores — willfully? — that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled time and again that flag-burning is a protected form of political speech. The First Amendment is pretty damn clear about it and anyone who has read that amendment ought to know it — and that makes me believe beyond a doubt that Trump has no clue as to what’s contained in the nation’s governing document.

And yet …

Donald Trump won enough electoral votes to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton and become the 45th president of the United States.

It puzzles me to the max — even now, weeks after the election — just how this happened. Still, I accept the result, as distasteful as it is to my political palate.

I cannot help but wonder, though, how many more idiotic pronouncements the president-elect is going to make. How much more consternation is he going to cause with his utter ignorance of something so fundamental as freedom of speech and political expression?

I’ll repeat what I’ve said before and what others have said already: We have elected a dangerous man as our next president.

national news, political news

OK, so let’s just burn the Constitution, too

burning-flag

The fictional TV husband, Ricky Ricardo, once had the perfect answer to a ridiculous assertion that his wife, Lucy, had made.

“I have five words,” Ricky said. “Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye!”

That’s my response this morning to this latest gem from Twitter twit in chief Donald J. Trump, who writes: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

What in the name of all this holy and sacred is this guy thinking? Or, better yet, is he thinking — at all?

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/29/politics/donald-trump-flag-burning-penalty-proposal/index.html

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled twice in the past quarter century that burning Old Glory is a form of political expression. Thus, the high court said, it is protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

For those who buy into every ridiculous utterance that flows out of the president-elect’s mouth, here is what the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Or “abridging the freedom of speech.” There it is, Mr. President-elect. It looks pretty clear to me.

This guy needs the mother of all reality checks.

He once told a TV interviewer that women should face punishment if they obtained an abortion. He backed off that nonsensical assertion not long afterward.

Now this? He wants to punish folks who burn the flag to protest government policy?

Before you accuse me of being soft on those who do such things, I feel the need to restate something I’ve said over many years. Those who seek to sway public opinion in favor of whatever point they make could not do anything more to turn that opinion against them than burning a flag.

Moreover, as one who once served in the Army and went into a war zone when ordered to do so, I take a back seat to no one in my love of country and its symbols. No one should burn a flag in my presence.

That said, it is a legal act that the Constitution protects under the very first amendment the founders wrote into our nation’s governing document.

It must stay that way.

Read the Constitution, Mr. President-elect. You’ll learn a thing or three about how this nation functions.

national news, political news

Let’s just call him ‘Lyin’ Donald’

trump-shrug

Donald J. Trump hung epithets around the necks of all his political foes while winning the presidential election.

The label “Lyin’ Ted” was aimed at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Cruz cannot come close to matching the lies that Trump has told.

With that, I want to hereby refer to Trump as “Lyin’ Donald.”

He has put out another grand lie. It regards the election results.

Without an ounce, a scintilla, a tiny grain of evidence, Trump now asserts that “millions of votes were cast illegally” for Hillary Rodham Clinton on Election Day.

Way to go, Lyin’ Donald. He’s managed yet again to defame local election workers, staffers and elected officials.

They’re recounting ballots in Wisconsin. They might do the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Lyin’ Donald won all three states. Green Party presidential candidate wants the votes recounted to ensure that the original count was done with integrity and honesty.

For Lyin’ Donald to suggest, though, that millions of votes were cast illegally only validates the assertion that many have made about the president-elect. He has no shame, no sense of propriety … but he’s loaded with gall.

national news, political news

We still have our guns … imagine that

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Plenty of doomsday scenarios were put forward by Barack Obama’s enemies when he became president in 2009. Most of them made no sense. One of them was particularly absurd.

I refer to politically active groups, such as the National Rifle Association, which fomented fear among the ranks of gun owners that the president was going to order federal agents to disarm us all. He would flout the Second Amendment and push legislation through Congress that would deprive of us of our constitutional right to “keep and bear arms” … they said.

Do you remember all that crap? I do.

It was all meant to scare the daylights out of us, to suggest that this president — who really isn’t one of “us,” if you’ll recall that other “birther” baloney as well — was hell bent on coming after our guns.

One of the social media themes that made the rounds not long ago was that the president had endorsed the Australia law that essentially took away everyone’s gun. The result of that law was a precipitous decline in gun violence Down Under; Obama thought that was a good result.

That never happened. It won’t happen, either, as long as we have a Constitution that includes the Second Amendment.

What the gun-owner-rights fearmongers ignored, too, was that the president lacks absolute power to impose his will over the nation. I hope the new president understands that, too. The president has that other co-equal government arm with which he must deal: Congress, which is populated by members who get lots of campaign dough from the gun lobby.

I mention this — as we draw closer to the end of President Obama’s time in office — to remind us all of the fearmongering that at times can overcome reasonable discussion of serious public policy issues.

national news, political news, State news

Texas elector follows conscience out the door

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Art Sisneros apparently is a man of deep faith and conviction.

He takes an oath and plans to stick by it. So, when he took an oath as a Texas Republican elector to vote for the individual who won the state’s electoral votes in the presidential election, he felt he had to abide by that oath.

Except for one thing: The person who won the state’s 38 electoral votes is Donald J. Trump, a man who — according to Sisneros — doesn’t deserve his vote.

What to do?

Sisneros did the only thing he felt he could do: He resigned as a Texas elector. He walked away from his task of casting a vote for president because he couldn’t (a) vote for Trump or (b) become something called a “faithless elector,” meaning he would break his pledge to support the GOP candidate for president.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/texas-elector-art-sisneros-to-resign-instead-of-voting-for-donald-trump/ar-AAkRIX1?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Sisneros calls the Electoral College “corrupted from its original intent.”  I won’t weigh in on whether we should toss the Electoral College out. My sense is that it still performs a public service to the national electorate by giving smaller states more of a voice in the electoral process … which I consider to be a good thing.

But I do like the notion that one elector has weighed carefully the consequences of his actions and decided his best option is to walk out, to follow his conscience out the door and to allow the state to appoint someone to his spot who isn’t as conflicted as he is.

As U.S. News and World Report noted: “(Sisneros’) decision followed a previous post in which he posed the question of whether it was ‘acceptable for a Christian to vote for a man like Trump for president,’ and concluded that he could not ‘in good conscience’ do so.

This is precisely the kind of contradiction that many of us saw, with committed evangelical voters sticking with Trump, even in light of the candidate’s admission that he groped women and behaved like a complete and utter boor.

I cannot help but wonder if there will be more of this kind of soul-searching among electors as the date approaches for them to cast their important votes for president.

national news, political news

President-elect shows how to win ugly

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Even in victory, the president-elect of the United States is continuing to defame, degrade and denigrate elections officials.

Donald J. Trump now contends — without a shred of substance — that millions of voters in California and New Hampshire cast their ballots illegally. He presumes, of course, that the illegal ballots were cast in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who Trump defeated to win the presidential election.

With victory in hand, Trump now has decided to ratchet up the absurd, baseless and idiotic assertion that the election was “rigged” to favor his opponent.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-claims-with-no-evidence-that-%e2%80%98millions-of-people%e2%80%99-voted-illegally/ar-AAkP3mF?li=BBnb7Kz

Does this clown have any proof of what he’s alleging? No. He doesn’t.

He is continuing this ridiculous habit of making allegations with no basis upon which to back them up.

Trump’s list of people and groups that he’s insulted and defamed certainly must include the state and local elections officials he now has asserted are corrupt.

Can you even imagine what this guy would be saying if he had lost the election? He won it fairly and openly. Trump is going to be the next president.

Why in the world he makes these ridiculous assertions is totally beyond many of us.

You’ve heard of sore losers, right? We’re now witnessing the antics of a seriously sore winner.

national news, political news

Just maybe Trump should consider demanding a recount

ballot-box

I’ve been rolling this around for a while.

Donald J. Trump has said two things about this effort to recount ballots in Wisconsin. They seem to be in direct contradiction with each other.

He calls former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s request for a recount a “scam.” He dismisses the effort as futile, pointless and that it won’t change a thing. Trump will still win.

Then he said, via Twitter, that he would be leading the popular vote nationally if you deduct the millions of votes he said were cast “illegally.” He currently trails by 2.2 million votes nationally.

Do you follow that? Neither do I.

If Trump believes millions of ballots were cast illegally — and if he assumes most of them were cast in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton — shouldn’t he demand a recount as well?

International news, national news, political news

Why this fierce battle over a Cabinet pick?

donald-and-mitt

I’ll admit that I haven’t always watched closely the process a president-elect goes through to fill Cabinet picks.

Still, the growing tempest over Donald J. Trump’s vetting of secretary of state candidates has me wondering: Is this normal? Have previous presidents-elect faced this kind of outward and public tumult?

The Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, is in the running to lead the State Department. A lot of Trumpkins don’t want him anywhere near the new president. Why? Mitt said some harsh things about their guy during the campaign. They want Mitt to apologize before Trump picks him. They also don’t believe Mitt will be loyal to the president.

I happen to believe Mitt was right when he called Trump a “fraud” and a “phony.” At one level, Mitt seems like the absolutely wrong choice to be the vicar of Trump’s foreign policy — whatever it is. Then again, selecting Mitt would verify what many of us have believed all along, which is that Trump has no policy and he’s looking for someone to help him build one from scratch; Mitt could do that for Trump.

Who’s other “favorite” for State? Rudy Giuliani, that’s who. The one-time “America’s mayor” would be a terrible choice. He has no foreign policy experience, other than the money he earned representing foreign governments — which presents a serious conflict of interest.

I keep hearing that former U.N. ambassador John Bolton is in the hunt, too, for the State Department post. He has called for the bombing of Iran, which surely works against any effort to develop “diplomatic initiatives” from the Trump administration. Don’t go there, either, Mr. President-elect.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/battle-over-secretary-of-state-opening-goes-public/ar-AAkP9nE?li=BBnb7Kz

Former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said she isn’t even sure Mitt voted for Trump in the election. My response? That’s no one’s business how someone votes; that’s why the ballots are cast in secret.

This melodrama is going to play out eventually, I reckon.

If only the president-elect had a deeper pool of applicants to consider for this post. He’s going to need plenty of help developing a foreign policy doctrine. Mitt could deliver it … if only he can get the Trumpkins on his side.

Hold on for a rough ride.

national news, political news

‘Millions voted illegally’ … seriously?

donald

Donald J. Trump has cemented his title as a provocative prevaricator.

The president-elect has launched a fascinating counterattack against those who want to recount the ballots cast in Wisconsin, and possibly in two other states.

Trump said he won the Electoral College in a landslide and would have won the popular vote as well if you take out the “millions” of votes that were cast “illegally.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-attacks-recount-effort-in-election-where-millions-voted-illegally/ar-AAkPasR?li=BBnb7Kz

Really, Mr. President-elect?

Here is what he wrote in one of his flurry of tweets: “In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Well now. A 306-232 electoral vote victory isn’t really a “landslide,” but I digress.

I guess Trump is presuming that most if not all the “illegal votes” were cast for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

He how does he know that? He doesn’t. Trump doesn’t know anything about the electoral process that’s been called into question.

However, he knows that “millions voted illegally.” I believe the president-elect is applying the same base of knowledge he used to declare — falsely — that “thousands of Muslims cheered” the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

military news, national news, political news

Trump damages due process

bergdahl

Donald J. Trump proved beyond anyone’s doubt that political candidates can — and do — say anything without regard to the consequences to certain cherished American principles … such as, oh, due process.

While running for president, Trump condemned a U.S. Army sergeant as a “rotten traitor.” The man in question is Bowe Bergdahl, who is set to be court-martialed in the spring on charges that he walked off his post in Afghanistan before he was captured by Taliban terrorists.

He was held captive for five years. Then he was released in a prisoner swap with U.S. officials.

I am not going to make an assertion about Bergdahl’s guilt or innocence. I wasn’t there. Neither was Trump. Or anyone other than the Taliban terrorists and Bergdahl. That didn’t prevent Trump from issuing a blanket campaign-stump conviction of the young man.

Moreover, as the New York Times wondered in an editorial published today, the rants of the future commander in chief likely have put Bergdahl’s right to a fair trail in extreme jeopardy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/the-soldier-donald-trump-called-a-traitor.html?ref=opinion

As the Times stated: “Sergeant Bergdahl is charged with desertion and misbehavior in front of the enemy; a guilty verdict could result in a sentence anywhere from no jail time to life. But how can he get a fair trial in the military justice system when the next commander in chief has proclaimed his guilt and accused him of treason?

“The short answer is he can’t.”

The Army has charged Bergdahl with desertion and he could be sentenced to prison for the rest of his life if he’s convicted.

Trump’s proclamation of guilt of one of the men who soon will be under his command speaks to his utter disregard for the rule of law and of the due process that is accorded to all criminal defendants.

The Times suggests that President Obama might grant Bergdahl a pardon to allow him to “rebuild his life” and avoid what it calls a “questionable” prosecution. The Times states that Bergdahl had a pre-existing mental condition when he enlisted in the Army, which granted him an enlistment waiver.

Given the poison that the next commander in chief has inserted into this pre-trial discussion, the current commander in chief ought to take a hard look at a pardon.

Trump’s rhetorical recklessness only demonstrates his unfitness for the job he is about to assume.