Category Archives: political news

This next ‘debate’ is going to be a doozy

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, stands with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the first presidential debate at Hofstra University, Monday, Sept. 26, 2016, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Donald J. Trump has taken credit for a lot of things lately.

* For predicting the terror attack that killed 49 people in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub.

* For persuading President Obama to release his birth certificate that proves he is a “natural-born” U.S. citizen.

* For selecting a running mate, Mike Pence, who did a stellar job while debating Tim Kaine the other night.

* For juicing up the ratings that drew all those viewers to the first debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Well, the Republican presidential nominee can take credit for what’s going to transpire, more than likely, at the next debate, when he and Democratic nominee Clinton square off.

Ladies and gents, we are heading for a serious train wreck of a political spectacle Sunday night — all due to Trump’s hideously lewd comments about women that were caught on a “hot mic” 11 years ago as he was preparing for a cameo appearance on a daytime soap opera.

You’ve heard about it, yes?

Well, the reaction has been ferocious. Many Republican leaders want Trump to drop out of the race; others of them want his running mate, Mike Pence, to bail.

They wanted a full-scale apology from Trump. What they got last night in a 90-second video was as much a threat against Clinton as a mea culpa for saying how he sought to have sex with a married woman, how he wanted to grab another one in her private area, how he was able to have his way with women because he’s a “star.”

Did you see contrition in Trump’s face or hear it in his voice as he delivered that so-called “apology”? I did not.

Now we get to watch Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump field questions from votes in this town hall event in St. Louis. The questions will come not only from moderators Martha Raddatz of ABC News and Anderson Cooper of CNN, but from every-day folks who (a) believe Trump has disqualified himself as a presidential candidate or (b) believe Hillary Clinton needs to answer as well for her husband’s own well-chronicled sexual misbehavior.

The rest of the issues — trade policy, the war on terrorism, the economy, jobs — may be cast aside as Americans tune in to hear Trump seek to defend the indefensible.

Go ahead, Donald. You are more than welcome to take credit for triggering this national debate.

Trump apologizes for ‘distraction’

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Well, there it is.

Donald J. Trump has issued — seemingly — the first full-blown, unqualified apology of his life.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/facing-backlash-trump-apologizes-for-lewd-comments-in-%e2%80%9905-video/ar-BBx95Fw?li=BBnb7Kz

“I apologize” for saying and doing “foolish things,” he said.

I’ve watched the video — it’s only about 90 seconds long — three times already. I do not perceive a sense of actual shame for the things he said in 2005 about women, about his attempt to have sex with a married woman, the access his star power had in allowing him to start kissing women whenever he felt like it, his desire to grab them in their private areas.

No, he called it a “distraction” from other issues. Those ghastly comments don’t reflect his true character, Trump said.

Whatever.

I … don’t think it’s quite that easy to dismiss.

Maybe that’s just me. My gut tells me I’m not alone.

The video was obtained by a major newspaper and aired in the past 24 hours. It reveals to me the character of an individual who’s said some pretty hideous things about women over a number of years.

It’s part of a pattern that the Republican presidential nominee has exhibited.

I do not think this issue is going away.

Will a Trump apology make it all go away?

Donald Trump gestures while speaking surrounded by people whose families were victims of illegal immigrants on July 10, 2015 while meeting with the press at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, where some shared their stories of the loss of a loved one. The US business magnate Trump, who is running for president in the 2016 presidential elections, angered members of the Latino community with recent comments but says he will win the Latino vote. AFP PHOTO / FREDERIC J. BROWN        (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

The word this evening is that Donald J. Trump is going to release a video of him issuing a full apology for what he said 11 years ago about women.

The Republican presidential nominee was heard making statements about how he put moves on a married woman. The recording contains some lewd, profane language.

It is disgusting in the extreme.

So, the question is this: Does a full-throated apology from the GOP nominee erase what he said? Does it expunge the record? Does it mean he can proceed as if nothing happened at all?

I think not.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/billy-bush-says-he%E2%80%99s-ashamed-by-lewd-talk-with-donald-trump/ar-BBx9lLD?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

 

‘We’re not electing a Sunday school teacher’

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Donald J. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, tried — in some sort of fashion — to defend his former boss’s conduct regarding women.

Perhaps you’ve heard. The Washington Post published a story in which Republican presidential nominee Trump was caught on a “hot mic” saying some ghastly things about women.

Lewandowski said: “I’ve never heard anything like this out of him and so let me say, we are appointing a leader, we are electing a leader to the free world, we’re not electing a Sunday school teacher.”

Sure thing, Corey. I get that.

But don’t we have the right to expect the “leader of the free world” to behave like a mature adult?

The so-called “locker room talk,” which is how Trump has described it, did not occur when Trump was a kid. It happened 11 years ago. Trump was just shy of turning 60. He was newly married to Melania, his third wife.

This is how a future major-party presidential nominee should talk?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/299920-lewandowski-defends-trump-were-not-electing-a-sunday-school

This is not a “boys will be boys” moment.

Hits just keep coming for Trump

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This link is worth your time. It’s from the Washington Post. It contains a video of Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump talking about — what else? — women.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/ar-BBx95Fw?li=BBnb7Kz

It’s extremely disgusting. It’s lewd. It’s vulgar. It’s contains language that includes what my late father used to call the “functional four-letter word.”

It was recorded in 2005, just 11 years ago, when the future presidential nominee was not quite 60 years of age. He was a grown man, on the cusp of senior citizenship when he was heard saying some remarkably vulgar things about women.

I just do not know how many more of these examples of hideous conduct many voters in American can tolerate from a major-party candidate for president of the United States.

Someone will have to explain to me how this does not disqualify someone serving as head of state of the greatest nation on Earth.

Media stars jousting over candidates of their choice

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My list of pet peeves has grown over the years as I have grown older.

I don’t call myself a curmudgeon, but I do at times come off as a fuddy-duddy. Some things about contemporary journalism, for instance, annoy me greatly.

Such as when reporters and commentators become newsmakers. My old-school thought is that they should be apart from the action. They can report on it and, yes, comment on it without making hay.

That all said, now we have two Fox News stars jousting with each other. News anchor Megyn Kelly has become a “supporter” of Hillary Rodham Clinton, says avid Donald J. Trump ally Sean Hannity.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/megyn-kelly-sean-hannity-trade-barbs-over-trump-treatment-229220

The feud is on.

Hannity is a commentator. He is a strong conservative voice on the “fair and balanced” cable network. He’s been in Trump’s camp since the beginning of this presidential campaign.

Now he’s decided to challenge Kelly, who serves another function at Fox; she is a news anchor. She’s also a pretty solid journalist. Kelly had the bad form, I guess in Hannity’s view, to ask Trump some tough questions way back during that first GOP primary debate. She wanted Trump to explain his highly offensive comments about women. The exchange that ensued sparked a feud that continues to this day.

That makes Kelly a Hillary Clinton supporter, according to Hannity.

I should note that of the two, Megyn Kelly is the one with a journalism education and professional background. Hannity lacks those educational credentials; he’s a talker.

I, frankly, don’t much care who she intends to vote for when the time comes. It shouldn’t even be a topic for public discussion. But then we have Hannity — who doesn’t hide his own bias — trying to make noise … which is all this is, in my humble view.

These media stars need to settle down. They ought to stop firing their barbs at each other and concentrate on the individuals and policies on which they report and offer opinion.

Who’s the major culprit in this goofy exchange?

Sean Hannity. Of course!

My advice to the young man? Knock it off, dude, and keep on shilling for Trump.

Thanks for clearing that up, Donald

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To think many of us thought he actually meant those hideous things he has said about women.

The “fat pig” stuff? The jokes about women’s weight? Statements about “flat-chested” women?

It’s all for “entertainment,” Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has said. He doesn’t really mean those things. He was trying to make us do … what? Laugh out loud? Scream out loud? Cry out loud?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-women-insults-entertainment-229225#ixzz4MKgkqc5I

Let’s not forget the on-going feud with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, who — according to Trump — had “blood coming from her wherever” the night she confronted him on previous derogatory comments about women.

Does this clown think we’re all suckers, rubes, chumps? Did we all fall of the proverbial turnip truck?

I’d like to say that “no one takes this round of excuses seriously.”

I wish I could. Sad to say, though, some Americans actually are going to buy into this line of crap.

Gov. Johnson needs to study up on foreign affairs

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The world’s most indispensable nation needs a leader who is well-versed on the world that surrounds it.

The United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth, despite the ridiculous assertions of Donald J. Trump that we’ve become something significantly less than that. Accordingly, whoever becomes president needs to understand the principals involved in some of the world’s greatest trouble spots.

Libertarian nominee for president Gary Johnson flunked that knowledge test yet again.

Sigh …

He asked an interviewer “What’s Aleppo?” He didn’t know that Syria’s largest city is the epicenter of the hideous refugee crisis that has engulfed so much of the Middle East and Europe.

Then, when asked by another TV interviewer to name a single foreign leader he liked and/or respected, he couldn’t name one.

The latest gaffe came when Gov. Johnson was asked to name North Korea’s leader. He couldn’t come up with Kim Jong Un.

One of the tests of leadership in this country must include knowledge of far more than such basic information.

An exceptional nation needs to have exceptional leadership at its helm. Two of the four people running for the presidency — GOP nominee Trump and Johnson — are flunking the leadership test. I won’t speak yet to the knowledge base owned by the Green Party nominee for president, Jill Stein.

The fourth candidate is Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. She has demonstrated that she fully prepared to assume the role of president of the world’s greatest nation.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gary-johnson-couldnt-name-north-koreas-leader-kim-jong-un/ar-BBx3t5v

‘Atlantic’ makes history with endorsement

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Hillary Rodham Clinton’s pile of media endorsements has added a significant new voice.

While I have conceded that endorsements from elite media organs don’t pack the wallop they once did, this one has gotten some traction.

“The Atlantic” has issued its third presidential endorsement in its 159-year history. The first one went to the nation’s first Republican presidential candidate, a guy named Abraham Lincoln, in 1860.

Five score and four years later, in 1964, “The Atlantic” weighed in with an endorsement of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Now it has backed Hillary Clinton.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-and-against-donald-trump/501161/?utm_source=atlfb

Here’s a snippet from the editorial: “Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic’s editors found themselves in 1964. We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.”

This is a fascinating development as the campaign heads for its final month. I’m so glad it’s almost over. I am running out of stamina listening to the candidates trashing each other.

“The Atlantic” concludes its editorial endorsement with this: “We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.”

Ouch, man!

To be candid, the endorsement doesn’t convey unbridled confidence in Clinton’s standing. It’s more of a non-endorsement of  Donald J. Trump. I suppose that sums up what has shaped up to be the theme of this campaign: The candidates cannot stand on their own record exclusively, so they pound away at their opponents’ weaknesses.

Trump is the most profoundly unqualified and unfit candidate for the presidency most of us ever have seen.

Will this endorsement matter? Will it be the difference between winning and losing? I doubt it. Still, it’s worth your time to read and to digest what the editors of a distinguished publication have to say about the next election for the presidency of the United States.

Oh, I am so glad it’s about to be over.

Pence is right about Russia; Trump … is wrong!

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Mike Pence demonstrated quite nicely just how badly the Republican Party has messed up its campaign for the presidency.

It has put the wrong guy at the top of the ticket.

My belief is based on Pence’s assessment of Russian dictator/strongman/tyrant Vlad Putin. He called him a “small bully” at the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night who must be met with stern resolve and military might.

Trump’s view of Putin? He believes the United States and Russia can become allies in the fight against the Islamic State. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia?” Trump has asked. He has expressed admiration for Putin.

Pence doesn’t seem to think U.S.-Russian relations can improve as long as Putin is kicking backsides in the Kremlin.

This is the kind of thing that might have Republicans gnashing their teeth over what their party has done. It has nominated a presidential candidate who is spectacularly clueless on the geopolitical relationships that complicate U.S. foreign policy. Meanwhile, it has a vice-presidential nominee who sees the world through a more realistic prism.

The worst news, for Republicans of course, is that Americans are going to vote next month for the candidates at the top of their respective tickets.