Category Archives: political news

‘Boxcars’ no more acceptable than ‘ovens’

hillary

Admission time.

I’ve been goaded into saying something about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s remark concerning Donald Trump’s “immigration reform” idea, which is to round up 11 million or so undocumented immigrants and ship back to where they came from.

She said recently that Trump and other Republican candidates intend to ship immigrants back to their homeland in “boxcars.” The remark drew understandable rebuke from those on the right who said the Democratic presidential front runner is invoking images of the Holocaust with that kind of analogy.

Clinton’s campaign has denied any connection.

You decide.

The campaign flacks are mistaken if they do not believe many Americans understood the juxtaposition of “boxcars” and “Holocaust.”

These presidential candidates need to understand that gravity of making such highly offensive comparisons.

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, you’ll recall, criticized the Iran nuclear deal by declaring President Obama would march Israel to the “oven door” if the deal is approved by the Congress. That remark also drew expected — and deserved — criticism from those on the left.

A critic of this blog reminded me that I had been silent about Clinton’s nasty reference to boxcars. I took the criticism as a challenge to be as vigilant on both sides of the political divide about comments that deserve rebuke.

Clinton, Huckabee and the whole crowd of presidential candidates should declare a moratorium on comparing anything that occurs presently to what happened between 1939 and 1945.

World War II — and all its ghastly consequences — stands alone.

 

 

Some self-awareness, Mr. Vice President

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Dick Cheney’s utter lack of self-awareness is an astounding thing to behold.

The former vice president and his daughter, Liz, have co-written a book, “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.” In an extended excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal, Cheney writes that President Obama has made “false” statements about the Iran nuclear deal.

False statements? Yes, the man who orchestrated — along with the rest of the George W. Bush national security team — this nation’s invasion of Iraq on a whole array of falsehoods has now laid the charge on the man who succeeded President Bush in the White House.

He has joined the GOP amen chorus in blaming Obama for the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, contending that the United States has “abandoned” Iraq and is “on course” to do the same thing in Afghanistan.

I don’t disagree with the title of the Cheneys’ book. The world does need a “powerful America.” I will simply add my own view that the world still has a powerful America in its midst.

We remain the world’s pre-eminent military power — by a long shot. Our economy is still the envy of the world. People are aching to gain entry into the United States. Yes, many of them come here illegally, but many more come here legally and in accordance with federal immigration law.

Let us stop denigrating our current role in the world — as many of the GOP presidential candidates have done — by suggesting we’ve lost our place at the top of the geopolitical food chain.

As for the former vice president, he needs to take time for some serious introspection before he accuses others of stating foreign-policy falsehoods.

Read more on this link.

Refugees or criminals? Which is it?

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One of my very best friends in the whole, wide world is a lawyer who lives in California.

I’ve known Tim Lundell since I was in high school. He was my best man and we’ve shared a lot of emotions over many years.

Tim posted this comment today on Facebook.

“Isn’t it funny? In Europe they have ‘desperate migrants, embarking on a perilous journey in search of a better life.’ Here, according to certain politicians, we have ‘illegal immigrants who rape and murder.’ I guess it’s just a matter of humanitarian perspective.”

The target of Tim’s barb, I’m certain, is Donald Trump, who’s gained considerable mileage over his rants about illegal immigrants who come to the United States from points south … meaning Mexico and beyond. Republican primary voters are eating this stuff up, giving Trump a tremendous boost in the current public opinion polling

I do not dispute the notion that some of those who come into this country without the proper documentation come here to do harm, just as Trump has said.

But many others do come here to seek a better life, just as those who are fleeing the Middle East and heading for places such as Greece, Italy, France and Germany are doing.

I’ll also acknowledge that the influx of immigrants into Europe has spawned a considerable backlash from right-wing extremists, who contend that the refugees present a considerable danger to the European way of life.

However, as we keep debating the issue of whether to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants from the United States, shouldn’t we keep in mind that many of them are here for the right reasons and are not here to commit crimes?

The blanket condemnation of illegal immigrants does not square with the reality of why many of them are here in the first place. They are here to make a better life for their families.

I am not suggesting they all should be granted amnesty, or that they shouldn’t be required to start the process of obtaining legal immigrant status.

Let us just try to understand that people come here for a lot of reasons — and many of them have no intention of committing crimes against the country they want to call home.

 

 

 

Name-calling becomes a hit

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Republicans are becoming the party of name-callers.

Let’s run a little tabulation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a “jackass.”

Trump has called Graham, former Govs. Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney “losers.”

Trump also has said that every official in the U.S. government is “stupid.”

House Speaker John Boehner has chimed in with a “jackass” epithet hurled at Sen. Ted Cruz.

I know I’ve missed some, maybe a lot. But these come to mind immediately.

What’s up here? Are the candidates for the presidency getting under each other’s skin?

I’ve lost count of the bad names Sen. John McCain has tossed at folks who disagree with him. Then again, he’s not running for president this time around.

I’ll give the current GOP bunch this much credit: At least they aren’t tossing out f-bombs, at least not publicly.

It was then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s dubious honor to reveal his potty mouth when, during a Senate floor debate years ago, he told Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to go f*** himself.

Hey, just think: The presidential campaign is just getting warmed up.

 

Read your oath of office, Mme. Clerk

same-sex-marriage

Kim Davis took an oath when she became a county clerk in Kentucky to uphold the constitutions of her state and her nation.

The oath, I’m quite willing to suggest, didn’t include any exemptions for her religious faith.

Thus, it becomes imperative that she fulfill all the terms of the oath she took.

But she’s refusing to do that.

Instead, she’s refusing to grant marriage certificates to gay couples. She cites her religious belief opposing gay marriage and the U.S. Constitution’s protection of religious liberty.

I get that Kim Davis’s Christian faith is important to her. Mine is important to me as well.

But she took an oath to uphold the law. What’s more, the U.S. Supreme Court this year has ruled that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states. That includes Kentucky.

To their credit, Potter County Clerk Julie Smith and Randall County Clerk Renee Calhoun declared they would issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples who request them. I also would have applauded either or both of them had they resigned if their religious faith interfered with their public oath.

Davis should resign from her office, as some county clerks have done around the country. She cannot serve in an elected public office without carrying out all the duties that the office requires.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/kim-davis-kentucky-clerk-again-denies-license?utm_content=buffercaf60&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

 

Stop the presses! Cantor endorses Bush

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I feel like dealing with two unrelated subjects in this blog post.

Except that they both deal with Jeb Bush.

First, the former Republican Florida governor today earned the endorsement of Eric Cantor.

You remember Eric Cantor. He is the former U.S. House of Representatives majority leader who, in the Republican primary of 2014, lost to TEA Party favorite David Brat.

What was the knock on Cantor in Virginia, which he represented in the House? It was that he was too wedded to being part of the GOP congressional power structure and that he cared too little about the home folks’ concerns. He was an out-of-touch Washington pol.

So, his congressional district primary voters turned on him, tossed him out of office.

I believe his endorsement of Gov. Bush will mean, well, not a thing.

***

Second, I am considering referring to Jeb Bush in the future by putting his first name in all capital leaders, just as I have done with the TEA Party.

Why? Well, “TEA” as in TEA Party is an acronym, meaning “Taxed Enough Already.” So, I’ve declared it appropriate to refer to this wing of the GOP with an all-cap reference.

The same principle applies to Jeb Bush. His first name also is an acronym. “Jeb” stands for “John Ellis Bush.”

Should I refer to him as “JEB” Bush, the way Confederate Gen. James Ewell Brown (aka J.E.B.) Stuart is identified?

Isn’t America still ‘great’?

ballcap trump

Tod Robberson, writing a blog for the Dallas Morning News, poses a question that’s been nagging at me since I first heard Donald Trump make a certain proclamation.

Trump has promised to “make America great again.” He’s been wearing a gimme cap at campaign rally with the words written across the front of it.

My thought always has been that the United States is a great nation. It’s a superpower with unprecedented military capability. It’s economy remains — for now, at least — No. 1 in the world.

And people from other nations are flocking here — yes, even legally — to start new lives. As Robberson pointed out: “In fact, the very immigration issue that Trump has made the focal point of his campaign belies the assertion that America isn’t great. Why would millions of people risk their lives to come to this country, legally or illegally, if there weren’t something of overwhelming value drawing them specifically here? It’s actually a lot easier to migrate to Canada, Europe, Costa Rica or Brazil. But for some reason, people want to come to America. That’s because we are still the greatest nation on earth.”

Trump, though, is suggesting that the United States no longer is “exceptional,” to borrow a popular Republican mantra of past campaigns against the current Democratic president.

Robberson also shoots down the notion that during the Ronald Reagan years in the White House that the United States stood as the model for greatness that today’s GOP seeks to emulate.

It’s worth a look: http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2015/08/make-america-great-again-trump-needs-to-rethink-his-rhetoric.html/

I’m just wondering how Trump gets away with asserting the United States of America isn’t still the greatest nation on the planet.

 

 

‘The Hispanics’ won’t love this media spat

jorge ramos

Donald Trump keeps harping on what he believes is a love affair between himself and “the Hispanics.”

They’ll love me, Trump proclaims, because he employs so many of them to work in his business empire. The anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric that labels Mexican immigrants coming into this country — albeit illegally — as “rapists, drug dealers, murderers” … along with “some good people, too” — well, that doesn’t matter, according to Trump.

Then he got into this highly visible spat this week with Jorge Ramos, a new anchor and reporter for the Spanish-language network Univision.

Trump was taking questions from reporters in Dubuque, Iowa, when Ramos interrupted him. Trump got agitated at Ramos’s persistent questioning of how Trump intended to build a 1,900-mile wall across the country’s southern border.

To be fair, Ramos did barge into another reporter’s question. He shouldn’t have been so rude to his colleague.

Then again, Trump could have answered Ramos’s question and gone on to the next questioner. He didn’t do that.

He waved a bodyguard over, and then the bodyguard forcibly removed Ramos from the meeting room.

Outside the room, a man wearing a Trump lapel badge, told Ramos to “got back to your country,” to which the Mexico-born Ramos replied that he is an American citizen.

Ramos came back into the interview room later and got to ask his question. He sparred with Trump a bit more.

I just wonder how Trump actually believes — if he truly does believe it — that Hispanic voters are going to continue lovin’ on the candidate when he treats individuals such as Jorge Ramos so rudely.

The word “delusional” keeps coming to mind.

 

David Duke endorses Trump

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Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke has declared his support for Donald Trump.

I should just let that statement stand on its own.

But I cannot.

This’ll be brief.

Duke’s past is as reprehensible as it gets. He’s now thrown in with Trump, the current Republican Party presidential front runner.

“So although we can’t trust him to do what he says, the other Republican candidates won’t even say what he says. So he’s certainly the best of the lot. And he’s certainly somebody that we should get behind in terms, you know, raising the image of this thing.”

I’m not for a nanosecond going to suggest that Trump share’s Duke’s KKK dogma. I am going to suggest that Duke — no matter what he says about himself or the organization to which he belonged — cannot shed his past.

Duke’s obituary is going to include a KKK reference. And we all know about the murder, misery and mayhem that it has committed against other Americans.

There. Now I’m done.

 

GOP ‘horse race’ turning into match race

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Some of us have lamented the horse-race emphasis on the media’s political coverage.

The media become much too focused on polls and on who’s up and who’s down.

Donald Trump is clearly “up” in the Republican presidential primary campaign. All 16 of the other GOP candidates are “down.”

But as in an actual horse race, the GOP campaign is turning suddenly into a match race — featuring just two candidates.

They are Trump and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The rest of them include some serious and intelligent individuals. I would rate Gov. Bush in that serious and intelligent category. Trump? He’s in another category altogether. He’s intelligent. He’s also inarticulate and doesn’t possess an ounce of nuance, decorum — or an understanding that the presidency is not an oligarchy, that it contains far less power than Trump seems to suggest it does.

The two of them are resorting to some serious character attacks. Trump calls Bush a “low-energy candidate.” Bush counters that Trump isn’t a “true conservative.”

Indeed, it fascinates me that conservative Republicans are taking the gloves against Trump, accusing him of being a RINO, aka Republican in Name Only. As Jeb Bush said, according to the Texas Tribune, of Trump’s proposal to build a wall along our nation’s southern border: “Mr. Trump’s plans are not grounded in conservative principles,” Bush said. “The simple fact is his proposal is unrealistic, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, it will violate people’s civil liberties, it will create friction with our third largest trading partner, it’s non-necessary, and I think he’s wrong about this.”

It’s also interesting to me that Democrats have been oddly silent as Trump goes after Bush, and Bush returns fire against Trump. They’re leaving the anti-Trump rhetoric to the rest of that increasingly anonymous Republican field.

I remain amazed that this year’s GOP campaign has become so entertaining. I thought the 2012 Republican field set the entertainment bar so high that no future primary campaign in either party would reach it.

Silly me. The 2016 GOP field has exceeded my expectation.

However, right now it’s just the two “leaders” — Donald Trump and Jeb Bush — providing the entertainment.