Category Archives: political news

political news, State news

Rick Perry 2.0 makes another run for White House

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Here we go again.

Rick Perry is going to run for president of the United States of America.

The former longest-serving Texas governor in state history hopes for a much better outcome than his first effort, which ended in January 2012 — before the first Republican primary ever took place. He stumbled, bumbled and fumbled badly that first time out. His debate performances were hideous, highlighted by the infamous “oops” moment which he couldn’t name the third of three federal agencies he’d dismantle if he were elected president.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/rick-perry-announces-presidential-campaign-118627.html?hp=l2_4

He’s back now.

Ready for action.

He’s changed his look, wearing those eyeglasses.

Perry thinks we need a president who’ll tell them the truth, who’ll lead from the front, who’ll do all the things he says the current administration hasn’t done.

This campaign differs from the first one, however, in another key way. He became an instant frontrunner when he announced his intention to seek the 2012 GOP nomination. Perry enters this race as a distant also-ran in a field headed — for now — by the likes of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; there might be another name or three out there at the front of the pack, but Perry’s name ain’t one of them.

And I haven’t even mentioned, until right now, that he’s the first declared presidential candidate in history to run while under indictment alleging abuse of power. But, hey, that’s another story for another day.

Back when he was running for president in late 2011, I would hear from more than one Texas Panhandle Republican — and believe me, I live in the most GOP-friendly region of this GOP-friendly state — that they hoped he’d become president, but for reasons I didn’t expect to hear.

They wanted Perry to win because they wanted “to get him out of Texas.”

political news

Now that’s a real apology

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz made a seriously ill-timed crack about Vice President Joe Biden.

Cruz, a Texas Republican and a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, made the quip to a Republican audience.

He then apologized. Immediately and sincerely.

He said this: “It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief, and I sincerely apologize. The loss of his son is heartbreaking and tragic, and our prayers are very much with the Vice President and his family.”

The Biden family is mourning the death of the vice president’s oldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of 46.

It’s a joke Cruz has used before. You can see it here:

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ted-cruz-apologizes-biden-joke-days-after-vice-presidents-son-dies?cid=sm_fb_msnbc

Yes, the joke was ill-time and ill-advised.

However, Sen. Cruz’s apology was the real thing, not one of those phony “If anyone was offended” sorts of non-apologies. If only all politicians who make similarly inappropriate comments would be so forthright.

political news

Hastert scandal drips with irony

If you think for a moment about the scandal involving former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, you come away scratching your head at the incredible irony.

A grand jury has indicted Hastert on charges that he spent money illegally to keep someone quiet about an alleged sexual encounter between Hastert and the then-student at the high school where Hastert was a teacher and a coach.

That part of it is weird enough.

But consider the context of the time he was selected to become speaker of the House of Representatives.

* The House had impeached President Clinton for lying to a federal grand jury about an extramarital dalliance he was having with a White House intern.

* The then-speaker, Newt Gingrich, who railed incessantly against the president for his moral failings, resigned from public office after it was revealed that he, too, was fooling around with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

* Up stepped Rep. Bob Livingston, who was set to become speaker. But oops! He dropped the effort because he also was involved in an extramarital affair.

Man, sex was in the air.

Then came the Boy Scout, Denny Hastert. He was chosen to become speaker — and the first person, after the vice president, in line of succession to the presidency of the United States of America.

I guess they didn’t vet him at all, let alone thoroughly.

Thus, the irony.

national news, political news

Feeling badly about scolding Obama

Let’s assume for a moment that my prediction that Donald Trump won’t run for president next year turns out to be wrong.

If he does declare his candidacy, I might be forced to eat some crow regarding my recent scolding of President Obama for using the first-person singular pronoun too liberally while accepting credit for the good things he’s done as president.

Barack Obama is a piker compared to The Donald.

Trump told the Des Moines Register that he’s the “most successful candidate ever to run” for president. He declared “the American dream is dead,” and then said he’d bring it back all my himself. He said he’d wipe out the Islamic State quickly and its elimination would be a “beautiful thing.”

Sheesh!

Can this guy really and truly be serious? Is he really, honestly going to run for president and use his immense personal wealth as a reason to elect him?

Mr. President, I don’t want to take back what I said, but I will if Donald Trump declares his intention to succeed you in the White House.

My head is about to explode.

 

national news, political news

A more relevant question regarding Hastert

A blog that I follow, Bell Book Candle, has offered an interesting question regarding the growing scandal involving former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Hastert has been indicted on felony accusations involving sexual abuse of a student back when Hastert was a wrestling coach at an Illinois high school.

The media need to focus not on the sex, but on the money. According to the blog:

“The media will focus on Dennis Hastert’s past indiscretions if they are of a sexual nature. However, the real question that they should be asking is how a relatively obscure public servant can afford to pay $3,500,000 to buy the silence of one person. Our politics and our politicians are being corrupted by the huge amounts of cash available to them. We must rid our democracy of the ability of some to buy favoritism for themselves, be they corporations or be they the 1%.”

The media won’t trouble themselves quite so much with the money part of this matter.

As the saying goes: Sex sells.

However, money does have a corrupting influence at many levels involving those who make public policy.

This is one of the stranger stories I’ve heard in many years.

A big part of me hopes that it doesn’t pan out. A bigger part, though, fears that it will.

 

political news

JFK would be a Republican … and Ike would be a Democrat

Ted Cruz says John F. Kennedy would be a Republican.

The U.S. senator from Texas, and a GOP candidate for president, said there’s “no room” in today’s Democratic Party for a tax-cutter like JFK.

Really? And in my view Dwight Eisenhower would be laughed out of the Republican Party today. It was Ike, you’ll recall, who warned us during his farewell message as president in 1960 of the “military-industrial complex” and the danger of making it too powerful.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ted-cruz-believes-jfk-would-be-republican-today?cid=sm_tw_msnbc

How would that fly today in the world of the neocons who relish the idea of going to war rather than solving problem through diplomacy?

Cruz, though, I believe offers an incorrect attribution to a famous political quote from the 1960s — which was before Cruz was born.

According to Cruz: “I would point out that in the 1960s, one of the most powerful, eloquent defenders of tax cuts was John F. Kennedy. As JFK said, ‘Some men see things as they are and ask why; I see things that never were and ask why not.’”

Actually, senator, that observation came from another famous Democrat, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who recited that mantra as he campaigned for the presidency in 1968.

Yes, the parties have changed since those days.

Let’s not single out one politician and one political party. If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll also find that today’s Republican Party isn’t very welcoming either to those who saw the world differently than many see it today.

 

national news, political news

‘Protecting the homeland’?

Forgive me, please, for expressing this, but Jeb Bush might be suffering from brotherly-love blindness.

He was questioned by Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” news talk show.

Schieffer asked the former Florida governor and likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate what he learned from his brother, former President George W. Bush.

“Well, the successes clearly are protecting the homeland,” the former Florida governor opined. “We were under attack, and he unified the country, and he showed dogged determination, and he kept us safe.”

And he kept us safe. He said that.

OK, let’s reel this back a bit. The 9/11 attacks occurred on President Bush’s watch, which Jeb has acknowledged. It’s been reported from various sources that the president likely ignored warnings from his national security team that a major attack was imminent. He was briefed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, about the threat that al-Qaeda posed.

And yet …

The attack occurred on that bright Tuesday morning in New York and Washington.

President Bush “kept us safe”?

Yes, but only after all hell broke loose.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Sen. Graham ‘ready’ … to take U.S. back into war

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham says he’s “ready” to run for president, and to be president.

He’s also ready, it sounds to me, as if he’s ready to send Americans back to the Middle East, to fight radical Islamic terrorists face to face.

Haven’t we been there, already? Haven’t we lost sufficient numbers of American lives in the fight against Islamic terrorists?

Apparently not, says Graham.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/im-ready-lindsey-graham-officially-enters-2016-race/ar-BBktaAk

The South Carolina Republican jumped into the GOP nomination fight today, vowing to ratchet up our military posture abroad. Interesting, yes? We did that during the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. We went after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as we should have done. Then we decided — wrongly, it turned out — to take the fight into Iraq. We flexed our military might quite nicely in that country, then kept fighting and fighting and fighting as resistance rose up and the Islamic State became a serious force with which we’re still trying to reckon.

Graham’s campaign speech makes it sound as if we’ve rolled over. We have done nothing of the sort.

Someone needs to slip him a note with these words: “We killed bin Laden.”

Other terrorist leaders have been killed. ISIL remains a serious threat, but the United States is striking hard at that outfit as well.

Do we really want to re-enter the ground war in Iraq, or in Yemen, or in Syria? Do we really want to re-engage an enemy face to face? Graham seems to think it’s all right. I disagree with him. The Associated Press reported: “Graham is a prominent Senate voice in seeking a more muscular foreign policy and one who casts the threats facing the United States in particularly dark terms.”

Our foreign policy is muscular enough.

national news, political news

Get elected to Congress, and enrich yourself?

Median income of Americans has fallen since 2003.

How about the incomes of their elected congressional representatives? It’s gone the other direction.

http://members-of-congress.insidegov.com/stories/4235/list-congress-members-getting-richer?utm_medium=social.paid&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=ao.sp.fb.dt.4235&utm_term=insidegov

And to think that some members of Congress want a pay raise, that 174 grand a year isn’t enough, that only “rich people” can serve.

That’s the line being pushed out there by U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., along with other members of the House and Senate who gripe that they’re underpaid.

Check out the link attached to this blog and you might get a different idea of just how “impoverished” some of our elected reps and senators have become — which is to say they aren’t impoverished in the least.

Many of them have seen their portfolios increase while serving on Capitol Hill.

How does this happen? In some instances, senators and House members parlay their public standing into positions on corporate boards. All they do, then, is belong to boards of companies that reap tremendous profits and then distribute some of that wealth among board members.

Hey, it’s great “work” if you can get it.

This is the kind of stuff that makes the plea such as what’s been coming from Alcee Hastings sound ridiculous on its face.

Let’s can the give-us-a-raise talk.

political news

VP Biden suffers another shattering loss

Joe Biden’s standing among Americans has had its ups and downs.

The vice president is known as a garrulous guy, seemingly without a care in the world.

The reality, which was driven home yet again this weekend, is that he has suffered more heartache than most of us.

Vice President Biden’s son, Beau, died of a brain tumor. He was 46 years of age. He is survived by his wife and two children.

And a grieving father.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-bidens-2012-advice-to-grieving-families-is-all-the-more-poignant-now/ar-BBkrnXo

As the essay by Ezra Klein notes, Joe Biden’s own political career almost ended before it really took off. In December, before he took office in the U.S. Senate, to which he was elected, the senator-elect’s wife and daughter died in an auto accident. His two sons, Beau and Hunter, suffered serious injury. Sen.-elect Biden was just 29 at the time he was elected and would celebrate his 30th birthday before being sworn in, making him constitutionally qualified to serve in the Senate.

He wanted to quit. His friends talked him into staying the course. He took his oath next to his son Beau’s hospital bed.

Sen. Biden would marry again. Jill Biden became his children’s new “mom,” and the couple brought more children into the world together.

Klein’s essay recalls a startling speech Biden made in 2012, in which he said how he came to understand why someone would want to take their own life. They’d been “to the mountain top,” he said,  and they knew they wouldn’t ever get there again.

The vice president has been to several mountain tops in his most eventful life. As of today, though, he is suffering the level of grief that isn’t supposed to happen. He’s having to bury a child — yet again.

Oh, the strength that lies within some of us.

As Klein noted in that remarkable 2012 speech: “There will come a day – I promise you, and your parents as well – when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye,” Biden says. “It will happen.”