Now the spouses have become targets

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When did Melania Trump andĀ  Heidi Cruz become candidates for president of the United States?

Oh, wait! They merely are married to men who are running for the office. Now, though, they’ve become subjects of social media messages fired by one of the Republican presidential candidates.

Let’s hold on for a wild ride, shall we?

A super PAC not associated with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign apparently posted an ad that contained a picture of Melania in the nude.Ā Donald J. Trump responded that “Lyin’ Ted” needs to be careful or else Trump would reveal something about Cruz’s wife.

These attacks are getting tiresome, not to mention way, way off topic.

Trump took down the tweet he put out there about Mrs. Cruz. However, as we know, social media’s impact is immediate, as in instantaneous. It’s like trying to unhonk a horn; it cannot be done.

As for the British GQ article and the picture about Mrs. Trump, well, that’s apparently been out there a good while, having been published in 2000.

I’m just one individual living out here in Flyover Country.

I’d like to offer a suggestion to these two men — neither of whom ever would get my vote for president.

How about avoid talking about your wives? You guys — not the women you married — are running for the presidency. It is your views on the issues that interest me and, I presume, millions of other Americans who are paying attention to this campaign.

The rest of this baloney is tawdry and unbecoming of the office you are seeking.

Then again, soĀ are some of the things the actual candidates for president have said about each other.

 

Define whose ‘awful legacy,’ Mr. President

Bubba and The Worst President Evah

Former President Bill Clinton is paying the price for speaking without maximum precision.

So is the presidential campaign of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The 42nd president, while speaking on his wife’s behalf, asserted it is imperative that voters erase what he called the “awful legacy” of the past eight years.

That’s it. Awful legacy. He didn’t identify whose legacy to which he was referring.

Pundits, politicians and just plain folks were left, therefore, to presume he meant the president’s “awful legacy.”

The borrow a term: Oops!

The Hillary Clinton campaign immediately sought to clarify what he meant, which was the legacy of the Republican-controlled Congress that, according to the campaign, has obstructed President Obama at every turn along the way.

OK, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t say “Congress’s awful legacy.” Then again, neither did he say “Barack Obama’s awful legacy.”

However, since the president is the Main Man in any political discussion, we are left to presume the former president was talking about his successor.

Right?

President Clinton, of course, has gotten into this kind of word-parsing mess before.

Recall his grand jury testimony during the Lewinsky Scandal when he sought to tell the panel, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” ThatĀ verbal miscueĀ has become embedded in U.S. political lexicon.

I doubt this one will endure quite as long.

Still, for a seasoned politician — which Bill Clinton certainly is — to speak so imprecisely in the heat of a critical campaign really does make some of us wonder: What in the world did he really say — or mean?

Perhaps he can blame it on jet lag.

 

Let’s get real, Sen. Cruz … patrol Muslim neighborhoods?

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Ted Cruz is reacting just like a politician seeking any advantage he can find.

The Texas Republican U.S. senator and a leading candidate for president, responding to the terrorist attacks that killed dozens of people in Brussels, Belgium, has called for law enforcement to “patrol Muslim neighborhoods” in the United States.

He believes “political correctness” and “fear” are preventing U.S. officials from doing enough to prevent terror attacks in this country. It’s time to “utterly destroy” the Islamic State and other terror cells.

No argument on the destruction of ISIS, senator.

But tell us, please: How are we going to define “Muslim neighborhoods”? Are there such enclaves in major American cities? Houston, which it Cruz’s hometown, has the largest Muslim population of any city in Texas. Where are those Muslim neighborhoods?

How about we concentrate fully on another course?

Let’s instead redouble our intelligence and military efforts to destroy ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and other terror cells abroad. Hasn’t the federal government already declared its intention to “destroy” these murderous cults? Hasn’t the president vowed to protect Americans? Aren’t we killing bad guys each day with air strikes, using manned and unmanned aircraft?

And aren’t we intercepting efforts to bring terror to this country?

We should vow to stand with our allies who are grieving at this moment over the senseless and brutal loss of life in Belgium, just as we have done for allies in Paris and in all places where the terrorists have struck.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, denounced Cruzā€™s statement.

ā€œItā€™s really beyond belief that you have one of the leading presidential candidates calling for law enforcement to target religious communities totally based on the fact that they are of a particular faith,ā€ Hooper told the Washington Post. ā€œIn normal times, this would be the sort of thing that would disqualify someone from running for dogcatcher, much less president of the United States.ā€

Well, Mr. Hooper, here’s a flash. These aren’t “normal times.” We have this presidential campaign going on in the midst of a fearful climate — and candidates for the highest office in the land areĀ likely to say just about anything to get their names in front of the public.

There’s a lot of fear being spread — not just by the terrorists, but also byĀ politicians who think they stand to benefit from it.

 

Now it’s Brussels …

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Good morning, my fellow Americans.

We awoke today to more horror across The Pond. Terrorists have struck again, this time in Brussels, Belgium. At least 34 people are dead. All of them are innocent civilians. All of them presumably leave behind loved ones who are grieving.

Who did this dastardly deed? It’s a good bet the act has the signature of the Islamic State or some other monstrous organization.

It’s no coincidence, certainly that the attacks came just days after Belgian police apprehended the last surviving suspect in the Paris attacks of a few months ago.

The nature of our enemy cannot be condemned enough.

They attack so-called “soft targets,” which is another way of saying they go for the most vulnerable victims. They people just like the rest of us doing what they do normally.

Then their lives are shattered. Gone in a spasm of violence.

Yes, this fight must continue for as long as it takes.

The 9/11 attacks of nearly 15 years ago opened our eyes to the threat that’s always been there.

We went to war against the terrorists. How in the world do we declare victory against this evil that lurks among us?

Our hearts are broken yet again this morning as we ponder what’s happened abroad. Yet we must remain as vigilant as ever.

 

About those human rights abuses …

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U.S. foreign policy abounds with hypocrisy.

We support some nations while opposing others, citing issues in those nations we oppose that are commonplace in the nations with which we are friendly.

I bring to you … Cuba.

President Barack Obama is visiting the island nation, becoming the first U.S. president to set foot in Cuba since Calvin Coolidge.

His foes back home keep yammering about the human rights abuses that the communists in Havana are guilty of committing. Why, we can’t allow Americans to travel freely there; we can’t commence trade with Cuba; we can’t let our guard down.

What’s the deal, then, with other nations with which we have reasonably healthy relationships?

The People’s Republic of China? Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Vietnam?

Sure, we have differences with many nations around he world, including those I’ve just mentioned.

But the communists who run governments in China and Vietnam treat their citizens badly whenever they speak out against their leaders. The SaudisĀ refuse toĀ grant full rights of citizenship to roughly half of their citizenry; I refer, of course, to women. What’s more, the Saudis are known to execute criminals in public.

My point is simply this: Let’s stop the griping about Cuba’s human rights record, suggesting that it’s a disqualifier for U.S.-Cuba relations. Yes, let’s keep the pressure on Cuba to do better.

We can bring the change we want thereĀ by engaging them fully.

 

Hey we may be friends, but we’re not that close

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Talk about an awkward moment.

It happened today at the end of a joint press conferenceĀ with President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro.

The picture attached here tells it all.

Castro sought to raise President Obama’s hand in some sort of show of bilateral solidarity.

Obama would have none of it. He managed to avoid grasping Castro’s hand and when the Cuban president raised the U.S. president’s hand, he ended up grabbing his wrist.

President Obama’s hand went limp.

It was really a strange sight. Don’t you think?

I suppose President Obama might have taken offense at the scolding Castro delivered to American reporters who had the temerity to ask him about human rights abuses in Cuba. Or maybe it was Castro’s insistence that the United States give back the land it owns at Guantanamo Bay.

Or … maybe it was that it’s just a bit too early in this rebuilt relationship to grasp hands and lift them jointly in a show of unity.

The nations have some distance yet to travel before they get to that point.

Thus, I believe President Obama — without saying a word — delivered a message of his own to his Cuban hosts.

 

Anti-Cuba lobby still flexes its muscle

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The anti-Castro/Cuba lobby in the United States has been outsized for as long as I can remember.

Perhaps we are witnessing this week the latest manifestation of that muscle-flexing as President Obama tours the tiny island nation and gets skewered by those on the right for doing what many others of us think is the right thing.

Which is to normalize relationsĀ  with the communist regime.

It’s a curious thing to watch the head of state of the world’s most powerful nation standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the leader of a dirt-poor Third World state. Then to have that tinhorn lecture the leader of the Free World aboutĀ whether the United States should keep possession of its naval base at Guantanamo Bay gives the Cubans aĀ dubious and overstated standing — and then to have critics pounce on Obama for taking it!

To what do we owe this strange juxtaposition?

I believe it’s the power of that Cuban-American community that resides mostly in Florida.

The community had its birth in the late 1950s when Cubans fled their nation that had been taken over by Fidel Castro and his gang of communists. They took up residence in Florida and began immediately pressuring the U.S. government to do more to destroy Castro.

President Eisenhower heard them. He formulated plans to invade Cuba and then handed the keys to the Oval Office over to President Kennedy in January 1961, who then launched the Bay of Pigs invasion.

It didn’t turn out well for our side. The Cubans squashed the small force, took prisoners and then crowed about how the big, bad U.S. government was intent on destroying them.

Then we had that missile crisis in 1962. JFK took care of it by blockading the island, forcing the Soviet Union to “blink” and remove the offensive missiles.

By 1991, the Evil Empire had vaporized. Cuba was left without its major benefactor.

Still, five decades after the revolution, Cuba has remained a communist dictatorship. Fidel Castro handed the power over to his brother, Raul, who welcomed President Barack Obama to his nation.

Is Cuba a nation to be feared? Do we tremble at the thought of normalizing relations with this tiny nation? No. Why should we? We’re the big kids on the block. Heck, we’re the biggest kids on the planet!

Our politicians, though, have been told to fear Cubans by that overblown Cuban-American community.

So here we are. The president of the United States is making history simply by visiting an island nation that sits within spittin’ distance of our southeastern-most state.

Sure, the Cubans must do more to improve human rights on their island. The president should tell them so.

I don’t know why we should sweat so much over whether Raul Castro listens to us. He and that backwater government he runs can’t do us any harm.

My own sense is that normalization of relations with Cuba by itself is going to do more to bring reform to a nation that needs it in the worst way. Soon enough, the Cubans will see what the rest of the world really looks like.

They alsoĀ are likely toĀ see how their giant neighbor just over the horizon relishes the fruits of liberty.

Then they might start demanding it from their leaders.

 

Well stated, Mr. Chief Justice

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How about that John Roberts?

The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuked the U.S. Senate —Ā here it comes — for playing politics with the appointment of the next justice on the nation’s highest court.

Chief Justice Roberts did not know he was doing so when he made the remarks, as they came just a few days before the shocking and tragic death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

He noted the partisan nature of the votes for recent appointees to the court. According to the New York Times: ā€œLook at my more recent colleagues, all extremely well qualified for the court,ā€ Chief Justice Roberts said, ā€œand the votes were, I think, strictly on party lines for the last three of them, or close to it, and that doesnā€™t make any sense. That suggests to me that the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees.ā€

The court, of course, has a vacancy to fill. President Obama has selected D.C. Circuit Court Chief Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat. Senate Republicans say they want the next president to make the call, denying the current president the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility.

Chief Justice Roberts, served with Garland, surely must believe his judicial colleague is as “extremely well qualified” as justices Alito, Kagan and Sotomayor — whose confirmations were approved on largely partisan votes.

Roberts is on point with his call to consider these nominations on the merits of the individual’s qualifications.

No one has heard hardly a whimper from anyone questioning whether Merrick Garland is qualified to determine the constitutionality of federal law.

The opposition is being mounted for purely political reasons.

John Roberts says such posturing should stop.

I happen to agree with him.

As the chief said in his remarks preceding Scalia’s death: ā€œWe donā€™t work as Democrats or Republicans andĀ I think itā€™s a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process.ā€

 

Negative campaigning: It still works

dontvotefortheotherguy

Political operatives have a name for it.

Opposition research.

Every major political campaign dating back to, oh, most of the previous century has featured it. The organization hires teams of researchers to do one thing: look up negative aspects of an opponent’s record to use against them.

Why embark on this mission? Because it works. Every single time. Voters eat this stuff up, no matter how much they complain how they dislike negative campaigning. They respond to it.

The potential Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump presidential campaign that looms not too far into the future is going to provide “oppo research” teams a veritable trove of negatives.

If I were willing to wager my recreational vehicle, I’d say that Clinton’s team is facing what one could call a “target rich environment.”

Remember the time her husband ran for president in 1992? His campaign famously developed what came to be called The War Room. It developed a quick-hit strategy to answer every negative attack leveled at Gov. Bill Clinton by President Bush’s re-election team. The Bill Clinton team learned the lessons taught by the 1988 campaign of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, which allowed the Bush team to “peel the bark” off of Dukakis, as the late campaign strategist Lee Atwater said famously.

I’m willing to presume that Mrs. Clinton’s team has resurrected that notion for her campaign this fall.

More to the point, though, will be the opportunities that the presumed Republican nominee, Trump, will present to the newest Clinton version of The War Room.

TrumpĀ has littered his GOP primary campaign with countless public utterances worthy of outright ridicule, not to mention condemnation.

It makes me recall the era not long after the 9/11 attacks. Those of us in daily opinion journalism were handed so many opportunities and topics on which to comment that we faced the editor’s prized dilemma: What can I set aside for tomorrow or another day even later on which to offer an opinion or perspective. Take it from me: It is far more preferable to have too much from which to choose than not enough.

Team Clinton is going to have that kind of “problem” staring it in the face once the GOP nominee’s identity becomes clear.

Yes, I know that Trump’s team will haveĀ its chances as well. Which one of the campaigns, though, will have theĀ resources available to them to do the kind of research they’ll need to skewer their opponent? My hunch: the edge goes to Clinton.

Donald Trump already has demonstrated his ability to “go negative” when the other candidates have fired broadsides at him. He does so in amazingly crude ways. He’s criticized opponents’ physical appearance; he has denigrated a journalist’s physical handicap; he has chided an opponent for the manner in which he perspires. All of this, though, has endeared him to the Trumpsters who have glommed on to his message — whatever the hell it is.

And those examples comprise a tiny fraction of Trump’s much-touted business, personal and political history.

And it’s that crudeness that, by itself, is going to present the Clinton team with much of the opposition research material it figures to use against their expected foe.

You want negative campaigning? We’re about to get it.

It won’t be pretty. We’ll bitch about it.

Bring it on!

 

A new day begins in U.S.-Cuba relations

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Republicans are hyperventilating over President Obama’s visit to Cuba.

They need to chill out. They need to stop trying to put words in everyone’s mouth and stop trying to read others’ minds.

Barack Obama is paying a visit to the communist-run island nation because it’s the right thing to do, given that the two nations have restored diplomatic relations that had been severed for five decades.

A particular Republican who can’t seem to catch his breath is U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, one of three men running for his party’s presidential nomination. He has written an essay that accuses the president of turning his back on the dissidents who’ve been holed up on prison cells throughout the nation.

Again, young man, don’t seek to know what’s going on behind closed doors when the president meets with Cuban leader Raul Castro.

Yes, I agree that Obama should have scheduled a visit with dissidents in Cuba. Those who disagree with the commies in charge are denied basic human rights that we all believe are inherent throughout the world.

Unless it can be proved beyond a doubt otherwise, I will continue to hold out hope that when the doors are closed and when no one else is listening that Barack Obama will tell Raul Castro something like this:

“Mr. President, the fate of political dissidents here is of grave concern to my country. As their president, I must insist that you give them the freedom to speak their minds, even if it brings criticism of your government.

“We’ve just established relations with you, but you and your government colleagues have known all along about the opposition American presidents and our Congress get every single day. It doesn’t weaken our government; it strengthens it!

“I believe it will have the same effect here.”

I get that communist regimes do not view political dissent the same way free governments do.

Still, I happen to be one American — among many others — who is happy to see this rapprochement occur. It’s been overdue for many years.

May it bring change to our former enemies.