Monthly Archives: July 2017

International news

Putin denies meddling … what now?

Donald J. Trump shook hands with Vladimir Putin today and then got right to the heart of the matter.

Did you meddle in our 2016 presidential election? Did your government try to influence the outcome to ensure that I would get elected? So it was that the president possibly asked his Russian colleague.

Putin’s response? I deny any involvement. My government did not meddle in your election.

OK, then. That settles it, yes? Hardly.

Obviously, I wasn’t in the room. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was there, though, and he said that Trump “pressed” Putin on the election meddling matter. I guess we might need to ask the secretary of state what “press” means to him, if not to the president.

What we don’t know yet is whether the president stood up for the intelligence agencies that have concluded that Russia did interfere with our 2016 electoral process. Nor we do know what the president might have said to Putin about what the United States would do in response, given what he intelligence experts have said to this point.

This kind of summit diplomacy is brand new to Donald Trump. Putin’s got a lengthy record of face-to-face meetings/confrontations with U.S. presidents as well as with other world leaders. Time will tell us soon whether Putin pushed Trump around in that meeting room.

That all said, I am heartened that the world leaders struck a cease fire deal in part of Syria. Time will tell us — probably very soon — whether the cease fire will stick. A previous one lasted only hours before falling apart.

Are we to believe Putin — the former KGB spy chief — when he denies Russian government efforts to meddle in our election?

Umm. I don’t think so.

International news, military news

‘Mad Dog’ sounding reasonable, rational

I am continually amazed that a senior federal government official with the nickname of “Mad Dog” sounds so reasonable, calm and rational in the face of potentially grave danger.

So it is with Defense Secretary James Mattis, who today sought to assure the world that war with North Korea is not imminent in the wake of that country’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

“Mad Dog” Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, said that the United States is “not closer to war” with North Korea. Meanwhile, other officials — including the president of the United States — keep rattling their proverbial swords while talking of possible retaliation if the North Koreans were to launch a missile at us or one of our allies.

Maybe it’s Mattis’s experience as a combat officer that builds in a certain calmness. He’s been to war, has led Americans in combat and he knows better than, say, the president himself about the high costs associated with armed conflict.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is traveling in Europe and he warned of “severe consequences” as a result of North Korea’s “dangerous” behavior.

I am not minimizing the potential for grave danger here. I just prefer to have cooler heads dominate the conversation in the White House Situation Room.

As of now, the calmest voice in the room appears to belong to “Mad Dog.” Ironic, yes?

national news

Supply and demand and supply …

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is supposed to know about these things.

He was governor of Texas for a zillion years. Before that he was lieutenant governor. Before that he was the state’s agriculture commissioner.

He’s supposed to know some basic economics, or one should think. Yes? OK. He went to West Virginia today and spoke at a coal-fired power plant. Then the secretary said this: “Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand,” Perry said, according to reports. “You put the supply out there, and the demand will follow.”

To borrow a word that Perry himself made famous during the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign: Oops!

I believe the secretary had it exactly backward. My understanding of economics suggests this: Demand drives supply, not the other way around.

Or, as The Hill reported: “Twitter users were quick to find fault with Perry’s use of the term, which is defined in the dictionary as the law that ‘an increase in supply will lower prices if not accompanied by increased demand, and an increase in demand will raise prices unless accompanied by increased supply.'”

Check out some of those tweets.

This won’t signal the end of the world or anything like that. I just recall how candidate Donald Trump ridiculed his 2016 GOP opponent for donning eyewear to “make himself look smart.” That was a cruel cut, to be sure.

However, if the president is going to surround himself with “the best people,” as he promised, then he needs them to articulate a basic economic tenet about supply and demand.

legal news, national news

Ethics head quits amid serious questions about Trump

Walter Shaub isn’t exactly a household name. Until now. Maybe. Perhaps.

Shaub has just quit as the head of the Office of Government Ethics. He is leaving his post six months before the end of his term. Why the early out?

It appears that Shaub has grown tired of battling with the president of the United States over the myriad ethical questions surrounding the president and his business interests around the world.

Shaub has been battling with Donald Trump over the president’s refusal to divest himself of the business interests, handing it all over to his sons while remaining as CEO of the empire.

The Hill reported: “Shaub told CBS News on Thursday evening that he doesn’t know whether Trump is profiting from his businesses, but that’s not the point.

“‘I can’t know what their intention is. I know that the effect is that there’s an appearance that the businesses are profiting from his occupying the presidency,’ he told CBS News correspondent Julianna Goldman during the first televised interview following his resignation.

“‘And appearance matters as much as reality, so even aside from whether or not that’s actually happening, we need to send a message to the world that the United States is going to have the gold standard for an ethics program in government, which is what we’ve always had,’ he continued.

Read the whole Hill article here.

Appearance matters as much as reality. Yes, and that is what Donald Trump doesn’t even begin to comprehend.

Comedians joke that the term “government ethics” has become a major-league oxymoron. The vastness of Donald Trump’s business empire has created an ethical morass for anyone charged with the task of trying to guide a presidential administration down a straight-and-narrow path.

International news, national news, political news

No, Mr. President; Obama did react to Russian hacking

Donald J. Trump keeps harping on a canard, which is that Barack Obama “did nothing” when he learned in the summer of 2016 about Russian efforts to hack into our electoral process.

Wrong, Mr. President.

Trump keeps dodging the question about whether he believes the Russians sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Today, he once again gave the Russians some political cover by saying that “other countries” are hacking us, too.

My point here, though, is that President Obama did react to reports of Russian hacking.

He imposed economic sanctions against individuals; he tossed Russian diplomats out of the United States; he closed two Russian diplomatic compounds — all of this in reaction to reports of Russian hacking.

Trump is having none of it. He wants to divert attention from the questions and suspicion that continues to swirl around him regarding the Russians and whatever — if any — relationship they had with the Trump presidential campaign.

I get that presidents have blamed their immediate predecessors for real and imagined problems. Obama laid a lot of blame at the feet of his predecessor, George W. Bush — although he did give the Bush administration plenty of credit for the work it had done in helping locate Osama bin Laden prior to the May 2011 commando raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader.

Is there ever going to be a moment when the current president would offer a good word to his immediate predecessor? Don’t hold your breath. I won’t.

As for Trump’s insistence that Obama did “nothing” to respond to Russian hackers, that’s just another lie.

International news, political news

Trump remains in Russia-meddling denial

Donald J. Trump got the question straight up and directly: Does he believe the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election?

How did the president respond to the question from NBC News’s Hallie Jackson today on the eve of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany? Sure, Russia meddled, but so did other nations, according to Trump. He couldn’t say which nations. They’ve all been doing it for a long time, the president said.

Then he sailed off into what’s becoming the classic Trump tactic: diversion, deflection and denial. He then blamed President Barack Obama’s administration for failing to do anything about Russia when it knew in July of 2016 about reports of meddling. He mentioned that the election didn’t occur until November and then asked, rhetorically of course, “Why didn’t the Obama administration do anything about it?”

Good grief, Mr. President. That’s not the question. The reporter asked about what he believes occurred and whether he stands with the U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia acted alone in seeking to corrupt the U.S. electoral process.

Oh, I fear this bodes poorly for the president’s meeting Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and whether Trump is going to confront Putin directly on what seemingly the rest of the world apparently knows: that Russia got its hands quite dirty while interfering in the election of the president of the United States.

International news, national news

POTUS’s team slow on hotel booking? What the … ?

This one almost defies any kind of comment — but I’ll try anyway.

Donald Trump’s White House team reportedly damn near couldn’t get the president of the United States a hotel room in Hamburg, Germany, where he’s set to attend the most crucial meetings of his still-brief time as president.

They waited too long.

I’m trying to imagine how the president of the world’s most powerful nation can be denied a room in a hotel as he prepares to be one of the key players in an amazing international geopolitical drama. He is set to meet at the G20 summit with leaders of the world’s 20 largest economic powers. One of them happens to be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who’s been in the news of late regarding his country’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

How does that happen? How does the White House botch this arrangement … allegedly?

Read Buzzfeed story here.

Is this yet another example of how the president described his White House operation as a “fine-tuned machine”?

If so, then this man needs yet another reality check.

entertainment news, Uncategorized

What? Ringo turns Double-7?

Ringo Starr has become a metaphor for my old age.

Oh, where has the time gone? You know who this guy is, right? He came into the world with the name Richard Starkey. He grew up in Liverpool, England. He played the drums a bit. Then he joined this band that had just fired its original drummer. They needed someone new to play the sticks for them.

John, Paul and George hired Ringo and, well, as they say: the rest is history.

He was the oldest of his new bandmates by just a few months; he was born July 7, 1940, just ahead of John Lennon, who was born Oct. 9 of that year.

Ringo’s musical imprint — along with that of John, George Harrison and Paul McCartney — became the signature not just for my generation, but for others that have come along since then.

But … not for everyone.

A couple of years ago, when Ringo was turning 75 — which is one of those landmark birthdays — I approached a colleague of mine at the business where I worked part time. I mentioned to her — suffice to say she is a good bit younger than yours truly, let alone Ringo — that it was Ringo’s 75th birthday. Isn’t that cool?

She gave me a blank stare and, as the Good Lord is my solemn witness, she said: Who’s Ringo Starr?

I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the ground. I also am pretty certain that my eyes damn near flew out of my head. How in the name of all that is holy and sacred does this young woman not know anything about Ringo Starr, one-fourth of the band that shaped her parents’ generation?

“Why, I never,” I answered my friend. “Don’t you know that this guy helped raise me?” And he did, too — right along with those three other guys.

If only Ringo would see this blog and know that in that one fleeting instant I had his back. The old drummer is about to turn 77. I hope my former colleague has learned just a little something about this living legend.

She just has to ask her parents.

media news

Declaring war on this overused cliche

I am declaring a state of war with a phrase that is driving me stark raving mad … I’m tellin’ ya.

“At the end of the day” has emerged as the most annoying cliché in the modern English language.

I just watched an interview on MSNBC’s “Last Word” show hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell, one of my favorite TV pundits/commentators. He didn’t use that phrase. O’Donnell apparently knows better.

Oh, no. It came from his guests: foreign policy wonk John McLaughlin and Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who is known for his expertise on Far East issues.

I heard Kristof drop “at the end of the day” twice in the span of about 15 seconds while responding to a question from O’Donnell. It’s particularly disappointing to hear it come from Kristof who, as a journalist, I am quite certain would never write that cliché in one of his NY Times columns.

(As an aside, I want to share with you that Kristof and I are “homeys” of a sort, as we both grew up in Oregon. I came of age in the Portland suburbs; Kristof grew up in the Willamette Valley.)

Here’s my theory on “at the end of the day” and its purpose for those who keep using it. It’s a setup phrase. I’ve concluded that whoever uses the phrase to preface a conclusion, it is to lend credence — a sort of gravitas — to whatever point the individual is trying to make.

“At end of the day, I am quite certain you have to stay hydrated during the hottest periods of the summer.”

Do you get it?

I do not yet know how this war I have declared will develop. I don’t have a strategy for waging it. I guess I’ll just start by pledging never to use it in this blog — except to call attention to its annoying quality; I also will pledge never to be caught dead saying it out loud.

If only these talking heads would toss the phrase into the crapper.

State news

Straus vs. Patrick: main event at special session

This might be nothing more than a sideshow, but it’s beginning to affect the agenda that awaits Texas legislators who are preparing to gather in Austin for a special session.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus — both Republicans — are the state’s two leading legislators. Patrick runs the Senate; Straus is the Man of the House.

They are at serious odds over one of the items that Gov. Greg Abbott has placed on the Legislature’s list of items to consider. It’s that damn “Bathroom Bill.”

Patrick insists that the Legislature enact a law that orders people to use public restrooms in accordance with the gender listed on their birth certificate. Straus opposes the bill and has made no secret that he dislikes the bill.

Now we hear that Straus has said something about how the Bathroom Bill is going to cause a spike in suicide among transgender Texans. As the Houston Chronicle reported:

“Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was rocked back on his heels and clearly on defense early in the week after Texas House Speaker Joe Straus opened a new line of attack on Patrick’s push to restrict restroom access based on gender. In short, Straus said he is concerned that the legislation will cause some vulnerable transgender Texans to take their own lives; it is a population that already has a high suicide rate.

“In an interview with the New Yorker, Straus said he rejected overtures from Patrick to resolve the issue because Straus was ‘disgusted by all this’ and ‘I don’t want the suicide of a single Texan on my hands.'”

Here’s the Chronicle story.

Now this ridiculous bill has become a life-and-death matter? Is that right?

To be blunt, I am disappointed that Gov. Abbott added this bill to the Legislature laundry list of legislative priorities for the special session. I dislike the idea of the state mandating public restroom use in this manner.

I believe it does discriminate against transgender individuals. Moreover, I cannot yet understand just how the state intends to enforce this rule were it ever to become law. Are we going to plant bathroom monitors? Will the state install cameras in restrooms, for crying out loud?

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Patrick and Speaker Straus are fighting between themselves over this idiotic notion.

I’m pulling for Straus.