Monthly Archives: January 2018

national news, political news

Eric Greitens: latest casualty in ‘family values’ war

Don’t sit down, Gov. Eric Greitens. I’m going to talk about you for a moment.

This fellow is a Republican governor from Missouri. He’s been in office for only about a year. He also is making quite a name for himself.

He ran for office as a “family values” candidate. He once proclaimed his love for his wife and children and the happiness he feels at being a married man and father.

The former Navy SEAL — who was a Democrat until he switched parties in 2015 — was even discussed as a possible presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024.

Then came this: He fooled around with a woman other than his wife before he was elected governor. What’s even more troubling is that he allegedly threatened her if she blabbed about it.

The woman, who was married at the time, is now divorced from her husband. Greitens remains married to his wife. He admits to the affair, but denies threatening the woman with whom he took the tumble.

Family values …

Wow. What are we to make of political candidates who make such a big show of their marriage? How are we supposed to react when they get caught in the big lie? I take this kind of thing quite badly. It doesn’t go down well. Why? Because of the show politicians such as Greitens make when they actually boast about their marital fidelity on the campaign stump — as if someone keeping a vow he makes before God is worth a boast.

This clown reminds me of so many politicians who’ve proclaimed their love for the spouse only to be revealed to be philanderers.

Does the name John Edwards ring a bell? Edwards was the 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee who campaigned across the land declaring his devotion to his late wife, Elizabeth — while he was messing around with a woman who later gave birth to a baby, courtesy of that relationship with Edwards.

This kind of revelation sickens me in the extreme. Gov. Greitens makes me sick, too, given that he made such a phony show of his marital devotion.

Politicians who lie about their faithfulness then deserve all the scorn they receive.

Now … you may sit down, Gov. Greitens. And may you disappear from the national political scene.

national news

Is there a Liars Anonymous organization?

Donald Trump needs an intervention.

The president of the United States cannot tell the truth. He cannot state simply the reality of any situation he confronts, or that stands in his way.

Trump decided to lie like a rug yet again when he announced his decision to cancel a planned state visit to Great Britain. His excuse? He said former President Barack Obama brokered a bad deal to purchase the site for a new U.S. Embassy in London.

Trump blasted his immediate predecessor for paying too much public money to relocate the embassy.

So, that was his pretext for deciding against visiting the UK?

Two points are worth making here.

One is that his stated reason is as transparently phony as it can possibly get. The president doesn’t need to fabricate a reason to avoid going somewhere. The real reason clearly has to be that Brits cannot stand him. He was going to run straight into the teeth of intense public protests were he to visit Great Britain.

He has insulted British Prime Minister Teresa May; he has hurled ill-founded criticism of London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, who happens to be a Muslim (and we certainly know how Trump feels about those who practice the Islamic faith).

The second point is this: The deal to purchase the embassy site was brokered under the administration of President George W. Bush. It was finalized in 2008, the year before Barack H. Obama took office.

Donald Trump has a serious grudge against Barack Obama. What fuels it? Is it that the former president exhibited the class and grace that the current president lacks? Is it the former president’s continued high standing among Americans? Is it because of the former president’s racial … oh, you know.

Donald Trump cannot tell the truth. He is a pathological liar.

He needs to enroll in a Liars Anonymous session — if there’s one available … and declare: My name is Donald and I am a liar.

 

International news

Memo to Carlson: POTUS mustn’t talk like that

1 Comment

I certainly expected right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson to give Donald Trump a pass on his “s***hole” comment about Haiti and nations in Africa.

The Fox News host/commentator said the president “something almost every person in America agrees with.” Trump, as you know by now, griped out loud during a White House meeting on immigration about the nation accepting so many immigrants from “s***hole” countries; he mentioned Haiti and those in the continent of Africa. He then lamented whether the United States should encourage more immigration from “countries like Norway.”

I will not argue the point about the quality of life in the nations Trump disparaged in such a reprehensible manner, except to say that the people who live there deserve a level of respect that Donald Trump is incapable of giving them.

However, I want to make a point about what Carlson said in response to the president’s hideous remarks.

Whether “almost every person in American agrees” with what Trump said totally misses a critical point.

I am one American who believes that presidents of the United States shouldn’t make such statements in public. I cannot prevent presidents from thinking such things. However, for crying out loud, the current president needs to exercise some semblance of discretion when discussing issues of keen importance to the United States of America.

That he would make such a ghastly statement reveals what many of us have believed all along about the president: Donald Trump is an ignorant racist.

So, to Tucker Carlson, I will say: Read my lips, young man. I don’t give a damn what you might think of some portions of the rest of the world … but I certainly do care when the leader of my beloved country pops off like a tinhorn thug.

International news, media news, national news

Do we quote the president … completely?

An interesting back story is developing in the wake of Donald John “Potty Mouth” Trump’s latest crude utterance.

Some media outlets are debating whether to publish or broadcast a profane expletive in an unedited form.

You know of which I am talking. The president expressed an angry epithet this week while discussing immigration with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the White House; he asked why the United States accepts immigrants from countries that are, um, less desirable than others.

He doesn’t understand why we accept immigrants from Haiti and from Africa. He wants to see more immigration from countries such as Norway.

He used a word I don’t like publishing on this blog. I choose to disguise it lightly with asterisks; readers know what it says. How do they know it? Because some  media outlets say it out loud.

CNN made a point of using the term explicitly in its coverage of the controversy last night. Anderson Cooper and then Chris Cuomo made no apologies for it. They both said the public needed to hear the word that flew out of the president’s mouth. Cuomo commented on how his children listened to Dad say it while he was offering commentary and was questioning guests on his news-talk show.

CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett, though, made a point that his network won’t repeat the word as Trump blurted it out.

I am going to continue to disguise the epithet. I once made a vow about a year ago that this blog wouldn’t sink into the rhetorical rathole.

I prefer to let gutter mouths — such as the president of the United States — speak for themselves.

International news

Trump blames Obama as he cancels foreign trip? Yeah, right!

Who in the name of international embarrassment does Donald John Trump think he’s kidding?

The president announced overnight that  he’s canceling a planned trip to Great Britain … because, he said, his predecessor agreed to a deal that cost the United States too much to build a new embassy in London.

Huh? What? Eh?

It’s Barack Obama’s fault that the president isn’t going to take part in a state visit with this nation’s most valuable ally?

This is just my view own view — and I suspect others share it too — but the real reason is quite different. He’s not going to Britain because he would be hooted off the island nation. The Brits cannot stand the U.S. president, who said the mayor of London didn’t do enough to prevent attacks by Islamist terrorists; I’ll add here that the mayor happens to be a Muslim — and Trump made the tasteless remark in the wake of just such an attack!

There’s also that issue of the travel ban that Trump has sought to impose against Muslims seeking entry into the United States.

Yep. The Brits are angry. Prime Minister Teresa May also has received her share of insults from the president.

Donald Trump, though, thinks he governs a nation of 300 million rubes, dolts who cannot grasp the obvious.

Which is that the president of the United States is a embarrassing our nation daily.

Shameful.

International news

Did he really say ‘s***hole’?

The president is on record calling nations in Africa and Haiti “s***holes.”

Donald Trump wants to encourage more immigration from Norway. I’ll make a leap and presume he means also more from western Europe, maybe even from Asia.

The president is pushing what he’s calling a “merit-based” immigration policy. Riff-raff need not seek to enter the United States of America, under the Trump policy.

I’m thinking tonight of my grandparents. All four of them came to this country from Europe. They weren’t from the western part of the continent; they all hailed from southeast Europe — from Greece and the European portion of Turkey.

Mom’s parents were from Marmara, Turkey; Dad’s parents hailed from the Peloponnese, the southern peninsula of Greece.

I’m wondering: Were they from s***hole countries, the type that Trump has described? Would they even be allowed to enter the United States in the 21st century?

None of them was well-educated in an academic sort of way. I’m not sure they would be deemed worthy of “merit-based” admission based on their humble beginnings in southeast Europe.

But … they all came here in the early 20th century. They were model citizens. They became proud Americans. My grandparents produced 10 children: three on Mom’s side and seven on Dad’s side.

All five of their sons served in the military; three of them served in combat during World War II and the Korean War; one of the WWII combat vets was my father. One of their daughters served, too. They answered the call to arms in a manner that Donald Trump  did not. Imagine that.

I take this immigration debate seriously and quite personally. I am the grandson of immigrants who might or might not have been given the keys to their new country if they had to meet some sort of “merit-based” standard set by the current president of the United States.

Now he labels an entire continent as a place full of “s***hole” nations and suggests other Third World countries elsewhere produce citizens who are unfit for entry into the world’s greatest and — until recently — most welcoming nation.

Sad. And disgraceful.

International news

Trump cements a racist pattern

OK — and if you’ll pardon me for saying this — let’s “tell it like it is.”

Donald John Trump has exhibited a clear pattern of racist views.

The president today said the United States needs to curb immigration from “s***hole countries” such as Haiti and those in Africa. He then said we need to encourage immigrants from, oh, Norway.

We are witnessing yet another demonstration that the president of the United States has racist thoughts. He has revealed yet again what lurks in what passes for this man’s heart.

It fits a pattern.

  • He called white supremacists, Klansmen and Nazis “fine people” after the Charlottesville, Va., riot this past summer.
  • Trump insisted for years that the nation’s first African-American president was born abroad and wasn’t legally entitled to campaign for, let alone, occupy the office to which he was elected twice.
  • When he announced his campaign for president, Trump said Mexican immigrants were rapists, murderers and drug dealers.
  • The five young black men who were acquitted of raping a white woman in Central Park many years ago should be executed for a crime they never committed, Trump said; he’s never apologized for that statement.
  • The professional football players who kneeled prior to games to protest police conduct against black Americans are “sons of b******,” Trump said.
  • Trump has said Haitians “all have AIDS,” and said Nigerians live “in huts.”

This is the man elected president of the United States? This individual is supposed to represent the very best of the greatest nation on Earth?

I am tired of dancing around the issue. It’s time to call this man what he is. He’s not just a pathological liar. He is a racist.

He’s also a disgrace.

International news

Trump said what about these countries?

Donald John “Potty Mouth” Trump Sr. is giving us all a bad name, dear reader.

It’s being reported that during a heated meeting in the White House, the president of the United States referred to immigrants from certain parts of the world as coming from “s***hole countries.”

Oh, he was referring to places such as Haiti and nations in Africa.

Then he reportedly said the United States needs more immigrants from, um, Norway.

OK. What are we saying here? Is the president saying “no” to immigrants from Third World countries populated by dark-skinned citizens? And is he suggesting further that by encouraging immigration from Norway and, I’ll presume for a moment, other Scandinavian countries, that he favors blonde, blue-eyed foreigners coming here?

As one can expect, the president’s remarks have drawn criticism from those who say he is race-baiting. They suggest the president is revealing — one more time — a crassness that betrays bias against people of a certain racial or ethnic makeup.

This isn’t Trump’s first derogatory statement about some of Earth’s inhabitants. He said once that everyone in Haiti suffers from AIDS and that Nigerians don’t want to return “to their huts.”

The White House hasn’t denied the president made those hideous remarks this week. Instead, the White House issued this statement, which reads in part, according to The Hill: “Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people,” White House spokesperson Raj Shah said in a statement. 

Someone will have to explain to me what that means.

The immigration meeting offers another example of Donald Trump’s blatant ignorance of the principles that have made this country a beacon of hope to people around the world. Those principles have produced an open-arms policy that tells immigrants they are welcome here regardless of their socio-economic condition or — and this is critical — of their racial or ethnic background.

Spare me the refrain that Trump is merely “telling it like it is.”

He has disgraced himself. I fear he also has disgraced the high office to which he was elected.

national news

POTUS shows that ‘Fire and Fury’ is accurate

Michael Wolff wrote a book, “Fire and Fury,” that alleges that the president of the United States is clueless about government and the issues of the day — among other things.

Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. responds that the book is crap; it’s fiction; it’s fake.

Then he convened an open-mic session in the White House to discuss immigration reform — and manages to demonstrate in real time the accuracy of Wolff’s description of Trump’s handling of affairs of state.

The man is clueless! Really! He doesn’t have a clue!

Trump said he’d sign whatever immigration bill the congressional leadership brought to his desk. Then came House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to remind the president that, actually, he cannot make that promise.

Why? Because the GOP base won’t stand for just any old immigration bill, such as something that doesn’t include construction of a wall along our nation’s southern border.

This is deal-making? This is how the “art of the deal” gets done?

Margaret Carlson, certainly no fan of Trump, wrote this in the Daily Beast:

What the White House actually accomplished Tuesday is the opposite of what it set out to do—set the bar low and show a president carrying out presidential tasks competently. If this had been Trump at the first tee, he’d have shanked it 50 yards into the woods. Into the bargain, the White House staff took more mulligans than (Bill) Clinton ever did. Aside from giving in to his Democratic captors, all the king’s men couldn’t keep him from going off script to long nostalgically for the olden days of Jack Abramoff memorial earmarks.

Read the rest of Carlson’s essay here.

Wolff actually stated in “Fire and Fury” that the White House operates in a state of constant confusion, chaos and contradiction.

I believe we have seen a demonstrable example of what Wolff wrote.

national news

Donald Trump is a White House ‘nobody’?

Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway has just offered a doozy.

The White House senior adviser actually said on national TV that “nobody here talks about Hillary Clinton.”

I won’t take too much time to respond to this latest alternative fact.

Conway got into a televised tiff with CNN’s Chris Cuomo , who challenged her assertion that Hillary Clinton’s name is never mentioned within the walls of the White House.

The president of the United States — for crying out loud! — keeps talking about Hillary. He did so yet again this week at a press conference. He keeps reminding us that he won the 2016 presidential election. Donald J. “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. keeps referring to Hillary as “my opponent.”

So, is Conway telling us that the president is a “nobody”?

Well, of course not!

However, she has offered some phony version of the truth that bears no resemblance to the real thing.