Monthly Archives: June 2018

International news, military news

Trump tosses truth into the crapper

Donald John “Liar in Chief” Trump’s disdain for the truth has taken an amazing new turn — if that is possible.

He came out of his summit with North Korean dictator/despot Kim Jong Un and declared how “thousands” of parents of missing Korean War veterans begged him to get their remains returned to the United States for proper burial.

The president then said it again today in an extraordinary — and bizarre — media “availability” at the White House.

Let’s back it up a bit, shall we?

The Korean War ceasefire took effect in 1953. That was 65 years ago. A warrior who was lost at the very end of the Korean War might be, oh, 83 to 85 years of age today, if not older. His parents? Let’s see, they would be at minimum 100 years of age, presuming Mom gave birth to her son when she was around 18 years old.

The likelihood is that these parents of missing Korean War vets who begged Donald Trump to do something about their sons’  remains would be much older. Maybe about 120 years of age.

Thus, for the president to say that “thousands” of these parents came to the presidential candidate — who then became president — to seek the return of their remains is an … outright, bald-faced lie.

He is lying in a manner few of us have ever seen in a public official, let alone in the president of the United States.

I gave up a while ago griping about Donald Trump’s penchant for tweeting policy statements. I cannot let pass this individual’s continuing to lie directly to the people he was elected to serve.

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 51

Toby the Puppy always seems to attract attention among children who see him walking with my wife and/or me on his leash.

A little boy, about age 7 or so, saw Toby the other day as we were strolling through the Amarillo recreational vehicle park where we lived for a time.

“Can I pet him?” the boy asked. Sure thing. The youngster stroked the puppy’s head; Toby responded with some licks.

Then the boy asked, “What’s his favorite thing to do?” I didn’t have to think for an instant about that one. “He loves to fetch his toys,” I said. The youngster got it.

Yes, Toby is a relentless toy fetcher. His endurance is boundless. His energy knows no limit. He loves to fetch his squeaky toys. What’s more, he’s getting very good at it.

The toy squeaks when he bites down. Then he promptly returns it directly to our feet. Right there. At our feet. We need not reach too far to pick it up and toss it again.

I’ve mentioned to you already on this blog about Toby makes us laugh every single day. He’s been a member of our family for not quite four years and, yes, we have laughed with him every day since he became a part of our lives.

The fetching provides plenty of opportunity for his mother and me to laugh. I never tire of a good laugh as I watch him. He cracks me up.

Maybe, too, it’s because I want to find humor wherever it presents itself, given the depressing state of political news these days. Whatever.

I simply am grateful that Toby the Puppy is able — and so very willing — to provide it.

business news

Two years later, Trump still making no sense on trade

I posted a blog item nearly two years ago wondering if Donald Trump knew a damn thing about trade policy.

My conclusion, based on what I understood from a speech he gave in Bangor, Maine, was that he was clueless.

I must maintain that conclusion today.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/06/incoherence-on-trade-policy/

Now that he is president of the United States, Trump has decided to impose steep and punishing tariffs on imported goods from two of our nation’s most vital trading partners: Canada and Mexico.

The Republican president has trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which includes the United States and, yes, Canada and Mexico. NAFTA was intended to forgo the kind of protectionist tariffs that governments impose on other nations.

The concept of “free trade” is to allow goods and commodities to flow among participating countries. To that end, I long have believed NAFTA was doing as it was intended.

Yet the president took office after promising to re-do NAFTA. I don’t know the basis of his disagreement with the agreement, except that he says the United States is wallowing in some sort of deepening “trade deficit” with our primary trading partners.

Now he’s calling Canada — Canada, I tell ya! — a threat to our “national security.” Does this guy, the president, know anything — about anything?

Two years ago, in Maine, Trump told us he favored free trade; then in the same speech, he said he opposed it.

His nonsensical approach to trade has not abated one bit now that he has taken an oath to serve as the head of state of our great nation.

This is what we acquired when Donald Trump got elected?

Holy cow, man!

national news

‘Haven’t paid … close attention’? Really, Mr. Speaker?

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan needs to be called out for telling a lie. So, I think I’ll do that.

He said this today in response to a question about whether he had faith in Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt:

“Frankly I haven’t paid that close attention to it … I don’t know enough about what Pruitt has or has not done to give you a good comment.”

Really and truly, Mr. Speaker? He is saying that all this tumult over EPA Administrator Pruitt’s mounting ethical troubles have gone unnoticed by the nation’s third-in-line for the presidency. He hasn’t paid “close attention to it,” he said.

Good grief, Mr. Speaker. Do you expect anyone to believe this?

I am quite certain he knows quite enough to make a comment on Pruitt’s troubles. He just doesn’t want to say anything about it.

Let me refresh his memory: Pruitt secured a dirt-cheap rental agreement for himself and his wife from a lobbyist who represents a company that is subject to EPA rules and regulations; Pruitt has been spending extravagantly for such things as a “secure telephone booth” in his office; his travel tabs have been exorbitant as well.

These are ethical matters that keep on piling up.

It’s been in all the papers. Cable news networks have been reporting on these matters.

The speaker of the House hasn’t heard enough about it to make a comment, to answer a reporter’s simple and direct question?

I don’t believe the speaker is telling the truth.

International news

Clergyman is right: Policy is ‘immoral’

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions should put his Bible away and open it again on Sunday when he’s in church.

The Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border is not in keeping with biblical principles. It is, as Cardinal Daniel DiNardo called it, an “immoral” policy.

The administration has invoked this policy as a deterrent against illegal immigrants. Donald Trump doesn’t want illegal immigrants to enter this country. I join him in that regard. I want strict border enforcement as much as he does and as much as the attorney general wants it.

Do we really need to separate babies from their mothers and fathers? Do we really need to torture these parents by keeping their children away from them while immigration officials sort out how to handle these individuals’ undocumented entry into the United States?

Sessions invoked the Bible when he said Romans 13 compels governments to enforce the law apparently by whatever means they deem necessary. Sessions said in Fort Wayne, Ind., according to The Associated Press: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” he said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

Did the Almighty compel the separation of children — some of them infants — from their parents? I think that’s open to serious discussion.

The administration has other responsibilities, too, according to Cardinal DiNardo, who said: “Our government has the discretion in our laws to ensure that young children are not separated from their parents and exposed to irreparable harm and trauma,” DiNardo said in a statement.

Reprehensible.

national news, political news

IG takes former FBI boss to the woodshed

The FBI’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, has laid it out there.

James Comey, the FBI director during the 2016 presidential campaign, messed up royally. He broke with Justice Department protocol by failing to consult with Attorney General Loretta Lynch when he called a press conference to say he had no hard evidence to prosecute Hillary Clinton over the use of her personal e-mail account.

That press conference in July 2016 brought out allegations of “rigged election” from Donald J. Trump.

There’s more. The IG also said Comey messed up when, 11 days from the election, he sent a letter to Congress revealing that he was looking once again at Clinton’s e-mail matter.

The Clinton camp said the latter announcement swung the election in Trump’s favor.

Oh … brother.

This investigation by Horowitz is likely to grow dozens of legs. The president no doubt is going to seize on some element of the IG’s findings to demonstrate that the FBI was biased against him.

Except that the IG has said that he found no evidence of politicization at the July 2016 news conference or when he announced in October of that year that he was looking again at the e-mail matter.

I am one American who is reluctant to say categorically that Comey’s second announcement on the cusp of Election Day was decisive in determining the outcome. However, it appears to look as though there might have been some tangible impact. Clinton’s momentum stopped dead. Journalists covering the campaign reportedly said in the moment that Comey’s letter to Congress effectively ended Clinton’s chances of winning.

In the period since that amazing, tumultuous episode, Trump has sought to turn Comey into a villain. Trump fired Comey over the “Russia thing,” and has vilified the former FBI director, calling him a liar, a showboat and everything short of being the son of Satan himself.

Of course, the president has turned his big guns on special counsel Robert Mueller, who’s looking into the Russian meddling in our electoral process.

A detailed IG report by all rights should add clarity to a complicated investigation. I fear that Michael Horowitz’s report has made it cloudier than ever.

military news

Saluting is back in the news

Whether to salute is back in the news.

Donald Trump was recorded saluting a North Korean general in what appears to be an awkward, unscripted moment. The president extended his hand, the general saluted him, the president then returned the salute.

It looked clumsy.

This mini-kerfuffle does bring to mind a discussion that emerges from time to time: Does a president return salutes from military personnel? Should he do so?

Recent presidents have done so. It’s appropriate, given their role as commander in chief. Presidents Obama, Bush (43) and Clinton all did it; so did President Reagan. Bill Clinton, as I recall, needed some schooling on how to salute, given that his initial efforts looked a bit, well, clumsy as well. Active-duty military personnel and veterans picked up on it right away.

Donald Trump’s return of these salutes look just fine to me. He snaps it properly. Perhaps he learned how to salute during his years in military school prior to heading off to college.

I like watching presidents return these salutes, as long as they know what they’re doing when they snap them back at military personnel who initiate them.

As for the current president’s clumsy moment in Singapore, it’s no big deal.

national news

Happy Flag Day, America

Happy Flag Day, everyone. Are you flying Old Glory outside your house? Or from your car? Or from the back of your motorcycle?

Good for you if you are. If not, hey, that’s OK, too.

You see, the flag we honor today symbolizes our freedom to fly the flag — or not fly it if that’s what we prefer.

Whether we fly the flag doesn’t diminish our love of country, or the flag that symbolizes our great nation.

This is particularly significant this year because of some of the kerfuffle that has been stirred up by professional athletes who “take a knee” during the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” before athletic events. The athletes, most of whom are African-American, have protested police brutality in communities across the country.

Do they hate the country, or the military personnel, or the flag when they decline to stand during the National Anthem playing? No.

Then again, the flag we honor today symbolizes the government that gives athletes the right to make these statements. Donald J. Trump has chosen to demonize them, however, using the flag as a sort of rhetorical weapon. The president has it exactly wrong!

We honor the flag because of the symbolism it carries. We don’t honor a piece of red, white and blue cloth. We honor the system of government our nation’s founders created, the government that allows unfettered protest.

Yes, that includes efforts by those to burn the flag when they protest government policy. Is that an effective way to win converts to your point of view? Hardly. No one is going to make me align with their cause by burning the flag. Indeed, I cherish the flag too much to tolerate anyone doing such a thing in my presence.

However, the court system created by the founders stands by people’s right to burn the flag to seek “redress” of their grievances.

The flag we honor is a glorious symbol of freedom. Oh, how I love the principles for which it flies in all its glory.

Enjoy your Flag Day.

International news

Whether to bow or salute?

Do you remember the time President Barack Obama was criticized/ridiculed/condemned for supposedly bowing before Saudi King Abdullah.

I’ve seen the video of that encounter. Critics said the president of the United States shouldn’t humiliate himself by bowing before a foreign head of state.

Now we have Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, returning an awkward salute from a North Korean general. You’ve seen the video, yes? The president walked down a line of dignitaries. He extended his hand. He did so with the general, who then saluted the president; Trump returned the salute.

Can he do that? Should he do that? I mean, North Korea is an “enemy state” that technically is still at war with the United States and the rest of the world. At least we weren’t at war with Saudi Arabia when Barack Obama greeted that country’s monarch.

Still, the Trump salute probably is not as big a deal as many critics might make of it, any more than the Obama bow before the Saudi king denigrated the nation he was elected to lead.

The bigger problem for Trump is the rhetoric he has used to describe Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator whose policies should qualify him as deserving of standing trial for crimes against humanity. Trump calls this despot “honorable” and a “great negotiator.”

International news, media news

Who’s the real ‘enemy,’ Mr. President?

I find it weird in the extreme that Donald J. Trump is getting cozy with a real “enemy of the American people.”

Except that the president has declared another entity to be the people’s No. 1 enemy.

He calls North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un an “honorable” man. Yes, a young despot who should be tried for crimes against humanity on the basis of the treatment he levels against his own people is now the president’s newest best friend. Trump calls Kim “smart” and a “great negotiator.”

Oh, but who’s the “enemy” that Trump has identified? It’s the media. The American journalists who cover the Trump administration has incurred the president’s wrath. He calls the media the “greatest enemy of the American people.”

Now, I believe that is a perversion of the first order.

The president cuddles (proverbially) with dictators/thugs/killers while excoriating the media that are seeking to hold him and his administration accountable to the public — the president’s employers.

I don’t know about you, but the president has it exactly backward.

Oh, and then there are the Russians …