Monthly Archives: August 2018

national news

Demographic changes ‘foisted on us’?

Lauran Ingraham is a conservative radio talker and TV commentator of some note who purports to speak for millions of Americans.

She said this: “In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore,” she complained.

“Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like. From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically, in some ways, the country has changed.”
Yes, the country has been changing since, oh, the moment the first colonialists walked ashore and began setting up camp in the New World.
I wonder how Native Americans then — or those today — might feel about the changes that have been “foisted” on them.
Donald Trump, environmental news

POTUS fails to perform this simple task

Donald J. Trump’s supporters don’t ever seem to hail the president’s empathy, his compassion, his sensitivity to others.

Have you noticed that?

Consider what a veteran broadcast journalist, Dan Rather, has tweeted about the president.

There are many difficult things for presidents to do. Finding space in your schedule (and soul) to speak empathetically about Americans suffering from natural disasters (wildfires, hurricanes) shouldn’t be one of them. And yet Pres. Trump routinely fails in this human instinct.

The president cannot seem to bring himself to express any support for these victims. Instead, he has chosen to blast environmental laws in a nonsensical attack on the wrong culprit.

Donald Trump has failed to perform one of those tasks that we all expect of our president. Ronald Reagan rose to the occasion, as did George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. All of them had reason to speak to the nation about the suffering our fellow Americans experienced. They comforted the heartbroken. They fulfilled the role of Comforter in Chief.

The current president cannot bring himself to do what is expected of him? Shameful.

military news

Nagasaki: That bomb ended it!

The United States Army Air Force dropped a second big bomb 73 years ago today.

That one exploded over Nagasaki, Japan. The first big blast, at Hiroshima, didn’t bring Japan to the surrender table. The second one did.

The atomic age had entered the world of warfare. It was called the Manhattan Project, where some of the world’s most brilliant nuclear physicists worked to perfect the atomic bomb.

They did. It worked.

The United States had been at war with Germany, Italy and Japan for nearly four years. Germany surrendered in May 1945; Italy called it quits in 1943.

Japan was left as the remaining Axis power. President Truman, new to the office he inherited when President Roosevelt died in April 1945, had the most difficult of decisions to make: whether to use this terrible new weapon.

He went with his gut. Yes, drop the bomb and hope to save many more lives than will be lost. That calculation proved accurate, too.

Nagasaki was devastated on Aug. 9, 1945 by an even bigger bomb than the one that leveled Hiroshima three days earlier. Less than a week after Nagasaki was incinerated, the Japanese surrendered.

World War II came to an end.

President Truman said he didn’t regret deploying the bomb. Many of the great men who developed it had second thoughts. The likes of Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein eventually expressed some form of regret for their roles in developing this monstrous weapon.

We all hope never to use them again. Twice was more than enough.

I can recall a quote attributed to Einstein, who once was asked how he thought a third world war would be fought. He said, in effect, that he didn’t know with absolute certainty, but was certain that the fourth world war would be fought “with sticks and stones.”

military news

What do we call those who enlist in the ‘Space Force’?

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Space Force? Is that a new military branch?

It’s no longer sufficient that our Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard comprise the finest and most sophisticated military force the world has ever seen.

The Trump administration is taking the first steps toward establishing a new military branch with its theater of operations to be in outer space. Beyond our atmosphere. Somewhere in the great beyond.

Call me skeptical, but I don’t get it.

I have to concur with the skepticism expressed this past June by U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who said, “That’s a serious subject. It’s one that I would have a hard time supporting. All of our branches have the space element and it’s working. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

What’s more, what do we call the enlistees? Astro-soldiers, extraterrestrial sailors or Marines, spacemen and women?

There once was a time in this country where we were concerned about the “militarization” of space. We were once locked in a Cold War with the communists in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Yes, we wanted to protect ourselves against attack from those two powers. President Reagan initiated a Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars, which established an anti-missile defense system.

Now, though, the Trump administration wants to create a whole new military service. They call it the Space Force.

I recall back in the 1960s, when NASA was considering who should be the first astronaut to set foot on the moon. NASA had been spooked a bit by the Soviets’ concern over reported U.S. plans to militarize the lunar surface. Its astronaut corps was full of active-duty military personnel.

NASA instead chose a civilian astronaut, Neil Armstrong, to take that “giant leap for mankind” as a symbolic gesture that sends the message that the United States had no intention of militarizing the moon.

Now we want to create a Space Force?

As Sen. Inhofe noted, our existing armed forces all have space elements that are working quite well.

Finally, can we really and truly afford the cost of creating this military branch?

Donald Trump, media news

Media ‘not supposed to be the story’

CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta is a man to whom I can relate. More or less.

He made an appearance last night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and asserted that the media aren’t supposed to be the story they are covering. Indeed, Acosta has become a media “celebrity” because of his frequent public clashes with White House press officials — notably press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Plus, Donald J. Trump continues to single out Acosta and CNN as purveyors of what he calls “fake news.”

The Hill reports: “Do you worry that the president points at y’all so much and there’s a natural need to respond as a human being that you end up being the story when that’s not really the goal of your journalism?” Colbert asked Acosta on the CBS “Late Show” host Wednesday night.

“We’re not supposed to be the story, you know. That’s not why I’m out there,” Acosta responded. “I get accused of that from time to time, and my attitude is ‘Listen, I’m allowed to care about this country as much as anybody else.'”

I, too, lament the way the media have become part of the story. In a perfect world — and this one has never been perfect — the media would report the news and remain in the shadows. I liken it to the sports referee who no one notices, until the ref does something stupid or otherwise noteworthy.

The president chooses to make the media the story by continuing to hammer them over the way they cover his administration.

He won’t simply allow the media to do their job. He won’t accept that not all news is positive. He doesn’t recognize the media’s role in holding public officials accountable. Therefore, he ratchets up the volume whenever he fires off those tweets accusing the media of being the “enemy of the people.”

That all said, the notion that Acosta would agree to appear on a late-night TV show with a host who has been notably critical of the president suggests that he isn’t exactly walking the walk in terms of seeking anonymity.

His message about the media’s role — as the chronicler of events — is on point. The media mustn’t become “the story,” and that precludes CNN’s chief White House reporter from appearing on a national TV show.

Donald Trump, national news, political news

Birtherism falls along racial lines

Now that some of us have raised the “racism” issue as it concerns Donald Trump’s pointed — and quite specific — criticism of African-American political foes, I want to revisit the issue of “birtherism.”

Trump made a lot of noise years ago about whether Barack Obama was qualified to run for president. He based his questions about the lie that Obama was born in Kenya. Therefore, he couldn’t run for president because, according to the U.S. Constitution, Obama wasn’t a “natural-born” citizen of America.

Obama, of course, was born in Hawaii in 1961. He said so at the outset. He finally produced a birth certificate to prove it. That wasn’t good enough for Trump and many others.

Why did Trump and others continue to foment the lie?

Uhh, let me see. Oh, I think it’s race. Obama’s father was a Kenyan. His mother was from Kansas. Dad was black; Mom was white. Get it?

Now, for the other noted “birther” case. It involves U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who ran against Trump for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2016.

Cruz actually was born outside the United States. He was born in Canada. His father is Cuban. His mother is an American.

Sen. Cruz was able to quell the questions with a simple — and generally accepted — interpretation of the Constitution. Since his mother is a U.S. citizen, Baby Ted became a U.S. citizen immediately upon his birth. Therefore, he qualifies as a “natural-born” citizen simply because of his mother’s citizenship.

Hey, that same logic works for the former president, too. His mother was a U.S. citizen, making him an American the moment he came into this wold. Except that wouldn’t fly in the minds of his critics … and that includes the president of the United States.

And all of that presumes he was born somewhere other than the United States! He was born in the U.S.A., but the questions continue to linger even to this day among most Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans.

Is race a factor? Hmm. I believe it is.

national news

Rep. Collins arrested by FBI; says he’ll seek re-election

U.S. Rep. Chris Collins is well within his rights to run for re-election while the federal government prosecutes him on a charge of insider trading.

The New York Republican, though, might be handing local and national Democrats a gift they never thought they’d get.

The FBI took Collins into custody on a charge that he gave insider trading information on stocks. The lawmaker then held a press event in which he declared the charge is “without merit.”

He then said he is going to run for re-election.

Good luck with that one, sir.

Collins has the distinction of being the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. He was No. 1. The leader of the congressional “pack.”

He’s not the first lawmaker to seek re-election while under investigation. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez did so, too. The Democrat wasn’t exactly cleared; the jury that heard his corruption case got hung up and couldn’t deliver a verdict, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial.

Collins’s decision to stay on the ballot does carry huge risk, not just for him, but others within the GOP. He well might have given Democrats all across the land a huge cache of ammo to use against Republican opponents.

Beware the blue wave. There might be swells building at this moment.

Donald Trump

Avoid ‘perjury trap’? Sure, just tell the truth!

The president of the United States is highly unlikely to appear voluntarily before the special counsel who is examining whether the president’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russian hackers who interfered in our election.

I say that wishing Donald Trump would agree to meet with Robert Mueller.

Trump said last year that he was “100 percent” in favor of meeting with Mueller. Silly us, particularly those of us who took the president at his word in the moment. He lied to us then. He likely would lie to Mueller and his legal team.

Therein is the reason why the president won’t agree to meet voluntarily with Mueller. Trump’s legal team fears what they call a “perjury trap.” That is as phony a dodge as anything they have said regarding Trump and this investigation.

The most sure-fire way to avoid committing perjury is for the president to tell the truth. If the special counsel or one of his deputies were to ask him a direct question, he should answer it with equal directness — and with the “whole truth.”

If the president were wired to tell the truth instead of lie constantly, this “perjury trap” nonsense would be irrelevant. Except that this president is wired to prevaricate, to fabricate and to lie through is teeth.

That’s why he won’t meet with Robert Mueller. At least not of his own volition.

Donald Trump

‘Your favorite president’? Hardly, Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump clearly isn’t talking to me. I know he doesn’t know me from Adam, doesn’t give a rip what I think about anything.

However, he put this Twitter message out that said:

The Republicans have now won 8 out of 9 House Seats, yet if you listen to the Fake News Media you would think we are being clobbered. Why can’t they play it straight, so unfair to the Republican Party and in particular, your favorite President!

What does he mean “your favorite President!”?

My favorite president left office on Jan. 20, 2017.

Everyone knew the president would brag about the election results. He took credit for GOP victories in the U.S. House of Representatives. I get that the GOP won eight out of nine seats. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story, kind of like the way Trump doesn’t tell the whole story about his own election to the presidency in 2016. Instead, he fabricates the circumstance of his election, calling it a “record,” most lopsided victory since Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984 … blah, blah, blah.

So now he’s yapping about his party’s victories. They are by the skin of the president’s teeth. In congressional districts where Democrats have no business being competitive.

Hey, I understand that a win is a win and that winners are defined clearly as those who get more votes than the other guy.

These wins, though, don’t deserve all the braggin’ they’re getting from Donald Trump.

national news

Nixon’s resignation now seems oddly relevant

The 44th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office carries an odd poignancy when you consider what is happening in real time — today!

On Aug. 9, 1974, President Nixon handed over his letter of resignation to the secretary of state, walked out of the White House and flew away aboard Marine One. His covering up of the Watergate scandal did him in.

Gerald R. Ford took the presidential oath of office and declared that “our long national nightmare is over.”

I fear we’ve entered into another tempest of nightmarish proportions.

No one knows how the investigation into Donald J. Trump’s difficulty is going to turn out. Special counsel Robert Mueller is deep into his probe of “the Russia thing” and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

The president is acting like a man in trouble. He keeps declaring Mueller’s probe to be a “rigged witch hunt.” Mueller, though, is keeping his head down, his shoulder to the wheel and has clamped down on his legal team to protect against any leaks.

His 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is on trial for money laundering. Mueller has indicted several other key aides to the president. He has obtained guilty pleas from some of them.

What we have on our hands, dear reader, is a monumental mess. The president refuses to keep his mouth shut while Mueller does his job, sounding for all the world as if he has something he doesn’t want revealed … whatever it is.

So it is with a certain sense of dread that we look back 44 years to when another president, Richard Nixon, was given the grim news from his fellow Republicans. It was that he didn’t have enough Senate support to acquit him if an impeachment went to trial. Then it fell to GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona to tell the president he had to quit.

The president followed Sen. Goldwater’s advice. President Ford reminded us that “our Constitution works.” Yes, it did then.

It will work again, no matter what happens with this president.