Monthly Archives: December 2018

national news

Let’s call it Air Force One, even though it really isn’t

The big blue-and-white Boeing 747 that is carrying the late President George H.W. Bush back to Washington, D.C., for his state funeral has a new name.

I’m going to refer to it as Air Force One, even though in the strict definition of the term, it isn’t. For this flight it is known as Special Air Mission 41.

Air Force One is referred to any aircraft that is carrying the president of the United States. Piper Cub, Stealth Bomber, Gulfstream jet, Boeing 747, it doesn’t matter. If one of its passengers is the president, it is Air Force One.

The jet is carrying as well the former president’s children, including the 43rd president, George W. Bush.

I have been struck by TV news commentators referring to the jet as Air Force One, as if it’s how you refer to the jet at all times.

Well, I’m going to stray from decorum and refer as well to the big jet that is taking Bush 41 back to the place where he toiled for eight years as vice president and four years as head of state.

This great — and good — man has earned one final ride aboard Air Force One.

FBI, national news

Comey scores a victory

Former FBI director James Comey has given up his effort to avoid testifying before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in private, behind closed doors.

But . . . he scored an important concession from the committee in return: The panel will release to the public the full transcript of what House members ask him and Comey’s answers to the inquiries.

Comey was summoned to appear before the committee to tell members about his firing by Donald Trump and about the FBI investigation into alleged collusion with Russian government agents who attacked our electoral system. We might get to know what was said at the time and what if anything his dismissal might reveal to those of us who are concerned about whether the president obstructed justice by firing the FBI boss.

Comey’s reluctance was centered on the nature of the questions that committee members might ask and whether Republican members in particular would be overly hostile. He wanted it all done in public, in front of the nation and the world. He sued to have it his way, but then backed away when Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., agreed to release the transcripts for public scrutiny.

Comey in effect got what he wanted. The public will be allowed to see what he said, what the committee asked him and will be able to discern the nature of the inquiry.

The former FBI director said in a tweet: Grateful for a fair hearing from judge. Hard to protect my rights without being in contempt, which I don’t believe in. So will sit in the dark, but Republicans agree I’m free to talk when done and transcript released in 24 hours. This is the closest I can get to public testimony.

Hey, it’s close enough, Mr. Director. Talk to us after it’s done. We’re all ears.

International news

Trump talks to Putin? Big deal; just no press conferences

The White House has confirmed that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin talked to each other at the G20 conference in Buenos Aires.

In keeping with my pledge to go soft on the president and Putin for the time being, I’ll merely say: So what? Big f****** deal, man!

Trump and Putin were two of the many world leaders who gathered to talk to each other about a whole host of issues. Trump had canceled the one-on-one meeting with Putin ostensibly over the Russians’ aggression in the Black Sea against Ukrainian navy ships. There well might be some domestic concerns coming into play. Whatever.

That the U.S. president and the Russian president talked to each other doesn’t necessarily portend another embarrassment for Donald Trump, as did the Helsinki summit the men conducted.

At least they won’t appear together in a press conference.

national news

Foes can, and do, become friends

I have been listening intently to the testimony of a former foe of the late President George H.W. Bush about how they became friends.

Former President Bill Clinton defeated President Bush in 1992. Bush was seeking re-election, but a faltering economy and a broken campaign pledge to never raise taxes did him in.

Clinton and Bush went nose-to-nose — along with the banty rooster Dallas billionaire Ross Perot. Clinton won with 43 percent of the popular vote, but also with a substantial Electoral College majority.

Bush and Clinton were drawn together in 2004 when President George W. Bush assigned them to raise money for tsunami relief for Southeast Asia. That was when their friendship formed. It grew over time and cemented itself indelibly.

Theirs is not the only friendship formed out of political adversity.

I think also of how two earlier adversaries became BFFs over time. President Gerald Ford lost his bid for election to Jimmy Carter in 1976. That campaign was equally harsh and ferocious. Moments after taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1977, President Carter turned to his predecessor and thanked for “all he did to heal the country” after the Watergate scandal of 1972-74.

The two men forged a close friendship that lasted until President Ford’s death in 2006.

These friendships, I am saddened to say, seem to be too rare of an occurrence.

President George W. Bush isn’t exactly best of pals with Al Gore and John Kerry, the men he defeated in 2000 and 2004. One didn’t see President Carter and President Reagan chumming around after Reagan defeated Carter’s bid for re-election in 1980. President Obama did deliver some touching and heartfelt remarks at Sen. John McCain’s funeral earlier this year, but those 2008 foes didn’t spend a lot of time off the clock with each other; nor do President Obama and Mitt Romney, his defeated 2012 opponent.

I’ll add that George W. Bush and Clinton have become friendly over the years, given Clinton’s professed “love” of Bush 41 and the notion that the elder Bushes “adopted” Clinton as another of their sons; that means “W” and Clinton see themselves as brothers with different mothers.

That brings me to the current president. What kind of relationship can Donald J. Trump ever have with the foe he vanquished in 2016, the woman he calls “Crooked Hillary” Clinton? Indeed, how many political friends has the president cultivated during his time in office and will those relationships last after he leaves the presidency?

Still, I take pleasure in listening to the tales of how political foes can become friends. It’s one of the shining virtues of our nation’s extraordinary political makeup.

national news

He once was known as ‘Rubbers’

One aspect of the late President George H.W. Bush’s extraordinary political career has been getting short shrift by the media.

I refer to a nickname a young member of the U.S. House of Representatives endured while he served there.

George Bush was known to his colleagues as “Rubbers.” How’s that? Well, he was a big-time ally of Planned Parenthood, the organization devoted to family planning, which included the distribution of contraceptives . . . and so forth.

He continued his affinity for Planned Parenthood’s agenda well past his four years in Congress. He spoke to his colleagues in 1968 about Planned Parenthood.

Read it here.

But then he became a national politician in 1980 when Ronald Reagan selected him as his vice presidential running mate. Bush and Reagan had competed against each for the Republican presidential nomination; Bush famously labeled Reagan’s trickle-down fiscal policy “voodoo economics.” That didn’t dissuade The Gipper from tapping Bush as his running mate.

Immediately upon accepting the Republican nominee’s request to join the GOP ticket that year, Bush became a “pro-life” politician.

That immediate transformation from “pro-choice” to “pro-life” always rang hollow to me. Ronald Reagan could not possibly run for the presidency with a running mate who was such a champion for an organization that was total anathema to his political base.

Bush signed on and made a pledge — and I believe it came with a wink and a nod — that he would recite the pro-life mantra when asked to do so.

George Bush never became an outspoken advocate for the pro-life position, which I suppose tells us plenty about his actual devotion to the cause.

But you do what you gotta do . . . I suppose.

legal news

Avenatti’s standing takes a header? Too bad, dude

So now there are reports that a loudmouth lawyer is feeling the pain of a plummeting public standing.

Cry me a river, will ya?

The lawyer is one Michael Avenatti, who I believe is the least sympathetic public figure this side of Donald John Trump Sr. He represents — for now! — Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress/stripper who has alleged that she and the future president of the United States had a one-night fling about a dozen years ago. She got a $130,000 hush money check to stay quiet — about an event that Trump says didn’t happen. Go figure.

Avenatti has been a cable talk-show staple since Clifford/Daniels burst onto the scene. To be totally candid, this guy annoys me in the extreme. He shows up everywhere. He is on a first-name basis with all the leading talking heads. He clearly has established himself as being part of the most dangerous place on Earth: between Avenatti and a TV camera.

Well, now his stock is plunging.

Stormy Daniels says he isn’t representing her correctly. He is doing and saying things in public without her permission. Daniels says she is considering dumping him as her personal counsel.

What’s more, he was accused briefly of striking a woman in a “domestic dispute.” Avenatti, who is estranged from his wife, denied it vehemently. The local district attorney then decided to forgo filing a formal felony criminal charge against Avenatti. The Los Angeles city attorney’s office, though, is still pondering whether to pursue a misdemeanor case against him.

And then there’s this: Avenatti is — or was — considering running for president in 2020 as a Democrat. His modus operandi reportedly is to become the Democrats’ pit bull in a fight with Donald Trump.

If they go low, according to the Avenatti Doctrine, we go even lower; we fight ’em tooth and nail, hammer and tong; strap on the brass knucks; let’s get ready to rummmmmble!

I want this guy to vanish. I am tired of hearing his voice, of looking at his mug, of listening to him proclaim how he is always right and everyone else is always wrong.

Say good night, counselor.

national news

Awkward encounter coming up?

If you’re honest with yourself, you are wondering the same thing I am wondering.

They’re going to honor the life of the late President George H.W. Bush on Thursday at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Attendees for the event clearly will be others who held the exalted office that President Bush held for four years.

George W. Bush, the late president’s son, will be on hand. Bill Clinton — who forged a close friendship with Bush 41 — will be there. So, likely, will Barack Obama. And yes, so will Donald Trump. I don’t know yet whether Jimmy Carter will attend; I hope he’s there.

What are we wondering, you and I? Well, speaking for myself only, I am curious about how Presidents Bush, Obama and Clinton might react when they encounter the current president.

My guess — and that’s all it is — would be that they’ll all act correctly in public. In private? Well, we cannot know, unless someone who is among them leaks it to the rest of the world.

Donald Trump has expended a lot of his waking-hour energy disparaging Presidents Clinton and Obama. He’s been less vocal about “W.” I’m not going to get into the particulars about what Trump has said about his predecessors, although it is worth noting that he even mocked Bush 41’s “Points of Light” program that the late president made one of his signature domestic achievements.

I believe, too, that Trump will deliver remarks about President Bush during the National Cathedral event. It’s also good to understand that these men were not friends. Bush 41 even acknowledged some time ago that he voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, stiffing his fellow Republican, Trump.

I can see the potential for a number of awkward moments this week while the nation continues to bid farewell to President George Bush.

Let’s all watch with keen interest, shall we?

national news, political news

Bush 41’s death means end of ‘old’ GOP? Let’s hope not

More than a few talking heads have ruminated since the death of former President George H.W. Bush about the future of the Republican Party and whether the party of which Bush was a proud member will return in its former image.

Some have said “no.” I don’t subscribe to that idea.

Today’s Republican Party has been taken over by those loyal to a president who doesn’t define his own ideology — such as it is — by anything resembling traditional GOP values.

The GOP has taken a dramatically different course from where it used to travel. I’ll offer three examples

  • President Bush was a supreme coalition builder. He did that very thing when assessing how to kick Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in the late summer of 1990. He brought together more than 30 nations to (a) provide fighting forces on the field or (b) give money to finance the military initiative that became known as Operation Desert Storm; some nations, of course, did both.
  • The Republican Party of old once touted fiscal responsibility. It loathed a federal budget deficit. It preferred to curb spending and, yes, curb taxes. The current GOP has enacted a tax cut but has done damn little to curb spending. Thus, the deficit is ballooning again.
  • The Party of Lincoln used to be an inclusive outfit. It welcomed people of all races, ethnicities, creeds. It has become another kind of party these days. It is seeking to shut the door on those seeking asylum from tyranny in their homelands. Politicians who belonged the former Republican Party helped a Democratic president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, enact the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the mid-1960s over the objection of many southern Senate Democrats who clung to their segregationist history. Imagine that happening today.

I cannot predict whether the old Republican Party will return, let alone when that might occur. I try like the dickens to avoid cynicism. My hope still springs forth that there will be a better day ahead.

President George H.W. Bush — although he was far from perfect — still in many ways embodied the ideals of a once-great political party. Those ideals have been pushed aside. We’ll bury Bush 41 in a few days. While we’re at it, how about trying to exhume the remains of a Republican Party that he represented?

military news

Did they make it back home?

This picture appeared on an earlier item I published on this blog. It’s from World War II.

The men you see in this picture are part of the Greatest Generation, the fellows who answered the call to save the world from despotic tyrants in Europe and in Asia.

I see photos such as this and wonder on occasion: Did these men survive their mission and were they able to serve for “the duration” of the war and return home?

Normally I don’t spend a lot of time wondering these things, but they do cross my mind on occasion.

I am thinking at this moment of an exhibit I’ve seen a couple of times in Fredericksburg, Texas. It is the Nimitz Museum on the War in the Pacific. Fleet Admiral Carl Nimitz was a native of Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country and the city is rightly proud of its most famous son. He commanded naval forces in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II.

It is full of picture of men sitting aboard landing craft as they prepared to storm ashore at any one of the many island battlegrounds where the fought. I look into the eyes of those men and wonder if they survived.

Granted, those young men — if they did make it home and are alive to this day — would be very old men now. Indeed, I am the product of a member of the Greatest Generation. My own late father would be 97 years old. He saw his combat on the other side of the world, in Africa and in the Mediterranean Sea.

Another exhibit that evokes such a feeling is the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire, N.M. It sits on a bluff overlooking a gorgeous valley amid the New Mexico mountains. It is the product of a man who lost his son in battle during the Vietnam War. It, too, contains pictures of men facing extreme danger, along with letters they had written home to their loved ones. The letters express the anxiety and, yes, the fear in the men’s hearts as they prepared to fight a determined enemy.

You look at those pictures as well and ask: Did they return home and were they able to start or re-start their lives with loved ones, to rear their children and welcome their grandchildren into this world?

The pictures are the faces of men who have ventured straight into hell on Earth and you hope that by God’s grace they were able to return to their earthly home.

national news

Taking a break from the rough-and-tumble

This blog is taking a brief hiatus from feasting on its main menu of political prey, namely the president of the United States.

Perhaps you’ve noticed the absence of Donald Trump-bashing on High Plains Blogger. For those who believe as I do about the president, don’t give up on me; I’ll return to the feast in due course. For those who oppose my view about the president, I apologize in advance . . . for the same reason I have given to those on the other side of the great divide.

My focus the past couple of days has been on the death of a great American, the 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush.

I am trying to imagine a major American public figure who has led a more full and enriching life than President Bush. Perhaps I need to think harder about it, but I keep coming up empty.

GHW Bush led the fullest of lives. I want to honor that life. I have discussed a bit of policy regarding his time in the Oval Office hot seat. Yes, I had issues with him as president. I didn’t vote for him either in 1988 or 1992. However, when someone as devoted to his country as President Bush was passes from the scene, I find it wholly appropriate to set aside those differences and honor a life well-lived.

I don’t know at this moment when I’ll get back into the battle over the current president’s mounting difficulties. I might wait until after President Bush is buried later this week. I might suit up before then.

For the time being, I’m enjoying the break I’m taking from the rough-and-tumble of what is unfolding before our eyes.

I’ll see you on the flip side soon.