Monthly Archives: December 2018

International news, national news

Russians have earned grudging admiration for their success

I feel the need to offer a word of congratulations to our nation’s No. 1 geopolitical adversary, Russia . . . the nation formerly known as the Evil Empire.

Perhaps we ought to resurrect that Cold War epithet made popular by Ronald Wilson Reagan.

The Russians once were governed by those nasty communists who created something called the Soviet Union. The USSR dissolved in 1991, collapsing under its own weight of military excess and corruption.

But the Russian Federation that emerged is no less nefarious. Think of what it did to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome. The Russians, led by the former Soviet spymaster Vladimir Putin, wanted Donald Trump to win. They sought to sow disinformation about Hillary Rodham Clinton and other anti-Trump candidates.

They accomplished their mission and now, two years into the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States is still roiling over his election. There has been serious discord among millions of Americans. Some of us no longer trust the electoral system. We are suspicious of the government, of our allies, even ourselves.

The Russians have done what they set out to do.

They didn’t even have to be ultra-careful when they hacked into our electoral system. They could be reckless and open about it. So what if we detected their interference? The very fact that we did has established that our system is no longer bullet-proof. The Russians, thus, cast it all in doubt.

Mission accomplished!

So the discord will continue to tear at our system for as long as Donald Trump is president. We will continue to question the man’s legitimacy as president. We’ll continue to wonder what the Russians did, how they managed to crack our supposedly fool-proof electoral system.

I no longer am concerned that Trump refuses to acknowledge the Russians’ role in upending our electoral process. It’s a given. I expect it from this guy.

My concern now focuses on what we’re able to do to shore up our cyber defenses. Can we prevent the Russians or other bad actors from penetrating our elections? We have many uber-smart geeks working within the government who are tasked with that challenge. Then again, the Russians have ’em, too.

My saluting the Russians for their success in no way is an endorsement of what they did. They have enabled an unqualified unfit individual to take the reins of our government.

My salute merely is to acknowledge that they did what many of us thought was impossible.

national news

Democrats plan to provide Trump with an immediate test

Suppose this government shutdown lasts until the new Congress takes office in early January. Republicans will maintain control of the Senate, but Democrats take over in the House of Representatives.

The new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is going to do the following: She is going to urge the House to approve a budget deal that doesn’t pay for The Wall that Donald Trump wants to erect along our southern border. The House will send it to the Senate. She will dare the GOP Senate majority to kill the bill the House will enact.

If the Senate discovers its spine, it well could send the bill to the president’s desk for his signature. Or, it might approve a different bill and the legislation could be hammered out in a conference to reconcile the differences.

Either way, Donald Trump is going to face a serious challenge when January rolls around. It’s only a few days away, folks.

Pelosi is no one’s fool. She is fully capable of engineering this House deal, of getting Democrats to hold the line and shoving this government shutdown issue squarely onto the GOP’s lap.

As the saying goes: Elections have consequences.

Put another way: Karma’s a bitch, man.

International news, military news

Trumps do what first couples are supposed to do

It took longer than it should have taken, but it occurred quietly early today. Donald and Melania Trump flew to Iraq to visit U.S. troops and to offer them the nation’s support as they stand in harm’s way defending our interests in one of the world’s most troubled regions.

I won’t second-guess anyone here.

The president and first lady did what first couples — especially the president — are charged to do. They are supposed to speak on behalf of the nation to the men and women who stand on the front lines in the fight against our enemies.

I am glad the president and first lady visited Al Assad Air Base, west of Baghdad. Security apparently was an issue as Air Force One landed. The first couple took selfies with the troops, chatted them up and likely expressed their support for them.

The president should have gone before now. However, he went and perhaps learned a thing or two from the men and women he visited about some of the difficulties they face being stationed so far from home and away from their loved ones.

The presidency can be a learning experience, even if it isn’t supposed to provide on-the-job training for the president. I would hope the president learned something today, except that he routinely seems to suggest that knows all there is to know about everything.

Still, I’m glad he and the first lady made the journey.

Now, Mr. President, please look for a way to end this ridiculous government shutdown.

national news

What ‘policy change’ could Trump enact? Let me think

A fellow I do not know, but someone who reads this blog, has posed an interesting question that I have chosen to answer with a blog post.

He asks: (High Plains Blogger), other than stepping down, what policy could Trump enact to change your mind about him?

Fair question, right? You bet it is. It deserves an answer. So, here goes.

The president can surrender his effort to build The Wall. He can stop insisting that Mexico pay for it. He surely must know he cannot order another sovereign government to do his bidding. He should recognize that The Wall won’t solve anything. He should simply ask Congress to spend more money to enhance existing methods to curb illegal immigration.

Trump can stop demonizing refugees, implying that those seeking asylum comprise gang members, terrorists and assorted felons intent on murder, rape, human trafficking, drug dealing . . . you name it.

The president can acknowledge publicly that Russia is our No. 1 geopolitical adversary and that Russian operatives sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Along those lines, he can demand the immediate extradition to the United States of the dozen or so Russians indicted for criminal activity related to that effort.

Trump can apologize for demonizing his foes. He can atone for the hideous insults he has hurled at the media, at members of his own Republican Party. One place to start would be to publicly apologize to the family of the late Sen. John McCain, the Republican who stood at the gates of hell while he was imprisoned during the Vietnam War. Trump’s statement that McCain was a “hero only because he was captured” was hideous in the extreme.

Donald Trump can learn to act like the president of the United States of America. He can behave with decorum and dignity. He can stop his ceaseless Twitter tirades. He can learn how to treat Cabinet officials with respect, and stop informing them of their departure through those petulant tweets.

Sure, a resignation would be my preferred solution to ending the Trump Era in modern presidential politics. Donald Trump need not exercise that option as the only way out. A close second-best option would be to see him denied the GOP nomination in 2020; absent that, for him to be defeated in the 2020 general election.

However, having laid out these notions, I do not expect the president to change his mind, enact any new executive policies that would make me or other critics better of him.

Therefore, the criticism from this forum will continue.

military news

Trump misses chance to buck up wounded vets

Think for a moment about an opportunity that Donald Trump let slip past him.

The president who’s entangled in a showdown over The Wall, shutting down part of the federal government, could have gone to Walter Reed Army Hospital, or to a nearby military installation to visit our troops.

He could have told them in person that despite the standoff and the government shutdown, the commander in chief was standing with them. Their government would not turn its back on the men and women in uniform.

Trump didn’t do that. No, he became the first president to not visit troops at Christmas time since 2002. President Bush didn’t visit American service personnel in 2001 or in 2002; 9/11 had just occurred in 2001 and the president was in the midst of preparing to launch the Iraq War the following year.

He visited every Christmas holiday for the remainder of his presidency. As did President Obama, who would visit with Marines in Hawaii during his annual Christmas vacation from 2009 until 2016.

Donald Trump had time on his hands. The government is shut down. He spent Christmas Day reportedly moping around the White House, firing off Twitter messages bitching about those nasty Democrats and his failure to obtain money to build The Wall along our southern border.

The president missed a chance to tell the troops that he supports them, that he’s got their back, that the government won’t let them down.

Oh, well, Maybe next year? Hmm, Mr. President?

national news

Donald Trump: classic RINO

I know a lot of Republicans. They are friends of mine. By that I mean they’re actual friends, people with whom I’ve shared many ups and downs, highs and lows.

I haven’t yet had the nerve to ask any of them in person a question that has been bugging me ever since Donald Trump rode down the escalator in the summer of 2015 to run for president of the United States — as a Republican.

Why do they continue to support a guy who is a classic Republican In Name Only? Trump is the living embodiment of the term RINO.

He had no serious ties to the Republican Party before he declared his presidential candidacy. Those who fancy themselves as pure-bred Republicans, descendants of the Party of Lincoln, surely were aghast when he launched his campaign by invoking xenophobic rhetoric against Muslims and Latino immigrants.

Trump’s international trade policy is about as anti-Republican as any I can think of. He is a protectionist in the mold of labor-union bosses who tilt heavily toward the Democratic Party. Most GOP politicians I’ve encountered favor free trade, detest tariffs and do whatever they can avoid international trade wars; they damn sure avoid those wars when it involves our allies and strong trading partners.

Republicans used to detest federal budget deficits, let alone deficits that spiral out of control. That’s what the current GOP president is delivering with his tax cuts coupled with spending increases.

GOP politicians used to stand foursquare behind our intelligence community and law enforcement officials. Not this POTUS. He undermines and undercuts the CIA, the DNI and other spooks who say in unison that Russia interfered with our 2016 election. He blasts the FBI and the Justice Department, two agencies that usually are the darlings of GOP officials.

Donald Trump alienates our allies. He eschews virtually every normal diplomatic channel to communicate with them. Republicans normally would chafe against all of that, too.

But they don’t. They let Trump trample all over them.

Too few of them call out the president for what he is: a RINO. Yet they blast others of their own party to have the stones to criticize the president for being unfaithful to the political banner under which Donald Trump was elected as president.

Weird.

economic news

Now the POTUS wants to manage global economy?

This blog doesn’t deal much at all with global economic policy, mainly because its author — that would be me — isn’t qualified to discuss it. So, I able to resist the urge to get entangled in such complicated matters.

However, it’s always been my understanding that the Federal Reserve Board is independent of the president of the United States. Yes, the president appoints the Fed chairman but traditionally lets the Fed run on its own power. The president stays out of the economic quagmire.

That is until Donald Trump became president. Now he’s getting involved in second-guessing, undercutting, undermining Fed chairman Jerome Powell over interest rate policy. He is blaming Powell — among others — for the precipitous decline in the stock market. He says that Powell, a well-educated economist, doesn’t understand the stock market. Eh? What?

Trump wrote this via Twitter: “The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch — he can’t putt!”

I am having trouble getting past the idiocy in that tweet in the first place. I am trying to figure out what the hell Trump is trying to say, referencing government shutdowns, trade wars and “strong dollars.” What the . . . ?

What is troubling is that the president is now trying to micromanage something about which he knows not a damn thing! I get that he’s likely to say he knows more about economic policy than any human being who’s ever lived . . . except that he cannot find his rear end with both hands when it comes to any of it!

Donald Trump won’t ever get it. He won’t ever understand that there are issues he should avoid. Every time this clown opens his mouth and utters these feckless clichés, he sends the markets into gyrations.

As someone who fears for the future for my retirement fund, I implore Donald Trump to do something he is incapable of doing.

Keep your trap shut . . . Mr. President!

national news

Trump shows smallness with Christmas greeting

Presidents of the United States routinely offer Christmas or other holiday greetings with an ample measure of good cheer and happiness. They wish us well, perhaps inject a little faith into their greetings. We feel good hearing from our head of state.

What did Donald J. Trump do today? He fired off a Twitter message that talks of the “disgrace” that infects our political world . . . but then offered a Merry Christmas greeting. It looked for all the world like a throwaway line.

He said: “It’s a disgrace, what’s happening in this country. But other than that I wish everyone a very merry Christmas.” Warm and fuzzy, yes?

I want to suggest that the tone and tenor of the president’s message today reflected a smallness, a bitterness and a pettiness in the man who holds the nation’s highest office, who commands the world’s greatest military and who (supposedly) represents the world’s most indispensable nation.

I wish he could have just — for once! — followed the norm set by all his predecessors. He could have simply offered his fellow Americans a heartfelt holiday wish and saved the political malarkey for another day; I’d even settle for him returning to the fight the day after Christmas.

He didn’t do that. He invoked the fight that has shut down part of the federal government. He suggested the “disgrace” is augmented by his fight with members of Congress over construction of The Wall he wants to erect along our southern border.

Oh, and then he tweeted this message on Christmas Eve: I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security. At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about. Crazy!

The more he claims to be a big man, the more he sounds like a small man. The larger the boast, the smaller he becomes.

Donald Trump is one strange dude.

national news

What if Obama had done all this?

Someone put this out on Twitter — I don’t remember who it was — but I’ll offer it here just to get the discussion going.

What do you suppose would be the reaction from the evangelical Christian movement had Barack Hussein Obama had done the following:

Produced five children with three wives; cheated on all three of his wives; talked openly to a TV interviewer about being able to grab women by their private area; mocked a journalist with a physical disability; said a U.S. senator and former Vietnam War prisoner was a “war hero only because he got captured”?

They would be understandably enraged, yes? Of course they would.

Donald John Trump says and does all of that — and more, I reckon — and they’re silent. They stand with him. They pray for him and wish him success as he seeks to make America great again.

Go figure.

national news

Merry Christmas to you, too, Mr. POTUS

Donald Trump sort of offered a mixed Christmas wish to his fellow Americans.

He wrote: “It’s a disgrace, what’s happening in this country, but other than that I wish every a very merry Christmas.”

Geez, thanks, Mr. President.

His greeting kind of reminds me of how someone might have greeted Mary Todd Lincoln: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

The “disgrace” Trump referenced is the border wall standoff and the partial shutdown of the federal government. I get that it’s a disgrace what is happening, except that he’s a principal party to it occurring in the first place. He insists on $5 billion for a wall that stands as a waste of money that the government doesn’t have; we are in debt up to our armpits, after all, right?

Trump once promised/pledged/committed to forcing Mexico to pay for the wall on our southern border. It ain’t happening. That means you and I could be stuck with the tab.

Still, the president’s Christmas greeting offers the faintest of good wishes.

I’ll accept the “Merry Christmas” part of it with some reluctance. The “disgrace” element? Well, that’s on the president as much — if not more so — as it is on everyone else in government.