Monthly Archives: December 2018

national news

New WH chief of staff seeks to preserve his own sanity

I am going to hand it to Mick Mulvaney, the new “acting” White House chief of staff.

Whereas John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps four-star general, sought to bring a military-style discipline to the White House, Mulvaney isn’t even going to try that approach.

Politico reports that Mulvaney is going to let “Trump be Trump.”

There you go. Let Donald Trump run the White House the way he sees fit and hope against hope that it works out. Spoiler alert: It likely won’t.

However, Mulvaney — who once called Trump a “terrible human being” — will be able to maintain more than a semblance of his own sanity if he allows the president a relatively free rein in the West Wing of the White House.

Politico reports: Mulvaney will adopt a much larger role in politics and messaging, and plans to take a more laissez faire approach to some quirks of the Trump White House that irked Kelly — like non-essential staffers attending meetings, or the president frequently reaching out to longtime friends, Republican lawmakers and advisers for advice or dinners in the White House residence.

Is it a surprise, then, that Trump and Kelly have been barely speaking? Of course not.

I’m not sure what to make of the Mulvaney Doctrine in running the White House staff, except to believe that he’s basically going to cede day-to-day management to the Big Man himself.

I am wondering now whether Mulvaney is going to lobby the president for a permanent appointment in the White House. He now is ostensibly the head of the Office of Management and Budget. I presume he’ll hand OMB duties to someone else while he shows up for work in the White House.

Under normal circumstances, I would wish Mulvaney well as he embarks on a new challenge. These are far from normal times in the White House. The president is feeling the heat of multiple investigations bearing down on him. The White House staff reportedly is down in the dumps over the uncertainty and chaos.

I suppose the best I can hope for is that Mulvaney’s strategy at sanity preservation works for him.

International news

Let’s not slam the door shut

Tucker Carlson’s intemperate blast at immigrants brings to mind an argument I have heard from others who share the Fox News talking head’s view.

Carlson had the bad form to say on the air the other day that immigrants make the country “dirtier” and “more divided.” Advertisers have been pulling out from Fox News sponsorships as a result of Carlson’s intemperate remarks.

However, he seems to speak on behalf of an alarming number of Americans who want the country to stiffen the standards for entry to all immigrants who seek to come to the Land of Opportunity.

I have sought to argue that it is patently un-American to slam the door shut on those who want in. The Statue of Liberty still invites the rest of the world to send us the dispossessed, those who “yearn to breathe free.” Yes, the president wants to build a wall along our southern border to stem what he describes as an illegal immigration “crisis.” I am not yet convinced that the “crisis” that Donald Trump alleges is any more severe now than it has ever been.

Then we hear from the likes of Tucker Carlson, who has a cable TV forum to spout the nonsense seemingly about all immigration.

I stand proudly as the grandson of Greek immigrants. Not a single one of them made this country “dirtier,” nor did they seek to “divide” themselves from the rest of the society they sought to join. They all became U.S. citizens. My maternal grandfather did so by enlisting in the U.S. Army in his quest to get into the fight in the waning days of World War I. His wife, my Yiayia, became a fervent U.S. patriot who idolized Presidents Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

To be sure, my grandparents weren’t the only immigrants who found a better life. They weren’t alone in their quest for opportunity. They were among millions of others from throughout the world who sought and found their proverbial end-of-rainbow treasure.

Do these xenophobes actually seek to deny other immigrants the opportunity to become Americans by choice? How can they say the things they say, make arguments that Tucker Carlson echoed the other day, that immigrants make dirty the nation that traditionally has kept the light on for those seeking entry?

I will not tolerate that kind of bigotry. Nor should anyone else.

Immigrants built this nation. They continue to improve on what our forebears erected.

They are dirty? They divide the nation? Ridiculous.

national news

Take a look and ponder these words

It took me just a few minutes to read the essay I have attached below this brief preamble. I would like to share it with you.

The writer is named Charles Pierce, who I understand is a sportswriter and “liberal political commentator.” He makes occasional appearances on National Public Radio and has been published in several national magazines.

He is highly critical of Donald J. Trump. I cannot possibly add a single word to what he has written.

***

“In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and say, “And we shall overcome.” I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing “Amazing Grace” in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, God knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. Watch him again, behind the seal of the President of the United States.

Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”

International news, military news, national news

Trump knows ‘more about ISIS than the generals’

Oh, how one can bring back some of Donald Trump’s idiotic statements while he ran for the presidency of the United States. If only they had registered with enough voters in at least three key states to keep this guy out of the White House.

Alas, it didn’t happen.

“I know more about ISIS than the generals,” Trump boasted recklessly during the campaign. We now are likely to learn the utter fallacy of that nonsensical boast.

Trump issued a statement via Twitter that he is ready to pull all U.S. troops out of Syria. He has declared that ISIS in Syria has been defeated, meaning I suppose that the terror monsters no longer pose a threat to innocent human beings.

However, Trump’s statement goes against what the Pentagon brass wants. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have argued that the United States should maintain at least a token force in Syria to lend assistance to the anti-ISIS forces that are seeking to destroy the organization.

The president didn’t heed the Joint Chiefs’ desire.

I suppose you can say that he is acting on the boast he made, that he knows “more about ISIS than the generals.”

I do not believe for an instant that the president knows anything about anything.

International news

Have we gotten rid of ISIS permanently?

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

So said Donald J. Trump this morning via Twitter as he signaled a planned withdrawal of about 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria.

I am dubious of this declaration of victory. My concern is as it has been throughout the war on terror, which commenced after 9/11. It is that a declaration of victory is a tenuous proposition at best.

The Islamic State is not — as President Obama infamously described it — the “junior varsity” of terror organizations. ISIS is the real thing. They are monstrous murderers who have, along with al-Qaida, perverted a great world religion and used it to justify their horrendous attacks on fellow Muslims, let alone against Christians and Jews.

To suggest that we can declare categorical victory in the fight against ISIS is risky in the extreme.

How will we respond if ISIS launches another hideous attack in Syria after we have left? Do we send the troops back in?

The president has gotten some push back from congressional allies, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who called a U.S. withdrawal from Syria “a big win for ISIS.” He said pulling out prematurely would be an “Obama-like mistake.”

This war against terror cannot possibly be concluded the way “conventional wars” have ended, with someone on one side surrendering and then signing documents signaling the end of a conflict.

I don’t yet know how you determine whether you’ve eradicated the last known terrorist from any battlefield. I just fear we haven’t accomplished that mission in Syria, or anywhere else.

legal news

That didn’t hurt so much, right, senators?

Eighty-seven to 12.

That was the vote on a measure backed by Donald John Trump to overhaul the federal criminal justice sentencing system. It passed through the U.S. Senate with tremendous bipartisan support.

I trust it didn’t hurt senators who decided to side with the president on this one.

It is a solid piece of legislation that I trust will win House support this week and will go to the president’s desk for his signature.

It has drawn support from across the political spectrum. The American Civil Liberties Union likes it along with many conservative organizations.

My favorite element in the bill is the relaxing of federal sentencing guidelines. Current law requires federal judges to impose mandatory sentences even on those convicted of non-violent drug offenses. The overhaul gives federal judges the flexibility that is granted their colleagues in state judicial systems across the nation.

The president is right to push this legislation through. Those who joined him are showing some much-needed compromise and a bipartisan spirit that has been lacking in Congress dating back for many years preceding Trump’s time as president.

The 12 “no” votes, by the way, came from Senate Republicans who stuck by the same tired old system that too often sends people to prison who really don’t deserve to be there.

Here’s hoping for full enactment of this reform.

national news

Yes, we’re in trouble, but it’s not a mortal danger

Count me as one of millions of Americans who is concerned about the state of politics, policy and public discourse in this great country of ours.

Do not count me as one who fears for its survival. We’re going to survive and perhaps even prosper once we get past what is happening at this moment.

The president of the United States appears to be in trouble. Investigators appear to be closing in on some serious misdeeds; they might include criminal charges leveled against Donald Trump and his immediate family.

The president is lashing out, blasting and smashing at his foes. He disparages our intelligence community, our laws enforcers, our duly elected representatives who happen to disagree with the manner in which he governs.

There might be an impeachment on our horizon. Or not.

The United States has endured many more difficult circumstances than what we’re enduring now. We’ve been through two world wars, a Great Depression, the Civil War, political corruption of all stripes and types. We have impeached two presidents already and damn near impeached a third, who then quit the presidency just as the impeachment was about to occur.

I remain an eternal optimist in the beauty of the government our founders created in the late 18th century. It contains some marvelous self-correcting mechanisms. We have elections every couple of years. We get to vote on House membership every other year; we vote on a third of the Senate at that time. We vote for president every four years and we limit a single president to two elected terms.

Congress can block a president’s impulses. The federal court system is empowered to rule on the constitutionality of congressional or presidential actions.

The system works.

Are we in dire peril over what may transpire in the coming year, or perhaps in the coming weeks? I don’t believe we are. I believe instead that the system will hold up. It will rattle and clank at times. Ultimately it will protect all Americans.

I am keeping the faith in the wisdom of those founders. They knew what they were doing.

media news

‘Poorer’ and ‘dirtier,’ eh, Tucker Carlson?

Tucker Carlson fancies himself as a provocative commentator for the Fox News cable network.

His provocativeness is now costing his employers some serious dough. Sixteen advertisers have pulled out of supporting his nightly talk show on the Fox News Channel because of some remarkably intolerant remarks he made about immigrants.

He made some anti-immigrant remarks this past week without apparently qualifying them. He wasn’t talking about illegal immigrants. I guess he meant all of them.

Hmm. Strange, don’t you think? I wonder where Carlson’s forebears came from? Were they here when the Pilgrims landed? Or when Columbus landed ashore? Or when the Vikings were terrorizing the upper east coast in the 12th century? Um, probably not.

The advertisers are hitting Fox where it hurts, in its corporate pocket book.

I am not a fan of boycotts. As a rule, I don’t believe they work.

I wonder, though, whether these advertisers are going to teach Carlson — a youngish conservative firebrand — a lesson that sticks.

Finally, as the grandson of immigrants to this country, I take huge personal offense at any suggestion that my grandparents made this country dirtier and poorer when they came here in pursuit of a better life.

entertainment news

Rep.-elect Crenshaw showing serious class and dignity

I want to concur with a friend of mine who said over social media that he is beginning to like Dan Crenshaw more each day.

The Texas U.S. representative-elect has reached out to “Saturday Night Live” cast member Pete Davidson after hearing about the mysterious Instagram post that suggested Davidson might be contemplating suicide.

Davidson, you will recall, mocked Crenshaw on an “SNL” segment, poking fun at the former Navy SEAL’s war wound; Crenshaw lost one of his eyes in Afghanistan when he was hit with an explosive device. Crenshaw showed up on an “SNL” segment to poke fun at Davidson. Crenshaw, a Republican, demonstrated a wonderful sense of humor in response to Davidson’s mocking of him.

Now we see yet another side of Crenshaw. According to Fox News: “I talked to him personally (Sunday),” he said. “We don’t go back very far. We’re not good friends. But I think he appreciated hearing from me. I told him everyone had a purpose in this world. God put you here for a reason. It’s your job to find that purpose. And you should live that way.”

I, too, hope that young Pete Davidson finds his way out of whatever dark place he’s in at the moment. Some heartfelt words of encouragement from a newly elected member of Congress certainly can provide help.

I join Rep.-elect Crenshaw in pulling for Pete Davidson’s sound emotional health.

Yes, I am liking Dan Crenshaw more as well.

business news, national news

That darn public domain is tough to shake loose

1 Comment

Oops!

I feel compelled to borrow the famous line from the 2012 Republican presidential primary from then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry who famously suffered the brain freeze while trying to name the three agencies he would terminate were he elected president.

It now applies to something that 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump said about a foundation run by Bill and Hillary Clinton. He called the Clinton Foundation the “most corrupt enterprise in political history.”

Oh, brother. Now this comes forward.

The Trump Foundation has been shut down because of a “shocking pattern of illegality.”

The Trump outfit was collecting money to service Donald Trump’s myriad “business and political interests.”

I now shall ask: Does this make the Trump Foundation the most corrupt enterprise in political history?

Oh, probably not the “most corrupt.” It does seem to be pretty damn corrupt nonetheless. It’s corrupt enough for the New York attorney general, Barbara Underwood, to order it shut down . . . immediately!

Let’s wait for the president to respond to this latest embarrassment. It ought to be a doozy.