Monthly Archives: November 2019

economic news

Jobless rate is great … but it doesn’t negate misbehavior by POTUS

One of the dodges employed by Donald Trump’s apologists who are fighting against the impeachment tide that is splashing against the president is the strength of the national economy.

Indeed, so does the president speak to that issue.

Unemployment is at a 50-year low, Trump and The Gang tell us. They ask: “Why impeach a president who is doing such a great job on the economy?”

Here’s my answer: Because the issues relating to the president’s probable impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives have nothing to do with his performance as president, or the strength of the national economy.

The issues of grave concern center on whether the president has violated his oath of office or, as has been alleged, broken federal law.

It is the very same separation of these matters that drove Republicans to march toward impeaching President Clinton in 1998. They didn’t give a rat’s rear end about the nation’s economic health two decades ago. Did it matter to them that the federal budget was balanced on President Clinton’s watch? No. They said, with some justification, that the president perjured himself before a grand jury; he broke the law, they said and, therefore, had committed an impeachable offense.

I thought then that the impeachment was a waste of time, given that Clinton’s lie had to do with a relationship he was having with a woman who was not his wife. That relationship didn’t have a thing to do with the duties of his office.

The issues driving the pending impeachment of Donald Trump have everything to do with his conduct as president of the United States. They also have nothing to do with the jobless rate, or the growth rate of private-sector employment, or trade policy, or immigration policy or anything else on the president’s list of issues with which he must grapple.

Let’s just try to keep these matters in some perspective, shall we? The economy is doing well under Donald Trump’s watch. It’s a big deal, to be sure. It’s a tiny, infinitesimal deal, however, when we ponder this matter of impeachment.

national news

Circus is coming to Capitol Hill … maybe

It looks as though they’re going to roll out the big top under the Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C., if Republican members of Congress get their way.

The House Intelligence Committee is taking its hearings into the public arena next week with the first televised hearings into the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s term as president.

Congressional Republicans want to hear also from Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and the individual known only as The Whistleblower.

Why do you suppose they want those two individuals to appear? I can make a guess: They are running out of legitimate defenses for the president’s conduct in office and are trying to divert attention from Trump to the son of a potential 2020 campaign opponent and an individual whose report to Congress spawned the impeachment inquiry in the first place.

At issue, of course, is that July phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump asked for a “favor, though,” in exchange for releasing the weaponry that Ukraine asked for to fight Russia-backed rebels. Quid pro quo, anyone? It’s against the law!

Now the GOP caucus wants to question Hunter Biden over his business relationships in Ukraine, which Ukrainian prosecutors have said broke no law. They also want to quiz The Whistleblower and likely want to question his or her motives in squealing on the president.

The hearings get started with a bang this week when the House Intel panel summons career diplomat William Taylor to testify in public what he has said in private, that Trump did seek a favor from Ukraine, which is — shall we say — against the law!

Get ready for the circus to start. The GOP will seek to provide plenty of distractions from the serious and sober business at hand in the House of Representatives.

national news

‘I mean no disrespect … ‘

I learned a long time ago that when someone says they “mean no disrespect,” they usually do mean disrespect.

So it was this week when U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., stood before a Donald Trump rally crowd and bellowed that “I mean no disrespect, but it must suck to be that dumb.”

The object of his “mean no disrespect” setup? It wasn’t the guy standing next to him, which was the president of the United States.

Oh, no. It was U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who launched the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s conduct as president. The inquiry, of course, is intended to determine if the House will impeach Trump.

You and I know it will do precisely that.

Sen. Kennedy, though, wants to declare his fealty to the president. He does so by disparaging the intelligence of arguably the nation’s most adroit politician, who in my mind happens to be Speaker Pelosi.

Kennedy’s “mean no disrespect” comment, shall we say, was quite disrespectful. I am looking forward to seeing who among the nation’s leading politicians comes out of this mess with the more serious battle scars.

My hunch is that it won’t be Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

national news

ICE can be mended

Joe Biden is having trouble finding his footing lately as he campaigns for president, but I want to fully endorse an idea he has put forth about the nation’s immigration enforcement policy.

The former vice president says it is wrong to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. It can be repaired. Indeed, the best remedy, according to Biden, is to elect a new president in 2020.

I have been troubled, along with progressives, by the ham-handed approach ICE has used to detain immigrants who have entered the United States illegally. However, the principle behind ICE’s formation remains sound. Yes, we need better enforcement along our borders — both north and south, I hasten to add — as well as along our expansive Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts. ICE’s mission is to enact enforcement policies that seek to stem illegal immigration into the country.

ICE critics have taken the argument against the agency’s policy too far, though, by calling for its abolition.

Democratic presidential candidates, such as Elizabeth Warren, say the human rights abuses are a direct result of ICE policy. She’s only half-right. The direct responsibility for that policy flows from the White House, where Donald Trump is currently residing.

I agree with Joe Biden: The best cure for what ails ICE is to replace the president with someone with a semblance of empathy and compassion for those who are seeking to enter this country while fleeing oppression and crime in other nations.

There is no compelling need to abolish ICE. The agency simply needs to be repaired. Let’s start with removing the guy at the top of the chain of command.

national news

Is it possible Trump would resign … a la Richard Nixon?

I feel like sharing with you a political fantasy that keeps creeping into the recesses of my noggin.

Right off the top: I cannot stop wondering if there’s a chance that Donald J. Trump would resign the presidency, the way Richard Nixon did on Aug. 9, 1974.

President Nixon’s resignation speech spoke of the distraction a prolonged impeachment hearing in the House and a Senate trial would become. He said resigning was “abhorrent” to him. The president added that he couldn’t in good conscience concentrate on keeping his job at the risk of letting more critical matters of governance go unattended.

So, he quit.

To be fair, the president didn’t mention in that televised speech that Senate Republicans had told him he was toast when the matter would go to trial.

Twenty-four years later, another president was impeached. Bill Clinton didn’t quit. He fought it, but was able to compartmentalize the impeachment apart from the task of governing.

Donald Trump isn’t wired that way. He is being consumed by the impeachment. He fires off a constant stream of Twitter messages blasting the House impeachment inquiry, and the patriots who have told House committee members that, by golly, the president did seek a quid pro quo, a personal political favor from a foreign government.

Resigning, of course, would belie what Trump has said all along, that he didn’t do anything wrong when he had that “perfect” phone call with the Ukrainian president.

Nor is Trump inclined to put country ahead of his personal political fortunes. I mean, he had no public service exposure prior to running for the presidency in 2016, so the idea of serving others is totally foreign to this guy.

Plus, I guess I should add that the prospect of the Senate convicting him of any crime against the nation is even more remote than it was in 1999 when it cleared President Clinton.

However, I cannot stop hoping that Donald Trump would find it within himself to simply walk away. Sure, that would mean we’d get Mike Pence as president. The vice president also might be tainted by the dirt that has been kicked up around the president, which I suppose is grist for yet another story at another time.

I am not sure I have the stomach for the impeachment that is racing closer to finality. If only the president of the United States was as queasy as many of the people he promised to serve … and could finally put the nation’s interest ahead of his own.

If only he’d just quit.

media news

Time of My Life, Part 42: I met him before he was famous

Chris Matthews is celebrating 20 years as host of an MSNBC news/commentary talk show, “Hardball.” He has been getting salutes from fellow media stars, politicians and entertainers.

I don’t qualify as any of those categories of individuals, but I want to offer a salute of my own.

You see, I met Chris Matthews once before he was, well, “Chris Matthews.”

It was the summer of 1992 in sweltering Houston, Texas. Matthews and I worked for the same media corporate employer, the Hearst Corporation. I was attending the Republican National Convention at the Houston Astrodome while working as editorial page editor of the Beaumont Enterprise; Matthews was there as a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. He hadn’t yet made his big splash on cable news TV, although Matthews was a frequent guest — as I remember it — on the PBS program “The McLaughlin Group.”

The Hearst Newspapers had a work station deep in the bowels of the Astrodome. We all had our areas where we could organize our notes and send stories back to our newspapers through the primitive computer systems we used at the time.

One morning, I went to the small coffee bar we had set up in our work stations. Who do you think joined me there? Chris Matthews, that’s who. We chatted for a few minutes. I told him I enjoyed publishing his column in the Beaumont Enterprise; he thanked me for the exposure was getting in Southeast Texas. We had a laugh or two about what we had seen the previous day. Then our encounter ended.

My recollection of this guy, whose media personality is loud, brash, borderline rude is that he was much quieter when he was chatting with a fellow Hearst-oid. Yes, he is a gentleman.

OK, I admit to being a bit star struck as I recall that brief meeting. I doubt Chris Matthews would remember it, given the journeys our respective lives took after that encounter in the Houston Astrodome.

If he would remember, I would be flattered to the max. If he doesn’t, that’s all right. I do.

national news

Talkers are now suggesting Trump won’t run in 2020 … huh?

Neil Katyal is a serious guy, a former acting U.S. solicitor general who’s argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and, yes, I’ll stipulate that he was appointed to the solicitor general’s post by President Barack Obama.

So, when Katyal says that Donald Trump is unlikely to be the 2020 Republican presidential nominee, one ought to consider this a serious prediction.

I’ll declare here that I disagree with Katyal. I believe Trump will run for re-election next year and that the Republican National Convention will nominate him for another term as president.

Katyal believes the probable impeachment by the House of Representatives will drive Trump to the sidelines. I also need to note that Katyal has wanted Trump to be impeached. He believes the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors and should be kicked out of office.

If Donald Trump has taught any of us any lesson at all it ought to be to never underestimate this guy’s staying power. He should never have been elected president in the first place; but he was elected. He shouldn’t have been nominated by the GOP in the summer of 2016, given all the candidacy-destroying instances that would have taken out “normal” candidates for public office; but he was nominated.

Trump has managed somehow to survive countless deal-breaking mistakes. He denigrated a Vietnam War hero, the late Sen. John McCain; he mocked a physically handicapped reporter for the New York Times; he admitted to grabbing women by their “pu***”; he disparaged a Gold Star family at the Democratic National Convention. You want more? Well, you get the idea.

He survived all of it.

Is the president inclined to bow out of the 2020 presidential campaign because the House has impeached him? I find that hard to believe.

I wish it were plausible. I am shuddering at the notion that Trump somehow is going to parlay this impeachment into a winning political strategy. How? I suppose by energizing that base of support that holds firm at around 40 percent, based on the RealClearPolitics polling average. Yeah, he needs more than that to win, but won the presidency in 2016 despite polling nearly 3 million fewer votes than his Democratic opponent.

This clown is maddening in the extreme. He doesn’t deserve to be re-elected. I hope Neil Katyal is right. However, I fear the worst, that Trump will run for re-election … and that he just might win!

military news

Don Trump Jr. makes a grotesque comparison about sacrifice

Simply grotesque.

That’s the only description I can give to something that Donald J. Trump Jr. wrote in his book “Triggered.”

He writes about visiting Arlington National Cemetery in January 2017, the day before his father became the 45th president of the United States. He looked at the graves and thought of the “sacrifice” his family would endure once Daddy Trump became president.

He writes: In that moment, I also thought of all the attacks we’d already suffered as a family, and about all the sacrifices we’d have to make to help my father succeed — voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were ‘profiting off of the office.’

Frankly, it was a big sacrifice, costing us millions and millions of dollars annually. Of course, we didn’t get any credit whatsoever from the mainstream media, which now does not surprise me at all.

Wow! He equates the “sacrifice” his family has made to the men and women who have served in harm’s way, who have committed themselves to public service, and in many instances — as he looked over the graves at Arlington — have died on battlefields in far-off lands.

To equate in any fashion the sacrifice made by these Americans to what he and his family have endured is beyond the pale.

Veterans have spoken out in anger at what Don Jr. has written. I cannot blame them. You may count me as one American veteran who takes great offense at what this scion of a family born into immense wealth has written.

This guy knows not a damn thing about “sacrifice.”

national news

Isn’t this ‘obstruction of justice’?

I must be missing something, or perhaps I am slow on the uptake.

The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to Capitol Hill to take his testimony behind closed doors; it’s part of the House impeachment inquiry into whether Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses.

Mulvaney was a no-show. He defied a lawful subpoena from the legislative branch of government.

Now, where I come from, that would be considered an obstruction of justice. Congress is doing its legally sanctioned duty to ask an executive branch staffer for information into a legally constituted inquiry into whether the president of the United States should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Republicans involved in this inquiry are giving the White House a pass on stiffing Congress. That’s hardly what they said in 1998 when the House was conducting an inquiry into whether to impeach President Clinton. Two decades ago GOP House members and their Senate colleagues said that subpoenas issued by Congress had the force of law and that anyone who gets a summons must appear before Congress.

What’s changed? How is this different?

Oh, wait! I got it! The president is a Republican. Therefore, he isn’t held to the same standard of accountability as his Democratic predecessor.

The House impeached Clinton on charges that included an obstruction count. Has the White House chief of staff delivered another evidentiary dirt ball that will land on Donald Trump?

national news

‘A Warning’ paints dire picture of Trump White House

I haven’t decided whether I will read “A Warning,” a book written by someone known only as Anonymous.

That said, I am interested in the contents of the book, some excerpts of which have been obtained by The Washington Post. My reluctance in buying the book and reading all of it is my concern that someone with the kind of salacious detail about Donald Trump hasn’t found the courage to identify himself or herself to the public.

I dislike text written by anonymous authors.

OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, what I have seen in the Post’s article about the book sends chills up my spine. It does seem to confirm what I and many millions of others have believed from the get-go of this man’s presidency: Donald Trump is unfit for the office.

Anonymous writes that a large number of senior aides contemplated resigning en masse to protest the president’s behavior and his handling of policy matters.

According to the Post: “I have decided to publish this anonymously because this debate is not about me,” the author writes. “It is about us. It is about how we want the presidency to reflect our country, and that is where the discussion should center. Some will call this ‘cowardice.’ My feelings are not hurt by the accusation. Nor am I unprepared to attach my name to criticism of President Trump. I may do so, in due course.”

The author does tell about Trump’s intellectual shallowness, his lack of attention to any sort of detail, his absolute absence of curiosity about the nitty-gritty of policy. The writer says Trump operates solely from within his gut and hunch and surrounds himself exclusively with sycophants who are unwilling to tell the president the truth.

It paints an utterly ghastly future for a second Trump term if hell freezes over and he gets re-elected a year from now.

From what I have heard so far from Anonymous, my skin is crawling at the prospect.