Monthly Archives: November 2019

national news

Trump’s incompetence rivals his corrupt intent

Donald Trump, with a single Twitter message, managed to send his Republican allies on the House Intelligence Committee scrambling to cover up for his ridiculous and destructive impulses.

While a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was testifying before the panel today, Trump decided to fire off a tweet that said she was “bad news” while serving at her post. Trump fired her, which was well within his authority to do. He did so after insulting her performance. She testified today about the circumstances that led to her dismissal as ambassador to Ukraine.

But then the president decided to tweet that ridiculous message, committing what Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called a potentially impeachable offense “in real time.”

The result of that astonishing message was to produce glowing salutations to the former ambassador’s three decades of service to the country. I suppose they were intent on roughing her up, but they relented when word got out about Trump’s remarkably ignorant tweet.

I don’t know what prompted the president to say such a thing while Yovanovitch was testifying. He well might have committed yet another impeachable offense by tossing out a message that could prove intimidating to future committee witnesses.

My goodness, this president’s incompetence is beginning to approach the level of what I believe is his corrupt intent.

Weird.

national news

Has the POTUS added another impeachable offense?

Good grief! All the president of the United States had to do with sit back along with many millions of the rest of us and listen to what this former ambassador had to say in response to questions from the House Intelligence Committee.

Did he do that? Oh, no! Donald J. Trump instead decided to unlimber his Twitter fingers and insult and denigrate Marie Yovanovitch while she was in the middle of her congressional testimony.

The tweet that Trump fired off prompted Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to stop the testimony and read the president’s message out loud and into the record.

“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him,” Trump tweeted. “It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

As we used to say in high school, “No sh**, Sherlock!” Of course it is a president’s right to appoint ambassadors. It’s also within his right to fire them. The question at hand, though, as it regards this former envoy is: Why did you choose to insult her publicly and demean her before dropping the hammer?

Now we hear that the president, in the minds of some on Capitol Hill, might have added witness intimidation to the list of offenses for which he is likely to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

Trump defended his tweet saying he has the right of “freedom of speech” afforded to all Americans. Well, yeah, sure he does. However, he happens to the president of the United States who is being investigated for allegations that are likely to lead to his impeachment.

Therefore, does the president of the United States have the freedom to say whatever the hell he wants? I guess he does … if he has some sort of political death wish!

This guy, Donald Trump, is out of control. He needs to go!

crime news

Another lunatic shoots up a public school

I am tapped out.

I have run out original thoughts to offer about these acts of insanity that keep erupting in public places.

A shooter opened fire today at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif. Two students were killed; six more were injured. The gunman, a 16-year-old student at the high school, is in grave condition with a self-inflicted gunshot would to his head.

These incidents have become so outrageous, so egregious, so hideous and so damn commonplace they defy us to come up with something that hasn’t already been said over many years of this senseless violence.

I won’t try here.

I am just simply devastated that the parents of two children who died at the hands of a moronic gunman now will live with their grief for as long as they draw breath.

The list of communities stained indelibly by this violence has grown by one more. The worst news is that more will follow.

It is to our nation’s everlasting shame that this violence persists.

education news

UT hazing case brings disgraceful behavior front and center

Blogger’s Note: This blog post appeared originally on KETR-FM’s website.

I guess I missed out on a lot of “fun” while attending college back in the day.

The “fun,” had I joined a fraternity at Portland (Ore.) State University, would have included hazing. You know, things that involve sleep deprivation and assorted other forms of what would qualify as “torture” if it was being done to soldiers captured by the enemy on the battlefield.

Nicholas Cumberland died Oct. 30, 2018 after being hazed at the University of Texas by the Texas Cowboys, a fraternal group that UT-Austin has suspended for six years. Cumberland died in an automobile accident. He had been subjected to the kind of activity that clearly should be considered torture. The university has just released a report detailing the incident and the punishment it has leveled against the organization linked to the tragedy.

I find this kind of activity to be reprehensible. I’m an old man these days, long removed from my own college days. I was a young married student when I enrolled at Portland State. I lived with my bride and would go home each day after class. Thus, I avoided being sucked into the kind of activity that fraternities do to their members.

As KTRK-TV reported: “Cumberland was paddled so hard, he had ‘significant bruising on his buttocks nearly a month after the Retreat and car accident,’ records allege.”

Yes, the young man was on a “Retreat” when the vehicle he was in rolled over.

We hear about this kind of thing all the time. It’s certainly not unique to UT-Austin, or even to any public college or university in Texas. My hope would be that university educators and administrators everywhere in this nation would be alarmed enough to examine how their own fraternities conduct themselves.

A report by the UT-Austin Dean of Students Office notes that the Sept. 29, 2018 retreat included students bringing, among other things, “copious amounts of alcohol.” They also brought a live chicken and a live hamster, presumably to arrange for the frat pledges to kill the animals in bizarre fashion.

I get that I didn’t get to experience the full breadth of college life back when I was trying to get an education. I had seen enough already, having served a couple of years in the U.S. Army, including a tour of duty in Vietnam. So, I wasn’t a totally green homebody when I enrolled in college upon my return home.

I still cannot grasp the “benefit” accrued by hazing students to the point of killing them.

Perhaps the death of Nicholas Cumberland could prompt university officials to take a sober look at certain aspects of campus life and whether some elements of it result in campus death.

national news

Husband of key Trump aide brings it!

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in George and Kellyanne Conway’s dining room.

George Conway is a noted lawyer and a vocal critic of Donald J. Trump. Kellyanne Conway is the former Trump 2016 campaign manager who now serves as a senior policy adviser to the president of the United States.

Trump is in the midst of a fight over whether he should be impeached in connection with allegations that he sought a political favor from a foreign government, an action that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now refers to as “bribery.”

As I watch this impeachment inquiry proceed, I am struck by the same question that George Conway has posted in this Twitter message. Many of Trump’s defenders are — in other contexts — honorable men and women who are going to the mat for a man who does not share their basic values of decency and morality. I know a number of individuals for whom I harbor personal affection even though they continue to stand with this president.

I am baffled and amazed at the level to which so many of these individuals continue to “defend” this guy. I want to qualify the word “defend,” because what we hear from these Trump allies doesn’t constitute a defense of Trump’s character, his own morality or his own values. Their “defense” has been a full frontal assault on the motives of Trump’s accusers and the process by which they are bringing their complaints.

We watched much of that strategy play out during the first round of public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry earlier this week. It is a sorry continuation of what has been done ever since former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation and the Justice Department hired Robert Mueller III to become the special counsel who would examine whether Trump’s campaign “colluded” with Russians who attacked our electoral system.

George Conway speaks for many millions of Americans — such as me — who cannot fathom the extent to which otherwise straitlaced Americans keep casting their lot with the charlatan masquerading as president of the United States.

national news

Speaker ups the ante; now it’s ‘bribery’

Oh, brother. Here we go. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now is tossing out the “b” word in connection with the impeachment inquiry under way in the House of Representatives.

She believes Donald Trump has committed an act of “bribery,” one of two crimes mentioned specifically in the U.S. Constitutions as grounds for removing the president from office; the other crime is “treason.”

So, where do we stand? Pelosi has stated out loud that Trump’s attempt to obtain a political favor from Ukraine in exchange for sending weapons to Ukrainians who are fighting Russia-backed aggressors is a bribe.

I am left to say, um, wow!

The Constitution states that the president “shall be removed from office on impeachment for conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

OK. You got that? What does the handy-dandy American Heritage Dictionary say about what constitutes a bribe? “Something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to induce or influence a person to act dishonestly.” 

As I try to connect these dots, I conclude the following: Donald Trump’s asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksiy for a “favor, though” falls directly into the definition of a bribe. He wanted dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; in return for the dirt, the president would release weapons slated to go to Ukraine.

Hmm. Is that a bribe? I believe it is.

The more troublesome question rests with how congressional Republicans are going to act on this conclusion. I fear they won’t consider it a bribe. They likely will insist that it’s done “all the time.”

But … is it?

I often have written about how “elections have consequences.” Well, consider this little observation: We are now reaping the consequence of electing someone with zero understanding of what the United States Constitution allows and prohibits.

national news

Trying to grasp logic of POTUS’s resistance to inquiry

So help me, I am trying like the dickens to grasp the logic behind Donald Trump’s strategy in resisting the impeachment inquiry launched by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The president says he has done not a thing wrong; his phone call with the Ukrainian president was “perfect”; he calls the inquiry a sham, a hoax and a the worst witch hunt in U.S. history.

OK, then why in the world does he obstruct Congress’s efforts to question his key aides, former Cabinet officials, former legal counsel?

The president has employed the same strategy that he used in resisting Robert Mueller III’s probe into alleged Russian “collusion” involving the attack on our electoral system during the 2016 election. He said there was “no collusion, no obstruction,” yet he fought Mueller every step of the way.

Mueller determined that that was no provable conspiracy to collude with the Russians, but left the door open on the obstruction of justice matter.

So, here we are. The House Democratic caucus believes there’s reason to launch an inquiry into whether Trump sought foreign government help to promote his re-election. The House is inquiring into whether impeach Trump. The president says the House is on a fixing expedition. He says there’s nothing to expose.

Why, then, does he keep obstructing Congress? I must be missing something. Help me!

national news

Day One proved more eventful than some of us expected

The first day of public hearings into the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry could have turned into a snoozer.

It didn’t. Far from it. The daylong testimony was riveting on a couple of levels.

On one level we got to hear from the mouths directly of two career public servants about the things they said in private to the House Intelligence Committee. Their public testimony was as damaging as what we were led to believe their private testimony had been.

William Taylor is the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; George West is a deputy secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. They were strong. They were forthright. I believe they told the truth.

They told us that Trump sought political favors from a foreign government. They said the president was more interested in digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, than in rooting out corruption in Ukraine.

I believe they helped shore up the belief among many Americans that Trump has committed at least one impeachable offense. There might even be a bribery count thrown into the impeachment mix once the House of Representatives votes on the issue.

With several more days of hearings to go, the other aspect of this spectacle deals with how the Republicans on the committee and elsewhere in Congress are going to respond.

I will acknowledge my bias, but to my eyes and ears, the GOP didn’t fare as well as their Democratic colleagues. They struck out hard against Democratic motives and challenged what the witnesses saw and heard. Stunningly, they didn’t say a single word — that I heard — in defense of Donald Trump’s character. Which makes me wonder: How are they going to defend Trump against this impeachment tide?

They won’t defend their political main man. They will continue to attack, which will seek to divert our attention from the issue at hand: whether the president broke the law while violating his oath of office.

There will be more to come. This serious matter is likely to demonstrate — no matter how this drama concludes — that our Constitution does work.

national news

Both sides are digging in deeply

My aversion to making political predictions remains rock-solid, given my abysmal record in making them.

That said, this isn’t exactly a flash, but it seems more likely than ever that Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t going to change each other’s minds regarding the pending impeachment of Donald Trump.

We got a good look today at the intransigence on both sides. However, I am going steer clear of the “both siderism” argument here by declaring that congressional Republicans are those who need to have their heads examined.

William Taylor and George Kent sat before the House Intelligence Committee for about nine hours today. They answered questions from lawmakers on both sides. To my mind, they painted a clear picture of a president who sought foreign government assistance in helping his political future. He abused the power of his office. He has violated his oath of office. Donald Trump has committed an impeachable offense.

Republicans don’t see it that way. They say that even though what the president did was wrong, they don’t see his actions as impeachable. They are wrong. I believe the president deserves to be booted from office.

He likely won’t get the boot. The House impeachment will send this matter to the Senate. Republicans control the upper chamber. To convict the president of a crime against the Constitution would require a flip of 20 GOP senators. Most of them won’t budge.

Therefore, we are entering a most frustrating element in this process. It is that both sides are digging in. They both think they’re right. However, in this debate there only can be one correct side.

In my view, the winning argument belongs to the Democrats.

national news

Envoy tosses a live grenade at Oval Office

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

William Taylor said he would not offer an opinion on what he delivered today to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee.

He didn’t need to offer that qualifier. What he delivered was the rhetorical equivalent of a live hand grenade straight into the Oval Office.

The longtime diplomat, a career public servant, today revealed that Donald Trump was more interested in finding dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, than he was in rooting out corruption in Ukraine.

Yep, Taylor told the panel that there was a quid pro quo, that the president of the United States wanted the goods on the Bidens exclusively to help his upcoming campaign for re-election, which he well could wage against Joe Biden, the former vice president of the United States.

So … what now?

We’re going to hear from some more witnesses on Friday. Then some more next week. Maybe even more than that.

I listened to a lot of what Taylor and longtime State Department aide George Kent told the Intelligence panel.

I collected a couple of takeaways from this remarkable day of testimony … under oath.

  • One is that nothing that Taylor and Kent said is likely to shake any of Trump’s Republican allies out of their fealty to the president. The GOP members of the Intel committee today didn’t defend Trump’s character. They didn’t say that Donald Trump would never do what has been alleged. Instead, they homed in on Democrats’ motives and on the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine. They defended Trump by attacking his critics.
  • The second takeaway was that Taylor and Kent are as polished, sophisticated and dedicated to the nation as had been advertised. They were unflappable in the face of the aggression exerted by GOP questioners.

The hearings will continue. There well might be more rhetorical grenades tossed into the White House. Will there be any signal that GOP devotion to Trump will falter? I am not holding my breath.