Monthly Archives: June 2020

national news

Does POTUS really want a second term?

Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni are two top-notch reporters for the New York Times who have put together a story that suggests something quite remarkable.

It is that Donald Trump’s behavior and his inability/unwillingness to listen to advice from his staff to dial back his weird impulses suggest that Trump secretly doesn’t want to serve a second term as president.

Oh, I wish that were true. I have trouble believing it.

Haberman and Karni aren’t suggesting it’s all true. They just have talked to a lot of White House functionaries who make the suggestion based on what they are witnessing within the West Wing.

It is an intriguing thought to be sure. Trump cannot lead. He isn’t wired for public service. He is proving it time and time and time again. Trump’s feeble attempts at crisis management reveal a fundamental weakness in a guy who spent his entire professional life running a business, hosting a TV reality show and behaving like a crass, cruel and scandalous fool.

“I don’t think he’s fit for office,” says former national security adviser John Bolton. No kidding? Well, many of us have been saying it all along.

We have walked headlong into a most fascinating election season. I think we ought to keep Trump’s behavior at the top of our minds as this individual seeks to suggest he deserves a second term at the helm of the most exalted public service job on Earth.

Take a look at Haberman and Karni’s story here.

It might give you pause.

education news

School will be back … but should students and teachers return?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has rung the 2020-21 school bell telling students, teachers and staff that classrooms will be open for the upcoming academic year.

Abbott shut down in-person class study this spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students kept current with their studies at home; our granddaughter and her older brother were two of them and, I should add, they did quite well studying at home.

Now what? Abbott’s back-to-school directive does give parents the flexibility to decide whether to send their children back to class.

As the Texas Tribune reports:

“It will be safe for Texas public school students, teachers, and staff to return to school campuses for in-person instruction this fall. But there will also be flexibility for families with health concerns so that their children can be educated remotely, if the parent so chooses,” said Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath.

When students return, school districts will not be required to mandate students wear masks or test them for COVID-19 symptoms, said Frank Ward, a spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency.

If I were King of the World, I most certainly would require masks and COVID-19 tests. I am not. I am just a concerned grandparent who wants to ensure that students, teachers and staff will be safe from becoming infected by a disease that could do them great harm.

Man, I hope Abbott knows what he’s doing. Texas is experiencing a serious spike in infection, hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Yes, we want to return to what we like think is “normal” activity.

Given recent trends, I am just leery of sending young children back to school and instructing them to practice “social distancing.”

national news

Wait for the whining about Facebook ‘censorship’

Facebook has done the absolutely correct thing by pulling down a Donald Trump re-election campaign ad that displays a symbol used by Nazis to designate political prisoners.

I cannot wait for the yammering, whining and whimpering to start now from the Trump team, complaining that Facebook is being “politically correct.”

The symbol is a red inverted triangle the Nazis would use to identify individuals bound for, um, death camps and other forms of political imprisonment. Indeed, it is reprehensible in the extreme for such symbols to show up anywhere these days, let alone coming from a campaign for a president of the United States seeking re-election.

As the Washington Post reported: A red inverted triangle was first used in the 1930s to identify Communists, and was applied as well to Social Democrats, liberals, Freemasons and other members of opposition parties. The badge forced on Jewish political prisoners, by contrast, featured a yellow triangle overlaid by a red triangle.

What in the name of common decency is the Trump team trying to convey?

They either are ignorant, arrogant or simply stupid.

Hey, I’ll go with all of the above.

Trump has decided to go after antifa, the loosely based collection of protesters often identified with far-left movements. Indeed, the word “antifa” is shorthand for “anti-fascist,” which is precisely the kind of movement that this modern-day group would oppose … and which was the focal point of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany.

Facebook acted correctly.

As for the ad it took down, well, it speaks volumes about Donald John Trump.

legal news

SCOTUS scores a win for DACA recipients

It looks for all the world as if the U.S. Supreme Court has been smitten by a case of humanity along with a touch of compassion.

The court issued a ruling, albeit a narrow 5-4 decision, that upholds the Obama administration’s executive order protecting the residency status of hundreds of thousands of folks who came here illegally, many of whom as children brought to the United States by their parents.

President Obama issued the order called Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. It protected about 650,000 immigrants from deportation. Donald Trump rescinded that order. The high court, though, today said “not so fast.”

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s four progressive justices in siding with DACA recipients, writing the opinion that said Trump’s order lacked sufficient legal foundation.

This a good deal. Many, if not most, DACA recipients have known no other country but the United States. Many of them are unfamiliar with their country of birth. They speak English. They attend school here. They work here. They pay U.S. taxes. They live as de facto Americans. Except that they aren’t citizens.

Donald Trump sought to ship them out, send them back to a country with which they have no understanding or familiarity. Politico reports: Roberts, who has emerged in recent years as a semi-regular swing justice on the court, wrote the majority opinion concluding that the decision to phase-out the program was unlawful because it did not consider all the options to rein in the program and failed to account for the interests of those who relied on it.

So the fight continues. It appears that the Trump administration will be unable to craft a new order in time for the November election.

My hope is that if Trump loses the election that the new president, Joe Biden, will scrap the effort to eliminate the DACA program and allow these once-young immigrants to continue to pursue their dream of living in the land of opportunity … provided, of course, that they seek to legalize their standing as U.S. residents.

national news

Bolton book: recipe for frustration

The more I hear about John Bolton’s book, the more frustrated and angry I am likely to become.

The former national security adviser for Donald Trump has laid bare what we have known all along. Trump is corrupt. He is self-serving. He doesn’t know anything about anything. He is an existential threat to the America we all love and cherish.

And yet the book, “The Room Where it Happened,” in reality doesn’t reveal much new. Many of us knew Trump had committed impeachable offenses when he sought political help from Ukraine.

To be sure, Bolton’s tome does reveal a ghastly new detail. It is that Trump gave China a pass on the concentration camps it was using to imprison political foes. Trump also sought political help from China.

All told, though, we are witnessing an example of a former national security expert parlaying his experiences in government into a handsome payoff. He should have blown the whistle loudly when he was given the chance during the impeachment proceeding against the Moron in Chief.

Yep. The frustration is reaching a boiling point.

national news

This Trump critic is no ‘Deep State’ monster

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Let’s be clear about John Bolton, who he is and the governing philosophy he represents.

The former national security adviser for Donald John Trump has written a book that shreds the president, peels the bark away from him. “The Room Where it Happened” is a memoir that tells a grim story of Donald Trump’s ignorance, his self-serving approach to government and the corruption that runs rampant through his administration.

Bolton is a hard-liner. He is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican foreign policy operative. He broke with Trump over policy differences, in that Bolton took a tougher stance against Iran, Russia and Syria than Trump.

This is my way of saying that John Bolton is not some squishy liberal “Deep State” operative, meaning that Trump cannot possibly label him as a tool for those who believe Trump poses a threat to that Deep State cabal that seeks to control the world.

All of this makes his contentions in the book all the more remarkable. He says Trump asked China for re-election help; he said the Saudi role in the murder of a Washington Post columnist took attention away from Ivanka Trump, who was facing a firestorm of her own; he acknowledges that Trump sought a political favor from Ukraine in exchange for weapons sent by the United States to help Ukraine fight Russia-backed rebels.

Were this coming from a lefty, Trump might be able to make hay over the source of John Bolton’s criticism. He cannot use that defense. John Bolton instead is a man of high principle who is laying even more bare what we have known all along.

It is that Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency.

national news

Bolton spills more beans on Trump … who knew?

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As the saying goes: The hits just keep on comin’.

Former national security adviser John Bolton is about to release the contents of a book he has written in which he details how Donald Trump — in Bolton’s view — committed multiple impeachable acts while dealing with foreign leaders.

Gosh! Who would have thought that could happen?

The White House is suing Bolton in seeking to block publication of his book, “The Room Where it Happened,” contending that Bolton is violating national security matters by publishing classified material. Bolton, to no one’s surprise, denies any such claim from the White House.

I’ve never been a Bolton fan. However, I am even less a fan of Donald Trump. So, when Bolton says that Trump curried favor with China to help him win re-election, or that he held up military aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on Joe Biden, well… I tend to believe him.

Bolton’s memoir is an explosive tome that alleges that Trump is ignorant about foreign policy and that Trump governs my impulse and little else.

Bolton dives straight into the heart of the issues that brought about Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives, namely the Ukraine matter and Trump seeking a favor from the Ukrainian president: Would he launch an investigation into Joe Biden before the United States would send Ukraine missiles to help fight the Russia-backed rebels fighting against the Ukrainian government?

Of course, in many respects this memoir is a bit anti-climactic. Many of us knew already what Bolton was going to say in the book. Congressional Democrats wanted Bolton to testify during the impeachment inquiry and then in the Senate trial that eventually acquitted Trump. Bolton balked. We didn’t hear from him. Until now.

Then again, it’s not as if Bolton’s testimony during the impeachment inquiry and trial would have changed any minds. It’s doubtful any minds will be changed even now.

I find it ridiculous — and certainly not funny — that Donald Trump would seek to block publication of this memoir on some phony notion of leaking “classified material.” Trump instead appears frightened by the prospect of a once-trusted national security aide exposing him for what many of us know already.

That the president is a dangerous buffoon.

national news

Ex-cop faces some serious prison time

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I’ve seen the video. You have, too. We’ve all seen it. The video is stomach-churning and heartbreaking.

Rayshard Brooks got stopped by Atlanta police. They tested his sobriety after finding him asleep in the drive-through lane at a Wendy’s restaurant.

He took a Breathalyzer test and came up slightly inebriated. He offered to walk to his sister’s house just a few blocks away. The cops sought to handcuff him instead. Brooks resisted; he wrestled a Taser stun gun from one of the cops; he ran away.

The cop — Garrett Rolfe — shot him in the back … twice while he was fleeing, running for his life. Brooks died later in a hospital.

Now the cop is charged with felony murder. This looks like a legitimate accusation to level at the former officer.

The ex-cop is white; Rayshard Brooks was black. It is another case in a distressingly long line of cases involving white police employing the heavy hand of the law on a young African-American. To think, as well, that this case happened while the nation is still reeling from the George Floyd case in Minneapolis, where another white officer snuffed the life out of Floyd, a black man who allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit bill.

Oh, my goodness. When will we learn? Ever?

State news

Gov. Abbott hands out blame, fails to own this crisis

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I have some advice for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

You need to stop dishing out blame to others and start taking ownership of the role you have played in the spike in COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death in the state you were elected to govern.

Abbott decided this week to blame 20-something Texans for refusing to practice social distancing, for failing to wear face masks in public and for being too cavalier about the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic that has swept around the globe.

Here’s a thought for the governor to ponder, although he likely won’t: Greg Abbott has the authority to issue a mandate that requires Texans to wear masks. Yet he doesn’t do that. He chooses to follow the lead of others — namely Donald Trump — who decline to accept fully the gravity of the health crisis at hand.

Having said that I’ll accept that we all deserve to be slapped across the face about this COVID-19. We need to ensure we all take it seriously. I get it. However, I found the tone of Gov. Abbott’s remarks to be disconcerting because they fail to address the role he and other political leaders can play in reducing the threat of this killer virus to Texans.

Isn’t there a saying making the rounds that declares that “We’re all in this together”? If were “in it together,” then we need to share the responsibility in looking for ways to get through this crisis. Assessing blame to just some of us won’t do the job.

medical news, military news

‘Cause for celebration’? Really?

(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Vice President Mike Pence is proud to wear the dunce cap that designates him as Donald Trump’s No. 1 sycophant.

Take, for instance, what he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, where he declared that “under … Trump’s leadership” the rate of infection by COVID-19 in the United States should be a “cause for celebration.”

Huh? Is the VPOTUS out of his mind? Well, yes. He is!

If he’s going to cite national causes for celebration, he needs to hold up France, Italy and Spain. Those countries have actually “flattened the curve” and are seeing serious declines in the infection and death rates from the pandemic.

How about Greece and Taiwan, which took seriously proactive measures at the onset of the pandemic and have experienced hardly any of the heartache that has occurred in the United States?

Oh, no! The VP has swilled Trump’s pandemic Kool-Aid and declared we should be “celebrating.” Earth to Mikey: We’re getting sicker here; many states are seeing serious increases in infection and hospitalization.

Pence wrote: “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the courage and compassion of the American people, our public health system is far stronger than it was four months ago, and we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy.”

No. We are not “winning the fight.”