Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news

Trump piles on a new charge without evidence

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Donald Trump’s list of unsubstantiated allegations keeps growing.

He now has accused former President Barack Obama of committing a crime. The crime alleges something to do with former national security adviser Michael Flynn and whether President Obama conspired with the FBI to investigate whether Flynn had conspired with Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

When reporters asked Trump about “Obamagate,” he said the media know the nature of the crime.

This is disgraceful.

It comes from the Imbecile in Chief who has alleged that millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016; he accused the Obama administration of “spying” on his campaign; now he has launched new conspiracy campaign against his immediate presidential predecessor.

Donald Trump is channeling the shady ghost of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the infamous commie-hunter from Wisconsin who smeared the reputations of dozens of public servants in the 1950s.

Only this time Trump is actually one-upping McCarthy by accusing his predecessor of committing a crime, which is tantamount to what he is alleging with this Flynn business.

He calls the Obama administration “the most corrupt” in U.S. history, which is laughable on its face, given that so many of Trump’s former associates, campaign aides have pleaded guilty to criminal activity.

Michael Flynn is one of them. He pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about the Russian attack on our election. Then he took it back. Now he has the Justice Department seeking to have the guilty plea wiped off the books.

So now we have Donald Trump seeking yet another diversion from reality by leveling a specious allegation against Barack Obama.

Astonishing.

medical news

Why put the muzzle on these medical experts?

This must be the “chaos” that Barack H. Obama referred to in that leaked phone call to the Obama Alumni Association.

The former president of the United States has categorized Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as “chaotic.” Yep. He said it. I believe it.

So now we have this: Drs. Antony Fauci and Deborah Birx, two of the nation’s leading infectious disease experts, reportedly are being shoved aside while Trump seeks to concentrate on cheerleading the nation back to economic vitality.

It matters not a damn bit to Trump that Fauci and Birx have actual expertise to offer the nation as it seeks answers to the pandemic that has killed 80,000 Americans and is threatening to kill many thousands more of us.

As Politico reports: The broader turn away from the health issues at the core of such a all-encompassing national emergency is just the latest chapter in a communications strategy that’s long confounded and frustrated public health experts.

Trump is more interested in his own political future than in the health of his fellow Americans. That is the major takeaway I am getting from all of this back and forth.

We are dealing first and foremost with a health crisis. Americans are being felled by the thousands each day. Many of those sickened are dying, for crying out loud! Yes, we also have an economic crisis with which to deal. However, Donald Trump must not shun the experts who are supposed to offer clear-headed, objective analysis of the health risks to a nation that needs it far more than it needs cheerleading and exhortations to get back to work.

And it’s the chaos that serves as the common thread that runs through Donald Trump’s mish-mash approach to solving a problem that needs maximum focus … which needs to fix itself on the health of Americans.

national news

Obama weighing in — finally! — on the 2020 election

Barack Hussein Obama is speaking out, labeling Donald John Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as “chaotic,” and criticizing the Justice Department decision to forgo prosecuting an admitted perjurer.

So, you might ask: What is a former president doing here? Isn’t it “normal” for a president to remain quiet about how his successor is doing? Sure it’s normal. Indeed, President Obama has been quiet.

Except for this: Donald Trump keeps invoking his immediate predecessor’s name, criticizing his policies and declaring — mostly without justification — that he has fixed the things that Obama got wrong.

A leaked phone call to a group called the Obama Alumni Association has the former president describing Trump’s response to pandemic as “chaotic” because Trump has been too preoccupied with “what’s in it for me?” rather than fixating on the problem and the suffering of his fellow Americans. Obama also is going all-in for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee and vows to work as hard as he can to ensure Biden’s election this fall.

I normally would take some alarm at a former president playing such an active role in a campaign involving his immediate successor. However, Trump — as I have noted — brought all this on himself by continually seeking to denigrate the service that Obama rendered during his two terms as president.

A quick review: Obama inherited an economy in free fall; he pushed Congress to enact stimulus packages to rescue the economy; the nation began a 10-year job-growth climb; he ordered the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden; the State Department negotiated a deal to deny Iran access to nuclear weapons; he reduced the annual federal budget deficit by two-thirds; he handed Trump a robust economy.

Trump, though, doesn’t see it that way. So he keeps seeking to criticize Obama.

Now it appears that it’s game on for the former president.

Hey, I don’t hide my affection for the former president and my disdain for the current clown masquerading as president. Thus, if the current White House occupant wants to invoke President Obama’s name continually, well … bring it. I’m quite sure Barack Obama can find plenty more to say in response.

national news

Stars are aligning for a Trump election defeat, however …

As I look ahead to the upcoming presidential election, I am tempted to fill myself with hope that we well might change presidents when all the ballots are counted.

Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee. He has to win a few more primary elections to corral enough convention delegates to win the nomination when the party convenes its convention, be it a virtual event or one with actual delegates meeting in Milwaukee.

Biden has garnered the endorsements of virtually all his former rivals in what once was a huge and diverse field of contenders. He also has scored the endorsement of the most popular Democrat in America, former President Barack Obama.

The economy has collapsed. Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been pathetic, feckless, confused, chaotic. He once downplayed the threat and then has been caught flat-footed as it has killed more than 20,000 Americans; the number is going up.

However, let’s remember that the stars aligned in 2016 for a Trump defeat. Then he won. He captured enough Electoral College votes to defeat a supremely more qualified candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Trump defeat shocked virtually every political observer on Earth.

That result gives me pause to suggest that former Vice President Biden is a shoo-in to defeat the former reality TV celebrity/carnival barker/con man/charlatan/conspiracy theorist/habitual liar.

My sincere hope is that Biden’s campaign brain trust learns from the fluke that produced a Trump election in 2016, studies how this travesty occurred and attacks with full force the record that Donald Trump has produced.

Trump’s team already knows what it has to do to win re-election. It has to retain its base and energize it. They’ll turn Trump loose and allow him to rail and rant in that incoherent fashion that seems to play well in front of those campaign rallies.

At this moment, the stars are lining up to defeat this fraudulent president. Oh, how I hope they remain aligned … and how I hope that Joe Biden can deliver on his pledge to “restore the nation’s soul.”

national news

This man offers hope for our future

This video is about 30 minutes long. It was recorded in the summer of 2017.

I have nothing to add to this. I just want to encourage you to watch it and to listen to the message delivered by a newly former president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, as he accepted the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

It speaks volumes about the ideals we need to attain once again for this great country.

national news

Why hasn’t Obama weighed in for Biden? Here’s why

Donald Trump chided Joe Biden this week, wondering out loud why Barack Obama hasn’t endorsed the former vice president who now wants to run against Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Well, Trump knows why, but I’ll offer my belief here.

President Obama has chosen to take the conventional route in presidential primaries. He didn’t want to enrage loyalists for other candidates still running by backing the man who served with him for eight years from 2009 until 2017.

The last candidate facing Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has bowed out. Now the road is clear for the former president to weigh in.

Earth to The Donald: There it is for you. Spelled out.

Trump, of course, doesn’t adhere to that playbook. He has weighed in repeatedly during Republican primaries in 2018 and again this year. Some of the endorsees have won, others have lost their primary fights. There’s been plenty of GOP backbiting after the votes have been counted, with Republicans arguing with each other over the impact that Trump’s endorsement might have brought to the result.

President Obama doesn’t want to get involved in that sort of intra-party squabbling.

It’s been a time-honored strategy.

I am pretty certain now that Joe Biden is the last man standing in the once-huge Democratic Party primary field that Barack Obama will cut loose.

It will be fun to watch.

national news

Biden wasn’t No. 1 choice at first; he is now

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

I find myself trying to stop the head-spinning caused by the trajectory of the Democratic Party presidential primary contest.

Joe Biden is now the presumptive nominee of the party that will challenge Donald Trump for the presidency. He claimed that title when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race.

I need to make two key stipulations. One is that I am glad to support former Vice President Biden’s nomination and his election as the next president of the United States. The second is that Joe Biden was not my first choice among the 22 candidates who lined up originally to seek the Democratic nomination.

I wanted someone new. I wanted a fresher face than the one Biden presents. He wasn’t among the top five Democrats in the field, but surely within the top 10.

To be candid, I didn’t have a favorite among the thundering herd that started this race. I like Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker … all of them brought plenty to the table. My hope early on, prior to the field being formed, was for the Democrats to nominate someone who would leap out of the proverbial tall grass, a total surprise.

I thought there might be another Jimmy Carter out there; bear in mind, I make the Carter reference only in hoping someone would surprise the political world the way Carter did in 1976.

None of those candidates made the final cut. Joe Biden is the last man standing.

I am all in for Biden now. Yes, I think he was — as President Obama has described him — the “finest vice president we’ve ever had.” He was consequential, a critical member of the Obama team. He served as a bridge between the president and congressional Republicans who over many years had developed abiding respect and love for the nation’s No. 2 politician. We need a president today who can rebuild that bridge.

Donald Trump has governed just as he campaigned. He appeals only to his base. I am going to place my faith in Joe Biden to actually deliver on his own pledge to “restore the soul” of our nation.

My journey to this place was full of fits and starts. However, here is where I stand. I do so proudly.

medical news

Trump and his team are getting it … finally!

I want to hope that Donald J. Trump has turned the corner on this coronavirus matter, that he’s now taking it as seriously as it deserves to be taken.

I also want to believe the president when he says we’re in a war with an invisible enemy, a war he vows to “win.”

However, the turnabout has been so dramatic, so profound that I cannot stop listening to the nonsense he spouted not so long ago while the rest of the world was becoming rattled by the onset of the pandemic.

He went in just a matter of two weeks from proclaiming the pandemic to be a “Democrat hoax” to declaring war on this “enemy.”

How, too, can we forget what we have learned about how he dismantled the pandemic office set up during the Obama administration as part of the National Security Council? Trump took the office down, reportedly only because President Obama thought it was worthwhile.

Now we’re paying the price for such reckless petulance? Is that the deal? Consider what has been reported about how the Obama team sought to counsel the Trump team during the transition from one administration to another.

The Obama folks sought to brief the Trump folks about the potential dangers of pandemics, according to Business Insider. The Trump team, though, were disinterested in what they were hearing. BI reports that the new commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, actually dozed off more than once during the briefings he and others were getting.

As BI reported: “There were people who were there who said, ‘This is really stupid and why do we need to be here,'” the senior Obama administration told Politico.

OK, so it appears now that the Trump administration is starting — finally! — to understand the scope of the crisis that has erupted. I will remain hopeful that’s the case.

Why, though, did we have to endure the idiocy that came from our nation’s top government echelon?

national news

POTUS exhibits extreme envy of a former POTUS

ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Critics of this blog are going to accuse me of engaging in psychobabble, but I am going to post these brief thoughts anyway.

Donald John Trump, to my way of thinking, is exhibiting extreme envy of his immediate predecessor, Barack Hussein Obama.

That seems to me to be the only reason he keeps trying to run down the former president’s accomplishments. For instance, Trump threw this little gem out today on Twitter: Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation. The April 2009-10 Swine Flu, where nearly 13,000 people died in the U.S. was poorly handled. Ask MSDNC & lightweight Washington failure @RonaldKlain, who was the President then?

See? There you go. He keeps trying to suggest that President Obama’s two terms — to which he was elected both times with healthy majorities — just didn’t cut it.

Well, Trump is lying … which is no surprise to anyone with half a brain.

Why, though, does he keep insisting that Barack Obama was such a failure? Let me take a brief stab at it.

I believe he envies Obama. He looks at the way President Obama handled himself in public. He is jealous of the way the public responded to Obama’s grace, his calm, his class, his dignity. Can you imagine Donald Trump ever leading a grief-stricken church congregation in the wake of a massacre in South Carolina in a rendition of “Amazing Grace”? Try picturing Trump shedding a tear when talking about children and their teachers being murdered in a school as Obama did when mourning the shooting deaths in Newtown, Conn.

The public still yearns for that kind of presidential compassion and empathy. It finds none of it in No. 45.

And so when his Twitter fingers get itchy, he lashes out with nonsense. He directs his anger and his envy at the man he succeeded as president, at the man who continues to engender more admiration and outright love from a public that for the most part disdains Donald Trump.

The current president simply sickens me.

national news

Missing this kind of PDA from POTUS and FLOTUS

I just know I am going to catch grief from critics of this blog … but, what the heck. I am going to say this anyway.

I miss seeing this kind of funny display of affection from the first couple of the United States.

These pictures showed up on my Facebook news feed. I figure they were snapped in January, when Michelle Obama celebrated her 56th birthday. She and her husband were goofing off, exhibiting a good natured public display of affection.

I vaguely recall the occasional stuffed-shirt criticism that came at them when Barack Obama was president and Michelle Obama was first lady.

Their White House successors haven’t shown this kind of public affection for each other that I can remember.

Pictures such as these demonstrate a level of humanity in our elected leader and his spouse. It’s a refreshing sight to see, even from a former POTUS and FLOTUS.