Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

national news

Hey, Mr. POTUS, what about the rest of the country?

It has become an established fact that Donald John Trump Sr. loves talking exclusively to those who support him no matter what.

He speaks their language; they adhere to his message.

The latest so-called “dog whistle” was blasted out today when the president fired off a Twitter message in which — and this is really rich — he actually denied that nearly 3,000 Americans died from the wrath brought to Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria.

He blames the death toll on Democrats who are intent on making him look bad. That’s it! The Puerto Rico territorial government’s death toll, revised way upward from a formerly official count of 64 fatalities, is a plot, a conspiracy.

He made this astonishing, idiotic and utterly baseless claim as Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolina coast, threatening to bring even more havoc to the Eastern Seaboard.

Let’s talk, briefly, about his Puerto Rico remarks.

It’s easy to say that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about. However, he knows precisely what he’s saying. He is speaking to his “base,” the 35 or so percent of voting-age Americans who are behind him to the very end. The base doesn’t care about the truth. It doesn’t care about reality. It cares only that Trump stands up to the so-called “mainstream media,” those who oppose him.

Trump himself declared during the 2016 campaign that he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes.” Americans were aghast in the moment when Trump said it. That boast doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous now.

So he continues to talk to the base. He continues to make assertions without a scintilla of evidence to back them up. Democrats are to blame for the deaths of all those U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico? Millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016? He watched “thousands of Muslims” cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11? Barack Hussein Obama was born in Kenya and was ineligible to run for president?

That’s what I call “fake news.”

national news, State news

How will Cruz explain his change of heart toward POTUS?

Whenever the two major candidates for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Ted Cruz meet in a joint appearance, I am hoping whoever questions them will ask Cruz a critical question about his relationship with Donald John Trump Sr.

If it were me, I would ask him: Senator, you once called Donald Trump a pathological liar; you called him amoral; you called him gutless coward. How is it that you now welcome him to Texas to campaign for you? How do you justify this remarkable change in attitude toward a man you seemed to loathe when you both were campaigning for the GOP nomination in 2016?

If given a chance for a follow up, I might ask him to explain the president’s loathsome comments about Cruz: You took them personally, senator. Do you no longer feel the intense anger you expressed in the moment?

I also am thinking that Cruz’s opponent, Democrat Beto O’Rourke, is likely to ask the incumbent a lot of questions along those lines himself.

OK, I know what many of you are thinking. This isn’t new. Political foes for many years have buried the hatchet. Team of rivals, anyone?

To wit:

  • Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigned against each other in 2008; they said some incredibly mean things about each other. Obama got nominated, then elected and selected Clinton to be secretary of state.
  • Obama also ran hard and aggressively against Sen. Joe Biden in 2008 and then named Biden as his vice presidential running mate.
  • Sens. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson didn’t care for each other when they ran for the Democratic nomination in 1960. Then they teamed up and won the election.

That was then. The here and now presents another set of questions.

Trump disparaged Cruz’s father, suggesting he might have been complicit in JFK’s murder; he ridiculed the senator’s wife, Heidi. He called Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.”

Sen. Cruz’s response to all of that was intense and seemingly visceral anger — and justifiably so.

But … the men have let bygones be bygones. Yes?

I am left to wonder what it takes for a politician to tell us what they really think. I also have to wonder if Cruz’s outrage was feigned or was it for real.

As for the president, well, I don’t believe a single thing that flies out of his mouth.

national news

Wyoming: stranger political climate than Texas?

CASPER, Wyo. — I love this state. It’s spacious, gorgeous and virtually uninhabited.

It’s the 10th-largest state in the union in terms of area; but it ranks No. 50 in terms of population, with about 580,000 residents scattered across 97,000 square miles.

It also has a single U.S. House of Representatives member representing it, along with two U.S. senators, Republicans John Barrasso and Mike Enzi.

And what about that member of Congress? She is Liz Cheney, who happens to be the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Here’s where the strangeness of Wyoming politics comes into play. Our friend Tom — a longtime journalist of some standing here — was showing us around Casper and he told me that Wyoming isn’t too keen on carpetbaggers, the politician who barely knows a region he or she wants to represent in government.

Why, then, did Wyoming elect Liz Cheney, who grew up in Washington, D.C., while her dad was serving in the Defense Department, Congress and as President Ford’s chief of staff before being elected VP in 2000?

Tom’s answer: “Because she has an ‘R’ next to her name and her dad happens to be the former vice president of the United States.”

I don’t have a particular problem with carpetbaggers. Indeed, my first political hero — the late Robert F. Kennedy — carried that title when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 1964. So did Hillary Rodham Clinton when she ran for RFK’s old seat in 2000 after serving eight years as first lady of the United States. Indeed, Mitt Romney — the former Massachusetts governor — is facing down the carpetbagger demon as he runs for the Senate in Utah.

I do find it cool, too, that a U.S. House member can represent the same constituency as two U.S. senators. Indeed, senators tend at times to lord it over House members that they represent entire states while their House colleagues have to settle for representing a measly House district.

Not so in Wyoming, where equality between the “upper” and “lower” congressional chambers is alive and well.

Donald Trump

POTUS’s petty petulance keeps revealing itself

Donald Trump is a petulant president. Of that there can be no doubt.

The latest example of the president’s petty petulance reveals itself in the way he has reacted publicly to the deadly fires that are consuming hundreds of thousands of acres in California.

Would the president offer a highly public statement of support for the firefighters and other first responders? Or for the families that are being frightened by the fires or have lost all their possessions? Or the loved ones of the firemen who have died fighting to protect Californians?

Not yet, that I’ve heard.

He instead has issued a weird Twitter message in which he blames federal environmental rules that, according to Trump, have hampered firefighting efforts to quell the flames.

Trump lost California to Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 election by roughly 4.3 million votes. He has been feuding with Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown over environmental issues.

But the man who is president of all Americans — even those who oppose him — cannot yet bring himself to offer a soothing word of support for those who are suffering.

Disgraceful.

national news

Yesterday’s ‘fib’ becomes a full-blown ‘lie’

It’s hard to remember at times how the media used to treat Donald J. Trump’s penchant for prevarication.

They called his truth-twisting mere “fibs.” Or “misstatements.” Or they used similarly tepid terminology.

Then he got elected president. His telling of fiction continued.

It finally dawned on media members. The president was lying, as in knowingly disseminating false information.

I will admit to being among those who initially were reluctant to use the “L-word” in describing Trump’s unwillingness to tell the truth. I won’t say he is “unable” to speak truthfully; I believe he is fully capable of telling the truth but he merely chooses to lie.

I am not going to equate Trump’s lying to what many conservatives accused former President Obama of saying as he sought to defend the Affordable Care Act. Obama had said Americans could “choose their own doctor” under the ACA; it turned out to be untrue. Did the president lie, as in knowingly say something he knew to be false? I do not believe that’s the case; I happen to believe the president made that statement believing it to be true.

Trump’s lying comes from a different source. His lying is pathological, as former Republican Party presidential primary opponents such as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz have described it. That doesn’t excuse him from speaking falsely.

He stands before the nation and makes false statements about:

The size of his electoral victory, the nation’s economic growth, the state of the nation when he took office, his toughness with Russia, wiretapping of his campaign office in 2016, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote margin coming from illegal immigrants voting for president … and, oh yes, Barack Obama’s place of birth.

And on it goes. The lying never stops.

The lies have piled up from the moment he entered the world of politics in June 2015, at the moment he rode down that escalator at Trump Tower.

The media were slow on the uptake at first. They have wised up, awakened and are now calling these falsehoods what they are.

They are lies. The president is a liar.

national news

Can’t put a single thing past POTUS

Once upon a time, long before he died of cancer complications, I once said of the late Amarillo millionaire weirdo Stanley Marsh 3 that I wouldn’t put a single thing past him, that he was capable of attempting any stunt under the sun.

With apologies to the late Texas Panhandle eccentric “artisan” and goofball, I am beginning to think the same thing of the president of the United States.

His former lawyer/confidant/”fixer” Michael Cohen has told authorities that he believes Donald Trump knew of the infamous 2016 meeting with Russians who had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton before the meeting took place.

That means Trump — surprise, surprise! — allegedly lied when he said he knew nothing of the meeting, that no one told him. Cohen reportedly told Don Trump Jr. in advance of the meeting, and that Don Jr. told Dad.

There also are reports that Trump’s legal might have leaked the news of Cohen’s recordings of the two men discussing paying hush money to a Playboy model who alleges she and the future president had a nearly year long love affair.

What might Trump the Elder have done here? There’s some speculation that the president might be behind the leak of this information so that he can get a head start on discrediting Cohen. He wants to peel away at Cohen’s credibility as he has sought to do with special counsel Robert Mueller and former FBI director James Comey.

And this all might be the work of someone who says point blank that he has “done nothing wrong.”

Sure.

national news

The ‘Fixer’ now seeks to damage Trump?

You might not expect me to say this, but here it comes anyway: Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former good friend and lawyer, has allegedly revealed another big lie from the president of the United States … but it might not matter.

Hey, I think it’s a big deal. Others think it’s a big deal. But the president’s penchant for prevarication has become almost standard fare now.

Cohen reports that candidate Donald Trump knew of a meeting with Russian operatives before it happened during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has said he didn’t know about it. Don Trump Jr. has said he never told Dad about it. Cohen, though, says Junior told Senior about it before the fact.

Thus, the president and his First Son lied in public about what they knew — or didn’t know.

The Russians reportedly had dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton, Trump’s Democratic foe in the election. They allegedly wanted to meet with Trump to tell him what they had. Did the candidate call the FBI to rat them out? Did Don Jr. do it? Did anyone squeal about principals from a hostile country to the feds? No.

Now it might be that Trump has been caught in another whopper.

Will anyone care? I do. So should you.

national news

U.S. attorney general: disgusting partisan hack

I’ll just get this off my chest up front: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a sorry excuse for a high-level federal law enforcement official.

The AG stood this week before a crowd of conservative high school students who began chanting “Lock her up!”, referencing the idiotic e-mail controversy that centers on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Rather than do the right thing, which would have been to silence the crowd and remind them of the “rule of law” and “due process,” the AG chuckled nervously and repeated the chant from the podium. He then said something about “hearing that chant” during the 2016 presidential campaign.

I once was willing to give Sessions the benefit of the doubt, given his decision to recuse himself from the “Russia thing” probe at the Justice Department. No longer.

Sessions had the chance to show some statesmanship, to demonstrate that he lives by the rule of law. Instead, when the students began chanting “Lock her up!” he gravitated back to his partisan roots. He once was a Republican U.S. senator from Alabama who, before he was elected to that body, was rejected by the Senate for a federal judgeship because of racially tinged statements he had made.

Now the nation’s chief law enforcement officer has seen fit to continue the idiocy associated with a failed — and quite lengthy — investigation into a controversy that’s been decided.

The AG has joined the president of the United States in disgracing his high office.

Shameful.

national news

AG joins the crazy chant? Are you kidding?

To think I actually once said something positive about U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. What in the world was I thinking?

He recused himself from the Russia investigation because of his key role as a Donald Trump presidential campaign adviser. He handed it over to his deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein, who selected Robert Mueller as special counsel. I applauded the AG for demonstrating an awareness of conflict of interest.

Then the attorney general does this: He stands before a group of teenagers and laughs at the “Lock her up!” chant that came from the audience. Oh, and then he repeats it along with them.

Rule of law, Mr. Attorney General? Due process, sir? Executive decorum? What in the world is going on here?

As CNN reported: “Lock her up,” Sessions said, chuckling at the brief interruption from the audience as the chant then grew louder.

“I heard that a long time over the last campaign,” he said before continuing with his prepared speech.

The chant became a part of the GOP mantra in 2016 as controversy swirled over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mail controversy. Clinton, of course, ran for president as the Democratic Party nominee. The “Lock her up!” chant became the theme of the Republican National Convention.

For the attorney general to laugh it off now is both disgusting and disgraceful.

Therefore, I hereby take back my positive comments about the attorney general.

national news

Obama, Hillary … it’s all their fault?

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Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. fired off yet another in an infinite string of idiotic tweets.

This came out earlier today: So President Obama knew about Russia before the Election. Why didn’t he do something about it? Why didn’t he tell our campaign? Because it is all a big hoax, that’s why, and he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win!!!

A big hoax. There you have it.

Why, then, is the president making such a big deal out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian goons who attacked our democratic process?

Because … it’s not a hoax.

It’s real. Trump knows it. His team knows it. He is diverting attention from it.

Let’s stay tuned and hang on with both hands.