Tag Archives: White House

national news

The clown show is getting even more bizarre

That astonishing sideshow that commenced today in the Cabinet Room of the White House left me fairly speechless.

Why? Because there is too much on which to comment. Donald Trump’s non-stop riff covering the government shutdown, The Wall, the military, James Mattis’ resignation/firing, and God knows what else has left many of us out here grasping for something on which to analyze.

I’ll go with two items that jumped out at me.

Trump said, “I think I would have been a good general, but who knows?” Well, Mr. President, you had your chance back in the 1960s. While many of us were answering the call to duty during the Vietnam War, young Donald Trump received (cough, cough!) medical deferments associated with, um, bone spurs.

I had flat feet in 1968, which I always thought was a disqualifier. The U.S. Army induction center in Portland, Ore., didn’t accept that idea. So . . .  off I went.

The future president got five deferments. The New York Times recently revealed that the circumstances of those deferments were at best questionable, that the doctor who “diagnosed” the bone spurs allegedly did so as a favor to young Donald’s father, Fred. Thus, I won’t buy into his goofy notion about how good a general he would have been.

Then he said this about James Mattis, the now-former secretary of defense. “What did I get out of” his service? “Not much,” Trump said.

OK. Let’s see. The oath that Mattis took was to protect the country, to serve the country, to defend the Constitution. He did not swear an oath to serve the president. He did not declare his adherence to the individual who nominated him to run the Pentagon.

Then the president said he “essentially” fired the defense secretary.

Right there is yet another demonstration from Donald Trump that this individual does not understand the true meaning of public service. He has shown one more time how patently unfit he is to serve as commander in chief of the finest military apparatus the world has ever seen.

media news

Whether to tweet or be ‘presidential’

I’ll concede the obvious, which is that Donald John Trump has redefined the presidency of the United States.

He issues policy pronouncements via Twitter. He tweets his brains out, firing off messages conveyed normally through more, um, diplomatic channels. Part of me still wishes he would cease and desist.

However, another part of me — perhaps it’s the major part — actually wants him to keep it up. Keep using the medium to say things, to outrage us, to fire up your base, to give the rest of us reason to detest you.

A lengthy article in Politico talks about how Trump has overused Twitter. Remember when he promised (imagine that!) to cut off the tweets once he became president? That pledge had as much value as his promise to make Mexico pay for The Wall, that he wouldn’t have time to play golf and his pledge to be the “unity president.”

Read the Politico article here.

Trump has been unleashed on Twitter.

It’s given bloggers such as yours truly plenty of grist on which to comment. Keep it coming, Mr. President.

I’ll just add one caveat: Do not tweet out the nuclear codes or otherwise endanger national security any worse than you already have done through your careless remarks to Russians and other adversaries who visit you in the Oval Office.

The new year promises to be chock full of news, as if the year that just passed wasn’t full enough as it was.

With the “Stable Genius” at the helm, there’s never a dull moment.

economic news, national news

Nice timing on pay freeze, Mr. POTUS

Donald John Trump isn’t exactly the master of impeccable timing.

He helps shut down part of the federal government, forcing the furloughing of thousands of federal employees; thus, they are not getting paid while their agency is shut down because the White House and Congress are arguing over money to build The Wall along our southern border.

What does Trump then decide to do? He signs an executive order freezing wages for federal employees! They were slated to get a 2.1 percent pay increase. No longer will they get it. Trump said the budget cannot support it. Imagine that, will ya?

The budget deficit has exploded since the president and congressional Republicans enacted that tax cut, depriving the government of revenue that might have helped minimize deficit growth.

At least, though, the pay freeze doesn’t have an effect on the 2.6-percent pay increase granted to our men and women in the military.

Still, as the saying goes: Timing is everything.

Nice timing, Mr. President.

International news, national news

Trump stays put, unlike congressional leaders

I have to say it out loud: I disagree mightily with Donald Trump’s reasons for shutting down part of the federal government, but I agree with his decision to stay put in Washington while needling his foes to find a solution to the stalemate.

Meanwhile, congressional leaders — Republican and Democrat alike — are nowhere to be found in D.C. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is gone; so is Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer; Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell also are MIA.

I get that the two sides are miles apart. Trump wants money to build The Wall along our southern border. Democrats are having none of it. But the two sides cannot talk to each other face to face if one of the parties is absent, correct?

We don’t need The Wall to shore up our border security. We can accomplish that feat without erecting The Wall, whether it’s an actual wall or an unreasonable facsimile.

At least the president is on scene. I wish those who run the legislative branch of government were there, too.

national news, State news

Democratic excitement causes flashbacks

I must be hallucinating, or having some sort of flashback . . . which I assure you isn’t drug-induced.

Texas Democrats, not Republicans, are all agog over the looming struggle for attention between two rising stars. One of them came so very close to being elected to the U.S. Senate; the other is a former big-city mayor and a former housing secretary for the most recent Democratic president.

Stand tall, Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro.

O’Rourke almost defeated Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the midterm election; he might run for president of the United States in 2020. Castro was mayor of San Antonio, the state’s second-largest city and served in the Cabinet of Barack H. Obama; he, too, might run for POTUS.

Of the two of them, Castro seems the surer bet to toss his Stetson into the ring, although O’Rourke keeps tantalizing many around the country with messages that suggest that he, too, is likely to join the Democratic free-for-all.

Texas once was a Democratic bastion, where only Democrats were seen and heard. Then it morphed into a Republican stronghold and the GOP snatched all the headlines, the air time and people’s political attention.

It’s now becoming more of an inter-party competition, instead of an intra-party donnybrook. I like the idea of the two parties fighting hard for the hearts and minds of Texans and other Americans.

As for O’Rourke and Castro, I am beginning to sense a rivalry in the making.

Politico reports that a Texas political strategist, Colin Strother, sees the two men’s disparate upbringing well could produce a unique situation in Texas. They won’t be fighting for the same constituency, Strother guesses. “I see them as two completely different types of candidates,” he said.

Castro sees himself as the underdog, given O’Rourke’s meteoric rise while losing his race to Cruz. He has a twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who’s been helping him raise money to try to bring down the O’Rourke colossus.

O’Rourke, you might recall, campaigned against Cruz without the help of high-powered, top-dollar political consultants and/or pollsters. He just visited every one of Texas’s 254 counties, talked to voters wherever he found them. What astounded me was the amount of time O’Rourke spent in GOP-stronghold counties in rural West Texas, from the Panhandle to the Permian Basin. Didn’t anyone tell him the Panhandle is where the John Birch Society used to give “mainstream politicians” fits?

I don’t know whether both — or either — of these young men are going to vie for the Big Prize in 2020. I’m just delighted to see the excitement they both are generating in a state that has grown quite unaccustomed to hearing noise from Democrats’ side of the fence.

national news

A Christmas wish for our politicians

I am in the spirit of bestowing Christmas wishes. I won’t bore you with what I wish for members of my family . . . besides, it’s personal.

I’ll bore you instead with what I wish for those politicians who work for us, you and me. We are the bosses, folks, not the party leaders, or those who call the shots in Congress or the White House. Every member of Congress — as well as the president — answers to us. We call the shots.

My overarching wish is for our politicians to stop this idiotic game of shutting down the government every few months. They need to approve long-term federal budgets that include money for vital programs upon which we all depend.

This “continuing resolution” nonsense has to end. Now would be a good time to end it.

The federal government is shut down for some undetermined length of time. Some of it is still operating. However, the halls of Capitol Hill are silent. The national parks are quiet.

Sure, members of Congress are surrendering their paychecks while the government is shuttered. Not all of them have signed on to that pledge. The president doesn’t take a paycheck for whatever it is he does in the White House, so he’s already clear of that particular shame.

I realize this Christmas wish of mine is a pipe dream. It won’t happen, more than likely, while all sides seek a way out of the mess they’re in.

However, in the Christmas spirit, I offer this request with the hope that somehow, somewhere, in some fashion our employees — the men and women who do our bidding (supposedly) — can find a way toward a permanent solution to this idiocy.

So, I’m on the record. You work for me, folks. Get the job done!

national news

Trump’s hysteria continues to mount

My astonishment at the presidential hysteria mounting over the Russia probe and related matters is continuing to build.

It presents itself in stark contrast to the stone-cold silence coming from the office of the special counsel that Donald Trump is attacking multiple times daily.

Robert Mueller continues to insist on a veil of silence. He has instructed his team to keep its collective trap shut. No leaks are coming from the special counsel who is examining that “Russia thing” that prompted Trump to fire FBI director James Comey in May 2017.

Yet the president continues his frontal assault on Mueller’s reputation, on the reputation of his former friend Michael Cohen, on Comey, on the Department of Justice, on the FBI. His assault is inflicting some collateral damage, too, such as on the rule of law and on the notion that the U.S. Constitution stands as a bulwark against any abuses of power that might arise from any of the three branches of government.

It is my fervent hope that Mueller concludes his investigation sooner rather than later. I am growing weary of the Twitter tirades coming from the White House. I am tiring of the insistence from the president that Mueller has “no evidence of collusion”; in fact, we don’t know what Mueller has or doesn’t have, which is why I want the probe to reach its finish line.

As for the president, every time he yaps about “no collusion” or “no laws being broken,” he sounds all the more to me as if he’s trying to hide something from public purview. I refer to those tax returns that he has refused to release; or the mountain of documented evidence that Mueller has compiled that is bound to answer a lot of questions.

Donald Trump’s hysteria plays well with the base that is hanging with him to the end. Fine. It isn’t playing well with the rest of the country, the 60-some percent of us who disapprove of the manner that Trump seeks to lead the country.

Please, Mr. Special Counsel, wrap this thing up as soon as possible to spare us the frothing madness that pours out of the White House.

Oh, wait! It just occurs to me that the end of the Russia probe — no matter how it concludes — is going to produce another endless barrage from the president of the United States.

Dang it, man! We can’t win!

national news

How in the world do you wish success for Trump?

I have grappled with this since the moment I learned that Donald John Trump had been elected president of the United States.

It is how do I wish success for someone who I believe is unfit for the office of president?

Yes, I have heard how previous presidents wished their successors well, even if they are from different political parties. The late President George H.W. Bush famously wished good things in that letter he wrote to the man who defeated him for re-election in 1992, President Bill Clinton. President George W. Bush wished the same for the man who succeeded him in 2009, President Barack Obama.

I am just a shmuck blogger out here in Flyover Country. I cannot bring myself to wish Donald Trump success. Why? Because his definition of “success” is at odds fundamentally with what I believe is best for the country.

He wants to isolate the nation from the rest of the world. He wants to roll back environmental regulations, giving polluters greater freedom to, um, pollute our air. He wants to build a wall along our southern border. He favors tax cuts for the wealthy and to hell with anyone else. Trump believes trade wars are good for the country. He wants to take “credit” for shutting down the government if he doesn’t get what he wants. Trump is populating his administration with know-nothings and novices. Trump wants to trash the Affordable Care Act and replace it with an unknown policy. He curries favor with international despots.

How in the name of good government does one wish success for someone who wants those things? How does one believe any of it is good for the nation?

I am at a complete loss at understanding any of it.

To be fair, Trump’s agenda does have a couple of winners. I want him to succeed in enacting federal sentencing reform. I favor an infrastructure improvement plan, although likely scaled down a bit from the $1 trillion pipe dream he’s put out there to repair roads, bridges and airports; furthermore, we need to find a way to pay for it without exploding the national deficit and debt.

Those are just two aspects. The rest of his larger “vision,” if you want to call it that, is anathema to everything I believe.

Trump’s definition of success, in my humble view, is a prescription for national catastrophe. As such, I cannot possibly wish him well.

national news

Why the rapid turnover of ‘best people’?

Donald Trump made a plethora of promises while seeking the presidency. One of them was to surround himself with “the people best people” to run the executive branch of government.

How has that worked out? Not too well.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is “leaving” the administration at the end of the month, according to the president. Trump hasn’t told us whether he was fired or whether he quit to “pursue other interests” — which in reality means the same thing as getting canned.

When the president nominated Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, he hailed the man he had never met as a brilliant business executive and the best dealmaker on Planet Earth. Then he fired him. Just the other day, Tillerson spoke out against Trump, criticizing his management style. The president’s response? Tillerson lacks “mental capacity” and is “dumb as a rock.”

Tillerson is just one of many individuals who have gone from hero to zero during their time working in the Trump administration.

He has burned through multiple chiefs of staff, communications directors, and various Cabinet officials . . . all in the span of less than two years! Just think, Trump has two more years to go to finish out his term in office!

Best people? They aren’t on board. His campaign promise was nothing but an empty platitude.

Trump hasn’t yet appointed a White House chief of staff, turning instead to an “acting” chief, Mick Mulvaney, who also has a full-time day job as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Think about that for a second: an “acting” White House chief of staff. Trump keeps telling us that applicants are lining up out the door and around the block to work in the White House. I would submit that the president is lying about that matter, too, just as he lies about everything continuously.

The “best people” aren’t going to be found inside the White House, let alone in the West Wing. They’re running like hell away from the madhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue.

national news

One more stark difference between Trump and Bush 41

Americans have just bade farewell to a great and good man, George Herbert Walker Bush, with tributes and praise that brought instantaneous comparisons to one of his presidential successors, Donald John Trump Sr.

The tributes honored the former president’s empathy, compassion, the size of his heart, wisdom and coolness under the most extreme pressure imaginable. Many of us drew a straight line between the 41st president and the 45th president and found the latter man lacking in all those categories.

What has gotten almost no attention has been the qualifications chasm that exists between the men.

We went from electing arguably the most qualified man ever as president to electing — without question, in my mind — the most fundamentally unqualified man. Yes, we made that leap between 1988 and 2016. In just 28 years we reset the standard for electing the leader of the free world and the commander in chief of the world’s greatest military machine.

Bush served as a U.S. Navy aviator in World War II (who came within a whisker of dying in combat), successful West Texas businessman, two-term member of Congress, CIA director, special envoy to China, Republican Party chairman, ambassador to the United Nations and then vice president of the United States. All that occurred before his smashing election as POTUS in 1988. He also was married to the same woman for 73 years, with whom he produced six children.

And Trump? His business record has been, shall we say, mixed. He had zero public service experience. His entire professional life was aimed at self-enrichment. He has filed multiple bankruptcies. The only public office he ever has sought is the presidency of the United States. The personal part? He’s been married three times and has admitted to cheating on his first two wives — with evidence mounting that he did the same thing to his current wife.

President Bush brought honor and an enormous well-spring of commitment to public service to the world’s most powerful office. Donald Trump has brought — um, let me think — not a single shred of any of it to the office to which he was elected. We have turned the presidency into an office where the occupant can receive on-the-job training. No experience necessary. How utterly astonishing!

George H.W. Bush was worthy of the praise he received. Donald J. Trump is equally worthy of the scorn he is receiving.