Tag Archives: Barack Obama

political news

Bank it: Trump isn't running for president

My former colleagues at the Amarillo Globe-News have run a column by a guy who fancies himself as a player in Republican political circles.

He is Matt Towery, a former Georgia GOP state legislator and a pal of Newt Gingrich. He’s also a friend of the Globe-News’s corporate ownership, which is the major reason he is published occasionally in the local paper.

Towery thinks Donald Trump is considering seriously whether to run for president in 2016. What’s more, Towery is infatuated with the notion of Trump actually becoming president.

Let’s clear the air.

Trump isn’t running. He’ll never run for president. He is talking like this because he likes — no, he loves — the sound of his voice. He loves getting people all worked up over the goofy things he says and he takes himself far too seriously on these matters.

However, the real reason he won’t run is because he has a lucrative TV deal that he cannot surrender. It’s that apprentice show of his on NBC-TV, the one where he tells celebrities “You’re fired.”

He’s going to give that up to earn a paltry 400 grand a year making decisions involving the future of the nation?

Towery took pains in a column published this week in the Globe-News to poke a little fun at President Obama’s experience prior to moving into the White House. He belittled his community organizing experience and noted that Obama served briefly in the Illinois Legislature and then the U.S. Senate before being elected president in 2008.

Meanwhile, Trump keeps bellowing about whether the president is constitutionally qualified to serve in the office he holds. You know, the “born in Kenya” crap. Give me a break.

Towery equates Trump’s “star quality” with Ronald Reagan. Sure. Except that Reagan actually governed a huge state for eight years. Trump’s government experience? None.

And let’s not look askance at the importance of actually working with government.

No, Donald Trump is among the least-suited men possible for this incredibly nuanced and sophisticated job. He should keep his day job “firing” washed-up celebrities.

President Trump? Perish the thought. Forever.

International news

Is this our cyber response?

Gosh. Let me think about this.

Sony Pictures gets ready to debut a movie depicting the attempted assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un; the North Koreans reportedly hack into Sony’s computer system, causing it to crash; the United States blames the North Koreans for the cyber attack; President Obama then says there will be a “proportional” response to the North Korean effort to bully Sony.

Then, today, North Korea’s Internet system goes down virtually throughout the nation.

Coincidence? Or is this the retaliation that President Obama said would come?

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/north-korea-suffers-widespread-internet-outage-n273281

Hmm. I’m guessing it’s more than mere coincidence.

These things just don’t happen with such amazing timing, do they?

Kim Jong-Un may have picked a fight with the wrong adversary.

Don’t expect the CIA, the Pentagon, the White House, the Homeland Security Department — anyone — to own up to it. As I’ve noted already, Americans do not need to know everything that happens behind closed doors.

 

International news

Why oppose relationship with Cuba?

The continuing argument over whether the United States should normalize relations with a Third World communist country 90 miles off the Florida coast continues to baffle me.

The Cuban-American community is split on this issue. Republican politicians — and even a couple of Democrats — by and large oppose it; Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is a notable Republican exception to that opposition.

The opponents of President Obama’s decision to begin that process keep citing Cuban’s horrible human rights record. Yes, it’s horrible, but let’s compare it with another nation with which the United States does have diplomatic ties.

It’s Vietnam.

Consider a few facts about this country.

* We fought Vietnam in a bloody and brutal war for roughly a decade. The Vietnamese killed 58,000 Americans during that struggle. How many Americans have died fighting Cuban military personnel since Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959? Nineteen, while fighting Cuban troops during our 1983 invasion of the island nation of Grenada.

* How did the communists from the north respond when they took control of Vietnam? They imprisoned those who had worked with the South Vietnamese government, sending them to what they called “re-education camps,” which was a euphemism for concentration camps. I met a few of those “re-educated” Vietnamese when I returned to the country in 1989. Believe me when I say that they were treated as common criminals by the conquering communists.

* Have the Vietnamese enjoyed the same kind of human liberty and freedom that some in Congress are demanding of Cuba? Hardly. Vietnam remains a hardline communist autocracy. There’s been plenty of economic reform since Saigon fell in April 1975 and the country is enjoying some economic prosperity. Its people do not live totally free, however.

And yet we’ve been diplomatic partners with Vietnam since July 11, 1995, when President Clinton opened that door.

Why are some of us now so reluctant to follow the same course with Cuba?

Let’s get real. If we can bury the hatchet with a former battlefield enemy, then surely there lies opportunity to forge a relationship with a nation that poses zero military or economic threat.

 

 

International news

North Korea to attack U.S.? With what?

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has issued a direct threat to President Barack Obama.

His country will attack the United States if the president retaliates with a cyber counterattack as payback for the hacking of Internet systems at Sony Pictures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/21/north-korea-threatens-us_n_6362608.html?ir=Politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

So he’s going to attack us, yes? With what, precisely?

Well, if there ever was an empty threat, I’m guessing this is one.

Kim isn’t going to see this bit of advice, but I’ll offer it anyway.

Do not talk like that, young man. You are playing a very dangerous game when you threaten the greatest military power in the history of Planet Earth. If by “attack” you mean another cyber raid on our computers, I shall remind you as well that our resources are far greater than yours and that you would rue the day you tried that tactic as well.

I don’t mean to dismiss Kim Jong-Un as a toothless tiger on the world stage. He does have nukes … allegedly. South Korea sits just on the other side of the 38th Parallel and that nation is a critical ally of this nation; indeed, we’ve got about 40,000 troops stationed there.

However, this tough-guy talk isn’t likely to stop President Obama from considering — and perhaps ordering — a “proportional” response to the havoc Kim reportedly brought to Sony computers over the company’s production of that movie depicting Kim’s attempted assassination.

 

 

International news, political news

Lame-duck status has its advantages

Sometimes it can be good for politicians to use their lame-duck status to move important debates forward.

Take the lame-duck president of the United States, Barack Obama. All he has done in the past few days is call for a profound change in our nation’s relationship with Cuba, with which we’ve had zero relationship for, oh, the past 50 years.

With no more campaigns to run, or elections to win (or lose), the president has done what he could have done years ago. Indeed, earlier lame-duck presidents dating back to the Johnson administration could have done it.

They chose sit on their hands.

Contrast that context with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a possible — if not probable — candidate for president in 2016. He’s a TEA party Republican who’s backing the Democratic president on this deal.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/rand-paul-supports-opening-cuba-113677.html?hp=b2_l3

Paul will have some answering to do if he faces the deeply split Cuban-American community in south Florida in a couple of years.

Obama has staked out an important change in U.S. foreign policy with this push for “normalization” of relations with Cuba, which came with the release of Alan Gross, an aid worker who’d been held prisoner for five years on a bogus spying charge by the Fidel/Raul Castro regime in Havana.

He had to have figured he could act now that he’s a lame duck. Of course, no politician ever admits to such a thing. They offer up high-minded rhetoric about “doing the right thing” or “acting in the best interests” of the city, state or nation.

That explains, perhaps, the president’s change of heart on Cuba. It doesn’t explain Sen. Paul’s courage on the issue, given that he’s bucking many fellow Republicans on this matter.

About the only thing that makes sense about Paul’s support of Obama on the Cuba policy issue is that he’s not going to run for president after all. I hope that’s not the case.

As for the president, well, lame duck status does have its advantage.

 

entertainment news, national news

Rethinking this Sony film matter

Mea culpa time, kind of.

I’ve been getting beaten up over a blog I posted about whether Sony erred in making a comedy about an attempted assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. I said Sony Pictures’ biggest mistake was in making the film at all.

The chastening I’ve taken has forced me to reconsider what I wrote. Here it is:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/12/19/sonys-bigger-mistake-was-in-making-film/

President Obama said this week that Sony “made a mistake” in pulling the film from its scheduled release. He said the filmmaker should not be intimidated by a two-bit dictator. Others have noted that the United States, the strongest nation on Earth, shouldn’t be cowed by a tinhorn despot.

My friends on the left and the right have slung barbs at me for suggesting that Kim Jong-Un had a legitimate beef with the filmmakers and the film, “The Interview,” which stars Seth Rogen and James Franco.

No one likes admitting they were mistaken, but I think I’m about to go there.

Maybe I got caught up in the heat of the moment and didn’t think through the implications — all of them — in suggesting Sony had messed up.

Perhaps if I were running Sony, I would have been reluctant to depict the killing of an actual sovereign leader. Here’s the thing, though: I am not running Sony. That was someone else’s call. They had the right to make that decision.

Kim Jong-Un, therefore, didn’t have the right to bully Sony into pulling back the release of its film.

There. I actually feel better now.

 

national news, political news

Bring on the State of the Union

House Speaker John Boehner has put an end to one of the more idiotic notions to come from the TEA party wing of the GOP in, oh, maybe ever.

The speaker officially invited President Obama on Friday to deliver the State of the Union speech on Jan. 20. It’s in keeping with congressional custom, which says the speaker invites the president into the House chamber to speak to a joint session of Congress — and the nation — about (yep!) the State of the Union.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/john-boehner-obama-state-of-the-union_n_6354448.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

A minor tempest popped up a few weeks ago when some TEA party advocates in Congress actually suggested — apparently in all seriousness — that Boehner ban the president from making his speech. Don’t extend the invitation, Mr. Speaker, they said, because we want to punish the president for issuing that executive order that saves 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation.

That’ll teach him, isn’t that right, Mr. Speaker?

Well, Boehner didn’t listen. Good for him.

The president will deliver the State of the Union speech. He’ll lay out his agenda for the next two years. Democrats will clap; Republicans will (mostly) sit on their hands. That’s the way it goes at these events, no matter the party to which the president belongs.

 

national news

Vacation for first family; POTUS will need the rest

President Obama has jetted off to his home state of Hawaii for some R&R with his family.

I’ll be interested now for the next several days whether we’re going to hear any carping about the golf being played, or whether the first lady is spending a lot of money on shopping excursions, or whether the first daughters are behaving themselves.

This kind of carping goes with the territory, I guess, and I am hoping that now — six years into the job — that the president and his family have grown used to it.

Social media being what they are, criticism hits cyberspace in swarms. It’s immediate, quite often mistaken and misplaced and also quite cruel.

I recall a couple of other notable presidents who’d take lengthy vacations.

* President Ronald Reagan would get holed up in his ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif., uttering hardly a peep in public. He’d come back down from his Rancho del Cielo refreshed and ready to take on the challenges of the day. You’d hear the occasional gripes from the media about the president’s lengthy hiatus, but hardly none of the nitpicking one hears today.

* President George W. Bush liked to “clear brush” at his own ranch in Central Texas, near Crawford — which is near Waco. Again, the media would gripe about that time off, although my hunch is that they disliked hanging out in rural Texas, which I’m guessing lacks some of the creature comforts to which those big-city media hounds had grown accustomed.

In both instances — and regarding vacations other presidents have taken — such criticism is unfounded and ridiculous.

Barack Obama doesn’t have any planned public events while he’s enjoying Christmas with his clan in Hawaii. He’ll get his usual daily national security briefings and updates on other matters way back east in Washington.

For now, enjoy your time in the sunshine, Mr. President. A new Congress controlled by the “other party” awaits you when you return for the home stretch of your time in office. You’ll need all the rest you can get.

 

national news

Boys kept out of White House queries

President Obama’s final press conference of 2014 made news in an unexpected manner.

Eight reporters asked him questions in the White House Press Room. All of them were women. Obama said at the outset he had checked his “naughty or nice” list when developing his list of questioners.

I guess the men among the White House press corps had been naughty.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-answers-female-reporters–questions-only-at-year-end-press-conference-212200355.html

What’s the statement here? I haven’t a clue.

One of the other interesting elements of the roster of questioners was that most of them rarely, if ever, get a chance to ask the president something at one of these events. They were “unknowns.”

The “big hitters” among the White House press cadre — the men and women who get the front-row seats — comprise the major broadcast and cable news networks, along with The Associated Press, the pre-eminent print news outlet. They sat there stone-faced while Obama called out names of people sitting in the back of the room.

Actually, I thought it was rather cool for the president to call on those who don’t usually participate in these televised news conferences. It gives others whose job is to report on presidential events a chance to put their own questions on the record with the Leader of the Free World.

Enough of the major-media echo chamber, thank you very much.

***

A memory came to mind just as I was typing this post about “no-name journalists.” Here goes.

Back in the 1980s, NASA announced a plan to send a working journalist into space aboard a space shuttle mission. It then put the word out for any journalist who was interested to apply.

I applied for a spot on a shuttle mission. What an amazing opportunity to report first hand, up close, in real time the immense thrill of orbiting Earth from outer space. Hey, I could do this.

As it turned out, NASA scrubbed its “civilian in space” after the Challenger disaster in January 1986, when school teacher Christa McAuliffe died along with her crewmates.

But after I submitted my application to NASA, I was sharing my desire to fly in space with a colleague of mine at the Beaumont Enterprise, where I was working at the time. I mentioned to my friend, Rosemary Harty, that NASA likely would go with some big-name network TV news celebrity — someone like Walter Cronkite.

“Oh, no they won’t, John,” Rosey said. “They’re going to pick a nobody, just like you.”

 

International news, political news

Cuba policy change provokes GOP fight

President Obama is picking a fight — between two Republicans who might want to succeed him in the White House.

I love this infighting.

Obama has announced a dramatic change in our nation’s policy toward Cuba. We’re moving toward normalization of relations, you know, with embassies in both countries and ambassadors representing their nation’s interests.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky supports the change; GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida opposes it.

So, what does Paul do? He calls Rubio an “isolationist.” He mentions his colleague by name. He takes direct aim at the young Floridian’s opposition to what Paul thinks is a reasonable and long overdue change.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rand-paul-tears-isolationist-marco-rubio-over-cuba

I happen to agree with Sen. Paul on this one.

He wrote an essay for Time magazine in which he lays out his argument. “The supporters of the embargo against Cuba speak with heated passion but fall strangely silent when asked how trade with Cuba is so different than trade with Russia or China or Vietnam,” Paul wrote. “It is an inconsistent and incoherent position to support trade with other communist countries, but not communist Cuba.”

Rubio is among those “strangely silent” lawmakers who cannot grasp the need for change in the U.S.-Cuba relationship.

Rubio actually baited Paul with a statement he made on Fox News: “Like many people who have been opining, [Paul] has no idea what he’s talking about,” Rubio said. Paul’s op-ed essay in Time was in response largely to what Rubio said.

So the intra-GOP fight has commenced.

Rubio’s own Cuban heritage gives him some credibility on this issue. However, like a lot of politicians who blind when the subject of Cuba comes up, Rubio needs to look at the big picture and understand what Barack Obama and Rand Paul both get: If a 50-year policy doesn’t produce any positive change, then it’s time to change the policy.