Tag Archives: Barack Obama

military news, national news, political news

Hagel bids awkward adieu at Defense

Talk about an awkward moment.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel resigned today amid media reports that he was forced out by the White House that reportedly was unhappy with the way he communicated foreign policy strategy. Then, in an extraordinary attempt at trying to look happy about his departure, he stood with President Obama and Vice President Biden, both of whom heaped praise on their “friend.”

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/24/politics/defense-secretary-hagel-to-step-down/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

This is how you play the game in Washington, or I suppose in any government power center.

Hagel will stay on until the next defense secretary gets confirmed by the Senate.

And here is where it will get real interesting.

A cadre of bomb-throwing Republicans are vowing to block future presidential appointments in retaliation for Obama’s executive order on immigration this past week. The bomb thrower in chief, of course, is the Texas loudmouth Sen. Ted Cruz, who did qualify his threat by saying he wouldn’t object to key national security appointments.

Well, someone must tell me if there is a more important national security post than that of defense secretary. I can’t think of one.

I have zero confidence that Cruz will step aside and let this next appointment get the kind of “fair and thorough” confirmation hearing he or she will deserve.

But let’s hope for the best.

As for Hagel, I’m sorry to see him go. I rather liked the fact that an enlisted Vietnam War combat veteran was picked to lead the Pentagon. I also appreciated that Obama reached across the aisle to select a Republican former senator for this key post. I thought Hagel acquitted himself well under extreme pressure when the chips were down. He was at the helm during a time of enormous change at the Pentagon.

Our military force is still the strongest in the history of the world. I am quite certain we will maintain or position as the world’s pre-eminent military power.

Now, let’s find a successor and get the new person confirmed.

International news, national news

Off your duff, Congress, and move on immigration

If nothing else at all, President Obama’s decision to proceed with an executive order delaying the deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants has shamed Congress into doing something — anything! — constructive to engage in this debate.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/republicans-no-immigration-response-113091.html?hp=c2_3

There’s been a lot of accusatory talk from Republicans about the president defying “the will the people,” or “circumventing the Constitution,” or even acting “lawlessly.”

They have no plan.

The Senate did pass an immigration reform bill a year or so ago, but the House of Representatives sat on it. They dithered and dilly-dallied, stalled and stymied any move to enact some improvements in federal law that bottles up efforts by undocumented immigrants to attain legal status and work toward eventual citizenship.

So now Obama has taken action.

I keep looking at the order he signed and wonder: What is in it that angers the GOP so much?

It prioritizes the arrest and deportation of criminals; it seeks to put more federal security on our southern border; it enables children of illegal immigrants who were born in the United States to stay with their parents; it allows illegal immigrants to, as Obama said, “come out the shadow” and work openly and, yes, pay federal personal income taxes.

My main objection to the order was in its timing. I believe the president should have waited for the new Congress to take its seat. Oh well, he ignored the advice from a middle-of-the-country blogger. My feelings aren’t hurt, Mr. President.

Now it falls on Congress to get off its collective duff and approve a comprehensive immigration reform bill that helps restore the nation’s role as being the Land of Opportunity for all.

 

 

 

national news, political news

Thanks, Sen. Sessions, for taking impeachment away

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., says the Senate won’t impeach President Obama over his use of executive authority.

That’s awfully big of the senator.

Except for one thing: Impeachment doesn’t originate in the Senate.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/gop-senator-doesnt-plan-to-impeach-obama/ar-BBf7jQk

Impeachment begins in the House of Representatives. If the loons in the House have their way, the Senate gets to put the president on trial for whatever charges the House decides to bring against the president.

The Huffington Post reported Sessions’s remarks this way: “No, we’re not going to impeach President Obama. Or have a move to impeach,’ Sessions said at a Heritage Foundation event and then added, ‘The president has certain powers and we truly believe — and I think it’s accurate to say that he abused those powers.'”

Clear as mud, yes?

Actually, the president didn’t “abuse” his power as chief executive of the federal government. He acted within his constitutional authority. He merely riled his Republican “friends” to the point of apoplexy — which isn’t all that surprising, given the political climate that hovers over the nation’s capital.

I hope the idiotic fringe element of the House of Reps — along with their allies in the conservative mainstream media — takes Sessions’s declaration seriously and ends this nonsensical talk about impeachment. The new majority in both houses of Congress needs to demonstrate an ability to govern.

Remember?

 

State news

Gov.-elect Abbott saying (far) right things

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott, once upon a time, was considered a mainstream Republican. Reasoned, cautious, yet dedicated to basic conservative principles of smaller government and low taxes.

Then he got bit by the tea party bug.

The state’s next governor now declares he plans to sue President Obama over that executive order issued this week that delays deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants, more than 1 million of whom live in Texas.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/11/21/abbott-obamas-order-violates-constitutional-provis/

The Texas Tribune reports: “In a statement, Abbott said Obama’s order ‘circumvented Congress and deliberately bypassed the will of the American people. I am prepared to immediately challenge President Obama in court, securing our state’s sovereignty and guaranteeing the rule of law as it was intended under the Constitution,’ Abbott added.”

Well, consider this for just a moment. President George H.W. Bush in 1990 issued an executive order that did the very same thing for 1.5 million illegal immigrants. Bush, a Republican, did it for compassionate reasons. Didn’t the current president cite compassion for families in issuing his own order?

Where, dare I ask, were the calls of indignation when President Bush issued the executive order? It was done quietly, with little fanfare.

That was then. Today’s climate seems to require fanfare, blustering, posturing, finger-pointing, threats and challenges.

Therein perhaps lies the crux of what’s going on here.

Greg Abbott, the once reflective and deliberative man of the bench, has become just as shrill as the rest of what has become the “mainstream” Texas Republican Party.

 

national news, political news

When in doubt, House, sue

Congress is going to court with the president of the United States.

The House of Representatives filed its long-awaited lawsuit against Barack Obama, contending the president misused his executive authority to “rewrite the law” regarding the Affordable Care Act.

I’ll stipulate that I’m no constitutional lawyer, but I’ll bet the farm that Obama didn’t break the law.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/house-files-obamacare-lawsuit-113089.html?hp=b1_l1

He did what the Constitution empowers him to do.

It’s curious, too, that Congress filed the suit the day after Obama delivered that long awaited executive order on immigration, although the lawsuit deals with the ACA exclusively. I guess Speaker John Boehner just couldn’t take it any longer.

The lawsuit, along with the talk of impeachment, is utter nonsense.

Boehner is grandstanding in the worst possible way. It’s not even clear the court will hear the lawsuit, let alone allow to go to trial and be decided by a jury.

The most hilarious aspect of this lawsuit are the claims by Republicans that the president is “overusing” the executive authority granted to him. It’s funny because Obama has signed fewer executive orders than almost any of his immediate predecessors. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the most recent two-term Republican presidents, signed more. Where was the outcry then?

We’ll now get to see how this circus plays out.

Meanwhile, some serious legislating needs to get done. How about seeing the GOP craft a bill on, say, immigration and health care? They say they can do better. Let’s have it.

 

national news

Immigration reform = family values

2 Comments

Remember the early 1990s when “family values” became a mantra for politicians seeking to return to the core values of our nation?

Vice President Dan Quayle once chided the TV character “Murphy Brown” for having a child out of wedlock. The debate was joined.

Two decades later, the term “family values” has taken a new turn. It became part of President Barack Obama’s pitch to fix a broken immigration system.

The president’s pitch is nearly perfect.

Obama went on national TV today to tell the nation he would sign an executive order that keeps families together. Mom and Dad may have entered the nation illegally, but brought their children along when they were small — or perhaps bore their children in this country, an act that gave the kids instant U.S. citizenship.

The president’s order defers the deportation of some 5 million illegal immigrants. His aim, among other things, is to keep families together. Obama told the nation that it’s impractical to deport all those who came here illegally. Must we deport their children? And what about those children who are citizens simply by virtue of their birth in the United States of America?

This won’t deter Republicans from challenging the president. The new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner are vowing unspecified actions to fight the president’s action.

Well, let’s have that fight and let’s allow the public to decide whether it’s right to separate families, or to uproot entire families after they’ve found a better life in the Land of Opportunity.

 

International news, national news

Now it's Congress's turn to act on immigration

President Obama has made his speech. He’s done what the law allows him to do. He has issued an executive order that starts to move immigration reform forward.

Now he has challenged Congress to enact a bill that would apply permanent solutions to the nation’s immigration problem.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/20/politics/obama-immigration-speech/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Instead of hyperventilating and tossing out “lawless” accusations against the Obama administration, perhaps the GOP-led Congress — both the Senate and the House of Representatives — can do what it hasn’t yet done. Fix the immigration problem that has brought us to this point.

Obama has delayed the deportation of 5 million undocumented immigrants. He has ordered border security officials to prioritize the arrest of gang members, suspected terrorists and common criminals — and then deport them post haste.

A good number of the rest of the illegal immigrant population? They can “come out of the shadows,” as the president said.

Constitutional scholars have been saying for a good period of time that Obama stands on solid legal footing in doing what he did this evening. Politicians have been saying something else, that the president is “overstepping his authority,” that he’s creating a “monarchy,” that now calls himself “Emperor Obama.”

Well, what the 44th president of the U.S. did was no more dramatic than what many of his predecessors dating back to Dwight Eisenhower have done. The drama has come from the furious opposition on the Republican side of chasm.

Do I wish he would have waited for the new Congress to take its seat? Yes. He didn’t listen to me.

But the president did what the law allows him to do.

So now the ball has been batted back to Congress. Pass a bill and send it to the White House.

 

national news, political news

TV networks miss a chance to engage viewers

This post will be brief, so I’ll get right to the point.

The major broadcast networks and a major cable network are blowing a chance to stay engaged in the immigration by declining to broadcast the president’s remarks tonight on the executive order he is about to issue.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/19/media/networks-and-obama-speech/index.html

ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox have said “no thanks” to carrying the speech live. CNN and PBS will carry it.

Given all the debate, discussion, finger-pointing, threats and lies told to and about all sides in this debate, I would have bet the proverbial farm that the networks would carry it live. It’s kind of a big deal, given what congressional Republicans have threatened to do when the president signs the order.

Silly me. The broadcast networks have dramas and comedies to show.

 

political news, State news

Cruz overstates his case once more

Ted Cruz just cracks me up.

Except that I’m not laughing.

He’s written an essay in which he accuses the president of the United States of acting like a monarch. Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order that tweaks federal immigration policy. He’s going around Congress, which includes the freshman Republican senator from Texas. Yes, Ted Cruz.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/11/president-obama-is-not-a-monarch-113028.html?hp=c4_3#.VG35X1J0yt9

What the senator and his fellow critics of the president keep ignoring is that previous presidents, including some notable Republicans, have done precisely the same thing that’s about to occur with this president. Where was the congressional outrage then? Well, there wasn’t any.

The link attached to this blog post also notes that Texas may sue the president over his executive order. That’s kind of strange, too, given that I’ve read reports in recent days about how Texas is going to benefit tremendously when the president defers deportation of millions of illegal immigrants. Many thousands of them live and work in Texas and they would be able, under the order, to come out of the shadows and work openly, pay taxes and perhaps start working their way toward legal residency status, if not outright citizenship.

That doesn’t stop loudmouths like the Texas Cruz Missile from overstating his case, which he does with annoying frequency.

 

national news, political news

So long, D.C. bipartisanship

Perhaps you’ve noticed during the time I’ve been writing this blog that I’ve called for more bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., and in Austin.

Well, my desire to see both parties working together for a change hasn’t changed, other than it might have been intensified. I was hopeful for a more bipartisan atmosphere in Washington after the mid-term election. The president said he wanted it. The new Republican majority leader said the same thing.

We can kiss it goodbye.

President Obama is going to issue an executive order today that will enrage his Republican “friends.” It will tinker a bit with immigration policy, deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants, as well as strengthen border security.

I think it’s a good plan, but the incorrect strategy. I wish he would wait. And no, the president is not plowing new ground with this action. He’s doing the same kind of thing on immigration that Republican presidents dating back to Gerald Ford have done.

Still, Obama is going to stick it right back in the eyes of Republican leaders in Congress. He said he’s “waited long enough” for Congress to act. Some in D.C. are talking about impeachment, which is a ridiculous notion on its face.

But the era of even pretending to want bipartisanship in Washington appears to be over.

It’s unclear what the outcome will be for the remainder of Barack Obama’s term as president. A friend of mine, an Australian journalist with a keen interest in American politics, mentioned to me in a recent email that he predicts a miserable and torturous slog toward the end of the Obama presidency. He believes — as I do — that Republicans are feeling emboldened now that they’ve taken control of the Senate and strengthened their grip on the House.

And the president’s response to that bold new opposition? Why, he’s digging in his heels and daring them to fight.

It need not end this way — but it surely will.