Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

national news

Nothing to this probe? Check this out

Matthew Dowd is no squishy liberal, a “snowflake.” He’s a long-standing Republican political operative.

He also serves as a broadcast and cable news “contributor” and, yes, he is a Donald J. Trump critic.

He sent out a tweet just a while ago that reiterated something he said this morning on ABC News’s “This Week” program: As i said on to give some perspective: “Benghazi was a 4 year investigation, there were zero indictments. The Clinton emails was a 2 year investigation, there were zero indictments. The Mueller investigation has been 14 months, there have been 23 indictments.”

“Benghazi” involved a terrible firefight that occurred at a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on the watch of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; the “Clinton emails” also involved the former secretary’s use of her personal email account while serving in the State Department.

The Mueller investigation? Well, it’s that probe that is occurring at the moment to explore questions relating to Trump’s presidential campaign and its possible relationship with the Russian government … among other things.

GOP hardliners want Robert Mueller’s probe to end. Now! They forget about the length of time they insisted on maintaining while GOP members of Congress looked at Hillary Clinton’s conduct.

All that time, money and effort produced zero indictments. None, man!

Mueller — who, by the way, also is a Republican — so far has harvested a much healthier crop of criminal complaints.

And, no, this isn’t a “witch hunt.” It is a serious investigation being conducted by a serious public servant.

national news, political news

Trump’s delusion turns to confusion

I saw this headline and couldn’t believe my eyes.

It said that Donald J. Trump wants to get rid of the Electoral College, that he wants the popular vote to decide who gets elected president. Why? Because a popular vote majority, according to the president, is easier to attain.

Eh? Huh? What the … ?

Trump did a phone interview this morning with “Fox & Friends” in which he spun virtually out of control on a number of subjects.

According to Politico: “Remember, we won the election. And we won it easily. You know, a lot of people say ‘Oh, it was close.’ And by the way, they also like to always talk about Electoral College. Well, it’s an election based on the Electoral College. I would rather have a popular election, but it’s a totally different campaign,” Trump said. “It’s as though you’re running — if you’re a runner, you’re practicing for the 100-yard dash as opposed to the 1-mile.”

“The Electoral College is different. I would rather have the popular vote because it’s, to me, it’s much easier to win the popular vote,” he continued.

If you’re scratching your head over that passage, join the club. So am I. The president — as is usually the case — makes zero sense.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. Trump was elected legitimately by capturing more than 270 electoral votes he needed to win. He finished with 306 electoral votes, thanks to winning three critical “swing states” — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — by a total of 77,000 votes among them.

He didn’t win the election “easily,” as he keeps saying. The way I see it, Trump won by a whisker. However, he won according to the rules set forth by the U.S. Constitution.

What baffles me is why he would prefer to toss aside the Electoral College. He parlayed an Electoral College strategy perfectly in 2016, enabling him to win the presidency.

So now he says winning the popular vote would be an easier goal to attain? Who is this clown kidding?

This man’s delusion is downright confusing.

national news

Comey: friend turns to foe

James Comey continues to make the turn. Hey, he might make a full circle before this drama is finishing playing out.

The former FBI director once was hailed by Donald Trump when Comey revealed he had more information to explore regarding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use — or misuse — of her personal email account while she was secretary of state.

Eleven days before the 2016 presidential election, Comey tossed the outcome into serious confusion mode with the revelation about the so-called new evidence.

Trump was ecstatic. The GOP nominee bellowed that Comey had done his job well.

Then came the news that Comey said there was nothing more to investigate. Case closed. But the damage well might have been done to Clinton’s campaign.

Then the new president took office. He allegedly sought some assurances and a reported pledge of loyalty from Comey. He didn’t get them.

Then the president fired Comey from his FBI job. Ever since, Comey has been called everything but the Son of Satan.

Ahh, the fortunes do turn dramatically.

Now the ex-FBI boss has written a new book. He told ABC News that Trump “might have” obstructed justice. He called the president “morally unfit” to serve.

And then the Twitter tirade came from the president, who responded with “worst FBI director in history … by far!”, “slime ball,” and “serial liar.”

I don’t know about you, but I intend to hold with both hands for the foreseeable future as this dispute plays out. If it ever does!

political news

O’Rourke winning money battle against Cruz

Beto O’Rourke appears to be winning one aspect of the upcoming electoral fight against an incumbent U.S. senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.

It’s the fight for campaign cash.

Will it translate to victory in the bigger, more important battle — the one for actual votes this fall? Well, that remains to be seen.

The Texas Tribune reports that Cruz, the Republican incumbent, is going to declare that he has raised less than half of what O’Rourke, the Democratic challenger, has raised in the first quarter of 2018.

I won’t spend a lot of time analyzing the battle for cash. Here, though, is a thought that came to me from a retired journalist friend of ours who offered this tidbit during our recent visit to the Golden Triangle.

O’Rourke’s goal has to be to cut his expected losses in rural Texas while maintaining his expected hefty margins in urban Texas.

The Cruz Missile has already put the warning out to his GOP faithful that the “far left” is energized against him — and against Donald Trump, whom the far left hates with a passion, according to Cruz.

Our friend, who’s watched a lot of election cycles in Texas over the span of many decades, believes that O’Rourke — a congressman from El Paso — needs to continue plowing the rural field in the hunt for votes. That seems to explain why O’Rourke has spent so much time in places such as Pampa, Canyon, Amarillo and throughout the reliably Republican Texas Panhandle.

In a certain fashion, if that is the strategy that O’Rourke is employing in Texas, it seems to mirror the national Democratic strategy that enabled Barack Obama to win two presidential elections and for Hillary Clinton to win the popular vote by 3 million ballots while losing the Electoral College to Trump. If you look at the county-by-county breakdown nationally, you see that Republican presidential candidates in 2008, 2012 and 2016 all won vast expanses of rural America; Democrats, though, harvested tremendous numbers of votes in urban America.

One can boil that down to a Texas strategy, too, I reckon, given this state’s huge urban centers in San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas/Fort Worth.

Thus, it becomes imperative for O’Rourke to somehow cut deeply enough into the losses he can expect in the Piney Woods, the Rolling Plains, the High Plains and the Permian Basin to give him some breathing space as he shores up the support he can expect in Big City Texas.

I do hope the young man spends his campaign cash wisely.

national news

Keep speaking up, Hillary

Hillary Rodham Clinton has made an excellent point about how she is being treated differently from other candidates who lost their bids to become president of the United States.

Speaking at a Rutgers University event, Clinton was asked to respond to critics who have told her to keep quiet about current issues of the day.

Her response? No one ever told previous losing presidential candidates — all of whom were men — to cease speaking out.

As The Hill reports: “I’m really glad that, you know, Al Gore didn’t stop talking about climate change,” Clinton said to applause.

“And I’m really glad John Kerry went to the Senate and became an excellent secretary of state,” the former first lady continued. “And I’m really glad John McCain kept speaking out and standing up and saying what he had to say. And for heavens sakes, Mitt Romney is running for the Senate,” Clinton said.

What makes her different from those other presidential nominees who have kept their voices active and engaged in policy discussions? Clinton believes it’s her gender.

Hmm. Is there a reason to doubt that?

Yes, I’ve been critical of Clinton’s remarks recently about those who voted for her and who voted for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election. I’ve never told her to keep quiet.

With that, keep speaking up, Hillary Clinton.

national news

Hillary tries to walk it back … good luck with that

Try as she might, Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to do the impossible. As my late friend and colleague Claude Duncan used to say, “You can’t unhonk the horn.”

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, went to India and told an audience that those who voted for her came from more economically progressive and advanced states; those who voted for Donald Trump were, um, less progressive and advanced.

Oh, boy. You can’t go there, Hillary Clinton.

She has been criticized roundly for her remarks. I am joining in that criticism. Yes, she received my vote in 2016 and she would get it again were she to run against the guy who beat her.

Her “explanation” rings hollow. She said she didn’t intend to offend anyone with her remarks. Clinton wrote on Facebook: “I meant no disrespect to any individual or group. And I want to look to the future as much as anybody.”

Look to the future? Sure she does. I take that statement to mean she wants to set her remarks aside and doesn’t want to keep explaining herself.

“No, it’s not helpful at all,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said on “Fox News Sunday,” when she was asked to comment on Clinton’s comments.  “In fact, my friend Hillary Clinton is wrong.”

According to The Hill: Clinton also implied that women who cast a ballot for Trump did so due to “ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

“As much as I hate the possibility, and hate saying it, it’s not that crazy when you think about our ongoing struggle to reach gender balance — even within the same household. I did not realize how hard it would hit many who heard it,” Clinton said in her explanation.

Now she realizes it. I’m glad she sought to clarify what she meant to convey. Still, I am having difficulty trying to separate the intent from the spoken word.

national news, political news

By all means, welcome back, Katrina Pierson

She’s back. Dallas resident Katrina Pierson is going to return to the presidential campaign trail on behalf of Donald John Trump Sr.

I am delighted to see her return to the partisan battle.

Pierson is a long-time Texas TEA Party activist, which is where she earned her spurs before becoming a senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Here, though, is the real reason why I want to see Pierson back in the fray. She is prone to making truly bizarre statements.

Such as when she blamed President Obama for starting the Afghan War — in 2001. Oops! That fight began on President Bush’s watch, about a month or so after the 9/11 attack on New York City and Washington, D.C.

Or the time she blamed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the death of U.S. Army Capt. Humayan Khan, whose parents were strong supporters of President Obama; remember how they stood before the 2016 Democratic convention to excoriate the GOP nominee, Trump. Oh, darn! She must have forgot that Capt. Khan died in Iraq in 2004, five years before Obama and Clinton assumed power.

So, I’m all excited to see Katrina Pierson return to the presidential campaign trail.

She’s good for plenty of laughs. We’ll need to keep our sense of humor when 2020 rolls around to keep from going insane!

local news, State news

Democrats feeling a ‘wave’ coming on?

Democrats across Texas are heartened by a surge in their party’s early primary voting numbers, saying that they are rivaling the primary interest generated by the 2008 presidential campaign struggle between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Hill reports a surge in some urban areas, such as Harris County. They believe the Democratic primary uptick signals a potential “wave” sweeping across the state this fall.

Count me as mildly skeptical of that, although I do hope for a wave, given my own progressive leanings.

I clearly recall the heavy Democratic interest in 2008, even in heavily Republican Randall County, where I am registered to vote. The lines at the Democratic polling station was far longer than it was at the GOP station, signaling to my mind a bit of GOP crossovers seeking to commit a bit of mischief in the other party. Hey, that happens on occasion.

The Democratic surge then didn’t translate to victory in the fall, as Democratic nominee Obama lost Texas to GOP nominee Sen. John McCain.

Moreover, I don’t necessarily equate large early-vote numbers to increase overall turnout. It means quite often only that more voters are casting ballots early … and that’s it!

My own preference this year was to vote in the GOP primary, given my intense interest in helping return Kel Seliger to the Texas Senate. But that’s just me.

“You can’t underestimate the surge that we’re seeing out there with the blue wave coming,” said Ed Espinoza, executive director of the Democratic-leaning Progress Texas.

Let’s just wait this one out. Shall we?

national news

Due process, Mr. President?

Donald Trump has had an epiphany. Maybe?

I’m trying to understand how this guy, the president, can call for “due process” when he’s demonstrated a remarkable and shameful tendency to forgo it when it involves his political foes.

Now he says that Rob Porter, the former White House staff secretary who’s accused by former wives and a former girlfriend of spousal abuse is entitled to “due process.” He and a former speechwriter, who also quit this week, are being railroaded out of their jobs by mere allegations, according to the president.

Wow! Can you believe it? The president insists on “due process” to determine their guilt or innocence.

Back when he just a mere hotel/real estate mogul, Trump called for punishing five young men who had been exonerated of raping a woman in Central Park. They were the Central Park Five. Trump didn’t think for a second about due process for those individuals.

How about when he was running for president and he declared his belief that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was somehow implicated in the assassination of President Kennedy? Oh, his evidence was a photograph he saw in, um, the National Enquirer, of Rafael Cruz and Lee Harvey Oswald. I must mention that Cruz was running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Due process? Hah!

Let’s not forget the “Lock her up!” chants regarding Hillary Rodham Clinton, Trump’s opponent in the 2016 general election. Trump campaign crowds would launch into the chant and, oh yes, Trump would egg them on. Did the former secretary of state and U.S. senator deserve “due process”? Or was she fair game just because she was a politician running for the same office as the guy who beat her?

If only the president would have shown as much concern for “due process” in the not-too-distant past. His previous carelessness only heightens the skepticism when he shoots off his mouth about this current spate of White House chaos.

national news

POTUS has much for which he must answer

The farther along we stagger forward into the presidency of Donald Trump, the deeper the hole he digs for himself.

I refer to the many statements he has made — as candidate and then as president — that have yet to be substantiated.

A few of them come to mind.

  • He has asserted that climate change is a “hoax,” a fantasy created by China to discredit our fossil fuel industry.
  • Trump has accused “millions of illegal immigrants” of voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016, giving her the nearly 3 million popular vote margin she rolled up over the president.
  • The president has fanned the flames of the phony and slanderous birther movement once again by challenging whether Barack Obama was actually born in the United States of America; he once said that the president is a U.S. citizen, but has all but walked that one back.
  • Candidate Donald Trump said he would release his tax returns once the Internal Revenue Service completed its audit. That was more than two years ago. The tax returns remain a secret. The IRS cannot possibly be conducting that audit to this day.
  • Trump said he wouldn’t have time for golf, that he’d be too busy making America “great again.” He, um, has broken that pledge, too.

I know I’ve missed a few. Maybe many. But I hope you get the point.

The president has made bold pledges. He hasn’t been held to account for them. His base continues to rally behind him. They give him a pass on all of it. They ignore his hideous personal behavior in a way they never would do if the president was a member of the opposing political party.

Others of us out here are seeking to hold this guy accountable for his lengthening list of untrue statements and promises he made.

I don’t expect the president to listen to his critics. He doesn’t care what we think. He cares only about the slobbering support he gets from those who relish the idiotic notion that Donald Trump simply is “telling it like it is.”