Tag Archives: Ukraine

national news

Wake me from this ‘long national nightmare’

Gerald R. Ford ascended to the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974 and declared that “our long national nightmare is over.”

That was then. The Watergate scandal consumed the presidency of Richard Nixon. He was facing certain impeachment by the House of Representatives and equally certain conviction by the Senate. So, he resigned.

President Ford’s declaration comes to mind now as we lapse into another nightmarish stupor. Donald Trump is facing nearly certain impeachment by the House. The acknowledged circumstance appears to make the Watergate burglary and the cover up seem tame by comparison. Trump has admitted to soliciting foreign government help in securing his re-election. Today, he astonished the world by saying China and Ukraine both should investigate business dealings done by former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential opponent of Trump in the 2020 election.

I fear the nightmare this time will not end as cleanly as it did in 1974 when President Nixon resigned.

The House has enough evidence to impeach Donald Trump. The Senate, though, isn’t showing a hint of the courage demonstrated during the Watergate matter. Republican senators are standing behind Trump, who clearly has violated his oath of office by placing his personal political interests ahead of the country’s national interest.

How this crisis ends is anyone’s guess. Trump could follow the Nixon model and resign; he won’t. The president could be impeached and then be acquitted by the Senate; then he’ll run for re-election crowing about being found not guilty of what he has acknowledged doing.

He could be impeached and then convicted; but how might he depart the White House? I have zero faith that he would leave with any sense of shame or humility.

We’re entering another long national nightmarish scenario that doesn’t appear headed toward any sort of clean ending.

It’s not all grim, however.

President Ford also reminded us that “our Constitution works.” It most certainly did in 1974. I am clinging tightly to my belief that it will work yet again this time around.

national news

Trump: the gift that keeps giving

The Stable Genius who masquerades as president of the United States is leaving a bread-crumb trail that is leading straight toward impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Donald Trump today — in full view of the entire world — called on China and Ukraine to investigate Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter, over business dealings that Trump has characterized as “crooked.”

I need to mention that the elder Biden is running for the Democratic presidential nomination and might face off against Trump next year during the 2020 presidential election.

So, there you have it, loudly and clearly and with no ambiguity.

The president of the United States has solicited another foreign government to help him win re-election. Sound familiar? Well, yes. It does! He got that kind of help from Russia during his winning presidential campaign in 2016 against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Man, on man. This guy is off his rocker.

He is now openly abusing the awesome power of his office for personal political gain. There can be no pretense. There can be no need to put “alleged” or “allegedly” in front of reports that Donald Trump has enlisted the aid of foreign governments.

This is astonishing, incredible, mind-blowing — just name it.

The idea that Trump would seek help from a authoritarian power such as China to investigate a U.S. citizen is utterly and completely beyond the pale.

If there is any doubt that the president deserves to be impeached for abusing his office, I believe he has just emptied the gasoline can over an already raging political wildfire.

media news

Media performing stellar job reporting on this scandal

Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump has introduced a new mantra to describe the news media.

He calls them the “corrupt media.” It’s no longer, he says, just the “fake news media.” He says the media are corrupt and are trying to bring down the presidency.

I want to extend a word of praise for the job the media are doing in reporting on the march of the pending impeachment of Donald Trump.

The president has admitted to soliciting help from a foreign government to get him re-elected, along with finding dirt on a potential political opponent. Trump has actually acknowledged that he is seeking foreign “interference” the likes of which occurred in 2016 when Russians attacked our electoral system.

The media are reporting on all of it. They are telling the nation and the world what we all need to know about the president and the administration.

Donald Trump’s epithet toward the media ranks as just more hysteria from an individual who is sounding as if he is getting frightened at what might loom not far into the future.

The media are doing their job. They are performing magnificently.

national news

Changing my mind on impeachment

Donald John Trump is forcing me to rethink my resistance to the notion that he needs to be impeached.

I’m allowed to change my mind, yes? Hey, politicians do it all the time. Bloggers are allowed to reconsider their own statements.

I do remain dubious — although decreasingly so — about whether an impeachment is going to result in the president’s removal from office. The House of Representatives now has enough votes among Democratic members who favor impeaching him.

Then what? The issue goes to the Senate, which must have a trial. Conviction requires two-thirds of senators to agree that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Republicans comprise the majority in the Senate; conviction would require about 20 GOP senators to convict, which doesn’t — at this moment — appear likely to occur.

OK, why the change of mind?

Donald Trump clearly has violated his oath of office. He has admitted to soliciting help from Ukraine’s president in his re-election; he also has admitted to asking him for dirt on Joe Biden, a potential opponent in 2020. Those two matters, right there, are grounds for impeachment.

It gets worse. He withheld military aid until Ukraine agreed to “play ball” with him; Ukraine, you see, wants to purchase weaponry it uses against Russian aggressors who invaded the country.

Trump is making it damn near impossible to stem the tide of impeachment that is swelling daily if not hourly. He alleges that his accusers are committing acts of treason. He is growing increasingly combative and irrational. The president’s rage looks to me to be getting the better of him.

I have held out for the notion of letting the 2020 election remove the president from office. I am beginning to believe that we shouldn’t wait for that event to occur.

None of this fills me with joy. It merely fills me with resolve to repair what is damaging our system of government. The damage is being inflicted by the president of the United States.

national news

Trump takes aim at protected whistleblower

As if Donald John Trump wasn’t in enough hot water …

The president of the United States asked a foreign leader for re-election help and for dirt on a political foe; that’s bad enough right there. Then he suggested he would withhold money to help the foreign leader’s country in its fight against an aggressor nation until he got the help he sought; that makes it even worse.

House Democrats are gearing up for an impeachment effort against the president.

Is the president defending himself on the merits of what he has asked the Ukrainian president? Oh, no!

He has decided to take aim at the intelligence official who blew the whistle on what he or she believes is occurring, which is that the White House is trying to subvert the Constitution and is seeking to cover that effort up!

Trump wants to “interview” the whistleblower. Hmm. Is that, um, tampering with someone who is protected under federal law?

And then we see Trump talking about the whistleblower being “almost a spy,” and suggesting/implying that we need to treat spies the “way we used to” treat them, “when we were smart.” Does that mean execution?

The whistleblower’s lawyer has issued a warning that any effort to interfere with his client’s effort would violate federal law.

This individual, who reportedly comes from the intelligence community, is protected under the law to do what he or she has done. This person has presented, to my way of thinking, credible accusations that the president has violated his oath of office. He has solicited foreign government help in assuring his re-election. Trump has sought help from foreign governments for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Furthermore, the president has put our national security at risk by withholding money to pay for weaponry that Ukrainians want to help them fight the Russians, who have invaded Ukraine; he would release the money if the Ukrainians decided to “play ball” with Trump’s re-election team.

Now he wants to know the identity of the person who has outed him? He threatens something “bad” happening if that individual doesn’t reveal his or her identity?

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have yet another “long national nightmare” in the making.

International news

Ukraine story taking on more lives

This is how controversies evolve into full-blown scandals.

Something happens that raises eyebrows. Then we hear about more matters related — perhaps only tangentially — to the original event. Then more matters are heaped on all of that. Our attention gets stretched far beyond the original “sin.”

So it is happening now with the Ukrainian matter, the July 25 phone call that Donald Trump had the Ukrainian president and who else might have heard the two men talked about in that fateful conversation.

Trump is now known to have asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zellenskiy for help in his re-election effort, including getting dirt on Joe Biden, a potential 2020 campaign opponent.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he didn’t know anything about the phone call; then we hear from a State Department official, talking to the Wall Street Journal, that Pompeo listened to the phone call in real time.

Then the president decides to throw Vice President Mike Pence’s name out there, suggesting that the VP might be involved in some manner.

Oh, and now comes news that Trump sought help from Australia’s prime minister for help in undermining former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into The Russia Thing.

What in the name of scandalous behavior is happening here?

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the formerly highly esteemed New York City mayor, has become unhinged. He rambles incoherently on national TV, accusing former Vice President Joe Biden of crimes that other prosecutors say are unfounded.

The House is force-marching its way toward impeaching the president on charges that he violated his oath of office by soliciting a foreign government for political assistance. Whether it results in conviction in the Senate, of course, remains a highly open question.

However, what could have been blown off as a mere “controversy” is becoming rapidly a full-blown “scandal” that will result in an impeached president running for re-election.

We are racing down heretofore untraveled roads.

Wow!

national news

Mike Pompeo has violated a West Point tenet?

Oh, my goodness. The plot is getting thicker by the hour.

This observation comes from a friend of mine, who posted this item on social media: Pompeo is a graduate of West Point. The United States Military Academy. One of the most important values at West Point is this: “A cadet will not lie or tolerate those who do.”
Pompeo is a liar.

The Wall Street Journal, hardly a left-wing publication, has reported that State Department officials say that the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, listened in on the phone call that Donald Trump had with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zellenskiy, in which Trump asked his counterpart for help in getting re-elected in 2020.

Except that Pompeo told journalists that he didn’t know anything about the phone call.

Hmm. Who’s telling the truth? The Wall Street Journal is a first-rate publication with first-rate political reporters. I’ll go with what the WSJ is reporting.

This story is growing more legs than a monster centipede.

Trump’s conversation with Zellenskiy wasn’t “perfect,” as Trump has called it. It appears to many of us that the president broke faith with the oath he took by asking for help from a foreign government to help his political fortunes. Moreover, he reportedly withheld appropriated money that Congress had approved to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggressors until it agreed to “play ball” with the U.S. president and members of his Cabinet.

Donald Trump has been outed, or so it is becoming clearer, by a whistleblower whose report has helped accelerate the movement toward an impeachment vote by the House of Representatives.

Now we hear that the secretary of state has been revealed to be as blatant and bald-faced a liar as the man who nominated him to be our nation’s top diplomat.

Utterly despicable.

national news, political news

‘Good government’ is about to take some time off

1 Comment

I consider myself to be a “good government progressive.”

Government should do the most good possible but it takes individuals on both sides of the political aisle to make it work as I believe our nation’s founders intended.

So … having laid that out, I fear we are about to enter an era of “no government” action aimed at helping Americans.

Impeachment now is clouding it all in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump is enraged at Democrats who want to impeach him for violating his oath of office. He says a phone conversation he had with the Ukrainian president was “perfect,” even though he asked his counterpart for foreign government assistance in getting re-elected and in digging up dirt on a potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has launched an “impeachment inquiry.” Trump is spending his days now firing off Twitter tirades and tantrums at his foes.

What does all this do for the cause of good government? It throws it into the crapper.

Democrats are enraged at Trump, too. The president, who doesn’t work well with Democrats under the best of circumstances, isn’t likely to work with them on anything now that House Democrats appear intent on seeking his ouster from office.

So, we’re going to pay our lawmakers a six-figure salary ostensibly to enact legislation, cast votes and send bills to the Oval Office for the president’s signature.

Except that none of that is likely to happen as House Democrats and Donald Trump play political chicken with each other.

Therefore, good government will vanish for the foreseeable future.

national news

This really has been Trump’s ‘worst week’ as president

Donald J. Trump has had so many “worst weeks” of his presidency that I have lost count of them.

There was the week when he supported Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s denial that Russians attacked our electoral system in 2016; or when he attacked our allies at NATO and threatened to pull the United States out of the seven-decade-old military alliance; or the time he accepted responsibility for shutting down the federal government; and let us not forget the week in which he said there were “fine people … on both sides” of an uprising that included Klansmen, Nazis and white supremacists on one of those sides.

Well, this week really has been … um, terrible!

Democrats in Congress are preparing to impeach the president. They have launched an impeachment inquiry over allegations that Trump asked Ukrainians for help in bringing down a potential political foe. What’s more, he seemed to hold up a congressional approved military aid package until such help would be forthcoming.

Yes, this really has been Trump’s “worst week” as president.

Might it get even worse than that? Oh, sure. He could actually be impeached. He could stand trial in the Senate. He could be convicted of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and kicked out of office.

This week, though, stands apart from the other “worst weeks” that Donald Trump has suffered.

national news

How should an impeached POTUS fare on Election Day?

Donald J. Trump is facing an extraordinary political hurdle as he campaigns for re-election as president of the United States.

It has been revealed that Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zellenskiy chatted by phone and that Trump sought to hold up a pledge for military aide to Ukraine over a “favor” that would provide dirt on Joe Biden, a potential political rival.

Trump has been accused now of jeopardizing national security because the president is abusing the power of his office.

Congressional Democrats are hurtling toward impeaching the president. What happens if the House actually impeaches him by, say, Thanksgiving?

Here’s where the hurdle stands in his way: What happens if the House impeaches Trump while he is in the midst of a re-election campaign? This unprecedented territory!

President Nixon won re-election in a landslide in 1972 and then quit the presidency in 1974 as the House was preparing to impeach him over the Watergate burglary/cover up. President Clinton won re-election in 1996 and then got impeached in 1998 because he lied to a grand jury about his relationship with a young White House intern; he, like Nixon, had no more campaigns to wage.

Donald Trump’s predicament is unparalleled. If the House impeaches him, he might be forced to run for re-election while shrouded under the darkest of political clouds.

None of this, of course, presumes what the Senate will do were it to receive the formal complaint against the president. I am wondering whether it will move to conduct a trial quickly or wait until after the election … for reasons I don’t quite understand.

I remain a bit reluctant — although decreasingly so — to push the House to proceed with an impeachment. I still would prefer an election to determine whether Donald Trump stays in office. However, the evidence of wrongdoing, corruption and frightening abuse of power well might compel the House to act rapidly.

Will it impeach the president as he prepares to run for re-election?

If it does, I will wait with bated breath to see how Donald Trump seeks to use an impeachment as a reason to re-elect him.

Hold on. This well might get mighty rough.