Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news

Mitch McConnell: Partisan hack demonstrates his hypocrisy

There well might be no more demonstrably partisan political hack in the U.S. Senate than the man who runs the place … and who has the gall to accuse politicians on the other side of playing politics.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked a bill that would seek to make our electoral system more secure and to prevent foreign hostile powers from hacking into our system.

Why did he do that? Because he says Senate Democrats have made it too “partisan.” They are “playing politics” with the legislation.

Wow, man!

Hmm. Let’s see how this works. Requiring paper ballots to back up the electronic ballots is “partisan”? Mandating that political candidates report to the FBI any suspected foreign-power interference is “partisan”?

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has stood with the Russians who did attack our election in 2016 and are likely to do so again in 2020. Trump’s partner in the Senate now is standing with him, declaring that Democrats are the partisan hacks.

Let’s flash back for a moment to 2016.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died while vacationing in Texas. The conservative icon’s body barely had gotten cold before McConnell declared that President Obama — serving his final full year in office — would not be allowed to seat a justice to replace the conservative icon, Scalia.

Obama ended up nominating Merrick Garland, an eminently qualified jurist. Garland didn’t get a hearing. McConnell was at his obstructionist worst in blocking Garland’s nomination and in denying President Obama the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility.

So now the majority leader calls Democrats the partisans? He says Democrats are playing politics with an electoral security bill?

The man’s hypocrisy takes my breath away.

International news

Another bin Laden is wiped out … hooray!

Hamza bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden and a reported “heir” to the terror group al-Qaida leadership is dead.

That’s according to U.S. officials who today declined to give any details on bin Laden’s death, or whether the United States played a role in the individual’s demise.

Donald Trump said simply “I don’t want to comment on that” when asked by reporters to comment. That’s OK, Mr. President. No need to speak out just yet.

Hamza bin Laden’s death, if true, marks another milestone in the nation’s ongoing war against terror groups that have declared their mission to be to bring harm to Americans and others around the world.

On May 1, 2011, when U.S. special forces killed Hamza bin Laden’s father in that spectacular raid in Pakistan, President Obama told the world that Osama bin Laden was not a “Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.” His son, Hamza, was cut from the very same blood-stained cloth as his old man.

Now he’s dead. That’s my hope. I also hope that the United States military did kill him. May he rot in hell.

national news

POTUS: Do as I say, not as I have done … for decades!

Oh, Mr. President, you just cannot stop tripping over yourself.

Your statement issued over the weekend that The Squad shouldn’t criticize the presidency, the nation, its policies flies directly in the face of your own personal history.

You tell the four Democratic congresswomen with whom you have been feuding that they need to quell their criticism. They shouldn’t speak ill of the government, you say. They shouldn’t speak out against our nation’s policies. You tell them, essentially, to keep their mouths shut.

Then you say they owe you, the nation and the rest of Americans and apology for all those criticisms they have leveled.

Are you serious, Mr. President?

What in the world did you do for decades? You did precisely the very thing you accuse Reps. Alyanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of doing?

Many of us remember the epithets you hurled at President Obama, at Hillary and Bill Clinton, various local officials at several levels of government. You have called previous presidents “stupid.” You have slung intensely personal insults at presidents and senior Cabinet officials.

Hey, Mr. President, I am just one of your constituents out here, but I think I speak for others who wonder the same thing. You, sir, lack the moral standing to instruct anyone else on how to conduct themselves as it regards those in power.

You have spent a lifetime leveling intense — and often deeply personal — criticism of others.

Now you expect four freshmen members of Congress to clam up just because you tell them to do so?

You cannot possibly be serious.

national news

Trump: It’s either support me or ‘hate’ for America

Donald Trump is quadrupling — maybe even quintupling — down on this hideous feud he has launched against four freshman members of the House of Representatives.

He told the four congresswomen that they could return to where they came from if they didn’t like the country they were elected to serve in Congress. Most Americans believe the Twitter tirade was racially/ethnically/religiously inspired. Three of the four congresswomen were born in the United States, making them every bit as American as Trump; the fourth came here as a pre-teenager from her native Somalia.

He is not letting up. Trump said Tuesday that the congresswomen “hate” the country. They “hate” American values and want to “destroy” the nation as we’ve known it.

Here is what I heard him suggest: Either you agree with me or you must hate the country.

This is utterly, profoundly, astonishingly ignorant. Donald Trump is suggesting that you either support him wholeheartedly or you want to turn the nation into some sort of socialist enclave.

Wow!

Donald Trump is accusing his critics of doing precisely what he did four years ago when he declared his candidacy for president.

Have the Trump legions been afflicted by acute amnesia? Do they not remember what this carnival barker said about President Obama? Do they not recall the intensely personal criticism he leveled not just at Obama, but also at President George W. Bush, President Clinton?

Indeed, this con artist ran a campaign based virtually exclusively on righting what he called the “stupidity” of previous presidents’ policies. Let’s not forget, too, that he did all this against the backdrop of his fomenting the lie that questioned President Obama’s birthright as a U.S. citizen.

So, for the president to say today that you’re either for him or against our nation is to imply that he, too, hated the country four years ago when he sought to be elected president.

I’ll say it once more: Donald Trump is unfit for the office he occupies.

national news

Dissent, protest … so very American

Donald Trump is accusing four freshman members of Congress of “hating” the United States, of “hating” Israel and of speaking ill of the country they purport to love.

They need to go back to where they come from, says the president of the United States. If they don’t like it here, they are “free to leave,” he says.

Oh, my. I am going to respond this way: Shouldn’t Donald Trump, while running for the presidency in 2016, followed such advice when he was trashing the policies of the man he sought to succeed?

The president has declared rhetorical war against Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez. They’re all Democrats, all women of color, all U.S. citizens. They’ve been vocal in their criticism of Trump and his policies.

The president has launched a frontal attack on all of them.

But to my point: Donald Trump called our political leadership “stupid” while running for president in 2016. He lambasted our national trade policies, our national defense policies, our economic policies. Beginning in 2011, he became a chief proponent of the lie that President Obama was not constitutionally qualified to serve in the White House, referring to phony allegations that Obama was born in Africa. He questioned Obama’s academic credentials, even suggesting that Obama never even attended Harvard University, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review.

Did anyone ever suggest that Donald Trump should “go back to where he came from,” or from where his mother emigrated?

No. Nor should they.

Trump was entitled under the rights granted by our Constitution to criticize the government, even if he was incorrect in his criticism. The four women he is challenging today are equally qualified to criticize government policies.

The president’s utter and unmistakable lack of self-awareness is on full display as he criticizes four duly elected members of Congress for doing the very thing he did while he ran for the only public office he ever has sought.

Amazing.

national news

Trump ends radio addresses … does anyone care?

First, I will make an admission.

I rarely listened to a presidential radio speech as it was being broadcast. I do so maybe twice dating back to the Reagan administration (1981-89).

Presidents dating back to Franklin Roosevelt — who revived the tradition when he took office in 1933 — would record these messages to be broadcast across the country.

President George H.W. Bush didn’t follow up on President Reagan’s consistent delivery of the message. Then came Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama, all of whom were faithful to the habit of talking to Americans directly over the radio airwaves about policy matters.

Donald Trump, though, has tossed the practice aside. Are you surprised? Neither am I.

He relies on Twitter to announce policy decisions, usually with mangled syntax, misspelled words, lots of capitalization and extraneous punctuation.

I find it mildly distressing that Trump would discontinue the weekly radio speechmaking. After all, they have been known to make a bit of news. Media report on what the president says and on occasion they might say something newsworthy enough to make us sit up and pay careful attention.

Trump sees, I’ll presume, as a waste of time. Probably like those daily presidential national security briefings he once told us he didn’t need to hear. He asked, rhetorically, “What’s the point?” He had no need to listen to someone on his national security team tell him something he said he already knew, Trump said.

I mean, he did tell us he knew “more about ISIS than the generals.” Isn’t that what he said?

Being something of a presidential traditionalist, I would prefer a return to the weekly radio speeches, rather than the Twitter tirades that are replete with misspellings, assorted nonsensical rants and, oh yeah, a total absence of credibility.

national news

POTUS is teeing it up … again, and again, and again!

I follow Robert Reich on Facebook partly because I agree with his political world view, but also partly because he thinks the same way I do about certain politicians … such as Donald John Trump, just to cite the obvious example.

Here is what the former Clinton administration labor secretary wrote today about the current president:

Trump’s golf trips have now cost taxpayers an estimated $108 million dollars. One of the major expenses is his use of military helicopters to fly short distances to his resorts in Northern Virginia and New Jersey.

Remember, this is the same man who railed against Barack Obama, and vowed “he wouldn’t have time to golf” as president. Meanwhile, he is draining the treasury to fund his hobby while cutting programs for low-income and middle-class Americans. Shameful.

Ignore that Reich wrote “dollars” while using the dollar symbol. His point is spot on.

Trump’s hideous criticism of Barack Obama’s golf outings missed the point by a mile. The point, which I have sought to make on this blog, is that president’s are never “off the clock.” I didn’t begrudge Obama’s golf outings when he served as president and, truthfully, I don’t begrudge Trump’s golf excursions now.

Except that Trump made such an a** of himself criticizing President Obama that he now exposes himself to criticism from those who like to point that he “lied” about having “no time for golf” once he became president. Trump told he would be just too damn busy “making America great again.”

America is just as great now as it was when Trump took office — at least I think it is.

If only the president had kept his pie hole shut while campaigning for the office. He wouldn’t have exposed himself to be the lying hypocrite that he is.

However, do the legions of Trumpkins out there care that they are lining up behind an unreconstructed liar? Hardly!

national news

Harris scores big, but now faces some blowback

Kamala Harris pounded Joe Biden with some serious body blows at that debate this past week. The U.S. senator and former California attorney general caught the former senator and former vice president flat footed when she questioned him about his senatorial relationships with avowed segregationists.

Oh, my. Then came the initial response. Harris now is on the front rank of Democratic challengers to Donald Trump. Her fans think better of her, if that’s possible. Biden’s fans initially were somewhat dismayed.

Now, though, the senator is getting a bit of push back, some resistance from those who think she might have let her ambition get the better of her. She shouldn’t have gone low with that attack against the ex-VP, some are saying.

Let’s play this out for a moment.

Suppose Biden remains the favorite among Democrats. Suppose, too, he gets the party’s presidential nomination in the summer of 2020. Who would he choose as his running mate. One Biden anonymous supporter said, “That sh** ain’t happening.”

Really? Let’s see. George H.W. Bush called Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy “voodoo economics” when the two of them ran for the Republican nomination in 1980. Reagan then selected Bush to run with him; they served as a team for two terms and Bush got elected president in 1988.

Oh, then we had Biden running against Barack Obama in 2008. They fought hard for as long as Biden was in the hunt. Then the Delaware U.S. senator dropped out. Democrats nominated Sen. Obama — who then chose Biden to run with him. You know the rest of it.

Moral of the story? If Biden gets nominated, do not count out Sen. Kamala Harris as a potential running mate.

national news

Biden stumbles, but he didn’t knock himself out

Well, there you go. Former Vice President Joe Biden had to know one of his presidential campaign foes would come after him for his vote on busing and his tepid acknowledgement of working with segregationist senators back in the day.

Still, he seemed flummoxed when Sen. Kamala Harris challenged him directly during last night’s Democratic presidential debate on the busing matter. Biden’s response was that he voted against the busing measure in the Senate only because it was being dictated by the Department of Education.

Still, Harris came off as the winner of that exchange. Biden, the clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, came up short.

Is this the end of Biden’s bid? Hardly.

Leave it to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican no less, to put it in perspective, which he did this morning.

Christie noted that in 1984, President Reagan suffered through a terrible debate performance against former VP Walter Mondale while campaigning for re-election; Reagan stumbled, bumbled and mumbled his way through forgetful efforts to answer questions. He also noted that President Obama had a horrible debate showing against Mitt Romney in 2012 when he was running for re-election.

They both came back, Christie said, with Reagan winning re-election in a 49-state landslide and Obama winning a second term with a surprisingly comfortable margin.

The message? One stumble does not doom a presidential candidacy. It’s still early and Joe Biden will have plenty of opportunity to regain his footing.

national news

Obama vs. Trump: Why not debate, gentlemen?

I watched Donald Trump’s interview this morning with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd and came away with a couple of observations I want to make here.

One is that I was glad to see the president sit down and be grilled hard by a member of a media organization he has demonized as a purveyor of “fake news.” Trump was mostly civil to Todd, who pushed the president hard on several key points. I was waiting for an explosion; it didn’t detonate.

Second, I was struck by the president’s continuing obsession with the record left behind by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump kept insisting that the economy he inherited was on the brink of collapse, that the economy now is the “best” in U.S. history and, of course, he takes all the credit for an economic expansion he said was made possible only by his election to the presidency.

I tossed around in my head a notion I want to reveal here: Why not ask these two men to discuss that economic miracle together, in a debate, if you want to call it that?

I know it won’t happen. Presidents don’t debate their predecessors. Under what used to be normal circumstances, the current president takes office and assumes command, looking forward at all times, rarely looking backward, always thinking about what he intend to do to move the nation to the next step, past the next hurdle or barrier.

Not so with Trump. He is fixated on President Obama’s legacy, which to my way of thinking is a whole lot better than the one Trump characterizes.

So why not sit down across a table and talk to each other about how they view the economy — and perhaps a few other issues as well? Health care seems like a topic for discussion, along with, oh, relations with our allies, our ongoing war against terror and the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran. Hey, maybe Trump can be forced to defend the ridiculous assertion that the special forces who killed Osama bin Laden should have acted sooner than they did; I would pay money to hear him mount that defense.

Trump is obsessed with comparing the presidency to the office that Obama left. He dare not compare himself to Obama the man, if you know what I am saying.

Barack Obama inherited an economy in free fall. It had actually collapsed by the time he took office. He along with Congress enacted some emergency measures that he hoped would stop the downward spiral. They worked. The economy then entered a job growth streak that hasn’t let up. Yet it is Donald Trump who takes the credit for the expansion that’s still under way.

If only we could actually hear these men explain to us their version of history. One of them, Obama, would do so in a measured, nuanced and elegant manner. The other, Trump, would resort to his version of the English language.

I wish it would happen. All I am left to do is sigh.