Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

national news, political news

Hillary again? Absolutely!

Donald Trump cannot resist the temptation to re-litigate the 2016 election.

Neither can some of the rest of us who didn’t support the president in his winning bid for the White House.

That all said, I want to state something that won’t surprise regular readers of this blog: If I could re-cast my most recent vote for president a second time, I would cast it in a New York minute for the candidate I supported in 2016; that would be Hillary Rodham Clinton.

We’re coming up on the first year since Trump took the oath of office. It’s been the longest year of many of our lives. Each day, let alone each week and month, has brought crisis upon crisis. Headaches caused by chaos and confusion abound in the White House. The president cannot get his feet under him.

It’s fair to wonder: Would a President Hillary Clinton have taken office amid such stumbling and bumbling? No. The transition would have been seamless.

It also is fair to ponder whether Hillary Clinton was the perfect candidate for president. Of course she wasn’t. She had her flaws. Clinton didn’t seem genuine. At times she sounded and actually looked inauthentic. But I didn’t — and still don’t — buy the notion about her being “crooked.” Her flaws as a candidate in my view do not include criminality.

My continued support for Hillary Clinton, I must add, presumes she would run against Donald Trump. To be totally candid, there were other Republicans I found much more attractive than the guy who won the GOP nomination. Had the nominee been, say, Ohio John Kasich or perhaps even U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida I might be persuaded to vote Republican for the first time in my voting life. I particularly like Gov. Kasich — and I actually would like to see him challenge the president in 2020.

However, if I had the chance to vote all over again between Trump and Hillary Clinton, I wouldn’t regret for a minute supporting Clinton.

Her competence and her understanding of government cannot be questioned. Neither can we question her decorum or her dignity.

I grew tired very early in the Trump administration of shuddering at the president’s rhetoric. I have zero doubt that Hillary Clinton would know how to act presidential.

national news, political news

Voter fraud commission is a goner … good!

Donald J. Trump said this today in a statement released by the White House:

“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry.

“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.”

Where do I begin? I’ll start with this: Mr. President, the only “evidence” produced came from your mouth or, more accurately, your Twitter account.

The president said after the 2016 election that “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton, giving her the nearly 3 million popular vote margin she rolled up while losing the Electoral College tally. Trump never produced a scintilla of evidence. No one ever proved a thing about alleged widespread voter fraud.

So he convened this voter fraud panel to prove he was right. It didn’t find a thing. The president is right about one thing: States refused to cooperate because elections officials — including those in Texas — couldn’t determine any rational cause for releasing the information.

This looked for all the world like an effort to find a solution in search of a problem. The problem didn’t exist in the manner that the president alleged.

I’ll make a friendly wager. No money involved: The Department of Homeland Security won’t find anything, either.

national news

That’s some Trump 2016 campaign ‘leak’

George Papadopoulos seems to have a big mouth that spews a lot of, um, intelligence when it’s lubricated with liquor.

Who is this guy and what does it mean? According to the New York Times, Papadopoulos is a former low-level Donald Trump presidential campaign aide who, during a drunken bender in London, told the Australian ambassador to Great Britain that Russian government officials had compiled dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

So … its meaning? The young man who served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump team said enough to alarm the Aussie envoy, who then alerted U.S. government officials. He also triggered the FBI investigation into the “Russia thing” that prompted the president to fire former FBI director James Comey earlier this year.

Another bombshell … maybe?

The revelation has the potential of creating yet another firestorm regarding special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the Russia collusion allegation. The Department of Justice selected Mueller — also a former FBI director and a highly respected career prosecutor — to lead the probe into whether the Trump team colluded with Russian agents who sought to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The president keeps insisting there was “no collusion.” He has said Mueller is engaged in a witch hunt, although of late he says he believes Mueller will treat him “fairly.”

My own view is that this one-time low-level underling — Papadopoulos — might have spilled enough of the beans to lure the special counsel’s legal team toward pay dirt.

Bizarre.

media news, national news

Dear Mr. President: Ditch the ‘fake news’ mantra

There you have it, Mr. President. That’s my New Year’s resolution for you to ponder … that is, if you read this blog.

I’ll try to shoot you a copy of it and hope you’ll take a moment to read it.

This “fake news” yammering you keep tossing out there is, um, tiresome, boring and oh so very lacking in self-awareness.

You, sir, are the master composer of fake news.

You have revived the lie about President Obama being born abroad and being unqualified to serve in the office he vacated nearly a year ago after serving two successful terms; you lied about Hillary Clinton getting votes from millions of illegal immigrants; you lied about witnessing “thousands of Muslims” cheering the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11; you lied about losing “many friends” in the towers on that terrible day.

Don’t you get it, Mr. President? Every time you accuse the media of putting out fake news, you expose yourself to the very same accusation — which is tangibly and demonstrably more accurate than the bogus allegations you make about the media.

Why not start semi-fresh in 2018? You can do that by declaring your intention to stop repeating that phony mantra about fake news. It disserves the nation you were elected to lead and you vowed to “unify” after you took your oath of office.

You have failed to unify us, Mr. President. Pitting the media against America doesn’t make anything or anyone “great again.”

Happy New Year, Mr. President.

Now, get to work.

national news

Law and order party now talking ‘purge’ at FBI

How can the political party that prides itself on being the champion of “law and order” now contain members who are doing all they can to undermine that principle?

That appears to be happening within the ranks of the Republican Party.

Members of Congress, being goaded by those in the conservative mainstream media, are ratcheting up their criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the “Russia thing” that instigated the president’s dismissal of former FBI director James Comey.

The Justice Department appointed Mueller to be special counsel, enabling him to begin looking into allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russian agents who had hacked into our nation’s electoral process. The FBI, meanwhile, keeps getting hammered by some on the right and the far right and, oh yes, by Donald Trump, the nation’s president.

The FBI and DOJ are now being called “biased” against Trump. What? I thought the president extolled the FBI back when it was investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email usage while she served as secretary of state.

Apparently that’s all changed. Trump now says the FBI needs a thorough housecleaning. It needs top-to-bottom reorganization, he says. It has a new director, Christopher Wray, whose hands are being zip-tied by the president’s tweets and assorted public comments about the FBI.

There once was a time when the FBI was considered the premier investigative law enforcement agency in the entire world. Few people thought to impugn the agency’s integrity or that of the men and women who run it. That time seemingly passed the night of Nov. 8, 2016 when Donald Trump got elected president.

The president, though, in recent days has talked about Mueller treating him “fairly” and has actually dialed back some of his fiery, anti-FBI rhetoric.

Those of us who pay attention to the president are concerned that he’ll reload and start lobbing more artillery at the agency when given the chance.

Is this what the GOP “base” wants to hear from the president? That he is disparaging and disrespecting an institution that hard-core Republicans used to support?

national news

Trump trashes FBI yet again

Put yourself in the shoes of a professional law enforcement officer with desires to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Your director works at the pleasure of the president of the United States. The FBI director’s job is to manage arguably the world’s premier investigative agency. Yet the president calls out the management of your agency almost daily, using language one hears on junior high school playgrounds.

The FBI has long been considered a place where trained professionals do their jobs with skill and precision. Yet the president — the nation’s top dog — keeps questioning its competence and its professionalism.

POTUS takes aim at FBI

Donald J. Trump seeks to embark on a sort of scorched-Earth policy with regard to the FBI. The man he chose to lead the agency, Christopher Wray, is now being hamstrung by the man who hired him. Wray cannot shake himself loose from the shackles that Trump clamps around his ankles.

The president keeps invoking the name of the man he fired, James Comey, who was investigating whether Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russian hackers who sought to influence the 2016 election outcome. And, yes, he attaches epithets to Comey’s name, along with that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the president’s election opponent.

Now the president has joined the conservative chorus in seeking the departure of Andrew McCabe, who was Comey’s chief deputy at the FBI. Trump has accused McCabe of being too cozy with Clinton while the agency was investigating her use of private email servers while she was secretary of state during the first term of the Obama administration.

I guess I just cannot put myself into the shoes of anyone with designs of becoming an FBI agent. The president’s Twitter tirades against the FBI cannot possibly be a lure to anyone who seeks to serve their country.

International news, national news, political news

Memo to GOP: Remember ‘Benghazi’?

Republicans in Congress and their friends in the media are now singing loudly from the same political hymnal.

They want special counsel Robert Mueller to either be fired or they want him to conclude his investigation into the “Russia thing.”

Oh, they have such short memories.

I feel compelled to remind them all of one word: Benghazi.

The GOP conducted an investigation with seemingly no end. It involved then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and whether she committed some sort of crime in relation to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The attack killed four Americans, including the nation’s ambassador to Libya.

They held hearings. They brought Clinton before congressional panels. They quizzed her, berated her, threatened to “lock her up!” over the chaos that ensued from that tragic event.

It went on for years. From 2012 until 2016. It cost millions of dollars of public funds.

Now we have Mueller on the hunt for the truth behind another highly sensitive matter: whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russian government officials who sought to meddle in our 2016 presidential election.

They now are alleging bias in the Mueller team. They point to two staffers who exchange pro-Hillary email and text messages — before Mueller fired them when their antipathy toward Trump became known.

Some in the conservative media are pressuring the president to fire Mueller. Big mistake, folks! The president says there’s no evidence of collusion. Fine. Then, let Mueller’s team reach that conclusion on its own.

As for the calls for the special counsel to wrap up his probe, Republicans on Capitol Hill and around the country need to examine their own conduct during another probe involving a prominent Democratic politician.

If we’re going to demand a thorough probe into alleged wrongdoing, then it must apply to everyone.

Isn’t that only fair?

political news

Mitch McConnell: partisan powerhouse

Oh, how I wanted to give U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the benefit of the doubt.

I didn’t like the way he stonewalled Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court after Antonin Scalia died in 2016. Then he turned around and said all the right things about Roy Moore, the religious zealot — who also has been accused of sexually abusing girls; McConnell said Moore is unfit to serve in the Senate and he wanted him to end his candidacy.

Now the Republican from Kentucky is showing who he really is: a partisan powerhouse hack.

He doesn’t want to wait for Alabama U.S. Sen.-elect Doug Jones — the Democrat who beat Moore this week in that special election — to take his seat before voting on the GOP-authored tax cut bill. Moore is a certain “no” vote on the bill.

But wait! Seven years ago, a Republican was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts and McConnell insisted that the Senate wait for Scott Brown to take his seat before voting on whether to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Which is it, Mr. Majority Leader? Is it right for one party to gum up the works, but not for the other party?

I refer to McConnell’s successful obstruction of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the high court for a reason as well. McConnell wanted to hold off on confirming a Supreme Court pick until after the 2016 election. He was hoping Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton, even though almost no one thought he would. His gamble paid off.

However, while obstructing the president, he accused Democrats of “playing politics” with the nomination by insisting that Judge Garland get a hearing and a vote. I trust you see the irony in that statement, as McConnell was “playing politics” like the master politician he has proven to be.

Now the Senate Republican majority is poised to foist a tax cut that will explode the federal budget deficit on Americans; analyses suggest it will benefit the wealthiest Americans while burdening the rest of us. But that’s OK, says Mitch. Bring it on!

Don’t wait for a duly elected Democrat to take his seat. We gotta get this bill to the president’s desk because we’re desperate for a win.

Oh, and never mind what he said before about Sen.-elect Brown. Hey, if Americans can ignore what the president says about his political foes, surely they’ll give McConnell a pass on his brazen duplicity.

national news

So many lies, only one winner?

Politifact has announced perhaps my favorite award category of all time: Lie of the Year.

It’s a fact-checking website that has declared its 2017 Lie of the Year to be Donald J. Trump’s assertion that Russian interference in our electoral process is a made-up story that Democrats fabricated as an excuse for why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.

I have to admit that’s a good one.

The president has disparaged the nation’s intelligence-gathering network and has stood behind Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s “denial” that the Russians hacked into our electoral system.

In fact, there have been so many lies it’s hard to pick just one.

Barack Obama ordered the wiretap of Trump’s campaign office? That’s a good one, too. Millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary in 2016, giving her a 3 million popular vote victory? That’s a serious knee-slapper. The president’s electoral victory was the greatest since President Reagan’s re-election in 1984? I can’t stop laughing at that one.

Actually, though, I think Politifact has chosen well. The “Russia thing” hoax lie is really rich, man.

Trump likely would be in the running for lying every year he’s been in politics. My favorite 2016 lie is how he would “stop tweeting” once he became president. And the 2015 winner would have to be that Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns was because of an on-going Internal Revenue Service “audit.”

Come to think of it, has the IRS completed that audit? Was there ever an IRS audit?

Liar, liar …

national news

Actually, Mme. Press Secretary, election didn’t settle it

Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the 2016 presidential election decided what voters think about the accusations by women against Donald Trump.

Let me ponder that for a moment. Umm, actually it didn’t settle it. Or perhaps it did in a way that Sanders didn’t intend.

Several women have accused the president of behaving badly toward them; they have alleged incidents of groping, unwanted kissing and assorted tomfoolery they didn’t seek or want.

This is news today because of the sexual abuse allegations that have brought the downfall of Hollywood moguls, actors and politicians. Trump remains untouched. Some senators have called on Trump to resign, just as three members of Congress have done. Other critics are suggesting an ethics investigation is in order.

Oh, what did the election settle? Sanders said Trump’s Electoral College victory meant the issue is gone.

Nope. It isn’t.

Let’s see. How did Trump do in the popular vote? He received 62,985,134 votes. Oh, and how many votes went to Hillary Rodham Clinton? 65,853,652.

That’s a difference of 2,850,518 votes … in Hillary’s favor.

Thus, I do believe Sarah Sanders is mistaken if she thinks the election settled anything.