Tag Archives: Ronald Reagan

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Mitt now aims to fight poverty

Chris Matthews is loud, abrasive and occasionally rude on his TV talk show.

He’s also smart, shrewd and insightful when he delivers political commentary.

Matthews cannot believe that Mitt Romney can run for president a third time as an advocate for poor Americans, noting that in 2012 Romney was a champion for the “1 percent” of richest Americans while saying that the 47 percent, the poor folks, “are takers.”

http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/romney-to-focus-on-fighting-poverty-383924291861?CID=SM_FB

He wonders how Mitt can change his tune so dramatically and rapidly from his previous presidential campaign and get away with it. Will it sell to voters who remember the self-deportation talk, the spontaneous offer to wager a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry, references to “the illegals”?

I’ve got a name for Matthews to ponder: George H.W. Bush.

Let’s flash back to 1980. Former Gov. Ronald Reagan had sewn up the Republican presidential nomination. He began looking around for a running mate. He toyed with the idea of picking former President Ford to be on his ticket; the former president said “no.” Then he turned to George Bush, who ran against Reagan in the GOP primaries.

One little problem, though. Bush was a noted supporter of organizations such as Planned Parenthood. He voted routinely, while a member of Congress in the 1960s, for legislation that funded contraception and other family planning programs. His nickname in the House of Representatives was “Rubbers.”

But the GOP nominee in 1980 needed to run on a strong pro-life platform. Would “Rubbers” agree to switch his view on abortion if he ran? You bet he would. And he did.

George Bush took the phone call from Ronald Reagan. He got the offer to run. He said “yes,” and transformed immediately — as in right then and there — from a pro-choice Republican to a pro-life Republican.

The Reagan-Bush ticket won in a historic landslide.

Can Mitt make a similar switcheroo? Absolutely.

 

International news, national news

'We should have sent someone' to Paris rally

Think long and hard about this one.

When was the last time the White House admitted openly that it made a mistake. My best recollection goes back to, oh, around 1987 when President Reagan said as much about selling arms to rebel fighters in Nicaragua.

Still, the White House press spokesman, Josh Earnest, made a startling announcement today in declaring that the Obama administration erred in not sending a higher profile emissary to join the massive Paris “unity rally” in the wake of the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/229217-white-house-we-were-wrong-on-paris

Secretary of State John Kerry said today as well that the U.S.-France relationship goes far beyond a single event, such as the Paris rally. President Obama has noted that France is our “oldest ally,” dating back to the American Revolution.

But yes, the White House made a mistake. I’m glad the administration is acknowledging it.

The current war on international terror began on Sept. 11, 2001 when terrorists conducted the cold-blooded, premeditated attack on the United States. We issued a call to arms and enlisted the aid of nations around the world.

The United States has been the main player in the world’s fight against the monsters who seek to terrorize the rest of the world.

There should have been a high-profile U.S. delegation at the unity rally, which featured the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

That does not diminish our leading role in the global war. Indeed, today’s White House admission well might enhance it.

 

national news

Hinckley won't be tried again … for murder

It’s settled. John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan in March 1981, will not be tried for the murder of one of the men who died as a result of the injuries he suffered on that terrible day.

One of the other victims was the late White House press secretary James Brady, who died this past summer. A medical examiner said Brady’s death was a direct result of being shot in the head by Hinckley.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/228396-no-charges-for-hinckley-in-james-brady-death

This is a good call for a number of reasons.

Hinckley was acquitted of trying to assassinate the president. He fired the shots. The acquittal was because he was determined to be insane. That means he also was considered insane when he shot Brady and two law enforcement officers.

The Constitution prohibits what’s called “double jeopardy,” meaning criminal defendants cannot be tried twice or more for the same crime. As The Hill reported: “In explaining their decision Friday, federal prosecutors argued that because Hinckley was deemed insane by a jury in 1982, they would be unable to argue today that he had been sane when he shot Brady.”

Hinckley’s time in court has come and gone.

My initial reaction to Brady’s death was to put Hinckley on trial for murder. I thought better of it a few days later. I’ve thought even more about it months after that.

Prosecutors have made the right decision.

 

national news, political news

Gov. Cuomo told the harsh truth

A progressive voice is gone. Too bad for the nation he leaves behind.

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo — who died Thursday at age 82 — once was thought to be a possible candidate for president. Why, he even might have become president one day, perhaps a good or great president at that.

He chose instead to stay in Albany, N.Y., and govern his state. Cuomo would lose his governor’s job eventually in that 1994 Republican sweep, the one that took control of Congress and tossed out a number of governors. Cuomo was gone from public office, as was, say, his friend and colleague Ann Richards here in Texas.

But take a listen to a speech this good man delivered a decade earlier, at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. He told of a “tale of two cities.” One was the “shining city on the hill” envisioned by President Reagan. But there was another city that Gov. Cuomo sought to lift up.

He sought to bring attention to the suffering he said the president was dismissing.

Cuomo’s brand of progressiveness wasn’t the knee-jerk brand. He spoke from his heart. No, his politics didn’t play well in much of the country in 1984. Was his progressive brand popular here, in Texas — and in this part of the Lone Star State? Not even close.

As he told the DNC delegates in San Francisco that evening, he wanted the nation to know that while, yes, the nation did symbolize the shining city, it was — and is — a more complex place. People who are suffering need help from the government.

After all, he said, it is their government, too.

Rest in peace, governor.

 

 

political news

Bank it: Trump isn't running for president

My former colleagues at the Amarillo Globe-News have run a column by a guy who fancies himself as a player in Republican political circles.

He is Matt Towery, a former Georgia GOP state legislator and a pal of Newt Gingrich. He’s also a friend of the Globe-News’s corporate ownership, which is the major reason he is published occasionally in the local paper.

Towery thinks Donald Trump is considering seriously whether to run for president in 2016. What’s more, Towery is infatuated with the notion of Trump actually becoming president.

Let’s clear the air.

Trump isn’t running. He’ll never run for president. He is talking like this because he likes — no, he loves — the sound of his voice. He loves getting people all worked up over the goofy things he says and he takes himself far too seriously on these matters.

However, the real reason he won’t run is because he has a lucrative TV deal that he cannot surrender. It’s that apprentice show of his on NBC-TV, the one where he tells celebrities “You’re fired.”

He’s going to give that up to earn a paltry 400 grand a year making decisions involving the future of the nation?

Towery took pains in a column published this week in the Globe-News to poke a little fun at President Obama’s experience prior to moving into the White House. He belittled his community organizing experience and noted that Obama served briefly in the Illinois Legislature and then the U.S. Senate before being elected president in 2008.

Meanwhile, Trump keeps bellowing about whether the president is constitutionally qualified to serve in the office he holds. You know, the “born in Kenya” crap. Give me a break.

Towery equates Trump’s “star quality” with Ronald Reagan. Sure. Except that Reagan actually governed a huge state for eight years. Trump’s government experience? None.

And let’s not look askance at the importance of actually working with government.

No, Donald Trump is among the least-suited men possible for this incredibly nuanced and sophisticated job. He should keep his day job “firing” washed-up celebrities.

President Trump? Perish the thought. Forever.

national news

Vacation for first family; POTUS will need the rest

President Obama has jetted off to his home state of Hawaii for some R&R with his family.

I’ll be interested now for the next several days whether we’re going to hear any carping about the golf being played, or whether the first lady is spending a lot of money on shopping excursions, or whether the first daughters are behaving themselves.

This kind of carping goes with the territory, I guess, and I am hoping that now — six years into the job — that the president and his family have grown used to it.

Social media being what they are, criticism hits cyberspace in swarms. It’s immediate, quite often mistaken and misplaced and also quite cruel.

I recall a couple of other notable presidents who’d take lengthy vacations.

* President Ronald Reagan would get holed up in his ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif., uttering hardly a peep in public. He’d come back down from his Rancho del Cielo refreshed and ready to take on the challenges of the day. You’d hear the occasional gripes from the media about the president’s lengthy hiatus, but hardly none of the nitpicking one hears today.

* President George W. Bush liked to “clear brush” at his own ranch in Central Texas, near Crawford — which is near Waco. Again, the media would gripe about that time off, although my hunch is that they disliked hanging out in rural Texas, which I’m guessing lacks some of the creature comforts to which those big-city media hounds had grown accustomed.

In both instances — and regarding vacations other presidents have taken — such criticism is unfounded and ridiculous.

Barack Obama doesn’t have any planned public events while he’s enjoying Christmas with his clan in Hawaii. He’ll get his usual daily national security briefings and updates on other matters way back east in Washington.

For now, enjoy your time in the sunshine, Mr. President. A new Congress controlled by the “other party” awaits you when you return for the home stretch of your time in office. You’ll need all the rest you can get.

 

national news, political news

How dare Obama quote Scripture!

You know, if I had given it a moment’s worth of thought, I might have been able to predict that one conservative mainstream media outlet would criticize the president of the United States for quoting Scripture.

The thought didn’t cross my mind. Then I saw this item from Media Matters, an acknowledged liberal watchdog organization.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/11/21/now-fox-amp-friends-is-upset-that-obama-is-quot/201665

(Check out the link where Elizabeth Hasselbeck says she “got goosebumps” when President Reagan cited Scripture back in 1981.)

They chided “Fox and Friends” for criticizing President Obama for having the utter gall to quote the Bible when talking about his executive order regarding immigration reform. Why, those “Fox and Friends” talking heads just couldn’t understand how the president — whom they have criticized in the past for his alleged failure to acknowledge his Christian faith — could do such a thing in this context.

I need to stop hyperventilating.

There.

Let’s understand something about the 44th president. He’s declared time and again that he believes Jesus Christ is his savior. He reads the Bible and has been a Church of Christ member for, oh, a long time. Barack Obama also uses Scripture passages frequently when making some point, just as all of his predecessors — from both political parties — have done since the beginning of the Republic.

May we stop applying these ridiculous double standards when analyzing the president’s statements on public policy?

OK. I’ve made the request for fairness in covering these things. I’m quite sure no one at Fox News will give it any consideration.

 

 

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.

 

International news, legal news, national news, political news

Reagan and Bush did it; why not Obama?

Republicans in Congress are getting loaded for bear if that Democratic rascal in the White House follows through with a threat to execute an order that delays deportation of some 5 million illegal immigrants.

What they’ll do precisely in response to a now-expected executive order remains unclear.

Maybe they should follow the congressional led set when two earlier presidents did precisely the same thing, using exactly the same constitutional device.

That would be: nothing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/15/reagan-bush-immigration-deportation_n_6164068.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

At issue is whether President Obama will use his executive authority to delay those deportations and, by the way, strengthen security along our southern border. Congress wants him to wait. So do I, for that matter. Congressional Republicans are threatening to hamstring confirmation hearings on the president’s pick to be attorney general, Loretta Lynch. Heck, they might even sue the president.

The most troublesome — and ridiculous — notion being field tested in the court of public opinion is impeachment.

Let’s look briefly at history.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did the same thing. One heard nary a peep out of Congress, let alone the Democrats who controlled the place at the time.

Congress enacted an immigration law in 1986, but in the following year, President Reagan gave immigration officials the power to cover the children of illegal immigrants who were granted amnesty under the law. As the Huffington Post reported: “Spouses and children of couples in which one parent qualified for amnesty but the other did not remained subject to deportation, leading to efforts to amend the 1986 law.”

Along came President Bush in 1989. The Huffington Post reports: “In a parallel to today, the Senate acted in 1989 to broaden legal status to families but the House never took up the bill. Through the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Bush advanced a new ‘family fairness’ policy that put in place the Senate measure. Congress passed the policy into law by the end of the year as part of broader immigration legislation. ‘It’s a striking parallel,’ said Mark Noferi of the pro-immigration American Immigration Council. ‘Bush Sr. went big at the time. He protected about 40 percent of the unauthorized population. Back then that was up to 1.5 million. Today that would be about 5 million.'”

What gives with the current crop of yahoos calling the shots on Capitol Hill?

Oh, I forgot. The tea party/nimrod wing of the GOP vows to shake things up and no longer do things the way they’ve been done in the past.

That must include allowing the president of the United States to actually lead.

 

International news

The Wall came tumblin' down

Walls were meant to be broken, scaled, breached.

Thus, when the Berlin Wall came crashing down a quarter-century ago today, it signaled an inevitable result.

The communists who ruled East Germany at the time built the wall in 1961 to keep people in, not necessarily to keep people out. Their strategy never really worked. People fought to break through the wall to find freedom in West Berlin, which still was surrounded by the rest of the communist country. Still, the people fled, often dying in the effort.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/ng-interactive/2014/nov/03/the-berlin-wall-in-the-cold-war-and-now-interactive

The Wall is history now. It came down. Berlin would be united. Germany would unite as well.

The Soviet Union? It hung on for two more years before it, too, disintegrated into oblivion.

One element about all of that stands out for me as I look back at that tumultuous time.

The president of the United States at the time didn’t do a touchdown dance. He didn’t crow aloud about how great we are and how evil the communists were. George H.W. Bush wasn’t one to spike the ball, as it were, in a moment of supreme triumph.

His immediate predecessor, Ronald Reagan — whom Bush served as vice president for eight years — didn’t do any shouting from the rooftop either. Both men, to their credit, chose to let the events play out, to allow the people to celebrate their freedom and for the world to draw its own conclusions about what was occurring in a great European city.

It’s helpful, though, to recall the abject failure of the wall. It symbolized only the tyranny of those who erected it and served to remind those who sought freedom of their own desire to breach the wall.

They succeeded. Good for them. Good for the rest of the world as well.