Tag Archives: POTUS

national news

Stability? Who needs stability, right, Mr. POTUS?

Donald Trump is showing that he can be a master rationalizer. The guy can seek to rationalize every idiotic circumstance.

Such as the array of “acting” Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials. The president says he is in no hurry to find permanent replacements, saying something about liking the “flexibility” that’s built in to his current administration makeup.

Ridiculous!

He has an acting White House chief of staff, an acting interior secretary, an acting attorney general, an acting defense secretary, an acting U.N. ambassador, an acting Environmental Protection Agency administrator. Only the White House chief of staff does not require Senate confirmation.

Now, the president has nominated individuals to become the permanent U.N. envoy, the EPA boss and attorney general.

However, he is being caught in a swirl of legal and political conflicts that are interfering with the “normal” flow of business; of course, “normal” takes on a new meaning in this Era of Donald J. Trump, which is to say that there is a whole “new normal.”

I happen to believe that the presence of so many “acting” executive branch officials begets more chaos and uncertainty. There can be little good side to having all these posts occupied by individuals who just keeping seats warm for someone else.

How about getting busy, Mr. President?

national news

You can ‘relate’ to furloughed workers? Really, Mr. POTUS?

Listen up, Mr. President. I should not have to explain this to you, but I will anyway, because I have the time to do so.

Don’t try to fool us into believing that ridiculous claim that you can “relate” to American federal employees who have been furloughed because of the partial government shutdown that you initiated with your insistence on money to build The Wall.

I read your remarks to reporters today, about how you supposedly can relate to the misery that’s been inflicted on these dedicated public servants.

Let me remind you, sir, of a key difference between you and them.

Those employees work because they have to work. They need the income to feed their families, pay their bills, keep a roof over their heads and maybe — if there’s money left over — to take a vacation once in a while.

You, Mr. President, are working for free because you chose to forgo the presidential annual salary of $400,000. You did so because you are so fabulously wealthy (or so you keep telling us) that you don’t need the pittance the government pays you to “make America great again.”

I’ll be clear on this point: I appreciate your willingness to give up the presidential salary. I also applaud your decision to donate the money each year to various charities. They need the cash more than you do . . . apparently.

However, do not attach this idiotic form of false equivalence to what you are foisting on federal employees and your decision to voluntarily give up your salary.

You cannot possibly “relate” to what they’re enduring.

As for whether those furloughed employees agree with your decision to shut down the government and deprive them of their paychecks, hmm . . . I’d bet real American money they don’t.

entertainment news

Should awards shows become political events?

Variety magazine poses a question that is giving me fits, but I have reached a conclusion.

It asks whether televised awards shows that honor entertainers should become a forum for honorees to spout their political views.

I think not.

The Emmys, Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globes ceremonies have been most memorable for the political speeches that actors and others in the entertainment industry deliver while accepting their trophies.

Are their opinions of some value? Sure they are. Are these ceremonies the place for them to make those views known to the entire world? I don’t believe so.

I have long believed in the “There’s a time and place for everything” theory. I have this admittedly old-fashioned view that awards ceremonies are intended solely to honor those who get paid lots of money to, um, entertain us. That is why I watch them — on the rare occasion that I do.

Free speech is great, however . . .

You may spare me the rebuttal about “freedom of speech,” and “First Amendment guarantees” and this being a “free country.” Believe me, I get all of that. I understand the argument in favor of those who want entertainers to deliver us their political views on the issues of the day.

I also am acutely aware of the entertainment industry’s left-leaning bias. These folks, to be candid, are preaching to the choir if they are talking to me. I share their bias. Thus, I don’t need to hear points of view that merely affirm what I already believe.

All I want from entertainers is for them to perform up to the standards we all expect of them. Whether they think badly of the president of the United States or of certain members of Congress or of governors of certain states is irrelevant.

Good grief! We’re inundated with opinion 24/7 on cable TV shows, in various publications, and in blogs — such as this one.

Entertainment awards ceremonies need not be a forum to feed me more of the same.

national news

Where’s the wall, Mr. President?

What you see here is a picture of the home where Barack and Michelle Obama live. Donald Trump said the Obamas live behind a 10-foot wall and wondered why if a wall is good enough for the former president and former first lady, why can’t we build a wall along our southern border.

Do you see a wall? Anywhere? Are the Obama hiding behind a wall?

Gosh. I don’t see it.

Which goes to show yet again that the Liar in Chief cannot tell the truth. He must be genetically redisposed to lie even when he doesn’t have to lie.

He lied about his presidential predecessor’s home. He is lying about the dire circumstances he insists require the construction of The Wall. He lies about everything, every single subject he chooses to address.

We are expected to believe a single statement that flies out of the president’s mouth? Nope. Can’t do it.

national news

Mitt shows his hand regarding POTUS

Well, that didn’t take long.

Utah Republican U.S. Sen.-elect Mitt Romney, who takes office later this week, wasted no time in establishing himself as a Donald Trump watchdog on Capitol Hill.

I am thrilled to read what the new senator had to say about the president of the United States.

I also am delighted to know that he poked the president sufficiently to prompt yet another Twitter response, calling on Mitt to be a “team player” and urged him to concentrate on issues such as, oh, border security.

Back to the point of Mitt’s essay published New Year’s Day in the Washington Post. He said Trump has taken the Republican Party to new lows. He questions the president’s principles, his competence, his commitment to the office he occupies.

What’s even more fascinating is the Republican Party’s response to Romney’s criticism. A GOP RNC member from the Virgin Islands is pitching an idea to make it more difficult for someone to challenge Trump in the upcoming presidential election. Current rules apparently give a well-funded challenger a relatively clear path to challenging an incumbent president.

The RNC member notes that no GOP incumbent who has faced a primary challenge has been returned to office. Two of them come immediately to mind: President Ford in 1976 and President Bush in 1992.

Read the Romney essay here.

Trump, of course, has pointed out that Romney lost the 2012 election as the GOP nominee to President Obama, while he won in 2016. I’ll just add that Romney faced a more formidable opponent in Obama than Trump did in defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton. But that’s beside the point.

The relevant point is that Utah’s new junior senator has presented himself as a serious member of the U.S. Senate, someone who’s been around a while and understands government and the way it works. What’s more, his personal background suggests that he is a credible critic of a president who lacks the “character” we need in our head of state.

What follows is a snippet of Romney’s essay:

To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.

There you go.

national news, State news

Democratic excitement causes flashbacks

I must be hallucinating, or having some sort of flashback . . . which I assure you isn’t drug-induced.

Texas Democrats, not Republicans, are all agog over the looming struggle for attention between two rising stars. One of them came so very close to being elected to the U.S. Senate; the other is a former big-city mayor and a former housing secretary for the most recent Democratic president.

Stand tall, Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro.

O’Rourke almost defeated Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the midterm election; he might run for president of the United States in 2020. Castro was mayor of San Antonio, the state’s second-largest city and served in the Cabinet of Barack H. Obama; he, too, might run for POTUS.

Of the two of them, Castro seems the surer bet to toss his Stetson into the ring, although O’Rourke keeps tantalizing many around the country with messages that suggest that he, too, is likely to join the Democratic free-for-all.

Texas once was a Democratic bastion, where only Democrats were seen and heard. Then it morphed into a Republican stronghold and the GOP snatched all the headlines, the air time and people’s political attention.

It’s now becoming more of an inter-party competition, instead of an intra-party donnybrook. I like the idea of the two parties fighting hard for the hearts and minds of Texans and other Americans.

As for O’Rourke and Castro, I am beginning to sense a rivalry in the making.

Politico reports that a Texas political strategist, Colin Strother, sees the two men’s disparate upbringing well could produce a unique situation in Texas. They won’t be fighting for the same constituency, Strother guesses. “I see them as two completely different types of candidates,” he said.

Castro sees himself as the underdog, given O’Rourke’s meteoric rise while losing his race to Cruz. He has a twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who’s been helping him raise money to try to bring down the O’Rourke colossus.

O’Rourke, you might recall, campaigned against Cruz without the help of high-powered, top-dollar political consultants and/or pollsters. He just visited every one of Texas’s 254 counties, talked to voters wherever he found them. What astounded me was the amount of time O’Rourke spent in GOP-stronghold counties in rural West Texas, from the Panhandle to the Permian Basin. Didn’t anyone tell him the Panhandle is where the John Birch Society used to give “mainstream politicians” fits?

I don’t know whether both — or either — of these young men are going to vie for the Big Prize in 2020. I’m just delighted to see the excitement they both are generating in a state that has grown quite unaccustomed to hearing noise from Democrats’ side of the fence.

International news, national news

Russians have earned grudging admiration for their success

I feel the need to offer a word of congratulations to our nation’s No. 1 geopolitical adversary, Russia . . . the nation formerly known as the Evil Empire.

Perhaps we ought to resurrect that Cold War epithet made popular by Ronald Wilson Reagan.

The Russians once were governed by those nasty communists who created something called the Soviet Union. The USSR dissolved in 1991, collapsing under its own weight of military excess and corruption.

But the Russian Federation that emerged is no less nefarious. Think of what it did to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome. The Russians, led by the former Soviet spymaster Vladimir Putin, wanted Donald Trump to win. They sought to sow disinformation about Hillary Rodham Clinton and other anti-Trump candidates.

They accomplished their mission and now, two years into the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States is still roiling over his election. There has been serious discord among millions of Americans. Some of us no longer trust the electoral system. We are suspicious of the government, of our allies, even ourselves.

The Russians have done what they set out to do.

They didn’t even have to be ultra-careful when they hacked into our electoral system. They could be reckless and open about it. So what if we detected their interference? The very fact that we did has established that our system is no longer bullet-proof. The Russians, thus, cast it all in doubt.

Mission accomplished!

So the discord will continue to tear at our system for as long as Donald Trump is president. We will continue to question the man’s legitimacy as president. We’ll continue to wonder what the Russians did, how they managed to crack our supposedly fool-proof electoral system.

I no longer am concerned that Trump refuses to acknowledge the Russians’ role in upending our electoral process. It’s a given. I expect it from this guy.

My concern now focuses on what we’re able to do to shore up our cyber defenses. Can we prevent the Russians or other bad actors from penetrating our elections? We have many uber-smart geeks working within the government who are tasked with that challenge. Then again, the Russians have ’em, too.

My saluting the Russians for their success in no way is an endorsement of what they did. They have enabled an unqualified unfit individual to take the reins of our government.

My salute merely is to acknowledge that they did what many of us thought was impossible.

national news

What ‘policy change’ could Trump enact? Let me think

A fellow I do not know, but someone who reads this blog, has posed an interesting question that I have chosen to answer with a blog post.

He asks: (High Plains Blogger), other than stepping down, what policy could Trump enact to change your mind about him?

Fair question, right? You bet it is. It deserves an answer. So, here goes.

The president can surrender his effort to build The Wall. He can stop insisting that Mexico pay for it. He surely must know he cannot order another sovereign government to do his bidding. He should recognize that The Wall won’t solve anything. He should simply ask Congress to spend more money to enhance existing methods to curb illegal immigration.

Trump can stop demonizing refugees, implying that those seeking asylum comprise gang members, terrorists and assorted felons intent on murder, rape, human trafficking, drug dealing . . . you name it.

The president can acknowledge publicly that Russia is our No. 1 geopolitical adversary and that Russian operatives sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Along those lines, he can demand the immediate extradition to the United States of the dozen or so Russians indicted for criminal activity related to that effort.

Trump can apologize for demonizing his foes. He can atone for the hideous insults he has hurled at the media, at members of his own Republican Party. One place to start would be to publicly apologize to the family of the late Sen. John McCain, the Republican who stood at the gates of hell while he was imprisoned during the Vietnam War. Trump’s statement that McCain was a “hero only because he was captured” was hideous in the extreme.

Donald Trump can learn to act like the president of the United States of America. He can behave with decorum and dignity. He can stop his ceaseless Twitter tirades. He can learn how to treat Cabinet officials with respect, and stop informing them of their departure through those petulant tweets.

Sure, a resignation would be my preferred solution to ending the Trump Era in modern presidential politics. Donald Trump need not exercise that option as the only way out. A close second-best option would be to see him denied the GOP nomination in 2020; absent that, for him to be defeated in the 2020 general election.

However, having laid out these notions, I do not expect the president to change his mind, enact any new executive policies that would make me or other critics better of him.

Therefore, the criticism from this forum will continue.

national news

A Christmas wish for our politicians

I am in the spirit of bestowing Christmas wishes. I won’t bore you with what I wish for members of my family . . . besides, it’s personal.

I’ll bore you instead with what I wish for those politicians who work for us, you and me. We are the bosses, folks, not the party leaders, or those who call the shots in Congress or the White House. Every member of Congress — as well as the president — answers to us. We call the shots.

My overarching wish is for our politicians to stop this idiotic game of shutting down the government every few months. They need to approve long-term federal budgets that include money for vital programs upon which we all depend.

This “continuing resolution” nonsense has to end. Now would be a good time to end it.

The federal government is shut down for some undetermined length of time. Some of it is still operating. However, the halls of Capitol Hill are silent. The national parks are quiet.

Sure, members of Congress are surrendering their paychecks while the government is shuttered. Not all of them have signed on to that pledge. The president doesn’t take a paycheck for whatever it is he does in the White House, so he’s already clear of that particular shame.

I realize this Christmas wish of mine is a pipe dream. It won’t happen, more than likely, while all sides seek a way out of the mess they’re in.

However, in the Christmas spirit, I offer this request with the hope that somehow, somewhere, in some fashion our employees — the men and women who do our bidding (supposedly) — can find a way toward a permanent solution to this idiocy.

So, I’m on the record. You work for me, folks. Get the job done!

local news

Ready for a joyous day

In the interest of observing and honoring the Christmas spirit, I am going to pledge to go soft on the president of the United States of America during the next 24 hours.

I use this blog as a cudgel to beat Donald John Trump over the noggin as often as I deem fit. It’s quite often, indeed.

However, we’re going to honor the birth of a child who came to Earth to absolve the rest of us of our sins. Yes, we’ll also celebrate the more secular side of the holiday, the arrival of Santa Claus.

It’s a day to open gifts from loved ones and to relish the joy of children who have waited all year long for Santa Claus’s arrival.

It’s no day to discuss politics, or public policy or the many aspects of both that trouble us.

Christmas also is a day to reminisce on when we all were much younger. Here is one of my memories:

When I was a boy, Mom and Dad had this ritual we played out every year. We enjoyed a quiet Christmas Eve at home. My sisters and I would go to bed early, try to sleep through the night. We would get up way before sun-up on Christmas Day. We would wake Mom and Dad, who would roll out.

My sisters and I would leave a glass of milk and some cookies on a plate for Santa to consume when he arrived with our gifts. We would notice the partially drunk glass of milk and a half-eaten cookie on the plate. There was the note from Santa, thanking us — by name — for the treat we had left. It didn’t dawn on us in the moment that Santa’s handwriting looked just like Mom’s . . . go figure!

We’re all grown up now. We’re all serious individuals (most of the time). However, we still all enjoy Christmas and revel in the joy it brings. So does my wife. Our sons are grown, too. Oh, but we have a granddaughter now who cannot wait for Santa Claus to come.

I’m going to concentrate on those joyful moments and rejoice in the event that Christmas symbolizes.

I’ll get back to the other stuff in due course.

I just want the president of the United States to avoid doing something profoundly stupid on this holy day. Absent that stupidity, I’ll look for positive subjects on which to comment.

Merry Christmas!