Tag Archives: White House

national news

Changed forever? Oh, please, no!

One year into the presidency of Donald John Trump Sr. and the question is being asked: Has he changed the presidency forever?

He’s changed it. He has transformed the presidency into a sort of cult of personality. He demands loyalty from those he appoints to high office; he demanded it from an FBI director and then fired him when he didn’t get it.

By my reckoning, Trump has been a truly “consequential” president — for better or worse.

Has he delivered a permanent change to the high office? I doubt it. Strongly, I doubt it.

It’s often said that the office is bigger than the person who occupies it. That’s so very true even if that person possesses the ego and narcissistic qualities of one Donald Trump.

We cannot know, of course, what Year No. 2 will bring to this man’s time in office. Year No. 1 took us on one rocky ride after another. I suppose one could surmise that the constant chaos and confusion has brought considerable change to the nation’s highest office.

That’s how this guy rolls. He loves the chaos. He loves being the center of attention, no matter its cause or consequence.

But so help me this need not be a permanent fixture of the exalted office occupied at this time by someone who had never run for any public office of any kind prior to the 2016 presidential election.

Yes, he’s brought significant change to the presidency.

I guess all we need do at this moment is consider that on the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, he is presiding over a government shutdown.

By golly, that’s what I call “change.”

I also would bet real money none of us alive today is going to see this kind of first-year presidential commemoration ever again.

I now will hope that the next president will return the office to what we’ve long thought of as “normal.”

national news

Trump victimized by his own big mouth

Donald John “Deal Maker in Chief” Trump Sr. reportedly has acknowledged the obvious.

The president is blaming congressional Democrats for the federal government shutdown that occurred at midnight, but has told White House aides that he is going to take the heat for it.

Imagine my absolute non-surprise!

Trump said in 2013 that the president should take the fall for a government shutdown. One occurred that year. A Democrat, Barack Obama, was in office at the time. Trump said the buck stopped at the president’s desk. The president is the nation’s head of state and government. Thus, he deserves all the blame.

That was then.

While campaigning for president in 2016, Trump then declared time and again from the campaign stump that he is the “greatest deal maker” in history. He made a “yuuuge” fortune cutting “the best deals.” No longer would there be “bad deals” struck inside the Oval Office “if I’m elected president,” Trump told us.

Well, Mr. President, what in the name of deal making has happened? Why didn’t you negotiate “the best deal ever” to avert a government shutdown?

Yes, the president likely will take most of the heat for this shutdown. Trump doesn’t deserve all of it, but he has managed — through his big mouth and thoughtless commentary — to deliver it directly to himself.

Our memories are long, Mr. President.

Now that Donald Trump is in charge, it’s time for him to step up — and lead!

national news, political news

Politics can be so very poetic

I know I am not the only American who believes this, but the possible partial government shutdown seems to sum up quite nicely the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency.

Politics can be, oh, so poetic at times.

Such as right now.

It is quite possible that we’re going to wake up Saturday with the government shuttering some of its doors and windows. And think of it: This event might occur on the exact date one year after Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office.

No Drama Obama handed the White House keys over to All Chaos All the Time Trump.

Ain’t it cool? Well, no. It’s not.

The government shutdown, if it comes, will signify to me that Donald Trump’s time as president has come to a form of full circle.

He stood on the Capitol podium one year ago and delivered that dark, forbidding inaugural speech. Then right out of the chute, brand new press secretary Sean Spicer scolded the White House press corps with a scathing rebuke of its reporting of the size of the president’s inaugural crowd.

That, dear reader, set the tone for how this administration was going to conduct business.

So, here we are. One year later, we’re about the close many government offices, denying services to Americans who are entitled to partake of services they pay for with their tax money.

Trump, meanwhile, is chiding Democrats because they insist on a funding bill that takes care of so-called “Dreamers,” those U.S. residents brought here illegally when they were children. Democrats are chiding Republicans over their insistence that a funding bill include money to build a “big, beautiful wall” along our southern border.

The president’s “leadership” on this government funding madness has been missing in action.

I’ll just remind you all that of all the principals involved in this fight, only one of them represents the entire country: the president of the United States.

To borrow a phrase, Donald Trump “is leading from behind.”

Ah, yes. The political poetry of this chaos is so very telling.

As is its irony.

national news

Year No. 1 is coming to an end … now for the next chapter

I am not going to spend a lot of time looking back on the first year of Donald J. Trump’s time in the White House.

High Plains Blogger has devoted a seemingly infinite amount of space to this subject all year long — and then some!

Readers of this blog know how I feel about the president. I have no need to recap it here.

I will offer this bit of advice, though, if anyone is interested in looking back. Just click on the “Search” tab on the blog’s home page and type in “Trump.” You’ll see it all.

Take a look here

There has been a bit of positive commentary on this blog about the president. I pledged to offer it when such matters presented themselves. I think I’ve been faithful to that pledge. The problem has been that Trump hasn’t done enough to merit more positive comments from this corner.

***

Looking ahead briefly to Year No. 2, to be candid I don’t expect much to change with regard to this blog’s posture relating to the president.

We still have that “Russia thing” to resolve. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, remains hard at work trying to determine whether the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russian hackers who sought to influence the 2016 election outcome.

Along the way, I expect the president will keep denigrating Mueller’s integrity, even though he was universally praised when the Justice Department appointed him. And … I’ll have plenty to say about that.

I’ll also comment on the lies he’ll continue to tell and the insults he’ll keep hurling at his political foes as well as the media.

I guess my hope for the second year of Trump’s term as president is that he is able to hone the White House into the “fine-tuned machine” he called it. He isn’t there yet.

My other hope would be for the president to keep tweeting.

He gives me — and other commentators — plenty of grist when he unleashes his Twitter thumbs.

national news

Presidents should be better than this

I consider myself a modern fellow. I believe I am adequately liberated from the hang-ups that bedeviled my parents and grandparents.

However, I remain kind of stodgy in one respect. I expect the leader of my country to be the best we have to offer. I expect the president of the United States to be relatively free of the bad habits that afflict many of the rest of us.

Take for example the latest offering from Donald John Trump. He sat in the White House conducting a serious meeting on immigration reform. He was talking to several key lawmakers: six Republicans and a Democrat. The discussion turned to special protections offered to immigrants from Third World countries.

Then the president blurted out his now-infamous “sh**thole” comment about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa.

His supporters say he’s speaking for millions of Americans. They say he is using language many of the rest of us use.

I get that. I have been known to pepper my language with terms similar to what the president used. However, there’s a big difference.

Donald Trump is the president; I am not. He is the one who talks about high-minded public policy with other government officials; I talk to my friends and family members. He represents the greatest nation on Earth; I represent only myself.

I want the president to be better than what he continues to demonstrate.

I want him to speak with some semblance of dignity and decorum. He keeps disappointing many of his fellow Americans. We deserve better than what we’re getting from our head of state.

International news, media news, national news

Do we quote the president … completely?

An interesting back story is developing in the wake of Donald John “Potty Mouth” Trump’s latest crude utterance.

Some media outlets are debating whether to publish or broadcast a profane expletive in an unedited form.

You know of which I am talking. The president expressed an angry epithet this week while discussing immigration with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the White House; he asked why the United States accepts immigrants from countries that are, um, less desirable than others.

He doesn’t understand why we accept immigrants from Haiti and from Africa. He wants to see more immigration from countries such as Norway.

He used a word I don’t like publishing on this blog. I choose to disguise it lightly with asterisks; readers know what it says. How do they know it? Because some  media outlets say it out loud.

CNN made a point of using the term explicitly in its coverage of the controversy last night. Anderson Cooper and then Chris Cuomo made no apologies for it. They both said the public needed to hear the word that flew out of the president’s mouth. Cuomo commented on how his children listened to Dad say it while he was offering commentary and was questioning guests on his news-talk show.

CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett, though, made a point that his network won’t repeat the word as Trump blurted it out.

I am going to continue to disguise the epithet. I once made a vow about a year ago that this blog wouldn’t sink into the rhetorical rathole.

I prefer to let gutter mouths — such as the president of the United States — speak for themselves.

International news

Trump said what about these countries?

Donald John “Potty Mouth” Trump Sr. is giving us all a bad name, dear reader.

It’s being reported that during a heated meeting in the White House, the president of the United States referred to immigrants from certain parts of the world as coming from “s***hole countries.”

Oh, he was referring to places such as Haiti and nations in Africa.

Then he reportedly said the United States needs more immigrants from, um, Norway.

OK. What are we saying here? Is the president saying “no” to immigrants from Third World countries populated by dark-skinned citizens? And is he suggesting further that by encouraging immigration from Norway and, I’ll presume for a moment, other Scandinavian countries, that he favors blonde, blue-eyed foreigners coming here?

As one can expect, the president’s remarks have drawn criticism from those who say he is race-baiting. They suggest the president is revealing — one more time — a crassness that betrays bias against people of a certain racial or ethnic makeup.

This isn’t Trump’s first derogatory statement about some of Earth’s inhabitants. He said once that everyone in Haiti suffers from AIDS and that Nigerians don’t want to return “to their huts.”

The White House hasn’t denied the president made those hideous remarks this week. Instead, the White House issued this statement, which reads in part, according to The Hill: “Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people,” White House spokesperson Raj Shah said in a statement. 

Someone will have to explain to me what that means.

The immigration meeting offers another example of Donald Trump’s blatant ignorance of the principles that have made this country a beacon of hope to people around the world. Those principles have produced an open-arms policy that tells immigrants they are welcome here regardless of their socio-economic condition or — and this is critical — of their racial or ethnic background.

Spare me the refrain that Trump is merely “telling it like it is.”

He has disgraced himself. I fear he also has disgraced the high office to which he was elected.

national news

POTUS shows that ‘Fire and Fury’ is accurate

Michael Wolff wrote a book, “Fire and Fury,” that alleges that the president of the United States is clueless about government and the issues of the day — among other things.

Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. responds that the book is crap; it’s fiction; it’s fake.

Then he convened an open-mic session in the White House to discuss immigration reform — and manages to demonstrate in real time the accuracy of Wolff’s description of Trump’s handling of affairs of state.

The man is clueless! Really! He doesn’t have a clue!

Trump said he’d sign whatever immigration bill the congressional leadership brought to his desk. Then came House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to remind the president that, actually, he cannot make that promise.

Why? Because the GOP base won’t stand for just any old immigration bill, such as something that doesn’t include construction of a wall along our nation’s southern border.

This is deal-making? This is how the “art of the deal” gets done?

Margaret Carlson, certainly no fan of Trump, wrote this in the Daily Beast:

What the White House actually accomplished Tuesday is the opposite of what it set out to do—set the bar low and show a president carrying out presidential tasks competently. If this had been Trump at the first tee, he’d have shanked it 50 yards into the woods. Into the bargain, the White House staff took more mulligans than (Bill) Clinton ever did. Aside from giving in to his Democratic captors, all the king’s men couldn’t keep him from going off script to long nostalgically for the olden days of Jack Abramoff memorial earmarks.

Read the rest of Carlson’s essay here.

Wolff actually stated in “Fire and Fury” that the White House operates in a state of constant confusion, chaos and contradiction.

I believe we have seen a demonstrable example of what Wolff wrote.

national news

Donald Trump is a White House ‘nobody’?

Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway has just offered a doozy.

The White House senior adviser actually said on national TV that “nobody here talks about Hillary Clinton.”

I won’t take too much time to respond to this latest alternative fact.

Conway got into a televised tiff with CNN’s Chris Cuomo , who challenged her assertion that Hillary Clinton’s name is never mentioned within the walls of the White House.

The president of the United States — for crying out loud! — keeps talking about Hillary. He did so yet again this week at a press conference. He keeps reminding us that he won the 2016 presidential election. Donald J. “Stable Genius” Trump Sr. keeps referring to Hillary as “my opponent.”

So, is Conway telling us that the president is a “nobody”?

Well, of course not!

However, she has offered some phony version of the truth that bears no resemblance to the real thing.

medical news, Uncategorized

No armchair diagnoses, please

You may count me as one who takes a dim view of those who think they can diagnose medical matters from a distance.

There’s a good bit of that going around these days as it relates to the behavior of the president of the United States, one Donald John Trump Sr.

Yes, he’s acting squirrely. And yes, he tweets messages that sound as if they come from a junior high schooler. He goads a dictator with nuclear bombs. He insults media representatives, politicians and a particular book author … not to mention at least one key former White House aide.

Does any of this mean the man is certifiably crazy? Is he nuts? Is he unfit mentally to be commander in chief?

I am not qualified to answer any of that. Neither are the “experts” who keep insisting the president needs to be kicked out of office on the basis of someone’s long-distance assessment of Trump’s mental fitness.

They don’t know of which they speak.

More than 50 years ago the nation had this same discussion about the late Republican U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964 against President Johnson. Goldwater was deemed to be nuttier than a fruitcake because he talked openly about going to war with the Soviet Union, the world’s other great nuclear power at the time.

Someone wrote a book about Sen. Goldwater and put in writing what many were saying out loud. Goldwater sued the author for libel and won. Then came something called the “Goldwater Rule,” which disallows people from issuing medical diagnoses without examining the person about whom they are talking.

I believe we should keep that in mind as we discuss Donald Trump’s conduct of the high office he occupies.

There might be political reasons to remove this guy. They haven’t emerged; perhaps they never will emerge. Medical assessments are best left to those who get close enough to the subject to offer them.

The rest of us are just firing pot shots from the peanut gallery.