Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news

Former first lady takes ‘birther’ lie quite personally

To be honest, I never gave a thought to the view expressed by former first lady Michelle Obama regarding the hideous lie fomented by her husband’s successor as president of the United States.

Donald J. Trump for years kept repeating the lie that Barack Obama was born outside the United States and, thus, was not qualified to seek the presidency let alone serve as president. I viewed the lie from the outside, considering it to be a racist rant intended to demonize the first African-American ever elected to the presidency.

Trump eventually tossed out a throwaway line at the end of another set of remarks that the president “was born in the United States.” Then he returned later to the casting of doubt over the truth of Obama’s place of birth.

Now the former first lady has written in her memoir “Becoming” that she cannot “forgive” Trump because, in her view, he put her family in potential danger from “wingnuts and kooks” who might pick up a loaded gun and head to Washington to harm the Obamas’ two daughters.

Michelle Obama’s criticism of Donald Trump will resonate with millions of Americans. It, of course, will sound hollow to millions of others, those who subscribe to Trump’s idiotic lie.

As for Donald Trump himself, I have no doubt at all — none whatsoever — that Michelle Obama’s criticism has zoomed straight through is vacuous skull.

He doesn’t give a damn!

national news

Obama asks: Why are the winners still angry?

Yamiche Alcindor, a correspondent for PBS, posted this Twitter message earlier today.

Pres Obama as protesters heckle him in Miami: “Why is it that the folks who won the election are so mad all the time? … Like when I won the presidency, at least my side felt pretty good. It tells you something interesting, that even the folks that are in charge are still mad.”

The former president ventured to South Florida to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillem and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, another Democrat.

He encountered hecklers. He engaged them directly.  The former president does pose an interesting question. The folks who oppose him and the candidates he supports are those who won the 2016 election.

They and their political party control the White House and both legislative chambers of Congress. They’re in charge! It’s their show!

Yet they’re still angry? What gives?

national news

Trump scraps domestic terror effort

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Does it surprise you to learn that Donald J. Trump plans to toss out an Obama-era program to finance an effort to root out the causes of domestic terrorism?

Yeah, me neither.

That’s the plan, though, as the president reportedly is going to discontinue a grant program created by the Barack Obama administration that was supposed to be funded yearly. But no! The Trump administration said it’s a one-time-only grant. So the Department of Homeland Security won’t keep it going.

The timing of this announcement is stunning as well.

It comes a week after Cesar Sayoc was arrested on charges that he sent pipe bombs to opponents of Donald Trump, as well as to a major media outlet. They’re all Democrats, either politicians or Democratic political figures. Did I mention that two of the intended targets were former presidents of the United States and one of them is a former vice president? There. I just did.

So the president doesn’t want to keep this effort going.

Why is that? Oh, it’s no doubt going to be argued by some — and I can buy their argument — that Trump wants to get rid of it because it originated during Barack Obama’s time as president.

The Countering Violent Extremism Grant spends $10 million annually on efforts to examine the causes of domestic violence and terrorism. Yes, it’s a scourge in this country. Hate groups have gotten more brazen in recent years. The slaughter of 11 congregants at the Pittsburgh synagogue symbolizes what I’m talking about; a suspect has been arrested and charged with 29 hate-crime-related felonies.

But the president wants to discontinue a valuable grant aimed at rooting out domestic terrorism?

Sickening.

national news

Calling the Obamas and Clintons? ‘We’ll pass’

I want to hand Donald J. Trump a most left-handed compliment.

The president at least had the stones to acknowledge that he won’t do the decent thing as it regards two of his presidential predecessors.

Cesar Sayoc was arrested in Florida by the FBI in connection with a series of pipe bombs sent to various Democratic political figures and to CNN. Two of the intended victims of the domestic terrorists were former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

A reporter asked Trump this week if he intended to call his predecessors presumably to assure them that they are safe and that the administration will do all it can to ensure their safety and that of all Americans.

Trump said, “We’ll pass.”

There you have it. The decent thing to do would be to … oh, you know what that is.

Disgraceful.

national news

We have presidents … and we have Trump

I have been listening to comparisons between Donald Trump and his three immediate predecessors, namely their reaction to extreme acts of violence.

The preceding presidents knew how to rally a nation, to speak to our better angels, to show strength and resolve in the face of tragedy.

President Clinton dealt with the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. He urged us to ignore the angry voices that prompted Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Murrah Federal Building, killing 167 people, including many children.

President Bush stood on the rubble at Ground Zero immediately after 9/11. He took a bullhorn, threw his arm around a New York City firefighter and told the nation that the terrorists “who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon.”

President Obama wiped away tears as he spoke of the slaughter of 20 first- and second-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Now we have Donald Trump. Someone or some group is sending pipe bombs to Democratic politicians, a donor, a former AG, a cable news outlet and an legendary film actor/political activist. Does the president demonstrate any sense of fear or compassion for the recipients of these packages?

Oh, no! He blames Democrats for fomenting the anger, along with the “mainstream media,” which he says is guilty of sending out “fake news.”

Then he pokes fun at calls to be more “civil” in leading the public political discourse.

The current president simply doesn’t measure up to the three men who preceded him in performing this fundamental duty of his high office: unifying and healing a nation in distress.

national news

What in the world is happening to us?

The authorities say they have recovered seven “devices,” some of them identified as “live” bombs, from assorted targets in Washington and New York.

I admit to getting a bit ahead of myself in an earlier blog post, as it was reported initially that one of the devices was meant to be delivered to the White House. The Secret Service says no such explosive was recovered.

That said, the White House has issued a strong statement condemning the act of what it called “cowards” who have sent the devices.

That leaves us to look at those who had been targeted: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, former CIA director John Brennan, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, CNN’s Nw York offices, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left-wing mega political donor George Soros.

What do these folks and institutions have in common? They all have (a) criticized the president or (b) been targets of the president’s criticism.

Hmm. Coincidence? I fear not.

The country wants a quick resolution in the form of an arrest of the suspect or suspects responsible for this frightening act of terror.

This must be said as well: If the targets’ political similarity have anything to do with the sending of these explosive devices, then we have entered a whole new age of recrimination and hatred.

It has to stop. As Gov. Cuomo stated earlier today, any attempt to restore civility in our public discourse “must come from the top.”

national news

Is this the result of the toxic political climate?

Dear reader, we have a profoundly frightening development unfolding at this very moment.

Secret Service officials have intercepted explosive devices that were sent to the homes of former President and Mrs. Bill Clinton, former President and Mrs. Barack Obama, liberal political megadonor George Soros, CNN headquarters in New York and — this likely confuses the casual observer — the White House.

None of the individuals targeted by the bomber was in danger.

It would be easy to label whoever did this as someone — or several people — associated with a right-wing group, given that Donald Trump has targeted CNN as a purveyor of “fake news” and, of course, has pilloried the Clintons, former President Obama and Soros.

But the White House also was by someone intent on doing damage to the president’s home and those who live and work inside it.

Good grief! Is this what we’ve come to?

Thank goodness the authorities were able to intercept the packages, which reportedly have been ID’d as containing explosives.

Let us all hope and pray the FBI, the Secret Service and local police authorities are able to arrest whoever is responsible.

I am now frightened.

economic news

Doesn’t the deficit matter any longer?

News that the federal budget deficit grew by 17 percent in the past fiscal year makes me wonder.

How is it that “real Republicans” continue to lend their support to a man who calls himself a Republican but on whose watch the deficit is allowed to grow at this breakneck pace?

Donald Trump made a lot of campaign promises while winning the presidency. He said the deficit would plummet. It hasn’t.

It grew to about $771 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

Now I get that there are factors contributing to that deficit. The Trump tax cuts, for one. Another has been a boost in defense spending.

But juxtaposed to this deficit lies a curious set of potential issues that could send it into deep space. The wall Trump wants to build along our southern border is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Then there is that infrastructure improvement package that the president said should cost more than $1 trillion. He wants to improve, repair, renovate, rebuild our nation’s highways, bridges and airports.

Where in the name of fiscal responsibility is he going to get that money? Oh, I know! He’ll borrow it, just like President Barack Obama did in 2009 when he inherited a national economy in collapse — and which Trump and other Republicans criticized to the hilt at the time, even as the economy began to revive itself.

Obama and his spendthrift policies did help reduce the rate of growth in the annual deficit dramatically during his two terms in office. In President Bush’s final year, the deficit exceeded $1 trillion; the Obama administration and Congress managed to cut that annual amount by roughly two-thirds.

Now it’s climbing — inexorably, according to many economists — back toward that trillion-dollar figure.

Deficit hawks — and I consider myself a deficit hawk — are alarmed. If not, they should be alarmed.

Yet the question remains about those real Republicans. The president you embrace doesn’t adhere to anything approaching regular Republican fiscal orthodoxy. Why do you keep clinging to this individual’s coattail?

national news, political news

Let’s call him ‘Slippery Mitch’

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In the spirit of Donald J. Trump’s knack for attaching pejorative nicknames on certain politicians, I want to hang a label on the U.S. Senate majority leader.

Let’s call him “Slippery Mitch” McConnell.

Oh, my. The fellow is hard to pin down, no matter how direct the questioning becomes. Consider what happened this morning on “Fox News Sunday.”

The program moderator Chris Wallace sought to ask McConnell whether the Senate would consider a U.S. Supreme Court nomination in 2020 if one were to become available. Why did Wallace pose the question? Because McConnell blocked then-President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

McConnell said the president shouldn’t be allowed to pick a justice in an election year. He prevented Garland from getting a hearing before the Senate.

But, Wallace wondered … what about 2020, when we’ll have another presidential election?

McConnell wouldn’t answer Wallace’s direct question, which was whether he would proceed with a confirmation process if Donald Trump nominated someone in 2020. McConnell then tossed out the notion that he blocked Obama’s nomination of Garland on the fact that the Senate was led by a party that differed from the president.

Wallace picked up on McConnell’s change of motivation and wanted to know if that rule still applied, given that both the Senate and the presidency could be controlled by Republicans.

McConnell still refused to answer the question, casting it as a hypothetical.

Wallace grills McConnell

And … so it goes on and on.

None of this is a surprise. Politicians by their nature are prone to slip and slide away from direct questions … which I reckon explains why the media and others are so quick to praise those rare politicians who are willing to speak directly and candidly.

“Slippery Mitch” McConnell has shown just how elusive an experienced pol can become.

2016 election, national news

Hypocrisy rules the day in Kavanaugh fight

Hypocrisy is king in Washington, D.C.

Not the truth. Not nobility. Not high ideals or soaring rhetoric.

It’s hypocrisy that rules. It has cemented its vise-grip on U.S. politics and government. The Brett Kavanaugh battle is over and the judge is now Justice Kavanaugh, the ninth member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Who is the Hypocrite in Chief? I’ll hand that dubious honor to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

You’ve read on this blog already my distaste for the hypocrisy exhibited by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal — who once lied about serving in the Vietnam War — and his lecturing of Kavanaugh about whether lying about one thing means he lies about all things.

The Hypocrite in Chief (dis)honor goes to McConnell because of the ramrod job he pulled in shoving Kavanaugh’s nomination through. And then he blames Senate Democrats for “obstructing” the process and for “playing politics” with this nomination.

McConnell wrote the book on obstruction in early 2016 upon the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The justice died in Texas and McConnell immediately declared that President Barack Obama would not fill the vacancy created by Scalia’s death. Obama went ahead with his nominating process, selecting U.S. District Judge Merrick Garland to succeed Scalia.

Garland didn’t get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He didn’t get the courtesy of meeting with Republican senators privately. McConnell said that the president was not entitled to replace Scalia during an election year. He gambled that a Republican would win the 2016 election and then would be able to nominate someone of his choosing.

McConnell’s cynical gamble paid off. Donald Trump won. He nominated Neil Gorsuch to the high court. The Senate confirmed him.

And all the while McConnell tossed out “obstruction” epithets at Senate Democrats who were rightfully steamed that a Democratic president had been denied the right to fulfill his own constitutional duties in seeking to fill a Supreme Court seat.

Then came the Kavanaugh nomination. McConnell greased it to allow Kavanaugh to be confirmed after a perfunctory secondary FBI investigation that — big surprise! — turned up no corroboration to the allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a young woman in the early 1980s.

The obstructionist named McConnell then had the temerity to hammer at Senate Democrats for their own resistance to Kavanaugh’s nomination.

So … take a bow, Hypocrite in Chief Mitch McConnell.