Tag Archives: Barack Obama

State news

Beto doesn’t need Barack’s blessing?

Barack Obama is handing out political endorsements the way GIs handed out chocolate bars during World War II.

The former president has endorsed 11 Texas candidates — all Democrats, of course. Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat in the middle of a dogfight campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz hasn’t received an endorsement from the 44th president.

Not surprisingly, O’Rourke says he isn’t worried about it. He told the Texas Tribune he doesn’t need an endorsement from President Obama. According to the Tribune: “I don’t think we’re interested (in an endorsement)” O’Rourke said after a town hall … “I am so grateful to him for his service, he’s going to go down as one of the greatest presidents. And yet, this (election) is on Texas.”

Obama issues endorsements

There might be a couple of ways one can take that statement. One is that President Obama isn’t terribly popular in Texas; he lost the state to GOP rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. Another is that the Texas election deals uniquely with Texas issues and that an endorsement from a national politician carries little weight.

Whatever he means, my sense is that he won’t disavow an Obama endorsement were it to come between now and Election Day.

How could a candidate refuse such a blessing from someone who — and I agree with O’Rourke on this one — is going to be remembered as one of the nation’s “greatest presidents”?

national news

McConnell needs some self-awareness counseling

Ay, caramba!

What in the world is with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, griping about Senate Democrats who want to delay by one week the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court?

He bitched from the Senate floor about the “obstruction” of Democrats seeking an FBI probe to examine the veracity of sexual assault charges brought by Christine Blasey Ford and two other women against Kavanaugh.

Doesn’t this man remember anything? Doesn’t he remember how he led a year-long obstruction of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court? Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016; his body wasn’t barely cold when McConnell said Obama would be denied the opportunity to replace him with a nominee.

The president nominated Merrick Garland. McConnell then said Garland wouldn’t even get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. McConnell denied Obama the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility, which is to fill vacancies on the federal bench.

He said the president should carry out that task during an election year.

Baloney, man!

So now the majority leader is yapping because Democrats insist on an FBI probe into whether the newest high court nominee is fit to serve? Give me a break.

How about some self-awareness, Mr. Majority Leader?

national news

SCOTUS picks, then and now

Let’s review briefly the course that two U.S. Supreme Court nominations took.

In early 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died. President Barack Obama not long afterward nominated Judge Merrick Garland to succeed the conservative judicial icon. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t wait for the nomination to come forward. He declared within hours of Scalia’s death that Obama would not replace Justice Scalia under any circumstance.

The SCOTUS seat remained vacant for the rest of that year. Donald Trump got elected president and then nominated Neil Gorsuch. The Senate heard from the nominee, then confirmed him.

It was the delay that enraged so many Americans.

The Republican Senate majority had no problem dragging its feet to await the outcome of the 2016 election.

What a change has occurred.

Justice Anthony Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court. The president then nominated Brett Kavanaugh to succeed him. Judge Kavanaugh went through the confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Then a woman came forward to allege that the nominee assaulted her sexually when they were in high school. Then we hear from two more women who said essentially the same thing.

The GOP majority was having none of it. The committee heard from one of the women and from Kavanaugh.

Now the Judiciary panel is going to vote today whether to confirm Kavanaugh’s nomination. The majority says it cannot wait. It has to rush this nomination forward. The questions about what happened in the early 1980s? Hey, minds are made up.

Let’s rush forward.

So … one president’s nomination gets stonewalled for a year. Another one’s selection hops on the fast track.

To think that Majority Leader McConnell has the gall to accuse the other side of “playing politics.”

medical news

Do you recall the GOP lawsuit to toss out Obamacare?

Once upon a time — it now seems so long ago — then-U.S. House Speaker John Boehner filed a lawsuit that sought to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Barack Obama was president of the United States. Boehner and his congressional Republican colleagues had tried but failed to toss out the ACA. So, Boehner thought he’d try another course, through the court system.

Then a funny thing happened. Boehner quit the speakership and left Congress. He got really frustrated with the TEA Party wing of his Republican caucus in the House. So he walked away.

Oh yeah, then we had this election in 2016 and a Republican, Donald J. Trump, got elected president. He’s tried to toss out the ACA, too. He cannot get the job done.

I keep wondering: Whatever became of that lawsuit? Boehner seems to have walked completely away from the public policy discussion that fueled so much of his awake time when he was speaker of the House.

As for the court system, I keep wondering if it has taken a powder on this notion of adjudicating a civil lawsuit that seeks to rid the law books of the Affordable Care Act.

Is the law perfect? No. Is it the “disaster” that Donald Trump says it is? No. It has put millions of Americans on health insurance who otherwise didn’t qualify or who couldn’t afford it.

As for the Boehner lawsuit he filed with considerable fanfare before he decided he’d had it up to here with the TEA Party, its dormant status suggests to me that when it came to throwing his weight around, the House speaker was all hat and no cattle.

economic news

How about sharing credit, POTUSes 44 and 45?

Barack H. Obama and Donald J. Trump are arguing over who deserves the credit for the nation’s booming economy.

Trump keeps hogging all the credit. Obama is reminding us that Trump inherited an economy on the upswing.

Trump says the tax cut has spurred job growth. On his watch, the unemployment rate is at historic lows, job growth is booming, as is the stock market.

Oh, but Obama says the nation’s economic stimulus package approved not long after he took office has spurred much of the growth. The nation has been on an upward climb since 2011.

I know this won’t happen. Ever! How about the men sharing the credit?

Why won’t it happen? Obama and Trump are politicians of different political parties. They obviously detest each other. Trump fomented the Big Lie for years about Obama’s place of birth. Obama has recently taken the gloves off with Trump, calling him out by name in his attempt to help Democrats get elected to Congress in the 2018 midterm election.

I am inclined to side with President Obama. I know: no surprise there. It’s just that Donald Trump has continued to speak untruthfully about the nature of the economic recovery and about the base line he inherited. He calls the economy a “disaster,” which it clearly wasn’t when he took office.

My hope is a futile one. Still, it’s good to remember that when our Special Forces took out Osama bin Laden in May 2011, the then-president — Barack Obama — made sure to spread the credit to where it was due. He praised the anti-terror work done for many years across two administrations, Republican and Democrat.

Is there that kind of sharing to be expressed these days with a relatively robust economy? Hah! Hardly.

International news

ISIS is still out there … somewhere

The Islamic State has faded in recent weeks from the front end of Americans’ consciousness, or so it seems.

There was a time when terror attacks throughout the Middle East were occurring and ISIS was claiming responsibility for its latest heinous act. It seems that the terrorists have gone a bit quieter of late. I know it’s foolish to presume they aren’t plotting and conniving ways to inflict damage to innocent people.

Do you remember during Barack Obama’s second presidential term how it became somewhat fashionable to refer to ISIS by a name deemed to be detrimental? Secretary of State John Kerry often would refer to the terrorists as Daesch, which reportedly is deemed in the world of Islamic terrorists as a derogatory reference.

Kerry would use the term to get under Daesch’s skin, rankle them, get ’em to make a foolish mistake.

Then we might hear about a drone strike, or some military action that wiped out an ISIS leader, or a Daesch leader, if you prefer.

I wrote about the terrorist group while I was blogging for Panhandle PBS.

ISIS kicks up recruitment activities

Donald Trump campaigned for the presidency by proclaiming that “I know more about ISIS than the generals. Believe me.” Well, he really doesn’t.

However, for the time being, ISIS — or Daesch — continues to feel the heat of the world’s greatest military machine. As we mark the 17th year since the 9/11 assault on this country, let’s keep these monsters at the top of our minds, even if they aren’t making news.

national news, State news

How will Cruz explain his change of heart toward POTUS?

Whenever the two major candidates for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Ted Cruz meet in a joint appearance, I am hoping whoever questions them will ask Cruz a critical question about his relationship with Donald John Trump Sr.

If it were me, I would ask him: Senator, you once called Donald Trump a pathological liar; you called him amoral; you called him gutless coward. How is it that you now welcome him to Texas to campaign for you? How do you justify this remarkable change in attitude toward a man you seemed to loathe when you both were campaigning for the GOP nomination in 2016?

If given a chance for a follow up, I might ask him to explain the president’s loathsome comments about Cruz: You took them personally, senator. Do you no longer feel the intense anger you expressed in the moment?

I also am thinking that Cruz’s opponent, Democrat Beto O’Rourke, is likely to ask the incumbent a lot of questions along those lines himself.

OK, I know what many of you are thinking. This isn’t new. Political foes for many years have buried the hatchet. Team of rivals, anyone?

To wit:

  • Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigned against each other in 2008; they said some incredibly mean things about each other. Obama got nominated, then elected and selected Clinton to be secretary of state.
  • Obama also ran hard and aggressively against Sen. Joe Biden in 2008 and then named Biden as his vice presidential running mate.
  • Sens. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson didn’t care for each other when they ran for the Democratic nomination in 1960. Then they teamed up and won the election.

That was then. The here and now presents another set of questions.

Trump disparaged Cruz’s father, suggesting he might have been complicit in JFK’s murder; he ridiculed the senator’s wife, Heidi. He called Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.”

Sen. Cruz’s response to all of that was intense and seemingly visceral anger — and justifiably so.

But … the men have let bygones be bygones. Yes?

I am left to wonder what it takes for a politician to tell us what they really think. I also have to wonder if Cruz’s outrage was feigned or was it for real.

As for the president, well, I don’t believe a single thing that flies out of his mouth.

national news

Obama’s re-entry carries some risk … but so what?

Barack H. Obama’s re-entry into the political fight does present some risk for the 44th president of the United States.

Some of Donald J. Trump’s supporters already are taking Obama to task for the tone and tenor of his criticism, suggesting that he is flouting a long-standing tradition in which former presidents remain silent after they leave office.

I get the risk. Indeed, I long have admired former presidents who have decided to stay out of the fight. Presidents Bush 41 and 43 are two examples of that doctrine.

However, I am not going to condemn President Obama fully. His successor has goaded him. He has done so through a relentless attack on many of the policies espoused by Obama. He wastes few opportunities to criticize the former president, calling his presidency a “disaster,” or suggesting he lacked the guts to make some of the tough decisions that Trump is making.

Trump is now getting a bit of what he has dished out almost from the moment he took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2017.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for the president? Are we supposed to believe Obama and other critics are picking on him unfairly?

It’s the biggest of the big leagues, Mr. President. This reaction from Barack Obama is precisely what his successor should have expected as he has continued to pop off.

We can parse the former president’s language all day and into the night. I happen to believe he is right to criticize Trump for failing to condemn Nazi sympathizers; for espousing tribalism and the politics of fear; for criticizing Americans over “how they pray”; for failing to stand up to international bullies.

None of it is American. The 44th president is right to speak out on behalf of those of us who continue to be aghast at the policies expressed by the 45th president.

political news

This election really might be one for the ages

It seems that every two years politicians declare the upcoming election — whether for president or for Congress — to be the “most important election in our lifetime.”

Barack Obama joined that chorus today. Others have said that the 2018 midterm election is the most consequential election in memory.

The more I think about it, they might be right. This midterm election might be the most important such event we’ve seen in some time.

Think of the stakes. A president seems to careening out of control. Congress stands as a possible deterrent to the president’s most dangerous impulses. The House of Representatives well might shift from Republican to Democratic control.

What happens if the House flips from GOP to Democratic? Hearings. Lots of hearings. That “Russia thing” will take an even more prominent place on center stage.

So … yes. This election seems like a real big deal.

Maybe the biggest ever?

2016 election, national news

More voters means better government … always!

Barack H. Obama gave a speech today that touched on a subject I have tried to make over many years while I worked as a print journalist in Amarillo and Beaumont, Texas and back in my home state of Oregon.

I won’t presume to believe the 44th president of the United States got the idea directly from me. Nevertheless, I’ll take a bit of ownership of the idea he put forward.

He implored young people in his audience to “vote,” to take part in the political process if only just be ensuring that they cast their ballots. “Don’t think your vote doesn’t matter,” Obama said, noting that he he was able to win two presidential elections by narrowly carrying many voting precincts or congressional districts across the land.

I’m going to steer away from the partisan nature of what the former president said, concentrating instead on the bigger picture.

For decades I sought to boost voter turnout by imploring voters to follow this simple creed: Don’t let your neighbor — who might or not agree with your political leanings — decide who should represent you in government. I ran out of ways to say the same thing. Yes, I repeated myself. I’m likely doing so here … right now!

Texas remains one of the nation’s most miserable examples of representative democracy. Our voter turnout at every level — from the presidential level on down — habitually ranks at or near the bottom of all 50 states. Think of that: Texans protect the right to vote on many issues and for many candidates; yet when given the chance to vote, too many of us stay home.

The former president spoke a tremendous truth today to those students in Illinois. They need to take part. They need to become the solution to what they believe is wrong with our political system today. The simplest way to do so, in the former president’s words, is to exercise their right to vote. Cast a ballot, man!

So, thank you, Mr. President, for elevating my message to the national stage.