Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news

Putin’s ‘worst enemy’? Let’s see about that one

Donald John Trump now vows to be Vladimir Putin’s “worst enemy” if the men’s attempts at friendship fails.

Sure. I’ll buy that. Actually, I won’t.

You see, the president has been handed every opportunity already to become the Russian president’s “worst enemy.” He has taken a pass.

You saw that astonishing press conference in Helsinki. Trump had a chance to confront Putin on the world stage. He didn’t. Instead, he said Putin’s denial of attacking the U.S. political system in 2016 was “very strong” and “powerful.”

Trump has hit back at the critics. He said something on CNBC about those who have said he should have been tougher on Putin. Trump offered some goofy straw man, asking whether his critics wanted him to walk over to Putin, get directly in his face and yell at him.

Of course not, Mr. President.

All many of us want is for you to look Putin in the eye and say, “Mr. President, we will not stand for your interfering in our electoral system. Americans consider that a hostile — and I am one of them — and we will respond accordingly.”

He didn’t do that … apparently. He stood there and then rolled over.

Now he contends that he’ll be Putin’s “worst nightmare”? Give me a break.

Yet again, he takes another shot at former President Obama, who he has called a “patsy” in his relationship with Putin. Oh, brother. The president needs to give that one up, too.

The president so far has demonstrated a profound reluctance to talk straight to this nation’s adversary. Tough talk to American media won’t do the job, Mr. President.

International news

Obama speaks out in semi-muted tone

Barack H. Obama by and large has refrained from criticizing his successor as president of the United States.

Then he stood on a podium today in South Africa to honor the memory of the late Nelson Mandela.

The 44th president said a lot of things that observers know to be critical of Donald J. Trump. He didn’t mention the president by name. He didn’t need to do that.

The audience knew about whom he was referring when he said, for instance, the following: “Too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth,” Obama said. “People just make stuff up. They just make stuff up.”

He referenced the embrace of authoritarian regimes. He spoke about the politics of “fear” and “retrenchment.” He took a nod toward the angry rhetoric that imbues our current political discussion.

About whom do you think he was speaking?

You can read the full transcript of the former president’s speech here.

I remain one American who misses the kind of dignity I had come to expect in my president. Barack Obama embodied that. George W. Bush did as well. Same for Bill Clinton (except for that one terrible episode that tarnished his presidency).

What we’re getting these days is a lesson in crudeness, clumsiness, ignorance, anger and rage.

This is unity? This is how you make America great again?

Barack Obama arguably could have done better at unifying the country. Then again, there were many Americans who wouldn’t rally behind him under any circumstance. I know you get my drift.

His speech today in South Africa, however, lays out a dire warning about the quality of so-called “leadership” we are getting in this troubling time.

“I am not being alarmist, I’m simply stating the facts,” he said. Yes, “the facts” can be frightening, indeed.

International news

Once upon a time, Republicans mistrusted the Russians

There once was a time, not that long ago, when Republican Party politicians bristled at the notion of cozying up to Russia, the direct descendants of what President Reagan once called The Evil Empire.

They would rant and roar at the prospect of Democrats talking nice to the Russians. They would argue that the Russians weren’t to be trusted as far as we could throw them.

The 2012 GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, called Russia the world’s greatest geopolitical adversary of this nation. Democrats laughed at Mitt. I admit to being one of the critics who dismissed Mitt’s view; I regret what I said then.

These days the one-time Party of Reagan has been captured and co-opted by Donald J. Trump. The current president is unlike any human being who’s ever been elected to the high office.

He talks nice to the Russians. Get this: He now disparages and disrespects our allies. He scolds our North Atlantic Treaty Organization friends for failing to pay enough to defend themselves. The president’s NATO diatribe plays directly into the hands of Russia.

I’m trying to imagine what the Republican Party hierarchy would do if, say, Barack H. Obama had done any of the things that his immediate successor has done. They would collapse into spasms of apoplexy. They would call for the president’s head on a platter. They would impeach him in a New York nano-second.

This is a strange new world, dear reader. It’s making me nervous.

The president of the United States is supposed to be a source of wisdom, stability and dignity. Instead, we have someone at the top of our governmental chain of command who has turned everything on its head.

What’s more, the political party with which he is affiliated is buying into it. The Russians are the good guys now? We are scolding our allies and giving comfort to our No. 1 adversary?

Wow!

national news

Self-awareness, Mr. Majority Leader?

I could barely contain myself. I wanted to toss a shoe at the TV set as I listened to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell condemn what he called “far left” resistance to whomever Donald J. Trump would appoint to the Supreme Court.

Why, he just cannot fathom how these groups could make such judgments without even knowing who the president plans to select.

Wow! Does the majority leader — who made his remarks in a Senate floor speech — not remember what he said immediately after Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, creating a vacancy on the high court?

Let me remind him. About an hour after Justice Scalia died, McConnell declared that no one whom President Obama would appoint would get a hearing and a confirmation vote. He declared the president’s pick dead and buried. Obama had nearly a year left in office when McConnell mounted his successful obstruction campaign.

So now he is accusing lefties of pre-judging any appointment that would come from Donald Trump.

Does anyone else see the irony of this idiocy? He is leveling an accusation against a political opponent that he could have leveled against himself when the previous president sought to fulfill his constitutional responsibility.

This is rich.

International news

Which is worse, the Iran deal or the N. Korea non-deal?

Donald J. Trump campaigned for the U.S. presidency vowing to toss aside the Iranian nuclear arms deal brokered by the Obama administration.

He did what he promised to do. We’re now out of the deal, even though our partner nations remain committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

So, what does the president do? He goes to Singapore, meets with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un, declares the North Korean nuclear threat to be over after supposedly extracting a pledge to “denuclearize” the Korean Peninsula.

Except that Kim Jong Un didn’t agree to what Trump said he did. Now we hear that Kim is accelerating his nuclear weapon development.

Oh, and the Iran deal actually resulted in the Iranians getting rid of fissile material it could have used to build a nuclear bomb.

All of this comes from the guy who pledged to make the “best deals” in the history of humankind. He promised to end the “disastrous” deals worked out by President Barack Obama’s team in conjunction with our allies.

However, he didn’t get any kind of deal from Kim Jong Un.

Now he’s headed to Helsinki, Finland, where he’ll meet one-on-one — sans national security aides — with Russian strongman/former KGB boss Vladimir Putin.

What in the world can go wrong with that meeting?

national news

Trump denigrates Bush 41, too!

Donald John Trump thinks he is operating in a free-fire zone.

Political foes are open targets for his insults. That’s a given.

But a former president? Of the current president’s own party?

The 45th president of the United States decided Thursday to denigrate the charitable program initiated by the 41st president of the United States. He told the rally crowd in Great Falls, Mont., that he didn’t understand George H.W. Bush’s “Thousand Points of Light” program, the one that called on Americans to help one another, apart from government.

“What the hell does that mean?” Trump asked.

Mr. President, it means charity. It means selflessness. It means public service in the purist sense of the term.

For this president to denigrate the work of a man — President Bush — who just buried his beloved wife of more than seven decades speaks volumes about his absolute callousness.

And I hasten to point out here that President Barack Obama honored President Bush when he awarded the 41st president the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — for the very work that Trump decided to disparage.

This is how you pay tribute to a great American:

Pay attention — for once in your life! — Mr. President.

 

national news

Wait for Mueller before making SCOTUS pick?

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An interesting idea is being floated by those with some stake in the president’s next selection for the U.S. Supreme Court.

It goes like this: Donald Trump should wait for special counsel Robert Mueller to finish his probe into the “Russia thing” before making his choice known. Think for a moment about this. What if Mueller determines there is some criminality involved in the Trump presidential campaign’s dealing with Russian goons who meddled in our 2016 election? What happens if that case ends up eventually before the nation’s highest court?

Does the president deserve to select someone who might have a material interest in determining the legal fate of a case involving the president, his campaign and, indeed, the presidency itself?

There’s plenty of chatter already that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should allow the midterm election to determine the Senate composition before sending this nomination up for a Senate vote; the Senate must confirm this appointment. McConnell did manage to block President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in early 2016 shortly after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama had nearly a year left in his presidency, but McConnell said the Senate needed to wait until the presidential election before considering anyone for the court.

Mueller well might be getting near the end of his exhaustive probe. Should we wait for the special counsel to finish his task and deliver his report to America? Sure. Why not?

national news, political news

Wishing a Sen. Romney stays true

Mitt Romney doesn’t likely give a rip what a blogger in Texas thinks about his pending new role as a U.S. senator.

He should. He is going to be elected to the Senate from Utah, one of the nation’s most Republican of states. He wiped out his GOP primary foe Tuesday night and will campaign this fall for a seat in the Senate, where he will vote on laws that affect all Americans, including this blogger from Texas.

I have only a single wish for Sen.-to-be Romney. It is that he stays true to his belief that Donald John Trump is a “phony” and a “fraud.” And that he holds the president accountable for the lies he keeps blurting. And … that he makes sure that he won’t roll over for the president because of some fear of political retribution.

Mitt didn’t get my vote for president in 2012 when he ran against Barack H. Obama. That doesn’t mean I dishonor him. He had an uphill climb against an incumbent president and he lost the popular vote by roughly 5 million ballots and the Electoral College vote 332-206.

However, Romney was spot on in his critique of Trump during the 2016 election. He told the truth about the GOP nominee.

I know he’s a good party man. I also know that as a newly minted resident of Utah, he has to be sure to protect his new constituents’ interests. Nothing he says about the president should endanger any federal program that benefits Utahns.

But I do not want him to play dead in front of a president who — in my mind — is exactly how Mitt Romney has described him … as a “phony” and a “fraud.”

national news

National debt? Hey, it’s still growing!

Donald Trump made a lot of promises when he ran for president of the United States.

Many of them were bold and audacious. One of them involved the national debt. He reaffirmed to the Washington Post in April 2017 that he would wipe it out over eight years, presuming he would be re-elected in 2020.

Let’s see. How’s he doing? Not too well. The national debt has, um, exploded in the first year and a half of his presidency. It has surged past the $21 trillion mark and is proceeding at a breakneck pace well beyond that total.

The Congressional Budget Office is reporting that the national debt, fueled by tax cuts and immense increases in government spending, is on a fast track into deep outer space.

According to CBS News: “At 78 percent of gross domestic product, federal debt held by the public is now at its highest level since shortly after World War II,” the CBO found. “If current laws generally remained unchanged, the Congressional Budget Office projects, growing budget deficits would boost that debt sharply over the next 30 years; it would approach 100 percent of GDP by the end of the next decade and 152 percent by 2048. That amount would be the highest in the nation’s history by far.” 

Republicans were so very quick to excoriate Democratic President Barack H. Obama over the national debt. The GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney sought to make the debt one of the centerpieces of his effort to defeat Obama. Then came Trump, the dealmaker in chief, the business tycoon and, oh yes, the self-proclaimed “King of Debt,” to tell us he would eliminate the national debt by the end of his presidency.

Well, at this rate, Mr. President, you have to get busy.

I mean, real busy.

national news

Rethinking the notion of ‘presidential prerogative’

I long have believed in the concept of presidential prerogative, meaning that presidents have the right to appoint people to high office assuming those people are qualified to do the job to which they have been appointed.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, has disabused me just a little bit from that long held belief.

McConnell ignored presidential prerogative in 2016 when he blocked President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. There was a year left in Obama’s tenure as president; Antonin Scalia had died and Obama selected a true-blue moderate to the highest court in America.

McConnell blocked it. He said the Senate shouldn’t consider a Supreme Court nomination during an election year.

His obstructionism infuriated many Americans. Me included. I believed the president had the right to select whoever he wanted, given that he had been re-elected in 2012. I also have said the very same thing about presidents regardless of party over many years. You can look it up. Honest. I have.

Now, though, we have another president getting ready to select someone to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is retiring at the end of July. I normally would give Donald Trump the green light on this one. Except that McConnell laid down a rule that he forced the Senate to obey in 2016.

Two years later, doesn’t that rule still apply? Hey, what’s good enough then should be good enough now.