Tag Archives: Vietnam War

political news

Trump still in front … but only for now?

Of all the moments worth mentioning from Thursday night’s Republican Party Top 10 debate, one — in my mind — stands out dramatically.

It involves Fox News moderator Chris Wallace and, you guessed it, Donald Trump.

I give Wallace great credit for seeking a specific answer to a specific allegation that Trump has leveled at Mexico’s government, which is that the Mexican government is “sending” illegal immigrants across the border, into the United States, where they are raping and murdering Americans.

Twice last night he sought some specifics from Trump, who early in the morning after the debate remains — I’m betting — the GOP frontrunner.

When he failed to provide specifics to the first question, Wallace gave him another 30 seconds to specify what proof Trump had to back up his allegation.

Trump finally said he’d “been to the border last week” and talked to Border Patrol officers who told him “that’s what is going on down there, whether you like it or not.”

So. There you have it.

Border Patrol agents told him. That means it’s true, yes?

It was an entertaining and edifying exchange between a loudmouth entertainer seeking the presidency of the United States of America and a moderator seeking some detail in one of the more outrageous allegations that has come from a candidate’s mouth.

And yet, this guy somehow is getting away with this stuff?

I’m going to stand by my belief that Trump’s candidacy likely died when he made light of Sen. John McCain’s Vietnam War record. Events such as what we heard when Chris Wallace asked him twice to provide proof of a claim that Mexico’s government is “sending” illegal immigrants into the United States only highlights Trump’s unfitness for public office.

The big question remains: When will the GOP faithful realize it, too?

national news, political news

Cornyn is correct; Cruz is, um, incorrect

John Cornyn knows how the U.S. Senate functions.

He’s been serving there for some time now as a Republican from Texas.

His whipper-snapper colleague, fellow Republican Ted Cruz, doesn’t know how it works quite so well.

Accordingly, Cornyn took Cruz to task for the attack he leveled at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Cruz did so in a speech on the Senate floor in which he called McConnell a liar.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/26/cruz-and-cornyn-engage-senate-floor/

McConnell had allowed a vote on the Export-Import Bank, which Cruz and some other Senate conservatives want to eliminate. McConnell, R-Ky., allegedly had promised that a vote wouldn’t occur. Cruz took him to task for it and then decided to say out loud what he could have said in private, which is that McConnell can’t be trusted to keep his word.

Enter the senior senator from Texas, Cornyn.

“I have listened to the comments of my colleague, the junior senator from Texas, both last week and this week, and I would have to say that he is mistaken,” Cornyn said, adding that McConnell did not deceive any senator with his fancy procedural footwork. According to the Texas Tribune: “If the majority leader had somehow misrepresented to 54 senators what the facts are with regards to the Ex-Im Bank, I would suspect that you would find other voices joining that of the junior senator, but I hear no one else making such a similar accusation.”

“There was no misrepresentation made by the majority leader on the Ex-Im Bank,” Cornyn added.

I continue to believe that Cruz — who’s also running for president — hit the floor of the Senate when he took office aiming to make a name for himself. He’s done so quite nicely and along the way incurred the wrath of his GOP colleagues, not to mention the Democrats with whom he must work.

Remember, during former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing, when Cruz questioned out loud whether Hagel — a former Republican senator from Nebraska and a decorated Vietnam War combatant — was taking money under the table from North Korea? That line of attack drew a sharp rebuke from another noted Vietnam War combatant, Republican Sen. John McCain, who scolded the freshman for impugning Hagel’s patriotism and integrity.

Now the senator who wants to be president has been lectured by his fellow Texan about the rules of the Senate.

You just don’t call another senator — let alone the majority leader — a liar.

media news, national news, political news

Thicken your skin, Donald; it’s going to get worse

Let’s see if I have this right.

Donald Trump enters the Republican Party presidential primary field and immediately rakes Mexican illegal immigrants over the coals and then says Sen. John McCain isn’t a real war hero because, as Trump said, he likes “people who weren’t captured” by the enemy in wartime.

Then the Des Moines Register, Iowa’ leading newspaper, publishes a scathing editorial urging Trump to withdraw from the campaign. He called Trump an embarrassment to the Republican Party.

And then Trump bans the Register from covering a campaign event in Iowa.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-bans-des-moines-register-from-iowa-campaign-event-120615.html

And why? Because the Register was offering an opinion on the state of play in the GOP and Trump’s role in this campaign. That’s part of the paper’s mission, its franchise, its duty to those who read the publication.

Trump, though, just didn’t like the editorial. So, he decided to kick the paper out of his campaign event.

Wow! This is getting really, really fun to watch.

Trump’s got to get some thicker skin. Hey, he says he’s the master of the universe — or words more or less to that effect. Does the Man Who Can Fix Any Problem on Earth really have to react so badly because a newspaper is performing its duty?

I would think one with the clout that Trump proclaims wouldn’t have to worry about what a measly little media outlet would have to say about him.

This campaign is shaping up already as an amazing sideshow of insults, gotchas, payback and political stunt work.

Good grief! Those Iowa caucuses are still months away.

Donald, you need to toughen up. It’s only going to get worse.

media news, national news, political news

Trump is driving the media crazy

Donald Trump is confounding everyone who observes politics for a living … or for a hobby.

The most profound impact might be on the media and how they seek to cover this guy.

The New York Times has published an interesting analysis of the media coverage of this individual’s amazing rise to the top of the political heap.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump%e2%80%99s-wealth-and-poll-numbers-complicate-news-media%e2%80%99s-coverage/ar-AAdtnhP

It notes that his wealth and poll numbers are giving the media fits as they try to make sense of what this person means to the 2016 race for the presidency. Is he for real? Is he a showman who is seeking to elevate his real brand, which is as a reality-TV huckster? Or is this guy really in it for the long haul, seeking to change the course of American history?

Trump recently filed the financial disclosure forms needed to cement his run for the Republican presidential nomination. Some folks — me, included — thought that perhaps he wouldn’t file those forms, and that his campaign would go away after a suitable amount of fanfare and rhetorical fireworks.

So, he’s taken the next step.

Trump is getting a lot of ink and air time. Some pundits on the right think the media hate this guy. I disagree.

I believe the media love him, not because he’s Donald Trump and he’s going to single-handedly “make America great again,” as he proclaims. They love him because he sells newspapers and brings viewers to TV screens.

And yes, there’s a certain entertainment value associated with this Trump’s pronouncements, not to mention the angry response he evokes from his fellow Republican presidential candidates — and from those who’ve run for the office previously; Democratic candidates and “strategists,” of course, are loving every minute of this traveling carnival.

I’m going to keep believing, though, that Trump is a flash in the pan. His comments about Sen. John McCain’s war record, I believe, were too much for many serious Americans and I’ll keep insisting that his statement making light of McCain’s five-year captivity in a North Vietnamese prison cell will become the single event that dooms his candidacy for the White House.

However, until he exits the arena, the media will keep covering him — and will keep struggling with trying to decide just how to do so.

Good luck.

political news

Perry unleashes barrage on The Donald

Perry skips the ed board

Someone might need to take my temperature.

I’m about to say something complimentary about former Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

It is that Gov. Perry unleashed a barrage of criticism at none other than Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The depth, breadth and intensity of Perry’s criticism of Trump was stunning. That’s the only way to describe it.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/22/rick-perry-donald-trump-dc/

He spoke today at a Washington hotel, invoking the memory of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., who in the 1950s launched a witch hunt for communists. Sen. Joseph Welch was then forced to ask McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency?” Perry today asked the same question of Trump.

He called Trump a “sower of discord,” and a “carnival barker.”

There was much more, as noted in the link attached to this post.

Perry seemed to save his harshest tone for Trump’s belittling of Sen. John McCain’s valiant service as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He noted Trump’s multiple deferments during the war and said he couldn’t begin to withstand the torture and utter hell that McCain endured for more than five years as a captive in Hanoi. “Donald Trump was born into privilege. He received deferments to avoid service in Vietnam,” Perry said. “He breathes the free air thousands of heroes died protecting. And he couldn’t have endured for five minutes what John McCain endured for five and a half years.”

Trump also had noted he hadn’t ever sought God’s forgiveness, to which Perry replied: “A man too arrogant, too self-absorbed to seek God’s forgiveness is precisely the type of leader John Adams prayed would never occupy the White House.”

Gov. Perry’s attack on Trump was on point at virtually every level.

The good news, though, is that Trump stands zero chance of being nominated by his party, let alone elected president.

The bad news, however, is that Trump won’t heed a single word of what Gov. Perry said about him. He is without shame.

national news, political news

Sen. Franken’s ‘joke’ gets a fresh look

Fifteen years ago, before he was a United States senator, Al Franken was a comedian.

And a pretty funny one at that.

He also hosted a radio talk show on the progressive Air America network.

In 2000, he wrote an essay in which he said this about Sen. John McCain: “I have tremendous respect for McCain but I don’t buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I’m concerned he sat out the war.”

The statement is getting some added attention these days in light of what Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said of his fellow Republican’s service record.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/al-franken-criticize-jon-mccain-captured-donald-trump-120359.html?cmpid=sf#ixzz3gS3qJiW9

Franken was elected to the Senate in 2008 in a razor-thin margin. He has become a leading progressive Democrat in that body. According to his spokesman, he made the statement about McCain as a joke. He told McCain that very thing when McCain was a guest on Franken’s Air America radio show.

Well, whatever Franken’s motives were in his pre-Senate days, I don’t find a single thing funny about what John McCain endured for five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

Yes, he’s saluted his Senate colleague since then. I’m sure the tributes have been sincere.

But here’s an example of how one’s words never disappear.

national news, political news

Most entertaining campaign in history is on tap

So help me, I didn’t think it was possible for any campaign to be more entertaining than the 2012 campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Thank you, Donald Trump, for smashing my expectations for the 2016 campaign.

The Donald has managed to do what I thought was impossible: He’s managed to make the likes of Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain look and sound almost reasonable, rational and mainstream.

He’s shot off his mouth about Mexican immigrants who come here illegally, stereotyping them as murderers, rapists, drug dealers — along with “some good people.” He’s called Mitt Romney a “loser” because he got beat in a campaign that he should have won; he’s challenged whether Ted Cruz of Texas is a legitimate candidate for the presidency, given that he was born in Canada.

And now he’s said John McCain isn’t really a war hero, even though he was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, while saying in the next breath that he likes “those who weren’t captured.”

Other Republicans have condemned Trump’s buffoonery. So have Democratic candidates.

It’s been an amazing campaign to date and we’re still months away from those Iowa caucuses and the lead-off New Hampshire primary.

Trump has managed to suck all the air out of every room he enters. The other candidates? They can’t be heard above all the ruckus created by Trump’s amazing ability to call attention to himself.

Four years ago, Bachmann and Cain — along with Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and even Rick Santorum — tried to raise a stink about this and/or that. They all were “frontrunners” for a time. Then came Romney, with all of his money and political connections, to win the GOP nomination.

Now we have Trump, who reportedly has much more wealth than Romney — and who brags about his portfolio incessantly — making a lot of racket.

But here’s the deal. He won’t be nominated. He’s going out with his guns blazing (figuratively, of course). Someone else will be nominated. If I had to bet on the next GOP nominee, I’d put my money today on either former Florida Gov. John Ellis (Jeb) Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. But they’re so boring.

Trump has turned this campaign into a circus.

Way to go, Donald. You’ve made the preceding cast of GOP contenders/pretenders look like statespersons.

military news, national news, political news

Politics of ‘personal destruction’ bites the GOP

1 Comment

This comes from Bill Press, a noted Democratic Party loyalist, TV commentator, author, pundit and partisan gadfly.

He posted this on his Facebook feed today.

“You might say: ‘What goes around, comes around.’

“In 2004, it was OK for Republicans to attack war hero John Kerry. But suddenly in 2015, it’s not OK for another Republican to attack war hero John McCain. I’m sorry. That doesn’t work. To murder yet another aphorism: “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

“Don’t get me wrong. I think Donald Trump’s comments about John McCain are disgusting. I like McCain. I believe he’s the real thing: a genuine American war hero, who deserves the respect and gratitude of every American, no matter what you think of his politics.

“But Republicans can’t have it both ways. They can’t practice one kind of politics – and then whine and moan when somebody plays the same kind of politics against them.

“Two lessons to be learned here. First, the Republican Party should do what I suggested a month ago: Disown Donald Trump and throw him out of the party.

“Two, Republicans should stick to the issues and stop playing the politics of personal destruction. Because, eventually, it’ll turn around and bite you in the ass. It just did.”

I’ll add only this.

John Kerry and John McCain happen to be close friends. Their Vietnam War combat experience is their common bond. They worked together in the U.S. Senate to help establish diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam.

And Kerry, who’s now secretary of state, has strongly condemned the comments that Trump made about his friend.

national news, political news

McCain doesn’t need apology, but he deserves one

John McCain says he doesn’t “need an apology” from Donald Trump, who’s inflamed the political rhetoric by suggesting that McCain isn’t a “war hero.”

The Arizona U.S. senator, though, said family members of others who have served and sacrificed for their country need the apology from the flame-throwing Republican presidential candidate.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/donald-trump-john-mccain-feud-veterans-usa-today-op-ed-120347.html?hp=t3_r

Well, if you’ll excuse me for butting in, senator … but you certainly deserve an apology from the bombastic blowhard, Trump.

McCain’s story is about as well-known as any political story out there. His Navy fighter jet was shot down during McCain’s 23rd combat mission during the Vietnam War. He suffered a broken leg and two broken arms when he ejected from his airplane over Hanoi. McCain was taken captive and imprisoned for more than five years. He was tortured, held in solitary confinement, tortured some more. His injuries never were treated properly. He resisted his captors the best he could.

If that doesn’t define heroism, then perhaps nothing does.

McCain told “Morning Joe”: “I’m not a hero, but those who were my senior ranking officers, people like Col. Bud Day, a congressional Medal of Honor winner, and those that have inspired us to do things that we otherwise wouldn’t have been capable of doing. Those are the people that I think he owes an apology to.”

Trump — who obtained multiple student and medical deferments during the war and never served — has bloviated quite badly over McCain’s service.

Yes, he should apologize to McCain — and to all others who have served.

 

political news

This is when Donald Trump’s candidacy died

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Mark it down.

The weekend of July 18-19 is when Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy came to a screeching halt.

That’s the good news.

The bad news — which in reality is good news — is that (a) he doesn’t realize it, (b) he’ll refuse to realize it and (c) he’ll stay the course for as long as he can.

Trump decided to self-immolate his campaign by declaring to a conservative audience that he preferred U.S. military veterans “who weren’t captured.” That was his inimitable way of denigrating the heroic service of another Republican presidential candidate, 2008 GOP nominee John McCain.

Sen. McCain, of course, was captured by North Vietnam when his plane was shot down in 1967. He suffered grievous injuries, which weren’t treated properly his captors.

He spent more than five years in captivity. He came out in 1973, along with hundreds of other POWs, after the United States agreed to a negotiated end to the Vietnam War.

Trump, though, didn’t serve in the military. He got those deferments, allowing the war to swallow up millions of other young Americans.

He didn’t have a chance in hell of being nominated by the Republican Party, let alone getting elected as the 45th president of the United States.

This latest bit of verbal excess just seals the deal.

If his chance of nominated was next to nil before, it’s now really at — or below — that level today.

But, heck, don’t drop out, Donald. Some of your GOP foes think you’ve disgraced yourself enough. Get out, man, they’re imploring him.

Stay in, Donald. Another fellow GOP candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, thinks The Donald deserves to be heard. I do, too.

However, he’s going to find it harder and harder to get his message heard above the laughter — and the boos.