Tag Archives: White House

International news, military news

U.S. redoubles efforts to protect civilian lives

drone strikes

U.S. drone strikes have killed perhaps as many as 116 civilians since 2009, according to the White House.

What, then, is the response from the commander in chief, Barack Obama? He issued an executive order today that redoubles our military’s efforts to avoid killing civilians in future drone strikes.

I can hear it now from critics of the president.

* He’s soft on terrorists.

* Obama isn’t really committed to killing Islamic killers.

* We’re trying to conduct a “politically correct” air war against these monsters.

It’s all crap!

What the executive order signifies to me is that we’re better than the bad guys, who actually target civilians. They seek to go after so-called “soft targets” at airport terminals, train stations, shopping malls, schools, residential neighborhoods.

Our aim in launching these manned and unmanned air strikes has been to take out military targets — which we are doing with considerable effectiveness.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/white-house-at-least-64-to-116-civilians-killed-in-drone-strikes-since-2009/ar-AAhRCSZ

The White House figures are at odds with some independent estimates of civilian deaths, which place the number a good bit greater.

However, let us not give short shrift to U.S. military policy that seeks to minimize these deaths.

Sure, we didn’t always follow that doctrine. U.S. aerial bombardments during World War II targeted civilian population centers specifically. But that was then.

We are able in this modern age to launch air strikes with remarkable precision and accuracy. Are they always successful? Are we able to carry these strikes without inflicting death and injury on civilians? Of course not.

We shouldn’t change our standards to match the barbarism committed by our enemies.

International news, political news

No ‘new evidence’ found to implicate Clinton …

benghazi

So, do you think the battle has ended in the fight to use “Benghazi” as a tool to derail Hillary Rodham Clinton’s march to the White House?

I wish. It will continue full throttle.

The U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi has concluded its expensive and highly partisan probe of the former secretary of state’s role in that terrible tragedy that erupted on Sept. 11, 2012 at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Four Americans died in a chaotic firefight that night. One of them was Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Then-House Speaker John Boehner convened this committee to get to the truth behind what happened. The panel, led by Republican U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, called dozens of witnesses, plowed over the same ground repeatedly and then finally concluded that they cannot find any “new evidence” that Clinton did anything wrong.

Sure, they found plenty with which to criticize the administration. The military was ill-prepared to deal with the terrorist attack on the compound, the panel said. The administration didn’t do enough to protect the staffers who got caught up in the frenzy, it concluded.

In the end, though, it has determined that Clinton wasn’t culpable, that she didn’t engage in a cover-up.

Oh, but now she’s running for president of the United States. Rest assured that her foes are going to continue to question the manner in which she responded to the emergency.

And, oh yes, we have those e-mails and Clinton’s of a private personal account to distribute State Department messages. The FBI is investigating that matter.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/house-benghazi-panel-finds-no-new-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-hillary-clinton/ar-AAhINBW?ocid=spartandhp

This has been an expensive endeavor, costing an estimated $7 million. Many of us — me included — are quite convinced that Speaker Boehner wanted to find something that would implicate Clinton as she sought the presidency. The panel came up short.

But for those who are looking and lusting for more dirt to fling at the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, they likely will take some “comfort” in the knowledge that questions will linger as long as there are enemies of the former secretary of state around to raise them.

Still, I’m glad this select committee’s work is finished.

Finally.

national news, political news

As nation grieves, Trump boasts

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“Temperamentally unfit … ”

We’re likely to hear that a lot during the next few months as Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigns for president of the United States against Donald J. Trump.

Examples? We’ve got plenty of them.

The latest example of temperamental unfitness presented itself in the hours after this past weekend’s slaughter of 49 people at the Pulse, an Orlando, Fla., nightclub.

The nation went into shock at the most gruesome mass murder in U.S. history. Trump’s response was to send out a tweet that boasted about how he predicted that Islamic terrorists were going to strike.

Trump said he called it. He was right. The president of the United States has been “weak” in the fight against terrorism, he said.

Republican insiders now are saying that Trump blew it badly by bragging during this time of national bereavement. “Only an a**hole says ‘I told you so’ the same day 49 people are killed on American soil by a terrorist,” said a New Hampshire Republican, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously, according to Politico.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-orlando-response-224479

The massacre in Orlando has been generally categorized as an act of terror. The killer — an American — seems to have been radicalized by his fealty to the Islamic State.

It’s also been called the “worst act of terror on U.S. soil since 9/11.” That’s now a given.

I now shall remind us all of what national security officials said in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Almost to a person they predicted then that we’d get hit again. That the terrorists had smelled our blood and they wanted more of it.

It’s also been a given that we would feel this kind of pain.

Trump’s braggadocio was so profoundly inappropriate that it only feeds the narrative that Hillary Clinton is going to recite time and again as she campaigns for the presidency.

local news, political news

Non-endorsements pile up for Trump

Here’s what Mac Thornberry, a dedicated “establishment Republican” member of Congress said about whether he plans to “endorse” GOP nominee-to-be Donald J. Trump.

“If you endorse somebody, it’s like a stamp of approval and embracing them,” Thornberry said earlier this month, according to the (Wichita Falls) Times-Record News. “I’m not comfortable doing that with him based on a number of reasons.” A spokesman clarified to the Tribune that Thornberry would not vote for Clinton but has not committed to voting for Trump.

There you have it.

The Republican congressman whose 13th Congressional District stretches from Dalhart in the farthest northwest corner of Texas all the way to the northern Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, isn’t (yet) going to endorse his party’s presidential nominee.

As the Texas Tribune has reported, the GOP delegation from Texas is far less united in its view of Trump than the Democratic delegation is about their party’s presumed presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/06/15/texas-congressional-delegation-endorsements/

I am struck by Thornberry’s non-endorsement. It speaks oh, so very loudly to me.

He’s my congressman. I’ve voted for him a few times over the years, depending on the quality of his primary or general election opponents.

He’s generally quite careful and circumspect about political matters when he’s asked to comment publicly.

“Based on a number of reasons,” Thornberry said he is uncomfortable endorsing his party’s presidential nominee. What would they be? Trade policy? Statements that a woman should be punished for getting an abortion? The lengthy string of tasteless insults? His accusing President Bush of deliberate deception in taking us to war in Iraq? Might it be that Trump has no record at all of public service or any commitment to public service through his many business ventures?

You know, it looks for all the world to me as though Mac Thornberry is going to have a hard time even voting for his party’s presidential nominee, let alone endorsing him.

That’s just me talking, of course. Whatever the congressman decides, he’ll act on it in private.

I’ll just add one more point. If Mac Thornberry — who is as loyal a Republican as you’ll find — cannot endorse Trump, then the GOP’s top candidate for 2016 is facing serious trouble down the road.

national news, political news

Obama lacks GOP go-to pal in Congress

Valerie-Jarrett

Valerie Jarrett gave a stellar defense Sunday night of her boss and long-time friend President Barack Obama.

Her appearance on “60 Minutes” was notable in her defense as well of her role — in addition to senior adviser — as friend, confidante and her easy access to the Leader of the Free World.

But she pushed back when CBS News correspondent Nora O’Donnell asked her about the president’s continuing prickly relationship with congressional Republicans. She said Obama has done all he could do to reach out.

O’Donnell, though, asked — but did get an answer — about the lack of a leading Republican in either the Senate or the House to whom the president could turn to fight for his legislative agenda.

It brought to mind the kind of relationship that previous presidents have cultivated with members of the “loyal opposition.” President Lyndon Baines Johnson could turn to GOP Sen. Everett Dirksen in a pinch; President Ronald Reagan had a fabulous after-hours friendship with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill; GOP President George W. Bush relied on help from Sen. Ted Kennedy to push through education reform.

Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have that kind of personal friendship with members of the other side. He relies on his own instincts, his own circle of friends — such as Jarrett — and the vice president, Joe Biden, who to this day retains close friendships with Senate Republicans.

It’s that lack of kinship that has troubled many of us who want the president to succeed. I recall having this discussion once with retired Amarillo College president Paul Matney, who lamented that Obama had not developed the legislative know-how that LBJ brought to the presidency.

LBJ had served as Senate majority leader before his one-time foe John F. Kennedy asked him to be his running mate in 1960. Ol’ Lyndon knew how the Senate worked and he was able to parlay that knowledge — along with tremendous national good will after JFK’s assassination in 1963 — into landmark legislation.

Barack Obama has been forced to struggle, to battle relentlessly, to get anything past a Republican-led Congress intent on blocking every major initiative he has sought.

The reasons behind the ultra-fierce resistance will be debated long after President Obama leaves office.

He seems, though, to have lacked one essential ingredient to move his agenda forward: a good friend and dependable ally on the other side of the aisle who could run interference for him.

 

national news, political news

Trump upsets the national political truism

donald-trump-gag-big

Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy has turned everything on its ear.

The Republican Party is at war with itself. How does the party back a presidential nominee who opposes traditional GOP orthodoxy? And just how does the party define “unity” if it cannot back its nominee fully?

Let’s play this out a little more.

What, then, about the rest of us who at the same time oppose traditional GOP dogma while also being repulsed by the very idea of Donald Trump ever settling behind a big desk in the Oval Office?

I’m trying to grasp the apparent conflict I’m enduring now as I watch Trump get ready to become the Republicans’ next presidential nominee.

I dislike the traditional GOP view on abortion, on tax policy, on wage and marriage equality, on gun control and on immigration.

I also dislike Trump’s views on at least one of those issues: immigration. The rest of Trump’s views are, to say the least, malleable. I don’t know precisely what he thinks about any of the rest of them.

Which brings me to this point. Why do I oppose this guy’s candidacy so vehemently?

I guess it’s his unfitness for the office he’s seeking.

Trump has no record of public service;  we have nothing on which to base his past performance. He has no grasp of the basics of government, let alone any idea on how to manipulate its complexities. Trump has lied constantly throughout this campaign — and until recently has been allowed by the media to get away with it.

He is a reality TV celebrity. He “owns” beauty pageants. He’s built glitzy hotels and has lived an opulent lifestyle. And American voters are supposed to relate to this?

And I haven’t yet gotten into his moral fitness for the job. He seems to possess no moral bearings. He has boasted openly about his marital infidelity. The things he has said about women simply stand as some of the most revolting things I’ve ever heard from anyone … let alone from someone on the brink of become a major-party presidential nominee.

How many other major, mainstream presidential candidates can you name who’ve spoken to shock jock Howard Stern about his sexual exploits?

This is what I mean about Trump upsetting every political calculation there is.

True-blue Republicans don’t trust him. My goodness, this guy is the classic RINO — a Republican In Name Only. Yet, he continues to collect the votes of millions of GOP base voters who, I guess, are trying to send some kind of “message” to the party establishment.

If he’s a RINO, which he is, then he ought to appeal to the rest of us who don’t swallow the Republican orthodoxy. Am I right?

Not even …

 

national news, political news

GOP’s presumed nominee is looking for love

ryan

Donald J. Trump has a problem.

Actually, he has quite a few.

One of them is the lack of love coming his way from the so-called Republican Party “establishment” he must have if he has a chance of becoming the next president of the United States.

Get a load of this: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan — the nation’s most powerful Republican — has said he cannot support his party’s presumed presidential nominee.

Why? He doesn’t represent the kinds of values Ryan wants him to represent. Trump is showing zero ability to unify the party, which also must happen if he intends to sidle into the Oval Office next January.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-paul-ryan-jab-at-each-other-deepening-fracture-in-gop/ar-BBsHgXZ?ocid=spartandhp

Trump is at odds with GOP orthodoxy on things such as trade, entitlement spending and foreign policy.

So, how does the nominee-in-waiting earn the speaker’s support? How does he pivot in the correct direction? Does a sudden change in philosophy — as if Trump actually has one — suggest insincerity? What’s more, does the speaker’s about-face look equally phony?

The Republican Party is about to nominate someone with the highest negative ratings in memory. The negative vibe is coming from within the very party Trump wants to represent in the fall campaign against the Democrats.

Here’s the best part: Trump now says he doesn’t support Ryan’s agenda. Someone needs to remind the presumptive nominee that the speaker of the House arguably wields at least as much power as the president of the United States.

Does he need proof of that? He ought to ask the man who occupies the Oval Office at the moment.

As the Chicago Tribune reports: “Whether Ryan’s conditions will be met by Trump remain to be seen. The businessman has shown only modest interest in hewing to party norms, and many observers do not expect him to do so now.”

There, folks, lies the problem that confronts the next GOP presidential nominee.

 

national news, political news

Gov. Kasich faces a bitter irony

kasich

John Kasich must feel like the unluckiest politician in America.

He’s caught in perhaps the most bitter irony in recent political history.

The Ohio governor is running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. He’s one of three men still standing in what began as a 17-candidate GOP primary free-for-all.

Given that we’ve been talking — a lot! — about public opinion polling in this presidential campaign, it’s good to mention this: Kasich stands alone among the three men still running as the only candidate who can defeat probable Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton. Donald Trump loses big to Clinton; so does Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Why, then, does Gov. Kasich still struggle as the longest shot of all the GOP candidates who will become the party’s presidential nominee this summer?

The Republican base has endorsed Trump and Cruz in all those primaries and caucuses. Kasich has won exactly one contest: in Ohio, the state he governs. Hey, man, he had to win that one, right?

I’ve heard pundit after pundit, voter after voter say the same thing: Gov. Kasich is the last grown-up in this race.

Trump and Cruz are despised by the Republican establishment for varying reasons. Trump lacks a governing philosophy; Cruz seems to have virtually no friends in the U.S. Senate, where he has served since January 2013.

It appears, though, that one of those two individuals is going to carry the GOP banner into the fall against Clinton. Those polls? They keep showing they’ll lose. Maybe by a lot.

Kasich continues to poll far better vs. Clinton than either of them.

He also continues to lag far behind in the Republican Party polls of primary voters.

Poor guy. I feel sorry for Gov. Kasich.

 

national news, political news

Now … about the Democratic wackiness

1 Comment

rs_1024x759-150709052426-1024.Donald-Trump-Hillary-Clinton-JR-70915_copy

Almost all the political chatter of the past, oh, six months has been about how Donald J. Trump turned his Republican Party primary presidential candidacy from a joke to a matter of serious discussion.

Who among you really thought this guy ever — in a zillion years — would achieve GOP frontrunner status when he declared his candidacy this past summer? I didn’t either.

He has. Trump is beginning to wobble, though, because his glaring lack of study of the issues is finally catching up to him. He’s likely to get hammered in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Then it’s on to New York, where he figures to do better, if not real well.

OK, enough of that.

Those Democrats have produced their share of campaign wackiness, too.

Let me ask you this one: Who out there really and truly thought at the beginning of her campaign that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be challenged as strongly as she’s been challenged by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, the “democratic socialist”? I’m with you. I thought she was a shoo-in.

She’s been hammered by the right — as expected — over Benghazi, those “damn emails,” as Sanders has described them, and over an alleged lack of “authenticity.

But she’s also been pounded by the lefties. Those kids who’ve climbed aboard Bernie’s bandwagon because of his pledge to provide college education for everyone has helped lift this guy’s candidacy to heights never imagined when he started out.

Bernie well might win in Wisconsin this week. Then he goes to New York, which Clinton represented in the U.S. Senate after she served two terms as first lady.

Clinton’s task in Wisconsin is to keep the result fairly close; a blowout win by Sanders might light a serious wildfire in his campaign that could cause some serious trouble for Clinton in New York.

Clinton now has to win big in her “home state.” I put that in quotes because, as you know, she really didn’t spend much time there before being elected to the Senate in 2000. It’s that authenticity thing, aka “carpetbagging,” that keeps nipping at her.

Clinton remains miles ahead of Sanders in the delegate count. If she wins yu-u-u-u-u-ge in New York, then she is on track to sew the primary campaign up by the time it rolls around to California.

If she stumbles there after getting beat in Wisconsin, well, then we’ve got a different game.

Yesterday’s sure thing, thus, becomes a candidate in for the fight of her life.

Go figure.

I’m telling you that when historians over the next generation or two try to examine the impact of strange and weird presidential campaigns in this great country, they’re going to hold Campaign 2016 up as their starting point.

I’m not sure how it can get any stranger than what we’ve witnessed on both sides of the divide.

It probably will.

national news, political news

Christie’s 180 on Trump fascinates, confounds

chrischristie_0

Let’s see how this tracks.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, said that Donald J. Trump is “unfit” to become president.

“We aren’t electing an entertainer in chief,” Christie famously said of his rival. We are electing a commander in chief, he added, and Trump didn’t measure up to the standards required to hold that all-important job.

Then he got beat in New Hampshire. Christie suspended his campaign and this week he tossed all those vibes about Trump out and said he is the “one man” who can lead America.

Politics does have this way of changing one’s stated position. Whether it changes one’s heart and soul, though, cannot be determined.

Check out the endorsement.

He said an interesting thing that deserves just a bit of parsing.

Christie — while making his announcement as well as over the course of the next day and a half — said Trump is the one candidate who will guarantee that “Hillary and Bill Clinton will not get within 10 miles of the White House.”

Hmmm. Think about that for a minute.

Would a President Trump — my hands still tremble when I type those two words next to each other — impose some kind of travel restriction on the former secretary of state? Would he restrict her movement through, say, an executive order?

It’s also interesting that he would include the 42nd president of the United States in that restriction. For crying out loud, governor! The man was elected twice to the very office you once sought.

Oh well, back to reality.

I guess Gov. Christie — who used to impress me as a man of principle and his own brand of panache — has performed the Big Daddy of Flip Flops in endorsing the man he once called “unfit” for the presidency.