Monthly Archives: May 2017

International news, national news

More like a stand-up double, maybe, Mr. President

The president of the United States believes he “hit a home run” on his first trip abroad as head of state.

I believe I will disagree with Donald J. Trump on that one.

“But we have been gone for close to nine days. This will be nine days. And I think we hit a home run no matter where we are,” Trump said in Italy as he prepared to return home — and into the political maelstrom that awaits.

Let’s review:

* He started in Saudi Arabia and delivered an acceptable speech to a room full of kings, presidents and potentates about the threat of international terrorism. It’s interesting that he would make such a speech in a country that has done next to nothing to curb its breeding of terrorists. Hey, wasn’t Osama bin Laden a Saudi native?

* Trump ventured to Israel, where was met by government officials who were steamed that he revealed classified secrets to Russian visitors earlier that had come from Israeli intelligence officials. Lord knows what Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu likely told him in private.

* Then he went to the Vatican and met with Pope Francis, who he had criticized while campaigning for the presidency because the Holy Father disagreed with some public policy statements the candidate had made.

* Trump then ventured to Brussels, where he scolded NATO allies because some of them aren’t paying enough for the defense of Europe against Russian threats and those threats presented by terrorists. The reactions of the heads of state and government who heard the lecture couldn’t have been more instructive; they couldn’t believe the president would dress them down in such a public manner.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/335416-trump-at-conclusion-of-first-foreign-trip-i-think-we-hit-a-home-run

Along the way, the president was met with concern, a bit of anger over past statements. By my way of reasoning, he didn’t do much to assuage the concerns of world leaders who are concerned about the absence of any public service experience in his background.

Home run, Mr. President? Hardly. I’d say you hit — maybe — a stand-up double.

State news

‘Bathroom Bill’ appears headed for trash heap

I cannot pretend to understand fully the issue of transgenderism.

However, I know a hurtful and unnecessary piece of legislation when I see it. The Texas “Bathroom Bill” that aims to tell folks which bathroom to use is one of them.

The Associated Press is reporting that the state’s Bathroom Bill is all but a goner. Still, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick vows to bring it up in a special session.

Except for one little thing.

Only the governor, Greg Abbott, can call legislators back into a special session and Gov. Abbott doesn’t appear inclined to do so.
The legislation would require people to use public restrooms that coincide with the gender noted on their birth certificate. And yet, there are those who contend that they “identify” more with the opposite gender; many of those them are having what’s called “surgical reassignment” to transform them from one gender to the other.

I’ll repeat that I do not pretend to understand confusing gender identity, having never gone such confusion myself.

The legislation being discussed, though, seems discriminatory on its face. What’s more, the Texas House of Representatives — led by Speaker Joe Straus — has been fighting to derail this Dan Patrick-led initiative from the get-go.

Indeed, business interests have threatened to boycott the state if it enacts such a bill, which has been the kind of punishment inflicted on North Carolina, which approved a similar bill.

As the AP reported: “Many states have balked at such bills after North Carolina was thrust into political and economic upheaval over its law, which was partially repealed in March.”

As they say, “money talks.”

https://apnews.com/b5e455ab9a15422cbd1f3eda069e4cf4

The Legislature is set to adjourn in a couple of days. There likely won’t be a Bathroom Bill sent to Gov. Abbott’s desk before lawmakers sign off for the session. As for Patrick’s pledge to get a special session called, he’d better check with the governor — who I hope keeps a cool head and decides that the Bathroom Bill is fraught with too much economic peril for Texas to endure.

The very idea of the Texas Legislature being hauled back to convene a special session for something as ridiculous as this is mind-blowing on its face.

International news

Don’t go public with private concerns, Mr. POTUS

I feel the need to flesh out a bit a point I made briefly in an earlier blog post, but which seems to have gotten some traction among the various TV talking heads commenting on that particular point.

Donald J. Trump delivered a scolding lecture to fellow NATO heads of state and government about whether their countries are paying their fair share of the alliance’s defense.

I will ask again: Why couldn’t the president have delivered that message in private instead of standing in front the whole wide world and telling the NATO nations’ leaders about how “unfair” it is to saddle American taxpayers with such a burden?

Other presidents have griped about the cost of paying for NATO defense, but they’ve done so more discreetly. Then they would stand out front and declare solidarity with NATO. Trump did some of that the other day, but his message was diluted by the scolding he delivered about the price tag of providing for the defense of western Europe.

NATO nations certainly have stepped up in response to direct threats against member states, such as when 9/11 occurred. The president was good enough to acknowledge that NATO fighting personnel answered the call to fight the terrorist monsters who killed so many of our citizens on that terrible day.

But what we heard in Brussels was the rhetoric of a man who doesn’t know anything about diplomacy and how to use it effectively to achieve a common purpose.

national news

If Hillary needed to be ‘locked up’ over e-mails …

Let’s assume for a moment the very worst about Jared Kushner, son-in-law and senior adviser to Donald J. Trump.

The Washington Post is reporting that Kushner suggested to Russian government officials that the Trump transition team set up a secret line of communication between the Russian embassy to the United States and the Kremlin.

OK, to be completely fair — the story might not be true. My sense, though, is that it’s there is something significant happening to the Trump administration.

So, if the Post is correct and Kushner was able to secure a back-channel line between the Trump team and the Kremlin — using Russian communications equipment — how does that compare with what the Trump campaign alleged about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of her personal e-mail server?

Do you remember the chants of “Lock her up!” coming from those Trump campaign rallies? Do you recall that disgraced former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn helped lead those chants himself?

What Kushner is reported to have sought makes Hillary’s use of personal e-mail accounts look so, so quaint.

Think of this. The Post is reporting that Kushner wanted to use Russian intelligence equipment to transmit communications between the Trump team and the highest level of government in Moscow. Did this young man have a clue that Russians monitor carefully all communications between their embassies and the Kremlin?

I guess we now can understand a good bit more clearly why the FBI had declared Kushner to be a “person of interest” in its investigation of what the president called “the Russia thing.”

The Russia thing is growing a lot of legs.

national news

Happy birthday, Dad

This is a picture of my father. His name was Pete Kanelis.

My sis snapped this picture in 1979, a year before Dad died in a boating accident that to this day still gives me great pain. He was 59 years of age when he died in the accident just north of Vancouver, British Columbia, where he was cavorting with friends and business associates on a business/fishing trip.

I want to mention Dad to you today because Saturday would have been his 96th birthday.

Apart from the obvious feelings of loss and grief I felt for seemingly the longest time in my life, my feelings today as I remember Dad are a bit more, oh, philosophical.

Fate dealt us all quite a blow that day when the call came to me the day after Dad died. The very last thing I said to him before he departed Portland for Canada was, “I’ll see you Wednesday.” The call arrived on a Monday morning. The news was terrible.

I think of Dad — and Mom, too — in ways that boggle my mind at times.

What would they be like had they lived long enough to grow old? What kind of old folks would they have been? As it is, I have spent a good bit more time on Earth than either of them were able to do. Mom died four years after Dad at the age of 61.

I have my own theory — and that’s all it can be — about how Dad and Mom would have aged had they been given the opportunity. Dad was one of seven siblings and he — more than any of his brothers and sisters — valued family relationships. My sense is that he likely would have been a bit clingy, that he might have resisted the career opportunity I sought when my wife, sons and I moved to Texas in 1984. Mom would have been more accepting of it. Had she been able to grow old without Dad, I believe as well that Mom would have returned more to be like the young woman — full of vim of vigor — that she recalled occasionally about herself.

The thing about fate, though, is that you cannot take it back. You cannot relive moments that come and go. Life doesn’t give us any do-overs.

So … with that I am left only to wish that Dad were here to celebrate his 96th birthday. If only fate hadn’t intervened.

I still miss him every day.

International news, national news, political news

What? A back-channel phone line with Kremlin?

I know Donald Trump’s son-in-law is entitled to an innocence presumption.

Jared Kushner has now been shoved to the front row of a growing investigation into what the Trump presidential campaign may have done in connection with the Russian government.

The latest live grenade to explode deals with a report that Kushner and the Russians sought to set up a secret line through which the Trump team could communicate with the Kremlin, the seat of the Russian government in the heart of Moscow.

If it’s true — and I’ll presume that special counsel Robert Mueller will make that determination in due course — then it’s fair to ask: What would Kushner seek to keep secret from normal communications channels?

Some analysts are suggesting that this latest report might be a “game change” in the growing controversy. (I am going to refrain from calling it a “scandal” until we know a whole lot more.)

The Mueller investigation is going to determine whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election. Trump says “no.” His buddy, Russian President Vladimir Putin, says “nyet.”

If this latest revelation is a game-changer, then I’m believing that Donald J. Trump’s tenure as president is about to enter some seriously tenuous territory.

media news

‘Russia thing’ is producing a form of vertigo

I no longer am an active member of the so-called “mainstream media.”

Thus, I am merely a watcher and reader of news. So help me, though, the speed and intensity of the “breaking news” that keeps busting out is making my head spin.

I refer to the Donald Trump/Russia/Jared Kushner/Michael Flynn/FBI director firing/special counsel elements that keep bursting out with bombshell after bombshell.

I’ll just say that I am immensely proud of the media’s role in revealing these stories. The New York Times and the Washington Post news staffs have been performing an immense public service in their work to root out all the information they can find.

Good on ’em. Keep up the great work.

For now, though, I think I’ll need a dose of Dramamine.

national news

Kushner, under scrutiny, to lead WH ‘war room’

How does this work?

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has been identified as the subject of an FBI investigation into “the Russia thing” that is bedeviling the Trump administration.

Now we hear that Kushner is going to lead a team effort within the White House to combat the myriad questions that keep dogging the president, his campaign and his senior White House staff — of which Kushner is a member!

How in the world does Kushner separate himself from the very probe while leading the effort to fight it?

To be fair, the FBI is likely to look into what Kushner knows about the Russia matter, not what he has done … allegedly.

The young man is about to undertake a multi-tasking effort that might not have any equal in American political history.

media news, national news, political news

No jokes about ‘shooting’ reporters, Gov. Abbott

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a bill that reduces by a good bit the first-time fee for Texans seeking to obtain a concealed handgun carry permit.

I am one of those Texans who formerly opposed the concealed handgun carry legislation when it was first enacted in 1995; my position has evolved over time … more or less. Suffice to say that while I no longer oppose it, I am unwilling to sign on as an avid proponent. I have accepted the law. I trust you’ll understand my point here.

Then the governor did something that borders on gauche. He went to a shooting range, fired a few rounds at a target and then joked that he would carry the target around “in case I see any reporters.”

Yuk, yuk, yuk …

https://www.texastribune.org/2017/05/26/texas-gov-greg-abbott-signs-measure-reduce-handgun-license-fee/

The timing of the governor’s joke, however, makes it a good bit less “funny” than it otherwise might be.

You see, they just had this election up yonder in Montana this week. The Republican candidate, Greg Gianforte, decided earlier in the week to “body slam” a reporter, Ben Jacobs, who asked him about the GOP health care overhaul bill. Gianforte didn’t like the question, so he struck out — quite literally — at the reporter.

Montanans elected Gianforte anyway to the at-large congressional seat he was contesting with Democrat Rob Quist.

I draw that comparison only to illustrate the coarsening of debate in this country. The president of the United States has declared the media to be “the enemy of the American people,” and some folks — even, apparently, some candidates for Congress — appear to have bought into that line of manure.

Thus, I just caution the Texas governor against using that kind of language, out loud, in public, where others can hear him.

Gov. Abbott meant it as a joke. I know it’s a joke. Not everyone, though, is going to take it that way.

business news, International news

POTUS ‘tells it like it is’ abroad

Donald J. Trump’s supporters like to say the president merely “tells it like it is.”

Others of us prefer to say he tells it like he thinks it is.

He is abroad, finishing up his first overseas trip as president and he’s managing — as only the president — to demonstrate a stunning lack of diplomatic skill.

Get this, his assessment of Germany, one of our nation’s strongest allies and trading partners: “The Germans are bad, very bad,” he said. “See the millions of cars they are selling to the U.S. Terrible. We will stop this.”

What? Stop it. How? He wants to start a trade war with Germany because it peddles cars to American consumers?

Vox.com is a known liberal-leaning website, but it offers an interesting analysis of how Trump’s lack of diplomatic skill is hurting him and the country he represents.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/5/26/15698824/trump-germany-bad-trade-cars

As Vox reports: “First, it’s worth noting that the language Trump reportedly used in the meeting is yet another example of his total lack of nuance or finesse. Trump likes to cast the world in black and white and use superlative language. Things are ‘terrific,’ or they are ‘terrible.’

“Trump speaks this way on domestic issues as well, but in international affairs his vulgarity as a speaker is amplified. Diplomacy requires gentle touches and subtle signaling that simultaneously maintains stable relationships while having the power to pressure or persuade. Slamming the Germans, a vital US ally, as ‘very bad’ and saying you need to ‘Stop’ them from selling cars to the US is, well, the opposite of that.”

Vox also notes that German automakers also operate many manufacturing plants in the United States, employing Americans and paying them well to produce these motor vehicles.

That the president wouldn’t recognize that is just another sign of his complete ignorance about the world and the inter-connectedness among nations.