Tag Archives: Barack Obama

International news, national news

Trump demonstrates his ‘gift’ at U.N.

Donald John Trump has an extraordinary “gift,” which is all I can think of to call it at this moment.

The president of the United States’ gift enables him to stand before audiences and say the most inappropriate things at the most inopportune times in the most unlikely venues.

For example:

* The day after his inauguration as president, Trump went to the CIA, stood before a wall honoring the agents who’ve fallen in the line of duty and then proclaimed his joy at winning such a “historic” presidential election.

* Earlier this summer, he went to the annual Boy Scout Jamboree and proceeded to excoriate his predecessor, Barack Obama, for this and that and said — incorrectly, I should add — that the former president had never addressed the Jamboree. Trump’s speech prompted the Boy Scouts of America to issue an official statement of apology.

* Then this week, the president stood in the hall at the United Nations — a place founded on the principle of peaceful resolution to international crises — and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the communist nation threatens the United States or our allies. Oh, there’s more: He scolded the U.N. member nations for not paying their fair share and opened his speech by boasting about the state of the U.S. economy — during the eight months of his presidency.

The essence of the president’s gift lies in his ability to get away with this nonsense. His “base” of supporters loves hearing the president “tell it like it is.” They cheer him on. They chide those of us who oppose this kind of behavior as being “losers” who are bitter at having lost an election they should have won.

He, of course, knows how the base is going to act and react. That’s why he continues to demonstrate this strange behavior.

Will it ever catch up with him? I am never, ever going to say out loud that it will. Only that it should. This guy has been defying the laws of political gravity since the day he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and declared his candidacy for the first political office he’s ever sought.

Go … figure.

medical news, national news, political news

GOP launches ACA repeal 2.0

For the ever-lovin’ life of me I cannot grasp this notion that congressional Republicans keep insisting on repealing the Affordable Care Act.

They don’t want to fix what’s wrong with it. They want it gone. They want it tossed, ground up, thrown onto the trash heap. Why? I only can gather it’s because it has the name “Barack Obama” on it.

The GOP-run U.S. Senate is scrambling now to get a second run at tossing the ACA out. They’re trying to round up enough votes to approve repeal with a simple majority; after Sept. 30, according to a Senate rule, they’ll need 60 votes to do the job.

The Senate fell a vote short of the majority it needed earlier this summer. ACA repeal was thought to be a goner. It’s back.

What does the new bill look like? I understand it looks a lot like the old one. It diminishes Medicaid benefits for low-income Americans; it gets rid of the cost reduction subsidy that the ACA provides for those who seek health insurance under the government plan.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who cast the deciding vote that killed the Senate effort before the August recess, called for a return to “regular order.” He wants Republicans to work with Democrats; he wants bipartisan cooperation, if not buy-in.

He’s preaching to no one within his Republican Senate caucus.

Senate Republicans are intent on doing precisely what they accused Senate Democrats of doing in 2010 when the ACA was approved and signed into law by President Obama. They’re going to shove it down the other party’s throats and make Americans like what they’re doing … no matter what.

I remain baffled by the idea that they cannot find a way to fix the ACA. Indeed, the former president offered to work with Republicans if they could find a solution. They stiffed him.

They could do the same thing now, with a Republican in the White House.

Indeed, it now appears that Donald Trump is showing some sign that he’s beginning to learn one of the lessons of governing in Washington, D.C.: Legislating is a team sport that works best when both political parties are sitting at the same table.

local news, national news

No efforts to ‘erase history’

1 Comment

I used to have a relationship — albeit a distant one — with a fellow named Carl Fowler.

He used to write the occasional letter to the editor and guest column to the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked as editorial page editor for nearly 18 years. I see that he’s still submitting commentaries to the newspaper. Truth be told, I cannot let this one pass without a brief comment.

Fowler, as is his wont, is highly critical of who he calls the “far left” for seeking to remove Confederate monuments from public squares.

And in his essay, he manages to do a couple of things that are wrong on their face. He refers to the “Democrat Party,” which is not the name of the party known officially as the “Democratic Party.” That’s how modern conservatives seek to demonize the Democratic Party and those who belong to it.

He also misquotes former President Barack Obama. He refers to a statement the former president once made about the United States no longer being “just a Christian nation.” Of course, Fowler said Obama’s quote was that we are “no longer a Christian nation.” The word “just” is important here, because the former president was referring to the increasingly non-Christian mix of Americans who are becoming key components of our diverse national texture.

Moreover, we never have been a “Christian nation.” Fowler, a retired academic, ought to know better than to imply anything of the sort. All he’s got to do is read the U.S. Constitution and he won’t find the words “Christian” or “Jesus Christ” anywhere in it. You see, the founders created a secular state that gave us all the right to practice whatever religion we wanted — or to not practice any if we so chose.

The essence of Fowler’s essay, though, is to condemn those who take a dim view of honoring those who went to war against the United States of America. The Civil War killed more Americans than any other conflict in our history. To my way of thinking, those who sought to destroy the Union were traitors.

Should we erase that chapter from our national story? Of course not. Let’s just call the Confederates who they were.

Here is Fowler’s essay. Check it out. The floor is now open for discussion.

environmental news

More chaos from Trump; this time it’s those Paris Accords

This is what I mean when I mention the chaos that emanates from Donald J. Trump’s White House.

He said he would pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, citing the worldwide agreement to cut carbon emissions as endangering U.S. jobs. Then comes word that the president is having second thoughts.

Major media outlets — such as the Wall Street Journal — report that Trump is having second thoughts about his decision to pull out of the agreement. The White House says “no!” that’s not the case at all. The president intends to pull out; he’s going to keep one of his major campaign promises, White House flacks insist.

Then there’s confusion over whether he wants to renegotiate the accords to make them more acceptable to whatever concerns he has over them. Is he willing to renegotiate or not? A European Union officials said the United States won’t renegotiate the deal, but will review the terms to decide if there’s some wiggle room to allow continued U.S. participation.

Sheesh! I keep wishing for a No Drama Obama type of White House operation. Former President Barack Obama used to operate under a premise that the less drama, confusion and, yes, chaos, the better for the White House.

Donald Trump’s modus operandi is to pursue precisely the opposite result. The more chaos and confusion, the better.

Can we get our stories straight? Ever?

medical news

ACA is actually doing what it’s supposed to do

Let’s talk about health insurance, OK?

The highly partisan agency, the U.S. Census Bureau, has come up with some data that illustrate the difficulty the Republicans in Congress — and the pseudo-Republican in the White House — have had difficulty in repealing the Affordable Care Act.

The Census Bureau reports that the rolls of uninsured Americans has continued to decline since the enactment of the ACA. It’s now down to 8.8 percent this past year, down 0.3 percent from 2015.

Prior to implementation of the ACA, the uninsured rate stood at 13.3 percent, according to the Census Bureau.

Oh, by the way, I’m joking about the Census Bureau being full of partisan hacks.

The news isn’t all good for the ACA. A Gallup Poll indicates an increase in uninsured Americans stemming largely from the uncertainty over the ACA’s future.

Mend it, don’t end it.

I remain committed to the notion, though, that the ACA can be fine-tuned, improved, tweaked and tinkered with. It need not be scrapped, tossed onto the scrap heap, which is what congressional Republicans and Donald J. Trump want to do.

Need I remind readers of this blog that Medicare’s enactment in 1965 was followed by the a round of tinkering? President Lyndon Johnson managed to persuade his fellow Democrats and his many Republican allies on Capitol Hill to improve the landmark health insurance program. The program works well for elderly Americans.

Why in the name of compromise and cooperation can’t we find that formula today? What is stopping congressional Republicans who control Capitol Hill from working hand-in-glove with Democrats to improve the ACA? President Barack Obama implored both sides on Capitol Hill to improve it if they were so inclined; he said he was all in on any effort to make the ACA work better for more Americans.

Republicans were having none of it. “We gotta repeal it!” they bellowed. Well, they had their chance after Trump got elected president. The president failed to deliver the goods. GOP leaders in Congress failed as well. The ACA remains the law. It figures to stay that way for the foreseeable future — if not longer.

Republicans say they intend to keep yapping about repealing the ACA and replacing it with something else. The voices are growing a bit more muted in sticking to that mantra.

That’s fine with me. Repeal isn’t the only answer. Surely there’s a way to make the ACA work for even more Americans.

national news, political news

Hoping that Hillary calls it a career

Hillary Rodham Clinton is beginning to resurface.

Her book is out, the one that “explains” why she lost a presidential election she should have won. I’ll stipulate that I haven’t read “What Happened.” I have every intention of doing so. I’m curious as to what this candidate who should have been elected in 2016 says about her stunning election loss.

I’ll simply fall back to a position I took not long after Donald J. Trump got elected president of the United States.

My hope for the Democratic Party is that they find a fresh face, a novice to the national political stage, a rookie to run against whomever the Republicans nominate for president in 2020.

It shouldn’t be Hillary Clinton. And if the Republican Party honchos were to ask for my opinion, I’d say they shouldn’t renominate the incumbent president. Hey, I just told ’em that very thing. Imagine that!

Hillary will lay a lot of blame on FBI Director James Comey and his strange reopening of the e-mail probe late in the campaign. She’ll blame the Russians for hacking into our electoral system. She will blame the media for the way they covered her campaign. Sure, she also is going to take a lot of the blame herself.

From where I sit out here in Flyover Country, it’s that last element that deserves the bulk of the cause for her stunning loss.

Clinton was a lousy candidate. She spent too much time down the stretch in states she had no prayer of winning and too little time in those battleground states that flipped from supporting Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 to backing Trump.

Yes, I also believe in that malady called Clinton Fatigue. We had two terms of her husband, President Bill Clinton; and along the way, we got a big dose of first lady Hillary Clinton, too. Do you recall when candidate Bill told us in 1992 if we elect him, we’d get her as well in a sort of two-for-one deal?

She ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000 as she and her husband were to leave the White House and she served her new home state of New York with competence and some level of distinction.

She challenged Sen. Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and took him to the wire. The new president’s payback was to appoint her secretary of state, a post she held for Obama’s first term.

Clinton won the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination believing the election was hers for the taking. She wasn’t alone. I was among the millions of pseudo-experts who thought she’d win in a record-setting landslide. I’ve been eating crow ever since.

Her time has come and gone. She’s yesterday’s heroine.

I do not want her to run again. She had my support once already. I’m not sure I can back her a second time.

Her book is likely to produce some interesting reading. That is it. However, the future of her political party, I believe, belongs to someone who’s going to emerge from nowhere.

State news

A-Team steps up to help Harvey victims

These five men belong to an exclusive club, with an exclusivity exceeded only by the former pope’s club.

They are the five men who’ve been elected president of the United States. They have gathered for a joint fundraising effort to help the victims of Hurricane Harvey, which savaged the Texas coast in late August.

They are collaborating on a One America Appeal website that asks Americans to donate what they can to aid those who are stricken by the pummeling delivered by Harvey.

Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have recorded a video that kicks off the fundraising effort. My hunch is that it might be updated as soon as Hurricane Irma finishes delivering more destruction to Florida in the next few days.

But this is bipartisanhip to the max. Two Republicans and three Democrats have locked arms in a call to aid our fellow Americans.

See the video here.

As President Bush 43 noted, “We’ve got more love in Texas than water.”

Considering the amount of rain — 50 inches of it! — that fell on Texas during Harvey’s unwelcome visit, that’s really saying something.

Thank you, Messrs. President.

International news

Another date to mark a war with no end in sight

I refuse to call Sept. 11 an “anniversary.” I reserve that term to commemorate weddings and other happy beginnings.

9/11 is none of that. It’s coming up Monday. Sixteen years ago terrorists commandeered four jetliners; they flew two of them into the World Trade Center’s twin towers; one flew into the Pentagon; one crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a titanic struggle between passengers and terrorists.

Roughly 3,000 people died on that terrible day.

Not long after that, President Bush sent young Americans to war against the terrorists. The Taliban government in Afghanistan, which had given shelter for the monsters, fell to our forces. The war raged on and on and on.

In March 2003 the war spread to Iraq. We toppled a dictator, who later was captured, tried and hanged. We were told we went into Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction. We didn’t find any.

What the 9/11 date will remind me on Monday is that we very well may never — at least not in my lifetime — be able to end this war against international terrorism.

President Bush handed the struggle off to Barack Obama in 2009. The fight went on.

In May 2011, President Obama announced “to the nation and the world” that U.S. special forces had killed Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind. We cheered the news. Crowds gathered outside the White House chanting “USA! USA! USA!” We got the main bad guy.

What happened after that? The war went on.

The Islamic State surfaced during this time. ISIS has continued to bring havoc and horror. There have been beheadings and bombings.

The war rages on, despite the arrest of and deaths of several key ISIS and al-Qaeda leaders.

Our enemy is cunning. He is smart. He knows how to hit “soft targets.” His victims primarily are other Muslims, which puts the lie to the notion that we are “at war with Islam.” As President Obama said while announcing bin Laden’s death, our enemy comprises a cabal of murderers who have declared war on Muslims as well as they have on Christians and Jews.

This year, President Obama handed it off to Donald Trump. The new president campaigned foolishly on the pledge to wipe out ISIS and al-Qaeda. He boasted that he knows “more than the generals about ISIS.” He doesn’t.

No matter the level of presidential boastfulness, the fight will rage on. We’ll keep killing terrorist leaders. Others will slither out and take the place of those we eliminate.

How do we prevent more “soft target” incidents? How do we prevent the so-called “lone wolf” from driving a motor vehicle into crowds? Or how do we stop those from igniting bombs at sporting events or other places where large crowds of victims gather?

9/11 is no anniversary. It’s not a date to celebrate. It’s a date that should serve to remind us of the threat that has lurked among us for far longer than we ever imagined.

And it lurks to this very day.

The war will rage on.

International news, national news

OK, Congress, it’s your turn to fix DACA

So, now we’re left to hope that Congress — the outfit that couldn’t come up with a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — is supposed to find a legislative answer for undocumented immigrants who came here as children.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Differed Action for Children Arrivals is being rescinded in six months. Congress has a chance, then, to enact a law that gives DACA residents a fighting chance at avoiding deportation to countries they didn’t know. Why is that? Because they have lived their lives as Americans. They came here as children when their parents sneaked into the country.

Donald J. Trump now wants to punish those individuals for the sins of their parents.

Sessions said today that President Obama’s executive order establishing the DACA program is “unconstitutional.”

Read Sessions remarks here.

If that’s the case — and it’s debatable, of course — then Congress has the chance to make it right for those who have lived as de facto Americans. Their “home country” is the United States of America.

Will Congress deliver the goods in six months? Lawmakers’ track record pretty much stinks to high heaven. They had seven years to come up with a suitable replacement for the ACA. Trump got elected president as a Republican, giving the GOP complete control of the legislative and executive government branches. They choked, failed, sputtered, face-planted on ACA repeal and replacement.

Oh, and the president failed miserably, too. Let’s not forget that he’s the GOP’s leader now.

We have about 800,000 U.S. residents facing potential deportation to places they do not know. The president once again has played solely to his political base. The rest of us be damned!

Get to work, Congress.

national news

Where will these DACA residents go?

I keep reading stories about undocumented immigrants who came here as children telling the world about their worries and fears regarding potential deportation.

They are so-called “dreamers.” They live here under a provision called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Donald Trump reportedly has decided to end the DACA program in six months, giving Congress a window to enact a legislative solution to this knotty issue.

Still, the question remains stuck in my craw: Where are these DACA residents going to go if the government rounds them up and sends them back to the country of their birth?

I watched two California university students tell a TV reporter that neither of them have been to Mexico since their early childhood. The United States of America is their home. They grew up here. The USA is all they’ve known. Sure, their parents broke the law, but their children have done nothing wrong — except seeking legal status.

President Barack Obama signed the executive order granting temporary reprieves for DACA residents from deportation. Donald Trump wants to rescind the order, or so we’re led to believe. Some members of Congress say Obama’s action might be unconstitutional.

OK, then. If that’s the case, let’s craft a legislative answer. Send a bill to the president’s desk, ask him to sign it and grant the “dreamers” a streamlined path to obtain U.S. citizenship or permanent legal residence.

Send these people back to their country of origin? Donald Trump said this year he wants to treat DACA residents “with heart.” OK, Mr. President. Show us your heart.