Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news

Compare two presidents’ view of White House

Oh, for a momentary flashback to a time when the president of the United States would express reverence for the People’s House.

I came across an essay that President Barack Obama wrote about the White House. He penned it in 2013, less than a year after his re-election. It’s worth looking at today in light of a remark that his successor, Donald J. Trump, reportedly made to some golfing buddies at a club the president owns in New Jersey.

Trump called the White House a “real dump,” explaining to his pals that’s the reason he spends so much time away from there on the weekends.

I prefer to reflect on Obama’s essay, which you’ll find here.

The former president wrote this essay to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, which President Lincoln delivered in 1863 at the site of the horrific Civil War battle. Obama wrote, in part: “I linger on these few words that have helped define our American experiment: ‘A new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’”

That is what living in the White House is all about. The structure pays tribute to the struggles that have built our great nation. Barack Obama clearly understood its meaning. Donald Trump does not.

national news

White House ‘A real dump’? Why, I never …

This story might not amount to much over the long haul, but for the moment it has legs and it is beginning to scamper onto TV news reports.

Donald John Trump reportedly told members of his posh New Jersey golf club that one reason he spends so much time away from his Washington, D.C., residence is because the White House is “a real dump.”

By the way, the picture attached to this post is of my wife and yours truly this past June standing in front of the “dump” that reportedly drew the president’s derision. Honestly, it looked quite lovely to us.

The president has spent a lot of time while in office at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. I’ve never seen it, but I hear it’s quite posh. It’s full of glitz and glam. It’s got lots of fancy chandeliers and solid-gold fixtures. It’s quite decadent, or so I’m led to believe.

Same for the president’s Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan and for his New Jersey golf club, where he told club members about his digs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The White House doesn’t measure up to Trump’s standards — allegedly!

I guess perhaps the president doesn’t grasp that it’s not his house. It’s our house. Yours and mine, dear reader. Yeah, the president is an American citizens, so he has a bit of buy-in, too. He doesn’t grasp the history associated with this structure or the fact that it stands as the symbol of the exalted office that Trump now occupies.

The president is merely a tenant there, along with first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron.

The Trumpkins across the land will ignore this impertinent utterance. Imagine, though, for just a moment this hypothetical scenario: What might the reaction be if, say, Barack H. Obama had said such a thing about the People’s House?

Well, the current president gets a pass because he “tells it like it is.”

Actually, he has just offended millions of “homeowners” who take pride in the White House and who appreciate and understand what it means to citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.

business news, national news

‘Economy is doing so well’

Donald John Trump is rightfully happy with the state of the national economy.

The stock market is setting records. Joblessness is low. More jobs are being added to non-farm payrolls. Consumer and business confidence is high.

That’s all great, Mr. President.

The president talked about all of that today as White House chief of staff John Kelly reported for work on his first day in the West Wing.

Here’s the deal, though. The trend the president cited is a continuation of the “mess” he supposedly inherited when he took over this past January from Barack H. Obama.

Didn’t the one-time Republican candidate for president trash the daylights out of President Obama’s stewardship of the nation’s economy? Didn’t he cite sluggish GDP growth as part of that so-called “mess”?

I’ll give the president credit, though, for a recent Commerce Department report that ticked up GDP growth a bit past its original estimate. For that, the president can take some measure of credit.

I just find it curiously ironic that one president’s economic “mess” becomes another president’s economic “miracle.”

political news

Yep, Mitch, it’s time to ‘move on’

Mitch McConnell sounds like a man who has cried “Uncle!” in his long-running effort to toss out a law that is linked to a man he once vowed he would make a “one-term president.”

The U.S. Senate majority leader didn’t succeed in limiting former President Obama to a single term; nor did he succeed in repealing his signature piece of domestic legislation, the Affordable Care Act.

It’s time to “move on,” he said this week after the latest — and most dramatic — failure to repeal the ACA.

Yes, Mr. Leader, it is time. Sure, you now have a chance to tinker with the ACA, to improve it. The Senate’s top Republican can work with Democrats — for a change! — in finding some common ground.

But the task of legislating, which McConnell knows as well as any one in the Senate, involves lots of complicated things. It involves building and rebuilding relationships with your colleagues from the “other party.” It means you have to deal with myriad crises that crop up around the world without a moment’s notice; and brother, we have a lot of ’em, right, Mitch?

It also means that the leader also has constituents back home in Kentucky who need matters dealt with that concern only them and only their state. I am going to presume that McConnell has a Senate staff that is tasked with tending to those needs on his behalf.

The Battle of the Affordable Care Act is over, Mitch. You lost. The other side held together.

The Senate can fix what’s wrong with the ACA, keep its name, and deal forthrightly with a heaping plate of issues that need its attention.

Oh, yes. We also have that “Russia Thing” that needs our attention.

national news, political news

OK, Mitch … time to get to work — with Democrats!

Mitch McConnell isn’t going to take any advice from me, given that he likely won’t even know I’m offering it.

I’ll go to bat anyway. Here’s my advice to the U.S. Senate majority leader, who has just witnessed the collapse of the Republican-authored overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

If I were Mitch, I’d get on the phone in the next day or two. Pick up the phone, Mitch, and place a call to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

McConnell would do well to say something like this:

“Hello, Chuck? This is Mitch. OK, pal. You win. You won this fight. You held your Democratic caucus together to fend off our effort to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something we crafted all on our own. I get that we didn’t do what we should have done at the beginning, which is seek Democrats’ advice and counsel on how to replace the Affordable Care Act.

“But look, Chuck. I know how this system is supposed to work. I’ve been around the Senate a long time, as you have and I understand fully that cooperation and compromise aren’t four-letter words. Except that I’ve got that damn TEA Party wing of my caucus that keeps giving me the dickens whenever I talk to you folks.

“Hell, man, Lyndon Johnson worked the Senate like a craftsman; he played senators like fiddles. He got things done when he ran the Senate.

“So, here’s my idea. Let’s all sit down together. I want to toss out the ACA. You support it in principle. But surely you have problems with it. Those damn premiums are too high. Insurers are bailing out in some states. Patients can’t always get the docs they want to treat them.

“Why don’t we put our heads together to fix the Affordable Care Act. We can call it whatever we wish. I tried to get it tossed. It’s still the law of the land. It’s going to remain the law of the land possibly until hell freezes over. But I’m willing to work with you to fix what you and I both know — along with members of our respective caucuses — that the ACA isn’t perfect. Far from it. It needs fixing.

“Are you in?”

Chuck Schumer, having heard all of this, likely would answer:

“Welcome aboard, Mitch.”

national news

Who, what is Donald J. Trump?

A family member and I had an exchange earlier today about Donald J. Trump in which my kin sought to make a point that the president isn’t a conservative.

This family member is the real deal. He considers himself to be a true believer and that Trump is not of the same mindset as he is.

I’ll concede that point to my young relative.

The truth, as I see it, is that Trump has no ideological grounding. He entered politics seeking to shake up the world. He said he wants to “make America great again.” As I’ve watched him stumble, bumble and fumble his way through the first seven months of his presidency, I am left to wonder: What in the name of all that is holy does this guy believe? What does he stand for?

He appointed a White House communications director who used to support Barack Obama. Indeed, the president himself used to be friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton. He used to be pro-choice on abortion. The president once favored some controls on guns ownership.

He ran for president as a populist, vowing to restore American jobs. Trump then vowed to propose a trillion-dollar infrastructure improvement program. He wants to overhaul the tax code.

He has trashed our intelligence community. Trump has disparaged our nation’s most valued allies.

Through this maze of ideological confusion and nonsense, he remains the favorite son of the evangelical Christian community … even though he’s never — that I can tell — spent any significant time understanding the teachings of Jesus Christ.

His Republican Party “base” adores him because he “tells it like it is.”  Good grief, man! That’s it?

I have said until I am nearly hoarse that Donald Trump has no business being president of the United States. However, that’s what he has become.

As I continue to watch his flailing and — so far — failing administration, I am left to wonder: What in the world does this clown stand for, what are his core beliefs and what in the world is he doing to this great nation?

national news

Here is how you address a Scout Jamboree

Donald John Trump delivered a hideously inappropriate message to the Boy Scout Jamboree.

In it, the president chastised former President Obama for non-attendance at one of these events while he was in office. The president, though, was correct to say that Obama didn’t attend a Jamboree in person, but he did record a message to the 2010 event to commemorate scouting’s 100th anniversary.

You can see the former president’s remarks here.

They are totally in keeping with the tradition that presidents of the United States have followed for decades to help the Scouts celebrate their service.

That is, until this year.

national news, political news

Trump continues to disgrace his office

I simply am at a loss to understand the president of the United States.

He continues to exhibit an utter disregard for presidential decorum, such as the most recent “performance” he staged at the Boy Scout Jamboree.

Donald John Trump stood before about 40,000 Scouts and their leaders and decided to make a political speech. He denigrated his immediate predecessor, Barack H. Obama, for allegedly failing to appear at a Jamboree; he was wrong, as Obama attended the 2010 event. He tore into Hillary Rodham Clinton, who he defeated in the 2016 election. Trump excoriated Congress for failing to enact a Republican-authored health care bill.

On and on he went …

The Boy Scout Jamboree is among the last places on Earth one would expect to hear such a political diatribe. That didn’t deter this guy.

Let me point out here that Trump never became a Scout; Obama did. For him to criticize President Obama was akin to his declaring that former Vietnam War prisoner Sen. John McCain was a hero “only because he was captured; I like those who aren’t captured, OK?” Oh, yes, Trump never served in the military, while McCain flew combat missions on fighter jets during the Vietnam War.

I won’t belabor the point too much longer, but I feel the need to say that never in my entire life have I felt the utter disdain for a president of the United States that I do for the current White House resident. I cannot attach the terms “President” and “Trump” consecutively.

I say this yet again even thought I do accept that Trump was elected fairly and squarely. He won more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton and won enough of them to be elected president. I do not subscribe to the idea that the Russian meddling in 2016 was decisive; Trump likely would have won even without the Russians’ interference.

However, he continues to disgrace the office. He sickens me at many levels. I’ve lost count of the “last straw” comments he has made since becoming a full-time politician. The Boy Scout riff is just the latest. I’m sure there’ll be more.

national news

This is the guy who’ll keep the WH stories straight?

Anthony Scaramucci has a law degree and a pretty hefty financial pedigree.

Somehow, though, he got himself appointed White House communications director over the vehement objections of former press secretary Sean Spicer.

As I scanned Scaramucci’s record, I got a glimpse into what might have prompted Spicer to quit after Donald Trump installed Scaramucci as communications director.

“Mooch,” as he is known, seems to have had trouble keeping his own stories straight.

He is known to support gay marriage and strong gun-control laws, two issues that are anathema to Donald Trump’s political “base.” He once raised money for Democratic presidential candidate Barack H. Obama. Mooch backed Scott Walker and then Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican primary and then threw in with Trump’s transition after the president was elected.

He’s also said some highly critical things about Trump.

I must ask: This is the individual who is going to put the White House “on message” and seek to avoid the missteps, mistakes and misstatements that have poured out of Trump administration?

Chaos, meet confusion.

medical news, national news, political news

Take the hint, Mitch: Nation hates Trumpcare

Memo to Mitch McConnell: Give it up on trying to resurrect the Senate Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

The word now from the U.S. Senate majority leader is that he is going to reopen negotiations on the failed GOP plan. He is trying to woo Republicans who (a) oppose the legislation or (b) are straddling the fence.

McConnell could not muster up the 50 votes he needed to approve the Senate plan. GOP conservatives hate it because it too much of the ACA; GOP moderates hate it because it casts too many Americans off the rolls of the insured.

The nation’s Republican in chief, Donald Trump, is refusing to “own” the GOP caucus failure.

One final point: Public opinion polls show a 17 percent approval rating for the Republican plan.

Hey, who needs those stinkin’ polls, right, Mr. Majority Leader?

McConnell is fueled by this desire, or so it seems, to rid the law of anything with Barack H. Obama’s name on it. Recall that he said right after Obama’s election that his “No. 1 priority” was to make Obama a one-term president.

He’s now gunning for a consolation prize, which is to toss the ACA into the crapper.

Pay attention, Mr. Leader: Your plan is no better in the eyes of Americans who now have health insurance for the first time in their lives. You and your fellow Republican senators work for them — for us, sir! You need to do our bidding.