Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news

No, ma’am, it’s not yet ‘time to move on’

Sarah Huckabee Sanders gets paid to do the bidding of the president of the United States.

However, the deputy White House press secretary should know better than to insult Americans’ intelligence with a goofy assertion about it being “time to move on” from questions swirling about Donald Trump’s campaign and its possible link to Russian government operatives.

We’ve got a lot more ground to cover, young lady, especially in light of the president’s abrupt firing today of FBI Director James Comey.

With that, I would urge you to tell your boss — the president — something he needs to hear, but likely won’t want to hear. It is that these questions won’t blow away with the wind until he comes clean about what he knew, when he knew and who was doing it.

The “it” happens to involve questions about whether the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russian hackers seeking to swing the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. He keeps dismissing the questions out of hand. He suggests that “anyone” could have done the hacking; yet he never fingers the Russians directly.

All of these dismissals, all this obfuscation, all the maneuvering only lend credence to the suspicion in many circles that the president is trying mightily to keep information from the public — from those he now governs as head of state.

Time to move on, Sarah Sanders? Hardly.

Sanders said: “Frankly, it’s kind of getting absurd. There’s nothing there. We’ve heard that time and time again. We’ve heard that in the testimonies earlier this week. We’ve heard it for the last 11 months. There is no ‘there’ there.

“It’s time to move on and frankly it’s time to focus on the things the American people care about.”

I happen to “care about ” knowing whether the president worked with a foreign government to influence our election. I suspect I am not the only American with such concerns.

national news, political news

For starters, Mr. POTUS, please explain the timing of Comey firing

This has been a big week in the presidency of Donald J. Trump, wouldn’t you agree?

The former acting attorney general of the United States, Sally Yates, testified Monday that she warned the Trump campaign about Michael Flynn’s association with Russian government officials.

Then on Tuesday, the president decided to fire FBI Director James Comey, whose agency is in the midst of investigating questions surrounding the former national security adviser.

The firing has shocked and stunned much of Washington, D.C., and — I venture to guess — much of the rest of the nation, too.

What in the world does one make of this?

Trump’s letter to Comey discusses something about his conduct regarding the Hillary Clinton e-mail matter that erupted 11 days before the presidential election. So … he waits until today — May 8 — to pull the trigger on Comey?

I don’t know about you, but something smells badly here. It stinks. It reeks.

There’s going to be some gnashing of teeth for a few days. Then what?

Here’s what I think ought to happen. I believe it is monumentally imperative that Congress — House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans — declare the need for an independent prosecutor to continue this Trump-Russia probe. There can be no hint, not a whiff, of bias in this investigation.

Comey told a congressional committee that his office was examining questions about whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian government officials who — according to intelligence agencies’ assessment — sought to interfere with the 2016 election. Has any of it been proven? No, although the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Democrat Adam Schiff, has said there appears to be something “more than circumstantial evidence” to pin the collusion charge on the Trump campaign.

Still, the investigation must continue. Can a Trump appointee as head of the FBI be trusted fully to do what he or she must do to root out the truth? Call me a skeptic — even a cynic, if you prefer — but I have grave doubts that the president is going to nominate a truly independent FBI director.

We’re hearing words like “Nixonian” to describe what Trump has just done. President Nixon fired the independent prosecutor who was zeroing in on the White House during the Watergate scandal. As we know, it didn’t work out well for the president, who quit his office just as the House of Representatives was preparing articles of impeachment against him.

This latest matter has taken a dramatic turn for sure.

It’s timing of this dismissal that has awakened a lot of Americans.

Mr. President, you need to explain yourself. Now!

national news, political news

Yates testimony deepens Flynn-Russia mystery

No one in Washington, D.C., likely thought Sally Yates was going to clear things up when she testified today about a former national security adviser and his relationship with the Russian government.

Oh, no. The former acting U.S. attorney general deepened the questions, heightened the intrigue and quite possibly opened some more doors of inquiry into this ongoing mess within the Trump administration.

At issue is former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general who last 24 whole days as Donald Trump’s right-hand man on national security issues. The president booted him after Flynn lied to Vice President Pence about conversations he had with Russian government officials.

Yates’ testimony, though, did reveal an interesting lapse of time: It took 18 days for the president to fire Flynn after learning about the general’s deception. Why did it take so long to let him go?

Flynn’s seat gets even hotter

Yates also told U.S. senators that Flynn’s conversations with the Russians — and his lying to the vice president — likely exposed him to blackmail. She said that’s a dangerous set of circumstances surrounding someone upon whom the president must rely for national security advice.

Oh, the web of intrigue continues to grow.

Yates stayed on after Donald Trump took office; she had been appointed by President Barack Obama to serve in the Justice Department, but then the new president asked her to stay on during his initial days in office. Then he fired her.

The Hill reports: “Reporting based on leaks of U.S. surveillance revealed in February that Flynn misled Vice President Pence about the contents of a December phone call to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — an account Pence was then repeating to the American people.”

There’s also this from The Hill: “‘We weren’t the only ones that knew all of this,’ Yates said Monday, referring to the revelation that Flynn misled Pence about the true content of the phone call with Kislyak. ‘The Russians also knew about what Gen. Flynn had done. The Russians also knew that Gen. Flynn had misled the vice president and others.

“’This was a problem because not only do we believe that the Russians knew this, but that they likely had proof of this information — and that created a compromise situation, where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians,’ she said.”

Do you think this Russia-Trump story is going away any time soon? Neither do I.

The FBI is examining this relationship. And of course there’s the question about collusion and whether the Trump campaign actually cooperated with Russian hackers who sought to influence the 2016 presidential election.

I believe I’m going to stay tuned to this drama as it plays out.

International news

Texas landowners may block wall construction

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This is funny … almost.

I’m not laughing. However, the irony is too rich to ignore. As the New York Times is reporting, those closest to the nation’s southern border seem to be mounting the sternest challenge to efforts to build that big ol’ wall between the United States and Mexico.

They’re supposed to be terrified of the “flood of illegal immigrants,” right? Not exactly.

Texas appears to be at ground zero of the battle between private landowners and the federal government that seeks to build that wall.

Texas’s vast expanse of real estate is almost exclusively in private hands. Citizens own the land and they are none too willing to surrender it, no matter what the Department of Homeland Security might have to say.

Lawsuits have been filed

According to the Times, landowners have filed dozens of lawsuits against the government that wants to condemn their land to make way for the wall. Some property owners are hoping to tie this matter up so tightly that they’ll outlast the Donald J. Trump administration.

Texans have proven over many years to be not bashful at all about fighting tooth and nail to protect their land from government seizure. That well could be the fight that the president faces as he maneuvers efforts to construct the wall that he and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly say can be finished in 24 months.

Texas and Mexico share 1,254 miles of border. Most of the land on the Texas side of the Rio Grande River is privately held. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to pay “just compensation” for property it takes from citizens.

And, yes, there happens to be a lot of land west of El Paso — through New Mexico, Arizona and California — that the feds will have to take from private ownership. It won’t come cheaply.

I understand completely that the Rio Grande Valley region needs careful attention from border security officials. According to the Times: “The Rio Grande Valley is among the busiest smuggling routes on the Mexican border. Last year, Border Patrol agents seized 326,393 pounds of marijuana, second only to the agency’s Tucson sector. It also seized about 1,460 pounds of cocaine, the most of any sector. Nearly 187,000 illegal border crossers were apprehended here in 2016, the most of any Border Patrol sector.”

I see the need for greater security.

But seizing the land and building a wall? This fight is just beginning.

Oh, we can forget about Mexico paying for the wall — if it ever gets built!

medical news, national news, political news

GOP now reaping what it has sown

John Boehner was angry, man. He was furious when he took the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Republican congressman from Ohio was furious that Democrats had pushed a bill that sought to reform health care without even reading the massive piece of legislation.

He bellowed, blustered and berated his “friends” on the Democratic side of the floor for shoving this bill down the throats of their Republican colleagues.

Boehner’s anger was righteous.

The Affordable Care Act became law in 2010. Boehner would eventually become House speaker. He would file a lawsuit to get the law repealed. Speaker Boehner, though, bailed on public service after continuing to fight with the TEA Party wing of his Republican House caucus. He’d had enough.

Then the 2016 election occurred. Donald J. Trump was elected president. He promised to “repeal and replace” the ACA. This past week, the GOP-controlled House approved a bill we’ll call “Trumpcare.” It’s an alternative to the ACA. It passed by just four votes out of 430 cast in the House.

But wait! Did the GOP leadership know what was in the bill? Did they read the legislation? Did their GOP caucus members read it? Do they know all the nuts and bolts of it?

Hah! Hardly.

They’ve repeated the sin of their colleagues. Does it make their effort to “shove it down Democrats’ throats” any more palatable? Not in the least.

Instead, GOP House members are hearing loud and clear from their constituents a ringing message: The folks back home don’t like what they’ve passed and what they have foisted onto the Senate for its consideration.

Meanwhile, the president who has crowed about keeping his campaign pledge now has to persuade the Senate to follow the House’s lead. Trump, the guy with zero government experience or knowledge of how it works on Washington, D.C., is going to recieve yet another lesson in how Congress just doesn’t do the president’s bidding whenever he barks the order.

And those Republican members of the House of Representatives who voted for Trumpcare are going to get a taste of what they sought to deliver to Democrats in 2010.

Payback truly is a bitch … you know?

International news, political news

French fight back against fear

Is there a lesson to be learned from the French presidential election?

Oui!

It is that terror need not sway an informed electorate.

Moderate centrist Emmanuel Macron today became the youngest person ever elected president of France, defeating far-right extremist Marine Le Pen. It was Le Pen who sought to parlay certain elements of fright into an electoral victory. The source of that fear and loathing was the spasm of terrorist violence that has befallen France since 9/11.

France answers the call

Macron sought a different course for France. He wants to keep his country involved with the rest of Europe and the world, unlike Le Pen, who sought to retreat into a “France-first” dogma that mirrors much of what helped propel Donald J. Trump to victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Trump called for a ban on Muslims seeking to enter the United States; he wants to build that wall along our southern border; he is seeking to restrict travel of refugees fleeing several majority-Muslim countries. Why? Because he wants Americans to live in fear of further terrorist attacks.

The French know all about the horror of radical Islamic terrorism. Yet they rejected Le Pen’s platform of retreat.

And if you think about it, France’s decision to go with Macron mirrors earlier presidential elections in The Netherlands and Austria, where voters turned back isolationist presidential candidacies in favor of continued engagement.

I wrote in an earlier blog about how the paltry voter turnout in Amarillo shouldn’t be interpreted as a “mandate” for sweeping change at City Hall.

Get a load of this: Seventy-four percent of France’s registered voters turned out to give Macron a 30-percentage-point victory over Le Pen.

I would call that a mandate.

medical news

‘Trumpcare’ it will be

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Barack Obama’s critics have relished the opportunity to call his landmark health insurance overhaul legislation “Obamacare.”

I chose a while ago to forgo that term, preferring to call it by its official name: the Affordable Care Act. Any reference to the “Obamacare” would acknowledge that’s the term others have hung on it. The former president himself eventually would refer to the ACA by the term used by his critics.

Obama no longer is in office. Donald J. Trump is now the president. Trump has pushed another piece of legislation. It is called the American Health Care Act.

In the spirit of those who were so highly critical of the president’s predecessor, I am now preferring to refer to the AHCA as “Trumpcare.”

Hey, I am as critical of the current president as Barack H. Obama’s critics were of him. My loathing for Donald J. Trump entitles me, therefore, to refer to his version of health care overhaul as Trumpcare.

media news, medical news, national news

Trump assails media yet again

Why is it that the Fake News rarely reports Ocare is on its last legs and that insurance companies are fleeing for their lives? It’s dead!

That, dear reader, is one of Donald J. Trump’s latest tweets in a Twitter tirade he launched late today against the national news media.

I find it fascinating.

The president accuses the media of failing to report that the Affordable Care Act is collapsing.

Excuse me, Mr. President?

Trump and his allies keep saying it. The media keep reporting it. It’s no longer a novel notion.

I happen to disagree with the president’s assertion about the ACA. Isn’t that fair enough? He’s entitled to his opinion, while others are entitled to theirs — even if they are at odds with what the president says or believes.

The road ahead for the bill that the House approved to replace the ACA remains full of land mines. The U.S. Senate isn’t likely to adopt the House’s version of health care overhaul.

The media’s job is to report the progress of that journey regardless of whether it’s positive news or negative news for the Trump administration.

You can bet your last nickel, though, that the media are reporting precisely what the president is saying, which includes pronouncements about the future of the Affordable Care Act.

business news

This a ‘disaster,’ Mr. President?

The job numbers came in this morning — and they look pretty darn good.

The U.S. Labor Department reported today that the economy added 211,000 non-farm jobs to payrolls in April and the unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent.

The boost in jobs was considerably greater than analysts had predicted. The jobless rate has inched a bit closer to what one might consider to be “full employment” in the United States.

Donald J. Trump used to disparage the Labor Department figures as phony, bogus, cooked up, fake. That, of course, was during the Obama administration. The president doesn’t say those things now that he’s on the job.

Hey, I’ll give the president credit for presiding over this sparkling jobs report. Let there be many more of them.

I do have one question: A little more than three months into your presidency, is this the economic “disaster” and the “mess” you have said repeatedly you inherited from Barack Obama?

military news

Another Army nominee hits the road … what gives?

The United States is chock full of qualified individuals capable of administering the U.S. Department of the Army.

But now we’ve just witnessed the departure of the second consecutive nominee to become the Army secretary. Why is it so damn hard for Donald Trump to fill this post?

The first fellow to pull out, billionaire Vincent Viola, cited his myriad business dealings, that they were too complicated to unravel. He hit the road.

Now we learn that Mark Green, the president’s second Army secretary nominee, has pulled out because of his rather weird statements regarding transgender Americans and whether public school students are being “indoctrinated” by Islamic influences.

Good grief, dude.

According to The Hill newspaper: “He’s said that ‘transgender is a disease’ and agreed with a questioner who said ‘we need to take a stand on the indoctrination of Islam in our public schools,’ among other controversial statements.”

Green was a Tennessee state senator when he popped off about transgender individuals and Islam.

A person’s sexual orientation is no “disease.” It is part of an individual’s persona. Is there some virus that is infecting individuals with transgenderism? As for a so-called “indoctrination of Islam” in our public schools, someone will have to demonstrate to me where and how that’s occurring anywhere.

Green said he is being attacked because of his “Christian beliefs.” Please. The man’s faith has nothing to do with it! At issue is the belief that this man seems to exhibit a strong vein of intolerance.

Back to my initial point.

This country has many capable administrators who have not expressed themselves in a manner that gets them in such trouble.

Where are they?