Tag Archives: Donald Trump

national news, political news

Here’s why Hillary lost

Hillary Clinton has blamed a lot of factors on her shocking defeat during the 2016 presidential election.

FBI Director James Comey’s 11th-hour letter to Congress about those “damn e-mails”; WikiLeaks dumps of more e-mail material; Russian hacking … and yes, her own missteps.

I only can surmise that one of those self-inflicted wounds occurred when Clinton failed to visit Wisconsin, one of the key “battleground states” that went for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election. She also paid precious little attention to Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all of which also swung in Trump’s favor. She wasted a lot of time by taking those states for granted in the closing days and weeks of a campaign she thought was in the bag.

Had she and her campaign devoted the energy she needed to fire up her base on those states, none of the other matters would have amounted to anything.

She didn’t. She blew it. Her campaign disserved her.

Democrats have concluded as much in assessing where this election went south.

Now it’s time to look ahead. Democrats have a mid-term election next year on which to concentrate. After that, in 2020, they have another shot at the White House.

I will stand by my an earlier assertion that Democrats need to find a freshly scrubbed, unknown political star to carry their standard forward. I believe there’s something to be said about “Clinton fatigue.” Her best chance at grasping the big prize stood before her this past year, but she let it slip away.

Who would that new political star be? I have no idea. I haven’t heard his or her name yet.

Get busy, Democrats,

medical news, national news, political news

Why not repair ACA instead of repealing it?

Barack H. Obama used to say it all the time: If Republicans have any improvements they want to make to the Affordable Care Act, I am willing to work it with them.

The Democratic president was open to tinkering with the ACA. He said he was keeping an open mind on ways to improve his signature piece of domestic legislation.

Then his time as president expired. His successor, Donald J. Trump, had vowed to “repeal and replace” the ACA starting with Day One of his presidency. He has labeled the ACA a “disaster.”

But the president can’t seem to bring himself to persuade his fellow Republicans in Congress to do as his predecessor has suggested regarding improving the ACA. They have dug in hard in their effort to repeal and replace the ACA. Trump has joined them. They now are left to fighting among themselves over the best way to replace the ACA.

The ACA is not the “disaster” that Trump has asserted about it. The law has provided health insurance for more than 20 million Americans who couldn’t afford it.

I am willing to concede that the ACA isn’t perfect. However, it is the law of the land. Why in the world can’t the GOP pick the law apart, huddle with Democrats, agree on what’s working and then seek to reform the elements of the ACA that aren’t working?

Oh, no. They cannot go there. The intention among the GOP leadership is to throw out every vestige of the ACA because, I’m going to presume, it has President Obama’s imprimatur. The Republican congressional caucus had declared its intention to make Obama “a one-term president,” and the ACA — approved in 2010 — simply had to go.

Tinkering and mending this law doesn’t constitute an unprecedented solution. Congress did as much with Medicare in the 1960s and with Social Security in the 1930s.

They managed — somehow — to improve those other two pieces of landmark legislation.

What about the here and now?

national news, political news

Hillary takes the blame — and places it elsewhere, too

Let’s stipulate something right up front: Political historians and journalists have a monumental task on their hands trying to assess and analyze the mind-boggling results of the 2016 presidential election.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the candidate who lost the election to Donald John Trump, did not make their jobs any easier when offering her own view of how she snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Clinton spoke during a Women for Women conference in New York City.

Clinton took responsibility for the errors she made. She has determined that she ran a flawed campaign. She also said FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress revealing that he was taking a fresh look at the e-mail controversy played a part; so did the release of data from WikiLeaks, which raised questions among undecided voters about Clinton’s candidacy.

“It wasn’t a perfect campaign — there is no such thing — but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off,” Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

She also blamed a latent misogyny among voters who just couldn’t vote for a woman to become president of the United States.

Was it Comey? The WikiLeaks release? Misogyny? Campaign incompetence?

All of the above.

Hillary did note something that continues to rumble in the president’s craw, which is that she did win nearly 3 million more popular votes than Trump. She just was unable to win in those Rust Belt states that had voted twice for Barack H. Obama.

I’ll just add as well that pollsters took a lot of heat in the immediate aftermath of the election. But get a load of this: The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows that Hillary won the popular vote by a bit more than 2 percentage points, which is just about where the RCP pre-election poll average had pegged it.

What we have here is a perfect storm of circumstances that produced the most shocking U.S. political upset of, oh, the past 100 years.

Good luck, political historians, as you sort all of this out.

International news

Don’t meet with the dictator, Mr. President

Donald J. Trump seems to have a fascination with ham-fisted dictators. He relishes praise that comes from the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and says he’d be “honored” to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “under the right circumstances.”

Let’s set aside the Putin “bromance.” Kim Jong Un doesn’t deserve the attention of the president of the United States.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has counseled the president to avoid any temptation to sit across a negotiating table with Kim Jong Un. I believe Albright is correct.

North Koreans are starving while Kim Jong Un is squandering resources to build his military machine. Albright said it is wrong in the extreme for the U.S. president to talk to this guy, who’s also threatening potential nuclear attacks on South Korea and possibly Japan.

Trump already has referred to Kim as a “smart cookie,” which isn’t exactly the kind of description a president would apply to the leader of a nation that is still technically at war with his neighbor to the south; North and South Korea, you see, never agreed to a peace treaty when the shooting stopped during the Korean War, a conflict that cost more than 40,000 U.S. lives.

“Smart cookie,” my backside.

As for the “honor” the president would feel if he could meet with Kim under the correct circumstance … don’t go there, Mr. President.

Trump has boasted about his ability to make “great deals” as he seeks to meld his business acumen with his conduct of foreign and domestic public policy. Thus, Trump reckons that he can talk Kim Jong Un into a more reasonable posture in East Asia.

The president’s record of non-achievement — just a little more than 100 days into his presidency — suggests to me that he needs to rethink that particular talking point.

national news, political news

How do you define a ‘good’ government shutdown?

Donald J. Trump is wearing me out.

He keeps saying outrageous things, forcing bloggers and other commentators such as yours truly to figure what the hell the president is trying to convey.

Get a load of this one, the latest bit of crap-ola to fly out of Trump’s mouth: He now says the government can use a “good shutdown” in September when the money to fund it runs out.

Has there ever been another president of the United States who has uttered such abject nonsense? Umm, let me think. No. There hasn’t.

Trump frustration grows

As The Hill reports, it appears the president has grown frustrated with Congress, which has approved a funding measure that keeps the government operating, but includes zero money for that “big, beautiful wall” Trump wants built along our southern border with Mexico.

According to The Hill: “Democrats have argued that they won most of the battles surrounding the bill, and several media accounts have suggested that Trump and the White House were losers in the negotiations.

“A New York Times headline on the deal said: ‘Winners and Losers of the Spending Deal (Spoiler Alert: Trump Lost).'”

With the president, it’s all about winning and losing. He wants money to build that damn wall because it would constitute a “win” for him and his White House team.

As for the government shutdown idea, that’s pure idiocy. Then again, if Trump had any knowledge or experience with government — or perhaps any sense of the good that government can do for those who need assistance — he wouldn’t have made such a ridiculous statement, which he made via Twitter.

House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the president’s rant. “The president’s tweet was that we might need a shutdown at some point to drive home that this place — that Washington needs to be fixed,” Ryan said. “I think that’s a defensible position, one we’ll deal with in September.”

Shutting down the government can “fix” Washington? Oh, here’s an idea: Why doesn’t the president summon congressional leaders of both parties to the White House and start talking to all of them about constructive solutions?

That would fix Washington … wouldn’t it? It also would keep the government running and serving those Americans who need help.

national news, political news

More celebrities set to run for POTUS? Oh, please

Donald John Trump’s election as president of the United States was unprecedented at many levels.

He had never held public office; he was a TV celebrity and real estate mogul who slapped his name on seemingly every high-rise being built in the past two decades; he’s been married three times and has bragged about his infidelities.

But he’s the man. Now we hear plenty of chatter out here in the peanut gallery about other first-time pols — who also happen to be celebrities — pondering whether they want to run for the presidency.

Spare me! Spare the country! Please say we aren’t about to get more of this ridiculousness.

Kanye West has said something about running in 2020.

Oprah Winfrey has been mentioned as a possibility. Oprah? She’s far more preferable than Kanye “Kim K’s Husband” West … but, really?

Oh, how about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook? This youngster isn’t even old enough to run for the office  — but he will be by the time 2020 rolls around. He, too, has gotten a mention by some of the TV talking heads.

I’m a bit old-fashioned in this regard. I happen to think experience with government and politics is a valuable commodity on which to run for the highest office in the land. I also like the notion of politicians having a record of public service to reveal to the public whose votes they would be seeking.

Trump didn’t bring any of that to the 2016 presidential campaign. I guess he was blessed to be running against Hillary Rodham Clinton who, it turns out, became a terrible candidate. The irony in all of this is that the “smart money” thought the tables would have been turned, that Hillary had been “blessed” with getting to run against someone so patently unqualified and unfit for the office that he ended up winning.

Who knew?

Trump is now the president and his presence on the world stage is creating a bit of buzz out in the land of other celebrities with no qualifications for the presidency; they, too might decide to become candidates.

Say it ain’t so. Someone. Please.

national news, political news

POTUS admits it: He is without principles

Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, made what sounded — to my ears at least — like a confirmation over the weekend of what many of his critics have been saying since he began running for the office to which he was elected.

He seems to have acknowledged that he doesn’t have any principles. He lacks any core beliefs for which he would stand and fight.

When pressed by CBS News’s John Dickerson on “Face the Nation,” Trump blurted out that “I don’t stand by anything.”

Well. There you go.

Dickerson sought to press the president on the unfounded allegation he leveled that President Barack Obama wiretapped his campaign office. Trump declined to answer — and then he ended the interview.

The president’s remarkable acknowledgment came amid a flurry of media interviews that included untold numbers of bizarre assertions that demonstrated a number of qualities about this man: He knows next to nothing about U.S. history, about the government over which he presides and about the world through which he must navigate.

I keep coming back to the “I don’t stand by anything” statement.

Oh, man. That speaks volumes to me. What it means, I believe, is that anything that flies out of his mouth is fair game in the moment. It means that we have an unprincipled carnival barker sitting behind that big Oval Office desk and in the Situation Room. He is making decisions based on whatever someone tells him in real time and that he will not stand for anyone seeking to hold him accountable for anything he has said previously.

Hillary won the popular vote because of illegal ballots? Obama wiretapped his campaign office? Kim Jong Un is a “smart cookie”? John McCain is a war hero only “because he was captured”? Barack Obama is an illegal alien who wasn’t qualified to run for president? The media are “the enemy of the American people”?

Does he believe this horse manure? Or does he just say it because he has this insatiable desire to stir things up?

Donald Trump has just settled a serious talking point at only the 102nd day as president. He has just admitted that he is an unprincipled charlatan.

I won’t say “I told you so.” Oh, wait! I just did!

national news

Yes, there really are dumb questions

Let’s all flash back for a moment, to a time when we all sat at our school desks. We would be perhaps reluctant to ask our teacher a question, thinking it’s a dumb query. Your teacher would say, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question.”

Well, I think I we’ve heard one. It comes — believe it or not — from the president of the United States of America.

In an interview, Donald J. Trump said this: “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

Let me take a stab at it, Mr. President.

The Civil War was fought because several states in the South seceded from the Union; they didn’t like the federal government telling them that they had to follow federal law. The governors of those states hued to the notion that “states’ rights” superseded federal law — and those states had the “right” to sanction slavery, to keep human beings in bondage, for slave owners to possess other human beings the way they possessed, say, farm animals or equipment. President Lincoln sought a compromise by allowing slavery in certain states, but would not allow any expansion of slave-holding states. Southern states resisted that restriction and then began to secede, forming the Confederate States of America.

In April 1861, Confederate gunners opened fire on the Union garrison stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., harbor.

The war began. When it ended in 1865, more than 600,000 Americans died on battlefields; it was the costliest war in terms of lives lost in U.S. history.

Why the Civil War?

Could they have worked it out? Could the states of the north and south reached some sort of common ground?

Hey, this is just me, but I doubt it.

The president would do well to crack a few books on the subject of the Civil War. He would learn a great deal about a defining chapter in the history of the nation he now governs.

national news

Does the POTUS know anything … about anything?

If you strip away Donald John Trump’s obvious knowledge of cultivating a massive business empire, you might be left to wonder as I am wondering: Does the president know a single thing about the history of the nation he now governs?

He was interviewed by SiriusXMPolitics and said this about the Civil War, according to the New York Daily News:

“Had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” Trump told SiriusXMPolitics about the seventh President, who left office 24 years before, and died 16 years before, the onset of the American Civil War.

“He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart, and he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War,” Trump said.

“He said, there’s no reason for this. People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question,” Trump continued. “But why was there the Civil War. Why would that one not have been worked out?”

Let’s set aside, first of all, the mangled syntax that poured out of Trump’s mouth. I’ll merely not that this man cannot speak in coherent, complete sentences. For example: “He said, there’s no reason for this. People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question,” Trump continued. “But why was there the Civil War. Why would that one not have been worked out?”

Then he utters absolute nonsense about one of the nation’s more colorful and well-known presidents.

Could Old Hickory have prevented the Civil War? Well, maybe … if he had lived long enough to renounce slavery and free the human beings he held in bondage.

This is what we have now: a know-nothing president.

Or is this what his supporters mean when they say the president “tells it like it is”?

International news, national news, political news

Border security, yes; the wall, no!

Well now, that wasn’t so hard, was it Congress?

Federal lawmakers have approved a stop-gap budget bill that keeps the government operating through September. They have avoided a federal government shutdown that some in Congress — and the White House — had feared might occur at the end of this week.

Here’s the thing, too: The budget contains zero money for a “big, beautiful” wall along our nation’s southern border, which Donald Trump had insisted be included … that is, until he backed down and withdrew his demand.

The bill allocates $1.5 billion for enhanced border security. Hey, that’s not a bad load of dough to protect our borders against illegal immigrants and assorted criminals and, yes, potential terrorists. More Border Patrol agents and better surveillance equipment can go a long way toward making us more secure along both of our lengthy land borders.

It also sets aside $15 billion in defense spending to fight terrorism, with $2.5 million of it contingent on the president developing a strategy to fight the Islamic State. I like that idea, too.

Let’s get busy with longer term deal

Congress isn’t done. Not by a long shot. How about lawmakers hunkering down immediately to start working on a longer-term arrangement that keeps the government functioning well past the next deadline?

Believe it or not, September will be upon us before any of us knows it. Congress, though, likely will spend the bulk of the summer spread out on recess. Members will go home, or perhaps travel on those infamous “fact-finding” junkets to exotic locations in the South Pacific, South America or the south of France.

But I’m heartened to know that the wall gets no taxpayer money, given that the president’s efforts to get Mexico to pay for it have fallen flat.