Tag Archives: Donald Trump

International news, military news, national news, political news

How can Trump deny Syrian refugees?

Donald J. Trump expressed appropriate outrage over the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against civilians — including children.

The president is right. Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. And I do support the decision to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles at military bases believed to be where the Syrians launched the chemical weapons against their fellow citizens.

However …

How does the president justify his decision to ban refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria because they happen to originate from a Muslim-majority nation?

His statement condemning the casualties inflicted on children seems to fly directly against his heartless decision to ban refugees.

How do you balance one against the other, Mr. President?

legal news

‘Shining moment’ carries baggage for McConnell

The Hill posted a story online with the headline “McConnell’s shining moment.”

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is shining because the body he runs has confirmed Neil Gorsuch to a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Pardon my anger, but the leader isn’t shining. He stands as a scoundrel, a thief who stole the seat from another judge who should have been confirmed in 2016.

McConnell is boasting that the most “consequential” decision he has made was his decision to block Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The consequence would be to block a vote on the Senate floor.

Hours after Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, McConnell made clear his intention to prevent President Obama from filling the spot on the court. Some have praised McConnell for blocking the president. I choose to condemn him.

Politics takes over

Gorsuch’s confirmation today was totally expected. The Senate voted 55-44 to approve his confirmation. He earned his court seat on the basis of a rule change that McConnell orchestrated in which the Senate abandoned its 60-vote rule to end a filibuster. I get that the majority leader was within his rights to change the rule.

What happened in 2016, though, is the much more egregious transgression. McConnell played raw politics with Obama’s nominee. The U.S. Constitution gives the president the power to fill federal judgeships. Barack Obama fulfilled his duty. The Senate also has the right to reject a nominee.

The Senate, though, should have heard from Garland. It should have weighed this man’s credentials. It should have considered his qualifications. It should have received a recommendation from the Judiciary Committee.

And it should have cast an up-down vote on whether to confirm the president’s nominee.

Thanks to the majority leader’s obstruction, none of that was allowed to occur.

And to think that Mitch McConnell has the stones to accuse Democrats of playing politics with Supreme Court picks.  This man, McConnell, has set the standard for politicizing the highest court in America.

Gorsuch’s confirmation isn’t a “shining moment.” It is permanently soiled by political poison.

business news, national news, political news

Tax returns, anyone? Anyone?

Indulge me for a moment or three.

I remain stuck on an issue that has gnawed at my gut since the moment Donald John Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his campaign for the presidency of the United States.

That’s right. Tax returns.

We haven’t seem them. We need to see them. Trump needs to produce them. We need to know a lot about this individual’s business empire and what about it — if anything — is built on Russian interests.

It’s been nearly two years since the escalator ride. Trump has said many things about those returns. He’ll release them when the Internal Revenue Service completes its audit; then he said he won’t; then his campaign flacks said he would, then they said he wouldn’t.

The IRS says audits don’t prevent release of tax returns. Trump ignores that disclaimer. He did release some single-year returns showing that he paid a lot of money in federal taxes. They showed that, yep, he’s really rich. That’s it.

For that matter, we don’t even know with absolute certainty that the IRS is even auditing the president. The IRS doesn’t comment on individual audits. That means we’re left to take Trump at his word that the audit is ongoing.

Given the liar in chief’s penchant for prevarication, are we really and truly expected to take this man’s word as gospel? I … think … not.

This clown entered the political arena in July 2015. Presidential candidates from both parties have released complete tax returns every election cycle since 1976. Four decades later, we still don’t know about the current president’s tax returns.

It’s time, Mr. President. Come clean.

national news, political news, State news

Trump and Perry: national security BFFs?

How in the world do these things happen?

Political foes say some amazingly harsh things to and about each other. Then when the fight is over, they declare a winner, all is forgiven and forgotten. It’s just politics, man. Which means that we didn’t really mean all those angry things we said to the other guy.

I just caught up with a story published in the Texas Tribune that seems to illustrate all of that quite nicely. Former longtime Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who now serves as secretary of energy in the Donald J. Trump Cabinet — is now joining the National Security Council. Perry has become one of the president’s more trusted national security advisers.

Did they cure the ‘cancer on conservatism’?

Rick Perry once challenged Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. He was one of a thundering herd of GOP hopefuls seeking to succeed President Obama.

Perry didn’t make the grade — again! But before he stepped off the stage, he did manage to launch a scathing, blistering attack on Trump, whom he called a “cancer on conservatism.” He said the cancer needed to be “excised” from the party, meaning, I suppose, that Republicans needed to do all they could to avoid nominating Trump.

Lo and behold! Trump wins the election and then selects Perry to run the DOE, which in itself is soaked in irony. You’ll recall that Perry ran for president in 2012 and during a primary debate sought to name the three federal agencies he would eliminate. He mentioned the departments of Education and Commerce, but then forgot the Energy Department, producing that infamous “oops” moment that likely will live forever.

I get that energy policy is a national security matter and that the energy secretary deserves to be included in national security discussions on the NSC.

It still does boggle my mind to see Rick Perry — of all people — elevated to this exalted place during this troubling time.

It makes me ask: Did he really mean that stuff about curing the conservative movement of its “cancer,” or was he making it all up?

How will we know when he’s speaking from the heart or whether he is merely pandering?

International news, military news

Here’s a thought: Go after Assad’s house

U.S. military forces tonight launched a few dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syrian military targets.

Donald Trump ordered the strikes in retaliation for Syrian government forces’ use of chemical weapons on civilians, killing dozens of them, including children.

It was a reprehensible act. The thought occurs to me: The strikes hit military targets, but why not zero in on where the dictator, Bashar al-Assad, hangs his hat?

It’s not unprecedented. I recall when the Persian Gulf War started in late 1990. The first weapon was a Tomahawk cruise missile launched from the USS Wisconsin, the World War II-era battleship that had been brought back into active duty. The ship’s target? Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad!

Saddam commanded the Iraqi military that had invaded Kuwait. He served two roles in Iraq: head of state and the supreme commander of the Iraqi military. President George H.W. Bush, thus, considered Saddam to be a military target.

Assad is just as ham-handed a dictator as Saddam Hussein had become. He also has a tight rein on his military forces. Therefore, he is a military — as well as a political — figure.

We should hit Syrian military targets. What the Syrian government has done is reprehensible in the extreme.

It does nothing, though, without the approval of the dictator who is in charge.

Make the dictator a target, too.

national news, political news

Make recusal permanent, Rep. Nunes

U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes has recused himself “temporarily” from the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged connection to Russian government hackers.

Fine. Let’s make the recusal permanent, shall we?

Moreover, let’s work to institute an independent investigation into the potentially grave matter and take it completely out of the hands of partisan politicians.

Nunes chaired the Intelligence panel. Then he revealed he had some knowledge of “incidental surveillance” being done on Trump campaign officials. He ventured to the White House secretly and met in private with the president.

The former chairman managed to compromise his independence completely. After all, he had served on Trump’s transition team. From where I sit, he is too close to the subject of his committee’s investigation.

The Intelligence Committee chairmanship now falls to Mike Conaway, a Texas Republican. He pledges to carry the investigation forward.

I fear that won’t be good enough.

This matter is beginning to swallow up Congress as well as the White House. Politics is threatening to get in everyone’s way while the questions continue to surround the president, his campaign staff and even his governing administration.

Did the campaign collude with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election? Did the president defame former President Obama by accusing him falsely of ordering a wiretap prior to Trump taking office?

Republicans tend to give the president a pass on all of this; Democrats are quick to convict him of all of the above.

Independence is required to produce a thorough and unbiased investigation.

Nunes’ recusal is a start toward that end. Let’s finish it by handing it over to an independent counsel.

national news

Time to lube the ‘machine,’ Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump’s “fine-tuned machine” has been misfiring almost since the jalopy rolled into the White House.

Now we hear that senior policy adviser Steven Bannon and the president’s son-in-law/adviser Jared Kushner are at each other’s throats almost daily.

Is this how a “fine-tuned machine” runs, Mr. President? Many of us out here in the peanut gallery don’t think that’s the case.

Trump pledged “best people”

The president vowed to surround himself with the “best people” ever assembled to run the government’s executive branch.

Bannon came on board after serving as editor of Breitbart News, the ultra-right wing media outlet. Kushner married well, as he is Ivanka Trump’s husband. Neither man has government experience. They’re both strong-willed, however, which might explain why they are fighting constantly.

Here’s another wrinkle.

Until this week, Bannon had a seat on the principals committee of the National Security Council. Then the president moved him off the panel.

Bannon’s been fighting with Kushner for weeks. The president loves his daughter and doesn’t want her husband injured while butting heads with Bannon.

Hmmm. Is there linkage between the bickering inside the West Wing and Bannon’s demotion from the principals committee?

Break out the lube oil, Mr. President.

legal news, national news

Sexual Assailant in Chief weighs in on O’Reilly

Donald Trump has declared to the world that Bill O’Reilly is a “good person.”

O’Reilly and Fox News Channel are fighting off allegations that the media star and his employer have engaged in sexual harassment against several women who have filed complaints.

So, what does the president of the United States think? He says O’Reilly is getting a bum rap, that he shouldn’t have settled those complaints for millions of bucks, that he should have taken the accusers to court to make them prove what they have alleged.

All this comes from someone who in 2005 was heard to say how he groped women, how he grabbed them by their private parts, how his star status enabled him to start kissing women.

To be fair, O’Reilly’s settlements with the women, along with what Fox News has shelled out, does suggest there’s fire under all this smoke.

The president of the United States, though, has a lot more important matters to ponder than whether his buddy O’Reilly is guilty of doing things to which Donald Trump has already admitted doing himself.

Stick to matters of state, Mr. Sexual Assailant in Chief.

International news

UN envoy says what Trump should say … about Russia

Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad gassed citizens, killing dozens of them.

The president of the United States condemns Assad, as he should do; then he lays the blame for the attack on the inaction of former President Barack Obama.

Then in wades the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, to say what should be said: Russia is complicit in this heinous action and must be punished.

My question: Why, oh why, cannot Donald John Trump muster the guts to speak ill of Russia in this regard?

The president continues to remain mum on Russian misbehavior. He cannot admit in public that the Russians hacked into our election system; he cannot agree that Vladimir Putin is a “killer”; he keeps wishing for a more cooperative relationship with Russia.

But, wait, Mr. President. The Russian are bankrolling Assad’s murderous regime in Syria. They are funding the dictator’s ability to obtain the murderous weapons he uses on his citizens.

Ambassador Haley speaks out

The U.N. Security Council is considering a resolution to condemn the Russians over this attack. Russia is one of the five permanent council members and has the authority to veto any such resolution. Where is the president on this one? Will he condemn the Russians if they veto a resolution that seeks to slap additional sanctions on them?

Ambassador Haley said this, according to The Hill: “Russia has shielded Assad from U.N. sanctions. If Russia has the influence in Syria that it claims it has, we need to see them use it,” Haley said at an emergency meeting of the council. “We need to see them put an end to these horrific acts. How many more children have to die before Russia cares.”

Mr. President, it’s your turn now. It’s time for you to “tell it like it is” concerning Russia.

national news, political news

Mr. Innuendo is at it again

Donald Trump, who is unafraid to toss out any innuendo imaginable, is at it again.

This time, the president says former national security adviser Susan Rice “may have” committed a crime.

His evidence? His substantiation? Oh, what the hell. He doesn’t have anything to offer. He just said it.

Rice’s so-called “crime” apparently occurred when he allegedly sought the identities of Trump campaign officials who were mentioned as possible targets of U.S. surveillance.

She served as national security adviser for President Obama. Rice has denied any involvement in this matter and has said she did not break any law.

The hits just keep coming

That won’t stop Trump, who continues to exhibit recklessness as it regards others’ reputation. All he had to say when the subject came up would have been, “I won’t comment any further on that matter until we get to the bottom of what happened. But, no-o-o-o. He had to pop off yet again.

However, he did say: “I think it’s going to be the biggest story.  It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.”

Kind of like the wiretapping ordered by Barack Obama, yes?