Tag Archives: 2016 election

national news, political news

Historians have huge task ahead with this election

Is it too early to wonder aloud about how historians are going to chronicle the major story of 2016?

I don’t think so.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since the TV networks declared that Donald J. Trump — the former reality TV celebrity, billionaire, serial philanderer, beauty pageant owner — had just been elected president of the United States of America.

The world is full of historians who’ve made names for themselves telling us about the political exploits of previous presidents. The history lessons they’ve provided about our nation’s political leaders have been steeped in fairly traditional themes: lower-level political offices, business success, inherited wealth, abiding political philosophies.

Trump’s story tracks along vastly different lines.

He has zero public service experience; he violated virtually rule of standard political decorum; he had never sought public office; he lied through his teeth almost daily; he admitted to doing terrible things to women; he denigrated a war hero; he criticized a Gold Star family; he mocked a reporter with a serious physical disability.

However, he won! He was elected president without ever telling us precisely how he intends to bring jobs back, how he intends to destroy our enemies abroad, how he plans to pay for a mammoth infrastructure improvement plan.

Trump defeated a candidate who virtually every single political observer in America believed would win in a walk. He was outspent and out-organized … or so we all thought!

Historians will be scratching their heads. They’ll have to crack their knuckles and get their fingers limbered up as they prepare to write their first, second and third drafts of history.

The most puzzling element of this history-writing endeavor might be in determining how Trump managed to whip up anger among Americans who live in a country that is demonstrably better off than when the current president, Barack Hussein Obama, took office in January 2009.

Moreover, President Obama then sought to put his relatively high standing among Americans to the advantage of his preferred candidate — fellow Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. He campaigned hard to Hillary; Michelle Obama delivered stunning speeches in support of Clinton while providing blistering critiques of Trump’s admitted misbehavior with women.

None of it mattered. None of it stuck. It didn’t gain traction.

I do not envy the task that awaits historians.

Good luck to you all. Many of us out here will be awaiting your conclusions.

national news, political news

It’s not a ‘landslide,’ Donald … really

trump_donald_getty_1

May I call you “Donald”?

My head is about to explode as I listen to the president-elect refer to his victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton as a “historic landslide.”

Historic? Yes. Surely. No one saw this victory coming. No one predicted that Donald J. Trump would win this election, that he would become commander in chief of the world’s greatest military complex. No one predicted this showman/reality TV celebrity/real estate mogul/serial philanderer/admitted groper of women would actually get the keys to the White House.

It’s historic, man.

Landslide? Nope. Not even close to one.

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/311115-trump-touts-historic-electoral-college-victory

He is trailing Clinton by 2.8 million votes. He won enough electoral votes to become elected. He finished with 304 of them; Clinton’s total ends at 227. Interestingly, Clinton lost more “faithless electors” than Trump when the Electoral College cast its vote on Monday; that, too, is “historic.”

Trump cannot possibly actually believe he won in a landslide. He has seen the numbers. He must know about the nation’s great divide.

He keeps spouting this nonsense. I guess we just need to get used to it. There’ll be much more to come.

national news, political news

Enough of the excuses … Hillary lost!

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I am growing weary of the constant blame-gaming that’s going on among those who wanted Hillary Rodham Clinton to become president of the United States.

By all means, I preferred her over the candidate who won. I’ve already stipulated as much — many times! — on this blog.

She didn’t win. She lost. Hillary was thought to be the prohibitive favorite to become the next president. She didn’t get there.

And yet, we keep hearing that FBI James Comey’s 11th-hour letter to Congress about those pesky e-mails doomed Clinton’s campaign. Now we hear that the Russian hackers might have tilted the election in Donald J. Trump’s favor.

On the first matter, there’s nothing anyone can prove about Comey’s last-minute intervention. On the second matter, there ought to be a special commission convened — independent of Congress — to examine what the Russkies did, how they did it and recommend ways to protect us from future hackers. Hey, we convened such a commission after the 9/11 attacks.

Former President Bill Clinton, one of New York’s presidential electors, chimed in today about Comey and the Russians.

A lot of things went wrong with the former president’s wife’s campaign. If anyone needs to take the hickey on this stunning loss, it ought to be folks such as Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook.

Hillary Clinton should have put herself miles ahead of Trump by the time Comey’s letter came out. She fell short.

Who gets the blame? Hillary Clinton and her team need to look inward.

national news

Still waiting to turn the corner on the new president

1 Comment

I believe I need counseling.

Here’s my dilemma. I have declared my willingness to “accept” that Donald J. Trump has been elected president of the United States. I can count electoral votes as well as the next guy; Trump got more than enough of them to win. He’s likely to sew up the victory today as the Electoral College votes for president.

However — and this is where the dilemma gets really serious, in my view — I cannot yet write the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively. (Take note that I have just avoided doing so.)

I intend to comment frequently on the new president. I’ll be watching him closely. I won’t be alone, quite obviously. I cannot speak for others bloggers/writers/commentators out there. I only can speak for myself.

It has become something of an obstacle for me to refer to the 45th president the way I have been used to referring to every single one of his predecessors. I routinely type the words “President Obama,” or “President (George W. or George H.W.) Bush,” or “President Clinton,” or “President Reagan” and so forth. I didn’t vote for all of those men to whom I refer in that fashion.

This new guy who will take office on Jan. 20? That’s somehow different. I cannot quite get to the root of it.

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Perhaps it is Trump’s singularly repulsive temperament. It might well be the endless litany of insults he hurled along the way to winning the highest office in the land. Maybe it’s the way he denigrated so many individuals and groups of people. It well could be the notion that he has presented himself — brazenly — as the smartest man ever to inhabit Planet Earth.

I’ll be careful in the future always to refer to Trump as the president. I accept the outcome of the election. However, my instinct — or perhaps it’s the latent childishness that I cannot let go — instructs me to avoid attaching the man’s title directly to his last name.

I cannot go there. I might not ever get there.

Help!

International news, Uncategorized

POTUS planning to take final shot at Russians

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Donald J. Trump doesn’t believe the findings of the CIA and other intelligence officials that Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election.

I’ll presume, therefore, that he won’t take any action against them.

But here’s the thing, dear reader: We have a president on duty who does believe the CIA analysis, who has expressed outrage at the idea of foreign intervention in our electoral process — and who has vowed that he will act “in our own time” to retaliate against the hacking nation.

President Obama is in office until Jan. 20. It is sounding increasingly likely that he’ll do something to punish the Russians for what the CIA and others have said they’ve done. The specifics of what they did remain unclear, but the president’s longtime adversary, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, also appears complicit in what has transpired.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-says-%E2%80%98we-will%E2%80%99-retaliate-against-russia-for-election-hacking/ar-AAlCY8m?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

My guess would be that Obama will act in ways that might be difficult to undo. Trade sanctions? Diplomatic pressure? Retaliatory hacking of Russian cyber activity?

Obama said on National Public Radio this morning that some of the options being considered would be public and would be reported; other options might be done in secret. That’s the beauty — if you want to call it such — of being in charge of a vast intelligence network that can do these things undercover, out of sight.

The Russians need to know that what they did cannot be tolerated by any government, let alone by the United States of America.

If the new president is going to dismiss the fact-based information gathered by the CIA, then it falls on the current president to act while he still has the stroke to do so.

Go for it, Mr. President!

entertainment news

Goodbye and good riddance, 2016

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We’re still about two weeks from the end of a truly crappy year.

Not for me personally, mind you. My health remains good, as does my wife’s health. We’re spending more time on the road in our recreational vehicle and having a blast every mile we’ve traveled. Our family is doing well, too. We’ve got some big changes in store for the coming year. You’ll be hearing about them as they develop.

No, this year sucks out loud because of the deaths that have occurred. I hope I’m not getting ahead of myself by taking note this far in advance of the end of the year. It’s been a tough time for iconic figures. For instance, we lost:

David Bowie, the genius British musician, songwriter, actor and trailblazing artist, died of cancer. Iggy Stardust is no longer with us. I knew he had cancer, but like a lot of his fans, I was unaware that his time had run out.

Prince died at his suburban Minneapolis mansion. Talk about a genius. Wow! Have you seen that tremendous guitar riff he did during the 2002 concert memorializing the late Beatle George Harrison? He also left behind a vault full of hundreds of unpublished songs.

Muhammad Ali bid us farewell. This one hurt terribly. The three-time heavyweight boxing champion was far more than a warrior in the ring. He was a champion for the causes in which he believed. He fought for civil rights, against the Vietnam War (which cost  him his title) and for justice. Oh, and he was the most beautiful fighter any of us ever had seen. He fought with power and blazing speed and grace.

Arnold Palmer is gone, too. They called him The King of Golf. His majesty, indeed, brought golf into the television age. He was a man’s man. He played great — and exciting — golf. He was a middle-class guy who won — and lost — in unconventional ways. Fellow golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez once said it well: “Every golfer today owes everything to  Arnold Palmer.”

John Glenn was 95 when he died just recently. He was a former U.S. senator, a Marine fighter pilot and an astronaut. Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth, on Feb. 20, 1962. He returned to space 36 years later to become the oldest man, at age 77, to ever fly in space; he took his place in the space shuttle Discovery, which lifted off the launch pad carrying “six astronaut heroes and one American legend.”

I cannot recall a single year producing this level of national and international mourning.

Oh, and we had that presidential campaign, too. It didn’t turn out the way many of us wanted. We’ll persevere, I’m sure.

So long, 2016, and good riddance! You really sucked all year long.

International news

Russia story may never go away

aala31c

CIA officials keep putting the heat on Donald J. Trump and his friends in Russia.

They now are asserting that Russian computer hackers actually did try to get Trump elected president of the United States.

What I am not yet clear about, though, is what precisely did the Russians do. How precisely did they seek to do what CIA spooks are alleging?

I happen to believe the broad outlines of what the CIA is asserting. I believe the reports that Russia tried to get their hands into our electoral process. It’s not a figment of Democrats’ imagination, as Trump says in response. It’s not the media, either, that are fomenting a lie, as Trump and his team also seem to imply.

This story is growing more legs than a centipede.

Furthermore, I am having even more trouble with Trump’s continual rebuff of what the career spooks at the CIA are saying. He’ll need these individuals, these intelligence teams, once he becomes president. They will be providing him mountains of intelligence daily — or however often Trump chooses to receive it.

When trouble erupts around the world — and it will, no doubt — the president needs the analysis.

It’s fair to wonder how this relationship between the White House and the intelligence network is going to work if the president keeps denigrating the work of the pros who toil day and night compiling information about our international adversaries.

I continue to believe the president-elect needs to get on board with the concerns being expressed and stop saying up front these concerns lack veracity.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-officials-putin-personally-involved-in-us-election-hack/ar-AAlzZQI?li=BBnb7Kz

The CIA says Russian President Vladimir Putin himself got involved. This happens to be someone who has praised Trump and who has received reciprocal praise from the president-elect. Putin also ran the KGB during the Soviet era; if you haven’t heard, the KGB was a ruthless spy organization.

Thus, this story continues to spread. It’s making me quite nervous.

International news, national news, political news

Waiting to hear what Russians actually did

trump

I don’t understand a lot of things.

One of them involves the Russian effort to “influence” the 2016 presidential election, allegedly to grease it for Donald J. Trump to become the next president.

We’re hearing a whole lot of chatter about the CIA’s findings that apparently conclude that Russia did use cyber tactics to meddle in the U.S. electoral process.

But …

What did the Russians do? What precisely did they do, using their computer systems to hack into relevant computer platforms in the United States to tilt the election in Trump’s favor? How does this sort of hacking actually work?

http://time.com/4597416/transcript-donald-trump-fox-interview/?xid=homepage

We keep hearing about “classified information” that’s been shared with pertinent members of Congress. One of them, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said this morning he couldn’t divulge what he knows. All he would say was that the CIA has made a determination that the Russians did something to seek to influence the election outcome.

A lot of Americans are interested to know what the Russians — or whoever — did. It is my sincere hope that we can learn at least a snippet of what the CIA says it knows.

The danger, of course, is whether releasing too much information to the public could jeopardize our own country’s ability to retaliate against the meddling nation or to protect us from future cyber-crime attempts. I get all that.

The media, though, keep nibbling around the edges of what the Russians supposedly sought to do.

As a consumer of this information, I am awaiting some explanation of what precisely was done, by whom — and to what end.

national news, political news

Trump’s ‘thank you tour’ needs some diversity

trump_thankyoutour

Donald J. Trump proclaimed on Election Night his intention to be the president for “all Americans.”

He said so while he was declaring victory after being elected president of the United States. Trump said he intends to bind the deep political wounds that divided Americans.

Wise words. A wise message. Was it heartfelt? Was it sincere?

Consider this: The president-elect has embarked on a tour of locations where he was victorious over Hillary Rodham Clinton. He’s been to Wisconsin, to Iowa, to Ohio, to Pennsylvania. Today he was in Louisiana. He’s going to Florida.

Trump won all those states. He has spoken to cheering crowds. He has soaked up the love flowing from the cheering audiences.

However, I am wondering along with some other observers why he hasn’t scheduled any appearances in, say, California, or New York (his home state, by the way), or Illinois, or Minnesota. Those states all were won by Clinton.

Were the votes cast in those states for the former secretary of state unanimous? Of course not! It would seem that the next president could muster enough of a crowd at any location in any of the states that Hillary won to offer a word of thanks for those who did support him.

Imagine for just a moment what the reaction would be if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency and visited only those states where she had won and ignored those that went for her opponent.

I get that those would merely be symbolic steps. However, symbolism matters at times. It sends important messages.

This could be one of those times when the president-elect, still aglow from his stunning victory, tells Americans living in those states where most voters opposed him that, by golly, he’s their president, too.

national news, political news

Needing help accepting this outcome … fully

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A friend of mine has acknowledged a greater-than-normal disappointment in the presidential election result.

He said he’s having trouble accepting that Donald J. Trump is now the president-elect of the United States of America.

I am now going to admit the same thing.

Just as my friend said, I’ve voted for losing presidential candidates many times over the years. I’ve voted in 12 presidential elections, dating back to 1972. My record as of Nov. 8 is now 5-7 … that’s five winners and seven losers.

I know how it feels to be on the losing side.

This one is different than all the rest of them. It’s even different from my first vote, when Sen. George McGovern got smashed to smithereens in a 49-state blowout to President Nixon. I was young, full of piddle and vinegar, just home from service in the Army, newly married and I worked my butt off in my hometown to elect a good and decent man to the presidency.

It’s not that I believe Trump was inferior to his chief opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s deeper than that. He’s patently unfit for the office. I will maintain that belief more than likely for the entire time he serves as president.

That could change. Trump could prove me wrong. He could turn out to be a quick study. He could muster some semblance of the decorum needed to serve as head of state and the leader of our government. Trump could actually grasp the concept of limited presidential power and he could accede to the will of another co-equal branch of government, the one on Capitol Hill, aka Congress.

I cannot get past the notion, though, that he’s going to try to run roughshod over the system. That he’s going to do some incredibly stupid things, issue some incompetent — or unlawful — orders.

I want none of that to happen. I want the new president to succeed. In some perverse way, I’m actually pulling for him. I know that sounds like a huge contradiction, given what I’ve written already in this post, along with what I’ve stated in countless previous posts on this blog.

It’s not. I have declared already that I do not subscribe to the hope that he will fail. Presidential failure means failure for the entire country. I will not forsake my citizenship; I won’t move to another nation. I will stay put and speak out whenever I feel like it. I’ll praise the good things Trump does and will criticize the bad.

So help me, I cannot yet come to grips with the notion that this guy — the former reality TV celebrity, the hotel mogul, the guy who admits to cheating on his wives, who acknowledges seeking to impose his sexual will on women, who mocked a physically disabled reporter, denigrated Gold Star parents and flung insults at opponents — is about to become the 45th president of the United States.

It’s not like the previous times I’ve voted for the losing candidate. Yes, I know Trump won the election fair and square. I accept the fact that he won the required number of electoral votes. And yes … he will be my president.

I’m just having trouble moving forward and putting the result behind me.

Do I need an intervention?