Tag Archives: Washington Post

national news, political news

Debate prep matters … it really does!

trumpclintonill927

Donald J. Trump blew it in that first joint appearance with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

No doubt about it.

Now he’s got to ready for the next one. Will he do what he needs to do or will he follow his misdirected instincts and do what he seems to always do: ignore the best advice he can get?

Dan Balz, a veteran political columnist for the Washington Post, seems to think he’ll do the latter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/will-trump-shift-gears-in-time-for-the-next-debate/2016/10/01/92ac526c-87e7-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html

Lessons learned from the first debacle seem to have gone unheeded by Trump, according to Balz. Contrast that with what happened when Barack Obama fell asleep during his first debate in 2012 with Mitt Romney. He thought initially he did well; then his staff told him otherwise. Obama listened, then got ready for the next one.

Trump, according to Balz, instead is relying on “Internet polls” that have told him he did just fine during that first encounter.

Keep thinking it, Trump.

This “unconventional” campaign of his worked well in securing the Republican presidential nomination. That’s because the base of his party was willing and ready to accept someone wholly unqualified, unfit and unprepared for the office he is seeking.

The rest of us know better.

national news, political news

Trump’s unfitness on full display … in front of us all

clinton-and-trump

I watched Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump duke it out last night … and then went to bed.

I slept well and awoke this morning fairly refreshed for the new day — and comfortable in the belief that Trump never will be elected president of the United States of America.

You know about my bias. The Republican candidate for president — in my view — is the most singularly unqualified person ever nominated to seek the highest office in America.

By golly, he demonstrated his unfitness in front of tens of millions of Americans.

Here is Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart’s review of what we saw. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/09/27/donald-trump-bombs-on-the-ultimate-reality-tv-show/?utm_term=.0423edc88f7f

Capehart and I are on the same ideological page. I just want to share it with you because he summarizes cleanly and with crisp precision the amazing spectacle that Trump provided.

His lack of preparation for this joint appearance was, in its way, breathtaking in the extreme.

We had heard how he had taken “unconventional” measures to prep for this event. There were no mock debates. He apparently didn’t read any briefing books or policy papers. No one coached him on how to behave when Clinton was answering the questions posed by moderator Lester Holt.

He calls himself a “great negotiator” who will fix flawed trade deals and will persuade our allies to pay their fair share for their own defense?

Give … me … a … break!

The occasionally raucous affair last night served as a precursor for the two additional presidential encounters awaiting Clinton and Trump.

Will the GOP nominee be any better prepared for Nos. 2 and 3? Well, he had a lot of time to get ready for the first one.

He didn’t bother, which tells me all I need to know about whether he’s ready for the most important job on Earth.

national news

President ought to take a look at the flood damage

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I am one of those who believes Barack Obama should take day away from his vacation to do something quite presidential.

He ought to take a jet ride south from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., to tour the flood damage of Louisiana. He ought to spend just a bit of time talking to local residents, local officials, state officials and his Homeland Security staff to get an up-close look at Mother Nature’s fury.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards has said he’d rather have the president wait before going there.

Look, this isn’t written into the president’s job description. It’s understood, though, that when Americans are hurting their head of state sometimes gets called upon to offer personal words of comfort, love and support.

A historic flood, to my mind, counts as one of those times.

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post makes an interesting argument that the president famously doesn’t always do things just because they look right.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/18/heres-why-president-obama-isnt-stopping-his-vacation-to-visit-the-louisiana-flooding/

I get that, too.

However, this president did join the amen chorus of critics in 2005 when President Bush staged that noted flyover during in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out much of New Orleans. The critics all said Bush needed to set foot on the ground and the flyover became something of a symbol of alleged presidential nonchalance about the suffering that befell one of America’s great cities.

Cillizza writes: “Presidents don’t get vacations — they just get a change of scenery,” Nancy Reagan famously told critics of her husband’s regular trips to the family’s ranch. Work, especially in this digital age, follows you around.

I get that, too.

Presidents, though, assume the role of “comforter in chief.” Obama has performed that role masterfully many times during his two terms in office. Whether he’s embraced family members of those slain in spasms of violence or gone to natural disaster sites — such as when he went to the Jersey Shore after Super Storm Sandy devastated that region — he’s been there.

Some folks in Louisiana need comforting right now.

national news, political news

Texas turning ‘purple’? Maybe … but not just yet

Donald Trump gestures while speaking surrounded by people whose families were victims of illegal immigrants on July 10, 2015 while meeting with the press at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, where some shared their stories of the loss of a loved one. The US business magnate Trump, who is running for president in the 2016 presidential elections, angered members of the Latino community with recent comments but says he will win the Latino vote. AFP PHOTO / FREDERIC J. BROWN (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

George Will is a conservative columnist/pundit who — no surprise here — detests Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

He has written an essay, moreover, that makes an intriguing suggestion. It is that Trump’s presidential candidacy just might turn one of the nation’s most Republican-leaning states into something far less so.

I refer to Texas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-texas-become-another-brick-in-the-democrats-blue-wall/2016/07/20/08b55f5e-4de0-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html

My own sense is that Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton has a long way to go just yet in making Texas truly competitive in this election.

Will, though, suggests that the time is closer than some of us believe.

He notes that Dallas County has gone from solidly Republican to solidly Democratic. He reminds us that Hispanics and Asians are two fast-growing minorities. He speaks as well about how Texas is mirroring the nation’s turn toward a majority-minority population.

All of that plays into Clinton’s push to become president.

Texas, though, hasn’t elected a Democrat to any statewide office since 1994. Will says that’s the longest statewide GOP winning streak in the nation.

My own sense is that if Texas becomes moderately competitive in the Clinton vs. Trump contest — meaning if Clinton can close to within, say, 5 or 6 percentage of Trump — then we’re going to see a serious blowout in the making.

If she somehow manages to win the state’s 38 electoral votes — and that can happen only if Latinos and African-Americans turn out in record numbers — then the blowout can be of historic proportions.

Will it happen in Texas?

Maybe soon. Just not right now.

media news, national news, political news

This scandal produced a suffix

Forty-four years ago today, some goofballs broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, D.C.

They rifled through some files looking for dirt they could find on the party bigwigs. They left.

The cops arrived and discovered that the office had been burglarized. They launched their investigation at the Watergate Hotel and office complex.

Thus, a political suffix was born.

The Watergate scandal took flight eventually. The Washington Post assigned a couple of reporters from its metro desk — Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein — to cover it as a run-of-the-mill cop story. They buried their initial coverage of it.

Then the reporters’ phones start ringing. “There’s more to this story than meets the eye,” snitches told them. The reporters badgered their editor, Ben Bradlee, to allow them to look more deeply into it. Finally, Bradlee relented. He turned the fellows loose.

They uncovered a scandal that would turn into a monumental constitutional crisis. We would learn that President Nixon told the FBI to stop snooping around, that he had ordered the CIA to spy on his enemies. Nixon would quit the presidency, Woodward and Bernstein would win the Pulitzer Prize — and their names would become synonymous with investigative journalism.

Since then, every political scandal under sun — or so it seems — has had the “gate” suffix attached to it. Here’s what I found on Wikipedia. I know, take it with a grain of salt. Still, it’s rather interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_with_%22-gate%22_suffix

There’s more of them than I ever imagined.

But for my money, the original “gate” scandal — and it’s listed in there — remains in a class by itself.

June 17, 1972 is a date many of us will always remember — in the words of the president who would succeed Richard Nixon — when our “long national nightmare” was just beginning.

 

national news, political news

Speaker: ‘That’s not my plan’ to pull endorsement … yet?

How many times have you heard a politician say he or she has “no intention” to seek higher office? Or that he or she has “no plan” to do this or that, only to change his or her mind and do what was disavowed earlier?

That’s more or less what I’m hearing House Speaker Paul Ryan say as he is peppered with questions about his endorsement of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

“That’s not my plan,” Ryan said to questions about whether he would rescind the endorsement.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to hurtle out of control all along the campaign trail. He recently accused President Obama — and this is utterly outrageous — of seeming to favor the terrorists over the protection of American lives.

Ryan keeps condemning Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country. He said he’d never heard of a presidential candidate pulling press credentials for a major media outlet, which Trump did to the Washington Post.

Now comes Trump’s campaign’s assertion that congressional GOP leaders need to support him all the way or “be quiet.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/paul-ryan-still-endorses-trump-224439

Is there a breaking point? Is there a line that Trump can cross that would cause the speaker to take it all back?

I’m betting it’s out there. It also might not be as far in the distance as the speaker would have us believe.

Plans, after all, do have a way of changing.

media news, national news, political news

Trump shows another example of ‘unfitness’

Hillary Rodham Clinton has coined a new mantra to describe her opponent in this autumn’s campaign for the presidency of the United States.

She says Donald J. Trump is “temperamentally unfit” to become president. My sense is that she’s going to hammer relentlessly on that point.

The Democrats’ presumed nominee has been handed yet another example.

Trump has revoked the credentials of The Washington Post, banning the newspaper from covering his events.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-revokes-post-press-credentials-calling-the-paper-dishonest-and-phony/2016/06/13/f9a61a72-31aa-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html

Trump is unhappy with the coverage the Post is providing for his campaign. He called the paper “phony” and “dishonest.” Sound familiar? He’s said the same thing about, oh, the New York Times, Fox News and CNN.

He gets his dander up when media outlets report things about his campaign that do not cast him in the most positive light imaginable.

It’s the modus operandi of the presumed GOP nominee.

As the paper reported: “In a statement, Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said: ‘Donald Trump’s decision to revoke The Washington Post’s press credentials is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press. When coverage doesn’t correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished.

“‘The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along — honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically and unflinchingly,’ Baron continued. ‘We’re proud of our coverage, and we’re going to keep at it.”’

Does he not get that intense media coverage is part of the deal to which he agreed when he decided to seek the Republican presidential nomination?

What am I thinking? Of course he doesn’t get it.

He doesn’t get anything.

Thus, we see yet another example of his temperamental unfitness for the presidency.

media news, national news, political news

How would Tim Russert react to today’s politics?

imrs.wdp

Tim Russert died eight years ago today.

Do I still miss him? You bet I do.

So does Chris Cillizza, a columnist for the Washington Post, who reposted a piece he wrote three years ago to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Russert’s sudden and shocking death from a heart attack.

Here it is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/06/13/remembering-tim-russert-5-years-later/?tid=sm_tw_pp&wprss=rss_the-fix

Cillizza wonders what Russert would think of today’s political climate and particularly what he’d think of Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

I think I know the answer.

He’d be appalled at both things.

Russert came from the political world into the world of broadcast journalism. He worked for U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who during his years in the Senate was many Republicans’ favorite Democrat. He also worked for New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who didn’t have as many friends in the GOP. But still, Russert knew his way around politicians.

He joined NBC News and stumbled onto the “Meet the Press” moderator gig while filling in one Sunday.

He did so well, proved to be so comfortable, that the NBC News brass made him the permanent moderator.

What set Russert apart from so many of his peers and those who came along after him was his preparation. He knew all there was to know about the people who sat in front of him. Russert was an expert at making politicians account for the very things they said in public.

“You said this, senator,” he would say, “How do you explain that?”

He was an equal-opportunity afflicter. Democrats and Republicans all had to bring their “A game” to a session on “Meet the Press” when facing Tim Russert.

What would he think of Trump? He’d no doubt be aghast, but he’d keep it to himself. One can rest assured, too, that he’d give Hillary Rodham Clinton just as stern a grilling.

 

military news, national news

WWII vet receives hero’s burial

BBrwSTV

Just when you think humanity might have fallen into some sort of evil abyss …

Something really heart-warming occurs.

Andrew Moore lived alone. He had no family. Apparently he had few friends. He died in December. His body lay unclaimed for months.

Then, according to the Washington Post, some neighbors where he had lived in an apartment complex decided that the 89-year-old World War II veteran needed a proper burial. So they arranged to have his remains interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

Moore was granted a burial fit for a hero. With full military honors.

As the Post reported: “Moore was given a hero’s sendoff at Arlington National Cemetery. A uniformed honor guard escorted Moore’s flag-covered remains. In place of a silent goodbye, a bugler played taps and three volleys of rifle fire marked his passing.”

This man apparently had left no will, no instructions on what should happen to his remains when he died. He was a pensioner who never married or brought children into this world.

His neighbors were able to determine he had served in the Navy during the war, with a brief tour in the Philippines; he later served in the Coast Guard.

Moore reportedly had quite the gift of gab. The Post reports that he was known to detain the mail carrier for 30 minutes or longer to talk about football. The paper also reported that Moore shared little about himself, his story, his history.

Bill Sheppard and Nick Addams, two of Moore’s neighbors, were saddened at the man’s death. The two of them managed to raise the funds required for the burial. Moore’s remains were cremated and Sheppard and Addams then made all the arrangements to have the ceremony take place at Arlington, where general-grade officers lay next to statesmen, astronauts and thousands of others who have died in service to their country.

This lonely man, though, also needed a proper sendoff once he left this world, his neighbors determined. They made sure he got it.

Goodness, it is clear, still can be found among us.

Rest in peace, Andrew Moore.

Thank you for service to this nation. Thanks, also, to the generous spirit of this man’s neighbors who felt move to give him the honor he deserves.

 

media news, national news, political news

‘Shame,’ ’embarrassment’ become campaign themes

dontvotefortheotherguy

Oh, for shame!

The remaining men vying for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination appear to have become embarrassments to the very people whose support they will need this fall when one of them square off against the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

What in the world has become of the process that selects major-party nominees seeking to become the most powerful officeholder in the whole world?

It has become a sideshow, a circus act, a schoolyard fight, a proverbial food fight.

Voters should demand better of the candidates. Then again, perhaps they secretly like what they’re hearing and seeing.

The Republican side of this carnival act has been particularly disgraceful. And that is coming from Republicans who’ve watched it.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz asked viewers who watched one of the Republican debates, the one in Detroit, to summarize what they saw. The Washington Post reported: “Sophomoric,” “embarrassment,” “disappointing,” “shameful,” “despicable,” “angering” and “schoolyard brawl” were some of the responses he received during a broadcast on Fox News Channel.

As one Republican told the Post — and this guy is a Ted Cruz supporter — the candidates need to be talking about ISIS and the “loss of freedom.”

Instead, he noted, they were engaging in the kind of talk one hears on junior high school playgrounds.

Who and/or what is the culprit?

Have social media become the communications vehicle of choice for too many Americans? We appear to be relying on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts to learn things — most of it irrelevant to actual policy — about these candidates.

Have their been too many of these Republican and Democratic primary debates? It might be that the candidates have run out of creative ways to argue the fine points of policy and have been left to resort to the kind of shameful name-calling and ridicule we’ve been hearing.

Do the candidates themselves deserve blame? Pundits keep talking about Donald J. Trump’s lack of depth and his mastery of media manipulation. Then there’s the belief among many that he is a barely closeted sexist, xenophobe and racist. The response from Ted Cruz to Trump’s insults has been, well, less than stellar as well.

The campaign should have been dignified. It has been everything except that.

These individuals are seeking to become commander in chief of the world’s greatest military machine. They want to become head of state of what many of us believe is the greatest nation ever created. They seek to lead a nation of 300-plus million citizens into a still-uncertain future.

And this is what we’re getting?