Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Response to Trump … it’s about what we should expect

Donald J. Trump’s supporters are pushing back on the intense criticism coming from the portion of the country — most of which voted against him in 2016 — of the man’s presidency.

I feel the need to flash back for a moment to 2009.

Let’s remember what a leading Senate Republican said at the time about the previous president of the United States, Barack H. Obama.

Mitch McConnell then was the minority leader in the Senate and I presume he was speaking on behalf of the GOP Senate caucus when he made a straightforward and ominous declaration.

He said his “No. 1 priority” as the Senate GOP leader was to “make Barack Obama a one-term president.”

Yep. That’s what he said. He laid down his marker early in the Obama administration. He didn’t stress enactment of landmark legislation, or working with the president to rescue the economy — which was collapsing when Obama took office. He didn’t propose any reforms of his own or suggest ways Republicans and Democrats could find common ground.

He said he intended to make Obama a one-term president. That translated into “obstruct everything he intends to do.”

Hmmm. It didn’t quite work out that way. Obama got re-elected in 2012 and finished his time in the White House with soaring approval ratings in every single leading public opinion poll.

Is it right and proper for Democrats now to follow the Republicans’ lead? Mostly “no.”

I’ve noted here before that I don’t wish for the president to fail. A presidential failure means the country fails and we all pay the price for that.

However, as the new president seeks to form a government — and he still has quite a way to go — my hope is that Democrats can find some common ground with the Republican president whenever possible.

The problem, though, is that Donald Trump has begun harping about the media being the “enemy of the people” while continuing to boast about his Electoral College victory. Enough, already!

Some positive proposals ought to be formulated and presented for Congress to ponder.

Until then, my Republican friends ought to just swallow the swill they offered eight years ago when Barack Obama was elected … with, I feel compelled to note, a far more robust majority than his successor earned.

national news

What? No outrage over pricey Trump outings?

Wait for it. The fiscal conservatives who were so outraged over President Barack Obama’s vacation tabs are going to go ballistic over the cost to taxpayers of Donald J. Trump’s jaunts to his posh Florida estate.

Do you think they’ll cry the blues over it?

Naw. Me neither.

It’s a fascinating case of selective outrage. The current president’s outings to Mar-a-Lago have cost taxpayers nearly as much in a month as the Obamas cost in an average year of Barack Obama’s presidency.

What was outrageous is now acceptable. Isn’t that the message?

I am having difficulty understanding any of this, much as I am having difficulty understanding why Trump’s behavior has been given a pass by those who continue to hang on his every inarticulate sentence.

I should note that Trump was among those who were critical of Obama’s golf outings, his family vacations and his assorted visits to whomever and wherever away from the White House.

Judicial Watch, a conservative think tank, estimated the annual cost of Obama’s travel expense at $12 million annually. Meanwhile, the Trumps’ three visits to Florida since he became president a month ago have cost about $10 million. It’s a rough equivalence, but it’s telling nevertheless.

Still, the silence from the right about the president’s pricey travel to his resort home in Florida is deafening in the extreme.

And, what the heck: I haven’t even mentioned — until this very moment — the cost of providing Secret Service protection for the first lady and the couple’s son, who are living in Trump Tower in New York City.

media news

‘Fake news’ now gets under Trump’s skin

Does anyone else see the irony of Donald J. Trump’s bitching about “fake news”?

This is the guy who for about a half-dozen years kept alive the bogus “news” about Barack Obama’s place of birth. He questioned whether the former president was qualified to serve in the office he held for eight years.

He kept harping on the rumor that Obama was born in Kenya, the birthplace of his father. He fomented the Mother of All Fake News Stories.

Now the president — the one-time bard of the birther movement —  calls anything he considers negative to be “fake news”?

Oh, the irony is rich. Isn’t it?

media news

It’s the temperament, man … the temperamant

I’ve been trying to determine when I’ve ever seen a president of the United States treat the media in the manner being displayed by the current one.

I cannot remember a single time. Not even during President Richard Nixon’s time in the White House.

Donald Trump has shown utter contempt and disrespect for the men and women assigned to cover the White House for their various news organizations.

It manifests itself when he gets a question he dislikes. He tells reporters to “sit down, that’s enough” when they seek to elaborate on their question, to fill in a blank or two. No, the president will have none of it.

Forget for a moment that he calls them “dishonest” out loud, in public, to their face … and then expects these fellow human beings to treat him with kid gloves.

The disrespect — as I’ve witnessed it — is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, even from afar.

If we march back through time — starting from Barack Obama and going backward — I cannot remember a president acting the way this one does in front of the media.

There was one memorable, testy exchange in the 1970s between then-CBS News correspondent Dan Rather and President Nixon. The president was getting entangled in the Watergate scandal and Rather asked him a pointed question. Some members of the press gallery chuckled, some even clapped. Nixon asked Rather, “Are you running for something?” Rather responded, “No, Mr. President, are you?”

Presidents usually have strained relations with the media. They dislike negative coverage, as does any politician — no matter what they might say. As I’ve watched presidential/media relationships from a distance over the years, I have noticed a sometimes cool cordiality between the Big Man and the media that cover him.

What we’re getting now is open hostility and an exhibition of extremely bad manners from the guy who needs the media as least as much as they need him.

I’m trying to imagine what will occur if and/or when the crap really hits the fan at the White House. I fear the president will go berserk.

Didn’t someone mention temperament as a quality we look for in a president of the United States of America?

national news

‘I inherited a mess’; no you didn’t, Mr. President

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Donald J. Trump wouldn’t know a “mess” if he slipped and fell in the middle of one. Indeed, he hasn’t yet acknowledged the mess he’s created since becoming president of the United States.

The president said today at his hastily called press conference that he “inherited a mess” from President Barack H. Obama.

Really, Mr. President?

Let’s see: 80 consecutive months of job growth; millions of jobs created during the past eight years; an annual budget deficit that’s been cut by two-thirds; a vibrant housing industry; the Dow Jones Industrial Average has nearly tripled in eight years; commandos killed Osama bin Laden; other terrorist leaders have been killed or captured; we have avoided a major terror attack; Iran has been banned from developing a nuclear weapon.

A mess? Are you kidding me?

Barack Obama and Congress cleaned up the mess they inherited and left you with a country in far better shape than when your immediate predecessor took office.

No, the country’s not in perfect condition. But it’s no “mess,” man!

Paraphrasing the famous “Saturday Night Live” routine involving Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin in their hilarious point/counterpoint spoof: Don, you ignorant shlub!

education news

Educator has it right: Come visit us, Mme. Education Secretary

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I want to give a full-throated cheer to a former colleague of mine who has gone on to do some great work in public education classrooms.

Shanna Peeples, who was named 2015 National Teacher of the Year, these days works in the administration of the Amarillo Independent School District. Until this school year, she taught English at Palo Duro High School. She was named National Teacher of the Year and was feted in a White House ceremony hosted by President Barack Obama. We worked for a time together many years ago for the same newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News.

What has Peeples done to earn praise from yours truly? She has invited the current education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to visit Amarillo. Come see what’s going on here, Shanna has told DeVos.

Lord knows the education secretary could use some on-site experience visiting public schools, talking to educators who work for public school districts and to public school students.

Peeples made her invitation known on social media. She has said she’ll bring the “coffee and donuts” to a meeting with Secretary DeVos.

I want to join the one-time National Teacher of the Year in inviting DeVos to Amarillo.

Look at it this way, Mme. Secretary: Amarillo sits in the middle of the Texas Panhandle, which voted overwhelmingly for the guy who nominated you, Donald J. Trump. This is ostensibly friendly territory. Amarillo ain’t Berkeley, if you get my drift.

DeVos, though, has zero experience with public education. Not as a student, or the mother of students. She ought to come here and take a look at the work being done by those who work for the very public to which the secretary also answers.

Nice going, Shanna. I hope the secretary accepts your invitation.

media news, national news, political news

Let’s set the record straight, Mr. President

I know it’s not a hu-u-u-u-ge deal.

However, I feel the need to set the record straight on another one of those prevarications that flew out of Donald J. Trump’s mouth.

The president called a press conference today and spoke — and jousted — with the media for more than an hour. Among the mistruths he spoke today dealt with his assertion that his Electoral College victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton was the biggest “since Ronald Reagan.”

Uh, Mr. President, no sir. It isn’t. Not by a long, long shot.

Let’s review, shall we?

1984: President Reagan was re-elected with 525 electoral votes.

1988: Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected with 426 electoral votes.

1992: Bill Clinton was elected with 370 electoral votes.

1996: President Clinton was re-elected with 379 electoral votes.

2008: Barack Obama won with 365 electoral votes.

2012: President Obama was re-elected with 332 electoral votes.

2016: Donald Trump won with 304 electoral votes.

There are the numbers. Trump’s victory wasn’t the biggest since Reagan. Oh, here are some more numbers to put Trump’s victory into, um, a little different perspective.

Clinton collected 2.8 million more popular votes than Trump. The president’s victory was sealed in three states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — which he won by a total of 77,000 votes, out of more than 120 million ballots cast nationally.

If Clinton had won those states, she would have been elected. She lost them to Trump. I am acutely aware that Trump won the contest where it counted, so please spare me the lecture and accusation that I’m still choking on all those sour grapes.

A reporter — NBC’s Peter Alexander — today challenged Trump’s statement about the size of his victory. The president said he was referring only to “Republican” presidents. Oh. I see. Then Bush 41’s victory didn’t count?

Trump’s bogus assertion about the size of his victory isn’t a big deal by itself. It does illustrate the man’s propensity for playing fast and loose with facts.

Perhaps, though, they merely are those “alternative facts” to which his senior policy adviser, Kellyanne Conway, referred.

national news, political news

Trump needs to get out more

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I am going to make a request of the president of the United States.

Mr. President, you need to take wing in that big jet of ours and visit the nation you are trying to govern. And no, sir, I don’t mean just those states you won. You need to go to those places you lost bigly to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.

I’ve griped in the past about previous presidents’ failure to reach out to those parts of the country that backed the other guy.

The only time Barack Obama ever came to Texas, for example, was to attend those private, high-end fundraisers. He didn’t visit the Panhandle, which voted twice for his Republican opponents by, oh, significant margins. We have concerns, too, that the president should have addressed. Farm policy is a big deal around here, you know?

So it is with Trump. He spent a good bit of the transition period visiting those deep-red states he won in 2016. It was that so-called “thank you tour” in which he seemingly continued harping on the campaign themes that helped him win the election in the first place. He kept chiding Clinton for failing to visit states such as Wisconsin in the final weeks of the campaign. He talked about his “massive landslide” victory, which of course it wasn’t.

Trump promised to be every American’s president. He vowed to unify the country. He has pledged to work for the common man and woman.

Well, he gets to fly on that big Boeing 747 that we pay for and maintain. It’s not his plane, but it’s ours. I am more than willing to foot the bill for it as long as the president puts it to good use.

The way I see it, flying that bird to places like San Francisco, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Albuquerque and Denver is a pretty good use of the plane. He even ought to visit some liberal enclaves in those red states, too. You’ve heard of Austin, right, Mr. President?

Sure, he’ll get some protestors. That goes with the territory.

He jets back and forth between Washington and his posh estate in South Florida. I believe he’s been there three weekends in a row. Hey, he knows they love him there.

We’ve got a great big country out here full of citizens who cast ballots for the other candidate. Pay them a visit, too, Mr. President. Tell them how you plan to “make America great again.”

They’re all ears. As am I.

national news, political news

Honeymoon? What honeymoon?

Talk about rocky rollouts.

Presidents of the United States take command in what we call a “peaceful transition” of power. It’s supposed to be seamless. It’s intended to miss nary a beat. One guy steps off the inaugural podium as the former president and the new guy takes over as if he’s been there all along.

Then we have the transition from Barack H. Obama to Donald J. Trump.

What a mess!

As near as I can tell, the former president kept his end of the bargain, seeking to provide all the necessary support, advice and counsel to the new president.

What’s happened? Oh … let’s see.

* The new president issued an executive order that calls for a temporary ban on refugees coming here from seven mostly Muslim countries; then a federal judge strikes it down and his decision is upheld by a federal appeals court. Up next? The U.S. Supreme Court, more than likely.

* Now we have the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, quitting over allegations that he engaged in improper negotiations with Russians regarding sanctions that the Obama administration had leveled against them. The problem is threefold: Flynn might have violated federal law by talking out of turn to the Russians before Trump took office; he apparently lied to the vice president about what he said; and Trump needs to reveal whether he knew about the talks as they were occurring — or even whether he sanctioned them!

* A few Trump Cabinet appointees are being confirmed by narrow margins in the Senate. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was confirmed, in fact, by a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Pence.

* There are reports of civil servants sweating bullets about their futures within the Trump administration.

* Oh, and the president apparently engaged in a free-wheeling discussion the other day — in the open, in front of unauthorized personnel — with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about what the United States might do in response to a North Korean missile launch.

* Trump keeps repeating the phony mantra about alleged voter fraud by illegal immigrants casting ballots for Hillary Clinton. Proof? He hasn’t produced anything!

It ain’t supposed to start like this, man.

The military uses a popular acronym to describe certain circumstances: FUBAR; the cleaned-up version is translated to mean “fouled up beyond all recognition.”

There you have it.

International news

Now, Mr. President, what did you know … and when?

This just in: Michael Flynn has quit as national security adviser for Donald J. Trump.

Flynn resigned over questions relating to alleged conversations he had with Russian government officials prior to Trump becoming president of the United States. Reports have swirled that Flynn had talked about possible loosening of sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed to punish the Russians for their alleged role in interfering with the U.S. presidential election.

The Logan Act, anyone? It bars unauthorized personnel from negotiating with a foreign government. Flynn well might have broken federal law.

Now comes the question, to borrow an inquiry made famous in another serious matter: What did the president know and when did he know it?

Did the president know about Flynn’s conversations as they were occurring? Did he sanction them? Did the president hush it up?

The former acting U.S. attorney general, Sally Yates, wrote a report that suggested Flynn might have been “compromised” by his meetings with Russian officials. Yates then was fired over her refusal to enforce Trump’s ban on refugees from certain countries. Did the president know about these meetings in real time?

Trump now must find a new national security adviser. He has a long list of qualified, competent, knowledgeable individuals who can give him proper counsel regarding national security concerns.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, is known to be a brilliant military tactician and strategist. He also possesses intense feelings about Islam and has called that great religion a “cancer” on the world. I’ve heard two previous presidents — Barack Obama and George W. Bush — say we aren’t “at war with Islam.”

Gen. Flynn, though, got into trouble because of his relationships with Russian government higher-ups. There’s likely to be more to come in this regard.

I’m among those who want to know about what the big man in the Oval Office knew about these discussions — and when he knew it.