Tag Archives: Barack Obama

International news, media news, national news, political news

Trump stretches unconventional approach

Donald J. Trump’s campaign for the presidency was unconventional.

His transition into the office he has won is even more so.

We often hear it said that “We have only president at a time.” Trump, though, is using his Twitter account to suggest something that borders on the otherwise.

The United States this past week abstained on a United Nations Security Council vote that condemns Israel over its settlement building on the West Bank; U.S. policy for years has been to veto such a resolution. Thus, the Obama administration broke with longstanding U.S. policy.

Then in comes Trump to tweet that the United States was wrong to abstain; that the U.N. is a “sad” organization.

The point here is that presidents-elect traditionally have let the current president conduct foreign policy. They wait relatively quietly while they prepare to take office; then they are free to change whatever policy they wish.

Trump isn’t waiting for Inauguration Day. He’s blasting the daylights out of President Obama whenever he sees fit using his Twitter account.

My wish would be for the president-elect to hold his fire until he becomes the president. Americans actually do have just one president at a time.

Donald Trump’s time is coming on quickly. Until he takes the oath of office, he ought to keep his trap — and his Twitter account — quiet.

national news, political news

Here’s the most meaningless debate imaginable

Well now … let’s commence the most meaningless political discussion possible, shall we?

Who would have won if Barack H. Obama had been the candidate opposing Donald J. Trump in this year’s presidential election.

The president of the United States says he’d win. The president-elect — big surprise here — disagrees.

The meaninglessness lies in the indisputable fact that we’ll never know the answer. The U.S. Constitution bars the president from seeking a third term, thanks to its 22nd Amendment.

But as long as the president has introduced this silly argument, I’d like to carry it a bit further.

I believe he would have won. Why? He’s got a ton of political moxie. He would have surrounded himself with he best political strategists possible. He would not have taken anything or any voter group for granted. Obama would not have “played it safe,” as he said Hillary Clinton did. He would have made mincemeat of Trump in any number of televised joint appearances.

There. That’s my view.

However, it’s only my speculation, just as it is anyone’s speculation — including Barack Obama himself — about how an Obama-Trump contest would have ended.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-vs-trump-dispute-erupts-over-who-would-have-won/ar-BBxAD1A?li=BBnb7Kz

Here, though, is a bit of reality to toss into the mix.

Consider the context of the 2012 presidential election. Obama’s presidency was considered by many experts to be on the ropes as he prepared to run against the Republican nominee, who turned out to be Mitt Romney, another formidable and successful businessman — who also had political experience as a one-term governor of Massachusetts.

The economy wasn’t performing all that well. The Affordable Care Act was being vilified as a failure. The Republicans saw a huge opening for their nominee as the campaign commenced.

Oh, but what happened? Obama used his crack political team to target selected audiences in various regions of the country and hammered Romney relentlessly over comments the GOP rival had made. Recall the “47 percent” gaffe.

Obama ended up winning the election by a comfortable margin: 5 million ballots and 332-206 Electoral College votes.

Would he have defeated Trump? I believe so.

However, it’s a silly debate to have.

President Obama is leaving office in less than a month. Donald J. Trump is the man of the hour.

legal news, national news, political news

U.S. Supreme Court: a victim of collateral damage

Elections have consequences … as the saying goes.

Nowhere are those consequences more significant, arguably, than on our judicial system. Which brings me to the point. The U.S. Supreme Court has suffered what I would call “collateral damage” from the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

A nearly perfect jurist, Merrick Garland, waited in the wings for nine months after President Obama nominated him to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Sadly, Garland’s political fate was sealed about an hour after Scalia’s death when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that the Senate would refuse to act on anyone Obama would choose for the nation’s highest court.

It was a shameful, reprehensible display of political gamesmanship and yet McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans had the temerity to accuse the president of playing politics.

McConnell took a huge gamble — and it paid off with Trump’s election this past month as president. Now the new president, a Republican, will get to nominate someone.

The New York Times editorialized Sunday that whoever joins the court will be sitting in a “stolen seat.” The Times, though, offers a pie-in-the-sky suggestion for Trump: He ought to renominate Garland, a brilliant centrist who Republicans once called a “consensus candidate” when he was being considered for the Supreme Court back in 2010.

That won’t happen.

Trump, though, could pick another centrist when the time comes for him to make his selection, the Times suggested. Frankly, I’m not at all confident he’ll do that, either. Indeed, with Trump one is hard-pressed to be able to gauge the ideology tilt of whomever he’ll select, given the president-elect’s own lack of ideological identity.

Scalia was a conservative icon and a man revered by the far right within the Republican Party. His death has put the conservatives’ slim majority on the court in jeopardy. But, hey, it happens from time to time.

President Obama sought to fulfill his constitutional duty by appointing someone to the nation’s highest court. The Senate — led by McConnell and his fellow Republican obstructionists — failed miserably in fulfilling their own duty by giving a highly qualified court nominee the full hearing he deserved.

Now we will get to see just how consequential the 2016 presidential election is on our nation’s triple-tiered system of government.

Will the new president administer some kind of conservative “litmus test” to whomever he chooses? Or will he look for someone who — like Judge Merrick Garland — has exhibited the kind of judicial temperament needed on the highest court in America?

I fear the worst.

International news

Barack-Bibi feud ratchets up seriously

Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanhayu have been anything but BFFs ever since they became leaders of the United States and Israel, respectively.

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have had a final falling out that seems a bit difficult to understand. I want to share my own perspective on what I believe lies at the core of antipathy.

Obama reportedly instructed the U.S. United Nations delegation to abstain from a resolution condemning Israel over its construction of settlements in what often is called “occupied territory” that Israel took from Palestinians who call that land their own.

The abstention has enraged Netanyahu, who I believe has a point.

It is this: During the entire existence of the Israeli state, the nation has gone to war against its neighbors. None of the conflicts has been of Israel’s choosing. It has responded to attacks from its Arab neighboring nations: in 1956, 1967 and 1973. While the Israeli armed forces weren’t being mobilized for battlefield combat, they have been summoned time and again to put down insurrections in places like Gaza and the Golan Heights.

The Israelis feel a direct threat from their neighbors every day. Yes, they have peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt; Syria, of course, presents an existential threat with the presence of Islamic State fighters doing battle with government forces that answer to a dictator who’s also a sworn enemy of Israel.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has vowed to exterminate Israel; the Hamas terrorists who run the government in Gaza also have vowed to destroy Israel. Hezbollah runs wild in Lebanon along the northern border of Israel.

Is there any reason to doubt why the Israelis view their situation with a great deal more alarm than any other state leader can fully appreciate? I’ve been able to peer into Gaza from just outside its border; I’ve been allowed to see damage in Israeli cities such as Sderot by rockets launched from Gaza; I’ve seen the heavily secured border fences along the Israel-Lebanon border; I’ve had the pleasure of obtaining passage through the heavily guarded wall separating Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Thus, in my view the Israelis have ample reason to feel a sense of betrayal by their allies in Washington who over many years have used their U.N. Security Council veto power to quash these resolutions.

The Israelis have never provoked armed conflict with their neighbors, but they certainly have finished it.

Thus, our most reliable Middle East ally is asking itself: Will the United States of America stand with us if the shooting ever starts again? The question, if it’s being asked, is not an unreasonable one.

International news

Obama, Netanyahu part company with bitterness

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu occasionally used to say kind things about each other, despite their differences over how to find peace with the Palestinians.

I am guessing the niceties are finished.

The United States has broken with decades of diplomatic tradition by declining to veto a United Nations resolution condemning Israel over the settlements it is building in occupied territory that once belonged to Palestinians.

Netanyahu is furious and has said so openly and has condemned the U.N. and the United States over what he perceives is a slap at Israel.

This is tough for me to say, given my longstanding support of our president, but Netanyahu has reason to be angry.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/netanyahu-blasts-un-obama-over-west-bank-settlements-resolution/ar-BBxvBpL?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

The settlements are part of Israel’s effort to strengthen the buffer between its territory and that which it took during the Six-Day War of 1967, a brief conflict that was started by its Arab neighbors. Israel managed to finish it quickly by dispatching forces from Jordan, Egypt and Syria. In the process, it took over land known as the West Bank, which cuts through Jerusalem.

I have had the high honor to see that part of the world up close and I totally understand the Israelis’ concern about future violent outbreaks.

Netanyahu took particular umbrage at the language within the resolution. As the Washington Post reported: “’The resolution is distorted. It states that the Jewish quarter and the Western Wall are occupied, which is absurd,’ said Netanyahu, referring to holy Jewish sites that sit within the Old City in East Jerusalem.”

The Jewish quarter sits within the walled city inside Jerusalem. To suggest that it, along with the Western Wall, are “occupied” is ridiculous on its face.

As an aside, I sought for weeks to obtain an interview with Netanyahu before embarking on a month-long tour of Israel in May-June 2009. I wasn’t able to get one with the prime minister. Had I been able to sit down with him, I would have asked him about the settlements and sought to get a deeper look at the Israeli perspective into why they feel the need to build them in the first place.

Netanyahu now looks forward to working with Donald J. Trump, who will succeed Obama as president in January. My hope is that Trump can find a way to persuade Netanyahu that there must be a pathway toward a permanent peace with the Palestinians, even with the settlements.

I continue to support the so-called “two-state solution,” which would allow a sovereign Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel. The Palestinians, though, need to do a lot more to put down the militant objections within their own ranks to Israel’s own existence.

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of this serious breach between the United States and Israel is that it is happening as Christians prepare to celebrate Christmas. Think of it: Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, is walled off from the rest of Jerusalem and the prospects for that wall ever coming down appear dimmer than ever.

It is my belief that President Obama has made the bigger mistake in declining to object to this U.N. resolution. In doing so, he has alienated our nation’s most trusted ally in a region where we need all the alliances we can muster.

military news, national news, political news

To salute or not to salute?

I’ve wondered about previous presidents and whether they would adhere to a particular protocol, so I’ll ask it once again about the next president: Will the new commander in chief return military salutes given by the men and women in uniform who are required to salute him?

I’ll presume that Donald J. Trump knows how to snap a salute. He attended a military high school, which he once said was virtually the same as serving in the military. I’m betting young Donald’s instructors taught him how to salute.

Believe me when I tell you this: It’s something one never forgets how to do. It’s kind of like riding a bicycle … you know?

Of all the presidents in my lifetime — I was born during the Truman administration — I can recall only four commanders in chief who would return the salute: Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Of those men, only two — Presidents Reagan and Bush — had actual military experience; Reagan, I regret to say, would snap what a friend of mine (a retired Army major) would call a “Hollywood salute.”

All the rest of the presidents during my lifetime, didn’t return the salute, not even President Eisenhower, the former general of the Army and supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Nor did President Kennedy, a Navy officer who saw intense combat in the Pacific Theater. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush 41 all served on active duty. They didn’t salute, either.

And so the question will persist as we await a new commander in chief. There’s no rule that requires a president to return the military salute.

It is my own personal belief that the commander chief, despite his civilian status, should return the salute as a matter of courtesy to those who are fulfilling their obligation as military personnel.

Still, I’ll await the next president to see how he treats the servicemen and women who serve under his command.

national news, political news

No ‘racist intent’? Is this guy joking?

OK, I cannot let this one go.

Donald J. Trump says he wants to bind the wounds that divided the nation during a heated presidential campaign.

Fine. Then the president-elect needs to put maximum distance between himself and individuals such as Carl Paladino,  a fellow who ran his campaign in New York.

Paladino, a one-time Republican nominee for New York governor, has said some hideous and hateful things about President and Michelle Obama. He told an alternative publication he wants the president to “die from mad cow disease” in 2017; then it got even worse. Paladino said this about the first lady: “Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortable in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”

The president-elect’s transition team has issued a statement calling Palidino’s statements “reprehensible.” Yes they are, to the max.

What is utterly flabbergasting in the extreme is that Paladino said he didn’t intend any “racist” overtone in his statements.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/311686-trump-ny-co-chair-wishes-death-on-obama

According to The Hill: “Paladino on Friday verified to The Buffalo News that his comments were real, attacking the newspaper for inquiring about them. “’Of course I did,’ he said when asked if he had uttered the remarks. ‘Tell them all to go f*** themselves.

“’Tell that Rod Wilson I made that comment just for him,’ Paladino added, referring to one of the newspaper’s black columnists and editors.”

No racist intent? Paladino said he is “not politically correct.”

He is much worse than that.

national news

Here comes the ‘holiday’; let’s enjoy it

I cannot let this time of the year pass without commenting on a typically ridiculous rant offered by the former half-term Alaska governor, Sarah Palin.

The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee just had to go off on the Obama family because it sent out “Happy Holiday” cards during this season. The card features a Christmas-like image of a fireplace and Bo, the Obamas’ dog sitting in front of the crackling fire.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/12/sarah-palin-fox-news-attack-white-house-holiday-card-design.html

Palin ventured onto her favorite — and friendliest — venue, the Fox News Channel to spew her nonsense. As the Los Angeles Times reported: Palin told Fox News that she found it “odd” that the card emphasizes the dog instead of traditions like “family, faith and freedom.” She also said that Americans are able to appreciate “American foundational values illustrated and displayed on Christmas cards and on a Christmas tree.”

Sigh …

C’mon, Sarah! Didn’t you see the poinsettias in the picture? They’re universal symbols of Christmas, aren’t they?

As someone who grew up in the Christian faith — I was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and became a Presbyterian after I got married more than 45 years ago — I’ve never had a problem with someone wishing “holiday” greetings during this time of year.

And I have grown weary of those who keep getting their hackles raised when they see others do so.

As I keep noting on this blog, the Constitution declares that there shall be “no religious test” for anyone seeking public office. The Obama family, therefore, need not prove to anyone that they believe in the same God as most Americans.

But the “Happy Holidays” greeting is a simple reminder that the nation’s head of state recognizes that not every American celebrates Christmas. Yes, this remains a festive time of the year. So, the first family has chosen this year — as it has during their time in the White House — to celebrate the holiday in a more ecumenical manner.

Some first families have chosen to emphasize the religious aspect of the season. I honor that desire, too.

In this joyous season, though, I have to take mild umbrage — it’s not all that severe, given that it’s Christmas — at a politician yapping about the first family’s choice of message to send out during this holiday season.

Put another way: Zip it, Sarah!

***

This will conclude my snarkiness during the holiday season. I’ll be commenting on this blog throughout Christmas Eve and I might even add a comment or two after we see what Santa brought us during the night.

I’ll get back at it, though, after Christmas. The new year awaits and there will be so-o-o-o much fodder for us to ponder.

national news, political news

Once ‘noble’ pursuit getting more vengeful

The late Robert F. Kennedy used to proclaim that politics could be a “noble” pursuit if its practitioners kept their eye on the public service aspect of their craft.

It’s gotten a lot less noble in the years since RFK’s time in the public arena.

Politics has become a contact sport. A blood sport in the eyes of many. We are about to witness it become even bloodier as the next president of the United States takes his oath and begins the work of leading the country.

Donald J. Trump is headed for the roughest ride imaginable. More than half of those who voted in this year’s election voted for someone else. There are myriad questions surrounding the president-elect’s fitness for office, about his business dealings and about the quality of the team he is assembling.

It’s been said there might be an impeachment in Trump’s future if he doesn’t take care of some of those business dealings that could run him smack into the “emoluments clause” in the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits presidents from receiving income from foreign governments.

Is all this to be expected? Sure it is.

Is it unreasonable to ask these probing questions? Of course not!

Vengeance can be most troubling. Trump will take over from a president who’s himself felt the wrath of those who opposed him at every turn. There was talk of impeaching Barack H. Obama, too.

President Obama sought to do some bold things, such as get medical insurance for millions of Americans; he sought to rescue the failing economy early in his presidency with a costly stimulus package; he continued to pursue terrorists abroad using aggressive military action; he sought to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

All along the way, his foes sought to stymie him. There were a couple of shameful incidents, such as when a Republican member of Congress shouted “liar!” at Obama as he was delivering a speech to a joint congressional session; there also was the declaration from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell who said his “No. 1 priority” would be to make Barack Obama a one-term president.

The Democrats now are on the outside looking in at Republicans’ efforts to reshape the federal government.

It won’t be a cakewalk for the new guy any more than it was for the fellow he will succeed.

Memories are long in Washington, D.C., even if politicians who say spiteful things to and about each other can make up and join the same team — which happens all the time in the nation’s capital.

Trump’s team must know that political nobility is long gone. They’d better get ready to be roughed up.

As they say: Payback is a bitch.

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.