Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news, political news

POTUS, FLOTUS and kids take time off

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A young Amarillo businessman — a friend of mine — griped recently that the Obama family would be jetting off to Hawaii for a little Christmas R&R.

It’s a tradition the president and first lady have followed since they moved into the White House in January 2009.

My friend seems to think that since the president is the lamest of ducks — with less than a month to go before he leaves office — he doesn’t need a vacation.

Actually, he does.

This brings up a point I want to make about presidential vacations … which is that they don’t really take vacations the way I — or my young friend, for that matter — understand the meaning of the word.

Presidents are never off the clock. They are accompanied by that military officer who’s carrying “The Football,” aka the briefcase containing the nuclear codes; the president gets his daily national security briefing; he is on-call 24/7.

I wrote about the Obamas’ vacation in a blog post two years ago:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/12/vacation-for-first-family-potus-will-need-the-rest/

I don’t begrudge presidents from taking time away from the office.

You may choose to believe or disbelieve my next point, but I’ll make it nonetheless. I won’t begrudge the next president and his family from taking time away.

Donald Trump will need some time away — presuming, of course that he works as hard at being president as his predecessors have done. Despite what my friend asserted the other day, Obama has worked his tail off, as did Presidents Bush 43, Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt … I’ll stop there.

They all faced crises and conflict. They need time to chill, to collect their thoughts, to spend time with their spouses and kids.

They are not out of touch or out of reach.

So, with that I say to the current president and his beautiful family: Surf’s up, enjoy yourselves … but keep the phone nearby. We might need you, Mr. President, in a pinch.

International news

Islamophobe to lead national security team

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President Bush declared it in 2001.

President Obama reaffirmed it in 2009.

“We are not at war with Islam,” both men said. The enemy, they asserted, comprises individuals who have “perverted” a great religion for some decidedly unholy causes. They are murderers, terrorists, thugs, goons … you name it.

So, who does the next president select as his national security adviser? A retired U.S. Army lieutenant general who calls Islam a “cancer.” Michael Flynn has said repeatedly over the years that the fight, indeed, is against those who adhere to a certain religious faith.

The attack at the Berlin Christmas market allegedly by an Islamic State agent, according to Donald J. Trump, underscores the hatred that Muslims harbor against Christians. Gen. Flynn shares that view and he will have the new president’s ear when the administration takes over on Jan. 20.

This is a dangerous situation that we’re about to enflame with the expected rhetoric that will come from Trump’s national security adviser.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/report-nsc-facing-staff-exodus-over-michael-flynn.html

Now we’re hearing reports of career security analysts leaving the National Security Council rather than serving under Gen. Flynn. There apparently is little contact between the NSC staff and the incoming team. What’s more, there are questions emerging about whether Flynn shared sensitive information with foreign military officers while he was serving in Afghanistan.

I don’t doubt for an instant that Gen. Flynn is a top-flight military tactician. He once ran the Defense Intelligence Agency and apparently did so with great competence. However, I do question his temperament — not to mention the temperament of the man who has selected him to lead the NSC.

Do we really need someone operating at the right hand of the commander in chief who has this nutty view that we’re fighting a war against more than 1 billion Muslims around the world?

We are at war with terrorists who do not represent the overwhelming majority of people who want to live in peace alongside the rest of the world.

The doctrine to which we have adhered since 9/11 has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of terrorists. We’ve eliminated the mastermind behind the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. We have blown other terrorist leaders to bits and have decimated the terrorists’ ability to sustain combat on the battlefield.

Have we eliminated the threat? No. The Berlin attack, the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey and the shooting this past week at the Swiss mosque show us that the fight continues.

It’s a fight against terrorists. It’s not a fight against a religion.

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!

media news

Media getting it from both sides

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The media can’t buy a break, they can’t get any love these days.

Republicans hate ’em. Now the nation’s top Democrat, the president of the United States, has gone after the media.

Barack Obama held his final press conference of the year this past week and became animated precisely one time, as he was chiding the media for their coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s losing presidential campaign.

He didn’t like the way the media obsessed over the e-mail story, how they kept reporting over and over the controversy that just wouldn’t go away.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/16/president-obama-isnt-a-big-fan-of-the-medias-coverage-of-the-2016-campaign/?postshare=6221481923285992&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.be51a74a5fb5

Democrats appear to be stealing some of the signals offered by Republicans. When things go badly for you, blame the messenger.

Donald J. Trump, I believe, actually loves the media. He is what we used to call politicians a “media whore.” He would use the media to his advantage whenever and wherever possible. He did so brilliantly during his winning campaign for president — even as he trashed the media for what he said was their failure to “tell the truth.” He called them “the most dishonest people.” Still, the media followed him around, giving him ample air time and print space.

Now he’s the president-elect and he’s still trashing the media.

At one level, I understand the president’s frustration with the media. Reporters did all the things he said they did with regard to covering Hillary Clinton’s campaign. However, the media didn’t make these circumstances up. They didn’t just fabricate them and then try to peddle made-up stories to the public. They were real.

The media were doing their job, just as they did when they finally began calling out Trump for lying continually about his foes, about what he allegedly witnessed.

The media are facing a changing environment. To be sure, they are full these days of opinion, commentary and punditry that is overtaking the straight reporting of just the facts.

There remain straightforward media organizations that do a good job of reporting the news fairly. The problem, though, develops when they become drowned out by the noise created among other outlets. Online “news” sites are putting “fake news” stories that the public is buying as real. The purveyors of fake news, moreover, are making money off the clicks they get from suckers who consume that crap.

If only the actual reporters who continue to do their jobs honestly, fairly and with integrity could be heard above the din.

I fear they’re being drowned out forever.

International news, national news, political news

Smooth transition running into serious bumps

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There goes my trick knee again. It’s throbbing. My gut is grumbling. My fingers are tingling.

Something is telling me that the “smooth and seamless transition” from the Obama administration to the Trump administration is going to become a lot less smooth and seamless.

Why? Gosh. Let me think. Oh! It’s that Russian hacking thing, I reckon.

Donald J. Trump is dismissing — and dissing — the intelligence community’s assessment that Russian spooks hacked into our cyber network and sought to affect the presidential election.

President Obama, meanwhile, is declaring his intention before he leaves office in a little more than month to strike back at the Russians.

Who’s reacting correctly here, the president or the president-elect?

I’m going to go with the man who’s still on the watch in the Oval Office.

Trump’s stated view that the CIA is all wet and his belief that the Russians didn’t do anything wrong is a profoundly dangerous posture to take, given what we know about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s world view and his demonstrated ability to commit atrocious mischief whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Barack Obama is planning to take action against the Russians, while hoping for an easy handoff to the man who’ll succeed him.

The transition could be made a lot smoother if the new guy, Trump, would accept what the intelligence community already knows. The Russians aren’t our friends and they aren’t likely to become friends if they detect they have a patsy sitting behind that big desk in the Oval Office.

My hope, of course, is that the president retains the dignity he has brought to the office and ensures as smooth a transition as possible. If only, though, this Russian hacking matter hadn’t gotten in the way.

International news, Uncategorized

POTUS planning to take final shot at Russians

obama_putin

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!

national news

‘Get over it’? Sure, when y’all get over your own selves

trump-wins

The “Get over it!” mantra is beginning to grate on my nerves.

It’s coming from those who are glad to see Donald J. Trump elected president of the United States. The mantra is aimed at the rest of the country — more than half of those who cast ballots, actually — who voted for someone else.

They can’t “get over it.”

I don’t quite consider myself in that category of disgruntled voter. Maybe others see me as one of the sore losers. I don’t like being perceived that way. I am doing my best to level my criticism of the president-elect in a way that focuses more on the issues as I see them.

I will admit to occasionally challenging the man’s temperamental fitness for the job, but then again, that’s an issue, too.

The annoyance over the calls to get over it stems from the eight-year bitch session that’s been under way since Barack Hussein Obama was elected president.

A lot of folks haven’t gotten over that seminal event. The election in 2008 of the first African-American as head of state and head of government of the greatest nation on Earth just hasn’t gone over with a certain segment of this nation.

Sure, they’ll respond with, “I am not a racist, but …” And, no, I am not hanging the “racist” label on all of the president’s critics.

I understand that the man’s policies themselves have angered a lot of Americans. We had that big economic stimulus package that rescued several segments of our then-failing economy; we got the Affordable Care Act, over the strenuous objections of Republicans; he granted a temporary reprieve for about 5 million illegal immigrants through the use of an executive order.

I happen to support all those aforementioned actions. That’s just me. I’m one of those Americans who voted twice for the president.

We are a sharply divided nation. The election of Donald J. Trump enhances and emphasizes that division in ways we haven’t seen in some time.

I am still struggling with the idea that Trump will become the next president. I’ll “get over it” … eventually. I promise.

Just don’t keep reminding me to “get over it.” The more you say it the more I am likely to resist.

environmental news, national news, political news

Would a Secretary Perry bring wind into U.S. energy grid?

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Let’s play out a possible scenario that, the more I think about it, sounds increasingly intriguing.

It’s the idea of naming former Texas Gov. Rick “Oops” Perry as the country’s next energy secretary.

Set aside for a moment that Perry once said he wanted to get rid of the Energy Department. His recitation of the three agencies he’d dismantle produced his infamous “oops” moment during a 2012 Republican presidential debate.

Let us also set aside that Perry once called Donald J. Trump a “cancer on conservatism.” The president-elect is considering him for this key Cabinet post anyway. Hey, Perry did end up endorsing and campaigning for Trump. I guess they’ve made up.

Perry served as Texas governor for 14 years, longer than anyone in state history. On his watch, the state managed to do something quite correct with regard to energy policy. It has become — along with California, imagine that — among the leaders in wind energy generation in America.

I’m not entirely clear on what direct role Gov. Perry played in all of that. I do know, though, that during the time he served as governor, the state’s sprawling landscape has become “decorated” with wind turbines, in many instances for as far as one can see.

The Texas Panhandle is among those places where wind power has become major “alternative energy” source.

It is as clear as can be that Perry comes from a state that also produces a lot of fossil fuel. Oil and natural gas also are quite prevalent throughout Texas.

I will remain hopeful, though, that a former governor of a state that has developed such a huge — and growing — alternative energy industry might want to imbue a federal agency that he might lead with the same policy.

Drill, baby, drill isn’t the only way to rid the nation of its dependence on foreign oil. Indeed, we’ve already come a huge distance in that regard during the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, which has promoted many forms of clean alternative energy sources to heat and cool our homes, fuel our motor vehicles and power our industrial plants.

Would an Energy Secretary Rick Perry continue that policy? Would the president who nominated him allow such a thing?

My hope springs eternal.

entertainment news, national news

Trump to make use of his ‘spare time’

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Kellyanne Conway is a master spinner.

I actually kind of admire Donald J. Trump’s winning campaign manager’s skill at political spin.

Let’s consider her answer to questions about the president-elect’s decision to remain as executive producer of “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Trump will do his “Apprentice” work in his “spare time,” Conway is saying. Spare time? Yep. When the president isn’t busy providing for our national defense, creating millions of jobs for Americans and fighting ISIS terrorists to the hilt, he’s going to devote some of his energy to the reality TV show he started.

The president has a full day on most days anyway. In Trump’s case — if we are to take his campaign rhetoric at face value — he’ll be busy as the dickens “making America great again.” How is he ever going to have the time to work on “Celebrity Apprentice” episodes?

Conway noted that President Obama spent a lot of time on the golf course during his eight years in office. Indeed, I argued on this blog that the president is never off the clock, that he’s the head of state 24/7.

So it will be with Donald Trump. He’ll be at the helm every waking moment of every day he serves as president of the United States.

If a president can take time playing a round of golf to relax, I suppose another president can take time to produce a reality TV show.

Of course, the TV show and the compensation the president will earn from it does present a situation that the network’s news division — NBC in this instance — will have in covering the president.

In the meantime, I will stand by an earlier comment, which is that a president who doubles as a reality TV show producer — and this is just for starters — is just plain weird.

International news, national news, political news

Big surprise: Trump trashes CIA analysis of Russian hackers

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Of course Donald J. Trump would dismiss the CIA’s assessment that Russia played a role in seeking to influence the U.S. presidential election.

Naturally, he would dismiss the analysis provided by career intelligence officers trained to the max to make such determinations.

The president-elect won the election fair and square, by a “landslide,” he says. He didn’t need no stinkin’ Russian hackers trying to mess with our electoral process, he’ll say.

This is a potentially huge deal, folks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/10/us/politics/trump-mocking-claim-that-russia-hacked-election-at-odds-with-gop.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

It’s so big that President Obama has ordered a top-to-bottom analysis of what happened, when it happened, who did it and why. He wants the results on his desk before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

The president-elect has fired yet another barrage at the U.S. intelligence community he is about to lead. He is opening up a potentially serious breach between the myriad intelligence agencies and the White House.

Trump has drawn fire from, get this, fellow Republicans. As the New York Times reported: “’To have the president-elect of the United States simply reject the fact-based narrative that the intelligence community puts together because it conflicts with his a priori assumptions — wow,’ said Michael V. Hayden, who was the director of the N.S.A. and later the C.I.A. under President George W. Bush.”

That’s what he is doing. He is rejecting these findings out of hand.

I get that partisan emotions are still burning white hot. More from the New York Times: “With the partisan emotions on both sides — Mr. Trump’s supporters see a plot to undermine his presidency, and Hillary Clinton’s supporters see a conspiracy to keep her from the presidency — the result is an environment in which even those basic facts become the basis for dispute.”

The man who’s still the president for a few more weeks has ordered a complete review. How about letting the intelligence pros do their job, deliver their complete findings to the president — and then let us discuss how we might need to defend our electoral system against foreign interference.