Tag Archives: government shutdown

International news

NORAD’s Santa Tracker still on duty . . . despite the shutdown

This is good news for children around the world.

The Santa Tracker who works for the North American Aerospace Defense Command will be on duty Christmas Eve, despite the partial shuttering of the federal government.

Yep, NORAD will continue to track Santa Claus’ progress as he makes his way south from the North Pole to deliver his gifts to anxious children everywhere.

You have no idea how happy this makes a lot of little ones, even if they don’t quite grasp the circumstances surrounding Santa’s annual worldwide trek this year.

We have a little one in our family who’s expecting Santa Claus to visit in the next little while. Emma, our granddaughter, isn’t up to speed on the government shutdown kerfuffle. It doesn’t matter to us. Her parents won’t tell her; nor will her brothers; you can rest assured that her grandmothers and grandfathers — all four of us — will remain mum on the subject of shutting down the government while we are in her presence.

As National Public Radio reports: Despite gridlock in Washington, more than 1,500 military personnel and volunteers in an air force base in Colorado will be hard at work Christmas Eve, tracking Santa Claus and answering children’s calls.

We can all breathe a little more easily over the next day or so while we await the Jolly Old Man’s arrival. NORAD is on top of the situation.

national news

How will POTUS sell his leadership in 2020?

Let’s presume for just a moment or two that Donald J. Trump is going to campaign actively for re-election in 2020.

Yes, I know that is increasingly problematic . . . but humor me.

How does the president seek to sell his “leadership” skills to the American voting public? I ask the question as the nation enters its third federal government shutdown in the less than two years that Trump has been president of the United States of America.

Yep. This great dealmaker, swamp drainer and the man who surrounded himself with the “best people” has presided over three government shutdowns.

What makes this so weird and so unbelievable is that the same political party has controlled both congressional chambers and the White House. Yet they cannot — either on Capitol Hill or the White House — manage to govern effectively enough to prevent the government from shutting down.

How does Trump seek to sell his leadership, therefore, to Americans who he suckered in 2016 into believing he could actually govern?

Good grief! This individual has burned through numerous key White House staffers, at least seven Cabinet officials and assorted other mid- and lower-level functionaries. He has pi**** off allies in Europe, the Western Hemisphere and Asia. He criticized his predecessor for playing too much golf while in office and then laps the field in the number of golf outings he has taken while serving as president.

He kowtows to dictators. He denigrates previous presidents’ leadership skills while praising the leadership of the dictators he admires.

All this while presiding over three government shutdowns less than halfway through his first — and I hope only — term as president.

Is this carnival barker actually going to seek to persuade Americans that he has made America “great again” through this stumbling and bumbling?

I believe he will. I am going to hope for all it’s worth that this individual does not snooker us a second time. You know what they say about “fool me once . . . fool me twice.”

International news, national news, political news

GOP losing patience, finally, with POTUS?

The beginning of the end of the Trump presidency came and went a long time ago. I have never wavered from my oft-stated convictions that (a) Trump will not finish out his term, and (b), the end will be triggered by a presidential meltdown that forces the Vichy Republicans in Washington to mount an insurrection — if only to save their own asses, not the country. This week was a big step toward that endgame, and surely one of the most remarkable weeks in American history.

So writes Frank Rich, a writer for New York Magazine and a former columnist for the New York Times.

Those “Vichy Republicans,” and they include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and lame-duck House Speaker Paul Ryan, took a shiv in the back from Donald J. Trump.

They thought they had a deal to keep the government running. The Senate voted unanimously to send a spending bill to the House — but with no money to build that damn wall along our southern border.

The House got its hands on it. Right wing radio talkers got the ear of the president and told him he was betraying that shrinking base of his base by not demanding money for the wall. Trump called Ryan to the White House and told he had changed his mind, that he wouldn’t sign the bill.

The government has been shut down. Yes, it’s a partial shutdown. However, it still affects hundreds of thousands of federal employees . . . at Christmas!

Is this the moment that the GOP finally — finally! — will stand up to this goofball president?

Meanwhile, the president’s chaos pattern escalated with the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis, who quit over severe disagreements about the way the president develops policy statements. By that I refer to the Twitter torrents that announce policies such as, oh, the withdrawal of about 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria. There was no consultation with allies, with the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA, the DNI. Trump did it all by himself.

That did it for Mattis. He has quit and will walk away with his reputation intact.

Meanwhile, the federal government will stagger along. The president will continue to operate in a chaotic atmosphere.

How much longer will Trump’s supposed GOP allies tolerate it?

I will leave you with this from Rich’s commentary: The Mattis resignation is huge. It’s not that he was the last “adult in the room” but that as a retired military man and a secretary of Defense with access to both foreign intelligence and the inner workings of the White House, he knows treason when he sees it.

Wow!

national news

Speaking of promises, Mr. President . . .

Donald Trump’s ever-shrinking but still potent political base is reminding us of the promise the president made about border security and the wall.

He was going to be get it built, no matter what, they tell us.

Part of the government has shut down because congressional Republicans cannot persuade the rest of the legislative branch to pony up $5 billion to pay for the wall across our southern border. Thousands of hard-working American families are now thrown into turmoil just before Christmas.

Trump’s base reminds us of a campaign promise he made, yes? How about this promise: Mexico is going to pay for the wall!

He kept repeating it all along the 2016 campaign trail. Who’ll pay for he wall? Mexico will! Over and over. He beat it like a drum. The base ate it up. Mexico said, “No we won’t.” Donald Trump kept insisting Mexico would finance it.

Why, then, are we haggling, dickering and arguing over whether American taxpayers should pay for a wall that won’t do a thing to make us more secure? Why have we shut down part of the government and thrown families into chaos on the eve of one of our most sacred holidays?

Oh, wait! I almost forgot! We’re doing it because Donald Trump made a hollow campaign promise that he could not keep and possibly knew he could not keep when he kept bloviating about it en route to the presidency of the United States.

However, enough voters in just the right states swallowed the hook and got him elected to the nation’s highest office.

Disgraceful.

media news

Blogging requires multi-tasking skills

For the first time — more than likely — since I started blogging full time I am left with too much to comment on.

Just today alone, the news exploded all over the place.

  • The U.S. House of Reps decided to put $5 billion to build a wall along our southern border into a stopgap funding bill, then got assurances from Donald Trump he wouldn’t sign the Senate version of a bill that would keep the government running.
  • The government is about to shut down partially.
  • Then to top it off, Defense Secretary James Mattis quit and told the president off in his letter of resignation. Man, he blistered the commander in chief’s rear end. He delivered the letter in person at the White House. And get this: He signed his letter without salutation; there was no “sincerely,” or “with great respect” or “God bless you, sir” at the end of Mattis’s resignation letter.

I’ve been focused this afternoon on the Mattis matter, as I consider it to be most critical at this moment. I believe his resignation and his reasons for quitting constitute a national security crisis . . . as if Donald Trump doesn’t have enough crises to keep him, um, occupied.

As for me, I now need to figure out what I can write about in the moment and what I can set aside for another day. This reminds me of the situation I faced as an opinion page editor after 9/11. We had more to write about than space would allow, meaning we had to decide which topics we could postpone for another time. It’s an editorial writer’s and editor’s ideal situation.

This blogger now has the same dream.

national news

Chaos begets more chaos in Trump’s world

Chaos is running rampant throughout the executive branch of the U.S. government.

Nope. It isn’t a “fine-tuned machine,” no matter what Donald Trump calls it. It is a clanking, sputtering bucket of bolts with the wheels about to fly off the rickety machine.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has resigned, revealing specific differences of world view with the commander in chief. He becomes the eighth Cabinet officer to resign or be fired in the first half of the president’s term in office.

Three Cabinet officials quit under clouds of scandal. Three of them were canned outright. Yet another one resigned for reasons that weren’t entirely clear.

Let’s not forget the departure of two White House chiefs of staff, several communications directors, two national security advisers and any number of lower-level White House aides.

Now this happens. I happen to be a huge admirer of Secretary Mattis. I admire his military background, his studious nature, his commitment to the men and women in uniform. I admire his steady hand and his repeated resistance to the president’s impulsive nature.

He has had enough of the chaos. This decorated Marine Corps general can no longer answer to a commander in chief who operates the way Donald Trump seeks to operate.

Chaos is Donald Trump’s modus operandi. He revels in it with no understanding — none at all — of the misery and mayhem it creates for those who must deal with it up close.

And this all comes as the president responds to the bellowing of his political base and insists after all for money to build that wall along our southern border. What’s more, the government well might shut down partially at midnight Friday, putting thousands of federal workers out of a job right before Christmas.

This is not how you make America great again. It is not how you tell it like it is. It is not how you win.

This is a frightening time. James Mattis’s upcoming departure signals a growth in chaos at the highest — most sensitive — levels of our government.

Read Mattis’s resignation letter right here. Then ask yourself: Is this any way to run the world’s most indispensable nation?

International news

Trump on the wall, who’ll pay for it and that shutdown . . .

Donald Trump is sending a dizzying array of mixed messages — on a single issue all by itself.

  • The president wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” along our southern border.
  • He insisted again today that Mexico is going to pay for the wall; Mexico’s government has said it won’t do as the president insists.
  • Democrats in Congress say that Trump’s insistence that Mexico pay for the wall takes Congress off the hook; there’s no need for Congress to worry about the money.
  • Thus, we need not worry about a government shutdown, which Trump insists will happen if Congress doesn’t cough up $5 billion to pay for the wall that he insists Mexico will finance.

Are you as confused as I am? If so, then I don’t feel so badly.

I cannot keep up with Donald Trump’s messy mix of messages.

national news

Now it’s the GOP’s fault, yes?

I don’t know how this latest federal budget showdown is going to play out.

Still, I am wondering about how the president is going to assess responsibility if the government shuts down for the second time in a month.

The culprit this time might be Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has put a hold on the Senate deal that sets a budget for two years. Paul, one of those staunch fiscal conservatives, hates the budget because it spends too much money. Never mind that it is a truly bipartisan effort.

So he’s delaying a Senate vote, delaying another vote in the House of Representatives, delaying a budget going to the president’s desk — and getting his signature.

Donald Trump was quite quick to blame Democrats for the earlier government shutdown. Will the president be as quick to blame a fellow Republican for this latest government cluster flip?

The president endorsed the Senate deal worked out by bipartisan leaders in the upper chamber, even though he had said the previous day he would “shut the government down” if Congress didn’t come up with a deal to stiffen border security.

Now he’s getting torpedoed by one of his own GOP allies — because i spends too much money.

This ain’t good government, folks.

national news

Which is it: shutdown or deal on budget?

On one day, the president of the United States declared there would be a government shutdown if Congress didn’t come to a decision on an immigration package that secured our borders.

That is that. No deal, no government. “I would love a shutdown” if there’s no deal to build a wall. “Without borders, we don’t have a country,” Donald Trump declared.

The next day, U.S. Senate Democratic and Republican leaders cobbled together a budget deal that funds the government for two years. It’s a bipartisan agreement. Oh, and it doesn’t have any money for the wall the president wants to build across our southern border.

No worries, said the president. He’ll sign it if it gets to his desk.

So, which is it? Does the president want the wall or does he want to fund the government and avoid a shutdown that could occur later this week?

Honestly, I prefer the second version of the president’s current view. I believe he should sign the bill if it clears the House of Representatives, which at the moment is going through a revolt among members of its most conservative members. They hate the bill because it spends too much money and, yes, doesn’t include money for the wall or other border security measures.

They call themselves “fiscal hawks.” They say the Republican Party no longer can claim to be the party of “fiscal responsibility.”

Here’s what I hope happens. The House agrees on the Senate bill, they send it to the White House, the president signs it and then all sides — Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the president — get to work immediately on resolving the issue of immigration.

A viable government needs to proceed without the imminent threat of shutting down.

I am one taxpaying American citizen who is damn tired of this Band-Aid policy of running the government.

Can we just agree to keep the entire federal government functioning and serving all Americans while our representatives do what they were elected to do?

It is called “governing.”

national news

Trump would ‘love a shutdown’?

Donald Trump would “love” a shutdown of the federal government.

He’d love it. He said it many times today during a White House meeting on gang violence. The president, quite naturally, blames Democrats if a shutdown occurs. Democrats, he said, oppose border security; they oppose benefits for the military. Democrats are nasty. They’re “un-American” because they didn’t clap for him while he delivered “really good news” during the president’s State of the Union speech the other day.

The president really should not want a shutdown of the government, as Republican U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock told him during the gang violence meeting. “Both sides” learned that a shutdown hurts them, and the public doesn’t like it one damn bit, she said.

Ah, but the president still would “love” a shutdown.

This is how you “tell it like it is,” right? Trump is the first president in my memory who has said — in effect — that he would favor a shutting down of the government he was elected to administer.

To what end do we close offices and deny taxpayers the full service from the government for which they pay? To build a wall across our southern border.

This is not how you govern, Mr. President. Honest.