Tag Archives: Barack Obama

national news

Civility, good will come back to life

bush-and-michelle

Take a good look at this picture.

It is fast becoming my favorite image from this year’s election campaign.

You know who they are: former President George W. Bush and first lady Michelle Obama. They were attending the dedication today of the African-American museum in Washington, D.C., an exhibit that tells the comprehensive story of the African-American experience in this nation.

Presidents Obama was the keynote speaker today and he took time to heap plenty of praise on the work that President Bush (whose wife, Laura, also attended the ceremony) did to make this important exhibit a reality.

There’s something quite gratifying in seeing this image, of Michelle Obama embracing her husband’s immediate predecessor as president.

It’s also interesting — to me, at least — that the image was snapped by David Hume Kennerly, who happened to be the official White House photographer during President Ford’s administration. You see, Gerald Ford served at a time when Republicans and Democrats fairly routinely worked together to solve national problems.

We’ll soon relegate this image to the back of our memories as we proceed toward the end of this contentious election campaign.

I thought I’d share it here just as a reminder that civility, good will and good manners occasionally present themselves.

International news, legal news, national news

Go for the override, Congress, of 9/11 lawsuit veto

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It’s rare, indeed, these days to see liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans agree on much of anything.

However, we have bipartisan agreement on a veto by President Obama on a bill that would have allowed victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia.

The president said “no” to the bill. Congress is vowing to override the veto.

I believe members of Congress are right about this one.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lawmakers-vow-to-override-obamas-veto-of-sept-11-bill/ar-BBwzrJK?li=BBnb7Kz

According to the Associated Press: “This is a disappointing decision that will be swiftly and soundly overturned in Congress,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who sponsored the bill. “If the Saudis did nothing wrong, they should not fear this legislation. If they were culpable in 9/11, they should be held accountable.”

There’s your comment from a liberal Democrat. Then there’s this, from a leading Republican, again from the AP: Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another of the bill’s sponsor, criticized Obama for failing to listen to the families of the victims and said he looked forward to the opportunity for Congress to override the veto.

Proponents of the bill say it is tailored narrowly and that it allows plaintiffs to sue only on matters relating to acts of terror. The president said it might cause other governments to take action against U.S. personnel stationed abroad and warned of consequences if the Saudis are actually sued.

I like Schumer’s rationale for overriding the veto.

The Saudis have said they had nothing to do with the terrorists — many of whom were Saudi citizens — who flew those jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Fine … let them deny it.

As Schumer has said, if they are not complicit, then they shouldn’t worry.

The 9/11 attacks will cause pain and misery for as long as Americans are alive who remember that day. Many thousands of them suffered incalculable loss at the hands of deranged terrorist monsters.

If another government — a supposed ally of the United States — at the very least looked the other way, then it should have to pay for the unspeakable grief it allowed to occur.

national news, political news

Cruz does it … he endorses Trump!

cruz-and-trump

Politics can be a fickle endeavor. Your enemy becomes your friend at times for the most dubious of reasons.

History is full of such examples: John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson battled for the Democratic nomination in 1960; JFK then picked LBJ as his vice president. George H.W. Bush accused Ronald Reagan was espousing “voodoo economics” in 1980; then the Gipper picked Poppy to be his No. 2. Barack Obama told Hillary Clinton she was “likable enough” during a 2008 Democratic primary debate; then Obama tapped Clinton to serve as secretary of state.

Now we have Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas — the guy who called Donald J. Trump a “pathological liar,” a “serial philanderer,” and an “amoral bully” — endorsing the GOP presidential nominee.

The Cruz Missile is going to vote for Trump in November, he said. Why the change of heart? It looks for all the world like an anti-Hillary endorsement.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/trump-rival-cruz-to-throw-support-to-gop-nominee-228584

Frankly, I thought Cruz might withhold his endorsement throughout the campaign, given the hideous things Trump said about the senator, his wife Heidi and his father. It got intensely personal for Cruz and I believed he was right at the GOP convention to urge the delegates to “vote your conscience.”

Well, it didn’t happen.

The fickle nature of politics has shown once again how foes can set aside hurtful comments to achieve a common end.

Will it help or hurt? Many of Cruz’s most ardent conservative supporters believe Trump is an imposter to their principles.

What the heck. Politics in this raw form can be downright ugly.

national news, political news

‘Birther’ label still sticking to Trump

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Donald J. Trump made a tepid declaration the other day that Barack H. Obama actually was born in the United States of America.

That ended the Republican presidential nominee’s idiotic assertion over the course of the past five years that the president is constitutionally ineligible to serve, right?

Not even close.

As A.B. Stoddard writes for Real Clear Politics, “Once a birther, always a birther.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/09/23/once_a_birther_always_a_birther_131876.html

Indeed, the nature of Trump’s alleged disavowal of what he has stated for all those years only has fueled speculation that he still stands behind the lie he has been telling about the 44th president.

As Stoddard writes: Dodging the question of what led him to announce last week that President Obama was indeed born in the United States, Trump told an Ohio radio station on Wednesday: “Well, I just wanted to get on with you, you know, we want to get on with the campaign. And a lot of people were asking me questions. And you know, we want to talk about jobs, we want to talk about the military. We want to talk about ISIS, and how to get rid of ISIS.”

So, there you have it. Trump just wants to change the subject. He wants to get people talking about things other than the lie.

I’ve tried to set the record straight in this forum, declaring that Obama’s place of birth isn’t even relevant, given that his late mother was a U.S. citizen, a fact that granted U.S. citizenship to Baby Barack at the moment he came into the world.

Thad didn’t stop Trump and other birthers.

So, now he says he has “ended” the birther debate simply by saying in a single sentence that President Obama was “born in the United States, period.”

No. It hasn’t ended the debate at all.

business news, national news, political news

Tax returns, Trump, tax returns … release them!

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I am taking a bit of a leap here in challenging the New York Times on an editorial … with which I happen to agree.

The Times says Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump needs to release his tax returns. He needs to do what candidates of both parties have done since 1976. There’s no law requiring him to release the returns; it’s merely been customary for candidates to do so to reveal to the public just how they conduct their personal financial business.

Here’s the editorial. Take a look. The Times raises excellent points.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/opinion/mr-trumps-stupid-excuses-on-taxes.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

What the Times missed, though, is a simple point: It didn’t challenge Trump’s assertion that he’s being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

The audit is the lame excuse he and his campaign team — mainly his sons — have used to keep the information from public information. The IRS, though, says an audit doesn’t preclude releasing the tax returns.

More to the point, though, is that Trump hasn’t even provided evidence that the IRS even is conducting an audit. He hasn’t given us any indication of a letter, or a notice, or a note tossed in over the transom alerting him of the audit.

He is asking us to take his word for it that the IRS is conducting an audit.

All of this is a shameful, disgraceful display of hypocrisy and duplicity from someone who for years demanded proof of President Obama’s place of birth and his academic records … not that any of it matters to those who have backed his candidacy.

OK, Donald Trump. The time has long passed for you to come clean and do what you have demanded of Barack Obama.

local news

Keep politics out of this parade

parade

KGNC-FM radio in Amarillo asks for comment on whether a man who portrayed an “imprisoned” individual believed to be President Obama went over the line at the Tri-State Fair parade through the city’s downtown district.

I believe I’ll provide my answer here.

Yes, he crossed several lines. One of them was civility. Another was good taste. Another dealt with respect for the high office of president of the United States.

The individual reportedly was dressed in black. He was “contained” behind bars. There was a guy with a “Make America Great” banner standing on the wagon carrying the Obama-like “prisoner.”

Hmmm. Political? Do you think?

I consider it a disgraceful slight to the office of the presidency. It suggested that the current president needs to be locked up. For what, I don’t know.

You know the cliché about “time and place for everything.”

This kind of overt politicization need not occur in a parade meant to honor a community event, the Tri-State Fair.

What’s more, it need not disrespect the presidency of the United States of America.

http://www.kgncfm.com/man-amarillo-tri-state-fair-parade-mocks-obama/

Free speech? Political expression? It’s all protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The folks who run the Tri-State Fair, though, ought to set some standards for the kind of exhibits it allows to roll through public streets.

This one was disgraceful.

national news, political news

Birther argument misses major point

1 Comment

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My head is about to explode.

So help me, it is.

Donald J. Trump’s half-assed declaration that the birther movement he helped perpetuate is now over has glossed over the single most under-reported element of this entire controversy.

It doesn’t matter one damn bit whether baby Barack Hussein Obama Jr. came into this world in Hawaii, Kenya or on Mars. He would have been constitutionally qualified to hold the office of president of the United States.

Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, declared Obama was “born in the United States. Period.” That ends the lie he’s been telling for more than five years, that Obama was a foreign-born pretender to the presidency.

It’s always been a racist smear meant to defame the twice-elected first African-American president. Trump knows it. Yet he kept saying it, more than 60 times out loud over the years, according to some sources.

But here’s the deal, folks. Barack Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen when she gave birth to her baby in Honolulu in August 1961. His mother’s citizenship bestowed U.S. citizenship immediately on Barack Obama. None of this “birther” crap matters. The Constitution says only “natural-born” citizens can serve as president. Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen.

Do you remember when Trump raised the same issue about former Republican primary rival Ted Cruz, who actually was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father? Cruz, the Texas U.S. senator, said he earned his U.S. citizenship by virtue of his mother’s citizenship.

End of discussion.

This utter crap about President Obama’s place of birth continues to fester only because of the man’s racial makeup.

For Trump to have perpetuated the lie is a disgrace on its face. His tepid declaration late this past week that, by golly, he was wrong all those years is nearly as disgraceful.

Will it go away now that the GOP nominee has said it’s over? No. Nor should it. This individual, Trump, should do what he says he never does: apologize to the president of the United States for seeking to defame him.

media news, national news, political news

Media, Trump need to end their love affair

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Donald J. Trump’s newfound friends in the conservative political movement need to cease declaring that the “mainstream liberal media” are out to “get” their guy.

That they despise Trump, and that the GOP presidential nominee hates them in return.

They love each other. The media love Trump, who in turn loves the media. He plays the media for the suckers they are.

He called a press conference in which he said he would make a major policy announcement. Instead, he used the event to tout some business deal, a hotel, in which he boasted about how great it is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-time-for-tv-news-to-stop-playing-the-stooge-for-donald-trump/2016/09/16/bc66812e-7c28-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

The press conference was supposed to center on Trump ending his racist rants about President Obama’s birth. It wasn’t about that. Sure, he said Obama “was born in the United States. Period.” But the bulk of the event was to shower praise on himself his business success.

This is where Trump is crossing a very troubling line: mixing personal business with a campaign for the nation’s highest political office.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump%E2%80%99s-anything-goes-campaign-sets-an-alarming-political-precedent/ar-BBwi7sm?li=BBmkt5R

Indeed, this latest stunt is part of a pattern.

The media are playing a major role in it.

Trump will continue to rant and rail about the “dishonest political press.” His supporters will cheer him on. He’ll give them more of the same. They’ll cheer him even more loudly.

Meantime, the rest of us are left scratching our heads and wondering: When will this charade stop?

military news, national news, political news

Another key Republican weighs in on Trump

MEET THE PRESS -- Pictured: (l-r) Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appears on "Meet the Press" in Washington, D.C., Sunday Jan. 24, 2016. (Photo by: William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images)

Now it is Robert Gates’s turn to join the amen chorus of Republicans concerned about their party’s presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Gates, who served as CIA director and defense secretary for President Bush before staying on to serve as defense boss for President Obama, said that Trump is “beyond repair.” He said Trump has no understanding of the differences between negotiating with foreign government leaders and those with whom he has business dealings.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-gates-donald-trump-national-security_us_57dd63b4e4b08cb1409622ee

“Mr. Trump is also willfully ignorant about the rest of the world, about our military and its capabilities, and about government itself. He disdains expertise and experience while touting his own—such as his claim that he knows more about ISIS than America’s generals,” Gates wrote in op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal. “He has no clue about the difference between negotiating a business deal and negotiating with sovereign nations.”

He “knows more about ISIS than American generals.” That statement taken all by itself suggest to me at least that this clown — I refer to Trump — has no business anywhere near the nuclear launch codes.

I’m not expecting those who have supported Trump’s incredible — and by “incredible” I mean “not credible” — rise in political power to forsake their guy. Still, how many testimonies such as the one delivered by Robert Gates does it take to persuade others that they are banking their country’s national security on someone who knows not a single thing about protecting it?

Or them? Or their families?

national news, political news

Trump seeks to shed ‘birther’ label

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Nice try, Donald Trump.

You’ve been spreading falsehoods for nearly eight years about President Barack Obama’s supposedly fraudulent birth record, contending he was born in Kenya and, therefore, was not constitutionally qualified to lead the United States of America.

Now you say he was “born in the United States. Period.” That’s supposed to end all that innuendo just like that. Is that how it works?

No. The Republican Party’s presidential nominee will have to live with the lie he fostered through his contention that Barack Obama wasn’t qualified to hold the office to which was elected twice.

Sure, he’ll lay the blame at the feet of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who once raised the issue herself. She backed away long ago, saying that Obama is as qualified to serve as president as she is, or as Trump is.

That never stopped Trump from yapping, yammering and yowling the falsehoods about the president.

But now he’s taking it all back.

Sort of.

Here’s what he ought to do: He ought to issue a formal apology and declare for all the world that he lied through his teeth.

Will that happen? Never.

Thus, the lie he has promoted must remain part of the debate over his own fitness to serve as leader of the greatest nation on Earth.