Category Archives: national news

International news, national news, political news

OK, it's official: We're at war

Is it war or is it a counter-terrorism campaign?

I’d thought out loud in an earlier blog post that the terminology didn’t matter. We’re going after the Islamic State with heavy weapons. Secretary of State John Kerry — who’s been to war … in Vietnam — was reluctant to use that term. Now the commander in chief, Barack Obama, says we’re “at war” with ISIL.

http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-makes-official-us-war-220808683.html

Let’s be mindful, though, of what this “war” actually means, or doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean we’re going to take over a foreign capital, run up the Stars and Stripes and declare victory. Nor does it mean we’re going to receive surrender papers from a foreign government aboard some warship. It won’t result in our rebuilding (I hope) some nation that we’ve blown to smithereens trying to root out and kill terrorists.

What the “war” means is that we’re going to be in this fight for perhaps well past the foreseeable future. I suspect we’ll still be fighting this “war” when Barack Obama leaves office on Jan. 20, 2017. He’ll hand the battle plans over to his successor, wish that person good luck and then the new commander in chief will be left with trying to kill all the ISIL fighters our military can find.

The war against terrorism is something we launched after 9/11. Everyone in America knew the war wouldn’t have an end date. Heck, there really wasn’t an strategy to conclude the war when President Bush declared it after the terrorists killed thousands of Americans on that terrible Tuesday morning 13 years ago.

I still don’t give a damn what we call this conflict. If it’s war, then we’re going to have to redefine how we know when it’s over.

First, though, we’ll likely have to redefine when it ends. Good luck with that.

national news, political news

Palins were punchin' 'em out?

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This little tidbit from the tundra almost defies anything that makes sense.

Almost …

It’s been reported that the family of former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got involved in a brawl at someone’s home near Anchorage.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/wp/2014/09/11/stretch-hummers-a-bloody-brawl-and-sarah-palin/

The Palin Gang showed up in a stretch Hummer — allegedly — went inside and then a fight broke out. Involved in the altercation reportedly were Sarah Barracuda’s husband, Todd, son Track and daughters Willow and Bristol. It apparently also involved a former boyfriend of one of the daughters.

And then, supposedly, someone apparently from the Palin Gang yelled, “Don’t you know who we are?”

Here’s how the Washington Post reported the story:

“Anchorage Police Department’s communications director Jennifer Castro confirmed to the Loop that there was a fight at a party where the Palins were in attendance. Castro said ‘just before midnight Anchorage police responded to a report of a verbal and physical altercation taking place between multiple subjects…’”.

Ugghhh!

And to think some people actually take seriously what this one-time Republican vice-presidential nominee has to say about anything.

I suppose equally interesting might be that on the day the news broke about this brawl, Sarah Barracuda appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” show to discuss President Obama’s strategy for destroying the Islamic State. Of course, Palin was critical of the president’s plans. However, Sean Hannity didn’t bother to ask her anything about the fight and whether she and her family were involved.

She still thinks of herself as a serious political pundit? You betcha.

national news

Obama better economically than Reagan? Wow!

Here’s a bit of a surprise: Barack Obama’s presidency has had a greater positive impact on the national economy than the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

You want more of a surprise? This assessment comes from Forbes Magazine, hardly known as a liberal-leaning publication prone to sing the praises of lefties.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/

Nope. Forbes isn’t exactly Mother Jones or The Nation.

But in the essay attached to this post, it notes that the unemployment rate has dropped more quickly during the Obama administration than it did when Reagan was president. The deficit? It’s dropped significantly while during the Reagan years it grew way beyond what was considered prudent at the time.

Forbes cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics as its source for the glowing economic report. It notes that the August job-growth figure was a disappointment; the nation added “only” 142,000 jobs in August, breaking the string of 200,000-job string of monthly reports. There’s no need to wallow in despair, according to Forbes: “Despite the lower than expected August jobs number, America will create about 2.5 million new jobs in 2014.”

This is worth noting — and I encourage you to read the Forbes article — because Obama’s critics continue to do an effective job of poor-mouthing the economy. There continues to be this perception among the public that the economy remains in the tank. For the life of me I cannot understand how the right wing is able to sell that notion. But it does.

I suppose one can pick apart all these economic indicators and find negative elements to highlight. It’s just interesting to me nevertheless that Forbes — founded by the late Malcolm Forbes’s father and continued by his one-time Republican presidential candidate son, Steve — would find so much good news to report about someone with whom the organization has so little in common.

International news, national news, political news

War or counter-terrorism effort?

We’re beginning now to parse the meaning of the word “war” and whether our effort to destroy the Islamic State means we’ve entered yet another armed conflict.

Secretary of State John Kerry disputed that terminology, declaring that the United States is embarking on a comprehensive “counter-terrorism” campaign to eradicate the hideous terrorists.

It doesn’t matter one damn bit to me what we call it.

All of this harkens back to when we declared “war” on international terrorism. President Bush reacted to the 9/11 attacks by tossing out the Taliban in Afghanistan. In doing so, he said the nation would be waging a multi-front war against terrorists, hunting them down wherever they lurked or hid.

Indeed, the 9/11 attacks on Washington and New York served — if you’ll pardon the use of this term — the Mother of All Wakeup Calls to this country. We’ve known about terrorists. We’ve understood intellectually they can do us harm. However, the 9/11 attacks were so brilliantly conceived and executed — and it pains me terribly to say it that way — that we were forced to ratchet up our vigilance to unprecedented levels.

So the war goes on.

Our campaign now to eradicate the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant can be called a war, or it can be called a counter-terrorism offensive.

I don’t care what they call it. The strategy just announced by President Obama is a continuation of what we’ve been doing ever since the terrorists committed their heinous act 13 years ago.

It’s a new kind of conflict with a new kind of enemy. I’m still hoping to learn how in the world we’ll ever be able to declare victory.

national news, Sports news

Independent probe needed in Rice case

The case of Ray Rice is getting serious.

The former Baltimore Ravens running back who hit his fiancée — who’s now his wife — is out of a job after knocking his wife unconscious in a New Jersey casino elevator.

http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/investigation-has-bought-nfl-roger-goodell-time-he-needs-ray-rice-091114

But it’s getting complicated now.

National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell said he didn’t see the video of Rice smashing his wife in the face until just the other day. The Associated Press reports that the league office got the video in April, two months after the incident.

The question: Did the commissioner cover up what he knew and when he knew it?

That’s where former FBI director Robert Mueller comes in. He’s going to conduct (presumably) a thorough, independent investigation of what happened. He’ll report back to the NFL and to the public.

At issue is whether the NFL sought to whitewash this case to protect its image. If it turns out Goodell knew far earlier than what he’s acknowledged, he ought to be fired summarily.

The bigger issue, of course, is how the organization is going to handle domestic violence cases involving its employees in the future. Rice initially got a two-game “suspension.” Then the video showing him punching his wife came out. The league suspended Rice indefinitely and the Ravens fired him from the team.

Robert Mueller needs to get to the bottom of this case and he needs to follow every lead he gets to get to the truth — and to who knew what and when they knew it.

national news, Sports news

Rice caught on camera; cut by Ravens, suspended by NFL

Ray Rice doesn’t think so, but it’s a good thing an elevator camera didn’t blink.

It happened to catch the former Baltimore Ravens running back in the act of cold-cocking his then-fiancée — who’s now his wife — in a hotel elevator.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11489134/baltimore-ravens-cut-ray-rice-new-video-surfaces

TMZ released copies of the video. The National Football League expressed appropriate outrage. The Ravens released Rice and the league has slapped him with an “indefinite” suspension.

This all comes after the league announced a tough new policy regarding domestic violence and after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell — in an extraordinary mea culpa — disclosed that he “got it wrong” when he imposed a two-game suspension on Rice for allegedly beating the woman unconscious.

The camera now has revealed that there’s no “allegedly” about it. He did the deed and has been kicked out of the league presumably for the foreseeable future.

In July, Rice said this about what he did: “I know that’s not who I am as a man. That’s not who my mom raised me to be. If anybody knows me, they know I was raised by a single parent, and that was my mother. I let her down, I let my wife down, I let my daughter down. I let my wife’s parents down. I let the whole Baltimore community down. I let my teammates down. I let so many people down because of 30 seconds of my life that I know I can’t take back.”

That’s not who he is as a man? Well, I will differ with him on that. The video reveals something quite different.

Yes, he let a lot of people down. Still, he must face the punishment he’s been given.

The Ravens and the NFL have made exactly the right call.

 

International news, national news, political news

President gets it … finally: 'Optics' matter

It took a little while, but President Obama has acknowledged something many of us out here knew already.

Visual images — the “optics,” if you please — matter to those who are watching the commander in chief’s every move.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/07/politics/obama-golfing-optics/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Obama said on Meet the Press this past Sunday that he should anticipated how the image would look as he headed for the golf course immediately after making a heartfelt statement condemning the gruesome assassination of an American journalist by Syrian terrorists.

The White House defended the juxtaposition of those events as it happened. It turns out the president has had some second thoughts about the sequence of events and their proximity to each other.

Obama told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that James Foley’s murder moved nearly to tears as he spoke with the young man’s family. I believe him when he acknowledges how these events affect him emotionally. “I think everybody who knows me — including, I suspect, the press — understands that … you take this stuff in. And it’s serious business. And you care about it deeply,” he said.

He added that he understands that “optics” is important. “It matters. And I’m mindful of that.”

As a matter of substance, these things ought not to matter. However, the cliché about “perception becoming reality” in the eyes of those who see things also is important. His teeing off immediately after delivering such a statement offered the perception of a president who doesn’t care. He said that’s untrue and likely unfair.

Perhaps this brief tempest will have delivered a lesson to a president who’s trying right now to manage several international crises. Be mindful, Mr. President, of how your every move is being watched by the public — for whom you work.

 

 

 

national news, Sports news

Racist rant brings right response

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Donald Sterling, the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers professional basketball team, was caught saying some hideous things about African-Americans. His response? He fought tooth and nail to keep control of his team. He failed in that effort.

Bruce Levenson, owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, has admitted to sending out racist emails two years ago. His response? He announced his intention to sell his majority interest in the Hawks, he has apologized to NBA fans everywhere and is vowing to bow out quietly.

Which man did the honorable thing?

Of course you know the answer: Bruce Levenson.

http://time.com/3292250/atlanta-hawks-selling/

Levenson’s email reportedly said some derogatory things about African-American fans. “I’m truly embarrassed by my words in that email and I apologize to the Hawks family and all of our fans,” Levenson said in a statement. Levenson said he had “trivialized our fans by making clichéd assumptions about their interests” based on their race and ethnicity.

The NBA, which has demonstrated its zero-tolerance policy on racial matters, was quick to commend Levenson for thinking first about the NBA, the Hawks and “the Atlanta community.”

That, folks, is how you respond to an incident in which you have shamed yourself.

 

 

national news, political news, State news

Mitt falls far short of saying 'no' to 2016 run

Don’t believe Mitt Romney’s non-denial about whether he wants to run for president one more time.

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee told Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace that “I am not running. I have no plans to run.”

OK, Mitt. That ain’t one of those Shermanesque statements, you know, where you’re supposed to say “If nominated I won’t run; if elected, I won’t serve.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/09/romney-195006.html?hp=r6

Mitt says he’d be a better president than Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democrats’ presumed frontrunner for the 2016 nomination. He also says he’d do better than the man who beat him in ’12, President Barack Obama.

Mitt told Wallace that his time had “come and gone.”

Hey, doggone it, he still hasn’t said he won’t run under any circumstances.

These non-statements about political futures are so frustrating. Politicians keep saying they “have no plans” to do something, then turn around and do what they said they have no plans to do.

The problem with that non-statement is the verb “have.” It’s a present-tense verb that doesn’t rule anything out, say, for tomorrow. Or the next day, or the day after that.

I remember in 1988 I asked the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen if he would consider running as Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis’s running mate on the Democratic Party presidential ticket. Sen. Bentsen said his plate was full serving as Texas’s senior U.S. senator. He never actually answered directly: yes or no. Turned out he was dodging. Dukakis selected him to run with him for the White House.

Bentsen had an out. He was able to run successfully for re-election to the Senate that year.

Is Mitt Romney really and truly not going to run for president in two years?

I’ve heard nothing from him that says “not just no, but hell no.”

 

 

national news, political news

Kansas turning blue? Maybe

Albert Hunt probably wants this to happen, given his political leanings.

The veteran political journalist is suggesting that Kansas — one of the country’s most dependably Republican states — might elect its first Democratic U.S. senator since 1932.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-04/will-kansas-go-blue

And you know what? It’s more than just remotely possible.

Pat Roberts is a veteran Republican senator who now is in the fight of his life. The Democrat who had been slated to run against him dropped out of the race. His name will remain on the Kansas ballot, for now; the decision is under appeal.

Roberts now faces a well-funded, popular independent, Greg Orman, a businessman who says he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and for Mitt Romney in 2012.

As Hunt notes in his article for Bloomberg View, Roberts was beaten up badly in a Republican primary by an opponent who made Roberts’s residency an issue. Roberts didn’t help himself during the primary campaign when he let slip that “home” is Washington, D.C., and not Kansas.

Some polls suggest Orman is leading the two-man race for the Senate.

Even though Orman is a registered independent, he’s getting plenty of help from Democrats who want him to caucus with them if he gets elected.

What does this mean for an expected Republican takeover of the Senate? It means if Kansas, of all places, elects someone other than a Republican, then a GOP takeover might not be nearly as inevitable as a lot of folks are predicting.