Tag Archives: Barack Obama

International news

Did we make a ‘mistake’ in Hiroshima?

2 Comments

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I am drawn by a particular passage from remarks President Obama made while visiting Hiroshima.

“We’re not bound by genetic codes to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story,” Obama said in remarks at the memorial that commemorates the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese city on Aug. 6, 1945.

To be sure, the president did not deliver an apology for the decision one of his predecessors, Harry Truman, made in seeking an end to the bloodiest war in human history.

Nor should he.

But the statement seems to imply that the decision was a “mistake.”

I beg to differ, Mr. President. I think many of your fellow Americans beg to differ as well, particularly those of us who are descended from those who were participating in that theater of operations at the end of the war.

The president’s speech was far-reaching and it spoke to a “moral awakening” that the event brought to the world. Indeed, it did, and for that awakening we should be grateful. The world saw first hand in 1945 just destructive these weapons can be.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/obama-hiroshima-visit-223645

President Truman, who took office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, felt at that moment he had to make a decision that would (a) end the war quickly and (b) change the world forever.

It did both. President Truman said late in his life that he never regretted the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and, three days later, on Nagasaki.

For me personally, he might have saved my own father’s life. Dad was in the Philippines serving in the Navy and well could have taken part in the campaign against the Japanese homeland. The bombs prevented that campaign from occurring.

Those of us who have this connection with what happened that at the end of World War II perhaps see the event with a different form of clarity than others.

I’m glad President Obama has spoken out about the need to remain alert to the tragedy of these terrible weapons.

Was its use in Japan a “mistake”?

No. It was not.

 

education news, political news, State news

SBOE runoff turns out OK after all

texas_board_of_education_messes_with_history-460x307

Just about the time I was ready to give up all hope of political sanity within the Texas Republican Party …

Those voters over yonder in the Piney Woods do something sensible. Who’d a thunk it?

Tuesday night, they rejected the candidacy of one Mary Lou Bruner to District 9 on the State Board of Education. Yep, the GOP runoff produced another winner, Keven Ellis of Lufkin, a member of the Lufkin school board.

Bruner had been favored to win. She finished first in the Republican primary in March and was considered a strong candidate in the runoff. Then came the torrent of criticism regarding many of the former kindergarten teacher’s social media posts.

The one that got the most attention has been her contention that President Obama subsidized his drug habit as a young college student by prostituting himself. My favorite, though, was the notion she posted about dinosaurs becoming extinct because the baby T-Rexes couldn’t survive after Noah’s Ark made landfall on Mount Ararat.

District 9 Republicans then began to give serious thought to the choices they had. Did they really want someone with that kind of outlook representing them on the board that determines public education policy in Texas?

I’m still not crazy about the notion of electing these board members. I still prefer that they be appointed, subjected to Texas Senate confirmation, and that they have a deep background in education.

A Republican runoff in one East Texas SBOE district shouldn’t be seen necessarily as a harbinger of a return to sanity in the state’s political process. The state GOP, which dominates the Texas political landscape to the point that it has all but eradicated Democrats’ viability, still is capable of enacting some highly restrictive public policies.

Still, Keven Ellis’s runoff victory in East Texas gives me some hope that reason and sanity still have a voice within the state Republican Party.

political news, State news

SBOE spared a candidate’s lunacy

Bruner_v._Ellis_jpg_800x1000_q100

It’s late in the day and I’m a bit tired.

So I won’t belabor the point.

The Texas State Board of Education has been spared the idiotic philosophy of one Mary Lou Bruner, who today lost her Republican Party runoff in District 9, an East Texas board of education district.

GOP voters today nominated a Lufkin chiropractor, Keven Ellis, to campaign this fall against the Democratic nominee.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/24/state-board-education-runoffs/

The 15-member SBOE is a contentious enough body as it is. Bruner represented something out of a parallel universe.

She’s a former kindergarten teacher who said, among many other things, that President Barack Obama was worked as a gay prostitute to support a drug habit when he was a young man and that dinosaurs became extinct because the baby beasts couldn’t fend for themselves on Noah’s Ark.

Yes, this individual came dangerously close to helping determine public education curriculum for our state’s school children.

Wisdom prevailed today in East Texas.

I am grateful. Thank you, GOP voters.

 

legal news, national news, political news

GOP lawmaker: Wrong to block Garland

garlandmerrick_031716hj3

Dan Donovan’s opinion on a critical judicial appointment might matter if he actually were to play a tangible role in determining its outcome.

It’s too bad the thoughts of a back-bench Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives will be relegated to the back of the closet.

Donovan is a New York member of Congress who said it is wrong for the Republican Senate leadership to block the appointment of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. If Donovan were king of Capitol Hill, he’d let Garland have a hearing and a vote.

He’s right, of course. President Obama appointed Garland to the high court after the shocking death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this year.

Within hours of Scalia’s death, though, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that the president’s nominee wouldn’t get a hearing. The president’s pick would be tossed aside. Why? Barack Obama is a lame duck, said McConnell, and the appointment should come from the next president of the United States.

It’s an absolute crock of crap.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/281000-gop-lawmaker-republicans-were-wrong-to-block-garland

“I’ve never thought that was a good idea,” Donovan told reporters in Staten Island. “I’ve always thought that the Republicans were wrong, that they should see who the nominee was — actually, the president nominated Judge Garland — and judge him on his abilities, his jurisprudence.”

Gosh. Do you think?

The irony of McConnell’s refusal is too rich to dismiss. He accuses the president of playing politics by seeking to force the Senate to hold hearings and then a vote. The ironic part is that McConnell’s obstruction of this appointment is the classic example of “playing politics” with a key provision in the constitutional authority of the legislative and executive branches of government.

The only reason McConnell is blocking this appointment process from going ahead is because the appointment might change the balance of power on the court, which was a narrowly conservative panel with Scalia. Garland is more of a mainstream moderate judge who, I should note, won overwhelming Senate approval to the D.C. Circuit Court.

Who’s playing politics, Mr. Majority Leader?

One of McConnell’s fellow GOP lawmakers is making some sense. It’s a shame his voice won’t be heard at the other end of the Capitol Building.

 

International news

U.S., Vietnam enter new partnership

obama

Who would have thought that two nations that killed thousands upon thousands of the others’ citizens could reach this point?

The United States has lifted its 50-year-long arms embargo against Vietnam.

My initial reaction: Wow!

President Obama went to Hanoi over the weekend and announced the lifting of the embargo. He’s thinking strategically, of course. Vietnam has grown quite concerned about China’s increasing aggressiveness in Southeast Asia. For that matter, U.S. officials are concerned as well.

So, the arms embargo will enable U.S. manufacturers to sell weapons to Vietnam, giving that country some needed assistance in case China decides to take its aggressiveness to another, more dangerous level.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/obama-lifts-decades-old-arms-ban-in-his-1st-visit-to-vietnam/ar-BBtm1DM?ocid=ansmsnnews11

Forty-one years ago, North Vietnamese tanks and other armored vehicles rolled into Saigon, stormed the presidential palace in what was then South Vietnam. Troops struck the South Vietnamese flag and ran up the communist flag in its place.

The war ended right then.

However, it has continued to simmer at some level in the hearts of many Americans.

Frankly, I am one who is glad to see this relationship take the next logical step. We’ve already restored diplomatic relations with our former enemy; that rapprochement took 20 years since the end of the shooting.

The president has opened the door to Cuba, another nation with which we had zero relations for more than five decades. You’d have thought, listening to critics of that deal, that Obama had signed a pact with Satan himself.

However, we never went to all-out war with the Cubans. We did go to war with the Vietnamese and it cost both nations dearly.

Does this shore up our alliance structure in a part of the world that President Obama has placed greater emphasis? One can hope so.

It also sends a clear message to China, with which Vietnam also has gone to war in recent years.

It’s far better to have the Vietnamese on our side in this dicey world of geopolitical maneuvering.

 

national news, political news

Obama lacks GOP go-to pal in Congress

Valerie-Jarrett

Valerie Jarrett gave a stellar defense Sunday night of her boss and long-time friend President Barack Obama.

Her appearance on “60 Minutes” was notable in her defense as well of her role — in addition to senior adviser — as friend, confidante and her easy access to the Leader of the Free World.

But she pushed back when CBS News correspondent Nora O’Donnell asked her about the president’s continuing prickly relationship with congressional Republicans. She said Obama has done all he could do to reach out.

O’Donnell, though, asked — but did get an answer — about the lack of a leading Republican in either the Senate or the House to whom the president could turn to fight for his legislative agenda.

It brought to mind the kind of relationship that previous presidents have cultivated with members of the “loyal opposition.” President Lyndon Baines Johnson could turn to GOP Sen. Everett Dirksen in a pinch; President Ronald Reagan had a fabulous after-hours friendship with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill; GOP President George W. Bush relied on help from Sen. Ted Kennedy to push through education reform.

Barack Obama doesn’t seem to have that kind of personal friendship with members of the other side. He relies on his own instincts, his own circle of friends — such as Jarrett — and the vice president, Joe Biden, who to this day retains close friendships with Senate Republicans.

It’s that lack of kinship that has troubled many of us who want the president to succeed. I recall having this discussion once with retired Amarillo College president Paul Matney, who lamented that Obama had not developed the legislative know-how that LBJ brought to the presidency.

LBJ had served as Senate majority leader before his one-time foe John F. Kennedy asked him to be his running mate in 1960. Ol’ Lyndon knew how the Senate worked and he was able to parlay that knowledge — along with tremendous national good will after JFK’s assassination in 1963 — into landmark legislation.

Barack Obama has been forced to struggle, to battle relentlessly, to get anything past a Republican-led Congress intent on blocking every major initiative he has sought.

The reasons behind the ultra-fierce resistance will be debated long after President Obama leaves office.

He seems, though, to have lacked one essential ingredient to move his agenda forward: a good friend and dependable ally on the other side of the aisle who could run interference for him.

 

political news, State news

This politician shouldn’t be elected to SBOE

bruner

Texans decided to take a gamble when they decided some years ago to amend the state  constitution allowing politicians to run for seats on the State Board of Education.

I use the term “politician” in its strictest sense; the term describes anyone who seeks votes to an elected position.

Thus, the gamble occurs when politicians of varying stripes seek these offices.

I bring you one Mary Lou Bruner, a politician who’s running for a seat on the Texas State Board of Education.

She is among the strangest individuals imaginable seeking a highly critical state job, which is to help set public education policy for the state’s 5 million or so public school students.

Bruner’s statements are wacky … in the extreme.

Here’s the punch line: She is in position to win a Republican Party runoff next week and, with that victory, is a virtual cinch to be elected to the 15-member board.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/mary-lou-bruner/

District 9 comprises a section of East Texas. Yes, it’s a long way from the Texas Panhandle, which is represented on the SBOE board by Amarillo lawyer and former clergyman Marty Rowley.

Bruner’s runoff opponent is Lufkin chiropractor Keven Ellis. According to Texas Monthly, early voting trends seem to suggest Bruner’s in the driver’s seat.

Why is she so unsuitable? Check out the link I’ve attached to this blog and you get the idea.

She has said some stunningly ignorant things. And yet this individual is a retired kindergarten teacher.

Bruner has said President Obama spent part of his younger days as a male prostitute; she said Islam is not a religion; she said dinosaurs went extinct because they were babies and couldn’t fend for themselves after the ark landed on Mount Ararat; she said House Speaker Paul Ryan “looks like a terrorist” after he grew a beard.

The record is full of loony statements.

To think, therefore, that this individual stands an excellent chance at this moment of helping set public education policy in Texas.

I cannot vote against her in this upcoming runoff. However, I can put this short message out there and hope that it gets to enough individuals over in the Piney Woods to deny this individual the chance to affect the education of future Texas leaders.

Check out the link. It’ll make you cringe.

 

national news

POTUS honors authentic heroes

officer

Presidents get to do remarkable things while they serve as the leader of the Free World.

One of their ceremonial tasks is to pin medals around the necks of heroes. Military personnel receive these honors. So do firefighters and police officers.

President Obama got to perform one of those duties Monday when he bestowed Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor awards to 13 officers, who performed remarkable acts of courage — such as pulling someone from a burning vehicle, stopping a mass shooting in Garland, Texas, and rescuing a little girl from captivity. One of the officers honored paid for his heroism with his life.

I merely intend here to join those who honor these individuals for the extraordinary bravery they perform each day they go to work.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/16/obama-honors-11-police-offices-with-medal-of-valor/

The president summed up nicely the kind of courage he honored: “It’s been said that perfect valor is doing without witnesses what you would do if the whole world were watching,” Obama said. “The men and women who run toward danger remind us with your courage and humility what the highest form of citizenship looks like.”

So, they do this in service to their communities.

None of us does this enough. I certainly don’t.

It’s always good to thank public safety officers for their service to the community — for their service to each of us individually. On the occasions that I do offer the thanks, I’m always gratified by the sincerity of their response. To a person, the individuals I’ve thanked have responded with outwardly genuine appreciation for the expression.

We’ve all known that there’s nothing at all “routine” for these public safety officers who report to work each day. Every call for assistance, every emergency presents potential danger for the responder … and for the family members who pray every day that they’ll return home.

Thank you all for your service.

national news

Grads get lecture from POTUS about ‘listening’

Condoleezza-Rice_

President Barack Obama has delivered some much-needed wisdom to recent university graduates about the need to keep their ears and their minds open to all points of view.

The president delivered a commencement address to Rutgers University graduates and lectured them about the “misguided” effort to prevent a former secretary of state from speaking to an earlier class of graduates.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obama-chides-rutgers-students-pressuring-203403559.html

Condoleezza Rice was supposed to speak to Rutgers grads in 2014, but she was pressured to back out of her scheduled appearance because students and faculty members disagreed with her involvement in the George W. Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Obama said it was wrong to mount that kind of pressure against Rice.

He is correct to say so.

“I don’t think it’s a secret that I disagree with many of the policies of Dr. Rice and the previous administration. But the notion that this community or this country would be better served by not hearing a former secretary of state or not hearing what she had to say — I believe that’s misguided,” Obama said. “I don’t think that’s how democracy works best, when we’re not even willing to listen to each other.”

You go, Mr. President!

Universities should be places where all points of view are welcome. Does anyone really doubt that a former secretary of state has something valuable to say to students who are about to leave academia to make their way into the world?

This notion of academic snobbery has rankled me repeatedly over the years.

I’m gratified to hear the president of the United States tell these young graduates something they needed to hear, if they might not like hearing it.

International news, military news

Now … about dropping that nuclear bomb

bomb

It’s been called the “elephant in the room.”

Barack Obama is about to become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, Japan. The question of the day: Will he apologize for a decision one of his predecessors made to order the dropping of a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city? A corollary question: Should he apologize?

The late-May visit so far doesn’t include remarks from the president that amount to an apology.

Here’s some unsolicited advice, Mr. President: Don’t do it. There is no compelling need to apologize for a decision that President Truman made as a way to end the bloodiest conflict in human history.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/10/politics/obama-hiroshima-visit-japan/index.html

The president said early in his time in office that he wanted to visit Hiroshima, which was targeted on Aug. 6, 1945 as the place where the United States would drop this then-secret weapon.

Many thousands of civilians died in that horrific blast. Are there regrets today for what happened then? Yes.

Let’s set this in some context.

Nazi Germany had surrendered in May 1945 to advancing Soviet, American, British and Allied troops. The war in the Pacific Theater was still raging, although Japan had retreated from all the territory it had claimed. The U.S.-led onslaught had brought the war to Japan’s homeland.

President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and the new president, Harry Truman, was briefed immediately about a project of which he knew next to nothing during the brief period he served as vice president.

He made the decision to use the weapon to persuade Japan that its continuing the fight would be futile.

Knowing what he knew at the moment, President Truman made the correct call.

My hope is that the current president, 71 years later, will recognize that his predecessor did what he believed at the time he had to do, which was to use the weaponry at his disposal to end the world’s bloodiest conflict.

Let me be clear about one more point …

I have a direct interest in President Truman’s decision. My father, who saw intense combat while serving in the Navy in the Mediterranean theater of operations from 1942 through 1944, had arrived in The Philippines in early 1945 and quite likely would have taken part in the effort to invade and conquer Japan.

I cannot prove this, but there’s a decent probability that the president’s decision to drop The Bomb on Hiroshima and later, on Nagasaki, might have saved my dad’s life.

For that reason, I say: God bless President Truman.