Tag Archives: Barack Obama

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Trump to get access to top-secret info

Protection Lock

Since 1952, the custom has been to give major-party presidential nominees access to top-secret security briefing material.

The idea has been to keep these individuals in the loop on pressing issues involving the safety of the nation. The 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, got the information from the Obama administration as he ran against Barack Obama; four years earlier, the Bush administration provided the briefings to Sens. Obama and John McCain while they ran against each other. That’s been the norm dating back to the days of the Truman administration.

Consider, then, that in just a few weeks the next Republican Party presidential nominee is going to receive these briefings and will be privy to some highly sensitive material.

Yes, that means Donald J. Trump is going to peek under the national security tent and know much of what the president and his military and intelligence staffers know about the dangers that threaten us.

I am not sure what is more frightening: the material to which Trump will have access or that he’ll actually be given that information in the first place.

This is the guy who this past year told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd that he derives his national security “expertise” by watching “the shows” on Sunday morning, meaning the news talk shows presented on several of the broadcast and cable news networks.

Trump most recently said that former GOP rival Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in the murder of President Kennedy. His source for that disclosure? The National Enquirer.

The real estate mogul also said he wouldn’t have any problems with South Korea and (gulp!) Japan developing nuclear arsenals to deter the idiot/madman who runs North Korea.

President Obama will make the final call on the classification level of the information to be disseminated to the major-party nominees. There’s no law that mandates any of this. It’s strictly a judgment call. The president cannot let one nominee see more than the other, however, which means that Trump and probable Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton will get the same information.

I mentioned all this briefly last night to my wife, that Trump is going to get these national security briefings the moment he becomes the GOP presidential nominee.

Her response? “Oh … my.”

Exactly, my dear.

 

political news, religious news

Hey, the day of prayer hasn’t been canceled after all!

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Did you notice that we’re having a National Day of Prayer today?

What in the world … ?

Haven’t the right-wing scoundrels and Internet trolls out there been saying something about President Obama “canceling” this annual event? Haven’t they accused the president of being a barely closeted heathen who hates people of faith?

Well, the National Day of Prayer is continuing this year as it has all along.

The president has been just as diligent and faithful in his acknowledgment of this day as all his predecessors have been.

Obama’s immediate predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, spoke just as clearly as and articulately as the current president about this special day, which was enacted in 1952, during the final full year of President Harry Truman’s term.

Those of us who believe in God’s power and draw strength from it welcome this day. Moreover, those of us who share that belief understand that God takes many forms in the hearts of those who believe in the Almighty.

In this current climate, though, the National Day of Prayer takes on a special significance.

Many of us today fear those who worship God in ways with which we are not familiar. A major-party presidential candidate awaiting his party’s nomination has given voice to those fears by declaring his intention to ban people of a certain faith from entering the United States.

Let’s pray, therefore, for those who share that fear. Let us also pray for those leaders who articulate it aloud.

They need our prayers today. And always.

As for those who keep yammering about the cancelation of the National Day of Prayer … just be quiet, bow your heads — and pray.

 

national news, political news

R.I.P., Republican Party

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Now that millions of voters have dug the grave, it’s now time to start tossing dirt on what once was a great political party.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is going to announce soon that he’s suspending his campaign for the presidency. It’s over for him. The field now belongs exclusively to Donald J. Trump, the real estate mogul/reality TV celebrity/carnival barker/fear monger.

The Republican Party presidential nomination will go to Trump this summer and he’s going to lead the party to a disastrous defeat against — more than likely — Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Kasich was the party’s last hope of retaining some sanity in what has been the most raucous and rancorous primary campaign in most folks’ memory.

Kasich has realized he can’t win. Sen. Ted Cruz bowed out Tuesday night after it became clear that Trump would win the Indiana GOP primary.

The Republican Party once comprised politicians able and willing to compromise on occasion. It once had individuals who knew how to legislate. The conservative wing of the GOP once believed that government should stay out of people’s lives and it once believed in the principle of less government across the board.

Then came this guy, Trump.

What on Earth does he believe?

He panders and pillories the same demographic groups at the same time. He insults anyone who disagrees with him. He also throws out innuendo aimed at destroying opponents, such as the one about Ted Cruz’s father being complicit in President Kennedy’s murder.

Good bleeping grief!

Oh, yes. He also continues to spout the fecal fallacy about President Obama’s birthplace and questions whether the president — who’s nearing the end of his second and final term in office — has been constitutionally qualified to serve as our head of state.

It was a great run, Republican Party.

Now we’ll all see what rises from the ash heap that will remain once the votes are counted this November.

Rest in peace …

 

national news, political news

Don’t look for these rivals to make up

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Recent political history is full of examples of how rivals for the presidency have said means and occasionally disgusting things to and about each other … and then hooked up as allies.

In 1960, U.S. Sens. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson fought each other for the Democratic presidential nomination. JFK was nominated and then picked LBJ to run with him. They won the election and the rest is, well, history.

Twenty years later, former Gov. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush battled for the 1980 Republican nomination, with Bush labeling Reagan’s tax plan as “voodoo economics.” Reagan won the GOP nod and then picked Bush to run alongside him as vice president.

In 2008, the combatants were Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden fighting for the Democratic nomination. Biden dropped out, Obama won the nomination and picked Biden to run with him. President-elect Obama then turned to another campaign rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and selected her to be secretary of state.

In 2016, well, matters are quite a bit different.

The battlers this time are Donald J. Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz. They are fighting for the Republican nomination.

The gloves are off. The brass knuckles are on. The men loathe each other. Trump calls Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.” Cruz is now responding with attacks on Trump, referring to him as a “pathological liar” and a “serial philanderer.”

Trump now says that Cruz’s father might have been a principal — are you ready for this one? — in the assassination of President Kennedy. Cruz’s response was classic: “Let’s be clear: This is nuts. This is not a reasonable position. This is kooky,” Cruz said in Evansville, Ind. “While I’m at it, I should go ahead and admit yes, my dad killed JFK, he is secretly Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his backyard.”

Cruz is likely to get battered badly in today’s Indiana GOP primary. He’s going all-out against Trump. The men seem to truly despise each other.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/05/03/bracing-indiana-loss-cruz-unloads-trump/

Trying to predict any outcome in this year’s wacky presidential contest is a dicey proposition at best.

I feel comfortable, though, in asserting that Trump and Cruz will not team up for the fall campaign.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Five years ago, the war on terror shifted

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Five years ago, my wife and I were watching TV.

Then we noticed one of those crawls scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It announced that President Obama was going to make a special announcement about a national security issue.

It was a Sunday night. The president never goes on national TV to tell us something about national security unless it was something really, really huge.

I turned to my wife and said, “I think they got bin Laden.” Yes, I said that. You can ask her if you wish.

It was right around midnight when Barack Obama strode to a microphone in the White House to say that U.S. Special Forces had carried out a mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

The forces took bin Laden’s body to an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, where sailors aboard the U.S.S. Carl Vinson “buried him at sea.” I prefer to think they just tossed his corpse into the drink.

Americans cheered. I cheered, too. We all were glad to see the 9/11 mastermind and head of al-Qaeda pay the price for his dastardly history.

Of course, in the days and weeks that followed, Obama’s critics all said much the same thing. The president was taking “too much credit” for issuing the order to take out bin Laden. Big deal, those critics said. He didn’t board the helicopters, fly into Pakistan with no lights at night. All he did was issue the order.

I felt compelled at the time — on May 2, 2011 — to remind those critics that another president once ordered a rescue mission into Iran. It was April 1980 when U.S. Army Special Forces ventured to Desert One and where several of them died in the futile attempt to extract those U.S. hostages from the clutches of the Iranian “students” who captured them at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Did President Carter deserve the “blame” for the mission failure? Sure he did. He ordered it, apparently without agreeing to plans for how to deal with the mechanical failures that resulted in the desert tragedy.

Having said that, President Obama deserved “credit” for ordering the hit job that brought down the world’s most notorious terrorist.

Did the death of one man spell the end of the fight? Not in the least.

It redefined the nature of the fight. It made it possible for the current president to rely on finely tuned intelligence gathering to help our forces bring justice to the monsters who seek to do us harm.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/02/politics/obama-terror-doctrine-bin-laden-raid/index.html

Was the bin Laden raid a lead-pipe cinch to succeed? No on that one, too. The president was concerned that the Navy SEAL team and the Army Special Forces pilots would come up empty when they landed in the compound where they believed bin Laden had been “hiding in plain sight.”

The mission proved to be a success.

The fight against international terrorism goes on. I, though, am willing to give the commander in chief for exhibiting a huge measure of courage in issuing the order that brought about a national cheer.

Believe this, too: Had it gone wrong, President Obama surely would have gotten the blame.

 

national news, political news

Time to handicap the fall election

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This isn’t the first comment written on the upcoming general election for president of the United States.

Having stipulated that I’m a little late stepping into this muck, I’ll now offer what I believe is shaping up for the fall campaign.

Hillary vs. Donald will be the most miserable campaign in most people’s memories.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is now almost assuredly going to face Donald J. Trump in the race for the White House.

As I look at the Electoral College map and read all that polling data, I am left with an inescapable conclusion. It is that unless Clinton gets indicted a month before the election on some made-up charge by a federal grand jury involving the use of her personal email account, she is going to become the second history-making president in a row.

Just as Barack Obama was the first African-American to become president, Hillary Clinton will become … oh, you know.

Not only that, in my humble view she very well could make history in another fashion. She could score the largest electoral landslide perhaps since Ronald Reagan’s re-election victory in 1984. President Reagan won 49 states and 525 electoral votes.

All that’s left, thus, for Clinton is to score a 50-state sweep. I believe it’s possible.

How do I know that? Well, I don’t know it.

Polling data, though, suggest that Trump’s huge gender gap is too big to overcome. Women have something like a 70-plus percent unfavorable view of Trump. Women also comprise about 53 percent of the population; the percentage is even greater among likely voters. Women tend to vote more than men.

That’s one key demographic working against Trump.

Let’s try another one: Latinos.

Trump’s opening gambit during the campaign was to label illegal Mexican immigrants as rapists, murderers and drug dealers, while adding he was “sure there are some good ones, too.”

Now, if you’re a Latino American, do you believe this individual really cares about you? Are you going to buy into his notion that he just “loves Hispanics” because “so many of them work for me”?

Therein lies another gold mine for Team Clinton.

I also will posit this notion: Trump’s hideous standing among Latinos is going to make states such as Texas and Arizona highly competitive for Clinton and the Democrats. New Mexico will vote for Clinton anyway, along with Colorado, Nevada and California.

You want another towering obstacle for Trump? How about those “traditional Republicans” who don’t trust Trump as far as they can throw him. The evangelical voters who comprise so much of the Deep South aren’t likely to stampede willingly to Clinton’s side. Instead, they just might sit this election out, denying Trump the cushion he would need to defeat Clinton throughout Dixie.

The Rust Belt is a goner for Trump. The Great Lakes, the Northeast and New England all are locked in for Clinton.

The Farm Belt? What in the world has Trump done to woo voters who live in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, except “tell it like it is”? These states also are full of those traditional Republicans who dislike Trump’s garish lifestyle and his less-than-stellar personal conduct over the years.

The Pacific Northwest will stand firm behind Clinton. Hawaii is for Hillary. Alaska, too.

OK, I’ve just spent a lot of energy in the past few minutes bashing Donald Trump.

What does Hillary Clinton bring to the table? What would commend her?

I get that she’s got a lot of negatives, too. She doesn’t appear to be the most trustworthy candidate in the history of the Republic.

However, she is tough. She is seasoned. She knows how government works. Say what you want about her playing the “woman card,” her gender will work in her favor.

This campaign will not be waged on the high ground. It will be fought in the trenches. Trump will take it there, just as he has done throughout the Republican Party primary. Those who have watched the Clinton organization up close, though, know that Hillary Clinton has surrounded herself with seasoned, battle-tested pros who know how to respond quickly and with maximum effectiveness.

Having said all this, I am the first to acknowledge that I am wrong more than I am right.

On this one,  though, my gut tells me I am more right than wrong.

One final caveat. This election campaign to date has turned every conventional political theory on its ear.

We shall see.

International news, military news, national news, political news

Syria fight to get some U.S. ground help

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I have great respect and admiration for U.S. Sen. John McCain.

The Arizona Republican, though, needs to stop insisting that it’s time to put more American “boots on the ground” in places where they don’t belong.

President Obama has ordered 250 U.S. Special Forces to Syria to “assist and advise” frontline troops who are battling the Islamic State.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/277529-mccain-250-more-us-troops-in-syria-insufficient

McCain’s reaction was quite predictable. He called the deployment a “welcome” development but then said it is “insufficient” and is doomed to fail.

I happen to disagree with the failure prediction.

Having said that, I am troubled by the way the president has described the troops’ assignment. He said they aren’t going to be “combat” troops. I am forced to say, merely, “Huh?”

The troops will comprise mostly Army Special Forces … Green Berets and Rangers. These folks are trained to the hilt to, um, fight.

I strongly suspect that if, in the process of advising and assisting the Syrians, that these special operations troops find themselves engaging ISIL terrorists that they’ll know what to do.

The soldiers who are joining the fight against ISIL are going to deliver maximum damage to the terror organization.

On one hand, Sen. McCain should reel back his desire to send thousands more ground forces back into battle.

On the other hand, the president of the United States ought to quit soft-pedaling the threat of combat that awaits these forces.

 

legal news, national news, political news

GOP erects fortress of obstruction

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Merrick Garland should be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to take a seat on the Supreme Court.

Why? He’s qualified in the extreme. He is a model of judicial restraint. Garland is held in high regard by his peers and even by politicians of both parties.

So, what’s the trouble?

He happens to have been nominated by a Democratic president in his final full year in office. Senate Republicans, the folks in charge of the body who must confirm these nominees, say that Barack Obama doesn’t deserve to name the next justice.

And why is that? Well, it’s because the next nominee is going to succeed a conservative judicial titan on the court. Antonin Scalia went hunting in West Texas and then died suddenly earlier this year.

The Supreme Court’s balance has been narrowly conservative. Scalia’s death occurring during the presidency of a progressive politician means that the politician — Barack Obama — should get to select the next person to serve on the nation’s highest court.

But, no-o-o-o-o, say Republicans. He can’t do that.

The nomination must wait for the election to occur and for the next president to take office, say Republicans. Their hope, as if it’s not clear, is that one of the Republicans running for the White House will win the election.

Garland has launched what some are calling a “charm offensive” against some targeted Republican senators.

It hasn’t worked. The GOP lawmakers thought to be vulnerable to Garland’s judicial brilliance aren’t budging. They’re standing by their own man, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said — laughingly, in my view — that “the people deserve to have a voice” in choosing the next Supreme Court justice.

It’s a crock of horse manure. The people’s voice was heard in November 2012 when voters re-elected Barack Obama as president.

Oh, but wait! Didn’t the people speak in 2014 when they voted to hand control of the Senate over to the GOP? Sure they did.

However, as one who believes in presidential prerogative, I also am of a mind to place greater value on the votes collected by the one individual who is elected head of government and head of state than on the votes earned collectively by the legislative branch of government.

Garland’s charm offensive likely won’t — by itself — change enough minds to earn him a confirmation hearing before Barack Obama leaves office.

However, it very well could awaken the people once again this election, who in turn might seek to have their “voices heard” when they toss aside the Senate Republican majority while electing a Democrat to assume the presidency.

Obstruction can be difficult to disguise.

 

International news

How about that? POTUS admits to ‘worst’ error

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gadhafi11

I’m going to give President Obama some high praise for doing something one doesn’t often hear from people in high office.

He has acknowledged what he says is his “worst mistake.”

What’s more, he did it in a forum that is considered hostile territory.

The president appeared on “Fox News Sunday” this weekend and told host Chris Wallace the worst mistake of his presidency was failing to plan adequately for the fall of the late Libyan dictator/tyrant/despot Moammar Gadhafi.

When do presidents do such a thing? Did Richard Nixon ever say he erred by recording those conversations in the White House; has Jimmy Carter ever said his biggest mistake was ordering the mission to rescue the Iran hostages; did George W. Bush ever acknowledge the Iraq War was a mistake?

OK, so the president didn’t take the heat for the Libya mess by himself. He heaped some blame in British Prime Minister David Cameron for being distracted at the time of Gadhafi’s downfall.

I do give Obama credit, though, for admitting to a lack of planning as the world watched the chaos unfold in Libya. The so-called “Arab Spring” went into full bloom in Tripoli as rebels took over the government, captured the dictator — and then killed him.

It got worse, of course, as the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came under attack and four Americans died in the melee. Perhaps some adequate planning could have forestalled that event, yes?

The president’s greatest triumph? Without question, he said, it was his decision to jump-start the economy with stimulus packages upon taking office. I won’t argue with him on that. The economy was in free-fall and something needed to be done quickly.

It might be, too, that the president deserves props for telling all this to a broadcast journalist employed by a media outlet known as being patently unfriendly to politicians of Obama’s particular leaning.

I’ll give some to him for that alone.

Sure, there can be some debate on “worst mistakes” of the Obama presidency. Some might rank his failure to act on Syria crossing the “red line” when it used chemical weapons; others might rank the president’s unfortunate description of the Islamic State as the “JV team.”

The Libya coup aftermath, though, surely ranks as a critical error.

It’s just rare to hear a politician actually admit to making such a mistake.

 

national news, political news

No mandatory vote law needed, Mr. President

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Barack Obama is frustrated at the political division and the apparent apathy among voters in the United States.

I share the president’s frustration.

However, I don’t share his enthusiasm for a suggested remedy.

Make voting mandatory, he said in a speech at the University of Chicago law school.

The Australians  do it right, he said, by requiring citizens to vote. He said such a requirement would be “transformative” by boosting turnouts to the 70 to 80 percent range.

There are ways to encourage turnout without making citizens do it, Mr. President.

We could declare Election Day a national holiday. Give everyone a day off from work to vote. That’s an idea.

As for mandatory voting, the U.S. Constitution grants us the right to vote. It doesn’t specify it as a condition of citizenship. Our rights as citizens depend on whether we choose to take full advantage of them.

I am proud to vote. I almost always wait to do so on Election Day, whether it’s in the primary or in the general election. There’s just something ham-handed and, dare I say, dictatorial in declaring that Americans must vote.

I also lament the pitiful voter turnouts. Only 53.6 percent of Americans voted for president in 2012. The Australian turnout was greater than 90 percent in its most recent general election. Yes, that is vastly better than our own electoral performance.

“We really are the only advanced democracy on Earth that systematically and purposely makes it really hard for people to vote,” Obama told the law students.

That might be true. There are many options out there to make it easier for Americans to vote. Writing that requirement into law isn’t one of them.

We must remain free to vote — or not vote — as we see fit.

For better or worse, that’s the American way.