Tag Archives: Barack Obama

International news, military news, national news, political news

Yes, he got the Nobel Peace Prize

obama nobel

The New York Times has posted a story that bestows a dubious legacy on President Barack Obama.

He’s about to exit the presidency after serving two full terms with the country at war.

His time in office will include more time at war than FDR, Richard Nixon, LBJ or Abraham Lincoln, the Times reports.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/us/politics/obama-as-wartime-president-has-wrestled-with-protecting-nation-and-troops.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

I doubt very much that President Obama is going to tout this legacy, particularly as he starts serious planning for his presidential library.

It brings to mind something I brought up in this blog a while back, which is his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize during the first year of his presidency.

He’ll never give it back. I’m not suggesting he should, although I did write a blog that said I wouldn’t be all that upset if he did.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/11/11478/

The Nobel committee honored the then-brand-new president as a rebuke, or so it has been speculated, to his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush. The Nobel panel thought little of President Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq and many analysts suggested that awarding Obama the Peace Prize was meant to stick it in Bush’s ear over the Iraq War.

The official reason was that the Nobel Prize committee felt Obama had the promise of bringing the world to a new era of peace.

It hasn’t happened.

Is it the president’s fault? Does he shoulder the burden of continuing conflict around the world? No.

We’re still killing terrorists. We’ve been fighting a virtual all-out war with the Islamic State, which emerged from the rubble of the Iraq War as that country established a Shiite Muslim government, which is anathema to the Sunni Muslims comprising the Islamic State.

It’s clear that Obama delivered on his pledge to end our active combat role in Iraq. The Afghan War rages on as well, with troops remaining in that theater well past the time the president had hoped to bring them home.

I remain a supporter of Barack Obama. I believe he did a masterful job of infusing aid to shore up an economy in free fall. I also believe he’s done well in developing alliances around the world.

This wartime presidential legacy, though, is one that shouldn’t make any of us proud … least of all the man whose time as leader of the Free World is about to end.

 

national news, political news, Uncategorized

Why aren’t we cheering this news?

federal-budget-2013

I am a lousy psychoanalyst.

I’m not educated in it. I’m not an expert at anything, truth be told. I just try to observe my surroundings and keep myself somewhat centered.

Still, I am inclined to believe that human beings are drawn more readily to negativity than they are to positive news.

That might explain the contents of this link:

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-public-has-no-idea-the-deficit-shrinking

The writer suggests that Americans don’t know that the budget deficit is shrinking at a greater rate under the Obama administration than at any time in recent history.

Why don’t Americans know this? Why aren’t they cheering the news?

I think it’s because the naysayers have won the argument. How is that? Because human beings are drawn to their message.

Hey, I can relate to it. The TV Guide we get at our house has a “Cheers and Jeers” section in the back of the magazine. I am drawn instinctively to the “Jeers” the magazine gives before I read the “Cheers.” Do you know what I mean here?

Deficit spending used to be Republicans’ major bogeyman. They pilloried Democratic politicians in 1980 because the federal budget deficit exceeded $40 billion annually. Oh, to have a deficit that small these days.

The deficit exceeded $1 trillion when Barack Obama took office in January 2009. It’s now down to less than half that amount. Remember when we actually balanced the budget during the administration of another Democrat, Bill Clinton? A failed Republican president candidate this year, John Kasich, played a big role in making that happen, but he never was able to parlay that positive record into votes among GOP base voters … who are too enthralled by the negativity being sold by Donald J. Trump.

The negativity proponents are winning the national argument about the federal budget deficit.

It’s not the essence of their message. It’s that they’re outshouting those who know the truth, which is that it is shrinking.

How, then, do we get past humans’ instinct to embrace news that angers them?

environmental news

Bison get new, exalted status

bison

Let us take a break from partisan politics for a moment and talk briefly about something that ought to warm our hearts.

The bison has been named the national mammal of the United States of America, to which I offer a hearty “bravo!”

President Obama has signed the National Bison Legacy Act into law. This new designation does not remove the bald eagle from its standing as the national symbol. It does give the bison some added standing as the national mammal, which is a good thing, considering what human beings did to the grand creature during much of the 19th century.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/north-american-bison-national-mammal-us-222975

We’ve all studied American history enough to know how humans slaughtered the great herds on which Native Americans depended for food, clothing and shelter. Bison would roam the prairies in vast numbers. Millions of them galloped across the High Plains, for example.

Humans killed so many of them that their numbers were decimated to fewer than 1,000 or so head of wild beasts by the turn of the 20th century.

They’ve come back. Thankfully.

Several hundred thousand of them now are being raised on ranches and farms. Thousands more roam on public lands. Why, we’ve even received some of them at Caprock Canyons State Park in the Texas Panhandle, where the herd is doing quite well, according to Texas Parks & Wildlife officials.

I’m glad that Congress and the president saw fit to honor the glorious beast with this national mammal designation.

Fans of the bald eagle need not worry about the national symbol, though. It, too, was nearly killed off until the government banned the use of the pesticide DDT, from which the great birds were dying because they were eating fish that had been poisoned by the chemical.

So, what’s next? Designation of the national reptile? I have a suggestion: the alligator, which has made a dramatic comeback of its own along the Gulf Coast.

Meantime, let the buffalo — ‘er bison — roam.

 

 

national news, political news

Hatred won’t end just because we demand it

malia

Leona Allen has written a terrific blog post for the Dallas Morning News.

Sadly, though, it won’t accomplish what she has demanded: an end to the racist epithets aimed at the family of Barack and Michelle Obama.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/enough-of-this-racist-and-insensitive-tripe-about-the-obamas-interracial-marriage-from-trump.html/

Allen has taken appropriate note of the hateful reaction from those who commented on Malia Obama — the older of the Obamas’ two daughters — deciding to take a year off before entering Harvard University. She writes: “Instead of celebrating the kid’s hard work, anonymous trolls took it upon themselves to disparage her with racist epithets.”

Fox News took down the comments after its website was filled with comments from the racist haters who took time to disparage Malia’s accomplishment.

The president’s policies are open to criticism, as are the policies of all presidents. It goes with the territory. They all know their public policy record is fair game.

What is not fair game, though, is the hate that is thrown at public officials — and their families.

We’ve seen far more than enough of it for the past nearly eight years. As Allen notes, the Obamas have done an admirable job of maintaining their dignity in public in the face of the comments that have been hurled at them.

If only the blogger’s demand to cease and desist the hatred would be met.

Of course, the Obamas are the only targets of the hatred. The blog notes that others have taken aim at interracial couples. Allen noted that U.S. Sen. John McCain’s son, Jack, is married to an African-American woman and has lashed out at the haters simply by posting pictures of himself and his wife on social media.

We’ve all heard about the “toxic” political atmosphere in Washington.

Many of us salute the progress we’ve made in the realm of race relations.

This latest spasm of hatred aimed at an accomplished young woman who happens to be the daughter of the president of the United States only shows us how far we have to go.

 

International news, military news, national news, political news

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!

prayer-pic-11

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

1 Comment

gop-death1

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

cruz-trump_jpg_800x1000_q100

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

heres-the-story-behind-one-of-the-most-iconic-photos-from-the-bin-laden-raid.png

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

1 Comment

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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.