Tag Archives: Barack Obama

International news, military news, national news, political news

Syria fight to get some U.S. ground help

April 26, 2016 kanelis2012

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

April 16, 2016 kanelis2012

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

April 12, 2016 kanelis2012 1 Comment

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

April 11, 2016 kanelis2012

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.

legal news, national news, political news

Cruz is ‘eligible’ to run for POTUS

April 9, 2016 kanelis2012

This is fantastic!

The Ted Cruz Birther Movement is slow to die. Heck, it might never wither away!

Constitutional crybabies keep insisting that because the Republican U.S. senator from Texas — and GOP candidate for president — was born in Canada that he isn’t eligible to seek the presidency, let alone hold the office if elected.

Plaintiffs in several states have sought to block Cruz’s candidacy on specious grounds that the senator is a foreigner.

These challenges are doomed. They won’t get to first base, I believe, with the U.S. Supreme Court.

A lower court judge put it well. A natural-born citizen “includes any person who is a United States citizen from birth,” wrote Pennsylvania Commonwealth Judge Dan Pellegrini.

Young Rafael Edward Cruz came into this world as a U.S. citizens because his mother is an American. Therefore, no matter where on Earth baby Ted was born he became eligible to run for the presidency.

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t define “natural-born citizen.” It doesn’t specify that a president must have been born on sovereign U.S. territory. All it specifies is citizenship — and federal law, by golly, is pretty damn clear on that point.

Still, this birtherism regarding Cruz’s eligibility is nearly as funny as the cockamamie notion that dogged President Barack Obama right up until the moment he won re-election to a second — and final — term in November 2012.

national news, political news

Bernie turns from nice to nasty

April 7, 2016 kanelis2012 4 Comments

Bernie Sanders once vowed never to speak ill of his chief rival for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

He said he wanted to stay on the high road. He barely mentioned her by name while stumping across places like Iowa and New Hampshire.

That was then. Today he went straight after Hillary Clinton, contending in New York that the former secretary of state, U.S. senator — from New York! — and first lady isn’t “qualified” to become the 45th president of the United States.

Why is Clinton now unqualified to hold the nation’s highest office? According to the Vermont independent-turned-Democratic senator, her acceptance of money from “big Wall Street banks and other establishment political action groups makes her no longer qualified.

Hmm. That’s an interesting accusation.

You see, from my perspective, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most qualified candidate — among the five people in either party still seeking the presidency — to become the next president.

She served several terms as first lady as Arkansas; she became first lady of the nation for two terms and had a profound influence on her husband’s rather successful presidency; she was elected twice to the U.S. Senate from New York; she served as secretary of state during President Obama’s first term.

Surely, there have been other candidates over the years who’ve brought more sparkling resumes to the Oval Office. I keep thinking that of the presidents who served in my lifetime, the one with the glossiest history was George H.W. Bush. World War II fighter pilot, CIA director, member of Congress, U.N. ambassador, Republican Party chairman, vice president? The man had chops to be president.

As for Sanders’ own qualifications, well, he’s marginally so.

But the tone of this Democratic primary campaign has changed dramatically.

Now the nation is paying attention.

That’s the way it goes. Negativity works.

local news, national news, political news, State news

Wind power is in the wind

April 7, 2016 kanelis2012

ADRIAN, Texas — You have to squint your eyes a bit to take in the view in this picture.

It’s along Interstate 40 in the Texas Panhandle. I shot the picture this afternoon with my fancy-shmancy phone camera as I was returning home from a lunch meeting with a colleague in Tucumcari, N.M.

It’s a wind farm. Lots and lots and lots of wind turbines are blowing in the breeze, generating electricity — I reckon — to be shipped to points hither and yon. Given that I don’t get out as much as I used to, I was struck by the sight of hundreds of those turbines along nearly the entire length of I-40 through Oldham County after driving back onto the Caprock.

I want to call attention to this form of energy because of the presidential campaign that’s now in full swing in both major political parties.

Republicans and Democrats are seeking to nominate candidates for the White House, one of whom will succeed President Obama on Jan. 20, 2017.

That silence you’ve heard along the campaign trail has dealt with wind energy. You remember wind energy, don’t you?

Politicians are supposed to talk about it as a way to wean this nation from its dependence on fossil fuels. We’ve made some progress in one critical area: The United States is about to become the world’s leading fossil fuel energy producer, which means we’ve all but ended our dependence on foreign oil.

Of late, the only mention I’ve heard of energy production has been on the Democratic side of the campaign trail, with Bernie Sanders accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of being in the hip pocket of fossil fuel producers; Clinton has fired back, saying Sanders also is beholden to campaign contributors who are associated with fossil fuel producers. The world has a glut of oil, demand is down, therefore so is the price of fossil fuel-related products — such as gasoline!

Oh sure, the candidates traipsed through Iowa corn fields in the first contest of the season and talked here and there about ethanol, the “bio-fuel” produced by corn. One of the big surprises of the campaign, of course, was Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s victory in Iowa — even though he stuck his neck out and criticized ethanol subsidies as a form of government giveaway the nation couldn’t afford.

The Republican/Democratic Road Show trekked eventually to Texas. Did you hear much around the Panhandle about how any of the candidates would seek to shore up wind power?

If you did, then were dialed in far more acutely than I was. I don’t recall hearing a peep out of that still-large herd of candidates in the time leading up to the March 1 Texas primaries.

I’m proud of my state for becoming a leader in wind energy. Think of it: Texas and California have something in common after all, as they are the two leading wind-producing states in the country. Who knew?

Heaven knows we have enough of it here. It’s renewable and clean — even when it kicks up tons of dirt from the cultivated fields that are spread out for miles upon miles along our vast horizon.

Here’s my plea to the candidates … if they or their staffers see this blog post: How about talking more about wind and other renewables? It’s no longer cool to just “drill baby, drill.” We’ve got a lot of wind out there that’s not coming from the mouths of political blowhards.

How about ensuring we find ways to put it to use?

media news, national news, political news

Win or lose, Trump’s impact has been ‘y-u-u-u-u-ge!’

April 6, 2016 kanelis2012

Americans ought to perhaps prepare themselves for a major shock at the end of this year.

I’m talking about Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

No, I do not mean to suggest that Trump is going to win the election and start preparing himself to settle into the chair behind that big ol’ desk in the Oval Office. He won’t ever get to do that — in my humble view.

What I mean is that Trump’s presence on the campaign scene has had an impact far, far beyond anyone’s expectations when he entered it this past summer.

Yes, America, this man well could become Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2016.

I don’t know how the Time editors are going to process this election. The winner of the campaign assuredly should be the logical choice for the esteemed honor. If it turns out to be Hillary Rodham Clinton, well, she will have made history as the first woman ever elected, just as Barack Hussein Obama made history by becoming the first African-American ever elected president.

Trump’s influence on this election, though, has been overarching.

He has redefined how the media cover these events.

Think of it: The guy has no government experience of any kind whatsoever. He is known as a reality TV celebrity and real estate mogul. He has lived a life of excess — and boasts about his extramarital sexual conquests. He begins his campaign by insulting Mexican immigrants who come here illegally by lumping all of them together as rapists, murderers and drug dealers.

Then it got worse.

Still, the man remains the frontrunner for the Republican Party presidential nomination. The media cannot stop reporting on his utterances. Why is that? Because the public is infatuated with them. Even those of us who cannot stomach the sight of him or the sound of his voice can’t stop writing about him.

Trust me on this: If there wasn’t a public appetite for this guy, the media wouldn’t report on him. The media respond to what the public demands.

The Time editors have made much of the criteria they use for these selections. The person they put on the magazine’s cover are there because of what they contributed for “good or ill.” The publication has put some pretty hideous characters on its cover: Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and the Ayatollah Khomeini come to mind immediately.

Donald J. Trump ain’t in their league.

However, he’s had a gigantic impact on the political process that selects the person who becomes president of the United States.

International news, military news, national news, political news

POTUS shows command of the obvious

April 2, 2016 kanelis2012

Barack Obama demonstrated today a compelling command of the obvious when he said the Republicans’ leading candidate for president “doesn’t know much about foreign policy.”

The president was responding to comments from Donald J. Trump about allowing South Korea and Japan develop nuclear weapons programs.

Yep, Trump said he would be open to that possibility as a deterrent to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

According to Politico: “The person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally,” Obama told reporters as he finished the last of a series of high-level meetings on nuclear security in Washington.

“The person” to whom Obama was referring also said the United States shouldn’t even rule out using nuclear weapons to fight the Islamic State in the Middle East and, oh yes, in Europe.

Oh … my.

That’s the obvious criticism: that Trump doesn’t know diddly about U.S. foreign policy, its aims, how it protects U.S. interests and how it intends to maintain peace.

What is not so obvious is the question that the president didn’t ask. Perhaps he didn’t want to stick the proverbial hot branding iron in the eye of the Trumpsters who keep cheering their man on.

I’ll ask it here: How is it that the individuals who keep voting for this guy give him a pass on such obvious ignorance?

I am acquainted with some Trumpsters here in Amarillo. They keep answering with the same refrain: Trump “tells it like it is”; political correctness be damned!

As Ricky Ricardo might say: Ayy, caramba!

Trump’s ignorance keeps revealing itself in breathtaking fashion.

Just this week alone, he said women should be “punished” if they obtain an illegal abortion; he then reversed himself … twice! Then came the remarkable assertion about the use of nukes to fight radical Islamic terrorists. To be fair, he didn’t pledge to drop A-bombs on them, only that we shouldn’t take their use “off the table.”

Still, this individual does not grasp the meaning and the gravitas of what he says. As the president noted today in his remarks, the world pays careful attention to what major political leaders in this country say. Obama said: “I’ve said before that, you know, people pay attention to American elections. What we do is really important to the rest of the world, and even in those countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections because they understand the president of the United States needs to know what’s going on around the world.”

Trump may say he’s not a politician, but that’s now patently untrue. He is a politician seeking the highest office in the land. He seeks to become chief executive, the head of state and the commander in chief of the United States of America.

Yet he keeps shooting off his mouth about matters of which he knows not a single thing.

How in the name of all that is holy does this clown keep getting away with it?

local news, media news

This is how you trick ’em

April 1, 2016 kanelis2012

My pal Jon Mark Beilue has established an April Fool’s Day tradition at the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for 17-plus years.

This man is a master of putting one over on readers.

He does it intentionally once each year. He did so again today with this masterpiece about a proposed location for the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library.

He once spun a yarn about film star/heartthrob Matthew McConaughey moving to Amarillo; he once told a tall tale about the late Stanley Marsh 3 establishing an art museum inside an abandoned grocery store building next to Interstate 40. There have been others; those are two of my personal favorites.

I’ll just add this point before asking you to enjoy it as I have done already today.

The beauty of this kind of writing, which Jon Mark does better than anyone else I know, is that it tempts you to suspend your disbelief when you read it. You actually start to believe it could happen that, somehow, it’s not a prank.

Well, obviously it is.

Most of us in this part of the Texas surely are glad that it’s all a joke.

Others of us, well, might think differently.

Still, this is brilliant.

Enjoy.

High Plains Blogger