Tag Archives: 2016 election

political news

2020 election really might be the ‘most important in our lifetime’

Every presidential election cycle we hear the same thing: This is going to be the “most important election in our lifetime.”

The candidates say it. Their handlers say it. Many in the media say it.

The election — no matter the context, the backdrop or the candidates — is the “most important” election we’ll see for as long as we live.

You know what? The 2020 election really and truly might be that election. It truly might tell us plenty about ourselves, how much we can tolerate in our political leaders and whether the 2016’s result was much of a fluke as many of us — such as me — believe it was.

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign essentially began the day after he was inaugurated. If not on the day itself!

He has been campaigning basically since the moment he stepped off the podium in front of the Capitol Building.

Why do I attach such significance to this election coming up? Because in my estimation Donald John Trump had no business winning the Republican Party nomination in 2016, let alone winning the election over a supremely more qualified opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yes, Hillary Clinton had plenty of negatives. She might not have been the best-suited candidate to oppose Trump, but she at least knows how government works; Trump knows not a damn thing.

He has been lying and misrepresenting almost every aspect of his presidency, starting with the way he has characterized his election. Trump got elected by one of the narrowest margins possible; he lost the actual vote by nearly 3 million ballots but squeaked by with enough Electoral College votes to win the White House. Yes, he won it legally, but it was far from the historic landslide he has portrayed it.

The 2020 election well could be a referendum on a return to what the late Sen. John McCain used to refer to as “regular order.” Trump has upset that order at almost every level imaginable. I am one American who prefers that our president knows government, understands the Constitution and is able to forge relationships — if not friendships — with politicians with whom he has disagreements.

I believe the country can withstand four more years of Trump, but the price would be enormous.

The 2020 election can stem that huge cost. Therefore, this upcoming election could actually be the most important in our lifetime.

International news

Electoral attack is no laughing matter, Mr. POTUS

Mr. President, you need to understand something that I am utterly certain is beyond your level of understanding … but I’ll offer it anyway.

You must understand that an attack on our electoral system is an attack on the very framework of our representative democracy. Therefore, for you to seemingly joke and kid with the perpetrator of the 2016 attack on our presidential election — your tyrant/pal Vlad Putin — is so far beyond the pale that it defies logic at any level.

You sat there next to Putin and when asked by a reporter whether you have warned him against meddling in our election, you seemed to take it less than seriously. I understand you said you told him to stop meddling and when Putin heard the translation, the killer grinned, as you did.

Funny stuff, Mr. President? Actually, it’s about as serious as it gets.

I am one American who is horrified at your cavalier attitude toward this Russian meddling. Special counsel Robert Mueller said the attack was so pervasive, so systematic, so thorough that it should concern “every American.” Hey, that means you, too, Mr. President.

I watched that interview you had with Bill O’Reilly in which the Fox News anchor said that “Putin’s a killer.” Your response was hideous and horrifying in the extreme. You then sought to suggest that the country you were seeking to govern also had committed atrocities on a par with what Putin has done.

This demonstration you put on in Osaka at the G20 meeting this week, joking and grinning with Vlad about Russian interference in our sacrosanct electoral system only goes to illustrate what many of us believe about you.

It is that you don’t give a damn about the country you were elected to govern.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but I want you out of the Oval Office at the earliest possible moment. You are presenting and clear and present danger to the United States of America.

national news

Could we have a 2016 election result repeat itself in 2020?

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I was chatting with a friend this afternoon about the 2020 presidential election when a horrifying thought occurred to me.

It is that we well might see a repeat of the 2016 election in which the winner of the contest receives fewer votes than his foe but manages to win just enough Electoral College votes to be declared the winner.

Yep, I refer to Donald John Trump possibly being re-elected in that manner. Here’s what my friend and I didn’t discuss today: Trump and whoever he faces might have an even larger ballot differential than Trump had against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton garnered nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, but lost the election when the carnival barker corralled 304 electoral votes; he needed 270 to win.

Suppose for a minute that Trump is able to squeak out another Electoral College win in 2020. He could lose, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin — maybe all three — and still eke out just enough electoral votes to win another four years in the White House. Trump won those Rust Belt states against Clinton, which was critical to his winning the presidency.

Such a result — the second consecutive such result and the third outcome in the past six presidential elections — could doom the Electoral College. That would produce the other poor consequence of an election result that might occur in November 2020.

However, a rising tide against the Electoral College would be a distant second to the notion of Donald Trump being re-elected.

I shudder at the thought.

national news

Yes, Sen. Cornyn, we need a law

I believe I will disagree with John Cornyn, the senior Republican U.S. senator from Texas.

He said the nation doesn’t need a law that requires political candidates to report foreign interference in our elections to the FBI. Cornyn said it should be understood that politicians should report foreign interference to authorities. Cornyn said he would do so if such an attack occurred in an election in which he would be involved. Good for him. I’m glad he would do the right thing.

However, we have a president of the United States who now admits to flouting normal procedure at every turn. Donald Trump told ABC News that if a foreign country — such as “Norway,” as Trump said — had information a political opponent, he would “look at it.”

The Senate sought to enact legislation that would have required candidates to report such interference to authorities, but it was blocked by freshman Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

Cornyn doesn’t see a problem with Blackburn blocking the bill. According to the Texas Tribune: “The simple answer is call the FBI and let them investigate it,” Cornyn said. “We don’t need to pass a law to do that.”

In a perfect political world, by all means you don’t need such a law. However, this old world of ours is far from perfect, as the election of Donald Trump has demonstrated with remarkable clarity. Trump has denied any Russian interference in the 2016 election. Now he says he would allow it in future elections and he “might” notify the FBI.

Cornyn says we don’t need a law to prevent such a thing?

I believe we do need a law, Sen. Cornyn.

national news

Why the praise for this lawyer?

Emmet Flood is leaving the White House later this month.

Donald Trump is praising the lawyer he brought aboard to help with his battle against former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians who attacked our electoral process.

The president called Flood a “great friend” who did a great job.

Trump tweeted “no collusion, no obstruction.”

Whoa! Hold on a second, Mr. POTUS.

Mueller has said there was “no collusion.” I get that. We all get it, OK? He did not clear the president of obstruction. How many times do we have to say it? Mueller did not exonerate the president. He said so in his 448-page report. He repeated it in that extraordinary nine-minute spiel this week.

Still, the president keeps harping on a known falsehood.

Here’s the deal, though: The more Donald Trump says it the more it sinks into the thick skulls of those who continue to believe the lies this guy gets away with telling.

Weird.

national news

Trump stands as proof that ‘anyone’ can become POTUS

A young U.S. senator from Illinois stood before the 2004 Democratic National Convention and said, “Only in this country is my story even possible.”

His name was Barack Obama, a self-proclaimed “skinny kid with a funny name.” He was an African-American man born in Hawaii to a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya. There he was, delivering the keynote speech to Democrats who would nominate Sen. John Kerry to run against President Bush.

Four years later, that senator would run for president himself. Millions of Americans voted proudly for him. I was one of those Americans. Sen. Obama became President Obama and demonstrated that, indeed, “anyone could be elected president.”

Obama set the standard for political improbability. Eight years after that, though, another man smashed that standard to smithereens.

Donald John Trump Sr. had never sought public office. He had never devoted a minute of his adult life in service to the public. His entire life had been built with one goal: to enrich himself.

He was a huckster supreme. He sold us a bill of goods. He talked about his brilliant business acumen. Trump told us he would do for the country what he did for himself. He would make America great again. All by himself, too!

Well, this charlatan managed to capture enough Electoral College votes to defeat a profoundly more qualified candidate, former U.S. senator/secretary of state/first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now he wants a second term as POTUS. I must ask this question: Is this clown going to fool us yet again?

Trump has managed to denigrate damn near every institution he has touched. He has hurled insults. Trump has tossed out innuendo after innuendo.

Trump has failed time and time again to demonstrate a shred of humanity. He lacks the basic elements of empathy. He cannot tell the truth at any level.

Donald Trump has proven without a doubt that in this country, “Anyone can be elected president.”

If this individual manages to win re-election in 2020, then we all must live with the truism we hear from time to time:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

national news

Trump wasn’t kidding, apparently, about strength of his support

Many of us rolled our eyes in disbelief when Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue” and not lose any votes.

Sure, some Americans applauded. They laughed. They cheered. Others of us were, um, appalled.

Then the candidate got elected. Now the boast doesn’t seem quite so farfetched, given the strength of the president’s firewall in Congress against the amazing array of examples of his utter lack of character, his lack of decency, his disregard for the law, his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s political base remains wedded to him at some level approaching 40 percent. They give him a pass as he tells Congress to stick where the sun doesn’t shine in search of answers to serious questions about whether the president obstructed justice. They stand and cheer this clown as he hurls juvenile insults at his foes.

They have shrugged as he called the late John McCain a “war hero only because he was captured” by the enemy during the Vietnam War; they laughed as he mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability; they didn’t care that he acknowledged groping women; the base didn’t flinch while he denigrated U.S. intelligence analysts’ view that Russians interfered in our 2016 election; they didn’t mind when he attached moral equivalence between Klansmen and Nazis to those who protested against them.

I could go on. You get my drift.

What was seen and heard as a preposterous assertion on the campaign trail no longer can be dismissed. Donald Trump rode that solid base of support to a victory no one saw coming. He is relying on that base now as he campaigns for re-election.

He has endorsed a hideous Twitter message that slanders House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, suggesting she is a drunk.

The base doesn’t care!

One of the many Democrats running for president this time, Pete Buttigieg, recently lamented how Republicans used to care about “character.” They no longer care about that.

They stand foursquare behind a president who lacks character at every level one can imagine.

Utterly amazing.

national news

Isn’t an attack on our electoral system … an attack on U.S.?

I would have thought that a documented, proven attack by a foreign hostile power on our electoral system would produce an all-out, full-throttle, frontal assault on future attacks.

I must have been mistaken.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he is going to prevent any consideration of election security measures by the Senate. McConnell, a Republican lawmaker, has taken aim at Democratic senators’ election security measures, calling them some sort of “Democrat protection” notion.

If we take the long view, we need to grasp what happened in 2016 and again in 2018. Russian government agents hacked into our electoral system. They interfered in our presidential election three years ago. They sought to help Donald Trump get elected president. Our nation’s top intelligence analysts have said the same thing: The Russians did it!

Why aren’t members of the House and Senate debating some measure to prevent this kind of electoral sabotage in the future?

I shudder to think that McConnell is running interference for the president who recently has referred to the 2016 attack as a “Russian hoax.”

What else am I going to conclude?

national news

‘Chaos president’? Trump sees it as a compliment … maybe?

Jeb Bush told us during the 2016 Republican Party primary campaign for president that Donald Trump would govern under an aura of chaos.

Yep. He was right. Trump vanquished the GOP field bigly, then went on to eke out a victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The White House has become a place where sensibilities go to die. The president fights with the media, with Democrats, with Republicans who oppose him, with his national security team, the national intelligence network, our nation’s historic allies in North America and Europe.

I’m at the point of this individual’s term in office that I am considering tossing aside the word “chaos” to describe him and the manner he seeks to govern the nation. Why? I am beginning to believe that Trump sees the terms “chaos” or “chaotic” as endearments.

He likes governing this way. Is it possible that he sees chaos, confusion, controversy as his ticket to re-election?

That question is not as dumb/idiotic/moronic as you might think. You see, this president vowed to be an unconventional head of state when he won that Electoral College victory in 2016. Of all the promises he has made, this is one that he has kept in mega-spades.

He has fired no fewer than a half-dozen Cabinet officials; sure, some of ’em “resigned,” but we all know they were shoved out the door.

He changes his mind at the sound of the last person to whisper in his ear. He governs with his Twitter account. He makes pronouncements that serve as policy and doesn’t tell the “best people” he purportedly hired to surround him and give him the “best advice.”

Oh, but wait! This is the same guy who said during the campaign that he knows “more about ISIS than the generals.” Trump declared the Islamic State was “defeated” in Syria, only to watch as ISIS launched another terrorist attack.

I thought Jeb Bush’s prediction of a “chaos presidency” was correct. I also thought that it would frighten enough voters away to deny this clown the election as president of the United States.

Silly me. I was wrong. Jeb Bush was right, but it doesn’t matter to this guy that so many Americans are worried about the chaos he has brought to the White House.

Why should it bother him? It’s the way this nitwit rolls.

legal news

Barr on the hunt for clue to ‘witch hunt’?

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Here we go again. U.S. Attorney General William Barr — reportedly/allegedly/supposedly acting on his volition — has hired a federal prosecutor to determine whether an illegal “spy” operation triggered the Robert Mueller probe into alleged collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russians who attacked our electoral system.

Do you believe with all your heart and soul that the AG acted on his own? Or that he will keep his mitts off the probe being conducted by the U.S. attorney from Connecticut? Or that this investigation will put the “witch hunt” diatribe from the president to rest?

Barr has given John Durham the task of determining whether illegal “spying” occurred during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. Other senior officials, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, have said they have seen no evidence of any such monkey business. That’s not good enough for Barr, who happens to be Wray’s boss. He wants Durham to scour the evidence and make an independent determination.

This assignment bothers me for two reasons.

One is that Donald Trump is involved. Given that I don’t trust him as far as I can toss his 239-pound body, I consider the president to be wholly non-credible on anything, on any issue. I don’t believe a word that flies out of his mouth. He yammers about the Mueller probe being a “witch hunt,” although the AG himself has said he doesn’t believe that to be the case.

The other reason is that Barr also has been acting and sounding more like the president’s personal lawyer than the nation’s chief law enforcer. He filed that four-page “summary” of Mueller’s findings, only to be criticized by Mueller for failing to provide the full context of what Mueller and his team concluded.

So now he has turned John Durham loose to look for determine what others have concluded already, that the Obama administration didn’t “spy” on Trump’s campaign.

Let’s wait for what the prosecutor learns.  I fear another tempest may be brewing.