Tag Archives: Great Britain

International news, national news

Texas is not alone in its secessionist fervor

secession

Texas is far from the only state where nut jobs think it’s OK for their state to secede from the United States of America.

Others from Vermont to Hawaii think that since Great Britain has voted to withdraw from the European Union that Americans think they have license to do the same thing with Washington, D.C.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/5-us-independence-movements-inspired-by-brexit-214010

Am I missing something here?

The Brits remain part of a sovereign nation. The EU is a confederation of other sovereign European nations that sets certain rules for those nations to follow. They involve trade, currency and travel.

Every nation within the EU is free to self-govern according to their political framework.

Now we hear this goofy trans-Atlantic talk about states pulling out of the United States. Secessionists are tired of what they say is a government that’s too big, too intrusive and too out of touch.

Huh? What?

The federal government is responsible for the protection and well-being of 320-plus million Americans, all of whom live in states that are governed by that document called the U.S. Constitution. You remember it, yes? It grants us all rights and liberties. It sets forth the governing framework.

Oh, and then we have Congress, which appropriates money to pay for things like national defense, highways, Social Security and Medicare … and quite a number of other things we’ve come to cherish as American citizens.

This secession talk is crazy in the extreme. I need not remind everyone that some states tried that once. We went to war and the battles that ensued killed about 600,000 Americans.

Britain’s exit from the EU should be settled over there.

Such nuttiness needs to stay on that side of the ocean.

business news, International news

No mulligans should be allowed on ‘Brexit’ vote

Brexit

Those silly British citizens just plain surprised the world with that vote to remove the United Kingdom from the European Union.

Now, it appears at least 1.5 million of them want a do-over. They want another chance to reverse what a majority of Brits said they wanted. They’ve reportedly signed their names to petitions being circulated throughout Britain.

A part of me wishes a do-over election was feasible and reasonable. I dislike the idea of Britain exiting the EU. I fear for the future of this stellar alliance of nations and what its potential disintegration might mean to us on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

But in reality, the decision ought to stand and the British government should play the hand its been dealt.

Were it possible to grant electoral mulligans, Americans might have sought such a thing after the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore collected more popular votes than George W. Bush but lost the Electoral College by a single vote when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the hand-counting of ballots in Florida; Bush had 537 more votes in Florida than Gore when the counting stopped, so he won the electoral vote by one more that he needed to be elected.

Our constitutional system worked.

The British referendum delivered a clear message, meaning that the British electoral system worked, too.

My hope — which is not exactly my expectation — is that the world financial markets will settle down eventually. Maybe it will settle down sooner than we think at the moment. That’s the one element of this tumult that upsets me … as a semi-retired American citizen.

A do-over on this referendum — which, incidentally, was a non-binding vote? It won’t happen. Nor should it.

The British government now must deal wit the harsh reality of re-creating an old relationship with the rest of Europe.

business news, International news, political news

Narcissism dictates Trump’s response to ‘Brexit’ vote

image

I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a more narcissistic candidate for public office than Donald J. Trump.

And to think that the very first elected office this guy wants to occupy is the presidency of the United States of America.

Go figure, man.

I was among those who were utterly stunned as I watched Trump’s behavior on the day that Great Britain decided to bolt from the European Union. Financial markets around the world reacted badly; trillions of dollars in people’s personal wealth disappeared; the EU will lose its second-largest economic power.

But there was Trump — in Scotland, of all places — bragging about his golf course resort at Turnberry.

The presumptive Republican nominee strode to the microphone wearing his trademark “Make America Great Again” ballcap. All he could talk about was how plush the new digs are at Turnberry and how successful the resort is going to become.

Oh, and then someone asked him about the “Brexit” vote. Trump’s response? If the pound continues to collapse, that’ll be good for him because more tourists will come to Turnberry.

Huh?

What the … ?

He then said he supported Britain’s exit from the EU all along. Never mind he chaos it has brought to millions of Americans. He was there to talk about his resort and then he spoke to all the dough he’s going to make when Brits show up to play golf.

Compassion? Concern? Leadership?

They’ve all gone missing from this candidate’s presidential portfolio.

 

International news, national news

'Bloviator' O'Reilly's war coverage challenged

Bill O’Reilly’s brand on TV news is one of confrontation and — some would suggest — self-serving excess.

OK, I’ll suggest it, too. O’Reilly is full of himself at times.

He’s been all over the Brian Williams story and the now-admitted “misremembering” about the NBC News anchor being shot down in Iraq in 2003.

Well, the self-proclaimed bloviator is now facing a challenge of his own, from Mother Jones magazine, over whether O’Reilly actually witnessed combat during the brief war in the remote Falkland Islands in 1982, when Great Britain sent a flotilla to its territorial possession to rid the place of Argentine troops who had taken the island illegally.

“I was there,” O’Reilly has contended all along. Mother Jones disputes O’Reilly’s assertion.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/bill-o%E2%80%99reilly%E2%80%99s-falklands-war-coverage-challenged-in-explosive-new-report/ar-BBhLZxs?ocid=ansWrap11

This story is still developing, but as MSN reported, O’Reilly has been quick — imagine that — to respond to the allegations that Mother Jones has made that the correspondent did not face hostile fire, as he has reported for more than three decades.

MSN reports: “The (Mother Jones) website’s David Corn highlights several instances where the Fox News primetime host claimed to have covered the 1982 fighting in the Falklands War between Argentina and England up close–the issue is few reporters were able to cover the conflict up close due to the remote location of the war zone.”

I’m not going to make an assessment here of whether O’Reilly fibbed about his war coverage. I will, however, suggest that the Fox News TV talk show star’s aggressive reporting of others’ troubles — such as Brian Williams — exposes him to careful scrutiny by other watchdogs to ensure that he’s as righteous as he claims to be.

Here’s the Mother Jones article that O’Reilly asserts is “bulls***.” It’s lengthy. It’s also quite interesting and carefully detailed.

Bill O’Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem

See for yourself. Is David Corn merely a “left-wing assassin,” as O’Reilly asserts, or is he an aggressive reporter?

As for O’Reilly, it appears he has to explain himself — without resorting to name-calling.

 

Uncategorized

Professor Gingrich lectures on ISIS

Good Saturday morning, students.

Professor Newt Gingrich is going to lecture you on the link attached here about how little President Obama understands about the international terror threat being posed to the United States and, of course, he implies that he — the professor — gets it.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/22/opinion/gingrich-isis-obama/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

I don’t deny that the professor is smart. He knows how to win elections, he knows how to rouse them rabbles. He’s just not that good at governing, as his stint as speaker of the House of Reps demonstrated back in the late 1990s.

Here’s in part what he writes about the president’s remarks on the beheading of American journalist James Foley by ISIS terrorists: “I urge you to read President Obama’s full text. It isn’t very long. The most delusional line is his assertion that ‘people like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.’ Of course it is freedom and the rule of law that have been rare throughout history, and tyranny and lawlessness that have been common. ISIS and the ideology it represents won’t just wear themselves out.

“One has to wonder whether the President understands how serious a threat ISIS presents. ISIS is a fact. It is a religiously motivated movement that uses terror as one of its weapons. Beheading people is nothing new in history.”

One has to wonder? No, one need not wonder whether Barack Obama “understands how serious a threat” ISIS is to the rest of the world. He’s living with it. He is hearing constantly from his national security team, his diplomatic team, the Joint Chiefs of Staff — and from critics such as Professor Gingrich — precisely how dangerous this group of monsters is to the United States.

Gingrich has posed some fascinating notions about ISIS’s reach into mainstream cultures, such as Great Britain. He’s correct to suggest we’d better take this organization seriously.

However, he ought to stop there. Let’s not presume that the president of the United States doesn’t understand these things. The nation has one commander in chief at a time.

At the moment, it is not Professor Newt Gingrich.