Tag Archives: U.S. presidency

national news

How does Trump fulfill these customs?

The U.S. presidency is chock full of custom related to a president’s time in office and that period after he leaves the White House for the final time as our head of state and commander in chief.

Many of those customs involve bringing the president back to the White House. You know the drill: ceremonies take place honoring past presidents; occasionally they return to unveil portraits of themselves and their wives; current POTUSes might call their predecessors to lead humanitarian missions.

Can anyone imagine President Biden asking his immediate predecessor to join him in a White House ceremony? Is there any possible scenario that could bring Donald Trump back to the White House for even the gauziest of events?

Heavens, no! Not a chance on this good Earth! 

Even if none of the investigations into Trump’s role in fomenting the 1/6 insurrection result in a criminal indictment do I see any chance that The Donald would return.

Trump laid down that marker after Election Day 2020 when he declared that he won an election he lost. He defamed election workers across the entire nation by declaring the system to be corrupt. He has been revealed in public testimony to have been actively involved in seeking to overturn those election results.

The customary return of Donald Trump to the White House, therefore, has been blown to smithereens by the hideous conduct of its former occupant.

Custom matters not one bit to this guy … which is fine with me.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

media news

Spare me the gag lines, Mr. President

I’m not sure how I am going to write this blog entry.

I am laughing out loud.

Donald J. Trump has been whining about the coverage he’s been getting from the media, calling it the most unfair in U.S. history.

Here’s how Politico reported what the president told U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduates: “Look at the way I’ve been treated lately,” Trump said, as some in the audience burst into laughter, “especially by the media. No politician in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly.”

A friend of mine noted on social media that Trump, student of history that he is, is absolutely certain of what he said. My friend was joking, of course. Trump is no student of anything, let alone presidential history.

Unfair treatment? Hardly.

Were the media giving kid-glove treatment to, let’s see:

Harry Truman, for relieving Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command during the Korean War?

John F. Kennedy, for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba?

Lyndon Johnson, for his prosecution of the Vietnam War?

Richard Nixon, for the Watergate scandal?

Gerald Ford, for his occasional fits of clumsiness?

Jimmy Carter, for his occasional fits of self-righteousness?

Ronald Reagan, for the Iran-Contra debacle?

George H.W. Bush, for reneging on his “read my lips” pledge to never raise taxes?

Bill Clinton, for messing around with that 20-something White House intern — and his subsequent impeachment?

George W. Bush, for failing to find weapons of mass destruction after going to war in Iraq?

Barack Obama, for enduring the “fake news” about his place of birth, which — by the way — was fomented by Donald John Trump?

These men — Democrats and Republicans — have plenty in common. They assumed the presidency knowing full well that the media would be looking carefully at every single thing they do. The media would expose every misstep, mistake, misstatement.

That’s how it goes. That’s a condition of the job to which they were elected or to which they ascended through other means.

However, for Trump to assert that he’s been given the worst treatment in the history of the presidency is — dare I say it candidly? — yet another fabrication.

There. I got through it. I’m proud of myself.

Uncategorized

Button it up, Mr. VP

Dick Cheney continues to astound me.

The former vice president of the United States just won’t go away quietly. He keeps yammering and blathering about what a horrible job Barack Obama has done as president. He proclaims the president has demonstrated “weakness” in the face of foreign threats. He talks about the “danger” posed by the Obama foreign policy doctrine.

What utter crap!

Cheney the chicken hawk — who got all those draft deferments during the Vietnam War — keeps harping on the need for “military response” to any overseas crisis. Give me a bleeping break.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/05/18/cheney_obama_has_demonstrated_repeatedly_that_he_can_be_pushed_around.html

Cheney was at it again over the weekend, Monday-morning-quarterbacking recent moves by the Obama administration.

My hope would be that one day Cheney would follow the lead of the man in whose presidency he served, George W. Bush, and just clam up and let the one president we have do his job. President Bush, as has his father, George H.W. Bush, have been the models of post-presidential decorum as it regards the men who succeeded them in office.

In fairness, I cannot let slip a slap at President Clinton, who’s spouted his share of criticism at George W. Bush, who succeeded in him in the White House.

Presidents and vice presidents should assume a role of “elder statesmen,” which by definition keeps them elevated from the partisan political posturing that occupies current officeholders.

They’ve all had their time in the arena. They’ve all made mistakes. Yes, that means Vice President Cheney has made them, too — although he is so very loath to admit to the doozies that occurred on his watch.

Cheney’s post-vice presidential arrogance just is too much for me to take.

Put a sock in it, Mr. Vice President.