{"id":35316,"date":"2019-02-06T17:15:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T17:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35316"},"modified":"2019-02-06T17:15:13","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T17:15:13","slug":"theres-still-that-elephant-in-the-room-mr-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35316","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s still that &#8216;elephant in the room,&#8217; Mr. President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTeOlN.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-35317\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTeOlN-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTeOlN-300x212.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BBTeOlN.jpg 588w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Donald Trump&#8217;s second State of the Union speech reportedly went over well with most Americans, who told pollsters overnight they approved of what he had to say.<\/p>\n<p>I was one of those Americans. The pollsters didn&#8217;t call me, but I&#8217;ll offer this unsolicited view: The president did hit a few good notes and I applaud him for hitting them.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Criminal justice reform<\/strong> is a big deal and I am glad to hear him insist on reforming federal laws that punish non-violent criminals too harshly. I was delighted that Gladys Johnson, whose life sentence in prison for a first-time drug conviction that Trump commuted, was there to receive bipartisan applause.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Infrastructure repair<\/strong> also is a big deal. We need to fix our crumbling roads, bridges and airports. How we pay for it is another matter, given that it&#8217;s going to cost well north of $1 trillion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s about it in terms of supporting the president&#8217;s policies.<\/p>\n<p>Trump called for an end to &#8220;partisan investigations.&#8221; Well, actually, I don&#8217;t consider special counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s search for the truth behind allegations of &#8220;collusion&#8221; with Russians who attacked our electoral system to be a partisan exercise.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an important one. Yes, the president is right to assert that we need unity at home if we&#8217;re going to assume our role as world leader. I&#8217;ll just offer this notion: Let the special counsel finish his work, allow him to reveal to the public what he found, let us discuss the findings openly and then we can decide what steps &#8212; if any &#8212; to take before we move on.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/politics\/state-of-the-union-the-chance-of-trumps-agenda-getting-through-congress-and-other-takeaways\/ar-BBTeedk?li=BBnb7Kz\">Some takeaways from SOTU speech<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t get into the body language chatter that has erupted on social media, such as the strange hand-clap given by Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the sitting on hands by congressional Democrats who now comprise a majority of the House membership.<\/p>\n<p>I simply find the president&#8217;s pleas to be utterly lacking in sincerity. He says the right words, but I cannot get past the belief that he doesn&#8217;t actually <em>believe<\/em> what he says. Therefore, how can he expect the rest of us to buy into whatever message he seeks to deliver.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump&#8217;s second State of the Union speech reportedly went over well with most Americans, who told pollsters overnight they approved of what he had to say. I was one of those Americans. The pollsters didn&#8217;t call me, but I&#8217;ll offer this unsolicited view: The president did hit a few good notes and I applaud &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=35316\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">There&#8217;s still that &#8216;elephant in the room,&#8217; Mr. President<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7932],"tags":[7131,1112,3178,3983,7093,4401],"class_list":["post-35316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","tag-collusion","tag-congress","tag-nancy-pelosi","tag-robert-mueller","tag-russia-probe","tag-state-of-the-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35318,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35316\/revisions\/35318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}