National Republicans
The paradox of George Herbert Walker Bush
To read Jon Meacham’s new biography of Bush 41 (“Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush”) is to realize how much politics has changed in 20 years, to understand why Jeb Bush is going nowhere in the presidential race and to marvel at GHWB’s admirable character – and fundamental cluelessness. The…
Read MoreWho’s being weak here?
It damn sure isn’t President Obama, who is unafraid to show his grief, anger and determination to combat gun violence. No. It’s the cowardly Republican politicians who are so scared of the NRA they react hysterically over the smallest steps to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. The NRA…
Read MoreConnecting the Dots
It turns out President Obama’s case of the wobbles, when it comes to whipping ISIS, isn’t confined to putting ‘boots on the ground.’ There’s a story in The Hill telling how the Homeland Security Department got the wobbles too, stopping an investigation dead in its tracks to ‘connect the dots’ between outright terrorists and other…
Read More“He isn’t politically correct”
Those are the code words often used by Donald Trump’s supporters. Meaning what? Judging from what Trump says, it must mean, “We like it when he says things that offend people, like women, the handicapped, the poor, Hispanics, Muslims and anybody else we don’t like.” These people appear to like it when he suggests most…
Read MoreThis Little Problem
After what happened in San Bernardino you’d think, now, down in the bowels of the Immigration Department they’d be hard at work fixing the problems with granting visas. But, instead, they’re having a knock down drag-out fight over an odd bit of esoteric Orthodoxy: When it’s right and when it’s wrong to use social media…
Read MoreThe Drawbridge
It was a long dry trek across an arid desert, reading through newspaper after newspaper looking for one editorial with a kind word to say about Donald Trump denying Muslim’s visas. Trump, the greatest newspaper editors roared, has torn the Constitution to shreds. Trump has desecrated America’s finest virtues. Trump is lower than pond scum.…
Read MoreGhost of Christmas Future
My last blog – a scenario wherein Donald Trump wins the Presidency – depressed some Democrats. And more than a few Republicans. So here is a Happier New Year scenario, in the form of a news story that might be written at the end of next year: In the wake of sweeping election defeats in 2016, Republican leaders…
Read MoreCrazy as Loons
Speaking in measured cadences the President explained reassuringly, over and over, how his visa screening program is sure to catch terrorists disguised as Syrian refugees – then the New York Times reported Tashfeen Malik slipped past Obama’s screeners after talking about jihad on social media. Then another newspaper reported the head of the Department of…
Read MoreA nation at risk
Has America really come to this? Have we come to where we must rely on the Republican Party to save us from electing a President who is an arrogant, egotistical blowhard with the vocabulary and maturity of a fourth-grade boy and the potential to wreck our economy and start World War III? What have we…
Read MoreAs Rome is Burning
Sunday morning I stayed in bed, read the newspapers and watched the morning political shows and when I was done I’d learned two facts: No one in the Democratic political elite, the Republican elite, or the media elite likes Donald Trump. He’s lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut to all of them.…
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