Archives for 2017

Stephen Miller, the White House policy adviser, made some bold and controversial statements across an array of Sunday political talk shows yesterday. One of his favorite talking points was also summed up in one of his tweets:

“We have a president who has done more in three weeks than most presidents have done in an entire administration.”

Of course we all understand what the conservative, 31-year-old “senior” adviser means by the word “more.” He, no doubt, is thinking along the lines of accomplishments.

While most would dispute such an interpretation of Trump’s performance, in a real sense, our neophyte president has done more in his first three weeks in office than most presidents do in an entire term … just not in the way Miller, former press secretary of Michele Bachmann, cares to acknowledge.

Trump has done more …

1. to undermine our rule of law by questioning the legitimacy of our court system.
2. to make our country less safe through his thinly disguised Muslim travel ban.
3. to alienate our friends and allies with anti-NATO talk.
4. to trash our free press (except Fox News) as purveyors of “fake” news.
5. to question the integrity of our voting system through unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
6. to tangle with a publically traded company because of a business decision they made.
7. to create a diplomatic crisis with two close allies, Mexico and Australia.
8. to belittle the civil rights movement by defaming icon, John Lewis, through racist tweets.
9. to insult our intelligence agencies by comparing them to Nazis.
10. to attack the first amendment by claiming protesters are paid professionals.

All this in only three weeks!

What we, and the world, desperately need from Donald Trump is for him to do less, not more, Stephen!

No, we do not care how many golf vacations our chief executive takes. The further away from Washington D.C., and a pen, the safer we, and our beleaguered democracy, will be.

Photo | cnn.com

Sir, since being sworn in on January 20, not a day has gone by without you monopolizing the news cycle. Whether it’s coverage of another rushed executive order or a vengeful tweet, we are heading for Trump burnout fast.

Don’t get us wrong. We are enjoying your performance with all its twists and turns. But could you not be in our faces every minute of every day?

TV shows have commercial breaks and long movies have intermissions. We really need a chance to catch our collective breath and the time to absorb what you’re presenting us.

May I make a suggestion? Could you turn your daily soap opera into a weekly drama? There is no way we can put up with a daily Trump show for four straight years. You’ve heard of audience fatigue, right?

Or is there a reason why you want to dominate the news so much? Is there a rationale why everything you do seems so rushed and not very well thought-out? Is it that you feel time is not on your side?

If that is the case, your hogging the news is understandable.

Yes, only three weeks into your presidency there already is talk of impeachment. Gambling houses all over the world are taking action on whether you will resign or be impeached before the end of your term.

Ladbrokes, the British oddsmaker, has your chances of leaving office by way of resignation or impeachment and removal at just 11-to-10, or just a little worse than even money. The odds of you being impeached this year in the House of Representatives are only 4-to-1, according to the Irish bookmaker Paddy Power.

Whatever it is that’s motivating you to make news on a daily basis, we want to make a deal with you. We know you like deals. If you feel you’ll survive your four years in office because Congressional Republicans wouldn’t dare get rid of you, slow down a bit. Don’t feel as if you have to shock us on a regular basis. We will still care about what you do or say even if other people share the limelight.

But if you believe your days are numbered, then go ahead and do as much as you can while in power. Just one little request … please keep us from World War III.

Photo |  REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Our new president promised to come out of the gate running and he has not disappointed … 22 executive orders in only his first two weeks in office.

Funny, but it wasn’t that long ago Republicans cried foul when President Obama resorted to the presidential prerogative at the start of his presidency.

“It is unilateral, overreaching and unconstitutional,” wrote Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz. “Left unchecked, it is behavior that undermines, and will ultimately erode, the foundation of our democracy and our freedom.”

The problem Trump and his administration have encountered, and the lesson they have hopefully learned, is that when you act quickly you tend to make mistakes.

Many of Trump’s executive orders have been poorly thought-out, poorly written and poorly executed.

Nothing exemplifies this better than Trump’s executive order on immigration.

President Trump issued his poorly-cloked Muslim travel ban to take effect immediately without preparing those who would have to execute it. This led to confusion and needless detainments at airports across the country as Homeland Security tried to sort things out (who was banned and who wasn’t).

Now, Trump’s travel ban is rightfully and predictably being challenged in federal court on constitutional grounds.

It seems Trump is simply checking off his campaign promises without any regard to the consequences. It’s an unnecessary and dangerous “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” mindset.

“A businessman with no experience in public office,” today writes New York Times reporter Peter Baker, “Mr. Trump has shown in his administration’s opening days that he favors an action-oriented approach with little regard for the two other branches of government.”

Good governance requires reflection and planning …. something akin to the governing style of the last occupant of the Oval Office.

Trump and his administration must learn that governing in these polarized times calls for a commitment to inclusion, transparency and deliberation.

Mr. President, just because you promised your base something in October doesn’t mean you have to shove it down the nation’s throat as soon as you get the chance.

The country needs a thoughtful leader with a “slow hand.” For the sake of the nation, sir, no more quickies please.

Photo | forbes.com

It is incomprehensible, and downright scary, how Americans have elected as their president a man who knows so little about the system of government he is sworn to uphold.

America rejected being ruled by an autocrat at the moment of its founding. Instead of a supreme ruler, our Founding Fathers gave us the Supreme Court. Specifically, they gave us a Constitution that created a system of national government divided into three separate, but equal, branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.

The Constitution also created a system of “checks and balances” to ensure that no one branch of government would become too powerful.

In the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison (1803) the Supreme Court announced for the first time the principle that a court may declare an act of Congress void if it is inconsistent with the Constitution. Basically, the Court said it had the power and duty to be the final arbiter of the constitutionality of congressional legislation and executive action.

Donald Trump’s rushed executive order on immigration was not only poorly thought out and badly executed, it was universally deemed to be unconstitutional by people who know about these things … constitutional scholars.

The order, which halted refugee arrivals into the U.S. for 120 days and barred citizens of Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days, was sure to be challenged in court.

Yesterday, a Seattle federal judge put a nationwide block on Trump’s order. When a judge issues a temporary restraining order, it is because he believes the side challenging the order is likely to succeed on constitutional grounds and immediate action is needed so as to prevent those affected by the order from suffering “irreparable injury.”

Instead of President Trump saying his administration would appeal the judge’s decision, our new wannabe tsar took to Twitter to mock the judge:

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

It is one thing for a presidential candidate to disrespect a judge, as Trump did during his campaign, but the President of the United States?

Trump continues to prove he knows nothing about our system of government. We are not a nation ruled by men but by laws. His personal attack on a federal judge and broader disrespect for an independent judiciary, is not only unpresidential but unprecedented and unforgivable.

Photo | nbcnews.com

You were warned. You were urged. You were implored to do the right thing by your hero. But you wouldn’t listen. You just couldn’t overcome your distaste for Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

No, you felt evil Debbie Wasserman Shultz and the biased Democratic National Committee needed to be punished for having favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. Those leaked DNC emails, courtesy of WikiLeaks and Russian Czar Vladimir Putin, got you so riled up you swore to vote for anyone but Trump’s “Crooked Hillary.”

So you decided to give your vote to a candidate who could not win (Stein, Johnson). Some of you gave your protest vote to Trump, believing he also was incapable of winning. Some of you even voted for Trump just to shake things up! And a good many of you simply decided to sit out the election altogether.

We will never know for sure if your actions (inactions) gave us President Trump. But your movement certainly didn’t help. One analysis of the 3rd Party vote concluded that if Hillary had received half of the Libertarian vote and half of the Green Party vote in 3 of the key swing states, we’d be celebrating the first woman president.

Many of you said you were disgusted having to choose between the figurative “lesser of two evils.” And now we have real evil occupying both the White House and the halls of Congress.

As the saying goes, elections have consequences.

Trump, in just a few weeks, is making good on many of his campaign promises … mostly the dangerous and crazy ones like the Muslim ban. Unfortunately for some Trump voters, buyer’s remorse is starting to set in. Instead of “draining the swamp” in Washington D.C., the politically inexperienced narcissist has succeeded in surrounding himself with billionaires, lobbyists and crackpots.

Your wish to harm Hillary through hateful rants on social media seems to have paid off… much like the fake anti-Hillary news put out by paid Russian bloggers. Unfortunately you’ve also punished a good many Americans horrified at what a Trump presidency will bring.

But I have to believe some of you are looking at the chaos Trump is inflicting on our democracy (and the world) and, just maybe, feel a tinge of guilt. … much like those Florida Ralph Nader voters in 2000 (who also warned you!).

(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

It was a great run … 240 years to be exact. The unique and improbable “American experiment,” begun in 1776, has come to a disappointing end. Somewhere, the Founding Fathers are weeping.

The notion that a diverse group of people could live together in harmony, ruled by law and governed by a majority of its citizens freely electing their representatives, had its appeal. But as the nation’s founders feared, without an informed electorate, majority rule could turn into mob rule and undermine the very rule of law (Constitution) upon which the nation was based.

Once a government can pick and chose which laws to obey, the game is over. Once rules can be changed midstream to favor a certain governing faction, say sayonara. Once citizens, either through apathy, complacency or ignorance, no longer care about fair play or how its government behaves, turn out the lights, the party’s over.

Yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) pushed forward two of President Donald Trump’s questionable cabinet picks, advancing their nominations despite a Democratic boycott.  Even though rules require at least one member of the minority party to be present for the committee to vote on the nominee, Hatch suspended the rules.

Last year, after the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Even though Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution clearly spells out the roles the president and the Senate must play in the appointment process, Senate Republicans, led by Senators Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, vowed to do nothing … not to meet with any nominee, not to hold any confirmation hearings, and not to vote on any nominee.

After an anti-corruption ballot measure passed in South Dakota this past November, Republican lawmakers refused to enact the measure which instituted campaign finance, lobbying reforms, public financing for campaigns and creating the first independent ethics commission in the state’s history. The Republican governor took it upon himself to declare voters were, “hoodwinked by scam artists who grossly misrepresented these proposed measures.”

And so it goes. See a common theme here from a certain political party?

The saddest part of American democracy’s death is that it was self-inflicted. No outside power toppled our democracy. Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill” is no more. Through their choices, the American people simply decided to pull the plug.

Photo | intellectualtakeout.org