The Daily Nooze

"All the news we deem fit to print"

You are here: Home / Archives for trump

On Repealing DACA, Trump Happens To Be Right

By 6 Comments

In her column in today’s Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin calls Trump’s ending of DACA, “Trump’s most evil act.”

Her sentiment is shared by a great number of Americans. In a rare case of unity, both Democrats and Republicans are voicing their opposition to the ending of Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

But is this criticism valid … or does it miss the point?

President Obama created the DACA program, which exempts children brought to this country illegally by their parents from the enforcement of the immigration laws, through executive order. He was forced to do this after Congress refused to enact such a law.

There has been serious question ever since Obama signed the order as to whether the President had the constitutional authority to do so. After all, our Constitution gives Congress the power over immigration policy.

Prior to today’s action by Trump, Attorneys General from Texas and nine other Republican-led states threatened to sue his administration if it did not rescind the program that grants deportation relief and access to work permits to nearly 800,000 “Dreamers,” or undocumented immigrants brought to the country at a young age.

While everyone may like Obama’s order, which treats the innocent children of illegal immigrants humanely, a valid argument could be made in court that the former president’s action was unconstitutional; that it was a circumvention of the legislative branch.

In rescinding Obama’s order, Trump is now forcing Congress to do its job.

The fact that it is good policy should not “trump” the fact that it, most likely, was bad law.

Trump has given Congress a six-month window to enact a law that would give “Dreamers” the protections afforded by Obama’s executive order.

It is beyond ironic that our current president, who likes to run roughshod over our Constitution, is doing the right thing in protecting the sanctity of the document and reinforcing the separation of powers.

As Trump aptly tweeted today: “Congress, get ready to do your job – DACA!”

Will they finally step up to the plate?

Photo | greensboro.com

Cracks Start To Appear In Trump’s Christian Conservative Fortress

By 2 Comments

Evangelicals overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, 80-15% according to exit polls, helping to put him inside the White House. That’s the most they have voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004, when they overwhelmingly chose George W. Bush by a margin of 78-21 percent.

But after seven months in office, there are signs of a “come-to-Jesus” moment among some Christian conservatives.

“Mega Church” leader, and member of Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board, A.R. Bernard, recently became the first member to quit the board.

“ … I agreed to serve on the President’s Evangelical Advisory Board. However, it became obvious that there was a deepening conflict in values between myself and the administration,” wrote the pastor this Friday.

This was followed by yesterday’s shocking announcement that some graduates of Liberty University, one of the nation’s most influential evangelical Christian institutions, are preparing to return their diplomas.

The Lynchburg, Virginia school, founded by the Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell, is now run by his son, Jerry Falwell Jr., a staunch supporter of Donald Trump.

The graduates are protesting Falwell’s ongoing support for Trump. They began organizing after Trump’s divisive remarks about the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Va.

Chris Gaumer, a former Student Government Association president and 2006 graduate, said it was an easy decision.

“I’m sending my diploma back because the president of the United States is defending Nazis and white supremacists,” Gaumer said. “And in defending the president’s comments, Jerry Falwell Jr. is making himself and, it seems to me, the university he represents, complicit.”

For Doug Johnson Hatlem, a 1999 graduate now working as a Mennonite pastor in Ontario, Canada, Charlottesville feels like a tipping point for many alumni who have been worried about the university’s association with Trump.

“It really is a watershed moment to have people openly chanting Nazi chants … holding white supremacist signs, and carrying weapons along with all of that, and killing somebody, injuring many in the process,” he said. “For there not to be an unconditional condemnation of that kind of action and behavior is just completely anathema.”

Are these isolated events among Christian conservatives or the beginning of something much bigger … the asking for forgiveness and repentance?

Time will tell.

Photo | esquire.com

 

 

 

 

Trump … Abject Failure At Everything Except Further Dividing our Country

By 2 Comments

Of all the lies that have come out of Donald Trump’s mouth since first announcing his presidential bid on June 16, 2015, claiming he is not a racist surely tops the list.

“Number one, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person,” our newly installed president stated at a news conference on February 16, 2017.

The recent domestic terrorist attack in Charlottesville has cleared up any question on whose side Trump’s sympathies lie when it comes down to a contest between white nationalists and those patriots protesting the group’s hatred.

In an unhinged news conference Tuesday in the lobby of his gilded tower in Manhattan, Trump doubled down on the inappropriate and equivocal comments make shortly after the Virginia tragedy when, instead of specifically condemning the white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, he denounced “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”

While speaking at the Trump Tower news conference, that was ostensibly meant to be about infrastructure permitting, our divider-in-chief finally took off the gloves … and the hood.

He repeated his claim that both sides were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville. He labeled the protesters the “alt-left” and claimed they were “very, very violent” when they sought to confront the peaceful white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups.

Trump’s remarks earned the praise of David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, who tweeted: “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”

After almost seven months in office, Donald Trump has done nothing to help the many hopeless people who believed in him and voted for him. No new and improved health care; no tax reform; no infrastructure program… just stoking the flames of resentment and division among many angry and aggrieved whites who feel they are a minority in their own country.

And in the not too distant future, that may actually be the case.

According to a new census projection, white people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2043, giving way to African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and other minority groups.

White supremacists, and their enabler in the White House, are fighting a losing, desperate battle. What we need most is to learn to live together in peace, now more than ever. All the hatred and violence in the world cannot stem the tide of history.

Photo | nydailynews.com

 

 

When Will Enough Be Enough For Republican Leaders?

By 2 Comments

I know. It’s a rhetorical question. The reflexive answer is “never.”

But are we really at the point where, like Trump’s most staunch supporters, Congressional Republicans will stick with their man even if he shoots someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue?

Firing FBI Director James Comey in an obvious attempt at obstruction of justice wasn’t enough.

Thanking Vladimir Putin for expelling over 700 U.S. diplomats from Russia wasn’t enough.

Challenging North Korea’s Kim Jong-un with talk of war, and causing the people of Guam and Hawaii to prepare for a possible attack by the unstable dictator, wasn’t enough.

And now, Trump’s mealy-mouthed tweet denouncing “all sides” in the Charlottesville terrorist attack by white nationalists on lawfully demonstrating counter-protesters, isn’t doing the trick either.

For chrissake, three people died and nineteen injured in one of the largest hate-filled white power rallies in decades!

Of course there are isolated pockets of “responsible” Republicans like Lindsey Graham saying Trump should “dissuade” those hate groups from thinking they have a friend in Donald Trump. Or Orrin Hatch tweeting “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”

What is needed is for top Republican leaders to grow a pair and have a serious talk with Trump. For starters, all white nationalists in his administration need to go. The firing of Steve Bannon would be a good start.

Prior to joining Trump’s team, Bannon was chairman of Breitbart News, a website that openly bragged about being the “platform for the alt-right”!

How about this … Republicans lead an effort towards a bipartisan vote condemning the president’s failure to distance himself from white supremacism? A strong congressional resolution that condemns white nationalists and censures the president? That might go a  long way in helping to mend our divided country.

Polls show that a majority of Americans do not support the man-child currently occupying the Oval Office. In fact, a recent Monmouth University poll found public support for impeaching Trump is higher today than it was for impeaching former President Richard Nixon in the summer of 1973, just as the Watergate scandal was beginning to unfold.

Only Republicans have the power to remove the most unfit and dangerous president ever to occupy the White House.

What will it take for them to do their duty and what’s right for their country? When will enough be enough?

Photo | Edu Bayer/New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

Trump’s Favorite Country Song? Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Comrade”

By 2 Comments

Donald Trump thanked Vladimir Putin for expelling more than 700 U.S. diplomats from Russia in response to increased sanctions.

Just like with his own fervent supporters, Trump remains loyal to his hero. Putin could shoot a political opponent in the middle of Red Square and not lose our president’s support!

Photo | businessinsider.com

Trump Can’t Even Pretend He’s Not In Putin’s Pocket … Sad

By 2 Comments

 

Congress overwhelmingly passed a tough new Russia sanctions bill last week. The vote was 98-2 in the Senate; 419-3 in the House. Yet the bill sat on Trump’s desk for 6 days before he decided to affix his John Hancock to the legislation yesterday morning. The delay was causing speculation Trump might veto the measure.

Realizing he was boxed in, our so-called commander in chief reluctantly signed the veto-proof bill.

There was none of the usual bill-signing ceremony or theatrics. Instead, Trump released a “signing statement” accusing Congress of passing a bill that included “a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions” that “purport to displace the President’s exclusive constitutional authority to recognize foreign governments, including their territorial bounds.”

To further demonstrate his contempt for the constitutional system of government that he heads, Trump could not help but take a cheap shot at the legislators. “Congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking,” said the petulant president. Why not just get more childlike and say they couldn’t negotiate their way out of a paper bag?

Even with a retired four-star general now acting as the new White House chief of staff, one just knew Trump could not resist his tweeting machine.

Echoing Kremlin talking points, our traitor-in-chief blamed Congress for the country’s deteriorating relationship with Russia.

“Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low,” tweeted Trump. “You can thank Congress, the same people that can’t even give us HCare!”

From day one, Trump has not had a bad word for Vladimir Putin. His delay in signing the sanctions bill that rightfully punishes the Russian “tsar” for his country’s interference in our 2016 presidential election says it all.

Donald J. Trump cannot even fake tepid anger at our nation’s biggest geo-political foe…. even when it would be the prudent thing to do.

The question now becomes what will Putin do next? What does he do after his large-scale investment into Trump, in order for him to lift the serious sanctions imposed against Russia by President Obama, has gone kaput? Looks as if there will be no quid pro quo for the puppet master.

Might there be some embarrassing, even incriminating, tapes released sometime soon?

Photo | express.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.