Category: National

In her new book, “What Happened,” Hillary Clinton underscores, and rightly so, the impact of James Comey’s last minute, campaign intervention. It was, indeed, outrageous and beyond the pale. But there is still this: For those who made Comey their game-changer, they still had to vote for the alternative. It wasn’t Mitt Romney or John Kasich or Jon Huntsman. It was still Donald Trump, arguably the most unqualified person to ever be elected president.

Clinton was an experienced, capable but frustratingly flawed candidate who ran a below-average campaign. James Comey’s interference was unconscionable. But this is still on the electorate. There weren’t enough “deplorable” haters and Trump channelers to have defeated Clinton. But too many saw a “lesser of two evils” Hobson’s choice and voted for Trump–or sat it out. Thanks, again.

President Donald Trump recently called on Congress to pass sweeping tax cuts. As only he can. He said so at a manufacturing company in Springfield, Mo. Details were in short supply. It wasn’t a rally crowd, so he had a script. But he’s still Trump. He eventually wanders, especially if he is detail-challenged, which is a given.

“I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done,” he underscored. But he couldn’t quit there. It’s not what he does. So he does what a pathological ad libber does. To wit: “And I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress, do you understand me? Do you understand? Understand? Congress. I think Congress is going to make a comeback. I hope so.”

Whatever. Mitch McConnell wasn’t moved to respond, in kind or otherwise. Maybe he’s still worrying about Elaine sharing a Trump Tower elevator with the president.

Imagine, being privy to the world’s ultimate bully pulpit and given to presenting yourself and your administration like this? Even if you were a xenophobic-racist-know-nothing, wouldn’t you (sort of) miss the eloquence and presidential demeanor of Barack Obama? I didn’t think so.

The First and Second Amendments have something in common, besides being constitutionally foundational–and targets for increasing legal scrutiny. They both–now more than ever–require common sense.

* Jared Kushner, somehow, is President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East adviser. His qualifications: He’s Trump’s son in law. He’s Jewish and regards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “Uncle Bibi.” And he has presumably done the background reading his father-in-law passes on. And did we mention that he was Trump’s son in law? But by any definition, he is woefully under-credentialed. He could use a track record. Perhaps he should start with the Trump administration and help bring coherence and peace out of inner-circle in-fighting and chaos.

* How does Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation–and the WIFE of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell–stay in this administration? Being an immigrant (Taiwan) of color, MBA-holder from an elitist university (Harvard) and former director of the Peace Corps should be problematic enough. But living with the embarrassingly high-profile Trump-McConnell acrimony?

When asked about the tensions between her husband and the president, which include Trump’s scathing, public scapegoating of McConnell over health care, she said: “I stand by my man–both of them.” How equivocatingly disingenuous–and less-than-spontaneous. Chao is now becoming known for something other than merely being part of the oddest couple since Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki.

* Arguably, nobody could be worse for the Oval Office than Donald Trump, and that includes annoyingly sycophantic Veep Mike Pence, who looks normal and doesn’t shout. But Pence hardly helped the cause–if the cause is common sense, compassion, public safety and historic candor–with his dismissive comment on the public controversy over Confederate monuments. “What we have to walk away from is a desire by some to erase parts of our history just in the name of some contemporary political cause.” That should have embarrassed even the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” the forum for the Pence interview.

* Collusion prequel. It so happens that a few years back both Donald Trump and Joe Arpaio pursued the insidious case of Barack Obama’s birthplace. Hoping to find it was some place other than Hawaii. Talk about “birther”-caretaker coincidence. “There was no collusion,” says Arpaio.

* What still remains weird and, well, inexplicable are these post-election studies and surveys analyzing the “Obama-Trump voters,” basically working class whites who switched sides to channel their ultimate populist. “Obama-Trump” voters? That should still be an oxymoron.

* These days you never know who’s going to show up at a congressional town hall meeting–from ideologues and hecklers to pragmatists and idealists. The other night in Clearwater, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, D-St. Petersburg, incurred a new constituent dynamic: psychiatrist. Dr. Mark Simko weighed in on the competence of Donald Trump. This is, alas, where we are.

“Every utterance, tweet-wise or personally, shows evidence of temperamental, emotional and intellectual instability,” diagnosed Dr. Simko, “and I’m concerned about the safety of the country.” Aren’t we all, but how sobering to have it underscored clinically. Scary.

* From what we hear, gun purchases are off in Florida as are requests for concealed weapons permits and background checks. Apparently it’s  attributable to having a gun-rights advocate in the White House. Anyone feel safer as a result?

* This just in. Border Patrol agents in California have detained 30 individuals–Chinese and Mexicans–found in a smuggling tunnel. About that wall … .

* No, we don’t miss White House spokesman Sean Spicer, but, as opposed to his successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, he never came across as insufferable or darkly duplicitous, just in over his head, out of touch and ultimately hung out to dry. So who will play Huckabee Sanders on SNL this fall? You know a major send-up, complete with disdainful, arched brow, is on the way.  But as to more specifics–and to paraphrase Huckabee Sanders–we’ll just have to get back to you on that.

I thought I had heard it all when it came to segregation history. From public schools, military platoons, lunch counters and “white primaries” to “colored” rest rooms and water fountains. But here’s an item, thanks to a recent column by USF St. Pete historian Gary Mormino, that took me aback.

During the height of Cold War paranoia, America prepared, so to speak, for nuclear war on the home front. As in bomb shelters, fallout shelters, air raid sirens and students, especially in Florida, practicing the art of “duck and cover.” The head of the Civil Defense Administration, Millard Caldwell, a former Florida congressman and governor, had once advocated segregated bomb shelters. He really did.

Imagine, while preparing for nuclear apocalypse, there was sentiment to still make race–as in black and white, not just human–a priority. “Gobsmacking,” to use a vintage, non-academic Mormino adjective.

When it comes to Confederate statues and monuments, we all agree on something: History is not to be destroyed. And if he were still around to weigh in, George Santayana would surely agree. Something about remembering the past–at the risk of repeating it.

And context, as always, matters.

We can acknowledge history without honoring it. Some things belong in the public square, some in a museum. Common sense and common decency, even if not common enough, should dictate.

Visit Berlin, for example, and see how modern Germany has handled the Holocaust. There are museums and there are high-profile public reminders. The message is the same: “This is what we as an unconscionably culpable society allowed to happen. Never again.” It is as moving as it is necessary.

However, statuary harkening back to the Confederacy–“Gone With the Wind” and apocryphal  family histories notwithstanding–is inherently inappropriate for America’s public places. There’s a reason why so many of them were erected during the height of Jim Crow. There are no publicly-acceptable rationales for referencing a cause steeped in racism. This isn’t cathartic, Holocaustesque therapy. This is a visceral affront to African-Americans.

Too bad these controversial Confederate monuments haven’t had inscriptions that contained more truth than allegiance to a revisionist “cause.”  Maybe something like: “This memorial ‘commemorates,’ as it were, the South’s treasonous war of secession from the United States and the concomitant effort to retain a way of life that relied on a slave-labor economy. The maintenance of such an economy was also dependent on a conscience-free rationale that defined non-white slaves as inferior human beings.”

Had that been the case, the truth may have set us free of all this angst and political posturing we still experience today.

* Steve Bannon is no longer a White House staffer. This pleases White House insiders not named Gorka or Miller. Some say he’s been “unleashed”–so, head’s up Republican establishment, as well as Jared and Ivanka. But actual presidential influence–a phone call away–could still remain, especially as Breitbart News, an axis of economic nationalism and alt-right racism, refortifies. Bannon is now its executive chairman. Word is, Breitbart is serious about a TV version. As David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, has noted, “If Bannon and Breitbart are spinning him up, Trump may dial him up on a regular basis. That may give him leverage.”

Leverage without “Javanka” and the generals listening in. Just Sebastian and Stephen.

* Trump, it has been announced, will be skipping the annual Kennedy Center Honors arts awards this year. It would have been a “political distraction,” disingenuously explained White House press harlot Sarah Huckabee Sanders. How noble. Actually, it would have resulted in a boycott by the honorees–and even more embarrassing press for Trump .

* First it was the business councils that bailed. Then the artists committee. Now it’s scientists and local officials disbanding their climate policy panel. Pretty soon it will be official: “Input” is only welcomed from the “basket of deplorables” and certain GOP cowards.

* No one, obviously, should applaud what that Missouri state senator said about Trump, even though we understand where the rhetoric is coming from. For the record, Democratic Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal–in a Facebook post–expressed hope for a presidential assassination. She has since apologized. She took back the appalling reference, but she couldn’t take back context.

Doesn’t her disturbing–but not as shocking as it should be–post speak alarming volumes about where we now are as a country, as a culture and as a society?

*It’s beyond exasperating to read frequent analysis for Trump’s election that centers on the Democratic Party as effectively leaderless and message-challenged. As in no single galvanizing candidate and no single, all encompassing, rally-round message to rouse the grass roots and gin up the vote.

Not that we don’t get that overview. In normal times, it makes sense. It’s Political Campaigning 101. The Dems never found their A-game.

But in this case, it’s an absolutely unacceptable rationale for what happened. It means this electorate–notably including working class, white voters who had felt taken for granted–actually found this manifestly unethical, uninformed, narcissistic, vulgar, faux-populist lout to be an acceptable alternative to what the Dems were offering.

The most serious threat to democracy is not Donald Trump. It’s an easily duped electorate.

“Bullets are like the angry email you hit send on before thinking more calmly about–they can’t be recalled. I don’t have or carry a weapon precisely because I worry I’d use it.” No, these aren’t the words of some liberal advocating gun control, if not Second Amendment repeal. They were spoken by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

You often hear references to “sausage” in the context of unedited journalism products–from news reporting to news analysis. Print and electronic. The same goes for lawmaking. The process can be messy. The finished product hopefully belies that reality.

Well, this column’s initial iteration, I must admit, was more for therapy than publication. It would give sausage a bad name. The language was crude in parts, reflecting my mood–a taut mix of exasperation, anger and fear. We are on the brink of something unconscionable. And it was eminently preventable. Worst-case scenarios now hang in the balance.

So I cleaned it up some, and the f-bombs–actually FY imperatives–have been defused. But in their stead, I’ve left inoffensive reminders of their prominent sausage placement. They’re still necessary.

Here goes.

“Fire and fury”/”locked and loaded” should be the last act of this disgracefully nightmarish Trump presidency. Not that we didn’t see it coming. At least Peter Sellers was darkly funny in “Dr. Strangelove.”

Personally, I say Flatulent Yak to all Trump voters and ongoing supporters.

That goes for those who needed a white-nativist, alt-Reich misogynist to channel because their lives were hapless, and Trump helped enable their societal scapegoating with his validating, racist dog whistles. As to careerist Republican cowards who took one for team GOPster instead of Team USA and made their Faustian deal: Fatuous Yeoman. You all enabled this incompetent menace to be the president of the United States. How do you even sleep at night?

And to those who didn’t vote at all for whatever reason, including the disingenuously false equivalence of two off-putting candidates: What the hell were you thinking? This wasn’t some “lesser of two evils” dilemma. This was evil vs. a flawed candidate. So, yeah, you’re part of this Trump diarrhea derby too. Falsetto Yawn.

Fundamentally, here’s the issue. Trump’s a manifestly obvious national and global threat of existential proportions–not just an impulsively unhinged, pathologically lying lout. Would that he were merely that. Why the hell would anyone want his undersized digits anywhere near the nuclear codes? Why do you think administration officials have been trying to placate journalists and reassure them that Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chief of Staff John Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have a pact designed to ensure that one of them is always nearby to watch over Trump in case he goes, uh, ballistic?

Trump could be the trigger man for Armageddon. As the editors of Scientific American have anxiously noted: “With the exception of the president, every link in the U.S. nuclear decision chain has protections against poor judgments, deliberate misuse or accidental deployment.” Helluvan exception. Kim Jong-un, frankly, is more calculated. Hell, so was Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, who found a stalwart John F. Kennedy between him and Cuban Missile Crisis mushroom clouds. Donald Trump 2017 is no JFK 1962.

And let’s not forget or forgive: Feckless Yokel, GOP primary voters, especially you hypocritical evangelicals who helped create dystopian momentum–from Charlottesville to Pyongyang. David Duke to Kim Jong-un. You didn’t see any of this coming? You were just religiously gullible and thought the right-to-strife Trump a better fit than Ted Cruz Control? Isn’t apocalypse part of your frame of reference? Who did you pray to for guidance? Mike Huckabee? Even Marco Rubio, Exhibit A of the Takes-One-To-Know-One School, recognized Trump for the narcissistic con man that he’s always been.

Sorry for the redundancy, but Freudian Yeti, Trump voters, for being part of the “Deliverance,” “Duck Dynasty” and Goldman Sachs crowds that helped elect him and do this to our country and our world. Moreover, lest I forget, Fetid Yahoo. We deserve better, even though you don’t.

In sum, Gen. Kelly–do something as Trump doubles down on dumb and dangerous–from Iran to Venezuela to North Korea. Don’t just be the semper fi version of Reince Preibus. Collude with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford–the one who was bumped from that national security meeting by Steve Bannon.

And recall the haunting words of former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who said Trump was fanning the flames of war with his rhetoric. “I think it eliminates maneuver space for him, because it looks like brinksmanship to me,” said Mullen.

If it helps, remember that Italy didn’t arrest anyone for what happened to Benito Mussolini when he hung around too long right-side up. Enough of America will have your back. Channel your inner Brutus or maybe Burt Lancaster in “Seven Days in May.”

Impeachment and the 25th Amendment are too civilized and time-consuming. Time is no ally; we are imperiled now. Tarring, feathering and quartering–finalized by a goodbye coup-smooch from Chelsea Manning–would be fitting.

OK, I’m exaggerating for effect.

No I’m not.

* Is it too much to ask, even by the lying, “fake news” media, that the president of the United States at least act, well, somewhat presidential? To other heads of state as well as the Boy Scouts. And to anyone privy to disturbing, impulsive tweets–and that’s, of course, all of us. Could he at least not dishonor the office that transcends the individual occupant? The primaries are over, even if West Virginia will never act like it.

When Trump tells cops to “Please, don’t be too nice” to those they arrest, he was just channeling his inner open-mic-night temperament. Prudently protecting the head of someone entering a cop car who has just been arrested for, say, a heinously violent crime can seem ironically incongruous, even darkly humorous. But not coming from the president in front of an audience of police officers.

When Trump unpresidentially talks down to the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Australia, it can only hinder American prestige and, more importantly, influence. Those recently leaked transcripts provide unsurprising insight into his priorities and duplicity. Whether it was the wall or  refugees, Trump, it is now confirmed, wanted to save face from a campaign stoked in bumper-sticker rhetoric and whiskey promises to his gullible nativist  base.

* Frankly, if there’s anything that can bring bipartisanship to this polarized Congress, it’s Russia. The sanctions legislation was one sided and veto proof. And if Trump were to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller over Russian collusion and/or obstruction of justice, there are serious signs that this would ignite a congressional firestorm of Watergate proportions.

And speaking of Watergate, let’s not forget that the final push for Richard Nixon’s resignation was, indeed, a bipartisan effort.

* It has hardly gone unnoted that Mueller will be using multiple grand juries–common vehicles to subpoena witnesses and records–and has assembled an extremely formidable team of (16) attorneys. Mueller, a squeaky-clean, decorated war veteran and former F.B.I. chief, is highly thought of–as opposed to Trump–and has recruited some of the best and brightest. Arguably better and brighter than their counterparts. Game on.

* Another ripple effect from having Donald Trump as–it’s still oxymoronic to write–president: Political insiders are credibly discussing the actual possibility of Rick Scott running for president. WTF! And that, with a wink and nod to Sen. John McCain, doesn’t stand for “Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.”

* We now know that Gen. John Kelly, the White House chief of staff,  reads the same book after every promotion. It’s C.S. Forester’s 1936 novel, “The General.” It’s a parable about the danger of patriotism and duty unaccompanied by critical thinking. Perhaps he could share it with the commander in chief, who hasn’t read a book since “Art of the Deal.” Or, perhaps, Kelly will expand his post-promotion list to include “Seven Days in May.”

*VP Michael Pence is saying all the right things about his sycophantic loyalty to the president, despite media speculation about viable GOP back-up plans for 2020. Interestingly, Pence has also formed the “Great American Committee.” That makes him the first sitting vice president to have his own political action committee. It also encourages the speculation he so publicly abhors.