Today’s offering will be just a collection of various thoughts and questions about recent events in the political arena. Not much will be resolved, but sometimes just bringing the subjects up is beneficial.
The airwaves have been inundated with the controversy over NFL players not respecting the flag or the national anthem. Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, kicked off this last year by his actions before the season. Now President Trump has been vilified by many for making this into a racial problem. But a couple of questions I would have for the principals — who injected racism into the subject? Colin Kaepernick, not the President. In addition, this comes from a player who signed a contract for over $140 million, but the controversy he ignited came after he was benched for poor play, and his team tanked in the standings. It also came after he had asked for a trade from his team. Curious timing, to say the least.
Another recent eruption was the Charlottesville, Virginia riot that took the life of a young woman. Again, the President was roundly criticized for not immediately and pointedly condemning white supremacists, the KKK and the alt-right. Yet, if you read his first response, imagine a Democratic President using those words, say one like Barack Obama. Wouldn’t he have been praised for his eloquence? Perhaps the problem was more of political correctness than of correctness.
Where has Russia gone from our national angst? All summer long a diligent search for a “smoking gun” proving the Russians managed to elect Donald Trump as President was undertaken. With no proof, have any of those who so viciously attacked the President apologized for their overheated rhetoric? I heard none do that.
Another story of national interest is Hillary Clinton’s book tour, touting her tome What Happened. In this exercise in futility, she has managed to blame so many others for her stunning defeat in the 2016 election that it would take most of this blog to catalogue them. When will she get around to me? I feel so ignored in her blame game. Don’t you wish she would just go away? Perhaps she should just become another exhibit in Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, placed in the wing for losers.
In an opinion piece, I read again of how President Trump has had very little in the way of success since he became the Chief Executive. Yet most news outlets refuse to acknowledge the bills passed, regulations rolled back and actions to stimulate the economy he has accomplished. The list is long, and others have done an admirable job of listing them, so we won’t try here. But the ignoring of good news from the White House has reached epic proportions. This past week, President Trump, surrounded by students from across the nation, announced an initiative about the STEM educational efforts, fueled in part by his own money and pushed by the head of the Education Department, Betsy De Vos. If former President Obama had done this, all the major news outlets would have carried the ceremony live, but they didn’t. Can you say bias when it comes to covering Donald Trump’s administration?
We can’t ignore the situation with North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom, under that present Kim as dictator, continues to threaten the United States with nuclear tipped missiles. To listen to most pundits, both left and right, President Trump has made the problem much worse by his twitter attacks on “Rocket Boy”, as he dubbed Kim Jong Un. After repeated tests of rockets and nuclear devices, our President has threatened massive retaliation if we or our allies are attacked. Previous administrations, Bill Clinton’s, George W. Bush’s, and Barack Obama’s, have used such watered down rhetoric and weak sanctions that the rogue regime’s leaders have simply continued on their merry road to becoming a nuclear power. Our fearless leaders of the past have looked the bullies of the Hermit Kingdom in the eye, and said, “Please don’t do that!” Or in the terms of a previous President, drawn a “red line” in the sand and done nothing when the North Koreans took another leap forward into the nuclear club. Isn’t refreshing, though, to have a leader here in the U. S. who will stand up to the bully? Appeasement, we know from past history, just makes war more likely.
Another subject could take up many pages of ranting. For seven years, Republicans have promised to repeal the train wreck known as ObamaCare. Now that they have the House and Senate under their control, and a person in the White House who would sign such a measure, we have seen how stiff their political spines are. If the 2018 elections give the House back to the Democrats, the Republicans have only the spaghetti-spines of some Senators to blame. Where are the politicians who will keep the promises they proclaim on the campaign trail?
Those of us here in “flyover country” see all the hypocrisy and mendacity in our political leaders, but are really not surprised. Disappointed, but we have seen what has been happening in the public arena for too many years to not expect politicians to basically turn their backs on those who elect them. Sometimes I wish our leaders were picked at random from the phone book. Couldn’t do much worse, could w