Trump gives zero detail on Afghanistan

In what was a highly anticipated speech to the American public, and the world, President Donald Trump was to have given his plans for Afghanistan, a 16 year old commitment to American lives,and money, on Monday, but instead offered little little of consequence, saying only that the U.S. would be prepared to attack.

In one way, the speech seemed hardly necessary without the detail, and only seemed to sustain the view that he was a bystander, and not a leader, on the world stage, just as his domestic agenda was thwarted at nearly every turn, by either appeal courts, or lack of support; much it from his own party.

Saying that “conditions on the ground, not arbitrary time tables will guide our strategy, from now on,” he again echoed his own anti-Obama strategy, and again, incorrectly tried to link the rise of ISIS to the announced withdrawal from Iraq, under President Barack Obama. For some, this reference seemed to be one of the more galling aspect of the Trump presidency that seems to lack a core foreign policy.

Currently there are 8,400 troops in Afghanistan providing training, advising and assistance to the Afghan troops. The Pentagon has recommended an additional increase of 4,000 troops, according to sources, but the president did not give numbers, only that the nation would be prepared for an attack, should it be necessary, but some say the Pentagon announcement could come as early as next week.

Democratic minority leader, Nancy Pelosi in her prepared statement, noted that the address was “low on details and raised serious questions.” Joining her in this, was Sen, Jack Reed, (D-R.i) who wondered how any policies in this area could be conducted with still vacant positions in the State Department, and proposed cuts, for more in budget proposals.

In the absence of advisor Steve Bannon, perhaps this is all that Trump could come up with, without a plan from his chief architect whose “shock and awe” plans, like that of the much maligned Muslim travel ban, sputtered and faltered, as it floundered in the appeals courts, across the country.

Bannon whose departure, after run-ins with people such as Jared Kushner,  the president’s son-in-law, was announced by the White House, as by mutual consent, but was far from that as he not only roughed up other key staff members, but went beyond talking points in an interview with a liberal journal, where in effect, he said, with North Korea, the U.S. would be toast, and “they got us.”

Trump is known not to like anyone that gets more press attention than he, so this was Bannon’s swan song, spun by the White House that he was just looking for the right time to leave. This of course is as about as disingenuous as another Washington exit line, “I want to spend more time with my family.”

If the trouble with Trump is Trump, then it gives pause as to who can help him craft the message, make the agenda, and keep the deliverer stay on script.  The exodus of administrative staff is beginning to read like a laundry list: Bannon, Priebus, Spicer, and Scaramucci.

The biggest gaffe, and perhaps, the most regrettable words, blaming “both sides” in the Charlottesville conflagration, has cost Trump, even the semblance of moral leadership, even from the GOP, from by such now reliable critics as Jeff Flake and Lindsay Graham, and whom for the former, has gone off the rails and called him names. But, then after last year’s election, is this any surprise?

For some observers and critics the general admonishment over what many have seen as racist remarks (plus the endorsement by Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke) of support for white supremacists is the last stand, and the replayed remarks will not go away.

With his poll ratings at only 40 percent approval, his global standing, has also suffered, after tentative relations, after the election.  Angela Merkel of Germany has told her leadership that they are in it alone, and the tart admonishment of England’s Prime Minister Theresa May, over national security leaks, is even more worrisome after nearly seven months of his presidency.

While Monday’s remarks gave little of substance, many are trying to predict the future: will Trump get censured for his post Charlottesville remarks? Will there be impeachment proceedings, begun in earnest? All are up for grabs.

Some White House sources, are saying on deep background, that Vice President Pence, when he enters the Oval Office, looks longingly at the Resolute Desk.

Charlottesville Horror: Where do we go now?

White Nationalists marching in Charlottesville

Saturday’s events in Charlottesville, Va. have proved that America’s most intractable problem - race - is still with us. In all of its awful capacity to sear through the fabric of the nation, white supremacists, some of them from the Klu Klux Klan, came to this quiet, and historic college town, home of the University of Virginia, to protest the pending removal of a statue of Confederate leader, Gen. Robert E. Lee, from a city park.
 
The air was rife with the potential for violence as many of them descended on the town, and were met, even before the demonstration began, by counter protesters, many of them, young and equally white in number; and mostly local, some of them students.
 
Then the unthinkable happened, a car masked with blacked out windows, plowed through them, scattering their bodies, some flying through the air, as the horror unfounded.
 
It was as if the lens of history had played a rerun of the horrific images that were shown on television in the 1960’s, of black protestors being terrorized by snarling dogs, in Alabama, and having fire hoses turned on them. Now, it seems that racial violence has once again come to America’s eyes: the ghosts of the past recast, with images, that at that time, President John Kennedy called, “sickening.”

The spectacle, and the carnage, were met with rage from all corners of the nation, but a local media person, Sandy Hausman, Bureau Chief of station WVTF, in an interview with NPR, refused to acknowledge the horror, preferring, instead, to genteelly dismiss the deadly clash, as merely “unpleasant.”
 
Her description, intentional or not, was redolent of Civil War matrons, who steadfastly refused to acknowledge the reality of the frequently violent nature of racial confrontation; and that in and of itself, is a large part of the problem, around the conversation of race in America.
 

While no place is safe in America, from racial prejudice, the South, despite heroic efforts from both the private and public sphere, still bears the scars of its slaveholding past, and that legacy is still alive, as the events of the weekend showed us.
 
It must be admitted that many of the vigilantes and hatemongers have used the election of Donald Trump, as the reason to breakout out of the closet of prejudice.  Recently, a friend from the South recalled an incident where someone had used the “N” word in a public forum, and when confronted, said, “My president has told me that it’s all right to say it.”
 
While Trump has not said that word, or explicitly given that impression, he has as both candidate and president, gleefully, mocked the handicapped, women politicians, news anchors, war heroes, and even bragged about grabbing the private parts of women.
 
Using this no holds barred approach, it is not far down the road to racial prejudice, and bigotry. The loss of life is a tragic coda to the rhetorical slurs that he has made.
 
Trump was also criticized for a slow response to the incident, and when he did, did not call out, or identify such people as David Duke, a Klan member, (who was present) or even the Klan itself, (which was there), among other groups present, is ironic, for he continually criticized President Obama, during terrorist attacks for not saying, “radical Muslim extremists.
 
The pattern seems to be set with this president, even as he dragged his feet to address previous anti-Semitic comments, even though his daughter is a Jewish convert married to a Jewish man, Jared Kushner.
 
This response was far less strident than what he has used against North Korea, or even that of his own supporters, such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or GOP majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Many have asked themselves and administration officials, if the president cares less about racial conflict, than other issues.
 
Thomas Boessert, Homeland Security Advisor, defended the president’s remarks on the Sunday political chat shows, and later Trump did actually use the term “white supremacists,” but the stronger condemnation, seemed to only come after he received public criticism; even from his own party, like Cory Gardner of Colorado who said that the president needed to “call evil by its name.”
 
The 36 hour delay, while he was at one of his golf resorts, in Bridgewater, N.J. resulted in an email to pool reporters that were traveling with him, instead of a televised address, or a press conference, with national coverage.
 
Paradoxically, there was the following: “It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.”
 
The statement is atypical of Trump, who juxtaposes phrases and words that have no contextual meaning; but then, the final filip - a reference to Barack Obama, whom he seems obsessed by.

On Tuesday he backtracked from his earlier, scripted statement to say, "I think there is blame on both sides," Trump said during a contentious back-and-forth with reporters in the lobby of his Midtown Manhattan building.

"What about the 'alt-left' that came charging at, as you say, the 'alt-right,' do they have any semblance of guilt?" Trump asked. "What about the fact they came charging with clubs in hands, swinging clubs, do they have any problem? I think they do."

He added: "You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. nobody wants to say it, but I will say it right now."
 
Certainly, this blog would not be the first place to address, the pattern Trump has of implying that his words, (even those infamous tweets), are leading some to violence, intolerance and bigotry, as when he recently advocated violence towards prisoners as they are put in police cars.”don’t be too nice.” Words that many police chiefs took notice of, and regretted hearing as they tried mightily to not have police identified in their communities with unchecked violence.
 
His exploitation of the societal divisions that some Americans have retained, even after the social revolution of the 1960s, is more than a diversionary tactic, that some have called it. Trump has rallied a base of discontent, that has now come to the surface in an ugly and confrontational manner, that threatens tear us apart, instead of bringing us together.

Contrast this with Kennedy’s words: “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.”
 
Where do we go now, and how can the nation heal from the sickening image of innocent men and women, plowed down in a vicious hate-filled attack?
 
One way might be to recognize the weekend's events, and the actions of the driver of the car, James Alex Fields, as a terrorist attack, that resulted in 19 injuries, and one death.
 

As James Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney for the Western Division of Virginia, under the Obama administration noted, when actions are used to intimidate the populace, affect the course of government, then we have the legal basis for identification.
 
In the aftermath, the questions, that arise, from the appeals court that overturned the city’s request to move the protests to another area that could be better policed, to the lack of intervention for a troubled teen with overt Nazi sympathies, need to be examined on all levels, but mostly that of leadership on the highest level. And, for that, there remains a big question mark.

Updated on 16 August,, 2017 at 10:48 a.m. CSDT

Affirmative Action under fire from Trump, with a twist

In another of the Trump administration’s diversionary tactics to play to his base, and rile his liberal opponents, he has awakened the sleeping giant of affirmative action, another divisive issue; a close second to that of abortion in the United States, and one sure to gather ire, among its defendants and its opponents. In short, the perfect storm to remove the attention from the increasing circus-like atmosphere at the White House, now under the lion-taming skills of General John F.  Kelly.
 
That unenviable task withstanding, Donald Trump, has extended the politicization of education, promulgated by Betsy DeVos, who, late last month, announced that the Department of Education would be pulling back on race based complaints, and those of sexual assaults on college campuses.
 

Now comes America’s 45th president running the gamut from A to B, in an effort to divide the country and remove the taint of suspicion that he, and his election crew, allegedly colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 election campaign. But, we’ll let Bob Mueller and his investigative crew work on that.
 

Meanwhile, there has been a shift from the traditional behavior of the Justice Department, according to The New York Times, who reported that “The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating, and suing, universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.”

The document, is “an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”
 

Or, simply put a job announcement asking for resumes, but without, a detailed list of duties or skills, but one that “suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.”
 

Even to the casual observer this represents a slippery slope that tilts towards the increased politicization of education, so prevalent in the Trump administration.
 

“The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses,” noted the Times.
 

It also supports the growing conservatism that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has shown, towards voting rights, the aftermath of the DOJ investigation into the Chicago Police Department, by the Obama administration, which has received criticism by him, and especially for his withholding of a consent decree to enforce the recommended changes.
 

Praising this move is Roger Clegg, a former official in the Civil Rights division, under President Reagan, who called the news, “welcome” and “long overdue.”
 

“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.
 

This has been a charge from the right, for some time, but it’s hard to see this in a white majority country whose only quotas are that they receive preference, which created affirmative action practices to level the playing field for non-whites.
 

The group that has most benefited from affirmative action have been white women, a frequently overlooked fact, that even the storied Time Magazine noted in a piece written by a FOX-TV contributor before the last affirmative action case heard by the Supreme Court.
 

Sally Kohn wrote that “While people of color, individually and as groups, have been helped by affirmative action in the subsequent years, data and studies suggest women — white women in particular — have benefited disproportionately. According to one study, in 1995, 6 million women, the majority of whom were white, had jobs they wouldn’t have otherwise held but for affirmative action.

”In the ensuing days to come, this may be overlooked as both sides load their arms in defense, or attack, of picks, or panning the Trump efforts. One further issue, not to be forgot is that “Another study shows that women made greater gains in employment at companies that do business with the federal government, which are therefore subject to federal affirmative-action requirements, than in other companies — with female employment rising 15.2% at federal contractors but only 2.2% elsewhere. And the women working for federal-contractor companies also held higher positions and were paid better.” 

Kristen Clarke, the president of the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized the affirmative action project, in an interview, as “misaligned with the division’s longstanding priorities.” She noted that the civil rights division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups, performing work that often no one else has the resources or expertise to do.”

The Court has ruled that the benefits that “flow from having a diverse student body can justify using race as one factor among many in a “holistic” evaluation, while rejecting blunt racial quotas or race-based point systems. But what that permits in actual practice by universities — public ones as well as private ones that receive federal funding — is often murky,” noted the Times.
 

Colleges and universities are organic institutions whose growing importance in achieving middle-class, not to mention professional status, cannot be overlooked, in a just society, and removing the goals, even considering “compelling interest” and “holistic” cannot be overlooked. This was clearly seen in the historic Brown V. Board of Education decision.
 

With what often appears to be one thing, and that is often another, is the aforementioned 2016 case, brought by Abigail Fisher, who felt that the University of Texas at Austin discriminated against her, but as was later shown, had just average grades, and wouldn't have made the cut. In a telling revelation, UT was highly selective that year, even more so than Harvard, and while there was a related percentage program that might have admitted her, it did not. Instead, it admitted five that were black or Latino, and forty-two that were white.
 

“Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher's who were also denied entry into the university that year. Also left unsaid is the fact that Fisher turned down a standard UT offer under which she could have gone to the university her sophomore year if she earned a 3.2 GPA at another Texas university school in her freshman year.”
 

These actions, that the Times flushed out, are less about race than appears, noted one author, and more about dismantling efforts to show equality in education, and perversely, to upend the 14th amendment, the equal protection clause so frequently cited, in civil rights cases.
 

The Trump administration, while its intentions have been exposed, may want to be careful, in what could very well be another failure, despite clever use of the front office, rather than the careers division.
 

Vanita Gupta, who ran the civil rights division in the Obama administration’s second term and is now president of the liberal Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights,  remarked,“The fact that the position is in the political front office, and not in the career section that enforces antidiscrimination laws for education, suggests that this person will be carrying out an agenda aimed at undermining diversity in higher education without needing to say it,” she said.

Gen. Kelly takes charge, and fires Scaramucci!

Stepping up to the plate on Monday was retired Marine General John F. Kelly to replace the ousted chief of staff, for the Trump White House, Reince Priebus, in what is arguably one of the most chaotic of White House administrations, seemingly ever. While it’s hard to give a score, or ranking to previous efforts, it’s quite clear that this is not your father’s White House, as the old car dealerships would advertise.

Taking the road less travelled, Kelly fired the F-bomb laden, brash boy, Anthony Scaramucci,  as White House Communications Director, who himself replaced the beleaguered, and often clueless, Sean Spicer, whose violated the first rule in public speaking : making Nazi comparisons, and putting that American history textbook, on the garage sale table, in the backyard.

Unbelievably, in an interview with The New Yorker, Scaramucci took a series of profanity laden pot shots at some of the most prominent members of President Trump’s administration, including Priebus, and others. After a collective WTF from even the most sanguine of Trump supporters many had said, enough was enough, and in steps the General, a  veteran with combat experience in Central America, and Iraq.

If what we have seen over the last six months is indicative, of any past participles, then it’s safe to assume that the general has his work cut out for him, making order out of chaos, with the leaks from frustrated staffers, and those that serve them, to the fake news that emanates from the keyboard of POTUS.

If sanity truly does matter then the first order of business, as all of the talking heads on network, and cable stations, have noted, is the president, or even more succinctly, those awkward, often sophomoric tweets that sabotage his efforts at even establishing an agenda, not to mention daily governance, attacking hither and yon, suggesting that he has secretly recorded tapes, threatening news organizations, announcing bans on transgendered people without warrant, or even by - including the Pentagon.

Not to mention the public whipping (via Twitter) that he has given Jeff Sessions, which seems a hell of a way to treat a fervent, and early supporter of candidate Trump.

What lies behind most of these “airoticas” is fear, genuine fear, that as some have said, when the truth comes out with the Russian allegations, then it’s a return to Trump Tower. It also lurks behind the beratement of Sessions for recusing himself from the Russian investigation, and not the old canard of Hillary’s emails.

In the none too distant past, the presence of Ivanka Trump, as special advisor was hoped to stop those embarrassing tweets. But, while she has emerged as an advisor, (with a flawless wardrobe of couture fashion), even she can’t make a difference, unless she trades in her Manolo Blahniks for a pair of track shoes to race around the private quarters of the Mansion to see what Daddy is tweeting, and where he is doing it - maybe under the blanket, or in the linen closet?

In a CNN interview, on Monday, with ardent Trump supporters in Alabama, his fans almost begged him to stop with the tweets already, or at least to discipline them, with Kelly’s help?

As we all know family matters, and in this family, Kelly will have to tread a fine line between the lives of Ivanka and her husband Jared, and brother Donald, Jr., who have all behaved in suspicious manners: meeting secretly with Russian officials and asking for a secret channel, one of theirs, to communicate with; to the namesake, and heir, meeting with a Russian lawyer to get the goods on Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign, sudden contracts with foreign clothing retailers for orders from Ivanka, Inc.

The jungles of Central America maybe just the experience that Kelly needs to traverse the hills of the family Trump, not be confused with the Von Trapps. Yet, most agree that the number one factor to be addressed is Trump himself. "I keep saying there is no better Trump, there's never a pivot," said GOP strategist Rick Wilson, a vigorous critic of the president. "No one is smart or strong enough to change him,” reported The Hill.

All of which points to how can Kelly, as urban slang would have it, keep it real with Trump. That is the $64,000 question, and one that is not easily answered. For example,  if Kelly urges him to stay on message, can that be done without a message? So far, the Trump agenda seems to be mostly campaign promises, and little else.

After seating Kelly for the press announcement in one of the gold upholstered, (and, ill-named Martha Washington) chairs in the Oval Office, they proceeded to the “board room” as Trump calls the Cabinet Room, and when asked about the latest nuclear North Korean bomb testing, (one that could potentially hit either Denver, or Chicago) all that he could say, was “We’ll take care of it.”

Godspeed General Kelly!