Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
(Courtesy Tom Stiglich)
JOHN BOLTON’S BOOK – After hearing comments on the book – “The Room Where It Happens” – I couldn’t help but think about the lessons learned by standup comedians on knowing how to play the room. Bolton failed to learn that.
During an appearance on Martha MacCallum’s “The Story,” Fred Fleitz, former NSC chief of staff to Bolton, observed that it’s the job of the senior advisors “to work with the president, not to fight with him to implement his policies.”
Noting that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others “found out how to work with the president and be effective” – playing the room – “Bolton and others (Mattis?) couldn’t figure this out.”
You may recall General Jack Keane saying that those disgruntled generals who left the Trump administration simply couldn’t figure out how to work with Trump the businessman after decades of military associations working with politicians and bureaucrats.
While the book criticizes Trump’s decisions, leadership capability fitness for office, and a man without principles, Fleitz notes that Bolton disproves those beliefs by recounting the president’s decision not to bomb Iran after our drone was shot down. It was a principled decision since some 200 people may have been killed.
SYMBOLISM OVER HISTORY – As we see statues of historical figures removed around the country, many of them destroyed, Nancy Pelosi used the power of her speakership to have the portraits of four former speakers removed from the U.S. Capitol. All had ties to the Confederacy.
“The portraits of these men are symbols that set back our nation’s work to confront and combat bigotry,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to the clerk of the House.
AN INTERESTING SIDE NOTE – The portrait of Democrat John W. McCormack, who served as speaker during the House passage of the Great Society legislation, continues to hang in the Capitol, despite the recognition that LBJ’s Great Society was ill-conceived as the answer to end poverty and racial injustice. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had earlier turned out to be a bad deal for Blacks and had started them on the path to dependency on government. “(It) contributed to, rather than alleviated, suffering,” said Ronald Reagan.
“During Lyndon B. Johnson’s first 20 years in Congress, he opposed every civil rights measure that came up for a vote.” – Barack Obama, April 10, 2014
Where does one stop in removing portraits and statues of past historical figures? It should have stopped long ago, but if portraits of former speakers tied to slavery and the Confederacy have to go, why not the portrait of McCormack who supported legislation that perpetuated the Black reliance on big government?
CHARLES CURTIS (smithsonian magazine)
BIDEN’S CHOICE OF A BLACK WOMAN to be his running mate is often referred to as “historic,” but did you know that she will not be the first minority vice president? “The first vice president of color was a Republican elected over 90 years ago,” according to Joseph Simonson, writing in Washington Examiner.
The first was Republican Charles Curtis, who served under Herbert Hoover for four years, had significant Native American ancestry. Born in the Kansas Territory in 1860, Curtis spent many of his formative years on an Indian reservation. The records are not clear whether he was one-eighth or three-eights native Indian, but he remained a member of the Kaw Tribe his entire life. That’s your history lesson for today.
THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT would be viewed as “racist” and the protestors as “devils” by Muhammad Ali if he were alive today, according to his son Muhammad Ali Jr.
In an interview with the New York Post on the fourth anniversary of his father’s death, Ali Jr. said his Dad “would have been sickened by how the protests have turned to violence and looting after the death of George Floyd.”
It’s not just black lives matter, white lives matter, Chinese lives matter, all lives matter, everybody’s lives matters,” he went on to say.
I HOPE YOU ALL HAD A HAPPY FATHER’S DAY
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
