Commentary

I’m back after a brief respite.  Back to give you my thoughts on topics from my stack of stuff. 

Long Overdue

While President Trump was issuing a sweeping grant of clemency, including full, complete and unconditional pardons for some 1500 participants in the Jan. 6, assault on the Capital, my thoughts were of Ashli Babbitt, the only person killed that day. 

Babbitt, unarmed and posing no real threat, was needlessly shot that day by a trigger-happy Capitol Police lieutenant, Michael Byrd, who was cleared of wrongdoing.

Thanks to Judicial Watch, the government watchdog agency that filed a $30 million wrongful death suit on behalf of the Babbitt estate and her husband,   “a settlement has been agreed to in principle,” according to the agency’s president Tom Fitton.  I am proud to be a longtime member of JW.

Go Figure

After years of following the right direction percentages of the Biden administration, you may recall my frustration over those poor souls who thought he was headed in the right direction while the majority thought otherwise.

A year ago, at this time, just 29 percent said the U.S. was heading in the right direction, while 65 percent said it was on the wrong track. In Rasmussen Reports’ latest survey, 45 percent of likely U.S. voters think the country is heading in the right direction, with 51 percent believing the nation is headed down the wrong track.  Huh?

Brooks Opines

For those of you who don’t follow the New York Times, I don’t blame you, but I thought you would like to know that opinion columnist David Brooks, the guy who once predicted Barack Obama would be a great president merely because of the neat crease in his trousers, continues to poke fun at President Trump.

“I’ve detested at least three quarters of what the Trump administration has done so far,” he wrote, “but it possesses one quality I can’t help admiring: energy.  I don’t know which cliché to throw at you, but it is flooding the zone, firing on all cylinders, moving rapidly on all fronts at once.”

You would be mistaken if you took that as a compliment of Trump, like his remark about the crease in Obama’s trousers, as he continued by saying, “Some of this is inherent in President Trump’s nature.  He is not a learned man, but he is a spirited man,” further asserting that he “possesses a torrential thumos (Greek for spiritedness), a burning core of anger, a lust for recognition.

“All his life, he has moved forward with new projects and attempted new conquests, despite repeated failures,” Brooks says, adding, “Trump’s greatest strength, his initiative, is his greatest weakness.”

Offering Democrats a bit of his advice, Brooks notes, “Democrats will do the most good if they can stop sounding like Democrats for the time being, with all the tired rhetoric about the oligarchy and trickle-down economics,” while suggesting they defend the Constitution, postwar alliances, Medicare and Medicaid, all of which Brooks fears are in trouble with Trump.

Poor David, he wrote that prior to Trump’s trip to the Middle East, where, along with some of America’s leading business titans committed to trillions of dollars in investments, while cementing relationships with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Syria despite criticism that he was “sucking up” to them.

“Before our eyes,” said Trump in Saudi Arabia, a new generation of leaders is transcending  the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past, and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos; where it exports technology, not terrorism; and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds ae building cities together, not bombing each other.”

And there‘s the revitalization of the Abraham accords, anti-nuclear negotiations with Iran, peaceful negotiations for Israel and Hamas and between Ukraine and Russia on his global agenda while at home he helps Johnson and Thune shepherd that one beautiful bill through Congress,

So, looking ahead, while Brooks views Trump’s initiative as a weakness, I continue to marvel at the president’s ability to simultaneously juggle domestic and foreign efforts in the spirit of America First at a pace Biden never achieved.

In 2016, I recall hearing an individual on the golf course predicting war with Trump’s win.  That didn’t happen.

In the Middle East, he said, “As I have shown repeatedly, I am willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and stale world, even if our differences may be very profound.  My preference will always be for peace and partnership, whenever those outcomes can be achieved.  Always.”

Finally

I found Jim Biondi’s letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal both humorous and true. Writing from New Bern, North Carolina, Biondi wrote: “God invented economists so that meteorologists wouldn’t be the only ones wrong most of the time.”

May God continue to bless the United States of America.