Politeness is so overrated. President Donald Trump’s naysayers have come out in full force in recent days to blast his tough-talk speech to the United Nations as bombastic, and his Twitter firings at North Korea’s Kim Jong Un as dangerous. But the truth is: Keeping the world powers on its collective toes is good for America.
We’ve heard the words and music of this song before. The hoariest cliche in American politics, presented as accomplished fact by every wise head in academe and media after every wipe-out election, is that the losing party is finished. Kaput. Destroyed. Done for. Dead, as in the graveyard.
Bangladesh has been a haven for the Rohingya people since they began fleeing unprovoked oppression in their home state of Rakhine on Myanmar’s western shore, bordering Bangladesh, in 2015. Denied citizenship in their own country, the Rohingya have been in conflict not only with the other citizens of Rakhine but also with the government of Myanmar, which considers many of them to be anti-government insurgents. The United Nations describes the Rohingya as one of the world’s most persecuted people.
What does it mean to ‘Make America Great Again’? That’s a seemingly simple question with no simple answer, but an important part of it is certainly fixing our broken systems.
President Trump is right. His speech at the United Nations was his third act of Reagan-like statesmanship, after the historically accurate, morally rooted and inspirational speeches in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Warsaw, Poland. This time, he pointedly spoke for those who cannot speak in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and suppressed people around the world. It was a tour de force, and it’s hard to disagree with any word. Once again, Ronald Reagan would be nodding.
News that Iran's and Turkey's governments reached an accord on Idlib, a Syrian town now the focus of American interests, brings relations between the two of the largest and most influential states in the Middle East momentarily out of the shadows.
Just after last week's terrorist attack in Barcelona, a pro-Islamic State website posted video from the scene along with a message in Arabic saying, "Terror is filling the hearts of the Crusader in the Land of Andalusia."
No matter what President Trump and Congress do about taxes and the like, low interest rates are becoming as certain as aging. That's good news for young folks buying homes but tough on retirees who rely on CDs and bonds, and people over 55 realigning portfolios for retirement.
President Trump is in trouble again with his moral superiors. His problem, of course, is that he cannot throttle his baloney detector. Mr. Trump, it seems, at some point in life acquired a baloney detector that has usually served him well. It certainly served him well during his long years in business and during his brief time in politics. Now, however, it is problematic.
Given the heated rhetoric that surrounds the right to work, you might believe that the concept threatens the very existence of unions. However, as a former union president I can assure you that the ability to collect fees from people who don't want to join the union is not only unnecessary, but that ultimately it undermines union officials' legitimacy when speaking for voluntary members.
You've heard it out there. You know the story already. USA Today "broke" it in a huge scoop on Monday: "Exclusive: Secret Service depletes funds to pay agents because of Trump's frequent travel, large family."
As summer temperatures continue in the 90s, August beachgoers aren't the only ones feeling the heat. In Missouri, union employees are getting burned by efforts to block implementation of right-to-work.
We will learn even less from history if we wipe it clean, as some are trying to do by removing statues of Confederate leaders whose beliefs about slavery and race most, including me, find offensive. Conversation beats censorship.
Amid the chaos of Charlottesville, two specters from the previous century's darkest hours have re-emerged. Alongside the well-publicized Nazi symbols on full display during the "Unite the Right" rally, so too were Communist hammers and sickles brandished by the opposing anti-fascist or "Antifa" protesters.
Mitch McConnell has been taking quite a beating from President Trump for failing to get a health care reform bill through the Senate, but even Mr. Trump has largely conceded that John McCain, alone blew up the majority leader's painstakingly crafted compromise.
Would you hire someone who had falsified documents or been convicted of theft? Probably not. But then again, you're not the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Is more inflation desirable? Those at the Federal Reserve seem to think so, and they have explicitly said their target is 2 percent, or about double the current level.
We owe Chicken Little an apology. Maybe the sky really is falling. Evidence is everywhere. Cries and whimpers suddenly grow deafening as the landscape is dusted with snowflakes, who imagine they're unique and have in common with other snowflakes only an extremely low melting point.
At the heart of the Cold War, the ever-present nuclear threat had a profound effect on the American psyche. Children hiding under desks during air raid drills during the 1960s and 1970s had longer-term implications in terms of mental and physical health as studies in the 1980s revealed.
At the end of the Cold War, Russia was a facsimile of itself. Shorn of empire, the Russians appeared to be a weak regional power, if that.
In 1993, when President Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), its boosters claimed that it would solve, once and for all, a plethora of problems plaguing the nation's voter registration rolls.
One lesson I've learned from working for Donald Trump is that you have to pay attention to what he does, not what he says. The left and the media are on a rampage accusing President Trump of being a racist and Nazi-KKK sympathizer because of his words in response to the horrid events in Charlottesville.
California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher's recent three-hour meeting with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange as reported earlier this week by The Hill may prove interesting in light of the allegations of several former high-ranking U.S. intelligence analysts that the Democratic National Committee was not hacked by the Russians or anyone else prior to last fall's presidential election.
Having refused to repeal Obamacare, the Republican Party is dead, as was the Whig Party in 1854 after it colluded in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which opened these territories to slavery.
Don't for one minute think this past week of Charlottesville-tied mayhem has been over a statue of Robert E. Lee. It's not. It's about power, control and the political course our nation will take as we head into the future.
