Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/tag/donald-trump/page/6/)
The 2016 election has set many new precedents. Here’s one for me: I will vote a straight Democratic ticket. Never thought that would happen. Even in the yellow dog Democrat days in Texas, my argument never varied: elect the best candidates, regardless of party, and they will find a way to figure out the way forward. Elect some Democrats to get the horses to a gallop, and throw in a few Republicans to pull on the reins. Continue Reading →
The candidates running at the top of the Montana Republican Party’s statewide ticket gathered Friday evening in Missoula to rally their base heading into November’s election, each promising to bring change to Helena if elected to office. (more…) Continue Reading →
It looks like the presidential election might be over already. Thank God. But the creatures that spawned the Creature from the Reality TV Lagoon are likely to be with us for a while yet. I refer to the lords of talk radio, whose unrelenting sledgehammer attacks on conventional governance finally coughed up presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. He has been, sure enough, unconventional. Continue Reading →
I have been seriously out of touch lately. We let our subscription to the dead-tree edition of the Billings Gazette lapse a few weeks ago and haven’t renewed it because we get sticker shock every time we see how much they want to charge us for the damned thing. (more…) Continue Reading →
Scholars, political strategists and us media elites with our chauffeured limousines and steak dinners have been struggling to understand the broad appeal of Donald Trump, a man whose contributions to society include possibly paying federal income tax. Is it his fourth-grade speaking level? Is it his brilliant use of repetition? Maybe. But in poring over the transcript of Monday’s debate with Hillary Clinton, it struck us that what we have found in Trump is a Homer for the modern age. Continue Reading →
By the time you read this, I may be a grandfather. Or maybe not. My daughter’s due date was Tuesday, but no word as of late Tuesday night. Never trust a Crisp to make a deadline. There is no trick to making babies. Continue Reading →
In 1956, after 11 years in Siberian prison camp and internal exile, Alexander Solzhenitsyn began writing seriously. He never expected to see a single word of his in print. But in 1962, his first novel, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” appeared in a Russian magazine. It was for many years the last of his work that would make it into print in the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn was exiled in 1974, and the KGB, the secret police serving at the direction of the Soviet government, launched a campaign to publicly discredit him. Continue Reading →
In Phoenix earlier this week—as on his official website—Donald Trump promised “enhanced penalties for overstaying a visa. Millions of people come to the United States on temporary visas,” he claims, “but refuse to leave.” Trump’s solution? “Completion of a visa tracking system.”
Each year, 45 million nonimmigrant visitors come to these shores. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 1.17 percent of them overstay their visas. So, for starters, Trump’s “enhanced penalties” are a solution is search of a problem. Continue Reading →
Learning that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick had refused to stand for the National Anthem reminded me of the one time I sat down for social justice. Kaepernick said he was protesting oppression of black people in the United States. His NFL employer, perhaps taking into account the liberal politics in Moscow on the Pacific, issued a grown-up statement: “In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.” It was a brave stand in a league where standing up for America is just good business. A report by U.S. Sens. Continue Reading →
Political parties change over time, sometimes reversing roles, sometimes disappearing. Today’s GOP has undergone many transformations since its birth in the 1850s as the successor to the Whig Party. The Republican Party was founded on and ultimately found its legitimacy as the abolitionist, anti-slavery party before and after the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th and arguably greatest president, was its voice and identity. (more…) Continue Reading →
