No Florida Offshore Oil Drilling Is Partisan Politics

Last updated on: January 10, 2018 at 11:21 pm By Kermit Zarley

Yesterday, the Trump Administration declared there will be no drilling for oil offshore Florida’s huge coastline. It reversed President Trump’s policy of opening offshore oil drilling in an effort to make the U.S. energy self-sufficient. It happened five days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had announced an ambitious offshore oil drilling plan for U.S. coastlines. Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott had demanded this exemption for Florida. Level-headed, Democratic Florida Senator Bill Nelson said of this decision, “I have spent my... Read more

Do We All Need to Call Ourselves Geniuses?

Last updated on: January 8, 2018 at 1:01 pm By Kermit Zarley

Saturday, President Donald Trump responded to Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, by calling himself a “genius.” Today, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham defended this rather non-presidential remark by saying that if President Trump didn’t call himself a genius, nobody else would. Oh, that makes a lot of sense, Mr. Graham. According to that, we all should call ourselves geniuses. As I’ve said before on this blog, I think it better to abide by the biblical proverb, “Let another praise you,... Read more

New Book Questions Donald Trump’s Mental Health

Last updated on: January 7, 2018 at 6:02 pm By Kermit Zarley

Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, was released Friday. It’s the talk of the town in Washington, D.C. and the nations’ news media. Throughout much of President Trump’s first year in office, author and journalist Michael Wolff had considerable access to the White House, interviewing many staff members and taping their comments. The book is a scathing critique of Donald Trump’s mental fitness to be president of the United States of America. Such people have called him a “moron,” “stupid,”... Read more

Likud Votes to Annex West Bank Settlements

Last updated on: January 3, 2018 at 2:36 pm By Kermit Zarley

Sunday, the advisory central committee of Israel’s ruling Likud political party voted to begin a process of annexing the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. They consist of nearly half a million settlers. This was a most provocative decision. The international community regards the West Bank as former Palestinian territory, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, and that it should be returned to the Palestinians in a peace agreement. But U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent recognition of Jerusalem... Read more

Talk of a Gaza-Sinai Palestinian State

Last updated on: December 31, 2017 at 6:17 pm By Kermit Zarley

It has been largely underreported in the U.S. media that this year there has been some serious talk by the most significant heads-of-state about creating a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and restive North Sinai. This idea reportedly was first broached privately in 2014 by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi soon after taking office. But the idea angered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. That is quite understandable since the Palestinian Authority governs Palestinians living in the West Bank, whereas Hamas... Read more

Trump Says the Media Needs Him

Last updated on: February 25, 2021 at 10:24 pm By Kermit Zarley

Yesterday, President Donald Trump gave an unscheduled, impromptu, thirty-minute interview to New York Times veteran reporter Michael Schmidt at Trump’s luxurious Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Palm Beach, Florida. That is the newspaper that Mr. Trump constantly bashes in his public comments. In this interview, the president said so many outrageous comments that I thought he sounded mentally deranged. One of them was this prediction about his planned re-election for president in 2020: “Another reason that we’re going to win another four... Read more

Trump “Sticks His Pick in the Ground”

Last updated on: December 29, 2017 at 4:50 pm By Kermit Zarley

President Trump was playing golf earlier this week. CNN showed him hitting a particular chip shot, with trees barely blocking a full view. When he made the shot, apparently from close to the green, his swing was so bad. On his downswing, his upper body lunged and dipped atrociously. When he made ball contact, his club gouged the turf and stuck. (We couldn’t see if he hit the ball or where it went.) In golf parlance, that is called... Read more

Trump’s Strategies to Avoid Impeachment

Last updated on: December 27, 2017 at 4:55 pm By Kermit Zarley

I think it’s pretty obvious by President Donald Trump’s constant trashing of the FBI and the Mueller investigation that he colluded with the Russians to win the presidency last year. Whether or not the Justice Department’s special counsel Robert Mueller and his team will be able to prove it and/or related things before the court, or convince Congress of it enough to lead to impeachment, remains to be seen. But Trump’s constant disparagement of the FBI and Mueller’s investigation gives... Read more

How Long Has Jerusalem Been the Capital of Israel?

Last updated on: December 24, 2017 at 12:42 pm By Kermit Zarley

After U.S. President Donald Trump recently declared that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “I think what it does is finally recognize a historical truth. Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel for 3,000 years from the time of King David.” What do you think? Is Netanyahu right? Then Netanyahu said of Jerusalem, “It has been the capital of Israel for 70 years.” I thought he just said Jerusalem was the... Read more

U.S. Threatens Nations about Moving Its Embassy to Jerusalem

Last updated on: December 21, 2017 at 10:34 am By Kermit Zarley

In 1981, Israel defied international consensus by declaring all of Jerusalem as the “undivided, eternal capital of Israel” even though Israel had taken possession of East (Old) Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967, so that the UN, according to its principles, regarded it as “occupied territory” that should be returned to its previous owners, the Palestinians, by negotiation. Yet on December 6, U.S. President Donald Trump defied international consensus by announcing that for the first time the U.S. recognizes... Read more