Leonard Toboroff

Tuesday

Leonard Toboroff

Get ready for Trump’s second term

President Trump’s adversaries are running Joe Biden, a fallback Beltway lifer who is credibly accused of selling his office, leaking false intel about Gen. Flynn to the Washington Post and handsiness with female political allies. Oh, and it appears that a prosecutor in Ukraine is digging into the potential criminal liability of the one or more persons who gorged on Burisma’s trove of US taxpayer funds. Joe’s son Hunter is named, and so Joe, in a context not yet fully disclosed. If there’s a criminal investigation in Ukraine, no problem: Joe’s plea of cognitive impairment will let him walk. And the hosannas reaped by doughty old Jim Clyburn for picking Joe up off the floor in South Carolina now seem no more than a feel-good story.

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Friday

Leonard Toboroff

J’Accuse Barack Obama!

When President Obama was in his 75-day transition to the Presidency, he initiated correspondence with Supreme Leader Khamenei of Iran to explore, at the least, some form of what French diplomats call détente, or even entente. But Iran remained an adversary to the United States. Instead of rapprochement, the Shia theocracy  was sanctioned by UN Security Council resolution 1803 on March 3, 2008. As it happens, this was prologue to l’affaire Flynn, a scandal whose events resemble those of that affaire to remember, the notorious Affaire Dreyfus. That’s Alfred Dreyfus the army officer, not Richard Dreyfuss the actor.

obama

Thursday

Leonard Toboroff

Obama’s political police

In the beginning there was a clandestine ‘surveillance’ and ‘unmasking’ program by operatives in the Obama executive branch, targeting figures in some way related to President-Elect Trump during his 75-day transition period. But on January 5, 2017 the outgoing Obama administration took a fateful step. Obama convened a meeting in the Oval Office; present were his VP, the Deputy AG, his National Security Adviser, the heads of the FBI and CIA and perhaps one or two others. A decision was taken to open a counter-terrorism investigation. The target: the incoming president, Trump. The FBI chief, Comey, was dispatched the next day to brief Trump about an ongoing investigation, but hide from him that he was the target.

political police

Friday

Leonard Toboroff

‘Trust but don’t verify’: US-China relations in the 21st century

It seems this virus is fiercely contagious but far less lethal than first supposed. The argument now is whether we should be emerging from lockdown and getting back to the business of business. The Trump faction, some 50 percent of our country, are straining at the bit to go back to work. Democratic leadership and the left-leaning media are against breaking lockdown. Why? It’s the usual knee-jerk ‘Orange Man Bad’ anti-Trumpism and a shivering fear that Trump can rebuild our economy in time for the coming election. But the economy cannot be fully restored without addressing the most complicated question: what to do about China? Twenty years ago China was a developing nation, albeit one shaking a military fist externally and crushing dissent internally.

trust verify

Wednesday

Leonard Toboroff

Senators don’t make good presidents

The quadrennial Super Bowl of the race for what is always the ‘most important election ever’ is now a mere seven months away. All eyes not glued to Donald Trump turn to the presumptive Joe Biden. Presumptive in many ways and years, Joe raises the knotty issue of whether a senator can, or rather, should be elected president. Only three have gone from ‘sitting’ during a single term in the Senate to sitting in the White House: Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama. The truth is, senators don’t make good presidents. Most of them don’t even make good senators. Warren Harding was not of the modern, post-World War Two era. He did once hold an important if mostly ceremonial seat as lieutenant governor of Ohio.

senators