July Fourth in North Korea

North Korean Fireworks:  Remember when Sarah Palin said that she was an expert in international relations because she sees Russia from her house.  Well, if North Korea’s Kim Jong Un keeps it up, soon she may see one of his missiles too.  While the rest of us were celebrating with fireworks, North Korea launched an advanced two stage Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, one with the potential to reach as far as Alaska.  The North Koreans aren’t there yet but, once they refine their reentry precision and figure out how to miniaturize a nuclear weapon, they will have the capability to hit Palin’s house.  Trump may have seen early intelligence revealing Kim Jong Un’s holiday plans, Monday night his staff reported that he had substantive phone calls with Japan and China. After the missile launch Trump responded by tweeting “North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Then he wistfully added “Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all.”  With that, Trump grabbed his tweeter and headed out for a round of golf at Trump National Golf Club, his Virginia course.  While he was tooling around in his cart, his national security team held an otherwise all hands crisis meeting at the White House and later in the day Secretary of State Tillerson issued a statement condemning North Korea’s missile, calling it an escalation in the threat to the US, the region and the world.  He then requested global action to further isolate North Korea and asked for an emergency session of the UN Security Council.  Together with Russia, China who has been less than helpful so far despite Trump’s fawning over President Xi, issued a somewhat pointless joint statement calling for North Korea to freeze its tests and for South Korea and the US to freeze military exercises and remove the US THAAD missile defense system recently employed in South Korea. None of that is likely to happen.  On the campaign trail, Trump promised that once he was president North Korea would behave and given his disdain for Obama, he probably tuned out the warning that North Korea would be his first major crisis.  An inevitable crisis and a president with impulse control problems, it may be time for the Palin family to move to the heartland.

Voter Suppression Commission:  The Brennan Center’s seminal report on voter fraud concluded that the incidence of voter impersonation is so small that it is more likely that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls,” and a comprehensive 2014 study published in the Washington Post found “31 credible instances of impersonation fraud from 2000 to 2014, out of more than 1 billion ballots cast.”  The lack of demonstrable fraud in study after study may explain why officials from forty-four states have announced that they will not be providing some or all of the data requested by the Pence-Kobach Commission.  Louisiana’s Republican Secretary of State joined the chorus of naysayers by saying “my response to the Commission is, you’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data, and if you are, then you can purchase the limited public information available by law, to any candidate running for office. That’s it.”  The Commission set up to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, appears to be trying to create another one, their letter directs that data be uploaded to a website with no security protections.  Trump may keep on tweet smacking the states and claiming millions of fraudulent Hillary voters, but it looks like his commission is going nowhere.

Putin Meeting is On:  Trump leaves for Europe tomorrow, stopping first in Poland where he will get a warm welcome from Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the populist leader of Poland’s ruling party who share’s Trump’s anti-elitist, anti-press views and who has been criticized by Western European leaders for human rights abuses.  In other words, Trump is stopping off in Poland to lend his support to a like-minded leader before moving on to Hamburg for meetings with the rest of the less hospitable G-20 crowd. Trump’s Thursday meeting with Putin has been upgraded from a casual meet and greet to an official state meeting but as of now Trump still doesn’t have a formal agenda.  National Security Advisor McMaster  says that Syria and Ukraine will be discussed and, given Kim Jong Un’s missile launch, North Korea is likely to be on the agenda, but there is still no indication that Trump will bring up Putin’s election meddling in the US and Europe even though Germany is expecting Russian interference in their upcoming elections. Among other things, Putin is expected to demand the return of the two compounds that Obama took over before leaving office.  If Putin says some nice things to Trump and compliments him on his spiffy hairdo, they will probably be returned.  Sad.

The Wrestlemania Meme:  The original version of the nasty video of Trump bashing the CNN logo-headed man was posted by a Reddit troll who goes by the name of HanA**HoleSolo,  a frequent poster of racist and anti-Semitic content.  The journalist who first uncovered the troll’s identity is now being bombarded with death threats.  The troll has issued a lengthy apology to CNN for the video, for his prior posts and for appearing to advocate violence against journalists.  The version of the video that was tweeted out by Trump was edited to include sound, so far no one in the White House has assumed responsiblility for creating Trump’s modified version.  And of course no one at the White House has apologized for inspiring violence. 

No Care Trumpcare:  At least two versions of the not very popular Trumpcare have been submitted to the budget office for a revised score.  Home for the July fourth holiday, Senators spent the weekend avoiding a lot of anxious constituents who fear losing insurance coverage while fielding calls from conservative lobbyists threatening to harm their political careers if they fail to vote yes when and if Trumpcare comes up for a vote on the Senate floor.  Oblivious to the irony but touched by the tragedy, Trump offered to help the parents of a severely disabled British infant with a lethal genetic disease get expensive experimental treatment even though the infant is likely to die with or without care.  He seems not to know or care that upwards of twenty-two million Americans losing access to their health care if Trumpcare passes, with even more losing insurance if Obamacare is repealed without a replacement, would be a bad thing too.