Birds of a Feather

My Guy:  Nothing he could say or do would tear Trump away from his guy, senatorial wannabee Roy Moore.  After days of dithering and after sending his surrogates out to pave the way,  Trump finally revealed what he’d been thinking all along.  He is on team Moore and he wants all Alabama’s Trump loving voters, and there are a lot of them, to know it.  Yesterday, he said that since Moore “totally denies” the allegations that he sought out and molested young women and because the events, to the extent they happened, took place forty years ago, “you have to listen to him.”   On a personal level he relates to Moore, he knows what Moore is going through because he too was “falsely” accused of harassment or so he’d like everyone to believe.  On a strategic level he desperately wants another Republican vote for his corporate tax cut plan.  He hammered that point home by attacking Moore’s Democratic opponent, moderate Doug Jones by saying "We don't need a liberal person in there, a Democrat, "I've looked at his record. It's terrible on crime. It's terrible on the border. It's terrible on the military ... we do not need somebody that's going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad with the military, bad for the Second Amendment." Unlike Moore, who dates young girls, Jones, the man that Trump described as soft on crime, is responsible for the conviction of two of the KKK members responsible for the murder of four little girls killed in the notorious bombing of a Birmingham Baptist church. Jones is a supporter of a woman’s right to choose but the rest of his positions are fairly centrist and he is a supporter of the second amendment.  Though he doesn’t believe Moore’s accusers, Trump wants us all to know that “women are special” and that he thinks “it’s a very special time because a lot of things are coming out and I think that’s good for our society and I think it’s very, very good for women, and I’m very happy a lot of these things are coming out, and I’m very happy it’s being exposed.” Yesterday, Jones released an ad quoting one of Trump’s special women, his favorite daughter Ivanka Trump, who earlier commented on Moore’s acts by saying “There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children and I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.” The ad also quotes Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who formerly occupied the seat Moore and Jones are vying for, and Republican Alabama senator Richard Shelby, who said that he will “absolutely not vote for Roy Moore.”

Other Birds of a Feather:  Charlie Rose responded to accusations that he had sexually harassed a series of women by saying that he didn’t mean to be offensive he just thought he “was pursuing shared feelings.”  CBS, who had been alerted that the Washington Post article about Rose was about to drop before it was released, officially dropped Rose yesterday, as did PBS and Bloomberg.  Representative John Conyers, admitted  to making a payment to a staffer who had alleged that she was fired for refusing his advances but disputed the facts of her accusation and said that the $28,000 payment he gave her was more of a severance payment that anything else. Because the payment came from his office’s discretionary funds, it sidestepped the official Congressional system for dealing with harassment accusations, a system that has come under attack for its treatment of victims, and raises concerns that the amount of payments made to accusers far exceeds the previous $15 million estimate. In any case, Conyers will now be subjected to a  House ethics committee review.  The information about Conyers, while accurate, was provided to Buzzfeed under questionable circumstances by Mike Cernovich, the far right conspiracy promoter who was also responsible for the blatantly phony “Pizzagate” accusations against Hilary Clinton. Cernovich obtained his evidence, an unsigned draft of a confidentiality agreement between Conyers and his accuser, by tweeting out an offer of $10,000 for anyone who could provide proof of Congressional harassment. Shedding a light on bad behavior by members of Congress is a good thing, shedding light to justify the election and seating of serial dater and molester Roy Moore, not so much.

Net Neutrality out, Transgender In:  Net neutrality is one of those confusing topics that doesn’t mean much until your Netflix transmissions start slowing down and/or your cable provider starts sending you really big bills for faster service, the service you were getting before for a lower price.  During the waning days of the Obama administration rules were adopted that treated internet service providers as if they were utilities, prohibiting them from favoring their content or the content of some of their best clients over the content of their competitors.   Yesterday Trump’s FCC Chairman Ajit Pal announced that he is  “proposing to repeal the heavy-handed Internet regulations imposed by the Obama Administration and to return to the light-touch framework under which the Internet developed and thrived before 2015.”  In other words, regulations are bad, Obama’s regulations are really bad, and neutrality is on its way out.  In any case, like many other Trump rollbacks, you won’t notice the impact of this change on day one, but you are likely to notice it eventually. Some of Trump’s other plans have encountered a few bumps in the road.  Yesterday a Republican appointed federal judge in Maryland blocked Trump’s transgender military ban saying there was no justification for the policy change.  He went on to slam Trump saying that “a capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified tweet of new policy does not trump the methodical and systematic review by military stakeholders qualified to understand the ramifications of policy changes.”  He’s the second judge to halt the ban, but he went one step further, also lifting the ban on sex reassignment surgery for military members. The courts are also giving Trump a hard time about his sanctuary cities policy. Earlier in the week a San Francisco federal judge issued an injunction blocking Trump’s executive order that tried to deny funding to cities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration officials, after finding the order unconstitutional.  Needless to say Trump isn’t all that happy with the courts or the judges which is why he’s been pushing to get more and more new judges confirmed, qualified or not.  You do have to wonder how his newest judge, Brett Talley, the guy with no experience but who is an expert in the supernatural, would have ruled in these cases.    

The World Turned Upside Down:  Trump had a great one hour phone call with his BFF Putin yesterday.  According to Trump they discussed North Korea, Syria and Iran, it was a “great call” because Putin talked "very strongly about bringing peace to Syria" and "very strongly about North Korea."  Heather Nauert, the State Department spokesperson, pointed out that Putin has a really good relationship with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad as evidenced by the picture of the two of them walking arm and arm in Moscow earlier this week and that we should be very relieved that Putin is taking control of the situation over there.  Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman has officially stepped down after four decades of rule, a good thing except that his likely replacement is his former deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, nicknamed the crocodile, another guy with a reputation for brutality.  Hopefully, Zimbabweans relief at getting rid of Mugabe is not short lived.  Moving further north, things aren’t going well for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the collective sigh of relief breathed out when she won her election was premature. She’s been unable to form a government and may have to call a new election, which would provide another opportunity for German’s far right party to solidify their standing. At least the Turkeys are okay.  Trump pardoned Wishbone and Drumstick, the winners of this year’s pardon lottery but not before cracking a joke at Obama’s expense.  He said that he had looked into revoking the pardons for last year’s lucky turkeys, Tater and Tot, but had been advised by White House counsel that their pardons are irrevocable.  Perhaps he was delivering a message to Mike Flynn, the man in trouble for his Turkey crimes?

Happy Thanksgiving!