Matza and Bunnies

A short blog for a holiday shortened week:  The Russians have retaliated for our retaliation for their ex-spy poisoning by kicking out a bunch of Americans and closing our St Petersburg consulate.  Trump has started talking tough to Putin and actually told him that if he ups his nuclear arsenal, we will up ours more, promising that we will beat him at his game.  Trump’s also called upon French, German and British leaders to stand together in response to Putin’s nuclear threats, as if they needed to be convinced.  Still, for some reason Trump doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s talking tough to Putin because he still wants to be his bestie so he’s advised his aides to keep quiet about his otherwise rational response.  Stormy Daniels’ lawyer’s bid to get Trump to testify about their tete-a-tete has been derailed for now by a judge who said that the request is premature.  However, Michael Cohen, Trump’s pitbull/lawyer’s lawyer pretty much threw the validity of the “hush” agreement away by saying that Trump had nothing to do with it, didn’t authorize it in the first place and never made the $130,000 payment.  Cohen may be in bigly trouble now for his unethical behavior and funding of the Stormy payoff, particularly since the payoff is looking more and more like an illegal campaign contribution, but he probably doesn’t care because he “loves” Trump and would do anything for him, something the two of them probably discussed over their surprise candle lit Mar a Lago dinner last Friday.  Trump went on a trip to Ohio, paid for by Federal moneys because it was supposed to be another one of his infrastructure pushes.  However, instead of talking infrastructure he mostly engaged in electioneering and Democrat bashing, once again forgetting to focus on infrastructure, except of course for his discussion of his wall which he claims is under construction and being paid for by the Mexicans even though it’s not and he’s trying to pay for it with money set aside for military expenditures. After Parkland student David Hogg, overshared by tweet sighing that he, like many other high school seniors, had not gotten into a number of his preferred college choices, the despicable Fox host Laura Ingraham dissed him over twitter, mocking him for his college rejections.  The media savvy Hogg, who has been admitted to a few fine colleges, hit back, calling for  corporate sponsors to boycott Ingraham’s show.  A number of companies, including Rachael Ray’s Nutrish dog food company, Trip Advisor, Wayfair, Expedia and Hulu, responded by pulling their ads.  Ingraham’s feeling the pain and has kind of apologized, in the “spirit of Holy Week.” At least for now it appears that her attempt at saying she’s sorry is falling on deaf ears.  Makes you wonder why all those companies were advertising on her show in the first place.  As to corporate America, the stock markets mostly finished the quarter down, a shock to Trump who has tied himself to a raging bull and still hasn’t realized that tweeting tariffs and attacking major companies like Amazon contributes to market volatility bigly.  Regarding Amazon, Trump may be attacking the company because of his genuine concern that it’s achieving monopoly-like status, or he may be attacking in solidarity with his real estate cronies who are despairing over their vacant malls, or he may be attacking because Amazon’s Jeff Bezos also owns his media nemesis, the Washington Post.  My money is on the latter.  Rumors abound that House Speaker Paul Ryan has decided not to run for reelection in November.  To the extent that Ryan opts out, expectations are that he will be replaced by Representative Steve Scalise, who though he’s had a hard time recovering from the gunshot wounds that he received last year during the shoot out on the Washington baseball field, is still an ardent supporter of gun rights. Ryan says that rumors about him leaving Congress are false, but confirms that he hasn’t made a final decision about seeking reelection because that’s a decision that he says he never makes until Spring break, only after consultation with his wife and family and, anyway, everyone in Washington denies rumors until they’re ready to come clean.   

Happy Passover!  Happy Easter!

Matza and chocolate eggs for all.

Good Luck finding the Afikoman!