Transwhat?

Keyser Soze on Steroids:  Sixteen guys walked into the Saudi Embassy, the one seeking divorce papers got angry, threw a few punches and then was subdued and accidentally murdered by the others, one of whom just happened to have a bone saw.  And to be clear, none of this was authorized by the King, Crown Prince or anyone from the higher echelons of the Saudi government.  After days of denying that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was even dead, the Saudis now admit that he is dead and that some Saudis were involved in his murder but the rogue fist fight story is the best excuse they’ve managed to come up with.  Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS), the guy who probably authorized Khashoggi’s killing is now in charge of getting to the bottom of the sordid affair.  To that end he’s rounding up all of the usual suspects, one of whom has already been killed in a Riyadh car “accident.”  One or more of the others will either end up dead, be imprisoned or will be banished until forgiven as part of some future Ramadan act of royal kindness.  Trump, who first said that it was rash to assume that the Saudis had any involvement in that “foreign” US resident journalist’s disappearance has gone from denying Khashoggi’s death to accepting he’s dead to believing the Saudi’s story to acknowledging that maybe it’s a bit hinky.  Under pressure from a bipartisan group of senators, he’ll probably come up with some mild punishment that he will then label as harsh, but he continues to make it clear that he doesn’t want that punishment to impact any of the Saudi’s purchase of US arms.  As to those arm sales, Trump continues to insist that they total $110 billion though to date the number of executed letters of acceptance is only $14.5 billion.  He’s also said that cancelling the sales would result in the loss of many US manufacturing jobs, a loss he first put at 40,000 but has now inflated to 1,000,000.  Though privately Trump has grown concerned about son in law Kushner’s relationship with the Crown Prince, particularly that it may have led MBS, who had already gotten away with a number of egregious actions like imprisoning and extorting his opponents, a horrendously bloody war in Yemen and the temporary “kidnapping” of the Lebanese Prime Minister, to become overly confident that no one would notice or care if he “disappeared” a journalist,  publicly Trump has also tried to diminish the “boys” relationship by saying that they are just two young men who like to shoot the breeze.  To help, some of Trump’s supporters have been doing their best to throw shade at Khashoggi’s reputation in an attempt to justify his murder, pointing out that he had a relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, an association that might have been a good reason to have excluded Khashoggi from your next Passover Seder but wasn’t out of the norm for the region and in any case wouldn’t justify slicing and dicing him into little pieces.  Khashoggi was targeted because he was both a member of a prominent and respected Saudi family and an outspoken critic of the Crown Prince’s actions and policies, a lethal combination of characteristics that the thin skinned MBS decided he could no longer tolerate.  US relations with Saudi Arabia will survive this mess, after all they survived the Saudi involvement in 9-11, but Trump who has pinned much of his Mideast policy on Saudi Arabia, particularly his efforts to isolate Iran and achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, is kind of caught in a pickle right now, no matter what he does, MBS’s reputation has taken a big hit, one that makes him a less useful tool for Trump’s policy objectives.

Politics Unusual:  The Saudi mess is just a distraction right now, the real story is about the midterms.  In the immediate aftermath of the Kavanaugh affair, the polls indicated a voter shift towards Republican candidates, particularly in the Senate.  The Kavanaugh effect seems to be waning which is probably why Republicans have shifted their strategy and are now addressing health care.  As crazy as it sounds, Republicans, most of whom voted consistently to repeal Obamacare, have adopted the protection of pre-existing condition insurance mandates as part of their party line.  Of course the devil is in the details, the Republican position isn’t that such coverage has to be affordable or comprehensive they just want to be able to say that they advocated for its availability.  Not a problem if the annual cost of an individual policy reaches six figures or if that policy excludes coverage of the specific pre-existing condition, the Republican position is just that insurance should be available.  Trump is bolstering this position by saying that any Republican candidate who doesn’t support pre-existing condition coverage will have to answer to him and we know how consistent he’s been on the subject of health care.  Ironically, one Republican has been speaking some truth lately.  Majority Leader McConnell has been remarkably forthcoming, saying that if the Republicans maintain control over Congress and strengthen their position in the Senate he will revisit and pass Obamacare repeal legislation before moving on to cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits.  On the Senate front, though he leads in the polls, Senator Ted Cruz is probably not all that happy that the Houston Chronicle is endorsing his populist opponent Congressman Beto O’Rourke.  The Chronicle, who endorsed Cruz the last time he ran, says that though they still think that he’s smart, whatever that means, they believe that he puts his own personal interests ahead of those of the state.  They believe that Beto, even if he is more progressive than the type of candidate they usually support, will be a better advocate for the interests of the residents of Texas.  In a move that can’t be making Republican candidate Martha McSally very happy, The Arizona Republic, Arizona’s largest paper endorsed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema for Senator. The paper called Sinema a good natured centrist, rejecting McSally’s assertion that she is a “tutu wearing leftist.”  At the same time, the paper called out McSally for spewing vitriol.  McSally and Sinema are currently locked in a statistical tie making the paper’s endorsement that much more critical.  In other election news, Trump is doing his best to invigorate immigration politics.  He’s blamed Democrats for the growing migrant caravan currently passing through Mexico, even going so far as to suggest that they organized the caravan in the first place. He’s also promising to pass middle class tax cuts before the election, even though Congress is not in session, and in what can only be seen as another nod to his religious right base, his administration is ramping up its war against transgender individuals by seeking to impose regulations that would result in the recognition of only the sexual identity that can be determined by genetic testing, essentially erasing transgender people out of existence, basically taking a sledge hammer to a whole class of people to solve the “bathroom problem.”

Mueller Time:  Special Counsel Mueller has been quietly working away.  Reports are that he’s been keeping a grand jury very busy while the rest of us have been focused on Saudi Arabia and the midterms.  Specifically, reports are that he’s subpoenaed virtually everyone and anyone who knows anything about Trump’s longtime associate Roger Stone, Stone’s relationship with WikiLeaks and involvement in the release of the DNC emails.  Given the very reasonable expectation that Trump will act to rid himself of his annoyingly recused Attorney General Sessions and the meddlesome twosome of Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and Mueller as soon after the midterms as he can, it’s fair to assume that indictments will drop shortly after the polls close on November 6. The Russians have been busy too.  On Friday, the Justice Department announced a criminal complaint against a Russia woman for conspiring to interfere in the 2018 midterms by pushing out more of those nefarious internet stories that exploit social wedge issues.  She worked for the same Russian media troll company that Mueller previously indicted.