Entomology

Wasps: Yesterday as politicians from both sides of the aisle commemorated the life of George H W Bush, remembering or maybe just deluding themselves about that “wonderful” time when WASPs ran the country and civility was valued, Republican led legislatures in Wisconsin and Michigan, dominated by some by some very white guys were doing their best to ignore the political preferences of their states’ voters by pushing forward legislation that would substantially diminish the power of newly elected Democratic Governors and Attorneys Generals. The legislation passed early yesterday morning in Wisconsin and is now awaiting the signature of the state’s outgoing Republican Governor Scott Walker; Michigan isn’t far behind.  The Wisconsin/Michigan strategy isn’t new, North Carolina did the same thing a few years ago in order  to diminish the power of a newly elected Democratic governor.  The North Carolina legislation has been litigated ever since, with state courts chipping away at its effectiveness; it’s likely that the Wisconsin and Michigan laws will follow a similar path, though the outcome of any litigation will depend on each state’s constitution.  Around the same time that North Carolina passed their legislation, the state also fought back against non-existent voter fraud, the kind that Trump likes to talk about where people, primarily minorities and illegal aliens, change their hats and don Groucho Marx moustaches and other disguises to vote early and often.  To beat back against that “fraud” the state passed strict voter ID requirements, more an effort to suppress legitimate Democrat leaning minority voters than anything else.  At the same time the state made it easier for residents to obtain absentee ballots primarily because absentee ballots are more frequently used by Republican voters.  The state is now facing the consequences of that action. It’s looking more and more likely that the outcome of the North Carolina 9^th District congressional where Republican Mark Harris a local pastor, defeated Democrat Dan McCready, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, by 905 votes, is tainted, the result of election fraud perpetrated by Harris’ consultant, Leslie McCrae Dowless, who manipulated the state’s liberal absentee ballots regulations to the advantage of his Republican candidate. The Editorial Board of the state’s largest paper, the Charlotte Observer is calling for a new election and at this point a new election is one of the possible outcomes as is just going ahead and confirming Harris’s victory because what’s a little fraud as long as the Republican candidate is the beneficiary.  Not surprisingly, national Republicans have had little to say about the situation primarily because it doesn’t fit their whole voter fraud narrative and because there is a chance that a new election would result in the party losing another House seat.  Democrats haven’t been so silent, they have legal eagles on the ground in North Carolina and Congressman Steny Hoyer who will be in charge of such things in January says that he might decide to refuse to seat Harris absent a new election.    

Creepy Crawlers:  Paul Erikson, a long term Republican operative who is also the boyfriend of Maria Butina, the NRA loving Russian who is currently sitting in a Federal jail facing charges that she acted as a covert foreign agent, has received a “target letter” from federal investigators who are considering bringing charges against him under the same law, Section 951 of the US code, the law that bars people from secretly acting as agents of foreign governments.  It’s not clear that Erikson, who frequently visits Butina at her current place of residence where the two sing Broadway songs together, really they do, will be charged, the Feds may just be using the threat to get him to talk more about Butina and the NRA’s close ties to questionable Russians like Alexander Torshin, the Putin associate and former Russian Central Bank officer who met with Don Jr during the 2016 NRA convention.

Bed Bugs:  David Farenthold, the Washington Post reporter who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigating Trump’s virtually non-existent charitable contributions remains laser focused on all things related to the Trump business empire.  Yesterday, he reported that despite Trump’s assertion that he has no business ties with any Saudi Arabians, his hotels have benefitted bigly from Saudi largesse. Within months of Trump’s 2016 election victory, travel consultants representing the Saudi’s booked 500 nights at Trump’s Washington DC hotel.  A significant number of these rooms were for veterans flown in to Washington to lobby against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a law, which opened the door to litigation alleging that the Saudi government bore some blame for the 9.11 attacks because 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the attacks were Saudi citizens. The travel consultants disingenuously claim that they moved the bookings to the Trump hotel because the hotel offered them discounts they couldn’t resist.  The veterans reported that they were treated very well, were provided with lots of good meals and access to open bars where the alcohol flowed freely, different from prior trips where they stayed at Holiday Inns and were served Ritz crackers.  Farenthold reports that since February 2017, Saudi customers have booked large numbers of rooms at Trump hotels in Chicago and New York and that the related income significantly boosted the bottom line of both hotels, helping the New York hotel turn a profit one quarter during what would have been a money losing period. Despite the evidence Trump continues to assert that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had little if anything to do with the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it looks like the Saudis are getting what they paid for.  

Cockroaches:  Cockroaches like debt and deficits never go away for long.  Thus it isn’t all that surprising that Trump isn’t all that concerned that his policies, most specifically his tax cuts, are resulting in large growth in the federal debt.  His response when senior officials showed him “charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a “hockey stick” spike in the national debt in the future” was that the since the “critical mass” would occur only after his second term (yikes, second term) was up was “Yeah but I won’t be here.” That not so surprising attitude probably also explains Trump’s views on climate change. He may not be around when the current shoreline disappears, but the Norfolk Naval Shipyard would like to be, they are now in the process of building protective sea walls in an effort to protect their nuclear submarine service facility.