Holiday Travel

Cadet Bone Spurs:  Trump couldn’t have been all that pleased that on the same day that he finally visited troops in a war zone, the NY Times printed a story about how he got his bone spurs, the ones that kept him out of being sent to fight in Viet Nam.  It turns out that one Queens, New York podiatrists wrote him an excuse letter, one where the bone spurs were fabricated in exchange for some favorable treatment by his landlord, Fred Trump, and that another podiatrist who frequently worked with the local draft board corroborated the diagnosis as a favor to his fellow foot buddy.  The letter and back up support were enough to convince the draft board that Trump wasn’t fit to serve. That a rich kid used connections to avoid going to Viet Nam isn’t all that shocking, he wasn’t alone in that respect, but it certainly explains why Trump can’t remember which of his feet had those “debilitating” spurs and more significantly confirms another one of the things that he was lying about during the 2016 campaign while saying that the late Senator McCain’s wasn’t a hero because he’d been captured by the Viet Cong.  That said, it’s nice that, with a perfectly coifed Melania in tow, Trump finally went to visit the troops.  Sadly, because just smiling for the cameras and interacting with soldiers wasn’t enough for him, Trump also delivered an inappropriate political speech, one where he attacked Democrats for failing to provide him with the funding for his wall and defended his decision to abruptly pull troops from Syria by saying that “we are no longer suckers, folks.”  He did affirm a commitment to staying in Iraq, noting that if he had to fix any messes resulting from his rash Syria decision, Iraq could be used as a launching pad.  To that end, Trump and his remaining advisors should probably have been just a wee bit more gracious to Iraqi officials.  For some inexplicable reason, contrary to usual practice, they made no arrangements for Trump to meet with Iraq’s president or anyone else of note during his brief stopover, a faux pas that left the Iraqis condemning him for violating their sovereignty.   Anyway, after saying that he was in no rush to replace Defense Secretary Mattis, the former general who is way more popular with the troops than he is, falsely claiming that he’d awarded the soldiers the first pay raise they’d received in ten years, and then signing a few MAGA hats, the admittedly skittish about being in a war zone Trump skadoodled out of harm’s way, heading to Germany and then back to Washington DC.  On the flight back, Trump posted a video that had been taken of him and Melania in Iraq, a video that included members of Seal Team 5, revealing their location and their identities to all, something that is classified but then again he gets to do things like that without punishment because he’s Trump and we’re not.     

Death Count: While Trump was traveling we learned about the death of another migrant child who died while in US custody over the Christmas holiday.  The child, a young Guatemalan boy, had spent the last six days of his life being moved to at least four immigration facilities.  Though it’s not clear what caused the tragic death, it is clear that neither the border patrol, the INS or the Department of Health and Human services are equipped to handle the mess that changes in US policy have caused at the border.  Current INS facilities are at capacity, not because of increases in migrants crossing the border but because more migrants are being detained.  Additionally, to the extent that spaces are available they are usually in facilities that don’t have the ability or expertise to take care of children.  As usual Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen, who still has a job mostly because no one else is available to replace her, blamed that child’s death on his father’s decision to flea violence in his homeland because that’s her answer to everything. That said, even she knows a public relations nightmare when she sees one, so she announced plans to transfer in some medical personnel from the Coast Guard so that children can be “assessed” as soon as they enter the US.  Nielsen isn’t the only seriously underqualified Trump official who is lucky to be gainfully employed.  Yesterday the Wall Street Journal filled us in on another one of Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker’s disqualifications.  It turns out that Whitaker has long been claiming that he had been awarded  Academic All American status for his combined University of Iowa football playing and academic prowess.  Unfortunately for him, a spokesperson for CoSIDA,  the awarding organization confirms that he never achieved that status.  While his claim might not seem like a big deal, the Department of Justice is a stickler about truth telling on application forms.  Applicants making similar false claims are typically disqualified before they get in the door.  However, it’s unlikely that Whitaker’s boss, Cadet Bone Spurs, is all that concerned about those fabrications, after all Whitaker’s promotion to Mueller supervisor was based on more pressing things like his willingness to provide Trump’s lawyers with inside information about the status of the Russian investigation and maybe, just maybe, a promise to squash inconvenient indictments and other such things.

Beading:  The government funding stalemate lives on with no end in sight. Trump continues to insist that he won’t sign any spending bill that doesn’t provide him with all the funding he wants for a wall that has morphed from a cement structure paid for by Mexico to a slatted fence funded by the new NAFTA but first paid for by US taxpayers.   Christmas Eve, home alone in the White House, Trump tweeted “I am in the Oval Office & just gave out a 115 mile long contract for another large section of the Wall in Texas,” adding that he had plans to visit the construction site in January.  The only problem with that is that though repairs on a much smaller stretch of existing structures are ongoing, no one knows what he is talking about, moreover he doesn’t even have the authority to sign “wall contracts,” that’s something done by Border Patrol and the US Army Corp of Engineers upon the authorization of Congress.  Throwing shade at all things “wall,” soon to be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noted that even if the wall is now a “beaded curtain” she’s not passing any legislation to fund it.