Beer Pong

To Impeach or Not to Impeach:  Yesterday Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on record, publicly saying what she’s been telling her caucus for a while, that she doesn’t currently support impeaching Trump although she does think that he’s unfit for office “ethically, intellectually and curiosity wise.”  Her view is that “impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he's just not worth it." She didn’t totally rule out impeachment, instead her view is that absent a sure shot in the form of some really implicating hard evidence that would turn Trump’s Republican stalwarts in the Senate against him, she believes that the aggressive pursuit of impeachment would backfire, dimming the Democrats chances of a 2020 victory.  To be sure Pelosi is all in on continuing congressional investigations and hearings into Trump Inc’s bad acts and crimes because she does want incriminating mud to fly in his direction for as long as possible, but ever the pragmatist she just doesn’t want to engage in a fruitless impeachment process. Not surprisingly, a number of members of her party and a significant number of pundits are outraged by her position, their view is that the Democrats have a constitutional obligation to try to boot Trump out but despite their frustration Pelosi is likely to prevail, at least for now.  Not surprisingly the Republican reaction to Pelosi’s statement is that of course there will be no impeachment, because Trump is the best president ever and anyway he’s been ordained by a higher authority.  For his part Trump, who’s got to know that he’s not out of the woods, is probably stewing over Pelosi’s comment that he’s not worth the trouble.  As to other investigations, picking up on Michael Cohen’s testimony that the Trump organization manipulated asset values to obtain bank loans, late yesterday, New York State’s attorney general’s office sent subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank for records relating to the financing of four major Trump Organization projects and a failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League in 2014.  The request to Deutsche Bank seeks loan applications, mortgages and lines of credit in connection with the Trump International Hotel in Washington, the Trump National Doral outside Miami, and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. Investors Bank was subpoenaed for records relating to Trump Park Avenue. Activity on the Mueller front continues.  This week Judge Amy Berman Jackson is scheduled to hand down Paul Manafort’s sentence in relation to his Washington DC case and is also expected to chastise and/or incarcerate Roger Stone for violating his gag order.  Additionally status reports are due in on former security advisor Michael Flynn and Manafort associate Rick Gates, neither of whom have been sentenced yet largely because they’ve continued to cooperate with Mueller’s investigatory efforts.  As to Mueller’s report, as far as we know it hasn’t been handed over to Attorney General Barr yet but everyone continues to expect that it’s delivery is imminent.         

2020: Beto O’Rourke hasn’t announced that he’s running yet, but he keeps on sending out tease emails so it’s fair to assume that his announcement will be coming soon. In an onstage interview former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Adams said that her life timeline, yes she has one, calls for her to run no sooner than 2028 but then immediately after she said that she clarified that she was still considering running in 2020. And of course Joe Biden’s announcement will be coming soon too. NY Senator Gillibrand is batting back a #MeToo moment of her own over criticism that she didn’t adequately respond to a staff member’s assertion that she’d been harassed by a co-worker.  To be fair to Gillibrand, she did address the issue and the accused harasser was demoted and is now gone, however given that she’s been held responsible for pushing former Senator Franken out of office, Gillibrand is being called out for hypocrisy and besides she is a woman candidate and the press seems to enjoy taking down women candidates.  Facebook pulled down some of  Senator Elizabeth Warren’s ads where she talked about breaking up Facebook and the other social media companies thus proving that Warren has a point about their monopolistic power. Under pressure, Facebook is now reposting those ads.  Pete Buttigieg the impressive but little known Mayor of South Bend, Indiana had his breakout moment this weekend when he responded to a question about his fellow Indianan Mike Pence by questioning how “he allow himself to become the cheerleader for the porn star presidency? Is it that he stopped believing in scripture when he started believing Donald Trump.”  Yesterday, Buttagieg’s sharp remarks were rewarded with $600,000 of campaign contributions from 22,200 individual investors, not Bernie sized money, but still an impressive one day haul.  In an effort to make up for Hillary Clinton’s failure to visit Wisconsin during her 2016 run for the presidency, the Democrats announced yesterday that visiting the Badger state will be mandatory in 2020.  Their convention will be held in Milwaukee.  There will be lots of beer, wonder if Justice Kavanaugh will slip in for a few rounds of beer pong?     

Other News:  Remember when Trump said during the 2016 campaign that he would never cut Medicare or Medicaid?  Well that’s another one of those things that he didn’t really mean.  His budget “plan” calls for large cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP food stamps as well as medical research and education and just about everything that’s not related to building a wall or funding the military.  Remember when Trump said that he would eliminate the country’s debt in 8 years, well to no one’s surprise that’s not happening either, instead it will keep growing with the annual deficit expected to exceed $1 trillion this year and next.  It’s worth noting that the last time budget deficits were that large was during the years following the 2009 financial crisis.  So much for fiscal management.  Late Friday Judge Sabraw, the federal judge overseeing the reunification of the migrant children separated from their families expanded a class action suit filed by the ACLU by declaring that the Trump administration is legally responsible for all children who were separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border and placed with relatives or other sponsors after July 1, 2017, which could amount to “thousands” beyond the 2800 separations already acknowledged as a result of the “zero tolerance” policy of 2017 and 2018.  Of course Department of Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen still claims that there was no child separation policy.  Apparently not only is North Korea continuing to work on its nuclear program, but the country has also found numerous ways to successfully evade UN sanctions and is importing more oil, expanding coal exports, selling weapons and hacking into foreign banks all according to a report by a UN panel of experts. The report did not address any of those love letters written by Kim Jong un to Trump. Lastly, though his sponsors still don’t seem to mind very much, more old clips of Fox’s Tucker Carlson making racist and misogynistic statements keep coming to light.  He refuses to apologize for any of them, instead saying that he is the victim of a “mob” who has been trying to kill his show.  However, Jeanine Pirro, one of Fox’s other  “fine” people has been called to task by her bosses for slamming controversial Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for wearing a hijab and for claiming that Omar advocate’s sharia law.