Bombing Runs

Steady Hand?  Yesterday Trump authorized the bombing of selected  military sites in Iran.  The plan called for striking specific radar and missile batteries with the hope of minimizing or all together avoiding human casualties.  US bombers were in the air on the way to their targets and US ships were in position when Trump changed his mind and ordered the cancellation of the mission, telling forces to stand down at least for now.  The NY Times reports that there is a real schism among Trump’s advisors with hawks Secretary of State Pompeo, security advisor John Bolton, and CIA Director Gina Haspel all in on what they were calling just a  “retaliatory” strike while the more pragmatic Pentagon generals were urging caution, warning that military action could lead to “spiraling escalation.”   It’s not clear if he was involved in Trump’s decision to call off the strike but earlier in the week it was reported that Fox’s Tucker Carlson has also become one of Trump’s Iran whisperers and surprising as it may sound, he too has been urging caution.  Who would have ever thought that taking advice from Carlson could be a good thing?  It’s also not clear if Trump was influenced by his idol Vladimir Putin who is also on the record saying that attacking Iran would be a very, very bad thing.  Just a reminder, Trump still doesn’t have a Secretary of Defense, just another one of those defense contractors serving in an acting position.  In summary it looks like withdrawing from the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal and applying maximum sanction pressure is working, just not in a good way.  Separately, the Senate voted to block Trump’s planned arm sales to Saudi Arabia, unfortunately that vote won’t mean much since they don’t have enough votes to override the expected Trump veto.   

Absolute Immunity?  The transcripts of Hope Hicks’s congressional testimony were released yesterday.  Guided by a team of White House lawyers who were there to make sure that she said as little as possible, Hicks declined to answer 155 times.  In addition to refusing to confirm where in the White House her office was located she also refused to confirm that there hadn’t been a war between Israel and Egypt during her tenure, a question thrown in to highlight the ridiculousness of the situation.  She was however allowed to answer one question about her White House tenure, the one that concerned the weather on her first day of work.  She did confirm that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference but defended the use of WikiLeaks’ stolen John Podesta emails as okay because they were “publicly available” information.  As frustrating as her testimony was, House Judiciary Chairman Nadler is hoping that the absurdity of her White House guided testimony or lack thereof will help bolster the Democratic case that this absolute immunity thing is mostly bunk when they go to court to try to force more cooperation from Hicks and others like Don McGahn.

2020:  The Democratic debates are scheduled to take place next week on Wednesday, June 26 and Thursday, June 27.  The nominees will be positioned so that those currently doing the best in the polls will be placed towards the center of the stage with the one percenters at the outermost corners.  Night one we will hear from Bill De Blasio, Tim Ryan, Julian Castro, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and John Delaney, positioned in that order so that Warren, the leader in this group is in the middle.  Night two the set-up will be as follows: Marianne Williamson, John Hickenlooper, Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet and Eric Swalwell.  Expectations are that Wednesday night will be Warren’s to lose while Thursday night, given it’s more interesting make-up, will be more of a toss-up.  Then again with this crowd, who knows.  Anyway, right now everyone continues to attack Biden for saying that he was civil to and when necessary worked with segregationist Senators during his Senate tenure in order to get legislation passed.  Oprah guru Williamson is trying to dig herself out of a hole that she dug for herself by making some anti-Vax comments and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is temporarily off the trail, dealing with a racial police shooting situation in his hometown.  On the Republican front, Alabama’s Judge Roy Moore is back.  Much to the chagrin of Majority Leader McConnell and Trump who’d both prefer a more mainstream, or at least mainstream by Republican standards candidate, yesterday he announced that he once again plans to run in the Republican primary for Senator because the Republicans really need another reactionary pervert in their mix.    

The Supremes:  By a vote of 7 to 2 SCOTUS ruled that a 40-foot World War I memorial cross can stay on public land at a Maryland intersection because it has become a “prominent community landmark” and removing it would be hostile to religion.  Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, who remain a little more focused on that whole separation of church and state thing dissented.  Rulings are still due out on partisan gerrymandering and the census immigration question.  As to that last issue, on Wednesday a federal district judge in Maryland ruled that the new evidence in that case merits more consideration, opening the possibility that the question could come before the Supreme Court again even after it rules.  The new information referred to by the federal district judge involves what was found on files on a thumb drive inherited by the daughter of a now deceased Republican operative.  Those files reveal that the purpose of the inclusion of a citizenship question has nothing to do with advancing minority voting rights but has a lot to do with impeding minority representation.