The Not My Type Defense

Potato, Potahtoh:  Yesterday Trump signed an executive order imposing “hard hitting” sanctions on Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying that he was responsible for Iran’s “hostile conduct.”  Well at least he intended to target Kahmenei but in classic Trump form he bungled the Iranian leader’s name and instead announced sanctions on the long dead Ayatollah  Khomeini who was Iran's Supreme Leader from 1979 to 1989.  Khomeini was succeeded by the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei and easy mistake for the rest of us to make but then again we’re not president and don’t get to read from cue cards.  While the new sanctions aim to deny top Iranian officials access to important financial resources, the Ayatollah and most of the people closest to him don’t really have bank accounts in their names in Europe or outside of Iran that would be hit by the sanctions. Iran responded by saying that any efforts at a diplomatic solution to hostilities between the two countries are now permanently dead, not that they’ve been all that alive since Trump moved into  the White House, but Trump has been saying that he’d like to have Khamenei join his BFF squad alongside North Korea’s Kim Jong un, who he sent another love note to last week, so being so publicly rebuffed can’t be making him happy. Additionally Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani mocked Trump saying the White House is “afflicted by mental retardation.” Apparently Rouhani doesn’t know that the more politically acceptable term now is intellectually and developmentally disabled but we get his point.  In any case Trump isn’t one for political correctness.  During an interview with The Hill TV, he “vehemently” denied raping his most recent accuser journalist/columnist E. Jean Carroll stating “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?“ So if only she had been his type,  attacking her would have been justifiable?  For it’s part the NY Times admitted that the paper had dropped the ball on the coverage of Carroll’s accusation by downplaying the story and keeping it off of page one.  The  Times editors now acknowledge that the Carroll news should have been presented more prominently with a headline on The Times’s home page.  That’s from the paper who went almost apoplectic over Joe Biden’s excessive “hugging” not to mention Al Franken’s inappropriate touching.    

2020:  The press, liberal pundits and a number of his Democratic rivals continue to dwell on Joe Biden’s verbal flubs but apparently voters who like him still like him, and his appeal to African American voters, most notably the large number in early primary state South Carolina, remains high.  In preparation of the debates that are scheduled for later this week, a number of the Democratic candidates are following Senator Elizabeth Warren’s lead by announcing that they too have a “plan.”  In Bernie Sanders case, that plan includes forgiving $1.6 trillion in student debt, Sanders' plan will have no eligibility criteria and will be available to the nation's approximately 45 million student loan borrowers of both federal student loans and private student loans.   Sanders would fund his forgiveness plan through, what else, a new tax on financial transactions, which he says could raise more that $2 trillion over the next 10 years.  The plan would include a 0.5% fee on all stock trades, a 0.1% fee on all bond trades and a 0.005% fee on all derivatives trades.   Not to be outdone Beto O’Rourke is calling for a “war tax” to establish a new trust fund for veterans’ health care for every war the U.S. fights. The tax would range from $25 for taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes below $30,000 to $1,000 for taxpayers making more than $200,000 a year and would be levied on households without military members or veterans.  Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been a bit too busy to get into more detail about his plans.  He’s been dealing with the aftermath of a racially charged police shooting at home in South Bend, Indiana where the population is somewhere around 35 to 40% minority but the police force remains 90% white.  He has acknowledged that his city’s “effort to recruit more minority officers to the police department and introduce body cameras have not succeeded” and has said that he accepts “responsibility for that” hardly an acknowledgement that he wanted to make this week when he was already facing criticism about his lack of appeal to African American voters.   On the Senate front, Maine’s Democratic House Speaker Sara Gideon announced plans to challenge Collins who is up for reelection in 2020.  Though a few other Democrats plan to run, Gideon is viewed as the candidate with the best chance of defeating Collins.      

The Stench:  The children, including the toddlers who had to rely on other young children for care have now been moved from the despicably filthy Border Control station in Clint, Texas that got all that unwanted press attention to another location, a tent facility near El Paso.  The administration continues to blame Congress, most notably the Democrats, for refusing to provide more money for detention centers, a criticism that isn’t totally unwarranted as Democrats remain concerned that providing additional funding to improve the condition at detention centers will just encourage the administration to detain more undocumented migrants and refugees.  In any case, though Congress will probably get its act together in order to provide more funding, it’s fair to say that an administration that has found ways to divert funds to wall building should be able to find money for soap, blankets, water, food and caregivers for kids.   In other news that stinks, after the House Oversight Committee announced plan to call Kellyanne Conway in to “discuss” her Hatch Act violations White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter to Chairman Elijah Cummings telling him  that the White House “respectfully declines the invitation to make Ms. Conway available for testimony before” because who cares about ethical violations anyway.  As to ethical violations, somehow or other Axios managed to get hold of copies of a large number of the amateurish vetting reports that were completed on Trump team members before they were hired. Not surprisingly, Trump’s “vetters” were far more concerned about nasty comments made about Trump than any obvious conflicts or ethical lapses, which goes a long way to explaining why so many Trump team members have fallen by the wayside.  As one vetter put it,  "To be honest, the process was such a disaster and such a sh-t-show and there were so many unqualified people coming through that the issues with [future HUD Secretary Ben] Carson don't really stick out to me, you know, I'm like, 'Oh gentle Ben is unqualified and thinks that pyramids store grain or whatever. Great. At least he's not beating his wife and his wife's not appearing on Oprah.'" That last comment related to Trump’s first nominee for  Labor Secretary, Andrew Puzder whose nomination was pulled after it was discovered that his wife really did accuse him of abuse on an episode of Oprah.