Shooting While Vaping

911:  Giving a presidential speech on 9.11 should be a no brainer: show up, be solemn, cite a few heroes, bless America, lay a wreath or two and leave.  Unfortunately, although Trump appeared to stick to his teleprompter script, his speech veered into Trumpistan land by straying to a few of his usual themes.  Although he had the good sense not to cite those nonexistent thousands of Muslims he likes to insist were seen “cheering” from New Jersey on that terrible Tuesday, he again talked about how he went down to the 9.11 site to help out; of course there’s no evidence that he helped out, unless you count sharing in some of the post 9.11 aid money as helping. He also took credit for the passage of the extension of the Zadroga Act, the legislation that extended aid to those still falling ill from the long term effects of the 9.11 pit even though the Republican led Senate had to be  dragged kicking and kvetching into signing on to the legislation.  Finally, he couldn’t stop from bragging about raising the military budget to historical levels, forgetting to mention that he was diverting some of that “desperately needed” military money to the building of his vanity wall.  Bottom line, not surprising, just sad.  Also, though it wasn’t surprising, later in the day Trump continued to criticize his now former national security advisor John Bolton. He did that by reminding everyone that Bolton, who he had hired in the first place, had questionable judgement because he had advocated for the invasion of Iraq, something Trump had to know when he hired him. Trump then went on to say that Bolton had inappropriately insulted his bestie, that honorable guy Kim Jong un by calling for the denuclearization of North Korea via the Libya model, the one that resulted in the demise of that country’s leader, Moammar Gaddafi.  That suggestion probably did insult Kim, but really, doesn’t that missile launching, nuclear arsenal building thug deserve some insulting?  Anyway, Trump may be poking the wrong bear.  Bolton, who like him or not, is a man of principle with little to lose.  So far all he’s said is that he’ll have his say in “due course.”  A book and/or a series of long interviews are likely on the horizon.  Expectations are that Bolton is unlikely to hold back his true feelings or observations about the state of play in the Trump White House.  As to that state of play, Trump got something to celebrate last night after the Supreme Court ruled that pending final court review, his administration can continue to block asylum seekers transiting through Mexico from other countries from entering the US, forcing them to apply for refugee status elsewhere, a policy that pretty much bars refugees from all Latin American countries other than Mexico. Separately the administration said that though Bahamians were “welcome” to come stay in the US for a while, they will not be granted Temporary Protected Status which means that they won’t be allowed to work.  Also they will need to have all their papers in order to be allowed in, ordinarily that would be a reasonable request except that people fleeing floods and home destruction are lucky to have grabbed spare underwear on their way out the door, under the circumstances the requirement that they have their papers in order is a bigly impediment.  

               

Guns, Guns, Vaping: Influenced by First Lady Melania and her concern for children like “her” adolescent son Barron, not his son, “her” son, Trump spoke out against vaping yesterday saying that his administration plans to ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes in response to the hundreds of people who have become seriously ill from “mysterious” vaping related lung diseases.  Giving the growth in vaping, particularly among minors, this is a good thing. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an anti-smoking activist has already committed $160 million to an anti-vaping campaign.  Unfortunately, unlike Bloomberg, who has also put millions of his funds behind gun control, Trump’s outrage only goes so far, he continues to dither on the whole gun thing.  He’s met with Republican Senator Toomey and Democratic Senators Manchin,  and Murphy, the persistent Senate trio, who continue to press him to support expanded background check legislation but they report that though they haven’t given up hope, Trump has made no commitment to support any piece of legislation. Hoping to advance progress on the gun front, this morning, a group consisting of 145 of the chief executives of some of the nation’s leading companies sent a letter to the Senate pushing for an expansion of background checks to all firearms sales and stronger “red flag” laws saying that “Doing nothing about America’s gun violence crisis is simply unacceptable and it is time to stand with the American public on gun safety.”  The list of companies co-signing the letter includes Levi Strauss, Uber, Lyft, the Brookfield Property Group, Royal Caribbean, Jared Kushner’s brother Joshua’s Thrive Capital and the Mitt Romney co-founded private equity group Bain Capital.  That list is impressive but depressingly a number of companies including Facebook, Google, Apple and leading banks Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo did not sign on because of concerns that doing so would subject their businesses to more regulatory pressure from the conservative side of the aisle and Republican dominated regulatory agencies, a not unrealistic fear given that Citibank did actually face some regulatory pushback after committing to some other gun restrictive policies.    

And….:  The Daily Beast reports that Trump is considering participating in a French plan to provide Iran with a  $15 billion line of credit to get them to continue to comply with the Obama era JCPOA nuclear deal that he hates because paying up to get Iran back into the deal that he is trying to destroy makes for consistent policy, right? North Carolina Republican legislators, many of whom only hold their seats because of extreme gerrymandering promised their Democratic colleagues as well as the press that no legislation would be brought up on the floor yesterday, tricking the Democratic governor as well as a large number of the Democratic contingent into believing it was safe for them to attend 9.11 commemoration services.  With few Democrats present they then voted to override the Governor’s veto of their budget, a budget that sends money to corporations but refuses to adequately fund education or authorize the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Lastly, on the legal front a jury in Palm Beach found that odd Chinese woman/spy who tried to bring electrical equipment into Mar a Lago guilty of  trespassing and former Trump fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen has been spending some of his jail time cooperating with New York prosecutors looking into some of those alleged Trump organization criminal activities.  

Tune in tonight for another Democratic debate, this one pitting Senators Sanders, Warren and former VP Biden against each other and seven of the other presidential wannabees.