Blame it on the Bulbs

Locked and Loaded:  On Saturday drones and possibly missiles were launched at two major oil installations in Saudi Arabia taking out 5.7 million gallons or 50% of the country’s daily production capability, an amount equal to +/- 6% of global oil output.  Although the Saudis expect to get 2 million gallons of their production capability back on line quickly and Trump has already said that he is prepared to tap US reserves to help fill the gap, this morning oil futures are up around 9% reflecting concerns over supply and regional stability.  The big question now is determining who was responsible for the attack and how, if at all, Trump and/or Saudi Arabia should retaliate.  Although Saudi Arabia’s foes, the Yemeni Houthi rebels, took responsibility for the attack, Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo were quick to point the finger at Iran, a supporter of the Houthi’s and frequently their partner in crime.  The Saudis, with the help of US arms and air support, and the Houthi’s, with the aid of the Iranians, have been fighting a particularly lethal war proxy war, one that has involved the deaths of many Houthi civilians, so it’s quite possible, that Iran helped with the attacks and at the very least they probably provided the firepower.  Additionally despite the Houthi’s assertion that it was their drones that took out the Saudi oil fields, questions have been raised about their ability to have launched such an effective attack without the aid of the Iranians.  For their part the Iranians have denied any involvement which means little because they always deny involvement.  The timing of this assault is awkward at best for Trump, he fired national security advisor John Bolton in part because the two disagreed on Iran strategy.  Bolton wanted to continue with the maximum sanction policy that Trump had put into place following his decision to pull the US from the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement; Trump wants, or at least until Saturday morning’s attack, wanted to meet with Iranian President Rouhani to discuss the possibility of a “new” nuclear agreement and had even expressed an interest in participating in the $15 billion line of credit that French President Macron had offered up as an incentive to get Iran back to the negotiating table. In fact, last week before the attacks, both Secretary of State Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin represented that Trump was interested in meeting with Rouhani, with no preconditions, during the upcoming New York UN meetings, something that Trump had also said and tweeted.  Now Trump says that assertions he was interested in meeting with Rouhani are “incorrect statements” put out by the “fake news.” Further he’s now beating war drums, tweeting that “there is reason to believe that we know the culprit,” his way of saying that he is sure that it is Iran; that we are “locked and loaded depending on verification,” verification from the Saudis not US intelligence experts; and that he will then determine “under what terms we would proceed!” as in he may be on the verge of moving forward with a retaliatory attack, without the support of Congress.  We’ve been lied into war by other presidents but never by someone this obviously deceptive and irrational.  It’s fair to believe that if Trump acts on his impulses, this won’t end well.  The Iran/Saudi Arabia/Houthi mess isn’t the only Middle East situation raising eyebrows right now.  Israel’s redo election is scheduled to take place tomorrow.  In an effort to solidify the ultra-right flank of his already very rightwing coalition, Prime Minister Netanyahu now says that he plans to annex the Jordan Valley and all of the West Bank Settlements.  He’s made similar assertions in the run up to previous elections so it’s not clear what he would actually do but this time he has a US president on his side so this could be more than just an empty campaign pledge.  For his part Trump is publicly teasing entering into a mutual defense treaty with Israel, an obvious ploy to help his good friend Bibi win the election because interfering in other countries elections is kosher. Right? Oy.

Beer, Beer, Beer: Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh is back in the headlines and not in a good way.  The New York Times reports something that we all kind of suspected, that the investigation into his beer “induced” sexual predatory behavior was just a smoke and mirrors charade.  Two New York Times reporters who have spent the past year writing a book about the whole Kavanaugh affair assert that the FBI follow-up investigation into Kavanaugh’s misdeeds was superficial at best and that no one from the FBI actually contacted or interviewed any of the at least seven people who could have corroborated the accusations of his second accuser, fellow Yale student Deborah Ramirez.  Ramirez is the accuser who claimed that Kavanaugh pushed his private parts onto her during one of those beer infused Yale parties.  The Times reporters provide additional information about still another party where Kavanaugh engaged in another similar display of his manhood with still another Yale student; that incident was recounted by Max Stier, also a Yale grad, who is now the respected  head of a Washington DC based non-profit.  At the time of the hearings, Stier reported what he witnessed to several Senators and the FBI but no one seemed all that interested in pursuing the matter because, why would they?  Responses to the article have been as expected. Moscow/Mitch McConnell tweeted that these are just more “uncorroborated and unsubstantiated“ accusations from those crazy frustrated liberal Democrats looking to revisit a “dark and embarrassing” time for the Senate.  Trump tweeted that “Brett Kavanaugh should start suing people for liable, or the Justice Department should come to his rescue.” He later changed that to “libel” but whatever, we all get the point.  A few Democratic presidential candidates including Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg are calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment and a few others including Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden are calling for further investigation.  No comments from Senator Susan Collins but somewhere she could be or should be clutching her pearls and wringing her hands.  No comment also from Kavanaugh.  As to Beto O’Rourke, comments on his call for the mandatory buyback of AR 15s and AK 47s have been all over the place too.  One Texas legislator told him to try to “come get my AR 15,” prompting Beto to report the taunt as a threat and some Democrats have raised concerns that he’s just given Republicans a good “Democrats are coming for your guns” talking point for the 2020 election but Beto has doubled down saying the time has come to act, something Trump is still asserting he will do at some point this week, or not.   On the election front, Joe Biden’s gaffes and his jumbled response to a question about racial inequality, particularly his suggestion that parents play record players to their kids have also generated criticism both because of claims that he was being patronizing and because of his old school choice of a record player.  Apparently his critics don’t know that turntables, like older politicians are very in these days, maybe. Biden’s gaffes aside, Julian Castro has learned the hard way that going after the former VP comes with costs, he lost an endorsement from one Texas Democrat, Congressman Vincente Gonzalez, who switched over to Biden’s team.

Footnotes: House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff is raising alarms over a whistleblower report that may implicate someone in the White House, perhaps Trump, in some kind of questionable activity.  Apparently credible whistleblower reports are supposed to be shared with the relevant committee but the Justice Department is sitting on this one even though the Intelligence Community Inspector General says that it is credible, claiming some kind of executive privilege, an implication that it does involve either Trump, his office or both. Expect to learn more about this soon especially if the whistleblower decides to go public.  In other news, Ivanka Trump told a group of Republican donors that she inherited her moral compass from her father and at a different event her “moral compass” told donors that  energy saving light bulbs are the reason that he always looks orange, not that fake tan stuff, the light bulbs, the ones that he wants replaced with the older, less efficient ones. So the leader who may be about to launch an attack against Iran based on information provided by Saudi Arabia, the country where journalists get tortured and chopped into very little pieces for speaking truth believes that light bulbs are his enemy.