Uniquely Dangerous

#SharpieGate:  While hurricane Dorian continues to rage through the Carolinas spinning tornadoes in its wake and the death count in the storm ravaged Bahamas continues to climb, Trump, who once commissioned a special Sharpie from the marker’s manufacturer, is still obsessing over sunny Alabama.  Yesterday he tweeted at least five times about the storm’s path, insisting that his warning to Alabama residents to hunker down in preparation for Dorian had been spot on, and then, because tweeting wasn’t enough, he “enlisted” his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, Rear Admiral Peter Brown, to release a statement saying he’d briefed Trump "multiple times concerning the position, forecast, risks, and federal government preparations for and response to Hurricane Dorian" and that in one of those very early briefings he shared a map showing a teeny, tiny sliver of Alabama possibly, maybe being exposed to some strong puffs of air.  Trump even summoned Fox News’ White House Correspondent John Roberts to the White House to try to harangue him into defending the accuracy of the Alabama warning. Those efforts didn’t work, both Roberts and his colleague Shep Smith continued to stick with the facts with Smith torching Trump on air by calling his Alabama assertion “fake news defined.”  Separately, the Washington Post reported that one of their confidential White House sources confirmed that Trump was most definitely the one responsible for the Sharpie mark-up of the map used to try to “prove” his Alabama mistake.  Let’s hope that Trump never needs us to take his word about a real emergency because his credibility, to the extent he had any left before this Alabama nonsense, is shredded in pieces, spun away in one of those Dorian tornado columns alongside Jared Kushner’s long awaited Middle East peace plan, the plan that has been due for imminent release for what seems like forever.  Yesterday, Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization’s one time in-house real estate lawyer who had been serving as Middle East Special Envoy alongside son-in-law Jared Kushner on the forging of the “ultimate deal” for Middle East peace announced that he is moving on.  Nothing to worry about though, Greenblatt is being replaced by Avi Berkowitz, a 29 year old lawyer who is described as Jared’s protégé.  In other diplomatic news, while asserting that an Afghanistan peace deal is close at hand, despite all those recent and very lethal Taliban attacks, Secretary of State Pompeo, who is also considering leaving the administration to run for Senator in Kansas, refused to sign on to the “agreement in principle” that US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad “hammered out” after nine rounds of talks with the Taliban possibly because the agreement “does not guarantee the continued presence of US counterterrorism forces to battle al Qaeda, the survival of the pro-US government in Kabul, or even an end to the fighting in Afghanistan.”  That said, the agreement will probably get signed at some point since Trump really wants one because announcing the end of the Afghan war and the withdrawal of US troops before the 2020 elections, like building the Mexico wall, is a promise that he wants to deliver regardless of the consequences and, with regard to Afghanistan, who doesn’t want out?

Gun Wars:  Walgreens, CVS and Wegmans have announced that they, like Walmart and Kroger, will start asking customers not to openly carry guns into their stores in states where open carry is legal. Although that hardly seems like a big thing, especially to those of us who live in states where open carry is prohibited altogether, with 45 states allowing open carry it is significant. All this attention on guns, especially presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s call for mandating the buyback of all AK 47 and AR 15 assault weapons, has a lot of people freaking out including John McCain’s daughter Meghan. The View co-host, who “earned” her job by being born a McCain, told her program’s audience that an attempt by the government to compel AR-15 owners to sell back their weapons would prompt “a lot of violence,” because that’s a really popular gun and she likes shooting hers.  Suffice it to say, O’Rourke was less than pleased with McCain’s response, noting that it sounded like a call for violence to happen.  Unfortunately others with on air pulpits share McCain “view,” Fox’s Tucker Carlson says that a gun buyback would “lead to civil war,” not that he is actually calling for such a thing.  Right?  At least those guys are only pundits looking to boost their own ratings and popularity, unlike Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who owes some of his fame to Pete Davidson’s eye patch wearing SNL impersonation.  Crenshaw is against closing background check loopholes because then he wouldn’t be able to “let my friends borrow my handgun.”  Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had a tweet for that, she responded “Why are you 'lending' guns to people unsupervised who can't pass a basic background check? The people you're giving a gun to have likely abused their spouse or have a violent criminal record, & you may not know it." While the “likely” part may be a stretch, her point is very valid.  Though it’s not clear that anything will come of it, yesterday Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat who together with Pennsylvania‘s Republican Senator Pat Toomey has been trying to get their jointly sponsored expanded background check legislation passed for years met yesterday to discuss “gun policy issues.”  A White House spokesperson said that Trump “expressed interest in getting a result, so conversations will continue to see if there’s a way to create a reasonable background check proposal, along with other ideas,” but the Wall Street Journal reports that “another person familiar with the meeting” said that Trump “didn’t give Senator Manchin a clear signal, illustrating the widespread uncertainty on Capitol Hill about what Mr. Trump might support.” Want to bet that the NRA followed up with calls to Trump and all the other politicians in their pockets.

2020 Footnote:  Starbucks’ Howard Schultz who kind of disappeared from public view this summer released a statement confirming what many suspected and the rest hoped, he is ending his “exploration” into making an independent run for the presidency in part because "not enough people today are willing to consider backing an independent candidate because they fear doing so might lead to re-electing a uniquely dangerous incumbent president."