Whack a Mole Redux

Book Lists:  Over the weekend Barack Obama shared his favorite reads of 2019.  It’s not clear that Trump, who doesn’t even read his daily briefing, read any books this year although he did manage to make one, his son’s book Triggered, a NY Times best seller by having Republican party apparatchiks purchase tons of copies for distribution to his fawning donors.  Trump spent some of that time freed up by not reading engaged in one of his favorite activities: tweeting.  He again retweeted an article outing the anonymous Whistleblower.  He did that over the objections of his advisors who have repeatedly told him that he shouldn’t. He also continued to trash talk Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attacking her for sitting on the articles of that “faux” impeachment “witch hunt” and going after her state and district’s homeless problem.  His tweet attacks were so relentless that some concluded that Hillary Clinton must be subletting her usual corner in his head to Pelosi.  Trump also found time to attack Senate Minority Leader Schumer and all things New York State leading a few to surmise that he might know that something bad is about to drop from one of those many NY investigations. That’s a possibility but it could just be that he’s really upset about impeachment and with a series of articles that were published in the NY Times.  The NYT provided extensive details, including previously unreleased and quite horrific videos, about the war crimes committed by Edward Gallagher, the SEAL who Trump pardoned and had reinstated because who doesn’t love a war criminal.  The article appeared just after Trump had the charming fellow to Mar a Lago as a featured Christmas guest. In a weekend appearance on ABC’s This Week, Robert O’Brien, Trump’s current national security advisor, defended Trump’s treatment of Gallagher saying if ever a guy deserved clemency it was Gallagher; so now we know how O’Brien qualified for his job.  As to John Bolton, one of Trump’s many previous national security advisors, via another NYT article we learned a little more about how he together with Secretary of State Pompeo and Defense Secretary Esper tried hard to get Trump to release the Ukraine military aid that had been promised but then held up as part of the “get dirt on Biden and shift blame to Ukraine for the 2016 election interference” quid pro quo.  Published last night, the NYT article, details the timeline of events related to the Ukraine aid hold up.  It includes more information about the frustration and pushback from career staffers at OMB and the Defense Department who tried to get the Congressionally mandated aid released.  The article also throws more light on the cadre of Trump political appointees, most notably his acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, but also some people in OMB and legal who blocked the aid distribution while ginning up curiously questionable legal justifications for sitting on it. To the extent that the Senate impeachment ever gets off the ground, and it probably will sometime in January, Pelosi’s impeachment managers will find the NYT’s elegant timeline useful. As to the impeachment trial, we still don’t know what Senators Schumer and McConnell will agree to, or more accurately what McConnell will allow, but at least so far, Speaker Pelosi’s stall strategy appears to be providing the time for more relevant evidence to seep out while also impacting polling numbers.  Though the percentage of people supporting Trump’s removal remains somewhere in the low to mid 50s depending on the poll, the percentage who believe that witnesses should be called is above 65% .  Turning back to Pompeo, it’s hard to miss that though he had no problem with the character assassination of former Ambassador Yovanovitch, he clearly understood the importance of delivering the aid to Ukraine, a fact that makes his behavior that much more difficult to countenance.  In any case, though O’Neill insists that Pompeo isn’t going to leave his post to run for the open Kansas Senate seat, reports are that Pompeo’s already got a new website and that Trump is floating names of possible replacements and that one of those possibilities is O’Neill while another is current Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.  

Hate:  Sadly, hate was everywhere this weekend.  As evidenced by this weekend’s Hanukkah knife attack in Monsey New York, the scourge of anti-Semitism continues to be on the upswing.  The family of the Monsey attacker asserts that he has a history of mental illness and though that’s likely, when did mental illness become an excuse for anti-Semitism?  Another hate spewing attacker who “only” managed to hurt three Orthodox Jewish women in Brooklyn last week was released after her defense attorney cited her mental illness and promised that she would attend twice monthly counseling because as we all know twice monthly counseling is a cure all for ingrained hate. It doesn’t look like she’ll be free to show up for those sessions because she’s been arrested again for committing another assault. Fortunately, neither the Monsey nor the Brooklyn attackers had guns but the same can’t be said for the now deceased murderer who shot up and killed some parishioners at a church outside of Fort Worth, Texas. What a way to finish the year, but then again given current events, not all that surprising.  Anyway, you’ll be relieved to know that Trump and daughter Ivanka joined the long list of politicians condemning the attacks.  As to Ivanka during an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation, she mumbled something about how she’s not sure how much longer she’ll stay in Washington or whether she’ll ever run for office, that she’s got so much more to do but ultimately it will be up to her kids.  Could someone please tell me what she does and why CBS thought that interview was at all appropriate?

Etcetera:  In other news, Joe Biden first said that he wouldn’t honor a subpoena to appear before the Senate if he was “invited” to testify.  He then changed his statement to say that he shouldn’t be called because he’s not a fact witness on things related to the charges against Trump but that of course he would honor any subpoena.  He should have said that in the first place or said something along the lines of “Gee I’d be happy to testify if Trump does too.” Apparently, it’s not just Ukraine, Rudy Giuliani has also been mucking around in Venezuela, seeking to impact policy while benefiting from some business opportunities.   Several news services reported that it’s too early to count Senator Bernie Sanders out, that he is a real contender.  That may or not be true or it may just be that Bernie’s people succeeded in pushing out a good story.  Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer continue to spend millions and millions of dollars to the consternation of their competitors but to the joy of local media outlets everywhere.  There were early reports of a ceasefire deal with the Taliban but since winding down military activities like ending hate crimes is similar to playing whack a mole the possible end of war in Afghanistan has been offset by an upswing in activity in Iraq and Syria where the US attacked some Iran sponsored militias.          

I’ve said it before but will say it again we are in for a bumpy 2020.  Happy New Year!