Election Year Blues

Welcome to 2020:  There’s an impeachment trial on the horizon, we’re in the midst of a very messy and consequential election cycle, hate is on the upswing and that’s just the domestic news.  On the international front, things have grown increasingly testy in the Middle East, North Korea’s Kim Jong un is ramping up his nuclear threats and Vladimir Putin claims to have deployed a hypersonic nuclear missile that he insists is in a class of its own. As a result of drought and extreme temperatures fires are raging in Australia while here at home California utilities continue to implement power outages in their fight against conflagrations.  As to the environment, even member of the EPA’s Science Board, a group selected by the Trump administration, are raising concerns noting that several of the administration's environmental priorities, including liberalizing rules concerning auto emissions and clean water are not, to say the least, a good thing. Not to worry though, because despite all this Trump had a great holiday at Mar a Lago, where he, his family, and his friends, including the increasingly bizarre Rudy Giuliani sported tuxedos and sparkly gowns while partying away the beginning of the new decade.

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  Speaker Pelosi still hasn’t delivered the articles of impeachment to the Senate and Senate Leader McConnell and Minority Leader Schumer still haven’t agreed to the terms of the impending impeachment trial though Rudy Giuliani says that he’ll be happy to head up Trump’s defense team, something that would be entertaining assuming that you like to watch train wrecks but something that is unlikely to happen.  Maine’s Senator Susan Collins raised a few hopes by saying that she was open to impeachment witnesses being called to testify at the impeachment trial but then went on to say that she thinks that the final determination on whether there should be any witnesses should wait until after both sides present their cases so basically she’s clutching her pearls but committing to nothing.  Chief Justice Roberts who will be presiding over the impeachment trial issued his year-end report writing that “We should reflect on our duty to judge without fear or favor, deciding each matter with humility, integrity and dispatch. As the new year begins, and we turn to the tasks before us, we should each resolve to do our best to maintain the public’s trust that we are faithfully discharging our solemn obligation to equal justice under law.”  The wishful took that as a bit of warning to Trump but the wishful also want to believe that Roberts will save Obamacare and reproductive rights.  In any case with VP Pence sidelined during the Senate trial, Roberts will be the one who breaks ties on such things as witness calling so who knows, maybe he really is trying to deliver a message.  On the witness front, the judge overseeing the case related to whether or not John Bolton’s aide Charles Kupperman could be compelled to testify before Congress mooted the case because Congress had dropped efforts to subpoena him.  The judge’s decision does not in any way suggest that Kupperman and by extension Bolton, the guy that everyone, or at least everyone on the Democratic side of the aisle, and maybe even a few of those silent Republican Senators, wants to hear from, can’t be compelled to testify.  Essentially, the Kupperman ruling leaves the ruing made by Judge, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who earlier rejected the claim of “absolute immunity” in a case involving former White House counsel Donald McGahn as the final word, for now, on current and former executive branch employees’ testimony. Many of those former federal attorneys who want to hear what John Bolton has to say, believe firmly that he can be compelled to testify but to do that he’ll have to be called which takes us back to McConnell and Schumer’s negotiations on the whether or not witnesses will be called during the upcoming Senate trial.  For his part Bolton continues to speak out, criticizing Trump’s North Korea policy and supporting taking a hard line with Iran, he just refuses to talk about Trump’s Ukraine “drug deal.”  Though Bolton is still mum on that subject, Lev Parnas, the Giuliani crony who’s in deep trouble with Federal prosecutors has asked a federal judge for permission to share his records with the House Intelligence Committee.      

Iraq, Iran and the Embassy:  Things got very messy, as in almost Benghazi level messy, in Iraq over the holiday after  protesters surrounded the US Embassy in Baghdad to express their fury about US military strikes in Iraq and Syria.  Those US strikes were a retaliation for an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia’s rocket attack that had resulted in the killing of an American contractor and the wounding of several American soldiers.  Though the US retaliatory strike killed a number of members of the Iranian backed militia, a number of unrelated Iraqis were killed as well, something that left the Iraqi government, as well as the Iraqi populace less than pleased.  Though we are now being told that all is under control, the embassy suffered damage, more US troops are being sent to the region and Secretary of State Pompeo, who made a name for himself relentlessly attacking the Obama administration and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi tragedy, has cancelled his planned trip to Ukraine where he was supposed to tell President Zelensky that despite all indications to the contrary he is really loved,  to deal with the more pressing situation in Iraq because there’s no way he nor Trump want to see the Baghdad situation get worse on their watch in the run up to the 2020 election as that’s the kind of thing that would further highlight their hypocrisy, failed diplomacy and the escalation of hostilities that has resulted from walking away from the Iranian nuclear deal without having a Plan B or even a Plan Z in place.        

Democrats:  The election year is finally here, it’s still not clear who is in the lead.  Pete Buttigieg, who still has little if any African American support, remains a money magnet, Elizabeth Warren less so than before and Bernie says that three of his doctors insist that he is fit as a fiddle.  Former VP Joe Biden is kinda sorta still in the lead in the national polls of Democratic voters which means little because what matters right now is winning primaries and he doesn’t appear to be in the lead in early states Iowa, New Hampshire or Nevada although he is still in the lead in South Carolina. Nevertheless everything Biden says gets taken a bit out of context because going after Uncle Joe is what the media likes to do so when Biden said that he would consider a Republican running mate, many in the press truncated his remark to eliminate that part where he said that right now he couldn’t think of any that would fit the bill.  It’s not just Joe, the twitterverse, dominated by extremes from both sides of the aisle, continues to attack anyone in the Democratic party who isn’t on the progressive side and many of the same Berniacs who slammed Hillary and voted for Jill Stein are out there slamming anyone who isn’t Bernie.  Trump who has his own problems has got to be enjoying all of this. #Sigh