Bombing Bloomberg

Democracy on Fire: First the good news, my jury duty is over.  Half my fellow jurors-in-waiting were called to a voir dire, the rest of us spent the day taking advantage of the city provided, probably very hackable WiFi while twiddling our thumbs in the jury on-call room before being set free.  The Harvey Weinstein jury was deliberating next door but aside from all the extra security and TV camera crews nothing happened there either.  Now the bad news, the Democrats debated last night.  I am so debated out that despite the fireworks, and there were fireworks, I fell asleep almost immediately.  My general impression is that we’re all toast, that the moderates are busy squabbling amongst themselves while the progressives, Bernie and Elizabeth won the night which means that Bernie won the night and if Bernie won than Trump won too.  As to Mike Bloomberg he took a lot of incoming and many hits.  Suffice it to say, he needs to practice, practice, practice and improve his performance for the next debate if he hopes to lead the party out of its misery.  Although Bernie’s health came up, he got off easy which wasn’t fair given that earlier in the day Briahna Joy Gray, one of his campaign spokespeople, called demands that Bernie release more health reports, the ones that he promised he would release before saying that he wouldn’t, were part of an organized smear campaign against him.  She then went on to falsely claim that Bloomberg, who has released extensive health reports in which he disclosed that he too has some stents, ones that were put in years back when he was mayor, had also had a heart attack.  That’s not true, Bloomberg has never had a heart attack.  She later claimed that she just misspoke, but she also voted for Jill Stein in 2016 so that tells you as much about her as you need to know.  At the end of the debates, all the candidates were asked what should happen if no candidate has the 1991 delegates needed to win the nomination by convention time.  All but Bernie said that they would abide by the Democrats already agreed upon procedures for a contested convention, those are the new rules that were put in place at the request of those like Bernie who felt that the so-called superdelegates unfairly tilted the nomination towards Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Bernie, who could well have more delegates going into the convention, albeit not enough to win, self-servingly said that the one with the most delegates at that point should be anointed. In other words, forget about those new rules, it’s all about me. A disaster looms?  Since I’d hate to end this paragraph on such a sour note, one piece of good news:  In Arizona, former astronaut Mark Kelly is leading Republican Senator Martha McSally in the polls by 7 points, an amount that has increased since the impeachment vote.     

Et Cetera: It looks like Trump has found himself a new acting Director of National Intelligence.  He’s tapped Richard Grenell, the current US Ambassador to Germany.  Grenell has no relevant intelligence experience but as a staunch and vocal Trump fanboy he’s offended a lot of European leaders with his Trump styled nationalist comments which makes him perfect for the new position.  Needless to say the members of the intelligence community are alarmed.  Grenell will be replacing Trump’s current acting DNI,  Joseph McGuire, who has reached the end of the time limit for serving in an acting position without  Senate confirmation.  As an ambassador Grenell has already been Senate confirmed once.  Also on the staffing front, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood, the Pentagon official who warned against withholding aid to Ukraine, has resigned at the request of Trump who continues to rid the government of anyone unwilling to heed his party line, in other words anyone with a moral center.  On the political intrigue front, yesterday during a pre-extradition hearing in London the lawyers representing WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange said that he was offered one of those Trump pardons, one that would have required that he deny that the Russians had anything to do with the DNC email hack.  Specifically they claim that former Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher offered Assange the deal in 2017 representing that he was acting on behalf of Trump.  Trump of course says he “barely knows” Rohrabacher.  For his part Rohrabacher admits to meeting with Assange as part of his own “fact-finding mission” but says that he was not directed to do so by Trump.  Assange’s lawyers say that they have some evidence to back up their claims.  It’s only a matter of time before Trump admits to being chummy with Rohrabacher and then to admitting that he did offer up a quid pro quo pardon but so what?  It’s also worth noting that back in 2016 House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.”  In other news, today is sentencing day for Roger Stone.  Tune into twitter, Trump is likely to erupt.