Radioactivity

No Apology Tour:  No one really expected Trump to show any remorse, the word probably isn’t in his limited vocabulary, nevertheless yesterday’s two public performances were remarkable even for him.  His day started with the National Prayer Breakfast where, with Speaker Pelosi sitting nearby, he  harshly criticized the "dishonest and corrupt people" who "badly hurt our nation" by pursuing his impeachment while at the same time thanking the "courageous Republican politicians and leaders who had the wisdom, fortitude and strength to do what everyone knows was right.“ Then he not so subtly referenced Pelosi and his newest enemy for life Mitt Romney by adding “I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong nor do I like people who say, 'I pray for you,' when they know that's not so….We have allies, we have enemies, sometimes the allies are enemies but we just don't know it. But we're changing all that."  That last part, his way of saying that  the war against his “enemies,” has just begun and it won’t be pretty. Why do we even have a national prayer breakfast?  Anyway, Trump continued on that theme later in the day during an hour long rambling speech that CBS called a “grievance filled victory lap,” the centerpiece of a his White House acquittal celebration.  It’s impossible to adequately reflect how crazy and mean spirited it was, or to repeat the names of all the people he attacked but suffice it to say his speech was a 100 on a scale of 10.  He slammed the FBI as chock full of scum and dirty cops, again attacking former FBI Director Comey, even though he was long gone before the Ukraine investigation started.  He went after the “corrupt leakers and liars,” conflated his Ukraine fiasco with his Russian one, once again calling it bullsh-t, his expletive not mine.  And of course he attacked all his critics for making his and his family’s life miserable because the idea that Ivanka, his designated candidate for 2024 and beyond, might shed a tear is horrifying beyond belief? As to that family, he actually said that none of them would ever take advantage of their name to make the kind of money that Hunter Biden made off of his.   The audience, a mix of the usual crowd of kowtowing Republican legislators, cabinet members, and an extra contingent of Fox and Fox like press lapped it all up.  

Vengeance:  And the retribution has already begun.  Various news outlets report that Lt. Col. Vindman, whose testimony so outraged Trump and his fans that they questioned his loyalty, is now being “reassigned” off of the NSC back to the Defense Department.  The Whistleblower’s name is all over the Twitterverse, helped along by Trump ally Senator Rand Paul’s Senate floor disclosure.  Attorney General Barr issued new restrictions on investigations into presidential candidates, essential saying that there will be none without his approval.  On its face that sounds reasonable except that we all know that he wouldn’t permit an investigation into a murder on Fifth Avenue if Trump was the shooter but might find one into Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg or whomever else the Democrats ultimately end up with totally justifiable.  And that whole Hunter Biden/Burisma thing, Joe Biden may be struggling, but the scrutiny into his son is not going away. In response to a request made back in November by Senate Finance Chair Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson, the US Treasury has started delivering  confidential banking records related to Hunter Biden to their committees.  All that was justified yesterday by Louisiana’s Senator Kennedy who said that the Senate has a moral obligation to investigate Hunter Biden; that’s the same Senate that refused to call any witnesses during the impeachment trial and the same Treasury Department that refuses to comply with any of the requests for Trump’s financial information.  And of course, just to be “fair” the press continues to harp on the fact that Speaker Pelosi tore up Trump’s State of the Union Speech, because that’s the real problem.  As to that speech, yesterday during her regular Thursday press conference while saying that she tore up the speech because it was chock full of lies, she also suggested that Trump appeared to be sedated during its delivery, an allusion to all those Adderall rumors perhaps?  Or maybe she knows more than we do? Pelosi also had to have been really, really disturbed by Trump’s decision to award that Medal of Honor to Rush Limbaugh who has spent a considerable amount of time over the years savagely attacking her especially since Democrats had instead expected him to honor John Lewis, the Congressman and Civil Rights icon fighting pancreatic cancer..

The Iowa Mess: Someday soon the 2020 Iowa Caucus disaster will be just another Harvard Business School bad practices case study but right now it’s still front and center, a scary omen of just how bad things could turn out for Democrats during this election cycle if they don’t get their act together ASAP.  One hundred percent of the results are in and, though his lead has shrunk, it appears that Pete Buttigieg won by a teeny, tiny amount.  Nevertheless, yesterday Bernie Sanders declared victory and why not, the results are so muddled that we’ll probably never know who really won.  As to the disaster, it turns out that the problems were magnified after the phone number intended for use by precinct captains who couldn’t get their results loaded on to the not ready for prime time APP, was shared on Reddit’s 4Chan site, a favorite of alt right trollers, along with a message encouraging site users to do their best to clog the phonelines, which a large number of them did, further delaying and disrupting the reporting of results.  Yesterday DNC Chair Tom Perez called for the Iowa Democratic party to recanvass the caucus vote, though no one really knows what that would entail and they don’t appear all that interested in doing so.  The AP kind of summed it up for everyone when they announced that even though 100% of the vote is in, they can’t declare a winner.

Next Up New Hampshire: Let’s hope that the New Hampshire primary goes off without a hitch.  It should because it’s a plain one person, one vote event but who knows, the Democrats appear to be proving Murphy’s Law every day now. New Hampshire could be another nail biter, last night’s poll by Suffolk University showed Bernie Sanders’ lead shrinking mostly due to Buttigieg’s rise.  Sanders is now at 24%, Buttigieg at 23%, Warren at 13% and Biden at 11%.  Buttigieg is clearly benefitting from the afterglow of his Iowa performance while Warren and Biden appear to be suffering from Iowa’s  radioactivity. In other Democratic news, Mike Bloomberg who did not compete in Iowa, won’t be competing in New Hampshire and won’t be on the stage for tonight’s Democratic debate but he does  appear to be gaining some traction.  He just received another endorsement, this one from the former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer who was ousted for publicly disagreeing with Trump’s decision to intervene in the Navy SEALS war crime case.  That endorsement follows one by Mikie Sherrill, the freshman NJ Congresswoman who won over a Republican district in 2018. It’s also reported that Chicago Mayor Lightfoot is also considering endorsing Bloomberg. It’s way to early to tell, but Bloomberg’s strategy of waiting until some of that radioactive dust settles might not be all that crazy after all.