Vengeance

Frog Walk Friday:  While Parasite’s Oscar Best Picture victory was surprising, Trump’s vindictive firing of both of the Vindman brothers and EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland was less so.  Still, seeing both Alexander, who testified while under subpoena, and Yevgeny, who was deemed untrustworthy because he’s Alex’s twin, frog walked off the White House premises provided some more proof of Trump’s devil may care dictatorial tendencies.  As to that whole devil thing, Don Jr, proved once again that he really is as stupid and evil as everyone outside of Trump’s dedicated base thinks he is when he justified his father’s Prayer Breakfast outrage at Speaker Pelosi’s assertion that she prays for him by saying that the likelihood of that “is about the same as the likelihood of Satan running around quoting the Scriptures” because it turns out that Satan quoted the scriptures in the book of Matthew.  Orange Junior, like his dad, should stay away from religious citations, it’s not like either one of them has spent much if any time in church.   Anyway, turning back to Trump’s Friday night massacre, the NY Times wants us to believes that some Republican Senators, most notably Susan Collins, Marth McSally, Thom Tillis and Ron Johnson, cared enough to try to prevent him from firing Ambassador Sondland likely because the wealthy Sondland, who “earned” his Ambassadorship by contributing $1 million to Trump, has also contributed to their campaign war chests.  Notably none of them were at all concerned about the way the Vindman brothers were treated.  To be clear, there was nothing illegal about Trump firing any of these guys, but the malicious way he did so was clearly meant to send a message, something along the lines of “cross me and you and your family will be toast.” Sondland who will forever be known for saying that everyone knew about and was in on Trump’s quid pro quo will  hardly suffer, he’ll just return to his Real Estate empire and make scads more money to donate to Republican candidates. Secretary of Defense Esper wants us to know that we shouldn’t be concerned about the Vindman twins, that they’ll be reassigned elsewhere in the military, somewhere safe and very far away, perhaps a location awash in radioactive dust.  On another note, it’s reported that former Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch, who formally retired from the State Department last week, has hired John Bolton’s agent, could a book and/or speaking tour be in the offing?  And John Bolton, who never testified, House Intelligence/Impeachment Chair Adam Schiff reports that the House reached out to him to provide a sworn affidavit  after the Senate voted against calling additional witnesses, but he rebuffed their request.  

Other Devious Characters:  On another note, just a few days after Attorney General William Barr announced that going forward there will be no investigations into presidential candidates from either party during the run up to an election, at least none that he doesn’t sign off on first,  Lindsay Graham revealed on Face the Nation that Barr has “created a process” for that “good’ and “loyal man” Rudy Giuliani to feed him any dirt he’s dug up on former Vice President Joe Biden during his Ukrainian smear campaign.  And, Republican Representative Devin Nunes, one of Trump’s favorites, who’s been known to help him find dirt in all kinds of places, including the White House files, was seen over the weekend lurking in the South Bend, Indiana airport.  Traveling through South Bend is most definitely not the way to transit back and forth from Nunes’ home state of California to Washington DC, but it is a good place to go if you’ve been assigned the task of digging up dirt on Pete Buttigieg.   And while Trump doesn’t want us to remember that he has a habit of tearing his note up into teeny, tiny pieces, especially notes from his conversations with Putin, he and his fanboys now want us to believe that Speaker Pelosi’s public shredding of his speech was a crime.  It wasn’t, but Trump’s shredding habit is, not that anyone named Barr cares.    

Democrats:  The Democratic contingent, or at least the qualifying contingent, were on the debate stage again on Friday night.  The pundit universe reported that Minnesota moderate Amy Klobuchar won the moment, but they’ve said that before, she’s been co-endorsed by the NY Times, and still her poll and caucus performance needle remains stuck in second gear.  The New Hampshire primary takes place on Tuesday, and those polls, indicate that Sanders at 24% is leading with Buttigieg, at 22%, right on his tail.  Trailing behind them are Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, and Amy Klobuchar at 13%, 10% and 9% respectively.  Late yesterday, Iowa, remember them, awarded 14 delegates to Buttigieg, 12 to Sanders, 8 to Warren, 6 to Biden and 1 to Klobuchar. Not happy about that allocation, Sanders’ campaign says it will seek a recanvass of certain of the precinct results.   Keep an eye on campaign coffers.  In the wake of his way less than impressive performance in Iowa, Biden is having trouble raising money and Yang, who failed to gain any traction in Iowa, has started firing staff.  Mike Bloomberg, whose infinite coffers will never run dry, continues to outspend everyone.  He is now tied with Warren for third place in at least one national poll, not that national polls mean much in a system that rewards state by state performance.   It’s not clear that anyone ever knew he was running but John Delaney,  the former Congressman from Maryland, dropped out of the Democratic race last week while on the Republican front Joe Walsh, the former Republican Congressman/talk show host who probably did as much to push the Trump hate agenda as anyone else before he saw the light, dropped out too.

Et Cetera:  Trump released his budget over the weekend.  Presidential budgets are aspirational wish lists so his doesn’t mean much but is nevertheless revealing.  In it he admits that the imploding deficit, the one now closing in on $1 trillion that he was going to get rid of in eight years, will be around for far longer. While that’s not much of a surprise to anyone who understood the implications of his tax cuts, it’s still rather distressing because at some point some future administration is going to have to do something about it, but then again as Trump once said he won’t be around by then so why would he care.  As to that budget front, Trump wants to increase defense spending, fund more of his wall and spend more on his space force all while decreasing the social safety net and certain other areas like the EPA and disease control, because, really who needs money for disease control right now anyway?  You’d think that a guy running for president wouldn’t want to talk about slashing programs like Medicaid and Medicare right after he said he would never do such a thing but since nothing  Teflon Trump does seems to matter with his base it’s probably not all that surprising that his budget calls for cuts there as well.  And because he could, Trump laid into West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who is not up for reelection for another five years, for voting against him last week, for good measure he also attacked Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell again because why not, and Mitt Romney was formally disinvited from CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee Convention.  CPAC’s chairman Matt Schlapp, whose wife Mercedes works in the White House Communications department, justified that snub by saying that Romney wouldn’t be safe there because those conservatives are just so mad at him.