BunkerBaby 

Chaos Week:  Well, last week was certainly one for the ages, or at the very least one that was both aging and mostly, though not always inspiring.  Trump spent the weekend hiding in his White House bunker, the one that Biden says neither he nor Obama every checked out, but that Trump says he “toured” last Monday as part of his “regular” duties.  Trump stayed in Washington instead of heading out to his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club because his aides told him that spending the weekend on the links with the country in an uproar would be optically awful. To make that bunker extra safe, he had a bigly wall built around the White House, do you think that qualifies as infrastructure week?  By the end of the weekend, his “wall” was covered with Black Lives Matter signs and other colorful and relevant messages, not the look that he was going for but one that fit in nicely with the  huge yellow Black Lives Matter paint job provided by Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser along the road leading up to the new White House fence.  You have to hand it to Bowser, she doesn’t have the power of a Governor but boy did she show Trump up.  She also sent letters to the governors of those states who had provided Trump with National Guard troops, telling them to call them back pronto.  Bowser’s decision to change the section of 16^th street outside the White House to Black Lives Matter Plaza was a stroke of genius, the kind of thing that had to have the #BunkerBaby foaming at the mouth, not that we would know for sure since he, unlike a number of mostly Democratic politicians stayed cooped up twittering hate and Law & Order all weekend.  In contrast Speaker Pelosi visited the demonstrators at the end of the week, Oregon’s Senator Wyden handed out water to marchers and yesterday a masked Mitt Romney, who given his wife’s impaired health has been extra careful about keeping away from the virus, became the first Republican Senator to participate, joining a group of evangelical Christians marching  with the demonstrators. He wasn’t the first Republican, Texas’ outgoing Congressman Will Hurd participated in a march in his and George Floyd’s home state.  As to Republicans, though most of them continued with their Ostrich routines, the NY Times reports that a few, including former President Bush and his brother Jeb will “probably” not be supporting Trump’s reelection though it’s not clear that they will actually vote for Joe Biden. To that end former Chief of Staff/General Kelly said that we should better check out the character of our candidates going forward.  You think?   Romney, who voted for his wife Ann during the last election made it clear that he’s not voting for Trump.  That said, Cindy McCain, wife of former Senator/war hero John McCain and former Secretary of State/General Colin Powell will be voting for Biden, that’s not surprising, Powell voted for Clinton last time out but his formal announcement of his plans as well as his criticism that Trump “has strayed from the Constitution,” led Trump to call him out as a weakling this weekend.  There’s something very special about the draft dodging BunkerBaby calling a former General a weakling.

Pepper Balls: Trump, who came close to calling up 10,000 active duty troops, more than the total number of US troops in Afghanistan, to bolster his White House defense contingent but didn’t only because his Defense Secretary, Joint Chief of Staff, and Attorney General pushed back, or leaked that they did, has claimed victory, saying that it was his actions that prevented the “very few” as in huge number of demonstrators who showed up this weekend to behave.  He’s now sending the National Guard troops home as well, but warns that he will call them back if needed.  As to Attorney General Barr, he’s far from innocent in any of this though he’d like us all to believe that he’s a voice of reason.  Yesterday  while saying that Trump has the right to call up active duty troops if he wants, he claimed that the rubber bullets and pepper balls shot at the protesters last week, the ones that his own Justice Department categorizes as chemical irritants and that for all practical purposes have the same effect as tear gas, are nothing to sneeze about.  Suffice it to say they are. Barr, a master at twisting words, disputes claims that he’s the one responsible for the attack on those largely peaceful demonstrators, the crowd that was pushed aside so that Trump could have his St Johns Church photo op.  He says that he didn’t directly tell anyone to shoot things at the demonstrators, he just told them to “get it done.”  With his aides growing increasingly concerned about the certainty of another Trump victory, he’s now going to try to shift gear.  Axios reports that he’s going to make a racially soothing speech this week, something that Housing and Urban Department Secretary Ben Carson teased out this weekend, at the same time that he said that if only Colin Kaepernick and those other kneeling football players had better explained the rationale behind their “take a knee” thing, it would have been okay.  On the knee front, New Orleans Saints Quarterback Drew Brees has apologized for his remark that kneeling disrespects the flag, saying that he now supports his team mates protests, and of course Trump that great soother, is criticizing Brees, but not too harshly, cause Brees is probably the more popular of the two and anyway he’s white.   No critical words from Trump about communications aide Mercedes Schlapp retweeting a message from an N word spouting, chain saw wielding racist, possibly because Trump is just jealous that he didn’t beat her to the punch. Daughter Ivanka also had a rough weekend, she was disinvited from making a virtual commencement speech to Wichita State grads after authorities there decided that having a Trump speak to their grads this week was probably not such a good idea.  She released her speech on twitter anyway, calling out the cancel culture.  Suffice to say that speech and her frozen faced delivery were truly peculiar especially the part about all the challenges she’s faced in life as are the facts behind the resignation of the NY Times Opinions editor, James Bennet.  He’s taking the fall for the publication of the Senator Tom Cotton op-ed, the one that called for military troops to restore order in the country.  Bennet says that though he authorized and actually sought Cotton out to write that piece, he didn’t read it before okaying its publication.  One more thing, on Friday while no one was looking Trump announced that he’s withdrawing 9500 US troops from our ally Germany, a gift to Putin maybe?   

Democrats: With final votes tallied from recent by mail primaries, Joe Biden, who is off to Texas today to meet with George Floyd’s family, has formally clinched the Democratic nomination. He is leading in the polls, doing remarkably well in key states like Michigan and even appears to be tied with Trump in Texas.  That’s nice, but it’s early and we’ve been down this road before.  It’s fair to assume that the now twitter trending #DefundThePolice hashtag being pushed out by a number of people and politicians on the left may cut into that lead just a bit.  Trump, the law and order candidate, already has his campaign forces using fears of mayhem and unchecked criminality to scare the crap out of his unlikely to totally crumble voter base. As to that call to cut police funding, the reality is that cash strapped states and municipalities are going to be cutting everything: education, health care services and police forces.  Though police forces will probably see some of their funding reallocated elsewhere, and maybe as in the case of Minneapolis a few may actually be dismantled, they aren’t going away, they’ll be renamed, reassembled with slightly different priorities, maybe, and, if we’re really lucky, choke holds, tear gas and union protection for evil doers will go away or at least fade into obscurity. Well maybe.   

The virus is still here, we're at 110,000 and counting but Phase One is happening in New York City. Fingers and toes crossed but let's not get ahead of ourselves, no manis and pedis here yet.  Stay safe wherever you are.