So Much Younger Than Today ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Help Me if You Can: It pains me to write this, but Trump had a pretty good day yesterday.  The Supreme Court heard the 14^th Amendment case and judging by the questions raised by both the conservative and liberal Justices including Clarence Thomas who given his wife’s involvement in the insurrection should have recused but didn’t, Trump won’t be kicked off the ballot in Colorado or anywhere else.  When issued, the Supremes’ opinion is likely to be based on procedural grounds as the Justices didn’t appear to question whether Trump was all in on the January 6 insurrection.  Trump also won the Nevada caucuses, garnering 99.1% of the vote to some guy named Ryan Binkley’s 0.9%.  That was hardly a surprise as the local Republican party structured the state’s caucuses to ensure a Trump rout, but his performance stands in stark contrast to Nikki Haley’s coming in second to “none of the above” in the state’s earlier pointless primary. To top off the day, the report by Robert Hur the special counsel responsible for investigating Biden’s lax handling of his trove of government papers, was released.  As expected, Hur, a Republican appointed by bend over backwards, but get no credit for doing so, Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t recommend that charges be brought against Biden.  However, taking a page from the playbook that James Comey employed to effectively destroy Hillary Clinton’s electoral prospects he included a potentially lethal zinger in his report, calling Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory and diminished faculties in advancing age.” Basically, he went after Biden for doing what his lawyers probably told him to do, say you don’t remember unless your memory about an event is sparkling clear.  Given that the period covered was years ago, and the events covered weren’t remarkable it’s not surprising that Biden’s memory was fuzzy, whose wouldn’t be?  Still with Biden, mental acuity is a bigly issue given his age and his stilted, stuttered speech pattern so naturally the story is front and center today. Last night Biden slammed back saying that he was so determined to cooperate with Hur that he sat for his five hours of interviews in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack on Israel while he was also handling an international crisis, one of unprecedented magnitude. Rightfully, Biden was further outraged by Hur’s suggestion that he was hazy about the timing of his son Beau’s death, saying that “every Memorial Day we hold a service remembering him attended by friends and family and the people who loved him. I don’t need anyone, I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”  Sadly, the age and memory thing will have legs and to be fair, who among us doesn’t enjoy pointing out the countless times that the same age cohort Trump says things totally ignorant and weird, like his confusing of Haley with Pelosi, or his thinking that he ran against Obama, or that World War II is on the horizon.  The bottom line, odds are that come election day we’ll be choosing between an anti-democracy, retribution seeking criminal who is rooting for the economy to tank, mayhem at the border to get worse and who cites Xi and Putin as his role models while counting Kim Jong un and Viktor Orban as his besties versus an experienced,  well-meaning old uncle who despite his supposed memory lapses is pro-choice, pro-democracy, cares about the environment and at the end of the day seeks compromise across the aisle. That should be an easy decision unless of course tax cuts are your only concern.

 

I’ve Changed My Mind: After the events of October 7, the focus was passing legislation to fund Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Then Speaker for the moment Mike Johnson threw a wrench into the foreign aid plan, tying aid onto what he hoped would be an unattainable “border fix.”  Well forget about the border fix which as it turns out wasn’t so unattainable, not because the migrant “hordes” and all that much feared fentanyl has gone away but because Trump doesn’t want a fix right now so we’re back to the beginning.  Yesterday by 67 to 32 the Senate passed a procedural vote intended to pave the way for $95 billion of aid to make its way to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.  The funding is not a done deal yet, the Senate still needs to pass through a few more hoops and as usual Senator Rand Paul and a few other obstructive, Trumpian types will slow things down, but this is the most progress we’ve seen on the foreign aid front in a long time and not a moment too soon given how immediate Ukraine’s needs are. For the record, the following Republican Senators voted for the aid package:  Capito, Cassidy, Collins, Cornyn, Ernst, Grassley, Kennedy, McConnell, Moran, Murkowski, Romney, Rounds, Sullivan, Thune, Tillis, Wicker and Young. Assuming the aid bill makes it out of the Senate, which in and of itself is not a given, it will next land in Speaker Johnson’s House where nothing good will happen without a considerable lift from Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. Yesterday, at his weekly news conference Jeffries said that his team has been talking with those House Republicans who still care about supporting our allies about ways to force the aid package to the floor for a vote without Johnson and his leadership team’s support. On the subject of Mike Johnson, he committed another faux pas earlier in the week when he promised Montana Congressman/Senate wannabee Matt Rosendale that he would endorse him for Senator if he’d vote for the standalone Israel aid package.  Rosendale, who like Johnson denies that the two had a backroom deal, did vote for the standalone Israel package despite earlier saying he wouldn’t. The standalone package failed to pass.  Moreover, Johnson reneged on his promised endorsement, not because he doesn’t like the obnoxiously very right-wing Rosendale but because several Republican Senators screamed at Johnson, pointing out that backing Rosendale over the relatively popular, well as popular as a Democrat can be in Montana, Senator Jon Tester was a losing proposition. Johnson’s credibility has taken another hit, one that could prove fatal in the days ahead. Also, Republican Steve Scalise is expected back next week from his bone marrow transplant which means the Secretary Mayorkas impeachment will be back as well because that’s time so well spent?     

 

Vanish in the Haze:  Still no Israel Hamas ceasefire/hostage release deal because at least for now, Israel thinks that the price is still too high.  Netanyahu is another one whose days may be or at the very least should be numbered not because Hamas isn’t asking for too much but for lots of other reasons. Biden and just about everyone else is losing patience with him, questioning whether he’s pulling a Trump, doing what’s best for himself rather than what’s best for Israel. In other internationally depressing news, former Foxy Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin and about all you need to know about it is that Putin showed up several hours late as one does when one’s a former KGB guy making it clear who is in control.  He then treated the sniveling Carlson with disdain, even bringing up what everyone knows, that Carlson was turned down when he applied for a job at the CIA after college. Naturally, Carlson let Putin wax on and on about how he had every right to invade “his” Ukraine.  Carlson did bring up WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich’s illegal incarceration so let’s given him a half a point for that but nothing more.

#BringThemAllHomeNow