Unfortunate Events 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🚀🚢

Drip, Drip, Drone:  The Iran peace deal is percolating, along the lines of an erratic coffee maker with one remaining broken K-cup. In other words, having a good cup of coffee by breakfast time, like smooth transit through the Strait of Hormuz and an absence of hostilities in the region is unlikely to happen soon, if ever.  Over the weekend, Iran shot projectiles at a few of the ships bold enough to move through the Strait, something about the Mullahs and the IRGC being pissed that those ships were using a route in Oman’s territorial waters rather than one under their control.  The US responded by striking Iran and then Iran responded by shooting a few missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain.  Last night the administration said that what Trump had referred to as “unfortunate” attacks by Iran were over, since the two sides have once again agreed to “stand down,” by temporarily halting hostilities to move back to hammering out the terms of a peace deal, one based on the vague Memorandum of Understanding.  Iran responded by saying not so fast we didn’t agree to do that.  The US insisted that Iran was prepared to keep a scheduled meeting on logistics, Iran again said, not so fast, we’re not attending that meeting. The NY Times reports that officials in Tehran believe that despite their struggling economy and the damage to their infrastructure they have the upper hand for now.  Their assessment is that Trump doesn’t want to resume all out war with the midterms on the horizon, so they see no reason to make concessions or to give up control of their nukes especially since they also believe that once the midterms are in the rearview window, Trump is likely to ramp up hostilities. There will be little time to brew a strong cup of coffee on the Lebanon-Israel border either because while Israel and Lebanon have signed a US brokered framework agreement to end their hostilities, Lebanon doesn’t have much, if any, influence over Hezbollah, the source of those hostilities, who almost immediately declared the agreement “null and void.”  If only someone had told the East Wing, Arch d’ Trump, pond scum obsessed Trump just how complicated the Middle East was and will always be earlier 🤯.   As to that huge pond, the one with the blooming green algae problem, the paint manufacturer says that some peeling was always expected.  Also, it turns out that Trump’s geniuses removed the large filter boxes that were supposed to help keep the algae under control because they were ugly 🤦‍♀️and the orange guy didn’t want ugly things around during all his planned 250-year anniversary celebrations, like the one that took place this weekend that few people attended.        

Pride Celebration?  Last week while the rest of us were going about our lives, someone decided to seriously disrupt former Mayor, Transportation Secretary, and maybe future presidential contender Pete Buttigieg’s.  That disruption involved reporting to authorities that he had confessed to some random person that he had done horrible, twisted things to his now four-year-old adopted twins.  As a result of the anonymous report, Michigan State Police and Child Protective Services showed up at his home and removed his twins from his custody for 24 hours while they investigated what they quickly determined and then publicly acknowledged was most definitely a false and malicious report. It’s probably not a coincidence that the heinous accusation took place during pride month. Moreover, despite the conclusion that was reached by authorities that the accusations against Buttigieg were false and that he had been the victim of a twisted form of swatting, they hurt.  Buttigieg is an effective messenger who has been out on the campaign trail helping candidates around the country, he had to cancel a scheduled appearance in Arizona to deal with this slime. The accusations against him are an indication of how much someone, or some group of people, fear him but that doesn’t make them less damaging, a quick look at the crude, bigoted comments posted on Twitter and other social media sites shows how even false accusations can haunt.      

More 💩:  So, is anyone surprised to learn that Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr and a few, if not all, of Commerce Secretary/Peace Guru Howard Witkoff’s sons are now significantly, as in multiple millions of dollars richer as a result of their proximity to power?  Their climb up the billionaire ladder is the result of some lucrative mineral contracts that businesses they are involved with have obtained and how those businesses have received more than one billion dollars of preferential loans from the US government.  The NY Times includes details of one of those deals, with a Kazakh entity. Apparently, Hunter’s real problem wasn’t that he benefited from his father’s name while his father was out of office but that he didn’t go big enough and didn’t go all in while his dad was president.  While they’ve been getting richer, Dad Trump is doing his best to make sure that the midterm elections and any subsequent ones are called into question. His interim Director of National Intelligence Pulte, whose remit is supposed to be the temporary oversight of the intelligence integration function while Trump’s new appointee Jay Clayton goes through his confirmation process, has hired Christina Norton, the former Director of the Republican National Committee and election denier who worked on election-related issues as his chief of staff. Norton’s hire is an indication that Pulte knows that Trump has no plans to get Clayton confirmed anytime soon.  She, like Pulte knows little if anything about intelligence, but that’s the point, her role is to “find” problems with the upcoming elections in order to disrupt them while casting doubt on their integrity.  We are cruising to disaster, in five alarm territory 🔥with few, if any, hoses. Our best hope at this point may be that Trump will prove as incompetent with his election disruption as he has been with his pool.