Eighteen Years

Bolton Bolts:  On the same day that Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, appeared in court for still another rescheduling of his long awaited sentencing, John Bolton, his third one, quit or was fired depending on who you ask.  Bolton’s departure, whatever the reason, isn’t all that surprising.  It’s become increasingly clear that he and Trump weren’t on the same page with regard to national security.  Bolton, a neocon and a hawk, disagreed with Trump’s approach to North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan and has been hed responsible for Trump’s ill-fated effort to achieve regime change in Venezuela.  Notably Bolton also considers Russia a hostile player and doesn’t buy into Trump’s efforts to “woo” Putin.  Ultimately it was Bolton’s very vocal disapproval of Trump’s negotiations with the Taliban and his plans to bring them to Camp David that led to his demise.  Though it was well known within the White House that Bolton, a former and probably future, Fox News contributor, had a habit of leaking items to the press and reaching out to like minded members of Congress in an attempt to rally support for his views, part of his effort to derail Trump policies that he was opposed to, it was his leak that VP Pence also disagreed with the idea of bringing the Taliban to Washington around September 11 that doomed his tenure.  As to his departure, Bolton claims that he offered up his resignation to Trump on Monday night and that the two agreed to talk again in the morning.  Not wanting to be upstaged, Trump jumped ahead and tweeted “I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.” Though Bolton’s hawkish positions concerned many in Washington, even some of his critics are worried about his departure, because despite their concern that he could have pushed Trump into a war or two, they still viewed his presence as a needed counter balance to Trump’s frequently irrational positions and impetuous actions.  In any case unlike Trump’s other departed senior advisors and cabinet members, Bolton, who immediately called into a few networks to contradict Trump’s assertion that he’d been fired, isn’t expected to remain silent.  For now Trump, who has started calling Lt. General McMaster, his second national security advisor, the one he did fire, for behind the scenes advice has appointed John Kupperman, whose views actually align with Bolton, as his acting security advisor.  Yesterday, Secretary of State Pompeo, who had butted heads with Bolton so often that the two had stopped speaking, was seen smiling from ear to ear leading some to suggest that he is pushing to have the national security role folded into his Secretary of State portfolio and who knows, Trump, who trusts Pompeo might buy into that approach especially if it stops Pompeo from jumping ship and running for the open Kansas Senate seat.

Guns, Guns, Guns:  With both houses of Congress back in session, Senate Majority Leader Moscow/NRA/Mitch is back in Washington.  Unfortunately he continues to insist that nothing, nada, nunca will happen on gun control until he gets Trump’s unqualified assurance that he is fully on board and since pinning Trump down on gun legislation is akin to nailing down jello, moving forward with any form of gun legislation remains elusive reportedly because Trump’s polling experts have advised him that his base continues to be very opposed to any gun restrictions and keeping his base and his NRA handlers happy is all Trump cares about.  Yesterday, when a member of the press asked Speaker Pelosi if she had any regrets about not bringing the House back to Washington in August to “light a fire” on gun legislation, she stopped cold, glared at the reporter and said we did our job, we passed legislation adding “I am getting very angry about the silliness of these questions,” ask Mitch McConnell why he didn’t bring the Senate back and if “he has any regrets for all the people who have died due to his inaction.” So far all McConnell has done is blame Democrats for their “theatrics,” saying that they know that no bill will get signed unless Trump is onboard so he has no plans to move forward until he’s sure of that because what’s the benefit to him of showing initiative especially since he’s up for reelection this cycle and he too relies on the beneficence of the NRA.  New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who is fed up with Washington’s inability to act, has decided to move forward with his own plan. Under his direction, New Jersey plans to “stop doing business with gun manufacturers and retailers that fail to adopt policies that go beyond federal laws, like conducting expanded background checks, to stop guns from falling into the wrong hands.  New Jersey will also apply pressure on major financial institutions, seeking information from banks that do business with the state “about their relationships and policies involving gunmakers and sellers” with the intent of using those disclosures to decide whether to continue doing business with financial firms.  New Jersey is a big purchaser of guns for its various police forces and is also a large payer of financial fees so this could be bigly.     

Elections: Republicans are breathing a sigh of relief over their candidate, Dan Bishop’s, narrow victory over Democrat Dan McReady in yesterday’s North Carolina District 9 special election but they shouldn’t be all that relieved about the results.  Bishop’s margin of victory was only 2% in a district that Trump and Romney both won by 12% in 2016 and 2012 respectively.  Moreover, according to the Cook Political Report there are 35 other districts where the Republicans won by a much smaller margin that now appear vulnerable.  Although Trump’s North Carolina rally and his ability to drum up support in some of the redder more rural parts of the district may have tipped the election to the Republican candidate, with it looking more and more likely that Democrats will remain in control of the House after the 2020 elections, it’s highly likely that more Republican members of Congress will announce plans to retire, putting more red seats at risk, largely because being in the minority is just not as much fun as being in control.  Though I don’t share Trump’s tweet view that  “One of the greatest and most powerful weapons used by the Fake and Corrupt News Media is the phony Polling Information they put out. Many of these polls are fixed, or worked in such a way that a certain candidate will look good or bad. Internal polling looks great, the best ever!” I try not to get too excited about poll trends that show his approval ratings declining. However, it is worth noting that recent polls from Washington Post/ABC and CNN show that Trump’s approval has fallen from the low to mid 40s to 38-39%, those are the concerning polls that inspired Trump’s poll bashing tweet.  

September 11, never forgotten.

Exfiltration

Mulligan Stew:  It’s election day in North Carolina’s Ninth District for the Congressional seat that has remained open since the 2018 midterms, a result of the discovery that the Republican candidate had committed election fraud by engaging a consultant to harvest absentee ballots from local residents, throwing out the ones cast for his Democratic rival.  The Republican replacement candidate, Dan Bishop, is running against Democrat Dan McCreedy who “lost” the first go round of the election by a narrow margin possibly because of the election fraud perpetrated by the prior Republican candidate and his absentee ballot “farmers.” Although technically this is a do over of the 2018 midterm, it is being viewed as an harbinger of things to come in 2020.  That said, Trump won this North Carolina district by around 10 points in 2016 so though the race is expected to be a squeaker, McCreedy, the Democrat, is far from a shoe in.  To help Bishop, the Republican candidate, Trump held a rally in North Carolina last night; he was supposed to visit Hurricane Dorian victims too, but a local storm and a close lightning strike forced the cancellation of that part of his visit.  Trump spent most of his rally on the usual subjects: himself, draining the swamp he keeps filling, attacking the migrant hordes and the invasion at the border,  disparaging the press and claiming that a Democratic victory would end the world as we know it.  Wouldn’t that last claim be nice?  As to Hurricane Dorian, the #SharpieGate controversy isn’t going away though the focus has now shifted from Trump’s kindergarten scribble to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross who is reported to have called into officials at NOAA, which is part of the Commerce Department, threatening to have people at the National Weather Service fired for refuting Trump’s claim that Alabama was within the Dorian cone of uncertainty. It turns out that NOAA’s Friday missive, the one that disavowed the Alabama National Weather Service storm clarification, was issued in response to Ross’ threats.  The Friday memo has caused widespread anger within NOAA and the scientific community leading to accusations that NOAA had been “bent to political purposes.” The whole incident which is now being examined by the Commerce Department’s Office of the Inspector General, has being added to the growing list of things being investigated by House Democrats who pretty much initiated the first stage of impeachment proceedings yesterday.  Calling Ross’ threats “an embarrassing new low” a few Democratic House members are calling for his resignation.  Ross, the cranky old guy who frequently falls asleep during meetings, is probably safe for now, not because he should be, but because Trump would rather not have another cabinet seat to fill.  On the swamp front, though Trump insists that he knows nothing about all those US Air Force transport crews refueling at Prestwick Glasgow airport and staying at his Turnberry, Scotland resort, Scottish government documents obtained by the NY Times show the Trump Organization made an arrangement with officials at Glasgow Prestwick Airport that routinely sends flight crews to Trump's Turnberry resort and that Trump "played a direct role in setting up" the deal at the time.  The House Oversight Committee  is investigating that too. 

Spy Story:  Yesterday in a story reported by CNN and now verified by other news outlets, it was revealed that the CIA exfiltrated a highly placed Russian spy from Russia in 2017 over fears that his cover was about to be blown.  That fear was driven in part by concerns that Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and were coming close to exposing the “covert source” as a spy.  The decision to exfiltrate the Kremlin based spy was made shortly after the May 2017 Oval meeting between Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and then Russian Ambassador Kislyak, the meeting in which Trump “accidentally” shared super, duper top secret Israel intel about ISIS with the Russians.  Trump’s oversharing with the Russians, though not specifically about the Kremlin spy, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of his exposure causing then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo to conclude that it was time to get him out of Russia.  The former spy now lives, or at least until yesterday when his location and identity was uncovered by an NBC reporter, lived in the Washington, DC area.  Though the spy is now being relocated, Trump, remains in the White House, where he continues to inappropriately declassify and share highly secret information, things like super-secret satellite photos of Iran missile sites, on twitter. Remember when Republicans were so outraged about Hilary Clinton, saying that she couldn’t be trusted because of her personal email server, the one that wasn’t breached by the Russians and that held no super-secret stuff.  Those concerns are so yesterday.    

Footnote:  After a large number of Bahamians were banned from boarding a ferry to the US because they didn’t have visas, visas that typically aren’t required of Bahamians heading to the US, Acting US Customs and Border Head Mark Morgan said that was a mistake made by the ferry operator,  that they should  have been allowed on board for humanitarian purposes.  However, his statement has now been turned on his head by Trump, who, sticking to brand,  said that we “have to be very careful” when letting people from the Bahamas into the United States, saying “I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the United States — including some very bad people and very bad gang members.” Because we all know that slews of gang members headed to the Bahamas after Dorian struck so that they could then turn around and “sneak” back into the US, right?  Does make you wonder if white Bahamians are being subjected to the same reviews as all the other now homeless locals.  So much for that whole humanitarian thing.

   

Volfefe

Tea with the Taliban:  Well, a lot of weird news over the weekend about subjects as different as the Taliban, questionable Scotland overnights,  and Chrissy Teigen.  To set the mood, let’s start with Chrissy Teigen, the outspoken, funny, model wife of singer and activist John Legend.  Apparently Trump got upset that he wasn’t being given enough credit for prison reform during last night’s NBC Lester Holt special on the subject so he slammed “boring musician” Legend, who appeared on the program and then for good measure called Chrissy out as “his filthy mouthed wife” adding her to the growing list of women of color he’s publicly insulted. Legend responded by suggesting that Melania praise her husband for something, anything because he’s clearly “in need,” but Chrissy, a master of the art of tweeting, who is not one to let an insult slide responded in kind calling Trump a “pussy ass bitch,” which of course is now trending.  Now to more serious subjects, it’s not a secret that the Trump administration has been negotiating with the Taliban in an effort to extricate US forces from Afghanistan before the 2020 elections.  However, no one knew that Trump had impetuously invited them to Camp David to “finalize” a peace agreement.  We learned that on Saturday morning after he tweet revoked their invitation saying first that “unbeknownst to almost everybody” he’d invited them but because they had tried to “build false leverage” with their most recent suicide bombing that had killed an American soldier and eleven others, he was “immediately” cancelling the meeting and calling off “peace negotiations.” Like the invitation, the cancellation was suspect; the suicide bombing behavior is hardly new.  Maybe Trump has finally started listening to his sidelined national security advisor John Bolton who has been opposed for some time to the direction that the negotiations have been taking. Whatever the real reason, even those supportive of Trump’s strategy of sidelining the Afghan government to  negotiate directly with the Taliban were outraged at the thought that he would consider inviting them to Camp David or even that he would allow abettors of the 9.11 terrorists to enter the US.  That Trump would even think about having the Taliban visit on the anniversary of 9.11 further fed their disgust.  Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said “this isn’t a gameshow, these are terrorists.”  Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the daughter of former VP Dick, generally a Trump apologist, said “the Taliban should never visit Camp David” and Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran,  tweeted “Never should leaders of a terrorist organization that hasn’t renounced 9/11 and continues in evil be allowed in our great country. NEVER. Full stop.”  Senator Lindsey Graham, the toady who gets toadier every day, congratulated Trump for cancelling the meeting ignoring that Trump had invited the Taliban leaders in the first place. Last night the NY Times reported that Trump had ginned up the ill-fated Camp David invitation because “after staying out of the details of what had been a delicate effort in a complicated region, Mr. Trump wanted to be the dealmaker who would put the final parts together himself, or at least be perceived to be.”  So Trump who was so angry about not getting enough credit for prison reform that he lashed out at a singer and his model wife was so distressed about not getting enough credit for his “peace” efforts with the Taliban that he invited them to Camp David for Trump steaks, tea and ice cream?  Cancelled or not, at least the Taliban can say that they got an invitation.  Mother Jones magazine reports that in addition to holding up aid already promised to Ukraine, the embattled ally whose citizens fear every night that they will wake up to find that they have been annexed by Putin’s Russia, Trump is withholding an invitation to their new president Volodymyr Zelensky as part of an effort to get Zelensky to help his “legal advisor” Rudy Guiliani dig up or, even better, invent disparaging dirt about Joe Biden and his son.

Scottish Grifting:  Late Friday Politico reported that the House is investigating why US transport planes carrying supplies to Kuwait are now refueling at the underused Scottish Prestwick airport which is located all to conveniently close to Trump’s struggling Turnberry golf resort while the crews flying those planes are overnighting at the high priced resort.  Curiously the Pentagon has been rebuffing House investigators’ request for additional information about these flights and their “feed the Trump till” routes though last night, perhaps in response to press coverage, the US Air Force reported that it has ordered a sweeping review of the use of Trump resorts for overnight crew accommodations.  Politico reports that the frequency of the stops at the Prestwick Airport and overnight stays by the Air Force in the region has increased steadily from 95 stops and 40 overnights in 2015 to 250 stops and 220 overnights in 2019.  Details about how many of those crew overnights were at Trump’s Turnberry resort have not yet been provided by the Air Force.  Its worth noting that before Trump took office, he cut a deal with Prestwick Airport, part of his effort to keep the floundering airport open to facilitate visitation to his golf course. Coincidence that the US Air Force is now rerouting planes through Prestwick? Unlikely.  It’s also unlikely that NOAA officials in Washington came up with the idea of chastising the Alabama National Weather Service professionals who corrected Trump’s misstatement about Alabama being at risk from Hurricane Dorian without any influence from the White House.  As you can imagine, the head of the national union representing those workers says they are "shocked, stunned and irate" over NOAA siding with Trump over its professionals.  The union leader said “never ever before has their management thrown them under the bus like this…..These are the people risking their lives flying into hurricanes and putting out forecasts that save lives. Never before has their management undercut their scientifically sound reasoning and forecasts.” Bottom line, though it’s sunny in Alabama and Dorian has moved on to Canada,  #SharpieGate lives on.  As to all those battered Bahamians it’s now reported that even though Bahamian residents with clean records don’t generally need visas to enter the US many of those seeking refuge with friends and family stateside are being prohibited from boarding US bound flights.

2020:  Though the Republican National Committee is doing its best to cancel primaries wherever it can, former South Carolina Governor/Congressman Mark Sanford, the fiscal conservative who once claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail when he was actually with his Argentine girlfriend, has announced plans to primary Trump.  On the Democratic front, polls indicate that Senator Elizabeth Warren is gaining, mostly at the expense of Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris but a little bit at the expense of former VP Biden who, gaffes and all, continues to be in the lead.  The third round of Democratic debates takes place in Houston on Thursday.  Although only ten candidates will be on the stage this time around, unless someone drops out beforehand, there will be eleven on the stage in October as billionaire, Trump impeachment advocate Tom Steyer has qualified for the next round.  It’s fitting that a billionaire qualified for the October debate stage on the same weekend that JP Morgan announced the creation of the “Volfefe,” an index which will track the effects of Trump’s tweets on the financial markets.     

Uniquely Dangerous

#SharpieGate:  While hurricane Dorian continues to rage through the Carolinas spinning tornadoes in its wake and the death count in the storm ravaged Bahamas continues to climb, Trump, who once commissioned a special Sharpie from the marker’s manufacturer, is still obsessing over sunny Alabama.  Yesterday he tweeted at least five times about the storm’s path, insisting that his warning to Alabama residents to hunker down in preparation for Dorian had been spot on, and then, because tweeting wasn’t enough, he “enlisted” his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, Rear Admiral Peter Brown, to release a statement saying he’d briefed Trump "multiple times concerning the position, forecast, risks, and federal government preparations for and response to Hurricane Dorian" and that in one of those very early briefings he shared a map showing a teeny, tiny sliver of Alabama possibly, maybe being exposed to some strong puffs of air.  Trump even summoned Fox News’ White House Correspondent John Roberts to the White House to try to harangue him into defending the accuracy of the Alabama warning. Those efforts didn’t work, both Roberts and his colleague Shep Smith continued to stick with the facts with Smith torching Trump on air by calling his Alabama assertion “fake news defined.”  Separately, the Washington Post reported that one of their confidential White House sources confirmed that Trump was most definitely the one responsible for the Sharpie mark-up of the map used to try to “prove” his Alabama mistake.  Let’s hope that Trump never needs us to take his word about a real emergency because his credibility, to the extent he had any left before this Alabama nonsense, is shredded in pieces, spun away in one of those Dorian tornado columns alongside Jared Kushner’s long awaited Middle East peace plan, the plan that has been due for imminent release for what seems like forever.  Yesterday, Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization’s one time in-house real estate lawyer who had been serving as Middle East Special Envoy alongside son-in-law Jared Kushner on the forging of the “ultimate deal” for Middle East peace announced that he is moving on.  Nothing to worry about though, Greenblatt is being replaced by Avi Berkowitz, a 29 year old lawyer who is described as Jared’s protégé.  In other diplomatic news, while asserting that an Afghanistan peace deal is close at hand, despite all those recent and very lethal Taliban attacks, Secretary of State Pompeo, who is also considering leaving the administration to run for Senator in Kansas, refused to sign on to the “agreement in principle” that US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad “hammered out” after nine rounds of talks with the Taliban possibly because the agreement “does not guarantee the continued presence of US counterterrorism forces to battle al Qaeda, the survival of the pro-US government in Kabul, or even an end to the fighting in Afghanistan.”  That said, the agreement will probably get signed at some point since Trump really wants one because announcing the end of the Afghan war and the withdrawal of US troops before the 2020 elections, like building the Mexico wall, is a promise that he wants to deliver regardless of the consequences and, with regard to Afghanistan, who doesn’t want out?

Gun Wars:  Walgreens, CVS and Wegmans have announced that they, like Walmart and Kroger, will start asking customers not to openly carry guns into their stores in states where open carry is legal. Although that hardly seems like a big thing, especially to those of us who live in states where open carry is prohibited altogether, with 45 states allowing open carry it is significant. All this attention on guns, especially presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s call for mandating the buyback of all AK 47 and AR 15 assault weapons, has a lot of people freaking out including John McCain’s daughter Meghan. The View co-host, who “earned” her job by being born a McCain, told her program’s audience that an attempt by the government to compel AR-15 owners to sell back their weapons would prompt “a lot of violence,” because that’s a really popular gun and she likes shooting hers.  Suffice it to say, O’Rourke was less than pleased with McCain’s response, noting that it sounded like a call for violence to happen.  Unfortunately others with on air pulpits share McCain “view,” Fox’s Tucker Carlson says that a gun buyback would “lead to civil war,” not that he is actually calling for such a thing.  Right?  At least those guys are only pundits looking to boost their own ratings and popularity, unlike Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw, who owes some of his fame to Pete Davidson’s eye patch wearing SNL impersonation.  Crenshaw is against closing background check loopholes because then he wouldn’t be able to “let my friends borrow my handgun.”  Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had a tweet for that, she responded “Why are you 'lending' guns to people unsupervised who can't pass a basic background check? The people you're giving a gun to have likely abused their spouse or have a violent criminal record, & you may not know it." While the “likely” part may be a stretch, her point is very valid.  Though it’s not clear that anything will come of it, yesterday Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat who together with Pennsylvania‘s Republican Senator Pat Toomey has been trying to get their jointly sponsored expanded background check legislation passed for years met yesterday to discuss “gun policy issues.”  A White House spokesperson said that Trump “expressed interest in getting a result, so conversations will continue to see if there’s a way to create a reasonable background check proposal, along with other ideas,” but the Wall Street Journal reports that “another person familiar with the meeting” said that Trump “didn’t give Senator Manchin a clear signal, illustrating the widespread uncertainty on Capitol Hill about what Mr. Trump might support.” Want to bet that the NRA followed up with calls to Trump and all the other politicians in their pockets.

2020 Footnote:  Starbucks’ Howard Schultz who kind of disappeared from public view this summer released a statement confirming what many suspected and the rest hoped, he is ending his “exploration” into making an independent run for the presidency in part because "not enough people today are willing to consider backing an independent candidate because they fear doing so might lead to re-electing a uniquely dangerous incumbent president."

Chlorinated Chickens

Sharpie Gate:  This would be funny if Trump wasn’t the leader of the nation, but since he is, it isn’t; pathological maybe, but funny, not so much. Yesterday, during another one of his White House propaganda events, Trump staged a show and tell where he displayed a map of Hurricane Dorian’s cone of uncertainty. The map included a “curiously” hand drawn extra bold, black arc that extended Dorian’s reach to include Alabama.  It appears that, Trump, who had previously waxed on about how much he loved black Sharpies, had used one, or at the very least had an aide use one, to alter an official weather service map to “prove” that all that criticism he’d received for erroneously reporting that Alabama would be affected by the storm had been unwarranted.  For the record, the altering of an official national weather service map is a crime, not that anyone at Justice cares when Trump commits crimes. Trump also denied having anything to do with VP Pence’s decision to stay at the Trump Doonbeg Golf resort, the resort located 300 miles away from Dublin where all of Pence’s Ireland meetings took place, even though Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short had earlier confirmed that the “recommendation” to stay in Doonbeg came from Trump.  The ever cooperative Pence is now lying about that too, insisting that it was his decision, one he made so that he could visit the home of his ancestors and one that made his  Secret Service entourage’s job easier, something that also isn’t true.  Of course, Congressional Democrats have now added the decision process behind the Doonbeg stay to their list of emoluments violations, as if that matters. It also appears that Congress is planning to hold hearings on the porn star and playmate babe payoff campaign violation scheme, largely because the crime in question involves people who can’t be protected by Trump and Justice’s questionably but so far very effective executive privilege umbrella.  On the investigatory front, yesterday a Washington DC jury found Skadden Arps partner Greg Craig not guilty of charges that he had made false statements to the Justice Department about the nature of the work that he had done for the then Russia friendly regime running Ukraine. Craig, a former counsel for the Obama White House, was the one Democrat ensnarled in the investigation into former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s criminal activities.  The case against him had been considered a bit of a reach with some suggesting that it had been pursued in order to make the point that Mueller’s investigation wasn’t only targeting Republicans. The Craig outcome could also serve as a warning to Justice that pursuing charges against former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe won’t be a slam dunk with a skeptical  Washington, DC jury.

The Wall:  So it turns out that Trump has given up on the idea of Mexico paying for his vanity wall.  Instead he is raiding the military’s budget, redirecting $3.6 billion of funding that had been previously allocated to various military construction projects at home and overseas.  Last night the Defense Department released the list of 127 military construction projects that stand to lose funding, the list features projects in 23 states, three U.S. territories and 20 countries.  Schools for military personnel, projects in storm ravaged Puerto Rico and a $160 million project at the US military academy at West Point are on the targeted list as are projects intended to help our European allies bolster their defenses against Russian aggression.  The Defense Department claims that the moneys for all these projects will be “backfilled” in subsequent Congressional budgets, but given that Congress has already made it clear that they have no intention of funding Trump’s wall, it’s hard to believe that they, most notably Speaker Pelosi, will be all that interested in cooperating.  Litigation is of course expected, over the funding reallocation and over all of the local eminent domain suits that are likely to follow, but since Trump is doing all of this under the guise of his earlier emergency  declaration, the one intended to protect the country from the non-existent marauding gangs of drug traffickers and babies crossing through the southern border, it’s not clear that anything can be done to stop him.  Besides with the economic boom ending and recession fears growing, Trump needs to fulfil that promise to his base that he’s building them a wall to insure a  2020 victory so he’s prepared to fight this one to the end. That said, his concern seems limited to his own future, some of those cuts are in the states served by vulnerable Republican Senators including Arizona’s McSally, North Carolina’s Tillis,  and Colorado’s Gardner.  Even Moscow McConnell’s Kentucky will be impacted.  On the 2020 front, more than a dozen Republican Congressman have announced plans to retire.  All told, five of those retirees are from Texas, and though many come from “safe” Republican districts, their collective decision to jump ship is indicative of their belief that the House will remain in Democratic hands regardless of the outcome of the presidential election.  On the presidential front, the leading Democratic candidates participated in an extremely long CNN town hall on the climate crisis yesterday.  Though their approaches, the cost of their plans and their  support for things like carbon taxes differ they all agreed that we’re facing a crisis, a sign that, even though he’s no longer a candidate, Governor Jay Inslee has had a real impact on the campaign.  Trump responded with a series of tweets attacking #FakeNewsCNN.               

Across the Pond:  Things are going so badly for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that yesterday, during a heated House of Commons debate about Brexit, he called Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn a “chlorinated chicken,” a reference to claims that the UK will have to lower its food safety standards to get the trade deal with the US that they will desperately need if they make a hard exit from the European trade pact.  Johnson also called Corbyn a “great big girl’s blouse,” which must be a really big insult across the pond but seems pale in comparison to the “this is  f-cked up” comment that Beto O’Rourke used last week to describe the recent spate of Texas murderous gun rampages. Though the odd British taunts are humorous, the tone of the debate was harsh, and Johnson’s base of support, small to begin with, appears to be shrinking so much so that this morning his own brother, who opposes Brexit, resigned the government tweeting “In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest - it’s an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister.”  That said, for what it’s worth, chlorinated chickens and all, Johnson retains Trump’s full support because “Boris knows how to win. Don’t worry about him.”  But then again, Trump doesn’t like losers so even that support is likely to wane, when and if Boris loses, and at least for now, it’s looking like his days as Prime Minister might be numbered. Somewhere in Britain, former Prime Minister Teresa May, who took so much heat for her failure to implement Brexit, is smiling, or at the very least singing, “breaking up is hard to do!”        

The Tipping Point?

Chipping Away: Shortly after Senate Majority Leader McConnell told conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt that he wouldn’t do anything on gun control legislation until Trump tells him what he would be willing to support because why would he ever want to take the lead on anything not related to judges, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, stepped up by announcing that it is discontinuing all sales of handgun ammunition and sales of short-barrel rifle ammunition that can be used with military-style weapons. The company will also stop all handgun sales in Alaska, marking its complete exit from the handguns category and is asking shoppers to no longer openly carry firearms in stores, in states where “open carry” is allowed, unless they are authorized law enforcement officers.  Although Walmart had stopped selling the military-style rifles that are commonly used in mass shootings in 2015, its “gun sales had continued to represent a large slice of the ammunition market: about 20 percent overall. That share now could fall to as little as 6 percent.”  The creeps at the NRA responded as expected, saying that “It is shameful to see Walmart succumb to the pressure of the anti-gun elites,” and then probably immediately started dialing and threatening all of the politicians in its dwindling  but still ample pockets.  Later in the day, Kroger, a company that stopped selling guns after the Parkland shooting, released a statement “asking that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores, other than authorized law enforcement officers,” and said that they, like Walmart, encourage “elected leaders to pass laws that will strengthen background checks and remove weapons from those who have been found to pose a risk for violence.”  Though the pressure is building on Trump to at least support stronger background checks, expectations are that at best he’ll put his weight behind some combination of locking up “crazy” people, quicker enforcement of capital punishment sentences, and red flag laws.  As to background checks, it turns out that the Odessa Texas shooter failed one in 2014 due to “mental health” issues but managed to get an assault type weapon anyway, buying from a private individual in one of the those “loophole” sales permitted by current federal law.  Turning back to Moscow Mitch McConnell he told Hugh Hewitt that he doesn’t mind being referred to as the Grim Reaper, the nickname he’s earned for stopping all votes that do not lead to tax cuts or uber conservative judge confirmations but he thinks that the Moscow Mitch moniker is a form of “modern day McCarthyism” because he’s a “cold warrior at heart” even if he is preventing any bipartisan election protecting legislation from coming up for a vote.  Who needs fair elections anyway, especially if they even out the playing field?  As to Supreme Court justices , McConnell also told Hewitt that he would of course bring one up for confirmation if an open seat became available because his refusal to even consider Judge Merrick Garland wouldn’t be relevant now because he makes the rules.  In other Senate news, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin announced that he will not be running for governor, he plans to stay in the Senate where he is “needed,” depending upon the outcome of the 2020 election, his swing vote could give him a lot of influence.      

Around the World:  The UK’s Brexit mess took still another turn yesterday after some rebel members of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s party who don’t want to see a no-deal Brexit take place on Halloween, the currently scheduled Brexit date, jumped ship, with one of them actually standing up and dramatically moving to a bench on the other side of the House of Commons while Johnson was speaking.  It’s not clear what happens next, there could be new elections and another extension of the Brexit deadline could be in the mix. Things also remain messy in Hong Kong where leader Carrie Lam, who generally takes her directions from China, finally withdrew the controversial extradition bill that sparked the three months of frequently violent protests that have rocked Hong Kong.  Protesters are still demanding greater democracy for the city and an independent commission into police conduct so it’s not clear if her concession will be enough to end the demonstrations.  On the real storm front Hurricane Dorian has finally moved away from the Bahamas, leaving an unbelievable amount of destruction in her wake.  The following link includes a list of some organizations providing much needed assistance   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/world/americas/hurricane-dorian-how-to-help.html

Post Labor Day Blues

Better in the Bahamas?  Trump cancelled his trip to Poland so that he could stay home and deal with Hurricane Dorian, the slow moving, lethal category 5 storm that appears to have caused massive destruction in parts of the Bahamas but seems to be avoiding Florida landfall, at least for now.  Who knew that “dealing” with the deadly storm meant tweeting out misinformation about its path, playing multiple rounds of golf and doing his best to avoid answering questions about the weekend’s other tragedy, the shooting in Odessa, Texas? His press secretary insisted that Trump was accompanied by a weather expert at all times who provided him with constant updates on Dorian’s status, it’s not clear if that expert was a real person or the weather app on his trusty twitter device but whatever or whomever, Trump clearly had a problem assimilating the data he was getting so after claiming that category 5 storms are unheard of, he then tweet warned residents of Alabama that they were in Dorian’s path, misinformation that was almost immediately refuted by local weathermen, Alabama’s governor and the National Weather Service.  Given how popular Trump is in Alabama, one reputable and usually trusted local forecaster was actually slammed by some gullible Alabamans for having the nerve to refute Trump’s weather alert causing the disgusted forecaster to respond "I have zero interest in politics. Dorian will not affect Alabama in any way. That is not a political statement."  As to Poland, when Trump was asked if he had a message for Poland on the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of World War II, he responded by saying “I do have a great message for Poland and we have Mike Pence, our vice president, is just about landing right now...I just want to congratulate Poland," leading many to conclude that he didn’t know that Poland was invaded and smashed by the Nazis in 1939.  For his part, Pence did what Pence does, he appeared serious and made few waves though he did acknowledge that the Russians were still engaging in election interference, either a curious disagreement with Trump or part of their ”good cop/bad cop” routine.  Following his Poland visit, Pence continued on to Ireland for a meeting with Ireland’s Prime Minister/Taoiseach Leo Varadkar but instead of staying in or near Dublin, he stayed at Trump International Golf Club at Doonberg which is three hours away and across the country from Dublin, because grifters grift and so do their vice presidents.  Though it’s generally difficult to out stupid a Trump tweet,  Deputy White House Secretary Judd Deere managed to earn this weekend’s prize for idiocy by tweeting “For all of you who still think our @VP is anti-gay, I point you to his and the @SecondLady’s schedule tomorrow where they will join Taoiseach @LeoVaradkar and his partner Dr. Matthew Barrett for lunch in Ireland.”  So, forget about all of his anti-gay statements and policy initiatives, Pence having lunch with the gay Prime Minister of Ireland while he’s in Dublin to have lunch with the Prime Minister of Ireland is proof of his tolerance?        

American Weekend:  Saturday afternoon another white guy with an AR style weapon went on a shooting spree this time in Odessa, Texas. As a result, including the shooter, eight people are now dead and twenty-two others, including three law enforcement officials and a 17-month-old, who was hit in the mouth and chest with shrapnel, were wounded. Texas Governor Abbott a proud gun rights advocate who once tweeted that he was “embarrassed” California was buying more guns than Texas, calling for Texans to “Pick up the pace” blamed the shooting on the failure of the state to adequately deal with mental health problems but said nothing bad about gun ownership.  He also had nothing to say about the series of new firearms laws that went into effect in Texas on Sunday, just hours after the shooting.  Those laws further loosen gun restrictions in the state that’s “had four of the ten deadliest mass shootings in modern US history.” As a result of the new laws, going forward there will be more guns in schools, in homes caring for foster children, in places of worship and apartment buildings because apparently more people having guns is a good thing, right? Marc Short, who is now VP Pence’s Chief of Staff, said that the administration is now working with the Justice Department on draft legislation that would expedite capital punishment for those found guilty of mass killings. It’s worth noting that study after study confirm that fear of the death penalty is not an effective crime deterrent.  In any case, as in Odessa, most mass shooters die during their rampages.   

More Stuff: It’s now widely accepted by everyone other than Trump that he’s been played by North Korean strongman Kim Jong un.  While writing all those flattering letters to Trump, Kim has been making significant advances in missile technology.   The New York Times reports that all those missile launches that Trump claims are no bigly deal have allowed North Korea to “test missiles with greater range and maneuverability that could overwhelm American defenses in the region.”  While he continues to defend Kim Jong un’s missile launches, Trump has gone all in on taunting Iran.  For some reason clear only to him, on Friday Trump tweeted out a super duper top secret satellite image of an Iranian space center where an explosion had taken place.  In the tweet he mocked Iran while asserting that the US had nothing to do with the explosion.  Trump may be right about that but his decision to share the image freaked out the intelligence community because of how much it revealed about the capability of US satellite photography.  Unfortunately, as in the case of the Israeli intelligence that Trump “accidentally” revealed early on to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov during that odd Oval Office visit early in his administration, he gets to decide what is and isn’t confidential. In other international news, the UK remains mired in their Brexit problem, predicting the path of Hurricane Dorian is easier than figuring out what Prime Minister Boris Johnson is doing or what will happen next.  On the US political front, this morning West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, the centrist who frequently infuriates Democrats with his Senate votes but who generally votes with the Democrats when his vote really matters, is expected to announce whether he will run for  Governor. The Trump administration appears to have backed off on their plans to start deporting children who are receiving treatments for their dire health issues in the US not because they don’t want to see the children deported but because of all the bad press that can’t be going over well with suburban Republican soccer moms.  Another presidential debate looms and the Democrats appearing to be ramping up their hearings and investigations into things Trump.  Welcome to September.