Random Thoughts: Playing Catch Up

OK, we've been away for awhile.  What did we miss?

John McCain (1936-2018)  

The Arizona senator died just a day after refusing any more treatments for his brain cancer.  While being hailed as a "war hero" who spent much of the Vietnam conflict as a guest of the Hanoi government, and as one of the few Republican critics of President Donald Trump, McCain was also responsible for being part of the Keating Five during the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, and for choosing Sarah Palin as his 2008 presidential running mate.  Neither Trump nor Palin were invited to McCain's memorial services, where former President Barack Obama (his '08 opponent) and daughter Meghan McCain delivered powerful eulogies that also served as rebukes to That Man in the White House.  John McCain was 82.

Palace Revolt?

It seems that those remaining staffers who still work for the White House have been scrambling to keep Trump from doing more harm than he already has, even to the point of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would remove a President for being mentally unfit to serve.  That's the vibe we've been getting from the information that's been coming from Bob Woodward's just-released book "Fear--Trump In The White House", and from a New York Times opinion column by a senior official who wishes to remain anonymous.

The President's response has been nothing short of predictable.  He accused Woodward, who has won awards for his coverage of every President since Richard Nixon, of being a bad reporter and has called the book "fiction".  He has also demanded a Justice Department investigation into who actually wrote the Times article.

However many headlines that were created by Woodward's book and "Anonymous'" column, they still don't tell us a blessed thing that we didn't already know about this President.  The one thing we need to know is why he's still in office, and what are we going to do about it.

The Kavanaugh Express

Neither protesters, Democratic opposition nor cover-your-rear answers will stop Senate Republicans from putting Brett Kavanaugh on the fast track to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice.  There are the arguments that President Trump shouldn't be nominating justices while he himself is in legal hot water, and that all the information on Kavanaugh was released too late for Senators on the Judiciary Committee to get a handle on.  But that doesn't seem to matter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his gang.  They want a conservative-dominated court that could last to the end of this century, and by George, it looks like they're going to get one.


Trump's "Heckuva Job" on Puerto Rico

As another major hurricane is set to strike the East Coast, Puerto Ricans are slowly getting their lives back together after the fury of Maria.  President Trump recently praised federal officials for being "incredibly successful" in their handling of the U.S. commonwealth's situation.  Uh, slow responses on food and supplies?  Taking nearly a year to get back on the electrical grid?  Nearly three thousand dead, according to updated estimates?  Heckuva job, indeed.

UPDATE (9/13/18):  Trump now says that three thousand people did not die during the hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico, claiming it was all a Democratic party plot to make him look bad.  All right, if three thousand did not die, how many of them did?  If it's around 20, like you first claimed, that would have been remarkable.  Who knew statistics were subject to political interpretation?