It's all a blur
Greetings, friends. Hope you're not in one of the larger parts of the country anticipating some challenging weather over the next few days.
Just back from a trip west for a family occasion. I won't bore you with travel stories, except to say (mostly for those who know me) that I deliberately placed myself in the middle seat on both flights. You may talk amongst yourselves about this rare occurrence as you like.
However, since it's not available here in my home area, I will offer that my wife and I joined our daughter one morning for a spectacular breakfast at a place called Snooze. Kudos to our vigilant, patient and generous server J'Dinkalige for a wonderful experience.
The 24-hour news cycle certainly makes for some interesting and maddening headlines and stories, and our current White House administration appears to adhere to the "all media is good media" mentality. So that means that there are going to be stories that are of little value except to mention the name of our President.
The latest utterances about Iran qualify. As you likely read, news broke recently that National Security Advisor John Bolton was the architect of a plan that would place around 120,000 troops and a large cache of equipment in the Middle East in proximity to Iran. President Trump had said that was "fake news" but now there have been meetings at CIA and yesterday at briefing of the primary leadership on Capitol Hill (known as the Gang of Eight).
Are we going to war with Iran? Depends. This appears to be part of that "maximum pressure" strategy that the Administration has used so unsuccessfully with North Korea. My biggest worry is that a slip of the tongue in a situation like this pulls us into a costly and agonizing fight with someone with whom we had an agreement in place not that long ago.
And there are now over forty investigations that are being conducted by Congress and all are being challenged by the Administration in court and elsewhere. Clearly the Administration is trying to move the timetable forward so that a) this is a campaign issue, the "presidential harassment" that's been cited previously, and b) the courts tie up all of these informational requests and demands for an indefinite period and the public more or less forgets about them.
There's only a single investigation that most would consider appropriate, and that's impeachment. Fear of losing should not be mistaken with fear of acting. That's for the House Democrats who acknowledge that impeachment is risky only because it would be difficult to convict in the Republican-controlled Senate.
But just wait 24 hours, there'll be more to talk about.
Just back from a trip west for a family occasion. I won't bore you with travel stories, except to say (mostly for those who know me) that I deliberately placed myself in the middle seat on both flights. You may talk amongst yourselves about this rare occurrence as you like.
However, since it's not available here in my home area, I will offer that my wife and I joined our daughter one morning for a spectacular breakfast at a place called Snooze. Kudos to our vigilant, patient and generous server J'Dinkalige for a wonderful experience.
The 24-hour news cycle certainly makes for some interesting and maddening headlines and stories, and our current White House administration appears to adhere to the "all media is good media" mentality. So that means that there are going to be stories that are of little value except to mention the name of our President.
The latest utterances about Iran qualify. As you likely read, news broke recently that National Security Advisor John Bolton was the architect of a plan that would place around 120,000 troops and a large cache of equipment in the Middle East in proximity to Iran. President Trump had said that was "fake news" but now there have been meetings at CIA and yesterday at briefing of the primary leadership on Capitol Hill (known as the Gang of Eight).
Are we going to war with Iran? Depends. This appears to be part of that "maximum pressure" strategy that the Administration has used so unsuccessfully with North Korea. My biggest worry is that a slip of the tongue in a situation like this pulls us into a costly and agonizing fight with someone with whom we had an agreement in place not that long ago.
And there are now over forty investigations that are being conducted by Congress and all are being challenged by the Administration in court and elsewhere. Clearly the Administration is trying to move the timetable forward so that a) this is a campaign issue, the "presidential harassment" that's been cited previously, and b) the courts tie up all of these informational requests and demands for an indefinite period and the public more or less forgets about them.
There's only a single investigation that most would consider appropriate, and that's impeachment. Fear of losing should not be mistaken with fear of acting. That's for the House Democrats who acknowledge that impeachment is risky only because it would be difficult to convict in the Republican-controlled Senate.
But just wait 24 hours, there'll be more to talk about.
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