Syria, Obama's now Trumps fight. I was asking to a retired USAF colleague, an expert on Middle Eastern affairs, how Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, could have lived so long. My colleague's response was, "...the mukhabarat [Assad's secret police/secret service] is very effective and brutal. The leadership is Alawite, Assad’s religious group, which constitutes about 10% of the population. They figure if they lose they will die."
ICE swings into action. The story began to unfold Monday, Feb 6th when Immigration and Control ICE enforcement agents began to round ups at ..."homes and workplaces in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, the Los Angeles area, North Carolina and South Carolina.. ICE dislikes the term 'raids,' and prefers to say authorities are conducting 'targeted enforcement actions.' "
On January 25th, President Trump ..."pledged to deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records." Based on preliminary reports, "criminal records" can be anything from brutal felonies to minor misdemeanors. No doubt, this story will continue to unfold.
Flynn out. Retired General Flynn, President Trump's choice for National Security Adviser, became the first high level appointee to resign under fire after admitting he had had potentially illegal contacts with members of the Russian government before the president's inauguration. Flynn had publicly denied these allegations to the press and, more damning, to Vice President Pence.
Interestingly, the then-Acting US Attorney General, later fired by President Trump, had testified publicly before Congress about Flynn's possible problems. The Washington Post's story said, "What's remarkable about the Flynn saga was how incredibly routine it was. A deeply damaging story comes out. The White House goes into bunker mode. Conflicting reports from conflicting aides emerge. And then, whammo: Resignation. It was a prototypical Washington scandal that played out like hundreds of similar ones before it."
Who's in charge. Michael Gerson remembers, "In early January, House Speaker Paul Ryan met
on the issue of tax reform with a delegation from the president-elect.
Attending were future chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen K.
Bannon, future chief of staff Reince Priebus, future senior adviser
Jared Kushner, future counselor Kellyanne Conway and future senior
policy adviser Stephen Miller. As the meeting began, Ryan pointedly
asked, 'Who’s in charge?' ” Silence.'
As the old saw goes, "It's tough to tell the players without a scorecard." This seems to be increasingly true in the Trump White House.
Gerrymander. This article from the Washington Post highlights to a long standing problem that has been, in a sense, the elephant in the cloak room, even on the floor of the US House: the once-every-ten-years redrawing of federal congressional districts, most often to the sole advantage of each state's majority party. These absurdly tortured boundaries have long been drawn ignoring previous Supreme Court guidelines.
Congress is deeply and stubbornly unpopular. On average, between 10 and 15 percent of Americans approve of Congress – on a par with public support for traffic jams and cockroaches. And yet, in the 2016 election, only eight incumbents – eight out of a body of 435 representatives – were defeated at the polls....In the 2016 elections for the House of Representatives, the average electoral margin of victory was 37.1 percent. That’s a figure you’d expect from North Korea, Russia or Zimbabwe – not the United States. But the shocking reality is that the typical race ended with a Democrat or a Republican winning nearly 70 percent of the vote, while their challenger won just 30 percent.
What possible explanation is there for this continuing anomaly other than might makes right?
Thank you for reading. May your coming week be much less baffling that the past 7 days.
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