No Answer

Would you trust Donald Trump. Jr. and his brother Eric with you cellular telephone service? 

Five hundred and ninety thousand people did.

About a year ago, Anastasio Trump Debayle (Don Jr.) and his brother Luis (Eric) came up with a plan to create a cell phone that would "outdo Apple" and provide excellent and personalized service that would have other cell phone companies eating its dust.  Anastasio Debayle and Luis got 590,000 Trump supporters to pay a hundred dollars each, for a total of $59 million, to buy this mobile phone, and then . . . nothing.  The phone was delayed for months and all of these MAGA people who bought it were left . . . on hold.  

This past week, the phone finally materialized - a gold-colored (natch!) mobile phone that the Somoza - er, Trump - brothers ordered to avoid a lawsuit for failing to produce the product they promised to their customers.  The phone itself was worth next to nothing - maybe about five cents, meaning that it was overpriced by about $99.95.  The phone was rendered obsolete by newer products in the cell phone market.  All Trump supporters got for a hundred bucks was the cheap color application and the Trump brand.  Whereas Anastasio Debayle and Luis got $29.5 million each. 

The phones finally ship out soon. Maybe they'll actually work. 

The Gloves Come Off

Donald Trump is going after Joe Biden big time.  Fearful that Biden would be a formidable opponent to his re-election bid in 2020 should he be the Democratic presidential nominee, Trump sent Rudolph Giuliani to Ukraine to try to get the government there to open an investigation into his interference reading an investigation into some potential funny business including his son Hunter's service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.  Giuliani reversed course after a public outcry over his efforts, as he is not a government official acting on Trump's behalf but merely Trump's lawyer, but the damage may have been done.  Even though a recent Bloomberg story debunked the story about any wrongdoing on the Bidens' part, this story helps sow the seeds of doubt among Democrats who might end up nominating someone Trump can take out more easily.  Like Bernie Sanders.

This comes just after Trump's son Donald Jr. was subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee for its investigation of possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, which sounds like payback against Biden.  In fact, the Senate Intelligence Committee's chairman, who issued the subpeona, is Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, and he is less interested in backing up Trump than he is in getting to the bottom of what exactly the Russians did in the 2016 election.  This has nothing to do with Biden's son except for the fact that it's Trump's son who's being subpoenaed.  It's a weird case of tit-for-tat with Trump getting revenge against Biden for trying to have Biden's son investigated because of a subpoena against Donald Trump, Jr. that Biden didn't initiate!  And now Trump may ask Attorney General William Barr to look in to the Biden "case" himself.

Even if Biden is the best choice to go against Trump, he has his work cut out for him.  Trump will stop at nothing to win another term, and he's willing to destroy anyone to make it happen.  But he's so hell-bent on destruction that the person he may end up destroying most is himself.

The Plot Begins To Unravel

Robert Mueller is issuing a subpoena for the Trump Organization's documents regarding their dealings in Russia.  Now if there is any funny business going on with that country's oligarchs, Trump will be exposed as the con man everyone suspects him to be, propped up by Vladimir Putin and bending over backwards to keep the Kremlin protected from international sanctions and isolation.  Perhaps knowing that the jig may be up, Trump has allowed his aides to condemn Russia's connection to the poisoning of a Russian double agent and his daughter living in England and to approve sanctions against the Russians - but he's not yet ready to take credit for anything that would offend Putin.

"Mueller is not fooling around," Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) tweeted in response.  "A subpoena carries the force of law . . ..  If Donald Trump fires him, it's because Trump is hiding something bad from the American people."  House Republicans are certainly hiding something, since they terminated the investigation of the House Intelligence Committee into Russian meddling in the election and declared there was no collusion without hearing any testimony from witnesses Democrats wanted to bring in, which would have undermined that argument.  And by the way, the Senate investigation continues. 

While all of this is going on, Donald Trump, Jr.'s wife Vanessa has filed for divorce.  Talk about a danger signal!  This is the political version of a signal in the atmosphere that clues weather forecasters into a coming storm.  Vanessa Trump's split from her husband means that a sh--storm may be coming.     

And what about porn star Stormy Daniels, speaking of storms?  Please, that's a nothing-burger compared to the scandalous news about Trump and Russia that's about to blow up all over the Internet.

Ajit Pai may be considering an end to Net neutrality sooner rather than later.      

Meanwhile, Andrew McCabe was fired as FBI deputy director two days before his retirement because he misled investigators about letting FBI members share with the press damaging information about the investigation of . . . Hillary Clinton?  I give up, nothing makes sense anymore.

Apples and Croissants

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Donald Trump, Jr. was in enough hot water when he turned out to have met a Russian female lawyer, while in the company of campaign manager Paul Manafort, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, to get incriminating information about Hillary Clinton.  Now it turns out he met with four other people at that same June 2016 meeting - including a British publicist and a former Soviet intelligence officer.  All in an effort to tip the scales for his dad even as the Democrats were tipping the scales for Hillary.  I'm suddenly reminded of why I voted Green.

Anyway, there's no evidence that the younger Trump got any information about Hillary, and, if he didn't, he obviously need never have bothered, as his father still won.  But it may turn out that he did get some dirt on Hillary, and even he didn't, his fraternization with the Russians only reveals how far and how low the Trump family was and is willing to go to gain ultimate power. Martin O'Malley famously said that the Presidency is not a crown to pass back and forth between two families; that is, the Bushes and the Clintons.  Look what happens when it's entirely controlled by one family.  This family.

This should prove once and for all that Trump is not to be trusted and that he should be forced to resign.  But Republicans still are backing him.  I don't get it; if Trump goes, they still have Mike Pence.  Pence is a nut like Trump, but at least he's an honorable nut!

And now for the croissant . . . French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Donald Trump at Bastille Day celebrations in Paris and treated him like a good friend.  "Macron" must be French for "Blair."  Nice try, Monsieur President, but Trump still isn't going to get the U.S. back in the Paris Agreement.  You have to talk to his boss Steve Bannon about that!

In the News . . .

The Iraqi city of Mosul was finally liberated by the Iraqi army from the Islamic State, and the people of Iraq are justly celebrating.  But the fight isn't over yet: some pockets of Islamic State resistance remain just south of Mosul, and over in Syria, the Islamic State holds many square miles of land, as well as the city of Raqqa, the self-described capital of the group's declared "caliphate."  Nevertheless, Donald Trump will probably declare premature victory over the Islamic State, taking credit for a victory President Obama planned for when the Islamic State War began with the group's takeover of Mosul in 2014.   

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, Jr. is in trouble over a failed attempt to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton just before she clinched the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.  It seems he met with a Russian attorney who said she had the goods on Hillary, only for the effort to come up leaving Don, Jr. empty-handed.

Donnie, that was dumb, really dumb! You shouldn't have risked potential violations of intentional law just to get some information to hurt the Democratic presidential nominee.

Besides, why go to some Russian lawyer for damaging information on Hillary when all you had to do to get information against her was watch the Democratic presidential debates?  :-p