A Guest Post from Alby Damned
We don’t know what the ratings on last night’s “Apprentice: Supreme Court” edition are, but the winner is Neil Gorsuch, a religion-loving, cop-loving Coloradan. Think Antonin Scalia without the obnoxious personality flaws. This AP report draws on interviews with people in Colorado who have worked with him, and truth be told it sounds as if Trump could have done much worse.
So what do Senate Democrats do now? Has the public’s spine-donation program worked? Don’t count on it. Talking Points Memo runs down the political implications of the pick and what Democrats might do. Short version: They’re cautious. Betcha didn’t see that one coming.
While the rubes watched the TV, a draft of a presidential order targeting legal immigrants on public assisstance for deportation made the rounds in Washington. The leaked release follows the same pattern as the original immigration crackdown order, which leaked early in the week before being signed Friday.
The media still doesn’t know how to deal with the Trumpocalypse, but at least they’re policing each other for egregious kow-towing. The editor of The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by noted immigrant Rupert Murdoch, was outed for directing his reporters to use mealy-mouthed language to avoid angering the popular vote loser.
Details are coming out about Trump’s first drone strike, the one that left a Navy SEAL dead in Yemen. How’d it go? “Almost everything went wrong,” an unnamed senior military intelligence official said. Contrary to earlier reporting, the raid was Trump’s first clandestine strike — not a holdover mission approved by President Barack Obama. The mission involved “boots on the ground” at an al Qaeda camp near al Bayda in south central Yemen, where an MV-22 Osprey experienced a hard landing near the site, injuring several SEALs, one severely. The tilt-rotor aircraft had to be destroyed. A SEAL was killed during the firefight on the ground, as were some noncombatants, including women and an 8-year-old girl.
You might have missed it amid the rest of the blundering, but Trump has added Germany to his Targets of Wrath list. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones explains why, and why it’s mostly just hot air.
The old adage claims sports don’t build character, they reveal it, which doesn’t say much for bicycle racers. Having apparently run out of ways to enhance the human body, the sport’s never-ending search for the perfect cheat is now concentrating on the machine– think hidden motors and electromagnets inside the rims. As unsporting as it sounds, I want to know when I’ll be able to add one to my bike. It’ll come in handy on the hills.
Alby Damned is the nom de guerre of retired journalist and talk show host Al Mascitti. He lives in Hockessin.