On Wednesday the U.S. Senate at least took the first step to invoke the War Powers Act (as recounted in this morning's editorial "The Senate Steps Up on Saudi Arabia: Even Lindsey Graham — Lindsey Graham! — is offended by the administration’s callousness toward the murder of Jamal Khashoggi."). The editorial board of The New York Times believes the chances slim that congress can block vital U.S. assistance of al-Saud and the United Arab Emirates in their war on Yemen. But I'm not so sure.
Lindsey Graham has pledged to interrupt the order of business in the senate until CIA director Gina Haspel appears. And we have yet to hear from Turkish president Recep Erdogan. My guess is he is springing a trap. Once zombie May and boy king Macron genuflect and kiss the jeweled hand of the crown prince, Erdogan will make a move, further compromising the already cadaverous May and Macron.
We'll see. One thing is for sure. The longer Trump fronts for the Saudi monarchy, and the longer the United States facilitates the starvation of a nation, the more likely he loses in 2020.
Many who pay attention to politics believe that American voters don't care about overseas conflict. I think that's untrue. A majority of voters might not give a hoot, but there is a significant fraction that does, and that fraction pulls from both the left and the right; that fraction also pulls other voters along with it.
U.S. support for the Saudi monarchy is radioactive politically. How else to explain congress' sole override of an Obama veto when it enshrined into law the ability of the 9/11 families to sue the kingdom of Saudi Arabia? That happened in September of 2016. Since Trump was actively campaigning against the House of Saud at the time, complaining about the kingdom's support of terrorism, at the same time he was promising to work with Russia and Assad to end the war in Syria, one can argue -- and for me it's persuasive, given Trump's narrow victory -- that Trump is in the White House based on his criticism of the Saudis on the campaign trail.
May is finished; so is Macron; as is Trump.
May, a caretaker of an elite consensus for which there is no popular support; Macron,a ruse, a PSYOP; Trump, a bestial wail meant to frighten the turnkey but it turns out that Trump is a more sadistic turnkey than the turnkey (Hillary) whom he bested.
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I've seen no mention -- not in Reuters, AP, NYT -- of the bombshell story published in the Miami Herald this week about Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilia network. I saw it in yesterday's Significant Digits:
80 women
Eighty women say they were molested or “otherwise sexually abused” by Jeffrey Epstein, a Palm Beach multimillionaire hedge fund manager accused of assembling a “cult-like network of underage girls,” whose friends included former President Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Epstein could have spent the rest of his life in prison, but instead a plea deal was struck whereby he’d serve 13 months in jail and an FBI probe into his victims and other powerful figures potentially involved in his crimes was shut down. [Miami Herald]
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