Lots of news -- in brief

Lots happening in the news.

1.  Roy Moore:    National Republicans are finally distancing themselves.  Both Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, and many others in Congress, have said he should step aside.   Virtually all of the senators have said, at least, "if it's true," he should.   Others are dropping that qualifier and saying they believe the women and he should drop out now.   Everyone's eager to see what Trump does.  Moore still has a lot of support in Alabama, and some even think he can still win.   Some even say, given the choice between a Democrat and a Republican pedophile, they would choose the latter.   McConnell, etc. are desperately trying to figure out a way to reject Moore while still holding on to the seat, given that they would then have only a one-vote Senate majority.

2.  Nominee for HHS Chair:  Trump has nominated Alex Azar to replace Tom Price as head of Health and Human Services.   For 10 years, Azar was a top executive for one of the major pharmaceutical companies, which is bad, when one of Trump's stated goals -- and that of the American people -- is to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.   However, I have a hunch he might not be as bad as Price.   He is known as an expert on government health care regulation, having worked in the George W. Bush HHS department.  He's known as a problem-solver and not as an ideologue.

3.  Donald Trump, Jr. was back in the headlines when it was revealed that he had previously undisclosed email exchanges with Wikileaks during later stages of the campaign, during the time of their release of DNC-hacked emails.   While Wikileaks claims to be non-partisan and only concerned with full transparency and exposing government secrets, it's obvious from these messages from them to Trump, Jr. that they are supporting Trump -- asking their campaign to help publicize the site where people can read the DNC emails.   Fifteen minutes after receiving such an email, not Trump, Jr. but Trump, Sr. sent out this tweet:  "Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks.  So dishonest!  Rigged system!"   You only have to believe, as our intelligence chiefs do, that Russia was behind these hacks, to see this as evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign.   Whether it's enough to make a case, is a question.   But Mueller has much more than this.

4.  Trump home from Asia trip:   It was a long, and therefore risky, trip with lots of chances for our gaffe-prone president to stumble.   While there were no glaring missteps, and he didn't start WW III, there is plenty for progressives and globalists to be very disturbed about, not least of which is Trump's becoming pals with the Philippine monster Duterte.   Trump treated him like a new personal friend and never once mentioned the human rights abuses -- even the rampant murders of suspects by police that Duterte openly condones.  Back during the campaign, Trump praised how well Duterte was "handling the drug problem" in his country -- [yeah, he just murders any suspect in the streets;  it takes a little longer to go through due process.]   It brings to mind Trump's campaign exhortation to a law enforcement crowd not to "be so nice" to suspects when you're taking them into custody.    The world now knows how to play Trump -- you flatter him, have adoring crowds cheering him, put on a grand display of military might . . .  and you have your brutal strongman become buddies with him (Putin and now Duterte).

5.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions was back on the hot seat yesterday in a hearing by the House Judiciary Committee.  Grilled over his ever-changing answers about his contact with Russians during the Trump campaign, he resorted to "I don't remember" dozens of times.  Over several different hearings, now, his pattern is to "not remember."   Then when he's presented with evidence, or someone else's testimony, then he remembers.   And here's the troublesome thing:   he doesn't remember that he met with a Russian or that he was in a meeting where Papadopoulos said he was in contact with Russians and could set up a meeting between Putin and Trump.    Sessions "didn't remember" that meeting;  but when his memory was "refreshed" by Papadopoulos' confession in his plea bargain, then Sessions remembers what he himself said in the meeting.   He didn't remember meeting with the Russian ambassador;  but when refreshed, then he remembers what they talked about. The other very disturbing thing to me was, when asked, he had to admit that he had not taken any action toward preventing foreign interference in our next elections, even though in a hearing months ago he had said he would.

6.  Giving in to Russia:    Rachel Maddow had a fascinating and chilling segment last night about Russian spying -- and our own collusion in it.   She reviewed the history of their bugging our embassy in Moscow back in the late 1970s.   But the really chilling part was what prompted her to report this:    Our State Department, with Rex Tillerson as its head, has just awarded a no-bid contract to provide  security services at the Moscow embassy to a Russian firm that is headed by a close Putin ally who is also a veteran of the KGB.   Remember that Tillerson was closely involved with the Russians in oil deals, when he was CEO of Exxon-Mobile.  Putin gave him a medal.   And now we're going to give them the keys to our embassy building in their capital?   The same building that was practically unusable when new because Russians had installed listening devices in the basic building materials we let them supply.  This is either naivete or collusion, trying to be passed off as building a better relationship.  It seems Russia has thoroughly invaded our executive branch.   So we just handed them the keys.  What could possibly go wrong?

Ralph