Politics Corner, October 7th

"Lady Freedom" by skpy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 

Short and tart tonight. Plenty happened but one big thing took the honors.

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I won't guess which it is but either Trump is paying off Putin as fast as he can or he's bribing Putin to keep himself in office and away from indictment. Or maybe it's just a down payment on a dacha outside of Moscow or St. Petersburg. But two of the three big stories today benefit Russia to the detriment of the United States.

Everyone but Russia and Turkey are horrified at Trump's actions in Syria. Moving out US troops lets ISIS back in the game and gives cover to Erdogan who gets a free run at killing Kurds. That's United States allies for those keeping track of such things. Turkey won't be the only country jumping into the power vacuum. Putin has been waiting for this. [The Politico] [NBC]

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Couldn't get more direct than that, could it? Of course it can. Trump wants to drop out of the Open Skies treaty that not only is a joint exercise with all of our European allies but also allows us to track Russian military deployment. Dropping out will piss off our allies (even further) and increase Russia's military power. Both are net gains for Russia and net losses for the US. Whose Constitution did Trump swear to uphold? Ours or Russia's? [US House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs]

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The third big story might be the driving force behind the other two. We're not there yet but it's looking more and more likely that Trump's taxes will become public. I don't know what's in there. I do know that he really, really doesn't want us to see them whatever any judge thinks. [Yahoo! Finance]


This would be top story in any other administration but here and now it's just a blurb: the House has subpoenaed documents from the Pentagon and the White House budget office in relation to the Ukraine [Reuters]

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Political discussion welcome.