Skip to main content

THREE PERPLEXING TRUMP CABINET CHOICES

President has made some perplexing choices for his cabinet.  The first batch made some sense.  The latest seems cloying, if not baffling and certainly stunning.

Take Matt Gaetz as Attorney General.  Here Trump should have selected a lawyer with gravitas and high credibility.  Surely there are many of them, who would still be supremely loyal to him.  Trump called Gaetz a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney.  A 42-year old Floridian with a law degree from William and Mary, Gaetz practiced law for two years, never as a prosecutor, partly tainted by one suspension.  You would think that his legal shallowness and potential for not being confirmed by the Senate would influence him to for now hold on to his House seat.  But he just resigned from the Congress.  Perhaps Gaetz's irredeeming virtue is that he too has some sexual issues clouding his past.  He will become a weapon for Trump.

The other worrisome selection is Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.  A 43-year old former Democrat from Hawaii, I'm one of many in her home state saying....what???  She did serve in Iraq, but only in the National Guard.  Her key role on the Trump campaign team was preparing him for the debate against Kamala Harris.  And you know badly that went for Trump.

What does the National Intelligence office do, anyway?

  • The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a senior cabinet-level United States government official, required by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to serve as executive head of the United States Intelligence Community (IC) and to direct and oversee the National Intelligence Program (NIP). All IC agencies report directly to the DNI.
  • Thus, Gabbard will sit at every full cabinet meeting.
  • Before the DNI was established, that role was performed by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
  • The first director in 2005 was John Negroponte.
  • The seventh and current director is Avril Haines, the first woman to hold that position.  Anyone ever
    hear of her?
  • Some previous directors were a Vice Admiral and a Lt. General.
  • There are 17 intelligence agencies and organizations, including the CIA.
The third alarming nomination is Pete Hegseth, FOX News personality, as Secretary of Defense.  Said Politico:

Pentagon officials alarmed over Hegseth’s lack of experience: ‘Would you trust him to run Walmart?’


Did you know that this is only one of 80 other Pentagon appointments that requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate?  About the DOD and Hegseth.
  • A $780 billion annual budget with 3 million employees.
  • 1.4 million active-duty personnel.
  • Commander in Chief will be Donald Trump
  • Some say, next to the presidency, the DOD secretary is the second hardest job in the executive branch.
  • 44-year old Peter Hegseth:
    • Princeton BA and Harvard MPP.
    • Served in Iraq and Afghanistan, awarded a Bronze Star Medal and still served as an Army National Guard major.
    • Political commentator for Fox News.
    • Author of six books.  

    Not related to the above, nor our Norwegian Encore cruise, but we are just a couple of hundred miles west of Paris, so just a note that the Notre Dame Cathedral will re-open on 8December2024.  Last year, one of my postings said:

    Four and a half years ago I had lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in the world, the Paris La Tour D'Argent (I've also dined at their Tokyo steeple), and from my table could view the Seine and the Notre-Dame.  A month later, this church burned down.   At a cost exceeding a billion dollars, this cathedral might re-open at the end of the year, but could take up to 40 years to completely restore.

    Typhoon Usagi brushed the Philippines, is now down to 110 MPH, will weaken into a Category 1 and skirt the southeast corner of Taiwan late Friday or early Saturday as a tropical storm.

    Our Norwegian Encore will on Day 33 arrive in Zeebruge, Brussels, Belgium tomorrow.

    - 

    Labels:

    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

    By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases.  Very few are aware that a new one,   BA.4.6,  is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples .  However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6.  Here is a  reference  as to what this means.  A series of two injections is involved.  Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab  co-packaged with  cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on  subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome.  This strain has also been spreading in
    Post a Comment
    Read more

    Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

    Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics.  Thursday was my pandemic day for years.  Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments.  All these  subvariants  derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms.  One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell.  From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant,  BA.2.86,  also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to  lose hair  for several months.  This is caused by stress more than anythi
    Post a Comment
    Read more

    HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

    The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been
    Post a Comment
    Read more