Benjamin netanyahu

Inquiring minds want to know: should Nancy Pelosi, who has hitherto prudently fended off calls from her left flank for impeaching Trump, adopt the lesser tack of launching an impeachment inquiry? Progressives want progress, which is to say they’re intent on ousting Trump from office by any means necessary. Their thinking is that starting an inquiry may not be tantamount to impeachment, but will help erode Trump’s defiance of Congress, thereby allowing it to inform the public of his various transgressions. Trump has instructed his former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II not to meet Congress, an edict he obeyed this morning to the vexation of Jerry Nadler, the head of the House Judiciary Committee.

William Barr flinched for a nanosecond, then plunged into the murky waters of the deep state. There was ‘spying,’ he ventured, in 2016 – against the Trump campaign. There was no ‘specific evidence,’ but he’s persuaded it happened. In that moment before the Senate, Barr betrothed himself to Donald Trump. Only moments earlier Trump had gone on a prolonged tirade about the malefactions of ‘dirty cops’ who had engaged in ‘treasonous’ activities against him and his aides. Trump, you could say, is on a roll these days. His chum Benjamin Netanyahu just won re-election, partly thanks to a series of boosts from Trump. He may be heading towards a trade deal with China.

When Ilhan Omar says that there’s too much money in American politics, she’s stating the obvious. That’s why I support her brave campaign against the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Realtors, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, General Electric, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Business Roundtable, the AARP, and Boeing. These are America’s top 10 lobby groups, ranked by total spending over the last 20 years. In 2018, the US Chamber of Commerce spent $94.8 million on lobbying. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, spent $21.7 million and surged to Number Eight on the charts. The America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) ranked Number 157, and spent $3.5 million.

Not many world leaders can claim to be on friendly personal terms with Donald Trump. There are fewer still who would regard a visit to this particular president’s White House as a crowning achievement, and one which would increase their popularity at home rather than being seen as a moral failing. So the lesson of Benjamin Netanyahu’s triumphant meeting with the US president deserves particular scrutiny for having jumped all these hurdles. Admittedly, it helps to be a right wing Israeli Prime Minister at a time of Republican ascendancy. Netanyahu’s relationship with Barack Obama was famously abrasive. Any successor was bound to be an improvement, even if the strong US-Israel relationship goes far deeper than the Presidential level.