Wondering on Wednesday (v180)

Happy first Wednesday of September.

Let's start with Alabama, Dorian, and the president. Here's my wondering: If Alabama was a blue state, would Trump have put it inside the cone of uncertainty at any point? Would he have defended that move, if he made it, even as the National Weather Service was tweeting disagreement in order to calm fears that had been raised for no reason?  And who the heck drew the Sharpie cone over Alabama in the first place?

There was a lot of consternation on the left that the president supposedly cancelled his visit to Poland so that he could stay home and monitor Dorian directly, when in fact he spent a couple of days at his golf course in Sterling, VA. "Shame on him for golfing during a potential crisis," was the message - as if President Obama didn't play golf back in '16 when Louisiana was flooded. I wonder why there was so much outrage? Dorian was not threatening the US at the time - Alabama had nothing to fear while the president was assaulting the golf course.

Besides, he was monitoring the storm. Take a look at this article from the New York Times.

Over the long weekend, President Trump monitored Hurricane Dorian from a golf cart at his club in Virginia, calling for regular updates from an aide trailing him around the course. By 8 p.m. Monday, as Dorian churned toward Florida and Mr. Trump’s boarded-up Mar-a-Lago resort, the president had golfed twice and since Saturday morning pelted the American public with 122 tweets.

By all means, slam him for making money again from his presidency, but I think we can all back off from the criticism of golfing during a crisis. I also wonder who or what he would have been tweeting about had he not had Dorian to keep him occupied.

Speaking of making money from his presidency, how about that visit by Pence and Mother (and his actual mother and his sister) to Ireland? Pence needed an hour-long motorcade, another hour on Air Force Two, and then another short trip by car to get to his meeting with the Irish President.

The lengthy commute was necessary because of Mr. Pence's choice of hotel: Rather than spending Monday night in Dublin, the vice president stayed 181 miles away by car on the other side of Ireland - at the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg. The person who suggested he stay there was the hotel's owner himself, President Trump.

 "I don't think it was a request, like a command," Marc Short, Mr. Pence's chief of staff, told reporters travelling with the vice president. "I think it was a suggestion."

The Times notes that this just the way things are done in the Trump Administration.

In total, nearly $20 million has been spent at the Trump family hotels since 2015 by various mostly Republican political groups, including Mr. Trump’s own political committees, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics. 

Nice work if you can get it, right? I wonder how anyone can pretend that he's not making money off his presidency?

And finally tonight, let's wonder how many more Republicans will not be running for re-election next year. A short time ago, another one - Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, declared he's done.

I've said all along I'd know when the right time came and I've come to the conclusion that it has. There is nobody running against me. Nobody can say they've pushed me out. I'm doing this on my own terms. 

Sensenbrenner, 76 years old, has served for 42 years. And he's the second one to announce today; earlier, Rep. Bill Flores said he's not running again, becoming the fifth Texan to bail. 

Now, I wonder how we can get Republican Senators to make the same decision...