Wondering on Wednesday (v182)

Ready for some wondering? 

Let's dive in!

I wonder what the handful of states that are  cancelling their Republican presidential primaries are thinking. I can't imagine the president not wanting to show how loved and popular he is by crushing his opponents in a primary, can you? I mean, everyone talking about him is exactly what he lives for, right? 

Is it, as has been suggested by former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, that the president's party faithful support, hovering around 90%, may be a mile wide, but only an inch deep? Are the states afraid of letting that particular cat out of the bag?

Given that one of the reason why the cancellations are happening, we're told, is because it's expensive to hold a primary, I wonder if the RNC will cancel their convention? I know, that's silly, but a woman can hope, right? 

Staying with presidential politics for a bit, I saw a headline today that began "Sanders supporters cry foul..." and my first thought was, I wonder why that's not a bumper sticker? I mean, that could be every headline from 2016, and they're just piling on the foul-crying this time around too. Which is one reason why many people don't like him. You know, people like me. And I wonder if that's why Sanders is in third place in four of the five national polls since the debate?

I'm also wondering what the Democratic presidential candidates have to gain by calling for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

I get it - I believe he lied in his confirmation hearings, I believe he did make unwanted sexual advances, of varying degrees, on multiple women, and that he has no business being on the court. But on the court he is, and there he will stay, barring forensically verified proof of his lies or the sexual activities, and I don't know that such evidence exists. And honestly, if the NY Times reporters had not been writing a book, but instead were working solely to get to the bottom of the accusations against Kavanaugh, I'd feel better about that. 

More important, though - under even the weakest of normal circumstances, the nomination of a potential SCOTUS justice with even a hint of what he's accused of never would have seen the light of day. And I wonder if we'll ever be close to that kind of normal again.

Finally, tonight, the president has named Robert O'Brien as his fourth National Security Advisor. O'Brien was most recently the 'Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs' at the State Department, and according to Trump, his record is 38-0. 

I wonder if anyone knows who those 38 'hostages' were? Because to me, a hostage is someone like Terry Anderson, kidnapped on the streets of Beirut and held for over 2450 days, from the mid-1980s until 1991, or the 52 American diplomats held for 444 days in Iran before being released. 

A hostage is not someone convicted of a crime in another country and held in jail. You know, like A$AP Rocky, for example, who was arrested after getting into a fight on the streets of Stockholm. 

Keep in mind that Trump send Robert O'Brien to intercede in the case of A$AP Rocky - and wonder about that.