PMC Commentary

Wham. Scaramucci loses his fucking head.

Oh my, that was fast. Politico:

Scaramucci was expected to announce his new communications team Monday afternoon, but he was informed of the decision to remove him that morning. A senior White House aide said the move came after discussions over the weekend. There was "no way" he could work with Kelly, the senior aide said.

"Kelly is already changing the culture here," said another White House aide.

No he is not. The beheadings go on, and Kelly's military-like efficiency will soon enough be swamped by the incorrigible, indefatigable impulsiveness and stupidity of Donald J. Trump. As was needed with Louis XVI, Trump will only need to apply a bit more pressure on the blade when it's time to decapitate Kelly as well. There's not a safe tête within 200 yards of this gothic horror of a White House.

 

The partisan madness speaks for itself

Rep. Chris Collins (R., N.Y.), the first member of Congress to endorse Mr. Trump, said that instead of turbulence, Mr. Trump last week "had one of the best weeks he has ever had."

And,

"So far, I think he’s done a good job," [said] Gary Kirke, an Iowa businessman and prominent Trump donor.

—Quoted in the Wall Street Journal

Good grief. Should I ever become that blind to both reality and presidential indecency, someone, please, just end it for me.

 

Why keeping Trump to avoid Pence is a dangerous argument

Tom Toles imagines the solution to Trump's predicament of wretched approval ratings, legislative disasters, and the very real potential of much of his base deserting him:

What to do is almost predetermined. Do the thing within your control that is almost guaranteed to rally the nation behind you, bigly, for at least a little longer. Guess it yet? That’s right. A war.

Need congressional approval? Oops, not really anymore. Against whom? It almost doesn’t matter. So many choices, and any enemy will suffice.

Now back to Trump in particular. With whom will he start a war? Yes, there are many choices, but one looming scenario is Iran. And here is a case that war with Iran is already being planned….

[E]veryone would be well advised to keep a close eye on U.S. interaction with Iran, and for that matter with everywhere else.

I quite agree. In fact with this "insecure, incompetent megalomaniac" in the Oval Office, I'd venture that a needless, unprovoked war is predestined. It is this almost certain reality alone that tips me toward the advisability of impeachment.

The counterargument is that a President Mike Pence would be far more effective in working with this reactionary Congress; it would be preferable, then, to retain the megalomaniac in the White House, since he hasn't any idea as to how to work with others and negotiate legislation. The counterargument is seductive and nearly convincing — until one acknowledges the massive human devastation that a Trump War would inflict.

Pence's legislation could be rescinded. Trump's body count could not.

 

The funniest, battiest, worst piece of writing I have ever read, Part 2

I once described Kurt Schlichter's scribblings, currently slobbered at Townhall.com, as that which "soars to the polemical heavens and descends utterly deranged. His has got to be the most perfect kernel of 'Fucking nuts' I have ever had the pleasure to read." I employed that description in a 2015 post titled "The funniest, battiest, worst piece of writing I have ever read." It was, at the time. But now, Schlichter has outdone himself. I quote the comical lunatic at some length:

"We cannot tolerate this any longer," said [in April 2018] the former CIA Director at the head of the table. "We have to forcibly retake the government from Donald Trump. It is the only way save our democracy."

His audience nodded solemnly. The men and women gathered at that secret February meeting on the top floor of 241 West 41st Street, the New York Times building, were Democrat politicians, media figures, retired and active members of the federal security bureaucracy, and several Establishment Republicans, and they were at wit’s end. There simply was no other choice. Donald Trump must be replaced, and it no longer mattered how….

"You need to see this," Anthony Scaramucci, the communications director said. [Chief of Very Little Stuff Gen. John Kelly, who had nonetheless 'focused and discipled the White House staff' and was now 'notching legislative wins'] followed. In the comms room, he saw the same picture on all the screens – except for Fox, which was snow. It was Hillary Clinton, stiff at a desk, looking a bit like she had imbibed some liquid courage. She was reading off a sheet of yellow paper.

"…no choice but to act decisively to restore democracy and our Constitution by removing the Trump junta. Our armed forces are acting to protect our country by transferring leadership to the National Committee of Recovery and Reconciliation, made up of prominent citizens from all political parties, which will govern until fair elections free of foreign collusion can be held …"

Kelly caught the President and his escorts at the elevator. The battle outside sounded like the general remembered Fallujah sounding. Except, inside the White House, he had only a few Secret Service agents and some Marines to hold off the onslaught.

"Sir," he said. "It’s a military coup."

That bit of insanity is from Schlichter's hilariously zany yet altogether solemn "The Military Coup Against Donald Trump of 2018, Part 1." Regrettably he leaves us hanging, until he publishes the even more hilariously zany yet altogether solemn "The Military Coup Against Donald Trump of 2018, Part 2" — and if we're lucky, Parts 3, and 4, and …

I'll give him this much. As a fucking Scaramuccian paranoid schizophrenic and thus loyal Trumpeteer, he knows his audience's paranoia, and is exploiting it to the max.

 

Where are the Joe McCarthyites when we need them?

This is perhaps the weirdest inversion of history yet.

Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin expels hundreds of Americans and indigenous personnel from their diplomatic posts in retaliation against U.S. sanctions; the Russians are "nervous," says a Georgetown University Eurasian expert, because they see "unpredictability," so they sort of run home to mama — that is, they revive "old habits" of Cold War tactics. Meanwhile, American spooks are reviving blunt, Cold War terminology. As the NY Times reports, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said this month that doubtless the Russians "are trying to undermine Western democracy."

So far, none of this is particularly stunning. What's persistently stunning however is the Times sentence that immediately follows the Coats quote: His boss — the Republican U.S. president — has never uttered a similar phrase.

And therein lies a truly weird inversion of American history. A Republican president is being "soft" on Russian totalitarianism and its expansionist aggression, and behind him is a Republican base that is all too willing to accommodate that president's rather peculiar timidity. In the original version of Cold War domestic politics, it was of course Democratic presidents, their pompous diplomats in striped pants as well as their weak-kneed socialist-Democratic base who traitorously endured the Russian bear.

Those who then denounced the appeasers and accommodationists were, especially, Republican McCarthyites. They saw traitors everywhere, but most perilously within the American government. Pretty much all they nailed to rights were Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, since McCarthyites of yore were little more than reckless, paranoia-promoting demagogues.

Today, however, those same McCarthyites would, with abundant empirical evidence in their grasp, be justified in attacking the sitting Republican president and his loyal base for Russian accommodationism.

For both, in dismissing Putin's attack on the American political process and embracing rejections of our transatlantic allies, are, arm in arm with Russia, "trying to undermine Western democracy." They are fifth columnists of the first order, and what's more, they're open and unabashed about it.

Which brings us to the absolutely weirdest inversion of America's unfolding history: Where are the Republican McCarthyites when they could be of real and legitimate use?

 

Trump goes to war - with the GOP

His congressional troops are hopelessly bogged down and surrounded by sanity in Obamagrad, but Der Führer is seemingly convinced that sheer will to victory can overcome. Accordingly, the unhinged strategist in chief has, for public consumption and in the past 24 hours, sent three frantic dispatches to the Eastern front:

Some might note that for the besieged fools to bust out of Obamagrad, dynamiting the Senate's filibuster rule, as Trump urgently advises, would do no good whatsoever. Each of the three anti-Obamacare bills that recently went down in the Senate — skinny repeal, clean repeal, McConnell's replacement — was subject to a simple-majority vote. In fact virtually everyone has noted this. So, odds are, even the rabid, drooling fanatic in the Oval Office is aware that his strategic goadings are altogether irrelevant — except in the service of further bamboozling the homefront rubes.

A fresh, exceedingly narrow push at overwhelming obfuscation and deliberate misdirection (his base will believe anything), appears to be one of the legs of Trump's new strategic triad. The second leg is that of internal threats: "If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly," Trump also tweeted, "BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!" The last and much newer leg — the immensely critical leg — stems from the second: all-out war with his own party. In his desperate need to blame others for his failures, Trump never runs out of discovered enemies.

A day or two ago I heard a reporter on cable news say — brace for this — that she had been hearing the following from Republican pols (which, absent a transcript, I'm paraphrasing): What's happening? Why is Trump doing so much damage to our party?

Such indignation is amusing. Throughout Trump's real estate and casino career he suckered and screwed just about every partner. On the campaign trail he signaled similar intentions in his poetic readings of "The Snake," whose moral concludes: "'I have saved you,' cried the woman. 'And you've bitten me, heaven's why? You know your bite is poisonous, and now I'm going to die.' 'Oh, shut up, silly woman,' said the reptile with a grin. 'You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.'"

Well projected, Donald. But in your new strategic triad, you have overlooked the fourth and final move by your enemies: They can impeach your venomous ass.

 

A presidency in ruinous free fall

Normally in the course of presidential events the firing of a chief of staff would be a big deal. Not so in the Trump White House. There, turmoil, tension, recklessness and failure reign daily. Let us review.

In addition to Reince Priebus' brutal defenestration, this week the WH press secretary resigned in disgust and the president's promise of great, terrific, damn-near cost-free health care went down in an ignominious rout. Trump has had no domestic policy victories in a legislature of his own party. Congress rebuffed the American president's power in the arena of foreign policy by toughening sanctions against his beloved motherland, Russia. He's under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice; other charges or articles of impeachment to come. His job approval rating is in the tank. He was forced to fire his first national security adviser. He has fired an FBI director and an acting attorney general; also departing were a communications director, a deputy chief of staff, and a deputy national security adviser — all in six months.

To sort of smooth things out public relations-wise, Trump has hired a communications director whose rhetorical skills are roughly on a par with those of a button man in the old Scarfo crime family. Trump himself had already degraded presidential discourse to once-unimaginable lows; Anthony Scaramucci is merely perpetuating Trump's "tradition" with better suits and more stylish ties. The twosome's chief accomplishment so far has been to motivate actual conservatives to ask: "How did so many of the same people who spent the past 50 years bemoaning the decline of morality and decorum become the agents and enablers of the most morally grotesque administration in American history?"

It's reported that Trump fired Priebus partly because the chief of staff failed to return Scaramucci's verbal fire. "I [wasn't] going to get into the mud on those sorts of things," said Priebus, post-firing, about Scaramucci's personal assault. Priebus went on to say, "I’m always going to be a Trump fan. I’m on Team Trump." The president may have had a point. Simply defending oneself isn't "getting into the mud." Furthermore, effusively praising the clown who just fired you is a sign of excessive demureness, which is an underlying characteristic of any failing chief of staff.

Perhaps the most telling remark on why this White House is in concentrated free fall comes from a Trump friend and presumed defender, Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy. "Trump is a guy who’s all about results," said Ruddy to the NY Times. "I think he’s taking stock and seeing that this health care thing that was promised to him by Reince and Paul Ryan was not properly developed. In my view, he’s a disappointed customer."

Or, rather, a disappointed bystander — a bystander in the political process. Trump seems to have believed that his mere presence would be daunting to congressional lackeys; they would do whatever Trump wanted done, even if Trump himself never knew what the whatever was. Trump is a James Deanean demagogue without a cause — except that of his greater glorification through lowest-brow discourse. Street-brawling is not leadership.

Hence continuing to reign daily in this White House will be turmoil, tension, recklessness and failure — turmoil and failure so breathtaking, even the sacking of a chief of staff barely rates notice. 

 

Priebus' final humiliation

Having publicly humiliated Reince Priebus for a week, the sadistic bastard of a POTUS has now fired him in a tweet. Not surprising.

If Trump was going to replace Priebus with a cabinet member, I am surprised however that he didn't appoint Jeff Sessions.

At any rate, let us hope that Mr. Priebus has already begun writing his tell-all book on this horrifying obscenity of a White House.

 

Another Richard Dawkins "outrage!"

The latest Richard Dawkins kerfuffle is most amusing. He's now on the progressive left's shit list (who isn't?) for being Islamophobic; pointedly, he's been disinvited by Berkley, California radio station KPFA as part of a promotion tour: "We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people. KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier."

I had read KPFA's press release earlier this morning in the Weekly Standard, and just spotted it again in Andrew Sullivan's latest and, as usual, excellent weekly column for NY Magazine. Sullivan is as amused as I. "As anyone with a brain and an internet connection knows, Dawkins has made a second career out of vilifying religions of all kinds," he writes. What's more, Sullivan asks "Why is he Islamophobic and not also obviously anti-Semitic?"

Sullivan asks because, well, Dawkins once wrote that "the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

So, again, Why is Dawkins not "obviously anti-Semitic?" Permit me to field that one, Andrew. Here's what literary critic Harold Bloom, a Jew, had to say about God of Milton's Paradise Lost, derived straight from the Old Testament: "I find Milton's God the principal blot upon an otherwise magnificent poem…. He is self-righteous, irascible, and anxious; William Blake accurately termed him a Schoolmaster of Souls. You have to be a dogmatic Christian whose values are not aesthetic to find this God attractive."

Indeed, Paradise Lost's "hero," so to speak, is Satan. Other than Hamlet and perhaps Falstaff, he's the most fascinating, engrossing literary character in the English language. Milton's Satan is full of somewhat justified outrage over the ham-handed dictatorialism of the Supreme Deity, and he's not about to take any divine crap without a fight.

I digress, but only out of love for English literature, Harold Bloom, and any kerfuffle over the eminently rational Richard Dawkins.

 

Explaining John McCain's vote

Here's the take on McCain's vote by the Washington Post's James Hohmann:

The maverick was willing to vote "no" on the "skinny repeal" amendment so that other GOP colleagues who were also opposed to the measure could vote "yes" to save face with the conservative base.

The maverick's "no" vote, then, was actually an anti-maverick vote in customary support of his contemptible party. All politics — no principles; anything to provide his colleagues deliverance from the wrath of their mean-spirited base.

In other words, nothing "heroic." In fact, if Hohmann's take is correct, McCain's was the most partisan vote cast last night.

 

The cruel insanity of Dems helping Republicans

Incredible.

Earlier this morning I heard a former Mitch McConnell aide say on MSNBC that it is now up to Democrats to effect health-care reform; that it's up to the minority, out-of-power party to govern, since the majority, in-power party cannot. The former aide actually said the former and he implied the latter, in all seriousness.

For years Republicans shrieked: Give us total control and wonders we'll perform. Voters did — which was a wonder itself — and Republican incompetence promptly became the Eighth Wonder of the World.

That Democrats should feign helpfulness is politically unquestionable. They should go through the motions of bipartisan comity, they should be the very model of a modern major generality. But to rescue Republicans from their self-inflicted stupidity would be the most egregious form of malpracticed politics ever.

What Democrats could do (assuming Republicans are even looking for bipartisan salvation) is to shore up the Affordable Care Act in policy-wise ways. Voters would be pleased. But President Obama's legacy would then be converted by Republicans into Trumpcare; both Republicans and Trump would get the political credit — and the abomination of Republican control would go on.

Years more of GOP Hellishness would be Democrats' payback, as well as the enduring curse on the republic.

No, a sharp, decisive and brutal stake must be driven into the dark heart of modern Republicanism — via no real Democratic cooperation. After 40 years of pseudoconservative torture, a couple more painful years is a minor price to pay. Republicans wanted total control of health care, budgets, debt ceilings and the like. They got it. They own it. They own it all. Now let 'em drown in their own incompetence. That, they earned.

Democrats would be insane to fish them out of their troubles, and thereby ensure yet more Republican torture of the republic.

 

That thump you just heard was the Republican Party hitting the floor, not health-care reform

Essentially, House Speaker Paul Ryan cast the dooming, decisive vote in the Senate. Yesterday he agreed to negotiate in conference the "terrible," "horrible," "disaster" of a "fraud" called the "skinny bill," as the bill's ultimate supporter, Lindsey Graham, had denounced it. But, as the NY Times points out, "Ryan left open the possibility that if a compromise measure had failed in the Senate, the House could still pass the stripped-down Senate health bill. That helped push Mr. McCain to 'no.'"

I suspect also decisive in McCain's "no" vote was the indescribably incompetent Mr. Trump. As Politico reports: "The president made a last-ditch effort, calling the Arizona senator … as the bill’s fate hung in the balance…. After Pence had spent about 20 minutes working McCain, the senator went off the floor to speak with Trump by phone" — only to return and vote it down. "Stunned gasps echoed throughout the chamber."

So thank you, Mr. Speaker, for sketching a reality that several veteran senators had failed to see; and thank you, Mr. President, for finally inserting yourself in the legislative process. Nice touch. Like all your others, it damned it to hell.

John McCain, however, will get the credit for "the ring of finality," as the Times puts it, to the GOP's unspeakably inept, seven-year crusade to screw millions of Americans, and, in some cases, kill them. "He's now become a hero for Democrats," further notes Politico, even though McCain was, characteristically, back and forth on the skinny bill "as the chaotic day unfolded"; indeed "one Republican insisted that the GOP could have secured McCain’s support had the vote been held earlier in the day." Timing, as they say, is everything. Actual principles? Very little.

Trump and Mitch McConnell now have a bit of explaining to do. So far, the latter's explanation: "What we tried to accomplish for the American people was the right thing for the country." What McConnell wrongly considered the "right thing" was a hastily thrown together, eight-page revamping of almost one-fifth of the American economy.

As for Trump? His explanation comes — where else? — on Twitter: "As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!" So Trump, you see, had this thing figured out "from the beginning." His humiliating defeat was no defeat at all; it was but proof of his transcendent genius.

That's not going to wash with millions of dupes who believed in his campaign promise of better, next-to-no-cost health care. His diehard supporters will of course lay the blame for defeat on traitorous "establishment" Republicans and obstructionist Democrats, but their numbers are increasingly small and they are stupid — to paraphrase President Eisenhower's description of 1950s' Trumpeteers.

There's really nothing left to say that hasn't already been said a thousand times — in various forms, the Republican Party can't govern and Donald Trump is an idiot. With the exception of the ultimately bloody mayhem of 1850s sectionalism, this nation has never been so profoundly sectioned into the reasonably conscientious and the utterly cretinous — with the latter, temporarily, getting their way. It won't last. The GOP and its crackpot leader have been indisputably exposed as the frauds they are. And this morning's party-killing exposure is just the beginning.

 

Fucking Anthony fucking Scaramucci - fucking director of fucking WH communications

For a White House director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci possesses a rather limited vocabulary. Highlights from his New Yorker interview with Ryan Lizza —

"Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac. 'Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the fucking thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months.'"

"I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves."

"I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President."

"What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers."

"I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice."

"Yeah, let me go, though, because I’ve gotta start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy."

Make who crazy?

"Let me tell you something about myself," he said. "I am a straight shooter."

Wrong, Mooch. You're a fucking lunatic. 

 

The GOP fraud of the "skinny bill" (like all the others)

I certainly take Sarah Kliff's point, although I'm somewhat baffled by it. Writes Vox's health-care expert (formerly of the Washington Post's Wonkblog):

Republican senators are expected to vote later today on a plan that many journalists have dubbed "skinny repeal"….

Skinny repeal refers to a bill that would roll back the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to purchase health insurance, as well as a few more minor provisions.

I’ve used the term skinny repeal in my own reporting. But I’ve come to think it’s wrong, and I’m going to stop.

Here’s why: Skinny repeal isn’t really that skinny at all. Rolling back the individual mandate would cause an estimated 15 million to 16 million Americans to lose coverage, according to Congressional Budget Office analyses of that policy. The nonpartisan office expects that premiums would rise 20 percent in the individual market.

The expectation could indeed be valid. What bewilders, however, is something I linked to yesterday. That is, in February 2017, the IRS issued this statement: "[We have] decided to make changes that would continue to allow electronic and paper returns to be accepted for processing in instances where a taxpayer doesn't indicate their coverage status." In other words, in line with Trump's executive order to do so, the IRS ceased enforcing the mandate months ago.

What's more, any "skinny bill" is not intended to become law; it merely "represent[s] a bridge to a conference committee," reports the Post, "and lawmakers are already skeptical that the differences between the two chambers can ever be bridged."

They can't.

The skinny bill is from pure hunger — to do something, which can't be done.

 

The military's extraordinary public rebuke of Trump

In a message today to the Pentagon's top brass, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff essentially said that Trump can go soak his head:

"I know there are questions about yesterday's announcement on the transgender policy by the President. There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President's direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance. In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect …"

… unlike the demented commander in chief.

At least we now know who Trump will be hate-tweeting about next.