The Carpentariat

"America's Best Christian" explains marriage

A reader left a comment this morning referencing Mrs. Betty Bowers, "America's Best Christian," and I thought it appropriate to let Mrs. Bowers speak for herself, in this case on traditional marriage.

 

Trump goes to school, but fails

If Trump's supporters can rally behind that contradiction in "America First" trade policy, they deserve a "10" in mental gymnastics, or perhaps a prize for excellence in Bobby McFerrin governance: "Don't worry, be happy," or as Trump sang it in a later tweet, "Be cool, it will all work out!"

Does Trump believe that? Who knows. But he's beginning to learn that unilateral pronunciamentos in a multilateral world aren't so easy to carry out.

What's particularly odd in this case is that the president actually had good national-security reason to penalize the Chinese firm of ZTE, since it had been violating trade sanctions against North Korea and Iran. But wouldn't you just know it? In this one justified case of coming down hard on a foreign firm, Trump reversed himself. Thus he's established precedent, and now, as the NY Times notes, "It might … diminish the future effectiveness of such controls when applied to other companies."

So even when Trump is right, he's wrong.

 

What's left to do in the Middle East?

OK, so you're Donald Trump, and so far you've done everything you can to roil the Middle East. You've aligned with Sunnis against Shiites, you've canceled the Iran nuclear deal — by which you've encouraged the Saudis to ponder their own nuclear program, you've handed Syria to Putin, you've alienated our traditional allies with a stake in the region, you've put a diplomatically devoid kid in charge of resolving the Israel-Palestine ordeal, you've destroyed any hope for a two-state solution, and you've relocated the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which has ignited violent and deadly protests in Gaza.

What do you do for an encore?

Why, you send two evangelical preachers to speak at the embassy's opening. One, John Hagee, in a 1990s sermon, "seemed to suggest that Adolf Hitler had been fulfilling God's will by aiding the desire of Jews to return to Israel in accordance with biblical prophecy," and the other, Southern Baptist Robert Jeffress, called Islam an abomination from "the pit of hell," and last year said “The truth everyone headed to hell has rejected is that Jesus Christ is the only means by which a person may be saved,” which of course meant that all Jews will go to Hell.

A good day's work, Donald.

 

Donald Trump and Vice President Sean Hannity

If there's a theme to Olivia Nuzzi's "Donald Trump and Sean Hannity Like to Talk Before Bedtime," in New York Magazine, it's that both men can function only in their own little world. The real one is too threatening, too dissonant, too confusing.

Among Trump's "cleared callers" at the White House (other than family members), are the likeminded from his own socioeconomic class: billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire Rupert Murdoch, billionaire Tom Barrack, billionaire Robert Kraft. And then there's "starfucker" Hannity, who lives like a billionaire and thinks like Trump, which means relentless self-reinforcement not of ideology but of comforting ideas. Plus Hannity "actually likes him," said a person familiar with them both, even if "he knows how nuts he is."

The two generally speak each evening after Hannity's latest primetime rant. The president's mornings, of course, are reserved for isolation, tweeting and Fox television. Early in Trump's administration he also watched CNN and MSNBC (mostly "Morning Joe"), which would catapult him into bizarre rages of tweeted retaliation. Eventually, by making him believe it was his own thought, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Press Secretary Sean Spicer convinced him to watch only Fox News.

Said a former WH official to Nuzzi, "Trump’s someone who loves praise more than he likes hate-watching 'Morning Joe.'" The official said "It got to the point that they were just like, 'We need to get him off these channels and onto "Fox & Friends" or else we’re going to be chasing down this crazy-train bullshit from MSNBC and CNN all day.'" Trump now settles in for what a current WH official called "mainly a complete dosage of Fox."

Not that sticking with Fox has done much to level out Trump's manic attacks. Said the former official, "Hannity" and other Fox News programming create "a fucked-up feedback loop" which places Trump "in a weird headspace. What ends up happening is 'Judge Jeanine' or 'Hannity' fill him up with a bunch of crazy shit, and everyone on staff has to go and knock down all the fucking fires they started."

As far as Hannity goes, this strikes one as rather odd, since, as Nuzzi relates, he essentially broadcasts the same show each night: "Regardless of the news of the day, the overarching narrative of the show is the political persecution of Trump, and by extension of Hannity and Hannity’s viewers, at the hands of the so-called deep state and the Democratic Party, and the corrupt mainstream media, a wholly owned subsidiary of both. Everything comes back to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, a phony, petty diversion from what should be the real focus: prosecuting Hillary Clinton."

This explains why, on Twitter and other online forums, so many Trumpeteers persist in focusing on Hillary as an epicenter of evil almost tantamount to Mueller's partisan wickedness. There she is, laughing at justice, while continuing, presumably, to pull the power strings of the Democratic Party. She is the Great White Whale to Hannity's 3-million Ahabs.

Perhaps the most telling line in Nuzzi's article is "Trump abides by the Groucho Marx law of fraternization. He inherently distrusts anyone who chooses to work for him." Thus enters outsider adviser Sean Hannity, every bit as paranoid, loony, isolated and self-satisfied as Trump. All the world is against them, both of them, and each has a base made of Hofstadter's paranoia style.

These are the lunatics in charge of American governance — one, not democratically elected; the other, not elected at all — which explains why our governance is so profoundly unrepresentative of America.

 

In bashing liberalism, a professor defends it

University of Virginia politics professor Gerard Alexander has written a rather peculiar op-ed. In his outspoken judgment, liberals are too outspoken and judgmental. With this exquisite logic, Prof. Alexander proceeds to hector liberals for hectoring conservatives and the millions of dimwits who voted for Trump. "Liberals, You’re Not as Smart as You Think You Are" is a tour de force in pots, kettles and blackness.

Here's an example of Alexander's deep reasoning. "When Kanye West publicly rethought his ideological commitments, prominent liberals criticized him for speaking on the topic at all." Parenthetically, I can't understand why anyone gives a damn about what Kanye West thinks. But to care enough to write that he "rethought his ideological commitments" is just laughable. Last night I happened to be reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' article on West, and ran across this: "In his visit with West, the rapper T.I. was stunned to find that West, despite his endorsement of Trump, had never heard of the travel ban." Liberal judgment affirmed.

Here's another. "Liberals feel more powerful than they are…. Liberals often don’t realize how provocative or inflammatory they can be. In exercising their power, they regularly not only persuade and attract but also annoy and repel." Has Alexander ever encountered a liberal? Far too many are sad sacks who fervently believe the cards are stacked against them in every way: the press is monolithically hostile to them, conservatives are unbeatable supermen, and George W. Bush personally recalibrated Diebold voting machines in Ohio. This is much more annoying and repellent than whatever Alexander has in mind.

And another. "Liberals … have rightly become more sensitive to racism and sexism in American society…. But accusers can paint with very wide brushes…. Some people have cavalierly leveled the charge against huge numbers of Americans — specifically, the more than 60 million people who voted for Mr. Trump." Well, let's see. Trump spent 17 months on the campaign trail consistently denigrating minorities and women. More than 60 million people then turned out to vote for the vile little worm who had made racism and misogyny core elements of his campaign — and so a connection is made. Oh, the intellectual presumptuousness of these liberals.

(Speaking of painting with wide brushes … "Within just a few years, many liberals went from starting to talk about microaggressions to suggesting that it is racist even to question whether microaggressions are that important." Many liberals did this, which in reality translates to a couple hundred airheads on college campuses of thousands, in some cases tens of thousands.)

And another. "When Mr. Obama remarked, behind closed doors, during the presidential campaign in 2008, that Rust Belt voters 'get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them,' it mattered not so much because he said it but because so many listeners figured that he was only saying what liberals were really thinking." Damn right. And so was Obama. Why are liberals condemned for speaking their right minds when clowns like Trump are applauded for prattling on dementedly?

And another. "Even if liberals think their opponents are backward, they don’t have to gratuitously drive people away." If liberals' comments about their backward opponents were gratuitous, I'd be forced to agree. But.

And this final example. "Without sacrificing their principles, liberals can come across as more respectful of others. Self-righteousness is rarely attractive" — writes Alexander, self-righteously.

Those are just the highlights. The good professor provides many other examples of liberals' outspoken judgmentalism that shouldn't be. Astonishingly, it never seems to occur to Alexander that he's bashing his own piece. Not only that, he acknowledges that much of liberalism is intellectually upright if not virtuous but encourages liberals to suppress it, so that the tender feelings of Trumpeteers are spared. What is it that conservatives are forever telling liberals? "Deal with it." Sounds about right to me.

 

What of America's place in the world, post-Trump?

The Post's Anne Applebaum — Pulitzer Prize winner, professor at the London School of Economics, academic specialist in propaganda — takes a hard look at what Trump hath wrought internationally for the U.S., and what she sees should not surprise.

She writes that the "era of American hegemony" — "when the United States was the 'essential' country" — began with the era of the Soviets' destruction, "probably peaked just before 9/11," and has been in decline ever since. But under Trump, its finality has been "accelerated" — mostly because this president "knows no history," he knows not what he's doing, and he seems oblivious to what is actually taking place.

Two fundamental aspects of Applebaum's essay are of interest. She treats American "hegemony" as a rather benign phenomenon instead of the internationally bullying kind to which we've all become semantically accustomed. And she marks its beginning in 1991, with the aforementioned collapse of the Soviet Union. I find it striking that she puts aside the larger historical framework — that which Time publisher Henry Luce called "The American Century," the postwar development of the liberal international order led by the United States. Seen from this perspective, America's decline under Trump looks more like a plunge.

At any rate, and under either framework, Applebaum's initial thesis is incontestable. America once "invested" in the world, she writes: diplomatically, militarily, and "above all in alliances." Through interdependent treaties, namely NATO and SEATO, the U.S. "kept parts of Europe and Asia free to choose democracy, and open for commerce and trade." Our most significant investment came in the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Western Europe, formed the basis of mutual economic growth, and made possible the practical creation of the European Union, now the world's second largest economy.

None of this just happened, none was inevitable. All of it took the careful ministrations of American presidents and engaged Congresses. Trump, however, "seems to believe that he can maintain" our status as a world leader "and even increase it, without making investments," observes Applebaum. And now comes his "abrupt withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal," which has thrust us into "the worst of all possible worlds."

We have in effect become a rogue nation, with others looking for ways around us. We have violated a perfectly serviceable treaty, we have broken our word, we have made ourselves unreliable — and our erstwhile friends in Europe will, in time, make a joke of our useless sanctions. What's more, "Trump recently sent a letter to Arab allies," notes Applebaum, "demanding that they commit more military resources to solve Middle Eastern problems." Without us.

Then comes her analytical coup de grâce, which I shall quote at length.

"How far can Trump get by shouting and goading, by talking about how much the United States is 'owed' by NATO or the Arab world? How far can he get without investing in allies, in diplomacy, in military engagement? Maybe quite far. That moment of American hegemony really was impressive, and there are many places where the aura has yet to fade. It will take quite a bit of time for Europeans, not to mention Russians and Chinese, to find their way around U.S. sanctions on Iran, to invent alternative ways to invest, to create new sources of credit outside the existing international banking system. It will take time before the rearmed nations of the Middle East realize that there is no reason, any longer, to consult the U.S. government before going to war. It will take time before U.S. economic policy becomes so erratic that others decide not to preserve the dollar as the reserve currency, or not to reserve a space for Americans at the top table. It may be many years before Americans finally notice that “hegemony on the cheap” means they no longer have much say in what happens outside their borders. But sooner or later that moment will come."

What Applebaum does not say is that America's international decline may be reversible, which is surprising, given that she underscores the "quite a bit of time" it will take for all these diminutions of American influence to occur. Of course first the next president must decide if he or she wishes to reestablish America's postwar or post-1991 status (presumably, at the electorate's urging). But assuming that decision is positive, Trump's ignorant, arrogant interference may be negligible; it can perhaps be brushed aside subsequent to many a sit-down with foreign friends and monitory messages to foes. Quite possible is that Trump will become but a bad yet disposable memory.

The trick will be in getting him the hell out of the White House just as soon as possible, so that America can get back to work as a large part of a benevolent international order. 

 

Selling bullshit

Republicans love to heave credit on Ronald Reagan for "winning" the Cold War. His steely resolve ultimately provoked Mikhail Gorbachev to throw in the towel and close up his communist shop, they say (always ignoring that Reagan's steely resolve doubled as a tripling of the national debt). Republican idolators steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the subtler yet far deeper explanation of the Soviet's collapse: The U.S.S.R. had been rotting internally for decades, and it finally, inexorably, imploded.

Should anything come of the U.S.-North Korea talks (which I doubt will take place), Republicans will heave yet another fallacy on the gullible American electorate, which will go like this: Much as Reagan did with Gorbachev and the Soviet Union, Donald Trump faced down that wily commie, Kim Jong Un, and provoked him, among other things, into missile-test cessation. They will steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the actual background, on which the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday:

The damage to the nuclear test site that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised to shut down is more extensive than earlier assessments showed, according to a new study by a team of international scientists.

Space-based radar showed that after the initial impact of North Korea’s latest nuclear test in September last year, a much larger part of the Punggye-ri test site caved in over the following hours and days.... The study was conducted by researchers from Singapore, Germany, China and the U.S.

Kim has conceded — or perhaps is about to concede — nothing at all, for he had next to nothing to concede, unless you count thousands of tons of rubble as valuable property. Naturally, it's in Republicans' interest to ignore this reality and go instead with the strongman theory of history. After all, ignoring reality and selling bullshit is just about all Republicans have left.

***

(I love #4.)

 

As always, a man of his word

The swamp wins again.

The NY Times:

Trump will lay out on Friday a broad strategy to reduce prescription drug prices, but in a break from one of his most popular campaign promises, he will not call for Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers.

As is his demagogic custom, he will instead go after what he calls "'foreign freeloading.' The administration will … put pressure on foreign countries to relax drug price controls, in the belief that pharmaceutical companies can then lower prices in the United States."

Yeah, that should work.

 

The stuff of Christian hypocrisy and malice

A couple years ago I described Kurt Schlichter's writing as "the most perfect kernel of 'Fucking nuts' I have ever had the pleasure to read." It's been a while since I checked in with the unhinged Mr. Schlichter. This morning I did, however, and found that he hasn't lost his touch. He's as batty as ever and delighted to prove it in public. (The poor man can't even untwist his, shall we say, thoughts. "I know that when I need theological clarification," he writes, "I seek out the militant atheist who thinks Christ was a socialist and believes that the Golden Rule is that Christians are never allowed to never offend anyone." Come on, Kurt, unraveling double negatives shouldn't be that hard.)

His latest, in Townhall.com, is "*Sigh* No, Being A Christian Does Not Require You Meekly Submit To Leftist Tyranny." Again with the tyrannical left as the right commands the White House, the Supreme Court, both houses of Congress and a massive propaganda machine, in which Kurt is a small but immensely hilarious cog. His theme is simple(-minded) enough: "There are a lot of people frustrated that Christians back Trump and refuse to let his personal life be used as a wedge to pry off their support. They are mad that Christians are not playing their role as defined by their enemies. Christians are supposed to be scandalized and give up and lose. But they won’t."

Of course with those last three words, Kurt demolished any reason for ever writing his jeremiad. Christians won't give up and they won't lose, he writes with high confidence. Thus why all his worry and fuss? On this we're not entirely clear, but damn his worry and fuss are fun. To wit …

"Jesus was not some sort of whiny wimp who refused to confront the establishment.... Jesus made people angry, because that’s what happens when you defy bad people. Being a Christian does not mean that you have to shrug and let the likes of Hillary Clinton be elected so she and her minions can fire up her anti-faith pogrom against those of us who dare worship God and not the elite she represents."

See what I mean? Fucking nuts and loads of fun. But what, you ask, is all this demented gibberish in service of? Perhaps you guessed. "We totally, completely, and fully understand Trump’s personal failings. And … we don’t care." One more passage …

"We don’t care because the culture has established new rules and we refuse to unilaterally disarm in the face of them…. We don’t care because of [Democratic] hypocrisy [Chappaquiddick, Schneiderman et al.]…. We don’t care because we are done seeing our morality weaponized against us…. But most of all, we don’t care because our priority is not whether Donald Trump acted like, well, Donald Trump. This is about survival, specifically our survival as a free people able to live, speak, and worship as we please…. [T]his is an existential struggle between our side and the people who want to crush us."

The only "militant atheist" I can think of who wanted to "crush" Christianity is now a ghost: Christopher Hitchens. Otherwise, atheists are more amused than upset by the Schlichters of the world. And while Trump rips up and spits on the Constitution, those on the left still respect it, especially its First Amendment. Religious liberty was perfectly intact under President Obama, just as it would have been under Methodist Hillary Clinton as president, which the sane among us understand.

When Schlichter writes that he and his fellow fanatics "don't care because we are done seeing our morality weaponized against us," what he's actually saying is that Christians should be free from charges of hypocrisy (which he finds so condemnable among Democrats); which further means that Christian "morality," in his book, is little more than a flexible means to an end — it is not, nor should it be, an uncompromising theological ideology of love and peace. The New Testament may say one thing, but to Schlichter it says something else: Christians should be street fighters and gutter brawlers; they should engage in the slimiest of politics, which Donald Trump offers in spades; they should dismantle Christian brotherhood whenever convenient and politically expedient.

In other words, they shouldn't be Christians. But not to worry, Kurt. You aren't. You are instead the very model of unChristian malice and hypocritical rubbish. The least you could do is articulate it with intellectual sophistication and polish; instead you give us fun-filled drivel of the most theologically treasonous sort.

Well, that's something, anyway. I could go on, but, amusing as he is, that's quite enough of Kurt Schlichter — for another couple years.

 

Your cheerful, Friday morning Trump report

In a closed, White House staff meeting yesterday on the Gina Haspel nomination, the subject of Sen. John McCain's opposition came up. Said Kelly Sadler, a White House communications official, "It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway."

Reports the Washington Post: "A White House spokesman did not dispute the report."

They're probably proud of it.

 

The charming and most excellent Kim Jong-un

It's true. Trump really can screw up even this simplest of tasks. Said the president early this morning, upon the coming home of three captured Americans in North Korea:

"We want to thank Kim Jong-un, who really was excellent to these three incredible people."

Said Victor Cha, Trump's first choice to be the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, until Trump discovered that Cha had criticized his administration, which simply is not allowed (shades of the "excellent" Kim Jong-un):

"We shouldn’t be giving the North Korean leader any humanitarian awards. I mean, he murdered a college student, a University of Virginia college student, Otto Warmbier, and there are hundreds of thousands of North Koreans that are in prison camps today, simply because they want to live in a more free and open society."

A mere "Thank you for the easing of tensions" — if that much — should have sufficed in the run-up to the U.S.-North Korea summit, which I still don't believe will come off. But with Trump, everything has to be outsized — the biggest, the best, the most excellent.

If the summit does come off, I suspect we'll be reading about a lot of inebriated White House aides. How else would they get through it?

 

It's even worse than Cotton = Cruz, Pence = Trump?

I won't dispute Dana Milbank's assessment of Sen. Tom Cotton (in "Cotton is filled with rage. Thank God he wasn’t tapped as CIA director"), since Milbank's assessment comes from those who know Cotton best, his colleagues and staff. He "has surpassed Ted Cruz as the most disliked member of the Senate," they say; "he can be as nasty privately as he is publicly, as uncivil to Republicans as he is to Democrats," he "imputes ill motives to those who disagree with him" — "He is, in short, an embodiment of what ails Washington: no compromise, and no disagreement without disagreeability," writes Milbank.

Nastiness, incivility and disagreeability are certainly what ail the Republican Party, anyway, and it, in turn, plagues Washington. It's a trifle hard for me to imagine anyone outpacing Ted Cruz in those particular contemptibilities, but if everyone on Capitol Hill says so, then so be it.

I do, however, take issue with George Will's latest condemnation, in "Trump is no longer the worst person in government."

"The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness," observes Will, is "America’s most repulsive public figure….

"His pandering had no purpose beyond serving Pence’s vocation, which is to ingratiate himself with his audience of the moment…. Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying."

I don't dispute that Pence is a horrifying, pandering fool of repulsive unctuousness. But other pols have been just as horrifyingly repellent. Trump, however, is sui genesis in his presidential corruption, his prideful ignorance, his coterie of crooks, and his unspeakable recklessness — all while being in charge of the world's most powerful military. Now that's horrifying.

 

"This is [Trump's] swamp of Washington"

He's a self-professed billionaire who went on to become president of the United States, and of all the lawyers he could have hired in his rise to the top, he chose Michael D. Cohen, an ambulance chaser, taxi-cab proprietor and facilitator for Russian mobsters. About this bizarre relationship, one's thinking instantly swings to the science of hydrology — something about levels and what water naturally seeks.

As CNN reminds us, just last month the president repeated that Cohen was his lawyer. Indeed, Cohen has "been seen recently at the President's private club, Mar-a-Lago." All this is clear. "What's less clear," writes CNN, "is how much Cohen discussed the nuts and bolts of policy-making with his longtime boss. One source familiar with Cohen's relationship with Trump said the President 'never talked to Cohen about substantive matters' that Cohen's clients would be interested in."

If the source said that on Trump's orders, then we have prima facie evidence that Trump in fact "talked to Cohen about substantive matters" — because the president always lies. The source also said, according to CNN, that Trump could "ultimately" be angry that Cohen had been "harvesting money off of the president's back." This is an impossibility. Trump, like any mob boss, would have been taking a cut. Water may seek its own level, but boodle always flows up.

This is what Cohen most likely has on Trump — what he has to sell to Bob Mueller, to save his own hide. Observes the Washington Post, "Selling access is common in Washington, but investigators could probe whether Cohen promised specific government actions in exchange for payments, which could cause him legal trouble. If he spent large amounts of time speaking to government officials on behalf of clients, investigators could also explore whether he should have registered as a lobbyist."

In fact the deeper that Cohen submerged himself in Trump's sewer of shambolically organized crime, the better for Cohen. The more valuable his wares, the more he has to trade. It would be best for the presidential mouthpiece if he had promised Trump's specific "actions in exchange for payments." This is probably why Trump is said to be far more troubled about the FBI's raids on Cohen's properties than he is about whatever it is that Mueller is doing in Washington.

No doubt Cohen, on Trump's advice, was screwing his clients — with winks going both ways — just as Trump had always screwed his business associates. Novartis, a Swiss drug manufacturer, shelled out $1.2 million for "Trump’s views on health care" — a subject that Trump, at the time, didn't even know was complicated? AT&T paid Cohen $600,000 for "advice on regulatory matters"? The powerful Washington, D.C. lobbying and law firm, Squire Patton Boggs, needed the ambulance chaser's advice on — anything?

The one firm the Cohen-Trump team didn't screw was Columbus Nova, the New York-based investment firm. It had ties to Russian "oligarch" (read mobster) Viktor Vekselberg, and it paid Cohen about a half-million dollars for, ahem, consulting services. Which was a good investment, in view of the games Trump has played with Russian sanctions.

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the goo-goo organization Public Citizen, told the Post that "This is the swamp of Washington." True enough. And yet an even more applicable metaphor is that of an iceberg — the tip of one, that is.

 

Squib of the day

Perhaps you remember Krystal Ball, the political analyst who used to appear regularly on MSNBC, but no longer. Where'd she go, and what's she been up to? A pretty good scam.

When the People’s House Project launched last May, founder Krystal Ball billed it as an organization that would defy old conventions and show Democrats a new model for winning campaigns. The former MSNBC host said her political action committee would support longshot candidates who embraced economic populism and lacked a political background — the kind of office-seekers who normally don’t receive support from party leaders.

But thus far, nobody has benefited more financially from the group than Ball herself. Of the $445,000 Ball raised for the group, she paid herself more than a third of that — $174,000.... The majority of her salary — $104,000 — came in the first three months of this year alone.

Now for the humorous part: "When first contacted, Ball said McClatchy’s questions were sexist and added that she was writing her own story about why male reporters were focusing on women’s salaries instead of men’s." She soon realized the futility of playing offense. "Later, she said that although she continued to think the initial questions were sexist in origin, she said she welcomed the scrutiny of her group."

The genius of Ball's project is that her "help" goes mostly to Democratic congressional candidates in untargeted districts, which means these candidates are almost certain to lose. Thus they are also candidates who are less educated in the racket of politics, which makes it easier to peel them.

 

A singular competence

From what I can tell, there's only one person in Washington D.C. these days who knows precisely what he is doing, and he is doing everything with precision.

"We certainly have next steps planned out."

"I hope the president goes on 'Fox & Friends' tomorrow, and then I hope that Rudy Giuliani makes the rounds on Fox."

"There are more bombshells coming. There's more evidence. There's more information."

"We are not changing. Especially because the strategy is working perfectly. Period."

— Michael Avenatti, idiot-slayer

 

Pompeo will adapt, but Mattis will go mad

Writing for Politico Magazine, the Brookings Institution's Thomas Wright offers an interesting (though far too wordy) take on the chaotic divisions within the Trump administration's foreign policy schools of thought — one, more thoughtful than the other:

The real divide in the Trump administration is not between hawks and doves. By any reasonable standard, all of Trump’s officials are hawks….

The new divide is between litigators and planners. The litigators, led by Trump and deputized to Bolton, see national security policy as a way of settling scores with enemies, foreign and domestic, and closing the file. They will torpedo multilateral deals, pull out of international commitments and demonstrate American power before moving on to the next target.

The planners [led by Mike Pompeo and James Mattis] insist that the administration must have a plan for the day after the score settling. They know American foreign policy is a marathon, not a sprint. They are thinking about the U.S. position in Asia after a preventive strike, the future of the Iranian nuclear program after abandoning the JCPOA, and the health of alliances after trade wars. They worry that the litigators will get the United States into a whole lot of trouble with no way out—so they urge caution.

Regrettably, we already know which school will prevail, since its headmaster happens to be Trump.

A good way to think of this brutish litigator bunch — "they will … demonstrate American power before moving on to the next target" — is as a kind of earthly Borg, chomping their way in mindless lockstep through the modern world. Eventually, the planning Pompeos and Mattises will either be assimilated or jettisoned, for theirs is an incompatibility that cannot stand. Differences of opinion confuse and annoy Trump, who can handle only one simplicity at a time.

My guess is that Pompeo, being a superb and wily politician, will find ways to accommodate the Oval Office's toddler. But Mattis? He'll ultimately go screaming into the night.

 

The chilly Ms. Haspel

Trump's CIA nominee, Gina Haspel, is a bit on the schoolmarmish, prickly side. When New Mexico's Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich pressed her this morning on her "moral compass," she seemed close to traversing the hearing-room floor and smacking him with a ruler.

With respect to that compass, torture, of course, has been front and center. And in my viewing, Haspel has come back each time with an answer grounded in legalities. It's merely a well-rehearsed strategy, but she also seems genuinely impervious to the ethics of beatings, bindings, sleep deprivation, stress positioning, coffin confinement, "walling" and the star of Bush-Cheney's show, waterboarding.

When she was told by that previous administration that torture was legal and then told to carry it out, she did — no questions asked, no ethics questioned. She now mouths a sensitivity to such ethics. But for a buttoned-up schoolmarm, she sure was easy the first time.

 

The GOP Establishment: Hear it meow

The NYT's Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns present us with a brain-teaser. They report that "Republicans narrowly averted political disaster in the West Virginia Senate primary on Tuesday with the defeat of former coal executive Don Blankenship." Then, just three sentences later, they observe that "In the West Virginia Senate primary, Mr. Blankenship came in a distant third." Perhaps Martin sees a distant third as a narrow defeat, and Burns sees a narrow defeat as a distant third, so they decided to split the difference?

At any rate, the theme of their story, "Cordray Defeats Kucinich in Ohio; Blankenship Loses in West Virginia," is that the establishment dominated yesterday's primaries. In another mind-bending passage, they further report that Trump and McConnell's Republicans "saw Mr. Blankenship as … unworthy of the Senate." With that body's notables such as the McCarthyite Ted Cruz, the lobotomized James Inhofe and the extraconstitutional Mitch McConnell, one would have thought a mere killer would fit right in.

Nonetheless, Martin and Burns's theme of the establishment over radical interlopers holds. The shameless killer did indeed lose — Blankenship seemed to attribute his loss to Trump's "hostile tweet" of Monday; Republican establishmentarian Troy Balderson beat business executive and Freedom Caucus-favorite Melanie Leneghan for an open Ohio congressional seat; for another open seat in Ohio, NFLer Anthony Gonzalez, who was the GOP's choice, defeated a state representative who wasn't; and, on the Democratic side, Ohio's gubernatorial candidate, Richard Cordray, formerly of the Obama administration, defeated left-winger Dennis Kucinich (non-endorsed by Bernie Sanders, but endorsed by his "allies").

The exception came in North Carolina, where, write Martin and Burns, voters "delivered the biggest upset of the night." Three-term Republican incumbent Robert Pittenger lost by two points to Southern Baptist thumper Mark Harris, making Pittenger the "first incumbent to lose renomination this year." He "sought to repel Mr. Harris by enthusiastically embracing Mr. Trump. But he found little support in return from the administration."

Harris is your typical, right-wing evangelical Christian from hell, checking all the obligatory boxes — he supports school prayer, he's pro-life, he's pro-term limits and of course he's agin Obamacare, he's just wild about the Second Amendment and he claimed that Rep. Pittenger, in the words of the Charlotte Observer, "was part of the Washington 'swamp.'" Somewhere there's a mold that churns out these fanatics. The Observer adds that "Though analysts say the district leans Republican, it's expected to be one of the two most competitive in North Carolina" (the other being the state's 13th District, with Democrat Kathy Manning facing GOP Congressman Ted Budd).

By and large, however, the Republican Party is running scared, so it's trying to play it safe. Last night suggested that, in this endeavor, the party will be reasonably successful. The establishment mostly prevailed. The absurdity of it all is that Donald Trump is now The Establishment, whereas just a few months ago he was the dreaded trespasser, the violator of all things Republican-established. With his ascendence and unchallenged entrenchment, the GOP is officially bonkers. After Reagan and Gingrich and George W., it didn't take much of a push.

 

Trump's biggest blunder yet, and our greatest regret

Let the history books show that Trump's violation of the Iran nuclear deal was not the result of any foreign policy strategy. It was instead a matter of personal malice and the fulfillment of pledged stupidity.

That's the adolescent level at which Donald Trump "governs." President Obama negotiated the Iran deal,  so Trump had to destroy it. In addition, this president had promised his perpetually angry base such a destruction, thus it had to be.

Trump was never going to be receptive to expert, pro-deal advice. He made his mind up before ever educating it, which he has yet to do. As Nicholas Kristof said on MSNBC shortly after the president addressed the nation this afternoon, "This was vandalism" — not a statement of informed, reasoned objections to the deal.

We'll be applying the "highest level of economic sanctions" against Iran, said Trump, which only ensures the gravest harm to the United States. In reality we're applying the highest level of alienation from our European allies, essentially leaving the United States friendless. In the Pacific we had Japan and South Korea as pals, but Trump is doing what he can to demolish those good relations as well. Someday we'll not only want our allies' help, we'll need it — instead, payback will come.

At the end of Trump's drivel he talked about the Iranian people deserving better leaders. At first all I could think of was how certainly true that is in America. Then I sat back and asked myself for the 547th time, How is it that the least informed, most corrupt American came to be making these momentous decisions?

It's a recurring nightmare for millions of us and billions around the world. Please, God, make it stop.

 

So fun to watch Trump sweat

Trumpian panic ...

Could anything be more satisfying than that? 

Yes. Reality.

"Two internal polls show Blankenship narrowly ahead of Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) and Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.), and Republicans are spooked" —The Hill

Perhaps the most sublime aspect of the West Virginia circus is that Trump, of all people, is looking down on Blankenship as a crackpot and a crook ("China people," "Cocaine Mitch," and one year in prison for killing 29 employees).

Only the modern Republican Party could cook up a madcap gumbo like this.