The Mooch is out

Seems that Squirrel-Hair did it directly, but at new Chief of Staff Kelly's request.

Will no doubt have more to say later, but initial observations and questions:

• Who the hell are they going to find willing to take that job now?
• What does an egomaniac like Scaramucci do after the double whammy of his wife filing for divorce and getting canned after being sure his boss liked him making an ass of himself?
• What will the next move in the Kelly era look like?
• What will the water-carriers havre to say?

Memo to those who think DJT has any interest in being a unifying figure for Republicans: forget it; he doesn't give a flying diddly about you

Tim Alberta at Politico has a pretty compelling insight into the dynamics between the various factions comprising the Republican Party and Squirrel-Hair:

Trump has, since taking office, consistently referred to Republicans as though he is not one himself—it's invariably “they” or “them.” Unlike past presidents of his party, Trump entered the White House with few personal relationships with prominent Republicans: donors, lobbyists, party activists, politicians. This liberated him to say whatever he pleased as a candidate, and, by firing Priebus, Trump might feel similarly liberated. The fear now, among Republicans in his administration and on Capitol Hill, is that Trump will turn against the party, waging rhetorical warfare against a straw-man GOP whom he blames for the legislative failures and swamp-stained inertia that has bedeviled his young presidency. It would represent a new, harsher type of triangulation, turning his base against the politicians of his own party that they elected.

Things have not yet escalated to that point. But some, including officials in his own administration, took the dismissal of Priebus as a signal that Trump is willing to go rogue against the GOP. Only a day after announcing Kelly as his new chief of staff, the president let loose on Twitter, calling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not changing the Senate’s filibuster rules and saying Republicans “look like fools” for not doing so. He also tweeted that Democrats are “laughing at” the GOP. In a final taunt, Trump tweeted that Republican senators would be “total quitters” if they move on from health care following last week’s failed repeal vote.

More and more, Trump talks as though there are Democrats and Republicans—and him, a party of one. If unchecked, this poses an existential threat to the GOP. But it’s not Priebus’ problem anymore. He is officially unemployed. And with a few weeks of summer vacation remaining, chances are that he—along with his wife and two young children—will soon be on an airplane, heading someplace where no reporter will be waiting to ask him about Donald Trump.

Anybody who hitches his or her wagon to this walking disaster is an utter fool and deserves his or her fate.

Speaking of Republicans with terminal cases of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome . . .

Head-scratcher move from He Who Hugged The Most Equal Comrade When Looking For Lots of Federal-Sandy-Aftermath Gravy:

Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill requiring New Jersey schools use the preferred pronouns of transgender students, according to a Saturday report.

The legislation (S3067/A4652) compels New Jersey to mandate that state schools call transgender students by their preferred pronouns and prohibits them from making transgender students use bathrooms opposing their gender identity, according to NJ.com.

Get back to your private beachfront and leave the world alone, you corpulent malevolent force.

Newt Gingrich and my powers of intuition

Newt Gingrich is, to use a hackneyed phrase often trotted out to nod kindly in the direction of someone with serious character flaws, a complex man. He's a former history professor and was the architect of the 1994 Contract With America, which suited the national mood at the time and allowed the Republican Party to seriously contend once again with a long-dominant Democrat party at the national level. He demonstrated, at least for a brief period, that he could craft policy visions with a Democrat president without losing sight of his principles. On the strength of that, the country's welfare system was reformed and Bill Clinton submitted a balanced budget to Congress in 1999. He was instrumental in setting the stage for the largest capital-gains tax cut in history. Gingrich is a fellow at both the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution. He's made some interesting documentaries on a variety of subjects.

But I've always had a feeling about that guy. Part of it was his flaky marital track record, beginning with marrying his high-school math teacher and later divorcing her. His daughters from that marriage seem to have assimilated that disruption in their lives and now apparently regard their father warmly, but there's no getting around the selfishness of his behavior. He then cheated on his second wife with the woman who became his third. And there was his whining about not being seated near enough to President Clinton on Air Force One on a foreign junket. In his post-Congress life, policy-related inconsistencies began showing up, notably his support for the Medicare Part D prescription-drug benefit. There was his infamous 2011 statement, during a Meet the Press appearance, that he didn't "think right-wing social engineering [was] any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," referring to his opposition to Paul Ryan's plan to phase out direct Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, a statement he had to try to walk back. One of the most infuriating instances of clouded vision on his part was endorsing Dede Scozzafava, a moderate, instead of conservative  Doug Hoffman in the special-election three-way race in New York's 23rd congressional district in 2009. Hoffman was closing on her in the polls at the time.

The hints were increasing that his wonkery was becoming just plain flakiness.

Then came his early and still-strong enthusiasm for Donald Trump. It's to the point where his frequent appearances on Sean Hannity's FNC show have become vomit-inducing gushfests.

And now a red line has been crossed.

Newt Gingrich is dead to me. He has negated every laudible accomplishment in his curriculum vitae with what he has had to say on John Catsimatidis's radio show:

Said Gingrich:

“President Trump is a New Yorker. He and Scaramucci sort of speak the same language,” Gingrich told John Catsimatidis in a pre-recorded interview on AM970 in New York City that aired Sunday. “And this way he has somebody that makes him kind of comfortable that he’s getting taken care of.”

“Scaramucci is an entrepreneur. He’s aggressive. Trump wants somebody willing to mix it up with the news media, get in the middle of the fight, try to get things done,” Gingrich said.

“I think that Trump is probably very happy with him right now and I think that’s good for Trump himself because part of the reason Trump gets so aggressive is he feels like nobody is defending him and he’s gotta go out and do it all himself,” he continued.

So what did Scaramucci say that Trump so identifies with, he, the one evangelicals to this day say is “God’s man”?

“Reince is a f—— paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said in the interview.

He also went after chief strategist Stephen Bannon, saying, “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c—,” he said.

“I’m not trying to build my own brand off the f—— strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country,” Scaramucci continued.

And reports are that Trump was quite pleased with the outburst. Gingrich’s comments seem to confirm that.

“Scaramucci is a natural fighter. He likes being in the media, he likes being seen, and I think he’s having a good time, and I think all of that comes together in a way that is very positive,” Gingrich said.

There was nothing positive about how he behaved, what he said, or Trump pitting Scaramucci against Priebus, or anybody else in the White House for his own amusement.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Newt has lost his mind.

And people with his kind of influence who have lost their minds are dangerous.

History, the subject that drove Gingrich's interest in public policy, will not be kind to this dark figure.

Saturday morning roundup

Donna Carol Voss at The Federalist does a magnificent job debunking "Six Ridiculous Arguments in Favor of Transgender Soldiers."

The latest North Korean ICBM test, which demonstrates NK's ability to strike deep into the North American land mass, is all the argument we need for pulling out of the P5+1 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. Appeasement of rogue states with nuclear ambitions leads to ever-more-grim sets of circumstances.

John Merline, writing in the IBD, like many commentators, wants to lambaste McCain and Murkowski for finishing off any hopes of repealing the "A"CA. As I said yesterday, the "skinny repeal" they and many others voted down was no repeal at all. Yes, I realize it was intended to keep the door open to further tinkering, but, based on this Congress's track record for tinkering leading to an actual free-market model, I didn't have much in the way of expectations for it this time. Merline does remind us of why the whole lot of them need a swift kick in the tail end, though. Leaving the "A"CA in place will mean further collapse along these lines:

ObamaCare's premiums have climbed by double digits in both 2016 and 2017, and will do so again in 2018. The number of insurance companies offering plans in the exchanges has steadily declined as their ObamaCare losses mounted. This year, dozens of counties might have zero insurance companies offering plans in their exchanges.

Enrollment in ObamaCare exchanges, which was supposed to be 24 million by now, has stagnated, and the individual market as a whole has shrunk by more than 2 million, largely because those who don't get ObamaCare subsidies can't afford insurance any more.

States that expanded Medicaid are now struggling with the unexpectedly high costs of what was supposed to be a gold mine of free federal money.

Speaking of the "A"CA, Peter Heck at The Resurgent  has a must-read on the morally repugnant spectacle of "faith leaders" supporting it.

Take Brian McClaren who begged his followers to:

“Join nuns from around the country to oppose stripping health care from tens of millions.”

First, McClaren is guilty of bearing false testimony. Left-wing Christian activists Shane Claiborne and William Barber tell the same lie repeatedly (the latter irresponsibly and immorally attributing efforts to undo Obamacare to racism). If the law requires me to purchase a Ford vehicle every year, repealing that law does not “strip” me of a vehicle. It gives me the option whether I want to buy one or not. McClaren, Barber, and Claiborne know this, but they lie for explicitly political reasons.

Allahpundit at Hot Air on how the possibility of a Kid Rock Senate run in Michigan, and the way his polling numbers blow the doors off both Dem and Pub competition, seals the deal for us now being in the age of the celebrity candidate:

Schwarzenegger could be ignored as an idiosyncrasy of California politics. Al Franken could be written off as the lucky winner of one of the tightest Senate elections in U.S. history in a blue-wave year. Trump could be dismissed as sui generis, a billionaire TV star who caught a populist wave just as it was starting to crest. But when “the pimp of the nation” is leading a Democratic incumbent in a battleground Senate race, there’s no going back. President Gary Busey is no longer out of the question.

Streiff at Red State systematizes into eleven points his thoughts on what John Kelly replacing Reince Preibus as White House Chief of Staff means.

First thoughts on "skinny-repeal' fail in Senate

It was a lame as hell piece of legislation. It would have repealed exactly what?

Squirrel-Hair, who has never given a microsecond's thought to what economic liberty is, but was focused on getting a "win," says that skinny-repeal blockage has "let the American people down."

This Senate is worthless. I can't imagine how it could redeem itself. Does anyone think tax reform is going to unfold like some beautiful flower?

It gets worse by the hour

Well, let's see.

I am on record as saying that in some ways, having to do particularly with the socio-sexual level of scouting's place in our culture, the Boy Scouts of America has gone adrift.

But Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh is on the solidest of ground issuing a statement basically saying, "Sorry to Scouts, their leaders and families for the way the President of the United States of America got way out of line at our National Jamboree."

Then there is the latest column by Kurt Schlichter, a case study in the phenomenon of the formerly principled, deep, funny and articulate champion of conservatism becoming a pathetic apologist for the disgusting Donald Trump (and, once that Kool-Aid had permeated the subcellular level of his vital organs, Kid Rock). He actually finds it within himself to tell his idol to scale back at least one kind of stupid that DJT is going full-tilt on:

 . . . sometimes you need to lay down some real talk, and this comes from someone who supports the president’s efforts to defeat the enemies of normal Americans. So let me say it clearly.

Stop this nonsense about Jeff Sessions.

Stop it. 

Have some discipline and focus. The day you decided to start pummeling Sessions was supposed to be about health care. The fact that our cunning, turtlesque majority leader managed to drag the first vote over the finish line notwithstanding, all you did was annoy your allies. When pretty much every Twitter pundit and senator and Rush and Hewitt and Tucker and Breitbart and a bunch of other alt-righties are all on the same sheet of music, that’s an indicator that you’re stepping all over your Schumer.

And Sessions is your friend – you can’t diss a friend, or you won’t have any friends left. And you need friends, because the enemy is coming.

Then there is the Joint Chiefs of Staffs telling Squirrel-Hair: "We don't respond to tweets. If we're going to reverse the transgender policy put in place a year ago by the previous administration, it's going to be done according to official procedures."

And then there is the unfolding Scaramucci disaster. LITD brought you up to date as to where we were early today., but now comes the Ryan Lizza piece in The New Yorker:

Scaramucci was particularly incensed by a Politico report about his financial-disclosure form, which he viewed as an illegal act of retaliation by Priebus. The reporter said Thursday morning that the document was publicly available and she had obtained it from the Export-Import Bank. Scaramucci didn’t know this at the time, and he insisted to me that Priebus had leaked the document, and that the act was “a felony.”

“I’ve called the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice,” he told me.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“The swamp will not defeat him,” he said, breaking into the third person. “They’re trying to resist me, but it’s not going to work. I’ve done nothing wrong on my financial disclosures, so they’re going to have to go fuck themselves.”

Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said, speaking of Trump’s chief strategist. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.” (Bannon declined to comment.)

He reiterated that Priebus would resign soon, and he noted that he told Trump that he expected Priebus to launch a campaign against him. “He didn’t get the hint that I was reporting directly to the President,” he said. “And I said to the President here are the four or five things that he will do to me.” His list of allegations included leaking the Hannity dinner and the details from his financial-disclosure form.

I got the sense that Scaramucci’s campaign against leakers flows from his intense loyalty to Trump. Unlike other Trump advisers, I’ve never heard him say a bad word about the President. “What I want to do is I want to fucking kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people,” he told me.

He cryptically suggested that he had more information about White House aides. “O.K., the Mooch showed up a week ago,” he said. “This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, O.K.? Because I nailed these guys. I’ve got digital fingerprints on everything they’ve done through the F.B.I. and the fucking Department of Justice.”

“What?” I interjected.

“Well, the felony, they’re gonna get prosecuted, probably, for the felony.” He added, “The lie detector starts—” but then he changed the subject and returned to what he thought was the illegal leak of his financial-disclosure forms. I asked if the President knew all of this.

“Well, he doesn’t know the extent of all that, he knows about some of that, but he’ll know about the rest of it first thing tomorrow morning when I see him.”

I'm currently watching Sarah Huckablee Sanders on Martha McCallum's FNC show try to put lipstick on this pig. It's the lamest blob of boilerplate I think I've ever heard from a White House press secretary, and that's saying something. She is sticking with the our-focus-is-on-moving-forward-on-issues-the-American-people-want-us-to-resolve talking points that any halfway savvy observer can tell is a way to feebly attempt to disguise utter panic. Whatever they're paying her, it's not enough.

I won't finish with my usual rant against the fools, phonies and careerists who handed us this mess.

But I will say once again, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio could have beaten Hillary Clinton and we wouldn't be covering our heads as the glowing red timbers fall around us.

Another day, more Trump White House chaos

New communications director Anthony Scaramucci made his big splash founding Sky Bridge Capital. Earlier this year, friends helped him get a job at the Export-Import Bank. It was always intended to be a short-term proposition, a means of bringing him into closer proximity with the the Trump orbit.

Well, now he's pretty darn near the orb around which everyone in Squirrel-Hair World orbits, and he seems to have gotten the hang of what you do in such a position: foment chaos and ill will.

He, of course, is on a rampage against leakers. He has been making Obama-era holdovers the focus of his inquiry into the matter.

But now, he wants to pin a big leak on Chief of Staff Reince Preibus - without a shred of evidence:

Scaramucci, it seemed, was trying to shoot the king—or at least publicly frame him. And he wasn’t shy about telling others at the White House that he believed Priebus had leaked the documents, though he couldn’t provide evidence to support his claims. Still, Scaramucci vowed to make Priebus pay.

The plan, however, had several flaws. The most significant: Scaramucci didn’t just lack evidence that Priebus was behind the leak—he lacked evidence that there had even been a leak in the first place.

As Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos reported late Wednesday night in the New York Times:

Mr. Scaramucci filed the disclosure form in connection with his previous, short-lived job with the Trump administration at the Export-Import Bank. Under federal law, anyone can request such a report on a government website 30 days after its receipt.
Mr. Scaramucci’s report says it was filed on June 23, which means it could be publicly released by the bank on July 23, or last Sunday. Politico did not indicate whether it obtained the report through such a regular request.
Asked why he thought the report had been leaked illegally, Mr. Scaramucci responded by text: “They aren’t in process yet.” But when told his form could be released on July 23, he did not respond further.

There was a reason Scaramucci didn't respond further: There had been no leak. The Politicoreporter, Lorraine Woellert, obtained Scaramucci's disclosures by making a routine request to the Ex-Im bank for the form 278e that Scaramucci completed before working there. Woellert tweeted:"Mr @Scaramucci's Form 278e is publicly available from ExIm. Just ask."

If Scaramucci didn’t respond to the Times, he did respond—where else?—on Twitter. Scaramucci tweeted an Axios piece headlined: “Scaramucci appears to want Priebus investigated by FBI.” Scaramucci denied the claim: “Wrong! Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks. ‪@Reince45.”

This guy fits right in.

UPDATE: If you want a real taste of the Scaramucci style, check out this WaPo account of his sit-down with CNN's Chris Cuomo. And I thought Squirrel-Hair had a wild way of expressing himself.

Trumpism is not conservatism in any way, shape or form

For all you slavish devotees who not only pledge your unwavering fealty to Squirrel-Hair, but fist-pump at the mere mention of those in his circle who likewise speak the populist / nationalist dialect, is this okay with you?

A new report from The Intercept says White House chief Svengali strategist Steve Bannon is behind the drive to saddle the “very wealthy” with a 44 percent to marginal tax rate.

Currently, that tax rate sits at 39.6, and the plan has been to lower it, as part of a tax reform bill.

Axios previously reported that Bannon was looking to raise the top marginal rate to “something with a four in front of it,” but the 44 percent bracket for those making $5 million and above is a more fleshed out proposal. Bannon has described himself as an “economic nationalist” and has pushed a populist agenda both through his previous outlet Breitbart News and and as an adviser to Trump. That contrasts with what Bannon calls the “globalist” wing of the party, made up by people like economic adviser Gary Cohn (though both Cohn and Bannon come from Goldman Sachs).

When the broad outline of the tax hike was reported earlier, Breitbart covered it favorably. The hike on the very rich would face stiff opposition from congressional Republicans, but find favor with Democrats.

Of course it would find favor with Democrats.

Squirrel-Hair gives us a peek into his "thinking" on the matter:

In a Wall Street Journal article earlier this week, the president toyed with the “what ifs” factor of tax reform, saying, “if there’s upward revision it’s going to be on high-income people.”

“I have wealthy friends that say to me, ‘I don’t mind paying more tax,’” he said. White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders was pressed on Trump’s comment at a televised briefing Wednesday, and said that further specifics of the plan would be released shortly, with an emphasis on tax cuts for the middle class.

He even trots out that silly-ass leftist self-congratulatory meme about not minding paying more in taxes.  Warren Buffet also spouts that crap. Just cut a damn check to the IRS at what the 44 percent would be and leave your fellow citizens alone.

No, nobody owns this except the fools who think these clowns are visionaries and great historical figures.

But count on Squirrel-Hair to put one up on the good-move side of the ledger in the most bone-headed way possible

David French at NRO:

he did it exactly the wrong way. Not only did he reportedly blindside members of the military (he tweeted while Secretary of Defense James Mattis was on vacation) with the timing and nature of his announcement, his typical inflammatory tweeting was guaranteed to ignite yet another round of public fury. He virtually guaranteed that the next Democratic president would immediately reverse his policy, and he made any congressional debate that much more challenging.

"Just tweet it" seems to be . . .

the virtual motto of a Trump presidency that’s lacking in legislative accomplishments, falling inexcusably behind in presidential appointments (including judicial appointments), and finding itself mired in endless, self-defeating controversies. Sure, there are some “conservatives” who measure success merely by the volume of “liberal tears” spilled on Twitter, and by that measure Trump is a smashing success, but infuriating opponents while alienating the persuadable middle is a poor way to build a political coalition or to prevail in public debate.

Leave it ti S-H to taint even his best actions.

Trump's role in the repeal-only fail

Jim Jamitis at Red State lays it out:

President Trump is indeed ready to sign a repeal-only bill. He was ready to sign an Obamacare-light bill as well. He’s ready to sign anything at all. That’s part of the problem.

As the top Republican he has shown zero leadership on perhaps the most important issue for the people who elected him. His willingness to sign anything provides no boundaries for Republicans in Congress.

Simply telling Congress that we won’t sign a healthcare bill that does X or that does not do Y would help them zero in on a target. Personally I don’t think the President really understands or cares about the issue. Condemning Obamacare as a disaster is just a red meat applause line for his rallies. Trump wants to get the “win” but he doesn’t know how to define victory.

Being guided by a desire to be seen as a "winner" rather than by any coherent set of principles was front and center in the reservations of those of us who cajoled and exhorted against this buffoon from the get-go.

Real human freedom is taking palpable blows as a result, but that doesn't seem to be a concern to the slavish devotees.

A former first-tier hero of conservatism jumps the shark

Can anybody tell me how the hell Rush Limbaugh thinks he is getting from his starting point (Trump's humiliation of Sessions looks baffling on the surface) to his conclusion (Trump is once again playing 4-D chess) with this line of "reasoning"?

His launching point really comes as a subtext to some kind of point he seems to be trying to make about Scaramucci asserting that most administration leakers are Obama-era holdovers.

Get any sense about how he's going to tie those together? Me neither.

Anyway, the launching point:

This public disrespect of Sessions by Trump has never made sense to me in any away. It hasn’t made sense in common sense. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t think Trump is off his rocker. I’m not like the media who think Trump is unbalanced and deranged. I think Trump is a masterful user/manipulator of the media. You take Sessions, whose incomparable value is advancing the Trump immigration agenda, and that’s why Trump was elected.

Okay, while I think Rush is deluding himself here, so far he's being coherent.

And the next paragraph is a pretty linear  recounting of what Jeff Sessions has been experiencing over the last year-plus - with one exception: this "diversion" business.

If he gets rid of Sessions, there’s nobody he’s gonna find that, A, could get confirmed, and, B, would continue what Sessions has started on implementing and enforcing the Trump immigration agenda. And that’s his value; not, you know, running defense on this Russia business. I think it’s all been a diversion. I go back to the time Sessions endorsed, through the campaign, through the transition, and then Sessions being nominated to be AG, the confirmation hearings. What’d they do? They savaged the guy as a typical Southern plantation-owner racist.

By "diversion,"  Rush seems to mean "running defense on this Russia business," given where he goes next:

They said despicable things about him, making fun of his middle name: Beauregard. But this week he has found new acclaim. He has been attacked by Trump, and the media and his fellow colleagues — the Democrats in the Senate who wanted to destroy him — have come to his defense. They’re speaking of his integrity, of his honor, and how it’s unseemly that some pig from Queens would ever treat somebody this way. Trump says (summarized), “He’s not doing a good job getting rid of the Russian thing. He’s not going on a good job investigating this. He’s not doing a good job. He’s disappointed me. He shouldn’t have recused himself.”

By the way, on that, don’t you think it’s still a little odd to still be carrying a torch for something that happened six months ago? I mean, get real. Sessions recused himself six months ago, and Trump’s acting like he’s still not over it? Come on, folks. So yesterday, Trump savages Sessions again. “Where’s the investigation into the leaks? That’s what’s really important here! We need the leaks investigated,” and today we get news that Sessions is on the verge of announcing just such an investigation, and this investigation will be of these Obama embeds and these people in the deep state, who they are and what they’ve been.

‘Cause real felonies have been committed there, and Comey wasn’t interested in it. We don’t know how many other people the FBI may or may not have been. Comey was not interested and didn’t do diddly-squat. So Trump sends out a call last night and the announcement Sessions is doing that, and Scaramucci is on Fox News today saying Obama holdovers are responsible for all of these leaks. I think that’s what this is all about. They know who the leakers are. ‘Cause there’s so many of them.

There’s so many leaks, so many leakers, they have to know who it is, at least some of them. So with Scaramucci today blaming Obama holdovers for a series of damaging leaks that have rocked the White House, distracted the White House, whatever, these leaks and these Obama holdovers are not helping, and he hinted that more staff changes could be on the way. He said: Listen, we have to crack down on leaks on a number of different fronts. What’s happened now in this past week, all these Sessions distractors are now saying what a great guy he is.

How much integrity he has and how it’s just unseemly for Trump to be treating him this way. I myself have joined that particular complaint. So now Sessions announces this investigation, and what are they gonna say about Sessions? Well, they’re gonna have to go back and say he’s a tool. “He’s a coward. He couldn’t take it! Trump starts ripping him publicly, and what does Sessions do? He bows town and says, ‘Okay, what can I do to get back…?'” So they’re gonna savage him again, but it’s gonna be funny to watch because they don’t have the credibility to do it anymore because they’ve just spent a week or more praising the guy.

As if Sessions detractors were a major factor in all this.


He then digresses into a reminiscence about how the Beltway establishment hated Dick Cheney when he was Bush 43's Vice President, and how that establishment then fawned over Obama and Kerry.

Well, okay, but he utterly fails to demonstrate any kind of parallels between any of that and this.

In the current situation, we're talking about the president publicly showing the utmost disrespect to his attorney general, who happened to be one of his earliest staunch supporters. And it's pretty clear Sessions is very pissed about it. Sessions and Trump are not even speaking. That fact is not going away just because the Justice Department is going to investigate leaking. To make some kind of connection, one would have to believe that Sessions was willing to be a pawn in a game designed to root out the deep state. I can't think of anything less likely.

Does this last paragraph tie it all together for you?

Jimmy Carter, smartest guy, he ended up not doing too well, but smart, smart focused guy. All these Democrats are brainiacs, John Kerry, and every Republican is an idiot. And so now here we have what appears to be a bit of media manipulation, a little bit of a feint. You put this all together, I think this is what they’re doing. I think it makes some sense because what’s apparent doesn’t.

Me neither.

Rush is trying to read tea leaves that aren't there.

Something happened when he got wowed, during the campaign season, by the unprecedented nature of the Trump phenomenon. He readily admitted then, and still does, that Trump's worldview and way of operating is not conservative, occasional policy dovetailing notwithstanding.

He was mightily impressed, in a slightly different way from the slavish devotees such as Hannity and Ingraham, but it now appears he may be going full fanboy.

And it's made a wreck of his vaunted powers of analysis.

The Obama holdover is probably one type of leaker. It's not the only type. Government is so big and the people comprising it have such an array of agendas that any number of people could have motivations for speaking clandestinely to reporters.

Then there's Squirrel-Hair himself. A guy who would rail repeatedly about the New York Times being a dispenser of "fake news" and then sit down with it for an extensive interview in which he gets the humiliate-Sessions ball rolling doesn't seem to be too preoccupied with message discipline.

No, Rush, it's what it appears to be. Trump demands fealty and ring-kissing from those who step into his orbit, but he doesn't give a flying diddly about reciprocating it. He's just an impulsive loudmouth.

The facts are so obvious as to be contortion-proof. Squirrel-Hair isn't nearly clever enough to mystify anybody.

Rush, you may be reaching your sell-by date.

One for the good-move side of the ledger

It's going to be tricky engaging in polemical exchanges with defenders of the former status quo on this, given that it comes after a number of days characterized by cringe-inducing utterances by Trump, but this was entirely the right thing to do:

President Trump on Wednesday said he would ban transgender people from any military service.

Trump made the announcement, which would represent a major shift in military policy, on Twitter. He said he had made the decision after consulting with "my generals and military experts."

"After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military," Trump tweeted.

"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you"

Transgendered people suffer from a mental disorder. To have the federal department charged with the mission of carrying out the defense of the nation acting as if it's not has been deeply troubling. If any governmental function needs to prioritize basic reality, it's the military.

As I say, the key to defending this move in the face of the howls and shrieks from the Left is to stick to the principle involved. This is not about Trump. (The Hill article to which I link tries to make it so, calling it a "gesture to the conservative base";  that may well be how he is looking at it. This is so overwhelmingly sensible, though, that no serious person can find a substantive reason to oppose it.)

We move forward today a little less burdened by infantile delusions. Not that we are completely free of them, but when acquiescence is removed on a given front in our culture war, it merits noting, in a celebratory tone.

 

Squirrel-Hair becomes more of a hot mess by the day

There was his address to the Boy Scouts National Jamboree in West Virginia. Not only did he not approach it as a chance to exemplify some dignified bearing to some 21st-century teens who are inundated with a grimly huge number of examples of a complete lack thereof, he exhibited an utter lack of focus. He meandered. He veered back and forth between whining and bragging. As others have pointed out today, it came off like one of last year's campaign speeches.

As I say, this was a perfect opportunity to show these young men that a US president prioritizes decorum. He blew that with the line, "Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I'm in front of the Boy Scouts?" And, of course, he then proceeded to speak about politics, taking the crowd back through the popular vote and electoral-vote numbers from last November, even getting into the arcane details of Maine's vote split.

He talked about "fake news." He tried to concoct an inspirational anecdote using a decades-old Manhattan cocktail party attended by "some of the hottest people in New York" as his material.

He made a point of pointing out that Obama never attended a National Jamboree.

He tried to make a veiled threat to HHS Secretary Tom Price's face funny, saying that if Price, who was onstage with him, couldn't use his influence in Congress to deliver enough votes for "A"CA repeal, he might just have to fire Price. Ha ha.

And that last embarrassment is just one of this still-young week's examples of the bad vibes he is befouling his cabinet with.

“If he can get treated that way, what about the rest of us?” one of the President’s Cabinet secretaries asked me with both shock and anger in his voice. I am told reports about Rex Tillerson (not who I talked to) are legitimate. He is quite perturbed with the President’s treatment of his Attorney General and is ready to quit. Secretary Mattis (also not who I talked to) is also bothered by it. They and other Cabinet members are already frustrated by the slow pace of appointments for their staffs, the vetoes over qualified people for not being sufficiently pro-Trump, and the Senate confirmation pace.

In fact, the Cabinet secretary I talked to raised the issue of the White House staff vetoes over loyalty, blasting the White House staff for blocking qualified people of like mind because they were not pro-Trump and now the President is ready to fire the most loyal of all the Cabinet members. “It’s more of a clusterf**k than you even know,” the Cabinet secretary tells me about dealing with the White House on policy. It is not just Tillerson ready to bail.

Then there are the tweets chiding Sessions and Congress for not looking into Hillary Clinton's Russia connections and other shady behavior. This, from the guy who said for Sessions not to pursue that because he "didn't want to hurt the Clintons."

And now he's even bad-mouthing the acting FBI director on Twitter.

Memo to the Stupid Party and the media figures who licked the Kool-Aid off the soles of S-H's wingtips in the summer of 2015: You clearly didn't give a flying f--- about seeing conservatism prevail. You could have put the energy you expended on this buffoon into any number of fine, principled contenders.

It is so very late in the day.

A primary law of this universe: Everything is a tradeoff.

I just had one of those situations in which a social-media post about a given subject elicits an interesting, amusing comment thread, and, at a given point of said thread, someone sees an occasion to try to point out a flaw in my conservative worldview.

The thread's primary subject was my attitude and behavior. A secondary subject was the nature of bureaucracy. It's important to keep that order clear. Switching it would amount to excuse-making, as you'll see.

Here's my post:

So, before I made the phone call I just concluded - to a customer-service representative at a large bureaucratic organization - I gave myself a talk: "Okay, Barn, maintain a calm demeanor and a productive attitude. No stuttering, yelling or cussing."

I failed miserably.

I think the situation was resolved favorably, but it was ugly getting there.

There were some comments along the lines of "Man, I can relate!"

I think people liked a comment I chimed in with:

 I know you, like me, are not much for organizational formality, and I find myself put off from the get-go by their tone. They have to wade through all kinds of doo-dah ("So what is the best number to reach you?") and no matter what you're saying, they begin their response with "Mmmm-hmmmm." Hey, toots, how about if we talk to each other like a couple of human beings?

And on it went. A couple of people asked if I had to press one for English. In fact I did.

At one point, a left-leaner chimed in with this:

Capitalism, Barney. It's what you crave: the big, behemoth money engine. No soul, no integrity. Just profit.

I responded that one must remember that I, as a consumer, have an array of choices.

A couple of trains of thought left that station and I've been on them both ever since.

One has to do with her use of the term "big, behemoth money engine." Now, that's just what the company in question is, but that in and of itself does not discredit capitalism. The service that the company in question provides is only offered by a small number of companies, it's true, but why that is so matters very much.

If it's a case of the classic scenario where an industry lobbyist takes a relevant legislator out for a swank three-martini lunch and says, "So what's involved in keeping small upstart competitors out of the picture?", that is not the free market that we conservatives are championing. We're talking about the real deal, not collusion or cronyism. Everybody who wants a shot at the market has to be able to give it a go.

The other train of thought had to do with my end, my role as a consumer. If the above scenario is not in play, if the field is wide open, and due to the start-up capital required or whatever, the field of service providers is just small, then my choices are circumscribed, and, depending on my priorities, may come down to me saying, "The hell with it, I'll go without TV." (That's unlikely, since my wife has a vote on the matter equal to mine.)

After all, I have no right to television service.

There is no right to television service.

For the same reason there is no right to health care.

Television service, health care, haircuts, oil changes for your car all exist because some human beings somewhere have some kind of motivation to provide them. No human beings so motivated, no services.

We're now zeroing in on one of the most primary laws of this universe we inhabit: Everything is a tradeoff. Everything.

No one can guarantee you a satisfactory setup for your life. And it's pointless to talk about level playing fields, and how it's unfair that some people are born into comfortable circumstances and others into conditions of dire need. It was ever thus. The only kind of equality that it makes any sense to talk about is equality before the law.

And any attempt to short-circuit this given about our universe is going to entail curbing someone's freedom. We either have to make somebody provide the service we are interested in, which is called involuntary servitude, or we have to limit the choices of those interested in a particular service, if we're going to collectively try to provide it to them. We've just seen a real-world example of that, in which Charlie Gard's parents weren't able to explore an option outside of what the British Health Service and the European Union deemed acceptable.

This is why conservatism is sometimes called a tragic worldview, as juxtaposed against leftism's utopian quality.

The material world is as it is. We have over ten thousand years' experience with it, and it has yet to yield us any kind of magical endless bounty.

Big Rock Candy Mountain this ain't. But we have our freedom. Well, as long as we value it enough to defend it against those still sure the peak of that mountain is just over the horizon.

Fostering esprit de corps is not Squirrel-Hair's strong suit

The guy may have a base of brainwashed #MAGA zombies that will carry his water to the ends of the earth, but among those who sign on for paid positions in his inner circle, it doesn't appear to matter if you got on his train the moment it first blew its whistle.

Rudy, you ought to think about that before you start taking this seriously:

President Trump is reportedly considering the idea of nominating Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and an ardent Trump defender, to serve as attorney general.

Axios reported Monday Trump is exploring the possibility of tapping Giuliani, and the news comes days after the president has publicly expressed frustration with the current attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times last week, Trump said he was angry with Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into ties between Trump campaign officials from Russia.

The president said he never would've tapped Sessions for attorney general had he known the former senator would recuse himself from the probe.

"Sessions should have never recued himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else," Trump told the New York Times in an interview.

A little side observation: Conversely, it doesn't matter if S-H rips you a new one, either. He may sit down with you, as he has here with the New York Times, and give you all kinds of revealing tidbits with which to dominate a news cycle.


But with regard to dissing Sessions, he got right back into it this week:

Trump also slammed the "beleaguered" attorney general, as well as the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, in a tweet Monday morning for not investigating Hillary Clinton.

"So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?" Trump tweeted.

Perhaps the way top officials and close confidants come and go with S-H is why, according to a MediaEthics.org poll, only 27 percent of Americans think he will serve out his term.  With the flightiness he demonstrates daily, I wouldn't be surprised if many among the other 73 percent think he may just fire himself.

UPDATE: Recommended reading: Michael Brendan Dougherty's NRO piece "Donald Trump Is a Nightmare Boss."

Monday roundup

There was a moment of giddiness last November when Squirrel-Hair, with outgoing Indiana governor Pence in tow, struck a deal at Carrier's Indianapolis plant to save 800 jobs set to be transferred to Mexico. Well, pink slips are starting to be issued in a 338-job layoff there. Different reason - the jobs are being automated rather than sent to Mexico -  but the six-month bit of breathing room for middle-aged workers was somewhat, shall we say, briefer than they'd been led to believe when S-H pulled his grandstanding stunt. This is what you get when you elect a president who has never given a microsecond's thought to how the free market works.

Peter Heck at The Resurgent reports on the latest developments on the cultural-rot front:

If anyone is looking for clarification on just how stupid we have allowed ourselves to become, an actual conversation that took place between supposed American adults and that is now making its way around social media, pretty well provides it.

Fair warning, though I have substituted for some terminology in the conversation, it’s nature is raw and rather explicit:

• Sean McManus: Isn’t trans sex inherently queer? If I were having sex with a transwoman that had a penis, and I stimulated that penis [orally] and [rectally], it would fall under [queer].
• Shay Serenity: Nope. If you’re a cishet (cisgender heterosexual) man having sex with a woman you are having straight sex.
• Sean McManus: Something about {orally stimulating a penis] just feels queer to me though
• Sasha Tourk: Well, it’s not. It’s a woman’s penis. It would only define as gay if you were a woman as well.

As a father of three young children, I shutter to think all of the various versions of “the talk” I’m going to have to have with my kids. The days of an evening chat or a sitting-on-the-end-of-the-bed conversation about the birds and the bees are long past. I’m fully anticipating needing to prepare an entire lecture series that spans a couple months.

The first two weeks will be spent breaking down new vocabulary – stupid words society has recently concocted and pretends are real things when they’re not. Things like “cisgender,” “heteronormativity,” and “androgyne non-binary.”

Then we’ll have to spend a few days on what is offensive and what is not offensive terminology. When I grew up, “queer” was a derogatory term that demeaned effeminate boys. And while I think it can still be used that way, it is also employed intentionally by some as their self-professed sexual identity.

And for the love of Pete, I’m going to have to make sure I include a thorough explanation of the new pretend-reality that says sexual attractions are innate, inborn, and unchanging (and how it should be illegal and regarded as child abuse to attempt to change them through counseling), while sex (or gender) is a mere social construct that can be fluid and change daily depending on mood.

Mayonnaise-Hair's IT guy's hard drive is now in FBI hands:

FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.

Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, an individual whom FBI investigators interviewed in the case told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

An additional source in Congress with direct knowledge of the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into “serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network” by Imran and three of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.

Capitol Police have also seized computer equipment tied to the Florida lawmaker.

Tech millionaire and homosexual activist Tim Gill is the point man in the faith-haters' push to stamp out the religious-freedom-legislation movement, saying he intends to "punish the wicked."

Memo to Palestinians: If you don't want metal detectors at the Temple Mount, then don't be shooting Israeli soldiers stationed there. 

You can't just shut down the Russia investigation

I don't see how Trump can fire Mueller.

Yes, there are compelling reasons for doing so. To a person, everybody on Mueller's 14-person staff is a Democrat who has contributed to Dem campaigns. The scope of the investigation is already metastasizing. The investigation is serving as a distraction from the far more plainly discernible Russian connections of the Clinton machine, not to mention as a distraction from the agenda that Republicans would like to pursue.

But there is an undeniable stench wafting off Trump's own maneuvers throughout all this. As David French at NRO has reminded us, it was questionable Russia dealings that led to the departure of a campaign chair, national-security adviser and foreign-policy adviser. Then there is the meeting in the Oval Office with Kislyak in which, in his signature style, Trump bragged about firing Comey and called him a "nut-job" - and shared classified information. Of course, there is also the "I'd love that!" line in Jared Kushner's email exchange with Rob Goldman.

Another NRO piece on this, by Andrew McCarthy, shows that Assistant AG Rosenstein, in order to burnish his impartiality bona fides, gave Mueller a free reign in the investigation's scope that Justice Department regulations don't actually allow him to grant. You think Capitol-Hill Dems had any interest in bringing that up with him?

Then there is the latest tweet flurry from DJT himself, full of whining ("It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.") and gloating ("As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!"). This is not the alpha-male behavior that DJT's slavish devotees think he exhibits.

So, while there's validity to the witch-hunt view of this, there's also the recklessness factor. 

To just say, "Can Mueller and let's get on with the agenda the American people want from our government!" is to gloss over too many actual questionable developments, developments that stem from the fact that we elected as president someone unfit for the office.

Think-tank experts need to keep first principles in mind when they offer prescriptions for issues

I think a paragraph from my "Further Explorations" post this morning needs some additional fleshing-out.

A guy like Schlichter is just as culpable as any pussy-hat marcher for the death of Western civilization. The whole where-have-the-position-papers-from-the-think-tank-pointy-heads-gotten-us mentality is nothing short of Jacobin.

This is particularly so, since, along with Kurt Schlichter, someone else has been on my mind lately for his damage to actual conservatism. The kind of damage and the reason for inflicting it are different, but it's damage nonetheless.

I'm speaking of the American Enterprise Institute's James C. Capretta. Here's what I wrote about him in a recent post:

Economic viewpoints? They range from Elizabeth Warren-style redistributionism to libertarian clamorings for a pure free market. In between are odd phenomena such as the insistence of the American Enterprise Institute's James Capretta that any alternative to the "A"CA include strong tax-policy incentives for people to not let their insurance coverage lapse, a heavy-handed, government-based stance for an ostensible champion of economic liberty to take. It's the government-has-to-do-something mentality that has led to Congressional paralysis over the "A"CA's repeal.

Neo-neocon wrote about him today, remarking on Capretta's latest piece, "The GOP's Collision With Health Care Reality." The relevant part here is when she discusses . . .

 . . . Capretta’s final suggestion for the GOP, a piece of advice that seems even more divorced from reality than the GOP’s actual behavior:

To get a better result with a renewed push, the GOP should include willing Democratic senators in the conversation. The party should understand that the goal should be a plan that costs less, reduces regulations, and injects serious market discipline into the system, even while ensuring all Americans have ready access to insurance. That may mean finding a compromise approach on giving individuals strong incentives to enroll in health insurance. The party should also work with GOP governors to find a reasonable and affordable compromise on Medicaid, one that provides for significant reform of the program, with more state control and clear federal budgetary restraints, while also providing a safety net to all Americans with incomes below the poverty line.

It would have been easier, and more fruitful, to pursue a bipartisan deal of this kind in the weeks after the election. That was when Republicans had the most power. But they still have some leverage. They should use it when the time is right to begin the process of moving health policy in a direction more to their liking. That will inevitably be less satisfying to some than writing a bill entirely on their own because of the compromises that will be necessary, but this kind of legislation would be far more likely to pass, and also survive when political control inevitably changes again. 

The sole exception to the disconnect from reality expressed there is one sentence that makes sense to me: “The party should also work with GOP governors to find a reasonable and affordable compromise on Medicaid…”. Other than that, I’m not sure what world Capretta is living in, but it’s not the one I’ve been observing for well over a decade. I don’t see any possibility of compromise on the part of the Democrats, who threw down the partisan gauntlet when they passed Obamacare in the first place. On Obamacare, the only compromise they will accept is complete capitulation from the GOP. 

You may be seeing why I bring this up in a post that starts out lambasting a Trump water-carrier for pooh-poohing think tank scholars.

My point here is that a guy like Capretta makes it sticky for a guy like me to defend think-tank scholars. His view of the health-care situation is so mired in wonkery that he can no longer see what his premise ought to be (individual liberty). Indeed, he is so ate up that, as Neo points out, he actually thinks reaching across the aisle to the anti-freedom folks would have some point to it.

Fortunately, we have the likes of the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner to counteract such pointy-headedness:

1. Health care is neither a right nor a privilege; it’s a commodity. Worse, it’s a finite commodity. There are only so many doctors, so many hospitals, and so much money, and there are limits to how much these things can be expanded. That’s why no health-care system, outside Bernie Sanders’s fantasies, provides unlimited care to everyone.

Every health-care system in the world rations care in some way, either through bureaucratic fiat (Scandinavia, the U.K.), waiting lists (Canada), or price (that’s us). One can argue about which of these rationing mechanisms is fairest or most efficient, but let’s not pretend that it won’t occur.

 2. Coverage is not access. Democrats like to pretend that giving everyone a piece of paper called insurance guarantees them access to the care they need. It’s sort of like magic. Say the right words, and poof, medical care appears. But in the real world it doesn’t work that way.

For example, take Medicaid, which is responsible for more than half the increase in coverage under Obamacare. Nearly a third of primary-care physicians won’t accept Medicaid patients.

3. The uninsurable are uninsurable. Let us remember that the definition of “pre-existing condition” is: someone who is already sick. It’s a little like driving your car into a tree and then trying to retroactively buy auto insurance. It won’t work. Insurance is the business of spreading risk. But for someone who, say, has cancer, there’s no risk to spread, just cost. That’s not insurance, it’s paying for health care.

Obamacare tried to square this circle by mandating that young and healthy people buy insurance to offset the cost of providing care to those already sick. It turns out that didn’t work. Not enough healthy people signed up to pay for the influx of sick people. Insurance companies either dropped out of the market, cut back on high-quality providers, or raised premiums. All of this forced more healthy people out of the insurance pool and threatened an adverse-selection death spiral.

4. Medicare is not a success. Faced with the wreckage of Obamacare, Democrats are increasingly embracing the once controversial idea of “Medicare for all.” Most of them would start slowly, with a Trojan-horse “public option,” a taxpayer-subsidized plan that would undercut private insurance, but the result would still be a government-run national health-care plan based on Medicare. 

We need to arrange a beer summit for Capretta and Tanner so the latter can school the former - and thereby put a cork in the pie holes of "populism" fans.

That's quite a turnaround

Ed Willing at The Resurgent asks, "Am I the Only One Creeped Out By This?"

No, Ed, LITD is plenty creeped out, too.

Yesterday's gushfest at the White House was a sight to behold:

Some highlights from yesterday’s love session:

“The presidents a winner, OK? And what we’re going to do is a lot of winning.”

“I love the mission that the president has.”

“I love the president, I obviously love the country.”

“The President has very good karma, and the world eventually turns back to him.”

“He’s genuinely a wonderful human being.”

“I love the president. I’m very, very loyal to the president.”

“I love these guys. I respect these guys.”

“I love the president.”

“I’ll tell you what I find when I travel around the country, people love him.”

“The president is phenomenal with the press.”

“The president himself is always going to be the president.”

“I think he’s got some of the best political instincts in the world, and perhaps in history.”

“He’s done a phenomenal job for the American people.”

And the best zinger of the day…

“He’s the most competitive person I’ve ever met, OK? I’ve seen this guy throw a dead spiral through a tire. I’ve seen him at Madison Square Garden with a topcoat on. He’s standing in the key and he’s hitting foul shots and swishing them, ok? He sinks three foot putts.”

A somewhat different tone from that he was taking a few months ago:

President Trump is “going to be the president of the Queens County Bullies Association.”

“I don’t like the way he talks about women.”

“The politicians don’t wanna go at trump because he’s got a big mouth and they’re afraid he’s gonna light them up on FoxNews.”

“You’re an inherited-money dude from Queens County. Bring it on, Don. You’re an inherited-money dude from Queens County.”

“This is right out of Elizabeth Warren’s playbook. Are you a Democratic plant for Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren? Stand here and prove otherwise.”

“He’s a class-divider.”

There's also his track record of donating to Democrat campaigns. Oh, wait, that's actually something he has in common with his boss.

Naturally, Scaramucci gave his first interview to Breitbart, talking about a string of desired "wins" that Steve Bannon has written on a wall.

And the business about how he hopes Sean Spicer "goes out and makes a lot of money."

These people are as hollow as jack-o'-lanterns.