Why didn't I think of that?

I could just post the craziest quotations of the last forty-eight hours and go read a book.  It's the lazy way but it would save me clutching my head and shaking it until the cervical vertebrae pop.  And yet I feel obligated to engage with the madness.

"When the iceberg hits the boat the rats start flying up from the steerage."  There's a new phrase-maker in town and his name is Anthony Scaramucci.  This is primo shit.  For "boat" read "ship," because a boat wouldn't live very long after hitting an iceberg (not the other way around).  Also, those beings in the steerage are passengers of limited means, possibly including the Scaramuccis who immigrated from Italy.  He seems to be getting creative with the old saw about rats abandoning a sinking ship, which is pretty unlikely unless they're rats who really love to swim.  Or fly, as he appears to suggest. I suppose it's a reference to Sean Spicer, who quit last week rather than work for Scaramucci.  It could be a reference to almost anything.  What this custard pie fight of a White House needs is a communications director who can't (or won't) communicate.

"We're taking orders via Twitter now?" was an unattributed quote "overheard" at the Pentagon. The occasion was a shitter-twitter "ban" on transgendered people serving in the military, violating a specific campaign promise and, as usual, leaving the details in limbo along with some 30,000 people. 
No time for discussion, had to get it out there on July 26, the sixty-ninth anniversary of Harry Truman's order ending racial segregation in the armed forces.  I can't wait to see what they have planned for the seventieth.  Trump proves he's not the puppet of Vladimir Putin by proving he's the puppet of the evangelicals.

"The way you eliminate the North Korean nuclear program is to eliminate North Korea."  Yes, he's back -- deep thinker of the right John Bolton.  And how?  Simple:  you "convince China that it's ultimately in their interest to reunite the two Koreas."  I think China would agree; it's the South Koreans who might not be interested in living in the country China would like.  Come to that, how many North Koreans are eager to join what they have been told is an American colony?  And how do you "convince China" to do anything? 

New White House mouthpiece and future Melissa McCarthy avatar Sarah Huckabee Sanders read the jaded press corps the most adorable letter from a nine-year-old Trump fan named Dylan Pickle.  Too long to quote here.  Why can't more Americans have the mentality of a third grader?  Or a hack at the National Enquirer, if that's your cynical opinion.  (Dill Pickle?  Is he a classmate of Ben Dover?)

Are you ready for a presidential tweet?  From the most presidential president since "the late great Abraham Lincoln"?  Hold on:  "So many people are asking why isn't the AG or Special Council looking into the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes.  33,000 emails deleted." 

"So many people," of course, refers to the voices in his head, and "Special Council" means "special counsel," i.e., Robert Mueller.  For the rest we have to speculate:  Comey's "crime" was failing to find that Clinton had committed any crimes, and the "33,000" emails is a number he got from the Russians via Junior or Slumlord-in-Law at the perfectly innocent meeting which may or may not have occurred and is now part of the greatest witch hunt of all time.  Also "I didn't do anything wrong" but totally have the power to pardon myself.  Clear?

Council/counsel.  Expect an executive order banning all homonyms.  Confusing and not necessary.  Who knew there were too different ways to spell to?  Nobody could have known.  Also April will now be called Ivanka.  She worked very very hard in Hamburg and she deserves a month.  And why is it so hard to get a Big Mac in #FailingHellholeHamburg?  If I knew I never would have went.

As long as we're in a comic mode, behold the Monty Python sketch being played out between the Interior Department and Alaska.  Lisa Murkowski and fifty-four other senators voted down the latest iteration of repeal-replace-refudiate Obamacare yesterday.  She was singled out for abuse by Trump and Ryan Zinke, the Interior Secretary, who actually said things could go badly for the state if they don't do something about this nasty (Republican) woman.  ("You got a nice state here, Senator.  Be a shame if it was to get done over, know what I mean?")  Zinke forgot that Murkowski chairs the Interior and Environment Subcommittee, and she's holding up all his appointments.  Bam!  I still think Trump has promised to return Alaska to Russia, but he makes the best deals, as we know, so he'll sell it back for $14.4 million, twice what we paid in 1867.  That'll show her.

The Mooch, as we affectionately call him, just gave an interview to The New Yorker that forces us to hold our deadline.  He really hates Rance Primbus Reince Priebus, calling him "a fucking paranoid schizophrenic."  He wants the Justice Department to investigate Priebus for "leaking" financial information about him which is part of the public record; who's paranoid?  And just in case you wondered, he adds, "I'm not Steve Bannon.  I'm not trying to suck my own cock."  (I wondered what Bannon's job title was.)  You plug those leaks, Mooch!  You fire every motherfucker in the motherfucking White House!  Scorsese is already talking to writers.

"Beleaguered."  You don't call someone "beleaguered" when you're doing the beleaguering.  Trump almost certainly doesn't know what it means; he probably saw it in Melania's English-word-a-day calendar.  Bewitched, bothered and beleaguered Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III certainly is.  For all the pomp of that Confederate treason name, he has the dignity of a squashed louse, refusing to quit until he hears the catchphrase "You're fired."  That may never happen, because Lindsey Graham says the Senate won't confirm another attorney general.  Senators don't like it when you abuse members and former members of the "world's most exclusive club."  Maybe the Mooch can explain to Trump   that the Senate will eventually be his jury.  If he knows.