"The potential for error is huge."

That remark, from an unnamed "administration official," could describe everything that has happened since January 20, but in this instance expresses anxiety about the impending Asia visit of Mr. and Mrs. Trumpelthinskin.  Valiant attempts have been made to "brief" him ("Asia is very very big and they really don't appreciate the 'me so solly' thing you do at parties").  He will be kept away from the DMZ but there is no way to skip South Korea altogether.  Perhaps nobody will bring up the "comfort women" dispute with Japan.  Don't mention nuclear weapons.  Tweeting is not allowed here, as it causes earthquakes.  No praising Nazis.  Just wave.

I imagine he'll be happy to leave Washington, where MAGA now stands for Manafort And Gates Arraigned.  Manafort has more passports than the Von Trapp family, so the judge has ordered him to stay at home and wear a cunning ankle device until his trial begins, or until he works out a deal to roll on Jared or whoever.  Many people are trying to remember exactly what they said the last time they had drinks with George Papadopoulos, and then there are those other, sealed indictments to be opened like the world's greatest Advent calendar.  Pound for pound, this is the most entertaining administration since forever.  I could watch the Manafort perp walk all day, and I love the Papadopoulos guilty plea so much, I may set it to music.

This circus has so many rings.  For instance, try this exchange from the daily Mendacity Matinee:

APRIL RYAN:  What is the definition of compromise as it relates to slavery and the Civil War?

HUCKABEE SANDERS:  I'm not going to get into and relitigate the Civil War.

You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.  The Confederacy didn't sue the United States, they attacked it.  With artillery.  Is that the kind of history they teach in Arkansas?

Nobody with a fourth-grade education or better believes we can go on burning fossil fuel, but Rick Perry came up with the dumbest rationale to date:  it provides electric lights and therefore prevents sexual assault.  Now I grant, sexual assault is a huge topic right now, but this feels like a desperate lunge from a man who, five hundred years ago, would have been hired as a court jester.  Is he asserting there's no other way to produce electricity?  Or that rape doesn't happen during daylight hours?  Who the hell knows?  Rick, as Elektra says in the Strauss opera, shut up and dance.

Have you met the long-promised tax bill?  As Cthulu is my judge it's called "The Tax Cut Cut Cut Bill."  Guess who came up with that.  And is he proud proud proud.  Three scoops tonight!  And three more bottles of Chateau Lafite for the table, as Corporate America celebrates its good fortune.  The ninety-nine percent, not so much.

When Al Franken named his new book Master of the Senate I assume he intended a joking reference to Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson.  It's turned out to be an excellent description of his own role as leader of the hounds pursuing Jeff Sessions.  The Judiciary Committee keeps putting him under oath and Poison Dwarf keeps perjuring himself on the topic of Russian collusion.  And Franken is right there, questioning and re-questioning, narrowing the perimeter and getting ready for the kill, the inevitable indictment.  Somewhere, Harry Daugherty and John Mitchell are saving Beauregard a seat at the Crooked AGs Table.

Speaking of Mitchell, we had a Nixon moment this week.  Remember when Nixon pronounced Charles Manson guilty while his murder trial was still going on, nearly provoking a mistrial?  There was a terror attack in New York on Tuesday (why do they always choose amazingly beautiful autumn days?), eight people dead after a fanatic drove a rented truck into a pedestrian walkway.  The bodies were still in the morgue vehicles when the tweeting began.  Since New York lacks a Muslim mayor like London's, blame was hurled at random Democrats like Chuck Schumer, followed by demands for the death penalty for this "animal."  (All the money in my pocket says Uzbekistan shows up on the next, doomed version of the Travel Ban List.  I wonder where he thinks it is.)  Oh, Donnie, we know you're not one of them fancy Constitutional lawyers like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but could you possibly make a better case for a change-of-venue motion, certain to be filed by any wide-awake paralegal?  How can this guy get a fair trial in a country whose "president" has already condemned him?  Let's move it to, let me think, Iran?

At the end of the day I love to pop a cold one and watch Republicans fight one another like badgers in a hole, even if it's mainly the ones who have decided to quit politics.  Trump's unparalleled ability to divide and disrupt has now spread to the religious, if I read this correctly -- something called "exvangelicals," Christians who don't wish to be associated with Brother Pussygrabber.  One of them is even a grandson of Billy Graham, which suggests a fracture in that famous family.  Protestants are constantly dividing like amebae anyway, but it's fun to cheer them on.  You divide, we'll conquer.  Resist.