...is my friend, goes the old adage, but I just can't apply it in these bad times. Watching the right devour one another is so soothing -- more of a "Go it woman/go it bear" recreation. Every time some piece of shit jumps or is pushed from the roof of that dump on Pennsylvania Avenue, I think, "Well, why were you working there in the first place, you piece of shit?" Disillusioned with the orange moron? Too late. Eat glass.
That goes double for Mitch McConnell, senator and excellent argument for dating outside the immediate family. Last year the Worm-faced One pulled off one of the greatest crimes in American history, stealing a seat on the Supreme Court out from under Merrick Garland based on a reading of the Constitution that only Neal Gorsuch or Al Capone would approve. Last month he came within a single McCain of destroying the Affordable Care Act. But the ACA lives, and so do the sanctions on Russia which the Senate passed 98-2. Clearly Mitch is very very bad at leadering, and he must go.
When a normal president wants the Senate majority leader to do something for him, he picks up the phone or talks to him over a meal. He doesn't insult and browbeat him on the twitter machine where everybody on earth can see it and snicker. Differences in strategy and style are thus kept private, and a united front is presented. Because, you see, presidents need Congressional leaders, who can't be fired or, in most cases, politically undermined...why am I even going into this? All loyalty flows upward to the Leader, and the only question is "What have you done for me lately?"
McConnell is weak and failing and he is dead,
dead to The Leader and he should stop being majority leader because there can be only one Leader, who is always right and does not "own" failure and if you aren't "advancing the president's agenda" you're no good. Sean Hannity says so. Laura Ingraham says so. Many people say so. I'll bet the Cabinet says so, even Rosalind Chao, Secretary of Something Relatively Unimportant, and she's married to Mitch McConnell. At least until The Leader orders her to divorce him. Have you seen this Cabinet? Caligula had less servile courtiers. He also made his horse a senator. The whole horse, not just the Ted Cruz part.
I love it. I love the incompetence and the dysfunctionality and especially the public sniping. It's exactly how Lyndon Johnson didn't pass his monumental civil rights bills in 1964-5. It's so far from FDR's first hundred days it doesn't even look like government. Every day Trump's toxic "agenda" remains stuck in the tunnel is a good day for America. Every day he spends derailing it is a blessing.
Every piece of shit elevated to White House flunkydom and then defenestrated is as exhilarating as an Astaire-Rogers
pas de deux. Go it, Leader! Go it, led! The Superfund site is to your left. Form a line and no pushing.
*********
I don't want anyone to think I'm siding with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, but it's hard not to admire, just a tiny drop, the way he jerks Trump around. I'm not proud of the way it makes me feel, but I can't lie. The KGB trained him well in the identification and recruitment of vain, stupid Americans, and in how to play a long game until the vain stupids could be of use. (Who else is in his net, do you suppose? Alex Jones? Nigel Farage? Brett Easton Ellis?) This week, as Americans fretted about the Korean crazy talk, Putin sent a Russian air force plane to spy on Washington. No response from what we grimly call "the administration." He also ordered 755 employees to leave the US Embassy in Moscow. That got a response: Trump thanked him for reducing the government payroll.
I swear to dog.
Yeah, he thinks all those people will now go work at Starbucks. He has no idea that they're still on the State Department payroll and will probably be assigned to other embassies, if we have any. And yeah, he's pretty much thrilled with anything Vlad does. Needless to say, this has re-ignited talk about pee hookers, shit parties, dead boys, dead dogs, or whatever Putin has on Trump. (In the fact-based community it's a question of what, not if.) It also elicited this fine tweet from Preet Bharara:
"Look, if Mr. Putin continues to insult and undermine America, I will offer him thanks the likes of which the world has never seen." See what he did? He referenced the chest-thumping dick-flapping threats to annihilate North Korea unless they cut it out and stop it and, and, just give up, OK? "Fire and fury" has become a punchline even faster than "covfefe," which is harder to pronounce. Ignoring James Mattis, Rex Tillerson and other relative adults, Trump works in fresh bloodcurdling threats between every round of golf, eliciting similar responses from the other crazy fat guy. (Really, can't Trump and Kim just put on big diapers, get in a circle and wrestle? Leave us out of it.) It's just like the Cuban missile crisis if Khrushchev and Kennedy were drunk and stupid and had Twitter instead of back-channel Swedish diplomats. A little demented, too.
Trump now claims credit for "modernizing" the nuclear arsenal he couldn't even describe during the campaign, apparently by putting Rick "Oops" Perry in charge of it. Shepard Smith, Fox News's toe dipped in the water of reality, has pointed out that he actually cut the budget for said update, which was ordered by BARACK OBAMA! Say goodbye to Shep. The folks on Guam can take comfort in that. Their hideous deaths will be avenged! The PRNK has a clear advantage here insofar as Kim knows where Guam is and Trump doesn't. Why do I think we're probably wrong to worry about climate change just because Greenland is on fire? (Don't even ask.)
"Boom! goes London and boom! Paree, more room for you and more room for me..."