Hooray, hooray...
Why are relations between the US and Iran (and other places) not even worse? Because Jim Mattis imitated Horatio Nelson. When a signal from the Admiralty ordered him to do something he didn't want to do, Nelson would put his telescope to his empty eye socket so he could say he never saw it. Mattis told The New Yorker, "Trump thinks out loud. Do you treat it like an order? Or do you treat it as part of a longer conversation? We treated it as part of a longer conversation." Which is a polite way of saying, "I ignored the idiot." And that, Rod Rosenstein, is how to leave office with a modicum of dignity.
Erik Prince, Ditsy DeVos's smarter brother, is in the shit. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has referred a criminal complaint to the Justice Department alleging Prince lied to Congress in 2017. Given this Justice Department, and given that perjury is a job qualification in this regime, Schiff may be whistling in the dark, but it may prevent Prince from getting a juicy government contract to send his mercenaries to Venezuela.
Louisiana's Isle-de-Jean-Charles is being swallowed up by the Gulf of Mexico, and the indigenous people who live on it, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, will soon have to leave whether they want to or not. It's a tragedy for a few hundred people, and re-locating them will cost millions. By contrast, Jakarta, capital of Indonesia and home to ten million, is also sinking fast. What will that dislocation cost in money and disrupted lives? The new capital may set up in Borneo. The people will be on their own, I suspect. When those Chinese create a climate change hoax, they give it everything they have.
Tweet of the day: On Mike Pence's visit to the carrier Harry S Truman, Brendan Ponton writes, "Sailors being instructed to 'clap like we're at a strip club' (not kidding)." Suddenly I want to see Battleship Potemkin. I don't know why.
The West Wing of the White House now has its own popcorn machine, and the patio outside the Chief of Staff's office serves beer and wine during Friday "happy hour." Thus Mick Mulvaney has solved the morale problem of his staff and created a new one for the custodians.
Jacob "Honey Trap" Wohl is back. His attempt to stop Robert Mueller with accusations of sexual misconduct worked so well, he thought he'd try it on Pete Buttigieg. The regulars at his hipster coffee shop stopped typing to point and laugh at him. Speaking of Mueller, he has some issues with the attorney general's distortion of his Report. Maxine Waters says William "Low" Barr should quit or be impeached, but she'll have to wait her turn for semi-literate abuse -- Trump has a new hate object. Letitia James, attorney general of New York, is a woman of color with power, and you know how that harshes his executive time. She's going after his beloved NRA as well as his business enterprises, so expect a withering nickname any minute now. With plenty of these!!!!!
This is fun, said nobody in this picture. The champion Baylor women's basketball team was forced to visit the White House and, like the Clemson football players before them, fed a lunch of junk food in elegant Styrofoam containers. Somebody wrote a speech and put it in front of the short-fingered vulgarian so he wouldn't start ranting about Colin Kaepernick or NO COLLUSION before collecting his free jersey from the coach on the left.
As Nick Charles would say, "And how are all of your folks?"