Wanderthread

Politics
150

Week in review:

  1. The primary purpose of the Mooch’s appointment was to eliminate Priebus. Mooch’s behaviour was not a case of individual incompetence; he was acting on Trump’s orders.
  1. As for Priebus: mission accomplished, the Mooch succeeded instantly. The demise of Priebus is nothing to celebrate; rotten and pathetic as he is, he was one of the few remaining institutional restraints on Trump’s abuse of authority. The new chief of staff is another of Trump’s crazed bigoted neofascist warmongers. The senior ranks of the US military appear to contain a large supply of such people.

  1. Although I can’t be certain, I don’t think that the Mooch’s dismissal was unexpected. I suspect that he was always intended to be a fire-and-forget single use weapon. Whether the Mooch himself was aware of this is an entirely separate issue.

  2. But the Mooch didn’t only go after Priebus; he also went after Bannon. The implications of this are harder to read.

  3. Ever since the Bannon/Kushner incident, the prevailing narrative has been that Bannon is on the outs. I strongly suspect that this narrative is false.

  4. Trump’s policy is still running in a heavily Bannonesque direction, there is no sign of Bannon being demoted or excluded, and Brietbart (which appears to still be functioning as Bannon’s personal propaganda outfit) has not turned against the administration.

  5. I think that there is a good possibility that the Bannon/Kushner feud was deliberately manufactured to lower Bannon’s profile after the heavy and unwelcome focus he drew in the early days. I’m now wondering if the swipe from the Mooch wasn’t more of the same. Again, the Mooch himself doesn’t necessarily need to be aware of this.

Regardless, it was a bad week. With Spicer gone, the Press Secretary becomes more competent. With Priebus gone, the last RNC agent in the top echelon is removed. The general theme of the week was a purge of RNC establishment figures from the West Wing.

The Enabling Act came substantially closer over the last fortnight. Meanwhile, the media spent the week clutching their pearls and giggling about cocks.

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151

Almost the only remaining bit of US political media that I can still listen to without screaming in frustration:

Tells it like it is; not afraid to call a fascist a fascist.

152

i graduated from college with a double major in math and english and i was 3 hours short of a minor in chemistry (my experience with organic chemistry is a story for another thread). anyway, reading quotes from 45 reminds me of studying the technique of stream-of-consciousness and internal monologue in my upper level english classes. look at this quote from a wall street journal interview in response to a question about the corporate tax rate–

"So I deal with foreign countries, and despite what you may read I have unbelievable relationships with all of the foreign leaders. They like me. I like them. You know, it’s amazing. So I’ll call, like, major ‚ major countries, and I’ll be dealing with the prime minister or the president. And I’ll say, how are you doing? Oh, don’t know, don’t know, not well, Mr. President, not well. I said, well, what’s the problem?

Oh, GDP 9 percent, not well. And I’m saying to myself, here we are at like 1 percent, dying, and they’re at 9 percent and they’re unhappy. So, you know, and these are like countries, you know, fairly large, like 300 million people. You know, a lot of people say – they say, well, but the United States is large. And then you call places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and you say, you know, how many people do you have? And it’s pretty amazing how many people they have. So China’s going to be at 7 or 8 percent, and they have a billion-five, right? So we should do really well."

honestly i thought that passages like that would only be found in novels by authors like joyce or pynchon but 45 talks like that a really large minority of the time. if you unpack that quote you get that 45 is amazed that asian countries other than china or india have populations larger than the population of the states, that he doesn’t understand the difference in gdp expectations between developing and developed countries, that his favorite figurative devices seem to be hyperbole and synecdoche, and that he takes a casual manner when he speaks to the leaders of “major, major countries.”

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154

yep

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155
156

Cracked are becoming more activist:

One bit missed in their discussion of the harms of the drug war, though: the international impact.

Firstly, the slaughter unleashed across the world, both direct and indirect. Military and paramilitary (DEA) US raids across South America. Drug-supported crime and terrorism across the world. Etc.

Secondly: US diplomatic and economic abuse.

For example:

From:

http://dangardner.ca/the-war-on-drugs-and-uncle-sams-big-stick/

Australian kids, who could have lived, are dead because of this bastardry.

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157
158

Do you think Trump’s war with NK or his cabinet’s war with Iran happens first?

159

I had thought from the beginning that Bannon would plan on avoiding NK until the Middle East was safely under control. Going at NK is likely to bring China into play, and China is the sole remaining power that could realistically challenge the USA.

But that was based on the assumption that Trump/Bannon/Putin were working in concert to divide the world between them.

If, OTOH, Putin is instead looking to crash the USA as rapidly as possible, then NK is just the way to do it. Trashing China in the process would be a bonus from Putin’s POV.

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160

I still think Iran will happen first, though we are still careening towards either. Trump’s recent staff shakeup favors Iran significantly, and I think the NK saver rattling he is doing is mostly to try and make China look bad because Russia’s interest economically is to take some of China’s business with the United States - and conspiracy or not Trump has aligned himself with Russia’s interests publicly and by all appearances privately.

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161

BTW: what I’m posting here are best-guess predictions. None of us are working with perfect information; it isn’t absolute certainties but estimated Bayesian probabilities.

Hence, the assumption that Trump is Putin’s fully-controlled stooge.

Is it confirmed sufficiently for a court of law? No. A scientific theory? Also no.

But for a more-likely-than-not Bayesian call? Fuck yes. Has been since the GOP convention.

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162

My answer for that is somewhere between “not yet” and “why the hell not?”

There’s something impeachable in there somewhere. It’s a miscarriage of justice if he doesn’t get impeached.

163

Agreed, but…

He won’t be impeached unless he loses the base. He won’t lose the base so long as he keeps the fascism flowing.

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165

The public does not decide if he gets impeached or not.

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166

No, the GOP Congress does. And they will not commit suicide in the primaries, no matter what Trump does. Unless the base flips, Congress will not impeach.

167

When they lose in the midterms anyway, that’s when they’ll start to impeach.

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168

For several election cycles, the GOP have been loudly proclaiming their willingness to subvert the democratic process by whatever means necessary. The GOP are in charge of electoral administration in the majority of states.

I see no reason at all to expect them to administer the midterms honestly. It would be suicidal for them to do so.

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169

We will see. I think they’ll lose anyway, or at least have a come to Jesus moment… but it’s too early to tell.

170

here’s another great example of what i was talking about. pay particular attention to the australian prime minister, a man of apparently overage or better intelligence, as it slowly dawns on him that 45 is not following his main idea and is instead flying off the topic to some shiny thing he thinks he’s found in the pm’s words.

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171

Yet another in the endless list of demonstrations as to why third-way compromise bullshit is catastrophically destructive idiocy:

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