Sounds Mildly Important

As driftglass puts it: Isn't that what they call mutiny?

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley says, while holding a glass of wine, he too found out about Trump's transgender ban through the news pic.twitter.com/MKInvXsIRh

— Natalie Johnson (@nataliejohnsonn) July 27, 2017

Vox:

President Donald Trump said his decision to ban transgender people from serving in the military, announced via Twitter on Wednesday morning, came “after consultation with my generals and military experts.” It’s becoming clearer and clearer that he was lying.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis was on vacation when the decision was announced, and privately opposed the move. The Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. James Dunford, said Thursday that the military wouldn’t implement the ban absent a formal, non-tweeted order from the commander in chief. 

And then there were the remarkable remarks that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley made during a luncheon at the National Press Club. 

During the lunch, Milley told reporters that he found out about the ban "the same way everybody else did — on the news." At the time, he was holding a glass of wine.

-and-

What’s more, it’s not even clear what the policy is. Would it bar openly trans people from joining the military going forward, or would it force the military to discharge trans people who are already serving? Would trans veterans — people who have already fought in wars — still be able to get health care through the VA?

These policy points are not details. Without answers to them, it’s literally impossible to figure out what Trump wants the military to do.

So - again - 45* acts like he thinks the military is his own personal tinker toy, and basically, he's right.  With a few exceptions, the CinC gets to do pretty much what he wants to do.  The Brass Hats at the Pentagon are trying to force him into some kind of normal protocol, but there's nothing that says a tweet isn't considered an official order.

And also too don't forget to remember - if it doesn't say specifically that he can't do it, then he'll probably try to do it. That's what he does; he's always looking for the loophole - the SmarmSpace.

BTW, there can't possibly be anyone anywhere who doesn't recognize this as 45* throwing more chaff in the air. He keeps looking for crazier-n-crazier shit he can pull as it gets harder to distract us from his Russia problem, and he can always do with a little help from the ChristoCons, so he "punched a queer" for them.

The guy has always benefited from creating chaos. Of course, now there's real potential for what he thinks is a little bit of his usual self-serving chaos to turn into a fullblown Constitutional Crisis all by itself.

The law of unintended consequences is a real thing.

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Today's Tweet

Fake Lord love the nerds

Why you never wear GREEN on TV🤗 pic.twitter.com/IsC8TuE3Ei

— Jesse McLaren (@McJesse) July 28, 2017

McCain's Big Moment

Grampy McDumfuck has a moment in the sun as he does the right thing (also the revenge-fuck-you-45* thing) by voting no on Skinny Repeal.

Watch Chuck Schumer (grey suit, center aisle, down front) tell his troops to STFU when they start to applaud.

The moment McCain votes no and the Democrats cheer pic.twitter.com/UiJXnC1VFE

— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) July 28, 2017

Plugging Those Leaks

Mr Scaramucci hard at work in service to his Führer Capo President - fuck, the guy he blows every morning. And he's not even officially on the payroll yet - what a guy, huh?

What It Is

Call it the Rube-ification of America. And to borrow from Bill Maher: "Why do we always have to be the stoopid country?"

Paul Waldman, WaPo:

What’s truly remarkable isn’t that a bunch of cynical politicians thought they could ride their base voters’ anger into control of Congress by lying to them about what they could actually accomplish; it’s that their voters actually believed it. And then those voters got even angrier when it turned out that the president had the ability to veto bills passed by a Congress controlled by the other party. Who knew! So instead of looking for a presidential candidate who would treat them like adults, they elected Donald Trump, a man who would pander to their gullibility even more. 

Which brings us to where we are today. Republicans couldn’t be bothered for seven years to actually think about what repealing and replacing the ACA might involve, or whether there would be trade-offs and choices to make, or whether setting up a system that accorded with their conservative philosophy might not actually solve the problems of the health-care system. They thought it would be enough to tell their voters to get mad, and worry later about what it would take to keep the promises they made.
-and-

That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of outright malice in what Republicans are doing, because there is. Their contempt for people who struggle economically is boundless. They’ve wanted to destroy Medicaid for decades, and they just might be able to do it. But their strongest motivation right now is fear, fear of the voters they regard as too dim-witted to be able to make a rational judgment about the most consequential policy question one can imagine.
We dodged one big-ass bullet at about 2:00 this morning, thanks partly to Collins, Murkowski and McCain - but thanks mostly to the simple fact that an awful lot of us have been up on our hind legs pushing back. Makes me proud.

BTW, it ain't over. Both McConnell and 45* issued the standard Daddy State threat - warning us we'd be sorry. 

When they say "Obamacare is failing" and "let Obamacare implode", they mean "we'll continue to sabotage Obamacare to punish you for not going along with us".

So don't get happy.

Modern Parenting

Dammit - why didn't I think of that?

(starting at 4:00)

Keith

The timeline is telling - and with some luck, Mueller's Manhunters have all of this in hand.

Today's Tweet

Politics 101

When GOP controls government, you get fascism.
When DEMs control government, you get health insurance.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) July 25, 2017

It Gets Worse

The Mooch - the guy 45* brings in to be this century's version of Nixon's Plumbers - one of the pros - yeah, that guy - he called Ryan Lizza more or less outa the blue, talked pure shit about Reince Preibus for 30 minutes or so, and then bitched because he'd meant for it to be off the record, but hadn't bothered to make that clear to Lizza.  Yeah - the guy's a real pro.

The New Yorker:

On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.

“Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”

In Scaramucci’s view, the fact that word of the dinner had reached a reporter was evidence that his rivals in the West Wing, particularly Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, were plotting against him. While they have publicly maintained that there is no bad blood between them, Scaramucci and Priebus have been feuding for months. After the election, Trump asked Scaramucci to join his Administration, and Scaramucci sold his company, SkyBridge Capital, in anticipation of taking on a senior role. But Priebus didn’t want him in the White House, and successfully blocked him for being appointed to a job until last week, when Trump offered him the communications job over Priebus’s vehement objections. In response to Scaramucci’s appointment, Sean Spicer, an ally of Priebus’s, resigned his position as press secretary. And in an additional slight to Priebus, the White House’s official announcement of Scaramucci’s hiring noted that he would report directly to the President, rather than to the chief of staff.

Scaramucci’s first public appearance as communications director was a slick and conciliatory performance at the lectern in the White House briefing room last Friday. He suggested it was time for the White House to turn a page. But since then, he has become obsessed with leaks and threatened to fire staffers if he discovers that they have given unauthorized information to reporters. Michael Short, a White House press aide considered close to Priebus, resigned on Tuesday after Scaramucci publicly spoke about firing him. Meanwhile, several damaging stories about Scaramucci have appeared in the press, and he blamed Priebus for most of them. Now, he wanted to know whom I had been talking to about his dinner with the President. Scaramucci, who initiated the call, did not ask for the conversation to be off the record or on background.
Score Card
Fuck - 6
Cock - 3
Shit - 1

Overheard on the intertoobz: "The guy's a pinky ring with legs."

Remember Your Orwell

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

"As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. They do not feel enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil."

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

Today's Pix

Today's Tweet

I never knew what #Kushner sounded like. But he sounds better with #zebras pic.twitter.com/R3NGpBp8mz

— Chris Sampson (@TAPSTRIMEDIA) July 25, 2017

Trae Crowder

An important reminder: It doesn't matter why they're doing these shitty things. It matters that they are doing these shitty things.

The Old Is New Again

And suddenly, we've got Democrats acting all Democrat-ey and shit.

I'm just hoping we don't have to put up with a lot of self-righteous fart-breathing told-ya-so from the Purity Warriors who said they actually wanted 45* because what we really need is a lot of debilitating anxiety and pain so we'd wake up and blah blah blah - fuck that and fuck you.

Letting us in for all that anxiety and pain in order to force us to go along with your idea of good policy makes you no different from the Repubs or the Neo-Liberals who use the same tactics - the Repubs and Neo-Liberals you're always calling assholes.

But hey - it wasn't really your fault. Putin made you do it, right?

Sometimes, our reaction to trauma is what motivates us to change. That does not mean you get to manipulate us by deliberately instigating the trauma.

That's not Smart Politics. That's Terrorism.