General Chaos In The White House

Martin "BooMan" Longman thinks Trump WH Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly is headed for the exits in Trumptempber:

I will be mildly surprised if Kelly lasts to the end of the month. I don’t see the point in what he is trying to do, and I doubt he’ll be able to see any point in it for much longer. He can’t save this administration or even keep it afloat. And I don’t think Trump will stop disrespecting him in front of the staff, so unless he enjoys being treated like Reince Priebus he’s going to take a walk or get himself fired before too much longer.

Things might be different if the administration were not taking on water faster than Kelly can bail it out, or if September were not set up as a crucible custom-designed to destroy the illusions of Republicans and Trump supporters everywhere. But playtime is over and the grim waiter has brought the check. Failure will begin to roll down like waters, and haplessness like a mighty stream. Brother shall deliver up brother, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause their political death.

Through it all, for as long as he lasts, Kelly will vainly try to steer the ship away from the shoals, and he’ll take the blame for errors not of his making and decisions made against his advice.

The real issue is what happens after Kelly departs, depending on how much damage is done with Trump ending DACA, possibly shutting down the government and wrecking the country's credit rating over the debt ceiling, botching tax reform, and running out of time for whatever hail Mary play on Trumpcare happens before September 30.

The same goes for Rex Tillerson, by the way.  He's not much longer for this State Department job in this dumpster fire of an administration, and neither is Treasury Secretary Gary Cohn.  It's possible and even likely that the three of them (along with Gen. Mattis at the Pentagon) get a hold on the country and run things as best they can for a while, but eventually they will realize that Trump is headed for history's septic tank and anyone along with him will be covered in crap.

It's even more likely that Mueller will come along and pull the plug anyway.  Where the country goes from there, I can't tell you.  Trump won't go quietly or peacefully and things could get violent pretty fast.  But Kelly could be a big part of directing the country towards the lifeboats.

Maybe.

We'll see. 

Scorched Earth, Hurricane Wind And Fired Staff: Trumptember

As Martin BooMan Longman reminds us, September is when Trump and the GOP will remember every cloudy day.

It’s happened. The Republicans’ month-from-hell has arrived. It’s the month I coined a meat-grinder. And it’s going to get off to the slowest of starts owing to the long Labor Day weekend holiday. There will much work for responsible government officials to do, and very little time for them to get it done. 

Yet, the president is the farthest thing from focused. The Russia investigation is terrifying him. He wants to fire his Secretary of State and it looks like Rex Tillerson would welcome that outcome. He’s fuming at his National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn because Cohn essentially called him a racist in public, but he doesn’t feel like he afford to fire him because he’s trying to pivot to a doomed tax reform effort. He’s chomping at the bit his chief of staff put on him to limit his access to fake news and crazy supporters and advisers. He’s still obsessed with his media coverage and the camera angles and attendance he gets at his political rallies. He’s more energized by his efforts to settle scores with Republican senators who have crossed him than he is with attracting the support of Democratic senators he will soon need. He’s recently made open war on the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, both of whom have been increasingly critical of his behavior and performance. Most of all, he misses the brief period during which the job of president was kind of fun.

And every day this month, more pictures of Hurricane Harvey's devastation will come in and the job of fixing it will be on his shoulders too.  Tillerson and Cohn might not survive the month as cabinet secretaries, hell Tillerson might not survive the weekend.

The job is hard, and Trump was never up for actually doing it.  Having the orange idiot at the helm is no longer funny or darkly humorous, but deadly serious (especially if Hurricane Irma comes to visit the US too).  Things are going to go extremely badly this month for Trump and for the country.

As Trump lashes out like a badger in a burlap sack, his attacks are not suited to his challenges. He threatens to force a government shutdown if he doesn’t get funding for his border wall, but he has absolutely no plan for getting the votes he’d need from Democrats to get his money. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get the debt ceiling raised or whether or not he should attach it to disaster relief. He doesn’t even have a theory of where the votes will come from or what he might need to trade for those votes. He says that he still wants Obamacare repealed but doesn’t understand that the opportunity to do that will end the moment the Republicans pass a new budget aimed at enacting tax reform. He senses that he’s completely blocked legislatively and calls for an end of the Senate’s filibuster, not realizing that he doesn’t and never will have anywhere near the votes he needs to make that change. 

This is how September is beginning for the president. Lord knows how it will end.

That's the killer.  There are plenty of very plausible scenarios right now where as bad as September is going to most likely be for us, October can easily be far worse, and a lot of those disturbingly plausible scenarios involve Trump saying "screw it" and doing something colossally stupid out of anger, frustration, dementia or a combination of all three.

Hope you enjoyed summer, because fall is going to be a killer.

Last Call For Taxing Our Patience, Con't

Trump went to Springfield, Missouri today (Hi Bon Tindle!) to talk about tax cuts for the rich and how they will help America unleash economic lasers or cash missiles or some other such flaming trickle-down supply-side Laffer curve garbage. Also specifics are for losers who don't trust Glorious Leader Trump.

President Donald Trump urged Congress to act on a sweeping overhaul of the tax system Wednesday, promoting the loose outlines of a plan that he said would ease the burden on "forgotten" middle class Americans while also reducing taxes for businesses. 

"I want to work with Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — on a plan that is pro worker and pro American. No more fitting place to launch this effort than right here in the American heartland," Trump said, speaking at one of the city's largest manufacturing plants. 

His speech offered four vague points for reform, but did not put forth much in the way of policy specifics — something White House officials warned would be the case beforehand. 

In additional to advocating for a business tax rate of 15 percent, Trump pushed for simplifying the tax code while urging "competitive" tax codes that he said would translate to higher wages. He also called tax relief for middle class families "crucial" and highlighted the need for affordable childcare, addressing a campaign promise spurred by his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who attended Wednesday's event. 

Trump said he was "fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done" before telling Missouri voters they should vote sitting Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill out of office if she didn't get on board with his plan. 

"If she doesn't do it for, you have to vote her out office," Trump instructed the crowd. He then closed out his roughly 34-minute remarks with a plea to "at least try to put the partisan posturing behind." 

During his remarks, the president seemed to subtly slight National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn — an instrumental administration voice on tax reform — when he left Cohn out of a long list of shout outs to administration officials and state lawmakers. 

"Anybody I forgot?" he asked the crowd after listing off other White House officials like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Cohn, who days earlier criticized the president's response to white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, was traveling with the president Wednesday, according to the White House.

How to Trump:

1. Some sort of tax plan, shut up FAKE NEWS.
2. Forget your Treasury Secretary.
3. About 5,000 square miles of Texas/Louisiana are still underwater but tax cuts
4. Perhaps now would be a good time to talk about Republicans cutting FEMA's budget by billions to pay for The Wall. 
5. Also talk about defeating Claire McCaskill at an official White House event and not a campaign rally but is so get in losers we're going to the mall.
6. Anyone bother to ask how much Donny's tax cut plan will save Donny in 2018?
7. I guess we'd have to see Donny's tax returns first.
8. Oh and the tax cut plan, we'd need that too for the math part I guess
9. MAGA, bitches.
10. Buy Trump merchandise on the website!

Something like that.

The reality is that Republicans will finish raiding the country's tax base with massive austerity cuts, massive tax cuts for the richest Americans, and plenty of surplus military gear for cops to keep the other 99% of us in line once we figure out we outnumber them 100 to 1.  Like Trumpcare, the details will screw millions of Americans over so badly that they probably won't be able to survive, and that's the whole point, to get to the lifeboats with mountains of loot before America hits that iceberg.

Trump will be tolerated for precisely as long as he plays the game and wins.  But he's already lost on Trumpcare for now and odds are he's going to lose on this too.  His corporate masters aren't going to be happy with him for much longer, and then President Pence will be expected to toe the line.

That's when things get truly bad.