Odds for Doug Jones Just Went Up in Alabama

Marine Col. Lee Busby (Ret.) has launched a full-on write-in campaign for the Senate seat in Alabama, hoping to stop Roy Moore from ever getting to Washington. Don't know what his candidacy looks like on the ground in Alabama -- local Alabama coverage at the moment is mainly reprints and replays of national political media), but he's already nationally famous. He did an appearance on Morning Joe a couple of days ago, an interview on NPR this morning, and he's been written up in the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, RealClearPolitics, and probably elsewhere.

Fox News. 

Busby is a conservative Republican. He says he'd vote for the Senate tax bill even though he knows he'll never have that opportunity (because it'll be done with by the time there's a new Alabama senator sworn in). Busby has no formal campaign structure or even a working website "as of Monday morning" (WashingtonPost). He told the Post he is "counting on social media to spread the word" (and here we are, reporting for duty).

According to James LaPorta, "Busby has been the CEO of his own business and worked as a defense consultant and investment banker. At the same time, Busby has been honoring fallen Marines with sculptures" (like the one in the foreground of the photo to the left).

That's an admirable thing to do.

Most interesting: Busby not only voted for Trump. He was current White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's vice chief of staff in Iraq.

Policy positions (other than support for the Trump tax law)? Against abortion (check!). Repeal Obamacare (check!). Voted for John Kasich in the 2016 Republican presidential primary (hmmm). But that's it. That's all the policy issues Busby has so far shared with the public, though there's this:

With the Washington Post, he used military strategy to explain his politics: "The left flank and the right flank are heavily guarded. I think that gives you an opportunity to run straight up the middle.” On the basis of that, the Post suggested he was therefore "centrist."

That may be correct. Despite his doctrinaire right wing positions on abortion and monetary policy, he attended a Doug Jones fundraiser early on, to check out the Democrat in the race (so he's open-minded or at least curious), but decided Jones was not "appealing." Meanwhile -- and perhaps the explanation for why he attended that Democratic fundraiser -- Busby has been unimpressed with Roy Moore, a zero in Busby's view, even without all the sexual accusations.

So what's a cigar-chomping Marine to do if both the Republican and the Democrat fail to measure up?

Comedy Night in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office, and his right-hand hitman, Don Regan, engineered the ouster of Lee Iacocca from an important advisory board. It was no secret that Regan hated Iacocca, who as head of the Chrysler Corp. had bulldozed a bailout for himself through Congress that Regan resented.

On February 19, 1986, Regan gave an interview on camera about his dust-up with Iacocca. Solemnly he announced, "I do not hate Lee Iacocca's guts," which instantly became in our household the favorite line when comic denial was needed. "We do not hate AARP's guts!" "We do not hate Blue Cross's guts!"

I am reminded of that Great Moment in Political Comedy when I saw yesterday Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's official spokeswoman rush back into a room full of reporters to blurt out that Rex Tillerson did not call President Trump a moron.

Yeah, un-ring that bell!

A quartet of on-the-ground White House reporters for NBC News had been the first to report that Tillerson has come close to divorcing himself from Trump more than once. There had been obvious and widely acknowledged friction between Tillerson and Trump from the beginning. But in July, while Tillerson was at his son's wedding in Texas, Trump delivered that politicized and leering speech to the Boy Scouts of America. Tillerson was disgusted on top of fed up. He told more than one person that he would not be returning to Washington. He would resign his position.

And he might have, if not for "the generals," Mattis and Kelly. According to NBC News, Mattis and Kelly talked Tillerson out of resigning more than once. They see Tillerson as a vital ally in keeping the country from descending into total chaos.

The Boy Scout speech was just the last straw on a big haystack. Baker, Haberman, and Thrush at the NYTimes talked to people close to Tillerson. The story everyone tells is that Tillerson "regularly expressed astonishment at how little Mr. Trump understands the basics of foreign policy." "Aides and Trump associates who have been in the room with them said Mr. Tillerson’s body language, eye rolling and terse expressions left little doubt that he disapproves of Mr. Trump’s approach."

Mr. Trump, they said, has noticed how Mr. Tillerson slouches in his presence, particularly when he disagrees with a decision. When overruled, Mr. Tillerson often says, “It’s your deal,” to the president’s irritation, according to two former administration officials.

It's your deal. The Exxon brush-off. He may as well have added, "...you moron!" According to eye witnesses, Tillerson did refer to Trump as a moron out loud and in front of people at a Pentagon meeting.

If Trump is a threat to national stability and our general safety, he's also a daily gold mine for stand-up comics.

Storm Saturday: ICYMI

Palatucci

1. Yesterday the Republican National Committee, meeting in Nashville, declared that there are no "very fine people" marching with racists, in an official resolution. But the resolution's author quickly added that denouncing white supremacists has nothing whatsoever to do with Big T in the White House, who had said that there were "very fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville.

“This has nothing to do with the president,” said Bill Palatucci, an RNC committeeman from New Jersey who wrote the resolution. “This is the RNC saying that racism and bigotry have no place in America” (therefore evidently making the White House an island unto itself, and not a part of America as a continent at all).

"Mr. Palatucci served as General Counsel to the Presidential Transition Committee of President Donald J. Trump. In this role, he was responsible for all legal matters related to ethics compliance and contracts and agreements between such agencies as the U.S. Department of Justice, General Services Administration, and the White House." (Gibbonslaw)

2. While a Cat 4 hurricane was bearing down on Texas, Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to fellow Birther and Hispanic tormentor, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County.

Message received! (There's a whole lot more being pardoned beside just Joe Arpaio.)

Question: Why didn't Trump pardon Arpaio at his rally in Phoenix, mere hours ago?

Reportedly, some White House aides convinced him it would create a storm of controversy. But he swished around and previewed the pardon anyway in front of that crowd, like a perfect little slut.

Hell-lo, Harvey! Just in time to provide cover! Not just for pardoning the whole concept of racial-profiling but also cover for this: 

3. WH Chief of Staff fires Sebastian Gorka.  Put a Marine in charge, you get ass-whippings. Gorka was a Steve Bannon creature (he also came from Brietbart), who had no defined job and lurked about in the alt-right, Islamophobic, Trump nimbus all through the Trump campaign, and looks like a Twilight Zone villain. Has an accent to go with it.

Retired Marine General John Kelly, recently put in charge of running the White House, revoked Gorka's security clearance while Gorka was on a two-week vacation, which essentially also eliminated his "job." Boom! Death by drone.

Gorka did not go quietly. The Federalist published his written "resignation" letter: “[G]iven recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the [MakeAmericaGreatAgain] promise are – for now – ascendant within the White House. As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House.”

So, Bannon and Gorka will be together again, back at Breitbart? If not America, they'll make Trump great again if it takes destroying the Republican Party.

4. Trump signs "memorandum" banning transgender troops from serving in the US Armed Forces. Remember he had tweeted on July 26 that he was banning preverts in the military, because he needed a distraction in the press from the catastrophic failure of the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The military essentially rebuffed the tweet and said (either in effect or literally), "Show us the beef in a signed order," which by the way would be stupid and offensive). 

But Trump finally signed what passes as an order (but was labeled "Memorandum") to the Pentagon, because he thought he couldn't afford to look weak ever, on any stupid topic, and with Harvey roaring on the Texas coast for distractive cover, he returned the military's pre-2016 policy under which no transgender individuals are allowed to serve openly in the armed forces. But with the memorandum Trump also simultaneously telegraphed the weakness of his case, leaving it totally up to General Mattis at the Defense Dept. and Whoever's Left at Homeland Security to decide what to do about transgender soldiers currently serving. "You guys decide," said the for sure entirely not weak Commander in Chief.

SNAFU, Trump-style. Shifting into Reverse while going downhill.

5.  Actual Harvey News: The Department of Homeland Security is currently without a permanent head. Two deputy director nominees at FEMA still await confirmation (either because Congressional Democrats have bogged down the process or because they're all going slow on nominations by a man who wanted his son's wedding planner as the director of New York Federal Housing). Trump has not even nominated someone to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

Trump, in his proposed budget released in May, recommended slashing FEMA programs and grants that help cities and states prepare for natural disasters (to the tune of $667 million), and he proposed cuts to the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program. Trump recommended a 16 percent cut to the overall NOAA budget and a 32 percent cut to the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the agency’s main ocean, weather, and climate research office.

Because knowing science never pays off.

"Very Fine People on Both Sides!" Trump's Clear Signal to White Supremacists

Following Trump's third, angry statement about the spectacle in Charlottesville yesterday, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke whipped out his smart phone and tweeted, "Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth.”

The truth, as someone suggested, had set him free.

Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush reported that "members of the president’s staff, stunned and disheartened, said they never expected to hear such a voluble articulation of opinions that the president had long expressed in private."

Eric Cantor, the former Republican congressman and Very Big Deal from Virginia, who's also Jewish, said Trump's efforts to equate the actions of counterprotesters with the neo-Nazis were “unacceptable.” “There’s no moral equivalence,” Cantor said.

Trump's rant yesterday sparked instant condemnation, especially from fellow Republicans (who are watching the intellectual underpinnings of their ideology turn to ca-ca, along with their electoral prospects):

Speaker Paul D. Ryan called white supremacy “repulsive” and said “there can be no moral ambiguity.” 

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, tweeted: “Blaming ‘both sides’ for #Charlottesville?! No.” 

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said white nationalists in Charlottesville were “100% to blame” and continued in a subsequent tweet: “The #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50% of blame as a win. We can not allow this old evil to be resurrected.”

Senator Todd Young of Indiana, a freshman Republican, wrote: “This is simple: we must condemn and marginalize white supremacist groups, not encourage and embolden them.”

Yesterday, Trump was in an emboldening frame of mind, which is obviously his native (pure white) and habitual condition.

Newly hired White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly
studies the floor (and his future) during Trump's
impromptu tantrum yesterday.
Photo by Al Drago, New York Times