Dead Man Walking

I'm no defender of SecState Rex Tillerson. The poor rich sap signed on to the Ship of Fools and will walk the plank soon as one of the shortest serving SecStates in history. I can almost feel his pain. But he did call Trump "a fucking moron" in front of people, so he has my respect as a man who both recognizes reality and experiences regret.

It's the dude who everyone says will replace Tillerson at State that we need to watch, Mike Pompeo, the Kansas congressman who accepted Trump's appointment to head the CIA and who looks very much like the ass-kisser who has Trump's number. Pompeo has paved his path upward by delivering the CIA's "daily briefing" personally to the president, and Trump has evidently come to love the news --  "doings out at Langley" -- so long as its laced with indulgence and flattery. Pompeo has demonstrated total slavish loyalty to Trump.

1. Pompeo obeys Trump's whims. Trump's consuming need to deflect on the subject of Russian money/influence became an everyday gripe session with Pompeo. Trump latched onto an alternate theory of how the hacking/leaking/publication of DNC stolen emails could have happened -- a conspiracy theory promoted by a former National Security Agency official. It wasn't the Russians! It was someone on the inside of the DNC who did it. The entire intelligence apparatus of the US, including not just CIA analysts but analysts from other spy agencies, had conclusively agreed that the hack was Russian. But Pompeo was more than ready to indulge Trump's deflection. So under orders,

Pompeo, with Trump.
Photo AP/Andrew Harnik

Pompeo met with the DNC inside job theorist and apparently swapped slobbers.

2.  Pompeo publicly proclaimed in October and in front of cameras that “the intelligence community’s assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election.” Pompeo neglected to say that the intelligence community never said any such thing.  The intelligence assessment had found, rather, that the Russian operation was unprecedented in its scale, and it concluded that Moscow’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process and help elect Donald Trump. It took no position whatsoever on whether the infiltration actually influenced voting numbers in the election. (As Russian manipulation of Facebook users continues to unfold, the direct impact of Russian meddling on voting statistics seems more certain every day.)

3. Again on orders from Trump (obviously), Pompeo was put on the phone to reporters from the WashingtonPost and The Wall Street Journal to try to knock down a story out that very day in the New York Times, headlined "Trump Aides Had Contact With Russian Intelligence: U.S. Officials Tell of a Flurry of Phone Calls Intercepted Before the Election." Pompeo reportedly told the reporters that the story wasn't true but refused to offer any substantiating detail of how it was untrue.

4. In August, Greg Miller reported, "Mike Pompeo has taken a special interest in an agency unit that is closely tied to the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, requiring the Counterintelligence Mission Center to report directly to him." Hmmm. Good place to be -- directly in charge of agents doing work you don't want them to do successfully. But, also, are you freaking kidding me?

Eight Ways Trump Is the Smartest in the Land

So this is the ant farm we live in now: Trump wants to stack his IQ up against his Secretary of State's. He hints broadly that he knows exactly how that contest would come out.

Which reminds me of dead old Socrates: “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”

Trump is no Socrates. (And for the record, Tillerson did not call Trump "a moron." He called him "a fucking moron."

Smart people who think they're smarter than everybody else create problems for themselves (might call them "self-inflicted wounds"). In the interest of understanding our head of state, seen through the gauzy screen of "high IQ" that he prefers, we offer Eight Ways Trump Is a Smart Person:

1. Smart people are overconfident, and they let praise go to their heads, giving them an inflated sense of their own infallibility. It's dangerous to always expect you'll win at everything.

2. Smart people push other people too hard. They set the bar too high, and when their "underlings" take too long or don’t get things quite right, well ... expect a storm. Smart alecks push even harder, and because of their overconfidence (see no. 1 above), they beat up other people emotionally as unworthy and simply lesser human beings.

3. Smart people always need to be right. Being right, in fact, becomes a part of their identity, so any admission of wrongness or error endangers the overconfidence (see no. 1 above).

4. Smart people lack "emotional intelligence." Winning is all that matters (see nos. 2 and 3 above). People's "feelings" and "emotions" (just weaknesses to be ignored) are irrelevant, and in fact emotional attachments (love, empathy, fellow-feeling) are just hindrances to always winning.

5. Smart people give up when they fail. Because failure is unthinkable, because winning is the only thing, when failure inevitably comes, Mr. Wise Guy is bludgeoned by reality and thinks it's the end of the world.

6. Smart people fail to develop grit. "When smart people can’t complete something without a tremendous amount of effort, they tend to feel frustrated and embarrassed. This leads them to make the false assumption that if they can’t do something easily, there’s something wrong with them. As a result, smart people tend to move on to something else that affirms their sense of worth."

7. Smart people think they're good at multitasking. They like to have many things going on at once, and if many things aren't going on, they're impatient. Multitaskers tend to think they're excellent at multitasking, but very often they're not. Jumping from one thing to another without completing anything is not an efficient use of time.

8. Smart people have a hard time accepting feedback or constructive criticism. They tend to under-value the opinions of others, or feel contempt for them. So they also tend to think that any other opinions are not worthy of attention. Which often leads to toxic relationships (see no. 2 above).

(Hattip: Travis Bradberry, "Eight Ways Smart People Act Stupid")

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.

Dumping Coal Waste Into Waterways Is NOTHING Compared To What's Coming

Trump promised during the presidential contest that he would "cancel" the Paris accord on global warming, the 194-nation agreement that all countries -- rich and poor, developed and undeveloped -- will take steps to reduce greenhouse gases. Since the Paris accord was signed, we have experienced two record-setting hot summers and now an unprecedented warm winter, so the urgency to stop the global warmup has become more intense.

Enter Trump. Russia's favorite president has already been peeing on environmental regs. According to leaked budget documents, the president intends to kill off nearly two dozen E.P.A. programs, including the Obama-era Clean Power Program, climate partnership programs with local governments, Energy Star grants to encourage efficiency research in consumer products and climate-change research. Those would be part of a broader Trump budget submission that would cut the EPA’s funding by 25 percent, to around $6.1 billion from $8.2 billion, and its staff by 20 percent.

As Steve Bannon suggested at CPAC, why else would Trump have appointed Scott Pruitt EPA administrator except to dismantle the EPA and environmental protections.

According to the reporting of Coral Davenport (with good sources inside the Trump White House),

Next week, Mr. Trump plans to sign an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to start the lengthy legal process of unwinding Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations for cutting greenhouse pollution from coal-fired power plants. Those regulations are the linchpin of the last administration’s program to meet the nation’s obligations to reduce climate emissions under the Paris agreement.

Davenport also reports that a power struggle has erupted in the White House between Steve Bannon, who published scores of articles bashing climate change as a hoax when he ran Breitbart, and Ivanka Trump, who thinks it would be politically boneheaded to withdraw the US from the Paris accords. According to Davenport, Rex Tillerson, the Exxon man, has formed an alliance with Ivanka in opposing Bannon. Tillerson sees withdrawal from the Paris agreement as potentially hurting the US's reputation (not to mention its honesty and commitment to the world's welfare) among other nations.

When the ex-CEO of Exxon is our best hope for saving the planet, you know we're in #TrumpNation.

Moscow on the Potomac, Times Two

The Look of Love: Rex Tillerson with
Vladimir Putin. PHOTO: RIA NOVOSTI/REUTERS

So word has leaked that after weeks of considering his options, Vladimir Putin has chosen Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as the next Secretary of State.

After economic sanctions were imposed on Russia following its invasion of the Crimea and its "shadow war" in eastern Ukraine, Tillerson spoke up against the sanctions: “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions,” he said. Apparently, sanctions against the aggressor state were harming Exxon in particular.

Well, yes, they were. The sanctions on Russia ended up blocking the implementation of a deal that Tillerson and Putin struck in 2011 which would have given Exxon access to Russia's Arctic oil resources while allowing Russia’s state oil company, OAO Rosneft, to invest in Exxon concessions all over the world. The following year, the Kremlin bestowed the country’s Order of Friendship decoration on Tillerson.

Oh, they're close, Putin and Tillerson.

Tillerson's Exxon stock (he owns $151 million of it) would increase in value when Russia gets its way -- that is, gets those sanctions lifted. Hacking an election and installing your guy as Secretary of State has its profits!

Senator John McCain said yesterday that Tillerson’s ties to Putin were “a matter of concern to me.” “I’d have to examine it,” he said on Fox News, adding that “Vladimir Putin is a thug, bully and a murderer, and anybody else who describes him as anything else is lying.”

A thug, a bully, and a murderer -- that about sums him up. Putin's also a pussy-grabber. He grabbed Donald Trump a long time ago, but when you're famous and powerful, you get away with shit like that. And he's running the U.S. government now.