Dopes and Babies

Boss Baby, via South China Morning Post.

Washington Post book promo, adapted from Philip Rucker's and Carol Leonnig's A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, coming out next week, on the meeting of 20 July 2017, arranged by Mattis as a kind of emergency education session for the president to familiarize him a little bit with the ins and outs of foreign and national security policy, on which Trump was imperfectly informed ("Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located")—the meeting where Rex Tillerson came to understand that Trump was a "fucking moron":

“We should charge them rent,” Trump said of South Korea. “We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”

That's how to run a country like a business. It's all about the shareholders, whoever they are.

West of Eden: Mission Accomplished

Mission Accomplished banner, Arrested Development, via Arrested Development Wiki.

Screenshot just in case somebody tells Trump what he just did and the thing gets deleted. 

George W, in an undisclosed location, chuckles, remembering he's not the worst president in US history any more.

Meanwhile, special thanks from most of the world to Defense Secretary James Mattis and, I think, President Emmanuel Macron for satisfying our emperor's need to display his manly firmness and compassion at so little cost, taking no lives (apparently no casualties at all among Syrian troops or civilians, though hardly anybody seems to be asking, thanks BBC), and not making the Syrian situation markedly worse than it was before. Maybe even making it a little better, if it's true that facilities for making chemical weapons have really been damaged or destroyed.

I really do think there's something brilliant about Macron and the ability he's shown to mediate the behavior of the two emperors, Putin and Trump, with whom he's cultivated something like friendship, and I'm sure he deserves some credit for talking Trump down from demanding more war.

It was a scary moment last night when Trump (or the text written for him) suggested this might be the start of something big—

Adults in the Room

Via Tenor.

Old Tom Friedman was wondering yesterday ("General Mattis, Stand Up to Trump or He''ll Drag You Down") what old General Mattis should do next, now that he's won the Survivor game in the White House island, last of the so-called adults in the room, the generals and generaloids who are supposed to be managing our rambunctious young president, what with McMaster having failed to "build up much of a relationship with Trump," Tillerson having burned his bridges with the "fucking moron" epithet, and Pompeo and Kelly having sacrificed their moral authority with their public lying in support of the president's lying:

Well, Secretary Mattis, here’s some free advice to the last man standing: Don’t just stand there. If you just stand there, you’ll be next. Because Trump and Sanders will be looking to enlist your old uniform next in their defense — that is, if Trump doesn’t throw you under the bus first to escape responsibility for the bungled operation in Niger.

Secretary Mattis, we don’t need any more diagnosis of the problem. We need action. And I am not talking about a coup. I mean you need to lead McMaster, Tillerson and Kelly (Pompeo is a lost cause) in telling Trump that if he does not change his ways you will all quit, en masse.

I hate to tell ya, Tom, but I think something like that has already been done, with the "suicide pact" among Mattis, Tillerson, and treasury secretary Mnuchin that Buzzfeed reported a couple of weeks ago:

Copernicus—Think of that!

Something very funky about that Krasinski Square setting, chosen, some thought, because it's a lot smaller than the Zamkowy Square where Obama addressed enraptured crowds in 2014, and easier to fill up with President Duda's bussed-in supporters. But looks a lot like a postmodern staging of a Wagner opera. Reuters photo via New York Daily News.

The Emperor discusses his plans for North Korea in response to its test of what seems to have been an ICBM that could carry a nuclear weapon to Alaska or Hawaii if they could make one small enough to fit it, which they apparently will one of these days if things go on the way they do:

“I have some pretty severe things we’re thinking about," Trump said at a news conference in Warsaw. "Doesn’t mean we’re going to do them. I don’t draw red lines."

"It’s a shame they’re behaving this way and they’re behaving in a very dangerous manner, and something will have to be done about it," Trump said.

He has no idea what he's doing because Mattis hasn't told him yet; perhaps the Secretary thought it would be more prudent to wait until after the Putin meeting, since, as we know, Trump can't be trusted to keep information to himself.

Also he thinks he doesn't draw red lines but he drew one just last week, the very same as the old Obama red line that he has mocked so much: