Year: 2017

But first . . .

Take heart: as of June’s end, 209 Democratic candidates had filed to unseat Congressional Republicans, up from a more typical 45 at this point in the last mid-term cycle.

And if that’s not enough to lift your spirits, here’s one of them — and a two-minute campaign ad that could have the good people of Kentucky voting in a Democrat.  Go, Amy, go!

And now . . .

Eliot Cohen, writing in The Atlantic, sees The Downsides of John Kelly’s Ascension.  “It’s not a signal that the president is preparing to moderate his White House—it’s a signal he’s going to the mattresses.”

A piece worth reading.

Finally, speaking of four-star generals, 56 Retired Generals, Admirals Warn Against Trump’s Transgender Ban.

“This proposed ban, if implemented, would cause significant disruptions, deprive the military of mission-critical talent, and compromise the integrity of transgender troops who would be forced to live a lie, as well as non-transgender peers who would be forced to choose between reporting their comrades or disobeying policy,” the retired officers said in a statement released Tuesday by the Palm Center, which researches issues of gender and sexuality in the military.

“As a result, the proposed ban would degrade readiness even more than the failed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. Patriotic transgender Americans who are serving — and who want to serve — must not be dismissed, deprived of medically necessary health care, or forced to compromise their integrity or hide their identity.”

The President cited “the tremendous cost” of transgender troops’ health care as a key reason for his tweeted policy shift (which he had not decided on in consultation with his generals, as he lied).  Yet the added cost to the military health care bill (about $8 million) is in the one-tenth of one percent range.  One-tenth of one percent is “tremendous?”

The Palm Center quotes two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

General Martin Dempsey said of our transgender troops that, “The service of men and women who volunteer and who meet our standards of service is a blessing, not a burden.”

And Admiral Mike Mullen stated that, “I led our armed forces under the flawed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy and saw firsthand the harm to readiness and morale when we fail to treat all service members according to the same standards. Thousands of transgender Americans are currently serving in uniform and there is no reason to single out these brave men and women and deny them the medical care that they require. The military conducted a thorough research process on this issue and concluded that inclusive policy for transgender troops promotes readiness.” Admiral Mullen urged civilian leaders ‘to respect the military’s judgment and not to breach the faith of service members who defend our freedoms.”

Have a great weekend.

But first . . .

. . . two unrelated stats:

1. Hillary Clinton won more votes than any Republican nominee in history, including Donald Trump.  (And just a tenth of one percent fewer than Barack Obama in 2012.)

2. Between the dawn of civilization and this week’s editing of our own genes, there have been just 400 human generations.  It took us barely a speck of time, really, to figure it all out.  (If we were fruit flies, reaching reproductive age in about a week, those 400 generations would have taken 8 years.)

And now  . . .

. . . nearly as eye-catching as either of those stats is this admission/admonition in Politico from Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ):

My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump
We created him, and now we’re rationalizing him. When will it stop?

---

. . . we conservatives mocked Barack Obama’s failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obama’s election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president . . . It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama’s legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial.

. . .

Under our Constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos. As the first branch of government (Article I), the Congress was designed expressly to assert itself at just such moments. . . . Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, “Someone should do something!” without seeming to realize that that someone is us.

. . .

[When] the period of collapse and dysfunction set in, amplified by the internet and our growing sense of alienation from each other, and we lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles in the process. But where does such capitulation take us? . . .

[T]he strange specter of an American president’s seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservatives—who had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Union—that it was almost impossible to believe. Even as our own government was documenting a con­certed attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.

It was then that I was compelled back to Senator Goldwater’s book, to a chapter entitled “The Soviet Menace.” . . .

Our forebears knew that “keeping a Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence.

. . .

We have taken our “institutions conducive to freedom,” as Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.

Congress gets to set its own definition of high crimes and misdemeanors.  At what point does destroying the country’s standing in the world and lying about everything to everyone not rise to the level of a misdemeanor?

Without truly wise, competent leadership, will we make it to 500 generations?  Or even 410?

The American Century ended in the early hours of November 9, 2016.

Consider this clip from CNN’s must-watch-every-Sunday-morning Fareed Zakaria, transcribed here:

In London last week, I met a Nigerian man who succinctly expressed the reaction of much of the world to America these days. “Your country has gone crazy,” he said, with a mixture of outrage and amusement. “I’m from Africa. I know crazy, but I didn’t ever think I would see this in America.”

The world has gone through bouts of anti-Americanism before, but this one feels very different. First, there is the sheer shock at what is going on. The bizarre candidacy of Donald Trump, which has been followed by utterly chaotic presidency.

The chaos is at such a fever pitch that one stalwart Republican, Karl Rove, described the president this week as vindictive, impulsive and shortsighted and his public shaming of the attorney general as unfair, unjustified, unseemly and stupid.

Another Republican, Kenneth Starr, the one-time grand inquisitor of Bill Clinton, went further, calling Trump’s treatment of Jeff Sessions one of the most outrageous and profoundly misguided courses of presidential conduct I have witnessed in five decades in and around the nation’s capital.

But there’s a larger aspect of the fall in respect for America. According to a recent Pew Research Center study of 37 countries, people around the world increasingly believe that they can make do without America.

Trump’s presidency has made the US something worse than we feared or derided. It is becoming irrelevant. The most fascinating finding of the Pew Survey was not that Trump is deeply unpopular, 22 percent approval compared to Obama’s 64 percent at the end of his presidency. That was to be expected, but that there are now alternatives.

On the question of confidence in various leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin got slightly higher marks than Trump, but Angela Merkel got almost twice as much support as Trump.

Even in the United States, more respondents expressed confidence in the German Chancellor than Trump. This says a lot about Trump, but it says as much about Merkel’s reputation and how far Germany has come since 1945.

Trump has managed to do something that fear of Putin could not. He has unified Europe. Facing the challenges of Trump, Brexit, populism, a funny thing has happened on the continent. Support for Europe among its residents has risen and plans for deeper European integration are underway.

If the Trump administration perceives as it has promised and initiates protectionist measures against Europe, the continent’s resolve will only strengthen.

Under the combined leadership of Merkel and the new French President Emmanuel Macron, Europe will adopt a more activist foreign policy. Its economy has rebounded and is now growing as fast as that of the United States.

Countries from Canada to China have in various ways announced that since Washington cannot be relied on to shape the global agenda anymore, others will step in its place.

The most dismaying aspect of Pew’s findings is that the drop in regard for America goes well beyond Trump. Sixty-four percent of the people surveyed expressed a favorable view of America at the end of the Obama presidency. That has now fallen to 49 percent. Even when American foreign policy was unpopular, people around the world still believed in America, the place, the idea. This is less true today.

In 2008, I wrote a book about the emerging post-American world, which was – I noted at the start – not about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of the rest.

Amidst the parochialism, ineptitude and sheer disarray of the Trump presidency, the post-American world is coming to fruition much faster than I ever expected.

[See also: CNN.com/Fareed and Fareed’s Washington Post columns.]

There’s no reason, of course, why our country has to lead the world — other than that it comes with huge advantages to us (like being able to print money out of thin air that the rest of the world accepts in return for its hard work and resources) . . . and that the world needs strong, principled, democratic, progressive, compassionate, progressive, rational leadership (which in the Clinton and Obama years, I would argue, we came as close to providing as any nation ever has).

And it’s not impossible that if and when we regain our footing, we will be looked to once again.  That’s certainly the hope.

But if one chose to mark America’s 1917 entry into World War I as the beginning of “The American Century” . . . well, do the math.

When your grandkids ask “what did you do in the war [to save the habitability of our planet],” you may be able to tell them about your carbon footprint (“I used a solar pool blanket!” “I ate less meat!”) — but now you can also tell them, “I went to the movies.”

Seriously!  Go see it.

Or at least watch the trailer.

From the left — Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post — The Worst Is Yet To Come:

The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive. . . .

From the Reagan right — Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal — Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor.  In small part:

The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity.

He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity.

. . .

Meanwhile the whole world is watching, a world that contains predators. How could they not be seeing this weakness, confusion and chaos and thinking it’s a good time to cause some trouble?

Finally, from the conservative right, via David Brooks in the New York Times:

Jeff Flake Plants a Flag

Do you ever get the feeling we’re all going to be judged for this moment? Historians, our grandkids and we ourselves will look and ask: What did you do as the Trump/Scaramucci/Bannon administration dropped a nuclear bomb on the basic standards of decency in public life? What did you do as the American Congress ceased to function? What positions did you take as America teetered toward national decline?

For most of us, it’s relatively easy to pass the test. Our jobs are not on the line when we call out the mind-boggling monstrosity of what’s happening. For Republican senators, it’s harder. Their consciences pull them one way — to tell the truth — while their political interests pull them another way — to keep their heads down.

Some senators are passing the test of conscience — Ben Sasse, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Mike Lee and John McCain. And to that list we can certainly add Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. In a few days he comes out with a book called “Conscience of a Conservative,” which is a thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it.

Flake grew up in rural Arizona. “Cattle ranching is the hardest work I’ve ever known and the best people I have ever known have been cattle ranchers,” he writes. He was one of 11 children and his family did not dine out, even once, while he was young. He lost part of a finger and learned frontier self-reliance on the ranch. As a Mormon he learned to be wary of the government, and especially the way it can persecute minorities.

He came to Congress in 2001 and earned a reputation as a scourge against federal spending and earmarks and as a champion of tax cuts. But he walked into a Republican Party that was descending from Goldwater and Reagan, his heroes, to Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. When I had coffee with Flake this week, he spoke about the philosophical and political corruption of the DeLay era with uncharacteristic contempt.

Things got worse. In 2016 the Republican Party, Flake argues in the book, lost its manners. “It seems it is not enough to be conservative anymore. You have to be vicious.” And it lost its philosophy. “We become so estranged from our principles that we no longer recognize what principle is.”

Flake told me he doesn’t want his book to be seen simply as a broadside against Trump. The rot set in long before, but Trump takes the decay to a new level.

On the day in 2015 when Trump endorsed a Muslim ban, Flake tweeted “Just when you think @realDonaldTrump can stoop no lower, he does.” Flake attended prayers at an Arizona mosque that afternoon. At the core of this book is a bill of indictment listing the ways Trump has betrayed the Goldwater Creed:

“Is it conservative to praise dictators as ‘strong leaders,’ to speak fondly of countries that crush dissent and murder political opponents …? Is it conservative to demonize and vilify and mischaracterize religious and ethnic minorities …? Is it conservative to be an ethno-nationalist? Is it conservative to embrace as fact things that are demonstrably untrue?”

Flake told me he didn’t even tell his staff about the existence of this book until just two weeks before publication because he didn’t want them to talk him out of publishing

He began working on it at night during the general election campaign, assuming it would be an autopsy for the party after Trump’s defeat. “It matters more now. It would be easier to wait until after the next election,” he told me, but he wanted to plant his flag at a time when his political future is at risk, at a time when it matters.

Frankly, I think Flake’s libertarian version of conservatism paved the way for Trump. People are being barraged by technology-driven unemployment, wage stagnation, the breakdown of neighborhoods and families. Goldwater-style conservatism says: “Congratulations! You’re on your own!” During the campaign, Trump seemed to be offering something more.

But Flake is in most ways an ideal public servant. He is an ideological purist but a temperamental conciliator. On spending and free trade he takes lonely principled stands; on immigration he’s crafted difficult bipartisan compromises.

In a time when politics has become a blood sport, he’s sunny and kind. “Assume the best. Look for the good,” his parents taught him. But he possesses a serene courage that is easy to underestimate because it is so affable.

Most important, he understands this moment. The Trump administration is a moral cancer eating away at conservatism, the Republican Party and what it means to be a public servant.

The 52 Senate Republicans have been thrust by fate into the crucial position of responsibility. They will either accept this decay or they will oppose it. They will either collaborate with the Trumpian path or seek to direct their party and nation onto a different path.

Flake has taken his stand. As the other Senate Republicans look at his example, they might ponder this truth: Silence equals assent.

. . . but before we do, here is the most amazing card magic ever — four minutes developed after the 2015 Paris terrorist attack.  More than two million people have watched; I can’t imagine what the 287 who gave it a thumbs down were thinking?  (Thanks, Bill!)

And now, in honor of mid-summer (thanks, Tom!) . . . the chemical rundown on ice cream — and sorbet and gelato.  Now you know.

Bonus item: WHY THE RUSSIANS HAD NO EFFECT ON OUR ELECTION.

I just figured this out.  Yes, an army of Russian operatives and “bots” were deployed for months to spread false information about Hillary Clinton designed to make people dislike and distrust her.  And yes, this once most-admired woman won reelection to the Senate by more than a two-to-one margin and had a 65% favorability during her years as Secretary of State.  (Henry Kissinger: “[She] ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” John McCain: “Secretary Clinton is admired and respected around the world . . . a very effective Secretary of State.” Condoleezza Rice: “She’s a patriot. […] I think she’s doing a fine job. I really do.” Lindsey Graham: “She is one of the most effective secretaries of state, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime.” Paul Ryan: “[If she had become president in 2009], we’d have fixed the fiscal mess by now.”)

But to think that the former KGB army that set out to destroy her would have had any impact is to believe Americans can’t tell fake stories from real ones.

Clearly, that’s not true.

When he gets an email or sees a Facebook post, even the most gullible of Americans can tell which are real and which designed by experts merely to seem real, while reinforcing a false narrative.

By way of examples: Despite all the intentional disinformation, virtually no American was duped into doubting Obama’s citizenship (other than 41% of Republicans polled two years into his presidency).  Given the all-but-unanimous alarm by the scientific community, almost no American could be made to doubt that climate change is real (other than 43% of Republicans). Because it was simply not true, almost no American who voted to reelect George W. Bush believed Iraq attacked us on 9/11 (other than the majority who did).

So why would we think that anyone — let alone a full quarter of one percent of the voters in Michigan — could have been influenced by fake news stories about Hillary?  Or by fake Facebook posts?  Or by thousands of Russian intelligence officers working for months to give Putin and Trump a win?

Put Putin across the chessboard from even the least savvy of our voters and he wouldn’t stand a chance.

Have a great weekend.

Or maybe we won’t, but here is constitutional law professor Noah Feldman’s rather brilliant TED Talk.

It is the genius of our system, he says, and of the Founders who created it, that we can navigate through the most tempestuous of waters.

But still.  Our president is “a complete idiot” (Karl Rove), a “dangerous con man” (Marco Rubio), “a national disgrace” (Colin Powell), “a pathological liar” (Ted Cruz), who “seems to feel big only when he’s trying to make other people feel small” (Carly Fiorina), and who is “undercutting everything we stand for” (Lindsay Graham).

And those quotes — all true and all from Republicans — were offered before he began proving himself to be even worse than anyone imagined.

And before his deep-seated preference for journalist-murdering Vladimir Putin was becoming ever more evident and concerning.

Before he took office, he joked he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters.  Now he seems to believe he could do that and just pardon himself.

After treating the Boy Scouts to an endlessly cringe-worthy speech — a record crowd of kids he seemed not to realize hadn’t come for him, but for their annual Jamboree — he beat up on his attorney general, made idiotic statements about health care legislation, and then — having never served in the military himself (despite being in the best health of anyone ever to have run for president), he Tuesday tweeted out a policy that could require expulsion of as many as 15,000 transgender men and women who have chosen to serve.

(On which point, I commend Warrior Princess. “To everyone who saw him, he was a hero. A warrior. A man. But underneath his burly beard . . .”)

Even Orrin Hatch, an 83-year-old Republican from Utah, knew this was wrong.

This can’t go on for four years.  But however long it does go on, if Noah Feldman is right, the system will right itself.

As my mother used to say, “Let us pray.”

One of your esteemed fellow readers — an Army vet and aviation defense attorney from Ft. Worth, Jim Burt — writes:

Harry Truman uttered what could be the entire Democratic Party platform in three sentences: “Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don’t need help. That’s all there is to it.”

Jim found that quote on a must-bookmark page with 44 others “to use when describing conservatives and Republicans to your friends,” ranging from Barry Goldwater (“Today’s so-called “conservatives” don’t even know what the word means. . . .“) to Mark Twain and George Carlin to William F. Buckley, Jr. (“A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”)

And he adds thoughts of his own:

I have occasionally questioned why we let Republicans get away with calling themselves “conservatives” when they don’t seek to “conserve” anything except the bank accounts of the very richest people, and their program is one of the destruction of time-honored programs, practices, and principles.  Mitch McConnell’s systematic dismantling of Senate norms is a good example of this.

Conservatism in the classic Burkean sense has always been about the recognition of reality over ideology, an expression of disdain or even revulsion for starry-eyed paper programs for the betterment of government or society and a preference for practices and procedures which have been shown by time and experience to work, if not always perfectly, at least adequately.  In this sense, “dynamic scoring” of tax cuts on the always-disproven premise that they will actually increase tax revenue by spurring economic growth is the very antithesis of traditional conservatism, as is the dismantling of proven safety net programs like Social Security and Medicaid.

One Republican politician recently acknowledged that the bank bailout and fiscal stimulus that pulled the world back from the brink of disaster in 2008-2009 were necessary, and that it was perhaps a good thing the Republicans weren’t in power at the time because their principles would not have permitted them to do what was necessary.  Prioritizing ideology over facts would be scorned by true conservatives.  Unfortunately, too many of the people calling themselves conservatives in the US today are a mix of racists, reactionaries, and radicals with ideological agendas that are not fact-based.

Are all of today’s “conservatives” — or Trump supporters — racists or nativists?  No!  But if someone is a racist or a nativist in America today, they will claim to be a conservative and likely support Trump.  Are they all reactionaries who want to return America to a “robber baron” economy?  No!  But if that is their de facto goal, they will claim to be conservatives and they will vote Republican.  Are they all radicals who want to tear down not just the Affordable Care Act but Social Security and Medicare?  No!  But . . . you get the idea.

Are any of these plans or programs compatible with what Andrew Sullivan calls “the pragmatism, moderation, incrementalism, and [cautious] reform” which at least purportedly characterized classical conservatism?  No.  Do they rely on science or other investigative tools to identify the actual facts (about virtually anything) so that they can make cautious fact-based decisions, or do they take more of a “Who are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?” approach?

Then I look at myself, and at the modern Democratic Party, shorn of its former racist base — which has all gone over to the Republicans.  Do we look to science for answers about climate, energy, medicine, etc.?  Yes.  Do we rely on other investigative tools, such as the Census and other population surveys, to gather verifiable facts about economic and social conditions?  Yes.  Do we try to identify actual problems and take a “whatever works” approach to fixing them, instead of identifying as a “problem” any incongruity between our theoretical aspirations and reality, in favor of our theories?  Yes.  So, I’m a conservative in the classical sense, and so is the Democratic Party.  That we’re actually trying to help people and make our world a better place is a lagniappe, in that sense.

I won’t insult you by hyperlinking lagniappe.  (Though if you didn’t have Tek Lin for eighth grade English, click here.)

But I will join you in saying, “Amen!”  (Even if we Dems too may from time to time be guilty of a little non-fact-based dogma.)

And hello?  Jim didn’t even mention conserving the environment, on which the habitability of our planet depends.

How about that small item?

But first — do you know jet.com?  Acquired last year by Walmart for $3 billion?

I love Amazon, but competition is important — and the glass-bottle Honest Tea varieties that are so hard to find in physical stores but that are just a click away with Amazon ($44.62 for a 12-bottle case of Moroccan Mint) are just a click away on Jet at $16.27 (for Cinnamon Sunrise or Ginger Oasis, my other two favorite varieties) — after the 15% new-customer discount on my first three orders but before the additional $4.31 they knocked off of already-free shipping for my willingness to wait a couple of days to receive it.  In all, $61.69, delivered, for 48 bottles, versus what would have been three times as much on Amazon.

Needless to say, that’s an extreme example — and I still love Amazon.  But “shop around?”

And now . . .

Okay, so this is about as self-indulgent as it gets . . . but I went over to the afore-mentioned Amazon recently to buy someone a copy of my investment guide — way easier to click for $10 than to actually have to put one in a jiffy bag, find stamps, and all that — and noticed a bunch of one-star reviews.

This is a little disheartening, so — being shallow and thin-skinned — I went to check them out.

My favorite, from G. Belmonte this past April 4th: “Book is great — however i received with the front cover torn….very disappointment.”  One star out of five.  (Don’t judge a book by its torn cover?) 

Then there was Matt, back in January: “Financial books shouldn’t get political. A great book whose advice is completely undone by a few sentences of rhetoric. Why? WHY?”  One star out of five.

Two people found that review “helpful.”

In fairness, not all ten of my one-star reviews call the book great.  In fact, only those two did.

Writing of an earlier edition in 2010, Chris called it “Worst book ever,” explaining: “This book was terrible. PLEASE do not waste your money on it. Anything of value in this book, you probably know already. PLEASE, in these tough economic times, find a better book to spend your money on.”

The current edition is not that much changed, so I’m afraid Chris would still hate it.

I actually challenged one guy (“What an idiotic set of advices“), who gave the book one star because it recommends that, when it comes to life insurance, most people should “buy term and invest the difference” — a point on which most consumer advocates and personal-finance experts agree.  Being a life insurance salesman (who earns a far higher commission on complex whole-life products), he calls this advice “stupid or simply irresponsible.”

We had a nice little back and forth (“It is the mark of a good salesman to believe passionately in his product, so hats off to Mr. Poletaev,” I began), and while he didn’t budge on the issue of life insurance, he agreed that maybe one star for the whole book, based on that one page, was “a little harsh.”  I like this guy.  But I’m still stuck with one star.

But first: “A lawyer, a spy, a mob boss, and a money launderer walk into a bar. The bartender says: you guys must be here to talk about adoption.” — Dr. A on Twitter

And whom do you believe — Eric Trump in 2013 (“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”) or Eric Trump denying he ever said that?

And why did Deutsche Bank loan him all that money?  Was there a Russian connection?

Why was the Vice Chair of a famous Russian money-laundering bank in Cyprus chosen to be our Secretary of Commerce?

And why was a guy Trump had not previously known — paid $10 million a year to help Putin — chosen to head Trump’s campaign?  Whose idea was that?

And why was the guy chosen to run — and gut — the State Department the only one of those being considered whom Putin awarded the Order of Friendship?

And why did Trump’s Attorney General lie about his contact with Russians?

And why did his National Security Advisor lie about his contact with Russians?

And why did his son Donald lie about his contact with Russians?

And why did son-in-law Jared attempt to set up a back-channel connection with the Russians that US intelligence would be unable to detect?

And why did Jared omit his Russia contacts from from his SF-86 disclosure form?  (And why does he still have security clearance?)

And why does Trump seem so happy whenever he’s with the Russians, inviting them and their photographer, but no American photographer, into the Oval Office; switching seats to seek out Putin for an hour’s chat at the G20 dinner?

And why does Trump still not accept the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia worked to influence our election?

When Trump fires Sessions to install someone to fire Mueller, he will explain that all this nothing-burger stuff is detracting from his (unparalleled) ability to get us all GREAT health care at a tiny fraction of the cost . . . make America safe again by getting Mexico to build a beautiful wall . . . and boost our economy by negotiating great trade deals.

Which brings us to . . .

John Mauldin’s report on the trade war that Trump is teeing up.  (By pulling out of the TPP, Trump’s already ceded American leadership in the Pacific to China.)

. . . Candidate Trump talked about renegotiating trade agreements to help American workers. I support that goal. The problem is that President Trump seems intent on starting a trade war that will hurt those same workers. We are on a very dangerous course. Worse, if a report I saw last week is accurate, that course is already locked in.

. . . This is what Axios reported June 30, based on the input of anonymous Trump-administration sources:

Read the whole letter, but the gist of the Axios report was that “One official estimated the sentiment in the room as 22 against [imposing 20% steel tariffs] and 3 in favor — but since one of the three is named Donald Trump, it was case closed.”

Apparently, our president has created a National Trade Council and put a discredited economics professor at its helm — someone who understands trade in the same way Trump’s EPA chief “understands” climate change or Trump himself “understands” health care — which is why we all now have GREAT health care at not just a fraction of the price (which would have been amazing) but at a “tiny” fraction of the price.  It was so easy!

Make no mistake: Putin is winning.

As I wrote earlier this month . . .

My fantasy — and it is only that — is that some crisis a month or three down the road triggers a lawsuit that can only be decided by the Supreme Court.  And that that Court, though captured by the right, somehow finds the fundamental patriotism and fairness to say something like this:

Seventeen years ago this Court faced a national crisis and — in a ruling it went out of its way to brand as non-precedential — made a tough and widely criticized call that, in effect, gave George W. Bush the Presidency and, as it happened, the opportunity to appoint two of us to this body.

Last year, the Senate made the unprecedented decision not to allow the President to fill a vacancy on this Court, on the grounds that the will of the people as expressed in 2008 and 2012 did not give him that authority — the Senate needed to see how the people leaned in 2016.  As we now know, the people — not the Electoral College, the people — leaned toward the Democratic candidate.

Today we face a new crisis.  In developments that have been building all year, it has become clear that the 2016 election results were interfered with by a massive Putin-directed thumb on the electoral scale — a thumb the existence of which the Trump team long denied knowledge of but of which we now know they were well aware.  In that context, we have been called upon to overturn the 2016 result as tainted, and to order a workable mechanism by which the country can move forward and regain its footing.

We hereby direct former presidents Obama and Bush, acting in concert, to recommend to this Court, in the shortest time possible, an interim president and vice president to serve out the remainder of this presidential term — or a shorter term if a majority of the House and Senate shall call for an earlier election.

Or something like that.  And Barack and George, very different people but both sane patriots, would perhaps recommend to the Court Joe Biden and Mitt Romney; the Court would approve; and most of the nation — not having attained anything like great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost — nor remotely to have tired of “winning so much they got tired of winning” — would breathe a huge sigh of relief.  As would the world.

Or they could just give it to Hillary, who did get more votes despite it all.  But Putin/Trump have been so effective at getting people to misperceive her (she is wonderful and would have made a great president), it could fail to give the same sense of closure.