Should We Talk About the Weather?

NEW, exclusive: NOAA staff warned in Sept. 1 directive against contradicting Trump: https://t.co/SbABVx8pec

— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather) September 8, 2019

Should we talk about the government? Because it looks like NOAA top brass had to tell their people, whose job is the weather, not to talk about it, because if they contradicted the Little Bronze God in the Oval Temple, what would he do? Maybe reduce their funding through some leger des main trop petit pour un gross homme, in much the same way he is raiding other programs for money to fund his border wall. You better believe people snap to when Trump makes demands if a Rear Admiral decides his job description is "one who covers Trump's entire orange peel rear." (That's the Coast Guard, and in addition to taking a hit from Trump's utterly stupid shut-down shenanigans from last year into this year over wall funding, they too are getting raided for wall money. Maybe the man threw himself on a reputation grenade for his department. I can't be too judgmental about that.) It kind of implies that Trump is running the government like some kind of mob boss.

There's a lot of other indicators, of course. Is the DOJ using a litmus test to decide what local and state governments get grants? Looks like it. That reflects back on Trumpism. Does it look like the same DOJ is being used as a cudgel against the auto industry for siding with California over Trump regarding air pollution? You tell me. Is politicization at the State Department a problem? Check the number of vacancies in that department. Government jobs might not pay the best, but they usually are great at providing a sense of security and focus and usefulness, and now? Not so much. Because everything Trump does undermines professionalism. Everything is corrupt.

The Trump folks are trying to undermine journalism, too, even if the message sometimes gets lost in their incompetence and mendacity. (Eric Trump probably just verified for us that most reporters don't ever assume he's worth asking for the inside dope because, um, well, they assume he's mostly an outside dope. For reasons.) But the games played with Jim Acosta and Brian Karem's press passes, as well as several other journalists', are intended to let them know--you say nice things about the boss, and it'll be all good. Don't make trouble.



It's mob boss stuff. So when the White House press staff put out a statement slamming the press to support Trump's weather flub on the taxpayer dime? Yeah. That's exactly what those well-trained flunkies would do over the weather. Would they lie us into war, or a recession, or whatever Trump's dumb ego told them to? They don't know--people think he could just be out of his mind, but they still keep stepping to his beat.

You look at it, and you tell me. (Ari Fleischer would step in and do their jobs in a heartbeat if they couldn't; you want to tell me he isn't still out there dancing on the head of a pin wanting to prove he can centrifuge shit into Shinola given half a chance if you ever happened across his Twitter feed?)

But there isn't a mob boss without kickbacks, because if the boss don't get his, nobody eats. So why wouldn't Trump float Doral for the next G-7? After all, Bill Barr wants to do the holidays at a Trump property, Pence used Trump's Doonbeg property as a (very) out-of-the-way place for his Ireland visit, and it looks like even the US military might be kicking their part up to the capo. It's a government bust-out.

And what do we get in return? Protection? Competence? Fuck no. He threatens US people like a boss, but shows his ass worldwide. His little stunt Tweeting about Iran's rocket failure really did let people know heretofore secret intelligence. The result of Trump's historic crossing the DMZ to meet with Chairman Kim? They certainly haven't de-escalated for shit. His abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal weakened the US' say in anything to do with it. He didn't fix ISIS for good. And just a few days short of 9/11, he goes and tweets out this:

He was going to meet with the Taliban at Camp David, unbeknown....hey he could have stopped there and left that secret. But no, he decided he had to talk about negotiations with people who harbor terrorists that he was going to negotiate with on our soil, but didn't, because....reasons that shouldn't actually seem atypical for the territory? Or maybe the negotiations were called off because it would interfere with golf? Or maybe he realized how bad it would really look, but had some sad, insecure need to let everyone know he was a good boy, and didn't meet with those nasty old Taliban? Which also lets us all know he was going to. And would have gotten a shitty deal, enforced by Russia and China, because he isn't Mr. Art of the Deal, so much as Mr. Out of His Depth and Incapable of Admitting Fault. That's a combination ripe for exploitation.

Talking about the weather, even his campaign's silly "own the libs" intentions of selling Trump markers, is nothing compared to actually talking about what he is doing to the government. He is ruining our relationships with allies and emboldening adversaries. Instead of draining the swamp, he is letting corruption bloom like algae in a lake filled with fertilizer run-off. So let's talk about the weather, but keep in mind--it's just a symptom. The entire Trump syndrome is so much worse.