When you read that the White House has "scold(ed) Cabinet members" for their numerous ethical lapses including six-figure doors and five-figure dining sets, or that they're "alarmed" that their own Education Secretary couldn't answer basic questions about her job on 60 Minutes, your first intuition might be to say "well, what were they expecting?" But your second, and wiser, intuition would be to declare reports of White House "alarm" about these matters as drama, meant to distract you from more important (and nefarious) doings. Believe me, things are going exactly as the Administration wants and expects.
Adam Johnson at FAIR reminds us that our "liberal" media has long justified defense spending hikes on the basis of "modernization" of our weaponry. After all, when you can already destroy the world hundreds of times over, and spend three times what China spends and 10 times what Russia spends, how else do you sell continued military spending? Meanwhile, here's a list of "(t)hings that the government is somehow never obligated to “modernize”: healthcare, education, family leave policy."
The incorrigible Matthew Yglesias at Vox informs us that liberals aren't actually becoming more "politically correct," but actually support free speech more than they used to, and more than right-wingers do now. As usual, he's got facts and figures to back his thesis up (including the one showing college students are less supportive of insult policies and the like than folks who aren't in college, which is a pretty priceless finding), but who needs science when you've got isolated anecdotes -- and unquenchable rage?
Northern California District Court judge tells EPA Administrator Scott "Cone of Silence" Pruitt to stop lollygagging on implementing the smog rules the EPA issued in 2015. Because, really, that fact that your party's Presidential candidate happened to win three swing states with pluralities-not-majorities and thus get a solid majority of the Electoral vote even as he only got 46% of the popular vote doesn't mean you can do any damn thing you want just because you head up the EPA. Has it occurred to him that this is why that one guy cussed at him on an airplane?
Finally, we should not rejoice that Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State -- history will instruct us that he either cheered on the Administration's purge of the State Department or stood by and did nothing, and the fact that his President threw him under the bus in public repeatedly doesn't make him a good man, merely a better one than the President, which is nothing to take to the Pearly Gates. And the man who may succeed him, CIA head/teabagger Mike Pompeo, could be substantially worse. Mr. Pompeo, after all, is the man who suggested that folks who use encryption to protect their privacy on the internet might well be criminals, and it can't be a good thing having a man that narrow dealing with, you know, the world. (As an aside, wanna know why they stayed in-house for the next CIA head, instead of giving it to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas? Because that could flip another Senate seat to Democrats, that's why!)
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