I suppose I may as well work the same furrow as the mainstream media does and talk about President Elect Trump’s cabinet choices. It’s a bit like drinking urine, but here goes.

The list thus far seems custom designed to irritate centrists and liberals. That’s only to be expected, right? People who didn’t support Trump, people who said bad things about him, people who worked for his opponent – their attitude is, well, fuck those people. And since they have no philosophical commitment to making government work effectively, the vengeance factor is of greater relative importance than it might otherwise be. Still, it is pretty stunning to see them assemble such a wrecking crew. We knew that a Republican win would mean hitting the ground running in January, and it looks like that’s going to be the case.

So what the hell – Trump has hired three generals so far: Flynn, Mattis, and Kelly, in order of crazy (most to least). Mattis seems problematic in that one might prefer overtly civilian control of the Pentagon, but then there’s putting General Kelly in charge of Homeland Security. So military control of the Pentagon and domestic security policy? Sheesh. (Don’t get me started about Flynn …. that man should be in a straitjacket.) There are also several billionaires under consideration, as well as a couple of financial crisis profiteers, most notably Mnuchin, who cleaned up on the purchase and re-sale of IndyMac, playing a prominent role in robo-signing mortgage foreclosures in between.

But I think the overriding theme is “opposite day”: putting people in charge of federal departments towards which they are either actively hostile or blissfully indifferent. Putting Dr. Carson in charge of HUD is just a case of appointing a functional incompetent to run a complex agency. Making Scott Pruitt head of the EPA is just a sick joke – that sounds like a Pence choice to me, but I’m guessing. Same with Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary. It seems like the charge of each of these ass-clowns is to destroy the thing they’ve been hired to run, and I’m certain they will be successful.

Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy. And if anybody thought Trump might be inclined to throw the other side a bone for the sake of national “healing”, they must surely be disabused of that notion by now.

luv u,

jp