Michael Wolff’s new book is dominating the airwaves and has all week.  Except on Fox Noise, of course.  The release date of the book was moved up to today, and Trumpland is doing everything it can do to increase sales, including threatening the author and his publisher as well as slandering everyone who spoke ill of Trump.  Steve Bannon, the Darth Vader of political strategy, has been renamed Sloppy Steve by His Orangeness.  Amongst all this firestorm, other news has been announced today, and the timing is just a little coinkydink:

The FBI has announced that it has reopened an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.  This comes after months of Trump screaming about “Crooked Hillary”, and demanding the FBI investigate what’s already been investigated ad nauseam. Word got out today of the investigation, apparently leaked by, you guessed it, congressional Republicans.  Second, Senate Republicans have made the very first criminal referral in connection to the Russia interference investigations against…wait for it…Christopher Steele, the retired British intelligence agent who wrote the famous dossier about Trump’s relationship with the Russians.  That’s right, folks…the VERY FIRST CRIMINAL REFERRAL from Republicans in the Trump-Russia investigation is against the guy trying to expose Trump’s collusion with the Russians.

The fact that these two announcements come on the same day as the release of Fire and Fury is, like I said already, purely a coninkydink.  Nothing to see here…move along.

Okay, so we talked about how the Voter Fraud Commission was a total bust and they were dissolving it completely while everybody chuckled.

Not so fast, Cowboy.  Apparently we forgot to put a stake in its heart.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the commission, says we shouldn’t get too excited.

The Kansas official said he expects officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and political appointees overseeing that agency to take over the commission’s work and begin efforts to match state voter rolls to federal databases of noncitizens. He insisted he was not disappointed with the president’s decision.

“It’s the right move,” Kobach said. “It’s a shifting in tactics from having the investigation be done by a federal commission to having it be done by a federal agency. The agency has a greater ability to move quickly to get the investigation done.”

Holy damn cow on farm-fresh grain, ICE is taking over the investigation because it’ better to have an “agency” than a “commission.”  I think what he’s saying is that agencies have guns.

While Kobach admits that ICE knows diddle squat about voter fraud, he is terribly excited about ICE messing in the election process of the United States of damn America.  Somebody please add his name to the Lost His Mind List.

Thanks to Deb for the heads up.

Stay with me here…I’ve been reading with great glee all of the excerpts of Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury, Inside the Trump White House, and have so far read nothing that didn’t ring true to me.  I mean, come on – Trump is a heavily made-up, feeble minded, thin skinned, narcissistic caricature of what we all understand to be “presidential”.  Trump has none of the characteristics of a successful politician (or successful businessman for that matter); he’s volatile; he’s taken to repeating his repetitions; he lies when it’s easier to tell the truth.  He’s fake to the core.

I’ve found the firestorm around this book to be highly entertaining and some of the editorial content of the talking heads is just as much fun.  One of those is this morning’s piece in the New York Times by Michelle Goldberg titled…wait for it…Everyone in Trumpland Knows He’s an Idiot.  She writes of several anecdotes in the book about how Trump went around his handlers and unilaterally fired James Comey over the Russia investigation.  She quotes Wolff about that decision, “In presidential annals, the firing of F.B.I. director James Comey may be the most consequential move ever made by a modern president acting entirely on his own.”

But more importantly, she makes the point that Trump is wholly and totally incapable of executing the job of the presidency, and EVERYONE knows it.  His failing mind, his obsession with striking back at every perceived slight, no matter how small, and his erratic decision making are all clear evidence of his incompetence.  Dozens of staffers have enabled him, assuring themselves and each other that they can manage him, when, in fact, no one can manage him, including himself.

Best line of the piece, though, came in the summation – Goldberg says,

“Trump, Wolff’s reporting shows, has no executive function, no ability to process information or weigh consequences. Expecting him to act in the country’s interest is like demanding that your cat do the dishes.”

Now, THAT is a great bit of wordsmithing, I must say.  Oh, and I’m trying to put my hands on a copy of the book today.  It should make for great fireside reading this weekend.

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Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions is kinda pathetic. Well, maybe I should say more pathetic than usual.

He doesn’t have anything to do all day so he’s taking up issues deeply important to our country and our justice system:  pot and Hillary.

Pot?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has rescinded an Obama-era policy that paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, creating new confusion about enforcement and use just three days after a new legalization law went into effect in California.

President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement official announced the change Thursday. Instead of the previous lenient-federal-enforcement policy, Sessions’ new stance will instead let federal prosecutors where marijuana is legal decide how aggressively to enforce longstanding federal law prohibiting it.

Now let me see if I have this straight.  Republicans, especially Sessions, are big states rights people.  They think that states ought to be making decisions about your life. Unless, of course, those states start making decisions that Republicans don’t like.

And if spoiling everybody’s fun isn’t enough, the Justice Department has decided that … oh dear God in Heaven Above … Hillary’s emails.

Justice Department officials are taking a fresh look at Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as secretary of State, The Daily Beast has learned.

An ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who is familiar with the thinking at the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters described it as an effort to gather new details on how Clinton and her aides handled classified material.

Oh hell, there you sit worried about nuclear holocaust, climate change, and having a fruitcake for president when you should be worrying about Hillary’s emails.

Somebody please slap Jeff Sessions.  That man child with the sweet voice has done got on my last nerve.

Donald Trump certainly pushes the boundaries of the collective hunch called reality.

So nobody is surprised that …

Lawmakers concerned about President Donald Trump’s mental state summoned Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee to Capitol Hill last month for two days of briefings about his recent behavior.

In private meetings with more than a dozen members of Congress held on Dec. 5 and 6, Lee briefed lawmakers — all Democrats except for one Republican senator, whom Lee declined to identify. Her professional warning to Capitol Hill: “He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”

Honey, his hair alone is a pretty good sign that his elevator doesn’t go all the way to the penthouse.

I think it’s great that Dr. Lee talked for two days but, actually, how many ways can you say “something ain’t right with that boy.”

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.