Well, after Stephen Miller’s unseemly tirade yesterday, Republicans are pleading for no more on-camera daily briefings.

Seriously.  It was the camera’s fault, not the idiots the White House sends to do the briefings.

Conservatives are arguing that the White House should once again take the press briefings dark after Wednesday’s on-camera event turned into a shouting match between a White House aide and members of the media.

White House policy adviser Stephen Miller engaged in a heated back-and-forth with two of the administration’s biggest media nemeses – CNN and The New York Times – provoking some in conservative circles to declare that it was a mistake to give reporters the exposure they crave by broadcasting the daily briefings.

No, no, no, no. It wasn’t that reporters crave “exposure.” Exposing lies and hypocrisy, yep. But not “exposure.” You’re thinking of Donald Trump, Buddy.

Let me ask a question: if Stephen Miller really showed-up Jim Acosta like conservatives said Miller did, then why in God’s name would they want to go “dark?”  Why not show-up the press in public and let people see they are “preening?”

Yeah, I thought so. That doesn’t make sense.

Thanks to Deb for the heads up.

A couple of weeks ago, Senate Majority Turtle Mitch McConnell threatened to cancel all vacations if a repeal to Obamacare wasn’t passed prior to the August recess.  With his best spinster schoolmarm scowl, he threatened to cancel recess unless the Senate passed this test.

McCain: School’s Out For Summer, Mitches!

But vacation is back on, next week, after the recent series of votes went no better than the prior series: repeal this summer is as dead as a coffin doornail, except inside the ego-bloated head of the PeeResident and amongst his nuttier fart-catchers.  With more petulance than panache, Dat Guy is insisting that no other bills be considered until healthcare is addressed.

If they listen to him, the Republicans risk a simultaneous government shutdown, global economic meltdown, and Constitutional crisis showdown:  the debt ceiling looms!

It used to be, in olden times, that for every spending bill Congress passed, they would have to authorize the Treasury to incur the debt to pay for it.  This cumbersome process was streamlined during WWI, when they implemented a block authorization to incur debt, up to a pre-set limit: the debt ceiling.  From time to time, Congress increases the limit on federal borrowing which is, after all, merely the vehicle to fund what Congress has already voted to spend.  The first time it was politically leveraged was when Congress was trying to rein in Eisenhower’s crazy spending on interstate highways.

Thanks, Ike! Now, about that SPEED limit…

Since 1960, the limit has been raised 78 times, mostly without incident. Recently, however, Teapublicans have tried to hold hostage the full faith and credit of the United States, otherwise guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment, in order to festoon a normal housekeeping bill with a garland of garbage advancing their Fuck-The-Poors (aka “austerity”) agenda.  They have blurred the line between incurring an obligation (the budget) and honoring an obligation (the debt), and a credulous public, a complicit right wing, and a corpulent clod of a President have bought right into the nonsense that the debt ceiling is an ideological piñata, instead of a landmine.

As we discussed here and here,  there is (yet another) fight within the Drumpf malAdministration over what to do.  Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, of the Goldman Sachs wing of the White House, has said from the start that a clean debt ceiling should be passed.  Just this week, Mnuchin met with McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to discuss exactly that.

But Mick Mulvaney, Director of Drumpf’s Office of Management and Budget, has always been a part of the blow-it-up, burn-it-down school of governing.  He voted against the ceiling four times in Congress, has advocated conditioning a raise on more draconian cuts, and just this weekend he pushed IMPOTUS’s view that NOTHING should be done by Congress until Obamacare is repealed, ESPECIALLY the debt ceiling.

Mulvaney and Trump, for two

How will this all come down?  As usual, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is no help: “To ensure that we have robust economic growth and promote fiscal discipline, the Trump administration believes it’s important to raise the debt ceiling as soon as possible,” she said Tuesday.  “Fiscal discipline,” seems to imply that it won’t be a clean raise.  “Robust economic growth” is a chimera: the debt ceiling will avoid a robust economic meltdown.

So, where do we stand with all this?  In July, Mnuchin continued the “extraordinary measures,” begun in March, of underfunding pensions to fund everything else.  This will get us into  September at which point he can use some incoming tax proceeds to get us a little further, but only a few weeks.  Sometime this fall, unless the debt ceiling is raised, the United States will go into default of its obligations, precipitating a global financial megaquake.

Or other, similar, disaster metaphor.

There is some hope.  Along with his being a criminal, the healthcare fiasco has left Dat Guy damaged and impotent.  He is unable to impose his will on a Republican Congress which is coming to realize that his bark is laughable and his bite is negligible.  There are still enough ideological idiots and Reich Wing Nutjobs who heil him, and may try to muddy up the bill.  But between the Democrats, and the handful of sane, safe Republicans who agree with Mnuchin, it’s likely a clean debt ceiling will pass.  There’s not enough time for anything else.

Consider:  The House is already on break, with the Senate planning to join them sometime in the next week.  That lasts until after Labor Day, when they return to a full slate of legislation, including the budget itself.  But first, Republicans want to “hard pivot” to tax “reform,” which means even less money coming in.  All of this requires serious, time-consuming work, and there are many thorny issues still to resolve.  If you added a contentious debt ceiling bill to that mix…?  In Congress, there’s very little will, or time, or political capital, or even inclination, to conspire with Donnie Dorko as he plays nuclear foosball with the world economy.

What a Foos Believes… no wise man has the power to reason away

We’ve lost our position as the avatar of democracy.  We’ve lost our position as the beacon of freedom.  We”ve lost our position as the leader of the free world.  All we have left is our position as the anchor for the global economy.   We can fix all the rest with a single election, but destroy the full faith and credit of the United States of America?

That’s gonna leave a mark.

UPDATE: It seems as though Mick Mulvaney may now be singing from the “clean debt ceiling” hymnal.  This could be the CoS Kelly Effect, combined with a realization that they can’t afford any more flaming legislative shitburgers they don’t have the votes for.  Or maybe it’s just another plot shift in the ongoing saga that is the internal WH Goldman Sachs vs Goon Squad feud.

Or maybe he just read this column.  In any event, it remains to be seen if the Freedom Caucus, Trump’s Base, and Fox & Friends provoke another Twitstorm policy change.

As if the Democrats needed more evidence of crime, stupidity, and violence, good ole former Republican congressvarmnt  Michael Grimm is going to run for congress again.

You remember Michael as the guy who threatened to push a reporter off the balcony and “break him in half.”  He also spent 7 months in prison for tax fraud.

With that background, by golly, he’s totally ready to join the Trump administration.

Hey, you gotta admit that Republicans had to look long and hard for anyone who could bring down the whole ticket any further than it already is.

Lucian Winterish, the White House correspondent for the ultra-right Gateway Pundit, took to Twitter and had himself a cute little hissy fit about those damn brown people.

Look again.  Those people are native Americans.  Remind me again who it was who broke into this country and took their resources and then did crap like declaring them illegal?  I forgot who did that, Lucien.  Can you help me remember who that was, Lucien? Lucien? Help me, dude.

Thanks to Mike for the heads up.

A Sports Illustrated senior staff writer, Alan Shipnuck, wrote that Donald Trump told people that the “White House is a dump.”

Trump, of course, denies saying it as he denies saying anything, ever, in his whole life, which is the best life ever.

Shipnuck responds …

My money is bet on the fact that he said it.  One reason why?  This is a house he owns that he just put on the market.

Look, I have often said that my favorite color is shiny, but it’s a joke. A joke that Donald Trump doesn’t “get.”

If the White House is a dump, this is why.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Okay, so everybody is emailing me telling me in panicked terms that that Rick Perry is being considered for Director of Homeland Security.

I’m not falling for that gag.  Hell, all he knows about energy is how to fill his own gas tank in an emergency.  Nobody, not even George Dubya Doofus, who knows Rick very well, would make him Director of Homeland Security.

Dear Sweet Lord, do not let this be Trump’s reward for Rick Perry being the only human in America to agree with Trump about transgender in the military.  Give the boy a damn trophy or something – not my Security.