— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) July 31, 2017
.
Apart from doing our best to prevent such a dreadful eventuality, what’s on the agenda for the day?
***********
This line in @PhilipRucker story –> "John F. Kelly will be sworn in Monday at the nadir of Trump’s presidency." https://t.co/vZr0SVV92J
— Annie Linskey (@AnnieLinskey) July 30, 2017
Thing about nadirs is that they're only identifiable in retrospect … https://t.co/b9OEcfjFDg
— Josh Chafetz (@joshchafetz) July 30, 2017
President Trump is trying to take command of his floundering administration by enlisting a retired four-star Marine general as his White House chief of staff, empowering a no-nonsense disciplinarian to transform a dysfunctional West Wing into the “fine-tuned machine” the president has bragged of running but which has not yet materialized.
John F. Kelly will be sworn in Monday at the nadir of Trump’s presidency, with historically low approval ratings, a stalled legislative agenda and an escalating Russia investigation that casts a dark cloud…
But no matter how decisive his leadership, Kelly alone cannot turn Trump’s vision into reality. Warring internal factions that have stirred chaos, stoked suspicions and freelanced policies for six straight months may not easily submit to Kelly’s rule. And the president — whose rash impulses routinely have sabotaged the best efforts of his senior aides — has shown no willingness to be tamed.
“Kelly is an incredibly disciplined person who could bring order to the process if the animals in the zoo behave,” said John E. McLaughlin, a former acting director of the CIA who served in seven administrations. “The danger he has is that Trump will be Trump.”…
I love reading about all of the "geniuses" who were so instrumental in my election success. Problem is, most don't exist. #Fake News! MAGA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017
"I would like everyone to know that my campaign was actually full of fucking idiots" https://t.co/fsOfsaC0YH
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) July 29, 2017
Not that he isn’t trying to keep future gaffes out of the press. Because FUTILITY!
Trump Org. has a new NDA: Employees must agree to keep secret any info they learn about anyone in the Trump family. https://t.co/Eie2ljgI5F
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 31, 2017
sukabi
Nice to know that Drumpf is at least aware that his entire family is actually more horrifying in private than they are in public.
kilo50
He did it all by himself. The mobs flocked to his shining charisma and if some cannot see his brilliance it is only because his illumination is so incredibly strong and their vision is so weak.
Jeffro
Greatest Loser President Ever…if only someone, or 65 million someones, had had this guy’s number before it was too late…
Bjacques
Don’t despair that, with an adult like General Kelly in charge, that the White Funhouse is no longer. The Kushners are also a liability, and their (alleged) ties to mobbed-up Russians continues to put the Presidency at risk, not to mention rankling with a straight arrow whose long military career that included the Cold War gives him no cause to love the former foe in any incarnation. How’s that going to play out? If Kelly cramps the Kushners’ style, their faction could be the source of the next round of leaks. Ditto Bannon, for much the same reasons.
Kelly should re-read Othello.
OzarkHillbilly
What’s the over/under on Kelly’s tenure?
NotMax
Friday news dump on a Monday.
They can’t even get that right.
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
This Administration is so unpredictable, no bookie would dare give a definitive answer.
NotMax
Publishers bidding for Scaramucci book booklet pamphlet page index card fortune cookie slip deal
NotMax
Grr. Code fail. Let’s try that again.
Publishers bidding for Scaramucci
bookbookletpamphletpageindex cardfortune cookie slip deal.lowtechcyclist
That pic from a couple days back with Lewandowski, Omarosa, Gorka, and Mooch – besides the late Mooch, what do the others actually DO in the White House? What are their functions – what are they responsible for doing?
My guess is that they’re just hangers-on, people whose real job is to listen to Trump, tell him what he wants to hear, and make him feel good about himself. What else are they capable of doing?
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone ???
Marcion
Am I the only one who gets confused when reading about “John F Kelly”? I keep thinking “wait, what did John Kerry do again?”
Morzer
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/31/martin-shkreli-trial-fraud-charges-jury-deliberations
LOCK HIM UP!
SFAW
@Morzer:
And his little dog, Trumpo!.
NobodySpecial
@Morzer: Look, we have to practice our tumbrel routine sooner or later, right? Call it a dry run.
Karen
I find myself missing JFK, LBJ and Carter, sure JFK’s father wasn’t much better in his source of fortune but at least he gave his children and education and managed to inspire them to give back to the country. I know JFK didn’t take his salary not sure what he did with it because I don’t remember fanfare of him not only giving it but giving to place that had first stripped needed funds from. What I do remember about JFK was the education programs, while LBJ’s focus was a little different all three presidents tried to make things better not start a world war. Yes, I know Vietnam; where US kept “promise” to France to try to keep the country as colony
Even during the “cold war” I don’t remember US trying to start a war with then USSR; since that was grade school I might be wrong
MattF
@lowtechcyclist: Omarosa is a reality-show actor, so she’s eminently qualified for the White House.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Quinerly
@NotMax:
?
ThresherK
@SFAW: Trumpo sounds like the Marx Brother even Minnie couldn’t get signed as part of the act.
debbie
@lowtechcyclist:
I remember looking at that photo, thinking that whenever Omarosa manages to force herself into the COS position will be the time to bail on America.
Quinerly
@rikyrah:
And a good morning from Poco! Ivan is eating his breakfast and will get back to you shortly. Have a great day!
JPL
President tweet a lot has been quiet so far this morning. hmmm
OzarkHillbilly
The Ann Arbor VA is trolling Trump. (pic)
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: As long as Trump is President. I would expect that Trump is enamored by a General and will pretty much do anything he says. I’m hoping for more incompetence and chaos though because no one deserves suffering under Trump’s agenda.
droog
Do you remember when Scooter Libby got sent up and people placed their hopes on…(*Wikipedias*) David Addington to make the VP’s office fly straight?
DO YOU REMEMBER IT
rikyrah
@NotMax:
Reince’s book is what the mini-series will be based on.??
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
That is very nice to see!
OzarkHillbilly
@Patricia Kayden: Only until trump figures out that doing what he is told to makes him a cuck.
Kraux Pas
Man, pretty ambitious goal for someone who already did more than any President evaaaaaarrr!!!!!111!!!1! (except maybe Lincoln)
ETA: Do you think he always chooses Lincoln because that’s one of the five Presidents he knows?
That’s an actual, real life, modified Trump quote right there.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Morning Poco and Ivan ??
debbie
@Kraux Pas:
Is that a promise or a threat? I cannot decide.
bystander
@MattF: Omaroasa’s appearance in that photo was great. Her bra straps don’t align with the shoulders on her dress, which may be some “don’t I look athletic?” thing, but it looks like “I only had a sports bra in my desk drawer.” She looks like she had too many cosmos the last time she wore that dress, too.
Baud
@Kraux Pas: The only good Republican president?
MJS
@Bjacques: “No cause to love the former foe in any incarnation.” I don’t see any evidence that Kelly is opposed to Russia in its current incarnation. He works for, and just took a promotion that puts him in close proximity to, the person who owes his presidency to Russia. I have to assume that one does not become a 4 star General by being blind to the obvious, so he must know that his boss was and continues to be in bed with Putin, and has no problem with it, or at least can live with it. His enthusiastic embrace of rounding up and deporting brown people indicates that he’s pretty scummy in his own right, so he’s probably feeling right at home now.
OzarkHillbilly
@droog: Addington was always there as Cheney’s hit man. I don’t remember anyone thinking moving him into the CoS position would change anything in a substantive way. I certainly didn’t.
Baud
I just don’t see how Kelly can contain Don Jr or Jared. They are family. And Bannon? He represents Trump’s only true base.
Kraux Pas
@Baud: Mr. Baud, I have a Theodore Roosevelt on line 1…
Wyatt Derp
If John Kelly is effectively going to be President I would like to know more about him.
Iowa Old Lady
@Kraux Pas: You mean he didn’t make up “prime the pump” himself?
bemused
@lowtechcyclist:
All they seem to work at is back stabbing each other jockeying for power, non-physical covert cage fighting. Chaos.
Bobby Thomson
@Jeffro:
Everyone did. As of election day, there was no doubt exactly who this guy was. That’s the problem. We live in a nation of idiots with the leader we deserve, not the one we need.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Today’s agenda: getting a large maple tree taken down (roots are starting to damage the driveway) and looking for a good introduction to working with many-to-many database relationships.
I’ve roughed out the datatables I’ll need for my current hobby project. l’ll require at least two many-to-many relationships. I’m … not seeing how I’m going to output reports yet. Recommendations for study material welcome.
Bobby Thomson
@Karen:
You certainly could view the Bay of Pigs that way.
Kraux Pas
@Iowa Old Lady: Dear lord, that one slipped by me. And I was so happy in my obliviousness.
He should’ve added:
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ? coffee buddy!
@Quinerly: and to Poco, Ivan, and you!
satby
Man, I was offline for quite the active news day yesterday, wasn’t I?
Though all the days that end in y are becoming like that. Chaos is the new normal.
bjacques
@MJS: Fair enough; I thought (hoped) he might be more like Mattis.But would Ivanka or Jared really put up with going through Kelly to talk to Daddy? (Baud already pointed this out.) It just doesn’t seem much more stable than before. One can hope, anyway. I’m up for lots more chaos…*inside* the White House.
Baud
@satby: Ride the wave.
Central Planning
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I didn’t like the database class I took in college, but based on your short statement, I think you need at least one of these things: 1) some sort of junction table to join your other tables together, or, 2) a redesigned database.
There does seem to be a wealth of information in teh google if you search for “many to many database relationships”
satby
@Baud: I’m like John, just sitting in my chair at the edge of the ocean, watching the waves.
OzarkHillbilly
@bjacques: Too bad it won’t stay in the WH.
Karen
@Bobby Thomson: I forgot about the Bay of Pigs until you mentioned it, I was 9 and there were other things going on in life at time. Yes, I have read history and about it, but it isn’t real in the way Cuban missile crisis was since I remember the pounding of shoe on table. If you have clear memories of world events back when you were 9 then you are much better at remembering than I am
NotMax
@satby
Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay
Quinerly
@satby:
Big tail sweep of a wagging tail from Poco to you. Soft meows back to you and rikyrah from kitty Ivan. I’m waiting until tomorrow to break it to him that we head back to Soulard Thurs. He so loves it here…morning sunbeam on my mom’s old bed. Have a great day.
Quinerly
@Wyatt Derp:
I’m with you. A very uneasy feeling about this. A different kind of uneasy than a week ago. Too many generals around a clearly unstable POTUS.
NotMax
@Karen
Cuban missile crisis was in ’62. Shoe banging incident at the U.N. was in ’60, took place when Ike was still president.
Tarragon
A good buddy was talking about an upcoming Civil War reenactment in the park we were walking though…
“I saw the encampments last year but didn’t get a chance to see the battle reenactment”
And I stopped him and and just went off, I even used what I think is a line I read here, “I have no patience for people who want to cosplay as a traitor.”
I think he was a little put off by the vehemence of it. We talked about other things.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bobby Thomson: Kinda have to disagree. It was just another proxy war, like so many others from Korea to Afghanistan (ussr’s invasion)
ETA should have said “a very bad attempt at a proxy war.”
sdhays
I think “delusion” is the word we’re looking for, not “vision”. As usual, Trump’s “vision” is everybody praising what an impressive leader (and manly man!) he is; what they’re praising him for is just details. His delusion is that his White House is already a finely tuned machine, with notable exceptions, and Kelly will make his White House even more finely tuned because that’s what generals are for.
Kelly has no chance of succeeding unless the rest of the clown car White House reports to him and fears him. Since half of the clown car is related to Trump, that can and will never, ever happen. The other issue is that Trump has no agenda beyond money, flattery, and dominating humiliation. Everything else that is called “Trump’s Agenda” is just the Republican agenda that Trump wants to sign so he can say he’s winning. He doesn’t give a shit about it in any concrete terms; he’s too stupid and lazy to even bother to understand it. No Chief of Staff, no matter how brilliant or competent, can translate that “agenda” into policy success.
satby
@NotMax: Thank you for Otis!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Central Planning: I don’t see any way around a many-to-many-to-many database. I have research subjects-to-record sets and record sets-to-repositories. Many of the record sets are published indices and extractions/transcriptions, available in multiple repositories. Where I’m stalling is selecting a repository and outputting a list of subject + record set. I can do it by iterating through an array of record sets in a repository, but I suspect that there’s an easier way that I don’t have the education/experience to see.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
oldgold
This Kelly is a great man stuff is a damn con. If he was half the person he is being hyped to be, there is no way he would be where he is. That is at the right-hand of this short-fingered vulgarian.
sdhays
@oldgold: Anyone willing to joining the Trump Badministration signals their unfitness for the job, but Kelly is moving into the White House even knowing that Trump is likely in deep legal trouble, likely including for sedition. He’s a very bad man.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
If only Kim-Jung Un was surrounded by generals, he would put away his childishness.
Oh, wait…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Six months and this, Trump to much of an idiot to get it and gets off to much on being an ass to even to try to learn.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@lowtechcyclist:
Gorka is the Orange Buffoon’s Kissinger – heavy accented person with a PhD appended to their name. Now, in Gorka’s case, it is apparently the equivalent of a degree from “Joe’s College of Barbering, Bible Studies, Diesel Repair and Science Stuff of Sparta MS”, but it is a PhD.
SFAW
@oldgold:
Or, he saw an opportunity to jump-start implementing his “vision” for America — something that running DHS did not allow him to do, except in a scaled-down way. What his “vision” for America is, I frankly don’t know, but based on what we’ve heard so far, I’m thinking it ain’t good.
I don’t think Kelly necessarily planned to become CoS, but he saw an opportunity and took it. And he knows Lying Littledick is so fucking stupid that Kelly can play him and his vanity to get done what he (Kelly) wants. I hope I’m completely worng about that.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
Good morning! Yes, and I think that chaos will defy and overwhelm great man [sic] Kelly too. T will not change and will attack the good [sic] general as soon as he either thwarts the president or begins to outshine him.
Patricia Kayden
@MattF: Over qualified, to keep it real. She’s probably better qualified than Ivanka and Jared which is a low bar but still.
Karen
@NotMax: I barely could keep track of where we were living at the time, since i think we moved 4 or 5 times from 1960 to 1963; I remember hearing about the Cuban missile crisis from adults talking about it, and remember watching an adult pound shoe on table strange what sticks in a childs mind in midst family turmoil
rikyrah
Trump’s policy illiteracy includes the basics of economic data
07/31/17 01:57 PM—UPDATED 07/31/17 02:37 PM
By Steve Benen
On Friday morning, the latest data on domestic economic growth was released, and we learned that the economy grew at an annualized pace of 2.6% in the second quarter, covering April to June. At a White House cabinet meeting this morning, Donald Trump pointed to the figure as proof of his underappreciated successes. From the official transcript:
It’s hard to say with confidence whether Trump has any idea what the GDP is or what the quarterly reports show, but 2.6% growth is clearly not an “unbelievable number.” It’s actually quite believable.
Indeed, when the president says “nobody” expected to see quarterly growth of 2.6 “for a long period of time,” that plainly ridiculous. As recently as last fall, which really isn’t that long ago, we saw 2.8% growth.
Throughout the Obama era, most notably after the Great Recession ended, we saw plenty of individual quarters in which growth topped 4% and, at one point, 5%. Barack Obama didn’t do much to pat himself on the back, and the Democratic White House didn’t tout the figures as “unbelievable.” They were simply seen as evidence of a domestic economy that was growing steadily.
rikyrah
Cover-up allegations raise awkward questions for Trump’s lawyer
08/01/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
……………………………..
As Joy explained on last night’s show, the Washington Post has quite a bit of new information on how the deceptive statement came together – with the president’s direct involvement.
The plan changed because the president changed it. In fact, Trump Sr. reportedly dictated the statement’s language, making him directly responsible for misleading the public about a Trump campaign meeting with Russian nationals.
Peter Zeidenberg, the deputy special prosecutor who investigated the George W. Bush administration’s leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity, told the Post, “The thing that really strikes me about this is the stupidity of involving the president. They are still treating this like a family-run business and they have a PR problem…. What they don’t seem to understand is this is a criminal investigation involving all of them.”
A Ghost To Most
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
star (snowflake) works well in many-to-many relationships. Look into fact and reference tables.
Not sure how deep you are into db design, so I will stop here. Any questions, let me know.
Central Planning
@Quinerly: I guess I’ll miss you in PKS – I think we’re having a reduced contingent visiting for 2 or 3 days in a couple weeks.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/31/17
Trump drafted Jr’s misleading collusion e-mail statement: WaPo
Carol Leonnig, reporter for The Washington Post, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about new revelations that Donald Trump was responsible for the misleading statement by Donald Trump Jr. to explain his meeting with Russians offering Clinton dirt and Russian government help.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/31/17
Motive eyed in Trump’s misleading collusion e-mail story for Jr.
Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about the legal implications of Donald Trump personally drafting Donald Trump Jr’s misleading story about the meeting he took with Russians offering government collusion for dirt on Hillary Clinton.
rikyrah
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 7/31/17
Trump silent as Putin expels U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia
Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about the Donald Trump administration’s odd silence in response to Russia expelling an unprecedented number of people from the U.S. embassy.
Quinerly
@Central Planning:
I’m back in NC month of October. Will be back and forth here and in Grifton…working on packing up the house I grew up in…53 years of stuff. Having to do it at my own pace. Get my email from a front pager…maybe Alain or Adam. Let’s stay in touch. Bet I know your dad…just came from the social hub of the village…the Bogue Banks Public Library…saying goodbye to my librarian friends and some local color. Drinks at the Monkey Bar tomorrow…plus it’s Wing Wednesday! Have a great day.
rikyrah
Can Anyone Persuade Trump Not to Fire Sessions?
by Martin Longman
July 31, 2017
There are two very significant things you can observe when reading this Washington Post piece by Sari Horwitz and Robert Costa on the broken relationship between the president and his attorney general. The first is that Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is willing to be obsequious in an effort to keep his dream job, but only up to a point. When it comes to his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, he’s not willing to concede much to Donald Trump. Sure, he can understand why the president finds his decision frustrating, but…
…the president is angry with him for following the law. One day after the Post revealed that Sessions had met in his Senate office with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak and failed to disclose it during his confirmation hearing, and a mere three weeks after he was sworn in as attorney general, Sessions held a press conference at the Department of Justice and announced that “I have recused myself from matters that deal with the Trump campaign.” He explained that he was following the advice of Justice Department lawyers, and Trump is fuming mad about that. But imagine what it would have looked like if Sessions had ignored that advice. He would have invited a revolt by not only Congress, but also by the majority of people serving in the department he has just begun to lead. In particular, the FBI would have gone ape. It’s not unlikely that there would have mass resignations, and anyone trying to argue that Sessions wasn’t leading a cover-up of Trump’s actions and his own actions would have been left with no compelling rebuttal points.
Gin & Tonic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Didn’t somebody over at LG&M do quite a number on Gorka’s dissertation?
rikyrah
This is Not Normal!
by Nancy LeTourneau
July 31, 2017
A lot happened during the week that I was on vacation. There is one pair of events on which I feel the need to comment. As you know, Trump gave a speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia that he turned into an “us against them” political rally. He followed that up with a speech to officers in Brentwood, NY where he basically encouraged police brutality (singling out the kind of behavior that led to the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore).
………………………
These two events don’t have a lot in common. But the tie that binds them is the fact that the President of the United States made remarks in public that were so inflammatory and incendiary that other leaders—who traditionally refrain from making political statements—felt the need to step up to the plate and either apologize or correct the record.
To the extent that we let that kind of thing pass by without comment, we accept that the bar of expectations for POTUS has been lowered to such an extent that this kind of thing is no longer shocking.
I want to go on record to say that I’m shocked and appalled (while not surprised…given the source). Please repeat after me: This is not normal!
satby
@sdhays: @oldgold: I’m with you guys, and Josh Marshall. Drumpf allows the internal rot in certain people to become obvious. Kelly is the latest to show that he’s a POS and no uniform on earth can make the stench go away.
rikyrah
Will John Kelly’s ‘Shut Up and Trust Me’ Approach Work in the White House?
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 1, 2017
…………………………………………..
However, there have been two major success stories for the Trump administration. The first has been commented on a lot—he gave the religious right their anti-choice justice on the Supreme Court. The second hasn’t received as much attention, but comes to the fore with the president’s decision to make General John Kelly his chief of staff. (Before the announcement, Kelly served as Trump’s secretary of homeland security.)
I have previously noted that this appointment highlights the fact that Trump likes military generals because of their immersion in a culture of hierarchy and dominance. But Kelly is also the one person in the president’s cabinet who has successfully implemented his portion of the Trump agenda. Julianne Hing explains that Kelly has turned DHS into a deportation machine.
Here is how Kelly managed to accomplish that 40 percent increase:
When challenged, Kelly simply told his critics to shut up.
bystander
I loved Mika today saying Ivanka in the WH would be like Zbiggie bringing Mika out of college to work with Madeleine Albright.
Lurking Canadian
@Tarragon: I guess you couldn’t talk him into wearing a blue uniform? That way he could participate in the reenactment while instead cosplaying as somebody who shoots at traitors.
rikyrah
I made a little video explainer on Trump, Sessions, Rosenstein and Mueller. You might find it useful. https://t.co/D8a9OQxqcZ
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) August 1, 2017
Central Planning
@Quinerly: Awesome. I sent a note to Alain referencing your post. We’ll see what happens. The world is a TINY place.
rikyrah
I love Misty Copeland.
@GGail26 Simply stunning. Thanks for the link!https://t.co/UoNPzoSeEC https://t.co/CfMDtGXsWn
— Arapaho415 (@arapaho415) August 1, 2017
I always apply fragrance before I step onto the stage. @EsteeLauder #BeAnInspiration #ModernMuse #EsteeAmbassador pic.twitter.com/SWjg9xXXDi
— Misty Copeland (@mistyonpointe) July 31, 2017
rikyrah
Anderson Cooper Reminds Viewers of When Jay Sekulow Denied Trump Was Involved in Don Jr. Statement https://t.co/byGvzFDDZN pic.twitter.com/JeEqBh6Gjx
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) August 1, 2017
rikyrah
My latest:
Putin Declares War on Trump
Why the White House should be very, very afraid of the Kremlin’s wrath.
https://t.co/rht3ZiiulA
— John Schindler (@20committee) July 31, 2017
rikyrah
Unless Kelly fires Cohen-Watnik, Gorka, and Bannon, it’s all a show.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 31, 2017
rikyrah
GOP senators have no appetite for another health care fight
08/01/17 09:20 AM—UPDATED 08/01/17 09:35 AM
By Steve Benen
Over the weekend, Donald Trump was under the impression he could taunt GOP senators into passing some kind of health care bill. In fact, the president said via Twitter, “Unless the Republican Senators are total quitters, Repeal & Replace is not dead! Demand another vote before voting on any other bill!”
The same day, Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said it’s the official White House policy that the Senate – part of a separate and co-equal branch of government – put aside its entire legislative schedule, presumably indefinitely, until the chamber makes the president happy by passing some kind of health care legislation.
At least for now, Republican senators don’t seem to care. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared in the early hours of Friday morning, “It’s time to move on,” and as the Washington Post reports, quite a few Republican senators are thinking along the same lines.
Chris Whitehead
So Trump’s new motto is “omertà” — it’s a family business after all.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
Yes and Kelly is the general I worry about. He has had no qualms about the travel ban or the despicable ICE round ups. He’s a monster. Every time I hear a pundit hope that he will bring order to the white house I want to scream. His kind of order is not good for democracy.
feebog
As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with the Rick Wilson tweet above. The word is that Kelly got Trumpov’s buy-in that the entire staff would report to him. However, reporting on a organization chart is not the same as restricted access. Apparently, up until now, almost senior staffer could just stroll into the oval office and talk to the Moron-in-Chief. Unless Kelly can assure that he completely controls the schedule and availability of Dolt45 he is not going to be effective. The real test will be Javanka. And if Kelly does succeed in corralling those two vipers, watch for the leaks and stories designed to undercut Kelly to really start flowing.
Yarrow
@MomSense: Just FYI, I replied to you late on the healthcare questions thread yesterday about some ideas about your friend who needs the doctor’s appointment.
Yarrow
@feebog: He’ll never keep Javanka from seeing Dad/FIL whenever they want. I’d guess same for Hope Hicks, who has been with Trump since before he ran for President and is buddies with Ivanka.
My guess is that Trump thinks Kelly is going to keep other people in line, whoever those other people are at the moment for Trump. Probably including media, Democrats, mean people on Twitter, etc.
jeffreyw
@Marcion:I’m an old: I always see it as John F Kennedy.
Karen
I was just on facebook and number of news feeds that I read had similar articles; there are weekly bible studies for the Cabinet. I thought that this violated separation of church and state.
MomSense
@Yarrow:
Oh thanks. I’ll check it out.
Gin & Tonic
@Yarrow:
Bingo.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I’m no expert so I don’t know what my $0.02 is worth, so I’ll offer $0.01 worth. There was a large complex SQL database at my former employers. I wasn’t directly involved with its development but did need enough SQL to put together complex queries and occasionally do some programming. At the time I left (retirement), there was a potential shift going on to a “noSQL” model, that reflects a general industry away from SQL.
I never worked on that transitional stuff and never got familiar with noSQL. I think it has a steeper learning curve but as I say there’s a general industry shift in that direction and you may find it a useful skillset to acquire. Or not.
Here’s one Stack Overflow article on SQL vs noSQL and many-to-many relationships.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14289386/many-to-many-relationship-with-nosql-database
Frankensteinbeck
Forget it. The Peter Principle has just hit, admittedly because Kelly has been given an impossible job. Trump can’t and won’t change. Ditto his family. The odds of Trump firing them are remote. Trying to change Trump or them will piss Trump off. It will piss his family off. Trump hates competence, and the better Kelly does his job, the angrier Trump will get. God help Kelly if the news flatters him while insulting Trump. It sounds like Kelly has no patience for incompetence, either, so this should break quickly.
@kilo50:
He kinda did. Certainly his campaign was wildly incompetent. It was balanced by Republican voters foaming with zeal to elect someone like him.
@Jeffro:
They had his number. They believed that a white man with no restraints whatsoever on his stupidity, dishonesty, spite, selfishness, misogyny, and especially racism would turn America into a utopia for them. They elected Trump to prove that they themselves are right about everything and better than us in every way.
@sdhays:
I would say Trump has an agenda, even a political agenda beyond enriching himself. It’s just so limited and wretchedly spiteful it’s easy to mistake for floundering. He wants to make life Hell for Latinos, make life Hell for blacks in a different way, and destroy everything Obama ever accomplished.
Chris
@rikyrah:
“The men and women on the front lines.” Oh, for fuck’s sake, you piece of shit, you’re not in Iraq anymore. Your “men and women” aren’t patrolling war zones and rooting out insurgent strongholds, they’re rounding up maids and gardeners. Your “men and women” are in about as much danger “on the front lines” as the average DC bureaucrat is from dying in a fire on the red line while reporting to work in the morning. So kindly go fuck yourself and stop talking about your “men and women” like they’re on Omaha fucking Beach.
FlipYrWhig
@lowtechcyclist:
Have you ever seen _Entourage_? It’s kind of like that. Bros and assorted hangers-on from the old neighborhood.
Mike in DC
I don’t know the status of the broader investigation into coordination with Russia, but to me it looks like the obstruction of justice case against Trump has gotten pretty strong.
rikyrah
On Iran, Trump wants to start with the answer, then work backwards
08/01/17 10:00 AM—UPDATED 08/01/17 10:09 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump has an important problem: a major U.S. foreign policy is working exactly as designed, and he wishes it weren’t.
As a presidential candidate, Trump had convinced himself that the international nuclear agreement with Iran was a disaster. As a president, however, Trump has discovered that the policy is working quite well, and the conflict between what’s true and what he wants to be true has apparently infuriated the easily confused president.
Trump’s new goal is to start with the answer that makes him feel better, and then have his staff reverse-engineer the evidence to arrive at the conclusion he prefers. The New York Times reported the other day:
It’s important to understand that Trump, presented with evidence of a successful American policy, is furious – because he wants and expects the policy to fail.
Chris
@feebog:
He won’t succeed at coralling Jared and Ivanka. Trump’s demonstrated time and time again that he’s most comfortable with a Mafia model of governance where all the important positions go to people who are personally loyal to him. It’s possible that the parade of disasters of the last six months, plus his awe for generals as the only kind of public servant he respects, have made him realize that he can’t govern like that anymore… but I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it. I think the smart odds, in a fight between Javanka and Kelly, are still to bet against Kelly.
opiejeanne
@bystander: Omarosa’s bra strap shows because the dress doesn’t fit her correctly. The shoulder of her dress has slipped to the side, which doesn’t happen if fitted correctly.
satby
@Chris: well said.
A Ghost To Most
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’ve been designing and implementing large OLTP and data warehouse databases for 25 years. If the plan is to use a conventional row-based db (eg. Oracle or SQL), then the best way to organize many-to-many is fact tables, with associated reference tables. If a columnar database is used, I haven’t done that, and can’t offer design suggestions.
What db/type are you planning to use?
eta: this comment should be directed to Sister Rail Gun
Gelfling 545
@lowtechcyclist: That photo semed like a still from a cheesy, sterotypical made for tv movie about the private lives of mafiosi circa 1980.
Tony J
If Kelly starts enjoying even a modicum of success keeping Jared and Ivanka out of the alt-Oval Office I forsee a sudden and precipitous plunge in neckline coverage and a corresponding rise in hemline levels. Kelly can rant all he wants, he can’t compete with the assets Pig Daddy really values.
OTOH, anyone really think he’s going to last more than a couple of months tops? I don’t recall the alt-President having much appreciation for being told what to do by anyone, especially someone who supposedly answers to him. Kelly will be sidelined, ignored, humiliated and dumped way before Ivanka has to resort to the twin-pigtail/Daisy Duke shorts look.
Chris
@rikyrah:
This is, of course, always how Republicans work.
You saw it with the Iraq War: they started from the premise that invading Iraq was a good thing; they bounced back and forth between the WMD and al-Qaeda rationalizations (without ever providing evidence for either), between the “we’ll be in an out in a couple months!” and the “we can’t leave now, it’s a mess!” rationalizations, and kept piling increasingly absurd demands onto Saddam of what he’d have to do to avoid an invasion.
Or tax cuts. You either have to cut taxes because the economy’s good so we can afford it, or because the economy’s bad and tax cuts can restart it, or because the economy’s not recovering fast enough so we need to do more of it, or because the economy’s back to normal so we can afford it again.
Or gutting the ACA or really, any welfare program, either because they’re harming the poor, or because the poor don’t deserve it, preferably both in the same sentence. It goes on.
Iowa Old Lady
Trump is tweeting this morning, so Kelly hasn’t gotten hold of that problem yet.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: I actually have to agree with him on this. Congress loves to pass laws that screw people over but good (drugs, immigration, pretty much everything) and then leave it to agencies to selectively enforce them (usually against browns and blacks only) in a manner that won’t get people pissed off (no shooting white women or cute kids) and make the papers. Which puts said agencies in a really bad place. And nowhere but nowhere has this “wink and a nod” approach to direction to agencies been more abused than immigration law and the enforcement thereof. Congress’ intent was to grab just enough people to keep the wages down (not what the law says they’re supposed to do) but not enough to terrorize entire communities (which IS what the law says they’re supposed to do!).
If the Chamber of Commerce wants their cheap labor they should force Congress to make that legal. And if howling packs of Trump voters scare Congress more than the Chamber does, then ban all immigration and let American business deal with the consequences. Enough of this “having it both ways” shit. It’s bad governance.
rikyrah
Trump’s Court Evangelicals and Their Impact on the Church
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 1, 2017
It is probably not an accident that, just as the media is awash with stories about chaos in the White House spurred by the now-former communications director’s foul-mouthed treatment of his adversaries, the evangelical world is treated to a story about the “Biblical leaders” in Trump’s cabinet.
……………………………………………………
If your head is spinning trying to reconcile a “spiritual awakening” to what is actually emanating from this White House, join the club. John Fea, who chairs the History Department at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, PA, recently shared a different perspective in an article titled, “Trump threatens to change the course of American Christianity.” He refers to people like Drollinger as “court evangelicals,” who “like the attendants and advisers who frequented the courts of monarchs, seeks influence.”
Many of these court evangelicals are the same ones who questioned Barack Obama’s Christian faith and who cast Hillary Clinton as evil, even as she herself attended Bible studies regularly while in Washington. The fact that they can now look beyond everything Trump has stood for in his life in order to claim his presidency is the work of God speaks to their hypocrisy.
Fea notes that there are Christians who aren’t buying what the court evangelicals are selling.
rikyrah
With the latest revelation, the Russia scandal now goes directly to President Trump himself: https://t.co/2DRwyfShBQ
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) August 1, 2017
Chris
@Tony J:
God, I hope not. With these people, chaos is good and competence is bad. The more energy Colonel Klink, Major Hochstetter and General Burkhalter spend on tripping each other up, the less they spend on harming the prisoners, which is unfortunately what all the rest of us are for the moment. For a reasonably competent person like Kelly to be able to make order out of chaos and productively focus the White House’s energy would not be a good thing.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@satby: We get to do that in December (assuming we all survive until December….)
rikyrah
@Iowa Old Lady:
what is he saying?
Mnemosyne
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
If you’re still around, see if there’s a Lynda.com class in the database program you’re working with. Most public libraries will have a way to give you free access to Lynda.
From what I understand from my FileMaker Pro class with Lynda, it’s pretty much impossible to have a workable many-to-many database. It always turns out that databases that appear on the surface to be that actually have a series of underlying tables that intersect to be many-to-one for each other.
Iowa Old Lady
@rikyrah:
I’d say the one I list first is the one Kelly needs to get on.
rikyrah
@Iowa Old Lady:
LIPS PURSED.
Chris
@rikyrah:
Said this before, will say it again: the only NeverTrump conservatives that I know who weren’t completely full of shit and have actually refused to support him have all been religious right types, usually evangelicals.
That’s not to say that all or even most evangelicals in my experience were good guys on the Trump issue – only that the only people who were were evangelicals. By contrast, my “moderate,” “socially liberal,” “cosmopolitan” East Coast Republican acquaintances [I don’t consider them friends and haven’t for some time] who were wringing their hands all through 2016 about what an awful thing it was to have to choose between Trump and Hillary? All folded like cheap lawn chairs, exactly as I knew they would.
Immanentize
@rikyrah: The vicious District Attorney in Houston, Texas, Johnny Holmes, used to say that the best test of a bad criminal law was it’s vigorous enforcement. It’s the same idea. If a prosecutor or police do what the law authorised, that is a political problem, not a law enforcement problem.
rikyrah
Anyone here watch TURN: American Spies?
It’s winding down. Last week’s episode was so action packed.
Iowa Old Lady
@Chris: A friend’s husband is a Never Trump R who voted third party. I recently asked him how that worked out for him and he said HRC would have been just as bad. I can’t even.
rikyrah
Also winding down is Orphan Black.
Last week’s show made me sad,….but, I knew that it was unlikely that all the good guys would be alive at the end of the series.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Interesting that at least one commenter called out the WaPo for soft-pedaling lies as mere “misleading statements”.
Anonymous coward
@sdhays: Bingo!
Immanentize
@Iowa Old Lady: FACT CHECK:. DOW was at 19,800 on inauguration day. Not 18K like Trump claims
Liar!
Iowa Old Lady
@Immanentize: I am shocked. I reclaim the time it took me to read that tweet.
No One You Know
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: SQL? There’s some good online material that’s free (IIRC, it can’t be saved, only learned…)
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: He said Election Day, and unfortunately, he’s correct.
The Moar You Know
@Iowa Old Lady: Again: when is Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Facebook) going to be held to account for giving this asshole a 24/7 platform?
Tony J
@Chris:
Very true, but how likely is it that Military Authority = Obedient Trumpworld? Really? The Most Insecure Man In The Western World is going to hand over day to day running of his alt-Presidency to an underling and obey orders to keep his mouth shut and his door locked while said underling gets tongue-bathed by the Fake Media for imposing granite-hard authority and rock-ribbed dominance over the most incompetent Administration in American history?
I just don’t see that happening. However Kelly got the job, Trump’s very obvious personality flaws make it impossible for him to do it effectively. Success for Kelly in his appointed task just turns him into a target for the alt-President’s raging jealousy and need to humiliate anyone and everyone who puts him in the shade. It’s happened time and again and will continue to happen as long as Donald Trump remains a preening, narcissistic, cowardly thug. Which means always and forever.
And this goes double and triple if there is any kind of actual military crisis in the near future. One headline about “Washington breathing sigh of relief that White House is under Kelly control” and he is out of there tout suite.
Edited to add – Or basically exactly what Frankensteinbeck said in his first paragraph at 105.
Shalimar
@SFAW: In other words, the hope is that Kelly can have the same quiet, behind the scenes influence that Jared does now, except actually be competent and have actual goals. I’m not seeing it happen. Jared and Ivanka already push those buttons better than anyone else ever will and they’re not letting some newcomer have access for long.
The Pale Scot
@Chris Whitehead: My thought too, the Oval office is now held at a table in an Italian restaurant.
Analyze This: The first or the second thing
J R in WV
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
A many-to-many relationship requires a third table “between” the two tables with the many-to-many relationship. This new table will have a row for every instance of a relationship between two rows in the original two tables, IIRC. I did it for a living, but retired years ago.
In grad school we used a book by Codd and Date, who were two of the three scientists who invented relational calculus and relational DB technology. There’s also a “Databases for Dummies” book, I haven’t read it but have seen non-professionals using it to make sense of their data issues.
Amazon has a book called “The Database Relational Model: A Retrospective Review and Analysis” by C J Date for not much money, but looking at the summary info sounds like it’s more about the theory than the practice. Looks like Amazon still carries
“Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners” by C. J. Date and “The Relational Model for Database Management: Version 2” by E. F. Codd. So one or both of these guys will be able to help if you are serious about it.
We designed to Third Normal Form, Date and Codd take it to Fifth Normal Form, which is too fine grained for the actual database engines to crank out a result set. My DB professor in grad school worked on a project to de-normalize a system designed to 5th normal form that would run on mainframes of the era. 3rd normal form is fine grained enough for most complex data yet DB software can run against the table structure needed. Many-to-Many is really the most complex relationship most databases need to handle.
ETA: The system designed to 5th form wouldn’t return a dataset in a reasonable amount of time. The tables were too small and you had to join dozens of them just to get a trivial dataset, which is why they revised the data structures to 3rd normal form.
Shalimar
@MomSense: He could start bringing order to the White House by deporting Gorka to Turkey*.
*Yes, I know. But inspired by the Johnny Dangerously newspaper headline, “MORONIE DEPORTED TO SWEDEN Claims He’s Not From There.”
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
I’m still very proud of myself that I managed to build a working database with three tables just by watching that Lynda.com class. I have one error in it, but it was introduced by someone who was trying to help. ?
J R in WV
@Karen:
They really need their bible study to focus on the red parts – quotes of Jesus – which they appear to not know about at all. ;-)
I don’t think it’s a violation of the first amendment for government workers at any level to have bible-study groups. When I had a business lunch with my last boss he would always say grace before starting to eat. I was always quiet and waited, tho I don’t pray at all, being a pretty serious agnostic leaning towards atheist.
If they decided to take some action with regard to their bible study, or during their bible study, that would edge closer to a violation in my mind. But my mind may be damaged when it comes to today’s antichrist religions, which the prosperity gospel and fundy churches appear to be to me.
But I was just a philosophy major, not a theology major, so what do I know?
Then I decided to major in something I could earn a living at, and so went on to use my logic training to understand computer science…
Mnemosyne
@Karen:
It’s a violation if they’re mandatory. People can hold Bible studies in the workplace IF they’re totally voluntary and not during office hours (i.e. during lunch or break time). There also cannot be any kind of harassment of or retaliation against people who don’t participate, because that’s actionable by law.
However, your instinct is probably right — I doubt there’s anything voluntary about these.
Miss Bianca
@Chris: Heh. Word on all that.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: I binge-watched this on DVD and am now on tenterhooks waiting for Season 5 to come out on DVD as well!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@J R in WV: I can find lots of material on how to design the database. It’s actually writing the query to get the data back out that I’ve run into an issue with.
I have lots of experience with making Excel do a decent imitation of a database, but I’m entirely self-taught.
I seem to have reinvented the “snowflake” without knowing it. (Thanks for that clue, A Ghost To Most. I have a better handle on exactly what I’m trying to find.)
When I normalized one of the *checks nomenclature* dimension tables, I ended up with another many-to-many. I can get my head around how to get output filtered on a field from one of the dimension tables. It’s the extra layers to get to the new table that is making my brain go nope. I had a feeling the query would be ugly. You appear to be confirming that.
I could build this in Access when I get back to my main computer, build a report, and look at the query that way, but that doesn’t really teach me anything.
Boussinesque
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Would there be any sense in building a virtual intermediate table using a VIEW, so that you can run queries against the view instead? We just covered views in my database class last night, and I was surprised at how much functionality you can get out of them. (Apologies if this is excessively naive–I’m still relatively new to formal study of databases myself)
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
Not seeing a light at the end of this tunnel. Too many bridges being burned.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Boussinesque: Hmm, that seems to be one of the holes in my knowledge that comes from being self taught. I’ll read up on that. Thanks!
Steeplejack
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Late to the thread, but as a semi-retired database guru I will throw in my 2¢.
In practical terms, many-to-many relationships get broken down into intermediate many-to-one relationships, which sometimes aren’t obvious or have to be artificially constructed.
The classic Database 101 example is usually something like an invoice-inventory system. You have many items in inventory (Inventory table) that can appear on many invoices (Invoice table). The classic rookie mistake is to have a fixed number of Item fields in an Invoice record, but you never know how many items are going to be on any given invoice. So you create an intermediate table, Invoice_Item, which provides a many-to-one connection from Inventory records and a many-to-one connection to an Invoice record. So one invoice can now have an unlimited number of items on it. An invoice is one Invoice “header” record and its associated items in the Invoice_Item table.
Sorry if this is insultingly obvious, but I like to keep my examples very simple when I’m working something out.
If I understand your comment, you have multiple repositories that contain many record sets on various research subjects. So you could start with three tables: Repository, Record_Set and Subject. There are many-to-many relationships among all three, e.g., a unique record_set can be held by many repositories and may apply to several subjects.
That’s the tipoff that you need many-to-one tables between Repository and Record_Set and between Subject and Record_Set. Think of Record_Set as the Inventory table and Repository and Subject as “headers” for intermediate Invoice-type tables (Rep_Holdings and Subj_Items). So a Rep_Holdings table record would contain a link to a repository and a link to a record_set. If you do a query for one repository, it will return a list of all the rep_holdings held by that repository. Similarly, a Subj_Items table would contain a link to a subject and a link to a record_set. If you do a query for one subject, it will return a list of all the subj_items related to that subject. From those you can get the details you really want in the associated Record_Set record.
It’s not clear whether you are creating your database from scratch or mining an existing database. If the latter, surely these intermediate tables exist in some form? Else how can you associate holdings with subjects and holdings with repositories?
Sorry if this has been off point or too much of a muddle. Maybe think of it as just more points to ponder. I’m flying blind because I don’t know the specifics of your situation.
As for reading/study, I came up hard and old-school, like J R in WV, so I’m not sure what to recommend. Not sure I’d tell you to wade into Codd and Date, although they were the founding fathers. I would think there are good resources on line these days. And it depends on whether you want “pure” database or something tuned to your specific tools/environment. I looked on Amazon, and the top hits for “practical database theory” are über-expensive college textbooks. Bummer.
ETA: Boussinesque has a good point about views, which (depending on your system) are related to “queries of queries.” Worth checking out.