Mr Comey and Trump's Unending Wars.

In the United States, of late, a new, nasty turn has entered the writing of memoirs. We used to write those books because they give us something to do in the boredom of retirement, could bring in hefty cash and at the same time satisfy some personal joy on the sidelines. James Comey, the ex-FBI Director fired by President Trump doesn't seem to be looking for money, looks very busy and if he's in retirement or semi-retirement, he's certainly deriving no joy from the inactivity. It would have been his wish he was still FBI Director, revelling in the glamour and power of office and he wasn't going to like it at all he was kicked from office by a man who has certainly not filched hair from sheep and whose hands are not really out of proportions as we think, virtually the only positive things he said about President Trump in his trending memoirs. If Mr Comey was out to unleash some vendetta, have some pound of flesh, a direction some memoirs are now turning, he has given himself some relief. Let's be sincere, Comey's sacking surprised even himself, he has been chafing all the while and he was certainly going to fight back and he has done plenty of hitting back in his latest book.
And the book isn't really going to do much more than that. He could write tomes and tomes of horrendous things about his ex-boss and still not say more than what we already know about him. Many of these thing's are in the open: Trump has a mafia-like impulse for elimination and it is hardly all about execution, even the most trenchant exhibitions of loyalty do not guarantee aides they would be spared the axe. What saved you today might be your death sentence tomorrow and in this way, you might liken him to the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. In fact, Trump sounds and looks eerie because so many personae swirl around him, images from many outlandish, troubling figures of history. Comey's memoirs will contain so many truths, and a rich sprinkling of outright fables, but it wouldn't matter a jot: Trump is such a grotesque character that anything trivial or prodigious redounds on him. He is a sort of Pandora Box and many of us are resigned to whatever he might throw up.
And out of view, Mr Comey might be silently bitting his ow fingers. If he had been convinced he did right by reopening the Clinton e-mails brouhaha when he did then he wouldn't have been making so much noise about Obama's vote of confidence. He reopened that particular nasty box and out flew a president that would busy himself not with substance but with so many unending wars.

The Sackman Wields the Axe Again.

The White House is full of revolving doors and President Donald Trump is the chief sackman. It is becoming increasingly difficult keeping pace with the number of subordinates that have resigned or have been fired from his administration. The other day it was Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State and it is the third National Security Adviser that we have on seat now. The latest is the US Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin and Shulkin did not hesitate to fire a parting salvo at his former boss,8 lamenting it should not be this hard to serve one's country. The Rasputin Coefficient measures the level of correlation between the values, beliefs and attitudes of a leader and the values, beliefs and attitudes of his subordinates. A positive correlation, good or bad, sees a high degree of match between the two sets while a negative correlation indicates a high level of dissonance. Hence Kissinger's diplomatic shuttles was an accurate reflection of Nixon's foreign policy mindset while Joe Biden would serve Obama like a faithful steed. When things become 'toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive', as Shulkin has alleged, there is always a high incidence of leaders and aides working at cross purposes. Measuring the Trump administration Rasputin Coefficient was always going to be problematic. It is not all that a static index in the first place, dealing with human emotions, thoughts and passions, qualities that are always on the change and oh, how erratic is our president! This moment, he is threatening to wipe North Korea off the face of earth, the next he is eager to sit down with Kim Jong-un and have a little handshake across the table, if not across the Pacific. When your leader is unstable, voluble, projects the most coherent of his policies in tweets and is always shooting off the cuff, then it is always difficult determining where your minds meet. What made you buddies today might be your undoing tomorrow simply because your boss's thoughts had moved on. What gives you a positive Rasputin Correlation today might give you a negative one the very next moment. Mike Pompeo is the new diplomatic favorite, a hawkish necessity but nothing stops Trump from suddenly becoming dovish and Pompeo would be toast.
It is a win-win situation for Shulkin. We could see him as being fired because he is a stable, rational man who correlates poorly with the 'toxic, chaotic' Trump and if the reason given for his sack is true, an illegal acceptance of Wimbledon tickets, we can always excuse him of having the bad, positive correlation with his boss in the first place. As Trump's thoughts and opinions change, so will his relationship with his subordinates change and we will see the sackman wielding the axe again.

Trump's Rasputin Coefficient 2: America Gets its Cutting Edge President.

Mr Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate, got something going for him, though a lot of folks in America might not admit it: or might not even be aware of it. The stage was waiting for a cutting-edge leader and Trump stepped right onto it. It would have taken something very extraordinary to stop him: certainly not his horrific groping statements about women, certainly not the latest Stormy Daniel revelations. If even they had gained more substance then. American folks were simply bored of the unending procession of family-loving, politically-correct speaking presidents, of which the latest, Barack Obama had a demeanor and manner that was so soporific he easily could send a hungry lion to sleep. Trump was a character whose idea had come and he was going to win, come prostitutes, come scandals.
Which was perfectly understandable. Political contests in the US had become hideously repetitive, on a template of combats that were not exciting, even interesting. Candidates were more or less sparing partners wearing the same gloves everyday. The best they could throw were phantom punches. Personal attacks sounded like gossips initiated by bored housewives, nothing subtle or engaging, that catches on all fours. The two dominant parties were rapidly being stripped of their colors and it was only a matter of time before a third force came to steal all the pinks and roses. Trump might have won on the Republican ticket but if someone was searching for traces of Bush or Reagan or Eisenhower in him then folks had better search for their ancestry in Mary, Queen of Scots. American politics was screaming for an Ali to come in and shake the scene and sex things up and in stepped a reality TV star who knew how to serve a repertoire of acts designed to keep his audience glued to their seats.
And he has been serving it aplenty: big, raw(no pun) and loud, very, very loud. Day in, day out, the controversies just keep pumping in. If an aide is not being accused of stubbing out cigarettes on the hand of his darling today, tomorrow a personal lawyer is admitting having paid a prostitute to... A charge he had denied so vehemently earlier. Every moment, Trump's Rasputin Coefficient is unraveling. Which is why the latest revelations will not elicit more than a puff of public outrage, a sudden huge flare of indignation that expends itself so quickly like the flashes of an explosion. More likely the hammer, if there was going to be any, will fall on the fingers of Mr Cohen. Folks take a very dim view of lawyers paying money that look hush. Another controversy will break out shortly, if it doesn't, it means the president has lost the plot Americans scripted for him. Few, very few are complaining. Folks can't have it both ways. Americans wanted a cutting edge chap in the White House and there was no toolmaker written into the scenes: a guy to pull out a blunting stone when the edge becomes too sharp.