THE GIANT OWN GOAL

“Never interfere with an enemy who is defeating himself.” - Napoleon

In every battle, a point comes when one side makes an unforced error, which the other side is able to exploit. Napoleon was referring to the self-defeat of the Austrian Army at his most successful military victory, the Battle of Austerlitz.

History is littered with such events. Robert E. Lee was defeated at Gettysburg by the discovery of a set of his plans, wrapped around a box of cigars, that had been dropped accidentally by one of his staff officers three days before the battle and discovered by Union scouts. Admiral Nagumo was defeated at Midway by his inability to decide whether to launch a second strike against the island or arm a strike to find and destroy the American fleet, a quandary that was decided by the arrival of 36 dive bombers that made short work of the fact his fleet was completely vulnerable due to his indecision. I could write all day about such Own Goals.

Own Goals also happen in politics.

Donald J. Trump is and always has been a loser since the day he was born. He went bankrupt six times, and bankrupted two casinos. His business genius is such that he managed to lose an inherited fortune that would have made him an actual billionaire for real had he deposited it in mutual funds and then never touched it.

It only took him eight days to arrive at Full FUBAR in his second malodorous occupation of the White House.

There are two things we already knew would define Maladministration II: a stunning level of incompetence coupled with a shameless brazen willingness to flat out lie to the public, most especially when they need to cover up their incompetence.

This morning, President Pissystink ran up the white flag. The Office of Management and Budget released a memo rescinding the order written by alleged “genius” Russ Vought at OMB on Monday night that purported to “freeze”all federal financial assistance, pending “reviews” to determine the ideological purity of each and every one. GOP senators were flooded with calls from community leaders who expressed confusion and concern about losing federal grants. This unforced error - an Own Goal of epic proportions - managed to create a huge uproar on Capitol Hill. Even the Republicans forgot their new Rules of the Game and got publicly upset. The reversal was signed by Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the OMB.

Incompetent ideological morons - who are incompetent due to stupidity - placed in charge of administering trillions of dollars is terrifying all on its own.

The past two days proved how badly such idiots can damage the country by their failure to think through the consequences of their Genius Decisions (/snark), and how far they will go to gaslight the public about their stupdity.

The fakakte began toward the close of business Monday, when OMB issued the memo. It was sweeping and designed to shock and awe. Trillions of dollars were going to be saved by cutting federal grants funding “Marxist” and “woke” programs. The pause on disbursements would apply to all Federal financial assistance, “pending review.”

To remove all doubt that “all” meant “all,” there was a footnote explaining that Federal financial assistance meant “(a)ssistance that recipients or subrecipients receive or administer,” except where the assistance was “provided directly to individuals.” To make their intent even clearer, Footnote 2 declared that the freeze would not impact two very specific programs, Medicare and Social Security. (Give them credit for some dim understanding of political reality.)

Then they made the Own Goal.

The point was driven home that Medicaid - the health insurance that 25% of Americans depend on - was on the chopping block. Tuesday morning, Payment Management Services - the portal for payments from that program - went down in all 50 states, as reported by the office of Senator Ron Wyden and confirmed by the New York Times. In place of the regular access to funds, there was a prominent red banner warning that there would be delays due to “Executive Orders regarding potentially unallowable grant payments.”

Chaos erupted Tuesday morning and quickly spread. Congressional offices were flooded with calls from constituents, nonprofits, emergency workers, students and people who didn’t believe their Social Security wasn’t on the list.

Things went from bad to worse so fast that the White House was forced into damage control mode by mid-day. Reincarnation of Reinhard Heydrich Stephen Miller and Trump fluffer, er, I mean Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt worked furiously to rewrite recent history and deny that what had just happened had actually happened, as they tried to lie brazenly about the event - lies that were so obvious people actually laughed in their faces when they said them. The lie that it was “coincidental” that the payment portals had suffered “technical difficulties” lasted a whole five minutes.

Even Republican congress critters know things are a problem when their voters overwhelm their phone lines with complaints. Tens of millions of low income Americans worried they would be suddenly cut off from Medicaid and food stamps and began calling government offices. Students who relied on Pell grants and scholarships worried whether they could continue their schooling. Seniors didn’t know if they would receive food from Meals on Wheels that day. Parents who relied on Head Start for their kids’ daycare didn’t know if they could be dropped off as normal.

Things got really bad when MAGA voters began posting videos lamenting the loss of their SNAP benefits. Even right wing “influencers” couldn’t come up with explanations their viewers accepted.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski posted that “Alaskans have understandably been reaching out to my office all day, asking for clarity, about what OMB’s memo ordering a pause in grants, loans and other financial assistance means for them. At this point, we don’t have any more direction than what has been reported.”

Governor Glenn “I’m actually very moderate (Ha ha)” Youngkin assured Virginians the pause would not impact individual assistance or other key programs. He then made his person Own Goal when he labeled Democratic outrage over the apparent loss of Medicare, Head Start and other funds as a “partisan stunt to disseminate knowingly misleading information” and said such actions were “dangerous fearmongering and completely wrong.” Never mind Youngkin had to call the White House himself to obtain guidance; never mind that it was the by-no-small- “coincidence” mass portal outages for Medicaid and Head Start being complained about.

Louisiana MAGA Governor Jeff Landry - a close ally of The White House occupier - publicly urged t he Maladministration to provide more notice and clarity. “We urge OMB. to develop a responsible runway to untangle us from any unnecessary and egregious policies without jeopardizing the financial stability of the state.” That one left a mark.

Tuesday afternoon, OMB released a second memo to clarify the scope of the first. It directly contradicted the express words of the memo from the day before.

“Q: Is this a freeze on all Federal financial assistance?” the second memo asked in an FAQ format. “A: No, the pause does not apply across the board,” was the new answer.

The second memo sought to reassure everyone that frozen funds would not include Medicaid, student loans and scholarships, or food assistance. That was particularly hard to swallow since those were the very programs listed among 2,600 OMB had said were under direct review.

The New York Timeshad gotten hold of the original list and published it. To no one’s surprise, Medicare, Pell grants and SNAP benefits were on the list of targeted programs.

The second memo was proof that no one was really in charge. To underscore that, White House gaslighting ramped up. Stephen Miller insisted in an interview on CNN that the first memo had been “clear as day.”

Jake Tapper began, saying, “We just talked to Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican, a Trump supporter. We just interviewed him. He said there’s a lot of confusion—” Miller inerrupted: “Yeah, created by the media, Jake! The OMB guidance memo, if you read it, is as clear as day.”

Tapper responded: “It’s pretty broad, and confusingly written.”

The only confusion is what the original memo said and what the Maladministration attempted to walk back with the second memo rewriting the meaning of “all Federal assistance programs.”

Presidential Fluffer Karoline Leavitt proved she her ability to lie and deflect. This was probably what the moron from the NYT was referring to when he called her performance “steely.”

That the move was not about spending but about control was obvious, and confirmed when she told reporters the door was open for departments and agencies to make direct appeals for exemptions from the freeze to Russell Vought.

She described reports of the Medicaid portal being inaccessible as an “outage” despite the clear red banner that indicated the inaccessibility was intentional. She lied that payments were still being processed and sent, even though no recipient could log on, saying any problems were the result of a technical glitch that needed to be resolved so that it would “back online shortly.” She bobbed and weaved saying she would “have to confirm” whether Medicaid was or was not fully excluded from the freeze when she was asked directly whether she could guarantee no individual currently on Medicaid would see a cut off as a result of the pause. “I’ll check back on that and get back to you.”

She went on to cite as an “example” of what the “review” was designed to stop a lie that $50 million had been sent to Gaza for condoms. As The Guardian reported, “According to a comprehensive report issued in September by the US Agency for International Development (USAid), not a penny of the $60.8m in contraceptive and condom shipments funded by the US in the past year went to Gaza. In fact, the accounting shows, there were no condoms sent to any part of the Middle East, and just one small shipment, $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives, was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.”

With the gaslighting by Miller and Leavitt, it’s impossible to know what the actual policy is. The Maladministration is backpedaling furiously after a federal judge granted a Temporary Restraining Order until next Monday’s hearing on the rule and its freeze.

One thing is clear, and should not be forgotten: Public pressure forced the Maladministration to back off of its most extreme positions and then to lie shamelessly in an attempt to cover up its own overreach.

This is important: The morons in charge don’t know what they’re doing.

They have pissed in the bed and forced an embarrassing public clean-up of the mess.

With important benefits such as SNAP, Medicaid and later the ACA on the line - programs used not only by Democrats but also by Trump-voting Republicans - Democratic messaging can be easily honed to a sharper point that reaches across party lines: “Keep your government hands off my benefits” is working.

The bottom line to all this is that it is a practical impossibility for the White House to directly approve every expenditure in the vast federal government. This is the result of Trump’s transactional orientation to power, which is as clearly obvious as it is unconstitutional.

Every government service, benefit, and contract is a thing of value he’ll dangle as inducement for things he wants.

But this was overreach so bad, so poorly designed, so incompetently carried out, that there is now a massive groundswell of public opposition to his hostage-taking, that is bipartisan in its rage and has put the fear of god into those people Mark Twain described so well back in 1873: “Consider a congressman, then consider an idiot. Bah! I repeat myself!”

But that opposition will only take winning advantage of the Maladministration’s Own Goal if the pressure is kept on Twain’s idiots, that they are made totally aware that this time, they have to answer to us on pain of losing that thing that is most valuable to them: their position in office.

Be sure to contact your representative and your Senators. Tell them how this crap affects you personally.

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