"The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve."

Writes Matthew J. Vaeth, Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a memo titled "Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Programs."

I'm reading about this in a Washington Post piece, "White House pauses all federal grants, sparking confusion/Trillions of dollars could be on hold, according to an Office of Management and Budget memo" (free-access link). Excerpt:

Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said... [t]here will be widespread panic, Kettl said, as state and local governments as well as the people most reliant on federal-funded grants scramble to figure out if and when their cash flow will stop.

Re "people most reliant on federal-funded grants" — the memo is explicit that it does not apply to Medicare or Social Security and "does not include assistance provided directly to individuals." But clearly there are "people" who have reason to panic. These would be "people" overseeing matters entangled with left-wing ideology who must "complete a comprehensive analysis" of whether their activities align with Trump's "executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal."

Trump has gone big. It's the shock-and-awe approach. But do you remember "Obama's Big Bang" ("rapid, once-in-a-generation overhauls of energy, financial regulation and health care")?

I like getting a chance to use my "Trump is like Obama" tag. That's where the cruel neutrality really hurts.

"During the presidency of Barack Obama, the national stockpile [of medical supplies] was seriously taxed as the administration addressed multiple crises over eight years."

"About '75 percent of N95 respirators and 25 percent of face masks contained in the CDC's Strategic National Stockpile (∼100 million products) were deployed for use in health care settings over the course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic response,' according to a 2017 study in the journal Health Security. Again according to NIH, the stockpile's resources were also used during hurricanes Alex, Irene, Isaac and Sandy. Flooding in 2010 in North Dakota also called for stockpile funds to be deployed. The 2014 outbreaks of the ebola virus and botulism, as well as the 2016 outbreak of the zika virus, continued to significantly tax the stockpile with no serious effort from the Obama administration to replenish the fund. During the presidency of Donald Trump, analysts have warned the United States is not prepared for a serious pandemic.... The Trump administration has not taken significant steps to replenish the Strategic National Stockpile."

From "Fact check: Did the Obama administration deplete the federal stockpile of N95 masks?" (USA Today), which rates the claim true.

Blaming Obama only goes so far. Trump had been President for 3 years by the time the coronavirus crisis got serious. Maybe Obama deserves "blame" for the depletion, but depletion sets up the need to replenish. Both Presidents are to blame for the failure to replenish. If anything, Trump is more to blame, since the depletion had already happened and Trump knew the stockpile was low.

But when Obama did it...

CNN's Sam Vinograd: Yes, Obama also separated families at the border, but when he did it, it was "for their own protection." pic.twitter.com/q9ZGailOX3

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 9, 2019

The front-page of the NYT right now shows the development of the framing of Trump's withdrawal from Syria.

You can click to make everything larger and clearer. This is the upper left side of the home page. I've blotted out the lower right corner of the image because it's not about Syria:



Notice that the oldest story is, "A Strategy of Retreat in Syria, With Echoes of Obama." Trump is like Obama. This isn't necessarily pro-Trump, since it suggests that Trump is betraying his own supporters and going back on some position he's emphasized in the past, but for pro-Obama readers, the feeling may be that Obama is vindicated — and perhaps a little relief that the Obama position was right and Trump is endorsing it, not doing anything disturbing, just seeing the best answer and going to the same place. Excerpt:

[E]ven Mr. Trump’s biggest critics, the Democrats, will have a hard time going after him on this decision. Mr. Trump’s view that American forces cannot alter the strategic balance in the Middle East, and should not be there, was fundamentally shared by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama. It was Mr. Obama who, at almost the exact same moment in his presidency, announced the removal of America’s last troops in Iraq — fulfilling a campaign promise.

Mr. Obama’s strategy — rely on local partners on the ground, use American air power when necessary to defend American interests and celebrate a return of American troops for the holidays — sounds a lot like discussions inside Mr. Trump’s White House over the past several days. Which is exactly what grates on some of the more hawkish Republicans in Congress.

The other story at the bottom and the story over to the left went up 10 hours ago. These get much rougher on Trump: "U.S. Exit Seen as a Betrayal of the Kurds, and a Boon for ISIS" and — from the Board of Editors and with a crude illustration — "Trump’s Decision to Withdraw From Syria Is Alarming. Just Ask His Advisers/This isn’t the first time the president and his administration have sent mixed messages." The similarity between Trump's judgment and Obama's is out of the picture, the stress is on the better judgment of Trump's military advisers, and the Editors waft the most sinister motivation:

It’s hard not to wonder whether Mr. Trump is once again announcing a dramatic step as a way of deflecting attention from bad news, in this case a torrent of legal judgments that are tightening the legal noose around him. That would be the worst rationale for a commander in chief sworn to protect the nation and to honor the men and women who serve in uniform.

Well, not the most sinister motivation. The most sinister motivation would be that Trump is Putin's puppet, that he's acting for the benefit our enemy, the Russians.

And look at the newest story, which went up 10 minutes ago. In the upper left corner, "Vladimir Putin Welcomes U.S. Withdrawal From Syria." It's quite short, but it's the top story at the NYT right now:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday welcomed President Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal of American troops from Syria, calling it “the right decision.”... Speaking at his annual news conference, which typically runs for several hours, Mr. Putin said he broadly agreed that the Islamic State had been defeated in Syria. “Donald’s right, and I agree with him,” Mr. Putin said....

From the comments already collecting on that article: "Hey Trump: you're the puppet"/"Of course Mr. Putin welcomes it. He probably told Donald to do it"/"Of course he did...."

The photograph at the center of all this shows Putin — on stage and, vastly enlarged, on 2 video screens. It looks creepy and ominous, and the captions is "'Donald’s right, and I agree with him,' President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said of President Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from Syria."

"Pres. Trump says he's 'ready to meet' with Iran 'anytime they want to' and says there would be 'no preconditions.'"

Pres. Trump says he's "ready to meet" with Iran "anytime they want to" and says there would be "no preconditions."

"I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet. I don't know that they're ready yet, they're having a hard time right now." https://t.co/5LhyfYAB1q pic.twitter.com/gAo4edtWNR

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 30, 2018

I'm seeing lots of reactions like this:

Trump, asked whether he'll meet with the president of Iran, says he'll meet with any leader without preconditions.

Republicans, at one point, attacked President Obama for saying he would meet with the president of Iran without preconditions.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 30, 2018

But I'd just like to say:

1. Trump is like Obama in many ways. Not in all ways, obviously, but click my "Trump is like Obama" tag for more examples of this phenomenon.

2. I remember when Obama made his statement that he'd meet "without preconditions" with Iran (and  Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea). It wasn't when Obama was vying with the GOP candidate. It was in July 2007, when he was fighting to distinguish himself in the field of Democratic candidates in this debate:



It wasn't Republicans that got on his case! It was Hillary Clinton and her supporters. Here's what I wrote at the time which makes it crushingly clear the opposition to Obama was about Hillary:

"It’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it? It’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cultlike situation as it relates to a president that happens to be of — purportedly — of the same party."

Said Senator Bob Corker, quoted in "Republicans embrace the ‘cult’ of Trump, ignoring warning signs," which is The Washington Post's response to this week's primaries, including the one in South Carolina, where a promising GOP newcomer, Katie Arrington, beat the well-known Mark Sanford in the Senate race the race for his congressional district.  WaPo identifies Sanford as "a firmly conservative member of Congress who had survived earlier scandal." It doesn't mention that he was the governor of South Carolina (when he became a national laughing stock, "walking the Appalachian Trail")( and that explains why my tag for him is "Gov. Sanford").

Why shouldn't WaPo celebrate Arrington's victory and exult at the rejection of the disgraced Mark Sanford? Why not use the template Women Triumph Over Sleazy Men? I know WaPo has that template, but I assume the answer is that everything must be understood through the loathing of Donald Trump.

Sanford criticized Trump, and Trump tweeted in support of Arrington. That seems to reflect the simple popularity of the man who got himself elected President, but somehow that's a "cult." By the way, was Obama a cult? I don't mind the use of the word "cult" to describe and explain personal political popularity, but WaPo is so aggressively slanted these days. It's propaganda. It's the cult of hating Trump.

Trump’s closest allies have largely dismissed the “cult” commentary, as Corker put it, as evidence of cultural and class tension inside the Beltway.

Oh!  As Corker put it. It's Corker's word, and when WaPo uses the word, it puts the word in quotation marks. Well, all right then. Journalism credibility protected — with scare quotes. And they go to the other side for balance. Look, it's Scaramucci again:

“They keep saying the cult stuff because they don’t like the disruption and change,” said former White House communications director and financier Anthony Scaramucci. “He doesn’t speak with an elitist vocabulary and the savoir faire that Washingtonians are used to,” referring to Trump.

The next line is a warning:

Disruption works both ways, however, and is no guarantee of success in midterm elections, which are often perilous to a president.

As if the Washington Post is inclined to give good advice to the GOP.

And then it's back to the Trump antagonists, this time to address the unstated question that WaPo must know readers have (and I said it myself, above, was Obama a cult?):

“I don’t think we, or any president, demanded personal loyalty to the degree Trump has,” said David Axelrod, an Obama adviser during his first campaign and term. “We made appeals around shared goals, ideals and agendas. We didn’t play in primaries. Popular as he was, Obama’s party was not the cult that the GOP is today.”

Here's the influential Trump tweet:

Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina. I fully endorse Katie Arrington for Congress in SC, a state I love. She is tough on crime and will continue our fight to lower taxes. VOTE Katie!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018

Ha ha. Argentina. Click on my "Appalachian Trail" link above. Sanford, as governor, told people he was off to hike the Appalachian Trail — so wholesome! — but he went to Argentina — to commit adultery.

Drudge and the devil doll.

Right now, at Drudge: