The MOTUS, of course, has his feud with Time simmering on a back burner. His endless rage seems endlessly at war with his attention span. Plus, he can always make his own covers.

Thus these new items:

The director of the federal consumer protection agency resigned, and under the agency authorizing act appointed his deputy to succeed him. The *resident appointed his budget director to the job, giving the fiscal axe-wielder Mick Mulvaney two government paychecks and the superintendency of an agency he is trying to kill wearing his other hat.

MOTUS, of course, is so exceptional a president that having just one head of a department couldn’t possibly be enough:

Since the first day I took office, all you hear is the phony Democrat excuse for losing the election, Russia, Russia,Russia. Despite this I have the economy booming and have possibly done more than any 10 month President. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2017

Earlier this weekend, he preened in the reflection of an #AltRight Very Fine People On One Side fake news emporium.

In October 2016, Tillerson’s Moron apologized for the stuff he said in the Access Hollywood tape. Now he says he doesn’t think that was him saying what he said he was sorry for.

Then, also this weekend, he left no doubt of his support for fellow sexual abuser in the US Senate.

The smart money remains that Alabama remains insistent on dragging American democracy down to its level:

Libertarian Gary Johnson, the next best choice for many a disaffected conservative, routinely polled between five and ten percent in many surveys. When the votes were counted, the Libertarian ticket barely cracked three percent. Were people who supported Johnson in the polls lying?

Probably not. They truly may have disliked Trump enough to vote for a third party. But when the time came, habit and partisanship overcame many of them. They may not have felt great about it, but they held their noses and picked the candidate with the (R) next to his name, just like always.

Moore ultimately could benefit from the same dynamic. Some Republicans who are disgusted with him at the moment might convince themselves that Democrats are worse than accused child abusers (an argument already being advanced on Twitter with a straight face by a man who wrote a book entitled The Politics of Bad Faith) and give Moore their vote.

If that happens, we will have reached a level of hypocrisy and hyper-partisanship that bodes very poorly for the ability of this system to function moving forward. Remember how the right frothed at the mouth over Anthony Weiner's sexual contact with an underage girl? Remember how conservative Evangelicals mobilized to keep transgender people out of bathrooms to "protect our daughters"? Remember how it took Milo Yiannopoulos' comments about pedophilia for the alt-right to turn on him?

Meantime, the *resident’s Arts of the Deal remain more the stuff of “as told to” lore than reality, as word dribbled out that NBA legend and Very Tall Black Man LeBron James scuttled Trump Soho, the hotel that was neither Trump’s nor in Soho.

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In other news, Zimbabwe’s Dead President Walking, 93-year-old Robert Mugabe, and his fiftyish wife and self-appointed heir, were bought off with a deal to retire alive after a military coup. The Moogs also get to keep all their loot an and a sweet immunity deal.

Mrs Moog will soon discover sloping around a palace with no one for company but a man nearing 100 and no power is no aphrodisiac at all. Watch for a 2018 divorce.

*****

On this day in 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran were illegally diverted to support Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Three weeks earlier, a Lebanese magazine had broken the story that the United States — in violation of its own arms embargo — had sold weapons to Iran in an attempt to gain freedom for American hostages being held in Lebanon. Because President Reagan had publicly stated that he would never negotiate with terrorists, it came as a shock to the American public when his administration admitted to doing just that.

To make things even worse, in 1982 Congress had passed the Boland Amendment, which specifically prohibited sending federal money to the Contra rebels for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. Meese’s revelation that the money from the arms sales was used to support a guerilla war against the leftist Nicaraguan government infuriated Congress. The day that the news broke, Reagan’s National Security Advisor, John Poindexter, resigned. His aide, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, was fired.

The following summer, Congress held hearings on what had become known as “the Iran-Contra affair.” Eleven administration officials were found guilty of a number of charges ranging from perjury to conspiracy. Reagan accepted responsibility for the arms sales, but denied any knowledge of the Nicaragua piece, and it has never been established exactly what his role was in the conspiracy. Notes from 1985, taken by then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, recorded that Reagan said that he could answer charges of illegality, but not the charge that “big strong President Reagan passed up a chance to free hostages.”

Meese, now 85, continues to waddle around conservative conclaves in DC.

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Even as they give Roy Moore a pass, America’s bathroom police are expanding their remit.

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Male escorts are expanding their market share in nearly every nation of the world, but Costa Rica, Finland, Israel, Panama and Taiwan, they are old school: male clients only. In other nations, monopolies rule:

"There are slim pickings in Bulgaria, China, Estonia, Uruguay and Paraguay where each country has just one male escort who has found a niche in the market and offers this service."

And, of course, they remain catnip to evangelical ministers.