Sullen Trump, Vaporware Presidency, Nevada Analysis, Health/News/Politics From STAT, And Proof Of Collusion

Things to think about from here and there:

1.  From Eli Stokols, LA Times, "Sullen Trump avoids usual duties"

“He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.

It's hard to move from business to government.  All the politicians touting the need to run government like a business simply show their ignorance about government, at least in a democracy.  In business you can mostly choose the projects you want to be involved in. In government the issues choose you.  In business you have much more unified top down command, but in government, you share power with two other branches.  And your customers have a say in more than buying your product or not.  They can decide on who you have to work with.  And in government, particularly in the higher offices, what you do is much more scrutinized.  You can't get away with serial fraud by hiring lawyers who intimidate competitors or quietly settle with cash and non-disclosure agreements.  

So it's easy to see why this Trump might be angry this week.  He's moved into an arena where his various personality disorders are less tolerated.  

2.  The Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last writes a piece called The Vaporware Presidency
Here's an excerpt:

Did you enjoy President Trump’s military parade?
Last winter Trump announced that he was going to stage a military parade in which our glorious armed forces would march down the boulevards of the nation’s capital proudly displaying their firepower and awesome weapons of war. Then we all spent several days bickering about whether or not it was proper for America to throw a military parade. (After all, it’s a totally normal thing that democratic republics do.) The parade was scheduled for November 10. 

Maybe people were taking Trump seriously instead of literally, or diagonally instead of orthogonally, but whatever the case, the walk-backs started soon after the ruckus died down. First, the Pentagon announced that the parade couldn’t include tanks, because they would destroy the streets. Instead, Trump’s parade would be heavy on wheeled vehicles and aircraft, they said. 

Then it was revealed that the parade would cost $12 million. Or, as Axios put it dryly, “just $2 million less than what the now-cancelled military exercises with South Korea would have cost, which Trump has described as ‘tremendously expensive’.” 

But of course, that was just the initial estimate. Eventually the budget ballooned out to $92 million. In August, Trump announced that he was “cancelling” the parade. He then tried to use this pretend cancellation of a make-believe parade that never had any chance of actually marching to attack local Democrats. And in the same breath he suggested that the real parade will really, truly, take place next year.

The article goes on to review the history of the word 'vaporware' coined by a Microsoft employee to describe early announcements of non-existent software.

The reason the nonexistent software was announced so prematurely was to act as an anti-competitive club against other potential entrants to the market. Sometimes the company announcing its vaporware knew it couldn’t deliver the product. Sometimes it didn’t even intend to deliver it.

'Today, when tech people talk about vaporware, they generally mean incompetence. But the roots of the term encompass malice, too.'

Then it lists other Trump initiatives that are vaporware.  I don't think we can be boil down a presidency to just one factor,  but this adds importantly to my own thoughts (influenced, I'm sure by many others):  most of what Trump says has no substance, it is mainly intended to distract from things he doesn't want the media to spend time on.   

3.  Some more probing analysis from the Nevada Independent by Michelle Rindels.  

How Democrat Steve Sisolak defeated conservative rising star Adam Laxalt in bid for governor's mansion

Gives detailed analysis of how The Democratic candidate for governor in Nevada beat the Republican. This piece doesn't focus on just one thing, but takes a wider view of the many little things that collectively matter.  But some things stand out:  focus on and consistency of issues; availability to media and people; and being more of a mensch (my term, not theirs.)  But, of course, lots of candidates who did that - Beto O'Rourke in Texas, Alyse Galvin in Alaska, for example, did all that and still lost.  In Nevada there were more factors - like unionized Latinos - that got Sisolak elected which weren't working in Texas and Alaska.


4.  STAT - A website worth tracking.  Here's how it describes itself:

STAT delivers fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about life sciences and the fast-moving business of making medicines. We take you inside academic labs, biotech boardrooms, and political backrooms. We cast a critical eye on scientific discoveries, scrutinize corporate strategies, and chronicle roiling battles for talent, money, and market share. We examine controversies and puncture hype. With an award-winning newsroom, STAT gives you indispensable insights and exclusive stories on the technologies, personalities, power brokers, and political forces driving massive changes in the life science industry — and a revolution in human health. These are the stories that matter to us all. 

Some recent STAT pieces:

• 8 burning questions for pharma, as Washington braces for a health policy shakeupHey, 
• NRA: I treat gunshot victims. Advocating about firearms is ‘my lane’
• CDC investigating burst of possible new cases of polio-like paralysis, as mystery persists

5.  Seth Abramson's book Proof Of Collusion: How Donald Trump Betrayed America just came out.  Here's a snipped of  a review by Aaron Gell at Medium:

"It is, as the author concedes, merely a “theory of the case” at this point. But it’s the only plausible theory, he adds, that “coordinates with all the existing evidence” and “explains decades of suspicious behavior by Donald Trump, his family, and his closest associates.”
Incredible as the story of Trump’s Russian entanglements always sounds when stated plainly, the evidence Abramson assembles is compelling, and we don’t know the half of it. Robert Mueller, presumably, knows more.'

[UPDATE Nov 15: I found the Intro and Chapter 1 of this book on the Barnes and Noble site. ]

After seeing Abramson regularly retweeted, I looked him up, and then followed him myself.