The latest Newsweek cover:

[Tanuki]

6. It's real, and the accompanying story is brutal

http://www.newsweek.com/2017/08/11/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-gop-white-house-potus-bannon-643996.html

....."So he sits and stews, like Al Bundy, the shoe-selling protagonist ofMarried ... With Children, the sitcom of roiling white discontent that predicted Trump better than any political scientist or pundit. Unsatisfying job, ungrateful children, all around him a nation in decline. Bundy dreams of the days when he was a high school football star; Trump, of his election-night romp through the Upper Midwest.

But that was long ago. Reality is here, an unwelcome intrusion for the aging reality television star. That “reality” was fun. This one isn’t. This one has special counsel Robert S. Mueller III rooting around like a bloodhound in his personal finances and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell droning on about budget reconciliation, whatever that is, and right-wing pundit Ann Coulter hectoring him on Twitter about illegal immigration. On the television, there is always California Representative Adam Schiff, talking about collusion with Russia and looking pissed.

Is it Friday yet?

Overwhelmed and Frustrated

Two days before the presidential inauguration, Trump tweeted a picture of himself seated at a desk, pen hovering above a stack of papers. On his face was the faraway look of a great man lost in deep thought: Pericles pondering the Athenian dead, Churchill surveying a blitzkrieged London. The accompanying text revealed that the president-elect was composing his inaugural address at the Mar-a-Lago resort, which he’d already rebranded “the Winter White House.”

The tweet was supposed to show leadership at work, but it instead revealed the lengths to which Trump will go to foster the image of diligent leadership. It didn’t take a team of CIA digital forensicists to figure out that the Spanish tile wall behind Trump in the photograph matched the one in the reception area at Mar-a-Lago. A photograph soon surfaced of a young woman at the very same desk, looking like she was ready to confirm your dinner reservation. Further scrutiny—that is, clicking a magnifying glass icon to zoom in—revealed that the papers on the desk were seemingly blank, while the writing instrument in Trump’s hand appeared to be a Sharpie, not especially useful for writing out a lengthy speech. Wanting to look like a head of state, Trump instead ended up looking like a concierge-in-training."....(more)