Scaramucci Out: Today's News for August 1st

Fox News:

Scaramucci removed as White House communications director

President Trump’s headline-grabbing communications director Anthony Scaramucci was shown the door Monday after just 11 days on the job – as retired Gen. John Kelly took command of the White House staff, moving swiftly to impose order on a West Wing gripped for weeks by infighting.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would not confirm reports that Kelly personally requested Scaramucci's removal --  but she made clear that the former Homeland Security secretary now has full control of the staff.

“General Kelly has the full authority to operate in the White House, and all staff will report to him,” Sanders said, adding there are no other anticipated staff shakeups in the works.

If you need an example of why President Trump is scattershot in his management style, look no further than this. A good manager hires the top guy first, and the top guy in this case is the chief of staff. What Trump did here was hire the head coach before the general manager, who then had to turn around and fire the head coach.

While Fox buried this story as quickly as possible, CNN had this news as their main headline this morning:

CNN:

Scaramucci's 250 hours of drama as Trump's communications chief

Standing behind a crush of reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Anthony Scaramucci displayed few outward signs his unbridled tenure as President Donald Trump's communications director was about to end.

Hands thrust into his pockets and a new government ID badge strung around his neck, Scaramucci watched stone-faced as Trump offered an effusive welcome to his new chief of staff, John Kelly.

...For Scaramucci, who went on a vulgar screed about his senior-most colleagues and vowed to fire his entire staff during his single stormy week on the job, Trump's appreciation for a lack of controversy may have proven ominous.

A few hours later, Scaramucci was facing Kelly in the chief of staff's corner office, learning his West Wing days were over. It was simply the latest chapter in an ongoing soap opera that's shaken Washington norms, leaving administration aides anxious and exhausted as they scramble to adjust to rapid-fire changes in management.

In less than two weeks, the Trump administration has lost three people, including the guy they hired (Scaramucci) that caused one of the others (Sean Spicer) to leave. While it is possible to have addition by subtraction, this chaos has a stench about it.

Leave it to CNN to give us a reasonable analysis of how this came to pass:

In interviews, Scaramucci repeatedly warned Trump aides that he was launching a new effort to ferret out individuals leaking embarrassing information. He began tarnishing Priebus publicly, first in an interview on CNN, comparing his relationship with Priebus to that of the fratricidal brothers Cain and Abel, and later in an expletive-laced rant to the New Yorker, where he described the former Republican National Committee chairman as a "paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac."

Scaramucci's crude comments last week about Priebus and senior strategist Steve Bannon had not seemed to initially agitate Trump, who invited Scaramucci the next morning to fly aboard Air Force One and later announced he was replacing Priebus, an apparent coup for Scaramucci.

A White House official said Trump originally found Scaramucci's comments about Priebus and Bannon -- which described the men as paranoid and self-serving -- as funny and "amusing."

But as time went on, the President became annoyed with the negative coverage because it "took over everything," the official said. In Trump's mind, his new communications director's profile had become outsized. Scaramucci was "grandstanding," one source close to the White House said, a grave misdeed that Trump punished by banishing him to "the cheap seats in centerfield."

The President asked a very close ally on Sunday if Scaramucci had seriously and permanently damaged himself. The ally replied that he had, a person familiar with the conversation said, and Trump seemed to agree.

Remember, the spotlight belongs to Trump, and Trump alone.

In other news...

The Daily Caller:

Australia Weather Bureau Caught Tampering With Climate Numbers

Australian scientists at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) ordered a review of temperature recording instruments after the government agency was caught tampering with temperature logs in several locations.

Agency officials admit that the problem with instruments recording low temperatures likely happened in several locations throughout Australia, but they refuse to admit to manipulating temperature readings. The BOM located missing logs in Goulburn and the Snow Mountains, both of which are in New South Wales.

Meteorologist Lance Pidgeon watched the 13 degrees Fahrenheit Goulburn recording from July 2 disappear from the bureau’s website. The temperature readings fluctuated briefly and then disappeared from the government’s website.

“The temperature dropped to minus 10 (13 degrees Fahrenheit), stayed there for some time and then it changed to minus 10.4 (14 degrees Fahrenheit) and then it disappeared,” Pidgeon said, adding that he notified scientist Jennifer Marohasy about the problem, who then brought the readings to the attention of the bureau.

The bureau would later restore the original 13 degrees Fahrenheit reading after a brief question and answer session with Marohasy.

...Bureaus Chief Executive Andrew Johnson told Australian Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg that the failure to record the low temperatures at Goulburn in early July was due to faulty equipment. A similar failure wiped out a reading of 13 degrees Fahrenheit at Thredbo Top on July 16, even though temperatures at that station have been recorded as low as 5.54 degrees Fahrenheit.

Failure to observe the low temperatures had “been interpreted by a member of the community in such a way as to imply the bureau sought to manipulate the data record,” Johnson said, according to The Australian. “I categorically reject this ­implication.” 

How does this even get to be a question? Unless, of course, they are already manipulating the data. Wrong data should be removed, not "massaged".

As the old saying goes, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Any human-manipulated statistic is prone to error, if not deception. And the anthropomorphic climate change crowd, which is currently dominated by Leftist-educated climatologists, is motivated to prove their case, facts be damned.