To Resist, You Must Stand and Fight. You Do Not Run Away.

Shame on all of them.  Dramatic gestures and five bucks will get you a cup of cheap coffee.  Cowards and traitors run away.  Patriots stand their ground and fight.

Career civil servants - the ones with the knowledge and experience to slow if not halt the American slide to Somalia - are exactly who the trumpians want gone.

 

No doubt the provocation was severe.  As someone who has had to work for repugs and freakazoids of the most extreme kind, I do know. But you can NOT resign. No matter how much bourbon it takes.

Putin is smiling.

Charlie Pierce: 

I cannot believe this is a good thing. From The Washington Post:

The entire senior level of management officials resigned Wednesday, part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior foreign service officers who don't want to stick around for the Trump era. Tillerson was actually inside the State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department's long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me. Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

I remember when institutional memory was a thing. Now, though, we're going to have a Texas oilman running the State Department, so who needs, you know, diplomats? Which reminds me—here's an interesting map from the Bloomberg News people. You will note that his executive order banning immigration from certain Middle East countries does not include immigrants from all certain Middle East countries in which the Trump organization does business. This, I think, could affect American foreign policy.