As always in an age of Trumpian madness, there’s lots of interesting articles to see on the Web this week. This time around, our favs include:

Over on the Hill, we have Republicans Beware: The ‘blue wave’ is already changing red states by Kristin Tate. This one is kind of amusing because Tate is a Rightest who warns her fellow libertarians that people are moving out of high tax states to low tax ones (Massachusetts to New Hampshire, for example) but bringing their voting habits with them. This she regards with distaste. What’s interesting to us, though, is that she misunderstands what Progressivism is all about. Vote against sales taxes? Fine. But make the obscenely rich pay their fair share first.

By this time, everyone knows that Trump’s new so-called ambassador to Germany has made a proper fool of himself by saying he wants to support Hard Right groups throughout Europe. Our own Luke Haines has done a piece on it, and for background, we suggest you check out Germany wants the new US ambassador to ‘explain what he meant’ about empowering Europe’s far-right by Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani in ThinkProgress. But while we aren’t really surprised that a Trumpian ambassador would say something like this, we are a little stunned that he’d be quite so public about it. Takes the proverbial special kind of idiot…

Another story that fascinates us, in a chilled sort of way. Trump decided to “disinvite” the Philadelphia Eagles from the White House because of the whole “take a knee” thing. You can see details at this Washington Post story. We wonder. Suppose Obama had refused to meet with a Super Bowl winning team over an issue of protocol. Can you imagine what Fox News would have said?

Speaking of Trump’s irrationality, check out this story on MSNBC.com, Trumps preoccupation with the Coast Guard’s ‘brand’ gets a little weird. Seems 45 is quite pleased that the Coast Guard, which he used to regard as a waste of time, is improving its “brand.” Which comes under the heading of…huh? Armed Forces’ don’t have brands. They have missions. Next time someone talks to you about running government like a business…

And give a glance at Adam Serwer’s powerful piece, Just Say It’s Racist, The American press is caught between describing Trumpism accurately and avoiding the wrath of the president and his supporters over on The Atlantic’s website. Mr. Serwer calls it like it is, and wishes the rest of the press would do the same. Just say that Trump is a racist bastard and his supporters are pretty racist, too. You can’t get away from it. So why try to hide it?

Finally, let’s look at Scott Pruitt. Just when we think he couldn’t get any more corrupt, he proves us wrong. The Washington Post is reporting that Trump’s EPA chief assigned one of his government aides to help his wife land a Chick-fil-A franchise. Really, for God’s sake, Scott. Try to be at least a little subtle. This is kinda embarrassing.