Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Let there be snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

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Late Night Open Thread: Trump Doubles Down on Defending the Indefensible

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If this dude wasn’t the presumptive presidential nominee of one of the two major parties right now, I swear this would be a ‘let’s talk about taking Gramp’s checkbook and car keys away before something terrible happens’ incident. As described at Bloomberg Politics [warning: autoplay]:

An embattled Donald Trump urgently rallied his most visible supporters to defend his attacks on a federal judge’s Mexican ancestry during a conference call on Monday in which he ordered them to question the judge’s credibility and impugn reporters as racists.

“We will overcome,” Trump said, according to two supporters who were on the call and requested anonymity to share their notes with Bloomberg Politics. “And I’ve always won and I’m going to continue to win. And that’s the way it is.”

There was no mention of apologizing or backing away from his widely criticized remarks about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing cases against the Trump University real-estate program.

When former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer interrupted the discussion to inform Trump that his own campaign had asked surrogates to stop talking about the lawsuit in an e-mail on Sunday, Trump repeatedly demanded to know who sent the memo, and immediately overruled his staff.

“Take that order and throw it the hell out,” Trump said.

Told the memo was sent by Erica Freeman, a staffer who circulates information to surrogates, Trump said he didn’t know her. He openly questioned how the campaign could defend itself if supporters weren’t allowed to talk.

“Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks?” Trump said. “That’s one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren’t so smart.”

Brewer, who was on the call with prominent Republicans like Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, interjected again. “You all better get on the page,” she told him….

When former AZ Gov. Jan Brewer is your voice of reason & moderation, well…it’s time to find some leftover from a prior GOP administration who’ll speak for the dark side. In the Washington Post, Alberto R. Gonzales, WH counsel & U.S. attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, “Trump has a right to ask if Judge Gonzalo Curiel is fair”:

…[S]ome have said that Trump’s criticism of the judge reflects on his qualifications to be president. If the criticism is solely based on Curiel’s race, that is something voters will take into account in deciding whether he is fit to be president. If, however, Trump is acting from a sincere motivation to protect his constitutional right to a fair trial, his willingness to exercise his rights as an American citizen and raising the issue even in the face of severe criticism is surely also something for voters to consider…

Trump’s not different or worse than prior Republican presidents; he’s just more overt.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Lest We Forget

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The Repubs have been just this bad for a loooong time. But in Dubya’s day, they could get away with being less public about their non-stop venality.

Apart from adjusting the signal-to-noise ratio, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

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Open Thread: Repubs Turn Their Lonely Eyes to… ‘Satan’?

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And yet — Politico, this afternoon:

Ted Cruz on Tuesday nabbed an unlikely endorsement: the backing of a Bush.

Neil Bush, a brother of George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, was listed (along with his wife) as one of 13 new additions to Cruz’s national finance team. The campaign said the new additions are all former supporters of other candidates, including Bush, Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Marco Rubio.

This follows the release last week of a list of several other previous Jeb Bush backers now supporting Cruz, whose hardline conservative approach is generally at odds with the one Jeb Bush took…

That would be Neil ‘Silverado-Ignite!’ Bush, runt of his litter. The GOP “Establishment” — such as it remains — lunges for what it perceives as the least worse choice. Another ‘risky’ tactic in a season of increasingly wild swings. Per Bloomberg View:

… The bad news [for the RNC] is that the vehicle of Trump’s defeat is turning out to be Senator Ted Cruz. With his faux-folksy recitations of Dr. Seuss and “The Princess Bride,” his singular insistence that Obamacare could be repealed, and non-stop obstruction fueled by his self-regard as the only principled man in Washington, he helped grind governing to a halt in recent years. One of the few points of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill is antipathy to Cruz. Vice President Joe Biden captured the feeling at the annual Gridiron Club dinner on March 5, joking that if President Barack Obama really wanted to put his mark on the Supreme Court, he should name Cruz to the open seat. “Before you know it, you’ll have eight vacancies.”

The emergence of Cruz as the savior of his party offers the painful choice between a fast death by gunfire (Trump romping to an unbeatable plurality of delegates within days) or a slow one by poison, as Cruz chips away at Trump’s lead with his latest wins in Kansas and Maine. But there’s no time to waste. The most super of Tuesdays is coming up on March 15 with the winner-take-all contests in Ohio and Florida. If Trump were to win both, the fat lady has sung.

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Late-Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Vaya con el Diablo, JEB!

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jeb ebb via dan savage

(via Dan Savage)

Clearing our shelves (for the season) — everything must go! Mr. Charles P. Pierce:

… He spent gobs of money. He hired all the best people. He had the name and the pedigree. And every one of those conventional credentials were turned against him as vehicles for mockery and derision by He, Trump, the wild-card for whom nobody had planned. Trump mocked Bush’s spending for its lack of results. Trump mocked Bush’s campaign for its lack of results. Trump mocked Bush himself for being low-energy, and for his lack of results. Meanwhile, Bush and his campaign worked day and night to lend obvious substance to every charge levelled by He, Trump…

(Do not make the mistake of thinking that I sympathize in any way with the sad political destruction of Jeb (!) Bush—except, of course, in the sense that it makes the presidency of He, Trump more of a possibility—because I still remember how, out of raw political ambition, he made the lives of a lot of good people miserable. Fuckabuncha him forever for having done that.)

Now, though, Jeb (!) is merely the symbol of a political party and a nominating process gone truly rogue, burning and consuming itself, using itself as its own fuel like some great breeder reactor of rage and fear. Bush, like all the members of the now vestigial Republican “establishment,” who spent 30 years developing the perfect context for something like the Trump campaign to occur, was stunned into incoherence when it actually happened. Watching him in his farewell on Saturday night was to recall what Abraham Lincoln said about General William Rosecrans after the Union’s defeat at Chickamauga; Rosecrans, Lincoln mused, was “confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head.”…

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Jeb Bush Takes Ball, Goes Home

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Per NBC:

Jeb Bush Suspends 2016 Presidential Campaign
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, once considered the Republican Party’s most likely presidential nominee, is ending his campaign after a dismal showing in South Carolina’s primary.

“The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision, so tonight I am suspending my campaign,” he told backers in the Palmetto State…

His campaign had hoped that South Carolina, a state rich with veterans and traditional Republican voters, would give the former governor a much-needed boost after big losses in Iowa and New Hampshire. Both former president George W. Bush and former first lady Barbara Bush campaigned for Jeb Bush in the state.

The loss comes after an enormous investment of resources by Jeb Bush and his allies.

Together, they spent nearly $81 million in TV ads during the presidential election – with $76 million coming from the Right to Rise Super PAC – according to ad-spending data from SMG Delta…

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Since this is Mr. Brinks Truck full of Right-to-Rise, scion of the Bush Crime Family, he’s the one candidate whose “suspension” might not actually be an ending. If it comes down to a brokered RNC convention — Reince and his guys frantically looking for a loophole that will let them declare Trump a non-person, while the Cruz and Rubio backers literally fist-fight in the hallways — I can see the Bush apparatus “graciously offering” to accept the burden of figurehead.

Of course, at the moment, the CW says that would be Paul Ryan‘s big chance, but how many College Repub ratfvcker divisions do the Ryan supporters command?

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Open Thread: Jeb Bush, Sad Trombone Candidate

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“Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t.” Some people need to learn by doing, and despite the political power of his formidable family Jeb may be about to find out what it’s like to wake up as a cockroach. Politico reports on the deathwatch:

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Frustration inside Bush world has begun to spill into open view, with even the most outspoken family loyalists admitting it may soon be time to move on.

With the New Hampshire primary just days away and polls showing him still trailing Marco Rubio, there is an increasing sense that Jeb Bush is running out of time to demonstrate strength.

Many donors and influential supporters, bound by a deep and longstanding connection to the patrician clan, say they will remain with Bush no matter what. Yet others, deeply distressed by the rise of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and eager for the Republican Party to rally around a mainstream candidate with viability, say they have come to terms with Bush’s long odds and the possibility they will eventually get behind someone else.

“I acknowledge reality. There’s going to be three or four candidates remaining after New Hampshire,” said former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber, a Jeb Bush adviser who also worked on George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. “I think the field is going to narrow pretty quickly. We’ll see what happens in South Carolina, and from there you can see the dynamic starting to winnow the field pretty quickly.”

While Weber said he would remain with Bush as long as he was in the race, others said they may soon head for the exits. Barring a strong showing, they said, Wednesday could be a day of deep reflection for them…

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The Caucusing of the Caucasians (Open Thread)

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The Iowa results on the Democratic side perfectly reflected my own fence-sitting sentiments — basically a tie with a slight lean toward Hillary Clinton. Maybe the primaries will still be important by the time I get to vote on the Ides of March!

trump LOSER cartoon_edited-1Trump’s loser speech was as short as his stubby, vulgarian fingers since he had no polling leads to brag about. He didn’t call Iowans stupid, but you knew he wanted to; instead, he opted for phony graciousness. That stripped away the alpha primate façade. It was like watching the biblical Samson shave his head onstage.

Team Lil’ Marco needs to Apollo-13 a solution for the candidate’s terrible thirst — maybe an under-the-jawline port connected via translucent tubing to an under-the-jacket CamelBak hydration system. All during his third-place “victory” speech, he was rolling his lips like a llama working up an epic loogie. Never have I seen someone so very thirsty and yet so prohibited from taking a sip.

Looks like Team Lil’ Marco took my advice and shit-canned the advisor who told the candidate to lose the children’s storybook-reader voice and dial up the anger. The words that emerged from the Sahara of Rubio’s parched pie hole signified that the phony optimism is back, along with the ersatz children’s fairy tale style of beginning sentences with the word “for.”

Cruz sounded like the psycho he is. To paraphrase someone in a previous thread, the boring psycho beat the somewhat interesting one. I like that Hillary Clinton stepped on his victory speech. Nice touch, Team Clinton.

And finally, can we take a moment to dance on Jeb Bush’s political grave? Not just that — can we bury the Bush Dynasty and drive a stake through its fat black heart at last? Here’s hoping Jeb’s odious super PAC aims its squid cloud of money-propelled butt-hurt squarely at Rubio and takes him out so we can start with a clean slate unbesmirched by that wretched family’s malign influence.

Richard is absolutely right to caution against extrapolating from the Iowa results, but Bush couldn’t even buy 3%. That motherfucker is toast, and it’s a great day in America. Thanks for that, Iowa, if nothing else.

Open thread!

PS: Today’s Chicago meetup info right here.

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