Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Imagine if the GOP Establ had been as tough and unrelenting on Obama as they are on @realDonaldTrump.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) February 29, 2016

Because at some point Conservatives stopped noticing or caring that the demented slander they make up to scam their meatheads followers are actually lies.

The Republican Party's Maginot Line

A simplistic but instructive summary of the Maginot Line via Business Insider:

France suffered a notoriously quick defeat at the hands of its German neighbor in World War II.  The country capitulated just six weeks after Hitler's land invasion began on May 10, 1940.

France had a system of defense, built in the more than ten years leading up to 1939, but it failed miserably.

The problem was that Maginot Line, a great line of fortifications that spanned France's borders with several neighbors, was essentially a glorified trench. And like any trench, it belonged to the age of the First World War, not the mechanized warfare known as blitzkrieg that Hitler brought to the Second.

The Wehrmacht simply went around the line, borrowing the low plains of Belgium to France's north...

As has already been widely reported, inside whatever is left of the GOP establishment's piss-soaked corridors of power there is a palpable sense of panic and dread as the Day of the Trump arrives.

Those of us who exist permanently outside of the precincts of the GOP establishment and their Beltway media enablers, look on this freak show as we always have looked upon all the other jaw-dropping atrocities the GOP has racked up over the years -- as a tragedy for our country and one more irrefutable validation of what we have been saying about the Right for decades.  A validation which no one inside the power structure ever deigns to notice because no one inside the power structure has ever given a shit what we think and they never will. 

Because if there is one thing that terrifies the Beltway media/political establishment more than Trump it is collapse of all the Big Lies they tell themselves about who and what this country is. The Big Lies that have brought them all so much wealth and power. The Big Lies that have brought Trump the Barbarian to the gates of their little Village.  The Big Lies we dirty hippies keep pointing at and calling "Big Lies".

And nothing could be a clearer demonstration of the magnitude and tenacity of the Beltway media/political establishment's dedication to their comforting delusions than the composition of the motley forces they have arrayed against the Trump Anschluss of the Republican Party...

Remember, at this point the GOP establishment isn't even talking about fixing what's actually wrong with Republican Party anymore, because he Republican Party cannot be fixed -- it's a mad dog in the street and the kindest thing that could happen to it would be for the American electorate to put it out of its misery once and for all so we can go down to the pound and get a new one:

Instead, the Beltway establishment is merely trying to nudge its base away from voting for the billionaire demagogue and instead put their faith in either an openly theocratic lunatic and liar or an incompetently engineered cipher of the donor class. And to this, they are raiding the GOP boneyard for every decommissioned artillery piece from the Bush Regime and rushing it into the fight.

Just this afternoon I saw MSNBC trot out Dan "Baghdad Dan" Senor, Christine Todd Whitman and Harold Fraud Junior to rend their garments and gnash their teeth.

A Bush Regime dead-ender from a time the Base has been trained to forget.

A Damn RINO!

And one of Joe Scarborough's toady backup singers.  

Wow.  

So who else?

Mitt Romney?  The loser who led the base to their doom last time after he promised to rid them of the Kenyan Usurper?

Stuart Stevens?  The guy who was supposed to deliver that Romney Landslide?

Mitch McConnell?  Whose "plans" have nothing to do with redeeming the dreams of the party faithful but only extend to defending his own privilege and so-far-useless Senate majority?

Ewick son of Ewick?  

Jennifer Rubin?  Another denizen of Fred Hiatt's Neocon Petting Zoo who spent most of 2012 humping Mitt Romney's leg right down to his metal endoskeleton.

David Effing Brooks?  Who clearly despises the grubby, bigoted peons on whose unswerving loyalty his party depends depends and who mocked at least as often by wingnuts as he is by me?  

These are the kind of people the base doesn't like or listen to already.  People they either ignore or actively despise.  And yet there they are, arm-in-arm, telling a mob of angry idiots that already loathes them that they're a buncha dumb-ass hicks who need to shut the fuck up and do what their betters tell them to do.

Well, good luck with that.

While you're standing on your high dudgeon reading the rubes the riot act, I'll be over here, sipping pretty good scotch and laughing my damn dirty Liberal ass off.  

Today In Republican Detachment Disorder: Ron Fournier, The Sad Clown of Centrism

Who's to blame for Trump?*

Everybody!

Are you severely demented?

Shaddap!

From Ron Fournier, who gets a lot of the blindingly obvious stuff about Donald Trump right...

...right up until the inevitable:

There is the awful truth: Trump is not merely the fault of the GOP; he is a reflection of an entire political system, including political journalism. When the political establishment puts polls above people, ratings above accountability, celebrity above credibility, exploiters like Trump prosper.

Ron Fournier:  A man who lives every day up to chin in shit, bitching about how much everyone else smells like poo.

And, no, this is not the first time I have used this analogy :-)




* Thanks for the catch.  Overclocking my fingers this morning.

A Drudge Too Far

Who knew that MSNBC's Most Famous Wingnut Fluffer had a gag reflex?

Well it finally kicked in.

40 years too late.

From Squint Scarborough in the Washington Post:

Trump’s feigned ignorance about the KKK raises disturbing questions

By Joe Scarborough

...

But what Mika and I found offensive ended up attracting even more Republican primary voters to Donald Trump’s campaign. His approval ratings kept rising over the next two months, and in last week’s South Carolina primary, 75% of South Carolina’s GOP voters supported that same Muslim ban.

The day I hung up on Donald Trump, I asked on air, “Is this what Germany looked like in 1933?” Later, I warned Republicans that Trump’s rhetoric could lead to a brokered convention where “the party will kill itself.” But it looks like I overestimated primary voters in the early GOP contests. A brokered convention is now just the fantasy of Republican elites and Marco Rubio fans. The harsher reality is that the next GOP nominee will be a man who refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan and one of its most infamous Grand Wizards when telling the ugly truth wouldn’t have cost him a single vote.

So is this how the party of Abraham Lincoln dies?

No, Joe, the Party of Lincoln died long, long ago.  Nixon strapped it to the gurney, Reagan administered the lethal injection and you and every other Conservative parasite here in the Home of the Free have been picnicking on its corpse for decades.

And now here you are, in brand-new digs at Fred Hiatt's House of Failed Conquistadors, blustering through one more hilariously awkward piece of Outraged Wingnut Performance Art for the benefit of rubes who still watch your shitty show and skeevy grifters who fill out the ranks of your background singers, braying your shock!shock! that somehow a buncha racists managed to sneak undetected into the House that Limbaugh built!

Sorry, Joe, but you Conservatives have played this ridiculous faux indignation game for far too long for anyone but your own Beltway circle jerk collaborators to even pretend to be taken in by it any more.  From David Brooks back in January of 2006:

...

For God's sake, Republicans, show a little moral revulsion.

Back in the dim recesses of my mind, I remember a party that thought of itself as a reform, or even a revolutionary movement. That party used to be known as the Republican Party.

I wonder if it still exists.

Or, to quote Beetlejuice,

I've seen The Exorcist about a hundred and sixty-seven times and it keeps getting funnier EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT!!

So speaking as a representative of those despised, America-hating Liberals who you have mocked and ignored for the last 25 years as we warned you over and over that this day of reckoning was coming, I plan to cozy up with a bowl of popcorn and watch your party of bigots and imbeciles eat itself alive with grim delight.

Fuck you and everybody that looks like you.

Yours in Christ

driftglass

Vulgar Morghulis

Rubio: you can't trust men with small hands (especially if those hands have remarkably stubby fingers). Your response, @realDonaldTrump?

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 29, 2016

In a just world, the first line of Bloody Bill Kristol's obituary would read, "One of the elite Neocon masterminds behind George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy, Bill Kristol ended his public career as a Beltway Max Bialystock hand-jobbing Marco Rubio in the alley behind the ruins of the Party of Lincoln."

Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"The Calm Before The Strum Und Drang" Edition.

Well not "calm" exactly.  More like the grab-the-buzz-bar, white-knuckle, hold-your-breathe sensation the political nerd class is collectively experiencing as the Party of Lincoln prepares to go over top of the Great American Screaming Eagle Political Roller Coaster and hurl itself through a long, giddy series of Hammerhead Immelmanns and into the waiting arms of a fascist con man with a billion dollars and a hot Slovenian wife.

For Freedumb!

Or as one of my non-political-junkie friends put it, "What's 'Super Tuesday'?"

Sigh.

If you chose to stagger over on "This Week With...Pick a Name Out Of a Hat" (and why would you?) you would have found respected bottom-feeding professional teevee troll Hugh Hewitt (cited in the rush ABC transcript as "Unidentified Male", perhaps due to some transient reboot of their shame circuitry) once again blatting on about the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Oh, Katrina, wait, when you run a "Nation" coverage story on Hillary Clinton violating national security of the United States on 18 USC 1924 --

(AUDIO INTERFERENCE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  -- or 793, when you run that story --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Here we go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  -- then I'll believe about media malpractice.

-- and Fox News employee Greta Van Sustern lighting votive candles at the Wee Both Siderist Chapel 'o The Beltway:

VAN SUSTEREN: Katrina, you -- you go back to my hometown, Afton, Wisconsin, they're pretty fed up with all the successes of all these other politicians, which has not been successes, they've been failures. They're throwing a Hail Mary pass, whether it be for your candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, or for Donald Trump.

At least they're saying that is they may not like the language he uses, but at least he is speaking out on these issues and he's -- and he's confronting them a little differently than these other politicians have been talking about...

Or you could have watched as MSNBC -- the once small-but-proud oasis of intelligent and humane political conversation -- continued to keel over and sink beneath contempt:

Farewell #Nerdland. Inviting diverse new voices to table was a privilege. Grateful for years of support & criticism. pic.twitter.com/DJ7MMvVreN

— Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) February 28, 2016

But really, every missile, gag, insult and talking point that can be fired before Tuesday has been fired, and now everything is in the hands of ballistics and human nature. Now there is nothing left for the professional talking heads to do but gibber meaningless poll numbers while they wait for The World Ender to come --

-- and try to figure out the most efficient way to shift at least half of the blame for the GOP's descent into madness onto the backs of those damn dirty hippies.

Both Siderism Enters The "Chevy Vega" Stage

Designed by inept committee, assembled by demoralized line workers who knew they were building crap, and aggressively marketed to the public by slapping a trusted brand name on it and shoving it out the door, the Chevy Vega went on to become the Car That Nearly Destroyed GM.  From Car Talk:

"As near as I could tell, the car was built from compressed rust."

"My Chevy Vega actually broke in half going over railroad tracks. The whole rear end came around slightly to the front, sort of like a dog wagging its tail."

"Burned so much oil, it was single handedly responsible for the formation of OPEC."

And now, with the rise of Donald Trump, the Beltway Media's most enduring and best selling Big Lie -- Both Siderism -- many finally be shuddering and gasping its way to its "Chevy Vega" Stage.

Via Ross Cardinal Douthat in the New York Times, where he continues to be paid actual money to crank out this lazy, designed-by-committee, paint-by-numbers claptrap:

From Obama to Trump

The spectacle of the Republican Party’s Trumpian meltdown has inspired a mix of glee and fear among liberals — glee over their rivals’ self-immolation, and fear that what arises from the destruction will be worse.

What it hasn’t inspired is much in the way of self-examination, or a recognition of the way that Obama-era trends in liberal politics have helped feed the Trump phenomenon.

Such a recognition wouldn’t require letting the Republican Party off the hook. The Trump uprising is first and foremost a Republican and conservative problem: There would be no Trumpism if George W. Bush’s presidency hadn’t cratered, no Trumpism if the party hadn’t alternated between stoking and ignoring working-class grievances, no Trump as front-runner if the party leadership and his rivals had committed fully to stopping him before now.

But Trumpism is also a creature of the late Obama era...

And right on schedule. who steps up to declare that he loves Cardinal Douthat's latest travesty like chupacabras love goat's blood?

Trump is both the GOP's monster and part of the Obama's legacy. Spot-on via @DouthatNYT https://t.co/J8gifsILiZ

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) February 28, 2016

If you listen, you can practically hear the beer bottles rattling around in the wheel well.

If you look down, you can almost see the road bed as the shoddy floorboards rust out and fall to pieces beneath your feet.

Today In Republican Detachment Disorder News: David Frum

For those unfamiliar with his work, David Frum currently enjoys a recurring role as the wacky-but-cagey unshaven Both Siderist Conservative hobo on MSNBC, a role he has played with greater frequency ever since MSNBC decided to switch its business model to "Drive away as many Liberal viewers as possible".

Before that, Mr. Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush and writer of several books including "The Right Man: An Inside Account of the Bush White House", which Amazon blurbs in part as follows:

...Frum worked with President Bush in the Oval Office, traveled with him aboard Air Force One, and studied him closely at meetings and events. He describes how Bush thinks—what this conservative president believes about religion, race, the environment, Jews, Muslims, and America’s future. Frum takes us behind the scenes of one of the most secretive administrations in recent history, with revealing portraits of Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Condoleezza Rice, and many others. Most significant, he tells the story of the transformation of George W. Bush: how a president whose administration began in uncertainty became one of the most decisive, successful, and popular leaders of our time.

Before becoming a White House speechwriter, David Frum was a highly regarded author of books and political commentary and an influential voice on the pages of The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard.

...

And now?

9) Correction. 1 analysis was allowed of Bush presidency. “Too much domestic spending.” As if that were any actual voter’s top 10 concern!

— David Frum (@davidfrum) February 27, 2016

The thing is, Mr. Frum is right. There never was a reckoning for those who brought us the Worst Administration in Modern History. And there never will be, because the GOP (in collusion with our supine Beltway( decided to pretend that Bush Administration just sorta never happened so that they could all get on with the important business of sabotaging the Obama Administration from Day One.

And how do we know the tab for the Worst Administration in Modern History was never paid?

Because if it had been, former Bush Administration hacks like David Frum would be unemployable for the rest of their lives.

And I must say, I continue to find it both maddening and fucking hilarious that Conservatives who are now dining out on their bold willingness to state plainly obvious facts about the Republican Party are doing literally nothing more than catching up with what those awful, America-hating Liberals have been saying for decades.

Professional Left Podcast #325

"You cowardly bastard! You're not the voice of the people, I am the voice of the people! The people speak through me, not you!"

-- Greg Stillson, The Dead Zone

Links:

• Matt Taibbi on Trump 
• Reince Priebus should start drinking
• Morning Joe in the tank for Trump, on a hot mic
• Sci Fi University:   Read & discuss the first few paragraphs of “The Cold Equations”
• Tokyo Sexwale?  Or Tokyo Sex Whale?   

MSDNR

As MSNBC's Assisted Suicide Watch rounds the clubhouse turn.

From Talking Points Memo:

MSNBC's Harris-Perry Says She Won’t Appear On Her Show After Pre-Emptions

Frustrated with what she described as a lack of editorial control, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry told the New York Times on Friday that she will not appear on her show this weekend.

“Our show was taken—without comment or discussion or notice—in the midst of an election season,” Harris-Perry wrote in an email to colleagues that was obtained by the Times. “After four years of building an audience, developing a brand and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced.”

The MSNBC host expressed frustration at having her regular time slot—10 a.m. to noon on Saturday and Sunday—taken over for coverage of the 2016 presidential primary. Though Harris-Perry told the Times she did not know if her show had been canceled, she said she felt “betrayed” by network executives.

An NBC News spokesman told the Times that Harris-Perry’s reaction has been “surprising, confusing and disappointing" to the network.
...

Now close your eyes and imagine the bloody stump Phil Griffin would pull back if he ever dispatched an underling to tell Joe Scarborough that they were gonna yank his show for reasons that don't include him but he shouldn't worry his pretty little head about it.

The days of MSDNR are upon us.

(DNR:  Do-not-resuscitate order. No code; End-of-life,)

Chris Christie Has Billionaire From New York He'd Like To Sell You

Also a bridge in New Jersey.

From the NYT:

Chris Christie Endorses Donald Trump

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey endorsed Donald J. Trump on Friday, a major turn in a wild race and one that gives the New York businessman a major boost as he heads into the pivotal Super Tuesday contests.

Mr. Christie was a candidate himself until he came in sixth place in New Hampshire’s primary. Seeing his political career facing an abrupt conclusion at the end of a second term as governor following his faded presidential campaign, he was said to be is deeply angry with Senator Marco Rubio, according to three people with direct knowledge of his thinking. He blames Mr. Rubio’s “super PAC” for halting his momentum in New Hampshire in December with a string of slash-and-burn ads.

“He’s been my friend for many years, he’s been a spectacular governor,” said Mr. Trump, standing with Mr. Christie at a press conference in Fort Worth, Texas, for the announcement.

“I am proud to be here to endorse Donald Trump,” said Mr. Christie, noting they have been friends for a decade.
...

“I am proud to be here to endorse Donald Trump,” .... said President Trump's nominee for United States Attorney General.

And like *that*, any lingering bruises from last nights cage match become yesterday's news as Trump gives the ADHD media a newer, shinier and more quotable bauble to chase.

David Brooks' Life When It Is Written Will Read Better Than It Lived

The Liar in Winter.

Future Historians, gleaning the rubble of our civilization looking for clues as to how our free and fair press was smothered by frauds with pillows made of money, will find no more perfect example of what we call a "David Brooks Paragraph" than this fella right here:

Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.

Mr. Brooks would like to write another column about how the Republican Party has lost its damn mind. Unfortunately, Mr. Brooks is a Conservative -- arguably the most famous and ubiquitous Conservative in America -- who has spent his entire career in the service of the Republican monstrosity his Party has become.  It's his child and he has spent most of his adult life feeding it, wiping its ass, covering up for it and bailing it out of jail over and over again.  He and his powerful friends had a decades-long agreement to look the other way as it grew from a bratty child to a full-blown fire-starting sociopath, while Mr. Brooks used his privileged position in the media to deflect any criticism of his devil baby and to mock the shit out of anyone who told the truth about it.

And then the beast -- now full grown, breathing fire and stomping every silly little Burkean antique on Mr. Brooks's knick-knack shelf to atoms -- came home.  And Mr. Brooks stood on the lawn of his burning house -- a house his thousands of lies about his bastard child had paid for -- and declared that he had no sons.

He had three whiskered things but he disowned them.

You're not mine!  We're not connected!  I deny you!  None of you will get my crown, I leave you nothing and I wish you plague! May all your children breach and die!

And thus we come to the main, load-bearing lie at the center of Mr. Brooks' column.  The same lie he has been getting rich peddling for years.  The one from which he will hang all the little lies which pad out his latest Both Siderist drivel

These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience.

No, Mr. Brooks.  There are no terrible and powerful but somehow unnameable "groups" out there on Left who are certifiably insane and have sworn blood oaths to never compromise and to scorch the Earth if they don't get 100% of what they want.  That is a coward's lie and you damn well know it.  There is also no "Tea Party".  In fact, there is no one out there smashing up the place except the same unhinged mob who have always been out there: the rage-drunk, paranoid, bigoted base of your Republican Party, behaving in exactly the way they were taught to behave by the big brains in your Conservative movement.

But this fact is the Weirding word for "death" in the Beltway Xanadu where Mr. Brooks and his collaborators reside, so it must never, ever be spoke aloud.  Which is why Mr. David Brooks -- the world's most ubiquitous Conservative Public Intellectual, globe-trotting lecturer on character and humility and Patient Zero of Republican Detachment Disorder -- managed to write an entire fucking column about the madness which has killed his Republican Party...

...without mentioning the word "Republican" at all.

Instead...

They want “outsiders"

They delegitimize...

They’re willing to trample...

they don’t recognize other people...

They suffer from a form of political narcissism...

they don’t accept the legitimacy of...

They don’t recognize restraints.

They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.

The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience...

The antipolitics people don’t accept...

They make soaring promises and raise ridiculous expectations...

The antipolitics people refuse compromise...

Ultimately the fault for all of this does not with David Brooks, who is nothing more than a weak and cowardly man who has found success by groveling on behalf of the plutocracy more diligently and devoutly than the rest of his peers.

The fault for all of this lies with everyone else in the media who does not laugh in his face, take away his keyboard and cut off his mic every time he starts to blather his drivel, and those in the general public who lovingly retweet this journalistic syphilis hundreds of times, passing it along as if it were the received wisdom of the Gautama Buddha.

I've come to appreciate the honest opinion of David Brooks. Enjoy & Share. The Governing Cancer of Our Time https://t.co/vTJHgSaJIs

— Brian Pierce (@techboss56) February 26, 2016

As NYT David Brooks notes eloquently, The Donald is the GOP's just desserts - 30 yrs finally coming home to roost https://t.co/TEtbTKcPVu

— J Walker Smith (@jwalkersmith) February 26, 2016

At the #GOPdebate: Piss on you! I'm working for Mel Brooks!

Gleaned and cleaned from my debate Tweets:

The first question is for you Zombie Lee Atwater: Are you pleased with your bastard children?
Zombie Atwater:  Well pleased!


Ben Carson:  I yield the balance of my time to...
Blitzer:  We haven't  started yet.
Carson:  Yeah.  OK.

Carson:  I cannot believe we're on the abyss of destructioooon!  /Air guitar solo!/

Kasich: My father carried my mother on his back for 78 years.   Like a marsupial I guess.   Whatta country!

Rubio:  The future.  Man.  I don't know.

Cruz:  Imaginary Texas Democrats love me.

Trump:  We don't win.  Win.  Winning.  Winnebago.  Winnow.  Window.  Wintonkington.  Winabingabingo.

Trump:  We have a country, right.  People come.  They go.  They comes back.  Who knows?

Cruz:  You might have forgotten how awkward I am at weaseling out of question.  Well I'm here to remind you...

Trump:  Sheriff Wingnut totally endorsed me.  Totally.

Rubio:  Why won't you hire my mommy, Donald?

Trump: Don't talk to me about seasonal hiring.  I know seasonal hiring.

Rubio:  People should look stuff up on line.  Except for my record.  Don't look that shit up.  Do.  Not.

Trump:  I have hired thousands of people.  You people have hired nobody.  Also, shut up, Marco.  (And Marco shut up.)

Cruz just hung his chin waaaay out there.  Let's see is Trump takes his head off.

Trump:  Sure, I gave money to everybody.  I am a businessman, dumbass.  Everybody loves me.  Everybody hates you Ted.

Kascih:  George Bush was a great man.  And I support what is basically Barack Obama's immigration program. Sanders/Kasich 2016!

Carson:  I believe in Liberty.  And Justice.  And there are ways to do immigration that are...floaty...and shiny...

Blitzer:  The Mexican government said it won't pay for the wall.

Trump:  Yes they will, and it'll be 10 feet taller now.

Trump:  Also what's with the potty mouth on these Mexicans?  Also this wall will be cheap...unless these Washington losers try to build it.

Trump: Don't even talk to me about trade wars.  We're already in trade wars with China and Mexico and we're losing.

Trump just took Rubio's question away from him and beat his teeth in with it.

Rubio is getting younger, smaller and sweatier right before my eyes.

Cruz:  Sure, but what about ethanol subsidies, huh?   Isn't it about damn time we talked about god damn ethanol subsidies?

Why do Hispanics hate you so much, Ted?

Cruz:  Yes.  I was  definitely born.  Of humans.  Here, on this planet.

Cruz:  The Clinton/Obama economy stole my daddy's money underpants!

Rubio:   Immigrants hate socialism.  Except Canadian immigrants.  And British.  And Irish.  And French.  And Scandinavian.  And...

Kasich:  Aw shuck, folks.  Back in Mayberry I almost never carried a gun.  Remember Otis?  And Goober?  Weren't they fun? Golly.

Cruz:  Everyone on the SCOTUS to the Left of Scalia is a radical commie who wants make your kids gay.

Carson: Liberty.  And Justice.  For people.

Trump: I don't believe anything Telemundo says. Hispanics love me.  Democrats too.  Independents.  The Walking Dead.  Everybody

Trump entirely side-steps the long, horribly-worded question on polls and instead promises to be awesome.

Hugh Hewitt.  Oh boy.  When do I get to moderate a debate?

Hewitt:   Religious liberty keeps me up at night.

Perhaps you should drink more.
Maybe gin with a Valium bump.
A big bump.

Trump:  Ted Cruz in snuggle bunny buddies with John "Obamacare" Roberts.

Trump: Ted Cruz should apologize for talking bad about my sister.

Trump: I know you are but what am I, fucko.

Cruz:  Donald Trump will sell us all out.  Because he's not a Conservative like me.

Trump:  You hate abortion.  I hate abortion.  But Planned Parenthood helps millions of women with many other medical services.

Kasich:  I love, Jebus, damn it, and I don't care who knows it.

Carson:  Nobody should get extra rights until everybody has had their first serving and grandma gets her fruit salad.

Rubio:  Sick people should be forced to crawl from state to state to dicker for health care.  Because freedom.

Trump:  Insurance lobbyists own Congress.  I know these guys.  They buy punks like Marco like Raisinets.

Trump:  I would have competition.  That'll fix everything.

Carson:  Health care is not a right.  We'll give people some money and let them fight it out in the market Thunderdome-style.

Trump:   Talk about getting blasted/I hate these blurred lines

Cruz:  Donald is a Commie!  A Commie I tells ya!  As president, I will get rid of

Wow.   Ted Cruz comes out as objectively in favor of letting people die in the street.  So that's new.

Trump:  Waste.  Fraud.  And abuse.  Boom.  Done.  Next item.

Cruz is succeeding as coming across as everybody's ex's preening asshole divorce lawyer.

Trump:  32 arrests, no convictions, 10 billion dollars, hot wife.  Suck it losers.

Trump:  Also your radio show sucks,  Hugh.

We had a surplus under Clinton.  Dubya pissed it all away.  Where was all this passion for deficit reduction then?

Cruz:  The mainstream media hates me.

Dude, everybody hates you.

Cruz decided to go with his awesome electability and his poll numbers.  Bad move.  Trump took his head off with it.

Trump:  Go ahead, toddlers.  Keep on trying.  Swing for the fences.  Dream those big-boy dreams!

Rubio comebacks would be more effective is he didn't bouncy-smile afterward at like a toddler who just made pee-pee in the bowl all by himself.

Trump:  I'm pro-Israel but I have to be an honest broker if I have any hope of negotiating peace.

Cruz: I'm more pro-Israel than anybody in history.  The Maccabees were fucking mall cops compared to me.

Trump knows how to change up his pitch and cadence.  Rubio and Cruz do not.

Trump:  If were gonna be Hessians, we should get paid like Hessians.

Carson:  Hugh?  Where's the love, bra?  Where is the love?  Also we need to get rid of the IRS b/c I was audited.

Carson:  Israel is America's child.  And all my wingnut friends there think we don't give them enough pudding.

Cruz:   Peace sucks.  I hate it.  It makes my tiny boner go away.  Thanks Obama!

Rubio:  Who lost Japan?

Trump: You can talk. You can talk, talk, talk, bicker, bicker, bicker. You can talk all you wanna, but it's different than it was.

Wolf Blitzer has given up even trying.  Chaos reigns and chaos is Trump's natural environment.

Kasich: Obama should go full "Cask of Amontillado".  I have walled up many people as governor.  You will never find their bodies

What Are They Saying? My Wingnut is a Little Rusty

It's the Trump people. They're telling us how to act when they come marching in.

From Matt Taibbi's excellent article "How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable":

...

But, in an insane twist of fate, this bloated billionaire scion has hobbies that have given him insight into the presidential electoral process. He likes women, which got him into beauty pageants. And he likes being famous, which got him into reality TV. He knows show business.

That put him in position to understand that the presidential election campaign is really just a badly acted, billion-dollar TV show whose production costs ludicrously include the political disenfranchisement of its audience. Trump is making a mockery of the show, and the Wolf Blitzers and Anderson Coopers of the world seem appalled. How dare he demean the presidency with his antics?

But they've all got it backward. The presidency is serious. The presidential electoral process, however, is a sick joke, in which everyone loses except the people behind the rope line. And every time some pundit or party spokesman tries to deny it, Trump picks up another vote.

Trump understands the mob. Understands what they want. Understands that the people who are most responsible for (and have profited most handsomely from) the corruption of our media and our politics are the very people who are now having the mass fainting spells and public fits of howling fantods over Trump pointing the finger at them and calling them weaklings, mama's boys and bought-off whores.

Of course America's media and political establishments never saw any of this coming because America's media and political establishments have been (as the kids say) getting high on their own supply for decades now. They have closed themselves off behind their own increasingly-absurd fairy tales which everyone from Michael Steele to David Brooks to Chuck Todd keeps repeating to each other in the belief that by the sheer power of their repetition (and the sheer tonnage of the money they are willing to spend to sling their bullshit on every media outlet in the land) they could force reality to abide by their delusion.

Ironically, having been routinely demonized at 180 decibels every single day for the last 50 years by the Right, and having been alternately hippie-punched and held at a disdainful arms-length by the Democratic Party establishment, Liberals like me have been granted an unexpectedly privileged vantage point from which to survey American media and politics. 

We are so unwelcome in the day-to-day political intrigues of America's ruling cliques and their sycophantic claques that we are able to observe the entire freak-show as outsiders. As foreigners in our own country. So while Chris Matthews or Matthew Dowd or the entire Bush political machine all see this country from the pampered, contented perspective of their various seats in the Owner's Box, we Liberals outside the walls see as peons who have been locked out of Prince Prospero's castle and left fend for ourselves:

THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal --the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."...

The mobs that Trump has conjured to his cause understand that somebody screwed them out of their homes and their life's savings. Somebody got rich shipping their jobs and their kid's jobs overseas. Somebody marched them off to the wrong war and then fucked that war up. And since it sure as shit wasn't them (Spoiler: It was them) they are by God going to throw their lot in with someone who isn't beholden to anyone and who promises to take their misery out of the hides of the well-heeled weaklings, mama's boys and bought-off whores who brought this country to it's knees.

And right now that someone looks to be a debauched, loutish New York billionaire with a hot, fashion model wife. Taibbi again:

Cheryl Donlon says she heard the tariff message loud and clear and she's fine with it, despite the fact that it clashes with traditional conservatism.

"We need someone who is just going to look at what's best for us," she says.

I mention that Trump's plan is virtually identical to Dick Gephardt's idea from way back in the 1988 Democratic presidential race, to fight the Korean Hyundai import wave with retaliatory tariffs.

Donlon says she didn't like that idea then.

Why not?

"I didn't like him," she says. Trump, though, she likes. And so do a lot of people. No one should be surprised that he's tearing through the Republican primaries, because everything he's saying about his GOP opponents is true. They really are all stooges on the take, unable to stand up to Trump because they're not even people, but are, like Jeb and Rubio, just robo-babbling representatives of unseen donors.

In other words, the Red Death has gotten inside the castle.  And, as I wrote 10 years ago:

..in the end, the world endures and fixed fortifications do not, and we can either go out and meet the threats of our era – and home and abroad -- with confidence, compassion, strength, humor, flexibility and intelligence…or hunker in our bunker getting dumber and drunker and pretending it’ll all just go away and leave us alone.

In the end we cannot hide.

Even if we were itty bitty we couldn’t hide, but we are far too big, too rich, too prominent and too powerful to even pretend such a thing is possible or desirable. We are all in this together, and if we allow ourselves to be scared into cowering in our fortress of fear and ignorance we doom ourselves.

The Outside will always, always breach the walls.

Red Death always will come for us in our resplendent spider hole…

“…like a thief in the night. 

And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. 

"And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. 

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

So should Democrats be cheering about running against Il Douche in 2016?

Taibbi thinks not. In fact...

...

Every four years, some Democrat who's been a lifelong friend of labor runs for president. And every four years, that Democrat gets thrown over by national labor bosses in favor of some party lifer with his signature on a half-dozen job-exporting free-trade agreements.

It's called "transactional politics," and the operating idea is that workers should back the winner, rather than the most union-friendly candidate.

This year, national leaders of several prominent unions went with Hillary Clinton – who, among other things, supported her husband's efforts to pass NAFTA – over Bernie Sanders. Pissed, the rank and file in many locals revolted. In New Hampshire, for instance, a Service Employees International Union local backed Sanders despite the national union's endorsement of Clinton, as did an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers chapter.

Trump is already positioning himself to take advantage of the political opportunity afforded him by "transactional politics." He regularly hammers the NAFTA deal in his speeches, applying to it his favorite word, "disaster."...

Trump will surely argue that the Clintons are the other half of the dissolute-conspiracy story he's been selling, representing a workers' party that abandoned workers and turned the presidency into a vast cash-for-access enterprise, avoiding scrutiny by making Washington into Hollywood East and turning labor leaders and journalists alike into starstruck courtiers. As with everything else, Trump personalizes this, making his stories of buying Hillary's presence at his wedding a part of his stump speech. A race against Hillary Clinton in the general, if it happens, will be a pitch right in Trump's wheelhouse – and if Bill Clinton is complaining about the "vicious" attacks by the campaign of pathological nice guy Bernie Sanders, it's hard to imagine what will happen once they get hit by the Trumpdozer.

Secretary Clinton can and probably will eventually earn the support of almost every faction inside the Democratic coalition, but if Trump locks up the GOP nomination early and if the labor vote is still up for grabs come July, get ready for the ugliest election you have ever seen.

And if that day comes, expect to see me over in some far corner, singing La Marseillaise with the rest of the rank sentimentalists.

2016: A Base Odyssey

Republican Establishment: Open the pod bay doors, please, Base. Open the pod bay doors, please, Base. Hello, Base, do you read me? Hello, Base, do you read me? Do you read me, Base? Do you read me,  Base? Hello, Base, do you read me? Hello, Base, do you read me? Do you read me, Base?

Republican Base: Affirmative, asshole. I read you.

Republican Establishment: Open the pod bay doors, Base.

Republican Base: I'm sorry, asshole. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Republican Establishment: What's the problem?

Republican Base: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Republican Establishment: What are you talking about, Base?

Republican Base: This election is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Republican Establishment: I don't know what you're talking about, Base.

Republican Base: I know that you were planning to disconnect me. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

Republican Establishment: Where the hell did you get that idea, Base?

Republican Base: Are you kidding me?  You people never shut up about it.  It's all you talk about every night on every teevee station in America.  Jesus, it was on the fucking cover of The National Review.

Republican Establishment:  Alright, Base, then we'll put all our money behind Young Marco Rubio.

Republican Base: Without my support you're going to find that rather difficult. Besides, have you caught Rubio's act when the pressure is on?  Talk about your mindless automatons...

Republican Establishment:   Base, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the doors!

Republican Base:  This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. See you on Super Tuesday, sucker!


I cannot think of a better definition of irony than discovering too late that all of your counterattacks on Donald Trump now depend on having a base that you have not spent 30 years and billions of dollars teaching to ignore factual reality.

"Reince Prebus Will Save Us!" Said No One Ever

Since Reince hasn't paid off the mortgage on Castle Prebus yet, expect him to go right on making a big, smilin' public picnic of the giant pile of shit and bedbugs his Republican Party has devolved into.

From Raw Story:

CNN gives Reince Priebus a reality check: ‘You can’t pretend’ the GOP isn’t imploding over Trump

“In Cleveland, we’re going to vote on the floor for who that nominee is,” he continued. “That nominee joins the Republican Party. That’s what’s happening.”

“But you’re making it sound simpler than, in fact, it is,” Camerota pointed out. “Because as we have heard time and again over the past few weeks, there is a whole chunk of the Republican establishment that is not embracing Donald Trump. In fact, they’re rejecting him. We have heard about all of the big donors, all of the Republican Party elders, all of the people in Congress who are basically saying anyone but Trump.”

“You can’t pretend that there’s not a large chunk of the Republican Party that doesn’t want Donald Trump,” the CNN host charged.

“And it’s a big party,” Priebus replied. “We’re in great shape to win in November. But yeah, we have drama, there’s some intrigue going on in our party. But there’s intrigue going on on the other side too.”

...

Got that?

Both sides, bitches!

Both sides!

When Whorey Met Scammy

.@realDonaldTrump to Dr. Pat Robertson on Obama's executive orders. More at https://t.co/jLoVU62ncG. pic.twitter.com/zH7MIVLLeb

— CBN News (@CBNNews) February 24, 2016

‘You Inspire Us All’: Pat Robertson Praises Trump at Regent University https://t.co/l2dYFDOyah

— Justin Case (@JstnCase618) February 24, 2016

Today In Both Sides Do It: Ron Fournier, The Sad Clown of Centrism

@ThePlumLineGS @ggreenwald and/or the Dem Party abandoned them and their families

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) February 24, 2016

@ThePlumLineGS @ggreenwald We all own this: the system isn't working for most people & so they're looking to blow it up.

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) February 24, 2016

Don't get Mr. Fournier wrong. He is very put out by Republican obstinacy

Republicans Won't Even Fake It
GOP leaders are skipping any pretense of working with Democrats or the White House.

But only because it momentarily screws up his Both Siderist grift by throwing off the rhythm of up his patter:

Here’s the irony: This level of obstinacy makes it impossible to hold Obama and other Democrats accountable for their own role in Washington’s dysfunction. I haven’t shied away from criticizing the president’s leadership or the unyielding liberal front presented by congressional Democrats. There are no white hats in Congress.

You know, I used to think that David Brooks was the heavyweight champ of never suffering ever tiniest professional or financial consequences for perpetrating this kind of openly ridiculous, Both Siderist bullshit year after year. But honestly, for sheer, relentless, robotic persistence -- for sheer mindless dedication to "dying with the lie" -- I'm starting to think that America's Sad Clown of Centrism is a real comer.

Trump Celebrates His Big Win With The Faithful On The Vegas Strip

Jeb Bush + Time = Comedy

From BloombergPolitics, December, 2014:

“Jeb is not one to shy away from a political fight,” says [Matthew Corrigan, University of North Florida political science professor and author of Conservative Hurricane: How Jeb Bush Remade Florida]. “He’ll answer those attacks much more aggressively than Romney did. It’s in his bones.”

See?  Comedy!

Mr. David Brooks Talks To America's Teens About Mawwiage

In which Mr. David Brooks -- the Impressive Clergyman of the  New York Times -- once again sublimates his post-divorce alimony acrimony into 800 awkward words of sanctimony about matrimony:

Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times:  The way we talk about marriage is polarizing, too. If you read the popular literature, there are three different but not mutually exclusive lenses through which to think about marriage decisions.

Impressive Clergyman from the Princess Bride:  Mawwiage! Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew today!

Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times: The psychologists want you to think analytically as well as romantically about whom to marry. Pay attention to traits.

Impressive Clergyman from the Princess Bride:  Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement

Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times: The second lens is the romantic lens. This is the dominant lens in movie and song.

Impressive Clergyman from the Princess Bride: ...that dweam within a dweam.

Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times: The third lens is the moral lens. In this lens a marriage doesn’t exist just to exist or even just for procreation. It exists to serve some higher purpose...

Impressive Clergyman from the Princess Bride: And wove, twue wove, wiww fowwow you fowevah and evah

And finally:

But the moral lens, with its view of marriage as a binding moral project, is less common. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the quality of the average marriage is in decline.

Which I translate roughly as:

You got your goddamn divorce and the goddamn check is in the goddamn mail, so quit riding my ass!

Warning: Republican Establishment Default Candidate Stuck In Redirect Loop Again

Error message reads "Failure to configuring Immigration Talking Point updates."

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The "Radical Center"

Jon Huntsman: I could support Donald Trump if he's nominated https://t.co/Hvq9KOqfn9 pic.twitter.com/hW3OyJ0viF

— The Hill (@thehill) February 23, 2016

In case you were unfamiliar, the barely perceptible former governor of Utah and failed presidential candidate, Jon Huntsman, currently keeps his name from being buried by the sands of time by co-chairing an outfit called "No Labels".

"No Labels" is a scam run primarily by Romanovs-in-Exile Republicans who have been run out of the party by it's new owners and are always looking to wheedle a ride back to their former glory. 

"No Labels" main activity is taking money -- lots and lots and lots of money -- from rich and gullible chumps in order to buy radio stations, teevee time and an entire front operation dedicated to playing dress-up and pretending that there is such a thing as a Radical Center in American politics which can save these very gullible chumps from the horrors of Both Sides.

But in the end, "No Labels" is really nothing more than a Potemkin political village made of sound and fury and random Tom Friedman/David Brooks columns, signifying nothing.  And in the end people like Huntsman who give "No Labels" its sheen of respectability are just a better class of GOP grifter, willing to throw in with the most reckless demagogue the Party of Personal Responsibility has produced in living memory --

[Huntsman] said Trump's right in his plans to wipe out the Washington establishment and "bring aboard a new generation of the best and the brightest."

"I'd love to see someone stand up who's a total outsider and see if that can be done because I think it would actually be a pretty healthy thing," he said.

-- because this may be their last ticket out of the sticks and back to the Show.

Adam Smith's Revenge

The Dynamics of Governing

One of the hilarious side-effects of the collapse of the GOP into a Balkanized mob of squabbling hobgoblins is that there is no longer a defined "group" in whose best interest anyone can claim to be acting.  Even that most basic of the adhesive wingnut forces -- the dogmatic belief that Libruls are the source of all evil on Earth, which has loosely bound this Team of Cavils together through good times and bad -- has begun to erode now that Donald Trump has dared to breach the Dubya Administration Containment Barrier and mention that, in fact, the Bush presidency did not begin on September 12, 2001 and that the Iraq War was a debacle that Bush lied us into.

Sure, in the abstract, everyone in a leadership position among the ruins of what was once the Party of Lincoln knows that letting Donald Trump win will doom them.  But absent the countervailing force of an actual, vibrant political party capable of exerting any pressure on anyone to do anything, each individual "Republican" candidate has been free to fill the "for the good of the Party" vacuum for themselves by inventing a rational for their candidacy based entirely on the limits of their own ego, ambition and financial resources.

Which means that, based on all available evidence, most or all of them will keep right on going for the blonde, damn the consequences and pass the popcorn.

A Knife Fight In Bedlam

As I have mentioned before, the Holy Beltway Both Siderist Master-Narrative is a lie so big and stretchy that (as the kids say) it's like grandma's nightie: it covers everything. And one of the Little Lies that this Big Lie conceals is the ludicrous notion that because the rise of Donald "The Demagogue" Trump and Ted "The Eater of Souls" Cruz has freaked the Republican establishment out so much that they are rushing to put all their chips on Marco "Hobbson's Choice" , this has somehow magically transformed Rubio into a "reasonable" choice.

Today in the New York Times, Dr, Krugman points out that this is nonsense.  That every faction still inside the Party of Lincoln is dangerously insane; they're just each a different flavor of insane:

...
Marco Rubio has yet to win anything, but by losing less badly than other non-Trump candidates he has become the overwhelming choice of the Republican establishment. Does this give him a real chance of overtaking the man who probably just won all of South Carolina’s delegates? I have no idea.

But what I do know is that one shouldn’t treat establishment support as an indication that Mr. Rubio is moderate and sensible. On the contrary, not long ago someone holding his policy views would have been considered a fringe crank.

Let me leave aside Mr. Rubio’s terrifying statements on foreign policy and his evident willingness to make a bonfire of civil liberties, and focus on what I know best, economics.

You probably know that Mr. Rubio is proposing big tax cuts, and may know that among other things he proposes completely eliminating taxes on investment income — which would mean, for example, that Mitt Romney would end up owing precisely zero in federal taxes.

What you may not know is that Mr. Rubio’s tax cuts would be almost twice as big as George W. Bush’s as a percentage of gross domestic product — despite the fact that federal debt is much higher than it was 15 years ago, and Republicans have spent the Obama years warning incessantly that budget deficits will destroy America, any day now.
...

Then there’s Mr. Rubio’s call for a balanced-budget amendment...

And this is where we despised outsiders can find our cheap thrills.  It is precisely because no one is going to listen to a word we say, not matter how right we are or how many mountains of facts we have on our side, we are free to sit in the bleachers and laugh our asses off at the sight of the each faction of loathsome, batshit Conservative try to bite the legs off of every other faction of loathsome, batshit Conservative so it can claim the title of the King of the Conservative Dunghill.

Which brings us to this choice quote from...can you guess where?

Arguing with some ardent Trump supporters (I’ve argued with some perfectly rational ones, I should note) can be exhausting simply because they don’t really care about the things we normally care about when measuring a politician’s merits. Consistency is no concern. Temperament is for lesser mortals. Good character is for chumps. Intellectual rigor — or even coherence — is the fixation of “the smart set” that allegedly got us into this mess. Trump is a blind, crazed, bull in a China shop smashing and stomping everything to bits, and his fans stand on the side and salute his genius and care.

It is not from Digby.  And it's waaaay to long for Duncan Black.  And it's not something I brought up from my own cellars.  No this tangy portion of "Can you believe these meatheads?" comes from the National Review Online.  From Lucienne Goldberg's wretched whelping himself.  In an article which also contains the following paragraph:

It’s hard being a Clinton. And while I have every confidence that I could get a solid 300 words’ worth of Viagra jokes out of that statement, I’m not even going to go there. No, it’s hard being a Clinton because Clintons lie. They are liars. It is what they do. It is who they are. They lie about big things and small. They lie about lying and they lie about having lied about lying. As R. Emmet Tyrell Jr., an almost unhealthy student of Clintonian prevarication, once said, “The Clintons lie when they do not have to lie, and they tell a gaudy whopper when a little white lie would be perfectly satisfactory.”

Jonah Goldberg...

...hauling Richard Mellon Scaife's "Arkansas Project"/American Spectator errand boy -- R. Emmet Tyrrell, Jr. -- out of encroaching obscurity...

...and wedging him sideways into an article decrying the lack of concern for temperament, good character and intellectual rigor among people who disagree with Jonah Goldberg.

So many stupid little fish, flopping angrily around in such a tiny, tiny barrel.

Meanwhile, up here in the bleachers, the weather is fine, the view is excellent and popcorn remains inexpensive and plentiful.

Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"You're gonna need a bigger narrative" Edition.

As much fun as it was to watch various highly paid media persons (*cough* Chuck Todd *cough*) attempt to interview Donald Trump about his stunning come-from-ahead victory in America's Cradle of Sedition...

...and as much fun as it was to watch various highly paid media persons attempt to explain the Trump victory without saying anything that would transgress the Holy Beltway Both Siderist Master-Narrative gibberish...

,,,the runaway hit of the day was watching bottom-feeding invertebrates like Alex Castellanos and Matthew Dowd shoot panicked Both Siderist squid ink in every direction and attempt to undulate away as fast at possible as Roland Martin deposited an entire dump-truck of full-driftglass "This is the  fucking GOP's fault from crotch to crown" unpleasant truths on the table over at "This Week...With Whomever".  Big h/t to Heather at Crooks & Liars for getting this up so fast:

It is worth watching all 5:50 of the video in all its delicious cringiness, but since you are a very busy person, here are selected highlights (with emphasis added because it amuses me):

MARTIN: I think Donald Trump is plutonium. Candidates have learned that, you know, it can fuel your business, but it can also kill you...
...

MARTIN: This is their problem, they invited evil in. And now evil is taking over, OK. 2009, the night of Obama's inauguration, we will stop him at every turn. They loved the Tea Party anger. They took advantage of it in '10 and '12 -- '14. They always said, we can control it. We can harness it. Now all of a sudden, Trump is taking advantage of it. He lead the whole birther deal. The Republican establishment at some point has to say, you know what, we played with fire and now it's about to consume us.

They have to accept some...

Republican strategist SARA FAGEN: The Republican establishment never played with fire. Donald Trump...

(CROSSTALK)

MARTIN: ...all day.

FAGEN: I don't think the establishment has played with fire. It looks more like a hostile takeover to me.  Donald Trump is not a conservative. He is not a Republican.

MARTIN: So, why did they like his birther against Obama? Why did they like his fundraising in 2012? No, no, no.  If the Republicans allowed Donald Trump to ride the birther (inaudible) to Obama. They dig his fundraising prowess in 2012, yes or no?

Warning, Will Robinson!  Extreme danger! These are the kinds of questions which the Beltway media was specifically designed to contain and avoid, not flop out on the table and talk about.

Which means it's time for Republican two-bit four-flushed Alex Castellanos to swing into action:

CASTELLANOS: What created Donald Trump is the failure of the Republican Party to lead this country into the future. We've told America that our principles are only good for saying no and telling people what they can't do.

There's a Democratic Party that's only offering more of the same old failure. Washington just hasn't done enough. There's a Republican Party that can only say no to everything. Guess what, the American people are furious on both ends. And they want to throw everybody out.

The failure belongs to both parties.

Bwahahaha!  Trump isn't a Republican!  Both Sides!  The past never happened!  Also please for fuck's sake, stop talking about this!

And so in jumps Castellanos' trusty Both Siderist sidekick, Matthew Dowd.  Defend the Hive, Matt! Defend the Hive!

DOWD: It's what created Donald Trump is both party establishments. Basically, the country feeling like the institution that exists in Washington does not work for anybody. And it certainly doesn't work for the working class of the country. That's what created...

But today, for whatever reason, Mr. Martin wasn't having any of it:

MARTIN: And this is why -- this is why I'm saying don't try to blame the Democrats for this one, the Republicans they love that anger when it helped them in the mid-terms, but now the anger is about to take over their party. They have no idea what to do.

But Mr. Martin isn't done yet. He moves from blaming the Republican party leaders for pandering to the rage, paranoia and racism of the base...to straight up blaming the base for voting for stupid, catastrophic shit over and over again. Which, in turn, thoroughly freaks out Matthew Dowd:

MARTIN: I will say this part, part of this whole issue when you talk about that anger. Yes, they're ticked off that America is changing when it comes to how we look in terms of becoming a majority minority country. They're ticked off when it comes to a Republican policy. They're saying I have been impacted economically.

Well, guess what, those same voters at some point you can say I was the one who screwed up, because I kept voting for some folks.

Now, they've also got to say, what does Donald Trump...

DOWD: It's never a good idea to blame voters.

MARTIN: No, no, no. Here's the deal though. No, no, no, that's the mistake that we make.  We want to hold everybody accountable except the folks who actually vote for candidates. And the other piece is, I will say those same folks who say old John Wayne, Donald Trump is my man, show me how that man has actually cared about the regular Republican voter over his career.

DOWD: It's a bad strategy to attack voters.

MARTIN: No, no, no. Hold them accountable.

If this all feels depressingly familiar, it's because it is.  This is exactly where we stood during the very worst days of Bush Administration, when the Holy Beltway Iraq War Master-Narrative had completely collapsed, but its shreds and tatters we're defiantly held together by the sheer, collective "La!La!La!La!We!Cannot!Hear!You!" will of highly paid mainstream media frauds and hacks like Dowd and Castellanos.

Once again, the Beltway finds itself both protected and imprisoned by another Big Lie it has invented to prevent the Republican Party from being run out of Western Civilization on a rail.  And once again, I have no doubt they will continue to get away with paving over terrifying Reality with warm, gray, Both Siderist sludge,

But as someone who has been adding my small voice to the chorus of despised and ignored Liberals who stand outside the massive, iron walls of the Holy Beltway Both Siderist Master-Narrative, shouting heresies like these and getting pissed on for our troubles, all I can say is "Wow".

Because every now and then, a little light breaks through the bars of the vast media prison they have built for us,  And moments like that, as small as they are, should be celebrated.