The chattering classes are having a high old time recounting the “beating” The Mouth That Roared endured last night at the manicured hands of Marco 3P0 and Texas Ted Cruz, the Gucci Shitkicker.
What they mostly forget is that Trump’s voters don’t care what the media elites think. And I’ll bet that any mouthbreathers who were on the fence as regards TMTR are firmly under the Big Orange Tent now after watching those two bidness-as-usual sellouts from Washington, D.C., tag-teaming the big fella like a pair of yapping coyotes trying to bring down a bull elk.
I think Steve Benen gets it mostly right here: They threw everything at him, up to and including the kitchen sink, and what did it get them? This morning TMTR is up and at ’em on Twitter, breezily calling them chickenshits, jagoffs and feebs.
Hell, even I started to get riled up once 3P0 started beeping and chirping like he was a Terminator or something, while Cruz minced around looking all “West Side Story” with his Harvard Law letter opener. And I wouldn’t vote for any of these bozos if the Donks ran Adam Sandler and Rosie O’Donnell against them. Despicable.
Miss Mia Sopaipilla inquires whether I plan to stick around for a few head bumps before pissing off again to God knows where.
Nose, meet grindstone.
I pretty much plugged right back in after my little sojourn in the desert. Cranked out a column and cartoon for Bicycle Retailer, edited pix and video for Adventure Cyclist, bashed out a post and gallery for all y’all, delivered myself of a few quips on social media, replenished the larder, and got the Subie serviced.
The old rice rocket is still ticking along nicely after 11 years and 117,000 miles, and a few inexpensive repairs — replacing the cracked moon roof, reupholstering the driver’s seat and buffing the haze out of the headlights — should keep me off the car lots for a while yet.
The critters’ separation anxieties have all been soothed (I haven’t told them Herself will be pissing off to Hawaii here directly). And if I haven’t had a lick of exercise in three days, well, at least I’ve gotten a few things done.
After a heavenly week of shunning radio, TV and the Innertubez, I can’t say I’ve enjoyed catching up on the news, save for a bit of heehawing at Jeb (!) finally noticing all those loafer prints in his ass. How pleasurable it was to finally see a head roll in that dime-store dynasty, even with The Donald serving as executioner.
And speaking of The Mouth That Roared, that tale has pretty much stopped being funny. Over at MoJo, David Corn reminds us that the Rethugs have no one to blame but themselves for this billionaire buccaneer who sailed right into the middle of their tony fleet and let fly with broadsides to port and starboard.
At The Guardian, Jeb Lund distributes the credit a little more widely, observing that the courtier press is a bit too comfy in its own box seat at the opera to notice that the peasants outside are revolting (oy, are they ever).
Me, I think we all had a hand in the phenomenon that Charlie Pierce calls “He, Trump.” Or off it, as in abandoning control of our electoral processes to the pros, fixers and wizards.
This is one of the reasons I’m not sanguine about the idea of self-driving cars. If you’re not in the driver’s seat, you can be certain that someone else is. And they may be taking you somewhere you’d rather not go.
As promised, here are a few more shots from my all-too-brief sojourn in the Lower Verde Basin. I always intend to shoot more, but once I get into the saddle a certain mindset takes over and the camera stays parked in its jersey pocket. Clicking any image will open the whole shebang in gallery mode.
There’s the signpost up ahead … you’re about to enter the McDowell Zone.
It’s hard to believe, but I was camped in an RV park that was packed to the gunwales with land yachts.
My accommodations, naturally, were of the spartan variety.
Day one was cloudy and cool, for the desert, anyway.
It was pleasant to have some time to adjust to McDowell temperatures after a chilly spell in Albuquerque.
I rose early to run most mornings.
No, that’s not Starkiller Base from “The Force Awakens.” It’s just the sun trying to break through the overcast.
Some unseasonably damp weather left the desert unusually green.
Didn’t matter which direction you looked, or which time of day, there was always something to see.
There was some work involved (there always is). this time centered on the Marin Four Corners Elite.
A Revelate frame bag crowds the water bottles a bit, but it’s still workable.
The Schwalbe G-One tires hooked up fine in all conditions.
The Granite Trail rises and falls through a basin that was pretty lush for this time of year.
With bags on bar, seatpost and frame, the Marin was still a better climber than I am.
The rangers told me the buzzworms were already out and about as cool and damp shifted into dry and hot, but I didn’t see any.
When the machinery starts acting up, what’s the first thing the IT guy asks?
“Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on?”
Well, I turned it off last Monday, but I didn’t get around to turning it back on until today. Sorry ’bout that.
I hadn’t had a good old road trip in far too long, so I took one. And I mean a road trip for me, one in which it was not necessary for me to be me for a few days. One must shut the fuck up from time to time, give the old pie-hole (and everyone else’s ears) a little R&R. Turn it off.
Camp Dog.
I suppose I could have taken a napping tour of Soho doorways, but that sounded a bit extreme, so instead I pissed off to McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Ariz.
The park is a bolt hole I used for years, but hadn’t visited in a while, and it was a pleasure to return. The weather was stellar, neither too hot nor too cold; there were some brand-new trails to explore; and while plugging into the Innertubes is possible out there among the cacti and coyotes, it remains something of a pain in the arse, so I didn’t bother trying. I did check mail once, using my phone, to see if anything demanded my immediate attention. It didn’t.
Nobody gave me an Airstream Interstate Grand Tour EXT for solstice, so I used my old North Face Expedition-25 tent and a new REI sunshade for shelter. And as regards cooking mostly I did not, as like the daily parade of conspiracies on the Innertubes it had become something of a nuisance.
Instead, I noshed on bits of this and that — baby greens with avocado and tomato slathered in olive oil, Creminelli salami and Barber’s cheddar on crackers, fruit, yogurt, granola, LaraBars, rice and whatnot.
I did, however, brew the obligatory pot of powerful black coffee first thing every morning. After a cuppa and a LaraBar I went for a run, and after that it was another cuppa, some yogurt and granola, and a ride on one of the two bikes I’d fetched along. Lunch was either out of the cooler or at DJ’s Bagel Cafe, which to my surprise was still open — and still good — after all these years. For dinner it was back to the cooler.
Come evening I enjoyed the sunset, the moonrise and a brief coyote concert, then turned in, listened to a little Mozart from the Academy of St. Martin In the Fields, read a bit of poetry, and nodded off. Next day I did it all again, but on different trails.
It wasn’t all fun and games. There were notes and pictures taken, and video shot. But I did not publish, until today. And as you see, I have not perished.
The Marin Four Corners Elite, tricked out with Revelate bikepacking bags.
He always thought he was the smartest dude in the room, and there’s certainly no denying his intellect. But that powerful engine was buried to the driveshaft in June 21, 1788, when the Constitution was ratified, and as the nation whose legal foundation it was changed with the times he declined to change with it. An “originalist” indeed. You’d think the thing had been carved into stone tablets and fetched down from Sinai.
Predictably, before the body had cooled the GOP leadership was insisting that the prez follow their lead and not do his job, which includes nominating a new member of the Supremes.
“Leave it to the next president!” the Elefinks trumpet. Um, no. This one was elected to the job, twice, and last I looked he hadn’t cleaned out his desk yet. And the Constitution is pretty clear on the division of labor here, in Article II, Section 2:
The President … shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for. …
The Senate can certainly continue to ignore its duties, for which it should be roundly punished at the ballot box. But the prez seems inclined to shoulder his burden, and thus we continue to see the irresistible force doing battle with the immovable object.
One wonders what the Pachyderms are thinking here, or if. Is this a simple knee-jerk reaction to the man Turtle wanted to make a one-term president? Are they confident that a “reasonable” Establishment Republican (Bush) can take the Oval Office in November and tilt the Court further rightward? Maybe they think they can muscle a prez named Trump, Cruz or Rubio into doing their bidding (maybe yes with the latter, but good luck with the other two).
I’m surprised they’re not shitting themselves at the thought of the Hilldebeast filling that vacancy, or Comrade Eeyore. Were it me pulling those big red levers in the Senate, I’d be inclined to cut a deal with the fairly centrist fellow who has the gig now.
As for Scalia, well, he died as he lived, a creature of the elites, in a 30,000-acre West Texas resort where the rooms start at $350 a night and the little people are kept far, far away.
“If your goal is to get away and not be bothered and be in the lap of luxury,” [Marfa city attorney Teresa] Todd said, “it’s the perfect place.”
Scalia has gotten even farther away from us now. As to whether he’s being bothered, or reclining in the lap of luxury, well, that’s a question for the theologians, not lawyers or journalists.
Mad Blog Media 