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.
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.
Not exactly the Battle of the Bulge, was it? Unless you count the bulges at the portly patriots’ American-flag belt buckles.
Could the Battle of the Budgies be coming to a peaceful resolution?
The Oregonian reports that the last holdouts at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon are ready to give themselves up, and that their patron saint, Cliven Bundy, was snatched up in Portland and faces charges from the 2014 debacle that triggered this whole clusterfuck.
Perhaps as they continue to enjoy the hospitality of the State at another venue these small fellows can take solace from a Longfellow, translating Friedrich von Logau:
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.
Mad Blog Media 