Out In The Open Now

via HuffPo:

WASHINGTON — Republican senators are rushing to condemn Donald Trump’s statement that a Mexican-American judge can’t be impartial because of his ethnicity. They’ve called his comments “wrong,” “offensive” and the “definition of ‘racism.’”

But they’ve just put themselves in a bind: those same senators are still arguing, somehow, that Trump is the best person to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, along with dozens of other federal court seats they’re holding open for the next president.

Acknowledging that Trump's comments are pretty horrible, but then continuing to stand up for the guy - well now, that's not exactly what anybody has in mind when they think of the word "integrity", fellas.

Watching a long segment replay from Joe Scarborough about the Judge Curiel thing struck me as pretty wild.  First, the GOP does not - THEY JUST FUCKING DON'T - get to play this like they never saw it coming and nobody ever tried to warn them.

They won't let me embed the video, so here's the link to the MSNBC page. (check for the date: June 6, 2016)

A little horn tooting might be in order here - libruls have been trying to tell us this was happening for years.  A blogger named driftglass (eg) has been saying this is what's going on. The podcast he does with Blue Gal every week has been laying this out for a good 200 weeks or more.  

Who's been right about this shit all along, and who's been fucking wrong?

Second, reports of the GOP's demise may be premature, but it gets harder and harder not to visualize it circling the drain.

Mr Oliver, If You Please

I'll keep asking the question - when do we start to get this level of quality reportage back in "the news"?

And also too - yes, there's an opinion embedded in this stuff.

• My opinion is that facts matter.  
• My opinion is that those facts show Trump University to be a scam.
• My opinion is that those two things add up to: Donald Trump is a lyin' sack of shit.

3500 lawsuits in about 30 years time?  Makes me wonder what his real bidness might be.

Artful Eloquence

hat tip = FB buddy VW-E

Muhammad Ali

Dead yesterday at 74

Once upon a time, there was a Meat Market type bar in southeast Denver called The Sports Page, and the gimmick was that they showed old movies of sporting events on a coupla big projection screens. My all-time fave was this fight between Ali and Cleveland Williams.  The first time I saw it, I was so mesmerized that I just sat there swilling beer and watching - I got drunk enough to fall asleep in my car out in the parking lot afterwards.

Here's what I posted on his birthday this year

Today's Quote

"I guarantee you that every person of color in this country has faced an indignity, from the ridiculous to the grotesque to the sometimes fatal, at some point in their - I'm going to say last couple of hours - because of their skin color.  Race is there, and it is a constant. You're tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it."

--Jon Stewart

Today's Tweet

#PoorDonald here are some mittens for you to keep warm, just your size! #TinyHands pic.twitter.com/WU9Q6tcp3S

— Sal #NeverTrump (@Salalaniz5) June 2, 2016

Today's Pix

Today's Librul Redneck

Cartoon Friday

Today's Tweet

OK - not bad. She's still batting in the low 200s for me, but at least that one gets her up over the Mendoza Line. https://t.co/oBZ5TRyvNP

— Mike Roberts (@eVilleMike) June 2, 2016

Today's GIF

Status Report

The Dems are nearing the end of what looks like a coupla high school knuckleheads in a slap fight after 5th period out in the teacher's parking lot.

Meanwhile, over at the cross-town rival's joint, the GOP seems to be having a hard time pretending there's not a full-blown meltdown going on.

• Carly Fiorina came to us packaged as the perfect Lady Repub because she was the darling of the CEO Class for having "saved" Hewlett-Packard and blah blah blah, but gosh, it seems HP has decided not to be a sponsor for the Republican Convention.  So, is Carly using her influence to keep HP away because she's grudging on Trump, or is she (& her GOP buddies) such poison to HP that they just can't stand the blow-back if they throw in?  Either way, oops. (don't look for Coke or Microsoft either - oops and oops again)
• There's a growing list of big-name Repubs who've declined invitations to Cleveland because they have to rinse out a few things and wash their hair.  eg: John Kasich and Rob Portman - arguably the top 2 GOP guys in Ohio (you know, Ohio - the state HOSTING THE CONVENTION) - both have said they're not sure if they're gonna make it to Cleveland next month.  4 out of the last 5 GOP nominees won't be there.  Wanna talk Rand Paul, Rick Snyder, Jeb Bush? Trump doesn't.
• Glenn Beck has been suspended from his broadcasting spot on SiriusXM because he agreed with a guy he had on his show who all but said we might need a patriot to step up and assassinate Donald Trump.
• Bloody Bill Kristol has burned through his list of people he's pushing hard to get up a 3rd party challenge for Trump - and he's down to like #5 on the list; a guy nobody's ever heard of - nobody outside of the Wingnut Welfare System anyway.
• The Evangelicals are split - or maybe that should be "have split".
• It's usually hard to tell where the US military stands on this stuff because they have to play it close enough to the vest that they don't do much thinking out loud and in public, but there's been a handful of comments telling me they're not looking forward to having to answer to complete bozos like the NeoCons again, and some of them (some big-deal retirees anyway) have very publicly expressed outrage in response to Trump's declarations of bringing back torture and saying the military will just have to suck it up and do whatever he says or else - nyah.
• And oh yeah - Trump's campaign is broke.  They don't have any money to put anything in place for a ground game; they can't buy ad time; they can't do much of anything until after he gets the nomination.  The only thing he can do is keep blathering about whatever pops into to his little vacumm-packed skull and hope the Press Poodles keep lapping it up.

Ain't this fun?  Anybody can be Da Preznint - don't take but some common sense and a little straight talk and hard work, and ... holy fuck, how did we get this fuckin' stoopid? 

Today's Philosophizing

Game Of Thrones is ridiculously popular - partly because a large portion of the audience is willing to embrace the idea of basing an entire government on the awesome image of a small odd-looking naked woman emerging from a house fire of suspicious origins.

And really - if you've been following this election cycle on American TV, you're prob'ly not all that surprised.

Today's GIF

Grist:

The temperature spiral that took the world by storm has an update. If you think the heat is on in our current climate, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

To recap, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins wrecked the internet a few weeks ago with a revolutionary new way to look at global temperatures. Using a circular graph of every year’s monthly temperatures and animating it, Hawkins’ image showed planetary heat spiraling closer to the 2 degrees C threshold in a way no bar or line graph could do.

Let's see ya cherry pick that one, DumFux News. 

Today's Stoopid

Limbaugh's really starting to flame out and spiral in - he's on the down-slope of the bell curve - so the topics of discussion (as well as the level of the discussion itself) have to get weirder and farther out in order to keep his audience of diehard dead-enders tuned in.

“Don’t doubt me on this. A lot of people think that all of us used to be gorillas, and they’re looking for the missing link out there. The evolution crowd. They think we were originally apes... If we were the original apes, then how come Harambe is still an ape, and how come he didn’t become one of us?”

The View From Out There

ThinkProgress:

Today's Tweet

Who says romance is dead?

I teared up. pic.twitter.com/aBYAS9fo0L

— Sex Talk (@SexTaIk) May 31, 2016

Bloody Bill Kristol's Trial Balloon

Bloomburg reports:

Two Republicans intimately familiar with Bill Kristol’s efforts to recruit an independent presidential candidate to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have told Bloomberg Politics that the person Kristol has in mind is David French -- whose name the editor of the Weekly Standard floated in the current issue of the magazine.

French is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. According to the website of National Review, where French is a staff writer, he is a constitutional lawyer, a recipient of the Bronze Star, and an author of several books who lives in Columbia, Tenn., with his wife Nancy and three children.

Reached in Israel late Tuesday afternoon, Kristol declined to comment on his efforts to induce French to run. The two Republicans confirmed that French is open to launching a bid, but that he has not made a final decision. One of the Republicans added that French has not lined up a vice-presidential running mate or significant financial support.

Today's Pix