Trump is a fireman!

My friend Terry Doss went sort of viral today when he mocked Donald Trump on the twitter. 

You should check him out and give him a follow. 

Treason Light

So, actual Presidential Candidate Donald Trump has commited a sort of treason.

I'm not kidding. Trump has suggested that Russia (a foreign power, for those keeping score) should commit an act of cyber warfare against a former United States Secretary of State.

I'm not the only one who finds this troubling.

Trump = Treason seems the sort of thing that should worry voters.

some two-bit dictator of a country you couldn’t find on a map

Elizabeth Warren is right on this. Donald Trump's RNC speech sounded like

"some two-bit dictator of a country you couldn’t find on a map."

She was talking to Colbert. Colbert should not have moderated in this conversation. He should have agreed. This is a dangerous time. This nation is on the razor edge of electing an unstable bigot who lacks the basic knowledge to be mayor of Upper Sandusky, let alone Commander in Chief of the greatest military on the planet.

Good info at VOX

lawyers Guns and Money Blog has some good info too.

President Pence

I almost didn’t see it coming. Trump has strong support from crazies, the far right, the alt-right, bigots, and loons. His problem is that the “moderate” wing of the Republican party fears him. They worry that he may  Just start a war with Belgium because he’s bored, or nuke El Paso because it is full of Mexicans. How does Trump fix this? 

Now comes a report  that Trump offered Kasich the VP slot with the assurance that he (Kasich) would be the actual President and Trump merely a figurehead. kasich Turned it down. 

Now we will hear the whispers that Pence got the same deal. Don't worry, they will say, Pence is a grown up and he will be in charge. Choke back your vomit and vote PENCE / trump. 

This is how this sociopath can win. 

I almost didn't see it.

You've been Trumped

I miss Roger Ebert. Even his memory can enlighten us. Today I read a review of a documentary from 2012 and found that it speaks to this very day.

In medieval times, the nobility enjoyed something called droit du seigneur, their right to deflower their serfs' virgin daughters before their marriage. These days the nobility has been replaced by billionaire bullies, who continue to screw us serfs.

You've been Trumped

Kanye West for SCOTUS

Supreme court Justice Antonin Scalia died (no doubt murdered by Donald Trump is a rage over competing comb overs).   Scalia was a dim bulb and an ideologue of the worst sort.A Twitter Egg.   I man who could barely string together a coherent series of ideas, and instead parroted talk radio bromides peppered with anachronistic slang in an attempt to sound interesting. He was a man with no ethical center, and no true judicial core. He ranted about originialism and textualism, then created, out of whole cloth, an individual right to own machine guns. He loved the original text of the constitution in it was useful in oppressing the poor and minorities and ignored it when it got in the way of his corporate gods. None of that I really important here, though.

Scalia’s replacement is what we must be interested in. The Repulicans had an easy path before them:

1.       Pretend to play ball

2.       Go slow

3.       Vote down every nominee that Obama offered.

That is all they needed to do. They would get what they wanted, and it would cost them nothing. Instead, in what can only be called an unforced error, they began (within minutes of Scalia’s demise) screaming that they would defy the constitution, shut down the system and fuck everyone. They threw a tantrum. Now they have to pay the price.

The price will likely be a Democratic Senate.

And, as for Scalia’s replacement? The possibilities are (in Descending order):

Hillary Clinton picks a liberal

Bernie Sanders picks a Super-Liberal

Donald Trump picks Kanye West

Have at it

Trump v Cruz

Vox discusses why some of the GOP elite seem to prefer Trump to Cruz. They get it dead wrong. The reason the Bob Dole wing of the Republican party prefers Donald Trump over Ted Cruz is simple. Trump can't win, Cruz possibly could.

The calculation is this: Trump on the top of the ballot guarantees that Hillary Clinton (or Berni Sanders) becomes president and likely gives control of congress back to the Democrats. Dole et al think that the Republican party can survive that over the long term.

On the other hand, a Cruz candidacy is likely to create the same effect, but there is a small chance that Cruz could win. A Cruz presidency would wreck the economy for a generation. It would be a disaster of diplomacy. The nation would almost certainly enter into at least one new war. Our allies would possibly abandon us. We would come very close to becoming a failed state. And no other Republican could be elected president in generations.
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That is their fear. It is a rational fear.

schadenfreude

Lawyers, Guns and Money tackles the legal argument surrounding birther-ism. It's a great article, and reminds us all to enjoy the irony of Ted Cruz's chickens coming home to roost.

The Good thing about Trump

It may be hard to believe that we here at magazine of the Dead see an upside to Donald Trump, but we do. We really do. This isn’t snark or satire. There is one (and only one) good thing about Donald Trump. What is it, you ask? It is this:

Donald Trump already has all the money and he is totally insane. These two things combine to make him not for sale. He does not take contributions. He does not raise money. He doesn’t need more money, and if he does he has more income streams than he can likely remember. The Koch cabal cannot purchase Mr Trump. His insane policies are the ones brewed up in the rotten meat of his mind, not those pushed by the other plutocrats.

He scares the crap out of us, but at least we can see that one upside.

That is likely the last quasi good thing we will say about the TRUMP

The Surge

The Bernie Sanderssurge continues apace.  He leads by 22 ponts in New Hampshire and 10 points in Iowa. He is making some inroads in the national numbers as well. The Sanders campaign is focusing on great events all over the country.

Could these be the contenders for President?

I know which one I would choose.

And it aint the reality TV star. That's for damn sure.

It's gonna happen

These days I think a lot about zombies. I often find myself wondering when the end will come. I can sort of picture how it will happen. Trump is elected. He starts wars with Iran, Mexico, China and New Zealand for some reason. We find ourselves overwhelmed and in an attempt to save U.S. America, some mad scientist invents a super virus that will wipe out Non-American types and ...

Zombies happen.

Or something.

Then, after a few years a small band of survivors begin to rebuild. They start by making a hat that says "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN". 

The wearer of the hat is named leader.

He immediately declares war on all the other groups of survivors...

He comes from downtown

I said this before, but I need to say it again:

Third prize is you're fucking fired

Am I the only one who looks at the current Republican nomination fights and sees a play written by David Mamet if Mamet had no empathy at all for his characters? Jeb is the former golden boy who has seen his glory fade and just wants a taste of what he had. He's willing to kill (or rob the store, or whatever) for it. Walker is the upstart who just know that he was born to win and will never, never get his comeuppance. Rubio is the wild card hustler living out on the edge and ready to make his move. Carson gets shot in act two. Sorry guys, but that's how it goes. Fiorina is the life beaten beauty, looking for one last score on the backs of taxpayers. Perry is the dangerous man. He's the goddamned godfather goddammit!

And the Trump. Trump comes from Downtown. Trump comes from Mitch and Murry. This watch costs more than your car and put that fucking coffee down! Coffee is for closers. It takes brass balls to win a nomination.  And these fools are all standing around playing guess his real name.

This shit would be funny if they didn't want to run the world.

Luntz fears the Trump

“We know his goal is to make America great again,” one woman said. “It’s on his hat, and we see it every time it’s on TV. Everything that he’s doing, there’s no doubt why he’s doing it — it’s to make America great again.”

Frank Luntz (Republican scum bag "polster") is starting to freak out about Trump. He ran a focus group to try to get to the bottom of the Trump Phenomenon. What he found frightened him.  They like his message because they can understand it. It is simple. hate and ignorance tend to be simple, after all.

What Luntz doesn't understand is that they (Fox, the Koch Cabal, the Republican establishment) built this. They drove insane ideas and insane narratives to rile uneducated, uninformed, bigoted people and get them into the political process; to get them invested in candidates that would serve the corporate philosophy. They birthed Trump. Now we all have to live with it.

Raw Story has the deets

Let's discuss Trump

This snark at wonkette got me thinking about just how much racism is behind the rise of Donald Fucking Trump in the Republican party. It almost seems to obvious, and as such may get overlooked. Of course Trump's supporters are racist. They love that he attacks brown people (rapist robots swarming over the border and such). But is that all that there is?

Five Thirty Eight has been arguing for a while that Trump isn't a serious contender. I disagree. In past elections, Trump would have been a non-starter, but changing demographics, economics, and the shrinking conservative base have altered the calculus.  I would argue that in today's climate.

The extreme wing of the Republican party (the group that has been groomed by the Koch - FOX cabal), the Tea Party contingent, has grown to have an outsize impact on Republican primaries. These people are bitter (and they cling to their guns and religion, as someone once pointed out). They are afraid of the other (be that other brown, gay, or something else) and they badly want to return to an imagined America of the past. In their minds, the tea party contingent sees a world in which the gays didn't exist, brown people knew their place and women weren't always up in your face with their "rights" and stuff. They think that this weird utopia existed sometime in the 1950s and that Liberals have stolen it.

These are people who believe that  the 2nd amendment says that you can have guns because you have a right to overthrow the government if you want. They believe that rich people drive the economy. They believe that blacks and latinos and gays have been given a lot of special rights that "Real Americans" just don't have. They are angry. They don't trust the media ( and that includes Fox news - they trust FOX over NBC, but not on its own). They don't trust the politicians. They don't trust the Other.  They want a revolution. Bloody revolution. They are angry.

And along comes Trump.

"In Trump's case, he appears to be cornering the market on white voters, the backbone of the current Republican Party, the poll shows," he wrote. "Republicans need as many white votes as possible to offset demographic shifts in the United States that have handed Democrats an electoral advantage in the last two presidential elections."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/who-are-donald-trumps-supporters-2015-7#ixzz3iMoNzwI3

 Those white voters? Make that White male voters according to the polls.


Republican White Men. Specifically Tea Party affiliated Republican White Men love The Donald. When he spews racist shit, he goes up in the polls. When he attacks women, he goes up in the polls.  This is the new road to a Republican nomination. It ain't pretty, but it works.


Side note: in head to head match-ups, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden beat Trump easily. 

Think of the savings, man.

Rolling Stone gets it.

Even the other candidates’ appeals to taste and professionalism fall flat. You can’t argue Donald Trump shouldn’t be making policy just because he’s rich when you’ve pushed for and won the complete gutting of the campaign finance system so rich people can write “FOR ZERO DERIVATIVES REGULATION” in the memo of a massive check. This is the system working. How is Trump any less qualified to determine policy than Sheldon Adelson, who may have mob ties in China, who likes to quash marijuana referenda to keep people away from vices that aren’t gambling, and who dictates our position on Israel? How is Trump less qualified to talk about abortion than ten-gallon shithead Foster Friess? Why is his money dirtier than the Kochs, whose exploding pipelines kill people? Hell, if anything, his candidacy cuts out the middleman. My god, think of the savings…

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/trump-the-dark-heart-of-the-republican-party-20150724?page=3


The Donald really is quite a thing, but what even the bad boys and girls at Rolling Stone aren't saying is that Trump isn't part of the severe right flank of the Republican party. He isn't appealing to some Bircher outgrowth out there on the fringe (Rand Paul has the Birchers tied up). No no no. Trump is the very center of the Republican party. He his the respectable middle. That is the sad and terrifying truth of it. 

Trump, Bitches!

Donald "The Donald" Trump is finally running for President of these United States (of Parody, I guess). This is, hands down, the best news for comedians since Banana peels were invented. Trump is a mashup of rigorous stupidity, vacuous pomposity, turgid speech and grand egotism on a scale never seen before. His bloviations on Immigration and trade are ridiculous and racist. His C.V. is laughable (he drove a casino into bankruptcy! Who does that? Really, who loses money with a casino?). He is a parody of a game show host and nothing more.

That being said, I want to run his campaign. His slogan should be:


TRUMP, BITCHES!

This would be emblazoned over that photo of a raccoon standing on the back of an alligator. No explanation given, none needed.

His running mate should be Lindsey Graham (R - Narnia). Graham can wax eloquently about how he longs to bomb Iran to glass and preserve the beauty and tradition of the Confederacy while Trump demands that Mexico build a fence to keep America out.

Trump, Bitches!