John McCain.

McCain starts out by chastising party leaders for not backing Donald Trump, saying they are “out of step” with voters. But then he demands an apology from Trump for saying tacky things about POWs.  Not for himself, you know, but for others.

Ask if he would campaign for Trump, McCain said …

“A lot of things would have to happen. I think it’s important for Donald Trump to express his appreciation for veterans, not John McCain, but veterans who were incarcerated as prisoners of war.”

He added: “I’d like to see him retract that statement. Not about me, but about the others.”

Yeah, John, not about you.

As long as we’ve got apologizing on our minds, I might as well tell you about this:  McCain says he has “no regrets” about wanting to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.

“I don’t often make a comment like this. But she was treated terribly by what we know as the mainstream media and that’s the only thing I will ever resent about my presidential campaign is her treatment by the media. It was disgraceful.”

John McCain has lost what was left of his damn mind.  John McCain has some apologizing to do.

And now McCain is suggesting Joni Ernst, pig castrator, as running mate for Trump.  Yep, John McCain has all the credentials needed for a vice presidential consultant.  Joni Ernst, the Koch Brothers house pet who also believes that Planned Parenthood needs to die, is a great idea, John.  Joni Ernst is Palin Palin with a serious haircut.

Okay, so I go on a cruise and Ted Cruz drops out of the Presidential race.  Can I go on a Trump?

I was in Mexico and heard stories about how much American are hated because of Trump.  I wish I’d brought a tee-shirt that said, “Hey, Amiga, I Hate Trump As Much As You Do.”

By the way, I discovered that you can buy a three bedroom casa with a swimming pool on the beach in Yucatan for $150,000.

.

So they way I figure it, if Trump is elected President, I can live well in the Yucatan.  Also on the plus side, Trump’s gonna build a huuuge giant wall just to keep all the rednecks and rightwingers out of Mexico.  I’ll even send him a thank you note for that.

I notice this morning that Rick Perry, Dick Cheney, and Bob Dole all endorsed Trump.  That’s the brain and morality trust of the Republican Party.

In fact, Perry is practically begging to be Trump’s Vice President.  Oops and Poops – what a ticket!

For our foreign readers, “grab some bench” is an American sports idiom which, roughly translated, sometimes means “you’ve done all you can, sit down and let us take it from here.” As in so many other things, (“bless his heart” springs to mind) tone and context are key, so “Sit your sorry butt down you’re making a fool of yourself and you’re making the rest of us look bad,” is actually a more common reading.

Example:

In Ala-damn-bama, where erstwhile Chief Justice Roy Moore sits astride the judicial bench, an ethics panel has told him to leave that real bench and grab some metaphorical kind.  The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission  filed abuse of power charges stemming – as they always do – from Judge Roy Moore acting not like the Chief Justice of  the Alabama Supreme Court, but rather the Chief Justiciar of the Lord Almighty (who, in Judge Roy’s head, may actually be the same Himself).   Until the matter is resolved, Roy Moore is suspended from the Alabama Supreme Court… again!

Huzzah!

All this stems from the shenanigans Judge Roy pulled after SCOTUS ruled in favor of gay marriage last year.  When we last discussed Roy’s jurisprudery, SCOTUS had slapped him upside the headfake he had made towards contrition, but still wouldn’t allow marriage certificates to be issued.

Strike one was when he was de-Justiced in 2003 for being Cecil B DeMille.  Strike two was the SCOTUS smackdown.  This, if there is ANY justice in Alabama, should be his third and last strike and he can permanently grab some non-judicial bench.  He should be out of the judging business for good; so now he can sit by the phone all day, waiting for Trump to appoint him to the Supreme Court.

Bless his heart.

You’ve heard me speak before of the con job that is politics. We politicos prey on your weaknesses and, as sharp as any street magic hustler, we show you what you expect to see, tell you what you want to hear, and separate you from your money, from your vote, and from the inherent power you have in a democracy.

A consistent version of the politi-con has been the ANGRY VOTER. The Angry Voter is the Hulked out version of David Banner, Real American.  They’ve been around forever, but they got rebranded and packaged as Nixon’s Silent Majority, Real Americans who did real American things, unlike not real Americans who protest and/or want free stuff and/or come from someplace else and/or aren’t white and/or don’t know their place.  They’ve always been angry, but at least back then they were mercifully Silent.

So, here we are today: Voter ANGRY! Voter SMASH!

Voter HATE puny insiders and elites.

The essence of a great con is that the mark will TELL you what he wants to hear. All you have to do is wave your arm and tell people they are not alone in their anger, that their anger is justified, sanctified, and shared by you, their Great White Hope.

That anger, while real, is actually unjustified and misdirected. But the con man will not tell you that.  He will tell you that the world works EXACTLY the way you think the world works.  “Yes, we CAN build a wall.”

Over and over we’ve talked about how the Republicans are ignoring reality to feed into and enforce that anger. The authoritarian mindset that waters the base of GOP politics like a malignant underground spring dictates that words like “disgusting,” topics like bathrooms, and images like two men kissing elicit visceral reactions of revulsion.

The authoritarian looks for a daddy figure to simplify life, remove uncertainty, and de-stress human-to-human contact, so that nothing can impede their cocooned serenity.  In spiritual matters, God and the preacher fulfill that daddy role.  In law enforcement, it’s the sheriff.  At home, it’s actually daddy.   And in politics, it’s a combination of all of the above, because in the authoritarian, all that stuff is hard-wired together, you can’t separate the two because the pluralism that informs our political discourse is actually the source of their anxiety.  Right wingers frack into those short-circuited brains, pump in a toxic cocktail of BS and righteousness, and pump out energy, while methane exits through the mouth.

Enter Donald Trump, descending his golden escalator.   Unlike every other politician who had to work within the system, and whose con was in support of political goals within a broader –albeit fungible – ideology, Trump’s WHOLE LIFE is about the con.  He HAS no ideology, beyond whatever makes the con work.

“He says what I’m thinking,” how many times have we heard that? Of COURSE he does.  He says whatever he thinks you’re thinking, whether or not it dovetails with what the guy 5 minutes ago was thinking or what he may have said 10 years ago on the topic.  Or with what he said 5 minutes ago.  He contradicts himself in his own speeches, he flips and flops left and right.

We saw some of this with Romney  because he was also very much a situational flip flopper, but when you come right down to it, anyone reading this column could probably sit down and come up with a fairly consistent description of what Rmormoney really thinks. “Rmormoney” pretty much sums it up.

Not so with sui generis Trump, whose very existence in the national consciousness has been built on a set of cons. I think there is one thought in his head, crowding out all the others: “I Am AWESOME!”   That’s his whole philosophy.  Everything else is patter for the benefit of the mark.  Holding reasonable, coherent, cohesive positions is a lot of work, and takes up a lot of brain.  There’s no room inside Trump for that, or self doubt.  That is by design, because really, a smidgeon of true self-reflection would be fatal to this narcissist.

So Donald Trump won the Republican nomination because, in a Party whose whole existence depends on the Angry Voter con, a professional finally showed them how it’s really run.

The Winky Watchers in North Carolina have been facing increasing pressure to back off on their HB 2 which limits bathroom use to the stalls assigned to the gender assigned to you at birth.   For weeks now, various artists, like Springsteen and Pearl Jam, have boycotted the state, disappointing thousands of fans most of whom, I imagine, understand the reasoning, but how many more 3.5 hour concerts does Bruce have in him anymore?

Hundreds, I hope.  Thousands.

 Knows far too much about bathroom trolls. 

Along with paypal and porn, many cities and states have been threatening to boycott the state as well.  Austin just started considering the question to boycott both NC and Mississippi.  Minnesota banned non-essential state travel to NC and has now said they will send no state college teams there.  My own Ohio is considering a similar measure, incongruously right alongside another right wing nutjob bathroom bill.  OH Rep John Becker is uncomfortably knowledgeable about the habits of public bathroom predators.

The Federal Gubmint has now dipped its oar in the water, threatening federal education funds to the state because the new law violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not to mention common sense, common courtesy and common decency.

“We won’t be answering,” said the Right Wing Speaker.

“Oh yes we will,” said the Nut Job Governor.

Derp.