Prairie Weather

On the day that doesn't exist most years: a little advice

Vote tomorrow if it's a primary day in your state!  It's a REAL day and it will have REAL consequences!

Time to check the mirror

What is the problem  here?  The problem is that every year it's the fashion displayed at the Oscars that's first on this morning-after's agenda.  Now, in the umpteenth  year in a row, the chosen outfits are just as awful as ever.  Versace? Horrific. McCartney? Embarrassing. No wonder Pharrell Williams has rolled up his pants signifying, probably, that he's had to wade through muck just to get to the ceremony. 

But all this L.A. "show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine" celebration has nothing on the Republican party's candidate show-and-tell. The Hil v. Bern drama gets "indie" ratings compared to the wide-screen embarrassment concocted by the political right.  "There’s talk of bad spray tans, sweat and urination. Accusations that a rival has ties to the mob. They’ve called one another little or a con artist. And they all agree that the other guys are liars," according to reporters at the Post.

“The catfight going on in the Republican Party right now is just an embarrassment,” said Fred Malek, finance chairman of the Republican Governors Association and a longtime major party donor. “This is schoolyard stuff. It’s disgusting and juvenile.”

Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a supporter of Ohio Gov. John Kasich, said he’s “totally embarrassed by a lot of the things Trump has said and I understand why Rubio is swinging to the fences, but to get into who’s tall, who’s short, who’s got a decent haircut, who’s sweaty — I don’t like it.” ...WaPo

Don't try and kid me, Trent.  You were an embarrassment in your time! And you know as well as I do that there's a constituency out here that loves it.  Candidates have a wide assortment of tools to assess the reception they're getting from minute to minute, from stump speech to stump speech. This crap works!  Worse crap works even better!  It's fine if your candidate hurls insults.  It's the other guys' candidates that we find offensive. 

Candidates mirror what we have become, who we are.

The indisputable superiority of some of us

In what perhaps struck the candidate as an act of solidarity, Sanders also chose Cornel West as liaison to South Carolina’s black voters. As the Washington Post puts it, West serves as Sanders’s “controversial traveling companion” and “has been highly critical of President Obama.” That’s an understatement. Cornel West hates President Obama. He once called the president “a brown-faced Clinton,” “a Rockefeller Republican in blackface,” and a “counterfeit” progressive. ...DailyBeast/DailyIntel

The moral of this ongoing, confusing story?  Keep people labeled.  Separate the groups. Stick 'em in categories and keep 'em there.  Tolerance?  Pragmatism?  Useless!  And no, education and "diversity" are not welcome here.  They just confuse everybody.  Unblinking hatred makes more sense.

Just make sure that -- whatever the outcome -- you remain on top.

Want to defeat an enemy? Try laughing.

Not the first time has laughter been suggested as an effective tool against any one of many seriously awful Republicans.  And Donald Trump may be an ideal target for diminishment-by-guffaw. 

James Fallows raises the possibility and suggests Marco Rubio may be attempting to use this magic -- this "kryptonite" -- on his adversary.  A video of Rubio's effort at stand-up doesn't do a lot for Rubio.   He's kind of (but not very) amusing with more than a little whine creeping into his performance. 

Obama, as one of Fallows' readers reminds him, is known for doing a much better job.

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Some truly dazzling people are endorsing The Donald.  Andy Borowitz reports on the lineup.

Aides to the G.O.P. front-runner, Donald Trump, expressed concern on Friday that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s endorsement of their candidate might overshadow equally impressive words of praise that Trump received yesterday from the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. ...

... [Campaign spokesman] Dorrinson said that the Trump campaign expects an avalanche of endorsements from G.O.P. leaders, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis in the days and weeks ahead. “Sure, that’s going to cause scheduling problems,” he said. “But those are the kinds of problems every campaign would love to have.”

Strand beesten

Court partially owned by Kochs

Among other toys the Kochs have in their well-stocked playroom are two Supreme Court Justices.  Do you need the names or have you guessed already?

“The questionable activities of some of our Supreme Court justices have been well documented,” including “participating in political functions,” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said in a statement explaining why she introduced the legislation last year. She was referring to the trips by Justices Scalia and Thomas to the events sponsored by Mr. Koch. ...NYT

Given the lionizing of Scalia and the Senate's memorial decision to disallow a replacement chosen by the White House -- oops, I mean the insufficiently "white" House -- I think it's fair to assume that Republicans don't see any particular merit in keeping corruption off the Supreme Court. Breyer, a "liberal" justice, is also in the top tier of Court moochers. 

Clarence Thomas?

In 2011, a liberal advocacy group, Common Cause, questioned whether Justice Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas should have disqualified themselves from participating in the landmark Citizens United case on campaign finance because they had attended a political retreat in Palm Springs, Calif., sponsored by the conservative financier Charles G. Koch. Mr. Koch funds groups that could benefit from the ruling. 

The disclosure report filed by Justice Thomas made no mention of the retreat. It said only that he had taken a trip, funded by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, to Palm Springs to give a speech. ...NYT

Who spent more time on the road in any given month? Scotus or Willie? Just askin'.