News Item: Sanders Wins Michigan

Trumpo Speaks From Jupiter

 Senator Sanders In Miami (Photo: Alan Diaz / Associated Press)

  

MEHR: This must mean something. Oh my yes, and watch now as the Clintonian jockeying in the middle furlongs becomes more intense and mean-spirited. Hillary The Inevitable ! will not be denied!!!

Via the New York Times:

Mrs. Clinton, addressing supporters in Cleveland, did not mention the Mississippi or Michigan results, instead alluding to the vitriol in the Republican field. “As the rhetoric keeps sinking lower, the stakes in this election keep rising higher,” she said. Running for president, she said, “shouldn’t be about delivering insults; it should be about delivering results.”

But it was almost as if her speech did not happen: Not one of the major cable news networks carried her remarks, which came as Mr. Trump was speaking.

Trump Waits To Speak In Jupiter, Fla. (Original Photo: Todd Heisler, New York Times)

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Der Amerikanischer Politik

Schaum-Saugen Schweinhunde *

Mr Fish, keepin' it Real.

The Gory Death Of A Panicked Animal Is Terrifying To See (Mr Fish)

SEE the thrashing of the WOUNDED BEAST as it CRASHES ACROSS THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE !! It is THE TEA PARTEI against THE GOOD OL BOYS OF THE GOP in a DEATHMATCH for control of the GRAVY TRAIN and SWINE TROUGH ACCESS !!  BECAUSE FREEDOM !!

 Girls, Girls, Girls [Say Obama Was Just A Realist] (Mr Fish)

HILLARY THE INEVITABLE will ensure that everything APPEARS TO CONTINUE AS IT ALWAYS HAS and that NOTHING WILL CHANGE in the future except for THE BETTER. The fact that a layer of society WILL STILL BECOME RICHER THAN BEFORE can be ignored as INAPPROPRIATE.  BECAUSE FREEDOM !!

(* Scum-Sucking Pig-Dogs)

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In A Just Universe We Are All Safe And Loved

But We Are Here

Yesterday a friend and I went to look at an assisted living community for her 86-year-old father. The facility's marketing person was friendly and low-keyed. The place itself was comfortable and clean; the average age of a resident was 83, and the men and women I saw seemed generally content and would easily engage with you if you stopped to talk with them. To live there in a small, one-bedroom apartment, would cost roughly $5,000 per month even without the range of assistance.

Later, my friend and I took a drive to another facility; it was a place her father could afford, but wouldn't feel comfortable in. She wanted to make a point about exclusivity. 

The place we went to was a 'community' run by a private corporation, like a suburb of single-story homes built within the past twenty years, all newer versions of the kind of GI-tract-style home built in 1948 which I had grown up in. It was on the top of a set of hills, surrounded by manicured lawns and trees, a cross between a park and a country club. 

We went into the community's main building, and walked through their dining area -- a broad room with tables and booths, actual silverware, fresh linen and bright napkins, good carpeting and dark, aged wood paneling; the place looked like the interior of a yacht club. The people in that room also seemed content, but in a different way -- they seemed dressed more formally for Sunday brunch than the people in the other facility; or, perhaps it was just me.

On the way out of the building, we stopped to look at an album with information about the residents -- "...after graduating from Stanford, he lived in London..." "was an officer in the U.S..." "...met his wife while working for the World Bank..." "...undergraduate degree at Yale...".  Most of the John Cheever short fiction I've ever read came to mind for a moment.

When we drove away, my friend said, "If you're accepted to live here, the entry fee is that you give the corporation who runs it about a million dollars. It's a loan -- they get to use that money for whatever they want. When you die, your heirs get the full sum back, but with no accrued interest.  And while you are living here, you pay about $10,000 a month for one of these homes. More, if you need assisted living," she said. "He could, but my father doesn't want to live in this kind of place."

"This is what the one-per-centers get at the end of their lives," she added. "And most of us won't even be able to afford the (first) place we looked at today."

I looked back at the place as we drove away -- at how clean, how quiet, orderly; how rich it seemed. It's one thing to intellectually consider how much better the Owners have it than the mass of the world's population. It's something else altogether to see it. 

I went away thinking about wealth, about inequity; about what Senator Sanders has been saying from The Stump, and the business-as-usual babble from Hillary The Inevitable ! I thought about things going on in the world outside Our Great Country, and about human suffering and history. 

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That led me to my usual blog-reading this morning, and I came across something that resonated.

One way or another, on a daily basis all of us struggle against the inane malestrom of useless human thought: con-artist commercialism, incoherence and illogic masquerading as clarity, and Exclusive and All-New ! that smothers human consciousness like a wet tarp. It does nothing to illuminate the landscape for other travelers or feed the soul.  And the Intertubes, a vast place, simply amplifies the prevalence of all of it (I'd include this blog in that list -- this is just a nighttime bus stop somewhere in the big middle of somewhere, or nowhere).

But -- one excellent thing about the Intertubes is, like other forms of communication, you may occasionally break out of the crazy Bardo-world of Amazon and Beyonce, CNN and Endless Living Through Twitting, and find yourself in a place where the sun is warm and the fields are green and open, the ocean is wide and blue, and people tell you the truth in complete sentences.

This bit of clear thinking (and you should read all of it), courtesy the Soul Of America, where there are cats.  I had to pass it along: Please consider.

If we had a society where everyone lived well whether they had a job or not, then we could make pure utilitarian arguments about employment. But when employment is required for people to be able to live decently, or even live at all, such arguments lead to treating huge masses of people as disposable, and consigning them to awful lives.

Again, this might be ok if we lived in a scarcity society, but we don’t. We produce enough food to feed everyone, we have the ability to house everyone, and so on... “Everyone should have a decent life, and that shouldn’t be contingent on whether they can make money for a billionaire.”

The economy and corporations exist to serve people, not the other way around. When they do not do so, the problem lies with them...

The core of any decent system of ethics, and thus of any political and economic order, is Kant’s maxim that people are ends, not means. When you forget that, you inevitably descend into monstrosity.

  --  Ian Welch, "Pure Utilitarianism and Capitalism"; Blog, March 5, 2016

MEHR, MIT ANGST AUS MITTELSTANDE: Rereading this post, I'm reminded how lucky we are to be able to focus on these kinds of issues, in a Western culture with cutting-edge technology. Which is another way of saying it reeks of middle-class stuff.  Guilty.

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Random Barking: News With Cheese

Trumpo The Clown

They're coming after Trumpi.

You can smell the smoke from pine-pitch torches; you can hear the sound of the posse, the jingle of tack and spur and the whisper of rope as riders gather, out of sight, just off Main Street. And away in the distance, you can hear the faint taptap taptap of the carpenters as they build sections of The Scaffold.

People on Main Street are keeping watch from their windows. If you listen closely, there's the unmistakable rustle of popcorn bags (and they have the good popcorn too, with caramel and sea salt ), meaning whatever is about to happen is expected to be engrossing -- a Survivor / The Apprentice fusion. Or, so they think.

Clouds are heavy in the Western sky. The sound of keening, growling, slobbering and splashing from Feral Kochs, the Addled Sheldon, the Little Rupert (Now In Heat!), and the squirming GOP Priebusfish is heard in the land. You smell something in the air -- and it's the odor of an auto da-fe.

We have public burnings in America every day; just cruise the Intertubes and ZuckerBook and Tweety. But we haven't had a good, political death-of-a-thousand-cuts since 1998, when they strung up Saintly Billy -- but only halfway. Rethugs, from their perch on the Moral High Ground, put The Hurt on him: Impeachment. And Monica.

There was the good popcorn, speechifying, and that image of Little Chelsea bravely saluting her father's cigar humidor as it was ceremonially wheeled out of the White Haus. Billy was allowed, bloodied but still in one piece, to walk away from his auto da-fe with a limp forever more. Or, so they thought.

Now, Trumpo's the target... except, it isn't only Rethugs who are coming after him. It's a section of the actual power structure of America -- and no one does an auto da-fe quite as well as the The Owners of our Great Nation. They see Trumpo as a drunken party-crasher, spoiling their mood, with the potential to upset the balance of a system which, ultimately, is for Their benefit.

You've seen Rules Of The Game , The Draftsman's Contract (if not, you should). The actual PTB, the top one-hundreth of one per cent, will do whatever they fucking well please to protect their interests. For them, the only rule is, Because I wish it. And it won't matter how big his hands, or any other parts of his anatomy, are. The irony is, Trumpo is one of their class -- a billionaire, an Owner, himself. S'all In The Game, Yo.

But too, also, the GOP Powerbars cannot allow Hillary The Inevitable ! to win in November -- because, they think, if Saintly Billy's wife becomes Leader, with scarred and oily Billy re-entering The White House in her wake ... there would (as that alien said in "Galaxy Quest") be blood, and pain, the likes of which you cannot imagine!! It's all too horrible for the Rethugs to contemplate.

But. Trumpi could surprise. He could become Leader -- the outward personification of an America where we are judged by our class and net worth, and not by the content of our character.

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MEHR, MIT  "WE HAVE REACHED THE TRUMP = HITLER MOMENT" :  

Someone had to go there first; turns out it's the President Of Mexico (via Reuters):  "Mexico's president has said his country will not pay for White House hopeful Donald Trump's proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and likened his "strident tone" to the ascent of dictators like Adolf Hitler". 

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Shrimp And Brie Nachos  
 

>> 6 ounces Brie cheese, cut into about thirty small pieces
>> 2 tablespoons olive oil
>> 2 garlic cloves, finely minced or garlic-pressed
>> 1 teaspoon paprika
>> 1 pound shrimp (~30), peeled, de-veined and tails removed
>> ¼ cup chopped red and green pepper

Place tortilla chips on a serving dish. Top with small pieces of brie cheese and set aside.  Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat for 1 to 2 minutes.

Add the garlic and saute for 1 to 2 minutes until soft but not brown. Stir in paprika. Lower heat and add shrimp. Saute shrimp for 3 to 4 minutes, or until pink.

Remove from heat. Place 1 shrimp on cheese 'n chip. Garnish with chopped red and green pepper and serve. 

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OhJay 

Runner-Up Winner, Tor Johnson Look-Alike Contest

Years ago, a springblade knife was found on O.J. Simpson's property in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood. If you were a sentient human in America in the early 1990's, you saw photos of Simpson's home, where he lived with his wife, Nicole Brown, before she separated from him.

As we all know, she was murdered by a psychotic killer wielding a knife, in a manner so brutal that (as the autopsy report noted) Brown had effectively been decapitated. Her friend, Ronald Goldman, was also brutally killed in the same manner.

The murder weapon was never found -- but after Simpson's acquittal on First-Degree Murder charges (and no, he cannot be tried again for that crime; more's the pity), a construction worker on Simpson's property found the knife and turned it over to an LAPD officer. The officer apparently held on to it for years without informing his superiors or the Detective division in Hollywood.  The LAPD admitted it now has the knife, but will not provide details about who had it or for how long, because it is embarrassing.

Simpson is in prison now in Nevada, convicted in 2008 on armed robbery and kidnapping charges, sentenced to 33 years, with a nine-year minimum. He is eligible for parole in 2017 (Oddly enough, one of Little Rupert's fishwraps, the New York Post, reported in October 2012 that Simpson had attempted to sell a knife to an unnamed buyer for $5 million US -- apparently the buyer believed it was the never-found murder weapon. Simpson had reportedly lowered his asking price for that item, leading the Post to choose the headline, "O.J.... Slashes Price").

This knife has been referred for laboratory analysis -- but even if a DNA report showed Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman's blood and hair were all over the weapon, it would only put a line under what is commonly assumed may be true -- that Herr Simpson is a brutal, psychotic killer who (except for the best legal team money could buy) should have already been sentenced to Death Row or prison for life in California.

Auf nicht wiedersehen, OJ, you murderous nutter.

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Is This The Best Cheese In The World?
From Britain, Where Cheese Is Desert

 The Telegraph.uk provides a look into the judging of cheeses. "It was like the Eurovision Song contest," the Telegraph told us, "but with less singing. And more cheese."

And the winner?  Le Gruyère AOP Premier Cru, Cremo SA - Muhlenen, Switzerland.

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Little Rupert Weds Model: His Lub Has Come Along

Little Rupert: Happy At Last, For The Moment

Little Rupert Murdoch, Oligarch and The Joey Goebbels-Wannabe, married a former model and jet-set fixture from the mutant zone Texas. It's Rupert's fourth marriage, and Jerry Hall's first (after a Caribbean wedding to Mick Jagger in the 90's was deemed to have no legal standing).  He is Old; she's 59, maybe.

But, "why shouldn't he be happy??" The fourth (and probably final) Mrs. Murdoch certainly looks ecstatic -- why not? Even with the inevitable Prenup, she's hit the Jackpot; it's The Gravy Train for her for the rest of her days.

Have fun, you two.  Meanwhile, Lil' Rupert's media still pumps sewage into the world, day in and day out, 24-7.

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Stranger Danger

UK View:  Can't Look; Can't Look Away

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MEHR, MIT SALZ:  Courtesy of the blog on the other side of the mirror, there is no better proof of the state of the Republican party and right-wing politics in America than that offered by the cultural sinkhole mutant zone devolving state of consciousness Texas (where --and this, a local joke -- the Cockroach is the state bird): 

"When you drive away all the reasonable people from your party," we are told, "you end up with Trump and the head of the Republican party in Travis County, Texas... [a state where] The lowest common denominator is very, very low."

The newly elected chair of the Republican Party in the county that includes the Texas Capitol spent most of election night tweeting about former Gov. Rick Perry’s sexual orientation and former President Bill Clinton’s penis, and insisting that members of the Bush family should be in jail.

He also found time to call Hillary Clinton an “angry bull dyke” and accuse his county vice chair of betraying the values of the Republican Party ...

... Morrow’s main complaint is with “establishment” Republicans, who he does not believe should hold elected office, he said. Last week, he tweeted that the Republican National Committee was just a “gay foam party.”

 

Morrow has a long history of critiquing prominent state Republicans in vulgar, and often sexually explicit, terms...

... Travis County GOP...vice chair Matt Mackowiak [is] apoplectic. Mackowiak, a Republican strategist, immediately announced over social media that he would do everything in his power to remove Morrow from office... “I’m treating this as a coup and as a hostile takeover.”

“Tell them they can go fuck themselves,” Morrow told the Tribune.

The post concludes with a straight shot at what the emergence of Trump means, politically and culturally -- that in many places, America is much like Yeats' poem; A Box Full Of Bad Crazy That's Looking For A Way Out:

There will be many more mini-Trumps and Trump rallies just as there were many tea party rallies. The gun nuts and militia movement will join with them; the white nationalists already have.

Even if the right manages to take down Trump it is too late to take down his followers. The right has been stoking the fears and resentments of their base for decades and now they are seeing the result of their labors. They thought they could milk the followers forever without consequence. They were wrong.

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UND JETZT:  Gilding the Lily, or proving the point Susan from Texas made (via Reuters):

One of Donald Trump’s sons appeared along with a white supremacist while giving an interview on a conservative radio show, adding to concerns that the front-runner in the battle to be the Republican candidate in November’s presidential election is willing to accept support from extremist supporters.

Donald Trump Jr., who is actively campaigning for his father, gave an interview on Tuesday on "Liberty Roundtable," a conservative Utah-based radio show...

During the show he was questioned by ... another radio host whose show "The Political Cesspool" is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading U.S. civil rights group, as "racist and anti-Semitic."

During the interview, conducted over the telephone, Trump Jr. talked about what a good father Donald Trump was and how his campaign is changing the Republican Party.

“It’s not a campaign anymore, it’s a movement,” he told his interviewers.

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Step Right Up; They're Naked And They Dance

Stupor Tuesday

It's been the Silly Season for some time now; unfortunately, that means we're talking about the state of the crippled mutant freakshow reality television program which has been passing as theater politics in the USA for nearly a quarter-century now.

Electoral-Vote.com, a website dedicated to voting Americans who live abroad:

Failing to denounce the KKK immediately was a huge blunder by Trump, certainly his biggest of the campaign. Bigotry (and, as a bonus, Duke is a vicious anti-Semite as well) is socially unacceptable in modern American society, and very few Americans are comfortable thinking of themselves as racist.

Trump's declarations about Mexicans and Muslims are both clearly just that, but he's been able to encode both as being about "national security." The Klan's endorsement, and Trump's wavering, both blow a huge hole in that fiction. Adding a bit more fuel to that fire is the fact that France's version of David Duke—Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was thrown out of the French far-right National Front party by his own daughter for being too racist—also proffered his endorsement [of Trump]this weekend.

(Original Photo: Bryan Snyder / Reuters)

But today is a big day for Senator Bernie Sanders, Hillary The Inevitable !, Trumpolina;  Little Marky Rubio; Grand Turtlebear Teddy Cruz of the Church of I Kill You ! (Yes; he has assumed the mantle previously worn by Crazylady Michele Bachmann [Hot Hot Hot]); and John (Who?) Kasich.  Much is at stake, and All Eyes Are On The Prize, whatever that actually might be. 

Americans Like Everything To Be A Cartoon Contest

Per Wikipedia, Republican and Democratic Super Tuesday contests are being held in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota (all with caucuses); and Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia (all with voting primaries).

Republican caucuses only are held in Alaska and Wyoming, and a Democratic caucus in American Samoa.

Again per Wikipedia, "The Republican candidates can win about half of their 1,237 delegates" in Super Tuesday's caucuses and primaries. The Democrats compete for "over 880 delegates, roughly one-third of those needed to win" that party's nomination. So, yes; it's a big deal.

 At The End Of A Life Of Unceasing Toil For Your Owners™,
The Reward: A Tub Of Slaw

Who will win? Who will lose? Who will claim the Tub Of Slaw™? Who's to say if it's good or bad? And, Are These Even The Right Questions?

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Random Barking: Last Salute

Empire

"Gibraltar"; Artist: Charles Pears, 1930, For The Empire Marketing Board

I spotted this image on the Tom Clark blog, via The Soul Of America, and was immediately captivated.

It has everything -- balanced design elements (the Golden Mean at work), balanced and complimentary colors; images of The Family, the Power Of Worldwide Empire (Sing, "Rule, Britannia", right now. You know who you are), and being on holiday -- which suggests both financial and job security; a pleasant interlude in a sunny and pleasant life.

Sadly, when this poster was created, England had been virtually bankrupted after the excesses of the Great War (World War One to you), and was busily being kicked to the curb by the Depression ("Thanks awfully, America!  I say; we certainly didn't see that coming! Bit of a surprise!"). The Empire was fading and in the great unwinding of national self-determination that followed WW2, all the 'Pink Bits' on the map would have to be replaced by different colors.

Here in Aremica, our own Empire is slowly fading, except in the minds of persons like Herr Trumpi. The Kochbrudern don't care; they're rich. The rest of us don't care because we're too busy texting. When we're purchased by Commie Red China on eBay, no one will notice until Google is shut down for 'maintenance'.

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Reprint Heaven: More Unspeakableness

An Entire Chicken In A Can

(In the "It Can Always Be Worse" category, we have this offering, from 2011.)

Even H.P. Lovecraft Could Not Have Envisioned The Badness

This isn't going to become a regular item -- but another thing in a can was made known to me recently. As a Dog, I'll eat a wide variety of food (and the occasional non-food) items -- but even this is too much for me to contemplate: Sweet Sue's Canned Whole Chicken.

It Emerges: Ia! Ia! Sweeta Sue Chiken ARRROOOOOO!!

First, the unsuspecting housewife releases the Thing from the chamber where it slumbered. Then, without warning, it grew -- and grew, and began to threaten mankind with the unbelievable fury of unleashed cosmic forces!!!

And, as we all know, you don't want to mess around with Cosmic Forces.

Unleashed, The Beast Began An Orgy Of Feeding --

But, Only In North Beach And Fisherman's Wharf

ANNOUNCER: We're here on CBS Sportstalk Radio; I'm Bob Hampton, and we're talking about the giant tentacled monster that's making life a little hectic for the drive-time commute in the Bay Area this morning... And how about those Giants, huh? Will the Raiders make their move to Santa Clara? Let's take your calls.... Hello, you're on CBS Sportstalk 96.

CHTULU: Hi, Bob; this is Chtulu from Ryleh. Love your show.

ANNOUNCER: Thanks. Where is Ryleh? Is that Contra Costa County, near Pinole?

CHTULU: Actually, it's an ancient city, sunken deep in the ocean for many, many Millennia, and initially a base for many of the Old Ones. You see, the history you've been taught about your world, and the Universe, is about as wrong as Y. A. Tittle staying in football past Forty. Many things existed on Earth, long before human history began. And, one of them was Me -- I've been out the loop for a while, but I'm back now and just wanted to AAARRRRRRRROOOOOO!!!!

Sorry about that, Bob. It's just so good to be out.

ANNOUNCER: Uh-huh. You just get out of the Big Q, huh?

CHTULU: Not a prison as you would understand it, Bob. But I was just listening to your program this morning and did want to comment on the appearance of the 'tentacled monster' you mentioned a moment ago.

ANNOUNCER: What's your comment?

CHTULU: Well, you see -- the stars are right, Bob, and the Great Wheel has come around; and it's time for the ancient forces that once ruled this planet to assert themselves. So I don't think anyone should be surprised when they open a can of something like a whole chicken, only to have it transform into something as big as the Bank Of America building in a matter of hours and threaten all of human civilization.

ANNOUNCER: Okay. Did you catch the Giants' game last night by chance, Chtulu?

CHTULU: What?

ANNOUNCER: Did you see last nights' game?

CHTULU: Bob -- with all due respect; I'm a long-time listener, and I've always liked this program -- but we're talking about a radical shift in human consciousness, here. We're talking about the most beautiful mysteries, and the most terrifying nightmares, of humanity made manifest in this world simply through the energy of thought. This is an event that's... well, it's Galactic in its implications, and frankly, Bob, in light of that I'm a little less interested in what Buster Posey will or won't do this season.

ANNOUNCER: [Pauses] So you're saying Posey won't do well heading into the season?

CHTULU: ... Bob -- try focusing a little. There's an Octopus the size of Cleveland out in the Bay. I see on CNN that they're considering carpet-bombing the Golden Gate with nerve agents -- nerve agents, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: All right; well, that's interesting, but I'd say Posey's gonna have a great season with the San Francisco Giants, and we look forward to that.

CHTULU: Not going to mean a thing if he gets eaten, Bob.

ANNOUNCER: Okay; and we thank you for your call. Hey, the time is 11:30, and whenever you just don't have time to spend on meal preparation, Sweet Sue's Whole Chicken In A Can can help!

The Peasants Begin To Understand: They're Doomed --

In The Horrifying Tales Of The Plush Chtulu!

After all, while Sparkle Christmas Tree Sweater Bear, for example, was a friend to all boys and girls, and Ellie the Happy Elephant was beloved by all who knew her, neither they nor any of the other animals commanded a worldwide fanatical cult of believers ready to do their bidding, not to mention being an ageless, indestructible creature from Beyond the Stars.

---

Trumped?

Imagine This

    This photo in every U.S. Embassy, worldwide.  (Rolling Stone / Mark Seliger, 2015)

This is not a comparison of Herr Trumpi with Hitler. Just so you know.

The most simplistic description of the chaotic world of German politics before WW2 is to say the Kaiser abdicated, a Republic was declared in November, 1918, and that it effectively lasted until Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933: a quick trip from monarchy to nascent democracy to fascism.

That's true. But it glosses over how long it took to Boil The Frog, the slow change in the political landscape during the Weimar years. How Germany became politically polarized between Kozis and nazis during a time of rapid social, technological and cultural change, and an economy that went from hyperinflation and poverty (1921-1925) to security and prosperity (1926-1929), and then -- BAM! Thanks, America! Didn't see that coming! -- the Depression (1930 -).

The simple view of that history also misses the number of political consensus leaders (Brüning, and von Papen and von Schleicher, for example) who contributed to the weakening of democracy in the face of a perceived internal threat -- Brüning used 'emergency decrees' to counter the rise of the nazis, and the Red Front; so did von Schleicher; and last but not least -- von Papen convinced the aging President Hindenburg to 'absorb' the leader of the nazi party into the Weimar government as Chancellor in order to neutralize him (How'd that work out, Franz?).

(Drezner Column, Washington Post Online, Feb. 23, 2016)

Trump isn't Hitler -- but if he were even to run for President and not win, it would show how far one of America's two traditional political parties has deteriorated, and that should give everyone pause. It would mean that a sufficient number of adults in the party of the Right (where gun nuts and religious crazies and the testosterone-fueled violence-prone live) are driving that party, and that should keep everyone up at night.

How willing The People's representatives in government are to compromise in order to reach common goals (and that the compromises don't seriously impact the lives of The People) is one gauge of a healthy political system. The more polarization in politics, the less likely compromise is possible, and the more likely the system is to break down.

 We Make Jokes, But Fewer People Are Laughing

Weimar Germany (and interwar France) had the same Left / Right friction, leading to occasional open violence in the streets -- and to revolving-door governments: because Germany operated under a parliamentary system, the agitation between Left and Right led to eight general elections between 1919 and 1932 -- roughly one every year and a half.  If there's no stability in politics, people will believe in what appears to promise it. Historically, it isn't democracy.

Considering Trump as a candidate may not keep you up at night. If he gains the Republican nomination, it's because the GOP leadership and the Kochbrudern and Little Rupert are making a compromise with circumstances -- as did Brüning, von Schleicher and von Papen -- to maintain political control of the American Right.

Even were that to happen, I believe Clinton could very well beat him (and, perhaps TPTB want the election to run that way; the self-aggrandizing Trump versus The American Merkel is way better theater) -- but that's not what's should be our concern.

Given what Trump is, that he's gotten this far in his candidacy is an obvious bellwether of how polarized we are as a society. It should concern us a great deal. That some adults in America have a growing feeling that we need to be a great power, and a great people, again -- that a Strong Leader (a Putin, say; or an Evangelical) is what America needs...  not the divisive waste of time that democracy can seem to be, and certainly not the weak, godless, and radical hippies on the Left.

Considering Trump as a candidate may not keep you up at night.  But it should.

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MEHR, MIT MEHR:  It must suck Tyrannosaurs to be one of the old Rethug Leaders at this point, trying to fend off yet another assault from the Tea Partei brownhirts or the evangelical black shirts. Something has to be done to cap the continuing rise of Trumpolina, they say bitterly -- and everyone in the Good Ol' Boy Grand Ol' Party who can lend a hand is coming out of the woodwork. For these kinds of people, it's behavior bordering on desperation.

We are united against That Guy, say every "inside source" at the GOP. President Yertle The Turtle says he will not dance with Trumpi; Little Paulie Ryan, Speaker-To-Animals, is more cautious. Mitzy, in a display so filled with irony, demanded Trump release his tax returns. While being interviewed on France24, one of Mitzy's advisors from his 2012 failed bid for the Presidency noted that yes, Trump could win a majority of delegates in the primaries and caucuses -- but they're not pledged to him past the first ballot at the convention! That's where he could be beaten!

Really? And what then? The Republican convention would turn into a live, realtime-ugly, 'brokered' floor-fight drama that hasn't been seen at any political convention since the Democrats at Chicago in 1968, or earlier. 

The traditional GOP leadership will have to choose: between trying to maintain control of their party, defeating Trump, then fending off Cruz and the religious right (or making a 'deal with the devil', as the GOP leadership always has done with them), and anointing Rubio or Kasich... or, the Good Ol Boys bow to the inevitable and allow Trump to be their candidate -- so that when (and if) he fails, Trump's fall will discredit the Tea Partei upstarts for a decade or more.

Would the Rethugs be willing to allow Trump's nomination, just to see him defeated by Hillary ! , who would likely remain in the White House for two terms? Take a moment and remember Florida in 2000.  Ohio in 2004.  Is it possible the Rethug Good Ol' Boys would try and steal the election for Trump, because a Hillary presidency is unthinkable? And because they believe they could saddle and ride Trump once he becomes President?

Who knows. It's a Big Tent world we live in. I'd like to say it will be good theatre no matter what happens -- but it's an open question that when all this is over, the Republican party won't have completed a transformation into something much more ugly, sociopathic and malignant than it already is today.

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UND, WAS IST JETZT NOCH IMMER MEHR?:  Amy Walters, on the oh-so-neutral PBS News Hour, made a salient point as we lean into Stupor Tuesday: The criticism of Trumpolina has increased -- but "no one is rallying around any of the alternatives" -- Senator Ted Cruz of Canada The Church Of I Kill You !, or Marky Rubio, Plucky Son Of Emmygrants. As a result, Trumpi is still the 'popular favorite'.

"The Republican party is on the verge of splitting apart," Walters noted. "If Donald Trump is the [official party] candidate, I think... we could see a [traditional conservative], such as Michael Bloomberg, running as a third party candidate."

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X-Files, Yes

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