Quickie: Calm Down, Everyone. Susan Sarandon Will Probably End Up Voting for Hillary If She Wins the Nomination (And So Will You)

The Rude Pundit is still in lovely England in lovely Bath. One thing he's noticed is that any time anyone talks to him about American politics, they assume at this point that "United States = Donald Trump." The Rude Pundit has to sigh and explain that most people don't actually support Trump, that he won't win the election, that it will be Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. To a man and to a woman, they don't believe him. Or they like Trump. It's a big fucking mess.

That big fucking mess and its potential to wreak havoc is one reason that Susan Sarandon, an actress the Rude Pundit has admired since Atlantic City, has said that a Trump presidency might be better than a Hillary Clinton presidency. It'll be so awful and cause such strife, such thinking goes, that it'll provoke revolution. The Rude Pundit knows of what Sarandon speaks. He predicted that kind of reaction to the presidency of George Bush, Sr. and George Bush, Jr.

And he was completely fucking wrong both times.

Sarandon has said that she can't vote for Clinton because the Democratic frontrunner is not against fracking, Bernie Sanders is, and Sarandon has been an environmental activist for decades. People got upset with Sarandon. People commented about it profusely. And Sarandon got into a slap fight on Twitter with some other celebrities over the whole fucking thing, which, to be honest, is the kind of thing that ought to bring on a working class revolution, too.)

This is all a big fucking waste of time because, at the end of the day, if Clinton beats Sanders for the nomination (not really a foregone conclusion), Susan Sarandon will likely vote for Clinton. As will just about every other person mouthing off about "Bernie or Bust" or "Let the World Bern" or whatever the fuck they're saying. Sure, sure, there will be a contingent that will stay home if Sanders loses because Fuck You, That's Why. Let's put that at a generous 10%.

Mostly, it's just talk. Sarandon will vote for Hillary. You will vote for Hillary. The Rude Pundit, who supports Sanders and has said this before, will vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination. Anyone can say right now that they won't. But they will. Yeah, you fucking will.

Get back to the Rude Pundit in November, Susan Sarandon and everyone else, and tell him what you did when you were confronted with the reality of a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Paul Ryan presidency and not the fantasy of your mighty stand for ideological purity.

Quickie: Fred Phelps in Heaven and Hell

After his death on March 19, Westboro Baptist Church founder and paragon of hate speech Fred Phelps found himself in a beautiful bedroom, laying on a fourposter with a chartreuse canopy over it, a luxuriously patterned quilt under his nude body. "At last," he thought, "my reward."

He awaited God, for, yes, we must all go naked before the Lord. But, instead, in walked a young Rock Hudson wearing a silk kimono, the bottom high enough to reveal bouncing testicles whenever he took a step towards the bed. Phelps was surprised by the Pajama Game-era superstar being there instead of his Savior, but he was also surprised at how peaceful he felt as Hudson approached the bed, took off the kimono, and got into the bed next to him.

"Monty's on his way," Hudson whispered to Phelps, and the self-proclaimed spokesman for a fag-hating deity knew Hudson meant Montgomery Clift. Phelps knew then that this must be paradise, and he felt an abiding satisfaction and peace as Hudson penetrated his anus with a rock-hard cock.

In that moment, being fucked by Rock Hudson while anticipating Montgomery Clift's imminent arrival, Phelps closed his eyes. He felt Hudson withdraw...no, wait, not withdraw...disappear? He opened his eyes to see that he was instead on a wooden platform, surrounded by his followers, all with their signs of condemnation, all pointed at him, informing him that God hated him, stoning him until he died again and awoke in the bed.

This would be his Hell: to have the moment of his greatest pleasure swept away and replaced with pure, punishing viciousness, over and over, for all eternity. Phelps had to admit that it was a damn fine example of damnation.

In Brief: Oh, David Brooks, You Are So Pathetic

The Rude Pundit doesn't know what is sadder: New York Times conservascribbler David Brooks's obsession with Donald Trump or his own obsession with Brooks's obsession. Either way, in today's "column" (if by "column," you mean, "a lengthy sigh exhaled from the depths of a shit-filled pit of despair"), Brooks reaches a kind of sublime nadir of self-parody, the moment when elitist privilege meets the inescapable results of having to interact with a world that couldn't give two fucks about that privilege.

Oh, but that's not early in the column, when he explains the roles of the sexes in the 21st century, most specifically the "man." That word is in quotation marks because Brooks describes some kind of fantasy male that exists only in the fervid imaginations of people who would take the time to imagine such a bullshit creature: "[T]he ideal man, at least in polite society, gracefully achieves a series of balances. He is steady and strong, but also verbal and vulnerable. He is emotionally open and willing to cry, but also restrained and resilient. He is physical, and also intellectual." And he knows how to go down on his partner with vigor, but also respect, yet without any hint that he would like his dick sucked in return. He will go without as a right gentleman would. What this all adds up to is that David Brooks has never had a blow job.

But Brooks hits that lowest of lows when he brings in Trump as a way of defining a certain type of misogyny. Trump's brand of it is not "traditional misogyny [which] blames women for the lustful, licentious and powerful urges that men sometimes feel in their presence." Oh, no, no, no, that Victorian-era he-man woman-haters club is not what's happening now, Brooks, ever at the cutting edge, asserts. Trump sees women as a contested space for beating other men, citing Franklin Foer's essential article on the subject. He "represents the spread of something brutal. He takes economic anxiety and turns it into sexual hostility." Motherfucker, since when hasn't misogyny been about beating other men at banging women? It's a key component of misogyny: the objectification of women in order to fuck them and treat them like shit and then brag about it. The fact that this is "new" to Brooks is hilarious and depressing.

Then Brooks says, ruefully, "I’ve grappled with determining how much to blame Trump’s supporters for his rise." And that's the end of the game because Brooks has not yet grappled with how much he and his priggish ideological bedfellows have created Trump. Brooks is above such self-recrimination because that would require more than just broad generalizations, penny arcade psychology, and water treading into oblivion.

On the Continuing Need to (Rhetorically, Of Course) Punch an Old Man in the Nuts (Orrin Hatch Edition)

The first line is enough to make you want to put your fist through time and shake Sen. Orrin Hatch when he was a baby. Writing in the New York Times (motto: "Yes, assholes like Hatch can abuse us constantly, but we're willing to host their hypocrisy"), Hatch says, in all seriousness, "Justice Antonin Scalia was among the greatest jurists in our nation’s history." That's an opinion, sure, why the fuck not, but then he follows it with one of the most easily disproved statements any politician uttered since Orrin Hatch said that banning flag burning is "the most important thing the Senate could be doing at this time" in 2006 (when, you know, a fuckin' war was going on).

Now, Hatch spittles, "Justice Scalia’s approach was grounded in the words of legal texts, and not in a judge’s personal preferences or the vagaries of popular political beliefs." Wait, wait, wait, Orry, we know that you're fingering your prostate with Scalia's cold, stiff digits, but are you talking about the same motherfucker who allowed his Catholicism to influence his judgment whenever it suited him and to cast it aside when he felt like killing some convict, guilty or not? Yeah, fuck that guy.

Once again, a conservative has embraced the bullshit stand that any judge who doesn't rule like right-wingers want them to must be a "judicial activist." So, obviously, only liberals can be such, not Scalia, who gleefully eviscerated his enemies whether he was in the majority or in dissent.

But the main point of Hatch's mush bowl of an editorial is that Senate Republicans are doing what America wants by standing firm against that alpha-Negro, President Obama, by denying consideration of his Supreme Court nominee to replace Scalia. He goes through the usual lying and bullshit. Yes, Orrin, you Mormon cockknob, the Senate has confirmed in an election year; remember, you magic underwear skid mark, Robert Bork was voted down by members of both parties; and, fuck you, you ass-faced clown, the "borking" of Clarence Thomas had to do with sexual harassment (and he was voted in, so what's your fucking point?).

He ends with a statement so lacking in self-awareness that he should have imploded from the intensity of it. Hatch says, "Considering a nominee in the midst of a toxic presidential election would be irresponsible." And who made it so toxic? Who has made the entirety of the political landscape toxic? The Democrats, who kept trying to work with Republicans? Or the Republicans who told the Democrats to go fuck themselves?

Remember when we used to pretend that Hatch was an honorable man? That he was buds with Teddy Kennedy so he could be reasoned with like a particularly attentive pit bull? Now he's gone rabid. Hatch was always frothing at the mouth. But he used to at least fake sanity.

Brief Interviews with Brits: 1. This Young Man Likes Donald Trump

Starting today, the Rude Pundit will feature brief interviews with locals here in London (and then Liverpool and elsewhere) about what the average British person thinks about the American elections, even if it's "Sod off, you wanker," which would be "Bingo" on a card of UK slang.

Earlier in the day, the Rude Pundit spoke to a young man, Joseph, a university student, about Republican candidate and man most likely to lie about banging your wife, Donald Trump. We were standing in one of the market stalls in Camden Town, talking about where we were from, and Joseph asked the Rude Pundit when the election was. When he said that it was in November, Joseph's eyes went wide. "You're serious?" he said. He couldn't believe that it was that far away. "I thought it was next week or something."

Then the Rude Pundit said, taking out his pocket voice recorder, "Since you brought up the election, let me ask you about what you think I'm going to ask you about."

"You mean Trump, right?" he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. The Rude Pundit nodded and started recording. (Just a note: The Rude Pundit is from the "keep them talking" school of interviewing, especially when he's talking to people not used to being interviewed. He'd rather hear what someone has to say than interrupt and argue. Call it the "Give-em-enough-rope" approach.)

Donald Trump Now Poisoning the United Kingdom

The Rude Pundit arrived in London yesterday, looking forward to blissfully avoiding mentions of a certain orange-faced half-man/half-sentient-Reddit-AMA. He arrived at his Airbnb flat and turned on the telly while unpacking and fucking saw motherfucking Donald Trump mouthing the fuck off about Muslims in Europe. Not content to rile up the yahoos in the United States with inflammatory lies and bullshit, now Trump was invited onto ITV's Good Morning Britain (which still needs a goddamned comma) to get the idiots in the UK all het up over fantasies. Of course, who else would have a media whore on than a media whoremonger? In this case, said monger of whores is Piers Morgan.

Responding to a question from Morgan about the Brussels terrorist attacks, Trump said of Muslims, "They're protecting each other but they're really doing very bad damage, they have to open up to society and report the bad ones. When they see trouble, they have to report it. They are absolutely not reporting it and that's a big problem." Of course, that would be a problem if, in fact, it was true.

But, as Miqdaad Versi pointed out today, the British anti-terror chief from Scotland Yard has praised the Muslim community in London for coming to the authorities with any suspicions and worries, even parents: "We still have Muslim families, mums and dads, ringing us on our anti-terrorist hotline, saying they are concerned about what they may have heard their child talking about. If we are told early enough we can intervene."

And a UK counter-terrorism commissioner told the BBC flat out that Trump is wrong and, in a polite way, that Trump's a fucking hateful dickhead: "If we demonize one section of the community that is the worst thing we can do, we are absolutely playing into the terrorists' hands of making people feel hate."

Of course, there are dipshits on this side of the Atlantic who have been praising Trump for saying "what most of us are thinking." Although someone should tell this Brit that unless he's thinking, "I wonder if Melania will let me fist her with my tiny hands," it's probably not the same thing.

England-Bound

For the next couple of weeks, the Rude Pundit will be roaming Her Majesty's land, mostly in London and Liverpool (where he's doing some non-rude speaking), but also driving on the wrong goddamn side of the road in the wild west of England.

So blogging will be brief and likely very British. He's gonna talk to the natives and see what they think about our clusterfuck of an election. He's expecting lots of "Fuck off, you American cunt," and, yes, it will be well-deserved.

Back soon. Or maybe he'll find a sanctuary away from future Tsar Trump.

Donald Trump Is a Dangerously Dumb Man Who Will Get Us All Killed

Last night, through a thick whiskey and opium haze, the Rude Pundit's bedtime reading was the full transcript of Republican presidential candidate, and man most likely to challenge you to a thumb war, Donald Trump's interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post (motto: "No, really, people want to read what Joe Scarborough has to say about shit"). He was alternately appalled and amused by the rambling, incoherent series of non-statements, bullshit, braggadocio, and ego that passed for "answers" to the questions. How can you not laugh when a buffoon who wants to be president seems to think that good foreign policy has to do with surprising people, saying, "President Obama, when he left Iraq, gave a specific date – we’re going to be out. I thought that was a terrible thing to do," as if no one would notice tens of thousands of troops packing up?

And then he awoke this morning, and Brussels had been attacked by fucking savage assholes so deluded by religion and hatred (towards them and against others) that they blew themselves up in crowded spaces. And the fact that Donald Trump is going to be a nominee of his party, with a sizable chunk of Republicans saying that they will support him in a general election-- 82% said they support him enthusiastically, with reservations, and only because he'd be the party's nominee-- isn't funny. It's fucking frightening. At this point, Trump has revealed himself to be so stupid that he makes George W. Bush look like a fucking sage.

Asked about how he would deal with ISIS, which murdered people in Belgium today and Turkey last week, and whether he would use nuclear weapons to prevent a ground war, Trump responded that he would handle them like he did his political opponents: "I don’t want to use, I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million dollars’ worth of negative ads on me." The problem with being a counterpuncher, of course, is that the first punch might knock you out.

And then, after telling them how good looking they all are, Trump actually told a group of journalists, sitting in a newsroom in Washington, D.C., "We lost the World Trade Center, we lost the Pentag – you know, we had a plane go into the Pentagon, etc." Yes, you micro-fisted twat mite, they're aware that a plane went into the Pentagon.

The last question to Trump was about climate change. He outright denied it exists due to human causes and said, "The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons." That's someone who is living in the 1970s, which seems about right for a man who called a female reporter "Beautiful." Yeah, suitcase nukes are scary, especially if you get most of your foreign policy from TV shows. Hopefully, people won't be able to swim with them to the Capitol when DC is underwater.

The rest of the interview was just like a Trump speech. It was a high-wire stream of consciousness that stupid people will take to be down-to-earth and meaningful. With a bunch of shit about his goddamned hands. Like it says above, 82% of Republicans said they will vote for him, even if they have to hold their noses. If that happens, Trump will still lose. But it means that a significant number of Americans don't give a fuck if a dumb, oblivious, deranged asshole is president.

That part is scarier than ISIS ever could hope to be.

Photos That Show President Obama Clearly Has Run Out of Fucks to Give

There will come a time in the not-too-distant future when people will wonder, "Why the fuck couldn't we travel to Cuba for all that time when we could go to China or Saudi Arabia or Tunisia or some former part of the Soviet Union or other?" And they'll be right to wonder because the stupidity and hypocrisy of American policy towards Cuba, while always nonsensical, moved into the realm of the existentially absurd sometime around 1990. But hawks will be hawks, and Cuba didn't provide us with precious oil or cheap products, like other nations that torture and imprison dissidents and suppress free speech. Oh, and fuck that fucker, Fidel Castro, for living so long.

So, yeah, that photo up there of President Obama with Che Guevara's head looming large in Havana's Revolution Square is gonna make the right raise the crazy to Derp Con Apology Tour, as they remind us that, yeah, Che wasn't such a cool dude after all (we know, gang, we know).

But that picture demonstrates once again that Obama no longer gives a fuck what you have to say. He is determined to put a stake in the heart of the vampiric past. "What we did for 50 years did not serve our interests or the interests of the Cuban people," he said at a press conference. But his lack of fucks extends to Raul Castro and the Cuban government, as he pressed Castro to cut the repression shit out. Calling out a dickhead tinpot dictator in public, to his face, is just icing on this fuckless cake.

Obama sees a future where we can let the final battle of the Cold War wither and die at last.

Note to Republicans: You Own Trump, You Psychopaths

Let's get this straight. The party that:

1. Has declared that the President should have no say in choosing a Supreme Court justice in his final year in office;

2. Has elected officials who support a man who led a group that pointed guns at federal employees doing their duty to enforce the laws;

3. Shut down the government because President Obama wouldn't agree to defund a program that had been passed by a previous Congress;

4. Refused to pass even the mildest of gun regulations in the wake a mass shooting that killed 20 grade school children even though over 90% of Americans supported such action;

5. Supported a government employee who refused to do her job because she didn't like what she was legally obligated to do;

6. Once passed legislation to force doctors to keep a brain-dead woman alive;

7. Killed an extension of unemployment benefits to the very jobless they now court for votes;

8. Once called anyone who opposed the war in Iraq unpatriotic and now admit that the war was, at best, a mistake (and haven't apologized for attacking anti-war Americans);

9. Refuse to acknowledge the existence of, let alone the need to do something about, climate change, even though 75% of Americans accept the reality and most think we should try to slow it down or mitigate it;

10. Demonized then destroyed ACORN, an organization that existed to assist the poor;

11. Demonizes and is attempting to destroy Planned Parenthood, an organization that exists to assist the poor.

12. Demonized and voted dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a law that exists to assist the poor;

And so very much more, now thinks that Donald Trump is too appalling for them?

It's laughable that a group of psychopaths believes that the psychopath who likes to disembowel his prey and dance with the innards is just a little too crazy to support.

Oh, dear, sweet, dumb Republicans, you own Trump. He is your deformed, conjoined twin who has pulled away from your side, leaving you bleeding to death as you wonder what you can do to ever be whole again.

Liberal Hate Porn: Conservatives Losing Their Shit Over Trump

Sometimes you need to take a break and just masturbate. Everyone's got their favorite kinds of porn, whether it's the regular ol' jizz-pile orgy or two girls, one cup, three donkeys. And then there's hate porn, some kind of schadenfreude that moves beyond mere satisfaction at the misfortune of others and tilts right into spanking and/or fingering material. So drop your pants and plunge into your drawers because we're gonna take a little tour around Right Blogsylvania, where many a conservative is losing his or her goddamned tiny mind over the inevitable nomination of Donald Trump as their Republican candidate for the presidency of the motherfuckin' United States. Sweet Jesus, it's better than teabagging a grateful 21 year-old evangelical guy in the men's room off the big conference hall at the Marriott Marquis in DC.

At Erick "Erick" Erickson's new publication, The Revenant, where he gets raped by a bear and left for dead...what's that? Oh, The Resurgent. That doesn't make any more sense. Anyways, Erickson doughily takes a mighty stand of opposition to sinful fake conservative Trump: "I find Donald Trump to be a man of low moral character and low integrity. Essentially, Donald Trump is gold plated sleaze and I have no use for him at all ever. If that means Hillary Clinton becomes President of the United States, Donald Trump’s supporters can carry that burden. Everyone saw it coming except for them." Are you hard and/or wet yet? Are you lubing your fingers with Erickson's tears?

It gets even sadder for Erickson. On NPR yesterday, he revealed that he actually, hilariously believes he has some power by threatening to get together a third-party to run a candidate for the presidency, one that he thinks would divide voters so much that the election would have to be decided by the mad House of Representatives. But he still sees destruction in the near-term: "If voters don't turn out to vote for a presidential candidate, they're not probably going to turn out and vote for state and local legislative races as well, which could be a real bloodbath for Republicans." Delicious blood, a pure aphrodisiac.

Over at Glenn "Yeah, Kasich Is a Son of a Bitch" Beck's internet concern The Blaze, where Beck is raped by a bear and left for dead, some of the columnists are aghast at the betrayal of other conservatives' support of Trump. Matt Walsh names names, including Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham, O'Reilly, Breitbart, Fox "news" and some politicians, all of whom he seems like he'd like to put in a sack and drown in a river: "The capitulation that many conservative and Christian leaders have shown towards Trump goes well beyond what the liberal media shows towards Obama. I’ve never in my life seen anything like this, and I suspect I’d have to take a flight to North Korea to witness an equal level of unthinking deference. But at least Kim Jong Un’s subjects submit under the threat of death and imprisonment. Our 'leaders' have subjugated themselves to the American Kim Jong Un simply for the publicity and the ratings and the chance to be friends with a billionaire celebrity." The whole piece will make you blow your load early, but wait, there's more.

At the National Review (motto: "We're the bears raping William F. Buckley's already dead corpse"), when the writers are not blaming those stupid poor white people for finally wanting something from their government, they're pissing and moaning about that dastardly Trump: "Once, it seemed possible that November would bring with it the completion of the conservative rebuilding project. Now, the Right teeters on the edge of obliteration. Even if the clown show of the last eight months has done nothing to reduce our standing before the world, the numbers before us are clear: Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican party has been an unmitigated catastrophe," writes Charles W. Cooke in a pathetic sob of a piece.

Oh, shit, did you orgasm? Didn't it just feel good to fuck yourself as a way of showing all these right-wing shitsacks what they can go do?

Goodbye, GOP. Maybe We'll See You in 2020

There are few things more deliciously pathetic than listening to some Republican commentator or think tank denizen appearing on your mighty cable news programs of doom to proclaim, after last night, that the virginal Grand Ol' Party will save itself from the ongoing ravaging by the bestial Donald Trump. Like a damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks awaiting the brave cowboy who will save her, Republicans believe that John Kasich will ride in just as the train is about to cut them in three. Or that the magical Brokered Convention will rescue their party from the black hole of Trump's savage maw, and Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney will yank them free from the event horizon, ready to let them float on like they always do, on an endless universe of money and demagoguery and intentional incompetence.

These delusional fantasies of the fevered imaginations of the frantic Republicans will fade as the convention draws closer, as they all realize that there is but one direction for the party, and that is into Donald Trump's flabby arms. Or, more precisely, Trump has bent the Republican body over a table, ripped off its pants and underwear, and is viciously fucking away at it with his oh, no, really, not-tiny dick, cooing in its ear, "Yeah, you like that, right? Right? Tell me I'm huge," the Republican Party unable to figure out if it should resist and risk getting beaten more or just let it happen and hope it's over with quickly. Yeah, it's that grim, it's that dark, it's that awful.

And the individual Republicans themselves have to figure out what they must do. Do they just stand there while Trump rapes the shit out of the basis for their political lives? Or do they tell him to stop and do whatever it takes to stop him, even ripping him off the Republican Party, throwing him to the floor, and beating him if tries to get close to its ass again? It won't matter. It's far too late. The fucking will continue. You just have to ask yourself if you're going to abet it or go out with a fight.

This is who you are, Republicans, and, c'mon, it's who you've been for a while now, even if you deny it. And you can blame it all on Great God Reagan. Yep, once the Most Sainted Gipper allowed the crazies from the religious right to have a seat at the table of American power beyond their behind-the-scenes role of manipulating their devolved parishioners, once Reagan allowed Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson sway over even the smallest part of American social policy, the die was cast, man, and at some point we were gonna get here. And since you can't unfuck something, if we don't stop this shit now, it will only get worse.The GOP may say that Trump was speaking "figuratively" about "riots" if he is denied the nomination, but that shit will happen.

The other deliciously pathetic thing is that Republicans are so fucking trapped, one could almost feel something akin to pity (although, in this context, that means something like "Stab that fish in the head so it stops flopping around"), but they keep stumbling over their own dicks as they attempt to pretend that they are anything more than sentient road blocks. After President Obama nominated the eminently too-reasonable Merrick Garland, a dude who had a comic book collection and helped convict real, actual terrorists, Senate Majority Leader Mitch "Should Neck Skin Look Like That?" McConnell announced that Garland can go fuck himself. How fucking petty and ridiculous can a group of humans look? We're likely going to find out.

Every move Republicans make now is done in the shadow of the inevitable Trump nomination. Republicans will lose the Senate in November, maybe the House, as Trump burns out like a meteor in the atmosphere. The question will only be how much damage he'll do when he hits the ground. The most honorable thing would be to just close up shop until 2020. Take a mulligan on this election. Rebuild. Rebrand. Maybe search a soul or two.

Aw, who are we kidding here? You're just gonna watch the ongoing violation and spray beer on the party to celebrate.

A Letter from the Rude Pundit to Marco Rubio

"Dear Senator Rubio,

"It's me, the Rude Pundit. I don't like you and, if you knew me, you wouldn't like me because of how much I don't like you, among many other reasons. But keep reading because, unlike anyone who does like you, I'm actually going to save your pathetic career, and the only reason I'm doing it is that unless enemies get together on this, like Loki and Thor when Asgard is getting messed up, Donald Trump is going to bully his way to the presidency or he's going to do great damage to the nation as a loser.

"I saw you talking to the press on Saturday morning about the violence at Trump's rallies in Chicago and St. Louis. I saw the actual, visceral despair in your sunken eyes and heard it in your shaken voice. You know, in your gut, in your 'nads, that something terrible is being unleashed, that a Pandora's box without a tiny Hope in the bottom has been opened. And you said at the end, 'I still, at this moment, continue to intend to support the Republican nominee. But it's getting harder every day.'

"Look, let's be honest. You're gonna lose Florida, your home state, today. It's gonna be a huge embarrassment and you probably should have dropped out a week ago. But you didn't, so nut up and be ready for the inevitable end. You can try to bumblefuck forward, into more losses and more shame, or you can go out like a goddamned boss. Which do you want?

"Tonight, when you're conceding Florida, or tomorrow, when you've gotten over your hangover, you need to get off the 'intend' fence and declare that you will not vote for Donald Trump if he's your party's nominee. You don't need to say you'll vote for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. You can say that you'll write in 'Mitt Romney' or however you want to burn off your vote. Or that you'll just stay home if Trump's the nominee.

"I know, I know. It hurts like a motherfucker. People will be angry. They will say you betrayed your party. They will insist that you were never really a Republican because of immigration or some such bullshit. But, as the first major candidate to not only not endorse Trump but to actively defy him, you will own the anti-Trump news for the rest of the election cycle. You can make a big deal about how politics shouldn't be defined merely by party but by standards and beliefs.

"Why you? Why not Jeb Bush? Because no one ever gave a shit about him. Why not Kasich? Because no one gives a shit about him. Why not Ted Cruz? Fuck that guy. Hard. It's you because you're the only candidate left that the media still cares for, however misguided that might be. It's a chance to rewrite the rules. You can stop lying, for once. And when Trump attacks you, however savagely he does, you can say that he's only angry because you didn't endorse him. Boom. Automatic defense, and it makes him look like a petty dick.

"Like I said at the beginning, I don't like you or your obvious pandering to idiot extremists in your party. Look where that got you. And, frankly, if you don't follow this advice and go out as a disgrace to Florida, Cubans, conservatives, and your family, I won't shed a friggin' tear. But it doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes all it takes to be a man instead of a boy is to say, 'Enough.'

"Kisses,

"The Rude Pundit"

Trump Is Our Monster Now and We Have No Way to Destroy Him

You fucking idiots in the mainstream media. The Rude Pundit, among others on the left and the right, warned you from the start that a Donald Trump campaign for the presidency was going to wreak havoc upon the landscape. But you didn't listen. Or you put your fingers in your ears and La-la-la'd yourselves as the ratings and page views soared. And now look what you've done. First you pretended that Trump was a buffoon and that his candidacy should be treated like another TV show. Then you fell on your fainting couches when Trump said his racist and sexist shit. And then you acted shocked when he continued to lead polls and win primaries and caucuses. Now, with actual violence occurring regularly on small and larger scale at his rallies (or cancelled rallies), you wonder how this could have happened.

What a fucking joke. After decades of giving a winking pass to conservative rhetoric and actions that, under any reasonable examination, would be considered extremist, after treating demonstrable lies like they are facts deserving of discussion (like welfare queens, Willie Horton, Swift Boat vet allegations, and birther nonsense), citizens are comfortable to wallow in ignorance as long as that stupidity hard-on is massaged and not slapped down. And that's on you, all of you, and not just Fox "news" and the conservative blogosphere, which flourished because, in the wake of the success of Fox, in particular, you cowered, flinched, and said, "Uncle" to the false god of "balance" instead of "truth." You are active accomplices, if not outright enablers, to the rise of Trump. And your failure to call a lie "a lie" is your shame.

By any measure, Donald Trump is a huge fucking liar. Right now, his lies are so blatant that there can be real, recorded violence at his campaign stops and he can actually say, "There's no violence." He can be on video saying that he wants to punch someone in the face and then claim that he doesn't condone violence. But to anyone who has followed Trump for any length of time knows that he is a fucking liar about just about everything in his life.

Here's an anecdote from a 1997 New Yorker profile: "Last fall, after Evander Holyfield upset Mike Tyson in a heavyweight title fight, Trump snookered the [New York Daily] News into reporting that he’d collected twenty million bucks by betting a million on the underdog. This prompted the Post to make calls to some Las Vegas bookies, who confirmed—shockingly!—that nobody had been handling that kind of action or laying odds close to 20-1. Trump never blinked, just moved on to the next bright idea." What does that say about a person that he'd lie about a bet and not give a shit when he's caught in the lie? It means that he pays no price for lying, ever. So of course he can lie about whatever the fuck he pleases because the truth doesn't matter to him.

And because we exist in a media environment where even the biggest liars, the biggest racists, the people who are consistently wrong about everything (looking at you, Bill Kristol) are still given a place on major media outlets to spout their lies, hate, and wrongness, it doesn't matter to anyone that Trump lies with the alacrity of a man who brags about how he got a blow job at a whorehouse like he's a big stud. As Ed Koch's deputy mayor said, "I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized."

There was a point, early on, when it would have been so easy to take down Trump. If, say, some resources were devoted to getting information on his business dealings, on the victims of Trump University, on his real worth, on the people who he's rolled over, on his ongoing temper tantrum of a life (he once attacked Leona Helmsley in pretty much the same way he attacks Obama or Marco Rubio). It might have worked early on, when his candidacy was still in its infancy and could be smothered with a pillow. But it's just too fucking late now. He has evolved to have impenetrable armor, and while it is still unlikely that he will win the presidency, what he's unleashed in American politics will not go away easily. Jesus Christ, Trump claimed that a protester that tried to rush him was a member of ISIS, a blatant falsehood. He brushed that off like lint from his ugly-ass suits.

The Rude Pundit has conservative Facebook friends in his Clark Kent world. One of them posted this weekend a defense of Trump in the wake of the Chicago rally debacle. He said that Trump spoke with "grace" and "compassion" for the protesters when he said they needed jobs (even though the rally was in the evening and hence after work for most people, as well as being at a college campus not three miles from where a significant percentage of the largest Mexican population in the U.S. outside of Los Angeles lives). The Facebook friend, a former high school pal, said that Trump cancelled because he was worried about people getting hurt. Of course, the FBF also said that the protesters were "crashing our party," which has all kinds of connotations that just make a person queasy. In a previous Facebook post, this same old friend said that the GOP better get behind Trump, that he is a plumber cleaning a clog of shit out of the pipes of democracy.

You really think anyone with that kind of blind, threatening faith in a candidate is going to be persuaded by anything at this point? Trump's own campaign praised Trump for "really good management and leadership under great pressure" in the aftermath of Chicago. Truth is a joke.

We're fucked until the general, and probably well after, no matter if Trump wins or loses. The violence at the protests, and Trump's implicit threat that he's going to send his goons to Bernie Sanders rallies (let's not even get into his baiting of Sanders by playground-chanting, "Bernie"), these are features of the Trump campaign now. At some point, maybe he'll be arrested for inciting a riot, but we know how that will end up.

For what to do now, honestly, the point has been made that Trump rallies can be shut down or at least disrupted. But Trump wants the violence there. He will leverage it to his advantage to work up his followers, just like he's manipulated the yahoos through his entire career. The best thing that anyone can do right now is actually very easy in concept and very difficult in execution. Make Trump boring. Turn him into another politician, not a martyr. Lies can no longer be countered by truth and facts. Cut that shit out.

The entertainment value is all. We need to come up with a way to get the ratings down so low that the show is cancelled.

What We Learned at Last Night's GOP Ice Cream Social

All the following are based on things said at last night's way-quieter and, in some ways, way-scarier Republican debate in Miami:

1. Ted Cruz wants to destroy public schools: "[T]he most important reform we can do in education after getting the federal government out of it, is expand school choice; expand charter schools and home schools and private schools and vouchers, and scholarships." What's missing there? Oh, right. Helping or even mentioning the public schools where the vast majority of the nation's children still go.

2. Trying to sound sweet, Marco Rubio came across as a selfish prick about Social Security: "I'm against any changes to Social Security that are bad for my mother." Fuck your mom, Marco. Who gives a shit? He promised he didn't want to make any adjustments for people currently on Social Security, but future olds? Yeah, you're fucked under Rubio.

3. Donald Trump will never pass up a chance to be a total dick. Asked a follow-up about Social Security, Trump said, "I want you to understand that the Democrats, and I've watched them very intensely, even though it's a very, very boring thing to watch." Why was that slam necessary? Donald Trump is the guy who is driving past a puddle after a rainstorm and heads into it just to soak the homeless woman on the sidewalk.

4. Ted Cruz likes to show he knows history, but won't tell you the full story. Talking about Trump's threat of a 45% tariff on goods from China, Cruz said, "You know, we've seen prior presidential candidates who proposed massive tariffs, you know, Smoot-Hawley led to the Great Depression." It bears saying that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was sponsored by two Republicans, Smoot and, you know, Hawley, and signed into law by a Republican, Herbert Hoover. So Cruz is saying that Republicans caused the Great Depression.

5. Donald Trump believes that there is some secret conspiracy among all Muslims against the United States. How else to explain his constant refrain of trying to "figure out what's going on"? As in, "There's something going on that maybe you don't know about, maybe a lot of other people don't know about, but there's tremendous hatred," which he said last night. He really thinks that all of Islam is trying to destroy the West.

6. Rubio's best line of the night is perfect for a Democratic ad in the fall: "I'm not interested in being politically correct. I'm interested in being correct."

7. The candidates all seem to think that "being politically incorrect" is that same as "I get to be an asshole without consequences." That is an idiot's understanding of political correctness, which really means, "Act like we live in a civilized society where people are genuinely equal."

8. Someone should tell Donald Trump that leading an "Israeli Day Parade" does not mean he knows shit about Israel.

8a. If Israel was a penis, it would be sore from all the blow jobs given last night.

9. If one of these fucknuts is elected, we will have a ground war with ISIS and we will do nothing at all to save the planet from climate change. So welcome to the new scorched deathscape.

10. Trump couldn't give two shits about freedom of the press or the right to protest and wants violence at his rallies. And the other candidates couldn't give two shits about it, either, or they would have called Trump a liar for defending the attacks on protesters and reporters.

11. Rumor was that John Kasich was there.

No, Sorry, Apologists, Donald Trump's Followers Are Racist Idiots and Assholes

Every day, the Rude Pundit reads some oh-so-compassionate writer, often liberal, who has penned a mighty article where he (and, yeah, it's generally "he") warns Democrats and the cranky left to not be such elitist jack-offs about the people who have said they are voting for Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president. Just a few days ago, Thomas Frank, a writer the Rude Pundit genuinely admires, took Democrats to task for not understanding where the anger driving Trump voters comes from. He centers it in the "the zones of economic misery that 30 years of Washington’s free-market consensus have brought the rest of America." Frank details how Trump appeals to this unemployed or underemployed white working-class population by his attacks on free trade agreements, for example. "Many of Trump’s followers are bigots, no doubt, but many more are probably excited by the prospect of a president who seems to mean it when he denounces our trade agreements and promises to bring the hammer down on the CEO that fired you and wrecked your town, unlike Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton," Frank writes.

Frank surmises that what's driving Trump's support isn't racism, but despair for the job market and the unfairness of the system, as one poll suggested: "Their favorite aspect of Trump was his 'attitude,' the blunt and forthright way he talks. As far as issues are concerned, 'immigration' placed third among the matters such voters care about, far behind their number one concern: 'good jobs / the economy.'" As for the popularity of the Trump movement, Frank writes, "We cannot admit that we liberals bear some of the blame for its emergence, for the frustration of the working-class millions, for their blighted cities and their downward spiraling lives."

Now, the Rude Pundit is pretty sure there is a huge gulf of difference between actual liberalism and the neoliberalism that Frank is actually blaming, but the conflation there hurts because, well, see, liberals actually do advocate for a shit-ton of policies that would help workers. As for the main free trade agreement Trump rails against, NAFTA was passed only because of overwhelming Republican support in 1993. The majority of Democrats were against it. And, let's be honest, Tommy: Trump's voters hear the anti-NAFTA stuff as "fuck those Mexicans."

The biggest problem here is that, even if Frank and others who call for us to feel more compassion for Trump's followers are correct about class issues driving them into Trump's filthy arms, they are leaving out the fact that fuckin' Bernie Sanders takes on those issues, too. His shock victory in Michigan is a direct result of his consistency on issues that matter to union members, factory workers, and other Rust Belt victims of the post-NAFTA economy. So something else is driving people to want Trump over Sanders, and it's not really that large a damn leap to say that there are just a bunch of fucking yahoos who are happy that someone is allowing them to let their racist freak flag fly proudly. (Of course, there are more vast differences between Sanders and Trump other than that the former promotes inclusivity and the latter is a deranged bigot who probably sucks his own dick in front of his children.)

On CNN last night, Trump said, "I think Islam hates us. There is something -- there is something there that is a tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There's an unbelievable hatred of us." To many people, many working class people, that is an appalling and ignorant statement. And if you're someone for whom that is not an appalling and ignorant statement, then you are appalling and ignorant. And you should be treated as such. Just because you happen to agree on some economic issues with the left doesn't absolve you of your fucking backwards-ass racism and overwrought fear. It sure as fuck doesn't mean that blame for that fear and anger falls on liberals. It fucking falls on the cocksuckers who shoved that shit into the brains of the willingly dumb and overtly racist Americans who drool over the rich dude who promises them he alone is the way, the path, the light. They would elect him dictator, if they could. That's what they want.

So fuck Trump's voters. They deserve all the economic support that liberals, real liberals, can get for the entire working class. But this blogger will take them seriously only as much as they are a threat (and beware what happens when Trump loses in the general). And he will disdain the shit out of their nation-harming utter stupidity.

Scenes from Our Neverending Abortion War: Wiping Away a Right One Regulation at a Time

In Republican political circles, limiting and ending safe abortion access are seen not just as articles of faith. They are prime features of conservative thought. "We support a culture of life," say the people who want to carpet bomb other nations and ban orphan refugees from coming to the shores of virginal America, all while they support torture and the death penalty. "We support women," they say, while waging legislative war on anything that gives women autonomy over their bodies. The right thinks about abortion the way a pony fucker thinks about horses: "Well, I like fucking it when it's a pony, but when it grows up, I just can't reach, so, no, I do not like horses." Not fucking the pony doesn't even come into the equation there.

In states across the country, legislatures are still working their pony-boinking dicks off passing regulations and limitations and general fuckery to destroy the legal right to abortion. Some of these are just blatant, naked blockades to any and all abortion access.

For instance, Oklahoma has pretty much lost its goddamned mind when it comes to wrecking the lives of any doctor who would dare to offer an abortion. The Senate there just passed a bill that amends the definition of "unprofessional conduct" that can cause the state to take away the medical license of a doctor. SB 1552 adds several phrases that, in essence, say that any doctor who performs almost any kind of a safe, legal abortion on a patient will have their license suspended and be subject to complete revocation. This means it's for a physician who "has performed an abortion...with an intention other than to increase the probability of a live birth, to preserve the life or health of the child after live birth, to remove an ectopic pregnancy, or to remove a dead unborn child who died as the result of a spontaneous miscarriage, accidental trauma, or a criminal assault on the pregnant female or her unborn child." No exception for rape or incest or even the life of the mother.

By the way, Oklahoma statutes are clear that only a licensed physician can "perform or induce an abortion." So if this new restriction passes, it will be legal for a licensed physician to take care of a woman who wants an abortion, but that physician will then lose their license.

By the way, another bill that would make it first-degree murder to do abortions is currently stalled in Oklahoma because there is apparently a line that even crazed Republicans won't cross. It's sort of like when a porn actor is fine getting a train run on his asshole while being shit on but refuses to participate in vomit games [Note: Don't google that]. Everyone's gotta have standards.

Most states' Republican legislators and governors are not willing to go quite so far as Oklahoma to control the bodies of women, or they want to at least have plausible deniability that they aren't trying to outlaw abortion, even if they're totally trying to outlaw abortion. Florida is about to ban any state funds from going to any organization or clinic where abortions are done. So even if the vast majority of what a clinic does is pap smears and prenatal care and breast cancer screening and HIV testing, it would be ineligible for Medicaid if it gives women abortion pills. Over in Mississippi, the House passed a bill that would limit what instruments a doctor could use while performing a surgical abortion if those instruments are used to dismember a fetus. The Indiana legislature is debating a bill that would question the motivations of women who are seeking abortions, preventing any abortion for a fetus that has been diagnosed with disabilities. The supporters are calling it an "anti-discrimination bill," which is so hilarious you just want to curl up in a ball and sob.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich recently signed a law banning state funds from going to Planned Parenthood, a Columbus clinic for that organization was defaced with graffiti calling it a "Satan Den of Babykillers" (in all caps, of course, of course). Of course, it'd be more accurate to call the place "Jesus's Paradise of Making Sure Women Can Have Babies" since mostly that's what Planned Parenthood does. But it's not quite as catchy.

All the politicians who supported, sponsored, and passed these laws, and hundreds more around the country, are holding their breaths, awaiting the Supreme Court's decision on the Texas clinic regulations. The one sign of sanity in all this was the court's suspension of a similar law in Louisiana, right next door. Louisiana had been down to just 2 clinics briefly, but now the four that closed under the law are back open.

So when you're in a voting booth in November, wondering if you should maintain your purity and not vote if your preferred candidate isn't on the Democratic ticket, know that you'll have the potential bodies of women stacked up on your conscience.

Note to Fellow Sanders Supporters: You're Gonna Vote for Clinton in the General, So Shut the Fuck Up

The Rude Pundit was talking to a friend in Tennessee after the primary there on Super Splendiferous Tuesday last week. "Yeah, I voted for Hillary," he said. Why? "Because all these Bernie people in town are just such assholes about it, so fuck them." The Rude Pundit talked to him again today, and he said that the Bernie voters he knows have said that they won't vote in November if Hillary is the Democratic nominee.

To which the Rude Pundit responded, "Oh, tell them to shut the fuck up. They're gonna vote for Hillary and they fuckin' know it."

Look, this here blogger is a future Bernie Sanders voter when the primary rolls around. He's not a slavering Bernie whore, ready to take all the Bernie chowder he can handle the way he was with Obama in 2008. But, as the Rude Pundit's said before, Bernie's beliefs line up with his own better than Hillary's, so logic would seem to dictate that he vote his heart here. However, he is well aware that Hillary Clinton may end up winning the Democratic nomination for president. In that case, he'll go to the middle school down the street in the fall and hit a button for Hillary. How is this even a question?

Yesterday, the Rude Pundit tweeted out some mighty tweets about how the constant call by Sanders and his supporters for Clinton to release the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs, et al, is a bullshit distraction. We all know exactly what's in those speeches, and it just sounds a little too much like Republican demands that Clinton release all her emails from her server or all her documents back in the days of the Rose Law Firm investigations, neither of which yielded any new or interesting or indictable information. It was a fuckin' snipe hunt, a distraction so you don't have to deal with real shit. What the fuck do you think you'll learn from the speeches? That she gave prostate-fingering hand jobs to Lloyd Blankfein? How is that any different than what we know now?

Everyone pretends like there is some Rosetta Stone to understanding some aspect of Hillary Clinton's putative corruption or criminality, some email that says she personally ordered the Benghazi attack, some document that says she killed Vince Foster to protect her lesbian cocaine affairs, some speech where she explicitly promised endless golden whores to Wall Street executives. This shit is like searching for Bigfoot. You see something move in the forest and instead of being satisfied chasing a deer, it's gotta be a giant, mythical man-beast. Except it's always just a deer unless you are delusional or full of shit.

In reaction to those tweets, the Rude Pundit received an implied death threat via email: "You're a fucking asshole and I hope you are murdered. ALL Hillary supporters should be murdered." That's annoying because 1) idiot motherfucker is wrong, and 2) it borders on a parody of a threat and it's hard to tell if it's serious. Either way, it's goddamned over the top.

So when the Rude Pundit reads things like Steven Salaita's recent piece in Salon, he can't help but think, "Oh, shut the fuck up. You're gonna vote for Hillary." Salaita complains about feeling like shit for being told to "Vote for Hillary or be responsible for Trump." That, he says, "is the slogan of somebody either maintaining or being played by the system." Which is a fancy way of saying, "My candidate might not get the nomination, so I'm taking my wubbie and going home."

'Cause, see, this Sanders voter understands the motherfucking system as a shitstorm of mindless, violent jingoism competing with people who are trying to keep the whole fucking place from falling apart. The Rude Pundit wants Sanders to be the nominee. But he wants Donald Trump or Ted Cruz not to be president even more. Like his support of Sanders over Clinton, it's just that simple, logical an equation. And if his vote for Clinton in the general will prevent the nation from being ass-raped by the cruel nativism and brutalist capitalism of the GOP, then he has a moral and ethical obligation to do it, even if we take every negative thing said about Clinton as true. It's still not as bad as Trump running the joint.

While this seems like a raging pro-Hillary post, it's not. If Biden were running and was the possible nominee, it'd be the same. But the Rude Pundit reads blithering nonsense like a 28 year-old Sanders supporter saying, "I will never support Hillary Clinton. I identify as a socialist. She stands for everything that I’m against. It’s Bernie or nothing," and he can't help but think that guy is a fucking liar and poseur, preening and sounding tough.

Like nearly every Bernie voter, he's gonna line the fuck up, shut the fuck up, and punch that touch screen for Hillary. Or he deserves whatever fucking hell awaits on the other side.

By the way, if Sanders ends up being the nominee, Clinton voters better fuckin' vote for him. Love only works if it goes both ways.

Start Your Week with the Louisiana Legislature Kicking Bobby Jindal While He's Down

Last year, then-Louisiana Governor and hilariously terrible presidential candidate Bobby Jindal was desperately trying to figure out how to get some more revenue for his cash-strapped state. But the bigger problem was obviously that Jindal, like most craven Republicans, had signed a pledge to unelected powermonger Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform (motto: "Harming the American economy for nearly 30 years and proud of it") not to raise any taxes ever.

To keep Norquist from declaring the pledge broken and harming his (snort) national ambitions, Jindal came up with a convoluted and entirely fantastic (as in "fantasy") tax credit that offset any hikes in revenue, thus making the whole budget revenue neutral and not, in fact, raising any taxes and if you understand any of this and don't want to scream into Grover Norquist's stupid face, you're a better person than the Rude Pundit. The SAVE act, for "Student Assessment for a Valuable Education Credit Program," was a phantom fee hike on student that created a phantom tax credit that...who the hell cares? It was a scam and legislators passed it so that Jindal wouldn't veto a couple of tax hikes.

Now, with Jindal out of office, Chris Broadwater, a Republican from Hammond, who had supported SAVE just to get the budget passed, sponsored a bill in the recently-ended special session of the legislature to repeal SAVE. It passed 95-0 because everyone knew blithering nonsense when they saw it and no longer felt like they were being held hostage to an embarrassing failure's lost dreams.

This would be worthy of little more than passing note except for one beautiful moment that occurred while Broadwater was answering questions from other members of the Louisiana House about the bill.

Democratic Representative Ed Price, from just down the road from Broadwater in Gonzales, Louisiana, facetiously asked, "Did you get permission from Mr. Norquist?" Broadwater could have demurred. He could have let slide that slight against the obeisance of Jindal and Republicans to Norquist's dangerous pledge. Instead, Broadwater did this:

Yep, he took out a puppet of a beloved Sesame Street character and declared, "Grover has made an appearance and is okay with the repeal."

Set up or not, it was a beautiful "Fuck you" to Jindal, whose poisonous, divisive two-term legacy has ended up bringing Democrats and Republicans together to attempt to unfuck the states, at least a little (and only after he was gone and a Democratic governor was elected).

Last Night's Debate: The Dick Fight the GOP Deserves

The lowest point of last night's Republican debate/urinary tract infection wasn't the one you might imagine.

It wasn't when frontrunner Donald Trump, sensitive about remarks from Marco Rubio about the size of his hands, commented, "And he referred to my hands, if they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee." And when the nadir of a debate to help decide who will be the Leader of the Free Universe ain't "I promise you I've got a big dick," you're in big trouble.

Yet it wasn't when Trump, as if to prove that he's got a bigger dick, kept calling Rubio "Little Marco," like the soon-to-be-unemployed senator from Florida could fit in Trump's dwarfish palms.

It wasn't when Trump kept talking over the other candidates whenever one mentioned his name, mocking them for having lower poll numbers than him, which is just another way to say, "I have a big dick."

It wasn't when Trump dismissed spittle-lipped Ted Cruz's attempts to paint him as a closeted Democrat. Trump said that donating to Harry Reid or Hillary Clinton was the price of doing business, which pretty much means that he expected something in return and no one asked him about that, which still wasn't the lowest point.

It wasn't when Trump refused to release off-the-record audio from an interview with the New York Times where, according to Cruz and Rubio, he allegedly said that he would be open to immigration reform.

It wasn't when Trump waved off all the facts that Fox "news," strangely attempting to practice journalism, threw at him in big graphics and video packages, as if any of those missiles could faze Godzilla.

It wasn't when Trump, a liar so well-practiced that he could jizz in your face and tell you it was someone else who did it, kept calling Cruz "Lyin' Ted."

It wasn't when Trump not only insisted that he would order the torture of prisoners and the murder of alleged terrorists' families, but that generals and soldiers would follow his orders (which, to be fair, of course they would). It wasn't even when Trump repeated the disproven lie that 9/11 hijackers' "families" got away.

It wasn't when Trump proclaimed, while lying about the civil suit over Trump University, that "I don't settle cases. I don't do it because that's why I don't get sued very often, because I don't settle, unlike a lot of other people." He said this even though just a little over two weeks ago, he settled his lawsuit with Univision over the Miss Universe pageant.

It wasn't when Trump was called a liar, a "con artist," someone "facing a fraud trial," a "disaster" for the Republican Party, a flip-flopper on the issues, and much, much more by the other candidates.

No, the lowest point of the sad dick fight that was last night's debate was when Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio all pussied out and said, as Kasich put it, "I will support whoever is the Republican nominee for president."

And that's game fuckin' over right there. None of the other insults, slights, or attacks matter because who the fuck cares if you're gonna get in line with the rest of the Trump ass-kissers to plant your lips on his tangerine-peel butt cheeks. None of the other three gave a shit, at the end of the day, that a wannabe war criminal, a fraud, a fake, and a fool would become the standard bearer of their party. No one had the guts to say, even, "Fuck him. I just won't vote," let alone, "I'd run as an independent against him."

So this debate is what the GOP deserves, a worthless sword fight between micropenises stretched to breaking so they can get in a few pathetic swats.

Samuel Alito: Supreme Dick (A Short One)

Yesterday's Supreme Court hearing was on the insultingly dumb Texas law requiring family planning clinics where abortions are performed to meet rigid standards that virtually no other medical clinic where outpatient procedures are done must meet. The three women justices kicked so much ass that asses miles away felt it. Justices Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, along with liberal male Justice Breyer, were all over Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller, taking apart the absurdity of his argument that the closure of all but 10 clinics in the entirety of Texas wasn't an "undue burden" on the women of the huge fucking state.

Of course, back on the conservative side, Clarence Thomas didn't say a goddamned thing, having gone back into a decade-long hibernation, like a particularly dumb and cruel cicada. Anthony Kennedy was at his weaselly peak in figuring out how not to make a decision. And John Roberts attempted to undo the arguments of clinics' attorney Stephanie Toti. The ghost of Antonin Scalia was screaming from Hell.

But the king dickhead of the day was Samuel Alito, the bespectacled worm of the court. Alito took it upon himself to try to get Toti to admit that the clinics didn't close because of the law. This mattered to him more than the lives of the women or the distance they had to travel or the money they had to spend or anything else, even though he was utterly fucking wrong:

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, there is very little specific evidence in the record in this case with respect to why any particular clinic closed. Basically, your argument is that the law took effect, and after that point, there was a decrease in the number of clinics...As to how many, of the total that you claim closed, do you have direct evidence about the reason for the closure?

MS. TOTI: Well, 11 of them, Your Honor, closed on the day that the admitting privileges took effect.

JUSTICE ALITO: Yeah. And as to how many...how many are you claiming total closed as a result of the law?

MS. TOTI: To...to date, roughly 20 clinics have closed.

JUSTICE ALITO: And of the 20, how...as to how many do you have direct evidence?

MS. TOTI: I...approximately 12, Your Honor, direct evidence.

JUSTICE ALITO: Because if...if you go through this ­­now we're not talking about a huge number of facilities.

A few minutes later, Justice Kagan punched Alito right in the nutsack when she said, "Is it right that in the two­-week period that the ASC requirement was in effect, that over a dozen facilities shut their doors, and then when that was stayed, when that was lifted, they reopened again immediately?" Toti said that was true. Kagan then put mighty fist to tiny balls as she concluded, "It's almost like the perfect controlled experiment as to the effect of the law, isn’t it? It’s like you put the law into effect, 12 clinics closed. You take the law out of effect, they reopen?"

Who knows how this will go at this point. But, obviously, there could be a law called "Keep That Fuckin' Baby, Whore of Babylon" and Alito would justify it somehow.

Post-Super Tuesday Observations: Our Trump Overlord Will Turn Us All Into Soul-Drained Chris Christies

1.

You know how when you see the secondary villain in a movie have some horrible fate befall him or her? You know how you feel when, for instance, that guy is ass-raped by a gorilla in Trading Places? You laugh, then you feel terrible for him for a moment, and then you think, "No, fuck that dude. He was gonna shoot our heroes. He deserves some ape dick."

Yeah, that's pretty much how the Rude Pundit felt watching Gov. Chris Christie standing behind Donald Trump while Trump gave another of his stream of (barely) consciousness self-congratulatory speeches after winning a bunch of the primaries last night on Super Tuesday (which is a dumb goddamn name for anything that adults are supposed to be involved in). Whatever Christie was thinking, whether it was "I might have helped burn the country to the ground" or "I hope he doesn't talk too long so I can get more hot wings," being backseat bitch to the alpha dog of assholery is everything he deserves.

2. Republicans are not going to go to "war" or tear themselves up over Donald Trump as their nominee. They aren't going to flee from him in great numbers. They aren't going to disavow him. They are going to line the fuck up like the brainless loyal tools that they are, climbing over each other to see who gets to cup his balls in their mouth for a little while.

And the reason is simple: When is the last time you saw the Republicans admit they were wrong? Except for Trump, these motherfuckers refuse to outright condemn George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Right now, they're talking a good game about distancing themselves from the expected nominee. But once Cruz drops out, most of those voters are going to head for Trump. And when Trump starts breaking 50%, the Republican establishment would rather kiss Trump's tangerine ass than deal with the ramifications of fighting him.

They're Republicans, after all. It's Democrats who rip each other to shreds at times like this. For some in the GOP, frankly, Trump has to be liberating, like "Oh, thank Christ, I don't have to pretend I'm not racist anymore."

3. On CNN last night, a fucked-up but telling moment occurred during the coverage of the returns. Trump surrogate Jeffrey Lord, who should be in a picture dictionary under "old white man," and Democratic activist Van Jones, both regulars on CNN, went at each other about Trump's difficulties with race. Jones was talking about Trump not immediately disavowing the KKK when Lord countered with Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who said a few sketchy things that were supposed to prove that Obama hated white people or something back in 2008. Jones responded, "Reverend Wright never lynched anybody. Reverend Wright never killed anybody." This led to Lord declaring that the Klan was "the military arm, the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party," which is true if American history ended in the 1960s.

The back-and-forth continued, with Jones bringing up Trump's long history of hating non-white people: "That whole thing with the Central [Park] jogger kids, he got the entire City of New York whipped up on this idea that these kids had done something wrong. And then when they are trying -- and they were innocent, we all make mistakes...He never apologized to those kids. And that's a stain on him. And you can walk through time after time where he has done stuff like that. The stuff about Native Americans being, you know, a criminal organizations and Mafia."

Lord answered with something that made the Rude Pundit wish he could reach into his television and punch Lord right in his dick. He said, "But, Van, what you're doing right here, what you're doing here is dividing people. We're all Americans here, Van...You are dividing people. This is what liberals do. You are dividing people by race...This is what liberalism is all about."

So liberals are dividing people by pointing out the divisive and racist comments of conservatives. That's pretty much the CNN version of "Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself." It's a stunning logical leap that absolves any racist of guilt. No, it actually turns the guilt around and places it on anyone who would dare to call out bigotry. We shouldn't say that the KKK was and is a group of terrorists who despise blacks and Jews and Hispanics and anyone not like them. No, that's divisive. We should say that the KKK is a group of terrorists who hate Americans, even if that statement is just fucking stupid.

Jones couldn't even respond to Lord's next statement, which was about the violence committed by the KKK: "[T]hey did it to further the progressive agenda. Hello?" You got that? Because the post-Reconstruction south was run by racist Democrats, anything they did was "progressive." Then, as if to add salt to the fucking wound he had already packed with bullshit, Lord said, "We have to be passionate about making sure, as Robert Kennedy used to say, that this country is color blind."

This is an article of faith among many conservatives: Democrats in the south were once racists who worked to prevent civil rights for African Americans; therefore, the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, is the one that actually cares about racial justice in this country. Of course, that's an incomplete telling of the story of what happened to freed slaves in the south after the Civil War. It leaves out the way that Republicans totally dicked them over in order to consolidate power and please northern capitalists during an economic depression.

You know who ended Reconstruction, part of which was assuring that blacks could have full participation in the running of the south, including the presence of the military? It was fucking Republican presidents. First, Ulysses S. Grant pulled back some on intervening in Southern affairs (even though he used troops to enforce federal actions), and then, as part of the deal that made him president, Rutherford B. Hayes removed Union troops from the region, leaving the white racist Democrats to have free rein to enact crazy-ass laws that created a new kind of slavery for black southerners. In other words, everyone fucked them over. You don't get to declare that your party was somehow clean because of the actions of Lincoln but leave out Hayes.

By the way, that paraphrase of Robert Kennedy on a color blind country is actually RFK quoting Justice John Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the decision that affirmed those crazy-ass Jim Crow laws and damned the south to nearly a century of backwards fuckery. Kennedy (and Harlan) declared that "Our Constitution is color blind," not the country. That's a big fucking difference. And the rest of Kennedy's speech where he said that in 1963 was about how African Americans got a raw deal economically and socially and that the government needed to enact laws to change that. Or, you know, divisive shit.

By the way, you know who wrote the Plessy decision? Justice Henry Brown, who was appointed by Benjamin Harrison, a Republican.

Yeah, the Republican Party is the party for Trump, almost like it's been waiting for him.

5. Oh, right, Hillary and Bernie each won some stuff.

New York Times Conservatives Refuse to Blame Republicans for Trump's Rise

Last Friday, David Brooks, in his New York Times "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the gurgles of drowning elitism"), sought to find the source of the River Trump that is flooding the Republican areas of the country right now. Brooks locates that lake high in the mountains of what he perceives as a general dismay with politics. "Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics," Brooks writes. "These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want 'outsiders.' They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power."

The entire column is 99% about Republicans, just Republicans, especially conservative Republicans. But, in what might be a nadir of both-sides-do-it-ism, Brooks never allows that the "cancer" exists more or less exclusively on the right side of the body politic. Look at what he says: "They suffer from a form of political narcissism, in which they don’t accept the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine...The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience...The antipolitics people refuse compromise and so block the legislative process."

That motherfucker contorts himself like he's attempting auto-analingus. Every single thing in Brooks's list of the politically damned is a description of how Republicans, and Republicans alone, have governed. In the minority in the Senate, they rewrote the rules on the passage of legislation so that filibuster was the default setting, not the extraordinary exception. Republicans got a whole bunch of yahoos and ideologues and evangelicals and other various and sundry cock mites elected, legislators for whom "compromise" is the same as "shit-eating." And they've attempted at every turn to delegitimize the twice-elected president. Don't fucking blame the person smoking a joint for burning down the house when there's an asshole with a flamethrower and an empty tank of gasoline standing right fucking there.

Brooks gets to Fucknut of the Hour by saying, "Trump is the culmination of the trends we have been seeing for the last 30 years: the desire for outsiders; the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible; the decline of coherent political parties; the declining importance of policy; the tendency to fight cultural battles and identity wars through political means." Again, almost all of that shit is attributable to Republicans, with Democrats winning...what? Gay marriage? And fuckin' Trump ain't running on opposition to that.

Then, on Sunday, the other New York Times conservative, Ross Douche-hat...Douthat decided that we have Donald Trump because that Barack Obama is such a dick. He wants everyone to recognize "the way that Obama-era trends in liberal politics have helped feed the Trump phenomenon." Obama has pushed the nation to a more authoritarian path because, well, shit because he has: "Having once campaigned against his predecessor’s power grabs, the current president has expanded executive authority along almost every dimension: launching wars without congressional approval, claiming the power to assassinate American citizens, and using every available end-around to make domestic policy without any support from Congress."

Leaving out that Obama has put out fewer executive orders than any president since, at least, Franklin Roosevelt (he's issued fewer than one-term presidents Ford, Carter, and Bush I), once again it needs to be said that, as far as domestic policy goes, Obama has had a Congress that, for most of his presidency, has pushed every legislative battle to crisis until, finally, it simply refused to do jackshit. Frankly, Obama could have gone far, far further on the domestic front and said, "Suck my balls and take me to the Supreme Court, jagoffs."

Of course, Douthat barely mentions the racism in the equation, in both the opposition to Obama and the rise of Trump. It's easier to say that white working class voters are abandoning the Democratic Party because "Obama has made moves that effectively slam the door on them: His energy policies, his immigration gambits, his gun control push, his shift to offense on same-sex marriage and abortion," not that they're mostly just fucking racists who are looking for an excuse so they don't have to just say they're racists (although Trump is allowing them to finally go, "Okay, fine, we're just fucking racists.")

The conservatives of the New York Times are desperately trying to rescue a party and an ideology that are being murdered before their eyes. Brooks and Douthat are denying that what they have believed has led to this moment in American political history. It has to be something else. They couldn't be wrong. Dear God, they couldn't be.