Tough Guy

"There isn't a goddamn difference between Don King and Don Trump. One guy's hair goes north and south, the other's goes east and west." -- Charley Steiner, radio voice for the USFL New Jersey Generals

If they pray over at CNN, chances are it's something along the lines of give us this day our daily clickbait. Then Wolf Blitzer breaks out his party surplice and farts around with the election hologram touch-screen doodad, while deep twit-thoughts scroll across the base of the screen. News you can use!

Let's not get confused over the success of Clownstick's cheap one-upmanship jabs. It's part blue ocean strategy, mostly sheer audacity and down-punching ego. No mystery there. The "establishment" candidates were a step or three behind because it was in their nature; the establishment media have been behind the whole way because they're used to covering establishment candidates. Everyone was stuck in the traditional playbook, because at heart this is a money game, and everyone was making money, so there was no reason to change anything.

Now their conventional wisdom has shifted to covering Drumpf's nonsense as if it has any validity, simply because it's "working," except it looks more and more like it's only working on the converted. His attempt to bait a federal judge may well end up going down as an all-time blunder, right up there with Crystal Pepsi and drafting Jamarcus Russell at #1 overall. Even I know you don't fuck with judges.

(Also, too:  This is the guy Clownstick's whining about, someone who literally risked his life to take on the Mexican drug cartels. If there was any remaining doubt about whether Fuckface Von Clownstick is an ignorant, whiny, pissy little cunt, let it be removed once and for all.)

Clownstick Syndrome

Perhaps one blessed day these beleaguered scriveners might ask themselves and each other:  What if he gave a press conference, and nobody came?

Better yet, instead of whinging about this being "what it's going to be like" when it's been like that the entire time, perhaps the energy you use to sit and stenograph the man-baby's tantrums could be better utilized in, oh I dunno, exposing this con man and fraud for what he is? It's not like the details aren't out there. Start pounding that drum for a change, and see what happens.

The Heretic's Dilemma

Twenty-five years ago, about this time of year, I went what is probably the only true vacation of my adult life, a six-week trip around Europe. We started and ended in Ireland, where I have cousins who live in a house that has been in the family since the early 17th century.

From there we went on through Wales and England, and to the Continent, through France, Switzerland, Austria, what was then still a unified Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Belgium (in that order), before heading back through the British Isles.

We spent a few days in Paris, which was not nearly enough, but we did see the main sights. At one point we went to Sacre Coeur, which is every bit as amazing as it looks.

Looking back, I suppose I made the shift from believer to agnostic to atheist from ages 10-14, give or take. And at the time we were in the Sacre Coeur, I was twenty-four years old, long hair, proud (and sometimes arrogant) unbeliever, caring only about working a job to feed my habits -- guitars, women, motorcycles, beer, and weightlifting. It was a warm June day, but it didn't seem right to wear shorts, so I wore jeans, a blank t-shirt, shoes. These details matter somewhat, as we'll see.

Everybody Calm Their Shit

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Let's assume that you have received the official internutz memo about the most recent thing your are supposed to be OUTRAGED about -- the senseless murder of a noble gorilla, into whose enclosure had fallen a young child. Naturally the cries went up instantaneously, as if the zookeepers were just supposed to wait and see what a 400-pound, immensely strong beast was going to do with the toddler he was dragging.

Tragically, initial reports did indicate that Harambe the gorilla was indeed being kind to the child, and had not harmed him. But the very act of trying to extricate the kid -- or even to tranquilize Harambe -- might have set him off. Life is about risk management, when you get right down to it, and that is simply a risk that no decent parent would be willing to take with their young child.

Now, the argument is being made that the mother (both parents were there, but most of the verbal attacks seem to be directed at the mother) is negligent; after all, what kind of parent lets their kid fall into a gorilla enclosure? Who knows? Maybe there was a hole in the fence, maybe there was just a low spot that the Cincinnati Zoo will be surprised to find had not been breached yet. Kids have a way of taking off when you turn your back on them for even a second, stop go get a soda, take a dump, whatever. That someone might have been technically negligent for a split-second does not necessarily mean that they were criminally negligent, or even negligent in a more general sense.

Flawed Rationale

The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf makes a good-faith attempt to engage a young (22-year-old) John Miller acolyte. To his credit, the acolyte attempts to respond in good faith as well, and actually answers with more depth and intelligence on a number of issues than his Oompa Loompa overlord.

In Which Microsoft Is Cordially Invited to Go Fuck Themselves

Seriously, I don't want Windows 10, okay? I don't care how many dopey commercials you run pimping your spyware OS, the real problem is that my Win 7 PC is five years old, and likely does not have enough memory or hard drive space to handle the upgrade.

And I'm fine with that; the machine does what I need it to do. I blog, surf, read, run my other websites, work on my guitar tabs. I run Malwarebytes to keep out the nasties, and CCleaner to clear out the pipes. At some point in the future, things wear out, and I'll have to replace my beloved trusty workhorse, and take whatever OS is going at that moment in time. But I'll make that determination, assholes, not you.

So leave me the fuck alone already. Your shitty, ubiquitous "daddy blog" commercial is no more convincing than your shitty, ubiquitous smiling babies commercials.

But they can't leave us alone, can they? YOU MUST TAKE OUR FREE UPGRADE. JOIN OR PERISH, MORTAL. They can't help themselves. Maybe the NSA is pushing them, as is noted in comments in the linked article at the beginning. Who knows?

One thing I do know is that it's pretty goddamned weird when a monolithic corporation tries so hard to give you something. It's even weirder when they're humping your leg every five fucking minutes with the aforementioned shitty teevee commercials to give you something.

There's always a catch, whether it's MOAR AND BETTER tracking bots feeding your porn searches to the gubmint, or a forced upsell to be announced at a date yet to be determined. I wish I was techier so I could just run Linux and be done with these bastards.

Startin' Up a Rumor

I'm not gonna say that Donald Trump is a fat, sweaty, spray-tanned asshole who tells lies the way most people draw breath, or that he keeps a small herd of specially-bred goats on his private jet to relieve him sexually after each of his campaign rallies. I promised I wouldn't say those things, so I'm not saying them.

But, you know, the fact is -- and I'm not saying this -- that his audiences should know that when he's talking to them, he's really thinking about tapping some sweet goat ass immediately after the show.

But I would never say that.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It's getting to be about that time in the electoral cycle, when the usual Nader-baiting groundhogs pop up from their holes to gaze at their navels and stroke their chins. The quadrennial Passion Play of the Gorestoßlegende, with its ever-rotating cast of sanctimonious characters, thunders on.

There's no debating these people, anymore than you can persuade a Drumpfkin of his folly. But the fact of the matter is that more Florida Democrats defected for Bush than for Nader in 2000. They keep overlooking this, erm, inconvenient truth (see what I did there?), and it's not hard to see why.

Feel-Good Hit of the Summer

On the one hand, freedom of speech and all; on the other hand, fuck this guy.

Billion Dollar Baby

I'm not familiar with PoliticusUSA, so cannot vouch for the veracity, but for one, it seems far more professionally written and laid out than rightie sites, such as your Bartbrite or Right Wing News or Western Journalism, and for another, it's about Donald Drumpf Fuckface Von Clownstick John Miller, so frankly, I don't give two fucks if it's even accurate or true or not anymore.

But it sure as hell sounds one hundred percent accurate:

When Donald Trump told Republicans that his campaign had money, it was a lie. In meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump’s campaign privately admitted that they have no money and will not be able to run television ads until after the GOP convention in July.

So, let's recap, shall we:  One of Miller's biggest positives, according to the double-digit IQ mouth-breather cultists who support him, is that he's "self-funded" and therefore beholden to no one. But just in the last couple weeks, Sheldon Adelson (you know, the other casino-owning scumbag), has already pledged $100m to the cause, since his last 100m pledge -- to Newt Gingrich in 2012 -- flamed out hilariously. And now it turns out that Miller doesn't want to pull a Meg Whitman and dump his own money into this after all.

Lazy Train

Oh, for fuck's sake. Look, Drumpf-Miller-Barron (DMB) did not "destroy the interview" -- just from the first two examples described in the article, the journalists are the ones ruining it. Megyn Kelly didn't press Miller on his lying lies because she's a fucking hack who aspires to be the next Barbara Walters. And, you know, maybe the WaPo morons ought to think twice about letting Clownstick phone in next time.

DMB is thwarting the media because the media let him do it. Jesus, it seems like he phones into Face the Nation every other week or so, when he lives within spitting distance of the fucking studio. Do ya think there might be some strategery on his part in doing that, Doctor? Stop with the phone interviews; let the retards at Fox and Friends be his butt-boys, that's what they're there for.

The clown is winning the media battle because he understands the game better than they do. They will gladly abdicate their journalistic principles (if they have any to begin with) for ratings. That is their prime directive. Miller knows this, that's why he would never, and I mean never, agree to do a real one-on-one interview with a real bulldog journalist who would tune him up on his endless lies.

He knows better. They don't seem to. And time is running out. Start doing your fucking jobs already, and stop letting him call in to waste everyone's time with his goddamned lying. If he won't agree to a face-to-face interview, then do some oppo research. It's not like he hasn't spent the last four decades stinking up the joint. Just grab a shovel and choose a direction.

The Aristocrats

Watching whatever stage of grief the Republicans are in right now is entertaining, to say the least. Some have a false sense of triumphalism and unity, as if their boy's excursions into Nineties nonsense is going to help their, um, cause. Yes, Deadbeat Donald, please do keep telling us about Whitewater and Vince Foster. While you're at it, go transcribe some Mudhoney lyrics, ya fuckin' hump.

Now, "principled" Republicans and/or conservatives, to the extent that there are any left, find themselves scrambling for purchase, wondering how they can in good conscience support the bloviating, comically-coiffed ass-clown representing their supposedly grand old par-tay.

At the Movies

As a palate cleanser from all things Drumpf/Miller, let's touch on a few flicks of recent (and distant) vintage:

Jurassic World -- Solid, tight, clean direction, uses John Williams' classic score instead of the usual action movie classic-hit nonsense. I don't watch many action movies, and when I do, it's usually because it's a slow weekend afternoon and nothing else is on, and something comes up on HBO. (Stay thirsty my friends!). Also, I go into this sort of movie with low expectations -- keep the action rolling, the actors should be having fun, that sort of thing. Anyone watching an action movie that expects art is either an idiot or an asshole, probably both.

Like every other green-screen extravaganza, this is strictly standard Hero's Journey fare, and you should be able to predict the mosasaur-vs.-tyrannosaur finale an hour before it occurs, but it's all done with a fairly high degree of conviction. Chris Pratt manages to try convincingly to channel a Gary Cooper type, though you can almost hear him squinting at times, and they put Bryce Dallas Howard in enough athletic tank tops to almost make you think she's A-list hawt, though Scarlett Johansson would have thrust those bad girls right in your fucking face. I stayed awake all the way through it, so that's most of the challenge right there. Grade:  B+

99 Homes -- This is a small, under-the-radar movie about a very unsexy subject -- the foreclosures of the so-called Great Recession, and the people who profited from the misery -- but is a quite effective portrait of a specific time and community of economic peril. It all comes a bit unglued in the third act, but getting there is immensely rewarding, due in no small part to strong performances by (seriously) Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon, the latter of whom, I humbly predict, will win an Oscar within the next five to seven years. Shannon and Garfield play off each other amazingly well throughout, and while the subject of this movie is depressing, the execution of it is anything but. Grade:  A-

 The Witch -- If Terence Malick made an early-America horror movie, it would look much like this. Writer-director Robert Eggers takes a period, folkloric tale and captures its essence. Rather than a high-falutin costume drama with buckle-hats and such, Eggers utilizes epistolary dialogue from early seventeenth-century Massachusetts and handmade period clothing to establish a setting for what becomes a truly suspenseful story.

The movie stars Game of Thrones alumni Ralph Ineson (Finchy from the British Office) and Kate Dickey as the devoutly religious parents of five young children, from teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) to infant Sam. The puritanism of William (Ineson) causes the family to self-exile from their already-small village to an even more remote area bordering the then-untamed wilderness. This is where Eggers' direction shines, in the patient, lush exterior shots showing both the vastness of the family's location and the haunting closeness of it. The period dialogue can be difficult to understand at times, but ultimately lends well to the overall atmosphere of remoteness.

Anyone who's ever been in a forest, especially in the afternoon, as the setting sun dapples through the trees, slowly augmenting the coming of night and mystery, knows the vestigial feeling one gets in the gut at such a time and place. The Witch showcases that limbic instinct again and again, to great effect. It's too bad, but no surprise at all, that this movie didn't go anywhere on its release; 'murkins need either "found footage" guff or superhero mashup bullshit to get them by between their hourly infusions of fat and high-fructose corn syrup and processed sawdust. But if you have the patience (and it's only 90 minutes, but no green screens), this is a wondrously-shot small-scale tale of dread and isolation. Grade: A-

Purple Rain -- When Prince passed away last month, it was tempting to jump on the internets bandwagon and make sure you all knew what a transformative figure he was in my life, just like everyone else made sure to do. But that wouldn't have been entirely true; while I certainly regarded him as a fine guitarist and songwriter, it just didn't seem right to grab that particular wheel at that particular time.

But the wife and I have gone back and listened to several of Prince's albums since his untimely demise, and it seemed like an opportunity to introduce our daughter to what was undeniably a major shift in music and video of the Eighties. Sure enough, the "movie" part of it is absolutely a product of its time -- poofy hair, cheesy acting, half-assed cinematography, an overly personalized plotline.

And yet on watching this relic for the first time in thirty years (in my case), there's no getting around the fact that the music holds up amazingly well, not only in the concert sequences, but in the exterior shots. The motorcycle scene during Take Me With U is beautifully shot, sun shining down on the road through fall leaves as Prince takes Apollonia to the lake for her impromptu skinny-dip. Pretty much every scene with musical accompaniment is superior to the rest of it, though there's no small amount of brownie points won in having Clarence Williams III as Prince's abusive dad.

One of the major differences between the "soundtrack" album and the movie is that the title track ends the album, which is especially poignant now, while the movie closes with I Would Die 4 U and Baby I'm A Star after Purple Rain, which has a more triumphant feel. It turned out to be surprisingly rewarding to do both, to listen to the album and to watch the movie, to see the innocence and potential of what (who) was arguably one of the most influential musicians of the last generation. Grade: B+

Lulz

Oh, this is surprising. Might as well have made the headline Lying Prick Cocksucker Lies. In other news, water is wet.

The list showed that the majority of the money that had been donated at that time came from Trump's foundation or the foundations of two of his friends, businessman Carl Icahn and pharmaceutical billionaire Stewart J. Rahr.

A couple of months ago, in the context of Madeleine Albright pulling the shopworn "there's a place in hell" card regarding women who didn't support other women, I mentioned what a lowlife move that was. But that's nothing compared to someone who trades on poached valor, and then doesn't even follow through, even though by their own account they can more than easily afford to. John Miller says he's worth ten billion United States dollars in the year 2016, with "tremendous cash flow," so six million bucks oughta be couch-cushion change. Yet it's been four months and the money still has not been discursed, and may not have even been entirely collected in the first place.

There's your fucking champeen, Real Murka. Hope you're proud of yourselves.

Easy Virtue

What Strix said. One of the more confounding sub-phenomena of this benighted year so far is how "transgendered restrooms" became this hill to die on for both diehard socialcons and equally diehard pwoggies. There simply cannot, even in a nation of 320 million people, be that many individuals, be they drag queens or just casual takers of dumps, who are affected by this is any meaningful way.

More to the point, why is it this issue that becomes the cause for Springsteen, Maroon 5, the NBA, et al, to exert economic coercion over a cultural backwater like, say, North Carolina? This is not a terribly meaty ankle; why the sudden communal urge to bite it? Most of these southern shitholes are far worse when it comes to reproductive rights, environmental protection, health care -- you know, things that actually affect more than .01 percent of the population, or whatever the sub-niche is that consists of transgender and cross-dressers.

Don't get me wrong; I support the cause and all. If I'm draining the weasel at Costco and some dude in a dress walks in and uses the urinal next to me, I couldn't care less, so long as they keep to themselves, just like any other user of the public skunk-works. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like if the celebrity boycotters went after something slightly more universally applicable, and I can't help but feel that this is the sort of nonsense that SJWs are particularly adept at ginning up.

Enablers

Megyn Kelly -- who does actually seem intelligent enough to know better -- needs to cut the shit and be honest with herself at least. The reason people are "biased" against John Miller is because he's a liar, a pimp, a con-man, a mentally ill narcissistic man-child, a fucking moron who is completely unqualified for any sort of public office, much less the presidency. The reason people are biased against Fixed Noise is because the "network" itself is biased, a shameless shitshow comprised of failed Republican office-holders and -seekers, and their ass-sniffing dogsbodies. At least CNN and MSNBC make passable attempts at balance, though they mostly fail because they're just shitty journalists, not because of any political bias.

Kelly, whether she knows it or not, had at least some potential goodwill from people normally inclined to ignore her. I can't be the only one to the left of Attila the Hun to wonder, given the awful treatment Kelly received at the hands of Miller and his cult followers and surrogates, if Kelly might be motivated to make her interview with Miller a showcase in insightful, responsive reportage. There's no need to come into it with an agenda; Miller's own words are more than enough to inform such an exercise in (again) JOURNALISM.

Teachable Moment

Hopefully this stubborn kid has learned a valuable lesson that will serve him well in the real world:  there are multiple layers of faceless, mindless bureaucrats whose sole function in life is to enforce rules, without regard as to whether they make sense or not, whether they add any value or not. Accept what you are told, do it without question, show your belly and let your masters decide whether to scratch or punch that belly.

Be honest -- for 99% of you out there, no matter what you do, that is the common undercurrent of your lives, no? Do what you're told, and maybe someday a bone might be thrown your way. Probably not, but you can't take that chance. Any honest commencement speech will include some variation of that something to warn the kids about the manifestly unsafe space that awaits them. Grab your ankles and hold on for dear life.

Doubling Down

Beyond all the bluster and bullshit, the lies and the cheap spray-tan, enraged cheeto John Miller's main characteristic is his willingness -- no, his enjoyment -- of gambling. Not in the specific "bet the house on 33 black at the roulette wheel" sense, but in the more generic "fortune favors the bold" sense. Sometimes that works out for him, sometimes not.

The problem in never changing that tack is that now there are bigger things at stake if he gambles wrong, than simply stiffing his partners on another shitty casino-hotel. This sense of his trickles down to even his tweets; as the article shows, this is a calculated risk predicated on the dopey sensibilities of heedless cult following. If EgyptAir 840 turns out to be a mechanical failure, no problem; Miller's retard fanbase remains immune to his hysterical nonsense. On the other hand, if it was a terrorist incident, it becomes a prescient center-piece of Miller's jabber for the entire summer, even though Miller had no way of knowing either way when he wrote the tweet.

So as unlikely and risible as it may seem that the Screeching She-Beast of the Tundra might be on Miller's veep short-list, one has to look at the pattern and ask, why not? Seen from the perspective of two of the most sociopathic personality types -- gamblers and narcissists, of which Miller is both -- it makes a perverted sort of sense.

Conservatard critics of Obama, imbued with their own special smugness even as they continue to deride that supposed quality in their opponents, typically tag Obama with the "messiah" epithet, some sort of variation on that. The idea is to impute that Obama came into office riding atop a white horse, determined to save us from the gubmint, from each other, from ourselves, that he and only he would be capable of any of those things.

Sound like anyone we know?

Role Reversal

Salon had a mildly interesting article (linking very reluctantly because the site is a completely half-assed, over-embedded, non-loading box of turds anymore) about how The Daily Show has faded because Trevor Noah is not Jon Stewart. Well, no shit.

I've watched TDS since the very first episode, and like most longtime fans, I assumed the show would lose most of its bite without Stewart; in fact, it was starting to in his last couple years, as longtime writers, producers, and correspondents began leaving to work on other shows and projects. Stewart's departure was just the capstone to that dynamic.

Fifteen years as the political ombudsman to disaffected Gen Xers and millennials had clearly taken its toll on Stewart's psyche. Chronicling and curating the infinite hypocrisies and absurdities of American politics, and the sheer butt-fucking stupidity of those in power and those who put them there, wore him down as much as it did most of us out here in what's left of 'murka.

Get It Together

Okay, so hopefully by now it should be clear that you're never ever going to tune in here and see me engage in cheap Nader-baiting, or smugly lecturing STOOPID LEFTIES how they "owe" their vote to this or that candidate. But this sort of behavior has to stop. This is nuts.

Nobody has any illusions about how this election is going down. This is going to be a soul-sucking, mind-numbing, interminable blatherfest between a cynical corporate Republican hack, and Donald DrumpfJohn Miller.

But it's also a showdown between people who have stayed active and informed and concerned about their country, and the gaggle of ignorant maroons mindlessly supporting Drumpf-Miller. Many of Drumpf-Miller's flock have proudly attested that they had never or rarely voted in the past. And as much as one might ideally wish that everyone would show up to exercise their sacred right, we're finding out the hard way that there are in fact some folks who, if they're not going to bother to inform themselves or think logically and rationally about serious issues, we're all better off if they stay home on election day.

The Name Game

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Drumpf? I'm not kidding or doing schtick here, there is something off about this guy. Who does shit like this? Even more bizarre is Drumpf's insistence that the voice on the tape is not him, even though it sounds just like him and reads exactly like him, even though it probably wouldn't hurt his standing with his cult of morons in the least to admit it.

Even more bizarre is the possibility that Drumpf himself leaked the tape, just to get another news cycle, perhaps to distract from his refusal to release his tax returns. Whatever.

One thing that seems clear, though, and it's definitely something that Democrats need to start working:  Drumpf's main point of vulnerability is his need maintain his vainglorious, nonsensical vision of himself as a man of greatness. He's a fucking clown, a needy, whiny, thin-skinned bitch who cannot handle even a little bit of criticism, no matter how true it is. And he cannot stand to be ridiculed, even though everything about him is patently ridiculous.

So uh, you know, Drumpf thinks his dumb fucking nicknames for everyone else are soooo clever: Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, Crooked Hillary, etc., etc. The Dems floated "Dangerous Donald" in response, but fuck that noise. Every chance they get, they should refer to him as "John Miller" or "John Barron", and coyly follow up with, "Oh, sorry, I mean Donald Trump."

Drumpf's marketing technique is mostly repetition, because repetition works, especially on simpletons. So just keep repeating it, all summer long, at the convention, out on the campaign trail. Mock it, point out how funny and silly and ridiculous it is. Drumpf won't be able to stand it. His Greg Stillson moment is not a matter of if, but when, it just takes someone to push and provoke him into it.

American Horror Story: Convention

If I ever get worried that I might occasionally get too over-the-top in my insults and pointed jeremiads against various assholes, all I have to do is keep in mind that there are true freaks out there. What do you even say to someone who emails a delegate that they're praying for said delegate to get prostate cancer because they might support Cruz instead of Drumpf at the convention? What the hell is wrong with these idiots?

Bonus points to Bobo Brooks, of all people, from a March column:

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.

Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.

This week, the Politico reporters Daniel Lippman, Darren Samuelsohn and Isaac Arnsdorf fact-checked 4.6 hours of Trump speeches and press conferences. They found more than five dozen untrue statements, or one every five minutes.

This is why, while I actually agree with Drumpf's assertions about his flock being dispossessed and left behind, and sympathize with the lost dreams of said flock, it's possible to feel only so much empathy for them. They voted for the politicians that did this to them, over and over again, for decades, generations. They were fine with selling out someone else's future somewhere else, so long as they got to keep their McJobs stamping overpriced widgets.

Talladega Nights

I have less of an issue with an 11-year-old being left alone with a 9mm handgun with which to defend himself, than the fact that he's such a lousy fucking shot.

Bored of the Rings

Alien-in-a-human-suit and Canadian native Rafael Edward Cruz Junior certainly comes across as the sort of physically inept doofus who, if you threw him a basketball, would probably try to dribble it with both hands simultaneously and granny-shot his free throws over the backboard. So it's no surprise that he would blunder his cynical attempt to capitalize on Indiana's moronic fixation on the sport by referring to the goal as a ring rather than a hoop. Highlarryous, as they say in the 'hood.

But is it really any more stoopid or laughable than Dumb Old Chump using doddering rageaholic Bobby Knight as some sort of validation of his, Drumpf's, own laughable sayings and obsessions? Beyond all the half-truths, untruths, and flat-out lies, the unifying theme of Drumpf's campaign has been that Preznit Chocolate Thunder has turned our fair land into a smoldering apocalyptic hellhole.