Opinion

The Republican Party as we’ve known it officially died this week as Acting Attorney General Todd “Trumpsimp” Blanche’s nomination essentially became inevitable. The personal lawyer of a convicted felon adjudicated rapist Epstein Bestie will almost certainly be the Attorney General of the United States of America.

Blanche will be remembered as the biggest traitor of them all, selling his spine to Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin for a currently unknown reason. It’s clear all of the Republicans have a price, or else we’d either be enjoying President Joe Biden’s second term or President Kamala Harris’s first.

Of the innumerable Trump scandals in this or his previous administration, the mishandling or non-handling of the Epstein investigation manages to stand out which, given the scandal-a-day pace, all but puts higher functions into a comprehensive coma.

It would be fun to ask why the administration has gone to such great lengths to hide the matter and shown so little enthusiasm in prosecuting the co-conspirators were it not for Occam standing right there, aghast, shaving away: "Take a wild guess."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blocked me on Twitter this week. And I’m not sorry.

Supernatural is widely regarded as the longest-running horror show in television history, with 327 episodes over 15 seasons.

The entire Trump presidency, from his first term through now, has been a horror show, blowing past 327 episodes in his first year back in office. Each episode seemingly has its own iteration; however, the plots sometimes repeat themselves.

Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan, declared Thursday morning, seems to have broken the brains of Republicans and the chattering class.

Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism, and that most other developed countries enjoy right now. That includes:

Obviously, this is not our first warning; indeed, Donald Trump's response to the Michigan Democratic primary fits a pattern that goes back years and will certainly progress through the general election this Fall. But hearing him rail away in theory doesn't shake the spine like seeing it in practice. And for real, it appears as though Trump is putting in serious practice time in Michigan and elsewhere, ready for gameday this fall.

As has been noted here for months, voters are furious over the state of the nation, and that goes for both Left and Right, though most on the Right can't bring themselves to lay their anger at the feet of the man almost solely responsible for the inflation, wars, and healthcare cuts fertilizing that anger. The Reds are most certainly willing to oust incumbents, witness Cornyn, Massie, among others.

As a veteran, I will go to my grave believing that covering each other's six doesn't end at the grave.

I learned the military mantra, meaning to “protect each other from danger coming from behind,” when I enlisted in the Vietnam War as an armorer after two of my childhood friends were killed in action.

It seems like only yesterday that Pam Bondi was confirmed as Attorney General and every political type in Washington assured us she was qualified because, after all, she'd once held the job in Florida.

I’m cynical in the most extreme way when it comes to anything involving the Trump administration, so I had zero faith that Bondi would be a guardrail. Instead, she was a drop-off, teetering on the ledge alongside Donald Trump throughout her tenure before eventually being pushed off.

It seemed so trivial. Trump ordered the Interior Department to post signs along the walkways leading up to several of the museums that make up the Smithsonian system in Washington, D.C., warning people that they’d find “inaccurate information” therein. It was based on a bizarre “report” written by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and released without fanfare on the 4th of July.

The council itself was packed by Trump with leftovers from right-wing think tanks and activist groups like American Compass, Heritage, the Manhattan Institute, and Stephen Miller’s America First Policy Institute.

As I write these words, Todd Blanche is cruising toward being confirmed as Attorney General for the United States. What looked improbable just a few days before quickly became, essentially, a done deal after Blanche did the bare minimum to assuage the concerns of lame-duck Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC).

We pretend that Blanche’s approval was ever really in doubt. It wasn’t. Sufficient smoke and mirrors were always going to be employed to satisfy the senators.

Hey, here's a thing. Donald Trump, the United States President, aged 80, managed yet again to go full North Korea "Glorious Leader" and win his golf club's championship for the 43rd straight time. Our full-time golf pro and part-time president tweeted: "The Winning Shot in the Bedminster Club Championship! ... so honored... I’m given very little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things. It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”

An adult tweeted that. Really.

I'll admit for a few days last week, I started to believe it too.

Today is Aug. 3, the deadline for Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to call a special election to fill Mitch McConnell's Senate seat if it becomes vacant. And for weeks, a theory has been metastasizing across social media, gossip sites, and even political discourse.