More Cowbell

Last time I checked (Wednesday, November 11, 2015) Ben Carson was talking gibberish. And still is as of as of March 14, 2016 when he was apparently roused from a nap with bathrobe Jesus (when did Ben Carson move to South Beach?) long enough to proclaim Donald Trump a deep thinker and voice of the people and reassure anyone who cared one way or another that he and Donald had buried the hammer and he had absolved The Donald of any sins and trespasses he may have committed previously. As any good high-minded Christianist would do.

Trump thanked Dr. Ben for his forgiving reawakening: "Having (Carson's) support, really, it just adds total credence to what I'm trying to do and to what we're all trying to do," said the always humble Donald.


Butterfat and the Border Troll
Dr. Carson's acquiescence to the Trumpet blasts and consuming fires of self righteous indignation oozing from the inflamed orifice of the vox Trumpage populi followed an earlier conversion by New Jersey's governor at-large Chris Christie.

Christie agreed to countersign on the Trump line in Fort Worth, Texas in late February and was placed on display - standing behind The Donald like a prize milk cow at a 4-H picnic - at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida on March 1st.

Christie, who had previously ridiculed Trump as a carnival barker and aspiring "entertainer-in-chief" has apparently succumbed to the alluring come-hither of showbiz hugeness by joining Trump's traveling circus of hyperbolic subterfuge.

Christie, no doubt, envisions a place for himself in a brave new order.* A place that may include a role in a Trump administration where he is assigned the task of closing all bridges and passes along the length of the Rio Grande. Chris Christie: Bridge Troll / International Traffic Czar. It'll be enorme!

Additionally, the Rio Grande will be renamed the Huge River should Trump be deposited in the White House.

* Contingent upon Christie's ability to remain free and clear of the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix.

Dark Triads
On Tuesday (March 15, 2016) the High Overlord of Mar-a-Lago rolled up the states of Florida, Illinois and North Carolina and folded them into his expanding dominion. Missouri's fate, as of this writing, remains uncertain as a swarm of Ted Cruzaders battle for a share of beachhead in the cocklebur state. [Update: Trump declared victor in Missouri.]

Former nominee/contestant Cara Carleton Fiorina (aka: Carly, aka: The Sneed) has managed to wriggler her way back into the glare of publicity by endorsing the wild rose of Alberta, Senator Ted Cruz.

Carly, another self proclaimed Washington, DC outsider - if by Washington, DC outsider you mean someone who literally prowls the backwaters about 5 miles outside of Washington, DC - returned earlier in the week like some kind of algal bloom that feeds on toxic runoff in an effort to persuade Marco Rubio and John Kasich to abandon their own presidential pursuits in order to more effectively combine hostilities against the swelling momentum of the furious Trumpenstaffel.

John Kasich, if you aren't sure which one he is, is the guy you may have mistaken for comedian Garry Shandling. It's an understandable mistake to make especially if you're accustomed to watching cable news programs with the sound turned off. But, in any case...

Kasich, the governor of Ohio, remains in the race for the Republican nomination following his primary victory in Ohio on Tuesday night. Kasich's victory in Ohio gives him a clear path to the GOP Convention nomination in Cleveland in July much the same way the Cleveland Browns victory over the San Francisco 49ers in week 14 of the 2015 season has cleared a path for a Cleveland Browns Super Bowl victory in February 2017.

Odds making aside, Kasich appears determined to carry his ball into the end zone even if he has to do it while dragging a snarling Carly Fiorina - whether chewing on his ankle or clawing at his facemask - right along with him.

Marco Rubio, on the other hand, has decided to suspend his campaign on account of the increasing realization that his American Dream was beginning to look more like a sweaty sleeping disorder. Whether Rubio, now a free agent, decides to sign with Kasich or join the Cruz-n-Carly camarilla remains to be seen as of this writing. In either case stopping Donald Trump's rumbling Sturm-Angriff is the clear objective at this point.

[UPDATE March 24, 2016 / Sadly Noted: Garry Shandling 1949-2016]

Tangerine Tormentor
On Tuesday night Lord of the Manor Trump addressed a crowded ballroom of supporters at his landed estate in Palm Beach.

Noticeably absent was the usual punch-face bombast and vulgarity on display during his campaign safaris to the outlands. The diamond earring blue-hairs and the real estate luminaries and the widows of dead tax lawyers aren't interested in being set upon by The Donald's populist screeds he reserves for the Klan grilled tailgate party rabble he's become accustomed to entertaining along the grody campaign trail.

The haute monde on hand in Trump's ballroom on Tuesday night are the people who actually get to eat that juicy pile of steaks and drink those bottles of fancy champagne the rest of Trump's churlish doting morons are only allowed to gaze upon.

You want to attend fashion show luncheons and Six Star Seafood Night at Mar-a-Lago? You run out and buy yourself a Brooks Brothers tennis sweater and cack up 200 large just to get in the door so the regulars can sniff around your bung hole long enough to determine whether or not you are worthy of their affections. A locker key and access to the croquet lawn will run you extra.

Otherwise, go back to squirrel popping and whacking golf balls around a cow pasture. Loser.

For Trump, running razzle-dazzle games on the easily amused Trumpenproletariat may work on the road. But when entertaining the high rolling betters under the chandeliers in the Grand Ballroom on South Ocean Boulevard the spinning roulette wheel of fortune better be rigged in favor of "the highest privileges and an elite lifestyle reserved for a select few."

 

Any attempt to reign in venture capitalists, private equity big-shots or hedge fund playboys (as Trump has suggested he would do by closing some carried interest loopholes) would launch Operation Overlord II if Stephen Schwartzman of the Blackstone Group has his say.

Trump can pose as Fidel Castro marching on Santiago in January 1959 when he's punching air from some stage in Madison, Alabama or Youngstown, Ohio but when he returns to his Bentleys and Brooks Brothers tennis sweaters in Palm Beach and his Louis XIV geegaws in Manhattan he'd best behave a lot more like Fulgencia Batista welcoming a delegation of United Fruit Company executives to a chummy fete at the Hotel Nacional.

Meanwhile in an alternate universe