Don't Mess With Me; I Haven't Had My Coffee Yet.

The major parties' conventions are almost over (if you wonder why this allegedly political blog has not covered the conventions gavel-to-gavel, it has to do with the fact that the interesting stuff is surrounded by acres of soporific chatter that puts me to sleep.  Also, all the interesting stuff is reported the following day, just like the Academy Awards.  So I know who the candidates are and what they espouse and what they look like and who is more likely to screw up my life), so have some distilled glimpses:

• The Rude Pundit:

  Here is what former president Bill Clinton did last night. Without even saying his name, he shrunk Donald Trump to a size where he could be drowned in a tub. By both humanizing and superhumanizing Hillary Clinton, he wanted the nation to ask, simply, "What the fuck has the other guy done? Financed a few buildings and hosted a game show and said stupid shit?"
  
  You can pretty much bet that Trump couldn't find Dothan, Alabama on a map with a giant arrow pointing at it and some assistant saying, "Sir, that's it, right there, where the arrow is pointing." But Hillary Clinton went there in the early 1970s, to one of the most racist places in the country, and went undercover to discover if schools were still segregated. People got killed for that kind of shit. Bill could have started his speech by saying, "Donald Trump isn't fit to clean the toilet the Secret Service uses at the White House."

  Usual warning for comparatively mild language.
• Zandar Versus the Stupid to a conservative pundit in the wake of the Republican convention:

  There's a lot of that going around these days, and I'll say what I always say to Republicans looking for absolution: you will never find it from me. You created this monster and did everything you could to empower it with the ability to destroy this country and 99% of the people in it, including yourselves.
  
  You lost control of the Rough Beast and once again you are looking to the rest of us to clean up the mess it made. I'm wholly uninterested in your confessions, Mr. Roy, or your apologies. What I want you to do is to have the good grace to shut the hell up and sit the hell down while the rest of us fix this country, and then the wisdom to stay silent while we make your miserable failures into a country worth being proud of.
  
  Most of all, you preyed on this country and gave voice to the hatred, the bigotry, the divisive rancor and the outright racism that fed and watered an electorate that gave rise to Trump. You made them powerful. We have to deal with that now because of people like you.

• The Hunting of the Snark, disassembling the bleating of Megan McArdle:

  The Republicans did this to themselves, which McArdle will never admit. They whipped up anger and resentment against the liberals to get conservatives to the voting booth and they destroyed respect for authority to undermine liberal leaders and policies. They have had a clown's car full of candidates for years but only this year do they have Trump. The right voted for the lesser of two evils for years, and now they are voting for pure evil, in the political sense. Eventually, that's always what happens when you vote for the lesser of two evils.

• And how could I forget Margaret and Helen?

  Salty language and a strong opinion don’t bother me. Saying what’s on your mind is usually a good thing. Usually. But what’s on Trumps mind isn’t fit for human consumption. It’s just hatred, fear and plain old racism. He put together a carnival in Cleveland to make the case that America has become a horrible place that no longer has time for political correctness. But I am here to tell you that speaking your mind and being politically correct are not mutually exclusive. Political correctness is having the emotional intelligence and decency not to use language, evoke images or take actions that marginalize, offend or otherwise insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against. Kind of sounds like something Jesus would support if you ask me.

There have been screams about Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Democratic party officials being "in the bag" for Hillary Clinton. This is only an issue because she won the nomination. The Republican National Committee has been half-heartedly "in the bag" for Jeb Bush for years, but until this last primary season, he had the good sense not to run.  This is not an issue because he, um, lost.

I don't mind reading dystopian fiction.  I resent the idea that I should live in dystopian fiction, though.