On Tuesday, after five-plus years of non-stop campaigning, Mexican descendant Willard Mitt Romney finally secured enough delegates to clinch the GOP nomination for president.
To celebrate this monumental achievement, Romney jetted off to Las Vegas to bask in the glow of Donald Trump's bright orange skin.
Pundits across the political spectrum wondered why he would choose to pal around with such a bloviating ignoramus, but they were overlooking the obvious.
Because Bill Maher, that's why.
Meanwhile, proving that what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas, Romney paid a secret visit to the California headquarters of Solyndra on Thursday, where he engaged in some Trump-esque conspiracy theorizing, and reiterated his promise to create a better Amercia.
Yeargh!
Morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D); Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R); Roundtable: Romney Campaign Senior Adviser Kevin Madden, Former McCain Campaign Senior Strategist Steve Schmidt, Neera Tanden (Center for American Progress) and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed (D).
Face the Nation: Obama Campaign Senior Adviser David Axelrod; RNC Chairman Reince Priebus; Author David Sanger; Author Daniel Klaidman; Roundtable: Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Michael Gerson (Washington Post) and Democratic Strategist Bob Shrum.
This Week: Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter; Romney Campaign Senior Advisor Eric Fehrnstrom; Roundtable: George Will (Washington Post), Democratic Strategist Donna Brazile and Paul Krugman (New York Times).
Fox News Sunday: Romney Campaign Senior Adviser Ed Gillespie; Former Car Czar Steve Rattner; Roundtable: David Brody (Christian Broadcasting Network), AB Stoddard (The Hill), Former Huckabee Campaign Manager Chip Saltsman and Juan Williams (Fox News).
State of the Union: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D); Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R); Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN); Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA); Roundtable: Dan Balz (Washington Post), Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal) and Mark Zandi (Moody's Analytics).
The Chris Matthews Show: Katty Kay (BBC); Andrew Sullivan (Newsweek/Daily Beast); Andrea Mitchell (NBC News) and John Heilemann (New York Magazine).
Fareed Zakria GPS: Former Bush Council of Economic Advisors Chair R. Glenn Hubbard; London School of Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges; Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter.
Up with Chris Hayes: Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele; Michelle Bernard (Bernard Center for Women, Politics & Public Policy); Ari Berman (The Nation); President of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten; Bob Herbert (Demos.org); John Nichols (The Nation); Judith Browne-Dianis (Tha Advancement Project).
Evening lineup:
60 Minutes will feature: a report on SpaceX, which recently became the first private firm to launch a space vehicle into orbit and successfully dock it at the International Space Station (preview); a report on the murder of a neo-Nazi leader and the growing subculture of hate playing out in America's backyards and alongside the border (preview); and, an interview with Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie (preview).
On Comedy Central...
Jon Stewart pushed back against Roger Ailes' recent claim that he's a self-confessed socialist.
The Daily Show
Monday: Authors Thomas Mann & Norman Ornstein
Tuesday: Libertarian Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson
Wednesday: Actor Michael Fassbender
Thursday: Former Bain Capital Managing Director Edward Conard
And Stephen Colbert sang a beautiful tribute to Mitt Romney's Amercia.
The Colbert Report
Monday: TBA
Tuesday: Second Lady of the United States Jill Biden
Wednesday: Actor Neil Patrick Harris
Thursday: Songwriter Regina Spektor
Elsewhere...
Republicans in Luzerne County, PA elected Steve Smith, a bona fide neo-Nazi to the county's GOP Committee.
Recruited into the neo-Nazi movement while he was stationed at Fort Bragg in the 1990s, Smith, of Pittston, Penn., has been active in an extraordinary array of white nationalist, skinhead, and neo-Nazi groups, including American Third Position, Keystone United (formerly Keystone State Skinheads), and the Council of Conservative Citizens. He is a former Aryan Nations member and former leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which was created by former Klan leader David Duke but is no longer associated with him.
Smith also belongs to a Pennsylvania-based group called the European American Action Coalition (EAAC), which according to its website was formed in fall 2011 "by a few well known White activists in the great and historic state of Pennsylvania."
Smith's ties to the racist right stretch far beyond the political. In 2001, he co-founded a racist skinhead group now known as Keystone United (which was until 2009 known as the Keystone State Skinheads, or KSS), one of the largest and most active single-state racist skinhead crews in the country. In March 2003, he and two other KSS members were arrested in Scranton for beating up Antoni Williams, a black man, using stones and chunks of pavement. Smith pleaded guilty to terrorist threats and ethnic intimidation and received a 60-day sentence and probation.
Meanwhile, in California...
Santee Mayor Randy Voepel (R) respectfully rejected a Chinese citizen's request for his autograph.
Dear Mr. Yong,
I respectfully decline to cooperate in any way with what I consider to be an enemy of the United States. The People's Republic of China is a repressive and evil communist regime that runs a Police State. I fought in Vietnam to stop communism and will fight communism until the day I die. Please accept me as a very determined enemy, as I assume you to be to me.
Best Capitalist regards,
Randy Voepel
Mayor, The freedom and human rights City of Santee
And, at our final destination...
North Carolina legislators are considering a novel approach to combating climate change.
North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises.
Which, yes, is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow's weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don't use radar and barometers; use the Farmer's Almanac and what grandpa remembers.
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe. But at least I'm enjoying the ride.
- Trix