​Hosts Phil Rosenthal and David Wild are joined by one of Phil’s best friends and one of the original "Everybody Loves Raymond" writers, Lew Schneider.  As they write, the writer, producer, director, comedian and actor “joins Phil and David for a freewheeling conversation about food, comedy, television writers rooms, great music, terrible vacations, Rick Springfied, Don Rickles, good times and even terrible timeshares. 

​On this week’s ‘Not My Job’ segment of the NPR quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the guest is John Stamos.  I thought I had posted this recently, but when searching through my records, that doesn’t appear to be the case.  If it turns out that I did, well…here’s your chance to hear it again.  But if not, his conversation with host Peter Sagal is breezy and fun, including stories about his surprising music career.
 
This is the full Wait, Wait… broadcast, but you can jump directly to the “Not My Job” segment, it starts around the 18:15 mark.

The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is former Republican operative Tim Miller.  He joins the podcast, as Al says “to discuss a wide range of topics! We cover Biden’s re-election strategy and react to his State of the Union speech. Plus the GOP response from Sen. Katie Britt [R-AL], With Congress as dysfunctional as it is, is there any chance of funding the effort in Ukraine? And does Tim still find common ground with his old Republican Party?”

While I could do without the commentary narration here, it’s low-key enough not to be overly intrusive.  And worth it for all these brief videos of adorably and impressively smart dogs who have figured out how to do a wide variety of tasks.
​

Last evening, I was read​ing about a state representative in Michigan, Matthew Maddock (R-Milford), who posted an “outraged” tweet about a photo he saw of a group of people getting off a plane that had just landed and were being away led by police cars.  And from that he made the leap and presumed that they must be illegal migrants who had been shipped to the state – because, hey, why wouldn't everyone make that assumption from a photo.
 
“Happening right now.  Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?"
 
It happens that, yes, many people knew exactly who they were and where they were headed.  They were members of the Gonzaga men’s basketball team, in town to play in the NCAA post-season basketball tournament.  Headed for their hotel.
 
His tweet was bad enough – on so many sick and pathetic levels.  Worse though (and sure, if anyone can make bad things worse, it’s Matthew Maddock – who in 2022 was stripped of his statehouse duties, though was allowed to still vote on bills, keep his office and hold committee assignments. He just wasn’t allowed into private meetings of the GOP caucus.  Oh, horrors, the penalty!  He ran for re-election as a Trump-endorsed candidate (of course…) and is back in office.  And how, to return to the question, did he make bad things worse?  After being informed of the mistake he made, Mr. Maddox kept doubling-down, adding a smear of the news media into the mix, insisting he doesn’t trust the (factual) reporting about the basketball players. Or posting responses like, "Sure kommie. Good talking point."
 
For the record, when you don’t trust reality, that’s on you, not on the news media or the people telling the truth.  It's not even on the fictional "kommies."

So, being reprehensible wasn’t lowlife enough for Rep. Maddock as an elected official, sworn to represent everyone in his district and serve for the betterment of society (whose wife, not surprisingly, was until last year co-chair of the dysfunctional, broke Michigan GOP), and he chose to clownishly double-down -- unwilling to be mature and responsible and simply say, "Oops, sorry," choosing instead to be divisive.  So MAGOP.

Of course, what's most-likely is that Matthew Maddock knows full-well that the story he posted wasn't true.  He may have even known it from his first public tweet.  He just wanted to get attention, divide, troll and get clicks, sort of like a 13-year-old.  Except he's an adult, and an elected public officer.  It's hard to know which is worse:  that he's this scary delusional or that knowingly irresponsible.

And then, after seeing the story, I turned on the news, and they were doing a report on the bridge collapse in Baltimore, and how so many Republican officials are trying to blame it on Diversity, Equality and Inclusive.  Rather than a ship whose steering went out.
 
So MAGOP.

But then, that's today's Republican Party. This isn't about Matthew Maddow, or the GOP organization in Michigan, or even faux-DEI attacks  Maddock, his wife and the others are just small pegs, indicative of who the Republican Party has morphed into today.

"MAGA" is no longer a wing of the party, it is the center, fully beholden to Trump, afraid to go against him in any way out of concern being called a RINO, Republican in Name Only.  Out of concern of getting a Trump-endorsed primary opponent.  MAGA is who the Republican Party has become.  Traditional conservatives who haven't left -- they are now the wing.  The party is the MAGOP.
 
And it’s just endless – Republicans doing what they can to not just twist reality, but ignore it, just to make political points which will “outrage” their base, even without any truth to.  Which isn’t all that difficult when so much of their base gets its information from what is literally an anonymous “Q” source that believe JFK is coming back from the dead to run with Trump.  A man who has been able to convince his devoutly-naive evangelical base that he is virtually anointed by God and insists the Bible is his “favorite book,” and has many copies around his house, yet thus far has refused to name a single Bible verse, was found liable for the equivalence of rape, and is now hawking autographed copies of the Bible.
 
And we haven’t even gotten into convincing this MAGOP conspiracy base that the election was stolen despite losing 60 lawsuits and no evidence.  And trying to impeach President Biden not only with zero actual evidence, but two "star witnesses" who've turned out to be an indicted Russian intel agent and a Chinese asset who ran away.  And all the threats of fascist violence against court officers and witnesses and most anyone when life doesn’t go how they want the world to be.  Crying out about increased crime, when all the statistics show that murders, violent crime and "home" crimes are all down.  Ranting about how terrible and out of control inflation supposedly is, when in reality inflation in the U.S. is the lowest in the world.  Shouting that they're Party of Freedom, while banning books, banning abortion, banning travel to get an abortion, banning the teaching of Black history, and enabling a leader who says he wants to be a dictator on Day 1, and says he wants to terminate parts of the U.S. Constitution, The "alternative facts" of Kellyanne Conway seem quaint now.  It's now almost an alternative universe.

It's a party that has nothing to offer.  Literally.  When the Republican Party last met at the 2020 national convention, actually, truly had no official platform.  And there aren't apparently any plans to have one now.  All they can offer is, not programs and proposals to help the country, but trying to continually scare the bejeepers out of their members, and blame it all on everyone else.  It's FDR turned upside down and inside out.  "The only thing we have is fear itself."

And all of this -- from Matthew Maddock on down -- much as it might enthrall their base, doesn't exist in isolation, but serves as reminders to the general public of what the Republican Party is today and "Oh, yeah, that's what was so awful about Trump, I remember now."  And it's all just pieces of the puzzle, parts of the reason -- now that Trump has officially won the MAGOP nomination and voters begin to focus on him more closely for who they want to actually lead the country for the next four years as he says he wants to be dictator on Day One, calls for "bloodbaths," and has disturbing mental meltdowns -- why President Biden has slowly moved ahead in polls, and why in a deeply-Red Alabama district that Trump had won by 25 points, the state seat was just flipped and the Democrat won by 25 points, a turnaround of 50 points.  No, the latter won't happen everywhere.  But it just happening to this extent even once must be terrifying to party leaders who are still semi-sane.
 
I was trying to think how to dive deeper into this (without my head exploding…), when I came across rough notes for an article I was planning seven months ago.  I don’t recall at this point what prompted it – the two paragraphs refer to Louisiana Republican senator John Kennedy, who it seems had made “outraged” charges against the judiciary for going after poor Trump.  But what struck me is how apt it all is to the MAGOP melting down even more these past weeks.  And even overlaps the story about Mr. Maddock that began this article
 
It was tentatively titled, “Both Sides Now,” and I think my point – and perhaps what Sen. Kennedy was going – was the effort by Republicans to “both sides” some issue.  As if one Democrat official lying makes an equivalent of Trump’s 30,000+ documented lies.  Or if there’s an act of violence that was caused by someone who supported Democrats, and that equated all the mass killings by manifesto acolytes of Trump and MAGOP fascism.
 
So, with only a little bit of updating at the very end with one hyphenated sentence, here’s the initial “Both Sides Now” draft that had begun working on over half a year ago.  I have no doubt it will hold 100% true in another half year.  And beyond.