Steve Bannon named runner-up for Campaign Manager of the Year

Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon

Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon

Congratulations to Stephen Bannon, who has clinched the runner-up position in this year’s Combat! blog award for Best Campaign Manager by registering to vote at a house where he never lived. The Guardian found him registered at a Miami home he once rented for his ex-wife, now vacant and scheduled for demolition. Bannon is a former editor at Breitbart news, which has made a pet issue of voter fraud in recent years, so I know what you’re thinking: Is this his only ex-wife? Nah—the newly minted CEO of Donald Trump For President also divorced Mary Louise Piccard, whom he impregnated in 1994 and then married just as soon as amniocentesis could prove the fetus was healthy. Per the New York Post:

Bannon had allegedly also earlier told Picccard, who was then his girlfriend and the expectant mother of their twin girls, that he would only agree to marry her if the kids were “normal.” He married her on April 14, 1995, three days before the twins were born.

“Bannon made it clear that he would not marry me just because I was pregnant. I was scheduled for an amniocentesis and was told by the respondent that if the babies were normal we would get married,” Piccard claimed in a document. “After the test showed that the babies were normal the respondent sent over a prenuptial agreement for me to review.”

That’s amore! In Bannon’s defense, though, it is much easier to abandon the mother of your disabled children if you aren’t married. It’s too bad these two didn’t work out, but at least she’ll always have her memory of the moment when he got down on one knee and sent over that prenuptial agreement. And Bannon will always have his Combat! Blog Campaign Manager of the Year: Second Place 2016 trophy. Congratulations to this year’s first-place winner, Robby Mook, who continues to win by not fucking up.

Zinke joins Gohmert, King to demand foreign women prove they aren’t pregnant

Seat open

Position available

This century, Montana’s Representatives-at-large have included Denny Rehberg—who denies he was drunk when he fell off a horse in Kazakhstan—and convicted goblin Steve Daines. Rep. Ryan Zinke has a tricky act to follow. Montana’s sole delegate to the House must join a coalition if he hopes to effectively represent our interests, but he also risks being swamped by national politics. Probably wisely, even if disappointingly, he seems to have taken up with the tea party caucus. But at least one of the bills he has co-sponsored with that bloc seems like a misstep.

[Four-hour break to vomit and sleep]

Oh, hey, is Thursday over now? It feels kind of over. I do not like using this blog to write about events of my personal life, but I sure have been throwing up a lot lately. I’m going to call expedience the better part of expression here and just link to today’s column in the Missoula Independent, which argues Zinke’s sponsorship of the Stop Birth Tourism Act is a poor political calculation. We’ll be back tomorrow with a one-way digestive tract and Friday links.

Trump threatens to tell us what he really thinks

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Donald Trump seems poised to give us the general-election campaign we wanted all along, in which he goes bananas and tears apart the Republican Party before—this part is really important—losing. Yesterday, Paul Ryan told Republicans on a conference call that he would no longer campaign for Trump and direct his energy toward protecting their majority in Congress instead. Although he did not withdraw his endorsement, the announcement was widely understood to capitulate the presidency, and narrowly understood to betray the nominee. Trump himself took the narrow view. This morning, he used Twitter to issue an ominous…promise? Threat? Status update? You can decide what this is:

It is nice. I assume he means he can finally focus on detailed policy proposals and rebuilding the dignity of the working class. But maybe he’ll just bash Muslims.

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Updated State of the Union Address guest list

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address in 2015.

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address in 2015.

On Sunday, President Obama announced that he would be leaving a seat open at his State of the Union Address for the victims of gun violence. This morning, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) announced that he, too, would leave one of his guest seats empty, to protest abortion. “I have reserved it to commemorate the lives of more than 55 million aborted babies, the chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world,” he said, adding that he would not attend the address himself. In light of these changes, the updated guest list is as follows:

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Friday links! Totally fair systems edition

From the Tumblr "Selfies With Homeless People"

From the Tumblr “Selfies With Homeless People”

What an improbable collision of historical trends is this selfie with a homeless person. First, we have to invent camera phones and a culture that encourages us to point them at ourselves. Then, we need an economy strong enough to make personal camera phone ownership nearly universal, but also weak enough that many people have to sleep at Taco Bell. If you can synthesize all that in a lab setting, I’ll give you multi-finger dollar-sign rings. Today is Friday, and it’s so weird that it must be perfect. Won’t you pull up the ladder with me?

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