"Under Bannon's Leadership, Breitbart Openly Embraced The White Supremacist Alt-Right. [...] Because Bannon's ambitions extend to Steve Bannon, he'll tell Trump he's doing a fantastic job even if he isn't. That's how Bannon Svengalis political figures and investors - by investing them in his personal genius, then hollowing them out from the inside. There's a reason Sarah Palin went from legitimate political figure to parody artist to Trump endorser, with Steve Bannon standing alongside her every step of the way. [...] [Bannon] is a vindictive, nasty figure, infamous for verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies. Bannon is a smarter version of Trump: he's an aggressive self-promoter who name-drops to heighten his profile and woo bigger names, and then uses those bigger names as stepping stools to his next destination. Trump may be his final destination. Or it may not. He will attempt to ruin anyone who impedes his unending ambition, and he will use anyone bigger than he is - for example, Donald Trump - to get where he wants to go. Bannon knows that in the game of thrones, you win or die. And he certainly doesn't intend to die. He'll kill everyone else before he goes."

Really.  Apparently it's more  than just a show.

And after every round of firing, he has to reset with a new group that is inferior to the most recently departed.  Not that he started with the all-star team to begin with.  We're in the third round of purges now, and I fully expect a few more in the next couple of months.

The downward slope is so steep right now that it's hard to believe it can sustain this level of deterioration until the election.

Meanwhile, Ryan and McConnell twist in the wind, damned by their own political cowardice no matter what happens from now on.  Indecision inevitably  becomes a decision anyway, and they have waffled too long.  They can't pull the trigger, but they can't not pull the trigger.

Errol Morris he's not.

Also......Is Roger Ailes now behind the scenes for The Donald? I have read that Trump's speech seemed reminiscent of the Tricky Dick 1968 campaign, which Ailes was also a part of.

Trump, reading from prepared remarks Thursday night, acknowledged that he sometimes says "the wrong thing" in an astonishing act of contrition that signaled Trump's willingness to break from his characteristic brashness and bare-knuckles style that carried him to victory in the Republican primaries.
"Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues," Trump told supporters here.

and HUFFPO

The current anti-immigrant movement centers around three groups -- the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA that all grew out of the vision of one activist who, like Trump, has unapologetically depicted America as a country of and for white people. While even some on the right are horrified by Trump's racism, these groups have long enjoyed a friendly reception on Capitol Hill as they have helped to sink any meaningful attempt at immigration reform. In fact, when it comes to policy, these groups are in many ways more extreme than Trump. NumbersUSA, which gives grades to candidates based on their immigration views, even docked Trump's grade over the summer, not because of his offensive remarks about immigrants but because he had put forward a muddled plan for a "merit-based system" for some undocumented immigrants.

A new report from People For the American Way explores the history and the influence of these three groups at the center of the opposition to immigration reform.

John Tanton, the founder of all three groups, made his view of America clear when he wrote in 1993, "I have come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist, it requires an European-American majority and a clear one at that." At other times, he worried about a "Latin onslaught" on the United States and of immigrants "defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs."

Rachel just did a great segment on this.   You should watch it online.

Republicans, worried about preserving their House and Senate majorities in the face of fierce headwinds, are accelerating their plans to distance themselves from Donald Trump - and may soon concede, if only implicitly, his defeat.
Party strategists are mapping out blueprints for down-ballot candidates, in TV ads and on the campaign trail, to present themselves as checks on a Hillary Clinton presidency. It's an approach that would essentially admit a Trump loss. In interviews, nearly one dozen Republican operatives said they had begun poll-testing the idea - which one labeled a "break glass in case of emergency" strategy - to gauge how the public would react to it.