(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favorite Living Canadian)

Would you like to see Exhibit A of why, one day, when the country has sobered up and promised never to drive drunk into the abyss again, the experience of this administration is going to go so far down the memory hole that it's going to be found in Tiananmen Square? It came in my email on Friday from a nice young woman from a public-relations firm who probably had no idea that she was dealing the republic one more mighty sledgehammer to the gonads when she sent it out.

MasterClass, the online education company that enables anyone to learn from the best in the world, announced today that David Axelrod and Karl Rove, two of the most esteemed political strategists best known for respectively orchestrating winning presidential campaigns for Barack Obama and George W. Bush, are setting aside party affiliations to come together to teach the first MasterClass on campaign strategy and messaging. In this class, Axelrod and Rove will demystify the political campaign process and break down their philosophies on what it takes to plan and execute a winning campaign. The class is now available at www.masterclass.com/dakr. Enrollment for the class is $90 for lifetime access, or $180 per year for the All-Access Pass, which grants unlimited access to all new and existing classes.

"It has never been more important to understand how this world of politics works and how to win the hearts and minds of voters," said David Rogier, co-founder and CEO of MasterClass. "The class isn't about being a Democrat or Republican — it's about two of the best political minds of our generation teaching how to win elections. David and Karl break down their respective campaign strategies and debate what is happening in the country today, and how we got here."

As tempting as it is to go on at length on the essential uselessness in our political moment of David Axelrod—and I could, god knows—is there anybody who's lived through the last four decades in American politics, and especially the past 20 years, who doesn't recognize what an insult this is to the human intellect and to political thought?

Karl Rove is a ratfcker. That is all he is. He started in the College Republicans and was such a weasel that Poppy Bush tried to run him out of the party. He ratfcked people in Alabama and (probably) ratfcked Don Siegelman into federal prison. He ratfcked John McCain in South Carolina in 2000. He spent the next four years, and especially the years between 2001-2003, ratfcking through a national tragedy, and ratfcking from just outside the Oval Office.

Brooks Kraft Getty Images

He ratfcked people like Max Cleland in the 2002 midterms. (Hi, Rick Wilson! That Osama ad was a masterpiece.) He ratfcked John Kerry in 2004; I, for one, will never forget the Purple Heart Band-Aids. He then ratfcked Valerie Plame and he ratfcked the Department of Justice and he probably still should be deep in the study of institutional dining. Karl Rove never breathed a breath in which he did not abase American politics and profane self-government in the most profound ways possible. He should be shot to the moon in a spacecraft, not pretending to be a scholar, much less a gentleman.

Nobody in the past two decades did as much to make this administration* possible as did Karl Rove. Why the hell is MasterClass doing business with this vicious lifeform? That Axelrod is willing to lend his name and the credibility he earned working for Barack Obama to this enterprise, that he is willing to partner up with the single most anti-Obama political figure I can think of, at least short of the White House, proves either that he can be bought for a song, or that he's drunk so deeply of his own narcotic we-are-all-in-this-together home-brewed Civility Cider that his loved ones should immediately commence an intervention and ship his ass off to Hazleden.

This kind of conscience-free bullshit is why Trumpism is going to outlive its founder. This is the most revolting thing I've read in a long time.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Yer Poison" (Chicken Snake): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here are some people cleaning up O'Connell Street in Dublin after the lads blew Lord Nelson off his pillar in 1966. During the Easter Rising in 1916, someone shot off Lord Nelson's nose. The government of the Free State and, later, of the Republic tried to find a solution to the imperial eyesore. Some students once occupied it and ran up a picture of Kevin Barry. Somebody else wanted to replace Nelson with a statue of Robert Emmet. (If, after the bombing, Eamon de Valera really suggested that the headline in the Irish Times should read, "British Admiral Leaves Dublin By Air," it's the funniest thing that worthy ever said.) History is so cool.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, New Scientist? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

Martin Kundrát at the University of Pavol Jozef Šafárik in Slovakia and his colleagues have now studied a hitherto-unexamined Archaeopteryx fossil. It was found in the early 1990s, apparently in a quarry near Daiting, Germany, and ended up with a private collector. For years it remained unknown and was nicknamed “the Phantom”, until in 2009 palaeontologist Raimund Albersdörfer bought it. It is now on long-term loan to the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Munich. “It looks more and more likely that Archaeopteryx really is somewhere on the lineage towards recent birds,” says Oliver Rauhut of the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology in Germany. “It’s very unlikely that it is an ancestor to later birds,” he says, because the odds are against a direct ancestor being fossilised, but “it gives us a good idea what a very early bird might have looked like”.

And, as an early bird, it undoubtedly caught a worm, which, at the time, probably was 80 feet long. I got a million of 'em, and all because dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

As soon as the word, "ruggelach" appeared in our weekly visit to the Laboratories of Democracy post, The Committee knew it would be sending 81.31 Beckhams down to Friedman Of The Plains. He did not disappoint.

Can’t resist. Sid is lying on his deathbed. His wife, Leah, is in the kitchen, baking her famous ruggelach. The delicious smell wafts in from the kitchen to the bedroom. Sid calls Leah into the room. “Sweetie, before I die, can I have just one piece of your great ruggalech? If so, I can die a happy man,” asks Sid. “No,” she says sweetly. “They’re for shiva.”

Mahjongg at 4 in the solarium!

If I manage to survive the rally tonight, I'll be spending the weekend following Amy McGrath around in Kentucky. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and remember, my dental records are in the liquor cabinet, behind the dusty bottle. of Crown Royal.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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