WHCD ’15: I’ve been boycotting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on principle ever since I stopped getting invited (except for the couple three or four — OK, it was six or seven — times I snuck in). An absurd event, of course — close to my vision of Hell. The Hilton ballroom is circled with rings of yellowish light, and it’s easy to imagine them as the flaming pits into which lobbyists are hurled in the afterlife. The Bosch-like qualities are part of what makes it fabulously enjoyable, especially for non-bigshots, assuming they still let non-bigshots attend. You may not be paid well, but it’s worth a month’s salary to feel you are part of this powerful, corrupt, yet insecure, preening and tacky fake community. Sorry I missed it.

Update: Daily Beast‘s Lloyd Grove ably uses the event to divine the capital’s mood! (“‘The Obama people are really bitter.'”) …

Kausfiles demands Comcast drop its merger plans: An old Ralph Nader trick, I’m told, was that when he found out the government was about to do something he immediately called a press conference and demanded that they do it. Presente.org, the indeterminately vaporous Latino lobbying organization, seems to be borrowing a related page from the same book, shooting out an email today (after this press report):

PRESENTE.ORG: COMCAST MERGER COLLAPSE WOULD BE HUGE WIN FOR LATINOS

So should the merger happen to collapse in the next day or so, you know whom to credit: Kausfiles! It would be a huge win for American workers beset by illegal immigrant competition and high cable prices. …

So while Scott Walker is questioning legal immigration levels, Ted Cruz is pushing a fast track for a trade bill with back-door guest-worker increases?  I never thought Cruz would blow his pre-campaign advantage over Walker (and the rest of the GOP field) on immigration, but that’s what he seems to be doing. … Maybe Cruz thinks he’s in the early Suck-Up-To-Donors** phase of the campaign, with the Rouse-the-Voters phase to come later — in the meantime, he’ll distract the base with social conservative theatrics. But, as Michael Barone and Byron York have pointed out, Republican primary voters are paying unusual attention to the race right now. How else would Walker rise to the top tier after a B+ speech at an early event in Iowa? …

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**– According to former Romney 2012 Finance chair Spencer Zwick, GOP donors are practically forming a cartel in the effort to back only a candidate who will push for amnesty and increased immigration levels. (“Even if Tea Partiers aren’t willing to get on board, Zwick said the GOP money men have learned their lesson: ‘I really believe that the donor community… now finally recognizes, and I see them only wanting to get behind a candidate that is willing to take leadership on his issue.'” — McKay Coppins, Buzzfeed.)