From the very early days of the campaign, His Orangeness has railed against all things not White American Male – all dark skinned people, especially women, ALL women, for that matter, and immigration, both legal and undocumented.  His rhetoric is continuously over the top, hateful, and racist.  He loves to dehumanize migrants with inflammatory terms like “illegals”, “animals”, and “aliens”.  His favorite pejorative, though, is “chain migration”.  The actual term is “family reunification” which has been allowed by the US government for decades where a documented migrant to the US could sponsor their spouse and children to join them in the states.  In some cases, a migrant’s parents are admitted into the country to join the family.  It’s humane, decent, and, I might add, very difficult.  It takes years to unify families through our broken system.

But in Trumpland, “chain migration” has been weaponized and is now used by Trumpists to be bigots in polite society.  Trump has repeated the falsehood (even during the State of the Union) that “chain migration” allows immigrants to bring “unlimited” people to the United States.  The statement, in short, is simply a lie.  It’s not true, and has never been true, but the term is in high repeat in conservative circles.

Trump’s problem, though, is that the very system he rails against just allowed Melania Trump (You remember her, right?  She’s the nude model from Slovenia who is now our First Lady.) to bring in her parents through “chain migration”.  AND, said parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, became US citizens yesterday.  That’s right, folks, the very system that Trump demands that Congress end just allowed his in-laws to become American citizens. Now, the Knavs are probably perfectly nice people who are fortunate to have friends in high places who could grease the skids for them attain US citizenship, which millions of others have been waiting decades for.  That’s not the problem.  The problem is the now-familiar hypocrisy.

This kind of hypocrisy shouldn’t be surprising.  Trump’s entire personal foundation is built on lies, cheating, and hypocrisy.  Rules apply to everyone else, but not Trump.  He’s immune from common decency or common sense.  Worse, the White House refuses to address any of his hypocrisy, including the “chain migration” lie, and the invertebrates in Congress, terrified of losing their power, do nothing to stop it.  That’s why it’s up to us to shine the light on Trump’s lies and fight fire with fire.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

Well, that answers that question…

Charles Cantwell, one of the Charlottesville Tiki Torch Tough Guys who started the violence last year during a white supremacist demonstration, pleaded guilty this week in plea bargain.  He got time served in jail, and was ordered to leave Virginia and not return for 5 years.  He’s the moron who was really tough during the demonstration and dissolved into tears when he realized the cops were after him for assaulting innocent counter protestors.  Clearly a Trumpist.

There is a place for anger, and THIS is it.

Michelle Goldberg published a great piece today, one you’ve got to read.  A couple of her quotable quotes:

“Naturally, all this has led to lots of pained disapproval from self-appointed guardians of civility. A Washington Post editorial urged the protesters to think about the precedent they are setting. ‘How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?’ it asked.

Of course, this is not hard to imagine at all, since abortion opponents have assassinated abortion providers in their homes and churches, firebombed their clinics and protested at their children’s schools. The Roman Catholic Church has shamed politicians who support abortion rights by denying them communion. The failure to acknowledge this history is a sign of the reflexive false balance that makes it hard for the mainstream media to grapple with the asymmetric extremism of the Republican Party.”

And…

“But unless and until that happens, millions and millions of Americans watch helplessly as the president cages children, dehumanizes immigrants, spurns other democracies, guts health care protections, uses his office to enrich himself and turns public life into a deranged phantasmagoria with his incontinent flood of lies.”

There’s a time for anger – and THIS is it.

In a more quaint time, government shutdowns and playing chicken with the debt limit were common tactics to take something away from people.  Now it’s committing international human rights atrocities to get what they want.  This new tactic is nothing but hostage taking.  In the 1980s, Reagan used several government shutdowns because the budget contained spending he didn’t like.  Newt Gingrich used government shutdowns trying to get slashes to Medicare, public health, and education spending.  The 2011 budget drama caused S&P to actually downgrade the US’s credit rating for the first time ever due to the irresponsibly of the Congressional Republicans’ continuous brinksmanship.  In 2013, they tried it again when brand new Senator Ted Cruz whipped up the House to shutdown the government in an effort to take healthcare away from millions of people.  All this screwing around never works, but Republicans continue using showdowns over the debt limit and budget to kill everything from healthcare, social spending, to funding Planned Parenthood.

Which brings us to now.  Donald Trump lied in a continuous stream about many, many issues, but one of his biggest lies was that he was going to build a “big beautiful wall” to keep dark-skinned people out of the country.  The most outrageous part of that promise was that, through his singular strength and negotiating prowess, he was going to make Mexico pay for it.  The notion was and is idiotic, and everyone but his biggest sycophants dismissed the promise as extreme hyperbole.  As expected, Mexico shot Trump the finger, and former president Vicente Fox makes sport of regularly poking him in the eye over the issue.

Having failed at destroying healthcare for millions of people and after blowing a gigantic multi-trillion dollar hole in the nation’s budget passing out tax cuts to billionaires, he’s now trying to keep his most outrageous promise by pushing funding in the federal budget and taking money from parks and military budgets to build his wall, but the Democrats have planted their feet saying no.  So, to put pressure on the them, Trump’s in-house white supremacist, Stephen Miller, with the help of a few other deplorables, cooked up the scheme to start holding dark skinned people hostage on the border.  As is typical for extremists, Miller miscalculated, but Trump and Jeff Sessions stupidly blundered into this political and human disaster.

Sessions defended this new hostage taking plan and continues to do so, even in the face of loud and getting louder opposition.  This tactic is also the reason that Trump’s newly assigned talking point blames the “Democrats’ terrible law” that’s forcing him to take hostages.  As we all know, there is no law.  He’s taking thousands of children hostage, in violation of international human rights laws attempting to force the Dems to fund his stupid wall.  It’s familiar territory for him, since he’s connected so closely to the Mob.  You know that line, “Cute kid – it would be a shame if something bad happened to her.”  That’s PRECISELY what Trump’s doing.  To force Dems to fund his wall, he’s doing irreparable damage to thousands of children and even more parents.

How anyone could support a politician who so regularly takes hostages is beyond me.  Such a tactic is not only immoral, it costs US taxpayers billions of dollars and destroys our standing on the world stage.  A government shutdown that merely costs jobs and damages the economy is one thing.  This tactic is literally costing lives. The Dems should stand fast, and we should back them doing that.  Like the Mob, extremists don’t compromise; they destroy and threaten until they get their way.  It’s time to take that tool away from them.

Papa John’s CEO, John Schnatter, is a serious jerk and has never hesitated to show it.  The problem is that when you own a major consumer products company and you take strong political stands, you’re going to piss off at least half of your customers.  Schnatter has now learned that lesson, stepping down after touching off a firestorm by ranting about NFL players protesting police brutality during the national anthem at the beginning of football games.  In 2009 and 2010 he took strong positions against Obamacare, saying he was going to cut employees salaries and raise prices in response to being required to provide health insurance to his employees.  He’s made no bones about how much he hates President Obama and any Democrat.

Welp, Democrats eat pizza, and inexplicably, they had been eating Papa John’s pizza, which is some of the worst on the market. They stopped. After Papa John’s sales started sliding over the political firestorm, other pizza companies, more inclusive of political views, started piling on Schnatter.  White supremacists came to Schnatter’s defense, naming Papa John’s the “pizza of the alt-right”, help that the company clearly didn’t need or want.  The board got enough of it and cut him loose as chief executive.  He still owns 25% of the stock, but I suspect that percentage is going to go down in short order.

Literally.  LOL.