• President Obama
• President & former SOS Hillary Clinton
• Eric Holder
• George Soros
• Maxine Waters (2)
• Robert DeNiro
• Vice President Biden
• CNN

These are the recipients of letter bombs targeting critics of Trump that started surfacing on Tuesday.  We don’t know who’s sending them, but the Noise Machine is already running at full throttle, screaming about a supposed “false flag” operation funded by George Soros to make Trump look bad.  As we’ve seen for years now, facts don’t matter to Trump or his sycophants, and after calling for unity while reading off a White House teleprompter, Trump reversed himself in the evening, stepping up his verbal attacks on the media and opponents, trying to turn responsibility for the growing threat of domestic terrorism away from himself by blaming the media for recording and playing back what he says word for word.  Knowing his adoring fans would support him, he took ZERO responsibility for the threats and violence that result from the bile pouring out of his own mouth.  The deplorables cheered.

Anyone paying attention knows precisely where responsibility lay for the toxic environment that now pervades all American’s lives.  Our democracy is threatened, and could easily crumble, even as Trump and the invertebrates in the Congress step up their destructive rhetoric and political actions.  We don’t yet know who’s sending the letter bombs, but it’s my guess that the terrorist is some gun-humping weirdo sitting in his basement wearing a MAGA hat who actually believes that Hillary Clinton and members of Congress open their own mail.

Bret Stephens, a loudmouth Neo-Con who regularly pollutes the opinion pages of the New York Times and right wing media, gave the Dems some very important advice Friday with the ominous warning, “Democrats are Blowing it, Again”.  Stephens, known as a vehement climate denier, Kavanaugh defender, torture supporter, and Trump apologist, believes he has the answer to all of the Dems woes, and that is, don’t be so mean.  Using the odd metaphor of becoming unattractive by piercing your tongue, Stepehens goes through a long litany of offenses the Dems have committed in his view:

1. Hillary said you can’t be civil with someone trying to destroy everything you stand for.
2. House Rep. Jerry Nadler dared to say that he would start an investigation of Kavanaugh and the whitewashed FBI “investigation” should the Dems take control of the House.
3. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris really blew it when the spoke out against the Kavanaugh nomination with “histrionics” and turning the hearings into “audition tapes” for the presidential bids.
4. Chuck Schumer chose to turn the Kavanaugh catastrophe into a campaign issue.
5. The New Yorker really blew it by publishing Deborah Ramirez’s account of Kavanaugh’s sexual assault.  Never mind that the FBI refused to follow up on that account and that of dozens of others who tried to testify to the veracity of her account.
6. Dems denounced Susan Collins, calling her a “gender traitor” in a a NYT op-ed.  Shame on the NYT, his employer.

Now here’s a guy who thought invading Iraq was a great idea, discrimination against Muslims is just dandy, and that Israel should strike against the Palestinians.  I know he has a depth of wisdom about all things Democratic (that’s sarcasm, folks), but perhaps his time would be better spent reviewing the truckloads of bullshit that he’s been peddling for years.  I know the NYT has him as a columnist for “balance”, but Jesus – there’s no one else?

I remember, back in the Old Timey Days (2016) when Dems were latté sipping, limp-wristed pantywaists who couldn’t be trusted with national security.  Now they’re an angry mob wanting to destroy America.  Two weeks ago, Americans, lead by victims of sexual assault stood up and said no to Republicans’ attempt to put a clearly unqualified nominees on the Supreme Court.  They were shocked when that pissed off millions of people.  Their response?  Vote for that nominee anyway, then get all sniffy about being called out for it.

So, to be clear: Republicans say that they should be able to bend or break any rule, ram through votes without investigations or protections for the minority, and should be able to pass any law to suppress those not in power.  Period.  They do that because the Dems are feckless sissies deserving of derision.  However, if said sissies dare stand up and say “Wait a Minute,” or try to stop the Repubs, they are then magically transformed into an “angry mob”.

For the record, here’s what the Kavanaugh protests looked like:

And here’s what an actual angry mob looks like:

Hey, GOP, y’all need to make up your minds.  Oh, and go buy a mirror, hang it on the wall, and look into it.  There you will see your angry mob.

One of the Fall’s biggest movies premiers is First Man, a biographical/action movie about Neil Armstrong.  It screened last week at the Venice film festival to rave reviews and Oscar talk.  A movie about one of our biggest 20th century heroes complete with jets, rockets, and spaceflight?  Cool, eh?  Not so fast, bucko, we have to go through the Patriot Test.  Uh, oh, the movie left out the actual planting of the US flag on the moon.  Trigger The Outrage Machine.  Now, for context, only a couple of hundred people have seen this movie so far; it doesn’t release until October 12, but right wing screamers from Breitbart to Twitter to even Marco Rubio have whipped up The Outrage Machine and turned the movie into a political hot potato over leaving out a flag planting scene.  Again, NONE of the people screaming on social media have actually seen the movie, and apparently not even the trailer, since our beloved totem was even featured in that.  Have a look:

Those who have actually seen the movie say the flag is all over it, and even shown in the moon scenes.  Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong in the film, said that the the story depicts “human achievement” more than simply American, which, in fact, is the way Armstrong himself saw it.  They chose to focus on Armstrong’s story, not only American culture.  And to some, that is the unforgivable sin.

So where is the outrage coming from?  It’s coming from radical partisans (who haven’t seen the movie) using bullshit to whip up anger of the base using the excuse that Armstrong’s biography wasn’t All-American-Flag-Wavingly-Jingoistic enough.  Oh, and that Gosling is a goddam Canadian daring to play an American hero.  That all adds up to blasphemy against Jingo, the All Seeing God of all things nationalistic.

The whole controversy is manufactured from whole cloth to only piss off the base.  What does the base do?  They get pissed off, of course, and light up social media with fake outrage over nothing.  And that’s how it works.

Since his death last Saturday, I’ve stayed pretty quiet about John McCain and the legacy he left behind, but wanted to share a few of my own thoughts about that legacy.  With 60 years of public service, which included 5 1/2 years as a POW in Hanoi, McCain certainly earned every bit of respect he’s now receiving by millions around the world.  He was a creature of the Republican party, but also stood against that party many times, especially when it was dead wrong and pushing some idiotic or cruel policy that helped no one except its base of bigots and special interests.  That part of John McCain I’ll miss greatly.

Having said that, there is one huge stain on his legacy for which I’ll never forgive him.  When he he ran for the presidency in 2008,  McCain abandoned the straight talk express and, as Stephen Colbert aptly put it, “climbed onto the the crazy train”.  Remember that?  McCain, always known for common sense and a fierce adherence to the truth, starting ranting like a teabagger and social warrior trying to get the base behind him instead of Romney (who was doing the same thing), and ideologues Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul.  It was shameful.  But the worst thing he did after winning the nomination?  He gave a voice and a face to the Know-Nothing Idiotic Wing of the Republican party by naming Sarah Palin to the ticket.  That one action opened the floodgates to a tsunami of bullshit, lies, and coded racist rants that the fringes of the party lapped up like spilled Boone’s Farm on a dance hall floor.  My God, what a disaster.  Palin would spout word salad about “death panels” or “palling around with terrorists”, and all of a sudden the airwaves were full of it.  Literally.  She inflicted a new low of stupidity and falsehood never before seen in American politics.

McCain gave the alt-right exactly what we didn’t need, which was a megaphone that has metastasized into the slow motion train wreck that now assaults our senses on a daily basis.  The GOP bears no resemblance to the business and freedom friendly party of the last half of the 20th century, having morphed into a Russian-loving, fascist movement that actually believes that Trump is some God-fearing messiah rather than the spray painted, hair weaved, lying shitbag that is reality.  The GOP of Lincoln is dead and has become the Trumpist Party which gushes about the beauty and grace of the nude model from Slovenia who is now the First Lady, and actually believes that the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, Homeland Security, and all non-Trumpists are corrupt conspirators out to get him.  They believe his denials about Russian interference in our elections and his campaign’s involvement in it, and support the convicted criminals who ran his campaign while refusing to honor McCain, who ironically paved the way for this rot that is coming from the head.

In total, McCain’s 60 years of public service is not totally negated by his selection of Palin, but that decision surely did a tremendous amount of damage to our country that will take decades to reverse (if ever), and history will not look kindly upon it.

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

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.