Senate Republicans are whipping up yet another investigation over a fake issue, this time of Hunter Biden.  Risking stating the blatantly obvious, this investigation, like many others, is complete bullshit, and being timed to inflict maximum damage on Joe Biden, who is close to taking the nomination for president.  Elected officials’ kids used to be off limits, but Trump and and National Trump Party have shattered that norm, bringing to bear the full force of the federal government to persecute political rivals and their families.

Enter Mike Bloomberg (again).  Over the weekend on MSNBC, former Bloomberg campaign manager Tim O’Brien announced that if Republicans go after Hunter Biden, Bloomberg will use cash he had set aside for his campaign to go “scorched earth” against the Trump kids, exposing their legion of conflicts, nepotism, and illegal use of federal office to make profits.  The ads will go after profits being made by Trump’s hotels that are charging the Secret Service and foreign officials for stays and hospitality, Ivanka’s Chinese patents, and government paying for all the kids travel for private business.  The entertainment value should be huge, and will drive Trump crazy (er).

Finally someone has the resources to stand up to the Noise Machine in a flame war.  It should be epic.

AOC tore up the GOP yesterday on climate change.  This warms my heart.

https://youtu.be/MMfWD2fHiYI

Mouthbreathers who can type have been going nuts that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was actually elected to Congress that they’ve frantically been trying to denigrate and discredit her in a dishonest mis-information campaign.  First it was being outraged that she wore a designer outfit for a fashion magazine shoot.  Then they mocked her clothing after she was elected.  Then it was the innocent dance video shot of her and friends back when she was an undergrad at Boston college.  Now it’s this:

This photo, not of Ocasio-Cortez’s feet, was posted by Tucker Carlson’s manure merchant, Daily Caller, with the headline, “Here’s the Photo Some People Described as a Nude Selfie of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”  That’s right, Tucker Carlson’s propaganda machine actually posted a photo of some woman’s feet in a bathtub, with the “some people” claim for the single goal of smearing a member of Congress because they don’t like her politics.

What’s disgusting is that these smears speed around the internet without the slightest concern for accuracy or common decency.  What’s really offensive?  The above photo or a college video is “shocking” and “inappropriate”, but the photo below is Okey-Dokey.

The noise machine has zero interest in accuracy, honesty, or common decency.  It’s all about winning, facts be damned.  At the same time the blindness with which these same people treat the Trumps is jaw dropping.

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.

By all means, whatever you do, don’t be uncivil to a Trump staffer.  We must all be nice to each other, right?

Yesterday, Newsweek published a story accusing Bernie voters of tipping the 2016 election to Trump.  It uses data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, compiled by Political Wire, that showed that, indeed, 10% of Bernie primary voters went for Trump in the general. It then goes into a swing state analysis that showed that Trump’s winning margin was less than the Bernie’s voters who went for Trump.  The implication was clear – stubborn Bernie voters wrecked Hillary’s bid for the presidency.  How evil they were and inconsiderate of Hillary and all of her supporters.  Fair enough.

There was an interesting mention, though, of a few not insignificant details at the very end of the article…First, the 10% of Bernie voters that went for Trump paled in comparison to the TWENTY FIVE percent of Hillary voters who went for McCain in 2008 (hypocrisy, anyone?).  More important, and one that I hadn’t realized was so large, was that almost 30% of Bernie voters were actually self identified Republican or leaned Republican.  Conversely, Hillary only attracted about 6 or 7% of the same demographic.

So, was it Bernie and his evil bots who wrecked Hillary’s election, or was it actually the fact that Hillary failed to attract the same demographic that Bernie did?  Trump certainly attracted a wide demographic of support.  Bernie attracted a wide demographic of support.  Hillary simply did not.  So, should the headline of the Newsweek article have been BERNIE SANDERS VOTERS HELPED TRUMP WIN AND HERE’S PROOF,  or should it have been HILLARY CLINTON LOST BECAUSE SHE FAILED TO ATTRACT A WIDER DEMOGRAPHIC THAN TRUMP?

I know the answer, but Hillary’s supporters, and many in the party, still cling to the myth that Bernie wrecked her election.  The inconvenient truth is that the numbers are the numbers and they speak for themselves; this lesson must be learned by the Democratic party lest it have to re-learn it in 2020.

I’m not holding my breath.