Sometimes there is a man so evil, so self absorbed, so pathetic …

The flags at Congress and the Washington Monument stand at half-staff for Senator John McCain, but the White House flag was raised to full staff this morning.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Republican congressvarmint from California, Dana Rohrabacher, who apparently does not mind being called Putin’s favorite congressman, has a Democratic opponent.

We can’t be having crap like that when Russia is perfectly capable of sabotaging elections.

FBI agents in California and Washington, D.C., have investigated a series of cyberattacks over the past year that targeted a Democratic opponent of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).

Well, I’ll be a monkey’s great nephew.  And then they say …

Rep. Rohrabacher is arguably the most ardent supporter of the Russian government and its leader, Vladimir Putin, in Congress. He has voted againstRussian sanctions and was once warned by the FBI that Putin’s government was trying to recruit him as an asset.

It looks like they were successful.

Oh wow!

I’m stunned.

Bush had an ethics lawyer?

Thanks to Bryan for the heads up.

Until 1968, Democratic Party bosses picked its candidates.  In 1968, Eugene McCarthy, who had won the most primaries, was pushed aside when party bosses picked Humphrey.  As we all know, Nixon beat Humphrey, which began our long national nightmare which ended in scandal and Nixon’s resignation in 1974.  In 1970, the party became democratic by giving the votes to the rank and file, but in 1972, the party nominated McGovern, who was slaughtered in 49 states by Nixon.  That’s when party bosses seized power again by inventing superdelegates, who had an outsized role in selecting candidates.  That outsized role was used to the extreme in 2016, which resulted in the second long national nightmare, the Trump era.  That happened when Hillary erected a huge wall of money and used that money to vacuum up almost all super delegates before the primaries even started in 2016, she abused Democratic Party rules to destroy the fundamental principle of our country – democracy.

Since the 2016 electoral disaster, the left side of the party has been at war with party leaders to get rid of superdelegates.  This weekend, they won a major battle when the DNC voted to reform the superdelegate system.  That reform took away the vote of superdelegates in the first vote in a contested convention. What that means is that if a candidate has enough votes to win the nomination without the superdelegates, they can vote.  If it hasn’t been decided yet, they have to wait on the sidelines on the first ballot.  This change, while not pure reform, is huge.  No longer can another candidate, like Hillary, use the party structure to suppress the vote of the rank and file before the primaries even start.  Because of this reform, party bosses like Donna Brazile, who had opposed the change are not happy.  Leaders like Karen Carter Peterson of Louisiana were outraged that their power to destroy democracy was being taken away.  Addressing the rules committee she said, “Are you telling me that I’m going to go to a convention, after my 30 years of blood sweat and tears for this party, that you’re going to take away my right?”  Well, Karen, if you mean your right to force your will over the voters, the answer is that you’re goddam right we’re taking away your right.  You abused that right, so now the people have taken that privilege away from you.  Welcome to democracy.

How do you like ‘dem apples?

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

Trumpists can never defend their support of the criminal sitting in the Oval Office without bringing up 2 subjects: 1) What about Hillary, and 2) The economy is booming.  The problem is that both answers are bullshit.  The whole Hillary thing is a simple dodge that Trump and his sycophants use on a daily basis to deflect attention away from the damage he is inflicting with the deepening constitutional crisis of his own making; but what about the economy?  True, the stock market (at least the S&P) touched an all time high on Friday, a whopping $2.00 over the previous high attained in January of this year.  The Dow remains about $1,000 below its January high.  Never hesitant to give himself credit for something, Trump tweeted this just as John McCain passed away:

Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder aside, is the economy really booming?  The answer depends on where you actually sit.  For those who received unnecessary tax cuts that are now overheating the economy, exploding the national debt, and kicking off inflation, yes, they are receiving a windfall that they are using for stock buybacks and acquiring more personal goods.  For those who are on the other end, not so much.  Wages have been stagnated since Reagan.  42% of Americans earn below $15 per hour.  One third of Americans earn less than $12.  The minimum wage has stagnated at $7.25 since 2009.  Wages are only rising at 2.9% per year, and inflation is now outpacing increases in wages.  Interest rates are rising to keep the economy from overheating further, and debt rates are increasing because of the supply of more and more federal debt.  To make matters worse, healthcare costs are rising 20% this year, credit card debt is now over $1 trillion, and student loan debt is burdening a huge part of the next generation of Americans.

In short, the economy is NOT booming for working classes of Americans.  The income gap is widening, and anger is increasing as Republicans in Congress and state houses step up their efforts to destroy the healthcare system, defund public schools, refuse to raise the minimum wage, keep the homeless in the streets, refuse to fund infrastructure, refuse to fix our voting system, ignore Russian interference in our lives, ignore the opioid crisis, refuse to reform the immigration system, jail children on the border, and pile on the national debt by spending over $700 billion a year on defense (not counting military retirement and healthcare) while slashing taxes. Pile on top of that Trump’s idiotic trade war based on lies that’s destroying jobs and kicking off hyper-inflation is some sectors, and you have a volatile combination that is unsustainable.

Conservative leaders all over the country pledging fealty to His Orangeness do so at their own peril.  However, we can begin to fix this only if normal people show up at the polls and vote.  If we do that, then we can declare an end to this long national nightmare and rebuild our much damaged society.

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