Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Disorder In The Court

It has been roughly 80 hours since we received a phone call from one of our daughters telling us about the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  We were away for a few days, happy to be masked up and holding hands, sauntering down the quiet, peaceful streets of old Sante Fe.  Suddenly nothing felt peaceful anymore.  We both stopped on the sidewalk and, heads down, were online in a heartbeat.

Glancing up as we walked, we were not the only ones glued to the information ether looking for details.  So many heads down...

In the hours that have passed since finding out, I have gone through many of the grief stages already. 

Denial - it was immediate.  No, no, nononononononononono.  Like everyone else, I knew how old she was, I knew the health battles of late, but the woman has always been a phenomenal life force.  5 foot 1 inch, yet larger than life.  Thinking of her in simple, human terms is difficult.  Thinking of how she battled for this nation - I cannot believe she is gone.

Anger - That came swiftly as the despicable, predictable GOP began making their glee known.  Anger at the hypocrisy.  Anger at the fact the news was still breaking yet they were dancing on a grave.  Anger because of everything her death telegraphs for our future, for the future of minorities, women, LGBTQIA, DACA, DREAMers, the disabled, the ACA, Roe v Wade, and on and on.

Bargaining - I don't know what I believe in in terms of what comes next.  Nothing can be proved, no one can prove a negative, but I found myself fervently wishing that there is something, some next stage to which that incredible woman has passed.  Energy like that cannot just cease.

Depression - As if the collective anxiety and depression and unease we have all been physically laboring beneath were not enough, this was an emotional body blow.  On so many levels.  RBG was a heroine for me, and for so many.  She was a leader, a pantheon of strength and character.  Diminutive in stature, almost precious in her white lace collar, but woe betide anyone who took those traits to mean pushover.  She was the absolute best of what a woman is, can be, can achieve.  She embodied grace, wit, intellect, compassion, and a deep, DEEP love of country and our laws.  Yes, I feel heavy, depressed, so very sad.

Acceptance - That last stage of grieving is not going to come easy.  I am Irish, I am belligerent, I am hard headed, and I hate when something awful happens and cannot ever unhappen.  I have grown enough to finally know that screaming at the wall will never move the wall, but in my private moments, there are still walls that pay the price for things I cannot change in my life.

What I do accept is that our fight does not stop with her death, with her lying in repose in the Supreme Court this week, with her burial.  What I do accept is that we are living through unprecedented times, with unprecedented behavior by the opposing party.  What I do accept is that the words 'Merrick Garland' are meaningless to the corrupt, power hungry criminals in the majority.  What I do accept is that hypocrisy is the air they breathe.

What I do accept is that in a 3-6 country, we are about to have a 6-3 Supreme Court and everything that portends.  That does not mean I give up.  It means I accept the reality of the cretins we are up against and the actual power they currently, legally have to act.

I also accept that the Notorious RBG led the way, showed the strength, defined will and honor and hope. 

Her mother, whom Ruth called "the most intelligent person I had ever known" instilled in RBG a deep, abiding love of learning, of equality, of the need to find and use your voice.  That her gender did not make her less than a man.  Her mother, so smart, went to work at age 15 so that her family could put her brother through college.  Being a girl, Celia was viewed as being lesser, having no need to advance her education.

When RBG was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993, she ended her press remarks this way, “I have a last thank-you. It’s to my mother. My mother was the bravest, strongest person I have ever known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”

I daresay she made her mother proud.  She blazed a trail through her schooling and when she was at Harvard Law - only 1 of 9 women, mind you, never forgot the dinner party at which the dean made the woman go around the table and each had to speak to justify why they were there taking the place of a man.  Ahh, 1956.  There were 552 men enrolled with her, but I guess that wasn't enough?  Because of her intellect, acumen, and unapologetic attendance in their ranks, she was nicknamed a "bitch" by the male classmates.  Her wry reply to finding that out?

"Better bitch than mouse."

DAMN.  QUEEN.

She persevered through the years juggling family, studies, and a university where women were not even allowed in the law library.  She was also one of the first women to serve on the Harvard Law Review journal.  She did not complete her years at Harvard, however, as she transferred to Columbia when her husband took a position in New York.  She would go on to be first in her class.

Which meant little as she struggled to find employment - again, we wimmin folk were still persona non grata in so many places.

She finally got her foot in the door with a low level clerk position and slowly began her climb.  Through the years she was a pioneer in gender equality issues - arguing before the Supreme Court six times, winning five. in 2011, Harvard awarded her an honorary degree, and in 2015 she received their Radcliffe Medal signifying she was someone who had transformed society.

I have long looked at her life, how she lived it, navigated demands, juggled family, career.  If we are each born an empty vessel, RBG filled hers to overflowing by the time she passed.  She learned, she taught, she parented two children, she was a dedicated spouse in a marriage where there was always equality.  She supported him, he supported her.  Shortly before his death, Marty, an accomplished lawyer in his own right, said, “I think the most important thing I have done is enable Ruth to do what she has done.”

That is a husband.

Just as forced sterilizations at an ICE facility have been making headlines, it is notable to remember how long this type of thing has been being perpetrated, and fought.  I wrote last week about how there were laws allowing it for decades - to thin the herd, strengthen the gene pool, and diminish a population based on race.  RBG, when she was the Director of the ACLU Women's Rights project, fought in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of a Black woman who had been operated on as a teenager through the eugenics program in North Carolina.  It allowed for forced sterilizations for "mentally defective" persons.  There is zero documentation to support the assertion that Nial Ruth Cox was mentally disabled in any way.  She had been found to be pregnant and as such her mother was told by the county her daughter was immoral, and unless she agreed to have her sterilized they would cut off benefits for the younger children.  They were told repeatedly the procedure was reversible and that Nial would be able to have children in the future.

She found out later in her life that was completely untrue.  Unable to have children, her fiance' left her, and as she was a single Black woman, she was denied adoption rights.  The ACLU took her case - that was in the 70s, that is how long this has been going on, that is how long RBG has been a fighter for women.

Once on the SC, she enjoyed working with Sandra Day O'Connor - very like minded women.  She has said that the period between O'Connor's retirement and the seating of Sonia Sotomayor were disconcerting. “The image to the public entering the courtroom was eight men, of a certain size, and then this little woman, sitting off to the side. That was not a good image for the public to see.”

I especially loved her oft repeated reply when asked at what point there would be "enough women" on the Court. She always replied “when there are nine … [There’d] been nine men, and no one’s ever raised a question about that.” 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew what we could be.  She saw the potential not only in women, but in all of us, in this country.  She understood the towering role of jurisprudence in this nation and how it must be equally applied.  She never stopped working towards that.

Perhaps it is best to say, she never stopped working. 

The public has been privvy to her ins and outs from hospitals in the past year.  Each time Twitter erupted with those of us volunteering as tribute - "Take my lung!"  "You can have my pancreas!"  I don't need my life, you can have it, Ruth!"  We held our breath, said our prayers if we pray, sent good thoughts to the universe, and only exhaled when word came that she was home, resting comfortably, yet still firmly holding her spot on the Court.

In terms of this election and the gargantuan import it has, she has been likened to the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.  She has been standing, all 5'1" of her, between us and the complete downfall of this nation at the hands of the Trump cabal.  On the Court hers was a voice of strength and probity and measure, and equality for all.

Her last wish, transcripted for her by her grand daughter was, "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."

Of course, it took only 24 hours for Adderall von Unindictedco-Conspirator to call it a lie.  That a Democrat wrote it.  Maybe Adam Schiff.  That is the power RBG had, still has.  Trump is a weak man, always has been.  He is shaken by any woman who is uncowed in his presence, unimpressed with his contour skills, and unimpeachable in her own dignity, self esteem, self worth.

He knows how much money Dems have raised in the hours since her passing - over $100 million in 48 hours.  He knows exactly how beloved she was/is.  He knows he is not man enough, human being enough, to wash her robe.

So he will do what he does to all who intimidate him, who refuse to bow to him, who are smarter than him - he will defile their memory, he will refuse them honor, decency, acknowledgment.  And in the case of RBG, he will move with all haste to nominate someone diametrically opposed to all she stood for, lived for, died for.  A powerful woman to be replaced by a subservient one.  A guardian of democracy by a doormat.

And the Republican majority in the Senate are in lockstep.  Pointing out their hypocrisy - Merrick Garland, anyone? - is meaningless.  They don't care how they appear, how their words from 2016 completely contradict their words now.  They are corrupt, power desperate despots who only care about installing another uber conservative judge who will tilt the court towards Handmaids Tale territory.

Political performance artists like Mitt Romney have acted their parts.  He marched with Black Lives Matter and now publicly promised his vote to Trump, a vote that will endanger the rights of all of us to gather, to protest.  In the final wash, all that matters to them is Roe v Wade.  Their obsession with the absolute intrusion into a woman's right to choose is what drives them.  They will then come for the Affordable Care Act in toto, decimating the lives of millions upon millions who will find themselves stripped of insurance, millions upon millions more who will be suddenly uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions.  Like COVID.

You do know that will be a pre-existing condition now, right?  If you have had it and come through fine, it is still going to haunt you forever.  Heart attack?  Lung cancer?  Brain tumor? Ass polyps?  All deniable because they can point at COVID.

These are lifetime appointments.  You die or you retire.  We are being set up for a lifetime of disorder in the court.  Equality will be shown the door.  LGBTQIA targeted in earnest and attacks backed by a court of religious zealots.  Immigrants will be denied everything.  A criminal president and all his equally criminal cronies will be guarded from harm or accountability.  All the protections promised by the words of this country's founding documents, by the amendments added since - gone.  All for the chance to crawl up the uteri of the nation while clinging to a Bible and a gun.

That's all that matters.  Not accountability.  Not criminality.  Not protecting and defending the weak.  Just another religious hack in a robe who thinks "God" is the answer to every question, and could not define "secular" if their life depended on it.

The sad thing is that our lives do depend on it.

We are still reeling from a pandemic, losing 1,000+ per day.  We are deep in the 4th largest mass casualty event this country has ever experienced, usurped only by the Civil War, WWII, and the 1918 flu.  We have a reality TV grifter flying all over the country holding rallies and talking about herd mentality - he is such buffet platter of ignorance, lard and venality. 

Herd IMMUNITY requires that over SIX MILLION of us die. You cool with that?  That number good?  Remind you of anything, like, say THE HOLOCAUST?  Or do they not teach you that in your Youtube Stupid as FuQ school?

We have no vaccine.  We have no clear information as the CDC has now validated it is completely corrupted by this administration.  205,000 people have died.  They have done nothing for this country beyond a one time stimulus of $1200 that many did not qualify for, and hand out billions in forgivable loans to their friends.  People are dying, being evicted, millions are still out of work, millions thrown off their insurance by losing their jobs to this pandemic, yet nothing.

But they can move like their asses are exploding trees on fire to nominate and install a new SC justice.  Want to explain that?

It is going to happen.  It does not matter how much we scream and shout, how much House and Senate Dems try to stall, obfuscate, point out the hypocrisy of their colleagues, the predictable unsuitability of whoever gets pulled from Under His Eye and nominated.  Republicans in the Senate have the votes they need to ignore every single one of us. In a 3-6 country, we are facing a 6-3 court - completely out of balance with the will of the people, the direction of the country.

They are out in force declaring they have a mandate from the people.  WTAF?  Their Sunkist succubus lost by three million votes.  Senate Dems got 18 million more votes than Senate Republicans in 2018. House Democrats won by the largest midterm margin of victory in history.  And Senate GOPers represent 15 million fewer constituents than Senate Dems.

Where's the mandate, other than in their heads, their wallets, and in the vapid, slackjawed craniums of the maskless dullards who flock to Trump's super spreader events?  There is no mandate.  There is only a powergrab.  And it is one that will fundamentally change this nation forever.

The CIA tells us that Russia is again hard at work inside our election system.  No one is blinking.  Our mail system was completely hijacked from within, and no matter what the courts are saying, all of the changes and destruction cannot be undone.  We are faced with unprecedented corruption from the Oval to the AG to the Senate Leader and every little minion in between.  It is sickening. It is unthinkable.  It is heartbreaking.

And all we have is our vote.

That is where my stage of Acceptance lies.  I accept that our ability to vote in dramatic numbers is what stands between us and the dike finally crumbling and washing us away.

RBG knew that.  She fought her entire life to give voice to the voiceless, strength to the powerless, hope to the hopeless.  She stood strong for us as long as she could.  But cancer had other plans.  No one is coming to save us.  We must save ourselves.

I know we are exhausted.  We are bereft.  We feel overwhelmed, which is how they want us to feel.  But we can do this.  We can channel a woman who fought colon cancer in 1999, surgery and all, and never missed a day on the bench.  We can be inspired by an 87 year old woman  who, for the last 20 years of her life, worked out with a trainer twice a week.  We can find strength in the thought of a woman who was denied access to her college's law library yet went on to kick the asses of all 582 men she schooled with.  We can draw courage from a woman who fought cancer three times (1999, 2009, 2019), defeated heart issues and an operation in 2014, and worked through 3 fractured ribs in 2018.

I often whisper the words my mother drummed into me as a child, when faced with something daunting, something that seems too big - "There's nothing to it, but to do it."  Ruth said something very similar.

“I spent no time fretting, and found a way to do what I thought important to get done.”

Let us not spend time fretting or fearing the work in front of us.  It is important, it is vital to our survival to get it done.  It is our turn to give voice to the voiceless, strength to the powerless, hope to the hopeless.  There's nothing to it, but to do it.

So do it in her honor, for Her Honor, the Notorious RBG.

#ETTD ... Literally

#ETTD

For those unfamiliar, it stands for Everything Trump Touches Dies.  Coined by Republican strategist turned current Dem ally (in an 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' way) Rick Wilson for his 2019 book, the hashtag is pulled out regularly as an easy way to sum up another firing, debacle, ruined international relationship, law broken, or political career ended by association with the Gouty Gourd.

But in the face of COVID-19, the 'dies' portion is sadly literal.  And growing.

This morning we sit at 130,856 American lives lost to the virus.  395 out of every million citizens.  Yesterday we hit a national record of over 52,000 positive cases reported in a single day.  Florida accounted for over 10,000 of those cases alone.

And while governors rapidly try to pull back on their Trump appeasment openings from May; while Pence now dons a mask in public; while Sean Hannity now counsels his mouthbreathing audience to mask up; while the spray tanned succubus himself brags about looking like the Lone Ranger in one...

Pause.  Look, we all know he is the I Ching of idiocy, but the Lone Ranger?  Yes, Donald, he wore a mask.  AROUND HIS EYES.  I swear to merciful God...

Back to where I was - it does not matter how states are scrambling, especially ones with Republican SICKOphants, the buck stops at Trump's door.  The dead piled up are his to own.  There is no argument to be had, no defense of this catasstrophic failure of a leader - every inaction, every cavalier utterance, every devil-may-care wave of his tiny hands - the severity of this pandemic is his fault.

Everything Trump Touches Dies.

It was just February 26th when Trump declared “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."  Ahhhh, February.  Anyone feel like that was four years ago?

Here are real numbers caused by Trump's complete embrace of "his gut" and complete ignorance of science:

March 1 - we had 2 deaths
April 1 - 5,109 deaths
May 1 - 65,529 deaths
June 1 - 106,492 deaths
July 1 - 130,798 deaths

And as for cases?  We currently stand at 2,782,556.  I'm no math scholar, but that seems to be more than 15, and way more than 0.

With his open encouragement to "liberate" their states from Dem governors who had taken the public safety reins and issued closures and stay-at-home orders, many states were reopening less than a month after they tried to close.  Gun toting MAGAts, enraged that they could not get their mullets trimmed at Supercuts, stormed capital buildings.  They took to the streets with asinine signs about refusing to wear a mask, how COVID was not real, likening mask requirements to slavery.

I live in Arizona.  We have a used douchebag of a governor here who suckles at Trump's power teats as often as possible.  With Memorial Day on the horizon, he threw open pools, bars, waterparks, casinos.  My husband runs a resort - I watched as people thronged, packing the pools like human stewpots.  Like those sickening scenes from the Ozarks with the pools so packed they were basically waist deep latrines, it happened everywhere.

Scientists were horrified and they tried their best to caution people, to warn them of the consequences of such behavior, to remind them we had not flattened the curve, were not out of the wave.  All to no avail.  Americans, once a people who pulled together in a crisis, who looked out for their neighbors, who understood the "greater good," are now a vile, self centered, selfish populace.  We want immediate gratification, and we want what we want when we want it.  We are the Veruca Salt of nations. 

Trump encouraged all of it.  Mocking governors, refusing to wear a mask in public, downplaying the virus by repeatedly saying "It will disappear."  Just yesterday - YESTERDAY - he repeated that mantra.

Trump: "I think we're going to be very good with the coronavirus. I think that, at some point, that's going to sort of just disappear, I hope."
Fox: "You still believe so, disappear?"
Trump: "Well, I do." pic.twitter.com/RXITpPbI4K

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 1, 2020

IT. IS. NOT. DISAPPEARING.  Not with the heat and sun as he prognosticated in March. Not because he wished on a star, not because he wants it to.  This virus does not care about anything but accessing our bodies which is made exponentially easier because so many refuse to don a simple mask.

At every turn they are being reinforced in their choice.  They see him without one everywhere.  They see him traveling to rallies where everyone sits packed like sardines with no face coverings.  They see his cronies like Pence just last Friday openly bragging about how great we are doing, how “We’re in a much better place” than two months ago.

Seriously?  If "much better" metrics have to do with bigger numbers, sure.  In two months we have literally doubled our number of dead.  A number every expert points to and states that it is waaaaaaaaay under reported. In a study by Yale University, published Tuesday, the 781,000 total deaths in the U.S. in the three months through May 30 were nearly 19% higher than what would normally be expected.  The number of excess deaths from any causes were 28% higher than the official tally of U.S. Covid-19 deaths during those months.

Again, not a math person, but even I get the import there.

Pence went on to talk about what a great thing it is that younger people are contracting the virus.  He said it was "very encouraging news” that “roughly half of the new cases are Americans under the age of 35.”  For the record, Florida has charted 7,000 cases in children under 18.  Two teenagers died last month.  Currently, 12 have developed MIS-C - Multi-system inflammatory syndrome - which is swelling that can affect the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes and gastrointestinal organs.

Will all kids who test positive take a bad turn?  Of course not.  But think about whether you are willing for your child to be the one who does.  Your refusal to mask up, to social distance, to listen to experts - you are playing Russian Roulette not only with your life, but with your children's lives.  And the lives of every person you come into contact with as you spew your vitriol in the grocery stores, stomp your feet while waiting for food, cough on passersby.

Trump is aided and abetted in these deaths by creatures like Lt. Governor Dan Patrick of Texas - a state that is surging and reclosing.  Here he is two nights ago, writing off Dr. Fauci.

Actually, you do. https://t.co/L316R2Mu0S

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) July 1, 2020

"I don't need his advice anymore."  I see.  A respected virologist who has dedicated his life's work to understanding and combating all things viral and deadly cast aside by a man whose greatest accomplishments in life (prior to snaking his way into politics) are, let me check here, oh yes - being a wannabe sports broadcaster and bankrupting a chain of sports bars.  Yes, by all means, Dan, you hold court on what people should do in the face of a deadly pandemic raging through the United States. 

Your Governor just issued a mask directive for the state of Texas, Dan.  Based on the comments on his Twitter feed, it is snowing there.  Seriously, it is pathetic to watch the big, bad Texans lose their shit over being asked to step up, cover their faces, and help in this health crisis.  You melting down with the rest of the snowflakes, Daniel?

Rand Paul, who constantly validates the ass kicking his neighbor doled out, had the temerity this past Tuesday in a Senate hearing to say to Dr. Fauci that, "We shouldn't presume that a group of experts somehow knows what's best for everyone."

I just can't with these people.

They are the reasons Trump continues to downplay this virus, continues to get away with literal murder, continues to avoid any accountability.  The results are coming in fast and furious.

Because masks were turned into a political football, people flat out refuse to wear them.  Because he repeated the "this is no worse than the flu" lie so often, people are out and about acting like it is no big deal.  Hell, young people are literally throwing COVID parties.

I am not making that up.

In Alabama, college students were throwing COVID parties wherein someone positive would be the guest of honor, people would pay to attend, and the first one to come up positive afterwards would win the cash.  Authorities are dumbfounded.  I'm not.  People, especially young ones, are just dumb.  (See Cinnamon challenge and Tide Pods) And when there is zero coherent messaging to them, of course they are going to act like this.

What boggles the mind is that this administration, for whom the economy is everything, is even ignoring the research that shows national mask wearing would not only slow the coronavirus transmission rate, but prevent a full 5% loss of the GDP because of shutdowns.

Yes, Lone Ranger, by simply wearing masks.

Had we had legitimate, sober, thoughtful leadership in the beginning - leadership that would have put arrogance and ego to the side and allowed the doctors and scientists to lead the response - we would be in an incredibly different position as we enter July.  Had Trump donned a mask in the beginning, encouraged mask wearing to all his adoring dolts, supported a monthly guaranteed stimulus to each citizen to help ride out the financial hardship of closures - think where we could be.  Think about how many would still be alive.

Instead, because we have a leader with the attention span of a coked up shithouse rat, he and we got bored with the virus, wet our pants because we were all housebound and frustrated, and forced things back open long before they should have been.  If we had stayed closed down through June, we would be ready to safely begin opening life back up.  Instead, we find our hospitals at crisis points - now rationing care (shout out to Sarah Palin - how do you like them death panels now?), cases predicted to hit 100,000 a day, and states having to close things back down.

Texas is burning.

When 10 people need life saving help, but you only have 3 beds....@DanPatrick @GregAbbott_TX

Maybe you should have listened to Fauci. pic.twitter.com/tXeuRCuWcq

— 🇨🇦OneNoteNews🇺🇸 (@AdamCC75) July 2, 2020

As Trump brags about "the crisis being handled" here are some facts from a Houston safety net hospital:

-50% of new COVID tests coming back positive
-No more ICU beds
-No more remdesivir
-No more convalescent plasma
-12 COVID patients in need of ICU care — stuck in the ER

That's something all the science deniers need to absorb.  If the thinking is, "well, if I get sick, I'll just go get taken care of" - no, you won't.  Given the enormity of cases mounting, there is no guarantee you will be seen, cared for, or admitted.  And if there are 3 beds and 10 people need them, as described by that doctor above, you may be left gasping for breath on a gurney in a hallway as the last ventilator is hooked up to someone who has a better shot at recovery.  That's not hyperbole.  That is real. That is happening.  And your hubris won't get you a vent any more than your hubris will keep you from needing it in the first place.

This is 4th of July weekend.  A time when we are all used to attending picnics, going swimming, having BBQs with friends, and enjoying fireworks lighting up the skies.  There is precious little to celebrate this year.  And frankly, staying indoors away from people is the best way you can honor this country.  Doing what small thing you can to contribute to the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for as many people as possible.

Trump won't be doing that.  In the face of explosive spread throughout the country, he will be heading to South Dakota to stand in the shadow of Mount Rushmore and bask in the masturbatory glory of his maskless flock.  Governor Kristi Noem (R-duh) has openly bragged of the event, "We will not be social distancing."

The result will be more transmissions, more positive cases, more requiring hospitalization, and more people dead.

I just hit refresh - 27,149 new cases so far since yesterday.  330 more dead since I started typing.

All roads lead back to Trump.  As you contemplate continuing to follow in his footsteps, ask yourself why he gets tested daily, but convinces you it is a hoax?  Ask yourself if your worship of this cretin is worth the risk of your life, the lives of your children. Because four words have never been so true: Everything Trump Touches Dies. 

Literally.

Soleimani, Soleimani, Baloney

I read.  Voraciously.  Everything that matters.  And things that have no impact or import.  I know places, I know names.  I know more pop culture than I probably should.  I know events both current and past.  As a citizen of the world, I consider it part of my responsibility to know, to care, to learn.  It makes life more interesting, but it also makes it less frightening.  As they say, the more you know, the more you know.

And as I always say, the questions the human mind can conjure are typically more scary than the answers.  We are wildly creative that way.

That being said, I admit that 24 hours ago, I had zero idea who General Qasem Soleimani of Iran was. 

But here's the difference between me and the hordes who are cheering "We're #1!" and beating their chests over his assassination:  I have not stopped watching, listening, reading since it happened.  I have been educating myself as fast as possible because what happened has tremendous import, horrendous potential consequences.

And no amount of bleating "We're #1!" like some deranged sheep is going to stop what happens next.

And there will be a next.

It likely will not be symmetrical, meaning it won't be over there and obvious.  It will more likely be asymmetrical and affect our lives here.  Cyber attacks, power grids, etc - all are easy targets.  All would disrupt life here immediately for a protracted period.

But back to Soleimani.  He has been a figure of death, subterfuge, violence for decades.  He did not just emerge on the scene.  And despite what Trump and his ill equipped minions would tell you, has always been planning attacks.  So some "imminent attack" is so much smoke and mirrors from an administration whose main mouthpiece has now been caught in over 15,000 whoppers since taking office.  And for the record, his litany of lies makes it impossible to believe anything that comes out of his mouth on the best of days, much less the worst when lives are on the line.

This was not some "AH HA!  We finally found you!" moment either.  Bush and Obama both had their chances.  Soleimani's locations have not been some unknown, unmapped, unfindable locales.  Both of those Presidents chose to NOT assassinate him. 

So what separates Trump from them and this attack from their inaction?

KNOWLEDGE.

Knowledge and facts and wisdom and a deep bench of internationally intelligent advisors.

Soleimani was a man revered, yes, also feared, but a man who was referred to as a "living martyr" in Iran.  He was known for referring to himself in humble terms as the "smallest soldier" and not one for the asskissing by his troops.  He was smart, brutal, and decisive.  He was the architect of any number of shadow wars.  He had brought the Islamic Republic to the edge with the USA.  And the blood he shed could fill swimming pools.

He was not a good guy.  In fact, no one - blue or red - is defending him on any level.  The world should be better without him now breathing in it.  His influence, his plots, his plans, his death count are legend.  But in assassinating him - and make no mistake, this was no mistake - we have broken open Pandora's Box and can now only wait to see what horrors emerge.

Cheering about being some awesome nation or how we opened up a can of whoop ass is the height of ignorance.  These idiotic chants and faux patriotism are rooted in having absolutely zero idea what the word implications means.  Every beer gutted, red hatted MAGAt who is pretend Marining some "OORAH!" and fist pumping cannot pronounce Soleimani, let alone explain who he was and why it actually matters.

That every expert, pundit, ex-Intelligence official is out in force literally using words like "I pray that the worst does not happen"?  It means that the past three years of watching every norm, safeguard, defense, and protocol be effed in the A by this administration is coming home to roost.  We have intelligence services gutted and maligned.  We have integral positions in our governance and defense that have gone unfilled.  And we have a reality TV host whose main claim to fame was saying "You're fired" now in charge of our collective destiny.

A spray tanned, self indulgent, lazy, corpulent, intellectually incurious man child with access to the greatest super power on the planet is calling the shots.  And he has no idea what he is doing.  No care about what comes next.

An emperor with no clothes, impeached just two weeks ago (yes, dullards, he was impeached - the location of the papers has zero bearing on that), whose greater lies and subterfuge continued to come to light just yesterday with a new batch of unredacted emails and today with the revelation that his loans were underwritten by Russia - this is the guy now ferociously wagging the dog. 

He's the stripper throwing copious glitter into the air to divert attention and get the handsy guys to temporarily back off.

It cannot be allowed to work.  Congress can and must multitask.  It must demand briefings about what led up to this assassination at the same time digging into the latest, very damning evidence about this cretin and who owns him, and by extension, us.

And you, me, the electorate MUST care enough to keep up.  Read, research, watch, listen, CARE.  If ever a time existed when "Google is your friend" - it is now.  Use it.  Read several sources, not just one. 

We  tend to sit back in this country and act like we are untouchable.  Yes, we have our own game of Mass Shooting Roulette to contend with daily, but we skate through our days largely ignoring the world stage and what happens on it.  That is a luxury Trump has blown out of the water.  We have few allies.  Pay attention to that.  The ones speaking up so far?  Not defending Trump or the USA.  They are stunned that they were not consulted.   Yes, MAGAts, that would be protocol.  At least it was when we had allies.  When we had a rational, thoughtful adult in the Oval instead of a bombastic toddler with a shitty diaper.

We are very touchable.  And Iran is not some backwoods, cave riddled desert with no resources.  Just like Soleimani was not some Osama bin Laden on the run.  He was a General with a military state behind him, not some splintered ideology running from safehouse to safehouse.

Thousands more of our young military members are being deployed.  You will notice there are no Trumps, Pences, McConnells, etc in their ranks. The rich and powerful care only about their own interests and consolidation of power.  They do not care how much of your child's blood gets spilled in the process.  For Trump, these service members are merely tools, a means to an end.  And right now, the end is distraction.  Think not?  Those unredacted emails and his loans should be front and center in the news right now.

They aren't.

As the baloney bullshit continues to be spewed and the tension ratcheted up, the best we can all do is to stay informed, gas up your cars, and think about what shape you would quickly be in if the power grid around you goes down.

Soleimani may be dead.  But his soldiers are not, the Iranian government, having threatened "harsh retaliation" is not, and the clock is ticking on the consequences they plan.

Deja You?

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

That's us.  That's the sick game we choose to continue to play with our country and the lives of those in it.  Gun Sight Roulette.

Will it be in another school?  At a much anticipated movie?  A concert where all are gathered to enjoy?  We never know, until the wheel stops, and then we do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Less than one week ago, I started a piece with the very same words above.  Cut and paste - no changes needed.  Last Monday morning, I was writing about Gilroy, about three innocent lives stolen while out enjoying themselves.  For Christ's sake, the 6 year old was in a bounce house.

Yesterday, I wrote about El Paso, about how the Gun Sight Roulette wheel had stopped on their town - one of the safest in this country - taking 20 lives with it.  A cowardly white supremacist had traveled 9 hours to the brownest place his pissant brain could think of to "kill as many Mexicans as possible."  His victimy screed filled with ignorance, bloodlust, and white sanctimony about HIS "beloved Texas."  Someone should have taught him better in school that HIS Texas was once essentially Mexico.  That perhaps he should have been the one to go back where he came from.

No matter, the blood has been shed, and it cannot be put back into the lifeless bodies still strewn on the floor of the Walmart.

Yet even as forensics crews worked through the night processing that horrific scene of mass murder; as bereft relatives began living the nightmare from which they will never awaken; even as we all struggled to find some respite in sleep - another mass shooting took place.

Last night, as many of us were getting ready for bed, or even in it fast asleep on the east coast, the wheel stopped again.  This time on the midwest town of my birth, Dayton, Ohio. 

In the area known as the Oregon District, as people were enjoying their Saturday night/early Sunday morning, as nightlife was winding down, 9 lives were taken in an instant as another cowardly piece of garbage, clad in body armor took aim.  As one witness described, he "had an AR-15 rifle, wearing a vest and earmuffs" and he "just started blowing bullets everywhere."

Police presence is heavy in that area filled with bars and entertainment venues, so they were able to stop him within a minute.  He is dead.  And like an episode of Deadwood, I wish he could be fed to Mr. Woo's pigs, that, as Al Swearingen once threatened, "Gabriel's Trumpet will produce you from the ass of a pig."  That is all these killers deserve.  To be turned into the literal pig shit they are. 

Police stopped him within a minute.  Yet 9 people lay dead.  26 are in the hospital.  His motive, as yet unknown, does not matter.  They are dead.  They are wounded.  They are traumatized for the rest of their lives.  Their crime?  Daring to step out of their homes.

It is that simple.  If the past week has taught us anything, it is that we ALL have targets on our backs.  Every. Single. One. Of. Us.

And the myth of the good guy with a gun?  Blown away along with the 29 people who lay dead within 13 hours of one another.  Texas, a stupidly easy place to open carry, filled with yahoos who liken themselves to some Lethal Weapon of vigilante-ism, did nothing.  A Walmart with thousands of people in Texas - many were packing - 20 people still dead.

That myth has got to go.  It is the most specious of arguments against strengthening our gun laws.  These murderers rely on the element of surprise.  They do not post an ad on Craiglist.  They do not send out an Evite.  They do not send a blast email.  They simply show up where they know there are a lot of people and start shooting.  You could be strapped up like Arnold in Commando and be dead before you had the chance to reach for your waistband.

I woke around 230am - pretty typical for me - reached for my phone to see what El Paso updates there might have been in the night, and found myself reading breaking news yet again.  And I am not ashamed to write these words:  I AM AFRAID.

I am afraid for my friends.  I am afraid for my relatives.  I am afraid for YOU.  And yes, I am afraid for me.  Not a single one of us is safe. 

This past week I have been doing something that at age 53, I had never had occasion to do before in my life.  I have been waiting  tables and bartending.  In my little town, there is one Mexican restaurant.  Authentic food, music, and some of the nicest people I know.  It was while Rudy and I were down there last Sunday night that the owner asked if I was busy the coming week.  She was short staffed.  I adore her and said I would be happy to help. 

The first day I was nervous, again having never done it, but I have surely eaten out enough in my life to know how it goes and how I like to be treated.  As for the owner, she has been so patient, so fun.  The young man cooking each day?  We delight in him trying to teach me a new Spanish word each day.  And yes, at times I have felt incredibly stupid.  Not because I have never waited before.  Pfft.  I picked that up quickly.  My Margarita game is really strong, too.  No, I have been embarrassed because I cannot speak Spanish with them. 

But unlike the MAGAtry in this country, I have no inclination to lash out, no ego that has me thinking they are talking about me.  And I certainly have zero interest in screaming "Go back where you came from!" 

They are incredible PEOPLE.  We laugh, we share, we make bad jokes.  She and I hug when I get there, we hug throughout the day, we hug before I say goodbye.  This little hole in the basement off the main street, loved by so many locals and tourists alike, has quickly become a place I feel welcome and comfortable.

Yet this morning, as I sit here knowing I promised her I would help with lunch today, I am frightened.  And I hate myself for that.  Nowhere in this country is safe from this happening.  Not a church, not a mosque, not a movie theater, not a concert, not a festival, not a bar, not a school, and not a restaurant.  Certainly not a Mexican one.

I don't want to die.  Maybe like Rose, "as an old woman, warm in my bed."  But certainly not in a hail of bullets fueled by hate, bigotry, and aggression fomented by the president of this country.

Yes, that's right.  I am calling him out.  God knows his own party won't.  And far too few leaders on the left are willing to draw the line connecting these murders to his yawning chasm of a mouth.  I appreciate that Beto, Castro, and Pete have had no compunction about answering the question directly with a version of - "Yes, Trump is culpable."  You do not get to draw targets on the back of an entire group for years, repeatedly cementing in your followers' minds that brown people are "invading" and the cause for all their woes, without this happening.  Every rally, every tweet - it all adds up to what we are seeing.

There is a racist, demagogic, white supremacist, careless, heartless bigot at the helm of these shootings.  His words have fomented this terror, his rhetoric has emboldened them to lash out, his administration is drenched in the blood of these people.  And if you support him?  You will never remove this stain either.  YOU BUILT THIS.  YOU WANTED THIS.  YOU UNLEASHED THIS.   You are sacks of filth who have cheered and clapped like deranged seals, egging him on, as he in turn eggs you on.  You think that your whiteness or MAGA hat will magically protect you from the next shooting?  And there will be one.  And that shooter is not going to stop to ask if you are a Republican, a Nazi, what your heritage is, when you attended your last klan meeting  And God help you should you have a deep brown summer suntan.  Trump does not give shit one about any of you.  Any of us.  Think I am exaggerating?  Watch him joke about using weapons on immigrants; watch him hear someone in the crowd yell "Shoot them!".  And watch him laugh and joke about it.  This is your messiah(ole).

Look how @realDonaldTrump laughs after someone yells to shoot migrants.#ElPaso #Dayton pic.twitter.com/05eC9tKRu0

— One Religion (@One_Re_li_gi_on) August 4, 2019

How about we expand your vocabulary, while you're still alive to do so?  Stochastic Terrorism.  Heard the term?  Here is the definition.  Read it and then tell me that is not what we are seeing, what we are hearing, what you soulless MAGAts are cheering.

Again, there will be another mass shooting.  Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe we will get a week long reprieve, but there will be one.  The deja vu will play out.  My question is when will it be Deja YOU?  When will you be covered by a white sheet in a pool of your own blood on a public street, in a Walmart?  When will your child be laughing one second, dead the next?  When will your office desk turn into the only protection you have between you and the one with the weapon?  When will you say goodbye in the morning to your spouse and never again say hello?  40,000 of us will not make it out of 2019 alive.  40,000 of us will die too soon, because a bullet finds us.  That number is not hyperbolic.  That is the average number of people lost to gun violence each year in this backassward country where we treat the 2nd amendment as some inviolate testament handed down by God.

Yesterday GOP politicians began their spin.  The "It's too soon to make this political..."  The "This is a mental health issue..."  Bull and shit.  The time to make it political was before El Paso happened.  Before Gilroy happened.  Before Philadelphia, before Newtown, before <insert name of any other mass shooting location>.  And as for mental health?  Yes, there is a percentage of shooters who are battling some form of mental illness, but not the majority.  And what we are seeing now are fragile white males who believe in their own supremacy.  Racism is a choice, not a mental illness.  We just watched as a 21 year old plotted, planned, and drove NINE hours to get to his targets.

I am fucking sick of empty platitudes, worthless thoughts and prayers, and worrying every single moment that my children, my friends, my loved ones may die at the hands of some reprobate who should never have had access to a gun to begin with.  If we can restrict who drives, votes, drinks, smokes - we can step the fuck up and restrict the who and how of weapons meant to kill as many as possible in the shortest amount of time.

I will go to her restaurant today.  Because I promised I would.  Because my word means something to me.  But also because to not go today would be saying "I don't want to stand next to you because you are Hispanic."  NO.  That is not who I am.  That is not how I live my life.  That is not how I see people.  No, I will go today and stand next to them because they are Hispanic. Because their humanity is worth as much as mine.  Because I see the beauty in how they have opened themselves up to me. Because all I see in them are PEOPLE.  Lovely, funny, warm people.  Because they are my friends.

Please stay safe.  And know that if any of you are taken, I promise I will politicize the shit out of your death, just as I ask that you do the same for me.  We cannot keep dying in vain.

Round and round and round it goes...

Sartre Was Right, Hell Is Other People

While working out last week, I found Ferris Bueller's Day Off on one of my streaming subscriptions.  Aside from being a welcome throw back to my late teens, it is full of eminently quotable lines and lessons, even 33 years on.

Long before Robin Williams enlightened a group of prep school boys, Ferris was the King of Carpe Diem.  Yet while his joie de vivre and dedication to seizing the day was legendary, what rang most with me last week was this line:  Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

These days that line especially applies to our news.  So many stories, so many twists, so many revelations, so many true "breaking news" stories that would normally demand at least a full news cycle, literally fade within a day as a newer, shinier story replaces it.  One can easily be forgiven for important news falling through the cracks based on headline fatigue or "blink and you miss it."

This past week, drowned in the wake of the Mueller Report hearings that, in the absence of a big dance number, left most news outlets focusing on being bored and droning on "Mueller... Mueller...Mueller...?" (all apologies to Ferris), there were some serious boundaries being overstepped and reported on that should have left the populace outraged.

His name is Francisco Erwin Galicia, age 18.  He is a natural born citizen of this country - Dallas, Texas - , and a high school student in Edinburgh, Texas (just north of the now infamous border town of McAllen.  On June 27th, he was driving with his younger brother and three friends to Ranger College in North Texas for a soccer showcase.  Both brothers are defenders on their high school team and were hoping to show well enough to garner college attention towards planning their futures.

And to anyone scoffing at that?  It's not pipe dreamy.  I lost count of the number of college showcases Toby attended.  That is how recruiting typically starts.  You contact coaches at the schools in which you are interested, invite them to come watch you play at a showcase, and it goes from there.

On their drive north, about 50 miles from home, they were stopped at an CBP checkpoint and asked to verify their statuses.  Marlon, the younger brother and two of the friends could not and were taken into custody.  Francisco, however, immediately presented his Texas ID, Social Security card, and a wallet size form of his birth certificate.

Let's just pause on that part for a moment.  How many of you travel with your SS card or any form of your birth certificate?  Yeah, Me neither.  But then I have this sweet cloaking device called white skin.

Despite his documents, he, too, was taken into CBP custody, held at the checkpoint for a day, and then transferred to a holding facility in Pearsall where he would begin three weeks of detention.  Marlon and the friends were transferred there as well.  As it turns out, Marlon, 17 and undocumented, decided to voluntarily be deported so that he could call their mother and alert her to what had happened.

That's right, when detained and placed in the holding facility, Francisco assumed they would be allowed to call someone.  “I told them we had rights and asked to make a phone call. But they told us, ‘You don’t have rights to anything’.” 

Motherfuckers.  So you detain, incarcerate, and refuse them any contact with the outside world.  Great plan.  Just disappear them off the face of the earth.  Who's to miss them?  Surely, brown people have no feelings, no connections, no families that love them, would miss them.  Bastards.

Marlon - A MINOR - is now in the dangerous border city of Reynosa with his grandmother.

While Francisco's mother now knew that he was in custody somewhere, she heard nothing from him for weeks and weeks.  Mothers, put yourselves in that position.  You send your child off with love and well wishes for his soccer success and he just disappears.  Despite being a provable citizen - POOF - sucked into an intentionally dark immigration vortex.

For almost three weeks, Francisco was not allowed to bathe, brush his teeth, denied any communication with family or an attorney, and was crammed into a cell with 60 other men.  No where to sleep, and nutrition so inadequate he lost 26 pounds.  At one point, he became so desperate that he contemplated voluntarily self deporting to Mexico just to escape the torturous conditions.

And yes, all along, from beginning to end, he continued to explain he was a citizen.

Think about that, too.  Good old crafty Ferris might have stood his ground, but Cameron would have crumpled and been living in Tijuana overnight.  Francisco's strength is humbling.

It was not until his mother, Sanjuana, found an attorney, that she had any contact with him.  It had been 23 days.  Once his attorney, Claudia Galan, found the media spotlight to turn to his case - the Dallas Morning News - and the subsequent national attention it briefly garnered (again, paling in comparison to the impending Mueller hearings) was he finally released and reunited with his mom.

I repeat - ONE DAY AFTER THE SPOTLIGHT TURNED ON - he was released.  It should not  take media attention to get these shitheels to do the right thing.  But then, cockroaches don't like lights turned on them.

The one small glitch that should have been sorted out IMMEDIATELY was an old visa his mother had obtained for him as a tiny child when she worried about trying to obtain a passport for him to travel back and forth between the states and relatives in Mexico.  For that, yes, she lied on the form and stated he was born in Mexico. 

Again, an easily explained and ruled out piece of paper.  But no one listened to him.  Despite carrying multiple forms of ID and citizenship, they simply did not want to believe him because he is brown.

Yes, bigots, brown citizens DO exist.  Just like Muslim citizens, black citizens, Asian citizens, orange citizens named Melania - this great land of ours truly is a melting pot of many flavors, not just some white cheddar pot of 70s fondue.

Francisco is now suing the CBP and ICE.  Good.

Especially in light of the bullshit they tried to throw down this past Thursday.  In a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing this week, Brian Hastings, Chief of Law Enforcement at the U.S. Border Patrol, had the temerity to claim that at no time did Francisco claim he was a citizen.

Riiiiiiiiight, Brian.  This kid, wasting away, filthy, afraid, and actually smart enough to know his rights and carry his documents, never said a word about being born here. Sorry, Bubba, but we're not as stupid as you and your ilk obviously are.

This is the kind of abusive crap that continues to happen because we have ignorant thugs running ICE and CBP. 

Back in March, a 9 year old girl was held for 30 hours at a San Ysidro checkpoint.  Julia Isabel Amparo Medina crosses the border daily with her brother, as they live in Tijuana, but go to school in San Ysidro (as do thousands of US citizens who opt to live in Mexico and commute).  SHE IS A US CITIZEN. She always presents her passport.  As the line was long and they did not want to be late to school, they hopped out of the car they were in and got in the pedestrian line.  She presented her passport as did her brother.   He was eventually allowed to pass, although they tried to accuse him of smuggling drugs and sex trafficking, but guards kidnapped her for 30 hours.  A NINE YEAR OLD CHILD.

Alone, petrified, they threatened her, lied to her.  They accused her of lying about her identity, saying that her passport photo did not look like her.  “I was scared," Julia said. “I was sad because I didn’t have my mom or my brother. I was completely by myself.”

THIRTY HOURS. Look at your 9 year old citizen and imagine that scenario.  If you cannot feel in your bones how traumatizing that would be for him/her; if you cannot feel it in your gut how frightened you would be for them?  Well, more's the pity for your children because you don't have a fucking heart to begin with.

These were citizens.  With proper identification.  Now imagine what happens to those who don't carry their passport or birth certificate with them.  Hell, I don't.  Do you? Unless I am traveling, my passport stays in a drawer at home.  But then, there we are, back at that whole white cloaking device.  I imagine if you're white and have a MAGA hat on your disgusting head you get a CBP job offer.

These things are happening in our name.  Under our flag. 

Yesterday, in another hearing, Congressman Ted Lieu forced CBP officers to watch video of children who had been separated from their parents at the border finally being reunited.  It is gutwrenching.  Watch.

‘Do you know any 3-year-olds that are criminal or national security threats?’ — Rep. @tedlieu had Border Patrol officials watch powerful footage of what the separation policy is doing to real families pic.twitter.com/iEwXe4g7el

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 26, 2019

Brian Hastings, again in the hot seat, was asked by Lieu if he considered a three year old a national security threat to the United States?  His repeated, slimy answer?  This crew cut cocksplat answered, I DON'T KNOW.

These tiny children are being kidnapped, irreparable harm is done to them, they are finally released to their parents and are so emotionally traumatized they cannot connect, and no one is being held responsible.  Again, if your heart did not break watching this, you don't have one.  Turn in your human card and GTFO.

In his 1943 play, No Exit, Sartre wrote the oft quoted line, "Hell is other people."  While many take it to mean that what we do to one another is hell, and that is not wrong, we ARE other people's hell - just look at the border.  But a deeper look at the context and words around that sentence reveal he meant that in the end, Hell is other people SEEING us, who we are, what we do, what we have done.  No fire, no pitchforks, no lava lakes.  Just each other, watching.

We have been watching as Hell has been created and perpetrated by this demonic administration in which cruelty is the point.  A hell in which Trump sanctions it all, takes glee in it.  Ferris taught Cameron carpe diem, but Trump has taught his minions carpe brown person.  Seize them, kidnap them, demoralize them, torture them, abuse them, inflict emotional terror that cannot be undone in a young developing brain.  We have created a Hell. And it's not enough that we watch as innocent immigrants are thrown into a black hole with no hope - we now watch helpless as innocent citizens like Francisco and Julia get thrown into it.  As three year olds are not even afforded a simple, logical, "No, they are not a terrorist threat."

We are their hell.

But the world is watching, and that is OUR hell.  The world sees us.  Our inaction.  They see who we are, what we are doing.  And they are judging.  They are disgusted.  They are sickened.  And like all those being tortured in our name, they will not forget.  Ever.

Sartre was right, Hell IS other people.  I ask you - feel the flames yet?

Bueller?  Bueller?  Bueller?

Yesterday Was NOT American Idol

I watched both hearings yesterday.  I have read the Mueller Report.  My expectations going in were not for bombshell revelations, not for me, at least.  But then that's what happens when YOU HAVE READ THE REPORT.  You already know the extent of the depravity, subterfuge, and complete disdain for our rule of law practiced by Trump and his minions.  And that's just in the unredacted part.

No, my expectations had more to do with my fellow citizens who might deign to tune in and receive a Cliff's Notes version of main events. 

And that is exactly what was offered.  Yes and no answers.  Passages from the actual report being read into the record for the public, and for the confirmation from Bob Mueller that they were accurate.

As I was watching, one thing kept nagging at me - although this was the height of REALITY TV, as this shit actually happened, it clearly was not going to be flashy enough for our hooked-on-adrenaline populace.

There were no zombies (Although the sycophantic bootlickers come close).  There were no Real Housewives with pathetic catchphrases (Although, Who needs truth when you have power and Chardonnay? would be a good one).  People weren't naked (but we should be very afraid).  No one was hooking up on Love Island (despite the copious Trump asskissing in plain view).  A million dollars and a recording contract were not on the line (one could, however, clearly see who was auditioning for a bigger role in Trump's Playhouse).  Howie Mandel did not have a bevy of beauties with suitcases (hell, Jim Jordan couldn't even be bothered with a jacket again).   There were no dragons breathing fire (Pssst, GOP - screaming at a witness does not make you look like Drogon.  More like Hodor.  All apologies to Hodor.).  No one using the word "cocksucker" as a noun, a verb, an adjective - all in the same sentence. (Kudos to both sides for not going that far.) No rose ceremony or human soup in a hot tub. (There was alphabet soup as words with no meaning poured forth from maws like Nunes and Gaetz.)

Word Vomit GIF from Wordvomit GIFs

You know, all the things it takes to keep our interest, make us watch, invest in the outcome.

And that is just so very sad.

Instead of focusing on the plainly stated facts of obstruction and Russian interference in our elections which is active and ongoing; instead of paying attention to the measured, quiet, non flashy, non partisan tone of Mueller; instead of coming away incensed at what has been done to this country - the takeaway was "Meh.  He looked tired, confused."

JFC, are we really that addicted to scripted drama that real life is too boring for us to process?

Robert Mueller is a veteran, a Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient.  He has served this country for decades, and he has served it well and honorably.  He is 74 years old, of course he looks tired.  He doesn't spray tan, loop his hair into some cotton candy farce, or have a plastic surgeon on retainer.  He is dignified, thoughtful, knows his business, understands discretion, and was not there to sing a song and hope you called in a vote for him.

I am disgusted by the "He looked weak, couldn't hear" lines.  If you actually watch these hearings, the person at the desk fielding questions ALWAYS has trouble hearing from the assembly in front of them.  There are ALWAYS requests to have a question repeated.  And the person at the desk ALWAYS looks around trying to find who is speaking to them this time.  Because there are MANY and they do not go down some methodical line.

He had the two volumes of the report beside him for reference.  And he did reference them often to make sure he was being accurate and not led. He did not agree with something that was unclear or slanted.  He was not lured into offering his opinions, as his opinions are not germane.  He refused to speak to ongoing investigations, offer details on deliberations that rely on confidentiality because he understands what is at stake not just in this, but in every case that may go forward from here.

As for his age?  You suddenly hold Mueller to some arbitrary standard, when you literally see a mumbling, stumbling, illiterate orange dullard on TV daily and that's cool because he talks like you, thinks like you, entertains you?

But then, that's the whole crux of this response to Mueller's appearance yesterday.  He did not titillate, he did not make shit up, he was not contentious, he did not pepper his word salad with "great" bigly" yuge" or point his finger and squawk FAKE NEWS!  ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

And that criticism applies to the left, not just the right.  There were just as many on the left decrying how boring it was (it was a Congressional hearing, not the Kardashians), how awful Mueller looked (again, he is 74, for Christ's sake), that he couldn't hear (my mother is in her 70s, wears a hearing aid, and is still sharp as a tack), that he seemed confused (point of fact, he only seemed "confused" in the face of the shit laden monologues of GOPers that had no real question anywhere in them).

It is disappointing.  It was not up to Mueller to make it flashy, catchy, mesmerizing - make you give a damn.  The facts of this case are flashy enough on their own, and you should give a damn.  They should be appalling to every citizen.  And every citizen should find them irrefutably damning to the scourge in the White House.

But go ahead, keep looking the other way.  Run your mouth about how Mueller was disappointing TV.  You know, the things that really matter.

Because at this rate, you are likely to get your wish for much more exciting television drama as Russia affects yet another election and you get to watch a new series called Dancing With The Czars.

Mueller Hearings: The GOP Is A 4chan Board

As were millions of eyes this morning, in the states and abroad, mine were up bright and early to watch the 6+ hours of questions and answers as Robert Mueller finally vocalized for the public.  The 400+ page report, 22 months in the investigation and making, ready to be provided to a populace who would rather see the movie than read the book.

My God we are dumb and lazy.  I do not excuse any side of the aisle in that descriptor.  The report is long. But because the report is long and no one has a magic wand or a game of Quiddich on the line, precious few have actually invested their time and energy in reading it.

I have found that inexcusable for months.  The details uncovered in the investigation clearly lay out the multiple and repeated attempts by the Outhouse-In-Chief to obstruct justice.  It details the attempts by his cohorts, cronies, and children to align themselves with Russia - forget the part that they all are as inept as Boris and Natasha in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon.  The point is the attempts were made.

Republicans have not read it.  Why would they?  They get their talking points from FOX News and Mitch McConnell, not from facts, data, and the FBI.  They live to parrot the "NO OBSTRUCTION! NO COLLUSION! tweets of Trump.  And as recently as yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray himself admitted to not having read it.  What the actual...?

I mean, I get it.  Why threaten the pollution up on Bullshit Mountain by plugging in a fan of clarity?  Cognitive dissonance is not something of which they are fond.  Having them face hard truths that collide with what they want to believe is painful for them.

Which is the operative word for what watching GOPers address Robert Mueller this morning absolutely was.  Painful.  And embarrassing. 

Painful because what we watched was the destruction of what has been their playbook for years.  The old saying which Jonathan Swift originally penned as “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.”  - subsequently attributable to Mark Twain with the funnier “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

For years now the Republicans have enjoyed the absolute silence of Robert Mueller and his team.  In the absence of leaks, briefings, and interviews, they were free to weave a narrative all their own.  FAKE NEWS!  WITCH HUNT!  NO COLLUSION!  NO OBSTRUCTION!  And when the report was given to Barr, Barr wrote his own summation of 448 pages that had little to do with the reality contained inside.  That was strategic as well - they know Trump's base are Trumper bumper sticker thinkers, that they were never going to download the report, much less buy a copy at Barnes and Noble.  So they have spent every day since the end of May when the report was released, concocting their own version, filling their base with lies, and circling the wagons so that no one can get near them with the truth.

And you know what?  You don't have to like the findings.  They can make you really angry.  Whatever.  But that does not make them NOT real.  You ignoring them?  That makes you a complete traitor to this country you proclaim to hold so dear.  It says that everything this country is supposed to stand FOR, you stand AGAINST.

But today, there Robert Mueller was to finally put paid to their fairy tales, obfuscation, and outright bullshit on behalf of Trump.  Today the truth had its shoes on and was ready to Usain Bolt their asses around the track.

Right out of the gate, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, asked the questions that left zero to interpretation:

NADLER: Director Mueller, the president has repeatedly claimed your report found there was no obstruction and completely and totally exonerated him. That is not what your report said, is it?

MUELLER: Correct, not what the report said.

NADLER: You wrote, “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are not able to reach that judgment.” Does that say there was no obstruction?

MUELLER: No.

NADLER: Your investigation found “multiple acts by the present that were capable of asserting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian interference and obstruction investigations.” Is that correct?

MUELLER: Correct.

NADLER: Can you explain what that finding means so the American people can understand?

MUELLER: The finding indicates that the president was not exonerated for the act he allegedly committed.

NADLER: In fact, you were talking about incidents in which the president sought to use this official power outside of usual channels to exert undue influence over your investigations. Is that right?

MUELLER: Correct.

That's it - right out of the gate - the two most cherished lies, the two deadest horses Trump keeps beating, were shown to be boldfaced lies by the 10,000+ Liar In Chief.

None of that stopped the Republicans, however, which is sad.  Once upon a time, party affiliation had to do with actual difference in policy, not bootlicking idolatry.  Once upon a time Republicans cared about what happened, not just about who made it happen.  And today made it crystal clear that they are willing to look past anything and everything to cling to the corpulent power teats of Trump.

Every GOPer who asked a question - wait, scratch that, "question" is being really generous.  What they did was offer up a five minute mashup of names they hate, scenarios they wish were true, and outright lies and hurl them, loudly, like an ALL CAPS 4chan comment board.  Mueller sat there throughout, and when given a chance to speak, had to ask what the question even was to begin with.

Jim Jordan, who is still convinced not wearing a jacket makes him some kind of tough guy cool, smirked, scowled, and demeaned Robert Mueller for refusing to answer certain questions because they pertain to ongoing investigations or reference confidential deliberations and information. If ever a throat needed a punch...

Then there was everyone's favorite drunk driver, Matt Gaetz.  Dripping condescension, refusing to hear the answers or explanation, just determined to put his Q Anon game piece on the board. 

Louie Gohmert Pyle made everyone's favorite Marine grunt look like a Mensa candidate as he blew his bare top.  His line was to weave a Grimm Fairy Tale of Trump as a lover of justice who was victim of mean people who "hated him."

And on and on it went.  Democrat question, Republican rant, Democrat question, Republican hissy fit - it was a tennis match between Serena Williams and squirrel shit in a blender.

And I just kept shaking my head.  I know the tactic.  I have two brothers, MAGAts both with whom I no longer have any connection, who truly believe that the louder they are, the redder they turn, the more they shout - the righter they are.  Well, I guess a part of that is correct, they are righter.

This afternoon in front of the Intelligence Committee was marginally better, yes, I will actually choke out that compliment to those GOPers.  At least they didn't beat their chests and throw their feces across the room.  It began with Chairman Adam Schiff, who laid down an opening for the ages.  I will provide both the video and a link to the transcript.  I urge you to watch and listen.

Devin Nunes, whose legacy will be that of a thin skinned little pissant who sued a make believe cow and his make believe mom on Twitter, used his opening to essentially hold up a skull and perform his own version of Hamlet.  He lamented this "hoax", this "witchhunt", moaned that this was the Dems "last gasp".  Yet as the minutes wore down and it came back to him for final comments, poor GOP Yorick had died, and Devin had literally nothing left to say, yielding his minutes back to Schiff.

This will indeed be a Tale of Two Hearings - not because there were two, but because there will be two versions splattered across the pundit-sphere.  The right will denigrate Mueller, a man whose Bronze Star boots they are not worthy to polish.  They will say he was evasive, tired, partisan.  Then there will be the left that points out what really showed throughout - Mueller was not ranting, he did not come with an agenda, when he answered, he answered forcefully, thoughtfully.  He refused to speculate, he would not speak out of his purview.  He would not violate investigations that are ongoing.  He would not corrupt the process, the integrity of it, or allow the people involved to be badmouthed.

That last one is important because try as the right might this morning, Mueller would not allow his people's work ethic, or his own to be tarnished.  One after another, Republicans tried to paint his team as highly partisan - laughable as Mueller himself is a Republican; they tried to point to some of them having donated to Hillary's campaign as evidence that the whole thing was a sham - as if Republicans on the team who donated to Trump were somehow sacrosanct.  In the end, Mueller shot them all down.

"We strove to hire those individuals that could do the job. I've been in this business for almost 25 years, and in those 25 years, I have not had occasion once to ask somebody about their political affiliation. It is not done. What I care about is the capability of the individual to do the job and do the job quickly and seriously and with integrity," Mr. Mueller said.

Sadly, lost in all the ranty, overtly obsequious, ALL CAPS SHOUTY tirades on which GOPers launched themselves, only one showed any concern at all for the conclusion that not only did Russia interfere with our 2016 election, but that they are still interfering "as we sit here."

Only one. The same number of lifeboats that held crew brave enough to turn around and save people in the Titanic sinking.

Because it is not in their best interests to have uncorrupted elections, just as it is not in their best interests to have districts that have not been gerrymandered like some topographical origami. 

I was a child when Nixon and Watergate went down.  But I know all about it.  About the corruption, the lying, the obstruction, yes.  But what I have always been most struck by are the Republicans, how they, when presented with incontrovertible evidence, cared not about protecting the criminal President, but about protecting the body politic, the integrity of our highest offices, protecting the Constitution they had sworn to serve. 

They were true patriots, true citizens, true believers in this country, her ideals, and the preservation of this grand experiment called America.

What we have now is a party that is the living embodiment of hate and ignorance. They have open disdain for science and the rule of law. They embrace conspiracy theories and those that disseminate them.

They are a 4chan board of losers, who if they had not lucked into their positions would be in their moms' basements making misspelled memes, attacking everyone with ALL CAPS, and shouting at her for more Pizza Rolls.

Today the truth laced up its shoes and started running.  By this afternoon, the lies had already been lapped several times. The truth is going to win this race. 

Where Is Your Humanity?

Two weeks ago, reports began coming out of Yuma regarding a detention facility there.  As so much of the concentration-camps-at-the-border news had been focused on the Texas-Mexico border, it was a revelation to many to hear about another state involved in the horrific treatment of those they caged.

The news?  More children, more hunger, more filth, more neglect, more sexual abuse.

And then, like all the other reports, and the Epstein pedophilia revelations, it faded into the ever expanding black hole of the Trump racist tweet scandal-rally chant news.  I give them this much - they do know how to throw a good distraction, and we are always stupid enough to follow the next shiny thing.

Last night, however, more reports began emerging from Yuma.  And if you are not sickened; if you are not feeling pain in your heart; if you are the least bit bored with the stories, I have to ask:  Where is your humanity?

Highlighted was a 17 year old boy named Abner who had been held for 11 days late May to early June.

Before I go further, I want to say to anyone who immediately equates a 17 year old with brown skin as sinister, an MS-13 member, a drug mule, or a rapist - STOP.  Pull your head out of your goddamned ass, and look around you.  Millions of 17 year old boys - gangly, uncertain, hungry all the time, scared of the future yet trying hard to front bravado.  Maybe you have one in your own home.  Maybe you are an aunt or uncle.  Maybe one cuts your grass each week.

Abner, just like your 17 year old, is a human being.  The difference being yours won the birth lottery and was born here.  Abner was born in Guatemala.  He fled the extreme poverty and danger - and despite his treatment here, his thoughts are with his four sisters still in Guatemala who he would desperately love to rescue.

When he was taken into custody, he was thrown into a holding cell with far too many other boys of all ages.  Cramped, the stench inescapable.  In fact, for the first FORTY EIGHT HOURS, he was standing and awake as there was simply no space to lie down.  He finally began trying to sleep on a pile of garbage in the corner.  He was, like all these children, freezing.

"I had to stay almost two days like this, standing. I didn't sleep. And they didn't treat me well because I would ask for at least food or water or something to cover myself with and they would deny it."

Pause.  Put yourself in those conditions.  Actually, screw that.  Put YOUR CHILD in those conditions.  Heart hurting yet?  Anger rising at the thought of your precious cherub being treated thusly?

He was subjected to cruel taunts by guards, watched as they punched another 16 year old boy in the stomach.  This was always the response to innocent questions like "What time is it?" (He had no idea if it were day or night as the lights were always on.) and requests for food.

In the cell were smaller boys - 8, 9, 10 year olds - that the older boys took to protecting, caring for.  They let the smaller boys sleep on the floor, giving them the space, choosing to stand themselves.  When the little ones cried because of hunger, they would give them their food.

Angry yet?  Remember, we're playing make believe and the 8 year old covered in filth, freezing on a concrete floor, and relying on the generosity of older boys to stave off hunger IS YOUR CHILD.

Drinking water was available by cupping their filthy hands together under the faucet in their cell and using them as a cup. 

Makes you all warm inside to think about your little Chad or Brendon, hands covered in dirt, grime, excrement, weeks of filth and no soap, using their hands to try to stay hydrated, huh?  You'd be ok with that, right?

Let's get back to hunger.  A 17 year old boy?  An eating machine.  Abner and these children were fed minimally twice a day - roughly around 10am, then again around 5pm - that's it.  I don't give a shit how cool you think you are for jumping on the Intermittent Fasting Train in the burbs, these children are hungry.  Abner details that they decided to give their food to the smaller children because they figured they did not understand what was happening to them, and at least the older boys could handle the pangs better.

Boy, those MS-13 fellows are brutal, huh?  Caring for smaller kids, giving up some of the only food they see each 24 hours.

When he was finally processed on to Health and Human Services (a fucking joke of a title if ever there was one) - he was still detained, but able to kick a soccer ball around and make some friends.  Abner finally was reunited with his father in Chicago and is waiting to hear from his lawyer as to the next steps that will happen to him.  He would love to be granted asylum, but the emotional dye has been cast.  He is scared.  He will never forget what he endured.

Which is the case for all of these people being caged like animals.  They are treated worse than animals.  They are mocked, they are neglected, they are sexually assaulted, they are subjected to torture (sleep deprivation, hunger, dehydration, cruel treatment by guards) - all for the crime of trying to escape the realities of where they were born.  Realities we, as we meander the aisles of WalMart - carts and asses overflowing with Cheetos, Pepsi, Pop Tarts, buffalo wings, beer, ice cream, and privilege - will never begin to comprehend.

But I know, I know - there you go kneejerking the whole "Well, they shouldn't have brought their kids here" as defense for how they are being stolen by us and mistreated.

New flash, Bubba - being born here does not make us better.  It makes us lucky. That's it, that's all.  In terms of global horrors endured by countless people, this is called being born on third base.  I don't care if you live in a mansion or a single wide with a chemical toilet - you still have it better than these people.  They are trying to escape monstrous poverty.  They are trying to protect their daughters from being raped daily.  They are trying to protect their sons from being kidnapped and ending up in gangs and dead.  They are trying daily to escape the realities of dying.

In terms of immigration law and the varying views on it, it is fine to differ in how you think the borders should be handled.  We can debate all day whether crossing illegally should be more or less than the misdemeanor it is.  We can wax crapsodic till the cows come home about our divergent thoughts on the millions already here.  And those arguments are valid.  We should have those debates.  Because we don't have solid answers, plans, goals.

But what we should not differ on is how we treat those who come here.  And that is where the fork in the Humanity Road divides us.

There are those of us who see these conditions, read these stories, see the pictures of dead bodies in the Rio Grande, of children freezing and alone in cages - and our hearts physically hurt.  Calling us bleeding heart liberals is fine with us.  That means we see the humanity in people, we see ourselves in other people no matter their skin color, their accent, their country of origin.  Yes, my heart bleeds for all of these people.  I am proud to be a human being who knows they are no different than me; proud to be a human being who can easily envision my own children subjected to this treatment and know how it would feel;  proud to be a human being who is angrier than I have ever been to be represented by a government of fascists, bigots racists - all who are tickled at their power to treat other humans like garbage.

Then there are people like YOU.  If blood actually runs through your veins, it is cold indeed.  You are devoid of compassion.  You make sick jokes about the desperate and the dead.  You take joy in seeing cages of brown people, dirty, hungry, desperate.  You feel glee as these stories come out.  And you LOVE that your government reflects what is inside you - hate, greed, racism, sadism.

You profess to be followers of Jesus, but would cage him in a heartbeat were he to show up today.  And here's a thought.  You always preach about Him coming back, right?  You all seem to yearn for it.  What if He already has?  What if He is in one of those cages right now?  Hungry, hurting, filthy, demoralized? 

What's that?  Doesn't fit your narrative?

How convenient.

Whether He is here now or not, you are being judged.  Your cruelty, your complete disconnect from the Bible you hold so dear.  Your pathetic joy at "doing to the least of these" - hunger, fear, pain, discrimination, marginalization - yet you blow off the last part of "You did to me." 

Again, you can disagree with them coming here, but were you a true believer, a follower of the Word, a decent human being - you would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us - horrified at what is being done in your name.

Where is your humanity?

Rhetorical question, we all know you sold it for a cheap red hat and the chance to worship an orange outhouse who allows your black soul to shine.  Good luck with that. 

Because right now,  a scared 17 year old immigrant has shown more compassion, more decency, more kindness, more understanding of sacrificing and helping others than all of you rolled together.

Rancid Food For Thought

The school lunchroom.  We all have memories of mystery meat, grey hamburgers, and feeling a reason to live when the calendar showed PIZZA - that rectangular wonder of the plastic tray.

We all also have memories of watching classmates worry about having enough money to buy even the most basic items offered, or hoping their account still had funds left in it because they were hungry.  Perhaps you were one of those children.

Even as a young child, I understood what I was seeing.  The fear, the embarrassment, the desperate looks as classmates would indulge in lunchboxes laden with sandwiches, Twinkies, a thermos full of Kool Aid.  The pained expressions as they just took a seat and drank milk slowly because a tiny carton was all they could afford.  I routinely shared what I had in my Holly Hobby padded lunchbox, even taking to sneaking extra food in at home for them.

I was 8 years old and those memories stay with me to this day.

It was not their fault.  They had zero control over their parents' finances.  Yet they paid the price in hunger pangs, mocking, and an inability to focus throughout the day. 

Fast forward 45 years and nothing has changed.  My own kids saw this dynamic play out during their school years.  In college they knew kids who showed up for any campus event simply because there might be free food.  Studies have shown that a full 20% of students at a four year college are food insecure.  Community college students?  A full 25%.

Younger children stats are equally heartbreaking - 1 in 6 children in this country live with hunger daily.  A full 12 million children - 17.9% - are in food insecure homes.  In the summer that number shoots up to 6 out of 7 children endure hunger because the free or reduced price school lunch they may receive vaporizes.  And before anyone starts with the oh-so-compassionate "Well, their parents shouldn't have had them." or "Well, their parents should get an extra job." - STOP.  Children cannot eat bootstraps.  And they sure as hell did not ask to be born (yet you demanded they were, you proud pro-lifer, you.)

While there are some children who are caught in homes where their parent or parents are irresponsible and neglectful, that is the exception, not the rule of poverty.  Most of these children DO have parents who kill themselves in two or three jobs to try to provide even the most basic of needs - a roof over their head, a couple pieces of clothing, and some food.  Those parents often going without themselves in order that their child receive a little bit more to eat.

As for the whole "They shouldn't have had the kids" mindset?  One, that fetus you screamed about being born is here and needs cared for, and two, who the hell are you to judge?  This notion so firmly rooted in the black souls and vile maws of people who think nothing bad can ever befall them.  How about you, with your three kids, two cars, and McMansion in the burbs?  What happens to you when you lose your job, cannot find another, and suddenly are selling a car, moving to an apartment, and having to wear sunglasses into your community food bank so no one sees you.  It happens.  Should we scoff at you, say you shouldn't have had those three kids?

NO.

More and more we see stories make national headlines when schools threaten their students and parents because of struggling to pay a lunch bill.  We see strangers step up and anonymously pay off an entire school district's roster of delinquent payments because there are decent souls who understand all of this - especially the part where IT IS NOT THE CHILD'S FAULT.

The most recent story to come up this past week, however, is about the ugliest tactic yet employed by a school district.

In Pennsylvania, the Wyoming West School District has sent letters to parents threatening their children will be removed from their homes.

"Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without breakfast and/or lunch. This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child's right to food," the July 9 letter reads.  "Please remit payment as soon as possible to avoid being reported to the proper authorities."

What in the actual hell?

Yes, the school district currently has roughly $20,000 in delinquent payments.  Which to be honest, spread out over the number of schools it oversees, breaks down to far smaller numbers.  But threatening a parent with having their child removed to foster care because they have $75.25 outstanding?

The letters were signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West School District, an obviously stellar human being.

The callousness, the recklessness, the abject cruelty involved here is unforgivable.  This is the equivalent of feeding the already hungry parents a bowl of emotional ebola.

These are their children.  As if the parents don't already suffer enough struggling to take care of them, to have school authorities threaten to tear apart their families?  Look, many families may not have the resources of a lot of us, but they they do not exist in some emotionless vacuum.  They love their children as passionately as do I.  They lose sleep worrying about their children.  They are proud of their children, want the best for them, and are willing to do anything to protect them.  Flat out stating that they are bad parents, worthy of being reported to CPS to have them taken from them because of a small lunch balance?  Inexcusable.

They live with enough fear without insensitive pricks piling on.

Those who actually understand this and work within the system have been very vocal in their condemnations.

"Foster care is to be utilized only when absolutely needed — when a child has been abused, is in need or has suffered a tragedy," said Luzerne County Manager David Petri. "Our foster care system is NOT to be utilized to scare parents into paying school lunch bills."

And Joanne Van Saun, Luzerne County Children and Youth Services Executive Director, stated, "It’s a total misrepresentation, a gross misrepresentation of what our agency does.  It’s just not true. We do not remove children from families for unpaid bills."

After being publicly outed for this heinous act, the school district has planned to send a "softer" letter out to those parents.  Softer, huh?  What?  Just going to threaten them with their children being tarred and feathered out on the playground?  Put in stocks out by the school flagpole? 

This kind of crap is why hunger remains such an embarrassing thing for so many.  Because those with full bellies who never lay head to pillow with a growling stomach or worrying about how they will feed their children in the morning, have zero idea or interest in understanding the plight of those who do.

It reeks of privilege.  Anytime you carelessly write off the concerns or treatment of someone, it is because it does not touch you, so it must not be a real thing.  Not trans?  Why should you care about bathroom safety for THEM?  Not black?  Why let you heart beat faster when you get pulled over for speeding?  Not hungry?  Why concern yourself with the fact that so many are?  They are obviously doing something wrong to deserve to be hungry.

Quite frankly, school lunches should be free.  If we can constantly build new football cathedrals for high school students, we can certainly provide a hot meal for the kids.  To hell with Friday Night Lights.  How about Fare Over Football?  It all comes down to what people with privilege view as important for the tax dollars they have to spend.

I have no doubt that someone will again step forward to pay the $20,000.  And that will be wonderful.  But it will not fix the problem that 1 in 6 children go to school hungry every single day. 

Just some rancid food for thought as you sit down to your Sunday brunch and bottomless mimosa.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It truly does take a village.  You may not be able to afford $20,000 to wipe a slate clean, but consider donating what you can to No Kid Hungry

In a country as prosperous as ours, 1 in 6 is shameful.

Child Rape Apologists And Their Whataboutism

Anyone paying even cursory attention to the news the past months has known the name Jeffrey Epstein.  Wealthy, connected, and a registered sex offender.

As Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown - sure to be on her way to a Pulitzer - has dissected his past, interviewed his victims, and autopsied the sweetheart deal he was given by current Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta 11 years ago, anyone with a moral code and sense of decency has been progressively sickened.

Unless you are Team MAGAt.

But I digress - as Maria would sing, "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..."

Jeffrey Epstein's predilections for underage girls has not been a secret.  In fact, for years and years, investigations have been started and thwarted, articles have been near publication, but altered after a visit and some pressure from Epstein (looking at you Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair), and countless friends, employees, and acquaintances have known and either procured for him, indulged with him, or looked the other way.

When a 53 page indictment - FIFTY THREE PAGES - of his criminal child sex history had been prepared by the FBI - this was 2007/2008, it appeared his pedophilic goose was cooked.  Enter his money and his high priced legal team who met with then prosecutor Acosta.  One meeting, and poof - 53 pages of sickening details, victim statements from upwards of 80 women and girls as young as 14 at the time, corroborations, and detailed digging, disappeared into a "non-prosecution agreement" in which he would serve a mere 13 months in a county jail with the ability to come and go for work and walks.

The deal also specified that “any potential co-conspirators” were granted immunity.  Oh, and the victims were never told.

What in the ever loving fuck?

That's right, all of his victims who had bravely come forward with their stories, despite fear of his power, influence, money, and reach, were kept in the dark about this development, all the better to not be able to legally challenge it.  Which they could/would have because it broke the law of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

Think about that.  You are a prosecutor.  You have 53 pages of details that should raise the bile to the back of your throat.  Should enrage you.  Should move you to do what you presumably entered law to do - UPHOLD IT.  And you quietly let a child sex rapist and trafficker loose.

How do you sleep at night?  Rhetorical question.  Given Acosta's rise, I would say he has slept well on a pillow of promises, money, and power.

So the years rolled on.  Turns out exactly as they had before.  Friends knew and still hung out with him.  Reporters knew but still wrote glowing articles about him. The Trump transition team knew all about him because they spent a few seconds asking if he would be a problem in terms of confirming Acosta as labor secretary.  Nah.  After all, Trump himself was great friends with him, even providing this quote for a 2002 profile piece in New York magazine, "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

One White House aide lauded his Arab connections and influence peddling abilities, casually writing off the rest with “OK, so he has a girl problem.”

As the Miami Herald was digging and publishing, Epstein defenders took to the airwaves.  Alan Derschowitz, FOX legal shitshow analyst and Epstein's attorney when the sweetheart deal was made has been particularly loquacious in Epstein's defense.  But then he was also listed in the civil suit brought by victim Virginia Giuffre who was 15 at the time she was used by these predators.  The suit stated Dershowitz “was Epstein’s attorney, close friend, and co-conspirator. Dershowitz was also a participant in sex trafficking, including as one of the men to whom Epstein lent out Plaintiff for sex.”  That suit was joined by another brought by Sarah Ransome in which she states she was repeatedly instructed to have sex with him.

Epstein's contacts, pals, buddies, business connections, etc run the gamut from Trump to Bill Clinton to Prince Andrew.  All have enjoyed his company through the decades, flown on his private jet repeatedly, and who, it stands to reason, may be very queasy the past two days.

Saturday night, after touching down in said private jet at Tetorboro Airport in New Jersey, Epstein was met and arrested by the FBI-NYPD Crimes Against Children Task Force.  He is charged with allegedly sex trafficking dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005, paying them, some as young as 14, to have sex with him, procure other young girls for him.

Add to that the details that came to light yesterday in a press conference that upon searching his $77 million manse in NYC, investigators found a "vast trove" of pictures of nude and partially nude young women and girls - many of whom appear seriously underage.  A safe was found to contain labeled discs of encounters as well. 

The indictment details his activities, how his employees would procure underage girls for him in NYC and Palm Beach, bringing them to his home to perform nude massages which would then escalate to Epstein touching them and move on to "include one or more sex acts."

"Epstein typically would also masturbate during these sexualized encounters, ask victims to touch him while he masturbated, and touch victims' genitals with his hands or with sex toys," the indictment alleges.  It also states Epstein knew that the girls were underage in part because some of the girls told him their age.  They would be paid sometimes hundreds of dollars.

Let me just interject something here - THAT DOES NOT MAKE THEM PROSTITUTES.  That makes them children who were being exploited and raped.  That so many news outlets are referring to them as underage women and that they had underage sex with him is grotesque.  THEY WERE CHILDREN.  A 14 year old is a child.  A child is not consenting.  A child is being raped.

As all of this was coming to light, and the connections to Epstein were being drawn - including Donald Trump who has his own "vast trove" of women who have come forward about his molesting, raping, exploiting them - MAGAt nation has taken to the virtual streets. 

And their whataboutism is very telling about just what kind of world they live in.

Showing up everywhere are these words, "Well, what if Bill Clinton is involved?"  The unmistakable meaning being that surely if one of the left's favorites is implicated we would defend him/her - you know, the way they do anyone in the conservasphere who is shown to be a deviant, a child rapist, a piece of shit.  I have also seen this defense: "Well, there is a big difference between a child and a 14 year old."

Seriously, this is the hill you want to die on?

Sorry, but no.  In fact, it has been a repeated and resounding no, we would not defend him from countless liberals in response to such bullshit. Including me.

You see, in the world in which I live, child sex trafficking is not a partisan issue.  It's a human issue.  And there are shit humans in every spot on the political spectrum.  You see, you simple minded, FAKE NEWS screaming, child rape apologists - it does not matter who is implicated, they need held fully accountable.  Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Santa Claus, the freaking Pope - IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER.

AGAIN, A 14 YEAR OLD IS A CHILD.

Oh, incidentally, you screaming FAKE NEWS at anything you don't like about your Orange Fuhrer doesn't make it not real.  It's just you showing your ignorant ass as someone who cares not for the rule of law, accountability, children in cages, children being used and abused, tax dollars being squandered by your hero, or justice.  It's you standing up and shouting to the world, I'M A FUCKING DUMBASS AND PROUD OF IT!  I'M JUST A PIECE OF SHIT THAT SUPPORTS AN OUTHOUSE!

I am really curious about one thing - why were you so eager to believe Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor basement - a pizza parlor that has no basement - but you are bound and determined that your heroes, proven to be decades long cronies with a pedophile and child sex trafficker, are instantly innocent?  Never mind, we all know the answer.  Just as with children in cages abused and dying under our flag, you will defend the indefensible rather than admit anyone in your orbit is corrupt.

That's the difference between you and decent society.  You are happy to ignore evidence, even that of child rape, to preserve your delusions.  We are willing to be disappointed in people and hold them firmly, fully accountable.

Whatever the fallout, whoever is swept up and incriminated in this reprehensible, decades long, casual use of underage girls as cum receptacles NEEDS DRAGGED INTO THE LIGHT AND THEN BURIED FOR THE REST OF THEIR MISERABLE LIVES.

Anyone who looks at a child and feels lust?  Die.  Your services are no longer needed.

These things happen because money is a powerful insulator from accountability.  Epstein being a billionaire with connections has allowed for the continued abuse of countless victims.  Just as Trump's money and celebrity have insulated him from true accountability EVER.

It remains to be seen just who is caught when this house of cards is demolished.  I just hope the cards are made of concrete and pulverize every last creature involved.