Donald Trump claims he came to Texas and saw the “horror & devastation” firsthand.

Of course, he did not.

Not even close.

So, Sarah Huckabee Sanders explains how it is that Trump saw devastation firsthand.

He met with a number of state and local officials who are eating, sleeping, breathing the Harvey disaster. He talked extensively with the governor, who certainly is right in the midst of every bit of this, as well as the mayors from several of the local towns that were hit hardest. And detailed briefing information throughout the day yesterday talking to a lot of the people on the ground. That certainly is a firsthand account.

Okay, would somebody please tell me the definition of secondhand account because it got lost some damn place.

Objection.  Hearsay, your Honor.

The only thing Trump witnessed in Texas was our Governor and … wait, wait, I got it.  Firsthand horror and devastation.

As I am sure you’ve heard by now, Robert Mueller has a triple digit IQ.

Trump pardoned Arpaio for one reason  – to send a hollering message that he is gonna pardon anyone indicted by Mueller.  Oops.

Mueller can fix that.

Mueller is teaming up with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering,” he notes.

Trump can pardon anybody facing charges from Mueller, but not from Schneiderman. It is probably significant that Mueller is letting this fact be known to Trump’s inner circle. Trump’s biggest source of leverage over Mueller just disappeared.

Checkmate.

Arkema Group, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, warned us yesterday that their chemical plant, 30 miles from Houston, was likely to explode this morning because the plant has been without electricity since Sunday.  As a precaution, a one and half mile area around the plant was evacuated.

Early this morning the first in what is expected to be several explosions sent plumes of smoke in the air.

Brock Long, administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Thursday that evacuations are based on “plume modeling,” which is used to predict the geographic extent of a hazard area from an explosion.

“By all means, the plume is incredibly dangerous,” Long said of what’s occurring in Crosby.

However ….

Company officials said the smoke is believed to be a “nontoxic irritant,” authorities added.

This morning, the CEO of the company responded on tv — “Toxicity is a relative thing.”

No it is not.  Either it’s gonna hurt you or it ain’t.  And whether it hurts you or kills you ain’t even relative — it’s one of the other.

Remember when Texas decided it was not going to monitor chemical plants any longer because that was too heavy a burden on free enterprise?  So this right here is your Dan Patrick Memorial Toxic Plume.

Well howdy doody, I smiled first thing this morning.

California Senator Kamala Harris (D) announced during a town hall on Wednesday that she would support Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s (I-Vt.) “Medicare for All” bill, which would institute a single-payer health insurance system.

“I intend to co-sponsor the ‘Medicare for All’ bill because it’s just the right thing to do,” Harris announced Wednesday at a town hall in Oakland.

Indeed it is.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s also the politically smart thing to do. It’s damn time that Democrats stood for something except election.

She will change the conversation and that’s a good thing.

In his New York Times column this week, David Brooks dubs a rising segment of the GOP as White Identitarian.  The identity of this group was  complicated in its development, but straightforward in its result – overt racism.  White Identitarians may or may not be simply racist; its worse than that.  This group, which has risen from 6% of the party in 2005 to 40% today apply minority standards to themselves.  What this means is that these white people feel discriminated against and are aggrieved by that perception.  They want minority standards applied to themselves, even though they are in the majority.  An example of this behavior is the White Lives Matter folks that has emerged to oppose Black Lives Matter.

Like many cultish like groups, White Identitarians reinforce their own belief that they’re being treated unfairly by talking only to each other and getting their “news” from propaganda outlets that repeat that myth.  The idiocy of this belief reveals itself when these folks say something really stupid to normal people resulting in mockery. For example, they believe the term “old white guy” is actually racist and/or sexist.  Saying that is silly, of course, but these folks actually believe it and get even more offended when someone like me laughs at them.

The dangerous element of this belief?  Donald Trump is playing to White Identitarians giving rise to overt racist behavior such as we witnessed in Charlottesville a few weeks ago.  Overt racists have taken control of the GOP, and radical gerrymandering has put these overt racists (and morons) in positions of power in Washington and state capitals all over the country.  It’s tearing the GOP, and indeed, the country, apart at its racial seems and needs to be exposed for what it is – white supremacy.  Period.

How do you fight this?  Head on.  You have to call racism racism.  This is not dealt with by equivocation and the “both sides” argument.  Like Brooks says in this column – white identitarianism is noxious.  It is poisoning the GOP from within and will destroy our democracy if not stomped out quickly.