Yesterday, Kirstjen Nielson, White House aide who was elevated to Secretary of Homeland Security last year after John Kelly was moved to chief of staff, gave up whatever was left of her reputation yesterday by standing at the briefing room podium lying to the American people in a continuous stream.  Most infuriating is her repeating ad nauseam that the brand new, cruel policy of separating children from parents who are fleeing violence and corruption in their home countries is not a policy, but a non-existent law passed by Democrats.  This outrageous lie, whipped up by in-house white supremacist Stephen Miller and repeated continuously by Jeff Sessions and Trump himself, is shameful.  To utter it from a White House podium is inexcusable.

Let’s be clear here – Nielson is lying when she says that she is “enforcing the laws passed by Congress”.  Technically, she is correct, but her agency CREATED this problem, and then enforcing a law that doesn’t need to be used.  Here’s how she is doing that: Refugees are coming to ports of entry to ask for asylum.  They are being turned away at those ports of entry because ICE has slowed entry to a trickle.  After days of waiting on bridges and in lines, they are crossing illegally in desperation, then turning themselves in to Border Patrol agents.  THAT’S when the “zero tolerance” policy is at its most cruel; these refugees are then arrested, thus “enforcing the laws passed by Congress”, their children are taken by force because children can’t be jailed with their parents.  This problem is wholly created by Trump and sycophants, then lied about from the podium of the White House briefing room.  It’s immoral and criminal.

The UN Human Rights Office has condemned this new practice as unconscionable and declared it “state sponsored child abuse”.  Republicans have finally awoken from their gerrymandered-in coma and are now speaking out against this new policy.  However, at the eye of this storm is Kirstjen Nielson, who is blatantly lying for Donald Trump trying to get back in his good graces after privately opposing this new policy.  This is what I don’t get about people like Nielson who sell their souls to a cretin like Trump.  What do they gain from that?  Why are they clinging to likely the most immoral president in US history?  How do people like Nielson sleep at night?  How can they do this day after day?  What are they planning on doing AFTER destroying their own reputations and then being cast aside?

Whatever rationalization Nielson adopted to justify this, it’s our duty, as Americans, to hound her out of office.  Maybe we can’t get rid of Trump (yet), but we can certainly deprive him of the tools he uses to prosecute his idiotic policies and repeat his lies and enable his immoral conduct.

John HickenLooper of Colorado, a Democrat, Andrew Cuomo of New York, also a Democrat, and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Repulibcan, reversed themselves today, barring deployment of their respective National Guard troops and equipment to the border in protest of Trump’s illegal detention of thousands of asylum seekers and their children in Big Box Prisons.  Adults are finally beginning to stand up on the hind legs and say NO! to Trump’s storm trooper tactics and hostage taking.

Progress.

All of us are aware of Trump stupidly supporting arming teachers in public schools to supposedly protect little children from mass shooters who have easy access to weapons of war.  NOW, his irresponsible budget slashing is placing the same requirement on healthcare workers, counselors, and teachers working in federal prisons.  Mindless budget slashing (while handing out over a trillion dollars of tax cuts to billionaires) has created a critical shortage of prison guards in facilities housing our most dangerous criminals.

The idiocy of this cretin infesting the White House is destroying lives, dragging down the economy, and now putting professional healthcare workers and teachers in harms way, just because.

There’s a time for anger, and this is it.

In a more quaint time, government shutdowns and playing chicken with the debt limit were common tactics to take something away from people.  Now it’s committing international human rights atrocities to get what they want.  This new tactic is nothing but hostage taking.  In the 1980s, Reagan used several government shutdowns because the budget contained spending he didn’t like.  Newt Gingrich used government shutdowns trying to get slashes to Medicare, public health, and education spending.  The 2011 budget drama caused S&P to actually downgrade the US’s credit rating for the first time ever due to the irresponsibly of the Congressional Republicans’ continuous brinksmanship.  In 2013, they tried it again when brand new Senator Ted Cruz whipped up the House to shutdown the government in an effort to take healthcare away from millions of people.  All this screwing around never works, but Republicans continue using showdowns over the debt limit and budget to kill everything from healthcare, social spending, to funding Planned Parenthood.

Which brings us to now.  Donald Trump lied in a continuous stream about many, many issues, but one of his biggest lies was that he was going to build a “big beautiful wall” to keep dark-skinned people out of the country.  The most outrageous part of that promise was that, through his singular strength and negotiating prowess, he was going to make Mexico pay for it.  The notion was and is idiotic, and everyone but his biggest sycophants dismissed the promise as extreme hyperbole.  As expected, Mexico shot Trump the finger, and former president Vicente Fox makes sport of regularly poking him in the eye over the issue.

Having failed at destroying healthcare for millions of people and after blowing a gigantic multi-trillion dollar hole in the nation’s budget passing out tax cuts to billionaires, he’s now trying to keep his most outrageous promise by pushing funding in the federal budget and taking money from parks and military budgets to build his wall, but the Democrats have planted their feet saying no.  So, to put pressure on the them, Trump’s in-house white supremacist, Stephen Miller, with the help of a few other deplorables, cooked up the scheme to start holding dark skinned people hostage on the border.  As is typical for extremists, Miller miscalculated, but Trump and Jeff Sessions stupidly blundered into this political and human disaster.

Sessions defended this new hostage taking plan and continues to do so, even in the face of loud and getting louder opposition.  This tactic is also the reason that Trump’s newly assigned talking point blames the “Democrats’ terrible law” that’s forcing him to take hostages.  As we all know, there is no law.  He’s taking thousands of children hostage, in violation of international human rights laws attempting to force the Dems to fund his stupid wall.  It’s familiar territory for him, since he’s connected so closely to the Mob.  You know that line, “Cute kid – it would be a shame if something bad happened to her.”  That’s PRECISELY what Trump’s doing.  To force Dems to fund his wall, he’s doing irreparable damage to thousands of children and even more parents.

How anyone could support a politician who so regularly takes hostages is beyond me.  Such a tactic is not only immoral, it costs US taxpayers billions of dollars and destroys our standing on the world stage.  A government shutdown that merely costs jobs and damages the economy is one thing.  This tactic is literally costing lives. The Dems should stand fast, and we should back them doing that.  Like the Mob, extremists don’t compromise; they destroy and threaten until they get their way.  It’s time to take that tool away from them.

Beloveds, I am sad to tell you that Momma passed away on Friday night in her own home.  She had made a decision to cease all medication except for pain control and had been ready to go for a few days.  She was 92 and 1/2 years old.

After being with family all day, she asked her caregiver for Blue Bell ice cream.  She ate some and then told the caregiver that she was full and handed her the bowl. The caregiver took to bowl to the kitchen sink and returned to wash mom’s hands. Mom said, “I’ve had enough.” She closed her eyes and was gone within seconds. It was peaceful. I am so comforted that she got her Blue Bell.

Here’s part of her obituary:

Jean married Paul in April of 1943 in the middle of World War II, and the newlyweds travelled to California while he was serving in the Army Air Corp.  After the war, they returned to Houston where both of their families lived. As with many women of her generation, Jean was a full time wife and stay-at-home mom while her children were young.  After her children entered high school, Jean started college to become a schoolteacher.  She taught children with disabilities. She was very good at it.

Jean took up painting in her later years, and she was very good at that, too. Whether in a lush landscape of the Texas Hill Country or a moody abstract of Galveston Bay, Jean had an eye for the natural beauty of our state. Her many works hang in the homes of her children and grandchildren, where they will always be a source of comfort.

Jean’s first love was travel.  She traveled extensively around the country and made exciting trips to Europe, the Holy Land, Mexico, and a cruise to Alaska.  She proudly lived independently until her recent short hospital visit.  She enjoyed sewing, knitting, and reading.  She was active in her neighborhood association and her church.

At her request, there are  graveside services for the immediate family only.  In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Star of Hope Mission in Houston or any organization helping to reunite children with their refugee parents at the border.  “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works?”  Jame 2:14

I am going to miss her down deep hard.  I’m going to take a week or so off (unless, of course, something wild happens and I can’t stop myself from hollering) and I deeply thank my friend El Jefe for keeping the doors here open for us.

Bubba and I will be going to the Texas Democratic State Convention in Fort Worth late next week. I need to be around friends and that’s where they will be.

So, Samantha Bee calls Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***” for remaining silent while her father directs a policy that tears immigrant families apart and imprisons small children in converted big box stores.  The walls of these big box prisons actually have Soviet style murals of Trump complete with quotes from his book, The Art of the Deal.  Fake outrage over Bee’s verbal attack resulted in her forced apology for being unkind to Princess Ivanka.

Last weekend, Robert DiNiro shouted, “F*ck Trump!” several times during his few moments on stage at the Tony Awards on national television.  Again, que the right wing noise machine that whipped up fake outrage over DiNiro’s denouncement, but luckily, he doesn’t work for anyone and doesn’t care what they think.

Then came Frank Bruni of the NY Times, who did what most progressives, including Michelle and Barack Obama, do, and that’s chant the “when they go low, we go high” mantra.  His article this week tut-tutted, finger wagged, and warned ominously that getting mad and saying so will re-elect Trump and his cronies.  That advice is STUPID and exactly the tactic that got us Al Gore and John Kerry.  I’m sorry, but that is just plain wrong and stupidly puts artificial limits on good people’s ability to get pissed off.  Several of my progressive friends reposted the op-ed on Facebook, imploring all of us to take to the high road, because some mouth breathing, drooling knuckle dragger in Columbia Mississippi won’t like our anger and will decide not to vote for the Democrat.  That’s an idiotic notion.  Said mouth breathing, drooling knuckle dragger will NEVER vote for the Democrat.  Wake up.

Let’s think about what’s actually occurring every day in the United States.  Jeff Sessions, who is a lifelong hater of all people with dark-pigmented skin, has started a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal immigration and is jailing thousands of people.  Because all these people, including mothers of young children fleeing gang violence south of the border, are being jailed, their children are being torn from their parents, and imprisoned.  That should piss you off.  Ivanka Trump?  She’s using her father’s corruption to expand her own brand around the world, often using child labor, to stuff her Gucci purse full of millions.  Foreign dignitaries are pouring millions of dollars into Trump’s pockets through his hotel just down the street from the White House.  As I pointed out this week, Trump is also selling his own likeness on cheesy memorabilia peddled to the public using 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as the address of the business.  Trump’s corrupt cabinet members are working 24/7 to erase all progress made under Barack Obama while enriching themselves on the backs of the taxpayers.  He’s turned US diplomatic policy on its ear, attacking Canada as a “security risk” while French kissing the most evil and murderous dictator on the planet.

For Christ’s sake, Frank, what the hell does it take to piss you off?  Over the last 30 years, Republicans have proven that vicious anger works.  They’ve also proven that outrage over fake issues works like a charm.  That’s why you get gay bashing and racist attacks on right wing media just as election seasons get started.  That’s why the phony “war on Christmas” gins up anger among Fox Noise loyalists every year.  It works.  Keeping people outraged drives them to the polls.  Democrats don’t get that, and never have.  The result?  Republicans control all three branches of the federal government.  They control 33 governors’ mansions, and 66 of 99 legislative chambers.  Radical gerrymandering has cemented in these gains to protect them from changing demographics.

On Thursday, one writer got it right. Drew Magary of GQ Magazine hit Bruni right between the eyes, calling his nonsense nonsense.  He said of Bruni, “…once a wonderful restaurant critic and is now one of the most singularly inane political columnists working today…”.  And his rant was a long drive straight down the middle.  He put it this way:

“Bruni is far from alone in smarmily crying out THIS IS WHY TRUMP WON! every time a liberal gets angry about something they ought to be angry about. It is the laziest, stupidest theory, one that posits that the only possible way to take down Trump from his evildoing is to keep your voice so quiet that everyone else can opt out of hearing it. It’s also a clear case of naked pandering from newspapers that skew liberal but still yearn—whether for financial reasons or out of sheer vanity—to appear fair to both sides. This is how you end up with two sets of rules for each party. Republicans can be openly racist, nationalist, corrupt, and horny. Democrats have to be GOOD, because Americans apparently crave goodness even though 60 million of them voted for Donald Trump.”