Today, at the burial site of 9,388 American heroes on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, Donald Trump read a speech clearly written by a staffer about the bravery of all those who lived and died on Normandy’s beaches on June 6, 1944 and thereafter.  The bar for Trump is now so low that if he gets through a speech without dropping his pants and wiggling Little Donald at the audience, it’s considered “a major success” and “very presidential”.  He was simply awful, intoning his speechwriter’s words in the cadence of that old Catholic priest droning through the liturgy, just trying to get through one more mass before he drops dead behind the altar and goes to claim that big reward in the sky.  The media gave him props; personally I was having to resist to not destroy my 58″ Samsung flatpanel with my 12 gauge.

The most disgusting event today, though, was Trump’s unbelievably insensitive behavior during this entire event.  From tweeting insults at Bette Midler last night to trashing Robert Mueller and Nancy Pelosi on Fox Noise during an interview ON THE SITE OF THE NORMANDY CEMETERY. Trump embarrassed all Americans, especially in context to his childish behavior and comments to Fox Noise on live television.

Once again, Trump makes the Americans looks like a band of idiots; he’s become a global embarrassment to all of us.

Since his first day infesting the WH, Trump has been trying to produce a militaristic super duper patriotic ceremony to celebrate…himself.  The Pentagon succeeded in shutting down his Soviet style military parade last year, but now he’s decided to co-opt the most American of American holidays and make it about himself.  The National Park Service has announced that, at Trump’s order, they are turning a traditional non-partisan event of American music and fireworks into an event centered on His Orangeness, including giving a speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and rearranging the entire holiday celebration to put himself in the middle of it.

My response to Trump trying to take over OUR HOLIDAY to make it about himself?  Fuck you.  I refuse to participate in any way, not even turning on my television for it.  Enough of this nonsense is enough.  He’s turned the entire US government into a reality television show starring him, his criminal cronies, and his entire fucking family.  I’m sick of it. Congress needs to stop this narcissistic asshole in his tracks, get him out of office, and then return our government to some level of normalcy.

For God’s sake, I want my country back from insanity and cheesy reality television.

In a shocking shift that is now appearing complete, the DOJ has morphed from law enforcement to protect the United States to DOP (Defense of the President) against the United States.  Starting under Jeff Sessions, and driven home under Bill Barr, the DOP has turned over 150 years of Constitutional law on its head.  Up until 2 years ago, the DOJ strictly interpreted the emoluments clause, even extending it beyond the president to others in the federal government from receiving ANY funds or gifts from a foreign government.  No more.  After several lawsuits were filed asserting that Trump receiving funds from foreign governments through his hotels and golf courses, his lawyers said that this is perfectly OK since those funds are received by his company in a “commercial” transaction.  They interpreted the emoluments clause as meaning direct payments to the president for actual action from the president; in other words, directly paid bribes.

The DOP has now adopted that very same position, turning 150 years of precedent on its head.  Now that the DOP is 100% Trumpland, along with the Senate, the courts are our only hope, but even that is now corrupted with the radical judges that Trump has succeeded in getting seated on the SCOTUS after McConnell stole a seat in 2016.  The result is that We the People are now completely exposed to Trump’s corruption.  The executive branch is broken; the DOP is corrupted and now representing Trump personally; the legislative branch is broken with the Senate in Trump’s pocket; the SCOTUS is corrupt with grossly unqualified judges political operatives sitting on the court.

What’s needed is nothing short of a complete overhaul of the laws, traditions, and statutes surrounding governance of all three branches of the federal government from campaign finance to ethics rules to term limits for EVERYONE.  Beto has just presented a plan for a constitutional amendment that limits house and senate members to 12 years, and SCOTUS judges to 18.  I would say that’s a good start.

When I was seven years old, I was enamored of the Apollo Program and aware that the President was in charge of the country, but not yet politically savvy enough to understand what it meant that he was Nixon. So I wrote a letter to the President asking how to become an astronaut, and inviting him to dinner if he was ever in town.

The White House responded with what I now know to be a standard letter and package of promotional material, and NASA kindly did the same. By the end of it all, I felt pretty important, but also understood I had to get through at least college before they’d strap me to the top of a Saturn V.  I was seven.

Meet Georgia Clark, an English teacher at Fort Worth’s Amon Carter-Riverside High since 1998. Her twitter handle, @Rebecca1939, has been recently deleted, but seems to suggest she’s 80 years old, or perhaps she’s enamored of the year Hitler invaded Poland. She claims to have edited her college newspaper in the Vietnam era.  Suffice to say, she’s somewhere north of seven years old.

Georgia had to delete her Twitter account, and change her phone numbers, because she thought she was sending a private Twitter Direct Message (DM) to Hair Twitler, the imPOTUS himself, which contained both her home and cell numbers in case he wanted to reach her, urgently. Sadly, Georgia’s messages were transmitted for the whole world to see.

What the world saw was racism.

You see, Georgia was completely disgusted by all the Mexicans ruining her school and her country. Her school had been “taken over” by “illegal students from Mexico.” She had “contacted the feds… and the person I spoke with did not want to… even listen to me.” (Small wonder.)  She needed “protection from recrimination should I report it to the authorities… the Mexicans refuse to honor our flag,” she whined.  “Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated.”

What happened next mystified her. “I asked for help…what I received was an alarming tweet from someone identifying himself as one of your assistants… followed by a second tweet with the f word…” While that certainly sounds like a Trump assistant, Georgia cannily “deleted” the tweets and reported them to Twitter.  Never mind that you can’t delete someone else’s tweet (you can block or mute the sender) but Twitter-savvy does not seem to belong to Georgia’s skill set.

What is in her skill set is a history of racist remarks to students  in a district that is 63% Hispanic.  Her tweets have included reminding Twitler of his promise to build a wall. She was suspended and reassigned from another high school after referring to the student body as “Little Mexico” and separating her class with non-Hispanic kids on one side referred to as Americans, and the kids on the other side as Mexico. Once a child asked for a bathroom break; she demanded to see his papers.

Texas once had laws that denied funding for undocumented children, and some public school districts attempted to charge them tuition to make up for the lost funds.  But in 1982, the Supreme Court struck all that down in a 5-4 ruling in Plyler v Doe.

Undaunted by settled law, Georgia’s not-so-secret messages ended up insisting to the President of the United States, “I really do need a contact here in Fort Worth who should be investigating and removing the illegals that are in the public school system.”

Georgia Clark, code name: rebecca1939, high school English teacher by day, secret ICE agent evenings and weekends.

I was seven.

What’s her excuse?

Happily, this evening, after an hour of public commentary, the Fort Worth ISD voted 8-0 to strap her to a Saturn V.  Georgia Clark was terminated for cause.

Just like in the Robin Williams’ movie, Awakenings, comatose patients in the Senate came out of their Trumpist comas long enough to speak out against Trump’s latest power grab that would destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of economic growth for no good reason.  His idiotic tariff against Mexican imports over illegal immigration is one of Stephen Miller’s (Trump’s resident white supremacist) worst yet, so bad, in fact, that the comatose have risen to finally say no.  It will be interesting now if Trump is dumb enough to push it to a vote.

I’m popping popcorn and pulling a few beers out of the fridge for this one.

The Democratic Party race to the 2020 nomination to face Orange Julius Cheeser will kick off with their first debate at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami, on the evenings of June 26-27. Yes, it’s a two-day extravaganza of wannabes, has-beens, never-wases, also-rans and contenders hosted by NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, all children of NBCUniversal, of the House of Comcast.

The First of His Name

Speaking of ’20, that’s the number of candidates who will be invited to the debate, 10 for each of the nights. Assuming that no one else decides to declare for the nomination in the next three weeks, that means that there will be 4 candidates of the current two dozen who will spend the two nights tweeting butt-hurt from the sidelines.  That is not as bad as it seems, because the top guns in the middle of the actual furball are only going to get about 10 minutes each on average to stand out from the madding crowd.

Some broke, some addled, four out

Who gets an invitation depends on polling and an odd measurement of “grass roots” support. For polling, a candidate must poll more than 1% three times in “qualified” polls, which encompass an array of media and polling giants, including FOX News but NOT RRRRRasmussen! The polls can either be national surveys or from any of the early states: IA, NH, SC, NV.

So far, 20 candidates have reached this threshold. This is the first decider.

If more than 20 candidate qualify via polling, grass roots fundraising is the next determinant. This is measured by unique donors to a campaign: a minimum of 65,000 comprising at least 200 donors from 20 different states. For this reason, you may see an onslaught of requests for micro-donations to micro-candidacies over the next week, as only 13 campaigns have reached the 65k mark.

Lookin’ at you, Mike Gravel!

Further tie-breakers are almost as complicated to calculate as the NFL Wild Card spot, but still rely on these two basic measures in varying combinations. The final date to have reached qualifying status in either measure is next Thursday, June 13.  Candidates will be assigned to a night randomly, thus avoiding any “kiddie table” talk; but, sadly, the “clown car” comparison will remain apt.

Selfie: all the Dems who think they can win

What all this all but guarantees is that anyone in the game right now, with even the faintest of chances, will have an opportunity to run to every medium they can reach crying “I was robbed!” and that practically nothing will be resolved prior to Detroit, on July 30-31, when they get to do it all over again.