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.

I didn’t realize that Trump has a new reality television series starting next season, but Colbert got the scoop and announced it tonight –

He leaked the storyline which is based on a classic Shakespearean tragedy that expresses the dichotomy between a talented American actress who meets and marries a British Royal and a jealous, petty American stalker who hates her because…she’s happy and he’s a miserable dick.

Update at the bottom.

Trump embarrassed himself (and us) on the first day of his visit to the UK, ranting on Twitter about boycotting AT&T over CNN, attacking Meghan Merkle, and generally being the buffoon in the most sophisticated and proper society on the planet.  For those expecting more faux pas, Trump didn’t disappoint tonight.  We know that Trump dresses like a soup sandwich, wearing dumpy suits, cheap Made in China clown-length ties, and ill fitting everything.  Let’s face it – a seventy plus fat guy who lives on Big Macs, fries, and soft drinks pretty much looks like crappola in virtually anything he puts on.  But tonight, the guy who describes himself as “really, really rich” looked like he rented his white tie and tails from the aisle with the flashing blue light at Kmart.  He appeared tonight looking like some overweight gamer wearing a Fred Astaire costume to a Halloween party at the local YMCA.  His appearance, especially alongside Prince Charles was laugh out loud funny.  To wit:

Notice the white vest, known as a “waistcoat” in white tie parlance.  Look at Prince Charles, and the look at His Orangeness.  See the difference?  Trump’s waistcoat, obviously designed for someone who’s ACTUALLY 6′ 3″, hangs down a good 4″ below his tailcoat.  Prince Charles is fitted correctly, with his waistcoat, not bought off the rack, slightly shorter than the front of his tailcoat.  It’s a small, but very telling faux pas.  Trump passes himself off as an upper class elite billionaire who’s an expert in all things, including technology and climate science.  The problem is, he doesn’t know shit about proper formal dress, and obviously ignored any advice to the contrary.  For contrast, here’s how past presidents have worn the look.

I know this is nitpicking, but our female politicians suffer this criticism on a daily basis.  I find that all’s fair, so Trump deserves mockery for desperately begging for mockery for the way he’s dressed.

UPDATE:

One of our readers sent in this correction to the royal photo:

In a moment of bag of horse manure stupid, 97 year old Lila Cockrell, former mayor of San Antonio, was turned away by officials from the polls for the mayoral runoff last Thursday because she didn’t have the proper ID.  Texas has one of the most idiotic voter ID suppression laws in the country.  For example, you can vote with your gun license, but can’t vote with your University of Texas ID.  The law is an incredible burden for the elderly and economically disadvantaged, as Republicans have made voter fraud suppression a key plank in their platform power grab.  Shockingly, the courts have often gone along (or delayed decision until it’s too late) over voter suppression and radical gerrymandering.

To make this story even more enraging, Bexar County voting official Jacque Callanen said (in his most Nazi-like apologist voice), “It was uncomfortable for the election officials to tell her, ‘No.’ Obviously, they knew who she was,” Callanen said. “But the law is the law. The election officials did what they’re supposed to do.”  Hey, Jacque – when the law turns away a qualified voter who everyone in the place knows is qualified over “the law”, the goddam law is wrong and needs to be struck down.  If Ray Charles were alive today, even he could see that, dumbass.