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.

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.”

CBS is reporting that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s spokesperson who, more than any other WH spokesperson in history, sold her soul to daily stand before the American people and spew lies and hate in a continuous stream, has apparently found her limit.  She’s out by the end of the year.  Her underling, Raj Shah, will follow her out the door.  I can just imagine who’s next. Unfortunately, Chuck Barris, aged host of the now defunct Gong Show, died last year.

God knows what we get next.

As we all are painfully aware, Trump wrecked the G7 summit by attacking our closest allies, and picked a fight with Canada over trade tariffs.  On top of all that?  Trump’s reasons to attack Canada is 100% based on lies.  Steve Rattner was on MoJoe this morning and talked about the idiocy of Trump’s tariffs.  Here are the facts:

We don’t have a trade deficit, we have a trade surplus with Canada. Also, Canada’s tariffs are the LOWEST in the developed world. Third, Canada’s tariff on dairy is a tiny piece of trade between the two countries. Lastly, since Trump put tariffs on Canadian lumber, price IN THE US have increased 27%.

You can watch it here.  It’s very informative, even with Joe S. interrupting Rattner every 15 seconds which is his most irritating habit.

Article I, Sec. 8 – 

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

The Founders established a balance of power that limited the power of the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches.  Until gerrymandering, the terminal cancer on democracy, the system worked well.  Now, the legislative branch is fossilized, full of ignorant, corrupt morons who see their only job as keeping their job.  In the House, the ruling party picks its constituents.  In the Senate, protections of the minority have been stripped away.  The resulting political Frankenstein is a Congress that literally does nothing, including setting international trade policy and war-making.  Because of this abrogation of constitutional authority, our entire governmental stability now depends on the character and basic decency of the person sitting in the Oval Office.

And then came Trump.  Because our system of government depends completely on the basic decency of the person occupying the office of president, as well as an adherence to over two centuries of tradition and custom, we’re not prepared to counter the actions of a president completely devoid of character and who is corrupt to the core. Combine that corruption with the abrogation of congressional authority, we are now completely exposed to the catastrophe that we witnessing today.  The President of the United States, unchecked by offsetting institutions, is actively undermining longstanding alliances, destroying trade relations among allies, and advocating alliance with our biggest enemy, Russia.

And ALL of these actions by Trump and his enablers are based on lies.  Our allies are NOT trading unfairly.  The markets among the major economic powers are open and free.  All trade agreements, at least before the regime of Cheeto Jesus, were openly negotiated.  Trump is poking our longstanding allies in the eye for no other reason than propping up the support of his ignorant, mouth-breathing, bigoted base.

If our members of Congress don’t stand up on their hind legs and stop this lunatic, he’s likely do set off a global trade war…FOR NO REASON.  Call your senator and congressman and tell them to stop screwing around and do their goddam job.  Our democracy depends on it.

We all saw it.  In the midst of tragedy, even as law enforcement was gathering evidence from the Santa Fe High School shooting, some idiot shows up wearing a Trump MAGA cap, carrying an American flag and openly carrying a semi-auto handgun.  When asked by the press what he was doing, his answer was, “Making America Great Again,” and that, “‘God bless y’all’ goes a long way.”  Somehow, in the face of crisis and indescribable grief, this tone-deaf goofball actually believed that bringing a gun and American flag to the scene of massive violence was somehow “comforting” to the families of murder victims.  Normal people reacted to his actions as you’d expect, with “WTF are you thinking?”

It’s easy to dismiss this guy as just another ignorant and supremely insensitive Trumpist jerk who has no common sense upon which to draw.  While those descriptors are certainly understandable, it’s actually worse than that; by openly carrying a firearm and an American flag at the scene of a tragedy, he actually believed he was helping.  He lives in that upside-down world where common sense has been displaced with idiotic dogma bred from long exposure to brainwashing.  The echo chamber in which people like this fellow live pumps out so much bullshit in a continuous stream that it actually bends reality for them.  Down is up, up is down, the sky is green, and the sun rises in the west.  Pouring mining waste into streams and spewing carbon dioxide into the air is “freedom”.  Cutting taxes increases revenue and strengthens the nation.  Money equals speech; corporations are people.  Climate scientists are conspiring against American business to help China.  Googling nonsense about vaccines invalidates decades of immunology research.  The tsunami of guns in America increases safety even though EVERY objective peer-reviewed study concludes the opposite. Consensus conclusions by the ENTIRE international intelligence community are dismissed as anti-Trump conspiracy; eliminating voting rights protects democracy; frolicking with prostitutes and porn stars is forgivable if you’re a member of the correct tribe.  Israel must be protected from the Palestinians so it can rebuild the Temple Mount and Jesus can come back.

This clown’s behavior in public is a textbook example of the shocking result of brainwashing.  Relying purely on the bullshit poured into his head, he engaged in behavior that jarred normal people.  I’m reminded of another example of this behavior, the goofy “Ride for the Constitution” in 2013, whipped up by talk radio screamers using birtherism as its basis during the Cruz-induced government shutdown where over the road truckers were encouraged to drive their rigs all the way to Washington to drive around the beltway.  The premise was that said truckers would somehow bring DC to a standstill and inspire Americans to stand up and “remove” Barack Obama, John McCain, and other prominent politicians from office.  In the end, all the truckers accomplished was raising the profile of the talk radio screamers and burning a lot of expensive diesel fuel for nothing. After a weekend of driving in the rain, they all declared victory and went back to working for subsistence wages to pay the fuel bill and try to feed their families.

It’s really easy to mock people like the MAGA guy and the truckers burning expensive fuel for nothing, but their beliefs and actions are alarming.  We have an entire segment of our society who believe that bullshit is filet mignon.  They act, AND VOTE, against their own interests.  They vote for carnival barkers like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  They are the classic “useful idiots” who are so ignorant of actual facts that they threaten our democracy by supporting anti-democratic oligarchies, voting away their own rights to those who spent billions to seize and maintain an iron grip on our democracy.  Democracy dies in darkness?  Certainly, but that darkness is created by institutionalized ignorance.