"The chosen one."

You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe that God wanted trump to be president. But don't laugh, that is exactly what Sarah Huckabee Sanders told a Christian broadcasting station recently. 

If God really planned to give us trump as president, God really has a sick way of showing love for the people she created. Atheist all over the world must be saying, I told you so. 

Still, I never understand when folks say God wanted a particular outcome and not another. I mean some white Christian conservatives hated Obama, and yet he was president for eight years.Did God give us Obama as well? Did God put democrats in the House these past mid-terms by helping them to take so many seats from republicans? I mean all this God love from right-wingnuts just doesn't make sense when she has been throwing them so much shade recently.

The funny thing is that trump himself has embraced this farcical mantra that he is some kind of religious man of God. So much so that he is doing dangerous things such as speaking out for  bible literacy tests in public schools. This from a man who couldn't even quote his favorite bible verse when asked. (He literally made up his own passage in the bible.)

 I am quite sure the last time Mr. trump touched a bible was when he accidentally touched one on a night stand while in a hotel room with one of his jump-offs.  It's kind of ironic that a man who has cheated on numerous wives, and has been accused of rape, is the religious leader that Christian conservatives choose to embrace.

But hey, to each his or her  own.

 "I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president," Sanders said, according to CBN News. "That's why he's there and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about."

I have a verse for Sarah. It's from the book of John: "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 

The truth part is going to be a little tough for the flock . 

American heresy.

The following essay is must read for those of us living in trump's America.

The Field Negro education series continues.

"God doesn’t bless America.

That’s not how this works.

I’m sorry to break it to you, Bible Belt Christians—but that’s just how it is.

I know this kinda wrecks the convenient narrative you’ve been working for the past 60 or so years (and hitting especially hard the past eighteen months), but honestly that nasty bit of heresy has done enough damage already and it needs to go. It’s straight-up of the devil.

I’m not sure where you’re getting your taglines and hat slogans from, but I know it isn’t from the Bible. I know it isn’t from your coveted and regularly trotted out John 3:16:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God loved the world.

God is in the world-loving business—not the America-blessing business.

You remember the world, don’t you; that massive, spinning sphere of 7.6 billion disparate human beings: brown people, Muslims, LGBTQ folks, Atheists, shithole countries—and lots and lots of non-English speaking, non-Americans?

Check out the Old and New Testaments again.

Read through the Gospels a few times.

Use any translation you’d like:

No America First.
No Making America Great Again (or at all.)
No flags or national anthems to pledge allegiance to.
A few other bits of news from the Scriptures:
Jesus was born in the Middle East.
He didn’t speak English.
He wasn’t white.
He wasn’t Evangelical.
He wasn’t a Republican.
He wasn’t American.
Heck, he wasn’t even Christian.

Jesus was a Rabbi who spent his days as an itinerant street preacher, living off the generosity of strangers and speaking in parables about a new “Kingdom of God:'” a radical way of living where the poor were cared for, the oppressed freed, and the outcasts welcomed in.

Jesus came to usher in a countercultural kind of interdependent community, in direct opposition to the power-wielding Roman Empire he stepped into. It was a diverse, barrier-breaking, border-transcending, nation-defying movement of generosity and mutual affection. It had nothing to do with blessing a Government or building an army—or creating a gated community of white folks in North America two thousand years in the future.

To claim that America was at all the point of the Gospels is flat-out heresy.

To assume any God-ordained supremacy based on religion, nation of origin, pigmentation, orientation, or native tongue—is a perversion of the work of Jesus and idolatry of the worst kind.

I’m sorry to break all this bad news to you. I understand the actual words of the Gospel are problematic, given the story you’re selling to those whose fear you’re leveraging in America right now.

It’s impossible to be devoted to the Jesus of the Scriptures, while refusing refugees, expelling immigrants, vilifying brown people, worshiping political power, guarding borders, and neglecting the poor—which is exactly the point.

As long as you continue to conflate God and America, you’re going to be whitewashing the Good News, shrinking God into your own image, and bastardizing the message of Jesus in ways that can only be described as fully and violently heretical.

If your God is America—you need a bigger God." [Source]

Go ahead and pass the offering plate for John Pavlovitz. 

Did he get a Whopper from Burger King?

I am glad that they finally caught the little monster who murdered five people in Louisiana. Apparently he was on his way to see his grandmother and to murder her as well.

Most of us were not surprised to see that he was taken alive. Because, well , he was white.
Let's face it, had Dakota Theriot looked like Treyvon Martin, we would be celebrating how law enforcement officials in Virginia saved taxpayers money by putting down the little monster.

Picture this. Theriot approached the scene where he was captured with his gun drawn and pointed at law enforcement officials, and he was still taken alive. Keep in mind that they already knew that he had already killed five people, was "extremely dangerous", and still they couldn't kill the monster who looked like the boy next door. I mean he could be one of their sons for crying out loud.
 
This of course is nothing new. The most recent example is that of Zephen Xaver.  All he did was slaughter five innocent human beings in a Florida bank before calling 911 to come and take him peacefully. (A wall wouldn't have kept him out, either. He was one of "us".) Of course, as was expected, law enforcement officials did just that.

The running joke in the black online community is that whenever we hear about one of these shootings, we can tell the race of the perp depending on whether he was taken alive or not. This has always been the case, but we really started to pay attention after Dylann Roof murdered those nine innocent church goers in South Carolina. After his horrific crime, he was incredibly brought a Whopper from Burger King by law enforcement officials before being arrested.

Imagine if you are the parents of Tamir Rice and have to watch all of this kind of stuff go down. He was only 12 years old when he was shot and killed by law enforcement officials for playing with a toy gun in a park. Contrast his treatment with that of the animals mentioned above. 

His only crime was being born black in America. There will be no trip to Burger King and a Whopper for him. 

*Pic from npr.org.

Caption Saturday.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: I swear she moved on me like a bitch

Pic from newsweek.com

The Marie Antoinette crew.

             These are tough times in America for a lot of people. I really feel for those poor federal workers who are about to lose a second paycheck because Mr. trump is holding them hostage for his vanity wall.

Of course we know that Mr. trump and his out of touch aides have no clue what ordinary working class people are going through. They have been having one let them eat cake moment after another.

They have claimed that this shutdown should be like a "paid vacation", and that all working class families who are struggling to put food on their table need to do is to make "adjustments." Go figure.

Today, Wilbur Ross, who is worth almost a billion dollars, suggested that all those federal workers who are working should just go to the bank or a credit union and tell their local banker to break them off. Poor Wilbur said that he didn't understand why these people are going to food banks to get food.
His leader was not better. While trying to back up Ross, Mr. trump declared that local banks and vendors would work with the unpaid workers.

I am not sure what universe these people live in. But here in the real world you just can't walk into the local bank and tell the banker to float you a few thousand dollars and you are good for it. You can't go to  the landlord and tell him that you will take care of your past-due rent as soon as the government opens. The landlord has bills too.

Today, a trump spokesperson was asked if the president was concerned about a terrorist attack or a plane going down because of trump's vanity wall project. She wouldn't answer the question. Instead, she chose to give us the usual deflection.

And the trump family members are still throwing us cake scraps from their 18k gold-plated table.

"Lara Trump’s comments came during an interview this week with digital news network Bold TV, after she was asked what she’d say to people missing paychecks.

She said, 'Listen, this is, it’s not fair to you, and we all get that, but this is so much bigger than any one person,...”' 

This stupid useless border wall isn't bigger than anything. The president told us that Mexico would pay for it, and that it would be a great  concrete walled structure across the Southern border. He lied! And the scary thing is that when he told his gullible supporters that lie, he knew that he was lying and they fell for it. Some of those same supporters are now struggling and trying to keep food on the table. They are having second thoughts about voting for the New York con man, because their stomachs are growling and their bills are piling up.

I feel their pain.

Sadly, the man they voted for and his aides can't say that. 

*Pic from businessinsider.com





   

The Covington Catholic spin, and America's willingness to buy into it.

• 

I am not sure who little Ted Cruz and his friends hired for their PR campaign and damage control tour, but whoever it is deserves a bonus.

There he was on NBC with Samantha Guthrie, trying to play the hero, and looking just like the boy next door. His MAGA hat no doubt tucked away with all his baseball cards and Boy Scout awards.

Now, because of a video showing four crazed Black Israelites (more on them in a minute) shouting at these school boys, we are supposed to believe that THEY were threatened, and that THEY were the ones who had to stand their ground against racism and intimidation. Poor little Ted Cruz was taunting that Native American, but he was merely standing HIS ground.   And America is buying it. Folks have deleted tweets, news outlets have retracted stories, and talking heads are saying that we owe the boys an apology for "jumping to conclusions".  I beg to differ.

We all saw the video, and every person of color who has lived on this earth longer than 24 hours knows what was going on. We know now who those kids were. We have seen them all before. Just look at some of those old Jim Crow era pictures of racists taunting and harassing civil rights workers and freedom riders, and you will see them again.

It's not like these kids and this school didn't have a history. Listen to some of the things they were saying on the tape, watch their behavior again as they circled around those Native Americans and mocked their tribal dance. Tell me again if you think that they were just poor little kids being heckled by those evil Black Israelites. And as for those Black Israelites; they are in every major city in America, and they hassle and harass  black folks and damn near everyone else on a regular basis. I have been harassed by them for simply walking by with a white co-worker. I was called a Tom and a Coon along with some other choice words. It's par for the course with those folks. They might yell and scream, but they are harmless. Most white and black folks who have lived in places with more than one stoplight would know this.  For the Covington Catholic kids to say that they turned on this group of Native Americans because they were being harassed by four Black Israelites is ludicrous. And what's sad is that a lot of folks have bought into the spin. (I see you CNN.)

Now, not surprisingly, they are being invited to the White House for a sit down with their grand leader. This is America in 2019. Act like a racist ignorant boor in the nation's capital, and you get invited to meet the Boor In Chief. Mr. trump says that the kids were treated "unfairly" by the media. But the media was simply reporting (before all the spin) what actually happened.

Of course, if you believe David French, this is what's happening as well:

"Last year, conservative wives looked at the furious attack on Kavanaugh and thought, "That could be my husband." Now conservative moms look at the wild attempt to destroy the Covington kids and think, "That could be my son.". 

Well mother, maybe if you didn't raise your son to be a bigot and a misogynistic asshole, things like this wouldn't be happening to him. 

*Pic from huffingtonpost.com

Land of the bigots.

 I don't know about the rest of you, but when I was a kid in high school I spent most my time chasing girls, playing sports, and trying to stay on top of my classes by hitting my books when necessary. What I wasn't doing, or wouldn't be doing if I was a kid growing up in America, would be going to my nation's capital with a bunch of religious extremist and anti-choice wackos, to bully and make fun of a Native American war hero, who was simply exercising his First Amendment right, and trying to defuse what might have been a very ugly situation between two groups of protesters. 

Most people of conscience were disgusted to see those high school boys put their bigotry and ignorance on display by surrounding and mocking that Native American musician (a Vietnam veteran), while wearing their MAGA hats. (The new symbol of hate in America) The incident and the imagery that went along with it, is indicative of where we are as a country when it comes to racism. Most people thought that racism and bigotry would die with the old racists and bigots who inhabit parts of our country. Of course this would be wishful thinking on their part. (Some things have not changed.)Thanks to a president who embraces said bigotry and hatred, and their parents who support him, a lot of young people in this country are no different than the old heads who wore sheets and hung black men from trees back in the day. They are keeping alive a long legacy of bigotry and intolerance that unfortunately will not die until they do.

Finally, tomorrow is the day we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. in this country. Ironically another man named King has exposed the republican party for the hypocrites that they are when it comes to matters of race. Some of them have finally denounced  Steve King, but you have to wonder why they denounced King and not the leader of their party ,who has not denounced the aforementioned Mr. King, and who has embraced the very same racist principles that he stands for. 

Steve King has been a racist for a very long time. He has been a racist in plain sight, and no one in the republican party ever called him out on his racism until now.

 I am glad they are finally speaking up (better late than never), but what took them so long? And it would go a long way if the leader of the "party of Lincoln" would openly denounce him as well. 

Of course we are not holding our breath. Because as we can see from the way those young men acted in Washington, that the president still has a large following who wants him to remain just the way he is.       

Caption Saturday.

•  

I need a caption for this pic. 

Example: Little Ted Cruz and the MAGA Brigade show how to hate in 2019.  

 

Is it time for the I word?

Now that we know that it's quite possible that Mr. trump instructed his lawyer to lie to Congress, and that if true, he would be guilty of suborning perjury, the following editorial from The Atlantic is required reading.   

"On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.

Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.

This is not a partisan judgment. Many of the president’s fiercest critics have emerged from within his own party. Even officials and observers who support his policies are appalled by his pronouncements, and those who have the most firsthand experience of governance are also the most alarmed by how Trump is governing.

“The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naïveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate,” the late senator and former Republican presidential nominee John McCain lamented last summer. “The president has not risen to the mantle of the office,” the GOP’s other recent nominee, the former governor and now senator Mitt Romney, wrote in January.
The oath of office is a president’s promise to subordinate his private desires to the public interest, to serve the nation as a whole rather than any faction within it. Trump displays no evidence that he understands these obligations. To the contrary, he has routinely privileged his self-interest above the responsibilities of the presidency. He has failed to disclose or divest himself from his extensive financial interests, instead using the platform of the presidency to promote them. This has encouraged a wide array of actors, domestic and foreign, to seek to influence his decisions by funneling cash to properties such as Mar-a-Lago (the “Winter White House,” as Trump has branded it) and his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Courts are now considering whether some of those payments violate the Constitution.

More troubling still, Trump has demanded that public officials put their loyalty to him ahead of their duty to the public. On his first full day in office, he ordered his press secretary to lie about the size of his inaugural crowd. He never forgave his first attorney general for failing to shut down investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and ultimately forced his resignation. “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty,” Trump told his first FBI director, and then fired him when he refused to pledge it.

Trump has evinced little respect for the rule of law, attempting to have the Department of Justice launch criminal probes into his critics and political adversaries. He has repeatedly attacked both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. His efforts to mislead, impede, and shut down Mueller’s investigation have now led the special counsel to consider whether the president obstructed justice.

As for the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, Trump has repeatedly trampled upon them. He pledged to ban entry to the United States on the basis of religion, and did his best to follow through. He has attacked the press as the “enemy of the people” and barred critical outlets and reporters from attending his events. He has assailed black protesters. He has called for his critics in private industry to be fired from their jobs. He has falsely alleged that America’s electoral system is subject to massive fraud, impugning election results with which he disagrees as irredeemably tainted. Elected officials of both parties have repeatedly condemned such statements, which has only spurred the president to repeat them.

These actions are, in sum, an attack on the very foundations of America’s constitutional democracy.

50 moments that define Trump’s presidency

The electorate passes judgment on its presidents and their shortcomings every four years. But the Framers were concerned that a president could abuse his authority in ways that would undermine the democratic process and that could not wait to be addressed. So they created a mechanism for considering whether a president is subverting the rule of law or pursuing his own self-interest at the expense of the general welfare—in short, whether his continued tenure in office poses a threat to the republic. This mechanism is impeachment.

Trump’s actions during his first two years in office clearly meet, and exceed, the criteria to trigger this fail-safe. But the United States has grown wary of impeachment. The history of its application is widely misunderstood, leading Americans to mistake it for a dangerous threat to the constitutional order.

That is precisely backwards. It is absurd to suggest that the Constitution would delineate a mechanism too potent to ever actually be employed. Impeachment, in fact, is a vital protection against the dangers a president like Trump poses. And, crucially, many of its benefits—to the political health of the country, to the stability of the constitutional system—accrue irrespective of its ultimate result. Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial.
The fight over whether Trump should be removed from office is already raging, and distorting everything it touches. Activists are radicalizing in opposition to a president they regard as dangerous. Within the government, unelected bureaucrats who believe the president is acting unlawfully are disregarding his orders, or working to subvert his agenda. By denying the debate its proper outlet, Congress has succeeded only in intensifying its pressures. And by declining to tackle the question head-on, it has deprived itself of its primary means of reining in the chief executive.

With a newly seated Democratic majority, the House of Representatives can no longer dodge its constitutional duty. It must immediately open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and bring the debate out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belongs.

Democrats picked up 40 seats in the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections. Despite this clear rebuke of Trump—and despite all that is publicly known about his offenses—party elders remain reluctant to impeach him. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has argued that it’s too early to talk about impeachment. Many Democrats avoided discussing the idea on the campaign trail, preferring to focus on health care. When, on the first day of the 116th Congress, a freshman representative declared her intent to impeach Trump and punctuated her comments with an obscenity, she was chastised by members of the old guard—not just for how she raised the issue, but for raising it at all.

In no small part, this trepidation is due to the fact that the last effort to remove an American president from office ended in political fiasco. When the House impeached Bill Clinton, in 1998, his popularity soared; in the Senate, even some Republicans voted against convicting him of the charges.
Pelosi and her antediluvian leadership team served in Congress during those fights two decades ago, and they seem determined not to repeat their rivals’ mistakes. Polling has shown significant support for impeachment over the course of Trump’s tenure, but the most favorable polls still indicate that it lacks majority support. To move against Trump now, Democrats seem to believe, would only strengthen the president’s hand. Better to wait for public opinion to turn decisively against him and then use impeachment to ratify that view. This is the received wisdom on impeachment, the overlearned lesson of the Clinton years: House Republicans got out ahead of public opinion, and turned a president beset by scandal into a sympathetic figure.

Instead, Democrats intend to be a thorn in Trump’s side. House committees will conduct hearings into a wide range of issues, calling administration officials to testify under oath. They will issue subpoenas and demand documents, emails, and other information. The chair of the Ways and Means Committee has the power to request Trump’s elusive tax returns from the IRS and, with the House’s approval, make them public.

Other institutions are already acting as brakes on the Trump presidency. To the president’s vocal frustration, federal judges have repeatedly enjoined his executive orders. Robert Mueller’s investigation has brought convictions of, or plea deals from, key figures in his campaign as well as his administration. Some Democrats are clearly hoping that if they stall for long enough, Mueller will deliver them from Trump, obviating the need to act themselves.

But Congress can’t outsource its responsibilities to federal prosecutors. No one knows when Mueller’s report will arrive, what form it will take, or what it will say. Even if Mueller alleges criminal misconduct on the part of the president, under Justice Department guidelines, a sitting president cannot be indicted. Nor will the host of congressional hearings fulfill that branch’s obligations. The view they will offer of his conduct will be both limited and scattershot, focused on discrete acts. Only by authorizing a dedicated impeachment inquiry can the House begin to assemble disparate allegations into a coherent picture, forcing lawmakers to consider both whether specific
charges are true and whether the president’s abuses of his power justify his removal.

Waiting also presents dangers. With every passing day, Trump further undermines our national commitment to America’s ideals. And impeachment is a long process. Typically, the House first votes to open an investigation—the hearings would likely take months—then votes again to present charges to the Senate. By delaying the start of the process, in the hope that even clearer evidence will be produced by Mueller or some other source, lawmakers are delaying its eventual conclusion. Better to forge ahead, weighing what is already known and incorporating additional material as it becomes available.

Critics of impeachment insist that it would diminish the presidency, creating an executive who serves at the sufferance of Congress. But defenders of executive prerogatives should be the first to recognize that the presidency has more to gain than to lose from Trump’s impeachment. After a century in which the office accumulated awesome power, Trump has done more to weaken executive authority than any recent president. The judiciary now regards Trump’s orders with a jaundiced eye, creating precedents that will constrain his successors. His own political appointees boast to reporters, or brag in anonymous op-eds, that they routinely work to counter his policies. Congress is contemplating actions on trade and defense that will hem in the president. His opponents repeatedly aim at the man but hit the office.

Democrats’ fear—that impeachment will backfire on them—is likewise unfounded. The mistake Republicans made in impeaching Bill Clinton wasn’t a matter of timing. They identified real and troubling misconduct—then applied the wrong remedy to fix it. Clinton’s acts disgraced the presidency, and his lies under oath and efforts to obstruct the investigation may well have been crimes. The question that determines whether an act is impeachable, though, is whether it endangers American democracy. As a House Judiciary Committee staff report put it in 1974, in the midst of the Watergate investigation: “The purpose of impeachment is not personal punishment; its function is primarily to maintain constitutional government.” Impeachable offenses, it found, included “undermining the integrity of office, disregard of constitutional duties and oath of office, arrogation of power, abuse of the governmental process, adverse impact on the system of government.”

Trump’s bipartisan critics are not merely arguing that he has lied or dishonored the presidency. The most serious allegations against him ultimately rest on the charge that he is attacking the bedrock of American democracy. That is the situation impeachment was devised to address." [Read more]

 I know that Mr. Mueller wants to dot his i's and cross all of hits t's. But I am not sure that the country can wait any longer.

I am just glad that publications like The Atlantic are starting to take notice. 

Mission *not* accomplished.

Today Mike Pence declared victory against Isis and told the American people that they have been destroyed. Mr. trump made the same declaration a few weeks ago. (Hmm,where have we heard this before?)

 "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency." 

Wrong! And our military leaders told him as much. Mr. trump made his announcement without giving a warning of his plans to his security leaders and the military strategists, and what happened today is a harbinger of things to come because of his reckless and incautious actions. 

Today, in a coordinated attack in Syria, ISIS radicals set off a bomb killing four Americans. Later in the day Mike Pence was forced to amend his earlier ridiculous statement, and try to backtrack his earlier statements about where we are in the fight against ISIS.

The problem with Mr. trump and the sycophants surrounding him, is that they believe that the real world is like one of his stupid condo projects. You can't just hype away the problem of real terrorism by using some marketing strategy to sway public opinion. Those four people who lost their lives today had families and loved ones. Not that it matters to Mr. trump. He would need a heart and a soul for things like this to have an effect on him. I will say the same about his number two man, Mike Pence, whose only focus these days seems to be stepping in for his corrupt and crooked leader once he is removed from office.

Finally, as Mr. trump's FOX VIEWS inspired government shutdown grinds on, we are starting to see how it is starting to disrupt our lives. We might not be one of those government workers who will go without a check, but at some point the government shutdown will start having a real serious effect on how we live our lives. A colleague of mine is flying to London next week, and she is not sure if there will be TSA agents at the airport, or if the air traffic controllers will be overworked. If you are relying on a tax refund check, you might want to hold off on those plans to spend the money.

At least you will have money to spend. Those poor federal workers who are living through trump's shutdown are not so lucky. And the images of families lining up outside food banks to get food to feed their families is not something we should ever have to see in the "greatest" country on earth.

“I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck.” 

Of course you are. And thanks to your shutdown, we are all a little less safe today.

Racists of a feather......

   It's nice to see House republican leaders finally moving to strip racist Steve King of his committee assignments. Some GOP leaders (some) have also spoken out against the open and unapologetic racist in their party, and you have to wonder what took them so long.

This is all good, but you know who have not spoken out against Steve King? If you guessed the president of the United States, move to the head of the class. Of course it would be hard for Mr. trump to denounce King for being a white nationalist, since he admitted that he himself is a nationalist, and that h does not believe that there is anything wring with such a label.

The truth is, Steve King has been empowered by the rhetoric and actions of Donald trump, and I suspect that the GOP will have a lot more Steve King type baggage to deal with before Mr. trump leaves the political scene. We can thank Mr. trump and Mr. King for giving us the wall, because it is a symbol that their racist supporters can stand behind. To them, it is so much more than just a wall, it is symbolic of their goal to keep America white, and keep the brown people out. This is more about an ethnically pure America than it is policy.

Today Mr. trump said that he has not been following the Steve King controversy. That was another lie, and it was laughable that he would think that anyone would buy it. Here is a man who follows the smallest of things on his many televisions, and he expects us to believe that he has not been keeping up with one of the bigger news stories over the past few days?

What this tells me is that he (trump) is afraid to condemn King, because his base is King's base, and the last thing that he wants to do now is piss them off. He needs them now more than ever, because the scandals just keep piling up one after another. He needs all the support from his base that he can get. And he will say (or not say) anything to get it.

Caption Saturday.

• 

I need a caption for this pic.

No pay, and still no wall.

 Today should be payday for thousands of government workers. Unfortunately, though, there will be a big fat zero where their money should be, thanks to Mr. trump and his fragile ego.

trump's vanity wall is going to cause countless families to suffer all sorts of unspeakable misery if this government shutdown doesn't end soon. It's not impacting the rest of us as much just yet, but it will. Just wait until all those TSA workers decide that enough is enough. Think of all the long lines and canceled flights at  our airports, and all the problems that will come as a result. Wait until the FDA can't properly check our food for poisons, and as a result the first little child dies in suburbia from some kind of food poisoning. Or the EPA fails to properly inspect a superfund site. Or, god forbid, the food stamp program is shut down in February, and all those poor working class trump voters  (the ones the New York Times love to fawn over) can't get their benefits.

I don't think that the orange one thought this through. He likes to say that folks who are with him will suck it up and suffer the long term consequence of not having food their tables, but wait until those bills start piling up, and their stomachs start growling. The con has been working because it hasn't seemed to affect Cult 45 in a serious way just yet, but if this shutdown continues it will.

Yesterday trump went down to the Southern border to show us how much of a national crises we were in, and let's just say his messaging didn't go over very well. It was a wasted trip.

First, he went to one of the safest towns in the region, where most of the residence want to keep things just the way they are, and where they get along just fine with those brown people South of the border. And then he had to sit and listen to a lecture from a border patrol agent, who had to explain to him that the wall won't do a damn thing to deter the serious criminals, who will just dig a long and deep tunnel right under it. Throw in the fact that all the contraband used as props to highlight the "crisis"--  such as the seized illegal drugs, money, and weapons-- were not captured at one of the illegal crossings along the Southern border, but at ports of entry into this country, which as we all know, is where the real problems start.

But this debate is not about facts with this president. It is about his wall and what it represents: A racist symbol of his dream of an America, that is more white and more homogenous than most of us could ever imagine. It is what he campaigned on, and it is, sadly, what his base expects.