There are reports that the White House is thoroughly enjoying our angst over this immigration disaster. They are amused.

Then we're hearing some of the stories about how agents and guards are treating detainees at the border, can't help remembering Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment.

How in the hell do we stop this?


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Meanwhile, over on C-span, a live hearing on the Clinton Email Investigation.

But Congress has no time to deal with what's happening on our southern border.


Ye gods.

At least, that’s how Paul Ryan refers to people like me. I’m kind of the stuff Republican nightmares are made of: senior citizen, iffy health, some disability, dependent on Social Security, Medicare, food and housing assistance. Mr. Ryan, along with Trump and the minions of his evil maladministration, would be pleased to know that their programs are working — for them.

Case in point, I just had to move to a smaller apartment because the housing assistance would not cover any portion of the most recent rent increase. I didn’t move far, just to another building in the same complex; my security deposit transferred, and I didn’t have to rent a truck, so I was saved from having to borrow to meet those expenses. And it’s still within a few minutes of all my doctors. It’s decent, but definitely not the Ritz. Even so, with rents being what they are, my new smaller place rents for more than the larger one I just vacated, and my portion of the rent went up 68%.

Things are going to be quite a bit tighter. It would be nice to be able to look forward to a meaningful COLA next year, but I ain’t holding my breath. At least my neck is loosening up a bit, probably from shaking my head at the realization that all this is what Ben Carson refers to as “incentive.” Now if only I could figure out how to incentivize myself to get younger and healthier...



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while (presumably) Republicans have "their" laws?

Trump seems to think so.





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They’re putting up tents to house children forcibly separated from their parents. There’s a better alternative. First, stop separating those families.

Then, take all those tents to D.C., and use them to house everyone who needs to be willingly or otherwise separated from the misbegotten Trump maladministration. The list includes Trump, Pence, Sessions, Jared, Ivanka, Sarah, Steve, Kellyanne, Mulvaney, Pruitt, Mnuchin, Zinke, DeVos, Ross, Carson, Perry, Nielsen, Pai . . . you get the idea.

Complicit abettors also get tented, starting with McConnell and Ryan and pretty much every Republican member of the House and Senate who have either propped up this horrible mockery of a presidency or remained conspicuously silent about it. And there needs to be a special tent for those officers and agents who clearly enjoy ripping families apart, with a special space reserved for the one who grabbed a nursing infant.

Yeah, it’s just a dream. But damned if it isn’t decidedly more palatable than our present reality. They’re working hard to tear our country apart. We need to be working twice as hard to hold on to what’s left in order to have a foundation for putting it back together. This country started as a dream of freedom. It’s up to us to reclaim it from the nightmare.

And we don’t have to wait until November.




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A friend just drove up to Telluride and spotted this sign. Wow.






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