Pretty pictures:
Friends. I’m going to make this short. All I can think about right now are those children being wrenched from their families. I try to maintain calm, but my blood pressure is surely high. I cannot believe that this is what my country has become, that Republicans are largely silent in the face of these atrocities.
Make calls. Protest. March. Donate money. Do everything you can – loudly and for however long it takes – to put a end to this policy. And then IMPEACH THIS MONSTER.
I am heartbroken. I can’t sleep. I am haunted by their cries and the images I’ve seen of children in cages. I keep thinking he can’t do anything worse than what he has already done, and then he manages to pull another atrocity out of his hat. Some vile and evil act that shames and diminishes our country. I think that’s the problem in many ways, he can’t be shamed. He has no soul, no conscience, and no compassion. He is a monster straight from the bowels of Hell.
I am struggling not to lose hope. I realize we have to save ourselves. Save a precious few, no one in his party is brave enough to speak out against him. What will we have become by November?
And he is a narcissist, as well. So he doesn’t think about anyone but himself.
I’m afraid, but trying to remain hopeful, Linda.
I cannot agree more. I go from shock to hopelessness to anger. Republicans are complicit in these acts of pure evil. I hope they (eventually) will pay for their lack of will to do the right and moral thing. Stand up Americans.
Kaye
They are complicit, they are just as guilty, and I hope the Republican party goes down in flames. Thank you, Kaye.
Makes me ashamed of what this country has become or I should say the Republican party. I am proud that so many Democrats and Republicans are coming out though. I have contacted both parties in my state.
Me too. And I’ll keep calling them until this stops.
It may be over. Trump signed an order, so hopefully this mess can be fixed.
They have no plans in place to reunite the children with their families, many of whom have been deported while the children have been shipped all over the country.
WOW, I did not know that. This is a mess than.
Parents have been deported, children are all over the country. It’s a nightmare.
I knew things were going to get bad when he took office but I cannot believe how far and fast our country has fallen! I feel so heartbroken and anxious over what is happening to those children and their families. It sickens me to hear “#45” saying things like “illegals” are “infesting” our country. This is so far past Republican/Democrat differences – this is MORAL/BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS!
“Infesting” – used by the Nazi party.
I know what you mean, Traycee. I knew it would be bad, but this is beyond what I imagined.
Well, it didn’t like my first comment, so I guess I’ll add a few words (#%^@**!!).
It went through as spam because using all symbols like that is often used in spam.
It thought it was spam!
Oops! Just too mad to make any sense!
Heart Breaking! This should not be happening in this country, a place I have been proud to call home…until him. I think of my Grands and how they would feel, traumatized, scared, lonely. They separate siblings so they can’t even have that comfort. We must do all we can to end this and remove that man from office. I am beyond heartbroken!
Me too. He must be impeached and put in prison for the rest of his life.
shock turns to sadness and fear.
sadness and fear turn to anger.
anger turns to action.
let it out!
kathy in iowa
I am! I am taking action. And I’ll march in NYC on June 30th.
oh, i know you are, claudia! :)
my comment above was as much a reminder to myself as it was encouragement to others to express our feelings and not sit idly by, expecting others to either read our minds or do what we can do to stop the egotistical and insane # 45 …
he needs to be impeached NOW!
thanks for your thoughtful posts.
kathy in iowa
Yes he does. NOW.
Again I do NOT understand why he is allowed to continue. Outside of impeachment, is there not another method of removal that the U.S. has? Truly not understanding …..
No. There is no other method of removal unless he resigns, as Nixon did. I think they should come up with a new way to remove him, however. We’ve never had anyone like this in office before.
This is a true nightmare. My husband and I will be attending the march in DC on June 30th.
I am proud of the group who jeered at Kirstjen Nielsen who was dining at a Mexican restaurant last night. She had to get up to leave because people were so angry. And it is not lost on anyone at her choice of restaurant. Idiot.
And Lewandowski – don’t get me started. This is what this President has allowed. All civility out the window. They are black hearted and nasty.
RAISE your voice everyone. Get out and volunteer to help get the Democrat vote in November.
Isn’t it ironic that a woman supporting the mistreatment of so many hispanics would dine at a Mexican restaurant?!! Our people love the culture they have added to our country. Also, many people forget that we took their country over not the other way around Texas and so much of the SW US was once Mexico territory. All these people that some call immigrants were probably in that area for 300 years or more.
Yes, indeed.
It is beyond me why she would defend this horrific policy and then choose to eat at a Mexican restaurant. Pretty stupid woman if you ask me. What the hell did she think the reaction would be when she walked in and dined there???? smh at the stupidity and cruelty of this Administration.
I’ll be marching in NYC, Julie. Nielsen deserves everything she gets. Completely clueless, pompous, and condescending.
Lewandowski is scum. Thanks, Julie.
I am concerned about you and all my friends with a conscious. Was sorta hoping you weren’t commenting today in order to rest, but also wanted to hear your ‘take’ on these atrocities. I’m not well-off and retired, but sent $50 to ACLU with instructions to send more lawyers to Texas. My husband has been calling (lots of our reps aren’t picking up). What I’m grappling with: how did we come to this as a Country so fast and so furiously? I just went outside, cleaned & filled the bird baths and came in to doo-wop music. What else can we do but take care of each other while collectively holding our breath for 6 more months?
Exactly. I can’t put how I feel into words. I am so enraged, so angry, that I can’t articulate it all, except to say that this is horrendous. Using children and babies as pawns, yanking them away from their families, having no system in place to reunite them. It is a nightmare born of bigotry, racism, xenophobia and white privilege. He is a nightmare.
Well said, Claudia ! Yes, so not good for the BP….
I’m trying to keep busy so I don’t lose my mind!
We have been calling and signing, etc. etc. I don’t know if you watched Rachel last night, but at the end, when she cried and could not speak, I was sobbing. And Lewandowski and Ingram…. I wish they would send both of them to “summer camp” or “boarding school”. A-holes is truly the only way to describe these wastes of human skin. Right now I am watching these despicable people around the table with him, dancing around to be sure to include words of praise when it is their turn to speak to their dear leader. I could vomit. Especially now, as he lists all of his major accomplishments that no one in the history of the world could solve….. but he has done them all. When does this embarrassment end?
The heat waves that we have been experiencing have a beginning and an end. It breaks, and we have some days of relief. I don’t see the end of this hell we are living ending anytime soon.
I can’t watch him. I can’t listen or I’ll explode. I can’t even watch Rachel, but I’m aware that she started sobbing. And apparently Lawrence was crying, too.
AND, come this November, express your feelings by voting Republicans out of office. You may not like Democrats, but you need to vote for them this time around. It’s about what is best for our country and it’s standing in the world. This current President needs to have his hands tied and the only way to do that is to vote Republicans out and Democrats in. THEN he can be impeached for the betterment of our nation.
Yes indeed. There’s no middle ground. No independents, no third party – VOTE DEMOCRAT. Thank you, Diane.
Hi Claudia, Mary here in Central Texas. There will be a protest rally here at the Capitol the 30th Saturday at noon. Please anyone who feels outraged by this obhorrent situation, contact moveon.org for a rally near you. We must not be silent.
Thanks Mary
I’m marching in NYC that day, Mary. I’ll be in town because that’s the day before Don’s show closes.
It’s horrendous. What happened to the ‘Land Of The Free? And how about the declaration. ‘Send me you poor etc’
Claudia, please check your mailbox, as it’s 2 weeks tomorrow since I sent a package to you, and it should be there by now. Blessings
None of that matters to Trump and his cronies. They are scum.
I did check my mailbox today, Lesley. Nothing there yet!
Not sleeping and with too much on the mind, wild thoughts fly across my brain and I was thinking of how when my parents were growing up, after the Great Depression was ending and World War II was starting to brew overseas, how the American masses really didn’t know what was going on in far-away Nazi Germany yet, as ‘normal’ life went on here in the U.S., such terrible things were happening over in Europe to others. Mom and Dad would shake their heads in later years, saying, “We didn’t know.”
With our border-states atrocity of present day, we DO know, we’re seeing the images, we’re getting the reports. And we’ll say years from now that this cannot have happened, not in the U.S. We are supposed to be the cut above, the leaders of a free world; humane, decent. The U.S. sets the finer example. Instead, this. THIS.
For me, I haven’t known much of anything about the immigration policies. I have no good excuse. I shouldn’t admit it. I read in USA Today just now: “The policy is not new…children have long been placed in foster care when their parents were criminally charged with an immigration violation.” I was clueless. I just never thought about it, although I live in a part of the country (practically my whole long life) where I’m surrounded by ‘illegals’ (my town of 30,000 is 80-85% Latino with a 20% [or less] of the population being non-Latino) and even, 40-something years ago, I went to school with kids who were not citizens although they’d been my classmates since kindergarten and now we were graduating from high school.
Initially, and they still do to a lesser extent (because we have more land going to housing now), people crossing the border came to work here in the fields; the agricultural industry. (My SoCalif county is still a big one for agriculture; orchards and row crops.) In former years, farmers looked the other way because it was cheapest labor. (The work is back-breaking. I went to school with non-Latino kids who wanted summer jobs of picking lemons or sorting/boxing tomatoes and they couldn’t do it for very long; too soft.)
But what have I been thinking (when I wasn’t thinking)? That if a family made a illegal border crossing and were actually caught, that the U.S. just sent them back to where they came from, as a intact family unit? That’s how stupid I’ve been; I thought they just got sent back – – detained and sent back, not prosecuted, not separated. I’m embarrassed to be so uneducated on such a massive problem.
I want to know more of Mexico’s response to the latest developments, too.
I doubt when any of these desperate people made the perilous journey along the migrant trail to the U.S. border that they ever knew or thought their children could get ripped right out of their arms. They’re just trying to figure out how not to die.
I ‘get’ that DT wants to send a powerful message. Some of the ‘illegals’ get up here and have no idea which way to turn. I’ve been a patient in the ER too many times where in the neighboring bay, a mother has come in with a sick baby, can’t speak English, has no insurance and no money and no doctor, but has learned the ER can’t turn her away and won’t ask too many questions or call the cops. This doesn’t help the hospital; it’s why a lot of ERs across the country have closed. A hospital is a business; it needs to make money. Just one example.
The truly-illegal don’t want to be documented anywhere; I see them most every day of my life; they prefer to stay under the radar and only deal in cash at the stores, the post office, etc. They’re not the ones who apply for welfare, at least not at first, and instead live in rat-infested garages or other places not fit for an animal (although I’ve traveled in rural Mexico by motor vehicle and seen people living in cardboard shacks, which don’t hold up well in pouring tropical rain). I’m sure people have been lost here, in my own town; have fallen through the cracks; nameless; succumbing to the abject poverty.
No easy answers (although the basic one should be to help/assist), but Trump’s way isn’t the way to go about it, people detained in cages, crowded on benches, questionable sanitation; children in utter terror sent away. What’s next? Railroad cars? (Images in my mind of aforementioned Nazi Germany in the 1930s-40s and persecution of Jews, ‘gypsies’ [the Roma people], etc.)
My grandfather was himself an immigrant in the 1800s to America and was forever-after struck with the sight of the Statue of Liberty when coming into New York harbor on the ship they’d crossed over the Atlantic in, and he knew the words by heart, which he taught my mom, his American-born daughter, and which she taught me: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
If we don’t amend gun laws in how they were written centuries ago here, then we can’t turn our backs on what the Statue says either. Two different subjects but it all comes down to the one thing, “Who are we?”
The answer is to live the motto on the Statue of Liberty. Illegal or legal. 90% of illegal immigrants are fleeing a far worse life. They are desperate for a chance to live and to raise their family in safety. They undergo an enormous amount of stress getting here. Why don’t we do everything we can to help them?
Trump’s answer is based on xenophobia, bigotry and racism. Period.
I agree with you. If we put money and resources into helping immigrants and poor people with more education better jobs, we would have a stronger economy and less crime. Most of the crime we have around here is people trying to make money without a full time job, or college education. Yet every business is cutting back salary, hours, and benefits.
Vicki What a poignant well thought out post.
I hate to say this ,I tried to pass the info on contacting our representatives,around my office?
Everyone of them as proud and cold hearted as the day they elected him!.
This is indeed heartbreaking!.
Thank you, Vicki for that post,and Claudia you Hang in My Dear.
Love to all, Judy A-
We have a monster for a prez…and in turn monstrous policies….and hand selected monsters to carry out the policies! I so agree with all that has been said…both by you and your readers. I’ve called….they don’t answer…cowards. We must vote them out!! Simple as that!! And our governor….says the separation of kids and parents is a federal matter,but still sends our National Guard to Texas. Another coward! I feel so helpless right now…..this isn’t my country anymore….such hate….where does that come from? Oh yeah….from the top! He is a monster!
Your Governor is as bad as the rest. Why is he still in office? I hope he’s voted out.
I have no idea why people continue to vote for him….why did they vote for trump? There are at least 10 Democratic people running against him…primary I believe is in August. It’s wait and see and vote!! The larger cities are democratic for the most part…hopefully the rural areas will vote with eyes wide open this time! ;)
I hope so!
Oh, Donnamae, we can only hope. Walker is also a horrid liar. I never realized how stupid these politicians believe we are. I am so ashamed of this state and this country. The primary IS in August. (My husband works the polls, so it is on our calendar.) We need to do all we can to get the vote out. This is just a travesty.
These are indeed frightening times amid monstrous deeds. Just when I think they can’t sink any lower . . . they do. I always hate when people make comparisons to Hitler and Nazis but such comparisons are totally warranted when talking about this gang of monsters and villains. I just hope that the GOP acts before it is too late to recover our country.
I do too, Carolyn Marie.
I’ve been daily emailing my congressman. He’s pretty dumb and backs the “president” 100%, so we need to get out and VOTE him out in November. As a sixty-something, it is so disheartening to see so many older people speaking to reporters so callously and dismissively about this whole situation. One told a reporter, “Quit trying to make us feel teary-eyed for the children.” What kind of a country are we turning into? Sigh…
My congressman, as well. He will be voted out in November. My Senators, thank goodness, are Democrats.
Soapbox Rant Alert – I wonder what the hell happened to 45 in his early childhood? Seriously. Nature or nurture? He was either born with some appalling organic defect in that swollen orange head of his. Or treated in some abominable way by whoever cared for him as a child. We’ll never know – probably. And at this point, I really don’t care. Because evidently, his own family doesn’t care. When this is all over, I bet we hear stories [lies] about how Junior or Ivanka tried to get him psychiatric help. Haha – nice try, kids. I hope they all spend the rest of their lives locked up. Since they all seem quite fascinated with the concept…
#Resist
#ProtectMueller
I don’t think his parents would be on any list for Parent of the Year. Not from what I’ve heard.
I want to see them all in prison. Mueller, time is of the essence!
I want to have hope. This gave me a little hope
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/whats-hot/how-one-moms-social-media-post-raised-dollar9-million-for-immigrant-families/ar-AAyUTK6?li=BBnb7Kz
But it will take more than money. This is a turning point in our history. Will we rise out of the ashes or align ourselves with dictators?
We will soon see.
It is indeed a turning point, Tina-Marie. I hope the Republicans rise to the occasion, but so far, they’re at swamp level.
They really are. This isn’t about party. If this monster were a Democrat, I would work to impeach him. He is really is just the party of Donald Trump. Wake up, people!
I would, too.
I share your horror and that of those commenting. But to better understand why it’s still happening, when someone with a blog site mentioned her horror, a person commented that when immigrants go to a port of entry and tell them they’re seeking asylum, “they will not be separated.” (We know this to be untrue these days.) She said that would-be immigrants are using their children as a “get of jail card.” When someone called her on her statement and asked where she’d gotten her information, she said that we should do just as she did and go to the source, the Director [sic] of Homeland Security. I think she meant the Secretary of Homeland Security, whom we know to have said some things that just weren’t true. This person commending said she’s not going to take our word for what is happening, and besides, the president would soon be signing the executive order to keep families together. She blamed media negativity for our cluelessness. I’d like to have told her to go to a better source, the original law charging those trying to get into the country illegally with a felony, a law sponsored by Republican Richard Armey of my own right-leaning state, Texas. It had 118 co-sponsors, only four of them Democrats. The Senate majority at that time was Republican and not Democratic. But I know it’s no use. These people will not be convinced.
Gosh, I’m on a new anti-seizure med routine, and I can’t edit for anything. Only now, after a few minutes do I notice my mistakes. I’m not going to bother to enumerate them, as the longer this gets the more I’ll make!
It’s just fine! xo
They are, effectively, members of a cult. I saw someone refer to them as ‘Cult45’ There is no reasoning with them, and furthermore, I want nothing to do with them. Thanks, Linda.
I understand completely. You can’t believe one thing this man says. Not one thing. Not one thing. I have always prayed for our Presidents. I stopped praying for this one about a month ago. I just couldn’t do it anymore. He expects us to believe his lies. I don’t think my prayers were helping and that makes me feel horrible. And I feel horrible that I have stopped praying for him. But every night I try to put him back in my prayers and I can’t do it.
I try to pray for him, to see him as God sees him, but I can’t do it either.
The horror to me is all our citizens who support him and these ideas. I cannot believe my naïveté in believing we had made progress in the past 50 years. The ugly hateful racist statements of ordinary citizens who support these actions are what make me sick at this time. He will be gone but this now emboldened hate can and will flourish and continue with new leaders from the same fetid pool. I am struggling to figure out how to address this and not just react to the daily outrage which can wear us down and deplete our energy for the larger struggle. Help!
Don and I just had this same conversation this morning. We were tricked into believing the country was evolving, that things were getting better.
As Don said this am, “Trumpism = Racism.”
I too have been tormented by the how? of AMERICANS voting for Trump. Today’s ‘USA Today’ reports testimony from Obama’s Cybersecurity Electronic Voting Expert that in fact, Russia scanned ALL 50 states’ voting equipment in 2016. Do we really think that if they could breach our systems that they would not tamper with the results? Ion Sancho, a Florida Elections expert, is writing a book on this and asserts that our US Government is doing very little to prevent future interference.
Of course they aren’t. It works to their advantage.