Fifty years ago today, Ted Kennedy delivered a eulogy for his brother Bobby considered by some to be the most profound speech of his career.  Katie Mettler at WaPo today offered an excellent writeup of that moment.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/08/those-he-to...

July 4, 2115 - Geraldine Lopez, the last known so-called Dreamer, died of natural causes at age 108 in Virginia. She was the last of the so-called Dreamers, who signed up in a program set up by Barack Obama, President from 2009-2016. The program was intended to create a path to citizenship for children brought to the United States illegally by their parents, and who grew up in the US knowing no other country. Over the decades it has remained in effect due to a mutiplicity of court cases, decisions, edicts and appeals, but just for those who were in up to 2018. Republicans have used the issue over and over in campaigns, to motivate their dwindling, mostly white rural, base to show up at the polls. Over many, many campaigns, Republicans have cast the aging, and over recent decades diminishing in numbers, Dreamers as everything from dangerous terrorists to lazy moochers.  Most notably, Republicans cast Dreamers, who were never eligible for federal programs, as "abusing freeloaders", and the reason the Republicans, who controlled Congress and the Presidency those years, claimed they "had no choice" but to "reluctantly" end Medicaid and Medicare in 2038, and Social Security in 2040. 

The debate about the events in Israel/Palestine in 1948 will be going on at least until there is an Arab-Israeli peace, and maybe longer than that.  But I think humane, reasonable people who know the history will agree that what Jews did to Arabs in 1948 was very bad indeed. There were about a dozen massacres, many expulsions, and 700,000 people exiled and dispossessed.(If you need sources, check Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and Walid Khalidi's All That Remains).

I have reached the nadir.

How much more can I fall?

And yet, according to Wiki, even the nadir is relative at best.

We have a potus who lies.

He lies about his height.

He lies about his weight.

He lies about his net assets.

He lies about his previous statements.

He lies about his current statements.

In just a few hours  we shall be entertained, once again with the White House Correspondence Dinner.

Once every year, the PRESS (as it is wont to be called) coagulates at some strange meeting place and makes fun of the POTUS.

This is kind of like a combination of All Hallow's Eve and April Fool's Day.

However, and it is a big however, the current POTUS is going to skip the festivities.

I think that his absence has something to do with this event as it occurred in 2011.

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, shared on her Facebook page a series of posts critical of the survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, who have become vocal advocates for gun control. Thomas shared a post Monday that included a pile of shoes from people killed during the Holocaust. The post was directed at students who walked out their classrooms last month to protest gun violence.

US Army Forces Command has been ordered by President Trump to form a new Airborne Division of 5,000 to protect his EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Mr. Pruitt had complained that his 19 full time body guards and 19 armored vehicles dedicated solely to protect him in his dangerous job were inadequate and insufficient for the threat vectors in the Oklahoma-Washington DC environment. He has demanded that in addition to more personnel, he required paratroops with heavy weapons drop capability to safely navigate the Washington DC area where he resides. A C-5 with airdrop capability will be in the air 24/7 over DC when Administrator Pruitt is in the area. Whether munitions will include non-strategic nuclear weapons, and what types of warheads,has not been answered and is considered classified information.