Bright sunshine tempered by a brisk ocean breeze this early-evening Monday on California’s north coast, been a gorgeous day all around, despite some fog in the AM, and the air’s been fairly warm, for this area anyway.
Dog run mid-day to Ma-le’l Dunes was also foggy, but way-sunny enough to be on the warmish side.

America has quickly become a case of pulp fiction — from The Atlantic this afternoon:

The president clearly said “country” in his tweet telling the representatives to “go back”; the remark assumes that the citizenship of the representatives is conditional because of their ethnic backgrounds; and Wolking’s defense requires ignoring the president’s own words.
But self-deceit is, in a sense, necessary for the president’s advocates: To reconcile the America they say they believe in with the one they actually do believe in, they cannot be honest with themselves about what the president actually said.

Raised in the deep South, I’ve seen enough racism and I’m pretty-sick of it. One of the many attributes of the T-Rump  era is how enormous the number of rotten, racist, assholes there is in this country. Supporting the T-Rump in any way or fashion, from the dimwit voter in MAGA caps, to creepy, GOP shitheads like Lindsey Graham, means a significant group of Americans are rotten, racist, assholes.
A minority, but a loud, play-dirty minority. (I located permanently to California in 1982).

In that notion of assholes, there’s this take from John Blake at CNN this afternoon — there’s two Americas:

These two Americas have long co-existed.
One is the country represented by the Statue of Liberty, and its invitation to poor and tired immigrants “yearning to breathe free.”
The other is the one that virtually wiped out Native Americans, enslaved Africans, excluded Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century and put Japanese Americans in concentration camps.
From the rarified perch of the White House, Trump’s racist tweets tap into the id of this other America.
And here’s what’s so frightening about this: It is not a big stretch to say that when a leader uses the kind of language that Trump uses against minorities, it may increase the chances of violence being used against them.

Bottom-line horror of the consequence of the T-Rump:

While the president’s remarks, laced with bravado and mendacity, were pointed at four freshmen members of Congress — all of whom are women of color — on Monday Trump was speaking to a nation. He stood before a bank of cameras and told us plainly and without pause that he meant every deplorable thing he’d tweeted and that if you don’t like it, get out.
“Does it concern you that many people saw your tweet as racist?” a reporter asked.
Trump, who appears incapable of shame, did not spare a breath before he responded, “It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me.”

This be a wormhole for direction:

First, you stoke hatred and fear of minorities. Then you round them up and put them in camps. Next, you send out raiding parties to get those who have been driven into hiding. The armbands come next right?

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) July 14, 2019

(Illustration above is by illustrator and portrait painter, Tim O’Brien, and can be found here).