On Friday, the first wave of troops left Arizona and Texas en route to their deployment.
As he has in the past, Trump slammed Democrats for not being tougher on immigration, but his plan to send troops to the border mirrors similar actions by then-Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Trump tweeted, “We are sealing up our Southern Border. The people of our great country want Safety and Security. The Dems have been a disaster on this very important issue!”
The move begs the question: If the National Guard can “seal” the southern border, why do we need to build a $40 billion wall?
We are sealing up our Southern Border. The people of our great country want Safety and Security. The Dems have been a disaster on this very important issue!
When Obama sent the National guard to the border, it was because of a surge in illegal crossings. When GW Bush sent them, there was around 1 million illegal crossings. Currently, illegal crossings are at a 46 year low. The only “crisis” now is that Mueller is closing in on Trump.
During Stormy Daniels’ interview with 60 Minutes‘ Anderson Cooper, Daniels explained she did not come forward about her alleged affair with Donald Trump before the 2016 election because she was threatened in person in a parking lot.
“Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” the person who threatened Daniels allegedly said. “That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
Now, her lawyer Michael Avenatti says he will have a “major announcement” about that person’s identity.
Avenatti tweeted this morning, “Expect a major announcement in the coming days regarding our efforts to identify the thug who threatened Ms. Clifford in Las Vegas in 2011 to “leave Trump alone” while making reference to her little girl. You can run but you can’t hide. #thugsearch #seriousconsequences #basta”
Expect a major announcement in the coming days regarding our efforts to identify the thug who threatened Ms. Clifford in Las Vegas in 2011 to “leave Trump alone” while making reference to her little girl. You can run but you can’t hide. #thugsearch#seriousconsequences#basta
This morning, in a radio interview, Trump went even further in extolling Rasmussen polling, claiming that, if anything, it is underestimating his popularity. It would be easy to laugh this off as the usual bluster, but if Trump really believes this, it could have real consequences for the country, particularly in the context of his brewing trade war with China.
In today’s interview with “Bernie and Sid in the Morning” on WABC radio, Trump listened modestly as his hosts showered obsequious praise on him for heroically making America great in the face of unremitting hate from the media.
“A poll just came out now, Rasmussen, it’s now 51,” Trump said. “They say that it’s 51 but add another 7 or 8 points to it. … They don’t want to talk about it, but when they get into the booth they’re going to vote for Trump.”
Then Trump was asked about trade and China. “I’m not saying there won’t be a little pain,” Trump said, adding: “We may take a hit, and you know what? Ultimately we’re going to be much stronger for it, but it’s something we have to do.”
This juxtaposition is disconcerting. If this trade war goes south, and the public rejects it, will Trump even know or believe that is happening?
Today is the 9 year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. The above picture was taken a couple of weeks before the “cancer journey” began. I looked at that picture practically everyday knowing I’d get back there eventually.
Plus, I like my hair in this picture.
For folks who may not know, April 7, 2009 I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. The good news is the disease was Stage 1 and I kicked it’s ass. The bad news at the time was it kind of didn’t matter – Stage 1 or not – six rounds of heavy-duty chemotherapy were in my future.
The first thing I said to Michael was “well, it’s going to be a shitty summer.”
In the end, I look back at a roller coaster ride and the many things that came out of the experience.
First and foremost is my appreciation for the life and health I’ve had in the past and the fact that I’m still here. Until you go through something like this yourself or with a very close loved one, you think you understand it but it’s really at arm’s length. I constantly felt like I was stuck in a bad TV movie.
I’ve also stopped, listened and spoken to every cancer patient and survivor that crosses my path since my journey. I always have time to listen and let them know “no, you’re not crazy – it sucks – but you’ll get there.”
During the journey, I only told a handful of friends; the ones who had to deal with my day to day. In my mind, I couldn’t put this huge thing on friends who were across the country and already had full plates. It felt selfish.
Below is a Note I posted on Facebook the night of my last chemo round, plus a couple of pictures from “the ride.”
It was in this note that I finally shared the journey with my friends. I wanted to share it again on my anniversary:
SUMMER ADVENTURE 2009 or “Everything You Never Needed To Know About Cancer”
Well, it’s about time… I finally put this all down regarding my Summer Adventure 2009, or as I got used to saying “Everything You Never Needed to Know About Cancer.”
In Early April of this year I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. A routine medical test (my first “over 40 test” as I called it) discovered what would be the beginning of a surprising, unexpected, sometimes uplifting and often depressing chapter of my life.
However, this is NOT a “woe is me” story. I just felt a strong urge to share this with all my friends who have not known what’s been going on in my life this summer. For most of you, when we’ve spoken or emailed and you’ve asked how I am, “great” was about as far as I could go with this tale.
I also want my friends to know this kind of thing can happen to us, and we then face it and move on stronger than before. 🙂
How I Got Here
After first meeting with an oncologist in Las Vegas whose office was too cold, sterile and not conducive to healing, plans were reassessed. Olivia Newton-John, who is a friend and client of Michael’s, asked how my first appointment went in Las Vegas, and when we related the lack of healing “environment”, she reached out and made sure I had an appointment with the head of oncology at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles – which became my home away from home for the past five months. I have to applaud the world class treatment I received at the Cancer Center there.
Olivia uses the word “journey” in describing the cancer adventure. I couldn’t pick a better word. Hills and valleys, ups and downs, long days to long nights and then dawn again. It’s a step by step kind of thing.
The Bad Things:
Ok, there are a lot, but I don’t and won’t dwell too much on those things. I’ve been lucky – not too many side effects along the way.
I did lose all my hair two weeks into it all but it will grow back – although I miss it everyday. It’s just about the only physical attribute I’ve ever liked about myself. 🙂
Thanks to all the anti-nausea and pre-meds they pump me full of before each round, I never got too sick. I did go through a lot of fatigue. Just collapsing fatigue. That made days and nights very long sometimes. Restless nights. Seconds crawled by. Dawn would never come it seemed.
The drugs also me very bloated most of the time. It was hard to look in a mirror. Not in a vanity way – I just didn’t recognize the guy I saw.
The one major side effect I’ve hated the whole way was numbness in my hands and my feet due to one of the drugs in my chemotherapy. It tool 6-9 months to finally go away. I couldn’t button a shirt or write a note or type for a long time.
The Good Things:
Are there good things in cancer? Maybe not. But the journey does remind you of some great things in your life. And in this case, those would be the friends who were a part of the “great adventure.” No over dramatizing here, but I wouldn’t have made it without them.
I made a choice early on not to make this whole thing too public. Not because I felt shame or attached some negative connotation to the disease. But it felt selfish thinking I would add to my friend’s already “full plates.” To tell friends that I wouldn’t see on a day-to-day basis anyway – well, that just felt selfish and self centered.
One other reason about not sharing this sooner: especially in the beginning I simply was not able to take more than one phone call a day or answer more than one email. My energy level was so low, I had to make the decision to keep things to my self for a while out of self-preservation. No reflection on any of you.
I knew I would be fine and I knew I would tell you all someday after all of this. And with long distance, there was nothing you all could do but worry. And I couldn’t do that to you. I wanted to save that energy for you all to tend to your lives, and also for us to celebrate this day that I finish my “great walk.”
Some friends, however, I speak with daily, and there was no getting around sharing with them. And they are my heroes.
Olivia Newton-John, besides being a world famous pop music icon and humanitarian/advocate for cancer since her own bout 17 years ago, became my patron saint of the journey. Emails, notes, voicemails, phone calls – it seems she checked in on me just at the right time, giving amazing encouragement to me to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She confirmed aspects of what she had gone through, almost to say “no, you’re not crazy – it’s not fun, but you can do it.” Her CD “Grace and Gratitude” played on my iPod almost every day. She is more special than the world truly knows.
Usually, I rarely could muster walking to the kitchen. But on the very last days ending a recovery period before a new round of chemo, I almost had a normal sense of energy. One day after round four, I put some Oleta Adams music on. And as the song “Window Of Hope” came on, I started to dance a bit around the kitchen. It took me a minute to even recognize it was happening. It was a very moving moment to reconnect to a part of me – dancing – that I hadn’t felt in so long. I eventually wrote her manager a note to share with her about my “window of hope” that I felt. Oleta herself emailed me the most wonderful letter saying “You danced because you let go of any delusions about your present condition (good or bad) and enjoyed where you were at that moment. And yes, you were ‘smiling in your liver!” I’ve loved her music, voice and writing for so long. To hear from her was magical.
John Genovese was with me at my first “outpatient” chemo-treatment. I had no idea what to expect and it was a six hour infusion process before I left with a portable chemo pump (I eventually named “Bumpy”). John sat with me and handled the whole episode with such confidence. Confidence I only pretended to have. More than once, because my husband Michael had to travel on business to keep our household going, John stayed with me in L.A., cooked for me, and drove me through the desert back to Las Vegas because I couldn’t do it alone. Hero.
Matt Zarley never missed a round of this with me. Whether it was dinners or lunches or going to a movie (something I rarely could get through physically) Matt was always checking on me, texting me, emailing me, sending me new music to listen to, getting me out of the house. Telling Matt face to face about my diagnosis was one of the most emotional moments I’ve ever experienced in my life. Perhaps one of the only times I cried as I said the words “I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.” He never flinched. He just knows me. He’s like my younger brother and this time he carried me.
John Bell and David Burke are my best friends from high school. John, a police officer in Texas and David, a fireman in Washington state. John had major back surgery the day I had my second round of chemo. Both of us wanted so badly to be where the other was. But we had to be in our respective states getting the treatments we needed. From John’s bedside in Texas, David was checking in on me. John came out of anesthesia asking how I was. They both have honored me with giving me space to heal but also being in contact long distance, asking questions, sending good thoughts and planning a reunion in Las Vegas for us after all this.
I didn’t tell Carlye Hughes, my rock family of 30+ years, because she carries so many people through life. She’s the Rector of her own Episcopal church, and in addition to helping her congregation on a daily basis, her niece Gabrielle was diagnosed with cancer two days before me. My first instinct was not to add to her plate. It just felt selfish. But after one round, I just couldn’t hold this back. Sometimes you just need that someone.
At the end of my first round, with confidence that I would be fine, I called her. Shock and silence on her end. OMG, I knew it might be selfish to tell her. I asked her not to come to the west coast. Too many other people needed her. Two weeks later she was on my couch in L.A. for my first “out patient” round. I was knocked out, fatigued, and she was the answer. For four days we just watched TV, she cooked my favorite foods from childhood, and talked. And that made all the difference. Sometimes your best friend being on the other end of the couch is the greatest medicine in the world. Carlye is my greatest medicine. Always.
And finally, there’s my husband Michael – my rockstar. There’s not enough room anywhere to express how he got me through this. What I can say is he made this about me at all times. Even though he was carrying the household and working 14 hour days in the absence of my income, he never complained. He constantly asked me to just “go lay down and get better.” That was his mantra. Dawn would come and I would get up to find the whole house cleaned and put together so I would have “order in my chaos.” He made everyday about my recovery. Whether sleeping in a chair in my hospital room in between working on his computer, to driving me to the hospital – sometimes at 4am because “Bumpy” the chemo-pump was malfunctioning and we had to go get it fixed. He’s just a rockstar. No other words. Thank you god for Michael.
As my cancer journey ended, I was more and more aware of how much there is for folks to do to help with this cause. In my small way, I encouraged Olivia Newton-John to revisit her amazing CD “Grace and Gratitude” and share it on a larger scale, which became “Grace and Gratitude Renewed.”
She wrote a new song – “Help Me To Heal” – with Amy Sky, and re-released the project anew. I was fortunate to get to edit footage from recording sessions to make a music video for the new song.
The End:
This is a good news story 🙂
The words “full remission” were spoken. Treatment/checkups will continue for a few years just to monitor things, but trust and believe I’ll be fine.
#FuckCancer
Me and Bumpy, the chemo pump. Looks like I have bad taste in handbags, doesn’t it?
My wristbands from each time I went to the hospital
Doctors diagnose, nurses heal. JoEllen, my chemo nurse. Bless her. This was my last day of chemo.
• Max Emerson and Abram Hodgens (above) know how to April in style! Oh, to be in Park City right now…
• Ok, so now I have to watch the upcoming all-athletes edition of Dancing with the Stars because oh-so-awesome Olympic bronze medalist Adam Rippon will be taking part in the reality competition. Two Olympic skaters have won in the past, so, just saying… 🙂
• Fitness model Quin Bruce is giving you “off-duty Superman”… #woof
• For a little #TBT action, I’m digging re-visiting American Idol alum Frenchie Davis’ single “Love’s Got A Hold On Me” from back in 2012. Oh – and are those hot, shirtless guys in there…?
I met and interviewed the openly bi singer during the promo for the single and she was an absolute doll.
A Mississippi woman has regained her parental rights to the child born during her marriage to her ex-wife in a new ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Mississippi’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a woman has parental rights to a 6-year-old boy born to her ex-wife when the two were married, in a case watched by gay rights activists and groups aiding in vitro fertilization.
Christina “Chris” Strickland brought the appeal, challenging a lower court decision that an anonymous sperm donor still had parental rights and that Strickland did not. Strickland ultimately hopes to win 50-50 custody of Zayden Strickland, who bears her last name and was born by Kimberly Day through artificial means when Day and Strickland were married.
All nine state Supreme Court justices found problems with the original, lower court ruling by Rankin County Chancery Judge John Grant III.
It’s difficult to rationalize how a judge gives an anonymous donor (who is unknown to the child and probably always will be) equal rights to a birth mother but cuts out the other woman who has been a mother to the child since birth.
If Strickland had been a man in a heterosexual marriage that had a child through use of an anonymous sperm donor, I’m certain he would have still been treated like the father he was and been given parental rights without question.
Chief Justice William Waller Jr. acknowledged the Mississippi legislature needed to clarify state law:
“The Legislature should speak directly to the recognition of the legal status of children born during a marriage as the result of assisted reproductive technology,” Waller wrote.
Twitter user Owen Benjamin found out the hard way life comes at you fast.
He recently took to Twitter to attack Parkland high school shooting massacre survivor David Hogg.
Yep, that’s a grown man attacking a 17-year-old high school student who recently survived a shooting massacre.
Just a fact check here – David Hogg has pointedly said he has no intention of calling for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment.
Anyway, you know what’s coming, right?
I have to say, if your ability make an income is dependent on being on Twitter, maybe you should consider that before acting like a fool.
It’s hysterical that Benjamin’s “big man” tweet attacking Hogg said he didn’t have sponsors because he didn’t need them and then whines saying he can’t make a living without his Twitter.
Actually, he does have “sponsors” via his Patreon page where it looks like he’s making over $7,000 a month. #WTF?
So I’m not crying any crocodile tears for OB. Act like a fool, get treated like a fool.
By the way, Benjamin considers himself a comedian. I thought comedians were funny…?
The best thing about the whole episode is David Hogg never even acknowledged Benjamin’s existence. #FTW
Just so you get a better sense of how “funny” Mr. Benjamin is:
Pod Save America is a no-bullshit podcast about politics hosted by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor that breaks down the week’s news and helps people figure out what matters and how to help.
In a recent live event, co-host Tommy Victor, in explaining the “caravan” of people fleeing violence in Honduras heading towards the U.S., shared why he “hates” Donald Trump: “When he pounds on the people who have it the worst, he reveals his true character.”
That ugly truth about Trump is a big reason why I can’t stand the current resident of the White House.
Watch below.
“This is why I hate [Donald Trump]… when he pounds on the people who have it the worst, he reveals his true character.” @TVietor08 on Trump’s reprised “rapist” comments about people fleeing violence in Hondurashttps://t.co/G9dchIFZvcpic.twitter.com/ewAtVlFbdL
In an extremely candid interview with Cyd Zeigler for OUT, Gus Kenworthy and Adam Rippon reflect on the adventure that was the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang and the pressures most of the world was unaware that they faced.
An excerpt:
Gus Kenworthy: I got so many messages, like, “Why are you even there? You got last place.” Well, first of all, I didn’t get last place, I made it to the final. But also, I was at the fucking Olympics. I didn’t get here because I’m a gay athlete — it wasn’t handed to me. I qualified the same way that everyone else did. It took a lot of fucking grit and gumption and hard work to get to this position. Anyone that discredits it is truly just a troll.
But also, it does suck. Being out was such a fucking cool experience, but no straight athletes were checking their messages or comments the day before their event and seeing death threats and super-hurtful shit from internet bullies. The day before my event I read messages that were like, “I hope you fall, I hope you break your legs, you’re a piece of shit.” I had a message that was like, “I want to curb stomp you, you faggot.” I’m like, OK, cool, there’s someone out there that wants to put my teeth on a curb and stomp on my neck. It takes a lot to read that about yourself and know that there are people out there that don’t want you to succeed.
Adam Rippon: And then you go and represent those people. I’m an American representing the United States of America, and I would get a pit in my stomach every time there was somebody on social media with an American flag in their name. The most consistent message I got was, “I hope you fail, I hope you fall. I’ve never cheered against someone in my entire life.” That was really consistent — it was pretty much across the board.
That somebody could go out of their way to say they’re proud of their country and that they love it, and they’re a patriot, and then turn around and taunt their athletes is incredibly disrespectful. They’re the opposite of a patriot. You don’t represent America. You represent you and your family and your small-minded whatever. That’s not American.
But the boys of winter make it clear that PyeongChang was very much a huge net positive for them as the first out men to represent the U.S. at the Winter Olympics.
You can watch the bromance between the BFFs in action during their OUT photo shoot below:
