EOMMD

Time once again for the End of Month Meme Dump (EOMMD). It's the resource that keeps on giving.

Arctic heat

Too bad it's not a porn title. 

Rising seas, melting polar ice caps, and we move onto a sandbar off the coast of Texas? Go figure!

Arctic Temperatures Surge in the Dead of Winter

(CNN) Winter is still in full swing in the North Pole, but temperatures this week have been downright summerlike in the Arctic.

Although it is shrouded in the darkness of a 24-hour polar night, temperatures in the Arctic have soared well above freezing this week, marking the hottest temperatures recorded in the region during winter, according to scientists from the Danish Meteorological Institute.

Calculations from Cape Morris Jessup, the world's northernmost land-based weather station, show that temperatures from February in eastern Greenland and the central Arctic are averaging about 15°C (27°F) warmer than seasonal norms.

And although the Arctic has seen temperatures climbing for decades, the past few years have seen the most extreme changes, according to Martin Stendel, a climate scientist at DMI. For the past 20 years, temperatures above freezing in February have only been recorded three times -- first in 2011, then in 2017 and now.

"For years, absolute values of temperatures have become higher and higher, but if you look a couple years back it's not so interesting whether the temperatures were minus 10 degrees C or minus 5 degrees C because the temperature was still well below zero," Stendel said.

But this month's unusual rises are interesting -- and unprecedented -- and have continued for a record nine days in a row.

Zack Labe, a climate scientist at the University of California at Irvine, tweeted a chart demonstrating how dramatically different this February's temperature is.

2018 is well exceeding previous years (thin lines)
for the month of February. 2018 is the red line.
Average temperature is in white 

In the past, it was not unusual for the Arctic to see days where temperatures would peak above minus 10 C (14 F), but what we are seeing now is different. Those peaks are becoming more frequent and long-lasting.

More worryingly, the warming weather pattern is producing a circular affect.

The warmer the air and water, the less sea ice there is. And the less sea ice there is, the warmer the air and water can get (and stay warm). This, in turn, leads to less sea ice -- and the vicious cycle continues.

For example, in Alaska, residents of the island village of Diomede are baffled at the open ocean water this February. There, residents are seeing the scientific findings in the Arctic play out in their own backyards. February should be the height of the sea ice season -- but instead, crashing waves are changing their town's coastline. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's head of Arctic research, Jeremy Mathis, told CNN that in many years of Arctic research, 2017 marked the first time that he and his group of researchers spotted no ice in the seas off Alaska.

"This year in 2017 during a 25-day cruise in the Arctic, we didn't see a single piece of ice," Mathis said. "We were sailing around on a Coast Guard icebreaker in blue water that could have been anywhere in the world. And it certainly didn't look like the Arctic."

Greenland's melting glaciers may someday flood your city

Arctic sea-ice masses have been shrinking in size over the January and February months since 1980. Data from January and February 2018 has so far demonstrated the most dramatic losses in size, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Last year had been the worst year for greatest loss in volume of sea ice until now.

Like the rising temperatures, sea-ice masses are also setting new records -- but not the good kind. "It seems like every winter we get a new record minimum at the moment," Graham says.

He holds onto the hope that public concern over the Arctic's rising temperatures will help shine a light on the issue he is most concerned about: shrinking sea ice. "These simple events can seem quite shocking at the time but it's what they do to bring attention to the large-scale sea ice that's important."

While the Arctic warms up, most of Europe has been hit with a cold snap that has extended into this week. The cold weather, dubbed "the beast from the East," is the result of cold winds from Siberia sweeping across many parts of Europe.

Jason Box, an American scientist and professor of glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said that cold air from the Arctic has been pushed away from its normal hovering position.

It's now found itself invading more temperate locations like Rome, where locals woke up on Monday to find their city covered in snow for the first time in more than five years.

The rest at the Original.

Boca Chica!

They could be launching rockets from Boca Chica by 2019, and will have their tracking stations in place by 2018. Imagine watching a rocket launch from our frikkin' balcony!

SpaceX: We are committed to building world’s first commercial launch complex in South Texas

from the Rio Grande Guardian
BROWNSVILLE, RGV – Members of Congress visited the STARGATE at UT-Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville on Friday, interested in the program and the group’s collaboration with SpaceX.

Congressman Filemon Vela said many people in his district – he represents Brownsville – were dubious that SpaceX would follow through on its plans to send rockets up to space from a launch pad on Boca Chica beach.

Dr. Rick Jenet, founder and director of STARGATE, responded that he was 100 percent sure SpaceX would be active in South Texas.

He later told the Rio Grande Guardian: “I am not a spokesperson for SpaceX but we can see the signs in the public statements that SpaceX are making. It is very clear that SpaceX has every intention of moving forward with the Boca Chica launch facility and in a recent conference in Silicon Valley, there was a presentation by SpaceX and you could see on the map a SpaceX facility, the Boca Chica space launch facility.”

STARGATE stands for Spacecraft Tracking and Astronomical Research into Gigahertz Astrophysical Transient Emission and is a radio-frequency (RF) technology facility currently under development in south Texas.

Within minutes of the discussion between Jenet and the members of Congress, James Gleeson, as senior communications manager at SpaceX sent the Rio Grande Guardian a quote about its commitment to South Texas. The timing was purely coincidental.

“SpaceX is committed to building the world’s first commercial launch complex in South Texas. We have invested millions into the project, hired new full-time employees and contractors, conducted extensive engineering and geotechnical surveys, and performed soil surcharging and drilling in preparation for the build,” Gleeson said.

“Last year, shipped from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and mounted on concrete foundations, SpaceX installed two ground station antennas at our South Texas launch site to track Crew Dragon missions to the International Space Station and beyond beginning in 2018, as well as for tracking flights from South Texas.”

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. Its mission is to revolutionize space technology with the ultimate goal of enabling humans to live on other planets.

SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company also made history in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft delivered cargo to and from the International Space Station — a challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for NASA.

In 2017, SpaceX successfully achieved the first re-flight of an orbital class rocket – a milestone on the road to full and rapid rocket reusability. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are the only orbital class rockets flying today that are capable of reuse. Currently Dragon carries cargo to space, but it was designed from the outset to carry humans. Under an agreement with NASA, SpaceX is now developing the refinements that will enable Dragon to fly crew as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Dragon’s first test flight with crew is expected to take place as early as 2018.

In 2017, SpaceX represented over 60 percent of all U.S. launches. Five of SpaceX’s 18 missions in 2017 utilized flight-proven Falcon 9 rockets. To date, SpaceX has successfully completed 51 launches – 48 with Falcon 9, one with Falcon Heavy and two with Falcon 1. Of those missions, SpaceX has successfully landed 23 first stage boosters – 12 at sea and 11 on land at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) and Landing Zone 2 (LZ-2). SpaceX has secured over 100 missions to its manifest, representing over $12 billion in contracts.

On February 6, 2018, Falcon Heavy successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Falcon Heavy is the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two, with the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lbs.)—a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel. Falcon Heavy’s first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973 from LC-39A, delivered more payload to orbit.

For more information about the company, go to its website: www.spacex.com.

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Atwood Park

Cameron County is spending up to $20 million on upgrades to various parks on South Padre Island. Looks like the upgrades are complete at Atwood Park, aka Beach Access No 5.  Love it.

Island beach park upgrade ready

fishing at the jetties on South Padre Island

from The Monitor

HARLINGEN — A $3.75 million makeover for one of Cameron County’s most popular South Padre Island parks is ready for visitors.

E.K. Atwood County Park, better known as Beach Access No. 5, will hold a ribbon-cutting to show off the improvements at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

“The new improvements include an elevated plaza structure with five pavilions and picnic tables, restrooms, community rinse stations, two new dune walkover structures with interpretive signs, four designated parking areas for food truck concessions and other associated improvements,” said Joe E. Vega, county parks director.

“The parking area has (Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant) parking and is constructed using a pervious paving system that is environmentally friendly,” he added. “The parking lot’s unique construction will reduce storm water runoff by allowing rainwater to infiltrate through the pavement and subsoil beneath, resulting in much cleaner runoff water making its way back into our water ways and groundwater.”

The park is one of the most popular on the Island and receives approximately a half-million visitors annually.

Vega said three food truck concessionaires have met requirements for fixed-place selling, and those applications have been forwarded to the county commissioners court.

“The parks department is in the process of executing agreements with the three vendors,” Vega said, and those applications will be presented to commissioners for approval in March.

E.K. Atwood Park is the first project of a $20 million investment in coastal park improvements that CameronCounty is undertaking.

Funding for this project came from bonds and beach user fees. The beach user fee was increased to $10 in January 2016 to pay for improvements to gulfside amenities at Isla Blanca Park, Andy BowiePark, Cameron County Beach Access No. 3 and E.K. Atwood Park.

“It’s a great addition to the Cameron County parks system,” Vega said. “It’s going to bring more people to that area, and we’re very excited with all the improvements going on in the coastal parks on South Padre Island.

“We’re doing all the necessary improvements to continue to provide services which are needed not only for this generation but for many generations to come,” Vega said.

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irony meter

OFF THE CHARTS! 

(It's a Jesus and Mo toon)

a flu cure

This would be quite big news. Hopefully they won't price the thing in the stratosphere. No, this is not the National Enquirer.

Japan's New Drug: One Pill May Stop The Flu in Just One Day

by Bruce Y. Lee, Contributor to Forbes Magazine

One day, you may be able to stop flu viruses in your body in just one day with just one pill. Based on an announcement yesterday, that day may be someday very soon in May in Japan.

On Friday, Japanese pharmaceutical company Shionogi announced that the flu medication that they have developed, Xofluza, otherwise known as baloxavir marboxil has been approved to be manufactured and sold in Japan.

Beginning in October 2015, the medication underwent priority review by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. Shionogi filed for approval in the autumn of 2017. Compared to Tamiflu, which requires two doses each day for five days, apparently only a single dose of Xofluza will be needed to treat the flu. Even though Xofluza has received approval, people will have to wait until the Japanese national insurance sets a price for the medication, which according to Preetika Rana writing for the Wall Street Journal, may not occur until May.  

Xofluza works via a different mechanism from neuroaminidase inhibitors like Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (zanamivir). Flu viruses are like squatters in your home that then use the furniture and equipment in your home to reproduce. Yes, I know, that makes for a lovely picture. A flu infection begins when flu viruses reach your lungs. Each flu virus will enter a cell in your lungs and then use your cell's genetic material and protein production machinery to make many, many copies of itself. In order to do this, the flu virus uses "cap-snatching". The virus employs an endonuclease enzyme to clip off and steal the caps or ends of your messenger RNA and then re-purposes these caps to reproduce its own genetic material. 

After the virus has made multiple copies of itself, the resulting viruses implement another enzyme called a neuroaminidase to separate themselves from parts of the host cell and subsequently spread throughout the rest of your body to cause havoc. While Tamiflu, Relenza, and other neuroaminidase inhibitors try to prevent the neuroaminidase enzyme from working, Xofluza acts at an earlier step, stopping the "cap-snatching" by blocking the endonuclease enzyme.

By acting at an earlier step before the virus has managed to replicate, Xofluza could stop a flu virus infection sooner than neuroaminidase inhibitors. The results from Shionogi's Phase III CAPSTONE-1 clinical trial compared Xofluza (then called Cap-dependent Endonuclease Inhibitor S-033188) with oseltamivir and placebo, with results being published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The study found that baloxavir marboxil (or Xofluza) stopped an infected person from shedding flu virus earlier (median 24 hours) than oseltamivir (median 72 hours). Those taking baloxavir marboxil also had lower measured amounts of viruses than those taking oseltamivir throughout the first 3 days of the infection. Baloxavir marboxil also seemed to shorten the duration of flu symptoms (median 53.7 hours compared to a median of 80.2 hours for those taking placebo). Since symptoms are largely your body's reaction to the flu virus, you can begin shedding virus before you develop symptoms, and symptoms can persist even when you are no longer shedding the virus.

The key with any of these flu medications is early treatment, especially within the first 24 to 48 hours of infection, which may be before you notice any symptoms. Once the virus has replicated and is all over your body, your options are limited. The vaccine still remains the best way to prevent an infection.

In the words of Alphaville, this new drug could be big in Japan. While Xofluza won't be available in time to help with the current flu season, this year's particularly harsh flu season has highlighted the need for better ways to treat the flu. But will the United States see Xofluza anytime soon? Similar to Pokemon, Xofluza may need a year or two to reach the U.S. market. But one day, one pill and one day may be a reality in the U.S.

Original. But how do you know you're infected in the first day if there are no symptoms?  Regardless, thousands of lives could be saved with this med. But, how about a better vaccine in the first place? I know, I know.

woodworking, etc

It has taken me about a year since retiring to finally "settle in" to being retired and living on South Padre Island. In the grand scheme of things, that doesn't seem like a really long period of time. I take things slowly. Don't try to do too much at once. Why rush things?

Finally, I got the garage in shape. Well, mostly. There is still a lot to do, but I finally have a good workbench and a couple of sawhorses. There are several more "things" I want to get for the garage, like different types of saws, but I have enough "stuff" to do a few things. 

So, one of the very first projects was to make a wedging table for the wife. She likes to do pottery, and a wedging table is where she works the clay until it's ready for forming and/or firing. She's been using a rickety folding table and it hadn't been working.

So, finally, I got around to building a wedging table. I used leftover materials, except for the wood screws and wood glue. The garage is half full of leftover wood from other projects around the house, so I used 3/4" plywood for the top, 2x4 wood for the underskirt and 4x4 pieces for the legs. Very basic. No lower shelf. One thing at a time.

After the table was built, we stretched a piece of dropcloth canvas over the top and stapled it into place. The canvas on top helps to absorb moisture in the clay. She's used it a couple of times now and says it's perfect. This is the first woodworking project I've done in years and years. Decades, even. But it's a great feeling to build something that actually works well for its intended purpose. 

Another thing we finally got around to doing was moving an upright piano from the wife's sister's house to the island. Got it moved last week and a piano tuner will be coming to the house next week to give it its first tune-up in probably 40 years. The thing was built in 1965 and was tuned a few times until the 1970's and then it just sat. Hopefully it is tuneable. Can't wait for that thing to be in tune.

It's sitting up against one of the two large, west-facing windows to look out to the bay.

Finally, I ordered two hammock stands to hold a couple of our hammocks. They will be awesome on the breezeway, but they are also portable so I can put them in the lot, or move them to the backyard, or even take them to the beach. 

Things are FINALLY coming together. Now, I suppose a hurricane will hit this summer and blow everything away!

George Carlin

Every now and then I need to re-watch some George Carlin. Let's hear it for electronic recordings.

Imagine

good guy with a gun

As expected, Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice-President of the NRA (National Rifle Assn), came out and defended all the guns in our society over sanity at this year's CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). He even pulled out his old saw: "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Is that right, asshole? Well, we have some new details about the Parkland, Florida shooting.

From Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog:

New details undermine the right’s ‘good guy with a gun’ argument

Opponents of new restrictions on guns have presented a variety of ideas in response to last week’s high-school shooting in Florida, most of which involve adding more guns to the equation. Maybe tragedies like these can be avoided, the argument goes, if schools had armed guards.

After all, as the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre told the public after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” He repeated the line again yesterday.

There are all kinds of problems with the adage, but new details emerged yesterday that further undermined the right’s talking point: at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., there was a good guy with a gun.

An armed security officer on campus where a gunman killed 17 people never went inside the high school or tried to engage the gunman during the attack, a Florida sheriff said Thursday. 

That officer has now resigned…. Scot Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school, “was absolutely on campus through this entire event. He was armed, he was in uniform,” [Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel] said.

The county sheriff told reporters yesterday that the armed security officer at the school remained outside, during the mass shooting, “for upwards of four minutes.”

I’ve seen some condemnations of the resigned officer’s lack of action, and I can certainly understand the outrage, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes people freeze in a crisis. Scot Peterson is hardly the first person to pause before running toward the line of fire.

The larger point, however, is that details like these don’t inspire confidence in the latest Republican talking points.

We now know, for example, that the accused gunman in Parkland wasn’t deterred by approaching a school with an armed security officer in uniform.

What’s more, for all of Donald Trump’s support for arming and training school teachers, there’s no way your typical algebra instructor is ever going to have the kind of training a sheriff’s deputy has to undergo before getting a badge and a firearm.

And yet, here we are. There was a good guy with a gun at the school, and 17 innocent people were killed anyway. Those searching for practical solutions should probably look elsewhere.

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Comfortably Numb

Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" will stick with me until my last days. Every time I hear David Gilmour's guitar solo I choke up. Weird, huh? We saw Floyd in London a couple of years back and when they played this song, it was strangely epic. Gilmour wasn't playing with Floyd at that time, but the guitarist (WTF was his name?) did a fantastic job. But no one can play it like David.

Parkland, FL

Yep, another week, another mass shooting in America. This one was at a high school in Parkland, Florida and was committed with, you guessed it, an AR-15, the weapon of choice of mass murderers. No wonder. This weapon fires bullets at over 2,800MPH, about three times faster than a typical handgun, and the result is usually instant death. Many people survive from being shot with a handgun. Not so with an AR-15.

David Hogg, NOT a "crisis actor"

This time, however, the surviving kids have gotten really pissed that, after so many shootings like this, our Congress has done not one fucking thing about lessening this violence. It would appear that a large number of our elected reps are in the pockets of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Trump even signed a law early in 2017 making it EASIER for the mentally ill to buy weapons!

Add this to the list of reasons to be ashamed to be an American right now. We are the only western nation where mass shootings like this happen over and over and over. And over and over. I was frankly numb to it, thinking that nothing was going to change, as usual, until these kids started stepping up and demanding change to our gun laws. They are a real inspiration.

Florida teens stage a "die-in"
in front of the White House.

That's the thing about life: you never know what the fuck is coming next. Just ask that Fortune Teller working out of that beat-up shack down the street.

For the first time in a long time, it feels like something might change about our insane gun laws. 

Stephen Colbert has been talking about it.

Loudon Wainright

I missed this one when it premiered wayyyyy back in 2016.

cryptojacking

A lot of things in todays world makes me feel "old" but few things make me feel older than the concept of crypto-currencies and this latest thing, "crypto-jacking." I just do not get it. How can you hack a computer and mine crypto-currency? What the actual fuck?

Hackers hijack Tesla’s cloud system to mine cryptocurrency

by Ryan Browne of CNBC

• Tesla's Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud account was compromised by hackers and used for cryptocurrency mining, RedLock said.
• Other major firms, including Aviva and Gemalto, were affected by similar problems.
• This incident marks another case of what is known in the cryptocurrency world as "cryptojacking."
• Tesla said that it did not see any initial impact on customer data protection or the safety and security of its vehicles.

Tesla's cloud system was hijacked by hackers who used it to mine cryptocurrency, according to researchers.

Hackers were able to infiltrate the automaker's Kubernetes administration console because it was not password protected, cybersecurity firm RedLock said Tuesday. Kubernetes is a Google-designed system aimed at optimizing cloud applications.

This left access credentials for Tesla's Amazon Web Services (AWS) account exposed, and hackers deployed cryptocurrency mining software called Stratum to mine cryptocurrency using the cloud's computing power.

Cryptocurrency mining is a process whereby so-called miners solve complex mathematical problems to validate a transaction and add it to the underlying network. RedLock did not specify which cryptocurrency was mined in the cyber breach.

This incident marks another case of what is known in the cryptocurrency world as "cryptojacking."

Cryptojacking is a process whereby hackers deploy software that exploits a computer's CPU (central processing unit) to mine cryptocurrency.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that hackers had deployed an altered version of the popular plugin Browsealoud to a number of government websites in the U.K., the U.S. and Australia.

This version of Browsealoud infected the government websites with Coinhive code, which is used to generate units of privacy-focused cryptocurrency monero.

U.S. online news outlet Salon is even asking visitors to its site who use ad blocking plugins if it can use their computing power to mine monero instead.

Uh, what? The rest at the original.

DJ Shadow

No, I do not usually partake of rap videos or rap music, but this video by DJ Shadow caught my eye and ear. What in the fuck is this world coming to?!

dereliction of duty

I can feel some righteous anger bubbling up to the surface about Agent Orange (Donald Trump). It's long overdue, but I think one would have to admit that Trump was given time to "settle down" and work his way into the presidency. Predictably, however, he is incapable of faithfully executing his duties. He doesn't even understand half of his fucking job.

How can any Trump supporter honestly excuse Trump's refusal to deal with the Russians and their attacks on our democracy? It becomes clearer and clearer that Trump is on the side of Russia, and not America. That should be an impeachable offense, maybe even a jailable one.

Trump's Staggering Dereliction of Duty

by Ruth Marcus, Washington Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor

National security adviser H.R. McMaster is in the news — and apparently in the presidential doghouse — for stating the obvious: that evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election is “now really incontrovertible.” So it is appropriate to take, as this column’s theme, the title of McMaster’s book on the Vietnam war, “Dereliction of Duty.”

McMaster was writing about military leaders’ failure to stand up to presidents who insisted on pursuing an unwinnable war. Now, in the White House in which McMaster serves, the dereliction of duty starts at the top. And, as the past several days have shown, President Trump’s failure is dereliction on a grand, unprecedented scale: We find ourselves at war without a commander in chief; in national mourning without a consoler in chief; and in political gridlock without a negotiator in chief.

The first is the most appalling and most terrifying. “Incontrovertible,” McMaster said, and so it is for anyone who bothers to read the indictment of 13 Russians for running a massive operation not only to disrupt the election but to do so to Trump’s benefit. But of course Trump never has and apparently never will be able to accept this. Is it his fragile ego that cannot tolerate the implicit challenge to his legitimacy? Is it something more sinister?

This much is clear: For whatever reason, Trump is unwilling to accept the reality of what happened in 2016 and, more alarming, unwilling to do his duty to seek to prevent it from happening again. We are at war with an enemy plotting to undermine our democracy, and our supposed leader, far from working to halt this, seems determined to ignore it. Where is Trump’s outrage now that the evidence against Russia is public, not that he needed to wait for that? It is invisible.

Instead, Trump’s anger is directed against McMaster, for omitting the untrue party line: “General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems. Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”

Trump’s anger is directed against the democratic institutions that have rallied to discover what happened and seek to prevent its recurrence: “If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!”

Laughing their asses off in Moscow, indeed. There has been not one word, not one syllable of presidential anger directed toward the people who did this.

But there is no depth to which Trump will not sink in defense of the only thing he holds dear: himself. And so, the nation witnessed a tweet in which the president, a leader to whom the country once looked for healing in times of national tragedy, instead used innocent victims, high school children mowed down in their own school, to make his bogus, self-interested point: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

Did he? Did he really use dead children to attack an investigation into his campaign and his conduct in office? Yes, he did. This is a person devoid of empathy. He can experience the world only through the prism of his own ego. He can read the requisite words from a teleprompter — “To every parent, teacher, and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you — whatever you need, whatever we can do, to ease your pain” — but he is incapable of feeling them. No one who imagines the shattered heart of a grieving parent could have written that despicable tweet.

Finally, a word about the “dreamers,” and the impending, unnecessary tragedy of Trump’s own making. He wanted a “bill of love” to protect the dreamers, Trump told us. “I will be signing it,” he said of any congressional deal to allow these promising innocents to remain. Trump broke the inadequate status quo for dreamers when he rescinded President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order allowing them to stay. Then he failed to fix it. Then, with an unnecessarily belligerent and premature veto threat, Trump got in the way of lawmakers of good faith attempting a solution.

“Dereliction of duty” is not a strong enough term to describe this man’s abysmal performance.

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