https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44527672
Donald Vader or Darth Trump?
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44527672
Donald Vader or Darth Trump?
Just because it's still funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBFKs-bQWzc
:creep:
Welcome back Don.Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
Dude over here, whose blog is pretty consistent that I linked above, develops the case that we are now one government action or policy away from full authoritarianism. He argues that (bolded as original, size change to my salience):
Quote:
So. Let us now think one step ahead. Let’s imagine, simply, that the head of state in this country, or its Congress, decides to do something much worse even than put kids in camps. By passing a bill, or an executive order, or both. We don’t even need to ask the obvious question — why would they stop at camps for kids?
Go ahead, pick something. Pick anything. Let the dark corners of your imagination run wild for a moment. Intern citizens. Strip people en masse of citizenship. Put residents and citizens in camps. Gulags. Enslave the prisoners in them. Put people in ghettoes, based on their ethnic status. Exterminate them.
Does this sound like fabulism to you? Please think again. Who is going to stop it? The Congress will not lift a finger — that much it has already clearly signaled, hasn’t it? The head of state appears to have no moral limits whatsoever — all this is very clearly within not just his legal capabilities, but more importantly, within the bounds of his moral imagination. It is something he is capable of as a human being. The media, at least a solid half of it, would probably cheer such things, and deny they are happening — just as it does right now for camps.
So. I want you to see the point. And I hope that it makes your blood run cold — because it does mine.
The worst abuses and acts imaginable in human history can happen overnight now. They have been licensed institutionally — there is not a single check or balance, not one, left to stop them. They can become a reality now with a single simple signing of a pen to paper. Do you see what I mean by: we are one step away from the abyss?
Do you still think that I overstate it? The world cannot stop it, can it? The UN can’t. The World Bank can’t. No international institution, no foreign power, no body of any kind whatsoever in the entirety of the world, in fact, can stop any of the preceding, should this country’s government decide that is what it wants to do. And who would intercede anyways? China? Russia? LOL — this is the stuff of their dreams, to see their great adversary self-destructing.
Now. Maybe you object. “But there will be legal challenges! The courts will stop them!!” You are right — but only in the way that proves you wrong. Sure, there’ll be legal challenges. Many and furious. But so what? They will not really stop any of the above. They may claim some sort of victory, after a time, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Those facing the thugs will still be hurt, traumatized, abused, for life — if they have lives left. The courts cannot prevent atrocity — they can only do justice for it after it is too late. History, Nuremberg, tells us that much.
Quote:
So in the end there are only two safety nets left in society that can stop the plunge into the abyss. The first is the people. The American people are brave and noble and kind. But they are also traumatized and wounded and broken, by the depredations of predatory capitalism. If it means losing their livelihoods, being blacklisted, being jailed themselves, never working again — will they march? Will they surround the camps? Perhaps you see the problem. Maybe some will — but enough? This safety net is an unsure one to have to rely on.
The second safety net left in society that can prevent a plunge into the abyss is the military. Now we find ourselves in the realm of truly broken societies. Will the generals say to their armies: “enough is enough. We will not permit this”? I don’t know. You don’t know. No one can really say. So this safety net may be there, but it may not be, too. There is an even chance, I’d say.
And that leaves us right where I began. We are one step away from the abyss. Just one. A tiny nudge. A single action. That is all it would take. A law passed by Congress. An executive order. Any kind of atrocity is well within the realm of very real political and social possibility now.
Just one. It could happen overnight. It could happen in the blink of an eye. It could happen tomorrow, the day after that, or even today. No, this wasn’t possible a decade ago — when a more sensible Congress and President and party reigned. But together, they mean that we are one step away from the abyss. From real darkness and horror. From becoming all that we once condemned as despised as ignoble, false, unworthy, and immoral.
The author uses much of his blog to argue that the sentiment "It couldn't happen here" represents a moral and intellectual failure on the part of the one holding it. "It is already happening here."
Addendum: There is one, ultimate safety net we can think of, of course: the civil disobedience of the federal agents tasked with carrying out whatever atrocity. Unfortunately, I don't have that kind of confidence in our enforcers...
On that note the Space Force is an incredibly stupid steps because once he begins to weaponize space, so will others. And if it doesn't end up with a big field of space debris that will prevent all space flight for a long time, who knows what kind of terrible WMDs countries will place up there that could obliterate humanity in addition to the nukes we already have...
Space used to be the one somewhat neural zone where countries even cooperate on space stations, now he's turning it into another arms race... :wall:
And this: http://www.dw.com/en/us-withdraws-fr...cil/a-44301296
Obviously Human Rights do not concern Trump, as if it wasn't obvious enough by the way he talks about dictators who constantly violate them..."funny" in that context, that Haley claimed the council wouldn't really care about Human Rights.Quote:
The Trump administration has yet again pulled the United States out of a major global organization — this time the UN Human Rights Council. The move comes a day after the UNHCR criticized Trump's immigration policies.
BTW, for those who don't know Stephen Miller is the grandson of Jewish immigrants, and the most outspoken 'card-carrying' fascist in the entire Trump admin.
Stephen Miller’s Family Is Furious Over Family Separation Policy
He probably likes to think of himself as a cross of Himmler and Goebbels.
When his parents were telling him about the Holocaust as a kid, he must have been the type of person to think to himself, 'I want to be a Nazi when I grow up.'
Meanwhile, ICE and ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) have no system for keeping track of the relationship between adults and the children taken from them (since before the present policy they would be released on own recognizance), so adults are getting deported while their kids are still in the camps and there is neither capacity nor interest to reunite them.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...-tearing-apart
Boy, camps full of unidentified, irrepatriable minors: sounds like a problem in search of a solution. Some type of 'long-term', enduring solution. Just sayin'.
Also meanwhile, the Trump admin is hiring dozens of lawyers to review immigration cases to find instances where it may be appropriate to strip naturalized citizens of citizenship. They are embarking on this obviously extremely urgent project now because there are potentially "a few thousand" cases in need of review. In post-war America, this process has typically been reserved for people who lied about being Nazis or war criminals on their paperwork.
But don't worry: the admin promises not to act on the basis of technicalities. What a relief!
Who will stop him?
This is the beginning of something scary.
Unless American society rejects its agreement to the current government power structure, then this may be something that continues to snowball.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/...ald-trump.aspxQuote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
:shrug:
Hence my pessimistic statements a week or two ago...Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
A man is above the law when there is no one able (or willing) to hold him accountable.
Perhaps a third ultimately approve, or half of Republicans.
"Law and order"
Obama orders that all potential thought-criminals preemptively surrender their firearms to federal agents under penalty of immediate incarceration.
Freedom-loving patriots: "Welp, it's the law." ???????
If I believed in evil, that's what I would call it.
That will increase as talk radio and Fox News continue to feed the base with the piss-poor explanation of "It's the law, Obama did it and if he didn't he should have according to the law."Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
We should talk about Obama, though. And Clinton.
It's to my shame, you know, how a few years ago I almost proudly related on this forum to the skeptical that 'Obama is like, the harshest deporter EVAR! So there!'
Tough on crime. Tough on immigration. These are the dividends of Democrats playing to independents and Republicans. Intensify the bad things in government but along the lines of something less bad than the opposition wants - and isn't that really all Democratic policy has been, "technically superior" to Republican alternatives? - and how can you not end up helping license the worst?
We need a clean break with the past.
So have others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Space_Forces
The Russian Space Forces (Russian: Космические войска России, tr. Kosmicheskie Voyska Rossii) are a branch of the Russian Aerospace Forces, that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and protection for Russia. Having been reestablished following the 1 August 2015 merger between the Russian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces after a 2011 dissolving of the branch.
Don C (and I was happy to see you back here. I hope the women in your life are flourishing as well):
I don't see enough parallels between present day USA and the Weimar to think what you fear is likely. I take your point about Miller though. It is wise to remember that a President is not a unitary figure and that others act in his/her name and even attempt to pull strings to get their way through the POTUS. I will have to think on that a bit.
I wish I could say that the current President has the moral fiber to decry any steps in a dictatorial direction. I simply don't see much moral fiber in him at all. I don't think the USA addled enough to allow it, but sadly I don't think he would mind it.
I voted for the wife in 2016. May have to vote for a Dem in 2020 to leverage Florida harder. I wish they'd run a true fiscal conservative democrat who didn't believe government was the answer to everything. It'd make my lever pull easier.
That sounds different to me, they're not militarizing space by sending soldiers there. Trump talks about a military space branch and then about sending people to the Moon and Mars, which seems to hint at literally claiming space with the military before others do, in part to prevent them from going there and claiming things. That's quite different from just having plans to defend against a laser satellite, ICBMs or whatever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilrandir
Even if you don't consider all this the minimum bar for ethnic cleansing, don't you think there's some precarity in our moment? My recent argument with ACIN was one of legality, history, and philosophy, but right now we're all referring to our concrete reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Here's the bottom line no matter what scenario we can offer you, and I don't see how you can disagree in abstract:
1. Trump is not bound, in morals or character or even dim causal inference, by normal human restraints as to what he can unleash on the country or world.
2. There is no reliable institutional restraint that can prevent or remediate any decision of the administration if it applies the ultimate overrude of pure action.
And adding to (1), after this year's purges of inner circle the admin beyond Trump is fully stocked only with committed and vicious fascists. The articles, especially Ben Wittes', around New Year's on how American institutions have proved resilient against and restraining of the government's agenda have been made a mockery of by Year 2018. ('Gravity? That precipice sure seems like a safe spot for that boulder!')
Again I don't understand, Seamus. Every Democratic president or presidential candidate since before you were old enough to vote has been a deficit hawk. Whereas the mainstream - the dominant - Republican dogma in the same period has been, with perhaps only the exception of George H.w. Bush (often closer to pre-Goldwater Republicans than to Reagan (i.e. Milton-Friedmanized) Republicans), tax cuts + deficit spending = starve the beast.Quote:
May have to vote for a Dem in 2020 to leverage Florida harder. I wish they'd run a true fiscal conservative democrat who didn't believe government was the answer to everything.
Do you deny any of this?
Just adding to this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Attachment 20838
There was a point in time where I thought the long game, 4d chess narrative had some merit to it. I no longer think this is the case. Trump was an outsider candidate who had to surround himself with outsiders in the GOP tent. He has essentially ousted the traditional GOP people and has doubled down on pandering to his nativist base (cue him hugging the flag yesterday). I don't think there is really much more to it than that.
I think these people have power and are simply willing to inflict pain. Their bumbling implementation of these policies is proof of that. I don't think Miller is particularly smart or capable. I think Miller has simply seized the levers of power. I would caution against conflating this and some type of long term plan.
Of course this does not make anything they are doing any better or not horrible. It does however underwrite the need for direct action. A congress that could get it's shit together could put a clamp on these mouth breathers in pretty short order. The executive branch doesn't have a plan or a legal basis for what they do (See all the travel ban).
The northern triangle is a disaster and this is a refugee crisis. It is a moral imperative to help these people.
Cruzs bill is only there so Beto does not outflank him on this issue. This is extremely unpopular in Texas and the kind of thing that could cause Cruz to lose his seat. Call me cynical.
I think virtually every Presidential candidate from either of the majors and most of the parties throughout my lifetime have all CLAIMED to be a deficit hawk. Mainstream GOP conservatives have always hawked the line you note about "starving the beast." It works partially, but in the face of endless deficit growth without any end state, it doesn't tame that beast very well. They peddle the line that growth will conquer all...and then fail to curb the spending thus rendering the added growth moot vis-à-vis the deficit. The Dems vary between crusaders who want to push us into a full on social democracy that makes everyone equal (Sanders end) and the practical politicians (Bill Clinton) who are more interested in the power itself than in the accomplishment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
The last one who seemed like he might actually try to change the budget process and really change the game was Perot in 1992. Sadly, he was something of a fruit-bat on other issues.
The GOP has always been closer to my preferred 'government at the lowest level practicable' approach...but all too often in words only.
I agree, but I should lay some distinctions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
1. Trump does not have principles, but he does have instincts.
2. Bannon, Miller, and others in and out of the admin evidently do have some sort of "plan", or better put, an agenda. Even something as simple as a series of broad steps or sequence of policy or social outcomes. To say they have an agenda is certainly not to say that they are geniuses or masterminds, or that everything has been charted beforehand.
Every economic and social reform we envision for Latin America depends on the decline of cartel violence as a prerequisite. We set three policy areas that have empowered and continue to empower cartels:Quote:
The northern triangle is a disaster and this is a refugee crisis. It is a moral imperative to help these people.
1. War on Drugs
2. Firearms proliferation
3. Restrictive immigration and border control policy.
What are the three pillars of cartel revenue and activity?
1. Drug trafficking
2. Arms trafficking
3. People trafficking
Our policies are what created the Central American refugee crisis, what plunged some of the safest and coziest countries on the planet into the most violent warzones within just one decade.
We owe reform to ourselves, to the people of the Americas, and to the World.
Cruz' proposal is so narrowly and marginally preferable to both the status quo and Trump's extension of it, he should switch parties.Quote:
Cruzs bill is only there so Beto does not outflank him on this issue. This is extremely unpopular in Texas and the kind of thing that could cause Cruz to lose his seat. Call me cynical.
So shouldn't you be one of those "vote Republican local, vote Democratic national" types?Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Just when it looked like Trump may have acted due to public pressure, it turns out to be a pretty bad bandaid:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-...n-for-20-days/
That might sound different but for the nature of the person who is responsible for carrying out the "defense plan". Do you honestly believe Russia would limit itself to defense? Or, to make it more general, do you honestly believe Russia would do what it says?Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
At least they had the decency to pull out of the UNHRC...
He is applying the same methods to this as he has done with all other negotiations - create an impossible situation so the other side will compromise and do what he wants.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
He wants money for his wall and all right now. He appears to think that this will force Congress to give him what he wants and everyone will blame Congress for the whole situation. That appears to be extremely wishful thinking.
~:smoking:
20 days because of legal ruling from the 90s.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
Obama pioneered the use of "family detention centers", a form of civil detention, to keep families detained together. In the past, and in the majority of cases under Obama, families were still released on recognizance and tracked, but Obama did pave the way for Trump's "zero-tolerance" policy.
And both Obama and Trump have tried to subvert Flores before. Trump now even seems to be petitioning for it to be weakened, to allow longer-term internment.
So in effect, we're exchanging (some of the) child concentration camps for formalized immigrant concentration camps.
I know, it's just that detaining them together is still a little less evil than detaining them separated. Sometimes you have to take what you can get. Although it says they will have to release the children after 20 days. What happens to them then?Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Lone children roaming the desert? :dizzy2:Quote:
However, at the 20-day mark, under the Flores consent decree, the department will have to release the children from custody.
NOTE: I stupidly linked the wrong Flores settlement above without checking the page. Here's the right one, Reno v. Flores (1993/1997).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._Flores
Just keep in mind, that's genuinely the logic of escalation. If I kidnap you and keep you chained up and starved for a week, but on the 8th day I give you a warm bowl of porridge, imagine how grateful you will be to me for having fed you.Quote:
I know, it's just that detaining them together is still a little less evil than detaining them separated. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.
Back to the child camps, unless and until the admin gets a superseding legislation or court decision. Then it's, well, not technically forever (unconstitutional), but in practice possibly probably indefinitely. If it's detention pending administration of criminal process like the Republican proposals, then given the case backlog, priorities, inadequate staffing, and the bad record the system has with giving low-status people speedy trials, it really is indefinite.Quote:
What happens to them then?
Be aware that Flores requires child detainees be kept in the "least restrictive" possible environment...
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/20/174845...nt-immigration
Don't really know if you are being sarcastic or not, can go both ways. But considering the human rights of some of the UNHRC members it's a all a bit of a farce no?Quote:
Originally Posted by Showtime
OT: At the child seperation, that is too harsh yes, but human-traders are as creative as they are relentless, how can the USA know that it are really their children. Things that are defendable can be made to sound worse than they really are. Some people are absolutily ruthless, and human-trade is probably the most cynical of them all
More grateful than if I never receive anything until I die of starvation. That doesn't mean however, that my gratefulness meter would be in the positive...Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
But aren't child camps just another form of detention? If I understand it correctly, the ruling says they can be held for up to 20 days and then they have to be released from detention. Putting them into a different detention is not a release, or is it? Does it count as some form of child care center? And in that case, wouldn't putting them there actually be required by the law since placing them in detention (with their parents) would be against the law? :dizzy2:Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Apparently the treatment is also quite bad in these "centers", and has been for a while, even under Obama as I understand:
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/..._children_have
So the claims of "we're detaining them, but we treat them so well!" could also be false.Quote:
Shocking reports have revealed that immigrant children were subdued and incapacitated with powerful psychiatric drugs at a detention center in South Texas. Legal filings show that children held at Shiloh Treatment Center in southern Houston have been “forcibly injected with medications that make them dizzy, listless, obese and even incapacitated,” according to reports by Reveal. Meanwhile, according to another Reveal investigation, taxpayers have paid more than $1.5 billion over the past four years to companies operating immigration youth facilities despite facing accusations of rampant sexual and physical abuse.
Has been known for years, happens here as well tranquilisers and all that
USA has an ugly dillema, they could be aiding human traffickers if they don't seperate the children from those they have no idea are actually their parents, they could just as well be trafickers and organ harvisters
God-cosplayer giveth, God-cosplayer taketh away.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
You have to look at this bureaucratically.
First of all, the court standard is an ideal. After 20 days, it's not like the court sends officers to extract the kids and deliver them to Never Never Land. And the government isn't automatically punished AFAIK for any given violation. What it does, is theoretically create an opening for the conduct to be challenged in court by a victim with standing - which could itself take many weeks or months to resolve. This is how our system works more generally too, the relationship between the judicial process and subsequent action.
Then, consider that if, deliberately or otherwise, the government does not know who next-of-kin are, or is aggressive about putting and keeping those on trial - you can't just release children to roam around the country backroads alone. And it doesn't even appear that Mexico and other countries are cooperative or being cooperated with such that kids could be quickly released to their national custody. So they have to be placed with selected families somewhere in the US.
Add it up, and my prediction under Flores is:
1. For 20 days, full resort package for adult and child at government-sponsored Family Fun Kamp.
(It used to be, then, that after 20 days the families would be released with tracking. Not confirming it with sources, but IIRC fathers were heavily biased against here; mother-child was treated as a standard unit.)
2. Cases can't be resolved because there are thousands of them, so vacation is extended for extra fun times.
(So far, this will definitely happen because it already has and must given the operation of the government.)
3. Going out on a limb, I wonder if the admin, given it's publicly-stated desire to create a deterrent effect - by using children to punish adults, etc. - might not devise an argument to ""temporarily"" transfer long-detained children to all-child Survival Camps
4. They might also do this if they intensify their bizarre practice (so far only known in a few cases) of deporting the adult, but, uh, 'hanging on' to the child and keeping them in the US for distribution in the foster care system.
4.a. Many thousands of kids added to the foster system would probably overwhelm it, creating a massive backlog that again causes a situation where children will be held indefinitely. This also has the side effect of screwing a subclass of citizen children, who will have a much longer wait to be placed in a foster family after having been removed from their biological/original families for reasons of abuse, neglect, death or disability of caretaker... but those kids are almost always from poor and/or minority families, so call it a bonus.
5. Why stop at people detained at the border? Why not move on to raiding established unauthorized communities - over 10 million people in the US - and placing them in camps essentially forever until they can be 'processed'?
But everything after (2) is just my speculation on how they could make the process as nightmarish as possible. The bureaucratic default is just to keep all the captured immigrants in consolidated camps and leave 'em to rot in a slow-walked and underequipped apparatus.
EDIT: Of course if Flores is watered down or superseded, the only protections remaining may be the basic constitutional ones esp. according to 5th and 6th Amendments and habeas corpus - which the government will definitely violate with impunity.
There is no dilemma in arbitrarily separating adults and children. This is totalitarian logic, a pure pretext, and it is exactly the backup used by Hitler and Stalin and every kind of mass murderer, that the target population is somehow contaminated and any hypothetical number of "bad elements" justifies its eradication.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
Stop to think about what you are saying. If one believes there is a chance of trafficking, one should assign social workers and trained personnel to evaluate each case, erring on the side of non-separation. Your suggestion is even less wise than shutting down an airport and shipping the thousands of people therein to black sites on the possibility that one of them could be, or eventually could be, a terrorist bomber.
Further notes:
1. We've been referring to criminal process because under Trump's zero-tolerance policy, everyone crossing the border at unauthorized points is potentially being subjected to charges of misdemeanor illegal entry (usually treated as a civil infraction before), but somehow this should conflict with international and domestic law on asylum seekers given that by law it is not illegal for an asylum seeker to cross the border anywhere. I suppose it comes down again to bureaucratic tricks, and refusing to process asylum claims properly. As we know, in the last few months even asylum seekers at designated crossings were being separated from their children. It's indisputable that the objective of this government is mass internment of a whole class of people, even at great expense and great harm. At some point I wonder if "deterrence" will become a secondary motivation to the inertia of internment.
2. As far as Constitutional rights: If I'm reading this correctly, the SCOTUS decided a few months ago (indirectly, by avoiding the issue of constitutionality) that detained aliens of any category in effect do not have a constitutional or statutory right to due process or bail. This Supreme Court might seriously rule, if the government fed it the right cases or appeals, that aliens "apprehended at the border" can be detained literally forever. If the government can obtain this result (or Congress passes a bad law lol), the situation will get much worse than it is now. Think Guantanamo Bay x 1000. Then, think Abu Ghraib x 10. Pretty soon, we'll be blowing way past the Japanese-American camps...
3. The government (Jeff Sessions) has just raised the bar significantly for the asylum process, so many more people can be quickly rejected, or even facially dismissed on "credible fear" before they are even allowed to make their cases.
4. Here is a pretty good synopsis of what the standard standard detention/asylum process was up to the point of hearing the cases:
Quote:
First, let’s talk about how border enforcement has operated since the Obama years. Since the so-called “migrant surge” in 2014, these were the possible things that might happen to you if you were apprehended at or near the border without papers.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
I understand what I am saying, and what's wrong with it. It wouldn't surprise me if it aren't evil people asking for this though, if it is only a deterrant it's atrocious but there might be more to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
No need to shut down airports by the way, too late they are already here
I think they keep them longer then, if I recall the reports, unless they can be released TO someone. Not sure if this is working well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
Who would that someone be, and who is watching them after them when they are released to 'someone'. As harsh as this all may sounds, there are so many possibilities for truly cynical people. I reckon that parents prefer to be with their children in the not so bad Mexico rather than be seperated from them. As atrocious as it all may sound at first glance it's defendable if you look at what is possible, I just hope it's for the right reasonsQuote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
So in your world, all the people who do cynical things all day are harmless and all the people who do relatively harmless things all day are the cynical ones we have to watch? You're basically driving towards a cliff telling the driver to go faster because the earth could open up behind the car and swallow it, you never know, it could happen any time. :dizzy2:Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
So you say that *&()*&(*⁽⁽(⁽%%*%((Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
Reminds me of an interview posyed earlier here
The separation of minors from parents while processing refugees/attempted immigrants has been occurring, at a low level, since at least the middle of the Clinton administration.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
We already HAD folks walking up to the border with kids, being separated from them, and then having those kids picked up by relatives in the States....and the adults on both ends were merely transporting the kids for sex-work. They passed laws during Bush 43 to try to curtail this, and now those guidelines are, in some cases, adding confusion to the proper treatment of such persons now.
USA border/immigration/refugee/illegals practices and procedures are a patchwork quilt of band-aids with no comprehensive efforts to rationalize or resolve the whole thing. In part, sadly, that is because the current chaos serves some political and economic interests to a number of different "players" on both sides of the border.
Donald Trump
Opiate of the masses?:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...upport-in-2016
So is opioid use and Trump support a symptom or a cause
They're both symptoms of the same cause.Quote:
Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny
The neoliberal capitalist system and the inability or unwillingness of the democrats to do anything about it while they focus on minority issues (identity politics).
I'm not saying socialism is the only answer, because some of these unemployed opioid former coal miners still believe that full on capitalism will bring them the american dream from coal miner to millionaire or have archaic views about manhood being derived from the amount of coal dust or exhaust gasses a man can swallow before dropping dead. :shrug:
Sanders could still have won though since he also promised radical change and to look out for the small man.
edit: should read the full article before replying, it's actually mentioned. :sweatdrop:
Building off the comparisons to pre-modern aristocracy, I have a new catch-phrase brewing for the trope of poor-to-rich socioeconomic mobility:Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
Nobility mobility is debility
Comments and suggestions?
I suggestQuote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
She sells sea shells on the sea shore.
Obama was a lawyer for a long time before he was President, and by all accounts continued to act like one - very detailed focused, generally cautious and slow to act.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
Trump is a... "personality" of little substance. And by all accounts he is continuing to act like one - views life as a reflection of TV, decisions should be decisive and made quickly; ratings = "winning" and detail = loosers.
Some genuinely prefer the second way of behaviour. They think government is too slow, are xenophobic and are anxious about how their life is not improving and blame this on everyone that is not them.
Obama did many things that were wrong - but he did it in a "normal" manner so most things happened behind the scenes or at the very least in a lawful way. Trump prefers to do things as gestures with little interest in whether things are lawful since no one will follow the boooooring case through the courts - least of all his supporters.
There are many things structurally wrong with the political system in the USA - many because things haven't been altered in over 100 years when the country was much more rural; others such as the electoral colleges are no longer required - direct voting with a decent AV system would be more likely to get a candidate that more people liked or a more balanced system of votes in at least the House if not the Senate as well.
But comparing it to other large bodies - which only the EU, India (and arguably China) exist it is the best by a country mile. Which itself is rather depressing.
~:smoking:
The UK system has the potential to be much better. However, the most important and powerful component in the UK system, the Commons, is currently at its worst I've ever seen. Another of its components, meant to hold it to account, the press, is also atrocious. They are institutionally good, but the individuals currently populating and driving them are awful.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
We were able to start from scratch. I have been listening to Mike Duncan's Revolution's podcast, most recently the series on the (failed?) 1848 Revolutions. It seems that even post-WW2, the legacy of nobility and elitist power structures weighs on current European political structures. For instance, why hasn't the UK gone full Republic? The PM is clearly the one running the show, the royal family is just a tourist trap that prints money for the state by luring us curious Americans to come over.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
At this moment in time, the USA / France and Turkey are the best reasons why keeping the Monarchy is better than the alternative: a weak structure with technically all the power helps prevent a strong structure from grabbing all the power. And the UK needs every method of getting in revenue - if this is one I'm all for it!Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Elitist power tends to be in power since whoever has power is called the elites. So, yes they've remained and I imagine always will. If the UK were to become a Republic what would be gained exactly?
~:smoking:
Sounds like you've been missing out on recent developments, this isn't universally the case anymore:Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH8RoLwAnhY
:laugh4:
Very droll...Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
By almost every metric I measure the value of a human being the man is worthless, but in terms of most metrics of power he is in the top fraction of a percentage point, and therefore is one of the "Nuveau Riche" Elite.
~:smoking:
Not sure how accurate that statement is. I wouldn't define elites simply as the ones who have power in government. Decision making powers are delegatable, easy to imagine that through an aristocracy that bribes the politicians (a legitimate worry among the left in the US under citizens united). In the other extreme who are the elites in a theoretical democratic body picked by random among the population every four years? Unless you are just making a tautological argument that the elite have 'power' in any form, thus those who have power are elites.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
As far as what the UK would gain, it depends on what you put into it. The political process shapes the culture and vice versa. What are the expectations of the house of lords under the current system? To be the detached, conservative element of land owners able to check the passions of the commons? Does that class even exist in 21st century capitalism? Over here, captains of industry are often just as impassioned and active in the world around them as the public.
If the remnants of the Kingdom were thrown off and the UK went full republic, how would the perception of the house of lords in this new political context change and adapt? Could this new perception bring about new public expectations and thus higher accountability to the upper chamber? This isn't so far fetched, the US has this exact conversation with our own Senate, which used to be selected by state legislatures, now by popular vote.
In the reality most live, politicians are bought by the wealthy. Sure, there are exceptions such as Theodore Roosevelt, but they are generally hated by those who rather like the status-quo.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
The House of Lords shouldn't work. All the ingredients are utterly wrong. Yet somehow it seems to do a much better job and at less of a cost than most alternatives. The Lords is mainly not the landed gentry. Sadly there are a fair number of ex-politicians who have been kicked upstairs but there are also people who are genuinely competent and able to properly review legislation.
If one is holding up the Senate as a great example of a better second chamber I'd really rather stick to the Lords, thanks - copying that gridlocked mess of a Federal Government would be a disaster.
If we were to have a President, if we are lucky we go the way of the Nordics and Germany (so many sentences seem to end up like that). Or we might go the way of France / the USA / Turkey. There is definitely a small theoretical upside - but there is a massive theoretical downside: Tony Blair as President anyone with the two houses stacked with his yes-men? He did enough damage as it was!
~:smoking:
Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) visited a few of the internment facilities:
Quote:
Sunday morning, I flew to McAllen, Texas to find out what's really happening to immigrant families ripped apart by the Trump administration.
There's one thing that's very clear: The crisis at our border isn't over.
I went straight from the airport to the McAllen Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing center that is the epicenter of Donald Trump's so-called "zero-tolerance" policy. This is where border patrol brings undocumented migrants for intake before they are either released, deported, turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or, in the case of unaccompanied or separated children, placed in the custody of Health and Human Services.
From the outside, the CBP processing center looks like any other warehouse on a commercial street lined with warehouses. There's no clue about the horrors inside.
Before we could get in, CBP insisted we had to watch a government propaganda video. There's no other way to describe it – it's like a movie trailer. It was full of dramatic narration about the "illegals" crossing our border, complete with gory pictures about the threats that these immigrants bring to the United States, from gangs to skin rashes. The star of the show is CBP, which, according to the video, has done a great job driving down the numbers.
Then an employee described what we were about to see. "They have separate pods. I'll call them pods. I don't really know how they name them." Clearly they had gotten the memo not to call them what they are: cages. Every question I asked them had a complicated answer that led to two more questions – even the simple question about how long people were held there. "Nobody is here longer than 24 hours." "Well, maybe 24-48 hours." "72 hours max." And "no children are separated out." "Well, except older children."
The warehouse is enormous, with a solid concrete floor and a high roof. It is filled with cages. Cages for men. Cages for women. Cages for mamas with babies. Cages for girls. Cages for boys.
The stench – body odor and fear – hits the second the door is opened. The first cages are full of men. The chain link is about 12-15 feet high, and the men are tightly packed. I don't think they could all lie down at the same time. There's a toilet at the back of the cage behind a half-wall, but no place to shower or wash up. One man kept shouting, "A shower, please. Just a shower."
I asked the men held in cage after cage where they were from. Nearly all of them were from El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras.
Then I asked them how long they had been there – and the answers were all over the map, from a few days to nearly two weeks (72 hours max?). The CBP agents rushed to correct the detained men, claiming that their answers couldn't be right. My immigration specialist on the trip who speaks fluent Spanish made sure the men understood that the question was, "How long have you been in the building?" Their answers didn't change.
Cage after cage. Same questions, same answers.
Next we came into the area where the children were held. These cages were bigger with far more people. In the center of the cage, there's a freestanding guard tower probably a story or story-and-a-half taller to look down over the children. The girls are held separately in their own large cage. The children told us that they had come to the United States with family and didn't know where they had been taken. Eleven years old. Twelve. Locked in a cage with strangers. Many hadn't talked to their mothers or fathers. They didn't know where they were or what would happen to them next.
The children were quiet. Early afternoon, and they just sat. Some were on thin mats with foil blankets pulled over their heads. They had nothing – no books, no toys, no games. They looked shell shocked.
And then there were the large cages with women and small children. Women breast-feeding their young children.
When we went over to the mamas with babies, I asked them about why they had left their home countries. One young mother had a 4-year-old child. She said she had been threatened by the gangs in El Salvador. She had given a drink of water to a police officer, and the gang decided she must be in with the police. The longer she spoke, the more agitated she got – that she would never do that, that she understood the risk with the gangs, but that the gangs believed she did it. She sold everything she had and fled with her son to the United States.
One thing you won't see much of in the CBP processing center? Fathers caged with their children. After pressing the CBP agents, they explained that men traveling with children are automatically released from the facility. They just don't have the cages there to hold them. Women with small children, on the other hand, could be detained indefinitely. I pressed them on this again and again. The only answer: they claimed to be protecting "the safety of the mother and children."
CBP said that fathers with children, pregnant women, mothers of children with special needs, and other "lucky ones" who are released from the processing center are sent over to Catholic Charities' Humanitarian Respite Center for help. That was my next stop in McAllen. Sister Norma, her staff, and volunteers are truly doing God's work. Catholic Charities provides food, a shower, clean clothes, and medicine to those who need it. The center tries to explain the complicated process to the people, and the volunteers help them get on a bus to a family member in the United States.
Sister Norma introduced me to a father and his teenage son from Honduras. The father said that a gang had been after his son, determined that the boy would join the gang. The only way for the boy to escape was to run. The man left his wife and four daughters in Honduras to bring his son to the United States. His only plan is to find work here to send money home to his family. His cousin lives in New Jersey, so CBP sent their paperwork to the local ICE center in New Jersey, and they would soon begin the long bus ride there.
Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley provides a lifesaving service to people of all faiths and backgrounds, but with a humanitarian crisis in their backyard, they're clearly stretched as thin as it gets. With more money and volunteers, they would gladly help more people.
I asked Sister Norma about the women and babies who were in indefinite detention. She said her group would open their arms and take care of them, get them cleaned up and fed and on a bus to a family member – if only ICE would release them.
"This is a moral issue. We are all part of this human family," they say.
Next, I met with some of the legal experts on the frontlines of this crisis – lawyers from the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Border Rights Center of the Texas ACLU, and the federal public defenders.
I gave them a rundown of everything I'd seen so far in McAllen, particularly when it comes to reuniting parents and children, and they raised some of my worst fears:
The Trump administration may be "reunifying" families, but their definition of a family is only a parent and a child. If, for example, a 9-year-old crosses with an 18-year-old sister – or an aunt or uncle, or a grandparent, or anyone who isn't the child's documented legal guardian – they are not counted as a family and they will be separated.
Mothers and children may be considered "together" if they're held in the same gigantic facility, even if they're locked in separate cages with no access to one another. (In the world of CBP and ICE, that's how the 10-year-old girls locked in a giant cage are "not separated" from their mothers who are in cages elsewhere in the facility.)
In the process of "reunifying" families, the government may possibly count a family as reunited by sending the child to a distant relative they've never met – not their parents. Some relatives may be unwilling to claim these children because it would be inviting ICE to investigate their own families.
Parents are so desperate to be reunited with their children that they may be trading in their legal right to asylum.
The system for tracking separated families is virtually unknown, if one exists at all. One expert worries that for some families, just a simple photo may be all the documentation that the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services have to reunite them. (I sincerely hope that's not true.)
The longer the day went on, the more questions I had about how the Trump administration plans to fix the crisis they've created at the border. So my last stop of the day was at the Port Isabel Detention Center, about an hour east of McAllen. It's one of the largest detention facilities in Texas.
The Department of Homeland Security had released some details on its plan to reunify families. The release noted that Port Isabel will be the "primary family reunification and removal center for adults in their custody."
Let's be clear: Port Isabel isn't a reunification center. It's a detention center. A prison.
There's no ambiguity on this point. I met with the head of the facility. He said several times that they had no space for children, no way to care for them, and no plans to bring any children to his locked-down complex. When I pressed on what was the plan for reunification of children with their parents, he speculated that HHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) would take the children somewhere, but it certainly wasn't going to be to his facility. When I asked how long HHS would take, he speculated that it would be weeks, but he said that was up to them. He had his job to do: He would hold these mothers and fathers until he received orders to send them somewhere else. Period.
So let me say it again. This is a prison – not a reunification center.
We toured the center. It is huge – multiple buildings isolated on a sun-baked expanse of land far from any town. We didn't go to the men's area, but the women are held in a large bunk-bed facility with a concrete outdoor exercise area. It's locked, double-locked, and triple locked. Tall fences topped with razor wire are everywhere, each backed up by a second row of fences also topped with razor wire.
An ICE official brought in a group of nine detained mothers who had volunteered to speak to us. I don't believe that ICE cherry-picked these women for the meeting, because everything they told me was horrifying.
Each mother told us her own story about crossing the border, being taken to a processing center, and the point that they were separated from their child or children. In every case, the government had lied to them about where their children were being taken. In every case, save one, no mother had spoken to her child in the days since the separation. And in every case, no mother knew where her child was.
At the time of separation, most of the mothers were told their children would be back. One woman had been held at "the icebox," a center that has earned its nickname for being extremely cold. When the agent came to take her child, she was told that it was just too cold for the child in the center, and that they were just going to keep the child warm until she was transferred. That was mid-June. She hasn't seen her child since.
One mother had been detained with her child. They were sleeping together on the floor of one of the cages, when, at 3:00am, the guards took her away. She last saw her 7-year-old son sleeping on the floor. She cried over and over, "I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say goodbye." That was early-June, and she hasn't seen him since.
Even though the CBP officials at the processing center told me that mothers with children that have special needs would be released, one of the mothers I spoke with had been separated from her special needs child. She talked about her child who doesn't have properly formed legs and feet and walks with great difficulty. One of the mothers spoke of another mother in the facility who is very worried because her separated child is deaf and doesn't speak at all.
The women I met were traumatized, weeping, and begging for help. They don't understand what is happening to them – and they're begging to be reunited with their kids.
Detainees can pay to make phone calls, but all of their possessions are taken from them at the processing center. The only way they can get money for a call is for someone to put money on their accounts. I asked if people or charities could donate money so that they'd be able to make phone calls to their family or lawyers, but they said no – a donor would need the individual ID number for every person detained at the center, and ICE obviously isn't going to release that information.
Three young lawyers were at Port Isabel at the same time we were. The lawyers told us that their clients – the people they've spoken to in the detention center – have strong and credible cases for asylum. But the entire process for being granted asylum depends on one phone call with an immigration official where they make the case for why they should be allowed to stay. One of the first questions a mother will be asked is, "Have you been separated from a child?" For some of the women, just asking that question makes them fall apart and weep.
The lawyers are worried that these women are in such a fragile and fractured state, they're in no shape to make the kind of detailed, credible case needed for themselves or their children. They had no chance in our system because they've lost their children and desperately want them back.
We stayed inside at Port Isabel for more than two hours – much longer than the 45 minutes we had been promised. When I finally went to bed that night, I thought about something the mothers had told me – something that will likely haunt me for a long time.
The mothers say that they can hear babies cry at night.
This isn't about politics. This isn't about Democrats or Republicans. This is about human beings. Children held in cages today. Babies scattered all over this country. And mamas who, in the dark of night, hear them cry.
I'm still working through everything I saw, but I wanted you to know the full story. The fight for these children and families isn't over – not by a long shot.
So, socialist Latina ran against one of the top Democrats in the House of Reps in the D primary, the party boss in New York or somesuch, real Tammany Hall character, real cozy with Wall Street, major bursar and nexus of PAC money throughout the country for the Democratic epilektoi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq3QXIVR0bs
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/05/...ampaign-video/
She waaaann. She won decise.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 15,897 57%
Joseph Crowley 11,761 42%
Those numbers are hilarious. (New York has a uniquely restricted primary system, but that's a story for another day.)
Platform:
*Medicare for all (TBF her opponent was one of the first national Democrats to push this on the agenda)
*Tuition-free public college
*Federal jobs guarantee
*Federal Assault Weapons/Hi-Capacity Mag Ban
*Abolish ICE
*Housing as a human right
*Restore Glass Steagall
*Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico
*etc
All these socialist and social-democratic candidates surging across the country at least give us the opportunity for a testing bed, and hopefully a realization on the national level that a party needs a coherent agenda that persist beyond a single election cycle.
Since this is the Trump thread, here is what Trump had to say about Crowley's defeat:
Quote:
Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!
In other news, but check it on your own time, multiple-run failure and centrally-directed interloper Juanita Perez Williams was handily beaten by a technocrat lefty in an upstate primary. Syracuse has become more competitive in the past 15 years, so a good case study this November for the center >> left vs. center-right theory.
In a few months, look forward as well to the big matchup in state-level primary: Nixon v Cuomo.
Just came across the Ocasio story as well, she's only a small Bernie and hasn't won against the Republican yet I assume (or is that an auto-win in her district?), but I still consider it a win for America.
Vis-à-vis the compromise thread, polarization, and Trump, this primary is pretty indicative of how the polarization is increasing.
Trump's deplorables continue to back him avidly despite his being a misogynist grandstander BECAUSE he is combative and tries to reduce things to black/white confrontations.
The Dems, especially in the NE, are truly starting to crystalize in favor of out and out social democracy (which has never been mainstream for the USA before).
Both camps want the alternate camp obliterated (politically).
I now believe that we are more polarized than at any point in our history prior to 1840 and after the Civil War.
I am still not sure whether Trump is a cause, a symptom, or a bit of both.
Bit of both, but he is an accelerant.
We'll see how much his deplorables support him when he kills their jobs. Badmouthing Harley for problems he caused, or badmouthing Germans and BMW in South Carolina seem like poor rhetorical choices.
There was a growing Socialist party during the Progressive Era. Managed to make progress in local and state governments until the first red scare after WW1.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
Third red scare incoming?
I've been saying polarization is at a scary level for a while. Even Monty is beating the drum of no compromise. Sadly, he may be right if the left is to survive past 2020.
They already blame the companies, not Trump. Evidence of a cult of personality; We are far removed from economics driven politics here.Quote:
Originally Posted by drone
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/26/62364...ction-overseas
Debs got <10% of the presidential vote, right? Then again, that's why Sanders didn't/won't run as an Independent.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Compromise is fine when goals overlap. Compromise for compromise's sake, decorum for decorum's sake: that's nothing but a destructive game for people who have no stake in the consequences of their actions. Why do almost all Democrats almost always vote for the admin's judge picks, when Republicans do not and would not extend this courtesy (wrong word)?. Is it advantageous toward ideals of "bipartisanship" or the integrity and legitimacy of the judicial institution, even on their own terms, to grease along nominees whose sole purpose in life is to eradicate a century of liberal jurisprudence?
Fight demotism with populism, I guess. :shrug:
But then again, I could be wrong and this is just normal for our democracy...Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
https://youtu.be/cwVDhwDJIxM
damn it
It's certainly scary to think the only way to discredit Trumpism is either massive one-on-one engagement with boots on the ground (i.e. neocolonialism), or the advent of extreme suffering and privation among the Trump-supporting population.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
So Supreme Court Justice Kennedy has retired. President Trump now can appoint a new solidly right wing justice, effectively turning the SCOTUS conservative for decades to come. This is a dark time for anyone left of center. And should the Senate not turn blue this November and one of the other left leaning judges either retires or dies before 2020, that would effectively mean the end of progressive SCOTUS decisions for at least a generation.
I'm sure all those progressives who refused to vote for Clinton in the battleground states are proud of themselves right now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drone
I wouldn't call it badmouthing. They really did poorly. In the World Cup.
But are you really? Or is it just the "elites"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
To me it seems sometimes, that the deplorables are not quite as polarizing as it may seem. What they want is a radical change away from a political and financial system that preaches success is all and lets you rot under a bridge once you lose your job and it has sucked you dry (e.g. by making you addicted to drugs that you spend all your money on). They do not even vote along party lines but went for Trump when the more mainstream Democrats were too deluded by identity politics to see that Bernie was their better candidate.
Of course there are some in the Trump camp who are, as I said earlier, still convinced that more capitalism will somehow improve their lives again, because they're too deluded to realize that they're literally useless for capitalists at this point. But overall I feel like the polarizing thing these days is mainly that the better-offs want the capitalist system to persist and make some cosmetic changes to the degree to which people are required to smile when they see a gay couple or a black person without actually improving anyone's financial situation considerably. Whereas the poorer strata are starting to realize more and more that these identity politics are just a distraction from the ongoing impoverization of more and more lower strata and the ongoing financial polarization of society while having money is more and more required to yield actual political power. In other words, they realized the growth of the oligarchic structures.
In other words, I should have put my prediction in the predictions thread about capitalism and where it's going leading to some kind of poor peoples' revolution at some point if noone stops it. The only problem is that in this case the only candidate the poor people had to go for was an idiotic billionaire con-man. But then again with a school system where only expensive private schools can provide good education and noone is really lifted up, how could you expect the poor and lesser educated to make an educated choice? Good thing that the new secretary of education wants to privatize the system even more for her own gain while probably making it even worse for the poor.
Accelerationism indeed. If this continues, the capitalist speedster may hit the wall even sooner than I would have expected. It may just take a while for the die hards to realize how this administration is duping them due to their low level of education and lack of self reflection in a country where self-advertizing and shallow, outward appearance are everything. :sweatdrop:
Am I too harsh? Too wrong? I think there is no new polarization, it's just the same old class warfare that Marx described, except that it has been waged by the rich on the poor for a while and the poor took a long time to realize it and fight back (see low education levels). The media in the US (espeically Fox I guess) is always quick to cry "Class warfare!" when the poor want something, but when there's a policy that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor, it's described as necessary for the economy...
I agree that this is nothing new - you could be referring to the USA in c. 1910 before the Trusts were broken up, there were no food standards, housing standards nor meaningful unions.
For the lower orders things improved considerably over the next c. 50 years due to both technology and the mass wealth transfers as the rest of the world was destroyed in two world wars and so the structural problems were not focused on. Now the rich are getting richer and not enough is getting to the masses so there is dissent as the browns / yellows / blacks are doing all the jobs the blue collar workers relied on for their middle class house with the picket fence. Free trade was fine as long as the world followed the Colonial model of wealth flowing into the USA but now that has also reversed.
And the answer, as is so often the case, is an ill-defined external threat coming in. Be that immigrants or the "easily won" trade war on other foreigners. Rather reminiscent of 1984.
~:smoking:
All You Need is Loew.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilrandir
It was a bad idea (for Germans) to let Russia host a World Cup. Germans never did well in Russia.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pannonian
Watch footage of his South Carolina rally. When he lays into BMW, you can see about half the people behind him going, "Wait, what?".Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Bernie Sanders adheres to the same concept of "identity politics" as the mainstream Democrats, if you consider that to mean emphasizing subaltern perspectives and policy implications for their groups. Indeed, once blacks and Hispanics had time to learn about Sanders, he became more popular among them than with white people. The argument is that he means it in a practical way, while other Democrats tend to be opportunistsQuote:
Originally Posted by Husar
The overwhelming share of Trump's vote was cast by party-line Republicans and pseudo-independents. Has anyone shown more than a handful of Democratic > Trump voters (not Bush > Obama > Trump voters), or at a higher rate than in previous elections?
Trump was and is well-liked by the middle and upper classes, stop imagining his voters as destitute hillbillies. If you want to make the case that a strong economic-reform platform can peel some of them away and neutralize the worst instincts of enough of the rest, that's reasonable, but don't resort to fairytales about who they are or how they view the world.
Well, I'm also pro identity politics in the wider sense, but I think these aims should be realized as part of a wieder focus on equality and same rights for everyone and not be the only front goals of a bunch of tiny, selfish movements that are only concerned about their own niche issues with politicians catering to all of them individually. That's what made some poor white people feel disenfranchized and maybe not even entirely unjustified.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
I think that goes largely without saying, but I thought US politics were all about that part of the people who may actually consider switching their votes. After the election everybody talked about how he got the votes of the disenfranchised workers in the rust belt or midwest, so they're the ones I'm focusing on since their needs would probably be better served by Sanders' politics than by Trump's.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Plus I would expect Sanders' ideas to give the African Americans more social mobility and so on. Utopia would be close indeed! :sweatdrop:
I agree that Bernie was the better candidate, especially up against Trump. Had the Dems put him in the lead, it is possible that the narrow victory would have gone the other way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
I don't know that it is 'elites' that are polarized here so much as it is those who are politically aware and awake and involved. The USA has always had a large mass of folks who really don't care much about politics at all, pursuing individual economic and social goals while ignoring the politisphere.
Well, in theory. But party-line voting is well-entrenched in our culture, and the real swing vote is among the non-voting population.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
That's us. We're all tourists here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
The Org isn't an ivory tower, but - it's some kind of tower, right? What's the material?
One interpretation is that because Sanders is relatively straightforward and honest about his principle and proposals and history, he has an inherent advantage over pragmatically-shifting establishment politicians, the kind Trump can run circles around because he speaks a whole different language.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
The poison in the UK and the USA is First Past The Vote systems. No compromise, no grey areas and always follow your Clan otherwise the Other Lot will win.
~:smoking:
The Government Is Ordering Toddlers to Appear in Immigration Court Alone
Quote:
Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, said she and her team recently represented an unaccompanied 3-year-old in court, “and the child — in the middle of the hearing — started climbing up on the table.”
Quote:
“I can’t describe to you the room I was in with the toddlers,” Colleen Kraft, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told CNN after visiting one of the shelters. “Normally toddlers are rambunctious and running around. We had one child just screaming and crying, and the others were really silent. And this is not normal activity or brain development with these children.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/06...ourt-alone/ampQuote:
Meanwhile, the broader legal situation is in flux. A federal judge Tuesday night commanded the White House to reunify families within 14 days if the child is under 5 and 30 days if the child is older. The Justice Department has not indicated whether it will appeal. Attorneys who are involved in the cases said it’s unclear how the judge’s order will work in practice, and when and how it could take effect.
Quote:
Yet children who are just arriving at care facilities are still not connected with their families, said Megan McKenna, a spokeswoman for Kids in Need of Defense. She said the children arrive at care facilities without a parent’s tracking number, and parents don’t tend to have their kids’ numbers.
After kids arrive in care facilities, HHS officials work on finding a “sponsor” to care for the child, such as a parent, guardian, family member or family friend. Historically, unaccompanied minors — who tended to be teens — found a sponsor in about a month and a half.
However, Rachel Prandini, a staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said finding a sponsor is more difficult now given recent fears that stepping forward to accept a child could trigger a sponsor’s deportation.
In April, HHS entered into an agreement with law enforcement officials that requires sponsors and adult family members to submit fingerprints and be subject to a thorough immigration and criminal background check.
HHS officials said the process is meant to protect the child.
Quote:
It’s impossible to know how many children have begun deportation proceedings, Tzamaras said. “There have been reports of kids younger than 3 years old and others as old as 17.”
[...]
She said in a statement that the court’s work is vital: “This is not traffic court. A mistake on an asylum case can result in jail, torture or a death sentence,” Tabaddor said. “We are a nation of laws. We value fairness, justice and transparency.”
Good comment about the real swing vote being the mostly uninvolved.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
And I agree with you about Sanders' honesty. He has had this outlook on politics and governance his entire adult life and pursued it as vigorously as the times/public allowed. I may disagree with his policy goals, but I do admire his honesty.
One of these is not a genuine image of a mass trial.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
What a nice graph, just like I remember it from math-class
If anything, this will be the kick that liberals need. Too long the left has relied on buying progress through lawyers and the grace of Kennedy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
Get the hell out there and vote.
Kennedy's record was pretty mixed.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...?noredirect=on
With the Republicans picking the new justice, expect someone much more prepared to toe-the-line.
Roe v. Wade is certainly going to be a target; Trump promised that much in his campaign.
Gay marriage/rights will be on the firing line as well; it just falls within the realm of "things cranky old men get really pissed about"
The future is the Republican's to craft; you know, Hillary's e-mails are still missing...
https://www.axios.com/trump-trade-wa...76f4e0f83.html
Quote:
Axios has obtained a leaked draft of a Trump administration bill — ordered by the president himself — that would declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules.
Quote:
Why it matters: The draft legislation is stunning. The bill essentially provides Trump a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned.
Quote:
The details: The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:
1. The "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) principle that countries can't set different tariff rates for different countries outside of free trade agreements;
2. "Bound tariff rates" — the tariff ceilings that each WTO country has already agreed to in previous negotiations.
"It would be the equivalent of walking away from the WTO and our commitments there without us actually notifying our withdrawal," said a source familiar with the bill.
By the way: United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act = US FART ActQuote:
"The good news is Congress would never give this authority to the president," the source added, describing the bill as
[...]
The bottom line: As a smart trade watcher told me: "The Trump administration should be more worried about not having their current authority restricted rather than expanding authority as this bill would do."
For fart's sake, can we skip to the scouring flame stage already?