Re: Trump accuses Canada of trying to burn White house in 1812
NoNukes writes:
Canada was a British colony during the War of 1812, so even though having no choice in the matter they were on the British side and considered a threat. It's even possible Canadians served in the British unit that burned the White House, though who knows.
Really?
Yes, really. This is just a bit of history with a bit of whimsical speculation. It doesn't mean Trump's citing the burning of the White House during the War of 1812 as evidence of US peril today at Canadian hands wasn't utter inanity.
There was no Canada in 1812.
Not sure what point you're making here. Sure things were organized politically a bit differently back then, but why is referring to it as Canada a problem?
And as an indication that Canada is a national security threat, citing the war of 1812 is even more ridiculous given that the burning of the US Capital was done by British Troops as a response to an invasion of Canada by the United States.
The burning of Washington was in part a reprisal for the burning of Port Dover on Lake Erie by American forces earlier in 1814. To speculate a bit, I think the British would have taken Washington anyway, but because of Port Dover they burned it, too.
When Trump became president I viewed him as a buffoon, and my concern was how well the country would survive having an incompetent in charge. I thought we'd emerge okay.
My views have changed. While Trump is ignorant and buffoonish concerning many things, he has the instincts, inclinations and innate cunning of a tyrant. I no longer think we'll emerge okay. His tax cuts will either cause extreme inflation or, more likely, a severe trimming of the federal budget through drastic cutbacks in social programs. Allies and trading partners will become more and more alienated, raising the price of goods and increasing inflation. There's some weird thing between Trump and Russia that will only become more weird, and there's no way to predict where it will lead. Tariffs will hurt American business and the unemployment trend will soon reverse and begin growing again, not this year, but soon enough to become an issue in the 2020 election. Recession is possible. The reversal of some of the protections put in place after the 2008 financial meltdown will cause yet another financial meltdown, though the timing and specifics are impossible to predict. Our institutions are under attack. Congress has become a Trump lackey. A constitutional crisis may yet rise out of Trump's efforts to hold Mueller at bay.
Re: Trump accuses Canada of trying to burn White house in 1812
caffeine writes:
There was no Canada in 1812.
There were two Canadas in 1812.
Not really sure what the relevance of this discussion is,...
I didn't get it either.
...but I have a more serious question.
Trump keeps justifying his tariffs with comments about how bad the US trade deals are with other countries - is he right? I've not actually seen this addressed at all in the press.
I've only read articles discussing trade numbers with Canada, with whom the US has a goods deficit and a services surplus. When the two are added the result is a net surplus. Trump is lying, though a number of news articles have called it a half truth (I strongly disagree).
But my bigger question is whether Trump is actually right for once. Do American producers face bigger barriers in exporting to Europe or Canada than vice versa? Or is Trump once again talking out of his arse?
I'm not sure why as much serious news analysis is spent on what Trump says. He tells so many lies (biggest inauguration crowd in history, it was the Democrats who colluded with Russia, we run a trade deficit with Canada) and half truths that it just isn't worth it. Concerning whether we run deficits with Mexico and European countries, since in general the strongest economies tend to run trade deficits because they can afford to buy more, my guess is that it is true. Trade deficits are an effect of economic strength, not a sign of economic exploitation.
Generally agree with your comments, but wanted to respond to this:
Stile writes:
Attempting to become independent and self-sufficient is a good goal for President Trump to have (as it is for any nation's leader.)
But isn't "independent and self-sufficient" the language of isolationists and anti-free-traders? Would it be okay to instead say "sovereign and self-reliant"?
Michael Avenatti appeared with Anthony Scaramuccii on Stephen Colbert's show last night, and it is worth watching. There's a commercial break in the middle, so it's divided into two YouTube segments:
If we want a Democratic candidate who can out-Trump Trump and can effectively speak truth to both lies and power, I think Avenatti's the guy. When he first burst on the scene it was as the self-promoting and attention-grabbing Stormy Daniels lawyer, but I've now heard him speak in interviews quite a bit, and I don't think that's who he is. This guy's got substance. I know he's not on anyone's list, but I've heard a lot of Democrats speak in opposition to Trump, and not one comes close to Avenatti.
Could he run a government? Got me, but he'd have a much better chance of getting elected than any of the milquetoast Democrats, and he'd be a much better president than Trump, though that's faint praise because, hey, who wouldn't be.
For those who don't recall Anthony Scaramucci, he had a brief dance at the White House as the Communications Director before he was fired on White House Chief of Staff Michael Kelly's recommendation after criticizing Trump officials and engaging in an expletive-laden interview with the New York Times.
quote: For the first time in the 33 years that scientists have assessed the health of the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary showed improvement in every region, a likely sign that a massive federal cleanup plan is working.
But has the Chesapeake Bay met Scott Pruitt yet? Who knows what havoc the current EPA chief will wreak once he hears about this or sees photos like this:
A pod of bottle-nosed dolphins swim this spring in the Chesapeake
Bay watershed off Ragged Point in Dorchester County
quote:In the wake of the Trump administration’s policy to purposely separate parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, my clients now ask: Where is my little girl? Who’s taking care of her? When do I get to see her again? Will they deport me without her? How will she be protected and by whom? How can I talk with her? Who will give her medicine if she’s sick? Gone are concerns about sentencing. It’s all about the parent and the missing child, separated not just by plexiglass and jail bars but by a gulf of the unknown. The president Wednesday signed an executive order ending the policy, but that changes nothing for my clients or the thousands of other parents who have already lost their kids at the border. ... I have to explain to these parents that I might never be able to answer their questions. I can’t promise that they’ll be able to speak to their children, or know their whereabouts or who is taking care of them, or whether they’ll be sent back home without their kids.
Why so many unknowns? This administration appears to have no infrastructure, policy or plan in place to deal with the destruction of families seeking refuge or a new life in our country. The disarray and confusion are on full display at the detention hearings I’ve attended for my clients. ... At another hearing before a different judge, as one of my colleagues asked the agent on the stand about the whereabouts of my client’s child, the prosecutor objected to the relevance of the questions. The judge turned on the prosecutor, demanding to know why this wasn’t relevant. At one point, he slammed his hand on the desk, sending a pen flying. This type of emotional display is unheard of in federal court. I can’t understand this, the judge said. If someone at the jail takes your wallet, they give you a receipt. They take your kids, and you get nothing? Not even a slip of paper?
So, they changed the policy (during Obama administration, I think?) -Policy is that parents are jailed for crossing the border illegally. -Kids are then held in another area so that they cannot be left to die if the "parent" isn't actually a parent. -Pictures of "kids in cages" were taken. Some of these same pictures (taken under the Obama administration) have surfaced as showing how much of a dick Trump is for keeping kids in cages.
Uh, no.
DrJones* writes:
A compare and contrast of how children were handled under the previous administrations.
While Bush, Obama and Trump all faced the same difficult problems, only Trump separated parents from their children while, as it appears right now, failing to keep records making reuniting them possible.
The Trump Stew: Hate, Maliciousness, Heartlessness
He hates immigrants, he wants them to suffer, and he doesn't care how much they suffer. Separating children from their parents is the greatest injury. Childhood trauma could last a lifetime. One immigrant parent has already committed suicide.
Compounding the problem is that my suspicion yesterday that the records necessary for reuniting families might not have been created let alone kept might be the reality. Today's Washington Post reports that Family Reunification a Complete Snafu. Some excerpts:
quote: The U.S. government has done little to help with the reunifications, attorneys say, prompting them to launch a frantic, improvised effort to find the children some of them toddlers. ... One legal aid organization, the Texas Civil Rights Project, is representing more than 300 parents and has been able to track down only two children. ... Government officials say they have given detained parents a flier with a toll-free number for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the U.S. agency that is usually in charge of providing shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children. But not a single one of Goodwin’s clients had received one, she said. Lawyers maintain that when they have called the number, often no one answered. In some cases, when someone did pick up, that person refused to offer details of where children had been taken, the lawyers said. ... Because of such complications, attorneys and former U.S. officials have begun speaking about the possibility of permanent separations. ... The U.S. government spent months developing the family-separation system, but authorities were struggling on Thursday to figure out how to reunite detained parents with children. There was no system for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handled the parents’ cases, to work on the issue with the refugee resettlement office, which is responsible for the children.
Someone asked how the rank and file who implement government policy could do this to families, but most of them are just doing their jobs. In the same way that doctors and nurses become desensitized to the suffering of their patients (they have to be or they couldn't do their jobs), those manning the care centers and the offices and logistics and so forth are just doing their jobs, but there is one job category that should have done some careful thinking and decided whether they could live with themselves, and if the answer was that they could then they should have asked a second question about what that says about themselves. I'm talking about that branch of the Border Patrol (more formally, US Customs and Border Protection) responsible for actually separating children from their parents.
But it's not easy. We say that "I was just following orders" is no excuse, but not following orders has very real consequences, such as loss of job, loss of income, loss of career, and when someone refuses to carry out a separation then someone else will just step in and do it, so what has been accomplished?
Short personal story: The first time my company lied to me about why I was being asked to lay off an employee I vowed to get out of management. I didn't want to lose my job or change my role in a way that reduced my income, which would have affected my family, so it was three years before I able to transfer into a technical role. Sparing the details, after that I engaged in practices that made me perpetually unpopular with management, which has consequences regarding advancement, promotions and opportunities. Border Patrol people on the forefront of family separation also face the same personal issues.
Complicating matters is that the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service, used to be the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)) handles contact with family members living in the US with whom the separated children might be placed while waiting for their parents immigration status to be resolved. But if those family members are illegals, as is frequently the case, they do not dare engage in contact with USCIS for fear of arrest, so they do not come forward. This is a new problem introduced by the Trump administration, because placement of children used to be handled by a different department outside of Homeland Security, probably the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the same office that is responsible for the children's care.
This is how the Nazis succeed. Sorry for going this route, but it's the right route in this case. Usually the news is about only the most senior personnel in government, but government policies are carried out by people we rarely hear of who know they have to follow those policies or suffer very real consequences. You don't stop the Nazis by refusing to follow their orders - that just isn't going to happen on any useful scale. You stop the Nazis by not putting them in power in the first place. Hitler is the poster child for bending a country to his attitudes and will, Edogan in Turkey is following the same template, and Trump may not be far behind. Our democracy is in very real danger.
For me your posts are just not ringing true. They seem like misinformation and propaganda spread under the false guise of seeking information and engaging in discussion.
This thread is about the Trump presidency, and separation of families is on Trump, not Obama. Immigration is just another manifestation of the truly horrible, misogynistic, racist, bigoted, egotistical, narcissistic, self-serving, conniving, lying, cheating, corrupt, dishonorable person that is Trump, who has no respect for our democratic institutions but considers them just instruments of his will. A person can like his positions on reducing the size of government and lower taxes and so forth, but that doesn't change the person that he is, and there are other conservatives with the same views who do not pose a threat to our democracy. I can respect supporting conservative policies. I cannot respect supporting Trump.
I also cannot respect being anti-immigrant. Ours is a country of immigrants, built by immigrants, enriched by immigrants. My own family (on one side) emigrated from Czarist Russia in the late 1800's. I've been to Ellis Island, seen the registrations.
Even decades and decades ago the US had already turned immigration into a complex labyrinth that creates many problems. Internment of Japanese Americans during WWII is a stain on our democracy (run by the military rather than immigration but a product of the same racism driving anti-immigration efforts today - we eventually apologized and paid reparations), as is our refusal to take in Jews in the years leading up to WWII. The whole H1B work visa process is a total fraud, I've been through it several times, it's another reason I got out of management. Some may want to discuss immigration issues here, but in this thread my only interest regarding immigration is in Trump's role in family separation.
quote: The hoax is the premise that President Trump’s administration has invented to rationalize such crimes against humanity: his narrative that America has been infest[ed] with hordes of crime-committing, culture-diluting, job-stealing, tax-shirking, benefits-draining aliens.
No part of that description is remotely true. Yet the Trump administration seems to have successfully shifted the national dialogue away from Do we have a border immigration problem? to What’s the right way to fix our border immigration problem?
No Nobel for you, Donald Trump! In fact, what you should get is the liar of the century award. I know it's early in the 21st century, but who could imagine anyone topping your performance.
In your latest act, on June 13th upon your return from the Singapore meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un you tweeted, "Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea."
How did we know it was a lie? If you're tweeting, you're lying. If you're speaking, you're lying. If anyone in your administration is speaking, they're lying.
How goofy must attendees of Trump rallies be, shouting, "Nobel! Nobel! Nobel!" Surely they had ample evidence of your incompetence on the world stage.
Well, Donald Trump, no Nobel for you! Yesterday you sent a letter to Congress saying:
quote:The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the Government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States...Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to North Korea declared in Executive Order 13466.
Looks like the working out of details between Mike Pompeo (Secretary of State) and North Korean representatives may not be going so well.
Here's the bottom line, it hasn't changed. Talks with North Korea will never go well. North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons. In return for giving up nothing significant (except maybe the return of US/MIA remains) Kim Jung Un has obtained a cessation of joint military exercises between South Korea and the US. Great work, Mr. President. You are truly a master negotiator.
What's next? Halting Russian sanctions and abandoning NATO in return for a Russian promise to work toward someday beginning efforts to develop a plan for holding talks about having a meeting about a ramp down of cyber-invasions and threatening neighboring countries?
The only upside to all this? Since you're a liar you're lying to other countries, too. Probably you're no more likely to follow through on your promise to cease joint South Korean/US military exercises than you are to cease being a racist and bigot. Though there is one factor pushing you toward keeping those military exercises cancelled. You see the government's money as your money. Military exercises spend your money, and if they spend it then you can't get your hands on it.
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