Angry Mom: Hey Attention Deficit Media, Catch a Clue!
I don’t even have a real post for this. I am so goddamned angry right now. Apparently the news media needs a recap on priorities.
There are thousands of children kidnapped by this administration, being trafficked under the guise of immigration control and border protection, shoved into all manner of care situations.
They don’t have anything to give them comfort; they are being permanently damaged at the cellular level by the stress they’ve been placed under by a heartless, thoughtless, incompetent bureaucracy.
There is no assurance so far that they are being tracked in any way.
There is no assurance they are not being abused.
Their parents are worried sick and equally damaged by these kidnappings, with no assurance they will ever be reunited with their children.
All for a misdemeanor offense of crossing a border in order to file for asylum.
The administration is making zero effort to address the root problems causing these refugees when they could be talking bilaterally with Mexico and Central American countries — they are simply not acting in good faith in any way.
The White House wants to rob Peter to pay Paul, expecting Defense Department to domestic policing.
We’re looking at executive-sanctioned kidnapping. Child abuse. Genocide by separation. Violation of Posse Comitatus Act. Possible human trafficking to unknown entities outside of government custody.
And the goddamned news media is chasing Trump’s human shield — the illegal immigrant who became legal by sleeping with a rich white dude — because of her idiotic attire. Be fucking best, indeed.
PAY ATTENTION, DAMN IT.
Where are the girls, the babies, all of the children? Where are the sick ones? And where are the dead ones?
Democratic elected officials have been trying to get answers, but they are denied access. A bipartisan group of mayors was refused access today in Texas. There’s too little coverage of this systematic denial preventing us from knowing what’s been done in our name with our tax dollars.
Do your damned jobs, media, and catch a clue. Quit chasing a deliberate distraction. There is nothing going on in or around that cheap women’s jacket which will solve the massive human-caused humanitarian disaster under way.
____
Use this as an open thread. Emphasis on media failures under the Trump administration, please.
Do you get to have your children with you in jail when you break the law with a MISDEMEANOR?
Howdy, first time visitor! Gee, we have never, ever heard that argument before. Point to where it says in this code, 8 U.S. Code § 1158 – Asylum, that minor children of asylum seekers must be removed from parental custody and placed in unknown facilities with unknown care possessing unknown qualifications and no permitted oversight, with little assurance of reuniting after asylum has been granted/denied.
Do you get to lose your children forever because you committed a misdemeanor?
As it turns out, that isn’t the important part. The *inportant* part is that the children, who have committed no crime, are not deprived of their parents, and in such a manner that reunification is impossible for even some of them
For moral imbeciles like you, that last part is a bennie. I get that.
Well said.
Where are all the Children-youngest to oldest, girls and boys. Boys being abused is nearly as common as girls, and we love them all. And, this prison company not allowing hugs to traumatized children, no comfort, is a technique to make them disassociate to give up fighting. Brutal.
This is where they should be NOW
#SingleStagingAreaNow. Please spread especially to the well funded RAICES. Perhaps they can convince a sports arena or pay a sports arena to offer quickly a SINGLE STAGING AREA NOW:https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1010134374098952192
@MichaelAvenatti
I rarely ask for help but I’m asking now. We need to pressure the govt to reunite families NOW by using a single staging area approach. This can be solved but they need to act immediately before time and distance permanently destroys families. Please trend
#SingleStagingAreaNow………….
Because you know it is nefarious when they make sure there is no paperwork, medical bracelets to keep track of Moms and their children. The ability to keep track is commonplace throughout society. They will build a wall to use as a funnel to steal and traffic kids.
https://twitter.com/Spoonamore/status/966839211683930112
Spoonamore @Spoonamore
Spoonamore Retweeted St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Dear. @senrobportman now at 10%. 5 out of 50 State Chairman (yes, all men) of @realDonaldTrump for President 2016 are now indicted for sex-crimes. Per your request, If I see something, say something, so refer ALL Trump State Chairs to the FBI as suspected sex-trafficers please.
Before this election in order to vote these people out we need evidence back in: hand counted paper ballots posted in precinct and called in not emailed in to state tallies. The same people have control over voting machines, registration rolls- see Greg Palast fighting Trump’s Kris Koback Crosscheck program dropping millions of legal voters off roles:
https://twitter.com/Greg_Palast
https://twitter.com/Spoonamore/status/883411622424915968
Spoonamore @Spoonamore
Dominionists program the #votehacking machines to control apx 20 states, and influence another 10-15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology …
Welcome to emptywheel. My point in asking about the girls and babies is that we haven’t seen them during the limited access journalists and elected officials have had. ALL of the children are at risk but DHS can’t/won’t answer questions about the girls (see DHS Secretary Nielsen’s press conference earlier in the week).
Thank you all so much for your kind hearts and brave writings. You make me proud to be human, and a better informed human.
I do understand the need to see the most vulnerable of all, the babies and girls that are most hidden from view for, no doubt, some very horrible reasons. I just want the boys to know that we talked about their terrible plight also, if ever they read any of the writings about this sometime in the future…hopefully when they are free…that they were not forgotten.
https://trofire.com/2018/06/21/large-corporations-help-human-trafficking-exceed-illegal-gun-sales/
That’s where the litigation comes in. Right now, lawsuits are developing against the industries that are providing aid and shelter to human traffickers, as well as some of the online communities where these traffickers solicit victims and customers. These lawsuits may be our last best hope to help protect innocent lives from falling into the hands of human traffickers.
https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1010239744087912448
@Alyssa_Milano
As well as
@MichaelAvenatti and@HMAesq, I am joining forces with Vorzimer Masserman, Fertility & Family Law Center to help locate and reunite separated migrant families.We will help prepare temporary guardianship agreements that will permit those children held in internment camps to be released to family members or other guardians in the U.S. selected by the parents until their asylum status has been adjudicated.
https://twitter.com/NewJerseyAG/status/1009885359801556994
@NewJerseyAG
We are challenging the federal government’s family separation policy and their absolute failure to reunite families.
………………
We have to be able to elect good leaders.
The Southern Poverty Law Center published a book listing members of the secretive conservative group whose members self-describe as interested/expert in election technology. This group fits with Spoonamore’s assessment. Here is link of members including the NRA, Mercers, Bannon, DeVos more:
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/05/17/council-national-policy-behind-curtain
The Council for National Policy: Behind the Curtain
The Council for National Policy, a highly secretive group, is a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix
…………
If only Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton had fought as hard as Jill Stein to count votes on those swing state machines, we would not be in this terrible place today. Though some cases were dropped when Hillary did not join Stein’s effort, others are still ongoing. If she gets into those machines she will find what Bev Harris warned about–the fractionalizing of votes and the true counts where paper ballots are available.
– http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-1/
Fraction Magic – Part 1: Votes are being counted as fractions instead of as whole numbers
By Bev Harris
– And Bev Harris’s video how Fraction Magic works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fob-AGgZn44
– https://www.votingjustice.us/
Election Protection and Voting Justice
As a first step towards restoring trust in our elections, we call for a nonpartisan Emergency Commission for Election Protection & Voting Justice. Click here for more: https://www.votingjustice.us/election_commission
The 2016 Recount & the Continuing Fight for Voting Justice
– http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/
The Election was Stolen – Here’s How…
Before a single vote was cast, the election was fixed by GOP and Trump operatives.
The system, called Crosscheck, is detailed in my Rolling Stone report, “The GOP’s Stealth War on Voters,” 8/24/2016. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890
Thanks. Just an FYI in case a comment gets hung up in moderation: the comments system will pull to moderation comments with links in them to prevent spam content and phishing attacks. When moderators can get to them they will review and free comments.
It’s not breaking the law, note also the relevant treaty obligations dating to the ’50s. Please troll somewhere else, and make sure Kaiser Quisling’s minions paid you up front, he has a habit of stiffing his “help”.
A misdemeanor is the kind that’s worse than a felony, right? Or is that only if it’s in all caps? Is it triple-super-seriously bad if it’s all-caps Comic Sans?
How’s the weather in Moscow Wayne?
The US has done such a bang up job of creating radicals over the years by supporting dictators & other scum that Cadet Bone Spurs decided he needed to go those 100 miles further &* do the radicalization on US soil. /not-so-much-snark
Media parroting ICE lies as if they were Trump lies. HIV Asylum seeker dies two weeks after being held in unheated ICE box for over 5 days. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-migrant-honduras-dies-u-s-custody-n878596 http://thehill.com/latino/389845-transgender-woman-part-of-migrant-caravan-dies-in-ice-custody Readers left to draw own conclusions. Immigration rights groups aka “advocacy groups” in Thehill stated Rosa died because of “medical negligence by U.S. immigration authorities.” The Hill added “ICE released a statement to Buzzfeed saying adequate medical care is given to everyone …” Only the buzzfeed article has statements from fellow prisoners describing in detail denial of medical care. https://www.buzzfeed.com/adolfoflores/a-transgender-woman-who-was-part-of-the-migrant-caravan-has
Semi-serious question: why isn’t this considered murder?
I could be wrong, but I thought there was a time when refusing to provide care to prisoners was considered sanctionable… you know, a “prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner” function all rolled up into one hairball of malice.
Nah, I must be hallucinatin’.
Great post, Rayne! A righteous rant, and truly deserved.
I was tempted to say “tell us what you really think”, but levity doesn’t seem appropriate.
Re: Wayne Wilson. First time visitor. First class creep.
Feed the trolls only once and only if the food is poison.
I cannot believe what is happening in/to this country. What’s being done in our name! What’s being done to us, to the world, and especially to the least among us. We’re gonna “house” refugees by stealing their children. We’re on track to have our own citizens living without food, clothing or shelter – while being deprived of healthcare and a good education. It just gets worse and worse. Day and night. I honestly can’t believe how rapidly this nation is losing its grip on sanity, humanity. It’s an indictment of every value I was taught growing up, of eveything I believe in and live by.
Obviously I’m not alone in feeling this way. So I commend the post! And every sane, caring person who reads here and writes here.
The White House is a cesspit-whirlpool. Name it Crime Inc. Even Melania doesn’t care. Thanks for telling us!
Keep telling it, world!
That seems awfully uncivil of you…. Dammit, I can’t even go through with the parody of the NY Times, it’s just too revolting.
Let me just link to this piece from Paul Krugman from 15 years ago pointing out how “civility” was just a club being used any time liberals don’t go along with whatever crackpot things the radical right does.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/opinion/lessons-in-civility.html
Or, for a more recent take on the stupidity of demanding civility to the human sewage at the NY Times, there is this piece by a guy who writes weekly stories about people pooping on themselves (but in a good way, I swear):
https://www.gq.com/story/on-rudeness
The Intercept key points. May 7th, Sessions parents and children to be separated because we detain them all no matter where they cross. May 5th through June 6, 2342 accompanied “children turned into UACs” That is the key point, “accompanied childrent turned into unaccompanied children” where before they were kept with their families. CBP has no count on separated children under the age of 5.
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/21/trump-family-separation-immigration-children-reunification/
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/19/children-separated-from-parents-family-separation-immigration/
Ed Kilgore has an interesting take on the chaos:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/chaos-engulfs-trump-policies-on-border-detention-of-families.html
(sorry, no toolbar yet again.)
[quote]
It seems virtually none of the people responsible for implementing Trump’s executive order got any kind of advance notice it was coming. And more importantly, the practical implications of continuing a “zero tolerance” policy without separating kids from parents being prosecuted weren’t worked out at all. That became obvious today when border control officials and the Department of Justice got into a public conflict with the Washington Post in the middle:
[…]
The nagging question is whether he’s just indifferent to the chaos he creates, or it’s part of a really devilish plan to keep his critics off-balance. Politico noted there was an earlier incident involving many of the same people that felt a lot like this one:
One of the people familiar compared the process to Trump’s January 2017 travel ban, which was signed the week after his inauguration and triggered widespread chaos at airports across the U.S. as customs officials struggled to understand who must be detained.
And guess who was at or near the controls in both cases? That’s right: top presidential policy adviser and arch-nativist Stephen Miller. In his celebrated recent profile of Miller, McKay Coppins said that he and former White House counselor Steve Bannon gloried in chaos:
[…]
So maybe yesterday’s chaos on the border and in Washington was deliberate and calculated, or maybe it was the result of incompetence and inconstant leadership. What it was not, in any sense, was responsible.
[/quote]
What are the odds Miller is a fan of Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, with his famous motto that chaos is a ladder for men like him to climb?
Guys like Miller gloss over what happened to Littlefinger, of course.
The other theory is that Miller is a stone-cold racist psychopath.
Assume you’ve seen the Vanity Fair quote … more or less “Miller is Waffen-SS”.
It’s incompetence.
Nothing, repeat nothing, this shitty excuse for an administration has touched had gone smoothly.
Witness the tariff roll outs. When Bush levied his steel tariffs the announcement was accompanied by a long, detailed list of all exemptions. When Trump announced his tariffs, nobody had any idea what was or was not excluded – businesses have to apply to find out if their imports are exempt. They have to submit individual applications for each different component or part. To date that is more than 21,000 applications.
Teeny problem. There were only a handful of staff at Commerce handling such applications. In three months they have still not hired or trained enough staff to make a dent in the mountain. Thus far fewer than 0.5% of applications have been processed.
And this is being on an ad hoc basis by people who have, for the most part, zero experience dealing with industrial components. Without one standard list to refer to, one processing agent could make an entirely different decision than the person sitting in the next cubicle. One company may be required to pay tariffs on the same product that another company gets exempted.
When Trump tried to run businesses himself they always ended in bankruptcies and in court. Now the entire business sector is subject to his gross negligence. This too will end in not a few bankruptcies and court.
It’s so easy to mistake a feature for a bug. There’s two operating layers to this feature; the first is the hand-picked and cultivated racist, misogynist narcissist who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody but himself and getting his ego stroked. Anything which appears to be a success on his part was the work of others who “produced” him — and I mean “produced” in the sense the word is used in entertainment industry. The second layer is a conspiracy of anarchic fascists who produce this program we know as The Trump White House. They vary individually in anarchism and fascism but they possess both and picked a confederacy of dunces to ensure the creative destruction of universal fascism Michael Ledeen could only fantasize in the wake of the Iraq War.
They’ve ensured nothing will be done efficiently; they are working on breaking it all next. And then they will argue as their conservative front men have for so long, that government doesn’t work and it should be starved for its failings.
Great conspiracy, Rayne. Who owns the hand that “hand-picked” this conspiratorial mastermind?
That’s your first. I’ve already given you a warning on the second.
The Trump administration is not incompetent about tearing things apart. In fact, that is its main talent.
The Trump administration does not do that by mistake or negligence. It does it because that’s precisely what it wants to do.
Gutting social safety net programs, the CFPB, school anti-bullying, anti-discrimination, and anti-racism programs, IRS and SEC oversight and audit staffs, proposing the merger of Labor and Education departments so as to gut employee unions and useful programs, as Pruitt has already successfully gutted many EPA programs, as Zinke has gutted public lands to enable royalty-free resource extraction of hard minerals.
All by design, with clear intent and purpose. The Trumpistas are incompetent when doing things they don’t want done. In that, they are brilliant, but the aim is to destroy. Immigrant children are just one of many targets. Gotta feel good, gotta win in November.
Trump’s Family Separations Are Unconstitutional The courts must award damages to families torn apart by the policy. TERI KANEFIELD and JED SHUGERMAN JUNE 21, 20185:33 PM
*
[quote] […] In both cases, the court held that parents have a constitutional right to the care and custody of their children under the 14th Amendment. This includes the right to due process if children are removed from their care. […] Parents thus do not lose their rights to due process under the 14th Amendment because they have been jailed or arrested. Unless she is declared unfit in a fair hearing, a parent who is arrested has the right to designate a caretaker or appoint a guardian. […] There is a fundamental problem with the Trump administration labeling people “criminals” before any sort of adjudication. Separation of powers forbids law enforcement from making determinations of guilt. […] But even if parents and children are guilty of misdemeanors, the Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishment,” and it too applies to all “persons.” […] There is a significant state interest in border security, but if Congress made illegal entry only a misdemeanor, it would tell us that state interest isn’t sufficiently compelling to mandate any kind of harsh punishment. Moreover, it’s not clear that many of these entries should be considered “illegal,” as asylum-seekers initially tried to follow the law by entering at proper ports of entry but were refused or, due to inadequate staffing, were stuck waiting at the border without food, water, or shelter. Necessity is a defense in criminal law, especially in the context of minor crimes. […] [end quote]
This is excellent, thanks! I hope that the judicial system doesn’t decide otherwise.
In other news, a Republican judge decided yesterday or today that the CBP is unconstitutional.
Call me defeatist (IANAL), but SCOTUS has been doing a lot of “the law is what SCOTUS says the law is” lately.
How difficult is it to make a list of 2432 children? Trump won’t be bothered. Volunteer attorneys are on the job. Real soon now some non government people will do so.
Apparently extremely difficult if the gummint didn’t maintain detailed records, which by most accounts they didn’t.
A couple of posts back I posted a link to this comment by Martin at Balloon Juice. (It’s comment 29 if your browser doesn’t put you right there – mine doesn’t.)
It is sobering:
OK, that’s bad enough, but it gets worse: I’ve seen estimates as high as 16K for the number of kids taken from parents… seems it’s been going on longer than we realized. The real number might be only 11K (another estimate) or yet some entirely different number … the point is, no one knows. Worse, it’s not clear that the gummint knows either. ICE has carried out their orders in a way that minimizes carry-through property and attribution.
You can’t get there from here. (Well, that’s the conclusion I draw from Martin’s comment, and from other things I’ve read.)
2342 children, apologies, will be interesting if anyone just copies the transposition error.
Do not think the boys are not in the same sightlines as the girls for sexual abuse & indentured servitude… or being disappeared. The dangers for the older kids are increasing, ICE and contract employee guards will devolve to violence as the kids gain more understanding of their situation & help each other survive. Anyone who takes these unholy jobs needs work and is pressurized themselves or is a sadistic opportunist. {Unless they are working with investgative reporters & lawyers to provide “inside” eyes.) Every kid prison, every private Christian “orphanage} is a tinderbox for serious “adult on child” violence-every employee akin to a street cop who knows he can torture, rape & kill Black & Brown kids with immunity.
Melania’s stunt-the jacket billboard and her rote statement-was a zoombie stunt. Not worth thinking about.
It may need a citizen’s militia armed with baby blankets, strollers and school busses to rush the barricades to free the children from these concentration camps. DSA is trying human blockades. Heaven forbid but it may need Rachel Corey kind of courage to save these children.
That is why Melania’s so-called “surprise” trip was so important for Kaiser Quisling (in Russian: квислинг or more generally as “betrayer / Judas”: предатель), so the palace could claim that things were A-OK. However, it doesn’t change the fact that this new EO made no actual changes, instead merely adding another layer of kabuki. The fact they want to hide everything and ditch the records makes it clear bad things are already happening (like already reported deaths in custody). We just don’t know what they are yet, but like Abu Ghraib it will come out sooner or later. Whether there is accountability then remains to be seen.
I note also that no justification was given to the various lawmakers (who I suspect have the right to inspect USG facilities without notice while investigating) as to why they are restricted in access, since I would also expect they have sufficient clearance levels.
The palace and KQ need to understand that they can cooperate with Congress and follow the law and treaty obligations or be forced to cooperate with the Hague court, like Slobodan Milosevic had to do, and EU prosecutors have been known to issue warrants for crimes against humanity (like Pinochet in Spain). The fact that Kaiser квислинг has pissed off almost all of NATO (Hungary likes him) means it is much more likely the EU will force the issue. It only takes one.
Articles like this can’t be squelched forever.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/06/i-worked-at-a-child-migrant-center-what-i-was-told-to-do-was-so-inhumane-that-i-quit/
Womp womp motherfucker! Psycho Meerkat meets Karma bus.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/06/womp-womp-motherfcker-internet-celebrates-top-speakers-bureau-dumps-corey-lewandowski/
Referring to family separation is too tame for what is happening.
The United States is implementing domestic extraordinary rendition.
The Press needs to pivot away from “separation”, it implies that the children will be returned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
this is on the money. words should not be allowed to hide reality.
Re: “Emphasis on media failures”
Based on a little search it seems most of the media is fluffing the white house on this story. On June 21 Jim Acosta of CNN tweeted
Trump appears to be causing more confusion in that cabinet meeting on migrant kids, saying his executive action is “limited..” and may still result in separations. “It leads to separation ultimately,” he said. https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1009846521242800129
Search for “leads to separation ultimately” “leads to separation, ultimately”
Media coverage, PBS, CNN, VOX, The Detroit News, buzzfeed, TPM, jezebel, and two TV stations.
A lot more coverage for misspelled Separation distraction than for (separating agitating inconstant) Potus45.
The idea that Rep. Steny Hoyer should reprimand his Hispanic colleagues for not maintaining “decorum” while protesting President Trump’s intentionally abusive and illegal border policies is so 1980s.
The GOP of Newt Gingrich failed to display much decorum as it refused to cooperate with and hounded the White House for nearly a decade. The GOP that lied the US into more than a decade of war in the Middle East was notably absent in decorum, as was the McConnell-led boycotting of Senate confirmations under Obama, so as to depopulate the federal judiciary, allowing only a GOP president to repopulate it with sound, FedSocBots.
Not that Hoyer’s colleagues should mirror Trump’s rants about animals, rapists and Mexicans, or even mimic the congressional intern who, when seeing Trump hobble through a congressional hallway on some errand, apparently shouted, “Fuck you!”
Not that it wasn’t deserved, but congresscritters have more options than venting at a retreating politician dragging his tie along the corridor. Protesting the transport of 200 migrant children to New York in the dead of night, perhaps. Or, repeated group visits with cameras to any of more than a dozen DHS prisons would be a good start. Being turned away at the gate – owing to some bullshit two-week notice period – is a story in itself and it keeps what’s going on inside on the front burner.
Hoyer is showing that he is as tone deaf as Ivanka. If he thought the reminder was worth articulating, he should have done it behind the woodshed, out of public view. Saying it out in the open does a disservice to the healthy passion of his colleagues and to the obligation of his party to be an effective opposition. It demonstrates how out of touch are the top Democrats. They need replacing come 2020 because with power in reach, they will be even more decorum-oriented.
The ‘let’s play nice’ with racists and nazis is insane.
I see it as Hoyer trying to maintain his personal control and, inevitably, Pelosi’s. The likes of the dynamic young Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fighting a primary with pseudo-Dem and Speaker wannabe Joe Crowley, scares the crap out of establishment Dem leadership. That it represents greater influence on the part of the middle and working class, who will push hard on their people over corporate priorities, they see as a major threat.
Hoyer’s comment represents the current Dem elite’s loss of control generally, and the loss of white upper-middle class dominance of a harsh, hierarchically controlled party. With vehemently enforced pay-to-play, it has turned into an enormous cash cow.
That structure hasn’t led to power. It has led to a wealthy, powerless opposition with a neoliberal profusion of enriched advisers and consultants. Like their academic and corporate counterparts, they don’t add value so much as tell current leaders what they want to hear. Ocasio-Cortez and her peers would change that for the better.
Of course, as usual, you are correct on the motivation behind the civility pill. However, even on the face of it, as cover, it looks incredibly stupid and insane. And as an aside, I’m glad Cynthia Nixon has made herself a bug up Cuomo’s ass, motivating him to move on issues.
The government has moved wildly hard-right, that makes the ‘centrist, let’s get along’ position untenable for anyone who isn’t a very conservative Republican.
I agree, the optics of Hoyer’s criticism are self-immolating. He is appealing to Trump’s base and to its analog in the Democratic Party hiearchy, not to his party or the vast majority of its members.
This reminds me of how CNN criticized Michelle Wolf for being mean to huckasanders during the White House Correspondents. It makes no sense.
The only coherent and consistent element of the “policy” , its roll out and defences of it by officials and propagandists is victim blaming : asylum seekers are the problem and it was they who put their chilren at risk of all the consequences which now eventuate.
The incoherence in policy, its implementation, and the overlapping and unstructured reposibilities of various government agencies is DELIBERATE and WILFULL.
Trumpers want to inculcate amongst the front line staff a bureaucratic indifference to the fate of the victims: thus they increase the chaos, blur lines of responsibility, increase the stress anger and tension, so that staff will keep their heads down, accept minimal personal responsibility for the horror confronting them, and become inured to the processes they are functioning within.
This is not the accidental outcome of policy change, unexpected teething problems arising from processing shifts, unintended consquences of reasonable rationalisation : the infliction of suffering through bureaucratic obscurantism is exactly what Miller Banon Trump and Sessions want to achieve.
They believe they can weather the storm of protest, because their base is conditioned to heartlessness to the victims they have “otherised”.
What is new(ish) are Trumpgandists of Hispanic and Black heritage soundbiting on MSM and elsewhere to the effect that “The cages look pretty good compared to the neighbourhoods I grew up in” and “Black folks have always had to suffer family separations, why should we treat the crimes of these illegals any different”. This propoganda is intended only to reassure the base, not persuade the critics.
“Trumpgandists of Hispanic and Black heritage soundbiting on MSM” = internalized oppression.
Same as women who bash feminists. They’ve internalized their oppression.
Yes indeed.
Of course, and their value as propaganda tools is they parlay their personality and experience to give an added twist to the process of “otherisation” while simultaneously reassuring their chosen allies . That reassurance comes from the display that the prejudices being pandered to are widely shared and “common”sense, even among proto-targets if only they would stop being so blind and recalcitrant.
Which, at the heart of the motivation, the root cause is Trump’s rabid racism, not an immigrant crisis (whether or not this is reality). Same with the Muslim ban. How many news outlets directly call this out? He is playing to his racist base, which some say we’re not allowed to talk about.
Stanley Cohen has an excellent thread on some of the Trump history:
“In an interview with Larry King in 1989 unearthed from CNN’s archives, Trump laid out his position, telling King, ‘maybe hate is what we need if we’re gonna get something done.'”
This one goes into the details of the Trump lawsuit, using Cohn, and calling the DOJ “storm troopers” and “Gestapo”.
https://twitter.com/StanleyCohenLaw/status/1010118426088488960
This situation is even more demented when you consider the past of Trump and buds, Epstein and Dershowitz. How many Trump pizzagates are we going to uncover years down the road?
Yup. I think it’s no coincidence the girl who was disappeared in the Katie Johnson suit was named “Maria Doe.” You might also take a look for stories about Trump and Tevfik Arif. Funny how owning a modeling agency puts one so close to human traffickers.
This will be the last thing I say on it, but as far as Melania, she is a grown-ass adult. Transmitting whatever message (and there was one, let’s not be naive) she did, wearing low-rent Nazi-promoting designer wear is another childish act of this administration. If you have something to say, make a formal statement and make yourself available for questions by the press. No sympathy or benefit of the doubt here. She has shown who she is, believe her.
Imagine if Michelle Obama pulled a stunt like that before going to an immigrant internment camp. Trump TV talking head propagandists would literally explode.
Imagine if Michelle had worn a knock off military surplus jacket that, instead of the original’s message, “Love Trumps Hate,” she had worn that one that says, in pidgeon English, “I really don’t care. Do u?” Poor language, illegible handwriting, bad message, sweatshop made grunge clothes? She would be pilloried for a month.
But Melania and her clothing are a sideshow, cover for the cruel chaotic mess in the Oval Office and for the meat cleaver he is taking to the federal government.
Combine Labor and Education Depts? Uh, huh. More cover for tearing away more of the social safety net and protections for children and labor. That sounds like an excellent theme the Dems should add to their 2018 and 2020 platforms. They happen to be true.
And air quality, Pruitt, which effects the entire globe and any future generations:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DgQGCppU8AEmYJH.jpg:large
Unfortunately, the national Democratic Party leadership is a bunch of sold-out scumbags that will only coalesce around increasing military budgets, cutting taxes for the rich and fluffing Russia conspiracy stories.
If only we had another choice.
That makes no sense at all…
Hmm. Too bad you got your choice, isn’t it?
Baby steps on accountability, how about it Mike Pence, you so-called “good Christian”?
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/06/msnbc-panel-calls-mike-karen-pences-silence-trumps-naked-white-supremacism/
There’s a reason he was so hated in deep red Indiana that he didn’t even run for re-election as governor: he’s a hypocritical phony.
In 2015 Pence stopped me in my tracks – I was planning to attend 50th h.s. reunion in northern Indiana – by enthusiastically signing Indiana SB101 (thinly disguised cover, on religion grounds, for LGBT-phobes who fear catching cooties and therefore pro-actively withhold services). I heard about it the day after, and I wasn’t fit to live with. I immediately canceled my plane and hotel reservations. Then I sadly emailed my BFFs to tell them them the bad news and explain why. One of them moaned, “Pence … oh don’t bring *him* up.”
Meanwhile for the kids already here, the GOP moved ahead on sticking the shiv in their backs. Pierce reminds us that LyinRyan himself benefited from the programs he’s trying to cut now, since he got his after all. Defend everywhere with everything.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21764247/republicans-are-willing-to-take-children-hostage-in-more-ways-than-one/
Thank you Rayne for your strong words and thanks to all for this smart discussion, I’m trying to stay sane and it helps.
I have just read there is a protest planned for June 30, I’m imagining a huge crowd all across the country. I for one can’t wait to be in with that crowd. I also saw photos of protestors outside Kirstjen Nielson’s home where they played the crying children tape through a megaphone and shouted ‘shame’ as she walked out of her own door, so well done.
Relating to chickenshit media coverage, I’m hoping someone at NYT will release the tape of Stephen Miller that the Whitehouse didn’t want out there. They could get that guy fired.
June 18 marked 6,000 days since Guantanamo And, we’ll be bringing our military expertise in erecting internment camps to the US mainland. It’s been ten years since the Supreme Court affirmed that Guantanamo prisoners had habeas corpus rights: Rights that were so relentlessly gutted and blocked by lower court rulings without a peep from the Supreme Court that the camp endures today.
A baby, a toddler, a kid can do a lot of growing up in that time frame.
Welcome to emptywheel. Thinking of Gitmo I also think of this humanitarian crisis not just because of the indefinite detention children face; this is now a radicalizing event which could affect our future relations with Mexico, Central and South America, and any group wishing for an excuse.
Donald Trump’s Illegal Alien Press Conference. Come on Down!
Trebling down on the murderers, rapists, sodomizers, and evil beasts that Mexico and other countries are harboring and keeping from American justice – well, Texas justice anyway.
Sixty-three thousand Americans killed by illegal aliens since 9/11 – and that’s undercounting!
I wonder how representative this quickly assembled jumble of stories is regarding Americans in general, regarding immigrants, and undocumented immigrants in particular.
Something tells me the numbers are not what Trump and his dog and pony show claim they are. Not to mention that Trump has cobbled together victims of alcohol abuse, drunk driving, in particular, and other causes. (How many are killed owing to good standup Amurriken citizen drunks, I wonder.) Never mind. Trump has assembled them all under the banner, “Illegal Aliens”.
Did we need this warning that Trump has not retreated or backtracked in any way, shape or form? That that is not in his DNA? That he is a racist in heart, mind and body? Did we MSM? I don’t fucking think so. Lying is in his DNA. Lying about his pet targets more so.
This is just beginning. It will get much worse. MSM, do your jobs before Trump sends the pitchforks out from the White House to haunt the villagers.
How can you watch? He is so repugnant, he starts talking and then it is shut off STAT, for me.
Judges, Cops, DAs and Social Workers across the US use this same exact fear of “separation” and their ability to make it permanent as a bargaining tool.
Have yet to see a national Democratic politician speak out against it. Have seen many that love how Big Brother/Sister will come in and correct us all with their good intentions.
Republicans (and POSs like the Clintons) always seem to like people getting punished.
The MSM might also publicize that no one is asking federal or state governments to treat would be immigrant children better than American children. If anything, this debate should highlight that this country fails to treat all its children with care.
No one loves cutting state education budgets more than the GOP. No one loves more tearing apart the unions of their teachers than the GOP, because they hate unions for being effective in opposing the worst excesses of public and private sector managers. No one, save for Irish orphanages of the past several decades, fails more often to oversee federal and state homes than house abandoned children than GOP-controlled governments.
No one loves imposing lower wages on everyone, making every parent’s job harder than the GOP; or taking away health care from the middle and lower classes; or taking food from the mouths of young children because their parents find it hard to get or keep work. No one more than the GOP prefers corporations over people.
And no one talks about doing one thing while doing its opposite than the GOP and Donald Trump.
George Will told Republicans that they need to vote for Democrats in November.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/vote-against-the-gop-this-november/2018/06/22/a6378306-7575-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3f63aae8ea97
Once your house has burned to the ground, you need to go stay with the neighbors for a while. I’m not a Democrat or Republican, but George can stay at my place. We all need to stick together to round up all the arsonists and put them in jail before they burn the whole city to the ground. We can work out our differences after we put out the fires.
Barn’s burnt down
Now
I can see the moon.
~Mizuta Masahide
The enemy of my enemy! George Will recently referenced this 1987 Krauthammer piece which seems to forewarn us of certain Trumpian mores . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1987/01/09/the-pardon-is-for-tyrants/8dc18dd2-04d3-4366-a085-f09348eb93bb/?utm_term=.07b93ac8ae31
I was not a fan of Krauthammer, or the majority of his opinions, but I don’t think he ever reached the level of rabid mouth foaming of the other Fox talking heads. I suppose you could say he lived on in grace, after his own personal major tragedies. There is something to be said for that.
If I recall correctly, he was a high-testosterone hardliner, fond of war, if unusually willing to allow abortion. He made the soft-nosed Mr. Brooks look like a lapdog, but then that’s David’s specialty, which makes it harder to see his sharp teeth and hard jaw.
A dark irony of Trump’s orphans:
“…In this way, the families that the Trump administration ripped apart over a misdemeanor offense could become permanently ruptured. Some of the children, Sandweg says, could eventually be put up for adoption. In the darkest of ironies, forcibly orphaned migrants – whom the president is desperate to deport – could in fact qualify for permanent residency, because the U.S. has a “special immigrant juvenile” classification designed for abandoned children. As Sandweg puts it, “Trump could be creating hundreds of future green card holders.” -https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/family-separation-explained-w521891
https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/sij
emptywheel Retweeted
Brad HeathVerified account @bradheath 2h2 hours ago
DOJ said it was diverting resources from drug smuggling cases to handle minor immigration charges brought on by the Trump administration’s border crackdown. Almost immediately multi-kilo smuggling cases started showing up in state court instead.
So…tough on drug smuggling?
And it’s not just ignoring major drugs cases, it’s ignoring other major felony cases, too, even if white collar crime cases were never on the Trumpian/Sessions radar.
Sessions has tied the DoJ in knots to placate his and Trump’s and Miller’s obsession with their personal racist immigration bogeyman.
Apart from making themselves feel good, apart from spreading chaos, this seems all about winning elections in order to maintain a GOP majority in both houses.
Between this comment and Marcy’s about the pain we’ll all suffer when the Mueller investigation wraps up, I’m not in a good place to think about this today.
It feels like Trump and the GOP have been in office for 20 tortuous years already.
I suspect Marcy was also saying that acting on any of Mueller’s recommendations, including his prosecuting any other targets, will be hard on everybody, not just the targets.
The Trumpistas take no prisoner, and don’t give a damn about collateral damage as they defend their crimes.
Prosecutions and other responses to his investigation will all take years, long beyond Trump’s single term in office. The new president will need a hard stomach, lest she gravitate toward Mr. Obama’s execrable, “Look forward, not back.”
I must point out that Condo-leeeezzza Rice won the Execrable Trophy, and relentless qvetching to “Move forward, not backward” played no small part in that.
“Move forward, not backward” is just adult-speak for the very complaint that every child whines to parents in response to admonishment: “You *always* say that! I *know*!” (Sound familiar?) What it *means* is “You’re embarrassing me, and I have no defense.”
Things I added to my “Border Issues” news list already this morning:
Thanks for posting this border issues list, sharpie.
1] Detention of Migrant Families as “Deterrence”: Ethical Flaws and Empirical Doubts https://www.justsecurity.org/58354/detention-migrant-families-deterrence-ethical-flaws-empirical-doubts/ Adam Cox, Ryan Goodman; 6/22/18
2] https://twitter.com/mahtowin1/status/1010286836432990210 3:22 PM – 22 Jun 2018
3] https://twitter.com/gregorykorte/status/1010341629708984320
4] Two days ago: https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1009848488031604736
Today: https://twitter.com/jackiekcalmes/status/1010528779368726528 7:23 AM – 23 Jun 2018
With respect to #2 above, a few days ago, The Daily News reported:
ICE detention of unaccompanied minors in New York is up more than 500%, city says
Maybe I missed something….
During this whole government-sponsored child abduction operation, I have seen mentions of government officials and departments and lawyers and laws and celebrities and much more. Lots of comments. Lots of outrage. A little bit of stubborn support for the operation, but quietly.
But I haven’t heard from Messers Daly and Dobson of Focus on the Family. One would think that these fine Christian gentlemen would be the first to condemn the recent Trump/Miller atrocities. Their website says that they are dedicated to helping families thrive, and to help parents raise children according to biblical principles. One is forced to wonder whether this is actually a Christian organization, or just a fund raising operation for the fight against abortion and gay marriage. Because, if one is a Christian, one does not get to pick and choose one’s fights. A principle is a principle. As far as I can tell, there is only silence from the redoubt in Colorado Springs.
Call me crazy, but I think this was planned. Taking the girls and babies, the MOST vulnerable and refusing to answer questions, stonewalling is designed to make us all feel powerless. Just as removing clothing is meant to do.
We must gather our power now!! Before it’s too late. There is a psychological reason for every thing being done. It’s not over sight. It’s deliberate.
Power and control:
Intimidation: fear tactic, display of weapons, use of anger
Mind games: name calling, humiliation, put downs, discrediting
Isolation: camps, chains, hostages,
Minimize, Deny and Blame: invalidation makes us doubt our own eyes.
Objectification: people as objects or sub human. “Animals”
Authority: I am boss I will do what I want. You asked for this. You want this.
Economics: cutting down all social scalfolding
Threats: obvious enough.
REMEMBER: The end game is complete control over us!!
And we are now in a situation where his life, and the life of his loved ones requires absolute control over us and our democracy. He will not survive without control over us!!
We as a nation are in grave danger. He will go to Putin, he will go to any despot to get that control. Time is of the essence!!! I spent years working DV he is the MOST danger of the dangerous. Some of these children are dead. Some have been abused. Some have been trafficked. He cannot return them because then we will know.
We should be at war with this man.
I agree with you. Let me add my two cents worth:
This is a conspiracy to defraud and to loot. Trump is one of many, both in this country and out. Trump is the controllee, not the controller. The idea here is to take control of the country and the people, while preserving the “market.” ( China is the model for this strategy.)
The scariest part, to me, is how much support for Trump still exists in this country. Hard to see that if one is stuck in a liberal news bubble. So my biggest fear is an election night shock this November.
That psychological response is exactly why attacking the weakest, most vulnerable, least deserving of punishment is part of the CIA’s KUBARK and the updated Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual.
Humans are hardwired to be keenly sensitive to symmetry, equitable treatment and their absence. The irrationality of punishing the most vulnerable is excruciatingly disorienting. It is dispiriting, it dissolves bonds, it dislocates people from each other and their government. It promotes learned helplessness.
Both CIA manuals were designed to keep local populations afraid and compliant, following CIA-backed, hard right coups, principally in Latin America. Colonial policing coming home.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/
“Action” is the magic word. It is important to start planning, and then taking, action. We are not helpless. A good place to start would be to register to vote, and then vote, come hell or high water. Then, it is crucial to encourage young people, blacks, and Hispanics to do the same. That would be a start. Beyond that, we as citizens are going to have to get more sophisticated in our ability to recognize and counter the onslaught of propaganda we face today.
The people of Chile took action, and they ousted Pinochet relatively peacefully. They took on the military and Catholic bureaucracies, and they won.
What would happen if citizens took over the detention centers?
The Navy is getting in on the act, with plans to build “temporary,” “austere” housing for nearly 120,000 aliens in the Bay Area, at Camp Pendleton, between San Diego and L.A., and in Florida.
Estimated costs for the next six months alone, over $230 million, excluding operating costs. No indication of whether and how that would be billed back to DHS. Even for the Pentagon or DHS, that’s real money.
Trump’s so-called retreat is one step back, three steps forward. Time for the MSM to rethink its Trump “retreats” headlines. Time to reread P.D. James’s Children of Men.
http://time.com/5319334/navy-detainment-centers-zerol-tolerance-immigration-family-separation-policy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Men
Does that $230K include medical/social services or only NAVFAC construction? I’d like to see the services contract for the detainees, including the immigrant teens (abducted from Boston Public Schools and other schools), separated children and women on U-visa applications (for domestic violence). I’ll bet there are none.
I don’t hear enough cautionary buzz about the fences (plural!) that military bases place between congress critters/MSM/investigative reporters and the detainees. If ICE compounds are effectively a brick wall – and they appear to be so – imagine similar compounds but on military reservations.
$230 million being impossibly low, even excluding operating costs.
Going back to Rayme’s opening theme of “do your damned job, media” there’s a huge story here that Time missed because they didn’t do the most basic analysis. There is simply no way you can build housing for that many people for that figure even on the assumption that it is temporary shelter.
Someone leaked that number to try to set the table for this being a relatively affordable policy, but there is no reason for Time to swallow the lie whole.
That number was for a six-month period. It is unlikely to cover construction costs for more than a fraction of these 120,000 places. It would not cover operating costs.
That’s only for a few Navy projects. The Army will spend more, as will other services. And then there’s all the aerial and spatial surveillance and associated costs. Boondoggle on boondoggle.
As you say, it is a dramatic undercount of the billions that this policy will cost. It also seems important to point out that these facilities are unlikely to be temporary.
My guess is it’s a similar process to the way Rumsfeld handled Iraq War estimates in the runup to the war.
I have no doubt there are bean counters in the Pentagon who know there is no way to do this without huge capital expenditures for sanitation, health care,and everything else. And I also have no doubt there are political ghouls who are slashing the hell out of those estimates.
In the end, I will bet they try to use the huge costs they’re incurring to slash domestic programs and build Trump’s wall. What choice do we have, they will whine.
The WaPo, the gray lady, the networks, buried the “Trump is a mad man” lead. “It leads to separation ultimately” words from Trump himself the day after the EO. How many GOP have flipped realizing if Trump doesn’t give a wit about 2342 children, Trump doesn’t give a wit about them. Non Trump internal rendition needs a fix, Indefinite detention of minors for years on end note, NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/21/us/politics/ap-us-immigration-abuse-claims.html
I wonder where the tiger is going. When was the last time a president got an FU while walking the halls of congress? Miller, Nielsen, Sanders confronted verbally when appearing in public. ICE and CBP people breaking down.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir” moment needed badly. Thanks Roy Cohn for two monsters.
I think there will be an election year shock. What will we do when it happens?? Russia has darn near every American citizens data. Stolen from our credit agencies. I guarantee they can easily manipulate the election. They just need certain numbers in certain areas to not be allowed to vote. The only way to override is to have so many extra people voting that it can’t be manipulated but I don’t know that this will work.
If the elections are stolen come fall, what is the plan???
We make up our minds today that we will keep fighting if that happens.
So sad. GOP making #FakeNews http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/sinclair-broadcasting-group-local-news-stations-attack-critics-of-family-separation-boris-epshteyn.html