A break from the Horror Show that is the Trump administration.
A moment to brag about my very talented and exceptional nephew, Kevin Callahan:
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Sunday Music Blogging: Kevin Callahan
A break from the Horror Show that is the Trump administration.
A moment to brag about my very talented and exceptional nephew, Kevin Callahan:
Saturday, June 29, 2019
The Shame of the Republican President
After being asked about Putin's comments bashing liberal democracy, our "stable genius" replied:
"If you look at what's happening in Los Angeles, San Francisco [cities] run by a group of liberal people..."
The Idiot-in-Chief doesn't know the difference between liberalism in the political theory sense and "liberal" in the American domestic politics sense. His cognitive sorting system is "good" or "bad." Once he hears "liberal" the system spits out "LIBERAL. BAD!" Artificial Intelligence could give a more thoughtful, informed answer.
Trump is too stupid and ignorant to understand that liberal democracy refers to the form of government we have in North America, Western Europe, and British Commonwealth countries. Putin asserted that our form of government based on individual liberties is obsolete and failing.
The Republican's moronic president, the "stable genius," has no idea of what "Liberal Democracy" means, and his Cultists voted the imbecile to lead and represent America.
What a colossal tragedy Trump is; and the entire world, except his Cultists, knows this.
For the TrumpCultists and those who regularly read my blog, here is the definition of "liberal democracy":
Liberal democracy is generally understood to be a system of government in which people consent to their rulers, and rulers, in turn, are constitutionally constrained to respect individual rights. However, widely divergent views exist regarding the meaning of consent and individual rights, of the particular forms of government that are best suited to the preservation of popular rule and the protection of rights, and of the types and effectiveness of constitutional constraints within particular forms of government. Nonetheless, liberal democracy is common throughout most of the developed world.
And here's "liberal," defined by President John F. Kennedy, as a domestic political doctrine:
“If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.”
How does it feel, America, to have a so-called president not know the form of government he was selected by Russia to lead, a liberal representative democracy?
The only leaders who seem to admire Trump are murderous dictators: Putin and Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump also sucks up to Kim Jong Un, y'know, the guy he says he "fell in love with."
Friday, June 28, 2019
Trump agrees with former Communist KGB Putin on "getting rid" (killing) of Journalists
Rabid far righties howl about infringements of any sort on their precious 2nd Amendment rights.
AR-15s? Don't you dare touch them! 2nd Amendment! 2nd Amendment! My right to bare my arms!!!!!!!
The so-called POTUS agrees with a murderous Russian dictator about "getting rid" of journalists (there is no free press without journalists), and the rabid far righties who whine about preserving the 2nd Amendment, laugh along with Trump in his joke about getting rid of the First Amendment.
This is the guy Trump admires:
Putin has "gotten rid" of not only journalists, but his opponents.
The Republican POTUS thinks it's funny to joke about killing journalists, like his hero, Putin, kills them.
Trump also made a Ha-Ha funny and told Putin "don't meddle in our next election." Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge. Get what I mean; get what I mean.
Trump and Putin make a lovely duo: Both of them have no respect for our American values or the Constitution.
TrumpCultists love it when Trump and Putin joke about killing ("getting rid') of journalists.
Donald Trump joked with Russian President Vladimir Putin that they should “get rid” of journalists as they met in public at the G-20 conference of world leaders in Osaka, Japan. Indicating toward the journalists in the room, Trump said, “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia but we do.”
Putin responded, in English: “We also have. It’s the same.”
It has been reported that 21 journalists have been killed in Russia since Putin came to power in March 2000. Trump’s remarks come a year to the day that a gunman killed five people at the Annapolis Capital-Gazette in Maryland.
The fourth estate in Russia
Russia currently ranks 180 out of 199 countries for press freedom, behind Iraq, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the international watchdog Freedom House.
Though it has never been known for its media independence, Russia’s press freedom and ranking have continuously decreased in the past decade under Putin.
[skip]
Reporters killed
Combining data from two nonprofits that records violations of press rights (the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and the Moscow-based Glasnost Defense Foundation), we found that at least 34 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 2000. (This tally only includes deaths confirmed or likely to be work-related homicides committed in Russia. It doesn’t include murders where the motives are unclear, or journalists killed in war and on other dangerous assignments, like covering the mob or riots.)
For comparison, in the same time period, two journalists were murdered in China, while three were killed in the United States (including the on-air deaths of two television reporters in Virginia this year). Nina Ognianova, the coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Europe and Central Asia program, said journalists covering corruption, human rights abuses, organized crime, and official wrongdoing can be "slain with impunity in Putin’s Russia." "Their killers are emboldened to act by an administration that marginalizes them, isolates them, and downplays their role in society," she said.
Accusing the New York Times of ‘Treason,’ Trump Crosses a Line
The Founders considered it the gravest of crimes. Tossing the charge around is irresponsible and wrong.
From the WSJ, June 19, 2019
First it was “the failing New York Times.” Then “fake news.” Then “enemy of the people.” President Trump’s escalating attacks on the New York Times have paralleled his broader barrage on American media. He’s gone from misrepresenting our business, to assaulting our integrity, to demonizing our journalists with a phrase that’s been used by generations of demagogues. Now the president has escalated his attacks even further, accusing the Times of a crime so grave it is punishable by death.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump said the Times had committed “a virtual act of treason.” The charge, levied on Twitter , was in response to an article about American cyber incursions into the Russian electrical grid that his own aides had assured our reporters raised no national-security concerns. Few paid much attention. Many news organizations, including the Times, determined the accusation wasn’t even worth reporting, a sign of how inured we’ve grown to such rhetorical recklessness. But this new attack crosses a dangerous line in the president’s campaign against a free and independent press. Treason is the only crime explicitly defined in the U.S. Constitution.
The Founding Fathers knew the word’s history as a weapon wielded by tyrants to justify the persecution and execution of enemies. They made its definition immutable—Article III reads: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”—to ensure that it couldn’t be abused by politicians for self-serving attacks on rivals or critics.
The crime is almost never prosecuted, but Mr. Trump has used the word dozens of times. There is no more serious charge a commander in chief can make against an independent news organization. Which presents a troubling question: What would it look like for Mr. Trump to escalate his attacks on the press further? Having already reached for the most incendiary language available, what is left but putting his threats into action?
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Trump's Concentration Camp Systems. Ocasio-Cortez is Correct.
I've read and heard the criticism against A. Ocasio-Cortez for referring the the camps at the southern border for children as "concentration camps." I've also read Andrea Pitzer, an expert who's written about concentration camps, and she asserts, from her research and studies of such mass incarcerations, that what is going on at the border is, indeed, a concentration camp system.
The Holocaust was an extreme concentration camp system, and what is going on at our southern border, while not as extreme or as deadly, is, by Ms. Pitzer's informed research, a SYSTEM of concentration camps.
To deny or say otherwise is to turn a blind eye to the abuse and even in some cases torture and death of babies and children -- living, breathing babies and children -- at these camps.
A blistering shame on America and the Trump administration.
"On Monday, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to US border detention facilities as “concentration camps,” spurring a backlash in which critics accused her of demeaning the memory of those who died in the Holocaust. Debates raged over a label for what is happening along the southern border and grew louder as the week rolled on. But even this back-and-forth over naming the camps has been a recurrent feature in the mass detention of civilians ever since its inception, a history that long predates the Holocaust.
At the heart of such policy is a question: What does a country owe desperate people whom it does not consider to be its citizens? The twentieth century posed this question to the world just as the shadow of global conflict threatened for the second time in less than three decades. The dominant response was silence, and the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty meant that what a state did to people under its control, within its borders, was nobody else’s business. After the harrowing toll of the Holocaust with the murder of millions, the world revisited its answer, deciding that perhaps something was owed to those in mortal danger.
From the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians in 1949 to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the international community established humanitarian obligations toward the most vulnerable that apply, at least in theory, to all nations."
[skip]
"So far, American citizens have gotten only glimpses of the conditions in the border camps that have been opened in their name. In the month of May, Customs and Border Protection reported a total of 132,887 migrants who were apprehended or turned themselves in between ports of entry along the southwest border, an increase of 34 percent from April alone. Upon apprehension, these migrants are temporarily detained by Border Patrol, and once their claims are processed, they are either released or handed over to ICE for longer-term detention. Yet Border Patrol itself is currently holding about 15,000 people, nearly four times what government officials consider to be this enforcement arm’s detention capacity.
On June 12, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that Fort Sill, an Army post that hosted a World War II internment camp for detainees of Japanese descent, will now be repurposed to detain migrant children. In total, HHS reports that it is currently holding some 12,000 minors. Current law limits detention of minors to twenty days, though Senator Lindsey Graham has proposed expanding the court-ordered limit to 100 days. Since the post is on federal land, it will be exempt from state child welfare inspections."
READ THE REST HERE AND UNDERSTAND WHY THE TERM "CONCENTRATION CAMP" APPLIES TO WHERE THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS KEEPING THESE CHILDREN.
Until we #CloseTheCamps, I really don't care about #BeBest, do u?
7 year olds, caked w/snot and tears, care for infants they’ve just met. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teen mothers' clothes are stained with breast milk. nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/…
7 year olds, caked w/snot and tears, care for infants they’ve just met. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teen mothers' clothes are stained with breast milk. nytimes.com/2019/06/21/us/…
Start here
Monday, June 24, 2019
"Donald Trump is running concentration camps at the border. The question remains: what are we going to do about it?"
Last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg trials says Trump's family separation policy is ‘crime against humanity’
He asks: 'What could cause more great suffering than what they did in the name of immigration law?'
This is America's shame brought to us by a shameless bigot and liar, Donald Trump:
An Expert on Concentration Camps Says That's Exactly What the U.S. Is Running at the Border
Surely, the United States of America could not operate concentration camps. In the American consciousness, the term is synonymous with the Nazi death machines across the European continent that the Allies began the process of dismantling 75 years ago this month. But while the world-historical horrors of the Holocaust are unmatched, they are only the most extreme and inhuman manifestation of a concentration-camp system—which, according to Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, has a more global definition.
There have been concentration camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and—with Japanese internment—the United States. In fact, she contends we are operating such a system right now in response to a very real spike in arrivals at our southern border. “We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”
Doctor compares conditions for unaccompanied children at immigrant holding centers to 'torture facilities'
"From sleeping on concrete floors with the lights on 24 hours a day to no access to soap or basic hygiene, migrant children in at least two U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities face conditions one doctor described as comparable to 'torture facilities.'
The disturbing, first-hand account of the conditions were observed by lawyers and a board-certified physician in visits last week to border patrol holding facilities in Clint, Texas, and McAllen, a city in the southern part of the state. (MORE: Katharine Gorka tapped as Customs and Border Protection press secretary) The descriptions paint a bleak image of horrific conditions for children, the youngest of whom is 2 1/2 months old."
DONALD TRUMP: MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, ONE CONCENTRATION-TORTURE CAMP FOR KIDS AT A TIME.
"Not only do these children in question not have beds, they are not even turning off the lights so that they can go to sleep. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture, plain and simple."
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Trump's Concentration Camps for Children
To all the TrumpCultists who come here every day and read my blog:
This is on you. You support this.
Lawyers who visited a migrant detention center in McAllen, Texas, forced Border Patrol to hospitalize four toddlers who were severely ill and not receiving medical attention, HuffPost reported. All of the children hospitalized were under the age of three and, according to the lawyers, were exhibiting symptoms of fever, cough, vomiting and diarrhea. They all had mothers or guardians who were in their teens.
One two-year-old was so ill, their eyes had rolled back in their head and they were “completely unresponsive,” Florida attorney Toby Gialluca told HuffPost. Some of the children had been refusing food or drink.
The TrumpCultists don't like to hear this. Too bad.
They will contnue to hear what Trumpublicans are doing to living, breathing, innocent children.
No soap, no toothpaste, and beds on a cold concrete floor.
The same people who scream about taking a zygote, that has no heart or brain, out of a uterus, ignor living, breathing, suffering children.
4-month old babies are taken away from their mothers.
That's what Trump has done to America.
Under Trump, America is NOT an exceptional country. Exceptional countries don't cage babies and children after taking them away from their parents.
It's difficult to believe, but TrumpCultists justify this crime against humanity.
Let them live with the consequences of that choice.
‘There Is a Stench’: No Soap and Overcrowding in Detention Centers for Migrant Children
A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week.Some of the children have been there for nearly a month. Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants.
Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk. Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said.
They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.
I’m a Jewish historian. Yes, we should call border detention centers “concentration camps.”
It isn’t just accurate. It’s necessary.
Friday, June 21, 2019
There's a lot going on in the news today. This is a big story as well.
From Digby:
My Salon column this morning:
Bright and early Thursday morning, President Trump angrily declared on Twitter: "Iran made a very big mistake!" He had obviously heard the news that Iran's Revolutionary Guards had shot down a very expensive American unmanned drone over international waters. (You know how he feels about money.) It was obviously some kind of threat but not too much later he met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and told the assembled press corps that he had "a feeling ... that it was a mistake made by somebody," giving the impression that he either knew this wasn't an act ordered by the top Iranian brass or was just trying to offer them a way out.
Later in the evening, this happened:
Trump approved a strike on Iran to be launched tonight in retaliation for drone shutdown but then abruptly changed his mind and pulled back. @shearm @EricSchmittNYT @michaelcrowley @maggieNYT nytimes.com/2019/06/20/wor…
As late as 7 p.m., military and diplomatic officials were expecting the strike. The president had approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries. But then he pulled back, at least for now.
596 people are talking about this
According to the New York Times, the operation was already underway with planes in the air and ships in position to fire missiles just before dawn on Friday. As of this writing nobody seems sure what prompted Trump to pull back when he did. There's no word on whether or not it was due to a change in the situation or simply another of his impulsive actions. The fact that the news media found out about it so quickly argues for the latter. People don't leak something like that unless they are shocked by what went down.
TRUMP'S CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Attorneys: Texas Border Facility Is Neglecting Migrant Kids
A legal team that inspected a Border Patrol station near El Paso, Texas, says young migrants being held there are experiencing neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government.
BY CEDAR ATTANASIO, GARANCE BURKE AND MARTHA MENDOZA, Associated Press EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they've been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago.
Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there's inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station. The bleak portrait emerged Thursday after a legal team interviewed 60 children at the facility near El Paso that has become the latest place where attorneys say young migrants are describing neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government.
Data obtained by The Associated Press showed that on Wednesday there were three infants in the station, all with their teen mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-year-old. There are dozens more under 12. Fifteen have the flu, and 10 more are quarantined.
Shame on Trump and on anyone who supports this inhuman treatment of living babies and children:
"The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S. - Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells.
The Trump administration told incredulous appeals court panel that a judge erred by insisting that 'safe and sanitary' conditions for detained immigrant children means they must have access to soap."
No soap. No toothbrushes. No healthcare. No soccer. No human touch. The regime of cruelty's immigration policy as set by Stephen Miller is sadistic!
The people who defend, support, uphold, and labor for this administration have no soul, no conscience, no humanity. They are devoid of everything that would make them redeemable.
The point is cruelty.
The Trump administration is an abomination, headed by a barbaric monster.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
B.S.er-in-Chief.
P.E. commenter, Ray, sent this to me.
It's more proof that DJT has been a bullshitter all his life.
Nothing's changed.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
President "Family Values" hires only the best people
BREAKING:
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has withdrawn from consideration to lead the Pentagon on a permanent basis, President Trump announced Tuesday.
The announcement came after USA Today published the details of a 2010 violent domestic dispute with his then-wife that was investigated by the FBI for his background check.
“Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who has done a wonderful job, has decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family,” Trump tweeted.
Remember Rob Porter left trump's inner circle of advisors for domestic violence.
Now Shanahan?
This put me in mind about something that happened several years ago. A rightwing troll came to P.E. many times and posted the comments below.
What is it about rightwingers and their fascination with beating the crap out of women? Is it because they need to make up for their little inadequacies?
Posted by Thersites to Progressive Eruptions at August 11, 2012 7:32 AM
Thersites has left a new comment on your post "US ADMIRAL: MR. OBAMA "FANTASTIC" PRESIDENT":
...but will Harry Reid stop beating his wife?
Posted by Thersites to Progressive Eruptions at August 18, 2012 3:44 PM
Thersites has left a new comment on your post "US ADMIRAL: MR. OBAMA "FANTASTIC" PRESIDENT":
But the REAL question is, "Does Harry Reid beat his wife?"
Posted by Thersites to Progressive Eruptions at August 18, 2012 8:09 AM
Thersites has left a new comment on your post "RYAN A FISCAL CONSERVATIVE?":One of these days Harry Reid will stop beating his wife and THEN we can have a real debate about the issues...
...but then, Harry Reid will NEVER. stop beating his wife, will he?Posted by Thersites to Progressive Eruptions at August 13, 2012 5:14 PM