The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

Blind_Io;n3550094 said:
It's not about disagreeing with his style. The GOP has actively worked to undermine the Muller investigation into whether or not Trump is compromised or colluded with Russia. If they really believe that there isn't any collusion, then the light of day should not bother them because the investigation would simply lay to rest any doubt about his legitimacy as President. However, this isn't what has happened, Trump's cronies have actively obstructed the investigation, lied to Muller's team, and tampered with witnesses. The GOP itself held what amounts to mock hearings in which they didn't even call all their own witnesses before announcing that there was no evidence of collusion. There is a huge amount of publicly available evidence that points towards collusion with Russia - and that's just what we know about.

So far in the Mueller investigation:

1) George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty in October to making false statements to the FBI.

2) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty in December to making false statements to the FBI.

3) Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, was indicted in October in Washington, DC on charges of conspiracy, money laundering, and false statements — all related to his work for Ukrainian politicians before he joined the Trump campaign. He’s pleaded not guilty on all counts. Then, in February, Mueller filed a new case against him in Virginia, with tax, financial, and bank fraud charges.
  • 7 counts in Washington, DC: One count each of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to launder money, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, making false and misleading Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) statements, a false statements charge in connection with FARA, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
  • 18 counts in Virginia: 5 counts of filing false income tax returns, 4 counts of failing to report foreign bank and financial accounts, and 9 counts of bank fraud or bank conspiracy
4) Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, was indicted on similar charges to Manafort. But in February he agreed to a plea deal with Mueller’s team, pleading guilty to just one false statements charge and one conspiracy charge.

5-20) 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies were indicted on conspiracy charges, with some also being accused of identity theft. The charges related to a Russian propaganda effort designed to interfere with the 2016 campaign. The companies involved are the Internet Research Agency, often described as a “Russian troll farm,” and two other companies that helped finance it. The Russian nationals indicted include 12 of the agency’s employees and its alleged financier, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

21) Richard Pinedo: This California man pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge in connection with the Russian indictments, and has agreed to cooperate with Mueller.

22) Alex van der Zwaan: This London lawyer pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Rick Gates and another unnamed person based in Ukraine.

23) Konstantin Kilimnik: This longtime business associate of Manafort and Gates, who’s currently based in Russia, was charged alongside Manafort with attempting to obstruct justice by tampering with witnesses in Manafort’s pending case this year.


This doesn't even scratch the surface of his insecure communications, the acts of his children, the fact that he's sending his daughter on official state business, and I've lost track of how many times his family has been allowed to "amend" their security clearance documents as new information hits the media.



Do you really expect the GOP to help Impeach Trump when they have covered his ass?

You also missed one thing in there that should make this all moot point anyway. Trump's lawyers have admitted that he knew about the meeting with the Russians and gave instructions about how to handle it to his son in law. That point alone should have already put him passed the point of no return, yet here we are scratching our heads wondering what it will take.
 
All of this being said, I hope he doesn't fuck up the North Korea peace negotiations. Still, not holding my breath. All it takes is him blathering out a tweet or two, which we know he is perfectly capable of.
 
He's already fucked it up. He conceded to ending military exercises with South Korea and to protecting the regime in North Korea. All they did is that they would commit to denuclearization - no timeline, no inspections, no deadlines, and no consequences for failing to comply. For the guy who thought the accountability in the Iran deal was "terrible", this is an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen. He gave away all his bargaining chips and got nothing more than a handshake and "I promise to do better" in return.
 
Blind_Io;n3550135 said:
He's already fucked it up. He conceded to ending military exercises with South Korea and to protecting the regime in North Korea. All they did is that they would commit to denuclearization - no timeline, no inspections, no deadlines, and no consequences for failing to comply. For the guy who thought the accountability in the Iran deal was "terrible", this is an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen. He gave away all his bargaining chips and got nothing more than a handshake and "I promise to do better" in return.

In which case I guess we can rely on Faux News to chalk up another tremendous success for the "dealmaker in chief", or the undisputed master of deals...?
 
Blind_Io;n3550135 said:
For the guy who thought the accountability in the Iran deal was "terrible", this is an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen.
I don't think the "quality" of the deal ever really mattered to him. The only important thing is whether he can take credit for it or not. If yes, it's the best thing that ever happened, could ever have happened, will ever happen and so on. If no, like the Iran deal, it is horrible and bordering on treason.
 
Blind_Io;n3550135 said:
He's already fucked it up. He conceded to ending military exercises with South Korea and to protecting the regime in North Korea. All they did is that they would commit to denuclearization - no timeline, no inspections, no deadlines, and no consequences for failing to comply. For the guy who thought the accountability in the Iran deal was "terrible", this is an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen. He gave away all his bargaining chips and got nothing more than a handshake and "I promise to do better" in return.

A lot of this has to be asked with the question "what if Obama did that" in mind. I think a lot of democrats would have few problems if that was a deal that Obama had made. A Military exercise isn't the End of the world. If that can start things going into a better direction, I think this isn't such a big deal. Those exercises are 80% provokation anyway. And if NK does not change it's ways - they can be back on quickly. I think (as with Cuba), making a first step and showing good will isn't the worst move. It also isn't a "huge win" - so far NK has only given it's word - for whatever that's worth. But (generally speaking) extending a arm every once in a while even to the worst of regimes in the hope that they may change - isn't that bad of a thing. Not when Obama did it with Cuba, not now when Trump meets Kim. It's what happens after that.

What has been staggering to see in the last couple of weeks was the 180° turn in opinion of a lot of right wing commentaries. Obama talks to Castro in hope of better relations? Worst. thing. ever. Trump talks to Kim in hope of better relations? ALL PRAISE ORANGE JESUS!!!!
I'd laugh at this sort of level of hypocracy if it wasnt so sad.
 
Interrobang;n3550154 said:
What has been staggering to see in the last couple of weeks was the 180° turn in opinion of a lot of right wing commentaries. Obama talks to Castro in hope of better relations? Worst. thing. ever. Trump talks to Kim in hope of better relations? ALL PRAISE ORANGE JESUS!!!!
I'd laugh at this sort of level of hypocracy if it wasnt so sad.

https://twitter.com/ErickFernandez/status/1006490047280046080
 
Paul Manafort is in jail for suspected tampering with witnesses. He was awaiting trial while under house arrest, but tried several times to contact witnesses and had his house arrest revoked.

Bets on how long it takes Trump to bail out this guy with a pardon to save his own ass by keeping Manafort turning on Trump?
 
Does anyone approve of the new immigration policy?
 
There is a bit of misinformation here. There is indeed no law stating that children should be separated from their parents. There are however laws about incarcerating persons illegally crossing the border and there are laws that state that children can't be incarcerated with their parents. The only policy change here is a tougher enforcement of the above laws. IMO those laws need to either be changed or repealed (at minimum keep the families together while deciding what to do with them) so the focus is in the wrong place.
 
This sums up my opinion on this:


As someone who actually works as a decision maker with enforcing immigration law, I'm quite appalled by this.
 
prizrak;n3550415 said:
There is a bit of misinformation here. There is indeed no law stating that children should be separated from their parents. There are however laws about incarcerating persons illegally crossing the border and there are laws that state that children can't be incarcerated with their parents. The only policy change here is a tougher enforcement of the above laws. IMO those laws need to either be changed or repealed (at minimum keep the families together while deciding what to do with them) so the focus is in the wrong place.


If that were the case, why is this suddenly happening now? This is a policy change that was implemented by this administration, period. Incarceration and detention are two different things so that does not hold water.
 
Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned. Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.

Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care. The government has faced withering critiques over images of some of the children in cages inside U.S. Border Patrol processing stations.

Decades after the nation’s child welfare system ended the use of orphanages over concerns about the lasting trauma to children, the administration is standing up new institutions to hold Central American toddlers that the government separated from their parents.

“The thought that they are going to be putting such little kids in an institutional setting? I mean it is hard for me to even wrap my mind around it,” said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which provides foster care and other child welfare services to migrant children. “Toddlers are being detained.”

Bellor said shelters follow strict procedures surrounding who can gain access to the children in order to protect their safety, but that means information about their welfare can be limited.

By law, child migrants traveling alone must be sent to facilities run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within three days of being detained. The agency then is responsible for placing the children in shelters or foster homes until they are united with a relative or sponsor in the community as they await immigration court hearings.

But U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement last month that the government would criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border illegally has led to the breakup of hundreds of migrant families and sent a new group of hundreds of young children into the government’s care.

The United Nations, some Democratic and Republican lawmakers and religious groups have sharply criticized the policy, calling it inhumane.

Not so, said Steven Wagner, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We have specialized facilities that are devoted to providing care to children with special needs and tender age children as we define as under 13 would fall into that category,” he said. “They’re not government facilities per se, and they have very well-trained clinicians, and those facilities meet state licensing standards for child welfare agencies, and they’re staffed by people who know how to deal with the needs — particularly of the younger children.”

Until now, however, it’s been unknown where they are.

“In general we do not identify the locations of permanent unaccompanied alien children program facilities,” said agency spokesman Kenneth Wolfe.

The three centers — in Combes, Raymondville and Brownsville — have been rapidly repurposed to serve needs of children including some under 5. A fourth, planned for Houston, would house up to 240 children in a warehouse previously used for people displaced by Hurricane Harvey, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.

Turner said he met with officials from Austin-based Southwest Key Programs, the contractor that operates some of the child shelters, to ask them to reconsider their plans. A spokeswoman for Southwest Key didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

“And so there comes a point in time we draw a line and for me, the line is with these children,” said Turner during a news conference Tuesday.

On a practical level, the zero tolerance policy has overwhelmed the federal agency charged with caring for the new influx of children who tend to be much younger than teens who typically have been traveling to the U.S. alone. Indeed some recent detainees are infants, taken from their mothers.

Doctors and lawyers who have visited the shelters said the facilities were fine, clean and safe, but the kids — who have no idea where their parents are — were hysterical, crying and acting out.

“The shelters aren’t the problem, it’s taking kids from their parents that’s the problem,” said South Texas pediatrician Marsha Griffin who has visited many.

Alicia Lieberman, who runs the Early Trauma Treatment Network at University of California, San Francisco, said decades of study show early separations can cause permanent emotional damage.

“Children are biologically programmed to grow best in the care of a parent figure. When that bond is broken through long and unexpected separations with no set timeline for reunion, children respond at the deepest physiological and emotional levels,” she said. “Their fear triggers a flood of stress hormones that disrupt neural circuits in the brain, create high levels of anxiety, make them more susceptible to physical and emotional illness, and damage their capacity to manage their emotions, trust people, and focus their attention on age-appropriate activities.”

Days after Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy, the government issued a call for proposals from shelter and foster care providers to provide services for the new influx of children taken from their families after journeying from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico.

As children are separated from their families, law enforcement agents reclassify them from members of family units to “unaccompanied alien children.” Federal officials said Tuesday that since May, they have separated 2,342 children from their families, rendering them unaccompanied minors in the government’s care.

While Mexico is still the most common country of origin for families arrested at the border, in the last eight months Honduras has become the fastest-growing category as compared to fiscal year 2017.

During a press briefing Tuesday, reporters repeatedly asked for an age breakdown of the children who have been taken. Officials from both law enforcement and Health and Human Services said they didn’t how many children were under 5, under 2, or even so little they’re non-verbal.

“The facilities that they have for the most part are not licensed for tender age children,” said Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, who met with a 4-year-old girl in diapers in a McAllen warehouse where Border Patrol temporarily holds migrant families. “There is no model for how you house tons of little children in cots institutionally in our country. We don’t do orphanages, our child welfare has recognized that is an inappropriate setting for little children.”

So now, the government has to try to hire more caregivers.

The recent call for proposals by the federal government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement said it was seeking applicants who can provide services for a diverse population “of all ages and genders, as well as pregnant and parenting teens.”

Even the policy surrounding what age to take away a baby is inconsistent. Customs and Border Protection field chiefs over all nine southwest border districts can use their discretion over how young is too young, officials said.

For 30 years, Los Fresnos, Texas-based International Education Services ran emergency shelters and foster care programs for younger children and pregnant teens who arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied minors. At least one resident sued for the right to have an abortion in a high-profile case last March.

For reasons the agency did not explain, three months ago the government’s refugee resettlement office said it was ending their funding to the program and transferred all children to other facilities. This came weeks before the administration began its “zero tolerance” policy, prompting a surge in “tender age” migrant children needing shelter.

In recent days, members of Congress have been visiting the shelters and processing centers, or watching news report about them, bearing witness to the growing chaos. In a letter sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday, a dozen Republican senators said separating families isn’t consistent with American values and ordinary human decency.

On Tuesday, a Guatemalan mother who hasn’t seen her 7-year-old son since he was taken from her a month ago sued the Trump administration. Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia was released from custody while her asylum case is pending and thinks her son, Darwin, might be in a shelter in Arizona.

“I only got to talk to him once and he sounded so sad. My son never used to sound like that, he was such a dynamic boy,” Mejia-Mejia said as she wept. “I call and call and no one will tell me where he is.”

http://time.com/5316764/toddler-immi...-age-shelters/

Anyone who tries to defend or downplay this is a goddamn monster.
 
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GRtak;n3550423 said:
If that were the case, why is this suddenly happening now? This is a policy change that was implemented by this administration, period. Incarceration and detention are two different things so that does not hold water.

The policy changed enforcement not the laws themselves. Again not defending either the policy or the laws but it is important to understand that these laws existed previously.
 
The Washington Post staff members who produce the Doonesbury website are really good at finding 'Trumpisms'. Here's the one for today:

From Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller:
"Imagine, in the context of domestic law, if you said that the speed limit doesn't apply to you if you have a child in the backseat. Can you imagine what the consequences of that would be?... Ours is the humanitarian policy."


SL
 
prizrak;n3550442 said:
The policy changed enforcement not the laws themselves. Again not defending either the policy or the laws but it is important to understand that these laws existed previously.



You do understand that incarceration and detention are different things, right?
 
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