https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1008436142675460097?s=12

1 - Entering the US for the purpose of seeking asylum is not a crime.
2 - Even if it were a crime, the people having their children taken and locked up haven't been convicted.
3 - Even people convicted of crimes can't be sentenced to have their children locked up.

BCC said:
I will leave it with this:



The Truth about Separating Kids
By Rich Lowry
May 28, 2018 10:37 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/

 Very nice.  Another variation of we must follow the law even though prior administrations did arrive at this conclusion.  More likely, that Nazi earworm, Stephen Miller, is influencing the decision.

tjohn said:

BCC said:
I will leave it with this:



The Truth about Separating Kids
By Rich Lowry
May 28, 2018 10:37 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/

 Very nice.  Another variation of we must follow the law even though prior administrations did arrive at this conclusion.  More likely, that Nazi earworm, Stephen Miller, is influencing the decision.

"Protest at Stephen Miller’s condo tomorrow. CenterCity in DC. Just show up w posters of kidnapped kids. Stop Tweeting and Rise up!!! Please get the word out. Make this Nazi’s life a living hell."

https://twitter.com/apwriter/status/1008211582248157184

Here's a recording from a detention center of children crying for their parents:

https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-border-patrol-cbp-trump-immigration-policy

I confess I couldn't listen to it. This is monstrous.

BCC said:
I will leave it with this:

The Truth about Separating Kids
By Rich Lowry
May 28, 2018 10:37 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/

Lowry’s Truth makes it sound simple:

1) Family units can go home quickly. The option that both honors our laws and keeps family units together is a swift return home after prosecution. But immigrant advocates hate it because they want the migrants to stay in the United States. How you view this question will depend a lot on how you view the motivation of the migrants (and how seriously you take our laws and our border). 

The Times’ details, some of which I highlighted, don't:

Children whose parents have been arrested are transferred to the custody of the Health and Human Services Department, whose staff screens them, finds housing and remains responsible for them.

From that point, migrant parents and children become separate legal cases in the maze of government bureaucracy, and keeping them linked has proved challenging. Different legal protections are afforded to juveniles and adults in the immigration system, and as a result, reuniting families can take months or longer, several legal experts said.

In federal court, parents typically plead guilty to the misdemeanor offense of illegal entry. Many are then likely to accept “expedited removal” from the country, in the hope of being reunited quickly with their children. But children cannot be subject to expedited removal; they are automatically entitled to a full hearing before an immigration judge, and their cases take longer to resolve.

"Once the parent and child are apart, they are on separate legal tracks,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director of ICE during the Obama administration. 

For those who crossed deserts carrying water bottles.........for my cousins who worked the cargo boats and jumped ship in NY harbor and left  loved ones behind

I didn't think about this until I saw the following headline. It makes sense because Trump's tax cut didn't really rally his base.

Forget Tax Cuts. Trump Wants to Rally the G.O.P. Base Over Immigration

I said before, the Republican party uses fear and anger, powerful motivators, to get their turnout. Someone said if they go low we go high. The problem is going low is what most strengthens turnout. 

“People don’t turn out to say thank you,” said Corey Lewandowski, one of the president’s top political advisers. “If you want to get people motivated, you’ve got to give them a reason to vote. Saying ‘build the wall and stop illegals from coming in and killing American citizens’ gives them an important issue.”

True, but Trump's terroristic use of children as hostages to get funding for his border wall is too much for anybody with any decency at all.

And Trump, the petty mobster, is in the process of discovering that he can't bully nations the way he bullied and squeezed subcontractors.

tjohn said:
True, but Trump's terroristic use of children as hostages to get funding for his border wall is too much for anybody with any decency at all.

It seems there are many who have lost all of their decency or possibly never had any. As a nation we're skidding into moral bankruptcy.

I wonder if he's pushing the boundaries to test loyalty.  It's all about the WALL and everyone knows it.

In Trump's mind - his presidency will be a meaningless unless he builds something lasting like a physical wall.  He knows how easy it will be to undue all of his policies (Tax bill), because able to unravel Obama's legacy fairly easily.

BG9 said:
I didn't think about this until I saw the following headline. It makes sense because Trump's tax cut didn't really rally his base.
Forget Tax Cuts. Trump Wants to Rally the G.O.P. Base Over Immigration

I said before, the Republican party uses fear and anger, powerful motivators, to get their turnout. Someone said if they go low we go high. The problem is going low is what most strengthens turnout. 

“People don’t turn out to say thank you,” said Corey Lewandowski, one of the president’s top political advisers. “If you want to get people motivated, you’ve got to give them a reason to vote. Saying ‘build the wall and stop illegals from coming in and killing American citizens’ gives them an important issue.”

True, but it works both ways. Democrats and Independents, who are a majority in this country, are mostly appalled by this stuff, and they can come out and vote too. And also, GOP is very fractured on immigration, so having this debate in an election year could potentially demoralize their base. I am not so sure this is a very good strategy for Trump, but then again, when did that ever stop him.

48 Senators have signed the Keep Families Together Act introduced by Dianne Feinstein. No Republicans have signed, not even Susan Collins, who is the most liberal Republican and has criticized the separation of families. The fear of the wrath of Trump has prevented her from signing the bill introduced by Feinstein. 

Now Ted Cruz has introduced emergency legislation to keep illegal immigrant families together. He won't sign Feinstein's bill.  

cramer said:
48 Senators have signed the Keep Families Together Act introduced by Dianne Feinstein. No Republicans have signed, not even Susan Collins, who is the most liberal Republican and has criticized the separation of families. The fear of the wrath of Trump has prevented her from signing the bill introduced by Feinstein. 
Now Ted Cruz has introduced emergency legislation to keep illegal immigrant families together. He won't sign Feinstein's bill.  

 And Orrin Hatch is circulating a letter to call for a moratorium until a bill is passed.

But please don't call those who support this policy "Deplorables".

I've been obsessed with the growing price of the wall. I had to research it because no one on the news has discussed the fact that it jumped about 20 billion. I remembered him saying on the campaign trail that although  people claimed it would be 12 billion he could do it for 6 billion. Lately I keep hearing that he wants about 25 billion. So here is a bit of an article that discusses the estimates. I just figure if its going to be a bargaining chip we should look at the real cost and point out to Trump's base that it has jumped from the number he recited many times.

As for Mexico paying for it, he will sell them on the idea that the tariffs count.

From Politifact last year excerpts from

Would Trump’s border wall cost the same as one and a half U.S. aircraft carriers?

By Chris Nichols on Friday, April 28th, 2017 at 3:53 p.m.

Paying for a "big, beautiful wall"

The U.S. border with Mexico is nearly 2,000 miles long. It already includes about 650 miles of fencing constructed under previous administrations. Trump has said the wall doesn’t need to span the entire border, adding in a television interview that "We don’t need 2,000 (miles), we need 1,000 because we have natural barriers."

During his campaign, Trump initially said he could build a wall for $4 billion and later estimated $6 billion to $7 billion. In April 2017, he put it at $10 billion or less.

The Associated Press reported in March that the Trump Administration wants to build a 30-foot-high border wall that "looks good from the north side and is difficult to climb or cut through," according to a pair of contract notices posted to a government website.

Sunday, April 2, 2017. (Brian Skoloff / AP)

Cost estimates for the wall vary greatly. Here are some relevant estimates, as chronicled by news publication Quartz.

• In July 2016, Bernstein Research, a firm that analyzes material costs, put the price tag at $15 billion to $25 billion, for a wall that stretches 1,000 miles and is 40 feet high, which was Trump’s initial desired height.
• In January 2017, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the wall would be $12 billion to $15 billion.
• In February 2017, a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security put it much higher, at $21.6 billion.
• In April 2017, the Democratic staff of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said in a report that costs could soar to nearly $70 billion — not including the significant costs and legal resources required for land acquisition.

Peters’ spokesman Jacob Peters said the congressman used the $21.6 billion estimate because it "comes from the internal report done by the Department of Homeland Security."

"This estimate falls somewhere in the middle of the range of cost estimates," the spokesman added. "Because this report was commissioned by (Department of Homeland Security) Secretary Kelly, and is based on the Trump administration’s own planning process to build walls and fences to cover almost the entirety of the border that is not already fenced, it is the best current estimate for what President Trump is likely to ask Congress to appropriate to build his border wall."

We also used the $21.6 billion as our estimate.

http://www.bartleby.com/104/64.html

jamie said:
I wonder if he's pushing the boundaries to test loyalty.  It's all about the WALL and everyone knows it.

 I don't think its about the wall anymore.  Of course, he still wants the wall but what he wants now is major cuts to legal immigration.  

Trump just wants to win.  Of course, deep in that black hole in his chest, I think he is a white supremacist.

tjohn said:
Trump just wants to win.  Of course, deep in that black hole in his chest, I think he is a white supremacist.

 The racism isn't so deeply hidden.

Klinker said:

jamie said:
I wonder if he's pushing the boundaries to test loyalty.  It's all about the WALL and everyone knows it.

 I don't think its about the wall anymore.  Of course, he still wants the wall but what he wants now is major cuts to legal immigration.  

But the wall is the ultimate symbol to keep the rapists and murderers out.  

In all of this - he NEVER mentions people from Europe who have overstayed their visas. 

Trump never cracks down on the companies who hire Illegal immigrants either.

We have a friend who works with a lot of Eastern Europeans and he tells us most of them just stay after the visa expires. Those guys just blend right in....

I know you know we have our own horror show with inhumane practices towards people in desperate need (could our respective governments have trampled on our good values, and good reputations, so quickly??). Inside my head, I keep screaming: my school Religious Studies teacher Rev Chadwick taught us that Mary and Joseph represented refugees when they were housed in the stable, and used the manger (a feeding trough) as bassinet. ‘This is why we should treat all strangers kindly and fairly,’ he said, ‘not just because they could be prophets or angels. Every person represents Gd Himself.’

How can so-called Christians use the Bible to support such horrid practices, especially now we’ve seen the footage of children in wire cages, told to sit without moving or making noise for hours on end??? 

joanne said:
I know you know we have our own horror show with inhumane practices towards people in desperate need (could our respective governments have trampled on our good values, and good reputations, so quickly??). Inside my head, I keep screaming: my school Religious Studies teacher Rev Chadwick taught us that Mary and Joseph represented refugees when they were housed in the stable, and used the manger (a feeding trough) as bassinet. ‘This is why we should treat all strangers kindly and fairly,’ he said, ‘not just because they could be prophets or angels. Every person represents Gd Himself.’
How can so-called Christians use the Bible to support such horrid practices, especially now we’ve seen the footage of children in wire cages, told to sit without moving or making noise for hours on end??? 

 Funny that you used that analogy. When I described the situation to my friend I used the phrase "no room at the inn."

Morganna said:

joanne said:
I know you know we have our own horror show with inhumane practices towards people in desperate need (could our respective governments have trampled on our good values, and good reputations, so quickly??). Inside my head, I keep screaming: my school Religious Studies teacher Rev Chadwick taught us that Mary and Joseph represented refugees when they were housed in the stable, and used the manger (a feeding trough) as bassinet. ‘This is why we should treat all strangers kindly and fairly,’ he said, ‘not just because they could be prophets or angels. Every person represents Gd Himself.’
How can so-called Christians use the Bible to support such horrid practices, especially now we’ve seen the footage of children in wire cages, told to sit without moving or making noise for hours on end??? 

 Funny that you used that analogy. When I described the situation to my friend I used the phrase "no room at the inn."

 Sorry - hit Quote instead of Like

I’m sketchy on my New Testament - didn’t the holy family have to hide out in Egypt during Herod’s purge of newborn males???

All despots eventually overreach themselves They appeal to the lowest common denominator and surround themselves with supplicants who only voice that which he would hear.  Fortunately we are a nation of decent folk and will oust him through lawful means.

I can think of so many,all over the world  most of whose names I cannot spell.....who left office through the use of a rope or a firing squad.

Hope, faith and hard work will oust this walking aberration.  It is just a matter of time.

author said:
All despots eventually overreach themselves 

 Stalin managed to die of old age, as did Mao, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il Sung.

Klinker said:

author said:
All despots eventually overreach themselves 

 Stalin managed to die of old age, as did Mao, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il Sung.

 Stalin died at an old age but there is strong theory that he was poisoned...........Mao was quite the controversial figure........apparently collected accolades as well as enemies.....equally popular as he was condemned. The two Koreans not really familiar to me

Hitler died in his 50's and Mussolini in his early 60's both through violence.  Qaddafi did not reach

his 40's........again violence

Chauchesku of Romania............executed at 71 by his own citizenry

Sadam Hussein of Iraq........hung by his own people........approx 70

Right.  Perhaps we should say some despots eventually overreach themselves.

author said:

 Qaddafi did not reach
his 40's........again violence

 Gaddafi was 69 when he was killed, after 41 years in power. If Trump manages to do half as well he will "over reach himself" in 2038.  

My point is that I don't think there is much comfort to be had in half true aphorisms.  The only solution is to get out there and kick some Nazi butt.

joanne said:

Morganna said:

joanne said:
I know you know we have our own horror show with inhumane practices towards people in desperate need (could our respective governments have trampled on our good values, and good reputations, so quickly??). Inside my head, I keep screaming: my school Religious Studies teacher Rev Chadwick taught us that Mary and Joseph represented refugees when they were housed in the stable, and used the manger (a feeding trough) as bassinet. ‘This is why we should treat all strangers kindly and fairly,’ he said, ‘not just because they could be prophets or angels. Every person represents Gd Himself.’
How can so-called Christians use the Bible to support such horrid practices, especially now we’ve seen the footage of children in wire cages, told to sit without moving or making noise for hours on end??? 

 Funny that you used that analogy. When I described the situation to my friend I used the phrase "no room at the inn."

 Sorry - hit Quote instead of Like
I’m sketchy on my New Testament - didn’t the holy family have to hide out in Egypt during Herod’s purge of newborn males???

 You won't be surprised by the fact that my total engagement with our Nativity scene was the placement of the animals in the manger.