[barmar]

ldrews, on 2018-June-22, 07:08, said:

So now, by Executive Order, illegal immigrant families are no longer being separated. Is this satisfactory to you?

How is this possible? I thought Trump made it clear that this process was required by law, there was nothing he could do about it, the Democrats have to fix it. He said it over and over, it must be true. Trump wouldn't lie about something so important, would he?

[ldrews]

hrothgar, on 2018-June-22, 08:15, said:

Hardly.

In the short term:

1. First and foremost, the US must take action to reunite the families that have already been separated

2. The US government must clarify how the new polices that it is implementing can be made consistent with Flores, or, alternatively pass legislation to overturn Flores

3. I think the restitutions are appropriate

Long term (and this will need to wait for the next Democratic administration) ICE needs to be abolished.

Personally, I'd like to see Sessions and Miller handed over to the Hague, but I know that this is wishful thinking

1. Why is that?
2. Why is that?
3. Why is that?

I think the chasm between us is so great that meaningful discussion is impossible. To me the only alternative is to consider you as an enemy and relate to you accordingly.

[johnu]

ldrews, on 2018-June-22, 07:08, said:

So now, by Executive Order, illegal immigrant families are no longer being separated. Is this satisfactory to you?

1. It was by Executive Order that children were being separated in the first place. And then Dennison lied and said that he couldn't do anything about it because it was the law, and by the way, it was the Democrats fault all along. Giving credit to Dennison for this is like giving credit to an arsonist who sets a 5 alarm fire and then calls the fire department.

2. Dennison has no plan to reunite children with their parents. Children that were already separated are still separated with no timetable to reunite them with their parents.

3. Lock em up. Dennison had the DOJ go to court Thursday to overturn the Flores decision so he could keep children incarcerated with their parents indefinitely.

4. We will wait to see if Dennison stops incarcerating children separately. The actual language says "It is also the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources." That seems like a giant loophole to continue their actions if there aren't available resources, whatever that means.

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2018-June-22, 09:43, said:

1. Why is that?
2. Why is that?
3. Why is that?

Let's start with number 2 first:

The 9th circuit ruled that the Flores settlement requires that both accompanied and unaccompanied minors must be released within 20 days.

You can not maintain a policy that simultaneously

• Detains adults
  
• Releases unaccompanied minors
  
• Does not separate families

Trump's executive order is logically inconsistent. This can be addressed (for example, passing legislation that overturns Flores), however, as it currently stands its incoherent.

Moving on to #1:

If you inflict torture on someone, its not enough to stop torturing new people. You also have an obligation to try to make things right.
The first, and most minimal step is to reunite the families who have been separated.

Moving on to number #3.

I think that real restitution is required:

to help put things right
to signal that we (the United States) recognize that what we did was wrong
as a deterrent

Perhaps the following quote will help provide context:

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound."

Quote

I think the chasm between us is so great that meaningful discussion is impossible. To me the only alternative is to consider you as an enemy and relate to you accordingly.

Hopefully this proves more interesting than the asshole troll persona that you have currently adopted...

[cherdano]

ldrews, on 2018-June-22, 09:43, said:

hrothgar, on 2018-June-22, 08:15, said:

1. First and foremost, the US must take action to reunite the families that have already been separated

1. Why is that?

So in other words, either little Larry is a pathetic troll. Or he is a truly disgusting pathetic human being who thinks one needs to justify trying to reunite 4-year old children after they have been takean away from their parents.

And people somehow think I am insulting little Larry when I call him a pathetic troll. (Of course, I am sure he is truly sincere in his belief that migrants who move to another country for purely economic or financial reasons, and aren't planning much to integrate into the local society, are the worst kind of --- oh wait!)

[johnu]

johnu, on 2018-June-22, 10:32, said:

1. It was by Executive Order that children were being separated in the first place. And then Dennison lied and said that he couldn't do anything about it because it was the law, and by the way, it was the Democrats fault all along. Giving credit to Dennison for this is like giving credit to an arsonist who sets a 5 alarm fire and then calls the fire department.

I have to give Dennison a lot of credit for finally coming up with a credible plan to fix immigration. From his official twitter account:

Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November. Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!

Of course, Republicans in the House couldn't pass an immigration bill with an already solid majority. And if passing legislation was something that couldn't wait, why does he want to wait 6 more months? He must be playing 3 dimensional tic-tac-toe.

[andrei]

cherdano, on 2018-June-22, 08:03, said:

Say what you want about President Stephen Miller's decision to institute government-organised child abuse - it did succeed in ticking off liberals! These snowflakes, can't even listen to some 5-year olds crying to see their parents without getting all sentimental.

Father says little Honduran girl on Time cover was not taken from mother

[hrothgar]

cherdano, on 2018-June-22, 11:08, said:

So in other words, either little Larry is a pathetic troll. Or he is a truly disgusting pathetic human being who thinks one needs to justify trying to reunite 4-year old children after they have been takean away from their parents.

And people somehow think I am insulting little Larry when I call him a pathetic troll. (Of course, I am sure he is truly sincere in his belief that migrants who move to another country for purely economic or financial reasons, and aren't planning much to integrate into the local society, are the worst kind of --- oh wait!)

Better watch our Arend, or you too might get labeled an "enemy" of Drews...

[cherdano]

andrei, on 2018-June-22, 11:31, said:

Father says little Honduran girl on Time cover was not taken from mother

LOLLLLL

[Winstonm]

Another shock - the right wing propaganda machine is propagating another lie about Obama.

Quote

Associated Press

President Barack Obama did not oversee the separation of 90,000 migrant children and their parents at the U.S. border, contrary to a misleading online report and claims circulating on social media.

The claim, published on a conservative website, was repeated on social media throughout the week as President Donald Trump faced criticism over his administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, which has left more than 2,300 children separated from their parents at the U.S. border since May

[hrothgar]

hrothgar, on 2018-June-22, 10:40, said:

Let's start with number 2 first:

The 9th circuit ruled that the Flores settlement requires that both accompanied and unaccompanied minors must be released within 20 days.

You can not maintain a policy that simultaneously

• Detains adults
  
• Releases unaccompanied minors
  
• Does not separate families

Trump's executive order is logically inconsistent. This can be addressed (for example, passing legislation that overturns Flores), however, as it currently stands its incoherent.

Oh lookie

https://www.nytimes....WT.nav=top-news

Quote

Tense arguments broke out at the White House over the past two days as top government officials clashed over how to carry out President Trump’s executive order on keeping together immigrant families at the Mexican border, according to four people familiar with the meetings.

The disputes started Thursday night. They continued Friday as Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, returned to the White House to question how his agency was supposed to detain parents and children together when the law requires that children not be held indefinitely in jail.

Stupid old Drews!

[hrothgar]

Quote

Tense arguments broke out at the White House over the past two days as top government officials clashed over how to carry out President Trump’s executive order on keeping together immigrant families at the Mexican border, according to four people familiar with the meetings.

The disputes started Thursday night. They continued Friday as Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, returned to the White House to question how his agency was supposed to detain parents and children together when the law requires that children not be held indefinitely in jail.

@Drews

Isn't remarkable how knowledge about a subject allows people to predict what is going to happen...

[Winstonm]

Speaking of keeping families together and having them show up for court: (emphasis added)

Quote

(1)The Family Case Management Program, which President Donald Trump ended several months after taking office, was meant to keep track of immigrant parents and kids in removal proceedings without having to keep them locked up. It was relatively small ― about 950 families in five locations. But (2)it was hugely successful: More than 99 percent of families in the program showed up for their court dates, and 97 percent participated in required check-ins with their case managers, according to a report from Geo Care, the private prison company that operated the program. (3)And it reportedly cost the government just $36 per family each day, versus $319 per bed per day in a family detention center.

1) Dennison ended a program that was 2) better, 3) cheaper, 4) less costly, 5) and did not imprison families, instead left them free on their own recognizance.

Another view of the same program with the deportation-heavy alternative chosen by Dennison.

[Winstonm]

Interesting stuff from Anne Applebaum, Washington Post: https://www.washingt...m=.20c072138233

Quote

It is remarkable, in retrospect, how many and varied were the dictatorships of the past century. Murderous regimes — states that killed large numbers of their own citizens for political reasons — arose in every possible type of society. Communist, fascist and tribal ideologies evolved in places whose cultural histories, economic status and religious traditions had nothing in common. Wealthy Germany and impoverished Rwanda. Buddhist Cambodia and Orthodox Russia.

Yet these different regimes did all have one thing in common. It was the obsession that one French scholar , writing of Cambodia, called the “mania for classification and elimination of different elements of society.” ....

....It is worth noting how often the president repeatedly conflates refugees with illegal immigrants and MS-13 gang members. This is not an accident: He has targeted a group and given them characteristics — they are violent, they are rapists, they are gang members — that don’t belong to most of them. He then describes them with dehumanizing language. Democrats, he has tweeted, “want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13.” The image of “infestation” evokes, again, vermin and lice. A few weeks earlier, he spoke of MS-13 as “animals,” once again making it unclear whether he meant actual gang members or simply those who distantly resemble them.

Dennison talks about the evils and dangers at the southern border, but let's shine the light of truth on those claims:

Quote

Despite what the president says, the situation at the border is much more nuanced. There’s not a flood of people racing across the border. The majority of migrants aren’t dangerous criminals. Many are women and families—and many are fleeing gang violence rather than seeking to spread that violence farther north.

[barmar]

andrei, on 2018-June-22, 11:31, said:

Father says little Honduran girl on Time cover was not taken from mother

Does it really matter? The cover is intended as an icon. The image of any little brown girl crying could have been used. Although it does seem like it shouldn't have been hard to get a picture of a child who actually was separated (although I think the detention centers have been limiting access by reporters).

It also makes it look like Trump is scowling directly at the little girl, but I'm sure everyone knows that this is just figurative, and they were never near each other.

[Al_U_Card]

Two sides (at least!) to every story and the only way to get the entire picture is to consider both (all) of them. Shutting out one of them only leads to a skewed perspective and an inaccurate interpretation of the "facts". Keeping a (campaign/platform) promise does not preclude adjusting or even changing one's position slightly or even radically. A most interesting progression be it, at times, bewildering.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2018-June-24, 15:15, said:

Does it really matter? The cover is intended as an icon. The image of any little brown girl crying could have been used. Although it does seem like it shouldn't have been hard to get a picture of a child who actually was separated (although I think the detention centers have been limiting access by reporters).

It also makes it look like Trump is scowling directly at the little girl, but I'm sure everyone knows that this is just figurative, and they were never near each other.

There is a sense in which it doesn't matter, but still.
We are hearing over and over about fake news.Those who wish to push that agenda have another log to throw on the fire. I don't think I saw the picture. Largely I stay away from such things. It is a general philosophy. Often such things are designed to fuel emotion, often they don't stand up to scrutiny, and so we, or at least I, feel conned. Most people who have lived for a while can access an understanding of trauma by looking back on our own life. No, we might not have had the experience of being taken from our parents. But we have had experiences enough so that we can understand fear. We can understand it well enough so that we do not need recordings of crying children to know that we do not want children separated from their parents. And when someone plays on those feelings with stuff that falls apart under examination, we get very pissed off.

So when journalists do this, they are playing into the hands of people who want to portray them as fakes. So they should stop doing it. It's lazy, at the very least. Doing something like this, and then effectively saying "Oh, sure, but it was just an icon so no big deal" is not doing their profession any favors.

The way the world is going, there are a lot of people out there wanting to kill a lot of other people, and this produces a lot of refugees. A very great number of them. We have to have a credible plan for what we will do. That's where journalists, if they take their profession seriously, can help. Skip the quickie.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2018-June-24, 17:08, said:

There is a sense in which it doesn't matter, but still.
We are hearing over and over about fake news.Those who wish to push that agenda have another log to throw on the fire. I don't think I saw the picture. Largely I stay away from such things. It is a general philosophy. Often such things are designed to fuel emotion, often they don't stand up to scrutiny, and so we, or at least I, feel conned. Most people who have lived for a while can access an understanding of trauma by looking back on our own life. No, we might not have had the experience of being taken from our parents. But we have had experiences enough so that we can understand fear. We can understand it well enough so that we do not need recordings of crying children to know that we do not want children separated from their parents. And when someone plays on those feelings with stuff that falls apart under examination, we get very pissed off.

So when journalists do this, they are playing into the hands of people who want to portray them as fakes. So they should stop doing it. It's lazy, at the very least. Doing something like this, and then effectively saying "Oh, sure, but it was just an icon so no big deal" is not doing their profession any favors.

The way the world is going, there are a lot of people out there wanting to kill a lot of other people, and this produces a lot of refugees. A very great number of them. We have to have a credible plan for what we will do. That's where journalists, if they take their profession seriously, can help. Skip the quickie.

Geez, Ken, I usually respect your sensible views but this time I think you've been at the crack pipe. Time did not claim that the child had been separated - and no other outlet that used the photo ever claimed the child was separated, and the photographer who took the picture repeatedly made clear the child had not been separated. https://www.snopes.c...ever-separated/

The only people who are making this false claim are right-wingers looking for any excuse to denigrate news organizations instead of reading the magazine or looking for valid information. That the photograph of this particular child became a symbol for the despair felt by immigrants and asylum seekers is valid, and to reuse the photo on a Time cover is completely proper. It would have been improper if they had written that this girl was separated, but they did not. Time is not responsible for what fools think.

I am surprised that you are letting people like Andrei, who would not turn on Dennison if he were found to be the Grand Wizard of MS-13, get to you to the point that you argue his claims are justified. They're not.

[Al_U_Card]

Best not to bite the hand that frees you. The propaganda element and skewed perspective is especially dangerous when it is seen as justified and even worse when it is accepted as normal. Works both ways.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2018-June-24, 21:46, said:

Geez, Ken, I usually respect your sensible views but this time I think you've been at the crack pipe. Time did not claim that the child had been separated - and no other outlet that used the photo ever claimed the child was separated, and the photographer who took the picture repeatedly made clear the child had not been separated. https://www.snopes.c...ever-separated/

The only people who are making this false claim are right-wingers looking for any excuse to denigrate news organizations instead of reading the magazine or looking for valid information. That the photograph of this particular child became a symbol for the despair felt by immigrants and asylum seekers is valid, and to reuse the photo on a Time cover is completely proper. It would have been improper if they had written that this girl was separated, but they did not. Time is not responsible for what fools think.

I am surprised that you are letting people like Andrei, who would not turn on Dennison if he were found to be the Grand Wizard of MS-13, get to you to the point that you argue his claims are justified. They're not.

As mentioned I don't think I even saw the pic so you are right I probably should have kept quiet.

So I googled and the very first thing that came up was something from USA today
https://www.usatoday...feet/721315002/
It begins:

Quote

As thousands of immigrant children have been separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, Time magazine's July cover places the blame on President Donald Trump.

Ok. USA Today did not say that that particular child had been separated from its mother. Still. On my recent trip to Minnesota I pretty much avoided news, but one of the hotels I stayed at did give free copies of USA Today. If I read that, I might have thought the child was separated from its mother. We do not always read so carefully that we see that the article did not specify that this child had been.
But of course many children have been. So, as barmar was saying, does it really matter if this particular child was or wasn't. And, as I said, there is a sense in which it does not matter.

What I really want to focus on is, first, that I do not need a picture of a crying child to get me to oppose separating children from their parents. Most people don't need it. Of course we oppose separating children from their parents.
And, as I also said, that's the easy part. Often saying what we should not do is the easy part. Now we have to figure out what we should do. I see that this child came from Honduras. Let's start with the following: Should everyone in Honduras who wishes to leave Honduras and come to the USA be allowed to do so? Ok, you said no MS-13. But again that's a (fairly) easy part. It is perhaps not a certainty, despite tats, whether a given person is or is not in MS-13 but no doubt the vast majority are not, and could easily be seen to be not. So can they all come? Same for El Salvador and Guatemala? Should it only be tose who manage to hike and wade to the border? I'm sure many more would like to come that cannot manage the trip. Should we provide transportation? Only for those who fear violence? How many people living in Guatemala are not fearing violence? Those with enough cash to hire a large security force perhaps.

You don't have to go with my framing of the questions. But we should start to address it somehow. Here is a question: Is it possible to somehow help these countries control the gang violence so that more of their citizens would feel adequately safe? Perfection is not possible. Rick speaking to Major Strasser on Casablanca: There are places in New York I would not advise you to go. But people live there. Of course the governments themselves are no doubt part of the problem. What to do about that? Are we to import everyone who lives there so that the government and the gangs, and nobody else, is left?

I understand things are better in Columbia than they once were, although it seems I have heard of some regression. Is this a viable model for how to be of real help? I have no idea.

Myself, I would not favor a policy that gives anyone, anywhere in the world, the right to relocate to the USA if they fear violence where they are. There are just too many. I see this as a bullet that must be bitten. Pictures of crying children do not help at all in trying to find a reasonable policy. Everyone who wants to come can come? Not a reasonable policy as I see it, and even if you do think that should be the policy there is not a chance in hell that it will ever become policy. So we need to stop with the pictures of crying children and work through what a reasonable policy would look like.

As to letting Andrei shape my views, no I don't think so. And I don't expect to shape his. Or yours, for that matter. My idea is that we express our own thoughts as clearly as we can. Some will ignore us, many in fact do that, some will think we are nuts, some might think what we say is worth thinking about. And of course some will say "I don't care, do u"?

Melania needs to issue a statement saying that she never wanted to be First Lady, hates being First Lady, and plans to live her own life. And then we should let her.