Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Swiper]

justin Amash is good company. he’s like ron paul’s mini me

 

[Michael Scally MD]

EO is a total disaster. 1/ it's vaguely worded and extremely open to "criminal" interpretation 2. Authorities have few facilities atm to detain whole families 3. There's no reason to believe 9th circuit judge won't immediately strike down.

[Thread] The parts of this that purport to end family separation are kinda like the Cheshire Cat—fading to nothing when you look closely. It’s administration policy to maintain family unity, “where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

In perhaps the least surprising news there ever were, reports are now coming in regular intervals that Chinese enforcement of sanctions on North Korea is becoming less and less strict following the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Kim’s visit today in Beijing will likely speed up the process, but the Chinese enforcement of the sanctions regime would like have become less vigilant in due course regardless.

You’ll have to excuse the sarcastic tone of the title and content of this post, but this is precisely the sort of development that not just this blog, but a whole host of others too, have predicted all along. Trump’s idea that “maximum pressure” would survive through the summit and general process, regardless of what is decided, was always unfounded. That’s just not how these things work.

Chinese enforcement of sanctions on North Korea depend much more on political circumstances in the region than on what sanctions the UNSC decides to level. China was always going to let down its guard once tensions de-escalated. Pressure could certainly get back on if things go back to the way they were earlier in the year, but to count on it as a matter of policy, as if it could be done easily or somehow automatically, is unwise or even naive.

To be sure, we shouldn’t draw any far-reaching conclusions from a small number of scattered news reports. But no one should be surprised if the number of reports continues to grow over the coming weeks, and if, one day in a not too distant future, Chinese customs figures of imports from North Korea also start to point upward.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes.
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
Switch on summer from a slot machine.
Yes, get what you want to if you want,
Cause you can get anything.

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
And you make them long, and you make them tough.
But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off.

Oh, I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
But will you keep on building higher
'Til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

[Thread] This is a remarkable review essay on several recent books about the Nazi era in the eyes of ordinary Germans. Life went on, and the atrocities piled up so high in the background it was hard to process each one before the next arose.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

President Trump sought to stanch a public outcry over his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy Wednesday, signing an executive order to end family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border after days of insisting he was legally unable to act.

Trump’s abrupt reversal, contradicting his own aides’ defense of the practice, signaled a political retreat after an international backlash over images of hundreds of children being taken from their parents and held in cage-like detention facilities.

But it remained highly uncertain whether the president’s hastily drafted order to keep families together in federal custody while awaiting prosecution for illegal border crossings would withstand potential legal challenges. And senior administration officials said the order did not stipulate that the more than 2,300 children already separated from their parents would be immediately reunited with them.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The order opens by declaring that “it is the policy of this Administration to rigorously enforce our immigration laws” while “maintain[ing] family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.”

...

Meanwhile, the order says nothing about reuniting the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents. While a Department of Health and Human Services official initially stated that the department is not to apply the executive order to children currently in HHS custody, a statement released later Wednesday said that HHS that it is “awaiting guidance on the matter.”

In the meantime, the administration faces ongoing legal challenges. The ACLU is seeking a class-action lawsuit to halt the separation of children and families without good cause; a status conference is scheduled for Thursday in light of the executive order. And two lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia—one on behalf of a mother from Guatemala released from custody but not yet reunited with her son, and one on behalf of three migrant parents separated from their children in detention. Whatever the administration hoped to achieve with its order, the legal knot that President Trump’s immigration enforcement policy created is far from untangled.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?

Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

— Herman Goering

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]