May 31, 2018

Three things from President Truman that every American should be reminded of every day under Trump

1) When Trump cries about all of the hell that is coming down on him from Avenatti, Mueller and Federal Law Enforcement Officers the American people should remember what Truman said when the Republicans cried that "he was giving them hell":

2) Stop blaming President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Senator McCain, Republican Senators, Democratic Senators and professional football players, this trade war, this mess with Russia, increased violence against people of color, all of the bad things that are happening have a single source:




3) When the war effort got underway and there was a big increase in military spending, Senator Truman who was a relatively unknown first term Senator didn't hold show hearings he got in his car and went to military bases where he saw both waste and profiteering. He didn't hide it, he brought a spotlight to it which could have embarrassed the Democratic President. President Roosevelt didn't try to out manoeuvre it or cover it up. He cooperated with it, enlarged it and eventually made Truman his Vice President.

Democrats don't investigate Republicans, they investigate problems. They seek the truth and want to build policy on what the facts are. If you want to find out what is really going on put the Democrats in charge

May 26, 2018

The Children aren't "missing". They and their families are in hiding.

Edited to change the title and add this summation:

The news media is conflating two separate events. One is the disposition of 57,000 undocumented minors that came to the US to join their families that had legal Temporary Protection Status. Those 320,000 families are now living in hiding and aren't going to immigration court so the undocumented minors are listed as "missing" because they missed a court date. What makes it confusing is that Trump is now separating "accompanied" minors from their mothers to create a horror scenario so that they are too afraid to come.

Back to the original OP


I) A new policy by Trump has been implemented to create a draconian situation so that mothers coming with their children are separated from their children creating a frightening situation to deter mothers from coming up with their children.

This is a new and intolerable change from the past.

II) Over the past several years, mostly under the Obama administration, nearly 50,000 children were brought to the border and handed to Border Patrol Agents (they weren't caught but literally handed to the Agents) who were processed as Unaccompanied Minors. In 90% of the cases these children were "paroled" to relatives in the US who promised to bring the children to an immigration hearing.

These children were largely from Honduras and El Salvador and had relatives in the United States since about 1990s who along with migrants from Haiti were granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS). They were allowed to get Social Security cards and work legally in the United States. DHS law enforcement officers could not take action against people with TPS. I know this because my son in law had one and we breezed through Border Patrol Check Points without incident under President Obama.

Under President Obama the relatives would show up when they were supposed to for processing because they had a path to at least a temporary legal status.

Trump has (see below) ripped up the TSP of 320,000 who, in most cases, had lived here for 15-20 years and for the last 8 years had been allowed to stay here legally. If they left the US (as one unfortunate friend of mine did to go to Canada) they could not return. If they broke a law they could not stay. My son-in-law would not, for example, cross a deserted street at midnight if the light flashed "do not walk" even if all of the rest of the group had crossed and were waiting at the other side.

Trump has destroyed the lives of 320,000 families who had an even stronger claim than the DACA students.

Obviously with this level of fear many of the family members who became foster sponsors for the undocumented children are too frightened to go to an immigration court where not only the child will be seized but the rest of the family.

The Senate has now become aware that about 1500 undocumented minors (not the recent accompanied children who have been ripped from their families) who in 90% of the cases were living with relatives have not showed up for their court appointed hearing. Out of the base 7000 remaining cases there probably a few dozen runaways or others that have unfortunate ends like trafficking (and I have in laws in Thailand who were subjected to that fait so I don't discount it) BUT that is not the real story here.

The real story is that hundred of thousands of people from Haiti, Honduras and El Salvador who did everything the government asked are now losing their legal status and are living a life that is full of fear. Every siren, every uniform now causes the same fear as the Jews in the early 30's in Germany who were being rounded up and had to report their status and show their papers.

It is this fear over a much larger group that is causing relatives to "hide" these UM. Unfortunately the two stories are being conflated and the real story is not being understood even by reliable news agencies.

Here are some of the facts:

This is about Stephen Miller's policies but its not about unaccompanied minors not showing up its about 320,000 families losing their legal status and now they are afraid to come to immigration hearings.

To begin with the wave of tens of thousands of undocumented minors started under Obama and not Trump.
Most of the undocumented minors arrived under Obama not Trump and the procedures developed from that.

President Obama issued Temporary Protection Status for 320,000 individuals from Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras who arrived in the US about 20 years ago fleeing hurricane, earthquake and other natural disasters. The TPS allowed them to live here legally. Until Trump made this an issue the issue of these people staying here had broad bipartisan support.

In 5 years 47,000 undocumented minors were brought into the US

What do you do with 47,000 children? Try and reunite them with their family. So in the policy known as "catch and release" these children were sent to live with their relatives in 90% of the time. When no relative is available they are sent to live with licensed foster care parents.



When they say that they are "Missing" what they are really saying is that the children don't appear in court. They have no way to determine if the children are really "missing" as we understand it or with their relatives who don't want to go to an immigration court that could harm not only the minor but all of the relatives.



Its the same employees and the same placement policies between the Obama and Trump administration. The only thing that has changed is the fear in these immigrant communities which creates a disincentive for people to come into the system.

The real issue is not that the children are missing but that entire communities are being pushed under ground because of fear that even though they are here legally that the Trump administration is going to break the word of the US government and take people who are here legally one day and illegal the next.

You will note that the Brookings Institute stated that most of the undocumented children were from Honduras.

There are about 60,000 people from Honduras who came here illegally but gained temporary protective status under Executive Order from President Obama. Tens of thousands from Haiti and El Salvador (including my son-in-law) also were given this legal umbrella to live and work here legally. Most of them have been here about 20 years.

Trump has ripped the legal basis for these people to be here and that is the reason that the children are not showing up for their hearings. Their parents (or other close relatives that are taking care of them) have lost their legal status and are afraid to go to an immigration court for the child. In any case the child is not going to get a permanent legal status to live here so there is little reason to go to an immigration court until there is a new President.

While losing 1500 children would be a great tragedy, that's not what is happening. What is really happening is that 320,000 law abiding families have lost their legal status and are now living underground and avoiding contact with immigration authorities.

Here is Trump taking away TPS (Temporary Protection Status) from various non white populations which is the real strategy of Miller:








This isn't about 1500 children that have "slipped through the cracks" its really about hundreds of thousands of families who came here decades ago and have established themselves as productive citizens and had legal protection. Trump has ripped that away and these families are living in fear and are too afraid to go to immigration court and risk losing their minor children being ripped from them.

The Trump administration has gone to war on 320,000 families from Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti who were here legally and making a contribution to the country. Now entire communities have to take maximum evasive measures to avoid detection. It isn't a mystery what happened to the 1500 children who are almost entirely living with relatives, its a mystery why any of them show up to an Immigration Court at all.

May 25, 2018

Paul Ryan is the worst Speaker in history, worse than the child molester.

Subjugating a constitutional republic is not a one man show. There is a cast of dozens and Mueller will document dozens, many who will be going to jail.

One of the main actors is going to walk away without facing any legal recourse.

Paul Davis Ryan Jr. will likely escape any criminal prosecution because his crime is not a crime of commission but one of omission.

Trump is able to act today without impunity because Paul Ryan has surrendered one of the main functions of the House of Representatives; serving as a check to excesses of the executive branch. The Senate serves as a check on the excesses of the people's House but it is the House of Representatives that is to serve as the first and most important check against a lawless executive.

We are in a constitutional Twilight Zone because the only real hope (until elections bring in a new House of Representatives) of Trump being held accountable is by an independent investigation by his own Executive Branch. By definition it is going to exist on the edge of a precipice as the law breaker is the head executive of the branch that is investigating him.

That's not the way that the Founding Fathers envisioned taking on an executive who embraced emoluments and partied with sedition and treason to benefit personally from being President.

The position of Special Prosecutor isn't in the Constitution, the Speaker of the House is.

Ryan's failure to act against Nunes and the co-opted Republican leadership on the House Intelligence Committee as was well documented this week shows what happened when a carefully balanced system of checks and balances operates when one key part of the checks and balances opts to not do its job.

The criminal activity of Trump belongs to Trump and his crime family. This constitutional crises belongs solely to Paul Ryan who has brought more shame to the Speaker's office than Dennis Hastert's crimes because the entire country will have to suffer the results of his dereliction

That Republicans would consider making Speaker Pelosi's return to the Speaker an issue after the incumbency of Hastert (The criminal molester), Boehner (the alcoholic obstructionist and now a paid spokesman for the pot industry), and Ryan who actively destroyed the fabric of our Constitutional tapestry only shows they have gone from a regular diet of Kool Aid to mainlining it with a constant drip.

May 17, 2018

When faced with the a choice of continuing with corruption, Malaysia took the Mandela option.

Good update on the situation in Malaysia here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-politics-anwar-malaysia/exclusive-malaysias-anwar-says-shattered-najib-called-him-twice-on-election-night-idUSKCN1II1U2

When faced with a fork in the road between continuing with a very corrupted status quo or taking a radical risk with a man who sat in a prison cell unjustly accused, Malaysia chose Mandela. I say that because the only parallel I can think of going from prison to Prime Minister by a demand of the people is Mandela. It is also a fundamental political change in the structure of the country.

This is not simply a change of party or coalition but a fundamental opening of the system. Following independence the Malays found themselves a minority of the population and owning only 20% of the assets of their own country. In order to secure their position in their own homeland they expelled Singapore from the Malay federation which enabled them create UMNO and a paternal state that brought in favourable conditions for the Malays to bring parity against the Chinese and Indian populations that dominated the cities.

This election shows that the Malays no longer feel pressured to follow an ethnically balkanized Malaysia but now are pursuing typical middle class values of fairness, anti corruption and transparency in government. It is the most astonishing political development in Asia in 3 decades.

Here are statements from Anwar in the article that also echo some of the tempering that you could hear in Mandela as a result of the suffering he had in prison.

A great beginning to the Malaysian Ramadan Season.

May 17, 2018

Exclusive: Malaysia's Anwar says 'shattered' Najib called him twice on election night

Source: Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia’s ousted former premier Najib Razak was “totally shattered” the night he lost the general election and called his jailed rival Anwar Ibrahim twice for advice on what he should do, Anwar said on Thursday.

Najib was handed a shocking election loss last week which ended the dominance of the Barisan Nasional coalition that has ruled Malaysia for more than six decades.

BN’s defeat in the May 9 polls was attributed to rising anger over corruption and an unlikely alliance struck between 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad and his former rival, Anwar, who got together to oust the scandal-tainted Najib.

Anwar, who was pardoned and released from his five-year jail term for sodomy on Wednesday, said he had received two calls from Najib.

“When he called on the night of the election, I advised him as a friend to concede and move on,” Anwar told Reuters in an interview at his home on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

Anwar said he asked Najib to come out with a statement quickly rather than delay and be perceived as trying to scuttle the process


Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-politics-anwar-malaysia/exclusive-malaysias-anwar-says-shattered-najib-called-him-twice-on-election-night-idUSKCN1II1U2

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The only parallel I can think of going from prison to Prime Minister by a demand of the people is Mandela.

This is not simply a change of party or coalition but a fundamental opening of the system. Following independence the Malays found themselves a minority of the population and owning only 20% of the assets of their own country. In order to secure their position in their own homeland they expelled Singapore from the Malay federation which enabled them create UMNO and a paternal state that brought in favourable conditions for the Malays to bring parity against the Chinese and Indian populations that dominated the cities.

This election shows that the Malays no longer feel pressured to follow an ethnically balkanized Malaysia but now are pursuing typical middle class values of fairness, anti corruption and transparency in government. It is the most astonishing political development in Asia in 3 decades.

Here are statements from Anwar in the article that also echo some of the tempering that you could hear in Mandela as a result of the suffering he had in prison.

May 14, 2018

Happy Mother's Day for all mothers, including those lost and found whose

children are still on the other side of civility or maturity and were too self absorbed to make a call.

You may think that people don't know of your sacrifice but people do see it but out of deference to your privacy and dignity would prefer to not speak of it explicitly.

Thanks to the mothers who bring the neighborhood cast inside for some cookies or along for a trip.

Thanks to the women who are in blended families and extend their care to all.

Thanks to some of the greatest moms who happened to be men raising kids by themselves.

Thanks to the mom of us all, Mitochondrial Eve our first common ancestor, the woman whose DNA ever single one of us share and lived about 130,000 years ago.

May 13, 2018

Pull out of TPP and watch the jobs go overseas: First up Harley Davidson

In this timely thread Union Leaders complain about jobs moving from the US to Thailand.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210610419

Sounds like just another company moving to cut costs, but it isn't. It is an American company desperately trying to maintain its market now that the US will be out of the TPP.

Before leaving the TPP it was expected that the US factories would be able to compete and export HD bikes to Asia, now they will be made in Asia. Guess what? Even IF the Idiot in Chief does to back to TPP and even IF they let the US back in, those HD jobs will not be returning, they are gone and gone forever, the TPP was the last chance to save those kinds of jobs.

The best peer review article on the TPP estimated that by the year 2030 the TPP would add about $ 140 billion to American incomes. The reason is simple: we exchange better penetration of US jobs that are based on higher capital, higher skill, higher tech and less fungible to give TPP countries better access to the US for jobs that are lower capital, lower skill, lower tech and highly fungible. That study below but first what happened to Harley Davidson:

On a macro scale the impact of TPP would have been significant to the US who would have been the biggest beneficiary:




International trade is a highly complex organism and a lot of it is not ideological. The greatest sin of the populist nationalist, in this case Idiot in Chief, is to implement policies that fit on a bumper sticker but actually will have a counter affect to its intention.

US tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum were made with the enthusiastic embrace of steel and aluminum manufacturers and their unions and it made for one of Trump's best photo ops. Last time we tried this it cost us a net loss of over 100,000 jobs and that is why Cohen left as economic advisor. The premise that China is a major disrupter in steel and aluminum is not only not true its laughable.

The major exporter of steel and aluminum to the US is Canada which has higher structural costs (like taxes) than the US.




Compare the announcement of the Idiot in Chief and the bad effects of leaving the TPP with the following article which is based on the US being in the TPP and having a really smart guy as President




This is the difference between an intelligent leader and an idiot, the difference between long term policy and a bumper sticker slogan.

For every year Trump is in office it will take five years to recover, and that is based on the assumption that the American people want to change and do the work of reading, understanding and discussing actual policies.

May 12, 2018

From Malaysia of all places a small but bright ray of hope, from prison to Prime Minister.

I have lived in Malaysia and I have a bias for Malays and all Malaysians; Indians, Malay and Chinese. I have a deep affection for them, but that also includes all of the other places I have stayed, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Pakistan, well you get the idea.

While Malaysia is one of the easiest places to make friends and where you can have honest conversations with people about history and politics it is a country that has been shrouded in a defensiveness for 50 years.

When the British left Malaysia the ethnic Malays were a minority in their homeland and only owned 20% of the country. They lived mostly in rural villages while the descendants of Indians (who came to build and run the railroad) and Chinese who came as labor and small businessmen had grown to run the urban economy prospered and dominated education and the bureaucracies.

The Malays kicked Singapore out of the Malay Federation and became 51% of the population and controlled the politics, army and police. A pro "Bhumiputra" policy came into force by the dominant coalition UMNO which gave big incentives for the Chinese and Indians to take on Malay partners.

UMNO lost one election and terrible riots occurred and since then a consensus between the groups was to let UMNO run the government, bring Malays to the city and gradually build up equity.

In the 80's Prime Minister Mahathir was Prime Minister and is protégé, Anwar Ibrahim, a bright star in the next generation joined as a Minister. Anwar railed against corruption in UMNO and an obviously trumped up charge of sodomy was levelled against him and Anwar went to prison. After prison he goes to England to teach at Oxford. After the requisite time that he was banned from politics (5 years) he runs in the opposition against UMNO and almost wins outright.

New charges of sodomy are brought against him. In 2012 he is found INNOCENT. On appeal he is found guilty. He goes to prison. He is in prison today.

Last week long retired Prime Minister Mahathir won a huge election victory with Anwar's wife as his deputy.

Today Anwar received a Royal Pardon. He will soon be the new Prime Minister of Malaysia. UMNO eventually became what Trump is trying to build with the Republican Party, stealing huge amounts of money for the leaders. Mahathir's sons are in the UMNO leadership.

In a dark international political leadership the people of Malaysia have created a ray of hope.



Former Prime Minister Mahathir stands next to his Deputy Ms Wan Azizah. Ms. Azizah is the wife of Anwar Ibrahim who was once Mahathir's protégé but who Mahathir imprisoned for sodomy. After release from prison Anwar made a political comeback and was imprisoned again for sodomy even though he was found innocent of the charges. Anwar Ibrahim will be going from prison to Prime Minister after receiving a Royal Pardon

That Anwar started on the political stage as a strong proponent of ethnic Malays and goes from prison to Prime Minister on a coalition of cross ethnic support is a bright ray of hope in a dark time.

May 11, 2018

Giuliani was in court today, yep he was chasing an ambulance

Well not quite but almost.

It was a metaphorical ambulance.

It was a metaphorical ambulance chasing an insurance company, kind of a human bites dog case.

If you mean, 'chasing an ambulance' as in a low level fraud case where your client is a low level con trying to rip off an insurance company then this case is as about as close to an ambulance chaser as you can get.

Now remember that Giuliani said that he had to quit his partnership so he can work exclusively for the President.

In today's case Giuliani is defending a woman who got into a wreck and then 10 minutes after the wreck purchases auto insurance to defraud the insurance company

Giuliani out chasing ambulances so he can help defraud insurance companies.

What a guy.

May 7, 2018

Interestingly Nunes who was conspiring to impeach Rosenstein now is after Sessions

Trump's mini mini me Nunes was telling everybody who would listen last week that this week they were going to impeach Rosenstein.

Now they are bloviating about finding Session in contempt about handing over classified materials on an investigation that he is recused on and doesn't even have access to.

CNN is not clear on why they changed.

I can't help but wonder if somebody watched Maddow's inspiring segment on Rosenstein and the clip where he recognizes a random quote and could give the date and backstory on the quote from memory. If so it may have deterred these idiots from trying to take on someone who actually uses the brain that they were born with.