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A Mandate For Cruelty
Donald Trump came into office with a mandate to be cruel towards immigrants, and he got right to work.
"Effective January 20, 2025, the functionalities of CBP One that previously allowed undocumented aliens to submit advance information and schedule appointments at eight southwest border ports of entry is no longer available," a message posted to the US Customs and Border Protection's website read. "Existing appointments have been cancelled."
That's a tough break for scores of asylum seekers w
The military, armed trained combatants used to repel unlawful forayers including mothers with children. That’s disgusting from a humanitarian standpoint and hyper hypocritical by religious decree. So Trump has proclaimed God’s protection for himself but for lesser humans (by his judgement) the threat of the use of weapons? How can people be okay with this?
It is also bad for the military. These types of activities require training, training that differs from existing military doctrine. Very little overlap. Coming at a time when most of the world’s militaries are being rendered obsolete by the war in Ukraine. Bad military decision by an imbicile.
I am going to quietly work to be ready for a new dawn after the demise of the Red Devil. I recently got a large complex journal article approved for publication.
Now that my writing and analytical skills have been developed I will take on a new project. That of illustrating whether regulations are the source of our wealth rather than a drag on wealth creation. I invite others to join, it will be a large project. It requires lots of data.
Now that’s a project and a question worthy of a proper answer. I have written my null hypothesis. Love to see the results.
Something tells me that Government Efficiency means burning a lot more calories on performative declarations and stunts, court briefings and hearings, and, after a four year break, finally a return to the office, er, links.
I do wonder what Trump would have to do to shock us at this point. Not even a southern border version of My Lai would do it. Hegseth would just claim pencil pushers don’t know what it’s like on the ground and Trump would shut down any military investigation.
When it comes to normalizing authoritarians, I can see how it happens now: gradually, then suddenly.
You forgot Pancho Villa. n=1
He has a fascinating wikipedia page.
+1.
Also when the British burned the White House, and various other incursions in the war of 1812. n=2
Does the Japanese invasion of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands count since Alaska was just a territory at that point? Technically, it was incorporated at the time and 549 American soldiers died getting them back…
Fear not! Your GOP is also looking at ways to limit or deprive healthcare from our citizens. (To help fund more tax cuts, of course!)
“That has led Republican leaders in Congress to circulate a document outlining plans for more than $5 trillion in spending cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act,”
And now this from DJT himself:
“Trump rolls back effort to lower Medicare, Medicaid drug costs. The executive order halts an effort to cap the copayment for generic medications at $2 for Medicare beneficiaries.”
Looking out for his base…
The results are in. A third of the US voting population voted to make one of the the three or four cruelest men to be alive in my lifetime the president of our “great” nation. This man may even be the Antichrist as described by Nostradamus and others. BUT he doesn’t actually have a mandate. The loser of this race lost by a relative whisker by capturing nearly a third of the votes as well. The other third didn’t vote for either party. They abdicated their rights and responsibility, leaving our fate to be managed by an uncaring sociopath who couldn’t really care what happens to any of us. There is no mandate. He is, in the words of Robert Musil, “The Man Without Qualities.”
Only those not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are not entitled to citizenship by right of birth. My understanding of what that means is that if the pregnant immigrant or visitor was not subject to the jurisdiction she could shoot and kill a police officer in the line of duty (to take the most extreme example) and the only thing the government could do is deport her.
I’m pretty sure no one wants that.
The more and the sooner harmful and horrific things are done, the better. Voters need to be slapped into awareness. In the meantime, we’re all part of Wall Street (I’m presuming and exaggerating, of course) so do the Wall St thing, turn your heart off, and look for short-term profit oppties.
Everyone has this WRONG! The supreme court has ruled that the phrase in the constitution “The executive power shall be vested in a President..” empowers the president to indefinitely suspend sections of the constitution through the declaration of a national state of emergency. I read the brief, in all its sophistry, back in the late 70s. We are currently living under a number of states of emergency, one of which removed us from the gold standard and another that removed us from the silver standard.
All Trump needs to do is to declare a national state of emergency specifically for suspending birthright citizenship and then the Supreme Court won’t do anything about it.
What is the citation of the ruling you refer to?
With this Supreme Court Trump may not have to do anything at all. They did declare him, specifically, to be a king last year.
Might be time for me to break out my “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” book set I’ve been meaning to read. Might be instructive for what happens next in this empire.
*Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Mike Duncan’s History of Rome podcast is a guilty pleasure of mine. Great for winding down at night. If you want to get straight to the era that might be relevant for us these days, maybe start about episode 26, but the whole thing is good storytelling, with much better sources of information than Gibbon had access to.
If you start at the beginning it’s very low tech- it quickly became a hit and the production quality goes way up after the first dozen or so episodes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rome_(podcast)
I say quit spending, pass the word, create a balance sheet recession. His followers will revolt. Painful? Lose-lose? Yes. It’s exactly what tRump is doing by stopping immigration reform, we all lose until he is in control. Stop spending is prudent in its own right – prepare for the economic consequences of more tRump.
But what about the economy??