Giving the Bird to Trump

You may recall Trump's recent unhinged rant about how windmills are detestable because they kill birds.

But if it's bulldozers or pollution slaughtering birds, Trump doesn't care.

Across the country birds have been killed and nests destroyed by oil spills, construction crews and chemical contamination, all with no response from the federal government, according to emails, memos and other documents viewed by The New York Times.

Not only has the administration stopped investigating most bird deaths, the documents show, it has discouraged local governments and businesses from taking precautionary measures to protect birds.
...
In nearly two dozen incidents across 15 states, internal conversations among Fish and Wildlife Service officers indicate that, short of going out to shoot birds, activities in which birds die no longer merit action. In some cases the Trump administration has even discouraged local governments and businesses from taking relatively simple steps to protect birds, like reporting fatalities when they are found.

“You get the sense this policy is not only bad for birds, it’s also cruel,” [Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity] said.

Cruelty is where Trump lives. Any policy that he can put into force, if there is an element of cruelty, know that Trump is reveling in it.

Spray DDT over a place where birds nest? As long as you can claim that you were trying to kill pests and that you really truly Scout's honor didn't mean to kill the birds, you're good.

Fortunately, there are companies and agencies that still try to do the right thing. But companies are largely amoral entities; they won't do the right thing unless forced. And Trump's never going to force them.

A Lot of Feds Will Do No Work Today

Many Federal offices are closed today for a national day of mourning for the last mainline Republican President, George H.W. Bush.

Bush was many things. His life showed that he believed in duty to his country and service to others. Against the wishes of his parents, he enlisted in the Navy when he turned 18. He was a pragmatist who not only despised ideologues, but he was willing to make a massive political sacrifice for the good of the nation.[1] The 1990 budget deal cost him a second term, yet it put the Federal budget on the bath to being balanced.[2]

Bush was an advocate of volunteerism. He believed in helping those who were less fortunate.[3] He believed in improving the environment.[4] He did not believe in bragging.

Contrast that, if you will, with the current President; a man who has three discernible motivations: Self-interest, vengeance and bigotry. It is patently clear that Trump and Bush had nothing but contempt for one another. Yet Trump put a VC-25 at the disposal of the Bush family to carry Bush's remains from Texas to Washington and back and allowed the Bush family to stay at Blair House.[5]

Trump's history is that he does not have a smidgen of human kindness or consideration for others in his makeup.[6] If he's being nice to the Bush family (and not pitching a Twitter fit over not having a speaking role at the funeral service), one has to wonder: What's in it for him?
________________________________
[1] “We’re getting pounded and the right wing is the worst,” Bush wrote in his diary in 1990, after he agreed to a compromise budget bill that included taxes he had tried to avoid. “There is a clump of these extreme extremists that I detest. But I can’t let the bastards get us down. … Push forward.”
[2] Something that was actually happening until his wastrel son blew it up in 2001.
[3] The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
[4] The Clean Air Act of 1990 did a lot to limit acid rain.
[5] These are traditional courtesies to deceased presidents, but Trump has little use for tradition.
[6] I'm not a shrink, but I believe that the term "narcissistic sociopath" fits Trump like a bespoke suit.

The Trumpist Boot Comes Stamping Down

For a long time, the Army has accepted immigrants on the promise that serving this nation would result in them being fast-tracked to citizenship.


Seems Trump is breaking the deal, to the point of kicking people out of the Army.

Meanwhile, Trump is trying to find anyone who made a mistake on their naturalization papers, so they can be kicked out. They claim that they are only going after those who committed fraud, but I submit that you'd have to be seven kinds of a fool to believe that.

we'll also see whether or not this enforcement dragnet catches anyone from Western Europe. I'm guessing the answer will be a negative.

Trump Pulls on His Jackboots

Trump is advocating deporting people without a hearing.

Let's be clear on this: Due process is a Constitutional right that applies to everyone on U.S. soil, regardless of how they got there. Without due process, there is nothing that would stop the authorities from snatching you up and then shipping your ass to another country. Do you carry proof of citizenship with you at all times? Do you have your passport or your birth certificate or naturalization papers on you, right now?

This is one more bit of Trump's frog-boiling. If he's successful at taking away due process for undocumented immigrants, do you really think that he'll stop there? If you don't take a stand for the undocumented immigrants, who are entitled to due process, then who is going to stand up for you when the time comes?

Trump is Jealous as Hell About Algeria

ASSAMAKA, Niger (AP) — From this isolated frontier post deep in the sands of the Sahara, the expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds. They look like specks in the distance, trudging miserably across some of the world’s most unforgiving terrain in the blistering sun.

They are the ones who made it out alive.

Here in the desert, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).

It's a nine-mile trek across the sands, but that's after a ride in open trucks. And some of them get dropped off well before the normal departure point.

The migrants the AP talked to described being rounded up hundreds at a time, crammed into open trucks headed southward for six to eight hours to what is known as Point Zero, then dropped in the desert and pointed in the direction of Niger. They are told to walk, sometimes at gunpoint. In early June, 217 men, women and children were dropped well before reaching Point Zero, fully 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the nearest source of water, according to the IOM.

It's a death march, pure and simple.

And I have no doubt whatsoever that is essentially what Trump would do, if he had the power to order it. And the Trumpanzees, good little Americans to the core, would cheer him on.

Trump Boils the Frog and the Good Little Americans Say Nothing

We are a nation that puts children into concentration camps.

There are plenty of Good Little Americans who are just fine with that. To the extent that this nation once held the moral high ground, Trump has surrendered that without a shot being fired.

The Administration of George W. Bush did some awful things, but they were reacting, in part to a large-scale terrorist attack.

Trump only has his fascist tendencies, and those of his inner circle, to blame.

First the children of undocumented immigrants go into the camps.

Who's next?

‘90s Flashback

Remember when the Right lost their collective minds about one kid being taken from his family? Now, thousands are, and all we hear are crickets.

President Psychopath

This is immoral as fuck:

President Donald Trump suggested Saturday that he is using his administration's separation of families at the US border as a negotiating tool to get Democrats to cave on his immigration demands, which include funding for a border wall, curbing legal immigration into the US, and tightening the rules for border enforcement.

He proclaims that he "hates" to do it, but he's going to continue to rip families apart until he gets his way.

That is reprensible at best. Trump is an inhuman monster. Those who are "only following orders" are proving that in this century, "good little Americans" will be a long-standing epithet.

This is from the Book of Face:

“Through all the adversities we faced last evening with computer outages, cancellations and delays, nothing prepared me or my crew for 16 passengers. Sixteen. All dressed in black and gray cheap Walmart sweat suits, quietly boarding the 12:30am flight.

Children! Thirty-two scared eyes looking straight forward dazed. We try to speak, yet none speak English.

During the beverage service, one of the crew comes to me in tears. They can’t face these children that have been ripped from their families with a smile.

These children were probably ranging in age from 11, to the most adorable little girl maybe 6 years old. At 2:30 in the morning, deplaned here in Miami not knowing if they will ever see their loved ones again that they were separated from in Phoenix.

Those sweet innocent children, dressed as criminals silently deplaned with the same fear as our initial meeting. Except for the little girl. She looked up at me as she turned left for the main cabin door, with tears of fear streaming down her face. I’m not sure the protocol, but I leaned over hoping to offer some hope, she hugged me, which was returned - much to the scowl and comments from the adult escort.

I pray that these 16 scared little souls, as well as all the other thousands, find their way to reuniting with their loved ones.

We are trained yearly in hundreds of possible scenarios as attendants. Something like this isn’t remotely one of those. I had only met one of my crew a few years earlier, the rest never. Thank God, we had one another to lean on to not only get through the flight, but also maybe some glimmer of hope for those babies.”

This cartoon got Rob Rodgers fired from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

This is on point:

As is this:

Republicans, this is your guy. You are the ones who are best placed to voice disapproval and to vote for people who are not going to slavishly fall in line behind Caudillo Trumpo.

Republicans: Are you going to continue to be good little Americans, or are you going to take a stand?

If you don't, then this is on you. You will not be able to truthfully claim that you did not know the horrors that were being done in your name.

We Will Be Reaping What Trump (and Obama) are Sowing Well Into the Next Century

First, go read BadTux's post about the ICE concentration camps for children.

I'll wait.

First off, as I mentioned there, One Day in the Life of Ivan Desniovich was not meant to be an instruction manual. (I mention that one in particular for it is among the thinnest of Solzhenitsyn's works. You can read it in a few hours and if you haven't, then get thee to a bookshop for elsewhere.)

Second. Almost every one of those kids will grow up. They will know that it was the United States government which tore them from their parents. Wherever they end up being deported to, and regardless of whether they are eventually reunited with family or not (I'm betting "not"), they will know that it was our government with separated them from their parents.

They will grow up with that knowledge. They will tell the tale to their friends, their children, their nieces and nephews and their grandchildren. They will tell the story to their children of how Abuela Maria taken from her parents by American goons and she never say them again.

Regardless of whatever good this country does in the remainder of this century, we are planting an incredible legacy of hatred and bitterness. Forty or fifty years from now, some of those children, now sitting in places that would even make Stalin blush, will be leaders in business or politics in Central and Southern American countries. They will remember that the seemingly friendly American diplomat or businessman siting on the other side of the table represents a nation that inflicted cruelty and degradation on children.

Because the one thing that we will not do for a century, or more, is admit that the horrors that we are inflicting on children today were, in fact, horrors, our own children and grandchildren will reap a bitter harvest from our cruelty.

Promoting War Criminals

Trump wants Gina Haspel to be the next head of the CIA.

Other than being a woman, Haspel is notable because she oversaw the use of torture and then helped cover it up by overseeing the destruction of evidence.

So this is where the United States is today: People who should be doing time for war crimes are being rewarded and promoted. Chuckie Taylor, Prisoner 76556-004, is probably laughing at the irony.

Why Trump is Against "Chain Migration" (aka Family Reunification)

Maybe it's because that's how his current wife's parents got to the U.S.?

Otherwise, Trump's in-laws would be stuck in Slovenia and he wouldn't have to deal with them glaring at him for being a philandering jerk.

It'd be just like Trump to screw over thousands and thousands of people because of a personal beef.

No Doubt, the Next Step is to Detain Them in Special Camps

The Trump administration is reportedly considering a controversial plan to deter illegal immigration by separating immigrant parents from their children when they are caught crossing the border illegally.

"Cross the border without papers and we'll ensure that you never see your kids again! Muwhahaha!"

Do these clowns don top hats and twirl their mustaches when they come up with these ideas?

I'd call it "inhuman", but I have never seen anything resembling a spark of humanity or compassion from Trump. He has all of the empathy of a hickory nightstick.

When he does try to relate to people, it's like watching a badly-programmed AI do it.