US Politics, June 2018: This is a total goat rodeo.

heard a podcast with andrea pitzer about https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316303593 and it was interesting.

actually it's here? http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/trumpcast/2018/06/are_detention_centers_concentration_camps.html

I think an interesting thought exercise, though, when considering if family detention is better than "family separation" is to imagine if you were on the border with your own children and your option was to be detained with them in a federal family detention facility for a long time while facing detention, or to get them out of there via the Flores Settlement and send them to a relative who can hug them and feed them and give them love and care. Obviously both choices stink. I don't have an answer for which is better but I know we can't automatically assume that keeping families together in a horrifying family detention facility is automatically preferred to getting the kid to safety of a sponsor.

question on the "finding relatives" part of this: do we know how often HHS is able to identify a relative or friend who can take care of them, vs how often they're sent to a foster family?

the autographing of the dead peoples' portraits is incredible

yeah, that floored me. what a fucking prick

good question, karl, i'm not really sure! i can ask

i'd kind of guess that no one knows? i'm not sure. in the midst of all this media coverage, somehow it took me a couple days ago to realize that these children were being sent to relatives/foster families, and that immediately made me wonder how many of these kids end up on the foster side of the equation. it's a dilemma with zero good options - like your friend said, it's not like we would want to send the children back to whatever dire situation they were trying to escape from. and i don't doubt that most of the foster families are very good people who want to do a good thing. but still, some of these immigration courts have backlogs until 2021. that means a child placed into a foster family could be there for 3 or more years before...what? before they're reunited with their convicted parents somewhere? before they all get deported together? honestly, i'm not even sure what typically happens after the migrants are prosecuted.

Ohhhhhh, I misunderstood and thought people were posing with signed photos of Trump, which was just weird. Now I understand: it's actually full-bore sociopathic.

"Sorry about your kid. Here, have an autograph. Wow, she was really attractive...really attractive. Not quite an Ivanka, but certainly a Tiffany or just above. Just above. Alright, let's get some people thrown out the country!"

He is so clearly not fit to serve. Shame the next in line is pretty bad too.
Also shame you can't declare the 2016 election null and void and have another go with immediate results.

In a world that actually functioned, I'd think that simply spending any time in the presence of Donald Trump would be the the most watertight anti-Trump argument imaginable.

'Oh christ...this malfunctioning Skynet robot in an ill-fitting human suit who can't disguise his naked contempt for even his staunchest supporters is the guy I've been championing?'

For the fourth straight day there was no WH briefing. No officials to explain how the admin plans to return the separated kids to their parents. This is how the briefing room looks.. a few reporters waiting for answers that aren’t coming yet. #whereistheplan #whereispresssec pic.twitter.com/aLok8zcEbc

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 22, 2018

I keep getting reminded of the Dr Who story Aliens of London and the Slitheen where grossly corrupt, venal aliens take over top positions in the UK government etc for personal gain.
ButTI assume that Trump does still pass for human at least.
Is it a skin suit though?

oh my fucking god Chris Hayes is marvelous tonight

WHAT THE FUCK

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Government-Reform-and-Reorg-Plan.pdf

goodbye, America

what a wonderful time to be a government contract employee

goodbye, Army Corps Of Engineers, it was nice knowing you

maximum confusion, organizational arson, total corruption, melania's jacket.. it's like the fuckin Joker is in charge

I wonder which government contractor(s) wrote the report

xp not sure I get the significance of this, but really sure I don't want to read 132 pages of this government's proposals

it's pretty much the "drown government in the bathtub" stage of things

It won't get past Congress. It won't even come close.

I hope you're right but I'm not even sure there's gonna be a Congress in the next six months

don’t say things like that

oh come the fuck on, dude. they can declare martial law at any point.

Yeah, I've been saying the US is over for a while, but I really do think whatever is currently in motion, we won't come back from in our lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqY2apae6Nk

ok lol

An unpopular opinion, but there are many organizational inefficiencies (often caused years ago by carelessly crafted legislation) in the federal government that really could be improved by reorganizing part of it. Individual agencies do this all the time. It is, however, a massive pain in the ass for everyone involved, Congress will never approve this, and ideally it would be something undertaken by something other that the most incompetent administration in American history

It’s also rife with opportunities for pure bureaucratic evil that are too complex and boring for the American public to understand or care about

https://m.nationalskillscoalition.org/news/blog/administration-reorganization-would-eliminate-critical-workforce-and-education-programs-and-expand-ineffective-work-requirements

They can’t even implement a one page executive order without stepping on their own dicks. I think even congress realizes this and won’t let this happen.

Read that .org as "Nationals Kills Coalition" and was like "Yeah, totally an official part of this administration..."

I think this week has aged us all thirty years...

xp again, in all sincerity, let's hope so

also, thank u Alfred

Melania confounds everyone again by wearing one of those jackets with all the NBA logos on it pic.twitter.com/ueJZJ6B7Cc

— Dan Hopper (@DanHopp) June 22, 2018

pretty sure Bob Dylan wore that in 1985, which makes Melania cool.

is this what it looks like when someone slowly gets sucked into another dimension on live tv

Tom Arnold just gave one of the most amazing cable news interviews I’ve ever witnessed pic.twitter.com/3aRwmuxeWe

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) June 23, 2018

that was painful to watch, he was also kind of incoherent on Lawrence O'Donnell's show

there aren't nearly enough stories that try to explain what migrants are fleeing from, but this is a good one:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/immigration-border-children.html

Though it’s impossible to know yet whether the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown on illegal border crossers will have a significant deterrent effect, one thing was clear this week at the Arizona-Mexico border: Many families — especially those from countries in Central America plagued by gang violence and ruined economies — are making the calculation that even separation or detention in the United States is better than the situation at home.

“Why would you undertake such a dangerous journey?” said Magdalena Escobedo, 32, who works at the migrant shelter here in Tucson, called Casa Alitas. “When you’ve got a gun to your head, people threatening to rape your daughter, extort your business, force your son to work for the cartels. What would you do?”

Tom Arnold link seems to have disappeared between me seeing it on my phone and going to look at it on my desktop.

He does sound a bit weird on the Lawrence O'Donnel show anyway.

Sorry, just loaded now. My feed must be not loading fully or something.

https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/immigrant-mom-loses-effort-regain-son-us-parents/story?id=16803067
Not a great precedent. & can see how this is likely to become one from what i'm hearing about a lack of planned out process. & maybe this is what the White house wants anyway.

oh come the fuck on, dude. they can declare martial law at any point.

Yeah they definitely can't declare martial law in any constitutional way. Plus with so much decentralized power in the U.S., I'm not even sure how it work. You'd have whole cities and states where the local law enforcement authorities would not respect the authority of the feds.

again, I hope you're both right.

Please don't say, "But y'all said that about Trump winning in 2016!"

thankfully that did not cross my mind

regarding the "why people seek asylum" question:

So we're gonna pretend these refugees aren't a result of our actions in Central America?

yeah it's Daily Kos link but it links through to more detailed reports