At 9 He Lost His Mom to Gang Violence. At 12 He Lost His Dad to Trump’s Immigration Policies.

When Brayan was 9 years old, in 2016, his mother was brutally raped and murdered in Honduras. Her body was found in a septic tank. When Brayan saw her in the coffin, she was so disfigured that he couldn’t recognize her. She had been seven months pregnant. That’s when his nightmares began, his fear of the dark. His mother’s boyfriend had abused her and was arrested in the killing, but he claimed it was a gang killing and was set free. He threatened Brayan and his father, José, so José vowed to bring Brayan to safety in the United States. The opportunity to travel there safely arrived this year.

Border Patrol officers refused to even glance at the notarized letters from lawyers making his case, José said. He was jailed for 20 days, asked to sign papers in English he did not understand and was deported to Honduras. Brayan was flown to a shelter for children in Maryland.

Brayan is now one of the more than 2,000 children — a conservative estimate — who have been separated from their families as part of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance crackdown on undocumented immigration. On June 26, a federal district judge in San Diego ordered that those families must be reunited within 30 or fewer days — even though a Justice Department lawyer acknowledged there was no formal procedure to reunite families.

This song is about fucking on a beach

Now why is it, do you think, that Royal family members never appear as soldiers on the front line? Or any Rothschild family member for that matter (actual surname Bauer). — raza

You said a few posts ago that Buckingham Palace should have been heavily targeted in order to destroy British morale. Now you are saying that the Royal Family should have been on the front line? You don't see the conflict around those two positions?

And Jack Bauer is always on the front lines.

So first you state that Buckingham Palace wasn't bombed, presumably because of some conspiracy involving the British Monarchy, despite the fact that not only was it bombed, but Queen Elizabeth wrote about how she and her Father the King were nearly killed during one of the strikes.

The Nazis' prime targets were strategic sites such as boatyard docks, factories, etc. that were not located near Buckingham Palace. It's also important to note that the bombs used in WW2 weren't very precise. That said, Buckingham palace was directly hit around nine times.

This is a pretty dumb conspiracy.

You would make the ideal patsy due to your naivety. They would have you dressed up in a brown shirt before you know it. — raza

Na, I'm Jewish, they would have murdered me.

Did the Germans bomb Buckingham Palace during the London blitz? Such an obvious and strategic target IF one was trying to undermine British morale.

But no. — raza

Except Buckingham Palace was hit by several bombs during The Blitz

Nah. just back right out of interfering in other countries and plug the holes in the border. Taxing corporations merely causes corporations to pass that tax bill on to ordinary consumers of their businesses. — raza

The damage is clearly already done, and merely removing ourselves from interference in foreign affairs will not magically solve the humanitarian crisis in the Northern Triangle. Neither will "plugging the holes in the border" whatever the hell that's supposed to entail. Corporations should be taxed progressively regardless, and the US Government should be strong-arming them so that costs don't trickle down to consumers or the general public, but that's a long argument that's neither here nor there. Suffice it to say, if the US Government can spend trillions on a war we lost, and add over $1.4 trillion to the deficit thanks to a needless and fallacious tax cut, I think we can afford to spend on taking better care of people whose countries we helped spiral into chaos and violence.

After all, the US is only a colony of the British monarchy and their financiers such as the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and their ilk. A full independence for the US is the only hope. A 2nd revolution is required as the 1st one was eventually countered over time by the usual war bandits. — raza

Damn, you are really going full tin-foil hat aren't you?

After all, the political and corporate elites are not the ones who ultimately pay for the all of those acts. — raza

So implement a progressive tax on corporations and the elite, create clean, hospitable centers to temporarily house immigrants who are escaping the countries we fucked over (the article does state that the US Government had a hand in this), and treat them with respect, provide healthcare services, etc. rather than separate them, detain them, and further demonize them as this Swamp-filled administration is currently doing.

The US is constitutional federal republic. That is, it is not democracy at all. Some aspects of our government are democratic. It remains to find out just what folks exactly mean when they refer to "democracies." The risk is that the imprecision can make a difference. The chart is interesting, but unelucidating. There's a difference between democratic in its noun form and its adjectival form. — tim wood

A Republic is when public officials are democratically elected to represent their constituents. It is a representative democracy; a type of democracy.

This is an important article that I think @ArguingWAristotleTiff (and several others) should read, which touches upon why immigrants from Central America, in particular the Northern Triangle are immigrating to America and why deterrence policies (e.g. family separation, detaining) will not be effective.

Please name any democracies that are collapsing. — tim wood

The "robustness" of democracies exist on a spectrum. The United States today, while an imperfect democracy in myriad ways, is nevertheless stronger than the United States in the 1880s. Political scientists have shown, through a wide-set of criteria, there is a "disturbing retreat" of the "robustness" of democracies around the world. While not necessarily a "collapse", it is worrisome all the same.

One perspective that others haven't taken into consideration is the fact that China has integrated a robust economy into its central management system. They seemed to have been able to solve the management problem (effective allocation of resources) that the Soviets faced under a central command economy. Some people call this a hybrid economy, but I digress. — Posty McPostface

This is becoming more debatable as China's GDP rate has been slowly decreasing year over year, ever since 2010. There has been talk of how viable China's growth will be in the long term. Xi Jingping has placed himself in a precarious position by abolishing term limits, centralizing power around him, thereby placing the promise of continued growth squarely on his shoulders, so it will be interesting to see how he further steers the economic ship, and how strong an effect the Road and Belt initiative will have on China's economic growth.

I was obsessed with The Last Temptation of Christ back in my sophomore year of college. Don't think I've seen it since then though.

I feel like the prettiest girl at prom.

Really loving this album

He just made peace with freaking North Korea. — fishfry

North Korea has increased nuclear production at secret sites, say U.S. officials

lol

Yeah, when Trump repeatedly calls the press "enemies of the people" or "fake news", "bad for the country", and a deluge of other anti-press rhetoric over the past 2+ years, and who then, after yesterdays shooting leaves five journalists dead, states in a press meeting, "Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job", I have to think to myself, hmmm, there are ways to analysis this, but surely including the idea Trump is a fucking idiot is simply not acceptable.

To clarify, I mean the person holding the Presidency. No, a member of the Supreme Court should not swear loyalty to the President.

So then I'm not quite sure where your gleeful reaction to a conservative court is coming from. It seems highly misplaced.

Conflating the Constitution with morality is most assuredly a right-wing position, brought on primarily through the vacuous 'Originalist' interpretation on the Constitution which would shackle this Nation to the 18th century.

Ah yes wonderful conservative jurisprudence. It's also not much a "political cycle" when the Supreme Court has been majority conservative for 40 years.

Tiff, you have two teenage sons, correct? I imagine one day they may have girlfriends who may one day become your daughters-in-law and heaven forbid this, but the new conservative court may very well decide within the next 20 years to overturn Roe v. Wade, and either allow states to determine abortion rights or Federally ban abortion nation-wide, and again, heaven forbid, but one day your daughters-in-law may be told by their doctor that they are carrying your sons stillborn, or a child with a serious terminal condition, that they must carry to term because abortion will most assuredly be illegal in Arizona and I know you would love your hypothetical daughters-in-law because how could you not love the women whom your sons married, and I know you would hate to see them in that pain that could have been avoided if only Roe v. Wade were not overturned by a conservative court that you are now gleefully celebrating, and if this hypothetical scenario does not happen to you in particular, you can be very much assured that it can happen and will happen to some other woman should Roe v. Wade be overturned (by six men, of course), which again, is a very real possibility.

With a decidedly conservative court, we can be assured the labor unions will continue to be beaten back (as most recently demonstrated by the recent blow to public-sector unions), hurting stronger wage growth and stronger worker rights, and we can be assured that LGBT rights will not progress any further, and could be scaled back in some cases (although a majority of Americans now support same-sex marriage, so the court may be more hesitant to chip away at gay rights).

The outrageous Citizen's United decision will not be overturned, and a deluge of money will be continue to be poured in politics by wealthy individuals for their own self-interested purposes, so be assured that your voice will matter less and less in the political realm as it's overshadowed by a wave of cash, but I imagine, Tiff, that you'll be swayed by the influx of deceitful political campaigns paid for by wealthy individuals who care only about their bottom-line.

I could get into gerry-mandering and voting rights, or gun control, etc. but it's all just too much now.

What's wrong with discussing loyalty? Isn't loyalty an important quality in your friends, in people you associate with, people you do business with, etc.? — Agustino

As @Michael stated, a member of the Supreme Court's loyalty, as a member of the judicial branch, ought to be only towards the United States. Not the office of the Presidency.

I'm writing this comment then immediately going to bed, and here it goes:

*ahem*

...The Fuck?

Personally I don't think "Western Civilization" is a coherent concept, so I can't, in any good faith, supply my own definition for it, and I don't think anyone can supply a homogenized rationality to it without hand-waving numerous contradictions and inconsistencies.

I can argue the fact that none of those names don't refer or are in anyway related to any ideological view unlike someone especially asking me to call 'they' when they are obviously a 'she' or a 'he'. — Terran Imperium

Transgender isn't an "ideology" anymore than Cis-gender is, or being heterosexual, or homosexual. No one would claim that being heterosexual is "ideological".

Of course many wanted to serve black customers. — raza

I agree with the progress of the civil rights movement to get government out of the way of private business's approach to their own customers — raza

lol no dude.

I support their right to complain. — raza

Actually, Sanders violated 5 CFR 2635.702 by complaining on her official Press Secretary account.

So if you support rejecting customers who have different political positions to the restaurant staff and/or owner do you therefore support a right for a Christian baker not to bake a gay wedding cake? — raza

None of this follows from the specifics of the Red Hen "incident" (which I use here very loosely). The owners of the Red Hen asked Sanders to leave because of the role she plays in the Trump Administration. She was not asked to leave because she is a Republican or a Conservative (I imagine the Red Hen, given its location in Virginia, serves a far amount of Republicans/Conservatives). This has nothing to do with mere "political positions". Sarah Sanders is an individual, not a member of a minority class, and this is not analogous to a Christian baker refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, on the basis of it being a gay wedding.

That said, this whole issue is a non-story. A powerful, wealthy, public facing woman, who works for an administration that separates families, was denied food at a restaurant. Boo-hoo. No one should care.

Oh no, did Raza miss the point again?

I would never condemn any President of the United States as "a clueless idiot", which is why such characterizations are surprising to say the least — FreeEmotion

Donald Trump just gloated on Twitter that Democrat Joe Crowley, who has been a representative of NY since 1999, lost the Democratic primary tonight. What he failed to realize, however, was that Crowley lost to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist. "Clueless idiot" seems like an apt epithet for Trump, just given the last 45 minutes.

Umm ok?

I disagree. We simply wouldn't be where, what, and who we are now if racism was as deeply ingrained in us as you and Hanover argue. — frank

But what is this based on? How do you know what we (speculatively) would be otherwise? This history of racism in America is well established by scholars, from the 17th century to the modern age.

Pretty hilarious of Mike Pence to ask South American countries to respect our borders because America "respects their borders and sovereignty" given the history we've had of installing or backing dictatorships in various South American countries, including the Northern Triangle, where many immigrants are escaping gang violence.

I'm finding it hard to follow this conversation, but racism, including explicit racist language, codified racial oppression, and even forms of 'soft racism' (e.g. uplift suasion) has existed within this country well before its very founding. When old forms of codified racism were deemed unconstitutional, they metamorphosed in novel forms of racism cloaked in subtler policies and language to obfuscate their oppressive intent. Trump, like many Americans, is a product of a socio-cultural environment that has been steeped in 400 years of vitriolic racism. One product of this environment was another American, Madison Grant, who wrote a 'scientific' racist book about race hierarchies, which heavily influenced Adolf Hitler when he wrote Mein Kampf. It can't be denied that there is a direct intellectual link between American racism and the racial tenants of Nazism, and Trump's language of immigrants "invading" and "infesting" our country, that they are "rapists", how he continually blurs the line between an average immigrants and members of M-13 (whose membership size pales in comparison with other extant gangs in America), or his deletrious zero-tolerance policy of separating families, is directly from the Nazi racial playbook, which in turn was influenced by American racism. Full circle.

About the pronouns, I was referring to the 'non-binary' people which I mentioned earlier in my post. Whereby forcing people to call them 'they' or 'she' or 'he' when it doesn't fit them is like forcing me to agree with their view on how the world works. Yes, language evolves and change through the centuries but it still had a basis on reality. The pronouns 'he' and 'she' rely on your biological sex, on a fact everyone can rely on. If a person who thinks she is 'non-binary' and I called her 'she' or 'he' does that make me bad? As I said those people are more subjective than objective and don't really look at reality. — Terran Imperium

No one is "forcing" you to refer to people by the pronouns that they ask to be referred to as. Language, like gender, is socially constructed, and regardless of the etymology of words they are, as you yourself admit, are malleable over time. A fitting analogy, let's say someone I meet someone who kindly asks me to refer to him as Jake, despite his birth certificate explicitly stating that his official name is Jacob. Or perhaps he'd prefer to go by his middle name, Max, because he dislikes the name Jacob or Jake. Or perhaps he decided, at some point, to change his name entirely because he loathed his given name for whatever personal reasons. His nickname, or new name lacks a "basis in reality", but that's not a justifiable reason to stay with the name Jacob. In fact, it makes very little sense to say that words have a "basis in reality" external to their socially constructed use.

Would I ignore his request and refer to him as Jacob regardless? Of course not. It's unnecessarily rude, doesn't inconvenience me in anyway, and is disrespectful of his innocuous request. Same is true when a transgender person asks to me refer to them as something other than their biological sex. Does it make you a "bad person" when you ignore their request? I would say yes, insofar as it's a clear demonstration that you doesn't view them as a person who should be respected or treated in a dignified manner. It is vital to note that studies have shown that there is a high suicide attempt rate of transgendered persons relative to the general population, the major factors being, "gender-based victimization, discrimination, bullying, violence, being rejected by the family, friends, and community; harassment by intimate partner, family members, police and public; discrimination and ill treatment at health-care system are the major risk factors that influence the suicidal behavior among transgender persons," and so I think that it should be understood that while maybe you had a negative experience with a transgendered person via the internet, you should A) not extrapolate her presumed "incivility" onto her entire group, while B) understand (and sympathize) that her frustration may stem from the fact that her group faces overwhelming social and personal hardships on a day-to-day basis that I personally can't even begin to wrap my head around.

Crazy how much insane conservative propaganda was launched in defense of Trump's zero-tolerance policy.

Don't really care if I piss off people who support inhumane policies.

Will you at least try to be civil with each other? — Mr Phil O'Sophy

There's actually been some debate over this, given Robert De Niro's "Fuck Trump" comment at the Tony's, or most recently, the owner of a small restaurant in Virginia politely asking Sarah Sanders to leave her restaurant.

Personally, when facing an administration that separates families, places children in cages, and doesn't bother placing a systematic process for reuniting them, calls immigrants "rapists", "invaders" and an "infestation", amongst a deluge of other Naziesque comments and actions, then I'm not really interested in using civil language or politely engaging in those who defend or support them. Fuck 'em. Oppression thrives best against silence and civility.

I can't, and won't bother to try to, dissuade a christian from being a christian and I am equally disinterested in attempting to dissuade you from your belief system. — raza

In order to dissuade someone, you first have to defend your arguments and show why ours are poorly reasoned. You haven't done either.

I'd wager that you would never consider Norwegian, or French, British immigrants to be analogous to "rapists". Jeremiah is right, you're just a racist.

It would be interesting to apply Popper's theorem to itself. Is the falsifiable principle falsifiable? — Preston

Popper's falsifiability theory has essentially been falsified as the history of science demonstrates that scientific theories have often advance using spurious methods and fallacious argumentation which, nevertheless, helped further our understanding of scientific phenomenon and crystallize theories. Falsifiability, while reasonable-sounding in the abstract, is far too rigid to be viably applied to science as it actually works.

It's telling here that your go-to analogy for undocumented immigration is rape.

DNA comparison is extremely easy and quick to verify.

While not applicable to all self-described right-wingers, it's extremely concerning to see the common reaction from right-wing pundits and media organizations towards the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and now the separation of 2,000 children from their parents, range from insouciance at best, to bullying and conspiracies at worst.

Paul Krugman's opinions in the NYT can be hit or miss, but I thought this piece really nailed it.

The speed of America’s moral descent under Donald Trump is breathtaking. In a matter of months we’ve gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages.

What’s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it’s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren’t happening. They’re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.

And you know what this reminds me of? The history of anti-Semitism, a tale of prejudice fueled by myths and hoaxes that ended in genocide.

First, let’s talk about modern U.S. immigration and how it compares to those sick fantasies.

There is a highly technical debate among economists about whether low-education immigrants exert a depressing effect on the wages of low-education native-born workers (most researchers find that they don’t, but there is some disagreement). This debate, however, is playing no role in Trump policies.

What these policies reflect, instead, is a vision of “American carnage,” of big cities overrun by violent immigrants. And this vision bears no relationship to reality.

For one thing, despite a small uptick since 2014, violent crime in America is actually at historical lows, with the homicide rate back to where it was in the early 1960s. (German crime is also at a historical low, by the way.) Trump’s carnage is a figment of his imagination.

True, if we look across America there is a correlation between violent crime and the prevalence of undocumented immigrants — a negative correlation. That is, places with a lot of immigrants, legal and undocumented, tend to have exceptionally low crime rates. The poster child for this tale of un-carnage is the biggest city of them all: New York, where more than a third of the population is foreign-born, probably including around half a million undocumented immigrants — and crime has fallen to levels not seen since the 1950s.

And this really shouldn’t be surprising, because criminal conviction data show that immigrants, both legal and undocumented, are significantly less likely to commit crimes than the native-born.

So the Trump administration has been terrorizing families and children, abandoning all norms of human decency, in response to a crisis that doesn’t even exist.

The thing about anti-Semitism is that it was never about anything Jews actually did. It was always about lurid myths, often based on deliberate fabrications, that were systematically spread to engender hatred.

I haven't read it, but as a rule of thumb, always go with what Streetlight recommends to read.