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David Brook’s Stupid Opinion in The New York Times

Is David Brooks suggesting we hold random twitter commenters, late night hosts and salad bar denizens to the same high standard that we hold the president? Or did he just rush to meet the deadline and come up with the most lavy BOTH SIDES argument ever?

Democratic leadership in the House have actually had really intelligent conversations about Iran. Left leaning media has done that as well. Even the mainstream media is doing a reasonable job. You paper is doing a good job. The facts and analysis are out there.

Is he imagining some rouges gallery echo chamber the rest of can’t see?

But the events of the past week have shown that the anti-Trump echo chamber is becoming a mirror image of Trump himself — overwrought, uncalibrated and incapable of having an intelligent conversation about any complex policy problem.

Source: Opinion | Trump Has Made Us All Stupid – The New York Times

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Senate Republican blocks unanimous consent on resolution calling targeting cultural sites a war crime

Remember when Bush43’s administration argued for Waterboarding and everyone thought that was the rock bottom for the GOP? Or when all those people critical of Obama’s drone war were totally OK with Trump escalating it again? Well those same people are against calling out war crimes if it makes dear leader look like a war criminal.

 

The page-long resolution states that “attacks on cultural sites are war crimes.”

Source: Senate Republican blocks unanimous consent on resolution calling targeting cultural sites a war crime | TheHill

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We already know they are willing to abuse national security for partisan politics.

Since long before he was a politician, he’s lied frequently and even written in multiple books about his profound belief in the value of lying as a means to get ahead. And he’s good at it. After his Atlantic City casinos went bust, he successfully duped a bunch of mom-and-pop equity investors out of their money to get out of debt and had them pay him a salary for the privilege. He then got himself elected president and immediately started bullshitting about everything from the size of his inaugural crowds to the way NATO works to Chinese currency manipulation.When someone has proven over and over again that they are not trustworthy, you can, and in important situations should, stop trusting them

Matt Yglesias is right here but the bigger point is that they have shown themselves willing to make this exact kind of lie, as so has the Republican party. The GOP has made it clear they are OK with abusing national security for partisan politics when they lied us into a disastrous Iraq war. They outed Valerie Plame. They lied about the Iran treaty. They pardoned everyone involved in Iran Contra. It just keeps happening.

You can’t trust Trump not to abuse national security for partisan gain because you can not trust the Republican party not to abuse national security for partisan gain.

Source: Trump and Pompeo are untrustworthy on Iran – Vox

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The president who is escaping indictment appointed the guy escaping 83 ethics charges.

The story not being told here is that Brett was facing 83 ethics charges and they went away when he became a Justice of the Supreme Court.  This was brought up during his confirmation hearing and somehow the story was all about the he-said she-said allegation and not the mountain of ethical problems that Brett had. The mystery mortgage payments? His role in the Brook’s Brothers riot in Florida? He public meltdown and unhinges ranting about conspiracies targeting him went mostly unremarked. The president who is escaping indictment appointed the guy escaping 83 ethics charges.

100k pages of his time in the Bush white house were withheld from congress. Somehow that wasn’t a story. Even while the NY Times covered it.

The bulk of the records being withheld “reflect deliberations and candid advice concerning the selection and nomination of judicial candidates, the confidentiality of which is critical to any president’s ability to carry out this core constitutional executive function,” wrote Mr. Bush’s lawyer, William A. Burck.

Looking at the WaPo fact check of the reasons why the Republicans didn’t care about those documents reveals some odd excuses.

Kavanaugh was a trusted adviser to Bush, said Paul C. Light, a New York University professor and expert on the White House

 

“Both groups concluded that Kavanaugh is no longer subject to the federal judiciary’s internal ethics review process because he is now a member of the Supreme Court. He became immune the moment he was confirmed on Oct. 6, a process that followed a congressional testimony about sexual misconduct allegations against him.”

The president who is escaping indictment appointed the guy escaping 83 ethics charges

From: huffpost.com

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-ethics-complaints-dismissed_n_5d4442a1e4b0acb57fcb6356

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Children of US Troops Born Overseas Will No Longer Get Automatic American Citizenship

“Children born to U.S. service members and government employees overseas will no longer be automatically considered citizens of the United States, according to a policy alert issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday.”

What a disgusting thing to do the troops. I can think of no one more deserving of “merit based immigration” than the children of active duty military personnel.

From: military.com

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/28/children-us-troops-born-overseas-will-no-longer-get-automatic-american-citizenship.html

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Under Donald Trump, drone strikes far exceed Obama’s numbers

 

“Obama eventually put in place arcane requirements to issue public reports on civilian death tolls (but just in certain military theaters), to limit targets to high-level militants (again, in certain battlefields), and require interagency approval (also only for certain targets).

Trump has peeled back all of those requirements because, well, he can. We now know more than we did about U.S. drone wars when Obama first took office, but less than when he left.”

Trump’s drone war escalation has gone unreported. His blocking of all reporting on it has gone unnoticed. I don’t hear a single thing about this from the concern trolls who cared very deeply about Obama’s drone war. 

From: chicago.suntimes.com

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/5/8/18619206/under-donald-trump-drone-strikes-far-exceed-obama-s-numbers

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GITMO for families escaping violence

GITMO for families escaping violence.

This administration is saying that people who are not breaking the law can be rounded up and placed in camps without adequate food, medical care or hygiene and denied access to the rule of law; and the administration is saying it can do this indefinitely.

Can we call them concentration camps now?

“The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a regulation to allow it to indefinitely detain migrant families who illegally cross the border. The rule replaces a decades-old court agreement that mandates a level of care for migrant children and limits how long the government can hold them in custody.”

From: nytimes.com https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/us/politics/flores-migrant-family-detention.html

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U.S. Deported a Detroit Man to Iraq. If he had been a POW, this would have been a war crime.

“In a heartbreaking video taken on what appears to be the streets of Baghdad weeks after being deported there, Aldaoud describes how he was pulled over by immigration officials and put on a plane. “They wouldn’t listen to me,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me call my family. Nothing. They just said: You’re going to Iraq and your best bet is to cooperate with us. That way we’re not going to chain you up; we’ll put you on a commercial flight. I begged them, I said: please, I’ve never seen that country. I’ve never been there, however, they forced me. I’m here now.” Immigration attorney”

From: slate.com https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/detroit-michigan-man-deported-died-iraq-diabetic-homeless.html

Now compare to this.

“Detained migrants should certainly be treated—at a bare minimum—no worse than international law requires prisoners of war to be treated. While there are certainly many cases of mistreatment of POWs by the United States as well as other international actors, the Geneva Conventions outline an ideal for POW treatment. The United States agreed to abide by these guidelines when it ratified the Geneva Conventions in 1955.

How can immigrants possibly deserve treatment any poorer than that of an actual, self-declared enemy of the United States? “

From: foreignpolicy.com https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/26/the-united-states-treats-migrants-worse-than-prisoners-of-war/

Even if you call them invaders , they should be treated at least as well as POWs are. And if Mr. Aldaoud had been yanked out of a POW camp and dumped into the streets somewhere to die, it would have been a violation of international law. This is rouge nation bullshit. This is not how to treat a person who has been in the county for 40 years. We should expect more from ICE than this.

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What Liberals must learn about Ilhan Omar

If you come here legally.

If you learn english.

If you work hard and play by the rules.

If you integrate into your community, If you earn respect from that community. If you become the representative of that community.

If you do everything right.

Republicans will not hold you up as the embodiment of the American Dream, alive and well in the US. They will tell you to go back where you came from.

Respectability politics is like treading water and waiting for conservatives to toss you a life jacket. They will never toss it. And when you give up and drown they’ll blame you for giving up. Clearly you didn’t want it enough.