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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.

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Waiting for Soybeans to Break 800

Trump’s policy of handing over buckets of cash to farmers to compensate them for the damage his trade policy is causing them is far more socialist than anything the democrats are suggesting.
This is the MAGA lined road to serfdom.

From: econbrowser.com https://econbrowser.com/archives/2019/05/for-corev-waiting-for-soybeans-to-break-800

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When investigators threatened his power, he declared himself dictator

“Mussolini undermined the institutions and culture of Italian democracy persistently and methodically. He denounced any negative press coverage of him as “abusive” and “criminal,” and demanded that the offending reporters and editors be fired. In Parliament he made offhand remarks about abolishing the constitution, creating a secret police and becoming a dictator. He dismissed officials who were insufficiently servile. He bullied Parliament into passage of an electoral law that guaranteed his coalition’s victory in the 1924 elections. And he stayed silent when Fascists beat up or killed opposition politicians.”

Every work of fiction that describes the US turning into a dictatorship starts like this. A populist is elected, bullies the press, consolidates power, uses the DOJ to attack his opponents and then turns the FBI into his secret police force.

From: washingtonpost.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/06/19/when-investigators-threatened-his-power-he-declared-himself-dictator/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6d9e71d6a8c3

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Trump Defends $1.17 Billion in Losses as Just for ‘Tax Purposes’

“Yet even as he tried to explain in a pair of Twitter posts that showing “losses for tax purposes” was considered a “sport” among real estate developers like himself, the president also said The Times’s account was “a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!””

His defense is that he is a tax cheat. He is saying the NY Times story is inaccurate because the times thinks his reported losses are losses and not fraud.

From: nytimes.com https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/us/politics/trump-tax-investigation.html#click=https://t.co/DNWG0W4J6f

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Billion in losses or a decade of felony tax fraud?

“The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.”

From: nytimes.com

I’m not a lawyer and do not have any special information here but one thing to keep in mind, a billion in declared losses may not be a billion in actual losses. He may be overstating or just inventing losses as a way to conceal profits. That would be tax fraud. And a 30 year history of felony tax fraud seems like a really good reason to block anyone from being able to look at his taxes. If they should become public, it would open him up possible fines and penalties, perhaps exceeding his ability to pay.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html

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Is Lindsey Graham unaware that we have had two years of personal email use go un-investigated or is he unfit for office?

“Any American out there who did what Secretary Clinton did, you’d be in jail now,” Graham declared. “The question I want to know is, does anybody other than me believe that?”

From: thedailybeast.com

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lindsey-graham-dont-make-mueller-report-public-without-setting-up-special-counsel-to-probe-hillary-clinton-emails/

Wow is this amazing. Can he really think this is true or is he just bullshitting? We’ve had two years of non-stop security scandals from this Whitehouse and he is either ignoring or ignorant of.  

 

From Sept 25th 2017 in the NY TImes:

At Least 6 White House Advisers Used Private Email Accounts

Mr. Kushner was not alone. Stephen K. Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, and Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff, also occasionally used private email addresses. Other advisers, including Gary D. Cohn and Stephen Miller, sent or received at least a few emails on personal accounts, officials said.

 

 

From Propublica Sept 15th 

President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission came under fire earlier this month when a lawsuit and media reports revealed that the commissioners were using private emails to conduct public business. Commission co-chair Kris Kobach confirmed this week that most of them continue to do so.

https://www.propublica.org/article/experts-say-the-use-of-private-email-by-trumps-voter-fraud-commission-isnt-legal

 

From the Atlantic, August 2018.

Ex-Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman said she has a secret recording from one of the most iconic, secure, technologically advanced places in all of American government

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/omarosas-situation-room-firing-on-tape/567365/

From WaPo, November 19th 2018

Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails last year to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules, according to people familiar with a White House examination of her correspondence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ivanka-trump-used-a-personal-email-account-to-send-hundreds-of-emails-about-government-business-last-year/2018/11/19/6515d1e0-e7a1-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html

 

And this is an incomplete list.  I didn’t cover Pence’s email problem or the cabinet members or the half dozen issues with people failing security clearances. 

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Trump Warns: It Would Be ‘Very Bad’ if My Police, Biker Gang Fans Decided to Get ‘Tough’ on My Opponents

 

“I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump–I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

Translation: Don Cheeto warns the country, “That’s a nice rule of law you have there, it would be a shame of something happened to it.”

From: thedailybeast.com

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-warns-it-would-be-very-bad-if-my-police-biker-gang-fans-decided-to-get-tough-on-my-opponents

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Matt Gaetz: A Tragedy of Trumpean Proportions in Three Acts

Act One: He Doth Tweet It

Act Two: He defends Himself Poorly

““I was happy to do it for you. You just keep killing it,” Gaetz was reportedly heard telling Trump, according to Dovere.

Also

Gaetz apologized to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and, apparently, to Cohen personally, for the tweets about Cohen’s alleged “girlfriends,” but the Florida Bar is currently looking into whether he violated an ethical code with his tweet.”

From: talkingpointsmemo.com

Act Three: He didn’t see Justice coming until it was too late

From cnn

Francine Andía Walker, the group’s director of communications, said the Florida Bar received a number of calls and emails regarding the tweet after it posted.According to disciplinary guidelines for the group, which is the organization of all lawyers licensed by the Supreme Court of Florida to practice law in the state, the state bar’s lawyer regulation arm must determine that an allegation against a bar member “would constitute a violation of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar” before a probe is opened.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/27/politics/gaetz-cohen-tweet-florida-bar/index.html

The lesson here is simple. Before you get involved with Trump, think of Chris Christie. That’s the best case outcome of doing business with Trump. Chris Christie is a joke and his political career is over but he isn’t in jail.

Becoming a punchline like Chris Christie is successful outcome.