U.S. Politics; Who Watches the Watchers?

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

The most pathetic part of the scandal, that so outraged the people of Spain, is that the ex-king knew just how despicable most people see this behavior of his -- so this hunting trip (only one of more) was kept secret from the Spanish people -- they didn't even know their king had gone out of the country.  The uproar when this whole mess was leaked to the press -- with photos -- well ya, abdication was the only answer.  And this sob was like 74 years old when he did this!  Surely old enough to know better.

 

You reach an age where you stop giving a fuck about things. And of course, as a king, he probably didn't give a fuck about a lot of things before that.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I recall seeing a documentary on vulnerable unwed mothers being separated from their children in Spain. If I recall they were strongarmed into giving them up for adoption by the church( w/ state support) or something to that effect, it went on for years didnt it?

Ireland.  The US too.

[Bonnot OG]

2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

It's even worse.  Apparently they've lost track of 20% of the children the separated from their families.  These fuckers need to be dragged before the UN on humans rights violations.

Yup, and they sold many of them to human traffickers. They are pure scum.

[Martell Spy]

Outrage Grows as Horror of Policy to Split Children and Parents at Border Becomes Clear

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/outrage-grows-as-horror-of-policy-to-split-children-and-parents-at-border-becomes-clear.html

Quote

 

As outrage grew on Saturday, Trump somehow seemed to think he could blame Democrats for the mess his administration has created. “Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
 Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

6:59 AM - May 26, 2018
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[Bonnot OG]

12 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Something else that I find pretty sickening about this whole situation is that it's probably being done because it's red meat for Trump's base.  Illegal immigration was way down, but no, we need to act like fucking savages to make MAGA hat guy happy.  Some Christians these people are. 

I wonder how many of these kids will ever see their parents again.  I suspect we're going to get a lot more information about this.  

Not if they are destroying paper trails.

[LongRider]

Perhaps President Moon will get the Nobel Prize.   Sorry stupid Twitter Twit.

 

 

[IamMe90]

1 hour ago, Sword of Doom said:

Not if they are destroying paper trails.

This administration is too incompetent to properly destroy paper trails IMO. I hope so, at least.

[Fez]

16 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

It's even worse.  Apparently they've lost track of 20% of the children the separated from their families.  These fuckers need to be dragged before the UN on humans rights violations.

No. There's a world of difference between these two situations. The separation of families is pure evil and cruelty and needs to end immediately. The losing track of the children is government incompetence and almost certainly not a big deal in most cases. The children were placed with sponsored adults, mostly family members of the kids, who were vetted; and in ~1,500 cases, these adults did not respond to follow-up calls from the government to see how the kids were doing. But that doesn't mean the kids were truly lost, or used for nefarious purposes, most of the kids are going to be exactly where they are supposed to be; and the adults just didn't respond to the follow-up call. I deal with other government programs that involve follow-up calls to adults, mostly related to substance use or criminal justice programs, and having only 20% of participants not respond to follow-up calls is a really good rate. It's not that something bad happened, its that a lot of people just ignore calls for various reasons.

There are of course going to be some number of cases where something did go wrong and something bad happened to the children, but those are going to be the kids that would've been missed even if the program was run much better and there was a 99% response rate. The true problem lies in the separation of the families in the first place, and that's where my outrage is focused.

[Larry of the Lawn]

24 minutes ago, Fez said:

No. There's a world of difference between these two situations. The separation of families is pure evil and cruelty and needs to end immediately. The losing track of the children is government incompetence and almost certainly not a big deal in most cases. The children were placed with sponsored adults, mostly family members of the kids, who were vetted; and in ~1,500 cases, these adults did not respond to follow-up calls from the government to see how the kids were doing. But that doesn't mean the kids were truly lost, or used for nefarious purposes, most of the kids are going to be exactly where they are supposed to be; and the adults just didn't respond to the follow-up call. I deal with other government programs that involve follow-up calls to adults, mostly related to substance use or criminal justice programs, and having only 20% of participants not respond to follow-up calls is a really good rate. It's not that something bad happened, its that a lot of people just ignore calls for various reasons.

There are of course going to be some number of cases where something did go wrong and something bad happened to the children, but those are going to be the kids that would've been missed even if the program was run much better and there was a 99% response rate. The true problem lies in the separation of the families in the first place, and that's where my outrage is focused.

Ok, good to know where that number comes from.  I heard this story on WAMC earlier and if it's just a follow up call not being answered the headline of the article I linked and the radio segment are misleading.

To be clear, the 'dragged before the UN' comment was directed at those responsible for the policy in the first place.  Kelly's comments were also infuriating.

[LongRider]

37 minutes ago, Fez said:

No. There's a world of difference between these two situations. The separation of families is pure evil and cruelty and needs to end immediately. The losing track of the children is government incompetence and almost certainly not a big deal in most cases.

This Frontline article suggests that the issue is more nuanced than that.

Quote

A top official from the Department of Health and Human Services came under fire during congressional testimony on Thursday over how the agency tracks unaccompanied minors after they are released to family or other sponsors inside the United States.

Steven Wagner, the acting assistant secretary of the agency’s Administration for Children and Families, faced a barrage of questions from senators on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations over why HHS does not track unaccompanied minors who fail to appear at their immigration court hearings. The agency has faced increased scrutiny following a scathing 2016 report from the committee that found it failed to protect unaccompanied minors from traffickers and other abuses.

“It’s just a system that has so many gaps, so many opportunities for these children to fall between the cracks, that we just don’t know what’s going on — how much trafficking or abuse or simply immigration law violations are occurring,” said the committee’s Republican chairman, Sen. Rob Portman.

 

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, LongRider said:

This Frontline article suggests that the issue is more nuanced than that.

 

I would add the policy of separating children from family stressed an already stressed system. A system that was not set up for this. They could have prepared a system specifically for this. They either did not think of it or decided it was not worth the resources.

They are put with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of HHS.

And according to Longrider's article, no one contacts state and local officials that the children are being put in their state/locality. Heck of a job Brownie.

 

[LongRider]

15 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I would add the policy of separating children from family stressed an already stressed system. A system that was not set up for this. They could have prepared a system specifically for this. They either did not think of it or decided it was not worth the resources.

Agree, as the sense I'm getting from this is that it is based in established policy  that wasn't meant to handle the increased volume of Trump's approach to immigration, refugees and asylum seekers.  

Because of this and other issues, children are unaccounted for and many fear the worst for them and rightly so. 

Trump's inane tweets and Kelley's remarks do not inspire confidence that those at the top give a shit.  (of course we knew that already)

 

[lokisnow]

16 hours ago, Sword of Doom said:

Yup, and they sold many of them to human traffickers. They are pure scum.

Words matter.

When you use the oppressor’s language like “human trafficking” substituting rhetoric you are complicit in their normalization of slavery (like Almost 100% of journalists or government bureaucrats are complicit because they are eager to normalize slavery and insist on using language that makes them feel good about themselves like “trafficking”).

don't give in to normalizing slavery, call slavery slavery. 

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, Triskele said:

Something else that I find pretty sickening about this whole situation is that it's probably being done because it's red meat for Trump's base.  Illegal immigration was way down, but no, we need to act like fucking savages to make MAGA hat guy happy.  Some Christians these people are. 

I wonder how many of these kids will ever see their parents again.  I suspect we're going to get a lot more information about this.  

This policy comes directly from the agent orange dumbster himself. This is what that fight overheard between him and the woman head of Homeland Security was about.  HE WANTS THIS AND DEMANDED IT.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/were-closed-trump-directs-his-anger-over-immigration-at-homeland-security-secretary/2018/05/24/4bd686ec-5abc-11e8-8b92-45fdd7aaef3c_story.html?utm_term=.8fd88651cc61

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/Trump-Homeland-Security-Immigration-482356711.html

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

No. There's a world of difference between these two situations. The separation of families is pure evil and cruelty and needs to end immediately. The losing track of the children is government incompetence and almost certainly not a big deal in most cases. The children were placed with sponsored adults, mostly family members of the kids, who were vetted; and in ~1,500 cases, these adults did not respond to follow-up calls from the government to see how the kids were doing. But that doesn't mean the kids were truly lost, or used for nefarious purposes, most of the kids are going to be exactly where they are supposed to be; and the adults just didn't respond to the follow-up call. I deal with other government programs that involve follow-up calls to adults, mostly related to substance use or criminal justice programs, and having only 20% of participants not respond to follow-up calls is a really good rate. It's not that something bad happened, its that a lot of people just ignore calls for various reasons.

There are of course going to be some number of cases where something did go wrong and something bad happened to the children, but those are going to be the kids that would've been missed even if the program was run much better and there was a 99% response rate. The true problem lies in the separation of the families in the first place, and that's where my outrage is focused.

My, my, my aren't you reasonable, with no skin in the game, no loss of children no loss of parents, whom you may well never see again.  Even incompetence, no matter from how high up the pressure comes to perform that way, the Nuremberg Trials did declare criminal.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

Words matter.

When you use the oppressor’s language like “human trafficking” substituting rhetoric you are complicit in their normalization of slavery (like Almost 100% of journalists or government bureaucrats are complicit because they are eager to normalize slavery and insist on using language that makes them feel good about themselves like “trafficking”).

don't give in to normalizing slavery, call slavery slavery. 

Kind of going to nitpick here -it's my understanding that human trafficking refers to a broad range of rights in persons violations where as slavery refers to the most oppressive end of that spectrum.   That's how the terminology was used anyway, in a class I took on slavery (and was taught by an African professor).  I'm all for not adopting the language of the oppressor and all but this seems like a strange place to call that out.  

 

On a similar topic, has anyone seen any evidence that the children separated from their parents are being sold as slaves or is this just being extrapolated from the ICE plans to destroy documentation of sexual assault of detainees, the missing children placed by ORR, and the policy of separating families?  

Because I'm hearing this everywhere but so far it sounds mostly like speculation.

[Fragile Bird]

7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

My, my, my aren't you reasonable, with no skin in the game, no loss of children no loss of parents, whom you may well never see again.  Even incompetence, no matter from how high up the pressure comes to perform that way, the Nuremberg Trials did declare criminal.

I don’t think that’s a fair thing to say. The fact is, people are incompetent, or lazy, or going through a crisis, and they fail to do things they are supposed to do. I was shocked when I first saw the stories, but I agree with Fez. There will be some bad stories about some kids, but the rest will be ok, their adults were being irresponsible for some reason.

[Bonnot OG]

ICE and Border Patrol should be dealt with how the Nazis are Nuremberg were dealt with. Just following orders shouldn't cover your ass from human rights violation and trafficking children into slavery.

American Gestapo  

[Bonnot OG]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Without any comment on this specific suggestion this does make me think of something I've thought of in the past.

After Obama won there was a discussion about whether Bush or any folks should be charged with war crimes, and Obama was all like "It's time to look forward."

Assuming we ever have elections again and if the Dems get back into power are we going to do the "it's time to move forward" again?  The inclination towards revenge is going to be stronger this time than it was after Bush, I recon.  

ETA:  And to that end I would not be surprised if the Trump admin tries to go after Obama era people legally.  There's already been chatter about trying to prosecute Mueller himself.

Looking forward means also rectifying past horrors, something this country counties to refuse to do. They can not come on tiny end to sweep shit under the rug.  That has allowed republicans to act how they act. There's is no accountability for their horrendous actions.

Stop playing nice with scumfuck politicians and law enforcement officers and letting them off the hook. 

 

Also, Elon Musk is a bigoted piece of fucking garbage. Not a shocker given he had no issue working with Trump, and that he grew up in apartheid South Africa.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000560049389907969

[Bonnot OG]

Cops in Wildwood NJ beat a woman that was in a choked hold. Punched her in the head. The shitbag mayor justifies it by saying she provoked them. 

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/05/video-busts-cops-beach-punching-underage-woman-head-passes-breathalyzer-test/