All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[WestPhillyPunisher]

McCain Family Slams GOP’s Use Of Late Senator In Attack Ads

“The family is disappointed that John’s image is being weaponized” by the National Republican Congressional Committee, a friend said. Newsflash: the GOP don't give a ****. They'll weaponize ANYTHING if it'll help them win the upcoming midterms. But hey, both sides are bad....!

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GOP Candidate in North Carolina Buys Ads On Weather Channel Ahead Of Hurricane

Mark Harris, a conservative pastor, is trying to win a House seat in the Charlotte suburbs. Crass, man. Crass!

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Republicans Line Up Tax Cut Messaging Bill While Abandoning Tax Cut Message

Just 12 percent of GOP TV ads have mentioned the tax cut bill. Hmm! Perhaps they know mentioning the bill might piss off their constituents. Just a guess.

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Pressure Mounts On Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski To Block Brett Kavanaugh

The Maine and Alaska Republicans are feeling the heat in their home states ahead of Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote. Will they yield to the pressure, or will they put party ahead of country and confirm Bob 'n' Weave Brett?

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Eric Trump Accused Of Anti-Semitism For Bob Woodward ‘Shekels’ Criticism

Trump said Woodward wrote his new book to “make three extra shekels.” Like scumbag father, like scumbag son.

[JCAll]

Breaking: Trump admin took millions from FEMA for ICE detentions



After the disastrous response to Hurricanes Maria and Harvey, after the disastrous situation created by the Trump Adminstration's 'Zero Tolerance' Policy in which children were taken from their parents, the Trump Adminsitration has foudn a way to make both even worse.

They took nearly 10 million from FEMA, money needed to deal with the aftermath of Hurricanes like Florence, and is giving it to ICE to build Internment camps for immigrant families. Internment camps like those used for Japanese Americans during WWII.

Just read that it wasn't just $10M from FEMA, but $200M from multiple agencies under the DHS.
That doesn't make me feel better.

[numberthirty]

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Eric Trump Accused Of Anti-Semitism For Bob Woodward ‘Shekels’ Criticism

Trump said Woodward wrote his new book to “make three extra shekels.” Like scumbag father, like scumbag son.

Man, must have been his week to try to take the heat off of the rest of the family.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The danger of having an out of control egomaniac as President:

‘Never give an inch’: Trump keeps touting perceived failures as successes

An estimated 3,000 people died after the devastating Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico last year. Large swaths of the island were without power for months. FEMA was short thousands of workers and underestimated how much food and supplies were needed in the recovery, according to a federal government report.

But in the eyes of President Trump, the government’s response was a raging success — and one he touted this week as a monstrous hurricane pinwheeled toward the Carolinas.

“We got A Pluses for our recent hurricane work in Texas and Florida (and did an unappreciated great job in Puerto Rico, even though an inaccessible island with very poor electricity and a totally incompetent Mayor of San Juan),” he wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

It’s a frequent tactic of the president — elevate a widely perceived failure or mistake and defend it as a great triumph while attacking his critics. His detractors say it is shameless and sometimes comical gaslighting; supporters say he is just a master marketer who uses hyperbole and always shows strength.

“You just never give an inch or admit any mistake in public,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide describing Trump’s mind-set.

Trump faced withering criticism, even from supporters, for standing on a podium in Helsinki in July and cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin while seeming to question U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election and entertaining the idea of letting Russian law enforcement officials question American citizens.

But to hear Trump tell it these days, it was one of his finest hours.

“One of my best meetings ever was with Vladimir Putin,” he said earlier this month, before attacking the “fakers,” or his short-term for the “fake news media.”

This week, he has repeatedly brought up Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” — continuously calling attention to a portrayal of his White House as incompetent and veering toward a breakdown. Trump says the book is a “scam” and that his White House is a “smooth running machine.”

Aides say that Trump’s tendency to focus on and defend his perceived failures is fueled by a mix of potent factors. He obsesses over negative news coverage sometimes long after the topic has changed. He often marvels that he can make the cable news chyrons change. And he is constantly selling himself — regardless of who is in front of him and no matter the topic.

Sometimes, he is trying to preempt criticism that he knows is likely to revive itself, like before this week’s hurricane. And he tells senior aides that his supporters will believe his version of events.

Trump observers and critics said that the president’s refusal to admit mistakes and to go a step further and declare them smart moves has long been part of how he operates.

“One of his great strengths is that he lives in his own reality distortion field — there is this narrative going on all the time in his head about how successful he is, how great he is — one of the things that allows him to plow ahead after he makes mistakes,” said Timothy O’Brien, a longtime Trump biographer.

[aja_christopher]

If you have an example of Sanders being at the head of an agency that was that sort of an argument that recently?

Let's discuss it. If it exists, it should be condemned.

Why bother -- even if Harris turns out to be the better candidate overall and is the person that most Americans choose to represent them as the Democratic nominee in the general elections, past history shows that you still won't vote for her against the greater evil of the Republican party.

Which makes discussing these issues with you a complete waste of time, regardless.

Your idol Sanders literally TOLD you to vote for Hillary and you still didn't do it -- why should anyone here expect their arguments to matter to you when you don't even listen to the guy you routinely idolize.

[numberthirty]

Why bother -- even if Harris turns out to be the better candidate overall and is the person that most Americans choose to represent them as the Democratic nominee in the general elections, past history shows that you still won't vote for her against the greater evil of the Republican party.

Which makes discussing these issues with you a complete waste of time, regardless.

Your idol Sanders literally TOLD you to vote for Hillary and you still didn't do it -- why should anyone here expect their arguments to matter to you when you don't even listen to the guy you routinely idolize.

If you are going to try to compare the two, having an example where Sanders was actually in charge of the outfit that defended incredibly flawed policy would be a start.

Having been wrong about something that you could not be certain about? That's one thing.

Defending what her people did at the time they did? It's almost impossible to create a scenario where that action was anything like "Excusable".

[Tami]

Detention of Migrant Children Has Skyrocketed to Highest Levels Ever

Even though hundreds of children separated from their families after crossing the border have been released under court order, the overall number of detained migrant children has exploded to the highest ever recorded — a significant counternarrative to the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the number of undocumented families coming to the United States.

Population levels at federally contracted shelters for migrant children have quietly shot up more than fivefold since last summer, according to data obtained by The New York Times, reaching a total of 12,800 this month. There were 2,400 such children in custody in May 2017.

The huge increases, which have placed the federal shelter system near capacity, are due not to an influx of children entering the country, but a reduction in the number being released to live with families and other sponsors, the data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services suggests. Some of those who work in the migrant shelter network say the bottleneck is straining both the children and the system that cares for them.

Most of the children crossed the border alone, without their parents. Many are teenagers from Central America, and they are housed in a system of more than 100 shelters across the United States, with the highest concentration near the southwest border.

The new data was reported to members of Congress, who shared it with The Times. It shows that despite the Trump administration’s efforts to discourage Central American migrants, roughly the same number of children are crossing the border as in years past. The big difference, said those familiar with the shelter system, is that red tape and fear brought on by stricter immigration enforcement have discouraged relatives and family friends from coming forward to sponsor children.

Shelter capacities have hovered close to 90 percent since at least May, compared to about 30 percent a year ago. Any new surge in border crossings, which could happen at any time, could quickly overwhelm the system, operators say.

“The closer they get to 100 percent, the less ability they will have to address anything unforeseen,” said Mark Greenberg, who oversaw the care of migrant children for the Health and Human Services Department under President Barack Obama. “Even if there’s not a sudden influx, they will be running out of capacity soon unless something changes.”

The administration appeared to move to address that on Tuesday, when it announced that it will triple the size of a temporary “tent city” in Tornillo, Tex., to house up to 3,800 children through the end of the year. Immigrant advocates and members of Congress reacted to the news with distress, because conditions are comparatively harsh in such large overflow facilities, compared with traditional shelters.

Facilities like the one in Tornillo are also more expensive to operate, according to Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the shelter program. She said such facilities cost about $750 per child per day, or three times the amount of a typical shelter.

[Tami]

Speaking of which....

Document shows DHS transferring $29M from Coast Guard to ICE

It's not just FEMA: ICE quietly got an extra $200 million

The Trump administration this summer quietly redirected $200 million from all over the Department of Homeland Security to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, despite repeated congressional warnings of ICE's "lack of fiscal discipline" and "unsustainable" spending.

The Department of Homeland Security asked for the money, according to a document made public this week by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley. Of the $200 million, the document says $93 million will go to immigrant detention, a 3% budget increase that will fund capacity for an additional 2,300 detainees; and $107 million for "transportation and removal," or deportations, a 29% budget increase.

[aja_christopher]

If you are going to try to compare the two, having an example where Sanders was actually in charge of the outfit that defended incredibly flawed policy would be a start.

Nice dodge.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Speaking of which....

Document shows DHS transferring $29M from Coast Guard to ICE

It's not just FEMA: ICE quietly got an extra $200 million

If something like that "quietly" happened while Obama was in office, the howls of outrage from Republicans could be heard on the International Space Station. But with Trump running the show? Crickets.

[numberthirty]

Nice dodge.

Making an attempt at framing it that way doesn't change the fact that an Attorney General absolutely is at the top of the agency that tried to make a case for there being a case for prison labor if it makes economic sense. Certainly far enough up the chain of command in that agency to create a climate where folks knew that the way they were going to do things would never involve that sort of argument.

Which is just one time that agency was on the wrong side of this sort of thing.

[aja_christopher]

Making an attempt at framing it that way doesn't change the fact that an Attorney General absolutely is at the top of the agency that tried to make a case for there being a case for prison labor if it makes economic sense. Certainly far enough up the chain of command in that agency to create a climate where folks knew that the way they were going to do things would never involve that sort of argument.

Ok.

10 chars

[Tendrin]

I'm just amused by the staggering hypocrisy on display by 30.

[aja_christopher]

I'm just amused by the staggering hypocrisy on display by 30.

Why -- it's like being surprised that Trump is Trump.

"When people show you who they are -- believe them."

[Tendrin]

Why -- it's like being surprised that Trump is Trump.

"When people show you who they are -- believe them."

Like, the dude spent years, years! castigating Clinton for having talked about superpredators, while Bernie actually was involved in the legislation and voted for it -- but SUPER PREDATORS, MAN! But now that we're talking about Harris, Bernie's past totally is irrelevant and only recent things matter.