Virginia Governor recalls helicopter, soldiers from the U.S. – Mexican border

MoonHowler

WTRV.com

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has ordered the recall of four Virginia National Guard Soldiers and one helicopter from the U.S. – Mexico border.

“Virginia benefits from the important work of securing our border and we have a responsibility to contribute to that mission. However, we also have a responsibility to stand up to policies or actions that run afoul of the values that define us as Americans,” Governor Northam said in a statement. “Today I spoke with the Adjutant General of the Virginia National Guard and ordered him to withdraw four soldiers and one helicopter from Arizona until the federal government ends its enforcement of a zero-tolerance policy that separates children from their parents.”

The governor, a Democrat, noted when Virginia deployed the soldiers, he expected they would “play a role in preventing criminals, drug runners and other threats to our security from crossing into the United States.”

He added he did not expect they would be “supporting a policy of arresting families and separating children from their parents.”

“We are ready to return and contribute to the real work of keeping our nation safe,” the governor continued. “But as long as the Trump administration continues to enforce this inhumane policy, Virginia will not devote any resource to border enforcement actions that could actively or tacitly support it.”

President Trump has accused Democrats of wanting migrants to “infest our country.”

Infestation by human beings?  What person says something like that?

Good for Governor Northam for taking a strong stand on this violation of basic human rights.  More governors need to step up to the plate and do the right thing.  Our current border issues are a refugee crisis.

Trump Administration: Ultimate child abuse

MoonHowler

What is wrong with our country?  Why are we as a nation permitting this immoral behavior?  We don’t put children in cages.  We don’t tear children away from their families.  This Trump administration should hang its head in shame, then be booted out of office.

I thought the Republican party was pro-family values? Pro-life? Pro-decency?

This policy is none of the above.  I call on everyone who claims to be a Republican to put a stop to this carnage.

We have had this discussion in Prince William County before.  It was ugly.  It also was immoral.  History will not be kind to those who participated. History will not be kind to whose who were silent.

~~The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.~~

Immigration debate raises its ugly head, again

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

President Trump on Wednesday endorsed a new bill in the Senate aimed at slashing legal immigration levels in half over a decade, a potentially profound change to policies that have been in place for more than half a century.

Trump appeared with Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and David Perdue (Ga.) at the White House to unveil a modified version of a billthe senators first introduced in February to create a “merit-based” immigration system that would put a greater emphasis on the job skills of foreigners over their ties to family in the United States.

The legislation seeks to reduce the annual distribution of green cards awarding permanent legal residence to just over 500,000 from more than 1 million. Trump promised on the campaign trail to take a harder line on immigration, arguing that the growth in new arrivals had harmed job opportunities for American workers.

“Among those who have been hit hardest in recent years are immigrants and minority workers competing for jobs against brand-new arrivals,” said Trump, flanked by the senators in the Roosevelt Room. “It has not been fair to our people, our citizens and our workers.”

 

I wish I had a nickel for every time I head people say they weren’t against immigration, just illegal immigration.  The recently proposed bill regarding immigration shows that simply is not true.

One of the most draconian aspects of the bill is that  it limits the number of legal immigrants.  If people cannot immigrate legally they will do so illegally.

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Lies, more lies and offensiveness

MoonHowler

Huffingtonpost.com:

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump told Capitol Hill leaders Monday evening that he lost the popular vote because 3 million to 5 million “illegals” voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to three sources in both parties familiar with the meeting.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote in November’s election because of voter fraud. There is no evidence of this, and none that millions of undocumented immigrants voted for Clinton. It’s a fixation for Trump, who won the election because of Electoral College votes, but has had trouble accepting that Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million.

“I don’t think he was joking,” said one person familiar with what happened in the meeting. “He spent 10 minutes on his win and said he won the popular vote, except 3 to 5 million illegals voted for” Clinton.

Another source confirmed Trump used the word “illegals,” considered an offensive term for undocumented immigrants.

First off, the term “illegals” is just offensive.  The President of the United States should not be using offensive language about any one.

Secondly, he didn’t win the popular vote because he got 2.8 million votes fewer than Hillary Clinton.  Yet he won.  Isn’t that enough?  Must he whine over the popular vote while he sits in the White House?  What kind of ingrate does that?

Thirdly, he lied.  Yes, he lied.  I don’t feel like making nice and calling it a falsehood.  He has no proof or even hint or suggestion that illegal immigrants voted.   The lying needs to stop and he will be held accountable for his lies.  The continual, verifiable lies are obvious and undeniable.  He doesn’t even care that we know he lies.  I suppose in his mind, he excuses it because of the megalomania personality.

 

Several pastors support Orlando execution

MoonHowler

 

Washingtonpost.com:

Following the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, a Baptist preacher stood at his pulpit Sunday night in Northern California and delivered an impassioned sermon praising the brutal massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida.

Pastor Roger Jimenez from Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento told his congregation that Christians “shouldn’t be mourning the death of 50 sodomites.”

“People say, like: Well, aren’t you sad that 50 sodomites died?” Jimenez said, referencing the initial death toll in Orlando, which authorities later clarified included 49 victims plus the gunman. “Here’s the problem with that. It’s like the equivalent of asking me — what if you asked me: Hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?’

“Um, no, I think that’s great. I think that helps society. You know, I think Orlando, Fla., is a little safer tonight.”

He added: “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!”

These clowns obviously do not represent Christianity any more than the Orlando shooter represents Islam.  Encouraging and supporting this heinous act is getting darn close to what I would call Christian terrorism.

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Denmark: So much for decency

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

COPENHAGEN — Lise Ramslog was out for a barefoot amble on the warm day last September that Europe’s refugee crisis came to her remote village in southern Denmark.

The 70-year-old grandmother had planned a simple stroll. What she found in her ­quiet, coastal community were hundreds of exhausted asylum seekers who had arrived on the ferry from Germany only to be stranded without access to public transportation. Some had begun to walk along the highway in desperation.

Ramslog decided on the spot that she would help: She ended up giving two young couples, a small child and a newborn baby a 120-mile ride in her cramped sedan to their destination in Sweden. “When we crossed the border, they rejoiced and cried,” she recalled.

In another context, Ramslog might be known as a good Samaritan.

But the Danish government has a different term for her: convicted human smuggler.

Good grief. Fined for being a decent human being. Had the Danish people been warned?  During WWII, the Danes were amongst the most humane people in the world.  They saved hundreds of Jews.  What has become of the humanitarian state?  Denmark also shielded and assisted those escaping the Iron Curtain.

All of Europe seems to have gone heavy handed in discouraging immigrants, mostly asylum seekers.

Is it fear?  Is it financial?  Or could it be that there were just too many needy people?

The link to the post shows the draconian measures that many European countries are taking to discourage refugees.  It’s a new world but not necessarily brave.

 

About those sanctuary charges….PWC is not a “sanctuary county”

MoonHowler

howl more whine less

Funniest thing. Two local bloggers go berserk making all sorts of charges about Prince William County becoming a sanctuary city. they obviously need to spend more time howling and less time whining and making up crap.

Those of us who have been around a while and who were involved with immigration issue remember all too well what happened.  We knew it wasn’t true.  Our police department has always cooperated with I.C.E.

That didn’t stop the local bloggers. One them  absolutely knew better. He wanted to send the immigrants back with love.  In fact, he led the charge to send them out and drive them out.  (I would sure hate to see “hate”.) The other one just wanted to take a few more pokes at Melissa Peacor and Chief Hudson. There might have even been a little gouge or two directed at Corey Stewart, just to poke the bear.

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Trump proposal: Ban all Muslims from entering the US

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump called Monday for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the United States, barring followers of the world’s fastest-growing religion because he considers the faith rooted in hatred and violence.

The proposal — which was quickly denounced by other candidates from both parties — marks the latest escalation of the virulent anti-Muslim and ­anti-immigrant rhetoric that has fueled his unlikely candidacy. It also came less than 24 hours after President Obama urged tolerance in an Oval Office address, saying the fight against terrorists should not “be defined as a war between America and Islam.”

But at a rally Monday night in South Carolina, Trump received a boisterous standing ovation as he shared the idea, telling the crowd that a ban is “common sense” and that his Muslim friends agree with him.

“We have no choice,” he said to cheers. “We have no choice. We have no choice.”

I suppose the fact that this move would be illegal and unconstitutional is OK with Trump supporters?

It’s actually frightening that his campaign has gotten as far as it has gotten.  He plays on fears and proposes what the ignorant want to hear, not what is actually possible.

The mainstream Republicans had better decide what they are going to do about him.  Can they disavow his rhetoric?  Can they distance themselves?  Can they simply tell him he can’t be a Republican?

How does Trump propose to tell if people are Muslim?  How would they be marked?  What would he do about American citizen Muslims who wanted to return home from visiting overseas?  What about American service personnel who just happened to be Muslim?

Do people have any idea how un-American  this kind of talk sounds?  No wonder some of them hate us.

 

The Refugee situation: Changes in Attitude…Changes in Lattitude

MoonHowler

 

1938 refugees

Washingtonpost.com:

 

The results of the poll illustrated above by the useful Twitter account @HistOpinion were published in the pages of Fortune magazine in July 1938. Fewer than 5 percent of Americans surveyed at the time believed that the United States should raise its immigration quotas or encourage political refugees fleeing fascist states in Europe — the vast majority of whom were Jewish — to voyage across the Atlantic. Two-thirds of the respondents agreed with the proposition that “we should try to keep them out.”

To be sure, the United States was emerging from the Great Depression, hardly a climate in which ordinary folks would welcome immigrants and economic competition. The events of Kristallnacht — a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in areas controlled by the Nazis — had yet to take place. And the poll’s use of the term “political refugees” could have conjured in the minds of the American public images of communists, anarchists and other perceived ideological threats.

But look at the next chart, also tweeted by @HistOpinion. Two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup’s American Institute of Public Opinion in January 1939 — well after the events of Kristallnacht — said they would not take in 10,000 German Jewish refugee children.

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Mexico army crosses the border–ten years ago

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

Stephen R. Kelly, a former U.S. diplomat who served in Mexico from 2004 to 2006, teaches at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

In a scene that would have given Donald Trump heart palpitations, 200 flag-waving Mexican troops breached the U.S. border outside Laredo, Tex., 10 years ago and advanced unopposed up Interstate 35 to San Antonio.

It was the first time a Mexican army had marched on San Antonio since 1836 when Gen. Santa Ana massacred besieged Texas independence fighters at the Alamo.

This time, however, the Mexican soldiers were on a relief mission to feed tens of thousands of homeless and hungry Americans displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Setting up camp at a former Air Force base outside San Antonio, they distributed potable water, medical supplies and 7,000 hot meals a day for the next three weeks.

If this doesn’t sound like the Mexico you’ve been hearing about lately — the one that has been ripping America off, the one that sends rapists and criminals across the border — you might want to consider this little-known gesture of humanity from our abused southern neighbor as you think about Katrina 10 years later.

Perhaps Donald Trump wants to include this act of human kindness in his diatribe against Mexicans.

Further reading

 

European immigration problems approach critical mass

MoonHowler

refugees

European immigration problems make ours look like a walk in the park.  According to the Washington Post:

BRUSSELS — Thousands of refugees, most fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been snaking northward through the Balkans in recent days, confronting a Europe woefully unprepared to deal with them at every step.

Most endured a perilous crossing to Greece aboard rafts and boats, some barely fit to sail. They traversed Greece, a nation paralyzed by economic crisis and too poor to handle a flow of people that in July hit a record high. At the border with Macedonia late last week, they trudged through a wall of riot police, who fought them back with tear gas before relenting. Now, the asylum-seekers, thousands a day, are racing into Hungary, which is rushing to complete a barbed-wire border fence by the end of the month to force them to seek other routes.

It is a long parade of misery unparalleled in Europe in recent years. But the continent has so far failed to agree how to respond. Amid a refugee crisis that by some measures is the worst since World War II, individual nations are being left to improvise their own measures. In Hungary, that is taking the form of 108 miles of barbed wire and fencing.

The crisis is shaking fundamental tenets of European life, including the principle of free movement between most of the nations of the European Union. It is fueling a surge of anti-migrant sentiment in the countries that are housing the bulk of the asylum-seekers, Germany and Sweden. And it is straining the weakest countries, such as Greece, that are on migration’s front lines.

“Unless we do something, we will become a lifeboat sinking under the weight of people holding on to it and drowning everybody, both those seeking help and those offering help,” said Janos Lazar, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, at a ceremony last week celebrating the founding of Hungary.

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Birth right citizenship in question?

MoonHowler

we the people

The citizenship clause of the 14th amendment to the Constitution states:

 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

 

This amendment was adopted on July 9, 1868.   The amendment is nearly 150 years old.  However, when I turn on my TV it seems that every GOP candidate is calling “birthright citizenship” into question.

The only way I know to “undo” an amendment is to repeal it.  That process is lengthy and requires two-thirds approval of both houses of Congress or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures.   That’s not likely to happen.

What are these politicians thinking?  The Latino vote is about 11% of the electorate.  That’s a pretty big chunk.  Using words like “illegals” and “anchor babies” does nothing but demean a certain portion of the population.  The use of those terms certainly isn’t going to bring in any votes.

Deporting everyone who is undocumented might be a good election slogan but it is impossible.  What would these politicians do?  Use the military to round up 11` million people?  There would be caravans of thousands of buses.  The “Trail of Tears” would look like a Sunday school picnic.”

The GOP candidates needs to shut up about immigration and tend to matters that they can actually accomplish.  Right now their rhetoric is simply bullshit and bluster.

14th

Sheriff Joe, rejected again…Trump on the rise

MoonHowler

Washingtonpost.com:

On Friday, in Arpaio v. Obama, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio’s attempt to challenge the Obama administration’s immigration initiatives in federal court.  According to the court, Sheriff Arpaio lacks standing to challenge the measures. Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote the opinion for the court, joined by Judge Sri Srinivasan.  Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment.

The introduction to Judge Pillard’s opinion provides a nice summary of the court’s analysis.  It also seems to accept the Obama administration’s characterization of its immigration reforms as an exercise of enforcement discretion, suggesting that this panel would have rejected Sheriff Arpaio’s claims on the merits.

 

The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security facing what he perceives to be enormous practical obstacles to removing from the United States the eleven million people unlawfully present here, has sought to set enforcement priorities. He accordingly directed relevant agencies temporarily to defer low-priority removals of non-dangerous individuals so that the agencies can focus their resources on removing dangerous criminals and strengthening security at the border. People whose removal has been deferred are generally eligible to apply for authorization to work, and to reside in the United States for up to three years.

The opinion is long and interested readers should read the entire editorial in the Washington Post.  However, it basically says that Sheriff Joe doesn’t have standing.  Period.

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Republicans cringe as Donald Trump continues to mouth flash

MoonHowler

The head of the Republican National Committee, responding to demands from increasingly worried party leaders, spent nearly an hour Wednesday on the phone with Donald Trump, urging the presidential candidate to tone down his inflammatory comments about immigration that have infuriated a key election constituency.

The call from Chairman Reince Priebus, described by donors and consultants briefed on the conversation and confirmed by the RNC, underscores the extent to which Trump has gone from an embarrassment to a cause for serious alarm among top Republicans in Washington and nationwide.

 

But there is little they can do about the mogul and reality-television star, who draws sustenance from controversy and attention. And some fear that, with assistance from Democrats, Trump could become the face of the GOP.

Rather than backing down from his comments about illegal immigrants — whom he characterized as rapists and killers, among other things — Trump has amplified his remarks at every opportunity, including in a round of interviews Wednesday.

He insisted to NBC News that he has “nothing to apologize for” in his repeated remarks about Mexicans. But he also predicted that, if he secures the GOP nomination, “I’ll win the Latino vote.”

So the Dump Trump and Trump Trump crowd grows even larger.  What an embarrassment.  Trump is not only an embarrassment about immigration–he is an all-around embarrassment on pretty much all topics.  He is an egotist and a blow-hard.  He is, above all, un-presidential.

Meanwhile, the more interviews Trump gives, the more Republicans cringe.  Unless Trump is contained, the Republicans are pretty much guaranteeing that they won’t retake the White House for decades, if ever.  Isn’t there a way that political parties can filter out people who are simply unsuitable to run under their banner?

US Appeals Court rules against Obama immigration plan

MoonHowler

New York Times email:

A federal appeals court on Tuesday denied the Obama administration’s request to lift a hold on the president’s executive actions on immigration, which would have granted protection from deportation as well as work permits to millions of immigrants in the country illegally.

Two of three judges on a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, left in place an injunction by a federal district judge in Brownsville, Tex. The ruling comes in a lawsuit by 26 states against actions President Obama took in November. Many of the initiatives were scheduled to take effect this month.

The appeals court found that Texas and the other states did have sufficient legal grounds to bring the lawsuit and that the administration had not shown it would be harmed if the injunction remained in the place and the programs were further delayed.

I am sorry that the Court ruled against the President on this one.  We have illegal immigrants living in this country who pay their taxes and are productive members of society.  Leave them alone.

The nation should be spending its limited resources on deporting criminals.  There are plenty of those to go after.  Let’s leave decent people alone.

On the other hand, all the immigrants can’t be deported.  They will have children and those children will vote against those who tried to make life more difficult for their families.  I guess that is what Republicans are afraid of.