Day: June 5, 2019

Closing Thought–05Jun19

Recently a story was reported about the children arrested and held on the border…..some were left in vans for hours on end before processing….

Under the blistering Texas sun last July, 37 migrant children boarded vans for what was supposed to be a 30-minute ride. At the end of the road from Harlingen to Los Fresnos lay the promise of hugs, kisses and long overdue reunification with their parents, from whom they were taken when the Trump administration began systematically separating migrant families who crossed the border illegally.

But when the children, all between 5 and 12 years old, arrived at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s adults-only Port Isabel Detention Center, rather than seeing their parents, they saw a parking lot full of vans just like theirs, with children from other facilities who, just like them, were waiting to be processed and reunified with their parents.

It was 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 15, 2018.

Not until 39 hours later — after two nights in a van — did the last child step out of a van to be reunited. Most spent at least 23 hours in the vehicles.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/botched-family-reunifications-left-migrant-children-waiting-vans-overnight-n1013336

Seriously?

Where is the outrage?

Even a dog left in a hot van gets move sympathy that children…..this is not a country that I recognize any more…..these are children and Americans seem to not care…..not people I want to associate with on a daily basis.

But wait!  There is more!

For the past year and a half, Dr. Eric Russell has been traveling from Houston to McAllen, Texas, every three months or so to volunteer at the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center, a first stop for many asylum-seeking migrants who’ve been released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Rio Grande Valley.

During his most recent visit to the clinic in April, when he saw more than 150 migrants, he noted a troubling new trend: a number of people reported that their medication had been taken from them by U.S. border officials.

https://news.yahoo.com/border-patrol-is-confiscating-migrant-kids-medicine-us-doctors-say-225354608.html

Where are the human rights crusaders?

There are laws that protect animals from this torture….but not children?

This is a low point…it is pathetic….and anyone that defends this is as pathetic as the policy.

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In The Year Of 2050

Should be a song from the 70s but this case it is some interesting news…..the 2050 is an interesting year. It is the year that we can have a clean environment if we enact certain laws to help climate change….it is the year that the economy will come to be more equable…..if only certain laws are put into place….in other words 2050 is a magical year for the planet…..if only certain laws take effect.

A harrowing scenario analysis of how human civilization might collapse in coming decades due to climate change has been endorsed by a former Australian defense chief and senior royal navy commander.

The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, a think-tank in Melbourne, Australia, describes climate change as “a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization” and sets out a plausible scenario of where business-as-usual could lead over the next 30 years.

The paper argues that the potentially “extremely serious outcomes” of climate-related security threats are often far more probable than conventionally assumed, but almost impossible to quantify because they “fall outside the human experience of the last thousand years.”

On our current trajectory, the report warns, “planetary and human systems [are] reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order.”

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/597kpd/new-report-suggests-high-likelihood-of-human-civilization-coming-to-an-end-in-2050

Further Reading: 

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/04/existential-risk-climate-crisis-could-lead-civilizational-collapse-2050-warns-report

Without good solid plan then I suggest that no one make long term plans after 2050.

Was that BLEAK enough for you?

But not to worry….the uber Centrist Biden has a plan……

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is pitching a $5 trillion-plus climate proposal that he says would lead the US to net zero emissions of carbon pollution by 2050, the AP reports. Biden’s plan calls for $1.7 trillion in federal spending over 10 years, with the rest of the investments coming from the private sector. Biden, who discusses the plan in a video posted online, proposes covering the taxpayer costs by repealing the corporate tax cuts that President Trump signed in 2017, while eliminating existing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. “Science tells us that how we act or fail to act in the next 12 years will determine the very livability of our planet,” Biden said in a statement ahead of the plan’s unveiling Tuesday. “That’s why I’m calling for a clean energy revolution to confront this crisis and do what America does best—solve big problems with big ideas.”

Yeah…the “Private Sector” has been our partner for decades….and how has that worked out for the climate?

So much crap to gain some support from the environmentalists…..nothing about it is gonna work.  PERIOD!

Dystopia

This is a word that is used liberally (small “L”) to describe the politics in the US these days……Dystopia.

A political dysfunction of “Brave New World” and a TV series “Dystopia”…but is it possible that it is something close to reality?

Can the United States continue to shape international politics as it has done for the past 70 years, or is the era of US dominance coming to an end? Most attempts to answer this question focus on America’s relative power – that is, the balance of material capabilities between the US and its geopolitical competitors. However, today the most pressing checks on US leadership come not from foreign competitors, but rather from America’s increasingly dysfunctional domestic politics.

America is suffering from a shortage of functional or ‘usable power.’ While relative power as measured by its military arsenal vis-à-vis those of its rivals has held steady, the domestic political ability of US presidents to turn the country’s tremendous power and wealth into international influence is declining. This has been the case for some time now. America’s deficit of usable power did not begin with Donald Trump, but it has grown measurably on his watch as president.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/will-dysfunctional-politics-finally-end-american-century#

There is so much that is going wrong in this country…..but can all this partisan b/sh*t bring about the end of the republic?

The American republic could die, just like Rome.

Wavering for some time on the verge of becoming a complete oligarchy, America is on the verge of flipping from a democratic republic to a strongman or autocratic form of government, something that’s happened to dozens of democracies in the past few decades, but never before here. It’s possible we won’t recover from it.

The death of a republic is different from the death of a nation; Rome was a nation for nearly 2,000 years, but its period of being a republic was only around 300 years long. For the rest, it was a brutal empire with a small but wealthy and corrupt ruling class and a thin patina of democracy-for-show.

Trump is openly defying the norms and laws of our republic, while calling for the imprisonment of both his political enemies and members of the very law enforcement agencies that might hold him to account. And he’s only able to do it because billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, with Fox News, and the billionaires Republicans depend on to fund their re-elections are providing him with cover.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/21/how-republics-die
 
This republic is under attack….and many Americans could care less as long as their fav celebrity wins the election…..
 
If that is your voting style…then I thank you for helping destroy our republic…l.and I look forward to the crappy country this style will bring…if it has not already hit rock bottom.
 
This next election will show us just how much damage cult worshiping can do to this country….so far it has been pathetic.

Troops Out Of Iraq?

AS an opponent of war I want our weary troops out of Iraq….but of course I am pretty much alone since the government, M-IC and the media will do whatever it takes to see that our troops remain…..

Do not get me wrong it there was a good reason for the troops to be there then I would reconsider my stand….but I do not see that good reason.

Besides the media and the M-IC would go batcrap crazy at the thought of our troops coming home…….does anyone remember 2008…Obama is president and troops were being pulled out…..and the M-IC turned to the media to help the GOP fight to keep the troops in country…..most of their stuff was lies….but I expect that from the GOP…..but I wrote about in 2008……https://lobotero.com/2008/06/15/iraq-may-ask-us-to-leave/

I know who care about something that was a mere blip on the geopolitical radar?

Well the Iraqis may be in the process of throwing the US out of the country……

Iraq has spent the better share of the last 16 years under US military occupation. Despite this, time and again US-Iraqi relations have come to be defined by US hostility toward neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s desire to not get mixed up in that.

So while Iraq’s parliament was already bristling under Pentagon talk of staying in Iraq, and Trump saying that the US was staying in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran,” the recent escalation of US rhetoric about a war against Iran has sparked action within parliament.

It has been said for awhile that Iraq will be voting on a bill that would aim to expel all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, and singles out US troops in particular as needing to leave. The bill is endorsed by Iraq’s top two Shi’ite blocs, and is expected to pass fairly easily. Exact timing of the vote is unclear, but it is expected to be sooner rather than later.

What happens then is the real question. Iraq’s parliament is already being spun as “pro-Iran factions,” and it’s been a long time since US officials, Pentagon or otherwise, gave any indication that they thought staying in Iraq was up to the Iraqi government.

So while the Iraqi Prime Minister is warning the US that they can’t use Iraq to launch a war on Iran, the US is browbeating Iraq over its government-aligned Shi’ite militias, and doing everything they can to try to portray that Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government as effectively in league with the Iranians, and subsequently a threat to US interests. No matter what happens, it seems certain US-Iraqi ties will suffer for it.

(antiwar.com)

Deja vu all over again!

How will the M-IC and media spin this to have it overturned?

If it happens there will be a massive attempt to change the narrative.