Justice Dept. announces new family detention policy for illegal immigrants

The administration announced a new policy Friday to detain nearly all illegal immigrant families nabbed at the border, offering the latest bold ante in an ongoing battle over President Trump’s attempt to stop a new surge of migration.

The policy will be controversial not only with congressional Democrats and immigrant-rights activists, but also with a federal judge who had ordered that children could be held no longer than 20 days in immigration detention.

Government lawyers, though, said yet another judge’s ruling earlier this week making most family separations illegal supersedes the 20-day rule and other restrictions, and gives the government the ability to hold families together until their immigration cases are completed.

“The government will not separate families but detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry,” the Justice Department said in a filing with Judge Dolly M. Gee.

The arguments come as lower courts are increasingly asserting control of the immigration system — leaving the executive branch struggling to carry out its own policies amid potentially competing rulings and judges working at cross purposes.

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If the (Brown) Shirt Fits...

The hateful vitriol of the American Left is reminiscent of a hateful vitriolic 20th century leader.

“The art of leadership consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.”

“F—k Trump!” —Robert De Niro

“Mr. President, f—k you!” —Caitlin Marriott, an intern for Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH). Marriott was suspended, but will continue working through August.

“You’re the presi-dunce but you’re turning into a real prick-tator. … In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c—k holster.” —Stephen Colbert

“Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.”

“It’s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress Wednesday was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflicted.” —former CBS news anchor Scott Pelley, following the attempted assassination of Rep. Steve Scalise and other Republicans by Bernie Sanders volunteer James Hodgkinson during practice for the annual congressional baseball game

“If you see anybody from [Trump’s] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd! And you push back on them! And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!” —Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)

“We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles. … We should hack the system get the address of the ICE agents the CPB agents and surround their homes in protest. We should find out what schools their children go to and surround their schools in protest.” —Peter Fonda

“Around two dozen threat reports were issued in the past few days, primarily against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. … Each of these reports is generally related to a specific online threat. All employees are personally contacted by DHS security if they are the target of a violent threat. … In one example, a senior DHS official living in the Washington, DC, area found a burnt and decapitated animal on his front porch” —ABC Radio

“If you see these people in public, you should remind them that they shouldn’t have peace.” —DOJ paralegal Allison Hrabar, who joined the mob of fellow Democratic Socialists of America that surrounded Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen while she dined at a Mexican restaurant

“I would have done the same thing again,” stated Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen restaurant who asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. Wilkinson reportedly organized a mob to follow Sanders and her family to another restaurant and continue berating them. CNN’s Symone Sanders endorsed the actions, insisting people “calling for civility need to check their privilege.”

“The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.”

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up."—Hillary Clinton

"I always said about the Trump people, there’s two things they hate: being called a racist, and black people.” —Bill Maher

“We can no longer say Trump’s the bad guy. If you vote for Trump, you’re the bad guy. If you vote for Trump, you are ripping children from parents’ arms. … If you vote for Trump, then you, the voter — you, not Donald Trump — are standing at the border, like Nazis, going ‘you here, you here.’” —former CNBC talk show host Donny Deutsch

“[Trump supporters] cannot say, ‘Oh, I’m just supporting him because he’s giving them hell in Washington, DC. No, he’s been openly racist just like we said back in December of 2015 — openly racist. If you support him, then you’re supporting that, and you are that. It’s that simple.” —MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough

“Anybody who enables, anybody who votes for and supports a racist is a racist. You are culpable, white America, I’m sorry.” —Michael Moore

“Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS [pieces of s—t] that think he will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing.” —an unidentified FBI employee, according to the inspector general’s report

“Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support.” —FBI agent Peter Strzok

“It is not truth that matters, but victory.”

“In late May, before the uproar over the Trump administration’s family separations policy had reached fever pitch, several prominent journalists and activists tweeted disturbing photos published in the Arizona Republic from a facility that allegedly housed minors who had been wrenched from their parents. The pictures showed children, covered only in a thin layer of aluminum foil, sleeping in cages. … But there was one problem. The photos, it turned out, were from 2014, during the Obama administration’s second term.” —NY Magazine

“The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she [was] taken from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.” —correction issued by Time magazine following its cover photo of Trump and a crying child. Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal nonetheless insisted the misrepresentation “capture the stakes of this moment.” Later it was learned the mother had been previously deported in 2013.

“Now look, I know we’re not Nazi Germany. But there is a commonality there and a fear on my part that we have standards we have to live up to.” —former CIA Director Michael Hayden, defending his tweet containing a picture of Auschwitz with the caption “other governments have separated mothers and children”

“I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the almighty creator

"God is on OUR side!” —Maxine Waters

“If you win you need not have to explain. … If you lose, you should not be there to explain.”

“Do you think that being asked to leave a restaurant, or having your meal interrupted, or being called by the public is bad? My fascism-enabling friends, this is only the beginning.” —Splinter columnist Hamilton Nolan, who further insists that “when you aggressively f—k with people’s lives, you should not be surprised when they decide to f—k with yours.”

“I’m not a Republican and I don’t vote. But because I’ve been labeled as a Trump supporter … I’ve stopped appearing in public … because of the physical danger. … And I’m feeling like the best reason for Republicans to vote is they’re coming for you next. And they’re not hiding it. They’re coming for Trump right now, but they’re making it pretty clear they’re coming for Trump supporters next.” —Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.” —Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller

Final note: All of the italicized quotes in this column come from the same source: Adolf Hitler.

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Neoliberalism: No regrets,/b>

Dr. Madsen Pirie writes from Britain:

Two years ago, in 2016, Prof Colin Talbot, Professor of Government at the University of Manchester, claimed that the term “Neoliberalism” was devoid of meaning. He was attacked by a ‘progressive’ student who demanded that he be disciplined by the university authorities. Talbot claimed that no-one admitted to being a neoliberal, and that it was now simply an all-purpose insult.

Cambridge took a lead with its debate in mid-June of 2018 on the motion, “This House Regrets Neoliberalism.” The Cambridge Union took the line that the term does in fact have meaning, and that it is something one can be for or against. The Adam Smith Institute is for it. Asked to speak at the end of a 2015 term-long seminar at Brighton University, I chose the title, “Looking at the World Through Neoliberal Eyes,” and subsequently had a T-shirt custom-made reading “Neoliberal and proud of It.”

The ASI’s executive director at the time, Sam Bowman, then published in 2016 an essay about what it meant to be a neoliberal. The ASI rebranded itself as “a neoliberal, free market think tank.” Far from regretting neoliberalism, the institute took pride in it, indulging in it, and trumpeting its virtues and achievements, and explained why it did so at every possible opportunity.

I am often asked at schools about the causes of poverty, and I reply that there are none. Unfortunately, poverty has been the condition of humankind for most of its 3 million-year existence. To ask its causes is like asking the causes of cold in the universe. It is the absence of heat or energy. Similarly, poverty is the absence of wealth. Wealth is the unusual condition that requires explanation. Poverty is what happens when there is no wealth, none of that unusual condition. It is wealth that requires explanation. I do not, of course, mean that poor people are poor because they do nothing. I mean they are poor because of the absence of that unusual condition, the one we should study, understand, and try to replicate as widely as possible.

A fundamental cause of wealth is the use of resources for investment instead of consumption. It is the deferment of present consumption in order to achieve future gain, the use of resources as capital. This is what financed the Industrial Revolution – the best thing that has ever happened to humanity. The addition of free markets and free trade ensured that the wealth created by the Industrial Revolution increased the living standards and the life chances of ordinary people. It led to cheaper food, medical advances, and it paid for such things as sanitation and education. It lifted humankind above subsistence and starvation, and onto that upward road that we have been climbing ever since.

This year marks an anniversary. In 1978 there came Star Wars, three popes, democracy in Spain, and the Sex pistols. But the most significant event of 40 years ago passed without notice at the time. In the village of Xiaogang in China, 18 farmers met at night in secret to sign a pact that divided the village’s collective land between them, allowing each family to keep a share of the proceeds they generated. They knew how risky this was, going against the ruling socialist ideology, and added a clause pledging to raise and educate the children of any exposed and executed. Their first harvest yielded more than the previous 5 years added together, and they were exposed by neighbouring villages.

Under Mao Zedong they would undoubtedly have been executed, but the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping was consolidating his power. He ordered that the experiment of the villagers be studied, and then replicated across China. So began the modernization of China. The approach was copied in India and other countries, and marked the beginning of the neoliberal hegemony.

Those who praise China’s “economic progress since 1949” are glibly glossing over the great socialist famines that killed 60 million people from starvation. The progress dates from 1978, not 1949, and it was the brave farmers of Xiaogang who led the way. It was not socialism but its abandonment, and the spread of neoliberal policies that paved the way to success.

Is this something we should regret? Not at all.

2 billion people were lifted out of subsistence and starvation

The average incomes of the world’s poor doubled in real terms
Life expectancy doubled

Deaths in childbirth and infancy became a fraction of what they had been

Access to sufficient food, healthcare and education reached unprecedented levels

Did it increase inequality? Yes, it did within countries. This always happens when countries embark on that upward road to growth and prosperity. Inequality increases at first, then levels off and subsequently declines. But inequality decreased between countries as poor countries vied to join the ranks of richer ones.

However, neoliberals think that absolute command of resources matters more. Access to enough food, healthcare and education is more important than the gap between rich and poor. Will there be food on the table on Friday? Do the children have a safe place to sleep? Can our parents get though winter? These things matter more than how far ahead rich people might be. Neoliberalism brings the greatest help to those who need it most – those on the bottom rung of society.

Should we regret what it has achieved? Absolutely not. We can be justly proud that we have discovered a formula that uplifts the common lot of humanity. Its achievements cannot be ignored, because they are real-world facts, not some fancy theory of what might happen. They did happen. Is neoliberalism the last word in economic progress? Probably not. It is essentially empirical. If something better comes along, it might well replace it.

But that is no reason to regret what it has achieved. It is the best system we have yet found to bring decent lives to ordinary people around the world. We should no more regret it than we should regret the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the Industrial Revolution.

We carried the torch for a time and we let its blaze light up the world. We should honour it and exult in its achievements, and reject emphatically any idea that we should regret it.

SOURCE 

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Leftmedia: Trump Caused Newspaper Attack,/b>

The murderer was motived by his own personal animosity. It had nothing to do with Trump

Five journalists who worked at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, were murdered Thursday when an individual with a longstanding grudge against the newspaper blasted his way into the building seeking revenge for a lost 2015 defamation lawsuit he had leveled against the paper. It was personal animus against that specific newspaper, not some generalized anti-media sentiments. Nevertheless, as news of the attack quickly spread across the country, once again leftists politicized the atrocity by blaming President Donald Trump.

The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman wrote, “What happened today is sickening. This alleged gunman appears to have had a longstanding grudge against the paper and little else is known so far. But Trump is the only president in memory to call the press ‘the enemy of the people.’”

Reuters’ Rob Cox went further, angrily pontificating, “This is what happens when [Donald Trump] calls journalists the enemy of the people. Blood is on your hands, Mr. President. Save your thoughts and prayers for your empty soul.” Others joined in with similar memes.“

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway observed, "We also didn’t see [the MSM] wonder if the media’s harsh treatment of Republicans led to the mass assassination attempt on a baseball field filled with Republican senators and members of Congress last June. They also didn’t wonder if anti-police rhetoric led to the targeted murders of various policemen in recent years. The blame game seems to work one way with traditional media sources.”

Is it any wonder that 72% of Americans think the MSM intentionally reports misleading news?

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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