Trump, the man with a dream of a Wall

[Brian Peacock]

I have a question. Can Mexicans not get tourist visas for the US? So, what can the border wall even do? Can Mexicans not just enter the us with a tourist visa and then go underground?

That happens a lot, although we don't have good numbers as to how many of our undocumented residents came that way. I've seen estimates of up to 45 percent.

My nephew went on holiday to the US with a bunch of mates before starting uni. Universal studios, theme parks, etc. He never came back. Of course he met a girl, moved in with her, got a job, and married, had a kid, and finally, after being illegal for years, got citizenship. Been there 14 years. Steady income. Youngest is 7, maybe 8 now. Saw them last year at his sisters wedding. She's a pretty slip of a thing. Said she found his rural Hampshire accent exotic and sexy, but then again flat-bellied, broad-shouldered farm boys are generally well received in most romantic settings.

[Tero]

CNN Kellyanne Conway's husband has begun deleting a series of tweets he posted in the last month that are critical of President Donald Trump.

George Conway, a conservative lawyer Trump once considered nominating as solicitor general, deleted several tweets that called attention to Trump's legal woes, his difficulty in finding his next communications director and the White House's later debunked denials of staff shakeups

[Tero]

Googling: Mexican citizens who already have a visa and are planning to travel to the United States beyond the border area and/or for longer than 30 days, must obtain an I-94 permit at the port-of-entry from a Customs and Border Protection officer. In New Mexico, an I-94 is required for travel beyond 55 miles from the border. The fee for an I-94 permit is US$6. The permit may be issued for a maximum term of 6 months and for multiple trips to the U.S. The issuing Customs and Border Protection officer will determine the exact conditions of the permit.

Of course, if you are a refugee to Mexico you don’t get a visa

[Tero]

Trump has managed to stop 2000 entering, and all had valid visas:

Trump has tried several times to reframe the ban, but was met with legal challenges each time. A second, narrower travel ban was also blocked last year, but a third travel ban, issued in September, was allowed to move forward by the Supreme Court. But even this travel ban is still under legal consideration, and the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on it this month, according to BuzzFeed.

Several federal courts have declared this third travel ban unconstitutional, and a federal appeals court joined the chorus of opposition in February.

[Tero]

Tomi Laren or someone has convinced Trump people are still coming in under DACA (applies only to arrivals prior to 2007)

Before an Easter service in Palm Beach, Trump was questioned by a reporter about his tweets, and he wasn’t any more eloquent in person. He repeated his easily disprovable claim that “a lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA.” He also blamed Democrats for dropping the ball on a DACA deal. In reality, they have offered Trump several deals to end crisis he created, all of which he has turned down.

[Tero]

Here we go: China is going to trump Trump
China hits back at Trump, slaps new tariffs on US goods worth up to $3 billion
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ch ... um-n861916

[pErvinalia]

Aaaand, the US economy tanks.

[Seabass]

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

[Seabass]

Two articles on Trump's grift from this month's New York Magazine:

NYMag: 501 Days in Swampland

A constant drip of self-dealing. And this is just what we know so far …


On the day he took the oath of office, Donald Trump delivered two messages about what to expect from his administration. First came the lofty promise of his inaugural address. “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” he vowed. “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth.”

The second message, which Trump delivered without speaking a word, was aimed at a much smaller, but very rich, audience. As the new president’s motorcade left the Capitol, rolling past knots of supporters and protesters, it suddenly stopped three blocks short of the White House. Trump, the First Lady, and the rest of his family got out of their limos and took a three-minute turn in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue.

This was no random spot. The very first place Trump headed after being sworn in — his true destination all along, in a sense — was the Old Post Office and Clock Tower, which only 12 days before the election had been repurposed as the Trump International Hotel Washington. The elegant granite structure, whose architectural character Trump had promised to preserve, was now besmirched by a gaudy, faux-gold sign bearing his name. The carefully choreographed stop sent a clear signal to the foreign governments, lobbyists, and corporate interests keen on currying favor in Washington: The rewards of government would now be reaped by a single man — and the people would bear the cost.

More than at any time in history, the president of the United States is actively using the power and prestige of his office to line his own pockets: landing loans for his businesses, steering wealthy buyers to his condos, securing cheap foreign labor for his resorts, preserving federal subsidies for his housing projects, easing regulations on his golf courses, licensing his name to overseas projects, even peddling coffee mugs and shot glasses bearing the presidential seal. For Trump, whose business revolves around the marketability of his name, there has proved to be no public policy too big, and no private opportunity too crass, to exploit for personal profit.

Nowhere has the self-enrichment been more evident than at his Washington hotel, which quickly filled up with the very lobbyists and swamp creatures Trump had railed against during his campaign. Oil companies, mining interests, insurance executives, foreign diplomats, and defense contractors all rushed to book their annual conferences at Trump’s hotels and resorts, where Cabinet members graciously addressed them. After hiking the nightly rate to $653 — 32 percent higher than other local luxury hotels — Trump collected $2 million in profits from the property during his first three months in office. By last August, the hotel’s bar and restaurant had hauled in another $8 million in revenue. And although Trump has pledged to give away any money his hotels earn from foreign governments, the plan contains a lucrative loophole: Employees at his hotels admit that they make no effort to identify guests who represent other countries, meaning that much of the foreign money spent at Trump’s properties flows directly into his own pockets. On March 28, a federal judge allowed a lawsuit to go forward that charges Trump with violating the Constitution by accepting money from foreign governments at his D.C. hotel.

In fact, although Trump refuses to disclose the details of his myriad business operations, he continues to enjoy access to every dime he makes as president. Instead of setting up a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest, as other presidents have done, Trump put his two grown sons in charge of his more than 500 business entities. His sons regularly brief Trump about how the enterprises are doing, enabling him to personally monitor how his decisions in office affect his bottom line. What’s more, only 15 days after this “eyes wide open” trust was set up, Trump amended the fine print to allow him to take money out of the operation any time he pleases. The loophole, buried on page 161 of the 166-page form, stipulates that any “net income or principal” can be distributed to Trump “at his request.” Far from putting his wealth in a blind trust, Trump asked the public for its blind trust, effectively sticking his money in a piggy bank in Don Jr.’s room that he is free to raid at any hour of the day or night.

Trump’s children are working hard to cash in on his time in office — especially with foreign investors. At taxpayer expense, they have flown to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Dubai, and India in search of licensing and real-estate deals, trading on the president’s influence in exchange for investments. But the biggest complication of Trump’s presidency — and the one he works hardest to keep secret — is the way his entire business operation is mired in massive debt. Rather than being independently wealthy, public records show, Trump and the business partnerships in which he is a leading investor owe big banks and foreign governments at least $2.3 billion — far more than his disclosure reports indicate. His largest single loan — for nearly $1 billion — is from a syndicate assembled by Goldman Sachs that includes the state-owned Bank of China. If either Trump or Jared Kushner, who tried to shake down Qatar’s finance minister for a loan, winds up needing to negotiate new terms on his ballooning debt, America could find itself being dictated to by a foreign government — all because the White House, thanks to Trump’s business model, has become a true House of Cards.

What follows is 501 days of official corruption, from small-time graft and brazen influence peddling to full-blown raids on the federal Treasury. Given how little Trump has disclosed about his finances, this timeline of self-dealing is undoubtedly only a fraction of the corruption that will eventually come to light. But as even this initial glimpse makes clear, Trump isn’t draining the swamp — he’s monetizing it.


full article:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... eline.html

NYMag: Corruption, Not Russia, Is Trump’s Greatest Political Liability

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it. He was a brilliant businessman, or at least starred in a television show as one, and he would set aside his lifelong pursuit of wealth to selflessly serve the greater good. This was the promise that pried just enough Obama voters away from Hillary Clinton in just enough upper-Midwest states to clinch the Electoral College.

Since Trump took office, his pledge to ignore his own interests has been almost forgotten, lost in a disorienting hurricane of endless news. It is not just a morbid joke but a legitimate problem for the opposition that all the bad news about Trump keeps getting obscured by other bad news about Trump. Perhaps the extraordinary civic unrest his presidency has provoked will be enough to give Democrats a historic win in the midterms this fall, but it is easy to be worried.
Trump’s approval rating hovers in the low 40s: lower than the average of any other president, yes, but seemingly impervious to an onslaught of scandals that would have sunk any other president, and within spitting range of reelectability.

As the races pick up in earnest, some kind of narrative focus is going to be necessary to frame the case against Trump. Here, what appears to be an embarrassment of riches for Democrats may in fact be a collection of distractions. It is depressingly likely that several of Trump’s most outrageous characteristics will fail to move the needle in the states and districts where the needle needs moving. His racism and misogyny motivate the Democratic base, but both were perfectly apparent in 2016 and did not dissuade enough voters to abandon him.
The Russia scandal is substantively important, but it is also convoluted and abstract and removed from any immediate impact on voters’ lived experience. The reports of Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels, even the possibility of hired goons to keep her quiet, is not exactly a disillusioning experience for voters who harbored few illusions to begin with.

But they did harbor one. Trump’s core proposition to the public was a business deal: If he became president, he would work to make them rich. Of course, the fact that Trump was able to reduce the presidency to such a crass exchange, forsaking such niceties as simple decency and respect for the rule of law, exposed terrifying weaknesses in the fabric of American democracy. But the shortest path to resolving this crisis is first to remove Trump’s party — and it is Trump’s party — from full control of the government in 2018, and then to remove Trump from the White House in 2020. The clearest way to do that is to demonstrate that Trump is failing to uphold his end of the deal. After all, the students at Trump University once constituted some of the biggest Trump fans in America. Until they realized Trump had conned them. Then they sued to get their money back.


full article:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... ility.html

[Tero]

Brown people stay away! Go back to your shithole countries!
CNN
The just-below-the-surface message is this: White people made this country great. Brown people are flooding in. They pose an existential threat to your daily life and what the future holds for your children. If you don't fight back now, you may lose everything.
Another example of this came in January, when Trump spoke of countries from which he'd like to see more immigration. He mentioned predominantly-white Norway and not "shithole countries" like those in Africa. The comments blew up a bipartisan effort to pass legislation to give special legal status to people in the DACA program.

"Mexico has the absolute power not to let these large 'Caravans' of people enter their country. They must stop them at their Northern Border, which they can do because their border laws work, not allow them to pass through into our country, which has no effective border laws. Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People. Border Patrol Agents (and ICE) are GREAT, but the weak Dem laws don't allow them to do their job. Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!"

[Seabass]

Why the White House is pretending a fired cabinet secretary ‘resigned’
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show ... y-resigned

In other words, if Shulkin didn’t resign, the president’s personnel authority is far more limited. What’s more, if Shulkin was fired – and literally every piece of evidence makes clear that he was – then he should be replaced by Deputy Secretary Thomas Bowman until the Senate confirms a permanent successor.

But the White House doesn’t like Bowman, an opponent of the far-right privatization push.

[Seabass]

grift

d'oh! graft!

[Forty Two]

So, his popularity, while still under 50, is at its highest level so far, at 42% -- http://theweek.com/articles/764645/why- ... -than-ever

Could he push 50? According to the Republican leaning Rasmussen Reports, he recently hit 50% among probable voters. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/0 ... -per-cent/ I am not too trusting of Rasmussen. They haven't been right much.

A far more trustworthy source is 538.com, and they have him at 53% disapprove and 40% approve. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/tr ... l-ratings/ That leaves about 7% uncertain or neither. 538 got the election wrong, of course. But, Nate Silver knows what he's doing and they probably, I would imagine, are focusing really hard on their Trump predictions these days.

So, some upcoming interesting events might be big for the Trump-meister. The meeting with Kim Jong Un -- high risk, high reward - if he comes out of that with a denuclearization agreement, Trump will get a great boost.

He needs some development on the Wall - http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-bo ... bp-2017-10 - he's got prototypes going, but he needs to get shovels in the ground, so to speak, so he can show a fulfilment of at least part of that promise. Nobody expects the wall to be done completely, but he needs to have something going on it.

An economic growth of 5.4%, if that becomes real, would be astounding. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/economy ... shows.html

We had success in Syria, and now he is pulling the troops out. That's an excellent development that will prove very popular, I believe.

Trump's first year or so has been a nice success - https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... 968842001/ and underreported https://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/ ... 963040001/ and http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/ ... n-year-one

So what else can be said constitutes Trump success, and what more good news can be expected in the coming year or so?

[Tero]

”President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he intended to deploy troops along the U.S.-Mexico border until a wall was built there, proposing an escalation of efforts to prevent people from entering the country illegally via the southern border.”

[Brian Peacock]

Will they be trained in the extent of the law and the applicable law enforcement procedures, or will they just be deployed to look fierce and dangerous? The only way to fully secure the border is to control it on both sides - are we to expect a tactical incursion into Mexico before or after nuking NK?