Happy Fathers Day. pic.twitter.com/kFNMrMT6rY
— You Had One Job (@_youhadonejob1) June 17, 2018
So, what happened over the weekend that wasn’t a horror story?
This post is in: Nature & Respite, Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Clown car
Happy Fathers Day. pic.twitter.com/kFNMrMT6rY
— You Had One Job (@_youhadonejob1) June 17, 2018
So, what happened over the weekend that wasn’t a horror story?
by Adam L Silverman| 15 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Don't Mourn, Organize, Enhanced Protest Techniques, Open Threads, Organizing & Resistance, Politics, Popular Culture, Silverman on Security, Cybersecurity
I know a number of you all are planning to join one of the various protests, actions, and/or demonstrations that will begin taking place as a result of the President’s family separation policy. So I wanted to re-up the post for anyone that missed it the first several times I posted it. I also saw a tweet, which I can’t find right now, from one of the protesters at the Vice President’s event last week in Ohio who said that the audience assaulted her and other protestors before event security came and escorted them out. So you need to prepare yourself that there may be violence if you protest at this type of event. I would recommend designating one member of your group to begin to record video as soon as the demonstration starts and for that person to do nothing but quietly stand and video events so there is a record and they don’t have to worry about being attacked. And one other person as the dedicated video recording person’s buddy so they can keep their head on a swivel and look out for that person’s wellbeing. Also, stay as close to the perimeter of the event, near an exit, and with your back to a wall if at all possible.
(Originally posted on 18 December 2016)
Congress shall make no law… abridging…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — Amendment 1, Bill of Rights, US Constitution
One of our readers/commenters emailed me about a week ago and asked if I would put up a post about personal security for those going to peaceably assemble to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. I put a list together and ran it past a select group of our Balloon Juice legal eagles (those I’ve corresponded with before/have corresponded with me, so if you didn’t get asked, don’t be insulted I didn’t want to just impose on you with a cold request) – thank you all for getting back to me. Here’s my list of what I think anyone going to peacefully assemble should do to enhance their personal security.
Should the worst happen and you get caught up in a peaceable assembly that suddenly turns not so peaceable:
One last item: some of you probably carry a pocket knife or multitool everywhere. Or everywhere that you’re normally allowed. I would recommend not carrying anything on your possession that could be construed as a concealed weapon or even an openly carried one. Even if you’re in a state/jurisdiction that allows for concealed or open carry of knives and/or other weapons – don’t. Being part of a march or peaceful assembly that turns ugly is not a good time to attempt firearms (or knife) normalization.
Stay Frosty!
Peaceful Assembly and Personal Security – Re-uppedPost + Comments (15)
by Adam L Silverman| 85 Comments
This post is in: 2020 Elections, America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2018, Foreign Affairs, Immigration, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
First Lady Laura Bush has a very powerful op-ed against the President’s family separation policy in today’s Washington Post.
On Sunday, a day we as a nation set aside to honor fathers and the bonds of family, I was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents. In the six weeks between April 19 and May 31, the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers or foster care. More than 100 of these children are younger than 4 years old. The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders.
I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.
Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; interned Japanese have been two times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.
Americans pride ourselves on being a moral nation, on being the nation that sends humanitarian relief to places devastated by natural disasters or famine or war. We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance. If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.
People on all sides agree that our immigration system isn’t working, but the injustice of zero tolerance is not the answer. I moved away from Washington almost a decade ago, but I know there are good people at all levels of government who can do better to fix this.
Recently, Colleen Kraft, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics, visited a shelter run by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. She reported that while there were beds, toys, crayons, a playground and diaper changes, the people working at the shelter had been instructed not to pick up or touch the children to comfort them. Imagine not being able to pick up a child who is not yet out of diapers.
Twenty-nine years ago, my mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, visited Grandma’s House, a home for children with HIV/AIDS in Washington. Back then, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the disease was a death sentence, and most babies born with it were considered “untouchables.” During her visit, Barbara — who was the first lady at the time — picked up a fussy, dying baby named Donovan and snuggled him against her shoulder to soothe him. My mother-in-law never viewed her embrace of that fragile child as courageous. She simply saw it as the right thing to do in a world that can be arbitrary, unkind and even cruel. She, who after the death of her 3-year-old daughter knew what it was to lose a child, believed that every child is deserving of human kindness, compassion and love.
In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can.
It is important to remember that the US is a signatory to both the 1961 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 New York Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, as well as the US-Canada Agreement Covering Third-Country Asylum Claims at the Border of 2002 and the Refugee Act (Immigration and Naturalization Act) of 1980. All of these have the force of US law within the United States.
Stay angry!
Open thread!
This post is in: Don't Agonize - Organize, All Too Normal, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
Slate has a long list of organizations to which we can send money or volunteer. There are several looking for lawyers. I know one of the Balloon Juice legal staff was looking for something like this the other day, although I [embarrassed emoticon] can’t remember who it was. I sent some money this afternoon, since I couldn’t join Beto O’Rourke’s march to the center outside El Paso.
Sample:
Pueblo Sin Fronteras is an organization that provides humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants on their way to the U.S.
• RAICES is the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas offering free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children and families. Donate here and sign up as a volunteer here.
• The Texas Civil Rights Project is seeking “volunteers who speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’ and have paralegal or legal assistant experience.”
• Together Rising is another Virginia-based organization that’s helping provide legal assistance for 60 migrant children who were separated from their parents and are currently detained in Arizona.
• The Urban Justice Center’s Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project is working to keep families together.
• Women’s Refugee Commissionadvocates for the rights and protection of women, children, and youth fleeing violence and persecution.
• Finally, ActBlue has aggregated many of these groups under a single button.
For those of you in Philadelphia, a welcoming party is planned for Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday
Mike Pence will be in Philadelphia on Tuesday. There will be a welcoming party. https://t.co/rf7uwfv8Eq
— Dr. Audra J. Wolfe (@ColdWarScience) June 17, 2018
I see some discussion of a demonstration at Susan Collins’s office on the previous thread. Give me a link, and I’ll post it here.
Anything else happening?
Update from esteemed commenter Yarrow:
Call your Governor and your state representatives too. These detention facilities are in many states and not everyone even knows they’re there. Here’s an article from 2014 about migrant children being flown to various states. It certainly hasn’t improved since then.
PHOENIX — Before they sloshed and skidded across the Rio Grande, Greysi and Claudia Paula had never been on a plane.
Now the teenage Honduran sisters are frequent fliers, crisscrossing America on government chartered jets and settling into commercial airliner seats at taxpayer expense. In the harried and jumbled scramble to house a wave of unaccompanied minors illegally entering the United States, U.S. officials have ordered the girls flown from Texas to Arizona, from Arizona to Oklahoma and from Oklahoma back to Arizona — all in a matter of weeks.
Also from the article:
One recent evening, he [Tony Banegas, a Honduran honorary consul] flipped through the planner — an extraordinary document that tells in sparse language and shorthand the story of a crisis unfolding. He compared the names he’d written down with the reports he received from federal officials about the transportation of unaccompanied minors to shelters.
“This guy is going to Pennsylvania,” he said, pointing to a name on a long list.
“Ah. Michigan. First time I see Michigan.”
“New York. I see that a lot.”
It’s not just border states.
This post is in: Election 2016, Goddamned Traitors, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Russiagate, Assholes
SCOOP: Roger Stone met with a Russian promising dirt on Clinton during 2016 campaign, despite earlier denials. And…the Russian once claimed to be an FBI informant. By @RoigFranzia @PostRoz https://t.co/ZNIEbo9Qrw
— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) June 17, 2018
Happy Father’s Day, ya mutha– !
MIAMI — One day in late May 2016, Roger Stone — the political dark sorcerer and longtime confidant of Donald Trump — slipped into his Jaguar and headed out to meet a man with a “Make America Great Again” hat and a viscous Russian accent.
The man, who called himself Henry Greenberg, offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the upcoming presidential election, according to Stone, who spoke about the previously unreported incident in interviews with The Washington Post. Greenberg, who did not reveal the information he claimed to possess, wanted Trump to pay $2 million for the political dirt, Stone said.
“You don’t understand Donald Trump,” Stone recalled saying before rejecting the offer at a restaurant in the Russian-expat magnet of Sunny Isles, Fla. “He doesn’t pay for anything.”
Later, Stone got a text message from Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign communications official who’d arranged the meeting after Greenberg had approached Caputo’s Russian-immigrant business partner.
“How crazy is the Russian?” Caputo wrote, according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted “big” money, Stone replied, “waste of time.”
Two years later, the brief sit-down in Florida has resurfaced as part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s sprawling investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, according to Caputo. Caputo said he was asked about the meeting by prosecutors during a sometimes-heated questioning session last month.
Stone and Caputo, who did not previously disclose the meeting to congressional investigators, now say they believe they were the targets of a setup by U.S. law enforcement officials hostile to Trump.
They cite records — independently examined by The Post — showing that the man who approached Stone is actually a Russian national who has claimed to work as an FBI informant.
Interviews and additional documents show that Greenberg has at times used the name Henry Oknyansky. Under that name, he claimed in a 2015 court filing related to his immigration status that he had provided information to the FBI for 17 years. He attached records showing that the government had granted him special permission to enter the United States because his presence represented a “significant public benefit.”
There is no evidence that Greenberg was working with the FBI in his interactions with Stone, and in his court filing, Greenberg said he had stopped his FBI cooperation sometime after 2013.
An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mueller’s office.
The meeting took place two months earlier than federal officials have said a counterintelligence operation was officially opened and before WikiLeaks began releasing hacked Democratic emails…
There were so many Russian assets falling out of the trees, looking to help us! Who can remember every single dodgy contact among them?!?
Stone and Caputo clearly want the story to be about "Greenberg", but the interesting story seems to be the Ukrainian man that Greenberg brought with him. Whom Stone neglected to mention. https://t.co/5i1UYkmqxz
— zeddy (@Zeddary) June 17, 2018
Yes, I’m looking forward to Adam’s thoughts on this revelation, too.
The more I learn about Stone and his alleged political brilliance, the more I realize he's only been successful bc he's willing to lie, cheat, and subvert ethics wherever he can. Not sure I'd really consider that brilliance…
— Chapman (@MikeChapmoo) June 17, 2018
At least Rudy isn’t far enough gone that he tries to claim Stone was just some short-term volunteer who’d barely even met the candidate… yet:
GIULIANI, SHORTER: Roger Stone may have tried to collude with Russia, but I believe his effort was unsuccessful, so meh pic.twitter.com/kZKBxXEGoG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 17, 2018
Russiagate Open Thread: Roger Stone, Back in the SpotlightPost + Comments (150)
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Brazil v Switzerland, 2pm EDT. FIFA liveblog at the Google link.
There aren’t as many Brazilian expats in our MA town as there are in Everett or Framingham, but I’m pretty sure every local eating place with a television will be quite busy… even without factoring in Father’s Day.
World Cup Open Thread, Day Four: Afternoon GamePost + Comments (39)
by Betty Cracker| 212 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, General Stupidity
Great photo in this tweet:
Happy Father's Day! (photo by Terry Crayne; https://t.co/zJd6vjiuK3) pic.twitter.com/zQxFLjhWmx
— BirdWatchingMagazine (@BirdWatchDaily) June 17, 2018
Happy Father’s Day to all jackal dads! Hope you’re having fun with your pups.
This is a red-letter day in our household. My husband is an excellent dad and thus gets to name the day’s menu while loafing around watching golf. (Bacon and strawberry buttermilk pancakes already completed; eggplant parm coming up this evening.) Right now, he and the spawn are off riding around in the country.
To be honest, I dread Father’s Day every year because my dad and I have a difficult relationship. I disappointed him by being born without a dick, and then my sister went and did the very same thing a year later. Not long thereafter, our parents’ marriage imploded, and my dad has been more absent than present in my life ever since — by mutual agreement.
But he did teach me to swim, water ski, ride motorcycles, drive large trucks with large boats attached, launch said boats from treacherous ramps and then drive the boats too, in all kinds of weather. He taught me to scuba dive and fish. He taught me to ride and care for horses. These are all valuable skills to have, so I am grateful.
After putting it off for most of the day, I’ll call him later, and we’ll have a painfully awkward conversation because we have absolutely nothing in common. We’ll both be relieved to hang up, unless he brings up the subject of Trump, in which case we’ll hang up angry.
This is actually an improvement over our relationship in years past; we didn’t speak at all for most of the 1990s. My mom, who had more reason to despise my dad than anyone, never stopped encouraging me to maintain contact with him. And I do — partly in her honor.
We’re running out of time to get our relationship right, my dad and me. He’s in good health, but he turned 70 a couple of years back. He’s the only parent I have left, and I’m acutely aware of that.
It makes me sad that we aren’t closer, that we find it impossible to appreciate each other’s good qualities more. But given who we are, I think this is probably as good as it gets, and I’m making my peace with that as best I can.
Anyhoo, sorry to be depressing about Father’s Day, but I suspect I am not alone in feeling ambivalent about it.
Open thread!