When leftists try to pull that "cruelly separated from their parents" jive on you

Give them a taste of this:

A report from Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reveals that the Trump administration’s reunited the vast majority of children at the border with their parents or a guardian.

Data from the Department of Health and Human Services indicatesthat 95% of kids released from custody have been “reunified with an individual sponsor or released to a parent.”

The document identifies more than 2,500 children separated at the border. According to the metrics — of 1,619 — 99% have been discharged.

From the report:

Of the 1,603 discharged children, 1,546 children—or 95 percent—were either reunified with an individual sponsor or released to a parent. Specifically, 1,061 children were released to a parent and 485 children were reunified with an individual sponsor,”

So what of the remainder?

Of the remaining 73 children who had not been reunited with an individual sponsor or released to a parent, HHS provided the following data:

 16 children remain in the care of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), of which four children were determined to not have been separated from their parent;
 21 children sought a voluntary departure, meaning that the child went back to his or her home country;
 20 children aged out, meaning that these children turned 18 and by law ORR cannot keep them in their custody;

Furthermore, the report corrects a misconception that 30 minors remain cruelly separated from their parents:

Although Democrats allege that 30 children remain separated from their families, these children remain separated largely because either the parents pose a danger to their child or the parents have expressed an intent not to reunify with their child.

Insist on policy being driven by truth.

A Democrat congresswoman is actively working to erode national sovereignty

She should get in some big trouble over this, one would think:

A Democratic congresswoman is sending staff to Mexico’s northern border town of Ciudad Juárez to find migrants returned from El Paso, Texas, under the “remain in Mexico” policy, then coaching them to pretend they cannot speak Spanish to exploit a loophole letting them to return to the U.S. 

The National Border Patrol Council’s El Paso chapter and several Customs and Border Protection personnel told the Washington Examiner aides to Rep. Veronica Escobar, who took over 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s district, and the local Catholic diocese have interviewed thousands of migrants in Juarez over the past few weeks to find cases where Department of Homeland Security officials may have wrongly returned people. 

“What we believe is happening is Veronica Escobar’s office is going … to basically second-guess and obstruct work already done by the Border Patrol,” said one senior union official, who shared evidence with the Washington Examiner from concerned CBP managers and rank-and-file members. Those documents have been held to protect identities.

These staff people are wearing recording devices and cherry-picking the parts of the interviews that are most likely to put the border patrol in a bad light.

All three border officials worried the interviews might be used to suggest the Border Patrol is wrongfully turning away a large number of asylum-seekers.

“We had finally found a happy medium ‘cause we always get crapped on when it comes to immigration laws, and then they’re finding loopholes to bring them back,” the second official said. 

Mark H. Metcalf, a former federal immigration judge during the George W. Bush administration, said the involvement of Escobar's office was likely "more of a stunt than a genuine threat to the integrity of the process."

"She's trying to obviously say these people have been wrongly denied their claims and they're waiting when they shouldn't be," said Metcalf.

However, he said a criminal case would exist if Escobar were found to be complicit in an effort to perpetrate a fraud, which would have to include knowingly injecting false statements during interviews, follow-up conversations, and documents presented to U.S. officials. 

Even at the level of being a stunt, though, damage is done. It opens the door to other rogue Congressional offices doing it. A juicy quote here and there from an asylum-seeker takes mere minutes to go viral on social media.

This is rotten.

 

 

Tuesday roundup

Who is offering an incisive, perfectly articulated refutation of the idea that there is anything different about the border detention centers now from how they were during the Obama era?

The DHS secretary from that era:

“Chain link barriers, partitions, fences, cages, whatever you want to call them, were not invented on January 20, 2017, okay?" Johnson said during an interview at the Aspen Institute. 

Johnson was asked about a photo taken in 2014. It shows the former Secretary touring a border detention facility in Arizona when the unaccompanied minor and family unit crisis actually began. Most of the media started paying attention to the issue, while expressing outrage over the Trump administration's response to it, only recently.

"The photograph you're referring to was a facility in Arizona. I recognize the photo because Governor Brewer was with me and it was during the spike. We had a lot of unaccompanied kids, we had a lot of family units and under the law one they're apprehended by the Border Patrol, within 72-hours we have to transfer unaccompanied children to HHS and HHS then puts them in a shelter and find placement for them somewhere in the United States," Johnson said. “But during that 72 hour period, when you have something that is a multiple, like four times of what you’re accustomed to in the existing infrastructure, you’ve got to find places quickly to put kids. You cant just dump seven year old kids on the streets of McAllen or El Paso. And so these facilities were erected and that one I think was a large warehouse and they put those chain link partitions up so you could segregate young women from young men, kids from adults, until they were either released or transferred to HHS.”

El Salvador's new president is demonstrating a level of clarity that has long been absent from the immigration discussion:

The new president of El Salvador on Monday took responsibility for the June deaths of a father and daughter who drowned crossing the Rio Grande in a bid to reach the United States, saying the onus is on his government to make the country a safer place -- and one where migration is "an option, not an obligation."

A photograph from the Mexican side of the river showing the body of Oscar Martinez and his daughter, Valeria, lying face down with Valeria's arms still wrapped around her father’s neck shocked the world late last month amid an already heated debate about illegal immigration in the US.

President Nayib Bukele, who took office a month ago with the promise of making El Salvador a safer and better place, told the BBC in an interview published Monday his country is to blame for the deaths. He said his government is responsible for fixing the problems that have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee in the first place.

“People don’t flee their homes because they want to, people flee their homes because they feel they have to,” Bukele told the BBC. “Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health.”

He continued: “We can blame any other country but what about our blame? What country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador, they fled our country. It is our fault.”

Bukele is one to watch. Born in 1981, when the Salvadoran civil war was red-hot (and was a proxy war in the Cold War), to a Palestinian Muslim father and a Christian mother, he was a rising star in the FMLN (the Marxists in the aforementioned civil war; the "FM" in the acronym stands for Farabundo Marti, a 1930s Salvadoran Communist party leader) until the party ousted him. Not that he holds any affection for ARENA, either. Claims to belong to a "new ideas" movement.

How come Eric Swalwell and Andrew Yang were both able to name Andy Ngo in their condemnations of Ngo's beating, but unable to mention Antifa by name?

This is two and a half years old, but it I just ran across it today on Twitter and found it highly  relevant. It's a Gospel Coalition essay called "What We Need to Learn From the Early Church."  Author Tim Keller points out how subversive the church was in its days as a nascent movement:

The earliest Christians were widely ridiculed, especially by cultural elites, were excluded from circles of influence and business, and were often persecuted and put to death. Hurtado says Roman authorities were uniquely hostile to them, compared to other religious groups.

Why? It was expected that people would have their own gods, but that they’d be willing to show honor to all other gods as well. Nearly every home, every city, every professional guild—including the empire itself—each had its own gods. You couldn’t even go to a meal in a large home or to a public event without being expected to do some ritual to honor the gods of that particular group or place. To not do so was highly insulting, at the least to the house or community. It was also dangerous, since it was thought that such behavior could elicit the anger of the gods. Indeed, it was seen as treason to not honor the gods of the empire, on whose divine authority its legitimacy was based.

Christians, however, saw these rituals and tributes as idolatry. They were committed to worship their God exclusively. While the Jews had the same view, they were generally tolerated since they were a distinct racial group, and their peculiarity was seen as a function of their ethnicity. Yet Christianity spread through all ethnic groups, and most believers were former pagans who suddenly, after conversion, refused to honor the other gods. This refusal created huge social problems, making it disruptive and impossible for Christians to be accepted into most public gatherings. If a family member or a servant became a Christian, they suddenly refused to honor the household’s gods.

Christianity’s spread was seen as subversive to the social order—a threat to the culture’s way of life. Followers of Jesus were thought to be too exclusive to be good citizens.

He says the three reasons Christianity so quickly became a civilizational powerhouse are that Christians were called into a "social project that either offended or attracted people, that it offered a direct relationship - with a foundation of love - between the Creator God and people, and if offered an assurance of eternal life.

The lesson for today? It is that if what you are offering is available from many other sources, you'll become irrelevant:

 If a religion isn’t different from the surrounding culture—if it doesn’t critique and offer an alternative to it—it dies because it’s seen as unnecessary. 

Worthy read at The Other McCain entitled "LGBT Ideology As Pathological Narcissism." Some wild and woolly examples of just how exotic the little pieces of turf claimed by each subgroup within that ideology can get.

In the wake of Nike folding like a cheap card table when vulgar grandstander and race-baiter Colin Kapernick called the just-rolled-out Betsy Ross flag shoes racist, Arizona governor Doug Ducey has said (in essence) to the footwear maker, "Forget that deal we were going to enter into with your cowardly asses."

Josh Hammer at The Daily Wire brings together all the grotesque forms that the Democrat party's exponentially unprecedented leftward lurch has taken of late and concludes, as you will, that the party is fundamentally unfit to lead the country.

Two things going on simultaneously as I write this: Vladimir Putin has cancelled his schedule for today to have an urgent meeting with his defense minister, and, over here in the US, Vice President Pence's plane has turned around and headed back to DC.  Big deals or no? We shall see.

It's this kind of stuff - today's edition

Look, LITD's position on Donald Trump is very well known. It's pretty much the same as that of, say, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, Kimberly Ross, Susan Wright, Noah Rothman, Joe Walsh and Brad Thor.

The Very Stable Genius has orchestrated some absolutely excellent policy moves since he's been president:

• rolling back regulations in a number of areas
• giving his full support to the right-to-life movement (even if its is a reversal of position that looks suspiciously like political calculation)
• superb judicial appointments
• pulling out of the JCPOA
• pulling out of the Paris climate accord
• pushing Congress to cut taxes
• moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem
• recognizing Juan Guaido as the Venezuelan president

But there have been some very bad moves as well. It's possible history will prove me wrong, but I think playing footsie with Kim Jong-Un is one of them. Imposing tariffs on trade partners certainly is. Endorsing paid family leave goes in this category.

Then there are his personality and character flaws. His reckless mouth. His Twitter habit. His belittling of anyone who gives him less that unqualified support. (The way he singled out Mia Love for humiliation is unforgivable.) His utter lack of interest in reading or cultivating relationships with great minds.

Sometimes the confluence of bad policy decisions and impulsiveness make for truly destructive moments.

Such is the case with what he said in announcing the horrible state of emergency regarding the southern border.

For crying out loud, an emergency is something that requires action that one has to do, by definition. So what in the name of all that is holy prompted him to say this?

"I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster."

Pal, you just handed your testicles to the Freedom-Haters on a silver platter. They are going to ride this glaring contradiction all the way to as many political victories as they can rack up.

And then there is the precedent being set. Once the Freedom-Haters have achieved those political victories, including possibly the White House, God forbid, they are going to impose the Green New Deal and single-payer health care on us in the name of "emergency."

So, no, I do not give a flying you-know-what about the shills and throne-sniffers calling me a "Never Trumper" and a traitor. They're the idiots who are willing to be agents of national ruin, and it's enough for me that I'm certain of that in my heart of hearts.

This era in our history is quite hard to ride out. Alas, there is no alternative to dealing with it like a grownup. A disgusted, embarrassed and deeply concerned grownup.

Another Mulvaney diss of the VSG surfaces - and it's a spot-on observation about this wall business

From 2015:

Now, with the president holding the government hostage, as he threatens to shut the government down, if he doesn’t get $5 billion (an arbitrary number that has no research or budgeting plan behind it) for a border wall, another comment from Mick Mulvaney has been unearthed, dating back to August 2015.

This particular comment is in regards to the border, and then-candidate Trump’s views of border protection.

While speaking with a South Carolina radio station, Mulvaney pointed out that just putting some form of barrier at the border wasn’t really a well thought out solution.

"The fence doesn't solve the problem. Is it necessary to have one? Sure. Would it help? Sure. But to just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone running for president to take that simplistic of [a] view," Mulvaney said on WRHI radio.

"And by the way, the bottom line is the fence doesn't stop anybody who really wants to get across," Mulvaney said at the time, according to CNN.

He’s not wrong.

Real border security has already been mapped out by better men than the reality TV host, if only he could be convinced to listen.

Strategic fencing, more boots on the ground, and aviation assets covering the border, with direct communications with fast responders, who are actually atthe border, not 50 miles back.

I have a feeling that if Trump would present something more reasoned and planned out than just barking about a wall (that Mexico was supposed to pay for, but won’t), he’d have much less of a problem getting it included in funding.

Meanwhile, Mulvaney’s past keeps coming up, and he knows he’s about to be the most miserable person in government.

Indeed. To invest so much in this particular symbol, when it's only one component, and probably not the most effective one, in the effort to reclaim our national sovereignty, is to reveal oneself as a pretty poor tactician.

But it was "the wall" from the get-go, and unless there's some way to break through the Senate's intransigence, the VSG's reelection prospects are taking a significant hit.

You think Ann Coulter is going to shill for him ever again if he can't pull this off?

The Very Stable Genius is looking a lot like a mere mortal this week

It turns out he's no more able to build walls with Mexican money, make the stock market soar without interruption, or achieve lasting peace in the Middle East than the Most Equal Comrade was able to quell the rising of the seas or fundamentally transform America.

Now, Democrats are not to be taken seriously when the subject is national sovereignty, but the ones  in Congress do have a point in their opposition to the wall along the southern border when they say, "Um, you said quit unequivocally that Mexico would pay for it." In fact, the administration is about to send $4.8 billion to Mexico in development aid.

I'll bet Ann Coulter is fit to be tied about right now.

And son-in-law Jared Kushner obviously has the VSG's ear, given that he's now on the criminal justice reform bandwagon,

And the Fed chair isn't intimidated by he of the wispy carrot top:

Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell said 'nothing' will deter independent central bankers from following their economic convictions – after an extraordinary pressure campaign by President Donald Trump failed to stave off a rate hike.

Powell got asked repeatedly Wednesday about Trump's extended public push to hold off on further rate increases – which the Fed's rate committee brushed past as it came out with a 0.25 per cent increase in the Fed's closely-watched lending rate.

And though he didn't go after Trump by name, Powell, who was nominated by the president, proclaimed his independence when asked about the pressure tactics by multiple reporters at a rare press conference.

'Political considerations play no role whatsoever in our discussions or our decisions about monetary policy,' Powell told reporters just minutes after the Fed announced its rate hike. 

And now the stock market is on a downswoop of its roller-coaster gyrations. At this point, all its gains for the year are wiped out.

And folks are starting to discuss the consequences of this sudden announcement of a "full and rapid" withdrawal of US troops from Syria:

 First, it looks like Erdogan’s information operation on the killed Muslim Brotherhood apostle and WaPo opinion writer, Jamal Khashoggi, had its desired effect. You’ll note that no one is talking about this beacon of press freedom in the past week. 

Second, this is a huge win for Iran, for Bashar Assad, and for Vladimir Putin. They have gone from being on their heels strategically to having turfed us out of Syria without lifting a finger.

Iran, now effectively allied with both Turkey and Russia, will be unhindered in its quest to create the so-called Shia Crescent that terminates on the Mediterranean.
Regional partners will see that we are not a reliable ally, particularly when their every existence is at stake. Not only will Erdogan be free to continue with the Turkish policy of ethnic cleansing and re-peopling the area with Turks, it will put Erdogan’s boot on the throat of the cause of Kurdish self-determination. Other people are going to notice.

Russia goes from participating in a conflict that generates enough dead Russians that the Russian government has to hid the funerals to being seen as the regional kingmaker.

So much winning.