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EDITORIAL

Trump Threatens to Kill All US Aid to Small, Poor Country Over Immigration – Here’s Why That Would Be a Disaster

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Donald Trump speaking at a political rally in Wheeling, West Virginia

Maybe Trump Just Wants to Be a Totalitarian Dictator and Doesn’t Care About Human Beings at All?

President Donald Trump has just threatened the President of Honduras, a tiny, impoverished, Central American country. Via Twitter, Trump says he “strongly informed” President Juan Orlando Hernández that “effective immediately!” if he does not stop a “caravan” of about 1,600 people making their way to the U.S. border, he will cut off all aid to Honduras.

Not all of the 1600 are from Honduras, but Trump won’t care when they reach the U.S. border. It’s unclear what the President of Honduras can do once the migrants leave his country.

Honduras is a small and very poor country, ravaged by drugs, gangs, and the environment. Some of its people and communities never recovered from hurricanes that batter the land. Up until 2016 it was labeled the “murder capital of the world.”

America gives this country what amounts to a drop in the bucket of international aid: just $127 million. By comparison, that’s about as much as the asking price ($125 million) of a Palm Beach mansion Trump sold to a Russian oligarch in 2008.

What does Honduras do with that money?

“USAID programs in Honduras seek to promote a more prosperous and safer Honduras that advances inclusive social and economic development among populations most at risk of crime and violence and those living below the poverty line,” the U.S. government’s USAID website states. “USAID works to increase the security of vulnerable populations in urban, high-crime areas; sustainably reduce extreme poverty for vulnerable populations in western Honduras; and create a more transparent and accountable national government.”

In other words, that money is used to make living conditions in Honduras a tiny bit better, so its citizens won’t want to leave, and come to the United States.

“The goals of strengthening democracy and promoting viable economic growth are also intended to encourage Hondurans to avoid leaving their country and are especially important given the country’s geographical proximity to the United States,” according to the U.S. Dept. of State.

Where does the $127 million come from?

U.S. agencies, including the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, the U.S Dept. of State, and the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human services, to name a few.

The funds are not blank checks, and they are used for specific purposes dictated by the U.S. government.

But the bottom line is if Trump cuts off all aid to Honduras, conditions will worsen, more people will want to leave, and immigration will become an even greater problem.

But perhaps that’s Trump’s goal. Or maybe, he just wants to be a totalitarian dictator and doesn’t care about human beings at all?

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EDITORIAL

How Bad for LGBTQ People – and All Americans – Is Trump’s Pick for Attorney General? Really Bad. This Bad.

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5 years ago

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December 7, 2018

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From attacks against ‘the homosexual movement’ and ‘the HIV people’ to lamenting church and state separation as a ‘moral lobotomy,’ Barr is not only bad, he’s dangerous.

Some Americans right now are probably thinking that President Donald Trump’s announcement he will nominate William Barr as Attorney General is a good move. They would be wrong.

Barr (photo, left, with President George H.W. Bush) is a former Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. His résumé makes him seem qualified. But his history, policies, beliefs, and actions disqualify him.

William Barr is a devastating pick for LGBTQ people, people who support a woman’s right to choose, those who believe in the separation of church and state, and anyone who believes the rule of law must apply to all – including the President of the United States.

Barr served for 14 months as President George H.W. Bush’s last Attorney General. But it was during his time as Deputy Attorney General that he exposed a set of beliefs and took actions that make him not only unqualified – but dangerous.

It was the early 1990’s, and Barr was able to overturn a draft rule that would have allowed people living with HIV/AIDS to enter the United States. Not only did he stop that rule from taking effect, he proposed that even refugees living with HIV/AIDS seeking asylum not only should be barred from entering into the U.S., they should be sent to America’s military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Today, that’s where America sends enemy combatants in the war on terror.

In a 2001 interview he called people with HIV/AIDS, “the HIV people.” He bragged that he had told Colin Powell, who at the time was serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “we’re not bringing these people into the United States.”

That’s far from the only reason he should not be confirmed.

Another reason? Barr thinks Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

There are other statements he’s made that make clear his beliefs and interpretation of the Constitution are just plain wrong – and dangerous to a diverse, progressive America.

“This moral lobotomy of public schools has been based on extremist notions of separation of church and state or on theories of moral relativism which reject the notion that there are standards of rights or wrong to which the community can demand adherence.”

That’s what Barr had to say in 1992, on the topic of separation of church and state, as GLAAD reports in a statement sent to NCRM opposing Barr’s nomination.

“It is no accident that the homosexual movement, at one or two percent of the population, gets treated with such solicitude while the Catholic population, which is over a quarter of the country, is given the back of the hand. How has that come to be?” Barr, who is Catholic, once also said.

In that same essay Barr called for school “vouchers at the state level and ultimately at the federal level to support parental choice in education. We should press at every turn for the inclusion of religious institutions.”

GLAAD says that “like his predecessor Jeff Sessions, Barr has a vicious anti-LGBTQ history, even suggesting that equality for LGBTQ Americans has ‘led to America’s decline.'”

“William Barr, who has wrongfully suggested that LGBTQ people – not Trump and his destructive policies – have harmed the United States, is the latest in a long line of replacements who President Trump has appointed to his Cabinet who are just as anti-LGBTQ as their predecessors,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD. “If confirmed, there’s little doubt that William Barr would continue the Trump Administration’s objective of erasing LGBTQ Americans from the fabric of this nation.”

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EDITORIAL

Donald Trump Lies and Lies Again About the ‘Caravan’ of Honduran Migrants – Is He Just Scared of Them?

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5 years ago

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October 31, 2018

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President Donald Trump kicked off Wednesday by sticking to his midterms gameplay of focusing on the “caravan” of mostly Honduran women and children who are already exhausted from walking hundreds of miles from their homes into Mexico.

And he lied. Again.

While his supporters on Fox News are also spewing lies about the migrants, claiming they will bring smallpox – a disease that was fully eradicated worldwide by 1980 – to America, the Pentagon announced it is sending, at Trump’s direction, 5200 troops to the border in response to the migrants.

Perhaps afraid there won’t be enough photos of troops at the border “defending” frightened Republican voters to motivate them to go to the polls, Trump has decided to throw even more accusations about Hondurans.

“The Caravans are made up of some very tough fighters and people,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “Fought back hard and viciously against Mexico at Northern Border before breaking through. Mexican soldiers hurt, were unable, or unwilling to stop Caravan. Should stop them before they reach our Border, but won’t!”

This of course is mostly a lie.

Trump followed that up with this:

Some “very bad thugs and gang members.”

There is, of course, zero proof of that.

The Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff, who is traveling with the caravan, offered these tweets in response to one of Trump’s similar fear-mongering tweets and comments to reporters last week:

The New York Times did report that last Friday, when the migrants entered Mexico, there was “a tense hourlong standoff, during which migrants hurled objects at the police, including rocks and shoes, the police fired canisters of tear gas, forcing the migrants into a retreat.”

Six police officers were injured.

“After the violence had subsided, however, leaders of the caravan organized the migrants into orderly lines for processing by Mexican migration officials.”

That hardly warrants a description of, “Fought back hard and viciously against Mexico at Northern Border before breaking through. Mexican soldiers hurt, were unable, or unwilling to stop Caravan.”

And it lasted an hour.

Perhaps President Trump is just getting bad information. A Google search turned up nearly no news of attacks on Mexican police by migrants. There was this fact check of Trump’s false claims, and an embarrassing report in a far right wing website called American Thinker, (perhaps an oxymoron?), which insisted that the caravan is “as many as 10,000 strong now,” and the altercation at the border ended with police badly injured.

They offered this tweet as “proof” (You may have to click on the photo to view it, it shows a bloodied police officer.)

It took less than 60 seconds to find that the image, or at least its description, is fake.

It is a photo from 2012, according to the European Pressphoto Agency, when Mexican police detained 1000 protesting students.

It seems nearly all the claims from the right about the migrant “caravan,” which is a few thousand people, mostly women and children, marching by foot in search of a better life, are just plain false.

Why are Republicans so scared? Why is Donald Trump?

The Washington Post on Tuesday published this video of what Trump calls “very tough fighters,” and, “very bad thugs and gang members.”

Maybe if he watches it he’ll be less frightened?

Probably not. His “fear” is racism, plain and simple.

 

Image: Screenshot via Washington Post/YouTube

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EDITORIAL

‘It Doesn’t Matter What He Says We’ll Support It’: Trump Fans Profess Unquestioning Approval for President

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5 years ago

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October 23, 2018

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Tuesday night outside Houston’s Toyota Center Trump supporters were hanging out ahead of the president’s rally to endorse embattled Republican Senator Ted Cruz. And they were only too happy to elaborate on their deeply held beliefs in support of President Trump.

“It doesn’t really matter what he says, we’ll support it,” one Trump supporter told Right Side Broadcasting, a right wing network created to live-stream every one of Trump’s rallies.

A reporter for Right Side Broadcasting (RSBN) asks one of the gathered Trump supporters what she’s hoping the president will talk about later that evening.

“The caravan,” she blurts out, with no hesitation. “I would like to know a little bit more about what he’s going to do, ’cause that’s an invasion of our country.”

(Fact check: it is not an invasion.)

She adds that they’ll “see what he has to say tonight,” but admits it won’t matter: “I love everything that comes out of his mouth.”

Another woman, dressed in a red MAGA hat and red MAGA sweatshirt jumps in. “It doesn’t really matter what he says, we’ll support it.”

The man next to her interjects: “Vote Republican.”

“I’m a Trumpette,” the woman in red adds. “I’ll support anything.”

They all laugh.

Watch:

 

Thanks to ShareBlue’s Tommy Christopher for posting the video clip.

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