Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.  Today, a few longer reads.

Will Bunch has a must- read on the assault on democracy by dimwit demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump and his rotted out Republican Party (with a healthy assist from a supine media):

Do you smell something? That’s the stench of freedom dying, and it’s coming from America’s southern border, where refugee children seeking U.S. asylum as they flee murder, rape and degrading conditions in Central America have instead been tossed into a growing gulag of squalid concentration camps, created by an administration desperate to cling to four more years of power.

Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University tasked with monitoring government compliance with a court order on how long migrant kids can be held in detention, said not only is Trump’s Border Patrol not complying, but attorneys are shocked at what they found at a Clint, Texas, facility where hundreds of youths have been sent: Children sleeping on frigid concrete floors, covered in filth, unable to shower for days, and taking care of one another because the authorities are looking the other way. [snip]

Here’s the big picture, and it’s as alarming as it can get. Phase I of Trump’s assault on democracy is over. The public and to some degree the press has grown numb to thousands of lies and to outrageous and even allegedly criminal behavior by the 45th president. The Democratic House that was elected in 2018 to hold Trump in check has had nearly six months to prove that it’s remarkably ineffective at doing its one job — by allowing the White House to walk all over them in defying subpoenas, in following the law or even providing basic information. [snip]

So Phase 2 is now here, and it’s as bad as your worst fears about a Trump presidency. To rally his base and get the anger that he needs out of his opponents, that means moving from rhetoric to roundups on immigrants, which will not shrink but swell the population of America’s concentration camps. It’s no surprise that Trump’s immigration-crackdown plan coincided with both his own reelection launch and this week’s Democratic debates, because he wants his opponents playing defense. And if Trump’s tough talk and his utter disdain for smart diplomacy triggers war in Iran or North Korea or somewhere else, he will challenge the electorate to dare oppose “a war president.”

Speaking of stench, this report from ABC News describes how fast America has been de-sensitized to the creeping fascism playing out on our southern border:

From sleeping on concrete floors with the lights on 24 hours a day to no access to soap or basic hygiene, migrant children in at least two U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities face conditions one doctor described as comparable to "torture facilities."

The disturbing, first-hand account of the conditions were observed by lawyers and a board-certified physician in visits last week to border patrol holding facilities in Clint, Texas, and McAllen, a city in the southern part of the state. [snip]

After assessing 39 children under the age of 18, she described conditions for unaccompanied minors at the McAllen facility as including "extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food."

All the children who were seen showed evidence of trauma, Lucio Sevier reported, and the teens spoke of having no access to hand washing during their entire time in custody. She compared it to being "tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease." [snip]

Conditions for infants were even more appalling, according to the medical declaration. Many teen mothers in custody described not having the ability to wash their children’s bottle.

And children who were older than 6 months were not provided age-appropriate meal options, including no pureed foods necessary for a child's development, Lucio Sevier reported.

Always keep in mind, the cruelty IS the policy with these fuckers.

The Salt Lake Tribune, in deep red Utah, isn't mincing words:

Yes, we do have concentration camps.

They are not work camps. They are not death camps. At least, not on purpose. Our government is not building massive gas chambers and industrial crematoria. It is not conducting sick medical experiments on members of an unfavored class.

But that does not mean that the places into which we are herding tens of thousands of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers are not properly called concentration camps. Because that is precisely what they are. [snip]

When some in the public eye dare to tell that truth, as the media-savvy Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did the other day, enablers of the administration’s cruel policies cry foul. They say that using correct terms such as “concentration camps" — or, worse, invoking the term “Never again” — unfairly equates what is going on now at our southern border with the Nazis’ “Final Solution” — the deliberate murder of millions of people.

It is true that we are not doing that. We are doing this. The two are not morally equivalent. And we probably don’t have reason to fear that this is necessarily going to become that.

But, then, we never do.

Because that starts as this. Some of the people who study, and some of the people who survived or are descended from survivors of the Holocaust, are pointing out that that crime against humanity did not arrive overnight.

It worked its way up, from nasty political speeches (check) to politicians seeking and gaining power with promises to protect the purity of the nation from foreign invasion (check) to denying basic human rights and decency to people of an unfavored class (check).

Too bad so many national media types =cough= Chuck "Not My Job" Todd =cough= don't have the same sense and moral clarity (unlike colleague Jose Diaz-Balart on =sigh= Telemundo, who fact- checked the dimwit demagogue in real time).

(You can use this navigator to check out organizations that provide relief to refugees at the southern border, if it's in your heart to give.)

Speaking of conservative Mormon Utah, guess what its residents Google most?  Hahaha. (For our home state, it's =wince= David Hasselhoff, for some unfathomable reason.)

That last tidbit was found via Infidel 753's always worthwhile link round-up.  See what you're missing if you don't check it out?