1. A couple of Border Patrol/ICE people tell me that the US does not effectively charge an entry fee to non-US citizen individuals seeking to enter the US legally across the southern border. The point made by these border and immigration professionals is that the money would enable the construction and installation of more and better border barrier systems. They make the point that where border barrier systems have been installed the flow of illegal migrants is much reduced. Mexico evidently collects such a fee in the San Diego sector. My question for the lawyers is whether or not such a fee would be legal if put in place under an EO or would this require legislation?
2. We now have had Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS), Clinton Derangement Syndrome (CDS), Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), and United States Derangement Syndrome (USDS). I propose yet another Derangement Syndrome. This would be the Russia/Iran Derangement Syndrome (RIDS). In this syndrome now prominent on both sides of the political divide, the Russia of Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. disappears to be replaced altogether by Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet Union writ large to condemn Russia in our minds to the status of crafty inherently hostile barbarians. Well, pilgrims, maybe it ain't so! Ukraine? Are we really solidly behind a coup generated government of Nazi sympathizers in Kiev? Are we really? Is there really evidence that Russian Army troops are fighting in eastern Ukraine? Is there? Or is this claim just another example of Borgist (foreign policy establishment) information operations? Do we still remember that the Crimea was for centuries an integral part of Russia, not the Ukraine, until Khruschev, a Ukrainian, arbitrarily gave Crimea to the Ukraine. The Russians took it back? What a surprise. What a surprise! That doesn't fit with the "rules based world order?" Well, maybe there is something wrong with the rules that the Borg loves so much. Russia intervened in Syria to prevent a jihadi/Gulfy/Israeli/US handover of the country to the grip of a salafi satrapi of Saudi Arabia? Well, God bless them!
3. The Borg evidently thinks it bestrides the world as the standard bearer of the aforementioned "rules," commanding from the imperial capital on the Tiber/Potomac. A reminder of this "thought," is the statement today in the corporate media that the US "ordered" Soleimani, the IRGC Quds force commander (foreign interventions) not to leave Iran and he has had the effrontery to visit Moscow. Tell me pilgrims, what is the sense of such a statement. How is Soleimani a terrorist? He carries out his country's foreign policy as do our people for US policy. His men worked with Iraqi insurgents to fight us during our adventure in country building? Mathis, McMaster and all that crew are so deeply embittered by war that they cannot see the foolishness of that? They should grow up. "We fought them and they fought us." Germany, Japan, Spain, etc.? Come on! Grow up!
4. Pelosi appears to me to be demented.
5. "Shithole?" Well, SWMBO and I have lived and visited in many a "shithole." Haiti, Salvador, Yemen, and any number of African dumps closely resemble that description. Rude? Yes, certainly, but he is the "hard hat" president. IMO most Americans agree with him on this.
6. A lot of the newer, younger people on Foxnews' air appear to be making their reportage into the new CNN. pl
You covered a lot of ground, more than i will comment upon.
outthere @29, concerning Ed Herman, yes odd, to watch a standard theme of left complaints surface on the right as seemingly new nutshell coinage or neologism: Fake News*. The same happened with anti-globalization shifting from left complaint to the right as central theme.
But can Herman's article really serve to deal with 2 and 3 in Pat's no doubt provocative list: pro-European Ukrainians (Tom asks should they be reduced to Nazi-sympathizers?)**, the Borg, the Empire on the Potomac as new Rome, empire resistant Iran. Did I forget anything?
* admittedly news coverage in the US post 9/11 was one of my earliest obsessions...news standards, facts versus opinion and so on.
** interesting question. ... Should Europe finance Ukrainian debts out of his diverse pots, as Soros suggested? What about Greece et al's debts? Who should pay for those debts however elegantly indirectly? European taxpayers, just as in the 2008 banking crisis? They seem to prefer to revolt just as in the US. ...
Posted by: LeaNder | 14 January 2018 at 07:34 AM
Blake
You cleverly write of deposed political figures that the Left loves and treasures in memory. In Leftworld the CIA deposed all these saints and replaced them with the "monsters." Clever fellow you are. The trouble with that theory of history is that the "monsters" did not make these countries poor. These countries are, or were poor and hopeless because of the collective malaise built into the mentality of the masses there. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 14 January 2018 at 08:13 AM
Blake I have no idea if people in the military share my opinions. I have been retired a long time and do not communicate with active duty people. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 14 January 2018 at 08:15 AM
Larry Kart
I thought it was from "Porgy and Bess." Sorry. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 14 January 2018 at 08:46 AM
For what reason would you confiscate money that illegals earned in a morally right way? Especially because it is a problem that is easily solved by illegals by using an underground bank.
Posted by: charly | 14 January 2018 at 01:58 PM
To complete the List of inconsistencies with regard to Crimea: These who cry Foul Play conveniently forget the Kosovo - in ohne Part of Europe it is good to Separate some Territory from a State deemed unable to Governors it justly and to the Benefiz of the local Population in another Part this is unacceptable.
I think you are right about questioning the myth of fighting russian personel in Donbas, Not the presence.
On soleimani : he is under un sc Travel ban until 2020 But he Visited moskow in 2015, 2016 and 2017. pointing out inconsistencies in the implementation of Chapter vii Resolution is fair for all. The Arms Embargo against ISIL should get same amount of Publicity.
http://www.conflictarm.com/download-file/?report_id=2568&file_id=2574
Posted by: Wunduk | 14 January 2018 at 05:50 PM
The rebels did get some regular help at the battle of Ilovaysk, but have been largely uneeded otherwise, from what I have read.
So Perdue are and Cotton are both saying Durbin is full of shit, like I said Trump never said it.
Posted by: LondonBob | 14 January 2018 at 06:47 PM
LondonBob
If Trump had said "hellhole" the reaction would have been the same. BTW if a lot of these places were not what Trump called them these people would not be desperate to come here. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 14 January 2018 at 08:53 PM
From my experience usually trackhoes(edit tried to turn it to francophones).Sometimes backhoes,but a lot of manual labor wherever we came from.
Posted by: C Bridge | 15 January 2018 at 01:30 AM
LondonBob - I think we're throwing stones from inside the greenhouse.
You'll remember the opening scenes of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" in which an American driving in New York takes a wrong turning and finds himself in quite a different world. I've gone wrong driving in London once or twice and have seen much the same transition. Scary, if you've got family with you. I think it's much the same in parts of some other English cities.
That's setting aside the squalor of the drug areas in our cities, towns and villages. Pavement areas of cafes with addicts applying tourniquets and injecting in plain view as they sit at the tables. Runners back and forth. Dealers waiting outside schools for the children to come out. Notices on village greens warning parents not to let their children play unsupervised because needles are left lying around. Then there are our cardboard cities and the surprising number of people who can find nowhere to sleep but in shop entrances or on the pavement. Add to that the vandalism one sees here and on the Continent - shattered windows or phone booths, overturned benches and the like - and there's a lot to pretend isn't happening if we're to think ourselves much different.
It's off topic but weren't both sides in the Ukraine helped from outside? Advisers, "volunteers", mercenaries, war tourists, intelligence, equipment, and sometimes it seems, as in Debaltsevo and in LLovaisk, direct Special Forces or artillery support.
As far as meaningful assistance went the Russians came late to the party in the Donbas and it was always clear they were prepared to do no more than assist in holding the fort. It's less obvious what our side thought it was up to. Granted, the initial resistance must have taken Western military advisers by surprise, but after the early disasters it must have been obvious that the Ukrainian Army, regulars or street fighting Neo-Nazis, wasn't up to the job and wouldn't be. Yet the carnage continued, with our encouragement, and presumably under our direction or at least advice.
Either our people didn't have competent military there who could assess the situation, which is surely unlikely, or they didn't give a damn as long as they could prolong the crisis. We tend to focus on the suffering of the Novorossians, but the many thousands of Ukrainian casualties are more eloquent testimony to either the incompetence or the callousness of our people who were involved. As far as the proxy war component of the conflict went, and I believe it went quite a way, then in plain terms we screwed up our own proxies more than we did the opposition.
Posted by: English Outsider | 15 January 2018 at 06:53 AM
I was reliably informed at the time that the French and Germans wished to see a peaceful negotiation, whilst it was the US administration that pushed for the ATO and got their way.
Posted by: LondonBob | 16 January 2018 at 03:46 AM
London Bob - presumably we did not add our voice to that of the French and the Germans?
Posted by: English Outsider | 17 January 2018 at 04:47 PM
" I have seen precisely zero evidence of any involvement of the regular Russian military in Novorossia."
Since you lived in the Ukraine you'll have much better knowledge. The SST search engine shows no comments from you at that time so might I ask if you have further information?
There were assertions that there was artillery fire across the border on one occasion, and that there were Russian Special Forces in Debaltsevo. Advisers on both sides. Claims that young Novorossian volunteers were sent to Russia for training in the early days, leaving the older men with at least some military experience for the fighting.
Might I ask, is clarifying such details going to have to wait until later, or are the facts now securely established?
Posted by: English Outsider | 17 January 2018 at 05:28 PM