Category Archives: Critique

Trump Is Trying To Overcome Radically Liberal Immigration Laws & Shitty Lawmakers

Critique, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Law, Military, Republicans

Whether ordered by Barack Obama or Donald Trump; sending National Guard troops to the border, it must be clear, has always been about optics, no more.

Indeed, previous administrations have done so.

But it remains true that the National Guard can act as “extra eyes and ears for border guards,” and no more, notes The Economist, in its April 7th-13th (2018) issue. As we know all so well, “there are legal constraints on using soldiers for law-enforcement.”

In Trump translation: “We have horrible, horrible and very unsafe laws in the United States.”

The president was, therefore, wrong when he announced in April that, “We are preparing for the military to secure our border between Mexico and the United States.”

Certainly President Trump’s “proclamation to deploy the National Guard” does nothing to stop Central American asylum-seekers. These brazen border-crossers “rarely hide from border agents,” for they know that, to stay in the US, and live off the American taxpayer’s avails, all they need do is “lodge a legal claim to stay.”

In Trump translation: We have the crappiest, most liberal immigration laws.

RECENT HISTORY: “During Trump’s first nine months in office, arrests for immigration violations were 42% higher than they were during the same period in Barack Obama’s last year. Non-border deportations rose 25% in fiscal 2017. Deportations of illegal immigrants who have committed no other crime, and who were not a priority in the Obama era, nearly tripled. Refugee admissions have plummeted. This fiscal year 16% of them are Muslim, compared with 42% a year ago.”

ICE agents have increased their presence at courthouses. ICE said they will use courthouse arrests only for “specific, targeted aliens” with criminal records, gang affiliations or removal orders, or who pose national security threats.

MOREOVER, I don’t know if Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice has done so yet, but it was “to set quotas for clearing cases for immigration judges to hit.”

White House officials had been “drafting a package which would, among other things, make it easier to deport children who arrive alone at the border.”

All good stuff the sainted Sarah Sanders, White House spokesperson, never mentions.

So, to bypass the shitty lawmakers who’re unprepared to heed the country, should Republicans “eliminate the rule that most new laws can pass the Senate only with a 60-vote supermajority”? Should they, before it’s too late?

(Source: “Be Very Afraid: Donald Trump takes a hard turn on immigration.“)

POTUS & Pompeo Make Great Strides On North Korea, Are Rewarded With Double Negative Headlines

China, Critique, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Trade

June 1, President Trump was impressive on North Korea, sharing a significant development with the media. He would “be meeting with Kim Jong-Un in the coming weeks as we seek to denuclearize the North Korean area and the entire Korean peninsula.”

“I think it is a getting-to-know-you meeting-plus. And that can be a very positive thing,” said the president.

POTUS and Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state, had just met with Kim Yong Chol, a high-ranking North Korean, in talks to salvage the summit.

At the same time, the president indicated that he viewed China and South Korea as neighbors who should do the dominant policing of North Korea.

In addition to non-stop sneering during “programming,” the headline President Trump received from CNN today was a double negative, something along the lines of:

“North Korea Summit No Longer Cancelled.”

Why not run a positive headline?

“North Korea Summit is On.”

IS Prince Harry Losing The Crown Jewels? Dah!

Britain, Christianity, Critique, Etiquette, Pop-Culture

Already Meghan Markle is making political statements against age-old English traditions. The head of the US Episcopal Church, not head of the Church of England, will officiate at the Royal Wedding ceremony, this week-end.

I did not notice the race card Mr. and Mrs. Markle are playing so crudely. Naively, I looked at the break in tradition this American woman has clearly forced, in smuggling an American man-of-the-cloth, when monarchic tradition calls for an english clergyman to officiator at a Royal Wedding.

In any event, whoever ends up wearing the crown jewels (or the pants) in Britain’s new royal family (I’m already betting the American Woman will); future royal babies born to Mr. and Mrs Meghan Markle are bound to be … nosy, if to judge from their parents’ probosces.

The Dismal Scientists Of Microeconomics Are ALSO Struggling To Do Science

Critique, Economy, Intelligence, Pseudoscience, Science

Almost every bit of research cited in support of some or another ridiculous claim in the popular press seems abysmally designed. At least to this former student of research methodology.

Samples are too minuscule to claim generalizeability of findings beyond the sample, to the broader, targeted population. Likewise, you just know sample selection is poor, too. Variables are not often operationalized in an intelligent way. The actual hypothesis frequently sounds wacky. On and on.

It transpires that the same methodological flaws that “bedevil most social sciences, and some hard sciences, too,” have infected the dismal scientists of microeconomics.

“Many results in microeconomics are shaky.” From the a series “on the shortcomings of the economics profession” in the Economist:

A recent examination in the Economic Journal, of almost 7,000 empirical economics studies, found that in half of the areas of research, nearly 90% of those studies were underpowered, ie, that they used samples too small to judge whether a particular effect was really there. Of the studies that avoided this pitfall, 80% were found to have exaggerated the reported results. Another study, published in Science, which attempted to replicate 18 economics experiments, failed for seven of them.