Ann Coulter says crying immigrant children are "child actors"

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has doubled down on her claims that immigrant children in detention camps are actors that are part of a 'political stunt' designed to destroy the United States.

Following her comments, TMZ asked Coutler on Tuesday if she had seen the photos of immigrant children being held in cages after being separated from their parents.

'Yes have you heard the tapes, it's weird. I think they need to improve their scripts. They're saying Mommy and Daddy. You might want to put it in Spanish next time,' she said, implying again that they were just child actors.

On the issue of the young children being separated from their parents, Coulter said: 'They're being separated from coyotes and drug mules'.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5862981/Ann-Coulter-doubles-claims-immigrant-children-actors.html

Corey Lewandowski mocks immigrant girl with Down syndrome

I'm fixated on tolerance today

"Tolerance" is a very low bar when you're talking about an attitude to The Other--"tolerating" gays, "tolerating" people of color, "tolerating" Jews--hell "tolerating" the heat when the a/c's broken.

"Toleration" is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to living with people who are different from us. We "put up" with them. We don't like them, necessarily, and we certainly don't invite them into our lives. We're not happy when they join our kids' classes at school, but we "tolerate" it because it would be just too much trouble to complain--and we might come out looking like a racist. Which we definitely *are NOT*

To announce that we have ZERO TOLERANCE for a group of people is pretty breath-taking. We can't even TOLERATE these little babies and young children being left with their parents? Zero tolerance.

"Tolerate" is such a pathetic, piddling little excuse for refusing to put up with things that annoy us, things we'll subject ourselves to *if we have to* but we won't like it. I can't tolerate it when someone leaves the toilet seat up, but I'll lower it rather than sit in toilet water.

I have never felt so ashamed of being an American, never felt so impotent, never felt like crying so hard for people I don't know. I don't think I can tolerate this.

"Zero Tolerance" got Jean Valjean a death sentence for stealing a loaf of bread

"Zero tolerance" is a cruel, lazy and ineffectual way to address crimes. Years ago, when we began to become aware of sexual abuse in our society, schools proudly announced a Zero Tolerance for sexual misbehavior. A first grader who kissed a classmate was expelled; so was the sixth grader who participated in a gang rape in the boys' room. Zero tolerance gave us the Rockefeller drug laws which put first-time marijuana *possessors*--not sellers, possessors--in jail for long terms, sometimes life terms, no matter what the judge in the case felt was reasonable. Zero tolerance keeps me from carrying my 1" long folding scissors on airplanes.

Zero tolerance is invoked when the authority in question does not want to take the time and trouble to examine each case on its own merits, with appropriate consequences imposed. Zero tolerance sounds mighty tough, but it's really the lazy man's out.

Zero tolerance treats Mexican and South American families who have tried to follow our immigration laws exactly as people trying to cross the border illegally. Zero tolerance treats eight-month-old babies the same way it treats adult gang members.

God save us all from Zero tolerance.

ETA: Just read MrScorpio's post about Trump's continuing war on POC. Zero Tolerance also gave us the "one drop" doctrine of determining who was white and therefore fully human. Zero tolerance.

Everyone must care about everyone else's children

Trump continues to take directions from Putin

Last weekend, independent Russian-language media published hundreds of photographs from protests that preceded Monday’s inauguration of Vladimir Putin, who has claimed the office of President for the fourth time. In many of the pictures, Russian police were detaining children: primarily, preteen boys were having their arms twisted behind their backs by police, being dragged and shoved into paddy wagons. According to OVDInfo, a Web site that has been tracking arrests since anti-Putin protests began, six and a half years ago, a hundred and fifty-eight minors were detained by police during the protests, accounting for just less than ten per cent of the day’s arrests.

Ella Paneyakh, a Russian sociologist who studies law-enforcement practices, observed in a Facebook post that the police had clearly been directed to target children. A possible explanation, she suggested, is that social services, which will process the minors, is even less accountable than the regular courts are. While Russian activists have learned to make the work of the courts difficult, filing appeals and regularly going all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, there is no role for defense attorneys and no apparent appeals process in the social-services system. The threat is clear: children who have been detained at protests may be removed from their families. At least one parent has already been charged with negligence as a result of his son’s detention at one of the demonstrations last weekend.

Another possible explanation is that Putin and the system he has created have consistently, if not necessarily with conscious intent, restored key mechanisms of Soviet control. The spectacle of children being arrested sends a stronger message than any amount of police violence against adults could do. The threat that children might be removed from their families is likely to compel parents to keep their kids at home next time—and to stay home themselves.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/taking-children-from-their-parents-is-a-form-of-state-terror

I think I detect the fine hand of Steven Miller

in Trump's insistence that the Democrats can end the separation of children from their families with a phone call. The phone call would be to agree to fully fund the fucking wall. Trump/Miller is using this cruel policy to force the Democrats to choose between suffering children and their principles. Trump continues to try to muddy the waters so his "base" won't catch on, but I think the message is pretty clear. They tried it with DACA, and the Democrats stood fast. Now they've upped the ante to unspeakable cruelty and are going to continue to insist that it's up to the Democrats to end it.

They do know that "suffer the little children"

doesn't mean "make the little children suffer," don't they?

Dear Donald Trump

This is what a guy who doesn't have to pay for sex looks like:

Blaming the victim? Suicide

People who are on the verge of killing themselves are often not capable of asking for help. It's a well-known symptom of depression that it affects your intellectual abilities, slows down your thought processes, and distorts reality. When you are so depressed that you are genuinely ready to kill yourself, you are in no place to think clearly, much less realize that you should reach out to a suicide hotline.

I know this from personal experience. If my husband hadn't happened on me crying so hard I couldn't speak and forcibly taken me to the doctor's office, I would have parked our van in a secluded area of a nearby park, drunk the bottle of vodka I had in the front seat, and put the plastic bag over my head.

It angers me when the first public response to a celebrity suicide always includes telling people who want to kill themselves to get help. If they were capable of getting help for themselves, they wouldn't be ready to kill themselves, assholes.