Monday, September 3, 2018

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are fleeing federal food programs like SNAP and WIC in droves because they know the Trump regime will start targeting them using that information.

Immigrants are turning down government help to buy infant formula and healthy food for their young children because they’re afraid the Trump administration could bar them from getting a green card if they take federal aid.

Local health providers say they’ve received panicked phone calls from both documented and undocumented immigrant families demanding to be dropped from the rolls of WIC, a federal nutrition program aimed at pregnant women and children, after news reports that the White House is potentially planning to deny legal status to immigrants who’ve used public benefits. Agencies in at least 18 states say they’ve seen drops of up to 20 percent in enrollment, and they attribute the change largely to fears about the immigration policy.

The Trump administration hasn’t officially put the policy in place yet, but even without a formal rule, families are already being scared away from using services, health providers say.

“It’s a stealth regulation,” said Kathleen Campbell Walker, an immigration attorney at Dickinson Wright in El Paso, Texas. “It doesn’t really exist, but it’s being applied subliminally.”

There's no doubt that this is all about fear.  Immigrants who don't use these programs save the government money, after all. But mostly it's about getting rid of the next generation of immigrants and slowing down or even reversing the browning of America, while feeding fresh, raw meat to Trump's base.  Taking food out of the mouths of "anchor babies" is exactly what the Trump camp wants.

The immigration proposal, which White House officials are working on ahead of the midterms as a way to energize the Republican base, would primarily affect legal immigrants already in the U.S. who are seeking a green card and people applying for legal admission to the U.S. It could also affect undocumented immigrants if they want to seek legal permanent residency in the future — a change that would represent a substantial expansion of the definition of public charge
.

Under a provision known as public charge, U.S. immigration law has for more than a century allowed officials to reject admission to the country on the grounds that potential immigrants or visitors might become overly reliant on the government. But until now, officials have looked narrowly at whether someone would need cash benefits such as welfare or long-term institutional care. Immigration hawks in the Trump administration are pushing to consider would-be immigrants’ use of a much broader array of services, including non-cash assistance like food stamps, Head Start, Medicaid and WIC, according to versions of the proposed rule that were obtained by news organizations earlier this year.

Undocumented immigrants do not qualify for most government aid programs, but such an expansion of public charge could apply to the whole family. In the past, if a mom was applying for a green card her own use of public benefits might be examined. Under the proposed change, her child’s enrollment in Medicaid or Head Start would weighed as a negative factor, even if that child is a U.S. citizen.

The end of immigration into the US is coming, along with mass deportations of "undesirables".  We have one chance to stem the tide in November.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

We've finally reached the point where, as predicted, the Trump regime's state news organ is now officially pushing that Dear Leader was framed for his many crimes

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said Sunday that she believes various forces in Washington have conspired to “frame” President Trump and bog down his administration with scandal and controversy.

“Nobody is looking at the corruption. It’s all one-sided, the corruption on the part of the Democrats," Pirro told radio host John Catsimatidis in an interview on AM 970 New York. "This president was framed. It’s that simple.”

I’ve been in law enforcement for over three decades. This guy was framed," Pirro continued. "The crisscrossing and the incestuous nature of our government in an attempt to prevent the outsider president that we wanted from getting elected is frightening.”

Pirro, a former judge and ardent supporter of Trump, echoed claims the president has made before that he was framed "for crimes he didn't commit."

In May, Trump tweeted an unverified claim that the FBI placed a mole in his campaign team and suggested that the agency was attempting to "frame" him for alleged wrongdoings associated with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia. 

I'm moderately surprised that it wasn't Hannity broaching the subject, but Jeanine Pirro has now escalated this to an extremely dangerous new level.  It's one thing for Trump himself to babble about witch hunts, but if FOX News hosts are now going to start accusing the Justice Department of a massive conspiracy to frame him, then there's no limit as to what they will justify doing in order to defend Trump as Mueller closes in.

You'll know the fix is in when Republicans in Congress and candidates running for midterm elections give non-committal answers to "Do you believe Trump is being framed by Mueller?" instead of anything other than a hard no, and that Pirro is ridiculous and that the Mueller probe has their full support.

Stay tuned on this one.  It's going to get a lot uglier.


Solving A Micro Mystery

Medical scientists in the US have come to the conclusion that the spate of unexplained illnesses among US diplomats in Cuba and China can be explained by repeated attacks from microwave weapons.

During the Cold War, Washington feared that Moscow was seeking to turnmicrowave radiation into covert weapons of mind control.

More recently, the American military itself sought to develop microwave arms that could invisibly beam painfully loud booms and even spoken words into people’s heads. The aims were to disable attackers and wage psychological warfare.

Now, doctors and scientists say such unconventional weapons may have caused the baffling symptoms and ailments that, starting in late 2016, hit more than three dozen American diplomats and family members in Cuba and China. The Cuban incidents resulted in a diplomatic rupture between Havana and Washington.

The medical team that examined 21 affected diplomats from Cuba made no mention of microwaves in its detailed report published in JAMA in March. But Douglas H. Smith, the study’s lead author and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a recent interview that microwaves were now considered a main suspect and that the team was increasingly sure the diplomats had suffered brain injury.

“Everybody was relatively skeptical at first,” he said, “and everyone now agrees there’s something there.” Dr. Smith remarked that the diplomats and doctors jokingly refer to the trauma as the immaculate concussion.

Strikes with microwaves, some experts now argue, more plausibly explain reports of painful sounds, ills and traumas than do other possible culprits — sonic attacks, viral infections and contagious anxiety.

In particular, a growing number of analysts cite an eerie phenomenon known as the Frey effect, named after Allan H. Frey, an American scientist. Long ago, he found that microwaves can trick the brain into perceiving what seem to be ordinary sounds.

If that's true, then suddenly there's a real problem.  Deploying these against US diplomats would be, you know, an act of terrorism...or an act of war.

The microwave idea teems with unanswered questions. Who fired the beams? The Russian government? The Cuban government? A rogue Cuban faction sympathetic to Moscow? And, if so, where did the attackers get the unconventional arms?

At his home outside Washington, Mr. Frey, the scientist who uncovered the neural phenomenon, said federal investigators have questioned him on the diplomatic riddle and that microwave radiation is considered a possible cause.

Mr. Frey, now 83, has traveled widely and long served as a contractor and a consultant to a number of federal agencies. He speculated that Cubans aligned with Russia, the nation’s longtime ally, might have launched microwave strikes in attempts to undermine developing ties between Cuba and the United States.

“It’s a possibility,” he said at his kitchen table. “In dictatorships, you often have factions that think nothing of going against the general policy if it suits their needs. I think that’s a perfectly viable explanation.”

We'll see where this goes.