“No,” John said, standing up straight for maybe the first time in his life.
“No?” Landry raised an eyebrow and the screen flickered momentarily as the connection through wormhole fluctuated. “What do mean, ‘no,’ Colonel?”
“I mean I’m not coming. Tell them there was an emergency. Or tell them the truth for all I care. I’m not traveling to another galaxy to shake the tiny hand of a racist, sexist, xenophobic cheeto and pretend to like it.”
“I might be persuaded to go just to see the look on his sorry excuse for a second in command’s face when you introduce me as your husband,” Rodney piped in sarcastically from behind John. “We can tell him all about the gays in space who save his ass every day.”
“Yeah, just tell him we’ve all caught the gay and had to be quarantined so it doesn’t spread to the rest of his precious, totally straight military. Nobody’s ever relieved the stress of living in a combat zone with a little guy on guy hand job exchange,” John drawled.
Landry rubbed his temples.
“I’m afraid I stand with Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay on this issue, General,” Woolsey interjected. “This is an IOA expedition after all, and the, er, man’s policies have the potential to be incredibly divisive among our expedition members, many of whom are from the very countries the, er, president–” Woolsey swallowed, as though the word caused bile to rise in his throat–“Has continuously vilified without cause.”
“I see,” said Landry after considering them for a moment. It lasted so long, John was beginning to think the screen was frozen. “Off the record, I can’t say I blame you. To be honest, I’m a little jealous of your current position in another galaxy. On the record, I’m so sorry to hear of Atlantis’ recent outbreak of Athosian Whooping Cough. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.”
Senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows over the weekend, and his comments about voter fraud have earned him justifiably dim reviews. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump and Fact Checker Glenn Kessler dealt with those claims in depth.
Here’s the key exchange, with “Face the Nation’s” John Dickerson (emphasis added):
DICKERSON: When I talked to Republicans on the Hill, they wonder, what in the White House – what have you all learned from this experience with the executive order?
MILLER: Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is – is – is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.
The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.
“Will not be questioned.” That is an incredible claim to executive authority – and one we can expect to hear plenty more about. Trump has beaten around this bush plenty, yes. But Miller just came out and said it: that the White House doesn’t recognize judges’ authority to review things such as his travel ban.
It might have been excused as a little over-exuberance, except that Miller said similar things in his other Sunday show appearances.
He said on “Meet the Press”: “The bottom line is that a district judge – a district judge in Seattle – cannot make immigration law for the United States, cannot give foreign nationals and foreign countries rights they do not have and cannot prevent the president of the United States from suspending the admission of refugees from Syria.”
And on “Fox News Sunday”: “This is a judicial usurpation of the power. It is a violation of judges’ proper roles in litigating disputes. We will fight it. And we will make sure that we take action to keep from happening in the future what’s happened in the past.”
****
Gehayi here. So yeah.Miller, an advisor and speech writer to 45 and one of the co-authors of the Muslim ban (the other being Bannon), just openly declared war on judges’ power to review a president’s actions and declare them unconstitutional. Never mind that this is how federal and state courts work in the U.S.A., and that any state or federal court can challenge the constitutionality of a law. Miller wants an end to judicial review and an end to the judiciary checking the power of 45.
Which would mean ending constitutional democracy as practiced in America.
Just the fact that someone close to the president wants this is appalling.
Now realize that 45–who has never shown that he grasps what the word “NO!” means, and who regards refusal of anything he wants as a horrendous personal affront for which the refuser must be punished–completely agrees.
you don’t have a president, you have a dictator.
I mean I understand that the realisation of this fact is one of slowly mounting horror. But you best believe it now, it saves time
Now is an excellent time to look at your history books and start thinking about what comes next. Try the 1930s as a start.
Isn’t something similar to this what caused the Watergate scandal?
Yep. 4.5 minutes of erased tape caught Woodward and Bernstein’s attention.
Kiddos, @sailorzeo is exactly on point. If you haven’t learned about Richard Nixon and the Watergate Hotel in school (or even if you have–God knows my school mentioned it but hardly explained it), here are some things you’ll want to look up.
Movie: All The President’s Men
Bob Woodward
Carl Bernstein
Watergate tapes
Deep Throat (USE CAUTION I strongly suggest using a search term like “deep throat watergate” or “deep throat presidential leak” and if your parents have a web tracker on your computer, tell them you’re researching Watergate BEFORE you look this up)
If your parents or your grandparents were around for Nixon’s presidency, you may wish to talk to them, too.
Mhairi Black MP was being interviewed and the interviewer laughingly said “well, if it’s at Balmoral, it’s out of the way so less protesters” and this was her response:
AAAJ (Asian Americans Advancing Justice) has created a website here where you can report anti-Asian hate crimes.
This is real life! This is real shit happening to real people! I don’t want to hear any more discourse that acts like Asians or Chinese people in particular are gonna be safe or don’t need to worry about the new regime
Ugh. Sorry to hear that NO minority is safe (but not surprised).
Donald Trump has called for a shutdown of the Internet in certain areas to stop the spread of terror.
In a speech at the U.S.S. Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina,
on Monday, Trump referenced the use by ISIS of social media as a
recruitment tool. He recommended a discussion with Bill Gates to shut
off parts of the Internet.
“We’re
losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” Trump said. “We have to
go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand
what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas,
closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of
speech, freedom of speech.‘ These are foolish people. We have a lot of
foolish people.”
Some totalitarian governments do it
The notion that the Internet could be shut off is not completely off
base. North Korea does it. Some countries have been known to shut off
Internet service to their citizens in times of crisis. Egypt restricted
the Internet during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.
Other
countries block certain Internet services and sites. China is the most
famous example, forbidding most social networking sites as well as
websites that deal with subjects the government doesn’t want its
citizens to know about.
Most Western countries, including the
United States, regulate the Internet very loosely. There are few
restrictions about what American citizens can do and say on the
Internet. Child pornography is one example of forbidden Internet
activity in the United States – Google is barred from linking to it,
and websites cannot display images of it.
Why the United States can’t do it
But a full-on “closing up” of the Internet “in certain areas” would be
an impossible task. There are so many players with so much redundancy
built into the system, that the Internet is not just something that can
be turned off with a wave of a magic wand.
Virtually every part in the United States has multiple Internet service provider options.
Comcast, (CMCSA) Time Warner Cable (TWC) and the other major broadband companies don’t overlap much. But Verizon (VZ, Tech30), AT&T (T, Tech30), Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (TMUS)
all provide the same service to roughly the same areas. Satellite
companies also provide Internet to most parts of the country.
Removing Internet service in certain areas of the U.S. would require
those companies to turn off their cell towers and fiber networks, and to
restrict satellite access to people living in those regions.
America can’t shut off the Internet overseas either
Shutting down Internet service in foreign countries could be even more difficult.
Despite a common belief to the contrary, the United States does not
control the global Internet. Servers on foreign soil serve up the Web
and other Internet services to people living abroad.
So foreign
Internet infrastructure would need to be disrupted or shut down to turn
off service in certain areas – already a tricky task made even harder
if the countries and companies controlling those servers and cell towers
abroad don’t cooperate.
Whatever, Donald Trump wouldn’t want the Internet shut off anyway. Then he couldn’t tweet.
While Trump clearly doesn’t know the first thing about how the
internet works (outside of his Twitter account), don’t let “it couldn’t happen in America” blind us to some
very real ways in which the internet can be made less free, less
accessible, and less useful for things other than government propaganda
and surveillance. And don’t doubt that President Trump (and his party)
would be happy to implement them.
the time honored tool of every dictator, censorship is one of the first things out of trump’s mouth. this is real censorship, as opposed to when someone tells you you’re wrong on twitter.
it should come as no surprise whatsoever that 45′s pick for FCC commissioner, ajit pai, is SUPER excited to strip net neutrality from american citizens. if you didn’t know, net neutrality is the principle that currently allows you to access whatever internet site you want, at the same speed as all the other sites, without your ISP spying on you TOO much. the US regulations that protect you in this way are an annoying speed bump for ISPs in their quest to wring you like a wet dishrag until all your money falls out, and of course Team Spraytan works for them, not you.
and hey, if they do want to enact the fuckin lunatic censorship proposed in the article above, getting rid of these protections will be their first stop. what’s the most likely target of this anti-internet offensive? obviously, it’ll be american activists, scientists, and anybody who’s ever used the phrase “tiny hands” – or, as all those folks will be called in newspeak, terrorists.
just one more thing you should keep on your list of Horrible Things To Yell At Representatives About.
I am sorry but until you live in America I don’t think you should have any opinion.
The rest of the world will stop having an opinion on American politics once America stops fucking with the rest of the world. Sure, Trump and his love of nuclear weapons certainly wouldn’t have an effect on the rest of the world. Or you know when you decide to attack the Middle East again because oil or some “we shall bring them democracy and freedom”-bullshit….
They don’t get a vote, but they sure as fuck can voice their opinions all they want.
…literally the US has made damn sure that it matters to the rest of the world, so yes, the rest of the world does get to have an opinion on our bullshit politics
Steel Phoenix Studios 