If you’ll remember, it had started before dRumph -
Cadet Bone Spurs only amplified the message our wonderful “gentlemen” in congress have sent.
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The reply from Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Translation taken from this article on Vox
President Donald Trump:
I’ve learned about your latest position regarding Mexico. First of all, I want to express that I do not want a confrontation. When facing a conflict in our relationship, no matter how serious, the cities and nations we represent deserve that we turn to dialogue and act with caution and responsibility.
Mexico’s best president, Benito Juárez, maintained an excellent relationship with his Republican counterpart, Abraham Lincoln. Later on, during the oil expropriation (when Mexico kicked out foreign oil companies), Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood the profound reasons that led patriot President Lázaro Cárdenas to act in favor of our sovereignty. Indeed, President Roosevelt was a titan of liberty. Before anyone else, he proclaimed the four fundamental human rights: the right to speak freely, to practice religion freely, to live free of fear, and to live free of misery.
That’s the thinking behind our politics when it comes to the migration issue. Human beings don’t abandon their hometowns because they want to, but because they need to. That’s why, when I first took office, I proposed to partner in helping develop Central American countries by making productive investments that will create jobs and address the root cause of this terrible issue.
You must also know that we are complying with our responsibility to prevent, to the extent possible and without violating human rights, passage through our country. It’s worth reminding you that, before long, Mexicans will no longer need to go to the United States, and that migration will be optional, not forced. That’s because we are fighting corruption, Mexico’s main problem, like never before! And that’s how our country will become a great power with a social dimension. Our fellow citizens will be able to work and be happy where they were born, where their families, traditions and cultures are.
President Trump: You can’t solve social problems with taxes or coercive measures. How does one transform, overnight, the country of fellowship with immigrants from around the world into a ghetto, a closed-off space that stigmatizes, mistreats, chases, expels and cancels legal rights to those who are seeking —with effort and hard work— to live free of misery? The Statue of Liberty isn’t an empty symbol.
With all due respect, while you have the sovereign right to say it, the slogan “America First” is a fallacy, because until the end of times, and above national borders, universal justice and brotherhood will prevail.
More specifically, my fellow president: I propose that we deepen our dialogue to find alternative solutions to the root cause of the migration problem, and please, remember that I don’t lack courage, that I am not a coward or timid, but that I act based on principles: I believe that politics, among other things, was invented to avoid confrontation and war. I do not believe in the Talion Law, in a “tooth for a tooth” or an “eye for an eye,” because, if we go there, we’d all end up toothless and blind in one eye. I believe that people of the state, and even more so, as people of the nation, we are obligated to find peaceful solutions to our disputes and to always practice the beautiful ideal of non-violence.
Lastly, I propose that you instruct your staff, if it’s not an inconvenience, to meet with representatives of our government, led by Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations, who are heading to Washington tomorrow so we can find a solution that benefits both our nations.
Nothing by force, everything with reason and by the Law!
Your friend,
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
President of Mexico
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I can’t wait for the SNL skit:
(An aide hands President Trump a letter from the President of Mexico)
Trump: “I don’t understand. This is gibberish.”
Aide 1: “I thought you gave him the translated letter?”
Aide 2: “I did.”
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Everything Donny Two Scoops does is #2
Big Brother’s machines of loving grace to watch over us, right. Implant chips in all citizens (except those born outside the records system, who shall remain disenfranchised), legal residents and visitors, and approved spies. Install chip-readers at choke points with ICE agents at hand to snag the unchipped, What, your infant isn’t chipped yet, or your kid broke theirs? Ship-em to Tijuana!
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in some good news the tangerine toddler blimp is coming back… (no tarp being thrown over that one)
Dude, I’m talking about, like, a card, a database, a phone, a secure front-end. You’re taking about implanted chips, not me.
And if you think asking someone for verifiable id/proof-of-citizenship at a place of employment is a facist invasion of privacy, that’s some slippery-slope nonsense, too.
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I wish I could be so trusting of our well-meaning gov’t. But ubiquitous surveillance, yow. Show me your papers. Oh, those can be forged. And facial recognition is flaky. Chips is is, then.
The slippery slope started some time ago and we’re picking up speed.
I honestly can’t be sure anymore. And really, you were parroting HIS argument, which is a pretty dumb argument. Electronics manufacturers in the US are finding that many of the Chinese suppliers are moving to Vietnam and the Philippines. So much for bringing manufacturing Stateside.
/s
but not really
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The first question anyone with slightest familiarity with issue would ask.
The last question DOTARDUS would ever ask.
So, he involves us in a trade war of caprice.
Well, it’s 5% on everything. Plus, he’s advertised it as the opening salvo; surely he can ramp it up further when Mexico doesn’t “accede to his demands.” And why would 5% intuitively not make a huge difference to the financial markets? (If your body temperature were increased by “only” 5%, you’d have a 103.5º fever.) It’s taken much less in the past to rattle the markets and generate stampedes of capital flow. And greater economic instability, real or perceived, in Mexico will only create… more migrants at the border. But why would Orange Julius Caesar even care if his policy is counter-productive: an increase in migrants means he has even more ammunition to whip up his base into a xenophobic frenzy with.
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I agree, the extreme forced birthers, racists and flagrant antiregulation greedheads have tasted blood and are riding high on the vindication. They’ve seen lines crossed unchallenged and unhindered. They’re not going to let of their feverish dreams of domination easily.
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Yeah, I was thinking merely of the fact that a 5% tariff wouldn’t be enough to make anyone move their business out of Mexico, but it certainly hurts consumers and the economy (and may well provide the final nudge needed to push it over the cliff). And yeah, if Trump doesn’t back down, it’s certainly going to go all the way up to 25%, as there’s no way Mexico could fulfill his demands (which are vague anyways). At which point the US will be hurting from price increases and Mexico will be hurting from lost business (driving more unemployed workers into the US…).
Trump is in this weird position now where he can’t solve the “immigration problem” even if he was able (which he obviously isn’t) because then he doesn’t have an issue that fires up his base, but at the same time, he needs to show that he’s done something to decrease immigration, because otherwise he just looks ineffectual (which he is - his policies having only increased immigration numbers). He’s put himself into a corner, and responses like this make things worse - he can’t back down without being able to say his actions had a positive effect, but it’s never going to work the way he wants because it’s only going to make matters worse (by pissing off Mexico which will stop going along with his plans, create more immigrants, etc.) as well as damaging the economy.
Yeah, I was just thinking internationally, but nationally things aren’t going back, either. Those kinds of folks are emboldened by their beliefs having gone so mainstream as to sit in the White House. Their bigotries are no longer being seen as unmentionable in polite society and they’re going to want more.
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