The executive order is a thoroughly duplicitous piece of [LIFTED].

The first page of it was almost entirely spent talking about 9/11, and then doesn't actually include any of the countries that 9/11 hijackers came from. I'm sure it's a pure coincidence, but those are also countries where Little Donald has significant business interests.

It also includes a UK MP, who happened to have been born in Iraq, and perhaps more notably hits a number of Iraqis who have spent most of the last decade helping the US armed forces, are no complete pariahs in their home country and are getting utterly screwed over by it. I've not seen it confirmed, but it possibly also applies to certain US military (ie fully signed up soldiers) who are currently on active deployment anywhere that isn't the USA. Whether all of these are by design or just the complete [LIFTED] incompetence of his administration remains to be seen.

The man really has no redeeming features to speak of.

Opinion I saw that they didn't even bother getting a lawyer to look at the exec. orders before they signed them into application. The ACLU took one look at them and immediately started legal action, which suggests they think they are pretty weak. I suspect they'll get blown away in court like paper in front of a blowtorch, which will make Trump really, really angry. This in itself will be brilliant, should it come to pass.

Also, apparently the orders don't actually require some of the things that the US border guards are doing. Anyone who has travelled to the states will have stories about those guys. I've met a couple of nice ones, but I've met an awful lot who... weren't very nice. After a couple of bad experiences I stopped going to the states altogether, too much hassle.

You make it sound like that is a good thing?

It was stated as being temporary (90 days for all travellers, 120 days for asylum seekers/refugees) however if left to their own devices things like that have a habit of being temporary for a very long time.

As it happens, it lasted barely a few hours. As soon as a federal judge saw that it blocked green card holders - who have a legitimate legal right to be resident in the US and will have previously been security vetted - he made a class action order, which applies to the whole US, that effectively annulled it. I'm sure it's only the first step on this particular road but Trump already has egg on his face. Mind you, his face is the same colour as an egg yolk anyway, so maybe people won't notice.

Here is a fascinating deconstruction of the whole thing. Note the author is not some wishy washy liberal, he's previously argued that drone strikes and extraordinary rendition were legally valid and should be accepted.



So the order was apparently drafted entirely within the white house, with no consultation of anyone in the state department, department of homeland security, justice department or JSC and that the Nation Security Council's lawyers were actively prevented from seeing it. And that government officials who did get to see it told white house officials that it wouldn't stand if it included Green Card holders, but they went on and did it anyway. It is legally full of holes and seems to violate at least two amendments of the American constitution. He agrees with the belief they didn't even get a lawyer to look at it at all before they published it.

On top of all that, Trump has kicked the head of the armed forces off the Joint Security Council (!) and put the head of Briebart news on it instead. Just like how in soviet Russia every committee had to have a commissar on it to ensure it followed the wishes of The State.

It would be hilarious if it wasn't quite so dangerous.

Maybe I've been reading Scott Adams blog too much but I'd be careful about making any assumptions about the apparent stupidity of this particular move.

First off, Trump has shown those that elected him that he's trying to put in place the crap he said he would during the election. He's done a LOT of that in his first week (even if it doesn't actually stick) and that's the bit people remember.

Now it's been struck down by the courts he'll almost certainly play it up as the courts obstructing "the will of the people" to be protected from all those horrible terrorists 'out there'. That makes it easier for him to later get frisky with the US legal system.
Also don't forget the Republicans blocked Obama from appointing a new Supreme Court judge during his time in power. There are also couple of Supreme Court judges who are quite likely to retire during his term and that gives the Republicans the potential to skew the Supreme Court in their favour for what could be a very long time.

All conjecture of course but with a Trump, however much of buffoon he looks like on the surface, it's worth considering what the actual plan is under all the noise and misdirection.

Everything we've seen and heard so far suggests Trump does actually think being president means he can say or do whatever the heck he likes. He doesn't understand the power vested in him isn't just for his personal use. He doesn't understand the office he's arrived at in any fundamental way at all and I suspect he will make a pretty good impression of a blind man wandering around a garden rake disposal dump.

The people behind him probably are much smarter than he is, but they have no experience and, if stories are true, do not see eye to eye with a big chunk of the Republican party establishment who do have the experience. They can't help but make these mistakes early on because they've arrived in a system they don't understand. They'll get better at it, this is undoubtedly true, but they're actually in quite a weak position at the moment; much weaker than any other incoming president has been for decades, if not ever.

Even a pro-republican supreme court judge isn't going to throw out a case where it's patently obvious to anyone with a law degree that a Presidential order has violated the US constitution. They have to retain their own credibility and their own political mandate. If they just look like a stooge for Trump, that's not going to sit well on them later - hard to get a nice Professorship at an Ivy league university if everyone thinks you're an idiot.

Petition to deny Trump a state visit to the UK

Note this is not a petition to deny Trump access to the UK, it's simply to deny any such visit the trapping of a state visit like parades and pageantry - to relegate it to the level of the ordinary dealing of politics. Because that would wind Trump up no end.

It needed 100,0000 signatures to be debated in the house of commons. It got that in a few hours, in the middle of the night. I reckon it'll hit a million within 24 hours. The largest petition ever is just over 4 million apparently - this one may possibly breach that.

Trump executive order: UK ministers to press US on ban - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38789821

Stronger together.

Mexican President Meets Meryl Streep Instead of Trump

maybe the reason not to allow the enemy within and they are the 'enemy' like it or not ...

ps. the UN will rubber stamp it. reason funding ...

They're not. Nobody from the banned countries has ever committed an act of terrorism or any such against any American citizen. There are several predominantly Muslim countries where people have come from and then committed atrocities against Americans, but none of them are on the banned list. The fact several of those countries also have significant Trump-related businesses is entirely coincidental, I'm sure.

Let's make one thing absolutely clear - there is NO reasoned security grounds for doing this. The countries that are being blocked have not presented any threat to the continental US. The countries where there are organisations that do present such threats are open to travel. The only thing this is is a massive propaganda coup for exactly those factions in the Middle east that Trump laughably claims to be 'fighting' by doing it.

Every. Single. Radical islamist haterag or ludicrous video channel or whatever is saying the same thing tonight. "See, we told you the US hates you because you are Muslim and now they've shown it to be true."

The idea this makes anybody in the US safer is laughable. If anybody was coming to blow up something the US before, they're still coming. And what's more, if the CBP would have let them in before, they almost certainly still will. The only effect this has had, beyond misery for a pile of completely innocent people, is to make the hatred of the US in the Middle east worse.

Whether he's keeping his promises, whether it's constitutional, whether it will be popular... aside from all of that the bare fact is it simply won't work.

trump the puppet of Israel very strong ally with saudi arabia so obviously hes not going to ban people from there

cant wait to see that wall built

the grounds for this being put into place can be summed up with 3 letters W ... A ... R
unrelenting no holes barred out right war which will go far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan

if you fail to see what has been put in place with the UN and Russia then ...

US soldiers and support workers to the US Army, people already cleared for immigration (green carded) or even American citizens aren't allowed back into the country. That is totally crazy.

Luckily sanity prevailed and they are being allowed back in.

It's at a million this morning