Our president is a racist and a shameful laughingstock, part MCXVIX.
President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they floated restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?Trump said, according to these people, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway, whose prime minister he met yesterday.
Meanwhile, the more polite and diplomatic members of the rest of the world are all thinking about what a shithole the United States is becoming.
Can I move to Norway instead? Please?
The recently-televised immigration meeting shows why he needs minders at such meetings.
This is interesting: “It sounds absurd today but back in the day there was hysteria against Norwegian immigrants, who allegedly refused to assimilate and undermined American values….”
Man who wants those descendants of Vikings moving here. Those pillagers and scavengers /S
Really, Norway and most of scandavian countries have become models toward which we need to aspire. *sigh*
?
Artor,
Norway may be a very good choice.
Unlike other oil-producing countries, they have set aside the oil money in long-term funds for future generations, for when the oil is gone.
The gini coefficient is good. Healthcare, social programs, education, all are high in lists comparing industrial countries.
Gender equality, the whole shebang.
Minus points for a xenopobic populist party, but that is the only problem I can think of, offhand.
And every party that rises above a four-percent treshold gets a proportional share of parliament seats.
He acts as though people are his to be bused in. I can’t imagine why anyone in Norway would want to come here, given that they have a much better, and much more stable society than we do here in Ustates.
This was just reported on CNN: “The President’s ‘shithole’ remark is being received much differently inside of the WH. Staffers predict the comment will resonate with his base.”
Apropos of nothing much, in 2010(-ish), there was apparently around 1000 immigrants from Norway. I have no idea what the “quota” is for Norway (the State Dept calls it something else), but would not be surprised to learn it’s under-subscribed; that is, that there are more “slots” available for Norwegian immigrants than applications.
SC, #7
That’s how he got the nomination and then got the second highest number of votes.
I’m not sure why anyone would think it would be received any other way.
Also re. Norway; We in Sweden got the musicians and the crime authors, they got the polar explorers and the scenery.
– – –
But let us not forget the many other great countries.
Ironically, those countries are great because they have implemented good ideas that usually originated in USA!
– – –
Two generations of US politicians decided to burn the place down while the rest of the world moved ahead on and up.
What have you done with your pitchforks? ?
Wow! A shithead blathering about shitholes! How nicely symmetric!
I wonder how many Norwegians are currently in the US without permission, or working contrary to the provisions of their visas. Despite what people like Trump think it’s a number greater than zero.
#4: Vikings? Most of those Norwegian immigrants, like my great grandfather, were farmers who settled in cold empty parts of the country and raised cows.
Also, there was some discrimination: squareheads, they were called. Norwegians were thought to be kind of slow, not very bright, more of the plodding, unimaginative sort. To reciprocate, of course, Norwegians taunted Swedes for being soft and wimpy, and Finns were just plain weird semi-savages.
There’s bigotry everywhere.
MCXVIX? Has the enumeration of Trump’s vile excrescences broken the Roman reckoning completely now?
To be fair the majority of Norse settlers in early Medieval Europe – the people who got called Vikings – were also farmers who settled down to raise cows in the cold, desolate bits nobody else wanted. The angry pillaging ones doing the actual viking just got all the tabloid inches in the mainstream monastic chronicles.
I think what’s (somewhat) new is the blatant admission and open racist cynicism, with little or no attempt at spin.
This should have an interesting effect in Latin America and the Caribbean.
And throughout Africa, which I assume was an inadvertent omission. (Hair furor’s comment was, in part, in direct response to “African countries and Haiti”.)
And much of the rest of the world, albeit in some cases cynically.
Not yet confirmed, but what may be an early response, Donald Trump visit to London called off amid fears of mass protests:
There are numerous additional reasons hair furor to stay away, but this might have been the icing on the cake, so to speak.
No – my present knowledge of the continent and its regional alliances and different countries’ current relations with the US isn’t sufficient to make even vague predictions about the effects of his comments.
Carlos Curbelo and Mia Love could switch parties.
I think I posted about this bullshit at the time:
#14: We’re just reduced to spluttering out random Roman numerals. There is no tally. There can be no tally. Might as well throw in a few Suzhou numerals while we’re at it. Or toss up our hands and vomit on the page.
Miami Herald Editorial Board: “So, Mr. President, would you say South Florida is a ‘shithole’ too?”
The United States needs a true patriot with a gun…
After Trump and the GOP gets done with America, it too will become a shithole country.
Cross posted from the Political Madness All the Time thread.
Trump’s “shithole” comments are wildly popular with white supremacists.
Link
From Yamiche Alcindor:
I never thought I would live to see the day when the president of the United States called an entire country and an entire continent shitholes. At least I didn’t until Nov of last year. In a single year he has destroyed what remained of the world’s post-war goodwill towards us with his nonstop villainy. How can anyone ever look at the US the same again? How can the people who voted for him ever atone for him?
From Republican Representative Erik Paulsen of Minnesota:
From Fox News host Tucker Carlson:
Option C: Tucker Carlson’s brain is not in proper working order.
Norwegians aren’t Vikings. Norwegians are what were left over after all the Vikings left. ;)
Medieval Guy, proud Norwegian-American
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
I’ll offer you a hint, Mr. President. It’s the seventh word in.
birgerjohnson @5,
Also, fjords. Don’t forget the fjords. Slartibartfast was very proud of those.
Another comment Trump made concerning immigration, (an excerpt from a new interview Trump gave to the Wall Street Journal):
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox responded to Trump’s “shithole” comment:
Rich Lowry of the National Review defended Trump’s “shithole” comment:
Joy Reid, guest hosting for Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s “All In,” did not defend Trump:
Apparently Trump, Tucker, et al are ignorant of America’s role in making El Salvador, Haiti, and many African countries such horrible places to live that people desperately try to leave.
Rachel Maddow tonight pointed out that this comment is going to be in the American media for maybe two weeks before we move on to focus on the next crazy thing that Dump says, but countries in Africa and the Caribbean are going to be remembering it and holding it against the US for years after Dump has left office and there’s something we want them to work with us on.
Is Puerto Rico a foreign shit hole?
Norway is a lovely country. One of my favorite holiday destinations. Been there only three times though, because it is pretty costly.
A common misunderstanding: the word “viking” does not refer to a people. Viking was a profession.
Who now remembers the American occupation of Haiti 1915?
It ended with Haiti having to agree to some very unfair trade agreements.
Also, France extorted Haiti to pay “reparations” for the slaves becoming free, decades after the Haitian independence following a slave insurrection..
— — — — — —
1915 is an interesting year, This is when a town in Texas spent several hours torturing and literally burning a black man to death, in the center of town, in front of a very big crowd and without intereference from the authorities. The participants were proud of it and even made postcards depicting the event.
— — —
The extreme violent gangs in mesoamerica were born from countries that had suffered civil war, political repression and death squads. The future gang members went to USA, joined gangs, were deported back and now started the extreme gangs that live on today, and are the cause for many people fleeing to USA.
— — —
BTW, Swedes originally had a bad reputation in the USA, alongside the Norwegians. As the Swedes left urban ghettos moving on up, they were replaced by latinos…
Well, the reason he’s not getting as miuch immigration out of Scandiwegia is that we Euros are starting to see the US as a shithole country. My Dutch colleagues went from about 3/4 thinking I was crazy to give up my US passport 4 years ago to 3/4 thinking I was prescient. I’ve got a few friends in academia (e.g., a physicist who works at CERN) who won’t go to conferences in the US any more.
I’m finding it more and more difficult to see a scenario where the US doesn’t continue its long slide into corporate feudalism.
From Lynna’s quoted article, #26
Isn’t this the whiny Nazi who was complaining about Communists on camera while pouring milk on his face?
Ack. In many respects, the US are becoming an underdeveloped country. Sorry Americans, you’ve become a primitive tribe in our eyes.
“Norway may be a very good choice.
Unlike other oil-producing countries, they have set aside the oil money in long-term funds for future generations, for when the oil is gone.
The gini coefficient is good. Healthcare, social programs, education, all are high in lists comparing industrial countries.
Gender equality, the whole shebang.
Minus points for a xenopobic populist party, but that is the only problem I can think of, offhand.
And every party that rises above a four-percent treshold gets a proportional share of parliament seats.”
Right. It’s a pretty nice place (except for a strand of (yes!) puritanism/prudishness which is not uncommon in Scandinavia) and a very good place to live. But precisely for that reason, few if any Norwegians today are interested in immigrating to the USA!
The US played a major role in making Haiti a shithole: https://twitter.com/ZachJCarter/status/860129670481805316
Waaaay back up there but, ‘víkingar’ was more of an occupational category than anything else. In Englisc they were ‘Dene’ i.e. Danes.
The question one should ask oneself is why on Earth would Normegians want to come to the USA at the moment?
In Michael Moore’s latest documentary, “Who to Invade Next” at the end of the documentary he asks a woman in… it might have been Iceland, or Norway if she would like to move to USA. She responds “absolutely not!” and motivates it with the way American society ignores the suffering of its members.
The exodus from our “shithole” is beginning:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-10/chinese-workers-abandon-silicon-valley-for-riches-back-home
The government of Botswana responds, calling the remarks “highly irresponsible, reprehensible and racist.” They call on other nations around the world to strongly condemn them.
The Rapist tweets:
SC, #49
It must be really tough to be the US ambassador/diplomat to these countries. If you stay on, you’ll have to represent Chitler’s positions. If you quit, you’ll just be replaced by a Stephen Miller type bot who is fully in line with Trump’s ideas.
Here’s the video of Dick Durbin’s comments about the meeting. So far not a word from the Republicans who were there.
I just can’t get away from this shit, can I? I recently cut the cable. Now I don’t have access to 24-7 cable TV news. One of the reasons for doing this because I was obsessively watching all things Trump. It turns out this wasn’t doing my health any good. At my last doctor’s visit my BP was running high. I was also showing some classic signs of depression. My physician asked me about my politics. I told her what I was. She nodded and said that many of her Democratic patients were showing signs of stress, some acute. She recommended that I stop watching cable news to lower my body’s production of stress hormones. These may be affecting my blood pressure as well as my emotional state. So, I cut the cable (I’d been thinking about doing that for a while anyway). But, as I said at the top, there’s no escaping the madness. Trump gets in no matter what I do. The only way to avoid him is to go someplace remote. A WiFi desert. Maybe Mongolia?
Jeff Flake confirms: “The words used by the President, as related to me directly following the meeting by those in attendance, were not ‘tough’, they were abhorrent and repulsive.”
Speak up, six Republicans who were in attendance.
Thinly disguised shout-out to Anders Brevick fans.
Republican vermin are so tiresomely predictable.
Eh, the orange shitgibbon is doing a great job. Assuming that he works for Putin and his job is to humiliate and undermine the US. The big question in my tiny mind is just how much of the GOP does Putin own? F*ing traitors all of them.
The Netherlands are now welcoming the new US ambassador, who lied about us, then lied about having lied about us, then lied about having lied about having lied about us, not apologizing and not taking words back, despite being shown the actual footage where he lied, lied again, and again lied again.
How the fuck are we supposed to take seriously a country that sends such a dimwit as its representative?
MSNBC is reporting that the US ambassador to Panama has resigned.
It’s been confirmed by a State Department spokeswoman: “US Ambassador to Panama John Feeley, a career diplomat and former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, has resigned, telling the State Department he no longer feels able to serve President Donald Trump.”
Hm: “Anyone who is reporting the ambassador to Panama resigned in wake of Trump’s remarks yesterday is WRONG. His resignation was already on US Embassy website BEFORE Trump made those remarks.” The reports made it sound like a new thing.
#59 confirmed – his resignation was announced before Trump’s comments were revealed.
Completely unsurprisingly, people and governments and other organisations in various African countries are upset, Haitians, Africans outraged by Trump’s : slur
Also, UN condemns Donald Trump’s : remark as racist
Unfortunately for Blessing Dlamini and the rest of the rational world, not-thinking about hair furor and his dalekocracy, whilst possibly beneficial for one’s own peace, does not seem to deal, at all, with the damage and thieving being done.
I hate to break it to you, but large swaths of Europeans would consider moving to the US a definite downgrade.
Today in some of the Berbers welcome Amazigh New Year:
,Summary of current (non-)statements from meeting attendees.
TheGyre@52: “The only way to avoid him is to go someplace remote. A WiFi desert. Maybe Mongolia?”
I recommend the Arctic. Poor internet, so you have to prioritize.
Also unsurprisingly, Norwegians (or should that be Normegians?) are having great fun with the attention, ‘No, thanks’: Norwegians pooh-pooh Trump’s crude invitation to emigrate:
Some tweets quoted by France24:
Apropos of nothing, can people in U.S. government and mainstream news media please refer to specific African regions, nations and states?! I am beyond tired of people who should know better referring to an entire continent of 54 independent states, 1.2 billion people, that makes up about 20% of the total land area of the Earth as just “Africa”
Algeria
Angola
Benin
Botswana
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde
Cameroon
Central African Republic (CAR)
Chad
Comoros
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Republic of the Congo
Cote d’Ivoire
Djibouti
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gabon
Gambia
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mauritius
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Nigeria
Rwanda
Sao Tome and Principe
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Somalia
South Africa
South Sudan
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Rant over.
embraceyourinnercrone, #67
Wholeheartedly agree with your frustration with that.
It’s a sneaky white supremacist/colonial tactic. It makes those countries and the people from the continent seem generic and easier to dehumanize.
Indeed. As a reminder, Sarah Palin “didn’t know Africa wasn’t a country”: “Palin didn’t understand that Africa was a continent rather than ‘a country in itself’.” The world’s second largest continent is not a monolith.
Al Jazeera has a fantastic rant by Elsie Eyakuze, “a blogger for the Mikocheni Report, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania”, ‘Shithole’ nationalism. A few choice excerpts below, but the whole thing should be read.
embraceyourinnercrone @ 67:
Didn’t Bush the Least’s State Department get Mauretania and Mauritius mixed up on some issue? I remember hilarity ensued </sarcasm>, but I can’t remember the details….
No idea about a Bush-era mix-up between Mauritania and Mauritius, but there apparently was something of the sort during Ronaddled Raygun’s time, Behind Qaddafi’s ’81 plot to assassinate President Reagan:
Maybe that was it. I didn’t think it was that long ago, but everything’s been a slow-motion trainwreck since Reagan got elected, and it kind of runs together. Plus, I’m senile.
Charlie Pierce quotes MA state rep and child of immigrants from Haiti Linda Dorcena Forry:
He concludes: “This is how leaders talk. This is how presidents used to talk. Goddamn us for forgetting that.”
Nana Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana: “The language of @realDonaldTrump that the African continent, Haiti and El Salvador are ‘shithole countries’ is extremely unfortunate. We are certainly not a ‘shithole country’. We will not accept such insults, even from a leader of a friendly country, no matter how powerful.”
biggerjohansson @10
We traded them in for bongs and “#Occupy” placards, the same way we traded Lenin for Lennon and Bolsheviks for flower children.
You may express your approval of #45 here: https://gop.com/official-january-2018-presidential-approval-poll/.
After submitting your response, you are told that
and that so if you could please donate some extra dollars to keep this billionaire in office.The @77 “poll”, in full: