The Imperial Presidency, Part 2

[Mamorien]

a perfect talk or two with his good friend Xi Jin Ping

"He's Xi ther Jinping. Don't you know what 'ther' means?"

[classicdrogn]

I have several spicy but unlikely guesses... I suspect you'd need to be behind the closed doors with them to know for sure, and I am not that curious. I will simply accept that they are very good friends, comparing the power of their their dictatorships and has the bigger ballroom.

[robkelk]

this one's too depressing for me to read. Maybe somebody else can get through the article and post a tl;dr of it.

How Trump’s mass deportation plan became big business

[Labster]

this one's too depressing for me to read. Maybe somebody else can get through the article and post a tl;dr of it.

How Trump’s mass deportation plan became big business

TL;DR electing Trump has led to death and misery for lots of people, but you knew that already

Private prisons are the original sin here -- the only thing that has really changed is the number of people in detention.  So the overcrowding is new, but the barely-edible food is not.  The intentional reshuffling to facilities far away from their families and social network is a new Trump innovation, I'll grant.

The cruelty is intentional, of course.  For 99% of the people, they can leave at any time.  All they have to do is sign a document that they agree to be deported, and they can be on a flight to some random country overnight. These are all just the scofflaws who want to argue their case before a judge instead of just agreeing that "Trump was right all along." Of course we can't send back Iranian dissidents to Iran, that would be cruel -- well, it would be impractical anyway. So they are sent to Burkina Faso or Rwanda.  Probably Rwanda, now that I think of it, because you wouldn't want to deport a Muslim to a place with Muslims, they might think we were soft and try to come back.

Dead but deportable: US immigration judge signed order to eject teen murder victim - the perfect intersection between bureaucratic cruelty and American gun violence.  All of these immigration judges are under the supervision of the President, not the court, so they need to keep their numbers up, spending immigrants as quickly as if they were AI tokens.

The company in the article, CoreCivic, was once partially owned by lefty billionaire Tom Steyer a decade ago, and that came up as an attack on his the campaign for California governor.  I like him, he cares for a lot of progressive and environmental causes.  He keeps to all the rules.  The only thing he lacks, is that perhaps he should sell all of his holdings and give it to the poor, instead of running a vanity campaign.

In any case, if you can't stand to read articles like the one above, it just proves Canadians are weak.  There's an article like this one every day, new wanton cruelty on someone else, else blatant depravity or needless death, each day brings a novel invention in the inexecrable march of time.  In America, we need strong men, and strong men are made by hard times.  Which is why we're so busy making hard times, of course.  Stay up in your weak country based on weak values like love and justice.

[Jinx999]

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/17/trump-va...ar-g7.html

Trump's decided to capitulate. And blame the VP for it.