I saw a lot of everything, to be honest. Just in our group of 5 we had a mid-thirties white immigrant woman (me), two Latinas one of which a middle aged Chilean national and another a 20-something US citizen, a middle aged German-American man, an older Brazilian gentleman of African descent. I think we were a pretty representative sample of the population. And to top it off, we had a post -march Chinese dinner with an Iranian -American friend

Best quote I read about Spicer's press conference was "This was Spicer's first hostage video!"

A US legal watchdog says it will file a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, alleging he is violating a constitutional ban on accepting payments from foreign governments.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38714446

The question is, what is required as a French national to transit between Canada and the US, returning to Canada, and were the CPB agents correct - they do make errors. French nationals shouldn't need a visa to enter the US as a tourist, but I think evidence that they'll be leaving.

I think it is perfectly reasonable for them to turn away foreign protestors at the border. Glad to hear they are doing their jobs.

Spicer is minitrue heading the Ministry of Truth in the People's Democratic United States of America.

Perhaps they didn't file ESTA in time?

http://www.esta.us/france-esta.html


I too can imagine a scenario:


CPB: Sir, you have not filed your ESTA paperwork and therefore cannot enter the US.
Protester: But I have a right to go and march in Washington to protest on the world stage.
CBP: Sir, "Canadians (and other foreign travelers) have no right to go and participate in this march."


And what if the CBP agents made a mistake? Why attach some nefarious and unproven motive as the headline?

Now, if there was a memo, or directive that was leaked which could corroborate the people's interpretation of events, then this would be journalism. But as it stands, it is just more shite reporting that fuels the divide.

My Favorite:

In addition to 3wishes's website of keeping track of Trump's acheivements found here:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/w...ess-do-in-2017

...here is a new achievement - climate change info from the white house's website is gone:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/u...e-website.html
or
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/20/the-w...sappeared.html

or the many others reporting on it.

This is now the third time I've seen the alt-truth discussion in the US bring back memories of 'baghdad bob'.

Also interesting was this article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...ctions/274241/

To protest is a right, and that right doesn't diminish because you're foreign.

But of course when you're in a foreign country you need to act respectfully of that country and its laws, ways and customs.

I would rather question why people feel so strongly about a foreign country inaugurating a new head of state that they feel the need to go there and protest about it.

The more i think about it, fueling the divide might be a good thing. At least I hope people are questioning everything on both sides - make both journalists and the administration accountable.

It would be nice if Immigration was held more accountable too - but I understand the security and terrorism considerations. Having gone through the permanent residency/citizenship process for my husband, it is a black hole. Likelihood of any transparency there is almost zero.

Any government agency needs to be transparent and accountable and it is the job of politicians to make them accountable. Just because something has become a murky black hole because people have allowed it to is no reason to accept it that way.

Government agencies need to serve the people, not the other way around.

If any information is being withheld, there must be a reason for that (for example, interests of national security, ongoing criminal investigation etc). "I can't be arsed to anwer an email" is not in that category.

Entering the US is a privilege granted, not a right. I believe there are many reasons a border agent can apply to deny any foreigner entry. It has always been so, with varying degrees of laxness.

Because it will affect them sooner or later.

This is true. The US does have a gravitation pull. But I don't believe the recourse here is to try to prevent anything in the US. You can't. The recourse here is for existing governments to do a better job serving the interests of its people, if they intend to avoid it.

If US starts exhibiting real positive changes because of Trump, people throughout the world will start asking why they cannot do the same.

I'm not confident Europe will be able to react in time. It is not known for its agility and responsiveness in handling a rapidly changing world. I think it would rather try to control the narrative with fake news, take the elitist route, ignore reality and try to suppress it by shaming dissenters. Might work here, it might not, for a while.

__________________
exceptio probat regulam

Being anti-Trump doesn't necessarily mean being pro-Hillary (or pro-Clinton in general).
Or wasn't the main reason some voted for the orange neanderthal that they were "anti-Hillary" rather than pro-Trump?

That brilliant "logic" goes both ways.

AFAIK, a rather large percentage of the women-vote went to Trump - because they couldn't really bring themselves to vote for Hillary.

Some of the points Trump made are actually quite reasonable. Like the observation that most of the US-allies aren't really paying their share for the protection they enjoy from simply being a US-ally. Germany is probably the worst offender in that respect.

Same with the trade-deficit that is at the heart of the "35% percent import tax" threat. Together with China, Germany is probably the worst offender here, too...

I know. Which makes all this even sadder.

I didn't realize he's ever made an actual point. And most importantly: stuck with that point for longer than 5 minutes.

He's an erratic flip-flopper. Nothing he says can be taken seriously, I'm afraid. Even if there were some very limited reason in some of his "statements" (or well, his Twitter contributions), it wouldn't matter cause the next day, he'll say something else and then pretend to never have said the other version in the first place.

Ah no come to think of it, there's an exception: he does indeed still want to build a wall towards Mexico...

I wonder what proportion of the people who marched on Saturday will show up to vote in the midterms.