All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Mister Mets]

Correct -- you're looking for places to impose your personal hypotheses and political biases instead of simply accepting the data at face value, and then doing so.

You might be interesting in doing that -- and avoiding discussing the bigotry and criminality of your party in the process -- but I've made it clear both in the past and the present that I'm not.

The data doesn't really tell us the answer to the question: what limit do Democrats want on legal immigration? There's still a lot of ambiguity.

We can discuss more than one political issue at a time. We don't have to view every small issue as a proxy for different fights. An opinion about the solutions for the migrant crisis isn't necessarily an indication of where you stand on tax cuts for the rich or the overall state of politics.

I've said on other threads in the past that there were people that voted for Trump that didn't agree with him and held their noses in the booth. That is no longer the case.

At this point, I don't see how anyone can support Trump without pretty much declaring "racism is okay with me."

That's before we even talk about mental-illness caliber narcissism.

For Trump supporters who don't see the racism as a good thing, they would think either that the criticisms against him are exaggerated, or that the upsides to his presidency exceed the downsides to liberals and/ or establishment Republicans who wanted have the courage to do stuff like allowing an American embassy to Jerusalem.

Is it any wonder they want to rein ICEstapo in a lil' when they're going around doing **** like this?

Attachment 84586

And before you ask, this incident has been confirmed by multiple sources.

If you're really concerned about people wanting to know that there are trustworthy sources, you could cite the multiple sources. In this case, it seems to be one source, a facebook post by a local organization MIRAC - Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee.

MIRAC - Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee

I'm pretty sure the people who want to Abolish ICE don't just want to rein it in a little.

Well now, THIS figures to be interesting:

Ocasio-Cortez gets new 2020 challenger: a Republican immigrant from Jamaica

It's a rather safe Democratic district. I'm glad she's getting coverage, but she'd be lucky to get 25 percent (which would be higher than results for McCain, Romney or Trump is in the district.)

[aja_christopher]

The data doesn't really tell us the answer to the question: what limit do Democrats want on legal immigration? There's still a lot of ambiguity.

In case you haven't noticed, you're the only person who seems to be concerned about this "ambiguity" -- to the point where you won't directly address the racist, criminal, and abusive policies currently being enacted by your party.

You need to just accept that others don't necessarily agree with that perspective and move on to something else.

[Iron Maiden]

Last night on Chris Hayes show on MSNBC, he brought up something very interesting about Trump's racist tweets. Other sites like HuffPost have brought this up too but here is an article from the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that is titled "Immigrants' Employment Rights Under Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws": They cited the following as an example of discrimination

Harassment Based on National Origin
Ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person's foreign accent or comments like, "Go back to where you came from, " whether made by supervisors or by co-workers.

Of course, the relationship between the POTUS and members of Congress is not a a employer/employee one. We don't have any evidence that Trump said this to any staff members at his hotels, Mar A Lago, etc. But he certainly thinks that way. IMO, even this can be used in articles of impeachment, if it ever gets off the ground. I have serious doubts about it anyway since there is almost zero chance that the makeup of the Senate will change before 2020.

But as Hayes pointed out, Doug Collins tried to get it stricken from the record when Nancy Pelosi made her statement about Trump's Tweets being racists. But there it is on the government's own website about employee harassment, etc.

And judges can certainly use this against Trump in any cases brought before them concerning immigration.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

And banned.

Drive by baiting has claimed another whiny ass.

The pattern has been almost always the same: A conservative/right winger saunters in, full of support for the likes of Trump and the GOP, presents semi-logical/rational arguments in the beginning, gets into increasingly heated discussions with us liberals, then loses his mind, says crazy **** like Bonesaw and WHAMMO! Ban city! I'm sure others like him will swing by and repeat history.

[Tuck]

Now why the Italians have embraced Columbus so, when it was all Spain that sent him to the New World.

Columbus is really only a big deal because Italian immigrants coming in the 19th century became acquainted with Washington Irving's history of him and latched onto it as a way to feel American when many people were telling them they weren't.

[Tuck]

One of my brothers thinks it's global warming.

It's global warming. Eveything else is rearranging chairs on the Titanic.

[Dalak]

Honestly I think the biggest issue today is a serious overload of short-sightedness. Not understanding the long view of how Global Warming is being handled, Tax Cuts that are making things worse for everyone not rich or a corp, the barbaric treatment of the people on our border, these things and more are going to have disastrous consequences in the near future as well as the long run. However these things don't matter to Conservatives because the liberals 'hate whites' and 'want open borders' so they are self-satisfied in not doing anything to safeguard the future of not only America but the planet we all live on.

[kidfresh512]

Last night on Chris Hayes show on MSNBC, he brought up something very interesting about Trump's racist tweets. Other sites like HuffPost have brought this up too but here is an article from the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that is titled "Immigrants' Employment Rights Under Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws": They cited the following as an example of discrimination



Of course, the relationship between the POTUS and members of Congress is not a a employer/employee one. We don't have any evidence that Trump said this to any staff members at his hotels, Mar A Lago, etc. But he certainly thinks that way. IMO, even this can be used in articles of impeachment, if it ever gets off the ground. I have serious doubts about it anyway since there is almost zero chance that the makeup of the Senate will change before 2020.

But as Hayes pointed out, Doug Collins tried to get it stricken from the record when Nancy Pelosi made her statement about Trump's Tweets being racists. But there it is on the government's own website about employee harassment, etc.

And judges can certainly use this against Trump in any cases brought before them concerning immigration.

It is pretty standard ethical clause. Most employers have similar. That's why it is insane that GOP would sit there and act like what he said was not racist. But, we have seen how little value this administration places on ethics. They think of ethics as red tape to their agenda not guidelines for behavior.

[PwrdOn]

No one's forced to agree on anything.

It's possible to think immigration isn't that important, that immigration is immensely important and that Democrats have the right policy, that immigration is important but that it's a good thing to have people coming in as undocumented immigrants for whatever reason, that immigration is important and Democrats are going too far in plans to decriminalize illegal entry but that other issues are more important, or whatever.

This leads to a question I've been meaning to ask for a while: what do you guys think is the most important issue of our time?

I asked people around me. My godfather thinks it's the debt. My father thinks it's the rise of the administrative state. My mother thinks it's Russia. One of my brothers thinks it's global warming.

I'd say it's determining how best to adjust to rapid social and technological change. Where do you guys stand?

Racism. America's original sin that has never been adequately addressed, and continue to kick the can down the road will just make the inevitable fallout that much worse. And this isn't just out of naive idealism, the reason most Republican economic and social policies fail so miserably is because they think that they can offload all of their problems onto minorities who will somehow be willing to bear that burden without complaint, and then act shocked and appalled when the blowback bites their precious white working class in the ass.

[Gray Lensman]

No one's forced to agree on anything.

It's possible to think immigration isn't that important, that immigration is immensely important and that Democrats have the right policy, that immigration is important but that it's a good thing to have people coming in as undocumented immigrants for whatever reason, that immigration is important and Democrats are going too far in plans to decriminalize illegal entry but that other issues are more important, or whatever.

This leads to a question I've been meaning to ask for a while: what do you guys think is the most important issue of our time?

I asked people around me. My godfather thinks it's the debt. My father thinks it's the rise of the administrative state. My mother thinks it's Russia. One of my brothers thinks it's global warming.

I'd say it's determining how best to adjust to rapid social and technological change. Where do you guys stand?

Let me throw another one in here that doesn't get much mention - the declining effectiveness of antibiotics. In a fashion similar to climate change, this has the potential to mess things up on a geological time scale. Everything else is a short term problem compared to those two.

However, green technology has the potential to do serious damage to Russia's bid for influence since a lot of their power is based on providing energy to Europe. Take the threat of turning off the pipelines away from them and they lose a major source of economic power. Plus, we can stop worrying so much about the Middle East outside of the shipping lanes.

[Theleviathan]

Put me down for the rapid changes in technology because they have tremendous effects across all the issues. It's why UBI should be a serious conversation point, why any conversation about global warming involves changes in tech, about job losses, etc. It's tech and it's really not even close. (Global warming is serious, but still a little ways off. The tech issue could be in the next decade)

Though aj is right, the first priority is destroying this brand of Republicanism. I'm totally cool with a Kasich-like version re-emerging, but this toxic brand has to go.

[Ragged Maw]

Racism. America's original sin that has never been adequately addressed, and continue to kick the can down the road will just make the inevitable fallout that much worse. And this isn't just out of naive idealism, the reason most Republican economic and social policies fail so miserably is because they think that they can offload all of their problems onto minorities who will somehow be willing to bear that burden without complaint, and then act shocked and appalled when the blowback bites their precious white working class in the ass.

So by “racism” you mean white supremacy. Though either way, I understand why it’s in the highest tier on many people’s lists.

[PwrdOn]

So by “racism” you mean white supremacy. Though either way, I understand why it’s in the highest tier on many people’s lists.

In America, actual racism by non-whites, as opposed to mainstream anti-racist viewpoints that the right likes to paint as anti-white, is largely just a reaction to white racism, and a rather weak one at that. Like, "Oh yeah, you think you're better than us? Well actually we're the ones superior to you cause reasons!" It's hard to imagine that they truly believe the rhetoric that they're spewing. If whites were to clean up their act, the rest of America would follow suit rather quickly, it's not like black and brown supremacists would see an opening and try to seize power or anything like that, they're far too insignificant and disorganized to do so at any rate.

[aja_christopher]

Let me throw another one in here that doesn't get much mention - the declining effectiveness of antibiotics. In a fashion similar to climate change, this has the potential to mess things up on a geological time scale. Everything else is a short term problem compared to those two.

However, green technology has the potential to do serious damage to Russia's bid for influence since a lot of their power is based on providing energy to Europe. Take the threat of turning off the pipelines away from them and they lose a major source of economic power. Plus, we can stop worrying so much about the Middle East outside of the shipping lanes.

I'm all for the fast(er) development of technology -- it's the adaptation that's the problem since human behavior is part of the larger issue at hand.

Cybernetics, solar power, nanotechnology, bio-engineering -- if anything, I think we're behind schedule with regards to developing and putting those technologies to good use.

The reality is that we have both the technological and intellectual resources to solve nearly all of the world's problems, but so long as the social and political will isn't there, it won't happen.

And it definitely won't happen under (Republican) politicians who see unnecessary military spending and tax cuts as more important than science funding, which brings us back full circle to my first observation about removing Republicans from power.

-----
"Trump once again requests deep cuts in U.S. science spending"

"For the third year in a row, President Donald Trump’s administration has unveiled a budget request to Congress that calls for deep spending cuts at many federal science agencies, including a 13% cut for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a 12% cut for the National Science Foundation (NSF), while providing hefty increases for the military...

Overall, White House officials say their goal is to cut spending on domestic and foreign aid programs by about 5% below this year’s levels while increasing military spending. At the same time, the administration says it wants to generally abide by a 2011 law that calls for reducing nondefense spending by 9% and defense spending by 11% in 2020, compared with this year’s spending."

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019...ience-spending

[Ragged Maw]

In America, actual racism by non-whites, as opposed to mainstream anti-racist viewpoints that the right likes to paint as anti-white, is largely just a reaction to white racism, and a rather weak one at that. Like, "Oh yeah, you think you're better than us? Well actually we're the ones superior to you cause reasons!" It's hard to imagine that they truly believe the rhetoric that they're spewing. If whites were to clean up their act, the rest of America would follow suit rather quickly, it's not like black and brown supremacists would see an opening and try to seize power or anything like that, they're far too insignificant and disorganized to do so at any rate.

Well, here’s hoping your right and all our proverbial ships get raised as a welcome side effect. Cause at least I know that the current GOP isn’t going to do that for anyone except the big money.