All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tami]

Texas and Louisiana Sue Biden Administration Over Treatment of Immigrant Felons

(CN) — Texas and Louisiana sued the Biden administration Tuesday in federal court, claiming the Department of Homeland Security is not issuing detainer requests for immigrants imprisoned on felony convictions, which means they are being released from custody after serving their time instead of deported.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can issue detainer requests to prison and jail officials asking them to hold undocumented immigrants behind bars so ICE agents can pick them up.

But Texas and Louisiana claim under memos issued by the Department of Homeland Security in Biden’s first days in office, ICE is failing to issue detainer requests for dangerous immigrants incarcerated in their states.

Furthermore, Texas claims, the Biden administration has rescinded ICE detainer requests for dozens of immigrants locked up in state prisons run by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, many of whom were convicted of drug offenses, ranging from possession to manufacture and sale.

[Tami]

Just saw this on Twitter, and seriously???

Screenshot_2021-04-07 Shane Goldmacher on Twitter Check Box.jpg

[Malvolio]

Just saw this on Twitter, and seriously???

Screenshot_2021-04-07 Shane Goldmacher on Twitter Check Box.jpg

Note that last line. If you don't uncheck the box, you are not only donating right now, you're agreeing to have a regular monthly donation taken out of your bank account.

[Tami]

Note that last line. If you don't uncheck the box, you are not only donating right now, you're agreeing to have a regular monthly donation taken out of your bank account.

That is the scam. Question your loyalty, guilt you into not unchecking the box, but not tell you what the box is really for unless you look at the last line in smaller type.

[Tami]

“We Are Hoarding”: Why the U.S. Still Can’t Donate COVID-19 Vaccines to Countries in Need

On the morning of March 31, roughly 25 Biden administration officials gathered at the White House, double-masked, for a meeting called on short notice by a member of the National Security Council. They were there, they believed, to debate how best to broaden the federal government’s COVID-19 response beyond U.S. borders, and reclaim America’s traditional role as the world’s public health leader.

The challenges they planned to address were daunting. The Trump administration had poisoned relations with the rest of the world, first severing ties with the World Health Organization and then politicizing the pandemic, referring to COVID-19 as the Wuhan virus and even “kung flu.” Into the vacuum rushed Russia and China, who began currying favor around the world by distributing their own vaccines—of possibly dubious quality.

Unfortunately, sending doses overseas is no simple matter. To even begin planning in earnest how to do so, an essential document entitled The Framework for International Access needed to be greenlit. That was a goal of several officials in attendance at the meeting at the White House last Wednesday.

Instead, those in attendance heard a stark and dismaying message: The pandemic was spiraling out of control here at home. There was no capacity to deal with global donations, meaning that planning would come to a “screeching halt,” said the senior government official.

For all the well-documented failures of its pandemic response, the Trump administration exceeded expectations when it came to developing COVID-19 vaccines. Thanks in part to Operation Warp Speed, a multibillion-dollar joint venture of the Pentagon, the Department of Health and Human Services, and private pharmaceutical companies, a handful of manufacturers were able to gain approval for new vaccines in record time, accomplishing in under a year what might normally have taken a decade.

Still, given the nature of the Trump administration, this signal accomplishment came with some substantial asterisks. Upon taking office, the Biden team discovered that the previous administration’s plans for the distribution of vaccinations to individual citizens were woefully inadequate. And the Trump team’s unwillingness to enact a national testing plan, or even to clearly advocate for basic protective measures, allowed the virus to run rampant, leading the U.S. to suffer more deaths than any other country on earth.

The contracts the Trump administration signed with the vaccine manufacturers prohibit the U.S. from sharing its surplus doses with the rest of the world. According to contract language Vanity Fair has obtained, the agreements with Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Janssen state: “The Government may not use, or authorize the use of, any products or materials provided under this Project Agreement, unless such use occurs in the United States” or U.S. territories.

The clauses in question are designed to ensure that the manufacturers retain liability protection, but they have had the effect of projecting the Trump administration’s America First agenda into the Biden era. “That is what has completely and totally prohibited the U.S. from donating or reselling, because it would be in breach of contract,” said a senior administration official involved in the global planning effort. “It is a complete and total ban. Those legal parameters must change before we do anything to help the rest of the world.”

In a statement to Vanity Fair, a Defense Department spokesperson acknowledged the contract restrictions, saying: “DoD did attempt to negotiate terms that would allow the use of vaccine doses outside the U.S., but in some cases, the vaccine manufacturers refused.” Given the imperative to produce 300 million doses for the American public, said the spokesperson, Operation Warp Speed officials agreed that it was “more important to contract with the vaccine manufacturers for doses that could be used” by U.S. citizens “than walk away from the negotiations based on this single term.”

[Tami]

Child abandoned near border in Rio Grande Valley seen on video asking Border Patrol for help

A frightened child alone in Texas last week told a Border Patrol official that he'd been abandoned by a larger group and was without his parents, video of the encounter showed.

The video, taken Thursday in the Rio Grande Valley, shows the boy sobbing and saying that he didn't know where the group he was with went.

Customs and Border Protection said that the 10-year-old boy from Nicaragua was found walking alone on a rural road near La Grulla, Texas.

He woke up and realized he had been left behind by a group of migrants he was traveling with, and he is safe at a Border Patrol facility and will be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, it said.

Biden has said most people arriving at the border are being turned away. "The only people we are not going to let sit there on the other side of the Rio Grande by themselves with no help are children," he said late last month.

Late last month, officials said smugglers dropped two young children from Ecuador, 3 and 5 years old, were dropped over a 14-foot-high barrier along the New Mexico-Mexico border.

The girls were left alone and rescued by Border Patrol. Officials including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas expressed outrage and said the incident showed the abuse children suffer at the hands of smugglers.

[Tami]

Karate, Wonton, Chow Fun: The end of 'chop suey' fonts

Here's a thought experiment: Close your eyes and imagine the font you'd use to depict the word "Chinese."

There's a good chance you pictured letters made from the swingy, wedge-shaped strokes you've seen on restaurant signs, menus, take-away boxes and kung-fu movie posters. These "chop suey fonts," as American historian Paul Shaw calls them, have been a typographical shortcut for "Asianness" for decades.

Shaw traces the fonts' origins to the Cleveland Type Foundry which obtained a patent for a calligraphy-style printing type, later named Mandarin, in 1883. It is perhaps no surprise that this Eastern-inspired lettering emerged in the late 19th century, an era when Orientalism coursed feverishly through the West.

"Mandarin, originally known as Chinese, is the granddaddy of 'chop suey' types," Shaw wrote in the design magazine, Print. "Neither the food nor the fonts bear any real relation to true Chinese cuisine or calligraphy. But this has not prevented the proliferation of chop suey lettering and its close identification with Chinese culture outside of China."

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Child abandoned near border in Rio Grande Valley seen on video asking Border Patrol for help

That video was nothing short of heartwrenching.

[mogwen]

“We Are Hoarding”: Why the U.S. Still Can’t Donate COVID-19 Vaccines to Countries in Need

Thank you for sharing this article! Now I understand why the US are hoarding vaccines. This is terrifying because this Trump move will lead to many deaths and risks allowing a particularly potent variant to emerge which could be far more deadly. The repercussions will be tremendous, I can assure you, Biden administration or not.

[Castiel]

Thank you for sharing this article! Now I understand why the US are hoarding vaccines. This is terrifying because this Trump move will lead to many deaths and risks allowing a particularly potent variant to emerge which could be far more deadly. The repercussions will be tremendous, I can assure you, Biden administration or not.

America has to look after itself first. This will not get better for years to come no matter what.

[numberthirty]

America has to look after itself first. This will not get better for years to come no matter what.

Actually looking out for itself first would involved attempting to head off a situation where variants are a "More Likely..." outcome.

Which is the exact opposite of what is happening.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Actually looking out for itself first would involved attempting to head off a situation where variants are a "More Likely..." outcome.

Which is the exact opposite of what is happening.

How do you do that when such a large percentage of the population is against COVID preventions?

[Amadeus Arkham]

[PwrdOn]

How do you do that when such a large percentage of the population is against COVID preventions?

That makes it even worse, because not only America hoarding vaccines that could be going to people who might need them more, our unwillingness to impose any kind of a vaccine mandate means that a lot of those shots will end up going unused and we'll probably be one of the last countries to achieve herd immunity anyway.

America has to look after itself first. This will not get better for years to come no matter what.

If Russia, China, and India can share their vaccine supply with the rest of the world, surely the richest and most powerful nation in the history of mankind can spare a few doses too?

Karate, Wonton, Chow Fun: The end of 'chop suey' fonts

Remove all US troops from the Eastern Hemisphere, and nobody will care one bit about racist fonts.

[numberthirty]

How do you do that when such a large percentage of the population is against COVID preventions?

That makes it even worse, because not only America hoarding vaccines that could be going to people who might need them more, our unwillingness to impose any kind of a vaccine mandate means that a lot of those shots will end up going unused and we'll probably be one of the last countries to achieve herd immunity anyway.

...

Exactly.

..........