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

[kidfresh512]

All the reporting so far clearly states that these migrants were Asylum seekers. CNN looked at the court paperwork they had. They have every legal right to seek asylum here and have their claims processed. DeSantis seems to be in hot water with how he used the states money to pay for flights from migrants in Texas.

Florida budget language that created migrant relocation program would not permit DeSantis’ Massachusetts flights stunt

His bs, word salad responses so far basically saying these people some of them maybe wanted to come to Florida and even though they were in Texas that somehow allows him to use funds to circumvent that.

[Tami]

Worker shortages are fueling America’s biggest labor crises

The U.S. economy came within hours of shutting down because of a standoff between unions and railroad carriers over sick pay and scheduling, highlighting just how dramatically staffing shortages have reshaped American workplaces and driven exhausted workers to push back.

With more than 11 million job openings and only 6 million unemployed workers, employers have struggled for more than a year to hire enough people to fill their ranks. That mismatch has left employees frustrated and burnt out, and is fueling a new round of power struggles on the job.

While the railway dispute, which the White House helped resolve early Thursday, has garnered the most attention, a number of other strikes are spreading across the United States. Some 15,000 nurses walked out of the job in Minnesota this week, and health-care workers in Michigan and Oregon have recently authorized strikes. Seattle teachers called off a week-long strike, delaying the start of the school year.

At the center of each of these challenges are widespread labor shortages that have caused deteriorating working conditions. Staffing shortfalls in key industries, such as health care, hospitality and education, have put unprecedented pressure on millions of workers, igniting a wave of labor disputes as well as new efforts to organize nationwide.

Too many industries are still struggling to find workers. The share of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one is at 62.4 percent, a full percentage point lower than it was in February 2020, according to Labor Department data.

The reasons are complex and broad. Early retirements, a massive slowdown in immigration that began during the Trump administration, as well as ongoing child care and elder care challenges combined with covid-related illnesses and deaths have all cut into the number of available workers.

Although the U.S. economy has officially recouped the 20 million jobs it lost at the beginning of the pandemic, the gains have been uneven. Major shortfalls remain, particularly in low-wage industries that have lost workers to higher-paying opportunities in warehousing, construction, and professional and business services. The hospitality and leisure industry is still down 1.2 million jobs from February 2020. Public schools are missing nearly 360,000 workers and health care has yet to recover 37,000 positions. Rail transportation, meanwhile, is down 12,500 jobs.

Note: Many of these immigrants and asylum seekers, if they were welcomed in instead of being abused or kicked out, could be the ones filling the gaps in the labor market.

[InformationGeek]

The governor of Mississippi hates his own capital apparently.

Mississippi Governor @tatereeves: “It is a great day to be in Hattiesburg. It’s also, as always, a great day to not be in Jackson."

Absolutely shameful.

[Tendrin]

As inhumanity takes hold of the GOP, and conquers whatever moral core the party once possessed, it has a totalizing effect on Republicans. They believe their own anti-migrant propaganda so sincerely that other perspectives seem naive by comparison. Put another way, this transformation began with the conviction that migrants – and before them, Black people – were not full human beings. A party becomes inhumane through the degradation of others. By treating migrants as though they are parasites instead of people, Republicans lower themselves, too.

The conservative movement’s deep history of racial prejudice suggests that the GOP’s turn toward inhumanity is inevitable and irreversible. Some lines, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed. Republicans take their marching orders not from elder statesmen like Mitt Romney but from racist demagogues like Tucker Carlson, who said on Thursday’s broadcast that Martha’s Vineyard would need “shantytowns” to house their new residents. Carlson isn’t going away, and neither is the racism that animates the GOP. Anyone still seeking a reasonable governmental partner in the GOP is setting themselves up for personal disappointment and political failure.

As Republicans cavort over the suffering they’ve unleashed, they create an imperative for a different political vision. This vision remains distant but can be glimpsed, every now and then, through the generosity of others. Martha’s Vineyard did not react the way Republicans had hoped. The people of this small island opened their doors to migrants: feeding them, clothing them, translating for them. If Democrats truly want to become the party of opposition, a beacon in contrast to the “semi-fascism” of today’s GOP, humanity must lead the way. That would require a reckoning within the Democratic Party itself, as its leading figures have all crossed humanitarian lines of their own. Barack Obama’s drone program showed the party at its worst, and Biden’s immigration policies remain far too hostile to migrants like Andres Duarte, who are responding to the stories America tells about itself. This is not yet a place where anyone can make it, but this could be true, someday, if there is the political will to see it through.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opini...fa001ef0f38f9f

[worstblogever]

Oh my god




Fetterman, upon hearing this, probably just cracked up.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...fa001ef0f38f9f

I didn't know about this. This makes Mastriano even more of a dirtbag than he already is now.

Fetterman and Shapiro should team up for an ad to hit both Oz & Mastriano on being "Jersey Boys".

[Tami]

‘A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy

The current period is different. As a result, the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country’s governing ideals in decades.

The first threat is acute: a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election.

The violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress, meant to prevent the certification of President Biden’s election, was the clearest manifestation of this movement, but it has continued since then. Hundreds of elected Republican officials around the country falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Some of them are running for statewide offices that would oversee future elections, potentially putting them in position to overturn an election in 2024 or beyond.

“There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy.

The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion.

The run of recent Supreme Court decisions — both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular — highlight this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades. And the court is only one of the means through which policy outcomes are becoming less closely tied to the popular will.

Two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote. Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. Even the House, intended as the branch of the government that most reflects the popular will, does not always do so, because of the way districts are drawn.

“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and a co-author of the book “How Democracies Die,” with Daniel Ziblatt.

[Tami]

Fetterman and Shapiro should team up for an ad to hit both Oz & Mastriano on being "Jersey Boys".

The problem is that, as a Jersey Girl, I feel uneasy about this. New Jersey is a great state and a great place to live. Mastriano and Oz are the worst of the worst, and are hurting this state as well as PA. It's a good thing we here in Jersey have developed a thick skin and have learned how to take the punches.

[Tami]

Trump’s Team of Lawyers Marked by Infighting and Possible Legal Troubles of Its Own

To understand the pressures, feuds and questions about competence within former President Donald J. Trump’s legal team as he faces potential prosecution on multiple fronts, consider the experience of Eric Herschmann, a former Trump White House lawyer who has been summoned to testify to a federal grand jury.

For weeks this summer, Mr. Herschmann tried to get specific guidance from Mr. Trump’s current lawyers on how to handle questions from prosecutors that raise issues of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.

After ignoring Mr. Herschmann or giving him what he seemed to consider perplexing answers to the requests for weeks, two of the former president’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and John Rowley, offered him only broad instructions in late August. Assert sweeping claims of executive privilege, they advised him, after Mr. Corcoran had suggested that an unspecified “chief judge” would ultimately validate their belief that a president’s powers extend far beyond their time in office.

Mr. Herschmann, who served on Mr. Trump’s first impeachment defense team but later opposed efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, was hardly reassured and sounded confused by the reference to a chief judge.

“I will not rely on your say-so that privileges apply here and be put in the middle of a privilege fight between D.O.J. and President Trump,” Mr. Herschmann, a former prosecutor, responded in an email, referring to the Justice Department. The exchange was part of a string of correspondence in which, after having his questions ignored or having the lawyers try to speak directly with him on the phone instead, Mr. Herschmann questioned the competence of the lawyers involved.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, Doug Lamborn, who first won office in 2007 by gay-baiting and claiming his primary opponent “supported the homosexual agenda” (which wasn’t the case). Lamborn was also named the most conservative member of Congress in 2010 by the National Journal, which makes sense when you realize he was one of the original member of the GOP to push legislation fueled by FOX News’ “War on Christmas”, as well as being the guy the guy who co-sponsored a bill to try to defund National Public Radio. Plus, long before Mitt Romney ever talked about defunding PBS and speaking ill of Big Bird, Rep. Lamborn did it first. Lamborn even once gave an interview where he described being associated with President Obama “like touching a tar baby”, which he defended by saying he had no idea “tar baby” was a racial slur. That may be part of the reason that he once called for American generals to resign to protest President Obama's foreign policy or the time he made a spectacle of himself back in 2012 by announcing that he was boycotting President Obama's State of the Union Address, then complaining when the media actually reported it, and saying he was being "unfairly singled out". Lamborn has also took to claiming President Obama was doing nothing to prevent Christian persecution around the globe because he was too busy supporting LGBTQ causes, instead.

Needless to say, Doug Lamborn has been getting a lot of grief at his town hall meetings. And then he was implicated as someone who benefited from stock advice from fellow Congressman Chris Collins, whose stock advice really amounts to insider trading, although unlike Collins, Lamborn avoided being directly indicted. He managed to survive the scandal of fraudulent signatures to get on the ballot in 2018, then fend off two primary challengers in the form of fellow FREDs Owen Hill, and Darryl Glenn, before holding off Democrat Stephanie Rose Spaulding in the general election with 57% of the vote.

Now in his 7th term in office, Lamborn has continued his feud with PBS, complaining not just about Sesame Street and Big Bird, but getting his knickers in a twist and trying to defund PBS because the teacher on the cartoon Arthur had the titular character’s teacher, Mr. Ratburn, married to another man (anthropomorphic animal man, but GASP, A MAN!). Lamborn’s fury, as follows:

”A case in point is PBS—the Public Broadcasting Service—which recently aired a surprising episode of the children’s show “Arthur” titled “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone.” In this episode, PBS writers deemed it appropriate to preach their liberal views on same-sex marriage to America’s young children: The episode featured—and celebrated—a same-sex wedding.
After the episode, many conservatives, including Rev. Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, came out in opposition. Even the state of Alabama opted against airing the program and instead barred the episode from Alabama Public Television. When confronted with criticism, Marc Brown, the creator of “Arthur,” explained: ‘That’s not the kind of world we want to live in, and we want children educated so they can see there’s not just one type of family.’
Taxpayers now know with complete certainty that the goal of the PBS cartoon is to impart social liberalism to children… “

… Get bent, Lamborn. And stop whining all the time about the Green New Deal without seeming to even know what it IS, and labeling everything you don’t like “socialism”.

Make no mistake, Doug Lamborn has become one of the Republicans embracing the GOP becoming the “Party of Trump”, as evidenced by his speech in the House in September 2019 commending Donald Trump for choosing to have U.S. Space Command housed at Peterson Air Force, where he bizarrely referred to “space warfighters”, which we can only assume is related to the fever dream of Trump’s Space Force.

[worstblogever]

Anyway, it’s probably not a shock to anyone that Lamborn, now in his eighth term in office after winning re-election in 2020 with 58% of the vote, continues to rack up a highly conservative voting record, now in the minority:

• December 3rd, 2019: Rep. Lamborn couldn’t be bothered to show up to vote against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
• December 18th, 2019: Lamborn ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Lamborn votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Lamborn signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
• January 7th, 2021: Doug Lamborn votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Lamborn votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Doug Lamborn votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online.
• February 25th, 2021: Lamborn votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Lamborn votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Doug Lamborn votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Lamborn votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Lamborn votes against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm.
• May 19th, 2021: Rep. Lamborn votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• July 28th, 2021: Doug Lamborn rages on the floor of the House against mask mandates for members of Congress as advised by the attending physician for the House, saying that if he is required to wear one, instead, all of Congress should just be “adjourned and shut this place down”. He continued rambling and publicly questioning the efficacy of vaccines, while he was at it.
• November 5th, 2021: Doug Lamborn votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• March 31st, 2022: Lamborn votes against HR 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, which would limit the cost that drug companies could list insulin at to $35 and make sure no diabetic was priced out of surviving their condition. Bill Dougson would rather they be gouged by pharmaceutical giants and/or die.
• May 18th, 2022: Doug Lamborn is one of 192 Republicans who votes against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
• May 18th, 2022: Rep. Lamborn votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because these days, a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly domestic terror.
• May 19th, 2022: Lamborn doesn’t even bother to show up to vote for HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.
• July 15th, 2022: Doug Lamborn votes against House Amendment 262, which would require the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Secretary of Defense to publish a report on the infiltration of American law enforcement by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, offer measures to be taken to remove them from their ranks, and prevent further infiltration by others.
• July 13th, 2022: Lamborn votes against the Honoring Our PACT Act, to provide healthcare to veterans affected by toxic burn pits while serving in the War on Terror that leave them more susceptible to forms of cancer.
• July 19th, 2022: Rep. Lamborn is one of 157 Republicans who vote against the “Respect for Marriage Act”, which would codify same sex marriage into law nationally.
• July 21st, 2022: Lamborn is one of 195 Republicans who vote against the Right to Contraception Act, which codified the right of Americans to have access to birth control.

Colorado’s 5th Congressional District still has a +14 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, and remains the most conservative district in the state. That means he’ll be incredibly hard to pry from office, even what with news that his own staffers are getting fired for taking precautions during the Covid-19 pandemic and allegedly being told by Lamborn that Covid-19 is a “hoax fabricated to derail Donald Trump’s reelection bid”. Further e-mails between staffers indicate Lamborn will also be facing an ethics investigation for allegedly having Congressional staff run errands for his wife, against Congressional rules. Or that his Chief of Staff, Dale Anderson, pressured staffers to buy Lamborn and his wife gifts.

In a sane world, where people understand science and don’t adhere to conspiracy theories, he’d already have been toast years ago. Alas, that’s not the direction this country, in particular his district has trended. We’re still hoping his Democratic opponent, David Torres, can flip this district against the odds in November.

[Mister Mets]

First, I don't understand your use of the word "Trespassers".

Second yes they are legal Asylum seekers.

See this thread:











etc.

As your link notes, the majority of asylum claims are rejected, even by the Biden administration, although it takes about a year to process each case.

If someone is making an asylum claim without meeting the standards for it, the description "trespassers (with the caveat that they may be mistaken in good faith)" seems valid.

It does highlight that a major problem is how long it takes to adjudicate asylum claims. It shouldn't typically take a year.

[Tendrin]

The problem is that, as a Jersey Girl, I feel uneasy about this. New Jersey is a great state and a great place to live. Mastriano and Oz are the worst of the worst, and are hurting this state as well as PA. It's a good thing we here in Jersey have developed a thick skin and have learned how to take the punches.

In fairness, I donb't think Fetterman has ever said a bad word about Jersey itself, nor has his campaign, unless you count 'Oz is from Jersey' is a bad thing. xD

[Tendrin]

Hey, WBE. Fettemran's team beat you to it. XD

wbegotit.jpg

[Tami]

As your link notes, the majority of asylum claims are rejected, even by the Biden administration, although it takes about a year to process each case.

If someone is making an asylum claim without meeting the standards for it, the description "trespassers (with the caveat that they may be mistaken in good faith)" seems valid.

It does highlight that a major problem is how long it takes to adjudicate asylum claims. It shouldn't typically take a year.

I work in a Law Firm now, and an Appeal can take up to a year. Processing Asylum Claims when there aer so many of them and a shortage of legal professionals to handle the cases slows the process up considerably. The system needs to be fixed, more lawyers, Judges, and advocates need to be recruited to do the work, and there are probably other ways the process can be improved.

Right now, it is what it is. The faults with the system should not mean punishment for the immigrants.

BTW - they are not Trespassers. They are immigrants, asylum seekers, and mostly just people. Once you start using the word Trespassers, you drift into dangerous territory since Native Americans consider all Non-Natives to be Trespassers.

I could go on and on about why the word Trespasser is wrong, but I'm too tired right now. Suffice it to say that I disagree with you on yoru choice of words. .

[worstblogever]

Hey, WBE. Fettemran's team beat you to it. XD

wbegotit.jpg

Great minds think alike, it seems.

Fetterman truly is the most delightful troll of the right out there right now. I hope he drives the GOP crazy for decades.