I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.
If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.
The comment in the podcast that most connected with me was Bouelle's statement about it not just being about the South as a geographic area, specifically. I live in blue part of blue MA, and the whole giant American and/or Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup with Eric Church or similar blasting is all over the place here.
Head out into Worcester or Franklin county, even more so.
Cross the border into southern NH, even more so.
What thinking lately about the whole moment we're in, and have been in since probably Reagan, is that this country has never successfully come to terms with the negative or darker side of our history. There is a lot that is negative in our history - violent, genocidal, explicitly and thoroughly racist. And we've never really found a way to come to terms with it.
So we end up with these weird overcompensating mythologies about American exceptionalism - how special and wonderful and indispensable we are.
And the people who do try to call it out are accused of "hating America". And some of them seem caught up in our darker corners, like they themselves can't let go of it or move past it.
And a lot of the really toxic shit has never really gone away. One of the remarkable things to me about the last 40 years or so is the degree to which it's become OK again to be an unapologetic racist. Or at least a "scientifically based" racist, see also the Bell Curve crap.
Or an unapologetic misogynist, or at least a proponent of the idea that men are somehow supposed to be the bosses. See also Charlie Kirk. Andrew Tate, who is clearly one sick bastard, has over 10 million followers.
I think this ends up - as Cottem points out - being "shunted off" onto the South because that region has the most overt history of, specifically, chattel slavery. The Confederacy was an explicit attempt to establish a state based on the doctrine of white supremacy and the legitimacy of black slavery. It's an obvious vector for the worst in our history. And, that is an obvious source for resentment on the part of the folks who live there.
But the whole country is complicit in that history, and I think the whole country participates in a refusal to come to terms with it in an honest way.
As a point of contrast, Germany post WWII was able to move past Naziism - to not continually be engaged in arguments about it (I think - right Helmut?) - by owning it, recognizing it as toxic and a point of shame, and making explicit choices to reject it. Until AfD I guess.
And I think the way Trump fits into this is that his own personal pathology mirrors that of the nation perfectly.
Personal charisma is great, recognizing that nobody watches TV anymore so stop spending all your money there is great, understanding how to leverage social media is great.
Recruit the charismatic people, do all those things.
However.
My main criticism of the (D)'s over the last, say, 40 years is that they've neglected the areas that aren't what they see as their places of strength. Rural areas, much of the south, much of the mountain west, to some degree the industrial midwest.
When I say that, people often reply "how can you say that, their policies are much better for those folks". And in general I think that's true. But I'm not talking about *policy*. I'm talking about physical presence and local identity.
There are 50 states, 435 Congressional districts, and something north of 3,000 counties or county equivalents in the US. I don't know how many cities and towns, but a lot of those, too.
There should be a (D) candidate for every public office, in every one of those political units, in every cycle. There is not. My scientific wild-ass guess is that they're lucky if they field candidates in half of them.
There should be some kind of (D) field office in each of those political units, and the DNC and similar (D)-aligned organizations should be supporting all of them with money and people. They should *not* be telling them how to run their local organization, because the people who live in an area almost certainly know the area better than anybody in the DNC. But they should be supported with money, assistance in recruiting local candidates and volunteers, and with boots on the ground (as they say) during election cycles.
Way back when, Howard Dean developed a 50 state strategy to basically do the above. It worked well. Obama continued it at least for his first run, but since then it's kind of been abandoned.
There *is* interest in all of those places. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been holding town halls in very red places and thousands of people show up. So at least a basic level of interest is there.
My sense, or belief, is that the (D)'s as an institution have focused on the stuff they sort of know how to do - basically the easy stuff. Solicit big money from rich people in large cities, focus-group their messages to try to polish them up into something that will resonate with "regular people", lean heavily on the most reliable demographics that they are (more or less) sure to win.
It's a very top-down, center-of-power-centric approach.
They need to stop spending billions of dollars on consultants and start spending billions of dollars to establish and support *local (D) organizations* in every freaking political unit in the country. And let those organizations take the lead in identifying and understanding the issues that are significant to the people *in those places* and in explaining to those people how they benifit more from (D) policies than from (R) ones. Which, in general, they do. And also let those local folks take the lead in understanding how (D) policies do NOT benefit folks there, so they can evolve policy to address those needs.
Folks in all the places I'm talking about don't really care all that much what Chuck Schumer says. They might not even care all that much what Trump says other than to find it somewhere between annoying and entertaining.
But they will have a much harder time tuning out what their neighbor says.
The 50 state strategy, but really make it a 50 state, 435 district, 3,000 plus county, every town and city strategy. Support (D) candidates for mayor, town clerk, school board, county sheriff, tax assessor, dog catcher. State senate and house.
And, of course, federal House and Senate. But work from the bottom up.
Do that for 3 or 4 or 5 election cycles. They'll lose a lot, and spend a lot of money on doing so. And they'll win some. And over time, they'll win more.
Patience, persistence, and quit relying on the easy wins.
At vrious points in my brilliant code monkey career I contemplated offering bribes to the machines, but I could never figure out what they would take as currency.
Threats usually resulted in some technological version of "Oh yeah, well watch *this*!".
This first article on this page might be of interest for folks wanting more
Ai, rumba!! Allow me to digress.
Rumba in its various forms is / are kind of folkloric root and base of Cuban music. This right here is guaguanco, one of the three traditional rumba styles, and the one most commonly still performed, played here in pretty much it's traditional form.
Another guaguanco, with the great Orlando "Puntilla" Rios, grand old man of the Cuban / New York rumbero community. The clave is easier to hear here, it's more even eighth notes, where the more traditional players tend to elide the difference between a duple and triple time feel. This is *rumba* clave, a little different to the "Bo Diddley" "shave and a haircut" clave - called *son* clave - shown in the reggaeton in two minutes clip.
This is one of my favorite videos in the world. When they break into the call-and-response thing at about 4:30 and the dancers get up the joy of it all is palpable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnBN_AXfkvk
Salsa is more of a popular, dance club style, mostly based out of New York. Here is the great Ruben Blades performing "Pedro Navaja", which is basically the Spanish version of "Mack the Knife". This has son clave, which you can hear pretty clearly at the beginning of the tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqCC-zWQfdI
Clave is the key (literally) to a really broad range of musical styles and traditions of the Spanish-speaking African diaspora. It's one of many similar rhythmic patterns found in Africa, all of which turn out to be Euclidean rhythms, which I will not get into because we'll be here all night.
MAGAs do not want to share the world with anyone else. Not sharing is the point of the movement
They are in for a big disappointment, because the rest of the world isn't going away. And it's true, they're trying to make the US their own private homogenous playground, but there are too many other kinds of people here already. A lot of us were born here.
A lot of the brown Spanish speaking people were here before this country was.
I don't know what it's gonna take for these fuckers to get it through their heads that white skin and blue eyes just ain't that big of a deal.
There’s also, though, the antifa types who see themselves as mutual aid groups, who are there to offer medical support and protection to other groups they are in solidarity with.
I can affirm this.
A former minister of mine was at the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" calamity - she lived there at the time and was present as a peaceful protestor. Her own account of the day gives a lot of credit to antifa (by whatever label) for providing a buffer between the quite violent right wing folks and the folks there to protest peacefully.
In my own direct expeience, I've seen "antifa" folks present at demonstrations who were there to provide medical or trauma help if that was needed (thankfully it was not). Carrying a simple trauma first aid kit, and they were clearly marked with red crosses on their kit and on armbands.
My comment was really toward the folks who come deliberately to fight, specifically. I more or less understand the impulse - I think most of us feel anger at the stuff that goes on - but I'm not sure it accomplishes anything useful. It just gives the Andy Ngo and "Based Stick Man" types of the world something to look forward to.
Hey, that's actually a really good breakdown of reggaeton. Clear and succint and accurate.
I am completely ignorant of Bad Bunny's work because (a) rap leaves me behind because I have a hearing impairment that makes it basically impossible for me to make out lyrics in recorded music, and (b) reggaeton drives me nuts - it's not just that it's repetitive, the repeating cell is so small that there is no (to my ear) breathing room.
Plus I live near a couple of large Latin communities and the way I hear reggaeton is typically being cranked from some guy's car at a volume level that makes the doors of my car vibrate from the massive bass. I want to take those guys aside and say "You're gonna be stone deaf by the time you're 40" but I'm more than sure they wouldn't care. They're having fun now, 40 is a long way off.
I miss salsa. At least that gives you both sides of the clave.
All of that said, BB seems like a very interest artist and social and cultural persona. I'm not a sports guy and will likely not watch the Super Bowl, but I'm both amused and delighted that he was the NFL's pick for the half time show.
In my wildest dreams I would never have predicted the NFL as a socially forward-looking organization. I suspect they know who their viewing audience is.
MAGAs just gonna have to learn to share the world with everybody else.
John Lennon's words are, I think, appropriate in the current situation.
When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor
There are situations when there are no other options, but I don't think we are anywhere close to that now.
As an aside, this has always been one of my issues with antifa and similar. The folks they want to fight would like nothing better than an opportunity to get into it with them. It's kind of what they live for.
Why give them what they want?
For folks heading out to No Kings tomorrow, stay safe and to whatever degree you can bring joy to it. I'm sorry to say I won't be out there, I have another commitment for the weekend of long standing.
Grand jury would not indict, which has become a way for regular folks to resist bullshit acts of overzealous or punitive prosecution by the current DOJ.
Ironically, the guy was a DOJ employee, and was subsequently fired.
One point to make regarding doxxing in our current environment is that any real harm done to an ICE agent will just become an excuse for the feds to double down.
Trump is looking for any excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to legally (for some readings of "legally") deploy the military domestically. Which would basically be ICE on steroids.
Trump has an army, folks opposed to his policies don't. And Trump is eager for any pretext to use it, against people in this country who are opposed to his policies and actions.
I'm opposed to doxxing, of anyone and of any kind, for all of the obvious ethical reasons. But all of that aside, as a purely strategic matter, it's a really bad idea to give Trump any reason to send the army into your city or town.
Here is where I am today as regards calling a thug a thug.
This week we had folks in the Young Republicans organization telling us they love Hitler and who should be sent to the gas chanbers. The folks involved included a Vermont state Senator and the head of staff of a NY Assemblyman. The latter was the guy who "loved Hitler".
Not fringe people.
Today I see that Mike Davis, former chief counsel for Chuck Grassley, former clerk for Gorsuch, and current head of the conservative Article III Project, decided to call House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries "George Soros' house slave" in a post on X.
We also have a photo from the office of Congressman Dave Taylor, (R) Ohio, showing a picture pinned to a bulletin board with an American flag modified to include a swastika.
Plus all the ICE bullshit. Plus all the "manosphere" crap.
If you don't want to be called Nazis, don't be Nazis.
If you don't want to be associated with Nazis, don't associate with Nazis.
If you don't want to be called fascist, don't behave like a fascist regime.
If you don't want to be called thugs, don't send thugs in your employ into our cities and neighborhoods to abuse people.
If you don't want to be called misogynist, don't joke about rape being "epic".
A hit dog will holler.
I'm not interested in dialog with people who consider folks who don't look like them are some lower order of being. I don't even know where the conversation could begin.
I'm not referring to bc, I do not get that vibe from him.
But it's rampant in the right wing. Which owns the (R) party and the "conservative" name right now.
If you don't like that, you need to take it back from them. I can't do that, you can.
Clean your damned house. You have rats in the walls.
3 links seems too few, 5 seems like a better compromise between overly strict and being exposed to spam.
14 days is probably too short - some threads seem to want to go on longer. 21? A month? But longer than a month seems unnecessary - usually if a thread goes on that long it's because it's wandered off onto a different topic that probably deserves its own post.
Don't know what I think about the subscriber thing. What does it give you that you don't get by just walking up to the site? Not having to re-enter name and password each time would be handy, but not sure if that alone is worth the extra fuss.
My biggest ask would be to make "Oldest" the default sort order. I (personally) find it confusing to go bottom-up to follow the chronological sequence of posts. But others may prefer the current default.
As always, thank you all for keeping this place alive!
Thank you for your thoughtful response! I'll try to reply briefly.
I think you are correct as regards the law. The severity of the offense depends on whether someone came through a federal entry point vs. just walking across the border somewhere, and also whether someone is trying to re-enter illegally after having been deported.
Thank you for the clarification and correction, I appreciate it.
First, we are on the same page as regards people with criminal histories or demonstrable gang affiliation. I would except folks whose "criminal history" is a moving violation, but certainly crimes against persons or property are legitimate grounds for deportation or refusal of entry.
I don't actually prefer the folks who are here without legal status to the 5 million waiting in line. If I understand the estimates of the size of the "no legal status" numbers, they actually include many of those 5 million - people waiting for an asylum ruling, people here under TPS, basically anyone who has not yet been granted permanent legal residency.
For folks who did straight-up sneak in or overstay their visa - people who are *not* in the pipeline - it's legitimate to deport them, or at least require them to justify their presence here on some legitimate basis (fear of being killed if they return, frex). But I also think we need to be realistic about what we can do without turning the country into a police state. Reagan offered amnesty, we've since had Dreamers, those are both programs intended to deal with the situation humanely and realistically. Don't know if they are appropriate to the current situation.
I personally would be fine with defining a structured path to residency for folks who have been here for some time - 5 years? pick a number - and who have no criminal record. Especially folks who are in families of mixed immigration status - right now we are deporting people who have kids here, and who have been here for years and years. That doesn't seem right, to me.
I'm curious to understand your point about the folks "waiting in line" a little more clearly. Are they "waiting in line" here in this country, i.e., their status is in process but not yet granted? Are they waiting in some other country for a request to immigrate to be granted? I want to understand how the presence of an undocumented person here harms them, or is unfair to them in some tangible way.
Purely from a practical point of view, the focus should be on people who are here with no legal status and who are making trouble. Criminals, gang members. And I agree that the DHS numbers are BS. My understanding, based on cites of ICE's own statistics, is that 80% of the people being held in the Burlington facility near me have no criminal record.
Lastly, I agree that if ICE folks didn't wear masks, they would be at risk of being doxed, and that there is potential for harm there. I would counter that *if they weren't acting as they are acting*, that risk would be significantly reduced. Cops, FBI, etc. generally don't find it necessary to wear masks. ICE's own behavior - their violence and total disregard for due process - is what creates, or at least exacerbates, that risk. They are lawless.
I agree that it's a hard problem, and that there is no perfect solution. But what we are doing right now is nuts. Not "nuts" as in "silly and amusing", but "nuts" as in harmful and destructive, not just to immigrants, but to all of us.
Due process applies to everyone, or else we are all at risk of losing it.
You'd think Hitler would be a bright line. Wouldn't you? What the hell is funny about gas chambers?
My father, step-father, father-in-law, and uncle, all fought in WWII. Uncle didn't make it back. They would freaking puke to see this.
They think this crap is funny. "Edgy". It's all a joke, right? Owning the libs for fun and lols.
And now they're all gonna whine because they've been outed and some of them are losing their jobs.
I affirm the idea that we don't want to dehumanize other folks. That said, these folks dehumanize themselves.
And I understand that there are Good And Reasonable Conservatives, but there are a hell of a lot of folks like this. These are not "fringe" characters, they are leaders in the Young Republican movement. Leaders.
Good And Reasonable Conservatives, if you want to engage in civil and constructive dialog with your counterparties, you need to get people like this the hell out of your party and your movement. I know I sure as hell have nothing to say to them, and am not interested in anything they might want to say to me.
To borrow wonkie's language, they can fuck right off.
I can't make them go away. You - reasonable conservatives, wherever you are - can. Or at least you can try. They do not deserve a place in governance, in political leadership, or in public conversation.
If you want people to stop calling MAGAs and conservatives in general Nazis, STOP INDULGING THE NAZIS IN YOUR COMMUNITY. If you can't do that, the rest of us can't believe you when you say they "have no part" of your world. They do have a part of it, they are right there in plain sight.
That number sounds like a lot, but if I follow it all correctly it includes folks who may not have been granted permanent residency but who are protected from deportation for any of a variety of reasons.
Those folks, who actually are trying to "come here the right way" according the the policies in place when they came, make up about 40% of the 14 million. A lot of the policies that grant them protection from deportation were instituted by Biden, and are being removed by Trump. So who knows what will happen to them.
Net/net, as your correction indicates (thank you!), we grant permanent legal residency - a green card, with permission to live and work here - to about one-third of one percent of the overall population.
We're not in danger of being replaced, or overwhelmed with sneaky illegal votes. There are places in the country that *are* stressed by the levels of immigration we see now - I live in one - but in most places even that is not an issue. Or at least is being managed effectively.
Trump doesn't like brown people. Miller doesn't like brown people. So they want to throw the brown people out. And they are hiring / have hired a bunch of out of control yahoos to make that happen.
Mostly I stepped on them. For the ones that got away, I watched where they ran to, and am gonna follow up with a heavy treatment of boric acid.
But yeah, they take a licking and keep on ticking. 6' 2", 215 lbs, jumped on those little bastards with my full weight, and some of them still walked away.
We have had an on again / off again water issue in the basement - for years - that finally got bad enough that we decided to do something about it. Did some looking around, figured out it was coming from the bulkhead, called a basement guy. A crew will be here second week of November to do the french drain / sump pump thing.
To get ready, we moved a bunch of stuff out of that part of the basement. And... found a bunch of black mold. Yecch!
Tore out some sheetrock, tore out a workbench that had some rotten moldy MDF, pulled up some vinyl tile. Off to the dump with all of that.
But in the process of tearing out the workbench, we discovered that it had been the favorite hiding space for critters. Centipedes (my wife HATES HATES HATES HATES HATES them) and spiders (my spirit animal, according to Facebook).
I tried to work around the spiders, with mixed success. There was no mercy for the centipedes. They're not bad critters, more or less apex predators in the creepy crawly world, but they freak my wife the hell out, so they had to go.
Got all the mold either physically removed from the house or treated thoroughly (vinegar + borax + dish soap + water + a scrub brush). Now I get to put everything back together again - new sheetrock and insulation, build a new workbench, replace vinyl tile, skim coat the new rock, prime and paint everything in sight. But the "putting back together" stuff is very enjoyable for me. My wife is heading out to Ohio tomorrow for a crafting class, so I'll be down in the basement making the world a better place for everything other than centipedes.
A lot of places in the world are stressed, for a lot of different reasons. Poverty, environmental issues caused by climate change, war and general anarchic violence.
We're very lucky to live where we do.
All of the above is going to result in people wanting to emigrate. To go somewhere else where they will not be subject to violence, not be desparately poor. Not be miserable in any of a thousand ways.
All of that is not necessarily new, but the scale of it is likely to change. Is, in fact, changing. And there are a lot more ways to get from one place to another now.
We need an intelligent immigration policy. One that recognizes the realities named above. One that recognizes the value of immigrants to this country. One that isn't rooted in the mythology of white supremacy - that recognizes that "real Americans" come, and have always come, in all colors creeds and nationalities.
One that is sane and humane. One that is enforceable without descending into a police state, which is where we are, right now.
It's where we are, right now.
People are gonna try to come here. The overwhelmingly vast majority of them - overwhelmingly - want to come, work, and make a decent life.
That is how most of us ended up here.
We let a bit more than a million folks a year into this country as lawful permanent residents. That's generous! A lot! Especially by international standards.
But it's about 3% of the population. We could increase that significantly and not get close to "they're gonna replace us" levels.
It's an issue that IS NOT going to go away. Folks are going to migrate, because if the alternative is getting killed or starving, you will take your chances.
So we need to find a constructive way to deal with that. One that does not require masked anonymous agents in full military kit breaking into homes and smashing car windows to grab random people because they are brown.
Which is what we do now.
Do we really want to live like this?
The church I attend locks the doors during services because ICE is perfectly likely to march in and start grabbing people. It's not an overreaction, it's a realistic assessment of where we are right now.
The purpose of the guidelines is to provide direction to ICE to help them prioritize who they will pursue, and why. The guidelines state that enforcement should be directed toward people who *pose a threat* to the public.
Mayorkas further observes, correctly, that there are 11 million undocumented people in the US. I hope we can all agree that it's not practical to find and deport 11 million people. So choices have to be made.
Go after people who are a threat.
I live very close to large immigrant communities. For a number of years, I lived in the Point neighborhood in Salem MA, which was then and still is a largely Dominican community. I attend a church that has about a 60% Latino congregation. I've volunteered at a local food bank whose clientele includes Dominicans, Brazilians, Haitians, Russians and other Eastern European folks. Also plain old white bread Americans who need access to free or cheap food.
I am aware of the issues around immigration, aware in general of the problems it creates, and also aware of how we benefit from immigrants.
The sticking point for immigration - the place where it is hugely problematic, rather than just one of several issues to deal with - is at the southern border. Because it's closer to the countries that many migrants come from, and because people can basically just walk there.
I absolutely understand that the issues facing someone living in a border area in TX or AZ or CA are different than the issues facing me. I'm surrounded by migrants, but they aren't wandering homeless through my neighborhood in large numbers. Or any numbers.
It's a problem of a different quality.
My understanding is that the Biden policies exacerbated the problem *at the southern border*. Maybe exacerbated it a lot, i don't have numbers. If you want to blame him for that, I will recognize that as a fair point. He did take steps to remedy that, as you point out "because of an election". He recognized he was vulnerable there.
And Trump prevented those changes from taking place. Because of an election.
Politicians' minds are concentrated by elections. Not ideal, but that's the reality.
The approach Trump and Miller are taking right now is creating holy f***ing havoc where I live. People afraid to leave their homes, afraid to send their kids to school, afraid to go to work. Not just illegal people, but literally anybody brown, anyone who speaks Spanish or speaks English with an accent.
People who were born in this country, and who have lived all their lives here. Afraid to go out of the house. Because ICE under Trump and Miller are a freaking terroristic goon squad.
Illegals are seized, citizens are seized, anybody who looks like they might possibly by Latino.
I sometimes attend a standing weekly demonstration at the local ICE facility in Burlington MA. It's basically an office building, with no facilities for holding people. The agreement ICE has with either the leaseholder or the town (not sure which) is that nobody will be held overnight, or at least for more than a day.
People are held there for many days. Weeks in some cases. They sleep on a concrete floor with a Mylar blanket. Many in one big room, with one toilet that offers minimal privacy. No place to shower. No medical facilities. No kitchen.
Undocumented people, people who are not citizens but have legal status, and citizens. All picked up and held in this shithole.
ICE has been unresponsive to requests from the town to inspect the facility. They have refused entry to members of Congress.
They are an unaccountable violent militarized goon squad.
I'm sympathetic to folks who live in southern border areas. I have family that lives in a southern border area, and they often feel that things are out of control.
But what Trump and MIller are doing is not making things any better. It's freaking mayhem.
Long post, sorry for that. Need to get some of this crap off my chest.
Wjca summed up my own response about Afghanistan. The only thing I'd add is that blame could be assigned not just to Biden, not just to Trump, but also to Bush II who got us into that war without a clear mission.
Were we after Al Qaeda? The Taliban? Were we there just to eliminate a threat to the US? Or are we going to transform Afghanistan into a modern liberal republic?
I'd add Rumsfeld, who had his own vision and agenda for "modernizing the military" which ended up leaving the effort short on resources.
And I'd add all the war mongering creeps in the Bush II administration who took 9/11 as their free pass to invade Iraq.
So, all of them.
And if you want to keep the (D) vs (R) score even I'll add Carter, who funded and armed the mujahadin - the proto-Taliban - to stick it to Russia.
That's about 50 years of history landing in Biden's lap. It was a mess, because everything about our engagement with Afghanistan has been a mess. He did well to get us the hell out of there.
On a different topic, I'm all in favor of "green pork". The fossil industries have had a stranglehold on our public energy policy for decades, they are going to do everything they can to make sure every freaking ounce of fossil fuel that is still in the ground gets extracted and burned, because most of the book value of those companies is based on doing exactly that.
We've passed several milestones in the advent of our new climate, and we don't appear to be making much progress in slowing any of that down. The market does not appear to be getting it done, so I'm fine with the public sector - government - stepping in.
YMMV, that's how I see it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Something Different”
Other people must be doing interesting and/or useful things beyond politics.
I've been cleaning black mold out of the basement. Big fun!!
:(
Also, went to a two-day reiki class over the weekend, which was actually kind of profound. And fun. Profound fun.
Looking forward to getting the basement wrapped up so I can get back to the vibes.
On “Monarchy in the UK”
Well, not always by a long shot.
I stand corrected!
"
I spent the entire time my we watched "Downton Abbey" annoying my wife by yelling at the Crawley's to learn how to put on their own damned clothes. So I'm probably not the person most likely to have a positive opinion of the royal family.
All of that said, from this side of the pond the UK royals seem to have this weird dichotomony between the ones who are actually king or queen (or in line to be), and who seem to take the responsibilities of their office seriously, and the rest of the family, who end up having too much money and privilege and not enough to do so they end up behaving badly.
Over here, we've had Billy Beer, the wild and crazy Bush twins, Hunter Biden, and Uday and Qusay Trump. So I'm not sure we're in a position to point fingers.
If it's working for you all, carry on. Seems expensive, though. And they should all learn to put on their own clothes.
On “The South shall writhe again”
The comment in the podcast that most connected with me was Bouelle's statement about it not just being about the South as a geographic area, specifically. I live in blue part of blue MA, and the whole giant American and/or Confederate flag flying off the back of a pickup with Eric Church or similar blasting is all over the place here.
Head out into Worcester or Franklin county, even more so.
Cross the border into southern NH, even more so.
What thinking lately about the whole moment we're in, and have been in since probably Reagan, is that this country has never successfully come to terms with the negative or darker side of our history. There is a lot that is negative in our history - violent, genocidal, explicitly and thoroughly racist. And we've never really found a way to come to terms with it.
So we end up with these weird overcompensating mythologies about American exceptionalism - how special and wonderful and indispensable we are.
And the people who do try to call it out are accused of "hating America". And some of them seem caught up in our darker corners, like they themselves can't let go of it or move past it.
And a lot of the really toxic shit has never really gone away. One of the remarkable things to me about the last 40 years or so is the degree to which it's become OK again to be an unapologetic racist. Or at least a "scientifically based" racist, see also the Bell Curve crap.
Or an unapologetic misogynist, or at least a proponent of the idea that men are somehow supposed to be the bosses. See also Charlie Kirk. Andrew Tate, who is clearly one sick bastard, has over 10 million followers.
I think this ends up - as Cottem points out - being "shunted off" onto the South because that region has the most overt history of, specifically, chattel slavery. The Confederacy was an explicit attempt to establish a state based on the doctrine of white supremacy and the legitimacy of black slavery. It's an obvious vector for the worst in our history. And, that is an obvious source for resentment on the part of the folks who live there.
But the whole country is complicit in that history, and I think the whole country participates in a refusal to come to terms with it in an honest way.
As a point of contrast, Germany post WWII was able to move past Naziism - to not continually be engaged in arguments about it (I think - right Helmut?) - by owning it, recognizing it as toxic and a point of shame, and making explicit choices to reject it. Until AfD I guess.
And I think the way Trump fits into this is that his own personal pathology mirrors that of the nation perfectly.
On “Politics thread”
Personal charisma is great, recognizing that nobody watches TV anymore so stop spending all your money there is great, understanding how to leverage social media is great.
Recruit the charismatic people, do all those things.
However.
My main criticism of the (D)'s over the last, say, 40 years is that they've neglected the areas that aren't what they see as their places of strength. Rural areas, much of the south, much of the mountain west, to some degree the industrial midwest.
When I say that, people often reply "how can you say that, their policies are much better for those folks". And in general I think that's true. But I'm not talking about *policy*. I'm talking about physical presence and local identity.
There are 50 states, 435 Congressional districts, and something north of 3,000 counties or county equivalents in the US. I don't know how many cities and towns, but a lot of those, too.
There should be a (D) candidate for every public office, in every one of those political units, in every cycle. There is not. My scientific wild-ass guess is that they're lucky if they field candidates in half of them.
There should be some kind of (D) field office in each of those political units, and the DNC and similar (D)-aligned organizations should be supporting all of them with money and people. They should *not* be telling them how to run their local organization, because the people who live in an area almost certainly know the area better than anybody in the DNC. But they should be supported with money, assistance in recruiting local candidates and volunteers, and with boots on the ground (as they say) during election cycles.
Way back when, Howard Dean developed a 50 state strategy to basically do the above. It worked well. Obama continued it at least for his first run, but since then it's kind of been abandoned.
There *is* interest in all of those places. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been holding town halls in very red places and thousands of people show up. So at least a basic level of interest is there.
My sense, or belief, is that the (D)'s as an institution have focused on the stuff they sort of know how to do - basically the easy stuff. Solicit big money from rich people in large cities, focus-group their messages to try to polish them up into something that will resonate with "regular people", lean heavily on the most reliable demographics that they are (more or less) sure to win.
It's a very top-down, center-of-power-centric approach.
They need to stop spending billions of dollars on consultants and start spending billions of dollars to establish and support *local (D) organizations* in every freaking political unit in the country. And let those organizations take the lead in identifying and understanding the issues that are significant to the people *in those places* and in explaining to those people how they benifit more from (D) policies than from (R) ones. Which, in general, they do. And also let those local folks take the lead in understanding how (D) policies do NOT benefit folks there, so they can evolve policy to address those needs.
Folks in all the places I'm talking about don't really care all that much what Chuck Schumer says. They might not even care all that much what Trump says other than to find it somewhere between annoying and entertaining.
But they will have a much harder time tuning out what their neighbor says.
The 50 state strategy, but really make it a 50 state, 435 district, 3,000 plus county, every town and city strategy. Support (D) candidates for mayor, town clerk, school board, county sheriff, tax assessor, dog catcher. State senate and house.
And, of course, federal House and Senate. But work from the bottom up.
Do that for 3 or 4 or 5 election cycles. They'll lose a lot, and spend a lot of money on doing so. And they'll win some. And over time, they'll win more.
Patience, persistence, and quit relying on the easy wins.
On “What’s up, doxx?”
They're saying almost 7 million at No Kings today.
that's a lot of people
On “The Return of the Boat Hook”
At vrious points in my brilliant code monkey career I contemplated offering bribes to the machines, but I could never figure out what they would take as currency.
Threats usually resulted in some technological version of "Oh yeah, well watch *this*!".
On “Weekend music thread #02 Bad Bunny”
Absolutely
"
This first article on this page might be of interest for folks wanting more
Ai, rumba!! Allow me to digress.
Rumba in its various forms is / are kind of folkloric root and base of Cuban music. This right here is guaguanco, one of the three traditional rumba styles, and the one most commonly still performed, played here in pretty much it's traditional form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQvzI1A2P0
Another guaguanco, with the great Orlando "Puntilla" Rios, grand old man of the Cuban / New York rumbero community. The clave is easier to hear here, it's more even eighth notes, where the more traditional players tend to elide the difference between a duple and triple time feel. This is *rumba* clave, a little different to the "Bo Diddley" "shave and a haircut" clave - called *son* clave - shown in the reggaeton in two minutes clip.
This is one of my favorite videos in the world. When they break into the call-and-response thing at about 4:30 and the dancers get up the joy of it all is palpable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnBN_AXfkvk
Salsa is more of a popular, dance club style, mostly based out of New York. Here is the great Ruben Blades performing "Pedro Navaja", which is basically the Spanish version of "Mack the Knife". This has son clave, which you can hear pretty clearly at the beginning of the tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqCC-zWQfdI
Clave is the key (literally) to a really broad range of musical styles and traditions of the Spanish-speaking African diaspora. It's one of many similar rhythmic patterns found in Africa, all of which turn out to be Euclidean rhythms, which I will not get into because we'll be here all night.
I pretty much love Latin music.
"
MAGAs do not want to share the world with anyone else. Not sharing is the point of the movement
They are in for a big disappointment, because the rest of the world isn't going away. And it's true, they're trying to make the US their own private homogenous playground, but there are too many other kinds of people here already. A lot of us were born here.
A lot of the brown Spanish speaking people were here before this country was.
I don't know what it's gonna take for these fuckers to get it through their heads that white skin and blue eyes just ain't that big of a deal.
On “What’s up, doxx?”
There’s also, though, the antifa types who see themselves as mutual aid groups, who are there to offer medical support and protection to other groups they are in solidarity with.
I can affirm this.
A former minister of mine was at the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" calamity - she lived there at the time and was present as a peaceful protestor. Her own account of the day gives a lot of credit to antifa (by whatever label) for providing a buffer between the quite violent right wing folks and the folks there to protest peacefully.
In my own direct expeience, I've seen "antifa" folks present at demonstrations who were there to provide medical or trauma help if that was needed (thankfully it was not). Carrying a simple trauma first aid kit, and they were clearly marked with red crosses on their kit and on armbands.
My comment was really toward the folks who come deliberately to fight, specifically. I more or less understand the impulse - I think most of us feel anger at the stuff that goes on - but I'm not sure it accomplishes anything useful. It just gives the Andy Ngo and "Based Stick Man" types of the world something to look forward to.
On “Weekend music thread #02 Bad Bunny”
Hey, that's actually a really good breakdown of reggaeton. Clear and succint and accurate.
I am completely ignorant of Bad Bunny's work because (a) rap leaves me behind because I have a hearing impairment that makes it basically impossible for me to make out lyrics in recorded music, and (b) reggaeton drives me nuts - it's not just that it's repetitive, the repeating cell is so small that there is no (to my ear) breathing room.
Plus I live near a couple of large Latin communities and the way I hear reggaeton is typically being cranked from some guy's car at a volume level that makes the doors of my car vibrate from the massive bass. I want to take those guys aside and say "You're gonna be stone deaf by the time you're 40" but I'm more than sure they wouldn't care. They're having fun now, 40 is a long way off.
I miss salsa. At least that gives you both sides of the clave.
All of that said, BB seems like a very interest artist and social and cultural persona. I'm not a sports guy and will likely not watch the Super Bowl, but I'm both amused and delighted that he was the NFL's pick for the half time show.
In my wildest dreams I would never have predicted the NFL as a socially forward-looking organization. I suspect they know who their viewing audience is.
MAGAs just gonna have to learn to share the world with everybody else.
On “What’s up, doxx?”
John Lennon's words are, I think, appropriate in the current situation.
There are situations when there are no other options, but I don't think we are anywhere close to that now.
As an aside, this has always been one of my issues with antifa and similar. The folks they want to fight would like nothing better than an opportunity to get into it with them. It's kind of what they live for.
Why give them what they want?
For folks heading out to No Kings tomorrow, stay safe and to whatever degree you can bring joy to it. I'm sorry to say I won't be out there, I have another commitment for the weekend of long standing.
I'll be there for the next one.
"
then couldn’t get the charge to stick?
Grand jury would not indict, which has become a way for regular folks to resist bullshit acts of overzealous or punitive prosecution by the current DOJ.
Ironically, the guy was a DOJ employee, and was subsequently fired.
One point to make regarding doxxing in our current environment is that any real harm done to an ICE agent will just become an excuse for the feds to double down.
Trump is looking for any excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to legally (for some readings of "legally") deploy the military domestically. Which would basically be ICE on steroids.
Trump has an army, folks opposed to his policies don't. And Trump is eager for any pretext to use it, against people in this country who are opposed to his policies and actions.
I'm opposed to doxxing, of anyone and of any kind, for all of the obvious ethical reasons. But all of that aside, as a purely strategic matter, it's a really bad idea to give Trump any reason to send the army into your city or town.
Things are bad enough as it is.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
Here is where I am today as regards calling a thug a thug.
This week we had folks in the Young Republicans organization telling us they love Hitler and who should be sent to the gas chanbers. The folks involved included a Vermont state Senator and the head of staff of a NY Assemblyman. The latter was the guy who "loved Hitler".
Not fringe people.
Today I see that Mike Davis, former chief counsel for Chuck Grassley, former clerk for Gorsuch, and current head of the conservative Article III Project, decided to call House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries "George Soros' house slave" in a post on X.
We also have a photo from the office of Congressman Dave Taylor, (R) Ohio, showing a picture pinned to a bulletin board with an American flag modified to include a swastika.
Plus all the ICE bullshit. Plus all the "manosphere" crap.
If you don't want to be called Nazis, don't be Nazis.
If you don't want to be associated with Nazis, don't associate with Nazis.
If you don't want to be called fascist, don't behave like a fascist regime.
If you don't want to be called thugs, don't send thugs in your employ into our cities and neighborhoods to abuse people.
If you don't want to be called misogynist, don't joke about rape being "epic".
A hit dog will holler.
I'm not interested in dialog with people who consider folks who don't look like them are some lower order of being. I don't even know where the conversation could begin.
I'm not referring to bc, I do not get that vibe from him.
But it's rampant in the right wing. Which owns the (R) party and the "conservative" name right now.
If you don't like that, you need to take it back from them. I can't do that, you can.
Clean your damned house. You have rats in the walls.
On “Opinions on settings”
3 links seems too few, 5 seems like a better compromise between overly strict and being exposed to spam.
14 days is probably too short - some threads seem to want to go on longer. 21? A month? But longer than a month seems unnecessary - usually if a thread goes on that long it's because it's wandered off onto a different topic that probably deserves its own post.
Don't know what I think about the subscriber thing. What does it give you that you don't get by just walking up to the site? Not having to re-enter name and password each time would be handy, but not sure if that alone is worth the extra fuss.
My biggest ask would be to make "Oldest" the default sort order. I (personally) find it confusing to go bottom-up to follow the chronological sequence of posts. But others may prefer the current default.
As always, thank you all for keeping this place alive!
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
Hello bc -
Thank you for your thoughtful response! I'll try to reply briefly.
I think you are correct as regards the law. The severity of the offense depends on whether someone came through a federal entry point vs. just walking across the border somewhere, and also whether someone is trying to re-enter illegally after having been deported.
Thank you for the clarification and correction, I appreciate it.
First, we are on the same page as regards people with criminal histories or demonstrable gang affiliation. I would except folks whose "criminal history" is a moving violation, but certainly crimes against persons or property are legitimate grounds for deportation or refusal of entry.
I don't actually prefer the folks who are here without legal status to the 5 million waiting in line. If I understand the estimates of the size of the "no legal status" numbers, they actually include many of those 5 million - people waiting for an asylum ruling, people here under TPS, basically anyone who has not yet been granted permanent legal residency.
For folks who did straight-up sneak in or overstay their visa - people who are *not* in the pipeline - it's legitimate to deport them, or at least require them to justify their presence here on some legitimate basis (fear of being killed if they return, frex). But I also think we need to be realistic about what we can do without turning the country into a police state. Reagan offered amnesty, we've since had Dreamers, those are both programs intended to deal with the situation humanely and realistically. Don't know if they are appropriate to the current situation.
I personally would be fine with defining a structured path to residency for folks who have been here for some time - 5 years? pick a number - and who have no criminal record. Especially folks who are in families of mixed immigration status - right now we are deporting people who have kids here, and who have been here for years and years. That doesn't seem right, to me.
I'm curious to understand your point about the folks "waiting in line" a little more clearly. Are they "waiting in line" here in this country, i.e., their status is in process but not yet granted? Are they waiting in some other country for a request to immigrate to be granted? I want to understand how the presence of an undocumented person here harms them, or is unfair to them in some tangible way.
Purely from a practical point of view, the focus should be on people who are here with no legal status and who are making trouble. Criminals, gang members. And I agree that the DHS numbers are BS. My understanding, based on cites of ICE's own statistics, is that 80% of the people being held in the Burlington facility near me have no criminal record.
Lastly, I agree that if ICE folks didn't wear masks, they would be at risk of being doxed, and that there is potential for harm there. I would counter that *if they weren't acting as they are acting*, that risk would be significantly reduced. Cops, FBI, etc. generally don't find it necessary to wear masks. ICE's own behavior - their violence and total disregard for due process - is what creates, or at least exacerbates, that risk. They are lawless.
I agree that it's a hard problem, and that there is no perfect solution. But what we are doing right now is nuts. Not "nuts" as in "silly and amusing", but "nuts" as in harmful and destructive, not just to immigrants, but to all of us.
Due process applies to everyone, or else we are all at risk of losing it.
"
the group texts of Young Republicans.
You'd think Hitler would be a bright line. Wouldn't you? What the hell is funny about gas chambers?
My father, step-father, father-in-law, and uncle, all fought in WWII. Uncle didn't make it back. They would freaking puke to see this.
They think this crap is funny. "Edgy". It's all a joke, right? Owning the libs for fun and lols.
And now they're all gonna whine because they've been outed and some of them are losing their jobs.
I affirm the idea that we don't want to dehumanize other folks. That said, these folks dehumanize themselves.
And I understand that there are Good And Reasonable Conservatives, but there are a hell of a lot of folks like this. These are not "fringe" characters, they are leaders in the Young Republican movement. Leaders.
Good And Reasonable Conservatives, if you want to engage in civil and constructive dialog with your counterparties, you need to get people like this the hell out of your party and your movement. I know I sure as hell have nothing to say to them, and am not interested in anything they might want to say to me.
To borrow wonkie's language, they can fuck right off.
I can't make them go away. You - reasonable conservatives, wherever you are - can. Or at least you can try. They do not deserve a place in governance, in political leadership, or in public conversation.
If you want people to stop calling MAGAs and conservatives in general Nazis, STOP INDULGING THE NAZIS IN YOUR COMMUNITY. If you can't do that, the rest of us can't believe you when you say they "have no part" of your world. They do have a part of it, they are right there in plain sight.
"
I think that should be 0.3% (1 million per 340 million)
Argh. Yes, you are correct!
The 3% is the number of undocumented aliens in the US - in recent years somewhere around 11+ million, growing to about 14 million now.
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/
That number sounds like a lot, but if I follow it all correctly it includes folks who may not have been granted permanent residency but who are protected from deportation for any of a variety of reasons.
Those folks, who actually are trying to "come here the right way" according the the policies in place when they came, make up about 40% of the 14 million. A lot of the policies that grant them protection from deportation were instituted by Biden, and are being removed by Trump. So who knows what will happen to them.
Net/net, as your correction indicates (thank you!), we grant permanent legal residency - a green card, with permission to live and work here - to about one-third of one percent of the overall population.
We're not in danger of being replaced, or overwhelmed with sneaky illegal votes. There are places in the country that *are* stressed by the levels of immigration we see now - I live in one - but in most places even that is not an issue. Or at least is being managed effectively.
Trump doesn't like brown people. Miller doesn't like brown people. So they want to throw the brown people out. And they are hiring / have hired a bunch of out of control yahoos to make that happen.
That's where we are at.
On “Bathtub Bug is Dead”
Indeed.
Mostly I stepped on them. For the ones that got away, I watched where they ran to, and am gonna follow up with a heavy treatment of boric acid.
But yeah, they take a licking and keep on ticking. 6' 2", 215 lbs, jumped on those little bastards with my full weight, and some of them still walked away.
I'm glad they aren't bigger.
"
We have had an on again / off again water issue in the basement - for years - that finally got bad enough that we decided to do something about it. Did some looking around, figured out it was coming from the bulkhead, called a basement guy. A crew will be here second week of November to do the french drain / sump pump thing.
To get ready, we moved a bunch of stuff out of that part of the basement. And... found a bunch of black mold. Yecch!
Tore out some sheetrock, tore out a workbench that had some rotten moldy MDF, pulled up some vinyl tile. Off to the dump with all of that.
But in the process of tearing out the workbench, we discovered that it had been the favorite hiding space for critters. Centipedes (my wife HATES HATES HATES HATES HATES them) and spiders (my spirit animal, according to Facebook).
I tried to work around the spiders, with mixed success. There was no mercy for the centipedes. They're not bad critters, more or less apex predators in the creepy crawly world, but they freak my wife the hell out, so they had to go.
Got all the mold either physically removed from the house or treated thoroughly (vinegar + borax + dish soap + water + a scrub brush). Now I get to put everything back together again - new sheetrock and insulation, build a new workbench, replace vinyl tile, skim coat the new rock, prime and paint everything in sight. But the "putting back together" stuff is very enjoyable for me. My wife is heading out to Ohio tomorrow for a crafting class, so I'll be down in the basement making the world a better place for everything other than centipedes.
The joys of home ownership. :)
On “From the archive: hilzoy on Avian Flu (9 Oct 2005)”
If we only knew what was coming
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
A final thought, or comment, about immigration.
A lot of places in the world are stressed, for a lot of different reasons. Poverty, environmental issues caused by climate change, war and general anarchic violence.
We're very lucky to live where we do.
All of the above is going to result in people wanting to emigrate. To go somewhere else where they will not be subject to violence, not be desparately poor. Not be miserable in any of a thousand ways.
All of that is not necessarily new, but the scale of it is likely to change. Is, in fact, changing. And there are a lot more ways to get from one place to another now.
We need an intelligent immigration policy. One that recognizes the realities named above. One that recognizes the value of immigrants to this country. One that isn't rooted in the mythology of white supremacy - that recognizes that "real Americans" come, and have always come, in all colors creeds and nationalities.
One that is sane and humane. One that is enforceable without descending into a police state, which is where we are, right now.
It's where we are, right now.
People are gonna try to come here. The overwhelmingly vast majority of them - overwhelmingly - want to come, work, and make a decent life.
That is how most of us ended up here.
We let a bit more than a million folks a year into this country as lawful permanent residents. That's generous! A lot! Especially by international standards.
But it's about 3% of the population. We could increase that significantly and not get close to "they're gonna replace us" levels.
It's an issue that IS NOT going to go away. Folks are going to migrate, because if the alternative is getting killed or starving, you will take your chances.
So we need to find a constructive way to deal with that. One that does not require masked anonymous agents in full military kit breaking into homes and smashing car windows to grab random people because they are brown.
Which is what we do now.
Do we really want to live like this?
The church I attend locks the doors during services because ICE is perfectly likely to march in and start grabbing people. It's not an overreaction, it's a realistic assessment of where we are right now.
Is this how we want to live?
"
His administration (Mayorkas) stated that the unlawful presence was not by itself a basis for an enforcement action.
People LIke Me always make this point when immigration comes up, but since I am a Person LIke Me, I guess I'll make it again.
Being in the United States without some kind of legal status is a civil, not a criminal, violation.
Law enforcement, at all levels, needs to prioritize where they will direct their efforts. Resource are not infinite, so choices have to be made.
Here is a discussion of the policies instituted under Mayorkas:
https://www.valverdelaw.com/unlawful-status-alone-should-not-be-the-basis-for-an-enforcement-action-under-new-guidelines
The purpose of the guidelines is to provide direction to ICE to help them prioritize who they will pursue, and why. The guidelines state that enforcement should be directed toward people who *pose a threat* to the public.
Mayorkas further observes, correctly, that there are 11 million undocumented people in the US. I hope we can all agree that it's not practical to find and deport 11 million people. So choices have to be made.
Go after people who are a threat.
I live very close to large immigrant communities. For a number of years, I lived in the Point neighborhood in Salem MA, which was then and still is a largely Dominican community. I attend a church that has about a 60% Latino congregation. I've volunteered at a local food bank whose clientele includes Dominicans, Brazilians, Haitians, Russians and other Eastern European folks. Also plain old white bread Americans who need access to free or cheap food.
I am aware of the issues around immigration, aware in general of the problems it creates, and also aware of how we benefit from immigrants.
The sticking point for immigration - the place where it is hugely problematic, rather than just one of several issues to deal with - is at the southern border. Because it's closer to the countries that many migrants come from, and because people can basically just walk there.
I absolutely understand that the issues facing someone living in a border area in TX or AZ or CA are different than the issues facing me. I'm surrounded by migrants, but they aren't wandering homeless through my neighborhood in large numbers. Or any numbers.
It's a problem of a different quality.
My understanding is that the Biden policies exacerbated the problem *at the southern border*. Maybe exacerbated it a lot, i don't have numbers. If you want to blame him for that, I will recognize that as a fair point. He did take steps to remedy that, as you point out "because of an election". He recognized he was vulnerable there.
And Trump prevented those changes from taking place. Because of an election.
Politicians' minds are concentrated by elections. Not ideal, but that's the reality.
The approach Trump and Miller are taking right now is creating holy f***ing havoc where I live. People afraid to leave their homes, afraid to send their kids to school, afraid to go to work. Not just illegal people, but literally anybody brown, anyone who speaks Spanish or speaks English with an accent.
People who were born in this country, and who have lived all their lives here. Afraid to go out of the house. Because ICE under Trump and Miller are a freaking terroristic goon squad.
Illegals are seized, citizens are seized, anybody who looks like they might possibly by Latino.
I sometimes attend a standing weekly demonstration at the local ICE facility in Burlington MA. It's basically an office building, with no facilities for holding people. The agreement ICE has with either the leaseholder or the town (not sure which) is that nobody will be held overnight, or at least for more than a day.
People are held there for many days. Weeks in some cases. They sleep on a concrete floor with a Mylar blanket. Many in one big room, with one toilet that offers minimal privacy. No place to shower. No medical facilities. No kitchen.
Undocumented people, people who are not citizens but have legal status, and citizens. All picked up and held in this shithole.
ICE has been unresponsive to requests from the town to inspect the facility. They have refused entry to members of Congress.
They are an unaccountable violent militarized goon squad.
I'm sympathetic to folks who live in southern border areas. I have family that lives in a southern border area, and they often feel that things are out of control.
But what Trump and MIller are doing is not making things any better. It's freaking mayhem.
Long post, sorry for that. Need to get some of this crap off my chest.
"
Wjca summed up my own response about Afghanistan. The only thing I'd add is that blame could be assigned not just to Biden, not just to Trump, but also to Bush II who got us into that war without a clear mission.
Were we after Al Qaeda? The Taliban? Were we there just to eliminate a threat to the US? Or are we going to transform Afghanistan into a modern liberal republic?
I'd add Rumsfeld, who had his own vision and agenda for "modernizing the military" which ended up leaving the effort short on resources.
And I'd add all the war mongering creeps in the Bush II administration who took 9/11 as their free pass to invade Iraq.
So, all of them.
And if you want to keep the (D) vs (R) score even I'll add Carter, who funded and armed the mujahadin - the proto-Taliban - to stick it to Russia.
That's about 50 years of history landing in Biden's lap. It was a mess, because everything about our engagement with Afghanistan has been a mess. He did well to get us the hell out of there.
On a different topic, I'm all in favor of "green pork". The fossil industries have had a stranglehold on our public energy policy for decades, they are going to do everything they can to make sure every freaking ounce of fossil fuel that is still in the ground gets extracted and burned, because most of the book value of those companies is based on doing exactly that.
We've passed several milestones in the advent of our new climate, and we don't appear to be making much progress in slowing any of that down. The market does not appear to be getting it done, so I'm fine with the public sector - government - stepping in.
YMMV, that's how I see it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.