Kind of interesting that in the 20 years since this was originally posted, in the case of a pandemic we (the OECD countries) have developed the ability to formulate a vaccine and manufacture a billion doses in under a year.
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.
...what justification is there for its presence anyway?
One possibility: there are two major global shipping choke points in the region (Hormuz and Mandeb). The US is the only country with enough military power projection to force them open in the event someone tries to close them. Having a staging point for large air transport efforts related to that seems like a necessity. But this is a very complicated question.
Ha, that's what comes of not looking at the papers (or anything else) till 6.30 pm*! Thanks hsh.
Now from me: on the issue of Biden's v Trump's records, I was going to snarkily ask bc what, as a lawyer, s/he thought about Trump's annexation of the entire (as near as he can) legal system and DOJ to go after his "enemies". I was going to contrast it with the prosecutions and convictions of Trump while Biden was POTUS, but lo, I don't have to. Here (from the Atlantic) is something today:
“what justification is there for its presence anyway?”
we're there to keep the region stable enough to keep the world's oil supply steady. if the supply of oil is interrupted, the entire world's economy will suffer; nobody will be immune.
that's why we need to find a better energy source than oil.
This seems like the best thread to mention the group texts of Young Republicans. In the spirit of wonkie's original subject, high-profile Democrats should be pointing this out to the non-MAGA electorate. This is the progeny of the beknighted Charlie Kirk, who was demonstrably a white Christian nationalist despite his superficial "civility."
This is who they are - by choice. Saying so is not othering. It is truth.
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.
"what justification is there for its presence anyway?"
At this point: inertia.
Half a century ago, when we were a big oil importer and the Saudis essentially controlled the price of oil worldwide, there were obvious economic reasons to be involved there. Plus, at that time, some humanitarian reasons to defend the only democracy in the region (Israel).
But now, we're a net oil exporter. We still import a lot, but on balance. And these days (yes, gradually over the intervening decades) Israel has ceased to be a shining example compared to its neighbors. Even though said neighbors are still pretty appalling.
In fact, from a domestic political perspective, the majority of American Jews are no longer solid Israel supporters. Netanyahu has made manifest for them just where Israel has descended to. All we need is a generation of politicians who don't personally remember the situation from 50-60 years ago.
Here in Japan, we generally use boiling water, fortunately, there is usually a hot pot for green tea. I was looking at Gemini and it says that undiluted vinegar also get them.
Call me crazy, but the US needs to get out of the ME - it has caused a lot of terrible misery there and besides what justification is there for its presence anyway?
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.
wonkie - Maybe the Republican party wouldn’t have degenerated into the corrupt, fascist, anti-Constitutional front for religious extremists and oligarchs that it is today if the rest of us had spent the last twenty-five years LOUDLY DENOUNCING THEIR FASCIST PROPAGANDA instead of trying to be “reasonable” while politely engaging in discussion of issues.
...or if the "concerned republicans" had actually been critical of the alt-right and had chosen to ally with the centrist democrats rather than choosing to conciliate their radicals and blame the "radical liberals."
There's a whole lot of quiet complicity enabling this lawless administration, and all of this hindsight is blame shifting.
Washington Examiner had an article today about an imaginary group supposedly teaching people how to use vandalism against ICe in Chicago. There is a Facebook page put up by someone with people making suggestions along those lines ( an ICE operation? Is anyone actually dumb enough to advocate crime on FB?) but the actual groups doing training are very scrupulous about document only--do nothing that could justify an arrest. Kid Twat is quoted in another article bemoaning unAmerican youth. There was another Kirk-deification piece about those mean Dems who aren't being sufficiently worshipful of Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives. This is Goebbels-style propaganda and it is a multiple times a day occurrence every fucking day and has been for decades.
But if I call it out for what it is, supposedly I'm being as bad as or the same as the haters.
Fuck no.
Maybe the Republican party wouldn't have degenerated into the corrupt, fascist, anti-Constitutional front for religious extremists and oligarchs that it is today if the rest of us had spent the last twenty-five years LOUDLY DENOUNCING THEIR FASCIST PROPAGANDA instead of trying to be "reasonable" while politely engaging in discussion of issues.
This is, in many ways, the dynamic that defines reactionary centrism: the right must be understood, but never blamed. The left can be blamed, but need not be understood. One thing that follows from this is a hyper-sensitivity about treating the right fairly. John Rentoul, for instance, the chief political commentator for the Independent, is no cheerleader for Reform UK. Yet his theory of how to defeat the party often involves scoldingthe left for directly stating the nature of the threat: “Oh dear, m’lud: It’s never a good idea to call people Nazis if they are not Nazis” (that might sound like a mean-spirited parody of a British establishment type, but it’s actually the title of one of his columns).
This being just a taste, not the sum total of what I think is apropos. Again, worth a read.
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.
Non-partisan discussion of Biden's border policies.
The summary is that Biden went back to policy before Trump, which hadn't much differed between Republican and Democratic administrations. Calling that an "open-border policy" is not factual.
So if you like Trump, yes, you'll think Biden wasn't cruel enough. But you wouldn't switch from your previous support for Democratic candidates because Biden agreed with the presidents you'd previously supported.
"There was a way to do it safely. Biden had a date in mind and stuck with it. He owns it."
First, there was? Care to share how it might have been done safely?
Second, Biden didn't have a date in mind. Trump (before he left) had established the date. Biden was stuck either totally reworking the pullout, or trying to execute what he was handed. In retrospect, he should have abrogated the pullout agreement Trump had made, and created a viable plan. And just accepted the fact that he would be totally trashed for doing so.
Did it go badly? No question. But from where I sit, Trump owns it. Or would, if he ever accepted responsibility for anything.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “From the archive: hilzoy on Avian Flu (9 Oct 2005)”
Kind of interesting that in the 20 years since this was originally posted, in the case of a pandemic we (the OECD countries) have developed the ability to formulate a vaccine and manufacture a billion doses in under a year.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
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.
On “The Qatar that plays like butter”
...what justification is there for its presence anyway?
One possibility: there are two major global shipping choke points in the region (Hormuz and Mandeb). The US is the only country with enough military power projection to force them open in the event someone tries to close them. Having a staging point for large air transport efforts related to that seems like a necessity. But this is a very complicated question.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
Ha, that's what comes of not looking at the papers (or anything else) till 6.30 pm*! Thanks hsh.
Now from me: on the issue of Biden's v Trump's records, I was going to snarkily ask bc what, as a lawyer, s/he thought about Trump's annexation of the entire (as near as he can) legal system and DOJ to go after his "enemies". I was going to contrast it with the prosecutions and convictions of Trump while Biden was POTUS, but lo, I don't have to. Here (from the Atlantic) is something today:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/trump-political-prosecution-democrats/684556/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCThgNr42oHPKHeuYkIOS1gc&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I haven't actually read it yet*, but from a brief skim it looks like they do a decent job....
"
Here's one from your side of the pond, GftNC.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/15/young-republicans-racist-group-chat-messages-leaked
On “The Qatar that plays like butter”
“what justification is there for its presence anyway?”
we're there to keep the region stable enough to keep the world's oil supply steady. if the supply of oil is interrupted, the entire world's economy will suffer; nobody will be immune.
that's why we need to find a better energy source than oil.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
hsh, do you have a link?
"
This seems like the best thread to mention the group texts of Young Republicans. In the spirit of wonkie's original subject, high-profile Democrats should be pointing this out to the non-MAGA electorate. This is the progeny of the beknighted Charlie Kirk, who was demonstrably a white Christian nationalist despite his superficial "civility."
This is who they are - by choice. Saying so is not othering. It is truth.
"
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 “The Qatar that plays like butter”
"what justification is there for its presence anyway?"
At this point: inertia.
Half a century ago, when we were a big oil importer and the Saudis essentially controlled the price of oil worldwide, there were obvious economic reasons to be involved there. Plus, at that time, some humanitarian reasons to defend the only democracy in the region (Israel).
But now, we're a net oil exporter. We still import a lot, but on balance. And these days (yes, gradually over the intervening decades) Israel has ceased to be a shining example compared to its neighbors. Even though said neighbors are still pretty appalling.
In fact, from a domestic political perspective, the majority of American Jews are no longer solid Israel supporters. Netanyahu has made manifest for them just where Israel has descended to. All we need is a generation of politicians who don't personally remember the situation from 50-60 years ago.
On “Bathtub Bug is Dead”
Here in Japan, we generally use boiling water, fortunately, there is usually a hot pot for green tea. I was looking at Gemini and it says that undiluted vinegar also get them.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
But it’s about 3% of the population.
I think that should be 0.3% (1 million per 340 million).
Well, still better than the billions of illegals and illegal votes in California alone that His Orangeness used to rant about. ;-)
On “The Qatar that plays like butter”
Call me crazy, but the US needs to get out of the ME - it has caused a lot of terrible misery there and besides what justification is there for its presence anyway?
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.
"
How did you kill the centipedes? They are really tough buggers.
"
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?
"
wonkie - Maybe the Republican party wouldn’t have degenerated into the corrupt, fascist, anti-Constitutional front for religious extremists and oligarchs that it is today if the rest of us had spent the last twenty-five years LOUDLY DENOUNCING THEIR FASCIST PROPAGANDA instead of trying to be “reasonable” while politely engaging in discussion of issues.
...or if the "concerned republicans" had actually been critical of the alt-right and had chosen to ally with the centrist democrats rather than choosing to conciliate their radicals and blame the "radical liberals."
There's a whole lot of quiet complicity enabling this lawless administration, and all of this hindsight is blame shifting.
"
Washington Examiner had an article today about an imaginary group supposedly teaching people how to use vandalism against ICe in Chicago. There is a Facebook page put up by someone with people making suggestions along those lines ( an ICE operation? Is anyone actually dumb enough to advocate crime on FB?) but the actual groups doing training are very scrupulous about document only--do nothing that could justify an arrest. Kid Twat is quoted in another article bemoaning unAmerican youth. There was another Kirk-deification piece about those mean Dems who aren't being sufficiently worshipful of Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives. This is Goebbels-style propaganda and it is a multiple times a day occurrence every fucking day and has been for decades.
But if I call it out for what it is, supposedly I'm being as bad as or the same as the haters.
Fuck no.
Maybe the Republican party wouldn't have degenerated into the corrupt, fascist, anti-Constitutional front for religious extremists and oligarchs that it is today if the rest of us had spent the last twenty-five years LOUDLY DENOUNCING THEIR FASCIST PROPAGANDA instead of trying to be "reasonable" while politely engaging in discussion of issues.
"
May be apropos to the current discussion:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/70966/what-is-a-reactionary-centrist-does-uk-have-them
This being just a taste, not the sum total of what I think is apropos. Again, worth a read.
"
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.
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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.
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Non-partisan discussion of Biden's border policies.
The summary is that Biden went back to policy before Trump, which hadn't much differed between Republican and Democratic administrations. Calling that an "open-border policy" is not factual.
So if you like Trump, yes, you'll think Biden wasn't cruel enough. But you wouldn't switch from your previous support for Democratic candidates because Biden agreed with the presidents you'd previously supported.
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"There was a way to do it safely. Biden had a date in mind and stuck with it. He owns it."
First, there was? Care to share how it might have been done safely?
Second, Biden didn't have a date in mind. Trump (before he left) had established the date. Biden was stuck either totally reworking the pullout, or trying to execute what he was handed. In retrospect, he should have abrogated the pullout agreement Trump had made, and created a viable plan. And just accepted the fact that he would be totally trashed for doing so.
Did it go badly? No question. But from where I sit, Trump owns it. Or would, if he ever accepted responsibility for anything.
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