“Three things everyone wants – fast, cheap, and good. But you can really only have any two of them.”
Itshould be noted that two is only the maximum. This administration demonstrates that you might get only one. Or, more often with them, none.
2 weeks ago
Take a deep breath, Tiny. A slow deep breath.
Charles was actually agreeing with you. If these thugs were real law enforcement, they would routinely wear body cams. (Which, be it noted, are also real useful if there's an actual court case to be made in these situations.). The reason they weren't wearing them is that they are nothing like real law enforcement.
2 weeks ago
as far as i can see, all there are are masked thugs doing thuggish things with the full backing of a gang of thuggish morons, who were elected by drooling wannabe thugs.
Certainly there is an enormous amount of that on the streets. But that behavior inevitable gets a lot more attention. Just as a riot which extends across a half dozen city blocks, in a city of several million, is all you will see on the news.
But consider the last time you arrived on an international flight. The guy doing customs inspections was also ICE (customs enforcement, right?). But, at least in my observation, those folks are courteous and polite to everybody, regardless of how they look or what their proficiency in English. If all of ICE was the thugs, I'd expect something less.
2 weeks ago
russell: In general, she says, the officers are kind to the folks they are handling. She hasn’t met that many – 10 or 12? – but that’s the pattern. So at least some of these people have retained some degree of their own humanity.
I think it's useful to distinguish between those ICE officers who have been hired under Trump and those who were not. The group who were hired under Trump are pretty uniformly scum who ought to be booted out as soon as possible. (With criminal charges where those can be sustained.)
The other group probably includes some bad apples. But the majority should be assumed to be normal people, absent evidence otherwise in specific cases.
I know it's tempting to generalize. ("All ICE agents are horrible!" "All white people are racists!" etc.) But it is not helpful if the goal is to solve a problem, or change a behavior which some of the group is engaging in.
3 weeks ago
My own point of view is that ICE and the CBP in their current form need to be disbanded. They are a public menace. We need to manage immigration, but not like this. Shut it down and start over from a clean slate.
My inclination would be to shut them down and lay off everybody working at either. Those who worked there pre-Trump are welcome to reapply. But no promises. Those hired under a Trump administration? Don't even bother to apply, because that's an automatic reject.
3 weeks ago
On the evidence of now 5 years of Trump administration(s), there seems no way to guess in advance what, if anything, will turn out to be a tipping point. One only notes that numerous events which might reasonably be expected to be a tipping point have turned out not to be.
No doubt 20/20 hindsight will allow future historians to write "Obviously...." But us living thru events? No way to make a meaningful prediction.
3 weeks ago
Was it for not being sufficiently fascist? Or for not being sufficiently sexist? (Could be both, I suppose....)
3 weeks ago
he was told on Tuesday that he needed to excise some teachings of Plato from his syllabus.
I wonder if I could win a sucker bet here. I'd bet most** of those exercised by Plato have never actually read any of it. Beyond, perhaps, whatever quotes out of context an AI might include in response to a query about possible "woke" material in the college curriculum. Any takers?
** Actually, if any have I would be surprised. But there are always a few college students who, for whatever reason, have had occasion to read with utter incomprehension.
Itshould be noted that two is only the maximum. This administration demonstrates that you might get only one. Or, more often with them, none.
Take a deep breath, Tiny. A slow deep breath.
Charles was actually agreeing with you. If these thugs were real law enforcement, they would routinely wear body cams. (Which, be it noted, are also real useful if there's an actual court case to be made in these situations.). The reason they weren't wearing them is that they are nothing like real law enforcement.
Certainly there is an enormous amount of that on the streets. But that behavior inevitable gets a lot more attention. Just as a riot which extends across a half dozen city blocks, in a city of several million, is all you will see on the news.
But consider the last time you arrived on an international flight. The guy doing customs inspections was also ICE (customs enforcement, right?). But, at least in my observation, those folks are courteous and polite to everybody, regardless of how they look or what their proficiency in English. If all of ICE was the thugs, I'd expect something less.
I think it's useful to distinguish between those ICE officers who have been hired under Trump and those who were not. The group who were hired under Trump are pretty uniformly scum who ought to be booted out as soon as possible. (With criminal charges where those can be sustained.)
The other group probably includes some bad apples. But the majority should be assumed to be normal people, absent evidence otherwise in specific cases.
I know it's tempting to generalize. ("All ICE agents are horrible!" "All white people are racists!" etc.) But it is not helpful if the goal is to solve a problem, or change a behavior which some of the group is engaging in.
My inclination would be to shut them down and lay off everybody working at either. Those who worked there pre-Trump are welcome to reapply. But no promises. Those hired under a Trump administration? Don't even bother to apply, because that's an automatic reject.
On the evidence of now 5 years of Trump administration(s), there seems no way to guess in advance what, if anything, will turn out to be a tipping point. One only notes that numerous events which might reasonably be expected to be a tipping point have turned out not to be.
No doubt 20/20 hindsight will allow future historians to write "Obviously...." But us living thru events? No way to make a meaningful prediction.
Was it for not being sufficiently fascist? Or for not being sufficiently sexist? (Could be both, I suppose....)
he was told on Tuesday that he needed to excise some teachings of Plato from his syllabus.
I wonder if I could win a sucker bet here. I'd bet most** of those exercised by Plato have never actually read any of it. Beyond, perhaps, whatever quotes out of context an AI might include in response to a query about possible "woke" material in the college curriculum. Any takers?
** Actually, if any have I would be surprised. But there are always a few college students who, for whatever reason, have had occasion to read with utter incomprehension.