The law that Trump blocked regarding immigration was a terrible one that legitimized the continuation of illegal infiltration into America. Kudos to him for blocking it.
Somehow, as the elections approached and the Democrats panicked over the unpopularity of their actions, they managed to reduce immigration without any additional legislation. The problem is that, deep down, they still believe that borders are racist and would be happy to abolish them entirely if they win the elections.
Funny how anyone who complains Trump blocked that bill ignore two things:
1. That Trump was a private citizen, and if the sitting president and VP couldn’t overcome one private citizen’s opinions, then maybe the prez and veep shouldn’t be prez and veep
2. That the bill was a bad bill overall, and did not meet the standard required for the compromise that is the hallmark of politics
What disingenuous nonsense. Trump was not some random 'private citizen' at the time he scuttled that bill. He was the likely candidate for president. And the bill had the support of Republicans until he told them to back off. You guys really can't spin this one away.
He had no official position though. If you Democrats are so weak that you can't stop a private citizen -- who wasn't the Republican nominee at that point -- then you're weak.
Good grief, that is such drivel. George Soros has no 'official position' and Republicans squeal about his influence over US politics all the time. Everyone knows Trump has coercive control over Republicans in congress.
How weak was it when Trump couldn’t even get his own party behind ending the ACA and was derailed by a republican senator in his effort. That is seriously weak. Not sure how you can vote for such a headless chicken without authority. World leaders laugh at him. Poor soul
The evil Neocon war hawk John McCain got in his way. We were new to the Presidency back then, we'll be 10x stronger if we win again....Deport all illegals..
This is some really weak bad-faith argumentation. Trump has a stranglehold on the GOP electorate. He demanded that GOP electeds kill the bills to help him politically, they obliged. You are simplifying the matter to such an extreme that it ignores every single piece of context.
It wasn't just Trump - every serious conservative immigration policy wonk was screaming that the bill was horrible, because it was in fact horrible. I have no idea what spell Jim Lankford got put under to sign on to that pile of garbage, but it must have been mighty indeed.
The Republican Senators and Representatives would have been very happy to pass the bill had Trump not intervened. And it would have been a decent bipartisan effort, which matters, because nothing else it going to be permanent.
Really? If those congressmen did not believe it would help them get reelected, they would not have done it. Which means they believed Trump's opposition was consistent with their electorate.
You are ignoring how elections work in a desperate attempt to demonize Trump. Your efforts only serve to highlight your ignorance and desperation.
BURNT-BOY - Did Joe Biden have 50 years of incredible "EXPERIENCE" marked by his uncanny ability to "reach across the aisle" - when he was "elected" he had the HOUSE, SENATE and WHITE HOUSE...Are you FRICKIN' Joking or Just a GREAT LIAR??? ALSO, DEMs could have done Immigration in Obama's first term where they had HOUSE, SENATE and WHITE HOUSE...They had TWO opportunities to do it and IT WAS NOT A PRIORITY...that is why LATINOS ARE MOVING TO TRUMP...TRUMP BUILT 500 MILES OF BORDER WALL, THAT KAM-BAM just POSED in front of AFTER LETTING IN OVER 20 MILLION UNVETTED ILLEGALS...WHAT WORLD ARE YOU LIVING???
This is so obviously unserious. Since Trump was elected in 2016, he has been the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, and has, throughout that time, been the leader of the party.
One need look no further than an analysis of the 2024 Republican primary.
Has Trump been a private citizen since 2021? Yes. Does Trump exercise more influence over Republican Party politics than Mitch McConnell? Yes, and here's an even higher threshold: does Trump exercise more influence over Republican Party politics than the Republican Speaker of the House? Ask Kevin McCarthy.
It was because of the grossly inflated national deficit, which worries a lot of conservatives, and me, too. McCarthy wouldn't move a budget that would start to deal with that. I think we're about to do better on that in a Trump administration ------- I hope.
I didn't mean to imply that Trump ousted McCarthy, even indirectly. Just was trying to show that other Republicans who could somewhat-credibly be called more influential than Trump... aren't.
Trump's signature policy achievements were: (1) a massive tax cut primarily benefitting the rich; and (2) sending stimulus checks paid for out of the public fisc (but with his signature for some reason) to every American.
The man has made a career out of accumulating unsustainable debts and then making those debts someone else's problem. Where on earth does your "hope" that Trump will suddenly take the deficit seriously come from?
I swear to God, Trump is just a Rorschach blot to you people. He has no discernable core beliefs beyond "Trump Uber Alles," so you all just parse the word salad he vomits to convince yourselves that he *really* supports the exact policies you happen to want.
And yet you forget one simple fact: Trump does not elect the congressmen - their constituents do. So to blame Trump for congressional opposition ignores the fact they vote in accordance with their interests - reelection - which means they vote consistent with their constituents' interests. Which, if you are still following, means that they believed their constituents would support their opposition to this bill.
Trump's influence over voters does help elect congressmen. The effect is not always decisive: several Republican Primary candidates that Trump has endorsed have failed. But it is significant: all of the most vocal intra-party opposition to Trump has been silenced by primary defeats. This is because Trump has influence, and more Republican voters take cues from him, and identify with him, than anyone else. That's power.
The relationship between voters and political candidates is a dialogue: voters support political figures and give them power, but political figures routinely influence what their followers think. It doesn't just go in one direction, and any political scientist can tell you that.
If Trump came out in support of the bill, and several other key representatives did, most if not all of those constituents would have fallen in line because they trust Trump.
You can throw around the word "weak" all you want, but if you could see how weak you look, as a Trump supporter, to many Democrats, you'd be embarrassed. Democrats are not hiding behind a candidate so scared of opposition as to be lobbing threats of violence against the opposition.
He was a private citizen. And if Biden couldn’t negotiate with Congress against the opposition of a private citizen then Biden is not qualified to be president.
He was a private citizen. You cannot change that fact. How stupid of you not to recognize that, in your desperate attempt to divert attention from Biden and Harris's incompetence and ineptitude.
He’s the leader of his party. His party followed his direction. Conservative Republicans helped create the bill. It was a product of compromise, which strongly favored Republican priorities. It just did not favor Trump’s reelection campaign.
It did not favor Republican priorities at all, because it cemented in law the currently-dubiously-legal discretionary authorities that Secretary Mayorkas has been using to de facto throw the border wide open. It, for all intents and purposes, locked in ~2 million illegal entries per year, with a discretionary authority to close the border if the rolling daily average went over 5k encounters (thus vulnerable to gerrymandering via strategic understaffing and de-enforcement) per day, with Mexican and Canadian nationals excluded from the tally. So encounters of cartel soldiers don't count towards the "close the border" authority - exactly what we want! It also gave resettlement NGOs a billion dollars, granted migrants automatic work authorization as soon as they finished booking with ICE/INS, and did nothing to reinstate the public charge rule. It was an awful dud.
Please. Let's not overcomplicate this. Republicans control the House, and possess a blocking minority in the Senate (courtesy of the filibuster). If the GOP wants to sabotage a legislative effort to reduce migration because they know it will hurt Democrats politically, that's what's going to happen. Republicans in Washington care about the national interest about as much as they care about used toilet paper.
Let us be accurate about this. Enough Republican Senators were happy to see the bill passed, even though they knew that it would not be good for Trump's re-election. Until Trump stepped in and told them its didn't suit him enough.
So why did they change their mind? Because they know that if Trump spoke out on it, enough of their constituents would agree with him, and they would face difficulty getting reelected.
What does that mean? it means that they decided based on what they realized their constituents wanted. That it took Trump for them to realize that is not Trump's fault.
Is that it though? Isn’t the thing he threatens them with basically being cast out of his in group and therefore facing a bunch of unpleasantness from online savagery to facing some trumpist in a primary. I don’t think it’s much to do with “what the public wants” as opposed to “what maga wants”
A border bill was the second thing the Republican majority in the House did after coming into office. Senate Democrats have sat on their thumbs with it ever since.
Passing that HR2 bill (which will likely be HR1 in the new Congress) will be the first thing done next year. Trump will have a signing ceremony at the White House, and Vance will point out, while smiling, that it is a BIG F-FING DEAL!. Republicans now know what they want to do on the border, much to the chagrin of the Establishment. Next up - what to do about Health Care. Removing Obamacare would be a huge step forward for our country.
“ if the sitting president and VP couldn’t overcome one private citizen’s opinions, then maybe the prez and veep shouldn’t be prez and veep”
By that logic we shouldn’t have a president. The leader of the House should be the leader of the country, because that’s the person who controls Congress.
That is how most democratic countries work, so it’s not really wrong, but it requires a major rewrite to the constitution.
Was it the administration’s bill? Yes. Are they blaming Trump for not getting the bill passed? Yes. Is your comment partisan and ignorant, and doesn’t seek to excuse their incompetence? Yes.
Trump couldn’t vote on the bill. The administration refused to negotiate with the opposition and compromise to the point they would support the bill. Blaming Trump for this administration’s incompetence is just plain stupidity wrapped up in desperation to blame someone else.
The opposition agreed to the bill. But then Trump told them to vote no on everything related to the border until election season. They *did* the negotiation.
“The opposition”? It was negotiated in committee, and ultimately only 5 Republicans supported it. That is not “the opposition”. And by the way five Democrats opposed it. So you could just as well say opposition was bipartisan.
Rewrite the Constitution to remove the constraints against unfettered majority rule?
What happened there is precisely why we have these constraints. If you want to replace existing law, you need a supermajority to do it. Note in 2001 this wasn't a problem passing the Patriot Act/allocating GWOT dollars which would have never happened before that event. Yet in 2010 Democrats had close to a supermajority and they still had issues passing Obamacare and particularly the public option.
The framers saw what had happened in places like Athens - demagogues commanding support and then committing the state to damaging policies (see Peloponnesian War). They wanted safeguards against that. Annoying? Yes. But they've generally served us well.
dude what are you talking about? what standard? the bill already had the bipartisan backing and the numbers. if trump hadn't told his minions the bill would've passed
i am genuinely curious whether you know about these or not
3. That the supposedly necessary bill wasn't law while Trump was president either, and he somehow managed a much lower level of illegal immigration just the same.
The state with the most illegal immigrants working in it is Texas. The types of businesses that hire illegals are mostly republican owned. Republican states barely ever prosecute companies for hiring illegals. California also doesn't prosecute companies for hiring illegals, although republican states higher more overall.
The main reason the illegals are here is for the jobs. If republican states cracked down on companies hiring illegals in their states, than they wouldn't have most of the illegals. They don't do that because those companies hiring them are some of the biggest donors to the republican candidates.
Companies hiring illegals is the main reason we have the illegal immigration issue. States with larger agricultural industries (which tend to hire more illegals) also tend to be republican leaning states. Although California is an exception to this and is a large agricultural producer and also doesn't crack down on companies hiring illegals (although there aren't as many illegals working there as in Texas)
Both parties are to blame, the idea the republicans are some sort of border heroes is laughable though, when they are in fact at the center of the problem, and have had the power to largely end the problem (at least in their states) for decades yet refuse to.
No. Wrong. People come here to get away from a bad situation. A job is additional incentive, but often they are fleeing poverty, oppression. And if they can’t get in, any job would be moot. So I reject your argument as wrong on reason and, possibly, in fact as well.
It's interesting but also disheartening seeing back-to-back comments here mischaracterizing their opponent's views on immigration. One just saying that Reps are just racist, and another saying Dems just believe the border is racist.
I'm getting real sick of all the absurd oversimplifications and vilifications of opposing viewpoints. So few people in this country seem to make any actual effort to understand the other side. It's depressing.
I don't think all Dems think the border is racist. Most Dems don't think much about immigration politics at all, and are quite happy living in large multicultural metropolitan areas. However, the Democratic party is highly susceptible to capture by radical niche activist groups, and I am dead sure that the people inside the Democratic party who care most about immigration *do* think the border is racist.
I don't really disagree with most of this, but I definitely think that "the border is racist" is a partisan oversimplification of opposing views. Plenty in the Democratic party for sure believe that the processes and enforcement practices around immigration are racist, but that border itself is racist? Come on. Even in pro-immigration activist circles that would be a fringe take.
We need to stop painting the opposition as caricatures, as if they walked out of a political cartoon.
I mean, if you have a border but don't actually enforce it, it's not a border. I don't think it's a caricature to take the opposition's statements and actions seriously.
The jobs for illegals that republican politicians are protecting are the most relevant thing. That is the reason why they are here and stay here. If republican states cracked down on companies hiring illegals than they wouldn't have issues with having so many illegals in their states.
To be fair California has a lot of illegals working there as well, although not as many as Texas, and also doesn't crack down. Both parties are to blame.
My problem isn't with taking statements and actions seriously, you should absolutely take them seriously, it's with mischaracterizing the reasons why they do them.
If you look at the Dem's actions (or inactions) and statements around the border and conclude that you can't support that, then that's reasonable. If you conclude that they must be doing it because they think the border is racist and should be abolished, then I think you're building them up as a caricature.
Similarly, if you think the only reason Reps have for opposing immigration is racism, you're also building them up as a caricature.
It's a disservice to ourselves to not explore the feelings, logic, and positions we disagree with, and instead dismiss them based on flimsy premises. It's lazy and tribalistic thinking that is making this whole country stupider.
But there are a lot of left academics and activists who *do* think the U.S. is irredeemably racist, and that enforcement of our borders against "the global south" is also racist. They're not cartoons, they're real living breathing people with wacky, but real ideas.
Republican politicians obviously don't care about border enforcement either, as that would cut into the profits of their corporate donors that make bank off of hiring illegals. The state with the largest amount of illegals working in it is Texas. A state controlled almost completely by Republicans for decades. How many employers that hire illegals there do you think are being seriously prosecuted?
You don't need to convince me that a lot of GOP politicians don't care about the grass roots. This is why there keep being all these populist uprisings against all the "respectable" sorts in the GOP, and why we finally got stuck with someone like Trump as a brick through all the "respectable" people's window.
I'm of the mind that the modern polarization we're seeing has a lot to do with the rise of the internet and global communications, which has little historical precedence. Real world conditions would need to get seriously bad before a civil war is imminent and the day-to-day life in this country is just nowhere near that bad, despite all the ridiculously un-nuanced partisan rhetoric online about it.
Well, let's hope so! Claims that history has ended and that what has always applied before doesn't apply any more do not have a good track record. But even so, it's only predictive, not a guarantee.
No, I think we could go on talking past each other indefinitely without any civil war. That's what was going on between the abolitionists and the slave-favoring interests in 1859 and all through the 1850s.
It's only when you do something that causes a real power imbalance that the nation breaks. When Lincoln won, since he was pro-abolitionist and not even ON the ballot in the entire South, secessions started the next day, literally, and seven states were gone before he was sworn in. That's what I think will happen if you mess with the Electoral College.
I am hoping Trump wins the popular vote so that legitimitizes his election past this danger point.
I'd compare claims that "Lincoln was an abolitionist and that was why we seceded" against "Trump is a fascist and the second coming of Hitler, and that's why we voted against him three times".
They have way more in common than you might think.
Lincoln had a personal view that abolition would be a good thing, but he wasn't invested in it as a political goal. The Southerners didn't give this much of a chance; the presumption was that he was going to take away their slaves (say that like "he took my job" would be said today). There would have been just incremental change in slavery if they'd tolerated his election, and with a likely Democrat Congress for most of his term, not much real movement at all. Might have booted him out in 1864 - that election was also very close.
In similar fashion, if the Democrats hadn't treated Trump like the Antichrist, they would have had him for two terms (2020 was that close) and he'd be leaving office now probably at least somewhat in disgrace because of the state of the economy, which wasn't really amenable to anything other than an unpleasant contraction after the sugar high of COVID. The Supreme Court was already lost in the teens, so what was the point of all this? Breyer probably could have been talked into hanging on a few more years. 2024 would have been an easy win in that scenario, and think of all the Senate candidates that would have benefited from that - Baldwin/Brown/Casey/Slotkin and probably even Tester. Trifecta if everyone treated Trump as the moderate that he actually is on most things.
There is a deeper similarity. The real issue with Lincoln was the supremacy of Northern interests in things like a transcontinental railroad and protective tariffs. Those issues were the things he was _really_ interested in. That wasn't a very photogenic political issue, so slavery it was. It got everyone's skin in the game.
The issue with Trump is really the collapse of the neocon hegemon dream. Not his purported fascism.
The way they reduced immigration was by establishing similar policies as the bill laid out through executive action. These are likely going to be struck down soon. The issue in the border would be much better now had the bill passed, but you and the Republicans don’t really care about the border. It’s not a real concern, it’s an excuse to be racist and blame others for your failures.
What happened was (and this almost entirely happened in public):
Democrats wanted more funding for Ukraine. When Mike Johnson took office, he said "ok, but we want a bill that will protect the border. We'll pass more Ukraine funding only if we get to attach border provisions to it". Democrats said "ok", and they (along with Republican politicians like James Lankford) went to work on a bill. The result was a compromise, and it was a major improvement on the status quo.
When the bill went to a floor vote, Lankford said, on the floor, that a "popular commentator" told him "If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election."
You get 3 guesses as to who that popular commentator was. Anyway, the Border Patrol union (which had previously endorsed Trump) came out in favor of the bill, because it was a significant improvement. The Oklahoma state Republican party censured Lankford, and Trump publicly lied about his previous support for Lankford and said the bill "would be very bad for his career".
Ukraine is an important issue for both parties. There is widespread agreement on funding Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine funding later passed as a separate bill. Border funding did not pass because (some) Republicans refused to vote for it. Democrats in this case were willing to compromise much more than ever before but Republicans refused to take yes for an answer because it did not benefit Trump.
Wait are you actually serious? Were you completely not paying attention at the time??? Dems wanted Ukraine funding, Reps said no not until border bill. So a compromise bill was written. It’s that fucking simple. It wasn’t pork, it was the instigating factor for the compromise. Do you even know how to read?
The bill locked in 2 million unauthorized crossings per year, and only then granted a discretionary authority to close the border. It also gave a billion dollars to resettlement NGOs to spread those migrants around the country and provide them benefits on the public dime, and drastically increased incentives for even more migration by granting huge numbers of those unauthorized migrants work permits while awaiting their deportation hearings.
Another aspect of a Harris presidency is that she would appoint radical woke judges who would strike down laws restricting immigration. The judges Trump would appoint would not strike down laws or regulations limiting immigration.
And hopefully, a Republican House of Representatives with enough Republicans in it that Johnson can do something with it besides desperately holding his place. I like a lot of what the Freedom Caucus is doing (and my representative is in it) but it's all getting pretty unwieldy.
I believe the border bill only went into effect when daily crossings exceeded 4,000? 4000!!! We should burn the whole world if even one damn illegal enters this country -- let alone 4000...
We can debate which number is "too high" but in the end, you are right - even one illegal crossing is already, well, illegal. I find it disheartening that both sides have reduced the immigration policy debate to illegal Mexican border crossings. To me, that topic is table stakes. The real immigration debate should be how we optimize LEGAL immigration for the good of the country.
Most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants, according to Forbes. The CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Oracle (to name three) are all immigrants. This kind of immigrant, with tech skills and entrepreneurial thirst, is what keeps America leading the world. And if you strategically let enough of these immigrants in who greatly increase GDP and tax base and who don't use much state welfare, you could probably fund social security and medicare for a generation. You don't even have to increase the total number of immigrants, just be more strategic about which immigrants you favor.
It was 5,000, and I don't believe for a minute that they would have held to that. They've have just given up and let in 10,000, whoever presented themselves, Y'all come on!
It was to get more Dem voters, but that strategy seems to have backfired.
DHS divides illegal border encounters into three parts:
apprehensions: people crossed illegally but can apply for asylum and not required to be arrested
inadmissibles: not eligible lawful entry but can also apply for asylum
expulsables: not allowed to apply for asylum and must be sent back
So the vast majority of the 5,000 encounters/day can apply for asylum and then disappear into the US until their claim is processed, or until they’re found, or forever.
“Encounters” does not mean they came up to the border, said hello and then went back.
Oh get real. To become a voter one must must be a citizen. Most states require a SecureID to register. To become a citizen one must go through the immigration process, even people who marry an American citizen.
To go through the immigration system one must have been formally admitted, not have committed a crime since admission, and wait a variable number of years depending on the type of admission. If one has a previous ejection for an illegal crossing one may not make a legal application for ten years.
Now there may be a few illegal residents who steal a deceased or otherwise "unused" identity of an American citizen to vote, but it's pretty rare, and is a major crime. So why would someone who very much prefers not to be noticed take the risk?
It would be stupid for the illegal alien to try it, so it's stupid -- and snottily elitist I might add -- for you to think they would.
What are you talking about? JAMES LANKFORD drafted it, my dude. He himself said he got every major concession the GOP wanted and could expect from Dems.
The bill's provisions only take effect when illegal crossings exceed 5,000/day (on some average), so only if they're over 1.8M illegal crossings/year, about 3.5 times the average during the Trump administration. That's some fix to the border crossings.
In addition, there's no explanation why illegal border crossings were so much lower during the Trump administration, when this bill didn't exist.
DHS divides illegal border encounters into three parts:
apprehensions: people crossed illegally but can apply for asylum and not required to be arrested
inadmissibles: not eligible lawful entry but can also apply for asylum
expulsables: not allowed to apply for asylum and must be sent back
So the vast majority of the 5,000 encounters/day can apply for asylum and then disappear into the US until their claim is processed, or until they’re found, or forever.
“Encounters” does not mean they came up to the border, said hello and then went back.
As I said before, no alien without papers could "disappear" into America for very long if E-Verify were used properly. But that would raise the costs for the Holy "Small Bidnesses of the Yew Ess of Ay" and we surely cannot have THAT!
What changed is that wide-spread cell service reached the Andean countries in the late 2010's. People for whom "El Norte" was a fairy tale saw a lifestyle far beyond their wildest dreams. Plus, Maduro got more beatly in Venezuela. Nearly half the country has fled.
Your ignorance of Latin America is astounding, spoken by one born and raised there.
Yo aprendi mas en la calle en Caracas charlando con los pavitos del barrio de lo que tu te crees que sabes de la America Latina. Quien se hubiera imaginado semejante bobo hoy en dia.
It wasn't the city dwellers who got cell service, it was the folks in the countryside, and they're the ones who trek the Darien Gap and ride "La Bestia". The better off folks in the city used to fly to Miami and just overstay their visas. It's only recently that the city folks have (largely) given up any hope that Maduro will stand down, and now THEY too are abandoning ship.
There is no other rational reason for the sudden (e.g. within the past half decade) interest in immigrating to the United States among rural people from Latin America than that they suddenly have visual access to what is possible. Sure, some of them saw Caracas or Maracaibo in the pre-cell days, but they had to GO THERE to do it. Now the images of "El Norte" are beamed to them 24/7/365.
The vast majority of people entering a decade ago signed on with a Coyote, walked through the desert, and disappeared into American low-paying but essential jobs. Now they come to the border stations and claim Asylum; how do you think they know that they can do that? Of course, since Maduro is a Communist, Venezuelans get a sympathetic hearing. The law was written to let anti-Communists from the East Block in during the 1950's. Part of the Bi-Partisan Bill was tightening the requirements for Asylum.
You may not be aware that we had TV in Latin America since the 1960s and color TV in Venezuela since 1982. Most shows were American, dubbed into Spanish. My favorites were Streets of San Francisco, Kojak, Rockford Files, so plenty of opportunity for everyone with TV coverage, which means everyone, to see images of the US.
Only an insular, poorly educated, monolingual underachiever could think Latin Americans didn't know about the US until cellular.
You only proved one can have an undeveloped mind even in a developed country.
Mas pendejo que la palabra misma. ¿Porque no te educas un poquito como los que si entendemos de la América Latina?
How is investing into increased staffing at the border and cracking down on crossings outside of ports of entries legitimizing illegal infiltration?
What evidence is there that anyone besides the most leftist voices want to "abolish the border"? What does that even mean? You think that politicians are going to just layoff thousands of agents and pivot on bipartisan consensus for an effort that would have no benefit to our country?
If anything, the Democratic Party has waved the white flag on this issue and been pivoting to the center on immigration since the DNC.
In short, the notion that it was anything other than the most conservative immigration bill in a generation is nonsense. Republicans had a golden opportunity to do what no administration (including Trump's!) had been able to do in decades. Yet they threw the opportunity into the garbage to help Trump, who in all likelihood won't be much better than Obama was on immigration, even if he wins.
The main reason illegal immigrants are coming here is that republican owned businesses are hiring them and state level republican politicians are refusing to prosecute those businesses. Those businesses are major republican donors.
This. Illegal immigrants are almost to a person, poooooor. They have to work to survive. E-Verify was supposed to prevent their hiring, but Republican businesses from tiny to huge have forced their Republican puppies in the Red States to block enforcement.
So, here is where you make a mistake. Democrats do not all believe that borders are racist.
I agree that some do, but they hardly speak for everyone.
And here's a bit of cognitive dissonance on both sides:
While a few Democrats do think we should have open borders, there are others, on the right and far left, who seem to think that Ukraine should have open borders, if you catch my drift.
So, I think we all need to check our biases at the door, guard against cognitive dissonance, and stick to proven facts about things.
IKO says: AMEN TO THAT...but not reported on CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, NYT, Wash Post....TAMRITZ - you are writing to a bunch of Zombies that have NEVER HEARD ANYTHING YOU ARE SAYING...Introducing LIBERALS to real news is like giving a Vampire Garlic...It repels them...
That "bipartisan border bill" was never going to get out of the house or the Senate. Why do you continue to ignore that fact even before Trump spoke out against it.
Of course it did. Biden was trying to sneak in legitimizing replacement of Americans by Latin Americans and South Americans so it could go on indefinitely.
You are barking nutso. Biden is probably a much higher percentage of European Ancestry than you are. Wikipedia notes "Of Biden's sixteen great-great-grandparents, ten of them were born in Ireland." He has other lines from England proper and France.
After the deportations, who do you imagine will be making up your room? Who will wash your dishes when you dine out? Who will do the things you dislike, but which your lifestyle and your own economy depend upon?
For the first time in this election, I’m honestly really hopeful.
There’s a very, very clear path for a Trump victory! And it’s based on real, tangible problems that America is facing not “But… but the orange man bad!”
We’re going to get Trump in, and like Nate Silver said, he’ll be “an asshole, but MY asshole” and he’ll steamroll the problems we’re facing.
I’m seriously, SERIOUSLY looking forward to the next 4 years with Trump.
It's not just Trump. We get :Team America 1st. DJT, JD, Tulsi, RFKjr, ELON, Vivek. Great minds centered around America and her standing in the free world. 2024-2028. America rising!
You are asking us to take seriously a short list of 'great minds' that includes Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. I don't think I'm the one who needs to stop with the bullshit.
Paul will be gnashing his teeth greatly on November 6th and into 2040. When Tulsi become the first woman president after 20 years of DJT,JD, THEN Tulsi Gabbard. The left will be wandering in the forest for 20 years plus. Go Tulsi (Watch her rise...)
JD's only chance is probably when DJT gets elected then kicks the bucket.
Seriously - higher tariffs and lower taxes? More like inflation over the roof top and dysfunctional government. That alone is preparing for a blue wave in 2028.
Just saying. Not that KDH can easily get two terms if elected either. Whoever is in charge in the next 4 years will get a lot of blame.
Among that list, I think Elon is the only genuine great mind, though JD and Vivek are both smart and articulate. RFKJr is admittedly a bit nutty.
But what everyone on that list has in common is that they are independent thinkers who instinctively rebel against any order to "conform or else". This is a huge contrast to Team Democrat and its policy of trying to crush any heterodoxy or unapproved opinions.
I was replying to Tim Rhode’s comment above: “When Tulsi become the first woman president after 20 years of DJT,JD, THEN Tulsi Gabbard. The left will be wandering in the forest for 20 years plus. Go Tulsi (Watch her rise...)”
I am not full of hate. All I said was I didn’t think she could be elected because she’s in a cult.
Poor RFK; I fear the parasite got away with the better part of his brain. So I hope Trump doesn't give him a very high position in the government. Maybe a Cabinet seat, something worthless and likely to be extirpated, like the Department of Education ----
Elon Musk has great technical genius, and enough business sense. But on a lot of things more connected with society, he is plain downright stupid. Accusing a cave rescuer of "paedophilia" isn't the only thing he has got terribly wrong. It is one of the downsides of Aspergers. In a government position, Musk is bound to get something disastrously wrong and get the sack - but use him as an adviser, by all means.
Bill Gates is also a two-edged sword. He has done some brilliant charitable works with diseases in developing countries, especially polio and malaria. But he has too much of a black/white mentality and has made various bets on SMR nuclear reactors, and on fusion, because he can't see that wind and solar are the low cost choices.
So get real - neither Musk not Gates are good listeners, rather, they are thought leaders, and you need good listeners in government, before taking decisions.
Elon doesn't have that power. Dick Cheney is not a Democrat. And there are a lot of Republicans in congress who supported the war in Iraq (as did Trump at the time)
Most politicians, pundits, and others supported the war because Dick Cheney lied over and over again the Saddam had WMDs and Iraq was aiding Al-Queda. All lies and we know that 100%.
Dick Cheney is a horrible human being whose lies led us into a "war" that lasted almost 10 years and led to the deaths of 4,500 American soldiers and at least 100,000-300,000 Iraqis and possibly more.
Yeah people are just gushing over Kamala's CHOICE of campaigning with Liz Cheney. Warmongers united! I'm sure your loved Bush/Cheney in 2001. right? This is comical! No more $ for the military industrial faction please. go Team America!
Team Trump is so for the people that he isn't allowed to operate charities in NY anymore after using a child's cancer charity to funnel money to himself. Nearly his entire previous cabinet - people he chose! - have come out against him because of his fascist tendencies. I truly hope you are just a bot trying to influence public opinion and not someone actually this beholden to clearly false propaganda about a conman who has only ever looked out for himself.
Hey Tim, as I see you are a healthy, wealthy person who lives an epic life, I’m sure you will gladly enjoy the tax cuts and oppression of minorities under Trump. However, anyone with a sense of empathy and a bone of compassion will easily see all of the ethical issues with Trump.
However, you don’t even need to care about ethics to see how terrible his economic policies will be for the country as a whole. You can hee and haw about gas prices, but it takes a fool or an ignoramus to not see how terrible his plans are, or listen to the experts from all across the board who will tell you why they are so terrible.
You can continue living in your little bubble, but it’s gonna burst real soon once you hope to get social security or Medicare (we can see that grey hair), Trump will be the last person on your side.
But I encourage you to keep living that healthy, wealthy, epic life as long as you can, because the shame of recognizing how ignorant the things you’re saying are would probably kill you.
Are you white? Because if you are, does it make you a Karen (or a Ken) when you presume to talk about minority oppression, especially for this brown American who benefited greatly during Trump’s first administration and is struggling to make ends meet under Biden.
RFK jr is a nut job, Tulsi is in a cult and takes orders from someone else, JD is a chameleon who was a DEI admit to Yale because he was a poor white, conservative kid from Appalachia
Yes, many and many of the richest tech-CEOs in America switched over to Trump this election, several (Musk, Zuckerberg) when they saw that remarkable footage of the first assassination attempt. I am impressed that Jeff Bezos (a personal hero, in a way) apparently has done the same, since he kiboshed the WaPo endorsing Harris, by all accounts.
Okay, we've got the very rich and transcendently able people: now we need the celebrities. Then the university presidents and the full professors.
And our celebrities will actually perform for the crowds, not just speak for 5 minutes when half the audience came for them and not the (joyful) candidate!
I don't want to take the country's future lightly. But part of me wish Trump did win just so that people learn the lesson the hard way so they can remember it for longer. You are not going to like the next 4 years if he wins. Trump is not "your asshole". He's a conman.
It's actually the people who you hate most -- the Harris voters -- who are on your side and genuinely want to fix the problems you are facing -- unless you are supporting Trump because you are religious fanatic intending to impose your world view on others, or if you are a white nationalist, then we have no common ground.
I'm of the same mindset. I don't hate MAGA voters: I hate their hate and vitriol and want them to succeed so they can leave that baggage behind. But you've got to be honest with yourself first. Nothing is "owed" in this world.
I fully support trade schools, community college investments, job training and relocation expenses to lift the tide for everyone. The types of people who need this are overwhelmingly MAGA. Where were these investments in our people between 2016-2020? What they are demanding: a pound of flesh from the LBGTQ community, elimination of women's rights: how does that help anyone? it's not helping them get a job: training and education does that. Deporting immigrants isn't helping bring the down the cost of groceries, that's for sure. Anyone who's lived abroad knows our groceries are insanely cheap, precisely due to lax regulations and cheap labor. Should we pay $9 for a gallon of milK? It's a fair question, but you can't have it both ways.
I would agree with you except for the part about we might not have another election to vote in. And the number of wackadoodle judges he would be able to appoint.
I guess we'll see in +/- 10 days, but I think you are going to be very disappointed. Harris is going to win this, and the polling error will be substantially on her side. But again, we'll see.
Agreed. And to my point - of course Harris may lose, but everything aside, I truly believe the polls are underestimating her for a number of reasons. I thought the Trumpers were full of shit in '16 when they kept saying that he'd win - and now I find myself in a similar situation.
I always thought Trump had a chance even when my well-educated, outdoorsy circle of friends did not. There was a passion about thim that didn't exist for Romney.
Of course, after he did zip for the country between 16-20 except get a bunch of people killed during COVID and try to overthrow the government, I hoped they'd come to their senses. But I suppose owning the libs is enough. It sure is enough to get Cruz re-elected in TX. I don't think more than 5 voters can point to legislation he has sponsored that helps Texas, and yet, he keeps getting re-elected.
Never underestimate the willingness of pepole to cut off their nose to spite their face. Logic dictates that people should want 70% of something rather than 100% of nothing, but emotion dictates that enemies must be punished at all costs, even if it means getting 100% of nothing every time. Or, as in Blazing Saddles, in lieu of pay, here are some paddleballs to play with. I've been around it all my life and still can't come to terms with it; growing up in a small town, watching low skill high paying jobs move away, and people simply refusing to make a change in their life. Community college, moving to a different town to start a new career....nope.
Everyone is biased. But I do have the capacity to look at crosstabs and other indicators, and I'm predicting a Harris win. Again, we'll see soon. I'll look for you after the election. :)
It shows that the increase in minority incomes started in 2013 or 2014, and peaked in 2019, after which it was relatively static for a couple of years.
Trump was president January 2017 to January 2021. So the rise started before he took over, and stopped while he was still president. It is thus far more likely that Obama kicked off the trends which started the rise in income for minorities, and that Trump couldn't maintain it after a couple of years.
Actually it is far more likely that the President has very little to do with those types of trends. The economy is made up of trillions of individual decisions and is unlikely to be affected by who is in the White House or any politician. What they can do is to set some curbs on how entrepreneurs behave and create some government programs that work around the edges of the economy (Social Security and Medicare are the most successful bringing senior poverty down significantly as more people lived longer). As an example, we are on a long term trend of decreasing black poverty that started in 1940 (80%) and government programs designed specifically for black poverty seem to have little to do with it. In 1964 (Civil Rights Legislation) it was 42%, by 1993 it was around 31% and now sits at roughly 17%. That is just one example of many. I don't think either candidate is worthy of my vote, nor will they change the trajectory of the economy. That leaves people fighting over minor cultural issues where I trend toward conservative positions currently.
So it increased, then the pace slowed, and then it reaccelerated under Trump? And minorities WERE in face better off? And even if he didn’t do anything to help it - which he did - neither did he do anything to hurt it, the way Biden and Harris did illegal immigration?
Your chart reading leaves a lot to be desired. The charts showed that the rate of increase in minority earnings was set in Obama's time, and started dropping again before Trump left power.
You seem to have amnesia about the utter chaos Trump's term was, day to day to day. It was exhausting. And his "results" certainly weren't the "best ever".
Fairly telling that everything you listed are things the president has no control over. What the president does have control over is national security (generals and many of his own cabinet members declared him unfit for office), supreme court nominees (roe overturned, ymmv on this one) and guiding the country through a crisis (2020 Covid policy).
Huh! This comment is like in the New York Times comment section, where there were some cheerleaders a few days ago when I was there. Not as bright people as many in this forum, I suspect.
Your ignorance is astounding. Giving free rein of the most powerful country in the world to a narcissistic selfish felon who has no respect for the law and who is declining cognitively? Who is a useful idiot for Putin? The recklessness of you people is amazing to me. In the face of all evidence to the contrary, you think Trump will do anything positive for the upper middle class, middle class, or working class?
I'm still in the Turd Sandwich vs Giant Douche camp. Probably voting for Harris; might write in Haley; definitely not voting for Mr. Tangerine Man.
Although I would enjoy a Trump presidency iff it means that all of the histrionic Dem NaziesHandmaidsTaleProject2025Fascism talking points get thoroughly debunked.
As I have said before, either the Dems are crying wolf about "Republican fascism" aGAIN, or this time it's for realsies but nobody cares because they've been crying wolf for so long.
They were already debunked...or did I miss the fascist government that decimated minority incomes and reintroduced slavery during the first Trump administration?
You're not wrong, but once was apparently not enough. Granted, it may never be enough. But the Dems seem to be "all in" on this hand, and eventually they are going to go broke.
When BLM started to riot, were they an enemy - say, of peace and order? And were they within the country? And did any of the governors mobilize the military, in the form of the national guard, to handle them?
Like I said - the people who use the word "fascism" to try and smear Trump only demonstrate that they do not understand the word.
Well it sounds like John Kelly disagrees, as he said recently he would use the term fascist to describe Trump. And I don't think you can compare rioting from BLM or January 6th marches to a condidate for president calling democratic members of congress "the enemy within" and suggesting the military be used to handle them. If Harris said she wanted to use military force against republican lawmakers, would you find that at all concerning?
Call it immigration but we all know what's driving the debate on the right is racism. Trump says immigrants are eating people's pets, "poisoning" the blood of America, and he's going to put them in camps; Harris wants to give undocumented immigrants access to healthcare. Hmm...tough call.
He's said that he'll round up those "Hatians" most of whom are here legally. I'm guessing that part of the "rounding them up" process will have something to do with their skin color. If they are here LEGALLY and still shipped out via Trump order, what's to stop Trump from going after any racial group that is a useful scapegoat? Authoritarians must have scapegoats to stay in power. There has to be an "other" to hate (or just read 1984).
Describing them simply as “legal” is at best ignorant and at worst deliberately misleading.
The idea of “legal immigration” involves people applying and waiting in line, being approved by a rigorous vetting system, etc. These immigrants have arrived illegally and then been given a quasi-legal status that in theory is only temporary but in practice is indefinite. They are de facto illegal immigrants who have been given merely de jure legal status for ideological reasons.
You can change the technical rules for what counts as "legal" if you must, but don't then act shocked when citizens who suffer the negative externalities of unconstrained replacement migration object to your new category of pseudo-legal immigration alongside traditional illegal immigration.
If we're going to let them in illegally, and then let them stay, masking them with the veneer of an executive order that ignores the fundamentals of immigration law, then why have any rules at all?
When the de jure “legal” status is arbitrary and not process-driven, most don't believe it to be legitimate, no.
I repeat: You can change the technical rules for what counts as "legal" if you must, but don't then act shocked when citizens who suffer the negative externalities of unconstrained replacement migration object to your new category of pseudo-legal immigration alongside traditional illegal immigration.
Changing and making rules to define what is legal is...in fact how you define what is legal. I think I understand your argument but you're using the terms de jure and de facto wrong and that is where I got confused.
This isn't an argument, it's a declaration. You're declaring that it's not process-driven. But it is: the immigration parole program is the program under which many of the Haitian immigrants are here. It requires that candidates undergo vetting and have a person inside the US who supports their candidacy and who promises to support them while they're in the US. These are generally businesses that need cheap labor. And so this is not "unconstrained", it's constrained by business needs.
The picture here is that the US is taking advantage of the fact that people who want to work, who cannot work in their own country, will happily come to the US and work on the cheap. This is a win for anyone who cares about inflation, for example.
They're arguing that Temporary Protected Status ≠ legal immigration.
That's the crux of the issue. Those that are more liberal feel like it's okay to help and host foreign peoples out of a rut... and those that are more conservative feel Darwinism should rule the day and they should be left to perish if their country cannot rescue itself and if individuals don't have the resources to escape.
Whether documented or undocumented, it's dehumanizing and, frankly, disgusting to talk about any immigrants the way Trump does.
Nevermind that the pet-eating story was completely fabricated and implicated an entire community of legal, documented immigrants in the fake story.
Thinking undocumented immigrants are "bad" (whatever that means) may be one thing--and even that is debatable. Saying they are poisoning the blood of America and you are going to round them up in detention camps reflects some of the worst and most despicable moments in human history.
I call bullshit. If you refuse to deport illegal aliens then you are part of the problem. Heck if that’s the case, let’s not penalize the guy who robs you if it should happen. Since laws don’t seem to matter to you.
And yes illegal aliens are bad. That is not debatable except to those who do not respect the law.
The statistics show convincingly that legal and illegal immigrants have a much lower crime rate than natural born US citizens. Further, they are prepared to take the really low paid jobs no one else wants.
If Trump manages to send home 11 million or so immigrants who are not US citizens, then it is bound to devastate the US economy.
But subscribing to racism is an easy way out, isn't it. Stops people from having to think through issues for themselves.
Irrelevant. Legal immigrants are here legally. They have obeyed the laws for admission and residence, they should stay. Illegal immigrants by default have not. They should be deported.
Will it devastate the US economy? That is debatable. What is not debatable is that they have committed a crime to enter, and to remain.
The accusation of racism is false, and the people who resort to it have nothing of substance to offer other than unfounded accusations.
The Biden administration has deported or blocked entry to more immigrants than any president in 20 years, and is on pace to deport as many as Trump did. I have no idea what you are talking about about with your comment.
And yet the number of illegal aliens who have entered and remain the country has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. That you ignore that is, frankly, ridiculous.
It has gone up but to say it has skyrocketed is probably an exaggeration. It is approaching the all-time highs of 15 years ago. Not sure who is ignoring that?
hey smart guy, how do you identify and deport millions of illegal immigrants without racially profiling them and catching legal immigrants in the process—both of which would violate due process and the 4th amendment. Due process is afforded to everyone, not just US citizens.
cite the law that allows you to detain someone to ascertain their citizenship status without probable cause. Just cite the statute. If it’s so easy just do it
so youre just gonna avoid explaining how we do “mass deportations now”—a slogan trump printed on signs at his nomination rally? Is it because it can’t be done without uttering the word “camps”?
Here’s what i know, even if the unthinkable happens and trump wins, you’re still going to lose.
We always win in the long run. Progress marches on regardless of how many people try to stand in its way.
Here’s what i know, the constitution is very clear about what we do with traitors. Trump is a traitor to the US and his oath to the constitution. I believe in the constitution. I believe in the consequences the founders set out. Trump should not be allowed to walk
Yeah this brown immigrant is calling BS on your comments, and on any illegal alien who entered the country and then was magically granted some form of legal status. They are still illegal and should be deported. They should get in line the way I did, and follow the laws the way I did.
A country without a border is country no more. If we have unrestricted illegal immigration then what are citizens really voting for? For whose benefit. A country siezes to exist
Did you read the article? The USA certainly has a border. The past three years have seen record-breaking border apprehensions. Who is arguing for unrestricted illegal immigration? Certainly not the Biden-Harris administration.
I read it. Look.at Nates graph and the illegal immigration due to open border. A country cannot just take in millions upon millions of illegal immigrants because that changes the whole culture of the country. I am a first generation citizen and it may be diificult for you to believe but for lot of immigrant friends the border is the most important issue. People leave their countries, families, friends come here for a better life and opportunities and slog through the immigration process,pay their taxes get citizenship which takes decades. And then govt let's in so many illegal immigrants. who pays for their rehabilitation? People need to follow the process for legal immigration or refugee status. If Harris loses, this will be the biggest reason
Record-breaking border “apprehensions” of immigrants who are then given a piece of paper to pseudo-legalise them and allowed into the country to do as they wish.
The administration has deported or blocked entry to more immigrants than any other since W Bush second term. As many (likely more) deportations than Trump.
This information is readily and publicly available I encourage all Trump supporters angry about Democrats' supposed open-border policy to take a look at them.
This is a straw man comparison. In your example drinking water has nothing to do with the relevant actions. With Trump, his language directly lays the groundwork for his policy. One follows from the other.
He calls immigrants animals, says they are poisoning the blood of America, they are eating pets, they're dangerous or diseased or insane, they're invading, they're destroying the country, they need to be rounded up the military and put in camps and processed for mass deportations. The language is stark, and his policies follow directly from them.
Again, where is he getting this language? Why does it sound so reminiscent of others in the past? Is it a coincidence? Maybe, I guess.
-Populist leader promising a return to a mythic past ✅
-Mass deportations promised✅
They literally copied the nazis word for word on LGBTQ+ issues:
-After World War I, a rise in the visibility of LGBT+ people in Germany led to an increase in the belief that there was an increase in the incidence of homosexuality among young men due to recruitment by adult gay and bisexual men.[37] By the 1920s, backlash from psychologists and psychiatrists against tolerance of LGBT+ people in Berlin suggested that homosexuality was a social contagion.[38][39] The SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps argued that 40,000 homosexuals were capable of "poisoning" two million men if left to roam free.[40]
Mass deportation of illegal aliens? What is wrong with that?
Is this administration permitting the illegal entry of millions of unvetted people, who are now competing for jobs with legal immigrants and citizens? Yes.
Has inflation been ridiculously high during this administration? Yes.
Is nationalism a bad thing? Only to idiots who do not appreciate this country.
Your allegations and associations are stupid and desperate.
Your take on inflation is ignorant and emotional. We have had high inflation, yes, in a period of GLOBAL inflation. The root causes had little do do with administration policy, or do you think the US President can cause global inflation? Inflation has come down faster in the US than almost any other major economy, while growth is faster than almost all of the other large economies. That does not indicate the administration has done a poor job, but rather that they should be praised, if anything, although I actually believe the Fed has been more responsible than the President. But the idea that the Biden administration caused high inflation is supported by no fact base.
Jeff part of that inflation elsewhere in the world has been the strength of the US dollar. Have you adjusted for that?
If the government had done nothing, then I would accept that the inflation was a spillover of the global environment. But the government injected MASSIVE liquidity into a system that was already recovering. THAT was inflationary.
If you do not understand the effect of liquidity on inflation, then YOU are ignorant and emotional. That, in the context of this administration’s multiple failures, you think that it is to be praised, confirms both your ignorance and emotion.
I'm just repeating what Trump has said. Does he mean something else? Where is he getting his ideas and language? Must just be a coincidence it mirrors other historical actions.
Someone says nothing rude to you and you tell them they’re speaking with hate, 5 minutes prior you tell people who disagree with you that they’re stupid.
“I think people became indifferent very fast…When things go on for years…In the beginning they were just camps, that these camps would become death camps…wasn’t known in the beginning” - Albrecht Becker, Holocaust survivor, From the documentary Paragraph 175
They actually weren't death camps at first, Becker is right. There was a slow evolution towards that end. The camp system was intended as a harsher alternative to the traditional German prison system. When they started to morph into mass killings, the first trial balloons were forced sterilizations, then the medical euthanasia program with the claim "life unworthy of life". Einsatzgruppen following the invading troops in the old Soviet Union shooting the commissars and Jews, the millions of Russian POW mass murders and finally the mass killings in the East in dedicated death camps.
Migod, somebody here actually reads history. Bravo HBI.
I am fascinated by the Reichstag fire. That was a month after Hitler took office as Chancellor, and we know he was absolutely convinced it was a communist insurrection. (We have the transcripts, is how we know. He was a very upset man that night, watching that great fire roaring to the heavens.)
However, it wasn't. I'm no fan of the communists in the German parliament or anywhere else, but they had nothing to do with it. It was exactly the person a bumpteen Germans reported seeing break in through a window at the time, a Dutch retarded man. He bought a lot of those wax firestarters you can still buy and put one on several seats, and (only) one caught and the building went up bigtime.
Hitler immediately passed his Emergency Declaration and tried very, very hard to get this guy on trial to say he was working with lots of commies, but the guy was pretty impaired and the court stopped all that --- they still could. They executed the Dutchman, but that was all. After that, things ---------- developed. May 10 was the burning of books by German students all over Germany, and then there was the Night of the Long Knives.
Marinus van der Lubbe was an Oswald-like figure. Way too fricking obvious. I mean Oswald had actually defected to the Soviet Union and then come home. van der Lubbe was a card-carrying Communist party member, admittedly in the Netherlands. He apparently wanted to emigrate to the USSR from Germany but couldn't afford the ticket(s). If anything i'd call him low IQ, not necessarily retarded, after all, he was able to hold jobs and did some communist organizing, not things you'd expect from an actual below-60 person. He'd been held for arson in the Netherlands apparently, also. So he was experienced at setting fires.
In both cases, it's hard to imagine them thinking up their roles on their own. When Oswald said "i'm a patsy", I actually believe him. Van der Lubbe himself was executed so we can't ask him, and I don't believe any useful records have survived to describe some kind of intelligence operation that resulted in him setting the fire. Most people have surmised that this was the case, nonetheless.
Weird that fewer people feel the same way about Oswald and the Kennedy assassination. Incidentally, Oswald was no rocket scientist either.
Hitler's Enabling Act and such were preplanned events, that much is certain, and I believe there's some support in Mein Kampf for precisely this kind of behavior. For world beaters, the Nazis were really okay with telegraphing their modus operandi.
One of my degrees is in the subject (history). Its main impact was on understanding research and classifying sources. I'm thankful for that. Things like primary/secondary/tertiary sources and the whole concept of living vs dead knowledge encapsulated in the "sasha and zamani" concept. Seems obvious in retrospect but college made it clear.
You seem to have read very different sources than I did on van der Lubbe. I have followed the Reichstag fire quite closely, and a friend from his village in Holland gave a lot of information on him to the court: van der Lubbe was on state support because he was certainly retarded, and he asked this friend to forward the money to him when he made it to Germany. He took off on odd quests: in one such he decided to hike from the Netherlands to China (not strong on geography) but got tired of it in the Austrian mountains and turned back. He was indeed a card-carrying communist, but it seems to have been a sort of social promotion, because he went to a communist hall the day of the fire and talked up revolution; the men there seem to have been embarrassed by his obvious retardation and didn't have anything to say to him. He didn't have a job during any of this time; he was pretty impaired. But he did like to set fires, and wow, did he set one.
As for van der Lubbe's our-time compatriots, I would say the Crooks kid, in his low-level job, is more of a match than Oswald. I have been saying right along that the Ryan Rouche guy is so much like Oswald that they are cut out of the same bolt of cloth. Guys practically with a sign hanging on them, "hire me to shoot someone important." Travelling to foreign countries promoting wild and unsophisticated political ideas, ready to be co-opted by any spy that came along. Van der Lubbe was seen breaking in (by himself) by so many Germans who called police and reported it that it's ridiculous; and a policeman did go in after him, but the fire was started by then.
As to whether Hitler preplanned the Emergency Declaration (one-man rule by him) before or after the fire is an interesting question I never considered; I see you think it was preplanned to meet any big crisis. It's possible, but I've never seen that proposed anywhere else. Hitler said the fire was the beginning of a communist insurrection and most of the communists in the parliament lit out for Paris, sensibly. And then he took over. But for a good year anyway the court system and other systems remained intact: a sort of societal friction. Hitler was never able to convict the communists he put on trial along with van der Lubbe because they simply didn't do anything, and the courts were still in control then. They kept at van der Lubbe to say he had a whole conspiracy with him, but he was very confused by all this and eventually stopped talking altogether.
Yeah if you take xenophobia out of it it becomes clear that the border is a record-keeping problem, not a social problem. The problem isn't that the people are coming in, the problem is that they are being given a really legally dubious status. ("Illegal" is not quite the right word for somebody awaiting an asylum hearing, but they often technically do not have the right to work.) The immigration of the last three years has been great for our economy - it's just something that only gets discussed in academic circles because the press is too beholden to political narratives.
Although "population growth is good for your economy" seems like something people shouldn't need to be reminded of, people just can't get past the x-word when so much paranoia is being whipped up in hostile media, that doesn't tell them things like "immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans" or "immigrants use fewer drugs than Americans" or "immigrants work more hours than Americans." Instead they focus on anecdotal instances of "migrant crime" - as if O.J. Simpson means we should all fear running backs.
I don't want to tell people who are concerned with the "preservation of our culture" or whatever that they're just "being racist;" I certainly think it's more complicated than that. But I think if you compare this to previous waves of immigration there isn't really much different versus how people reacted to Italians or Irish or Germans.
"I don't want to tell people who are concerned with the "preservation of our culture" or whatever that they're just "being racist"
So would you be okay with our country turning into the Venezuelan gang culture taking over apartment complexes in Colorado and New York City? With the Honduran gang culture taking over high schools? With the Mexican drug cartels now running all of Mexico running America too?
I'd rather vote for Trump and work with him to clean this up.
I've given plenty of examples in this thread about Trump's language that underlies his policy. It parallels racist ideas and language of the past and present, if not outright uses it.
Yes there are reasonable ways to have a discussion about immigration policy. Starting from "immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country" is not how you do it. Blame Trump, not me.
Prior to the media explosion over it, how many people could tell you the poisoning the blood example? And, once you answer that earnestly, what makes you think then that Trump did? This is precisely my point.
Of course he exaggerates. But everyone knows that about him as does he. When everyone is on the secret, it’s not a secret.
So if he's not a racist or intentionally using racist language, he's just ignorant? Uh, I mean I guess.
Language about poisoning the blood, poisoning the bloodline, impure blood, etc. have been racist and antisemitic tropes...forever. I'd expect someone who wanted to be president could avoid historically hateful language, it's not asking for much lol.
Guess you’ve had a disappointing series of Presidents then given all of their past comments and support… from the bright and clean Presidents who sat in pews of Rev Wright. You can keep going backward down the list for some time. I actually don’t assume the worst each. That’s just me.
If you choose to ignore what Trump says and where that sort of language comes from, that's on you. Feel free to be glib about it, but the ignorance and denial is your choice.
Nate — your article says Biden “appointed her to lead the response on the Southwestern border”, but links to an article saying she was appointed to work with Central American governments to help alleviate the underlying conditions leading to migration. Those are two different things. The way your article phrases it is misleading. She was not, from what I can tell, ever appointed to lead oversight of the actual border.
Yep, the common Democratic party response to this talking point is "no, she was appointed to work with Central American governments, not the border itself", and that response is... completely accurate. But these issues are closely related enough to make even a person like Nate make the mistake... so that's easily good enough for Republicans as a talking point.
This article reads like early Breitbart stuff that I thought was interesting for this very reason.
They would write up radical right wing material and link to "supporting" evidence that actually disproved the point.
Then their comment section would flood with people who clearly had not clicked on the links, but wanted to rabidly support the tone and conclusions in the article.
Interesting to remember that and see the dialogue under this article.
Nate, I'm with you on the border and the economy. This has been a huge liability for Democrats since 2020 and Biden could have done something about it much sooner. It was such a political loser (not to mention creating an image of chaos and lack of control around his presidency) that why it wasn't addressed baffles me. The proposed immigration bill that was sunk by Trump was far too late, and besides, if Democrats really believed that people would blame Trump for blowing it up, they should be removed of their duties. The average voter doesn't pay attention to who blocks what bill in Congress.
What frustrates me is the disconnect between inflation and illegal or legal immigration. You don't like inflation, fine. But deport millions of essential workers and see what happens. A friend of mine who owns a roofing company said he'll lose at least 50% of his team if Trump gets his way. That's 50% fewer projects he can take on. These are good paying jobs that not a single white man will do. Let's face it: getting on a 110 degree roof and working 12 hour days, 6 days a week for $1,500 a week: the Trump voter isn't doing that job.
A friend who owns a painting company in a HCOL area with few immigrants constantly is struggling to staff. He doesn't have immigrants willing to work hard nearby, so he has to rely on locals. 75% can't even pass the drug screen, and most of the other 25% just stop showing up to work at some point. $30/hour is a good rate but it simply doesn't matter. Nobody wants to be a painter.
The thought that Americans want to do these jobs is fantasy. What they want is $50/hour to stay home and play video games. They'll bitch about inflation and when it goes through the roof due to deportations and tariffs, they'll double down on trans rights. Heck, why not blame trans athletes for future inflation while we're at it? Logically it makes as much sense as complaining about inflation on one hand and saying we should blow up our food and construction supply chain. Oh, and add a 20% tax on everything for good measure.
It's funny that if you inserted the word "immigrants" into your criticisms of Americans, you'd be called racist up and down this board (for some strange reason; "immigrant" isn't a race).
Are there cons to deporting illegal aliens and restricting legal immigration? Certainly and contributing to inflation is one. But you are also ignoring the benefits including increased wages, lower housing costs, lower medical costs, less strain on educational resources, etc etc.
There are other ways to tackle inflation that don't involve straining the rest of our system and degrading our social fabric.
I mean... would you say that "American" has racial connotations in the same way "illegal immigrant" does? I guess it's beside the point.
I think this downplays the impact on local economies. If I take Trump's number that there are 15-16M illegal immigrants in the country, and that his goal is to deport them, we're talking about a 5% decrease in the population. This is a demographic-level catastrophe. Sure, housing prices will go down... in just the same way they've gone down across the Midwest in response to the opioid crisis. This is not a good situation, because (among other issues) tanking property values will cause Americans who have invested in homes (me for one) to lose my investment.
For many of these 15-16M, they are the parent of one or more young American citizens. So now you're talking about breaking up families, and turning (probably) millions of 2-parent households into 1-parent or 0-parent households. This is not me asking for empathy for these young people: any person who has looked at this kind of thing can tell you that poor 1-parent and 0-parent kids are going to have, statistically, many more problems integrating into our society and being productive.
Border security and deportation of violent offenders is more than defensible. But large-scale deportation of non-violent illegal immigrants (and I suspect this is the strong majority) seems to me to be an... obviously terrible idea.
This is not to mention the cost of the deportation itself. This is going to take a large-scale expansion of domestic law enforcement capability.
I think Trump's proposal for large-scale deportation is a request to pay the government to expand now, so that you can be robbed by negative economic consequences down the line.
I too am a homeowner, but it's insane to put up a loss in equity as comparable to people struggling to get a house in the first place. Homeowners can't wall themselves into a perpetual value increasing proposition based off government fiat. Home prices should be subject to normal supply and demand like any other commodity. Right now the government has worked not only to artificially restrict supply but to artificially increase demand through the importation of millions of illegal aliens.
You can throw around "demographic-level catastrophe" all you want to try and scare people but that's all it is: fear mongering. We have had demographic leaps and recesses of comparable size before. We're experiencing it right now with mass migration. Why aren't you complaining about the "demographic-level catastrophe" that millions of illegal aliens represent?
As for the mechanics of deportation: it sounds like we agree on law enforcement physically removing violent illegal aliens. They should also deport violent legal residents. After that we don't need a massive law enforcement effort. Romney was ridiculed for this but he was right about self deportation. You remove the incentives for people to stay here and they will go back. So let's ensure employers can't hire illegal aliens, schools can't educate them, welfare services don't go to them, and we end the ludicrous anchor baby portion of birthright citizenship and they will leave of their own accord. Nobody is separating families. The children will leave with their parents of course. Their parents are responsible for them after all.
I'm not claiming that homeowners should be guaranteed increasing home value. You are advocating for a position that will likely decrease the net worth of millions of homeowners. The government is not importing illegal immigrants, it's just not doing enough to enforce the border.
Yes, I'm fear mongering. And what I'm selling is a legitimate fear, not a phobia: this will cause a demographic catastrophe. The last time we had anything remotely similar to the current (slow) population increase, it was the Great Depression. We're in a comparatively much healthier economy, particularly since recovery from the recession. So this time, the slow population increase has to do with other factors. If we kick out 5% of the population, we will jeopardize that healthy economy and put ourselves in a much worse position.
I'm not complaining about the "demographic-level catastrophe that millions of illegal aliens represent" (also fear mongering, this time w/o basis) because they aren't causing a catastrophe. Young and hardworking people are good for our economy. Because of people like this, the US population (unlike virtually every other developed country) will continue to have a growing population. This is arguably the biggest advantage the US economy has in the mid-to-long-term.
"So let's ensure employers can't hire illegal aliens, schools can't educate them, welfare services don't go to them"
...requiring a large-scale expansion of government to ensure compliance of businesses, schools, etc. It's expensive, and the result of this expense is emptying neighborhoods and disrupting local economies. And this policy will impact the most criminal part of the illegal immigrant population the least, and it will drive many of the more productive members of that population into more marginal, and perhaps criminal, existences.
"anchor baby portion of birthright citizenship"
Unless you are removing the birthright citizenship of babies already born and deporting them too, you're still creating those 0 and 1-parent households. And these numbers will almost certainly be in the millions.
"The children will leave with their parents of course. Their parents are responsible for them after all."
Woah... this is far and away the least defensible thing you said. How common is this belief? This isn't about policy, it's about a misunderstanding of who these people are, and what the problem we're confronting even is. If those children have any relatives, or friends of parents, who are legal, their parents will often leave their children behind. For those who don't have relatives or close friends, the parents may still leave them behind and they'll end up in the foster system. What we're talking about here is why they made the journey in the first place. The reason it's tempting to believe that all the parents will take their children is because that makes the problem seemingly more tractable for simple solutions like "deport them all". We really are talking about pushing huge numbers of young American citizens to the margins here.
Yes homeowners (including me) will lose equity. I refer back to my prior point. You didn't actually address it.
Mass migration has priced millions out of the housing market, increased medical costs, damaged social cohesion, introduced cartel violence, started a fentanyl crisis, strained educational resources, and depressed wages. That IS catastrophic!
"...requiring a large-scale expansion of government to ensure compliance of businesses, schools, etc. "
Don't shift the goal posts. I was addressing your claim that this would require a "large-scale expansion of domestic law enforcement capability."
"And this policy will impact the most criminal part of the illegal immigrant population the least"
Please actually address my points instead of putting words in my mouth. I never said that those policies were intended to impact the criminal element...
"Woah... this is far and away the least defensible thing you said. How common is this belief?"
You mean the belief that parents should be responsible for their children? I would hope that's pretty common. It's certainly the most defensible part of my comment.
"For those who don't have relatives or close friends, the parents may still leave them behind and they'll end up in the foster system. "
Wow they certainly aren't sending their best are they? Tell me again why we want people who would be so quick to abandon their children here? I will reiterate: parents should be responsible for their own children. If you think illegal aliens are different that speaks volumes about how you view them. I on the other hand will hold them to the same standard I would hold anybody else.
Well sure but I think it's still worthwhile to point out the double standard. It may not have any meaning but the left still uses it as a weapon and if me pointing out the hypocrisy of it's use has some chance of waking up somebody on the left to this, I think that's still worthwhile.
If Trump gets in then costs are going to go up and labor will get more expensive. If democrats win, then interest rates will come down, costs will go up.
Among Progressives that I know from some years ago before COVID, it was hoped that easier immigration and grace for border crossings would eventually benefit the Democratic Party through a (supposedly planned bill to be passed in the future by a liberal-dominated Congress) accelerated process that would eventually grant Green Card status to DACA recipients and their families... eventually granting them the Right to Vote.
They also saw anyone desperate enough to cross the border illegally as someone in need of help and felt that the United States could be that "knight in shining armor" for them.
What our country's liberals did not expect was for those migrants to not only strain local community resources, but that some of the ones that did gain the right to vote... would be voting for Conservatives. It turns out that Catholicism is quite popular in South America and a significant number of Latinos are socially conservative as a result.
So, this became a lose-lose situation for the Democrats: Double down on border enforcement and anger their Progressive base for turning away "desperate migrants" or smooth out the process for asylum... and, shockingly, create a burden on US cities that most center-left voters were not aware of until recently, especially after that migrant bussing stunt by TX Governor Abbott.
From what I've been reading lately, Progressives are crestfallen on immigration now because their dream of having a country that represents all humanity with the Democratic Party leading the way has bitten them in the ass in multiple ways that they just did not predict. Turns out USA and our country's wealthiest cities don't have as much resources as we thought to help these migrants... And that the male children born from these migrants over the past couple of decades that are now the age of the majority would want to vote for Trump.
Really need to understand demography. We have a very small group of kids now reaching the age of 18. We have a very large group of adults leaving the work force and at the end of their lives. We have a lower fertility rate than ever. We have relied on immigration the entire history of this country and it has served us well. Most of these immigrants were fleeing places where there was constrictions on freedoms and violence in the streets. Our current problems with immigration is one of management and as such could be solved pretty easily if we, as a country, had leadership that wanted to instead of using it as political football.
Exactly! It's amazing to see liberals running cover for corporate greed. You remove all the excess labor nobody except corporations asked for and the American worker gets much more negotiating leverage.
So here is the thing for me, a lot of people, even moderates voted for Biden because they thought he was going to be a moderate maybe a little left leaning and that his border stuff was mostly meat for his base.
Well in 4 years the border is unmanageable and the Democrats have refused to take responsibility, they have refused to reverse course. Biden could have solved it in year 2 with executive orders and then worked on a bill.
The broad economy isn't all that great and I think you need to paint the economy in the inflationary light. Okay the economy is great and inflation is down, but the inflation rate is down. Everything is still more expensive.
You can't truthfully say the Biden administration has refused to reverse course. Border apprehensions in September were the lowest they've been during his presidency after a steady decline throughout 2024, thanks largely to a series of executive orders which restrict the ability of migrants to claim asylum. You can absolutely criticize how long it took them to get to that point, but it's just flat out false to say they've done nothing
I agree, they've done something about it. The fact that it took till 2 months before the end of an election cycle to manifest an action that anyone could have told them in 2022 was required...that speaks to bad governance. Obama would have done quite a bit better, for instance. "Asleep at the wheel" for a significant part of this term is pretty much what I think.
I think it speaks more to ideology than bad governance. They only did it begrudgingly, after the fact at the last possible moment - quite possibly with the intention of rolling back those changes in the event of a Democratic victory - because they have never acknowledged the problem because their ideology won’t permit it and their party is completely captive to the extremists.
Looking back Harris made a deadly mistake in keeping so many Biden acolytes on and O’Malley Dillion to run her campaign. Harris failed to immediately differentiate herself from a very unpopular president who still acts like a petulant child who would have won reelection. If Biden’s presidency was so successful how come Harris is not campaigning with him or even barely mentioning his name? Harris’ campaign until recently was scripted which was Biden’s strategy only Harris did it better. The campaign has turned into a bummer.
This just underscores that the Democrats never got the message on immigration because they didn’t want to. Notably, if the US had Canada’s immigration system, it would be less of an issue too. (Favoring more highly skilled/educated immigrants.). The winning formula would’ve been: Biden withdraws in early 2023, the Dems have a primary contest, they pick a moderate governor from a swing state as their candidate who isn’t constrained by Biden’s legacy. All hypothetical, all unprovable, but I’d guess that would’ve worked better than this. Shapiro 2028, maybe?
When the big checks starting coming out during COVID, this was a foregone conclusion. I knew it at the time. The recovery has been less painful than I anticipated, actually, but still painful. What the economy looks like in 2028, who knows.
I was kind of shocked to learn that for all the pro-immigration rhetoric out of the left, there actually hasn't been a strong push to bring in top level foreign talent. You can be a foreign student graduating with an advanced degree from one of the US' most prestigious universities, and not only do we not actively recruit you to stay, most of the time there isn't even a pathway to stay if they want to, they're forced to go back home. It really demonstrates to me how so much of politics really is selfishly personal, the elite class who run things right now discourage immigration that will compete with them, but happily open the borders to people who can be employed at sub-minimum wage, and attempt to shut down the federal enforcement organizations that would catch and punish the companies that do so.
From a progressive standpoint, the open borders should be a moral and ethical problem. They should be standing at the border protesting. 1) enabling people to try to kill themselves crossing the border and 2) stealing top talent/rich from developing countries to mow lawns (you’ve got to have money to pay the smugglers). I’m sure they could find some pregnant mother who died or a neurosurgeon. The pro immigration policy doesn’t make sense!
The immigration thing runs square into the declining birth rate issue here in the US. The West in general is signing its own death warrant by having births be below replacement rate. Immigration can only help for a short while, but those who think about such things want as much as possible to stave off the crisis. Eventually the source nations for emigration will have the same issues we do with replacement rate.
Since our retirement system is essentially a Ponzi scheme, inadequately sized future generations will remain an issue until that changes, which it won't. Not having enough people is like inviting some more populous country to assimilate you, whether via economic dependency or actual political assimilation.
So policy should be geared towards raising kids. $0 cost for giving birth. Good maternity paid by state. Free preschool. Expensive and I’m sure even more could be done.
I would be for all that. I think it's been tried and it didn't move the needle much. But that's no reason not to try again. The fundamental issue is that having a family has close to zero long term economic benefit for non-agricultural households. Giving real thought to that might offer a solution.
Wombs that were outside of the mother, technological would solve a lot of issues (abortion being one, giving birth another). Better fostering systems and make it easier to adopt. Couple this with better financial and respite supports would help solve this issue.
i literally just described the poll dumb dumb: economy is over democracy. Do you have bad eyesight? You shouldn’t use words you don’t understand like “strawman”
It's not biased it's the truth. Those numbers and the fact that a man who tried to overthrow his own government after losing an election will get over 80 million votes to return to power shows that many Americans would happily trade democracy for cheaper gas.
It is a sign of a society in severe decline that such a huge proportion of the population wishes to vote primarily to a) murder their own babies and b) import millions of low-grade foreigners to replace them. Can this decline be reversed if that faction loses in November? Let us all hope so.
The idea is supposed to be that low-skilled migrants would come in and be willing to be trained. We are a country of opportunity. It should be our duty to make sure every migrant that comes here has a chance to prove themselves. We shouldn't be a country "only" for the well-resourced citizens of the world... Though it looks like I'm in the minority on that view these days.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the fact that most of them believe Christopher Columbus did nothing wrong, refuse to admit bubble tea is cultural appropriation, and that they have not listed their pronouns on their Twitter bios. *shudder*
You state that Harris was appointed "to lead the response on the Southwestern border," while linking to an article about how she was appointed to work with Central America on the causes of immigration. One is a cause-based position, one is an at-home effect-based position. Those are two very different responsibilities.
Yeah, I'm not sure why Dems are taking such comfort in, "No, no, the cure attempted by Joe Biden was so incredibly stupid that even though Kamala was in charge of it, she never even got around to addressing the actual problem, she was wasting her time doing lots of other idiotic stuff, that also failed spectacularly to solve anything." Maybe technically true, but not exactly a strong argument for why people should think she has the competency to be President.
They could have kept Trump's policies, then worked with those countries and passed a bill.
Instead they reversed Trump's policies, crossings exploded, they gaslight the american public and the border patrol, and then proposal a phony bill 3.5 years later.
I believe Harris' recent narrative calling Trump Hitleresque will affect her 6.7% lead in the Democracy-Polarization category. This narrative is not going to be helpful to her campaign, and could send many voters Trump's way.
Sometimes messages are set up Incase of a loss. You set the narrative and then when the camps are created you play it again and again. We warned you. He’s putting them in a concentration camp. Trumps policies are bold. They’re going to get a tough reaction. Not looking forward to that.!
Probably won't hurt him at all ----- remember, Hillary quite literally SAID this summer that she wanted to put most of us, conservatives, in a re-education camp. Sweet. That woman has really lost it.
Given it didn’t take much to hurt him in 2020. Imagine his policies on steroids and the backlash on even more steroids. It’ll be worse than you imagine.
Let 'em stay where they belong and not break our laws and sneak in here illegally and no one will put them in any camp. That's all it takes: they should just obey our law.
I think the point of this is a turnout strategy. Nothing positive has worked, so the Harris campaign is now doing "Fear the Orange Man!" They are hoping to charge up fear to get their voters to the polls.
The end is near for Harris. You don’t have to like Trump to not want an extension of the last 3.5 years. Things have been the worst in my entire lifetime. Thank God Jimmy Carter gets to see what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did to probably give him a leg up as only the second worst presidency and administration in history at this point. There is no logical reason for voting for Harris or wanting her to win besides “Hate Trump”
Some of us don't like assholes and would rather have the "weak, compromising" candidate as our nation's leader vs. a loudmouthed idiot that thinks foreign policy is transactional.
Ironically, this is all coming at a time in which the economy is roaring and the only thing that could make the economy better is more immigration.
Kamala is going to lose because they created too many jobs and didn't worry too much about hassling foreigners, and then Trump is going to take credit for the best economy in several decades while messing around with counterproductive tariffs.
Republicans are still eating at the political trough that came from Reagan getting credit for economic growth that came from cyclical change and massive deficit spending.
This is my gut, don’t trust my gut, here is another article on why you should trust my gut, in the middle I’ll remind you not to trust my gut, then I’ll get back to telling you why you should probably trust my gut. I really am a fan, so I guess I can take it, but there are reason why she could win as well. He just doesn’t seem interested in writing about them except to say “shrug, I guess it could go this way?”
You can’t deny there’s certainly some overlap. Trump is a right-winger who has risen to power by demonizing a demographic subset that doesn’t have a lot of political power, and has shown tendencies toward authoritarianism. All of those traits described Hitler, obviously. They describe a lot of other demagogues throughout history though. I guess you could say there are some more “niche” bad guys who are better analogies to Trump than Hitler.
Actually, this is an interesting thought experiment:
Say you could transport our current situation back to 1932, with Trump being in the position he’s currently in right now, saying the things he does now, etc., with most of all the major events in his saga from the past 9 years happening the same way; with events, people, issues, technology, and other details changed to make them fit what the world was like then but otherwise analogous to their equivalent today. Do you think the press, both home and abroad, would make be making comparisons between the MAGA movement in the U.S. and what was then unfolding in NAZI Germany? Of course there’d be differences noted, but I think there’s a good chance the two situations would be seen as parallel and possibly part of a global trend.
Now what do you think Trump would be saying about Hitler in that universe? Would he have been calling him out as evil? Or do you think he might’ve talked about him the same way he has talked about Putin, Orban, even Kim Jong-Un? Can you honestly tell me Trump and Hitler wouldn’t have seen each other as like-minded?
I am literally in Budapest today and visited the‘Terror’ museum few hours ago. Much of what I saw and heard has eerily similar tone and spirit. Hard not to see the parallels.
The parallels are very, very weak and our government is much much much better than the Weimar Republic.
Also, many in the Maga movement and many others voting for Trump are tired of wars, proxy wars, etc. The Nazi movement was foaming at the mouth to get into another world conflict.
The Nazis also had the SA and SS since the 20s. The maga/republicans have nothing of the sort. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison in 1924 and explicit called for the extermination of Jews.
It is a lazy argument and lazy to compare your opponents to the vile and evil things Hitler did.
Also, there is only 1 President to ever put people in camps and that was FDR, a man who the democrats never demonize.
I mean, if you just stop at 1932, then it isn’t nearly as extreme a comparison is it. You’re basically saying we should ignore warning signs until something unspeakable actually happens.
Well sure except for Hitler fought during WW1 and called it "the greatest of all experiences," was pissed that the Germans surrendered, in 1923 he held a beer hall captive, etc, etc.
A lot happened way before 1932 and the Weimar Republic was vastly different than the US.
Yes, indeed, because you call anything you don't like a "warning sign" and try to cancel everyone saying it. That is one bad argument you are making: anything you don't like people thinking is a warning sign that Hitler is near.
I've been to that beer hall ---- it's doing fine. I don't THINK he exactly took the beer hall hostage; there was a political meeting there and he took the other side hostage and tried to force them to agree to his demands at gunpoint. He was organizing to march on the government of Munich, and did, too, with some 3,000 brownshirts, but it didn't work out.
Compare all that to the party at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and this is why I am bitter about the Dems calling that a "coup," as if.
I forgot that old saw! That the one who calls Nazi first is the losing side!! Excellent, I remember that meme started decades ago, I'm amazed the Dem campaign didn't think of it.
I have studied WWII extensively but did not know the American Nazis pre-war did a rally in Madison Square Garden --- turns out my husband DID know because he watches the Hitler Channel! Ahhh --- the History Channel, that is. Wives call it the Hitler Channel for good reasons.
The law that Trump blocked regarding immigration was a terrible one that legitimized the continuation of illegal infiltration into America. Kudos to him for blocking it.
Somehow, as the elections approached and the Democrats panicked over the unpopularity of their actions, they managed to reduce immigration without any additional legislation. The problem is that, deep down, they still believe that borders are racist and would be happy to abolish them entirely if they win the elections.
Funny how anyone who complains Trump blocked that bill ignore two things:
1. That Trump was a private citizen, and if the sitting president and VP couldn’t overcome one private citizen’s opinions, then maybe the prez and veep shouldn’t be prez and veep
2. That the bill was a bad bill overall, and did not meet the standard required for the compromise that is the hallmark of politics
What disingenuous nonsense. Trump was not some random 'private citizen' at the time he scuttled that bill. He was the likely candidate for president. And the bill had the support of Republicans until he told them to back off. You guys really can't spin this one away.
He had no official position though. If you Democrats are so weak that you can't stop a private citizen -- who wasn't the Republican nominee at that point -- then you're weak.
Good grief, that is such drivel. George Soros has no 'official position' and Republicans squeal about his influence over US politics all the time. Everyone knows Trump has coercive control over Republicans in congress.
George Soros has no official position, but Trump - at best, a candidate, has?
That is, to use your term, disingenuous nonsense. Physician, heal thyself.
How weak was it when Trump couldn’t even get his own party behind ending the ACA and was derailed by a republican senator in his effort. That is seriously weak. Not sure how you can vote for such a headless chicken without authority. World leaders laugh at him. Poor soul
And how "strong" must private citizen Obama have been to save the ACA despite holding no official position.
Obama didn't save the ACA. McCain did.
The evil Neocon war hawk John McCain got in his way. We were new to the Presidency back then, we'll be 10x stronger if we win again....Deport all illegals..
We? You think Trump cares about you, that you're part of his team. Oh, dear...lol.
I almost thought this comment was parody
This is some really weak bad-faith argumentation. Trump has a stranglehold on the GOP electorate. He demanded that GOP electeds kill the bills to help him politically, they obliged. You are simplifying the matter to such an extreme that it ignores every single piece of context.
It wasn't just Trump - every serious conservative immigration policy wonk was screaming that the bill was horrible, because it was in fact horrible. I have no idea what spell Jim Lankford got put under to sign on to that pile of garbage, but it must have been mighty indeed.
The Republican Senators and Representatives would have been very happy to pass the bill had Trump not intervened. And it would have been a decent bipartisan effort, which matters, because nothing else it going to be permanent.
Really? If those congressmen did not believe it would help them get reelected, they would not have done it. Which means they believed Trump's opposition was consistent with their electorate.
You are ignoring how elections work in a desperate attempt to demonize Trump. Your efforts only serve to highlight your ignorance and desperation.
BURNT-BOY - Did Joe Biden have 50 years of incredible "EXPERIENCE" marked by his uncanny ability to "reach across the aisle" - when he was "elected" he had the HOUSE, SENATE and WHITE HOUSE...Are you FRICKIN' Joking or Just a GREAT LIAR??? ALSO, DEMs could have done Immigration in Obama's first term where they had HOUSE, SENATE and WHITE HOUSE...They had TWO opportunities to do it and IT WAS NOT A PRIORITY...that is why LATINOS ARE MOVING TO TRUMP...TRUMP BUILT 500 MILES OF BORDER WALL, THAT KAM-BAM just POSED in front of AFTER LETTING IN OVER 20 MILLION UNVETTED ILLEGALS...WHAT WORLD ARE YOU LIVING???
IKO says: GET A GRIP, BURNT-BOY
Capitalization: how does it work?
We seriously need a "Block" button to squelch unhinged morons like NotOK.
This is so obviously unserious. Since Trump was elected in 2016, he has been the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, and has, throughout that time, been the leader of the party.
One need look no further than an analysis of the 2024 Republican primary.
Has Trump been a private citizen since 2021? Yes. Does Trump exercise more influence over Republican Party politics than Mitch McConnell? Yes, and here's an even higher threshold: does Trump exercise more influence over Republican Party politics than the Republican Speaker of the House? Ask Kevin McCarthy.
Trump is not why Kevin McCarthy bit the dust.
It was because of the grossly inflated national deficit, which worries a lot of conservatives, and me, too. McCarthy wouldn't move a budget that would start to deal with that. I think we're about to do better on that in a Trump administration ------- I hope.
I didn't mean to imply that Trump ousted McCarthy, even indirectly. Just was trying to show that other Republicans who could somewhat-credibly be called more influential than Trump... aren't.
Trump's signature policy achievements were: (1) a massive tax cut primarily benefitting the rich; and (2) sending stimulus checks paid for out of the public fisc (but with his signature for some reason) to every American.
The man has made a career out of accumulating unsustainable debts and then making those debts someone else's problem. Where on earth does your "hope" that Trump will suddenly take the deficit seriously come from?
I swear to God, Trump is just a Rorschach blot to you people. He has no discernable core beliefs beyond "Trump Uber Alles," so you all just parse the word salad he vomits to convince yourselves that he *really* supports the exact policies you happen to want.
Exactly. Trump may give voice, give credence even, to certain positions - but at the end of the day, it is up to the voters, like you and me.
And yet you forget one simple fact: Trump does not elect the congressmen - their constituents do. So to blame Trump for congressional opposition ignores the fact they vote in accordance with their interests - reelection - which means they vote consistent with their constituents' interests. Which, if you are still following, means that they believed their constituents would support their opposition to this bill.
Again, not serious.
Trump's influence over voters does help elect congressmen. The effect is not always decisive: several Republican Primary candidates that Trump has endorsed have failed. But it is significant: all of the most vocal intra-party opposition to Trump has been silenced by primary defeats. This is because Trump has influence, and more Republican voters take cues from him, and identify with him, than anyone else. That's power.
The relationship between voters and political candidates is a dialogue: voters support political figures and give them power, but political figures routinely influence what their followers think. It doesn't just go in one direction, and any political scientist can tell you that.
If Trump came out in support of the bill, and several other key representatives did, most if not all of those constituents would have fallen in line because they trust Trump.
They vote in accordance with what Trump tells them. That's the scary thing about personality cults.
You can throw around the word "weak" all you want, but if you could see how weak you look, as a Trump supporter, to many Democrats, you'd be embarrassed. Democrats are not hiding behind a candidate so scared of opposition as to be lobbing threats of violence against the opposition.
You are not considering that we don't care if we look "weak" to Dems. Why would we care? We are winning. Winning is not weak.
YOu're not winning. You're hiding.
Trudy, are you seriously accusing a candidate who’s been shot twice of violence against his opposition?
Yes, I am seriously doing it.
Very, very seriously making this accusation.
Do you understand what I am saying? I am deadly serious in making this accusation.
If you ask me again, I will repeat that I am deadly serious about making the accusation that he has threatened violence.
It has the support of 5 Reps. LOL 😂🤣😂 The GOP will not pass an amnesty bill Trotsky.
IKO wants to know: WHAT REPUBLICANS, PAUL? PLEASE NAME THEM...
EVERYONE WATCH WHAT PAUL DOES...THIS WILL BE FUNNY...
He was a private citizen. And if Biden couldn’t negotiate with Congress against the opposition of a private citizen then Biden is not qualified to be president.
The bill never had the support of enough Republicans to pass, even before Trump commented on it.
Maybe in the Senate, but probably never in the House. That support was disappearing rapidly.
He was a private citizen. You cannot change that fact. How stupid of you not to recognize that, in your desperate attempt to divert attention from Biden and Harris's incompetence and ineptitude.
Your argument doesn't become any stronger by simply repeating your error and adding some ad hominem.
It wasn't meant as ad hominem. It is meant to reiterate the emptiness of yours. Was he, or was he not, a private citizen?
I come back and you're still arguing badly.
He’s the leader of his party. His party followed his direction. Conservative Republicans helped create the bill. It was a product of compromise, which strongly favored Republican priorities. It just did not favor Trump’s reelection campaign.
It did not favor Republican priorities at all, because it cemented in law the currently-dubiously-legal discretionary authorities that Secretary Mayorkas has been using to de facto throw the border wide open. It, for all intents and purposes, locked in ~2 million illegal entries per year, with a discretionary authority to close the border if the rolling daily average went over 5k encounters (thus vulnerable to gerrymandering via strategic understaffing and de-enforcement) per day, with Mexican and Canadian nationals excluded from the tally. So encounters of cartel soldiers don't count towards the "close the border" authority - exactly what we want! It also gave resettlement NGOs a billion dollars, granted migrants automatic work authorization as soon as they finished booking with ICE/INS, and did nothing to reinstate the public charge rule. It was an awful dud.
Letting in 5,000 illegals a day??!! What kind of a godforsaken law is THAT? I hated it. Many, many of us did. Trump was following US on this one.
Please. Let's not overcomplicate this. Republicans control the House, and possess a blocking minority in the Senate (courtesy of the filibuster). If the GOP wants to sabotage a legislative effort to reduce migration because they know it will hurt Democrats politically, that's what's going to happen. Republicans in Washington care about the national interest about as much as they care about used toilet paper.
Let us be accurate about this. Enough Republican Senators were happy to see the bill passed, even though they knew that it would not be good for Trump's re-election. Until Trump stepped in and told them its didn't suit him enough.
So why did they change their mind? Because they know that if Trump spoke out on it, enough of their constituents would agree with him, and they would face difficulty getting reelected.
What does that mean? it means that they decided based on what they realized their constituents wanted. That it took Trump for them to realize that is not Trump's fault.
Is that it though? Isn’t the thing he threatens them with basically being cast out of his in group and therefore facing a bunch of unpleasantness from online savagery to facing some trumpist in a primary. I don’t think it’s much to do with “what the public wants” as opposed to “what maga wants”
A border bill was the second thing the Republican majority in the House did after coming into office. Senate Democrats have sat on their thumbs with it ever since.
Passing that HR2 bill (which will likely be HR1 in the new Congress) will be the first thing done next year. Trump will have a signing ceremony at the White House, and Vance will point out, while smiling, that it is a BIG F-FING DEAL!. Republicans now know what they want to do on the border, much to the chagrin of the Establishment. Next up - what to do about Health Care. Removing Obamacare would be a huge step forward for our country.
And are you prepared to say the Democrats would do the same?
“ if the sitting president and VP couldn’t overcome one private citizen’s opinions, then maybe the prez and veep shouldn’t be prez and veep”
By that logic we shouldn’t have a president. The leader of the House should be the leader of the country, because that’s the person who controls Congress.
That is how most democratic countries work, so it’s not really wrong, but it requires a major rewrite to the constitution.
Was it the administration’s bill? Yes. Are they blaming Trump for not getting the bill passed? Yes. Is your comment partisan and ignorant, and doesn’t seek to excuse their incompetence? Yes.
Trump couldn’t vote on the bill. The administration refused to negotiate with the opposition and compromise to the point they would support the bill. Blaming Trump for this administration’s incompetence is just plain stupidity wrapped up in desperation to blame someone else.
The opposition agreed to the bill. But then Trump told them to vote no on everything related to the border until election season. They *did* the negotiation.
“The opposition”? It was negotiated in committee, and ultimately only 5 Republicans supported it. That is not “the opposition”. And by the way five Democrats opposed it. So you could just as well say opposition was bipartisan.
Rewrite the Constitution to remove the constraints against unfettered majority rule?
What happened there is precisely why we have these constraints. If you want to replace existing law, you need a supermajority to do it. Note in 2001 this wasn't a problem passing the Patriot Act/allocating GWOT dollars which would have never happened before that event. Yet in 2010 Democrats had close to a supermajority and they still had issues passing Obamacare and particularly the public option.
The framers saw what had happened in places like Athens - demagogues commanding support and then committing the state to damaging policies (see Peloponnesian War). They wanted safeguards against that. Annoying? Yes. But they've generally served us well.
Parliamentary rules works perfectly in several other countries with extremely high standards of living and public safety.
It’s hard to hide or lie when your voting record on every bill is decisive and on the record.
dude what are you talking about? what standard? the bill already had the bipartisan backing and the numbers. if trump hadn't told his minions the bill would've passed
i am genuinely curious whether you know about these or not
Only five Republicans supported it. And five Democrats actually opposed it. Let’s not pretend it had wide approval. Please.
IKO says...JOEYL ROCKS...RIGHT ON MA BROTHA!!!
Man, you're a bad arguer.
Man you make empty comments.
3. That the supposedly necessary bill wasn't law while Trump was president either, and he somehow managed a much lower level of illegal immigration just the same.
The state with the most illegal immigrants working in it is Texas. The types of businesses that hire illegals are mostly republican owned. Republican states barely ever prosecute companies for hiring illegals. California also doesn't prosecute companies for hiring illegals, although republican states higher more overall.
Irrelevant. Border is federal responsibility.
The main reason the illegals are here is for the jobs. If republican states cracked down on companies hiring illegals in their states, than they wouldn't have most of the illegals. They don't do that because those companies hiring them are some of the biggest donors to the republican candidates.
Companies hiring illegals is the main reason we have the illegal immigration issue. States with larger agricultural industries (which tend to hire more illegals) also tend to be republican leaning states. Although California is an exception to this and is a large agricultural producer and also doesn't crack down on companies hiring illegals (although there aren't as many illegals working there as in Texas)
Both parties are to blame, the idea the republicans are some sort of border heroes is laughable though, when they are in fact at the center of the problem, and have had the power to largely end the problem (at least in their states) for decades yet refuse to.
No. Wrong. People come here to get away from a bad situation. A job is additional incentive, but often they are fleeing poverty, oppression. And if they can’t get in, any job would be moot. So I reject your argument as wrong on reason and, possibly, in fact as well.
It's interesting but also disheartening seeing back-to-back comments here mischaracterizing their opponent's views on immigration. One just saying that Reps are just racist, and another saying Dems just believe the border is racist.
I'm getting real sick of all the absurd oversimplifications and vilifications of opposing viewpoints. So few people in this country seem to make any actual effort to understand the other side. It's depressing.
I don't think all Dems think the border is racist. Most Dems don't think much about immigration politics at all, and are quite happy living in large multicultural metropolitan areas. However, the Democratic party is highly susceptible to capture by radical niche activist groups, and I am dead sure that the people inside the Democratic party who care most about immigration *do* think the border is racist.
I don't really disagree with most of this, but I definitely think that "the border is racist" is a partisan oversimplification of opposing views. Plenty in the Democratic party for sure believe that the processes and enforcement practices around immigration are racist, but that border itself is racist? Come on. Even in pro-immigration activist circles that would be a fringe take.
We need to stop painting the opposition as caricatures, as if they walked out of a political cartoon.
I mean, if you have a border but don't actually enforce it, it's not a border. I don't think it's a caricature to take the opposition's statements and actions seriously.
The jobs for illegals that republican politicians are protecting are the most relevant thing. That is the reason why they are here and stay here. If republican states cracked down on companies hiring illegals than they wouldn't have issues with having so many illegals in their states.
To be fair California has a lot of illegals working there as well, although not as many as Texas, and also doesn't crack down. Both parties are to blame.
DeSantis appears to be trying, to give him credit.
My problem isn't with taking statements and actions seriously, you should absolutely take them seriously, it's with mischaracterizing the reasons why they do them.
If you look at the Dem's actions (or inactions) and statements around the border and conclude that you can't support that, then that's reasonable. If you conclude that they must be doing it because they think the border is racist and should be abolished, then I think you're building them up as a caricature.
Similarly, if you think the only reason Reps have for opposing immigration is racism, you're also building them up as a caricature.
It's a disservice to ourselves to not explore the feelings, logic, and positions we disagree with, and instead dismiss them based on flimsy premises. It's lazy and tribalistic thinking that is making this whole country stupider.
But there are a lot of left academics and activists who *do* think the U.S. is irredeemably racist, and that enforcement of our borders against "the global south" is also racist. They're not cartoons, they're real living breathing people with wacky, but real ideas.
Republican politicians obviously don't care about border enforcement either, as that would cut into the profits of their corporate donors that make bank off of hiring illegals. The state with the largest amount of illegals working in it is Texas. A state controlled almost completely by Republicans for decades. How many employers that hire illegals there do you think are being seriously prosecuted?
You don't need to convince me that a lot of GOP politicians don't care about the grass roots. This is why there keep being all these populist uprisings against all the "respectable" sorts in the GOP, and why we finally got stuck with someone like Trump as a brick through all the "respectable" people's window.
Yes. This is a behaviour pattern that is historically highly predictive of imminent civil war.
I'm of the mind that the modern polarization we're seeing has a lot to do with the rise of the internet and global communications, which has little historical precedence. Real world conditions would need to get seriously bad before a civil war is imminent and the day-to-day life in this country is just nowhere near that bad, despite all the ridiculously un-nuanced partisan rhetoric online about it.
Well, let's hope so! Claims that history has ended and that what has always applied before doesn't apply any more do not have a good track record. But even so, it's only predictive, not a guarantee.
Well that's not really what I claimed though. Anyway, I subscribe more to the thinking that "history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme."
No, I think we could go on talking past each other indefinitely without any civil war. That's what was going on between the abolitionists and the slave-favoring interests in 1859 and all through the 1850s.
It's only when you do something that causes a real power imbalance that the nation breaks. When Lincoln won, since he was pro-abolitionist and not even ON the ballot in the entire South, secessions started the next day, literally, and seven states were gone before he was sworn in. That's what I think will happen if you mess with the Electoral College.
I am hoping Trump wins the popular vote so that legitimitizes his election past this danger point.
I'd compare claims that "Lincoln was an abolitionist and that was why we seceded" against "Trump is a fascist and the second coming of Hitler, and that's why we voted against him three times".
They have way more in common than you might think.
I started to like this comment, then I realized I didn't understand it. Explanation welcome.
Lincoln had a personal view that abolition would be a good thing, but he wasn't invested in it as a political goal. The Southerners didn't give this much of a chance; the presumption was that he was going to take away their slaves (say that like "he took my job" would be said today). There would have been just incremental change in slavery if they'd tolerated his election, and with a likely Democrat Congress for most of his term, not much real movement at all. Might have booted him out in 1864 - that election was also very close.
In similar fashion, if the Democrats hadn't treated Trump like the Antichrist, they would have had him for two terms (2020 was that close) and he'd be leaving office now probably at least somewhat in disgrace because of the state of the economy, which wasn't really amenable to anything other than an unpleasant contraction after the sugar high of COVID. The Supreme Court was already lost in the teens, so what was the point of all this? Breyer probably could have been talked into hanging on a few more years. 2024 would have been an easy win in that scenario, and think of all the Senate candidates that would have benefited from that - Baldwin/Brown/Casey/Slotkin and probably even Tester. Trifecta if everyone treated Trump as the moderate that he actually is on most things.
There is a deeper similarity. The real issue with Lincoln was the supremacy of Northern interests in things like a transcontinental railroad and protective tariffs. Those issues were the things he was _really_ interested in. That wasn't a very photogenic political issue, so slavery it was. It got everyone's skin in the game.
The issue with Trump is really the collapse of the neocon hegemon dream. Not his purported fascism.
The way they reduced immigration was by establishing similar policies as the bill laid out through executive action. These are likely going to be struck down soon. The issue in the border would be much better now had the bill passed, but you and the Republicans don’t really care about the border. It’s not a real concern, it’s an excuse to be racist and blame others for your failures.
Why did that bill include money for ukraine
Because it was a compromise.
Why? It could have been a separate bill. That is why people hate DC. Just 1 bill for 1 issue.
Sigh...
What happened was (and this almost entirely happened in public):
Democrats wanted more funding for Ukraine. When Mike Johnson took office, he said "ok, but we want a bill that will protect the border. We'll pass more Ukraine funding only if we get to attach border provisions to it". Democrats said "ok", and they (along with Republican politicians like James Lankford) went to work on a bill. The result was a compromise, and it was a major improvement on the status quo.
When the bill went to a floor vote, Lankford said, on the floor, that a "popular commentator" told him "If you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election."
You get 3 guesses as to who that popular commentator was. Anyway, the Border Patrol union (which had previously endorsed Trump) came out in favor of the bill, because it was a significant improvement. The Oklahoma state Republican party censured Lankford, and Trump publicly lied about his previous support for Lankford and said the bill "would be very bad for his career".
What also happened is that Biden reversed all of Trump's policies to cause the problem in the first place. (and this entirely happened in public)
They could kept those policies or at least changed their minds halfway through and then worked on a border bill.
So yes, the Biden administration gets blame for the border failings.
and also 6 democrats in the senate killed it as well. Did Trump convince them?
Btw lots of legislatures around the world have a “no omnibuses” rule that says any bill can only be about one topic.
We should implement that. I get tired of this stuff. A lot of times no one votes for a bill because it is stuffed with 10 other issues.
Ukraine is an important issue for both parties. There is widespread agreement on funding Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine funding later passed as a separate bill. Border funding did not pass because (some) Republicans refused to vote for it. Democrats in this case were willing to compromise much more than ever before but Republicans refused to take yes for an answer because it did not benefit Trump.
because that border bill sucked
Wait are you actually serious? Were you completely not paying attention at the time??? Dems wanted Ukraine funding, Reps said no not until border bill. So a compromise bill was written. It’s that fucking simple. It wasn’t pork, it was the instigating factor for the compromise. Do you even know how to read?
The bill locked in 2 million unauthorized crossings per year, and only then granted a discretionary authority to close the border. It also gave a billion dollars to resettlement NGOs to spread those migrants around the country and provide them benefits on the public dime, and drastically increased incentives for even more migration by granting huge numbers of those unauthorized migrants work permits while awaiting their deportation hearings.
Another aspect of a Harris presidency is that she would appoint radical woke judges who would strike down laws restricting immigration. The judges Trump would appoint would not strike down laws or regulations limiting immigration.
She’ll have a Republican senate.
As Sen. Langford just demonstrated, many Republican senators are not smart enough to realize when they're being fed horse-crap cookies.
And hopefully, a Republican House of Representatives with enough Republicans in it that Johnson can do something with it besides desperately holding his place. I like a lot of what the Freedom Caucus is doing (and my representative is in it) but it's all getting pretty unwieldy.
No, it would NOT have been better off.
I believe the border bill only went into effect when daily crossings exceeded 4,000? 4000!!! We should burn the whole world if even one damn illegal enters this country -- let alone 4000...
We can debate which number is "too high" but in the end, you are right - even one illegal crossing is already, well, illegal. I find it disheartening that both sides have reduced the immigration policy debate to illegal Mexican border crossings. To me, that topic is table stakes. The real immigration debate should be how we optimize LEGAL immigration for the good of the country.
Most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants, according to Forbes. The CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Oracle (to name three) are all immigrants. This kind of immigrant, with tech skills and entrepreneurial thirst, is what keeps America leading the world. And if you strategically let enough of these immigrants in who greatly increase GDP and tax base and who don't use much state welfare, you could probably fund social security and medicare for a generation. You don't even have to increase the total number of immigrants, just be more strategic about which immigrants you favor.
Why aren't we having this debate?
It was 5,000, and I don't believe for a minute that they would have held to that. They've have just given up and let in 10,000, whoever presented themselves, Y'all come on!
It was to get more Dem voters, but that strategy seems to have backfired.
It wasn’t 5,000 crossings; not one migrant would be allowed in illegally. It was 5,000 encounters, and then they had a mandatory border closure. here’s an explainer: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna136656#anchor-Sowheredidthis5000adayfigurecomefrom
And another: https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/no-the-senate-immigration-bill-does-not-allow-5000-people-to-illegally-enter-the-us-daily/
Oh, and then look, a misleading headline by FoxNews, which is inaccurate: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-border-bill-allow-5000-migrants-day-before-title-42-limit-starts.amp
No wonder you’re misstating facts
They are all illegals and every man jack of them should be deported now.
Wishful thinking on your part:
DHS divides illegal border encounters into three parts:
apprehensions: people crossed illegally but can apply for asylum and not required to be arrested
inadmissibles: not eligible lawful entry but can also apply for asylum
expulsables: not allowed to apply for asylum and must be sent back
So the vast majority of the 5,000 encounters/day can apply for asylum and then disappear into the US until their claim is processed, or until they’re found, or forever.
“Encounters” does not mean they came up to the border, said hello and then went back.
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-can-the-data-tell-us-about-unauthorized-immigration/
They can "disappear" until they run out of food and money. Then, if Republicans hadn't gutted E-Verify, they'd be found at a workplace.
" if Republicans hadn't gutted E-Verify, they'd be found at a workplace"
and that explains why there wasn't a single illegal alien in the US during the Clinton and Obama years?
Oh get real. To become a voter one must must be a citizen. Most states require a SecureID to register. To become a citizen one must go through the immigration process, even people who marry an American citizen.
To go through the immigration system one must have been formally admitted, not have committed a crime since admission, and wait a variable number of years depending on the type of admission. If one has a previous ejection for an illegal crossing one may not make a legal application for ten years.
Now there may be a few illegal residents who steal a deceased or otherwise "unused" identity of an American citizen to vote, but it's pretty rare, and is a major crime. So why would someone who very much prefers not to be noticed take the risk?
It would be stupid for the illegal alien to try it, so it's stupid -- and snottily elitist I might add -- for you to think they would.
This is unhinged. You need better access to mental health care.
What are you talking about? JAMES LANKFORD drafted it, my dude. He himself said he got every major concession the GOP wanted and could expect from Dems.
Exactly!
The bill's provisions only take effect when illegal crossings exceed 5,000/day (on some average), so only if they're over 1.8M illegal crossings/year, about 3.5 times the average during the Trump administration. That's some fix to the border crossings.
In addition, there's no explanation why illegal border crossings were so much lower during the Trump administration, when this bill didn't exist.
It wasn’t 5,000 crossings! Not one migrant would be allowed in illegally. It was 5,000 encounters, and then they had a mandatory border closure. here’s an explainer: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna136656#anchor-Sowheredidthis5000adayfigurecomefrom
And another: https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/no-the-senate-immigration-bill-does-not-allow-5000-people-to-illegally-enter-the-us-daily/
Oh, and then look, a misleading headline by FoxNews, which is inaccurate: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-border-bill-allow-5000-migrants-day-before-title-42-limit-starts.amp
No wonder you’re misstating facts
Wishful thinking on your part:
DHS divides illegal border encounters into three parts:
apprehensions: people crossed illegally but can apply for asylum and not required to be arrested
inadmissibles: not eligible lawful entry but can also apply for asylum
expulsables: not allowed to apply for asylum and must be sent back
So the vast majority of the 5,000 encounters/day can apply for asylum and then disappear into the US until their claim is processed, or until they’re found, or forever.
“Encounters” does not mean they came up to the border, said hello and then went back.
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-can-the-data-tell-us-about-unauthorized-immigration/
As I said before, no alien without papers could "disappear" into America for very long if E-Verify were used properly. But that would raise the costs for the Holy "Small Bidnesses of the Yew Ess of Ay" and we surely cannot have THAT!
What changed is that wide-spread cell service reached the Andean countries in the late 2010's. People for whom "El Norte" was a fairy tale saw a lifestyle far beyond their wildest dreams. Plus, Maduro got more beatly in Venezuela. Nearly half the country has fled.
Your ignorance of Latin America is astounding, spoken by one born and raised there.
Yo aprendi mas en la calle en Caracas charlando con los pavitos del barrio de lo que tu te crees que sabes de la America Latina. Quien se hubiera imaginado semejante bobo hoy en dia.
It wasn't the city dwellers who got cell service, it was the folks in the countryside, and they're the ones who trek the Darien Gap and ride "La Bestia". The better off folks in the city used to fly to Miami and just overstay their visas. It's only recently that the city folks have (largely) given up any hope that Maduro will stand down, and now THEY too are abandoning ship.
There is no other rational reason for the sudden (e.g. within the past half decade) interest in immigrating to the United States among rural people from Latin America than that they suddenly have visual access to what is possible. Sure, some of them saw Caracas or Maracaibo in the pre-cell days, but they had to GO THERE to do it. Now the images of "El Norte" are beamed to them 24/7/365.
The vast majority of people entering a decade ago signed on with a Coyote, walked through the desert, and disappeared into American low-paying but essential jobs. Now they come to the border stations and claim Asylum; how do you think they know that they can do that? Of course, since Maduro is a Communist, Venezuelans get a sympathetic hearing. The law was written to let anti-Communists from the East Block in during the 1950's. Part of the Bi-Partisan Bill was tightening the requirements for Asylum.
What an ignorant about Latin American!!
You may not be aware that we had TV in Latin America since the 1960s and color TV in Venezuela since 1982. Most shows were American, dubbed into Spanish. My favorites were Streets of San Francisco, Kojak, Rockford Files, so plenty of opportunity for everyone with TV coverage, which means everyone, to see images of the US.
Only an insular, poorly educated, monolingual underachiever could think Latin Americans didn't know about the US until cellular.
You only proved one can have an undeveloped mind even in a developed country.
Mas pendejo que la palabra misma. ¿Porque no te educas un poquito como los que si entendemos de la América Latina?
How is investing into increased staffing at the border and cracking down on crossings outside of ports of entries legitimizing illegal infiltration?
What evidence is there that anyone besides the most leftist voices want to "abolish the border"? What does that even mean? You think that politicians are going to just layoff thousands of agents and pivot on bipartisan consensus for an effort that would have no benefit to our country?
If anything, the Democratic Party has waved the white flag on this issue and been pivoting to the center on immigration since the DNC.
Look at how many it was going to permit.
I wrote about that bill here: https://voltairesviceroy.substack.com/p/the-time-when-trump-sabotaged-immigration
In short, the notion that it was anything other than the most conservative immigration bill in a generation is nonsense. Republicans had a golden opportunity to do what no administration (including Trump's!) had been able to do in decades. Yet they threw the opportunity into the garbage to help Trump, who in all likelihood won't be much better than Obama was on immigration, even if he wins.
The main reason illegal immigrants are coming here is that republican owned businesses are hiring them and state level republican politicians are refusing to prosecute those businesses. Those businesses are major republican donors.
This. Illegal immigrants are almost to a person, poooooor. They have to work to survive. E-Verify was supposed to prevent their hiring, but Republican businesses from tiny to huge have forced their Republican puppies in the Red States to block enforcement.
So, here is where you make a mistake. Democrats do not all believe that borders are racist.
I agree that some do, but they hardly speak for everyone.
And here's a bit of cognitive dissonance on both sides:
While a few Democrats do think we should have open borders, there are others, on the right and far left, who seem to think that Ukraine should have open borders, if you catch my drift.
So, I think we all need to check our biases at the door, guard against cognitive dissonance, and stick to proven facts about things.
IKO says: AMEN TO THAT...but not reported on CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, NYT, Wash Post....TAMRITZ - you are writing to a bunch of Zombies that have NEVER HEARD ANYTHING YOU ARE SAYING...Introducing LIBERALS to real news is like giving a Vampire Garlic...It repels them...
That "bipartisan border bill" was never going to get out of the house or the Senate. Why do you continue to ignore that fact even before Trump spoke out against it.
It did not legitimize border crossings. Please cite to the actual bill language
Of course it did. Biden was trying to sneak in legitimizing replacement of Americans by Latin Americans and South Americans so it could go on indefinitely.
You are barking nutso. Biden is probably a much higher percentage of European Ancestry than you are. Wikipedia notes "Of Biden's sixteen great-great-grandparents, ten of them were born in Ireland." He has other lines from England proper and France.
After the deportations, who do you imagine will be making up your room? Who will wash your dishes when you dine out? Who will do the things you dislike, but which your lifestyle and your own economy depend upon?
yep
Yup, absolutely.
For the first time in this election, I’m honestly really hopeful.
There’s a very, very clear path for a Trump victory! And it’s based on real, tangible problems that America is facing not “But… but the orange man bad!”
We’re going to get Trump in, and like Nate Silver said, he’ll be “an asshole, but MY asshole” and he’ll steamroll the problems we’re facing.
I’m seriously, SERIOUSLY looking forward to the next 4 years with Trump.
It's not just Trump. We get :Team America 1st. DJT, JD, Tulsi, RFKjr, ELON, Vivek. Great minds centered around America and her standing in the free world. 2024-2028. America rising!
None of those people are 'great minds'. They are mostly conspiratorial loons and corporate grifters.
Elon may have differing opinions than you, but he is a great mind. Bill Gates is a great mind as well. Stop with the bullshit.
You are asking us to take seriously a short list of 'great minds' that includes Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. I don't think I'm the one who needs to stop with the bullshit.
Paul will be gnashing his teeth greatly on November 6th and into 2040. When Tulsi become the first woman president after 20 years of DJT,JD, THEN Tulsi Gabbard. The left will be wandering in the forest for 20 years plus. Go Tulsi (Watch her rise...)
Your math is very creative Tim.
JD's only chance is probably when DJT gets elected then kicks the bucket.
Seriously - higher tariffs and lower taxes? More like inflation over the roof top and dysfunctional government. That alone is preparing for a blue wave in 2028.
Just saying. Not that KDH can easily get two terms if elected either. Whoever is in charge in the next 4 years will get a lot of blame.
Tulsi is in a cult and takes orders from her cult leader. I doubt she would ever be elected.
Among that list, I think Elon is the only genuine great mind, though JD and Vivek are both smart and articulate. RFKJr is admittedly a bit nutty.
But what everyone on that list has in common is that they are independent thinkers who instinctively rebel against any order to "conform or else". This is a huge contrast to Team Democrat and its policy of trying to crush any heterodoxy or unapproved opinions.
Did I say anything about those 2?
You people are so full of hate. Seriously, have you ever stopped and taken a breath?
What hyperbolic drivel. You don't know me or my political tribe.
I was replying to Tim Rhode’s comment above: “When Tulsi become the first woman president after 20 years of DJT,JD, THEN Tulsi Gabbard. The left will be wandering in the forest for 20 years plus. Go Tulsi (Watch her rise...)”
I am not full of hate. All I said was I didn’t think she could be elected because she’s in a cult.
Poor RFK; I fear the parasite got away with the better part of his brain. So I hope Trump doesn't give him a very high position in the government. Maybe a Cabinet seat, something worthless and likely to be extirpated, like the Department of Education ----
Elon Musk has great technical genius, and enough business sense. But on a lot of things more connected with society, he is plain downright stupid. Accusing a cave rescuer of "paedophilia" isn't the only thing he has got terribly wrong. It is one of the downsides of Aspergers. In a government position, Musk is bound to get something disastrously wrong and get the sack - but use him as an adviser, by all means.
Bill Gates is also a two-edged sword. He has done some brilliant charitable works with diseases in developing countries, especially polio and malaria. But he has too much of a black/white mentality and has made various bets on SMR nuclear reactors, and on fusion, because he can't see that wind and solar are the low cost choices.
So get real - neither Musk not Gates are good listeners, rather, they are thought leaders, and you need good listeners in government, before taking decisions.
How many people has Elon sent to war based on a false premise? Lol yall can have Dick Cheney
Elon doesn't have that power. Dick Cheney is not a Democrat. And there are a lot of Republicans in congress who supported the war in Iraq (as did Trump at the time)
Dick Cheney literally endorsed Harris.
Most politicians, pundits, and others supported the war because Dick Cheney lied over and over again the Saddam had WMDs and Iraq was aiding Al-Queda. All lies and we know that 100%.
Dick Cheney is a horrible human being whose lies led us into a "war" that lasted almost 10 years and led to the deaths of 4,500 American soldiers and at least 100,000-300,000 Iraqis and possibly more.
Elon tweets random shit and catches rockets.
And David Duke endorsed Trump. So what?
And Elon wouldn't know the first thing about catching rockets. He has a company of great engineers who do that work for him. Stop being so damn naive.
Yeah people are just gushing over Kamala's CHOICE of campaigning with Liz Cheney. Warmongers united! I'm sure your loved Bush/Cheney in 2001. right? This is comical! No more $ for the military industrial faction please. go Team America!
I respect your right to be wrong.
Team Trump is so for the people that he isn't allowed to operate charities in NY anymore after using a child's cancer charity to funnel money to himself. Nearly his entire previous cabinet - people he chose! - have come out against him because of his fascist tendencies. I truly hope you are just a bot trying to influence public opinion and not someone actually this beholden to clearly false propaganda about a conman who has only ever looked out for himself.
Enjoy the next 4 years Ken. They will be GREAT for America and the world. You will be happy we get JD for 8 after. :)
Hey Tim, as I see you are a healthy, wealthy person who lives an epic life, I’m sure you will gladly enjoy the tax cuts and oppression of minorities under Trump. However, anyone with a sense of empathy and a bone of compassion will easily see all of the ethical issues with Trump.
However, you don’t even need to care about ethics to see how terrible his economic policies will be for the country as a whole. You can hee and haw about gas prices, but it takes a fool or an ignoramus to not see how terrible his plans are, or listen to the experts from all across the board who will tell you why they are so terrible.
You can continue living in your little bubble, but it’s gonna burst real soon once you hope to get social security or Medicare (we can see that grey hair), Trump will be the last person on your side.
But I encourage you to keep living that healthy, wealthy, epic life as long as you can, because the shame of recognizing how ignorant the things you’re saying are would probably kill you.
For anyone confused, I’m referencing the blog on his profile that never came to fruition… just like Trumps campaign promises.
Are you white? Because if you are, does it make you a Karen (or a Ken) when you presume to talk about minority oppression, especially for this brown American who benefited greatly during Trump’s first administration and is struggling to make ends meet under Biden.
I’m glad you are the only minority in America…
Hey, don't just give it away to JD, we've still got DeSantis, Youngkin and Cruz on the bench and I haven't made up my mind just yet.
Sure sounds like an angry Dem who realizes the Dems are losing -----
Remember, the angry group are the ones who are losing, always. That's how you can tell. People know they are losing before they see they are losing.
RFK jr is a nut job, Tulsi is in a cult and takes orders from someone else, JD is a chameleon who was a DEI admit to Yale because he was a poor white, conservative kid from Appalachia
Yes, many and many of the richest tech-CEOs in America switched over to Trump this election, several (Musk, Zuckerberg) when they saw that remarkable footage of the first assassination attempt. I am impressed that Jeff Bezos (a personal hero, in a way) apparently has done the same, since he kiboshed the WaPo endorsing Harris, by all accounts.
Okay, we've got the very rich and transcendently able people: now we need the celebrities. Then the university presidents and the full professors.
And our celebrities will actually perform for the crowds, not just speak for 5 minutes when half the audience came for them and not the (joyful) candidate!
At first I thought you were joking. Then I realized your were serious. What a bunch of lightweights,
Trump wouldn't stop to piss on you if you were on fire in the street. Always remember that.
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. (George Orwell of course).
How funny you quote Orwell and fail to see all the Democrats have done over the last 8 years or so.
I respect your right to be wrong.
...and his right to be stupid.
I don't want to take the country's future lightly. But part of me wish Trump did win just so that people learn the lesson the hard way so they can remember it for longer. You are not going to like the next 4 years if he wins. Trump is not "your asshole". He's a conman.
It's actually the people who you hate most -- the Harris voters -- who are on your side and genuinely want to fix the problems you are facing -- unless you are supporting Trump because you are religious fanatic intending to impose your world view on others, or if you are a white nationalist, then we have no common ground.
I'm of the same mindset. I don't hate MAGA voters: I hate their hate and vitriol and want them to succeed so they can leave that baggage behind. But you've got to be honest with yourself first. Nothing is "owed" in this world.
I fully support trade schools, community college investments, job training and relocation expenses to lift the tide for everyone. The types of people who need this are overwhelmingly MAGA. Where were these investments in our people between 2016-2020? What they are demanding: a pound of flesh from the LBGTQ community, elimination of women's rights: how does that help anyone? it's not helping them get a job: training and education does that. Deporting immigrants isn't helping bring the down the cost of groceries, that's for sure. Anyone who's lived abroad knows our groceries are insanely cheap, precisely due to lax regulations and cheap labor. Should we pay $9 for a gallon of milK? It's a fair question, but you can't have it both ways.
I would agree with you except for the part about we might not have another election to vote in. And the number of wackadoodle judges he would be able to appoint.
I guess we'll see in +/- 10 days, but I think you are going to be very disappointed. Harris is going to win this, and the polling error will be substantially on her side. But again, we'll see.
Harris may well not win, but it is going to be an unmitigated disaster if Trump does win.
Agreed. And to my point - of course Harris may lose, but everything aside, I truly believe the polls are underestimating her for a number of reasons. I thought the Trumpers were full of shit in '16 when they kept saying that he'd win - and now I find myself in a similar situation.
I always thought Trump had a chance even when my well-educated, outdoorsy circle of friends did not. There was a passion about thim that didn't exist for Romney.
Of course, after he did zip for the country between 16-20 except get a bunch of people killed during COVID and try to overthrow the government, I hoped they'd come to their senses. But I suppose owning the libs is enough. It sure is enough to get Cruz re-elected in TX. I don't think more than 5 voters can point to legislation he has sponsored that helps Texas, and yet, he keeps getting re-elected.
Never underestimate the willingness of pepole to cut off their nose to spite their face. Logic dictates that people should want 70% of something rather than 100% of nothing, but emotion dictates that enemies must be punished at all costs, even if it means getting 100% of nothing every time. Or, as in Blazing Saddles, in lieu of pay, here are some paddleballs to play with. I've been around it all my life and still can't come to terms with it; growing up in a small town, watching low skill high paying jobs move away, and people simply refusing to make a change in their life. Community college, moving to a different town to start a new career....nope.
A similar situation—where you’re super biased? Sounds like it.
Everyone is biased. But I do have the capacity to look at crosstabs and other indicators, and I'm predicting a Harris win. Again, we'll see soon. I'll look for you after the election. :)
You mean like his first term was an “unmitigated disaster” for all those minorities like myself who saw our income rise?
Take a good look at the chart in https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2024/05/income-and-wealth-in-the-united-states-an-overview-of-recent-data .
It shows that the increase in minority incomes started in 2013 or 2014, and peaked in 2019, after which it was relatively static for a couple of years.
Trump was president January 2017 to January 2021. So the rise started before he took over, and stopped while he was still president. It is thus far more likely that Obama kicked off the trends which started the rise in income for minorities, and that Trump couldn't maintain it after a couple of years.
Actually it is far more likely that the President has very little to do with those types of trends. The economy is made up of trillions of individual decisions and is unlikely to be affected by who is in the White House or any politician. What they can do is to set some curbs on how entrepreneurs behave and create some government programs that work around the edges of the economy (Social Security and Medicare are the most successful bringing senior poverty down significantly as more people lived longer). As an example, we are on a long term trend of decreasing black poverty that started in 1940 (80%) and government programs designed specifically for black poverty seem to have little to do with it. In 1964 (Civil Rights Legislation) it was 42%, by 1993 it was around 31% and now sits at roughly 17%. That is just one example of many. I don't think either candidate is worthy of my vote, nor will they change the trajectory of the economy. That leaves people fighting over minor cultural issues where I trend toward conservative positions currently.
So it increased, then the pace slowed, and then it reaccelerated under Trump? And minorities WERE in face better off? And even if he didn’t do anything to help it - which he did - neither did he do anything to hurt it, the way Biden and Harris did illegal immigration?
Thank you for confirming my point.
Your chart reading leaves a lot to be desired. The charts showed that the rate of increase in minority earnings was set in Obama's time, and started dropping again before Trump left power.
So Trump did slow the pace for you.
Like it was during his first term? Because, of course, before Covid, his results were far far worse than Biden's and Harris's. /sarc.
You seem to have amnesia about the utter chaos Trump's term was, day to day to day. It was exhausting. And his "results" certainly weren't the "best ever".
And you seem incapable of doing any research into the good results he achieved.
1. Unemployment - lows, and even better results for minorities and women
2. Wages - up
3. Labor participation rate - up - optimism
4. Gas prices
5. The border - secure, in comparison with the sieve we now have
6. No new conflicts - certainly Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Russia, China were nowhere near as aggressive
And nice disingenuous try about "best ever".
How many of these were a direct result of Trumps policies vs trends inherited from Obama?
Fairly telling that everything you listed are things the president has no control over. What the president does have control over is national security (generals and many of his own cabinet members declared him unfit for office), supreme court nominees (roe overturned, ymmv on this one) and guiding the country through a crisis (2020 Covid policy).
lol
Huh! This comment is like in the New York Times comment section, where there were some cheerleaders a few days ago when I was there. Not as bright people as many in this forum, I suspect.
Speak much?
I have no idea what you are asking, but I can assume it's rude.
He didn't really fix anything when he was president, why would he fix anything next time?
The only thing he's actually focused on is exploiting his power to enrich himself and his family.
The real TDS is how a con man from nyc convinced half the country that he's fighting for them. So bizarre
It's going to be so fun to watch your entire house of cards come crashing down.
Your ignorance is astounding. Giving free rein of the most powerful country in the world to a narcissistic selfish felon who has no respect for the law and who is declining cognitively? Who is a useful idiot for Putin? The recklessness of you people is amazing to me. In the face of all evidence to the contrary, you think Trump will do anything positive for the upper middle class, middle class, or working class?
That's nice, dear.
I'm still in the Turd Sandwich vs Giant Douche camp. Probably voting for Harris; might write in Haley; definitely not voting for Mr. Tangerine Man.
Although I would enjoy a Trump presidency iff it means that all of the histrionic Dem NaziesHandmaidsTaleProject2025Fascism talking points get thoroughly debunked.
As I have said before, either the Dems are crying wolf about "Republican fascism" aGAIN, or this time it's for realsies but nobody cares because they've been crying wolf for so long.
They were already debunked...or did I miss the fascist government that decimated minority incomes and reintroduced slavery during the first Trump administration?
You're not wrong, but once was apparently not enough. Granted, it may never be enough. But the Dems seem to be "all in" on this hand, and eventually they are going to go broke.
I agree.
So when he says democrats are "the enemy within" and that he wants to leverage the military to handle them... how does that not equal fascism?
When BLM started to riot, were they an enemy - say, of peace and order? And were they within the country? And did any of the governors mobilize the military, in the form of the national guard, to handle them?
Like I said - the people who use the word "fascism" to try and smear Trump only demonstrate that they do not understand the word.
Well it sounds like John Kelly disagrees, as he said recently he would use the term fascist to describe Trump. And I don't think you can compare rioting from BLM or January 6th marches to a condidate for president calling democratic members of congress "the enemy within" and suggesting the military be used to handle them. If Harris said she wanted to use military force against republican lawmakers, would you find that at all concerning?
You dodged my question. Bottom line, unless I see action, I would not believe opinion. John Kelly expressed an opinion.
Call it immigration but we all know what's driving the debate on the right is racism. Trump says immigrants are eating people's pets, "poisoning" the blood of America, and he's going to put them in camps; Harris wants to give undocumented immigrants access to healthcare. Hmm...tough call.
Trump says ILLEGAL immigrants are bad. I’m a legal immigrant and now naturalized citizen and I agree with Trump.
He's said that he'll round up those "Hatians" most of whom are here legally. I'm guessing that part of the "rounding them up" process will have something to do with their skin color. If they are here LEGALLY and still shipped out via Trump order, what's to stop Trump from going after any racial group that is a useful scapegoat? Authoritarians must have scapegoats to stay in power. There has to be an "other" to hate (or just read 1984).
Describing them simply as “legal” is at best ignorant and at worst deliberately misleading.
The idea of “legal immigration” involves people applying and waiting in line, being approved by a rigorous vetting system, etc. These immigrants have arrived illegally and then been given a quasi-legal status that in theory is only temporary but in practice is indefinite. They are de facto illegal immigrants who have been given merely de jure legal status for ideological reasons.
You can change the technical rules for what counts as "legal" if you must, but don't then act shocked when citizens who suffer the negative externalities of unconstrained replacement migration object to your new category of pseudo-legal immigration alongside traditional illegal immigration.
Am I crazy or is "de jure" legal status the exact definition of what legal status would be? "De jure"...by law or according to the law.
If we are going to start making up new things -- "de facto" legal and illegal status -- then why have the laws and rules at all?
If we're going to let them in illegally, and then let them stay, masking them with the veneer of an executive order that ignores the fundamentals of immigration law, then why have any rules at all?
When the de jure “legal” status is arbitrary and not process-driven, most don't believe it to be legitimate, no.
I repeat: You can change the technical rules for what counts as "legal" if you must, but don't then act shocked when citizens who suffer the negative externalities of unconstrained replacement migration object to your new category of pseudo-legal immigration alongside traditional illegal immigration.
Changing and making rules to define what is legal is...in fact how you define what is legal. I think I understand your argument but you're using the terms de jure and de facto wrong and that is where I got confused.
This isn't an argument, it's a declaration. You're declaring that it's not process-driven. But it is: the immigration parole program is the program under which many of the Haitian immigrants are here. It requires that candidates undergo vetting and have a person inside the US who supports their candidacy and who promises to support them while they're in the US. These are generally businesses that need cheap labor. And so this is not "unconstrained", it's constrained by business needs.
The picture here is that the US is taking advantage of the fact that people who want to work, who cannot work in their own country, will happily come to the US and work on the cheap. This is a win for anyone who cares about inflation, for example.
They're arguing that Temporary Protected Status ≠ legal immigration.
That's the crux of the issue. Those that are more liberal feel like it's okay to help and host foreign peoples out of a rut... and those that are more conservative feel Darwinism should rule the day and they should be left to perish if their country cannot rescue itself and if individuals don't have the resources to escape.
Whether documented or undocumented, it's dehumanizing and, frankly, disgusting to talk about any immigrants the way Trump does.
Nevermind that the pet-eating story was completely fabricated and implicated an entire community of legal, documented immigrants in the fake story.
Thinking undocumented immigrants are "bad" (whatever that means) may be one thing--and even that is debatable. Saying they are poisoning the blood of America and you are going to round them up in detention camps reflects some of the worst and most despicable moments in human history.
I call bullshit. If you refuse to deport illegal aliens then you are part of the problem. Heck if that’s the case, let’s not penalize the guy who robs you if it should happen. Since laws don’t seem to matter to you.
And yes illegal aliens are bad. That is not debatable except to those who do not respect the law.
The statistics show convincingly that legal and illegal immigrants have a much lower crime rate than natural born US citizens. Further, they are prepared to take the really low paid jobs no one else wants.
If Trump manages to send home 11 million or so immigrants who are not US citizens, then it is bound to devastate the US economy.
But subscribing to racism is an easy way out, isn't it. Stops people from having to think through issues for themselves.
Irrelevant. Legal immigrants are here legally. They have obeyed the laws for admission and residence, they should stay. Illegal immigrants by default have not. They should be deported.
Will it devastate the US economy? That is debatable. What is not debatable is that they have committed a crime to enter, and to remain.
The accusation of racism is false, and the people who resort to it have nothing of substance to offer other than unfounded accusations.
The Biden administration has deported or blocked entry to more immigrants than any president in 20 years, and is on pace to deport as many as Trump did. I have no idea what you are talking about about with your comment.
And yet the number of illegal aliens who have entered and remain the country has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. That you ignore that is, frankly, ridiculous.
It has gone up but to say it has skyrocketed is probably an exaggeration. It is approaching the all-time highs of 15 years ago. Not sure who is ignoring that?
hey smart guy, how do you identify and deport millions of illegal immigrants without racially profiling them and catching legal immigrants in the process—both of which would violate due process and the 4th amendment. Due process is afforded to everyone, not just US citizens.
Check if they have passport/Greencard/visa.
You have to have probably cause to do that: what reasoning are you using to check an individual’s citizenship status? That they’re brown?
The Democrat policies letting so many in allow us to do so.
That they're brown - please don't make stupid, racist comments like that. If you think color determines immigration status, then you are the racist.
cite the law that allows you to detain someone to ascertain their citizenship status without probable cause. Just cite the statute. If it’s so easy just do it
That they're real black and speak a patois French would work.
Again, troll
1. You close the border crossings
2. Re-enact stay in Mexico
3. Fine the shit out of employers for employing illegal immigrants
4. Profit
Your #3 would take care of the problem. It will never, ever happen.
and honestly it is the easiest thing to implement and the most humanitarian solution.
so youre just gonna avoid explaining how we do “mass deportations now”—a slogan trump printed on signs at his nomination rally? Is it because it can’t be done without uttering the word “camps”?
Here’s what i know, even if the unthinkable happens and trump wins, you’re still going to lose.
We always win in the long run. Progress marches on regardless of how many people try to stand in its way.
I cannot see how the democrats have made us progress in anyway in the last 4 years.
they didn’t engage in a coup for one.
Here’s what i know, the constitution is very clear about what we do with traitors. Trump is a traitor to the US and his oath to the constitution. I believe in the constitution. I believe in the consequences the founders set out. Trump should not be allowed to walk
You forgot deporting the ones who snuck through. Out, out, out.
Trump's advisers have talked about ending "chain migration," which is a legal immigration process that Trump's own in-laws used.
Ending chain migration does not mean ending migration. What might have served the country's purpose in the past might no longer serve it today.
In other words -- "yes, we are also in favor of curbing legal immigration, contrary to what I said in my OP."
How ridiculous. I am an immigrant and support legal immigration. Please don’t be asinine.
Hope you are not brown because if you are he’ll be going after you.
That is such an ignorant comment it is hilarious.
Not ignorant if one was a brown LEGAL immigrant living in Springfield OH and sure to be deported if Trump is elected.
Yeah this brown immigrant is calling BS on your comments, and on any illegal alien who entered the country and then was magically granted some form of legal status. They are still illegal and should be deported. They should get in line the way I did, and follow the laws the way I did.
There was nothing magic about it, it’s called a signed law. Enjoy your repeated traffic stops asking for your papers if Trump is elected.
A country without a border is country no more. If we have unrestricted illegal immigration then what are citizens really voting for? For whose benefit. A country siezes to exist
Did you read the article? The USA certainly has a border. The past three years have seen record-breaking border apprehensions. Who is arguing for unrestricted illegal immigration? Certainly not the Biden-Harris administration.
I read it. Look.at Nates graph and the illegal immigration due to open border. A country cannot just take in millions upon millions of illegal immigrants because that changes the whole culture of the country. I am a first generation citizen and it may be diificult for you to believe but for lot of immigrant friends the border is the most important issue. People leave their countries, families, friends come here for a better life and opportunities and slog through the immigration process,pay their taxes get citizenship which takes decades. And then govt let's in so many illegal immigrants. who pays for their rehabilitation? People need to follow the process for legal immigration or refugee status. If Harris loses, this will be the biggest reason
What is U.S. culture and how is it changing? Is the change bad?
Record-breaking border “apprehensions” of immigrants who are then given a piece of paper to pseudo-legalise them and allowed into the country to do as they wish.
To rape and murder, often. Better to run for the border than to be put in a Mexican jail for their crimes, no doubt.
The administration has deported or blocked entry to more immigrants than any other since W Bush second term. As many (likely more) deportations than Trump.
This information is readily and publicly available I encourage all Trump supporters angry about Democrats' supposed open-border policy to take a look at them.
that's because the whole world knows that you must get to the Mexico border and claim asylum, and govt sponsored NGOs are shepherding people through
Weimar America
The parallels in language are so stark and obvious it's amazing so many people deny it.
The stupidity and desperation in the contortionist comparisons is hilarious.
Joey I'm just repeating things Trump himself has said and interpreting them through my own historical perspective.
He has said these things. What do you think he means? Where do you think he gets these ideas?
The contortions are similar to saying “pedophiles drink water”. Kevin McAllister likes water. Therefore Kevin must like little children.
It is ridiculous.
This is a straw man comparison. In your example drinking water has nothing to do with the relevant actions. With Trump, his language directly lays the groundwork for his policy. One follows from the other.
He calls immigrants animals, says they are poisoning the blood of America, they are eating pets, they're dangerous or diseased or insane, they're invading, they're destroying the country, they need to be rounded up the military and put in camps and processed for mass deportations. The language is stark, and his policies follow directly from them.
Again, where is he getting this language? Why does it sound so reminiscent of others in the past? Is it a coincidence? Maybe, I guess.
Kevin did those people enter the country illegally after which they were granted some sort of permission to stay?
name one thing i’m wrong about
-High inflation ✅
-The “great replacement” ✅
-Nationalism ✅
-Populist leader promising a return to a mythic past ✅
-Mass deportations promised✅
They literally copied the nazis word for word on LGBTQ+ issues:
-After World War I, a rise in the visibility of LGBT+ people in Germany led to an increase in the belief that there was an increase in the incidence of homosexuality among young men due to recruitment by adult gay and bisexual men.[37] By the 1920s, backlash from psychologists and psychiatrists against tolerance of LGBT+ people in Berlin suggested that homosexuality was a social contagion.[38][39] The SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps argued that 40,000 homosexuals were capable of "poisoning" two million men if left to roam free.[40]
Mass deportation of illegal aliens? What is wrong with that?
Is this administration permitting the illegal entry of millions of unvetted people, who are now competing for jobs with legal immigrants and citizens? Yes.
Has inflation been ridiculously high during this administration? Yes.
Is nationalism a bad thing? Only to idiots who do not appreciate this country.
Your allegations and associations are stupid and desperate.
Your take on inflation is ignorant and emotional. We have had high inflation, yes, in a period of GLOBAL inflation. The root causes had little do do with administration policy, or do you think the US President can cause global inflation? Inflation has come down faster in the US than almost any other major economy, while growth is faster than almost all of the other large economies. That does not indicate the administration has done a poor job, but rather that they should be praised, if anything, although I actually believe the Fed has been more responsible than the President. But the idea that the Biden administration caused high inflation is supported by no fact base.
Jeff part of that inflation elsewhere in the world has been the strength of the US dollar. Have you adjusted for that?
If the government had done nothing, then I would accept that the inflation was a spillover of the global environment. But the government injected MASSIVE liquidity into a system that was already recovering. THAT was inflationary.
If you do not understand the effect of liquidity on inflation, then YOU are ignorant and emotional. That, in the context of this administration’s multiple failures, you think that it is to be praised, confirms both your ignorance and emotion.
America in general does not do nuance. Not even when the nuance is barely there.
how many policies do you have to share with nazis before you are one. Look in the mirror and wake the fuck up.
Millions of men of all colors and walks of life died for the stars and stripes just for you take it for granted. Shame on you
You people have such a stupid and simplistic view of history that it is hilarious.
I'm just repeating what Trump has said. Does he mean something else? Where is he getting his ideas and language? Must just be a coincidence it mirrors other historical actions.
Someone says nothing rude to you and you tell them they’re speaking with hate, 5 minutes prior you tell people who disagree with you that they’re stupid.
“I think people became indifferent very fast…When things go on for years…In the beginning they were just camps, that these camps would become death camps…wasn’t known in the beginning” - Albrecht Becker, Holocaust survivor, From the documentary Paragraph 175
They actually weren't death camps at first, Becker is right. There was a slow evolution towards that end. The camp system was intended as a harsher alternative to the traditional German prison system. When they started to morph into mass killings, the first trial balloons were forced sterilizations, then the medical euthanasia program with the claim "life unworthy of life". Einsatzgruppen following the invading troops in the old Soviet Union shooting the commissars and Jews, the millions of Russian POW mass murders and finally the mass killings in the East in dedicated death camps.
Migod, somebody here actually reads history. Bravo HBI.
I am fascinated by the Reichstag fire. That was a month after Hitler took office as Chancellor, and we know he was absolutely convinced it was a communist insurrection. (We have the transcripts, is how we know. He was a very upset man that night, watching that great fire roaring to the heavens.)
However, it wasn't. I'm no fan of the communists in the German parliament or anywhere else, but they had nothing to do with it. It was exactly the person a bumpteen Germans reported seeing break in through a window at the time, a Dutch retarded man. He bought a lot of those wax firestarters you can still buy and put one on several seats, and (only) one caught and the building went up bigtime.
Hitler immediately passed his Emergency Declaration and tried very, very hard to get this guy on trial to say he was working with lots of commies, but the guy was pretty impaired and the court stopped all that --- they still could. They executed the Dutchman, but that was all. After that, things ---------- developed. May 10 was the burning of books by German students all over Germany, and then there was the Night of the Long Knives.
Marinus van der Lubbe was an Oswald-like figure. Way too fricking obvious. I mean Oswald had actually defected to the Soviet Union and then come home. van der Lubbe was a card-carrying Communist party member, admittedly in the Netherlands. He apparently wanted to emigrate to the USSR from Germany but couldn't afford the ticket(s). If anything i'd call him low IQ, not necessarily retarded, after all, he was able to hold jobs and did some communist organizing, not things you'd expect from an actual below-60 person. He'd been held for arson in the Netherlands apparently, also. So he was experienced at setting fires.
In both cases, it's hard to imagine them thinking up their roles on their own. When Oswald said "i'm a patsy", I actually believe him. Van der Lubbe himself was executed so we can't ask him, and I don't believe any useful records have survived to describe some kind of intelligence operation that resulted in him setting the fire. Most people have surmised that this was the case, nonetheless.
Weird that fewer people feel the same way about Oswald and the Kennedy assassination. Incidentally, Oswald was no rocket scientist either.
Hitler's Enabling Act and such were preplanned events, that much is certain, and I believe there's some support in Mein Kampf for precisely this kind of behavior. For world beaters, the Nazis were really okay with telegraphing their modus operandi.
One of my degrees is in the subject (history). Its main impact was on understanding research and classifying sources. I'm thankful for that. Things like primary/secondary/tertiary sources and the whole concept of living vs dead knowledge encapsulated in the "sasha and zamani" concept. Seems obvious in retrospect but college made it clear.
You seem to have read very different sources than I did on van der Lubbe. I have followed the Reichstag fire quite closely, and a friend from his village in Holland gave a lot of information on him to the court: van der Lubbe was on state support because he was certainly retarded, and he asked this friend to forward the money to him when he made it to Germany. He took off on odd quests: in one such he decided to hike from the Netherlands to China (not strong on geography) but got tired of it in the Austrian mountains and turned back. He was indeed a card-carrying communist, but it seems to have been a sort of social promotion, because he went to a communist hall the day of the fire and talked up revolution; the men there seem to have been embarrassed by his obvious retardation and didn't have anything to say to him. He didn't have a job during any of this time; he was pretty impaired. But he did like to set fires, and wow, did he set one.
As for van der Lubbe's our-time compatriots, I would say the Crooks kid, in his low-level job, is more of a match than Oswald. I have been saying right along that the Ryan Rouche guy is so much like Oswald that they are cut out of the same bolt of cloth. Guys practically with a sign hanging on them, "hire me to shoot someone important." Travelling to foreign countries promoting wild and unsophisticated political ideas, ready to be co-opted by any spy that came along. Van der Lubbe was seen breaking in (by himself) by so many Germans who called police and reported it that it's ridiculous; and a policeman did go in after him, but the fire was started by then.
As to whether Hitler preplanned the Emergency Declaration (one-man rule by him) before or after the fire is an interesting question I never considered; I see you think it was preplanned to meet any big crisis. It's possible, but I've never seen that proposed anywhere else. Hitler said the fire was the beginning of a communist insurrection and most of the communists in the parliament lit out for Paris, sensibly. And then he took over. But for a good year anyway the court system and other systems remained intact: a sort of societal friction. Hitler was never able to convict the communists he put on trial along with van der Lubbe because they simply didn't do anything, and the courts were still in control then. They kept at van der Lubbe to say he had a whole conspiracy with him, but he was very confused by all this and eventually stopped talking altogether.
Yeah if you take xenophobia out of it it becomes clear that the border is a record-keeping problem, not a social problem. The problem isn't that the people are coming in, the problem is that they are being given a really legally dubious status. ("Illegal" is not quite the right word for somebody awaiting an asylum hearing, but they often technically do not have the right to work.) The immigration of the last three years has been great for our economy - it's just something that only gets discussed in academic circles because the press is too beholden to political narratives.
Although "population growth is good for your economy" seems like something people shouldn't need to be reminded of, people just can't get past the x-word when so much paranoia is being whipped up in hostile media, that doesn't tell them things like "immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans" or "immigrants use fewer drugs than Americans" or "immigrants work more hours than Americans." Instead they focus on anecdotal instances of "migrant crime" - as if O.J. Simpson means we should all fear running backs.
I don't want to tell people who are concerned with the "preservation of our culture" or whatever that they're just "being racist;" I certainly think it's more complicated than that. But I think if you compare this to previous waves of immigration there isn't really much different versus how people reacted to Italians or Irish or Germans.
"I don't want to tell people who are concerned with the "preservation of our culture" or whatever that they're just "being racist"
So would you be okay with our country turning into the Venezuelan gang culture taking over apartment complexes in Colorado and New York City? With the Honduran gang culture taking over high schools? With the Mexican drug cartels now running all of Mexico running America too?
I'd rather vote for Trump and work with him to clean this up.
Not every policy disagreement is an ism, even when you find one word that may tie to an ism. This knee-jerk stuff is so so old.
I've given plenty of examples in this thread about Trump's language that underlies his policy. It parallels racist ideas and language of the past and present, if not outright uses it.
Yes there are reasonable ways to have a discussion about immigration policy. Starting from "immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country" is not how you do it. Blame Trump, not me.
Prior to the media explosion over it, how many people could tell you the poisoning the blood example? And, once you answer that earnestly, what makes you think then that Trump did? This is precisely my point.
Of course he exaggerates. But everyone knows that about him as does he. When everyone is on the secret, it’s not a secret.
So if he's not a racist or intentionally using racist language, he's just ignorant? Uh, I mean I guess.
Language about poisoning the blood, poisoning the bloodline, impure blood, etc. have been racist and antisemitic tropes...forever. I'd expect someone who wanted to be president could avoid historically hateful language, it's not asking for much lol.
Guess you’ve had a disappointing series of Presidents then given all of their past comments and support… from the bright and clean Presidents who sat in pews of Rev Wright. You can keep going backward down the list for some time. I actually don’t assume the worst each. That’s just me.
If you choose to ignore what Trump says and where that sort of language comes from, that's on you. Feel free to be glib about it, but the ignorance and denial is your choice.
Nate — your article says Biden “appointed her to lead the response on the Southwestern border”, but links to an article saying she was appointed to work with Central American governments to help alleviate the underlying conditions leading to migration. Those are two different things. The way your article phrases it is misleading. She was not, from what I can tell, ever appointed to lead oversight of the actual border.
Yep, the common Democratic party response to this talking point is "no, she was appointed to work with Central American governments, not the border itself", and that response is... completely accurate. But these issues are closely related enough to make even a person like Nate make the mistake... so that's easily good enough for Republicans as a talking point.
I came here to say this. No clue why Nate would phrase it that way when quoting an article that says something very different. Not a good look.
Yeah.
This article reads like early Breitbart stuff that I thought was interesting for this very reason.
They would write up radical right wing material and link to "supporting" evidence that actually disproved the point.
Then their comment section would flood with people who clearly had not clicked on the links, but wanted to rabidly support the tone and conclusions in the article.
Interesting to remember that and see the dialogue under this article.
“This article reads like Breitbart”
Bro this is why no one takes your democratic drivel seriously. It’s so disconnected from reality that you can’t even admit when your own shit smells.
You probably don't even notice that you are one of the people who doesn't know how to click on links.
We know how to click links: we just never bother.
We know it's all Dem party propaganda, no use wasting time on that.
Of course - all primary source material is propaganda.
No, just Dem political links are propaganda.
lol bro really just proved my point and STILL doesn’t understand why he’s wrong
It’s like, you couldn’t even write this and have people believe it
Remember, Election Day is the 7th. Make sure you show up that day.
The 90's called an they want their frat party flunk out slang back.
Nate is in the bag for Trump this election. Probably too much time with Peter Thiel. His statistics still do seem mostly accurate.
Nate, I'm with you on the border and the economy. This has been a huge liability for Democrats since 2020 and Biden could have done something about it much sooner. It was such a political loser (not to mention creating an image of chaos and lack of control around his presidency) that why it wasn't addressed baffles me. The proposed immigration bill that was sunk by Trump was far too late, and besides, if Democrats really believed that people would blame Trump for blowing it up, they should be removed of their duties. The average voter doesn't pay attention to who blocks what bill in Congress.
What frustrates me is the disconnect between inflation and illegal or legal immigration. You don't like inflation, fine. But deport millions of essential workers and see what happens. A friend of mine who owns a roofing company said he'll lose at least 50% of his team if Trump gets his way. That's 50% fewer projects he can take on. These are good paying jobs that not a single white man will do. Let's face it: getting on a 110 degree roof and working 12 hour days, 6 days a week for $1,500 a week: the Trump voter isn't doing that job.
A friend who owns a painting company in a HCOL area with few immigrants constantly is struggling to staff. He doesn't have immigrants willing to work hard nearby, so he has to rely on locals. 75% can't even pass the drug screen, and most of the other 25% just stop showing up to work at some point. $30/hour is a good rate but it simply doesn't matter. Nobody wants to be a painter.
The thought that Americans want to do these jobs is fantasy. What they want is $50/hour to stay home and play video games. They'll bitch about inflation and when it goes through the roof due to deportations and tariffs, they'll double down on trans rights. Heck, why not blame trans athletes for future inflation while we're at it? Logically it makes as much sense as complaining about inflation on one hand and saying we should blow up our food and construction supply chain. Oh, and add a 20% tax on everything for good measure.
It's funny that if you inserted the word "immigrants" into your criticisms of Americans, you'd be called racist up and down this board (for some strange reason; "immigrant" isn't a race).
Are there cons to deporting illegal aliens and restricting legal immigration? Certainly and contributing to inflation is one. But you are also ignoring the benefits including increased wages, lower housing costs, lower medical costs, less strain on educational resources, etc etc.
There are other ways to tackle inflation that don't involve straining the rest of our system and degrading our social fabric.
I mean... would you say that "American" has racial connotations in the same way "illegal immigrant" does? I guess it's beside the point.
I think this downplays the impact on local economies. If I take Trump's number that there are 15-16M illegal immigrants in the country, and that his goal is to deport them, we're talking about a 5% decrease in the population. This is a demographic-level catastrophe. Sure, housing prices will go down... in just the same way they've gone down across the Midwest in response to the opioid crisis. This is not a good situation, because (among other issues) tanking property values will cause Americans who have invested in homes (me for one) to lose my investment.
For many of these 15-16M, they are the parent of one or more young American citizens. So now you're talking about breaking up families, and turning (probably) millions of 2-parent households into 1-parent or 0-parent households. This is not me asking for empathy for these young people: any person who has looked at this kind of thing can tell you that poor 1-parent and 0-parent kids are going to have, statistically, many more problems integrating into our society and being productive.
Border security and deportation of violent offenders is more than defensible. But large-scale deportation of non-violent illegal immigrants (and I suspect this is the strong majority) seems to me to be an... obviously terrible idea.
This is not to mention the cost of the deportation itself. This is going to take a large-scale expansion of domestic law enforcement capability.
I think Trump's proposal for large-scale deportation is a request to pay the government to expand now, so that you can be robbed by negative economic consequences down the line.
I too am a homeowner, but it's insane to put up a loss in equity as comparable to people struggling to get a house in the first place. Homeowners can't wall themselves into a perpetual value increasing proposition based off government fiat. Home prices should be subject to normal supply and demand like any other commodity. Right now the government has worked not only to artificially restrict supply but to artificially increase demand through the importation of millions of illegal aliens.
You can throw around "demographic-level catastrophe" all you want to try and scare people but that's all it is: fear mongering. We have had demographic leaps and recesses of comparable size before. We're experiencing it right now with mass migration. Why aren't you complaining about the "demographic-level catastrophe" that millions of illegal aliens represent?
As for the mechanics of deportation: it sounds like we agree on law enforcement physically removing violent illegal aliens. They should also deport violent legal residents. After that we don't need a massive law enforcement effort. Romney was ridiculed for this but he was right about self deportation. You remove the incentives for people to stay here and they will go back. So let's ensure employers can't hire illegal aliens, schools can't educate them, welfare services don't go to them, and we end the ludicrous anchor baby portion of birthright citizenship and they will leave of their own accord. Nobody is separating families. The children will leave with their parents of course. Their parents are responsible for them after all.
I'm not claiming that homeowners should be guaranteed increasing home value. You are advocating for a position that will likely decrease the net worth of millions of homeowners. The government is not importing illegal immigrants, it's just not doing enough to enforce the border.
Yes, I'm fear mongering. And what I'm selling is a legitimate fear, not a phobia: this will cause a demographic catastrophe. The last time we had anything remotely similar to the current (slow) population increase, it was the Great Depression. We're in a comparatively much healthier economy, particularly since recovery from the recession. So this time, the slow population increase has to do with other factors. If we kick out 5% of the population, we will jeopardize that healthy economy and put ourselves in a much worse position.
I'm not complaining about the "demographic-level catastrophe that millions of illegal aliens represent" (also fear mongering, this time w/o basis) because they aren't causing a catastrophe. Young and hardworking people are good for our economy. Because of people like this, the US population (unlike virtually every other developed country) will continue to have a growing population. This is arguably the biggest advantage the US economy has in the mid-to-long-term.
"So let's ensure employers can't hire illegal aliens, schools can't educate them, welfare services don't go to them"
...requiring a large-scale expansion of government to ensure compliance of businesses, schools, etc. It's expensive, and the result of this expense is emptying neighborhoods and disrupting local economies. And this policy will impact the most criminal part of the illegal immigrant population the least, and it will drive many of the more productive members of that population into more marginal, and perhaps criminal, existences.
"anchor baby portion of birthright citizenship"
Unless you are removing the birthright citizenship of babies already born and deporting them too, you're still creating those 0 and 1-parent households. And these numbers will almost certainly be in the millions.
"The children will leave with their parents of course. Their parents are responsible for them after all."
Woah... this is far and away the least defensible thing you said. How common is this belief? This isn't about policy, it's about a misunderstanding of who these people are, and what the problem we're confronting even is. If those children have any relatives, or friends of parents, who are legal, their parents will often leave their children behind. For those who don't have relatives or close friends, the parents may still leave them behind and they'll end up in the foster system. What we're talking about here is why they made the journey in the first place. The reason it's tempting to believe that all the parents will take their children is because that makes the problem seemingly more tractable for simple solutions like "deport them all". We really are talking about pushing huge numbers of young American citizens to the margins here.
Yes homeowners (including me) will lose equity. I refer back to my prior point. You didn't actually address it.
Mass migration has priced millions out of the housing market, increased medical costs, damaged social cohesion, introduced cartel violence, started a fentanyl crisis, strained educational resources, and depressed wages. That IS catastrophic!
"...requiring a large-scale expansion of government to ensure compliance of businesses, schools, etc. "
Don't shift the goal posts. I was addressing your claim that this would require a "large-scale expansion of domestic law enforcement capability."
"And this policy will impact the most criminal part of the illegal immigrant population the least"
Please actually address my points instead of putting words in my mouth. I never said that those policies were intended to impact the criminal element...
"Woah... this is far and away the least defensible thing you said. How common is this belief?"
You mean the belief that parents should be responsible for their children? I would hope that's pretty common. It's certainly the most defensible part of my comment.
"For those who don't have relatives or close friends, the parents may still leave them behind and they'll end up in the foster system. "
Wow they certainly aren't sending their best are they? Tell me again why we want people who would be so quick to abandon their children here? I will reiterate: parents should be responsible for their own children. If you think illegal aliens are different that speaks volumes about how you view them. I on the other hand will hold them to the same standard I would hold anybody else.
Jeff saying, "you'd be called racist up and down this board"
The really important thing is not to care about being called racist. They call everyone racist all the time. It doesn't matter anymore.
Care about saying what you need to say. That's what's important.
Well sure but I think it's still worthwhile to point out the double standard. It may not have any meaning but the left still uses it as a weapon and if me pointing out the hypocrisy of it's use has some chance of waking up somebody on the left to this, I think that's still worthwhile.
Pulled forward all my major expenses for next four years.
May I ask why?
If Trump gets in then costs are going to go up and labor will get more expensive. If democrats win, then interest rates will come down, costs will go up.
Among Progressives that I know from some years ago before COVID, it was hoped that easier immigration and grace for border crossings would eventually benefit the Democratic Party through a (supposedly planned bill to be passed in the future by a liberal-dominated Congress) accelerated process that would eventually grant Green Card status to DACA recipients and their families... eventually granting them the Right to Vote.
They also saw anyone desperate enough to cross the border illegally as someone in need of help and felt that the United States could be that "knight in shining armor" for them.
What our country's liberals did not expect was for those migrants to not only strain local community resources, but that some of the ones that did gain the right to vote... would be voting for Conservatives. It turns out that Catholicism is quite popular in South America and a significant number of Latinos are socially conservative as a result.
So, this became a lose-lose situation for the Democrats: Double down on border enforcement and anger their Progressive base for turning away "desperate migrants" or smooth out the process for asylum... and, shockingly, create a burden on US cities that most center-left voters were not aware of until recently, especially after that migrant bussing stunt by TX Governor Abbott.
From what I've been reading lately, Progressives are crestfallen on immigration now because their dream of having a country that represents all humanity with the Democratic Party leading the way has bitten them in the ass in multiple ways that they just did not predict. Turns out USA and our country's wealthiest cities don't have as much resources as we thought to help these migrants... And that the male children born from these migrants over the past couple of decades that are now the age of the majority would want to vote for Trump.
Really need to understand demography. We have a very small group of kids now reaching the age of 18. We have a very large group of adults leaving the work force and at the end of their lives. We have a lower fertility rate than ever. We have relied on immigration the entire history of this country and it has served us well. Most of these immigrants were fleeing places where there was constrictions on freedoms and violence in the streets. Our current problems with immigration is one of management and as such could be solved pretty easily if we, as a country, had leadership that wanted to instead of using it as political football.
Exactly! It's amazing to see liberals running cover for corporate greed. You remove all the excess labor nobody except corporations asked for and the American worker gets much more negotiating leverage.
So here is the thing for me, a lot of people, even moderates voted for Biden because they thought he was going to be a moderate maybe a little left leaning and that his border stuff was mostly meat for his base.
Well in 4 years the border is unmanageable and the Democrats have refused to take responsibility, they have refused to reverse course. Biden could have solved it in year 2 with executive orders and then worked on a bill.
The broad economy isn't all that great and I think you need to paint the economy in the inflationary light. Okay the economy is great and inflation is down, but the inflation rate is down. Everything is still more expensive.
You can't truthfully say the Biden administration has refused to reverse course. Border apprehensions in September were the lowest they've been during his presidency after a steady decline throughout 2024, thanks largely to a series of executive orders which restrict the ability of migrants to claim asylum. You can absolutely criticize how long it took them to get to that point, but it's just flat out false to say they've done nothing
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters
I agree, they've done something about it. The fact that it took till 2 months before the end of an election cycle to manifest an action that anyone could have told them in 2022 was required...that speaks to bad governance. Obama would have done quite a bit better, for instance. "Asleep at the wheel" for a significant part of this term is pretty much what I think.
I think it speaks more to ideology than bad governance. They only did it begrudgingly, after the fact at the last possible moment - quite possibly with the intention of rolling back those changes in the event of a Democratic victory - because they have never acknowledged the problem because their ideology won’t permit it and their party is completely captive to the extremists.
That's a weakness on their part, an inability to govern effectively because of captivity to extremists.
Looking back Harris made a deadly mistake in keeping so many Biden acolytes on and O’Malley Dillion to run her campaign. Harris failed to immediately differentiate herself from a very unpopular president who still acts like a petulant child who would have won reelection. If Biden’s presidency was so successful how come Harris is not campaigning with him or even barely mentioning his name? Harris’ campaign until recently was scripted which was Biden’s strategy only Harris did it better. The campaign has turned into a bummer.
This just underscores that the Democrats never got the message on immigration because they didn’t want to. Notably, if the US had Canada’s immigration system, it would be less of an issue too. (Favoring more highly skilled/educated immigrants.). The winning formula would’ve been: Biden withdraws in early 2023, the Dems have a primary contest, they pick a moderate governor from a swing state as their candidate who isn’t constrained by Biden’s legacy. All hypothetical, all unprovable, but I’d guess that would’ve worked better than this. Shapiro 2028, maybe?
Inflation was a doozie. Notice how the main players for 2028, on both sides, are sitting this out.
When the big checks starting coming out during COVID, this was a foregone conclusion. I knew it at the time. The recovery has been less painful than I anticipated, actually, but still painful. What the economy looks like in 2028, who knows.
I was kind of shocked to learn that for all the pro-immigration rhetoric out of the left, there actually hasn't been a strong push to bring in top level foreign talent. You can be a foreign student graduating with an advanced degree from one of the US' most prestigious universities, and not only do we not actively recruit you to stay, most of the time there isn't even a pathway to stay if they want to, they're forced to go back home. It really demonstrates to me how so much of politics really is selfishly personal, the elite class who run things right now discourage immigration that will compete with them, but happily open the borders to people who can be employed at sub-minimum wage, and attempt to shut down the federal enforcement organizations that would catch and punish the companies that do so.
From a progressive standpoint, the open borders should be a moral and ethical problem. They should be standing at the border protesting. 1) enabling people to try to kill themselves crossing the border and 2) stealing top talent/rich from developing countries to mow lawns (you’ve got to have money to pay the smugglers). I’m sure they could find some pregnant mother who died or a neurosurgeon. The pro immigration policy doesn’t make sense!
The immigration thing runs square into the declining birth rate issue here in the US. The West in general is signing its own death warrant by having births be below replacement rate. Immigration can only help for a short while, but those who think about such things want as much as possible to stave off the crisis. Eventually the source nations for emigration will have the same issues we do with replacement rate.
Since our retirement system is essentially a Ponzi scheme, inadequately sized future generations will remain an issue until that changes, which it won't. Not having enough people is like inviting some more populous country to assimilate you, whether via economic dependency or actual political assimilation.
So policy should be geared towards raising kids. $0 cost for giving birth. Good maternity paid by state. Free preschool. Expensive and I’m sure even more could be done.
I would be for all that. I think it's been tried and it didn't move the needle much. But that's no reason not to try again. The fundamental issue is that having a family has close to zero long term economic benefit for non-agricultural households. Giving real thought to that might offer a solution.
Wombs that were outside of the mother, technological would solve a lot of issues (abortion being one, giving birth another). Better fostering systems and make it easier to adopt. Couple this with better financial and respite supports would help solve this issue.
I wish both parties would have done this honestly.
If we want a new way forward then you can't be apart of either administration on a federal level.
ranking the economy over democracy. I think i’ve seen this one before
lol what a biased, straw man take! I hope you cure whatever’s wrong with you, my friend <3
i literally just described the poll dumb dumb: economy is over democracy. Do you have bad eyesight? You shouldn’t use words you don’t understand like “strawman”
It's not biased it's the truth. Those numbers and the fact that a man who tried to overthrow his own government after losing an election will get over 80 million votes to return to power shows that many Americans would happily trade democracy for cheaper gas.
It is a sign of a society in severe decline that such a huge proportion of the population wishes to vote primarily to a) murder their own babies and b) import millions of low-grade foreigners to replace them. Can this decline be reversed if that faction loses in November? Let us all hope so.
"low-grade foreigners"
What do you mean by this?
They're not sending their best.
How so?
The idea is supposed to be that low-skilled migrants would come in and be willing to be trained. We are a country of opportunity. It should be our duty to make sure every migrant that comes here has a chance to prove themselves. We shouldn't be a country "only" for the well-resourced citizens of the world... Though it looks like I'm in the minority on that view these days.
Everybody being charged with murder and rape is running for the northern border so they can do all that some more up here.
Who is they? What does sending entail?
I'm pretty sure he's referring to the fact that most of them believe Christopher Columbus did nothing wrong, refuse to admit bubble tea is cultural appropriation, and that they have not listed their pronouns on their Twitter bios. *shudder*
What a bizarre comment. I'll have what you're smoking
You state that Harris was appointed "to lead the response on the Southwestern border," while linking to an article about how she was appointed to work with Central America on the causes of immigration. One is a cause-based position, one is an at-home effect-based position. Those are two very different responsibilities.
Okay and she still failed because border crossings didn't go down.
They did from those countries.
Oh joy, 3 less people
Wrong.
Yeah, I'm not sure why Dems are taking such comfort in, "No, no, the cure attempted by Joe Biden was so incredibly stupid that even though Kamala was in charge of it, she never even got around to addressing the actual problem, she was wasting her time doing lots of other idiotic stuff, that also failed spectacularly to solve anything." Maybe technically true, but not exactly a strong argument for why people should think she has the competency to be President.
They could have kept Trump's policies, then worked with those countries and passed a bill.
Instead they reversed Trump's policies, crossings exploded, they gaslight the american public and the border patrol, and then proposal a phony bill 3.5 years later.
I believe Harris' recent narrative calling Trump Hitleresque will affect her 6.7% lead in the Democracy-Polarization category. This narrative is not going to be helpful to her campaign, and could send many voters Trump's way.
Sometimes messages are set up Incase of a loss. You set the narrative and then when the camps are created you play it again and again. We warned you. He’s putting them in a concentration camp. Trumps policies are bold. They’re going to get a tough reaction. Not looking forward to that.!
I need to see the polling before I believe Trump sending the cast of The View to a re-education camp hurts him with the voters.
Probably won't hurt him at all ----- remember, Hillary quite literally SAID this summer that she wanted to put most of us, conservatives, in a re-education camp. Sweet. That woman has really lost it.
Who?
Hillary. She seems to have been traumatized, and blames Comey mostly. She may be right.
Didn’t know we still bothered about past election candidates from almost a decade. Had totally forgotten about her.
Given it didn’t take much to hurt him in 2020. Imagine his policies on steroids and the backlash on even more steroids. It’ll be worse than you imagine.
I'm worried most Americans aren't going to really care if its only asylum seekers and undocumented people being detained in those camps.
It may be "legally kosher" to do that, but it doesn't make it morally correct.
Let 'em stay where they belong and not break our laws and sneak in here illegally and no one will put them in any camp. That's all it takes: they should just obey our law.
*Hitlerian I think is the proper diction in this instance.
I think the point of this is a turnout strategy. Nothing positive has worked, so the Harris campaign is now doing "Fear the Orange Man!" They are hoping to charge up fear to get their voters to the polls.
Yes. It’s psychology especially for voters who have motivation issues. It could get out a few thousand which is worth it
The end is near for Harris. You don’t have to like Trump to not want an extension of the last 3.5 years. Things have been the worst in my entire lifetime. Thank God Jimmy Carter gets to see what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did to probably give him a leg up as only the second worst presidency and administration in history at this point. There is no logical reason for voting for Harris or wanting her to win besides “Hate Trump”
Some of us don't like assholes and would rather have the "weak, compromising" candidate as our nation's leader vs. a loudmouthed idiot that thinks foreign policy is transactional.
Damn you’re triggered AF
Ironically, this is all coming at a time in which the economy is roaring and the only thing that could make the economy better is more immigration.
Kamala is going to lose because they created too many jobs and didn't worry too much about hassling foreigners, and then Trump is going to take credit for the best economy in several decades while messing around with counterproductive tariffs.
This is a big worry for me.
Republicans are still eating at the political trough that came from Reagan getting credit for economic growth that came from cyclical change and massive deficit spending.
And here we are again today with a post discussing why Harris could lose while your model shows a pure tossup.
This is my gut, don’t trust my gut, here is another article on why you should trust my gut, in the middle I’ll remind you not to trust my gut, then I’ll get back to telling you why you should probably trust my gut. I really am a fan, so I guess I can take it, but there are reason why she could win as well. He just doesn’t seem interested in writing about them except to say “shrug, I guess it could go this way?”
Here is a usual hint. The first side that starts comparing the other side to nazis typically loses.
The threat to democracy is fine. J6 fair game, but trotting out hillary and saying the MSG rally is like the neo-nazi rally from 39? Come on now.
You can’t deny there’s certainly some overlap. Trump is a right-winger who has risen to power by demonizing a demographic subset that doesn’t have a lot of political power, and has shown tendencies toward authoritarianism. All of those traits described Hitler, obviously. They describe a lot of other demagogues throughout history though. I guess you could say there are some more “niche” bad guys who are better analogies to Trump than Hitler.
Okay so let's compare him to the ones who didn't kill 6 million jews and launch the world into one of the deadliest wars of all time.
The "this side is Hitler" stuff is high school level IQ.
Hitler also lashed out at way more than just Jews.
Hitler also disarmed Germans, controlled the press. He also took an entire beer hall hostage.
You can make all of those arguments I had above and that you have, without invoking a mass murderer.
Actually, this is an interesting thought experiment:
Say you could transport our current situation back to 1932, with Trump being in the position he’s currently in right now, saying the things he does now, etc., with most of all the major events in his saga from the past 9 years happening the same way; with events, people, issues, technology, and other details changed to make them fit what the world was like then but otherwise analogous to their equivalent today. Do you think the press, both home and abroad, would make be making comparisons between the MAGA movement in the U.S. and what was then unfolding in NAZI Germany? Of course there’d be differences noted, but I think there’s a good chance the two situations would be seen as parallel and possibly part of a global trend.
Now what do you think Trump would be saying about Hitler in that universe? Would he have been calling him out as evil? Or do you think he might’ve talked about him the same way he has talked about Putin, Orban, even Kim Jong-Un? Can you honestly tell me Trump and Hitler wouldn’t have seen each other as like-minded?
I am literally in Budapest today and visited the‘Terror’ museum few hours ago. Much of what I saw and heard has eerily similar tone and spirit. Hard not to see the parallels.
Great analogy!
Yes he should stop "praising" them, but the left also goes nuts that he met with Kim Jong-Un. You have to meet with your adversaries.
Yeah the maga movement is exactly like the early nazi party....
Straw-man. I never said that. I’m saying there are parallels. Literally no 2 situations in history are ever exactly alike.
The parallels are very, very weak and our government is much much much better than the Weimar Republic.
Also, many in the Maga movement and many others voting for Trump are tired of wars, proxy wars, etc. The Nazi movement was foaming at the mouth to get into another world conflict.
The Nazis also had the SA and SS since the 20s. The maga/republicans have nothing of the sort. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison in 1924 and explicit called for the extermination of Jews.
It is a lazy argument and lazy to compare your opponents to the vile and evil things Hitler did.
Also, there is only 1 President to ever put people in camps and that was FDR, a man who the democrats never demonize.
I mean, if you just stop at 1932, then it isn’t nearly as extreme a comparison is it. You’re basically saying we should ignore warning signs until something unspeakable actually happens.
Well sure except for Hitler fought during WW1 and called it "the greatest of all experiences," was pissed that the Germans surrendered, in 1923 he held a beer hall captive, etc, etc.
A lot happened way before 1932 and the Weimar Republic was vastly different than the US.
Yes, indeed, because you call anything you don't like a "warning sign" and try to cancel everyone saying it. That is one bad argument you are making: anything you don't like people thinking is a warning sign that Hitler is near.
I've been to that beer hall ---- it's doing fine. I don't THINK he exactly took the beer hall hostage; there was a political meeting there and he took the other side hostage and tried to force them to agree to his demands at gunpoint. He was organizing to march on the government of Munich, and did, too, with some 3,000 brownshirts, but it didn't work out.
Compare all that to the party at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and this is why I am bitter about the Dems calling that a "coup," as if.
I forgot that old saw! That the one who calls Nazi first is the losing side!! Excellent, I remember that meme started decades ago, I'm amazed the Dem campaign didn't think of it.
I have studied WWII extensively but did not know the American Nazis pre-war did a rally in Madison Square Garden --- turns out my husband DID know because he watches the Hitler Channel! Ahhh --- the History Channel, that is. Wives call it the Hitler Channel for good reasons.
Trump has lost more than he has won and threat to democracy has always been the closing argument 🤷♂️