Immigration reform, in any meaningful sense, is probably dead:
In a bad sign for reform, the Republican chairman of the House’s immigration policy committee told a conservative radio host Monday that he opposes a path to citizenship even for young documented people brought to the United States as children, often referred to as DREAMers.
House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) told Hugh Hewitt that he would prioritize giving legal status to children who had been brought to the country illegally, but would stop short of giving them a path to citizenship.
Josh Marshall thinks reform supporters need more cowbell:
So stop pretending that this bill is going to pass and get about the business of explaining to voters who is stopping it from passing or in fact stopping it from even getting a vote. This tends to be something center-left reformers never get. The bill is dead or near dying. Letting this drag on only demoralizes people who think that government can act in the common good because it makes it seem as though the bill is dying of natural causes or some hopeless terminal illness — something tied to the nature of the Congress or the ‘process’ itself.
I agree that Democrats should highlight the issue more, but does it matter? I suspect Latino voters already know the drill on this issue. And no matter what Democrats say, the right-center English-speaking media consensus will be that both sides did it. We may have even see a Bobo-endorsed Burkean incrementalist do-nothing bill.
SectarianSofa
This sucks. Hopefully Ted&Hellen will show up and cheer me up with some incredibly weak trolling attempt.
Baud
There was some talk about a discharge petition on the Senate bill. Haven’t heard if that is still on the table.
MattF
I’m confident that the Spanish-speaking media will be all over this. And also that the usual media all-star team will maybe mention it in passing, because they’re fair and unbiased, as usual.
RaflW
Beat the GOP senseless over this. It’s certainly part of the reason the Republicans can’t even muster a mini-minority of the CA legislature any more.
The xenophobes who want to pull up the ladder now that their families have been American for 2 or 3 or even 10 generations are poison for a prosperous or even functional future. That needs said over and over again.
I do agree with Josh that Dems and liberals are not very good at repeated cudgeling. I think it seems boring or beneath dignity (or just not very intellectual). Tough shit.
The GOP hates Latinos and other immigrants. Lather. Rinse. REPEAT.
piratedan
@RaflW: it’s the modern day version of indentured servitude, you can never get legit even if it’s the only home and culture that you’ve ever known. Sorry about that whole American dream shit we promote, that’s just the advertising ….
Trollhattan
@RaflW:
Sure sets the stage for a Ted Cruz cruise to VICTORAH!
SectarianSofa
Also, Google and their Air Balloons Which Don’t Cure Malaria are dropping their shadows on California:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/googles-project-loon-flying-internet-coming-to-homes-in-california/
Pretty short-sighted. It would make sense to see what an expert on hot air would say about this stuff (‘enjoy your Malaria, Californians!’ I’m guessing). But no such luck in that article.
Just “Google says it uses “complex algorithms” along with wind and solar power to control their movement. The balloons form a mesh network 20 kilometers above the ground, with each balloon communicating with its neighbors and ultimately to ground stations connected to Internet providers.” Yeah, right. Google sucks at Philanthropy!
jamick6000
Maybe it will boost turnout for midterm elections and participation in state and local elections.
(because it makes it clear congress is the issue)
JPL
What can possibly be wrong with giving people work permits and letting them work here for minimum wage and pay taxes. Then if they need health care, they can go home. Leaches all of them.
Hal
But Hispanic voters are favoring Dems overwhelmingly at the polls. Those voters are well aware of who’s responsible for the death of immigration reform.
Also:
So they could stay in the country legally for how long? If there is no limit, but they receive no right as a citizen, what’s the point?
Just Some Fuckhead
I don’t know how JMM turned this into an attack on our steely eyed realists but I am not amused.
SectarianSofa
This lack of progress on immigration reform, along with the voter suppression improvements, really bums me out. Fucking jokers.
PsiFighter37
Latino votes for us >80% in 2016. Bet on it.
Good job, GOP.
Long Tooth
Essentially Marshall is counseling don’t only look forward, but look back, too. Wise counsel. Operator, get me the White House…
askew
@Baud:
There is increased talk about using a discharge petition. That’s what I think we are likely to see after the fight over the debt ceiling.
Jorge Ramos has already stated that the new English channel being targeted at English-speaking Hispanics will be talking about the failure of immigration reform passing and who to blame for it every single day until it passes. It’s going to be a huge deal in the 2014 election if it doesn’t pass.
lamh36
@MattF: I agree that the Spanich speaking media will be all over this, but more need to be done to force the issue to be covered by MSM too. One of the biggest strategic successes to the Civil Rights Movement is that the activist and the movement organizers and such made targeted and strategic decisions to put the atrocities of state sanctioned “riot control” on the front pages and the evening news programs all over the country.
IMO, the fact that there wasn’t any BET or CENTRIC or TVONE or Black twitter or a big syndicated Urban radio presence back then, made it so that the activist HAD to attempt to break into the national media.
So I can totatlly see what Josh Marshall is saying. I’m not saying that it’s all on Hispanic voters to get themselves on MSM, but it is def something that they strategically need to do along with their non-Hispanic media supporters
Chris
I hate conservatives.
This is increasingly my only reaction to all political news. God, I HATE conservatives. I really do.
fka AWS
@SectarianSofa:
You say Philanthropy, I say Opportunity for More Advertising Eyeballs and Data.
Heliopause
This is a double win. First, it’s a good thing that the Border Nazification Act of 2013 is going to die. Second, the GOP will be “blamed” by everybody except the centrist press.
Sadly, real immigration reform — you know, something that doesn’t require a decade-plus gauntlet of flaming hoops for the applicants to jump through (and that’s the liberal part of the bill) in addition to all the militarization — will have to wait for a better political environment.
Roger Moore
@Heliopause:
Missing scare quotes around centrist.
James E. Powell
@jamick6000:
Maybe it will boost turnout for midterm elections and participation in state and local elections.
It will if and only if A) the particular district has enough Latino voters to determine who wins and B) the Democratic candidate is willing to be forever branded with the word “amnesty.”
What sucks is that the DCCC will not make this a national issue for fear of generating anti-immigrant opposition from otherwise Democratic-leaning voters.
KG
There’s a distinct thread of “fuck it, government doesn’t work” running through American politics. It doesn’t hurt to remind people, particularly on big issues, who broke it.
Also, there’s a lot of second or third generation people that would probably be offended by the GOP’s stance (it’s an easy sell, “this is what they really think of your grandparents/parents/aunts/uncles/cousins”). The thing is, a lot of these second generation, and most of the third generation don’t necessarily speak the ancestral language. On top of that, this doesn’t just affect people of Hispanic descent.
mclaren
Gimme a break. This whole immigration reform discussion is ridiculous. American businesses in the southwestern united states desperately need below-minimum-wage illegal immigrants to survive, but the U.S. population in the southwestern states hates having to rub elbows with people who look and speak differently than John Q. Whitebread Public.
So the immigration issue will never be “solved.” There will never be any kind of so-called reform. The bracero program of the 1940s and 1950s did exactly the same thing we’re doing today: put a fig leaf over the mass exploitation of illegal immigrants by U.S. businesses, together with intermittant ruthless enforcement of deportation laws whenever the public outcry becomes too large.
Meanwhile, Spanish language radio stations in HelL.A. will continue to be the biggest and most profitable, Spanish-language K-12 bilingual education throughout the American southwest will continue to dominate the school systems, and hordes of nameless illegals will continue to gather silently on side roads throughout CA and NV and AZ and NM to be picked up by white contractors driving pickup trucks at 6:00 am to ferry ’em to construction sites and landscaping jobs and painting jobs throughout the southwest.
Even discussing any kind of immigration “reform” is absurd. Not gonna happen. Americans will continue to exploit and abuse illegal Mexican and central American workers while continuing to intermittantly deport and demonize them, and every single senator and congressman who votes for these kind of anti-illegal-immigrant laws has at least two different central American nannies taking care of their children for less than minimum wage.
Like AI and nuclear fusion and ending the endless Global War on Terror, immigration reform is a pipe dream and a piece of absurdist kabuki theater. Just stop it.
James E. Powell
@RaflW:
I do agree with Josh that Dems and liberals are not very good at repeated cudgeling. I think it seems boring or beneath dignity (or just not very intellectual).
RaflW Johnson is right that Josh is right!
There is an unfortunate lack of street fighters on the Democratic team. The few who show up from time to time are usually treated like drunken relatives at the family picnic. The Democratic big shots have to “distance themselves” whereas the Republicans give such people support and more air time.
Also too, we have been bemoaning this since at least 1998.
JPL
@mclaren: Obviously, you don’t believe in the dreamers.
cathyx
Why would the republicans want immigration reform? To make permanent citizens of a large group of people who will vote for the democrats?
cathyx
@JPL: How do you get that out of what he wrote?
piratedan
@JPL: and he knows nothing at all about how it isn’t just the southwest that uses cheap labor in Agriculture… see the Georgia peanut crop rotting in the fields last year
Schlemizel
The GOP wasn’t going to get a significant percentage of the LAtino vote anyway. This will however put them in good stead with their racist base helping their turn out. They are playing the short game hard because the only way they can win the long game is if they can game the system sufficiently to complete the destruction of America. Given the voting restrictions they have already put in place and adding the ones they have in the works they may just pull it off.
Getting 85% of the Latino vote won’t matter is they can drive the total number of Latino voters down 20-25%. Its about all they have left.
Doug Milhous J
@KG:
Good point.
raven
@piratedan: Don’t have to worry about this year, it’s underwater.
PeakVT
@cathyx: To not piss off both Latinos who are already citizens and those who might become citizens in the future. (At least that’s why they should want it.) There’s some corporate goodies in the bill as well.
Phil Perspective
@askew: Can you have a discharge petition in the Senate? I thought that it’s something Pelosi bashes Orange Julius over the head with.
SectarianSofa
@fka AWS:
I should clarify — Bill Gates says they suck at Philanthropy. To snarkily rewordify, from some-days-ago mistermix thread about balloons.
danielx
What other kind of bill would be Bobo-endorsed?
? Martin
@mclaren:
Uh huh.
The overwhelming majority of the population in the ‘southwestern united states’ in in California where we’ve had a DREAM act for 2 years now and where immigration reform has overwhelming support from the public.
So, everything you said is simply bullshit.
Patricia Kayden
“the right-center English-speaking media consensus will be that both sides did it.”
How? What argument can be made that both sides killed immigration reform? It’s been pretty obvious which party has been against immigration reform from the get go. The T’Baggers have been quite loud in their opposition.
raven
@? Martin: That’s a switch!
SectarianSofa
@? Martin:
Also it’s bullshit because the U.S. population in those states is sometimes actually themselves brown. Fucking racist dumbnut [mclaren]. USAmerican != White American. I guess they could all be self-hating, but, in fact, this is not the case.
And all immigrants are not day-laborers, or poor, etc..
Phil Perspective
@lamh36: IMO, the fact that there wasn’t any BET or CENTRIC or TVONE or Black twitter or a big syndicated Urban radio presence back then, made it so that the activist HAD to attempt to break into the national media.
So you’re saying that 75% of the idea was hoping that “Bull” Connor used the dogs and firehoses? Do you really think bootlickers like David Gregory(aka Fluffyhead) would give a crap today?
Roger Moore
@Schlemizel:
They’ve been getting an electorally significant number of Latino votes, typically around 30%. That’s not great, but it leaves plenty of room to do worse. Dropping to 20% of the Latino vote would cost them more than 1% of the national vote and might well lose their majority in the House. Alienating Latinos as badly as they’ve alienated blacks will make it nearly impossible for them to win at the national level with any plausible level of white support.
JPL
@piratedan: I live in GA so that is something I’m familiar with.
@cathyx: I was being sarcastic because of the dream act. sorry..
also, too.. I have lived in GA since 1986 and I will never, ever, ever enjoy hot boiled peanuts. It’s just wrong…
schrodinger's cat
Carry on, BOP (Bitter Old Party).
fka AWS
@SectarianSofa: I must have missed that one. That said, I don’t trust any of these large corporations when they mouth off about philanthropy, or Bill Gates for that matter. Granted, he’s helped with malaria, but his foundation seems to be working overtime to fuck up the American education system.
jenn
Does anyone here know when the borders locked down? I’m fully aware of the quota laws for folks coming from overseas, but I’ve read plenty about folks moving in between Canada and the US, and Mexico, and so far as I’ve been able to tell, they just took up life in their new country without any official paperwork. It didn’t seem to be an uncommon thing. So far as I can tell, they just became citizens and created families of citizens.
Ted & Hellen
I see BJ is beginning to have some influence…
MikeJ
@Roger Moore:
Bush got 40%. Romney got….
wait for it
wait for it
yes it is the magic percentage even in subsets….
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/11/07/latino-voters-in-the-2012-election/
aimai
@cathyx: These people are absolute morons. The Republicans and McClaren I mean. It doesn’t matter, electorally, whether they bring the 11 million into the voting pool or not. Hispanics are going to take over demographically and through natural birth rates in a very short while. All the Republicans are doing is forcing a previously politically quiescent population to become fully engaged in the political process. I’m very sorry that immigration reform has failed this time round–I never thought the curren crop of Republicans would do anything good legislatively so I’m not surprised. But this is such a pyhhric victory for them. Sure–they’ve spat in the face of future citizens! What a great idea. They’ve staved off the 11 million at the cost of turning the entire rest of the hispanic population against them. Yay?
Comrade Jake
OT, but the new Al-Jazeera America channel appears after about ten minutes of watching to be about a million times better than CNN or MSNBC. It’s really just the facts – no both sides do it “analysis.” Worth checking out.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: I love peanuts boiled in their shells, and I am not even from the south.
askew
@Phil Perspective:
The discharge petition would be in the House to bring the Senate immigration bill to the House floor for a vote. The method for bringing something directly to the floor of the Senate requires 2/3rds of the Senate I believe and was last tried during the Civil Rights era.
SectarianSofa
@fka AWS:
Yep — I allow it is possible that his educational reform stuff doesn’t go flub and fuct, but I am not optimistic.
jenn
@jenn: WW1? (I was referring to stuff I’ve read from the 1800s West.)
JPL
@Comrade Jake: Do you have a link? I’ll have to check and see if roku picked it up.
schrodinger's cat
@aimai: The GOP has managed to piss off other immigrants (not necessarily from Mexico) and citizens of Hispanic origin (like the Puerto Ricans, for example) with their non stop immigrant bashing.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: You probably like grits also. I do like polenta sliced with tomato sauce, though. The problem I have with grits is all that butter and cheese.. yuck..
Anoniminous
@jenn:
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act
SiubhanDuinne
Question for North-of-the-49th Juicers: Speaking of immigration, has anyone read “The Big Shift” (Ibbitson and Bricker)? I’ve not read it yet, but my (Canadian) carpool partner has been talking it up. Before I drop $12 or whatever it is on the ebook, I’d like an informed opinion. (Not to pre-judge, but the little bit my carpool passenger read aloud to me this morning sounded very David Brooksian. I could be quite mistaken.)
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: I have never had grits, your description of them sounds far from appetizing. I will usually try food at least once though, before rejecting it.
MikeJ
@SiubhanDuinne: Excerpt in the National Post.
Coastal elites hate real
Murka!Canduh!Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
Yep. And he needed those votes to win the election. He couldn’t have pulled off 2004 with the same 30% or so of the Latino vote that other Republican presidential candidates have been getting recently. And obviously he needed every vote he could get in 2000 to keep the election close enough to steal.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: Don’t listen to JPL on that topic. Ever have polenta?
Comrade Jake
@JPL: no link, but it’s channel 358 on DirecTV. They just covered a child labor outfit in Bangladesh making clothes for Old Navy. This is a story the US networks wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.
jenn
@Anoniminous: 1894 was a pretty big year, it looks like. That year, the US (at least mostly) closed the loophole at the Canadian border, requiring new overseas immigrants on their way to the US through Canada have to report to immigration authorities. I’ll have to check out some of your sources re impacts on non-new immigrants. Thanks!
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Yes I like polenta and upma ( South Indian version of polenta) in small doses.
cathyx
@aimai: We all know that republicans are morons. But what Mclaren said is true. Immigration reform will not happen because the money is on cheap labor. Dems and repubs in farm districts will not allow it. Despite what working class republicans want, rich white republicans who own businesses based on cheap immigrant labor have more pull with congress than teabaggers.
Keith G
Yes it matters. A significant problem that the Democratic Party has had lately is that it (we) rarely put up a fight. Win or lose, staging a political fight (is there a replacement word for crusade?) is essential to the health and effectiveness of groups of political partisans.
Is there some post baby boom DNC ethos about finding a “third way” and avoiding bare knuckle fights? Because a once feisty political party seems to be now made up of groups who rarely press onward to keep their ideas in the fore and the opposition on their heels.
The media is cynical toward the Democrats in part due to the reluctant of Democrats to follow their lofty words with an all-in commitment.
As whacky as those son-of-a-bitches in the GOP are….when they say they are going to put up a fight, they usually do – and sometime they don’t have to since their craziness inspires deals to be made.
edit
Oh and Hispanic voting numbers will not matter for quite a long time due to voter regs and gerrymandering. So don’t wait passively for that.
raven
@jenn: God, we’ve been watching “The West” and it’s disgusting what we did to people.
Anoniminous
@schrodinger’s cat:
Grits, polenta, and coarsely ground corn meal are all the same thing. The difference is where they are put on a supermarket shelf and how much they cost. In my experience grit run around $3 a pound and found in various places, polenta is in the fancy-assed aisle at around $7 a pound while corn meal is in the baking section and runs about $2.50 a pound.
schrodinger's cat
DougJ@top
I read the TPM article, Goodlatte opposes a special path to citizenship for the Dreamers he wants them to apply for their Green Cards within the existing categories, either EB (employment based) or FB (family based). Unless the Congress increases the total GC quota, this would amount to waits that would decades long, for some GC categories.
So immigration reform is not completely dead but its chances of survival seem slim at the moment.
jenn
@Anoniminous: What brought this to mind is – I wonder how many of the folks bitching mightily about undocumented immigrants had their forebears arrive here in the good ol US of A exactly the same way?!
raven
@Anoniminous: This is Red Mule Grits. Tim and Alice are wonderful folks who stone grind their grain.
JPL
@raven: hah! It’s the same thing without all the extra fat and stuff. BTW, it sounds like the school did all the right things today. I’m waiting for the NRA to say she should have shot the ass instead of talking him down.
schrodinger's cat
@Anoniminous: I get a pound of polenta for $2 in TJ.
raven
@JPL: Yea, looks like he lived right around the corner.
MikeJ
@Anoniminous: And hominy grits and masa have been nixtamalized.
JPL
Since I have gone way off topic, I’ll continue. I do like collard greens but I cook them quickly with a little vinegar and a tad of sugar. It’s not quite the southern way but it works for me.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anoniminous:
Peas and hominy, dude.
raven
@JPL: I use smoked turkey neck with collards, kale and mustards if I’m going the slow cook route. Quick sauteed with vinegar and a little soy is really good. I had a pimento and collards sandwich last week that was great!
taylormattd
Josh Marshall is *always* on board with the hand-wringing, “why don’t democrats message this better?????” routine.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Why would anyone ruin good corn?
Suffern ACE
@schrodinger’s cat: wouldn’t the dreamers be in better position than most for both categories since they are already here? Also, I thought that there were steep curbs on FB in this bill. Essentially find and employer or go home and I don’t care that your brother or uncle vouches for you.
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: I am so excited they’re opening a Trader Joe’s in VT.
piratedan
and nary a mention of Okra…while I do miss KrispyKreme, I don’t miss southern cooking outside of the odd craving for BBQ pork
JPL
@raven: I’ll have to try soy sauce. I’m not a baker so flour and sugar is always in short supply in my house. Thanks…
Anoniminous
@jenn:
a.) You’re welcome
b.) If they are of Nordic or Southern or Central European extraction — practically all of them.
aimai
@schrodinger’s cat: grits are wonderful, if they have enough cheese and butter! They are basically a looser, more granular version of polenta. Polenta you can cook soft or hard, and you can slice it and fry it. I don’t think you can do that with grits.
piratedan
@taylormattd: he could fucking lend a hand by not spending so much time equivocating himself
Mike in NC
So, good news for conservatives?
JPL
@raven: Odd question.. I have probably 100 sq ft of flagstone leftover and lots of stone from when I removed the pond. If you come this way and need any, you are welcome to it. Just let me know..
MikeJ
@aimai:
I throw it on the grill.
taylormattd
@piratedan: There is nothing worse than a lefty blogger/media type who, almost immediately after writing about the wingnut dominated media culture, turns around and calls democrats pussies or maybe just bad at marketing.
Schlemizel
@Roger Moore:
If they can keep people of color from voting in significant numbers its not enough to get 80% + on th Dem side. Thats they only play they have at the moment & they seem to be winning at it so I don’t expect them to change
piratedan
@taylormattd: one of those scary, “hey, here’s an opportunity for me, instead of actually doing something about it, I’ll bitch about the lack of it” moments that keeps him from standing out.
Anoniminous
@raven:
We grind our own corn meal (cost ~ fifty cents) but we do with steel blades. I’m not willing to fork out $500 for a stone grain grinder. And with all the crap the SO has on the kitchen counters there’s no room for one anyway.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ack. I was thinking of our local stores.
@MikeJ:
“nixtamalized”
Also known as “lye.” I grew up being forced to consume lutfisk which is herring or cod preserved in lye. Thanks but no thanks.
@SiubhanDuinne:
Bleech.
@piratedan:
Okra. Double & Triple Bleech
JPL
This is for those who can access the AJC from Mike Luckovich… link Today I had people working in my yard to replace a damaged fence and walked back to make sure they didn’t have someone in the school.. The company is in Gwinnett County so it was unlikely but I had to make sure.
also, too.. the school is the one that someone entered with an ak 47 but fortunately, did not injure anyone.
schrodinger's cat
@Suffern ACE: Many of these categories already have huge backlogs, and your number in the line is determined when your application to immigrate is approved (I-140 for EB and I I-130 for FB) and unless the total number of Green Cards is increased the Dreamers will basically have to wait for a long long time.
Whether a Dreamer has a good case or not depends on the individual case, being already in the US does not matter much for immigration purposes.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Don’t listen to this motley collection of northeasterners and sounders, SC. Make grits with salt and pepper and then serve them under soft fried eggs and beside corned beef hash. Fuckhead wouldn’t tell you wrong.
schrodinger's cat
@beltane: Their frozen fruits and frozen vegetables are a good deal too. I make mango chutney with their frozen mangoes.
JPL
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: So you want some corn with that grease. yummy
schrodinger's cat
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: I will have to try that. These days I have been cooking couscous with eggs and topping it with a little mozzarella.
ETA: How is your kitteh? Speaking of Kitteh, thread needsKitteh Gaga.
Splitting Image
@SiubhanDuinne:
I haven’t read it, but when my mother summarized it for me, the first thing that came to mind was the 2004-era argument that population centres in the Northeast were declining and those in the Sun Belt were expanding, especially Texas, which was expanding the Republican coalition and making it impossible for a Democrat to win a national election, mwahahhahahahah.
I hadn’t thought of Brooks specifically, but, um, yeah. Basically that’s it. I doubt I would pay good money for it, but if I found it in a dollar bin I might skim through it to try to guess which American writers they were cribbing their passages from.
As a historical note, the last time the Conservatives got it in their heads to “supplant the Liberals as Canada’s natural governing party”, they managed to transform the party from a piddly supermajority of 211 seats in 1984 to a glorious rump of two seats in 1993. Since Marx promised that the second time around would be the farce, I’m rather optimistic about the next few elections.
JPL
Is there anyway to stream Al Jazeera America? I was able to watch Al Jazeera with my roku but I can’t find Al Jazeera America.
SectarianSofa
@schrodinger’s cat:
Thing with grits is, if you don’t like how they taste, you keep adding sugar and/or butter. Or, that’s what I used to do. I like them, though.
Kay
This is a good piece on the GOP and Latinos in the states:
It’s long, but this is the basic story:
James E. Powell
@Keith G:
Is there some post baby boom DNC ethos about finding a “third way” and avoiding bare knuckle fights?
It is a post 1960s or post Nixon ethos. The Democrats’ don’t want to be seen as too close to African-Americans, other non-whites, hippies, women, gays/lesbians, environmentalists, labor unions, government employees, and all the other Others identified as enemies of the American Way of Life by the right wingers.
SectarianSofa
@Anoniminous:
steel versus stone ground? Does it make a difference — and is it purely a texture thing?
jenn
@raven: Huh, I wrote you a reply, and it looks like it didn’t go through. Shorter answer: Yep, human history is filled with pretty sucky actions, and we certainly supplied our share to the rolls here in the US, and the West. Our repeated screwing over the Tribes weighs particularly heavily, of course, but man, the exploitation of Chinese immigrant labor is pretty awful, too. Most Americans, I think, are pretty aware of our repeated Treaty breaking with the Tribes, among other atrocities — even if they aren’t overly aware of the details, and really don’t think of the overwhelming scale of that history. The history of Chinese immigrants here in the West is a much more silent one – smaller scale, of course, but terrible, all the same.
JPL
@JPL: okay I just found this good news…not
We have some great news to share – Al Jazeera America is launching August 20th! As a result, this live stream is no longer available in the U.S.
Hal
On grits, when I was living in San Francisco, I had breakfast at the cafeteria of the hospital I was working at one morning. I asked one of the servers if they had grits, and she just looked at me. Ritz? Um, no grits. g-r-i-t-s. She said she didn’t know what that was and I just said OK. I realize it’s SF, but damn lady, you never heard of grits?
Yatsuno
@Splitting Image: I’m pretty psyched about Trudeau. He might just lead the Liberals out of the wilderness yet, though it will unfortunately come at the expense of the NDP. I still think Layton dying is still impacting them, as I haven’t heard much noise from them lately,
Splitting Image
@Splitting Image:
Oh, just to add, I think that their premise about some of our immigrants being “conservative” is true, for different values of conservative. There is plenty of crony capitalism going on in Asia, so they do share some values with the usual suspects when they come over here, but there aren’t a selection of different Chinas and Japans across the Pacific for us to get our immigrants from, so immigrants from across the western Pond don’t vote all that differently than the ones who went to the U.S.
So, yeah, there is some social conservatism, but a lot of it is age-dependent. You won’t find as much homophobia in a group of 20-year old Pakistani-Canadians as you will in a group of 60+ immigrants. The Conservative party holds Muslims in the same estimation as the Republican party does down south, with predictable results. The Conservatives keep thinking Jews will eventually come around and vote for them, and they never do. Americans who look at Canada’s political system will find a lot of familiar ground there.
Kay
So they must know this, and they must know that they have to do more than put up Latino candidates. Yet they aren’t. Instead they’re putting up Latino candidates that Latinos won’t vote for (in higher numbers than they’ll vote for any Republican) in order to guarantee the white GOP base won’t get pissed off on issues.
SectarianSofa
@Yatsuno:
We need a FP post on Canadian politics….
rikyrah
as long as Spanish-language media makes it CLEAR who killed it……and it makes clear the CHOICE for
Latinos
please proceed, GOP
patrick II
@Hal:
They can’t grow up to vote for Democrats if they are not citizens. And that really is the point.
Josie
@schrodinger’s cat:
I have a great grits recipe, with butter, cheese and garlic in it. I guess lots of things would taste good with those three ingredients involved, though.
schrodinger's cat
@Josie: Would you care to share it?
Yatsuno
@SectarianSofa: There are certainly enough Canuckistani Juicers (and a few in the Ass of Canada) who could make that discussion interesting. These things really make me miss my ex and his best friend. Ex was a Con, best friend was a Communist. Even spoke Russian. And Welsh.
raven
@JPL: Aw thanks. We bought 75 truck loads from the former mayor of Athens when we bought our house. We landscaped with it and I moved it all by hand for the renovation. There it sits!
Josie
@schrodinger’s cat: Sure. It will take me a few minutes to type it, so don’t leave the thread. I’ll put it up shortly.
schrodinger's cat
@Josie: Thanks!
Josie
@schrodinger’s cat:
Cheese and Grits
Boil 1 1/2 cups grits in salted 6 cups boiling water for 25 minutes. Stir every now and then.
Gradually add 2 tsp Lawry’s salt and 1/2 tsp garlic powder, or 1-2 cloves garlic minced to 3 eggs, beaten.
Add eggs, 1 1/2 sticks butter, melted, and 1 lb cheddar cheese, grated, to grits.
Pour into 3 quart casserole dish and bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour.
Serve hot.
This is an old southern recipe, written to feed a large group. It can, obviously, be cut down as you wish. You can probably cut down on salt also, which is what i do. Every time I take it to a teacher’s breakfast, people can’t stop eating it.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
No cheese, no sugar.
Christ, shut this monstrosity down.
Bobby Thomson
Speak for yourself, Josh. Unlike TPM, most of us were never so delusional as to think the bill was alive in the first place.
schrodinger's cat
@Josie: What is Lawry’s salt? can I replace it with kosher salt?
Thanks for the recipe.
Mnemosyne
@Josie:
My husband says you can eat anything that has enough butter and garlic in it. That’s how he got through a serving of frogs’ legs.
(I tasted one. It was like a rubber eraser coated with butter and garlic.)
boatboy_srq
@Trollhattan: I read that as “…Ted Cruz cruise to VICTORIA!” Which would be useful if a) BC would take him and b) he hadn’t just renounced his citizenship there.
You know that they won’t win (sorry – just had to go there).
Josie
@schrodinger’s cat:
Lawry’s is a seasoned salt. It has, among other things, salt, paprika, turmeric, onion, garlic and some chemical sounding things. You could just use your own seasoning mix.
@Mnemosyne: I think your husband has a point, although I really like frog legs. The secret is to get them really fresh and cook them quickly at high heat.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Frog legs can be quite delicious, I have had them once, tasted like chicken but more delicate.
Josie
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
The no sugar I can live with; the no cheese is blasphemy.
Gravenstone
@JPL: If your provider had Current TV, that should be the same channel that AJ uses. AJ bought out Current specifically to obtain those broadcast slots.
nineone
Does anyone really take the media seriously anymore? I mean, who the fuck still listens to them unless they have to?
Jane2
@JPL: I live in Canada and love boiled peanuts…and raw peanuts. Neither of which I can get at my northern Safeway.
Jane2
@SiubhanDuinne: I wouldn’t give the book the time of day because it’s written by a Globe and Mail shill. This would be the same Globe and Mail that twenty years ago bemoaned the means testing for Canada Pension Plan, using the example of some guy making 125k a year.
Jane2
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Oy. That is just grits-style wrong.
Jane2
@Yatsuno: Not a chance….he’s the same old same old in an attractive package. The first clue was when he was all for keeping the Senate.
Jane2
@Josie: I swooned…and probably not from heart failure (I hope).
GregB
I think it is time to start trolling rightwing websites demanding that the GOP put Steve King on the 2016 ticket because he’s the only one with the guts to say what has to be said.
Cruz/King 2016!
Omnes Omnibus
Maybe Goodlatte thought the house was crowded.
phein39
@mclaren:
This is a middle ground the GOP is shooting for. A future where workers have no rights whatsoever, and US citizenship ain’t worth a damn. Then, it will be safe to allow immigrants to be legal.
johnny aquitard
@Hal:
That is the point.
Edit: I should’ve read to the end of the comments, others have said same already.
johnny aquitard
@Chris: Been saying that for a while now too.
It’s not that ‘our side lost’ or my views didn’t triumph. It’s the horrible suffering and human grief these dirtbags create for millions of other people so they can…do what, exactly? The superrich add another 100 million to the billions they already can’t consume in their lifetime. But the rest of these selfish pricks, the base?
What do they do it for? To tell themselves they’re still #1? Tell themselves they’ll get to trim three hundred bucks off their taxes? Satisfaction because, like Davis X. Machina said, that Other Family living under the overpass doesn’t have even a curtain rod to roast their pigeon on?
They would drill holes in the bottom of their own life raft if they thought it would allow them to get what they want, or to keep what advantage they think they have, because they firmly believe, for the most part correctly, Those Other people who share that life raft will drown first and then, incorrectly, the water won’t rise any higher.
You can’t convince people who are hostile to the idea of community, to equality, to sharing, and who engage in magical thinking about their own vulnerability that sinking the life raft is a bad idea.
Conservatives. Stupid, selfish, crass, and callous. It’s like the collective id of humanity, exposed, undeflected and unfiltered.
johnny aquitard
@MikeJ:
I’m thinking this means ~80% is the close to the practical max a Dem candidate can get. The other 20% or so would be fools, crazy and/or rightwing cubans. Then again the total number that 80% represents keeps growing.
Stupid fucking goopers. They’ve shit in their own hat and I want to see them wear it. Totally with Josh Marshall. I want to see Dems who will ram that hat down on their heads until the brim is around their ears.
johnny aquitard
@johnny aquitard:
Speaking of conservatives who engage in magical thinking, this just up over at TPM:
Poll: Louisiana GOPers Unsure If Katrina Response Was Obama’s Fault