(I’m putting this together at 6am, before going to bed, in the knowledge that it may be outdated by the time it appears on the front page. Do your worst, Trickster God!)
The Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant framework is an act of staggering cowardice which attempts to hold the #DREAMers hostage to an unmistakable campaign to make America white again. https://t.co/bhrbQd6YX2
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) January 26, 2018
There has been a bipartisan "compromise" on immigration with ***majorities*** in both houses of congress since 2013. The problem is Steve King has a veto. And so here we are.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) January 26, 2018
From the Washington Post, “Lawmakers call on Trump to drop bid for legal immigration cuts”:
Lawmakers in both parties said Sunday that the immigration debate should focus narrowly on efforts to legalize young immigrants known as “dreamers” and beef up border security, suggesting that President Trump’s demands to slash legal immigration levels are likely to sink a deal.
Democrats have voiced fierce opposition to a White House plan, released late last week, that featured a path to citizenship for 1.8 million dreamers in exchange for $25 billion for his border wall and sharp cuts to family immigration visas.
Though Democratic leaders have grudgingly offered wall funding, they have accused the president of leveraging the dreamers as “ransom” to severely constrict legal immigration, calling it a wish list for “anti-immigration hard-liners” and “white supremacists.”
Congress members, including some Republicans, said Sunday that the negotiations have gone too far afield ahead of a March 5 deadline after which 690,000 dreamers in an Obama-era deferred action program could begin to lose their protections from deportation…
Negotiators from both parties said after meeting with Trump at the White House two weeks ago that they had agreed to narrow the talks to four categories — the future of the dreamers, border security, cuts to family immigration and the diversity visa lottery, which Trump wants to eliminate.
Trump’s plan would terminate the ability of U.S. citizens to apply for green cards, awarding permanent legal residence, for their parents and siblings. The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated that the proposal could annually drop the number of green cards by at least 288,000 — 36 percent of the total number last year….
I have offered DACA a wonderful deal, including a doubling in the number of recipients & a twelve year pathway to citizenship, for two reasons: (1) Because the Republicans want to fix a long time terrible problem. (2) To show that Democrats do not want to solve DACA, only use it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2018
Does he think "DACA" is a person? pic.twitter.com/8vDnlpw2jp
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) January 28, 2018
Trump didn’t write this.
A. After his bedtime.
B. He doesn’t do bullet points
C. Too linear & logical
D. He doesn’t care about Republicans. Everything he writes centers not the GIP, but rather, _Donald Trump_. https://t.co/9NH16WjhEs— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 28, 2018
Not to nitpick BUT TRUMP IS THE GUY WHO ENDED DACA. This argument is like killing your parents and begging for mercy because you’re an orphan https://t.co/S0u6hzh0rR
— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) January 28, 2018
$25 billion as ransom for Dreamers with cuts to legal immigration and increases to deportations doesn’t pass the laugh test. #twill #heretostay #chicago #DreamActNow
— Luis V. Gutierrez (@RepGutierrez) January 25, 2018
It would be far cheaper to erect a 50-foot concrete statue of a middle finger and point it towards Latin America. Both a wall and the statue would be equally offensive and equally ineffective and both would express Trump’s deeply held suspicion of Latinos. https://t.co/R8g4iRHzYX
— Luis V. Gutierrez (@RepGutierrez) January 25, 2018
President can't be trusted to keep his word or maintain his position for more than a couple of hours. Every time hardliners inside & outside White House shift his position, we get farther from deal to serve the will of the Am. people: to give Dreamers a way to live here legally. https://t.co/VhrbUfraza
— Luis V. Gutierrez (@RepGutierrez) January 25, 2018
Just a reminder: Trump and his regressive policy are in place because conservatives looked at data predicting the white majority would shrink to a plurality by 2040 and panicked.
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) January 29, 2018
Sab
In response to Nancy Pelosi’s comment re Trump: you can’t make America white again because it never was all that white.
Betty Cracker
Eliminating or severely restricting family reunification as a component of legal immigration is a non-starter, IMO. But I say go ahead and waste $25B on the stupid, racist wall if that could secure a path to citizenship for 1.8M Dreamers. It can always be torn down later. I haven’t studied it closely, but from what I know of the diversity lottery program, perhaps the Dems could strike a deal to replace it with a “skills-based” immigration concept the wingnuts keep yammering about, which to them means “white” while in actuality, “skills-based” immigrants under the current system are a diverse lot.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: The top 3 countries for the skills based categories are India, China and Mexico.
ETA: They don’t care a whit for actual skills based immigrants either. This is their way of not arguing in good faith. Just like when they discuss DACA or the undocumented they keep harping about hundreds of thousands waiting in line.
Mike in DC
What’s truly impressive to me is that the nativists in the GOP are so virulently xenophobic that even offered full funding for the border wall and beefed up staffing for ICE, plus a 40-50% cut in legal immigration, a 10-12 year path to citizenship for less than a fifth of undocumented immigrants is still a bridge too far for them, and they’re likely to block any proposal from even being voted on in the House. It’s a 90-95% complete victory for them, and still unacceptable.
Mathguy
@schrodingers_cat: What, not Norway?!
Sab
@Betty Cracker: Who would want to immigrate here if they can’t bring family? My family has been here since the 17th century. My sister’s in laws came here in the 1980s .
They certainly did chain migration. They brought their elderly parents, who took care of the grandchildren, while the parents pursued careers in academics and medicine. Nobody was free-riding. The family as a whole has paid way more in taxes than the grand-parents ever took from the government.
schrodingers_cat
@Mathguy: FWIW I do know a Danish skills based immigrant!
NotMax
Let’s fire up the time machine viewer to peek in at B-J on August 17, 2015. The evidence was plain 2½ years ago.
But her emails!!!
@schrodingers_cat:
True. Although this leaves a spot for the racist fuckwits to get outmaneuvered by Democrats and the business branch of the GOP. It seems doable to set up a “skills-based” policy that would have essentially no impact on immigration. They could then jointly present a package that offers a path to citizenship for Dreamers, provides border wall money that will never get spent, includes a skill-based admittance system and point out that it’s cruel to prevent an American businessperson or student who goes overseas and marries not to be allowed to naturalize his/her wife or for one of our valuable skilled workers not to be able to bring over their parents to care for them in their old age.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: Precisely. It’ll mean an electrical engineer from India as opposed to a construction laborer from Poland.
schrodingers_cat
@Sab: You have to prove that they can financially support themselves with their own funds or help from you. The process is not easy and takes at least a year, from my anecdata.
cosima
Was waiting to see the doc today, and there was a BBC Radio 2 interview of Piers Gobshite Morgan. They followed that disgusting interview with emails & phone calls from orange fart cloud supporters (in the UK). When I got in to see the doc I told her that if she was planning to take my bp she would need to take into account I had just sat 20 minutes listening to things that raised my bp through the roof. I go to great lengths to remove all possibility of listening to his horrible voice, listening to his supporters idiocies, etc., and it was as bad as I’d thought it would be. Worse. I really don’t understand why anyone gives Piers the platform — he’s vile. Et tu, BBC?
On a positive note, I tried some strange cauliflower-broccoli hybrid (tenderstem cauliflower?) — it looked horrible, but tasted really nice. I will have to eat more of that. If you can find it in your grocery, try it!
But her emails!!!
@schrodingers_cat: I was under the impression that on average the time was more like 5-10 years given the backlog.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: I ate a danish for breakfast this morning!
Note: this is arguably irrelevant and uninteresting.
Sab
My husband’s primary care physician is from India, as is his back surgeon. My brother-in-law’s heart surgeon is from Italy. My sister’s primary care doc is Canadian. My sister’s sister-in-law is a cardiologist from China. Would any of these people be here if they couldn’t bring in family?
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: Pastry not a person, right?
KithKanan
@schrodingers_cat: I know a Swedish skills-based immigrant – my Psychologist (I don’t think anyone has to look much beyond my posts in the past year or so to wonder why I need one *sigh*).
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: my lawye says not to answer that question
Betty Cracker
The bottom line for Republicans is a drastic reduction in legal immigration. Therefore we’ll probably end up at an impasse. Again.
NotMax
FYI.
Mnemosyne
@Sab:
I would love someone to make a nice-looking t-shirt that says something like “Proud Result of Chain Migration.” I wouldn’t be here if my Italian great-grandmother hadn’t packed up the kids (including my grandfather) and followed her husband to America.
Sab
@Steve in the ATL: You got a good zhing in against me the other night, and I was not gracious in defeat. I acknowledge your victory, since even as I was writing my comment I was thinking “this is kind of long”.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Rs were not a monolithic party of xenophobia before T, what happened?
FYI Hatch and Flake have a outlined sensible immigration proposal, which means it will be DOA.
germy
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Given how long it would take to build, we could always zero out funding later before most of it is built.
germy
Chyron HR
@germy:
Progressives: “WTF I hate Puerto Ricans now.”
Gin & Tonic
@germy: Good choice.
Sab
@Mnemosyne: I bet I could get my nephews to wear them. Grandparents from China. Their spouses have grandparents from Poland and Japan. My own kids have grandparents-in-law from Dominican Republic and Czech Republic. We have always been a diverse country. Tammy Duckworth is more typically American than Trump.
schrodingers_cat
@Sab: His mother was an immigrant, and other than Tiffany all his children are anchor babies according to the terminology preferred by the likes of Miller and company. IIRC his father was an anchor baby also too.
Sab
Good point. They claim to be profamily, but they are not. Response to germy
germy
@Gin & Tonic:
I read somewhere that some victims of sexual abuse have been invited as well. I don’t know the details.
@Chyron HR:
If Kirsten runs for pres, I expect a gaggle of “new” commenters with unfamiliar names here to tear her down.
Tokyokie
I know of somebody who emigrated from Japan (a former co-worker of a good friend) after hitting the visa lottery. Back in Japan, she worked at an English-language daily of one of the big Tokyo newspapers, so her English skills would have been pretty good, although with the decline of the newspaper industry, I’m not sure what career path would have been open to her. Anyway, my point is that in order to apply for the lottery, an applicant is going to have to be able to traverse a lot of bureaucratic obstacles, filling out forms that, by and large, will not be in the applicant’s native language. The degree of sophistication required to even enter the lottery (much less deal with the paperwork necessary to follow up on a winning entry) probably means that the winners are, by and large, college graduates. Construction engineers might get here that way, but semi-literate construction workers aren’t going to be able to. But hey, let’s not let reality get in the way of racist conclusions.
The racist grandstanding on this issue really angers me, but then, the spousal unit is from the Philippines, where she earned a DDS degree, so she might qualify for skills-based immigration (not that she’s allowed to sit for the dentistry boards over here.) Can someone tell me what skill Melanoma has the justify her entry into the U.S., other than looking pretty and being willing to fuck horrible rich guys?
japa21
@Sab:
That in itself would be a great t-shirt or bumper sticker.
dean barbour
“We are a nation of laws, and we must enforce our laws. We’re also a nation of immigrants, and we must uphold that tradition, which has strengthened our country in so many ways.”
“These are not contradictory goals. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time. We will fix the problems created by illegal immigration, and we will deliver a system that is secure, orderly, and fair.”
George W. Bush from his address to the nation on immigration in May of 2006, a year before his own party shot down his reform bill. Since then, what we’ve heard from the GOP has been at best disingenuous, at worst flat out repugnant and it’s only getting worse.
NorthLeft12
@Betty Cracker:
I could not agree with this more. Forget about the ramifications of wasting $25B, or the optics of how it insults virtually everyone south of the border, and how it is an anti-American construct of the worst kind. Let Deadbeat Donald, the Republicans, and every white supremacist own this farce from day one.
Remind them who wanted this when the cost goes way over budget, when it collapses on top of a border guard, when it proves to be completely ineffectual, and it stands as a modern day monument to stupidity, waste, and racism. Make them own it….every….freaking….day.
schrodingers_cat
@Tokyokie: Two winners of the diversity lottery in my anecdata were graduate students one in chemistry and the other in food science from Nepal and Mali respectively. Not the worst or worst sent by their governments (another presidential lie).
bemused
@cosima:
Did your doctor take your comment about watching news in waiting rooms raising blood pressure seriously?
The Moar You Know
Just wanted to chime in with an oft-ignored angle on immigration: if nativist whites were so hellbent on keeping America full of white people, they could have promoted policies that would allow young couples to survive securely on one income. Failing that, they could have tried some policies that made it so that both parents wouldn’t have to work just to keep a roof over their heads. Failing that, they could have stepped up with comprehensive daycare programs and improved public schools. They could have made health care cheaper so that people wouldn’t be terrified to take a kid to the doctor. They could have made college cheaper so that people could see a way forward for their families and kids.
They did none of those things, which resulted in white birthrates falling off a cliff, which can only lead anyone capable of sentient thought to determine that the very people whining about immigration didn’t give a flying fuck about the people they supposedly love so much, and are in fact grandstanding. They love immigrants. Cheap labor and an underclass of Unternmenschen to beat on for eternity. Just what the modern Republican prayed for.
Steve in the ATL
@Sab: there’s nothing wrong with a long post—sometimes people have a lot to say, and we don’t get charged by the word to read this blog—but we reserve the right to give posters a hard time about it. In fact, we reserve the right to give posters a hard time about anything or nothing at all! To your credit, you did include paragraph breaks.
One problem with long posts is that they can be difficult to read on a phone, especially for old people such as myself with fading eyesight.
bemused
@Sab:
It would be impossible to track but I wonder how many virulent anti-immigrant folks see doctors that are immigrants.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Trump harnessed the anti-immigrant sentiment that has always been a powerful force in the demographic that votes overwhelmingly for Republicans (i.e., non-urban white people). Republicans like Reagan and the Bushes knew it was there, but they cared about the party’s long-term prospects enough to use open appeals to xenophobia sparingly. Trump only cares about Trump, so it was a no-brainer for him to shout it from the rooftops. That’s my theory, anyway. If I have time later, I’ll expand on that a bit in a post about an extraordinarily racist ad one of the GOP candidates for governor of Florida just dropped today.
Tokyokie
@schrodingers_cat: Like I theorized, college graduates with marketable job skills, not alcoholic day laborers. Not that the right wing can really distinguish between the two.
A few years ago, I had to have triple-bypass surgery. My cardiologist was from Austria, my thoracic surgeon was an Armenian Jew from Tehran. Were it not for immigrants, I’d be dead. The nativists can go fuck themselves.
Fair Economist
@germy:
That will happen to any credible Dem candidate in the top tier.
Sab
@Steve in the ATL: You are more gracious in victory than I am in defeat.
schrodingers_cat
@bemused: In many specialties immigrant doctors make up between 30 to 40 percent of the overall numbers.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@NorthLeft12: I heard someone talking about money for the wall and they said you can put any number in the bill because the amount that can logistically be spent this year is whatever Schumer offered before. If the Ds manage to take the House, then things change.
germy
@bemused:
Many of them refuse to. Which is why they’re dropping like flies.
tobie
@germy: Thanks for posting the tweet regarding Republican nomenclature. It drives me crazy that the media has adopted the offensive phrase “chain migration” without mentioning that it’s spin on the long-established “family unification policy.” At least with “death tax” the media will note that the official name is “estate tax.” With “late term abortion,” they’ve also adopted the Republican framing of “partial birth abortion,” and we’ve seen what’s happened in this arena thanks to the framing.
divF
@schrodingers_cat: The neurosurgeon that operated on our friend last week is of Indian descent.
We are also getting to the point in our lives where all the doctors seem so awfully young – he couldn’t have been more than 35.
ETA: Both also apply to my primary care internist.
Tokyokie
@schrodingers_cat: Because of a recent problem, I’m now regularly seeing a nephrologist. I believe his practice has five physicians in it, every one of them with an Indian surname. Doesn’t bother me at all, although I was disappointed that the one named “Singh,” whom I assume is Sikh, wasn’t wearing a turban.
Jack the Second
@Sab: (Half) my ancestors moved from one town in Germany to a new town in the US that was inhabited more-or-less only by other immigrants from that exact same town, whereupon they continued to speak German and only interact with other people in their insular community for three generations.
And the foundations of American civilization did not crumble.
Almost everything conservatives say is a threat about immigrants (in my family’s case, immigrants moving in, not “integrating”, and not speaking the English) is both (a) not a problem and (b) totally normal.
chris
OT: Another one bites the dust. Good riddance, say we all.
aimai
@Chyron HR: Ha ha! this is perfect!
schrodingers_cat
The way the current immigration system is set up unless you marry an American citizen there are vanishingly few avenues for a person to immigrate unless they have a college education, at the very least.
Jeffro
I say no $25B, even if it would be a completely ineffective monument to Republican stupidity. A) We already have plenty of those, and B) $25B will buy a lot of other, actually useful, things for the folks in this country who need it the most.
Anything the racist-in-chief wants, I’m against, period. He could have just left DACA alone, remember? This is all his (and Stephen Miller’s) doing.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne:
My mom has gone to several immigration vigils holding up a poster of an enlarged photo of her mother at age 14 with the caption “Refugee”.
(from Poland, though so far east in Poland that it became Russia. Which is a big part of why she left)
bemused
@schrodingers_cat:
Despite the examples I’ve seen of xenophobes objecting to being treated by non-white medical personnel but I would not be surprised if a lot of anti-immigrant white people don’t object to immigrant doctors treating them when they get their medical issues resolved.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Both my doctor and Mr DAW’s are Indian. And I’ve said before that only one of my grandparents and one of my parents was born in the US.
schrodingers_cat
@Tokyokie: Only the really devout wear turbans. Sometimes just the oldest son wears the turban, depends on the family. Plus its always possible that he is not Sikh. Singh is a fairly common north Indian name and not just among Sikhs.
Sab
@schrodingers_cat: @schrodingers_cat: They came in the olden days, before all the means testing. But they still didn’t free ride.
Under the new rules, my nephew had trouble getting his Canadian wife in, and she had trouble getting him into Canada.
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
I’m old enough to remember, when the anti-immigration zealots used to say they were just against illegal immigration. They had no problem with legal immigrants.
But I guess Trump’s election gave them permission to let their xenophobia freak flags fly.
And what the media does not grok is after they purge illegal and legal immigrants, they’ll look roll back permanent residence status, and then naturalized citizens, and then people born in the U.S. to parents, who were not born in the U.S.
The whole “logic” of the Birther movement was founded on the belief that Obama could not be a natural born citizen because his father was an immigrant. People, who believe this, have not learned any better and will come after birth-right citizenship, if given the chance.
Tokyokie
@Jack the Second: There are several cities in Central Texas that were initially settled by German or Czech immigrants. Heck, New Braunfels had a German-language newspaper up until the 1950s. Perhaps the most notable of the Czech towns is West. Which you might remember from a few of years ago of having been largely blown off the map because of the standards of industrial regulation that the folks wanting to constrict immigration endorse.
danielx
@divF:
You got that right, they all look like Doogie Houser to me. Not that I want them to look like Marcus Welby, but I’d prefer for them to look older than high school graduates.
Suzanne
I accepted the offer this morning and resigned at my current place. Current place wants to counter, and they talked about potentially moving me into the leadership role to make that happen. I’m so stressed out.
stinger
@germy: Very good point. See also: pro-life, death tax, etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@chris: Interesting. Matt Yglesias is tweeting out his family history, ancestors in NJ politics since the Revolution, and probably Republican since the Civil War. I think his district is the affluent suburbs of north Jersey. I hope the Dems have a good recruit.
Tokyokie
@schrodingers_cat: I figured something like that was the case. A Sikh wearing a turban in India will attract a lot less attention than one doing so here. But hey, I thought it’d be cool to have a physician who wore a turban!
stinger
@Suzanne: Deep breaths! From the tiny bit that I know about your options, none of them would be fatal! In other words, you can hardly choose wrong. And how great to be so wanted!
Gin & Tonic
@Tokyokie: LBJ’s first state dinner was a barbecue in a high school gym in one of those towns, on the occasion of the visit of the then-Chancellor of West Germany. Great story about it in Robert Caro’s LBJ biography.
Sab
@Jack the Second: My grandmother (Irish and Scottish descent) grew up in a German speaking town in Wisconsin. She got her first job in Ohio because she could speak German.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne:
It’s way better to be stressed out by this than by being laid off.
Just One More Canuck
@schrodingers_cat: we are all pastry now
danielx
@Suzanne:
It’s nice to be wanted, but…take the offer from the new employer! Current people know you want to leave; if you stay they will keep you around for as long as it takes to find a replacement. If they’re willing to do all this for you now, why didn’t they do it before when it would have made a difference in your decision-making process?
Don’t mean to sound vehement about this, but I have seen this scenario before.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: TRUTH.
But I don’t want to grow my career at the expense of someone else’s, especially someone I consider a friend.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@danielx: Seems like good advice. A cousin on mine was in a similar situation a few years back. He left Employer 1 for Employer 2 for the reasons you lay out, and just under a year later Employer 1 came to him again with a much sweeter offer, including counting his time away toward seniority, benefits, etc.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Danielx has it right. Jump.
Spanky
@Suzanne:
THIS IS ALL COMPLETELY NORMAL.
You should rightly feel flattered that they think highly enough of you that they want you to stay. But remember that they want you to stay to maintain the status quo. You want to leave for career growth. It’s perfectly OK, normal, and VERY COMMON for this to happen, and you might need to remind them of this.
Spanky
@Just One More Canuck:
Ich bin ein Berliner?
schrodingers_cat
@Tokyokie: This is true even in India. Although India is much more tolerant to turban wearing Sikhs in law enforcement and the armed forces. Khalistan movement resulted in terrible persecution of Sikhs, thankfully that has pretty much died down.
schrodingers_cat
@Just One More Canuck: Is that better than being chopped liver?
Tokyokie
@Gin & Tonic: LBJ’s ranch is just outside Fredericksburg, which is more or less the center of the German-settled part of Texas. (It’s also the hometown of Chester Nimitz and thus is where you’ll find the National Museum of the Pacific War, which occupies the space where the hotel Nimitz’s family ran stood.)
But her emails!!!
@Jeffro:
1. Is sacrificing the well-being of several hundred thousand people really worth symbolically giving Trump and Miller the finger?
2. $25 Billion won’t be used to buy useful things. It would either go towards a tax break for rich people, or sunk into one of our enormously over budget weapons programs.
Tokyokie
@schrodingers_cat: In other words, Sikhs generally don’t wear turbans in the U.S. because Americans don’t know what a Sikh is, and generally don’t do so in India because everybody thinks they know what a Sikh is. It’s enough to make me sikh to my stomach.
efgoldman
@Steve in the ATL:
Say, what youngster?
You’re a lawyer. Sue to make this blog ADA compliant.
Did you turn down the promotion/Texas move yet?
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
I say go ahead and waste $25B on the stupid, racist wall
You’ve never visited Big Bend, have you ?
Sure, there’s a great deal of desert landscape along the US/Mexico border, on which building such a wall would be merely stupid and not desecration. But there are other stretches of the border on which the building of such a wall would be an act of self-mutilation.
Suzanne
@danielx: I agree.
I do, however, know why they didn’t do this before, and it’s not that nefarious. I don’t have time to get into it, but essentially they have someone in this role who is very good at something else (and doesn’t really want the role), and they want to keep her because she’s strong at certain parts of the job, but they don’t really have enough work for her to do what she wants to do the most. But they don’t want to fire her, because her husband works for one of our big clients. It has become increasingly untenable, but they need to find a graceful transition for her.
But I don’t want to be tied up in drama.
efgoldman
@divF:
Many of them look like Doogie Howser to us. 14? 16? Can’t be over 21.
joel hanes
@Tokyokie:
I was disappointed that the one named “Singh,” whom I assume is Sikh, wasn’t wearing a turban.
America and Americans are growing less religious.
My close friend from India doesn’t do pooja at all, though others of my cow-orkers do.
schrodingers_cat
@Tokyokie: That and never getting a haircut takes a lot of commitment. To end on a high note, here is hotness that is Diljit Dosanjh who sports a beard and wears a turban.
ETA: So its mostly a personal choice from what I understand.
efgoldman
@stinger:
Stressful, but not like being out of work with your severance running out.
Frankensteinbeck
Thank goodness we don’t have to deal with this and also have a gun to CHIP’s Head. Our bargaining position is so much better.
No snark.
@schrodingers_cat:
While not monolithic, Republicans have been overwhelmingly the party of racism, with racism as the glue between factions, forever. There are factional differences about whether brown immigrants should be removed entirely or managed as an indentured servant underclass. what has changed is that the more desperate the racial panic, the more unhinged and obvious they get.
@The Moar You Know:
I’m sorry, but you leave out that the racists are absolutely convinced that hurting the poor hurts brown people much more than white people. It is built into the concept, because as racists they believe brown people are lazy and will always lose any equal competition. As such, cutting social services is in line with the ethics of the entire Republican spectrum.
@germy:
My mother is a doctor. She has seen in person patients, dying in an emergency room no less, who will not accept treatment unless it comes from a white person. It’s one of the ethical dilemmas of the profession.
Suzanne
@efgoldman: Damn straight. It is definitely the good problem.
schrodingers_cat
@joel hanes: Same here but I do miss some of the aspects. I remember my grandmother’s home and helping her prepare for elaborate poojas (the one where you invite a priest and all, for a special occasion) making garlands out of marigold, and sandal wood paste, etc. It used to smell great, plus the food was not too shabby.
I also love the sonorous Sanskrit chants and would like to learn the language.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman:
Or go to Job Lot and buy a few pairs of $1.99 reading glasses.
Shana
@NotMax: That he says in the linked article that it was the usual practice for him to fill in his ex-wives’ ballots for them may help explain why he has two ex-wives….
Sab
@Jack the Second: My grandmother (Irish and Scottish descent) grew up in a German speaking town in Wisconsin. She got her first job in Ohio because she could speak [email protected]
Jager
My cardiologist is a Sikh, his nurse practitioner is from Barbados. My ophthalmologist is from Iran, my optometrist (contact lens specialist) is from Pakistan. For fuck’s sake I’d be a blind man with a heart condition without these people taking care of me. And my primary care physician is a black woman who grew up in Compton, guess what? She is the best doctor I’ve ever dealt with in my life. They are what makes America great.
Betty Cracker
@joel hanes: I could ask if you’ve met any of the Dreamers who are at risk of being deported from the only country they call home. But it would be a bad-faith question, so I won’t.
Sab
@Tokyokie: We had an idiotic local judge (graduate of Catholic high school) ask the Sikh kid in a visiting high school class if his turban represented gang colors. I’m betting there isn’t a single Sikh kid in an urban gang anywhere in America.
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
Ah. You are assuming that we must choose one of the paths that Trump & Co. have outlined.
I was not.
When the hostage taker says “Bring me one trillion dollars, or I shoot the hostage”
I’m in favor of pretending to bring the money just long enough to get close enough to shoot the hostage-taker.
Yes, I know several DREAMers.
schrodingers_cat
@joel hanes: I am with you actually. My offer to the hostage takers would be. Nothing. That’s what you get for arguing in bad faith. I don’t trust a word that comes out of the WH based on past experience.
ETA: I would like the Ds to bring all the regular business in the Congress to a screeching halt. They manufactured the DACA problem by rescinding the status of Dreamers.
ETA2: But I am willing to live with the compromise Pelosi and Schumer make as long as it does not touch legal immigration.
NorthLeft12
@Sab: Not sure why the reference to the judge’s high school. Why don’t you just be open about it and tell us that he is a Catholic, if that’s what you are trying to convey.
Idiot judges come from all religions, all races, and all walks of life.
NorthLeft12
@Jager: This same issue is being played out in England. First, the NHS aggressively recruited foreign doctors to move to England, then they did not allow her to bring her daughter from Egypt after being in the country for a year. Her husband is an anesthesiologist who is upgrading his training so he can move to England too. What’s that about biting off your nose to spite your face?
The Lodger
@Just One More Canuck: Ich bin ein Berliner. Wir sind alle Berliner.
Betty Cracker
@joel hanes: No, I don’t assume that. But hundreds of Dreamers lose eligibility daily, the program terminates next month, thanks to Trump’s irresponsible order, and the Republicans control Congress and the presidency, so I don’t see us getting 100% of what we want. Obviously, if there’s a way to secure the future of the 1.8M Dreamers without the stupid, racist wall, that would be preferable.
Suzanne
WTF WHY IS ANDREW MCCABE OUT.
NorthLeft12
@dmsilev: Yeah, my Father is a refugee from Poland too. Came to Canada just after WW2. However, he [like many of his Polish friends] is unsympathetic (to say the least) of modern day refugees. They are somehow….”different”.
This is a real sticking point between us. It’s funny, because I used to regard my Dad as somewhat progressive. Not sure if this is what happens to a lot of seniors as they age. I hope not.
The Lodger
@Suzanne: I’m with danielx here. Sudden counteroffer-type promotions aren’t well-planned, by definition. Putting you in charge of the wrong group is just bad management, and you can manage your own career better than anyone else at that firm. Don’t worry about hurting your friends from the old job either; I’m sure you will remain in touch with the ones worth keeping (most of them, anyway.) Good luck!
J R in WV
@Sab:
While we were in Kentucky to watch the total eclipse of the sun last summer, I sat beside a nice guy in the hotel bar/restaurant who was from Seattle, and in Owensboro to install pacemakers. He came into Ky from Seattle for a couple of days once or twice a month, because there were no other doctors in town to do that particular cardiac surgery.
This is relevant because he came here from India. Very pleasant dinner companion at the bar, which is where we ate because the place was jammed for a Sunday evening, and understaffed totally. The food was great and the drinks prolific – the eclipse was also great. He liked Owensboro as a place to have a contract which is probably a high-paying medical position compared to just having a job locally.
Sab
@NorthLeft12: Its not that she is Catholic. It’s that she went to a deliberately non-diverse high school. There were lots of Catholics in my public high school, and none of them would have made such an idiotic assumption.
Jager
I don’t know why the original is in moderation, but let’s try it again…
My cardiologist is a Sikh, his nurse practitioner is from Barbados. My ophthalmologist is from Iran, my optometrist (contact lens specialist) is from Pakistan. For fuck’s sake I’d be a blind man with a heart condition without these people taking care of me. And my primary care physician is a black woman who grew up in Compton, guess what? She is the best doctor I’ve ever dealt with in my life. They are what makes America great.
gene108
@Tokyokie:
There are many non-Sikh’s with the surname Singh.
Gravenstone
@germy:
Corrected that for ya. History tells us that much.
J R in WV
@NorthLeft12:
The Trump Wall – make them install that on every panel of concrete case, every length of metal fencing, in big red letters.
THE TRUMP WALL
It can be a monument to the fatness blob of crap that is he.
Sab
If you have no life experience with diverse people, you really shouldn’t be in a position where you can make life changing decisions about folks you obviously are incapable of understanding.
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, it’s agonizing. The fuckers.
Big Bend is special, and even the conservative environmentalists in The Nature Conservancy are up in arms.
But my remark was not well thought out. Apologies.
Betty Cracker
@joel hanes: No worries! Maybe as some suggested above, the Dems can dangle wall funds for bait and just rescind it when we blow them out in 2018 (please God).
Vhh
@Betty Cracker: The actual wall is opposed by the entire TX GOP delegation, whose rich landowners don’t want the Feds taking their border property by eminent domain. Ditto AZ. The 25B will turn into hookers and blow for contractors and lawyers.
NorthLeft12
@Vhh:
Actually this may be a more effective form of “trickle down economics” than the tax cuts for the 1%.
Steve in the ATL
@Vhh:
Tell me more about this boondoggle….
Seanly
@Suzanne:
NEVER EVER TAKE A COUNTER OFFER. Whatever reason you had for looking to interview elsewhere will still be in force.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The usual rule is to not take counter-offers. The reasons you’re thinking about leaving are probably still operative, and if the counter is just to keep you in you probably won’t be happy.