“83,500 jobs left Wisconsin during my predecessor's term. But that's not on my watch. Thus far since I’ve come to office, we've created over 178,000 jobs in Wisconsin and we're creating thousands more here in Racine.”
–@POTUS ??
pic.twitter.com/64YyaNPiQC— Skyleigh Heinen-Uhrich (@Sky_Lee_1) May 8, 2024
.@POTUS gives a women a kiss after singing happy birthday to her at a campaign stop at the Dr. John Bryant Community Center in Racine, Wisconsin. pic.twitter.com/5z2uMD9hrl
— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) May 8, 2024
President Biden, in Wisconsin, on Trump’s Foxconn deal here: “Look what happened. They dug a hole with those golden shovels and then they fell into it,” Biden said: “Foxconn turned out to be just that – a con. Go figure.” pic.twitter.com/ZBcynTU6mJ
— Ken Thomas (@KThomasDC) May 8, 2024
This is interesting and noteworthy: during the 1990s, it was typical for even reformist labor leaders like AFL-CIO President, John Sweeney, to reference only the focus group tested “working families.” No “class.” Many Dems today say “working class”, which is rhetoric refracted https://t.co/skAG0VU2yG
— Richard Yeselson (@yeselson) May 8, 2024
Addendum to this morning’s earlier post:
Michigan former clerk and attorney charged after alleged unauthorized access to 2020 voter data https://t.co/SGBkmZmsxf
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 9, 2024
Meanwhile, President Biden:
“Trump means what he says – he means what he says,” Biden said. “And he says he’s going to get rid of all the stuff that we have done.”
— Ken Thomas (@KThomasDC) May 8, 2024
Biden, in Chicago fundraiser, is urging donors to read Trump’s interview w/ Time. “His presidency was chaos. Trump's tried to make the country forget about the dark & unsettling things that he did when he was president … I don’t think anybody wants to go back to that.”
— Ken Thomas (@KThomasDC) May 8, 2024
"While the press doesn't write about it, the momentum is clearly in our favor," Biden said at a fundraiser in Chicago.
"Trump's in trouble and he knows it," he said.
via @josh_wingrove
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) May 8, 2024
![On The Road - lashonharangue - Mayan Ruins and the Sacred Monkey River [3 of 4] 6](https://balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4-Copy-of-DSC05852-edit-80x80.jpg)
On The Road – lashonharangue – Mayan Ruins and the Sacred Monkey River [3 of 4]
Baud
Damn, son.
Mousebumples
On Wisconsin!
And good morning, everyone!
OzarkHillbilly
Disease and hunger soar in Latin America after floods and drought, study finds
The GOP thinks we have a crisis on our southern border. Just wait.
geg6
@Baud:
I know, right? Excellent line.
BellyCat
Desperate people do desperate things. Trump cares 0% about the Presidency but 100% about evading criminal punishment. Thus, he 100% needs to either be elected President again or destroy the integrity of the election system if Biden (allegedly) wins. It’s a long con at the expense of American democracy itself. Expect maximum drama.
Mousebumples
Mousebumples
Not sure if the above Op Ed by a Republican official has gotten much discussion here yet either.
Ken
I was today years old when I learned about Fenno’s paradox. Well, I knew it already (people hate Congress but love their own Representative), but not that it had a name. This was in the context of a Wisconsin poll that found only 34% of people think the economy is good, but 65% say their own finances are good.
There was also a comment about an (unreferenced) study that found people generally don’t like to say the economy is good, or more generally that things are going well for them, out of fear that will change their luck. Reminds me of my great-great grandmother, who according to family legend said that every baby was horrible-looking lest she bring bad luck on them.
BellyCat
Trump knows he can’t legitimately win, so it’s Smash and Grab time to pay legal fees. However, Trump is fairly certain he can undermine public confidence in the election results as well as jam up the process to potentially prevent Biden from being sworn in on Jan 20. That’s his play and it just might work given the makeup of The Supremes.
Baud
@BellyCat:
We have the Veep. We control the country.
p.a.
1) It’s projection: They are the ones who have to cheat to win.
2) Because of the Electoral College, it doesn’t take as much cheating (suppression, gerrymander etc.) for them to win. It’s not a high hill. 😡😱
Soprano2
Ugh, I sent a message to “Morning Edition” about this story
Migrant crime is politically charged, but the reality is more complicated
I asked them why they were using the Republican frame “Migrant crime”, even going so far as to put it in the title of the segment. I said I know this kind of thing can creep in, but they really need to think about this because it implies that they agree with the Republican viewpoint. It’s rare that I would contact them like this, but it really jumped out at me because we’ve all heard TFG say “migrant crime” as if it’s a specific thing hundreds of times, and now NPR is parroting that same phrase! The story was actually a decent, nuanced take on the problem, but that headline is really problematic.
MattF
Not on the WaPo front page any more, but here’s a gift link to Trump’s pitch to the fossil fuel industry. ‘Gimme a billion dollars and I’ll reverse all the Biden climate policies’. I’d only wonder how much of that he plans to steal. All of it, prolly.
Soprano2
Then there was this story, where they asked voters in AZ and PA about immigration. A woman in PA who said she is a Democrat said she’s voting for TFG because she thinks he was a lot better for the economy (translation, things were cheaper in 2019 than now) and Joe Biden has dementia and needs to be removed. So you can see that all the stories about this in the national press did their job of convincing some people that Joe Biden has dementia even though anyone who has dealt with dementia at all can tell you he does not have it! Another voter in AZ said he’s voting for Biden but they should build TFG’s wall because we need it. Normie voters sure sound weird to people like us, but I think there are more of them than of us, so we need to know what they’re thinking and feeling.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
The editors at Totebagger Radio can’t help themselves.
Just another example of why they lost my money and my ears a loooong time ago.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Remember, the media searches for these anti-Dem freaks to promote in their stories. They don’t represent average normies.
Leto
Hillary is on Morning Blow right now, and is just stating truth after truth after truth.
Soprano2
@Baud: Whoever wrote that line is a great speechwriter. I’m sure every media outfit will quote it.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Also impressed with that line! Another highlight was when Biden called out the press for eliding Trump’s unprecedented problems as a candidate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mousebumples: Forward!
Soprano2
@Mousebumples: I think TFG believes he doesn’t need much campaign apparatus because he gets so much free press, but turning out voters is important and free press doesn’t do that.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
We’re gonna win because of our GOTV efforts. Still the best bang for our buck.
Soprano2
@Ken: You see this with public schools too, where people say they like their public school but then say public schools in general are failing.
Soprano2
@Baud: True, I always wonder how many people they interviewed to get the ones they share with us.
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The thing is though a lot of the time the stories are good and informative. Yes sometimes they drive me crazy but I still think their news is a lot better than a lot of other sources. I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything back. I suspect they’ll get a lot of feedback on that title if it jumped out at me.
Baud
@Soprano2:
We need more liberal media whistle blowers. But I guess they’d be immediately blackballed.
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: ITA, you can’t replace that effort with anything else. It doesn’t matter if someone says they support you if they don’t actually vote for you!
Ken
Another one from bluesky: “RFK Jr is the only candidate who cares about lobal worming.
Oh, and I saw a post saying that he made the claim about brain worms in a legal hearing, where he was trying to get himself ruled mentally incompetent so he could get out of paying alimony. But that seems a little too perfect, in a “lazy writers of this timeline” way.
Betty
@Soprano2: It is most often the headlines that are the problem. People have emphasized that to the NYT and the Post editors, but they don’t seem to care.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: I agree with Baud that media outlets nut-pick among the normies. But from my experience with that tribe, I believe the immigration anxiety is real. I hope Dems keep hammering the House GOP for blocking meaningful reform so Trump can run on the issue. That was breathtakingly cynical in a way that could break through.
TS
@Leto: MJ looking o so serious – but amazingly not interrupting
narya
Speaking of GOTV efforts: I was chatting w/ my post-op nurse on Monday, inching toward politics, and I mentioned Postcards to Voters. As I was leaving to go home, she asked me for the name of the organization again. I hope she remembers it and signs up!
Layer8Problem
@Mousebumples:
Put that on a billboard facing the FTFYT’s polling desk.
Baud
@narya:
👍
Mousebumples
@Soprano2: agreed. I think he’s wrong, but that’s okay by me.
@narya: yay! Thanks – and hope your recovery is going well.
@Layer8Problem: lol, maybe Biden’s campaign can send them a letter with the information when they next decline to sit down for an interview.
Layer8Problem
@BellyCat: Smash and grab doesn’t buy staff in fifty states or fund get out the vote operations. This is not “I don’t need an operation, ’cause I have an army,” he doesn’t think that deeply. It’s just “money” and “mine”, as simple as that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@narya: Someone I talked to about postcards asked me if they helped. I said I thought there was evidence they did, and I knew for sure that writing them helped me. She also asked about where to find out more.
Daoud bin Daoud
@Layer8Problem: Smash & grab won’t win votes, but I doubt it matters to the Orange Obscenity – he already knows he’s getting fewer votes, so he’s using disruption and chaos to take power. It’s all about the power.
Mousebumples
@Dorothy A. Winsor: from the PtV website –
From a personal anecdote – the few times I’ve gotten postcards (I vote early and reliably so I’m probably not high on the GOTV/turnout address lists, hah), it’s nice to have a reminder. And it’s a story to tell friends (guess what I got in the mail!) as a low pressure way to talk about the week election, talk about my plan to vote, and then ask a friend, “are you planning to vote?” (and then help them sign up to vote by mail, find their polling place, etc.)
I guess I could lie about getting a postcard, but I don’t like lying….
narya
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Woo! Yeah, it helps me, too. I live in a very blue neighborhood in a very blue city in a pretty blue state, and I don’t feel like I can donate a lot of cash, but I DO want to do something.
O. Felix Culpa
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Postcardstovoters.org, in case you don’t already have the link. There are other organizations doing postcards too, but this group’s setup works best for me. You can sign up to do as few as 5 cards at a time, which I find convenient. You have to provide your own cards and postage; they provide the text and addresses.
Our county Dem party sent postcards to young voters in 2020, and our analysis indicates the effort made a statistically significant difference in boosting turnout.
gene108
@Soprano2:
I don’t TFG’s puny wall. I want my wall built on the Southern border. A continuous wall over 1000 meters high, dug a 1000 meters below ground and over 1000 meters thick.
No living thing will ever cross the southern border for many many years.
It won’t stop Republicans from whining about “migrant caravans” “invading the U.S. via the southern border”, but it should make the media less credulous in accepting these statements at face value.
Layer8Problem
@Daoud bin Daoud: Disruption and chaos need to do better than infighting and lack of coordination at the local and state level and a mere three randos protesting at the generalissimo’s trial.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: I believe the immigration anxiety is real too. I think Democrats need to message that the Republicans are standing in the way of real immigration reform. I object to any media outlet that claims to be nonpartisan endorsing TFG’s framing of the issue by using his phrase in their headline! The woman who said she was going to vote for TFG because she thought he handled the economy a lot better also had no idea he has plans to round up 11 million immigrants into camps and deport them. She immediately rejected that as a bad idea, but she’s still going to vote for him! The reporter mentioned that a lot of voters didn’t know about this plan, to which I wish I could have replied “You know there are organizations whose job it is to inform voters about what the candidates are saying, I wonder why they’ve fallen down on the job so badly?”
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Ken
That may explain the excessive use of “handwriting” fonts in political mailers. “Oooh, Segoe Script — that will fool them into thinking the Congressman wrote the whole thing in longhand.”
O. Felix Culpa
Anecdote: I was on a vineyard tour in Portugal last month, when a couple from Calgary (the one in Canada, natch), knowing I live in the southwest, asked me if I was concerned about the immigrant hordes crossing the US border. My one word answer: no. Since they got no purchase on that issue, they shifted in a non sequitur way to talking about this amazing biography they had just read about the amazing Elon Musk. I didn’t take the bait there either, so we thankfully went back to just tasting wine. Apparently some Canadians are watching too much Fox or Fox-equivalents too.
@rikyrah: Good morning!
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
And the Dems need to put in the ad…
This goes all the way back to George W Bush.
Man lied us into TWO WARS
but couldn’t get real immigration reform because of Republicans.
Make it clear.
Lay it out
The year after year of them blocking it.
And, also remember that the Orange Menace never even tried it.😡
Ken
@gene108: When you say “southern border”, do you mean the Mason-Dixon line? Because if so, I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe (etc.)
H.E.Wolf
Thanks to all the folks who have been talking up postcard-writing as a way to participate in GOTV. Balloon Juice link has Postcards To Voters information (and WaterGirl is willing to update it with information on other groups, if/when available).
https://balloon-juice.com/postcard-writing-in-early-2024/
In it to win it! And this is one option for “in it” that doesn’t require knocking on doors or making phone calls.
rikyrah
@O. Felix Culpa:
The amazing man who overpaid for Twitter, then proceeded to destroy it.
And in the process, destroyed the base of Tesla buyers. This running down that company too?
That Elon Musk😒😒
YY_Sima Qian
Foxconn originally planned to build a Gen 10 LCD plant there, which was doom to fail. Foxconn had never built LCD panels & modules before (& still has not), it had only assembled LCD modules into consumer electronic devices. It had no relevant expertise or skilled resources.
At the time of announcement, the LCD industry was undergoing a major shift. The product had become commoditized (as is often the case when aggressive Chinese entrants start to gain the upper hand). The Chinese players were taking market share at a rapid clip, helped by lower cost structure (mostly cheap land & utilities), economies of scale & generous government subsidies, & supported by a huge domestic market. Despite also benefiting from generous government subsidies, the Japanese makers had already exited the market, the Taiwanese manufacturers were well on the way, & the South Korean manufacturers were pivoting to OLED panels. Nevertheless, the entire supply chain ecosystem & all of the skilled human resources were in E. Asia. Almost all of the downstream customers of LCD modules, the assemblers of consumer electronic devices, were in the PRC (especially LCD TVs) or SE Asia. The largest markets for LCD TVs and consumer electronic devices were also in E/SE Asia.
So, N. America had the consumer demand, but no supply chain for LCD panel/module manufacturing, no consumer electronics assembly industry to feed the LCD panels/modules into, & lacked the skilled engineers & operations managers w/ relevant experience. One plant was not going to stand up a LCD industry in the US, since the Trump Administration had failed to attract any other LCD makers to the US, be they Taiwanese, South Korean or Chinese. & panels/modules made in Wisconsin were never going to be competitive in the commoditized market w/ rapidly falling prices, not against the Taiwanese or the South Koreans, let alone the Chinese.
So in the end, Foxconn failed to make much of the touted investment, failed to hire much of the touted labor force, & thus did not receive much of the contracted subsidies. BTW, the Wisconsin plant was but part of Terry Gou ambitions of making Foxconn a major LCD panel maker. He was surely attracted by the US$ 3B in promised subsidies, but he had also planned to build 3 Gen 10/10.5 plants in the PRC (surely lured by equally generous subsidies), including 1 on the parched Loess Plateau in Shanxi Province (sentiments played a role here in addition to subsidies), where his parents hailed from before they fled the Mainland at the end of the Chinese Civil War. 2 of the projects were stillborn, & a Gen 10.5 project was sold off (just getting completed after years of delay). So Terry Gou’s dreams remained just that everywhere.
At least w/ the CHIPS Act, the Biden Administration is trying to build on a still strong domestic semiconductor industry (Intel & Micron), attracted the top international chipmakers (TSMC & Samsung) to make substantial investments, & the US remains the leader by far in fabless design (Qualcomm, Nvidia, Apple, plus a host of other the average consumer never heard of) that could potentially utilize the new capacity. Even so, the current US effort will likely face very unfavorable economics (cost of construction and operations much higher than Taiwan or South Korea) & a dire shortage of skilled engineers & operational managers (not helped by the immigration policies).
If there was a con, it was played by Scott Walker & Trump in dramatically overselling the project. I would prefer Biden (& his speechwriters) save his rhetorical flourishes for the incompetent GOP, as opposed to leaning into the current nativist moment. & I say that as one w/ a pretty low opinion of Foxconn.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: TFG didn’t want immigration reform, he wanted to stop immigration altogether.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Yup, that one. The one who turned Twitter into a wretched hive of fascist scum and villainy. And the perpetrator of the Cybertruck, also too.
rikyrah
@BellyCat:
No.
We will beat the Orange Menace
Geminid
@Ken: Since I live in Virginia I’m canceling my newsletter subscription and telling the commenter to stay off my lawn.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Mousebumples
🤣 Yeah, the glossy texture kinda belies that concept.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108:
Unless, you know, they’re in airplanes.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: A couple months ago the CEO of the Dutch chip giant ASML warned that if the Netherlands excluded foreign engineers through restrictive immigration laws, his company would have to shift some of its operations to other nations. ASML has the largest market capitalization of any Dutch company, so I expect this got people’s attention.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What should we call our media? In India the lap dog media is called Godi media rhymes with Modi (both with a soft d sound).
They have been jeered by voters as they descend from their helicopters to get man/woman on the street interviews, its very funny to watch. And those clips become viral.
Godi == embrace.
Baud
@Mousebumples:
They should add coffee stains for verisimilitude.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
We used to call them The Village. Haven’t seen that used as often recently.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Its too mild for what they do for the Republican party. They behave like the propaganda arm for Republicans, yeah even the so called liberal media like NYT and NPR.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I read that. I think ASML has since decided to expand its presence in the Netherlands, so I am not sure if its concerns have been addressed.
Mousebumples
@Baud: or just send coffee!
Baud
@Mousebumples:
Enjoy a cup of Joe on Joe!
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker:
Attitudes about immigration are peculiar and the trouble is, the plurality position is kind of bad, so we have to choose between doing the right thing and being popular.
It used to be worse. When the 1965 immigration reforms were passed, almost nobody said they supported more immigration, and that lasted until the 2000s or so. I’d thought that 9/11 caused a big shift to xenophobia but really it was more a restoration of attitudes that had been stronger in the mid-90s.
Oddly, the Clinton years seem to have been the peak of anti-immigration attitudes in the past half-century.
These days we actually have between 25-30% of the population saying they want more immigration, which is pretty unprecedented. But the “less immigration” position is up from where it was a couple years ago.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The latest Congress ad about Godi Media.
They are parodying Arnab Goswami who has been a Hannity-esque host for Republic TV
He is lying in the “news cast” about how wonderful Modi has been for India.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: For many Americans, the only good immigrants are their dead ancestors who came to the US.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: The one thing saving the US from the kind of sharp demographic declines we are witnessing across Europe & E. Asia is immigration. It is mostly economic tailwind.
Betty Cracker
I’m trapped in a doctor’s office waiting room, and Wheel of Fortune is on the TV. I don’t think I’ve had to watch that since I lost my grandmas!
BellyCat
@Daoud bin Daoud: Exactly. He wants power but is intent on creating chaos to try and get power.
I think this ploy will ultimately fail, but much institutional damage regarding public confidence will likely be involved.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Better than Fox News. I hope you are not sick. Feel better soon if you are.
BellyCat
@rikyrah: Ultimately, yes.
catclub
From WAPO Editorial:
What is he smoking?
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: The vast majority of Americans believe that “illegal immigration” is bad. And it is an absurd situation–that these people are off the books means they can be exploited in horrible ways, and there’s a whole economic sector that depends on that.
But, of course, most of them jump from there to thinking the immigrants themselves are bad and need to be kept out, when really the problem is the illegality and they ought to have some legit means of entry (which would, however, also make it harder for them to get employment, since the whole point is the exploitation).
And it also meant that Trump’s administration could do a nice catch-22: they reduced legal immigration almost to zero, and if all immigration is illegal, stressing that you’re only against illegal immigration doesn’t mean much.
Uncle Cosmo
I have been firmly convinced for years that
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: No, I get it. It means “kill protesters”.
JCJ
@YY_Sima Qian: I understand what you are saying regarding the “nativist” sound of what President Biden said, but at least here in Southeast Wisconsin I think most people associate the “con” of FoxConn with Scott Walker and not China, Taiwan, or any other national entity. It seems to me what Biden is trying to do is extend the “con” sentiment to Trump and not just Walker.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: They used COVID to do that. So many people on work visas were stuck in limbo land because they couldn’t come back to the US.
Many affluent Indians who pay full tuition for undergrad are sending their kids to Canada and UK now. Directly as a result of Trumpista policies.
schrodingers_cat
@catclub: A so called Never Trump Republican made the same point in Bulwark this week.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve heard “stenographers”, which I suppose is unfairly dismissive of an honorable profession, but it’s not one that journalists should be doing.
YY_Sima Qian
@JCJ: Thanks for the clarification! I think it plays differently on national or international TV.
Uncle Cosmo
And IMO the best service on behalf of democracy that this blog provides.
This one is going to be won on the streets and the sidewalks and in the shopping malls, a handful of neighbors at a time – the seven-figure media buys are like lawn signs and bumperstickers only there to establish a presence.
Baud
Once again, libertarians are shown up as fools. Only the three lib justices were willing to rein in civil forfeiture today.
Captain C
@Ken:
If he’s too mentally incompetent to pay alimony, he’s definitely too incompetent to be President.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: And the ones who mow their lawn, care for their kids, roof their house, and work in their parent’s nursing home. We have a lot of cognitive dissonance in our attitudes toward immigrants in this country.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: As birthrates fall across the whole planet, at some point we’re going to run out of countries that are producing large numbers of people. But that’s a way off.
Before then, we’re going to be in a position where the remaining countries that are producing large numbers of people are mostly African and black. We’re almost there already. That’s only going to aggravate racism-driven xenophobia.
It seems to me that some countries have just accepted that they’re going to dwindle away. You can see it in e.g. Japanese science fiction depictions of the future–there are a lot of quietly depopulated worlds. There are things about this that aren’t bad; the world is finite and an eternally growing industrial civilization runs into hard environmental limits. But it has big problems too (elder care, labor shortages in general, a loss of dynamism).
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: When I talk to people about immigration I always stress that we need reforms that allow the people we need to come her to come here legally, because part of the reason we have so many people coming here illegally is because the legal pathway is so hard. I say we also need reforms because our system no longer serves us because of this. I wish people had even a little understanding of how hard it is for most people to immigrate here legally, especially since 9-11. That podcast I listened to about the man in Africa who won the diversity visa lottery was really eye-opening. He had to jump through so many hoops and make sure everything was perfect just to claim the visa, it was crazy!
Uncle Cosmo
Au contraire, they care deeply – and do their damnedest to ensure that every headline slams a Kong-size thumb down on the scales in Cheetoh Benito’s favor among an audience that by and large never reads or listens further. ‘Cuz y’know, under authoritarian rule they’ll be just fine. (Until they’re not. When it’s too late. Cretins. Cue Niemoeller.)
Another Scott
@Mousebumples: Thanks for the links.
I think too many reporters and political pundit types have forgotten the fundamentals of their training as journalists.
Tell us what is happening why, with the who, what, when, where, etc., stuff. Don’t try to predict the future. Don’t tell us what people are “thinking” about, “worried” about, and “trying” to do. Nobody can read minds, and words have meaning (“thinking” is not a synonym for “said in return for confidentiality”). Stop trying to make the contest a battle between equals to try to make your site and comments a safe place for any MotU’s advertisements.
As Kay reminds us, people get in trouble when they stop doing their jobs and start trying to do someone else’s.
So, rather than trying to interpret TIFG’s babblings or rewrite them to make them more coherent, so what Biden said – look at what TIFG has actually said and done and written. Look at the behavior and comments of his supporters, enablers, and the people around him. And tell people the truth.
This stuff isn’t hard.
Thanks.
Grr…,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: It creates this crabs-in-bucket situation too–some of the people who take the trouble to jump through all the hoops end up resenting undocumented immigrants who are just “skipping the line”, rather than the people who created this situation in the first place.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: The consular pathway to a Green Card via the State dept, is harrowing. Ask Gin and Tonic.
I used the change of status method. Less onerous but you already have to be in the US on another long term visa. For me getting the initial approval to immigrate was the more difficult part
People on H1-B actually get quite a lot of hate from many who identify as progressive and liberal. Check out this blog’s comment section over the years
I was called a liar and worse by ” valued” commenter here for not detailing all the intricacies of a student visa in a blog comment.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: A restaurant we go to regularly had a big problem with this because of Covid. They had employees on work visas who went back and forth from here to Mexico. When Covid happened, the workers got stuck where they were and couldn’t go back and forth anymore. It caused quite a problem for them.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: It’s not unearned. I got a story in my feed on my phone this morning that turned out to be basically a reprinting of the MO attorney general’s press release which claimed Media Matters was trying to “shut down a Missouri court”. Turns out they’re trying to get a case transferred from Missouri courts to federal court! I found at least three different outfits that just reprinted the AG’s press release. What else do you call that but stenography?
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: I think a lot of the resentment of the H1-B visa is in the way employers use it to not hire qualified American workers, like saying they can’t find anyone qualified when they’ve had hundreds of qualified applicants with experience who want more money than they have to pay the H1-B visa worker, plus with that worker they know the person is trapped in the job and thus not likely to complain or rock the boat too much. I think we need that program but I think it too needs to be reformed, there’s too much employer abuse of it. For one, you shouldn’t be trapped in your job if you have one of those visas.
Another Scott
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: +1
Biden defeated an incumbent when a pandemic was raging, when he couldn’t campaign much in person, when GOTV was problematic and difficult, when he had a severe early funding disadvantage, and when the incumbent was trying to lay the foundation for a dictatorship.
Biden won then. That shows how strong he is, and how weak the other guy is. And the other guy is even weaker now.
Now, Biden has a very strong campaign operation with a huge local organization system. He has overwhelming support by the party. He is well funded, and much better funded than the other guy. And, oh, the other guy is on trial in several courts. And on and on.
Biden’s doing the work. Biden will win in November and have long and broad coat tails if we do the work we need to do.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mousebumples
@Baud: seriously, should be a thing!
@Another Scott: happy to share!
Mousebumples
Yesssss! 👏👏👏👏
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I think the ASML head was implicitely telling Dutch politicians to keep that creep Wilders out of the Prime Minister’s chair. I haven’t followed up on their process of forming a new government though.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: I just call them media whores. I miss the old Media Horse Online blog. .
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: H1-B visa holders have to be paid at the market rate. You can take your H1-B to another employer. A cousin just did that last year. Its not easy but it can be done.
Also, DOJ has fined employers misusing the visa. You can self petition for a GC in extremely rare circumstances for an employment based GC. So you have to rely on your employer to do that.
Only an act of Congress can change this status quo
There is a lot of misinformation about immigration and not just about the undocumented. Orange Error put an error on our collective backs when he came down that escalator.
lou
@Ken:
@Ken:
This happened with Obama and Obamacare. News organizations made a big deal about polls that showed how many people “disapproved” of Obamacare without digging into *why* they did. Some were liberals who disapproved because they thought it didn’t go far enough.
wjca
My father, back in the middle of the last century, used to ask, “What if the Russian government is agreeable, but the translator hates us?”
This is rather the same situation. If someone wants to do something super useful, work up a pipeline for people to become headline writers. That’s entirely separate from reporters or editors. And those guys have an outsized effect on what the general public thinks is going on in the world.
Gloria DryGarden
@Dorothy A. Winsor: please say more. How did writing postcards help you?
Ksmiami
@Captain C: exactly
Ironcity
@Soprano2: Heard a piece on radio (probably NPR, I know, I know) about the Japanese Americans rounded up after Pearl Harbor and the number was something like 250,000. And TIFG is talking about rounding up and deporting 11 million. It’s one thing to have the bright (?) idea or concept of doing something and another thing completely to put numbers to it. Like how many people in one of Abbot’s busses out of Texistan, then how many busses, how many are available, who will drive them, what are the routes, where will they go, etc etc etc. Could TIFGs band of Nazis actually figure out how to actually do it?