Trump will almost certainly pull the plug on DACA, perhaps as soon as today or tomorrow. Back in February, he said, “We are gonna deal with DACA with heart.” But he’s a heartless liar, so that’s meaningless. Maybe he’ll wait until Hurricane Irma is menacing a coast before making the announcement — to maximize ratings.
The first order of business before Trump kills the program is to make your voice heard and support people in DACA status however you can. But if Trump kills the program, which enjoys broad support among Americans, it will also be important to tie the GOP to that decision.
John Stoehr published a piece in U.S. News yesterday demonstrating that anti-immigrant hysteria is now the mainstream GOP position and tying it to white supremacy more broadly. It’s worth a read.
Stoehr traces the modern flareup of anti-immigrant fever back to GWB’s attempt at bipartisan immigration reform and the subsequent freak-out over President Obama’s election. That made the GOP an easy acquisition target for a racist, xenophobic demagogue.
Stoehr also points out that GOP officials in red states are suing the government over DACA anyway, so it doesn’t much matter what Trump does. Here’s an excerpt:
Now comes the moment in which the Trump administration must choose: Does it give in to the demands of white supremacists whose social order is imperiled by immigrants, or does it make them fight for it in court? Practically speaking, it may not matter. Texas and other Republican states are almost certainly going to find another friendly judge, perhaps Hanen again, and the Trump administration is unlikely to put up a fight. But even if it did, the U.S. Supreme Court is now back to full strength. Justice Neil Gorsuch would almost certainly prevent another tie.
The conclusion is grim. Once Trump rescinds DACA, or Republican states force an injunction, immigration authorities can use DACA’s database to locate and deport nearly a million smart, educated and industrious men and women, those who would contribute the most to their respective communities. There will be a legal battle, but by the time that fight is over, hundreds or thousands will have been deported. It’s a national disgrace.
It is a national disgrace alright, but more specifically, it’s a Republican disgrace. It will be important to underscore that fact when ICE starts hunting down promising college students and hardworking taxpayers.
I know some young folks who are in DACA status, and they’ve been living in fear since the election. They are every bit as American as I am, and it’s horrifying to think of them being picked up by the ICE-stapo and dumped in a country they don’t know.
These are brilliant, hardworking kids. They are also 10 times more worthwhile as human beings than any Trump ever pooped out by a D-list model, foreign or domestic. I think that’s what scares the white supremacist shitheads the most.
ETA:
BREAKING NEWS: Fox News has learned @POTUS will end "#DACA" program as it currently exists. pic.twitter.com/pnZUhyTQZ1
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 31, 2017
Spray-tanned clown-ass motherfucker.
Major Major Major Major
This is all on Boehner for not letting the immigration bill have a vote.
Davis.X.Machina
This is what they voted for: the Great Getting.
Get the Muslims. Get the Mexicans. Get the gays. Get the liberals. Get the uppity blacks. Get the pushy women.
Get. Get. Get.
schrodingers_cat
@Davis.X.Machina: They are cutting off their nose to spite their own face.
schrodingers_cat
Today I read on the immigration related Twitter feed I follow, that ICE deported a citizen who was a veteran with PTSD (he has had brushes with the law)
rikyrah
Always said this..
Shrub lied us into not one, but TWO WARS…
and, he couldn’t get Immigration reform done.
STOP pretending that the GOP, at its core, is a White Supremacist Party.
schrodingers_cat
Its not just DACA, USCIS has added reams of pages to the already existing forms to apply for various visas, added hurdles like interviews and so on. They want to make the bubble of stupid air tight.
rikyrah
@Davis.X.Machina:
yep
LAO
@schrodingers_cat: It’s my understanding that (1) a federal judge ruled the Vet was an American Citizen, but that (2) he remains in ICE custody while the Agency appeals the district court.
Pretty fucking infuriating.
rikyrah
@LAO:
RIDICULOUS
schrodingers_cat
They want people on student visas to apply for visas every fucking year.
ETA: I don’t this rule has gone into effect just yet.
Mnemosyne
As I’ve said about this before, ICE is thrilled at this turn of events because they’re lazy fuckers. They’d rather arrest college kids and soccer moms than go after actual criminals. Arresting criminals might be, like, dangerous and stuff.
But going to an elementary school and arresting a mother of two after she drops them off? Easy as pie. Especially since they have a list and don’t have to do any actual detective work.
LAO
Seriously, who wants these people in our country? I mean really?
Tokyokie
Rounding up and ridding the society of Others is exactly what I’d expect from a Nazi sympathizer.
Major Major Major Major
@LAO: sounds like a Mexican plot to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.
Mike in NC
Looks like Trump is choosing to wait until late on Friday afternoons to pull his underhanded shit, hoping that few people will notice. So the news about DACA will be released around 4 PM on September 1st.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
It’s the only way conservatives can win elections, otherize people, weaponize fear and bigotry, cheat, disenfranchise, and gerrymander.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat:
QFT!
Frankensteinbeck
IE, Trump himself. These are not policies Trump is pushed to. They are his personal agenda, maybe the only thing he cares about after stuffing federal money into his own pocket.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
For all those Trump supporters and fascists out there:
Goons of Hazzard
Dead Kennedys
Happy hour belongs to America’s best-loved thugs
Here comes the four-wheel prosthetic penises
Got yer gun racks, tractor tires and lynch mob drivers
We couldn’t find a chick to sit in the middle
So we drink ourselves sick
Lean out the windows and pinch ass instead
We are the Goons of Hazzard
Glorified on your TV
We run down bikes and hitch hikers
And we know we’ll get off scot-free
We’re the vigilante heroes of your tough-guy flicks
Bashing punks & bums and fags
With our baseball bats
No deer to blow away in the woods today
So we go to Oroville and shoot a black kid down
Or waste demonstrators in Greensboro instead
We are the Goons of Hazzard
Glorified on your TV
We leave you in a pool of blood
‘Cause we know we’ll get off scot-free
Let’s get him:
Come here
Come here
Say something to me?
We’ve got him cornered
We’ve got him cornered
Is anybody looking?
Does anybody even care?
No!
Local papers paint us up to be big heroes
City fathers and Chamber of Commerce want us deputized
The stoner gestapo keepin’ your town clean
Get a shave, kid
We’ll pay you as a strike-breaker
Maybe you’ll make Tac Squad for the L.A.P.D.
We are the Goons of Hazzard
Glorified on your TV
We leave you in a pool of blood
And we always get off scot-free
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Go read that article Cheryl posted about the collapse of the GOP – they are desperate to distract their voters that the Republicans are so fractured they can’t govern.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@rikyrah: I think you mean “is NOT a white supremacist party.”
Because it damn sure is one.
LAO
While this tweet has nothing to do with the current discussion, it was too funny not to share and I’m certain that many of my fellow Jews would join him.
RSR
My wife is among a contingent of Philadelphia educators working to keep immigrant students safe:
In charged climate, Philly teachers learn how to keep immigrant students safe
Working Educators, a social justice caucus of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, was instumental in pushing the school district to provide training. She received training at school district headquarters, and then brought that information back to the staff at her school in a ‘turn around’ training session.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah:
I think you accidentally left out the word NOT in that sentence.
RSR
great, I want to post info about what teachers in Philadelphia are doing, but seems I’m in moderation hell. It’s just text with a block quote. :(
The Moar You Know
I don’t know how it could be done, and it certainly would not be an issue for anyone to run on but ICE/CBP needs to be disbanded and eliminated.
Annie
“They are also 10 times more worthwhile as human beings than any Trump ever pooped out by a D-list model, foreign or domestic. I think that’s what scares the white supremacist shitheads the most.”
This, this, a thousand times this. Some time ago I read Paul Kalanithi’s book “When Breath Becomes Air.” Book is good but hideous sad, but that’s not my point right now. Point is: Kalanithi’s family is of Indian ethnicity (can’t recall when the forebears came to this country). He graduated from Stanford, then got a master’s in English lit, then went to med school and was about to finish his training as a neurosurgeon when he got sick. One brother is a computer scientist in Silicon Valley; the other is also very successful but I don’t recall his profession. Their father is a cardiologist who moved the family to Kingman, Arizona because he could open his own cardiology practice there. Their mother did volunteer work to improve the schools in Kingman.
So I’m reading Kalanithi’s book and thinking, this is what white supremacists are scared of — brown people who put in the work and succeed — because the white people can’t look down on them and sneer.
It certainly does not sound as if anyone in this family was bemoaning the loss of high paying manufacturing jobs.
rikyrah
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
You are correct. Thanks for the correction.
Davebo
I used to date an immigration judge who was herself an immigrant and years ago she told me DACA was a horrible idea for just this reason. ICE now has a database to easily locate and start deportation proceedings.
The only positive is that EOIR currently has a 4 year case backlog in my part of the country now and dumping tens of thousands, much less hundreds of thousands of new cases, assuming most of these people contest their removal, is going to push that back to long after the nightmare that is Trump is over.
Betty Cracker
@RSR: Fished it out. Kudos to your wife and the Working Educators.
Cheryl Rofer
I am beginning to worry about how all this is empowering law enforcement and sending them the message that they can act with impunity.
ICE, because of how laws work near the border, is pretty close to lawless.
Pardoning Joe Arpaio says that law enforcement can act with impunity toward immigrants.
Removing the ban on giving military equipment to police departments says that they are an internal army.
First they came for the socialists/immigrants…
Frankensteinbeck
@RSR:
If ICE agents try to detain students on school grounds, there will be violence. There are teachers who would call ICE to come and cleanse their class. There are more teachers who would physically attack a man in riot armor to defend their students.
schrodingers_cat
@Annie: I am betting it was after the 1965 immigration act was passed, the one Cotton and Perdue want to get rid off with Miller’s blessings.
Yes they hate us because somewhere deep inside they know how they stack up. You can lie to everyone but not yourself.
karensky
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: so on target!
Laura
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: It’s ALWAYS a good day for a little DK!
Here’s an old chestnut with a twist:
https://youtu.be/6d3QFkZ5-hM
Nazi Trump Fuck Off!
rikyrah
@Annie:
There was a portion of this that I admit now, I had missed.
I understand their hatred of Black people – it’s as long standing as the republic.
But, considering that I didn’t think they KNEW any of the other folks that they hated.
And, then, during the Muslim ban, and immigration bashing, I found out that a good QUARTER of doctors in America, are foreign born. And, most of these people get their visas to practice in the United States, by agreeing to being sent to ‘ underserved areas’ – i.e., rural areas.
These racist pieces of shyt, are mad that the doctors TREATING THEM AND KEEPING THEM ALIVE….are foreigners.
They resent them, instead of being happy that their local clinics/hospitals get to stay open BECAUSE of these foreign doctors willing to work there.
I remember the story about the woman Chinese doctor, who gets told by White folks – IN THE ER – that they don’t want her assistance, and will wait for a White doctor.
THINK about the level of racism it takes to refuse help IN THE ER, because of the race of the doctor.
scav
@different-church-lady: There is a solid bit of not even all whaihte people are equal in its core beliefs though. Education certainly leaches the essential element out, as does not pissing on non-clone neighbors, while any XX status reduces the essential arayaness to token inertness: don’t y’all be messin’ your pretty little heads with all this complex stuff, but shaddup and be our handy pinup poster of what needs protectin’ ‘n’ shit.
rikyrah
@Cheryl Rofer:
Which is why we say, NO, NOT TODAY, MUTHAPHUCKA.
rikyrah
in moderation, please help
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Check out the percentages of the foreign born in the research universities of this country, at every level past the undergraduate, they outnumber the native born, in most STEM fields. That’s what Rs want to destroy, the scientific edge that the United States has.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Cheryl Rofer:
I read a vice article the other day about some old fart from the Weather Underground from several months ago telling the Antifa whippersnappers that they’re doing it wrong. Said that beating up Nazis would only politically isolate them. Bonus points for complaining about “neoliberals”.
I disagree. This isn’t the 60s or 70s anymore. A whole lot more people are being radicalized and the stakes are even higher. The fate of American democracy itself is at stake. I don’t advocate violence first. But I’m not a fool to think that it might never come to that. This is such a mess.
LAO
@Cheryl Rofer:
This isn’t particularly new, law enforcement has always acted with impunity and we, as a society, have relied upon the federal government to restrain the worst of that behavior. Now, with the restraint removed, it’s become more visible.
Also, the ban on military equipment was quite recent. IIRC, since 1997, almost $5 billion of military surplus was already transferred to state and local police departments. We already face a militarized police force.
HinTN
@Mnemosyne:
This describes cops everywhere. Not the good ones, mind you, but the shitheels that take the low-wage high-risk job because it puffs up their ego. If they can make it low risk, more the better.
SatanicPanic
@rikyrah: This. GOP is the racist party. Our job is to repeat that every time the subject of the GOP comes up.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: antifa, at least its Bay Area incarnation, IS about preemptive violence. So.
ETA the ones I know at least.
SatanicPanic
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: You might want to read up on the Weather Underground. If that guy is saying it’s a bad idea, it probably is, they would know all about counter-productive activism, they practically wrote the book on it.
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Please keep your violent fantasies to yourself. Thanks.
MJS
@RSR: Ask you wife to call in to PA’s Child Line when/if ICE shows up asking about children at the school. That’s the hotline for suspected child abuse. My kids are out of school, but I would certainly have wanted it reported if creepy fucks were hanging out near schools asking about kids.
Josie
A small bit of good news – A federal judge in San Antonio has temporarily blocked a new law which would ban sanctuary cities in Texas.
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/08/30/judge-temporarily-blocks-sanctuary-cities-law/
Mnemosyne
@Annie:
Yep. It took me way too long to figure that out, because it was incomprehensible to me that anyone would think we should reject smart, motivated people who want to make our country better by becoming legal citizens.
But once you realize it’s because those racist white people hate the competition and hate being shown that their “inferiors” are smarter and work harder than they do, then it makes sense.
The Moar You Know
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Let me speak plainly; it had better not “come to that” because the Left will lose. The American Right has centuries of experience with violence and is very proficient at it, in addition to having the tacit support of all of the State’s agencies of violence (armed forces, police, etc.) – the American Left has no experience and no institutional support.
I have no idea how, but another way needs to be found. If it comes to violence or a civil war most of us end up dead.
I’d prefer that this was not the case, and frankly would really prefer to teach the right a lesson in the means that they understand, but that is the hard reality of the situation.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think that qualifies as violent fantasy. He’s calmed down a lot.
@SatanicPanic:
chuckle
schrodingers_cat
@The Moar You Know: I don’t usually agree with you but THIS.
@Major Major Major Major: I read at least one comment longing for or predicting some violence in any thread that Goku comments.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: predicting/worrying about != longing for, he’s not like he once was, and he’s not Tenguphule. Room to improve but progress is progress.
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
Doesn’t get talked about enough about how badly Boehner broke the House. People keep harping on the Hastert rule of needing a majority of Republican votes to pass something as “OMG! That’s tough politicking”.
But Boehner went a step further and refused to allow bills to come for a vote, unless they could be passed with only Republican votes, and since the immigration bill was not going to pass with only Republican votes he killed it, along with infrastructure, a jobs bill and a host of other things.
And Ryan continues this fuckery till this day and the MSM treats this as business-as-usual.
trollhattan
Get the feeling with Bannon’s crew out, neocons are beginning to hold sway in the White House.
gene108
Very succinct, Betty.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: There’s not going to be a civil war, at most we’ll have a break up of the USA, and that’s not a guarantee of us all ending up dead. Smart political leadership can mitigate a lot of that.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: better the devil you know than a shit-covered face-tattooed raving mad imp with a needle sticking out of its arm, I guess.
SatanicPanic
Bloomberg has a great read on Kushner’s ownership of 666 Fifth St in NY. The details make me think that Donald Trump isn’t the only person in the White House with terrible negotiating skills
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-kushners-china-deal-flop-was-part-of-much-bigger-hunt-for-cash/
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@schrodingers_cat:
How is what I said a fantasy? I’m scared of that possibility.
Tokyokie
@rikyrah: As someone who lives in a large metropolitan area and NEVER wants to have some privileged white asshole as his PCP, when it’s been time to choose a new one, I search first for Asian family names, then for female given names. (And if I have access to academic credentials, I look for Howard grads.) Sadly, the Chinese physician who was my longtime PCP retired a few years back.
Aimai
@schrodingers_cat: yes! This!
schrodingers_cat
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Well you have advocated for violence, more than once. I get it that you are afraid, that’s normal, but don’t let your fear rule you.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Look, I’m a mid 50s white male from the South who can put on a drawl with the ease of slipping into your favorite old bathrobe. I fit in with the current state of white culture, and I have a mega shit ton of familiarity with how things work outside this haven of normalcy. I know how they think, I know their hatreds, both hidden and overt, I know the code words.
These are my people.
I can definitively tell you that the noble pursuit of a pure campaign of nonviolence does not work with them. They reinforce one another, so the concept of “shame” doesn’t exist beyond the occasional and very quietly whispered “tsk tsk” and clucking of tongues. Their faith washes them in the blood of their personal Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who forgives them of their all too understandable mortal sin (because we’re all sinners, after all – Christ was sent to die for a couple of days for us to have redemption and eternal life). Christ also will provide succor to the victims of your sins in the afterlife, so long as they believe, too – so you never have to work to change or redeem yourself so long as you bleat the correct words of belief. They’ve proven – repeatedly – that they’re willing to live in squalor and insecurity just so the n****r or the sp*c on the other side of town will have less.
You can try all the carrots in the world, but without a stick that truly motivates them (the fear of physical pain from violence), they won;t answer.
Martin Luther King’s success proved to be pretty brittle in the face of nearly 50 years of whining, legal challenges and social attacks on the concepts that he championed most. America’s whites were simply not fearful of the alternative. South Africa appears to be in a fairly decent spot with durable results – in addition to certain nonviolent moves, the white PTB were given, in essence, an ultimatum: share power voluntarily, or we’ll seize it by force and violence.
That is the current challenge I see with Antifa and other groups more prone to direct action. How to apply that fear to pasty, puffy white suburbanites.
One more thing – I see a lot of people talk about how it is a nationwide problem. I tend to agree, however, the main infection is in the South. Address that, and the other parts of the infection dwindle.
Major Major Major Major
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Fortunately we have these wonderful innovations like “democracy” and “a state monopoly on violence” that are more or less functioning.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: I’m not seeing a lot of smart political leadership these days, and sadly that’s one of the few arenas in which I can say it’s something I see “on both sides”. Institutional Dems don’t seem to understand just how dangerous and unstable the place America is currently in; institutional Republicans simply want to burn the US to the ground.
A breakup of the US would be lamentable but is an outcome I could live with. I understand the allure of the fantasy of taking on the right via the only method that they have of winning – i.e. violence – and shoving their faces in their own shit, but let’s get real; that is simply not going to be the outcome of such a contest.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major:
In all seriousness, give Trump and the GOP time. Their policies will eventually degrade the state’s ability to do that
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: What about California’s response to Trump’s election has left you unsatisfied? At the institutional level I see a group of people who are unified in their opposition. If anything, it’s the insurgent Democrats who aren’t taking this stuff seriously.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@The Moar You Know:
One realistic outcome if the GOP aren’t dislodged or continue on this path is a massive brain drain. Liberals always say they’re going to Canada, but if things get really bad, then they just might bug out. Along with a lot of other people if they can.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: what is degraded can be rebuilt, some things more quickly than others.
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: um, going to Canada counts as bugging out. It’s a different country, you can tell because the currency has a monarch on it.
rikyrah
Blaming Identity Politics Is Like Saying ‘All Lives Matter’
by Nancy LeTourneau
August 31, 2017
…………………………….
I thought of that when I saw yet another article, this time from James Baker and Andrew Young, suggesting that it is identity politics that is causing all of our divisions today. Just as “all lives matter” dismisses the fact that, for too many people, Black lives don’t matter—at least not as much as white lives—blaming our divisions on those who have been demanding a seat at the table is a way to say that they are the problem for wanting to be included.
The truth is that identity politics has been a feature of our government since its founding. It’s just that the identity that has been at the center of everything has been white male. The journey to include anyone else has been the long, hard struggle we’ve undergone to take steps to “perfect our union” and expand the “we” to include other identities. We are now at the point in that struggle when some of those who identify as white males are feeling threatened by the inclusion—and are mounting a backlash.
Need I point out that our current political environment is seeped in attempts to exclude anyone who identifies as something other than white male? Just yesterday the Trump administration tossed out the very idea of collecting data to track the exclusion when it comes to disparities in pay. We are in the midst of attempts to roll back the enforcement of civil rights, abandon affirmative action, suppress access to voting, promote police brutality and send brown people into the shadows. This country just elected a man to be president who mocked the disabled and bragged about committing sexual assault.
The idea that, while all of that is going on, we’re hearing women and people of color being blamed for causing our divisions is nothing short of appalling. Don’t come at me with your calls for unity until/unless you are willing to fight against these efforts and join in demanding that our “we” has to include everyone.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Well it sounds like the Republicans are working themselves up to block both the Debt Ceiling Increase and Harvey Relief at the same time on the grounds of why just make life miserable for only immigrants?
The Moar You Know
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Good post. I’m the first born outside the South since before the Civil War. Grew up “going home” every year. You describe the folk well.
The way – the only way, since we on the left will always will suck at violence – is for the left to co-opt the state and have the state put the fear into these folks. I agree you won’t move them to action any other way.
The “left” – not the extreme left but simply what I’ll term these days as “decent folk” have one tool and it’s a whopper. We have the money. The 500 counties that went for Clinton produce almost 2/3rds of the nation’s GDP. We will have to use that to wrangle our way into power and then do exactly what the GOP has been trying to do overtly since 2000, put in a way that will make every poster here squirm: disenfranchise voters. A lot of folks here and a lot of Americans will not like that, but we cannot continue on allowing a minority of insane people to rule the country. Right now, the House is gerrymandered, the two-Senators per state rule has locked us out of that chamber, and the electoral college is rigged to give elections to rural voters. The playing field does not need to be leveled. It needs to be turned on its head.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: sure, let’s become that which we hate in the pursuit of victory.
Principles only work if you apply them.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: Nothing, but we have not been tested yet. When the DEA starts coming in and seizing pot clinic records and arresting providers and patients, as they have stated they plan on doing, and ICE comes in (as they already have been in Los Angeles) and starts yanking kids out of classrooms, there’s going to be exactly nothing that the state can do about that. Or any other form of institutional or actual violence the current federal government chooses to indulge in. We are not a nation onto ourselves. If we were I’d probably never post here, just walk around happy every day.
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: Principles can’t work if one side refuses to abide by them.
Here we are. Our principles have brought us here. You can choose to respond effectively or in a manner that does not work.
JMG
@HinTN: I don’t know where you live, but in Boston and its suburbs, police officer is not a low wage job at all. Solid middle class to upper middle when they get seniority.
TomatoQueen
@SatanicPanic: A millstone around the neck of a white elephant, on a twisted chain of bollocks, tire rims, and vapor, and may it remain so forever.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: just eight years ago our principles (in this case “counting votes”) brought us the greatest president in a generation and huge democratic majorities in congress leading to the biggest expansion of the social safety net in fifty years. I’m willing to give our principles the benefit of the doubt.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I disagree with you, you young whippersnapper. ? The antics of groups like the Weather Underground were part of what led to the conservative backlash of Nixon and Reagan. We don’t want to repeat that history over again of making the conservatives look like the reasonable ones.
Ithink
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Where did you GET this from!?!?? Its pretty brilliant.
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: @Mnemosyne: listen to Mnem, she’s super old ? and thus super wise
Humdog
@schrodingers_cat: I for one am pretty tired of your continued tone policing at Balloon Juice. No one made you hall monitor. Adam set a standard against violent fantasies but you take it further and slap down cries of desperation. We are allowed to express defeated feelings here, regardless of your displeasure.
Peale
@Mnemosyne: Except that we already have the radical conservative backlash going on and we haven’t even started yet.
rikyrah
@JMG:
Here in Chicago, when they advertise about taking the police test, one of the lines that they always use – within 18 months, you will make $80,000.
That’s SALARY.
We’re not including their OVERTIME.
Plus, the money you can make with the outside security gigs.
It takes work for a cop in Chicago to NOT make $100k. And, even though we’re Chicago, and you MUST live within the city limits if employed by the city….. you will not be scrounging making 100k. We don’t have a housing market like New York or San Francisco.
The cops that I know, granted, they’ve been on the force for at least 10 years, but they make AT LEAST 150k.
rikyrah
@Tokyokie:
The only thing, when it comes to doctors, is that I don’t want a male OB-GYN. I simply won’t go to one. But, outside of that, I’m pretty flexible.
I simply can’t understand – BEING THE EMERGENCY ROOM – and trying to be picky about doctor’s based on RACE.
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: I am not. The ACA was a great accomplishment, bought to us only by a freak situation in Congress that won’t be repeated again in our lifetimes. And it will be Obama’s only accomplishment (besides not shitting his diapers on a daily basis, which sadly now seems to be where the bar is set for the current Leader Of The Free World) thanks to a bulletproof hold on Congress by the GOP. Everything else he managed to do was done was via executive order, and I think we can see the fate of virtually all of Obama’s executive orders in the hands of the Great Orange One.
Our principles, applied to a greater swath of history, have given us the fine bookends to Obama of Bush #2, and Trump. And only two years of Congressional control in the last 21.
Pretending that we can continue under the same rules is simply a guarantee of more failure. If an employee approached me with a plan that gave me the same results that Dems have gotten since 1980 I would fire him on the spot, and so would you.
ruckus
@Tokyokie:
I rarely see a caucasian doc at the VA. I’ve had one caucasian woman PCP and a couple of residents but that’s about it, in over 5 years.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know:
Supreme Court justices, DADT, Dodd-frank, Ledbetter, the stimulus, rolling back the worst of the bush tax cuts, were all executive orders?
ETA: new tobacco regulations, student loan reform…
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Belittling Obama’s achievements is not just a right wing past time.
Sincerely yours,
Hall monitor.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: Agreed! I am still hopeful we can beat back the revanchists at the ballot box. We outnumber the bastards, after all. It’ll take a lot of folks getting off the sidelines, but that’s what organizing is for.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: There are two jobs with wage disparities that will make your head spin. Teachers are one. Cops are the other. Cops in cities make money that I could only dream about. Firefighters too, by the way, if you’re interested in a career that makes bank without a lot of risk of getting shot at.
Rural cops, like rural teachers, can be making not much more money than the guy working at the local Taco Bell.
Your success in America is becoming increasingly dependent on where you live.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
And the crazies who threatened dire consequences if he had a vote. And the squishes who didn’t stand up and demand one. And the constituents who pushed their Republican Representatives to hold those positions.
schrodingers_cat
@Humdog: Every other thread here is about WASF, so the influence my comments have on other commenters seems to be negligible. Anyway you are always free to ignore my comments.
gene108
@The Moar You Know:
The way to fix the House is to increase the number of Reps beyond 435.
435 was voted on, in 1911, after the 1910 census, with 433 seats for the then 46 states and 1 seat each for when Arizona and New Mexico became states later in the decade.
Sticking the number to 435 for over 115 years has skewed the House to over represent rural areas.
Increase the numbers to reflect the fact 2/3 of the country lives in urban areas and the narrative will flip from “how do Democrats win rural areas” to control the House to “how can Republicans win urban areas” .
This will also increase the EC votes for mostly Blue states relative to Republican states.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: boehner was retiring anyway. This was a personal call he made and nothing else.
@Betty Cracker: I’ll be willing to talk compromising bedrock principles of liberal democracy when turnout is regularly over, I don’t know, 60%?
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: The problem I see though is that you’re saying “no one is smart” and “we don’t know what they’ll do in the future, when nothing will be able to be done.” I’m not sure what to do with that. My point was is that IF there is a crack up, we’ll have some smart people here in California who might be able to navigate that. I don’t know what your basis if for saying we don’t.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Of a holiday weekend.
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: You may see that as a success (and I like the ones we got) but with Garland, it was his biggest failure and I lay that personally at his feet.
That was a time to go to fucking war and he – and the rest of the party – did nothing. Government shutdown was called for at a minimum. What, that would have handed the election to the Repub…oh yeah.
One of very few things I fault him for. He’s still the best president I’ll see in my lifetime even so. Albeit one who was completely torpedoed by Congress at every turn.
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
Don’t get me started about firemen.
They get that money, and work, 3 days a week.
EVERY fireman I know has a second job.
EVERY DAMN ONE.
Not because they don’t make enough money as a fireman…
but, just because they can…
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: I fault him for not releasing the Russia info. He had faults, but he had many non EO successes.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: I agree. I think there are very few scenarios in which California does not come out a winner. My concern is at the national level. There is no recognition of the depth of the problem.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: Threatening the GOP with government shutdown if they don’t do what he wants? I am skeptical of this plan.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: Well sure, that’s probably the case in several places, but then again, they’ve been pretty united. Trumpcare got zero votes, for instance. I haven’t seen them this unified in my lifetime.
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: Gotta disagree, with again the huge caveat that for most of his time in office, he had a Congress who had openly stated they weren’t going to pass one damn thing he backed.
Now, I gotta say this, in fairness: the jiujitsu he pulled on Boehner and McConnell to sunset out the Bush tax cuts is something that needs to go into the history books. Absolutely masterful. He made a better president, but would have made a hell of a Senate leader if he’d decided to go that route.
rikyrah
“Mr. 30 Percent”: New polls show Trump collapsing during callous response to Harvey https://t.co/LFKgxhT0Lk via @shareblue
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) August 31, 2017
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know:
So other than all his successes he had none. Ok.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: A lot of older lefty professors seem to think that way.
Tokyokie
@rikyrah: If I were a woman, I wouldn’t want a male OBG, either. But it’s the unbridled condescension of which privileged white males are characteristically capable that I wish to avoid. I’m well-educated and have a nursing degree, so I can understand medical conditions and procedures, and I detest being talked down to. Thus, my last few PCPs have been a Chinese woman, an Indian man, and a white woman, and my dentist is a Vietnamese woman.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
Hey, now, I love my white male dentist! ? Of course, he’s an immigrant from Russia, so he’s probably not what you’re thinking of.
Humdog
@schrodingers_cat: as you are free to create your own blog with your own rules, hall monitor. You have had interesting points to add, when you are not policing, but maybe pie is more your style. I have never used the pie filter before.
germy
@HinTN:
Low wage? Where I live, the police (with their overtime) can sometimes clear six figures.
rikyrah
Pence says he asked Trump what he should say in Texas. VP says Trump said: “just tell them we love Texas.”
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 31, 2017
Betty Cracker
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah:
If I’m not mistaken, that’s 3 12 hour shifts. The kid also has the work schedule as a nurse.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I wrote a story!
____________________________
RAGNAROK’S BEST, MOST FABULOUS, VERY FABULOUS STORY
He slumped in the overstuffed chair, the confusion and fatigue of the last two days filling his mind with intermittent static and causing him to occasionally nod off. As he opened his eyes and looked around the windowless concrete walls and the intense men and women straining their tear-stained eyes at monitors and dejectedly whispering, he decided he was a little bored and reached into his pocket to out his phone. After he happily noted that there were at least 4 bars of wifi in this place, he stroked the little blue button with the white bird on it, and waited…
…and waited…
Finally, a message appeared on the screen that the server could not be found, and he had a flash of memory. “Oh, that”, he thought, as a nameless orderly pushed a cold glass of Coca Cola and ice with barely disguised contempt, splashing him in the process. The Secret Service agent standing at his side stopped crying long enough to frown at the orderly briefly and shake his head from side to side in the mildest rebuke.
Beyond that interaction, no one in the room seemed to care to look at him. They performed their tasks almost as automatons, albeit dejected automatons. If he had been capable of empathy, he would have recognized the signs that several of them would be consigning themselves to eternity alone in their rooms after their designated watches were complete; they wouldn’t have much to do after that, anyhow. That nagging sensation which always seemed to be lurking around the corner was really eating at him now – the loneliness was a wolf which couldn’t be held at bay, and that always made him cranky. “Hmph”, he said to himself as he grabbed the TV remote out of the cupholder of the chair. “Losers. That internet was supposed to keep working all the time, it was supposed to be built for stuff like this”. He stabbed the button on the remote, but saw nothing but static. No Doocey, no Hannity, not even that hateful dyke Maddow or that jerk Scarborough, even though they were all on, babbling just a few days ago.
“John”, he shouted. “What the hell is going on out there now?” His chief of staff was disheveled, red-eyed, tieless, shirtsleeves rolled up, as he shook his head at an air force general before slowly making his way over. “Jesus, sir”, the chief said in sotto voce. “You need to get out of that suit and tie – you’ve been wearing it for 4 days now. And you might try bathing – this facility has good water processing, and you smell ripe. I know your hair is an issue for you – put on a MAGA hat, it isn’t like we don’t have crates of them”. “Fine, John, but I still want a report”, the man said. “Get up and walk this way, and I’ll let air force brief you”.
As he ambled over, to the table surrounded by generals and admirals, the blue suit looked at the others and rolled his eyes.
“Sir”, the blue suited general said. “Preliminary analysis on the damage in Tehran, Bandar Abbas, Isfahan, Shiraz, Pyongyang, Nampo, Sariwan and Wonsan hadn’t even begun when the conflict widened as a result of your attack. Those alone probably resulted in at least two million deaths and an equal number wounded.” The man fiddled with the end of his red tie, stained as it was by the giant plane having been buffered by blasts and spilling his meal over his front, then saying “the time for a bunch of weak was over. I wanted finality”.
Air Force sighed. “You got that, sir. Losses in Seoul are probably about even with what our models showed – maybe three million. The generalized war on the Korean peninsula will probably kill ten million. The launches on Japan were expected, and we were surprised that the Kyoto bomb worked while the other four were fizzles.”
The man picked a new red hat that somebody had put on the table for him – he could see that it had been defaced by a sharpie marker with the word “asshole” appearing below MAGA. “But why did the Chinese…”, he started to say, and air force anticipated. “Could be they misread the launch tracks, could be that they decided we weren’t going to exercise that much power in their sphere of influence ever again. They made sure that the 7th is out of commission, along with Pearl, Long Beach, Yokohama, San Diego, Guam, you name it. And once those popped, Russia decided to do their thing, drawing in Europe. Pakistan is at it in support of the campaign on Israel, Israel has popped about a dozen Arab cities, but is going to fall, not that there is much left to get.”
The man nodded with this, and started a bit as he heard a technician sob “mom” as she reviewed a tracking radar. Must be some other city.
“My family, what about them, John. Did any get out?”, he asked the chief.
Sir, we didn’t tell you yesterday in all the confusion, but the First Lady…she…she was not at Andrews fast enough, nor was Barron. We tried to get the two in Kalorama, but once it was apparent that the conflict was destined to widen as Mr. Mattis warned you before you fired him, a mob dragged them out of their home, and we did not arrive on time. About all we managed to do was pick you up in New Jersey. The one in New York was an impossibility. The Speaker and the Pro Tem were stalled in Washington, and Vice President Pence may have been caught in the Texas bombs. We can’t locate him. As far as the federal government is concerned, you are it. There are probably a few governors around still, but we have no decent contact with the various national guard units at the moment. Hell, it was harder to get to this facility than we thought it would be – we ambled around for a day and a half until we could be reasonably sure that nobody else would know this location.”
“Well, are we winning?”, he said, giving his best executive glare at the men around the table. Each looked at the other, and ignoring him, looked away and went back to their table to work, ignoring his rising protestations and leaving him to his state.
chris
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Well done, Comte! I’ve always liked apocalyptic fiction, let’s hope it remains fiction.
Major Major Major Major
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I dunno, Twitter probably has some servers running in a vault in Norway or something.
Fun story, thanks!
Lalophobia
OT but…..Something about….donations?
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Hear, hear. My thought is that we should increase the number of Representatives until the least populous state has at least two. That would help to make the House more representative in the smaller states, where Montana has almost twice Wyoming’s population but the same single Representative in the House. It would also help to dilute small states’ excessive influence in the Electoral College.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
Fox news saying it has slightly downgraded my belief it will happen from ‘of course’ to ‘probably.’
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Teachers deserve much more money. I wouldn’t say firemen deserve less. The hours are weird precisely because it’s a grueling job that breaks people. They earn it. Like most problems in this country, it’s not that those who have should have less, it’s that those who don’t have should have more.
Amaranthine RBG
@Tokyokie:
Agreed, white doctors are the worst!
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Aww, are you feeling neglected? Do you need someone to pay attention to you?
rikyrah
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
A career that she went to school for a number of years.
Up until recently, all you had to be was 18 and have a high school diploma to take the fireman’s exam.
efgoldman
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well that, and DACA was something that Obama created, so Hair Orange just has to undo
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I get less annoyed about firefighters making lots of money. At least they’re genuinely putting their lives at risk when they go to work, unlike the majority of cops.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
This. First responders deserve to be well paid. So do teachers. And you know, we probably ought to pay janitors and fast food workers a living wage, also, too. We can afford to do it; we just haven’t done it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Frankensteinbeck: I don’t disagree, I was just pointing out the 3 days a week isn’t limited to firefighters.
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
No, firefighting is not even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs when analyzed as deaths per 100,000 workers.
(Nor, of course is police work.)
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne: in all fairness, that’s the vibe I was getting from this thread too.
It’s almost a parody. Seriously.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: They’ve been depending on their skin color to give them status for so long, it’s embarrassing to realize they’re far more mediocre than those “mud people” they so despise.
These people are wretches.
zhena gogolia
@Lalophobia:
Oh, please, oh, please, let’s nail these guys!
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: We can afford to do it, collectively. It’s just that a tiny greedy percentage controls most of the wealth, and they’d give it all up…for just a little bit more.
Tax the living shit out of the rich.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: I gotta quasi-family member who’s a fireman in Ohio. Nice guy, not well educated, pretty hardcore GOPper, but he respects me and I him so we don’t talk politics.
He is suffering, and I do mean suffering, from some hardcore undiagnosed PTSD as is everyone at his station, and after talking with him I bet it’s most firefighters in America. And even if counseling is available they don’t go. Culture really discourages it. They really are the first guys on the scene to almost anything and as he said, he’s been handed more dead babies by screaming mothers than years he’s been alive. Digging the remains of some guy’s wife out of the wheelwell of a semi while the guy stands there and sobs and screams is something he’s done more than once. A lot of those guys tend to go of alcoholism and now I sure get why.
Elizabelle
@Humdog: I appreciate Ms. ? Cat’s intervening to inject some lightness and sense. You might think on how a thread full of whining and despair monkey comes across.
We are living through a dreadful, disheartening era. I get that. But it depletes strength to sit here and wallow.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Repeal Taft-Hartley. Workers will earn a lot more when they can unionize effectively and state right-to-mooch laws are overridden by federal labor law.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Firefighters have a high risk of non-fatal injury, especially small department ones. The only job sector with more on-the-job injuries is health care.
germy
A new weapon for the war on cancer?
Motorized molecules driven by light have been used to drill holes in the membranes of individual cells and show promise for either bringing therapeutic agents into the cells or directly inducing the cells to die.
Mnemosyne
@Elizabelle:
I stood up for white dudes — I love my dentist! And my endodontist is a white dude, too.
But if someone is going to be looking at my vajayjay, I’m more comfortable if that person is another woman.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
I’ve known both cops and firefighters. I think firefighting is a tougher job, both physically and mentally.
germy
rikyrah
Manafort Notes From Russian Meet Contain Cryptic Reference to ‘Donations’
by KEN DILANIAN and CAROL E. LEE
AUG 31 2017, 1:52 PM ET
WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort’s notes from a controversial Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign included the word “donations,” near a reference to the Republican National Committee, two sources briefed on the evidence told NBC News.
The references, which have not been previously disclosed, elevated the significance of the June 2016 meeting for congressional investigators, who are focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.
It is illegal for foreigners to donate to American elections. The meeting happened just as Trump had secured the Republican nomination for president, and he was considered a longshot to win. Manafort was the campaign chairman at the time.
Lalophobia
@rikyrah: Yep.
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
SafeBee says so, so it must be true!
JPL
@rikyrah: The meeting was before the RNC convention. They changed the platform about Ukraine. Timely, indeed.
germy
Updated:
Mike in DC
Hmm. What’s the all time low for “share of the nonwhite vote”? Trump allegedly got 21% last year. 15 seems likely, under 10 might be achievable.
Duane
Nothing left to say except fuck Trump, that lousy bastard.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
I’m sorry your Google finger doesn’t work. That must be so tragic for you.
Matt McIrvin
Based on the charts I’ve found, in terms of fatalities, firefighting is only about as dangerous as police work. The people with huge professional death rates are loggers, fishers, pilots, roofers, garbage collectors, mining machine operators, truck drivers, farmers, electrical line workers–all vastly more dangerous.
Notice that many of these involve operating heavy machinery of some sort–that’s what really kills a lot of people, in addition to falling and all the million things that can happen to an ocean fisherman.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s a lot harder to find injury rates for some reason, but they’ve been saying for years that healthcare workers (nurses, orderlies, aides, etc.) have by far the highest on-the-job injury rate. I think that every nurse I know had back problems because of a work injury.
ETA: IMO, death should not be the sole measure of how dangerous a job is.
rikyrah
@germy:
President Obama expelled the Russian diplomats in San Francisco last December. https://t.co/w7yigjlbQm
— meta (@metaquest) August 31, 2017
Amaranthine RBG
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly right.
The only reason that “injury” rates for firefighters appears to be high is that departments usually have generous disability/time off provisions. Hurt your back working on a logging crew? Too bad, good luck with your next job. Hurt your back as a firefighter – welcome to 6 weeks paid time off.
Dumb people who believe years of police/firefighter union propaganda about them being the “Thin Blue Line” and “Putting their lives on the line” and continue to spread this B.S..
schrodingers_cat
Right wing journalists have been screaming “breaking news” about DACA repeal since the last week, it hasn’t happened yet but someone desperately wants it to happen. I will wait for the official announcement.
Amaranthine RBG
@rikyrah:
Christ on a cracker!
How can these people be so dumb?
I ain’t much of an expert on meeting with representatives of foreign governments to conspire about felonies, but I think I would probably not take any notes during the meeting. I thought Manafort was an old hand at sleazy crap like this.
El Caganer
@Roger Moore: We really should increase it – Germany has about 1/4 the population of the USA, but the Bundestag has about 50% more members than our House.
Mike in DC
The RNC laundering foreign donations, possibly to congressional races, would elevate this to “unprecedented scandal/crisis” level. The involvement of the congressional leadership in something like that would be an extinction level event for either the modern GOP…or for our Republic.
rikyrah
@Mike in DC:
Want all of them.
ALL.OF.THEM.
ARREST THEM ALL
Just One More Canuck
@Amaranthine RBG: Jesus, she cited a source, which is more than I’ve ever seen from you. If you don’t like it, find a better one. Otherwise, fuck off with your condescension
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
And driving, for which the danger is obvious. I suspect that the biggest problem in a lot of those industries is a feeling that they’re racing against time, which leads them to skip sleep and cut similar corners, with the inevitable cost in safety.
Apparently, there’s been a huge change in the rate of fatalities in the Alaska fishing fleet that illustrates this. The biggest single difference was changing the way they assigned quotas. They used to have an overall quota for the whole fleet, with each boat racing to try to catch as many crabs as possible before the quota was reached. When they switched to assigning a quota to each boat, they no longer had to race with each other; they only had to make sure they could reach their boat’s quota in the time allowed. That let them adopt sane safety practices, like getting regular sleep and returning to port during major storms. That isn’t apparently the entire story- there have also been changes in protective gear and increases in boat safety inspections- but it’s a big part of it.
chris
What do real journalists do? Mr. Charles P. Pierce offers a demonstration.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: EMTs get hurt a lot.
Amaranthine RBG
@Just One More Canuck:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=most+dangerous+occupations
Ladyraxterinok
@schrodingers_cat:
This % of foreign born in STEM study at US universities cannot be discussed publically. State legislatures want to cut/gut higher ed funding. Some are upset because ‘taxpayer dollars are being used to teach out-of-state students.’ They would be furious that ‘Americans’ hard-earned money is going to teach furriners.’
In the 80s at a midwest public university physics students had difficulty understanding their TA’s explanations of the problem solutions. At another, when the communication problems became too glaring the foreign-born students got the research assistant jobs. This created ill-feeling among the grad students because reseach-assistant positions are much preferred (eg, you have greater control over your schedule). None of the faculty or administers wanted legislators to become aware of these situations.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Amaranthine RBG:
Safebee is done by Underwriter’s Laboratory. I think they know better than you, asshole
Seth Owen
@Amaranthine RBG: I know a few firefighters and they often develop serious illnesses and die young. One young man is now on dialysis and on a waiting list for a kidney.
It’s often hard to prove direct causation but firefighters are exposed to toxic chemicals in nearly every fire.
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Awww, look! You finally figured out the Google! Good for you.
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
I agree with this idea; currently ICE and CBP are staffed with people allowed to run wild arresting anyone without a US passport in hand, and that is wrong.
But we do need to control borders and know who is entering the country. There are obviously enemies of western thought and freedom out there, in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and right here in America. Although I must say I’m impressed with the rarity of middle-eastern terrorism here at home.
Far more victims of fascists in America, and that includes the killings at the nightclub (Pulse?) in Orlando. He was from the Middle East, but he wasn’t religious, he was fascist, just like the idjit who ran down real Americans in Virginia. They were two peas in a pod if you ask me.
I hope all those unfortunately-American nazis realize that they are the same movement as the not-muslim fascists from the Middle East. But that may be too hard for them to grasp… none of them are what you would call politically sophisticated!
mai naem mobile
@Matt McIrvin: I remember convenience store cashiers were at the top of dying on the job at some point,I am guessing because of armed robberies.
sigyn
@Humdog: You’re not alone.
Ksmiami
@Mnemosyne: @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: ding ding ding fuck this shit we have contingency plans
Ksmiami
@The Moar You Know: I wouldn’t advocate violence , but the wholesale removal of scientific and technological assets so we can shut them down operationally- no internet, no antibiotics, no phones. Let them eat each other without us firing a shot
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
You’re dissing firemen?
They also pull people our of burning buildings, cars with flaming gasoline, warehouses with god only knows what in there. You might ease up on people willing to pull your family out of a fire a 3 am. Really.
Blue Galangal
@Ladyraxterinok: first of all, “80s” =/= 2017. Second, research assistantships are few and far between in this state’s 11 public universities. Everyone has to be a TA if they are getting a stipend, period. In the STEM fields, particularly engineering, many foreign born grad students are paying partial tuition plus a surcharge to come here, and they can’t be RAs at all because only US citizens can do research in certain disciplines, including all engineering disciplines, because of national security. Take your Reaganesque example designed to foment hatred of the other elsewhere. This has never been the case at the bulk of universities and is not the case post 9/11 times two.