Good Morning!
Once again I am trying to get a post up while furiously preparing for a program, this time a super-sized version of “Ethics Rock Extreme” for a federal agency, in collaboration with the marvelous Mike Messer, my rock/country/pop singer and guitar virtuoso partner of almost 20 years….I’ll begetting to ethics observations on last night’s debate when I return, if I return.
1. “Think of the children!” porn. I’m sure you’ve seen this…
…and have read or heard some of the shirt-rending and hair-tearing prompted by the viral photograph of a drowned “migrant” and his infant son. The injection of pure, unreasoning emotion and sentimentality into the illegal immigration debate is cynical but predictable, and this is just an escalation of the media campaign to frame all illegal immigration in romantic and sentimental terms.
The photo should change nothing. The death of an infant irresponsibly and recklessly taken on a dangerous journey (as well as an illegal one) is the fault of the parent who brought him, not the Presient of the united States, not ICE, not immigration officials. Democrats like Chuck Schumer who exploit such a photo are unconscionable. “Seeking a better life” is not now now has ever been a justification for breaking the law. The photo of an adult and an infant who die in the course of a dangerous attempt to break U.S. laws should prompt pity for the child and anger at the adult, no more, no less.
Those taking up the “Think of the children!” cry need to be asked if their solution is to provide ferry rides across the Rio Grande for children who are forced to accompany their parents in attempts at illegal immigration. Or U.S. lifeguards stationed on the shore, perhaps.
2. SCOTUS rejects the Commerce argument for a citizenship question on the Census. This time it was Chief Justice Roberts breaking with that supposedly iron conservative majority. Roberts wrote “that the decision to reinstate a citizenship question cannot be adequately explained in terms of [the Department of Justice’s] request for improved citizenship data to better enforce the VRA….Several points, considered together, reveal a significant mismatch between the decision [Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross] made and the rationale he provided.”
I don’t like the result, but I must admits the Commerce rational for adding the question never seemed honest or made much sense.
3. She had a point, but what an idiot. On May 17, Georgia Clark a Fort Worth teacher, sent a series of tweets to President Trump, telling the President that her school district was “loaded” with illegal immigrant students from Mexico, that her high school had been “taken over by them,” and that drug dealers among them had not been punished. She pointed to a “Hispanic assistant principal who protects certain students from criminal prosecution.” as the major culprit in the situation.
“Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated,” she said.
The board of the Fort Worth Independent School District voted unanimously to terminate the contract of the teacher. Fourteen people at the board meeting spoke against Ms. Clark’s continued employment, with none in support. Clark intends to request a hearing to contest the decision, her lawyer, Brandon Brim, said in a statement.
Observations:
- The school had to fire her once her negative opinion of many of her students became public.
- The New York Times refers to her use of the term “illegals” as adopting “a pejorative term for undocumented immigrants.” To the contrary, the term “undocumented immigrants” is a misleading and dishonest term for “illegals.”
- Clark thought that her tweets to the President were private. She’s an idiot. I’d fire her for that alone.
Ethics Alarms 
Whether or not the arguments were good or bad relating to putting the citizenship question on the census document the court has effectively stated that it will permit voter dilution.
I have coined the term voter dilution as the corollary to voter suppression. With voter dilution non citizens are counted as ordinary residents who are in a given electoral district. When the census uses the numerical count to allocate the number of House of Representative members each state will get this affects voting results by splitting districts burgeoning with the undocumented into new electoral districts. Even without voter fraud the undocumented will statistically increase the likelihood that a person of similar political leanings as the original elected representative because the undocumented can only hide in the shadows if they reside in areas whose residents share similar physical and linguistic characteristics.
To combat the inflation of political representation of those ineligible to decide our rules and regulations I will NOT complete the upcoming decennial census and I urge other citizens to do the same. The only Constitutional purpose for the census that I am aware of was to allocate representatives among states
If you can ask me my race and gender I am afraid the woke crowd will eventually come for me. If that excuse works for the illegal aliens I will demand that all questions other than absolute numbers in the household be stricken. There is no reason to need amy other questions. Even resources can be allocatted based soley on population count. Equality means everyone gets the same allocation right?
This echoes what my take on this is.
The census is used to draw congressional districts, not the number of registered voters, and so districts that punch above their weight class in illegal immigration get more concentrated representation for the voters.
You’re taking Democrat-held areas that might normally have three or four representatives worth of citizen population being given five or six representatives. Functionally, this is related to gerrymandering, but different enough that I don’t know if it actually has a word. Regardless, I never want to hear Democrats bitch about how un-Democratic Republican zoning policy is. They have a point sometimes, but so long as they support measures like this, they lose the moral right to make it.
So – I hadn’t considered this before, but if the US Census counts everyone regardless of nationality and residency status, etc – and the districts and proportions are designed around that number, what does adding a citizenship question do to affect that process? At this point, it would simply be a factoid about how many potential voters reside in a given district, no?
I mean, it’s one thing to add a citizenship question, but it’s another to say that we’re going to allocate reps and draw districts based on citizens rather than residents.
Honestly, I think the districts should be drawn based on registered voters….get away from the census. Forget counting kids and tourists for that specific process.
Article 1 section 2 was ratified in 1788 before we had immigration laws. The citizen question allows the apportionment of representatives based on the number of those currently eligible to vote for the person that will represent them in Congress or will be eligible simply through the passage of time.
In the upcoming Decennial Census this year alone will see over 1 million persons, be they asylum seekers, or simply undocumented aliens added to our population. How many new House members will be apportioned to the communities in which they reside but cannot vote legally? Every additional representative added because of these persons dilutes the value of all other representatives.
Open border advocates dont care one iota about dead migrants. They don’t care about pathways to citizenship. They only care about populating enough states with sufficient numbers of people who will either remain as the permanant underclass or seek to rise in the ranks of the political class to ensure electoral college victories on a permanent basis.
Interesting comment. I need to think about this.
jvb
If you want to think about it that way there could be 40 representatives in the House who represent illegal aliens.
“….who represent Foreign Nationals.” I mean, just let that sink in a bit. Illegal Aliens has become so charged that it means people who live here. We have US politicians who represent the interests of Foreign Nationals.
If you want to test this theory ask Schiff, Swallwell, Pelosi or Hirono if 1 million and counting Russians came to the US , overstayed their visas and then talked up conservative ideas while taking up residence in a Red state would they be pushing for open borders?
Has anyone ever asked them that?
The census apportions the number of representatives it does not draw the districts. Legislative districts are drawn by state legislatures. As of today the courts cannot interfere in the drawing og those districts.
I stand corrected. I think I knew that, but I sure as heck didn’t write it. The point still stands though, it just gets expended to the state level: The states with high numbers of illegal immigrants still tend to trend Democrat.
Absolutely HT.
Right now the thrust is to turn Texas purple if not blue.
The real prize will be to have more districts with poor latino voters than wealthier voters. The more bonds there are between residents the greater the liklihood the eligible voters will vote to protect undocumented relatives and friends.
It was a daughter, not a son.
“They want a better life” really doesn’t explain what is happening here though, does it? Are the people fleeing Venezuela right now just “looking for a better life,” or are they fleeing the risk of starvation, disease, and/or possible imprisonment by whatever government happens to claim control that day?
Lumping everyone who migrates to the US (or any other country) as simply wanting a better life is an easy way to dismiss the harder question of why are we seeing these mass migrations and what obligation, if any, do richer countries have in connection with this problem. If it is a matter of life or death, it is not simply wanting a better life, it is a question of survival. As we see increased climate change and political unrest across the globe, this problem is only going to get worse, not better.
What the hell does Venezuela, Guatemala, or Syria have to with climate change? No sale.
See, that’s why I also said political instability.
Which is a constant not a controllable or predictable variable. It has forever been so. Huh, just like climate change. Imagine that.
As the Earth warms, arable land moves north, so does ease of living. As those conditions move north, populations now unsustainable will seek more sustainable conditions. Hence a move from tropics to more temperate climates.
It’s a complex interaction, which isn’t fully attributable to climate change, but climate change is a big component.
Which is why I’ve always said, our chief concern with climate change has never been “how do we stop or reverse it?” (because since it isn’t anthropocentric, we can’t affect it) but rather, “how do we predict and prepare for the geopolitical shifts driven by climate change in terms of our international strategy and internal security?”
Wouldn’t as the Earth warms the arable land moves toward the poles? Unless the Earth’s axis shifts the temperate regions at various times of the year should be roughly equivalent in both tbe northern and southern hemispheres.
Yes, poleward. I summarized however. A quick review of the globe will show scant little “traditionally” arable land in the southern hemisphere, and even less as the arable land moves poleward.
Scant arable land may be a bit strong unless you are speaking to cleared lands. Sub saharan Africa has considerable arable land but putting it into modest to large scale agriculture would require displacement or extinction of many species. The same is true in South America and the loss of the rainforest would be catastrophic.. Perhaps a better statement would be the best arable lands lie in the Northern hemisphere and population growth in areas with insufficient capacity to support the growing population ends up in political instability, strife, and migrations.
Exactly the same thing occurs on a sinking ship with too few lifeboats. People start fighting for the available seats.
The real question is do we have an obligation to give up our seat.
I’ll throw my hat into the ring. The excuses for the failure of agriculture in the Southern Hemisphere are polite but unfounded. We can grow crops in places that were impossible previously due to advanced agricultural techniques. There is no band of global warming fire spreading northward destroying crops. The failure of agriculture in the Southern Hemisphere is due to a failure of societies and politics. Farming is playing the long game. It requires a stable, consistent social environment. Constant, debilitating unrest isn’t just bad for individuals, it’s counterintuitive to the whole social fabric. Crops watered with the blood of despots grow the most vigorously.
Now, for added spice, what’s actually spreading northward? The true advantage of the northern hemisphere (interestingly, Apple isn’t so keen to automatically capitalize that) is the more equitable arrangements of the societies. They are objectively superior to rule by banana republic strongmen who promise the world to get in power and deliver only contrived dependence and enforced misery. Consider the Democratic primaries: soon we’ll all be equal.
Listen. I’m going to stand by my summary statements because I don’t have the time to elaborate. But we’re discussing margins here and in some cases we’re discussing large margins.
In this case, “traditionally” arable land means land that *most efficiently* produces the *most efficient* crops. Those crops are grain crops and those lands are temperate plains. Yes, you can get other crops to grow elsewhere and yes you can get grain crops to grow elsewhere. But the earliest and most profound advancement of societies came when fewer collective man-hours were devoted to crop production — because fewer people needed to produce the calories to sustain more people. And the freed-up man-hours were devoted to OTHER advancements that make life easier.
As simplistic as this is, it’s still fairly accurate. While periodic bubbles and exceptions arise in history, for the most part, easier climates = easier to maintain societies and easier societies to advance the general condition of their members.
So if climate changes make a certain area marginally harder to live and another area marginally easier to live, NO, you won’t see the entire nation pick up and move, but you will see those on the margins of those societies who were barely eking by at a standard of living they could barely tolerate now unable to maintain the standard of living they barely tolerated. So? Those margins will generally move.
Ergo, as climate warms and the tropical regions (while still being productive in many regards) will be a little bit harder on the margins of society, and as more polar regions become easier for the margins of society, you’ll see a movement.
I mean, the legendary Viking exploits were generally fueled by this effect. The northern climates benefitted from a late Roman Imperial warming trend, and there was a relative population boom in the Norse lands. Then came a sudden retraction and things cooled, making a larger population unsustainable. This drove young hungry unpaid men to look for food and wealth abroad.
Hark!
I don’t reject the logic of your argument. It’s valid. It’s this climate change premise. There haven’t been year-over-year trends in average temperature in about two decades; rainfall and “weather patterns” haven’t ever shown a trend. The raw temperature data has been “”adjusted”” according to an urban heat island hypothesis which “”coincidentally”” results in the artificial reduction of past recorded data and the increasing of recent numbers (Google this if it’s the first you’re hearing of it!). I could stomach a hypothesis treated as fact to a minimal degree if I put forth superhuman effort, but a hypothesis which depends on still another underlying hypothesis positively earns the rotting fruit I throw at it. I’m not even an active, willful agent in an exchange. The festering produce is pulled by unseen forces out of my hand. It’s theft, really. I’m the victim. All of my garbage is taken from me against my will, and I’m left, bereft and alone.
Unwilling to merely show up and rain on the parade, I posited another potential source of general misery and strife: corruption. I hadn’t checked any numbers, I just had faith that Central America was a hotbed of graft and other such malfeasance. My faith was well-placed, as usual. A brief stint of research in Guatemalan economics uncovered that its corruption “ranking” has been decreasing (like in golf, a low score is good; unless you’re an administrator).
source: tradingeconomics.com
Campy as it may seem, people who live in rocky, sterile lands will thrive beyond our wildest imaginings if only the guilty are punished with consistency. As Guatemala shows, even if one lives in the land of milk and honey wherein edible food springs from the earth unbidden all around him, he will live in desperation and misery so long as the guilty, far from being punished, are allowed to be placed in charge of his life.
Our administrators are importing Guatemalans because they want more of what the Guatemalans have.
That’s “increasing”. I’ll never be comfortable with these low-numbers-are-high-numbers ratings systems. I use pH frequently – maybe daily – and the low-pH-is-high-acidity concept trips me up on occasion to this very day. Someone ought to make a law which states that it’s the government’s purview to make laws outlawing counterintuitiveness in measurement scales.
In this particular case, though, the man and his family had spent several months in southern Mexico after leaving their home country of El Salvador. Once free of whatever conditions they were fleeing in El Salvador, and safely in Mexico, the “survival” argument loses quite a bit of its weight, doesn’t it? The majority of illegal border crossings to the United States are people who passed through more than one country to get here. Why are they so insistent on coming here, often at great risk, rather than stay in one of the other countries they passed through?
Jeff, they don’t all come here. Many are going to Columbia and Ecuador right now. They will go wherever they think they have a connection and the chance for safety and food.
The statement that you objected to was about people coming to America for “a better life”. People migrating to Colombia and Ecuador are irrelevant. Again, most of the people fleeing violence or instability who come to the U.S. have to pass through at least one other, relatively safer country (either Canada or Mexico, and often several countries before that) before they get to the U.S. border. They are choosing to leave those places (where their survival isn’t threatened) to come to America. The only reason I can think of is that they think (rightly so, in most cases) that they have a chance for a better life in the U.S. than they do in those intermediate countries that they pass through.
The family of these particular migrants state that they were not being persecuted by anyone and that they were coming to the US in order to get higher paying jobs in order to buy their own home in their country of origin. They were in the queue to have a hearing, but got impatient and decided to jump the line by crossing into the US illegally.
Glad to see you are still around. I hope your hate for me has diminished. I am in therapy (but not getting better according to my doctora).
Just a few days ago I interviewed groups of Venezuelans who travel the highways on their way to Peru and Ecuador (according to what they tell me). They are obviously of the poorest classes and one fellow was from Maracay where, after a ran away from home, I lived in for over a year. They hitch rides on the backs of the big trucks. And they get lots of help from Colombians who sympathize with their troubles.
The fellows (and some girls) I interviewed have left only because they could not make enough money. Things are getting bad for the lower classes especially, and the pressure is put on them. The *minimum* wage is 6 dollars a month or so. The fellow I interviewed the longest was on his way to Ecuador where he hope to get work and send money back home. Or bring his wife and children. Ecuador has a dollar economy and people who have relatives abroad and can send back dollars … are doing quite well.
This New Zealander fellow presents an excellent picture of what life is like, today, in Venezuela. But keep in mind that things are harder in the interior of the country where there is less of everything (this vid is from Caracas). The second vid has him going up into the barrios.
I also interviewed for another reason a Colombian mechanic who was living and working in Venezuela up to just 2 years ago. He described his situation as ideal there. He loved it. Clean, few social problems, a wonderful pueblo he said. And he made good money. He only left 2 years ago because, then, things was getting bad.
A taxista who helps me with my photography projects lived in Venezuela for many years, and under Chavez. He and his wife and child had a good situation there too. He came back to Colombia 4 years ago. Because only then were things beginning to get sketchy.
Your entire system feeds you LIES LIES and MORE LIES. It is very hard to sort through. These lies are multivalent, multifarious and multiple.
The recent machinations by the honorable Bolton, et al, show the bad-evil side of the American government if only in the sense that it feels it can do what it wants, when it wants. If it has to lie, noooo prrooobleeem! The ‘truth’ about Venezuela is complex, as so many things are. (And believe me I am not a Chavista).
You are confusing hate with bemused annoyance.
When you sort through the lies and determine the truths only your intellect can divine let me know.
Is it couples counseling for you and you know who?
Noam won’t attend! (“I’m fine, I’m normal“, he says).
So, it is me and Paul Gottfried.
I’m working slowly through my (grand) father issues!
__________________
Question: If you had to clearly sort through the recent State Department machinations vis-a-vis Venezuela (Bolten, Pompayo, etc.) and you had to make a clear statement of truth about it, do you think you could do it? I intuit that you could not. You would inevitably include some of the lies.
Would you give it a (bemused) shot?
List the lies first.
Right. Just as I say: if you had to make a true statement you would fall on your face. Lies, part-truths, distortions: the media-systems are deeply complicit in them. It is pervasive. Because this is so all of us find ourselves in a ‘mystified ‘ state: unable to accurately assess and describe our world.
What interests me and what separates me from you is 1) that I see this and my ego is not committed to some patriotic narrative or other distorting self-imposed narrative, and 2) that I read people who have dedicated themselves to unraveling lies, both political and metaphysical.
Doing this and talking about it earns me contempt.
You have avoided the test I proposed because you know you’d fail. But that is really a minor one! The more fundamental lies are more consequential. All I do is write about them.
Someday perhaps you will be able to read what I write and comprehend. The problem you have is very common. And I have written tons about it.
Well, I continue to hate your writing style at least.
Yes, that’s my point — well, one of your many points at least. This is a complex problem, and it needs a complex solution.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Charles Green came back? And valygrrl? What about that fellow who seemed a friend of yours? Who used to post and was in the ‘American liberal’ camp?
Why do you see the US as a means to a solution. Are these people unable to devise a democratically arrived at solution that works for them.
I have no desire to get embroiled in a Latin American political problem.
I’ve been a student of history my entire life, and have degrees in history and law. Asking the following: “Why do you see the US as a means to a solution. Are these people unable to devise a democratically arrived at solution that works for them” is ludicrous. Either you are ignorant on the reason why EVERY immigrant came to the United States (at least the ones not in chains) since the 1600s, or you are an asshole who just wants to pull the ladder up behind him. Which one of these people do you want to be?
Qualification of the current, massive, uncontrolled influx as being qualitatively and quantitatively identical to historical immigration is hardly so much of a given as to effectively do the work of an unstated major premise in an argument concluding in a pejorative accusation of villainous intent.
Regardless of your loaded language, I am definitely not ashamed to say I want to pull the ladder up until the current massive group of immigrants (legal that is) manages to assimilate and become Americans. The only country – pretty much – on the planet that allows strangers to become Americans through and through.
I am only second generation here in this country and my wife is first generation. We know what we have here and are passionate about keeping it. The more our country’s culture becomes diluted by people that come here largely for a handout, the harder it will be to recover.
They interviewed the man’s mother back in El Salvador. They were coming to work in the US for a few years to save up money to buy a house. This wasn’t a matter of asylum, of refugees fleeing war, genocide, or natural disasters. It was simply about making more money.
Precisely. But even though the New York Times reported that information, they still published an editorial describing the father as an “asylum seeker” without any other qualification. This man wasn’t forced to cross the Rio Grande, much less was he forced to do so with his daughter; he made a conscious decision to do so, not out of fear of violence, but out of desire to improve his economic circumstances. It’s an understandable desire, but it doesn’t qualify him for asylum of any kind, nor excuse his reckless attempt to enter the US illegally.
The moderation queue really likes me lately.
Climate Change? That’s, like, so last year.
The Scary reference du jour, courtesy of the criminally insane UNIPCC, is Climate Apartheid!
That’s so, like, totes alarmist it must be, like, super really bad then.
Why do they keep coming up with these new terms?
”Why do they keep coming up with these new terms?”
Hive-minded Warmalista Alarmacysts are effortlessly herded by bright, shiny, seductively moving stimuli.
But the desired emotional reaction (clicking on Donate Now) to a real real scary reference (Climate Change Porn) has a short shelf life, despite targeting an easily driven demographic.
Want their attention? Use the same principle as the national marketers; sprinkle something new-and-improved in front of them time-n-again.
This piques the interest of the eminently exploitable and motivates them to act (READ: donate).
As a sovereign nation we have no obligation or responsibility when we have no say in the ultimate solution.
Richer countries are not the pressure valve to relieve citizens of other countries of their own responsibilities.
When we get involved we get blamed. It was they who yelled Yankee Go Home. And home is where I will stay.
People who are fleeing Venezuela because of starvation, disease, etc. can flee to Colombia. They don’t need to swim across the Rio Grande with their toddlers to get there. They come to the US because they think they will have a better life here than in Colombia.
That father endangered his child. Not even Hormiz David, Nino Yacoub, and Ramina Badal endangered any children when they climbed over the barricade to the Merced River.
If that father had survived, he would face trial for manslaughter in Mexico.
Now here is the Milano bitch.
Jack believes liberals exited his blog because we can’t face hard truths when it comes to the hopelessly biased liberal media, and our desire to see Trump impeached — damn the cost.
It’s more because writers here deem it acceptable to refer to someone as that “Milano bitch,” and no one calls them out on it. Would you be okay if someone referred to you as that “Ejercito Jackass?”
I don’t think your characterization of Jacks position is quite right.
Your point about ad hominem attacks is certainly valid, although as I have always said (probably stolen from somebody I don’t remember), politics is not tiddlywinks. Milano’s absurd comment is certainly risible by any measure not involving an appeal to emotion. That’s probably far enough to go on that.
Welcome back, Sparty.
“It’s more because writers here deem it acceptable to refer to someone as that “Milano bitch,” and no one calls them out on it. ”
So, I suppose you don’t read or post on ANY left leaning blogs, then? Seems to me they are MUCH worse than anything you get here at EA, which by any measure is a centrist endeavor. Were I to post on, say, Huff or Vogue, I would be manhandled with much worse than mild invective, if I were not banned outright for daring to have a different opinion.
Cry me a river at the ‘harsh treatment’ lefties get here at EA!
Gotta say, “Ejercito Jackass,” does have a bit of a ring to it. Concise, descriptive, has a nice little staccato rhythm.
Count me in.
-Jut
Hold on. Very few people here refer to liberal commenters as bitches or any other epithet. Conversely, Ms Milano has villified virtually every white male that fails to agree with her positions.
Suggesting people stopped commenting here because they are being called names on a regular basis is a hypothesis unsupported by facts. It is an excuse not to engage with others that hold differing views because it requires work to advance a true argument. It takes very little effort to agree with other like minded people or simply label the opposition as a misogynist, homophobe, Islamaphobe, racist, xenophobe etc. These are the adjective most often used to describe me when I offer my opinions in other forums.
“These are the adjective most often used to describe me when I offer my opinions in other forums.”
Glass half full?
No ablist, looksist, sizist, etc.; you got wiggle room…
Well, Alyssa, why don’t we just invite all the poor children from around the world in, along with their parents? That would be fun, wouldn’t it?
While we’re at it, we can just let all the Russians in, and Red Chinese. After all, they’re only really here to make a better life for themselves on the backs of our citizens, just like these folks. Heck, they even think like you do!
Come to think of it, we could drop borders for ISIS as well! They’d surely stop trying to kill us if we let them come in and suck off the public tit here, and form their own little enclave of Sharia law.
Who knew that all we had to do was open our doors and let the riff-raff in to have peace on Earth!
1. Border picture
It’s cynical, but then, an appeal to emotion is virtually the only form of argument used bye the “woke” Left these days, and frankly, they demand that it be placed above any reasoned argument. This is the ultimate evolution of “If even one ______ life is saved, it’s a good policy” argument.
These individuals in the picture are not citizens of the United States, they are an alien attempted infiltrator bringing his minor child to the US with the intent to steal public and private services, and perhaps public and private goods, to better their own situation. Even if the father’s intent is merely to “trying to find a better life,” they were attempting to do so at the direct expense not only of American taxpayers, but also of honest people attempting to legally immigrate.
How can anyone take the position that these things should not be criminal, and still be okay with indigent American citizens going to jail for theft, burglary, fraud, etc.? Are they not also “trying to find a better life,” and as US citizens, should their opportunity to do so be at least the equal of an alien non-citizen? To the civil courts with you, thief! Yeah, that’s the ticket…
The loss of young life is a tragedy, but let’s be honest — we really don’t care about that unless it’s good politics. It’s been estimated that 5,500 children die in sub-Saharan Africa every day. I don’t hear the liberals placing free flights to America from Africa on their laundry list of virtue signalling. Because racism? 🙂
2. SCOTUS decision
I haven’t had time to read it, but it seems that the constitutional question is at least properly solved in favor of the administration. Curing the rationale should be pretty easy. I can think of a half-dozen good reasons right off the top of my head.
3. Idiot
She should be happy she lost that job. Apparently, it was too much for her. It would’ve been far more ethical, though, just to resign in protest rather than to poison her future job prospects by casting aspersions on kids, even ones here illegally.
Then again, a person that ignorant about current technology should probably not be teaching. She certainly should’ve known better than to try to use a microblogging service she clearly doesn’t grok.
What I notice about this story is how *you* turn against her. Her complaint is real and fair. Her fear is valid and considerable. But *you* vilify it or, in this case, ridicule her and reduce her to being an idiot and stupid because she did not grasp how Twitter functions (and thought it more like sending an email).
She is a part of the ‘dispossessed majority’ and is seeing her country eroded out from under her. She did not say anything that was morally or ethically reprehensible though it is true, or seems to be true, that she violated a rule about making any comment at all about the status of the students:
First, as a public school teacher, Clark was a government employee and her actions could likely be construed to have violated the Fourteenth Amendment rights of students to be protected from discrimination. The Supreme Court ruled in the 1982 case Plyer v. Doe that public schools are required by law to provide schooling for all children regardless of their immigration status.
Additionally, school officials are barred from inquiring about the immigration status of students or their family members and cannot report students or their family members to federal immigration authorities. (from the website Law & Crime).
Nevertheless, she was speaking on a matter of ‘public concern’ and there is a strong element of first amendment privilege.
But what I notice is more your instantaneous condemnation of her. Now, this is a tricky and difficult area to talk about. You condemn her because in a general sense you serve those processes which have been set in motion and which are undermining the integrity of your country. There is a general mood of condemning white people who attempt to defend white interests against anti-white sentiment, and anti-white sentiment is rampant (virulent).
Here, a white woman is fairly describing what is happening to her community but *you* must jump down on her neck with both your feet. Wilmot Robertson in The Dispossessed Majority describes this sort of action, this sort of person (a person as agent) as either a ‘truckler’ or a ‘pussyfooter’. This present unethical condemnation is a mixture of both. *You* essentially serve destructive minority interests by not taking the right side, and then you ridicule and condemn a woman (and it should be you as men who do this!) a woman who is trying to defend her community.
In a normal environment — and we are very far away from normalcy — you would see, understand and defend her position. But this you cannot do because you serve the same processes as the general American progressives. It is related to anti-white sentiments. (But of course pro-white sentiments and ‘white well-being’ you cannot even consider and the notion of being ‘pro-white’ is unthinkable thought).
In other places on this blog the term ‘traitor’ has been used. It is curious to examine that term as one examines the psychological and ideological impetus to condemn and dismiss this woman. You take the same position as all the large media outfits: NYTs. Washington Post, The Independent, Buzzfeed, BBC, and the list goes on. These are the common ideas and sentiments that are circulated: Whites learn to self-condemn any self-defensive posture or action and when they notice someone who is not cowardly and who stands up, they act to bring them down. These are psychological mechanisms.
Now, this is not all bad. I think I can say that by your unethical condemnation that she and people like her will better understand *reality* and she will — as other people do too — realize what is being perpetrated against them in a large, destructive social endeavor.
What is confusing and contradictory is that you say this:
“These individuals in the picture are not citizens of the United States, they are an alien attempted infiltrator bringing his minor child to the US with the intent to steal public and private services, and perhaps public and private goods, to better their own situation. Even if the father’s intent is merely to “trying to find a better life,” they were attempting to do so at the direct expense not only of American taxpayers, but also of honest people attempting to legally immigrate.”
You grasp what is going on. But you condemn a person who has taken a positive step, though a mis-conceived one. I simply do not get it, thus I do not ‘grok’ you.
A “positive step” is highly subjective. Is it positive to risk your life and the life of your child rushing to the border of a foreign country hoping to violate their territorial integrity, with the intent to deprive their citizens of treasure to better your own circumstances?
I think not, and if you can’t grok that, I hold no hope for you.
The person who took the positive step is the teacher who got fired. In my opinion of course.
Oh, okay. I can agree with that. I obviously misunderstood.
The problem was the teacher’s execution, which rendered it no longer positive. For example, trying to feed your family by stealing from others is certainly a positive step in the opinion of the thief, but not so much for the victim or the law. There are ways to feed your family that don’t involve the flawed execution of breaking the law.
In this case, the teacher broke all kinds of rules, but not the law. It was that flawed execution that got her fired, not the quite reasonable concern that children illegally in the country were a problem.
But more to the point: there will come a day, and I hope it does come, when she and people like her gain an understanding about what has been done to them. And who begin to rectify it.
It was not ‘flawed execution’ that ‘got her fired’. It was a psychological mechanism, which you seem to support, that causes people to turn against their own. It is a failure of solidarity, and it is a failure of a man, or men, to stand with a woman who at the least is making an effort.
You can spin it how you wish to. I see it as cowardice.
I don’t stand with fools, no matter how worthy their intentions.
Right, then my retort will be that you have isolated yourself from a huge portion of rural America and the Flyover Country. Because that particular woman is a representative of what I call a ‘submerged class’. They are ‘original America’ and they are the original demographic. They are part of the dispossessed majority. The ‘deplorables’. And in the times we live in they are ridiculed and held in contempt.
Now, I do not know this woman and I base my opinions on intuition. But I will make some better effort to find out. Perhaps I will report back.
That’s right. Because she is supposed to be an educator, not a 25-year old Hollywood starlet, and even they know how Twitter works. Knowing how things work is part and parcel of a well-rounded education, and it isn’t as if Twitter just appeared on the scene last week. It is especially incumbent upon an educator to understand communications media, since communication is kind of fundamental to their job description.
I suppose my vilification of her is based on the fact that:
a) denigrating her students to anyone, regardless of their origin, is incredibly wrong for a teacher, and;
b) having no idea how to work a medium in which you do a) is the very definition of idiocy.
Her complaint is valid, in the sense that the school being taken over by illegal immigrants demonstrates a larger problem. What isn’t valid is the mechanism she issued her complaint, and how she said it. That should be obvious to anyone.
In no sense at all is it ‘incredibly wrong’. I would place attention on how you will to make it seem incredibly wrong.
I live within contexts — I have to admit this — where I feel so much contempt at times that it requires a spiritual effort to overcome it. I live among Latinos and I think I clearly see their strengths and their weaknesses. Though I am technically Latina, I do not desire to reason like one or to see the world like one. And this is why I take an adamant position to allowing America to be overrun with Mesoamericans. My opinions are sharp and strident, I know this, but they are not unreasoned. I can defend my ideas in ethical and moral terms to anyone, anywhere.
The school teacher has every right to make an effort — even if mis-guided — to call attention to the situation. She denigrated no one, and denigration is not what it is about. It is about seeing clearly and applying appropriate and fair labels.
It is entirely understandable that she has not mastered social media technology. There is no connection between not having done so and her concern and her complaint.
What is reprehensible is your attitude toward her. Not only is it unethical it is immoral. And that is why I wrote:
In other places on this blog the term ‘traitor’ has been used. It is curious to examine that term as one examines the psychological and ideological impetus to condemn and dismiss this woman. You take the same position as all the large media outfits: NYTs. Washington Post, The Independent, Buzzfeed, BBC, and the list goes on. These are the common ideas and sentiments that are circulated: Whites learn to self-condemn any self-defensive posture or action and when they notice someone who is not cowardly and who stands up, they act to bring them down. These are psychological mechanisms.
Don’t make me repeat myself! 🙂
I don’t agree with you. I think my attitude is reasonable, and my argument reasonable. You have not shown otherwise.
Just because the NYT, WaPo and others agree does not make my opinion any less valid.
I understand. I respect your view. My own view comes about — is coming about — after a long period of study of these issues. But, it is still subjective.
On the subjectivity, we can agree. That’s really the best we can do, after all.
Would that we were all privy to the objective, unassailable truth — about anything, really.
Wonderful! A harmonious stasis!
In the meantime — and I will follow your lead here — let’s find out if there is anyone we can both agree should be bashed.
And let’s get down to it! 🙂
1–”We used to stand as leader and friend to free people and people seeking freedom.”
OUR children are too fat, or starving to death (depending on the narrative du jour), aren’t well-educated enough, don’t get adequate health care, won’t have the life expectancy/economic opportunities of their parents.
Speaking of the the parents: they have wage stagnation, no savings, poor job prospects, are two days away from the dole themselves, the ones that aren’t already homeless will be by the end of the month, ad infinitum ad nauseum.
And you want the U.S. to take on mucho mas more that will need services several orders of magnitude greater?
I’m not a math/macro-economics guy, but I learned a looooong time ago that, harsh as it appears, picking up strays isn’t a viable long-term strategy, regardless of how deftly it ramps one’s Gosh I’m Nine/Messiah Complex endorphins.
How much longer do you believe the leader and friend to free people and people seeking freedom can afford to continue as:
*the world’s free haberdasher,
*the world’s free clinic,
*the world’s free landlord,
*the world’s free smorgasbord,
*the world’s free babysitter,
*the world’s free mental health provider,
*the world’s free jobs training/placement provider
*the world’s free educator,
*the world’s free transportation service,
*the world’s free police force,
*the world’s free disaster relief repository, etc., etc., etc.?
And to a world that hated us long before Hope-n-Change delivered us from evil?
Welp, hated us riiiiiight up until their time of need, [cue Jeopardy intermission muzak] then incuriously commenced hating us riiiiiiiight after their empty hat had something in it/the check cleared.
Free (frē) adverb:
At _The_Expense_Of_Others.
Erratum: should read–“Gosh I’m NiCe/Messiah Complex endorphins.”
So the Wayfair protesters are ostensibly arguing that the owners of their company should be free to refuse to sell their product to a client based purely on a conscientious objection to how the client plans to use the product?
While Wayfair still plans on selling to that client, the principle of what the protesters are demanding IS as described.
I wonder how many of these protesters simultaneously believe that bakers and florists should be compelled to sell THEIR products while those bakers and florists have a conscientious objection to how their product is being used?
All while the bakers and florists actually have a much *greater 1st Amendment argument than would the Wayfair protesters…
*I actually can see how ANYONE’s product in the free market should be seen as an extension of the 1st Amendment.
These people are idiots. The immediate effect of their demands would be simply that the detention centers are less comfortable.
Cognitive dissonance is strong among them. Last week, heartstrings were being pulled about sleeping on cold concrete floors. Wayfair comes along providing beds–so naturally, the solution is to protest, in order to keep the detainees sleeping on concrete floors.
Leftists would be out of work if the problems they protest were solved… they don’t give a damn about the kids, just the optics.
I really don’t think the protesters think that deeply.
Those employees simply want to force infants and children to sleep on cold hard concrete. That is why the don’t want Wayfair to fulfill the order.
First it was WayFair. Then, it was Bank of America. Check this out, from Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-26/bank-of-america-will-stop-lending-to-private-prison-companies
jvb
The new redlining. What would happen if a bank ceased to lend to firms wanting to produce hip hop recordings or reproductive health facilities specializing in abortions?
The crisis is that there is a thriving underground economy built on trafficking illegal aliens, sex slaves, and forced laborers, in addition to guns and drugs.
THAT’S the entire problem. The root issue is not how we treat the mass of exploited humans when they are herded up to our border in overwhelming numbers to provide cover and profit to criminals.
Our corporate media are not doing a good job educating Americans about this. They are doing the opposite. The average person thinks that thousands of poor people are fleeing Central and South America for America because they have no other hope, and that mean old businessman Trump is rounding them up into concentration camps and just generally trying to make their lives miserable because he hates brown people or something. If they are curious as to why these caravans keep coming, the media is not interested in satiating that curiosity. They’ll have to go find out for themselves.
The modern migrant crisis was boosted by President Obama when he and his staff made several foolish public statements to the effect that children at our border shouldn’t or wouldn’t be turned away. In 2014 this caused the first wave of unaccompanied kids to be bused to the border, overwhelming the agencies with the job of processing them. The Left championed the caravan, ignored the nightmare of kids in cages, sex slaves slipping through the cracks of enforcement, and general chaos at the border because they didn’t want to “politicize” the situation (read: Obama was president and his piss-poor management of the situation shouldn’t be pinned on him.) As soon as Trump assumed the White House, it was time to politicize the situation, as much as possible.
The success of the 2014 humanitarian disaster enriched and enabled the coyotes and traffickers, who lie to ignorant people in these countries, promising them the moon in exchange for everything they own, the profits from their future employment/benefit checks, and eventually, once they’re thousands of miles from home and completely under the coyotes’ control, the bodies of their wives and children, but that’s usually saved as a surprise hidden fee. They tell them that they have jobs lined up for them, that it’s easy to reach America, that various (Leftist-inundated) American institutions are on their side and will take care of them, etc. That is what is driving this crisis.
The only humane solution I can see is for Americans to make it clear, in word and action, that illegal immigration doesn’t work. Build a wall. End abuse of the refugee policy by demanding recognition of refugee status be earned at a local embassy in the country of one’s origin for the affected countries. End employment of illegal immigrants. And get the message out to every one of these countries that a trip to try to sneak into the U.S. will not end well. Nonprofits, churches, and politicians wanting to show how much they care about the poor children need to get on planes to Ecuador and start working to prevent people from being bamboozled into selling themselves to slavers. There is also plenty of work to be done improving the political and social climate of these countries. (Of course, as long as they stay over there, most of those same people seem to lose the capacity to care.)
Re: No. 1:
Check out this exchange on Facebook:
Apparently, if you are not horrified by this image you are no friend of the suffering. Additionally, you are instructed to “go fuck yourself” if you support Trump. If you support Trump, you are equally culpable for these persons’ deaths. By supporting Trump, you are supporting anti-immigration measures set to punish lowly undocumenteds coming here seeking a brighter future. A particular person in that thread was characteristically vicious toward your humble correspondent (that would be me – she accused me of being a cockroach*). You simply cannot ask, “Hey. That’s awful but, what about the coyotes, cartels, and others abusing these migrants on their journey toward greater US-based prosperity? Why is the father not responsible for what happened? How about the other monsters involved in this disaster.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez brutally criticized the Trump Administration and anyone against uncontrolled immigration, declaring them criminally liable for what happened to this guy and his 23 month old daughter. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was so upset she attacked another business for providing beds to the facilities. Wayfairer announced it would not provide such bedding, and radicals danced in the streets. But, wait. Those beds were needed in the facilities. I guess the Trump-abused-better-than-you undocumenteds are gonna have to keep sleeping on the floors. Law of unintended consequences, and all . . .
Republicans and Conservatives and Independents need to wake up: The Democrat Party has been taken over by rabid Alinsky-fed radicals who see cooperation, civility, and mutual respect as tools to be used to bludgeon their opponents. They don’t disagree on policy. No. They are driven by moral superiority. You don’t have a different opinion. You are wrong and must be destroyed. Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, and Tlaib are just its new loud mouthed faces. DNC Chair Perez, Clinton, the Obamas, Corey Booker, Reps. Shelia Jackson-Lee, Watters, and Al Greene are right there with them, goosestepping to the finish line. These people (Warren, Harris, and the like) are demagogues and know how to use the media to their ends.
jvb
*Ed. Note: If https://www.facebook.com/carol.roshtosmith had any concept of my disgust, fear, and loathing of cockroaches, she would know how offensive her stupid rants were/are. She is quite hateful. As are some of the other commenters on that thread. Actually, she was honestly vicious. Some of the others? Well . . .
Tough Political Cartoon Because It Is Too True
It’s interesting to really see what the left thinks “truth” is.
Source: Tough Political Cartoon Because It Is Too True
People like this wouldn’t know what truth was if it bit them in the ass.
DEKERIVERS/GREGORY HUMPHREY of Caffeinated Politics is consumed by his irrational hate of President Trump and Conservatives.
How do people get this damned hateful?
A lifetime of publicly funded indoctrination.
The SCOTUS opinion has a surprise twist at the end, written by Roberts, creating a one-time-only rule applying to this case and no other, that gives a sudden victory to the Democrats. If not for the surprise twist, the opinion would read like a complete endorsement of the Trump administration’s position.
The opinion’s reasoning goes something like this:
1. The Democrats say that the administration is not allowed to ask the census question about citizenship because (a) the administration’s true reasons for asking the question are X, Y and Z; and X, Y and Z are impermissible motives; and even if they were permissible, they would not justify adding the question.
2. The court’s answer is that:
First, the administration articulated a permissible reason that would justify asking the question.
Second, in addition to the reason articulated by the administration, there were many other permissible reasons that would justify asking, even apart from reasons X, Y and Z.
Third, contrary to the Democrats’ argument, reasons X, Y and Z were in fact permissible and they would also justify adding the question.
Fourth, besides that, our precedents have clearly established that it is inappropriate for the courts to inquire into the administration’s true motives.
At this point, the reader might think that the administration has won, BUT
Here comes the Roberts surprise twist: However, we’re creating a one-time rule that applies only to this case, because here, unlike any case in the past and unlike any case that we expect to see in the future, the lower court did inquire into the administration’s true motives (even though it shouldn’t have) and has created a record from which we can see that the permissible reason articulated by the administration was not one of its many permissible real reasons. So we are remanding to the lower court so that the administration go through a bureaucratic process and give new permissible reasons. If the administration gives even one of its real reasons, which we have already ruled are permissible, then the lower court should approve asking the question.
But the Democrats are crowing: Ha, ha, ha, even though the administration would clearly be permitted to add the question if the bureaucratic process were ever completed, there’s not enough time left to complete the process by June 30, when the questionnaires need to be printed, because we and our partisan judge in the lower court have run out the clock, so we win.
I do think there’s a chance that the Democrats might be celebrating a little prematurely. The administration never said that the questionnaires need to be printed by June 30. It said that if the questionnaires are not printed by then, the cost will increase substantially. From the hearing transcript below:
So there might be a chance that the administration can complete its bureaucratic process and get the question added by October 31. I don’t know how realistic a chance that is, though. Depends on whether the administration is willing to spend the money, how long the bureaucratic process takes and what other resources the Democrats and the lower court judge can deploy to delay the process past October 31.
Now the UN is saying that the US is violating international law by separating children from the adults entering the country illegally, and that we shouldn’t criminalize “irregular entry”: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/world/americas/us-un-migrant-children-families.html