No, I'm not... I said quite clearly that I live on LONG ISLAND, you're citing to NYC numbers. The fact that you don't immediately recognize the difference between the two shows that YOU are the one who doesn't have an understanding of what's going on here.
You have seen something in right wing media, and you believe it. When someone dies from a bee sting or from a vending machine falling on them it doesn't make the news. But when one person is hacked (1 person dead), OMG hackers are hacking everywhere be afraid!
This is what Republicans offer - fear and hatred. You've bought it. Immigrants don't want to attack people and kill. Do you want that? They want to take care of their families and earn a living. When you push people into desperate situations, they may feel they have no choice but to do desperate things.
Again, you still have no clue what's going on here.
I personally covered these issues over a decade ago in my work as a freelance journalist. I've personally KNOWN mothers whose children were attacked or threatened. I travel to and from work every day past areas where NUMEROUS children's bodies have been found, beaten and mutilated. The ACTUAL extent of the crimes isn't going to be documented by any numbers you pull up on the internet, because the bodies of children who disappeared years ago are only just turning up now. The DEMOCRATIC police commissioner has made this issue the county's #1 priority, and has publicly CONCEDED that laxity in enforcing immigration laws, both at the state and federal levels, has led to this situation now.
But yeah, you can choose to believe that none of this is actually happening here, or that it's all somehow meaningless, and that anyone pushing for crackdowns on illegal immigration are just "hypnotized by Fox news" (which I've never watched in my entire life, incidentally).
If you are sure immigrants are more violent than non-immigrants then you are misguided and possibly have fallen for racism.
Again, this is exactly the kind of distortions and rhetoric from the left that I criticized earlier.
1. The issue is clearly about ILLEGAL immigrants, NOT just any immigrants. 2. NO ONE made any claim or implication about immigrants being "more violent than non-immigrants."
It's the JOB of the government to enforce the law, including immigration laws, NOT to turn a blind eye to something that's illegal based on some personal feelings or ideology about the issue, and then hope that no law-abiding citizens end up paying a price for it down the road. ANYONE who dies or suffers at the hands of someone WHO WASN'T LEGALLY ALLOWED TO BE IN THE COUNTRY IN THE FIRST PLACE was let down by his or her government not doing the job that it's sworn and paid to do.
The rich pay Fox people, to get the middle class, to hate poor people. Then while you are distracted, they run away with all the money.
And here you're doing EXACTLY what you accuse others of doing - creating a bogeyman and making them the scapegoat (directly or indirectly) for any problem in society. Good luck telling parents whose child has been found scattered about the woods that "some rich guy paying Fox news" is what they should really be upset about in life.
But regardless of your anecdotal experience in your neck of the woods, crime in America had been falling for years. In fact violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century. This is a widely accepted fact. But if you only consume right wing propaganda or ignore facts and "feel" that things are worse you might be among the few that don't believe it.
I cited for you politifact that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes. If you have a illegal immigrant criminal then he's the same as any criminal and should be locked up (and/or deported). But overall illegal immigrants are less violent than non immigrants.
My fear mongering of the rich is based on facts. Real ones even. The Republican tax bill a middle class miracle (a whopper of a lie) gives permanent tax cuts to corporations and the vast majority of money from these cuts - over 80% goes to the rich. The rich already control the vast majority of the wealth. They didn't need more.
Just nine of the world's richest men have more combined wealth than the poorest 4 billion people.
If you have problems - fears, doubts, no health insurance, no social security, poor roads, underpaid teachers, it's because these rich business criminals are not paying their share. The illegal immigrant wants to feed his family and doesn't want to commit crimes because he'll be deported. He has zero power in society. When is the last time an illegal immigrant passed legislation to take away your health insurance? When is the last time an illegal immigrant voted to take away your rights? How many illegal immigrants are jacking up the price of lifesaving drugs to get rich or operating as predatory payday lenders? These people are powerless and just trying to get by.
No. Obama and campaign did not collude with foreign powers to get elected and violate the constitution every day since he's been elected.
He violated the Constitution every bit as much as Trump has - he assassinated US citizens, forced media groups to reveal their contacts, and monitored the activities of millions of everyday citizens without their knowledge.
They have not spread misinformation, that's been all Trump since he day one he's been lying starting with the crowd size and going on everyday since then.
Right from the beginning, Dems made baseless allegations of "voter fraud" that won Trump key battleground states. Based on that, people donated MILLIONS of dollars for recounts in those states - one resulted in a net gain of votes for Trump, another revealed improprieties that actually favored Hillary.
Building a wall? No bro immigrant fear mongering is not the problem, they've got no power were bring screwed by the rich and corporations.
This part is FALSE, it isn't "rich corporations" who are hacking children to pieces with machetes and scattering their body parts throughout woodlands and parks where I live (Long Island). Violent crime being carried out or perpetuated by illegal immigrants has been increasingly RAMPANT here for close to 2 decades, but it wasn't until Trump/Sessions got personally involved that there was any concentrated federal crackdown or national attention given to the issue. Most recently, police here uncovered a plot to assassinate officers and their families in retaliation for arrests. And yet despite this, Gov. Cuomo and other Dems like Mayor DeBlasio STILL persist in trying to undermine efforts to crack down on ILLEGAL immigration, and distort the issue as "vilifying immigrants" (Cuomo's exact words), instead of acknowledging it as the anti-CRIME issue that it is. It's a spit in the face to tax-paying citizens who live and work here and have to deal with this issue on a daily basis - and it's coming from the left.
What is your source to say that it is illegal immigrants that are committing these crimes?
Kim Jong-un has said that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons if the U.S. formally ends the Korean War and pledges not to invade.
This is being treated like a novel event, but it is not. North Korea has long brought up this proposal, and all similar denuclearization agreements over the past 20 years have ended with the North breaking its promises. I still see precious little indication that this time is any different.
Ultimately, the prospects for that sort of agreement depend on whether North Korea believes that a peace treaty would be more likely to prevent a war with the U.S. than nuclear weapons, and I find it difficult to believe that a highly militarized state like North Korea would feel that peace treaties would be anywhere near as effective a deterrent as nuclear weapons. Theoretically, the North might still abide by such an agreement, because the agreement could also include sanctions relief that would balance out the hit to their security, but North Korea's past statements suggest very strongly that the DPRK would not trade a 1% drop in their security (say) for a 10% boost to the economy.
Security and the government's chokehold on its people have been the DPRK's two biggest priorities for 70 years. While the North has complained about the effect of sanctions on its economy--it does care about its GDP--it has been very unwilling to implement even very modest reforms recommended even by the Chinese, and thus far it has been very willing to weather sanctions rather than change its behavior in order to avoid them.
The North has pursued military strength at the expense of economics and diplomacy for decades, including during the current Kim's young reign. I do not think we currently have enough evidence that this ordering of the North's priorities has changed.
Kim Jong-un has said that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons if the U.S. formally ends the Korean War and pledges not to invade.
This is being treated like a novel event, but it is not. North Korea has long brought up this proposal, and all similar denuclearization agreements over the past 20 years have ended with the North breaking its promises. I still see precious little indication that this time is any different.
Ultimately, the prospects for that sort of agreement depend on whether North Korea believes that a peace treaty would be more likely to prevent a war with the U.S. than nuclear weapons, and I find it difficult to believe that a highly militarized state like North Korea would feel that peace treaties would be anywhere near as effective a deterrent as nuclear weapons. Theoretically, the North might still abide by such an agreement, because the agreement could also include sanctions relief that would balance out the hit to their security, but North Korea's past statements suggest very strongly that the DPRK would not trade a 1% drop in their security (say) for a 10% boost to the economy.
Security and the government's chokehold on its people have been the DPRK's two biggest priorities for 70 years. While the North has complained about the effect of sanctions on its economy--it does care about its GDP--it has been very unwilling to implement even very modest reforms recommended even by the Chinese, and thus far it has been very willing to weather sanctions rather than change its behavior in order to avoid them.
The North has pursued military strength at the expense of economics and diplomacy for decades, including during the current Kim's young reign. I do not think we currently have enough evidence that this ordering of the North's priorities has changed.
The media continues to act like this is the first time the leaders of the North and South have engaged in a friendly photo-op. It happened at LEAST twice in the last 17 years just based on pictures I have seen from 2000 and 2007.
T-Mobile and Sprint are merging, lowering the number of actually viable cell-phone carriers from 4 to 3. The telcom industry continues to rapidly race toward nearly absolute monopolies, especially once AT&T and Time Warner merge. The casualties will be everyone's pocket books, when these companies will be able to name their price because they are essentially the only ones providing the service. In a decade, it's likely we will be choosing between, AT MOST, two cable companies for internet service/TV and two cell phone companies for phones. In some cases, they are going to even overlap.
I see no reason why we should tolerate monopolies in our market. They're bad for consumers, they're bad for innovation, and they're bad for economic growth because mergers eliminate competition.
Competition is the one and only reason why capitalism works as a system. No corporation is going to provide high quality, innovative products and services at low prices if it doesn't have competitors that are constantly trying to win over their customers. Why spend money on R&D if you can sell lousy products and still maintain market share? Why offer your customers low prices if they don't have any alternative? In the absence of real competition, the best profit strategy is to keep prices high and quality low. Everyone who's flown on a commercial airline has seen what happens when mergers eliminate competition.
Capitalism without competition is little different from communism. Both systems punish innovation and reward stagnancy because there's no profit incentive to do any better. We should break up mergers and monopolies and restore competition to any industry that's dominated by just a handful of companies. We should either impose limits on or forbid companies from buying out their competition.
I see no reason why we should tolerate monopolies in our market. They're bad for consumers, they're bad for innovation, and they're bad for economic growth because mergers eliminate competition.
Competition is the one and only reason why capitalism works as a system. No corporation is going to provide high quality, innovative products and services at low prices if it doesn't have competitors that are constantly trying to win over their customers. Why spend money on R&D if you can sell lousy products and still maintain market share? Why offer your customers low prices if they don't have any alternative? In the absence of real competition, the best profit strategy is to keep prices high and quality low. Everyone who's flown on a commercial airline has seen what happens when mergers eliminate competition.
Capitalism without competition is little different from communism. Both systems punish innovation and reward stagnancy because there's no profit incentive to do any better. We should break up mergers and monopolies and restore competition to any industry that's dominated by just a handful of companies. We should either impose limits on or forbid companies from buying out their competition.
It's especially bad in this industry, because despite an argument to made that no one TECHNICALLY needs internet or phone service, we all know that reliable access to both is oftentimes ESSENTIAL in modern society, be it for jobs or just everyday communication. We moved past letter-writing, land-lines, and bills being sent to and fro in the mail many years ago. Many companies won't even send you a paper billing statement unless you specifically ask for it. It is expected that the default method of payment will be completed online. The same can be said for bank statements. The only real reason the old methods are surviving AT ALL is because our grandparent's generation was just too set in their ways to adapt, but once they are gone (which is rapidly happening everyday) it is going to be nearly impossible to conduct normal everyday business and tasks without high speed internet and a smart phone. Of course, this is the MAIN argument in favor of Net Neutrality, which is that internet service is as essential as phones were in the past, and needs to be designated as an essential public utility.
As for providing poor service when you have the market cornered, ask anyone in a major metro area who only has the option of Time Warner or Comcast how their service is.
T-Mobile and Sprint are merging, lowering the number of actually viable cell-phone carriers from 4 to 3. The telcom industry continues to rapidly race toward nearly absolute monopolies, especially once AT&T and Time Warner merge. The casualties will be everyone's pocket books, when these companies will be able to name their price because they are essentially the only ones providing the service. In a decade, it's likely we will be choosing between, AT MOST, two cable companies for internet service/TV and two cell phone companies for phones. In some cases, they are going to even overlap.
On the otherhand, It's about time for this - Justice Department is suing the major carriers for their collusion to stop sim cards.
In Europe when I was visting there a decade ago, you could easily swap out sim cards and change carriers. In the US, Verizon and Sprint and the others either offered no sim card at all on their phones or made it so you couldn't just swap out sim cards usually due to contracts.
No. Obama and campaign did not collude with foreign powers to get elected and violate the constitution every day since he's been elected.
He violated the Constitution every bit as much as Trump has - he assassinated US citizens, forced media groups to reveal their contacts, and monitored the activities of millions of everyday citizens without their knowledge.
They have not spread misinformation, that's been all Trump since he day one he's been lying starting with the crowd size and going on everyday since then.
Right from the beginning, Dems made baseless allegations of "voter fraud" that won Trump key battleground states. Based on that, people donated MILLIONS of dollars for recounts in those states - one resulted in a net gain of votes for Trump, another revealed improprieties that actually favored Hillary.
Building a wall? No bro immigrant fear mongering is not the problem, they've got no power were bring screwed by the rich and corporations.
This part is FALSE, it isn't "rich corporations" who are hacking children to pieces with machetes and scattering their body parts throughout woodlands and parks where I live (Long Island). Violent crime being carried out or perpetuated by illegal immigrants has been increasingly RAMPANT here for close to 2 decades, but it wasn't until Trump/Sessions got personally involved that there was any concentrated federal crackdown or national attention given to the issue. Most recently, police here uncovered a plot to assassinate officers and their families in retaliation for arrests. And yet despite this, Gov. Cuomo and other Dems like Mayor DeBlasio STILL persist in trying to undermine efforts to crack down on ILLEGAL immigration, and distort the issue as "vilifying immigrants" (Cuomo's exact words), instead of acknowledging it as the anti-CRIME issue that it is. It's a spit in the face to tax-paying citizens who live and work here and have to deal with this issue on a daily basis - and it's coming from the left.
What is your source to say that it is illegal immigrants that are committing these crimes?
The ARRESTS that have been made with increasing frequency since the federal government finally got involved. In almost every instance, the culprits were comprised either partially or wholly of illegal immigrants.
NOT that this was any surprise to people who have actually lived and worked here for the past decades - it was always an open secret that many of these crimes were connected to illegal immigrants. It's just a shame that so many people had to suffer and die before the issue was finally acknowledged on a national level, or without the people who tried to call attention to the issue being casually dismissed as "racists."
1. 2017 is when the federal government got involved (the article even notes that). Look at the numbers from the year BEFORE that, which in some cases are about 50% higher. 2. Like I said, the numbers are NOT going to be accurate either way because NOT ALL CRIMES HAVE BEEN REPORTED OR ARE EVEN KNOWN YET. Here's another article from around that same time:
"Members of the Hispanic community say more must be done to protect their children in the wake of gang violence and the discovery of bodies in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
There are currently 30 missing Hispanic young people (ages 13 to 23) in Suffolk County and 17 in Nassau County, according to county police departments."
I cited for you politifact that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes. If you have a illegal immigrant criminal then he's the same as any criminal and should be locked up (and/or deported). But overall illegal immigrants are less violent than non immigrants.
As I said, this has NOTHING to do with the likelihood of committing violent crimes. Even if just a fraction of a percentage of illegal immigrants committed violent crimes, it would still be the government's JOB to enforce immigration laws all the same. Employees at McDonald's aren't free to refuse serving customers burgers because they "don't agree" with serving meat. Elected officials take oaths to uphold and enforce laws, and are PAID by taxpayer dollars to do that very service. It isn't their place to decide, "I don't personally agree with this law, so I'm not going to enforce it."
I remember the ol AT&T Ma Bell breakup from the 80's, but now it looks like she was only hibernating. This little chart gives an interesting picture. From the WSJ, an older article but I like the graphic.
There are currently 30 missing Hispanic young people (ages 13 to 23) in Suffolk County and 17 in Nassau County, according to county police departments."
I don't think this is an exceptional statistic. At any given time, just over one in 10,000 people in the U.S. is a missing child [USA Today]. According to the 2010 census, there are around 440,000 Hispanic people in Nassau and Suffolk counties. So very roughly, we'd expect at least 44 missing Hispanic children there. That's for ages 0-17 (I'm having trouble finding a more fine-grained age breakdown), but since the vast majority of missing children are teenagers, it seems likely that the estimate would only be larger for ages 13-23.
I looked up the historical crime rate for New York neighborhoods and found data directly from the NYPD. Here is a chart containing seven types of major crimes (murder, assault, rape, robbery, etc.) over the past 17 years, organized by precinct:
It's my understanding that Long Island is precinct 108. It looks like Long Island crime rates, at least for the most severe crimes, have been going down since long before 2017. They've been going down pretty consistently since the year 2000.
...Elected officials take oaths to uphold and enforce laws, and are PAID by taxpayer dollars to do that very service. It isn't their place to decide, "I don't personally agree with this law, so I'm not going to enforce it."
It is an elected officials place to say "I'm not going to waste your tax dollars on something we're not supposed to be doing." Doing the right thing even in the face criticism that is wrong is the right thing to do.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled consistently that immigration regulation is an exclusive Federal responsibility.
The States should not be involved. It is highly responsible that states like New York are not wasting your tax money on enforcement of a federal responsibility. If they did, the Federal government would be getting one over on the States because they'd be using State resources to do the Federal government's job.
The taxpayer dollars that we pay federally are for among other things enforcing immigration laws.
@semiticgod@smeagolheart: A quick explainer because the NYC/Long Island thing is confusing. The majority of NYC's population is on Long Island, and the majority of the population on Long Island is in NYC, but when people in the area say "Long Island," they almost always mean the parts of Long Island that aren't in NYC, i.e., Suffolk and Nassau counties. So any NYPD data isn't going to be directly relevant to what @SharGuidesMyHand is talking about. Precinct 108 is based in Long Island City, which is actually a neighborhood within NYC.
Suffolk has seen improvement in 2017 compared to 2016. Same goes for 2015 to 2016 (see page 13 of this PDF). And there's a lot of data on Newsday about crime rates in Suffolk and Nassau from 2006 to 2016. For murder, rape, robbery, assault, larceny, burglary, and motor vehicle theft, there's been a steady decline since 2006. The sole exception is a huge uptick in rape in 2015, which the article says is due to a change in the legal definition.
The data look very similar to NYC. The only distinct difference is that the percentage drop in the crime rate in NYC seems bigger than the drop in Suffolk and Nassau.
We all know that crimes committed by either Muslims or illegal immigrants are by default worse than the same crime if committed by someone else. Statistics don't work in these arguments, it's just "how it is".
Also, call me crazy, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that no one accused or convicted of hacking a child to death with a machete is being let back out on the streets if they are caught. So the solution is....what?? Go door to door in Hispanic neighborhoods asking for papers (which is essentially what ICE is now doing all over the country)??
Also, not for nothing, but MS-13 only grew to the size it is now BECAUSE of the US prison system, where they have been able to recruit. And NO ONE is defending violent gang members. The thing we have a problem with is that Donald Trump very purposefully uses one violent Latino-centric gang to paint all Latin American immigrants as rapists and monsters.
Also, not for nothing, but MS-13 only grew to the size it is now BECAUSE of the US prison system, where they have been able to recruit.
(I had a post written up and closed the window again, need to start using Chrome)
Actually they recruit in high schools. And M13 is a gang problem not an immigration problem.
Many of the gangs victims are asylum seekers fleeing the violence that the gangs in their home countries. They flee to America to escape the gangs but unfortunately they are in the cities waiting for them. When these asylum seekers are given a choice of "join or die" or even worse "join or your family back home dies" many take the join option where the government can now label them as illegal and use the line "these gang members are using our asylum laws to enter this country illegally."
If you look at it as a gang problem, like Evelyn Rodriguez is, the community can combat the problem more effectively. Schools need to be more vigilant and work with police on suspected gang membership. Anti-gang programs focusing on keeping youth off the streets also needs to be funded and not cut and kids and their parents need to be able to go to the police when they are being harassed without worrying about being deported.
That last point is something that has made the gangs like M-13 more brazen. Just ask them.
Also, not for nothing, but MS-13 only grew to the size it is now BECAUSE of the US prison system, where they have been able to recruit.
(I had a post written up and closed the window again, need to start using Chrome)
Actually they recruit in high schools. And M13 is a gang problem not an immigration problem.
Many of the gangs victims are asylum seekers fleeing the violence that the gangs in their home countries. They flee to America to escape the gangs but unfortunately they are in the cities waiting for them. When these asylum seekers are given a choice of "join or die" or even worse "join or your family back home dies" many take the join option where the government can now label them as illegal and use the line "these gang members are using our asylum laws to enter this country illegally."
If you look at it as a gang problem, like Evelyn Rodriguez is, the community can combat the problem more effectively. Schools need to be more vigilant and work with police on suspected gang membership. Anti-gang programs focusing on keeping youth off the streets also needs to be funded and not cut and kids and their parents need to be able to go to the police when they are being harassed without worrying about being deported.
That last point is something that has made the gangs like M-13 more brazen. Just ask them.
So at best, the situation here in regards to immigration with this gang is a Catch-22. You strictly enforce deportation, they use that to their advantage to blackmail young recruits. You lay off deportations in those neighborhoods, the violence escalates regardless. I agree it is a gang problem and illegal immigration is tangential. MANY people commit other crimes that aren't caught before they commit violent crime. And of course, the distrust of the Latino neighborhoods is frequently the #1 reason given by local police departments for not wanting to do the job of Federal Immigration officials.
Immigration policy has been in the news a lot in the UK recently. The government has for years now had a policy of reducing net immigration to less than 100,000 a year and one aspect of trying to achieve that has been a steady tightening of policies and procedures in order to set up a 'hostile environment' for illegal immigrants. That includes questioning people over their immigration status when getting a job, joining a school or accessing health care.
The aspect of this that has now caught the government out has been that this tightening of procedures has been applied to the 'Windrush' generation. The Windrush was the first big ship to arrive in the UK after WWII carrying workers from what was then the British Empire to address labor shortages. That process continued until the 1971 Immigration Act. That Act also gave the Windrush generation indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
That right to remain though was contingent on people staying in the UK, i.e. you couldn't live most of the time in the Caribbean and then just pop back to the UK whenever you felt like it. As part of the 'hostile environment' people are asked to provide documentary evidence of the fact they've remained in the country - and unsurprisingly many people are unable to do that. The government was warned that this policy was leading to injustices several years ago, but up until recently has treated problems as relating just to individual cases rather than as a problem with the policy itself.
The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has been under increasing pressure and last night finally resigned despite strong support from the government. The straw that broke the camel's back has been her insistence, including statements to Parliament, that the Home Office has not been setting targets for enforced removal of immigrants. Documentary and other evidence that targets have been used for a number of years got to a point where it was no longer credible for her just to say she was not aware of the targets.
I don't expect the resignation to ease the pressure on the government. One reason for Theresa May to support Amber Rudd so strongly is that May was Home Secretary between 2010 and 2016 (making her the longest serving Home Secretary in the last 60 years). May was directly responsible for setting up the 'hostile environment' referred to above - Rudd was simply carrying out that policy rather than devising something new. I would imagine that over the next few days May will look back through rose-tinted spectacles at the time when she only had that little matter of Brexit to worry her .
Any thoughts on the comedienne at the White House Correspondebce Dinner?
I saw her routines, she didn't seem very talented to me, maybe a third rate comedian. This has got to be her 15 minutes of fame, the end. She flubbed her lines a couple times. Her best bit was where she was making fun of Trumps insecurity about his wealth. Overall, not very good in my opinion.
Also, Trumps a very special coward because he was too scared to be there (again.) He claimed he would run into a school shooting but this guy is scared to death of what people might say about him. Also Pence is giving some speech in front of the NRA and Trump will be giving one later too I guess because he only appears in front of friendly crowds. Because he's a chickenshit as I just mentioned. But anyway, there will be no guns allowed at the NRA speeches. What ever happened to being protected by a few hundred good guys with guns? What's the problem, isn't the NRAs response to everything 'Moar guns!'. The Parkland shooting survivors are pointing out the hypocrisy here - they want to be able to be at a place without guns too.
Reading "highlights" of the transcript and watching a couple of clips, I didn't think she was very funny. Some of the jokes read like they needed more time in the oven, e.g., the strained path from Sarah Sanders to "Aunt Coulter." And what the heck was "shooting fish in a Chris Christie"? You're also correct that she stumbled over some of the lines.
But then when I watched the whole thing straight through, I honestly was laughing out loud. The WHCD is a dumb event, and it was really fun to see her brazenly power through completely losing her audience. It felt like performance art.
First off the WHCD and it's incestuous Beltway "village" mentality needs to be put down, but as for this event.....
First off, this event is essentially a roast. Trump was roasted many years ago on Comedy Central, and watching it at the time, he clearly did NOT enjoy it. That said, he is also a coward for not showing up, and even more of a coward for sending his female Press Secretary to take the hits.
Which brings us to the Beltway and conservative indignation over the jokes. The amount of cognitive dissonance it takes to support a political movement that's prime directive seems to be "suck it up snowflake, your feelings don't matter" and then complain about biting jokes at a comedy event reminds me of nothing so much as the schoolyard bully who runs to the hall monitor the instant someone punches back. For a group of people who are convinced liberals are weak crybabies, there is sure some AWFULLY thin skin on the right in this country. They feel perpetually aggrieved and mocked, an endless self-perpetuating victim complex. The size of the stick you have to have up your ass to complain about jokes in a roast format has to be at least 30 ft. long. If Sarah Sanders can't take a joke, screw her and the perpetual "I want to talk to your manager" look she always has on.
Again, this is a political movement primarily based on the urge to say "politically incorrect" things. But that is total horsehit. What it's really about is them being able to say anything they want, and having everyone else shut up and take it.
Trump still remembers that, many people are saying that's why Trump hates Obama. Well that and Obama is smarter, better looking, more popular, and more effective as a leader with bigger hands.
Trumps rally much more offensive than a couple jokes from a third rate comedian. Predictably Trump is faking indignation and offense, poor guy got his feelings hurt? I'm pretty sure no one has accused Trump of having feelings for many years. We've come to overlook Trumps behavior but Trumps the president what's his excuse for being offensive?
As I said, it's a bizarre Beltway ritual that needs to stop taking place, but it's no different than what Dean Martin and Don Rickles did in the '70s, or what Comedy Central has been doing for over a decade. And anyone claiming indignation about this event is being entirely disingenuous.
Comments
I am in awe and wonder that this title is not available in social media in a way that brings pennies to Pink Floyd, directly.
"All in all, you are just another brick in the wall."
This is what I wished the child chorus of the Finnish Eurovision entry to be. Oh, well...
Again, you still have no clue what's going on here.
I personally covered these issues over a decade ago in my work as a freelance journalist. I've personally KNOWN mothers whose children were attacked or threatened. I travel to and from work every day past areas where NUMEROUS children's bodies have been found, beaten and mutilated. The ACTUAL extent of the crimes isn't going to be documented by any numbers you pull up on the internet, because the bodies of children who disappeared years ago are only just turning up now. The DEMOCRATIC police commissioner has made this issue the county's #1 priority, and has publicly CONCEDED that laxity in enforcing immigration laws, both at the state and federal levels, has led to this situation now.
But yeah, you can choose to believe that none of this is actually happening here, or that it's all somehow meaningless, and that anyone pushing for crackdowns on illegal immigration are just "hypnotized by Fox news" (which I've never watched in my entire life, incidentally).
Again, this is exactly the kind of distortions and rhetoric from the left that I criticized earlier.
1. The issue is clearly about ILLEGAL immigrants, NOT just any immigrants.
2. NO ONE made any claim or implication about immigrants being "more violent than non-immigrants."
It's the JOB of the government to enforce the law, including immigration laws, NOT to turn a blind eye to something that's illegal based on some personal feelings or ideology about the issue, and then hope that no law-abiding citizens end up paying a price for it down the road. ANYONE who dies or suffers at the hands of someone WHO WASN'T LEGALLY ALLOWED TO BE IN THE COUNTRY IN THE FIRST PLACE was let down by his or her government not doing the job that it's sworn and paid to do.
Here on LI, it's MINORITIES who have been the biggest target and paid the biggest price for these crimes.
And here you're doing EXACTLY what you accuse others of doing - creating a bogeyman and making them the scapegoat (directly or indirectly) for any problem in society. Good luck telling parents whose child has been found scattered about the woods that "some rich guy paying Fox news" is what they should really be upset about in life.
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/crime/crime-numbers-long-island-1.15675726
But regardless of your anecdotal experience in your neck of the woods, crime in America had been falling for years. In fact violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century. This is a widely accepted fact. But if you only consume right wing propaganda or ignore facts and "feel" that things are worse you might be among the few that don't believe it.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/30/5-facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/
I cited for you politifact that illegal immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes. If you have a illegal immigrant criminal then he's the same as any criminal and should be locked up (and/or deported). But overall illegal immigrants are less violent than non immigrants.
My fear mongering of the rich is based on facts. Real ones even. The Republican tax bill a middle class miracle (a whopper of a lie) gives permanent tax cuts to corporations and the vast majority of money from these cuts - over 80% goes to the rich. The rich already control the vast majority of the wealth. They didn't need more.
Just nine of the world's richest men have more combined wealth than the poorest 4 billion people.
If you have problems - fears, doubts, no health insurance, no social security, poor roads, underpaid teachers, it's because these rich business criminals are not paying their share. The illegal immigrant wants to feed his family and doesn't want to commit crimes because he'll be deported. He has zero power in society. When is the last time an illegal immigrant passed legislation to take away your health insurance? When is the last time an illegal immigrant voted to take away your rights? How many illegal immigrants are jacking up the price of lifesaving drugs to get rich or operating as predatory payday lenders?
These people are powerless and just trying to get by.
This is being treated like a novel event, but it is not. North Korea has long brought up this proposal, and all similar denuclearization agreements over the past 20 years have ended with the North breaking its promises. I still see precious little indication that this time is any different.
Ultimately, the prospects for that sort of agreement depend on whether North Korea believes that a peace treaty would be more likely to prevent a war with the U.S. than nuclear weapons, and I find it difficult to believe that a highly militarized state like North Korea would feel that peace treaties would be anywhere near as effective a deterrent as nuclear weapons. Theoretically, the North might still abide by such an agreement, because the agreement could also include sanctions relief that would balance out the hit to their security, but North Korea's past statements suggest very strongly that the DPRK would not trade a 1% drop in their security (say) for a 10% boost to the economy.
Security and the government's chokehold on its people have been the DPRK's two biggest priorities for 70 years. While the North has complained about the effect of sanctions on its economy--it does care about its GDP--it has been very unwilling to implement even very modest reforms recommended even by the Chinese, and thus far it has been very willing to weather sanctions rather than change its behavior in order to avoid them.
The North has pursued military strength at the expense of economics and diplomacy for decades, including during the current Kim's young reign. I do not think we currently have enough evidence that this ordering of the North's priorities has changed.
Competition is the one and only reason why capitalism works as a system. No corporation is going to provide high quality, innovative products and services at low prices if it doesn't have competitors that are constantly trying to win over their customers. Why spend money on R&D if you can sell lousy products and still maintain market share? Why offer your customers low prices if they don't have any alternative? In the absence of real competition, the best profit strategy is to keep prices high and quality low. Everyone who's flown on a commercial airline has seen what happens when mergers eliminate competition.
Capitalism without competition is little different from communism. Both systems punish innovation and reward stagnancy because there's no profit incentive to do any better. We should break up mergers and monopolies and restore competition to any industry that's dominated by just a handful of companies. We should either impose limits on or forbid companies from buying out their competition.
As for providing poor service when you have the market cornered, ask anyone in a major metro area who only has the option of Time Warner or Comcast how their service is.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/20/technology/doj-wireless-carriers/index.html
In Europe when I was visting there a decade ago, you could easily swap out sim cards and change carriers. In the US, Verizon and Sprint and the others either offered no sim card at all on their phones or made it so you couldn't just swap out sim cards usually due to contracts.
This will be good for consumers.
NOT that this was any surprise to people who have actually lived and worked here for the past decades - it was always an open secret that many of these crimes were connected to illegal immigrants. It's just a shame that so many people had to suffer and die before the issue was finally acknowledged on a national level, or without the people who tried to call attention to the issue being casually dismissed as "racists."
2. Like I said, the numbers are NOT going to be accurate either way because NOT ALL CRIMES HAVE BEEN REPORTED OR ARE EVEN KNOWN YET. Here's another article from around that same time:
http://longisland.news12.com/story/36705300/police-30-hispanic-teens-missing-in-suffolk-17-missing-in-nassau
"Members of the Hispanic community say more must be done to protect their children in the wake of gang violence and the discovery of bodies in Nassau and Suffolk counties.
There are currently 30 missing Hispanic young people (ages 13 to 23) in Suffolk County and 17 in Nassau County, according to county police departments."
As I said, this has NOTHING to do with the likelihood of committing violent crimes. Even if just a fraction of a percentage of illegal immigrants committed violent crimes, it would still be the government's JOB to enforce immigration laws all the same. Employees at McDonald's aren't free to refuse serving customers burgers because they "don't agree" with serving meat. Elected officials take oaths to uphold and enforce laws, and are PAID by taxpayer dollars to do that very service. It isn't their place to decide, "I don't personally agree with this law, so I'm not going to enforce it."
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/historical-crime-data/seven-major-felony-offenses-by-precinct-2000-2017.pdf
It's my understanding that Long Island is precinct 108. It looks like Long Island crime rates, at least for the most severe crimes, have been going down since long before 2017. They've been going down pretty consistently since the year 2000.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled consistently that immigration regulation is an exclusive Federal responsibility.
The States should not be involved. It is highly responsible that states like New York are not wasting your tax money on enforcement of a federal responsibility. If they did, the Federal government would be getting one over on the States because they'd be using State resources to do the Federal government's job.
The taxpayer dollars that we pay federally are for among other things enforcing immigration laws.
The data look very similar to NYC. The only distinct difference is that the percentage drop in the crime rate in NYC seems bigger than the drop in Suffolk and Nassau.
Also, call me crazy, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that no one accused or convicted of hacking a child to death with a machete is being let back out on the streets if they are caught. So the solution is....what?? Go door to door in Hispanic neighborhoods asking for papers (which is essentially what ICE is now doing all over the country)??
Also, not for nothing, but MS-13 only grew to the size it is now BECAUSE of the US prison system, where they have been able to recruit. And NO ONE is defending violent gang members. The thing we have a problem with is that Donald Trump very purposefully uses one violent Latino-centric gang to paint all Latin American immigrants as rapists and monsters.
Actually they recruit in high schools. And M13 is a gang problem not an immigration problem.
Many of the gangs victims are asylum seekers fleeing the violence that the gangs in their home countries. They flee to America to escape the gangs but unfortunately they are in the cities waiting for them. When these asylum seekers are given a choice of "join or die" or even worse "join or your family back home dies" many take the join option where the government can now label them as illegal and use the line "these gang members are using our asylum laws to enter this country illegally."
If you look at it as a gang problem, like Evelyn Rodriguez is, the community can combat the problem more effectively. Schools need to be more vigilant and work with police on suspected gang membership. Anti-gang programs focusing on keeping youth off the streets also needs to be funded and not cut and kids and their parents need to be able to go to the police when they are being harassed without worrying about being deported.
That last point is something that has made the gangs like M-13 more brazen. Just ask them.
The aspect of this that has now caught the government out has been that this tightening of procedures has been applied to the 'Windrush' generation. The Windrush was the first big ship to arrive in the UK after WWII carrying workers from what was then the British Empire to address labor shortages. That process continued until the 1971 Immigration Act. That Act also gave the Windrush generation indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
That right to remain though was contingent on people staying in the UK, i.e. you couldn't live most of the time in the Caribbean and then just pop back to the UK whenever you felt like it. As part of the 'hostile environment' people are asked to provide documentary evidence of the fact they've remained in the country - and unsurprisingly many people are unable to do that. The government was warned that this policy was leading to injustices several years ago, but up until recently has treated problems as relating just to individual cases rather than as a problem with the policy itself.
The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has been under increasing pressure and last night finally resigned despite strong support from the government. The straw that broke the camel's back has been her insistence, including statements to Parliament, that the Home Office has not been setting targets for enforced removal of immigrants. Documentary and other evidence that targets have been used for a number of years got to a point where it was no longer credible for her just to say she was not aware of the targets.
I don't expect the resignation to ease the pressure on the government. One reason for Theresa May to support Amber Rudd so strongly is that May was Home Secretary between 2010 and 2016 (making her the longest serving Home Secretary in the last 60 years). May was directly responsible for setting up the 'hostile environment' referred to above - Rudd was simply carrying out that policy rather than devising something new. I would imagine that over the next few days May will look back through rose-tinted spectacles at the time when she only had that little matter of Brexit to worry her
I saw her routines, she didn't seem very talented to me, maybe a third rate comedian. This has got to be her 15 minutes of fame, the end. She flubbed her lines a couple times. Her best bit was where she was making fun of Trumps insecurity about his wealth. Overall, not very good in my opinion.
Also, Trumps a very special coward because he was too scared to be there (again.) He claimed he would run into a school shooting but this guy is scared to death of what people might say about him. Also Pence is giving some speech in front of the NRA and Trump will be giving one later too I guess because he only appears in front of friendly crowds. Because he's a chickenshit as I just mentioned. But anyway, there will be no guns allowed at the NRA speeches. What ever happened to being protected by a few hundred good guys with guns? What's the problem, isn't the NRAs response to everything 'Moar guns!'. The Parkland shooting survivors are pointing out the hypocrisy here - they want to be able to be at a place without guns too.
But then when I watched the whole thing straight through, I honestly was laughing out loud. The WHCD is a dumb event, and it was really fun to see her brazenly power through completely losing her audience. It felt like performance art.
https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/videos/10156956956427908/
First off, this event is essentially a roast. Trump was roasted many years ago on Comedy Central, and watching it at the time, he clearly did NOT enjoy it. That said, he is also a coward for not showing up, and even more of a coward for sending his female Press Secretary to take the hits.
Which brings us to the Beltway and conservative indignation over the jokes. The amount of cognitive dissonance it takes to support a political movement that's prime directive seems to be "suck it up snowflake, your feelings don't matter" and then complain about biting jokes at a comedy event reminds me of nothing so much as the schoolyard bully who runs to the hall monitor the instant someone punches back. For a group of people who are convinced liberals are weak crybabies, there is sure some AWFULLY thin skin on the right in this country. They feel perpetually aggrieved and mocked, an endless self-perpetuating victim complex. The size of the stick you have to have up your ass to complain about jokes in a roast format has to be at least 30 ft. long. If Sarah Sanders can't take a joke, screw her and the perpetual "I want to talk to your manager" look she always has on.
Again, this is a political movement primarily based on the urge to say "politically incorrect" things. But that is total horsehit. What it's really about is them being able to say anything they want, and having everyone else shut up and take it.
Trumps rally much more offensive than a couple jokes from a third rate comedian. Predictably Trump is faking indignation and offense, poor guy got his feelings hurt? I'm pretty sure no one has accused Trump of having feelings for many years. We've come to overlook Trumps behavior but Trumps the president what's his excuse for being offensive?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/30/politics/donald-trump-michigan-speech-annotation/index.html