How are toddlers capable of committing a "crime"?? And we have been over and over what the crime actually is. It's a low-level misdemeanor, and that is ASSUMING they have no legal right to apply for asylum (and many of these crossings are taking place because Trump has deliberately closed legal entry points for precisely this purpose).
They aren't arresting toddlers lol, try to be a little honest here. They are arresting the adults they happen to cross the border with, who need to identified as either actual parents or people smugglers.
Now, I know crossing a line on a map is clearly WAY worse than say, oh I don't know, blatantly obstructing justice or raping someone, but maybe we can get on board with the idea that the answer to that crime is NOT kidnapping their children and then sending those children to live in their own puke, shit, and lice for months at time, and not having sadistic border patrol agents confiscating what passes for their bedding as a punishment for losing a fucking comb.
When I was talking about hysterical emotional rhetoric without a basis in reality, this is exactly what i'm talking about. It seems to form the foundations a lot of the thinking around these things.
When you lay down assumption after assumption in rapid fire succession, sometimes it's just better to shake your head and walk away rather than having to do the work necessary to lay these things out in a more objective manner.
Kamala Harris pretty much annihilated the field. Buttigieg was pretty good. Biden looked pretty rough and Bernie seems like his moment has passed (But he's always had rough debates. He looks better elsewhere).
Marrianne Williamson was... just cringe worthy. Yikes.
I watched the debate just to see how Yang would do and he got what, 10 seconds? I only remember seeing him answer one question after having went through the whole thing. Should have expected it tbh.
Nobody else interests me, really, but take a shot every time someone says "this is very personal to me".
How are toddlers capable of committing a "crime"?? And we have been over and over what the crime actually is. It's a low-level misdemeanor, and that is ASSUMING they have no legal right to apply for asylum (and many of these crossings are taking place because Trump has deliberately closed legal entry points for precisely this purpose).
They aren't arresting toddlers lol, try to be a little honest here. They are arresting the adults they happen to cross the border with, who need to identified as either actual parents or people smugglers.
Now, I know crossing a line on a map is clearly WAY worse than say, oh I don't know, blatantly obstructing justice or raping someone, but maybe we can get on board with the idea that the answer to that crime is NOT kidnapping their children and then sending those children to live in their own puke, shit, and lice for months at time, and not having sadistic border patrol agents confiscating what passes for their bedding as a punishment for losing a fucking comb.
When I was talking about hysterical emotional rhetoric without a basis in reality, this is exactly what i'm talking about. It seems to form the foundations a lot of the thinking around these things.
I just provided detailed quotes from lawyers who visited the camps describing these exact conditions, and again, what we have is the "tone" police sending in the SWAT team. Where the language used to describe something is deemed somehow unworthy of debate with the champions of "logic and reason", which really just means "devoid of empathy".
So I'll just lay bare this tactic for anyone to get the blueprint of. Ignore actual news articles, eyewitness accounts or any other piece of actual evidence about what is going on. Immediately make it about how the person making the other end of the argument is "hysterical" and needs to settle down and be "rational" before they can be taken seriously. If they swear or ESPECIALLY if they are a woman, so much the better. Make the debate about HOW the argument is taking place rather than the actual issue.
This Justice Department has literally sent a lawyer to court explicitly arguing the government is not obligated to provide these children toothpaste or soap while in their custody. I posted video of the oral argument. And now I know why absolutely nothing penetrates the right-wing bubble that has been built in this country. It's simply willfully ignored because acknowledging them would force either unfathomable cognitive dissonance to kick in or actual horror at the realization of it.
Watched the second night of the Democratic primary debates with my mom and took more notes (my dad asked how the debates were going and I told him the Democrats were winning). As before, I skipped over generic statements of principles in favor of more specific proposals.
It started out much louder than the previous night, with much more people talking over each other in the first half hour.
Mirianne Williamson advocated reparations for slavery and stated that making America a better place to grow up as a child was her top priority. I caught no other policies from her.
John Hickenlooper said his first priority was addressing climate change. I caught no other policies from him.
Andrew Yang's top priority was his universal basic income proposal, $1,000 to each citizen age 18 or over every month. He proposed a value-added tax to help pay for the UBI proposal and said the UBI would increase GDP by $700 billion. Yang said Russia was the primary geopolitical threat to the U.S., and stressed that tariffs were the wrong way to address the Chinese threat. He cited his appeal with right-leaning people as proof of his ability to beat Donald Trump.
I was a bit disappointed with Yang's appearance here. The moderators seldom called on him and Yang remained perfectly silent during other candidates' speeches; he never tried to interrupt or challenge anyone, and as a result, he never got called on to speak in greater detail. His UBI proposal is even bolder and further to the left than Bernie Sanders' typical policies, yet he only got a brief chance to describe it. No other candidates bothered challenging him on it, and he never spoke past his time.
He followed the rules very rigidly, and all it meant was that he got less time to speak. It doesn't seem fair.
I think I understand why Pete Buttigieg became popular. He's very well-spoken and difficult to shake. When two other candidates criticized him one after another for an insufficient response to police violence in his hometown, he stayed perfectly calm; the criticism didn't shake him at all. Buttigieg proposed free college only for low- and middle-income families as opposed to a universal free college plan, a $15 minimum wage, a public healthcare option.
Joe Biden advocated free community college and freezing interest payments on student debt until students are making more than $25,000 a year. Defending Obama-era deportations, he said deportations make sense for those who commit major crimes but not those without a criminal record. He suggested building 500,000 green recharging stations to make electric vehicles viable nationwide and called for universal biometric locks on guns to prevent people other than their owners from using them.
Early on, I saw why people found Biden likable. But he really struggled later in the debate. When Kamala Harris criticized him for his comments about working with segregationists, Biden had a hard time responding, and when she further pressed him on his past opposition to public busing to hasten desegregation, his feelings were visibly hurt. She's a strong speaker.
Kamala Harris called for police body cameras and re-entering the Paris agreement, and stated that her top priority would be passing a middle class tax cut. She expressed opposition to Obama-era deportations, saying she had issued a directive for her sheriffs to use discretion rather than automatically deporting those immigrants who had not committed crimes.
Bernie Sanders notably didn't rule out higher taxes for the middle class to help pay for a Medicare for all plan which would include abortion access. He advocated abolishing private insurance and getting the U.S. out of the Saudi war in Yemen. Sanders spoke a great deal, but much of it was his standard anti-Wall Street rhetoric.
Kirsten Gillibrand suggested abolishing private insurance with a transitional period and assigning lawyers to represent asylum seekers. Her top stated priority was a family bill of rights with family leave and affordable day care, among other things. Notably, she was the first and only candidate to bring up campaign finance reform (which she did twice, unprovoked), saying that accomplishing any of the other objectives the candidates lined out would not be possible without first addressing political corruption.
We very, very seldom see candidates call for anti-corruption measures when social issues and monetary policies get voters' attention faster. I appreciate that Gillibrand brought this up--it's the mark of a candidate who realizes that the problem with our politics is not just that the "bad guys" win too many elections; the problem is structural and needs structural reform.
Michael Bennet supported a public option, criticizing the prospect of a Medicare for all plan that would make private insurance illegal, and notably supported a gun buyback program that would be mandatory. When Biden cited his successful work with Mitch McConnell, Bennet criticized him for helping make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Eric Swallwell quoted Joe Biden about passing the torch to a new generation to audience applause (which I think is clearly the only reason he said it) and said his top priority was ending gun violence. I caught no other policies from him.
Overall, I'm disappointed. I really hoped we would get to hear more from Yang; Harris really hurt Biden (emotionally and politically); and Sanders mostly repeated his traditional talking points. I did like seeing Gillibrand call out political corruption, though, and hearing Buttigieg speak so strongly makes him seem like an excellent candidate for a general election, since he would be very difficult to shake.
Kamala Harris pretty much annihilated the field. Buttigieg was pretty good. Biden looked pretty rough and Bernie seems like his moment has passed (But he's always had rough debates. He looks better elsewhere).
Marrianne Williamson was... just cringe worthy. Yikes.
I didn't even know who Marianne Willamson was until a few weeks ago and she has no business being on this stage. Again, just like last night, there are people who need to pack up and move out. Swalwell, Williamson, Gillibrand, Bennett, Hickenlooper and Yang, again, have a less than zero chance of winning this primary, and that number has never moved above or below that level, and never will. There are still only five people who have any shot at winning this thing, and they've been the same 5 people for months. Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, and Buttigieg, in that order currently, and Mayor Pete's time in the sun is also going to start to fade. He is exceptionally smart and engaging but empty on so much policy.
You aren't going to make a move and establish yourself in this field by hoping the moderator calls on you and sticking to your time limit. The reason Harris wiped the floor with the field is because she was the only one willing to grab the brass ring metaphorically hanging above the stage and when the time came to essentially take Biden's legs out from under him, she attacked without mercy and without hesitation. And THAT is who I want taking on Donald Trump, not some guy who thinks he can reason with Mitch McConnell.
Bernie Sanders also brought up an out of nowhere idea for the Supreme Court called "court rotation" which is frankly just bizarre and has no basis in anything resembling reality.
You aren't going to make a move and establish yourself in this field by hoping the moderator calls on you and sticking to your time limit. The reason Harris wiped the floor with the field is because she was the only one willing to grab the brass ring metaphorically hanging above the stage and when the time came to essentially take Biden's legs out from under him, she attacked without mercy and without hesitation. And THAT is who I want taking on Donald Trump, not some guy who thinks he can reason with Mitch McConnell.
I generally agree with this. However, what made Harris's rebuke of Biden effective was how she had to deliver it. In our society, a women talking over a man is more consequential (in a negative way) to her perception than a man talking over another man.
Her rebuke was invective, but it was also passionate and gentle. She managed to bring him to task on an issue without lowering herself. That kind of rhetorical juxtaposition is challenging, and she absolutely nailed it.
I just saw a Twitter thread suggesting the Marianne Williamson seems like someone who should have been a recurring character on "Frasier" and that is the most spot-on description of anything I have heard in quite some time.
@WarChiefZeke: The people locked up included legal asylum seekers, and children were taken from their parents before anyone was convicted of a crime. The whole problem with this situation is that it's being done without due process of law. Children are being apprehended and then locked up for illegally long periods of time. The only way you could say this wasn't "arresting" children was by pointing out that it was done illegally instead of legally--in which case the proper term would be "kidnapping."
Those are the only two ways children end up being locked up, and these children are locked up. If they were neither kidnapped nor arrested, they wouldn't be locked up.
It's not an opinion that these kids are imprisoned.
@jjstraka34: I too was confused about Sanders' comment on court rotation. If he's suggesting that judges from lower courts could be rotated into the Supreme Court, that would be a very new constitutional precedent, and it would yield massive power to whoever decided on those rotations. If it is what it sounds like, it would be easy to dismiss it as a court packing scheme.
I'm not as pleased with Kamala Harris. She demonstrated competence in a debate, but I don't see how her ability to hurt Biden by re-hashing a criticism she already made before is any more impressive than Cory Booker's "metagaming" or Julian Castro trying to cut down his fellow Texan competitor Beto O'Rourke. At least Cory Booker was drawing attention to himself without doing so at the expense of a carefully-chosen target.
Not that I view Biden with more sympathy because of it. He really does need to be able to shrug off criticisms in future debates, especially against Trump, and, good guy that he is, his impulse is to rush to the defense of Obama's administration rather than focus on his performance in a debate. It might not be a disadvantage as a policymaker, but it's a genuine disadvantage if you're trying to win an election where your opponents fight dirty.
@WarChiefZeke: I was also rather upset about the little attention given to Yang. He played by the rules and didn't get into silly fights, and he ended up getting penalized by it because not entering the fray meant he didn't get called on for extra time by the moderators when people criticized him back.
I get that politics involves rhetorically fighting with people, but that sort of restraint should empower a candidate; not hide them.
I think Marianne Williamson is out. I don't see much substance in her to begin with, and she doesn't sound like a hard-hitting politician when she debates. She speaks--and somehow even moves--like a random civilian. The style feels too casual for a presidential debate.
At least the survivors appear to be solid candidates. Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren, and Buttigieg all look capable of tackling the challenge. I just wish Yang, Gabbard, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar had better prospects as well.
I would argue that running against Trump isn't going to have anything to do with policy. He's running a sadistic reality show from the White House, and you haven't seen ANYTHING like what they are going to unleash on the eventual nominee. I want someone who has natural mithril armor and a Sword of Chaos +4 on their back. I also want this field whittled down yesterday. Trying to have an actual debate with this many people on stage is lunacy. It looks ridiculous and IS ridiculous.
I'm not as pleased with Kamala Harris. She demonstrated competence in a debate, but I don't see how her ability to hurt Biden by re-hashing a criticism she already made before is any more impressive than Cory Booker's "metagaming" or Julian Castro trying to cut down his fellow Texan competitor Beto O'Rourke. At least Cory Booker was drawing attention to himself without doing so at the expense of a carefully-chosen target.
Yeah - so I think this is an entirely fair take. I definitely did not like some of the debates in 2015 where it felt like damage done to Clinton in the debates would follow her through the entire election. I dont necessarily want that same thing to happen here.
However - speaking just in my own opinion - I think her criticism of Biden was fair, relevant and worth discussing on a national stage. I think there's a line that she (or anyone) should avoid crossing... but I dont really think she went there yet.
I would argue that running against Trump isn't going to have anything to do with policy. He's running a sadistic reality show from the White House, and you haven't seen ANYTHING like what they are going to unleash on the eventual nominee. I want someone who has natural mithril armor and a Sword of Chaos +4 on their back. I also want this field whittled down yesterday. Trying to have an actual debate with this many people on stage is lunacy. It looks ridiculous and IS ridiculous.
think its an over compensation from 2016 when the field was just Clinton and Sanders and you had people like @Balrog99 being turned off by the Democratic Party because the candidacy was handed off to "the chosen one."
I would argue that running against Trump isn't going to have anything to do with policy. He's running a sadistic reality show from the White House, and you haven't seen ANYTHING like what they are going to unleash on the eventual nominee. I want someone who has natural mithril armor and a Sword of Chaos +4 on their back. I also want this field whittled down yesterday. Trying to have an actual debate with this many people on stage is lunacy. It looks ridiculous and IS ridiculous.
think its an over compensation from 2016 when the field was just Clinton and Sanders and you had people like @Balrog99 being turned off by the Democratic Party because the candidacy was handed off to "the chosen one."
I would argue it's people trying to raise their national profile and trying to ink book deals at the expense of not looking like a circus act for the first 6 months of this contest. Fact is, the last two nights just reinforced what Dem primary polls already told us, which is that Biden and Sanders are the old guard trying to hang on with name recognition and Warren and Harris are the ones who are coming for them. It's not because of the media rigging the game for them, it's because they are the ones who have the chops to do so.
Of course it's not opinion that kids get imprisoned @semiticgod, but that's a far cry from being "locked in concentration camps", which was the language being originally objected to. What's more, kids getting imprisoned as a result of their parents- or others- illegally crossing the border with them isn't something that Trump started. He only started the family separation policy. Something I don't agree with, except as a temporary measure within or near the same facility until the adults undergo some sort of screening and questioning. So, basically, the statement I was originally objecting to from the Woke Verified Twitterverse, "Trump's locking kids in concentration camps!" was indeed inaccurate at every point. Trump didn't start it so he wasn't locking anyone up that wasn't before, and calling getting detained at the border being locked in a concentration camp is wildly hysterical nonsense.
I only see three options here really if you have lots of people illegally bringing kids over the border. Turn them away immediately, let them immediately into the country, or detain them for a period of time. Detaining them for a period of time clearly seems the most reasonable option, no matter what you are going to do after, to me.
“This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis,” she added, citing an article in Esquire magazine that quoted a historian of the Holocaust who lectures at the University of Virginia. In the article, the historian, Waitman Wade Beorn, said, “Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz.”
So actually denying that we are once again running concentration camps is the dishonesty. You claimed it was historically inaccurate. How? It seems academics agree and the dishonest republican officials and their lying pundits seem to have the dishonest position.
Again I ask what is a "concentration camp" to you then? Applying the term “concentration camp” to the indefinite detention without trial of thousands of civilians in inhumane conditions — under armed guard and without adequate provisions or medical care — is appropriate and it’s necessary to say.
I only see three options here really if you have lots of people illegally bringing kids over the border. Turn them away immediately, let them immediately into the country, or detain them for a period of time. Detaining them for a period of time clearly seems the most reasonable option, no matter what you are going to do after, to me.
Trump's going out of his way to make this a crisis. His family separation policy seems designed to be cruel. This path was available to Obama and previous Presidents and they didn't do it, it seems obvious you shouldn't separate 4 month old for months/years at a time from their parents maybe we need to pro-life people to chime in though. Additionally, he has refused to hire additional immigration judges and the immigration judges have toddlers defending themselves and stuff it's a huge mess that he's not interested in fixing.
Pregnant woman shot in the stomach indicted over unborn baby's death in Alabama
Putting a woman in prison for getting shot is what passes for justice in Republican america, make sure to take away her voting rights while you're at it but that probably goes without saying.
Stay classy Alabama. Alabama keeps prioritizing fetuses over women.
Also - trying to turn the absolute monstrosity of locking children up in abhorrent conditions as a means to terrorize anyone trying to cross the border into a semantics debate is missing the forest for the trees.
Of course it's not opinion that kids get imprisoned @semiticgod, but that's a far cry from being "locked in concentration camps", which was the language being originally objected to. What's more, kids getting imprisoned as a result of their parents- or others- illegally crossing the border with them isn't something that Trump started. He only started the family separation policy. Something I don't agree with, except as a temporary measure within or near the same facility until the adults undergo some sort of screening and questioning. So, basically, the statement I was originally objecting to from the Woke Verified Twitterverse, "Trump's locking kids in concentration camps!" was indeed inaccurate at every point. Trump didn't start it so he wasn't locking anyone up that wasn't before, and calling getting detained at the border being locked in a concentration camp is wildly hysterical nonsense.
I only see three options here really if you have lots of people illegally bringing kids over the border. Turn them away immediately, let them immediately into the country, or detain them for a period of time. Detaining them for a period of time clearly seems the most reasonable option, no matter what you are going to do after, to me.
You could reasonably say it was hyperbole if someone said the current situation was akin to the Nazi or Soviet concentration camps. However, those are particularly extreme examples and there are plenty of historical concentration camps that are comparable to the current situation in the US. Let's take the definition of a concentration camp as "A place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees or members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard." I can't see how the current situation can sit outside that definition.
I think it's fair to say that the current policy on detention originated with Trump. That doesn't mean that no-one was imprisoned in the past, but there are a number of features of policy under Trump that are new, e.g.:
- crossing the border illegally can be dealt with under both administrative and criminal law. In the past the main sanction has been administrative (deportation and listed as undesirable for future applications to come to the country). Trump has introduced the 'zero tolerance' approach of criminalizing in all cases.
- partial closures of borders to manage spikes in arrivals of refugees have been used in the past on a temporary basis. However, Trump has used selective total closures of the borders, as well as instituted 'metering' of refugees as a general policy irrespective of demand. This is clearly against both US and international law, but it's not the US authorities that are being hit with legal consequences, but the refugees who cross the border 'illegally' in order to seek asylum.
- Trump constantly claims that the policy of family separation was inherited from Obama, but that's not true. There have always been a few cases where children were removed from their families due to safety concerns (and that can happen to citizens as well as asylum seekers). That is not the same as a blanket policy to separate children. The Flores settlement puts clear limits on the extent to which such separations can be done - and those limits are still being blatantly ignored at the moment (that's the case for both illegal and legal asylum seekers).
- the conditions that detainees are being held in are objectively worse than in the past. To some extent you could argue that's a consequence of the policies being followed that have put more pressure on facilities, but I don't think that can be the whole answer. It's possible I suppose that funding is so short that things like blankets and soap can't be made available, though I suspect that private and voluntary groups would provide such items as donations if they were allowed to. However, practices such as maintaining air conditioning at high levels and keeping lights on at full intensity during the night (both of which cost money of course) suggest strongly to me a motivation to punish detainees rather than more humane concerns.
The problem I have with descriptors like "concentration" camps (and "fascist", "communist" etc.) is that they are often used incorrectly and too frequently. Such usage seriously weakens and trivializes the original meaning to the point of historical irrelevance.
The term concentration camp was first used in the Boer War and was used to describe the British tactics of "concentrating" the civilian Boer population in one place to make them easier to deal with and less of a threat (likewise the Nazis "concentrated" their civilian Jewish population). This is a distinct difference to an "internment" camp where foreign civilians are kept. Whilst I'm in no way denying that conditions in internment camps can be appalling, to put them in the same category as the camps of the Holocaust and all the associated imagery is both inaccurate and willfully misleading.
George Takei was IN two American concentration camps in World War II (which are the exact definition of the British ones described above) and he is unequivocal in saying these camps are also. In fact, he says these are probably WORSE, because as bad as Japanese internment camps were (and that is what they have always been called here, proving the two are a distinction without a difference), he was not deliberately seperated from his parents. But what would he know. He only lived it, and we are random people on the internet with opinions.
They are not being put in the same category as Nazi camps. No one did that. The idea that they are is the only argument that can be made by the other side about what is taking place there, because the actual substance of it is not arguable. So we are reduced to a debate about semantics, with people orders of magnitude more upset about the terminology being used than what is happening. The entirety of the argument on the right at the moment on this issue is "don't call then concentration camps" and "their parents were criminals, so tough shit".
Which is the point. These camps are extra-judicial, which ASIDE from the conditions is also why the term is being used. As the lawyer in the New Yorker article pointed out, as well as @Grond0 mentioning Flores, a court has MANDATED these children spend no more than 72 hours in these camps and are entitled to clean and sanitary living conditions. The government is keeping them for up to and longer than a month and arguing openly that soap and toothpaste don't fall under the standards of clean and sanitary. Since BOTH of these guidelines are being ignored, it is the Administration who is breaking the law, willfully and blatantly. The people crowing the loudest about how the parents of these children are criminals have absolutely NOTHING to say about the government purposefully ignoring court orders on this issue.
As for @Grond0 asking about private citizens donating items, yeah, people have tried that. They have been outright rejected. Because the cruelty is the point, and has been from day one:
The problem I have with descriptors like "concentration" camps (and "fascist", "communist" etc.) is that they are often used incorrectly and too frequently. Such usage seriously weakens and trivializes the original meaning to the point of historical irrelevance.
The term concentration camp was first used in the Boer War and was used to describe the British tactics of "concentrating" the civilian Boer population in one place to make them easier to deal with and less of a threat (likewise the Nazis "concentrated" their civilian Jewish population). This is a distinct difference to an "internment" camp where foreign civilians are kept. Whilst I'm in no way denying that conditions in internment camps can be appalling, to put them in the same category as the camps of the Holocaust and all the associated imagery is both inaccurate and willfully misleading.
The term concentration camp was first used about the detention of Cubans by the Spanish in the 1870s and again in the 1890s. The US strongly protested that treatment, but quickly set up its own concentration camps in the Phillipines - at the same time as the British were doing that in the Boer War. There were lots more examples of such camps internationally prior to the move to extermination camps in Nazi Germany - there's a short summary here of early uses of concentration camps.
I don't disagree that comparing conditions with Nazi camps is inappropriate, but I also don't think the term concentration camp should be reserved and only used in relation to the Nazis. The essential features of a concentration camp are:
1) the extra-judicial detention of large groups of people with some shared characteristic (based on religion, skin color, nationality, refugee status etc).
2) over-crowding in the camps and a lack of adequate resources for the detainees.
In many cases I think internment camp and concentration camp could be used synonymously. However, while I think 'concentration camp' is always associated with over-crowding and lack of resources, 'internment camp' is only often associated with those features. Just at the moment it does seem to me that concentration camp is the more appropriate term to describe some of the detention facilities on the border ...
You aren't going to make a move and establish yourself in this field by hoping the moderator calls on you and sticking to your time limit. The reason Harris wiped the floor with the field is because she was the only one willing to grab the brass ring metaphorically hanging above the stage and when the time came to essentially take Biden's legs out from under him, she attacked without mercy and without hesitation. And THAT is who I want taking on Donald Trump, not some guy who thinks he can reason with Mitch McConnell.
I concur with this assessment. If I were a Democrat I would probably be pushing for a ticket including Harris and Warren, in either order (it would probably be Warren/Harris, since Ms. Warren has more political experience).
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What are the alternatives to being held in detention facilities? Deport them to Mexico, even though many of these people are not originally from Mexico? Release them into the United States and hope they show up for their court date (which, these days, is usually 3 or 4 years in the future)? If we release them here, in which city or locate do we release them? Do we then also have to pay to put them into some form of housing until they find a job which, technically, they are not supposed to have or be able to obtain? Why are we not offering the same deals to out own citizens who are in the same status of need as these people?
Are the most vocal pro-immigrant voices willing to house some new immigrants in their own personal homes? If not, why not?
It's not like these immigrants are some brand-new phenomenon for which we have no existing policy. Ostensibly you would deport them to whichever country they came from. Is that not standard?
There was an article (at least in regard to the privately run detention centers) that we were spending $775 per day per child. Where is most of that money going?? Likely in the pockets of the executives of the private prison industry. Apparently the cost of the government-run, non-contacted ones is closer to $250-$300. That money can't cover soap, toothpaste and combs?? But another main point is this. If Trump's base is so obsessed with this issue, and you are going to support these policies, then you are gonna have to part with your precious tax dollars and pony up to treat these people like human beings. When you incarcerate people, YOU are then responsible for them. And yeah, that requires money, and effective management of that money. Instead, they seem to want the draconian policies AND for them to be treated worse than most animals are at a shelter.
You aren't going to make a move and establish yourself in this field by hoping the moderator calls on you and sticking to your time limit. The reason Harris wiped the floor with the field is because she was the only one willing to grab the brass ring metaphorically hanging above the stage and when the time came to essentially take Biden's legs out from under him, she attacked without mercy and without hesitation. And THAT is who I want taking on Donald Trump, not some guy who thinks he can reason with Mitch McConnell.
I concur with this assessment. If I were a Democrat I would probably be pushing for a ticket including Harris and Warren, in either order (it would probably be Warren/Harris, since Ms. Warren has more political experience).
*************
What are the alternatives to being held in detention facilities? Deport them to Mexico, even though many of these people are not originally from Mexico? Release them into the United States and hope they show up for their court date (which, these days, is usually 3 or 4 years in the future)? If we release them here, in which city or locate do we release them? Do we then also have to pay to put them into some form of housing until they find a job which, technically, they are not supposed to have or be able to obtain? Why are we not offering the same deals to out own citizens who are in the same status of need as these people?
Are the most vocal pro-immigrant voices willing to house some new immigrants in their own personal homes? If not, why not?
You aren't going to make a move and establish yourself in this field by hoping the moderator calls on you and sticking to your time limit. The reason Harris wiped the floor with the field is because she was the only one willing to grab the brass ring metaphorically hanging above the stage and when the time came to essentially take Biden's legs out from under him, she attacked without mercy and without hesitation. And THAT is who I want taking on Donald Trump, not some guy who thinks he can reason with Mitch McConnell.
I concur with this assessment. If I were a Democrat I would probably be pushing for a ticket including Harris and Warren, in either order (it would probably be Warren/Harris, since Ms. Warren has more political experience).
*************
What are the alternatives to being held in detention facilities? Deport them to Mexico, even though many of these people are not originally from Mexico? Release them into the United States and hope they show up for their court date (which, these days, is usually 3 or 4 years in the future)? If we release them here, in which city or locate do we release them? Do we then also have to pay to put them into some form of housing until they find a job which, technically, they are not supposed to have or be able to obtain? Why are we not offering the same deals to out own citizens who are in the same status of need as these people?
Are the most vocal pro-immigrant voices willing to house some new immigrants in their own personal homes? If not, why not?
Excellent questions here. The answer is "it depends" of course.
If they are here illegally and not claiming asylum they should be deported. If they're claiming asylum and not serious criminals they should get a chance to go before a judge and make their case.
Here's the problem and I highly suggest you and everyone look into it: Immigration courts and judges are not part of the legal system. So Jeff Sessions and fucking William Barr are dictating justice for immigrants.
Not surprisingly, they've been doing a terrible job on purpose and pretty much demanding their employee judges turn down as many cases as they can as fast as they can to keep their jobs. They aren't interested in hiring enough judges either to meet demand due to humanitarian crises south of the border (often exacerbated by Trump/and American policy). There's a critical lack of judges to be fair about the process by design. They are interested in locking up and making an example of border crossers and funnelling tax payer money to private contactors. That's the Trump priority - cause a crisis, whine and lie about the crisis you created, and rip off tax payers.
The American Bar Association has made calls for lawmakers to overhaul the nation's overwrought immigration court system by making the courts independent from the Department of Justice, and therefore from the Trump administration.
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They aren't arresting toddlers lol, try to be a little honest here. They are arresting the adults they happen to cross the border with, who need to identified as either actual parents or people smugglers.
When I was talking about hysterical emotional rhetoric without a basis in reality, this is exactly what i'm talking about. It seems to form the foundations a lot of the thinking around these things.
When you lay down assumption after assumption in rapid fire succession, sometimes it's just better to shake your head and walk away rather than having to do the work necessary to lay these things out in a more objective manner.
Kamala Harris pretty much annihilated the field. Buttigieg was pretty good. Biden looked pretty rough and Bernie seems like his moment has passed (But he's always had rough debates. He looks better elsewhere).
Marrianne Williamson was... just cringe worthy. Yikes.
Nobody else interests me, really, but take a shot every time someone says "this is very personal to me".
I just provided detailed quotes from lawyers who visited the camps describing these exact conditions, and again, what we have is the "tone" police sending in the SWAT team. Where the language used to describe something is deemed somehow unworthy of debate with the champions of "logic and reason", which really just means "devoid of empathy".
So I'll just lay bare this tactic for anyone to get the blueprint of. Ignore actual news articles, eyewitness accounts or any other piece of actual evidence about what is going on. Immediately make it about how the person making the other end of the argument is "hysterical" and needs to settle down and be "rational" before they can be taken seriously. If they swear or ESPECIALLY if they are a woman, so much the better. Make the debate about HOW the argument is taking place rather than the actual issue.
This Justice Department has literally sent a lawyer to court explicitly arguing the government is not obligated to provide these children toothpaste or soap while in their custody. I posted video of the oral argument. And now I know why absolutely nothing penetrates the right-wing bubble that has been built in this country. It's simply willfully ignored because acknowledging them would force either unfathomable cognitive dissonance to kick in or actual horror at the realization of it.
It started out much louder than the previous night, with much more people talking over each other in the first half hour.
Mirianne Williamson advocated reparations for slavery and stated that making America a better place to grow up as a child was her top priority. I caught no other policies from her.
John Hickenlooper said his first priority was addressing climate change. I caught no other policies from him.
Andrew Yang's top priority was his universal basic income proposal, $1,000 to each citizen age 18 or over every month. He proposed a value-added tax to help pay for the UBI proposal and said the UBI would increase GDP by $700 billion. Yang said Russia was the primary geopolitical threat to the U.S., and stressed that tariffs were the wrong way to address the Chinese threat. He cited his appeal with right-leaning people as proof of his ability to beat Donald Trump.
I was a bit disappointed with Yang's appearance here. The moderators seldom called on him and Yang remained perfectly silent during other candidates' speeches; he never tried to interrupt or challenge anyone, and as a result, he never got called on to speak in greater detail. His UBI proposal is even bolder and further to the left than Bernie Sanders' typical policies, yet he only got a brief chance to describe it. No other candidates bothered challenging him on it, and he never spoke past his time.
He followed the rules very rigidly, and all it meant was that he got less time to speak. It doesn't seem fair.
I think I understand why Pete Buttigieg became popular. He's very well-spoken and difficult to shake. When two other candidates criticized him one after another for an insufficient response to police violence in his hometown, he stayed perfectly calm; the criticism didn't shake him at all. Buttigieg proposed free college only for low- and middle-income families as opposed to a universal free college plan, a $15 minimum wage, a public healthcare option.
Joe Biden advocated free community college and freezing interest payments on student debt until students are making more than $25,000 a year. Defending Obama-era deportations, he said deportations make sense for those who commit major crimes but not those without a criminal record. He suggested building 500,000 green recharging stations to make electric vehicles viable nationwide and called for universal biometric locks on guns to prevent people other than their owners from using them.
Early on, I saw why people found Biden likable. But he really struggled later in the debate. When Kamala Harris criticized him for his comments about working with segregationists, Biden had a hard time responding, and when she further pressed him on his past opposition to public busing to hasten desegregation, his feelings were visibly hurt. She's a strong speaker.
Kamala Harris called for police body cameras and re-entering the Paris agreement, and stated that her top priority would be passing a middle class tax cut. She expressed opposition to Obama-era deportations, saying she had issued a directive for her sheriffs to use discretion rather than automatically deporting those immigrants who had not committed crimes.
Bernie Sanders notably didn't rule out higher taxes for the middle class to help pay for a Medicare for all plan which would include abortion access. He advocated abolishing private insurance and getting the U.S. out of the Saudi war in Yemen. Sanders spoke a great deal, but much of it was his standard anti-Wall Street rhetoric.
Kirsten Gillibrand suggested abolishing private insurance with a transitional period and assigning lawyers to represent asylum seekers. Her top stated priority was a family bill of rights with family leave and affordable day care, among other things. Notably, she was the first and only candidate to bring up campaign finance reform (which she did twice, unprovoked), saying that accomplishing any of the other objectives the candidates lined out would not be possible without first addressing political corruption.
We very, very seldom see candidates call for anti-corruption measures when social issues and monetary policies get voters' attention faster. I appreciate that Gillibrand brought this up--it's the mark of a candidate who realizes that the problem with our politics is not just that the "bad guys" win too many elections; the problem is structural and needs structural reform.
Michael Bennet supported a public option, criticizing the prospect of a Medicare for all plan that would make private insurance illegal, and notably supported a gun buyback program that would be mandatory. When Biden cited his successful work with Mitch McConnell, Bennet criticized him for helping make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Eric Swallwell quoted Joe Biden about passing the torch to a new generation to audience applause (which I think is clearly the only reason he said it) and said his top priority was ending gun violence. I caught no other policies from him.
Overall, I'm disappointed. I really hoped we would get to hear more from Yang; Harris really hurt Biden (emotionally and politically); and Sanders mostly repeated his traditional talking points. I did like seeing Gillibrand call out political corruption, though, and hearing Buttigieg speak so strongly makes him seem like an excellent candidate for a general election, since he would be very difficult to shake.
I didn't even know who Marianne Willamson was until a few weeks ago and she has no business being on this stage. Again, just like last night, there are people who need to pack up and move out. Swalwell, Williamson, Gillibrand, Bennett, Hickenlooper and Yang, again, have a less than zero chance of winning this primary, and that number has never moved above or below that level, and never will. There are still only five people who have any shot at winning this thing, and they've been the same 5 people for months. Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris, and Buttigieg, in that order currently, and Mayor Pete's time in the sun is also going to start to fade. He is exceptionally smart and engaging but empty on so much policy.
You aren't going to make a move and establish yourself in this field by hoping the moderator calls on you and sticking to your time limit. The reason Harris wiped the floor with the field is because she was the only one willing to grab the brass ring metaphorically hanging above the stage and when the time came to essentially take Biden's legs out from under him, she attacked without mercy and without hesitation. And THAT is who I want taking on Donald Trump, not some guy who thinks he can reason with Mitch McConnell.
Bernie Sanders also brought up an out of nowhere idea for the Supreme Court called "court rotation" which is frankly just bizarre and has no basis in anything resembling reality.
I generally agree with this. However, what made Harris's rebuke of Biden effective was how she had to deliver it. In our society, a women talking over a man is more consequential (in a negative way) to her perception than a man talking over another man.
Her rebuke was invective, but it was also passionate and gentle. She managed to bring him to task on an issue without lowering herself. That kind of rhetorical juxtaposition is challenging, and she absolutely nailed it.
Those are the only two ways children end up being locked up, and these children are locked up. If they were neither kidnapped nor arrested, they wouldn't be locked up.
It's not an opinion that these kids are imprisoned.
@jjstraka34: I too was confused about Sanders' comment on court rotation. If he's suggesting that judges from lower courts could be rotated into the Supreme Court, that would be a very new constitutional precedent, and it would yield massive power to whoever decided on those rotations. If it is what it sounds like, it would be easy to dismiss it as a court packing scheme.
I'm not as pleased with Kamala Harris. She demonstrated competence in a debate, but I don't see how her ability to hurt Biden by re-hashing a criticism she already made before is any more impressive than Cory Booker's "metagaming" or Julian Castro trying to cut down his fellow Texan competitor Beto O'Rourke. At least Cory Booker was drawing attention to himself without doing so at the expense of a carefully-chosen target.
Not that I view Biden with more sympathy because of it. He really does need to be able to shrug off criticisms in future debates, especially against Trump, and, good guy that he is, his impulse is to rush to the defense of Obama's administration rather than focus on his performance in a debate. It might not be a disadvantage as a policymaker, but it's a genuine disadvantage if you're trying to win an election where your opponents fight dirty.
@WarChiefZeke: I was also rather upset about the little attention given to Yang. He played by the rules and didn't get into silly fights, and he ended up getting penalized by it because not entering the fray meant he didn't get called on for extra time by the moderators when people criticized him back.
I get that politics involves rhetorically fighting with people, but that sort of restraint should empower a candidate; not hide them.
At least the survivors appear to be solid candidates. Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren, and Buttigieg all look capable of tackling the challenge. I just wish Yang, Gabbard, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar had better prospects as well.
I have great difficulty picking a favorite.
Yeah - so I think this is an entirely fair take. I definitely did not like some of the debates in 2015 where it felt like damage done to Clinton in the debates would follow her through the entire election. I dont necessarily want that same thing to happen here.
However - speaking just in my own opinion - I think her criticism of Biden was fair, relevant and worth discussing on a national stage. I think there's a line that she (or anyone) should avoid crossing... but I dont really think she went there yet.
think its an over compensation from 2016 when the field was just Clinton and Sanders and you had people like @Balrog99 being turned off by the Democratic Party because the candidacy was handed off to "the chosen one."
I would argue it's people trying to raise their national profile and trying to ink book deals at the expense of not looking like a circus act for the first 6 months of this contest. Fact is, the last two nights just reinforced what Dem primary polls already told us, which is that Biden and Sanders are the old guard trying to hang on with name recognition and Warren and Harris are the ones who are coming for them. It's not because of the media rigging the game for them, it's because they are the ones who have the chops to do so.
I only see three options here really if you have lots of people illegally bringing kids over the border. Turn them away immediately, let them immediately into the country, or detain them for a period of time. Detaining them for a period of time clearly seems the most reasonable option, no matter what you are going to do after, to me.
Let me quote AOC herself from NYT:
“This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis,” she added, citing an article in Esquire magazine that quoted a historian of the Holocaust who lectures at the University of Virginia. In the article, the historian, Waitman Wade Beorn, said, “Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz.”
So actually denying that we are once again running concentration camps is the dishonesty. You claimed it was historically inaccurate. How? It seems academics agree and the dishonest republican officials and their lying pundits seem to have the dishonest position.
Again I ask what is a "concentration camp" to you then? Applying the term “concentration camp” to the indefinite detention without trial of thousands of civilians in inhumane conditions — under armed guard and without adequate provisions or medical care — is appropriate and it’s necessary to say.
The Trump administration is even a little too on the nose by reopening Fort Sill, which was previously a Japanese American internment camp, to hold children.
Trump's going out of his way to make this a crisis. His family separation policy seems designed to be cruel. This path was available to Obama and previous Presidents and they didn't do it, it seems obvious you shouldn't separate 4 month old for months/years at a time from their parents maybe we need to pro-life people to chime in though. Additionally, he has refused to hire additional immigration judges and the immigration judges have toddlers defending themselves and stuff it's a huge mess that he's not interested in fixing.
Pregnant woman shot in the stomach indicted over unborn baby's death in Alabama
Putting a woman in prison for getting shot is what passes for justice in Republican america, make sure to take away her voting rights while you're at it but that probably goes without saying.
Stay classy Alabama. Alabama keeps prioritizing fetuses over women.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marshae-jones-alabama-pregnant-woman-shot-stomach-indicted-over-unborn-babys-death-2019-06-27/
Also - trying to turn the absolute monstrosity of locking children up in abhorrent conditions as a means to terrorize anyone trying to cross the border into a semantics debate is missing the forest for the trees.
Tdlr tonight's debate was a tease, more to come from him in the next few debates in July, September, and then two more I think he said.
You could reasonably say it was hyperbole if someone said the current situation was akin to the Nazi or Soviet concentration camps. However, those are particularly extreme examples and there are plenty of historical concentration camps that are comparable to the current situation in the US. Let's take the definition of a concentration camp as "A place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees or members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard." I can't see how the current situation can sit outside that definition.
I think it's fair to say that the current policy on detention originated with Trump. That doesn't mean that no-one was imprisoned in the past, but there are a number of features of policy under Trump that are new, e.g.:
- crossing the border illegally can be dealt with under both administrative and criminal law. In the past the main sanction has been administrative (deportation and listed as undesirable for future applications to come to the country). Trump has introduced the 'zero tolerance' approach of criminalizing in all cases.
- partial closures of borders to manage spikes in arrivals of refugees have been used in the past on a temporary basis. However, Trump has used selective total closures of the borders, as well as instituted 'metering' of refugees as a general policy irrespective of demand. This is clearly against both US and international law, but it's not the US authorities that are being hit with legal consequences, but the refugees who cross the border 'illegally' in order to seek asylum.
- Trump constantly claims that the policy of family separation was inherited from Obama, but that's not true. There have always been a few cases where children were removed from their families due to safety concerns (and that can happen to citizens as well as asylum seekers). That is not the same as a blanket policy to separate children. The Flores settlement puts clear limits on the extent to which such separations can be done - and those limits are still being blatantly ignored at the moment (that's the case for both illegal and legal asylum seekers).
- the conditions that detainees are being held in are objectively worse than in the past. To some extent you could argue that's a consequence of the policies being followed that have put more pressure on facilities, but I don't think that can be the whole answer. It's possible I suppose that funding is so short that things like blankets and soap can't be made available, though I suspect that private and voluntary groups would provide such items as donations if they were allowed to. However, practices such as maintaining air conditioning at high levels and keeping lights on at full intensity during the night (both of which cost money of course) suggest strongly to me a motivation to punish detainees rather than more humane concerns.
The term concentration camp was first used in the Boer War and was used to describe the British tactics of "concentrating" the civilian Boer population in one place to make them easier to deal with and less of a threat (likewise the Nazis "concentrated" their civilian Jewish population). This is a distinct difference to an "internment" camp where foreign civilians are kept. Whilst I'm in no way denying that conditions in internment camps can be appalling, to put them in the same category as the camps of the Holocaust and all the associated imagery is both inaccurate and willfully misleading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps
They are not being put in the same category as Nazi camps. No one did that. The idea that they are is the only argument that can be made by the other side about what is taking place there, because the actual substance of it is not arguable. So we are reduced to a debate about semantics, with people orders of magnitude more upset about the terminology being used than what is happening. The entirety of the argument on the right at the moment on this issue is "don't call then concentration camps" and "their parents were criminals, so tough shit".
Which is the point. These camps are extra-judicial, which ASIDE from the conditions is also why the term is being used. As the lawyer in the New Yorker article pointed out, as well as @Grond0 mentioning Flores, a court has MANDATED these children spend no more than 72 hours in these camps and are entitled to clean and sanitary living conditions. The government is keeping them for up to and longer than a month and arguing openly that soap and toothpaste don't fall under the standards of clean and sanitary. Since BOTH of these guidelines are being ignored, it is the Administration who is breaking the law, willfully and blatantly. The people crowing the loudest about how the parents of these children are criminals have absolutely NOTHING to say about the government purposefully ignoring court orders on this issue.
As for @Grond0 asking about private citizens donating items, yeah, people have tried that. They have been outright rejected. Because the cruelty is the point, and has been from day one:
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/06/24/texas-border-facility-donations-turned-away/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_content=1561414500&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
The term concentration camp was first used about the detention of Cubans by the Spanish in the 1870s and again in the 1890s. The US strongly protested that treatment, but quickly set up its own concentration camps in the Phillipines - at the same time as the British were doing that in the Boer War. There were lots more examples of such camps internationally prior to the move to extermination camps in Nazi Germany - there's a short summary here of early uses of concentration camps.
I don't disagree that comparing conditions with Nazi camps is inappropriate, but I also don't think the term concentration camp should be reserved and only used in relation to the Nazis. The essential features of a concentration camp are:
1) the extra-judicial detention of large groups of people with some shared characteristic (based on religion, skin color, nationality, refugee status etc).
2) over-crowding in the camps and a lack of adequate resources for the detainees.
In many cases I think internment camp and concentration camp could be used synonymously. However, while I think 'concentration camp' is always associated with over-crowding and lack of resources, 'internment camp' is only often associated with those features. Just at the moment it does seem to me that concentration camp is the more appropriate term to describe some of the detention facilities on the border ...
I concur with this assessment. If I were a Democrat I would probably be pushing for a ticket including Harris and Warren, in either order (it would probably be Warren/Harris, since Ms. Warren has more political experience).
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What are the alternatives to being held in detention facilities? Deport them to Mexico, even though many of these people are not originally from Mexico? Release them into the United States and hope they show up for their court date (which, these days, is usually 3 or 4 years in the future)? If we release them here, in which city or locate do we release them? Do we then also have to pay to put them into some form of housing until they find a job which, technically, they are not supposed to have or be able to obtain? Why are we not offering the same deals to out own citizens who are in the same status of need as these people?
Are the most vocal pro-immigrant voices willing to house some new immigrants in their own personal homes? If not, why not?
Does the US not have sponsorships?
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/guide-private-sponsorship-refugees-program/section-2.html
Truthfully, I am uncertain. That program probably exists but I would have to look into it.
Excellent questions here. The answer is "it depends" of course.
If they are here illegally and not claiming asylum they should be deported. If they're claiming asylum and not serious criminals they should get a chance to go before a judge and make their case.
Here's the problem and I highly suggest you and everyone look into it: Immigration courts and judges are not part of the legal system. So Jeff Sessions and fucking William Barr are dictating justice for immigrants.
Not surprisingly, they've been doing a terrible job on purpose and pretty much demanding their employee judges turn down as many cases as they can as fast as they can to keep their jobs. They aren't interested in hiring enough judges either to meet demand due to humanitarian crises south of the border (often exacerbated by Trump/and American policy). There's a critical lack of judges to be fair about the process by design. They are interested in locking up and making an example of border crossers and funnelling tax payer money to private contactors. That's the Trump priority - cause a crisis, whine and lie about the crisis you created, and rip off tax payers.
The American Bar Association has made calls for lawmakers to overhaul the nation's overwrought immigration court system by making the courts independent from the Department of Justice, and therefore from the Trump administration.