Can’t we just call this Rich America First and be done with it? Not rich? Then it’s NOT FOR YOU.
People who aren’t wealthy but not smart enough to know what real wealth is (and why they are unlikely to obtain it) always think they’re just a small hop away from being one of the elite rich folk who these benefits are for, never seeing that they are being bent over to keep the gap between themselves and the rich as wide as possible.
Yes, Americans are particularly weird because many of our poor don’t consider themselves poor. They consider themselves temporarily inconvenienced rich people, so they vote against their own best interests all the time.
Every Latino is an MS-13 gang member in Republican eyes, just like every black kid is a Crip or a Blood.
I think you are correct @rowe33.
I had an interesting interaction with a family that’s moving out of my neighborhood. The father of one of them who was helping everyone move overheard me talking to the teenage boy my kids are friends with and is doing the moving. I live in a very diverse neighborhood and that family is part of that with a latino father and white blonde haired mother. The boy is mixed race.
I asked where they were moving and it was to the whitest suburb of our school district. I said, jokingly but not as I refer to it this way with pride, that “We’ll hold down the 'hood for you after you’re gone.” I’m proud of all the neighborhood kids I’ve helped out and coached and been a dad to through the years. This other old dad yells back “Oh, I know what you mean by that.” Yeah, dude, you have no idea… I told him I’d lived there twenty years and I still love the neighborhood. He shut up.
The thing is and I told my son this in the car, they’re trading a whole different set of potential problems in my neighborhood, where everyone is exactly who you think they are and we’re all cool with each other, for an entire different set of problems in that new neighborhood where they will likely be looked down upon and face racial problems they haven’t even thought of yet. Another family down the block did the same thing, Black dad. White mom. Awesome people. They’re being treated like garbage in the whitest suburb they moved to across town.
While I am one myself, I say this with zero irony. White people are the problem.
I love Father Martin.
Is this an indication that House Republicans are feeling like they need a win for this Fall? Why else would a faction of theirs be trying to get a DACA bill through right now?
This, basically. They don’t care about GDP or the economy or whatever, as long as the gap between rich and poor is so wide you can’t see from one side of it to the other.
Also, Trumpists will never be satisfied with any kind of amnesty because they want to turn the immigration clock back to 1918 not 2018.
Interesting little power struggle going on in the House right now.
First off, Farm bill. Somehow the GOP is in danger of not passing it, which would be hilarious, since it’s their bill. I expect an afternoon of caving tomorrow though.
But next up, and germane to this thread: DACA.
Outgoing speaker Paul Ryan wants a vote on a bipartisan bill. One has been in the works for a while. It will very likely pass if it makes it to the floor.
It also would likely pass the senate.
And Kevin McCarthy is doing everything he can to prevent a DACA bill from coming up for a vote. He knows that such a vote would be toxic to Republicans and likely greatly harm their chances of retaining control of the House in November by depressing turnout in all their most xenophobic spots on the map.
Keep an eye on this one. Ryan may end up having a John Boehner “Fuck it” moment to give the HFC a final kiss-off going away middle finger.
Yeah, this is a HFC vs. Vulnerable Republicans thing.
GOP Congresscritters in the hundred or so districts that are only GOP +5 or so are sweating, seeing what happened in Pennsylvania and Georgia. They need to show their constituents that they aren’t racist pricks by voting for a bill that (a) provides protection for Dreamers while (b) also upping security at the border.
However, the House Freedom Caucus folks aren’t worried about the Dems, they’re worried about being primaried by someone to their Right. So they need to show their constituents that they absolutely are racist pricks by never in a million years allowing those evil Dreamers a place in the white fatherland. They’re also (rightly) worried that passing the bill will lower the fervor of the racist wing of the party and they won’t turn out in November like they did in 2016.
The Democrats can’t really lose here. If the bill passes and Trump signs it, then the Dreamers are saved and though Trump gets more money for border security he doesn’t actually get his dumbass Wall, which they can run on in November. If the bill is blocked or else Trump vetoes it, then they’ll say that the GOP have proven themselves to be racist pricks, which they can run on in November.
The Dreamers sure can lose, though.
Dave, the concern needs to be about the real people here, not these whimsical Dreamers coasting through life on the backs of hardworking coal miners.
That version of the Farm Bill is just a stunt, anyway. It’s the thing with Ryan’s big expansion of work requirements for food stamps and they all know it will never pass the senate. The HFC voted against it as a way to show how tough they are on immigration, even though the Farm bill doesn’t have anything to do with that. But the HFC knows it is a stunt, too, obviously. At some point the moderates (or non-extremists, anyway) on both sides will get together and do what they do every 5 years - put together a bipartisan Farm bill that keeps food stamps and also welfare for farmers.
https://twitter.com/wrdcsc/status/997124390847381504
https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/997090219970187265
Priest dragging Twitter is my new favorite Twitter.
Congrats to the student finalists of the US National Geographic Bee: (Spoiler: none of then would be welcome at a Trump rally)
Winner - Venkat Ranjan of California
2nd - Anoushka Buddhikot of New Jersey
3rd - Vishal Sareddy of Georgia
Nihar Janga of Texas
Gayatri Kaimal of Arizona
Atreya Mallanna of Massachusetts
Sean Cheng of New Hampshire
Jonathan Song of North Carolina
Saket Pochiraju of Ohio
Ashwin Sivakumar of Oregon
I’m surprised to see any red states at all.
What is the capital of Lincoln, Nebraska?
I’m guessing L?
A Border Patrol agent shot and killed a woman who had crossed the border illegally near Laredo, Tex., on Wednesday after the officer came under attack, federal authorities said.
The officer was searching for “illegal activity” in a culvert on a residential street in Rio Bravo, a border town about seven miles south of Laredo, when a group of undocumented immigrants started to hit him with “blunt objects,” United States Customs and Border Protection said. The officer, whose name was not released, fired at least one shot with his handgun, fatally striking the woman in the head.
A woman who lives next door to the site of the shooting disputed the federal agency’s account of the events, saying that the property does not have a culvert and that she did not see any weapons that the group could have used.
“They were on the very corner on that lot where there was a tree,” the woman, Marta V. Martinez, said in an interview Thursday morning. “There was no weapon. They were hiding.”