Enjoy the historical moment. Then document the atrocities.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
watch the GOP explode.
All you have to do is PASS A BILL.
Put the Senate’s bill up for a vote and there’s no need for the President’s Executive Orders.
But that wouldn’t make any sense. They don’t want the policy in any format. That’s like the whole conflict.
Listen to Obama claiming the moral leadership of America. Defining the moral cause of America to be a liberal one. A growing, welcoming, accepting cause that pretty much by definition eliminates any conservative or nativist counterclaim.
If white supremacists were willing to expand the definition of “whiteness” (like with Irish and Italians and Jews, etc) to include these new communities of Asian and Latino immigrants, this wouldn’t be an existential crisis for the future of American representation and power. But it is.
I thought it was a good, sensible speech outlining good, sensible plans.
So I’m sure all the usual suspects will shriek their lungs out about how Obama is destroying America.
And they won’t all be Republicans…
A routine announcement of a policy change was blacked out by the three major broadcast networks because they deemed it “political”. No need to regulate bandwidth of anything anymore, is there.
Taking bets on how much GOP immigration rage is driven by employers who are paying sub-minimum wages and managing through intimidation.
Taking the worst law enforcement agency in the federal government and giving it more resources. Just to try to buy off the screaming meeemies. It won’t silence them and it won’t calm the border. But it will discourage people from trying and that will show up in the statistics. If only there was some major economic development infrastructure project in Central America – something, you know like the Panama Canal. Unfortunately there is; it is in Nicaragua, and China is building it. Divided government works, right?
The Exodus verse should have every Christian homophobe throwing an object at the TV. Why Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. Raping immigrants.
Spending money to make money is only worthwhile when you still believe in investment and infrastructure.
Costa Rica is looking more and more tempting as a locale outside of Empire. I’ve been looking at Costa Rica for years…just Wiki it to see how awesome it is for a Central American / Latin American country.
Empires peak, and then regress.
This empire is definitely regressing.
Check out OPOL’s dKos diaries on his attempt to live in Costa Rica. Difficult. Although more money would likely have made it more possible.
Oh, I’m not under the impression that it will be a cakewalk to emigrate.
That said, I can speak Spanish at a conversational level, and within 16 months I’ll have a degree and license (medical field) that puts me and any immediate family members on a fast-track to working visas and resident status. Not to mention the large US emigrant population and somewhat-prevalent English speaking
Moving to Costa Rica isn’t anything that I’m prepared to do within 5 years, but it is close to the US and is a progressive utopia compared to the US.
If and when I move to Costa Rica, it will be with a job and a sufficient amount of savings (that will go a long way there).
Also: being able to swim in the Pacific Ocean at dawn and have dinner on the beach of the Atlantic Ocean seems awesome.
Oh, and as others have pointed out:
No f-ing military since 1947.
Yes, please.
Once you stop allocating the bulk of your resources to killing others, your country sure can do the right thing concerning the relevant issues of the day/century/millennium.
OPOL is in Cauhita, have not seen for many years. But CR is a middle class country, not a counter culture haven. think Denmark. I read a few of OPOL’s diaries, seems to me went there w/o a job and no real plans for entrepreneurship or anything, but I must say I found them opaque.
I work with a guy who bought a place in Costa Rica quite a few years ago, and he goes down there regularly on vacation. As soon as he retires, he is pulling up every stake he has here and moving there to stay year round. He says it is fabulous.
Costa Rica has no army, since many decades; it’s very prosperous, totally environmental, no big gap between rich and poor, and the gov spends it’s resources on education rather than military. has a very high/ the highest? happiness index.
It’s a relatively-progressive tropical country that has no interest in killing people it doesn’t consider non-Costa Ricans.
The very opposite of Empire.
Interestingly, Costa Rica also has an illegal immigrant problem (from Nicaragua). They have fences and border patrols and they enforce on the employer end as well.
as one would expect with a prosperous middle class nation next to oligarch and thug- run wrecks [excuse the strong language, just have been reading about the demos in Mex re: 43 students yesterday]
Searching frantically, I finally found it on one of the BBC channels. At least those in the UK recognize it to be sufficiently significant for broadcast.
it was on the intertubes under us.gov
True but my old PowerBook runs video rather poorly.
understand, I get warning signs all the time that my browser is not supported, often no picture or no video.
Positive
Negative
More STEM graduate immigrants pleases only on constituency and that one isn’t US STEM graduates or their families.
Good point on employer enforcement. Not just on undocumented workers, but also on wage and hour laws, and likely on tax evasion as well.
The crack-down on employers began in the mid-eighties. Why would doing more of the same work better now than it has for the past twenty-five years? Overall, IMHO, it’s worked about as well as it ever will.
The fines need to hurt, that’s how you make it work better.
How about $5,000 per day per employee?
Is more government police and activities to more thoroughly crack down on not socially or economically debilitating crimes really such a good idea? It’s been an extremely costly disaster in the war on drugs. Same with the hunting down of commies that was allowed after the implosion of the USSR to morph into hunting down Muslim terrorists.
Wonder if a couple of Senate races would have been changed if he’d done this 6-12 months ago.
No published figures on 2014 Latino voter turnout.
One interesting factoid — Cory Gardner got fewer votes against Udall than the GOP loser got in 2008. I know — can’t compare mid-term Senate race turnout to Presidential election year Senate race turnout. However, 2008 voters had to show up to vote and 2014 was an all mail-in ballot election. So, why were fewer GOP voters energized in 2014 than in 2008?
If he’d done this 6 months ago Udall would certainly have been re-elected. Maybe Hagan. None of the other losses would have been saved directly, although Republican frothing about shutdowns and impeachment might have produced some indirect benefits.
Those were the two Senate seats I was thinking of. But without Latino voter turnout in 2014, it’s difficult to speculate on a different outcome. But if it could have changed CO and possibly NC, it could also have impacted the FL governor’s race.
Would be ironic if the request by Congressional Democrats that Obama to hold off on immigration until after the election costs them seats.
Good point on the governors’ races. Probably several would have changed. FL probably, IL definitely; I’m sure there are more.
Dang, cowardice is expensive!
Democratic politicians fare better when they simply play it straight and refrain from trying to be clever. Republican pols lose when they speak honestly, but do well when their masters construct their clever and diabolical talking points following well-tested advertising methods.
Oh yeah, and there’s certainly going to be some House seats, as you say.
Well, I didn’t watch it. There is just so much stupidity and ignorance surrounding this issue and what the President is actually doing here that I just couldn’t find it within me to subject myself to those post-speech discussions. No doubt, I will get my fill of this subject over the holidays during all the gatherings.
Just prior to the speech I did point out to someone on Facebook that if the media source they depend on to explain the content of the President’s speech tonight also told them that the President deliberately avoided the carrying of the speech by the three major networks, then there is virtually a 100% chance that almost everything they think they know about the subject of immigration is wrong. That didn’t go over very well.
Just keep telling them things that don’t “go over very well.” Someday a light above their heads may turn on.
Bamboozled and frivolous media… check.
Hostile and erratic opposition… check.
Indifferent and ambiguous leadership… check.
Must be time for one of Tailgunner Ted’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad adventures, emphasis added:
The media focussed on his specific threat to block every nomination the rest of his term but they may have missed the small print.
And who is leader of this majority anyhow? Seems Ted is de facto ideologue for the whole legislature now.
Politically Challenged: Texas Tech Edition
To be fair, I would likely have missed the Snooki question.
I was about to watch that but thought: “No, I can guess and I really don’t want to see that.” I’m feeling happy this morning about a personal matter and I’d rather not spoil the mood — it’ll happen soon enough anyway.
On one level it’s funny. What it may mean for TX and the nation, is that ignorance is winning. Or maybe what has changed over the decades isn’t that we’ve become more education but that those who once entered the mostly blue collar work force after high school are now going to college.