Democrats weren't actually interested in border security because it's usually couched in racist terms
I think Democrats were interested in border security because they're vulnerable to media alarmism and are willing to throw migrants under the bus for it; it may have been seen as a negotiating piece for foreign military aid, but they definitely have no better vision or particular principles at stake, at least not the median congressional Democrat. Obama also let cruelty be the point at the border in the misguided idea that it would mollify Republicans. (And, to be fair, that DHS cops didn't see themselves as bound by his orders.)
I think the simplest explanation is that Democrats weren't worried about border issues because there a serious issue, but the facts on the ground have changed relatively recently and so the Biden administration is interested in improving the practical situation in some way. Here's the graph of border apprehensions over the past 20 years, the last year or two is genuinely different.
https://www.statista.com/chart/20326/mexicans-non-mexcians-apprehended-at-southern-us-border/
Sorry, "wasn't a serious issue."
Dems suck on this. Immigrants have far lower crime rates than native born Americans and add a lot to the economy and culture. FFS we're a nation of immigrants!
Why concede this to the fascist reactionaries?
I don't see those as in tension. Immigrants -- documented or not -- are a net benefit. Lots of people enduring dangerous conditions in order to seek asylum is not good, and the asylum system is broken.
When border apprehensions are at an all time high, I wonder what that really means. Does it mean that more people are crossing the border, or does it mean that more people crossing the border are turning themselves into authorities? Because I understand that "turn yourself in and seek asylum" is a current best practice for trying to get into the country, where as "stay the fuck away from the Border Patrol" was the previous method.
More people are coming in because the economy is way up. Not a "serious issue". It's good they're coming, actually.
(Not that they're not fleeing violence either. But a better economy makes us a more attractive haven.)
Neil Diamond allowed for a variety of motivations.
7: Right the point is that the number of people turning themselves in for asylum is very high and that this is a relatively new phenomenon. Regardless of what you think of the merits of their asylum claims (in particular, note that the "first safe country" rule is a part of asylum law) you need more resources if you're receiving more asylum claims, someone has to process and adjudicate the claims and the people need to live somewhere.
In NH we had a big debate about putting $1.4 million in the budget for the Northen Border Alliance Task Force Basically, state police overtime to help the feds patrol the northern border area - not that the feds had requested it.
But you know, hordes of people were coming over our remote section of the border with Canada, and Sununu said that something had to be done. Nobody was really sure of the size of the hoards, but it was a big problem, definitely.
The ACLU eventually got a count on how many border apprehensions we are talking about for this state. In the 15 months ending December 31, 2023, the number of migrants encountered by border control agents was 21.
The northern border is a problem because on the morning I drove out of Canada, I left my phone off so I worldly wouldn't have to pay the $5 (real dollars) for international service that day. I was 20 miles into Vermont when I turned on my phone. It said I was in Canada and I was charged $5.
Also, the border guard was an asshole. It was a bit jarring after dealing with Canadian people for the week prior.
My understanding is that a lot of this is driven by Venezuela and Cuba, where just crazy numbers of people are getting out of the country. 5% of the population of Cuba have emigrated to the US in the past two years.
Is that not a problem of the Republicans making? All the opportunities for getting into America were shut down, so asylum is the only legal pathway. So that's what people are doing.
I don't think the remedy is "expand the asylum bureaucracy while cracking down on asylum seekers" but rather "ensure that other legal pathways to entry exist so that asylum doesn't get overwhelmed."
16: Can we kick out the Cubans? I've heard how they vote in Florida.
Weird how we have economic sanctions and embargoes on Venezuela and Cuba and then their people end up coming here for economic reasons.
I really don't think it's driven by US-internal factors at all, it's driven by factors in Cuba and Venezuela. Of course the US sanctions policy plays a role, but I don't think any of this change is being driven by any changes in US immigration policy. There's 6 million recent Venezuelan refugees, and nearly 2 million of them living in Colombia alone.
19 is Mexico's position, they want to the US to drop the embargoes in exchange for asylum applicants staying in Mexico while the claim is being adjudicated.
Venezuela's problems stem from letting a guy who launched a failed coup run in a presidential election.
That's a very reasonable position on Mexico's part.
Would asylum seekers adjudicating in Mexico really reduce the amount of immigrants that much, or would border crossers go back to the old "stay the fuck away from the Border Patrol" standby?
24.last: I think the answer depends a lot on how appealing Mexico is to them as a final destination, in particular economic and safety trends within Mexico. Mexico is much richer than it used to be, which is a big factor in why there's so much less immigration to the US from Mexico than there was in the 90s.
Yeah, although Mexico would be safer if they had better control over their border. All those guns coming in from the United States is really destabilizing.
Democrats need to do more to secure the border from illegal gun exports.
Then how are they supposed to turn off the TV?
Or, surely that was in the border deal they just tried to negotiate with the Republicans, yes?
In Elvis's defense with the whole gun/TV thing, those were the days before remote controls.
Maybe they should try a sting where they release and track guns in order to find out how they're crossing the border. You could name it after some cool action film, Operation John Wick maybe?
I think that shutting down gun all stores within a zone of 100 miles from the border would be a reasonable compromise.
"note that the "first safe country" rule is a part of asylum law"
Not true. Popular myth with fascists, but no more than that.
30: In Elvis's defense, he got as high as fuck, then visited Nixon in the White House.
Dems suck on this. Immigrants have far lower crime rates than native born Americans and add a lot to the economy and culture. FFS we're a nation of immigrants!
This article suggests that, even if you think everything will sort itself out eventually, there are short term problems that need to be solved: https://www.vox.com/24063986/cities-migrant-crisis-border-overwhelmed-shelters
17: there's another group here with agency, which is the immigrants themselves. Once the innovation of "going to the first cop/government agency/whatever and claiming asylum, rather than hiking dangerously across the desert" has been adopted it's likely to stay that way because it is, in fact, better than taking those risks. It's been the standard-of-care way to get into Europe since the early 90s.
Processing applications in Mexico would probably help with having an orderly border, although no doubt there'll be some people keen enough they won't want to wait. If the numbers of people hanging about waiting get high enough it's likely that Mexicans will start complaining (whether because they're getting free cars etc etc or because they're taking their jerbs, depending on whether Mexico lets them work)
||
Popular former Gov. Larry Hogan(R) running for open Senate seat in MD. That's bad.
|>
On my only trip to Annapolis, I saw the current First Lady of Maryland.
Salvadorans fleeing violence and poverty have migrated to the U.S. for decades, hitting record levels in 2021. Following the gang crackdown that began in March 2022, the number of Salvadorans reaching the U.S. southern border fell, dipping 36% from 2022 to 2023, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Goddamnit I had a huge comment here, then lost it due to stupidity about Safari tab groups.
TL;DRetype: connecting to what Alex says in 36, I worry that we're going to see the US migration situation looking more like the European one in one key, dangerous respect: a consensus that the state has "lost control". And that narrative is absolutely poisonous for healthy politics. In Europe the kernel of truth to it is that most rejected asylum applicants are not deportable. Historically this hasn't been true in the USA, but if the asylum system is now totally overwhelmed, it's kind of irrelevant from the perspective of the potential immigrant whether they'll probably be deported when their case finally gets resolved in 8 years -- anything could happen in 8 years, and what really matters is those years of not being deported.
Here's an interview worth reading with Gerald Knaus, considered the inventor of the EU-Turkey deal from 2016. I was critical of it at the time; now I think he's basically right.
It seems to me that the basic strategy of the left regarding migration, in both Europe & the USA, over my adult life has kind of followed Hirschman's futility/perversity/jeopardy rhetoric of reaction: controlling migration is impossible, so don't try; attempts to control might even backfire (e.g. stopping circular migration encouraging permanent migration); any attempt to control it whatsoever endangers human rights & the rule of law (and besides immigration is good!). And there's some truth to some of this, particularly the third part. But the futility thesis is just false -- Australia really did stop the boats! -- and it feels like we're seeing that if center-left parties say "immigration is good, and besides it's impossible to control", center-right parties say "we would control it, if it weren't for these pesky human rights and laws and stuff", and the far-right says "we'll get rid of all that stuff, and then we'll get refugee numbers to 0" -- eventually a lot of voters will go with the ones offering a solution to what all the parties admit is a problem.
41: yes. The other interesting thing here is that public opinion has shifted so that, after a couple of decades of politicians insisting on "asylum and immigration" being treated as one and the same, the two have decoupled and immigration as such is no longer anywhere near as unpopular as it used to be, while people still get het up about e.g. asylum-seekers clambering under trains or rowing across the Channel. For years the big concern, or at least the big concern announced politically, was that "bad" immigrants would sneak in among the "real" refugees; the situation has now flipped, which feels practically hallucinatory.
Also the demographics haven't changed but unemployment has come down, so you get the weird sight of governments that were elected pretty much as single issue anti-immigration protests dramatically increasing visa issuance.
Even after Sunak's freakout U-turn a couple of months ago he's still planning on ~300k net arrivals/year, a historically high level and much higher than pre-Brexit even before you count in the flow from people still getting EU settled status, which has evolved into a shadow visa program. Meanwhile Meloni's government in Italy has decided to up the visas by half a million, and at those levels of numbers you've basically got a policy of recruiting immigrants whatever you say you're doing. So the equilibrium seems to end up being a mix of performative cruelty towards relatively small numbers of actual refugees and actively encouraging immigration - a horizontal split between means of arrival rather than a vertical one between countries of origin. I suspect this is likely to go global; the first country to arrive at this policy mix was Australia, for whom attracting immigrants is an avowed goal of policy, and the UK copied part of their approach (the famous points-based system).
I am planning a blog post with the working title "They That Flock Into Omelas Despite The Tiresome Bureaucratic Process And Substantial Fee".
If I had to propose a policy option I would go for expanding visas while doing processing before the border, which could perhaps be presented as a security intervention even if it is in fact facilitation. Something like 90% of asylum applications are eventually granted, so in the limit it's not much difference.
(And, if people are drowning at sea, perishing in the desert, or getting cut up by trains, that *is* a problem, it's not some sort of myth)
||
The American empire was not built primarily to acquire territory (like the empire of Alexander the Great), or financial tribute (like that of Athens), or resources and trade goods (like that of the British). It was more like the Venetian empire, which was meant to secure safe harbors and emporia for its trading fleet. America, after the acquisition of the Bomb, needed secure places for planes and ships carrying nuclear weapons, and secure regimes providing storage facilities and launching pads for our missiles.|>
That seems rather circular reasoning. The safe place for your ships is *at sea*. And the US did not need overseas nuclear bases for its strategic deterrent for very long. They were on B-52s or boomers, or in silos. The overseas nukes were tactical, for use in defending Europe. So the American empire consisted on safe places to put the nukes it needed to defend the safe places it needed to put the nukes it needed to defend the safe places it needed ...
I guess those deep soils are good for digging missile silos, huh? You could never dig one of those in New England without hitting rock.
The bombers are outside Omaha. The silos are also outside Omaha, but not just outside Omaha.
Apparently, we're getting all new missiles -- and new silos too. A huge multi-year project. The Sentinel.
I don't pay that much attention to what goes on over in Great Falls, so the scope of this was surprising: https://www.gbsdeis.com/project-overview/deployment-locations/malmstrom-afb-mt
I think it was more about putting them well away from the coasts, where you might get an unexpected little bundle of love from a Soviet missile boat just offshore.
Yes. Weirdly enough, the base lead to more communications infrastructure which lead to lots of call centers and a boosted local economy. Parts of Omaha are still standing today.
Cheap land, sparse population -- Minot ND and Great Falls MT are perfect for this sort of thing.
It seems wasteful to just throw away the old missiles without launching them.
Some of the ones that were axed under arms control got re-used to orbit satellites.
(Also in 46 did someone just say the British empire wasn't interested in naval bases? What?)
They just stack the satellite on top of the nuke and set it off.
With a bit of technology borrowed from the Coca-Cola Corporation, that would work!
(Standpipe's blog will explain about Orion.)
OT: Is there a hidden downside to building my own packraft from a kit? I can't think of one and I need a hobby.
Finally, someone made a sequel to Twister.
The Chiefs should not do that again.
That Kennedy ad was literally the worst superbowl ad I've ever seen.
How does he have money for this? Putin?
65: He's being funded by, among other people, Trump donor and Build the Wall enthusiast Timothy Mellon (of Yinzer Mellon fame), who gave him IIRC $10 million.
I haven't been watching closely, but I'm guessing the RFK ad was the one with LL Cool J?
I can't recall any political ads on the Super Bowl before. But I haven't watched the last dozen or so.
Paid for by American Values superPAC, funded by Tim Mellon, who gave $107 million to Republicans in the last two cycles. Standard 3rd party ratfucking ad.
That's a lot of money for two for the worst cycles the Republicans have had.
Generational wealth supporting generational wealth.
His Wikipedia page has a quote of his that's one of the most disgusting anti-welfare arguments I've seen. No self-reflection. Completely useless nepobaby failson.
The Pentagon knows how to run a football game.
Do Americans actually eat bacon with their hands?
There is another way?
I mean, apart from inside a BLT or bacon double cheeseburger or similar.
Pork is eaten with hands, beef with utensils, chicken depends on the preparation.
Also, 48-50: Inside of Omaha it's too dark.
Wait, seriously? If you're eating bacon and eggs, you pick up the pieces of bacon in your hands and put them in your mouth?
What (I scarcely dare ask) do you do with the eggs?
If we had some eggs we could have ham and eggs, if we had some ham.
I'd say it depends on how it's cooked. If it's soft, knife and fork. If it's so crispy that you can pick up a 15 cm piece by the very end, and hold it horizntally with material sag, them hands are fine.
Maybe British bacon is more flaccid or something?
Well, that does explain why you all seem to get food poisoning so often.
British people don't have proper bacon like we have here in the United States. What they call bacon is actually ham, and it makes a lot more sense to eat it with a knife and fork than it does with our crispier, more delicious bacon.
Or "back bacon", as they call it in the Great White North.
If it's so crispy that you can pick up a 15 cm piece by the very end, and hold it horizntally with material sag then it's charcoal.
It's more like partially rendered fat in a matrix.
British people don't have proper bacon like we have here in the United States. What they call bacon is actually ham
In the UK you can buy, and indeed I have in my fridge right now, both back bacon, aka "Canadian bacon", which is a back cut that includes the loin, and side bacon, aka "streaky bacon" or if you're an American "bacon", which is cut from the belly.
Both are useful. Streaky bacon is better as an ingredient, because it's fattier and that means you can cook the other ingredients in the fat and they'll take up the flavour, rather than having to add extra fat in the form of oil. (Lardons or pancetta are basically little cubes of streaky bacon, designed for exactly this purpose; good for use in pasta sauces, risotto, Ogged's Traditional Chilli etc). Streaky is also the better cut to use for things where you're wrapping another ingredient in the bacon and then cooking it.
But if you cook it by itself, it tends to dry out and become extremely hard and brittle, which makes it difficult to cut and eat - it flies into fragments when you cut it, and crumbles into small dry sharp pieces when you eat it. Back bacon is preferable for breakfast, etc, for this reason. Because it's got more moisture, the mouthfeel and flavour are better.
Ham, of course, is neither of these. It's a cut from the leg of a pig, as the name suggests (normally smoked or cured in some way).
I suppose that if you kept on cooking scrambled eggs they would eventually harden into a tough, rubbery mass, and then you could pick that up in your hands to eat it too.
But if you cook it by itself, it tends to dry out and become extremely hard and brittle, which makes it difficult to cut and eat - it flies into fragments when you cut it, and crumbles into small dry sharp pieces when you eat it.
Yeah, that's why you don't cut it, you pick it up with your fingers and eat it.
When perfectly cooked, its a delightful mix of tasty crunch and soft chewy goodness.
93: McDonald's tried that I think. The test marketing didn't go well, so they added some bread and called it an Egg McMuffin.
To render this in terms that a vegetarian like myself can understand, it's like trying to eat a potato chip with a knife and fork. I guess in the British Isles they call them crisps.
Also available, in my experience, though it's one of those experiences one wants to forget, as "scrambled eggs" in US army MREs. (We were often dumbfounded at the lengths their CoC would go to in order to supply hot cookhouse food to the troops in the field. But if the alternative was MRE scrambled eggs...)
97: what peep is saying is that it's like trying to eat a potato chip with a couple of crisps.
Ajay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiTXriHRLXg&t=9s
97: There are some pretty good faux bacons now. Not perfect--as Spike said in 95, perfectly cooked bacon is the best--but close.
Which reminds me, I was recently served a beef burger by accident in a pub; I could immediately tell it was real meat since it was dry and overcooked in a way that would be hard to do with current fake meats. We might have gotten to a place where it's harder to screw up the fake stuff, so it has a better worst plausible state.
Kind of like when you burn the bacon to shit and it scrapes right off your non-stick pan.
We bake the bacon on a baking sheet lined with foil.
It might be added that cooking bacon the perfect amount is no easy task, and may well be beyond the grasp of standard British culinary abilities. Back bacon is far more forgiving.
Spike, half an hour ago you didn't know the difference between bacon and ham. I had to explain it to you.
104: A friend taught me to do this, but putting the bacon on those elevated cookie racks.
You're supposed to use a rack, but I'm too lazy to clean one.
Anyway, it turns out back bacon isn't ham or bacon. It's pork loin.
And pork loin is pretty easy to cook.
I'm shocked that people have different tastes in foods yet speak about them in absolutes.
The obvious answer to eating crispy bacon that crumbles if you try to cut it while avoiding direct contact with your hands is to use chopsticks.
Tangential but might be useful; smoked diced sweet onion is very delicious and useful for vegans or non-pork-eaters instead of Baco-Bits. And you can make it when sweet onions are in season, it keeps.
Don't have a local supplier, don't want to take up smoking, keep trying to persuade meatheads to try it. But they aren't into vegetarian versions.
Once you take up smoking it's hard to quit.
102.1: Yes, I've been eating Morningstar Farms veggie bacon strips for over 20 years, always in the context of a BLT during the summer when the tomatoes are good. This is a favorite summer meal in my household.
But I can't judge how it compares to bacon from a pig. I'm sure I had it at least a few times before I became vegetarian, but I have no memory of it.
It may taste like pumpkin pie but I'd never know cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker.
How many cats does it take to threaten a human? There were three of them on the sidewalk and they didn't get out of my way. I was afraid they had rabies or something.
I just started eating a novel Morningstar breakfast product that's three different vegan animal-product-substitutes all mixed together into a blob. It's human pellets and I love it.
||
He abstained from cigarettes and alcohol, and only on occasion drank watered-down coffee. His one display of anger and frustration amounted to throwing a pencil at his desk.|>
I still haven't tried the new meat substitute products and probably won't. I'm not even a fan of tofu.
I would make a horrible vegan, because nearly everything I eat that is meatless is full of butter or cheese or eggs.
It's not even a vegan breakfast in the end, because I eat it with sriracha mayo.