Politics

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shinatoo
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Re: Politics

Post by shinatoo »

No laws were broken by these kis or there parents. It's not illegal to seek asylum. They came to the front door and knocked.
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Re: Politics

Post by mykn »

phuqueue wrote:It's weird how, in a country whose foundational story lionizes dudes who decided that they weren't happy with the laws that applied to them, people nonetheless think "he broke the law" is sufficient cause for any amount of injustice inflicted in response.
It's easy when you have no empathy for people different than you!
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Re: Politics

Post by flyingember »

shinatoo wrote:No laws were broken by these kis or there parents. It's not illegal to seek asylum. They came to the front door and knocked.
Source-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/im ... e96ca85f95
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Re: Politics

Post by AllThingsKC »

shinatoo wrote:No laws were broken by these kis or there parents. It's not illegal to seek asylum. They came to the front door and knocked.
1. I do not believe it illegal to seek asylum. Neither is taking away these kids from their parents. If border patrol believe the adults are a threat to the kids (among other reasons), they have the legal right to separate the kids. Now I don't like these stories as much as anyone else. There is no winner in these stories. But any parent who is arrested anywhere (not just at the border) will always be separated from their children. Unless the parent was abusive, there's no winner in those stories either. It's a sad and unpleasant situation all the way around.

2. I l hear a lot of talk about this being Trump's policy. Perhaps this is where the left is misguided with this fake outrage. This was taking place under Obama, Bush, and probably Clinton, etc. Show me a post from anyone complaining about this very issue in this thread during the time Obama was president. I don't know for sure, but you probably won't find one. That's because the left's fake outrage on this subject is without merit. (Here's CNN talking about what was happening in 2014: http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti ... xQakCUG_CM) It's fine for people to be upset with Trump for not changing it, but it's absurd to think this is only happening because of Trump.

3. You know who else is seeking asylum that the left is silent about? Unborn children. No unborn child broke the law by being born. As you said, "they came to the front door and knocked." They were greeting with scissors being stabbed in their back of their neck. At least we treat those seeking asylum better than that. (And now that's I've mentioned unborn children, phuqueue will likely respond with a "wall of text" post debating this subject.)
mykn wrote:It's easy when you have no empathy for people different than you!
Speaking of having no empathy for people who are different than you, see point #3.
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Re: Politics

Post by mykn »

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
cityscape
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Re: Politics

Post by cityscape »

AllThingsKC wrote:
shinatoo wrote:No laws were broken by these kis or there parents. It's not illegal to seek asylum. They came to the front door and knocked.
1. I do not believe it illegal to seek asylum. Neither is taking away these kids from their parents. If border patrol believe the adults are a threat to the kids (among other reasons), they have the legal right to separate the kids. Now I don't like these stories as much as anyone else. There is no winner in these stories. But any parent who is arrested anywhere (not just at the border) will always be separated from their children. Unless the parent was abusive, there's no winner in those stories either. It's a sad and unpleasant situation all the way around.

2. I l hear a lot of talk about this being Trump's policy. Perhaps this is where the left is misguided with this fake outrage. This was taking place under Obama, Bush, and probably Clinton, etc. Show me a post from anyone complaining about this very issue in this thread during the time Obama was president. I don't know for sure, but you probably won't find one. That's because the left's fake outrage on this subject is without merit. (Here's CNN talking about what was happening in 2014: http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti ... xQakCUG_CM) It's fine for people to be upset with Trump for not changing it, but it's absurd to think this is only happening because of Trump.

3. You know who else is seeking asylum that the left is silent about? Unborn children. No unborn child broke the law by being born. As you said, "they came to the front door and knocked." They were greeting with scissors being stabbed in their back of their neck. At least we treat those seeking asylum better than that. (And now that's I've mentioned unborn children, phuqueue will likely respond with a "wall of text" post debating this subject.)
mykn wrote:It's easy when you have no empathy for people different than you!
Speaking of having no empathy for people who are different than you, see point #3.
It was horrible under other administrations, agreed. That's why immigration reform continues to be a topic every election year. The problem now is the scale and the zero tolerance policy that are 100% Trump's. Forcing families to separate when there are not enough resources in place to properly manage everything and thus leaving kids in glorified dog kennels.

Did you really lump Abortion in with Immigration? Two TOTALLY different topics that have no bearing on each other. I also love how conservative Pro-Lifers feel that because someone is Pro-Choice that they are pro-fetus killing. That is not at all what Pro-Choice represents. It is about allowing a mother to make the decision to keep or terminate a pregnancy on their own in the early stages when a fetus could not survive on its own. Personally, I could never make the decision to terminate, nor would I advocate for it. However, the choice for another mother is not my decision to make. I would hope that mothers would carry their pregnancies to term in all cases, but it is difficult to understand what every mother's situation might look like and therefore it should be up to them to make the difficult decision.

Going back to tearing families a part, this is a choice that the current administration has decided to do on their own at this scale. It can be stopped by a simple creation of a memo from Sessions. But he is too busy citing the Bible as reason for his department's work ('Cough' Separation between Church and State 'Cough').

Keep trying to defend the indefensible position this administration has taken on. You can twist this any way you like, but it will still remain awful. My personal view is that this type of policy is what will breed the next generation of terrorists (extreme, I know). For all the kids who now will grow up without their family because they were separated and 'lost', they will likely harbor deep hatred for this country and it doesn't take much to imagine where that will lead. But you know, MAGA!
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Re: Politics

Post by loftguy »

There is a list that keeps growing in my head, mostly involuntarily, but it exists.
It's made up of the people who are driven to expose their lack of reason and humanity.
I'm going to buy far fewer Christmas presents this year...
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Re: Politics

Post by phuqueue »

AllThingsKC wrote:
shinatoo wrote:No laws were broken by these kis or there parents. It's not illegal to seek asylum. They came to the front door and knocked.
1. I do not believe it illegal to seek asylum. Neither is taking away these kids from their parents. If border patrol believe the adults are a threat to the kids (among other reasons), they have the legal right to separate the kids. Now I don't like these stories as much as anyone else. There is no winner in these stories. But any parent who is arrested anywhere (not just at the border) will always be separated from their children. Unless the parent was abusive, there's no winner in those stories either. It's a sad and unpleasant situation all the way around.
You do understand that if you have no idea what you're talking about, you're not actually obliged to say anything at all, right?

Families aren't being separated because anyone believes "the adults are a threat to the kids." Families are being separated because Trump and Sessions have decided to prosecute all cases of "improper entry," and children are subject to different legal procedures and can't accompany adults through their criminal prosecution. That is the legal basis for the separation. The practical reason for it, in Trump's own words, is to gain leverage in negotiations for his other political priorities. Nobody believes these kids' parents pose a "threat" to them.

Of course, there are also reports that children have been taken from asylum-seekers who followed the appropriate procedure and committed no offense at all. Very threatening, all these parents fleeing violence with their children. I'm sure an eight year old is much safer when he's stolen from his mother, who is then deported without him.
2. I l hear a lot of talk about this being Trump's policy. Perhaps this is where the left is misguided with this fake outrage. This was taking place under Obama, Bush, and probably Clinton, etc. Show me a post from anyone complaining about this very issue in this thread during the time Obama was president. I don't know for sure, but you probably won't find one. That's because the left's fake outrage on this subject is without merit. (Here's CNN talking about what was happening in 2014: http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti ... xQakCUG_CM) It's fine for people to be upset with Trump for not changing it, but it's absurd to think this is only happening because of Trump.
Any immigration activist will tell you that Obama was terrible on immigrants. This is no secret. I don't know whether the topic was ever broached in this specific thread, but it was not swept under the rug back then and is not forgotten now. That being said, this particular policy was absolutely not in place under Obama, it was only announced recently. Under Obama, families that crossed the border illegally were typically kept together and ultimately deported. They might also have been given the opportunity to request asylum. I doubt that Obama never criminally prosecuted somebody who crossed the border with a child, and in those cases the child would have been separated from the adult, but this was not done routinely to thousands of children as a matter of policy, as Trump is doing now.

Even if you were right, the hypocrisy of those who sat idly by while Obama did something doesn't make that thing ok, or absolve Trump for doing it. Yes, more people than just those specifically plugged into immigration should have held Obama's feet to the fire on things he was bad about. That they didn't reflects on the morals of the people, not the morality of the act.

Of course, even Trump realizes that the optics on this are so bad that he's tried desperately to pin it on the Dems (and apparently you bought it!), which is maybe a hint that you shouldn't be defending the practice.
3. You know who else is seeking asylum that the left is silent about? Unborn children. No unborn child broke the law by being born. As you said, "they came to the front door and knocked." They were greeting with scissors being stabbed in their back of their neck. At least we treat those seeking asylum better than that. (And now that's I've mentioned unborn children, phuqueue will likely respond with a "wall of text" post debating this subject.)
This is a dumb red herring thrown out by someone with essentially no grasp of the actual issues that are central to the debate and as such, doesn't merit a "wall of text" (but I do find it interesting that your jab at me is that I give you too much to read, you poor thing).

It's funny that you tried to go there though, since last week the US Conference of Catholic Bishops made a similar connection. But in framing immigration as a right-to-life issue, they were trying to actually help immigrants, not own the libs.
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Re: Politics

Post by phuqueue »

https://www.propublica.org/article/chil ... ion-policy

I guess that's what you get for committing the grave offense of entering the country, huh
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Re: Politics

Post by AllThingsKC »

This has been going on at the border for decades. While it's sad and shocking, it's really not "news," is it? So why is it making news now?

Well...
Trump's approval rating is highest it's ever been (according to "The Hill").
The economy is the best in decades.
Black unemployment is at an all-time low.
We could possibly see the denuclearization of North Korea.
The IG report shows anti-Trump texts among FBI agents.
The stock market remains high.
Satisfaction with the direction of the country reaches 12-year high (according to Gallup).

There are several things going Trump's way and some of it has never happened before. So how will Democrats run against that in November? Well, the media will need to create a news story where there is no news story. The left would have been better off waiting to make this a news story in September or October. Now they'll have to manufacture some other "news story" in the weeks before the election to create that fake outrage.

If liberals really cared about families at the border, why didn't the media do its job and report this while Obama was president? Then, Obama could have dealt with it, cleaned it up and been the hero! End of story. The answer, of course, is the media/left had to wait until it was politically convenient for them. Liberals (at least those in power) don't care about the families at the border and they will do nothing to help them so that they can use it as a political issue in November. So it's not just fake outrage here, it's also fake compassion.

And just like every other effort by the left to stop Trump, this too, will fail. Not that Trump is unstoppable. But the left's efficiency at stopping Trump is at 0% right now. I don't see why that would change any time soon. It could change by November, but probably not in June. In the mean time, Trump is like a wrecking ball to political correctness.

If anyone's interested, here's myth vs. facts on the zero tolerance policy: http://www.dhs.gov/news/2018/06/18/myth ... nce-policy
cityscape wrote:My personal view is that this type of policy is what will breed the next generation of terrorists (extreme, I know). For all the kids who now will grow up without their family because they were separated and 'lost', they will likely harbor deep hatred for this country and it doesn't take much to imagine where that will lead. But you know, MAGA!
You don't think they're harbor a deep hatred for the country they're fleeing FROM?
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Re: Politics

Post by grovester »

Yes, they hid the cages full of kids for 8 years despite gop congressional oversight for 6 of them.

You are a lost soul.
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Re: Politics

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

"2. I l hear a lot of talk about this being Trump's policy. Perhaps this is where the left is misguided with this fake outrage. This was taking place under Obama, Bush, and probably Clinton, etc."

"This has been going on at the border for decades. While it's sad and shocking, it's really not "news," is it? So why is it making news now?"

Why is it making news? Very simple, what has changed is everyone at the border is being treated as a criminal, even those seeking asylum. Those seeking asylum are not criminals, not by US law and international law. Those seeking asylum are to be treated as refugees. And in the past not all who came to our borders seeking asylum were granted it. More than half of the requests were denied and the families returned to their home country.
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Re: Politics

Post by phuqueue »

AllThingsKC wrote:This has been going on at the border for decades. While it's sad and shocking, it's really not "news," is it? So why is it making news now?
It's making the news now because your first sentence is an outright lie, as I previously explained (and even sourced for you). Your CNN clip that you linked to in your previous post (I hadn't watched it earlier as I was at work, but I've watched it now, and it shows/discusses what I expected that it would) doesn't show that Obama separated children from their parents (although they try to imply that), it shows unaccompanied minors being kept in cages. And that was also reprehensible. Like I said in my last post, Obama was bad for immigrants too! That part really isn't news. The practice of separating children from their families (and mocking them when they cry for their parents!) is news -- because it is new. I realize that facts have been drastically devalued throughout much of this country but I feel fairly confident that at least on this message board most people still deal in them.
Well...
Trump's approval rating is highest it's ever been (according to "The Hill"). lol he's at a staggering 43.7 according to RCP, which, yeah, actually probably is at or near a career high for him (51.3% disapprove, but I don't suppose you're interested in that)
The economy is the best in decades. None of the fundamentals underlying the economy have changed in the past year and a half and a growing body of evidence is showing that people's perceptions of the economy are totally divorced from the reality of it (which is why so many Republicans were convinced that the economy was in the toilet under Obama, and why many Democrats probably feel more pessimistic about it now than is warranted).
Black unemployment is at an all-time low. All unemployment is at/near historic lows. As previously covered, this is not because of Trump, or really because of Obama either -- but if you're going to give the president credit for it anyway, any rational assessment would have to give most of the credit to Obama. The overall unemployment rate was around 8% and still rising when he took office, peaked at 10%, and was at 4.8% when he left. And once again, none of this really matters because the president isn't super responsible for what's happening in the economy -- especially if the economy is doing well (he might have more ability to derail it) -- but if you're going to play this game then you ought to play it honestly. It's like taking a relay race in which one guy ran eight miles, starting in sand, and one did a mile and a half with the wind at his back, and crediting the latter with the victory.
We could possibly see the denuclearization of North Korea. Hopefully true, but don't hold your breath. So far Trump has managed to give NK a bunch of concessions -- symbolic ones, such as the mere fact of meeting them as an equal nuclear power, which they've sought for years, and concrete ones, such as the promise to freeze military exercises, although it looks like we probably won't actually keep that promise. In return he got NK to make the same pledges they've been making for 20+ years. BTW, Trump technically agreed to the denuclearization of "the Korean peninsula," not "North Korea." He probably didn't even know the difference. Maybe you don't either.
The IG report shows anti-Trump texts among FBI agents. The IG report shows no evidence of bias affecting the investigation. Also, the FBI made a big show of chastising Hillary Clinton while "declining" to bring charges (a choice that wasn't even the FBI's to make in the first place), then made another big show days ahead of the election of "reopening the investigation" for a bunch of "new evidence" that was actually evidence they already had, and all the while kept a tight lid on their investigation into Russian interference to boost Trump, so it'd probably be best for Trump and his fans to just quietly ignore the FBI and hope people stop talking about it, because the idea that the FBI was conspiring against Trump is embarrassingly silly.
The stock market remains high. Great, I'm sure the top 1%, who own almost 40% of all stocks, or the top 10%, who own 84% of all stocks, are super pumped about that. Not sure very many other people actually care.
Satisfaction with the direction of the country reaches 12-year high (according to Gallup). Yeah they've got it at a whopping 38%
There are several things going Trump's way and some of it has never happened before. So how will Democrats run against that in November? Well, the media will need to create a news story where there is no news story. The left would have been better off waiting to make this a news story in September or October. Now they'll have to manufacture some other "news story" in the weeks before the election to create that fake outrage.
Do you kinda maybe see how "this isn't the best time for 'the left' to have broken this story" maybe kinda undermines your little conspiracy theory that it's all made up?
If liberals really cared about families at the border, why didn't the media do its job and report this while Obama was president? Then, Obama could have dealt with it, cleaned it up and been the hero! End of story. The answer, of course, is the media/left had to wait until it was politically convenient for them. Liberals (at least those in power) don't care about the families at the border and they will do nothing to help them so that they can use it as a political issue in November. So it's not just fake outrage here, it's also fake compassion.
Once again, this didn't happen while Obama was president. But he was still plenty bad for immigrants, and it was reported at the time:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01790.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/us/p ... tions.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/us/o ... risis.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/us/l ... ation.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... 39df022e6d
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/us/p ... ecure.html

It took about thirty seconds on google to pull up those articles, I'm sure there are plenty more if you're interested.
And just like every other effort by the left to stop Trump, this too, will fail. Not that Trump is unstoppable. But the left's efficiency at stopping Trump is at 0% right now. I don't see why that would change any time soon. It could change by November, but probably not in June. In the mean time, Trump is like a wrecking ball to political correctness.
What does "political correctness" even mean at this point, except "whatever hurts the feelings of white supremacists"
If anyone's interested, here's myth vs. facts on the zero tolerance policy: http://www.dhs.gov/news/2018/06/18/myth ... nce-policy
Your critical reading skills must not be super sharp if you're looking at that and not seeing that it says, essentially, the same things that have already been said in this thread. We all know that DHS doesn't have "a policy to separate families at the border," DHS in fact has a policy of criminally prosecuting people who cross the border illegally, a policy that didn't exist a couple months ago, and this policy has the effect of separating families (and this effect is intentional on the part of the administration, by their own words). We know that, in the past, some families have probably been separated at the border for the same reason, but the difference now is that it is the official policy of DHS to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the border, thus necessitating family separation in all of those cases. We know that, for the most part, DHS is not attempting to prosecute people who have entered the country legally (although there are scattered reports of asylum-seekers being caught up in this, including having their children taken from them). There are also reports of border agents physically preventing people from crossing the border in order to declare asylum, which, I guess, means that "DHS is turning away asylum seekers at ports of entry" is also, technically, not true. And so it turns out that if you cherry pick the "myths" to "debunk," and you do it in just the right way, everything is actually fine!
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Re: Politics

Post by AllThingsKC »

grovester wrote:Yes, they hid the cages full of kids for 8 years despite gop congressional oversight for 6 of them.
As phuqueue has already pointed out, there's no shortage of news stories about the way the Obama administration handled kids...

03/11/2015, Washington Post: Mexican kids held for months as punishment for border-crossing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the ... 8085bea004)

01/28/2016, Washington Post: Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... 7b21fa28a4)

01/28/2016: New York Times: U. S. placed immigrant children with traffickers, report says (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us/po ... -says.html)

Of course, there was no outrage or compassion from the left then. This is exactly why I don't buy the left's sudden outrage and compassion for children at the border. They could have done something about this years ago. They did not. Probably because they don't actually care about those children. Could Trump do something about it now? Absolutely! But since I don't think Democrats care, do you think I expect Trump to care? No. Not that it makes it right, but it shouldn't be surprising that this kind of treatment at the border is nothing new.

I would love to discuss with you all solutions to the problem at the border. But, Democrats in power seem to care more about stopping Trump than they do about children at the border. The result? Trump isn't being stopped and children at the border aren't being helped.
phuqueue wrote: Do you kinda maybe see how "this isn't the best time for 'the left' to have broken this story" maybe kinda undermines your little conspiracy theory that it's all made up?
No. Do you think I question the left's ability to create another non-news story closer to the election? This is not the last non-news story we'll see between now and November. At some point, maybe it will hurt Trump. But the left has been unable to stop him so far. I don't see how this will stop Trump in the long term.

You posted some other things that I don't agree with (like with North Korea), but I spare you my responses for now, due to time.

On a side note, phuqueue, I really do look forward and appreciate your responses. You take time to post them, they are generally well though out, they are usually logical even if I disagree with them. It may not come across on this message board, but I try.... try... to be as unbaised as I can be. I use your responses to try to balance my right-leaning views. It doesn't always work, but I still appreciate the effort.
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Re: Politics

Post by grovester »

AllThingsKC wrote:
grovester wrote:Yes, they hid the cages full of kids for 8 years despite gop congressional oversight for 6 of them.
As phuqueue has already pointed out, there's no shortage of news stories about the way the Obama administration handled kids...

03/11/2015, Washington Post: Mexican kids held for months as punishment for border-crossing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the ... 8085bea004)

01/28/2016, Washington Post: Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... 7b21fa28a4)

01/28/2016: New York Times: U. S. placed immigrant children with traffickers, report says (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us/po ... -says.html)

Of course, there was no outrage or compassion from the left then. This is exactly why I don't buy the left's sudden outrage and compassion for children at the border. They could have done something about this years ago. They did not. Probably because they don't actually care about those children. Could Trump do something about it now? Absolutely! But since I don't think Democrats care, do you think I expect Trump to care? No. Not that it makes it right, but it shouldn't be surprising that this kind of treatment at the border is nothing new.

I would love to discuss with you all solutions to the problem at the border. But, Democrats in power seem to care more about stopping Trump than they do about children at the border. The result? Trump isn't being stopped and children at the border aren't being helped.
phuqueue wrote: Do you kinda maybe see how "this isn't the best time for 'the left' to have broken this story" maybe kinda undermines your little conspiracy theory that it's all made up?
No. Do you think I question the left's ability to create another non-news story closer to the election? This is not the last non-news story we'll see between now and November. At some point, maybe it will hurt Trump. But the left has been unable to stop him so far. I don't see how this will stop Trump in the long term.

You posted some other things that I don't agree with (like with North Korea), but I spare you my responses for now, due to time.

On a side note, phuqueue, I really do look forward and appreciate your responses. You take time to post them, they are generally well though out, they are usually logical even if I disagree with them. It may not come across on this message board, but I try.... try... to be as unbaised as I can be. I use your responses to try to balance my right-leaning views. It doesn't always work, but I still appreciate the effort.
Those articles have nothing to do with what we're talking about, they are referring to unaccompanied minors, not families.
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Re: Politics

Post by earthling »

US GDP growth trend not really better last two years...
Image

Unemployment rate improvement is good but rate of improvement is about same as 2011-2016.
https://www.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputSer ... NS14000000

Hourly earnings rate is improving but at same rate of improvement as 2011-2016...
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500 ... raphs=true

Will be another year or two before we see impact of Trump's trade war. Dismantling NAFTA will hurt central red states most. Meanwhile he's empowering a country of hate and isolation. His life history has been exploiting others for personal gain. Successful societies collaborate, not isolate or throw punches. If Trump doesn't like trade terms, the solution is to improve them, not destroy global relations while buddying up with other dictators/autocrats.

And he has the highest turnover rate of direct reports, WH staff and highest level of positions maybe since the age of early dictators. If you owned a large company and hired a CEO that can't manage to maintain a stable upper mgmt who struggle to work with him (and he mostly picked himself), would you keep him? No sane owner/board would.
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Re: Politics

Post by phuqueue »

AllThingsKC wrote:
grovester wrote:Yes, they hid the cages full of kids for 8 years despite gop congressional oversight for 6 of them.
As phuqueue has already pointed out, there's no shortage of news stories about the way the Obama administration handled kids...

03/11/2015, Washington Post: Mexican kids held for months as punishment for border-crossing (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the ... 8085bea004)

01/28/2016, Washington Post: Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... 7b21fa28a4)

01/28/2016: New York Times: U. S. placed immigrant children with traffickers, report says (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us/po ... -says.html)

Of course, there was no outrage or compassion from the left then. This is exactly why I don't buy the left's sudden outrage and compassion for children at the border. They could have done something about this years ago. They did not. Probably because they don't actually care about those children. Could Trump do something about it now? Absolutely! But since I don't think Democrats care, do you think I expect Trump to care? No. Not that it makes it right, but it shouldn't be surprising that this kind of treatment at the border is nothing new.
This is, once again, false. Plenty of people opposed Obama's immigration policies, especially in his first term, when he stepped up deportations to levels exceeding what the Bush admin did. Should there have been more grassroots outrage? Yes! But there wasn't none. And it seems baseless to me to attribute to bad faith what can much more realistically be attributed to ignorance. When your guy is in charge, there's an expectation that he will reflect your values, so fewer people are whipping out their phones to check every push alert from the Washington Post. People should have been more aware of what was going on, and they should have been more active against it, but they weren't, for actual reasons that are fairly obvious. "Fake outrage" is more of a right wing tactic anyway.

Despite all that, it's actually also false that nobody did anything. For example, after children were placed with traffickers (which was, incidentally, a mistake, not official policy), reforms were adopted to prevent that from happening again. Touching on a different part of the immigration debate, DACA was also done as an EO instead of as legislation (which left Trump with the ability to repeal it on his own, and he did) because the Republicans who controlled Congress refused to pass the Dream Act. Why didn't they do anything about family separation? Because it wasn't happening.

In any case, your approach here is childish. Children (much like the ones being held in cages at this very moment!) conceptualize acceptable behavior in terms of what (they think) other people have gotten away with. Adults are supposed to think about it a little harder. If it's wrong to steal children from their parents, then it's wrong. Trump should care, and you should care that he doesn't, and it shouldn't matter if Obama did the same thing (but he didn't) or if "liberals" uniformly sanctioned it at the time (but they didn't). The important thing is the behavior itself. Everything else, the lies, the whataboutism, the whataboutism that is dependent on the lies, is just misdirection and obfuscation.
I would love to discuss with you all solutions to the problem at the border. But, Democrats in power seem to care more about stopping Trump than they do about children at the border. The result? Trump isn't being stopped and children at the border aren't being helped.
Quick little correction here: there are no Democrats in power. The federal government is entirely in the hands of the GOP (and so are half the states). All Senate Dems have signed onto a proposal that would end family separation, but even so-called "moderate" Republicans like Susan Collins are balking, so it will go nowhere.
phuqueue wrote: Do you kinda maybe see how "this isn't the best time for 'the left' to have broken this story" maybe kinda undermines your little conspiracy theory that it's all made up?
No. Do you think I question the left's ability to create another non-news story closer to the election? This is not the last non-news story we'll see between now and November. At some point, maybe it will hurt Trump. But the left has been unable to stop him so far. I don't see how this will stop Trump in the long term.
It's not about "stopping Trump," it's about saving children. And it goes beyond just what happens to families at the border. Harsh and context-free immigration enforcement also empowers people to prey on immigrants and do things like this. It's not clear to me why any of this -- the dead teenager from Iowa, the four-year-old rape victim in Texas, the long-term harm to children stolen from their parents, parents who are deported without their kids and have no clear way to get them back, and on and on -- is worth it to protect our precious border from the grave threat of families fleeing violence.
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Re: Politics

Post by mykn »

and now we just spent several posts talking about how the ball was dropped while Obama was president and not talking about children being removed from their parents and placed into cages. Way to derail AllThingsKC, you succeeded.
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Re: Politics

Post by cityscape »

mykn wrote:and now we just spent several posts talking about how the ball was dropped while Obama was president and not talking about children being removed from their parents and placed into cages. Way to derail AllThingsKC, you succeeded.
I disagree. This is fundamentally what is wrong in this country. We have two sides who see things very differently in terms of how to fix the problems in this country. If we don't talk through it, even as silly as some of the arguments may seem, we'll continue to further divide. I actually watch Fox News regularly because I try to understand their position on topics where it seems so obvious on other networks, CNN, ABC, etc.... I'm the first to admit that the far right conservatives have done a good job at brain-washing the right and Fox News is their tool, however, most of the viewers are not as cynical as Fox News believes they are. So in a sense, I don't agree with AllThingsKC, but I do appreciate his take so that we can all hope to better understand each other.
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Re: Politics

Post by AllThingsKC »

Ok, there's a lot to respond to and I only have a short of amount of time to post, so here's my best attempt with time constraints:

I don't think that if the same thing happened while Obama was president, then it was Obama merely "dropping the ball." It should have been an outrage then too. Nobody is saying right now, "well, Trump just dropped the ball." People are saying, "FIX THIS NOW!"

Also, I agree with phuqueue that it doesn't really matter if children were placed in caged or mistreated during the Obama years. We have children in cages RIGHT NOW and need solutions RIGHT NOW. "But Obama did it too..." is not a solution. Two wrongs don't make a right. I'm with you there. I also think Trump should care more. Maybe he does, but that's not the impression I get from reading his tweets.

We'll have to agree to disagree about the reason why this is making news NOW. I still think it's ploy from the left. I don't really believe the left (or the right for that matter) care at all about those children.

There was something else I going to respond to, but I forget. I may respond later if I remember.
cityscape wrote: So in a sense, I don't agree with AllThingsKC, but I do appreciate his take so that we can all hope to better understand each other.
Exactly. I'm probably the only conservative on this board. But I LOVE this board and use it to counter my own ideologies because I know this board is at least 95% liberal. For all I know, I'm the only conservative in Downtown Kansas City. My conservative friends don't really understand the concept of being "pro-urbanism," so this board covers that base for me as well.
KC is the way to be!
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