My fellow Americans – According to White House press secretary Jen Psaki (whom I would nail so hard that whoever could pull me out would be named King of England), the COVID-19 pandemic is to blame for President Biden’s poor approval rating, which has fallen to a new low in recent polling. Point taken, but of course Biden and the Democrats campaigned on the pandemic being the fault of Trump and the Republicans, who failed to “follow the science.” And yet after nine months of glorious science-based leadership in Washington, here we are, no better off than before as far as I can see. Psaki also failed to mention the botch-up in Afghanistan, an unprecedented border crisis (including migrants coming in already infected with COVID), inflation, consecutive dismal job reports, and ongoing debt default brinksmanship. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Immigration
See You in Hell, Violent Idiots
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals! I was reading about the shootings that occurred in Atlanta last Tuesday. The author says, “Eight people were murdered. Six of them were Asian-American women. It seems impossible to feel this as anything other than anti-Asian and misogynistic violence.” Here’s a tip: Whenever someone prefaces an opinion by saying “it’s impossible to feel differently about this than the way I feel about it,” the speaker is full of shit. State your case. Hit me with some evidence. If the shooter had opened fire in a supermarket like the violent idiot in Boulder, he could have killed anyone he wanted to. Had he killed mostly Asian women, then I’d say you’ve got a good case for anti-Asian, misogynistic violence. But the guy in Atlanta shot up massage parlors. He blamed them for turning him into… Read more →
Then: “Kids in Cages”; Now: “Facilities Similar to Jail”
The number of unaccompanied teens and children in U.S. custody along the U.S.-Mexico border has reached record numbers, forcing children to stay longer in perilously overcrowded border facilities, many of which are similar to jail. — abcnews.go.com Unrelated thought: Didn’t President Biden campaign on amnesty and a halt to deportations? Read more →
Michelle Obama Fact-Checked by Associated Press
Surprising! Normally as a Democrat you really have to go off the rails to motivate a media organization to fact-check you. “Trump used facilities that were built during the Obama-Biden administration to house children at the border. They are chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where migrants were temporarily housed, separated by sex and age,” AP fact-checkers said. It noted that photos of children in housing centers that were circulated by Democratic officials online to criticize Trump were actually taken in 2014. These pictures actually “depicted some of the thousands of unaccompanied children held by President Barack Obama,” AP said. The “ripping migrant children from their parents and throwing them into cages” distortion was the most urgent issue in the world right up till the day everyone forgot about it, so why the AP is fact-checking it at this late date I do not know, but better late than never I… Read more →
Polarizing Ideas
Analyzing the actions and/or writings of mass murderers in hopes of being able to blame one’s political opponents is not an admirable impulse. The El Paso shooter wrote that his views predate President Trump, but I notice that didn’t stop motivated people from blaming Trump and his “polarizing ideas.” If we have to play this game, I think I could make an equally good case for “polarizing ideas” on the left. e.g., “When I’m president, I will decriminalize border crossings. People will be coming in from everywhere and when they get here, you’re going to be paying for their healthcare and education, all the way through college. Oh you’re trying to save up a down payment for a house? That’s too bad. Maybe they’ll take your job too. By the way, if you don’t think this is a good idea, you are a deplorable person. You’re a racist. You’re a white… Read more →
Sanctuary Cities?
Pelosi fumes over White House plan to release immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities Fox News Sanctuary cities: Immigrants, regardless of status, are safe in our city. Bring them here! They are welcome. This is the very point of a sanctuary city! President trump: Ok, we’ll send a few busloads over right now. Sanctuary cities: Wait — what? Read more →
Media Using the C-Word (“Crisis”)
White House requests $3.7 billion in emergency funds for border crisis Washington Post Daniel’s journey: How thousands of children are creating a crisis in America CNN Shocking Photos Of Humanitarian Crisis On U.S. Border Emerge Huffington Post “$3.7 billion [requested] to cope with the humanitarian crisis on the border and the spike in illegal crossings by unaccompanied minors from Central America.” ABC News Caveat: Those media quotes are from 2014 when President Obama was requesting emergency funds to deal with the border crisis. My go-to question for Democratic politicians would be “How do you respond to the president’s statement that we have a humanitarian crisis at the border?” And when they’re done with their predictably withering response, I’d say, “No, I was referring to President Obama’s statement.” President Obama, thank you for your great support – I have been saying this all along! pic.twitter.com/L506g9Aq4z — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2019 Read more →
Thomas Jefferson Explains Family Separations
My fellow Americans — The reason families are separated at the border is that the United States, like many countries, has laws governing border crossings by non-residents. When an adult is apprehended crossing our border illegally, they go into the criminal justice system and are placed in a detention center. Keep in mind that an American citizen apprehended in the commission of a crime is not processed any differently. If you are placed in a detention center, I assure you that your children will not be in there with you. A note on rhetoric: A strong line of argument should not require violent metaphors and manufactured hysteria — families “ripped apart,” children “torn from their mother’s arms” — to be persuasive. Read the Declaration of Independence, for example. Read more →
Separation of Families Considered Harmful?
Here’s a photo showing two girls in a “cage” watching a World Cup match, amongst dozens of other kids who are for some reason wrapped in foil. I’ve seen this photo and others widely circulated online recently as evidence of the Trumpenfuhrer’s crimes against humanity. But guess what? The photos were taken in 2014, when some other guy was president. Many people have a single standard for evaluating political activity: Is it being carried out by Team Red or Team Blue. Nothing is good or bad on its own merits. I don’t remember anyone on Team Blue being outraged about kids in “cages” in 2014, but in 2018 it’s a humanitarian crisis that has to be denounced mercilessly, even if the evidence has to be faked. I haven’t heard anyone propose a viable alternative to separating parents and children at the border. I’m not sure Team Blue wants to find… Read more →
Fact Checking the Fact Checkers
PolitiFact has a article headlined “Donald Trump’s NRA speech, fact-checked”. Here’s a sample: “African-American unemployment has reached another all-time, in history, record low … And the same thing with Hispanic American unemployment, which is also at the lowest level in history — unemployment, lowest level in history. And women’s unemployment — women, many women — is at the lowest level in almost 20 years. Think of that.” The “fact check” starts out like this: As far as the numbers go, Trump is correct. It then goes on for another five paragraphs to say that Barack Obama deserves “at least as much” credit as Trump for low unemployment. That’s a fact check?! Trump didn’t even say anything about who deserves the credit, although the listener is invited to make a favorable inference. Had he added “. . . and I deserve all the credit,” it would be fair in that case… Read more →
Feb. 5, 1917: Immigration Act Passed Over Wilson’s Veto
On this date in 1917, Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which, among other provisions, introduced a period of near complete exclusion of Asian immigration to the United States. Not that life was a bed of roses for Asian immigrants before 1917. Asian laborers were sought out for demanding and dangerous railroad jobs involving explosives. The phrase “Chinaman’s chance,” meaning little to no chance at all, dates from this period. Asians were not allowed American citizenship and were frequent victims of hostility and violence with no legal recourse. For example, in 1854, George W. Hall was convicted of murdering a Chinese man. On appeal to the State Supreme Court the decision was overturned because all of the evidence against him was from Chinese individuals. According to the Supreme Court ruling, the Chinese “recogniz[ed] no laws … except through necessity,… Read more →
Nov. 12, 1954: Ellis Island Closes
Via History.com: On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s. On January 2, 1892, 15-year-old Annie Moore, from Ireland, became the first person to pass through the newly opened Ellis Island, which President Benjamin Harrison designated as America’s first federal immigration center in 1890. Before that time, the processing of immigrants had been handled by individual states. With America’s entrance into World War I, immigration declined and Ellis Island was used as a detention center for suspected enemies. Following the war, Congress passed quota laws and the Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply reduced… Read more →