JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
Formerly "SandwichWarrior" and "The Upright Man", may or may not be feral, is most certainly quixotic.
User ID: 4009
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
2mo ago
As they should, CMV.
Ok, if we are defining "effectiveness" in terms of policy goals, what evidence do you have to show that the Trump administration has failed to reduce illegal immigration?
On a more foundational level would you agree with the statement that "incentives matter".
If we are going to continue using the silly tuna can metaphor the way i see it is this. The MAGA roomate is saying that we ought to build a fence (ie secure the border) and pick up all these cans (ie reduce the incentives to enter illegally or overstay) to do something about the feral cat problem. The moderate democrat and never-Trump republican reply that the tuna cans/incentives don't matter if you build the fence high enough so picking them up is a waste of time. Meanwhile the progressive roommate is saying "i don't understand the problem" while using the moderate democrat's credit card to order more tuna and a set of bolt cutters to cut the fence.
As for the spectrum, i don't believe it matters because at the end of the day you either have to draw a line somewhere or give up on enforcing the law entirely.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
2mo ago
Fair enough.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
2mo ago
By who, and how?
So there is a spectrum, what of it? I do not find the existence of edge cases to be a convincing argument against enforcement.
You also haven't answered my question about how we are defining "effective"?
First off I would like to point out that Carlos Odio is not some impartial analyst, he's a former Obama staffer and DNC Superdelegate who founded an NGO "dedicated to immigrant and Latinx outreach".
I would also ask how confident should we be in anything coming out of Cambridge University these days when viewed in the context of recent events?
Given the above, just how sure are we that Trump and the right are "failing"? As I was telling @cjet79 down-thread, US Mexico border crossings have hit a 50 year low.
Personally I find the "anti-flow" "pro-stock" position logically untenable, as what it boils down to in practice is "I don't believe in open borders, I just don't think that immigration laws should ever be enforced".
How are we defining "effective" in this context?
One of MAGA's stated goals is to reduce illegal immigration. If "putting on a show for the base" results in illegal border crossings hitting a 50 year low, they may reasonably conclude that doing so is an effective means of achieving said goal. Refer also to my prior posts on "picking up Tuna Cans".
As for your concern about "selection effects", the argument pattern matches to a common form of rhetorical bait-and-switch where legal immigration is conflated with illegal immigration. I imagine that risk averse immigrants who sincerely want a stable/predictable legal situation would apply for legal status without having to be prompted or threatened.
Is anti-stock, pro-flow a coherent position?
It's the old Berchtold Brecht "dissolve the people and elect another" position.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
2mo ago
The nukes are a only a concern insofar as the Islamic Republic of Iran is the sort of country that has been lobing ballistic missiles at it's neighbors for decades.
A nuclear armed Islamic Republic means that countries like Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE will need to start looking at each rocket coming over the horizon as a potential existential threat, and it will effectively put an end to nuclear non-proliferation as there is no way the Saudis are going to let Iran be the only regional power with nukes.
What does "winning" mean for the US?
As discussed in previous threads on the topic, the Trump administration's ultimate victory condition is that the Islamic Republic of Iran stops arming the various proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Et Al) that it has been using to attack it's neighbors and destabilize the region for the last 40 years.
At this stage Iran's ability to support their proxies in the near term has been wrecked and those proxies are in the process of being rolled-up, so i think it's fair to say that we're "winning". The trick to turn that "near term" into a "long term", whether this is accomplished politically through regime change, or more "kinetically" is orthogonal to the goal.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
2mo ago
On the policy level where you do need to be concerned about population level issues, there would be better ways to account for HBD than using race as a proxy for something you could target more directly.
Insert the "turning people into dinosaurs" meme here. "But I don't want to address social issues directly, I want to be tribal and clannish."
Blade Runner exists in a weird space where on one hand it's visuals are stunning and it features one of the greatest villains/villain arcs in all of cinema but on the other hand it's pacing and plot are kind of a mess which is why there are half-a-dozen different cuts of it floating around.
On the Gripping hand while Alien, Gladiator, and Villeneuve's sequel are all better "movies" than the original Blade Runner I still think that Blade Runner is worth watching if only to appreciate Rutger Hauer's performance and to see what everyone else in the cyberpunk dystopia genre has been cribbing off of for the last 40 years.
Assuming we're talking about the extended editiion that came out on DVD, i agree. Maybe not in my top 5 but easily competing for a spot in my top 10 alongside Alien, Gladiator, and Blade Runner.
Alien probably makes my top 5, and I would argue that when one director has 4 movies in the running for your top 10 favorite movies its disingenuous to claim that he doesn't know what he's doing even if you think that Napoleon and Promethius were both bad movies and that everyone involved in thier production should feel bad.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
2mo ago
Noted.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
2mo ago
The number for "gun violence" does not include self inflicted shootings as i already explained in the OP. Additionally you do understand that Canadian doctors killing an unknown number of people by accident in addition to the number they kill on purpose would increase rather than decrease the total number of people killed don't you?
Point being that when i say i was surprised to find out that the number for 'B' was larger than the number for 'A', saying the number for 'B' might be even larger than reported is not a rebuttal.
It's not an argument it was a question at my local haunt's trivia night. What kills more people per year?
A) Gun violence in the US.
B) Doctors in Canada.
C) Traffic accidents in Germany.
And as i said, my initial reaction was to quite literally exclaim "bullshit!" when the presenter told us the answer was 'B'.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
"that's 95% old people or people near death" you haven't popped my filter bubble, you've reinforced it.
So what about that 5%?
5% of 16,000 is a lot more than 5% of 100.
I don't know if that's the same incident, I just remember the court case making the rounds 4 or 5 years ago. One of the kids trying to claim that the Doctor had acted against his mothers wishes or something.
A MAID assessment requires the person to be conscious and mentally aware.
I believe this was one of the facts under contention.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
Right, because sometimes people disagree.
I wish I was exaggerating. What I find disturbing is that, as I was telling another user down thread, we seem to have gone from "don't be ridiculous, nobody is seriously suggesting we legalize infanticide" to "Massachusetts just effectively legalized infanticide and here's why that's a good thing" in the space of an election cycle.
It is a little ridiculous
No it very manifestly is not.
We are watching mainstream Democrats pivot from "Don't be ridiculous that would never happen." to "Yes it's happening and that's a good thing." in the space of an election cycle.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
But it is a bit of gerrymandering to create an interesting stat, I'd agree.
It was quite literally a trivia question.
Criminal, if true.
Assuming @ArjinFerman is thinking of the same story I am, the sequence of events went something like this. Mrs. Bennet discusses MAID with her Dr. and an assessment is performed but she ultimately decides that she doesn't want to go through with it and submits a request for in-patient hospice care. Mrs. Bennet subsequently takes a turn for the worse and falls into a coma at which point the Dr. "reassessed" her and then euthanized her on the basis of that reassessment. The Bennet family tried to take the doctor to court but never got anywhere because it had all been done legally and above-board.
You're appealing to "rules" and "processes" and "dignity" when a good chunk of my post is about how there is evidence that the rules and processes are not being followed while the medical establishment actively lobbies for their removal.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
Both have stringent rules (terminal, suffering with no chance of improvement, voluntary and well considered, review committee affirms), so I'm not too worried about a healthcare system running quick and cheap cost optimization...
Except as I noted in the subsequent links, the medical establishment is actively lobbying to do loosen those rules, and the DHHS is actively investigating Network for Hope for stripping patients for parts.
This is a distinctly right-wing, anti-democratic, and western-chauvinist view of the case which is of course "the problem".
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