phosphorus2
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User ID: 3264
phosphorus2
5d ago
From what I remember from reading on Kilmar - when you apply for asylum, you generally also apply for 2 other forms of protection. One is based on torture, one is based on nonrefoulment (dont return peoole to dangerous counties). But basically when you apply for asylum, you can also say "dont return me to my home country becauase theyll torture me". And sometimes you are able to get orders to not be deported to a certain country, even while being denied asylum. Which basically means (until recently, maybe?) they get to stay. So it might be that as much as home country not taking them.
I think what was happening with both Kilmar and CERCOT was that Trump admin was basically playing hardball. People were getting a bunch of nonrefoulment type protections from being returned to their home country, the bar to get that was lower, and then they could more or less just stay. And trumps response was to say "ok, maybe we cant send you back to Venezuela, but instead we can send you to a third counry, like South Sudan or El Salvador." The chance of being sent to south sudan or rwanda or whereever would nuke incentives to apply for certain protections.
phosphorus2
5d ago
I don't really understand what happened for the last 26 years as to why she was never deported, but she hasn't ignored anything, she was checking in with ICE regularly as asked.
If you are told to do something by a judge, and you don't do it, in what sense have you not ignored that judge? Did she leave the country as asked? As she was ordered? As the asylum process determined? No.
She never should have gotten an ICE check in in the first place, if anything I hold it against her for wasting even more time and money.
Under existing law
Under existing law she should not be here.
phosphorus2
6d ago
Secondly, the current immigration enforcement protocol seems to act on people who prosecutorial discretion should be utilized for, and has very consistently in the past, and then the government doesn't even bother to defend its acts to judges. Take this case, wherein we have a highly sympathetic detainee - but someone who nonetheless, I acknowledge, ordered removed many years ago, but not yet removed. That said, the government's position to the judge isn't even that they should do this, are allowed to do this, or want to do this - they literally offered no argument as to why she shouldn't be released. No, seriously, they submitted a three sentence response that said "we have no argument to present" - and then didn't just release the person themselves, without being ordered to? Why not? For what purpose does the government take actions that it does not represent to a court that it agrees with? For what purpose does the government require judges and court costs to issue orders to make them take actions that they have no argument to oppose?
The Iranian grandma got her due process in 1999. She applied for asylum, a judge said no, she was given a removal order. But, as you can guess "Petitioner was not removed and was allowed to remain in the United States."
What is the purpose of the asylum claim, the judge, the removal order if the Iranian grandma gets to stay no matter the outcome? The law says "remove the Iranian grandma". The judge says "remove the Iranian grandma". But for some reason the Iranian grandma stays.
26 years later the Iranian grandma who was told to leave is still here. And now the Iranian grandma gets to argue in court about her due process when she finally gets told to leave decades later. Where is my due process? Why do I have to pay for this whole elaborate process to kick people out, but when they get told to leave we just let them stay? Why are laws arbitrarily enforced, I just have to deal with it and also pay for her healthcare? Iranian grandma gets to just totally ignore the laws and the asylum system when it rules against her, but gets all the protections of the system when it suits her. Very cool.
phosphorus2
6d ago
I will add that the whole "ICE is going after criminals" argument for their big operations in Blue cities is absurd.
Its because this is an immigration argument that got squashed into a crime argument.
There is certainly an argument to be made that immigration is federal policy, and illegals living in one state may affect the union in the long run (due to birthright citizenship, if nothing else).
That is the entire counterargument, it answers your 2nd and 3rd paragraphs points. Immigration (deportation) is a federal policy, it is set at the national level, a system of each state / city setting its own immigration policy could not possibly work.
But the framing that ICE is busy catching rapists and murderers in MN is bullshit. They are there to fill their quotas. Number go up. Rapists make the number go up. Sick 70yo women make the number go up. 6yo's make the number go up. Trump needs to tell his base that he has deported more people than the Democrats, and the job of the DHS is to make the number he will claim less of an obvious lie.
I don't think its total bullshit, they probably are picking up more rapists and murderers than just the general population. A quarter of them have charges and another quarter have convictions (see below).
But I think this demonstrates well that this is an immigration argument squashed into a crime argument. Filling quotas, numbers going up, 70 yo and rapists both count as a deportation - these are all immigration metrics. Yes its absurd to call the sick 70yo a criminal, she's not being deported because she's a criminal. She's being deported because I don't want to pay for her healthcare.
https://tracreports.org/immigration/detentionstats/pop_agen_table.html
phosphorus2
11d ago
Pretty sure its not like your just so stoey 99.9% of the time. Dodgy Inc isnt going to have just one illegal maria is on the hook for. Obviously send her to jail for longer than months
Even so, just change the law to make it simple. Mandate e verify or just outlaw providing false info or make the minimum 20 years.
phosphorus2
11d ago
Maria goes to prison. If there is a pattern or some other papertrail the owners do too. What is complicated?
phosphorus2
13d ago
Anyway, assuming that compliance responsibility falls solely on the contractor, this seems like a straightforward workaround for immigration compliance. Instead of directly hiring illegals, use a dodgy contractor. If the dodgy contractor gets fined, they just close up shop and re-open under a new name somewhere else.
You are just assuming things will happen in such a way as to make this whole thing complicated. Which, to be fair, it has happened in that way until basically now. But it doesn't have to. Like there is a workaround in your telling of events because the government creates one, which it doesn't have to. If you assume the government actually wants to accomplish its stated goals then this isn't really a conundrum. Just send the dodgy contractor to prison. Its not that hard.
phosphorus2
18d ago
Yeah I'm not a lawyer so my understanding is vague of exactly what the legalese reason is. But regardless, Vance was speaking more narrowly here and not trying to claim ICE is immune from all laws.
phosphorus2
20d ago
And then I got fuckin' the vice president of the country I live in going on fuckin' news and saying (direct video quote) "the precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He's saying that this officer has absolute immunity. What the fuck are you talking about?
From the context Vance is referring to qualified immunity. He is not claiming that ICE is is immune to absolutely every law.
Other than that, when you are writing for an audience that you acknowledge disagrees with you I think you should try to keep your sides narrative out of your telling of events. Your telling of the events doesn't come across as an honest one and I think that undermines you and makes it way too easy to just nitpick and dismiss. E.g. describing her role in the shooting as "She blocked half a road for likely five minutes in her local neighborhood..." is obtuseness. "Running from the cops is not reason enough to use deadly force." is just you having an argument with yourself. Wow he called the woman who almost hit him with her car a "fucking bitch"? We have all seen the videos, you leaving out critical parts doesn't make us suddenly forget those parts happened! We know they happened, we know you left them out in your telling of events, and now you leave us the impression that you came to your conclusions based on not knowing basic things about the case.
phosphorus2
23d ago
You are reading
"Police Officers are not allowed to shoot people driving vehicles at them"
as
The police cannot shoot someone to stop them from fleeing.
Which I don't think is a fair reading - the former is likely legal (likely life in danger based on just based on a common reading of the text) and the latter is likely not by the same standard.
phosphorus2
24d ago
Even granting we are reading different narratives, I just don't see a difference between "I intentionally tried to run this guy over" and "I was trying to escape law enforcement and in my escape I was so negligent in my driving that I hit a man directly in front of my windshield"
phosphorus2
24d ago
The driver seems to be trying to leave, not run down an officer. He’s crossing in front of the car and nearly out of the way, and yet as soon as the car shifts to forward he has his gun out and is shooting.
The ICE agent was very clearly standing in a spot where the vehicle could not move forward without hitting him. You yourself agree with this assessment ("I think your analysis of the mechanics is fair, but doesn’t solve the issue."). How can you possibly determine the intention of her actions by what her actions were ? In both cases the results of either action would be exactly the same, she can't leave without hitting him. Trying to run down the officer looks exactly like trying to escape when the officer is a foot in front of your car!
She follows them around, gets ahead of them, parks in the street, waits for them to get out, waits until a guy is right in front of her, then hits the gas. That doesn't seem at all like she was trying to leave.
If a car begins accelerating towards you and your split second reaction is to go for your gun, I’m questioning your motives.
"Ah yes, you can see the woman has pure motives, she was just trying to leave, I can tell my a frame by frame analysis of her tire movements. But ICE agent, he reached for his gun while he was a foot in front of accelerated into him, that's suspicious!"
The fact that a car is dangerous isn’t relevant, because it’s not clear he was fearing for his life!
The dangerousness of a car hitting a person is irrelevant to that persons fear for their life? Really?
phosphorus2
25d ago
it manufactures a justification to escalate to deadly force to prevent an escape where one would not otherwise be present.
I don't think this is true at all. The justification in question is "my life was in danger so I had to use deadly force". Who actually manufactured this situation?
Woman:
- parks in the middle of the road and waits for ICE to arrive for the sole purpose of causing a confrontation
- waits til an ICE agent is directly in front of her car
- puts her car in gear
- hits the gas
- hits the ICE agent with her car
ICE agent:
- gets out of his car to make an arrest
- stands in front of a parked car
Standing in front of a parked car, which is what the ICE agent did, does not put a life in danger. He could have stood there all day, all year, until the end of time, and he still would not have been in danger from that car. The entire situation, and the entirety of the danger, was manufactured by the woman. She sought out confrontation, and when she got it she escalated with violence right up to the point where she got her brains blown all over her dashboard.
phosphorus2
26d ago
Also also note that based on Brenner's notes (loved that asspull) they could close the portal at any time.
"The Upside down is held together by an exotic matter sphere that we conveniently just found out about" is ridiculous, and I think a genuine plot hole. Not just bad writing.
Upside down Hawkins is destroyed almost instantly without an exotic matter sphere, but how could such a sphere get to upside down Hawkins in the first place?
phosphorus2
30d ago
But over the last couple days the people pointing out little nitpicky things has really ruined it for me, because the nitpicks show that the writers don't even care about their own show and keep ignoring/forgetting little important details.
Imagine that there is a crackhead armed with a knife trying to kill you. You are armed with a garden hose. You try to fend him off by spraying him with your little 10 psi water stream, which of course does nothing and he stabs you to death. You probably would have been better off trying to take the hose and beat him with it or strangle him or fend him off somehow.
This is about the relationship between government troops and demogorgons in ST. The troops are all armed with garden hoses, they do zero damage, and they all die. They would be orders of magnitude better off taking their M16s and swinging them like clubs. Drunk Karen Wheeler armed with a broken wine bottle is more effective vs demogorgons than entire squads of elite troops.
Now imagine that you had to fight that same crackhead, except now you have a flamethrower. You win this fight every time.
You are the US government. You are going to fight demogorgons. Do you give your soldiers the garden hose or the flamethrower? It has been 6 years, since the first scene in the first episode of the show, that the US government has been fighting demogorgons and they still have not figured out they need to give everyone flamethrowers and not garden hoses.
phosphorus2
1mo ago
only in places they have permission to be.
That is a more accurate characterization, yes.
I'm surprised because I thought ICE's deportation orders are not the big swinging dicks of arrest warrants, which is why they say stuff like don't answer the door for them if they knock and they can't deport you. If an illegal alien's roommate can refuse to let ICE in and it is not obstruction, then why is what this judge did obstruction?
If the roommate refused to let ICE in, and ICE only has an administrative warrant, then it's not obstruction because ICE didn't have the authority to go inside in the first place. An ICE warrant (and the warrant in question here) is generally an administrative warrant. It is filled out and signed by an ICE agent. It lets ICE arrest people, but only in public places they have permission to be. Courtroom hallways are public, courtrooms and houses are not.
An ICE admin warrant does not let ICE do things that the police would generally need a warrant signed by a judge do. It does not let ICE ignore the 4th amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, so if ICE wants to go into someone's house they need permission or a warrant approved by a judge.
phosphorus2
2mo ago
I think focusing on DEI and affirmative action is misleading. This college is talking about a change in the past five years.
These changes were made within the last five years, they were explicitly made to increase minority enrollment, and CA knew that these changes would result in a bunch of unprepared students. Their justification for the change is public (below), and it is solely focused on increasing minority enrollment.
https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/underreview/sttf-report.pdf
phosphorus2
2mo ago
How much of that changed over the 2020-2025 period being examined, though?
A lot changed. UC went SAT optional in 2020, and UC had a big push on LCFF at about the same time. I am just going to quote from the report (link below) subsections on your items 2 & 3:
In 2020, the University of California Board of Regents, against the advice of the report by the Academic Senate’s Standardized Testing Task Force (STTF), voted to eliminate the SAT and ACT from admissions consideration. Beginning with the cohort entering in 2021, standardized test scores were no longer used in the admissions process.
System-wide changes in LCFF+ Admissions and Enrollments (2019-2024). According to the UCOP Annual reports on LCFF+ admissions and enrollment, between 2019 and 2024, the number of LCFF+ students applying to at least one UC campus grew modestly, from 27,370 to 29,577 (Table 4a). In contrast, the number of LCFF+ students admitted to at least one campus rose more substantially, from 15,829 to 21,634, driven by an increase in admit rates.
I think getting rid of the SAT makes admissions particularly tough. If you look at Table 3 in the UCSD report in 2024 the high school math GPA of a UCSD Math 2 admit (Math 2 is middle school math) was 3.65. The high school math GPA for Math 10 (calculus I) is 3.74. Really hard to get a math competence signal from high school math grades.
Race based affirmative action has been banned by California's constitution for almost 30 years. Not to mention the Supreme Court's own decision in 2023. No Child Left Behind, as an educational slogan, goes all the way back Bush's first term.
Nobody at UC cares if affirmative action is banned. They do it regardless, with the explicit purpose of increasing minority enrollment.
"No we aren't doing affirmative action, we just lowered the admission standards from high schools with lots of minorities because of our equity concerns."
https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf
phosphorus2
3mo ago
I have a hard time accepting 7 years as a just sentence for the level of fraud here.
7 years sounds pretty reasonable for the amount of fraud he did. And his sucky, awful, scammy demeanor makes him very unsympathetic. He embezzled and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think most of his sentence is reasonable based on the COVID / PPP unemployment fraud alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santos#Federal_prosecution
There are very serious violent crimes that ruin lives that don’t get that amount of time. There are some murders that don’t get that amount of time.
That seems to be more of an issue with under punishing murder than anything else.
phosphorus2
3mo ago
As opposed to wildfires, which apparently pose no danger at all to the apparently fireproof plant....
It's funny, because Braunton's milkvetch relies on wildfires to reproduce. "The beanlike seeds require scarification from fire or mechanical disturbance to break down their tough seed coats before they can germinate."
The year is 2010. The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) publishes its initial environmental study on a large power infrastructure maintenance project. A portion of the project involves replacing about 200 wooden power poles that run through Pacific Palisades. The California State Lands Commission reviewed the initial study and requested that LADWP provide a Native American Ground Monitor during any digging to ensure that cultural resources are not inadvertently damaged or destroyed. By the final EIR in 2016 LADWP decided that replacing the all of those +70 year old power poles was no longer necessary.
The year is 2018. The Camp Fire ignites in northern California. It's cause was the failure of a 100 year old power line. By early 2019 LADWP decides to replace those 70 year old powerlines running through Pacific Palisades, they're in a now deemed high fire threat area. The California Public Utilities Commission has recommended they be replaced as soon as possible. Work is to start in 2019.
July 7th, 2019. LADWP has started work to replace the power lines, as well as leveling and grading new fire roads. Amateur botanist and avid hiker David Pluenneke is hiking in the area. David is a member of the California Native Plant Society. He sees that LADWP has trampled the endangered Braunton’s milkvetch. In all, 183 milkvetches were murdered. He is livid:
(What exactly would happen to a blue whale in this scenario David? What other than a bulldozer could get that whale off the mountain David?)
Our hero David reports LADWP to the California Coastal Commission. The CCC is not happy with unpermitted work done within their fiefdom. In order to get a CCC approved permit to replace the wooden poles LADWP must:
- Submit a detailed pre and post construction vegetation survey for the entire 2.5 mile stretch. The surveys need to identify the type and location of any and all sensitive species (all birds, shrubs, milkvetches), and it needs to show their location on a detailed map.
- Any work must be supervised by an on site project biologist, or biologists if the worksite is large. These observers will make daily surveys of sensitive wildlife species and they have the authority to stop any work that could result in their harm.
- LADWP agrees to excavate the new powerline poles by hand, with shovels. Workers will walk to the site. Helicopters will bring in the new poles and remove the old.
- No construction activities that generate noise above 60 dBA (loudness of an average conversation) may take place during bird nesting season, which runs from mid February to mid September. Of course this requires another observer biologist, a bird biologist, to verify.
- Pay $1.9 million in fines.
- All newly constructed fire roads must be unconstructed and returned to their original condition. Milkvetch and all.
- Etc.
I wasn't able to find if / when this particular project was completed by LADWP. Checking Google Street View, as of August 2023 these poles were not replaced. But overall there are 300,000+ power poles in LA. As of 2019, 65% of them were older than the average lifespan of 50 years old. In 2024, LADWP replaced just 2743 poles. Their average cost to replace a pole in the same year was $69,300. At their 2024 rates it will take LADWP over 70 years and $14 billion to replace all past lifespan poles.
To relook at the culture war angle - why was their a fire in Pacific Palisades? Maybe Jonathan Rinderknecht will be found guilty, maybe he won't be. But Jonathan didn't create a massive tinderbox in the LA hills for ideological reasons. Jonathan didn't let firehoses go without water while they sat a mile away from an empty 100 million gallon revisor. Jonathan didn't empower a council of retards at the California Coastal Commission to nuke every project from orbit at the behest of any and every nature activist. LA burned with or without Jonathan, the parallel Eaton fire was just as destructive and (as to current knowledge) not caused by him.
There will always be Jonathan Rinderknechts. We won't fix them by grasping for the very abstract universal meaning, or high-minded civic metaphysics, or better pathways, or whatever. If we need to have a confrontation with modern liberalism, it shouldn't be because it "prizes the autonomy of the individual above the stability of society". It should be because it fucking sucks. It empowers tiny little bean counter despots to make sure your critical infrastructure construction isn't too loud for the little fishes. It sets environmentalists as legally prescribed tattletales against those that produce and build. It fails to build and maintain basic infrastructure, and housing, and anything that isn't a patronage network. We should ask "Why was there a massive tinderbox outside our second largest city", instead of "What can we do to make sure every young man feels special."
phosphorus2
4mo ago
I bring this up particularly because psychoactive drugs are just one example of dangerous good. People have weirdly specific intuition about those drugs that often doesn't really track how they feel about the larger class.
The "weirdly specific intuition" people have on drugs is not merely because they are dangerous, its because they are also addictive. Dangerous + addictive is bad in a way exponentially worse than dangerous or addictive alone. Hence the intuition.
Chainsaws with no safeties are not killing 100k+ americans a year.
phosphorus2
5mo ago
Evolutionarily speaking, a woman's worth is largely dependent on immutable physical characteristics (modulo things like plastic surgery), so these sorts of stories tend to psychologically resonate with women.
"worth is largely dependant on immutable physical characteristics" is true evolutionarily speaking about all forms of life
I am guessing that was not the case when the perpetrator signed up for the job. That it is now such a job is the decision of the protestors, not of the perpetrator.
"We're going to follow you around make your job as stressful as we possibly can, what did you expect? You signed up for a stressful job!"
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