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I was sent this tweet which claims that the majority of Republicans voted against an offer to spend billions in border protection. This goes against my understanding of the GOP. Am I missing some context that would explain this?
I think one of the key things here is that the spending bill allocates money not just generically to "border protection" but rather to fund specific things, and some Republicans oppose the things that were being funded. For example:
I suspect Nehls and Raskin differ greatly on what their definition of "border protection" means, which will make finding something they can both agree to very difficult.
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Let's vote for me giving $1000 to the charity to feed the poor and also you giving me all your money and gifting me your house and your car and all your future earnings. What?! You vote against it?! OK, very well, let me write it down "This person voted against a proposal to give $1000 to feed the poor. Even when the $1000 was given by somebody else! I never thought somebody could hate the poor that much!".
That's how it works. When a politician says "my enemies voted against (doing something that obviously should be done)", he's likely lying to you, and likely by means of omitting what else the actual bill they're talking about contained. These bills are designed like this on purpose - so that when you refuse to go along with the obviously bad part, they would pretend you refused the good part. Do not be deceived.
Thank you.
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this implies that the people even voted for such a bill. let's not kid ourselves here: these are all career politicians, they're not paying for anything and as such will vote however it's most politically expedient to do so
They are not paying for anything, but some people may be unwilling to vote for politicians that keep spending money that don't belong to them and that we don't have. Unfortunately, the number of such people is small and is getting smaller all the time.
unfortunately indeed
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I'm guessing it was part of a bill that did a bunch of other things
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He has cancer.
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Mmm, I don’t think you should feel like an ass. Hes trying to elicit the feeling you’re having now. He’s an asshole, not you.
Trying to make @urquan feel like an ass by... having cancer?
What do you want him to do, if he didn't wear the bandana people would be all "who does he think he is, Lex Luthor" and then feel like an ass about that.
This is trivially disproved by there being millions of bald people, and hundreds of bald politicians, who nobody calls "Lex Luthor". Cory Booker looks like a cueball, and people call him a lot of names, but I haven't heard "Lex Luthor". Look here at the collection of shiny noggins and tell me who called them "lex Luthor" ever? https://www.gq.com/gallery/bald-100
Not many politicians wear bandanas though. It is not a very common garment for a politician, so when a politician wears one, it looks weird and its legitimate to ask questions. If you noticed above, Hulk Hogan wears one. He's not a member of Congress (not yet at least). Just as if somebody would wear a bathrobe and slippers or a wedding dress into Congress. There might be a legit reason or just a person fashion choice, but it has little to do with baldness as such or the reason for it.
People who are bald because of chemo wear bandanas, it's a thing. I don't know why it's a thing, but it is.
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Wear a hat? Shave his head?
Jamie Raskin is a lifelong grifting rage baiting asshole who continues spreading the insane propaganda lies about Russian spies in the White House.
He also used this opportunity to spread more rage baiting lies, claiming republicans had insisted that he take his bandana off.
This was, of course, a lie: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-jamie-raskin-cap-chemotherapy-republicans-house-representatives-1778293
So he wears a bandana, nobody cares except to tell him that they hope he pulls through with his cancer, and he uses this as an opportunity to claim that his political opponents are cartoonish villains, and that his bandana is a form of resistance.
Yes, him wanting you to feel like an asshole, and using his bandana to do so, is very literally what he is doing
It's a really common style for cancer patients who've lost their hair from the chemo (I don't know why but it is); are all of the other cancer patients assholes, or are you just using this as an excuse to vent about somebody who's politics you clearly don't like very much?
I'm not disputing that cancer patients wear bandanas. I'm saying that in this specific case he made his wearing of a bandana a political tool, and lied about people to do so.
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I've seen lots of bald politicians. I've never seen one cosplaying Prison Mike.
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TBH, about 90% of people there without the bandanas don't either. Unfortunately, most of the clowns there don't dress the part - that at least would be mildly entertaining.
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Raskin's never particularly straightforward, but I think it's a reference to the FY23 omnibus, which passed the House with only 9 Republican votes. But if so, that's kinda important context to leave out, since the Border funding was a tiny portion of the overall bill.
All around a confusing trick. How are Democrats supposed to feel about Republicans’ supposedly being offered border money on a silver platter?
Contemporaneously? The leftist side complained that Border Patrol/ICE funding was a sign of Biden's political compromise with evil, while the progressive/liberal side framed it as necessary funding for humane asylum processing. Which... uh, in turn reflects a lot of why a lot of Republicans didn't think it was offered honestly.
Someone deserves an award for coining "irregular migration." It can be effortlessly slipped in as a synonym for "illegal immigration" while completely inverting the meaning and intent. Word games really are power's best servant.
It makes sense, though: no human being is illegal, but I have heard plenty of people describe themselves as being "irregular", at least for a while.
Isn't normative used like a pejorative in the spaces that consider "no human being is illegal" a meaningful argument? we're like one step further on the euphemism treadmill from people who think this way being unable to differentiate between people who are legally permitted to be in a country from those who are not. As cliché as it is this is perhaps the closest thing to newspeak I've ever seen, not just brightening up concepts with pleasant euphemism but attempting to obliterate entire concepts via planned semantic drift.
Orwell wasn't so much prophesising as parodying existing trends in politics.
I also recommend The Politically Incorrect Dictionary (1992) which is dated but hilarious.
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I was just reading today the report South Korea submitted to UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and appearantly this offical UN body:
With Paragraph 8-d of CERD/C/KOR/17-19 stating :
And Paragraph 7 of the same document:
So this crusade against the phrase "illegal immigrants" isn't confined to NGOs and organizations founded with purpose of partisan advocacy.
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"No human being is illegal" as a phrase against "illegal immigration" is a fully general argument against calling any activity illegal.
It's a good argument against the term 'illegal immigrant', I guess, but I'm not sure if "irregular immigrant" is an improvement.
Yes, I struggle to think of a public policy debate more intellectually depraved than the debate in the US on illegal immigration, mainly because opposers of restrictions don't want the activity to be illegal but also don't want to make the effort of arguing for looser legal immigration rules.
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No it isn't. If there were a border funding bill that is acceptable to the majority of Congress, it could by definition be passed by itself. The trick here Dems do not want border funding. They want to use border funding as a lever to either get Reps to accept a very crappy omnibus bill, or to expose them to criticism of being "obstructionist" - which worked very well on you, as we see. This tactics works, that's why they use it again and again.
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