domain:kvetch.substack.com
zeke5123a
6d ago
I hope that happens. Then those people can all be labeled as insurrectionists and Texas and Florida national guard can come in and literally kill the bureaucrats.
Botond173
6d ago
There’s a Trump personality cult with very little genuine infrastructure behind it, sitting on top of the carcass of the post-Tea Party GOP, which itself is a hollowed-out shell of what it once was even ten years ago.
The timeline is a bit of a mess here. 10 years ago it was 2014. The Tea Party protests were in 2010 and, as far as I know, were quickly co-opted by the mainstream GOP after contributing to its success in the midterms. It was a flash in the pan, basically. 10 years, ago, the GOP was already a post-Tea Party GOP. Also, weren't there periods/terms between 2010-18 when it had a majority in the Senate and the House? There was ample opportunity to do immigration reform.
sliders1234
6d ago
I sort of hate just stating narrative that it was already dying versus Trump torpedoing it. I remember hating it when there were just rumors of what was in the bill but maybe the actual torpedoing took Trump and the establishment GOP was game. Who got where first I do not know.
The political situation sort of feels to me like the GOP had the high ground in war separating Biden (winning elections) from his food supply, but Biden was raping and pillaging a significant region (facilitating mass immigration today). If we give up the high ground we can protect our villages but it allows Biden access to his farms to resupply his armies (winning elections).
Feels like a retreat to me.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
6d ago
Jesus Christ dude. You know that bureaucrats are why we don't all live in mud huts and rape each other right? Have a little gratitude. You're posting this on an internet forum that only exists because generations of bureaucrats kept society together for a few thousand years.
sliders1234
6d ago
You are probably correct. He has funded a lot of the Trump opposition.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
6d ago
I wouldn't worry too much about it. I've had covid at least once and have noticed no change in my immunity or life otherwise. Don't read too much into one severe cold.
Bleep
6d ago
Biden can deport 15 million people today?
sure, Biden can reimplement the Trump policies which required detention in the US or release into foreign countries to await their removal proceedings because these policies have already been upheld in court
and then re-arrest all people he illegally released on parole and have them detained or removed to Mexico to await their removal proceedings
he can do that right now; he of course won't do that because he the Biden admin wants the immigration, they just don't want to suffer the electoral consequences of what he's doing
The law mitigates some percentage of the legal challenges by pro-migrant groups that would be inevitable (and will be) in any executive-led effort.
which legal challenges are mitigated by this bill?
the bill definitely opens other pathways for challenge, e.g., the entirety of 235(b) and process by which applications are reviewed as well as mandatory release into the US under a president who wanted to reduce migrant numbers
the bill may as well be a jobs program for immigration lawyers and provides billions more to those "pro-migrant" groups
Sauntsolaire
6d ago
I have multiple? I lost track.
WhiningCoil
6d ago
Virginia is dominated by Northern Virginia, which is a Washington DC suburb. For all intents and purposes, Virginia has been colonized by the federal government and votes with it's interest 99% of the time. Democrats have to be incredibly fucking retarded to squander their natural advantages, and they managed it back when Northam was elected. But for the most part, it doesn't matter.
Schools were probably the most salient issue that peeled off enough normies. And it was an uphill battle the entire time. The news lied, the schools lied, the politicians lied. And every time the truth eventually came out they just lied more. When they effectively lost the public relations battles, and the legal battles, they just dug their heels in and went "nuh uh". Nearly every school district is defying our Governors order with respect to trans students, knowing full well the school administrators will keep their jobs longer than our governor. It's tied up in courts, and even if the schools somehow lose, it's not their money they pay out. It's ours. But they are betting, probably correctly, that they can run out the clock until a Democrat takes over and drops the cases.
One county near me hit derangement levels I didn't think were possible, and voted in an even more pro-"pornography in schools" slate of board candidates. One took his oath of office on a literally stack of pornographic "childrens" books. Everyone clapped.
I've totally given up. Starting next year we are homeschooling our children. We were on the fence, taking our chances with private school. But after the most recent federal reinterpretation of Title IX, it's obvious no institution in any state is safe. Every single day we meet parents at parks doing the same thing. A not insignificant proportion of those parents are (or should I say were?) teachers themselves, and are choosing to protect their children from what they've seen the education system in our state become.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
6d ago
Again, we have the strongest currency in the world. If it goes bad then all others have gone before it. We abuse the shit out of that and we're going to abuse it more. No one can say boo.
Jiro
6d ago
Functionally though what is the difference between paying a company to do x or fining a company of it doesn't do x?
Paying it is limited by budget. Unfunded mandates aren't. This prevents many abuses.
KingOfTheBailey
6d ago
How does a project stop these people from getting a toehold and leveraging that into a takeover?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
The 'Alt Right' hadn't cheered for Trump on immigration since he caved on the Government shutdown in 2018.
You're probably using a more concrete definition of the Alt Right than I am. I'm aware that people like Richard Spencer drifted away from Trump around 2018, but much of the rest of the far right remained loyal to him, including many people who ostensibly wanted to prioritize immigration reform. There's no credible right wing groups that are angry with Trump over his flimsiness on immigration, at least none large enough to be relevant.
I don't think you want to get immigration under control any more than someone in the 'Alt Right'. What you do want is to appear like a concerned and reasonable person as judged by 'the respectable people' representing the mainstream media morality.
Well this is just dead wrong. I absolutely want to crack down on illegal immigration, but even beyond that I want to lower legal immigration as well, which is why I classified the 50K increase per year for 5 years as a "concession", albeit a small one. I reckon many people on the right agree with me on limiting legal immigration, but they know it's highly controversial so they instead pretend they only care about illegal immigration because it's breaking the law or cutting the line. I'm more open with my concerns, in ways that I doubt the "mainstream media morality" would side with.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
6d ago
The Republicans would rather lose forever than tear apart the country that way.
johnfabian
6d ago
Short attempt to explain an upcoming Canadian constitutional snafu
I'll try for brevity here. If you see any Canadian news showing up in your feed you might be aware there's been some wrangling over the "Notwithstanding Clause." This is the clause in the Canadian constitution that essentially allows the invoker (either a provincial government or the feds) to override court challenges to legislation except for stuff related to the basic functioning of democracy (like how elections are conducted). Outside of Québec the NWC has rarely been used at the provincial level and never at the federal level. It was included as a compromise in the 1982 constitution, and has historically been treated as an Option-of-Last-Resort when it came to disagreements between the provinces and the feds. It expires after five years of invoking which theoretically means it can only be used with popular support.
The structure of Canada's institutions were meant to mimic the United Kingdom's: parliament is supposed to reign supreme. Courts and the judiciary were meant to be deferential to the will of legislatures, and likewise legislatures were meant to honour the spirit of the broad constitutional principles embodied by the Charter. As many of you might suspect however, over time there has been some element of judicial creep, with the judiciary finding more and more things to be unconstitutional. Federal laws against abortion and gay marriage were struck down by Charter challenges (in each case I think correctly), but somewhat more speciously you have things like restrictions on public drug use or simple math tests for prospective teachers being declared unconstitutional. I know people around here might cynically think this is being done exclusively for progressive causes and while I think there is an undeniable slant among the judiciary you also have things like the courts deeming the measures taken against the trucker COVID protests unconstitutional.
More coherently the principle underlying the general trend is this: the judiciary wants more discretionary powers for itself. It does not want governments to dictate to judges the limits of their powers or decision-making. And where this is really drawing things into conflict is with respect to criminal justice. To give a non-culture war example, the previous Conservative government amended the Criminal Code to require consecutive life sentences be given for mass murderers; i.e. if you committed multiple first-degree homicides your eligibility for parole would not be after 25 years as normal but rather 50+ years (depending on the extent of your crimes). This was struck down on appeal on the grounds that this was "cruel and unusual punishment", on behalf of a man who had murdered six Muslims at a mosque in a mass shooting (not exactly a progressive hero, but now eligible for parole in 2039). Similarly the ability to hold potentially at-risk criminals without bail or severe bail conditions has been very limited, and a wide raft of possible contingencies for sentencing have been essentially mandated by court challenges. You might be familiar with "Gladue" reports (essentially lighter sentencing for indigenous offenders), but this has also resulted in bizarre sentencing decisions for immigrants who would risk deportation otherwise.
Almost-certain future PM Pierre Poilievre has made some waves by suggesting he would use it federally to override challenges to stronger criminal justice laws. This forthcoming showdown seems to be inevitable given the increased intransigence of both the judiciary and politicians: anger and confusion with these court appeals is not limited to conservatives and support for harsher sentencing is very strong. The original purpose of the Notwithstanding Clause was not as a means to reinforce parliamentary supremacy, but the expanded scope of court appeals has given it a new role in this context. The judiciary has badly overplayed their hand if they thought the political cost of using it would enable them to expand their reach without opposition.
Bleep
6d ago
Every single measure that reduces total inflows must pass
what part of the bill forces a hostile administration to reduce immigration at all? the bill may as well be a sieve with all the ways a hostile administration could legally ignore and excuse explicit limits; every single section of the bill which allegedly reduces immigration is actually not mandatory and is able to be set aside under vague, undefined language, like "operational circumstances"
this bill does nothing at all to force a reduction in immigration; it still relies entirely on a friendly executive to reduce immigration, but a friendly executive could already reduce immigration right now and they have for decades under status quo laws by simply enforcing them
which Trump demonstrated with his court upheld policies: require all migrants to be detained or remain outside of US while they await asylum hearings while you reduce and/or eliminate any government money available to support them
it's odd you claim there is no plan when the Trump admin already created a plan, they implemented the plan, and even waited out the court process for it to be upheld, which it was almost entirely
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
6d ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
Title IX doesn't apply to private institutions that don't receive federal funding.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
You really seem to want to catch me with supposed double-binds and contradictions instead of actually addressing important points.
If the contradictions are true, then fair enough. Like earlier when you mentioned "hey you say Trump's restrictions didn't do much, but then say that illegal immigration exploded when Biden removed them". I could certainly see why someone would think that was a bit weird so a clarification was justified, and even with that clarification I probably wasn't giving Trump enough credit to what might have happened if he didn't do his EO's.
But this is just a nothingburger. I feel like I'm reading the following: "first you said 'immigration', then fell back to 'illegal immigration'. Aha! A concession! Then you said Trump had bad PR because of saying stuff like 'shithole countries', but he didn't say that in a televised address, meaning it wasn't public, yet PR has the word 'public' in it. A contradiction!"
To the object-level claim here, if Trump says something inflammatory to a group who all then promptly leak it to the press, then yes, that's a PR problem. The two options Trump has are either 1) get his leaky ship in order, or 2) think it but don't say it, or at least say it in ways that aren't so clearly controversial. Every time you hear the media complaining about "dogwhistling", it's just Republicans doing this. But Trump never seem to get the memo, which is why he keeps shooting himself and the cause of immigration restrictions in the foot.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
Well there's nothing for me to really argue against here, just "I'm right and you're wrong", an ad-hominem, then "landslide for Trump in 2024!"
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
TwiceHuman
6d ago
I know I might just be responding with an n=1 outlier, but if my 85-year-old grandma has a cold in the morning she is alright again by evening. So while you might be right on average, I don't think you need to resign yourself to average health. The question is, how healthy do you want to be and is it worth the investment?
KMC
6d ago
Excluding wheelchair users whenever the market forces are not in their favor is not nice.
I mean this seriously: who fucking cares? Government is supposed to be fair and just, not nice. It is also supposed to be deliberately limited in scope and power, and demanding every single building in the country include ramps if they want to let people in off the street isn't part of it.
The crippled should take it up with God, not with Uncle Sam.
shamgar
6d ago
As for vitamin D, sleep, alcohol consumption and stress, I don't think there is a significant change in between the earlier period where I barely got ill and the past year where I caught colds/flu multiple times.
SlowBoy
6d ago
This is political sloganeering: Markey wants it both ways, saying yes and no, hoping voters like one answer or the other. If Markey really believed that this is a bad bill, and that Trump killed it, shouldn't he be thanking Trump? Wouldn't he be gloating? No, he just lapses into cliche: American values, better life, cynical Trump, etc.
Markey probably didn't even write his own statement. Someone in his office wrote it, and he signed off after making some changes. Now his statement exists as a fact in the public record I'm supposed to take as evidence of something. But taking it seriously is like trying to understand a LLM: it's just a rationalization for whatever was already decided upon.
(I'm not arguing that Markey wanted the bill to pass and is just giving kayfabe. I am arguing that his position is obviously, blatantly, contradictory. If I had to resolve that contradiction, I imagine that he thinks it was a bad immigration bill, and that his blaming Trump is purely cynical.)
This is my frustration with many discussions about politics here and this conversation in general: I think way too much credence is given to the imaginary fake facts the political world creates. "The bill was a good bill because the Border Patrol endorsed it" is like saying OMB predicts Obamacare will reduce the deficit: these are just press releases. They are treated very cynically by the people who make them. Take again Markey's statement: he wants to blame Donald Trump for leaving the border in chaos, because Trump (supposedly) stopped a bill Markey wanted stopped. Huh?
Which is back to the whole problem with the frame of OP's post: the frame that Trump tanked a good immigration bill was invented by politicos for cynical reasons. We could have given you this great border bill (that we don't want), but Trump stopped us, because he's selfish, while his supporters cheered, because, uh...? It's actually much simpler to assume that conservatives thought it was a bad deal, which explains neatly why they opposed it, why Trump opposed it, and why cons cheered when it was tanked.
You could argue that cons were wrong for thinking it was a bad deal, but the frame here basically accepts, uncritically, a cynical idea pushed by Democrats that they themselves don't believe.
shamgar
6d ago
I have recently passed 30 so it might be ageing is a part of it, but I guess I hoped significant deterioration of my immune system to start later than my early thirties. I did also get covid for sure once but probably twice. If it does have a longterm impact on the immune system that could very well be it.
I'm 100% with yah on this. Even my little city up here in the corner of the country is getting bankrupted by lying "asylum seekers" that are 100% economic migrants gaming the system. I hate it. I can't believe people are letting it happen and even cheering it on.
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