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Author | Topic: The Biden Presidency | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
jar writes: The gag order is on what the BP/ICE/HS report and frankly they lie. Are you maybe thinking of different things than what was in the CNN article? Or if there are Border Patrol claims in the CNN article that are untrue, which claims were those? If you don't tell me what you think the Border Patrol is lying about I can't investigate the claims. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
I'm looking around for what information the Border Patrol might have provided the news media that might be false or exaggerated and am having no luck. https://thehill.com/...revented-from-talking-to-media-report from The Hill isn't specific about Border Patrol claims:
quote: But that's after the gag order was given. I can't seem to find what lies you might be referring to that could have reasonably caused a gag order. Of course it isn't really a gag order. The Border Patrol is apparently only being asked to follow press rules set back in 2014. https://www.nbcnews.com/...ol-can-share-media-about-n1261133 from NBC News says that Border Patrol agents were asked to deny requests for "ride-alongs", for information like the number of migrants in custody, and for photos, so presumably they were providing these things before. If the truth about the situation on the border is being misrepresented then the solution is more transparency, not less. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
jar writes: LOL Investigate away. I think we agree on most things about immigration, but I wasn't able to figure out what lies you were referring to when you said the Border Patrol lies, so I won't be able to check them out unless you describe them. This matters because if the Border Patrol can't be trusted to tell the truth then I was wrong when I said the gag order was unjustified. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
The Biden administration is apparently capable of being as abusive and full of excuses about the southern border as the Trump administration. Yesterday in response to a questions from Martha Raddatz of ABC's This Week Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas took a declarative man-the-battlements Trump-style approach, saying:
quote: Concerning the viral threat, the current immigrant influx is about 100,000 per month. We're currently providing 2.5 million doses of vaccine per day or 75 million per month. 200,000 doses for 100,000 migrants in a month is .3% of our current rate of supply. We could easily vaccinate every illegal immigrant or asylum seeker. The people we're turning back into Mexico are just as vulnerable to the virus there as in the US, if not more so. Sending migrants back into Mexico is definitely *not* compassionate. The excuse of "We're in the midst of a pandemic" is just that, an excuse. If the Biden administration can't figure out how to be more humane than Trump then they deserve all the criticism they get. When I voted for Biden it wasn't for someone who could magically turn chaos into order but for someone who would deal with chaos with compassion and humanity. The answer from Mayorkas I would have liked to have heard would have been, "Martha, at this very moment we are already building pandemic-safe facilities as rapidly as possible in order that everyone crossing the border can be housed safely and with their families if traveling together. We're arranging vaccinations and increasing the rate of processing. We'll follow the law and allow everyone who fits the appropriate criteria to remain in the country. Our primary focus will be on keeping our borders safe and secure." It can't happen soon enough that we stop hearing news reports of illegals dumped wholesale back into Mexico. That's *not* dealing with the problem. That is almost literally just dumping the problem over the wall to make it someone else's problem. And it doesn't work anyway. Many just begin making plans for their next border crossing attempt. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
Taq writes: From a logistics standpoint, it would be extremely difficult to administer vaccines that require two doses weeks apart. Sure, but for any migrants permitted to remain in the country, what other choice is there? Whether vaccination would be provided would depend upon age, just as it does for Americans. Illegals already living in the country are eligible for the vaccine in at least some jurisdictions - I wasn't able to find national information on that.
Do you think this will encourage even greater numbers to cross the border? Yes, more humane treatment would encourage more migrants to cross the border. It will be a challenge.Sure, bringing down the hammer would discourage immigration, but is that who we are? I wanted Biden to succeed Trump as president for many reasons, but one of them was that Biden was a humane and compassionate person. If he's not going to behave that way then as far as immigration goes Trump may as well still be president. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
Migrants apprehended on the southern border are placed into one of three categories:
Those in the latter two categories should be medically evaluated and treated, processed, then either held in detention, or more often prior to Trump, released into America pending their hearing, which will determine whether they get to stay in the US. I imagine that many of them spend the time awaiting their hearing preparing to disappear into the great maw of America if their application is turned down. This doesn't bother me because I believe a great many of them arrived at our borders out of pain and desperation, and whether they're able to qualify for refugee/asylum status feels like too much a crapshoot should be considered fair. If we're not going to treat them fairly then they are only behaving rationally by not trusting us and making plans for the worst. The refugee/asylum strategy requires, in large part, on telling a convincing story of how chaotic and unsafe your home region was, likely without benefit of documentation. How many people can do that effectively, especially through a translator? Here's a description of how difficult it is from Who Is Eligible for Asylum or Refugee Protection in The U.S.? | AllLaw:
quote: You've arrived with only the clothes on your back. How, other than your words, are you going to prove you were persecuted? I imagine a family all telling the same story or different aspects of the same story has a much better chance than a lone man simply telling his tale, but I don't really know. How does a Border Patrol official assess the truth/falsity of a story for which there is no evidence from people he's unfamiliar with? We don't really know for sure how cruel it is to turn migrants back into Mexico or return them to their home country. No one is tracking them and seeing how many of them or their family group are still alive a year later. Are we just repeating the same ghastly error of turning away the ship full of Jewish refugees on the St. Louis in 1939? Eventually they were able to disembark here and there in Europe where it's estimated that a quarter of them died in Nazi death camps. I sense that most in this thread want to treat those seeking refugee or asylum status compassionately. After that it varies with some not seeing how compassion is possible given current resources. But we know the resource problem isn't true. If Mexico invaded then within days (hours?) our southern border would be saturated with troops and personnel and transports and tents and the Army Core of Engineers and construction and coordinators and supply officers and etc. etc. etc. We can do this, so let's do it. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
Apparently the Biden administration is continuing the "Trump-era pandemic policy of immediately sending asylum-seekers back to Mexico or their home countries without due process, otherwise known as expulsions." I assume the same goes for those requesting refugee status. It's not being enforced as strictly as under Trump, but I couldn't find figures. See Immigrants Crossing US Border Say They Know The Risks "But There Are No Options For Us".
From what I can gather, the reason the current problem is mostly one of migrant children is because the Trump-era policy of expelling them has been discarded while the rest of the policy is still mostly being followed. The article says that some parts of Mexico have stopped accepting expelled families with children under 6, so we're obviously still expelling families with children. I didn't vote for being only 40% or 50% or 60% or whatever it is less inhumane than Trump. We should build up our ability to deal with the migrant influx until we can treat everyone humanely and compassionately. The Biden administration should provide the public some evidence (through media access - I never expected the Biden administration would need reminding of this) that this is happening. As an aside: I don't like the bulldog approach of Biden's press secretary, Jen Psaki. That's just more Trump-era stuff. Sure, she's nicer and more open than Sarah Sanders or Kayleigh McEnany, but that isn't saying much. She can irrationally defend the indefensible with the best of them. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
Taq writes: Percy writes:
I would imagine that they may not know who is staying in the country and who may be deported immediately. Sure, but for any migrants permitted to remain in the country, what other choice is there? Unless "deported immediately" includes the possibility that they could remain in detention for more than a short while, those who are deported immediately shouldn't be a vaccination problem. Those who are allowed to remain should be vaccinated. You raised logistics as an issue, I think meaning just difficulties in general with vaccination. Solving it could involve housing them for 3-4 weeks until they get the second shot, or giving them the J&J as AZPaul3 suggests, though that one's having production problems at the moment.
Then you have the issue of tracking individual people who may not have IDs and may not be fully cooperative, and they are being moved from shelter to shelter. I completely agree with your sentiments, but the pragmatic side of me grimaces at the thought of how to follow through with it. This all feels very manageable for the greatest country in the world, but that doesn't mean we can do it without making a concerted effort. We have to at least try, and right now it looks like we're not trying. Non-minors are not a serious problem right now because when Biden tried to let everyone stay it was challenged in court and the Trump rules invoking the pandemic emergency held sway. Most non-minor migrants are being returned to Mexico right now.
Yes, more humane treatment would encourage more migrants to cross the border. It will be a challenge. Sure, bringing down the hammer would discourage immigration, but is that who we are? Good question. Is it politically viable for Biden to let all of these immigrants into the country and the millions more that would surely follow? I think it would be political suicide which says a lot about where our country stands on the issue. What we have is a humanitarian crisis. It demands that we respond with humanity, not cruelty a la Trump and like so many people who have been persuaded by him to deny any humanity to people in crisis. The US admits around a million immigrants a year from around the world. I don't think we'd have much trouble absorbing all the people fleeing conditions in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Border patrol agents apprehend one or two hundred thousand illegals each year. Even if a huge proportion of migrants who try to cross are successful, say half, that's still only maybe two or three hundred thousand illegals each year. It seems manageable.
In a practical sense, could we take in every person across the globe that wanted to immigrate to the US? I highly doubt it. So where do we draw the line? I don't know if there is a good answer to that question. It might be better to ask if we could take in everyone around the world who wanted to come here who was in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. I don't know how many that is, but we should work with our allies to come up with programs to reduce unrest, famine, etc., and also to share the immigration load. And the UN should be involved. Everyone else who wants to come can follow the normal immigration channels. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
By that I mean Sundays will never be the same as they were under Trump. I usually watch one or two of the Sunday morning political programs. I like ABC's This Week and NBC's Meet the Press best, but I also listen to Fox News Sunday and CBS's Face the Nation a fair amount of the time.
The one big change across all these programs is that we no longer see senior administration officials start talking and never stop, often using the initial question as just a launching point for the messages they wanted to get across. Kellyanne Conway and Rudy Giuliani were its most infamous, intense and enthusiastic practitioners, but pretty much all Trump officials took that approach, like Peter Navarro, Stephen Miller, Sarah Sanders, Kayleigh McEnany, Mick Mulvaney, Steve Bannon, and on and on. And many of the more prominent Republican members of Congress followed the same playbook, like Ron Johnson, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. And then there's the lies. Most were mendacious, but even some of the most well meaning people caused a great deal of damage. I know she meant well, and she didn't talk over her interlocutors, and I don't think she knew she was doing it, but Deborah Birx spread some key misinformation while trying to speak publicly while not getting on the wrong side of Trump. Because of this it took her longer than Fauci to find herself on the outside looking in, but her careful wording didn't prevent her eventual banishment. I won't miss Chuck Todd on Meet the Press trying to break in for five straight minutes of a Kellyanne Conway answer, uttering "but...but..." every ten seconds or so. Sunday mornings are much more pleasant now, but more importantly, more informative. I do wish that press secretary Jen Psaki would be more informative and less aggressive in interviews. She can come across more as the administration's defender than its spokesperson. Best Sunday host at breaking in and not allowing a guest to ramble on for minutes? Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
I'm very disappointed in the Biden administration's performance thus far, mainly because of the pandemic and Afghanistan.
Biden cannot be faulted for the low vaccination rate, but he can be faulted for his milquetoast response to mask and vaccine resistance. His administration should have been requiring and enforcing masks and vaccinations nationwide, then fought vigorously in the courts for it. He might have ultimately lost, but it would have been the right thing to do, both practically and politically. Biden can be completely faulted for the disaster in Afghanistan. Getting out of Afghanistan is exactly the right thing to do, but the way he's doing it is completely wrongheaded. Either he made terrible decisions or was given terrible information and advice by his advisors. There should have been months of planning and a slow, stealthy drawdown of weapons and personnel. Biden today does not seem the same person he was during a lifetime in government. I'm not talking about being a gaffe machine, that's a given. I'm wondering what happened to his honesty and competence. Here's hoping Biden can turn this around, because otherwise Trump or a Trump wannabe will be back in the White House in 2025. Certainly the groundwork is being laid for returning the House and Senate to the Republicans in 2022. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8
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Phat writes: And the only reason I liked Trump diplomacy in any way was that he thought American interests were getting taken advantage of by foreign interests who benefited from us more than we did from them. What benefits would those be?
Otherwise, I'm glad to be rid of Trump....but more like him will come if the small businessmen and uneducated retirees get passed over in favor of globalism. What's wrong with policies that benefit the world as a whole rather than just the countries with the most economic and military power?
Am I again ignorant of the BIG PICTURE? Someone enlighten me. Respectfully, of course. You're ignoring the big picture. You focus myopically on benefiting the US and leave the rest of the world out of your considerations. About "someone enlighten me," people have been enlightening you in this thread over and over again. It doesn't matter how many different ways you ask the same question, the answer won't change. It doesn't matter how many different ways you phrase your contradictory scenarios, they'll remain contradictory. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8
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Here's the national debt since 1900:
The national debt has never been paid off, so why do you think that yours is the generation that will be asked to pay it off? Why do you think our national debt is particularly onerous? A certain amount of our taxes goes to pay off the interest and some of the principle of the national debt each year. What proportion of our taxes is paid by each income group? According to one conservative group, the trend has been for the rich to pay an increasing proportion of the national tax bill since 1980:
(I spent a few minutes seeking confirmation of the information in this graph but came up dry - perhaps someone knows a source that would confirm or deny this.)
It would be as if you were suddenly slapped with $100,000.00 in debt and told that you must pay it back. Who is saying you'll be slapped with a bill for your share of the national debt? What propagandists are you listening to? Tucker Carlson? NewsMax? The reality is that you'll continue to pay taxes according to your tax bracket. Given your income ($27,000/year) and the standard exemption, your effective tax rate is almost zero. You're living in a fantasy world of conservative construction because it's much more exciting than the mundane world you actually inhabit. You've got this inner need to bring the message of salvation to the world, whether it be financial or religious, but you have enormous difficulty saying anything that is actually true. This is because you choose your facts based on who sounds most convincing to you rather than on actual facts. You're destined to be a sucker all your life. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Grammar.
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8
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Phat writes: I realize that you have a point, but will note that I do not listen to either Fox or NewsMax. I make up my own ideas. You do not make up your own ideas. Wherever they're coming from, in this thread you're pretty much following one of the Republican scripts.
Who is saying you'll be slapped with a bill for your share of the national debt? Im saying that the figures are so going out of sync with reality that sometime soon, we will either default or China (or someone else) will dump their dollars and send the dollar itself into orbit. The game cant be played too much longer. You've said the exact same thing before, and if I wasn't stopping myself I would cite the exact same numbers that you ignored last time. Why don't we reverse the roles. Using math, please explain how "the figures are so going out of sync with reality"? Your Chinese scenario has severe negative consequences for their economy. China dumping US treasuries would cause the dollar to drop a little but the Yuan to rise, thereby making Chinese exports more expensive internationally, driving down demand for their goods and causing widespread Chinese unemployment, an outcome China desperately needs to avoid to maintain order. The consequences for the US would be minor as the dollars, the treasure securities, would easily find a new home. China only holds $1.1 trillion of US debt - total world debt is $288 trillion. If the Chinese were to dump their US debt it would be like throwing a pebble into the ocean.
The reality is that the dollar itself will be the bubble that pops. Please explain how that would happen.
I'll admit that I don't know whether what I say is true,... A person of integrity waits until he knows the truth before speaking. You're just spreading Republican panic points.
...but I feel that I intuitively see the handwriting on the wall. What is puzzling to me is how the lot of you see no problem with the dollar bubble popping. Have you ever considered what will happen to your net worth and buying power? Please explain it to us, oh Obi-wan! Only you can save us.
Don't you want to protect your own interests or do you simply think that the bills will be paid and that if the rest of the world benefits more than the US it is meant to happen? Of course I want to protect my interests. That's why I don't take my financial advice from an inarticulate grocery worker so unable to manage his very common medical condition that it is affecting his brain. Start saying stuff that makes sense and connecting the dots and maybe people will start paying attention. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8
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Phat writes: So what if China created a new digital Yuan and tied it to Gold? No modern economy, especially one the size of China's, could tie their currency to gold. No modern economy currently ties their currency to the value of any mineral, including gold, and there's a couple good reasons for that. One is that their economy could grow no faster than the increase in supply of the mineral. Another is that the value of their currency would be tied to the value of a mineral whose value could be manipulated by other nations. I explained all this to you a short while back - you ignored it. You are running in circles and wallowing in self-imposed ignorance. You still haven't explained why China would take an action that would cause them great harm and us little.
You DO realize that China owns more gold than they admit in official figures. I never thought or cared about it. Two questions:
Or do you think I fell for that lie also? I think you fall for any good story. You're a snake oil salesman's dream. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
Phat, seriously, get help.
--Percy
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