Ojo Rojo

So are you saying any economic concerns related to a huge swell in immigration are unfounded?

This has always been the biggest question for me. I spent a few hours one day researching on the web. I tried to find reliable sources and those with juxtaposed policy positions. What I discovered is that undocumented immigration either has a small benefit, net zero or small cost. It's not huge one way or the other. I haven't read anything about it, but I do worry about what the long-term effects would be of flooding the country with new poor people via some new guest worker or open borders policy. I'm reliably left of center on social issues, but I also would like to preserve our high standard of living. I would think at some point immigration would reach critical mass and would start overtaxing social services, schools, hospitals, etc. I would also think it would greatly increase the supply of cheap labor, which would lower wages among the poorest people and drive them further into poverty. I worry now about public schools. I have seen in my own neighborhood public school that more than 50% of the kids are Hispanic (and I live in a white-ass neighborhood). I don't know for sure, but I think it's the presence of multifamily housing. I see that doing nothing but increasing here. I'm guessing, but wouldn't a higher ratio of multifamily to single family tend to decrease the property tax base and the source of school funding?

Ad seg would be my guess.

Except it has everything to do with Trump because the only reason why this particular article is of interest at all (and the reason it was posted here) is because Trumptards can incorrectly use it to compare what Biden is doing to what Trump did. Classic false equivalency. As has already been pointed out, no one wants to see kids in prison-like shitty temporary housing, okay? (unless you are R and the kids are brown) But sometimes the situation dictates that is the best we can do. It's the humane, best bad option Trump could have used too, but chose family separation and cages instead to appease his racist xenophobic base.

By "he" I mean Forrest Whitley.

He seems dumb.

A lot can happen in three years. I think Jan. 6th cost Trump a lot of the relatively moderate R voters. McConnell has signaled that he wants the party to divest itself of Trump. If he wins the civil war within the party Trump won't get the nomination. If he runs as a third party candidate all the better. If Biden does a decent job and there's no crazy disaster then he'll get reelected anyway.

Nobody's mad at them yet. Wait til the taxpayer funded bailout. I don't see these people paying $100,000 electric bills.

Oh, I agree with you 100% because of my own personal politics. I'm just pointing out that the decisions were made based on a different set of priorities. I believe that government should function for the greater good of the people. Not just those who can afford to participate in the political system by direct financial contributions, lobbyists, quid pro quo and the like. But that is not the set of priorities that has won the day in our state.

Maybe true for some or even all of them. I don't know who the real decision makers are here or what their real motivations are. I try not to make a lot of assumptions. I tend to think that the politics of the state mandated fewer regulations, lower consumer costs and "free market" effects on the whole industry. And that's the biggest reason why we are where we are. I'm not willing to say yet that a few individuals decided to enrich themselves to the detriment of the greater good. That might very well have happened, but it's more because the policies of the state as a whole allowed them those decisions in the first place.

Not every effect has personal responsibility as its cause. I know a lot of conservatives think that's all there is to anything, but that's not accurate. There are very complex systems in play that affect us all. Way bigger than what one person can effect on their own. No man is an island. We're all connected, whether we like it or not. Your choices affect me and vice versa. Pretending otherwise is a fairy tale. This wasn't a failure because 2/3 of the population was too dumb. (For the record, this degenerate lawyer winterized his own house and had no busted pipes.) This was a failure at a higher, institutional level. Industry, regulators and state government are responsible. They made choices that caused this to happen. I'm not saying that they made the wrong choice even. There is at least a reasonable basis for the decision. But make no mistake, the people who made those choices did so primarily to avoid costs and increase profits. People know what to do because they are doing it already everywhere but here. That's a policy decision, ultimately. So choose - do you want to have really cheap energy and companies in that industry that are profitable and as a consequence shit like this happens every 10-20 years, or do you want to have more expensive energy and companies in the industry with lower profits and this never happens. No right or wrong answer; it's a matter of priorities, which is all any policy decision is at the end of the day.

Same. He looks to be about 17 years old in this picture. And what's up with those glasses? He just looks like a smarmy turd. Very punchable face.

The root problem of democracy is politics itself. It's too easy to get people who vote to value the wrong shit.

Definitely will be interesting to see what happens. Their only goal, though it should not be, is to maintain as much power and money as possible. That means they will do what they think is most politically advantageous, even if doing so is bad for, and would ultimately mean the end of, the United States of America as we know it. The question is, is a win more assured with or without MAGAts? It may turn out that the longer the Republican party embraces and supports MAGAt fascism the more votes they lose. That would be the case if sane Republicans are more numerous or grow faster than MAGAts. There are some indications, based on the reactions to Jan. 6, that is the case. The other strategy is to continue to embrace and support MAGA because it's the only coalition under which Republicans can win. They tolerate and suppress as much as they can while still keeping the dumb evil motherfuckers in the fold. My hope is that Mitch kicks the MAGAts to the curb and that Trump starts the Patriot Party. That would kill the Republican party for a while, which is why it won't happen. MAGAts are dumb enough to do it; Mitch and the R establishment are not.

Do one for the perfect Republican!

Me too. Former CEO of Exxon was an unconventional choice for secretary of state. It didn't really make sense to me. But okay, let's go with it. The guy is competent and Trump did say he was going to be different, so... When Tillerson said Trump was a moron it made me feel a little less crazy. After that, I knew it wasn't just me and I could feel more sure I wasn't wrong. Before that I was like the relative or friend of the girl with the guy that didn't seem to make sense. "I don't know what she/they see in him, but that's their choice. Maybe he'll turn out to be okay." LOL.

I watched a few. There was an actual coup attempt. Thousands of Trump supporters went to D.C. to try to stop Congress from certifying the results of the election. On one level, I just can't believe it actually happened. For some reason, I've never really taken the threat of Trump and his supporters seriously. They are clowns to be pitied for their utter stupidity, not feared. This felt like a parody of a presidency and of an insurrection, not an actual fascist takeover of the USA.

Excruciating to watch. I can only do like 20 seconds or so. Let's all go around the room and introduce ourselves? This isn't some small group at a fucking sales convention, this is your fucking cabinet!!! You hand-picked these people, imbecile! I think he did this because he didn't know who most of the people were or what their position was. All of the non-turds in the room had to have all been just dying inside. I wish I could hear Rex Tillerson's internal dialogue.

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I think it's funny that the acts he was impeached on the first time haven't even made anyone's list that I've read. (You know, where he attempted to coerce a foreign leader by withholding military aid, while they were in armed conflict with our No. 1 enemy I might add, in exchange for political favors.) Shows just how much crazy shit happened. Craziest thing at the time: That he got a single vote in 2016. I'm choosing this because all other things flowed from it. None of this crazy shit happens if he doesn't get elected. I remember thinking at the time that we were going to see the most unpopular presidential candidate in history (Trump) lose in a landslide to the second most unpopular candidate in history (Hillary). I really thought that was what was going to happen. I just thought there was no way Americans would vote for a reality TV star as president. Trump was too transparent; so obviously unfit for the job that I thought even stupid people couldn't possibly vote for him. I vastly overestimated the American people. Craziest thing: That after four years of an embarrassing, horrifying dumpster fire shit show where Trump absolutely showed his ass on a daily basis, over 70 MILLION people still voted for him. No single event in my lifetime has caused me to utterly lose faith in humanity more than this. There is a bright side. At least we didn't have an actual gifted political leader at this moment in time to harness all of the racist, fascist tendencies that were ripe in America for some real bad shit to go down. We are actually fortunate that the person available to seize that moment was a retarded egomaniac.

My eyes have been opened to several things over the last four years: The U.S. is A LOT more racist than I thought. U.S. citizens are a lot dumber than I thought. Destroying the entire fucking country is not as hard as I thought. The Trumptards and right wing extremist fuckheads were angered by Obama's presidency, Hillary's candidacy and emboldened to come out of the shadows by Trump's presidency. We're less than a day in, but they are already retreating back to the shadows. All of the rational and good people among us must remember this: they might not be as visible as they were BUT THEY ARE STILL THERE AND THEY STILL THINK THE SAME VIOLENT RACIST THOUGHTS.

I'm really going to miss Randy Rainbow.

This. They only deserve to occupy the anus of America.

He did it to get reelected. He knew that a pandemic on his watch was going to be bad for his reelection chances. He had two choices - accept that it was happening and do the best he could for the good of the country and probably not get reelected or deliberately downplay and downright deny the virus existed and blame the other side for making it all up and taking people's freedums. He knew that his base and those he could attract to vote for him would believe anything he said and were already opposed to "the establishment," which includes scholars and scientists and those types. Based on his priorities and character, it was really the only thing he was ever going to do.

Spot on. Talk radio had a part to play as well. I did a spot of research and discovered that the FCC abolished a rule called The Fairness Doctrine as part of deregulation to help the declining AM radio business. The Fairness Doctrine required stations to give contrasting viewpoints. Enter Rush Limbaugh. As another element of deregulation, companies were allowed to own more stations, which served to bolster conservative talk radio too. Clearchannel's (now iHeartMedia) largest contract is with Limbaugh.