(Originally posted at 10:34 but moved up.)
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, Arizona Public Media reported Saturday.
The Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting her first “Congress on Your Corner” event at the Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.
At least five other people were injured, and the gunman was reportedly tackled by a bystander and is in custody.
UPDATE: Giffords was one of the crosshairs in Sarah Palin’s infamous map of targeted politicians.
UPDATE: NPR is reporting that Giffords and six others were killed by the gunman, and that nine others were injured.
UPDATE: According to the Huffington Post, a hospital spokeswoman told MSNBC that Giffords is still alive, and is currently in surgery.
UPDATE: Daily Kos is reporting that Giffords’s Republican opponent in the last election had a “Get on Target for Victory” fundraising party at a shooting range. Also, people on Twitter are reporting that Sarah Palin’s website has just been scrubbed of all mentions of Giffords. The “Take Back the 20” website that featured the map is down. Slog commenter Mdurango points out that Sarah Palin’s target map on the Take Back the 20 site is still, intermittently, up, and still features Giffords. Sorry, folks: I’m trying to separate the bullshit from the real, but it’s all flying hot and heavy today.
UPDATE 12:13 pm: Aaaand it just occurred to me to start time-stamping these. Huffington Post says that a federal judge may have been shot at the scene, too. When asked if his daughter had any enemies, Giffords’s father replied, “The whole tea party.” In addition, we have comments from Sarah Palin:
My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona.
On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.
And President Obama:
This morning, in an unspeakable tragedy, a number of Americans were shot in Tuscon, Arizona, at a constituent meeting with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. And while we are continuing to receive information, we know that some have passed away, and that Representative Giffords is gravely wounded.
We do not yet have all the answers. What we do know is that such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society. I ask all Americans to join me and Michelle in keeping Representative Giffords, the victims of this tragedy, and their families in our prayers.
UPDATE: 12:47 pm: Here’s the New York Times report:
Dr. Steven Rayle, a former emergency room doctor who now works in a hospice, said that he had witnessed the shootings. He said the congresswoman was standing behind a table outside the Safeway greeting passersby when the gunman approached her from behind, held a gun about a foot from her head and began firing.
“He must have got off 20 rounds,” he said. Ms. Giffords slumped to the ground and staff members immediately rushed to her aid, Dr. Rayle said.
Dr. Rayle said he performed CPR on some of the victims. He said one of the victims was a young child and appeared to be in critical condition with a gunshot wound.
He said that one of the staffers tackled the gunman and that he and others helped detain the suspect. The doctor described the gunman as a white male in his mid-20s with short hair and “dressed in a shabby manner.”
There’s a press conference streaming live right here in audio and right here in video.
12:56: The gunman has been identified as “Jared Laughner of Arizona, born September 1988.” UPDATE: It’s spelled “Loughner”.
1:02: Keith Olbermann is reporting on Twitter that “Rep. Giffords is out of surgery and alive.” Huffington Post and others are saying doctors are “optimistic,” but she is still in critical condition. The judge who was injured was identified as John Roll.
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
She was on Sarah Palin’s target map. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24…
She was hit in the head, terrible. I hope that she and the others who were wounded recover.
The sheriff reports so many wounded – “at least twelve”, I’ve just read.
NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED
In May, Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick, also targeted by Sarah Palin, said this:
Yes, National Guard. Yes, “border region is out of control.” But the bigger threat appears to be internal.
And may the congresswoman, if she survives, have a fast and full recovery. But I can’t help wishing the Democrats would go in-your-face, with Giffords’s/family’s permission, by submitting legislation for the Gabrielle Giffords Healthcare Reform Expansion Act.
Holy fuck, I thought about going to that.
Sarah Palin’s incitement to murder should rightfully see her arrested and charged.
she is dead…
Paul, I know you don’t work Saturdays, but I was wondering how committed you are to giving updates. For example, azcentral dot com is reporting that four of the people shot are dead.
Thanks for going the extra mile by spending your time off covering this.
She’s dead, according to the latest. I can’t imagine how her family must feel right now. Am expecting the world’s most insensitive statement from Palin in 3, 2, 1…
I’m so sad right now. I met a bunch of her staffers during the health care debate and most of them were just kids. Not that it would be better if they were older but I still kind of hope that none of the staffers who were killed were the college students.
Can we finally call Sarah Palin and the other Tea Baggers what they are? An organized terrorist organization?
The witness at Gawker says the guy also shot a kid. What a fucking country.
Oh, ever wonder what it was like living in Germany around 1931 or 1932? Well, wonder no more. You’re living it!!!
(buy a gun folks, the proto-Nazi’s have the taste of blood now and it’s gonna be one hell of a ride)
Sarah Palin had targeted her:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24…
March 2010. Who is responsible, eh?
@15 – With great sadness I agree with you.
This is the way the right wing works: Killing elected officials. You saw this before folks.
Please call it what it is: an assassination, a suprise attack, and killing of a public figure.
..and terroism
Those who live by gun, die by the gun. Jesus said so. Let’s teach Sarah Palin and her ilk what the second amendment really means!
@8: Oh please, Sarah Palin’s staffer once had some childish fun with graphics. Nothing more than that. You think Sarah is slapping a high five now?
Is this a Second Amendment solution?
There was just a “target Giffords” event the other day where participants were also invited to shoot a full-auto M16.
This is sickening and tragic. But it will ultimately help Democrats, and all decent people, to further box Republicans into a “violent crazy” corner. Where they belong.
Hey, Jan Brewer, was the shooter one of yours? He sounds like one of yours. How about you, McCain?
This is distressing, to say the least. The right and their talk boxes – Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck – are all to blame for this. Rile people up, and people get violent.
Very weird. MSNBC was carrying an affiliate feed and a reporter on the scene said that her source, inside the hospital, has confirmed that Giffords has died–and MSNBC broke away from the affiliate feed to basically say “Yeah, this is breaking news…you can’t trust reports on the scene.”
@22, no, she won’t say anything; just walk around with a smug look on her face.
from a commenter on the Huffington Post on Sarah Palin’s gunsight map:
“ProFromOre 12:01 PM on 3/29/2010
17 Fans
When I first saw this poster with the ‘gun sights’ on it, something didn’t sit right with me. I’ve been around guns since I was a kid, and I just didn’t see ‘gun sight’ when I first saw the symbol.
It didn’t dawn on me until last night when I was cleaning up some stuff from my desk and I ran across a welcome packet I received a while back from Southern Poverty Law Center after I had joined their org. In the packet is a map of hate groups and in one of the sidebars, there is an area discussing different hate groups.
My mouth fell open when I looked at it THIS time. Right there, in the section on white nationalists was the ‘gun sight’. It’s the logo for Stormfront!
I’d never seen this logo before I saw it on the SPLC map. I did a quick search at http://images.google.com/ on the terms ‘white nationalist’ and found out the ‘gun sight’ is the logo for Stormfront, a white supremacist site and forum. Look for yourself. Search Google images on the terms ‘stormfront logo’.
Wow… “
Perhaps the gunman was movtivated because he just shopped at Target.
My heart had been so helium-filled, on this unexpected playoff day……..
The ‘baggers have a helluva lot to answer for this morning.. As does every rightwing douchebag with a bully pulpit.. Blood on your fuckin hands, blood on your goddamned hands you sorry pieces of fuck…
fuck.
@22. Very irresponsible, inflamatory “childish fun” don’t you think?
No, I don’t think she’s high fiving anyone. I also don’t think she’s losing any sleep over what she incited.
Some ambiguity just now as to whether she still survives. I hope for her recovery. But I hope she doesn’t survive only to be a vegetable. A gun shot wound to the head doesn’t usually end up with what the docs call “a good result”, even if technically the victim survives. As for the political fallout, I wish I could be as optimistic as Fnarf.
What we have wrought. And the shooter sounds like little more than a kid himself, from the NPR report. Get me outta here.
@all
We should really tone down the “who’s to blame” rhetoric (i.e. that the shooter was a teabagger/Palinite). She was a little on the blued dog side so it’s possible (however very unlikely) that it was a crazy leftist. I’m sure we’ll find out pretty soon but it is a good idea to wait and see.
New reports indicate she is alive and in surgery. NPR’s got an update news feed here: http://m.npr.org/story/132764807
The footage they’re showing on CNN is from KGUN out of Phoenix. Priceless.
@32
I agree. After the shootings in Pennsylvania and the Alabama (?) that were directly related to conservative commentators there was no backlash whatsoever.
I feel sick.
The “takebacthe20” web site works intermittently; Gabrielle GIffords is still included on the list.
The latest update from KJZZ (Phoenix NPR) that Rep. Gif fords is in surgery.
The weapon used was an “assault rifle”.
Great time be living in AZ … Fucking lunatics …
On MSNBC they just had a report that it was a 9mm glock and not an assault rifle. Or at least they recovered one from the scene.
fox painfully obvious attempt to distract from shooting: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/08/ari…
Terrible. I guess it’s not shocking given the political climate in this country where one side demonizes the other and frames political discourse as a struggle of good versus evil.
Palin has just posted a Facebook note. Damage control?
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id…
fox’s painfully obvious attempt to distract from shooting: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/08/ari…
@41: common sense tells me that if she was indeed shot at close range, no way she would be in critical condition if it was any kind of rifle.
Wait, wtf? So Gabby is shot and their story is about her husband flying the shuttle?! Grrrrr….
Tragic. While I’m making a reasonable guess this is politically motivated (the murderer may be a whackjob but I’m sure he didn’t pick Giffords at random), we’re fortunate that, in this country, we seldom settle our political differences through violence. I’m amazed we haven’t had more politically-inspired violence the past few decades as extremists (and some not-so-extremists) on both the left and right have demonized the other side.
43/Gern: I guess it’s not shocking given the political climate in this country where one side demonizes the other and frames political discourse as a struggle of good versus evil.
One side demonizes the other? You mean each side demonizes the other, don’t you? (Exhibit A: 18/Vince: “This is the way the right wing works: Killing elected officials.”)
@49 Yes each side demonizes each other but don’t even pretend that it’s an equitable distribution.
Remember that Department of Homeland Security Report in early 2009 that said:
“The DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) has no specific information that domestic rightwing* terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues. The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-4…
@45 – I had to check four or five times to make sure that wasn’t actually from The Onion. I really don’t want to believe that a real, sincere human being can be legitimately that out of touch.
Perhaps you should try to separate the bullshit from the real *before* clicking “Post”.
KJZZ, the NPR station in Tempe, AZ, should be having live coverage of a press conference at the medical center in just a few minutes. Listen here:
http://kjzz.org/listen/ontheweb/
oh yes it’s very equal, jfk, mlk rfk, gg, compared to one attempt on rr.
oh wait that’s four to one.
let’s drill down and look at community organizer level. there’s obviously a equality in who gets shot and lynched, the community organizers on the left, and on the right.
oh wait, um, can’t think of a single right winger community organizer ever shot, yet thousands of blacks seeking rights or human status were lynched.
yeah, it’s equal. uh huh. sure. just like gwb got equal rights under law with al gore in that bush v. gore thing, it’s all very equal.
fucking murderers.
A federal judge, John Roll, was shot and killed there as well. Sez MSNBC.
Re 54: Press conference now scheduled for 12:45 PST (1:45 in Arizona). To clarify, KJZZ is in the Phoenix/Tempe area; the press conference will live at the medical center in Tucson, where the shootings took place.
http://kjzz.org/listen/ontheweb/
just heard from on Tucson KVOA live stream that they expect Gabby to make it out of surgery.
Looking forward to the inevitable finger-nail removing part of the assassin’s torture. May his body be left exposed to be rent and ripped by voracious dogs and the talons of birds.
Holly Scheisse!!!!
(Press conference will be live…)
@53: It’s not like I’m on the scene in Arizona. I’m in my living room. Blogs are messy, especially in breaking-news situations. If I make a mistake, I’ll correct it. That’s the deal.
50/bassplayerguy, I didn’t say that each side demonizes each other to the exact same degree. I’m just saying the right doesn’t have a patent on it, although I would agree with you that they are, overall, worse than the left.
I thought the whole point of everyone carrying a concealed weapon was to prevent this shit from happening.
I am doing my best not to sling around withering generalities about Arizona, the Tea Party, demagogues, and the psychopathically ignorant. But it’s hard.
Christ. Politics is never worth a life.
Damn, Judgepedia lists that judge MSNBC’s reporting dead as having ruled in 2009 that illegal immigrants had standing in a suit before him, then had to get marshals to protect him from death threats:
http://judgepedia.org/index.php/John_Rol…
I’m wondering if this has any correlation at all to the fact that takebackthe20.com has been down all morning.
Sarah Palin should be held partially, if not mostly responsible. Seriously, she’s inciting people to kill 20 house Dems. How many of them actually have to die before she’s arrested?
@65 except when you are a member of the American Taliban:
” For Jesus verily said go forth and gun down those who think differently than you, for this shall be the surest way to heaven.”
Join WWJMTW [Who Would Jesus Murder This Week]
Jesus Fucking Christ. This is why I no longer live in AZ, this is why I will not go back to AZ and visit my family. The GOP has fucking RUINED my home state with complete their lack of gun laws (sure, take a gun into the bar!), the lack of environmental regulations, the red-neck tea-bagger mentality, etc. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I hope they find this asshole, I hope he’s a white teabagger rather than anyone of Hispanic nationality, and I hope they string him up by each little hair on his teeny-tiny balls before they pull out each of his fingernails and toenails. (I’d say hang him by his dick, but he obviously doesn’t have one – going after a crowd with an assault rifle – dickless and spineless.)
The only good thing is that this happened in Pima County rather than Maricopa County, which is so totally corrupt, Sheriff Joe would be out there shaking this asshole’s hand. Fuck!!!!!!!!
20 shots to the back of the head from a foot away? How could anyone survive that? Perhaps the reason her condition is still being called “unconfirmed” is because they need to get in touch with her husband.
Jared Loughner:
http://azstarnet.com/events/collection_a…
Shooter was Jared Laughner. He doesn’t appear to have a Facebook page, at least not viewable by me.
MSNBC has reported from the hospital that Congresswoman Giffords will survive.
Gus, that gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. As far as I’m concerned, every anti-immigrant person in Arizona is an accessory to murder today.
Canuck, my KJZZ stream keeps cutting out, but I believe I heard a Pima County sheriff’s spokesman say that 18 people had been struck and 6 had died. So perhaps one bullet apiece. Hospital spokesman now saying that they are very optimistic about Rep. Giffords, who is “responding to commands.” Surgery is completed.
Whoa. Child died. Congressman out of neurosurgery and head of trauma is optimistic about her recovery. Five still in surgery.
I’m with you, Fnarf. I’m shaking.
@70: People shoot THEMSELVES in the head and occasionally survive. It’s all about where exactly the bullet hits and at what trajectory.
Live news conference at hospital at 1:03pm pacific time:
10 patients at this one hospital, 1 has died, 5 critical condition, 5 patients in the operating room undergoing surgery. Congressmwoman Giffords is in critical condition, she is out of neurosurgery at this time. She was shot once in the head,… “through and through,” can’t say in what direction she was shot.
The deceased was a young child.
Doctor is “about as optimistic as it can get in this situation” re: giffords. Giffords is under anesthesia, so unknown whether she will be in a coma, or whatnot.
Child was approximately 9 years old. That was the only child that came into this hospital.
@70, no, Canuck, she was shot once in the head, “through and through” according the surgeon who is speaking now on TV. He says she’s out of surgery and he is optimistic that she will make a recovery, though he wouldn’t say exactly what level of recovery. She was apparently talking and responding as she was being brought in.
A nine-old-girl died at the hospital. Police are saying four others died on the scene (including the judge).
FUCK YOU, Sarah Palin – you murdering cunt. You have blood on your hands !!
she was shot once in the head, through and through, according to the head of trauma. she is out of surgery and in intensive care. i pray if she has survived this far, she will be all right.
Sarah Palin didn’t murder anyone.
But her actions and words and the tone of her idiotic rhetoric certainly help fuel conspiracy nuts like this guy may turn out to be.
Free Republic is down right now. Coincidence?
It’s Jared Loughner, with an ‘o’. Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Classitup10#…
My suggestion, Paul, is to stop looking at HuffPo and Olbermann and turn on your TV and see the only first-hand reports. The surgeon, the sheriff, the mayor of Tuscon have spoken. That’s where HuffPo and others’ info is coming from, and they’re garbling it slightly (as is normal).
I’m guessing Giffords’ husband is not going to be on that last shuttle now.
Obama will be on camera any minute now.
@82, I appreciate you linking that for us. That is so horrifying. “My final thoughts…” the antifederalism, “government is controlling our minds through grammar”, currency backed by gold and silver…a military recruit….just fucking eeeeek.
will he say the truth, that the gop crazy wing stirs this up? or just bemoan another “senseless tragedy”?
@82: Excellent find. Assuming this is the same person, we will likely be hearing a lot about these videos in the coming days.
The poor little girl! I really feel for her and her parents!
@82: Christ, what a nutjob.
“The majority of citizens in the United States of America have never read the United States of America’s Constitution.
You don’t have to accept the federalist laws.
Nonetheless, read the United States of America’s Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.
…In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can’t trust the current government because of the ratifications: The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar. No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver! No! I won’t trust in God!”
And this is the most literate section.
@Fnarf There’s a Jared Laughner on Facebook that went to Chandler High School in Chandler, AZ. It doesn’t give any other information about him though.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=h#!/…
Youtube site makes him sound like a libertarian who views the original constitution as some sort of bible.
Grammar Nazi…?
The cult of violence – cornerstone to right-wing political thought – has finally spillt the dikes. Here is your well-regulated militia: tragic as it is unsurprising. Freedom is something which must be defended and guns are both the means and ends to this. Last I was in S. Carolina, I watched as three young black men hopped a fence, presumably taking a short-cut over to the park next-door. Inside the fence-owner’s house, a man shouts: “Tom, the race-war’s started!” and trundled out with a fucking shotgun. Fortunately, the guys had booked it and were off his property by the time he made it out the door. Guns are a self-fulfilling prophecy.
@82, oh, my God. He’s a nutjob. Maybe not even a real teabagger. Here’s some samples:
“The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar”
“You don’t have to accept the federalist laws”
“No! I will not pay debt with a currency that is not backed by gold and silver!”
“The majority of people, who reside in District-8 are illiterate” [comma sic]
“If you’re [sic] editing of every belief and religion reaches the final century then the writer for every belief and religion is you.”
He claims to be a military recruit at MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Facility) in Phoenix. That must not have gone too well, seeing as he was described as “scruffy” in Tuscon.
Holy crap, it’s Matt Luby!
No, even Luby didn’t say things like “987,123,478,961,876,341,234,671,234,098,601,978,618 is the year in B.C.E.”
I’ll bet you could torture this jackass mercilessly by pointing out the grammatical errors in his screeds about grammar.
Update: Tucson, not Tuscon. Sorry!
@89 – It looks like some attention seekers are creating fake FB profiles. That wasn’t there/searchable 25 minutes ago. He did have a MySpace that looks like it was scrubbed and National Journal reports his last MySpace status message was a goodbye to his friends (http://twitter.com/marcambinder/status/2…)
BBC’s North America editor:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/…
Pres. Obama just started speaking
He claims to have been removed by police from Pima Community College “for talking”, thereby rendering the Constitution invalid, or something. Indeed, “All United States of America’s college programs are unconstitutional colleges that’s in accordance with the United States of America’s Constitution.”
He obviously was really taken with his first day of Logic 101 there. Everything he writes is in if/then logical symbolism. He reminds me of Richard Lee (I took Philosophy of Science with Richard Lee at SCCC a million years ago; he was similarly obsessed with logically “proving” his various and sundry stupidities).
Oh, this is good too: “Thus, Algebra is a free source for education on the Internet”.
And “If I’m thinking of adding the 1 new symbol and number to the current alphabet and number system then I’m thinking of creating 1 new symbol and number to the current alphabet and number system.”
His “new symbol and number” can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fnarf/53366… Please tell me that’s not a man with a gun standing over a person who’s just been shot.
“The students are attending a torture facility!”
I’m guessing that some people at Pima will remember this guy.
Ugh, this news is sickening. Does “Loughner” rhyme with “loner”?
I am doing my best not to sling around withering generalities about Arizona, the Tea Party,
I think it’s typical for people to do that when it comes to groups of people, or things, they dislike while abhorring it when others generalize about people, or things, they like. I think people tend to be more partisan than principled.
During last week’s recitation of the [abridged] Constitution on the House floor, Rep. Giffords read the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law… prohibiting… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”).
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?…
To a much greater extent than most in Congress, Rep. Giffords’s willingness to sit at a folding table in front of a Safeway and speak face-to-face with individual constituents shows her dedication to her elected post.
@22 & 29 Which of the following statements is true:
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.” -Sarah Palin
People need to realize that death panels exist at every private insurance company in this country! They are called utilization management or utilization review departments. They are the insurance company employees that decide, based on medical information submitted by your doctor, whether you will receive a certain treatment or not. They make these decisions based on cost versus probable outcome. How many days are you allowed to stay in the hospital? Are you allowed to have a surgery suggested by your doctor? Is your chemotherapy going to be approved? Will you be allowed to have a CT scan or MRI? How about that liver transplant? -Jillian Barclay Salon.com
Yes, there is accusations of horrible behavior on the right and the left. The difference is in that the Left’s accusations are based on facts, and the Right’s are made up in order to energize their base to go crazy at town halls and incite violence.
It’s not even close to close to the same thing.
@71 Holy fuck, my wife was running a table at the festival. His Youtube channel was all of this bizarre shit about the mind control through grammar and a bunch of stuff that didn’t make any sense at all.
72/Fnarf: “As far as I’m concerned, every anti-immigrant person in Arizona is an accessory to murder today.“
Do you, and others, intentionally conflate people who are anti-illegal immigration with people who are anti-immigration? Or is that just due to laziness?
In the 80s, I was with a woman who’s Latina. Her parents were both from New Mexico and their parents had come to the U.S. from Mexico, legally. Her mother and father were both adamantly anti-illegal-immigration but very supportive of any Mexicans who came here legally, like their parents did.
Furthermore, if every anti-[illegal] immigrant person in Arizona is an accessory to murder today then, by that reasoning, every Arab-Muslim who was anti-American before 9/11 is an accessory to murder for the slaughter of people that day.
@104: “
Do you, and others, intentionally conflate people who are anti-illegal immigration with people who are anti-immigration?”
Yes. Absolutely.
The two are completely indistinguishable.
If it is only *illegal* immigration that is the issue, there is a VERY simple solution: provide a path to legalization, and actually ALLOW immigrants to enter this country.
Nobody on the anti-immigrant right will support that, they cry and throw tantrums about the horrors of AMNESTY!!
It is purely anti-immigrant bullshit through and through. This “oh, I’m totally fine with immigration, just not ILLEGAL immigration” is a complete load of racist bullshit.
Oh no, education on any kind of hispanic issues is being openly attacked, attempts at making english-only a law, etc etc etc.
Every piece of rhetoric is anti-immigrant, and thoroughly dehumanizing. I am constantly offended by such blatant racism and hatred, and it is ABSURD for your asshats to circle-jerk to “oh I love Taco Bell, I just don’t like ILLEGALS.”
Well maybe if ANYONE HAD A FUCKING OPTION TO COME HERE LEGALLY, THEY WOULD DO THAT.
All of these horrible “ILLEGALS” you’re so afraid of spend YEARS, thousands of dollars (and they’re nearly always poor), risk life and limb, merely for a CHANCE to come here legally, but THEY DO NOT HAVE THAT OPTION.
Until you lying sacks of shit actually stand up and advocate for increasing immigration quotas and providing a path to citizenship for immigrants, I do’nt want to hear it, and you can FUCK OFF.
Oh, and also: you met a Latina in the 1980s?
WOW. That’s just. Wow, that’s shocking! I’m so amazed!
I’ll bet you have a negro friend too.
Do you, and others, intentionally conflate people who are anti-illegal immigration with people who are anti-immigration?”
Yes. Absolutely. The two are completely indistinguishable.
I see.
What part of…
“In the 80s, I was with a woman who’s Latina. Her parents were both from New Mexico and their parents had come to the U.S. from Mexico, legally. Her mother and father were both adamantly anti-illegal-immigration but very supportive of any Mexicans who came here legally, like their parents did.
…were you unable to comprehend?
Oh, and also: you met a Latina in the 1980s?
I did indeed. And if you spent less time on internet message boards screaming at everyone who doesn’t see things as simplistically as you obviously do, you could meet one too.
It’s ignorant bullshit. Clearly you know nothing about Latin America. I’m sure they were fairly well-off, educated, and fairly white, which is the case with practically any latinos who are able to attain legal immigration status.
What part of: “you are a racist asshole and fuck off”
did you not understand?
@108: did you not maybe think that perhaps Mexicans could operate the internets, and that you’re talking to one?
Re 73, at 15:40 PST, KJZZ again confirmed 18 people struck, 6 dead.
@75: I heard of a case once where a man was shot in between the eyes, execution style. The low-caliber bullet deflected oddly when it broke through the skull, and really just traced several equatorial laps around the inside of his skull, leaving him with almost no damage to the brain.
@98: Looks like someone trying to start a lawnmower to me.
Until you . . . advocate for increasing immigration quotas
OK, let’s play you-get-to-make-the-rules.
1. What total number of people would you allow to enter the U.S. legally each year?
2. What basis would you use for determining who gets to immigrate?
So, so sad the hear that a child has died, in addition to the others. Good link to the BBC, gus, such an awful culture of hate we manage to produce here, I can’t imagine what Europeans think when they read about us.
@113: Well, your argument is that the problem is simply people being illegal. So why not have open borders? Doesn’t that solve the problem?
Or is the problem actually immigration itself, which you don’t like?
Yeah, open borders, where everyone is legal, sure would solve the problem of illegality.
So is that what you think should be done? If you were making the rules, would you declare open borders? After all, since you’re clearly in favor of poor people from Mexico (and, presumably, other countries as well) being able to legally come to the U.S., why would you want to prevent any poor person from being able to do that?
@108: did you not maybe think that perhaps Mexicans could operate the internets
Are you kidding? It was a Mexican, Alberto Jorgez, who invented the internets.
@116: Why don’t you answer the question.
It’s your logic, not mine. I’m not the one saying that legal immigration is totally fine that only *illegal* immigrants are a problem.
My logic is entirely different.
For me, my main concern is economic vitality and crime. So naturally, I prefer high immigration rates.
@117: I thought it was Al Gore!
@116: Why don’t you answer the question.
I asked you two questions @ 113 that you ignored. I’d like to know what your ideal immigration plan would be if you could make the rules.
venomlash, Alberto Jorgez. He was, after all, Mexican.
@120:
Oh great. We get to play the “No I asked you first game.”
Because clearly you have no solutions of your own other than racist diatribe:
If you’re curious, I think the current quota system is very racist, and unreasonable because if you happen to be coming from certain countries, you have a very high chance of coming to the US. If you happen to come from say, Mexico, you have basically ZERO chance of coming to the US unless you’re wealthy or a highly educated professional. So the allocation of visas needs to be significantly changed to mirror where people are actually trying to migrate from.
Second: there needs to be a clear path to citizenship for immigrants currently living in the US who lack proper documentation. Many already have TIN numbers and pay taxes, social security, Medicare, etc. There should be a clear path to a legal visa for all of these taxpaying, law-abiding workers. And over the medium-term, they should have a reasonable path towards citizenship as well, through hopefully an equitable system that allows them to say, but also doesn’t give them an unfair advantage over those waiting in the non-moving line still living in other countries.
Third: I think the racist need to fuck off. None of you have any more legal right to be here than any of your imaginary and evil so-called “illegals”.
Fourth: I think any USAmerican voting for a public initiative or referendum, or any legislator voting for legislation which would establish English as an official language should be required to pass a rigorous English test.
Fifth: Anyone voting for these bullshit anti-immigrant laws should be required to pass a citizenship test.
Sixth: Anybody who utters the term “anchor-babies” in a serious fashion should be sterilized lest their colossal cognitive retardation be passed on to future generations.
@120: Oh great. We get to play the “No I asked you first game.”
Well, it’s quite immature of you to ignore my questions and then turn around and require that I answer yours.
If you’re curious, I think the current quota system is very racist, and unreasonable because if you happen to be coming from certain countries, you have a very high chance of coming to the US. If you happen to come from say, Mexico, you have basically ZERO chance of coming to the US unless you’re wealthy or a highly educated professional. So the allocation of visas needs to be significantly changed to mirror where people are actually trying to migrate from.
That’s a start but still very vague. You’re still dodging my questions. That doesn’t tell me what you feel would be an acceptable number of people to let into the U.S., legally, each year, and it also doesn’t tell me what basis would you use for determining who gets to immigrate. For example, you say that “the allocation of visas needs to be significantly changed to mirror where people are actually trying to migrate from. What if most people were trying to migrate from Mexico? What basis would you use to decide which Mexicans get to immigrate and which ones don’t?
Second: there needs to be a clear path to citizenship for immigrants currently living in the US who lack proper documentation. Many already have TIN numbers and pay taxes, social security, Medicare, etc. There should be a clear path to a legal visa for all of these taxpaying, law-abiding workers. And over the medium-term, they should have a reasonable path towards citizenship as well, through hopefully an equitable system that allows them to say, but also doesn’t give them an unfair advantage over those waiting in the non-moving line still living in other countries.
How can it not give them an unfair advantage? They would be able to obtain citizenship because they came to the U.S. illegally while an equally (or more) poor and desperate person in Sudan or Bangladesh would not. If Mexicans who came to the U.S. illegally end up getting citizenship, then wouldn’t it be fair and just for more poor desperate non-Mexicans to be let in legally in order to compensate? (think of it as a form of affirmative action for poor Sudanese and Bangladeshis who didn’t have the good fortune to be born in a country adjoining the U.S.)
Third: I think the racist need to fuck off. None of you have any more legal right to be here than any of your imaginary and evil so-called “illegals”.
People who come to the U.S. illegally aren’t “evil.” But they’re certainly not imaginary. If the law says that it’s illegal to break into your house and someone does this anyway, then it’s not your imagination that they’re in your house illegally.
You said earlier, “So naturally, I prefer high immigration rates.” You didn’t say you were in favor of completely open borders, unlimited legal immigration. If you feel that all American citizens are here illegally, then how can you justify keeping anyone out who wants to come here?
Fourth: I think any USAmerican voting for a public initiative or referendum, or any legislator voting for legislation which would establish English as an official language should be required to pass a rigorous English test.
Perhaps there are some, but I’m not aware of any country that has an “official language” which forbids people from speaking their native language at home, amongst themselves, etc. If I moved to another country, I would expect to have to learn the language spoken in that country rather then demand that country cater to my language. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it would be great if they did. I just wouldn’t demand that they do it and whine and scream and call them racists if they didn’t.
Fifth: Anyone voting for these bullshit anti-immigrant laws should be required to pass a citizenship test.
I’m not sure what you mean by “anti-immigrant” laws? Laws against all immigration?
Although you continued to dodge my questions (they really weren’t difficult) I’ll answer yours anyway.
@113: Well, your argument is that the problem is simply people being illegal. So why not have open borders? Doesn’t that solve the problem?
From a moral/philosophical standpoint, I think that borders of all countries should be completely open. Does a poor person born in the U.S. have some greater moral right to a job in the U.S. than a poor person born in Mexico (or Sudan or Bangladesh) simply because they had the better fortune to be born in the U.S.? No. But, as a pragmatic matter, that concept is simply not sellable to people in a democracy. Most poor people in the U.S. will feel they have more of a right to a job in the U.S. than a poor Mexican (or Sudanese or Bangladeshi) because they were born here and, most people, no matter how kind-hearted and compassionate they are, would not support completely open borders.
Or is the problem actually immigration itself, which you don’t like?
Why you insist on equating legal immigration with illegal immigration is beyond me. It’s a very peculiar kind of logic that concludes someone who is not in favor of people entering the U.S. illegally must be opposed to the very idea of any immigration. It’s like someone concluding that if someone is opposed to people stealing cars they must also be opposed to people buying cars. Very odd. Very odd indeed.
@122: Why don’t you answer that same questions?
As far as number, I don’t really know. Finger in the wind answer, maybe 500,000 a year.
As far as basis, it would be based primarily on date of application, and to a smaller degree based on needed skillsets in the economy. No matter what it’s going to be somewhat arbitrary.
As far as unfair advantage: it’s grotesquely unfair now. If you’re from Norway or whatever, your chances are great. If you’re from Mexico, or China, your chances are nonexistent. My point was simply that people living in the US illegally now should not all be granted citizenship before people waiting in Mexico, as I do think that would not be fair. I have no problem granting them immediate visas to allow them to stay legally during the duration of their wait, assuming they are not criminals, are working, etc.
As far as justifying not allowing completely open borders, I think the argument hinges on resources and capacity to handle unfettered influx of unlimited numbers of people which would inherently be disruptive and complex. It doesn’t have to do with “I was here first” or “this is mine.” Just as people immigrated here in the past, as there were space and resources to accomodate them, immigration was reasonable. It still is. I think 5million people moving into the country in the space of a year would be an unreasonably large influx, regardless of skills, country of origin, or age.
As far as national language, english-only laws serve absolutely no purpose. If they restrict government activities only to english, they are very damaging, dangerous, and EXTREMELY counterproductive to a functioning society. If they are nothing more than “we declare” nonsense, they are simply expressions of latent racism, which has no place being enshrined in law. The government has no right to regulate what language I speak, or how I wish to interact with my government anymore than it has a right to regulate my religion or establish a preference for any religion over any other. Same with languages.
As far as anti-immigrant laws: laws clearly meant to attack immigrants, such as SB1070 in Arizona, and many other more local ordinances to make life difficult and even more miserable and isolated for undocumented immigrants, and even more vulnerable to being preyed-upon. By unscrupulous governments, police, businesses, and criminals.
@123: Why you insist on equating legal immigration with illegal immigration is beyond me. It’s a very peculiar kind of logic that concludes someone who is not in favor of people entering the U.S. illegally must be opposed to the very idea of any immigration. It’s like someone concluding that if someone is opposed to people stealing cars they must also be opposed to people buying cars. Very odd. Very odd indeed.
Nonsense. Because it’s a completely false reality. We have a reality now where for practical purposes, there is basically NO opportunity to legally come here from many countries, like Mexico. Currently, there is for all practical purposes, ONLY the opportunity to immigrate to the USA illegally, or no immigration at all.
If you are going to scream and cry about all the illegal immigration, then you advocate preventing people from coming here illegally. Given that there is NO realistic alternative, that means: DON’T COME HERE AT ALL.
If you are truly honest about stopping illegal immigration, there has to be a REALISTIC opportunity to immigrate here LEGALLY. There currently is not.
So unless your argument of “I don’t like illegal immigration” is IMMEDIATELY followed with clear and explicit and continued advocacy for a path to citizenship for those currently here, AND a REAL opportunity to immigrate here LEGALLY, then your argument is a facade, an argumentative trick to pretend that you’re not actually just anti-immigrant altogether, and you just want fewer foreigners moving here period.
And I have not seen ANY advocacy from you for actual legal immigration.
So until I see clear evidence that this is indeed your point of view, you get dumped in the “bullshit racist argument” bucket with all the other tantrum-throwing fucktards afraid of the scary brown people.
Oh and for the “stealing cars” analogy, that’s absolutely ludicrous.
It’s more like we passed a law preventing everyone except land-owning males from driving a car. Nobody else could purchase or drive a car. Oh, and there is absolutely no public transportation alternative. If you don’t own a car, you must walk. Bicycles are not allowed. There is ZERO alternative to getting around.
So, people resort to purchasing cars at very inflated prices (paying more in taxes than any services they receive) on a black market, and driving them despite not being allowed to drive a car. They don’t steal them, they BUY them illegally.
It’s a completely non-functional system, that leads to skirting the law in a way that if the law were simply rational and ALLOWED people the CHANCE to purchase a car legally, they could.
THAT is the reality we face today with immigration.
This whole “breaking into your house” thing is a load of crap. Until you have someone living on your sofa against your will, you can STFU. Immigrants pay rent just like anybody else.
In after shitstorm…
@122: Why don’t you answer that same questions?
You didn’t ask.
As far as number, I don’t really know. Finger in the wind answer, maybe 500,000 a year.
Thanks for your answer. 500,000/year seems reasonable to me. I had no idea of what the actual legal immigration number is per year and had a hard time finding the number on the internet but just came across a piece on Wikipedia which says “Since 2000, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 per year, of whom about 600,000 are Change of Status who already are in the U.S.”
As far as basis, it would be based primarily on date of application, and to a smaller degree based on needed skillsets in the economy. No matter what it’s going to be somewhat arbitrary.
Interesting. Given your comment @105 about illegal immigrants (“they’re nearly always poor”) and your comment @121 (“If you happen to come from say, Mexico, you have basically ZERO chance of coming to the US unless you’re wealthy or a highly educated professional.”) I figured you’d use need as the primary basis.
As far as unfair advantage: it’s grotesquely unfair now. If you’re from Norway or whatever, your chances are great. If you’re from Mexico, or China, your chances are nonexistent.
Based on what I found here, Naturalizations in the US 2008, that’s a very curious assertion. In 2008, the percentage of Mexicans who were naturalized was 0.22%. The total number of Europeans naturalized divided by just the number of people in Germany and France was 0.08%. If you included the population of the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Benelux countries, Switzerland and the Scandinanvian counties in the denominator, that percentage would be much lower. A person from Mexico would have a much greater chance of becoming a legal immigrant that someone from Norway, or any other European country. In 2006, the percentage of Mexicans naturalized was much lower, 0.08%, but it was still higher than the 0.07% of Europeans based, again, solely on the populations of France & Germany.
As far as justifying not allowing completely open borders, I think the argument hinges on resources and capacity to handle unfettered influx of unlimited numbers of people which would inherently be disruptive and complex.
Disruptive and complex, yes. But doable, also yes. The U.S. has the resources. It would be a matter of deciding to spread those resources among a greater number of people. What it basically comes down to is protectionism.
As far as national language, english-only laws serve absolutely no purpose. If they restrict government activities only to english, they are very damaging, dangerous, and EXTREMELY counterproductive to a functioning society. If they are nothing more than “we declare” nonsense, they are simply expressions of latent racism, which has no place being enshrined in law. The government has no right to regulate what language I speak, or how I wish to interact with my government anymore than it has a right to regulate my religion or establish a preference for any religion over any other. Same with languages.
I know nothing about the particulars of any English-as-an-official language proposals in the U.S., but I have a hard time believing that any of them attempt to “regulate what language you speak.” Americans in France are free to speak English but that doesn’t mean they can go to the local Post Office and demand that the clerks communicate with them in English.
The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”. It doesn’t say “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of language…”.
Be that as it may, I have no problem with my tax dollars being used to make it easier for new immigrants who don’t speak English to communicate with government.
We have a reality now where for practical purposes, there is basically NO opportunity to legally come here from many countries, like Mexico. Currently, there is for all practical purposes, ONLY the opportunity to immigrate to the USA illegally, or no immigration at all.
What am I missing here? How do you reconcile your assertion with this document from the Migration Policy Institue (“an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide”) which says…
If you are going to scream and cry about all the illegal immigration, then you advocate preventing people from coming here illegally. Given that there is NO realistic alternative, that means: DON’T COME HERE AT ALL.
It’s my understanding that there is an alternative. Not an easy one, but one nevertheless. Again, if it’s really true that it’s virtually impossible to Mexicans to immigrate to the U.S. legally, as you are claiming, then show me something that supports that. I’m willing to be educated, but I’m not willing to believe what you say is true simply because you say it.
…and you just want fewer foreigners moving here period.
Per our above exchange, we’re both in approximate agreement about the number of foreigners we feel would be reasonable moving to the U.S. A person who was in favor of a much higher number of immigrants could accuse you of wanting fewer foreigners to move here.
And I have not seen ANY advocacy from you for actual legal immigration.
You did above. In fact, if I was making the rules, I might be willing to let in more people, legally, than you.
So until I see clear evidence that this is indeed your point of view, you get dumped in the “bullshit racist argument” bucket with all the other tantrum-throwing fucktards afraid of the scary brown people.
You’re obviously obsessed with racism. As I said in another thread, if Mexico was a country full of poor and desperate white people, and they were coming into the U.S. illegally in large numbers, I think that most anti-illegal immigration people would be equally unhappy with that situation.
Anyway, aside from your bursts of immaturity and ad hominen attacks, I’ve enjoyed the debate but I’m done for now. If I feel up for it, I may continue tomorrow. I’ll definitely check back to see what kind of support you presented for your claim that it’s virtually impossible for Mexicans to enter the U.S. as legal immigrants.
@123: When you say “open borders,” do you mean allowing anyone who wants one to have a work visa, or do you mean allowing anyone who wants to become a citizen? Allowing anyone to work here is just free trade in labor, which most economists support, but allowing full citizenship rights is a very different matter. It really doesn’t make sense to me to allow citizenship rights to someone who broke the laws coming here: no illegal immigrant is a “law-abiding citizen”.
@121: Why the objection to the “anchor baby” term? Doesn’t it seem unfair to grant citizenship to a baby whose mother illegally crossed the border just to give birth?
@130: Those babies can’t petition for their parents to stay with them in the US until they’re grown up, but most people who toss around the term “anchor babies” wouldn’t let you hear that.
This is the PERFECT TIME for political comments, since they are what got us to this point. Rejoice, right-wingers: somebody who voted for health care reform has been murdered. You asked for it and you got it!
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As ever: empty rhetoric, logic-chopping, faulty reasoning, limp excuses and silly apologist ranting… all contributing to the wet-brain syndrome afflicting the ”Ala Derecho” (Spanish for “Right Wing”). Confucius say, ”Right-winger who fall asleep with problem wake up with gun in hand.”
If you can’t understand how right-wing tea party rhetoric caused this horrific act of DOMESTIC TERRORISM, maybe you need a short refresher course in Lucid Thinking 101.
Right wingers all the way from from Sarah Palin to that nutty neighbor of yours who has signs on his lawn about “god’s vengeance” are specifically and directly to blame for this tragedy. Every one of these nut jobs share the blame and have the blood of these murdered people on their hands.
Abandon your sniveling, limp excuses and simple-minded attempts to redirect the responsibility for these murders to one or two individuals.
At least be honest enough to admit — in print — that you think these Liberals got precisely what they deserved.
Your dreams have come true: somebody who voted for the health care bill has been murdered. That’s what you’ve been wanting to happen ever since you cheered the targets printed over the images of Liberal congresswomen, and the “lock and load” statements by Sarah Palin and others.
Have the honesty to come right out and say you’re happy to see Liberals murdered, because maybe it will prevent others from voting for socialism and welfare! Be honest! You wanted this to happen!
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@132
You really shouldn’t use hallucigecics this early in the morning. It makes making breakfast difficult when you confuse the eggs and bacon with your dog, or the frying pan with the coffee maker.
Accountability is pretty straight line, moron. The lunatic who shot this poor woman and the others who were injured, who killed a little girl and the others who died, is not taking orders from Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh. The theories of the left notwithstanding, we make choices and are responsible for them. Legally, morally or ethically, even if I agreed that such advocacy was real and not the fevered imaginings of your demented mind, advocacy is not action. So yes, the sole responsibility for pulling the triggers of the weapons at that Safeway lies with the person who pulled those triggers. What reasons he may have had are largely immaterial. This is a deeply disturbed and possible insane person who would have used some excuse to act out his violence, Sarah Palin or health care laws or whatever came readily to hand.
No-one will ‘ave the honesty to say that they are happy a liberal was murdered’, supporter of the health care lunacy or not, for the very good reason that very few actually are. Unlike hate filled partisans like you, most of us are deeply sad that a congresswoman and human being and wife is lost to her friends and family. This is true of her or anyone else who is murdered, politician or just a fellow citizen.
All these cries of ‘terrorism’ and ‘assasination’ are a bit previous, folks. For all we know the judge was his target, or the little girl. Wise people wait until the facts are in before making judgments on the situation.
Maybe if you took a look at yourself and your immature little friends (including many posting here on this topic) you’d see the same demonization of others based on politics that you decry. But then, that would take an honesty which you can call for, but for which you have no capacity.
Hi Black Rose,
Thanks for your question. I’d like to answer but I burned myself out on this topic yesterday. I just came back to see if El Capitán had posted some support for his assertion that a Norwegian’s chances of immigrating to the U.S. legally is “great” whereas a Mexican’s chances are “nonexistent.” But, alas, nothing posted.
All these cries of ‘terrorism’ and ‘assasination’ are a bit previous, folks. For all we know the judge was his target, or the little girl. Wise people wait until the facts are in before making judgments on the situation.
They said on the news this morning that the judge was in the area and stopped by to see Gifford because they were friends (or something along those lines.) It’s extremely doubtful the scumbag murderer knew he would be there. It seems like one of those unfortunate cases of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Also, you make very good points above so I’m not sure why you’d throw in something as silly as the little girl could have been his target. He walked up to Gifford and shot her in the head. She was clearly his intended target. Why he chose her is, of course, open to speculation but, based on his actions, I don’t know how one can argue that she was not his intended target.
Finally, right before I was going to post this, I checked the New York Times and just read this..
I’m not one of the liberals jumping on the blame-Sarah-Palin-and-the-Tea-Party bandwagon. But it does strike me as a bit more than a coincidence that Gifford’s district was one of those with a crosshair symbol on Palin’s map. I’m not saying that, if that did inspire him — either completely or partially — to pick her as his target that Palin is somehow responsible. I’m just saying it seems more than a coincidence. It will be interesting to see what authorities find out about his motives.
@ 114 I can’t talk for the Europeans but i can safely say that a lot of Australians are so glad your country is a long long way away.
@ The Lawmakers.
Your gun laws are just an open invitation to mass murder, yep, that’s 81 gun related deaths per day in the US. Times that by 365 and thats a pretty damn big number.
Scource http://www.neatorama.com/2007/04/23/s-gu…
I wonder how many people in the crowd were carrying a concealed weapon for self protection?
Didn’t help though did it, a little girl still died, and thats just awfull.
It beggers belief that Americans not only tolerate this, but encourage it.
But, oh, it’s your right to carry a concealed Ouzi for self defence, sorry, i forgot.
Grow up.
@ 114 I can’t talk for the Europeans but i can safely say that a lot of Australians are so glad your country is a long long way away.
@ The Lawmakers.
Your gun laws are just an open invitation to mass murder, yep, that’s 81 gun related deaths per day in the US. Times that by 365 and thats a pretty damn big number.
Scource http://www.neatorama.com/2007/04/23/s-gu…
I wonder how many people in the crowd were carrying a concealed weapon for self protection?
Didn’t help though did it, a little girl still died, and thats just awfull.
It beggers belief that Americans not only tolerate this, but encourage it.
But, oh, it’s your right to carry a concealed Ouzi for self defence, sorry, i forgot.
Grow up.
@136
I’ve discussed the war in Iraq with Italians and Germans on train rides, the 2nd Amendment with Brits and Irish in pubs, talked food and wine and art with Frenchmen on planes. On one occasion of which the latter half of the evening is missing from my memory entirely, I was easily drunken under the table by a couple of Australians in Civittavechia. I’ve dated Japanese, Chinese, Mexican and Bolivian ladies, and an Ethipian lady thought I needed a keeper enough to actually agree to marry me. To a greater or lesser degree I liked most of the folks I’ve met. Whatever I thought of internal politics in their countries, I kept to myself, unless I was asked my opinion. See, it wasn’t my affair. I don’t live in Australia, pay no taxes there and am not a citizen of that nation, so I assume that how you do things there is the busines of those who do.
Having said that, I’m glad Australia is so far away, if you’re representative of the breed. (From the folks I’ve met, most have a great deal more common sense than you seem to have acquired, thankfully for your nation.)
We don’t run the United States for the benefit of Australia, or Canada or Asia or Europe. We run it by and for the citizens of the United States. If you don’t like how we do things, you are more than free not to visit and to avoid Americans visiting your charming homeland. Otherwise, go play walkabout in the outback or sing ‘Tie me Kangaroo down’ to a bunch of drunk Aussies and mind your own business.
@138: I’m kind of agreeing with bugsy72 here.
I have never resided in Israel, and do not have Israeli citizenship. I’m perfectly fine with discussing the politics of Israel, whether with or without Israelis present. You want to know why? Because we all live on this planet, and it is spineless and irresponsible to overlook what is unjust simply because it is happening someplace else, in somebody else’s country.
Also, you may want to read your last sentence and see if it sounds at all racist. Sure, going walkabout is quite the national pastime in Australia, right? Actually, it’s a rite of passage undertaken by members of many Australian Aboriginal tribes in order to reconnect with their heritage, comparable to the vision quest of several Native American cultures. For someone who’s traveled the world and met Australians, you sure are ignorant about other people’s cultures.
Finally, an Australian (presumably there are lots of Australians with similar opinions) thinks that we obsess over self-defense too much. This is coming from a country in which about half of the wildlife will kill you if you irritate it, and even the groundcover will give you festering infected welts. An Australian telling you you worry about self-defense too much is like a Highland Scot telling you that you’re playing your bagpipes too loudly.
@138
Very well said, i am so glad you are well travelled and well informed on the rest of the world. That should hold you in good stead when you compare gun related violence in the US to the rest of the world. You see, murder is murder, no matter where you are, whether you are talking to the Irish and the Brits over a beer, discussing fine wines with the French, or whether i’m singing Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport in the outback.
What surprises me, is that with all your international discussions (which included the 2nd Ammendment) you still have the the closed in attitude that this is our backyard and we take a dim view on other nations, or their people judging us and our laws.
It also makes me double over in laughter to get a ribbing from an American about staying out of other countries affairs. Seriously.
I have been to America, thoroughly enjoyed Hawaii, SanDiego was a nightmare, and arriving in Los Angeles 2 weeks after the Rodney King beatings where the atmosphere was murderous, was extremely glad to leave.
I do get the feeling though that you are one of those people who carry a concealed weapon? Please tell me it ain’t so
And you should also know how gratefull the rest of the world is that you don’t run America for the rest of the world, even though you do try to impose your will on others, much to other nations heartache
I’m now going to go walkabout with the knowledge that i am safe from harm and enjoy a beer
@ 139
I knew there was some intelligence in America, well said
139: Finally, an Australian (presumably there are lots of Australians with similar opinions) thinks that we obsess over self-defense too much.
Venomlash, it makes perfect sense to me that Australians would not understand our obsession with self-defense, as “enshrined” in the 2nd Amendment. The U.S. came about due to a violent revolution against the British. Unless I’m way off-base with my history, that didn’t happen in Australia. The main reason for the 2nd Amendment was to give people the right to defend themselves against a future tyrannical government or to abolish that government. I think our histories have made us view the need for guns in different ways.
137: I wonder how many people in the crowd were carrying a concealed weapon for self protection?
Didn’t help though did it, a little girl still died, and thats just awfull. It beggers belief that Americans not only tolerate this, but encourage it.
On another thread, someone said that one of the men who tackled the murdering scumbag had a concealed gun. So if the murderer had managed to reload before he was tackled there’s a good chance the guy with the gun could’ve stopped him by shooting him.
We Americans aren’t in agreement on issues any more than you Australians are. There are many people in this country, including me, who would like to see much stricter gun control but we have this thing you guys don’t have, the 2nd Amendment, which states that people have the right to bear arms without infringement and the Judicial branch of our government has taken a very narrow and conservative view of what that infringement may entail.
@142
I find that to be a very valid point Roma. But i do get the feeling from reading all the comments, that the 2nd Ammendment has been twisted to such an extent that i’m sure your forefathers are writhing in their graves. Surely this is not what they envisioned their country to be, gun toting fanatics quoting the 2nd Ammendment whilst people, and children, like this poor little girl, die needlessly.
Yes, i might not fully understand the reasoning behind the 2nd Ammendment, but surely it has outlived it’s use by date. Your independence, was of course, many hundreds of years ago. I also believe that France had a very bloody and messy revolution, yet their gun related death rate is significantly lower. So why? Could it be gun control, and no 2nd Ammendment?
Scource http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/a…
I’d find it hard to justify this Ammendment based on the premise that it protects it’s citizens.
You only have to look at the stats to see a common thread on gun control vrs gun related deaths per capita.
I hope you guy’s work it out one day. But in the mean time, unfortunately, the world will continue to read sad stories like this coming out of America
@140
Murder is murder. Exactly. Whether a pistol was used or a hunting rifle, a baseball bat or a knife is kind of irrelevant, don’t you think?
I don’t own a gun, concealed or otherwise. Don’t have anything against one, it simply is a tool for which I currently have no use. I’ve shot them with friends who were sighting in hunting rifles, and was trained to use them as a boy, but at this time and place they just aren’t something I need.
Europe has had around 2 millenia head start on us, by way of established indigenous culture. China has a bit more. Egypt and parts of Northern Africa had cities 2500 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue and ‘found’ America. If we’re a bit behind hand culturally there might be a reason.
Having said that, the United States saved Europe from wars they allowed to cover the globe twice. We defended the world from Soviet agression for better than 50 years, at our expense. We may be the only country in history that won 2 major wars which we didn’t start without claiming an acre of ground for United States territory or a dollar of reparations from the loser. We protect vital shipping lanes carrying goods and resources to the United States, but also to Europe, Asia and Africa. Even to Australia. Without us the United Nations would be a joke. Sorry, even more of a joke. Without us NATO would be a paper tiger, and much of Western Europe would have fallen to the Soviets. In defeating the native people of this continent we allowed them to retain reserved land and citizenship in their tribes, where any sane policy would have treated them as the conquered nations they were and forced them to become a part of the conquering culture. It is the way it’s been done throughout history, nice to think about or not. We aren’t perfect. There’s a lot of bark left on us, as my grandfather used to say. But we have been generally a force for good in the world.
The problem the rest of the world has with us has less to do with policy than with snobbery. We are Rodney Dangerfields character in Caddyshack, in your eyes. In the eyes of many, we are loud, crass and lacking sophistication, but given our power and wealth a force to reckoned with anyway.
@144
There is a process for changing the 2nd Amendment, and it may be time to do so. Or it may not. If the popular will is there to support amending the Constitution to allow for revocation or alteration of the 2nd Amendment, so be it.
As for the founders, as Roma points out the 2nd Amendment was written so that States could retain militias for the express purpose of curbing federal power. These men were revolutionaries, one of whom wrote “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” They fully intended a citizenry who could, if needed, have the firepower to foment a new revolution if government got out of control.
Times change, and perhaps that Amendment needs altered, but for the security of what freedoms we retain it must be done within Constitutional provisions.
If the provisions of the 2nd Amendment can change arbitrarily, so can those of any other liberty we possess.
All this is perhaps a bit abstruse for an Australian. For an American, even, it is sadly becoming a point of ignorance. I’ve met fewer people who understand the basic workings of our government and the extent of their liberties than those who don’t. This ignorance may condemn us to tyranny, and make mockery of the bloodshed, patriotism and courage that got us to where we are. “This nation, of the people, by the people and for the people” may vanish from the earth, at least as a nation so conceived.
@145
On your first point, totally agree, murder is murder no matter how you put it. Guns just seem to be able to facillitate murder a bit more effectivley than a baseball bat and that is the point.
I am glad you don’t own a gun, and hope you never have need of one or have one pulled on you. But living in America your chances arent the best. It really does seem to be a gun culture.
I don’t buy the argument that due to it’s age, America is behind culturally. That’s very naive of you to think that. You were discovered in 1492 and declared independent in 1776. Australia was discovered by the Dutch in 1606, and claimed by Britain in 1770 with the first Europeans to settle in 1788. We’re younger, don’t have your troubles, and it’s no excuse.
You mention there might be a reason why you feel you might be a bit behind, well, as mentioned, the 2nd Ammendment would be a good place to start looking.
There is no doubting the help America had in helping to end the WW’s. You joined the first one in 1917, (it started in 1914) and the 2nd only after you were attacked in 41. But yes, thank god you did finally end up joining as America was indeed a powerfull force and helped end 2 brutal wars. Helped being the operable word though as there were many nations fighting long beforehand. And please don’t think America didn’t benefit. That’s just being naive again.
Also there is no doubting the good America done in confronting the Red Threat felt by Europe and the US. Unfortunately, a lot of that period is now known as Mc’Carthyism due to it’s unrelenting attack on it’s own citizens
Nato, United Nations, well, you hit the nail on the head there, biggest joke ever, and that’s even with America involved. And yes, i agree that generally, America has of course been good for the world. As have a lot of other nations over the centuries.
No nation is perfect, we all have faults, but some seem to strive harder for the good of it’s people than others and i can’t see how a nation full of guns can be smart move.
No, we don’t see you as Rodney Dangerfield, more like an arrogant and stubborn old man who is threatened by an outsiders view, but in the same breath is more than happy to impose your will on others. This discussion was started by murder and an ammendment in your constitution that seems to allow easy access to guns, which in turn helps America achieve the awfull status of being number 1 in the world on gun related deaths. It has absolutely nothing to do with what you have written above, let’s please remember that.
@146
I have no argument there. That is well explained and understood.
If, as you say, “from time to time the tree of liberty must be refreshed” , why not so laws established centuries ago. (Rhetorical Question.)
@Seattleblues, your history is revisionist denial in the extreme. We’ve been over this before, while the US no longer plants flags on sovereign territory and evicts its inhabitants (cough, western expansion, cough cough), we have long toppled foreign governments and replaced them with proxy governments, often right-wing dictatorships (such as Pinochet’s Chilean dictatorship), or completely ineffective governments (Karzai’s “parliamentary republic”). The reason we garner so much hate around the world is not simply that we are snobs, but that we are self-righteous snobs who see fit to force our will on other peoples, whilst claiming to be a bastion of freedom.
*slobs
@145: Nice revisionism in terms of what this country did to the Native Americans.
@146: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” (Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America)
What’s that about the states being intended to throw off what they might perceive as a tyrannical Federal government? Remember, the last time some states tried that, it split the country in half, and a lot of good men died.
VL
I didn’t advocate for revolution and wouldn’t. I was stating a historical fact, well supported by things the men who wrote our Constitution wrote and said. The Civil War was the test case, if you will, where states rights died. Until then, the issue was far from settled. What I wrote regarding the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was in specific response to something written about what the founders would have thought about the 2nd amendment now by our Australian friend. It was not intended as a comment on current events.
No revisionism. That’s a trick of the left. We conservatives like facts. They can be less convenient at first, but in the long run it’s easier to deal with them then deny them. You guys on the left might take some notes on that, by the way. The United States or Brittain or France or Spain were going to expand into what is now the American West. It was historically entirely inevitable. The local tribal cultures did not have the organization or firepower to stop the European powers, even had they not been decimated by infectious disease. Had it been any of the other 3 powers they’d have adopted less seemingly humane, but wiser policies of total subjugation of conquered peoples. We tried to be nice, tried to compromise, and have paid for it ever since. It would have been more humane in the long run to treat them as the conquered people they were instead of fighting ridiculous legal battles for the last century and a half. We attempted to help the native cultures ignore an unpleasant reality, that their way of life was over. This never works.
@152: “In defeating the native people of this continent we allowed them to retain reserved land and citizenship in their tribes, where any sane policy would have treated them as the conquered nations they were and forced them to become a part of the conquering culture.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_re…
“No revisionism. That’s a trick of the left. We conservatives like facts.”
Then from whence comes the Southern revisionism pertaining to the American Civil War, painting it as a “War of Northern Aggression”, and minimizing the issue of slavery? From whence is derived the myth of the “Obama Recession”? And from whence hails the immaterial specter of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction? If all conservatives loved facts as much as you say they do, we wouldn’t have our young men and women dying in Iraq right now. Also, with regard to the atrocities inflicted upon the Native Americans by the USA, I’m glad to see that you follow the policy of “if not us, someone else would have”. How very principled and moralistic you are!
@Seattleblues, you wear rose-tinted glasses. Simply stating something is “historical fact” does not make it “fact”. The history you present is more truthy than it is truthful. Your history glorifies Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, and Jingoism. Your history is sanitized and tribal. Perhaps Venomlash or another Slogger has the time or energy to once more explain American expansionism and colonialism, but I don’t.
Regarding the politics of denialist historical revisionism, the school boards of blue states aren’t the ones redacting, distorting, and inserting lies into our children’s textbooks. See @153.
@152: “We conservatives like facts.” Dude, have you ever watched FOX News?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Kne…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_te…
That’s kindness?
“We attempted to help the native cultures ignore an unpleasant reality, that their way of life was over.” Yes, it was over because they were slaughtered by invading armies. Colonialism or industrialism or even sedentary agriculture are not inevitable, they’re simply some forms of human societies. There are extant pastoral societies. The paternalistic “for their own good” attitude you’re expressing concerning colonialism is nothing short of disgusting.
As for state militias: the intent was to allow states to maintain armed forces to put down counter-revolutionary forces in a time when long-distance travel was difficult and time-consuming, and when population densities were much lower, and communities and cities much smaller, such that people within a given area had personal connections to one another that would discourage the sort of stranger-violence/collateral damage we see now.
From #145: “But we have been generally a force for good in the world.” Good for whom? The indigenous peoples of this continent and numerous Pacific islands? Not so much. Good for African and Asian nations caught in the struggle between USA and USSR? No. Good for the Africans captured and sold as slaves to work plantations here? Certainly not. Good for Latin America, mandating policies that bankrupt their states and fueling a drug war that’s escalating into anarchy in some parts of Mexico right now? Hardly. Good for the citizens or Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Hoo boy. Good for all of the slave-laborers “employed” by USA-born multinational corporations, driven by our ravenous consumerism? Fuck you.
Good for middle-class to wealthy people of European descent? You betcha!
We haven’t “generally” been anything; we have specifically been very good and very bad for different groups of people. The very good is mostly for people in positions of privilege here and elsewhere.
@132: Ala Derecha; El Español requiere acuerdo con el género de los sustantivos y adjetivos.
@152:
I didn’t advocate for revolution and wouldn’t. I was stating a historical fact, well supported by things the men who wrote our Constitution wrote and said. The Civil War was the test case, if you will, where states rights died. Until then, the issue was far from settled. What I wrote regarding the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was in specific response to something written about what the founders would have thought about the 2nd amendment now by our Australian friend. It was not intended as a comment on current events.
No revisionism. That’s a trick of the left. We conservatives like facts. They can be less convenient at first, but in the long run it’s easier to deal with them then deny them.
That’s total revisionist bullshit.
1). The second amendment has little to do with States rights against the Federal government as the Federal government HAD NO ARMY with which to oppress anyone. There was to be NO standing army, only organized militias, which would be called up by the Federal government only upon a declaration of war or actual invasion or rebellion.
2).The Civil War was NOT the first test case. It was the second. The first test case was called the Constitutional Convention, and the US Constitution came out of that. Perhaps you completely forgot the Articles of Confederation which posited a very weak federal government, and it was unmanageable, hence the Constitution. The entire PURPOSE of the Constitution ENDED the states-rights argument. And when it became convenient again during the civil war, and again during Jim Crow, over and over again the US Constitution stands supreme, and thank God for that.
@128:
Based on what I found here, Naturalizations in the US 2008, that’s a very curious assertion. In 2008, the percentage of Mexicans who were naturalized was 0.22%. The total number of Europeans naturalized divided by just the number of people in Germany and France was 0.08%. If you included the population of the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Benelux countries, Switzerland and the Scandinanvian counties in the denominator, that percentage would be much lower. A person from Mexico would have a much greater chance of becoming a legal immigrant that someone from Norway, or any other European country. In 2006, the percentage of Mexicans naturalized was much lower, 0.08%, but it was still higher than the 0.07% of Europeans based, again, solely on the populations of France & Germany.
That’s a statistically fallacious argument because many fewer people are trying to immigrate to the US from these countries. The denominator is not the population of the countries, but the number of people trying to immigrate to the US. And that makes it effectively impossible to immigrate legally from a country like Mexico.
I know nothing about the particulars of any English-as-an-official language proposals in the U.S., but I have a hard time believing that any of them attempt to “regulate what language you speak.” Americans in France are free to speak English but that doesn’t mean they can go to the local Post Office and demand that the clerks communicate with them in English.
First, it’s important to understand that the US as functionally usually operated in English, but many cases it did not. All of our street signage for instance, is designed to be identifiable by people who can’t read, from a time when most people were illiterate. Government always has a need to be able to communicated with its constituents, and sometimes that costs money.
I’m not sure where you’re coming from, but in places all over the US languages are used for all kinds of reasons, some kind of important. In transit systems or at airports for instances, maps, signs, and guides are often printed in multiple languages so people can figure them out as they’re traveling. In hospitals, interpreters are often provided for so that doctors can communicate with their patients and figure out what’s wrong with them (life and death). In emergencies, government announcements or literature often includes multiple languages. Ballots, ballot instructions, and voters guides are available in many languages allowing those who cannot read english, and those who don’t speak english but are US Citizens, the ability to vote as is their Constitutional right should they so choose.
For another example just in the last several years here in Seattle, there was an ongoing problem of African immigrants accustomed to cooking stoves and burning fires in open huts using charcoal grilles and stoves inside their homes when it got really cold completely unaware of the dangers of carbon-monoxide poisoning. This may seem obvious to you and I, but to someone who has never encountered this in their life before, it isn’t. Quite a few actually died because of this, and a big push was made by public health into these communities to pass out literature in various languages warning them of the dangers of burning fires inside.
English-only laws would dramatically restrict these government actions. And aside from certain public-health or emergency exceptions, most of these kinds of normal communications between government and people would be eliminated. The result would be direct harm on all of those people and those communities who either can’t read/write in English (including some native-born American citizens), and others who simply don’t speak English.
Be that as it may, I have no problem with my tax dollars being used to make it easier for new immigrants who don’t speak English to communicate with government.
Some people do, and they want to make life miserable for any foreigners who are living here by making it impossible for them to figure out anything unless they are fluent in English.
@153 and 154
My history doesn’t glorify anything. It states simple facts. European expansion into North and South America spelled the end for the local cultures. A combination of infectious disease, lack of cultural homogeneity, and superior technology on the part of the Europeans together with the prevalent notion at the time that areas not occupied by Europeans were open to colonization meant the end for indigenous cultures as they existed prior to 1492.
I made no value statement about this, except to say that the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French or Spanish. If you don’t believe this, look at the fate of the Inca or Aztec people under the Conquistadors. We weren’t angels. We behaved poorly at times. But our biggest mistake was to sign a single treaty with a single native tribe. Once clear victory was attained over a tribe the pretense of indidgenous sovereignty was and remains an unhumorous joke. Your link to the grotesque effects that policy had simply illustrates that fact. Treaties were stupid. Had the Cherokee been treated as a vanquished people they would have assimilated or died, like any other conquered people in history. (Assuming Wikipedia to be factually correct, which is a fairly large leap. I love the premise of that site. Get a lot of ignorant people to share their ignorance and somehow you’ll get better facts. Twain would have had a lot of fun with that notion.)
Indigenous cultures were quite simply surprisingly short on luck. Genetically, they were uniquely susceptible to European disease, with surprisingly little variation across the North and South American continents. Not through malice but through pure ill luck the local populations were decimated, with mortality rates as high as 90% continent wide. Some estimate even higher. Put into perspective, the plague in Europe is usually estimated to have had about a 30 to 40 percent mortality rate. Overstating the cultural effect of this would be nearly impossible. At the least, resistance to an incoming military force bent on colonization would have been beyond indigenous peoples. Add the presence of firearms, horses, wheeled vehicles and so on and the impetus to colonization becomes unstoppable. The local people never stood a chance.
It might be interesting to consider what this continent would look like had the Iriquois or Meso American or Inca people been able to retain their land. But it isn’t historical. It’s like wondering what would have happened had Chamberlain stopped Hitler at Poland, or had Alexander lived to 50. It makes for interesting conversations over coffee, but has nothing to do with the real world.
@128:
What am I missing here? How do you reconcile your assertion with this document from the Migration Policy Institue (“an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide”) which says…
I’m not understanding what you’re getting at here. There are many millions who wish to immigrate to the US from Mexico, the line is absurdly long, and many people have been waiting for many many years. Many more simply give up on the wait and come here illegally.
It’s my understanding that there is an alternative. Not an easy one, but one nevertheless. Again, if it’s really true that it’s virtually impossible to Mexicans to immigrate to the U.S. legally, as you are claiming, then show me something that supports that. I’m willing to be educated, but I’m not willing to believe what you say is true simply because you say it.
What alternative is that?
The Green Card lottery provides only 55,000 total Green Cards per year to randomly selected applicants from various countries with a limit of I think 25K per any one country. If you are in Mexico, the wait list is nearly a decade, and you may not get in at all.
To have any realistic chances, you need to be an immediate relative of a citizen, or have very high skills or training in a preferred worker field, etc.
Otherwise, you have to wait for years and years.
@130 It really doesn’t make sense to me to allow citizenship rights to someone who broke the laws coming here: no illegal immigrant is a “law-abiding citizen”.
Okay, let’s be equally absolutist. Have you ever had a parking ticket? Or gotten a ticket for speeding? Or fudged your taxes a little bit?
It makes no sense to allow someone who broke the law to maintain their citizenship rights. I think anybody who has ever broken any law should have their citizenship revoked and be deported to some random country, lets say Syria just for shits and giggles.
Why the objection to the “anchor baby” term? Doesn’t it seem unfair to grant citizenship to a baby whose mother illegally crossed the border just to give birth?
Two reasons:
1) IT IS IN THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION.
2) “Anchor baby” goes much further, because of the word ANCHOR. The whole conception of this is that if you come here illegally and have a child, then you have some TOOL that allows you to somehow gain citizenship for yourself and thus game the system just by the fact that you had a kid here, who per the Constitution is a US citizen.
And that’s a load of bullshit, because it isn’t true at all. The child’s citizenship doesn’t affect you at all. The child has to be an adult (21yo) before they can even APPLY for citizenship for the parents.
So as far as using the term in a derogatory way, it’s completely nonsensical bullshit.
Because if that is ACTUALLY happening, I can see NOTHING more dedicated, sacrificial, and patriotic than somebody trying to make a living for their family for TWENTY ONE YEARS, simply for the CHANCE to live legally in the United States.
If that isn’t evidence of sacrifice and dedication to the US, I fucking don’t know what is.
The federal government had no armed forces. Gee, why do you think that might have been? The states had armies of their own. Interesting. Have you read the Federalist Papers? The letters between Jefferson and Adams, or Adams and his wife, or Jefferson and the many people with whom he corresponded on the subject of the Constitution.
Yes, the second Convention produced a stronger government in 1789 than the Articles of Confederation had done. But these men were very wary of federal power, and very conscious that many of their friends had died in the recent war for independence. Yet people like you continue to believe that these men, these men for God’s sake who had risked their lives and property and families for independence, supported the kind of benign tryanny you espouse? Good lord, what fools these leftists be.
You really are an idiot that has apparently not read one single reputable history of this nation. (Howard Zens anti American bigotry is propaganda, not history. And it appears to be the only thing you’ve read.) States rights is still an issue in the federal courts, and the exact limit of federal power is an ongoing point of contention.
On one occasion (after the second Constitutional convention) a state army beseiged Congress. They demanded pay before they would leave the Capitol. And they won.
You are the revisionist. In your hatred for this country you seek any twising of fact to make it look poorly. You cry racism when we attempt to control who enters our country, or who holds citizenship here. This despite clear evidence shown to you by Roma that white or black, mexican or Norwegian, the numbers clearly say the ‘brown’ folks are the ones immigrating here in any real numbers.
You want with everything in you to believe us to be a bad people and a bad place. Well, move the hell out then. No-one is forcing you to stay here. I hear Germany is nice to live in, and I know Italy is. Canada does everything right, according to the anti-patriots of the left. For my money, I like what liberties we retain here, but I actually love my country and think it a pretty good place to live, unlike you.
Captain Wig-out
Remove ideology from the immigration question, and view it from a viewpoint of economics and national soveriegnty, and you might actually start making sense.
You make the assumption that everyone has an innate right to United States citizenship, regardless of what citizenship they currently hold, what they offer this country, or whether they broke our laws to come here illegally. There is not one nation in history that has accepted that notion. Every single nation that had a concept of legal citizenship has also believed that they had the right to determine who holds it.
And there are good reasons for this. In skilled industries, wages have fallen due to competetion from those who will work for less just to have a job. With all the chatter from the left about wage stagnation, this isn’t a legitimate area of government interest? We simply don’t have enough jobs even for those now living here, never mind for anyone who wishes to come. The effect of the unrestrained migration you advocate would be the continuation of lowering wages for American workers.
We have a right to our borders, like every other nation on earth. Who comes here is our business, not predicated on the need of the immigrant. We have a right to say that those who can care for themselves or have relatives who will do so take precedence over the indigent with no means to do so. We have a right to say that only those with necessary skills to offer our economy can come.
That’s the way it’s been done and will continue to be done, irrational calls from folks like you notwithstanding.
@161:
Yes, the second Convention produced a stronger government in 1789 than the Articles of Confederation had done. But these men were very wary of federal power, and very conscious that many of their friends had died in the recent war for independence. Yet people like you continue to believe that these men, these men for God’s sake who had risked their lives and property and families for independence, supported the kind of benign tryanny you espouse? Good lord, what fools these leftists be.
I’m sorry, when did Federalism become “benign tyranny?”
Maybe we could deduce something from the FIRST SENTENCE of Federalist #1:
After a full experience of the insufficiency of the existing federal government, you are invited to deliberate upon a new Constitution for the United States of America.
Gee, I dunno, do you think maybe the entire purpose of the Constitution was to strengthen a weak and ineffectual Federal government that under the Articles of Confederation was unable to properly manage the relationships among the various states?
In Federalist 9, Hamilton takes great pains to explain that while they are clearly increasing the power of the Federal government over an explicitly subordinate confederation of states, that state governments are nonetheless not abolished, but an integral part of a federal government.
In Federalist 15, he describes the weakness and ineffectual nature of the federal government victims to the whims of the various states and their disagreements, and describes: “… the frail and tottering edifice seems ready to fall upon our heads, and to crush us beneath its ruins.
So why don’t you calm the fuck down and stop straw-manning me with a bunch of rambling bullshit that flies in the face of middle-school history.
You want with everything in you to believe us to be a bad people and a bad place. Well, move the hell out then. No-one is forcing you to stay here. I hear Germany is nice to live in, and I know Italy is. Canada does everything right, according to the anti-patriots of the left. For my money, I like what liberties we retain here, but I actually love my country and think it a pretty good place to live, unlike you.
Classic. This is my favorite refuge of fools without any argument.
Ad hominem attacks, accusations of ignorance, and then accusals that people who disagree hate America and should simply go somewhere else.
Well fuck you, I my well-worn copy of The Federalist sits on my desk, mainly because I’m sick of clueless windbags like yourself screaming and bitching about things they’ve never understood and don’t know anything about.
So you morons who are screaming and bitching about endless states rights can have your stupid state coins and state flowers and fuck off. 1865 is OVER. And until you successfully abolish the national standing army first, and take that as the #1 over-reach of federal power, then fuck off. It’s the same uneducated rambling bullshit excuse to allow the good-ol-boys their lynching fun-times.
@162: You make the assumption that everyone has an innate right to United States citizenship, regardless of what citizenship they currently hold, what they offer this country, or whether they broke our laws to come here illegally.
No, I most certainly do not. You can’t point to any example of me stating that because I didn’t say that and I don’t think that.
Nice try.
And there are good reasons for this. In skilled industries, wages have fallen due to competetion from those who will work for less just to have a job. With all the chatter from the left about wage stagnation, this isn’t a legitimate area of government interest?
That sounds like socialist control of a free economy to me, and the restriction of unfettered markets and the freedom to compete in the marketplace, doesn’t it?
We have a right to our borders, like every other nation on earth. Who comes here is our business, not predicated on the need of the immigrant.
Of what native tribe are you a 100% pure-blooded member?
@160: I’m missing something here. You seem to think we should have the same standards for letting someone become a citizen as for the people who are already here. We’re not going to kick out a US citizen for a traffic ticket, or even a serious crime, but that doesn’t mean we should take in a non-citizen with similar problems. And violating immigration laws is a lot more serious than just a traffic ticket. More to the point, it’s not just any law that illegal immigrants broke, it’s the immigration rules: why should breaking the immigration rules give you an immigration advantage? Given that we can only allow a limited number of new citizens, shouldn’t we prioritize the ones who followed the immigration rules?
As far as the term “anchor baby” goes, I hadn’t even thought of it as referring to the parents of the newly born citizen, but you are correct that it is misleading to think of the baby as an anchor used to sneak the parents in. I’m more concerned with allowing the baby to be a citizen when the parents weren’t in the country legally. As far as it being in the Constitution, the 14th Amendment was intended specifically to overrule Dred Scott and make sure that former slaves were citizens, not to apply to immigration. Its language doesn’t clearly apply to people illegally in the country. In fact, it specifically limits its granting of citizenship to those “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It’s not clear that illegal immigrants are subject to the US’s jurisdiction for purposes of the 14th Amendment.
@165 Regarding your comment “I’m more concerned with allowing the baby to be a citizen when the parents weren’t in the country legally.”: the 14th Amendment is VERY clear. Any person born in the US is a citizen. Period. The baby’s parents’ legal status has no bearing on the baby’s citizenship. Period.
The 14th Amendment’s language may not have had immigrant citizenship in mind, but who the fuck cares? The 1st Amendment wasn’t originally designed to protect crush videos but the Supreme Court has decided that it does. We have long since extrapolated beyond the original intent of our key legal documents because situations exist today that didn’t when they were written yet these documents still offer philosophical guidance.
@158: “I made no value statement about this, except to say that the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French or Spanish.”
SB, for someone who enjoys belittling the shortcomings of “liberal education” you yourself seem very misinformed on a number of key points.
While I don’t dispute your characterization of the Spanish conquest, you are completely wrong in your assertion that “the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French.” While there were certainly clashes between native North Americans and the French, there was also a great deal of co-operation. Economics demanded it – the French (and later British) colonial economy in Canada was based on the fur trade, and co-operation with the local tribes was essential. (This led to the creation of an entirely new indiginous group, the Metis). The French and Indian War was so called because those two groups co-operated in fighting the British (soon to be American) colonists. (Similarly, native groups fought beside the British against the Americans during the War of 1812).
During the expansion into the West from the mid-19th century, there was far more conflict south of the 49th parallel than north. Canada’s expansion was not blameless, as the histories of the Red River and Northwest Rebellions show, but there is nothing in our history to match the Trail of Tears or Wounded Knee.
All that to say that if you honestly believe that “the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French” then you are clearly ignorant of history – both Canada’s and your own.
@165: You were missing that I covered that in #121. It’s a long thread, understandable. I think its a noncontroversial position that people already in line and following the rules not already here illegally should have priority over those already here, not just for granting visas, but probably for permanent citizenship as well.
I agree that it would not be just to allow those who came here illegally the right to remain legally before all those who chose to await the byzantine visa process.
AS far as: It’s not clear that illegal immigrants are subject to the US’s jurisdiction for purposes of the 14th Amendment.
I don’t know how it can be any more clear. Everyone born in the United States is a citizen of the United States. The sentence has no caveats or exceptions:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
This amendment has been tested in court several times, and it has been unambiguously interpreted to mean exactly what it says in plain english. Everyone who happens to be born in the United States, slave, immigrant, or otherwise, is a United States citizen (with very few exceptions for diplomats functioning in official capacity for a foreign gov, etc.):
“…the American citizenship which Wong Kim Ark acquired by birth within the United States has not been lost or taken away by anything happening since his birth.”
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)
If one wanted to change the plain language of that sentence, it would require a Constitutional Amendment. That’s fine, but it’s an uphill battle that’s for sure.
1/3 of the pop in our federal prisons are illegal immigrants, why aren’t libs concerned about that crime?
@169: Nice try.
Most crimes committed are against the states. A crime is only a federal offense if it directly involves the federal government or one of its on-duty employees, or if it crosses state lines in some way. As such, federal prisons only make up about 1/8 of the total prison population of the country. Since immigration is solely the responsibility of the federal government, the various states cannot and do not imprison persons convicted of immigration-related offenses.
Stop mindlessly spewing whatever sound bites you hear on the TV or your favorite news site, and try actually thinking for yourself.