Unpopular but true fact: The Federal government needs Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Also a true fact: Property-destroying protestors need to be arrested, prosecuted, and sent to jail, just like the Capitol-invading protestors in Washington, cops or not.

We somehow managed to function as a nation without ICE until 2003's small government conservatives decided we needed a bloated expansion. Illegal immigrants are not a threat to national security. But report after report and study after study have shown that angry white men are. Maybe that manpower should be refocused to actual threats instead of separating people from their families, sexually assaulting women, and performing unwanted medical procedures. Being an illegal immigrant is a misdemeanor offense. So why should a minor offense be met with such a heavynhand, disporportionate and constitutionally questionable law enforcement response?

I thought they arrested 5 police officers, not 3, for Terrorist attack on the Capitol?

Oh well.

The vaccine plan was the health plan was the (insert empty binders full of blank pages) plan

@3: Yeah, that answers the question of why Amazon waited until the Biden administration to offer the their services to aid in distributing the vaccine.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/amazon-offers-assist-us-covid-19-vaccine-distribution-75400912

FNC pouting:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/why-did-amazon-wait-until-bidens-inauguration-to-offer-help-with-vaccine-distribution

6 Trump hated Bezos so even if there was a plan I doubt Amazon would have been included just out of spite.

And its mighty white of Amazon to offer to help. I'm sure they are totally willing to use their distribution infrastructure with zero government subsidies. The best thing they could do to help the country is pay federal taxes.

@5 Paths to citizenship for who? Are you advocating for open immigration or should we still have some sort of immigration control?

That Trump had no vaccination plan became apparent a couple weeks ago when we first started seeing articles where state authorities complained that Feds had no plan. And when asked for comment, the Feds would say "distribution is up to the states".

Maybe Biden's people expected that there would be some plan from the Obama Admin languishing unread in a file cabinet someplace.

In other news, a couple of US-expat lesbians in Bali were summarily deported after opining that the island is "queer friendly".

@10 -- You might think the immigration question is "open borders" vs "pull up the drawbridge behind us and release the moat monsters".

Got news for you. Immigration policy, like a lot of real things in the real world, is seriously nonbinary.

@8, I caught a story about the CEO of Starbucks offering to help Jay Inslee with vaccine distribution in WA. He was saying something about governors being equipped to "govern," but not to do logistics.

I can't tell you how infuriated I was by that. Sure, state governments aren't equipped to do those sorts of mass logistical operations. But you know who's supposed to be? The goddamn federal government!

The only thing stupider than expecting each of the 50 states to do the equivalent of fighting World War II on their own, as the Trump "administration" was doing, is expecting Amazon and Starbucks to go out and fight World War II on our behalf.

Now, having said that, if there's some way for the Biden administration to engage the private sector through the Defense Production Act, then great.

@14: If AWS (or Azure) can help with the logistics of getting shots in arms that's a good thing.

@13 of course there are degrees of what an immigration policy includes but at the core there is a binary choice of whether you allow open immigration or have some sort of policy. When I listen to many of the voices asking for ICE to be abolished there seems to be a notion that we also allow for open immigration. That seems unrealistic and dooms their message.

@4 - that IS the healthcare plan. Everyone over 70 gets Covid and drops dead. Imagine the savings on Medicare alone!

@19 outside of the squad who in gov has advocated for abolishing ICE? I haven’t seen that proposed anywhere. I’m talking that activist crowd that is mostly behind the abolish ICE movement. If you take some time and read through their positions a great many of them call for no borders. If the right is co-opting that message to scuttle immigration reform of any sort then it’s going to go to the Dems to clarify. It feels similar to how the defund movement was undermined by the abolish crowd as well for policing.

@1 Popular fact with the majority of the American People: your side lost, get over it. We had better, as in less storm-trooperish, immigration enforcement before INS was merged into Homeland Security and turned into ICE. You racists want no non-white immigration at all, while the rest of us want fair, non-racist, and humane immigration and border patrol. Not that Fascists like you are intelligent enough to understand the difference.

Trump didn't see a way to personally profit from giving out free vaccines, so he wasn't interested.

I see another linguistic disaster coming over "abolish ICE," similar to the "defund the police" issue. If what we mean is to return immigration enforcement to what it used to be, FFS we need to say exactly that. Given that ICE, as fucked up as it is, currently enforces the borders, just saying "abolish ICE" sounds a lot like "don't enforce any policy at the border."

That may be what the handful of 10-year-olds rioting downtown want, but it is not the mainstream Dem position, it is not what the majority of the country wants, it is not what most immigrants I know want, and it is not something that would remotely ever happen, any more than we would ever have cities with no police force whatsoever.

I don't know whether "defund" actually cost any seats in Congress but it is plausible that it did, given the reporting and polling we saw after the election. Why set ourselves up for a similar fight over immigration?

@21/24 I'm with you then. Abolish ICE and go back to whatever we were doing before they came into existence with hopefully an improved immigration process as well.

Professor, I don't think we'll ever see something akin to the EU in our region anytime soon. While I think it would be beneficial if you look at the criteria the EU uses to accept new member states I don't think the Mexican government is currently willing or able to meet similar threshholds not to mention the resistance you would encounter from nationalists in the US and Canada. A more realistic goal is continued expansion and improvement of the work visa programs outlined in the USMCA.

I hope when the administration debuts the immigration policy they are working on they are clear on its intent so the far right isn't able to co-opt the message and spin it as an open border/no border free for all. I'm already seeing stories on migrant caravans from Central America showing up in the newsfeeds again so that spin is already starting.

@29: I thought presentation was everything. Even among the left.

@28 - I would argue that "abolish ICE" is going to be misunderstood EXACTLY the way "defund" was. In both cases, there are government agencies in charge of doing at least some things that are necessary. In both cases, said agencies are doing pretty heinous things along with carrying out their functions. I believe that the proportion of heinous actions to appropriate ones is generally higher for ICE than it is for the police, but it's the same principle.

And the result will be the same. The masses (perhaps they are stupid, but we go to elections with the electorate we have, not the one we want) will see the slogan as a call to eliminate what they see as a necessary government function. And that will bite us in the end.

@23 - It's not "my side." I'm a Democrat and voted for Biden. The United States needs immigration and customs control functions, like any other country. People who commit destructive acts during protests and insurrection need arresting and prosecution, like any other country.

Get over yourself. You are not the Guardian of Truth.

I hope the Jill and Joe remove those tawdry gold curtains Trump left behind from the Oval asap.

People were surprised that the guy who said:

he would defeat ISIS within 2 weeks;
he would get Mexico to pay for the wall;
he had the greatest inauguration crowd in history;
he was 6'5" and 240 lbs;
he had a healthcare plan that would be less expensive and better than Obamacare, just give him another two weeks to put the final touches on it before he releases it;

was lying about having a coherent coronavirus response? With 400,000 people dead? How could that possibly come as a surprise? Even Trump - unintentionally - admitted he was doing a piss-poor job, when he repeatedly claimed that a total of 100,000 Americans dead would be "doing a good job." Does anyone else remember how horrifyingly high that number sounded at the time?

@33: Still waiting on you to provide evidence to support your assertion of antifa killing cops, Swiftress. How's that coming along?

@31,

It's "Kneel before Zod!" Get it right, jeez ;)

@36 I don't recall making any such assertion, but suppose I did? I'm under no obligation to provide evidence of anything. You have just as good a search engine as I do.

@35: 74 million including the usual gang of Slog troll idiots would argue that you can'te possibly understand the working of a stable genius-- who in the final analysis is a fucking useless waste of atoms.

Goddamn it is so good to have grownups back in charge now instead of an army of feckless cunts.

@36: I suggest avoiding wasting your time by not waiting for responses to your lies.

@30:

There you go - trying to "think" again. You know how much stress that puts on the unvariegated mass of rice pudding you store between your ears. If you're not careful it's going to start spilling out all over the floor again.

@34:

Already done.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/politics/inside-joe-biden-oval-office/index.html

@44: Considering you were desperate to fire an attack but couldn't find anything to disagree with me, you settle for some verb fun. So I'm not insulted.

if the slogan is too Challenging for
EZ consensus – ‘cause well you
know u.s. -- why not Change The
Slogan? where’s the Harm?

& where’s OUR Fran Kluntz?

we on the Left need a Ministry of Propaganda half as effective as FOX, the Oxymoron and Sin- "we put the Sin* in Broadcasting" -clair radio cumteevee soon to be
trumpftopia TeeVee. buy Shares NOW.

*mostly lies, begging for money and shoving neo-Fascism down our Brethern's throats -- all in the name of
wait for it
God. Or Jesus
oh the humanity

cum = 'koom'
not kome
in this
case. ^^^

and brethren = Flock.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/08/06/44234024/slog-am-cliff-masss-nazi-comparison-no-more-parties-in-la-shazam-for-spiders/comments/2

Swiftress used Cliff Mass' racism as a cover for her own racism against BLM, and raindrop predictably rode in to white knight for her, just like he did again today.

Spouting baseless lies and then refusing to stand by them is certainly the fascist way, so Swiftress is earning that title today. And once again, raindrop comes in to white knight for the worst people in the room.

Do you deplorables ever get tired of being this completely predictable? Shouldn't you be be attempting to "be best" or something?

@50: You referred to "Antifa killing cops" in @36, so I thought you were referring to an actual event of cops killing antifa, but it's all about a weird Cliff Mass reference that has nothing to do with current events.

@51: You really never miss an opportunity to prove your inability to follow a train of thought for more than a minute. Again, not that this is news to any of us. But your idiocy was really a secondary point behind Swiftress' accusations against BLM (not antifa, my bad).

It's also no surprise to me that neither one of you can defend your earlier comments. Just like fascists and their enablers, respectively.