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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 09:47pm PT
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I am still not sure why there cannot be stiff penalties in place for persons who hire read exploit illegal aliens. If the person doing the hiring faced stiff penalties for the first offense and jail time for the second offense, would not there be more compliance. Why are we such wusses when it comes to this issue. If we truly do need persons to pick crops or make beds or whatever it is that supposedly Americans won't do, why can't we issue permits for persons to come over and do these jobs .....and pay them the minimum wage. If that means we pay more for veggies and hotel rooms, so be it. I'd rather not eat vegetables or sleep in beds which are born of someones exploitation but the way it stands now, there is little control over doing so. Greed, greed and more greed.
I'm totally with you. If we need these people, then they should be enfranchised into our system.
You have to remember that the Mexican immigration issue was invented by Americans during WWII to get farm workers. The Mexican government wanted to close the border to retain its work force. It shifted wealth to this country at the expense of Mexico.
We then tried to modify the system under the Eisenhower administration in the wonderfully aptly named Operation wetback. Look it up.
And now we use the system to keep workers poor and powerless, just as we have done with blacks, Irish, Italians, etc. when they were poor and powerless.
The fix is easy. Fine and jail time for hiring illegal workers. Nobody in power likes that idea for some reason.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 09:51pm PT
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Voting qualification are still run by the states, even if they have to nominally follow the constitution. The Feds only step in in the most heinous and public cases.
And the Supreme Court upheld the Florida vote, remember? They even sealed the ballot results.
Voter ID on election night doesn't work.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 09:58pm PT
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Oh, sure, but in this case it is the republicans using it as a tool. There are fewer republicans and their base is shrinking. Challenges are easier than trying to appeal to a wider set of voters.
That's what the tea party no compromise thing is all about.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 10:17pm PT
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I think you are confusing belief with rational thought.
But it goes beyond what they think, it's why the people manipulating them do it.
It's easy to get people worked up with fear and hate. You can shape them with fear especially.
So they want you to fear Mexicans, Arabs, non-fundamentalists, people willing to work for less than you will, etc.
They can Tailor the hate any way they want. You don't actually think Trump gives a damn about Mexicans one way or the other, do you? I'll bet he employs hundreds, documented or not. But he knows he can get a rise, and then people stop thinking.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 25, 2015 - 10:21pm PT
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Lois is back!
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 10:25pm PT
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Beliefs are based on faith and emotion. Faith is by definition unverifiable.
What are rational thoughts based on?
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 10:41pm PT
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When Trump tell us he is going to build a 100 foot wall and make Mexico pay for it he's not doing anything positive. He knows he can't do it, ( either have a secure 2000 mile barrier or make them pay)
He's just trying to polarize. If he was being rational, he'd see the merit of undocumented workers. You don't have to pay them much, they have no power, and they greatly contribute to taxes and keep yours lower. They get Social security withheld and can never collect it.
It's cheaper than moving jobs overseas.
Bring more in!
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 10:45pm PT
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I would hope reason and intellect, no? So, then, given a certain level of cognitive abilities, how does one ALSO support some of these totally irrational belief systems prevalent in various organized religion.
I'm pondering this also, but can you give me an example of an established religion based on rational thought?
Don't say Buddhism, there's all kinds of dichotomies there.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 10:56pm PT
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Like I said. I don't think he gives a damn one way or the other. But he's getting blood pressure up to polarize people.
That what the hundred foot wall and cheering Arabs is about. There is no rationalism involved.
His projects have undocumented workers.
http://www.businessinsider.com/undocumented-immigrants-donald-trump-hotel-report-2015-7
I'm not saying he's even purposely hiring them, he just provides the climate and distances himself.
He shouldn't pretend he cares at all, if he was behaving rationally. He thinks he's from an exempt ruling class.
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 11:02pm PT
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don't know, Lorenzo. I can't find one. Moreover, I don't know that I need to find one, either. Right now, I am listening to this lecture series called "The meaning of life" put out by the Teaching Company which looks at a whole variety of both organized religion and various "great thinkers." I can't find anything therein which particularly resonates with me. I mean it is certainly interesting enough to listen to, for sure, but I have not found anything especially profound or inspiring or even that which I can particularly relate to.
Don't beat yourself up. There probably isn't one.
People are perfectly capable of being both rational and non-rational, so a brain surgeon can have beliefs based on faith as well as scientific thought. There isn't much which connects them.
( but how much real science is in brain surgery? I see it as much craft and art.)
They even use the same tools I used in carpentry....just more refined versions.
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mcreel
climber
Barcelona
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Nov 25, 2015 - 11:07pm PT
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Now he's mocking people with disabilities! There's no bottom to how low he will go. He's making Nixon look good!
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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Portland Oregon
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Nov 25, 2015 - 11:31pm PT
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First time I ever thought Rush had anything real to say.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 26, 2015 - 07:41am PT
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Yep.
She wouldn't talk to Russia? Seriously?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Nov 26, 2015 - 08:41am PT
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Speaking of forgien policy, who does look strong? Here, Clinton certainly has the most experience.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Nov 26, 2015 - 10:05am PT
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This is not the first time Trump has been accused of mocking a person’s disability or physical appearance. In a July interview with NBC news, Trump lashed out at columnists Jonah Goldberg and Charles Krauthammer after the latter called the candidate a "rodeo clown."
“I get called by a guy that can’t buy a pair of pants, I get called names?” Trump said at the time.
Critics speculated that Trump had intentionally mocked Krauthammer, who is paralyzed from the waist down
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Norton
Social climber
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Nov 26, 2015 - 11:23am PT
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 26, 2015 - 01:39pm PT
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True dat, Lois.
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dirtbag
climber
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Nov 26, 2015 - 03:26pm PT
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No, you're not dead Lois.
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overwatch
climber
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Nov 26, 2015 - 04:02pm PT
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Sure "sounds" like her.
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philo
climber
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Nov 27, 2015 - 07:24am PT
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Donald Trump’s Police State
NOVEMBER 27, 2015
Timothy Egan
In “The Plot Against America,” the novelist Philip Roth imagines an alternative history at the dawn of World War II. Charles A. Lindbergh, aviator hero and crypto-fascist, defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. Rather than go to war against Nazi Germany, he foments an atmosphere of hatred directed at Jews in the United States.
President Lindbergh’s rule is based on fear. He can violate the Constitution because enough Americans do not mind limiting the freedom of a suspect minority in the name of security.
Of course, it could never happen here. It’s a novel, silly boy — one of late-stage Roth’s better efforts. Made-up stuff. That’s what I’ve always thought. But over the last three months, in listening to plans of the Republican presidential front-runner and the views of his increasingly thuggish followers, I’m starting to have some dark fears should Donald Trump become president.
Take him at his word — albeit, a worthless thing given his propensity for telling outright lies and not backing down when called on them — Donald Trump’s reign would be a police state. He has now outlined a series of measures that would make the United States an authoritarian nightmare. Trump is no longer entertaining, or diversionary. He’s a billionaire brute, his bluster getting more ominous by the day.
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before,” he said in the demagogic spiral following the Paris attacks. “And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule.”
What’s he talking about? In his words, he wants to implement “the unthinkable.”
Let’s start with his most far-reaching crush of cruelty, the Trump promise to create a huge “deportation force” to storm into homes, churches, schools and businesses and round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants. In doing so, he would need an army of agents to go door-to-door, breaking up families, and snagging many citizens caught up the in the mass sweeps.
As his jackbooted minions grab legal Americans (the children born in this country, citizens per the 14th amendment) and separate them from their illegal parents, he will place them — where? In foster homes? In detention centers? In concentration camps?
He says it will take only two years for him to disrupt nearly every community in the United States, destroying thousands of businesses in the process. “I’m going to remove them so fast your head would spin.”
Let’s do the math: Trump promises to arrest, sort, and deport 11 million people — a number more than 25 percent higher than the entire population of New York City. This from the nominal leader of a party that doesn’t think government can do anything well. In practice, (imagine the viral videos) the new operation would prompt a million Hispanic Anne Franks — people hiding in the attics and basements of Donald Trump’s America.
To go with his Deportation Force, Trump would send another wave of federal authorities out to identify, track and monitor Muslims in America. All of them? He hasn’t said. He’s building his police state on the fly. But in just a few days he went from saying he would “strongly consider” closing houses of worship (mosques), to saying he would have “absolutely no choice” but to shut them down. As for tracking Muslims through some kind a database, he’s been squishy, but also unequivocal, saying, “I would certainly implement that.”
For those fleeing war and religious persecution from the butchers of the Islamic State, sorry if you’re Syrian — Trump would deport those already vetted refugees, mostly women and young children.
To further clamp down in this land of the formerly free, Trump could borrow a few police state ideas from his fellow Republican presidential candidates. Mike Huckabee has suggested using federal agents to invade doctors’ offices and homes, physically preventing women from ending a pregnancy.
Ben Carson has said would consider unleashing a new force in academia, using the Department of Education to root out and punish schools foisting “political correctness” on young minds.
But if all the fragile college students clamoring for trigger warnings want something to send them straight to their padded safety rooms, they should attend a Trump public event.
These rallies are scary spectacles of rabid brown shirts in Dockers. His followers cheer while others pummel protesters, or spit on them. A few days ago in Alabama, a black protester was punched and kicked by his supporters. Trump suggested the man had it coming.
Like any good authoritarian — Soviet or banana republic — Trump concocts plots and dark doings to scare the quivering masses. And no one on the public stage is better at the Big Lie this year than Trump. PolitiFact found that 75 percent of his so-called factual statements are “mostly or entirely false.” The other 25 percent were “half true” or “mostly true.” His score in the flat-out “true” column was zero.
But that doesn’t stop him. The more lies he tells, the more popular he is with a large part of the Republican base that lives in a world of made-up horror and blunt force solutions.
So, hordes of Mexicans continue to rush into the United States, he says, when in fact more people are now returning to Mexico than are coming in. Syrian refugees are “pouring into the country” when barely 2,000 have been admitted. And Trump continues to say “I saw” thousands and thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11, when no such thing has ever been documented. The goal is to get you to hate them — Mexicans, Muslims, the object of all your fears.
As we enter the holidays, there is one more Trump vow to consider. “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you.” With Trump, the seasonal salutation may be mandatory, and creepy.
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