“It’s a little too quiet” - US Politics February 2021

It's "just temporary" ...

As a practical matter, ICE is now letting more unaccompanied minors across the border (per Biden's directives), and they do actually have to go somewhere. Legally the government can't just give a 16-year-old a bus ticket to Baltimore or whatever. But keeping them in jail is obviously not a good option either. I'm not sure what should be done in the short term, but they ought to be working on a better, more humane system in the near term. The absence of that is what will keep the detention centers open. And keeping the detention centers open allows them to not think about a better, more humane system, because they have a place to stash them. Not great.

“It is a step backward...” It is. What is the step forward for children in custody?

To get them out of custody obv. But our system is so fucked up that it's hard to get to that point. (Highly recommend "Tell Me How It Ends" by Valeria Luiselli on this.)

As a practical matter, ICE is now letting more unaccompanied minors across the border (per Biden's directives), and they do actually have to go somewhere. Legally the government can't just give a 16-year-old a bus ticket to Baltimore or whatever. But keeping them in jail is obviously not a good option either. I'm not sure what should be done in the short term, but they ought to be working on a better, more humane system in the near term. The absence of that is what will keep the detention centers open. And keeping the detention centers open allows them to not think about a better, more humane system, because they have a place to stash them. Not great.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 1:46 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Blerrrggghghg to ALL OF THIS HORRIBLENESS. I mean tipsy otm.

It's my understanding that the process of minors applying for asylum REQUIRES them to arrive unaccompanied at the border and surrender to agents. It doesn't work if there's an adult with them or if they have a parent or guardian resident in the US. I mean, it SUCKS, but that's what we've got. Let's un-get it though yes.

I interviewed a guy last week who had been put into deportation (for the infuriating reason that someone hit his car, and while giving an accident report to the responding officer, the guy had to acknowledge he didn't have a driver's license). He was whisked into the black hole of ICE while his wife and kids tried to keep track of where he was. The upshot was he spent about 5 weeks in ICE jail in two different states, and by forking over all the family savings (and the savings of other family members and friends) to hire a lawyer, he was finally released and had to take a bus back from Louisiana to Tennessee. He's now back doing exactly what he was doing before, working as a cook, but minus what little cushion the family had. The thing he kept repeating about the whole system was, "It's just a business."

Which is too kind, obviously. It's a fucking racket, and a deeply inhumane one. But it's so administratively and bureaucratically entrenched that dismantling it would be very hard even for an administration that really wanted to.

:((((( I worked with a middle-schooler whose brother was coming without documents from Guatemala iirc?, and was only a couple of hours away from NYC in a car when they were apparently detained & sucked into the maw of ICE. They took him all the way to CHICAGO, like a 14-hour drive away!! I tried to find him free legal services but my resources were all NYC-based and I think the family got their own lawyer first. It was so scary and awful.

ICE world really is its own subterranean system. It's like being captured by goblins.

The violence of borders is despicable, dismantle it all now afaic, I truly don't care about "how difficult it would be."

Clearly.

tuesday mornng challenge:

without googling, without using your computer, without looking at the news, and without breathing, who said this:

“Here’s a suggestion: Just don’t be assholes,” he said. “Just, you know, treat each other as human beings. Have some degree, some modicum of respect.”

hint: it's one of the biggest assholes

answer:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reported on Tuesday morning that his wife, Heidi, is less than thrilled that at least two people in her group chat leaked her tone-deaf texts about the Cruz family’s Cancún vacation in the middle of Texas’ snowstorm crisis last week.

“I will say, Heidi’s pretty pissed at that,” Cruz said during an interview on the conservative “Ruthless” podcast.

The group chat participants were the Cruzs’ neighbors, according to the senator. He speculated that the moles could’ve been some of the Democrats on their street.

“We’ve got a number of Republicans who are neighbors but we’ve also got a number of Democrats with folks on our street who put up Beto signs, which I thought was a little rude,” Cruz said, referring to his 2018 Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke.

Then the Texas Republican, who fled to sunny Mexico as millions of his constituents sat freezing in their homes due to power outages from the storm, tut-tutted at the leakers’ lack of decency.

“Here’s a suggestion: Just don’t be assholes,” he said. “Just, you know, treat each other as human beings. Have some degree, some modicum of respect.”

FUCK

i am really, really bad at the new Hide tag. ted cruz said it. ted cruz is an asshole. that's all i got here

we’ve also got a number of Democrats with folks on our street who put up Beto signs, which I thought was a little rude,” Cruz said

What a little pissant.

I am giving something away about myself here, but it physically pains me that I share a first name with Ted Cruz, and that it's much too late for me to try something else.

At least my name isn't Donald.

I truly don't care about "how difficult it would be."

As a statement of principle, I get it. As a statement of how to change things in the world, the difficulty matters a great deal.

If they can get any kind of half-decent immigration bill through — and I don't even know how to calculate the odds on that — that will be the important first step out of the current situation.

As a statement of how to change things in the world, the difficulty matters a great deal.

people are what make these things difficult. they aren't just difficult as a matter of fact.

we’ve also got a number of Democrats with folks on our street who put up Beto signs, which I thought was a little rude

Why would you ever take them down if you had Cruz as a neighbour?

you will get the same deflection from democrats re their currently unraveling stimulus disaster. disembodied difficulties.

The difficulty of people is the biggest matter of fact I've ever encountered.

The lack of self-awareness, saying "just don't be assholes" on a podcast called "Ruthless". Wow.

If you had to choose, would you call a kid Donald or isis?

I still don’t really know what ISIS is, or if it’s still happening

Every other heave-inducing Cruz-ism aside, that quote about the signs is really something else. It's a little rude that you'd support a party other than the one affiliated with squirming human-sized spermatozoa Ted Cruz!

xpost - they broke up in 2010, but they reunite for live shows from time to time

how has biden not visited texas yet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/21/winter-weather-texas-updates/

“He is eager to go down to Texas and show his support,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday. “But he’s also very mindful of the fact that it’s not a light footprint for a president to travel to a disaster area. He does not want to take away resources or attention.

I am giving something away about myself here, but it physically pains me that I share a first name with Ted Cruz, and that it's much too late for me to try something else.

Ted is just his stage name, though. Is your real first name Rafael?

how has biden not visited texas yet

he's waiting for all the Texas politicians to visit first

people are what make these things difficult. they aren't just difficult as a matter of fact.

True but tautological since politics is a human system. It's difficulties are inherently people-centric. Borders are also a human invention obviously, and exist as a subset of politics. But the problem being "people" doesn't make the problems any easier. Makes them harder, really. If the challenges were strictly physics or engineering, we could solve them pretty quickly.

President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden are traveling to Houston on Friday as the state continues to recover from the winter storm, according to the @HoustonChron: https://t.co/ggowOCGnuc

— Matt Viser (@mviser) February 23, 2021

^^And in exchange, we're sending Deshaun Watson and two draft picks to DC.

Ted is just his stage name, though. Is your real first name Rafael?

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 8:45 AM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No, but Ted is also my "stage name," and also the name that I've chosen to have printed on diplomas, etc. The only places that use my "real" and "legal" name are places of work, the bank, and other bullshit that has little to do with my life. No one has ever called me by my real name except in those contexts, either. I even tried to use it when I switched schools for high school, and it didn't stick.

Alas, I'm a Ted.

Ted is a nice name, imo. Anyway, I don't think the specific association with Ted Cruz is that strong yet. He hasn't been mononymized like Bernie or Hillary.

https://a1cf74336522e87f135f-2f21ace9a6cf0052456644b80fa06d4f.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/images/characters_opt/p-bill-and-teds-excellent-adventure-keanu-reeves.jpg

I've been a leftist firebrand long enough that people used to call me "Kaczynski" in middle school.

just so nonsensical and so deflating

.@SenatorSinema is doubling down on her support of the #filibuster in emails to constituents today. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/uYtv4W0pGg

— Sarah Dohl (@SarahDohl) February 23, 2021

xpost this is the story of a boy almost named Ted

THAT SOULJA BOY OF COURSE

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whos-gonna-tellem/sharetoken/PUnCw0rG5HKD?fbclid=IwAR3xRSjGs3kK_IFU2hphJwA0UnUOSrLRP9r5EdT3v42kdrAv0zyd3JoZr80

That Sinema thing is just so disheartening.

Wish someone would [redacted] Romney and Cotton.

Josh is otm there, especially regarding the need to use paid media to get the message across, instead of relying on free news media or social media accounts. Which runs into a basic problem of who is the custodian of that message and therefore should be the recipient of the money to distribute that message? The DNC is nominally set up to be that custodian, but they can't seem to shake off their deep-seated institutional ineptitude and their lazy fealty to the wealthy writers of big checks. I'd hate to have to send them my money to get this done; it would be like throwing it down a rathole.

Argh, Kyrsten Sinema. Eliminating the filibuster is *more likely* to lead to bipartisan solutions than retaining it. With a filibuster in place, Republicans can just prevent any legislation from being passed by sending an email. But if Democrats are able to pass legislation with a simple majority, that incentivizes Republicans to at least try to negotiate. And in some cases, Democrats will *want* to negotiate if it means that they can pick up Republican votes and then claim that the bill is bipartisan.

want a revolution? keep clamping down, lady. centrist out—

Honestly haven't paid a lot of attention to her, is she hoping for some pork being thrown her way now that Manchin has backed down a little?

that's always the question, innit? does what she says in any way reflect what she thinks and what she wants?

Sinema is useless and disappointing and lame.

Yep but at least she's not McSally or some even worse AZ Repub dilweed

when I think about Ted I think about the Seth MacFarlane movie about a wicked funny teddy bear who says the most crazy things