Retire, Breyer: another September 2021 US Politics thread

Capitol defendant nabbed by Snapchat Maps. pic.twitter.com/hwgKUjFdaz

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) September 20, 2021

More scenes from the Texas Haiti camp. pic.twitter.com/5FeNbFCyBL

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) September 21, 2021

This is good stuff

One of the most devastating campaign ads and hits on a Republican I have ever seen pic.twitter.com/PcMoU5h2RE

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) September 22, 2021

makes sense to me, which i 100% believe (with 99% confidence) means that it will have absolutely no effect on anyone who might change their vote

It’s mark meadows old district. There aren’t enough non-republicans for the persuadable people to matter.

is it weird to me that a "devastating hit" sounds more like just recounting what actually happened? that didn't even hit that hard, madison cawthorn is much more of a conniving cynical asshole than the ad makes him out to be

"devastating hit" isn't what the ad is about, that's Adam Parkhomenko trolling for retweets

shame on you Adam Parkhomenko @AdamParkhomenko!

sincerely, though, i do wonder who it convinces. i mean, seems great to me, it really does. and as i've argued in the past, even if it doesn't convince anyone new, it's good to occasionally send out signals of real life and actual facts and things that happened, just to remind others that see it that others see it too.

Jasmine Beech-Ferrara: "Violent extremism has no place in western North Carolina. It isn't who we are."

People who have studied history: "Um, hate to break it to you, but..."

I wonder why the ad showed MC talking about bloodshed and then cut to a tv anchor reporting what we just heard him say

probably doesn't mean anything for his district but it's encouraging to see dem house candidates not shy away from the fact that many (most) (all but like 4) republican congresspeople are dangerous extremists

BREAKING: Biden admin seeks contractor to run migrant detention facility at Gitmo, guards who speak Creole.

With @KenDilanianNBC. https://t.co/LKiIHL6xm3

— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) September 22, 2021

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) tells it like it is. “We always do this fucking dance,” Tester told Politico. “I don’t know if people are going to put their sane minds on and do what needs to be done, or shut it down. This is just a ridiculous exercise. I can’t even compare it to anything I do on the farm that’s this stupid.”

that man has clearly never fucked a chicken

I won't tell.

Allegedly...
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/letterkenny/images/0/06/BootsandtheGinger1x6.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190108051444

In an interview after the White House meeting, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said she urged the officials to halt deportations of Haitian migrants.

“We know the administration heard us and, in fact, they understand these issues very well,” she said.

In addition to protests, Bastien and other activists say the level of anger within the Haitian American community is so intense that some residents have been marching into county offices to sever their affiliation with the Democratic Party and registering as independents. Bastien said her own brother, who also lives in Miami, told her Tuesday that he plans to leave the Democratic Party this week.

“The betrayal is deep, and this week has shown that the Democratic Party, and its leader Joe Biden, does not care about Black people,” said Leonie Hermantin, an activist who works with the Haitian Neighborhood Center in Miami, where many refugees initially go for services when they arrive in South Florida. “Black lives do matter, even at the border.”

fuck the democrats

fuck them because they know they can take this "hit" from their own voters, and because they're doing it to try to impress conservatives with how tough they can be on children

at least one decent person. sadly, sometimes the best you can do is loudly quit

The U.S. special envoy for Haiti has quit his job in a blistering resignation letter saying he could not be associated with the Biden administration’s decision to deport thousands of Haitian migrants to their home country, a move he called “inhumane” given the deteriorating security situation in the country.

“Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed,” Daniel Foote said in the letter addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday.

“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the dangers posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,” he said.

Foote was named special envoy in July just weeks after the assassination of Haiti’s president plunged the country into political turmoil.

i understand why they're not getting anything done legislatively. they have no margins to work, and they have some all-time motherfuckers on their "side" (manchin, sinema).

and i understand why many elected democrats don't give a fuck about haiti or immigration and aren't willing to say anything about it now - a democrat is in office, and they're already worried about how they haven't been able to do jack-shit legislatively and are going to get wiped out in 2022.

it's a cynical, calculated indifference, and all it does is make their their last year or so in office a little smoother for themselves

the idiots are winning in america. it was a battle before, but they are winning now

it’s really depressing

it's depressing because we went through HELL and we got joe fucking biden at the end, even though absolutely everyone under the age of 35 (not even including me) fucking hated joe biden and really wanted bernie sanders

and because of that, this administration won't be a failure because it went too far or tried to hard or pushed too hard for justice or anything like that; it's a failure because they're still stuck in the 90s

We in the local Miami-Dade Dem chapter, which, as you can imagine, has many Haitian or Haitian-descent members, are uh not happy with the statewide party, which still consists of Bill Nelson types from the Panhandle and northern Florida.

maybe if had some sort of representation in congress that isn't 75+ years old? i cannot imagine a 35-year-old being such a cowardly piece of shit

a 35-year-old REAL PERSON, i mean, like the millions of really cool young people i know who would never, ever, give the false pre-internet politician smile at the camera while defending the worst things

The thing is, I expected '90s-era policies from Biden. COVID and Trump and living in MDC have made me way more transactional. Should the Dems in Congress pass the two bills and Biden sign them, I'd weigh the Biden presidency more coldly in the way we do FDR + the internment camps. "You signed these big bills, now you must lose control of Congress for betraying a crucial constituency like the Haitians and fellow human beings."

Should the Dems in Congress pass the two bills and Biden sign them, I'd weigh the Biden presidency more coldly in the way we do FDR + the internment camps. "You signed these big bills, now you must lose control of Congress for betraying a crucial constituency like the Haitians and fellow human beings."

i would too, sadly. they pass those bills, they will get "punished", because americans are the fucking worst.

and now, those 2 bills are very much in doubt. just a fucking debacle.

he doesn't get those 2 big bills (or if manchin brings it down to a mediocre bill so that he might get re-elected in WV again), then what has he done? he's partly reversed a bunch of Trump policy/executive order stuff, he's got the agencies starting the rulemaking process for revising trump-era revised regulations (PUKE, just typing that). all of that stuff is either EO and quickly overturned, or takes years and years in the slow-motion federal system and will just be reaching "Final Rule" status just as president fascist returns to kill us all again.

the only incentive to vote is against Trump, still. vote against the guy who tries to kill us, so that we can put in a temporary ancient man to twiddle his fingers for a few years and compromise with republican "moderates" who are actually rich assholes who spend their lives in country clubs

then we all get to be excited about voting for the first female cop in 2024, if biden dies or gets pushed into a quiet room.

guess we'll all just bide our time until AOC is ready, at which point in time it'll be appropriate to raise the whole Tax the Rich dress episode, which will be another useful way to determine who is absolutely full of shit yet again

Karl, you're talking yourself into a corner again.

it's true. i'm eating a bagel and getting ready to buy a gigantic box from home depot. it's going to be ok.

ooh Home Depot on a Thursday afternoon

i'm going to buy a giant telescoping box, put a giant painting in there, then take it to fedex and send it to the big apple

#supportsmallbusinesses

i normally spam the immigration thread with this stuff but w/e, some words from my friend who is an immigration lawyer
-----
Newsletter #14- Del Rio
Before starting I am going to leave the donation page for my friends at Haitian Bridge Alliance right here. Follow them @haitianbridge on Twitter, Insta, or FB. They are a collective of activists and advocates that support Haitian immigrants in our borderlands and a voice that must be heard right now.

I wasn’t planning on writing a newsletter this week. Then on Sunday night when I was going to bed and scrolling through the apps on my phone, I started to see photos of border patrol agents on horseback in Del Rio charging and whipping at black migrants with horse reins, pushing them back into the Rio Grande. I knew there was a growing number of Haitians arriving at the US border this month and that trouble would be brewing, especially after I read DHS’ “Strategy to Address Increase in Migrants in Del Rio”. But I was still alarmed, as anyone would be, by the violence of those images and went to bed feeling shook. (If you haven't seen the pictures just google it. I can't bear to look even one more time)

My anxiety only increased the next day until it reached the point of panic. My heart wouldn’t stop racing and I started crying in Zoom meeting with colleagues. I couldn’t quite figure out what was causing the panic attack. Certainly I have witnessed violence against migrants before and I wasn’t even witnessing this, I was just refreshing Twitter in disbelief and feeling sicker and sicker.

It was only after I was able to have a drink and then sleep that I woke up and realized that I freaked out because we have been yelling about how unjust Title 42 is for months and not only is it still happening but the government is escalating their strategy. And I was freaking out because of how nakedly the government is lying about what they are doing in Del Rio and my deep worry that the public will believe them.
Here are some quick facts about the situation: over the last few weeks around 12 to 14 thousand people, some individuals and some families, have arrived at the US at the border at Del Rio Texas. A lot of these people are Haitian but not all. There are Central and South Americans too. Where the Haitians are concerned, news sources are rightly pointing out that a lot of them are not actually coming directly from Haiti but rather from other points in South America where they migrated and were working until economic issues pushed them to migrate again, this time to the US. The situation is apparently growing grave as there is no food or water or health services. There is a desperate need for a humanitarian intervention yet, the Biden administration’s response, now standard, has been to say “now is not the time to come” and promise that nearly everyone will be routinely expelled under Title 42 and to ramp up deportation flights to Haiti at an appalling speed.

To control your outrage and keep your vote , here is what our government needs you to believe:
1. The people camped in Del Rio did something illegal. They did not. Entering a country seeking humanitarian protection, regardless of whether you end up qualifying for it in the long run, is legal. There isn’t an exception. Previously, when the border wasn’t shut down due to the pandemic, there was the option to turn yourself in directly at the port of entry. This was often seen as the more legal way to do it but crossing between the ports is a completely sanctioned way to seek protection under US law, which is exactly what these Haitians are doing.
2. We do not have the resources to process them humanely. We do. In a matter of weeks, 60,000 Afghan refugees were brought into the US in a peaceful and orderly manner for processing. They are being held at military installments and processed humanely. There is no reason we cannot do this with arriving Haitians. Even if we wanted to use detention centers to hold Haitians (which we absolutely should not), we are currently paying private prison corporations nightly for around 20,000 unused beds.
3. It is safe to send people on flights to Haiti. It is not. Haiti is struggling right now. There was recent presidential assassination and an earthquake and hurricanes. The conditions in Haiti right now are so devastating that 5 weeks ago the Biden administration re-extended rarely used Temporary Protective Status to Haitians stopping all deportations to the country. In doing so they cited, “Haiti is grappling with a deteriorating political crisis, violence, and a staggering increase in human rights abuses”. Yet now that there is political pressure in the borderlands they are quick to abandon their own plans. It is appalling.
4. It is legal to expel people to Haiti. It is not. The government’s strategy of expulsion is not legal. Title 42, the public health order that has kept the border closed since March 2020, does not authorize the government to deport refugees to their country of origin without due process. The whole concept of mass expulsions was invented during the pandemic as a vicious tool of border control. Just last week a Federal judge enjoined the practice of expelling families under Title 42. The order was to go into effect in two weeks. The Biden administration will appeal it but they have been told the practice of mass expulsion is illegal and are squeezing dozens of flights in under the wire before they have to stop.
5. Deterrent strategies work. They do not. Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I have seen the government do to people in an effort to deter them from exercising their international right to seek humanitarian protection in the United States: make them cross deadly deserts in 110 degree heat; take their children from them; put them in detention centers; send them to live in the streets of Mexico while awaiting a hearing; detaining them in disgusting congregate settings during a deadly pandemic; detaining them with their children; and flying them to the Guatemalan border and telling them to start over again. Telling people not to come and hurting them fails as a policy when people are desperate enough to move no matter what. It is how we find ourselves staring at photos of border patrol whipping Haitian migrants on the banks of the Rio Grande.

The problem with these lies is that most media incorporates them into their reporting and makes room for them in their analyses. And we repeat them to each other and we build a framework to understand this situation on misinformation. And if we believe these things, then we accept that the Biden Administration is simply making “tough choices” and not actively violating international laws.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how the world faced our moral duty to help Afghan refugees as the only choice no matter how inconvenient to our governments. We need the same response to Haitians as well. Here is what that looks like: stop deportation flights to Haiti immediately; send in humanitarian workers to ensure that people have food and water and health services; actually process people by leading with the fact that they need protection and give them credible fear interviews with the asylum office but only after they have had time to rest and care for their health and secure counsel and interpreters provided by our tax dollars.

None of this is easy. Doing the right thing rarely is easy. And there will be political fallout from the right. But there will always be political fallout from the right. I mistakenly voted for a President last year believing “anything was better than Trump” and not realizing that if that were my standard then I wouldn’t get much better. In the borderlands that is playing out perfectly and this president might be worse than Trump if he doesn’t immediately course correct and do the right thing.

1) hi gbx!!!

2) what is the immigration thread? i couldn’t find an updated one so i started this one - Abolish ICE

Fucking fuming at this situation, though am not surprised that an absolute asshole white supremacist like Biden would sign off on these conditions.

hi tracer! there's a rolling immigration thread from, like, 2013 i think, i would post periodic updates there from my lawyer pal

rolling US immigration reform thread for 2013 and beyond

thanks gbx and aimless

suggestion to use the abolish ice thread for USA stuff now? so that we see the words “abolish ICE” all the time but hey who am i to tame the wild internet winds

Gbx, is that newsletter available online somewhere, cuz if it is I’d like to make it available on FB.

i'll have a look -- i c&p'd that from my friend's FB, but i'm not sure where she's publishing the newsletter

https://preview.mailerlite.com/k9d8v0?fbclid=IwAR3c2og7SiLCrtprpvsXYx92H_xNq7xjdFQK0VNlPhbulaL-HjrXuhzpFOc

Thanks

Final count on Iron Dome: 420 yes, 9 no, 2 present.
No's: Tlaib, Carson, Omar, Massie, Newman, Pressley, Garcia, Grijalva, Bush
Present: Hank Johnson and Ocasio-Cortez

— Marc Rod (@marcrod97) September 23, 2021

Ocasio-Cortez in giving a pass to an apartheid state shocker.

she's preparing a scarf about it

I'm guessing it won't be a khaffiyeh

Free Palestine scarf made by an Israeli settler