Kenny Mayne: Dear Fellow White People: Or should I have said ‘Caucasian’?

[Larry]

1 hour ago, PeterMP said:

 

ehh, I'm not sure that's fair.  You could just as easy look at the number of people affected by the storms (where there NJ/NY coast is much more densely populated than Puerto Rico) and say it was worse for Obama.

 

(The fundamental issue boils down to a few things though, I think,:

 

1.  That Puerto Rico is an island I do think makes it harder for their to be a quality response.

2.  That fact that it is an island and not overly population reach does limit main stream media coverage of it, which also limits response realistically.

3.  The fact that they have limited representation also hurts, I think.  If Puerto Rico had 2 Senators, I think, you would have seen a different response.)

 

Just my opinion, but the fact that PR isn't part of the US (in the minds of maybe 90% of the population) was a bigger factor than those three combined.  

 

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, Larry said:

 

Just my opinion, but the fact that PR isn't part of the US (in the minds of maybe 90% of the population) was a bigger factor than those three combined.  

 

 

Okay, but that's partly because they don't have representation in terms of being a state (e.g. Senators) and they don't get media coverage.

 

If for the last 50 years people had heard about the Senators from Puerto Rico (where those votes would matter on all sorts of important stuff and their election and what party they were mattered), that would be different.

[tshile]

5 hours ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Yeah, that's my response.

 

And it’s the counter response to you. 

 

Too bad. 

[Destino]

19 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

Okay, but that's partly because they don't have representation in terms of being a state (e.g. Senators) and they don't get media coverage.

There is no shortage of issues Senators would love the press to cover more but the media chases revenue, not the whims of senators.  If people were clicking, sharing, and tuning in to watch Puerto Rico updates there would be an endless stream of media coverage.   

 

19 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

If for the last 50 years people had heard about the Senators from Puerto Rico (where those votes would matter on all sorts of important stuff and their election and what party they were mattered), that would be different.

This I agree with but only because it would cement Puerto Rican's in their minds as Americans. 

[PeterMP]

30 minutes ago, Destino said:

There is no shortage of issues Senators would love the press to cover more but the media chases revenue, not the whims of senators.  If people were clicking, sharing, and tuning in to watch Puerto Rico updates there would be an endless stream of media coverage.   

 

This I agree with but only because it would cement Puerto Rican's in their minds as Americans. 

 

The first part was related to the idea that it doesn't get much media coverage because it is a island without a large population that is disconnected.

 

If Puerto Rico wasn't an island it would get more media coverage in terms of everything else, including Senatorial elections (if they had Senators) and if more people lived there, more people would be related to people that lived there, which would generate more clicks.

[TheGreatBuzz]

As for PR being a state, that is a difficult situation.  Many living there don't want it.  But they also can't stand as their own country.  So what to do?  It is a difficult situation.  I lived in Guam for a few years.  It is the same there.  And, in general, they like being "Americans" but also don't consider themselves so in the traditional sense.  It is a weird situation with no clear fix that everyone will like.

 

As for devastation, don't forget the Keys is still pretty ****ed up.  Not as bad as PR but they are also closer, their system wasn't so screwed up before hand, and they are a state.

 

As for racism in general, I think it is still an issue but I'm not sure it is as big as many make it out to be.  I think there is a far bigger issue with class-ism.  It just so happens that more people of color happen to be poor from the historic racism.  My wife and I have talked about this before looking at our own actions and using the ole' "guy walking down the street" example.  I admit if we are walking down the street and on one side is a well dressed white dude in a suit and on our side is a poorly dressed black dude in "hoodlum" clothes, we would cross the street to where the white dude is.  Switch the people.  Black dude in a nice suit and white dude in hoodlum clothes.  We are crossing the street to where the black dude is.  But based on our history, the chance is greater that it would be the white dude in a suit than the black dude.  We need just as much effort to fix the income inequality and mobility.

[PeterMP]

3 hours ago, Destino said:

Excuse the snark but this is how I interpret what you wrote above: 

Dreamer's just need to be reasonable.  Sure they face deportation to a country they've never known, where they don't even speak the right language, but what about college affordability?  Those 200,000 El Salvadorians left to exposed need to realize that they aren't the only people that can claim to be vulnerable.  Not with climate change gripping our world.  Now we're all just as vulnerable, none more urgent than the other.

 

"You're not the only problem" isn't an acceptable answer to a person facing deportation with each change in the political winds.  Allowing the dreamers to stay doesn't cost an extra penny.  Changing the temporary status of refugees that have been living here for 17 years doesn't accelerate climate change.  All it does is remove the threat that haunts these people every day.  There is an urgency here that doesn't get properly recognized.  We are seeing, right now, the very predictable outcome of pushing this issue off until later.

 

 

Let me address this clearly, I do not think democrats and republicans are equal on this issue.  I see republicans aggressively seeking to do real harm to these immigrants by revoking their status and deporting them.  I view as democrats working diligently to get as good price for these lives, the ones you made a point of saying they valued, from republicans as possible.  See, totally different.

 

What the democrats say is certainly no where near as bad as republicans on this issue.  The problem is that actions are everything and in that area democrats have only proven themselves committed to maintaining the status quo.  They frame this stance as a defense against republicans to drum up votes, but democrats haven't come through.  Not when they had full control and not during Bush's attempts at comprehensive immigration reform.  The status quo isn't good enough. 

 

 

 

There's nothing in my post that suggest that the fact that there hasn't been immigration reform is because of the attitude of the Dreamers', the Salvadorians, or the relationship between them being here and climate change.  There was no implication that is the case.  There is no implication in my post that the solution to the Dreamer's problem is for them to be more reasonable.  And considering that nothing was done on college affordability or climate change (really), it isn't like one was traded for the other.  The Dreamer's aren't being threatened to be deported as a trade off for action on climate change or college affordability.  If the Democrats made a trade for the Dreamer's lives on those things, then they really got nothing for them.

 

I also didn't say we're all just as vulnerable, but we are all vulnerable, including people that live in poor countries that have less access to resources than the Dreamer's have had in their time here or the Salvadorians (including people that didn't get to leave El Salvador in the first place). 

 

Whether we all JUST as vulnerable or some are more vulnerable than others, does not mean that we all not vulnerable and all of our lives aren't be bargained with.

 

The other issue is that you are treating Democrats as a monolith.  In 2007, immigration reform failed, but all of the votes to do so came fm Democrats in red states.

 

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00235#positio

 

I'll ask you again, what do you think Obama should have done differently?

 

That status quo on lot's of issues isn't good enough.

[Going Commando]

11 hours ago, Destino said:

 I can't help but see that these vulnerable populations are being used as pawns.  Welcomed, but only so far as second class status.

 

It comes down to labor necessity.  We need their labor so we need them here, but we don't want to pay full price for it and we can deny them a sort of minimal human dignity that comes with citizenship and/or full legitimacy within our legal and economic and political system by keeping them as second class and illegitimate members of our society.  And yes, a big part of the reason why we don't want them to become full status Americans is because they're non-White and their first language isn't English and they have liberal politics and they would certainly dilute the political power of conservative White America.

 

It's similar to the path that African Americans have had to walk in our society.  Only with a more humane, 21st century face put on the exploitative and dehumanizing consumption of their labor and creation of their second class status.  America needed African labor so we imported it and coerced it, but in order to keep and control it, we kept them from obtaining status and basic human dignity in our society.  We're still preventing black Americans from obtaining full status and dignity and it's been 400 years since Africans first arrived.

 

America needs the labor of poor and working class whites too--labor that they will only perform if they are kept poor and prevented from obtaining a more equitable, just, and efficient division of our common wealth.  We're kept ignorant, wanting, and divided against each other.  We're taught from birth to identify with people of our race, a construct that is wholly a product of arbitrary quirks of phenotypes and social imagination, rather than identify with people who pretty much live the same way as we do, spending their lives performing daily labor to get by.

 

The demand for labor is an a priori cause of economic exploitation and social injustice.

[Going Commando]

Our society is based on an organizing principle of White Supremacy.  It's as fundamental to it as Capitalism.  Letting a massive bloc of non-White immigrants in and letting them obtain full social status without first stripping them of their autonomy and assimilating them and having them obtain "Whiteness" would absolutely undermine White supremacy.

[Veryoldschool]

I am opposed to immigration, legal and illegal because it is too tough for our own people with modest job skills to support themselves.  The combination punches of automation, open trade with low wage countries and the huge influx of labor from other countries as made it really hard for blue-collar workers.  As tough as it is now it will get worse as robots are going eliminate millions of jobs going forward, so I am opposed to immigration and opposed to free trade with low wage countries.  I believe our country would be a lot happier and peaceful if the interests of blue-collar workers were a top concern rather than an afterthought.

48 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

Our society is based on an organizing principle of White Supremacy.  It's as fundamental to it as Capitalism.  Letting a massive bloc of non-White immigrants in and letting them obtain full social status without first stripping them of their autonomy and assimilating them and having them obtain "Whiteness" would absolutely undermine White supremacy.

 

Racist

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

14 minutes ago, Veryoldschool said:

I am opposed to immigration, legal and illegal because it is too tough for our own people with modest job skills to support themselves.  The combination punches of automation, open trade with low wage countries and the huge influx of labor from other countries as made it really hard for blue-collar workers.  As tough as it is now it will get worse as robots are going eliminate millions of jobs going forward, so I am opposed to immigration and opposed to free trade with low wage countries.  I believe our country would be a lot happier and peaceful if the interests of blue-collar workers were a top concern rather than an afterthought.

Unemployment rates are at record lows.

[Going Commando]

4 hours ago, Veryoldschool said:

Racist

 

You think I think this is a good thing?

 

Yes, I agree that it is racist to keep millions of undocumented Hispanic immigrants in a second class status to exploit their labor and keep them from obtaining citizenship and equal status in our society.  I'm pleased that you agree.

[Bozo the kKklown]

Wasn’t @Veryoldschoolbarred from this section because he is racist?

[Zguy28]

6 hours ago, Veryoldschool said:

I am opposed to immigration, legal and illegal because it is too tough for our own people with modest job skills to support themselves.  The combination punches of automation, open trade with low wage countries and the huge influx of labor from other countries as made it really hard for blue-collar workers.  As tough as it is now it will get worse as robots are going eliminate millions of jobs going forward, so I am opposed to immigration and opposed to free trade with low wage countries.  I believe our country would be a lot happier and peaceful if the interests of blue-collar workers were a top concern rather than an afterthought.

 

There are plenty of blue collar jobs out there, people are just too picky and won't do them.

[Llevron]

24 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

Wasn’t @Veryoldschoolbarred from this section because he is racist?

 

I dont think he was barred but he himself said he wouldnt post again. 

[No Excuses]

We have record low unemployment and a plethora of high skill job openings for which we don’t have qualified candidates within the US.

 

Legal immigration of high skill workers is a huge boon to our economy. We’ve had to invest zero dollars in their upbringing and education, yet we reap the benefits of their wages and skills.

[PeterMP]

From an economist stand point, we currently have full unemployment.  

 

(Though, I will point out that's likely partly due to the large increase in deficit spending that happened this year, especially they even changed the payroll deduction tables to get the money into people's answer quickly vs. just waiting until next year and find that you get a larger refund or have to pay fewer taxes than you did the year before.  Another case where there has been a Republican "recovery" due to basic Keyensian economics where the Republicans are finding all sorts of other things to give credit to.  Just like under Reagan.)

 

And a lot of economic studies show that illegal immigrants actually result in the generation of more jobs than they take up (that their net effect on the economy is positive) (though they do hurt wages and jobs of low skill workers).

[zoony]

I wish more people could come to our country, the greatest country the world has ever seen.  I think we need a secure border but i also think our immigration policy should be exceedingly liberal.  Anyone with the drive to pack up their **** and leave everything they know for a chance at a better life is someone i want here

 

I also wish more of the people born here would see how great this country is, and stop being such whiny, insecure, `im a victim and heres why, please send $` ******* 24/7.

 

I was in manhattan for a week with my family 2 weeks ago.  Statue of liberty, 911 museum, best ramen ive had since i lived in Japan, ellis island, etc.   Every lyft driver we had was from the middle east with an incredible story about how they came to this country, and how much they loved it.  2 weeks later we had a severe close encounter with a black bear while hiking in the big south fork nrra.  Greatest. Country. Ever.

 

I wish we could start trading soft, ungrateful americans who dont want to work for immigrants.  That would be ideal

[TradeTheBeal!]

Historically, the entire US economy and capitalist theory is built upon a steady influx of immigrant workers/producers/consumers both skilled and unskilled.  If you posit the notion that we must severely restrict immigration as a means of preserving our economic standing in the world, then you reveal yourself as someone who has absolutely no understanding of American history at even the most fundamental level.

 

You are a total loss.

[No Excuses]

4 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said:

Historically, the entire US economy and capitalist theory is built upon a steady influx of immigrant workers/producers/consumers both skilled and unskilled.  If you posit the notion that we must severely restrict immigration as a means of preserving our economic standing in the world, then you reveal yourself as someone who has absolutely no understanding of American history at even the most fundamental level.

 

You are a total loss.

 

I can't think of a single example in history when protectionism and isolationism actually worked in the long-term economic benefit of any country.

[Warhead36]

Just now, No Excuses said:

 

I can't think of a single example in history when protectionism and isolationism actually worked in the long-term economic benefit of any country.

Wakanda

 

lolol

[Riggo-toni]

@zoony, I wish I could like your post twice!

If you want to come here and are willing to learn English, work, and stay out of trouble, WELCOME!

I am so sick of losers trying to blame other peoples for their own self-defeating behavior/life choices. I am repulsed by politicians who talk about how their grandfather came here with "nothing but the shirt on his back" and subsequently go on nativist tirades.

[Fergasun]

It's all about elections.  Racist white males vote more, therefore it pays to be a racist. 

 

If not, Donald Trump wouldnt be President.

 

Solving these issues is not beneficial to some political circles. 

 

[Veryoldschool]

35 minutes ago, Llevron said:

 

I dont think he was barred but he himself said he wouldnt post again. 

 

Correct, and this post may be a one-off.  Some people who disagreed with me alleged that my posts were racist which is a common liberal tactic to silence those who views that deviate from liberal orthodoxy.  I decided I wouldn't post on topics here because I visit this site to discuss the Redskins not waste pixels on close-minded, intolerant "progressives" who use the race card to cut off discussions.

 

We are living in the most repressive period of my 66 years.  College campuses that were once bastions of free speech when I was college age now have repressive PC speech codes and enforcers as vigilant as the religious police in Saudia Arabia or Iran that stifle and intimidate the heretics the so-called progressives call racists, sexists, homophobic or some other damning words to silence them.  Social media that looked to be platforms for free expression a decade ago have become Big Brother's toolbox.  Big Brother didn't arrive quite as Orwell envision but this age becomes darker and more oppressive each year.

 

My objection to legal and illegal immigration is principally economic.  I grew up in a very different county, a very broadly prosperous country filled with self-reliant families supported in the main by 1 parent who was able to support a spouse and 4 or 5 kids and pay taxes with a blue-collar job.  How many families do know like that today?  The country used to be full of that kind of family that was the norm.  Decades of automation advances, global wage based trade competition that sent production to low wage countries and unregulated immigration have collapsed the earnings of blue-collar workers.

 

It isn't possible anymore for 1 blue-collar parent to support a family like his grandparents did in the 50's and 60's before blue-collars real wages started to decline in the 1970's.  Both political parties abandoned blue-collar workers in favor of borderless trade and flow of people until Trump crashed the globalist party and hijacked the Republican nomination running as a national populist intent on restoring economic opportunity to blue-collar America.  We'll see how this plays out but he is clearly working on it as he said.

 

Yes, the economy is improved but real wages for blue-collar workers have been beaten down for a couple of generations so millions of Americans are still working 2 or 3 low paying jobs to support families.  I applaud Trumps efforts to deport the illegals and his efforts to use tariffs to stem the flow of goods into the country.  For the first time in decades, a POTUS is looking out for American workers.

 

I would prefer Trump crack down on the employers of illegals rather than build a massive wall.  If the fines for employing an illegal were real business killers and the laws were vigorously enforced the illegals would become unemployable and return to their own countries.  The real problem is employers and their competitors get away employing illegals, Trump needs to make employing illegals a losing formula to deal with the problem.  I'd like the government to start using the RICO statutes to deal with this criminal behavior.

 

Americans need the jobs and they need higher wages that is why Trump won in 2016 and if he can help blue-collar workers in the heartland make progress he'll win again in 2020 regardless what the angry, racist, hate-filled "progressives" do on the coasts.  He'll win and deserve to win.

[Bozo the kKklown]

Nah buddy, you are a racist.