All Things "AOC" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & the Squad.

[StillUnknown]

22 minutes ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

People defending this ****. Great hill to die on. You’ve done yourself proud.

 

it is inhumane and anti-American to treat people, anyone this way. Hell The police would be called for neglect and cruelty if there were dogs or other animals being treated like this in somebody’s neighborhood. 

 

Think about that you asswipes that want to get into a semantics war to avoid actually addressing the issue. This is a concentration camp. That it hasn’t turned into a death camp yet or if it’s slightly better than a camp that genocides millions of people doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change the argument any but it does show you for who you really are: pieces of **** 

 

There are times i sincerely feel like i'm stuck in an alternate reality. 

 

People are adding 2 + 2 and coming up with Jello.

 

This country is ****ed beyond repair

[Momma There Goes That Man]

37 minutes ago, Larry said:

No.  It's not.  

 

And if you have a problem with how terrible it is that people are engaging in a semantics war, then stop firing salvos in it.  

 

Are there some parallels?  Yes.  

 

Is it right and moral to point out said parallels?  Yes.  

 

Are there also differences?  Yes.  

 

Are said differences important distinctions?  Yes.  

 

 

I get there are minor distinctions. But it is a concentration camp. Call it for what it is. It’s a disservice to not acknowledge this. 

 

Obviously I wasn’t referring to you in my post. I know that you know better and you aren't using the semantics or minor differences to defend the practice or shift focus to that to ignore the actual atrocities of these camps. 

 

 

[Larry]

22 minutes ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

 

 

I get there are minor distinctions. But it is a concentration camp. Call it for what it is. It’s a disservice to not acknowledge this. 

 

Obviously I wasn’t referring to you in my post. I know that you know better and you aren't using the semantics or minor differences to defend the practice or shift focus to that to ignore the actual atrocities of these camps. 

 

 

 

"Minor distinctions" like six million dead people, and due process. 

 

Silly me. I think they're kinda important. 

 

I'll give you another word: hypocrisy. A pretty good example of it is someone who is on a rant to demand that people must agree to use the most emotionally loaded phrase in our language, chosen specifically because of its association with mass murder and ethnic cleansing, while simultaneously claiming that those elements don't technically have to be there, according to this dictionary, (and besides, they're just minor distinctions), while ranting that his enemy is engaging in a semantic war. 

 

You want to know who's semantic war is distracting from what's important?  Check the mirror. You had a great post there, that focused on what's really important - the ideal that this country doesn't do things like that to people. 

 

And then you had to add a second paragraph. 

[LadySkinsFan]

The "due process" these people go through is a sad minimization of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  They are going through "kangaroo courts" .

[Larry]

11 minutes ago, LadySkinsFan said:

The "due process" these people go through is a sad minimization of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  They are going through "kangaroo courts" .

 

I wouldn't be completely shocked if that were true. (At the very least, I assume Trump and his band of racists are working hard to make it true.)

 

Wouldn't mind seeing some support for it, though.  

[Bozo the kKklown]

2 hours ago, Larry said:

"Minor distinctions" like six million dead people, and due process

 

So you think the first concentration camps were in Germany? And that concentration camps only lead to killings?

 

So in the history of the world, their have only been seven concentration camps and they all were in Germany. The other camps in Germany and Poland where Jews were rounded up and forced to live against their wills weren’t? Where Anne Frank does wasn’t a concentration camp?

Edited July 4, 2019 by BenningRoadSkin

[CousinsCowgirl84]

3 hours ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

 

 

I get there are minor distinctions. But it is a concentration camp. Call it for what it is. It’s a disservice to not acknowledge this. 

 

Obviously I wasn’t referring to you in my post. I know that you know better and you aren't using the semantics or minor differences to defend the practice or shift focus to that to ignore the actual atrocities of these camps. 

 

 

 

Deliberately imprisoned is the part I question. They come voluntarily....

Edited July 4, 2019 by CousinsCowgirl84

[TradeTheBeal!]

6 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

 

Deliberately imprisoned is the part I question. They come voluntarily....

 

Yes.  Because America is the land of the free...or were you not aware of that?

[CousinsCowgirl84]

4 minutes ago, TryTheBeal! said:

 

Yes.  Because America is the land of the free...or were you not aware of that?

 

Anyone who breaks law gives up their right to freedom.... but you are drifting now...

Edited July 4, 2019 by CousinsCowgirl84

[bcl05]

Asking for asylum is LEGAL.  The Trump administration is ignoring that fact, but it doesn't make it untrue.

[CousinsCowgirl84]

5 minutes ago, bcl05 said:

Asking for asylum is LEGAL.  The Trump administration is ignoring that fact, but it doesn't make it untrue.

 

It is legal, but it has to be done in a legal way. And I’m any case, this has no bearing over whether or not holding facilities where people volunteer to go to....

Edited July 4, 2019 by CousinsCowgirl84

[Burgold]

2 hours ago, Larry said:

 

"Minor distinctions" like six million dead people, and due process. 

Are you sure they are receiving "due process?" When the children and parents were forcibly separated was there due process then? Did they establish protocols for due process? What due process is in place for the six month year old who's now one? More specifically, Trump and his lawyers have gone to court arguing that detainees can be held indefinitely and don't deserve due process. They are fighting the courts on this.

Never give Trump the benefit of the doubt. They don't want due process. They don't care about ethical or legal. They have created what they want and, by and large, they seem proud of it. Trying to find minutiae to differentiate this camp from that camp is ignoring the big picture. Listen to those who have spent their whole lives studying concentration camps. There is almost universal agreement and condemnation on those very grounds. These "camps" are arguably worse and certainly crueler than the Japanese Interment Camps. They are being used in a punitive way to concentrate a population many of whom approached the country legally through proper asylum procedures.

 

But regardless of the words we choose, the reality is horrific. The intent is horrific. The specifics fall below any standard of ethical imprisonment or detainment. They are far below that which we treat prisoners, enemy combatants, etc.

Just now, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

 

It is legal, but it has to be done in a legal way. 

And, by and large, it was. They didn't care.

16 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

 

Anyone who breaks law gives up their right to freedom.... but you are drifting now...

This isn't really true. Does the person who jaywalks across the street give up their right to due process? We have decided that prisoners in jails retain certain rights, certain freedoms. They don't lose their humanity and all protections because they break a law.

[Momma There Goes That Man]

 

3 hours ago, Larry said:

 

"Minor distinctions" like six million dead people, and due process. 

 

Silly me. I think they're kinda important. 

 

I'll give you another word: hypocrisy. A pretty good example of it is someone who is on a rant to demand that people must agree to use the most emotionally loaded phrase in our language, chosen specifically because of its association with mass murder and ethnic cleansing, while simultaneously claiming that those elements don't technically have to be there, according to this dictionary, (and besides, they're just minor distinctions), while ranting that his enemy is engaging in a semantic war. 

 

You want to know who's semantic war is distracting from what's important?  Check the mirror. You had a great post there, that focused on what's really important - the ideal that this country doesn't do things like that to people. 

 

And then you had to add a second paragraph. 

 

Larry I like you a lot as a poster here and I’m surprised you are the one taking this stance. But I absolutely question the due process they are receiving. And the intent to murder them at the end isn’t a requirement for it to be a concentration camp and therefore isn’t what I was referring to as a minor distinction. 

 

The phrase is loaded but it wasn’t chosen because of its association with genocide it was chosen because of its accuracy to their current situation. It’s just what they are called. It doesn’t mean I or anyone is implying they’re going to murdered at the end of this.

 

 If it hurts people to hear that and to acknowledge that yes, concentration camps are happening here in America, good. It’s supposed to

 

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Momma There Goes That Man

[Skintime]

46 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

 

Deliberately imprisoned is the part I question. They come voluntarily....

And then they are imprisoned. Hello????

[Springfield]

34 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

 

Anyone who breaks law gives up their right to freedom.... but you are drifting now...

 

This is the biggest load of **** that I’ve seen in a while.  Speeding is breaking the law, underage drinking is breaking the law, sex before marriage is breaking the law, stealing movies on the internet is breaking the law.

 

Breaking the law does not automatically mean that you lose your freedom.  Usually, you have to be proved that you’ve ACTUALLY broken a law by a jury of your peers to love your freedom.

[Skintime]

3 minutes ago, Springfield said:

 

This is the biggest load of **** that I’ve seen in a while.  Speeding is breaking the law, underage drinking is breaking the law, sex before marriage is breaking the law, stealing movies on the internet is breaking the law.

 

Breaking the law does not automatically mean that you lose your freedom.  Usually, you have to be proved that you’ve ACTUALLY broken a law by a jury of your peers to love your freedom.

She loves to twist crap to try to make points when she has nothing to stand on. She has no idea of how America works, only wants to provide mindless support to her master Lord trump.

[Momma There Goes That Man]

46 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

 

Deliberately imprisoned is the part I question. They come voluntarily....

 

Yes, they voluntarily travel 2,000+ miles with just the clothes on their back, bring their babies and toddlers on this life threatening journey to come to America and seek asylum and a better life.

 

That means they know beforehand they’d be ripped from their children, stuffed in cages and forced to live in their **** for weeks while being psychologically abused. Guess they had plenty of opportunity to know this by seeing it on their cable news, discussing it with their friends at the hair salon and researching it during their nights at starbucks on their laptops before volunteering to head here.

 

Get out of here with that nonsense

[TradeTheBeal!]

7 minutes ago, Springfield said:

 

This is the biggest load of **** that I’ve seen in a while.  Speeding is breaking the law, underage drinking is breaking the law, sex before marriage is breaking the law, stealing movies on the internet is breaking the law.

 

Breaking the law does not automatically mean that you lose your freedom.  Usually, you have to be proved that you’ve ACTUALLY broken a law by a jury of your peers to love your freedom.

 

Not too long back, cowgirl liked to let us all know that teenagers that run from the cops and get shot in the back “ had it coming”.

 

So...she’s made a lot of progress.

[Larry]

1 hour ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

 

So you think the first concentration camps were in Germany? And that concentration camps only lead to killings?

 

So in the history of the world, their have only been seven concentration camps and they all were in Germany. The other camps in Germany and Poland where Jews were rounded up and forced to live against their wills weren’t? Where Anne Frank does wasn’t a concentration camp?

 

Your first question?  Don't know, don't care.  That's what the term means now.  

 

Confess I know nothing about Anne Frank, (other than recognizing the name),  but I assume from your descrip[tion that it was a place where the Nazis grabbed Jews off the street, simply for being Jewish, and stuffed them in there.  I'll assume, with the supposed intent that they would have stayed there for life (except for that pesky thing that they lost the war.)  

 

Assuming that's the place you're describing, would such a place deserve to be called a "concentration camp"?  I could certainly see that label fitting.  (And I'll admit, for all I know, that's what the Germans did call them.)  

 

But that's still not what we're talking about, here, is it?  

 

Far as I'm aware, Trump does not have soldiers sweeping through the US, rounding up citizens simply for having Hispanic ancestry, and shipping them to BFE for the rest of their lives.  (Although he'd probably get a woody, thinking about it.  Could probably get 30-40% of the population to vote for it.)  

 

Unfortunately, if you assert that the label "concentration camp" does not require either mass executions nor people being rounded up solely for their ancestry, then what you're left with is arguing that there is no difference between "concentration camp" and "a county jail".  

 

Maybe "an overcrowded jail".  

 

- - - - 

 

Buried underneath the semantic warfare, though, there's some other points here that I think actually are worthy of discussion.  (I suspect that my opinion on all of them is going to be that they aren't quite as binary as the various shouting parties would like.)  

 

No, applying for asylum is not normally prosecuted as a criminal act.  (Neither is illegal immigration, as I understand it.)  

 

However, it is also the case that it is not a rule of the US that anyone who shows up at the passport window and says the word "asylum" must immediately be repleied to with "Welcome to the US.  You are now free to enter the country, to go and do whatever you want, and some day maybe we will ask for you to show up in court, and we'd really like it if you'd voluntarily show up, but we have no way to make you, and until that day, we aren't even allowed to do a thing to you."  

 

Showing up at the US border with a US passport, returning home from your trip, isn;t illegal, either.  But they have the right to detain you (for a bit).  They have the right to search you.  (And they don't need probable cause or a warrant.)  

 

People crossing international borders have a lower level of rights.  And again, I'm not at all certain that there is, or should be, an absolute rule stating that asylum seekers must be immediately turned loose within the US while they spend years shuffling paperwork leading up to their court date(s).  

 

I would absolutely argue that they're entitled so a speedy appearance before some kind of a judge, who will then set bail.  I'd love to have some info as to how many asylum seekers actually can make bail, and how many actually show up for their court dates.  I confess that I assume that it's very few.  My assumption is that anybody whose plan is to show up in a foreign country, get a fake identity, and get employment under the fake ID, seems like the very definition of "flight risk" to me.  But then, the fact that I read of Immigration using fake court appearances to lure immigrants to the courthouse, so they can arrest them, implies that some of them do actually show up for their court date(s).  

 

I'll also observe that I assume that the profile of the "typical asylum seeker" may well have changed under Trump.  Since the Toddler In Chief loves changing the rules every few weeks (sometimes every few hours), and part of his agenda has been a deliberate assault on all forms of legal immigration, I assume that we're now at a point where claiming asylum is now the only legal option left to people who would have had other options, three years ago.  

 

And as to the "they volunteer to be there" talking point?  

 

No, no one is claiming that Joe Immigrant waited his turn in line, walked up to the window with the little hole in it, and said "Please sir, I've heard so much about American prisons that I've traveled 2,000 miles, on foot, to experience one.  Could you please direct me to one?"  

 

However, the people in those facilities (the vast majority.  I'm certain that our ever-so-perfect government has accidentally or intentionally grabbed some people they shouldn't) are there because of actions which they took.  Not because they happen to be a certain race or religion or some other part of their identity.  Because of their actions.  

 

Saying "they're there voluntarily" is about as honest as calling them "concentration camps".  But, like the "concentration camps" slogan, there is an element of truth underneath there.  And it's an important one.  

 

[Springfield]

1 hour ago, Skintime said:

She loves to twist crap to try to make points when she has nothing to stand on. She has no idea of how America works, only wants to provide mindless support to her master Lord trump.

 

I don’t get the impression that she’s a Trump lover tbh.  I could be wrong though.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Happy 4th, y'all.

[LD0506]

I'm amused again.........

 

The term "concentration camps" is hung around the neck of the Nazis like a dead skunk, but those acquainted with history will know that it was an American invention used in suppressing the insurgency in the Philippines after we took them from the Spanish. They were a overt tool of oppression, the civilians held hostage were routinely threatened as leverage against the insurgents and people died as a result of the policy.

 

Arguing that since not enough people have died in this iteration somehow disqualifies the term is naked sophistry.

 

[Larry]

Oh, I certainly agree that I've seen people try to argue that since so-and-so has not yet killed six million people, therefore no one can point out how much so-and-so resembles the Nazis. 

 

As though there's some rule that if you only kill four million people, then no one is allowed to object. 

 

I absolutely think we need to point out when we're moving in that direction. 

 

(Nazis marching in the streets to celebrate the fact that their guy won ought to be a clue.)

[MEANDWARF]

20 hours ago, Skintime said:

And then they are imprisoned. Hello????

Are they free to go back to Central America?

[TradeTheBeal!]

What would Jesus do?