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Posted
This might be the truest thing in the history of the internet

Yep.
The working class cheering on billionaires as they suck the lifeblood out of the country, all so they can grab the satisfaction of being mean to Mexican landscaping crews, is amazing to watch. I never imagined anything that stupid, but here we are.
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Posted
this is nothing, but for some reason it really hit me, two small things pulled my trigger this week...
first... in the last week the blue mailboxes have been removed from the driveway/parking lot of our local post office. gotta find a spot, park and go inside now to drop a letter. 
and then we went to a nearby NFS area...lake, trails, park...and i have never seen restroom facilities at a federal park/site as filthy and neglected, looked like they hadn't been serviced or cleaned in over a week. i won't describe them, just disgusting.
minor examples reflecting the larger purposeful decay and destruction of our federal systems. 
i dunno...i was just already unreasonably annoyed about the post office bc wtfWHY?? and then the atrocious facilities just sent me over the edge. i got back in the car and had an actual cry. 
guess i should just be happy there weren't For Sale signs everywhere.
 

They got rid of the drive through mailboxes at the Allandale post office recently. There also used to be one in the hood on Greenlawn but it’s gone too.
Posted
8 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:


They got rid of the drive through mailboxes at the Allandale post office recently. There also used to be one in the hood on Greenlawn but it’s gone too.

 

200 mules !!!!!

Posted
46 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


Yep.
The working class cheering on billionaires as they suck the lifeblood out of the country, all so they can grab the satisfaction of being mean to Mexican landscaping crews, is amazing to watch. I never imagined anything that stupid, but here we are.

The backlash to the civil rights movement that buttresses the modern Republican Party has been going on for 70 years, so it's not all that surprising.

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Posted
5 hours ago, speed817 said:

 

Bullshit. 

Sloth was a tender hearted soul who sacrificed himself to save others. 

The exact opposite of Dotard 

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Posted
10 hours ago, Macanudo said:

Shawn Ryan is still a choad though.

scratching my head because he’s a huge Trump bootlicker isn’t he? Is that real?

Posted
11 hours ago, mchookem said:

this is nothing, but for some reason it really hit me, two small things pulled my trigger this week...

first... in the last week the blue mailboxes have been removed from the driveway/parking lot of our local post office. gotta find a spot, park and go inside now to drop a letter. 

and then we went to a nearby NFS area...lake, trails, park...and i have never seen restroom facilities at a federal park/site as filthy and neglected, looked like they hadn't been serviced or cleaned in over a week. i won't describe them, just disgusting.

minor examples reflecting the larger purposeful decay and destruction of our federal systems. 

i dunno...i was just already unreasonably annoyed about the post office bc wtfWHY?? and then the atrocious facilities just sent me over the edge. i got back in the car and had an actual cry. 

guess i should just be happy there weren't For Sale signs everywhere. 😞

 

“Not yet” (Sen. Mike Lee)

Posted (edited)

Posting this in both DT and CR, very longcat Facebook post from a HS friend of mine who is a defense attorney and whose wife is the exact kind of US citizen who is being threatened by Trump's policies. Spoilering because quite long but worth the read.

Spoiler

HOW TO TALK TO, ABOUT, AND WITH YOUR LATINO FRIENDS DURING THIS TIME


Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. As an attorney, we are in dire straits in this country with regards to "immigration." Whatever you think about so-called "illegal immigration," the scope of DHS activities, ICE, and CBP has gone far, far beyond merely enforcing existing immigration laws against undocumented persons. As a matter of verifiable fact, the authorities are taking steps to DENATURALIZE citizens, end birthright citizenship, and according to the vice president, make citizenship in this country a matter of who your ancestors were, not whether you've met the legal requirements for citizenship. Stephen Miller does not care whether you were born here, born to US parents, or earned your citizenship with tests and long years spent under a visa or green card. Stephen Miller hates the color of your skin and will do anything he can to remove you from the country. 


This kind of blood and soil nationalism is infuriating, threatening, and maddening to white Americans who can trace their ancestry back to the colonial times. So... let's imagine, for a moment, how your Latino friends feel.


Those of you who grew up in the Southwest know that many Latin Americans did not cross the border; the border crossed them. As the US expanded westward, we took, bought, or recovered land by treaty from Spain and Mexico, turning many formerly Spanish subjects or Mexican citizens into US territorial subjects or citizens of Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and so forth.


So it is wrong, at the outset, to treat Latin Americans as a class of "immigrants." Many of them have been living in the same area for hundreds of years more than the United States has expanded this far westward.


But others of them did come across a border once established in the 1800s. The problem is: the government sees no difference between these people. Whether they are Native American, European, African, Caribbean, or some mixture thereof in ancestry, all Latin Americans in the United States are painted with the same broad brush: they are Othered, they are held to suspicion of having come here "illegally," and they are subject to deportation.


Living as I have the past 23 years with a Latina, let me tell you the horrific things that get said to her: asking about her green card (she is a US citizen by birth), making jokes about "going back" or "deportation" (she has more right to be here than most Anglo Americans), or worse, the kind of smarmy self-regard that well-meaning centrists and liberals toss out to her.


[Wife's name redacted] has been told, "oh, don't worry, you're not the type they're looking for" or "it's OK, you're one of the good ones." Or worse, when she voices her very real fear that one power-tripping ICE agent could arrest her, detain her, and force her to prove her US citizenship over a challenge to "birthright citizenship" or even "denaturalization," people tell her not to harsh their vibes, that thinking about that ruins everyone's good time, and that she shouldn't be inflicting that kind of worry on people when it's not likely to happen to /her/.


And there is alot of understated, implicit racism in all of that. Many people forget that because Becky doesn't have an accent, is married to a white guy, and sits comfortably in the upper middle class that she's Latina. Among our white friends especially, she gets coded white because of her relation to me, her interests, and what we do. People rarely get to hear her speak Spanish (which she does well) or see her dance to Tejano and norteno music. You don't get to hear her talk to her family in Spanglish or celebrate Dia de Los Muertos or Diezyseis or other Mexican holidays (NOT Cinco de Gringo). And because of that, you often forget... she's as much a Mexican citizen as a US.


Her father was a Mexican citizen. Her mother is a US citizen. But she was born across the river, in Mexico. Her birth certificate is Mexican; we have a certificate of live birth recording her birth and status as a US citizen. So yes, the proposed changes to the 14th Amendment understanding of birthright citizenship (that we deny citizenship to children of two foreign subject parents born on US soil) would not necessarily affect her... but we've already seen them apply the same logic to US citizens by birth born abroad or born to foreign national parents. It is not a big leap from "denaturalize the children of foreign nationals born on US soil" to "reject the citizenship of US children born abroad to only one US citizen parent." 


And even if I could (because I'm not a bad attorney, and I know some excellent immigration lawyers) successfully argue that her case should be dismissed, that would still require her to spend nights, maybe weeks or months, in cruel conditions in ICE detention, cost us untold amounts of money in retainers or my lost time from work dealing with it, and leave us both scarred and traumatized by the experience.


And this is something we have to think about every time we leave the house or when we travel. When Becky was coming back in through customs after a cruise this past April, I sat in trembling anxiety until I heard that she cleared customs. And again, we are fortunate enough that we have CLEAR and Global Entry, but all it would take is one power tripping customs agent to pull her aside and then I'm on a flight to Miami to try to get her out.


So please, please, please, when you're discussing the political situation regarding immigration (and I think I have curated my FB list enough that most, if not everyone, agrees with our political position on this) understand that it is very real for some of your friends. And for those that are Latin American, don't do things like call them one of the "good ones" (implying that others, or even most Latin Americans, are "bad ones" or not good) or suggest that having the financial resources necessary or being covered by the white privilege of a partner or friend will do any good.


All you need to do is look through the news to see that masked ICE goons are indiscriminately assaulting and arresting anyone they deem sufficiently suspicious of violating immigration laws, e.g., having more melanin than the average American. You can be as white-passing as you want, if an ICE agent sees your last name is "Rodriguez," prepare for additional scrutiny.


And sadly, judges and local law enforcement are not doing enough to reign them in. If you live in a comfortable blue state where your governor is taking steps to reduce ICE's power and exclude their operations, I envy you. For those of us trapped in red states, there's a very real fear that a trip to the mall to buy clothes could end up in handcuffs or worse.


A little sensitivity is going to go a long way. And understanding that there's a special dimension to trauma to your Latin American friends goes even further. It won't hurt us to be careful with how we speak and examine the concepts and language we employ, even if unintentionally, for how that language comes across and who our audience is.

 

Edited by Brian Fantana
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Posted
7 hours ago, NWBuck said:

Bullshit. 

Sloth was a tender hearted soul who sacrificed himself to save others. 

The exact opposite of Dotard 

He didn’t sacrifice himself. He became part of Chunks family at the end. 



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