ewsieg

Almost wonder if maybe there was entrapment.

Conversely "The policies of the GOP with the border is racist and inhumane, it must be stopped!" "Here's clear evidence that the democrats are deploying the exact same tactics" "Well, so you're admitting the democrats are strong on the border? Hah, I owned you!" 😉

Not sure I'm completely following you. These numbers, without any breakdown at all, speaks to the overall volume at the border and the stress it puts on the system and communities near it. I've never argued that the southern border was wide open and free to pass through. I've only asserted that there are major challenges arising from it. Additionally the definition of 'open' can vary based on what part you're viewing. Title 42 is about to stop, so going forward, you'll have just apprehensions. For the apprehensions, it's basically catch and release. They give them a court date and let them go. From there, it's again all about how you choose to look at the statistics. Groups that want to see only legal migration will give numbers saying only 10-15% show up for their court cases based on how the court counts absentia. Pro any-type migration will give 98-99%, often focusing on the legal immigrate numbers. Based on what i've read, i'm comfortable that a majority do go to their court cases, roughly 60% of so. But last year, the border was so overwhelmed they started something new, they didn't even both to give a court case. They simply provided each with contact information and asked them to reach out to ICE when they settled. No ability to even follow up. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/politics/dhs-migrants-paperwork-ice-notice-to-appear/index.html That has since stopped, but also look at when it was stopped. My gut says as we headed into the off months for migration, the border patrol was able to catch up and continue the normal process. We have a guy on the Terrorist watch list that crossed the southern border, the FBI notified ICE of this, and he was still released because he was overweight and thus had an increased risk for Covid. As far as I know, he's still living his best life in Dearborn. To me, I think you can look at that and even if you don't want to say it's open, you have to admit it's fairly porous.

I haven't seen anything you have stated where I felt you were wrong in regards to Ukraine, but I have thought to myself you were a bit war hawkish and I needed to temper my own thoughts. I felt like I was looking at this in a more realistic view, where others were excited about the stalled ground movement, I focused on the destruction Russia was putting on the citizens. To me, a ceasefire as quick as possible, anyway possible, was the best outcome. Seeing the pictures of these towns west and north of Kyiv and you'd think it would solidify my thoughts. I think it's doing just the opposite. I think I've turned, give them the Migs, give them offensive weapons, give them everything they need to take their country back and don't stop until the Russians are out of the country and Ukraine is part of NATO. As you say, not only is that the only outcome that really stops further Russian aggression, but it's about the largest show of force we could provide to deter China with Taiwan.

That's tracking immigration, which honestly we should be working to reverse this trend. Folks that are upset about the border, are upset about migration. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/09/whats-happening-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-in-7-charts/

I still contend that if SCOTUS upholds one of these abortion bills we're seeing out of the South, it will be the best thing for the democratic party in the long run.

It's not only that the floodgates have opened, add to that how they are handled within their party. I'm sure this country has never lacked a handful of idiots in congress at any given point, but the majority/minority leaders helped form who represented the party and ensured they hid others from the spotlight. Today, it's almost like McCarthy is minority leader in name only. Assuming he would even want to, any attempts at shunning some of those you mentioned might get him called out by Trump. He has no control. The patients run the asylum.

That's not going to work out well for them.

oh yeah, my bad. It's all just "projections" if you keep looking forward.

Odds are Putin walks away from this with Crimea and control over the two new "independent" states. He spins it to his people that they 'denazified' Ukraine and points out to the Oligarch's and other power players how he took the energy rich portions of Ukraine for Russia. I know we make look at it as a loss as we point out how bad his military looked or how many casualties they take, but I doubt Putin cares about those stats.

I don't want to here him demand 'full bore from day 1' when he has the ability to implement a high sock uniform requirement and he hasn't done so.

i like this guys optimism. That said it reminds me of the optimism I had with Arab spring. His points about pro democracy pieces already in place are worth stressing though.

And that's the problem, IMO. You can't take any criticism of anything your side may have done wrong, heck, questioning it is even out of bounds. You go out and present an aura of infallibility and if challenged, point to what you believe is the worst thing the other side has done to build that red herring.

I believe the FU politics is a symptom, not the cause. As a whole, both sides stopped looking for a discussion and compromise is now a bad word. Gingrich's 'win at all costs' mentality very well may have been the beginning point, but both sides are all in now. Add to that a media that doesn't have the time, patience, or financial incentive to investigate and all we have is talking points being shared. If anything, we might need more political comedy. Find a way to get everyone to relate to something and laugh at it. Good comedians don't only make us laugh, they make us think of things differently.

It's rare that I would say this to you, but I couldn't disagree more. I'm guessing you don't watch him and probably only see clips pulled out. He pushes discussion, the show isn't about making a quick laugh. Most of the show is a discussion between him and a panel that even if it's a congressman/women, you get more information on their ideas in one show than you would watching a years worth of Sunday morning news shows. He's never 'shifted gears' either. As for all people, i'm sure his views are not the same as they were 20 years ago, but he's always been a progressive democrat. He's currently suffering from the same fate as let's say Cheney and Kinzinger. Cheney and Kinzinger are darlings of the left. But if you're a democrat based on platform policy, you wouldn't really cheer them on. They have one issue they disagree with the GOP on (granted a big one) and their side has turned on them and the left cheers. Maher, for the folks that don't regularly follow him, is the same. Grab an average person that has never watched the show and pick a random show he's done in the last 20 years and they will know he votes straight ticket democratic. But, if he feels the dems are heading a wrong direction, he calls it out. The right pulls the 30 second clip to celebrate him, the left grabs that same clip to say he's no longer a legitimate voice for the left.

MY-ERS

Absolutely, but he occasionally complains about Democrats, so he's not relevant and wrong. (/sarcasm)

Always listen to the experts and ridicule those that don't, unless you choose not to listen to experts, in that case, just ignore or deflect it (ie., it's just a prediction). Last year I pointed out migrant crossings were on pace to break all time highs and you deflected saying that was speculation (it wasn't, they were on pace to break all time highs, they simply hadn't yet....at the time). Turns out, the "speculation" was right.

I know some of you folks hate Bill Maher, being all left of center and taking objective looks at things like he does, but per usual, he was pretty spot on tonight.

This guy suffers horribly from the 'but Trump' virus. The only time Trump 'got away' with a gaffe was when the next one he made 'trumped' the first one. He was mocked relentlessly, and rightly so.

Stealing from a tweet I saw in regards to what if that was Chappelle and not Rock, I think both outcomes would have been similar, we would have seen an impromptu 1 hour special by either of them that consisted of Jada jokes, with a sprinkle of Will Smith cuck jokes. I think we were really close to hearing one from Rock but he chose to back off.

The 'return to Mexico' policy was the one that the Dems labeled as a horribly mean policy by Trump and that was stopped. The overflow of illegals forced them to try and deal with the fallout of stopping it, so they began using Title 42 more and restricting altogether based on if the countries had high rates of Covid. Biden quietly reinstituted the 'return to Mexico' policy though. So short answer, the GOP is wrong to say we're doing nothing and the Dems learned that just criticizing a policy and removing it without any plan was wrong as well.

I was caddying when I witnessed the only hole-in-one in my life, the worst golfer of the foursome was the one that got it. Took a crazy hop off of a hill next to the green and shot across the green and went right in.

Heads of State, such as Macron, expressed their disappointment with it as they felt it could hinder peace talks he was having with Putin. Here is the Biden walk back I mean, in re-reading what Biden said at the end of the speech, it's identical. Anyone disagreeing with that would be equivalent to my buddy texting me that Blashill should be fired.

From an earlier post of mine regarding this: Biden's admin has already handled it. As you say, it's already out there, can't put the genie back in the bottle, but I'm not pretending this is the end all / be all moment that potentially could start WWIII either.