Peggy Noonan has her finger on the pulse:
Something is going on, some tectonic plates are moving in interesting ways. My friend Cesar works the deli counter at my neighborhood grocery store. He is Dominican, an immigrant, early 50s, and listens most mornings to a local Hispanic radio station, La Mega, on 97.9 FM. Their morning show is the popular “El Vacilón de la Mañana,” and after the first GOP debate, Cesar told me, they opened the lines to call-ins, asking listeners (mostly Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican) for their impressions. More than half called in to say they were for Mr. Trump. Their praise, Cesar told me a few weeks ago, dumbfounded the hosts. I later spoke to one of them, who identified himself as D.J. New Era. He backed Cesar’s story. “We were very surprised,” at the Trump support, he said. Why? “It’s a Latin-based market!”
Meanwhile, back on planet earth:
A new Gallup poll released Monday evening found that 65 percent of Hispanic voters say they have an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 14 percent who view him favorably— yielding him a net favorable score of -51, well below any other presidential candidate.
kc
BULLshit.
Debbie
Interesting only when viewed through the scrim of an empty bottle.
kbuttle
The Tom Friedman school of journalism, modified to perfection with a fifth of Grey Goose and a handful of Vicodin!
Timurid
Peggy Noonan needs to lay off the bath salts…
Derelict
It must have been Tom Friedman’s cab drivers calling in that day.
samiam
Why are you people obsessing over Ross Perot v2 aka Trump? Makes about as much sense as your obsession over Palin.
It’s a circus sideshow. Can’t you find anything better to write about?
mai naem mobile
The Hispanic version of Tom Friedman’s cab driver???
dedc79
But, more importantly, Peggy, does Cesar have a Trump campaign sign on his lawn yet?
shell
Isnt this the same delusional hooey she was peddling right before the last Prez election? Blithering about ‘the vibrations are right’ and that seeing some new Romney lawn signs meant he was gonna win.
God, somebody take her off politics and just give her a pack of tarot cards to play with.
kc
Someone needs to fill some column inches.
Amir Khalid
For a moment there, I thought this was going to be a story about Hillary aide Huma Abedin’s husband — you know, Mister Underpants Pictures.
Roger Moore
It’s almost as if the people who call in to radio shows aren’t representative of the population at large. Who knew?
Amir Khalid
@samiam:
Start your own damn blog already, et cetera, et cetera.
schrodinger's cat
Punditubbies and their anecdata
Was it Friedman or Bobo who made the op-ed by faux anecdotes a thing? Or do we have someone else to blame for salad bars at Applebees?
dedc79
@shell:
Here’s where my mind went
Punchy
Cesar in a deli, eh? I think she’s dressing this up a bit much. She’s Roman around, fishing for a story. Ides say she’s full of shit, a veritable word salad this is.
BGinCHI
Oddly, Nooners is right:
Callers liked the guy they hate more than all the other fucking idiots he’s running against.
dedc79
@samiam: I think your complaint is best addressed to a Republican audience. They’re the ones obsessing over Trump (as they did over Palin). We’re just looking on in amusement or horror.
greennotGreen
Recently on this very blog (I think) I asked, what, you think African Americans don’t have crazy uncles? Well, Hispanics do too, and they call into radio programs.
MattF
Peggy puts her fingers into wall sockets and connects to the Zeitgeist.
Gin & Tonic
I wonder when is the last time she and her “friend” had any social intercourse other than Peggy ordering a sandwich?
Jeffro
@shell: Peggy has clearly figured out how to unskew all that pesky poll data.
Serious question: has any reporter asked Karl Rove what he thinks about all of this? He knows full well the GOP base’s tendency to repel Hispanics is the party’s most glaring weakness. Would love to see how he’s trying to spin the past several weeks’ worth of folly.
Baud
Hispanic voters are also tired of all the immigrants!
Immanentize
Data? How dare you present actual statistics? “Data” has fewer letters than “anecdote,” so there! And Peggy is friends with Cesar! Good friends! So double there!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What’s his last name?
SatanicPanic
She’s right about one thing- there is a Spanish language media that people like her and the companies she works for mostly ignore (because speaking another language is hard). It’ll be way too late when they finally figure out what’s actually being said about Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@Punchy:
Lettuce savor.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@BGinCHI:
Good point. I’m guessing the question was, Which Republican candidate do you like best after the debate? not Who are you going to vote for in November of 2016?
Does Nooners live in DC or NYC? Because I could see people in NYC seeing Trump as the local boy stickin’ it to the Republicans.
Lurking Canadian
I wonder if Cesar knows the black guy who rides the bus with Megan McArdle.
They probably used to play ball with Friedman’s cab driver.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And… it’s just maybe possible that Cesar knows that chatty regular-customer Ms. Noonan is a right-wing loon who needs to be placated and smiled at every now and then.
p.a.
@Derelict:My friend Cesar works the deli counter at my neighborhood grocery store. And moonlights as a cabbie with the NYT in his turf!
What are the odds?
currants
@Amir Khalid: Title Idea? Miasma
SatanicPanic
@Baud: the thing is there are some. I know a few myself. But even those people don’t refer to these people as rapists and murderers and don’t like it when Trump does. Because even the most glib conservative Latino knows that racist white people have a hard time distinguishing between recent immigrants and Latinos who have been here for generations.
ms_canadada
I think Peggy was talking to her friend, Bloody Cesar.
Kropadope
@OP
Welp, we need to make sure that this “51” percent of Latinos see the Donald’s debate performance, stat.
@samiam:
1912!!! 1912!!! 1912!!!
Literally the best outcome, if we want to heal our other party, would be if Trump won the most votes in the primary then was denied the nomination at the convention. My understanding is that many state Republican parties have rules that allow their establishment to control whom the delegates go to, so it’s still feasible in this day and age.
Trump supporters would be aghast and he would certainly go rogue. Poor Walker/Rubio will only win Vermont and Utah.
ETA: Eww, does that mean we wind up with Wilson?
Felonius Monk
Peggy has a friend? That in itself, if true, is newsworthy especially if he’s not just a drinking buddy.
FridayNext
@Amir Khalid:
That’s CAPTAIN Underpants to you!
gelfling545
@Roger Moore: And tend to be equally weird regardless of their ethnic ancestry.
Hoodie
Wanna bet Cesar smelled the Smirnoff’s on Nooner’s breath and decided to mess with her? I bet D.J. New Era was totally on the level, too. Did she call him “Mr. Era” or just “DJ”, seeing as she’s on a first name basis with Cesar?
samiam
@dedc79: That seems to be the mindset among progressives yes. Point and laugh. But you do it over and over again. Not realizing that you are doing exactly what the few intelligent people on the right want you to do. The echo chamber does not care if the echo is positive or not. Things progressives do not seem to understand.
One of the reasons I don’t call myself progressive. I am but I don’t want to be associated with far left any more than I do with the far right or central right for that matter. They are all idiots imho. Look at what more centrist Dems do. They just sit back and let the GOP make fools of themselves and don’t say much of anything. They see it for what it is. A circus sideshow that they do now what to give any validation to.
RP
I love this article so much I want to have its babies. And I’m a guy.
p.a.
@mai naem mobile: Dominican/Mexican, tomāto/tomăto to the Peggers crowd.
He (if real) might actually be from the Commonwealth of Dominica, not the Dominican Republic.
J.D. Rhoades
@samiam:
“PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE FRONT-RUNNER! NOTHING TO SEE HERE!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
a screw driver made with blood orange juice and stirred with a dagger?
Swap out the vodka for bourbon and it’s a Bloody Boehner
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@J.D. Rhoades: remember when we smug elitists misunderestimated Sarah Palin’s appeal to “real Americans”?
BR
@samiam:
I agree — while I too have engaged on the Trump discussions, there’s something to be said for listening to “Don’t Think of an Elephant” here. Even if we think we’re attacking Trump, we’re still re-emphasizing the things he said for him, for free.
Edit — just to be clear, I don’t think it matters so much on this blog, but if we’re engaging via social media or elsewhere, I think it’s better to ignore Trump and talk about real issues.
swkellogg
Obviously the poll needs to be unskewed.
Culture of Truth
It’s annoying jerks like Nooners who hold up the line at the deli counter trying to get the employees to reinforce their political beliefs while normal people are waiting to get their kids’ lunch meat and get out of there.
Chris
Shorter Peggy Noonan: “I have
blackLatino friends!”A Ghost To Most
@samiam:
Lanny, is that you?
Iowa Old Lady
The bubble in which Noonan lives has shrunk to fit her own head.
Mark B.
The people listening to and calling into talk radio tend to be right wingers, and most of them are ignorant loudmouths. Not surprising that a lot of them tend to support Trump. Whatever ethnicity they are. Most unscientific poll ever.
SatanicPanic
@BR: It’s kind of hard to do that when someone is spreading racist garbage. Especially if it’s your own people. Trump in particular would get plenty of coverage regardless of how we respond, but asking everyone to just leave it out there unchallenged is a tall order
schrodinger's cat
@SatanicPanic: Its not just Latinos who find Trump and his rhetoric alarming. It is immigrants in general, they know that though its the Latinos in the cross hairs right now but that they could be the next. Look at all the fear mongering about Asians, especially Chinese, off late.
Of course immigration status may be become moot if you belong to the wrong ethnicity, after all citizenship did not save the Jewish people of the Third Reich.
Mark B.
What’s going with the Balloon Juice server, anyway? Page loads are glacial.
Baud
Fixed.
Davis X. Machina
There’s a Poujadist[1] streak to Trumpismo that ought to play well in immigrant-heavy communities, especially among the current version of the alrightniks. If he weren’t a raving intolerant nativist asshole, and just an asshole, he’d get more traction.
Think Barry Levinson’s Baltimore, or Mordecai Richler’s Montreal….
[1] French third/fourth party from the fifties. Poujade’s base was the petits commerçants in small- and medium-sized cities. The movement valorized small, local business v. big, national ones. Anti-bank, anti-tax, anti-pointy-headed planners, anti-Paris, anti-politics, but no coherent big picture of the state of the economy.
msdc
@Kropadope: Vermont?
BGinCHI
Peggy Noonan is a national treasure and should be buried deep beneath the earth in a locked chest to keep her safe.
SatanicPanic
@schrodinger’s cat: no kidding. And Asian people have a long history of being accused of ruining the economy for white people in this country, so it’s no surprise they aren’t happy with Trump either
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Culture of Truth: I was thinking the same thing, all the people looking at their watches and rolling their eyes while The Nooners makes aggressive small talk with the condescending and slightly manic over-friendliness of a second-tier morning show host, in that affected purr, (Seeee-zerrr… how ARE you? Are you enjoying this GLORIOUS weather? That lovely sunshine is like a hug from Jesus) before ordering her half pound of pimento loaf from the guy whose job depends on being polite.
Chris
@Kropadope:
You think they’ve got the balls for that? I think they’d just cave, hold their nose and vote Trump, but YMMV.
Booger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If your Bloody Boehner lasts more than four hours, consult a doctor.
Bobby Thomson
@samiam: why are you obsessing over the comment section here? It’s a circus side show. Can’t you fin anything else to write about?
SenyorDave
Why just last week we had a dinner party that Cesar and his wife attended. Let’s see, we had the Whittinghams, Todd and Brittany, Todd is our investment guy. And the Kensingtons came of course, Tyler and Madison. Tyler is a cardiologist and Madison’s an OB-GYN. Also, the Spencers, Evan and Charlotte. Charlotte’s the local chair of the DAR. And Cesar just entertained us the whole time during dinner with his amusing anecdotes of his day behind the deli counter. Then we had wonderful chardonnay and some of Brittany’s divine lemon squares and we called it an evening. Isn’t America grand!
Kropadope
@msdc: A reference to the 1912 outcome.
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
Teabaggers, basically.
NotMax
It’s a single anecdote, dear heart, not data.
Memo to the NYT:
Perfectly suited for a gossip column. She’s on the wrong beat. Or holding too many seances to contact Hedda and Louella.
srv
All the latinos I know are thrilled – immigrants that want to be successful admire Trump.
@swkellogg:
I don’t think we should give much credence to a poll that was probably conducted in spanish.
kd bart
Peggy, they are selling you your liquor. They’ll tell you anything to keep your business.
MattF
@NotMax: Noonan is a WSJ columnist.
NotMax
@Mark B.
Day 4 of our long computational nightmare.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Old, old joke.
Q: What do you call a vodka and prune juice?
A: A piledriver.
Steve From Antioch
Noons is a horrible, vapid person.
But I don’t think it’s right to keep harping on her being a drunk, especially in a blog where at least two of the front pagers have substance abuse issues.
feebog
@samiam:
So we should just ignore the elephant in the room and hope he will eventually go away? News flash, this is a political blog, with a lot of icky liberals and progressives participating. What’s the point in participating in a blog like this if you can’t point and laugh at the irony of a real life Frankenstein running amok and trashing the Republican nominating process? And your fourth sentence assumes facts not in evidence.
NotMax
@MattF
Heh. Force of habit.
My bad.
redshirt
I’m so glad there are political experts out there revealing these hard facts.
Joel
@Steve From Antioch: It pains me to admit this, but I agree with you.
Iowa Old Lady
Has Noonan ever worked as a reporter? As I recall, she was a speech writer for Reagan?
FridayNext
@Mark B.:
People have been complaining about this for days. I for one have noticed no slow down at all. I don’t mean that to be an argument, just pointing out that the experience is not universal.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: Teabaggery is neither new, nor distinctly American.
J.D. Rhoades
You have to remember one important thing about wingnuts: they’re influenced, and some are slavishly devoted to, the “Austrian School” of Economics, which explicitly rejects empirical data in favor of “rationalism”, which is their code for “I pulled these principles out of my ass because they sound good.”
This is the biggest problem with trying to have an actual rational argument with these people: they will not be impressed by any data or actual evidence you can provide in support, because their worldview holds that all data is useless.
Baud
@Steve From Antioch:
Does she actually have a problem? I thought the whole drunk thing stemmed from the quality of her writing.
Punchy
@SiubhanDuinne: I relish the chance to ketchup with her earlier writings.
Zinsky
Peggy Noonan is a delusional upper-class twit who has no idea what life is like outside of the Washington DC exclusive dinner party circuit. She is also a piss-poor writer. Her schoolgirl fantasy columns about the wretched old limp-dicked Ronald Reagan were enough to make a sensible person vomit. And she continues to fabricate and bloviate about topics she knows nothing about, like this pathetic column. She knows about as much about the Hispanic “community”, as I know about ancient Sanskrit.
NotMax
@Punchy
Little point in Russian dressing to go do so, as mayo not be to your taste.
Mike J
Is Trump actually future Biff from Back to the Future 2?
http://imgur.com/gallery/PxErRd6
Amir Khalid
@Mike J:
You’re not the only one here who’s had that thought.
stinger
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Probably “New Era”. I believe that’s a common Dominican surname.
/snark
sukabi
@shell: hey, it’s not her fault…between the alcohol poisoning and her vibrator being set at stun, that’s as good a story as she’s going to be able to come up with.
Brachiator
Friend? Maybe a booty call friend?
Hey, when Noonan gets drunk, maybe she’s fun and freaky.
But I don’t know. Maybe some of what Noonan reports here is true, and that some of the Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican callers to this radio station like Trump. They’re New Yorkers. They may be proud, yeah, proud, of their Native Son kicking some butt.
This does not contradict at all problems Trump may have on a national level, and even in New York state when primary voting comes round.
Mary G
Cesar probably sells more vodka and gin and whatever other liquor to Ms. Noonan than all his other customers combined, so if she tells him she sees pink elephants in the corner, he’ll tell her he sees them too.
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
The Fronde, much earlier (between Louis XIII and XIV) was another interestingly teabaggerish movement. Heavily indebted government needs to raise taxes to pay for the cost of previous wars; nobles have enough power in the system to protect their wealth and pass the burden onto the Third Estate. But then, they use that opportunity to stir up the public against the monarchy, in the hopes of restoring their old privileges.
Cause the problems, then blame them on Big Government, then use the backlash to make the root problem (your privileges) even better entrenched. The more things change…
Woodrowfan
some of my older Filipino immigrant relatives seem to like Trump. But frankly, they’re not the brightest folk and fall for all those bogus chain emails and Facebook “WARNINGS!” If it’s not Trump it’s some multi-level marketing scheme, or some warning about AIDs being put into canned food, or some (imaginary) oppression of Xtains in the US.
Chris
@Mike J:
Biff was loosely based on Trump according to IMDb.
Kropadope
@Steve From Antioch:
Why? People here harp on people who are evidently posting while drunk all the time.
ETA: And Peggy Noonan is a major media figure. On-air drunken ranting is not cool, well, not in the news.
gene108
@ms_canadada:
Are you a grandmother yet?
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: She used to sound like a drunk in many of her TV appearances.
* I haven’t seen shouty TV pundits since the last 4 years that I have been without cable, so I don’t know if she has gotten better off late.
Woodrowfan
@Brachiator:
just wear your Ronnie mask and call her “Mommy” and she’s a tiger!
eemom
Working too hard can give you a heart attackackackackack….
/someone’s gotta do it
Matt McIrvin
@samiam:
Ah yes, the famous John Kerry 2004 strategy.
Keith
You could sing this whole thing to the tune of Ob La Di Ob La Da
Cesar has a counter at the Deli store, Peggy is a writer in la-la Land
Bobby Thomson
@Baud: with Noonan it’s assumed, based on certain tells. With Anne Althouse there’s video of her babbling over a glass of wine.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
A whole lot of Latinos are citizens, as are Asians. And they are not necessarily “fresh off the boat” citizens, so I am not sure why you use the term “immigrants” here. I think it muddles the good points you are making.
And it is also not useful to keep avoiding the fact that part of the issue here is illegal immigration.
Right now, I am not worried about government action. And it would be very interesting to see where “real Americans” would draw any ethnicity based line in the sand.
But Trump is obviously stirring up bigotry, just as right-wing nut jobs stirred up anti-Muslim bigotry after 911.
Yesterday, I listened to some audio that was recorded after Jorge Ramos was ejected from the Trump press event. Although an official Trump staffer was polite, apologetic and offered to have Ramos return to the press conference, you could here a Trump supporter yell, “Get out of my country!”
Ramos responded that he was a US citizen, to which the Trump supporter could only mumble, “Whatever.”
Dupe70
As always, the plural of anecdote is anecdata….
karen marie
@Mark B.: And that’s if you believe anything Nooners says. I believe she personally contacted this DJ person as much as I believe she has a “friend” who works at the deli counter of her local grocery store. In other words, she is full of shit.
El Caganer
So Peggy Noonan’s in the deli talking to Cesar. A Puerto Rican, a Dominican and a Mexican walk in. Stop me if you’ve heard this one……
jibeaux
He’s tradin’ in his Chevy for a Cadillac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac
since Peggy pays pretty good
Kropadope
@El Caganer:
Hey, now, I know this isn’t exactly a family-friendly site, but this is no place for that sort of thing.
gvg
Isn’t Cesar an Italian name anyway? Roman origin….I tend to think Ms Peggy is being made fun of by her source.
Doug R
@samiam: there’s a difference between progressive and reactionary and those kids better get off your lawn.
jibeaux
@gvg: It’s Spanish too, Cesar Chavez, Cesar Milan the dog whisperer (who, not for nothing, came here illegally and is now a citizen thanks to Reagan amnesty. Always fun to mention as a passive-aggressive fun factoid for Republicans.)
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: Ok if I had said Latino immigrants would that have made you happier? Or would you have found some other nit to pick? I know that many Latinos are not immigrants at all.
You say that illegal immigration is a real problem, I say that illegal immigration is just more politically palatable target. The nativist agenda is to curb all immigration, both legal and illegal. The whole anchor baby controversy shows its not immigration status that worries them at all.
Bobby Thomson
OT the DC Circuit just reinstated metadata collection. A very conservative panel, so by the time this comment loads it may have been overturned en banc.
Tractarian
I’m sorry, this is truly hilarious. If you were trying to write a column mocking Noonan, you couldn’t have done any better. She is a caricature of herself.
The funny thing is, she doesn’t even mention whether her friend Cesar supports Trump. (He only reported that “more than half” of callers to the radio show did.) You’d think she would have asked him his opinion. Oh well.
She and Maureen Dowd need to go cool off in some hotel room in Colorado.
MomSense
I bet Cesar at the deli counter is thinking you should never argue with a crazy mi mi mi mi mi. After years of dealing with Nooners at your counter you oughta know by now.
Baud
@Bobby Thomson:
Maybe not. The whole thing becomes moot in a couple of months, so judges may not bother.
Amir Khalid
@Tractarian:
Gaaaaaah! Brain bleach! Brain bleach!
Steppan
@gvg:
Serious props to the inventor of the sentient vodka.
JPL
The New Yorker has an article about Trump that is worth a read. The fearful and the frustrated…
Trump really scares me.
Nylund
Not to generalize, but New York Puerto Ricans are a bit atypical. Puerto Ricans are, by birth, American citizens, and they often resent being lumped together with Hispanic immigrants, especially illegal ones. As citizens, they are also more immune to many of the problems other Hispanics face and, dare I say, consider themselves to be “better” than other Hispanic groups since they are “real Americans.”
My guess is that a lot of that “pro-Trump” support from Hispanics in NYC is coming from the Puerto Rican community, and that it probably doesn’t signify much when it comes to Hispanic support for Trump in general.
Ted Mills
Read the headline, laughed, read the story, laughed all over again.
Peggy, drinking that hard will give you a heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and the quality of her hallucinations, i.e. the angels Ronald Reagan transmogrified into dolphins
Cacti
I figure some front pager will mention it at some point, but today is the 60th anniversary of a grim cultural event.
On August 28, 1955, 14 year old Emmett Till was kidnapped from the home of his great uncle by a lynch mob, and would never be seen alive by his family again.
His surviving family members are holding memorial events in Chicago.
NotMax
@Chirs
Cue Allen Sherman.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
The issue is accuracy, not what might make me happy. You insist on ignoring the fact that many Latinos are citizens. Why is that? What do you mean when you say “immigrants?” Most everybody here was an immigrant or had an ancestor who was an immigrant at one time.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
Bullshit. There are multiple concerns and multiple agendas at play here, including “open border” activists who don’t have the cojones to admit that they don’t believe that the government has any right to regulate immigration in any way.
Or the anchor baby nonsense is an over-reaction to the refusal of either party to address immigration issues.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Jeb! thinks it’s fair game to hold candidates accountable for their siblings views and careers
all righty, then, let’s go!
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Holy So Long and Thanks for All the Fish Batman.
ms_canadada
@gene108: Thanks for asking…still waiting. The sent my daughter-in-law home last night, and now she’s headed back in. Once my son calls me from the hospital, I’ll be on my way…EXCITING!!!
gian
@Baud:
Some are happy to pull the ladder up. Most are not.
When you figure about the conquest of the West and the post Mexican American war borders it’s a fair guess that families have been split by a border that used to be elsewhere.
Turgidson
@Lurking Canadian:
McMegan claims to have set foot on a bus? I call bullshit. You can’t buy Pink Himalyan Salt or high-end kitchen appliances on buses, last I checked.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
Rubbish.
“Anchor baby” is a slur thrown around by bigots who are angry that the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship to non-whites.
I can see from your scare quotes around open borders that you’re also a subscriber to the gated community view of the US. So I’ll ask you. At what point after your ancestors stepped off the boat did the country become full?
samiam
@feebog: Another reason you people are so dumb. You actually think the polls right now showing Trump way ahead mean something. You think in reality Trump actually has a shot at winning the primary. You are completely clueless. Yes it’s fun to watch some of the establishment GOP panic a bit but at the end of the day the establishment and their big money donors get what they want.
Also this is just the primary. The general is a whole other ball game yet again. Get your heads out of your asses maybe.
The Republic of Stupidity
Yes indeed…
Nothing says ‘winning the Hispanic vote’ quite like becoming a hot selling piñata…
NotMax
@
Put in mind of one of many laugh out loud moments on Northern Exposure.
gex
@Brachiator: Great point. As long as we help them continue to associate racial minorities with immigrants and vice versa we are doing their job. White people immigrate. Brown people are born here. Let’s stop being so sloppy.
NotMax
Citation fixed.
@
ms_canadada
Put in mind of one of many laugh out loud moments on Northern Exposure.
dedc79
@Cacti:
You have a rather nasty habit of disparaging and assuming the worst about any opinion that diverges at all from your own.
What is your position, anyway? Is it that anyone who can get here should be allowed in and become a citizen?
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat:
Mike Barnicle was fired from the Boston Globe for anecdotes with invented dialogue as Metro column (with opinion in disguise as “slice of life”). I feel like that was well before Friedman wrote his NYT bestsellers.
Amir Khalid
@samiam:
Do you have proof that he does not? In fact, he’s been widening his lead in the polls over the other candiderates, and there is no assurance that his lead in the polls will not become a primary victory. For all its money and influence, the party establishment has so far not managed to rein in Trump the loose cannon or silence Trump the racist loudmouth.
Calouste
@schrodinger’s cat:
FTFY.
Well, at least until they have achieved that. After that they’ll move on to restricting emigration from Eastern and Southern Europe, just like they did a century ago.
Gin & Tonic
@ms_canadada: Hope it moves along. My daughter was in labor for over 36 hours with her first child a few months ago.
Grumpy Code Monkey
You know, I wouldn’t find it remarkable for legal immigrants to have many of the same concerns about illegal immigration as the rest of us (if not more so – it exposes them to some risk from the, shall we say, less-well-informed).
And Dominicans ain’t Mexican; as long as Trump makes it about Mexicans (as opposed to brown people in general), they can probably convince themselves to look past the overt racism (after all, there are black Republicans).
So, it’s entirely possible Noonan found a couple of Hispanic immigrants who dig Trump’s message. Every culture has its rednecks.
samiam
Oh, yeah, it’s only August, and the polls that matter won’t happen for months. Doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun with it now. It’s either that or work.
Cacti
@dedc79:
My position is that legal immigration should be much easier.
Restrictive immigration laws in our national history are entirely rooted in racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry.
From 1783-1881, the concept of “illegal immigration” didn’t exist here on a national level. To petition for naturalized citizenship, you had to show 5-years of continuous residence in the United States, plus good character during the same period, that was it.
Then in 1882, the Republican Congress decided a change was needed, and our first restrictive immigration law was passed.
It was called the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Kropadope
@Brachiator:
I think what cat means is that (s)he is not ignoring that many Latinos are natural-born citizens, as you claimed. That’s what I get from “I know that many Latinos are not immigrants.” Posting the answer to your own question, but not recognizing it….
Another Holocene Human
@gian: And then there were the illegal deportations of mestizos from formerly Mexican territories.
Brachiator
@Cacti:
Sorry, just not the entire story. There are people who have problems with those who come to this country deliberately to have their children here so that those children will be citizens.
The anger over recent stories here in Southern California over Chinese mothers had less to do with their ethnicity and a lot to do with the fact that this was an organized ring that allowed wealthy mothers to come to California, party until their due dates, and then pretend to be indigent mothers, sticking the hospitals with the tab.
Did you protest the Obama Administration’s busting of the maternity hotels and the attempts to prosecute the organizers of these birth tourism rings?
You don’t see this at all. You see exactly what you want to see. Some of my ancestors were Native American. They were here when their country was stolen from them. So I suppose that I could volunteer to help you pack your bags and send you back to where ever you came from.
But if you believe that the immigration and naturalization service should simply process the entry of everyone who comes here, then say so and have the guts to make it an official plank of the Democratic Party. Because, yes, that is open borders, with or without quotes. Now sell it to the rest of the American people.
Some of the opposition to immigration reform is obviously racist. But not all is. And people need to step off their phony high horse if they cannot admit that they don’t believe that immigration should be regulated and that anybody who opposes open borders this is simply racist. Hell, libertarians have supported limitless immigration as part of their free market fantasies for decades. And libertarian support of open borders has never stopped them from believing in the exploitation of labor.
dedc79
@Cacti: Well, I think there’s virtual universal agreement among commenters at BJ (other than a few trolls, maybe) that legal immigration should be easier. Why would you accuse someone who opposes open borders (actually, who merely put the term in quotes) of advocating for a “gated community,” when it’s apparent that you aren’t advocating for open borders yourself? [edited]
Kropadope
@dedc79: Well, we all know that quotation marks serve no purpose beyond snarking about their contents.
Peale
@Nylund: yep. Also I would say that if trump weren’t going out of his way to make Mexican immigration specifically an issue (let’s say he was targeting Wiccans), I don’t doubt he’d be drawing in Latino men. Chris christie got about 1/2 the latino vote, just punching at government workers and teachers in a blustery way. That whole “never apologize and say what you mean” shtick has appeal as long as it’s not directed at your group. So far trump is directing at specific groups. The advantage though that the Democrats have, though, is that he makes it fairly toxic for republican candidates to, say, go before the Latin Amercan CoC looking for votes, or trying to appeal that direction. He’s mocking Bush for speaking to Hispanic groups in Spanish. Whether the Dems can take advantage of the disorganized and cancelled outreach efforts and actually organize and register voters and get them to the polls is a different question. Republicans need 1/5 of the Latino voters to change their minds and vote republican this election. I think Trump isn’t going to get them there. Dems need more Latinos to go to the pools at higher participation rates if they are going to take back senate seats and start cutting into republican house majorities. I hope they have a plan to make that happen.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator:
Read my comment, I am not ignoring that fact all. This is what I said, when you misrepresented me the first time.
Many Latinos are citizens, quite a few are citizens who were born here, whose families have been in this country for decades, if not centuries.
This is a strawman show me someone who is running for office who has advocated for an “open border”.
Republican House has scuttled immigration reform twice now, once during Bush II and the other time was after Obama’s reelection. The reform while not perfect would have addressed many of the issues regarding immigration. Both sides are not equally responsible. ICE under Obama stepped up enforcement and has deported about 1.4 million in his first four years in office. The total under Bush II was about 2 million for his entire term.
azelie
@eemom: You oughta know by now….
lol
@samiam:
The big money donors control the process because they can cut the pursestrings. That’s what happened to Rick Santorum in 2012 – won a bunch of states and then ran out of money despite all that success over the supposed frontrunner.
That’s why they’re panicking over Trump. There’s no spigot of party support or donor money that they can switch off. He’s untouchable.
Not sure if Trump can win the nomination but everyone has consistently underestimated his potential support. His favorability ratings amongst Republicans have swung 40-50 points and he’s increasingly the top second choice for supporters of other candidates. People keep saying he has a ceiling and then he goes through it. He’ll hit a peak I’m sure, but I’m not so sure it’s below 50%.
But if Trump “can’t win” then who can? Jeb!?
Romney won in 2012 because he maintained a steady and decently high level of support through all the rise and falls of his competition. Once the field was winnowed, the party cut off the money for everyone else and Romney drowned them in $125 million of spending between his campaign and SuperPACs.
In contrast, Jeb! started out in a worse position and he’s slowly bled out that support an his increasingly inept campaign rolls on. Yes, he has money, but he doesn’t have a money advantage over Trump. He’s actually at a disadvantage. He’s going to have to compete against an opponent who dominates earned media (reducing his need for paid) and can write himself a check for whatever he needs to win the nomination. Also, nobody gives a shit about Jeb!. He has all the charisma of an ellipsis.
Actually, scratch that. Trump gives a shit about Jeb!. He legitimately hates him on a personal level. This whole campaign might actually be about screwing Jeb! over. So he’s never going away as long as Jeb! breathes.
What’s worse is that they don’t have a backup plan who is acceptable to the donor class and can also win the Presidency.
Trump himself, of course, is utterly toxic in the general election. Republicans might like him more now but everyone else hates him worse. He’d be disastrous for the rest of the ticket which is why the RNC might bite the bullet and play hardball to keep the nomination from him. Better to lose the Presidency because he went independent than to watch him set fire to the entire party apparatus causing damage that’ll take decades to repair.
trollhattan
@kc:
I think the emphasis our magic dolphin lady intended was My “friend” Cesar “works” the deli counter….
cmorenc
@greennotGreen:
…and unfortunately, one of the crazy AA uncles sits on the US Supreme Court, thanks to pappy Bush.
Patricia Kayden
@BGinCHI: Bestest comment evah!
Brachiator
@Cacti:
Good. Keep Going.
Labor unions (with the notable exception of the IWW) supported the Chinese Exclusion Act. The law also impelled Canada to follow suit with similar laws and the despicable Head Tax. Mexico, on the other hand, welcomed Chinese immigrants, which led the Donald Trumps of the time to step up patrolling the US Mexican border.
Bonus question: the Supreme Court case that confirmed the right of children of immigrants to be considered citizens?
This issue is not new, and it brings forth both outright bigots and those who think that they are defending the rights of American citizens.
trollhattan
@lol:
Great summary. And if it proves correct (have considerable doubts, but whatevs) that Big Dog helped coax The Donald into running the whole mess seems an act of genius Nixon-level ratfvcking.
Patricia Kayden
@Zinsky: After she predicted Romney’s victory in 2012 based on tummy gurglings, she should have been forced to retire.
cckids
@J.D. Rhoades:
This x infinity. I’ve given up on discussions with the wingnuts in my family because when you present them with a fact that disproves their argument, the comeback is always “Well, I don’t believe that.” How do you counter a disbelief in reality?? My head can’t take the pounding against the desk any more.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
Sorry Jeb, but you’re conflating separate issues. Birth tourism and “anchor babies” are not the same phenomenon. If affluent foreigners are returning home following the birth of their US-born progeny, they’re hardly being “anchored” here, now are they?
As for US-born children of foreign parents in general, I’m not at all comfortable with assigning some sort of vicarious culpability to an infant for the behaviors of his/her biological parents. No one chooses when, where, how, or to whom they are born. If you disagree with Jus Soli citizenship as enshrined in the 14th Amendment, follow your own advice, and have the courage to say so. Just know that it makes you a philosophical compatriot of Trump and the Teabaggers and own up to it.
Liberal immigration policies have been an overwhelming positive for the country and its development, and I’m not the least bit reluctant to say so. On the other hand, a straight line can be drawn from current support for restrictive immigration policy to the Know Nothing Party of the 19th century, and the racist exclusivity of the early US labor movement.
jl
I’m not sure exactly what ‘anchor baby’ is supposed to mean. If it means a baby born in the US and granted birthright citizenship to non-citizen parents, one of whom is not authorized to reside there, seems to be around 300,000 per year. That seems to be where places like Breitbart get scare headlines that an ‘anchor bably’ is born every minute or so in the US. Or other scare headlines talking about the 8 or 10 billion dollars per year spent on ‘anchor babies’. Very scary.
Unauthorized Immigrants and Their U.S.-Born Children
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2010/08/11/unauthorized-immigrants-and-their-us-born-children/
trollhattan
@srv:
I got twenty bucks says that list is YOOOOOUGE! Which mows and which handles the leaf blower?
wasabi gasp
Putting aside the provocative notion that Noonan’s roast beef has been sliced to remarkable levels of intimacy, “fuck you, got mine” is not exclusive to jaundiced boomers on scooters.
Cacti
@dedc79:
You must not have been around when we were discussing Bernie’s belief that unskilled foreigners shouldn’t be coming to the US and taking jobs from young people.
I’d say the belief that legal immigration should be easier is far from universal around here.
samiam
@lol: News flash. The establishment picked Jeb way before he even announced. Sure, some of the big money donors still want to play hard to get a bit so that people like Scott Walkers will fluff them for awhile. But at the end of the day they will all converge on Jeb.
Just follow the money. Jeb is raking in what now? 100Mil per month?
OGLiberal
Never mind the pundits….most of the right’s policy beliefs are based in anecdotes….we have to cut welfare because my cousin’s co-worker saw somebody ua fancy birthday cake with an EBT card, we must loosen gun laws because one guy somewhere five-years ago thwarted a burglar because he was packing heat, we have to kick out all the immigrants because I read a news story a few weeks back where the rapist was an illegal, there is no global warming because it snowed in April!
It’s never data, it’s always some third-hand or imagined anecdotal stories that drives their
beliefsfears.Cacti
Also too, how often does Peggy have her “friend” Cesar over to her house?
Maybe that will be in her next piece.
schrodinger's cat
@jl: Anchor babies are a myth, created in the fever swamps of nativist, white supremacist sites like VDARE, that have now migrated into a more mainstream discussion, thanks to Trump. I first heard this term, when immigration reform was being discussed during Bush’s second term.
Children born on US soil do not give their parents a leg up in the immigration process neither are they an insurance from being deported.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat: I did not misrepresent your comments and your repeating of my own comments that many Latinos are citizens does not rescue your earlier misleading remarks.
Didn’t you earlier note that you supported something like the Canadian plan, in which anyone (presumably not a criminal) who paid a fee would be able to enter the country? This is fine, and pretty close to an open border policy, but it is not current law, nor does it necessarily represent the Democratic Party’s view of immigration reform, or the Republican Party for that matter. What would you do about people who could not or would not pay the fee or seek entry through legal means?
You rightfully note that the Republicans opposed immigration reform offered by their own president, and Obama faced opposition as well. Meanwhile, American citizens have watched in frustration as gridlock strikes again. Their anger and frustration has been exploited by various factions, and for some, hell, maybe for many, the anger is curdling into bigotry.
But it is simplistic to dismiss all the frustration as mere bigotry, just as it is simplistic and dishonest to ascribe all opposition to inaction over immigration reform to dirty nativists being bad people.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: The term “anchor baby” is one of those frames. They’re U.S. citizens.
There’s all sorts of assumptions bound up in a term like anchor baby: that the family actually is going to be in the US for more than a temporary basis, that they intend to stay permanently, that they somehow didn’t follow the US’ immigration rules when you can follow all the rules and still end up with no status or facing deportation.
They had this lady on the radio earlier this week. She could have maintained legal status if she would have kept flying back home for short periods, but she lacked the money to do so.
Our immigration system is a joke.
Renie
Just read Palin is going to interview Trump tonight on a conservative online show, One America News? Now that’s gotta be a yooogggeee freak show.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
If only it were limited to the right wing.
Bernie Sanders has also mouthed the idea that unskilled foreigners are taking job opportunities away from “young people”.
In this version of reality, 20-year old Austin and Dakota in Stepford suburbia are being thwarted from highly desirable opportunities as agricultural laborers.
JPL
@Renie: lol…
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: Quite simply there is no easy pathway for many people on work visas to immigrate. You are tied to your employer while your green card is being processed, which can take years.
ETA: Many times the employers just don’t want to go through the hassle and apply for your green card in the first place.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator:
And a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
rikyrah
WHAT.DA.PHUQ?!?!?!?!?!?
First State Legalizes Taser Drones for Cops, Thanks to a Lobbyist
North Dakota police will be free to fire ‘less than lethal’ weapons from the air thanks to the influence of Big Drone.
It is now legal for law enforcement in North Dakota to fly drones armed with everything from Tasers to tear gas thanks to a last-minute push by a pro-police lobbyist.
With all the concern over the militarization of police in the past year, no one noticed that the state became the first in the union to allow police to equip drones with “less than lethal” weapons. House Bill 1328 wasn’t drafted that way, but then a lobbyist representing law enforcement—tight with a booming drone industry—got his hands on it.
The bill’s stated intent was to require police to obtain a search warrant from a judge in order to use a drone to search for criminal evidence. In fact, the original draft of Representative Rick Becker’s bill would have banned all weapons on police drones.
Then Bruce Burkett of the North Dakota Peace Officer’s Association was allowed by the state house committee to amend HB 1328 and limit the prohibition only to lethal weapons. “Less than lethal” weapons like rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers are therefore permitted on police drones.
Becker, the bill’s Republican sponsor, said he had to live with it.
“This is one I’m not in full agreement with. I wish it was any weapon,” he said at a hearing in March. “In my opinion there should be a nice, red line: Drones should not be weaponized. Period
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/26/first-state-legalizes-armed-drones-for-cops-thanks-to-a-lobbyist.html
jl
But if by ‘anchor babies’ you mean kids with birthright citizenship because of birth tourism, a mother coming here for very short term just to give birth and get citizenship for her kid, then the number is much lower. Wikipedia gives low (around 8,000 / year) and high (40,0000 / year) estimates that I have seen before. Low is from Census Bureau and one that I believe (even though it is a proxy) since the definition and method is clear. The high is from Center for Immigration Studies and I have not found where this estimate comes from on their website, but it seems consistent with their anecdotal reports of what self-proclaimed birth tourist contractors say their annual visits are. Not sure how reliable it is.
But, take either the high or low estimate, the scandalous and clearly abusive type of birth tourism that Jeb!? wrongly implied was a big, and mainly East Asian problem is a very small thing.
Why the fuss over it? Why does it sell? Bigotry and xenophobia, and scared frustrated people looking for something outrageous to blame, IMHO.
And, also, how come I see so many corproate news media stories in my internet searches that cannot seem to find any numbers to put things in context, but just spew BS?
Anchor baby
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_baby“>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_baby
Anyway, birth tourism is hardly a speck of a substantive issue that makes any difference.
And I see ‘anchor baby’ used for long term undocumented US residents as an entirely different issue, economically. Seems like that should be net benefit to the US economically.
rikyrah
The 14%?
Well, Black folks have their own 10%- the Ron Christie’s, the Clarence Thomas’, the Jesse Lee Petersons…
so, Latinos have theirs.
Kropadope
@Cacti:
I don’t see anyone arguing that here, now. Got names? Why are you always dragging up another time, another place, and/or another group of people who aren’t present into an argument instead of engaging in the argument that is here, in front of you, right now?
gvg
does anyone know the story behind Trump hating Jeb?
As for the story Bill Clinton encouraged Trump to run, I have been thinking that most politicians must run into people on a regular basis that complain alot about pols not being just what they want and said pols must develop standard speeches to the effect of “then run yourself and see if you can make it better” which would stop most people from boring them further but some listeners would go out and try. Most would fail. A few must actually get elected. I am thinking Bill probably said something like that because I don’t see how anybody, no matter how smart and politically experienced they are could have predicted that Trump wouldn’t bomb pretty quick. Didn’t he in fact run last time with only a tiny bit of support and last time it seemed like the voters were picking everyone but they didn’t pick Trump then. Now this time is making last time look comparatively sane…but still.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Or student visas. And sometimes the education they receive is very specific to North America or a certain region or state. Complete waste to educate that person and then send them away.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: @Another Holocene Human:
I agree. I was late posting the numbers I have seen on the Jebberish definition and anchor babies (due to birth tourism) because I somehow bumped my computer and turned it off by accident (I am having a ‘Cole day’ here).
The birth tourism thing is a tiny problem. It is a totally bogus issue. And fitting that the noxious Jeb!? would explicitly drag that sensational BS into the front in order to cover his sorry ass and cover up his incompetent campaigning gyrations.
Mike J
@rikyrah:
Pretty dishonest reading of the bill. Before the bill passed it wasn’t illegal for the cops to put any kind of weapon they wanted on a drone. After the bill passed, it was illegal for cops to put lethal weapons on drones, and the bill didn’t address the legality of “less lethal” weapons. All in all, the police have fewer legal rights after the passage of the bill than they had before, and that’s a good thing.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: Bernie Sanders is a protectionist, he has sponsored anti-immigration legislation with his buddy Chuck Grassley in the Senate. Most BJers are against the evil H1-B visa holders. Immigration is an issue that cuts across the right-left divide.
It is easy to hate on the temporary work visa holders/undocumented than it is to take on the vested interests who employ the same.
Kropadope
@gvg:
No, he kept saying he was interested, but never actually formed a campaign.
jl
@Kropadope: I don’t keep track of what commenters say what here consistently, so I have no clue what the BJ commenter consensus is on anything.
But I do know that Sanders has objections to specific visa programs for both high skill and low skill workers that he thinks corporations are using to depress wages and as loopholes to abuse the workers with those visas, and he has voted against immigration bills out of those concerns.
I don’t see where Sanders ever said he was opposed to immigration in general. But if anyone has any links, fire away.
Cacti
@Kropadope:
It’s a real bear to use that search function in the upper right corner, but here you go.
And you’re whining that I didn’t give name-specific rebuttals to an uncorroborated claim of “near universal” agreement about an issue?
Are you a complete hypocrite, or is it a part-time position?
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: OK, well if you have the goods on Bernie, I’ll read a link on it.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Marx really underestimated the power of tribal bigotry to overwhelm any sense of worker solidarity among the proletariat class.
The US labor movement has a pretty embarrassing history of trying stomp on foreign immigrants rather than seeing them as brothers and sisters in the same struggle.
Kropadope
@jl: Right, and I believe Cacti about Sanders’s position. But he was making that claim about commenters and I have never seen such a thing. For the Democratic primary, I mainly support Bernie, but I don’t agree with him on the principle of restricting immigration or certain other things.
I remember during the weeks of endless BLM arguments, Cacti would try to hold BJ commenters accountable for what people were saying on Twitter. It’s just a really frustrating habit that (s)he is always trying to distract from the conversation at hand by…not exactly building a straw man, more like outsourcing his/her rebuttals.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brachiator:
Dude, you may know that when Trump and other Republicans say “immigrants,” they’re supposedly only talking about a limited group, but most people are smart enough to know that the limited group can get expanded quickly, and Republicans complaining about illegal immigrants from Guatemala today quickly expands into complaining about “immigrants” without any qualifiers.
People aren’t stupid. When people who immigrated here from Asia or the Carribbean or South America or even Europe hear “immigrants” being demonized, they don’t give conservatives the benefit of the doubt. Not anymore.
Brachiator
@Cacti:
Variations on a theme.
The parents obviously are often able to choose.
So you favor the earlier approach to immigration and think that it should be continued. Cool. But that is not current policy, nor is the current immigration service set up to quickly process anyone who shows up.
The line is not as straight as you might think from current policy, and non-action, to the errors of the 19th century. It’s easy to say, “current immigration laws don’t matter and if you disagree with me, you’re racist,” but it doesn’t get you very far in the long run.
jl
@Kropadope:
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The BJ-er knows! bwahahahhahhha!”
dan
65 percent? Why is that not 95%
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@schrodinger’s cat:
I tend to agree with the people who say that employers have too much control over H1B holders. A friend of mine from Singapore got screwed that way after working as a journalist in the US for two years.
Someone was saying yesterday that in Canada, those types of work visas are not tied to a specific job and/or employer but are tied to the person. That might be the better way to go, especially if they’re meant to be a way to entice highly-skilled workers to immigrate to the US and not a way for companies to get around prevailing wage rules.
schrodinger's cat
@jl: One example here Bernie and Chuck added an amendment to the TARP bill restricting TARP beneficiaries from hiring of H1-b workers.
Please note, that I am not a fan of the H1-B contractors like Infosys and WIPRO or other IT contractors who treat their employees like bonded labor either.
Kropadope
@Cacti:
And how would I have known what, precisely, to search for? You knew precisely what thread you were talking about, why should I not ask you for a link?
No, but thanks for misrepresenting, as always. No one in this thread has argued on behalf of burdensome immigration policies, so you bring up people from some past conversation. I’m starting to read the thread you linked to now, but your likely misrepresenting the people from last month’s thread also.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think it was probably me. I don’t know the minute details but I do know that self sponsorship for residency is open to a far broader group of potential immigrants.
Gravenstone
@samiam: Don’t flatter yourself sweetums, you’re not even worth the mockery any more. You’re just a waste of electrons floating on the internet seas.
Cacti
@Brachiator:
So what? A foreign parent wants their child to have the obvious economic, educational, and cultural advantages of US citizenship? And that same child might grow up to become an educated, productive US citizen? Gasp! The horror! I only want that from people who exited a proper American vagina, as George Washington intended (or not).
If telling yourself this gives you peace of mind for carrying the banners of Millard Fillmore and Samuel Gompers in the 21st century, go right ahead. Heritage, not hate, amiright?
jl
If what I see on the Center for Immigration Studies website is the basis for their estimated 40,000 birth tourism citizens per year, the plurality of them are to mothers from Turkey. Those damn Turks!
Wake up sheeples! The Turks are coming and They Want Deal!
Though not sure if the brags of self-proclaimed birth tourism contractor running the Turkish book is a reliable source. Maybe just saying stuff to drum up some business?
Which brings to mind, if the Trump/Rubio joint event comes off, it will be doozy.
‘Creeping Sharia’ Conspiracy Group Set To Sponsor Joint Cruz-Trump Rally In DC
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/frank-gaffney-cruz-trump-iran-rally
For those who follow these things, Gaffney will be involved, apparently.
And is this the start of a trend? First Cruz, and now Rubio, seem to be tagging along like Trump mini-me’s and msacots, hoping to scoop up Trump support after he flames out. Who will be next. Not Paul. Would be fun to see Jeb? try it, just for the trainwreck.
Gravenstone
Apologies if someone posted upthread, but the derp is about to reach intergalactic proportions. Palin to interview Trump.
Kropadope
@jl:
Doesn’t this fault the employers rather than the immigrants?
jl
@Cacti: I don’t see how undocumented US residents who are here long term, very probably with jobs, are in a position to choose. As I documented above, birth tourism is a very tiny, though legitimate, problem.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve complained about H1-Bs in the past but I am not against the visa holders at all. What I think is that they should have green cards, not some guest-worker visa that keeps them under an employer’s thumb.
John Revolta
@gvg: does anyone know the story behind Trump hating Jeb?
Stopped Clock theory?
jl
@Kropadope: I don’t know. I guess by time CA primary comes around, I will have had time to study up on whether Sanders has been good on policy solutions to what I think are real problems with both corporate abuses of both high and low skill worker visa programs.
Marc
If you read the writing of people like Krugman, they have come around to the idea that there are clear winners and losers with trade agreements, and with immigration. Now it may be that the net effect of both is positive, in the sense that winners outnumber losers. But it is also clear that there are people who lose; if you’re doing manual labor, and the pool of people willing to do it goes up, you will not benefit on average.
Immigration is a complex issue, but it is things like this that make it far less clear-cut than a other partisan issues. And it is especially difficult to maintain a generous welfare state with a large influx of less skilled workers, which is becoming a serious problem in some parts of Europe. Scientists like me are part of an international community, and I think that there is tremendous value in allowing high-skill people from everywhere to come here. This doesn’t apply everywhere, though, and there is a reason why big business is so enthusiastic about policies that keep wages low.
Kropadope
@Matt McIrvin:
This to the umpteenth power.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
As a House member, Bernie also voted for a Republican amendment to a Homeland Security Appropriations bill that prohibited DHS from providing any information to “a foreign government” on the activities of any “organized volunteer civilian action group” operating in the states of “California, Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona”.
No such language was included for groups operating in the states of, say: Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine.
Long story short, Bernie voted to give cover to the Minutemen bigots.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: There aren’t enough green cards, there is a yearly quota for employment based green cards set to 140,000. Plus every country has a set quota, so there huge backlogs for India, China, Mexico and I think the Philippines.
jl
@Marc: no time for me to get links now. but personally, I believe that the costs of undocumented immigration to US citizens, in general and in terms of compensation are very small compared to those produced by the evolving nature of US trade agreements and international financial policy encouraged by feds (e.g., the ;high dollar’ policy) .
There maybe some exceptions, and those concern specific high and low skill worker visa programs. And may be some exceptions for low skill Hispanic citizens in some border states. But in general, I think for average US worker and citizen, costs of undocumented immigration are very small compared to effect of trade agreements.
So, I tend to suspect bigotry and xenophobia and general cultural insecurity is cause of uproar over immigration, legal or not.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Trump and the Republicans are not the only ones talking about immigration. You and I are both in Southern California. The media, talk radio, public radio discussions are not just about people who fear or hate certain groups. There are people who simply (or simplistically) think that people should follow the rules when applying for entry to the US, even if those following those rules would take years. And people who fear the impact that large numbers of illegal immigrants might have on municipal services, schools, etc, especially when the economy is still weak.
You’re right. People aren’t stupid. And many people in the past clearly made and continue to make distinctions between legal and illegal immigration. It’s not a matter of whether anyone has to give anyone else the benefit of the doubt.
Equally, it is clear that some posters here don’t believe that there should be any restrictions on immigration (except obviously by those who have criminal records). And this may be a discussion worth having. But this is not the discussion that people want to have. And this gives Trump and people like him room to act a fool.
And worst of all, it inspires nimrods like Noonan to spectacular bouts of foolishness.
Anoniminous
@lol:
Great comment!
Which is why, in the end, the Establishment and Corporate Wings will deny him the nomination. With JEB! as the front man they risk losing the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. With Trump they risk losing the Presidency, Vice-Presidency, House, and Senate.
People forget primaries are an internal Party matter. Party insiders can pull all kinds of shenanigans to get what they want. Good current example is what the Blairite insiders are doing in the Labour Party election. Good example from 2012 is the Santorum winning the Missouri primary in a landslide and ending with 13 delegates to Romney’s 39.
Cacti
@jl:
To borrow a biblical expression, railing against birth tourism is straining at gnats while swallowing camels.
There were approximately 4 million live births in the US in 2014. That puts the high end of birth tourism births at 1% of the total, and the low end at 0.2%.
Not to mention, it’s not against any law for pregnant women to visit the US on a tourist visa. The places that were raided in California got in trouble for organized fraud, not for encouraging foreign nationals to have babies in the US.
Kropadope
@Cacti: So, I’ve been reading through the linked conversation. As expected, I found no example of anyone defending restrictive immigration policies. Just more examples of your exaggerated of what other commenters, and Bernie Sanders, said.
Let me spell it out for you, saying that corporate executives are exploiting immigrants and voting against policies that will help them do so is not being anti-immigrant.
Cacti
@Kropadope:
Natch.
Anything else you’d like to whine about or have me look up for you?
Kropadope
@Cacti:
Making inferences about someone’s tone in a text format…that’s odd.
So, apparently it escaped your notice that I’m charitably calling you a serial exaggerator and argument deflector, while still reserving judgment on your being a flat-out liar.
Calouste
@Anoniminous: That doesn’t take into account the scenario that Trump goes third party, specially if he goes with a party like the Libertarian Party that already has quite a few down ticket candidates. That would result in a worse outcome for the GOP that Trump leading their ticket.
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: Calm down. Cole posted front paged about this a couple of nights ago. And he was rightfully eviscerated for allowing the Beast’s misrepresentation of the legislation to stand unchallenged.
Brachiator
@Gravenstone:
Holy Baby Jebus!
Cacti
@Kropadope:
That’s a relief.
I lie awake at nights worrying about it.
NotMax
@rikyrah</a.
There was quite the lively thread about that very happenstance earlier in the week.
Kropadope
@Gravenstone:
We may finally figure out if the Wingularity can exist in the real world and not just mathematical models.
NotMax
Code fix and clarification.@rikyrah
Front paged, with quite the lively thread about that very happenstance earlier in the week.
Full metal Wingnut
My father is a Hispanic who hates Trump. But he’s Cuban, so he doesn’t really give a shit about the anti-immigrant record. Rather, he’s smart enough to know that Trump is poison for the Republicans and hates him for that.
Anoniminous
@Calouste:
Mostly Third Parties peter out because insurgents full of OUTRAGE! suck at organizing. When they don’t they end up splitting the vote, throwing the election to the other Party. The one time a Third Party did win we ended-up in a Civil War.
(Anoniminous’ tl;dr History of American Electoral Politics)
Game it out. The two major scenarios are: Trump will run in the general irregardless, Trump won’t run in the general if he doesn’t get the nomination. For either scenario the GOP play is to deny him the nomination. In the first the GOP and Trump draw the GOP Primary Game and start the General Election Game. In the second the GOP wins.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, that’s a policy choice the US made, not something that’s unchangeable.
Matt McIrvin
@lol:
The current head-to-head polling doesn’t show that at all. Trump’s within shouting distance of Hillary Clinton nationally, and does better than any other R candidate except Ben Carson. He does way better than Jeb Bush at this point. (Basically the R candidates’ relative strength in the head-to-head questions tend to track their standing in the primary pretty closely.)
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: Good luck changing that with the current Congress.
ETA: Increasing the Employment based quota was not even considered in the comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the senate in 2013.
Kropadope
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, we don’t need to nominate her.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brachiator:
The problem in California is not that undocumented immigrants are using up all of our public resources. The problem is that Prop 13 cut off funding for public resources by allowing giant corporations to freeze their property taxes at 1978 rates, making it difficult for the state to raise funds through any means other than sales and income taxes, assuming said taxes get 2/3rds approval in the first place.
Blaming undocumented immigrants for our financial problems in California is a smokescreen, and you should know that.
tony in san diego
Desmond has a barrow in the market place.
Matt McIrvin
@Kropadope: Polling vs. the other D candidates is very sparse, and when they ask about anyone else it’s usually Biden. I’d be surprised to see Bernie Sanders doing significantly better.
Looking at this again, it appears that the alarming Huffington Post averages I was examining were heavily dependent on a single, heavily outlying Gravis Marketing poll that is probably garbage. Cut them out and the numbers look more like what you might expect, e. g. Clinton is beating all the Republicans comfortably but Trump doesn’t actually do a lot worse than anyone else.
Patrick
@Matt McIrvin:
Polling at this stage for the 2008 election (ie 15 months out) showed Clinton being the Democratic nominee while Giuliani being the GOP nominee. IOW, polling this far out isn’t worth much…
colby
@samiam: I guarantee you that the few intelligent people on the right wing do not care what Balloon Juice says.
sm*t cl*de
Is this a new expression for “rubbing the bean”?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
The Proposition 13 excuse is old and tired. But it is also another example of how politicians play kick the can and allow deeper problems to fester.
Instead of raising income taxes or getting voters to approve other revenue increases by ballot measure, they simply allowed inflation to raise property taxes on individuals. And people on fixed incomes or whose incomes did not rise proportionately were in fear of losing their homes. And I absolutely recall some so-called liberals actually saying, “well, maybe some people should lose their homes. And this will allow new people to move into some neighborhoods.”
The state legislature did nothing, and they allowed the Howard Jarvis people to write a stupid, blunt ballot measure that ended up giving a break to corporations. They played a game of chicken with the taxpayers and lost.
I am not blaming illegal immigrants for the state’s financial problems. But it is stupid to tell citizens and legal residents who have lost their jobs, or who fear losing their jobs, or whose wages are stagnant that there is an infinite supply of money out there if you just raise taxes, and that the state can easily accommodate everyone who wants to come here with no additional costs. And also note that since 1967, there has been a slow, but steady erosion of the California economic base as the auto, aerospace, insurance and retail industries have contracted.
But the impact of illegal immigrants is obviously not the only issue. Again, some people want to say, “it’s not a problem, just let everyone in,” as if this should be the end of it. But at the same time, there are laws and rules that other people follow, which sometimes requires that they wait for years until they get citizenship or residency status. If people want to change the law and allow quick and easy entry, then change the law. But if you say,”let’s just ignore the issue because we don’t think it’s a problem, we will not discuss it, and we will declare anyone a bigot who doesn’t see it our way,” you are simply guaranteeing that the present mess we have, and its increasing ugliness, will only get worse.
Sad_Dem
@Mark B.: The comments sections of news websites also have a variety of pro-Trump comments. If I were a cynic, I’d suggest that maybe people were getting paid to comment. By the way, did you know global warming is a Marxist hoax?
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator:
Who is saying that? On this blog.
lol
@samiam:
Yes, Jeb! is raking in the big dollars. So what? Trump has more.
On top of that, Jeb! as a candidate is shit, his campaign is shit, the GOP base thinks he’s shit and he’s bleeding out. He’s the Guiliani of this cycle.
Waspuppet
@shell: not only was it delusional; it was a lie. She went on about Rmoney signs in “the tony areas of Northwest DC.” I live and work in the tony areas of Northwest DC and there was a Rmoney sign in the window if a Georgetown frat. And that was it.