Dems are making a big deal over standard operating procedure

a reply to: introvert

Ok. Obama, Bush and the rest are at fault as well. Now what about Trump? Do we hold him to the same standard and criticize him for # policy, or do we continue to dry about Obama?

YES, we hold Trump to the EXACT same standard.

And if you didn't notice, Trump signed an EO yesterday (that is probably illegal, by the way) to end the consequences of single parents without alternative caregivers having their kids taken into DHHR's custody. Instead, the children will be housed at the same facility as the parent.

Heroes? Not sure what that means.

That's an empty platitude used as an ignorant debate tactic. Seen quite a bit of it yesterday.

No, simply pointing at the left's general hypocrisy RE: illegal immigration. Every single leftist figurehead has spoken out STRONGLY against the illegal immigration crisis. Yet, since Trump also opposes it, voluminous numbers on the left are now supporting it.

This Democrat "party of not Trump" BS is not a good way to win elections or gain credibility in the eyes of the public. You should support/oppose issues because they are morally right/wrong, not because you don't like a certain President.

For instance, I still opposed illegal immigration even when Obama also opposed it. I opposed it even when Bush opposed it.

Regardless, I still recognize the need to come up with a better means of handling asylum/legal immigration. I simply oppose breaking the law. Which is more than a reasonable position.

But if we start ignoring one law, why not ignore all of them? Legitimacy is based on equal application of the laws: just ask Lincoln's 14th amendment.

a reply to: JBurns

Do we stop enforcing drug laws because when parents are arrested their kids get separated from them? Do we stop enforcing laws against robbery/rape/murder because when parents are robbers/rapists/murders their kids get separated from them?

False equivalency.

Then why in the hell would we stop enforcing our existing immigration law that CONGRESS created.

No one said we should stop enforcing the law. I think what is up for debate is how we enforce those laws.

You're trying to push a false equivalency.

No. I made no comparison to claim as an equivalence. You have.

I ask you again: Where should the kids go when all parents/guardians/caregivers are incarcerated/unwilling to take care of them

No deflections please. If you can answer the above question I'll shut up and eat crow.

This is the dishonest nature of the debate. You are correct that the kids need to go somewhere in those extreme cases and even the Obama admin could not get around that reality.

The problem is that with the polices we are putting in place, we are creating more of those extreme cases when there is no need to do so.

That is what many of you do not seem to understand.

No, we cannot get past the reality that sometimes kids may have to be separated from their parents. That's unfortunate. But you do not enact policy that makes it worse and try to justify that bad decision making by comparing people that cross the border illegally with people selling drugs, etc.

A hypothetical single mother (a US citizen) decides to rob a gas station at gun-point. She gets away, but is later apprehended after an investigation reveals her identity. When police come to her home to arrest her, her children will have to be placed with a parent/relative/caregiver OR they'll be turned over to DDHR/Child protective services....because unaccompanied children can never be left to live on their own!

No one is FORCING them into DHHR custody (whether you're an immigration law violator or a robbery law violator). You have the OPTION of turning your kids over to another parent, a relative/family member, etc as a legal guardian. IF and ONLY IF you do not have any other option, THEN the State has no choice but to take custody of the unaccompanied minor child because a minor cannot legally take care of themselves!

Again, there is absolutely NOTHING that says another parent/relative/etc can't come and get the children when the parents are arrested. And this applies to IMMIGRATION LAW VIOLATIONS for non-citizens and any other law our country has on the books.

originally posted by: introvert
a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

The narrative: "Trump is evil, he's doing this new thing that you should all be enraged about. No, don't look at the hearings on Capital Hill....look at the border" That is what the media is doing.

As is their right. They get to report on what they want. They also get to put in their opinion as they want. They are also reporting about the hearings, etc. People claim they are creating narratives about those issues as well.

I may not remember saying it...but I don't believe I've said it isn't their right. They are welcome to print what they want. I am welcome to have my opinion on it. And I am welcome to ignore them and starve them of attention.

Hardly. The vast majority of people read about stuff like this and move about their business.

It's almost as if crying about the media's "narratives" have become an alternative to saying "we are not being fed our confirmation bias and it makes me mad".

Why would you choose the word "crying"? Is this your underhanded attempt at an ad hominem at me?

Is having an opinion "crying"?

A little support for my opinion:

www.washingtonpost.com... 987f

If you want to see the actual study, the links are in there. Im sure you've seen it...it made the rounds pretty heavily.

a reply to: Allaroundyou

Allaroundyou: "Is the little baby upset about something his dear leader that would never lie did. AWWWW ish ok little buddy.....here here have shome milk"

You clearly have the mental capacity and logical reasoning skills of a 4th grader. So this question should be easy for you..... :

A hypothetical single mother (a US citizen) decides to rob a gas station at gun-point. She gets away, but is later apprehended after an investigation reveals her identity. When police come to her home to arrest her, her children will have to be placed with a parent/relative/caregiver OR they'll be turned over to DDHR/Child protective services....because unaccompanied children can never be left to live on their own!

No one is FORCING them into DHHR custody (whether you're an immigration law violator or a robbery law violator). You have the OPTION of turning your kids over to another parent, a relative/family member, etc as a legal guardian. IF and ONLY IF you do not have any other option, THEN the State has no choice but to take custody of the unaccompanied minor child because a minor cannot legally take care of themselves!

Again, there is absolutely NOTHING that says another parent/relative/etc can't come and get the children when the parents are arrested. And this applies to IMMIGRATION LAW VIOLATIONS for non-citizens and any other law our country has on the books.

Now, move along. Grown-ups are talking.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
What about the case where a woman seeking asylum at a port of entry was separated from her daughter for four months? What about the woman that has been granted asylum and still hasn't had her child returned?

what about Bob Smith?

at some point, you will have to realize that your one story about one lawsuit with the ACLU doesn't represent the 12,000 other cases, or whatever number is real.

a reply to: JBurns

For me, i need numbers. How many children have been in detention? What is the min/max/avg for their length of stay? Of the children in custody during the time the policy was utilized, how many:

- had a parent with them?
- had another adult with them/non-familial (or dubious claims of family)?
- were completely alone?

There is a story there im sure...but I without some answers to these questions the media has no credibility with me.

a reply to: JBurns

YES, we hold Trump to the EXACT same standard. And if you didn't notice, Trump signed an EO yesterday (that is probably illegal, by the way) to end the consequences of single parents without alternative caregivers having their kids taken into DHHR's custody. Instead, the children will be housed at the same facility as the parent.

Ok. Hold him accountable for his actions.

Not deflect to Obama, etc.

No, simply pointing at the left's general hypocrisy RE: illegal immigration. Every single leftist figurehead has spoken out STRONGLY against the illegal immigration crisis. Yet, since Trump also opposes it, voluminous numbers on the left are now supporting it.

Sure. Hypocrisy is everywhere. That does not mean a criticism of Trump's approach is not legitimate.

This Democrat "party of not Trump" BS is not a good way to win elections or gain credibility in the eyes of the public. You should support/oppose issues because they are morally right/wrong, not because you don't like a certain President. For instance, I still opposed illegal immigration even when Obama also opposed it. I opposed it even when Bush opposed it. Regardless, I still recognize the need to come up with a better means of handling asylum/legal immigration. I simply oppose breaking the law. Which is more than a reasonable position.

I don't care about your opinion of the democratic party. Nothing you said had anything to do with the nonsense about "heroes".

But if we start ignoring one law, why not ignore all of them? Legitimacy is based on equal application of the laws: just ask Lincoln's 14th amendment.

We ignore laws all the time. It's a matter fo enforcing what society finds acceptable and what lengths we are willing to go to enforce the laws.

What you speak of and advocate for is strict authoritarianism.

I think we should be a bit more flexible than that.

a reply to: introvert

This is the dishonest nature of the debate. You are correct that the kids need to go somewhere in those extreme cases and even the Obama admin could not get around that reality.

The problem is that with the polices we are putting in place, we are creating more of those extreme cases when there is no need to do so.

That is what many of you do not seem to understand.

No, we cannot get past the reality that sometimes kids may have to be separated from their parents. That's unfortunate. But you do not enact policy that makes it worse and try to justify that bad decision making by comparing people that cross the border illegally with people selling drugs, etc.

OK, and I acknowledge what you're saying here as well. The "zero tolerance" aspect *DOES* create more cases where this is required. However, I still contend this is no different than other violations of law simply because Kids without proper caregivers have nowhere else to go. Whether they are kids brought in with immigrants (illegally) or kids of US citizens charged with crimes.

I know you're a smart person introvert, and that is the ONLY point I'm trying to make. There is not a deeper meaning or agenda behind what I said. I genuinely am saying that *any* person arrested for a criminal offense (who has children) will have to find an alternative arrangement for the children or they will sadly go into State care

Which is a BAD Thing. I support families. Children growing up with Mom & Dad. I get it, I really do. Separating children from parents should never have to happen, but the damn parents keep breaking the laws (both inside and outside the US). So we're left with 1) ignoring the law, 2) breaking up families temporarily, 3) making new laws or 4) the parent having another care-giver available. Just keep in mind that doesn't just apply to immigration crimes, though. Any criminal parent in the US faces this same situation when they don't have alternatives to child care.

I also agree our laws need severely overhauled. For starters, there are way too many of them. Almost ANY conduct is "criminal" if government agents want to target you for whatever reason.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I may not remember saying it...but I don't believe I've said it isn't their right. They are welcome to print what they want. I am welcome to have my opinion on it. And I am welcome to ignore them and starve them of attention.

Absolutely. In the course of having and voicing your opinion, you do not get to misrepresent what they are doing.

Why would you choose the word "crying"? Is this your underhanded attempt at an ad hominem at me? Is having an opinion "crying"?

Because it comes off as whining and crying. Just my personal opinion.

We complain about the media and the "narratives" they push, yet we do not seem to focus on the responsibility of the reader to discern what is fact and what is fluff.

It's lazy and gets old listening to grown people cry about such things constantly.

If you want to see the actual study, the links are in there. Im sure you've seen it...it made the rounds pretty heavily.

I cannot read your source.

a reply to: JBurns

OK, and I acknowledge what you're saying here as well. The "zero tolerance" aspect *DOES* create more cases where this is required. However, I still contend this is no different than other violations of law simply because Kids without proper caregivers have nowhere else to go. Whether they are kids brought in with immigrants (illegally) or kids of US citizens charged with crimes.

It is different because, as I said in another thread on this topic, we choose as a people what extremes we are willing to go to.

In this case, we are creating the extremes when there is really no need to do so.

I know you're a smart person introvert, and that is the ONLY point I'm trying to make. There is not a deeper meaning or agenda behind what I said. I genuinely am saying that *any* person arrested for a criminal offense (who has children) will have to find an alternative arrangement for the children or they will sadly go into State care

And you are correct. The problem and question is: Why are we making it worse than it needs to be?

Illegal immigration is illegal. Yes, but it is not murder. It is not robbery. Or whatever you want to throw in there.

Which is a BAD Thing. I support families. Children growing up with Mom & Dad. I get it, I really do. Separating children from parents should never have to happen, but the damn parents keep breaking the laws (both inside and outside the US)

And that is never going to change. What an change is how far we are willing to go for the sake of " the law".

I do not know the perfect answer to that. What I do know is that Trump is accountable for his actions. Not anyone else.

Invoking the name of Obama and blaming the dems for their outrage is not going to solve any problems or bring us together to solve them. It just looks like petty deflection and typical Right vs. Left bull#.

originally posted by: introvert


Absolutely. In the course of having and voicing your opinion, you do not get to misrepresent what they are doing.

Absolutely I do.

And even better: it becomes a point to debate and discuss as people who disagree with my opinion try to post counter opinions. In the end, the hope is i am better as a person for having the discussion.

Because it comes off as whining and crying. Just my personal opinion.

We complain about the media and the "narratives" they push, yet we do not seem to focus on the responsibility of the reader to discern what is fact and what is fluff.

It's lazy and gets old listening to grown people cry about such things constantly.

I have no problem discerning fact from fluff for the most part. And when i discover i am wrong, i correct it. But there are 300mil people in this nation, many with a large audience of their own. Many of those folks can misconstrue or choose to not sort through the fluff and exercise caveat emptor.

Now, with that said...in my opinion the media has a duty. This duty arises through their special access. You and I cannot sit in the White House briefing room and banter with Sanders. The media gets special access to do this, and because our government seems to have this informal agreement whereby they get special access to report facts to The People, it would seem that they have a duty. Failure of this duty should likely result in loss of access.

a reply to: introvert

Another source:

www.npr.org...

Compared to other recent presidents, news reports about President Trump have been more focused on his personality than his policy, and are more likely to carry negative assessments of his actions, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project.

Researchers studied news stories from the early months of Trump's presidency, determining whether each story evaluated Trump overall in a positive or negative light. If a story had at least twice as many positive as negative statements, Pew said it had an overall positive assessment of the president. The reverse was also true for stories with a negative assessment.

Fully two-thirds of news stories about Trump from his first 60 days in office were negative by that definition — more than twice the negativity seen in stories from the first 60 days of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama's presidencies.

Taken from a different time period, but showing similar results from the 91% study I had earlier.

a reply to: introvert

And you are correct. The problem and question is: Why are we making it worse than it needs to be?

Illegal immigration is illegal. Yes, but it is not murder. It is not robbery. Or whatever you want to throw in there.

Why are we making it worse? I couldn't answer that. Why have we been unable to reach a legislative solution? We clearly need border security (which may include the wall, more personnel, etc) but we ALSO need extreme immigration reform. Our system is broken, I won't dispute that.

And I did not mean to equate illegal immigration with robbery/rape/murder/etc. You're absolutely right, they are very far apart from one another in terms of severity. Light years apart. I was only trying to point out that violators of literally any other law (who are facing incarceration) have to go through the same dichotomy: finding parent/relative for child care or DHHR custody

But you're 100% right that illegal immigration is not felonious nor is it equal to serious crimes against a person.

In this case, we are creating the extremes when there is really no need to do so.

There is a need for action, yet not a need for "extreme" action. I agree there as well. However, we have hundreds of thousands of illegal entries (or more) every single year. I don't believe our country can handle the continual population increase, look at homelessness/unemployment in some major areas. A big problem is that our population has grown from ~70 million in 1900 to 340 million in 2018. We simply cannot sustain this type of growth given the current conditions of the country.

Maybe something will change. Maybe we'll have a major breakthrough in technology that allows a country like ours to sustain a massive population

a reply to: introvert

Invoking the name of Obama and blaming the dems for their outrage is not going to solve any problems or bring us together to solve them. It just looks like petty deflection and typical Right vs. Left bull#.

You're right about that, of course

Apologies

Blaming this exclusively on Trump is not a solution either. Although as POTUS, I agree it has become his job to fix it.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Absolutely I do.

And even better: it becomes a point to debate and discuss as people who disagree with my opinion try to post counter opinions. In the end, the hope is i am better as a person for having the discussion.

That's unfortunate you would want to do so.

Now, with that said...in my opinion the media has a duty. This duty arises through their special access. You and I cannot sit in the White House briefing room and banter with Sanders. The media gets special access to do this, and because our government seems to have this informal agreement whereby they get special access to report facts to The People, it would seem that they have a duty. Failure of this duty should likely result in loss of access.

Duty? Not so much.

Perhaps you and I have a different idea of what the freedom of the press means.

a reply to: JBurns

But let us be clear about this: if you ignore one law, you have to ignore them all.

And let us be abundantly clear about the fact, that you've lost me there.

What is it with you and your absolute absolutes? Is there a shrine for those items of absolute drivel, and where the heck can I find it?
I'll gladly pay every entrance fee just to get out of this circus of justice beyond human rights.

a reply to: JBurns

Why are we making it worse? I couldn't answer that. Why have we been unable to reach a legislative solution? We clearly need border security (which may include the wall, more personnel, etc) but we ALSO need extreme immigration reform. Our system is broken, I won't dispute that.

True. Does a no-tolerance policy help perpetuate the notion of needing reform?

No. It reeks of authoritarianism.

But you're 100% right that illegal immigration is not felonious nor is it equal to serious crimes against a person.

Therefore it should logically follow that the consequences not be comparable, either.

There is a need for action, yet not a need for "extreme" action. I agree there as well. However, we have hundreds of thousands of illegal entries (or more) every single year. I don't believe our country can handle the continual population increase, look at homelessness/unemployment in some major areas. A big problem is that our population has grown from ~70 million in 1900 to 340 million in 2018. We simply cannot sustain this type of growth given the current conditions of the country. Maybe something will change. Maybe we'll have a major breakthrough in technology that allows a country like ours to sustain a massive population

I believe that is incorrect. Illegal immigration has been net zero for many years.

originally posted by: JBurns
a reply to: introvert

Invoking the name of Obama and blaming the dems for their outrage is not going to solve any problems or bring us together to solve them. It just looks like petty deflection and typical Right vs. Left bull#.

You're right about that, of course

Apologies

Blaming this exclusively on Trump is not a solution either. Although as POTUS, I agree it has become his job to fix it.

Fair enough.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: introvert

Another source:

www.npr.org...

Compared to other recent presidents, news reports about President Trump have been more focused on his personality than his policy, and are more likely to carry negative assessments of his actions, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project.

Researchers studied news stories from the early months of Trump's presidency, determining whether each story evaluated Trump overall in a positive or negative light. If a story had at least twice as many positive as negative statements, Pew said it had an overall positive assessment of the president. The reverse was also true for stories with a negative assessment.

Fully two-thirds of news stories about Trump from his first 60 days in office were negative by that definition — more than twice the negativity seen in stories from the first 60 days of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama's presidencies.

Taken from a different time period, but showing similar results from the 91% study I had earlier.

Thanks. Now that aspect brings up other issues we have to look at to get everything in complete context.

How much of this attention is attributable to Trump's own words and actions?

One of the things people like about him is his unorthodox style and speech. That comes with consequences and, rightfully so, more attention paid to him.

Is the media to blame for reporting on the "squeaky wheel" and do we complain when that wheel gets the "grease"?