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Republicans Accuse Obama of Treating Immigrants Like Humans |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Friday, 21 November 2014 14:00 |
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Borowitz writes: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the President, on Thursday night, of 'flagrantly treating immigrants like human beings, in clear defiance of the wishes of Congress.'"
(photo: file)
Republicans Accuse Obama of Treating Immigrants Like Humans
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
21 November 14
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 n a sharp Republican rebuke to President Obama’s proposed actions on immigration, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the President, on Thursday night, of “flagrantly treating immigrants like human beings, in clear defiance of the wishes of Congress.”
McConnell was brutal in his assessment of the President’s speech on immigration, blasting him for “eliminating the fear of deportation, which is the great engine of the American economy.”
“Fear is what keeps immigrants working so hard and so fast and so cheap,” McConnell said. “Remove the fear of deportation, and what will immigrants become? Lazy Americans.”
In a dire warning to the President, McConnell said, “If Mr. Obama thinks that, with the stroke of a pen, he can destroy the work ethic of millions of terrified immigrants, he’s in for the fight of his life.”
He added that Obama’s comments about deporting felons were “deeply offensive” to political donors.
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The Long, Brutal History That Predicts Darren Wilson Will Get Off Scot Free |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=32989"><span class="small">Andrew Jerell Jones, The Intercept</span></a>
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Friday, 21 November 2014 13:40 |
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Jones writes: "It's an outcome that will appall many Americans, sparking outrage not only in Ferguson but throughout the country. And despite all of that, it's an outcome that will not surprise any black person, including yours truly."
(photo: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)
ALSO SEE: In Ferguson the Arrests Have Begun
ALSO SEE: Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson in Talks to Resign
The Long, Brutal History That Predicts Darren Wilson Will Get Off Scot Free
By Andrew Jerell Jones, The Intercept
21 November 14
 arren Wilson will probably get let off.
It’s an outcome that will appall many Americans, sparking outrage not only in Ferguson but throughout the country. And despite all of that, it’s an outcome that will not surprise any black person, including yours truly.
Obviously, I hope that is not the case. I truly do hope that I am wrong and that Wilson is indicted by the Missouri grand jury now deciding his fate, which would mean he would at least face a trial and criminal charges over his killing of Mike Brown. But it’s hard not to expect the worst after Missouri Governor Jay Nixon called in the National Guard before the decision officially came down.
This isn’t knee-jerk pessimism at work here. To the black community, a non-indictment for Brown would be predictable. It would be as predictable as the verdict in the trial over the shooting death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a verdict that acquitted defendant George Zimmerman, allowing him to continue doing stupid things. Or as predictable as the involuntary manslaughter verdict handed down in the shooting death of restrained, unarmed, 23-year-old Oscar Grant in Oakland. Or as predictable as the acquittal of police officers charged with killing unarmed Sean Bell in Queens, New York by firing 50 shots into his vehicle. As predictable as the acquittal of the police officers who fatally shot unarmed Amadou Diallo 19 times, killing him. As predictable as the acquittals in the infamous police beating of Rodney King. And so on, back to Emmett Till and before.
And those are just the incidents the public knows about. For every Eric Garner choked and squeezed to death by the police or for every police officer caught on camera horribly shooting an innocent black man as he reaches for his license, there are thousands of racially tinged episodes of police brutality known only to the people involved, to the friends and families of the victims, and to pockets of the impacted communities.
Sure, there have been encouraging signs that black lives are slowly becoming as important as white lives. For example, David Dunn, the 45-year-old white male who shot and killed 17-year-old Jordan Davis at a Florida gas station in November 2012 was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison with no parole. Some justice also was provided for the late Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old woman shot dead in November 2013 in Detroit by white homeowner Theodore Wafer after she knocked on his front porch for help after her car crashed. Wafer was convicted of second-degree murder this past August and was sentenced to prison for 17 to 32 years.
But these rare moments of justice for black Americans are still overshadowed by moments where we are treated, at best, as second class citizens. A grand jury in Staten Island is still waiting to decide what to do with the officers who played a role in Garner’s death, despite the clear video evidence showing they violated their own police department’s protocol of no chokeholds. Meanwhile, in Florida, Marissa Alexander faces 60 years in prison for firing one shot from a gun at her abusive, estranged husband. Despite invoking the same controversial “Stand Your Ground” law that helped Zimmerman win acquittal, and despite having her initial conviction reversed on appeal, Alexander was denied a “Stand Your Ground” hearing hearing and faces fresh charges and three back-to-back 20-year sentences from Florida State Prosecutor Angela Corey.
Too many different stories of police brutality against black victims end the same way, with acquittals or lenient sentences for the cops. That’s why most people in the black community have no faith Wilson will ever face trial. Maybe we’re wrong, but history points to us being unfortunately right. And that prediction, if and when proven correct, won’t be one we’ll celebrate.
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FOCUS | Top 5 Ways Obama Punked the GOP on Immigration; and the 2016 Campaign |
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Friday, 21 November 2014 11:20 |
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Cole writes: "The 2016 presidential election will be very different from the 2014 congressional midterms just held."
Juan Cole. (photo: Informed Comment)
ALSO SEE: Full Text of President Obama's Speech on Immigration Plan
Top 5 Ways Obama Punked the GOP on Immigration; and the 2016 Campaign
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
21 November 14
 he 2016 presidential election will be very different from the 2014 congressional midterms just held. In the off years, turnout is low (this time it was less than 36 percent) and the people who come out to vote are disproportionately older, well off, and of northern European heritage. That is why the Republicans did so well; it was mainly Republicans voting. Only 21% of youth turned out to vote. It was in essence a series of local elections in which core Democratic constituencies couldn’t be bothered to come out (or in some instances faced trouble voting because of GOP voter suppression). In India, the poor vote; in the US, they don’t, in part because of GOP voter suppression and in part because they’ve been given the impression they have nothing at stake.
The 2016 election will be a national election, and the electorate will be very different. A majority of the eligible voters will vote. In a national election, the minorities are key. African-Americans are nearly a quarter of the Democratic Party. The Latino vote for Republicans will likely fall from 36% to only 30% in 2016, while the percentage of Latinos who vote Democratic will likely rise from 62% to 68% overall (what it was in 2012). Obama got a whopping 71% of the Latino vote versus 27% for Romney.
Obama’s freeze on deportations for certain classes of undocumented immigrants (those who have been here all their lives, having been brought as children, and parents of US citizens born in the US who have lived here as law-abiding residents for at least 5 years) throws a pigeon among the cats in several important ways.
1. Obama’s steps certainly matter to Latinos, some 2/3s of whom say that new immigration legislation is important or very important to them. There isn’t any doubt that the Democratic Party just picked up a lot of support in this demographic.
2. As Jonathan Chait and others have argued, Obama is enticing Republicans representing angry white men to denounce angrily and loudly his deportation freeze. The more they cavil against the executive order, they more they signal that their party is unsympathetic to Latinos.
3. Indeed, some Republicans have already been so crazed by the president’s action, which echoes that of Ronald Reagan, that they have gone beyond mere caviling and spoken of the possibility of violence against immigrants. Retiring Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn did this, effectively turning the GOP into the party of skinheads in the eyes of minorities.
The Young Turks: “GOPer Practically Begging For Violent Reaction To Obama Immigration Speech”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXHER1agnls
4. Florida has a lot of immigrants, and Obama has just shored up the 2016 Democratic position in that state, where people were glued to the television Thursday night and weeping with joy. Many undocumented immigrants have citizen relatives, who can vote and who now have reason to be grateful to the Democratic Party. (Hundreds of thousands of people move to Florida every year, and it is about to overtake New York in population, so it is a very, very different state from the one that existed in 2000).
5. Latino voters have relatively low rates of turnout. In part this is because so many have come relatively recently and they have not developed a sense of civic commitment to US politics. They are working several jobs and busy establishing themselves and their communities. In some instances, they may be chary of having anything to do with the Federal government even if they are citizens and eligible voters because they have undocumented friends and/or family and don’t want to draw attention to themselves. That skittishness may decrease now in some instances, and likely to the Democrats’ advantage.
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FOCUS | Suffer Little Children |
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Friday, 21 November 2014 09:40 |
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Krugman writes: "Will we continue our current regime of malign neglect, denying them ordinary rights and leaving them under the constant threat of deportation? Or will we treat them as the fellow Americans they already are?"
Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)
Suffer Little Children
By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
21 November 14
he Tenement Museum, on the Lower East Side, is one of my favorite places in New York City. It’s a Civil War-vintage building that housed successive waves of immigrants, and a number of apartments have been restored to look exactly as they did in various eras, from the 1860s to the 1930s (when the building was declared unfit for occupancy). When you tour the museum, you come away with a powerful sense of immigration as a human experience, which — despite plenty of bad times, despite a cultural climate in which Jews, Italians, and others were often portrayed as racially inferior — was overwhelmingly positive.
I get especially choked up about the Baldizzi apartment from 1934. When I described its layout to my parents, both declared, “I grew up in that apartment!” And today’s immigrants are the same, in aspiration and behavior, as my grandparents were — people seeking a better life, and by and large finding it.
That’s why I enthusiastically support President Obama’s new immigration initiative. It’s a simple matter of human decency.
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hen Eric Cantor was asked to leave his place of employment -- that request came from his constituents -- he neglected to pass along the location of the mason jar in which he buried John Boehner's balls back in 2010. Boehner's search now has become one of those National Treasure movies, where you have to find the location of the clues before you can find the location of the treasure. Apparently, he's come to the spot on the map that reads, "Now that the president has acted on immigration, 
