Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Guess the GOP is lubing up the amnesty More

Guess the GOP is lubing up the amnesty

Comments Filter:

  • If the only Republican objection to Amnesty is the loss of lower-than-minimum-wage illegal workers.

    • Don't read anything into it that's not there. Quid pro quo is a very traditional (and I thought Smitty was for tradition) form of exchange amongst business associates, which would include of course politicians. It solidifies an unwritten contract. I'd call them partners except that they would all kill each other at the drop of a hat. So, this inevitable symbiosis, this dance endures, choreography that was written eons ago. These things are the very essence of power, part of its process of accretion, the way

      • and I thought Smitty was for tradition

        I'll give you a "heh" on the gag, but that's like saying Danegeld was justified after the first payment. Only in a postmodern bizarro world bereft of any notion of right and wrong would you be correct.

        These things are the very essence of power, part of its process of accretion, the way rocks and dust clump together to form stars and planets.

        And I don't dispute this point either, but would say that the accretion has become an excretion. We now have the technology to go after the Founder's original notion of a power-distributed government. If we can just pull our Orwell out of our Huxley, we can go after it.
        I reject in advance your cynical predict

        • ...that's like saying Danegeld was justified after the first payment.

          What's that? A Guantanamo Bay joke? You know.. When Castro cashed the first check?

          ...right and wrong...

          LOL! There you go again. Tagging along with (very old) pop culture. I guess that's how you find the mess hall.

          ...the Founder's original notion of a power-distributed government...

          "Power-distributed"... amongst old white male aristocrats, bankers, and merchants? No thanks... Hopefully that age is finally coming to a conclusion.

          • amongst old white male aristocrats, bankers, and merchants?

            Indeed, they could not help themselves as they deliberately froze out the aardvark community.
            Seriously: they did what they could, as they could do it. The non-falsifiable proposition "They weren't perfect enough" is a beautiful Orwellian play to support the Progressive slide back into aristocracy. Bravo.

            • Ah, so black people are aardvarks. That very interesting. And I'm supposed to accept that rationalization because men are slaves to culture? Eh, so much for free will then.

              • I'd like it noted that the dot connection occurred in your mind. I know you live in a responsibility-free zone, but don't pin your racist stylings on me, sir.

                • You can't undo what you said by attempting to reverse the charges, but, what the hell, I'll give you an 'E' for effort. I mean, not that this is the first time you've tried to pull that stunt. I don't feel the need to repeat the common term used for such things. It has become self evident.

                  • Hey, you can attribute anything you want to me, just be sure to mark it "fiction".
                    I am an honest man; I have exactly zero to hide. I'll admit fault where it exists.
                    If you're interested in the rationale behind my remark, it's that the Framers come under a sweet, non-falsifiable "It wasn't fair enough" remark. Sure, the 3/5ths Compromise sucked. Yes, the lack of a vote for women sucked. We can as reasonably beat up the Founders for failure to authorize an Air Force beside an Army and Navy, or jokingly chide

                    • ...just be sure to mark it "fiction".

                      As long as you insist that the state impose your morals on the rest of us, I cannot.

                      ...jokingly chide them for freezing out 'the aardvark community'.

                      Jokingly? So now the backpeddling begins.. Sorry, I'm not saluting that flag... The meaning is clear.

                    • The meaning you impart is yours. I can no more help you there than I could hypothetically impose my morals on you. I still reserve the right to pray for you, though.

                    • You are doing very well at finally proving that psychology is more than phony pseudo-science. You are a concrete example of what you claim is mumbo-jumbo, the storybook fish I described previously. Quite a box you keep yourself in, which by itself is fine... until you try to expand your box to enclose everyone.

                    • Oh, psychology is tantamount to a faith in its own right. Am I supposed to be cowed by your appeal to authority, or something?

                    • Oh, psychology is tantamount to a faith in its own right.

                      Oh no sir. You are proof, in the flesh... No faith needed.

                      Am I supposed to be cowed by your appeal to authority, or something?

                      I... don't understand the question. Maybe you should ask a shrink

                    • I don't think we have any overlap beside alphabet on the topic of "faith".

                    • Yes I know what faith is

                      It's the utter unquestioning trust in something with no evidence to back it up. Some people believe that life has no meaning (as if it needs one) without it, and feel the need to impose theirs on other people.

                    • no evidence to back it up

                      I'll confess that all of the evidence up which I base my faith is ambiguous; at each point, you'd be free to disagree, call me "nuts", or worse.
                      Further, if the human mind holds the total scope of reality, then I'd kind of have to agree with you--I'm cuckoo for cocoa-puffs.
                      Two questions:
                      1. What happened in the universe before T0?, and
                      2. What happens after your heart beats its last?

                    • 1. What happened in the universe before T0?

                      What T0? Prove there was one. Big Bang is still an unproven theory, based on purely circumstantial evidence. It really only proves how little anybody, including you, knows.

                      2. What happens after your heart beats its last?

                      You die. What do you expect to happen? Didn't you learn anything in school? Go visit a morgue if you don't believe me. The only remaining evidence of your existence are the waves you made. But *you* are gone, POOF!

                      Your reality is entirely based on y

                    • Your reality is entirely based on your perceptions. As an experiment, you can go out with a camera and a good microphone and record the things your brain has filtered out and otherwise distorted.

                      Do you see how you contradict yourself in the space of two sentences? If reality was some solipsistic experience limited by my senses, then how could that external gear detect anything?

                      You're looking at the universe through a peephole, and you expect me to believe your rubbish that it came out of nowhere with the wave of your deity's hand?

                      I'm an idiot for saying that reality came from somewhere? This is getting good.

                      And it's not really important.

                      Isn't it? I'm supposed to look up to you as some kind of intellectual authority, to reject my current positions, because you called them stupid. It's kind of cool how you pooh-pooh any inconvenient questions.

                      When you go out banging heads, you will come across great resistance, in case you haven't noticed already, which I doubt you have since you haven't stopped making war on the 'infidels'.

                      Great toss-off. You stay beautiful!

                    • Do you see how you contradict yourself in the space of two sentences? If reality was some solipsistic experience limited by my senses, then how could that external gear detect anything?

                      Just play back the recording.. You'll see

                    • I, for one, would rejoice in something more than "I know you are, but what am I?" interactions.
    • I paid a pretty penny to Do It The Right Way at USCIS with my wife.
      Rewarding X million cheaters is offensive. Will these illegals be given houses, cars, and government jobs, too? Why not? Candy for the masses, so long as they vote correctly.

      • I've had an illegal immigrant do work on my house for me. I didn't know he was illegal when I first hired him. He speaks perfect English. He runs his own business, with business cards and shirts with the name of the business and everything.

        He's married to an legal immigrant and their son is also legal.

        I'm not going to argue that there aren't any people in the US that we shouldn't deport if we have the option. But for people who broke the rules once, but have since then made themselves into contributing memb

        • But for people who broke the rules once, but have since then made themselves into contributing members of American society, why shouldn't we offer amnesty? What good would be accomplished by deporting this guy? If applying the rules strictly creates bad outcomes, then the rules need to be changed.

          What is the historical precedent? Has this worked previously? Why has it been a failure? How do we know we're "getting it right" this time?

          • One time amnesty deals do nothing to address the underlying cause of illegal immigration which is that there's an underlying economic benefit to Mexican workers in seeking American income and that benefit significantly exceeds the hardships imposed by immigrating illegally. Really it's not much different than the flow of ions across a semipermeable membrane; it's going to continue until the underlying difference in potential is neutralized.

            Past attempts at dealing with the issue by increasing the hardships

            • It's not about 'immigration' per se as much as it is about the manipulation of a human commodity, no different from oranges futures or December crude. Your description is right on. All decisions are based on receivables and payables. Nothing else enters the equation, dosen't matter if you're in the US or the USSR or Red China, or even Mexico or Guatemala. Mr. Smith suffers from this obsession over 'morals' in a place where they simply don't apply, because they are the basis of 'his' (and those of similar st

              • A cognitive bias is really just a heuristic strategy that's being applied in circumstances where it isn't effective. The things that people believe are driven by a mixture of their assessments of the frequency of events and the priority the weight they assign to different outcomes. The brain doesn't really adequately distinguish between the assessment of frequency and the priority piece.

                This is the state of things. People's perception of the facts is muddled up with what's important to them. And you can't l

              • Mr. Smith suffers from this obsession over 'morals' in a place where they simply don't apply, because they are the basis of 'his' (and those of similar status) authority.
                And of course they see the 'demographic threat' as very real. It's the very basis of the anti-abortion movement, all neatly wrapped up in a religious package to exploit guilt. All this philosophizing is a pure distraction and is being used by the powerful to subjugate the weak, to make slavery a desirable thing, a rationalization for privilege, a behavior so strongly conditioned that they not even consciously aware they are doing it.
                Ah, but watch the furious denials. That's always the fun part, and the dead giveaway.

                How about I
                (a) Admire your ability to twist a series of issues, and
                (b) Laugh at you?
                Bwahahahahahaha

                • Those are textbook reactionary and symptomatic responses that only indicate you are unable to work outside your cultural narrative.

                  • What textbook, then?

                  • No one is capable of working outside their cultural narratives. Glib analysis of other people's cultural narratives is part of the culture you associate with. You're attempting to express his subjective reality in a manner that relates to your own subjective reality. That does not mean that you're working outside that subjective reality. Awareness of other people's limitations does not free you from your own. You have no basis for asserting superiority.

                    • In that case objectivity is impossible.

                      Anyway I'm not asserting superiority, nor being glib except as a response in kind. I'm only trying to prevent the imposition of one's cultural narrative of those who do (which is why they create their 'superior' deities in the first place) from imposing it on others. We demand equal footing. And that has to be done by tearing down the source of their assertion of 'superiority'. I consider ridicule a better alternative than heavy weapons to that end (my god will kick th

                    • In that case objectivity is impossible.

                      Sure, a ship can't sail an exact course. Yet, amazingly, great circle routes still kinda work. Not to say that you were arguing a solipsism here.

                    • Yes, well, your map still represents a flat earth. And your concept of solipsism mimics your claims that equal marriage rights equates to bestiality. Meaning they are bs.

                    • your claims that equal marriage rights equates to bestiality

                      (a) I never claimed such, and
                      (b) If you want a claim, here it is: I claim no right to re-define marriage beyond its traditional bound.

                      Kinda hefty and sweeping, I know, but that is the claim I make, and to which I'll attest, and lovingly pray for you amidst your poo-flinging.

                    • a) Yes you have claimed such. I'll dig the posts up at a future date.

                      b) ...beyond its traditional bound.

                      :-) Thank you for confirming my point exactly... Again you are attempting to impose your cultural rules on everybody else. Again you seek conformity, not liberty. Again you are attempting to protect and extend privilege over equality.

                    • I tell you that I'm not playing your game, and you insist I'm going for checkmate? And you're not demanding conformity? Not buying your attempts at a mind-frack here.

                    • That's right. You're playing their game.. as the *trained seal* for your pajama media and the other rags, barking their script on command.

                    • Nah, they're minions.

                    • You along with them. Spreading their bs...

                    • What I admire about you is your superior, noble, Lefty intellect.
                      If I didn't have you to bury me in an army of strawmen on /., I might entertain delusions of adequacy.

                    • Lefty

                      LOL! Can you be any more predictable? Doubt it...

            • Really it's not much different than the flow of ions across a semipermeable membrane; it's going to continue until the underlying difference in potential is neutralized.

              Past attempts at dealing with the issue by increasing the hardships imposed on illegal immigrants haven't been effective and now, I've presented the question to you if you feel it is morally correct to impose those hardships on a particular individual. What do you feel is best to put this specific situation right? What is important to you? Are individual human concerns subjugated to the macro-level goal of prevention of illegal immigration?

              So you expect me to move from a macro view (and I agree with your membrane point) to a subjective view "if you feel it is morally correct to impose those hardships on a particular individual".
              Well, fine. When you say "morally correct", I translate that to mean "conformant with divine will", as opposed to "ethically correct", which I would view as "what would survive legal review".
              Morally correct? Dude, you've implied I have some kind of divine knowledge of whether, on some cosmic scale, a specific case me

      • "candy" for everybody that props up the system... This is how the game is played.. What's your point?

        • Candy abuse has blown up our pancreas, and we're sinking into a diabetic collapse.
          I don't know. . .maybe we should re-think this?

    • If the only Republican objection to Amnesty is the loss of lower-than-minimum-wage illegal workers.

      Hogwash. The Republicans already have plenty of ways to pay workers less than minimum wage. Minimum wage only matters in jobs that American high school kids work, everything else either demands a better wage or is worked around with various accounting tricks to pass a lower wage.

      • Also, if you read Sowell, http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465022529/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373771854&sr=1-1&keywords=basic+economics [amazon.com] you find out that, while tickling the voter ear to good effect, all of these attempts to goose the market this way and that are counterproductive.
        We either (a) never learn, or (b) learned some higher-level lesson, I suppose.

        • all of these attempts to goose the market this way and that are counterproductive.

          However we should have learned recently that leaving the market to its own devices in the expectation that we can all come to prosper in the infinite wisdom and beauty of an unregulated system also doesn't work as it invariably encourages corruption and risk-taking that harm those who had no say in the gambles.

          Perhaps there is a solution somewhere in between, where some things could be allowed to run their own course with no intervention, and other critical elements are allowed to proceed only under th

          • However we should have learned recently that leaving the market to its own devices in the expectation that we can all come to prosper in the infinite wisdom and beauty of an unregulated system also doesn't work as it invariably encourages corruption and risk-taking that harm those who had no say in the gambles.

            I'm just not sure that this 'unregulated system' has existed. And in exactly what way has Sarbanes-Oxley helped anybody?
            I commend to all a study in Control Theory, where keeping everything in the left half-plane is the stable way to play.
            What happened 100 years ago, with the Wilson Administration, was moves that destabilized our system, and put too much power in DC.
            "Zimbabwe" Ben Bernanke, or his little button-man successor, is going to keep pumping in money by pretending the Fed can buy stocks.
            Fanny

            • I'm just not sure that this 'unregulated system' has existed.

              Leading up to the housing bubble and also the wall street collapse (failing of Lehman Bros, et al) we saw increasingly fewer regulations on whatever the financial institutions wanted to do. This lead to the financial houses destroying damn near everything because they faced no consequences for their actions.

              Granted, their attitudes of immortality likely came at least in part from their knowing that they had their hands around the throats of everyone in DC and hence would almost certainly not be allowe

              • we saw increasingly fewer regulations on whatever the financial institutions wanted to do.

                Lack of legislation, lack of enforcement, or lack of any consequence for their perfidy? The banks are as a willful teenager that has has plenty of good rules to go by, but are incentivized by the kickback schemes and the revolving Federal Reserve/Treasury/Wall Street door to keep right on chugging. Still not following, exactly, how "moar legislation" does much.

                the only wealth redistribution that DC is doing that accounts for any meaningful amount of federal expenditures is that which goes up - taking money from the middle class and giving it away to the people of the top echelons in income.

                And all of the vote-buying schemes, like the GOP farm legislation at the top of this post, or Pigford [americanthinker.com], or the higher education bubble [amazon.com] or the so-calle

            • Wealth is power, and vice versa. It determines who gets it and who doesn't. And invariably, great wealth can only be acquired through corrupt power of the state to protect the wealthy. If we decentralize power, wealth will naturally follow.

              • I'll grant that wealth and power have significant overlap for materialists, but I'd have to be in a box, like you, to think them fungible.

                great wealth can only be acquired through corrupt power of the state to protect the wealthy

                So, you hate private property? You think it impossible for hard work to be a source of wealth, and for the state to manage peace throughout the land in a reasonably non-corrupt way? Is THAT what you're saying?

Slashdot Top Deals

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken

Close