Not really. Auntie Zeituni was here illegally, and they gave her legal status.
Granted, she is the president’s aunt. But if judge could make an exception for her then I’m sure she’s not the only one. Even before she got granted asylum by a judge, she was getting a disability check every month and lived in government provided housing.
In America, the gifts start flowing even while you are breaking the law just being here. Then we give you amnesty.
If you don’t see that there is a double standard in play, I cannot imagine how I can debate anything with you; our perceptions of identical facts varies far too dramatically to be able to converse meaningfully.
No, I disagree. “The point is it should never fucking take three hours to vote in this country.” That’s an absurd standard, but it’s exactly and literally what was being discussed, so it was not preposterous to interpret it as I did. And of course the cure for that error, if error it was, would be for him or anyone to respond by saying, “Yes, OK, I did not literally mean that.”
And here’s what I said about liberals: “My perception of liberals – often unfair, I’m sure – is that they are well-meaning people with very little concern for or understanding of practical reality.”
That clearly lays out the fact that I’m conveying my perception, not reality – and, indeed, that my perception is often unfair.
That’s a damn sight more even-handed than comments made about conservatives.
And you know it! Again you seem to want me to remain steadfastly even-handed, constantly interpret comments made by my opponents in the most generous light possible, and suffer in silence the abuse heaped on me.
Why? Why should I?
Again, there’s an easy cure. Rather than defending these unintended precise and literal meanings in subsequent posts, why don’t people simply say, “I didn’t intend a precise and literal meaning here.”
Look, I do it. When I said to MswhatsIt, “That’s the problem – it may, or may not, be unreasonable; you can’t answer the question by mentioning only one factor,” she responded by saying, “Watch me:” And went to to say it.
Did I froth at the mouth? Was I stupified, unable to conceive any response to the clever way she had contradicted me?
No.
Wow. See that? I didn’t try to defend, tooth-and-nail, an obviouosly hyperbolic statement. Yes, I said, you can answer it by mentioning only one factor. What I meant was you can’t meaningfully answer it by mentioning only one factor.
Apparently I am the only person who has the capacity to reply ijn such fashion. Others seem bound to defend their whacky hyperbole as legitimate.
I think the problem is that no one is against a three hour wait if it is an extreme circumstance.
The polling place roof collapses and they have to move the venue at the last moment to one that has shittier line control.
The problem people are having, is when specific communities are targeted for longer lines, and polling and history show that you should be increasing access in those areas, not decreasing it (for partisan gain).
3 hours in utterly (in my opinion) unacceptable for a expected wait. If your civil bean counters figure that district X is going to have 3 hour waits, change something until the civil bean counters see waits of under an hour.
Again, the unexpected can, of course lead to heavier wait times. But it is unacceptable for the expected to lead there. As to your fear that it will somehow cost a huge amount of money, simply doubling the amount spend on elections, and targeting the areas with heavy waits could certainly make a tremendous impact.
I’d say that there are fewer items in the budget that outweigh fair access to voting on importance.
As for the Secretary of State being impeached, I’m more than willing to support impeachment for a SoS that plans on 3 hour waits. Especially if he’s pushing those waits to his political opponents.
I agree with everything you said.
But would you please acknowledge there’s a difference between “A” and “B?”
A: I’m more than willing to support impeachment for a SoS that plans on 3 hour waits.
and
B: Write a law that says wait times shall be measured, and if any voter’s wait exceeds the legal limit, that is grounds for impeaching that state’s secretary of state.
(Acknowledging that “B” are not your words, of course.)
I’d agree with that.
Well, if it’s not reality, but it is your perception, then maybe you ought to change your perception.
And you should quit the annoying straddle of going back and forth between whether you’re talking about liberals generally, or just the ones on this board. Is it duck season, or is it rabbit season? Settle on one, counselor.
As long as we are on the subject of statements that call for citation… Please post substantiation for the following…
1, Millions
2. illiterate
3. third world
4. non-English speaking
and last but not remotely least
5. criminal
We’ll just brush aside the assertion that they “tend to vote Democrat”. You can have that one for free. And we will accept that you are opposed to letting them in, it is unlikely that you are lying about your vast ignorance, which is amply demonstrated and need not be questioned.
So, you don’t even read posts, much less the links in them. Some ignorance is immune.
Yes, as suspected. There’s nothing more you need to say. Really. It wouldn’t help you one bit if you did.
Seriously, lay off the Irish.
[sub]p.s. you forgot to add “drunken” and “papist” to your description[/sub]
And “swarthy”
So you don’t have a cite for your claims. If you did I’m sure you would have posted it by now. I’ve read the cites posted to the thread so far and none give details into what you were mentioning that I saw. It’s possible I missed it, but if you had anything you would have posted it by now.
Is it your ignorance or your laziness that is the source of your bigotry? Or both? All are on display on this very page.
#1
The current number of illegal immigrants in the US is at least ten million.
Even low estimates have it in the millions.
#2
The example being discussed in this thread can’t speak English. I’d say it’s safe to say that she also can’t read English, making her functionally illiterate in our society, like many Spanish speaking illegal immigrants.
#3
Haiti is a third world country.
#4
It’s been cited to this thread that our example at hand doesn’t speak English. Didn’t stop her from coming her or getting citizenship.
#5
By breaking our immigration laws, illegal immigrants are by definition criminals. If you want specific criminal statutes that are being broken one only need to look at any illegals who are working because they can generally only do that by doing some form of identity theft.
I know you don’t like it being thrown in your face, but do you seriously dispute that there are millions of illegals in the US right now? Really?
It’s really simple, this formula that you follow. You make things up. When called out on this you resort to name calling and insults, because you can’t back up the things that you say.
It depends what you mean by “double standard”. You have a perspective and a posting style that people on this board know about. Their responses to things you say are informed by that knowledge. Furthermore, the board is overwhelmingly left-wing. Thus, people being people, responses to right wing posters are generally more hostile than responses to left wing posters.
So if that’s a “double standard”, then clearly there’s a double standard. But really, it’s a triple standard, because people respond to Der Trihs differently than they do to everyone else. No, wait, it’s a quadruple standard, because people respond to Guinastasia differently than they do to everyone else. No, wait, it’s an n-tuple standard, where n is the number of posters prolific enough that people are familiar with them.
I mean, it is what it is. There’s nothing conspiratorial about it.
No, it’s not a standard at all. It’s a statement. For instance, I believe that every able-minded child in American should learn to read by the age of 10. That’s just an opinion I have. It informs my opinions about educational policy. It is NOT a statement of educational policy in and of itself. You are reading “The point is that it should never fucking take three hours to vote in this country” to mean “It should never fucking take three hours to vote in this country, and if it does, that is such a heinous condemnation of every single bit of our voting system that we should investigate literally infinite money if necessary to guarantee with 100 percent certainty that it could never ever ever ever ever happen again”, as opposed to “It should never fucking take three hours to vote in this country… so when it does, that’s a Bad Thing, and we should make sure to investigate what went wrong, see if it’s something systemic, and apply reasonable and proportional resources to solving the problem” or even “It should never fucking take three hours to vote in this country, that’s all I have to say on the topic”. The thing is, one of those three readings fits into your nice caricature of a mushy-headed liberal who you can gently but sarcastically correct. The other two don’t. Guess which one you chose to respond to?
Sure, I’m not saying that everyone in this thread acted ideally. But an even better solution, or at least one which you had more control over, would be for you to have given people the benefit of the doubt in the first place. Is there someone in this thread who literally, positively, 100% truly, believes that a good voting system would be one in which if a single person in the state has to wait more than 52 minutes to vote, NO MATTER THE EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES, then the secretary of state should be impeached, always, period, no matter what? Well, possibly. Far more likely is that someone was engaging in a combination of lazy language, hyperbole, and/or not thinking the issue fully through. But you looked at an overreaching statement and instead of responding by trying to get clarification, you responded by pouncing, because here was an idea which was (if literally true) clearly untenable, and one which fit your perception of liberals, and one which you therefore wanted to debate into submission. Except that as long as no one was actually seriously endorsing this opinion, why would anyone engage with you? I mean, sure, they COULD patiently backtrack and clarify their position in the first place… or they could just get pissed off at you and get stubborn.
Sure, that’s not the rudest thing anyone has ever said, but it’s still (a) clearly insulting, and (b) suddenly jumping to generalizing about a group based on a comment which you went out of your way to interpret in a particular way.
Certainly, I don’t go around saying insulting things about conservatives as a whole, but bracketing it with “my perception of conservatives – often unfair I’m sure --”, and then wonder why conservatives bristle at the things I say.
True. And a damn sight more even-handed than comments made about liberals. So? Are you complaining that I don’t spend enough time policing rude things said on the SDMB about conservatives?
I don’t think I said anything of the sort. People are rude to you quite a bit on the SDMB. Sometimes I think it’s deserved (although of course even when deserved there’s no actual obligation to be rude). Sometimes I think it’s clearly undeserved in the local context, but understandable given your history. Sometimes I think it’s completely undeserved. But I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that you have some obligation as an SDMB poster not to respond in kind.
Sometimes they do. And sometimes they don’t. Ideally, they always would, but this is the SDMB, not some platonic ideal debating society. The question, to me, is (a) how you approach a potentially-hyperbolic statement in the first place, (b) what conclusions you draw when someone in fact does not come back and calmly and patiently clarify their position, and (c) what conclusions you then draw about entire groups of people.
I denounce you. [Sotto voce: I’m just trying to earn one Broder buck for policing my own. No offense.]
Too late, I already denounced you. A denounce of prevention, so to speak…
The clear meaning of your words is that the persons listed were criminals before they arrived here, not made criminals by the act of arriving. Unless, of course, you want to stretch towards their intention to arrive illegally as an act of conspiracy, hence, criminal. That might get you a nomination for the annual Bricker Award for Creative Semantic Parsing.
Can’t forget** Bricker**'s sudden penchant for creative definitions. I’m still looking forward to his ‘outlier’ definition that makes things he doesn’t like “outlier[s] by definition.”
Since he apparently feels free to come up with his own definitions of statistical terms when it suits him, maybe the next time we’re debating some legal point, I’ll come up with my own definitions of legal terms that suit me. If he doesn’t like them, I’ll just remind him that it was his idea. 
This is a new low of semantic parsing. Plus you threw in an accusation of semantic parsing at me while you are at it.
If I were discussing bank robbers, I might use the shorthand “criminals”. Would that mean that I must be inferring that they are criminals in some other way besides the fact that they rob banks, according to your insane interpretation?
Since we basically let anyone come into the country and work, the resulting millions of illegals we have here may be criminals in their home countries before they came here, or may not be. They might be members of MS 13 or they might not be. They might have communicable diseases, or they might not.
I think this is a bad thing. I’d prefer that we decide, using some kind of logical process, who we want and need in the country and only allow in people who meet these sort of criteria: Educated, disease free, English speaking, non-criminal.
I know by the standards of the SDMB this makes me an irrational bigot, but I assure you that I’m well within the mainstream and it is you who are out on the fringe.