A real “breaking news” headline on TV:
Trump Pardons Arpaio Amidst Category 4 Hurricane and New Revelations about Russia Probe
I care about the hurricane but the rest can go bite itself on the elbow.
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Was that a Canadian or European channel you were watching?
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No, American. You can just imagine Trump standing in the eye of the hurricane pardoning Arpaio right there while the wind tears out his last remaining hair.
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I was asking because of the word “amidst,” which is a typically British form of the preposition “amid.” In my experience — and I’ve lived a long time in many locations — Americans rarely use the word forms “amidst” and “amongst.”
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They don’t want to sound sophisticated, so they don’t use Plain English.
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American English is plainer and more accurate in its spelling than British English.
American English doesn’t have unnecessary letters in its words like “neighboUr,” or unnecessary silent letters on the end like “tonNE,” or ridiculously reversed final letters as in “centRE” and “theatRE.”
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Yes, it’s like a plain spinster sister who is obsessed with neatness because what else is there for her? 🙂
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“Spinster” is also a typically British word.
The American term is “old maid.” 🙂
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I use “amidst” and “amongst” quite a bit myself, when fitting.
Even in the U.S. one might have run across such spellings in the works of Dickens or Shakespeare.
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Pretty much.
So basically he doesn’t want people to pay attention to him firing Gorkaor pardoning Arpaio.
As for Arpaio:
Here’s a thread; don’t know where there’s a storify. Selections:
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901263384087334914
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901263445307387904
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901263506560954373
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901263605462515712
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901264023169245185
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901264137422069760
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901264238324449280
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901264497528254464
https://twitter.com/phoenixnewtimes/status/901264657448673281
https://twitter.com/JamesCordrey/status/901271524736466944
This is who he pardoned. Gross fucker. But hey, he showed those illegals good and hard!
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js
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No, Trump didn’t pardon him despite this: he rewarded him FOR all of this and FOR the fact that Arpaio is a loyal white supremacist birther.
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The art of distraction.
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I think they actually believe that the rest of it is as important as the hurricane.
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The fascist agenda of Trump is more and more clearer.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/225620165138726912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fdaily%2Fintelligencer%2F2017%2F08%2Fbirther-friends-forever-why-trump-and-joe-arpaio-are-bffs.html
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Nobody prevented the Democrats from taking some, any position on immigration. They have nobody to blame if the narrative has been colonized by somebody else.
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Of course, but this is clearly a fascist agenda. Rewarding someone for White supremacism and police brutality is a fascist policy.
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And it’s not going anywhere until the opponents get their heads out of their asses and start addressing the stuff voters really care about.
Yes, Trump is horrible, that’s undeniable. But I’m more interested in what is being done to get rid of him and what he represents. And other than the inane Russian drama, I’m not seeing anything.
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Yes, I saw that. Of course he did it during a hurricane.
As for Harvey, I texted the one person I know is around Houston, hopefully I’ll get a reply soon. All of my other acquaintances in Texas are around Dallas, and the one friend in Louisiana hasn’t said anything about evacuating…yet.
Ah what a relief, damning-with-faint-praise headline!Trump’s FEMA Director Doesn’t Seem Incompetent
“He is a rare Trump appointee who is a well-known professional in the field in which he was appointed,” Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, told Bloomberg. “Every part of his reputation suggests he’ll take a careful, deliberate, technocratic approach to the job.”…
…The federal government has said that it is running out of money to reimburse towns and cities for natural-disaster damage, even in the midst of a historically hurricane-light period in American history. (The last major hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland was Wilma, in October 2005.) But the Trump administration has gone well beyond merely trying to shift the burden of disaster management to the local level. Its draconian budget proposal included nearly $1 billion in cuts to FEMA, $500 million of which would come from FEMA’s grant programs, which include disaster mitigation.
….Future budgetary concerns will be relegated to the background, though, as Harvey bears down on the Gulf Coast. Even with a competent FEMA head at the helm, the storm will be a beast to manage effectively. Its slow, meandering path means that severe flooding, power losses, and transportation woes may drag on for days in Texas and possibly Louisiana. Petrochemical plants in the path of the storm may sustain damage, leading to a possible pollution crisis. As The New Republic notes, there is no EPA chief in place for much of the region in Harvey’s path, an absence characteristic of the Trump team’s sluggish pace in filling key government positions seven months into the administration. (The National Hurricane Center staff is similarly, and worryingly, depleted.)
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I’m very worried about those chemical plants. They are dangerous as it is and with a hurricane, one never knows if they’ll stand up to the wind and water.
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Why wouldn’t he pardon someone who ran a jail that he himself called a concentration camp? It’s the most Republican thing to do.
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I don’t think any other GOP president would have done that, though.
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He is GOP’s Id.
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\ Why wouldn’t he pardon someone who ran a jail that he himself called a concentration camp?
He wasn’t arrested because of this jail though.
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I read an article about Mr. Arpaio, but left with more questions than I had at first.
The article is here; my quotes and comments – below:
May be, people who are against him will agree to explain what is wrong both with America and the sheriff and what Democrats are (not?) doing about it:
\ sheriff of Maricopa County … building a national reputation for harsh conditions in his county jail
People seem to focus on this individual horrible sheriff.
I am much more interested in the apparent lack of governmental oversight.
Why could he do what he wanted, if he really crossed lines in this jail?
What is being done to prevent abuse of prisoners in jails countrywide?
Btw, he wasn’t jailed for anything connected with this jail (if the article is correct), but for doing something which (if I understood it correctly) is similar to what has been done in Israel with Eritreans.
This two paragraph quote describes his crime thus:
\ The criminal conviction grew out of a lawsuit filed a decade ago charging that the sheriff’s office regularly violated the rights of Latinos, stopping people based on racial profiling, detaining them based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally and turning them over to the immigration authorities.
A federal district judge hearing the case ordered Mr. Arpaio in 2011 to stop detaining people based solely on suspicion of their immigration status, when there was no evidence that a state law had been broken. But the sheriff insisted that his tactics were legal and that he would continue employing them. //
What is meant by “when there was no evidence that a state law had been broken”? Unless you steal or kill, being an illegal doesn’t constitute breaking a state law by itself?
Also, when I read about detaining “based solely on the suspicion” and “turning them over to the immigration authorities,” I wondered whether 100% of those were not really illegals. Won’t people who are legally in the country have documents to be shown before being turned over to the immigration authorities, like I have an Israeli ID or some have documents of being an American resident (or some other definition)?
I think knowing which % of people he stopped were really illegals is very relevant to the discussion, but I don’t believe newspaper articles will mention it.
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“Unless you steal or kill, being an illegal doesn’t constitute breaking a state law by itself?”
The left in America is very dedicated to the idea that border restrictions are somehow not real laws and that crossing borders without the required documentation isn’t a crime and should not be punished under any circumstances.
Mexico, for one country, disagrees and puts people who illegally cross the border in jail.
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“What is meant by “when there was no evidence that a state law had been broken”? Unless you steal or kill, being an illegal doesn’t constitute breaking a state law by itself?”
You’ve really outdone yourself this time. This is your understanding of law and your vision of justice. Rounding up people who don’t look like you with no evidence, hoping that once you catch them, you may find something to charge them with.
Apartheid-lover is too nice a word for you.
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It was explained to me a long time ago that non-citizens, including legal immigrants, do not have any civil rights here. If that’s how it is, ok, I accepted it. Im not sure why everybody seems to care all of a sudden and I have a very unpleasant suspicion that it’s only because it’s yet another way to discuss Trump’s evilness.
Obama was deporting like it was his favorite hobby. Why is that less problematic when he did it than when Trump does it? It’s a rhetorical question, of course. I know the answer. And it’s that nobody gives a shit about immigrants unless we can be used to condemn the other side. That’s why I’m completely uninterested in this discussion. It’s all completely fake. And I’m an immigrant and most people I’m close to are immigrants, mostly Hispanic. This is not for us or about us. We’re just an excuse. And it’s not very pleasant.
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“It was explained to me a long time ago that non-citizens, including legal immigrants, do not have any civil rights here.”
Explained by somebody who probably didn’t know much about the law.
“And it’s that nobody gives a shit about immigrants unless we can be used to condemn the other side.”
This seems to be one of your favorite tropes. Casting opponents of certain policies as white, ‘well-fed’ americans. From what I’ve read, people whose lives are most directly affected by immigration policies are more fearful under Trump than they were under Obama. That is not to say that they weren’t fearful under Obama. But it was better. Obama instituted the DACA ‘Dreamer’ program, for instance. And Trump is set to dismantle it. As for deportations, undocumented people who are turned away at the border are also classified as deportations (this number blew up under Obama, which should make immigration hawks happy, no? Isn’t that ‘securing our borders’? ). Just like going house to house and rounding people up. Or picking up children from schools and deporting them. That’s Trump.
So yeah, I’m going to defer to their experience to determine who gives a shit about them and who doesn’t. And to what degree.
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There is nothing that can be said at this point to even begin to convince me that Democrats or anti-Trumpers or progressives or whatever we might call them care about immigrants. Nothing. I’ve seen and heard too much to be so duped.
But everybody else should feel free to indulge in this illusion.
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Who gives a shit about intangible things like ‘care’? You changed the terms of your argument. I’m not interested in what goes on in the innermost recesses of people’s hearts. What is this, a purity test?
I’m saying that the people who are directly affected by actual policies related to immigration enforcement on the ground are more fearful under trump than they were under Obama. I bet they’d disagree with you on who was better for them, Obama or Trump.
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Fearful is as subjective as care.
I’ve been in this country since 2003. I’ve experienced so much contempt, condescension and pure disgust addressed at me that I believe I’m entitled to my opinion. 100% of this contempt and nastiness came towards me from people who do not vote Republican. Moreover, the degree of their contempt was directly proportionate to the degree of their progressivism.
If other people have a different experience, good for them. But this is mine, and I trust it more than any empty slogans.
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The most recent example was earlier this week on the playground. A fellow in an “Everybody should be a feminist” T-shirt. I made the huge mistake of referring to “our campus” and he spent the next 40 minutes making sure I remembered that I’m not from around here while he is.
It’s like that every single time. But I’m sure he’s on FB right now, super outraged about Arpaio. Because it’s easy and requires no effort. While not being a jerk to an actual immigrant, no, that’s too much trouble.
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// SB: This is your understanding of law and your vision of justice. Rounding up people who don’t look like you with no evidence, hoping that once you catch them, you may find something to charge them with.
Apartheid-lover is too nice a word for you. //
It’s a combination of being non-American and of being influenced by Israeli realities.
When Israeli government wanted to arrest undocumented workers from Africa, “rounding up people who don’t look like” Israeli Jews or Arabs is what has been done and it was effective since in 99% of cases the police identified them correctly. (Ethiopian Jews look differently.)
As for racial profiling, this phrase by itself doesn’t automatically make me feel bad since Israeli police and army have to use it all the time to protect my life.
I hope to gain some understanding of California’s realities with my questions. This man was reelected, so some Americans supported his approach. I do not think I should label all of them as practically KKK racists without even trying to check what happened exactly.
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“I hope to gain some understanding of California’s realities with my questions. ”
Start by googling his name, and acquiring the knowledge that we’re talking about Arizona, not California.
“As for racial profiling, this phrase by itself doesn’t automatically make me feel bad”
Oh, we know. This is the governing principle of your life. Why would it make you feel bad?
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“What is meant by “when there was no evidence that a state law had been broken”? Unless you steal or kill, being an illegal doesn’t constitute breaking a state law by itself?”
Yeah, because ‘illegal’ is stamped on the face of every brown person in this country, making it easy for Arpaio to identify.
I also like Cliff The Libertarian’s response to the role of government here. Arizona cops see a brown person and demand to see his papers. Perfectly fine in Cliff The Libertarian’s world.
“I think knowing which % of people he stopped were really illegals is very relevant to the discussion,”
It is only relevant to an apartheid-supporter like you. This man tortured people in his jail.
People hung themselves to escape his torture.
https://twitter.com/JonEHecht/status/901236754979717120
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// el:
“I think knowing which % of people he stopped were really illegals is very relevant to the discussion”
SB:
1) It is only relevant to an apartheid-supporter like you.
2) This man tortured people in his jail. //
Regarding 1) :
Is that the reason those statistics aren’t mentioned in any news article I’ve seen? 🙂
This man was reelected to be a sheriff (probably several times since wiki says he had been one from 1993 through 2016 ! ); if he stopped mainly legal residents, surely you would want to educate the American racists who voted for him time after time? Shouldn’t they know their money was wasted on police hurting innocent fellow Americans?
I am not an American and don’t know which % of population in California places in which Arpaio applied this policy are Latinos and which % of Latinos there are illegals. Do you know that? Seriously. Ok, I am “an apartheid-supporter” and so on, but do you know more than not-American me about the situation? Does anybody on this blog? It’s a serious question.
Regarding another matter, at least in Israel 90% + of legal residents and citizens would have no problem to show papers and not be arrested, thus wasting public funds on hurting law-abiding people. Is it different for America?
Regarding 2) :
Actually, my first thought when I read about him was “why was he arrested for criminal contempt of court because of stopping illegals, while courts had let him to get away with murder, perhaps literally, in regards to his treatment of inmates?”
I am for protecting human rights of inmates, but American courts don’t seem too interested. There apparently were no governmental checks of conditions in his jail all those years. One would think such checks of all jails should be a matter of course, even if there are no lawsuits.
Also, your second point has no connection to my question; those are two completely different matters. And, as I’ve already said, he was not arrested because of his jail at all, only because of continuing to use racial profiling despite court orders.
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You know it’s always very funny to me that everyone goes on about “the law” and “the rule of law” but only seems to care about it when applies to immigrants or people who look like they could be immigrants.
Not only was this man racially profiling, he was just a terrible terrible cop.
Test:
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I’m reposting b/c the links didn’t embed the first time: dude destroyed evidence, cost the county millions of dollars, went haring after Obama’s birth certificate to ignore sex abuse cases, caused prisoners to die and miscarry, had consumers of child porn in his unofficial “posse”, but all they can bleat about is “illegals.” “Law and order” my ass. His dumb monomania makes him a TERRIBLE COP who is no doubt grateful he escaped going to any of his own jails for even a short period of time.
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Stop with the virtue-signalling, Shakti. Don’t you know Obama was the same as Trump wrt immigration?
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My bug against Arpaio is way more about what he did to American citizens than what he did against undocumented immigrants. He is rewarded by Trump FOR being a white supremacist and FOR his police brutality.
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…a white supremacist birther, in fact.
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You are Canadian, so this is not addressed to you. But here in the US the only valuable response is not to get outraged on an endless loop but to start figuring out why so many immigrants don’t vote for Democrats. There is a lot of valuable information about this that could change a lot for the future.
In Canada, though, it’s much easier to be an immigrant, even though the relationship between being very progressive and being a massive jerk towards immigrants is still very much in existence.
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“here in the US the only valuable response is not to get outraged on an endless loop but to start figuring out why so many immigrants don’t vote for Democrats”
Problem is, it’s much more fun to be endlessly outraged on behalf of others. Figuring out a better strategy for connecting with voters is hard work and likely to be uncomfortable.
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