FOX News’ Megyn Kelly is livid over an effort by the Society of Professional Journalists to persuade news outlets to stop using the prejudicial phrases “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant” in favor of the more neutral “undocumented immigrant,” leading her to rail against what she sees as the tyranny of politically correct language:
“You know, we did a segment earlier in the year on how little people find the term midget offensive, and so you can’t say that anymore,” Kelly lamented. “There’s so many words that are suddenly becoming hurtful, and part of the group thinks it’s hurtful, and the other group doesn’t, and you’re left as a journalist saying, I don’t know what to do.”
Huh. Okay, so, if someone were to defy the tyranny of political correctness and describe Kelly as, I dunno, a “cunt,” would that be fine by her?
I mean, I’m not using that word, and I’d never use it to describe Kelly or any other woman. In fact, I’m not even sure I’ve ever typed that word before. But if someone else were to use that word to describe Kelly and her mean-spirited, disingenuous screed (no Megyn, “undocumented immigrant” is not equivalent to calling a “rapist” a “non-consensual sex partner”), well, I’d kinda understand what they were getting at, even if I found their choice of words to be offensive.
But then, who am I to bow to political correctness?
Is sperm-burping-cum-slut insensitive and hurtful? I wouldn’t want to call Megyn Kelly a sperm-burping-cum-slut if it is, so I thought I ought to ask first.
LOL infinity
when will using the terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant” be deemed as hate speech?
all hail political correctness, brought to you by your friendly(only if you agree with them in lock-step) progressives.
You are all full of crap. They crossed the border ILLEGALLY…not legally…thus they are doing something ILLEGAL. The law says it is ILLEGAL to cross our borders without the proper paperwork.
What if someone walked into your house at night without permission…would you just blow it off, or would you call the cops because they entered ILLEGALLY?
If you believe in this so much, please try and cross into Mexico without paperwork and see what happens to you.
LIBERAL IDIOTS.
Does she actually consider herself a “journalist”? My, but is she delusional.
If the left ceased using PC language to stifle dissent in their own ranks, then you might have a point, Goldy. Otherwise, you come off sounding as irrational as the FOX news cummintators. The right takes full advantage of PC language, because elements of the left DO use it to manipulate language, as does the right. Read Orwell’s essay on the subject for some perspective. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Wow! Coming to this country, willing to work crap jobs for peanuts so you can live 8 to a room in some dive and send a lot of what you make back home?
That’s put up side by side with rape.
I’d never call any woman a “cunt” either – as I’ve said many times, we who lean left should leave that to the right wing as they did in spades with Christine Gregoire, Hilary Clinton and other female Dems.
But “whore” fits any overpaid minion of the Murdoch right wing propaganda empire of either sex quite well thank you.
But perhaps even that is an insult to world’s oldest profession.
None of that BS matters if you’re doing it ILLEGALLY. You’re still breaking the law, which by definition makes you a CRIMINAL.
7
People cross international borders to better their lives and those who they love. People rape and burglarize because they don’t give a shit about others. The distinction is lost on the right.
Who’s hiring them?
Megyn Kelly looks to have quite a bit of plastic surgery.
@4
Illegals, undocumenteds, whatever, they tend to get employed by cheap labor republicans when they get here.
@YLB Who’s hiring them?
So two wrongs make it right then? You’re either concerned about the security of our country or you’re a traitorous scumbag…choose please.
Anyone hiriing illegals should be severely punished…they are traitors, too.
How are they “threatening”?
People like them have done the scut work in this country since the country began you moron!
They cut the meat and pick the vegetables on your dinner plate among countless other services you knee-jerk blockhead!
In short, their cheap labor raises your standard of living to some degree. Is that fact keeping you up at night?
If no one hires them then they don’t come here – no need to waste billions on feckless fences, paying troops to patrol the border or hardly any thing else.
But no! Ignorant degenerate fools like you fantasize about brutalizing them.
U.S. corn subsidized by the government is being sold in Mexico well below costs and it is estimated that it has put about 2 million Mexican farmer workers out of work who then come north looking for a job.
This is another case of unintended consequences of our policies.
@YLB
Really…you’re serious? The average immigrant is not threatening at all, and you know that as well as i do…but they are breaking the law. And a porous border lets in more than hard working people working crap jobs so they can live a better life. You also know that.
You either believe in following the law or you do not. By your own admission you believe it’s ok for some people to break the law. Where do YOU draw the line? Is it when someone runs a red light and kills your mom, or when someone breaks into your house and rapes your kid? Aren’t laws in place for a reason? Aren’t you glad we have laws? I guess you answered those questions already…
You cannot have it both ways. Why not try and focus your energy on changing the law instead of just whining about it on this forum? What are you doing to make it better for them? How are you helping these people you seem so passionate about…please provide details…really curious because I think you’re just blowing hot air.
So…law, or no law? Or only have laws when it suits you? I know you won’t answer these questions because your defense will instantly fall apart.
15 – Yawwwnnnn.. Typical dogmatic law and order right wing bullshit.
There are well over 10 million undocumented in this country.
They wouldn’t be here if weren’t wanted by someone. That “someone” is 10’s or 100’s of thousands of businesses in this country both small and not so small.
If you don’t want them here for any reason – fine – don’t reward their labor.
Next thing you know an idiot like you will feel threatened by jaywalking or going over the speed limit.
And I don’t do anything for the undocumented besides – oh consuming fresh meat and produce and going to the odd restaurant where an undocumented is washing the dishes or busing the tables. Hiring one from the local home depot? Nope not me.
That’s for someone else to do – and they wouldn’t be there if someone wasn’t using their services. Your kind NEVER has the least bit outrage for THAT someone.
14 – Bingo. There’s an opportunity to keep desperate Mexican workers working the land in their country without putting them in concentration camps before shipping them home in cattle cars – the classic right wing fantasy next to putting soldiers on the border to shoot them as come over.
Here’s one of those “traitors”:
http://weissbach.com/
Go ahead – click on his website. Make his day.
Some edifying right wing bullshit about immigration is sure to be there!
You’re not winning the debate. And I think you’re being dishonest when you say laws are typical ‘right wing BS’. I am POSITIVE that you want the law on your side when something goes wrong…look in the mirror and admit it. You’re lying to yourself and everyone else on here, and even your fellow libs can see it. Would your mom approve of the things you’re saying?
10’s or 100’s of thousands of people want cocaine in this country, too. So by your logic it should be ok because lots of people here are demanding it…
All businesses hiring illegals should be punished…what part of that don’t you understand? They are breaking the LAW, too.
Please keep the name calling coming. It means I am making progress.
@YLB
I did look at the website, but i don’t know who the dude is, nor do I have the time to read everything he wrote…there are tons of whackjobs out there on the left and right…so if you want to make a point then just tell me what he’s about.
I’m not right wing either…very liberal on some issues and very conservative on others. Following the law just happens to be one of the things I believe in. Nice debating with you. I am glad when I see people passionate about what they believe in…even if I think it’s misguided.
You either believe in following the law or you do not…
Let us concede their illegality (currently this crime is a civil, not criminal penalty, but I digress).
What is the solution? Let us further assume that capital punishment has some kind of deterrent effect. I suggest the following:
Hiring an illegal alien shall be a capital offense.
Similarly, white collar crime shall be a capital offense. I mean, why not?
Tax evasion shall be a capital offense.
I mean…if you find it OK to send a person to prison for stealing a piece of pizza at 7-11 (three strikes laws), why can’t we take this social policy to its logical conclusion.
I feel a new dawn of social change come, come, coming on!
21:
I don’ think anyone is advocating killing people. If they are, then they are whackjobs, too. And I think there is a law somewhere that would (and should) prosecute them. I definitely have a problem with 3-strikes. Call me a lib on that one.
I’m pretty certain that every existing law comes with a corresponding punishment already built in. But are they always enforced…no.
19 – 10’s or 100’s of thousands of those employers I’m sure use the ill gotten gains from the cheap labor of the undocumented to play golf with the likes of the John Boehners of this world yet I don’t see any clamor from the law and order right wing to shoot them as they enter the country club or ship them to jail in cattle cars.
Win the debate. I’ve gone down this road with many trolls here. I could give a flip.
20 – I’m amazed. He’s a local former radio right wing hate talk show host who came from Canadian wealth (don’t worry he’s here legally, I can’t remember if he’s a citizen) who was busted in this country for hiring undocumented labor.
He’s in your words a “traitor”.
No journalist should be allowed to get away with calling an undocumented alien an “illegal alien,” because they’re not illegal until they’ve been adjudicated as such by a court of law. Here is the proper terminology:
A non-citizen who is in our country without our government’s permission: Undocumented alien
A non-citizen who has been charged, but not convicted, of being in our country without our government’s permission: Alleged illegal alien
A non-citizen who has been convicted of being in our country without our government’s permission: Illegal alien
When Kelly applies the term “illegal alien” to an undocumented alien or an alleged illegal alien, that’s the same thing as calling a burglary suspect a “burglar.” Any journalist who did that in print or on air would be summarily fired. Yet that’s exactly what Kelly is doing.
The issue isn’t “political correctness,” it’s factual accuracy. And, also, a matter of protecting your employing news organization from libel suits.
@4 “They crossed the border ILLEGALLY…not legally…thus they are doing something ILLEGAL. The law says it is ILLEGAL to cross our borders without the proper paperwork.”
This sounds like an ALLEGATION to me, which, until proven in a court of law, is nothing more than an ALLEGATION. But then, you guys don’t believe in due process, do you? (See, e.g., Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, etc.)
@8 Nope, you’re not a criminal until a court of law determines you are, but that flies over the heads of all you ignorant trolls, doesn’t it? Every single one of you should be rounded up and forced at gunpoint to repeat your ninth-grade civics class.
@12 “You’re either concerned about the security of our country”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but why should we consider these border crossers a threat to the security of our country when the Bush administration, which let them in by droves, and Republicans, who employ them in their businesses, don’t?
@15 “The average immigrant is not threatening at all”
My what a short memory you have! You insinuated @12 they’re a national security threat, and mere 3 comments and 22 minutes later, you forgot that you called them a national security threat?
@19 “You’re not winning the debate.”
You’re sure not. You can’t even tie your own shoelaces without getting tangled up in them.
@20 “Following the law just happens to be one of the things I believe in.”
Well, if you really believe what you say, then let’s hire more cops and put them to work pulling over everyone who talks on a hand-held cellphone while driving, because in this state, that’s against the law.
@21 To be fair to the three-strikes law, stealing pizza isn’t a three-strikes offense per se, but it is if you stick a gun in someone’s face while you’re doing it.
Nobody is doing life under three strikes for simple theft. The news media likes to play up cases of people going down under three strikes for robbing someone of $1 but the reason they were charged with the third strike in those cases is based on their violent behavior, not on the dollar amount they took from the victim. If a mugger knocks me unconscious and leaves me for dead, his sentence should be the same regardless of whether I had $1 or $1,000 in my wallet he took from me.
Rapist and rape are prejudicial words. Let’s find a more neutral word. Let’s call rape “permissionless sex.”
Illegal alien….it is what it is! At least Megyn doesn’t use foul language like you do for shock value. I am sick of the libs’ political correctness. It is selective use of the first amendment. I’m not buying it.
Is it still okay to call them a bum, or do I have to say “homeless person?”
Right Wingers whine like a bunch of over-tired 2 year olds anytime they’re expected to treat people not of their tribe with respect. As if it’s taking something away from them to not call other “midgets” or “illegal aliens”.
When the Left complains about losing freedoms, we’re usually talking about citizens being tortured, or arrested for having liberal bumper stickers or having their phone conversations secretly recorded without a warrant. When the Right Wing complains about losing freedoms, they’re usually talking about having to find code words to replace the “n” word, or having to pay women the same as men for the same job–or not getting to openly ridicule gays.
I guess we all have our priorities.
@22 “I don’ think anyone is advocating killing people.”
You don’t read much, do you? Go to almost any rightwing blog and you’ll find people advocating killing others. So many righties have advocated killing liberals they even have a generic name — eliminationists. And then there’s the whackjobs who don’t just talk about it, but act on it — McVeigh, the guy who flew a plane into the IRS building, the Holocaust museum shooter, the abortion clinic bombers, and so on. “Proud,” who was being tongue in cheek (and, like the adolescent you are, you took the bait), at least appended judicial process to his joke. In this election cycle, a GOP candidate in Texas publicly suggested that civil war should be an option if his party didn’t regain control of our government at the ballot box. Was he joking? It didn’t sound like it.
How can any responsible person align himself with a crowd like that?
“other” s/b “others”
@23 He isn’t winning anything. He’s making a jackass of himself.
@34 See #25.
@35 They work a lot harder than you do — so you can enjoy cheap food — so if they’re bums what does that make you?
I say kick all the undocumenteds out of the country to free up those farm jobs for unemployed Americans. Make the farmers pay whatever wages they have to, to get millions of urban dwellers to commute to jobs 200 miles from their homes. Pass the higher labor costs through to consumers at grocery stores. We’ll have a 3% unemployment rate, $30-an-hour agricultural jobs, and $15 loaves of bread. That’s how things ought to be.
@36 Bingo.
I admire them little Mexicans a whole hell of a lot more than black people. Sure, they are criminals for breaking into my country, and should be sent back home, but at least they aren’t lazy, like many black people are. I mean, whenever I go into a restaurant, who’s working there? Mexicans. Don’t see any black people. And who’s doing all the construction work and hotel cleaning, etc. Mexicans. Hard working people. Black people are workshy and lackadaisical by nature. They also have a propensity to commit crime and acts of violence. But as far as work goes, having a job will screw up their eligibility for getting welfare.
Asians are hard workers. I admire them. They are naturally good at advanced math. Fact: Most asian people don’t brush their teeth. They swish green tea in their mouth in the morning, and that is how they cleanse their mouth.
fake cunt. good call. first down.
@35
One of my brothers is a bum, he isn’t homeless.
@34
When the fuck do I ever use political correctness?
In related news, Brett Favre was caught texting pictures of Tucker Carlson, though it’s been said that the mistake was understandable.
@42
Kick them out and the farmers will do a lot of that work with machine rather than hand labor and nobody will miss picking apples on a rickety ladder in 90 degree heat. And maybe, just maybe, some of those machines will be built in factories in America.
@44 “I admire them little Mexicans a whole hell of a lot more than black people.”
You managed to stereotype two races in 15 words. That’s quite an accomplishment.
@49 “Kick them out and the farmers will do a lot of that work with machine rather than hand labor and nobody will miss picking apples on a rickety ladder in 90 degree heat.”
I don’t think so. If farmers could do the work being done by farmworkers with machines, they would already be doing it with machines.
You can call the bitch a cunt any time you feel like it — even in church!
Can you imagine praying to the blesed virgin cunt of Guadalupe?
I know it sounds harsh — but that is the sound of freedom.
@51
They’re in the process of switching a lot of stuff over right now, they never had a need to make the switch before because there was always plenty of cheap labor around. But, Ag. will always need a lot of hands on work to be done.
How’s That Hopey-Changy Thingy Workin’ Out For Ya?
Sarah Palin is likely to be a footnote in history books, and this sound bite likely will be her most enduring legacy. Yet, this time, I think she nailed it. Obama is a fraud, a sham, and we’ve been had. And Palin is mocking us for it.
I’ve had a couple of personal encounters with the fraudulence of the Obama administration, which produces rhetoric that says one thing, and policies that do something entirely different.
Earlier this year, I had a chance to talk with Capt. Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, following the taping of a TV show. I asked him about the Obama administration’s response to Japanese whaling in Antarctica. Watson regards the Obama administration with contempt. They’re not serious about ocean conservation, he told me.
About a week ago, I found myself seated next to a U.W. professor on a cross-country flight. The professor was on his way home from Washington, D.C., where he had attended a conference organized by the Obama administration. The way it went, he said, was that a couple of administration flacks lectured the assembled academics and never gave the attendees a chance to talk. The Obama administration, he said, wasn’t interested in what they wanted to say and only want to make the professors listen to their propaganda message.
Tariq Ali, a well-known leftist activist whose cred goes back to Vietnam days, has written a scathing book that takes apart the pretense that Obama is somehow representing liberal values and serving the ordinary people of America and the world. Although Ali is a polemical guy and he has written a polemical book, he presents unassailable facts and logical argument. Obama, he shows us, has sold us out to corporatist interests at every turn.
The Obama Syndrome is a relatively short book, 117 pages, that you can read in a couple of evenings. If you have any read on your reading list, I suggest you read this one. It’ll open your eyes to things that have been plain to see, but about which many of us have been in denial.
Chapter 1 provides us with a historical overview of America’s governance since the advent of Reagan. Here is what Ali says about the advent of Obama:
“With politics going to the dogs … the first campaign had succeeded in galvanizing a generation of young Americans across the class and race divide. They believed their candidate was capable of correcting the imbalances and of reversing the turbo-charged thrust of corporate power and its adjuncts at home, while throwing the imperial juggernaut abroad in reverse. … Any expression of skepticism … was greeted with disbelief and sometimes ange. How could their candidate be charming, calm, intlligent, but also perfidious? … They did not wish to see Obama as a creature mired in the political culture of a corrupted and cynical Democratic Party … or a politician who had no desire to prize himself loose from the corporate political system that had assisted his rise to the presidency. Many believed that if Obama were elected, the country and its citizens would move on and part company with the murderous wars and the domestic policies of the Bush-Cheney period. Sadly, a different destiny lay ahead. …
“Obama did not dampen the hopes of youthful partisans who chose to interpret the marketing slogans ‘Change we can believe in’ or the even more vacuous ‘Yes, we can’ as a promise of something real. The aim of this type of sloganeering is to win support without offering anything in return except fine words, and on that level the new chief is a master. Truth in such campaigning is usually a bystander. Little of what Obama actually said in a combination of blandishments, special pleading and specious arguments justified much optimism, but the manner of his speaking, the color of his skin and the constant invocation of the word ‘change’ helped create a new spirit in the country — Obamania — that propelled him to the White House. …
“The young who campaigned for Obama did so because they regarded Bush and Cheney as amoral and venal politicians who represented the ‘haves and have-mores’ at home and murder abroad. They did not like the fork-tongued language of the Clintons with its slanted references and its soft-touch racism. In Obama, they thought, at long last they had found a leader who was not going to put the face of reason on wickedness or achieve supposedly reputable ends by disreputable means. He would be a righteous ruler. The candidate encouraged this view.”
What Obama has done in office, of course, is sell us down the river. He sold out to Wall Street, the bankers, the pharmaceutical lobby, the oil companies, the health insurers, the militarists. He kept Bush’s secretary of defense, put an education privatizer (and a guy who converted some of Chicago’s public schools into military academies) in charge of the department of education, and as all of you know, filled his economic cabinet with people like Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, in effect calling on people who created our economic crisis to save us from it.
Here is something you should know about Obama’s education policy:
“In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electicity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans’ school system took place with lightning speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city’s poor residents still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools. Before Hurricane Katrina, the school board had run 123 public schools; now it ran just 4. Before the storm, there had been 7 charter schools in the city; now there were 31. New Orleans schools used to be represented by a strong union; now the union’s contract had been shredded and its forty-seven hundred members had all been fired. Some of the younger teachers were rehired by the charters, at reduced salaries; most were not.”
In the “war on terror,” not only has Obama continued the war in Afghanistan, he has expanded it. And not only has his attorney general refused to investigate or prosecute anyone for torture, the worst of the prisons — Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram — are still in business, people are still being detained without trial, the rendition policy is still in effect, government wiretapping continues, and torture continues. When it comes to abuses of basic human rights, Obama’s policies are indistinguishable from Bush’s.
We voted for Obama and got a Bush third term. What can we do about it?
1. Support a primary challenger, if there is one. Anybody, even Mickey Mouse.
2. Stay home in 2012, or — dare I say it? — vote for the Republican … even if it’s Palin. We already have a Republican in the White House, so we can’t possibly do worse. The idea here is to break the military-industrial complex’s iron grip on the Democratic Party by dragging the party and its candidate down to defeat in order to rebuild the party with a clean slate.
3. Don’t give Obama any money. He doesn’t need it anyway. Almost all of the $900 million he raised in 2008 came from Wall Street and corporate interests. What he needs, and will miss, is the pretense that he’s supported by ordinary citizens whom he has betrayed and whose support he doesn’t deserve. What matters to him, and his propagandists, is not $5 times 10 million donors, which is only $50 million, but being able to wave a donor list with 10 million names on it in front of the TV cameras. In 2012, make sure that list is a lot smaller by making sure your name isn’t on it, so he can’t use your name to promote his corporatist agenda.
4. I’ve already said this, but don’t give him your vote. If he loses, the result will be disastrous, but if he wins, the result will be equally disastrous, so you have nothing to lose by sending a message to the corrupt rulers of the Democratic Party that they can’t take your vote for granted simply because you have nowhere else to go. You do have somewhere else to go. You can refuse to vote for a Bush fourth term.
I’m pissed. You should be pissed, too. We were lied to. We were had. This guy is a phony, a fraud, a con man. He has shit on us, the little people, across the spectrum.
It’s time for us to shit on him. The 2012 election is less than two years away. It’s not too soon to start looking for a primary challenger, and to start sending the word up the Democratic food chain that we’re not going to support Barack Obama in 2012, and if he’s the party’s nominee, the party is going to lose.
@54
Amen, brother Roger, Amen.
I think you strike at something very very essential – that the two-party system is not the choice it appears (to some) to be. That Left-Right divide is illusion, that the power behind both parties is corporatism, the spawn of fascism for the 21st century.
While the Republicans are wholly owned by corporate interests (it will be interesting to see whether the Koch-financed and controlled tea-party slips its leash and bites its master, however), the Democrats are nearly so, especially the Obama Administration and the more senior/powerful in Congress.
I hated my choices in 2008 – (Obama v. Clinton) v. McCain. I suppose Kucinich was closest to my socialist leanings, but, God, I find him cloying and unelectable. Plus, were a real leftist elected without wholesale change in the Democratic Party, the machinery in Congress and beyond would chew them up, as it did Carter (not that Carter was the perfect leftist – rather an outsides, out of the club – but the same result).
We’ve got to overthrow the culture of Versailles in the political discourse and the power of Wall Street in the actual control of what happens. Given that everything has been monitized, and that they have all the money, I think the one thing we have to cling to is the vote. That has not (yet) been taken away and I think that is where we need to advance from. And I think that the money surrounding voting (and essentially controlling it) needs to be cleared away. Billions and billions of dollars are spent manipulating our votes and distorting the peoples’ will.
I’ve long thought that a form of public financing might be the answer to this. In terms of keeping to “one person, one vote” I’ve thought that a system of vouchers, issued to each voter each election cycle that would be the only currency that would be allowed to buy political speech or political advertising or political organizing. Each voter gets the same amount, to spend as they wish. This gets around the whole money=speech nonsense from Buckley v. Valejo. It would effectively say that, OK, money is speech – but everybody gets the same amount of money for political speech. If you want to shout louder, then get some like-minded friends. It gets at a fundamental distortion of our civic discourse the the extreme disparity in wealth creates, and self-reinforces.
I worry that we are descending into Neo-Feudalism, that the power of the corporation and the very limited number of people that benefit and control that system is eclipsing Democracy.
proud leftist spews:
“Does she actually consider herself a “journalist”? My, but is she delusional.”
Then so is Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Rush Limbaugh,and every “journalist” at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MS-NBC, and all the “newspapers” and “news” magazines in the country.
Personally, I think political correctness is bullshit. I actually like what others may call “hate speech.” In fact, I beleive “hate speech” is FREE SPEECH, so it’s protected as is any other speech under the First Amendment.
Remember, the Bill of Rights puts restrictions on our federal government, not on the individual!
proud leftist spews:
“Does she actually consider herself a “journalist”? My, but is she delusional.”
Then so is Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Rush Limbaugh,and every “journalist” at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MS-NBC, and all the “newspapers” and “news” magazines in the country.
Personally, I think political correctness is bullshit. I actually like what others may call “hate speech.” In fact, I beleive “hate speech” is FREE SPEECH, so it’s protected as is any other speech under the First Amendment.
Remember, the Bill of Rights puts restrictions on our federal government, not on the individual!
So, using the term “illegal alien,” “illegal immigrant” or simply “illegal” is peachy-keeno with me.
I just love all of the myths about undocumented aliens repeated in this thread.
First and foremost the myth undocumented aliens “entered the country illegally”. Actually the vast majority entered legally at a normal border crossing, they just overstayed their visa and/or worked on a visa type that doesn’t allow for employment.
Second is the myth undocumented aliens are all Mexican, or even Hispanic. While these groups are certainly a large portion of undocumented aliens non-Mexican and non-Hispanic make up a fairly sizable chunk of the overall total. Of the undocumented aliens I’ve known only one was Hispanic (from Chile), the rest were from Japan, Germany, Serbia, Ireland, Russia, the UK, and Canada. FWIW all entered the US legally they just overstayed student, tourist, or au-pair visas rather than go home.
Finally there is the myth that violating US immigration laws is a crime akin to committing a violent felony. In truth most immigration law violations are fairly technical and other than deportation only carry a fine as a penalty. Overstaying a visa is closer to a speeding ticket or littering than it is to rape or theft. Given how convoluted the relevant law is and how fubar the involved agencies are it is quite possible to be in technical violation of the law while doing everything possible to comply. I know someone who the then INS lost the paperwork for. She was in technical violation of the immigration laws and had to spend lots of money on an immigration lawyer to try to straiten out. However she was allowed to continue working legally while her case was pending.
It’s easy to be a white, Seattle liberal and love illegals…why? Because they don;t take over our neighborhoods. If they did, you’d all squeal like pigs.
BTW have no problem with illegals. Try finding three native born bums to dig a ditch for you for $8/hr and no complaints. In fact, we should send all our bums to Mexico in exchange for folks willing to work for a living.
@55 Let us know if your revolution will be televised. If it runs the same time as ‘American Idol’, you’ll be f*cked.
@56 You’re SURPRISED that folks believe in these myths (or that Obama is a secret Muslim non-American)? Really? Dude the folks who believe in THOSE myths also spend their time fighting gay marriage only BECAUSE a magical invisible being they’re told lives in the sky said it was bad (according to a book written by a Roman committee 1700 years ago). Did you REALLY think logic, facts and rational thinking was the strong suite of this crowd? Myths make up almost all of their thinking. It doesn’t have to be true…they just have to “believe” it. Same thing to them.
You will NEVER EVER stop illegal/undocumented/what-the-fuck-ever immigrants. As long as it’s legal for folks to come from Mexico, France or Japan to visit Disney Land or the Grand Canyon, you will have illegal immigrants (when they just don’t go home). As long as you let folks come to the United States to study at a college you will have illegal immigrants (when they just don’t go home).
Unless you LITERALLY never let ANYONE visit our country to see relatives, do tourists things, go to college, here on work visas, etc, you will have this problem. Building a 14 mile high magically defended “wall” will stop some percentage of illegal immigrants from Mexico specifically. But as long as you can come into the United States on train, plane, car or boat…you will have this problem when folks come in and simply don’t leave. There’s NO way to stop that unless we create a SUPER massive hugely intrusive Federal government that stops everyone at “checkpoint” constantly checking papers and documentation (which can be faked anyway). This sort of thing has been going on since the ancient Egyptian and Roman empires. You’re as likely to stop unwanted immigration as you are to stop prostitution or drug use or sex.
@57 I’m not worried about “illegals” taking my job because my job involves training and speaking/reading/writing English. If your job CAN be taken by someone who can’t speak English, can’t read/write English, and has no specific skills….then YOU need a better job. My job requires being able to communicate with my boss and customers in English so I have NO fear of losing it to an illegal immigrant. Plus there’s the 15 years of training involved. So not worried. If someone wants to risk their LIFE to come here and scrub toilets at the Motel 6 for $50 a day…not my worst fear.
If it wasn’t for the illegals, how would we be able to undermine the wages of America’s lower classes?
And then the left sits around and wonders by the lower classes votes against liberals! It’s friggin’ brilliant.
Maybe if the far left in America actually showed concern for actual WORKING Americans rather than illegals, dopers, bums, the criminal underclass, welfare mamas and various other genitally-driven identity driven politics they’d make some head wind but ever since the left got taken over by the typical, college educated white people you see in Seattle, they’ve been fucked.
The Southern Strategy worked folks and will work again.
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Pious Seattle liberals: have you ever talked to folks whose livelihoods have been destroyed by illegals? Go talk to some Cambodian and Vietnamese landscapers here in Seattle and ask them how they feel about illegals. I’m one of the last in my uber-liberal neighborhood who actually uses legals, American gardeners (Cambodians). All my liberal neighbors hire illegals for 30% less.
@59 I am not opposed to gay marriage, but the far left (or right) makes me laugh.
Perhaps you should understand that the Torah and Septuagint predate your “1700 year” assumption by a few millennium.
@Everyone else
The process for migrant farm workers is well established. Truth in fact is that the majority of farm/service workers do have proper documentation. Those who don’t are the ones who sneak across borders. The reality is that many legal Hispanic immigrants resent those who bypass the issues of legality.
Immigration is like marijuana, close it down or open it up — half way doesn’t work.
@ 61
Jesus, you really are just a fucking psychopath.
Go back to Stormfront you fucking hick.
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Just Walk Away
A Missouri homeowner has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing Bank of America of lying to borrowers seeking loan modifications and stringing them along in order to collect additional payments and fees before foreclosing on them anyway.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/st...../19780258/
These homeowners should have walked into their local BoA branch, dropped the keys on a loan officer’s desk, and walked out.
Then walked away and let the bank cut the grass, pay the property taxes and utility bills, and figured out what to do with unsalable houses.
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@57 “Try finding three native born bums to dig a ditch for you for $8/hr and no complaints.”
Why the hell should anyone dig ditches for $8 an hour, and what gives you the right to expect someone else to perform hard (and dirty, and dangerous) physical labor for you, for that kind of money?
@60 “If it wasn’t for the illegals, how would we be able to undermine the wages of America’s lower classes? And then the left sits around and wonders by the lower classes votes against liberals! It’s friggin’ brilliant.”
The fallacy of your argument is that it isn’t “liberals” who let these people in, employ them, and undermine the wages of America’s lower classes. The people you vote for are doing that — which makes you complicit.
@64 What do you expect from wingers? After all, these psychopaths want terrorists to kill more innocent Americans so their party will get more votes. From GOP legislative candidate Mark Griswold:
“Congratulations Speaker Pelosi, now let the bombs fall where they may. My prediction: terror attack on domestic soil passenger aircraft within the next six months. Casualties in the 2-300 range. And, unfortunately, maybe that’s just what we need. It’s obvious people don’t remember what happened 5 years ago. Posted by FullContactPolitics at November 8, 2006 10:52 AM”
http://blog.usefulwork.com/cgi.....ry_id=7430
@67 See #54.
@65 “Im far from a hick”
That’s correct, you make hicks look urbane, polished, and erudite.
@68 Why the hell should anyone dig ditches for $8 an hour, and what gives you the right to expect someone else to perform hard (and dirty, and dangerous) physical labor for you, for that kind of money?
The right? My money and their free will in accepting it. Or do you think all those hard working folks hanging outside Home Depot work for union scale?
It’s not a ‘right’, it’s the free market.
“fallacy of your argument is that it isn’t “liberals” who let these people in, employ them, and undermine the wages of America’s lower classes.”
Really? Liberals don’t eat fruit and vegetables?
@68 Why the hell should anyone dig ditches for $8 an hour
BTW that’s not what I pay them, that’s what they charge. Apparently even illiterate Mexican farmers know more about market economies than you do.
Where is all the outrage over the “illegal farmers” and “illegal contractors” and other “illegal employers” that are illegally hiring all these undocumented workers????
Surely those of you who think “illegal” isn’t a prejudicial term, now see your error.
@ 75
So you admit to preferring illegal untaxed, unregulated labor to legal labor?
If one of them were to be hurt or killed on the job, are you prepared to take responsibility? If one took a few minutes off the job to go rob a house in the neighborhood are you going to account for your lack of supervision?
“So you admit to preferring illegal untaxed, unregulated labor to legal labor?”
Yep, many times for heavy duty projects around the home. Do you think you’ll find any Amercans willing to work hard for $8/hr? They’d rather be on welfare.
If I didn’t hire them, what do you think would happen to these guys? Would you prefer they go back to Mexico and live in poverty? Are you one of those guilty white liberals who refuses to get on a rikshaw in Calcutta and will walk instead?
“If one took a few minutes off the job to go rob a house”
Well, 1. I know these guys are pretty damn honest and hard working but am impressed at how you like to stereotype Mexicans
2. THe guys offering to do the job last time at $7/hr both had tear drop tattoos around their eyes. Apparently the market worked, because I went with the guys charging $8/hr.
3. I own a licensed gun.
DO you enjoy all those cheap fruits and veggies you eat or do you simply deny your role in hiring illegal untaxed, unregulated labor?
1. Michael spews:
2. Zotz sez: The microchip in Klynical’s ass was transmitting 6… 6… 6… spews:
7. YLB spews:
45. notaboomer spews:
52. harry poon spews:
Sigh……………..
Why?
Answer–Cuz you can??
Pretty shameful venting just because you disagree. The fact is we have approx. 12 million people here illegally. I agree many are here with good intentions. Others obviously are not. Clinton, Bush & Obama have done a terrible job of securing our borders. But many of the European Countries lots of you hold out as models have long ago drawn the line on illegal immigrants.
I think the focus on what we actually call people people here illegally is a sideshow issue that deflects from the problem at hand.
White Liberals in Seattle are not faced with the negative impacts of illegal immigration that California, Arizona etc. are so it is easy to sit back & welcome them into someone else’s backyard, isn’t it.
I also agree that employers who hire illegal immigrants should be fined. I have seen the paperwork of numerous illegals. It looks amazingly official, complete (in some cases) with matching SS numbers. But in many cases, it is also obvious that the paperwork is phony and simply overlooked to make extra bucks.
Social Security numbers are the key…and employers have the right & capability of verifying the name & number provided. That and perhaps requiring Rental Applications be verified with SS number will help stem the flow. If you cannot get a job or a place to live…why would you stay here illegally.
I also have a nephew who married a Canadian about 5 months ago. She still has not received her work permit. She has an excellent education & skills with standing job offers.
But she is caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare.
@34 Carol: Truly. Who knew that Goldy had any language use boundaries?
Two thoughts:
1) Is anyone else thinking about the Fox news paper on shaping the healthcare debate that Joel Connelly wrote a few weeks ago? (by using “so-called public option” and “government-run healthcare)
2) Did Megyn Kelly really call herself a journalist at the end of that segment? I can’t have heard that right . . .
@73 This isn’t about free markets determining wages. It’s about you calling other people “bums” because they won’t dig your ditches for $8 an hour. I won’t either, but that doesn’t make me a “bum.” I will, however, dig your ditch for $100 an hour. I’ll be reasonable when you’re reasonable.
@74 God, you’re a shithead. Fruits and vegetables come from various places and some of us try to determine the provenance of what we eat.
@75 The fact illegals, whom you just admitted you’re willing to employ, will dig ditches for $8 an hour doesn’t make American citizens who refuse to work for that kind of pay “bums.” My fellow Americans aren’t “bums” just because they don’t want their families to live on Mexican wages. But you’re a bum for hiring illegals and paying less than legal minimum wage — in fact, that not only makes you a bum, it also makes you a criminal.
@78 “Do you think you’ll find any Amercans willing to work hard for $8/hr?”
Why should they?
“They’d rather be on welfare.”
You can’t get welfare because you’re unemployed, jackass.
I think the comments by Freddie and Sean raise a question whether we should even have a capitalist or free market system. A lot of the people who hire illegals for “heavy physical labor” are contractors who charge their customers $75 an hour (or more) for labor they’re paying these immigrants $8 an hour for (and sometimes they don’t pay them at all). That’s human beings exploiting other human beings for their own aggrandizement. I’m not saying there’s a better system than the shitty free market capitalism we have, but I’m saying someone needs to invent one. We need a world in which no one can exploit others for their own selfish gain. Until then, God has promised retribution against those who do, in the next world.
Re: 61
Goldy – just ban him. As right wing idiots go, this one isn’t even the least bit entertaining.
@79 “Clinton, Bush & Obama have done a terrible job of securing our borders.”
Is there some reason you left out Reagan and Bush 41?
And are you so naive that you don’t know the illegals are here because the Republicans who ran our country for the last 30 years want them here? It isn’t the working class who employs this cheap labor and profits from the low wages they’re paid.
@80 Goldy doesn’t threaten to kill people who disagree with him. I can’t say the same for countless rightwing asswipes, who by the way, have this kind of language (and a whole lot more) coming to them.
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I think we liberals have been nice far too long. We should round up the people who disagree with us, subject them to rendition, and let them find out what waterboarding feels like.
@91 Just kidding! #91 is a wingnut joke.
I welcome the Mexicans who come here. It’s unfriendly, mean and cruel to oppose them. There’s no inherent value to one person over another. Why not share? They come to work, they get social security taken out most of the time, they’re helping our economy, and they’re on the whole fairly nice and interesting people with many positive attributes. We’re lucky to be next to Mexico. Great nation, great people.
Are you conservatives unware that your entire position on this rests on racism and a narrow minded ignorance that people in other nations can see quite readily?
I know you don’t get it that with latinos being 30% in a few years here, your positions are politically toxic. But really, why don’t you like the Mexicans who come here just as much as you like the average American?
Why do you care in the first place?
My ancestors did not ask to be put in the USA but that decision was made for them. Others were here for centuries and fought in all our wars. The world is a nice place, we should open the border totally.
Are you afraid you can’t compete, is that it?
In fact, why not just integrate Canada, Mexico and the USA, throw in Cuba in a couple of years and the DR while we’re at it.
Todos somos americanos, no?
@91
Can we start with the idiot @90?
@90
David has a pretty thick skin and I’m sure he doesn’t care what you call him. However you really should show a little class and leave his teenage daughter out of this. Though, having met her, I’m sure she is more than capable of defending herself against the likes of you should she ever choose to wander into the cesspit that is the HA comment threads.
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@98:
que pinche hijo de puta eres. Estas en el KKK?
Callate, solo demuestras las tonterias de las derechistas….la falta de valores…..la falta de inteligencia…
como si todavia se faltara de bastantes pruebas…los mexicanos valen mas que tu, culo.
@98 et al,
So, if your sole purpose here is to abuse my reverence for free speech to the point where I ban you, congratulations.
Hurrah!
Don’t worry, we’ll be calling them our much needed working class again in a few years. Just like the last few economic cycles.
And the wingnuts will have found something else to shout about.
This is what passes for acceptable “humor” on the left these days. You guys have not one shred of decency left in all of you combined.
re 104: Crusader does not possess the gravitas to be called an asshole — or even a douchebag.
No, gravitas is not a douchbag — but he is a cunt.
“We need a world in which no one can exploit others for their own selfish gain”
Or we’ll kill a few million trying to create that world!
“Great nation, great people.”
Well I know parts of Yakima you’d love to raise a family in then. Just get good bars for the house and bullet proof vests for your kids.
It’s great being white, living in one of the whitest cities in America and talking about the beauty of Mexican culture. When your neighborhood goes 50% illegals get back to me on how uplifting an experience it’s been, especially if you’re a property owner.
“Until then, God has promised retribution against those who do, in the next world.”
As an atheist, I’m less than impressed with your understanding of either human nature or economics.
@94 “I welcome the Mexicans who come here.”
OK, tell us what neighborhood you live in before I can even begin to take you seriously.
@104 “You guys have not one shred of decency left in all of you combined.”
Sure we do. We don’t invade other people’s countries, bomb their villages, and kill their women and children.
@108 So, you’re saying everyone who comes here for work to support his family is going to break into your home? Only a peawit stereotypes a whole nation because of their skin color. I live in a neighborhood that is primarily non-white and I haven’t had any problems.
@110
So, what neighborhood? Give me the nearest main cross streets.
You’re all (mostly) morons. You are speaking of a woman who has a law degree and presumably more intelligent than you idiots who call her a “cunt” and feel that is the same as calling an “illegal alien” and “illegal alien.” Political correctness has nothing to do with “name calling.” It is an effort to undermine the truth. THEY ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS. Nobody said they should be called “wetbacks” or “spics” or anything like that. Funny though, how most “liberals” want to stop being called “liberals” or God-forbid call a someone in favor of “socialism” a “socialist.” Or a moron a moron, Moron. You have no logic, and in the words of Plato, “You, sir, are the horse’s ass.”
I have to at least give Kelly credit for speaking in a respectful tone of voice and elucidating a clear and cogent argument, even though I think it’s wrong. The former at least puts her a cut or two above Fox’s thugs like Hannity and Bill-o. The latter puts her ahead of purveyors of total nonsense like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin.
As to what term may be used to refer to the people in question? Well, how about “dark-skinned scapegoats”? Frankly, that’s what the right seems to be constantly trying to make of any and all Latinos in this country (as if, as mentioned above, there wasn’t anyone else here without permission).
Oh really Roger Dumb Rabbit… So how do you explain Edwin Ramos? Of course this is the type of thug the dumb brick ylb wants to live in the US.
Yep good old Gavin Newsom and those San Fransicko treats!
When all they have are Mexican papers and citizenship documentation it’s only an allegation to Roger Dumb Rabbit. When they are videotaped crossing the US/Mexico Border it’s only an allegation to Roger Dumb Rabbit.
Was this another brainfart of Art?
PROVE IT. Provide links!
Freddie@111,
These HA liberals wouldn’t open their doors and accept a Katrina victim in. Oh wait a minute… they were mostly Black Americans.
Random question: I am starting mine blog to share my experiences. Do you think its hard or easy to create consistently?
Calling Megyn Kelly the c-word would be inappropriate, since robots do not have genitalia…..