US Politics Mega-thread - Page 655

On August 30 2018 05:29 Uldridge wrote:
So what kind of language would you use if you wanted to express how impressed you were with someone being articulate?

On August 30 2018 05:48 Liquid`Drone wrote:
hm like I've definitely described Obama as articulate in the past, and there was not even the tiniest veiled racisty thing involved in that. It's just that he's incredibly articulate. Not 'surprisingly so for a black man', just, compared to pretty much everyone. I get that in this context, where he also uses the phrase monkeying around, you can read more into it, but I really don't think there should be anything default racist about describing a black person as articulate. And it is a compliment, at least I use it as such.

On August 30 2018 06:18 Introvert wrote:
If he's a haedcore Trumper wouldn't we assume he already has the racist vote locked up? It makes no sense to say this is a dog whistle. He doesnt need the votes of those people anymore. In context it's pretty benign.

This is example 15354324747190 of Democrats finding racism literally anywhere, especially if it helps win elections.

Same people prob thought that hilarious DeSantis ad was serious instead of a joke.

On August 30 2018 06:20 IyMoon wrote:


So using racist terms isn't racist anymore? Come on man let's not be this bad

On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.

His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.

But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.

As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.

In a statement, the State Department said that it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications,” adding that “the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.”

But cases identified by The Washington Post and interviews with immigration attorneys suggest a dramatic shift in both passport issuance and immigration enforcement.

In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States. As the Trump administration attempts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration, the government’s treatment of passport applicants in South Texas shows how U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.

Juan said he was infuriated by the government’s response. “I served my country. I fought for my country,” he said, speaking on the condition that his last name not be used so that he wouldn’t be targeted by immigration enforcement.

The government alleges that from the 1950s through the 1990s, some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. In a series of federal court cases in the 1990s, several birth attendants admitted to providing fraudulent documents.

Based on those suspicions, the State Department began during Barack Obama’s administration to deny passports to people who were delivered by midwives in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The use of midwives is a long-standing tradition in the region, in part because of the cost of hospital care.

The same midwives who provided fraudulent birth certificates also delivered thousands of babies legally in the United States. It has proved nearly impossible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate documents, all of them officially issued by the state of Texas decades ago.

2009 government settlement in a case litigated by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) seemed like it had mostly put an end to the passport denials. Attorneys reported that the number of denials declined during the rest of the Obama administration, and the government settled promptly when people filed complaints after being denied passports.

But under President Trump, the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives.

“We’re seeing these kind of cases skyrocketing,” said Jennifer Correro, an attorney in Houston who is defending dozens of people who have been denied passports.

In its statement, the State Department said that applicants “who have birth certificates filed by a midwife or other birth attendant suspected of having engaged in fraudulent activities, as well as applicants who have both a U.S. and foreign birth certificate, are asked to provide additional documentation establishing they were born in the United States.”

“Individuals who are unable to demonstrate that they were born in the United States are denied issuance of a passport,” the statement said.

When Juan, the former soldier, received a letter from the State Department telling him it wasn’t convinced that he was a U.S. citizen, it requested a range of obscure documents — evidence of his mother’s prenatal care, his baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when he was a baby.

He managed to find some of those documents but weeks later received another denial. In a letter, the government said the information “did not establish your birth in the United States.”

“I thought to myself, you know, I’m going to have to seek legal help,” said Juan, who earns $13 an hour as a prison guard and expects to pay several thousand dollars in legal fees.

In a case last August, a 35-year-old Texas man with a U.S. passport was interrogated while crossing back into Texas from Mexico with his son at the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge, connecting Reynosa, Mexico, to McAllen, Tex.

His passport was taken from him, and Customs and Border Protection agents told him to admit that he was born in Mexico, according to documents later filed in federal court. He refused and was sent to the Los Fresnos Detention Center and entered into deportation proceedings.

He was released three days later, but the government scheduled a deportation hearing for him in 2019. His passport, which had been issued in 2008, was revoked.

On August 30 2018 06:22 Introvert wrote:



Dude we have multiple idioms in the English language involving monkeys and screwing things up. In fact, we have others that have nothing to do with screwing something up. Its logically possible this was a racist remark, but in context and strategically it makes no sense to call it one.

On August 30 2018 06:18 Introvert wrote:
If he's a haedcore Trumper wouldn't we assume he already has the racist vote locked up? It makes no sense to say this is a dog whistle. He doesnt need the votes of those people anymore. In context it's pretty benign.

This is example 15354324747190 of Democrats finding racism literally anywhere, especially if it helps win elections.

Same people prob thought that hilarious DeSantis ad was serious instead of a joke.

On August 30 2018 06:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
of course if you add 'surprisingly' it has a different connotation because then there's an implication that you expected worse.

What if someone just doesn't know about the racial baggage of 'articulate'? I mean, I am european, so it's hard for me to claim expertise on all things american, but I didn't really know that 'articulate' is a word with racial baggage. To me, it's just a neutral word that you use to describe someone who is better at phrasing him or herself in a persuasive, coherent and understandable manner than what your average person is. It's basically 'eloquent-light' from my perspective - but for a politician who wants to reach as wide an audience as possible, being 'well-articulated' is sometimes even preferable to being 'eloquent'; eloquent implies that there's a beauty to the language used beyond simply conveying meaning.

Like, I get what you guys are saying. I'm not trying to argue that DeSantis didn't know what he was saying. I just think the plausible deniability is too obviously plausible for 'articulate', by itself, to function as a dog-whistle that should get much attention. When you say it in the same sentence as monkeying around, sure. But for me, it's very easy to accept plausible deniability when I know that I myself could genuinely make the same error.

On August 30 2018 06:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
of course if you add 'surprisingly' it has a different connotation because then there's an implication that you expected worse.

What if someone just doesn't know about the racial baggage of 'articulate'? I mean, I am european, so it's hard for me to claim expertise on all things american, but I didn't really know that 'articulate' is a word with racial baggage. To me, it's just a neutral word that you use to describe someone who is better at phrasing him or herself in a persuasive, coherent and understandable manner than what your average person is. It's basically 'eloquent-light' from my perspective - but for a politician who wants to reach as wide an audience as possible, being 'well-articulated' is sometimes even preferable to being 'eloquent'; eloquent implies that there's a beauty to the language used beyond simply conveying meaning.

Like, I get what you guys are saying. I'm not trying to argue that DeSantis didn't know what he was saying. I just think the plausible deniability is too obviously plausible for 'articulate', by itself, to function as a dog-whistle that should get much attention. When you say it in the same sentence as monkeying around, sure. But for me, it's very easy to accept plausible deniability when I know that I myself could genuinely make the same error.

On August 30 2018 06:28 Plansix wrote:

Gotta juice that racist turn out and get out the vote of people who don’t like black people and don’t think they should be governor. Especially the low key “I like it when black men play football, but they need to keep their helmets on” suburban racist that will have a real problem with a black man as governor. Tap into those underlying feelings of racist and justify their existence as valid. That middle class dad is going to be a critical vote for this guy.

Seriously, you do know racism helps win elections right?

On August 30 2018 06:18 Introvert wrote:
If he's a haedcore Trumper wouldn't we assume he already has the racist vote locked up? It makes no sense to say this is a dog whistle. He doesnt need the votes of those people anymore. In context it's pretty benign.

This is example 15354324747190 of Democrats finding racism literally anywhere, especially if it helps win elections.

Same people prob thought that hilarious DeSantis ad was serious instead of a joke.

On August 30 2018 06:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Like, I get what you guys are saying. I'm not trying to argue that DeSantis didn't know what he was saying. I just think the plausible deniability is too obviously plausible for 'articulate', by itself, to function as a dog-whistle that should get much attention. When you say it in the same sentence as monkeying around, sure. But for me, it's very easy to accept plausible deniability when I know that I myself could genuinely make the same error.

On August 30 2018 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:


You treat this as if that was some sort of hindrance for him, it will absolutely benefit him. He is talked about, he gets to whine about the left calling him a racist just because he said some racist stuff, the horror, and he has enough "plausible" deniability to get away with it easily in the american climate. It was actually a pretty solid move from him, I genuinely believe that. Morally bankrupt, of course, but imagine my surprise.

On August 30 2018 06:32 Introvert wrote:



You do know those aren't the people he needs, right? You can shout turnout but that's not all there is. I'd think having a black man all over TV celebrating his surprise victory would be enough, not 1 second on Fox News.

On August 30 2018 06:36 Introvert wrote:


I've found our problem. I dont have much more time for it, unfortunately. But he used one monkey based saying out of however many we have. He could have used the phrase "monkey wrench" and prob still get labeled a racist.

Like I said, it's a reflex.