(01-10-2020 04:33 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(01-10-2020 02:19 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  BTW, the Native Americans, alaska natives, and Eskimos you speak of are also the descendants of immigrants, just that their immigrant forebearers were farther back in time. Their ancestor immigrated to the Americas across the Bering Land Bridge.

This is obvious and I'm not sure why you are bothering to explain it to a fellow Rice grad. However, the ancestors of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Eskimos came to this continent before there was a government or country. So they do not technically fit any of the definitions of "immigrant" that I have seen.

(01-10-2020 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Concentration camps

She was the one also who said that detainees were being forced to drink from toilets. She is on your team.

(01-10-2020 02:19 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Well, I think the nature of the work by the FBI does draw a disproportionate number of bad apples - Strok, Page, McCabe, et al.

I have no interest in discussing complaints about the typical conservative boogeymen (and boogeywomen). AOC is certainly one of the most liberal people in the Congress and represents a very liberal district. I imagine 99% of Democrats fall somewhere between her and Joe Manchin. So I'm happy to discuss the position of the boogewoman like AOC if you also want to include the positions of conservative Democrats. Otherwise, it isn't worth the time. AOC speaks for the Democratic party just as much or as little as Joe Manchin. The press focuses on her because she is young, attractive, outspoken, won a primary against an insider Democrat, and takes fringe positions. She gets a disproportionate amount of attention relative to her actual power, but that doesn't mean she has done anything to justify getting a disproportionate amount of my attention. I'm honestly a little perplexed that she has been able to draw so much attention from conservatives and Republicans. I basically ignore her as much as I do the vast majority of Democrats in Congress.

(01-10-2020 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I may be wrong, but were not the separations under Obama era guidelines?

From what I have read, there were a very very few and but those were limited to situations where the parent needed to be in actual jail for a crime other than an illegal border crossing. Also, I haven't read anything about separated kids dying while detained during the Obama administration or getting lost in the system.

(01-10-2020 10:17 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Is a person who thinks Confederate statues should be left in place, takes care of his invalid mother, and volunteers at the hospital a horrible person?

How about a person who thinks the statues should be pulled down, cheats on his taxes, and cheats on his wife? Is he a good person?

This is silly. The "very fine people" comment wasn't about people peacefully protesting the removal of confederate statutes. There were plenty of those in New Orleans when some Confederate statues were taken down (something I am personally aware of since I was 2nd chair for the federal government in one of the lawsuits regarding the removal of the statues by the City of New Orleans).

The very fine people included these guys (all BBC cites since everyone seems OK with the BBC as a relatively neutral and reliable source).

A reckoning in Charlottesville - 8/13/17

Quote:In the middle of Emancipation Park in Charlottesville on Saturday, two young women, one white and one black, took each other's hands and held them tightly, and with their other hands they gripped the steel barrier in front of them.

A few feet away, a young white man with a buzzed haircut and sunglasses leaned towards them over a facing barrier. "You'll be on the first f*****g boat home," he screamed at the black woman, before turning to the white woman. "And as for you," he said coolly, "you're going straight to hell." Then he gave a Nazi salute.

Quote:In a column they surged into the park, using sticks and their fists to shove aside anti-fascist counter-protesters. Then they blocked off the entrance with shields. Inside, David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, grinned and waved as the crowd, almost entirely white and male, cheered him on, chanting his name and putting their arms up in Nazi salutes.

They had reason to be pleased. They were in the middle of the largest gathering of white nationalists in America for decades.

Quote:In the park, in a pen ringed by steel barriers, the nationalists shouted anti-immigrant, anti-semitic and racist slogans and targeted white women counter-protesters, calling them "traitors" who "needed to get subjugated".

Quote:They chanted "Blood and soil" - an old Nazi slogan - and "Jews will not replace us".

At the base of the university's statue of Thomas Jefferson, on the Main Street side of the campus, they were met by university students who came to resist them, linking arms and surrounding the statue. The air was hot from the torches and acrid from smoke.

"The heat here is nothing compared to what you're going to get in the ovens," shouted Robert Ray, a writer for the white supremacist website Daily Stormer. "It's coming," he spat.

The Charlottesville rally was organized Richard Spencer.

US white nationalist Richard Spencer's wife says he abused her - 10/24/18

Quote:Richard Spencer first rose to prominence when he led chants of "Hail Trump" to a Nazi-saluting group in Washington after the US president's election victory.

Perhaps you should use all of Trump's comment, in context, next time. Trump very specifically excluded the people you cite in his own statements. But, why let actual context and actual words get in the way.

Quote:“I am not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”

Good grief.