"Open borders will destroy this country. You can't have a country if you don't have a border."
If we have open borders, we have borders. It's in the name.
"You can't have a country if you can't CONTROL your borders."
So we can do whatever we want with them? Okay. Open them up!
The "it's about sovereignty" people insist that there's only one and exactly one thing we're allowed to do with our borders and still be a country, and that doesn't sound very sovereign to me.
Of course, the reality is that no one ran for president on open borders, much less did our actual Democratic nominee do so. The GOP just calls *any* whiff of immigration reform "open borders" in order to make it sound scary and extreme.
But part of defanging that has got to be pushing back on the idea that it is scary and extreme. What would be so bad about open borders? What's so wrong with a little socialism? Why are we afraid of all the things the GOP tells us to be afraid of?
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The one legitimate takeaway I think we can get from the "Biden corruption" story is: basically everybody in the professional orbit of Hunter Biden wanted to exploit his connection to the White House, and they all failed.
That's a pretty nice endorsement for Joe, isn't it?
It's like, "Oh, this strung-out loser's dad is the vice president. He's the president's best friend. We cultivate him and the world is our oyster."
In Trump World, this would be excused as: yeah, duh. Obviously. That makes you smart.
But then... nothing came of it. No favors for Burisma; in fact, the opposite - Biden personally pressured for the firing of a tame prosecutor that was going easy on them. Whatever anybody did or didn't think they were "buying" when they hired or did business with Hunter Biden...
The way cats react to newly opened space reminds me of Lex Luthor in the Superman movies saying that land is the only real form of wealth because it's the one thing they can't make more of.
I love the fact that in two of the Superman movies he appeared in, Lex Luthor's actual evil plan amounted to a genocidal sci-fi real estate scam. Like, just casually kill millions of people to make a killing in the real estate market.
...I guess three of the movies when you consider that in II, he was trying to trade humanity's freedom for Australia.
We're pretty lucky in that the pandemic isn't going to affect our Thanksgiving plans much, insofar as it was probably always going to just be our one household having a nice meal together.
Imagine if we had an actual functioning government with actual public health initiatives pushing a message like "Celebrate Thanksgiving apart so we can survive together." Commercials showing people having small celebrations in their own household and then calling their relatives.
We will probably be ordering our meal from Cracker Barrel, who back during Easter surprised and impressed us by sending us an email from like a director of HR or somebody like that saying, "We notice you've ordered holiday meals from us in the past. Your local store delivers!"
Okay. Masks on, lather up, keep your distance, shut things down, cancel gatherings, be careful.
"No. We have to learn how to LIVE WITH it."
Payments to everyone to keep things afloat?
"No. LIVE WITH it."
...do you mean die?
"We lose thousands to the flu every year!"
Yeah, and that's with a robust but not perfect or universal vaccination effort, education, and a few simple, sensible mitigation attempts. A completely uncontrolled flu season would be terrifying.
Imagine if we *did* start wearing masks and keeping our distance during flu season. Imagine if we'd all been washing and sanitizing our hands sufficiently all along.
Imagine how much lower those flu numbers could have been this whole time.
As the grown-up child of a daycare mom, it is wild to see home daycares being lauded as something new and branded as "CareBNBs".
I know that nobody's experience is universal but I always had a weirded out reaction to the trope of "Oh we have to get our kids on a waiting list for preschool 17 years before they're born." because my town was all in-home daycares and the public school ran a preschool.
My mom added educational and enrichment components to hers rather than sending us to preschool, and eventually all the teachers were trying to get their kids into her daycare because she was good at it.
There's a trope where a crooked PI or lawyer or whatever will join some virtuous-sounding professional organization and pay the dues just long enough to get a membership card and certificate to put up on the wall and create a good impression for people walking in.
If Donald got to stay in office for 20 years and in the 20th year of his reign you couldn't go out without one of those Biovyzrs or you'd pass out, he'd still be talking about "the cleanest air and crystal clear water".