the_toast_is_gone
@the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world
- Comment on Hundreds March for 'Intifada' in NYC Hours After Attacks in New Orleans, Las Vegas 1 day ago:
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Have a good weekend, friend.
- Comment on Hundreds March for 'Intifada' in NYC Hours After Attacks in New Orleans, Las Vegas 1 day ago:
Have you heard literally any WWII ally propaganda?
I’ve heard plenty. It talks about defeating the Nazis, but it isn’t as genocidal as Hamas’s. If you can point to anyone’s declaration of war stating “God wants us to kill every single German,” I’d like to see it.
Have you literally not looked at any Azov propaganda?
Azov representing the entirety of Ukraine is disinformation used by the Russian government to justify invading a non-aggressive sovereign nation. Also, I doubt they want to kill all Russian civilians.
I don’t have the right to tell victims of genocide how to stop getting genocide
But you have the right to encourage the kidnapping, rape, and murder of civilians?
It was earned. Thoroughly earned.
- Comment on Hundreds March for 'Intifada' in NYC Hours After Attacks in New Orleans, Las Vegas 1 day ago:
Who thought it was their divine mission to exterminate the Nazis and Germans? Do Ukrainians think obliterating the Russian people is their God-given task on earth? And in those cases, does that justify setting out to annihilate an entire demographic?
Do you believe October 7th was justified?
- Comment on Deportation after two crimes? The CDU’s new plan to combat repeat migrant offenders slammed as ‘weak’ 1 day ago:
For you Americans who skip straight to the comments, this is in Germany.
- Comment on Hundreds March for 'Intifada' in NYC Hours After Attacks in New Orleans, Las Vegas 1 day ago:
Article 7 of their 1988 charter cites a verse demanding a holy war to exterminate the Jews, one so fierce that the very stones and trees call out to announce their hiding spots. Article 8 of the same charter states “Jihad is [Hamas’s] path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
- Comment on Hundreds March for 'Intifada' in NYC Hours After Attacks in New Orleans, Las Vegas 1 day ago:
That’s an insane thing to say about a group founded specifically to kill Jews and has been doing so ever since. Also, having a “mandate from the people” doesn’t stop an organization from being terrorists.
- Comment on Journos who joined gaslighting on Biden's decline should never live it down 2 days ago:
And they wonder why trust in the media is close to an all-time low! At this point, all one can do is laugh.
- Comment on Journalists who hid Biden's mental decline should be held accountable: NY Post editorial board 2 days ago:
Most sites I’ve seen have been pointing out perceived flaws in his plans since at least 2016. What more do you want? A million dollar assassination bounty on the New York Times front page?
- Comment on Journos who joined gaslighting on Biden's decline should never live it down 2 days ago:
It’s insulting how so many outlets regurgitated the party line up until the 2024 debate, then acted shocked over something that was obvious for years.
- Comment on Hundreds March for 'Intifada' in NYC Hours After Attacks in New Orleans, Las Vegas 2 days ago:
Hamas and ISIS are both Islamist terrorist organizations.
- Comment on Hochul's polluters pay bill could result in regressive costs for working families 2 days ago:
The costs of this fine will obviously be passed on to be consumer. It’ll accomplish nothing but funneling everyday people’s money into the government by proxy.
- Comment on "Border Czar" Tom Homan unveils new deportation plan 5 days ago:
A person’s legal existence is not the same as someone practicing without a license. You know that.
I know. It isn’t about existence. It’s about doing things through the appropriate legal channels. The entire world isn’t entitled to live in the US, just like the entire population isn’t entitled to drive on public roads or practice medicine.
The process to legalization is unnecessarily long and results in this backlog, which only contributes to illegal immigration and increasing costs to process
Not only that, but there was a skyrocket of asylum seekers during this administration. They’ve combined to create a system in which people are used as balls in a shell game while their asylum cases are pending. This never should have happened in the first place.
Illegal immigrants are not illegal because they want to be. The issue is with the legalization process, which we’ve touched on already.
The solution to millions of people breaking the law is not to get rid of the law. Reform the process? Absolutely. But the government saying “We don’t care that you broke the law” for years got us to where we are now. Once our systems aren’t under such severe strain any longer, then we can make clearer decisions about who to let in.
The links I provided have more information [about concentration camps]. We’re talking about millions of people. I’m certainly against Obama’s cages, it’s completely draconic at the very least if not fascist in some respect.
We certainly should make the facilities humane, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. People aren’t being put there to be worked to death or exterminated. It isn’t fascist any more than normal prisons are.
Yes, and the way to do that is through legalization, not deportation.
Legalization wouldn’t necessarily end their systematic abuse. It would, however, encourage illicit employers to continue seeking new immigrant employees and disregard citizens in the process. That’s not good for anyone other than the people running these businesses.
the tax burden is closer to $3.3 to 15.6 billion, over a magnitude less than the revenue they help provide. The sources I provided previously go into that.
That Cato Institute study you linked is from 2017. Even granting it as-is, sanctuary cities like New York are still struggling to care for asylum seekers taking their word seriously. NYC was left spending $4.24 billion to care for asylum seekers compared to the $3.16 billion the Biden administration awarded to homeless programs across the country. Why is one city spending more on a problem that Biden created than Biden is on a problem that’s existed for decades? It’s likely that the impact of immigration and asylum seeking falls somewhere between the Cato Institute’s numbers and FAIR’s.
Even within the polls where deportations have majority support, in the same poll, there is much more support for legalization. That contradiction is due to the Biden admin having no counter message against the right-wing framing of the issue since the Dreamers under the Obama campaign
It doesn’t help that the Biden admin is unpopular in general, as is the media that’s been running its cover for the last four years. Even if the admin had a response, barely anyone would have listened. As far as I’m concerned, they deserved to lose that trust.
- Comment on "Border Czar" Tom Homan unveils new deportation plan 6 days ago:
Here’s a huge problem with the immigration debate in the US: illegal immigrants are being conflated with legal immigrants in almost every argument in favor of enabling illegal immigrants.
The only difference between legal and illegal immigrants are paperwork.
Would you say the same thing about people who drive with or without driver’s licenses? Or practice medicine with or without board certification?
There is nothing wrong with people seeking asylum. That is not ‘abusing the system’.
The Biden Administration invited people to flood to the country under a revised asylum system that’s created a six year long backlog of asylum cases. There is no reason that refugees from every other nation on earth should go to the US specifically or during this time period other than the President throwing open the doors to them.
They are not ‘bringing in crime’ or ‘abusing social services’. They are responsible for less crime per capita than US citizens and contribute far more to social programs than they take out.
Are legal immigrants making these contributions, or are illegal immigrants doing so? And if asylum seekers are contributing so much to local economies, then why is NYC sounding the alarm on how costly the current system is to the city? They’re slated to spend $12 billion on the problem over the next three years. Furthermore, Congress has found the current policies have cost over $150 billion, with some estimates going as high as $400 billion. We can’t sustain that kind of spending. Also, illegal immigrants categorically do bring in crime, by immigrating illegally.
The only problem with immigration is that illegal immigrants are exploited with a two-tier immigration system.
I agree that we should stop using illegal immigrants as a slave caste. That starts by enforcing the law and treating people who employ illegal immigrants as criminals themselves. But giving amnesty to everyone who breaks the law only incentivizes people to continue breaking the law. Thus, their illicit employees need to be removed, at least for the time being.
Not only would mass deportations result in concentration camps, which is overtly fascist,
Define “concentration camp.” They aren’t being rounded up to do forced labor and be executed like in Nazi Germany. Also, is Obama a fascist?
they would also cripple the US economy by removing that pool of over-exploited labor from US businesses.
An economy that would be crippled if slavery was abolished deserves to be crippled. These jobs should go to legal immigrants and citizens.
Denying asylum and mass deportations come from a white nativist sentiment.
I don’t care about “white nativism.” I care about the law, our ability to sustain ourselves as a nation, and with limiting security concerns related to bringing in millions of people whose identities can barely be verified at all. None of this has to do with the color of anyone’s skin.
Nor are mass deportations due to public opinion, legalizing illegal immigrants is far more popular than deportation.
The issue isn’t completely cut and dry. Even among people do support legalizing illegal immigrants, almost everyone insists on a background check and over half would require them to have a job.
- Comment on "Border Czar" Tom Homan unveils new deportation plan 6 days ago:
There are a huge number of illegal immigrants and people abusing the asylum system. Deporting most of them is the only solution; we’ve given enough amnesty over the years.
- Comment on "Border Czar" Tom Homan unveils new deportation plan 1 week ago:
How is enforcing a completely reasonable law ethnic cleansing? Do you not believe in borders?
- Comment on I transitioned to become a boy. Now I'm suing those who encouraged me 2 weeks ago:
This article poses the question explicitly, and here is another woman suing her healthcare providers for using this argument. The query
“Would you rather have a living” “or a dead”
has hundreds of results on Google and the article mentions people saying this to her family. - Comment on I transitioned to become a boy. Now I'm suing those who encouraged me 2 weeks ago:
Most trans kids are suicidal or practicing self harm already which is exactly why doctors say this.
No doctor will ever tell you this unless your kid is at risk of self harm or death, already.
First off, it isn’t just doctors who say this. People on the streets or on social media shout down friends and family with hostage situation language like this. This also sets up vulnerable people to say it to those who disagree with it, or even worse, reframes suicide as an acceptable response if their friends and family argue against the treatment.
Second, someone should never tell someone else, “you are going to kill yourself unless you do what I tell you.” This goes double when the other person is already in a vulnerable state, and quadruple when the person saying this is in a position of authority. People often kill themselves because they believe there are no other options, and telling them that only cements the “no way out” problem in their minds.
Third, we often tell people who are suicidal not to seek out permanent solutions to temporary problems - like committing suicide because of current mental troubles or life problems. Telling an at-risk individual to get medications and surgeries that irreversibly change their body is a clear-cut case of a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The woman in the article is so distraught by her double masectomy she felt pressured to get that she’s now suing the people who convinced her to go through with it. Even if this only happens to a minority of people, we shouldn’t accept situations like this as “acceptable losses” or anything of the sort.
Fourth, if someone is at serious risk of ending their life, they should be in the emergency room, not arguing over medical procedures with their parents. That’s an extremely volatile situation and hanging the threat over parents’ heads of finding their child’s corpse is a severely wrong approach.
Would you tell someone with severe depression “you will kill yourself if you don’t take SSRIs and get X surgery”? Would you say the same about stimulants to someone with ADHD? Or about antipsychotics to people with bipolar or schizophrenia? Is it acceptable for someone to threaten suicide to maintain a romantic/friendly relationship with someone who doesn’t want it anymore?
- Comment on CNBC Shock Poll: 73% of Americans Now Support Militarizing the Border 2 weeks ago:
It seems like we’re more or less in agreement on the first point. There’s just too much money in keeping the status quo right now. I’ll leave it at that.
I am a bit dubious of several of your claims
Here’s a few sources for you. The sources for migrant aid are specific to New York City.
- The backlog of asylum cases is over six years long.
- The migrant influx is so severe that NYC has declared a state of emergency.
- Migrants are being given prepaid debit cards and placed in hotels at the city’s expense.
- The city temporarily shut down a school to use it as a migrant shelter. Given the severity of the storm they mentioned, I can understand their need, but there are plenty of vacant commercial properties they could have used instead.
- Migrants are given food stamps.
- Migrants are given low-cost insurance regardless of their legal status.
- Migrant children are placed in public schools.
- The city has housed more migrants than homeless New Yorkers.
- Partly as a result of the migrant influx, there is a much higher budget deficit in NYC than before.
I don’t think the county should import so many people who will become such a burden on our welfare infrastructure when we’re already struggling to take care of our own people.
What’s the fastest way to get rid of illegal immigrants? Making them citizens.
That may be true. Granting it though, is it the best approach? Sure, I believe some leniency should be given to people who have been here for years, like those who were brought here as children and have since grown up. But like the current asylum system, that could create precedent for migrants to enter the country illicitly and get forgiveness easier than they could have gotten permission. Expanding visas and streamlining the process for green cards and citizenship is on the table for sure. But in my opinion, applicants should have to wait in their home countries before entering, and stricter scrutiny should be applied to asylum cases.
Getting a massive influx of people all at once would certainly cause disruptions (though, again, at least as many as mass deportations), but getting tons of new taxpayers who buy into the whole system makes a lot more sense to me than using them as cheap labor.
That makes more sense to me as well, but we already have that influx and it’s already causing problems throughout the country. If we start giving blanket amnesty, then this will encourage others to do the same later down the line. It isn’t sustainable.
I can sort of agree that Americans are being harmed, insofar as government services are being strained, but the fix there is to strengthen said systems so they operate efficiently
There’s only so much that increased efficiency can do with a spike like this. It’s severely dysfunctional at this point, not only because of the influx but also because of the poor allocation of government resources. I’d love for everyone to get the help they need, but we have a huge problem even without the migrant crisis.
- Comment on I transitioned to become a boy. Now I'm suing those who encouraged me 2 weeks ago:
I think this is an extremely important question. Trans people’s suffering is no doubt real, but dilemmas are posed by medical professionals and activists like “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?” These set up emotional and medical hostage situations with immense pressure on patients to begin treatment they may not have wanted and parents to go along with it.
The medical industry has a great incentive to do this because it creates a pipeline for people to become lifetime customers for medications and other therapies. We already know that, in the US, dialysis centers game the Medicare system by giving less effective treatments because they have a captive market and make more money with this approach. People who go through transitions will need medical treatments for the rest of their lives, both to primarily maintain their new bodies and to deal with the side effects of their primary therapies. Again, a captive market, but this time created through inappropriate emotional pressure.
It’s a sad situation. People who question their gender identity absolutely should be taken seriously and helped through their struggles, just like anyone else with significant physical, mental, or emotional challenges. The threat to their mental health is important. But is telling these patients that they will commit suicide if they don’t begin gender-affirming care the best approach? Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? I hope we can explore the topic more.
- Comment on CNBC Shock Poll: 73% of Americans Now Support Militarizing the Border 2 weeks ago:
It isn’t, but it’s one of the systemic issues that makes illegal immigration as prevalent as it is. If the law against employing illegal immigrants was strictly enforced, there would be little incentive to continue using them. Then there would be less incentive to illegally immigrate (no job opportunities so no money getting sent back to family, for example).
To your point, a larger problem to the average person is the resources that are spent on them, and on asylum seekers whose treatment was changed significantly under Biden. There’s now a six-year wait time before an asylum case can be heard in court, and as long as they applied for it before they entered the country, they’re allowed to stay that whole time. Major cities have been swamped with migrants as a result of not just this policy, but also the governor of Texas bussing them to sanctuary cities. They’ve been given priority treatment in these places instead of homeless citizens who need help just as much as them - schools have been closed and students shifted to online learning to house migrants, for example. Migrants are given financial aid in the form of food stamps or even prepaid debit cards. On top of that, their children are placed in American schools and given healthcare. I strongly doubt that the government is making more money on sales tax from migrants than it is spending on their welfare. This isn’t an indictment of the migrants themselves needing help, it’s just a criticism of where our elected officials place their priorities.
I support reforming the legal immigration process. I have numerous friends from foreign countries who have a great interest in moving here, but because of things like the H1b lottery system, it’s next to impossible even if you’re highly qualified. Still, that’s no excuse for opening the doors to people who sidestep that whole affair and get more assistance from the government than legal immigrants do.
The American people are being harmed by the massive influx of migrants. The longer this goes on, the worse it will get. Should a country put the needs of its own citizens before other countries’, or the other way around?
- Comment on CNBC Shock Poll: 73% of Americans Now Support Militarizing the Border 2 weeks ago:
A big problem, from what I can tell, is that there’s a massive backlog of asylum cases and the asylum seekers are allowed to remain in the country until they’re tried. The estimated wait time at this point is 6 years. Meanwhile, the various legal processes for permanent residence are years long and they have a million strings attached. Some of the legal routes don’t even allow you to be in the country until you’re approved. That’s one of the reasons Hispanic voters turned out for Trump - they felt as though people taking this backdoor route were cheating the system and giving them a bad name.
I can understand a grace period for people who have already been here for some time, but we’ve already given incredible amnesty. How many more times will we push out the deadline, as it were?
- Comment on CNBC Shock Poll: 73% of Americans Now Support Militarizing the Border 2 weeks ago:
The problem is that the agricultural industry basically has a slave caste as its backbone. There will be no lasting solution as long as that’s true. Dismantling that system was good for America back in the 1800s, and it would be good if it happened again today.
- Comment on CNBC Shock Poll: 73% of Americans Now Support Militarizing the Border 2 weeks ago:
My mistake, I’ll edit the comment. The figure is 6 in 10 registered voters. Numbers vary depending on how it’s phrased.
- Comment on CNBC Shock Poll: 73% of Americans Now Support Militarizing the Border 2 weeks ago:
Nearly 3/4 of Americans support deporting all illegal immigrants. After the reform of the asylum process, people are pretty angry.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 3 weeks ago:
I’d love to see insurance companies get taken down a notch, but what you’re saying isn’t nearly as simple as you think. People regularly get tens of thousands of dollars into debt for lifesaving care, even with insurance. Those without it can go hundreds of thousands or even millions in the hole - I’ve personally known people in that situation. I certainly agree that hospitals are partly to blame, but the whole healthcare system is built around insurance paying most of the cost. This never would have happened if insurance didn’t exist. It’s a captive market. The only way doctors, hospitals, and pharmacists would unite in not accepting insurance was if all insurance companies disappeared. There’s just too much money on the table otherwise.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 3 weeks ago:
Very true. There’s some benefit where the business can get a “package deal” of sorts which makes it cheaper than buying individual policies, but it’s still a shell game.
- Comment on Why can't someone create a public alternative to health insurance in the USA? 3 weeks ago:
Insurance companies make money by indirectly extorting customers, be they individuals or businesses, through pricing schemes with healthcare providers. The American healthcare system is designed and priced around people having insurance, as you’ve noticed. This leads to insanely high bills for what should be simple things. An ambulance ride often costs over $1,000 without insurance, for example. In a nutshell, they’ve created a system where they are both the problem and the solution. Why don’t they start behaving more ethically? Well, from a money standpoint, why would you become less corrupt when you can collect more money by being corrupt?
Changing insurance providers, or even just certain coverage choices, isn’t easy. We have what are called “enrollment periods” in the US when you can do this, and the only other times are under major life changes such as marriage or having a child. As another user noted, most people get insurance through their employer. The company (usually) pays the lion’s share of the premiums; otherwise, the plans would be completely out of reach to employees. My plan would be four times as expensive to me if I was paying for it out of pocket.
As a result, starting something like what you want on a national level would be extraordinarily expensive, hard to compete with established players, and likely legally troublesome. Don’t get me wrong, we need reform pretty badly, but those reasons are why it hasn’t really taken off.
- Comment on “This is Not the Time for Balance”: LA Times Columnist Resigns in Protest . . . Over Balanced Commentary 3 weeks ago:
Readers are fleeing to new media after papers like the L.A. Times and the Washington Post literally wrote off half of the country.
They instigated their political opponents (and bystanders) to hate their guts and are now shocked to find people hate them. Now the Left is caught in a downward spiral of more and more deranged rhetoric that alienates those who haven’t drank the kool-aid and blaming them for it. The situation is a “five alarm fire” by their own design.
In other words, leopard, meet face.
- Comment on Taylor Lorenz Says 'We Want These Executives Dead' Hours After Health Insurance CEO Murdered 4 weeks ago:
You are, but redditors are so strong a stereotype that you have just about every other site gunning against them. Even other redditors hate redditors.
- Comment on Taylor Lorenz Says 'We Want These Executives Dead' Hours After Health Insurance CEO Murdered 4 weeks ago:
Given the levels of alarm that were being raised by the media and politicians across the aisle, I doubt people were too apathic to vote. It’s hard to feel like that when every person on your screens tells you that Trump is a fascist threat to democracy. It’s more likely that so many people sat out because they didn’t like the direction that both parties were taking. Less “I don’t care,” more “I can’t support either side.”