The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns

mtierney said:
 https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration

If apprehensions are up because we are dealing with increasing numbers of refugees fleeing terrible conditions in their home countries. They often turn themselves in as soon as they cross the border and ask for asylum.  

ml1 said:
and my objection to it is that it's clear that it's not reliable evidence by itself, and then you'd be subjecting truly eligible people to defending themselves against spurious allegations.  And in some cases, legitimate recipients might get their benefits taken away.
There seems to be an assumption that lots of people are scamming SS to receive disability payments.  But I don't know of any evidence that this is a widespread problem.  Certainly not enough evidence that we should be assigning bureaucrats the job of scanning for photos on Twitter or Instagram.

 Sure it't not reliable evidence by itself, but what evidence is?  Isn't this a relatively low cost step in the right direction?  Isn't it probably cheaper than whatever method is being used now?  For example social media monitoring could be used in conjunction with tip lines.  Right now if they receive a tip, they probably have to send a person to monitor the suspect for a certain amount of time.  Now with the advent of social media they could check the suspects FB before dispatching anyone.  Money saved.  

Also I think your example of the person playing with his kids in the yard is much less severe than what we're talking about.  I don't think we want to pass up a low cost method of catching the worst offenders for fear of troubling someone like your example.  

Red_Barchetta said:
 Sure it't not reliable evidence by itself, but what evidence is?  Isn't this a relatively low cost step in the right direction?  Isn't it probably cheaper than whatever method is being used now?  For example social media monitoring could be used in conjunction with tip lines.  Right now if they receive a tip, they probably have to send a person to monitor the suspect for a certain amount of time.  Now with the advent of social media they could check the suspects FB before dispatching anyone.  Money saved.  


Also I think your example of the person playing with his kids in the yard is much less severe than what we're talking about.  I don't think we want to pass up a low cost method of catching the worst offenders for fear of troubling someone like your example.  

 well there was a guy quoted in the article warning that a person on disability should avoid being seen doing something like throwing a Frisbee 

mtierney said:
 Well we all know your default position is!
Must get tiring — trump/church — answe to every issue!

 I am not against church, I am just against people who use churches as fronts to rape little kids. I'm not against Trumps, I am just against Trumps who use their power to sexually assault women. 

I would have expected that you would feel the same but, when it comes to your ethics, I have learned to expect disappointment.

I think there's nothing better than teaching our citizens to snitch on each other. It will make it so much easier once the revolution comes.

If we had built the Wall like our Dear Leader has demanded, this wouldn't have happened.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/agents-seize-77-million-cocaine-york-area-port-140930000.html

drummerboy said:
I think there's nothing better than teaching our citizens to snitch on each other. It will make it so much easier once the revolution comes.

 Juvenile response to a serious issue.

 Let’s make it more personal if getting SS or SS disability is not on your horizon. 

 How enraged would you be if someone stole your newspaper everyday? Took your parking space every single day? Someone who used your front sidewalk as pooping favorite spot for his dog? And this person was a neighbor who could not understand why you have a problem with this behavior. 

And, one day, you slipped and fell in dog poop, hurt your back, and now required disability. But, somehow, you couldn’t get it because too many others had falsely drain the funds.

With that neighbor of yours, I would guess he would be first in line to rip off the system!

Klinker said:

mtierney said:
 Well we all know your default position is!
Must get tiring — trump/church — answe to every issue!

 I am not against church, I am just against people who use churches as fronts to rape little kids. I'm not against Trumps, I am just against Trumps who use their power to sexually assault women. 
I would have expected that you would feel the same but, when it comes to your ethics, I have learned to expect disappointment.

Ethics?  I have yet to see a post where mtierney has supported the people you say you're against i.e. people who use churches as fronts to rape little kids use their power to sexually assault women.

lord_pabulum said:
Ethics?  I have yet to see a post where mtierney has supported the people you say you're against i.e. people who use churches as fronts to rape little kids use their power to sexually assault women.

 Well, then you just haven't been paying attention.  I would suggest a review of her posts on the Pope Francis thread. Clerical Rapists have no greater friend than mtierney.

Klinker said:

lord_pabulum said:
Ethics?  I have yet to see a post where mtierney has supported the people you say you're against i.e. people who use churches as fronts to rape little kids use their power to sexually assault women.

 Well, then you just haven't been paying attention.  I would suggest a review of her posts on the Pope Francis thread. Clerical Rapists have no greater friend than mtierney.

Evidently so. A concrete example when mtierney posted about Pell was to link to an article stating Pell may be innocent. Plus her many other postings show which way she swings.

mtierney said:

drummerboy said:
I think there's nothing better than teaching our citizens to snitch on each other. It will make it so much easier once the revolution comes.

 Juvenile response to a serious issue.
 Let’s make it more personal if getting SS or SS disability is not on your horizon. 
 How enraged would you be if someone stole your newspaper everyday? Took your parking space every single day? Someone who used your front sidewalk as pooping favorite spot for his dog?

Here we have an example of her twisted moral compass.

No rage for white, rich, powerful sexual predators. No rage against the legions of religious pedophiles or the organizations that protects them.

I have anger. My anger is against those stealing money from my and my child's pockets, in the many thousands. A massive Republican tax overhaul that primarily serves the 1% and corporations while giving the middle class crumbs. A ballooning deficit thanks to the overhaul. We we told it would pay for itself because it would so stimulate the economy. A lie.

Instead the middle class will pay back over the years with interest double or triple this debt. And we are now also told we need to cut entitlements, Medicare, Soc Sec, because of our national debt. But increase defense and homeland security.

So I have anger, of money being borrowed to feed the 1% and corporations which the working class will be paying for.

mtierney said:
 Juvenile response to a serious issue.
 Let’s make it more personal if getting SS or SS disability is not on your horizon. 
 How enraged would you be if someone stole your newspaper everyday? Took your parking space every single day? Someone who used your front sidewalk as pooping favorite spot for his dog? And this person was a neighbor who could not understand why you have a problem with this behavior. 
And, one day, you slipped and fell in dog poop, hurt your back, and now required disability. But, somehow, you couldn’t get it because too many others had falsely drain the funds.
With that neighbor of yours, I would guess he would be first in line to rip off the system!

a couple of points.  Do you even know how much fraud there is in the SS system?  I don't, although I suspect it isn't a huge amount because so many people are turned down in the first place.

Second, fraud should be investigated even if it's not that common.  But that's what administrators are for -- to administer the program and root out waste and fraud. It's not the job of citizens to rat out other citizens because they doubt they are disabled.  My father collected on a partial disability for most of his life due to an injury he incurred during the war.  To look at him you'd never have known he had a disability.  But his lungs had been badly damaged.  There are plenty of disabled people who don't "look" disabled.  Do we really need neighbors ratting those people out to the authorities?

db makes a great point about turning citizens into spies for the government and how it's a step toward authoritarianism.  Who is it that is likely to generate suspicion?   It's not likely to be "respectable", wealthy white guys.  It's immigrants, people of color and dissenters in general. 

The Stasi were especially good at turning citizens into civilian spies for the government.

so, libs and Dems tolerate pilfering, falsifying claims and cheating on taxes, etc?

The enforcers of Hitler’s insanity can not in any sense be compared to people who report the dishonesty and cheating of people — resulting in hurting other Americans adversely.

mtierney said:


The enforcers of Hitler’s insanity  

Did you mean Hitler or Twitler?  Goebbels or Gucklebee?  

The revival of fascism in the United States has made these allusions oh so much more complicated.

mtierney said:
blah, blah, blah, blah.......

 BTW, I am pleased, on a human level, to see that you have recovered enough to, yet again, defend the indefensible.

Welcome back.

I don't believe mtierney supports peados and rapists. It's lazy and ignorant to judge an individual by an association with a party one doesn't like.  I look at mtierney as a catalyst for some lively discussion in what would otherwise be a boring 'All Politics' echo chamber.  (Discussion, sans the personal attacks on an octogenarian with conservative beliefs by the self-righteous of course).

mtierney said:
so, libs and Dems tolerate pilfering, falsifying claims and cheating on taxes, etc?

 nice straw man.  Of course not.

Personally, I believe enforcement of such compliance is the job of the government unless a person is witness to blatant dishonesty.  It's not the job of busybodies with a hunch to inform on other citizens.

Klinker said:
 BTW, I am pleased, on a human level, to see that you have recovered enough to, yet again, defend the indefensible.
Welcome back.

 Still not in fighting shape, working with one finger of my left hand, but posting here keeps me from putting all focus on my itchy arm cast!,  

lord_pabulum said:
I don't believe mtierney supports peados and rapists. It's lazy and ignorant to judge an individual by an association with a party one doesn't like. 

It's not partisan at all.  Read the comments.  If the accused sex offender is a conservative or a Catholic, mtierney consistently blames the victim.  It's really quite remarkable and there are dozens of examples throughout these hundreds of pages of discussion.  I don't chalk it up to party affiliation, as much as what seems to be disdain for other women who aren't as "traditional" as she.

mtierney said:
 Seems to me that stopping fraud, even by spying on cheats via social media, is a good thing. What is the downside for Democrats?

 Here's what you and maybe everyone else misses.

It;s not spying on cheats. It's spying on everyone to catch cheats. 

If the Police could search everyone's house without  a Search Warrant based on Probable Cause they'd find a lot of criminals.

The "liberals" who wrote the Bill of Rights apparently believed that the right to privacy was more important than catching every single law breaker.

ml1 said:
 nice straw man.  Of course not.
Personally, I believe enforcement of such compliance is the job of the government unless a person is witness to blatant dishonesty.  It's not the job of busybodies with a hunch to inform on other citizens.

 Why do you believe only “busybodies with a hunch” step up to inform? 

 How about a nosy neighbor who calls police because he sees a man climbing into a second floor of your home, knows you are not home, and calls the cops? Turns out maybe that a teenage boyfriend of your daughter, lugging a six pack, was sneaking into her bedroom. Would you thank the neighbor, or curse him?

Maybe today’s breaking news about the college cheating scandal began with a leak by a frustrated parent over the blatant disgrace of the college admission process.

mtierney said:
 Why do you believe only “busybodies with a hunch” step up to inform? 
 How about a nosy neighbor who calls police because he sees a man climbing into a second floor of your home, knows you are not home, and calls the cops? Turns out maybe that a teenage boyfriend of your daughter, lugging a six pack, was sneaking into her bedroom. Would you thank the neighbor, or curse him?
Maybe today’s breaking news about the college cheating scandal began with a leak by a frustrated parent over the blatant disgrace of the college admission process.

another straw man.  I never said "only."  And I did say blatant dishonesty should be reported.  So a guy on a roof opening a window and going into a house is "blatant."  Overhearing your neighbor brag about scamming SS disability program would be blatant as well.

But snooping around to try and catch neighbors in a transgression? A different thing entirely.

ml1 said:
another straw man.  I never said "only."  And I did say blatant dishonesty should be reported.  So a guy on a roof opening a window and going into a house is "blatant."  Overhearing your neighbor brag about scamming SS disability program would be blatant as well.
But snooping around to try and catch neighbors in a transgression? A different thing entirely.

 It's certainly different from a CTV on every street monitoring everyone's comings and goings.

CCTV is one way to go as it video tapes scenes , but has no audio. So would not pick up the neighborhood big mouth. 

I grew up in the eras of “Loose Lips Sinks Ships” and If you see something, say something.

mtierney said:

Klinker said:
 BTW, I am pleased, on a human level, to see that you have recovered enough to, yet again, defend the indefensible.
Welcome back.

 Still not in fighting shape, working with one finger of my left hand, but posting here keeps me from putting all focus on my itchy arm cast!,  

Enough with the sympathy crap. When I get sick or stressed I don't whine about it to everyone, or to anyone actually.

If you want to pleasure is with your latest trials and tribulations go start a new threead where you can talk ad infinutum about all your diseases.

Actually, don't welcome back. You're a waste.

BG9, really?  How about looking at Klinker's post that you quoted, to get an idea how to strongly disagree with another human being/member of the "community" here?  IMO mtierney's response was perfectly in keeping with Klinker's backhanded "welcome," and not an instance of gratuitous complaining.

Someone is feeling her oats today!

Kellyanne Conway’s husband George was pulling no punches yesterday. I don’t think they’ll be having dinner with the Trumps any time soon. 

With the hashtag “#summacumliar” ——

“Have we ever seen this degree of brazen, pathological mendacity in American public life?”

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1105982777189695489?s=21

“But one lie on any subject is never enough for Donald Trump.  So he next tells a different lie. “

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1105986211720716294?s=21

“This man who recently gave a incoherent, rambling two-hour-plus speech, this man not known for economy of words? Another absurd, crazy lie.  Pathological.”

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1105986880548540422?s=21

“But these are just two of ... how many examples? Hundreds? Thousands?  Is it possible to count? At any level of government in this country, in any party, have we ever seen anything like this?  It’s beyond politics.  It’s nuts.  It’s a disorder.”

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1105988218032480256?s=21

And the topper ——

“Whether or not impeachment is in order, a serious inquiry needs to be made about this man’s condition of mind.”

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1105988372751892480?s=21

mjc said:
BG9, really?  How about looking at Klinker's post that you quoted, to get an idea how to strongly disagree with another human being/member of the "community" here?  IMO mtierney's response was perfectly in keeping with Klinker's backhanded "welcome," and not an instance of gratuitous complaining.

 appreciate your insight!

 Klinker and I have a looong and cantankerous online connection.His comments offend me consistently, but  I soldier on. It did not surprise me at all that Klinker understood me.

BG9,  OTOH, forgetaboutit!