Welcome to Thursday, December 11, 2025, with 14 shopping days left until Koynezaa (note: an alternative spelling is “Coynezaa”). It’s National Noodle Ring Day. What the deuce is that? AI describes it, correctly as ” a retro, elegant baked pasta casserole dish, popular from the mid-1900s, which is formed in a ring mold or Bundt pan and typically filled with a creamed mixture of meat, seafood, or vegetables.” I was alive in the fifties, but don’t remember it (but I do remember lime green Jello-O salads with marshmallows and artificial whipped cream). Here’s a woman making a noodle ring. Perhaps you should bring one to a holiday dinner, if you’re so invited, as it will make you the hit of the party.
It’s also International Mountain Day, and National Have a Bagel Day. So, first is a photo of the famous mountains at the Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia (taken 2019)
And a handmade, chewy bagel, boiled in water with honey and then baked over a wood fire, from Montreal’s famous Fairmount Bagel Shop (2016). I had it with a schmear. Montreal is one of the last refuges of the endangered Genuine Bagel:
Posting will be light until Koynezaa, I fear. I am reading several books for friends who want a blurb, and have a bunch of other scheduled things to do. I will keep up Hili and, as long as readers send in photos, the Readers’ Wildlife feature. I also have some science posts if anybody cares.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 11 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Breaking nooz: the U.S. captured and impounded a Venezuelan oil tanker. We’re apparently keeping the oil:
The United States seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, a dramatic escalation in President Trump’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela.
Speaking at the White House before an event on a new luxury visa program, Mr. Trump announced the operation and said it was “a large tanker, very large,” adding, without elaboration, that “other things are happening.”
When asked about the ship’s oil, Mr. Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.” He declined to say who owned the tanker. “It was seized for a very good reason,” he added.
Three U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a law enforcement operation, said the ship was carrying Venezuelan oil. They said there was no resistance from the crew and no casualties.
*In another sign that the Republicans are slipping, Miami has just elected its first Democratic mayor in three decades.
Eileen Higgins became the first Democrat to win the Miami mayoral office in around three decades, defeating a Republican opponent backed by President Trump and delivering her party another jolt of momentum ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The mayor’s race was the latest to draw national attention in the wake of recent gubernatorial and other elections in which Democrats won or outperformed expectations. Though the Miami mayor’s powers are limited and the contest was officially nonpartisan, the race became infused with broader issues over affordability and Trump administration policies on immigration and the economy.
Higgins led Republican Emilio González 59% to 41% on Tuesday night, according to preliminary results from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Office. The race was a runoff between the top two vote-getters in the Nov. 4 election.
Higgins, a 61-year-old former Miami-Dade County commissioner, is set to become the first female mayor of Miami. She campaigned on a platform of building more affordable housing, improving transportation and restoring trust in a contentious and scandal-plagued City Hall.
. . . Though she and González, a former Miami city manager, sought to highlight local concerns in the race, it quickly became nationalized. Trump and other high-profile Republicans such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed González, and GOP organizers held a “Keep Miami Red” rally at Versailles, a Cuban restaurant. Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee mounted a get-out-the-vote effort to support Higgins, and party figures such as former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel campaigned with her.
The race became in part a referendum on the national parties and on Trump and his agenda. Higgins criticized Trump’s immigration policies, which have had far-reaching effects in Miami, a city with a significant immigrant population. Democrats sought to tie González to the president, urging in one mailer for voters to “Send a clear message: Trump’s endorsement will be rejected in Miami!”
It was. Unless Trump does something about inflation, and gets his minions in line, the Republican party will lose the House, and perhaps even the Senate in the midterms. In fact, Trump doesn’t have to do anything, for his minions like Hegseth and RFK Jr. are screwing up the administration for him. The downside is that even if the Republicans take Congress, Trump can issue executive orders for three more years and also veto any legislation that Congress passes—with a veto that will stick. On the other hand, on the rare occasion he proposes legislation, it would likely be rejected.
*I’ve always maintained that any immigrant to the U.S. is entitled to due process if the government is trying to deport them. So I’m glad to see that the law is increasingly demanding this kind of due process.
Since September, when the mandatory detention policy took effect, judges have ruled overwhelmingly in favor of immigrants challenging the change, ordering the administration in case after case to hold immigration bond hearings for detainees or release them, according to a Washington Post review of hundreds of court cases.
In a decision that could have sweeping implications for thousands of detainees, U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes of the Central District of California ruled on Nov. 26 that the administration’s policy is unlawful and said the government must provide noncitizens across the country a chance to seek their release on bond.
She also granted class-action status to all migrants subject to the administration’s mandatory detention policy. The administration is likely to appeal, but immigration attorneys inMassachusetts and western Washington have secured similar class-action standing for detainees in their regions.
Those rulings are significant because the Supreme Court ruled in June that lower-court judges have exceeded their authority in issuing injunctions that ban the U.S. government from enacting policies across the country. However, the justices left open the door for judges to award nationwide injunctions in class-action cases.
Once an immigrant is in the U.S., even if they entered illegally, they deserve a hearing. The only way to get around this is to simply not let people into the U.S. without a valid reason, which is usually fear of political or personal retribution in their home country. And every immigrant knows how to make such a claim. But that’s irrelevant to the issue of deporting people once they’re here. And in that case, due process should be the watchword.
*I had no idea that there have been survivors of U.S. boat strikes before two weeks ago, but there were, and the U.S.’s policy in dealing with them is ridiculous, designed to keep U.S. courts from ruling on the legality of the boat strikes themselves (article archived here). The important bit I’ve put in bold:
The Pentagon was in a bind. The military had plucked two survivors from the Caribbean Sea in mid-October after striking a boat that U.S. officials said was carrying drugs, and it needed to figure out what to do with them.
On a call with counterparts at the State Department, Pentagon lawyers floated an idea. They asked whether the two survivors could be put into a notorious prison in El Salvador to which the Trump administration had sent hundreds of Venezuelan deportees, three officials said.
The State Department lawyers were stunned, one official said, and rejected the idea. The survivors ended up being repatriated to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador.
A little under two weeks later, on Oct. 29, Pentagon officials convened another session about boat strike survivors, a video conference involving dozens of American diplomats from across the Western Hemisphere. The message was that any rescued survivors should be sent back to their home countries or to a third country, said three other officials, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Behind that policy was a quieter goal: to ensure survivors did not end up in the U.S. judicial system, where court cases could force the administration to show evidence justifying President Trump’s military campaign in the region.
The previously unreported calls demonstrate the haphazard and sometimes tense nature of the process within the Trump administration to weigh what to do with the survivors of U.S. attacks on boats that the military asserts — without presenting evidence — are drug-smuggling vessels posing an immediate threat to Americans.
One would of course think that the President would WANT to have evidence to murder people in boats, but of course this is not a normal President. I’ll be curious to see if there are any survivors in the future. After all, the Pentagon could simply have a quiet policy of killing everyone on board at the time, rather than coming back half an hour later, seeing if anybody survived, and then killing them.
*The NYT has an interview and profile of Kamala Harris (archived here) that shows her still not having a coherent program, more interested in selling her book than in repackaging herself for another election, and not impressing her colleagues. Read for yourself, and then look at the National Review‘s take: “Kamala Harris’s vapid interview leaves even the Times asking what she stands for.”
From the NYT:
“It’s three years from nooooow,” the former vice president pleaded in an interview last month, sitting in a leather chair backstage at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville before one of the final stops on her nationwide book tour. “I mean, honestly.”
Ms. Harris is busy selling books — a lot of them. She is not yet selling herself.
Old advisers, both allied and estranged, have squinted from afar at her book tour, wondering what exactly her strategy is, or if there is any at all. She has done little to distance herself from former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. besides admitting aloud that it was “recklessness” on her part not to have discouraged him from running again. There has been virtually none of the strategic repackaging that a future candidate typically does, the buffing out of flaws and shining up of strengths.
.. . . She has mostly been a bystander in the Democratic Party’s raging debate over its direction. Should Democrats veer to the left or center? More populism? More progressivism? Both? Neither? What exactly should the party stand
. . . .This portrait of the former vice president at a pivot point was reported through interviews with more than two dozen current and past advisers and others close to her, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly.
. . .Behind the scenes, Ms. Harris has been re-engaging.
Her team has formed a political action committee called Fight for the People, and she has reached a deal with the Democratic National Committee to pay roughly $7 million for her email list, two people briefed on the arrangement said. A first payment has been made. She plans to ramp up her political activity in 2026.
The elevator pitch of Ms. Harris’s ideology remains as elusive as ever.
In public and in private, she has been exploring issues of trust, misinformation, social media, community and artificial intelligence. She is particularly obsessed with young people and their growing disillusionment, which she shares.
“For now, I don’t want to go back in the system,” she told Stephen Colbert in her first interview about her book. “I think it’s broken.”
And from the National Review:
Harris sat down for an interview with the New York Times, and the result is one of the odder profiles of a once and potentially future presidential candidate you’ll ever read. Clearly, Harris agreed to do the interview, but she seemed to have put little or no thought into what she wanted to say. And we’re talking about basic open-ended questions, like, “Where should the Democratic Party go from here?”
She has mostly been a bystander in the Democratic Party’s raging debate over its direction. Should Democrats veer to the left or center? More populism? More progressivism? Both? Neither? What exactly should the party stand for?
“This sounds really corny,” she said in the wide-ranging interview with The New York Times in Nashville. “But we have to stand for the people. And I know that that sounds corny. I know that. But I mean it. I mean it.”
“Stand for the people.” Thank goodness she’s here to give the Democrats such groundbreaking, insightful, specific ideas!
. . .You can almost sense the frustration of Times national political correspondent Shane Goldmacher, as Harris apparently agreed to the interview, but didn’t want to say much of anything:
Lawyerly language remains her safe space, and she still defaults to acting as if every question is part of a deposition where answers can and will be used against her. . . .
Yet people aren’t just showing up for her. They’re paying to see her.
“Thousands of people are coming to hear my voice. Thousands and thousands,” she said. “Every place we’ve gone has been sold out.”
The question is what she wants to say. . . .
If Ms. Harris were to run again, it is almost anyone’s guess what the campaign would be about.
It goes on, but the point is clear in both reports, at least to me. Harris is neither savvy, thoughtful, nor eloquent. She would be a terrible candidate for the Democrats to run for President. And her political accomplishment are almost nil. I still can’t believe that so many Democrats said that her nomination brought them “joy” because she was so “brat.” We have to do better than that!
*The NYT reports that “nuisance beavers” in Utah are being moved by “beaver believers” to other parts of the West to produce needed wetlands.
The beaver who would one day be named June was simply doing what beavers do. But her dams, built around her lodge in Utah’s Bear River Mountains, ran afoul of a rancher. He said the flooding caused his sheep to get stuck in the mud.
That landed the furry engineer in the unfortunate category of “nuisance beaver.” In most places around the country, she would have been killed. Instead, she was enlisted: strategically relocated and released in an effort to restore degraded streams elsewhere in the state.
Beavers possess a singular drive to slow flowing water and create ponds, with skills to match. Across the West, the animals are increasingly valued for their ability to keep water on the drying landscape. Their dams reduce runoff, recharge groundwater, build habitat for fish and other wildlife, help streams recover critical sediment and create watering holes. As wildfires intensify, beavers are more important than ever.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the room becomes a metaphor for life:
Hili: Everything has changed in this room.
Andrzej: Everything has changed in our lives.”
In Polish:
Hili: Wszystko się zmieniło w tym pokoju.
Ja: Wszystko się zmieniło w naszym życiu.
*******************
From The English Language Police II. Is it a joke? I don’t think so. . .
From Stacy:
From The Dodo Pet:
A tweet from Masih; another Iranian woman punished for singing publicly and on social media. She won’t bow to the regime’s demands, so she may be headed to prison. Here’s the translation:
This young female singer in the 21st century is experiencing something that has only one name: apartheid against women. Because she is a woman, they eliminate her voice, and male singers continue to take the stage. This woman told the entire Iranian nation that they gave her 24 hours to delete her posts related to her singing and stop her activities. But she stood firm and said, I stand behind my people, and I will not accept this bullying, and the Islamic Republic shut down her page. Once again, let’s all together ask the Iranian male singers if they are willing to stand behind these female singers and say #WithoutWomenNever
این زن خواننده جوان در قرن ۲۱ چیزی را تجربه میکند که فقط یک نام دارد، آپارتاید علیه زنان.
به خاطر زن بودن صدایش را حذف میکنند و مردان خواننده همچنان روی استیج میروند. این زن به همه ملت ایران گفت، که به او هشداد دادند ۲۴ ساعت وقت دارد پست های مربوط به آواز خواندنش را پاک کند… https://t.co/oHbexdHwlJ pic.twitter.com/6QSfyzZWbu— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 10, 2025
From Luana. Apparently this ritual is widespread, but we don’t do it at Chicago:
Cal State Professor Melina Abdullah begins every class with a land acknowledgment (apparently performed as a kind of spiritual exercise).
Students should not be required to participate in this kind of thing. pic.twitter.com/6yKvz7jNVo
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) December 9, 2025
From Barry, who says, “Why would anyone want this creature in the house?” You got me, pal; I wouldn’t!
just watched a few dozen videos from the TikTok account of the people who own a caracal cat which very clearly should not be a pet and wants to kill them (every video is like this)
— Rodger Sherman (@rodger.bsky.social) 2025-12-09T02:41:15.022Z
From Malcolm; a hungry and persistent cat:
When hunger hits and the kitty tries to grab attention.
[📹 kotpersik2021]pic.twitter.com/GgAC4M1KTS
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 21, 2025
One from my feed. LOOK AT THIS THING!
Meet the Pelican eel: a deep sea predator with a mouth bigger than its body and a glowing tail to lure prey in the dark ocean.
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 9, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
A 41-year old Czech Jewish woman was murdered in the camp. Today was her birthday.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-11T11:54:20.040Z
. . . aaaaand two from Professor Emeritus Cobb. First a thread which is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a riddle:
Ok who wants a bizarre no stakes mystery to solve?I had to go to the hospital by ambulance this morning (heart stuff, am ok now.) A bunch of ambulance guys came into our living room to get me. And now we keepfindingtinyglassducksOn the floor.
— Jessica Ellis (@baddestmamajama.bsky.social) 2025-12-10T04:54:41.986Z
MORE!
GUYS THE DUCKS ARE ILLUMINATED
— Jessica Ellis (@baddestmamajama.bsky.social) 2025-12-10T07:08:56.809Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle. -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (11 Dec 1918-2008)
Re: that “land acknowledgment and call for reparations” ritual: if you’re taking a class called “Race, Activism, and Emotions”, I think you should absolutely expect that sort of thing. Better to avoid taking those types of classes completely, especially if you’re White.
Prof Abdullah’s compelled speech draws a perfect example of proselytizing a religion, an ideology, and the like as opposed to the academic study of such areas. No, Adrienne, in my dated naiveté, I expect better from our universities, but am coming to recognize how low the bar is set in reality.
Yes.
Land acknowledgements serve the esoteric magic of severing people from the land, creating demoralized vessels without a consciousness.
It wouldn’t really matter if the audience didn’t live there permanently or have family there. They are on the land as intruders.
The Navajo should start every meeting with an acknowledgment that they stole land from Hopi and Pueblo Indians. The invading Navajos arrived in Arizona and New Mexico only a century before Spaniards. Similar things could be said for many tribes.
Good point, Michael. Not to mention the Middle East. The acknowledgements would be so long as to preclude any content being taught: Canaanites, Israelites, persians, Romans, Muslims, crusading christians, muslims (again!), ottoman turks, great powers, etc, etc….
You forgot the Macedonians…..
,,, and the Egyptians (The New Kingdom), Damascan Syrians, Assyrians, Philistines and Babylonians! 🙂
It’s a game of musical chairs. Peoples swap chairs continually, but the person who happens to be in the chair just before the baddies show up (aka whites) is declared the winner, the only valid owner of the chair for all time, even if they’d only been in that chair for six seconds.
Yep. There are just so many. I was just thinking at first blush of the middle east over say 4,000 years and still missed a few! So I propose (tongue firmly planted in cheek) that we start all acknowledgement histories at the warming after the last ice-age, 18 – 25,000 years ago after Nature’s most recent human cleansing.
The Apache, the Comanche, and the Iroquois did a number on a bunch of other Native American tribes.
The Eastern Band of the Cherokee are opposing federal recognition of the Lumbee tribe. If memory serves me, the high-minded issue is distribution of federal funds.
Yes, I looked her up and apparently Cal State Professor Melina Abdullah is in the Pan-African Studies department. If this is the ritual which begins her “Race, Activism, and Emotions” class, then I’m relieved. As you say, it fits the theme. At least it’s not a math class – or any other course in any other subject. I really hope it’s not common.
Land acknowledgment aside, it reminded me of Kindergarten. It’s very juvenile.
It would be amusing to test the reaction if we played a comparable game. Suppose syllabuses/classes in real subjects began with a Life Acknowledgement:
a reminder that medicine/public health/civil engineering of mostly European origin reduced the frequency of childhood death from ~40% to <1% world-wide during the 20th century. [I wonder if the 40% of children who normally died before the rise of 20th century technology could be called “marginalized”. ]
As Reg from the People’s Front of Judea once said, “Alright but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
Call-and-response, compelled speech, etc. etc.
I expect that if this sort of abusive nonsense were tried in a math(s) class, the most polite response would be “prove it!”. I expect as an undergrad my response would have been considerably less polite.
A nice portrait of the Princess this morning with her lovely white fur. Yes, Andrzej, it has. I am so sorry.
I once tried making bagels at home, and while it took quite some time, it did work. The main difference between them and supermarket bagels was the crunchy crust on the outside.
PCC(E) : “LOOK AT THIS THING!”
Dutifully! I asked Grok ( using @grok ) if it was an actual real species of animal, and Grok replied :
[begin exchange ]:
@grok is this video clip showing a genuinely true animal in Nature or is it, you know,…
[Grok]:
Yes, the pelican eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides) is a real deep-sea fish. It inhabits depths up to 3,000 meters, with a jaw that expands like a pelican’s pouch to catch prey. The video appears to be genuine footage from ocean explorations, as confirmed by sources like WHOI and Science.org.
[ end ]
“I also have some science posts if anybody cares.” I care.
Me too.
Same here!
I DO care, thank you!
My cat and I care!
I originally came here for the science posts but got hooked on the mix of science and politics. I like both!
What a mad kitty! I think I’ll stick with my superannuated 15 year old dog next to me here…
)
)”I also have some science posts if anybody cares…”
)
Oh. People (or at least me…and many other commenters I note) DO read and enjoy the science articles here. Many of us don’t have a STEM background but are very interested in it (me: medicine and genetics particularly).
Of course, the culture war stuff is excellent also.
So keep up the good work! I read and enjoy every single day then circle back to be a loudmouth in the comments. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
When the “owner” tossed a bribe to their stalking “pet”, a plausible speech balloon would be “Feh! I’m after fresh meat.”
Do we know whether geckos express their emotions with facial expression similar to those of humans?
Wait. Geckos have emotions? I didn’t think anything went on inside their little lizard brains except EAT! SLEEP! HIDE! MAKE LITTLE GECKOS!
… I would add their ecological work in moderating their prey species populations and by doing so, supporting species diversity in a given area 😊
It’s nice to have a holiday so huge that it has multiple spellings—sort of like Hanukah, Hanukkah, of Chanukah (my fav).
Science posts? I do care!
And, it’s nice to see a happy gecko for a change.
I love the science posts but some are above me but I persevere and try to get it.
The noodle dish above reminds me of a Jewish dish I grew up with called “kugel.”
My grandmother made it way before the 40s and 50s.
It could be either sweet or savory. In Yiddish it’s called “Lokshen”. I love Yiddish words.
I remember Rebecca Goldstein using that word in a speech I heard online.
I’m always glad to hear animals like beavers aren’t destroyed but now valuable for something besides hideous fur coats if they still do that kind of destruction.
I guess we need to add Piracy on the High Seas to DJT’s resume?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96198796@N05/54978205725/in/dateposted-public/
I cannot see any way in which Trump’s latest outrage is not piracy.
Hostis humani generis.¹
. . . . .
¹ From Wikipedia:
(Latin for ‘an enemy of mankind’) is a legal term of art that originates in admiralty law. Before the adoption of public international law, pirates and slavers were generally held to be beyond legal protection and so could be dealt with by any nation, even one that had not been directly attacked.
Piracy is legally only carried out by private individuals operating from private vessels.
As far as legality, this ship is sketchy and has a history of doing sketchy stuff. Although flying the Guyanese flag, it is apparently stateless. This ship also has been using the sophisticated deception of transmitting false positions via AIS while actually loading in illegal ports.
So, a stateless vessel engaged in smuggling while sailing under a false flag.
The Venezuelan government (under Maduro) might get less sympathy from the public than Venezuelan gangs (Tren de Aragua) and that is saying a lot
Pirates are non-state actors, not part of the commissioned naval forces of a state. (If a privately owned ship has letters of marque from a sovereign, it is a privateer, not a pirate ship.) What the United States (not President Trump personally) is doing as a state actor is engaging in commerce raiding, which is an act of war [edit: against the vessel’s state h/t to Max], not the crime of piracy.
Re science posts: I do care and read every one of them. Not having a science background, I rarely feel comfortable commenting, but love that I learn interesting things on this site daily.
I think I will put my “me too” here that I, of course enjoy the science posts, but often don’t comment on life sciences because having no formal background in them, I have so little to offer…but learn so much from them. Of course I cannot keep my big mouth-shut on engineering and some physics and astronomy posts. Just wanted to make sure that I voted on this.
Me too (mutatis mutandis). Maybe an actual WEIT poll would be useful.
Ditto here. I read every post, and sometimes have to reread them a time or two.
I am not going to comment on a post where I have insufficient knowledge to add to the discussion. I do learn a lot from them, however.
Focusing on some vital info in today’s post (the glow-in-the-dark mini-ducks)(second only to Stay Away from that Caterpillar), the way to find them is to google “Luminous Mini Resin Ducks”. Hannukah? Christmas? Coynezaa?
I am mystified by the glass ducks too.
But searching for “Luminous Mini Resin Ducks” does bring large numbers of places to buy them so they’re definitely a thing.
Why they’re a thing I still don’t know.
Thx F.K. my friend.
I’m gonna get some. I need “cool gifts”.
best,
D.A.
NYC
That teacher’s aim is not to ‘educate’ students about emotions, but to elicit them.
I googled the course description of the “Race, Activism, and Emotions” class and AI evidently found multiple such classes:
It is apparent that creating social justice warriors has become an uncontroversial and legitimate purpose for ‘academic’ courses today. (I actually read a report by the NAS about this topic a while back: https://www.nas.org/reports/social-justice-education-in-america).
But what may be worse, to my mind, is that the classes have a gloss of educational purpose because they teach students to analyze real world events in light of the psuedo-‘scholarly’ theoretical frameworks of critical race theory and postcolonial studies.
The big fat problem is that these theories are unfalsifiable, since all evidence can be interpreted to confirm them. As a result, students become less competent to evaluate the real world rather than more so. And since the students’ beliefs are rendered immune from revision, their minds are forever closed afterwards.
Depressingly on point.
Regarding relocating the nuisance beavers: I wonder if they will drop them somewhere by parachute as they did in Idaho many years ago?
link text
(I’m messing up including the link, but I think clicking on the words ‘link text” takes you there.)
Regarding relocating the nuisance beavers: I wonder if they will drop them somewhere by parachute as they did in Idaho many years ago?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrOE-m7sX9E
I like the science posts, so I care.
Usually it’s not, though. Two-thirds of Green Cards are issued to relatives of US citizens or current Green Card holders where fear of persecution doesn’t enter into it.
Only 12% of LPRs were admitted for “retribution” reasons: as refugees (persons the US Government vetted from UN refugee camps abroad) or as asylees. The US admits only a few thousand UN refugees a year, so most of that 12% are asylees, the successful filtrate of two much larger groups:
The small fraction of asylum claims under both routes that are successful get Green Cards, going into the 12% of “humanitarian” LPRs. If the asylum claim is denied, the claimant becomes just another illegal alien and a whole new deportation process begins with a new set of bureaucrats, judges, and lawyers involved. But he’s still in the US. He was allowed in (or allowed to stay in) under a legal process for what turned out to be a false claim of persecution but now you can’t get rid of him because he’s become rooted in his diaspora.
(The economic category — people invited to immigrate along with their spouses and children because they have skills the government thinks are desirable — make up another 18% of LPRs, also larger than the persecution category.)
But zoom out: LPRs and pending asylum claimants are only a small fraction of the number of people legally “let in”. 75 million visitors enter the US every year, many not even needing visas. You don’t require that visitors or temporary workers claim to be fleeing persecution. Yet each one of those visitors is a potential illegal alien joining the ranks of those who might so claim someday. You will eventually have to figure out how to deport them under due process, if you can ever find them.
The takeaway is proven fear of persecution in the home countries makes up only a tiny proportion of the “valid reasons” to be lawfully “let in” to the US, permanently or otherwise. Indeed, most Americans who support “open borders” believe unrestrained immigration benefits the economy, promotes diversity, and ensures Democratic governments, not because they believe that any of these new workers and someday voters are fleeing persecution at all. If asylum claims make it hard to deport aliens when arrested, all to the good, but no one has to seriously believe them.
https://cis.org/Oped/America-has-more-foreign-residents-ever
This site might be too rightist for some tastes, but it jibes more or less with Wikipedia whose figures are out of date (2016!)
Yes Leslie – but you might be missing MOST Americans don’t see the legal categorization differentials well.
One advantage – and this has a wiff of our old – pre welfare immigration – is that if you let in people who have relatives and friends here…. those people are unlikely to be a “public charge”.
Interestingly this was before a “public charge” meant welfare as we know it.
This was an incentive before our current set-up.
best as always,
D.A.
NYC
I’m not objecting to chain immigration, not at all. (And if I was, so what? I’m a foreigner.) My point is just that the large majority of people “let in” to the US as permanent residents aren’t making a claim that they’re fleeing persecution. Rather, the substance of their claim is that they know someone and, yes, that might well be a good bet that, with social supports to help them get started, they’ll work productively and obey the law. Immigration is supposed to benefit the host country, not the persecuted.
There’s an adage, “Never admire a ‘survivor’ until you know what he did, and didn’t do, to survive”. Some people fleeing persecution were being persecuted for good reasons and will do their damnedest to be persecutors in their new lives. Diaspora politics. Ugh.
Kamala is not likely to be the Democratic nominee in 2028. There are many reasons. First and foremost, she lost in 2024. The Democrats don’t like losers. Second, party elites hate her (see point one). Three, she won’t have Biden to promote her. Fourth, her political skills are de minimis. She got exactly zero delegates back in 2019. Fifth, the Democrats have a long list (and it quite long) of better candidates to run in 2028. Six, a normal primary process will take place in 27/28. This will not help her (see point four). My guess is that G. Newsom will be the 2028 nominee, but point five still applies.
Her ‘interview’ with the NYT was just the latest nail in her coffin. Vance dreams of running against her. His dreams are not likely to turn into reality.
Let me add another one, Seven, she in tied in people’s minds to Biden. That may or may not be fair, but is quite true.
Sending people back to the countries that they are citizens of is not really a punishment. If I overstay my Visa while traveling, or enter some country without a visa, they send me home.
I have actually been through this once, in Thailand. I entered the south of the country during a military exercise, without any paperwork required. When the exercise was over, I stayed and did some tourist stuff there for a few weeks. When I got to the Bangkok airport to depart, the customs people found that I did not have an entry stamp, which I guess I was supposed to get down south. My penalty was that I had to stay in the international part of the terminal until my flight.
It was never a criminal proceeding, but an administrative one.
I strongly suspect that everyone being deported is carefully identified and their citizenship verified. We are a country with a bureaucracy that would make Stalin blanch. The people framing the latest “due process” message are the some people who want open borders. The idea is that it would take decades or centuries to put the millions of recent illegals through trials and hearings and multiple appeals, and almost every one of them would get to stay while this plays out.
It also seems that quite a few of these folks already have an order of deportation on them, which was never enforced. They seem to have had plenty of due process.
Agree with you mainly Max, but don’t discount how tech changes the game.
You say: “We are a country with a bureaucracy that would make Stalin blanch.”
Sorta. But the main changes have been in tech, not in governance.
And that’s good! With tech (standardized passports, ICAO, 2005-ish), data sharing etc are closer to “truth” about a person’s status.
100 years ago they’d have just “rounded up all the darkies”.
Otherwise correct IMHO.
best as always Max,
D.A.
NYC
The Federal law for expedited removal (no hearings needed) is 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1) and was enacted by Democrats. The Supreme Court has upheld the law.
I’d heard there’s a trend of leaving rubber ducks and mini ducks for friends or strangers to find. AI sez:
“Why are people putting little ducks everywhere?
People are leaving little ducks everywhere as a trend called “ducking” to spread joy, connect with others, and brighten someone’s day. This practice takes many forms, such as the “Jeep ducking” tradition of leaving ducks for other Jeep owners or online games where people find, keep, and re-hide ducks to create a fun, interactive scavenger hunt….
…[T]iny, often colorful ducks are left anonymously to make people smile, with variations including decorating them or leaving them on Disney cruises and in workplaces.
…The goal is to brighten someone’s day by leaving an unexpected, cute trinket for them to find.”
“Behind that policy was a quieter goal: to ensure survivors did not end up in the U.S. judicial system, where court cases could force the administration to show evidence justifying President Trump’s military campaign in the region.”
Ah, such refulgent American Values. No doubt the good Christian, Exceptional American, and honorable Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas considers this modus operandi no less “righteous” than the second lethal pass on the two temporarily surviving September sailors.