Two years before leaving office, President Obama is offering approximately 5 million illegal immigrants temporary legal status. But what happens if they come out of the shadows, and then the political climate changes due, for example, to a nativist Republican presidential administration?
Two More Years
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Ayy-yupp!! Which way to the Beerhall?
“nativist Republican” ??
I didn’t realize Cherokees & Navajos leaned to the right. Y’learn something new every day.
yeah, huh?
“EINWANDERUNG”? Love it, Ted! 😀
But,mein verehrter Lehrer , I think Ted missed a beat – shouldn’t that plaque on the desk rather have read «Herr Reichskanzler Obama» ?… 😉
Henri
Good point!
<> would have worked, too!
😀
I have no idea what happened!
That was supposed to say <> in my last post.
?????????
IT HAPPENED AGAIN!!!!
Let me try it this way: *DER FÃœHRER OBAMA* in the brackets (both posts).
That definitely would have been better…
@ Ted Rall –
Danke schön!
😀
@derleherer
angle brackets, like ‘>’ are part of HTML. They can confuse browsers and websites alike, and cause headaches to people who speak the language every day.
«angle brackets, like ‘>’ are part of HTML. » One of the things I’d like to see on Ted’s website is a little guide to which HTML codes, if any, work on the site. Can, for example, a poster enable a bold font or italics or underlining, by, as I do here, surrounding a word or phrase with the proper code ?…
Mein verehrter Lehrer, there are several alternatives for enabling guillemets («») ; my operating system (Linux Mint 17) allows me to produce these symbols simply, by holding the Alt Gr key down and pressing «Z» and «X», respectively. If, as I suspect, you are using a Windows OS, the procedure (as always with Windows), one has to hold the Alt key down and, on the numeric tangent board (with Num Lock enable). take 0171 or 0187, respectively….
Give it a whirl – good luck !…
Henri
@Henri –
That’s interesting, last time I tried bold on this site, it *didn’t* work. Italics always have.
Attempting
Strikethroughand small and big and bigger@CrazyH – hey, strikethrough worked, anyway. taz cool.
Links do too, I use ’em all the time. (<a href=”…)
Well, CrazyH, it looks as if the HTML codes for bold and underline, don’t work, while those for italics, strikethrough, and embedding URLs do. Odd choices, perhaps, but the important thing for us posters to Ted’s threads is knowledge aforehand…. 😉
Henri
Hey, Henri – your comment looks odd to me, because in your post above, bold did work, even though my previous experience says it doesn’t.
However, I recently switch browsers after getting annoyed with Firefox. (hang on a sec …
… okay, I’m back)
It doesn’t appear bold in Safari, it does in Chrome, doesn’t in Firefox or M$ Internet Exploiter.
Interesting bit – the site stripped the ‘small’ and ‘big’ tags from the generated HTML (that which gets published on the site) but the <b> tags came through just fine: even though it appears that they are not always honored by the browser.
This is why there’s a high suicide rate amongst web
devs…
@ mhenriday –
For me, it’s too much trouble to find and use the correct HTML code for the little I might need such.
I’m pretty good at «copy & paste», though! 🙂
CrazyH, I use FF Nightly as my default browser (on, as noted earlier, a box running (64-bit) Linux Mint 17). There, as noted above, the HTML codes for bold and underline don’t work. However, on Google Chrome (Version 41.0.2224.3 dev (64-bit)), I see that the code for bold – but not that for underline – does work, just as you found to be the case. Indeed, it also works in Opera – I have six other browsers open in Mint, Safari and Internet Explorer, however, are not among them, but haven’t bothered to check them all. Just goes to show how explicit one has to be when discussing what works and what doesn’t work on a given website !…
Hope Ted doesn’t decide to start charging us rent for using his website to carry out this discussion !… 😉
Henri
And now, mein verehrter Lehrer, you’ve also become an expert in using guillemets ! Not bad !… 😉
Henri
@ CrazyH –
Usually I employ the quotation marks, but I thought this time I would try mhenriday’s brackets. It didn’t work for me, so I’ll go back to quotation marks or asterisks Thanks for the hint, though.
Two more years? I wouldn’t bet on it. I think the Republicans will impeach him. I also think that there’s a pretty good chance he’ll just resign. I mean, going by the past six years, he doesn’t give a f___ anyway.
The House of Representatives might impeach him, but the Senate needs to convict to remove him from office. Do you think they want Joe Biden in the Oval Office? He would be up for re-election in that case. H-m-m-m-m?
Not quite. Yes, the Senate has to vote, but think about it. The midterm Senate elections were rather grim for the Democrats. They took no seats from Republicans. (Louisiana’s still up for grabs in a runoff.) The Republicans took eight seats. If they get Louisiana, it will be nine. That is extraordinary.
The big strategy of the Republicans? Obama’s been a big disappointment. He’s had one piece of legislation, and that’s practically stillborn.
The Democrats tried to distance themselves from him in 2014. They’ll do the same for 2016, especially if the Republicans keep the shitstorm blowing.
First, start up a show trial around Obamacare.
In the spring, start up the impeachment.
While all that’s going on, a Supreme Court justice will probably retire. Great. Those confirmations can be yet another show trial. The key is to constantly show the Dems on the defensive.
By the time the elections are really boiling, EVERYTHING will be about Obama. The candidates will be terrified because Obama will, judging by the past six years, just be sitting there like he’s high. And that’s when the Dems will start pulling away. The Republicans will demand an impeachment trial and the Democrats who are worried about being re-elected, will let it happen.
At that point, the result of an impeachment attempt will be irrelevant anyway. If impeached, Hillary will be tainted as part of his cabinet. If not impeached, it fractures the Democrats anyway.
The only possible downside for the Republicans? None really. So why not try it?
@Alex –
“So why not try it?”
Because it might work. That would be abso-freaking hilarious. The ACA is *working,* people are happy with it and if it suddenly disappeared a whole lotta folks would be unhappy. Especially those Kentuckians who love their state exchange while simultaneously hating Obamacare. I’m lovin’ watching this one unfold.
Impeach Obama? What the hell are they going to impeach him for?! Domestic spying? Illegal wars? Murder? They got him dead to rights on those, but gosh damn but their wunderkind did the same things. While the electorate might not remember, you can be a few legislators do. It might even get reported in the media.
I don’t actually think you’re wrong. And I do think that the majority of GOP congresscritters are stupid enough, I think that the GOP electorate is stupid enough, and I wouldn’t be surprised at seeing some grandstanding at the taxpayers’ expense. But I don’l think that Karl Rove, the Koch bros, or the Skull and Bones Society are stupid enough to let it actually happen.
But then, I’m not stupid enough to bet the farm on it, either. I’ll bet ya’ a beer, though. 😉
@alex_the_tired –
All that, and not a word about President Joe Biden?
I don’t think the GOP want THAT!!!
😀
CrazyH,
Yes. ACA is working. But if it disappears? The unhappy people will be the poor and powerless. The rich masters will have no trouble steering the conversation to what really imperils America: illegal aliens. It will be all the media talking heads read off the cue cards.
Obama’s impeachment? Pick an issue. Does not matter. Because the impeachment will be solely as a piece of theater to put the Dems on the defensive. Hillary is about as tainted as a piece of three-days-warm ham. She’ll get the nomination and she will lose the election.
Meanwhile, the impeachment will drag on and on. If Obama beats it, the Republicans can say, “Yeah, of course the Democrats helped him beat the law.” If he loses, well, that’s even better. But the outcome is the least crucial bit of the trial.
And Joe Biden? As president? Oh God. That right there will doom the election campaign for Hillary.
Hey Alex – I’m just armchair handicapping here, I likewise believe that it’s all theater at this point.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they held impeachment hearings – it would surprise me if they actually got the votes. It’s not outside the realm of possibility, though. Even with all the noise & fury over Clinton’s BJ, at the end of the day he wasn’t actually impeached.
Okay – I’ll bet you one beer on whether they actually impeach O’bummer (doesn’t count if the Senate acquits him.)
I’ll bet one beer on whether they go through with overturning the ACA. The poor & ignorant of the south do vote, and they’re the ones with the most to lose. Never forget that it is a Republican bill: taxpayers money winds up in insurance execs pockets, what’s not to like?
I figure Rove’s stumping for Hillary – it gives ’em someone to blame. It’s been working with O’shitferbrains, why change a winning strategy?
I’ll bet you ONE beer on Hillary’s election as well.
That’s three beers on the table – not so bad considering we’re really betting on the future of the human race. (cue dramatic organ music…)
Two years ? The buck – or was it the triangle, as in triangulation – stops here ?… US politics would be a hoot, were it not for the consequences it has for us in the rest of the world….
Henri