Archive for 2020

IT’S ALL HOW YOU LOOK AT IT: Three different left-leaning media outlets reporting on the same year-end ICE report show that the Washington Post beats the competition at coming up with dramatic sounding but ultimately misleading headlines.

ICE Arrests and Deportations Drop Sharply in 2020, Largely Due to the Pandemic—CBS News.

US Immigration Arrests Down 27% in 2020—A Trend Activists Hope Biden Will Continue—Reuters.

Deportations of Migrant Families Spiked in 2020—Washington Post.

The “spike” that the Washington Post points to is actually good news no matter what one’s views on immigration law enforcement: ICE has entered into an agreement with Central American countries that allows it to verify quickly where illegal entrants are from, thus allowing for quick repatriation without the need for an extensive stay at an immigration detention center.  One has to read well into the article before one learns that deportations are way down.

The original headline for Washington Post might have been something like “ICE Deportation Decline,” since that is what’s on the URL, but the “spike” headline is what’s there now.

OPEN THREAD: Merry Christmas Eve.

A TRULY JOYOUS RENDITION OF IN EXCELSIS DEO: A beautiful and stirring performance by more than 1,000 participants. It was first performed in 2014 and is well-worth repeating in 2020:

VICTORY IN BRITAIN: Brexiteers, we did it! “We have achieved something that no other member state of the European Union has ever managed to do: that is, we didn’t only express our democratic opposition to the EU oligarchy – many member states have done that – but we also managed to defend that democratic opposition from the inevitable elitist onslaught against it. All other European peoples who have voted against EU constitutions or treaties or austerity packages – the French, the Dutch, the Irish, the Greeks – have eventually been defeated. They were either just ignored or forced to vote again until they gave the ‘right’ answer. Britain is the first nation in the history of this anti-democratic, anti-working-class, neoliberal oligarchy to resolutely see its democratic wishes through to the end.”

Related: Farage on the Deal: “The War is Over.”

As the establishment hissy-fits over Brexit and over the 2016 election illustrate, our political/journalistic/academic class fundamentally doesn’t believe that it should have to accept an electoral defeat.

And even in the United States, where they’ve supposedly won, they don’t seem happy: