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Geraldo Rivera vs Bill O'Reilly
It's inevitable. Any political debate in the United States eventually boils down to two positions. Each political party will proclaim its monopoly on the truth and its minions will fight the real battles 'on the ground.' Ignorant buffoons will yap about something they know nothing about and act on their stupidity. Some become criminals (or illegal immigrant lovers) and others become paramilitary pawns (Minutemen buddies). Eventually, everyone chooses a side (or a side is chosen for them) with the unfortunate side effect of making the problem worse.
Take for example last year's Fox News catfight between Geraldo Rivera and Bill O'Reilly. It all started with the tragic story of a young girl losing her life because of a drunk driver. O'Reilly covered the incident because the driver was an illegal alien and asked the resident Hispanic for an opinion. In comes Geraldo Rivera with his passionate bravado disagreeing with Bill from the start and stopping short of calling him a xenophobe (or racist moron). The video of the exchange landed on YouTube, driving me to analyze a few of the comments with my attentive reader, you.
'Notice how the Hispanic Jew uses his chicanery to obscure the issue,' said an astute viewer. What we have here is the good old fashioned chicanery argument. It has been used by many to describe Jews, Hispanics, Gypsies, and trolls. It usually helps to demonize the group and eventually discredit anything they say because everything is full of trickery and formal logic. It sure worked with the trolls, they never really bounced back. This kind of comment helps us reach a middle ground and moves along our search for a reasonable solution to the problem at hand... not! (like Borat would say).
'If you want to know exactly why the US economy is failing then look to all the banks who give illegal aliens car and home loans. These people have no intention of paying these loans off and in most cases drive the cars back into Mexico as an act of thievery,' commented another informed viewer. I don't know from which dumbass economist he got his numbers but this sure sounds like a scapegoat argument. It's like blaming the new kid in high school for the principal's decision to cancel prom because of persistent and rampant drug use on school property by students and staff. That's just bad logic. You might as well blame the building or the drug, as long as it's anyone but yourself.
Angry O'Reilly
Nothing compares to Bill O'Reilly's points in the segment. He represents the crown jewels of scapegoat-ism, faulty logic and downright bigotry. 'Americans have a right to protection from irresponsible people. That's why the government was created,' the great Papa-Bear (as Stephen Colbert calls him) said in his show before the exchange with Geraldo. In his reasoning, our government has failed to protect us because the guy wasn't deported earlier. The fact that he had more than one drunk driving conviction was irrelevant. He was dangerously illegal. If he was a hillbilly from New York City like O'Reilly, his story wouldn't have mattered and Mr. Ramos would be free to drive through a wall drunk and coked up. He could get his DWI in peace and be represented by a TV lawyer (even if he killed a busload of cute and innocent children).
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Angry Rivera
Rooting for Geraldo Rivera was hard, but it happened. He started with a perfectly logical argument: 'I think that we are talking about drunk driving, and there were 347 drunk-driving fatalities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the year 2005. I think this might be the first drunk-driving story we've done from Virginia. And the only reason its news on the Factor is because the driver was an illegal alien, what if his name was Bubba? What if his name was Buddy?' By the time O'Reilly started to scream, 'he doesn't have a right to be in this country!' and just after he babbled 'you want open border anarchy,' I feared for poor Geraldo's life. The daring Hispanic-Jew used the proverbial allusion to history and eventually said it was a sin to use the tragedy as a cheap political trick. I would call it disgusting and horrible, but we'll go for sin this time. Eventually they all bowed to the Fair and Balanced god of Fox News and pretty much nothing was accomplished. Bill said his viewers would agree with him and Geraldo said his viewers would agree with him.
The video, my dear friends, exemplifies the dumbed down, irrationally emotional debate in America. One debater becomes an angry whiner that doesn't love America while the other becomes a Nazi loving racist. In real life such an exchange would turn to violence and the tensions would grow worse. The whites blame the browns, the browns blame the blacks, the blacks blame the whites, the whites blame the yellows, the greens arrive, and oh no, it's hard to keep track of all the hate! Eventually the problem becomes so pervasive that we either deal with it when it's too late or begin to see it as commonplace. We never solve the problem and everything goes to hell in a hand basket.
The bottom line is that nothing changes and everything only gets worse. That puts me somewhere between the ass that doesn't love America and the illegal alien. If the America you're talking about hates immigrants and wants to close borders, then maybe I don't really love it. I grew up with the Ellis Island Stories and the cute Disney cartoon with the immigrant mouse. I want that America back, not the child labor America or the segregation America, but the land of opportunity America open to everyone. Did we already forget?
Comments
Geraldo Rivera is corrupt, and in bed with the same corporate interests that demand a return to the days of slavery. He represents exploiting illegal aliens, selling them out for profit. The US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, the historic enemies of even the minimum wage, workplace and environmental protections are the big financial backers of the illegal aliens/open borders promotion scam. If you care so damn much about "poor Hispanics" from south of the border, or anywhere, why do you pretend that this is about nothing more than exploiting those people to drag down wages and create economic instablity by moving the profit up to the wealthiest? Here's a hint for you, the reason Latin America has been historically impoverished and corrupt, has been because it's been run along the lines that the illegal alien lobby, including LA RAZA, MALDEF and LULAC, all on the payroll of the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, have been advocating. So, you rationales are only about one thing, ensuring that the wealthy governments of Latin America NEVER have to raise wages or increase opportunity for their people. They demand that same status quo be imposed here in the US, and thereby ensure that things will never change in their own countries. The illegal aliens here, because they are racist and the xenophobic ones, who somehow believe they are bettering their lot in life, by helping to destroy the lives of citizen workers, will ultimately wake up to the fact that they have been used by their own home governments, and the corporate elite. Because these illegals are too greedy and ignorant to question their one hatred, and coruption, they have sacrificed any chance they had, for a decent, improved future. They will be slaves to a system they helped create, one that couldn't have come about without their idiocy. "Yes they can", reduce themselves to slaves, "yes they can" continue their cultural practices of destroying everything they come into contact with, because they are incapable of thinking beyond what lies beneath their noses. There is a declining pool of jobs in the US, there is a severe, long term unemployment problem in the US, more than one million citizens lost their jobs here in the last year alone. There is NO worker shortage, no lack of skilled and unskilled workers here. Dr. George Borjas, the son of immigrants himself, a world respected economist, who works at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard has proven that not only is there NOT a worker/skills shortage in the US, but that illegal aliens HAVE dragged down the wages of citizens, and lead to the massive displacement of citizen workers. These are after all the descendents of the Spanish who created the trans-Atlantic slave trade, after committing the genocide against the indigenous people, who pretend they are the mythical "Latino", because they wish to deny their culpability to slavery and genocide, and they believe they can pretend to be indigenous. This truly indigenous woman knows her people's history, and is against illegal aliens, and open borders. She has friends who are black, brown and white, who are democrats, like her, and who are also against illegal aliens and open borders.
Apparently, you bypassed my point. I don't love Geraldo Rivera, but in this case he started as the more sensible speaker. Your comment represents the very point I was trying to make. You passionately argue that I am in favor of illegal immigrants, that I want open border anarchy, using O'Reilly's words. Some of the points you mentioned are true and others are debatable. You should take a look at yourself and wonder: how much is my passionate response helping the immigration debate? Are you willing to take a point that Geraldo makes if it's sensible? Or one from O'Reilly? Or are you going to dismiss everything they say because they are corporate whores (pardon the language, but its true!).
Your interpretation of Latin American history is arguable. You got a few things flat out wrong. Spain, like England, France, and Portugal, raped and destroyed the societies that lived in the Americas. However, Trans-Atlantic slavery started (1440) and was monopolized (to 1640) by the Portuguese for two hundred years. Spain preferred to use natives (until they started to die off) but eventually started in 1502 with a small number of slaves. In 1510 the country began the systematic transportation of slaves after Christopher Columbus' son complained they didn't have enough workers.
I want to go back to one of your points:
"Here's a hint for you, the reason Latin America has been historically impoverished and corrupt, has been because it's been run along the lines that the illegal alien lobby, including LA RAZA, MALDEF and LULAC, all on the payroll of the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, have been advocating."
That's the most misleading point you made. You leave out the historic and proven intervention of the US in Latin America. If Europe is responsible for Africa's poverty, the US is responsible for Latin America's woes. Our government has killed democratically elected presidents, financially supported dictators, quietly profited from their instability and destroyed the region's potential since 1846. The US went to wars out of greed and profited to the expense of their south-of-the-border-neighbors. All of the useless organizations you mentioned didn't exist back then. La Raza started in 1973, LULAC started in 1929, MALDEC started in 1968, and the US Chamber of Commerce was established in 1912.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt in one thing: illegal immigration affects wages and it's detrimental to the job market. That's why there's a need for an immigration reform. We need to show immigrants a legal way to enter the country that is fair and unbiased. We need to take them out of the shadows and crack down on employers that hire them for less than minimum wage.
In your dumbed down immigration debate, I'm the ass that hates America and the illegal immigrant lover. Again... helping nobody reach a solution. Just making us both angrier.
i dissagree with the statment of illegals not paying back th eloans of a car or a house,why do you think they got the house in tghe first place? to live in it and make a home and obviousely they are going to pay back since they are inform about the policies,and driving their cars to mexico?eventually they are going to find them so what the point in taking it to mexico?
Sorry, but Hispanic revisionist history is a lie. Spain controlled virtually ALL of the lands now referred to as Latin America, and at it’s time of conquest, a good portion of what is now the southeastern US. Starting approximately prior to the 1500s, Spain started importing for sale what would total 8.5 million African slaves.
While Portugal held territories in Africa, and Spain no doubt would have had to trade with Portuguese slave traders in some instances, you can’t sweep it under the rug that it was Spain who invented, profited from and controlled the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was only much later that Portugal controlled what is now referred to Brazil, and imported slaves there, but the rest of those lands south of the border, all the way up to Mexico. Into Florida, and island colonies like Puerto Rico and Cuba, were Spanish colonies, run by Spanish governors and other authorities, for their profit and that of the Spanish crown.
The indigenous populations died off because the Spanish invaders slaughtered them, in their quest to steal the gold, and other resources, and the native peoples realized what the Spanish were up to and started to fight back. There were very few actual indigenous peoples left, and so the Spanish crown, upon the suggestion of some Spanish aristocrats (one of which was an ancestor of Hispanic American US Senator Ken Salazar (D), the reason for his family’s large land grant in what is now called Colorado), authorized the creation of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. To sell slaves to mine the gold, work sugar and other plantations in the Spanish controlled New World.
As an indigenous person, I know my people’s history, and while the English, the Dutch and French had an unsavory history of mistreatment of my people, the Spanish were markedly worse. The Spanish invaders outright slaughtered and worked to death the indigenous, in the name of gold. They came deliberately in search of riches, with the intent of enslaving and exploiting innocent human beings. While the English and others did commit what were atrocities, it wasn’t on the scale or to the extent of what the Spanish perpetuated. What’s more, Latin American countries refused to outlawing slavery, and had to be forced to do so much later than the US did. To this day, the descendents of those African slaves, speak about how they continue to be exploited and marginalized, that outright racism and oppression are pandemic.. And racist stereotypes are promoted by Latin American governments. And even worse, while the US admits to it’s history, and has sought to make strides to bring about change, Latin American governments, and it’s people not only deny their history, they lie about it. The use vague and misleading terms to disguise it. Like you, they infer that the indigenous peoples just died off, some claim they just disappeared. Latin American textbooks claim that they lived in “peace and justice” with the native peoples, when the truth is more on par with what the Nazi’s did. Latin Americans in fact try to pretend that they are majority indigenous, or of mixed background of Spanish and indigenous, when it’s plain to see that they are not.
There are relatively few indigenous peoples left in Latin America, and as any person of indigenous (to America) background can tell, Hispanic features, bone structure, even hair is very distinguishable from the native peoples of this hemisphere.
You try to blame the US government for the political and economic climate in Latin America. While it’s true that some US government officials (both good and bad) have entered into bad alliances with corrupt Latin American governments and movements (on both the far right, and far left), they didn’t create or appoint those officials or movements, or the parties or movements that brought them to power. Some formed these alliances against the communism that took root in Latin America, because of the corrupt Hispanic governments, and the fear of that nightmarish dogma impacting the US. Others due because they were convinced that far right wing governments were acting abusively to their own people, and also presented that threat to our own country. I don’t excuse that involvement, but again, those bad Latin American governments, movements and the people of Latin America created those governments/movements, etc.. or are you pretending that all was sunshine and rainbows until the bad US got involved? Perhaps you need to hide behind those lies, but the rest of us aren’t buying into it. Latin America is rife with these problems because the culture is a corrupt one. I have Hispanic American friends who have stated as much and more. I know a young woman whose parents emigrated legally from Columbia, who actually took on a far leftist professor at her college, who tried to pull the same mythologizing you are, and she ultimately forced the professor to apologize for lying and exploiting her people’s history.
Just as your people rationalized the genocide against the indigenous peoples, you rationalize the same corrupt practice here and now. Rather than ethically demanding that Latin American governments, especially the wealthy Mexico, raise wages, and increase opportunities for it’s peoples, you excuse the displacement, and impoverishment of working poor American citizens, by illegals. You excuse their willingness to collude with the US Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, in fact your LA RAZA, MALDEF and LULAC, taking millions of dollars from those organizations, so they can essentially sell illegal aliens into slavery in the US, and the illegals think they are profiting and reducing American citizens into slavery, again, ignorance and racism seems to be woven into the Hispanic DNA. I guess it’s a cultural thing with you?
America, for all it’s bad moments in history is a good and generous country, millions of Americans have paid taxes that helped the poor in Latin America and other countries, and millions of Americans jobs were sent to Mexico, what has Mexico or other Latin American countries done for the people of the world? Slavery, illegal drugs and violent criminals isn’t much of a legacy. Clean up your own house instead of seeking to perpetuate more of your cultural legacy, because no one (other than those who are corrupt) believe or excuse your lies.
BTW, Geraldo is a liar, and he has a lousy reputation in the US. He's been caught faking reporting, and even abusing and harassing the victims of hurricane Katrina. He's a corporate tool. I can only say that "his panic" would be not getting the millions of dollars he is paid to lie.
Are you saying that everyone in the world has the right to live in USA?
What would the Mexican illegal immigrants think if everyone from a poor African country comes here and get their jobs with much less salary?
I really don't understand the mindset of those who want open border. Any civilized country has control of their border.
We need controlled immigration like any other countries.
Are you saying that everyone in the world has the right to live in USA?
What would the Mexican illegal immigrants think if everyone from a poor African country comes here and get their jobs with much less salary?
I really don't understand the mindset of those who want open border. Any civilized country has control of their border.
We need controlled immigration like any other countries.
i think the majority of people posting here are descendants of immigrants.
what would the usa be if the government had denied entry to migrants back in the day?
you probably wouldn't be typing angry comments if that were the case.
Another cop was killed in Phoenix, thanks to an illegal alien driving drunk. 6 out of the last 8 police officers killed in Phoenix came from actions by illegal aliens.
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