Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

Candidates for Mass Relocation

by BooMan
Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 11:22:36 AM EST

In the presidential primaries we have two candidates vying for the Adolf Eichmann Mass Relocation Award. For the Democrats, it is Joe Biden with his plan to partition Iraq into three pieces and physically separate the Sunnis and Shi'ites, Arabs and Kurds. Listening to Scranton Joey prattle on on the merits of that plan is the definition of the banality of evil. For the Republicans, the striver is Mike Huckabee.

In a major reversal, Mike Huckabee announced a new immigration plan that calls for the 11-12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States to leave the country in 120 days. Once back in their home countries they could then apply for legal entry to the country. While this may on the surface sound reasonable, given the numbers waiting to get into the country, it would be years before they could return, even if they wanted to. So no matter how they dress it up it is a call for the immediately expulsion of tens of millions of people living and working here in the United States each day.
No matter how you feel about the morality of the plan, or its practicality, it is amazing that the man who may win the GOP nomination is calling for the forced expulsion of 5 percent of the current American workforce. The economic and societal chaos these kinds of plans would create is almost unimaginable. After his reasonable approach to the issue in the last GOP debate, this new plan is yet more evidence of the incredible inability of today's GOP to put pragmatic progress before politics.

Huckabee's the new frontrunner folks. Our country is very ill.

Candidates for Mass Relocation | 9 comments (9 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 1)

Our country is very ill.

I'm not going to argue that, but I think this is instead a display of just how little foresight people have and how little thought they are willing to put into these things.

Both of these plans sound very logical on their face, at least to someone who agrees with the presumption that what they are 'solving' is indeed a problem that needs a solution.

It's the same thing with the 'liberation' of Iraq and the countless other issues of the day : people love the idea of a solution that comes gift wrapped all nice and tidy. No mess, no hassle.

The problem is that this is just not how things work in the real world. Nothing is that simple. Very few things have nice tidy solutions like that.

Compounding that problem is that our very electoral process is now set up such that only those kinds of simple and doomed to fail 'solutions' and the 30 second soundbites that go with them are politically viable. If any of the candidates were to offer real, workable solutions to anything they'd be looked upon as madmen.

Tengo un sueño.

by ejmw (ewitham (at) umich (dot) edu) on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 11:40:36 AM EST

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 1)

You have to think the Republicans in Iowa feel a vote for an evangelical minister is safe, because, being a minister, he would do the right thing.

It's the Christian thing to do.

There is no better example of "ignorance in action".

by mlhm5 on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 11:51:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 1)

If it would take us 6 months to get our 150,000 troops out of Iraq, how could we move 11 million people in 120 days?

The facial logic of his plan is not all that strong.

And what do we do with the people that do not cooperate? Obviously, they will require camps where they will be concentrated, pending disposition.

by BooMan on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 11:51:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 1)

That is what I am saying; people don't even think that deeply. They don't want to be concerned with such paltry details as the actual implementation of the plan.

They hear something that sounds good, think "Hey, that's a good idea" and that's that.

Marketing people all over the place have made their companies a ton of money by exploiting this.

Tengo un sueño.

by ejmw (ewitham (at) umich (dot) edu) on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 12:02:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 1)

Because it worked SO WELL for India and Pakistan...

And we're the big, bad parent who will send Sunni and Shia to their own rooms, and shout, "Stop your fighting, you bad boys!"

by judybrowni (judybrowni@usa.net) on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 03:50:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Imagine the consequences (none / 1)

Let me just suggest one consequence of that immoral and stupid recommendation: 12 million people live in at least 6 million rental units. (Most don't buy.) That puts 6 million empty homes out there, to crash what's left of the housing market.

I could go on and on, but it's so stupid it's not worth the electrons.

Michaela

by michaelmt (MrMichael_t@yahoo.com) on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 12:02:25 PM EST

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 1)

It's the ignorance, stupid.

Please God, don't make me think, it's Hard Work!

by Alice on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 12:13:38 PM EST

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 1)

the biggest thing wrong with Biden's plan, IMO, is that he makes this sound like a solution that we're going to impose on the Iraqis; imperial powers redraw the map as if it were 100 years ago.

it's not like he's the only one with this idea either; this insane neocon fantasy has a similarly partitioned Iraq as well as even more impossible map changes.

I think there's a fair chance Iraq will turn out that way; the ethnic cleansing is already happening. But the US can't make it go that way, nor prevent it.

The Four Horsemen of Bushism: War, Corruption, Hypocrisy and Greed

by esquimaux (esquimaux1 at gmail dot com) on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 12:30:23 PM EST

Re: Candidates for Mass Relocation (none / 0)

Look out Joey B. you're Manifest Destiny is showing-where we can just do whatever we want with other countries...or maybe I'm thinking White Man's Burden or hey why not git yourself over to I-rack and ask them how they feel about you're little plan for them.

As for Huckabee's 'plan', he's obviously even dumber than we thought and can't think his way out of the proverbial paper bag. Other people commenting here have made better points than I have-I'm just too disgusted to even point out the base stupidity of either 'plan'.

'Poverty is the worst form of violence'--Gandhi

by chocolate ink on Sat Dec 8th, 2007 at 04:56:24 PM EST

Candidates for Mass Relocation | 9 comments (9 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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