Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
That's a fair point.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
You'll be as shocked as I am to find out that the person actually responsible for keeping Guantanamo open is not Obama but the Evil Turtle.
Like reflections in the glass!
Kavanaugh has turned out to have other horrible sexual crimes to his name and Democrats are calling for his impeachment.
Hashtag Kavanaugh Lied
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 15th 2019 at 2:52:03 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
What a shock....
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
If she's not going to be President, Kamala Harris should be appointed a special prosecutor of all the Trump Administration after his removal.
Her one downside of being far too harsh on criminal activity would be a benefit there.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 15th 2019 at 2:54:45 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Keep in mind that this is talking about Obama's efforts to close Gitmo in 2016, so it doesn't give the full story.
This article from the New Yorker describes why he didn't do it during his two terms. Initially, they had an opportunity but chose against pursuing it because they were busy working on the ACA. And they had to deal with strong opposition from the Republicans and the Department of Defense, causing the Obama White House (with the exception of Hillary Clinton) to have a strong lack of interest in pushing forward on closing it.
So essentially it was initially understandable but became increasingly the product of an unwillingness to accept the political costs of closing it.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
I love Obama truly but my criticism of him amounts to the fact that he initially tried to build a coalition that wasted a good deal of time dealing with a racist, misogynist, hom....forget it, I can just say "dealing with the GOP." He also tried to play the adult in the room when he was dealing with people with no respect for the law like in the Supreme Court situation where it should have been shoved through.
Obama also didn't roll back the Presidential powers of the Bush administration or the government—perhaps for understandable reasonbs (i.e. what's above) but we're still dealing with the consequences thereof.
That meant Obama continued a lot of the Bush legacy, however, more competently handled.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 15th 2019 at 2:57:15 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
@Heap
And didn't most Republicans blocked or attempt to block policies/laws Obama wanted to pass?
Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
See, I don’t really think “fire them all” is necessary. Immigration enforcement is only a part of what ICE does. Do we really need to fire all the officers working in, say, the sex trafficking division just because they happened to work in the same agency as ERO?
What we’re realistically talking about here is some sort of formal inquest and maybe a name change.
Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 15th 2019 at 3:02:05 AM
They should have sent a poet.
With sympathy for Ramirez, I don't see any way Kavanaugh will be exiting the Supreme Court until his retirement. There was already a publicised allegation against him when he was confirmed, one more doesn't make a difference to most.
Life is unfair...
A procrastination in of itself
Gitmo in the end did provide a big issue, the people inside it were often innocent of any crime, so they couldn’t be jailed in the US, however they had also been radicalised after being tortured by the US, so setting them free would likely result in innocent deaths.
That’s a tough problem to find a solution to, when you take an innocent man and forge him into a terrorist can you justifiably set him free know what you’ve created?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
My hope is that democrats have a long memory, if the Dems win in 2020 and use that to enable free and fair elections going forward they could build themselves up to one day have two thirds of the senate, then impeachment can be done. Even if it takes 20+ years.
Edited by Silasw on Sep 15th 2019 at 10:06:45 AM
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
What we’re realistically talking about here is some sort of formal inquest and maybe a name change.
Sadly, the sex trafficker investigations have been (according to reports) very often reassigned to help with the kidnapping and so the vast majority of ICE have been involved in Trump's agenda because it's such a huge undertaking for it.
I think when the answer is, "Keep a man imprisoned for life for what he might do" then the answer is still, "Let him go."
I think the issue is his perjury.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 15th 2019 at 3:05:53 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
So Yang, a person who previously called "identity politics" divisive, is now defending bigotry?
What a shock, who could've possibly seen this coming...
Though I doubt it's hypocrisy from his perspective, after all, I doubt Asians are the minority he'd want to throw under the bus.
Maybe he'd choose trans people or black people, or maybe he'd surprise us.
Oh wait, I could and did.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 15th 2019 at 3:06:52 AM
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Foreign Troper
Yes. Yes you SHOULD set him free. Thats Minority Report-like thinking there dude.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
Evil Turtle's efforts go back a while longer.
Also, not same issue but regarding this:
This article from the New Yorker describes why he didn't do it during his two terms. Initially, they had an opportunity but chose against pursuing it because they were busy working on the ACA. And they had to deal with strong opposition from the Republicans and the Department of Defense, causing the Obama White House (with the exception of Hillary Clinton) to have a strong lack of interest in pushing forward on closing it.
Thanks for reminding me of the main reason why I don't like the idea of Medicare for All - it will eat up time needed for climate change legislation.
Edited by SeptimusHeap on Sep 15th 2019 at 12:13:29 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
A procrastination in of itself
I agree but one can see the difficult with the choice, who wants to be partly responsible for even more innocent lives being destroyed?
There was a way out, but it was so politically difficult that it was effectively impossible. Putting on independent (AKA The Hague) trial (and possibly executing) all US military personnel and CIA personnel who played a role in the torture regime might have been enough to de-radicalise the people radicalised by the US, combine that with giving them a cushy life they wouldn’t want to fuck up and you could avoid any more innocent blood being spilt.
But that request punishing US citizens who committed crimes against humanity, that was never going to happen.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Even with the reassignments that have been reported there’s still a significant amount of employees doing other things. ICE is an agency with 15-20,000 officers, it’s massive and does a lot of different things.
If they were reassigned to ERO and acted unethically while working there, fire them. Otherwise send them back to where they were before.
They should have sent a poet.
Speaking of the border patrol, ‘People Actively Hate Us’: Inside the Border Patrol’s Morale Crisis. But nevermind; while I take that the people complaining about low morale and frustration probably are not the same people as the ones posting racist and psychopathic rants on Facebook, there is no indication that anyone is considering that a mea culpa is appropriate.
Boo hoo, participants in kidnapping and concentration camps are sad.
Border Patrol isnt Imigrations Enforcement, most of the time they actualy do things like leave aide out for refugees.
When you have hiring surges with them however, problems begin to happen because most people have a HUGE misunderstanding on what boarder patrol actualy is (hint it's not shoot people trying to cross, it's trying to process them properly which most of the time involves bringing them into the us, doing the paperwork and letting them go)
Jhon Oliver actualy had a whole video on that, boarder patrol and there job isnt bad, recruitment surges without filtering them out are.
And demonizing the agencies is exactly what causes the issue, because when people think that the job of an agency is to hurt people, guess what kind of people start to seek employment there.
Edited by Imca on Sep 15th 2019 at 3:38:47 AM
Up until recently CBP barely dealt with migrants at all. Before 9/11 they used to search them for drugs and then direct them to a checkpoint, they really only concerned themselves with things like smuggling.
Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 15th 2019 at 3:39:07 AM
They should have sent a poet.
When you have hiring surges with them however, problems begin to happen because most people have a HUGE misunderstanding on what boarder patrol actualy is (hint it's not shoot people trying to cross, it's trying to process them properly which most of the time involves bringing them into the us, doing the paperwork and letting them go)
Jhon Oliver actualy had a whole video on that, boarder patrol and there job isnt bad, recruitment surges without filtering them out are.
And demonizing the agencies is exactly what causes the issue, because when people think that the job of an agency is to hurt people, guess what kind of people start to seek employment there.
The thing is that this is not an accident nor is it a misunderstanding. The current President of the United States has made the transformation of border security into an isolationist human rights violating detention center shitshow a top priority. It is what he wants from the Border Patrol and immigration.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Jupiterian Local
The reason some people are opposed to abolishing ICE is because it provides a necessary function. At the end of the day, someone needs to enforce immigration and customs laws, and since the reshuffling of federal agencies after 9/1, it's been ICE. The problem is not that ICE exists, the problem is that ICE is run by shitheads.
If you get rid of ICE, that means either replacing it with something largely identical in terms of purpose and authority, or else you revoke its status as an independent agency and everything it does gets rolled back into the Department of Homeland Security. Neither of these would prevent shitheads from putting immigrants in concentration camps if that's what the President ordered. So instead you get rid of the shitheads instead of getting rid of ICE.
The best argument in favor of abolishing ICE, imo, is the purely symbolic one. ICE's brand, as it were, is permanently tainted by this and the only way to purge the taint is to destroy ICE itself. Break it up and send its functions to different agencies — lord knows we've got plenty of them. (There's Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at minimum, for border and immigration related things.)
But there's certainly room for reasonable people to disagree on the issue.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
I think they’re reminding everyone that it’s not easy to wrestle the US government into shutting down a camp that stands as a national disgrace and an international violation of human rights.
Edited by Silasw on Sep 15th 2019 at 9:43:03 AM
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran