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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Funnily enough, I was just thinking someone should bring that up.
Anyway, as far as ICE is concerned, I think the only way to proceed is under the assumption that no relevant laws will be passed. Therefore, either there’s some law that’s already established that the people who will be in the position to do something will know what to do with, or executive orders or the like will have to be put into action.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Nov 17th 2020 at 4:28:52 AM
My musician pageI've adjusted the header post.
Anyway, Charles, we are all as outraged as you are. That's not the point. Outrage alone doesn't get us anywhere. We need a plan of action that is workable and in keeping with our own values. We can't become the monsters we oppose.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Speaking of Biden doing things, Biden is making good on his plan to make the Climate Crisis a part of every aspect of government.
"From the Pentagon to the General Services Administration, President-elect Joe Biden has embedded climate-minded officials throughout his sprawling transition team.
Climate experts, former Obama administration officials and green activists abound among the teams managing the transition for EPA; the Energy, Interior and Agriculture departments; and the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Unlike past transitions, officials with significant climate or clean energy experience also pop up in departments like State, Defense, Treasury and Justice."
Or you can copy a page from the Republican playbook and sabotage ICE by appointing no one or saboteurs to its leadership and middle management and negotiating budget cuts in Congress.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The problem there is that those tactics are great if you want to purposely make the government inefficient to complain about it, but not so great if you actually want to put an end to what’s going on.
There’s a lot that can be done with executive orders here (family separation, for example, as that’s a matter of policy and not law) but a proper reform package is going to have to come from the legislative branch. Our immigration laws need a top-to-bottom reexamination, and hopefully the past 4 years have given us the momentum to do that.
They should have sent a poet.So, are you expecting that to happen? Because even assuming we win both Georgia seats, the senate is still going to be caught in filibuster and therefore mostly useless.
My musician pageUnfortunately not. See, that's the problem. Electing Biden is only half of the victory. It stops the bleeding, but the Senate is the key to healing the wound.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah, I have strong feelings on the matter, but they’d be thumped for doomsaying, so I’ll just leave with all the points already made.
My musician pageWell, this is where the people who held out because of someone being "not progressive enough" or "too progressive" have to step up. The GOP is unified in its awfulness; Democrats have to be unified in upholding standards of decency.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"No, we probably won’t take the senate. No, that’s not a cause for doom and gloom. Biden can start the project, but its completion requires a whole lot more effort. This is why it’s so unfortunate that people seem to have interpreted Trump’s defeat as the “end of the movie” here.
There’s a lot of work left to do. In fact, there will be work to do forever. Democracy doesn’t have an endpoint.
That particular bit of common wisdom isn’t actually true, as it turns out. Republicans work day and night at their agenda, and they’re counting on our apathy and infighting.
Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 17th 2020 at 2:12:33 AM
They should have sent a poet.![]()
I don't mean that it takes less work to achieve a bad agenda than a good one, but rather that it's so much simpler to embrace one's negative impulses - which we all have - than it is to strive to be better.
It's a platitude, perhaps, but one that strikes me as true here.
Edited by Perseus on Nov 17th 2020 at 9:16:57 PM
If it really was easier to just be greedy and self interested the republicians would have gotten a hell of a lot more done then they did.
They controled all 3 branches of goverment, they had no one there to stall them really, and for all the shit they managed to so they STILL failed at there big ticket items, and people keep overlooking that.
They didnt get the monument to racisim built, they didn't manage to destroy the ACHA just to name two... two huge items that they ran there entire 2016 campaign on, and spent no small amount of effort trying to accomplish.
The reality is much more simple, government isnt a magical overnight solution to your problem, regardless of which side of the isle your on.
The problem is that Republicans aren't just greedy and self-interested, they are incompetent. Like truly, mind-numbingly, pants-shittingly stupid in almost every area. This is not a coincidence: it's an inevitable consequence of their philosophy of rejecting science, fact, and rationality in almost every aspect of their politics. People who are scientifically minded, rational, interested in facts are either turned off or kicked out.
This leaves three classes of people to headline the party: grifters - the ones in it for the scam who have no interest besides self-enrichment, toadies - people riding the coattails of power for self-aggrandizement, and fundies - true believers who are only competent at ignoring reality.
The GOP actively excludes competence in its leadership. People like Rudy Giuliani aren't exceptions; they are the rule.
Of course, it doesn't say much in Democrats' favor that we have to struggle this hard to win even though our opponents have handicapped themselves by performing self-lobotomies.
Edited by Fighteer on Nov 17th 2020 at 5:31:06 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"On the subject of Giuliani and incompetence:
Giuliani Is Said to Seek $20,000 a Day Payment for Trump Legal Work Last week, the president put the former New York mayor in charge of the court challenges to his loss in the election. Since then they have suffered nothing but setbacks
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us/politics/giuliani-trump-election-pay.html
I wonder what caused Guiliani to fall from grace as New York City's former mayor. He used to be popular after 9/11 happened. Was he always hiding something from us behind his back or did he genuinely change for the worse?
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The GOP only really encourages competence in one thing: winning elections through any means. If that means appealing to nationalism, materialism, anti-intellectualism, or whatever other ism you can name, so be it.
The GOP gets by on appealing to emotions.
Edited by M84 on Nov 17th 2020 at 6:42:01 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedAP News is reporting that ranked-choice-voting (and other electoral + campaign finance reforms) will narrowly pass in Alaska.
I read an interesting explanation on why RCV was doing better in Maine and Alaska than Massachusetts. Both states often have independent or third party candidates on the ballot and multiple elections in recent memory have been decided by a plurality, so people have seen the downsides of FPTP.
Yes, I know the trope doesn't cover that sort of thing, but you get the gist.
Edited by ScubaWolf on Nov 17th 2020 at 5:44:09 AM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"

Also, Republicans can get mad at anything. Have you met them? Remember, the cruelty is the point. Ripping children from mothers is the point. They regard Hispanic immigrants as subhuman and want to terrorize them into staying home.
Edited by Fighteer on Nov 17th 2020 at 4:24:47 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"