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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Paul did filibuster the renewal of the PATRIOT ACT, specifically how drones are used under its provisions. He spent hours and hours railing against drones... and then, of course, no more than a day or two later he tried to quietly walk it all back and by talking about how he was perfectly fine with drones shooting up the streets of an American city to kill a guy who stole $50 from a liquor store.
As for Kasich, he's actually unusually kind and humane on gay issues. While he opposes same-sex marriage he has said that there's nothing to do but accept the court's ruling, he had gone to a same-sex wedding just before the 1st debate, and in that same debate said that while he'd disagree with the lifestyle is one of his daughters came out to him, he'd still love and accept her. Naturally, this got the more hardcore, fringe, members of the party and right wing pundits grumbling that he was a Republican In Name Only, despite having run his state of Ohio overwhelmingly according to the Republican playbook. (With all the usual downsides to that, including low job gains, less tax for the wealthy, more tax for the poor, private prisons, schools in tatters, etc.)
A copy of Kasich's comments from that debate mentioned above:
Well, look, I’m an old-fashioned person here, and I happen to believe in traditional marriage. But I’ve also said the court has ruled … and I said we’ll accept it. And guess what, I just went to the wedding of a friend of mine who happens to be gay. Because somebody doesn’t think the way I do doesn’t mean that I can’t care about them or I can’t love them. So, if one of my daughters happened to be that, of course I would love them, and I would accept them, because you know what, that’s what we’re taught when we have strong faith. Issues like that are planted to divide us. … We need to give everybody a chance, treat everybody with respect, and let them share in this great American dream that we have, Megyn, I’m going to love my daughters, I’m going to love them no matter what they do, because you know what? God gives me unconditional love, I’m going to give it to my family and my friends and the people around me.
And I'm very interested in seeing what happens from here with the Oregon situation, I'm going to be keeping an eye out for details as they become available.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |It cannot be overstated how big of a deal that is.
The logic here just doesn't make any sense to me. The average American is profiting off of lower prices and higher purchasing power. The average foreigner is profiting off of MUCH higher wages, as much as six times higher. The US economy is benefiting from the reinvestment and, in the case of outsourcing, cheaper labor. Literally the only people losing anything are a small subset of the middle class, and the hit they're taking is relatively tiny.
Not to mention, are your net assets worth around $700,000? Do you have a yearly income of more than $34,000? Congratulations, you are part of the 1%.
BTW, the obvious solution to that separate issue is wealth redistribution via high taxes on the wealthy (though their wealth relative to everyone else's is highly exaggerated). This works for the Nordics, along with free trade. The "stop outsourcing", "stop free trade", and "prevent immigration" steps are completely unnecessary and just result in a shitload of suffering. I know it's a stretch to ask to think of Chinese people as... well, people, but please consider what going on about the evils of immigration/outsourcing/guest workers/etc. actually means. It means that you're screwing over all Americans (because everything will be more expensive), the US economy as a whole, and massively screwing over hundreds of millions of low income workers around the world... all for the sake of slightly improving the lot of one segment of the American middle class.
It would make just as much as sense to smash machines because they put manual laborers out of work. Or putting a special tax on people saying that they have to give 5% of their income to GM.
edited 27th Jan '16 1:31:18 AM by Nihlus1
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NAFTA arguably sucked ass for Mexico, so I can't really fault Sanders there. And we do have a ton of shit to clean up in our own economic court before we can be said to be a responsible participant in the global economy. I would accept that Sanders is offering a version of the Perfect Solution Fallacy whereby we can't fix other people's problems until we've fixed our own, but I will not accept a claim that he is in any way racist.
At the moment I'm leaning towards Clinton in the primary, if only because Sanders seems to have so many magic asterisks in his economic plans, calling for unspecified future cost savings to offset the enormous deficits that his numbers would suggest.
However, I do believe that large financial institutions need to be reined in and forcibly broken up if necessary. I do believe that we have to reinstate legal protection for unions and institute national minimum living wages and national health insurance, among other things. I do believe that we need an immigration policy that lets willing migrants work legally while not driving down wages for citizens. I do believe that we need to force large corporations and private individuals to pay their full share of taxes and not dodge them with offshored income and whatnot. Sanders has said that he would expand Medicare to cover all citizens; I think that's aiming too low and we should be seeking to expand Medicaid instead.
Yet I recognize the impossibility of doing these things in the current political environment, wherein we can expect a Republican House of Representatives for at least the next four years and probably longer. A Democratic White House would have to act within extreme constraints, and I think that Clinton would do a better job under those conditions.
edited 26th Jan '16 9:36:58 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I've been interested in it from day 1, because we had armed men taking over government lands/building, calling for other people to take up arms against their government, and flat out trying to provoke responses. It's pretty much textbook sedition, domestic terrorism, and if you really, really, want to reach, possibly even treason. I predicted from the start that the government would try to avoid giving the militia movement martyrs and such, but now that some members are under arrest, I want to see them be treated with full legal penalties. Because I certainly don't believe that the restraint which has been shown so far would have been shown for any number of other groups. If Black Lives Matter went about demanding change with rifles and demanding people to take up arms against the government and police, I have no doubt they would have been shut down hard within a day or two.
Now that these guys have had a month or so of parading around with their guns and being shrugged off, I want to see actual justice done.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Now you can argue that his plans for helping Americans will not actually benefit Americans (or non-Americans), and I think that's all quite interesting and worthy of discussion, but careful with your rhetoric, because semantics are a bitch.
edited 26th Jan '16 10:01:59 PM by Eschaton
Sanders is clearly supportive of fair and comprehensive immigration reform.
His rationale for opposing *poor* reform is to avoid making it easier for corporations to displace American jobs with workers treated like slaves.
It's not 'racist' or 'nativist' rhetoric to call out a complicated political situation that has been historically abused for profit.
According to a 2008 article:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont: "So it is terribly important that we understand that in the year 2008 slavery – slavery can exist in Immokalee and how workers can be treated as bad as they are."
A recent hearing on Capitol Hill is only the latest chapter in a series of accusations, protests, and apparent vindication. Charges of slavery and deplorable working conditions largely stem from the humid tomato fields of South Florida where thousands of laborers harvest millions of tomatoes each year.
[* * *]
Bernie Sanders, an Independent Senator from Vermont, called for a congressional audit of migrant worker wages and put one further shot across the bow of the Florida Growers Exchange.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont: "This is not the end. This is the beginning. Most of us on the committee believe it is deplorable and that these conditions should not exist in 2008 in the United States of America."
http://www.iptv.org/mtom/story.cfm/feature/5013/mtom_20080425_3334_feature
Sanders himself wrote an editorial on it in 2011:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/the-harvest-of-shame_b_96759.html
edited 26th Jan '16 10:14:47 PM by SolipsistOwl
This probably goes into the (surprisingly complicated) discussion of definition of race, but how would you define that term?
I mean the Irish weren't white until recently and there's some who argue that greeks aren't so really "white" is a useless word. Caucasian is generally a better term but still kinda odd.
So far no news as to what's going on at the refuge in Oregon. Far as I can dig up the FBI has setup a soft blockade 'round the place and there hasn't been any confrontations yet. The best part (if I understand your yank laws right) is that when they get convicted on these felonies they won't be able to own guns any longer
I just hope we avoid another Waco situation - the one that died was the one that basically invoked it, iirc.
In lighter news, ESA Fund is running this attack ad on Bernie Sanders in Iowa
. TL;DW - apparently they forgot that attack ads should include Scary Red Font and black-and-white to instill fear, along with a gravelly voice warning the populace against the threat. Instead, they opted for blue-and-yellow graphics, full color, and a soothing woman's voice while mentioning that Sanders wants to raise taxes on "Wall Street, big business, and the super-rich", which haven't exactly endeared themselves to the public as of late.

What I can't figure out is what a "pro-immigrant" stance as folks like him seem to define it would look like in reality. It seems that people on the proponent side of that agenda want a borderless world with no nationalities whatsoever, and that simply ain't happening. The systemic economic inequalities between nations are too great, and there is no international political will to address them.
When someone says that we need to "protect American jobs" and someone else reads that as saying, "Kick out all the Mexicans", there isn't much communication to be done. Is Bernie Sanders, an American, to be reviled for wanting to promote the interests of Americans?
I'm sorry, but you won't ever convince me to sacrifice my middle-class standard of living so that folks elsewhere in the world can rise up to my level when there are such vast reserves of wealth sitting in the coffers of the top 1% of individuals and businesses that could do the job far more effectively.
edited 26th Jan '16 9:25:16 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"