U.S. Politics-Hope Floats 2: We All Float Down Here

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

If the Original Trilogy has taught us anything it's that democracy dies to thunderous applause.  So that would be the sign.

Good to know you apparently appreciate screenwriting that is as inane, incoherent, and pathetically dishonest as Trump and the GOP.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

But then Anthony Kennedy retired. And Flake decided that obstructing a Supreme Court nomination would give him too much leverage over the president.

“My goal here is not to block judges. My goal is to get a vote on tariffs, and I have all the leverage I need with circuit court nominees,” Flake told the Arizona Republic newspaper. “I have all the leverage I need. I certainly wasn’t anticipating a Supreme Court vacancy, but it’s unaffected.”

 

Jeff Flake Flakes, Says He Won’t Block Trump’s Supreme Court Pick

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/jeff-flake-says-he-wont-block-trumps-supreme-court-pick.html

[Martell Spy]

Nearly 600 women arrested at immigration protests in the Senate building
Women’s March protesters chanted “Abolish ICE.”

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/28/17515160/womens-march-protests-family-separation-600-arrested

Quote

 

The Women’s March organized the act of nonviolent civil disobedience with the Center for Popular Democracy and CASA in Action. The protesters draped themselves in silver thermal blankets — evoking images of migrant kids in shelters — and chanted “Abolish ICE” and “We care.”

Nearly 600 protesters, mostly women, were arrested, according to ABC News.

 

 

[mcbigski]

6 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Nearly 600 women arrested at immigration protests in the Senate building
Women’s March protesters chanted “Abolish ICE.”

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/28/17515160/womens-march-protests-family-separation-600-arrested

 

Do you want more Trump?  Because advocating for uncontrolled borders will get you more Trump.  

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Jeff Flake Flakes, Says He Won’t Block Trump’s Supreme Court Pick

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/jeff-flake-says-he-wont-block-trumps-supreme-court-pick.html

Of course Flake isn't going to block the SC pick.  Feel like you're going on a link binge right now man.

 

[lokisnow]

Well ICE is a bush era big government creation our borders were secure before IcE was created fifteen years ago, and borders would be secured if we abolished the agency and distributed duties back to their original smaller government agencies.

if you want to keep ICE you’re just wanting to keep big government big.

[Martell Spy]

5 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Do you want more Trump?  Because advocating for uncontrolled borders will get you more Trump.  

Or it might get us more 28 year-old Latina socialist Congress critters.

[Martell Spy]

6 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Well ICE is a bush era big government creation our borders were secure before IcE was created fifteen years ago, and borders would be secured if we abolished the agency and distributed duties back to their original smaller government agencies.

if you want to keep ICE you’re just wanting to keep big government big.

Yeah and this rally was about family separation...a policy so terrible and humiliating to Trump that he now disavows it.

[Week]

6 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Do you want more Trump?  Because advocating for uncontrolled borders will get you more Trump.  

Are you unable to tell the difference between Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement? 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/politics/ice-immigration-eliminate-agency.html

[mcbigski]

5 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Or it might get us more 28 year-old Latina socialist Congress critters.

Most of the time when you guys are being self destructive or autophages I just smile and let it go but agitating for abolishing ICE seems like such an own goal even you guys must realize it.

Getting more polarizing reps out of safe districts might not help the Blue Wave prospects though.

[DanteGabriel]

4 minutes ago, Vetrani Weekić said:

Are you unable to tell the difference between Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement? 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/politics/ice-immigration-eliminate-agency.html

All agencies dedicated to chasing down brown people look the same I guess.

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

And while I’m on this. Conservatives have waited for this moment for decades. Now I dislike conservative ideology and the Republican Party. But, it’s hard not to admire, to some extent, their persistence. Maybe the left should learn how to rip a few pages out of their playbook.

It would be nice, but the right started by pouring insane amounts of money into think-tanks and public relations. They were smart enough to realize that they had to start by taking away the credibility of some fundamental ideas upon which the left based itself. And in doing so they even managed to redefine what "left" and "right" even meant. They got plenty of money, because immensely wealthy people realized that they would benefit from this "new" right winning the battle of ideas.
Of course in doing so they went so far that we now have two completely different views of what a "society" is even supposed to be. It's even remarkable that they got the religious right on board with it, but here we are, with societies that are no longer based on solidarity or empathy, but on individualism.

It's difficult to see how the left can pull off something like that in the near-future. You'd have to completely reverse the process and build an entire intellectual structure on a definition of society that most conservatives could agree upon, so that they can accept that the state has a right and a duty to manage solidarity between individuals (because all other alternatives are terrible) in order to provide the "individual right" to education or healthcare at least. But the funding could be problematic: even "liberal" billionaires are not that fond of actual solidarity (i.e. progressive taxation) and may not be so willing to fund PR campaigns to attack some of the right's fundamental ideas (because they benefit too much from them).

A different approach which I've been toying with would be to mimic some of the right's intellectual strategies. Just as they twisted liberalism (and individual rights) to build neo-liberalism by attacking socialism (in its broadest definition), one could imagine the left twisting conservatism to build a new form of "neo-conservatism" by attacking libertarianism. The starting point would be that humans have a sacred moral duty toward other humans, that selfishness makes everyone miserable (including selfish people), that no society can be a mere aggregation of individuals... etc. Just as the right embraced individual rights, the left could embrace... religious values, or at least use the discourse and terms coming from religion. While this might seem crazy at a glance because the modern left is deeply suspicious of religion, the modern right is actually very weak on moral aspects (unfettered capitalism and Christianty are quite difficult to reconcile). It's not that hard to see how being a deeply religious Christian could lead you on a path to socialism (again, in its broadest definition). Painting libertarians as faithless and ruthless individuals wouldn't be that hard either.
The main problem is that such a train of thought would mean adopting a progressive stance on issues like minorities' or women's rights that is not based on individual rights but on collective values, something that modern liberals could be very uncomfortable with, at least at first. But if the right managed to make religion an individual issue (something which is crazier and crazier the more you think about it), surely the left can make women's rights a collective one.

1 hour ago, Ser Reptitious said:

Charitable foundations: ??? Aren't a lot of charities based on religion? What exactly makes them liberal? Caring?

Haven't you heard? Empathy is liberal. Conservatives believe that God only helps those who help themselves.

[Bonnot OG]

Abolish ICE, abolish border patrol, open borders, stop supporting Israel and it's genocidal apartheid government. Stop with the imperialist foreign policy and maybe we will not be a big target and have to "keep america safe."

Also, it's disgusting that the DHS has their own 14 words, which look really similair to the Nazi's 14 words.

 

[Martell Spy]

Looks like work requirements for food stamps won't make it into the farm bill. Not that surprising, but still good. Paul Ryan will have to win the Presidency if he wants to do more cutting. The Senate won't let them in.

[mcbigski]

6 minutes ago, Vetrani Weekić said:

Are you unable to tell the difference between Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement? 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/politics/ice-immigration-eliminate-agency.html

Well someone else called it ICE in the post I was referencing.  As a moderate conservative im in favor of going back to Secretary of War so pardon me if I cant keep up with this season's PC cabinet names.

[Bonnot OG]

1 minute ago, Martell Spy said:

Looks like work requirements for food stamps won't make it into the farm bill. Not that surprising, but still good. Paul Ryan will have to win the Presidency if he wants to do more cutting. The Senate won't let them in.

Hopefully that  miserably Ayn Rand loving fuck drops dead before that is even a possibility.

So how is everyone doing btw? 

Enjoying being under a fascist government? 

[Bonnot OG]

Looks like the shooter in Maryland is a former pig who sued the paper for defamation (lost the case) for writing about his pleading guilty to criminal harassment of a woman he harassed online to the point of scaring her.

[Week]

6 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Well someone else called it ICE in the post I was referencing.  As a moderate conservative im in favor of going back to Secretary of War so pardon me if I cant keep up with this season's PC cabinet names.

They are two different organizations that you are conflating. Your implication of "uncontrolled borders" as a result of the abolition of ICE is both incorrect and complete nonsense. Small wonder that a crisis created by Trump and then continued by Trump can only be solved by Trump. 

https://www.ice.gov/

https://www.cbp.gov/

 

eta- PC is so passé. Get with the times. The term is civility and you are now for it.

[Bonnot OG]

I really want to abolish all borders,. It's ethical thing to do.

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Getting more polarizing reps out of safe districts might not help the Blue Wave prospects though.

If it's a safe district explain why it matters.

6 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Well someone else called it ICE in the post I was referencing.  As a moderate conservative im in favor of going back to Secretary of War so pardon me if I cant keep up with this season's PC cabinet names.

First, ICE isn't a cabinet-level department.  Second, wanting to revert to the War Department doesn't make you a moderate anything, it just makes you nonsensical perhaps afflicted with a strange obsession with, well, war.