Biden Announces Reelection Campaign

[Kaelik]

In addition to sending over bombs to do the genocide and various other statements in support of genocide thw biden admin that it is "repugnant" and "disgraceful" to do anything other then kill every single person in Gaza.

[MGuy]

They are going to just go into Gaza while ordering an evacuation to people who they have made sure have nowhere else to fucking go and are doing so amid our media and leaders acting like this is a decision that just couldn't be helped because of that darned Hamas. Every Palestinian that Israel goes out of its way to kill is on their hands and there is nothing anyone can do but support Israel in their openly genocidal efforts.

[Sashi]

They are going to just go into Gaza while ordering an evacuation to people who they have made sure have nowhere else to fucking go and are doing so amid our media and leaders acting like this is a decision that just couldn't be helped because of that darned Hamas. Every Palestinian that Israel goes out of its way to kill is on their hands and there is nothing anyone can do but support Israel in their openly genocidal efforts.

Whoa whoa whoa, are you saying Israel is planning to genocide Palestinians? But Mguy, how can you think of those as related events? Israel isn't an entity, it can't make plans much less "commit genocide" it's just a tool for people to pull levers on. Palestinians refugees have been blocked from having anywhere else to go for years and this evacuation is in response to an attack this week, and a bunch of politicians think it's in their own best interests to blame stuff on Hamas. What mental gymnastics are you pulling to think that there's a "historical throughline" between these events?

pfft, it almost sounds like you're saying Israel is responsible for Palestinian deaths just because they're exercising power over them. Way to anthropomorphize a country, Mguy. Sounds like some daddy issues on your part.

[Koumei]

Could you two have your argument in its own thread or something?

[MGuy]

At this point it isn't an argument. Sashi doesn't understand how governments work and is so eager for a gotcha that they've decided that this is an appropriate time to get one in. Before I was disgusted because of the fetishism. Now I'm disgusted because this person genuinely doesn't care about the subjects they are talking about. I'm just going to block them.

[Kaelik]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-de ... 04ff6ff95d

[MGuy]

The only people equipped to move resources in that time frame is 100 percent the people they are supposed to be going after. Clearly the intent is just to demolish Gaza and the West Bank. They don't care about the hostages and likely the stance of the Biden administration is that the 500-600 American citizens still in the area are acceptable losses lest the Israel lobby not find Biden sufficiently supportive of the genocide.

[krakenn]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-de ... 04ff6ff95d

And in the meantime...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-gaza-humanitarian-crisis_n_6529aba2e4b03ea0c0052102

Everything and its opposite.

[Kaelik]

That isn't the opposite.

On the one hand the US is providing weapons, military support, and making sure no one calls for a ceasfire in the ongoing genocide.

On the other hand the president called the ongoing genocide that he still supports and will not allow anyone to call for a ceasefire a "humanitarian issue" okay, but what does saying that mean? Does it mean that he wants them to stop dropping bombs? Obviously not! Does it mean he will stop giving them bombs to drop? Also no!

[MGuy]

We all know it's a humanitarian crisis. Multiple times in the past the US has pushed Israel to pull back a little from going full genocide while actively promoting each and every war crime that state has performed as "Israel defending itself". They've said this while being mysteriously quiet about whether or not Palestine has that same right. Today they've already pushed into Gaza. Tanks and troops on the ground after the white phosphorous, after the shelling, and even after reports of them attacking some of the convoys of people created because they ordered 1 million + people to move out of the way in 24 hours. Even if sleepy Joe finally woke up it is well past too late because his administration, as well as every other allied nation I've heard, have already green lit the latest chapter of this genocidal project.

[Kaelik]

We all know it's a humanitarian crisis. Multiple times in the past the US has pushed Israel to pull back a little from going full genocide while actively promoting each and every war crime that state has performed as "Israel defending itself". They've said this while being mysteriously quiet about whether or not Palestine has that same right. Today they've already pushed into Gaza. Tanks and troops on the ground after the white phosphorous, after the shelling, and even after reports of them attacking some of the convoys of people created because they ordered 1 million + people to move out of the way in 24 hours. Even if sleepy Joe finally woke up it is well past too late because his administration, as well as every other allied nation I've heard, have already green lit the latest chapter of this genocidal project.

They also intentionally target bombed the evacuation routes before the evacuation timetable completed. Just a slight add. But yes, the US, CAN push back against Israel, it usually doesn't push hard, but it easily could stop all of this, and it could even push in a way that slightly lessons it, but it won't this time.

But also, even over and above not doing what it could to save lifes, the act of describing an ongoing intentional genocide as a "humanitarian crisis" is part of the support for genocide that the US provides. It's intentionally downplaying what is going on to assure people that they do not need to involve themselves. "Humanitarian crises" happen all the time, and while they are bad, it's certainly not a cause for anyone to call for drastic actions. Genocide on the other hand is usually the kind of thing that people do care a lot about and think per se is justification for way more action. Classifying a genocide as a humanitarian crisis is part of supporting a genocide.

[Kaelik]

Making this the 2024 election thread:

Supreme Court oral argument on the Colorado election ballot case. It's fucking bad.

Might get a 9-0 refusal to rule on insurrection that says that if trump did an insurrection he has to be on the ballot we do the whole election and then congress just puts biden into office on January 6th even if trump gets more votes.

Obviously it's just "the dumbest way to get to trump on the ballot" because congress won't do that, but imagine actually saying that's the process for dealing for example a 12 year old running for president or Arnold. You just have an entire election where people have even less of a vote then usual and then you deliberately put the vote loser in power over the vote winner and hope no one riots.

[Kaelik]

Senate democrats have just launched an add campaign that is literally just about how evil brown invaders must be stopped.

[Thaluikhain]

So, is the main policy difference whether or not Mexico has to pay for it? Nice work.

[PseudoStupidity]

What a fucking joke. The Democrats seem to be pursuing every single shitty Neocon policy goal now. The only significant difference between them and the Republicans seems to be social policy towards minority groups. Not that whether or not you're allowed to teach about minorities isn't important, but it seems a lot less important than whether or not we let asylum seekers enter the country, whether or not we should let people starve in the streets, and whether or not we support genocide (we won't even get into prevention).

Politically, I'm sure this will play very well to Republicans and turn off the youth vote and minority vote even worse. Brilliant political move, assuming you want the Republicans to win.

[Kaelik]

It is absolutely baffling how many democratic consultants and politicians are convinced from the bottom of their hearts that "Republicans have always been right about this issue for 50 years everything you've ever heard a republican say was correct, and everything you've ever heard a Democrat say was incorrect. But now, we the democrats have adopted the gop position, and will use our vast technocratic expertise to implement the policy the gop has called for your entire life better then them." Is actually a winning political message.

Clinton did it on welfare, Kerry did it on the Iraq War, and biden is doing it on immigration (also Obama did it on immigration and you could find lots of other examples or he'll when Obama tried to cut social security).

All people hear when you do this is "the other side is right" and it pushes the acceptable policy discourse far right, but it also convinces people to vote for the gop more then they would. Because you keep saying the gop is right!

[PseudoStupidity]

I guess they're going for "We're actually MORE evil than the Republicans when it comes to immigration," but the Republicans do shit like literally deploy the army (Trump) or national guard (Abbott) to do psycho things like set up razor wire in parks.

I don't buy that the Democrats are harsher on immigration and I believe the Democrats are heinous bastards who would massacre immigrants just to get some WASP freak named Chester Worthington III who works at the Heritage Foundation to even consider voting for them. It's just that every single Republican would pay thousands of dollars to get a chance to shoot just one asylum seeker, and they'd record themselves doing it and put it up on Rumble or Truth or X or whatever horrible right-wing social media exists (Parlor?).

If you don't pay attention to policy the Democrats (used to) look positively nice on immigration. If you do pay attention to policy then...well, look at what the Republicans constantly propose and do. There is no winning on this issue from Democrats aside from convincing people that asylum seekers aren't a threat (which is true!), but that would go against the Democrat policy goal of... putting asylum seekers into concentration camps? Honestly not sure what they're trying to accomplish with that aside from continuing the status quo for as long as possible to keep transferring wealth upwards.

[deaddmwalking]

I know that people on this website don't like nuance, but there is some!

Historically, about 40% of Americans have felt that there is too much immigration, 25% felt that there should be more, and the remaining 35% feel that it's about right. If immigration increases, the 40% that feel it is too much will continue to feel it is too much; the 35% that feel it is 'about right' will get increasingly uncomfortable and fall into the 'less' category; even the people that think it should be increased usually have a level that they think is too high.

So the sensible question is 'how much immigration should we allow'? And the nuanced answer is it depends - there are people who are asylum seekers who are in real danger in their home countries; there are refugees displaced by war and violence; there are people who have a job offer in the United States; there are people who have family here and are trying to join their loved ones. We know we have issues with things like affordable housing EVERYWHERE, and more people needing more homes puts additional pressure on housing. And it's not just housing. There are costs to accepting immigrants. THERE ARE BENEFITS TOO! But that doesn't mean there aren't costs.

No country in the world has open borders (meaning anyone from anywhere can come in, with or without permission). The United States has the largest immigrant population (50 million), or about 20% of all the immigrants in the world. Many immigrants are guest workers in places like Saudi Arabia where they'll never have a chance to join the larger society.

So when Democrats say that we need to control the border (JUST LIKE REPUBLICANS) they're just saying what the vast majority of Americans agree on - we want to help our neighbors and be true to our founding mythology of taking the tired, hungry and poor, but we also want to continue our high standard of living and minimize the social disruption associated with large numbers of foreigners arriving without the infrastructure to support them.

Democrats have decided that saying NOTHING isn't working for them, and blaming Republicans for not wanting to do anything to address the border, even when given a chance, is an effective attack angle for the upcoming election.

Here's an article from the NY Times On the Border, Republicans Set a Trap, Then Fell Into It.

But this whole issue is bigger than a single sound bite.

[Thaluikhain]

But this whole issue is bigger than a single sound bite.

While that is true, c'mon, attacking immigrants is blatantly xenophobic. That other countries do it as well is no defence, that lots of Americans are in favour of it is no defence.

[deaddmwalking]

But this whole issue is bigger than a single sound bite.

While that is true, c'mon, attacking immigrants is blatantly xenophobic. That other countries do it as well is no defence, that lots of Americans are in favour of it is no defence.

Attacking all immigration is xenophobic. A majority of Americans being opposed to something actually is a defense. If we live in a democratic society than what the majority wants will be the default. The important caveat is that a true democracy avoids tyranny of the majority by including strong protections for individual/minority rights.

It's no secret that our founding fathers thought of this as a generally Christian nation and they wanted to avoid the types of religious wars fought between Protestants and Catholics at the time of the founding. But by establishing non-religion as the default, the nation has largely protected Jews, Muslims and Satanists even though a majority didn't think we should.

It's clear to me that religion is a deeply personal choice and the state has no right to intervene. It's less clear to me that I, born as I was in the United States, ought to be able to freely declare that I'm moving to Canada and it doesn't matter what Canadians think about it. If our closest neighbor to the North doesn't let Americans freely immigrate, it's not clear that we should unilaterally open our border to Canadians. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't, but it also doesn't mean we should - it means that it is a complicated question and needs careful consideration.

Here's a chart of immigration over time. In terms of NUMBERS, we have more immigrants than we ever have. But I think percentage is a more important and telling number - if you accept 1 immigrant in a town of 100, that immigrant is going to integrate very quickly; if you accept 100 immigrants in a town of 100 you're going to have two societies that will take a long time to figure out how to co-exist. That 15% that we're hitting as a society seems to be approaching the 'popular limit' before people feel that immigrants are causing more problems than their presence solves.

Note that chart shows a large drop in immigrants beginning in the 1920s (hitting a low in 1970). That corresponds to when the United States instituted quotas for individual countries.

There are all kinds of things that we think are important culturally - like equality of women - and they're not considered equally important in every other country. When we accept immigrants who reject our cultural values it's going to create conflict. Now my impression is most immigrants either accept our values or are willing to change - but that's still a long way from saying anyone can come for any reason.

Ukraine is a country that has been invaded by a neighbor. The United States set a goal of admitting 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. These were people that very clearly had a clear and pressing need for asylum. Up to this point, the United States has accepted 271,000 Ukrainians since the war began. Let's just call that 150,000 per year.

The number of identified 'illegal border crossings' was 2.5 million in 2023 (or 3.2 million in FY 2023 which runs Oct-Sep). Most of these people are asylum seekers.

A refugee is a person who has fled their own country because they are at risk of serious human rights violations and persecution there. The risks to their safety and life were so great that they felt they had no choice but to leave and seek safety outside their country because their own government cannot or will not protect them from those dangers. Refugees have a right to international protection.

An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country, but who hasn’t yet been legally recognized as a refugee and is waiting to receive a decision on their asylum claim. Seeking asylum is a human right. This means everyone should be allowed to enter another country to seek asylum.”

Even if we accept that 100% of asylum seekers have a valid claim and should be treated as refugees, it doesn't then follow that the United States ought to be their final home. Ukrainian refugees are in Poland, Germany, Finland, Greece and France (and many many more).

Of the 2.5-3.2 million asylum seekers, fewer than 1 million were from Mexico. Assuming that there was a danger in their home country, why wouldn't another country that was an immediate neighbor qualify as safe? If every country South of the United States is completely unsafe for their own citizens, surely that's an indication that some type of systemic fix is required?

Democrats have determined that the appearance of not doing anything is bad for their electoral chances. The fact is, not having a National Policy is also inhumane for everyone involved. This article is from 2019 talking about inhumane conditions for unaccompanied minors.

This is a tough question! Even if you want to help everyone you need to commit the resources to do so! Figuring out how to use our resources to solve our problems is what government is supposed to do!

I don't think 'let everyone come in, no matter what' is an answer that works - and certainly won't work long in a Democratic country. I'm a student of history and I know that people aren't particularly tolerant to begin with, and they become less so when they think they're being directly hurt by 'outsiders'. There are a lot of ways that having more people using more resources can be seen as hurting people who have been generally happy. Most people want to help the people around them, but they don't want to do so much that it becomes a real inconvenience - they don't want to give until it hurts.

Sniping at each party for being 'out of touch' without proposing a solution that you're willing to stand behind strikes me as disingenuous. What policy do you think that Democrats can offer that tax-paying Americans will rally behind?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Oh. Did someone say center left party imagining they can appeal to a racist immigrant bashing voting block and the consequences of that?

My fucking god. Hi, I'm from Australia, or on this one fucking issue, 30 years in your fucking future.

So as it turns out this is one of those "NO ONE COULD HAVE FORSEEEN" things that liberals like DeadDM keep on slamming into face first because they refuse to listen to everyone who foresees stuff accurately because foreseeing stuff accurately is for communists.

Now there is a lot to it, but the over all effect is simple, and the reason the Republicans are in on it is because internally I guarantee you they have strategists pointing at us and on the final outcome of conning the moron Liberal "center" of politics into trying and failing to appeal to a voting block that uses the word "miscegenation" like it was nothing.

It prolongs failing conservative parties grip on power by 10 to 20 years. THAT is all this achieves. Oh, and incredible insane and expensive acts of cruelty and crimes against humanity towards migrants.

And then when we are done, surveys on personal beliefs suggest we at least DOUBLED actual permanent underlying racist sentiment in the population by the end of it.

[PseudoStupidity]

Is DDM's argument that because people are xenophobic we need to respect their xenophobia? That is a shitty argument, xenophobia is bad so we should reject it.

Is his argument that Americans want a thing and Democrats need to adopt whatever a majority of Americans want? That is also shitty, not only because supporting bad things is bad even if they're popular, but because he doesn't actually believe this (otherwise he would be furious at Democrats for their support of the deeply unpopular genocide, among other things).

Is his argument that we lack the resources or that society would crumble if we admitted every single person who arrived in the US? It can't be that since he said 15% is the magic number and even if we take his maximum number of asylum seekers (3.2 million in 2023) that's less than 1% of the US population. That is, unless he considers people who moved to the US more than a decade ago to be fundamentally different from a natural born citizen in some way (this would be pretty fucking racist). I don't see how bringing in a number of immigrants equal to 1% of the US population every year would be a problem. People naturalize pretty quickly, so we'd never get to 15% of people in the US being unnaturalized (idk if that's the right term for it) immigrants.


The obvious correct policy when it comes to immigration is "let every person who wants to be part of your country into your country, but also run a background check to weed out people who wish to do harm." You would need a severe lack of imagination to believe that open borders would be worse than current immigration policy. It'd make the US different, but different in this case means "significantly better than it currently is." Labor is valuable, and bringing in a bunch of people (many of whom will enter the labor force) is bringing in value! Only if you think people are a burden could you possibly believe open borders would be a problem. Bring on the immigrants, let's literally do the Great Replacement or whatever it is that racists are scared of.

And just because I know what argument will be made, yes I know we'd need to convince the people of the US to support this. Convincing people you have the correct opinion is literally doing politics, and it's what the Democrats are emphatically not doing by saying immigrants are dangerous and will kill you with an AR-15.

[Kaelik]

Historically, about 40% of Americans have felt that there is too much immigration, 25% felt that there should be more, and the remaining 35% feel that it's about right. If immigration increases, the 40% that feel it is too much will continue to feel it is too much; the 35% that feel it is 'about right' will get increasingly uncomfortable and fall into the 'less' category; even the people that think it should be increased usually have a level that they think is too high.

What if instead of the universe where everyone's immigration opinions are perfectly calibrated based current actual immigration rates, it was actually based on complex social factors including but not limited to whether or not 100% of politicians are saying "there's a brown immigrant horde we need to stop to save the nation"

Also the democratic proposed policy doesn't actually reduce immigration. It's just draconian suffering caused to asylum seekers as part of security theater.

But thanks for demonstrating the point that all it takes is 4 months of democratic politicians saying there's a brown immigrant invasion before democratic partisan voters like deaddm are suddenly convinced we need to drastically reduce immigration and that draconian border agents is the way, instead of the reality: we actually could take millions more immigrants with no "social cohesion" issues and our immigration policy makes it extremely hard for people to be residents or citizens here legally for asylum or non asylum reasons, and instead makes people get a bunch of temporary visas then stay, becoming a large victim population for the policies that deaddm now supports and a victim of their employers who use the threat of those policies deaddm now supports.

If we literally just had an "open border" a bunch of people would go back to Mexico to see family and then come back then next picking or plowing season all the time instead of the extremely stupid system we have.

[Kaelik]

Notice that dead has completely adopted every psychotic trump talking point from 2016.

Apparently not wanting a bunch of border agents doing murders on the border and having asylum hearings for asylum seekers instead of what Joe biden now wants, millions more border agents and deporting people without a hearing, is "open borders" and we have to do the crazy right wing shit like not give asylum seekers hearings to protect our national character. They should remain in Mexico. Ect.

Just 100% a textbook example of why dem politicians adopting bad positions instantly turns a bunch of people who's only political position is "whatever I've heard on tv from my politicians" into bad people.

[Kaelik]

People naturalize pretty quickly, so we'd never get to 15% of people in the US being unnaturalized (idk if that's the right term for it) immigrants.

In the US context, naturalization is when they become US citizens, which takes at least a decade and often never no matter what they want.

But yes, in practical terms integration takes very little time at all, and also, once you stop believeing in the US character of respecting women's rights unlike filthy muslim people as deaddm does, it's actually totally fine to just admit people to the US and not have them "integrate" too.

Functionally, none of the millions of people who live on barely subsistance wages and deny workers protections in various farms around the country are integrated, but also, I'm not sure why we would care. I want them to be considered residents at the minimum and given free come and go and various labor rights anyway, but like, it clearly doesn't matter to anyone in their current communities whether they adopt the imaginary culture of middle class white protestants in Massachusetts.