US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6842

On February 11 2017 11:15 biology]major wrote:


Nope, she lost the very electorate that turned out for Obama in the critical states, she was shit, not gonna change my mind. You can delude yourself into thinking America and it's electorate is shit instead, but that will only translate to a free win in 2020 so go ahead, keep ignoring the white factory worker! He's white so he doesn't matter!

Maybe the dems will find a candidate as electable as HRC in 2020.

On February 11 2017 11:15 biology]major wrote:


Nope, she lost the very electorate that turned out for Obama in the critical states, she was shit, not gonna change my mind. You can delude yourself into thinking America and it's electorate is shit instead, but that will only translate to a free win in 2020 so go ahead, keep ignoring the white factory worker! He's white so he doesn't matter!

Maybe the dems will find a candidate as electable as HRC in 2020.

On February 11 2017 11:18 KwarK wrote:

The Dems put together a good package for the white factory worker. Incentives for companies to invest in depressed areas, long term benefits for those areas, dealing with the opiate epidemic etc. A far better package than the actual Republican one of slashing benefits and healthcare while criminalizing the workers.

The narrative that the Dems completely ignored those voters is false. The platform was there, they failed to communicate that their platform, while promising less than the Republican one, was actually real.

On February 11 2017 11:16 Sermokala wrote:

Winning the popular vote means nothing in the us stop bringing it up like it matters.

On February 11 2017 11:23 biology]major wrote:
No one is reading the freaking platform and trying to assess "oh do they care about me?" They expect a candidate to convey that with enthusiasm.

and the question everyone is asking themselves is "Is Trump brave enough to stand up to Putin?"

On February 11 2017 11:20 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


It means something every time someone says Hillary wasn't popular or supportable or electable, because it means those people are wrong.

On February 11 2017 11:13 biology]major wrote:


But he is building a wall, and he is dropping taxes, and he is trying to ban people from entering the country... Sure he might not keep every promise, but that's a great start (if you liked his promises).

On February 11 2017 11:23 biology]major wrote:
To your question kwark: absolutely the factory worker will benefit. Automation and globalism will eventually eradicate their occupation, but for now he will provide some relief. Ford, Carrier, GM, Chrysler is just the start.

On February 11 2017 08:17 LegalLord wrote:

It's a security issue. Mind you, it's only until we figure out what's going on, not permanent. It will help make the country safe again and it's precisely the kind of stopgap we need towards that end.

On February 11 2017 11:33 KwarK wrote:

Those jobs disappearing has been a snowballing process that has been going on a while and is continuing. Trump publishes a few high profile stories about how he has saved a hundred jobs here and there and apparently you're buying the propaganda. So let's ask it another way. Do you think he will be able to reverse the trend? Do you think the number of menial, unskilled labour, factory jobs in the United States is going to increase under Trump? Will those who lost their jobs to automation regain them or are you saying that those who are already fucked will stay fucked and many of those not already fucked will get fucked but that the number of new people who get fucked will be lower?

Hillary offered a solution to the actual problem. Trump insisted that the problem was completely different to what it actually was and is now ignoring it.

On February 11 2017 11:44 biology]major wrote:


I don't think he can reverse the trend, but I do believe American companies would rather invest in the USA instead of Mexico if they had the right incentive. He is actually meeting with them and asking them what it would take for that to happen, and I think it's a great idea. An underrated way he helped the factory worker is by making them a part of mainstream discourse though. It feels good to be validated and heard, even if it doesn't do anything practically, it raises the spirits of those people. We aren't rational robots no matter how much we pretend to be, a compliment, or recognition, goes a long way.

On February 11 2017 11:18 zlefin wrote:

you've already been disproven, it's not that hillary is shit, it's that she's a shitty campaigner. so please stop posting the inaccurate version.

also, the american electorate, as with all electorates, is shit. that's a well documented fact.
and can we cut back on using the word shit?

On February 11 2017 11:16 Scarecrow wrote:
Building a wall isn't the hard part of that promise, it's getting Mexico to pay for it that was always a load of crap.

On February 11 2017 12:01 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Hilarious part is building the wall is still damn hard. Projects like these will span decades, likely longer than Trump's grandchildren's lives.

And reality is that the survey work alone will take longer than his Presidency, waste millions of dollars, and by the time the next President is elected we'll have someone who knows it's a dumbass vanity project and cancel it.

On February 11 2017 12:05 Plansix wrote:

Billions. You mean billions. The cost of that wall would be like funding education nation wide for 2 decades.

On February 11 2017 11:23 biology]major wrote:


zlefin is right about the campaigning part. No one is reading the freaking platform and trying to assess "oh do they care about me?" They expect a candidate to convey that with enthusiasm. I payed pretty close attention to politics this election, and I never, ever heard HRC reference the factory worker. Never. Those people want to be a part of the discourse, and just imagine them being hated on for being white, while the DNC was basically a celebration of illegal immigration.

Zlefin, I'm a little irritated just thinking about it, but politicians have to be able to campaign. That's not a good excuse, you don't throw a billion dollars behind a robot.

To your question kwark: absolutely the factory worker will benefit. Automation and globalism will eventually eradicate their occupation, but for now he will provide some relief. Ford, Carrier, GM, Chrysler is just the start.

U.S. immigration authorities arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least a half-dozen states this week in a series of raids that marked the first large-scale enforcement of President Trump’s Jan. 26 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally.

The raids, which officials said targeted known criminals, also netted some immigrants who did not have criminal records, an apparent departure from similar enforcement waves during the Obama administration that aimed to just corral and deport those who had committed crimes.

Trump has pledged to deport up to 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Last month he also made a change to the Obama administration’s policy of prioritizing deportation for convicted criminals, substantially broadening the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all.

Immigration officials confirmed that agents this week raided homes and workplaces in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, the Los Angeles area, North Carolina and South Carolina, netting hundreds of people. But Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said they were part of “routine” immigration enforcement actions. ICE dislikes the term “raids,” and prefers to say authorities are conducting “targeted enforcement actions.”

Christensen said the raids, which began Monday and ended Friday at noon, found undocumented immigrants from a dozen Latin American countries. “We’re talking about people who are threats to public safety or a threat to the integrity of the immigration system,” she said, noting that the majority of those detained were serious criminals, including some who had been convicted of murder and domestic violence.

[For years, immigration authorities gave this Arizona mother a pass. Now she has been deported.]

Immigration activists said the crackdown went beyond the six states DHS identified, and said they had also documented ICE raids of unusual intensity during the past two days in Florida, Kansas, Texas and Northern Virginia.

That undocumented immigrants with no criminal records were arrested and could potentially be deported sent a shock through immigrant communities nationwide amid concerns that the U.S. government could start going after law-abiding people.

“This is clearly the first wave of attacks under the Trump administration, and we know this isn’t going to be the only one,” Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, an immigrant youth organization, said Friday during a conference call with immigration advocates.

ICE agents in the Los Angeles area Thursday swept a number of individuals into custody over the course of an hour, seizing them from their homes and on their way to work in daytime operations, activists said.

David Marin, ICE’s field director in the Los Angeles area, said in a conference call with reporters Friday that 75 percent of the approximately 160 people detained in the operation this week had felony convictions; the rest had misdemeanors or were in the United States illegally. Officials said Friday night that 37 of those detained in Los Angeles has been deported to Mexico.

“Dangerous criminals who should be deported are being released into our communities,” Marin said.

A video that circulated on social media Friday appeared to show ICE agents detaining people in an Austin shopping center parking lot. Immigration advocates also reported roadway checkpoints, where ICE appeared to be targeting immigrants for random ID checks, in North Carolina and in Austin. ICE officials denied that authorities used checkpoints during the operations.

[The ‘sanctuary city’ on the front line of the fight over Trump’s immigration policy]

“I’m getting lots of reports from my constituents about seeing ICE on the streets. Teachers in my district have contacted me — certain students didn’t come to school today because they’re afraid,” said Greg Casar, an Austin city council member. “I talked to a constituent, a single mother, who had her door knocked on this morning by ICE.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said he confirmed with ICE’s San Antonio office that the agency “has launched a targeted operation in South and Central Texas as part of Operation Cross Check.”

“I am asking ICE to clarify whether these individuals are in fact dangerous, violent threats to our communities, and not people who are here peacefully raising families and contributing to our state,” Castro said in a statement Friday night.

Hiba Ghalib, an immigration lawyer in Atlanta, said the ICE detentions were causing “mass confusion” in the immigrant community. She said she had heard reports of ICE agents going door-to-door in one largely Hispanic neighborhood, asking people to present their papers.

“People are panicking,” Ghalib said. “People are really, really scared.”

Immigration officials acknowledged that authorities had cast a wider net than they would have last year, as the result of Trump’s executive order.

The Trump administration is facing a series of legal challenges to that order, and on Thursday lost a court battle over a separate executive order to temporarily ban entry into the United States by citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries, as well as by refugees. The administration said Friday that it is considering raising the case to the Supreme Court.

[Federal appeals court rules 3 to 0 against Trump on travel ban]

Some activists in Austin and Los Angeles suggested that the raids might be retaliation for those cities’ “sanctuary city” policies. A government aide familiar with the raids said it is possible that the predominantly daytime operations — a departure from the Obama administration’s night raids — meant to “send a message to the community that the Trump deportation force is in effect.”

Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigrant advocacy group, said that the wave of detentions harks back to the George W. Bush administration, when workplace raids to sweep up all undocumented workers were common.

The Obama administration conducted a spate of raids and also pursued a more aggressive deportation policy than any previous president, sending more than 400,000 people back to their birth countries at the height of his deportations in 2012. The public outcry over the lengthy detentions and deportations of women, children and people with minor offenses led Obama in his second term to prioritize convicted criminals for deportation.

A DHS official confirmed that while immigration agents were targeting criminals, given the broader range defined by Trump’s executive order they also were sweeping up non-criminals in the vicinity who were found to be lacking documentation. It was unclear how many of the people detained would have been excluded under Obama’s policy.

Federal immigration officials, as well as activists, said that the majority of those detained were adult men, and that no children were taken into custody.

“Big cities tend to have a lot of illegal immigrants,” said one immigration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly due to the sensitive nature of the operation. “They’re going to a target-rich environment.”

Immigrant rights groups said that they were planning protests in response to the raids, including one Friday evening in Federal Plaza in New York City and a vigil in Los Angeles.

“We cannot understate the level of panic and terror that is running through many immigrant communities,” said Walter Barrientos of Make the Road New York in New York City, who spoke on a conference call with immigration advocates.

“We’re trying to make sure that families who have been impacted are getting legal services as quickly as possible. We’re trying to do some legal triage,” said Bob Libal, the executive director of Grassroots Leadership, which provides assistance and advocacy work to immigrants in Austin. “It’s chaotic,” he said. The organization’s hotline, he said, had been overwhelmed with calls.

Jeanette Vizguerra, 35, a Mexican house cleaner whose permit to stay in the country expired this week, said Friday during the conference call that she was newly apprehensive about her scheduled meeting with ICE next week.

Fearing deportation, Vizguerra, a Denver mother of four — including three who are U.S. citizens — said through an interpreter that she had called on activists and supporters to accompany her to the meeting.

“I know I need to mobilize my community, but I know my freedom is at risk here,” Vizguerra said.