US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9594

Democrats who voted on a spending bill this week to keep the federal government open are facing backlash from their party for not demanding a permanent solution for thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Immigration advocates in and out of Congress are railing against those who voted for the stopgap spending bill Thursday despite promises from Democratic leaders that they would force action on the issue by the end of the year. Even before the Senate vote, a group of House Democrats burst into the office of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate minority leader, demanding an explanation. Protesters shouting “Shame on Kaine!” briefly occupied the office of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who said he voted for the measure to prevent a partial government shutdown and protect federal employees.

“Every single Democrat who voted for the continuing resolution just voted to deport ‘dreamers’ and leave kids without access to health insurance,” said Murshed Zaheed, the political director of the California-based progressive group CREDO Action. “Quite frankly, it’s a pathetic way for the Democratic Party’s leadership to close out a year in which millions of Americans fought back and resisted the Trump regime’s racist, xenophobic and dangerous agenda.”

The internal party drama is sure to increase the pressure on Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to pass the Dream Act in January, when the latest stopgap spending bill is set to expire. It also threatens the party’s unity — and perhaps divisive primary challenges — at a time when Democrats are looking ahead to the 2018 midterms with new optimism that they have a chance to take control of both chambers.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) appears to have anticipated the backlash. Feinstein, who is up for election next year in the state with the largest population of “dreamers,” surprised activists earlier this week when she said she would vote for the spending bill rather than risk a shutdown over immigration. But Feinstein switched her vote at the last minute.

A new poll, and pressure from activists, may have played a role in her thinking. On Wednesday, the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies released a survey showing her leading by 14 points in a race against Kevin de León, the Democratic leader in the California Senate. De León, who has been in the race for two months, was among the loudest voices demanding that Feinstein oppose the stopgap bill.

“I’ve talked with them, I’ve met with them, I understand their plight and it breaks my heart,” Feinstein said in a statement. “To allow these young people to suffer is tragic.”

The push for immigration legislation erupted in September, after President Trump vowed to end a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which was instituted by former president Barack Obama via executive action and allowed some immigrants brought into the country as children to stay legally.

At the time, Pelosi and Schumer pledged to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and advocates have kept the pressure up to ensure they do. This week, no Democrat who voted to fund the government was spared — and emotions ran high as a result.

“Dreamers make up hundreds of thousands of Sen. Feinstein’s constituents, and while talking a good game on Dreamers, when it comes to standing up and supporting them, she is AWOL,” [Kevin] de León said at a Wednesday morning news conference, before Feinstein changed her position. “Don’t come back to California if you haven’t demonstrated your leadership and your courage to stand up for these young men and women.”

SAN FRANCISCO -- Officials have stopped a man who reportedly stated that "Christmas was the perfect day" for a terror attack in San Francisco and "did not need an escape plan because he was ready to die."

We've learned the FBI has arrested a man by the name of Everitt Aaron Jameson from Modesto. According to a handwritten letter obtained by the FBI, Jameson also referred to himself as Abdallah adu Everitt ibn Gordon.

The suspect was just in the Bay Area Sunday night, attending the Raiders - Cowboys game with his father.

According to the FBI, the public was never in any imminent danger from Jameson, despite the suspect's desire to conduct the attack on Christmas Day.

On December 23 2017 03:24 GreenHorizons wrote:


Felt compelled to point this out.



Source

They weren't Jewish either. There's no archaeological evidence for the event at the core of Passover and even plenty of Jews recognize it's a fictional story. (Don't tell xDaunt)

On December 22 2017 12:14 GoTuNk! wrote:


So who cares if they can pay it? What can be more inmoral than the government showing up to loot the grave of the diseased? That tax should be completely deleted.

On December 23 2017 05:31 Grumbels wrote:

I knew this, but I was hoping nobody would be pedantic enough to point it out.

On December 23 2017 01:30 Excludos wrote:


So you're completely in favor of the rich getting richer while the poor gets poorer? Especially if it's the rich guy's kids who haven't done a bit to earn it? It's "looting the grave" because people want them to pour a little bit of it back to the community? Come on

On December 23 2017 05:43 GreenHorizons wrote:


If people like xDaunt weren't saying with 100% sincerity I wouldn't have felt the need, but I grew concerned when not as many people confirmed they already knew it when he brought it up.

On December 23 2017 02:39 Grumbels wrote:

It's kinda sad how little we've progressed since the time of the Pharaohs who enslaved nations to build vast structures for them to haunt in eternity. Even the dead have property rights, apparently. All of a sudden I'm feeling very sympathetic towards grave robbers.

The largest pyramid, built for the Pharaoh Khufu around 2530 B.C. and intended to last an eternity, was until early in the twentieth century the biggest building on the planet...

The question of who labored to build them, and why, has long been part of their fascination. Rooted firmly in the popular imagination is the idea that the pyramids were built by slaves serving a merciless pharaoh. This notion of a vast slave class in Egypt originated in Judeo-Christian tradition and has been popularized by Hollywood productions like Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments, in which a captive people labor in the scorching sun beneath the whips of pharaoh's overseers. But graffiti from inside the Giza monuments themselves have long suggested something very different.

Now, drawing on diverse strands of evidence, from geological history to analysis of living arrangements, bread-making technology, and animal remains, Egyptologist Mark Lehner, an associate of Harvard's Semitic Museum, is beginning to fashion an answer. He has found the city of the pyramid builders. They were not slaves.

On December 23 2017 14:07 Sermokala wrote:
So Slaves didn't build the pyramids so Egypt wasn't a dictatorial state based on slavery?

oh so US slavery was so much worse then all other slavery that theres no reason to talk about anyone elses slavery in history.

On December 23 2017 14:07 Sermokala wrote:
So Slaves didn't build the pyramids so Egypt wasn't a dictatorial state based on slavery?

oh so US slavery was so much worse then all other slavery that theres no reason to talk about anyone elses slavery in history.

On December 23 2017 14:14 GreenHorizons wrote:


No, there's no reason to suggest they were the same thing, because they weren't.

Also this Jewish slaves built the pyramids thing (or Egypt was built on slavery) is a popular myth that should be put down whenever it's brought up.

On December 23 2017 14:14 GreenHorizons wrote:


No, there's no reason to suggest they were the same thing, because they weren't.

Also this Jewish slaves built the pyramids thing (or Egypt was built on slavery, or "every society had slaves like the US") is a popular myth that should be put down whenever it's brought up.

On December 23 2017 14:19 Sermokala wrote:

Ok so because the US has better documentations on the standards that slaves endured its the only slavery worth talking about? we can just ignore the rest of the world and history beacuse they didn't bother to document workplace conditions.

On December 23 2017 14:21 xDaunt wrote:

Alright, let me know when you are ready put down the straw man. I’m going back to my holiday drinking.

On December 23 2017 14:23 GreenHorizons wrote:


It's not just about workplace conditions. It's about believing you own someone and their children in perpetuity as property that have no human rights.



The only straw is the one you're drinking from man

On December 23 2017 14:37 Sermokala wrote:

So your stance is that the British created chattel slavery in that a concept of owning someone and their children in perpetuity. That slavery before this didn't entail the slave being someones property or that the offspring was always free.

On December 23 2017 14:40 GreenHorizons wrote:


No. I think it's important to distinguish the differences and when and where they actually existed. So that people don't make reckless assumptions like Egypt being built on slavery and that slavery being comparable to southern US chattel slavery and build world views that incorporate such misinformation.

On December 23 2017 14:47 Sermokala wrote:

But It was built on slavery. Early civilization almost anywhere was built on slavery. Agriculture was a labor intensive field and mining was extremely dangerous so they used slaves to fill in the gaps. They went to war and "made" more slaves then they killed. Cesear in Gual recorded that he killed a million barbarians and enslaved twice that. The pyramids might not have been made by slaves but it was probably slave labor that funded it in one way or another.

Making US slavery the only slavery worth talking about just ruins your credibility and makes it easy to paint you as anti american and god knows how easy that is these days to ruin your message.

I mean come on slavery is bad why are you trying to make people disagree with you about that.

The pyramids might not have been made by slaves but it was probably slave labor that funded it in one way or another.

On December 23 2017 15:07 GreenHorizons wrote:


How in the world did you get that from my response?

"Early civilization" and "built on slavery" I would probably want to clarify but would likely disagree with you on to one degree or another. But I never said that US slavery is the only slavery worth talking about, but it's only through the window of xDaunt's "western civilization" based pro-ethnostate arguments are we provided the context to make this relevant to US politics.

As such, attempts to use general phrases like "Early civilization almost anywhere was built on slavery" belie an incoherent argument of superiority/equivalence unsupported by the facts. Which will lead people to say things like:



Instead of noticing that there's basically no evidence that there was significant slave populations until the Greco-Roman period which is specifically outside of the period referenced by xDaunt regarding his sureness that Egypt was built on slavery or your supporting assertion that it funded the pyramids (based off nothing).

So while people advocate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, Muslims in Myanmar, and embolden the "western culture" war, and erase the magnificence of African history in order to make shithole arguments like "why didn't Africans utilize the 'gift' of colonization?! No sense in trying to force civilization on the uncivilized", I think the least I can do is point out they are ignorant arguments if not absurdly offensive and racist.