US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1562

On June 20 2019 00:52 KwarK wrote:
It’s an interesting spin that it’s a good thing that the President, who you seem to think is inclined to abuse his power, has been constitutionally thwarted. I’d still consider the situation negative.

Only 56 percent of the key positions in the Department of Homeland Security that require nomination and confirmation have been filled, according to the tracker. Kirstjen Nielsen has been working without a deputy since she was sworn in as secretary in December 2017.

At the Justice Department, just 48 percent of such positions have been filled. The department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been without a permanent director for years. Deputy Director Thomas Brandon, an agency veteran, has been acting director since 2015.

On June 20 2019 01:31 Simberto wrote:
I am all in favor of reigning in intelligence agencies. Most intelligence agencies, including US ones, are pretty scary if you are in favor of stuff like privacy or rule of law. Making up evidence to start a horrible war which killed 100s of thousands and destabilized the whole middle east, the results of which are still dominating that region is only the top of the iceberg here.

The problem is that i neither think that that is actually what Trump wants to do, nor do i trust him to be competent enough to get anywhere should he actually want to do that.

Trump wants to fight people who don't obey him, and those who say mean things about him. If the intelligence agencies were to come out and say that Trump is the bestest president ever, and maybe deliver some dirt on Hillary to him, and continue to obey every inate thing he demands, he would immediately stop caring about "reigning them in". What i see is not someone who cares about the rule of law trying to stop overreach, but a wannabe dictator fighting political opponents.

Ask yourself honestly if Trump would act the same way he does now if the tables were flipped, and we were talking about an investigation into Hillary instead of one into Trump. Since i doubt even Danglers or xDaunt could claim that, this is clearly not about the rule of law, but about Trumps ego and his demand for power.

As a general rule, if you only care about the rule of law when fighting for it benefits you, you don't care about the rule of law. If you only fight for privacy when it is your own privacy you are talking about, you don't care about privacy. The real test of what you actually care about is when you fight for something that is right despite it not being to your immediate advantage. And US republicans in general, and Trump in particular, fail that test at every possible junction. Thus, it is really hard to see anything that they do as anything but naked partisan power politic. Do the stuff that helps you, do the stuff that hurts your political opponent, fuck any principles whatsoever.

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863. It declared that all enslaved persons in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were to be freed. This excluded the five states known later as border states, which were the four "slave states" not in rebellion – Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri – and those counties of Virginia soon to form the state of West Virginia, and also the three zones under Union occupation: the state of Tennessee, lower Louisiana, and Southeast Virginia.[citation needed]

More isolated geographically, Texas was not a battleground, and thus the people held there as slaves were not affected by the Emancipation Proclamation unless they escaped.[7] Planters and other slaveholders had migrated into Texas from eastern states to escape the fighting, and many brought enslaved people with them, increasing by the thousands the enslaved population in the state at the end of the Civil War.[8] Although most enslaved people lived in rural areas, more than 1,000 resided in both Galveston and Houston by 1860, with several hundred in other large towns.[9] By 1865, there were an estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas.[8]

The news of General Robert E. Lee's surrender on April 9 reached Texas later in the month.[10] The Army of the Trans-Mississippi did not surrender until June 2.[8] On June 18, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived at Galveston Island with 2,000 federal troops to occupy Texas on behalf of the federal government.[7] The following day, standing on the balcony of Galveston's Ashton Villa, Granger read aloud the contents of "General Order No. 3", announcing the total emancipation of those held as slaves:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.[11]

Formerly enslaved people in Galveston rejoiced in the streets after the announcement, although in the years afterward many struggled to work through the changes against resistance of whites. The following year, freedmen organized the first of what became the annual celebration of Juneteenth in Texas.[11] In some cities African-Americans were barred from using public parks because of state-sponsored segregation of facilities. Across parts of Texas, freed people pooled their funds to purchase land to hold their celebrations, such as Houston's Emancipation Park, Mexia's Booker T. Washington Park, and Emancipation Park in Austin.[8][11]

Although the date is sometimes referred to as the "traditional end of slavery in Texas" it was given legal status in a series of Texas Supreme Court decisions between 1868 and 1874.[12]

In the early 20th century, economic and political forces led to a decline in Juneteenth celebrations. From 1890 to 1908, Texas and all former Confederate states passed new constitutions or amendments that effectively disenfranchised black people, excluding them from the political process. White-dominated state legislatures passed Jim Crow laws imposing second-class status. The Great Depression forced many black people off farms and into the cities to find work. In these urban environments, African Americans had difficulty taking the day off to celebrate. The Second Great Migration began during World War II, when many black people migrated to the West Coast where skilled jobs in the defense industry were opening up.[13] From 1940 through 1970, in the second wave of the Great Migration, more than 5 million black people left Texas, Louisiana and other parts of the South for the North and West Coast. As historian Isabel Wilkerson writes, "The people from Texas took Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other places they went."

On June 20 2019 06:27 IyMoon wrote:
So what does everyone think the odds of the US going to war with Iran are?

Do you think we go in even if no other country will go with us?

I am not sure if its just liberal circles being scared about a war that has no chance of actually happening, or if there is a real risk we are about to start another forever war.

On June 20 2019 00:00 Doublemint wrote:
so you actually want Trump and his ilk to rein in the intelligence community?

On June 20 2019 06:33 Simberto wrote:
I really, really hope you won't, but i am not willing to make any predictions. American politics is weird and unpredictable. You elected Trump. The US seems to like being at war, too.