President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Congress has kicked the can on immigration for decades. It's already bad, and with climate change, incoming changes to food and water supply, millions of people are going to be moving.

Alma, "Liberals want..." is a strawman. What both the D's and R's want is a bunch of adults with experience in government to sit down and hammer out something that is workable and can get passed. It badly needs to happen. This country needs entry level workers who are willing to be cheap labor and early generation immigrants. There are tons of jobs here who require those workers, and regular folks just aren't signing up to do those jobs. Immigrants who are outside the system are vulnerable to all sorts of manipulation and mistreatment.

Alabama passed a very effective/draconian labor law about four years ago. It worked so well that it scared half such people out of the state and employers like agribusiness and Tyson Chicken were crippled. We need to find a way to bring these folks into the system in a controllable way which does not equal throwing out every one of them that we can catch. We can't let everyone in at will, there needs to be standards and a system. That's a real world need.

A couple of smart people from each party need to nut up and work it out, without posturing, gaslighting and finger pointing, because it simply needs to get done for the good of the country and all parties concerned including the immigrants.

 

Most first world countries are caught in a paradoxical whipsaw: Declining birth rate and aging population, increasing automation/fewer middle class jobs, but a critical need for immigrants to do "dirty" jobs.

Throw in climate change and mass migration, and you've got a war. Or a slaughter.

 

Here's an example, related to Afghanistan, of how the media now approaches US decisions involving other countries and how some might react. These stories are about Biden's decision to effectively end the Afghan war.

Afghans Wonder ‘What About Us?’ as U.S. Troops Prepare to Withdraw

“It is about my existence. It is not about their withdrawal."

'The Americans are responsible for the troubles, hardships that we are going through. Now they are going to leave with their troops, with no peace, no progress. They just want to leave their war behind.”

"It is unreasonable, hasty and a betrayal to us."

Will Afghanistan Become a Terrorism Safe Haven Once Again?

"While it is understandable to want all our forces to come home, it should not be at the expense of losing what we have gained to do so. Repositioning our counterterrorism capabilities outside of the country will significantly reduce our intelligence collection operations and our ability to conduct unilateral operations against direct threats to the homeland.”

The Crucial Questions for Afghanistan

The reality of an imminent American withdrawal from Afghanistan differs from its long-anticipated likelihood. Already the anxiety engendered by this new certainty in the capital, Kabul, and other urban centers is making itself felt.

Afghans’ fear is multifaceted, evoked by the Taliban’s grim record, bitter and vivid memories of civil war and the widely acknowledged weakness of the current government. These conditions in turn push Afghan thinking in one direction: The country’s government and armed forces won’t survive without American support.

Jennifer Rubin's column is actually pretty balanced; I appreciate that she points out the media and accumulated foreign policy experts are often wrong on their prognostications. But the column ends like this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/14/afghanistan-requires-more-humility-everyone/

In any case, we should all pray that Biden made the correct call. Heaven help the people of Afghanistan — and the West — if he did not.

The Post's editorial is scathing.

At a minimum, it will mean an abandonment of those Afghans who believed in building a democracy that guaranteed basic human rights — and the nullification of the sacrifices of the American servicemen who were killed or wounded in that mission.

This is over 2,500 troops. Now, of course, the GOP is fuming over the withdrawal - that party is owned by defense contractor and nation-building interests. A massive gravy train is being lost, and you could long rely on Republicans to get giddy over the prospect of occupying foreign enclaves for treasure.

But growing segment of the left is mad, too, for moral reasons, that trace back to some enduring responsibility the US now has to rescue the world.

Biden's decision is frankly fascinating - his first that appears to be an old school Joe Biden decision. It's logically sound enough - we went for X, achieved it, and can no longer say we're there for the original purpose - which may be why it seems unpopular with the political classes. It will not be unpopular, I suspect, with many American voters.

 

I also see the strong Leslie Knope vibes here, but it was actually Ron Johnson, er... Swanson who had 93 meetings on March 31.

 

Didn't write liberals. Wrote progressives.

There were many, many Democratic presidential candidates who wanted to get rid of criminal prosecution for crossing the border illegally. Many progressives wanted to abolish ICE. Get rid of ICE and remove criminal status from crossing the border, and you have, in effect, an open border.

(Beto, to his credit, resisted this call.)

 

Baby, you'll come blockin' my agenda
Same old lie you used to use before
And I said yeah, well, what am I supposed to do?
Rioters said they didn't know what they were gettin' into
So they've had a little trouble in town
Now, you're tryin' to bring me down
Stop draggin' my, stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my numbers down

It's hard to think you're unwanted
It's hard to think about why you lost
This doesn't have to be the big "get even"
This doesn't have to be anything at all
I know you can't tell Putin goodbye
I know you really wanna be your own king

Baby, you could never look me in the eye
Yeah, you buckled with the weight of the world
Stop draggin' my, stop draggin' my
Stop draggin' my numbers down

Your people runnin' 'round loose in the world
Ain't got nothin' better to do
Make a meal of some cold Big Macs
You need someone lookin' into you

 

Trump surrendered to the Taliban in Afghanistan like he surrendered to Russia for Lebanon and Syria.
Biden is essentially following the Christian conservative position in Afghanistan.

 

You are definitely wrong, which is usually the case when you pull out the board brush and use it to create a false image of progressives and/or liberals.

 

Mmm...I don't think so. I think Christian conservatives to have a "conversion" mindset about American military occupation. If some American Christians - not me, but some - believe the US has a special calling to export itself around the world, I'm not sure how full-scale troop withdrawal addresses that.

 

I don't consider myself progressive, but I'm kind of defaulting to, "Eh, fuck it, let everyone in," because the other options seem worse. As the past X years have shown, if people want to come here, they'll come here. Might as well funnel them through legally and track them ASAP as potential future citizens, instead of this stupid game we're playing now. It also seems kind of rich to me that a nation of 97.6 percent immigrants decides that it's a bad thing, now that we've got ours.

 

Man, fuck the racist politicians of this state and their racist fetish objects.

Bill would increase penalties for removing historical monuments