The Biden Presidency

Eboue said:
Why bother to debate policies? Let's just wait for whatever Joe Biden's line is on any given issue and then defend it in blocks of text designed to obfuscate your complete moral bankruptcy.

You say "searching for posts to make a poster look bad". Yes! You look really really bad. It's clear that you have no objections to racism, to genocide, to inequality. You only want the boot that stamps on people to have a (D) next to it.
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I've posted that chapo clip after Charlottesville in one of these threads. Paraphrasing: "The fascists know what's coming with climate change, so that's why they want the border walls and the guns, while the liberals have no answer because they don't do planning or redistribution."

I think we can see the liberal answer from the admin now.
 
calodo2003 said:
My bad, conflated the two for a second. Still a very heavily edited clip.
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Looks like he didn't have a chair to sit on, which is apparently breaking news on right wing twitter.

Also, this is the same account that retweeted the clip.

 
calodo2003 said:
My bad, conflated the two for a second. Still a very heavily edited clip.
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I hear you bro, but it's evident he shouldn't have been sitting at that moment in the ceremony. Notice Macron, the First Lady, and others standing tall. FLOTUS had to cover her mouth and tell him to standup. Without her intervention, it would have been even more awkward.
Being sharp, alert, and self-aware is crucial for leading the nation. It's frustrating to think that Jill or an aide always needs to be there to prompt him.

(and before someone jumps, no 34Felonies is not the answer either)
 
Well there are news that claimed the video was edited. Mad editing skills if true.
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
[...]

So sure, I can provide some of what I believe the Democrat party should be adopting as a solution but I find it a bit ridiculous that you say it would be "completely pointless and a waste of time" for you to write out solutions. You must realize that I also have no influence on Democrat policy either. That doesn't negate the value of actual debate and not just rubbish one liners or pulling up some post from years ago and not offering anything else. I think European countries should have immigration that are more open to people from the Americas and Asia moving there (not just EU citizens moving around) but they likely won't because your countries offer universal healthcare and other benefits and the reality is they don't want to make that easy for immigrants to access that system.

[...]
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I wasn't asking you to. It's cool if you want to, but it shouldn't be a prerequisite for you to voice your displeasure with something happening.

The point, also, is that this isn't a general prerequisite for the poster in question either. This is a new routine that has popped up because their preferred people are in power, it's a routine made to defend the status quo without having to defend anything. When the people in power change, this user will revert to acting in the exact same way as before, and the same as the people now being dismissed. That is annoying, and it's why several posters seem to have grown tired of it.
 
This isn't tenable anymore, he's going to get absolutely murdered by Trump in the debates.

There needs to be someone else surely ?
 
foolsgold said:
This isn't tenable anymore, he's going to get absolutely murdered by Trump in the debates.

There needs to be someone else surely ?
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We're way past that point now. Unless he has a serious health problem, he will be on the ballot in November. The debates will be a shit-show for sure, but not sure it will hurt Biden all that much. They'll pump him full of meds like for that State of the Union.
 
NotThatSoph said:
I wasn't asking you to. It's cool if you want to, but it shouldn't be a prerequisite for you to voice your displeasure with something happening.

The point, also, is that this isn't a general prerequisite for the poster in question either. This is a new routine that has popped up because their preferred people are in power, it's a routine made to defend the status quo without having to defend anything. When the people in power change, this user will revert to acting in the exact same way as before, and the same as the people now being dismissed. That is annoying, and it's why several posters seem to have grown tired of it.
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It can also be annoying to just complain without ever putting effort into discussing a topic. I think that's what is completely pointless. Which isn't a prerequisite, but it makes for much more interesting and useful discussion.

Immigration is, this year's election, a big topic and it's good to actually discuss potential ways to improve the situation.
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
On a side note, I think it's interesting when European posters criticize US immigration policies when their own countries have much stricter immigration policies. Without showing a huge bank balance or having sponsorship from an EU company already willing to hire its virtually impossible for me to move to the UK, Portugal or Sweden for example. Is there anything you are doing in your own country to allow more immigration into your country? What immigration policies do you believe should be changed in the UK so people can immigrate there easier?
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I am an immigrant in Spain. I don't think it's particularly hard to live here legally. I think it's easier than in the U.S., from what I know (I also lived there for a while). So it's not necessarily true that immigration is harder in Europe.
 
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4bars said:
I have another idea. Lets US and EU stop fecking around to other countries and maybe people will not be forced to immigrate. Europe would not have the Operation Sophia (now under another name) that was infamous where among other things were paying actual pirates as officials that could tackle boats from Lybia and put them in make up prisons in Lybia where women were raped constantly because they were caged with man. Also actual slave trade was happening there.

The Lybia disaster provoked by the west. The syria /Isis disaster indirectly provoked by the west. And so many more

Another thing that would help is that the west should stop draining resources and brains from the countries that needs to be developed. Also, that they stomp them economically under the banner of free trade.....but not for the items that they could compete against the west and then they stablish protectionist laws. I hear crippling IMF also?


There are many many many things that a government could do and they don't. Why? because there are shit loads of benefits but we don't want to pay the consequences. And the consequences are asylum immigrants caused by the west and economic immigrants caused by the west. That without the west, this countries would be worse off than Europe and US? that is not all Europe and US fault? absolutely most likely yes, but most likely yes they would be in a good enough position to not think on immigrating risking everything. People don't immigate on a whim. Abandoning family, friends, language, culture, etc... At least not en masse

Now, if we feck their life around, I enjoy the privilege position that my country have because we feck their country and I enjoy the taxes on the benefits of the companies that bomb them, reconstruct them, outcompete them and give us cheap oil, then I have to be prepared for ambitious prepared immigrants to take my job at home. Oh, also the moral stand that we should take care of our fellow human people and that I am just privilege to live in a first world country by sheer luck
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This is really a much longer term structural issue.

Brian drain happens for several reasons but it's not surprising and understandable on an individual level. When people come to the West to attend colleges, there will be inevitably some that prefer to stay. There are some initiatives trying to reverse that process. Like Ghana allows anyone with African heritage (not just Ghanian) to obtain a Ghana passport to entice people to come to Ghana to build for the future. I think it's less about preventing brain drain and more about creating incentives to make moving into some developing nations more attractive.

I don't think the macro situation is as simple as the US becoming more isolationist. Some endeavors should definitely not be relocated in the future, yes. but improving the conditions across the developing world is going to also take capital movement/generation. And usually there a few preconditions to this being successful. For instance, a traditional prerequisite is judiciary development and trust in institutions. It's always going to be up for debate but I think each country will need to fight the right internal balance of public and private sector.
 
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oneniltothearsenal said:
It can also be annoying to just complain without ever putting effort into discussing a topic. I think that's what is completely pointless. Which isn't a prerequisite, but it makes for much more interesting and useful discussion.

Immigration is, this year's election, a big topic and it's good to actually discuss potential ways to improve the situation.
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Sure, but it's not a discussion, it's an attempt at shutting it down. You won't see a single word spent on actually arguing for or defending the policy.

If we go back to e.g. Trump's proposed Muslim ban, you never saw demands of "solving" immigration policy before you could have a serious opinion on whether or not it was a good idea. Now, with things like Biden launching stronger attacks on American asylum policy than Trump could ever dream of, saying "maybe don't" has suddenly become self-satisfying, simply a gotcha, unnuanced, and more condescending tripe. This is not serious behaviour.
 
There are two separate critiques, really: of Biden's policies, and of the contrast between his policies and his (and Dems') rhetoric.

The latter is relevant since this is election season and the claim is often made that if you don't vote for Biden then X bad thing will happen under Trump. If X bad thing also happens under Biden despite his rhetoric then that is not good for any pro-Biden arguments.
 
The immigrant / stop the boats bullshit we're seeing in the US and UK / Europe is a bit of a red herring anyway. Blaming foreigners and making them a scapegoat is an easy out for politicians instead of addressing the real issues such as the growing wealth inequality gap. People have less purchasing power, less disposable income, less goods, less financial security now than they have had in previous years and generations, whilst the top 1-x% of society haven't felt the pinch at all.

It's easy to say that the common man is feeling that way because people with different skin tones and languages are taking the same resources as them but that couldn't be further from that truth.
 
The Corinthian said:
The immigrant / stop the boats bullshit we're seeing in the US and UK / Europe is a bit of a red herring anyway. Blaming foreigners and making them a scapegoat is an easy out for politicians instead of addressing the real issues such as the growing wealth inequality gap. People have less purchasing power, less disposable income, less goods, less financial security now than they have had in previous years and generations, whilst the top 1-x% of society haven't felt the pinch at all.

It's easy to say that the common man is feeling that way because people with different skin tones and languages are taking the same resources as them but that couldn't be further from that truth.
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It's the oldest trick in the book basically. Find an "other" group that you can demonize to remove focus from material questions. If more voters used the "worker vs. capitalist" frame of reference for how they view the world and thereby vote, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately people generally are too easily swayed by racism and xenophobia.

I'll add a good example of this. In the U.S. many farms and ranches use undocumented immigrant labor, because they can pay them less under the threat of deportation. This drives down wages and provides fewer jobs for people with citizenship, so people easily jump to the conclusion that immigrants are the problem. But in reality it's the bosses that exploit this, and workers, whether they are immigrants or not, pay the price. If these immigrants instead had a pathway to citizenship, they would have the same employee rights and get fair compensation.
 
The Corinthian said:
The immigrant / stop the boats bullshit we're seeing in the US and UK / Europe is a bit of a red herring anyway. Blaming foreigners and making them a scapegoat is an easy out for politicians instead of addressing the real issues such as the growing wealth inequality gap. People have less purchasing power, less disposable income, less goods, less financial security now than they have had in previous years and generations, whilst the top 1-x% of society haven't felt the pinch at all.

It's easy to say that the common man is feeling that way because people with different skin tones and languages are taking the same resources as them but that couldn't be further from that truth.
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Great post and spot on.

For example, in Portugal, the fact that immigrants contributed close to 2 billion euros to social security and our NHS barely gets mentioned. If you get any type of incident with an immigrant it gets non stop coverage from all the channels despite the fact that crime rate remains unchanged even with the so called "mass immigration" from last years. Portugal remains one of the safest countries in the world. But the idiots lap it up. Unsurprising since most interviews target the too many brown people picking up fruits and vegetables gang when natives refuse to do so.

Media and politicians are to blame.
 
Suedesi said:
He probably pooped himself and doesn't know what to do.

I almost feel sorry for him. He's deteriorating so quickly that he should be resting. How can anyone allow their loved one, who is deteriorating so quickly, to spend their final years in front of the camera, under constant scrutiny?
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He didn’t poop himself and you should probably get the things you see online more thoroughly in this day and age.
 
Is this also edited?



It may be off-topic because this has nothing to do with Biden and his policies, but I am really dreading what AI may be doing in future. Considering the fact that the first one was edited, I have a strong feeling this one is too, and it looks very fecking realistic, which is scary.
 
I think the point about immigration that gets swept under the carpet now is unlike twenty years ago or even ten years ago in Europe during the first tidal wave of backlash to immigration is the advent of camera phones and social media means images are beamed into people's homes in instant. This is the single reason I think there is a huge backlash across America but also closer to home in Europe. So when you have high levels of crossings (which may have happened as much in the past) it didn't have the salience of an issue being projected as the number one issue.

Here in the UK the attack line that Tony Blair ushered in mass immigration is now a stick to beat to win working class small towns and traditional Labour seats post-Blair. He himself did not lose politically on the matter as it was not a highly discussed issue back then. They tried to make it a hot topic. They put up billboards covering it in 2005 all over the country not unlike what the Leave campaign did in 2016. And still he won big by not losing those voters.

I think the same is happening in the US. Biden on day one cancelled a lot of Trump's executive orders and only got heavily negative ratings for immigration handling as the narrative of mass open borders took hold. People didn't like it for 3.5 years. There are polls showing even a significant amount of non-white people now want strict policy. You can argue he was never progressive on it anyway. But most voters oppose him not because he wasn't too strict but because he wasn't strict enough. I don't think you can ignore that. You can argue he didn't (can't) make the case for why he repealed certain orders, ignored the pro-immigration argument as a matter of high importance and let it fester into negativity. I think that is a strong criticism and why the population moved right. But the fact is the population has moved right on immigration and we're seeing the same thing happen in places like Ireland where they were made to look like hypocrites when people were crossing onto their shores. Or even the most left wing city in England (Liverpool) having an anti-immigration backlash.

Where is this backlash coming from? What are the remedies to turn the clock on what has become a widespread theme of every election? Or is it too far gone where the perception of mass immigration through social media is not something you can correct like how crime is not higher than it was thirty years ago but people think it is based on algorithms of stories a long way away?
 
Boycott said:
I think the point about immigration that gets swept under the carpet now is unlike twenty years ago or even ten years ago in Europe during the first tidal wave of backlash to immigration is the advent of camera phones and social media means images are beamed into people's homes in instant. This is the single reason I think there is a huge backlash across America but also closer to home in Europe. So when you have high levels of crossings (which may have happened as much in the past) it didn't have the salience of an issue being projected as the number one issue.

Here in the UK the attack line that Tony Blair ushered in mass immigration is now a stick to beat to win working class small towns and traditional Labour seats post-Blair. He himself did not lose politically on the matter as it was not a highly discussed issue back then. They tried to make it a hot topic. They put up billboards covering it in 2005 all over the country not unlike what the Leave campaign did in 2016. And still he won big by not losing those voters.

I think the same is happening in the US. Biden on day one cancelled a lot of Trump's executive orders and only got heavily negative ratings for immigration handling as the narrative of mass open borders took hold. People didn't like it for 3.5 years. There are polls showing even a significant amount of non-white people now want strict policy. You can argue he was never progressive on it anyway. But most voters oppose him not because he wasn't too strict but because he wasn't strict enough. I don't think you can ignore that. You can argue he didn't (can't) make the case for why he repealed certain orders, ignored the pro-immigration argument as a matter of high importance and let it fester into negativity. I think that is a strong criticism and why the population moved right. But the fact is the population has moved right on immigration and we're seeing the same thing happen in places like Ireland where they were made to look like hypocrites when people were crossing onto their shores. Or even the most left wing city in England (Liverpool) having an anti-immigration backlash.

Where is this backlash coming from? What are the remedies to turn the clock on what has become a widespread theme of every election? Or is it too far gone where the perception of mass immigration through social media is not something you can correct like how crime is not higher than it was thirty years ago but people think it is based on algorithms of stories a long way away?
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You are right that social media magnifies everything but objectively with numbers on hand, immigration had never been higher. But is a problem that the west caused in asignificant percentage, directly or indirectly
 
4bars said:
You are right that social media magnifies everything but objectively with numbers on hand, immigration had never been higher. But is a problem that the west caused in asignificant percentage, directly or indirectly
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I don't disagree with your last point. But people often just say that as a closer to avoid explaining how they would counter this growing backlash in the here and now.

That's the cognitive dissonance I see on this forum a lot in terms of politics over the years. As if in fact the public are exactly where people posting here are on all the issues. No deviation at all. Instead I see politicians moving right on issues like immigration because the public is instead already ahead of them on the right. I don't think it is the other way round anymore and social media I think is the killer. It's the same with crime where statistically urban crime is down yet people feel way more unsafe.

Since this is the Biden thread it's relevant in that until this new policy he signed this week he was massively underwater on immigration for the opposite reason to what posters in this thread are now talking about. Which is that the majority of the public viewed him as letting a record number of people in without restriction for 3.5/4 years, that he is the open borders president.

I don't think this is going to stand up in a court because they will say he has to go through lawmakers not with a pen. I don't think he will appeal and instead say "I tried, now it is up to them to work together" and it is back to square one. But in doing so his people's calculus is he may reduce his deficit on a number 1 or 2 issue which could swing the election. I think it is clear political gamesmanship knowing an EO won't be legal and still doing it, cynical to shore up a few votes, and a waste of time at the end. Yet it is the exact same thing you could argue he did with student loans with one exception: student loans in the polls is not a high topic priority. Most people don't go to a university or even support the policy for their own cynical reason ("i paid mine off"). Immigration is number 2 after inflation or even number 1 in some cases. It is the case in elections all across the map.
 
Boycott said:
No deviation at all. Instead I see politicians moving right on issues like immigration because the public is instead already ahead of them on the right.
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The public has a variety of regressive and progressive views. The president can choose to indulge some (like nativism) and ignore others (like universal healthcare or a ceasefire). His choices are a reflection of his politics.
 
Boycott said:
I think the point about immigration that gets swept under the carpet now is unlike twenty years ago or even ten years ago in Europe during the first tidal wave of backlash to immigration is the advent of camera phones and social media means images are beamed into people's homes in instant. This is the single reason I think there is a huge backlash across America but also closer to home in Europe. So when you have high levels of crossings (which may have happened as much in the past) it didn't have the salience of an issue being projected as the number one issue.

Here in the UK the attack line that Tony Blair ushered in mass immigration is now a stick to beat to win working class small towns and traditional Labour seats post-Blair. He himself did not lose politically on the matter as it was not a highly discussed issue back then. They tried to make it a hot topic. They put up billboards covering it in 2005 all over the country not unlike what the Leave campaign did in 2016. And still he won big by not losing those voters.

I think the same is happening in the US. Biden on day one cancelled a lot of Trump's executive orders and only got heavily negative ratings for immigration handling as the narrative of mass open borders took hold. People didn't like it for 3.5 years. There are polls showing even a significant amount of non-white people now want strict policy. You can argue he was never progressive on it anyway. But most voters oppose him not because he wasn't too strict but because he wasn't strict enough. I don't think you can ignore that. You can argue he didn't (can't) make the case for why he repealed certain orders, ignored the pro-immigration argument as a matter of high importance and let it fester into negativity. I think that is a strong criticism and why the population moved right. But the fact is the population has moved right on immigration and we're seeing the same thing happen in places like Ireland where they were made to look like hypocrites when people were crossing onto their shores. Or even the most left wing city in England (Liverpool) having an anti-immigration backlash.

Where is this backlash coming from? What are the remedies to turn the clock on what has become a widespread theme of every election? Or is it too far gone where the perception of mass immigration through social media is not something you can correct like how crime is not higher than it was thirty years ago but people think it is based on algorithms of stories a long way away?
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I don't think you are entirely wrong on the effects of social media and how that can feed into a narrative but immigration in the US comes up at various times even before social media. The early/mid-90s were another time when this became a huge talking point (also mostly do the narrative presented by the right wing). In 1994, California ("the most liberal state") passed Prop 187 which limited access to public serves for undocumented immigrants so its not just due to social media. Going back further the whole "reefer madness" narrative was also fueled by anti-immigration activists.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
Why is this a bad thing or worthy of a laugh?

It's one more stable long term ally in the region to curb opposition interests and stem influence away from the CCP.
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Maybe is not worth laughing. Maybe is more I laugh not to cry. Because will see how this "defend" treaty will be used like in Israel. Would that treaty be used with SA involvement in Yemen to attack Yemen? maybe Sudan? Any other SA country of interest that SA is considering attacking and is considered to be thread to SA just because? and give US the perfect excuse to meddle once more in the ME under the excuse to defend an ally?

Also, after all the khasshoggi assassination and biden talking shit of MBS and when the oil price hiked up and Biden had to go peddling for MBS to lower the price and MBS couldn't care less?

Maybe what is laughable is that Biden said that he would make SA a pariah state and now makes them a strategic ally. That is very laughable actually
 
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