By, unfortunately, playing their game while also trying to move them over to more reasonable positions. It's why I bent over backwards for like 3 whole pages in this thread saying "Yes, I agree. IDF bad. Genocide bad. Palestinians are the victims. We need a solution that doesn't include continuous bombing of the Gaza strip." I kept conceding ground in hopes of helping everyone relax so we can brainstorm realistic options toward peace.
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
abcnews.go.com
Nah, they had plenty of chances to codify Roe v Wade for decades. And the fact that there would be a few Democrats that wouldn't support codifying Roe v Wade would also show that Democrats like to talk but not take action.
Yes, let's take one person and use them as an example and ignore countless of other Palestinian supporters who has constantly spoken up about Palestine! And forget the fact that streamers like destiny can cherry pick what to show!
You also forget, "HAMAS BAD YOU MUST CONDEMN HAMAS BOO TO HAMAS!!" while ignoring Zionists attacking Palestinians and Muslims. So far, I've not heard of a Palestine supporter committing acts of violence against Jewish people like you claimed they would, after a vet self-immolated. You weren't bending over backward, you kept pointing out Hamas kidnapping citizens (which wasn't a good thing, don't get me wrong), but nothing about Israel continuously indiscriminately bombing Gaza and killing their own people.
I'm actually impressed, and surprised, that you didn't accuse them of being fake plants to make American Palestinian supporters look bad.
I didn't even bring up the kidnapping until what like... two months ago? We've been arguing about this for half a year now. There are many, many more examples of me trying to reach across the aisle and help you see reason. I just stopped after you accused me of being an Islamaphobe and then called for the destruction of a country.
Are you aware that you just claimed that a realistic path to peace would be Israel, a much larger, much more powerful country, backed by the most powerful country on the planet, just... giving up and letting Palestine have what they want. What in the hell is realistic about that!?
I'll address both points here as you seem to have a misunderstanding of how the Senate works, and Democrats' views on abortion. The simplicity of "they had plenty of chances to codify Roe v Wade for decades" implies two assumptions to me: That you think parties always vote in lock step, and that filibusters don't exist. This is assuming a bill has cleared the House of Representatives. So to codify Roe v Wade, you need a majority of Representatives to vote Yea on the bill. It then goes to the Senate where you will need 60 votes to override the incoming Filibuster. Democrats have never been entirely pro-choice in their history, so even with a Senate super majority you can assume you'd still have some "Nays" who would allow a Filibuster which would ultimately kill the bill.
This is pretty vague. As far as US Presidents go he's the only one who's ever actually done anything to combat Islamophobia, so I'm not sure what you're even talking about.
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
I feel like you think you're the only voter that exists in this country.
Who also happen to be the same demographic most enthused about ruining Biden's campaign in the name of Palestine.
Isn't this more of a failure of politics? At least since I've been aware of US politics I don't recall any attempt by democrats to pass this. And you are right, this probably wouldn't have passed. And even now it probably wouldn't. But if you try to pass a bill even if it fails you can at least point fingers at those who voted against it. Congress as far as I can tell generally tries to protect its members from their actual positions.
The TikTok ban/forced sell is one thing I'm not going to be against. Ignoring all of my personal biases against the actual content of TikTok, it's a no-brainer that it's not in our interests to have a Chinese-owned company collecting data from US Citizens.
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
Whether it's a failure or success of politics is in the eye of the beholder. It's just how our particular flavor of politics works in the USA. It was by design that it's difficult to pass legislation, and incredibly difficult to amend the constitution. If you look at it from the way things were actually designed it's a feature and not a bug. If you look at it from the perspective of someone whose bill got Filibustered out of a vote then of course it's a failure. If the Republicans tried to codify an abortion ban and it was filibustered, I personally wouldn't see that as a success, but many would.
They usually want to be sure a bill is going to pass before they bring it to a vote. Before they ever bring it to a vote there are hundreds of negotiations happening to figure out whether the bill will pass or not. If they brought this to a vote and it failed it would be forever on the record as a failure and that would certainly be brought up in subsequent attempts to do the same thing. My guess is that it's been brought up before, and never had the votes to be worth bringing to a vote.
This.... so many times over. I've said it before but to me it's scary that even with those glaringly obvious truths there's so many folk out there who are against the ban. I am by no means a nationalist of any type (or even from the US) but how much do you have to hate yourself and your country to be cool with a foreign kinda hostile nation, which blatantly does not have anything resembling democratic principles, spying on you?
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
The filibuster as far as I can tell is outright abuse though. At least on my end I call BS on the arguments to keep the filibuster around... The filibuster should be indefensible in a democratic system.
Yeah there's no such thing as double jeopardy, I honestly think it's just one of those things that would have never passed though. Not to mention there's only been a couple of periods of time that there was a Democrat in Office with a Democrat majority in both the House and Senate.
It's obviously speculative but it's also an issue of how politics would be different if legislators had to take responsibility for the stuff they vote for instead of being able to simply avoid it by not voting at all. And this naturally goes beyond any one issue (and obviously requires citizens to give a crap about policy). At least to me the system looks like it shields legislators from responsibility even though it should reasonably actively work to push responsibility onto folk.
The hilarious part is that China fanned this flame themselves by having their fucking EMBASSY lobby against the ban. It raised a ton of red flags across the board.
hmmm, I'd say an embassy's job would be in that alley for this sort of thing. But it comes down to how much of an indisputable no-brainer this is. Tik tok not getting insta-banned years ago is a massive failure of governance and foreign policy... it's difficult to overstate how absurd this is. I mean, tik tok being used to spy on folk is something that has been known for years. It's been around since god damn 2016. By this point you'd think the government would at least be on witch hunt mode looking people whom might have been influenced by the chinese government to prevent it from being banned. And even then tik tok was given a year to divest. One more year of spying....
Usually the company would be the ones paying a registered lobbying firm. TikTok spent billions on lobbying over the past 5 or so years. They got cocky thinking they were untouchable, and lost big. Now their only hope is in the court systems which, who knows?
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
hmm, sure, but it's not that unusual for an embassy or consulate to act on behalf of it's people or business interests. The issue here is of course context and the obvious bad faith at play. Which make fairly normal stuff look straight up nefarious. Let alone the fact that china doesn't allow foreign social media should be enough for the US to do the same in regards to chinese social media.Usually the company would be the ones paying a registered lobbying firm. TikTok spent billions on lobbying over the past 5 or so years. They got cocky thinking they were untouchable, and lost big. Now their only hope is in the court systems which, who knows?
--- Double Post Merged, , Original Post Date: ---
This article outlines the history of their fight in extreme detail.
The part that struck me as the most validating piece of the TikTok ban is:
Another article that details the final nail in the coffin which was the Embassy getting involved.
It's about how it precipitated. If you read the article about the Embassy's lobbying for TikTok they were trying to be overly reassuring that the Party has no connections to the company, which is just completely false.