thebruinbleedstarheelblue
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they had a debate.
Just stop pretending that there was some sort of comparison or similar criteria. This was all a charade.
Where do we go from here?
- Thread starter rodoheel
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Just stop pretending that there was some sort of comparison or similar criteria. This was all a charade.
ChileG
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You know, Trump has a record as well. It was horrific.
sringwal
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The chart is regarding real life performances.
ZenMode
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You believe you know how things worked in this situation. From the average person's point of view, nothing you've provided shows anything happening to address the border crisis until 2023. From the start of the crisis in 2021, not only was there inaction, there was also no acknowledgement of the crisis by the Biden administration until, going from memory, years later.1. Because I know how things work. It wasn't even an executive order. It was a rule passed by DHS. The interim final rule was put for public comment in May 2024, and the rule itself was announced in June. Did you read the rule or the rulemaking?
2. Before the 2024 rulemaking, there was a rulemaking in 2023 called "circumvention of lawful pathways final rule." That rulemaking was required for the May 2024 rule making to be effective. Did you know about the 2023 rulemaking? No, you didn't. So the 2023 rulemaking had to go through the rule making process, which requires agency fact finding, notice-and-comment rule making, and the publication of an interim final rule. That takes 6 months at a minimum.
The final rule was published in May 2023. You do the math.
Fact Sheet: Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Final Rule | Homeland Security
As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to prepare for the end of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Title 42 public health Order, which will expire after May 11, 2023, and to return to processing all noncitizens under Title 8 immigration authorities, the Department of...www.dhs.gov
3. I also read an article from a person who had been working on this policy since 2022. I can't find it right now and it's hard to google because border policy returns so many matches, but anyway you don't need to know that. All you need to do is read the rulemakings. And if you're not going to do that, then you should stop talking.
Here is a court case describing some of the procedural history. The Lawful Pathways rule was proposed as a rulemaking on February 23, 2023. So there you go. Any further questions?
Even Trump, in all of his incompetence, was able to fast track the COVID vaccine process to address the issue much more quickly than normal. I suspect that IF the Biden administration actually wanted to address the problem more quickly, they could have. Hell, if they didn't put their heads in the sand and at least acknowledge what we all knew was happening, while saying they are working on a plan, that would be something.
What is more likely the case, as it was with not selecting Josh Shapiro and Harris not going on Joe Rogan's podcast, I'd bet that not taking action on the border was about not pissing off their base. As we are consistently reminded, here and on the old ZZLP, wanting a secure border and not having the country inundated with illegal border crossers, is racist.
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sringwal
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I have been thinking a lot about this comment, so I want to circle back to it. What you are talking about is not "proof." Instead, it is your opinion, based on a mixture of selected soundbytes, confirmation bias, and political spin by pundits whose job it is to convince you that your perception of reality is right (which goes back to confirmation bias). "Proof," as you call it, is in graphs and charts that are created in a way that eliminates bias.
And the "proof" of that chart is that Kamala's speeches are written at a higher lexile level (which gauge a combination of vocabulary and complexity) at a higher reading level than any president since George Herbert Walker Bush. Trump's, on the other hand, are at a far lower level than any other president in the country's history. That is undeniable.
What you are failing to also understand is that there is a difference in Trump's strategy for sharing information and Kamala's. Trump's strategy is to avoid actually talking policy. Kamala, on the other hand, brings policy in when she is able to do so. The more you speak of policy, the harder it is to give a clear, concise answer.
I've posted this a couple of times lately, but the best example I can give is from an episode of West Wing.
In it, President Bartlett is running for reelection and badly loses the first debate because he gets inside his own head, and gets wishy washy with his words, because his job is complex, and political wonks are called "wonks" for a reason. His opponent can give clear 10 word answers, and wins the first debate handily.
Bartlett's staff spends the next few weeks, with varying levels of success, trying to train Bartlett to give clearer "10 word" answer. By the time the debate rolls around, however, Bartlett still appears to be struggling with his answers.
At the debate, he changes strategy, forcing his opponent to go beyond the 10 word sound byte. This is the result.
This is the key part of the discussion:
Moderator : Governor Ritchie, many economists have stated that the tax cut, which is the centrepiece of your economic agenda, could actually harm the economy. Is now really the time to cut taxes?
Governor Robert Ritchie, R-FL : You bet it is. We need to cut taxes for one reason - the American people know how to spend their money better than the federal government does.
Moderator : Mr. President, your rebuttal.
President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet : There it is. That's the ten word answer my staff's been looking for for two weeks. There it is. Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They're the tip of the sword. Here's my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I'll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while... every once in a while, there's a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren't very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for ten words. I'm the President of the United States, not the President of the people who agree with me. And by the way, if the left has a problem with that, they should vote for somebody else.
Trump is the master of the 10 word answer. Notice, that his speeches are long, but he pivots after each 10 words to a new topic. He even admits as such, and has branded it "the weave," which is, essentially, his way of distracting you by having you "look over there."
Whenever you go past that point, he struggles. His world is a world of black and white. And black and white worlds, as Bartlett says, "include body counts."
Kamala's answers are filled with more nuance, but that can often make her come off as less clear. This is because we live in a world that needs nuance, but demands 10 word soundbytes that reassure us that we are right, and they are wrong.
But, in the end, soundbytes are, simply, that. A good one, such as "ask not what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" have the power to retrain how we think. But JFK also gave some of the most powerful, and complex, speeches of the last 100 years, and he was one of the most captivating speakers. He followed the soundbyte, 10 word answer, with 1000 more explaining the depth of what that soundbyte meant.
On top of that, being intelligent has never meant that someone is a clear speaker. Some of the most intelligent people I know, with IQs far beyond my own, are terrible speakers.
So, no. You don't have "proof" to support your claim that she is inept. What you have is your opinion, which you mistake for "proof" because we live in a post-truth world., and we have now raised multiple generations who care so little about our country and the success of it that they are unwilling to engage in learning about what it is that government actually does.
And, for me, that is just downright anti-American. But, that's just my opinion.
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superrific
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1. Biden didn't take action until May 2023 because that's when the pandemic authority expired. Literally, up until that point, Biden's policy was exactly teh same as Trump's. He didn't change the Title 42 policy (and wouldn't have been allowed to anyway by the 5th Circuit). I mean, the policies were exactly the same. Biden's people started working on a replacement in 2022 because the pandemic authority was going to run out.
2. As for the vaccine, the law is different there. Trump's initial fast tracking was more about funding than law, and the money was committed by Congress, and there are no complex procedures to follow for doling out research grants, basically. Up until the vaccine was fully developed, there was no law involved at all (except perhaps on the very edges).
Then, once the vaccine was developed, you're right that it required rapid approval. But the FDA law has long provided a mechanism to do just that. It's called a "fast track designation." That's literally where the term "fast track" comes from in the pharma context. That's been the law of the land for at least 25 years. And Trump didn't have anything to do with that. The vaccine makers submitted their applications to the FDA under a fast track designation. The FDA evaluated the applications and approved. That's the way the system is supposed to operate.
3. The responsibility of educated people is to educate those who didn't have our same opportunities. It is not to parrot admittedly uninformed views of "average" people and thus head down a path of ignorance.
Hopefully, you have learned something from this discussion. I've explained the facts and the law, with evidence and links as appropriate. You've asked questions. I've answered them. You can ask more if you want, and I will answer them too assuming they aren't simply combative. I've learned things from people on this board who know more than me about certain topics. I just don't understand the unwillingness of others to do the same.
And then, hopefully, you will then explain this stuff to other people you know. And that's how public discourse is supposed to work, and why it has always been the cornerstone of ordered society. We talk to each other; we learn from each other; we consider people's arguments and perspectives; and then we hopefully form informed views.
MAGA especially (and the Tea Party before it) has obliterated this process in many corners of our society. "Do your own research" is such a regrettable attitude to have. At some point, Tea Party people got it in their heads that they knew more about how things work than the people who do the work professionally. I think a lot of this started with Rush Limbaugh, and a lot of it was in response to global warming. Because, on global warming, in the 1990s we really needed to trust the experts. It wasn't something we were going to be able to observe. And you had Rush getting rich off telling people not to trust the scientists because they were bad people.
Well, now we have ultra destructive hurricanes and wildfires and the Amazon is in danger of disappearing and the ice caps are melting and all of this is actually accelerating and we can't do anything about it because a) in large measure it's too late; and b) the idiots who believed Rush Limbaugh about science are still doing their thing.
4. So what I ask of you, which is the only thing I ask of everyone on the board: stop being part of the problem. Don't read weird ideological websites that are full of misinformation about, say, the climate. Basically all scientists agree about climate change. It's not a controversy. And it has deadly real world consequences. It's impossible for 100,000 PhDs to be so stupid as to believe a load of bullshit. The reason that all scientists agree is the same reason that all doctors agree about vaccines: the evidence is incontrovertible. And if you can't assess the evidence -- which none of us on this board really can, except for one erstwhile poster -- then believe the consensus because there's no reason to think that all of those people are part of some misanthropic conspiracy.
This goes both ways. I'm not interested in left wing quackery any more than right wing quackery. Like, RFK Jr was a Dem, right? I never supported him, not one bit. Never. He's been full of shit for 20 years, and that hasn't varied with his political alliances. I have never had any time for his bullshit. I quickly got tired of the bullshit from Ibram X Kendi, and I don't defend him either. They are part of the problem.
Stop being part of the problem. That's all I ask.
Wait. You think hurricanes would be less intense but for Rush? America doesn’t control global warming. Any changes in America behavior in the 1990s would have no measurable effect on climate. Rein in China and India and the rest, and it could perhaps make a small difference today. But thinking Rush caused bigger hurricanes is a very jingoistic view of how global climate works.
Which is not to say we are not a huge part of the problem. Just that even if America stopped 100% of its fossil fuel consumption (an obvious impossibility) we’d still have a rapidly warming climate.
superrific
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Are you familiar with the Kyoto Protocol? I'm assuming that, if the US hadn't been a holdout because denialism, there would have been something of a possibility to nip the problem in the bud, relatively speaking.
All we would have needed was a carbon tax. Now we need far, far more.
Agreed. We could have maybe made a dent if Reagan hadn't put the full weight of the presidency behind the opposition to Carter's alternate energy programs. We not only lost years of development but politicized the issue. Our per capita usage is so great compared to those countries that our obstinance makes us look like hypocrites.
sringwal
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Ozone layer hole: How its discovery changed our lives
Ozone layer hole: How its discovery changed our lives
From the rise of spray tans to changes in international relations, the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer in 1985 changed the world in several ways.
www.bbc.com
Yes and Paris.
And neither have been particularly effective for a variety of reasons. Even if Congress had ratified Kyoto, it would not have made a hill of beans difference in this year’s hurricane season. It was all too modest and had little impact on developing nation emissions. Get China to scale back some of those new coal power plants it is commissioning and it would be 100x more important than anything Rush said.
ColdBlueSteel
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We still have lawfare. We go after Polymarkets!
superrific
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With all due respect, are you sure you fully understand the issues here?
Kyoto was the first step. It was a framework, like all major treaties. GATT. Geneva Convention. Montreal Protocol. Biodiversity convention, etc. They are all amended and revised over time to more fully realize the goals. Since GATT, there have been I think six major rounds of post-treaty tariff reductions (if I'm counting right). Montreal Protocol gets updated every few years as targets are met.
The original draft of Kyoto did not include China, that's true. But at the time, China was not a major greenhouse emitter. It was on pace to become one, but it wasn't there. Had Kyoto been ratified, China's accession to the WTO would have been contingent on acceptance of Kyoto.
If Kyoto had been ratified, then it would have put pressure on countries like India to grow sustainably. Because Kyoto absolutely would have created an authority for carbon tariffs (which are already valid under GATT imo but it's not 100% clear), India could be pressured to clean up as it became wealthier. And even more directly, the cap-and-trade market would only apply to full Kyoto signatories. Under Kyoto, Brazil and Indonesia could have made money simply by protecting their rain forests. India could have been paid for regulating the inefficient auto-rickshaw engines that emit so much pollution. So on and so forth.
If you're looking at Kyoto in isolation as if it was a discrete thing, then it wouldn't have been as effective (though even getting the US and Europe on a carbon reduction path in the 1990s would be paying huge dividends today). But that's not what it was, because that's not what any big multilateral treaties are.
Kyoto was ratified. Just not by the U.S. it was ratified by like 180 countries or so.
If you think the U.S. ratifying Kyoto in say the early 2000s would have materially impacted global temperature today, I believe you are living in a fantasy world.
Yes, it would have been better. But that is not how climate works.
superrific
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Without the US it had no chance of accomplishing anything. Kyoto was signed in 98. Not sure why you are saying early 2000s but details. I thought it was obvious that I was using Limbaugh as synecdoche for the rise of right wing media, but if it wasn't, that's what I meant.
I'm not a climate scientist and neither are you. Nor are we climate economists. Trying to argue about the hypothetical effect of a treaty that could have been ratified almost 30 years ago but wasn't seems silly to me. We should be able to agree that, whatever the global temperature would be today, the prognosis would be far better. We wouldn't be staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. There would still be a lot of work to do, but we'd also be 25 years ahead of where we are. Remember also that the US accounted for like 30% of global CO2 emissions in the mid 90s. If we had cut our emissions even by 5%, it would have made a considerable difference.
Also remember that it's cumulative. If our emissions decreased by 1% per year compared to actual, our current emissions would be almost 1/3 less, and there would be less CO2 in the atmosphere. Global temperatures today might be at 2015 levels, which would be about .25 degrees C below what it is today. That's considerable.
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I will say one thing, IF things go about as bad as everyone expects with concentration camps and crippling recession/ depression from tariffs etc AND we manage to have an election in two years AND it happens to be a blue tsunami that gives undeniable control to the Democrats in the Legislative branch, then it is time to go scorched Earth.
impeach Trump. Inform Vance that here are the rules you abide by or you're next, then impeach Thomas & Alito for corruption. Get the shit head judges out of Amarillo and wherever etc. Get rid of the filibuster. Make PR and DC states. Just do whatever it takes to codify norms into laws and don't care about the 2028 blowback. just get shit done. If the country is angry because it was all burnt down, then freaking build it back the right way.
Of course they won't but...
impeach Trump. Inform Vance that here are the rules you abide by or you're next, then impeach Thomas & Alito for corruption. Get the shit head judges out of Amarillo and wherever etc. Get rid of the filibuster. Make PR and DC states. Just do whatever it takes to codify norms into laws and don't care about the 2028 blowback. just get shit done. If the country is angry because it was all burnt down, then freaking build it back the right way.
Of course they won't but...
ZenMode
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I'm going to stick mostly to the topic of the border and not complicate things with the much bigger question of trust in government (or lack thereof), what we should/shouldn't believe and what is/isn't normal because we both know that the public facing operations of the government, the documented procedures, policies etc are largely a facade. Behind the scenes is what happens in "politics", so when you say "that's how things work", I have to believe you are talking about the procedural facade of government. "Well, in order to implement border policy changes, the procedure is to take this step, the next step, that step...and this step takes x amount of time, the next step takes x amount of time...".
So, when you say "Biden didn't change any of Trump's policies", on its face that may be true. Did he not change them because he thought they were good policies? Maybe. Or did he not change them because he saw the writing on the wall as it relates to the border and the reality of the world's perception that Democrats are much friendlier to immigrants than Republicans or at least Trump? Did he see the crisis, which was forming in early 2021, not 2023 as you stated previously, and decide to leave Trump's policies in place with the hopes of stopping the crisis. If Biden only started trying to address the crisis in 2023, as I believe you also stated, that is a problem. We'll probably never know for sure, but this issue stretches far beyond the procedural timeframes you referenced, which I'm confident could be shortened if there was a true desire to address the border crisis.
According to CBP data, 3 of Trump's 4 years in office had total CBP encounters under 700k. In FY 2021 - CBP enforcements were 1.9 million. In FY2022 - 2.7 million. FY 2023 - 3.2 million.
superrific
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You have no idea what you're talking about. There will be zero lawyers here or anywhere endorsing your conclusion that the Administrative Procedure Act is a facade. You don't even know what that statute is or does.
I mean, this is a case where you know nothing, and then conclude there's nothing to know. I'm not wasting any more time on you. You literally don't know the first thing about the topic you're ostensibly discussing.
ZenMode
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Only because, according to exit polls, it was a big issue for some voters. One that was viewed to have been ignored for a significant amount of time by the Biden admin.