TheReff
Rod Griffin
- Joined
- May 15, 2011
- Messages
- 6,315
- Reaction score
- 543
Maybe Mark Cuban will make a run so that with his billions and fresh ideas, there will be a chance to defeat Trump. Otherwise Biden's record and mouth will get him crushed by Trump in the debates. From "Current Affairs" Nathan Robinson in March 2020--"If this captures your thinking, I would like you to give me a chance to show that this argument for Biden, while tempting, is ultimately wrong in a very dangerous way. Biden is not what he seems to be, and there are some facts we need to confront."
Immigration: The Obama administration deported hundreds of thousands of immigrants, more than any other administration, a process that tore countless families apart and has served as Donald Trump’s go-to rationalization for his own brutal immigration policies. Biden has sometimes simply lied about this and pretended it didn’t happen. The Obama administration misled the public about what it was doing, and reports concluded that “contrary to Obama’s avowed policy, a huge part of ICE’s enforcement efforts resulted in the separation of families, and a much smaller portion went toward deporting people who posed legitimate public safety threats.” For countless children, this meant “pain and trauma [that] stunts their growth and development.” Under the administration Biden served in, “the budget for immigration enforcement jumped at one point to a staggering $18 billion annually, more than all other law enforcement agencies” combined. Splinter’s Natascha Elena Ulmann documents Biden’s horrific record on immigration over the years and the impact it had on immigrant communities. Biden “voted to uphold an HIV travel ban that authorized the indefinite detention of Haitian refugees despite a wave of public sentiment in their favor.” He “called for a crackdown on employers who hire “illegals” and fought against driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.”
Climate change: But climate activists have been consistently disappointed by Joe Biden’s lackadaisical approach to the greatest challenge of our time. It shouldn’t be that surprising: Biden’s campaign is stuffed with fossil fuel executives. His climate adviser is a former board member of natural gas company Cheniere Energy, one of his fundraisers co-founded natural gas company Western LNG, the pro-Biden Super PAC has a former gas lobbyist on its board, and his national campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, “has one of the most pro-industry voting records on fossil fuel issues among all congressional Democrats.” And as many know, at one point Biden’s son Hunter was being paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian fossil fuel company. This is troubling, because in order to combat climate change, we’re going to need to take on the industry; their continued profits are in conflict with the needs of humanity. But how likely is someone to effectively challenge an industry, when those close to him are tied to it? It’s very likely that Biden will be talked out of doing anything that could seriously threaten the financial interests of those in his circle. Sure enough, Biden’s original climate change plans got a D- from Greenpeace.
Criminal punishment: The “freest” country in the world has the most people locked up per capita—2.2 million total. Biden contributed significantly to that problem. He was one of the key Congressional figures in refashioning the Democratic party as a “tough on crime” party. Biden collaborated with unrepentant segregationist Strom Thurmond to create the “Biden-Thurmond bill,” which restricted use of the insanity defense (shifting the burden of proof from the prosecutor to the defendant) and abolished parole. Biden “unblushingly cited his and Thurmond’s leading role in enacting laws allowing for the execution of drug dealers convicted of homicide, and expanding the practice of civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement’s plunder of property belonging to people suspected of crimes, even if they are neither charged nor convicted.” He warned of juvenile “predators on our streets” who “warrant exceptionally, exceptionally tough treatment,” suggesting they were beyond hope of rehabilitation and simply needed to be cordoned off from the rest of society. Biden collaborated with the hard right to expand the death penalty, boasting that “the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties.” Indeed, people did get sentenced to death because of the law Biden himself wrote. Biden was proud of his role in cracking down on crime, a staffer recalling him saying: “Whenever people hear the words ‘drugs’ and ‘crime,’ I want them to think ‘Joe Biden.’”
Social Security: But Biden is lying when he says he never tried to cut Social Security benefits for the elderly. You can even watch him brag about it. Biden has proposed raising the retirement age and eliminating cost of living increases, and has said of Medicare and Social Security that “you’ve got to put all of it on the table.” Ryan Grim and Lee Fang unearthed material from the 1990s proving that senior advocacy groups had “blasted” Biden for siding with the GOP, with an AARP representative saying Biden was endorsing “nothing more than a raid on Social Security’s trust fund.” In fact, not only has Biden called for cuts to Social Security repeatedly over his political career, but he was intimately involved with an Obama administration “fiscal responsibility” effort that would have “back[ed] cuts to Medicare and Social Security despite pushback from some Democrats who opposed touching entitlements.”
Iraq: In 2003, Biden was “a senator bullish about the push to war [in Iraq] who helped sell the Bush administration’s pitch to the American public,” who “voted for—and helped advance—the Bush agenda.” He was the war’s “most crucial” senate supporter. Biden repeated the myth that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, saying that “these weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.” The resulting war was one of the most deadly catastrophes in the history of U.S. foreign policy—the Iraqi death toll was in the hundreds of thousands or possibly even the millions, and 4,500 American troops died. And that’s just the dead: countless more were left permanently maimed, to suffer with PTSD for the rest of their lives. For every dead person, there is a family who will struggle forever to get over their loss. This is no trivial issue: In selecting a commander in chief, you want someone who doesn’t launch catastrophic wars of aggression.
Now, you might be tempted to forgive Biden: Who among us hasn’t made the occasional disastrous decision that caused millions of deaths? But most unforgivably, Biden hasn’t reckoned with or atoned for what he did. Instead, he has simply lied about it repeatedly, because he knows how embarrassing the truth is.
Immigration: The Obama administration deported hundreds of thousands of immigrants, more than any other administration, a process that tore countless families apart and has served as Donald Trump’s go-to rationalization for his own brutal immigration policies. Biden has sometimes simply lied about this and pretended it didn’t happen. The Obama administration misled the public about what it was doing, and reports concluded that “contrary to Obama’s avowed policy, a huge part of ICE’s enforcement efforts resulted in the separation of families, and a much smaller portion went toward deporting people who posed legitimate public safety threats.” For countless children, this meant “pain and trauma [that] stunts their growth and development.” Under the administration Biden served in, “the budget for immigration enforcement jumped at one point to a staggering $18 billion annually, more than all other law enforcement agencies” combined. Splinter’s Natascha Elena Ulmann documents Biden’s horrific record on immigration over the years and the impact it had on immigrant communities. Biden “voted to uphold an HIV travel ban that authorized the indefinite detention of Haitian refugees despite a wave of public sentiment in their favor.” He “called for a crackdown on employers who hire “illegals” and fought against driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.”
Climate change: But climate activists have been consistently disappointed by Joe Biden’s lackadaisical approach to the greatest challenge of our time. It shouldn’t be that surprising: Biden’s campaign is stuffed with fossil fuel executives. His climate adviser is a former board member of natural gas company Cheniere Energy, one of his fundraisers co-founded natural gas company Western LNG, the pro-Biden Super PAC has a former gas lobbyist on its board, and his national campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, “has one of the most pro-industry voting records on fossil fuel issues among all congressional Democrats.” And as many know, at one point Biden’s son Hunter was being paid tens of thousands of dollars a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian fossil fuel company. This is troubling, because in order to combat climate change, we’re going to need to take on the industry; their continued profits are in conflict with the needs of humanity. But how likely is someone to effectively challenge an industry, when those close to him are tied to it? It’s very likely that Biden will be talked out of doing anything that could seriously threaten the financial interests of those in his circle. Sure enough, Biden’s original climate change plans got a D- from Greenpeace.
Criminal punishment: The “freest” country in the world has the most people locked up per capita—2.2 million total. Biden contributed significantly to that problem. He was one of the key Congressional figures in refashioning the Democratic party as a “tough on crime” party. Biden collaborated with unrepentant segregationist Strom Thurmond to create the “Biden-Thurmond bill,” which restricted use of the insanity defense (shifting the burden of proof from the prosecutor to the defendant) and abolished parole. Biden “unblushingly cited his and Thurmond’s leading role in enacting laws allowing for the execution of drug dealers convicted of homicide, and expanding the practice of civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement’s plunder of property belonging to people suspected of crimes, even if they are neither charged nor convicted.” He warned of juvenile “predators on our streets” who “warrant exceptionally, exceptionally tough treatment,” suggesting they were beyond hope of rehabilitation and simply needed to be cordoned off from the rest of society. Biden collaborated with the hard right to expand the death penalty, boasting that “the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties.” Indeed, people did get sentenced to death because of the law Biden himself wrote. Biden was proud of his role in cracking down on crime, a staffer recalling him saying: “Whenever people hear the words ‘drugs’ and ‘crime,’ I want them to think ‘Joe Biden.’”
Social Security: But Biden is lying when he says he never tried to cut Social Security benefits for the elderly. You can even watch him brag about it. Biden has proposed raising the retirement age and eliminating cost of living increases, and has said of Medicare and Social Security that “you’ve got to put all of it on the table.” Ryan Grim and Lee Fang unearthed material from the 1990s proving that senior advocacy groups had “blasted” Biden for siding with the GOP, with an AARP representative saying Biden was endorsing “nothing more than a raid on Social Security’s trust fund.” In fact, not only has Biden called for cuts to Social Security repeatedly over his political career, but he was intimately involved with an Obama administration “fiscal responsibility” effort that would have “back[ed] cuts to Medicare and Social Security despite pushback from some Democrats who opposed touching entitlements.”
Iraq: In 2003, Biden was “a senator bullish about the push to war [in Iraq] who helped sell the Bush administration’s pitch to the American public,” who “voted for—and helped advance—the Bush agenda.” He was the war’s “most crucial” senate supporter. Biden repeated the myth that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, saying that “these weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.” The resulting war was one of the most deadly catastrophes in the history of U.S. foreign policy—the Iraqi death toll was in the hundreds of thousands or possibly even the millions, and 4,500 American troops died. And that’s just the dead: countless more were left permanently maimed, to suffer with PTSD for the rest of their lives. For every dead person, there is a family who will struggle forever to get over their loss. This is no trivial issue: In selecting a commander in chief, you want someone who doesn’t launch catastrophic wars of aggression.
Now, you might be tempted to forgive Biden: Who among us hasn’t made the occasional disastrous decision that caused millions of deaths? But most unforgivably, Biden hasn’t reckoned with or atoned for what he did. Instead, he has simply lied about it repeatedly, because he knows how embarrassing the truth is.