The Dems are like compulsive gamblers who make bad bets. They double down on the next "sure thing" until they self-destruct.
"Hillary will win in a landslide" "Comey will vindicate Hillary" "Russiagate will end trump" "Ukraine is a done deal: Trump will be impeached"
See a pattern here?
The first problem is that "Russiagate" and "Ukrainegate" both had underlying Democratic misconduct. Clinton's e-mails and Wikileaks for Russiagate where DNC internal emails showed that Clinton WANTED Trump to be her opponent. The media pushed Trump and gave him nearly 6 billion dollars in free publicity.
Ukrainegate's underlying Democratic scandal concerns Joe Biden's son, Hunter, receiving a job from Buresma. Something which could have flown under the radar if the Dems kept their moufs shut.
Naw, they have to draw attention to Trump asking the Ukrainian President to look into it. There is also the money/military aid/arms sale which was alleged to be held up by Trump and whether this is tied to the Biden thing. There is another aspect to this: a Ukrainian company called Burisma Holdings.
Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine and National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) have conducted in total 15 investigations on Burisma's owner Zlochevsky. In 2016, former Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko accused Burisma subsidiaries of conspiracy and tax evasion of about one billion hryvnias (US$70 million) in 2014–2015, but later during investigation subsidiaries of Burisma were not mentioned. Tax audit of Esko-Pivnich by the State Fiscal Service found some violations in 2016. As a result, 50 million hryvnias (US$1.9 million) of additional taxes was paid to eliminate criminal charges. In total, Burisma paid additional 180 million hryvnias (US$7.44 million) of taxes to avoid further criminal proceedings. A criminal investigation was conducted if natural resources extraction licenses were issued to Burisma subsidiaries legally during the period Zlochevsky held government office. Although violations of the procedure were established by NABU, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office missed procedural deadlines for a lawsuit and the case for nullifying licesenses was dismissed by the court. In October 2019, Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka announced that all 15 investigation cases will be reviewed.
Мало того, що українська мова - це інша мова. Він має інший алфавіт. Гaнтер зміг зрозуміти достатньо, щоб зробити гарну роботу?
Which is "Does Hunter Biden understand Ukrainian? Not only is Ukrainian a different language. It has a different alphabet. Was Hunter able to understand enough to do a good job?"
Serious question since Biden was getting 50k a month to be a compliance officer for a Ukrainian corporation. Wouldn't being able to work in Ukrainian be part of the job description? Even Lt. Col. Vindeman said that Hunter Biden didn't seem to be qualified for the job. Toss in Even Hunter Biden admits these jobs don't appear to be on the up and up.
Let's add in for good measure that Hunter Biden has a similar job with a Chinese corporation.
So, while Trump asks for information on this, which even the Atlantic admits is "accepatble corruption", he's hauled before the Media and public with impeachment proceedings.
Listening to politicians talk about corruption is like Captain Renault being told there is gambling at Rick's place.
I can't wait for all this to blow up.
The better part is that the Ukrainian forces have serious neo-Nazis in their midst: the Azov Brigade. The right could have a field day with all of this!
This law prof makes it clear that he dislikes Trump, but he knows what the public seem to be missing and the Democratic establishment. I don't like Trump, but I also do not like the Democrats.
Unfortunately, he has the pulse of the nation down to a tee.
People are pissed, but they are pissed at the wrong thing. Trump's win was due to a sick system.
The lack of proper introspection into what really went wrong in the 2016 election is what would be much more proper than the bullshit that Trump has been subject to.
This guy is right: both sides of this controversy have demonised the other to justify their defences.
Я не умер, трахая лошадь. И я
определенно не трахал твоего осла после моей смерти. Вы думаете, я
сделаю предложение о шоу ослов, если отцы-основатели добавят коллегию
выборщиков в вашу конституцию?
No, Empress Katherine the Great didn't die fucking a horse. And she couldn't fuck the Democratic Donkey after she died either.
You think she offered to give the founding fathers a donkey show if they added the electoral college to the Constitution?
Anyway, Putin wasn't alive when the Constitution was drafted, but Katherine the Great was Empress of Russia!
Now, drop the partisan bullshit and start working on some serious issues such as climate change.
Not sure what to say about Trump's handling of the situation, but I will say he is the perfect distraction for what is really going on right now. It's really easy to blame Trump for a situation which should never been allowed to have happen.
I hear a lot of people criticising Trump for the Syria thing, but I don't see any alternative solutions being offered. The problem is that this was a time bomb where the US was acting with NATO ally Turkey in Syria.
The Kurds were good for being proxy troops for the US, but they were a problematic ally. First off, the Turks (and US) lists them as being terrorists. Secondly, the Kurds' loyalty was to themselves and their goal of a nation. That was a goal that the US could never honestly promise. And while the Kurds will happily fight anyone: they won't do it for someone else unless the someone else is going to protect them.
That leads to problem one: the Kurds will shift loyalties to who ever will protect them. They were fighting with Assad early in the conflict. The US lured them away, but the Kurds made it clear that they would switch back to Assad if the US stopped protecting them. The problem is that the military isn't the body that makes the decision: the politicians are. The military isn't supposed to question: it's supposed to obey.
And the military can't make too many friends in a place where there are rapidly changing allegiances such as the Syrian Civil War. Learn a lesson from the Kurds, your loyalty is to yourself first.
The Kurds were an American ally against ISIS, not Turkey. The United States made no commitment to protect the Kurds
against the Turkish army, much less assist them in maintaining a degree
of independence in northern Syria that I know about. The United
States was entitled to pursue its own interests in the region without some form of formal agreement. Neither Trump nor Obama defined those
interests in a way that would justify a deepening military engagement in
Syria.
Leaving the few soldiers in the Kurdish zone endangers American lives. The Generals who felt strongly could have disobeyed orders if they felt such a strong tie to the Kurds, but then the blame would fall on them for endangering their troops in a Turkish invasion.
Next problem: the NATO Treaty. The Treaty is a formal agreement, unlike whatever was between the US and Kurds. The existence of a Treaty ruled out a military response of any sort. A no-fly zone would be a no-no. Nothing says betrayal like shooting down an Ally's airplane.
On the other hand, Congress could declare war on Turkey if they feel as strongly as they purport to, but they won't.
The only real options are economic or diplomatic. The only real difference between what I would have done and what Trump did would have been to get international action to prevent the Turkish invasion. I also would have begun working on an exit strategy earlier. The Turkish invasion of Syria was not something which was in any way a surprise, yet no one did anything to prevent the problem.
The big problem is that there is a lot of bluster here. Congress is blustering. The Generals are blustering. The Turks are blustering. Trump is Blustering.
It's easy to play the blame game, but this was a disaster waiting to happen. Too many people failed to act to prevent the problem.
At this point, the US should take a deep breath and look at how it got into yet another mess.
Something that Senator Lindsay Graham would describe as “the dumbest idea in the world.”
What I am describing is something that would put the US into conflict with a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member.
Something which should have had congressional approval before being implemented. Something along the lines of funding an organisation which the US State Department lists as being a terrorist organisation.
Yet, that is exactly the situation that happened in Syria. After all the person who was president when the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War was Barack Obama.
There are a lot of things which stink to me about the US coverage of this event. The main one is the sudden sympathy for the Kurds.
But even more bothering is that Donald Trump is being blamed for something which sits squarely on Barack Obama's shoulders.
Yet even people who would have attacked Barack Obama are criticising Trump for this situation.
Treason is the only crime defined in the US Constitution (Article III, Section iii):
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
Prosecutions under this section are rare since it requires the act to take place during war time.
I'm no fan of Donald Trump.
On the other hand, whose administration decided to arm a group on the US State Department's list of Terrorist organisations. An action that would eventually lead to conflict with a NATO treaty ally?
Of course, you can't just blame Obama since congress knew, but did nothing about it. In a previously posted video, Lindsay Graham asks about the Kurds being listed as terrorists. Sen. Graham was among the harshest critics of Trump’s decision this week. Graham was once sympathetic to Turkish concerns and called the partnership with the Syrian Kurds “the dumbest idea in the world” in an April 2016 Senate hearing, given the PKK connection (clip mentioned above).
The question is who in the US was in charge on September 22, 2014 when the US began its involvement in Syria!
I have to admit to being baffled by the current reaction to Trump's decision to remove 50-250 soldiers from the Kurdish held area of Syria. Probably because I am somewhat aware of the situation, which means I see this as nothing new.
I'm no fan of Donald Trump, but the way the current Turkish invasion has
been portrayed seriously makes me question the bias of US media. There
has been absolutely NO discussion of some serious background points that
put an entirely different spin to this story.
Part of me wanted to subtitle this "I love it when Barack Obama gets us involved in pointless military exercises." US involvement in the Syrian Civil War began back on 22 September 2014 during the Obama administration.
YPJ girl soldiers: shouldn't they be in school?
It seems that the Trump detractors have been too willing to think that the "abandonment" of the Kurd was somehow "sudden" when anyone familiar with this will tell you that it is amazing it hasn't happened yet. The Kurds in Syria are tied to the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK (Kurdish: Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan). This group is considered a terrorist group by the United States, European Union, and NATO: to name a few. The YPG/YPJ's use of child soldiers should be embarrassing as fuck to people who are trying to make Syria's Kurds somehow "allies" of the west. The Kurds are no saints, but you wouldn't guess that from the current attention they are getting lately.
The Kurds have been our allies against ISIS, but it is not for us that they have fought. They fight ISIS for themselves, with our help. They are seeking an autonomous zone and, ultimately, statehood. The editorial fails to note that the Kurds we have backed, led by the YPG (People’s Protection Units), are the Syrian branch of the PKK (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party) in Turkey. The PKK is a militant separatist organization with Marxist-Leninist roots. Although such informed observers as Michael Rubin contend that the PKK has “evolved,” it remains a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law. While our government materially supports the PKK’s confederates, ordinary Americans have been prosecuted for materially supporting the PKK.
The fact is that:
"The Kurdish militias weren’t Washington’s first choice. U.S. attempts to train secular, anti-Assad, Syrian Arab forces to fight on its behalf cost hundreds of millions of dollars but produced just 5-50 fighters. The U.S. was forced to change tack and support Syrian Kurdish militias. The largest and most powerful of these were the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which were later called the “Syrian Democratic Forces” in the hopes of easing Turkish hostility and endearing the new fighting force to the predominantly Arab territories it began to conquer with U.S. air support."
What bothers me most about all this is the sudden concern for the Kurds, a group which has been fucked over for some time in the geopolitical struggles of this region. The Kurds say that they "have no friends, but the mountains." On the other hand, all the anti-Trump forces have developed a deep love for these "strong allies of the US."
Another thing which is conspicuous in all this is the fact that Turkey and The Kurds have had an armed conflict going on since at least 1978. There have been two other Turkish "invasions" of Syria (2016 and 2018) prior to the latest. A Northern Syria Buffer Zone was created by agreement between Turkey, The Kurds, and the US. Turkey felt the Kurds were in breach of that agreement, which is the reason for the current mess.
An even more important point which is missing is that Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, as is the United States. NATO, as a treaty adopted by the United States is part of US law (US Constitution Article VI, ii)! The Turks as co-signators of the treaty are our allies, not the Kurds.
As far as I know there is no formal agreement between the US and Kurds making them "allies" of any sort. In fact, the Kurds have fought with the Assad Regime and their Russian Allies during the Northern Aleppo offensive of 2016. The Kurds will fight with whoever promises to protect them at the moment. They aren't strong allies of anybody but themselves.
The Kurds can fuck back in the same manner as they have been fucked with in the political events of the region which makes it amusing when people try to make them out as "strong allies". Anyone who says that appears to be ignorant about the Kurdish people. The Kurds will find that all this concern will vanish like writing in the sand after the next news cycle.
Scott Ritter, the man who was "the loudest and most credible skeptic of the Bush administration’s
contention that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction" writes:
That Turkey, an American NATO ally, is
waging war against the SDF (which the Turks label as YPG/PKK—more on
that later), while at the same time targeting ISIS, the archenemy of the
all these Kurdish groups, underscores the complexity of the regional
politics at play in northern Syria today. Deciphering this alphabet soup
goes a long way towards explaining why the Turkish actions are
justified and why President Trump will ultimately be vindicated for
pulling the troops out.
The reality of the situation is as Scott puts it:
The American embrace of the SDF was
always a temporary solution to the problem of ISIS. The United States
never has supported a greater Kurdish nation. And while there’s been
much lip service to the idea of using the SDF as a vehicle to
destabilize the government of Bashar al-Assad, regime change has never
been seriously pursued by the United States in Syria.
The most important point is raised by Andrew McCarthy:
Our intervention in Syria has never been authorized by Congress. Those of us who opposed intervention maintained that congressional authorization was necessary because there was no imminent threat to our nation. Contrary to the editorial’s suggestion, having U.S. forces “deter further genocidal bloodshed in northern Syria” is not a mission for which Americans support committing our men and women in uniform. Such bloodlettings are the Muslim Middle East’s default condition, so the missions would never end.
A congressional debate should have been mandatory before we jumped into a multi-layered war, featuring anti-American actors and shifting loyalties on both sides. In fact, so complex is the situation that President Obama’s initial goal was to oust Syria’s Assad regime; only later came the pivot to fighting terrorists, which helped Assad. That is Syria: Opposing one set of America’s enemies only empowers another. More clear than what intervention would accomplish was the likelihood of becoming enmeshed, inadvertently or otherwise, in vicious conflicts of which we wanted no part — such as the notorious and longstanding conflict between Turks and Kurds.
There are a lot of different players in the Syrian Civil War. It was a dangerous game for the US to have entered. Although, it wasn't really just the US that was involved here: Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve comprised soldiers from at least Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. There were more troops on the ground than the 50-250 US soldiers.
I find the media's story troubling because I see narrative in the US media which is highly partisan and interventionist. I see a concern which is based not on reality, but on a media image which couldn't be further from the fact.
But it sure is convenient for making Trump look bad.
OK, I'm going to preface this by saying I'm no fan of Donald Trump.
On the other hand, you may know people who start frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of the "Cheeto" if they are left of centre.
There is a right wing manifestation as well which thrives on making the aforementioned people cringe. The ones on the right will support Trump because it makes the left leaners act in the manner depicted.
For the Left, Trump can do nothing right and is up to no good. It is their hope he will somehow be impeached, which isn't very likely.
Ted Rall hit the nail on the head with his definition:
“Trump Derangement Syndrome” is when you have so much anger and rage at
President Trump that you are willing to do anything, no matter how
stupid or reckless or dangerous, to try to get him out of office by hook
or by crook. Lately I’ve been hearing Democrats say that they’re hoping
that the economy head south, as if they didn’t live in the economy
themselves. Others want him to attack Iran so that people angry at the
war don’t vote for him for reelection. This is crazy talk
The recent incident with Turkey announcing it would be making bombing raids in Syria to push back the Kurds demonstrates how this all works.
I would put that most people who were upset by this know next to nothing about the Kurds: a stateless people who mostly live in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. They also don't know that Turkey has been participating in airstrikes against ISIL
alongside the U.S.-led coalition, but also actively supporting the
Syrian opposition and occupying large swaths of northwestern Syria while
engaging in significant ground combat with ISIL, the SDF, and the
Syrian government since August 2016.
SDF if you didn't know is The Syrian Democratic Forces which is
composed primarily of Kurdish, Arab, and Assyrian/Syriac militias, as
well as some smaller Armenian, Turkmen and Chechen forces.
Since most people don't know about the situation here is a brief run down of it:
It seems that this is another instance of the Kurds being used for political gain. In this case, an attempt at internal US political gain by putting Trump into a no win situation.
"U.S. and Turkish officials last month (September) agreed to work
together to create a buffer zone free of fighters from the People’s
Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara views as an existential threat due
to its presumed links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK is an armed group that has been at war in Turkey for over three
decades and has been designated as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the EU and the United States."
"However, Ankara has been critical of the lack of progress made with
the envisaged zone, threatening to put its own operation plan into
effect if Turkish troops do not control a “safe zone” within a few
weeks.
Turkey will also continue with operations in northern Iraq
“until all terrorists are eliminated from the area,’’ the council said.
Turkey on Aug. 23, launched Operation Claw-3 in northern Iraq targeting PKK militants.
Monday’s statement by the council also said that Turkey would continue its activities in the eastern Mediterranean."
In a statement, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said,
"The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the
operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS
territorial "Caliphate," will no longer be in the immediate area."
The New York Timesreported Monday that about 100 to 150 American forces would withdraw from northern Syria but not completely from the country. Newsweek confirmed the Times
reporting but the National Security Council official said the number
was closer to 230 service members, among them U.S. Special Forces and
reconnaissance units.
Sure, he may have blundered his way into it, but he would have done brought peace to the Middle East.
Which people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome would hate. Yes they would hate peace if Trump managed to achieve it!
Anyway, this story appears to have lived its short life cycle especially if it is yet another tactic that backfires on Trump's detractors. The bottom line is that this is a prime example of Trump Derangement Syndrome because people started reacting without all the facts. It seemed that emotion triumphed over reason in this instance.
“There was once a big atomic bomb That wanted to be a bullet. His friends all asked why, when he was such a big atomic bomb, he would want to be a tiny bullet. "I miss", he sighed, "the personal touch.” -- Tuli Kupferberg
I've kind of gone silent on the topic of guns since, like the above passage, climate change is something which affects us all. Sure, guns are bad, but the coming crisis makes the gun debate in the US look tame.
Climate change is happening. It's undeniable (if you are not totally out of touch with reality). And it will require cultural as well as political changes.
The United Nations has estimated that we need to reduce carbon emissions
by half within a decade to have a 50% chance of avoiding global
catastrophe. Of course, this is likely to be an underestimation as
recent science shows permafrost melting 90 years earlier than forecast
and Himalayan glaciers melting twice as fast as expected. Feedbacks and
locked in heating will take us over 2C even before we factor in
additional temperature rises from human caused emissions over the next
ten years.
In short, we're fucked
George Monbiot says:
A paper published in Nature
shows that we have little chance of preventing more than 1.5C of global
heating unless existing fossil fuel infrastructure is retired. Instead
the industry intends to accelerate production, spending nearly $5tn in the next 10 years on developing new reserves. It is committed to ecocide.
But the biggest and most successful lie it tells is this: that the
first great extermination is a matter of consumer choice. In response to
the Guardian’s questions, some of the oil companies argued that they
are not responsible for our decisions to use their products. But we are
embedded in a system of their creation – a political, economic and
physical infrastructure that creates an illusion of choice while, in
reality, closing it down.
Sure, people can try to say that this is "liberal nonsense", but climate change has been on the radars since physicist Edward Teller told the American Petroleum Institute (API) back in 1959 that a 10% increase in CO2 will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. “I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”
Lyndon Johnson’s President’s Science Advisory Committee states that “pollutants have altered on a global scale the carbon dioxide content of the air”, with effects that “could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings”. Summarising the findings, the head of the API warned the industry: “Time is running out.”
A confidential report prepared for Shell’s environmental conservation committee in 1988 found that CO2 could raise temperatures by 1C to 2C over the next 40 years with changes that may be “the greatest in recorded history”. It urged rapid action by the energy industry, “By the time the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even stabilise the situation.”
Instead of addressing the issue in the past sixty years, people have been heading full tilt on the road to disaster. It would have been far easier to have addressed this issue early on than to wait until the house has almost burned down.
Anyway, I am more interested in addressing climate change than in wasting time on trying to impeach Trump. This issue requires cultural and political change. I've made as many of those changes as I can, but others need to catch on.
The ecological and climate crisis is not be owned by any political ideology, culture, age or gender. We ALL need to take action on this pressing issue.
OK, the real problem facing any solution to the US gun problem is getting the guns off the streets. Yes, there will have to be a buyback which will be fun given that it will have to be on the same level as the Aussie one. There will probably be later gun amnesties, but without the monetary incentive.
So, cash in early.
There is a solution for those who can't wait to get your guns off the streets but aren't altruistic enough to just give them to someone without some kind of benefit.
They say they are willing to buy or allow for donation of the firearms. That is a pretty good deal if one can realise the fair market value of your firearm: even if it's only as a tax deduction.
Gun control won't work in the US as long as there are guns in circulation which is why getting them off the streets is the most important aspect for dealing with this problem.
A 2016 Marist poll found 58% of black Americans were in favour of reparations, while 81% of white Americans opposed the idea. A 2018 Data for Progress survey also found reparations to be unpopular among the general public, and especially so among white Americans.
Being opposed to a cash payout reparations tends to push the number up even higher.
Bayard Rustin, who organised the March on Washington and was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr, called reparations a "ridiculous idea".Mr Rustin told the New York Times in 1969, "If my great-grandfather picked cotton for 50 years, then he may deserve some money, but he's dead and gone and nobody owes me anything".He later expanded on the views, writing that a payout would demean "the integrity of blacks" and exploit white guilt.
The issue here being time at least five generations of US blacks have been free (i.e. were slaves). Sure we can talk about the discrimination in the South, but what do you do with a Kay Coles James or a Madam C.J. Walker? The name Pat McGrath came up during this search.
You don't need a white person to debate this issue since I know that blacks have opinions on the topics, but Ta-Nehisi Coates found a great topic to grab some attention. Unfortunately most of the talk is divided by race. It would be nice if some conservative blacks weighed in on the topic.
Coates mentioned debt, which is one thing which started me thinking about this topic. The Western Countries wrote off Africa's debt back in 2005, but the countries are now worse than they were BEFORE the write offs. While the reasons are different, the bottom line is the same:
Unless something is changed the debt will return worse than before.
In other words, people can throw as much money as they want at a problem, but fuck all will happen unless the underlying causes are addressed.
On problem with the US is the myth of abundance, in particular and abundance of land so that rich people can move out of the cities. That means the cities are left to decay (I blame most of Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw's problems on the industry the built those cities: the automobile).
Mr. Coates needs to integrate himself since there are poor whites living in those places. Of familiarise himself with Fred Hampton who understood the issue 50 years ago.
I wouldn't say that whites are better off economically by looking at a graph. I am no where near a Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or other 1% than Ta-Nehisi Coates is to Pat McGrath. And Pat McGrath still doesn't raise the income of poor blacks. On the other hand, those people skew the numbers when you look at averages. The average white person in Appalachia is in no way affluent.
There's a lesson in here somewhere, but I think that reparations will fail when it comes down to it. it's something that sounds intriguing, but is doomed to failure if anyone tries to implement it.
Kyiv Post has an article on how the Ukrainians see the latest attempt by the "Democrats" to try to harm Donald Trump. Another one that will backfire bigly.
What are Giuliani and Trump alleging?
Specifically, Giuliani alleges that: 1) Biden pressured Ukraine to
fire its prosecutor general in order to hamper an investigation into
Burisma Holdings, the oil and gas company where his son Hunter worked,
and 2) that Ukrainian officials conspired to help Hillary Clinton during
the 2016 election.
The problem with the impeachment nonsense is that the Democrats need to come up with something that won't backfire on them. This one will as the last one did since the underlying claims relate to Democratic corruption.
As the dude said, "let the person without sin cast the first stone".
But this shit beats having to address the US's problems.
It makes people uncomfortable to think that someone's ancestors didn't come to the US willingly. Slavery, indentured servitude, and transportation run against the narrative of people coming here for the "American Dream". Unless you mean the American Dream of someone else who receives cheap labour.
The US is far too in love with its national myth of opportunity and unlimited resources. The narrative runs that people come to the United States because they can work hard and enjoy the benefits. The reality has been that people work hard and someone else gets the benefits.
Tell someone who wants to know your ancestors immigration story that they came over in chains as a slave and they get all uncomfortable.
And Transportation is something no one is willing to talk about, but I would scream out my convict heritage like an Aussie boasts about being an ancestor of the first fleet if I found out one was in my family tree. But people also get really uncomfortable when they find out that a lot of pre-Independence immigrants were felons.
Bottom line is that unwilling immigrants aren't what people want to hear about.
Another big issue with this topic is that there is also no consensus on the Black (?) or African American (?) side. Case in point, Kay Coles James is President of The Heritage Foundation. She is also a black woman, and a Republican, which can cause some people's head to explode if they wish to believe that gender or race influences their opinion.
Where this comes in is in terms of conservative black people, which sounds like a contradiction in terms (sort of like Very religious Jews siding with conservative Christians in the US).
It is also the exception which proves the rule ("prove" meaning "tests") in that she is a black woman with a highly impressive CV going by the write up here: https://www.heritage.org/staff/kay-coles-james.
I'll mention Candace Owen, but that's it.
OK, Black Conservatives are definitely NOT on the same page as Ta-Nehisi Coates, or even me. But they do raise the question is it racism or is the issue something else which reparations aren't really going to address.
Part of the reason I mention Kay Coles James is that she is a black woman from a southern, former slave state who has done well in society. Perhaps that is due to when she grew up.
On the other hand, this white guy, who was born in Detroit has had his own share of eating 50 cent burritos and being leveraged to the hilt with debt during periods of unemployment.
Is that my white privilege at work?
Anyway, the black conservative opinion on this topic runs like this:
My point isn't that I don't think that slavery was bad or that there is no discrimination, but there is more than one opinion. Likewise, the past 160 odd years have changed the playing field to make this a very complex issue to address.
The bottom line is that any reparations may not be monetary: they may be more symbolic. Something to make people feel good about historic events which we must acknowledge, but cannot change.
There is a reason why the topics of slavery, indentured servitude, and transportation are neglected: because one of the United States' many myths is the myth of the immigrant coming because of the American promise. People arriving against their will goes against that myth. Someone boasts how their ancestors came for the opportunities found in the US has to deal with the fact that segments of the population arrived against their will.
Slave ships and auctions are the antithesis of Ellis Island, which is probably another myth as well.
But slavery, or people as commercial objects, is an integral part of US immigration law. The US has jus soli because of slavery and Dred Scott. The Fourteenth Amendment was a result of slavery. It haunts immigration policy because anyone born in the US is automatically a citizen: no matter whether their parents were lawfully present in the country.
There is the indignation by some people about children being placed in "cages", yet those are the holding cells used by the police in the US. Now, how would those people feel about people who arrived in this country chained together?
I am not going to get into a debate about people who are lawfully present or not, but treating migrant workers as property for the benefit of others leads to terrible consequences. Sure, there should be a process to allow workers into the country if there happens to be a lack of workers: but is there no unemployment in the US?
Bottom line, the US has a love of exploiting workers, which is a big part of the discussion. And that fact is highly uncomfortable.
Mary Sarah Bilder, Struggle over Immigration: Indentured Servants, Slaves, and Articles of Commerce, The, 61 Mo. L. Rev. (1996) Available at: http://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol61/iss4/1
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875), doesn't really address the Second Amendment, but it does say this:
The second and tenth counts are equally
defective. The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a
lawful purpose." This is not a right granted by the Constitution.
Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its
existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be
infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall
not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no
other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government,
leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by
their fellow citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called,
in The City of New York v. Miln,
11 Pet. 139, the "powers which relate to merely municipal legislation,
or what was, perhaps, more properly called internal police," "not
surrendered or restrained" by the Constitution of the United States.
Short, but pithy.
The right is one of "bearing arms for a
lawful purpose" and it only limits congress. Yet another example of how Heller and McDonald area break from the legal precedents set by the Court itself. McDonald truly being the outlier since it takes something which is specifically tied to Congress's power under Article I, Section 8, Clause 16 and "expands" it ultra vires to the States. Additionally, the rights mentioned in the various "Bills of Rights" out there only apply to governmental action.
The movement has gained momentum since
last month, when a shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso killed 22
people. A day later, nine people were shot and killed in Dayton, Ohio.
“Gun violence in America is not inevitable; it’s preventable,” the business
leaders wrote. “We need our lawmakers to support common-sense gun laws
that could prevent tragedies like these.”
Property owners have the right to control who enters their property and how they are supposed to do it. Additionally, they have a duty to make sure that people on their property are safe.
Mass shootings aren't safe.
Even more importantly, the nonsense about how armed individuals stop these shootings is being shown to be just that.
Cruikshank may seem cryptic at first blush, but it is highly important to understanding the Second Amendment. The right is similar to that given in the English Bill of Rights, to carry arms for a lawful purpose. Presser made it clear that the right was tied the active militia, what is now the National Guard.
Heller and McDonald were both ultra vires because they both went beyond the scope of Constitutional interpretation, but they have the advantage in that they were extremely limited in scope and subject to strict regulation.
One doesn't need to choose between two different schools of interpretation of the Second Amendment: one just has to admit that the right is "well-regulated".
