We did have a vote. It was called “the presidential election.”
The problem here is that those claims are quite specific and if you google them, you will find sites stating that those claims are true (as you can find sites for every silly thing on the internet). Most people will disregard information that is only published on a few and not very respectable sites, but others will say: “I knew it! And obviously MSM is not reporting on it.” and they get a dopamine kick by proving themselves right.
That doesn’t make the claim false (they are not actually suing yet but they may). This is a two-sided issue, one side concerned with the environment, one with economics. It is one thing to reverse internal domestic policy but another to reverse international agreements. I don’t know enough about it yet to form an opinion about whether canceling this is good or bad, but Canada certainly has a legitimate gripe about this. It won’t destroy the relationship but it does sour it a bit.
Thanks for posting. I’ve “relayed” it.
The original claim was “Canada is suing Biden.” The claim was not “Canada may sue the United States government at some point maybe.”
The claim is categorically false.
I was responding to the claim as made in the post I was responding to:
FWIW my post drew fire from my brother-in-law. Condensed version:
Him: Biden deserves the same treatment Trump got!
Me: Sure, fact check away. This article discusses many nuances.
Him-What you posted turned my stomach and I didn’t even finish.
Me: I gave you what I thought was a good reference but you didn’t give me anything to support a different view.
Him: What about that bitch Pelosi, Hunter Biden (etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.) there’s plenty of info about them out there?
Me: We didn’t finish the first argument. Now I’m supposed to sieve through that haystack? I don’t know what your beliefs are or what sites support those views. You’ll have to do that.
And if we can’t agree on facts, why would these arguments be different?
I probably read it in here, but whatever. Quote of the day:
‘Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” The words belong to Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
(Probably paywalled):
Stupid logic…
If a president were to sign an executive order to ban abortions (or get rid of Planned Parenthood) it will result in the loss of 60,000 jobs. (I can make up numbers too).
Would conservatives complain about the job losses?
I saw a headline somewhere that said something like “Republicans blame Biden for not uniting behind Republican agenda”. I assume it was The Onion, but you never know.
You mean like the Paris Agreement, the Iraq Nuclear Deal, NAFTA, tariffs on China, those kinds of things?
Yes, and Trump was lambasted from the left for bailing out of the first three agreements. It was part of his America First (actually more like America Only) agenda and those plus the tariffs were attacked as isolationist and protectionist. The tariffs were criticized nearly universally by economists.
The Canada agreement is a bit more complicated since it was first blocked by Obama, then restored by Trump. So you could say Biden is torpedoing an agreement with a strong ally and neighbor which will harm them economically, or you could say that he is simply restoring the status quo and saving the environment. Maybe both.
As I mentioned, I am not knowledgeable enough to have a firm position on this myself but I do see it as a valid criticism of Biden that can be discussed intelligently, unlike the misrepresentations and outright lies in the list in the OP.
Yes, and not all international agreements are the same. NAFTA was negotiated, agreed, ratified by Congress, and signed by President Clinton (although the full process spanned multiple administrations). Withdrawal from that sort of treaty seems quite serious, unless it includes a provision that allows unilateral withdrawal. The Iran nuclear deal was not ratified by the U.S. Congress, and involved more parties than just the U.S. and Iran; other western countries had also imposed sanctions on Iran and were parties to the agreement to drop them.
I don’t know what agreement was reached to allow the Keystone pipeline, or what its legal status was before Biden changed things.
Also it will not likely be the Canadian government that sues. Although Trudeau has made ritual complaints about the cancellation, I really wonder whether he isn’t secretly pleased. He really seems clear on climate change and cannot doubt that no form of energy except coal can be as dirty as oil from the tar sands.
I suppose Alberta might sue, but likelier some guy who has invested money on the assumption of the pipeline.
Am I the only one here who mentally went “SAY IT!”
(yes, I’ve seen Rocky Horror in the theaters with a full crowd.)
Maybe this
Sorry it was just a left over phrase from poor thinking and bad post structuring and typing, no unsaid gems of wisdom were missed. Also looks like my guess for the justification for the bullshit numbers was off as well.
I don’t think Biden is a hypocrite for issuing executive orders that he did and I don’t think that he needed to put anything to a vote.
However I do think that United States’ political culture has become (or is at least very close to becoming) unworkably antagonistic to the point where every time there is a change of government, the new government dismantles everything the previous government did, as a matter of routine and political theatre. The country can never move forward if this is the norm.
Consequently I do think it was counter-productive of Biden to make a great show of repealing all Trump’s more egregious executive orders, as soon as Biden hit the White House. I can understand why he did it in the sense he was no doubt wanting to show that he was losing no time in taking the reins and attempting to undo the damage that Trump has done but the damage it does to the broader political fabric is highly unfortunate.
Longer term I think it might have been better if he had left it a week or two and made at least a show of giving consideration to whether various executive orders should be repealed, rather than making his actions appear entirely reflexive.
If the concern is that the republicans will start reflexively ripping apart everything the democrats do when they gain power, don’t worry. They were going to try to do that anyway. (Remember that part where they tried to tear apart the ACA without even a replacement plan? Yeah.)
I consider it possible that he’s been considering this for months.
Yeah, these were executive orders that significant numbers of Americans already thought were loathsome and needed getting rid of.
I’m all in favor of having the Biden Administration be thoughtful and non-dogmatic about endorsing any actions taken by the Trump Administration that weren’t piles of self-aggrandizing bullshit. (Surely there must have been some? Some rational regulatory reforms slipped in by an earnest Republican policy wonk on a busy news day in 2018 or whenever as an unrelated footnote to some bloviating “Nuke the Immigrants” muscle-flexing parade? Somewhere?)
But there is no point any longer (if there ever was a point) to delaying or diluting acts of responsible governance just to try to persuade Trump voters that Biden’s not being reflexively partisan. They’re going to accuse him of being reflexively partisan no matter what he does, and their media and leaders are going to bang that drum all day long.
Republicans need to learn that if you do nothing but lie about your political opponents in order to discredit them, no matter what they do or how bipartisan they try to be, then you have merely removed all their incentives to try to compromise and cooperate with you.
I’m (still) supportive of compromising and cooperating with Republicans if they show willingess to engage in responsible governance and be honest about facts. But there is simply no point in trying to compromise and cooperate with people who have made it abundantly clear that their only priority is dishonestly demonizing you in order to reinforce the loyalty of their own ill-informed and deluded supporters.
A degree of reversal of previous government law and policy has always been with us. And yes, Trump made sure to attack the ACA, a flagship policy of the Evil Obama, his arch nemesis, at the earliest opportunity.
However, making a big show of signing a (literal) stack of executive orders reversing the policies of the previous government is a new thing and the danger is it will become an expected piece of first day in office theatre for vengeful Republicans. And it will extend past a few flagship policies and become a blanket policy. The problem with normal is it always gets worse.
And yes I fully appreciate that Biden had probably been thinking about which executive orders to repeal for months but it’s the optics – I fear that making it into an immediate piece of first-day theatre is only going to make everything worse.
It’s not about playing to the crazies, they are a basket of deplorables. It’s about the just right of centre people.
In my pesonal experience–and, sadly, I am having current, ongoing, experience–with tumpers, there is no new strategy. It’s all the same old same old: insult, lie, insinuate, actually make false charges (for example, for pointing out their idol’s lies, I get called a pedophile and that derails the discussion into how horrible I am for being a pedophile and how horrible non-trump leaders are for being supported by pedophiles), threats of violence, encouragement of violence, and actually carrying out violence.
As the Preacher said,
There is no new thing under the sun.