Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "" video.

@AguanoMuldtord I doubt it. I think she, like a lot of establishment types, genuinely thought that HRC would win the general election. But, it was a bit of a moot point as I don't think that anybody realized that McConnell would take the position that POTUS can't nominate anybody during that last year.
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@DaShikuXI Yep, we've been moving this way for decades with even very clear provisions in the constitution being twisted in grotesque ways. Things like the 2nd amendment being extended to cover a bunch of people for whom the amendment wasn't intended despite the plain reading requiring membership in a well-regulated militia. Or, corporate personhood which brought with it the rights of being a person without any of the jeopardy for things like execution or prison time. Or, the National Security Letters and No Fly list that effectively can't be challenged in court. Or GITMO and the crimes against humanity that were committed there. Or the continual watering down on protections for voters trying to engage in their right to vote. Or, the free speech cases where businesses decide they want money for providing services related to weddings, as long as they approve of the marriage. And so on and so forth. This stuff all had pretty clear constitutional protections related to them that the court decided to just ignore because the people that nominated them didn't like the proper interpretation.
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That's been the direction the court has been moving for decades now with things like GITMO being effectively a constitution-free area and more and more rights being given to corporations.
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@Lailowla Yep, there's three basic ways that people get citizenship. By being born someplace, by inheriting it from their parents or through the naturalization process. The US is somewhat unusual in that we use all three of those methods. You can become a citizen by being born in the US and having the appropriate birth certificate issued. Or, you can be born to American parents abroad and file the appropriate paperwork with the embassy. Which on the whole is probably how it should be as it makes it far less likely that anybody that's either the child of a citizen or born in the US won't have citizenship anywhere. One of the big issues with how citizenship is often handled in Europe is that because it's inherited, it can mean that babies aren't citizens of anywhere without a fair amount of bureaucratic activity to establish if their parents can pass the citizenship down and if not, what nationality the baby gets.
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@Quotenwagnerianer Most of the Americas hand out citizenship to basically anybody born there. The odd thing is the countries that don't, because it's a lot easier to establish where somebody was born in modern times than where their parents are from.
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@SioxerNikita It absolutely is a moral imperative for states to ensure that people aren't born without a state. What do you do with people that lack a state? You can't necessarily deport them as you'd have no idea where it is that they come from, and even in countries where citizenship is passed down, you still have provisions for giving people citizenship if they don't otherwise have citizenship. This whole business of people being stateless as not that big of a deal, ignores the fact that it is an extremely big deal as without citizenship you would lack basic things like the right to an education or work in much of the world.
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@SioxerNikita You think that it's moral to allow people to be nearly completely excluded from participation in society? There's a bunch of stuff that you can't do if you're not a citizen, or lawful resident. Vote, work, access to schooling, access to proper medical care, bank accounts and a bunch of other stuff. You really think that it's moral to allow people to fall through the cracks like that because they lack citizenship? Seriously? The question isn't whether there's a moral imperative for governments to avoid that situation, the question is what basis there is for countries to not have that obligation. I think it's pretty clear that there is a moral imperative to not have people without any sort of citizenship at birth, and a bunch of practical ones as well.
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Are we surprised? The GOP has been nominating incompetent judges for years. The main basis any of those jokers has for being nominated is a willing indifference to what the constitution and the laws say when it benefits the rich and powerful. I remember last time around that they put somebody up for a federal appointment that was barely out of law school and couldn't even answer basic questions about the courts.
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Probably, but it's not like the Democrats didn't see this coming and chose not to do anything about it. The moment that McConnell came out and stole that seat there should have been a war triggered where the party punished him and the GOP with every available tool and when Biden did get into office, he should have packed the court and started impeaching justices to get their dirty laundry out in public. We're in this position and that may have been inevitable from the point where it became clear we had a real problem, but the complete lack of any sort of meaningful fight is just pathetic.
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@quitepossiblyasian2558 I don't think it's an issue in the US, it has been a major issue in Hong Kong due to the relative size of the city compared with all the Chinese women trying to give birth their so that their kids get to enjoy the benefits of Hong Kong citizenship and more or less swamping the maternity wards. That doesn't really apply to the US as we're talking about the 3rd most populace country and a country that's 3rd or 4th largest by landmass, it would take a lot to swamp our medical system.
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@Quotenwagnerianer TBH, I was somewhat surprised by just how concentrated it is in the Americas. I'd wager it probably has to do with how impractical it was to go between the Americas and the rest of the world until the late 19th century.
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@Lailowla Pretty much, if that last post or two didn't get through, then I don't think that anything will. Having people that are stateless causes a huge number of problems
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@Quotenwagnerianer I could totally see it being just about making everybody in those lands subjects to those particular countries and as such on the hook for all the rules and duties associated with citizenship. And then never bothering to change the rules later on.
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@HaveAnotherPiñaColada It worked fine until the SCOTUS figured out that it could legalize bribery via court decisions and allow more and more money in to corrupt the system. It's kind of remarkable just how long it largely worked.
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