Trumps separating Central American children from their parents. Is this acceptable? - Page 28 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14926896
jimjam wrote:They tend to have a very simplistic view of life. The slightest complexity seems to confuse them.


That's because it is VERY simple for them;

the conservative moral system is based on the metaphorical idea of a Strict Father Family. In this metaphor, the strict father figure makes the rules and enforces them. It’s the job of everyone else to do as he says. If they don’t, it’s his job to punish them painfully enough so that they will do as he says in the future. Zero tolerance! Authority is justified. Winners deserve to win; losers deserve to lose. Winners are better than losers.

This conservative moral system is thus based on a rigid hierarchy:
• God above Man
• Man above Nature
• The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak)
• The Rich above the Poor
• Employers above Employees
• Adults above Children
• Western culture above other cultures
• America above other countries
• Men above Women
• Whites above Nonwhites
• Christians above non-Christians
• Straights above Gays

This hierarchy is the key to understanding the conservative worldview, and thus conservative policy. Every conservative Republican policy flows from this hierarchy.

Here’s how conservatives justify Trump’s baby jails:

First, these are immigrants. In the conservative hierarchy, non-Americans are below Americans. Therefore, they’re not entitled to American rights. Second, these immigrants are Latino. In the conservative hierarchy, whites are above non-whites and Western culture is above non-Western culture. Therefore, Latino immigrants have three strikes when it comes to the conservative mindset.
Finally, adults above children. In the conservative worldview, children are not allowed to resist or disobey adults. Therefore, when immigrant children cry inconsolably or refuse to calm down, they are injected with psychotropic drugs to force them into compliance.

All of this, together, fits into the conservative worldview because it’s seen as punishment for wrongdoing. They see Trump as the strict father handing out righteous punishment.


Lakoff Medium post

How Republicans Really Think (podcast)
#14926914
jimjam wrote:"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"…. no more :*(

It was never the case I'm afraid:
[On Ellis Island] The process the newly arrived immigrants had to go through was a sifting process. America was very determined not to let anybody in who would become a burden on the society and take advantage of their welfare. In 1875 federal regulations started to exclude undesirable people. In the Immigration Act of that year it was stated that no convicted felons or prostitutes were given permission to enter. In the Immigration Act of 1891 paupers were added to the list of excludable people. Even though the poorest people in Europe couldn’t afford to buy a ticket many immigrants who came were poor by American standards, the Act of 1891 must have made it harder for these poor people to convince the officials they would not become a burden. This of course must have added to their agony.

[...]

There were many unnecessary deportations and separations of families. This made Ellis Island "…one of the most tragic places on earth" . If one was detained one had to stay in overcrowded and unsanitary quarters until the problem was resolved. Sometimes it took just a few hours and sometimes weeks. It depended on the problem, maybe the immigrant was sick and had to stay at the hospital or maybe a family member or a relative needed to be found who could care for the one who just arrived. This long wait caused great agony!

You are probably well aware, but here's what happened beginning in 1917.
The 1917 Act implemented a literacy test that required immigrants over 16 years old to demonstrate basic reading comprehension in any language. It also increased the tax paid by new immigrants upon arrival and allowed immigration officials to exercise more discretion in making decisions over whom to exclude. Finally, the Act excluded from entry anyone born in a geographically defined “Asiatic Barred Zone” except for Japanese and Filipinos.

[...]

[In 1924] They created a plan that lowered the existing quota from three to two percent of the foreign-born population. They also pushed back the year on which quota calculations were based from 1910 to 1890.

Another change to the quota altered the basis of the quota calculations. The quota had been based on the number of people born outside of the United States, or the number of immigrants in the United States. The new law traced the origins of the whole of the U.S. population, including natural-born citizens. The new quota calculations included large numbers of people of British descent whose families had long resided in the United States. As a result, the percentage of visas available to individuals from the British Isles and Western Europe increased, but newer immigration from other areas like Southern and Eastern Europe was limited.

The 1924 Immigration Act also included a provision excluding from entry any alien who by virtue of race or nationality was ineligible for citizenship. Existing nationality laws dating from 1790 and 1870 excluded people of Asian lineage from naturalizing. As a result, the 1924 Act meant that even Asians not previously prevented from immigrating – the Japanese in particular – would no longer be admitted to the United States.
#14926946
First, these are immigrants. In the conservative hierarchy, non-Americans are below Americans. Therefore, they’re not entitled to American rights. Second, these immigrants are Latino. In the conservative hierarchy, whites are above non-whites and Western culture is above non-Western culture. Therefore, Latino immigrants have three strikes when it comes to the conservative mindset.


@redcarpet
You are very confused if this makes sense to you. Many Latinos are white. Actually, Latinos show why these racial classifications are nonsense. They are mongrels like me. The result of different groups breeding throughout exploration.
‘Whites above non whites’ requires all Conservatives be white. Perhaps you should ask the rest of the world about this or the non white conservatives in the US.
Latinos live in the West.
Your post is nonsense. Every human grouping requires some type of prejudice or they could not be identified as a group. Preferring the US or Western democracy is necessary, even if only ideally, or there is no reason for it to exist.
Prejudice is required for community cohesion. Deciding some prejudices are undesirable is a prejudice itself.

Edit: Considering people a ‘race’ because they speak Spanish demonstrates how absurd accusations of racism have become. It is now apparently possible to be racist against a language.
#14926963
jimjam wrote:Greetings …… i'm not going to waste your time with an endless political pissing contest. Long story short, it's just the haves against the have nots. it's been like that for a few thousand years. The rest is just a lot of crap and hot air.

How's the weather down there? It's beautiful but cool up here. 57 degrees last evening but, I love it. Too damn hot and humid down there come Summer. Makes thinking and moving too difficult. After this I will take the 8 minute walk down to beautiful Casco Bay and jog a couple of miles. I hope the fin finding business is going well for you.


Some serious unhinging has occurred.
Weather is great 92 with a low of 72 everyday look forward to the afternoon showers. Its nice down here now that the traffic has subsided. My mango tree is in season they are delicious.
#14926984
Every human grouping requires some type of prejudice or they could not be identified as a group.


This is incorrect. You are using the word "prejudice" wrong. AS YOU KNOW, when we use the word "prejudice" we are not using a word that is the same as "preference".


Preferring the US or Western democracy is necessary, even if only ideally, or there is no reason for it to exist.


What does this even mean? Are you imagining that the immigrants to America are coming here to somehow change the American governmental system? Or for that matter even particularly interested in it other than it affords them opportunity and safety that the dysfunctional system in their home country does not allow?
Prejudice is required for community cohesion.


Naaa. Again you are misusing the term.

Deciding some prejudices are undesirable is a prejudice itself.


Try using the correct word. Preference.

An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
n.
A preconceived preference or idea.
n.
The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.


I can prefer Porsche to Mercedes and it is even possible that my judgments are not objectively correct. (I do and they aren't by the way.) But societies are not (or at least should not) be based on adverse preferences about groups of people that are not based upon fact or careful analysis.

Careful analysis leads me to believe the following about Mexican and Central American immigrants:

Given. There is a limit to the number of immigrants we can accept and we should be aware and act on that limit. The limit is not zero.

My travel in the region compels me to completely understand why poor people (but often middle class too) people want to come to the US. The region is rife with problems. I also know that it is wrong to think of these immigrants as all poor. They are not all poor. Some few of them are fleeing persecution at the hands of their governments or the crime syndicates that have supplanted government in some countries. A major, if not the major, way that undocumented immigrants come to America is to fly here and overstay their visa.

Fact: 60% if undocumented immigrants in America have been here 10 years or more!

Fact: Over 30% of them own homes.

Fact: Of those over 15 a third have US born children who are citizens.

Fact: Only a tiny fraction have committed felonies or even serious misdemeanors. They are, by and large, a very law abiding group. Very. (They are less than half as likely as citizens to have committed a felony or serious misdemeanor.)

Fact: Some are business owners who employ Americans.

Fact: Most pay taxes including Social Security. (Which they will never be allowed to draw by the way.)

Fact: They are mostly politically inactive for the obvious reason.

Fact: They tend to be religiously and socially conservative.

Those are the facts upon which I base my opinions of immigrants. So I add this to my conservative/libertarian belief that borders should exclude only bad elements and the for good reason.

Finally this. I do not blame illegal workers for the fall in working class wages though they are an integral part of the problem. They did not come here to drive down wages nor to take them from American workers. The idea is preposterous. Most of them would love a raise in pay just like their American counterparts would.

Here is proof of my way of thinking. Pay close and objective attention to this OneDegree. I do not mean to be confrontation but only to give you the facts.

From 2007 to now the median income in my state has only risen 3.3%. Is this because of illegals? (We have a bunch of them.) Must not be. Our wages have increased more than the national average. New Mexico the same. Our wage increases are higher than those in Vermont, New Hampshire and other states with much lower illegal worker populations. This does not mean that they had no effect but it does mean that they had not so much effect.

But the argument of increased wages, you will say, does not take into account only lower economic class workers. And there is where the truth lies. All lower wage workers are suffering even in states with low illegal populations. Pay attention: In Texas almost 10% of the workforce is illegal. Their wages went up 7.1%. In Ohio, where the percentage of the workforce that is illegal is less than 2%, wages fell.

Obviously something else is at work here and my state knows it. We applied a solution that works. We forced the wealthy to pay their fair share. We raised the minimum wage to be one of the highest in the nation. And did it "kill" small business as so many predicted? Nope. Not a peep out of them. It did increase tax revenue, decrease evictions, and add to the roles of buyers for goods and services people who could not do it before.

Anyway. The above is just a snapshot and I fully realize overly simple. But it does show the factors upon which my opinions are based.

The Trump administration and my republican party would have us believe that something different is the truth. They are objectively wrong in blaming illegals for wages and crime and they know it. That is malicious discrimination against an ethnic group. It is an issue upon which they rely for their political support. This lie of theirs. Their followers could be unusually unintelligent or unusually lazy. This is sometimes, if not often the case. But the real reason that so many republicans dislike illegal aliens is that these aliens are brown.
#14926994
prej·u·dice
ˈprejədəs/Submit
noun
1.
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.


This pretty well rejects your meaningless comments about what prejudice is. Actually according to this definition, if I have a reason or experience for disliking a type of person, then it is not prejudice. So even if you want to distort the definition into only applying to politically correct prejudices, it still fails.

Increased demand for labor results in higher wages. No matter how many examples you try to provide to prove this is false, you will fail because it is a simple truth.

None of these are my major concerns about immigration anyway. You supplied ‘my’ concerns to fit your arguments.
I believe people should be helped where they live. If we truly want to help these immigrants, then supply them with interest free loans to start businesses in their own country. We don’t help them or ourselves by overwhelming our own resources. Natural resources are distributed throughout the world. It is stupid to overwhelm them in any one area.
I believe the US should only support 100 million people. I object to all immigration that makes our future more dire than it already is. It should be noted most immigrants come from the most overpopulated areas. This is not a coincidence.
We can no longer pretend Overpopulation is simply going to disappear worldwide. The only option left is to prevent your area from being overpopulated. Immigration simply makes other’s problems your problems too. It does nothing to help either place. If you reduce the population burden on Honduras for example, then you remove their need to confront it with added harm to yourself.
#14926997
jimjam wrote:Damn …….. some deep thinking here...……… caused me to change my opinion of Donald ………. I no longer see him as the tool of the good ole boy rich club...……. he obviously is interested in doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Just following the money and seeing who it helps will conclusively bear this out ……… :lol:

This is how our constitution starts:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

They weren't thinking about slaves, native Americans, women, or people outside our borders who wanted to come to the United States. The US constitution is expressly for maintaining the freedom of Americans and their children. Not the rest of the world. Today, freedom for Americans ultimately means freeing yourself from the yoke of media mind control, and that's what Melania Trump did. Perhaps, there was a motivated retort for all the mindless speculation about her health after her kidney issues--without much well wishing from the media.

Schrödinger’s Coat
The Art of Melania Trump’s Green Jacket
Melania, that jacket!
I was all-in with John in his all-out defense of Melania Trump until -- the jacket. Photographers caught our elegant first lady wearing a $39 jacket from the clothing store Zara. It is weird enough that she shopped at Zara -- this is a woman who toured Sicily with the G-7 spouses in a $51,500 Dolce and Gabbana jacket last year -- but it was way weirder to read the words on the back of that Zara fashion find: "I really don't care. Do u?"

The Trumps are media geniuses. They are at least a step ahead, but probably a totally different game from the old school DNC/media nexus.
If that's true, then Donald Trump must be mistaken. He tweeted that his wife's jacket "refers to the Fake News Media."

Ha. The point is that they control the conversation, not you--among other things. They don't care about your lame attempts at emotionalism, because they've already hit back with their "pink star moms" and made fools of you.

As for Melania Trump, she is proving to be the next best counterpuncher in the White House. Instead of admitting wearing such a jacket was a silly mistake, she doubled down, wearing the jacket again as she deplaned at Andrews Air Force Base.

There is not a problem with wearing a jacket, and there is simply no reason for the media to be manufacturing all these pointless controversies.


SpecialOlympian wrote:The combined intellectual might of schizophrenic brain trauma victim Kanye West

Hrmm... for one who chooses to chemically induce that state for recretional purposes, you seem to disparage those who don't have the choice to return to normal brain function. That's an odd disconnect.

SpecialOlympian wrote:world class alcoholic and Potcoin promoter Dennis Rodman

You champion recreational drug use. Does Rodman use the wrong drug, or is he "weak" because he has become addicted?

SpecialOlympian wrote:MLK's crazy grandson

He's MLK Jr.'s son. To say he isn't steeped in the civil rights legacy of his father is somewhat ungenerous. Again, you are attacking someone's mental health, while chemically reducing your own brain function for recreational purposes--which seems to have the side effect that you purport to find virtually everything hysterically funny.

SpecialOlympian wrote:haha lmfao

:|

QatzelOk wrote:Then I would tell you that this means that many black families have been destroyed by the USA government as public policy.

That's part of the point of keeping illegal aliens out of the country. It undermines poor blacks from making a better living by undercutting day labor wages among other things.

QatzelOk wrote:Throwing family fathers into jail for "smoking a joint" is more a form of eugenics than law enforcement.

Trump is reviewing that as well.

Drlee wrote:Today he publicly autographed the pictures of people murdered by illegal aliens.

I cannot imaging anyone doing that. It is beyond comprehension.

It's novel, which alone makes it newsworthy.

Drlee wrote:It proves that he is playing to a monumentally stupid demographic. People so classless and mentally deficient that they cannot understand how pathological this is.

You just said you cannot imagine someone doing that, so it is not compulsive or habitual in any way. Now you are proving Charles Murray's point in that you are conflating IQ and economic class; although, I'm sure you deride Charles Murray's work.

Drlee wrote:This is tantamount to the NRA president signing pictures of mass shooting victims.

Not really.

Drlee wrote:I am really concerned. Where is the edge? When does someone go so far that they can no longer be trusted with even the most mundane things not to mention a nuclear arsenal so powerful that it could blast us back into the stone age.

Maybe you should ask jimjam, who seems to think the entire world hangs in the balance as well. Meanwhile, Trump is busy denuclearizing North Korea--something three douchebags that preceded him in the White House proved incapable of doing.

Drlee wrote:I despair for my republican party. I guess I have no frame of reference for elected officials so damaged that they could stand by and let something like this happen without action. Although I am a lifelong republican I hope we are dealt a massive defeat in 2018. That is the only thing that can move us back to some form of accountability in government. It will not happen though. There are simply too many unintelligent people who support this kind of disgusting behavior.

This is why people don't take your claims of high IQ very seriously. Signing photos of victims of illegal aliens has virtually no policy implications whatsoever, but has you hoping for the political defeat of people who have nothing to do with what Trump is doing. Why don't you just admit that you are partial to Democrats and quit with the "I'm a Republican" concern trolling? It's fooling virtually nobody and makes you seem both stupid and diabolical.

Instinctive or Strategic Genius? Either Way, Trump Outsmarts Them Again!

Rush Limbaugh wrote:I don’t know if he’s (Trump) that many steps down the board or not. But I know that his instincts are practically infallible here. He has turned these people inside out, upside down. He has forced them, made them, caused them — his enemies — to expose their hypocrisy, to expose their lies, and to expose the fact that they’re dishonest when reporting so-called news. For starters, ladies and gentlemen, I predicted the press would say that Trump caved, that they would begin to take credit for it, that they indeed had put so much pressure on Trump that finally they had made him cave.

Trump is so far ahead of the DNC-Media. You have to remember that he is the POTUS, and that means he can use the NSA to intercept their collusions. He can spy on them, just like Obama spied on the Trump campaign. He's just not trying to create phony reasons to try to prosecute people, like the establishment.

Rush Limbaugh wrote:Anyway, he was the first to figure it out. (laughing) They realized that this only meant one thing, that Trump was gonna keep families detained, if we’re gonna keep ’em together, they’re gonna stay detained, quote-unquote, “behind bars.” What the left has been looking for here all along is catch-and-release. That’s what they want to return to. They thought Trump caving meant that his executive order was gonna be, “We no longer detain children,” and since we can’t separate families, if we’re gonna detain the children, we can’t deign the adults.

Therefore nobody’s detained, thereby everybody is free to roam America and get lost. (laughing) Well, that’s not what the executive order says. And then I predicted that there would be a court challenge to this before the next day — today — arrived. And I predicted that the court challenge would be on the fact that Trump had usurped his executive authority, that he cannot trump (no pun intended) existing law as written by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the Flores decision, which the media never talked about during any of this.

See? Brilliant. Trump will claim, "I tried to put families back together, but the Ninth Circuit is hell bent on destroying families." He's way ahead of the game here. All the BS by people like Godstud will be completely blown out of the water. The Ninth Circuit can uphold their prior ruling, or try to modify it in some way. Ultimately, arrestees are separated from their children, and that's going to prevail. Trump will just blame it on the courts--particularly the most liberal court in the United States. The Flores decision came down as collusion betweeen the courts and the Obama administration. That's not going to happen with Trump in the White House. Trump isn't separating children from their parents. The Ninth Circuit is mandating this policy. Trump should agree to pardon the detainees if they return to their home country.

Godstud wrote:People who support Trump not only lack intelligence, but also scruples.

Yeah. I haven't been able to find my scruples. I think my Hispanic maid must have put them away somewhere.

Conscript wrote:Separation of families a byproduct of enforcing the law because of a court settlement that predates the Trump administration, and is itself a product of Obama detaining the whole family and being brought to court over it in 2015. Separation happens as a result of the settlement whenever you insist on detaining the adults, prosecuted or not.

Yep. And Congress is unlikely to act either. So Trump is being tough, because he has no choice. :)

Stormsmith wrote:I agree with the money is Trump's motivator portion, but his increasingly reckless behaviour, complete with all his poor decision-making makes me think he's gone bonkers now and this is driven by fear of Robert Mueller.

It's all Robert Mueller's fault. He is putting people in jail without being convicted of a crime. Manafort has been separated from his family, and he hasn't even been convicted and he's an American citizen. It's just terrible.

Stormsmith wrote:Farmers won't plant more strawberries. There's no one to pick them, and if what I saw this weekend (father's day) no one up here is buying them.

Haha! The horror! Life without strawberries! Oh no. Say it isn't so! Destroy the social cohesion of your country for strawberries if you have any shred of decency left!

jimjam wrote:When his decrees fail Trump blames the Dems, Obama and Hillary.

His decree is intended to fail. He's keeping the families together, and the court is ripping them apart. It's not his fault. He's just enforcing the law.

Drlee wrote:Fact: Of those over 15 a third have US born children who are citizens.

Because of another horseshit ruling by the US Supreme Court using the 14th Amendment to read virtually anything into its text, creating "anchor babies" in the process, which notwithstanding is another adverse effect of using the courts to make social policy because we can deport the parents but not the children.
#14927002
blackjack21 wrote: It's not his fault.


Pretty much nothing that fucks up is the fault of the artful dodger. We've come a long way from "the buck stops here" and "I cannot tell a lie".

And this:

HARLINGEN, Tex. — The business of housing, transporting and watching over migrant children detained along the southwest border is not a multimillion-dollar business.

It’s a billion-dollar one.

Many of these contractors, including Southwest Key, whose president and chief executive, Juan Sánchez, has been a well-known and politically connected figure in South Texas for years. As their Southwest Key's client base increasingly has included children forcibly removed from their parents, public good will has eroded.

Critics have released tax records showing Mr. Sánchez’s compensation — more than $770,000 in 2015 alone His organization’s usually under-the-radar efforts to open new shelters have become pitched public battles.

Perhaps Mr. Sanchez's slogan should be: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Somehow it is appropriate that the prisons for profit industry is booming under Trump's reign.

Image
#14927008
So, are you accusing Juan Sanchez of being a racist? Or, are you complaining about the high cost of housing for people you support being in the country? I am missing the complaint in this story. I read it, but all I saw was “overpaid executive”. Hardly newsworthy in the US.
You know we must support all asylum seekers for a year because they are not allowed to work. This is very expensive.
#14927015
This is why people don't take your claims of high IQ very seriously.


I really don't care what people think of me personally.

Signing photos of victims of illegal aliens has virtually no policy implications whatsoever, but has you hoping for the political defeat of people who have nothing to do with what Trump is doing.


On the contrary. The republicans in the house and senate have everything to do with immigration policy. They are 100% in charge of it. Further. The republican party engineered the situation that made a Trump presidency inevitable.

I actually have sympathy for Trump. I don't think he understood what being president meant before he was elected and is still learning as he goes. He even admitted publicly that the presidency is harder than he expected it to be. I believe he is still trying to find his feet on foreign policy. He is all over the map. (no pun intended.) His life experience is one that favors surrounding himself with sycophants and he obviously does not seek or value the opinions of experts. His reliance on Generals speaks to his fears about loyalty. They are serving officers so they are more than staff members; they are people who must follow orders from their commander and chief. I honestly believe that Trump would be much happier if he were to resign and return to his former role. He was having fun then and I suspect not much now.

Why don't you just admit that you are partial to Democrats and quit with the "I'm a Republican" concern trolling? It's fooling virtually nobody and makes you seem both stupid and diabolical.


I will forget the stupid and diabolical charge. I consider the source. It is the best you can do. I understand that.

I am partial to democrats right now. I believe they are pursuing policies that are best for our country. I am a free trade republican. The current republicans are imposing trade barriers. I believe in net neutrality as a keystone of conservative belief in freedom of speech just as Bush did. The democrats are favor net neutrality and the republicans don't. I believe in sensible immigration laws similar to those pursued by Ronald Reagan. The democrats favor a Reagan like approach and the republicans do not. I favor a strong military participating in strong international alliances just as Eisenhower and Nixon did. The republicans are destroying that and the democrats favor it.

Simply put, today's mainstream democrats are yesterday's republicans. But here is the key. If we moderates and traditional conservatives abandon the party then our two party system will remain completely dysfunctional. Our best hope now is for a strong democrat win in November to nudge the republican party back to the center where the votes are. Our nation cannot survive one party adopting policies that are destructive to our delicate democracy. We can't survive a dumb ass party, sold out to private business interests.

As to whether this recent problem is Trump's. Of course it is. If he were to hire competent advisors he could avoid shit like this. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump is smart and educated. I think he would prefer not to do some of this shit. I am sure it galls him to have to be quite so much as a targeted populist. But the problem really is that he is totally defensive right now. The Mueller investigation has him on the ropes. His only protection (at least in his mind I suspect) is to hold the republican party hostage to his popularity. It is the right course of action for him IMO. He commands the "if you hear banjos paddle faster" crowd and the republican party desperately needs them not just to remain in power but to remain viable as a party at all. So Trump is stuck. His showmanship has carried him through difficulties in the past and he is, from his perspective, quite correctly relying on it now.

I do fault him for going over the top. That is where good advisors could come in. What he really needs is a smart "kitchen cabinet". People who have his back. (Not his family.) He could have been the great unifier . Perhaps he still could. He will have to learn to get his arms around more people. He has to make peace with the people he fears. One of two things are inevitable. Either he will win big or he will have a train wreck. Go back to the eve of the election. Look at my posts here. I predicted his electoral victory to the very point. It was clear as a bell that he would win. Blackjack. You and I were about the only two serious posters here who called the election properly. Why? For me it was not some pent-up voter outrage. It was just the math. The republicans had gerrymandered themselves into a victory. What was it for you?
#14927027
jimjam wrote:Pretty much nothing that fucks up is the fault of the artful dodger. We've come a long way from "the buck stops here" and "I cannot tell a lie".

Truman dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan, which the Democrats don't like to admit to doing anymore. Washington overthrew the British government, ran a spy ring, owned slaves, etc. That's why antecedent leaders cannot be effectively cited in an SJW argument and be taken seriously.

jimjam's artcile wrote:HARLINGEN, Tex. — The business of housing, transporting and watching over migrant children detained along the southwest border is not a multimillion-dollar business.

It’s a billion-dollar one.

Right. And that didn't start in the last few months of Trump's zero-tolerance policy. That spans many presidencies and Congresses. They have labor unions, and they are compelled to donate money to the Democratic party whether the employees are Democrats or not.

jimjam's article wrote:Many of these contractors, including Southwest Key, whose president and chief executive, Juan Sánchez, has been a well-known and politically connected figure in South Texas for years.

Identity politics doesn't work either, because Juan Sánchez is Hispanic. So by SJW standards, he's a race traitor.

Drlee wrote:On the contrary. The republicans in the house and senate have everything to do with immigration policy. They are 100% in charge of it. Further. The republican party engineered the situation that made a Trump presidency inevitable.

The neocons and political establishment generally made Trump inevitable. In case you've forgotten, that was not your analysis is 2016 at all. You got it almost entirely wrong.

Drlee wrote:I actually have sympathy for Trump. ... He was having fun then and I suspect not much now.

Crocodile tears. He's having a blast. He relishes a fight.

Drlee wrote:I believe in sensible immigration laws similar to those pursued by Ronald Reagan.

Who later called Simpson-Mazzoli one of his biggest mistakes.

Drlee wrote:Simply put, today's mainstream democrats are yesterday's republicans.

Absurd.

Drlee wrote:Our best hope now is for a strong democrat win in November to nudge the republican party back to the center where the votes are.

The votes are in individual districts and state-wide races. They aren't in the center of anything.

Drlee wrote:Our nation cannot survive one party adopting policies that are destructive to our delicate democracy.

Ha. We're doomed then, as we're a bunch of delicate flowers.

Drlee wrote:We can't survive a dumb ass party, sold out to private business interests.

Why not? We've survived two of them so far.

Drlee wrote:If he were to hire competent advisors he could avoid shit like this.

But 4 paragraphs earlier, you said this:
Drlee wrote:His life experience is one that favors surrounding himself with sycophants and he obviously does not seek or value the opinions of experts.

In other words, if he would just do what he is told as previous empty suits have done, your policies would get implemented. Once again, this is another area where your prognostications have been proven completely wrong. Don't you remember saying that Trump wouldn't be running the country at all? He would just be a figure head?

Drlee wrote:But the problem really is that he is totally defensive right now.

He just beat them at their own game. You don't even realize it when you've lost(, which I'm totally cool with by the way).

Drlee wrote:The Mueller investigation has him on the ropes.

Mueller is fucked by the recent IG report. The whole thing was cooked up to try to impeach Trump. There is no political will to impeach him. If they tried, he would beat it AND be re-elected.

Drlee wrote:People who have his back. (Not his family.)

Yeah, and sink a knife into it at every chance.

Drlee wrote:Go back to the eve of the election. Look at my posts here. I predicted his electoral victory to the very point. It was clear as a bell that he would win. Blackjack. You and I were about the only two serious posters here who called the election properly. Why? For me it was not some pent-up voter outrage. It was just the math. The republicans had gerrymandered themselves into a victory. What was it for you?

For me it was the pulse of the country. When Jeb Bush imploded in South Carolina, it was pretty clear the Republican establishment's last hope was Ted Cruz. They hated him too, but they thought Trump was going to lose. The establishment simply couldn't get it in their heads that Trump could win. You came around at the end, but you were all over the board, believing his behavior was a net liability. It was what made him news.

Me predicting a Trump win on Oct 28, 2016
I even took a cheap shot at SpecialOlympian in a follow-up post.
me on Oct 28, to SO wrote:Lol SO. Just LOL ... You're going to get hammered on November 8th. You'll be so shocked, you might even turn white!


You were constantly calling Trump a shill, and suggesting he would drop out. Even in October, 2016.
So do I circle back to my original assertion that Trump is a shill and will drop out before the election? I wonder. Clearly the powers that be are fleeing him in big numbers. He lost Utah today and probably Wisconsin. The calculus at the republican party headquarters has to be whether or not to ask him to step down. They have to realize that they may well lose the Senate over this. It is not inconceivable that this could put the house into play.

But yes, you did come around at the last minute when Comey re-opened the investigation at the last minute. I guess he didn't get his expected payout from Hillary... who knows. However, you conceded the election over when Comey re-opened the investigation at the last minute.
Drlee predicting Trump's win
Gerrymandering only works in House elections. In fact, the reason there are as many blacks in Congress as there are is that Republicans gerrymandered the districts so that blacks would take many of the Democratic party seats. You can't gerrymander a presidential election. It's electoral college math. Trump won, because Hillary trashed working class people--probably accidentally. However, people understood that, especially in contrast to Trump's stated policies. He didn't do much on trade until this year, which is causing the establishment heartburn but the white blue collar voters who often vote Democrat love Trump.
#14927034
blackjack21 wrote:Yep. And Congress is unlikely to act either. So Trump is being tough, because he has no choice.


Exactly, and this is the primary downside of the more zealous forms of 'anti-racism' and especially 'anti-fascism'. It becomes a refuge for scoundrels, the mission and power creep, militants, and tribalists ironically. Eventually it reaches a point where nothing gets done because nothing needs to get done for the opposition. We've reached such a height of absurdity in our dialogue where the definition of something is based on what emotions an image evokes, which is especially powerful in this age of media, in this case white people enforcing the law is Nazism. It hints not only at the breakdown of civics, rationalism, and liberal-democratic values, but at how affluent a society is and removed from the hardships that actually produced the Nazis. The two are probably connected since material change tends to debase overarching ideals, ways of life, and social norms, freeing up more aspects of society that can be molded and therefore fought over in a cannibalizing race to the bottom, in an ideological battle that's increasingly total and profound in nature. In the meantime, you get entropy of previous social organizations and atomization, causing people to relate to an increasingly complex world through things like identity as part of a wider trend compromising the middle class civic identity, which was supposed to transcend divisions unique to a postcolonial capitalist society. Instead, it's all unraveling.

The biggest lesson of 21st century politics thus far is that neither moral panic nor tribalism are unique to the right. We saw this with the gun debate, we see it with the immigration debate, and we see it in the dissonance over the far left versus the far right. Our social conflicts are not modern, they are less ideological than they appear and more consistent with the natural state of human conflict and entropy provoking irreconcilable division. Democracy is suffering because it is losing its ability to reconcile different interest groups of society that are increasing in number and becoming more divergent. Alt-left and alt-right politics are making a post-Cold War return because they are questioning the ability of our ruling ideas and national identity to reconcile the various interest groups in a positive-sum outcome, and therefore their mandate to govern.

Trump is correct to instruct the GOP to ignore the Democrats and postpone an immigration bill until after the midterms. There is simply no use in negotiation. We live in a society that is past truth, will be past civil debate entirely it seems.
#14927039
blackjack21 wrote:I think they are making it very clear that American workers are not their priority. I think that's a good thing.

I agree that the Dems repeatedly siding with illegal aliens is a gift. It's much better if they don't have the option to talk about children though.

That said, from the polls it looks like Republicans mostly blame the parents for the separation, so you may be right.
#14927060
blackjack21 wrote:Truman dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan, which the Democrats don't like to admit to doing anymore.

WTF does this have to do with the fact that Donald passes the buck and blames all fuck ups on a) the democrats b) Obama C) either Clinton d) Warren G. Harding or claiming great victories for things based upon lies.
blackjack21 wrote:Washington overthrew the British government

I'm OK with this, how about you? And....WTF again does this have to do with the fact that Donald lies like a rug. After a year and a half I really don't pay attention to anything he says any more. It's either lies or simple minded shit to entertain and titillate his base.

blackjack21 wrote:Right. And that didn't start in the last few months of Trump's zero-tolerance policy. That spans many presidencies and Congresses. They have labor unions, and they are compelled to donate money to the Democratic party whether the employees are Democrats or not.


You get awarded one more WTF. The incarceration boom under Donald has what to do with democrats or the fact that incarceration existed prior to Donald or How jail employees donate their $$?

blackjack21 wrote:Identity politics doesn't work either, because Juan Sánchez is Hispanic. So by SJW standards, he's a race traitor.


WTF award #4. What does Sanchez' race have to do with the fact that, at over $770,000 @year, he is just one more politically "connected" parasitic hack sucking off of Donald's jail/incarceration boom.

Congratulations ...cheap shots and really great begging of questions have won you jimjam's WTF of the month award.....

No offense #21. I think you are cool and I like you. I just had some time on my hands to engage in a political pissing contest this evening. :)
#14927074
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epoll ... -6179.html

During the early stages of this border "crisis", which I think has been successfully argued as both overblown and very temporary, Trump's approval rating appears to have gone up. We might expect it to go up further after the executive order, or it might dip/stay the same since the North Korean summit and IG Report likely had a lot to do with this as well.

I think I'll repeat that if Trump's policy is unacceptable and Obama's policy was also unacceptable, people who cling to this are basically being impossible to please because they can't build a facility for each separate family... I'm not sure what alternatives to these options there are.
#14927078
Blackjack, how many times do I have to tell you that I don't read your gigantic posts where you quote a dozen people? Nobody does. Please stop bothering.

You know what this forum loves and what is the most readable thing ever? The quote/sentence/quote/sentence/quote/sentence post format. Everyone loves reading those.
#14927083
Hong Wu wrote:I think I'll repeat that if Trump's policy is unacceptable and Obama's policy was also unacceptable, people who cling to this are basically being impossible to please because they can't build a facility for each separate family... I'm not sure what alternatives to these options there are.


Easy; amnesty for anyone not guilty of violent crimes paired with a citizenship pathway program just like most other countries in our world. It's not hard.
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