Drumpf

[Varrok]

Yet now Trump brands any news story critical of him as fake news

So far, I've personally seen just one case, with the CNN reporter who was aggresively trying to butt in while it wasn't his turn to ask.

we have his press secretary making up ‘facts’ to berate reporters with. Is that OK?

Of course not. Although, I don't think Trump tells literally everyone in the office what to say each day. I don't even think it's possible (time constraints), and saying the inauguration crowds were big or not seems like such a trivial matter, that I honestly doubt he would bother.

The hypocrisy comes from his businesses outsourcing abroad, with him then turning around and proclaiming that businesses outsourcing abroad are a problem, without doing anything to change his own business practices. Has he stopped his businesses from outsourcing? Has he implemented any actual policy about this yet? It is far from the only hypocritical thing he has done.

It's been literally a little more than a week since he's in power.

[UnderTheSun]

You need to read the article again – the 2011 situation was not a ban. The updates at the end of the article set this out flatly. It was also a situation caused by necessity, as the administration at the time had to respond to an identified issue. In contrast, Trump’s ban has been put in place without good reason, was ordered without going through appropriate planning, and has caused chaos as a result.

>not a ban
>literally forced the refugee process to halt

If it wasn’t a ban, then the Obama Administration wouldn’t have had the State Department stop processing Iraqi refugees, yes?
I could say that Trump isn’t really banning people from the 7 Middle Eastern countries, he’s just told CBP to stop processing people with nationalities pertaining to those countries.
Either way, the setup to both is the same. The ban (temporary halt, if you will) in 2011 was due to a bomb threat, while the temporary halt (ban, if you will) this past weekend was sparked by events such as the Orlando shooting and Ohio State car-knife attack.

It may have been a campaign promise, but I’m not arguing about that – I’m arguing whether it is a good policy, and it clearly is not.
And it was far from his only option – there was absolutely no reason to make this order so soon, and he wanted to wait for when he was in a more secure position he could have done.

Trump's a man of action, not the kind of person who is willing to wait while his cabinet gets filled out. Besides, voters expect results, and, again, Trump is a man of action, i.e. results.

Even the argument that this is about combating terrorism is plainly false – between 1975 and 2016 zero Americans were killed on US soil by a foreign national from any the countries identified on Trump’s list; and the probability of being killed by an immigrant in a terrorist attack is an astronomically low 1 in 3.6 million. Only 3 refugees have been arrested in the past 15 years for terrorist activities; only 0.00062% of refugees admitted into the country since 1975 ever attempted a terrorist act – and only 3 out of the 20 attempts were successful.

I don’t think the refugee crisis was in 1975, do you? The Gulf War wasn’t even until the 1980’s. The Middle East was a lot more stable back then.

The proposed tariff will not be paid for by Mexico, it would be paid for by Americans through increased prices to compensate for the tariff. Add to it that the US buys in more import from Mexico than vice versa – $316.4 billion versus $267.2 billion. This deal would hurt America more than Mexico; that is not ‘holding all the cards’. And tracking down money sent to Mexico by immigrants would be exceedingly difficult to manage; let’s not even get into the implications of holding hostage the money immigrant workers’ families depend on for support.
Meanwhile, Trump’s aggression is souring relations with the Mexican government, and the current wisdom is that the upcoming Mexican elections will see candidates vying to be as anti-Trump as possible to gain votes. President Nieto is already playing hardball, and it’s only going to get worse.

You seem to misinterpret the point of a tariff.
Tariffs make it more expensive for foreign bodies to sell goods in our markets. If they want to stay profitable, then they are forced to raise their prices, giving less expensive local goods a competitive edge. Consumers, obviously, will buy the local goods.
This means the foreign bodies lose money.
Trump hasn’t even implemented his tariff on China yet. The tariff he set on Mexico (in retaliation for President Nieto refusing to negotiate the wall) is at 20%. This kind of looks like a practice round.

You are confusing immigration and outsourcing into a single issue, but these are separate issues. Yes, manufacturing abroad is cheaper, and many businesses exploit the lower wages in countries such as China. But this is not something that can be blamed on immigrants or refugees within the country (many of whom immigrate for better wages), and it will not be solved by banning immigration or turning away refugees.

How was I saying they were the same issue, when I explicitly stated that it’s not just illegal immigration and refugees that are the problem?

And immigrants raise wages.

That article makes it sound like only illegal immigrants raise wages. We can reap the rewards of letting in people legally, while enforcing our immigration laws to keep out people who don’t care to follow the rules. Heck, Trump wants to streamline the immigration process.

Do you mean companies like Ford, where Trump falsely claimed credit for the Michigan investment (which is a fraction of the amount due to be invested in Mexico), or where Trump took credit for saving a plant that wasn’t even going to close?

Nah, I was thinking more along the lines of cases like the Carrier jobs staying (even after Obama said that wouldn’t happen). But the Ford CEO very much agrees with Trump’s policies, like the tariff.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fo...rticle/2607739

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0d9a5945c8b7b

Then again, what does he know? He’s only the CEO of one of the world’s largest automanufacturing companies.

In Hungary’s case, the fact is that refugees can take other routes around this border – so building the wall has simply redirected those people, not blocked them; they will seek the past of lesser resistance. For Trump and Mexico, the scenario is different – the size of the border is much larger, and there are no other routes around, so people would be more determined to find a way in.

“No other routes?” Slog Bait, you LIED to me!

But I am not concerned about the effectiveness of a hypothetical wall – of course putting a wall up will stop people. What worries me is the implication behind these walls; the ideology they represent. Let alone the prohibitive financial cost of such a wall would be quite possibly the largest waste of federal money on a vanity project the US has ever seen.

Estimated wall cost: Around 25$ billion
>be Obama
>propose $70 billion budget to carry out regulations
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susandud.../#cc4e1b1c7e4b
vs.
>be Trump
>for every new regulation, 2 regulations will be diced
>want to build $25 billion wall
>25 isn’t even half of 70

Hungary’s wall represents one part of the rising anti-refugee sentiment in Europe. Let’s recap: refugees are people fleeing war, seeking asylum, fleeing from terror. They risk life and limb abandoning their homes to travel across the world to find safety; but now instead they are finding themselves blocked, turned away, or penned in to despicable holding camps. The European Union is failing to support people desperately in need of help – is that the example the US wants to follow?

Is it really Hungary's problem how the refugees feel, since they're the very refugees that Hungary wants to keep out? Maybe the people of Hungary know something we don't? Isn't that grounds for negotiation?
That goes for other countries. Bringing in people from war-torn countries with a very different perception of human rights… What could go wrong?

I don’t know what European Union you’re talking about, but they seem to have the right idea. Japan saw trouble a mile (well, many miles) away, and only took in a few refugees. Guess what two of them (Turkish) wound up doing?
Evidently, the statistics you brought up didn’t work for Japan. Maybe they haven't worked out for America, either? Maybe that's why Trump won the election?

I don’t even know where to begin with this claim. Israel’s border fence is designed to hem in Palestinians; it has spent decades illegally encroaching further and further into Palestinian territory, building illegal settlements and driving the Palestinians out. Thousands of Palestinians have been murdered by the Israeli government. Israel’s border control is little more than apartheid oppression; much like Trump’s racist wall, it is built on the back of hatred and xenophobia. Illegal aliens do not bring crime – violent oppression ensures retaliation.

The barrier worked, didn't it? That's what we're talking about here.

Also... "Trump's Racist Wall"

"Mexican" is not a race. While we're at it, neither is "Muslim."

Trump’s approval rating has plummeted faster than any other US President in history, if that’s any indication of popularity.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-polls-in-the/

Polls have shown themselves to be… Unreliable at best.

Mrs Clinton was given a 90 percent chance of defeating Mr Trump, according to the final Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation stats released last night. If all recent polls are correct, she will become the first female president of the country tonight - the early hours of tomorrow morning UK time.

A left-leaning government would not build a wall. Sybil’s point is that the walls you cited are by-products of dangerous xenophobia – conservative anti-refugee Hungary and oppressive Israeli occupation. These are not examples that the supposed “land of the free” should follow; not if it wishes to be seen as a nation fit to lead the world on humanitarian issues.

So, beyond ideological dilemmas, walls work just fine?
Also… The United States has never been a saintly country. We were among the last of the world’s countries to abandon slavery, and even that took a long and brutal war to actually accomplish. We’ve been treating the Middle East like a chew toy for the past few decades.
Do you know why? Because we act in our own interests. If you look at my Sweden example above, that’s what happens when a country values foreigners over its own people. That’s what happens when a government fails to prioritize the well-being of its own people.
We don’t want to have our government make that mistake. That’s why we elected Trump.

Trump has done as good as nothing – his proposals to leave his businesses in the hands of his children are not enough to satisfy the Office of Government Ethics, and they do not constitute a blind trust. And yes, we should expect Trump to divest – regardless of the work he put in building those assets, the fact of the matter is that the most powerful government position in the free world should be free of any conflict of interest, and every other. We have already seen Ivanka Trump’s jewelry promoted on the White House website, and the Trump Organization pressuring foreign diplomats to stay at his hotels. There are many more ways in which trump stands to abuse his power and influence to personally enrich himself and his family, and that is unacceptable.

Personally, I think these allegations are overblown, and this is all a waste of time. Obviously, the OGE thinks differently, and that’s their prerogative. Which is good, because we need people who will scrutinize our politicians. But I don’t agree with what they’re treating like a smoking gun.
Besides, you do realize what happens next if the OGE actually gets Trump indicted, right?

>be Office of Government Ethics
>sue Trump
>win
>Trump is somehow impeached by republican-dominated Congress
>be President Mike Pence
>”amperes for queers” Pence
>”turning fruits into vegetables” Pence
>conservative evangelical Christian
>no conflict of interests... with God
>federalize conversion therapy
>nuke Middle East
>deusvult.jpg

Yet now Trump brands any news story critical of him as fake news – we have his press secretary making up ‘facts’ to berate reporters with. Is that OK?

Do you know who popularized “fake news” in the first place? The mainstream media, which can’t handle American citizens deciding for themselves who they will and will not trust as sources of information. The same mainstream media that lied to the American people, that Trump would never run for president, that Trump would never win the Republican nomination, that Trump would never win the election. Yet they have the audacity to call their more honest competition “fake news.”
Needless to say, Trump trolling the mainstream media like this was beautiful to witness.

The hypocrisy comes from his businesses outsourcing abroad, with him then turning around and proclaiming that businesses outsourcing abroad are a problem, without doing anything to change his own business practices. Has he stopped his businesses from outsourcing? Has he implemented any actual policy about this yet? It is far from the only hypocritical thing he has done.

Is there reason for concern? Yes. But, personally, I could care less.

Let's not forget the fact that the countries he conveniently omitted from the ban are countries that have had links to terrorist activities that have occurred on US soil in the same timeframe (our most famous example, 9/11, was enacted by terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt), but these same countries have Trump businesses set up within them.

You’re right, we need to add them to the pre-made list made by Obama that Congress already approved.

And as a reminder, to anyone who thinks the wall would be at all effective, consider the fact that the US-Mexico border is surrounded by water on both sides. If someone's going to cross the border, a wall isn't going to stop them. People can dig. They can swim, boat, and fly in. In a crude reference, they can also climb. There is a reason there's so many jokes about Mexicans hopping fences really well.

>be poor Mexican
>want to go to America
>don’t care about legal immigration
>want to climb over pesky wall
>go to ladder store
>45 ft long ladder costs over 9,000 pesos
>sell kidney for ladder
>haul 100 pound 45 foot long ladder dozens of miles through Mexican desert with other supplies
>reach wall
>can’t find level ground to set ladder
>try anyway
>half way up I fall off
>break leg
>too poor to afford medical care
>ice agent with 45 foot long pole pokes ladder off wall
>ladder drops onto my face

Not to mention we have Coast Guard patrolling the, well, coasts.

This is after the wall's built. The wall, that will take approximately 10 years to build, and by the time it's done it will likely be more useless than it already is, since Mexican immigration is no longer an issue and hasn't been for at least a decade now, way after we had the mass illegal immigration and dealt with it. The wall is a massive waste of money and resources that could be going towards infrastructure, the exact thing Trump said he wanted to focus on time and time again when appealing to rural voters.
As an addendum to how stupid the wall is, I'm an American born citizen that's always lived ~4 hours or less from the US-Mexico border and grew up in an area effected heavily by the mass illegal immigration a while back. The wall is very wasteful and very stupid. The proper measures for dealing with the undocumented immigrants have already been made. The wall is a total waste

If illegal immigration from Mexico is no longer an issue, then why do illegals who get deported multiple times keep finding their way back?
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/07/0...ultiple-times/
And why would the wall be a waste if Mexico itself had to build a barrier of its own at the Guatemalan border?

And what’s this about so many people from Haiti and Africa going to Mexico? Why would they want to go there?
[img] http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/25/in...tarian-crisis/[/img]
The fact of the matter is, illegals we deport aren’t staying out, and even Mexico is having to deal with illegal immigrants whom, for all we know, want to join the USA border hopping extravaganza.
Even if Mexico isn’t the source of illegals any more, it is undeniable that a wall will be an effective barrier in the long term.

Also a very firm reminder, that once elected president, your duty is to The People. You officially serve The People. Everything you've built up off to the side is officially not of your concern, and you are not in that position for yourself. You are no longer an individual, you are the public figurehead for an entire country. The only people who would try to say otherwise are dictators and people who stand to profit by being in that position (not mutually exclusive), which is why you're supposed to immediately drop all conflicts of interest upon entering the White House, since the US loves to cling to the label of democracy and "freedom with liberty and justice for all".

We’re a republic. Our votes represent our will. When a candidate wins, that means we approved of what they’re going to do, and any amount of us changing our minds will only matter come the next election cycle.
Besides, if a president was REALLY obligated to act on the people’s will, then we get a thing called “tyranny of the majority,” which our founding fathers specifically set up the Electoral College to counter.

As an addendum to other people's posts about The Wall; approximately 40% of Mexican illegal immigrants come by plane. A wall might slow things down (although as Slog Bait said, probably only a bit), but the there's plenty of people who are just going to fly over the top.

If Slog Bait is correct in that illegal immigration from Mexico is no longer a problem, then why is this 40%, from flights of all things, so big? Trump is right; if people are slipping through the cracks like this, we're obviously not paying close enough attention.

Then they'll be limited to land and water travel, and we'll have the wall and Coast Guard.

[STM]

Or sail around it using those two fuck of massive oceans that happen to exist either side of America's Mexican land border.

[Lord Vhazen]

Trump's a man of action, not the kind of person who is willing to wait while his cabinet gets filled out. Besides, voters expect results, and, again, Trump is a man of action, i.e. results.

I could say that Trump isn’t really banning people from the 7 Middle Eastern countries, he’s just told CBP to stop processing people with nationalities pertaining to those countries.
Either way, the setup to both is the same. The ban (temporary halt, if you will) in 2011 was due to a bomb threat, while the temporary halt (ban, if you will) this past weekend was sparked by events such as the Orlando shooting and Ohio State car-knife attack.

"Trump is a man of action" seems more of a glorification of his person than anything. Many of us think he's headstrong and stupid, and we don't trust his actions. It's not a matter of how confident he is, it's a matter of how competent he is, that's the problem. Obama fought with congress for literally EVERY decision he EVER tried to make, and virtually everything he did had to involve severe compromise in order for it to get passed, if at all. Now with a Republican in office, presidential decisions are quicker to process because we have a right-wing majority at this time with a right-wing cabinet. So far, since Trump has officially been president he's made what many of us consider a bad business deal of sorts, building a wall which we think will not be worth our tax payer's money, and now this whole airport situation is further indication of bad things to come. Innocent people like the OP's spouse are being denied access to their families back in the US because of an irrational, wild form of discrimination, meanwhile professional business men and women are facing work-related crisises as they can't continue their international work.

I keep using the word "xenophobia" because this is exactly what is being encouraged and what will continue to be encouraged with this attitude, regardless of why these decisions are being made. We've already had a problem with religious discrimination since 9/11, and while I agree that doing nothing about threats to national security is a worse option, automatically deeming someone a potential threat because of who they pray to or where they were born only reminds one of the Japanese internment camps of WW2. There are appropriate ways to deal with problems, and there are over-reactions which fuel bigotry.

I don't recall the last time the KKK initiated victory parades instead of protests for a president elect. It doesn't matter whether or not you call it an actual "ban" or the "temporary cease of processes". As you said, the initiation is the same, and the effect is the same too. Even if there is reason to temporarily halt the processing of certain kinds of people, the ultimate effect we're getting seems to be doing more harm than good as a "preventative measure". The same could probably be said for similar actions from previous administers.

Forgive me if I’m being stupid, but didn’t Trump say at some early point in his campaign that gross and overzealous safety procedures in airports were a problem we had to deal with? Maybe I misinterpreted or I’m remembering wrong, but that doesn’t really fit with what’s going on now.

How was I saying they were the same issue, when I explicitly stated that it’s not just illegal immigration and refugees that are the problem?

You did kind of bunch the issue of immigration and outsourcing together, it kind of looked like you were using one to prove the other point, which even confused me a little until I read it over a couple of times.

That article makes it sound like only illegal immigrants raise wages. We can reap the rewards of letting in people legally, while enforcing our immigration laws to keep out people who don’t care to follow the rules. Heck, Trump wants to streamline the immigration process.

It may seem that way if President Nieto is unwilling to negotiate, but the reality is that we hold all the cards. One thing to remember is that we don't need Mexico to literally pay us, it's just that Trump promised that Mexico will "pay for" the wall. For instance, Trump just recently asked Congress to approve a 20% import tax on Mexican goods. Other potential solutions include driving up the price of visas and forbidding Mexican immigrants from sending money back home to their families (amounts to $24 billion a year).

If Trump will really make it easier for people to migrate here legally and start a healthy American life, then I'm all for that, but I haven't really seen any indication of that. If anything, the message I've been hearing from him sounds more like he's trying to crack down on immigration all together and keeping people out more than anything. The idea of preventing people from using work Visa's to send money back home, which as you mentioned could pay for the wall, sounds more insensitive than anything. Many immigrants keep their actual families on the other side of the border because they honestly can't afford to go through the legal process to move them here much less buy a house or pay rent. Going harder on work Visas will only decrease legitimate, legal immigration. That's not streamlining. Raising prices for Visas also sounds like a way to make life harder for low-income, desperate families seeking the American dream, and nothing more.

Estimated wall cost: Around 25$ billion
>be Obama
>propose $70 billion budget to carry out regulations
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susandud.../#cc4e1b1c7e4b
vs.
>be Trump
>for every new regulation, 2 regulations will be diced
>want to build $25 billion wall
>25 isn’t even half of 70

Okay, so Obama’s idea was more expensive. Was it more reasonable though? What these regulations, specifically? Maybe they were a better idea than what Trump’s trying to do or maybe they weren’t. Either way, that doesn’t change the fact that many of us still think that the all mighty border wall won’t actually help our nation enough to be worth that kind of money.

Is it really Hungary's problem how the refugees feel, since they're the very refugees that Hungary wants to keep out? Maybe the people of Hungary know something we don't? Isn't that grounds for negotiation?
That goes for other countries. Bringing in people from war-torn countries with a very different perception of human rights… What could go wrong?

I don’t know what European Union you’re talking about, but they seem to have the right idea. Japan saw trouble a mile (well, many miles) away, and only took in a few refugees. Guess what two of them (Turkish) wound up doing?
Evidently, the statistics you brought up didn’t work for Japan. Maybe they haven't worked out for America, either? Maybe that's why Trump won the election?

But I am not concerned about the effectiveness of a hypothetical wall – of course putting a wall up will stop people. What worries me is the implication behind these walls; the ideology they represent. Let alone the prohibitive financial cost of such a wall would be quite possibly the largest waste of federal money on a vanity project the US has ever seen.

Hungary’s wall represents one part of the rising anti-refugee sentiment in Europe. Let’s recap: refugees are people fleeing war, seeking asylum, fleeing from terror. They risk life and limb abandoning their homes to travel across the world to find safety; but now instead they are finding themselves blocked, turned away, or penned in to despicable holding camps. The European Union is failing to support people desperately in need of help – is that the example the US wants to follow?

Once again, Mexican immigrants – who are the ones allegedly going to be effected by the wall – are by no means like immigrants over there in the middle-east. Plus, you still can’t ignore the kind of image a giant wall presents to other countries. I think Manco hit it pretty hard here.

The barrier worked, didn't it? That's what we're talking about here.

Again that’s not the issue – of course a wall will reduce illegal immigration. What I keep stressing is I honestly don’t think that issue is affected the country enough to warrant spending that kind of money. We should just invest in better security measures if anything. Or again, how about make it easier to legally migrate here? You know, streamline it?

Also... "Trump's Racist Wall"

"Mexican" is not a race. While we're at it, neither is "Muslim."

Apples and oranges. There is no need to be a dictionary here. It’s an idea that will promote discrimination, in a time where people are already resentful towards Hispanics. Though I have yet to be directly discriminated against, I have seen my mother and father discriminated against quite often growing up. Discrimination and resentment towards Mexicans is very much alive in this country, especially in border states. This wall presents a bad sentiment and I firmly believe it will not be worth the money to build.

We’ve been treating the Middle East like a chew toy for the past few decades.
Do you know why? Because we act in our own interests. If you look at my Sweden example above, that’s what happens when a country values foreigners over its own people. That’s what happens when a government fails to prioritize the well-being of its own people.

Things are different now since 9/11, but the Gulf War was a situation we had to deal with because we were obligated to defend an ally who was being wrongfully invaded.

We don’t want to have our government make that mistake. That’s why we elected Trump.

Trump got elected because of the electoral college, he did not win because of the popular vote – which to this day he still stubbornly claims was due to “all those damn dirty illegals” with absolutely no evidence to support such claims. I absolutely promise you that if someone better than Hillary won the head of the Democrats, Trump would have lost to an absolute landslide.
In fact, I promise you so much that if I had a time machine and could go and change who won the primary on the left and make it Bernie Sanders, Trump would have lost the general election by like 25% vs 75% AT LEAST. I promise you that so much that I would seriously give you a THOUSAND dollars if I would be wrong after using such a time machine. There are A LOT of Republicans who refused to vote because of Trump, and many I know personally would have voted for Bernie – some of which voted Hillary during the general just to try to keep Trump out of office. The Democrats fucked themselves one way or another by selecting Hillary to be their head. And many believe it happened in part because of the corruption in our politics – she is Wall Street incarnate and a witch.

>be Office of Government Ethics
>sue Trump
>win
>Trump is somehow impeached by republican-dominated Congress
>be President Mike Pence
>”amperes for queers” Pence
>”turning fruits into vegetables” Pence
>conservative evangelical Christian
>no conflict of interests... with God
>federalize conversion therapy
>nuke Middle East
>deusvult.jpg

Yes I agree, Pence is a scumbag and a much worse potential leader. The problem though is, how much of his kind would Trump cater towards to secure the next election? We’re probably going to see religion meddle more and more with government decisions and regulations as time goes by.

The hypocrisy comes from his businesses outsourcing abroad, with him then turning around and proclaiming that businesses outsourcing abroad are a problem, without doing anything to change his own business practices. Has he stopped his businesses from outsourcing? Has he implemented any actual policy about this yet? It is far from the only hypocritical thing he has done.

Is there reason for concern? Yes. But, personally, I could care less.

….

We’re a republic. Our votes represent our will. When a candidate wins, that means we approved of what they’re going to do, and any amount of us changing our minds will only matter come the next election cycle.
Besides, if a president was REALLY obligated to act on the people’s will, then we get a thing called “tyranny of the majority,” which our founding fathers specifically set up the Electoral College to counter.

That represents an entirely different issue that many others have been debating since its creation, and many have been calling for its abolishment. In fact, even TRUMP HIMSELF has stated before during his early campaign that the electoral college is an example of federal tyranny that must be abolished for the betterment of the American people. He said this, and then now he’s said the opposite because IT WAS THE REASON HE WON. This is one of the largest, most talked about examples of his hypocrisy. And of course now many more people are raging against it because here we are with Trump as our president.

Also, I agree polls aren't the most reliable of sources. But massive protests and just the simple word of mouth are when it comes to the general popularity of someone. Trump is by no means a 50-50 split, it's far more than that. Hillary and him were two of the most hated presidential candidates EVER to fight each other - both of whom hated by their own parties. This is not a matter of the "liberal media making him look bad". I can promise you that though Trump has his legitimate supporters, he has many more people who absolutely /hate/ him.

My history teacher, my federal government teacher and even my Texas government teacher all agreed on this, and they obviously studied this subject very thoroughly. 2016 is perhaps the most vicious, toxic election the country has ever seen, or at least it's the most absurd in that /both/ party's major candidates achieved the victory of the primary despite overwhelming hatred from their own parties. My federal government teacher stressed almost every single day that "These are two of the most unpopular candidates fighting that we've ever seen in a single election".

[Slog Bait]

“No other routes?” Slog Bait, you LIED to me!

Son what

Also... "Trump's Racist Wall"

"Mexican" is not a race. While we're at it, neither is "Muslim."

Manco's said numerous times that it was primarily xenophobia first and racism second. Most people use latino and Mexican, as well as several other Latin America nationalities, interchangeably. Latino is a "race".

So, beyond ideological dilemmas, walls work just fine?
Also… The United States has never been a saintly country. We were among the last of the world’s countries to abandon slavery, and even that took a long and brutal war to actually accomplish. We’ve been treating the Middle East like a chew toy for the past few decades.
Do you know why? Because we act in our own interests. If you look at my Sweden example above, that’s what happens when a country values foreigners over its own people. That’s what happens when a government fails to prioritize the well-being of its own people.
We don’t want to have our government make that mistake. That’s why we elected Trump.

The only people who argue this are the majority of Americans who genuinely were lead to believe we are The Greatest Nation In The World who does nothing but altruistic things for the rest of the world and that we are rewarded with garbage in return. Yeah, I don't know about you, but my entire experience through elementary school was a constant rehashing of exactly that. It's like we were set up to vote for a looney like Trump.

Also man dang, I didn't know that 61,201,031 voters (in other words 19.19% of the country's current population) counted as us as a whole. You're right, we sure did vote for him. Totally.

>be Office of Government Ethics
>sue Trump
>win
>Trump is somehow impeached by republican-dominated Congress
>be President Mike Pence
>”amperes for queers” Pence
>”turning fruits into vegetables” Pence
>conservative evangelical Christian
>no conflict of interests... with God
>federalize conversion therapy
>nuke Middle East
>deusvult.jpg

Congrats? You figured out one of the many reasons libtards were so freaked out at the idea of Trump winning. It's obviously a set up to get Pence into power, and it's only a matter of time.

>be poor Mexican
>want to go to America
>don’t care about legal immigration
>want to climb over pesky wall
>go to ladder store
>45 ft long ladder costs over 9,000 pesos
>sell kidney for ladder
>haul 100 pound 45 foot long ladder dozens of miles through Mexican desert with other supplies
>reach wall
>can’t find level ground to set ladder
>try anyway
>half way up I fall off
>break leg
>too poor to afford medical care
>ice agent with 45 foot long pole pokes ladder off wall
>ladder drops onto my face

Not to mention we have Coast Guard patrolling the, well, coasts.

Bitch the coast guard ain't shit. My neighbor and their 50 chihuahuas when I was like 12 swam their asses through the Gulf of Mexico and somehow hitchhiked their asses all the way to Nevada to start their new life and weren't stopped or caught a single time. I still meet people who pulled this shit off that are in the process of getting the appropriate documents to live in the states legally.

If you've ever looked into emigrating anywhere, you'd realize how insanely difficult and expensive it is, and how much easier it would be to just force your way into a country and figure it out while you're already there. The entire process is weighted heavily against you. God forbid you actually want to become a citizen. The second you miss a payment here or there to the appropriate people, or the second you slip up even the tiniest bit (not having your papers on hand when an ICE agent suspects you of being undocumented because you forgot them at home and you aren't totally read up on how to handle a situation like that) you get detained and treated like a god damn animal despite all the effort you put into immigration. It's fucking disgusting. It's the reason why there's so many undocumented people here, because what the hell does it even matter? If you get suspected of being undocumented you'll be treated the same way as someone is undocumented anyways. You still risk deportation. The entire country is working against you just by virtue of you wanting to potentially live there.

When Mexican immigration was actually a problem they were bringing down property value and upsetting the work force specifically because we weren't expecting it and their customs clashed with ours. But we adapted to it, tightened border control, cracked down on undocumented immigrants, and now all that's left is just the lingering remains and a steady stream of immigration and deportation, which would happen no matter how big or secure the wall was.

Also, the above reasons are why immigrants that went through the whole process and successfully gained their citizenship get even more pissed off than a natural born citizen about illegal immigration. They figure that because they were able to put in the time, and had the money to pull it off, that everyone who migrated here would be able to do the same. And for the most part, yeah, it's possible, but when you were just trying to escape in the moment as a means to provide for and protect your family it's pretty likely you don't have the money to expend and that you're viewing this as a bandage solution anyway.

If illegal immigration from Mexico is no longer an issue, then why do illegals who get deported multiple times keep finding their way back?
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/07/0...ultiple-times/
And why would the wall be a waste if Mexico itself had to build a barrier of its own at the Guatemalan border?

And what’s this about so many people from Haiti and Africa going to Mexico? Why would they want to go there?
[img] http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/25/in...tarian-crisis/[/img]
The fact of the matter is, illegals we deport aren’t staying out, and even Mexico is having to deal with illegal immigrants whom, for all we know, want to join the USA border hopping extravaganza.
Even if Mexico isn’t the source of illegals any more, it is undeniable that a wall will be an effective barrier in the long term.

I said this in a previous thread about a similar topic, and I think even the discussion of breaking out of a fortified prison was brought up, but if someone really wants to get in/out of somewhere, they'll find a way. Someone really wants to continue their life in America? They'll keep coming back again and again no matter how often they're deported or detained, no matter how big and flashy the border wall is. Someone really wants to break out of jail? There's been several cases of people throughout history that became famous/infamous for constantly committing felonies and yet somehow always breaking back out of prison or just being savvy enough to get let out early time and time again despite the fact they really shouldn't have.

What Mexico does with their money and their country's borders have absolutely nothing to do with what America does with their money and their borders. Mass immigrations and people seeking asylum only happens when Some Serious Shit goes down in the country of origin and the people are desperate for a better life or to stay alive at all. But that's been rehashed several times in different ways already in this discussion. The fact of the matter is, the time for a wall on the caliber that Trump wants has already come and gone. Mexico's economy has steadily been bettering itself, whether we were complicit in helping them or not is also irrelevant, and as a result far less people have been wanting to immigrate from Mexico, and more people are comfortable seeking asylum in Mexico or even crossing Mexico as a means to find shelter elsewhere.

We’re a republic. Our votes represent our will. When a candidate wins, that means we approved of what they’re going to do, and any amount of us changing our minds will only matter come the next election cycle.

You're about half correct. We are in fact a democratic republic, though the majority of Americans will tell you we are strictly a democracy, because they genuinely believe that to be the case. This is why I brought up that it's a label we cling to. When a candidate wins, assuming the system works as it's meant to, it means that the candidate is what the country as a whole needs, rather than representing what the will of the people is. The system is flawed, however, when The People don't understand how it works. Stop any random person on the street and I can promise you they believe the president is basically the only person that calls the shots and don't even realize they have a representative for their county they can speak to in response to a proposed bill or a sudden ban on a handful of countries they may affect them or someone they know. Which brings me to my next point.

Besides, if a president was REALLY obligated to act on the people’s will, then we get a thing called “tyranny of the majority,” which our founding fathers specifically set up the Electoral College to counter.

Except with the way our government is structured, the "tyranny of the majority" is not feasible. The POTUS is not an all-powerful figure head, they are a spokesperson for the country and are meant to represent us as a whole. They are meant to serve The People. Our system works on checks and balances, or at least it should, remember? If the president does something the people oppose, the legislature can overturn the executive branch because it's not what The People want, and the Executive branch must oblige. And there it is: The Legislature. The branch of our government that represents the will of The People. The way that there could never be a tyranny of the majority.

For the longest time, I did believe the electoral college was a good thing because it gave a voice to the little people, but the little people already have a voice. Several of them, actually. Each state has a senator to represent the state as a whole. Each state has several districts divided based on population. Each district gets a representative to speak on behalf of the people within that district. This way, the people voice their concerns and their will to their representative, who in turn vouch for the people when voicing their concerns and will to the senator, who in turn sits in with a senator for every other state to make a decision based not on the majority, but the country as a whole. Everyone already has a voice.

Removing the electoral college would not hinder us in the slightest. However, because there's been so much emphasis on the executive branch, specifically our president, it's allowed people to totally overlook our house and senate, and as a result there's some very gross and very shady figures basically working against the will of The People at every given opportunity.

If Slog Bait is correct in that illegal immigration from Mexico is no longer a problem, then why is this 40%, from flights of all things, so big? Trump is right; if people are slipping through the cracks like this, we're obviously not paying close enough attention.

Then they'll be limited to land and water travel, and we'll have the wall and Coast Guard.

40% may be a big number at first glance but when you take that 40% out of another number (40% of 50 is 20) it's moot. Also, all you have to do to be considered an illegal immigrant is to be in this country without a valid visa or green card, or you've stayed in the country longer than their laws allow with your passport (for example, if I stayed in the UK for longer than 2 months without a visa with just my passport I'd be considered an undocumented immigrant/illegal, even if I intended to leave shortly after that timeframe). What you're seeing there are people who came in and decided to stay or got held up and couldn't leave for fear of punishment for not making whatever the deadline was.

[Manco]

So far, I've personally seen just one case, with the CNN reporter who was aggresively trying to butt in while it wasn't his turn to ask.

https://twitter.com/search?l=&q=%22f...c=typd&lang=en

This is just when he’s explicitly used the term, by the way.

Of course not. Although, I don't think Trump tells literally everyone in the office what to say each day. I don't even think it's possible (time constraints), and saying the inauguration crowds were big or not seems like such a trivial matter, that I honestly doubt he would bother.

Apparently it bothered him enough that he called the National Park Service director to complain, and he spent most of his first address to CIA staff boasting about it.

But let’s be real here – of course Trump isn’t going to dictate every single thing to his staff, even if he is known as a micromanager. But that doesn’t excuse his staff propagandizing on his behalf, either – he is responsible for selecting those staff, after all.

It's been literally a little more than a week since he's in power.

And he’s been campaigning to get elected since June 2015. If this was an issue he genuinely cared about, he could have changed his own business practices a long time ago.

>not a ban
>literally forced the refugee process to halt

This isn’t 4chan, don’t greentext.

If it wasn’t a ban, then the Obama Administration wouldn’t have had the State Department stop processing Iraqi refugees, yes?
I could say that Trump isn’t really banning people from the 7 Middle Eastern countries, he’s just told CBP to stop processing people with nationalities pertaining to those countries.
Either way, the setup to both is the same. The ban (temporary halt, if you will) in 2011 was due to a bomb threat, while the temporary halt (ban, if you will) this past weekend was sparked by events such as the Orlando shooting and Ohio State car-knife attack.

It was not a ban, it was a delay in processing due to the high workload of reevaluating applications:

Former Obama administration official Jon Finer denied that any ban in Iraqi refugee admissions was put in place under Obama. “While the flow of Iraqi refugees slowed significantly during the Obama administration’s review, refugees continued to be admitted to the United States during that time, and there was not a single month in which no Iraqis arrived here,” he wrote in Foreign Policy. “In other words, while there were delays in processing, there was no outright ban.”

This differs significantly from Trump’s executive order, which is a definite ban.

The Orlando shooting took place in June 2016 and was an act of domestic terrorism, motivated by homophobia and the attacker was radicalized through the internet. Immigration had nothing to do with the attack, and tougher immigration law wouldn’t have prevented it. The Ohio State attacker is not believed to have had any contact with terror organizations, and was a lone-wolf attacker. Neither of these are convincing grounds for the ban being put in place now, as neither case has shown a flaw in the immigration system which was the case when Obama’s administration reevaluated Iraq refugee applications in 2011.

Trump's a man of action, not the kind of person who is willing to wait while his cabinet gets filled out. Besides, voters expect results, and, again, Trump is a man of action, i.e. results.

This is a rather aggrandizing manner of saying that Trump’s decisions are led by his ego. Look at his approach to interviews – he constantly talks himself up as popular, and constantly denigrates his critics. He alleges voter fraud because he lost the popular vote; he becomes enraged because his inauguration was poorly attended; he accuses opinion polls of being rigged because they show he is unpopular; he insults the massive protests dwarfing his own crowds.

Trump is a ‘man of action’ because he is seeking quick-fix, populist results to serve his own ego. He is nakedly self-serving, but the job of one of the most powerful political leaders in the world demands that he serve all of the people of the United States.

I don’t think the refugee crisis was in 1975, do you? The Gulf War wasn’t even until the 1980’s. The Middle East was a lot more stable back then.

We’re not just talking about 1975, we’re talking about the entire 41 years in that time period. And I’m sorry, but the Middle East has been far from stable for that time period, and for a long time beforehand.

You seem to misinterpret the point of a tariff.
Tariffs make it more expensive for foreign bodies to sell goods in our markets. If they want to stay profitable, then they are forced to raise their prices, giving less expensive local goods a competitive edge. Consumers, obviously, will buy the local goods.
This means the foreign bodies lose money.
Trump hasn’t even implemented his tariff on China yet. The tariff he set on Mexico (in retaliation for President Nieto refusing to negotiate the wall) is at 20%. This kind of looks like a practice round.

It’s you who is misinterpreting – any tariff will simply be responded to by Mexico raising prices, and buyers will raise prices to pass on that cost to the consumer. So Mexico still profits on its goods, while American consumers pay higher prices as a result of increased taxation. Americans pay for the wall.

And of course, if Mexican imports are reduced, then even less money will be made on those tariffs. Mexico might be making less money, but they still ain’t paying for that wall – all Trump will have done is sabotage the international trade market.

But I guess this shows that you never read the article, which sets this out:

Please do note that this is nothing, here at least, to do with whether a wall is desirable, or not so, nor even whether trade protection is a good idea and all that. This is just a very, very, simple economic point and one that is simply true. The people who pay tariffs are the people who buy the goods which tariffs are imposed upon. Putting a tariff upon goods moving from Mexico to the United States means that it is the people in the U.S., who are paying the tariff.

There is indeed a secondary effect, which is that less will be sold and that this will impact profits and wages in Mexico. Not that I think that's a good idea either of course. But that still leaves it to be true that any money actually raised by a tariff will be paid by Americans, not Mexicans.

How was I saying they were the same issue, when I explicitly stated that it’s not just illegal immigration and refugees that are the problem?

Because you responded to a point criticizing Trump’s stance on immigration by immediately segueing into talking about outsourcing, without addressing the issues raised?

That article makes it sound like only illegal immigrants raise wages. We can reap the rewards of letting in people legally, while enforcing our immigration laws to keep out people who don’t care to follow the rules. Heck, Trump wants to streamline the immigration process.

Here’s another article that discusses legal immigration as well. So between the two articles, we’ve established that both legal and illegal immigration has a positive effect on wages. So your previous claim — that immigration is responsible damages jobs because corporations pay foreign workers less — is incorrect. If Trump wants to ‘streamline’ the immigration process he is welcome to – but shutting down borders, turning away immigrants and refugees and causing chaos with poorly-planned executive orders is not ‘streamlining’ anything.

Nah, I was thinking more along the lines of cases like the Carrier jobs staying (even after Obama said that wouldn’t happen). But the Ford CEO very much agrees with Trump’s policies, like the tariff.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fo...rticle/2607739
https://i.redd.it/6pjz47lqobyx.png
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0d9a5945c8b7b
http://i.imgur.com/T8VKq0s.jpg
Then again, what does he know? He’s only the CEO of one of the world’s largest automanufacturing companies.

I don’t think an article title “Ford Scraps Plans For Mexico Plant, But Says It’s Not Because Of Trump” is a very convincing evidence for what you’re arguing, do you?

While on the campaign trail last year, President-elect Donald Trump attacked Ford’s plans to move production of its Focus vehicle line to Mexico. He later falsely claimed he’d convinced the company to keep a plant open in Kentucky. In fact, Ford had never planned to close the plant.

The company said that Trump was likewise not responsible for its latest decision.

“We didn’t cut a deal with Trump. We did it for our business,” Ford CEO Mark Fields told CNN on Tuesday.

Of course, as CEO for one of the largest automanufacturing companies, he is going to like policies of tax and regulatory cuts – which is what he is describing in your link, not the proposed tariffs. He is not a fan of the proposed tariff at all.

Estimated wall cost: Around 25$ billion
>be Obama
>propose $70 billion budget to carry out regulations
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susandud.../#cc4e1b1c7e4b
vs.
>be Trump
>for every new regulation, 2 regulations will be diced
>want to build $25 billion wall
>25 isn’t even half of 70

The problem with this comparison is of course that federal regulations cover the entire United States and must be enforced across the entire economical and social landscape of the country. It is a necessary function of the government to ensure safety and stability for its people, and that’s why the US government has regulatory agencies such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration, and National Labor Relations Board, among others. These agencies exist to protect people, and without proper regulation there would be significant health, safety, ethical and economic risks.

Now considering that in 2016, the total US Federal Budget was $3.54 trillion, regulatory spending would have been around … 1.98% of the total budget. This is a justifiable proportion of the budget to allocate to protecting people.

Contrast that with Trump's wall, whose high cost does not justify its own existence. Mexican immigration is not a problem that justifies such a high cost, and a competent president would recognize that those funds would be much more effectively spent elsewhere. But Trump is not a competent president, he is self-serving and is promising the ultimate vanity project fuelled by racist rhetoric.

Is it really Hungary's problem how the refugees feel, since they're the very refugees that Hungary wants to keep out? Maybe the people of Hungary know something we don't? Isn't that grounds for negotiation?
That goes for other countries. Bringing in people from war-torn countries with a very different perception of human rights… What could go wrong?
http://68.media.tumblr.com/41b123b49...wfq9o1_500.jpg
I don’t know what European Union you’re talking about, but they seem to have the right idea. Japan saw trouble a mile (well, many miles) away, and only took in a few refugees. Guess what two of them (Turkish) wound up doing?
Evidently, the statistics you brought up didn’t work for Japan. Maybe they haven't worked out for America, either? Maybe that's why Trump won the election?

“Is it really Hungary’s problem how the refugees feel” is an incredibly callous way to refer to one of the largest humanitarian crises of our times. Let’s remember: the refugees entering Europe are abandoning their homes and lives to flee from war, terrorism and persecution. They’re travelling thousands of miles and risking their lives for safety that they no longer have in their home countries.

Arguing that this is simply “not their problem” is nothing more than sticking one’s head in the sand. This is a global humanitarian crisis affecting millions of lives – you don’t get to turn your back on people in danger and claim any sort of moral high ground.

And let’s not forget that Muslim countries have taken in the vast bulk of refugees, and those reaching Europe are a fraction of those being received in countries in the Middle East.

Your example of Sweden is completely misrepresented, of course:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opini...ticle30019623/

The marked increase in rape cases during the 2000s is almost entirely a reflection of Sweden’s deep public interest in sexual equality and the rights of women, not of attacks by newcomers.

But aren’t refugees and immigrants responsible for a greater share of Sweden’s sexual assaults?

In a sense. Statistics show that the foreign-born in Sweden, as in most European countries, do have a higher rate of criminal charges than the native-born, in everything from shoplifting to murder (though not enough to affect the crime rate by more than a tiny margin). The opposite is true in North America, where immigrants have lower-than-average crime rates.

Why the difference? Because people who go to Sweden are poorer, and crime rates are mostly a product not of ethnicity but of class. In a 2013 analysis of 63,000 Swedish residents, Prof. Sarnecki and his colleagues found that 75 per cent of the difference in foreign-born crime is accounted for by income and neighbourhood, both indicators of poverty. Among the Swedish-born children of immigrants, the crime rate falls in half (and is almost entirely concentrated in lesser property crimes) and is 100-per-cent attributable to class – they are no more likely to commit crimes, including rape, than ethnic Swedes of the same family income.

What also stands out is that almost all the victims of these crimes – especially sex crimes – are also foreign-born. But for a handful of headline-grabbing atrocities, it isn’t a case of swarthy men preying on white women, but of Sweden’s system turning refugees into victims of crime.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ish-women.html

Indeed, according to official statistics on file with The Swedish Crime Survey, the sexual violence rate in Sweden has remained about the same between 2005 and 2014. In fact, it actually decreased by .3 percent between 2013 and 2014. That said, the country has the highest rate of rape in Europe, a statistic that has been partially attributed to both Swedish law, wherein rape is given a wider definition than in other countries, as well as a higher tendency among women to report the crimes to the police.

Gonna need a source on that chart there, and a source on your comments about Japan (although considering how xenophobic Japan usually is it doesn’t surprise me).

The barrier worked, didn't it? That's what we're talking about here.

Also... "Trump's Racist Wall"

"Mexican" is not a race. While we're at it, neither is "Muslim."

I’ve been over this exact same discussion before on these forums, so rather than rehash I’m just gonna quote myself:

“Immigrant” is shorthand for “someone who came from a foreign country”, AKA a “foreigner”. Foreigners are a very common target for discrimination based on their different ethnic background – AKA, racism.

Mexicans are people from Mexico, and are typically of Mestizo or Amerindian ethnicity. And just as with other foreigners, they are a target for discrimination based on their different ethnic background.

Fun fact: racism is very difficult to define because the concept of race is very poorly defined and has mostly been abandoned in scientific discussions. Thus, the definition of racism is unclear, and can be used quite broadly. I think when xenophobia is directed towards foreigners, particularly foreigners who come from non-white and non-European countries (as Trump has done when demonizing Mexicans and Muslims), it is acceptable to define that as racism.

First of all, the “races” you are referring to are not as clear-cut as you believe – race as a scientific model of categorization is largely discredited and no longer in common use, as it is difficult to clearly define; it has largely been replaced with other terms such as “ethnic groups”. The definition of racism is therefore not clear-cut, but has previously been defined by the UN as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin”. So by this definition, it is appropriate to describe the vilification of people of other nationalities and/or ethnic origins as racist.

Second, you’re wilfully ignoring that the groups of people Trump has targeted in his campaigns — including Mexicans — are generally of non-white demographics. And as I have already stated, Mexican people — the group you highlighted — are typically of Mestizo or Amerindian ethnicity. So even if we use your narrow definition of racism, we can still find reasons to consider that Trump may be racist for focusing on them.

Finally, “ethnocentrism” refers to the judging of other cultures based on the values of one’s own culture. It is more significant when discussing language, religion and customs, rather than physical attributes that would be described as “race”, or ethnic or national backgrounds.

So: Trump could certainly be considered to have an ethnocentric world view. But he is absolutely still a racist. These are not mutually exclusive.

Polls have shown themselves to be… Unreliable at best.

Polls are generally reliable in gauging the political mood; that doesn’t mean they are always correct, but they are more useful than anything else since we can’t hold a full election every time we want to know the political climate. It is unwise to ignore polling data.

So, beyond ideological dilemmas, walls work just fine?
Also… The United States has never been a saintly country. We were among the last of the world’s countries to abandon slavery, and even that took a long and brutal war to actually accomplish. We’ve been treating the Middle East like a chew toy for the past few decades.
Do you know why? Because we act in our own interests. If you look at my Sweden example above, that’s what happens when a country values foreigners over its own people. That’s what happens when a government fails to prioritize the well-being of its own people.
We don’t want to have our government make that mistake. That’s why we elected Trump.

So your argument here is that because America has never been a saintly country, that justifies not becoming a better country? OK.

Personally, I think these allegations are overblown, and this is all a waste of time. Obviously, the OGE thinks differently, and that’s their prerogative. Which is good, because we need people who will scrutinize our politicians. But I don’t agree with what they’re treating like a smoking gun.
Besides, you do realize what happens next if the OGE actually gets Trump indicted, right?

Well I’m glad you think that the most powerful politician in the world having ethical conflicts around privately profiting from his position is “a waste of time”. It’s certainly not grounds for impeachment after all – and it’s not as if the man campaigned to “drain the swamp” and criticized corruption in politics or anything, right?

Do you know who popularized “fake news” in the first place? The mainstream media, which can’t handle American citizens deciding for themselves who they will and will not trust as sources of information. The same mainstream media that lied to the American people, that Trump would never run for president, that Trump would never win the Republican nomination, that Trump would never win the election. Yet they have the audacity to call their more honest competition “fake news.”
Needless to say, Trump trolling the mainstream media like this was beautiful to witness.

I think it’s perfectly acceptable for the mainstream media to be concerned over false news being published free of facts or accuracy – it must be rather unfair for them to see less scrupulous folk getting away with publishing propaganda. Let’s be clear: fake news is not “honest competition” for the established media, it’s people abusing social media to get lies heard.

Of course, when all the available evidence says that Trump won’t be elected, it’s fake news to report on that – those goshdarn journalists not being able to see the future, amiright?

Is there reason for concern? Yes. But, personally, I could care less.

So when Trump campaigns on the issue, it’s a big enough deal that you dedicated two entire paragraphs of your post explaining it; but when Trump himself is shown not to practice what he preaches, you could care less. Gotcha.

You’re right, we need to add them to the pre-made list made by Obama that Congress already approved.

So here’s my question to you: Trump’s executive order is flawed because it includes countries where no significant terror threat has come from while leaving out considerably more concerning countries. Trump’s administration claims the list came from Obama administration – the same administration Trump said wasn’t tough enough on immigration. So, is it right for them to now use the same flawed list that their political opponents created when they were previously critical of their strategies? Surely if Trump wishes to tackle terrorist threats more effectively he should have created a new list?

If illegal immigration from Mexico is no longer an issue, then why do illegals who get deported multiple times keep finding their way back?
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/07/0...ultiple-times/
And why would the wall be a waste if Mexico itself had to build a barrier of its own at the Guatemalan border?
http://static.snopes.com/wordpress/w.../08/fence2.jpg
And what’s this about so many people from Haiti and Africa going to Mexico? Why would they want to go there?
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/25/in...tarian-crisis/
The fact of the matter is, illegals we deport aren’t staying out, and even Mexico is having to deal with illegal immigrants whom, for all we know, want to join the USA border hopping extravaganza.
Even if Mexico isn’t the source of illegals any more, it is undeniable that a wall will be an effective barrier in the long term.

My friend.

My friend, that isn’t a picture of the Mexican border wall. It’s a picture of the fence on the Israel–Egypt border. It says so in the Snopes article you directly linked it from. There is no border fence between Mexico and Guatemala.

Fuckin’ fake news, right? Gets everywhere.

We’re a republic. Our votes represent our will. When a candidate wins, that means we approved of what they’re going to do, and any amount of us changing our minds will only matter come the next election cycle.
Besides, if a president was REALLY obligated to act on the people’s will, then we get a thing called “tyranny of the majority,” which our founding fathers specifically set up the Electoral College to counter.

If the votes represent the will, then Clinton should be President. It’s rather disconcerting that in one breath you claim this, then in the next you talk up the electoral college, which specifically functions to unbalance the value of votes and dramatically over- and under-represents many states.

Tyranny of the majority is always a danger in political systems – but that must be balanced with the need for fair representation of people. Trump was not elected by the majority, yet now he is abusing his power and causing significant damage to the country and the minorities that do not have the power to oppose him.

[UnderTheSun]

"Trump is a man of action" seems more of a glorification of his person than anything. Many of us think he's headstrong and stupid, and we don't trust his actions. It's not a matter of how confident he is, it's a matter of how competent he is, that's the problem.

Personally, I believe the reverse; Trump is just as competent as he is confident. To me, his ego and passion are assets. Of course, some find his charisma… deplorable. I'll show myself out...

Innocent people like the OP's spouse are being denied access to their families back in the US because of an irrational, wild form of discrimination, meanwhile professional business men and women are facing work-related crisises as they can't continue their international work.

If it were up to me, I’d appoint magic psychics that can just vet people in a few seconds, then either let them pass or send them back. But bureaucracies aren’t genies (even though they kind of rhyme a little), so now we wind up with cases like a women being unable to visit her family. Every played “Papers, Please”? It’s a bit like that. It hurts to be a moral person whose job is more ethically fit for robots.
If you ask me, it’s like our modern justice system; people who did nothing wrong are going to be punished, but it’s better than saying everyone’s guilty (as chaotic as the travel ban is, at least people are making it through), or that everyone’s innocent (so all the really dangerous people would make it through with the people who wouldn’t hurt a fly (not to say that it’s impossible that some have slipped through the cracks these past few days; that’s what’s impossible)).

Forgive me if I’m being stupid, but didn’t Trump say at some early point in his campaign that gross and overzealous safety procedures in airports were a problem we had to deal with? Maybe I misinterpreted or I’m remembering wrong, but that doesn’t really fit with what’s going on now.

I dunno. There’s no denying Trump flip-flops on many issues. Makes him hard to predict, but, on the bright side, it shows he’s willing - well, not closed off to - changing his mind on issues.

If Trump will really make it easier for people to migrate here legally and start a healthy American life, then I'm all for that, but I haven't really seen any indication of that. If anything, the message I've been hearing from him sounds more like he's trying to crack down on immigration all together and keeping people out more than anything.

Key word sounds. To me, it sounds like all he wants to do is increase vetting of immigrants for safety reasons. Of course, to you and the other fellows here, he’s John Adams back from the dead. All of us are taking what we’ve heard about him, and drawing our own conclusions.

That represents an entirely different issue that many others have been debating since its creation, and many have been calling for its abolishment. In fact, even TRUMP HIMSELF has stated before during his early campaign that the electoral college is an example of federal tyranny that must be abolished for the betterment of the American people. He said this, and then now he’s said the opposite because IT WAS THE REASON HE WON. This is one of the largest, most talked about examples of his hypocrisy. And of course now many more people are raging against it because here we are with Trump as our president.

I think the reason Trump changed his mind is worth consideration. During his campaign, as far as Trump could tell, the entire election system was being rigged against him. Even if he managed to win the election itself, the establishment could just get enough electors to go against the results for their states, and that would be that.
Obviously, that’s not what happened, so now Trump’s all like, “Huh, maybe the Electoral College isn’t so bad.” Not to mention I’m pretty sure no reports of vote rigging have been properly investigated yet.
(By the way, Trump changing his mind isn’t exactly hypocrisy, since he’d have to be rigging something himself. Hypocrisy is Trump saying that fit people don’t drink Diet Coke… as a drinker of Diet Coke himself. That got a good chuckle out of everybody (not saying he wasn’t joking))

Bitch the coast guard ain't shit. My neighbor and their 50 chihuahuas when I was like 12 swam their asses through the Gulf of Mexico and somehow hitchhiked their asses all the way to Nevada to start their new life and weren't stopped or caught a single time. I still meet people who pulled this shit off that are in the process of getting the appropriate documents to live in the states legally.

Are you sure that the Coast Guard of your childhood is the same as the coastguard of today? As you’ve said, anti-illegal immigration measures have vastly improved (certainly enough to be satisfactory, in your eyes). How does today’s Coast Guard factor into this?
(Also, how did that fella manage to do that with a bunch of dogs? People can’t just tell little fuzzy critters to follow them around like that. Sounds like something out of a video game.)

I said this in a previous thread about a similar topic, and I think even the discussion of breaking out of a fortified prison was brought up, but if someone really wants to get in/out of somewhere, they'll find a way. Someone really wants to continue their life in America? They'll keep coming back again and again no matter how often they're deported or detained, no matter how big and flashy the border wall is. Someone really wants to break out of jail? There's been several cases of people throughout history that became famous/infamous for constantly committing felonies and yet somehow always breaking back out of prison or just being savvy enough to get let out early time and time again despite the fact they really shouldn't have.

So we should give up on enforcing rule of law, since crime will always exist?

Except with the way our government is structured, the "tyranny of the majority" is not feasible. The POTUS is not an all-powerful figure head, they are a spokesperson for the country and are meant to represent us as a whole. They are meant to serve The People. Our system works on checks and balances, or at least it should, remember? If the president does something the people oppose, the legislature can overturn the executive branch because it's not what The People want, and the Executive branch must oblige. And there it is: The Legislature. The branch of our government that represents the will of The People. The way that there could never be a tyranny of the majority.

”If the votes represent the will, then Clinton should be President. It’s rather disconcerting that in one breath you claim this, then in the next you talk up the electoral college, which specifically functions to unbalance the value of votes and dramatically over- and under-represents many states.

Actually, there’s another aspect to “tyranny of the majority” that concerns me: if we elected our president off of the popular vote, the high-density, high-population urban states would be the only states with any political influence. That’s not a good deal for the rest of the Union. It’s the same reason why we have a legislature with two houses, one with equal representation from every state, and one with representation based on population size; with just the former, small states are given disproportionate power, while with only the latter, well, tyranny of the majority.

Tyranny of the majority is always a danger in political systems – but that must be balanced with the need for fair representation of people. Trump was not elected by the majority, yet now he is abusing his power and causing significant damage to the country and the minorities that do not have the power to oppose him.

If the Electoral College’s current structure poses a problem, then the solution is a Constitutional Convention when the time comes…Which, if Trump turns out to be a massive failure (as you infer will happen), isn’t too far into the future.

It’s you who is misinterpreting – any tariff will simply be responded to by Mexico raising prices, and buyers will raise prices to pass on that cost to the consumer. So Mexico still profits on its goods, while American consumers pay higher prices as a result of increased taxation. Americans pay for the wall.

I’m sorry, I need to clarify: The article does not mention any goods that Mexico holds an import monopoly over the United States. It gives an example of a Mexican product, formerly costing $100, that is now $120. That means the principles of consumer choice remain; consumers may choose between the taxed Mexican goods, or non-Mexican goods which are not subject to this tax.
Consumers, logically, choose the products remaining at $100 (or even lower), and lose no money; meanwhile, retail stores fail to make a profit, so they stop accepting the proverbial white elephants. Again, America is not adversely affected, rather, Mexico is no longer profiting on exports, damaging Mexico’s economy and industries.
Furthermore, Mexico makes well in excess of $25 billion in two-way export revenue. Rather, we mutually make, more or less, ten times the proposed cost of the wall. President Nieto would do well to negotiate with Trump.

Of course, as CEO for one of the largest automanufacturing companies, he is going to like policies of tax and regulatory cuts – which is what he is describing in your link, not the proposed tariffs. He is not a fan of the proposed tariff at all.

Source does not prove that Mark Fields is against the tariff, only that it has legal friction with, and may threaten, certain international agreements. It even mentions that Trump and Mark Fields have common ground on the TPP (which we recently pulled out of, under Trump).

”Is it really Hungary’s problem how the refugees feel” is an incredibly callous way to refer to one of the largest humanitarian crises of our times. Let’s remember: the refugees entering Europe are abandoning their homes and lives to flee from war, terrorism and persecution. They’re travelling thousands of miles and risking their lives for safety that they no longer have in their home countries.
Arguing that this is simply “not their problem” is nothing more than sticking one’s head in the sand. This is a global humanitarian crisis affecting millions of lives – you don’t get to turn your back on people in danger and claim any sort of moral high ground.

We’re not turning our backs; check out what Trump’s got in store to help those guys out. A much more long-term solution than just taking in people fleeing an ever-worsening part of the world; if they’re leaving because it’s dangerous, how about we make it safe? If a pipe burst, why desperately look for bucket after bucket to hold the water, when you can temporarily stop the flow of water and mend the pipe?
Trump says we shouldn’t pay for it (of course, he’s a conservative, so he thinks people (and countries) should fix their own problems, hence him wanting to get people off of welfare), but since the refugee crisis itself is a problem to us Americans as well (caused, of course, by the refugees’ disrupted state of living, which they can’t really fix by sticking around), then I see no reason not to pitch in. The only problem is how one would go about doing this.

Your example of Sweden is completely misrepresented, of course:
Gonna need a source on that chart there, and a source on your comments about Japan (although considering how xenophobic Japan usually is it doesn’t surprise me).

Here’s a very thorough explanation of Sweden’s situation. Personally, I disagree with the sources you present, since they handwave the issue. One concedes that immigrants are behind the increase, but then saying that it’s really the fault of xenophobic Swedes (despite Sweden being very multicultural and xenophilic) and poor management of refugee shelters (How refugees could be any worse off than where they came from is beyond me; what about halting the flow of refugees until better conditions can be provided?). The other skirts around the truth by saying it’s due to “socioeconomic factors,” blames it on the Swedes (despite cases of hate crimes, apparently, being speculation, based on cited articles), and shifts the issue to sexual assault in general (as if not looking into who the perpetrators are will help women and case studies in any way).

So when Trump campaigns on the issue, it’s a big enough deal that you dedicated two entire paragraphs of your post explaining it; but when Trump himself is shown not to practice what he preaches, you could care less. Gotcha.

All Trump’s saying is that outsourcing isn’t good for the country that’s losing the jobs (like us). Sounds reasonable. Since he himself put (not any more, he’s the president now) outsourcing to use, that implies he’s got a good grasp on how it works. At least, a better grasp than the establishment politicians.
Also, chalk it up to me being tired of “Trump this, Trump that” all over the Internet. And during the election. My ears kind of got numb to criticism of Trump after a while. Too much soulless vitriol. At least the pro-Trump crowd gets to joke about the senile old lady who yells at cartoon frogs. Maybe I’d be on your side of the fence if your crowd had enough soul and passion to make up entire sagas about Hillary in the DNC primaries. Instead, they went and called the pro-Trump crowd “deplorables,” whom took up that name with honor.
Speaking of joking around…

This isn’t 4chan, don’t greentext.

I deliberately put in greentext so that I wouldn’t be taken so seriously. When an online discussion becomes too serious, we run the risk of devolving into a flame war. Trying to keep things calm and casual wouldn’t be so hard if the tone of words on a screen wasn’t up to the reader to interpret.
Greentext, on the other hand, is inherently humorous. While this does sacrifice formality, it also drops tension in a way that normal text cannot, therefore averting flame wars. In addition, due to it being humorous by nature, it can be used in both self-deprecation and to show the silliness of what others are saying, without appearing overly demeaning. If the other user feels insulted, they can fire back with greentext of their own, and the would-be flame war instead becomes an arms race of who can construct the most elegant shitpost.
Another thing to consider: this is the Oddworld Forum. The Oddworld franchise is founded on sending a serious message about the world’s problems through entertainment laden with humor. Why can’t its community do the same? Greentext seems to be a reliable means of doing so.
It’s better than a flame war over a politician who hasn’t even been in office for a month. And better for the mods, that’s for sure.

Thoughts?

My friend.
My friend, that isn’t a picture of the Mexican border wall. It’s a picture of the fence on the Israel–Egypt border. It says so in the Snopes article you directly linked it from. There is no border fence between Mexico and Guatemala.
Fuckin’ fake news, right? Gets everywhere.

Yeesh, I need to check these things. Good catch.
Then again, it’s a good thing Mexico didn’t build a wall, since they need the money to pay for ours.

[moxco]

Actually, there’s another aspect to “tyranny of the majority” that concerns me: if we elected our president off of the popular vote, the high-density, high-population urban states would be the only states with any political influence.

That's entirely untrue. As it stands now there are only a few states that determine the election. A popularly elected president would have to appeal to vast swathes of the electorate to be elected.

[UnderTheSun]

That's entirely untrue. As it stands now there are only a few states that determine the election. A popularly elected president would have to appeal to vast swathes of the electorate to be elected.

Mind naming those states?

Anyway, here are the results of the 2016 election (by county)



Although Trump appealed to 3084 counties, thereby winning the electoral victory, Hillary won only 57, yet won the popular vote.

This demonstrates that an election done by popular vote skews power in favor of America's dense coastal cities, which would then impose their will on more rural areas. One could call it domestic imperialism.

Our Electoral College system does give more votes to more populous states, but their advantage over less populous states is carefully measured to give the latter a chance. With this system, no state within the Union should fear its interests being drowned out by the influence of urban elites.

[moxco]

"Here's a map of arbitrary geographical divisions as you can see Trump won the ones with on average less people."

I don't see your point. Large tracts of land don't have political interests that need consideration. idk why but Americans seem to have this fixation of seeing these things very black and white (or blue and red). Like I'm sure many of those counties were within a few percentage points of being coloured differently. And with a directly elected president the conservative votes in the more urban states for Trump actually would have mattered, likewise for the slightly-less-conservative votes for Hillary in the red rectangles.

Mind naming those states?

The ones that weren't a foregone conclusion before election day.

[Nemo]

"Mexican" is not a race.

Are we all just going to skim over this?

[Mr. Bungle]

So what exactly is the purpose of the electoral college?

Is it part of an ancient prophecy to ensure the God Emperor's ascension?

I don't get it.

[Nemo]

So what exactly is the purpose of the electoral college?

Is it part of an ancient prophecy to ensure the God Emperor's ascension?

I don't get it.

It was originally intended to stop candidates that are "unqualified, but with a talent for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" from attaining presidency. Basically, exactly to stop Trump.

[STM]

I dunno if I've missed it, but can we just point out that there's no barbed wire border fence between Guatemala and Mexico, and anyone who posts that picture of one, which is actually between Israel and Palestine, is a fucking moron who doesn't do research?

Also it's funny how conservatives love pure democracy until it doesn't work for them. ONE PERSON ONE VOTE (until it becomes obvious that we'd loose on the grounds of pure democracy so ahhhh it's not fair for rural areas reeeeeee).

[Phylum]

Re Electoral College:

[Lord Vhazen]

Are we all just going to skim over this?

We didn't. Responses to that jumped around here and there but they were buried by more pressing comments.

[Slog Bait]

Are you sure that the Coast Guard of your childhood is the same as the coastguard of today? As you’ve said, anti-illegal immigration measures have vastly improved (certainly enough to be satisfactory, in your eyes). How does today’s Coast Guard factor into this?
(Also, how did that fella manage to do that with a bunch of dogs? People can’t just tell little fuzzy critters to follow them around like that. Sounds like something out of a video game.)

I know it's not, I was just using the most ludicrous example of someone that was Really Determined to enter the states that I knew personally. They weren't the only ones I've met that rafted/boated/straight up swam over, and I definitely have met more people who had done the same as them fairly recently, so obviously the coast guard remains 'not shit'. And as far as I remember they only had two dogs when they entered the states and their mom took advantage of how fast they bred to make some quick money off people in the neighborhood that totally ignored the 4-dogs-per-household law and had a thing for tiny dogs you could carry in your pocket. It was... surreal.

And yeah, they're satisfactory to me personally because they're no longer causing any negative impact that I can see. I can't speak for SoCal, but I know for a fact that Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, the other states that get the highest influx of undocumented Mexican immigrants, are not hindered or hurt from having large latino populations. In most of these cases, they assimilated into American culture just fine, and are functioning members of society. Believe it or not, even undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Go figure.

So we should give up on enforcing rule of law, since crime will always exist?

Yeah you totally missed the point of what I was trying to say.

You asked why the same undocumented immigrant could get away with illegally crossing the border time and time again, and used it as an example of our border being too weak and there still being a problem with illegal immigration from Mexico. In response, I told you essentially, that no matter how strong our border is, if that same person who keeps getting detained and deported really really wants to get back across the border, they will find a way. They would be an outlier, and are likely just as much of a problem to Mexico as they are to the US. Most people who get caught once don't try to make the effort to do it again unless their situation in Mexico is that dire.

Actually, there’s another aspect to “tyranny of the majority” that concerns me: if we elected our president off of the popular vote, the high-density, high-population urban states would be the only states with any political influence. That’s not a good deal for the rest of the Union. It’s the same reason why we have a legislature with two houses, one with equal representation from every state, and one with representation based on population size; with just the former, small states are given disproportionate power, while with only the latter, well, tyranny of the majority.

Except as I said, every district has representatives. Rural districts far outnumber urban districts. Representatives can be spoken to directly by the people in their district, and their jobs are to voice their districts concerns and do everything you seem to think the president is meant to do. They are the ones that represent the will of the people. You can also call your senator to voice the same concerns, as your senator represents the state and is obliged to listen to all the state's residents as well as all the states representatives. Collectively, they all carry the same concerns to direct the president in the right direction. Everyone gets heard, when the system works as it should. Putting so much focus on the executive branch and glossing over the legislative branch breaks the system and turns it into a system where you sit there and defend the electoral college because you're so worried the minority won't get a voice and totally ignore the fact our system already allows for a voice.

Also, with the electoral college abolished, it would open a lot more avenues for elected leaders. Third party candidates would actually stand a chance, and there's less chance for the mass corruption an essentially two-party system creates. I don't think there's anyone here who, in the last several election cycles, looked at the main two candidates presented and said "you know what? this candidate is totally in line with all of my beliefs and there is no contest because I don't have to play the lesser of the two evils game this election". I can also guarantee if they had looked at the third party runners during each election cycle they would have found someone who resonates with them almost to a t. With the electoral college, even if the candidate SOMEHOW got the popular vote, they would have still lost because they'd walk out with maybe 20 electoral votes if they were lucky thanks to how the electoral system works and the bias of the Democratic and Republican parties.

With the electoral college abolished, we might be able to prevent more elections from being so Red and Blue, and actually allow a chance for real anti establishment candidates and people who are genuinely interested in helping this country as a whole, rather than just thinking about it as a game or trying to use it as a means to squeeze more money out of us, to get into office

If the Electoral College’s current structure poses a problem, then the solution is a Constitutional Convention when the time comes…Which, if Trump turns out to be a massive failure (as you infer will happen), isn’t too far into the future.

You really think the people in power are going to give it up the system skewed in their favour that easily?

[Manco]

Personally, I believe the reverse; Trump is just as competent as he is confident. To me, his ego and passion are assets. Of course, some find his charisma… deplorable.

Ego does not belong in government, nor any kind of leadership role.

I think the reason Trump changed his mind is worth consideration. During his campaign, as far as Trump could tell, the entire election system was being rigged against him. Even if he managed to win the election itself, the establishment could just get enough electors to go against the results for their states, and that would be that.
Obviously, that’s not what happened, so now Trump’s all like, “Huh, maybe the Electoral College isn’t so bad.” Not to mention I’m pretty sure no reports of vote rigging have been properly investigated yet.
(By the way, Trump changing his mind isn’t exactly hypocrisy, since he’d have to be rigging something himself. Hypocrisy is Trump saying that fit people don’t drink Diet Coke… as a drinker of Diet Coke himself. That got a good chuckle out of everybody (not saying he wasn’t joking))

“I am going to criticize this system, until it benefits me and then I will change my mind” is pretty basic hypocrisy. You’ve written a lot of words to try and handwave that.

If the Electoral College’s current structure poses a problem, then the solution is a Constitutional Convention when the time comes…Which, if Trump turns out to be a massive failure (as you infer will happen), isn’t too far into the future.

Looking forward to it.

I’m sorry, I need to clarify: The article does not mention any goods that Mexico holds an import monopoly over the United States. It gives an example of a Mexican product, formerly costing $100, that is now $120. That means the principles of consumer choice remain; consumers may choose between the taxed Mexican goods, or non-Mexican goods which are not subject to this tax.
Consumers, logically, choose the products remaining at $100 (or even lower), and lose no money; meanwhile, retail stores fail to make a profit, so they stop accepting the proverbial white elephants. Again, America is not adversely affected, rather, Mexico is no longer profiting on exports, damaging Mexico’s economy and industries.
Furthermore, Mexico makes well in excess of $25 billion in two-way export revenue. Rather, we mutually make, more or less, ten times the proposed cost of the wall. President Nieto would do well to negotiate with Trump.

So, to be clear: the proposed tariff will increase the cost on imports from Mexico, thereby meaning that Americans in practice will be paying for the wall.

Because the tariffs will make Mexican imports more expensive, American buyers will buy less, meaning less money will be made from the tariff.

So not only are Americans paying the cost of the wall and not Mexico, but they would be buying fewer imports, thus reducing the amount the tariff earns at all.

That is completely illogical. You cannot expect to earn income on a tariff by actively sabotaging the trade relationship with the country you expect to tariff; and ultimately it is less likely that US buyers would invest in local goods to replace their 3rd largest import supplier, and far more likely that they would simply move to import from other cheap markets that are still more cost-effective than local investment. That’s just how business works.

Source does not prove that Mark Fields is against the tariff

Yes it does:

“A tariff like that would be imposed on the entire auto sector, and that could have a huge impact on the U.S. economy," Fields said.

The same message is corroborated in other outlets:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...riff/93906064/
http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/15/fo...tariff-pledge/
http://www.salemstatelog.com/ford-ce...ps-car-tariff/

Of course as a business they will move to capitalize on the current situation as best they can; they need to continue to make a profit, and refusing to work with the president and setting themselves up for a tariff would only serve to hurt their bottom line.

We’re not turning our backs; check out what Trump’s got in store to help those guys out. A much more long-term solution than just taking in people fleeing an ever-worsening part of the world; if they’re leaving because it’s dangerous, how about we make it safe? If a pipe burst, why desperately look for bucket after bucket to hold the water, when you can temporarily stop the flow of water and mend the pipe?
Trump says we shouldn’t pay for it (of course, he’s a conservative, so he thinks people (and countries) should fix their own problems, hence him wanting to get people off of welfare), but since the refugee crisis itself is a problem to us Americans as well (caused, of course, by the refugees’ disrupted state of living, which they can’t really fix by sticking around), then I see no reason not to pitch in. The only problem is how one would go about doing this.

This is a completely ridiculous assertion, and the very article you linked as evidence makes this clear. The article clearly states that the supposed ‘safe zones’ are not included in his executive order, don’t appear in the original statements from the White House or the Saudi Arabian King’s office about the call where they were supposedly mentioned, and also here he is again decreeing that other countries are going to pay for his ideas. The ‘only problem’ that you have identified is the biggest possible problem Trump could have – how does he expect that to ever work?

Here’s a very thorough explanation of Sweden’s situation. Personally, I disagree with the sources you present, since they handwave the issue. One concedes that immigrants are behind the increase, but then saying that it’s really the fault of xenophobic Swedes (despite Sweden being very multicultural and xenophilic) and poor management of refugee shelters (How refugees could be any worse off than where they came from is beyond me; what about halting the flow of refugees until better conditions can be provided?). The other skirts around the truth by saying it’s due to “socioeconomic factors,” blames it on the Swedes (despite cases of hate crimes, apparently, being speculation, based on cited articles), and shifts the issue to sexual assault in general (as if not looking into who the perpetrators are will help women and case studies in any way).

If you’re going to disagree with my sources, then I’ll happily dispute yours – the Gatestone Institute is a notably conservative, right-wing think-tank that often take an anti-Islamic stance on issues. You misrepresent the articles I cited: one states that the result of Sweden’s higher than average rape statistics is because Swedish people are much more likely to report sexual assault and sexual assault reports are calculated in an unusual manner, and explains that the more likely reason for the slightly above-average crime rate is because of economic factors – immigrants tend to be poorer, and poorer populations tend to commit more crime. The other article points out that hasty assumptions in identifying and reporting on perpetrators has created a distorted and inaccurate view of the crime statistics. So the causes appear to be: economic disparity resulting in higher crime rates, higher than average rates of reporting sexual violence, and distorted media reporting on crime. But accepting that would mean that people would have to confront the issue of poverty, rather than the convenient immigrant boogeyman.

All Trump’s saying is that outsourcing isn’t good for the country that’s losing the jobs (like us). Sounds reasonable. Since he himself put (not any more, he’s the president now) outsourcing to use, that implies he’s got a good grasp on how it works. At least, a better grasp than the establishment politicians.

This does not get around the facts that Trump is a hypocrite on this issue and that he has yet to take more action than empty rhetoric. Call me when his businesses stop outsourcing and he actually implements policies.

Also, chalk it up to me being tired of “Trump this, Trump that” all over the Internet. And during the election. My ears kind of got numb to criticism of Trump after a while. Too much soulless vitriol. At least the pro-Trump crowd gets to joke about the senile old lady who yells at cartoon frogs. Maybe I’d be on your side of the fence if your crowd had enough soul and passion to make up entire sagas about Hillary in the DNC primaries. Instead, they went and called the pro-Trump crowd “deplorables,” whom took up that name with honour.

If you back a hateful, xenophobic, egotistical fascist-enabler, I imagine having to defend that viewpoint must get pretty tiring. I will try to contain my sympathy.

I deliberately put in greentext so that I wouldn’t be taken so seriously. When an online discussion becomes too serious, we run the risk of devolving into a flame war. Trying to keep things calm and casual wouldn’t be so hard if the tone of words on a screen wasn’t up to the reader to interpret.
Greentext, on the other hand, is inherently humorous. While this does sacrifice formality, it also drops tension in a way that normal text cannot, therefore averting flame wars. In addition, due to it being humorous by nature, it can be used in both self-deprecation and to show the silliness of what others are saying, without appearing overly demeaning. If the other user feels insulted, they can fire back with greentext of their own, and the would-be flame war instead becomes an arms race of who can construct the most elegant shitpost.
Another thing to consider: this is the Oddworld Forum. The Oddworld franchise is founded on sending a serious message about the world’s problems through entertainment laden with humor. Why can’t its community do the same? Greentext seems to be a reliable means of doing so.
It’s better than a flame war over a politician who hasn’t even been in office for a month. And better for the mods, that’s for sure.

Thoughts?

Yes: don’t greentext, this is a forum, not 4chan. It’s a political discussion thread, not comedy hour – spend less time being funny and more time fact-checking your own arguments.

Yeesh, I need to check these things. Good catch.
Then again, it’s a good thing Mexico didn’t build a wall, since they need the money to pay for ours.

It’s incredibly careless of you to post someone else’s arguments without verifying the evidence for yourself first. The Snopes URL should have been a giant red flag.

[Lord Vhazen]

Ego does not belong in government, nor any kind of leadership role.

....

“I am going to criticize this system, until it benefits me and then I will change my mind” is pretty basic hypocrisy. You’ve written a lot of words to try and handwave that.

....

If you’re going to disagree with my sources, then I’ll happily dispute yours – the Gatestone Institute is a notably conservative, right-wing think-tank that often take an anti-Islamic stance on issues.

....


You misrepresent the articles I cited: one states that the result of Sweden’s higher than average rape statistics is because Swedish people are much more likely to report sexual assault and sexual assault reports are calculated in an unusual manner, and explains that the more likely reason for the slightly above-average crime rate is because of economic factors – immigrants tend to be poorer, and poorer populations tend to commit more crime. The other article points out that hasty assumptions in identifying and reporting on perpetrators has created a distorted and inaccurate view of the crime statistics.

....

So the causes appear to be: economic disparity resulting in higher crime rates, higher than average rates of reporting sexual violence, and distorted media reporting on crime. But accepting that would mean that people would have to confront the issue of poverty, rather than the convenient immigrant boogeyman.

....

It’s incredibly careless of you to post someone else’s arguments without verifying the evidence for yourself first. The Snopes URL should have been a giant red flag.

I want to conceive your child.

[Mr. Bungle]

Trump is too human

[Sybil Ant]

There's nothing human about the cunt. He's satan.

[Lord Vhazen]

There's nothing human about the cunt. He's satan.

The concept of Satan, demons and monsters are humanity's way of diverting blame and responsibility from themselves instead of accepting what they truly are capable of, as opposed to all other known forms of life.

Humanity blows. Trump is human. Ergo, Trump blows.

[Varrok]

www.trumpdonald.org

Blow Trump

[UnderTheSun]

Electoral College

"Here's a map of arbitrary geographical divisions as you can see Trump won the ones with on average less people."

I don't see your point. Large tracts of land don't have political interests that need consideration. idk why but Americans seem to have this fixation of seeing these things very black and white (or blue and red). Like I'm sure many of those counties were within a few percentage points of being coloured differently. And with a directly elected president the conservative votes in the more urban states for Trump actually would have mattered, likewise for the slightly-less-conservative votes for Hillary in the red rectangles.

Doesn’t “Large tracts of land don’t have political interests that need consideration” contradict “A popularly elected president would have to appeal to vast swathes of the electorate,” though?

So what exactly is the purpose of the electoral college?

Is it part of an ancient prophecy to ensure the God Emperor's ascension?

I don't get it.

To be fair, based on how bizarre 2016 was, that almost sounds sane.

It was originally intended to stop candidates that are "unqualified, but with a talent for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" from attaining presidency. Basically, exactly to stop Trump.

Trump didn’t really have it that easy. Hillary pretty much had the mainstream media in a handbasket, allowing the public to see Trump’s sins shown for the world to see on a daily basis, denying him “talent for low intrigue.” not to mention she had all the celebrity support (who’s more recognizable, a businessman or a movie star?) for the “little arts of popularity”. Logically, she would have won; heck, she took the popular vote by storm.

Except as I said, every district has representatives. Rural districts far outnumber urban districts. Representatives can be spoken to directly by the people in their district, and their jobs are to voice their districts concerns and do everything you seem to think the president is meant to do. They are the ones that represent the will of the people. You can also call your senator to voice the same concerns, as your senator represents the state and is obliged to listen to all the state's residents as well as all the states representatives. Collectively, they all carry the same concerns to direct the president in the right direction. Everyone gets heard, when the system works as it should. Putting so much focus on the executive branch and glossing over the legislative branch breaks the system and turns it into a system where you sit there and defend the electoral college because you're so worried the minority won't get a voice and totally ignore the fact our system already allows for a voice.

What you said is very reasonable. However, don’t forget that the President and Congress often end up bitterly opposed to one another (which is what our founding fathers wanted, a quarreling federal government that doesn’t get too much done in too little time); there’s a reason “lame ducks” are a thing. The President and Congress are much more unified when they’re part of the same political party (something our founding fathers didn’t consider, and what George Washington warned against in his parting speech), which leads into what you said next:

Also, with the electoral college abolished, it would open a lot more avenues for elected leaders. Third party candidates would actually stand a chance, and there's less chance for the mass corruption an essentially two-party system creates. I don't think there's anyone here who, in the last several election cycles, looked at the main two candidates presented and said "you know what? this candidate is totally in line with all of my beliefs and there is no contest because I don't have to play the lesser of the two evils game this election". I can also guarantee if they had looked at the third party runners during each election cycle they would have found someone who resonates with them almost to a t. With the electoral college, even if the candidate SOMEHOW got the popular vote, they would have still lost because they'd walk out with maybe 20 electoral votes if they were lucky thanks to how the electoral system works and the bias of the Democratic and Republican parties.

With the electoral college abolished, we might be able to prevent more elections from being so Red and Blue, and actually allow a chance for real anti establishment candidates and people who are genuinely interested in helping this country as a whole, rather than just thinking about it as a game or trying to use it as a means to squeeze more money out of us, to get into office

If you ask me, a popular vote system just neuters third parties and indie candidates even more. Look at Evan McMullin – he won a substantial chunk of Utah’s voters, at 21%. This might sound insignificant, but “a fifth of Utah” is a lot more galvanizing than “less than one percent of the total US population.” Once the day arrives when a third party/independent candidate seizes the electoral votes of even a single state, that will rock America’s political world more than any percentage could.
Aside from that, could you elaborate how abolishing the Electoral College would loosen the two-party system? Yes, our two main political parties do have electors of their own in every state, but I don’t think they really need the Electorate to survive. They would need their hold over Congressional elections loosened as well, somehow.

Trump and his Policies

And as far as I remember they only had two dogs when they entered the states and their mom took advantage of how fast they bred to make some quick money off people in the neighborhood that totally ignored the 4-dogs-per-household law and had a thing for tiny dogs you could carry in your pocket. It was... surreal.

I’m guessing the neighborhood was filled with loud yapping around the clock.

And yeah, they're satisfactory to me personally because they're no longer causing any negative impact that I can see. I can't speak for SoCal, but I know for a fact that Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, the other states that get the highest influx of undocumented Mexican immigrants, are not hindered or hurt from having large latino populations. In most of these cases, they assimilated into American culture just fine, and are functioning members of society. Believe it or not, even undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Go figure.

It's not that large latino populations are the issue (heck, it was Florida’s large population of Cubans, who often lean conservative, that allowed the state to go red). There's this general concern that people who live here contrary to the law (not saying latinos; Trump got heckled by an illegal Brit one time) will also live contrary to the law.

Yeah you totally missed the point of what I was trying to say.

You asked why the same undocumented immigrant could get away with illegally crossing the border time and time again, and used it as an example of our border being too weak and there still being a problem with illegal immigration from Mexico. In response, I told you essentially, that no matter how strong our border is, if that same person who keeps getting detained and deported really really wants to get back across the border, they will find a way. They would be an outlier, and are likely just as much of a problem to Mexico as they are to the US. Most people who get caught once don't try to make the effort to do it again unless their situation in Mexico is that dire.

Alright, truly dangerous illegals are often the same ones that take the effort to cross the border multiple times (and, likely, will continue to do so, and probably succeed). All the other illegals likely apply to neither, and are therefore not much to worry about. I can see that.
However, saying that this renders any strengthening of border defense futile is very much like saying that there’s no hope in having some technicians fix a broken computer, since banging on it to make it go faster didn’t work already – the “banging” being self-defeating catch-and-release tactics (which Trump ended through an executive order). Maybe taking them in for a more in-depth background check will be more effective? We’ll have to see.

Ego does not belong in government, nor any kind of leadership role.

Self-esteem is a valuable trait for leaders to have. It gives them the confidence that they are fit to rule, and that their decisions are what’s best for their people. There’s also the fact that leaders are the voice of their people. What is better: a leader willing to accept any deal, or a leader too proud to let their country’s interests go unheard?

“I am going to criticize this system, until it benefits me and then I will change my mind” is pretty basic hypocrisy. You’ve written a lot of words to try and handwave that.

It’s not that the Electoral College benefitted him, it’s that it bowed to the will of their states despite his fears that they were a political oligarchy, and the “rigged system’s” last line of defense. If some random third-party candidate won, and the Electoral College went with them, Trump wouldn’t continue his anti-electorate rhetoric, since it clearly wouldn’t be part of the rigged system there, either.
Basically, he changed his tune because he was proven wrong, and he happily admitted it.

Looking forward to it.

In the case that you’re wrong, and Trump turns out to be pretty good/not nearly as bad as people thought, would you be disappointed, or pleasantly surprised?

So, to be clear: the proposed tariff will increase the cost on imports from Mexico, thereby meaning that Americans in practice will be paying for the wall.

Because the tariffs will make Mexican imports more expensive, American buyers will buy less, meaning less money will be made from the tariff.

So not only are Americans paying the cost of the wall and not Mexico, but they would be buying fewer imports, thus reducing the amount the tariff earns at all.

That is completely illogical. You cannot expect to earn income on a tariff by actively sabotaging the trade relationship with the country you expect to tariff; and ultimately it is less likely that US buyers would invest in local goods to replace their 3rd largest import supplier, and far more likely that they would simply move to import from other cheap markets that are still more cost-effective than local investment. That’s just how business works.

Ehhh, kind of? The tariff was going to be implemented anyway, since protectionism (which revolves around sabotaging trade relationships) was always one of Trump’s biggest platforms. Any money the United Sates loses out on trade would, hypothetically, be made up for by the return of industry.

Yes it does:

Again, that doesn’t prove that he’s against the tariff. I’ll concede that it doesn’t really prove he’s for it, either. All it proves is that he knows it’s going to have “a huge impact” of some kind, good or bad.

This is a completely ridiculous assertion, and the very article you linked as evidence makes this clear. The article clearly states that the supposed ‘safe zones’ are not included in his executive order, don’t appear in the original statements from the White House or the Saudi Arabian King’s office about the call where they were supposedly mentioned, and also here he is again decreeing that other countries are going to pay for his ideas. The ‘only problem’ that you have identified is the biggest possible problem Trump could have – how does he expect that to ever work?

Well, first of all, we need to beat ISIS. That’s another campaign promise of his, so it could go hand-in-hand with ending the refugee crisis. I do know that Trump trusts the judgement of his Secretary of Defense, General Mattis (for example, Trump used to be pro-torture, since ISIS does it, too; however, Mattis convinced him that torture doesn’t work).

If you’re going to disagree with my sources, then I’ll happily dispute yours – the Gatestone Institute is a notably conservative, right-wing think-tank that often take an anti-Islamic stance on issues. You misrepresent the articles I cited: one states that the result of Sweden’s higher than average rape statistics is because Swedish people are much more likely to report sexual assault and sexual assault reports are calculated in an unusual manner, and explains that the more likely reason for the slightly above-average crime rate is because of economic factors – immigrants tend to be poorer, and poorer populations tend to commit more crime. The other article points out that hasty assumptions in identifying and reporting on perpetrators has created a distorted and inaccurate view of the crime statistics. So the causes appear to be: economic disparity resulting in higher crime rates, higher than average rates of reporting sexual violence, and distorted media reporting on crime. But accepting that would mean that people would have to confront the issue of poverty, rather than the convenient immigrant boogeyman.

You say that I fall back on the “convenient immigrant boogeyman,” yet amidst your defense of your sources, your only rebuttal to mine is that it’s right-wing and anti-Islam. Would I be correct to dismiss your sources just because I don’t agree with them?

This does not get around the facts that Trump is a hypocrite on this issue and that he has yet to take more action than empty rhetoric. Call me when his businesses stop outsourcing and he actually implements policies.

We’ll see.

If you back a hateful, xenophobic, egotistical fascist-enabler, I imagine having to defend that viewpoint must get pretty tiring. I will try to contain my sympathy.

That implies that only a like-minded crowd of xenophobes would be comfortable siding with Trump. What about the ex-Democrat liberals who refused to toe the party line? The disgruntled libertarians who’ve had enough of identity politics being the number one issue? The vengeful Bernie fans who found out what happened to his campaign through WikiLeaks? The apolitical netizens who are in it purely for the memes? It’s a big, varied crowd that’s fun to hang out with. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Likewise, you have my sympathies. Having your visions of international cooperation shattered by Brexit, dreams of a female POTUS canned by Trump’s victory, and witnessing multiculturalism become increasingly rejected by the West (with a rebirth of conservatism leading the charge) must be a nightmare. If it’s any consolation, remember that the political pendulum will eventually swing back to the left.
(Also… Trump’s only a fascist-enabler in the sense that his victory in the election has sparked violent protests run by people unwilling to see the status quo die, who see fit to physically lash out against their detractors, rather than let them be heard.)

I want to conceive your child.

Nep? Is that you?

[Lord Vhazen]

If you ask me, a popular vote system just neuters third parties and indie candidates even more.

Aside from that, could you elaborate how abolishing the Electoral College would loosen the two-party system

I don’t see how you can believe one point but not the other, it makes no sense…. Of course third-parties would have a higher chance of winning the presidency if we didn’t have an electoral college. The electoral college is filled primarily with Republicans and Democrats. Remove that, and you remove party biasm, which removes part of the competition between the two parties and ergo it would negate the “two-party system” we’ve semi-legitimately had for like 200 years. If we leaned more towards being a true Democracy over a Republic in this odd hybrid system we have, it would be more fair because you would honestly be elected directly as a result of how the American people as a whole feel about you as an individual candidate at that time. Each third-party vote would equate to like 10x as much as it would otherwise. You should see those videos that guy posted a few posts ago, it was really in-depth and interesting.

However, saying that this renders any strengthening of border defense futile is very much like saying that there’s no hope in having some technicians fix a broken computer, since banging on it to make it go faster didn’t work already – the “banging” being self-defeating catch-and-release tactics (which Trump ended through an executive order). Maybe taking them in for a more in-depth background check will be more effective? We’ll have to see.

Illegal immigration is a legitimate issue just like it is for literally every country that has ever defined its borders. There is no questioning that we should always have a border patrol and we should always take measures to deal with people who are here illegally – they live with no paper trail or a falsified one, drive in our streets with no insurance, and our tax payer’s money supports them wrongfully should they get on some kind of welfare.

But the thing is, this is exactly what makes them an easy scape goat. A good political scape goat rises from a legitimate issue, with actual merit to it, encouraging the support of people who have a problem with the issue while exaggerating its actual effects on a national scale. I believe that is how Trump rose to power – aside from being a Republican and besides the Electoral College. Just like how Hillary jumped on whatever liberal attitudes were popular in this generation, Trump jumped on what was a popular scape goat for people who take the example of non-Americans using American services to help themselves – the same people who preach about how socialized anything makes us into a “hand-out country” and all that. Trump kept talking about how he’d get rid of Obamacare, but now he’s back and forth with that because I honestly don’t think he knows what kind of system could replace it. Once again, people inherently find it easier to resent foreigners. Even legal ones.

While I believe we could use some better border control, the wall does not seem like a very effective idea. Like you said, better background checks sound like a better direction. And as Nate said earlier, about 40% of illegals come into the country via plane. Build a wall, and you’d see those same people try to move in that direction. But again… Maybe our problem would actually be lessened if we STREAMLINED the immigration process and made it easier for people to come here legally, and start legitimate, honest lives that could produce something helpful to the nation like any other American employee.

Self-esteem is a valuable trait for leaders to have. It gives them the confidence that they are fit to rule, and that their decisions are what’s best for their people.

Self Esteem = “Confidence in one’s own worth or abilities”, Ego = “A person’s sense of self-esteem OR self-importance”. The two are very similar, but can mean different things. He was not saying self-esteem is a bad thing, that’s retarded. He was saying an inflated EGO, as in, a shallow, arrogant sense of self-worth makes for a very bad leader. Trump is confident. But he’s also AMAZINGLY arrogant. He thinks he’s the greatest person who ever fucking lived…. Just look at the way he’s talked against his opponents before, or about his own campaign or his upbringing. He was so proud of himself for “inventing his slogan once at a golf game”, when in reality, the whole “Make America Great Again” was actually thought of first by the REAGAN campaign. Trump is far from humble. Arrogance can cloud judgement. Clouded judgement is bad for a leader. A leader should never EVER make decisions based on the will of their ego.

There’s also the fact that leaders are the voice of their people.

All of those protests outside suggest otherwise. Of course not everyone in the country at any given time feels the same, but this time it looks like there’s more actual Americans who disagree with his voice vs the people whose votes counted more than other human beings. Hence, the Electoral College.

What is better: a leader willing to accept any deal, or a leader too proud to let their country’s interests go unheard.

Uhhh, NEITHER!! What the fuck??? No leader should accept any kind of deal... They need to be reasonable enough to think it through. And that’s exactly what Trump didn’t do when it came to the negotiations with Mexico. He promised us that they’d reimburse us later because that’s what was “agreed on” allegedly, but there is absolutely no legal binding anywhere stating that they are supposed to. Either Trump lied to us in that comment, or he’s enough of an idiot to take someone’s word for it – which might I add is something a business man if anything should be cautious of. Mexico’s giving us the middle finger now. The wall is getting built, and WE’RE paying for it – not Mexico. Their president literally said they left because Trump “could not be negotiated with”. And all that talk about the Tariffs still don’t seem very reassuring. Meanwhile, Trump is too proud to accept that his idea may not be the best for our interests.

Before you’ve defended Trump by saying some of his actions may be because he made the promises and he’s just coming through with what he said for consistency. Well to that, I object – if he didn’t really think those promises were very smart after thinking it through he should be honest enough to prepare a speech trying to convince the people he made this promise to why said idea may need revision. That would be an act of letting his pride down.

It’s not that the Electoral College benefitted him, it’s that it bowed to the will of their states despite his fears that they were a political oligarchy, and the “rigged system’s” last line of defense. If some random third-party candidate won, and the Electoral College went with them, Trump wouldn’t continue his anti-electorate rhetoric, since it clearly wouldn’t be part of the rigged system there, either.
Basically, he changed his tune because he was proven wrong, and he happily admitted it.

I don’t think he would have to be totally honest. And more on that, I haven’t actually heard him talking about how he was proven wrong – which would be much more respectable. From the quotes I’ve heard, he seems to just be brushing what he’s said in the past under the rug embarrassingly. I haven’t seen a speech where he talks in-depth about WHY the electoral college is a good thing after all and WHY the American people should have more faith in it.

He won because of the electoral college, meanwhile it feels as if like 80% of the actual people living in the country are furious because of that. I’d love to see what would have happened if in 2016 we elected our candidates in a completely straight forward manner. Everyone seems to be ignoring Phylum’s sources, so I’m just gonna repost them here. Their content sounds like a better argument as to why the Electoral College is bad, meanwhile I have yet to hear a really great convincing argument as to why we still need it.

Re Electoral College:

Well, first of all, we need to beat ISIS. That’s another campaign promise of his, so it could go hand-in-hand with ending the refugee crisis.

Are you talking about those people running away from ISIS and other groups down in the middle east? The people who would be slaughtered if more countries turned them down? The only way to end that crisis would be to either turn them all down for the betterment of ourselves and accept the death of the only reasonable people from those countries, or get better at dealing with the constant bullshit they have there. Which is easier said than done. Plus, you can’t fight an ideology – ISIS is a terrorist organization, and they recruit extremists in other countries by convincing them that they have to do god’s work. I’m not knowledgeful enough to know how to combat ISIS better than we are, but Trump’s reaction to that seems to be to discriminate against Muslims and people of Iranian blood or other nationalities.

You say that I fall back on the “convenient immigrant boogeyman,” yet amidst your defense of your sources, your only rebuttal to mine is that it’s right-wing and anti-Islam. Would I be correct to dismiss your sources just because I don’t agree with them?

The places you linked from are known extremist’s sites and there is no defending that. I don’t even follow media much and even I can tell that. I remember them now that I’ve seen them again. I’ve seen people like The Amazing Atheist call them out on their bullshit before, they actually falsify data sometimes from what I remember. Especially the last one.

[Slog Bait]

There's so many words I keep losing track of what's happening in this thread

What you said is very reasonable. However, don’t forget that the President and Congress often end up bitterly opposed to one another (which is what our founding fathers wanted, a quarreling federal government that doesn’t get too much done in too little time); there’s a reason “lame ducks” are a thing. The President and Congress are much more unified when they’re part of the same political party (something our founding fathers didn’t consider, and what George Washington warned against in his parting speech), which leads into what you said next:

They did consider it, though. A government made up of a single unified party is an authoritarian regime. They didn't want the country to be founded on authoritarianism, but they also didn't want a two party system because it invites corruption too easily. With several dissenting views present, rather than just two parties dicking up the place split 50/50 and shutting down the government every few months because of polarization, people come to a middle ground far more easily because it'd be split up in a way where some parties would be more inclined to go for x, while others would go for y, and a few would go for z.

The party loyalty pressure would still be there, but instead of there being a hard split down the center you'd have Libertarians, for example, voting in favour of stuff like net neutrality and suppressing government interference along side the Democrats likely voting for net neutrality while voting for more government interference and Republicans voting against net neutrality and against government interference. It would actually allow things to get passed, and the president would stop being so at odds with congress. Sure they may represent a party, or they could be totally independent, but with more varying views within congress it prevents shut downs and roadblocks from happening as often as they do with a two party system.

If you ask me, a popular vote system just neuters third parties and indie candidates even more. Look at Evan McMullin – he won a substantial chunk of Utah’s voters, at 21%. This might sound insignificant, but “a fifth of Utah” is a lot more galvanizing than “less than one percent of the total US population.” Once the day arrives when a third party/independent candidate seizes the electoral votes of even a single state, that will rock America’s political world more than any percentage could.

Aside from that, could you elaborate how abolishing the Electoral College would loosen the two-party system? Yes, our two main political parties do have electors of their own in every state, but I don’t think they really need the Electorate to survive. They would need their hold over Congressional elections loosened as well, somehow.

Candidates that are native to a state regardless of party affiliation are likely to either win the state or win a large chunk of the state. McMullin is an example of this, as is Reagan.

A popular vote system tells people that their votes actually matter, and will likely lead to a significantly higher voter turn out. One of the major reasons people don't bother voting is because with the system we currently have, they feel like their vote doesn't matter worth a damn. (x)(x)

With the winner-take-all nature of the electorate on top of the fact that they've never actually exercised their "true purpose", hypothetically a third party member could win the popular vote in a landslide but not get a single electoral vote because they didn't win enough counties in every state. That's absolutely garbage and I find it hard to defend a system where that's possible. It's like when you posted that picture of the electoral map for the 2016 elections. PA, and MI were within 1% of a loss for Hillary in those states. FL and WY were within 5%. Hell, even down to the counties, the county I had voted in Trump had only won by about 3%, and it was in an incredibly loyal red county that has never come that close to flipping before.

Also, none of the third party candidates in any of the elections since 1924 I believe that won counties across the nation got a single electoral vote. Even if you really firmly believe the electoral college needs to stay, at the very least I believe you can agree that the winner-take-all aspect of the electorate needs to be dropped. And even then, what happens if they win the popular vote nation wide, but other parties cut in front by having a 1-10% lead on them in every county? The winner as dictated by the electoral college would be be absolutely crushed when comparing who got the popular vote of that election cycle.

There's obviously a lot of things that need to be done to get us to where we need to be. We need future generations to be properly educated on how our system works so we're not so polarized with the road bump of party loyalty from causing as much clashes within our congress. We need to give rural Americans steady living and education so they're given the opportunity to actually look into the candidates available and don't impulse vote because someone said they're gonna create jobs they're desperate for or just vote party loyalty because they believe their party always has their best interests in mind and aren't subject to changing as time goes on, and so on. We need to severely overhaul our election system to give a fair chance to people who aren't backed entirely by big business and banks. We need to get more variety in congress, and the best way to do that is likely to give more coverage for non-presidential elections within the communities they effect. And so on, and so on...

I do firmly believe that the electoral college remains one of our biggest roadblocks to allowing a third party candidate a chance at taking office. There's a lot of hypothetical situations regarding any of the elections in the past century I could pull up, but at this point I think you see my POV and understand why I feel the way I do. I can also see why you feel the way you do and I feel like, unless something said is unclear or contradictory, this is a good point to agree to disagree and part ways with the conversation. At least, in a public space. I'm chill with chatting in private about it from time to time but this thread is a big ol mess of text walls so I'd be more than glad to ditch it.

I’m guessing the neighborhood was filled with loud yapping around the clock.

Honestly I hardly noticed it over the city ambiance. It just sort of blends in.

It's not that large latino populations are the issue (heck, it was Florida’s large population of Cubans, who often lean conservative, that allowed the state to go red). There's this general concern that people who live here contrary to the law (not saying latinos; Trump got heckled by an illegal Brit one time) will also live contrary to the law.

It's pretty much rule of thumb that latino populations largely vote red.

And I get that, but that concern is only caused from fear mongering by people who have that whole nationality superiority complex (xenophobia, radical nationalism). It's why there's some criticism on referring to undocumented immigrants as 'illegals'. Being here past the time you were permitted isn't a criminal offense, just strongly discouraged because the state can't keep an eye on you, and you can't be arrested for it in the majority of states unless you do commit a crime while here undocumented. Once you do commit a crime while undocumented, you're permanently barred entry from the country.

It's a fairly irrational concern to believe that someone who lives here without the right visa is by default a criminal. It's not too far off to compare it to refugees with free range but far far more to lose by being here. If you moved or escaped to some place, you'd likely want to stay there, especially if you have a family. You wouldn't want to risk separation or putting them or yourself at risk. It's why first generation immigrants are usually so good for communities and the economy: because they're on their best behavior lest they be kicked out permanently or imprisoned.

However, saying that this renders any strengthening of border defense futile is very much like saying that there’s no hope in having some technicians fix a broken computer, since banging on it to make it go faster didn’t work already – the “banging” being self-defeating catch-and-release tactics (which Trump ended through an executive order). Maybe taking them in for a more in-depth background check will be more effective? We’ll have to see.

That's also not what I was saying. And a more accurate comparison would be upgrading a perfectly functional $2k tower to like a $20k tower with 5 gpus and 500tb of memory and 160gb of ram and a whole load of other shit that's beyond overkill and a total blubbering waste of money and resources.

What the fuck would you do with all that??? Why would you even do that when what you have right now is perfectly functional?

If you really wanted to "tighten the border" just have more security trained and patrolling the border. It'd be cheaper, it generates jobs, and it doesn't take 10 years and impose even more on the environment and our wildlife. As far as the jobs that building the wall would create goes, let's go back to all that infrastructure that needs fixing up because our infrastructure is severely lacking, to say the least. Mmm, infrastructure.

[Manco]

Self-esteem is a valuable trait for leaders to have. It gives them the confidence that they are fit to rule, and that their decisions are what’s best for their people. There’s also the fact that leaders are the voice of their people. What is better: a leader willing to accept any deal, or a leader too proud to let their country’s interests go unheard?

Ego and self-esteem/confidence are not one and the same. I am not criticizing Trump for having confidence – I’m criticizing him for being egotistic.

It’s not that the Electoral College benefitted him, it’s that it bowed to the will of their states despite his fears that they were a political oligarchy, and the “rigged system’s” last line of defense. If some random third-party candidate won, and the Electoral College went with them, Trump wouldn’t continue his anti-electorate rhetoric, since it clearly wouldn’t be part of the rigged system there, either.
Basically, he changed his tune because he was proven wrong, and he happily admitted it.

So… he claimed it was rigged because he thought he was going to lose, then he unexpectedly won, so now he’s happy and thinks it isn’t rigged? That is not a sign of a proper statesman – you don’t baselessly accuse the system of being rigged just because you think you’re losing.

So you haven’t changed that:

“I am going to criticize this system, until it benefits me and then I will change my mind” is pretty basic hypocrisy. You’ve written a lot of words to try and handwave that.

But even then, he hasn’t changed his tune, because he’s still making completely baseless claims about vote rigging!

In the case that you’re wrong, and Trump turns out to be pretty good/not nearly as bad as people thought, would you be disappointed, or pleasantly surprised?

You make it sound like it’s a TV show or something. My metric for Trump being a successful president is based on how the US and the rest of the world’s people come out the other side – and right now he seems to be running roughshod over all sorts of people.

Ehhh, kind of? The tariff was going to be implemented anyway, since protectionism (which revolves around sabotaging trade relationships) was always one of Trump’s biggest platforms. Any money the United Sates loses out on trade would, hypothetically, be made up for by the return of industry.

But the issue here is that Trump is trying to effectively put the genie back in the bottle – he’s not imposing tariffs to protect the producers in America, he’s hoping that killing trade with Mexico will bring industries that are gone back from the dead.

And again, this doesn’t change the fact that putting tariffs on Mexican trade means that Americans will be paying for the wall, not Mexicans.

Again, that doesn’t prove that he’s against the tariff. I’ll concede that it doesn’t really prove he’s for it, either. All it proves is that he knows it’s going to have “a huge impact” of some kind, good or bad.

“Imposed” is a very loaded word in that statement which should tell you the intent, and if he was positive he probably would have said so in more certain terms. I doubt the numerous outlets who covered it with negative headlines would have gotten that sentiment from nowhere, either.

Well, first of all, we need to beat ISIS. That’s another campaign promise of his, so it could go hand-in-hand with ending the refugee crisis. I do know that Trump trusts the judgement of his Secretary of Defense, General Mattis (for example, Trump used to be pro-torture, since ISIS does it, too; however, Mattis convinced him that torture doesn’t work).

To be clear, Mattis has not changed Trump’s mind – Trump has just said that he will leave the decision up to Mattis; he still “absolutely” believes torture works. Don’t spread misinformation.

Anyway, you don’t beat ISIS by pissing off more Muslims and validating terrorists’ anti-US rhetoric and turning away vulnerable refugees.

You say that I fall back on the “convenient immigrant boogeyman,” yet amidst your defense of your sources, your only rebuttal to mine is that it’s right-wing and anti-Islam. Would I be correct to dismiss your sources just because I don’t agree with them?

The issue here is that while I’ve identified how your source is biased and provided sources to back this up, all you’ve done is say you feel like my sources are biased and described why you feel they might be biased.

We’ll see.

I’m sure. In the meantime, we can enjoy Trump’s continuing conflicts of interest and abusing his power for nepotistic ends.

That implies that only a like-minded crowd of xenophobes would be comfortable siding with Trump.

No it doesn’t, and I don’t know why you’re suggesting that. Anyone who feels like they benefit from siding with Trump will do so. The point is that people supporting Trump are enabling him, and he in turn is enabling and empowering some of the worst corners of the political spectrum.

Likewise, you have my sympathies. Having your visions of international cooperation shattered by Brexit, dreams of a female POTUS canned by Trump’s victory, and witnessing multiculturalism become increasingly rejected by the West (with a rebirth of conservatism leading the charge) must be a nightmare. If it’s any consolation, remember that the political pendulum will eventually swing back to the left.

(Also… Trump’s only a fascist-enabler in the sense that his victory in the election has sparked violent protests run by people unwilling to see the status quo die, who see fit to physically lash out against their detractors, rather than let them be heard.)

I feel like I’ve seen this argument before, do they pass out cue sheets for you all to stay on-message or what?

easiest one of these yet pic.twitter.com/GswVV5t2xM

— jonbenet rammstein (@adequateGF) February 2, 2017

[Lord Vhazen]

Let me be the first to say that I honestly didn't give a shit about Hillary being a woman. More so, I think it's wrong for anyone to have cared much about that fact alone. Being a woman should not have any kind of an effect on being a presidential candidate. You're sexist no matter which way you look at that - a woman would not be a better leader because she is a woman and she would not be worse because of that either. A large message in Hillary's campaign was basically "I am a woman", which honestly pissed me the hell off. I'm sympathetic towards basic feminist issues at least since I'm an egalitarian and a reasonable person - but today, feminism in America has become increasingly irrational and discriminatory towards men. If anything, candidates like Bernie Sanders were more logical picks for an advocate of women's rights.

EDIT: So with that put aside, how about them Environmental Protection Agencies?

[UnderTheSun]

Electoral College

I don’t see how you can believe one point but not the other, it makes no sense….

Those points really don’t contrast at all. First I state that I believe that a popular vote system neuters third parties, then I ask how abolishing the Electoral College would help third parties. If the only alternative to the Electoral College is a popular vote, then adopting that sole alternative means crippling third parties.

Of course third-parties would have a higher chance of winning the presidency if we didn’t have an electoral college. The electoral college is filled primarily with Republicans and Democrats. Remove that, and you remove party biasm, which removes part of the competition between the two parties and ergo it would negate the “two-party system” we’ve semi-legitimately had for like 200 years.

Then we should also remove Congress, since both legislative houses are filled primarily with Republicans and Democrats?

The fact that the Republican and Democratic Parties would still dominate in Congress (as opposed to third parties) regardless of the Electoral College’s existence means that, as powerful political entities, they would still be sponsoring presidential candidates. The public would look at those two candidates the most, as it always does. In other words, removing the Electoral College does nothing to shake our two-party system’s grip on society.

You should see those videos that guy posted a few posts ago, it was really in-depth and interesting.

*watches*

Alright, a few things about Video #1: The guy says that the point of the Electoral College is so that presidents pay attention to those smaller states. This is in spite of the fact that presidential races, as we know them now, did not even exist back in the day. The Electoral College protects the interests of those states, plain and simple (which, due to his above assertion now void, means the Electoral College is doing its job).

As for Video #2… December 19th of 2016 was a good example of how the video portrayed a false interpretation of how the Electoral College works. A unique example, at that, since Hillary supporters were holding out for the Electoral College to do the same thing that the video demonizes, and vote for Hillary instead of Trump (against the will of their states). Neither these delusions, nor the video itself, reflected reality that day, since state governments tend to have some measures against unfaithful electors, such as a fine, or outright denying their request (consider the elector in Maine who wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders, but was shot down).

I do firmly believe that the electoral college remains one of our biggest roadblocks to allowing a third party candidate a chance at taking office. There's a lot of hypothetical situations regarding any of the elections in the past century I could pull up, but at this point I think you see my POV and understand why I feel the way I do. I can also see why you feel the way you do and I feel like, unless something said is unclear or contradictory, this is a good point to agree to disagree and part ways with the conversation. At least, in a public space. I'm chill with chatting in private about it from time to time but this thread is a big ol mess of text walls so I'd be more than glad to ditch it.

Sounds alright to me.

Trump and His Policies

Self Esteem = “Confidence in one’s own worth or abilities”, Ego = “A person’s sense of self-esteem OR self-importance”. The two are very similar, but can mean different things. He was not saying self-esteem is a bad thing, that’s retarded. He was saying an inflated EGO, as in, a shallow, arrogant sense of self-worth makes for a very bad leader. Trump is confident. But he’s also AMAZINGLY arrogant.

Ego and self-esteem/confidence are not one and the same. I am not criticizing Trump for having confidence – I’m criticizing him for being egotistic.

I wouldn’t say he’s egotistical, but my reasoning’s further down.

All of those protests outside suggest otherwise. Of course not everyone in the country at any given time feels the same, but this time it looks like there’s more actual Americans who disagree with his voice vs the people whose votes counted more than other human beings. Hence, the Electoral College.

I wonder why these totally organic protests don’t try moving out of Hillary-voting liberal cities, rather than go somewhere else to riot and destroy infrastructure…

Uhhh, NEITHER!! What the fuck??? No leader should accept any kind of deal... They need to be reasonable enough to think it through.

Well, I’m glad we agree that presidents shouldn't just take any deal (although why you disagree with a president rejecting a deal that's not in their country's best interests is beyond me). And Trump’s pride in himself and our country will be a good asset in terms of negotiating.

And that’s exactly what Trump didn’t do when it came to the negotiations with Mexico. He promised us that they’d reimburse us later because that’s what was “agreed on” allegedly, but there is absolutely no legal binding anywhere stating that they are supposed to. Either Trump lied to us in that comment, or he’s enough of an idiot to take someone’s word for it – which might I add is something a business man if anything should be cautious of. Mexico’s giving us the middle finger now. The wall is getting built, and WE’RE paying for it – not Mexico. Their president literally said they left because Trump “could not be negotiated with”. And all that talk about the Tariffs still don’t seem very reassuring. Meanwhile, Trump is too proud to accept that his idea may not be the best for our interests.

“Something a business man should be cautious of?” Are you a billionaire who won the presidential election? What leads you to believe you’re better at negotiating than he is? Need I remind you that Trump managed to get CNN, MSNBC, and Fox to pay for his campaign (figuratively, of course)?

You’re seeing the tariffs (which you said you agreed with earlier, since business wouldn’t exploit low-wage labor in Mexico) as an afterthought when they’re one of the prime instruments in getting this whole plan to work. How can Mexico be holding all the cards, when they stand to lose their outsource-fueled industries to the basic principles of price affecting purchase? A rise in unemployment won’t help against the cartels. Neither will stronger border control, which will force Mexicans who don’t like the way their country is to stay put. Public dissent will rise, and that’s not something I believe the corrupt, cartel-bribed government of Mexico is ready for.

If you really wanted to "tighten the border" just have more security trained and patrolling the border. It'd be cheaper, it generates jobs, and it doesn't take 10 years and impose even more on the environment and our wildlife. As far as the jobs that building the wall would create goes, let's go back to all that infrastructure that needs fixing up because our infrastructure is severely lacking, to say the least. Mmm, infrastructure.

Well, he’s getting to work on the former, based on Section 8 of this executive order.

As for repairing infrastructure… Trump’s plan to bring back jobs (manufacturing, coal, etc.) will, assuming success, fix infrastructure by providing employment and income (some of which goes to taxes). This will help sustain more direct methods of fixing infrastructure in a way that the usual loans and bailouts could not.

(Also, where are the 10-year estimates coming from? Do they take into account the rugged, unbuildable terrain in East Texas where the wall is planned to end (not the entire border)?)

So… he claimed it was rigged because he thought he was going to lose, then he unexpectedly won, so now he’s happy and thinks it isn’t rigged? That is not a sign of a proper statesman – you don’t baselessly accuse the system of being rigged just because you think you’re losing.

Could you spare a bit of time to look back on my comment?

It’s not that the Electoral College benefitted him, it’s that it bowed to the will of their states despite his fears that they were a political oligarchy, and the “rigged system’s” last line of defense. If some random third-party candidate won, and the Electoral College went with them, Trump wouldn’t continue his anti-electorate rhetoric, since it clearly wouldn’t be part of the rigged system there, either.
Basically, he changed his tune because he was proven wrong, and he happily admitted it.

Doesn’t look like I said it was because he thought he was losing, then he didn’t. Looks more like he was not afraid to admit he was proven wrong. Then again, could it be because neither of us can read Trump’s mind, much less the person who hasn’t stayed well-updated on Trump, and watched his campaign and “thank you” rallies (and thus, is unfamiliar with how he operates)?

But even then, he hasn’t changed his tune, because he’s still making completely baseless claims about vote rigging!

Article written: Friday 21 October 2016

Can we turn this time machine around real quick? Just real quick. Trump’s improved his pro-Voting ID rhetoric a LOT, now that his claims have support.

You make it sound like it’s a TV show or something. My metric for Trump being a successful president is based on how the US and the rest of the world’s people come out the other side – and right now he seems to be running roughshod over all sorts of people.

“Make it sound like a TV show?” Well, close, this is an internet community. We’re free to talk to each other as we please, be it asking questions, answering them, or declining to answer.

… The friendships that develop between members makes the atmosphere of the Oddworld Forums very informal…

Also, I’m just nitpicking here, but I wouldn’t factor “the rest of the world’s people” into whether Trump is a successful president of the United States in the end. Whether he’s a successful leader of the free world (a role which his “America first” mantra implies he doesn’t prioritize) is more appropriate.
Anyway, thank you for your response.

But the issue here is that Trump is trying to effectively put the genie back in the bottle – he’s not imposing tariffs to protect the producers in America, he’s hoping that killing trade with Mexico will bring industries that are gone back from the dead.
And again, this doesn’t change the fact that putting tariffs on Mexican trade means that Americans will be paying for the wall, not Mexicans.

And China, don’t forget China. I won’t act like there’s something you don’t understand, since you demonstrated your understanding pretty well:

Of course as a business they will move to capitalize on the current situation as best they can; they need to continue to make a profit, and refusing to work with the president and setting themselves up for a tariff would only serve to hurt their bottom line.

Yet you still ask what kind of magic wand Trump has. If you can say that Trump’s presidency is going rocky so far (implying how the rest of his term will go), then I can say that Trump’s progress on bringing back jobs isn’t half bad (implying how the rest of his term will go).

And again, you haven’t explained how, exactly, encouraging the purchase of less expensive non-Mexican products (with prices lowered even further by Trump lowering the business tax) means Americans are paying for the wall. The same goes for increasing visa prices and taxing/forbidding fund wiring to Mexico.

“Imposed” is a very loaded word in that statement which should tell you the intent, and if he was positive he probably would have said so in more certain terms. I doubt the numerous outlets who covered it with negative headlines would have gotten that sentiment from nowhere, either.

So now we’re going into the connotations of words. Where you see “imposed” as a grudging description of Trump’s intentions, I see an apt description of the strength behind Trump’s decision. I’m sure Trump would agree, given he himself said he would “impose” such a tax. Hey, maybe him using the word “impose” influenced Mark Fields’s choice of words, as well?

Also, in case you didn’t notice, “the numerous outlets” have tried to spin everything against Trump for a while (which often plays into his own hands). Something tells me they won’t give that up any time soon, either.

To be clear, Mattis has not changed Trump’s mind – Trump has just said that he will leave the decision up to Mattis; he still “absolutely” believes torture works. Don’t spread misinformation.

So you concede that Trump is not opposed to trusting the judgement of others over his own on issues? Rather than just fire them, like President Jackson did repeatedly when cabinet members didn’t do as he said? Doesn’t seem very egotistical of him. It’s almost like he’s behaving presidentially.

Plus, you can’t fight an ideology – ISIS is a terrorist organization, and they recruit extremists in other countries by convincing them that they have to do god’s work. I’m not knowledgeful enough to know how to combat ISIS better than we are, but Trump’s reaction to that seems to be to discriminate against Muslims and people of Iranian blood or other nationalities.

Anyway, you don’t beat ISIS by pissing off more Muslims and validating terrorists’ anti-US rhetoric and turning away vulnerable refugees.

Yes, let’s beat ISIS by using the exact same strategies we’ve been using in the constantly worsening Middle East for decades, rather than change the formula. I mean, it’s not as if Trump’s travel ban WASN’T targeting Muslims… right?



Surely Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria must be on this "Muslim ban" list?

The issue here is that while I’ve identified how your source is biased and provided sources to back this up, all you’ve done is say you feel like my sources are biased and described why you feel they might be biased.

Did you get our posts mixed up?
The most “identifying” you did to my source is a grand total of one sentence about how it has a right-wing bias and is anti-Islam. Rather than back that up, you then went on to restate the two sources I disagreed with earlier; you did not compare your sources’ points with mine in any way. All you did was, as I said, dismiss my source because you don’t agree with it.
Meanwhile, this is what I said:

Personally, I disagree with the sources you present, since they handwave the issue. One concedes that immigrants are behind the increase, but then saying that it’s really the fault of xenophobic Swedes (despite Sweden being very multicultural and xenophilic) and poor management of refugee shelters (How refugees could be any worse off than where they came from is beyond me; what about halting the flow of refugees until better conditions can be provided?). The other skirts around the truth by saying it’s due to “socioeconomic factors,” blames it on the Swedes (despite cases of hate crimes, apparently, being speculation, based on cited articles), and shifts the issue to sexual assault in general (as if not looking into who the perpetrators are will help women and case studies in any way).

Did I mention bias in there? I’m looking at this post of mine, and I can’t find a single accusation of bias. All I did was identify your sources’ points, and explain how I believe the reasoning behind these points is faulty.
I only ever mentioned bias when you, I’ll say it again, dismissed my source in its entirety due to the point of view of who wrote it. Even then, I only did that to provide a hypothetical scenario where I dismiss your sources for a similar reason. And not even because of bias!

You say that I fall back on the “convenient immigrant boogeyman,” yet amidst your defense of your sources, your only rebuttal to mine is that it’s right-wing and anti-Islam. Would I be correct to dismiss your sources just because I don’t agree with them?

Did I say that I felt your sources were biased? I’m looking at this post of mine, and I can’t find a single accusation of your sources being biased, just that I didn’t agree with them; either way, however, I brought up your sources’ points and, rather than dismiss them, explain why I thought they were wrong. Sadly, it seems you cannot afford to respond likewise.

No it doesn’t, and I don’t know why you’re suggesting that. Anyone who feels like they benefit from siding with Trump will do so.

I brought that up because you said so yourself:

If you back a hateful, xenophobic, egotistical fascist-enabler, I imagine having to defend that viewpoint must get pretty tiring. I will try to contain my sympathy.

Unless you mean to say that siding with someone is the same as being comfortable doing so. In that case, why did you assume that backing Trump gets tiring if that would mean I’m not comfortable backing him?

I feel like I’ve seen this argument before, do they pass out cue sheets for you all to stay on-message or what?

You seem to be skirting around the issue. Do you, or do you not, agree that actions against Trump and his supporters reflect fascism far more than anything Trump or his supporters have done, and would you substantiate your claim?
(By the way, we couldn’t have cue sheets passed out if we wanted to; we’re a social media-based grassroots movement, and don’t have centralized coordination. Not like groups like Antifa and CTR, which are externally funded. We’re not even that well-off on social media, if you look at cases like Reddit censorship of The_Donald, and Twitter shadowbanning Trump supporters.)

If anything, candidates like Bernie Sanders were more logical picks for an advocate of women's rights.

(Off-topic, but, apparently, there was a debate between Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz. I’m assuming you’re more engaged with (and more knowledgeable of) Bernie’s activity than I am, so did you happen to catch any of it?)

EDIT: So with that put aside, how about them Environmental Protection Agencies?

I’m going to be honest, I don’t know squat about the EPA (other than that they were pretty helpful in stopping DDT usage), so most of what I’m about to say is stuff I looked up.
Anyway, protecting the environment sounds good (I think we’re already at the point where everyone gets “pollution = bad”), but the EPA’s worthy of suspicion like any other government body. The most relevant bone to pick with the EPA is that it kept quiet about the lack of corrosion prevention in Flint, Michigan’s pipes. That article explains that it was due to technicalities in how issues like water safety are split between federal and state governments (the EPA got into a stalemate with Michigan’s own Department of Environmental Quality over pipe regulations), and it took months for the EPA to receive guidance on taking matters into its own hands (too late to prevent the crisis). From this, it’s clear that, from how the EPA is currently structured, it can’t respond immediately to potential crises.
In another incident, this time in 2015, EPA agents accidentally caused contaminated water to flood out of a gold mine, and into the Animas River (which feeds into the Colorado River), apparently due to a failure to communicate between the team and its leader; the leader was waiting for the Bureau of Reclamation’s advice on how to handle removal of mine debris, while the team proceeded with removal (they assumed they could judge the mine’s water level without carrying out standard procedures).
In both cases, it seems like the EPA’s biggest problem is communication shortcomings, both with other federal agencies and within its own ranks. I don’t know how any solutions to this would work out (I can’t think of any similar cases). Personally, I’d prefer reform; it looks like the EPA is meant to take the role of an arbiter between federal regulations and the states’ responsibility to enforce them, so giving it more power to publish its own findings (without having to communicate), and less power to intervene (leave it to the states, which will be pressured to act by these findings, lest they take sole responsibility for catastrophes), would maintain this role. I think we can both agree that just axing it is jumping the gun, though.

[Holy Sock]

I just want to know what decade Trump is aiming for when he Makes America Great Again.