US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6695

On January 30 2017 07:49 Garbels wrote:
What is Trump referring to with his World War 3 tweet to McCain and Lindsey?

On January 30 2017 07:24 xDaunt wrote:


Trump sees his more extremist proclamations as tools to get what he wants policy-wise. He sets the table with an extreme position and bargains back from there. This is a well-documented behavior of his. I think that he's setting the table for immigration reform with this executive order.


I already acknowledged the human cost of Trump's policy. I just don't find that conversation or the dwelling on it to be particularly interesting. There is a cost to everything. The real question is what we're getting in exchange.

And I find it curious that anyone would find my more clinical posts to be objectionable. From my experience I catch far less flak (if any) from those posts than when I say what I actually substantively think on anything.

On January 30 2017 07:45 Blisse wrote:


I unequivocally disagree.

This is the big lie of the anti-Liberal crowd. These concerns are in no way justified because very evidently the majority of Muslims have incredibly humane values. In the same way that Americans condemn white supernationalists and neo-Nazis, most Muslims condemn radical extremists. It is the only the existence of the civil unrest in the area that has stained our views of Muslims.

In the same vain, the Liberal left's (in your eyes, SJW's) support against discrimination against Muslims, or any other groups, is a condemnation of people trying to treat all Muslims the same, and is in no way an endorsement of Muslim radicalism and extremist values, as much as you guys keep trying to smear Liberals with.

No one ever says that all Muslims are good. People are saying, stop lumping all Muslims in the same group as the radicals, stop treating everyone from X country as though they're all the same.

On January 30 2017 07:52 opisska wrote:


So when you bulldoze the lives of completely innocent people, you just call it "human cost", acknowledge it and then everyone is obliged to move on? That is almost unbelievable. The inclusion of green card holders serves no practical value. It was either done on purpose, which would mean that the US president is willing to sacrifice legal residents of the country for some kind of a power game, or out of sheer ignorance, which we mean that he does so because he doesn't know better. Both options are disastrous.

On January 30 2017 07:45 zlefin wrote:

plesae calm down. we need more calm. do'nt get so worked up already, there's a lot of tim for trump to do far worse, don't run out of adjectives by using up the big ones early.
this is not just to you ofc but to everyone; it's important to just generically call for calm.

On January 30 2017 07:59 xDaunt wrote:

No, I don't expect people to just "move on." The negative reaction and other consequences are all part of the cost of the action.

On January 30 2017 07:54 xDaunt wrote:

We don't have to go as far as ISIS to find the populations of Muslims that are incompatible with the West and Western values. As a good liberal, are you not bothered by the high incidences of anti-homosexual and anti-women's rights behavior in Muslim nations? And I'm just picking those traditions because they're the most obvious. I could point to others as well.

On January 30 2017 08:06 opisska wrote:


You said that you don't find "dwelling on it interesting", which I see as a request for the other people in the discussion to move on from it, that's what I meant. But that is a very cheap way of argumentation - you are just labeling the strongest argument against your position as uninteresting in the hope that it helps you dismiss it.

What I really find interesting is that even though I have skimmed literarly hundreds of opinions of Trump supporters at various places online, I just wasn't able to find a single rational argument for the inclusion of the green card holders. Is this really the new standard of discussion, where the most blatant flaws in logic will just be loudly ignored, because it's the most convenient?

On January 30 2017 08:07 Tachion wrote:

If Christians can adjust their way of life to exist peacefully in America despite the anti-homosexual and anti-women's values in the bible, then Muslim's deserve the same chance. Millions of Muslims existing peacefully in the US have already demonstrated they can.

On January 30 2017 08:09 xDaunt wrote:


I can only guess why green card holders were included. But the decision was deliberate by all reports, so I expect that there is a reason (good, bad or otherwise).

On January 30 2017 07:50 biology]major wrote:


There's radicals, then there's sympathizers, then there's the middle group that have backwards beliefs that won't integrate well into our society (stoning for adultery, believe homosexuals/apostates to be executed), then theres the remaining normal ones who probably don't care for these beliefs and could integrate into western society. So how do we seperate these? How do we just prevent people from lying and abusing a system we put in place to get the ones we want and stop the ones we don't want?

I'm an immigrant btw, naturalized, so I fully understand the immigrant struggle.

On January 30 2017 07:51 Gorsameth wrote:

I have completely no idea.

I guess just Trump fishing for adjectives.

Edit: The tweet in question
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/825823217025691648

On January 30 2017 08:14 opisska wrote:


Are you able to picture a good reason? A reason good enough to sacrifice lives of random ordinary people for? Are you OK with that happening without the reason being provided? Why? Do you really think that something is at stake here, so that such drastic measures needed to be taken, on the timescale of days, without any real explanation? Do you think that this is the way politics should be conducted? I could honestly imagine that I would accept such behavior in case it would prevent an imminent threat, but that is just extremely unlikely in this case, as it has been time and time again demonstrated in this very thread how inefficient an anti-terrorist measure this is (and just "changing the stance on immigration" could surely have waited a couple of months after all these years). Your justification is basically "he does it for good reasons", which is the kind of benefit of doubt that people should never give to their leaders outside of actual war.

On January 30 2017 08:17 Blisse wrote:


My first point would be, the people who don't like Western cultures wouldn't apply to live in Western countries. So the sympathizers and middle group and radicals wouldn't even come.

If sympathizers and middle groups did come, they would come because they believe that the opportunities available in the Western world would be more beneficial, and would learn to accustom themselves to the given landscape.

If radicalists tried to abuse the system, we would hope that our immigration process is able to catch them, which it does pretty well. But some people will definitely leak through. In which case, here is one of the fundamental points of contention - is the small risk of uncaught, extreme radicalism worth losing the diversity of the "normals" and worth your humanity (in the case of refugees). Everyone will probably have a different position on the spectrum for that answer.

In Canada, that answer has been unequivocally, yes, it is worth it. In the US, it's up for contention. Personally, I have Muslim friends who have immigrated from Syria and Afghanistan and/or have family there.

On January 30 2017 08:19 Introvert wrote:


McCain and Graham are known as foreign policy hawks, this WWIII stuff is the common dismissive put down of that position.

And after 8 years we again have a party willing to disagree with other members in public. The hivemind was so boring.

Trump Apparently Didn’t Run Refugee Ban by His Legal Experts at State, DOJ or DHS


Reports from NBC and other outlets say that Donald Trump’s Friday executive order on immigration wasn’t vetted by his legal experts. At least, not the ones that presidents usually rely on.





On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department declined comment to NPR as to whether its Office of Legal Counsel reviewed any of Trump’s EOs. The OLC typically provides legal advice to the President and executive agencies. Two sources with the State Department told The New York Times in a Saturday report that leaders with Customs and Border Protection, and Citizenship and Immigration Services were getting briefed on the order right as the president signed it.

The president’s controversial policy bans immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations for 90 days. It stops a refugee admissions program for 120 days (indefinite in the case of Syria). However, a federal judge in Brooklyn issued a partial stay on Saturday night for anyone with visas, and in transit or already on American soil. Other judges made similar rulings in Massachusetts, Washington state, and Virginia.

This defeat may signal a weak future for Trump’s executive orders and policy, says Constitutional law Professor Jonathan H. Adler. He references the NBC, Times, and NPR reports when making the claim.

Now, Alder actually argues that the policy, “under normal circumstances” is lawful based on precedent, and would survive a judge’s scrunity.

"That is, I believe the executive branch may decide to identify specific countries from which immigrants and others seeking entry into the country must receive “extreme vetting” and that the President may order a suspension of refugees from particular places (as Obama did with Iraq in 2011)."

He says the policy doesn’t even “come anywhere close” to instituting a Muslim ban. But for Adler, the problem is whether government lawyers could prove to judges that their side performed due diligence when implementing policy.

"When Department of Justice attorneys go into court to defend the policy, they will not be able to maintain that this policy reflects careful review of the relevant security concerns or that administration lawyers gave due consideration to potential objections and relevant legal or constitutional constraints on the executive branch’s conduct. They won’t be able to say those things because they are not true — and judges will notice. Issuing orders that can upend people’s lives without conducting the most basic review is practically the definition of “arbitrary and capricious” government action."

In the Times article, White House aides claimed the State Department and homeland security officials were consulted about the order. “Everyone who needed to know was informed,” one aide reportedly said.

Meanwhile, the president says the EO is working great.

“It’s working out very nicely,” he told reporters on Saturday. “You see it at the airports. you see it all over.”

On January 30 2017 08:14 xDaunt wrote:

The false equivalence of comparing Christians to Muslims is rather tiresome. It's been a while since Christian nations en masse legislated for the killing of homosexuals. And the key difference is this: Western liberalism is born of Christian values. There is a big difference between asking Christians to adopt extensions of their faith and asking Muslims to adopt extensions of Christian faith. There is a huge cultural divide that you are not accounting for.