In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On May 11 2017 20:35 opisska wrote: Rumors have it that laptops will be prohibited in cabin for all US flights from Europe. Seriously, are you trying to end all businesses with Europe? No way I am checking in my laptop and I can imagine the same for people from businesses who actually matter.
You aren't allowed to have lithium batteries in your checked luggage either. So you have to leave the laptop at home as far as I can tell.
Well some companies ban all lithium batteries but some only those outside a device or over a specific capacity. At any rate, they will probably have to react to the new rules somehow in this respect, because not being able to take a laptop with you at all would mean a big problem for business travel, which makes the most of airline customers.
It really depends on how will this all pan out in details, but it can possibly be another 9/11 for the airlines.
On May 11 2017 05:27 TheLordofAwesome wrote: Wow, that got a lot of replies.
@all: When another election comes around, I will definitely take into account what I've learned from this one.
@Kwark I have repeatedly said that you are a smart person but a terrible persuader and this is just more evidence of it.
@zlefin I honestly heard almost nothing about Russia and Trump prior to the election. There was Michael Flynn, who I knew was highly suspect to say the least, but that was just one man, or so it appeared at the time. I thought once Trump assumed office, Flynn would be gone because of the vetting requirements. The appointment of him as NSA was when I lost all faith in Trump's administration. But that was all in the future at that time.
I heard a lot about the Access Hollywood tape and the Comey letter debacle. The overriding narrative about Trump before the election was that he was a racist/sexist/misogynist/ableist/transphobic/homophobic bigoted evil person but it didn't matter because Clinton was inevitably going to win.
Examination of Trump's Russian ties simply wasn't a very big deal back then, as hard as that may be to remember now.
@plansix [quote] These are all very good points. The next election, I will be voting with this experience in mind.
@opisska [quote] Platforms are the primary part of evaluating any candidate. I always thought Trump was ethically challenged (Trump University, stiffing contractors) and not very bright (as you said, every time he spoke). On the other hand, I agreed with him on the main issues (tax reform, wall, immigration reform, trade deals). My alternative was someone who I considered intelligent but just as crooked and whose platform I disagreed with in the extreme.
I know I am five pages late due to timezones, but .. wait! You actually agreed on the wall? I was a little expecting that you could challenge the idiot part (glad you didn't) and started thinking what would be a good example - and the wall came up rather obviously. I mean even if you discarded his incoherent speech as a persona that some voters like for some reason, then the sole fact that a highly visible part of his platform was a childish, unrealistic, useless and even harmful (ecologically and to local people) penis compensation, speaks volumes about who he is ...
Anyway, good that you said that you are willing to learn from these elections. More people like that! I just thinm that all the information was there already, but what is the point of beating people over it, really ...
I've lived close to the US southern border almost my whole life. There were over a million and a half illegal immigrants in my state as of 2006, and that number has certainly gone up since then. This manifests itself in very real cultural change. Imagine seeing the communities you grew up in being overrun by foreigners who don't even speak the language, much less share the same cultural traditions as you. They don't assimilate. It is impossible to have immigrants assimilate into the US if they can't even speak English. The situation would not be such a problem if the more than ten million illegal Latin American immigrants were highly skilled workers, but instead most of them are only able to do manual labor.
Anchor babies are a real problem too. The current situation is one where pregnant women sneak over the border and try to evade Border Patrol until they can give birth on U.S. soil, thereby guaranteeing their child American citizenship. This also provides the mother with a pathway to citizenship herself, simply by having the child inside the borders of the United States. You might ask who voted for this ridiculous situation. In fact, Congress has never enacted any such law. I actually can't find any convincing legal basis online. I did find a couple of arguments that the justification stemmed from particular readings of the 14th amendment, but that was obviously bullshit, because Congress had to pass a special act in 1924 to explicitly grant US citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States. So if the citizenship status of Native American kids was in question in 1924, the 14th amendment clearly doesn't grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreign nationals who only have a temporary visa in the U.S. To sum up: the current anchor baby situation is totally nuts and I can't even figure out how it started / what the legal basis is.
The U.S. needs a much stricter immigration system. Copying Canada's merit based system would be a good start. To candidate Trump's credit, he was the only person in either primary even willing to raise these issues. The mass importation of the Third World has got to end. It is destroying the social fabric of this country.
And the wall is the solution? What about first dealing with the absurd situation where you know that you have that'll many illegals, you even know roughly where they are, but mysteriously, they somehow can't be extradited? Even when some law enforcement has hold of them but they just don't happen to be the one interested in immigrants? Or just solving the very problem of birthright that you mention. I just think that if given the option to deal with a problem by fixing up a couple of legalities or by building thousands of miles of a barrier across unaccessible country, the first thing should be tried first. I am not criticizing stricter immigration here, that is a question of choice (I wouldn't chose it, but that's not the point), but the wall is absurd.
I agree that the legal loopholes should be fixed first. It's just that laws alone don't work vs people with no regard for the legal process. And from what I understand, even the highest cost estimates for a wall are 0.5% - 1% of the U.S. annual budget. That's a small price to pay for vastly increased border security that cannot simply be abolished by executive fiat as soon as political winds change.
Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
I know I am five pages late due to timezones, but .. wait! You actually agreed on the wall? I was a little expecting that you could challenge the idiot part (glad you didn't) and started thinking what would be a good example - and the wall came up rather obviously. I mean even if you discarded his incoherent speech as a persona that some voters like for some reason, then the sole fact that a highly visible part of his platform was a childish, unrealistic, useless and even harmful (ecologically and to local people) penis compensation, speaks volumes about who he is ...
Anyway, good that you said that you are willing to learn from these elections. More people like that! I just thinm that all the information was there already, but what is the point of beating people over it, really ...
I've lived close to the US southern border almost my whole life. There were over a million and a half illegal immigrants in my state as of 2006, and that number has certainly gone up since then. This manifests itself in very real cultural change. Imagine seeing the communities you grew up in being overrun by foreigners who don't even speak the language, much less share the same cultural traditions as you. They don't assimilate. It is impossible to have immigrants assimilate into the US if they can't even speak English. The situation would not be such a problem if the more than ten million illegal Latin American immigrants were highly skilled workers, but instead most of them are only able to do manual labor.
Anchor babies are a real problem too. The current situation is one where pregnant women sneak over the border and try to evade Border Patrol until they can give birth on U.S. soil, thereby guaranteeing their child American citizenship. This also provides the mother with a pathway to citizenship herself, simply by having the child inside the borders of the United States. You might ask who voted for this ridiculous situation. In fact, Congress has never enacted any such law. I actually can't find any convincing legal basis online. I did find a couple of arguments that the justification stemmed from particular readings of the 14th amendment, but that was obviously bullshit, because Congress had to pass a special act in 1924 to explicitly grant US citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States. So if the citizenship status of Native American kids was in question in 1924, the 14th amendment clearly doesn't grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreign nationals who only have a temporary visa in the U.S. To sum up: the current anchor baby situation is totally nuts and I can't even figure out how it started / what the legal basis is.
The U.S. needs a much stricter immigration system. Copying Canada's merit based system would be a good start. To candidate Trump's credit, he was the only person in either primary even willing to raise these issues. The mass importation of the Third World has got to end. It is destroying the social fabric of this country.
And the wall is the solution? What about first dealing with the absurd situation where you know that you have that'll many illegals, you even know roughly where they are, but mysteriously, they somehow can't be extradited? Even when some law enforcement has hold of them but they just don't happen to be the one interested in immigrants? Or just solving the very problem of birthright that you mention. I just think that if given the option to deal with a problem by fixing up a couple of legalities or by building thousands of miles of a barrier across unaccessible country, the first thing should be tried first. I am not criticizing stricter immigration here, that is a question of choice (I wouldn't chose it, but that's not the point), but the wall is absurd.
I agree that the legal loopholes should be fixed first. It's just that laws alone don't work vs people with no regard for the legal process. And from what I understand, even the highest cost estimates for a wall are 0.5% - 1% of the U.S. annual budget. That's a small price to pay for vastly increased border security that cannot simply be abolished by executive fiat as soon as political winds change.
Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
LOL Great joke.
That Portuguese sense of absurdist taking it to the extreme humour. Love it.
It's pretty annoying that people assume that securing the border is as simple as "herp derp build a wall" and then it's fixed. It turns out securing the border is super complicated.
A few basic things to keep in mind:
1. Large sections of the boarder are already impassable, so there's no reason to spend billions of dollars building a wall through them. 2. Boarder agents (who generally love Trump) don't want a huge concrete wall on the boarder. It would obscure their vision and make them less safe. 3. A wall is pretty easy to go under/over. 4. Building a wall would require using eminent domain to seize large swaths of land. Currently there is litigation which has been outstanding for 10 years+ from the last time the federal government tried to appropriate private land to build sections of wall. 5. Most of the immigrants crossing the southern border these days are asylum seekers from Central America, and they are legally allowed to cross the border to petition for asylum. 6. In the past, fortifying sections of the boarder has caused more unauthorized immigrants to settle permanently in the US. As long as they can cross back and forth relatively freely they tend to do so based on the season and what work is available. If a wall goes up making this more difficult they just stay in the US. 7. Something like 40% of unauthorized residents in the US are people who came here legally and then overstayed their visas. Building a wall does nothing about them.
Given all this, spending billions of dollars on a wall seems pretty dumb. Even assuming locking down the border is a worthy goal, it would be better to just to spend all that money on hiring new INS agents.
Edit: I guess this is all moot though because the purpose of the wall isn't to secure the boarder, but to make culturally insecure white people in Iowa feel safer. *sigh*
I know I am five pages late due to timezones, but .. wait! You actually agreed on the wall? I was a little expecting that you could challenge the idiot part (glad you didn't) and started thinking what would be a good example - and the wall came up rather obviously. I mean even if you discarded his incoherent speech as a persona that some voters like for some reason, then the sole fact that a highly visible part of his platform was a childish, unrealistic, useless and even harmful (ecologically and to local people) penis compensation, speaks volumes about who he is ...
Anyway, good that you said that you are willing to learn from these elections. More people like that! I just thinm that all the information was there already, but what is the point of beating people over it, really ...
I've lived close to the US southern border almost my whole life. There were over a million and a half illegal immigrants in my state as of 2006, and that number has certainly gone up since then. This manifests itself in very real cultural change. Imagine seeing the communities you grew up in being overrun by foreigners who don't even speak the language, much less share the same cultural traditions as you. They don't assimilate. It is impossible to have immigrants assimilate into the US if they can't even speak English. The situation would not be such a problem if the more than ten million illegal Latin American immigrants were highly skilled workers, but instead most of them are only able to do manual labor.
Anchor babies are a real problem too. The current situation is one where pregnant women sneak over the border and try to evade Border Patrol until they can give birth on U.S. soil, thereby guaranteeing their child American citizenship. This also provides the mother with a pathway to citizenship herself, simply by having the child inside the borders of the United States. You might ask who voted for this ridiculous situation. In fact, Congress has never enacted any such law. I actually can't find any convincing legal basis online. I did find a couple of arguments that the justification stemmed from particular readings of the 14th amendment, but that was obviously bullshit, because Congress had to pass a special act in 1924 to explicitly grant US citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States. So if the citizenship status of Native American kids was in question in 1924, the 14th amendment clearly doesn't grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreign nationals who only have a temporary visa in the U.S. To sum up: the current anchor baby situation is totally nuts and I can't even figure out how it started / what the legal basis is.
The U.S. needs a much stricter immigration system. Copying Canada's merit based system would be a good start. To candidate Trump's credit, he was the only person in either primary even willing to raise these issues. The mass importation of the Third World has got to end. It is destroying the social fabric of this country.
And the wall is the solution? What about first dealing with the absurd situation where you know that you have that'll many illegals, you even know roughly where they are, but mysteriously, they somehow can't be extradited? Even when some law enforcement has hold of them but they just don't happen to be the one interested in immigrants? Or just solving the very problem of birthright that you mention. I just think that if given the option to deal with a problem by fixing up a couple of legalities or by building thousands of miles of a barrier across unaccessible country, the first thing should be tried first. I am not criticizing stricter immigration here, that is a question of choice (I wouldn't chose it, but that's not the point), but the wall is absurd.
I agree that the legal loopholes should be fixed first. It's just that laws alone don't work vs people with no regard for the legal process. And from what I understand, even the highest cost estimates for a wall are 0.5% - 1% of the U.S. annual budget. That's a small price to pay for vastly increased border security that cannot simply be abolished by executive fiat as soon as political winds change.
Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
Sometimes the parody is hard to separate from the sincere.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today establishing a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system, multiple senior administration officials tell ABC News.
The officials say Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be announced as Chair and Vice Chair of the ‘Presidential Commission on Election Integrity’ in a press release today. It's not clear whether the White House will allow coverage of the order signing.
The commission, which will include Republicans and Democrats, will be tasked with studying "vulnerabilities" in U.S. voting systems and potential effects on "improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting," according to one official with knowledge of the announcement.
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Trump claimed widespread voter fraud explained why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes. To date, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, but they have promised an investigation
On May 11 2017 18:45 TheLordofAwesome wrote: [quote] I've lived close to the US southern border almost my whole life. There were over a million and a half illegal immigrants in my state as of 2006, and that number has certainly gone up since then. This manifests itself in very real cultural change. Imagine seeing the communities you grew up in being overrun by foreigners who don't even speak the language, much less share the same cultural traditions as you. They don't assimilate. It is impossible to have immigrants assimilate into the US if they can't even speak English. The situation would not be such a problem if the more than ten million illegal Latin American immigrants were highly skilled workers, but instead most of them are only able to do manual labor.
Anchor babies are a real problem too. The current situation is one where pregnant women sneak over the border and try to evade Border Patrol until they can give birth on U.S. soil, thereby guaranteeing their child American citizenship. This also provides the mother with a pathway to citizenship herself, simply by having the child inside the borders of the United States. You might ask who voted for this ridiculous situation. In fact, Congress has never enacted any such law. I actually can't find any convincing legal basis online. I did find a couple of arguments that the justification stemmed from particular readings of the 14th amendment, but that was obviously bullshit, because Congress had to pass a special act in 1924 to explicitly grant US citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States. So if the citizenship status of Native American kids was in question in 1924, the 14th amendment clearly doesn't grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreign nationals who only have a temporary visa in the U.S. To sum up: the current anchor baby situation is totally nuts and I can't even figure out how it started / what the legal basis is.
The U.S. needs a much stricter immigration system. Copying Canada's merit based system would be a good start. To candidate Trump's credit, he was the only person in either primary even willing to raise these issues. The mass importation of the Third World has got to end. It is destroying the social fabric of this country.
And the wall is the solution? What about first dealing with the absurd situation where you know that you have that'll many illegals, you even know roughly where they are, but mysteriously, they somehow can't be extradited? Even when some law enforcement has hold of them but they just don't happen to be the one interested in immigrants? Or just solving the very problem of birthright that you mention. I just think that if given the option to deal with a problem by fixing up a couple of legalities or by building thousands of miles of a barrier across unaccessible country, the first thing should be tried first. I am not criticizing stricter immigration here, that is a question of choice (I wouldn't chose it, but that's not the point), but the wall is absurd.
I agree that the legal loopholes should be fixed first. It's just that laws alone don't work vs people with no regard for the legal process. And from what I understand, even the highest cost estimates for a wall are 0.5% - 1% of the U.S. annual budget. That's a small price to pay for vastly increased border security that cannot simply be abolished by executive fiat as soon as political winds change.
Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
Sometimes the parody is hard to separate from the sincere.
I was being sincere. Educate me on why what I said is wrong.
On May 11 2017 23:01 Mercy13 wrote: It's pretty annoying that people assume that securing the border is as simple as "herp derp build a wall" and then it's fixed. It turns out securing the border is super complicated.
A few basic things to keep in mind:
1. Large sections of the boarder are already impassable, so there's no reason to spend billions of dollars building a wall through them. 2. Boarder agents (who generally love Trump) don't want a huge concrete wall on the boarder. It would obscure their vision and make them less safe. 3. A wall is pretty easy to go under/over. 4. Building a wall would require using eminent domain to seize large swaths of land. Currently there is litigation which has been outstanding for 10 years+ from the last time the federal government tried to appropriate private land to build sections of wall. 5. Most of the immigrants crossing the southern border these days are asylum seekers from Central America, and they are legally allowed to cross the border to petition for asylum. 6. In the past, fortifying sections of the boarder has caused more unauthorized immigrants to settle permanently in the US. As long as they can cross back and forth relatively freely they tend to do so based on the season and what work is available. If a wall goes up making this more difficult they just stay in the US. 7. Something like 40% of unauthorized residents in the US are people who came here legally and then overstayed their visas. Building a wall does nothing about them.
Given all this, spending billions of dollars on a wall seems pretty dumb. Even assuming locking down the border is a worthy goal, it would be better to just to spend all that money on hiring new INS agents.
Easier to get over than say, walking or driving across it? It's expensive and time consuming, but worth it given the size of the problem and the state of our entitlement programs. I'm also wanting to stop asylum petitioners that are ordered to appear for a hearing and don't show up.
Tack on some more billions for Visa reform. Let's call it comprehensive immigration reform and piss off the right people, to be honest.
San Diego's got a triple Wall/fence in some areas. Migrants moved around to easier areas to cross to the east. Strangely, they didn't think it was so easy to get over to change their attempts elsewhere. And if you didn't get the conflict of interest, border agents may see department cuts if the wall reduces the numbers needed to patrol large areas. Second strange coincidence is they voted for the guy that loudly supported the wall, showing maybe there's mixed sentiment.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today establishing a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system, multiple senior administration officials tell ABC News.
The officials say Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be announced as Chair and Vice Chair of the ‘Presidential Commission on Election Integrity’ in a press release today. It's not clear whether the White House will allow coverage of the order signing.
The commission, which will include Republicans and Democrats, will be tasked with studying "vulnerabilities" in U.S. voting systems and potential effects on "improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting," according to one official with knowledge of the announcement.
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Trump claimed widespread voter fraud explained why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes. To date, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, but they have promised an investigation
And the wall is the solution? What about first dealing with the absurd situation where you know that you have that'll many illegals, you even know roughly where they are, but mysteriously, they somehow can't be extradited? Even when some law enforcement has hold of them but they just don't happen to be the one interested in immigrants? Or just solving the very problem of birthright that you mention. I just think that if given the option to deal with a problem by fixing up a couple of legalities or by building thousands of miles of a barrier across unaccessible country, the first thing should be tried first. I am not criticizing stricter immigration here, that is a question of choice (I wouldn't chose it, but that's not the point), but the wall is absurd.
I agree that the legal loopholes should be fixed first. It's just that laws alone don't work vs people with no regard for the legal process. And from what I understand, even the highest cost estimates for a wall are 0.5% - 1% of the U.S. annual budget. That's a small price to pay for vastly increased border security that cannot simply be abolished by executive fiat as soon as political winds change.
Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
Sometimes the parody is hard to separate from the sincere.
I was being sincere. Educate me on why what I said is wrong.
Breaking immigration law is a crime. Equivalent numbers of Americans are not exchanged for the new crop of illegal immigrants, so one new lawbreaker still increase rape and DUI injuries. Try telling the mother of a dead child that she was one of many new crimes by illegal immigrants, but at least the percentage is lower! I'm sure she will be comforted by your brilliant use of statistics.
On May 11 2017 20:01 TheLordofAwesome wrote: [quote] I agree that the legal loopholes should be fixed first. It's just that laws alone don't work vs people with no regard for the legal process. And from what I understand, even the highest cost estimates for a wall are 0.5% - 1% of the U.S. annual budget. That's a small price to pay for vastly increased border security that cannot simply be abolished by executive fiat as soon as political winds change.
Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
Sometimes the parody is hard to separate from the sincere.
I was being sincere. Educate me on why what I said is wrong.
Breaking immigration law is a crime. Equivalent numbers of Americans are not exchanged for the new crop of illegal immigrants, so one new lawbreaker still increase rape and DUI injuries. Try telling the mother of a dead child that she was one of many new crimes by illegal immigrants, but at least the percentage is lower! I'm sure she will be comforted by your brilliant use of statistics.
Breaking immigration law hurts no one and the discussion here was clearly about violent crime or crime that actually makes natives' lives worse. When assessing crime statistics from the perspective of how safe one is in a country you obviously have to use relative figures, which is why they're pretty much always expressed that way when doing any sort of meaningful comparison. If you want to figure out how safe you are, you have to look at "what are the chances of me getting raped/killed today?". Those chances decrease with illegal immigration because they commit fewer crimes per 100 000 people.
I thought this was a policy debate not an exercise in cheap demagoguery. If you're actually concerned about grieving mothers, why not start with gun control?
On May 11 2017 23:01 Mercy13 wrote: It's pretty annoying that people assume that securing the border is as simple as "herp derp build a wall" and then it's fixed. It turns out securing the border is super complicated.
A few basic things to keep in mind:
1. Large sections of the boarder are already impassable, so there's no reason to spend billions of dollars building a wall through them. 2. Boarder agents (who generally love Trump) don't want a huge concrete wall on the boarder. It would obscure their vision and make them less safe. 3. A wall is pretty easy to go under/over. 4. Building a wall would require using eminent domain to seize large swaths of land. Currently there is litigation which has been outstanding for 10 years+ from the last time the federal government tried to appropriate private land to build sections of wall. 5. Most of the immigrants crossing the southern border these days are asylum seekers from Central America, and they are legally allowed to cross the border to petition for asylum. 6. In the past, fortifying sections of the boarder has caused more unauthorized immigrants to settle permanently in the US. As long as they can cross back and forth relatively freely they tend to do so based on the season and what work is available. If a wall goes up making this more difficult they just stay in the US. 7. Something like 40% of unauthorized residents in the US are people who came here legally and then overstayed their visas. Building a wall does nothing about them.
Given all this, spending billions of dollars on a wall seems pretty dumb. Even assuming locking down the border is a worthy goal, it would be better to just to spend all that money on hiring new INS agents.
Easier to get over than say, walking or driving across it? It's expensive and time consuming, but worth it given the size of the problem and the state of our entitlement programs. I'm also wanting to stop asylum petitioners that are ordered to appear for a hearing and don't show up.
Tack on some more billions for Visa reform. Let's call it comprehensive immigration reform and piss off the right people, to be honest.
San Diego's got a triple Wall/fence in some areas. Migrants moved around to easier areas to cross to the east. Strangely, they didn't think it was so easy to get over to change their attempts elsewhere. And if you didn't get the conflict of interest, border agents may see department cuts if the wall reduces the numbers needed to patrol large areas. Second strange coincidence is they voted for the guy that loudly supported the wall, showing maybe there's mixed sentiment.
It might make sense to increase fencing in certain areas, particularly urban ones, but trying to build a giant concrete wall across the entire border is beyond stupid.
On May 11 2017 20:01 TheLordofAwesome wrote: [quote] I agree that the legal loopholes should be fixed first. It's just that laws alone don't work vs people with no regard for the legal process. And from what I understand, even the highest cost estimates for a wall are 0.5% - 1% of the U.S. annual budget. That's a small price to pay for vastly increased border security that cannot simply be abolished by executive fiat as soon as political winds change.
Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
Sometimes the parody is hard to separate from the sincere.
I was being sincere. Educate me on why what I said is wrong.
Breaking immigration law is a crime. Equivalent numbers of Americans are not exchanged for the new crop of illegal immigrants, so one new lawbreaker still increase rape and DUI injuries. Try telling the mother of a dead child that she was one of many new crimes by illegal immigrants, but at least the percentage is lower! I'm sure she will be comforted by your brilliant use of statistics.
You are attempting to appeal to emotion when you can't argue with facts, SAD! Honestly though it should be easier to get immigrants over so they can do all the jobs that no American would do anyway. And I've always thought illegal immigrants should face harsher punishment than just deporting. The guy being deported 15 times probably should've been put to death around the 3rd time or so. At the same time with current immigration policy most farms will go out of business without illegals.
On May 11 2017 21:34 Danglars wrote: [quote] Just to add to what you're saying, we have a local story here that is riling people up. A man deported 15 times put a six year old in critical condition in a DUI crash. The story was all over the top-of-the-hour news reports on the radio. An anecdote to be sure. The southern border is just that porous. You erect a barrier that makes crossing much more difficult at because the cracks in the system are just too wide.
I would argue that there is no barrier we could create that can stop a man that is willing to be deported 15 times. As others have said, oceans do not stop illegal migrants. And on a similar line of thinking, contractors often say “you can’t stop water” when it comes to drainage and preventing flooding in houses. If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at some point we should have just incarcerated him. Maybe around deportation number 8-14.
The wall doesn't stop it, but it may reduce it.
Oceans only slow people down. Deserts only slow people down. Mountains only slow people down. How many billions are we willing to pay for a slight reduction while not overhauling our immigration system.
Several billion in fact. Slow down every attempted re-entry and make the success rate way lower (unless you think patrolling a wall is inferior to patrolling no wall) Waste more months of your life attempting. Save rape victims and DUI injuries because guys like Constantino are still attempting his 3rd border crossing at age 38. Instead of having made it across 15 times. And you'll have a nice big government big business president perfectly willing to negotiate guest worker visas for things like seasonal farm labor.
But no, when you say "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, at so me point we should have just incarcerated him" you meant "If this person was dangerous and kept coming back into the country, the stupidest thing would be to make it harder to do so."
Crime rates are lower among illegal immigrants than native americans, so you are increasing chances of rape and DUI injuries and making americans less safe by building the wall.
Sometimes the parody is hard to separate from the sincere.
I was being sincere. Educate me on why what I said is wrong.
Breaking immigration law is a crime. Equivalent numbers of Americans are not exchanged for the new crop of illegal immigrants, so one new lawbreaker still increase rape and DUI injuries. Try telling the mother of a dead child that she was one of many new crimes by illegal immigrants, but at least the percentage is lower! I'm sure she will be comforted by your brilliant use of statistics.
I thought this was a policy debate not an exercise in cheap demagoguery. If you're actually concerned about grieving mothers, why not start with gun control?
Ah see that is where you went wrong. There is little(no) place for solid policy debate on the internet.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today establishing a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system, multiple senior administration officials tell ABC News.
The officials say Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be announced as Chair and Vice Chair of the ‘Presidential Commission on Election Integrity’ in a press release today. It's not clear whether the White House will allow coverage of the order signing.
The commission, which will include Republicans and Democrats, will be tasked with studying "vulnerabilities" in U.S. voting systems and potential effects on "improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting," according to one official with knowledge of the announcement.
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Trump claimed widespread voter fraud explained why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes. To date, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, but they have promised an investigation
'We're in trouble boss' 'Damn what do we have left for distraction' 'not much' 'Well do the voter fraud thing again' 'But nobody found anything that points to...' 'MAKE IT HAPPEN'
The Dakota Access pipeline has suffered its first leak, outraging indigenous groups who have long warned that the project poses a threat to the environment.
The $3.8bn oil pipeline, which sparked international protests last year and is not yet fully operational, spilled 84 gallons of crude oil at a South Dakota pump station, according to government regulators.
Part one: In Montana, Native Americans fear a leak could destroy their way of life, but local politicians worry about the threat of protesters above all else
Although state officials said the 6 April leak was contained and quickly cleaned, critics of the project said the spill, which occurred as the pipeline is in the final stages of preparing to transport oil, raises fresh concerns about the potential hazards to waterways and Native American sites.
“They keep telling everybody that it is state of the art, that leaks won’t happen, that nothing can go wrong,” said Jan Hasselman, a lawyer for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which has been fighting the project for years. “It’s always been false. They haven’t even turned the thing on and it’s shown to be false.”
The pipeline, scheduled to transport oil from North Dakota to Illinois, inspired massive demonstrations in 2016 and was dealt a major blow when the Obama administration denied a key permit for the project toward the end of his presidency. But shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the new administration ordered the revival of the pipeline and worked to expedite the final stage of construction.
The Standing Rock tribe, which has fought the pipeline corporation Energy Transfer Partners and the US government in court, has argued that the project requires a full environmental study to assess the risks of the pipeline. But under Trump, who has close financial ties to the oil company, the project recently completed construction by the Standing Rock tribe’s reservation in North Dakota and has been loading oil in preparation for a full launch.
The April spill, which was first uncovered this week by a local South Dakota reporter, illustrates the need for the more robust environmental assessment that the tribe has long demanded, said Hasselman.
“It doesn’t give us any pleasure to say, ‘I told you so.’ But we have said from the beginning that it’s not a matter of if, but when,” the Earthjustice attorney told the Guardian on Wednesday. “Pipelines leak and they spill. It’s just what happens.”
Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist with the South Dakota department of environment and natural resources, said the spill was relatively minor and was caused by a mechanical failure at a surge pump.
The frustrating thing about these leaks (I realize 84 gallons is basically nothing) is that none of them need to happen. There are plenty of pipes in this world that transport some extremely sensitive material. These pipes do not leak under any circumstances. There are ways to make leak-immune pipes, ignoring things like intentional destruction, but these cheap solutions are all we ever do. I wouldn't mind these pipelines if they were manufactured in a way that preventing leaks.