ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

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RPGlitch wrote:

Well, that's the thing isn't it?

The problem is we have a group of people who have convinced themselves, that he is ruining our institutions, making the country more unsafe, or is secretly some racist.

But, when you look at a lot of his actual policies, its not that at all.

Most of the stuff is common sense. And some of the policies are even left leaning.

Its nothing at all what you hear from the news.

I think this sort of cuts to the heart of our disagreement.

You're saying, "Look at all these policies passed under Trump, they're all common-sense good things."

And I'm saying, "Sure, but that's totally normal stuff that any semi-competent government would pass and you could make similar lists for any president."

Part of this is selection bias - the news media covers things that are controversial, and "the government is working as intended" is not exactly a hot news story.

But there's a reason for that selection, and that reason is the other part: this is basically the "noise" of governance (in the "signal and noise" sense). Congress passing uncontroversial laws that are basically continuations of existing policy, feel-good executive orders that don't do much and general functionality of government... This is what we expect from government. In fact, it'd be news if we didn't see that. That's why it's noise. Praising Trump for this is akin for praising Trump for not shutting down the government, or praising Trump for keeping planes in the air.

The signal? Well, that's significant, out-of-the-ordinary stuff. The president's response to a natural or foreign policy disaster is terrible? That's signal. The president passes significant legislation that will have a meaningful impact on the country and its citizens? That's signal. The Department of Energy basically cannot do its job due to intentional purges? That's signal. We face our first-ever government shutdown when the president and congress all share a party? That's signal.

And while the noise has been largely positive (as one would expect), it's the signal that's actually interesting. And the signal... The signal has been really ugly.

And I guarantee this happened under Obama, too. Which do you remember - the multitude of small, uncontroversial bills passed under Obama (there are literally tens of thousands of them) or that the Obamacare website was an unusable mess early on?

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Do you have a source for this? As far as I read, there was no data for how Bush and Obama separated the children.

Admittedly, all I have is numerous experts on immigration claiming that this is the case, and documents from within the DHS documenting that this is a new policy signed off by the administration, and Trump announcing the change in policy publicly. I think that's more than enough, but if you want specific data on how many children were separated from their families under Bush/Obama, I do not have that data.

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The only new thing Trump did, was that he made it a formal policy for all detention facilities, a policy which only lasted for 3 months.

This shift from "doing it when it makes sense due to fear of trafficking/because the parent is breaking other laws and has to be detained" to "doing it to literally every family crossing the border" is what I'm talking about.

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RPGlitch wrote:

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

In fact, we've since received signed documents from DHS that prove that the family separation program was intentionally meant as deterrence - showing not only that this was a clear break with Obama-era policy, but also that the cruelty was the point.

I'm pretty sure the point was to decrease migrants, not inflict undue cruelty on people.

This is such an odd hair to split. "Our policy of being as cruel as possible to immigrants isn't for the sake of cruelty, it's aimed at deterring immigration!" Yeah - by doing everything you can to hurt those who try to immigrate. And it has to be cruel, because that serves as a deterrent. Okay...

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All illegal migrants are putting themselves and children at risk by crossing the border illegally. They are going to get hurt or die. Most of them fail to get in.

And most of them know this. Why do you think they try anyways? Many of them are fleeing violence or death in their home countries - violence and death that we helped cause. It should come as no surprise that some of them end up dead when we send them back. The idea that we're somehow making things better for them by scooping them up, separating them, and then deporting them sans kids is... well, fucking monstrous.

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And those that do get in put an undue strain on the communities involved (as we can see in Europe).

I feel like the people pushing far-right anti-immigrant propaganda (case in point: the ludicrously dishonest Einzelfall map) may also share some blame when it comes to the "undue strain" here. The reality is that there is a lot of bullshit spewed about the status of european immigration by the far right, and most of it is just that - bullshit. It's not true. No-go zones, for example.

Hell, the entire conversation is full of this kind of rabid nonsense. Question - does the best available data show that illegal immigrants reduce wages for natives? Do they "take our jobs"? Are they more likely to be criminal if we except immigration crimes? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions... Well, at best the data doesn't really support that answer conclusively, and at worst what data we do have shows the exact opposite. (Lookin' at you, Raycheetah.) The debate has become so polluted with nonsense that people are talking about a wall across the southern border as though it were somehow a policy proposal worth taking seriously, rather than, as Christopher Hicks put it, "a vortex of stupidity that’s sucking in everything it touches".

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RPGlitch wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You're advocating a policy of kicking people while they're down in order to make a perilous journey even more perilous. If that isn't an outright hateful approach to solving the problem, it is at best coldly contemptuous.

Yeah, no.

You break the law (crossing the border illegally). You get jailed. You do it again. You get a harsher punishment (family separation). That's hardly kicking people down.

Do you actually not understand Trump's zero tolerance policy?

If a person shows up at the border without the paperwork to enter the country legally (e.g. no passport), and they ask for asylum from oppression in their home country, there is a lengthy court process by which that application is accepted or denied. While waiting for a hearing, it used to be customary to release asylum-seekers into the general U.S. population (because deporting someone back to their home country when they say their home country is oppressing them is obviously cruel), and as you might imagine, many would not return for their hearings. Because of this, bonds were customary — asylum-seekers uses to be detained unless they could put up the cash, which was lost if they didn't show. A lot of them didn't show anyway. This doesn't happen anymore under Trump's new policy — bonds are rarely granted at all. Now, basically all asylum seekers are detained as long as possible.

You've incorrectly assumed that the people being detained have all been arrested under probable cause of either illegal entry or visa overstay. In some facilities, perhaps. But the detention centers along the border are full of people who showed up at the border seeking asylum and haven't broken a single law. The worst one might say of them is that they suspect the majority of such asylum claims are bullshit, but without evidence of probable cause supporting that suspicion in a specific case, there is no evidence that asylum-seeker committed a crime.

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Raycheetah wrote:

Disregarding any other varieties of crime these scofflaws may ultimately commit, their ongoing presence in the US routinely requires identity theft and other forms of fraud, in order to function within our socio-economic structure.

Not exactly victimless crimes.

Um, nope, that doesn't pass the smell test. Seeing as I know a thing or two about identity theft.

I'm not seeing some obviously Hispanic dude, real name Carlos Gutierrez, sitting at a job interview and handing over a driver's license that says Paul Kowalski. Identify theft is of course older than cybercrime, but in essence it's a cybercrime; the things one does with it typically involve online, phone, or snail-mail transactions, because such transactions conceal the dissonance between the age, race and gender of the victim with that of the perpetrator.

So unless there's some crime wave I've never heard of, of young Hispanic male Americans having their identities stolen by some hacker who then redistributes them to young, Hispanic male Mexicans — because the immigrants themselves aren't usually going to have the skills or equipment, and the idea of actually selling stolen identities, rather than simply abusing their credit, is baffling in and of itself — then yeah, I don't believe this at all. Sounds like cherrypick news ("hey Joel Pollack, I found that one illegal immigrant identity thief you wanted!"), not real news.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Do you actually not understand Trump's zero tolerance policy?

Just a reminder that Trump is simply following a law which was implemented in 1997.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You've incorrectly assumed that the people being detained have all been arrested under probable cause of either illegal entry or visa overstay. In some facilities, perhaps. But the detention centers along the border are full of people who showed up at the border seeking asylum and haven't broken a single law. The worst one might say of them is that they suspect the majority of such asylum claims are bullshit, but without evidence of probable cause supporting that suspicion in a specific case, there is no evidence that asylum-seeker committed a crime.

When the asylum grant rate is only 20%, you gotta ask yourself how many of those claims are legit. But maybe The System™ is failing too.

I was going to say "I suspect that the majority of asylum claims are bullshit," but I got tired of Googling. Still, we're not talking about criminals here, we're talking about applicants. For the most part, unqualified applicants, but applicants all the same.

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Xavderion wrote:

Just a reminder that Trump is simply following a law which was implemented in 1997.

Right. This must be why Jeff Sessions announced the policy change in 2018, internal DHS documents confirmed that there was a policy change, and immigration experts are saying that the mass separation policy is a result of the administration's policy change.

All of this makes the most sense if nothing has legally changed since 1997.

Just like it makes perfect sense to claim that white nationalists hate Trump.

Tell me, in your little universe, is Kitava the act 1 boss and Merveil the act 10 boss?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Raycheetah wrote:

Disregarding any other varieties of crime these scofflaws may ultimately commit, their ongoing presence in the US routinely requires identity theft and other forms of fraud, in order to function within our socio-economic structure.

Not exactly victimless crimes.

Um, nope, that doesn't pass the smell test. Seeing as I know a thing or two about identity theft.

I'm not seeing some obviously Hispanic dude, real name Carlos Gutierrez, sitting at a job interview and handing over a driver's license that says Paul Kowalski. Identify theft is of course older than cybercrime, but in essence it's a cybercrime; the things one does with it typically involve online, phone, or snail-mail transactions, because such transactions conceal the dissonance between the age, race and gender of the victim with that of the perpetrator.

So unless there's some crime wave I've never heard of, of young Hispanic male Americans having their identities stolen by some hacker who then redistributes them to young, Hispanic male Mexicans — because the immigrants themselves aren't usually going to have the skills or equipment, and the idea of actually selling stolen identities, rather than simply abusing their credit, is baffling in and of itself — then yeah, I don't believe this at all. Sounds like cherrypick news ("hey Joel Pollack, I found that one illegal immigrant identity thief you wanted!"), not real news.

Been going on for years. This is a June 2006 article from that cesspit of right-wing agit-prop, NBC News:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13105209/ns/us_news-security/t/fake-immigration-id-sellers-unfazed-threats/#.XLXISdh7mUk

Social Security numbers don't necessarily have names directly attached to them when used, and certainly DO cause trouble when someone misappropriates one to facilitate their illicit presence in the US. Fake driver's licenses may not be identity theft, but they are fraudulent documents which not only open doors otherwise closed to illegals, but also put them on the road in traffic they have not proven themselves to be qualified to drive in, a definite safety hazard (not to mention the classic "swoop and squat" accident insurance scheme popular among criminal aliens for years).

Now can you smell it? =9[.]9=

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I was going to say "I suspect that the majority of asylum claims are bullshit," but I got tired of Googling. Still, we're not talking about criminals here, we're talking about applicants. For the most part, unqualified applicants, but applicants all the same.

During Trump administration.

"
2017 asylum rates
• Grant rate: 20.22 percent

• Denial rate: 33.51 percent

• Other closure rate: 27.66 percent

• Administrative closure rate: 18.61 percent"


It was 31% during Obama Administration in 2016.


Trump has said that migrants are abusing the system. He tighten immigration policy, narrow the path to asylum and limited processing of these cases at the border aimed at restricting asylum claims. Pending cases have increased by nearly 50 percent since Trump took office in 2017. Immigration Court Backlog Surpasses One Million Cases. Good luck with the backlog. Maybe that is exactly what he want.

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deathflower wrote:

Pending cases have increased by nearly 50 percent since Trump took office in 2017. Immigration Court Backlog Surpasses One Million Cases. Good luck with the backlog. Maybe that is exactly what he want.

"Back when Obama was in office, I'd go to the grocery store and 5 people would be ahead of me in line. Now under Trump I go and 7 people are ahead of me. We should impeach."

Your whole post reeks of Whataboutism. It's pathetic how you defend Obama. Not only is it factually wrong, it's strategically wrong — he's not in the position anymore, so even a successful defense is moot.

Trump's results aren't satisfactory. Focus on that instead of trying being a cheerleader for someone only marginally different.

That's the number one thing that has always bugged me about "woke" people. Maybe you all are (more) awake now, maybe you are seeing some true things about the nature of our government under Trump — but you're late to the party. Shit's been colossally fucked for a while now. It's as if you've just popped out of the Matrix, naked, covered in pink goo under a sunless daytime sky, and you look at the forest of soot-covered metal towers around you and think to yourself, "I don't remember this from last night, so they must have built this all in the past 8 hours." I guess you can lead eyes to evidence, but you can't make them think.

Do yourself a favor: go pick up Edward Lude's Time to Start Thinking. You'd like it; the author would probably be considered centrist from a Euro perspective, because I read him as center-left. Take a look at the problems of America back in 2012. It's not that there haven't been changes in the past 7 years, but those changes are smaller than you think. (To his credit, Lude even predicted the rise of a "wacko" "like Donald Trump" as the future of the GOP, in a book published during Romney's campaign.)

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

The signal? Well, that's significant, out-of-the-ordinary stuff. The president's response to a natural or foreign policy disaster is terrible?

It was not that out of the ordinary nor was it terrible.

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The Department of Energy basically cannot do its job due to intentional purges? That's signal.

You linked an opinion piece.

Opinion pieces aren't reliable sources of information because they are a personal account of what people think happened at the time.

And by extension an easy way for people to feed misinformation to people without being liable for things they may say (because it's their opinion). Fox News and CNN both do this.

For example, I could have hit a car, and I'm guilty. But in my opinion, that other person hit me. And we are currently going through the legal proceedings.

You can get wildly inaccurate information this way. Be more considerate of the news you consume.

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We face our first-ever government shutdown when the president and congress all share a party? That's signal.

I'm going to assume you are mixing up the dates. And aren't completely ignorant on how shutdowns work.

The first shutdown, was January 22, 2018 via a filibuster by the opposing party, preventing any bill from passing. It had nothing to do with both being the same party.

The second shutdown, in December 22, 2018. was when the democrats took control of the house of representatives.

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Admittedly, all I have is numerous experts on immigration claiming that this is the case, and documents from within the DHS documenting that this is a new policy signed off by the administration, and Trump announcing the change in policy publicly.

I think that's more than enough, but if you want specific data on how many children were separated from their families under Bush/Obama, I do not have that data.

I was looking for the paperwork that said Obama only separated the children to protect against child trafficking or something to that effect, which was what you were claiming.

Otherwise, it seems more plausible to me they just did whatever was most convenient. Cause that's what people tend to do.

For example, it may have been convenient to simply have most kids away from their parents because they'd have to housed kids with several other adults for long periods of time unsupervised. That would put them at risk.

Any number of explanations can fit that narrative. And a short explanation by an 'expert' doesn't always give you the context nor scope of what was actually done.

Trump for example has this written down.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

This is such an odd hair to split. "Our policy of being as cruel as possible to immigrants isn't for the sake of cruelty, it's aimed at deterring immigration!" Yeah - by doing everything you can to hurt those who try to immigrate. And it has to be cruel, because that serves as a deterrent. Okay...

If we are being frank, it's your opinion that its cruel and only for the sake of cruelty.

That was not the statement of DHS on why it was done. Nor was it what really happened.

In case you forgot, the Eighth Amendment covers unusually cruel punishments under the law.

And Trump's law was not struck down for this reason when it was brought to court. It was pushed back on the account of due process, since the procedure did not have records for the children and their families, which would unduly affect those involved.

As it made it difficult for children to communicate with their families, and by extension whatever they needed to do for their court cases.

It had nothing to do with what people think was cruel.

So, when you are done being melodramatic.

We can talk about what is actually happening instead of making things up.

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The idea that we're somehow making things better for them by scooping them up, separating them, and then deporting them sans kids is... well, fucking monstrous.

Well, maybe emotional appeals like this would work, if I didn't think you were full of bullshit on this point.

Migrants in the largest caravans have already claimed they were coming in for economic opportunities, not to escape violence. And many have said to reporters that they were told that bringing children would make it harder to deport them.

I find it disgusting that people are bringing in children to help them break the law. And more retarded there are people stupid enough to think this behavior is a good thing.

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I feel like the people pushing far-right anti-immigrant propaganda (case in point: the ludicrously dishonest Einzelfall map) may also share some blame when it comes to the "undue strain" here.

Every major political European party that I'm aware of has taken steps to ban or significantly reduce migrants coming into their country in the last few years.

It's hardly a far right propaganda at this point. Its called reality.

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The reality is that there is a lot of bullshit spewed about the status of european immigration by the far right, and most of it is just that - bullshit. It's not true. No-go zones, for example.

You are right. There are no such thing as no go zones.

Sweden calls them problem areas.

Police can go to them, but they've been completely overwhelmed by the amount of criminal cases in those areas that its backlogged.

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Hell, the entire conversation is full of this kind of rabid nonsense. Question - does the best available data show that illegal immigrants reduce wages for natives? Do they "take our jobs"? Are they more likely to be criminal if we except immigration crimes? If you answered "yes" to any of those questions... Well, at best the data doesn't really support that answer conclusively, and at worst what data we do have shows the exact opposite.

*sigh*

You are forgetting the study you linked also mentions there was 15,000 extra crimes in Texas, specifically because of illegal immigration.

And that the overall crime in any area with higher immigration goes up, because there are more people in that area.

It's partly why the last four presidents have all been against illegal immigration.

That Bernie Sanders, one of the most socialist candidates, is against illegal immigration.

That the stance of the most influential and largest labor union in the United States, the AFL, is against immigration.

And that the crime statistics for every European country that allowed migrants have all had 20 to 30 year record highs of violent crimes, something your study conveniently leaves out.

When you add more people. You add more crime.

It's why nearly every democrat has all come against Trump for saying he'd just dump thousands of illegals into Sanctuary Cities. If anyone had any common sense, you'd know that would cause a huge influx of crime into the affected areas.

Just on the fact, there are more people coming in.

So. Ignoring all that, I suppose if I was that ignorant on the topic, I could come up with the idea that it was mostly right wing propaganda, and that people were wildly misrepresenting the issue, and being unjustly cruel.

Yeah, that isn't the case.

Also, on a personal note. I live in California, and it's not great here in many places of the state.

If you walk down LA, you can actually tell where the Mexican Consulate is because of the smell that comes from the garbage around the area, literally piled all over the street.

It was embarrassing because the consulate was on the way to Great America and I wasn't even sure what to say to my cousin and aunt who were there visiting from out of the country.

It looked exactly like a third world country where people can't be bothered to pick up the trash.

And they left thinking more racists things, then Trump ever could be.

It so happens they are were more polite about it.

Unfortunately, not all of us can close our eyes and pretend there isn't a problem.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

You've incorrectly assumed that the people being detained have all been arrested under probable cause of either illegal entry or visa overstay. In some facilities, perhaps. But the detention centers along the border are full of people who showed up at the border seeking asylum and haven't broken a single law. The worst one might say of them is that they suspect the majority of such asylum claims are bullshit, but without evidence of probable cause supporting that suspicion in a specific case, there is no evidence that asylum-seeker committed a crime.

Again, I'd completely see eye to eye with you, if there wasn't a good reason that the US was doing this.

Like you mentioned, the US does have probable cause to suspect most of the asylum applicants are being fraudulent (they admit it to reporters following the caravans) and thus enact stricter regulations (family separation) to discourage fakes from attempting to cross.

Back to your analogy. It's as if the interviewer found that some of the people in the room had fake qualifications and had everyone wait in separate rooms till he sorted it out.

It may be unfair to everyone who did nothing wrong. But it looks to me this is the best you can do under the circumstances where you have a huge influx of migrants.

And unless you are privy to some secret miracle cure to the issue, we are just grandstanding on technicalities at this point.

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Xavderion wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

There are many reasons that people think Trump is racist.

There's only one reason: TDS.

You’re demonstrating your own Trump Delusional Syndrome with that comment. Trump is a racist. He’s following in the footsteps of his KKK father Fred Trump Those articles don’t talk about TDS. They talk about real examples of him exhibiting his racism.