The flood of money is one of them. It has always been so, but the magnitude has gotten larger. There were adds in 1966: Don't sell Minnesota Short, when Bob Short was hoping to buy his way in.
But part of the trouble is and always has been that problems are difficult, most people (I include myself) have limited attention spans for politics. and so we don't do nuance well. In a five year period, 1940-1945, we went from isolationist to nuke em.
Trump, and others for that matter, speak to people who don't have time for nuance.
I find most political adds simply unwatchable. But I always have. The advertising industry is paid to sell us candidate X, or candidate Y, or some pain reliever or a new car. It doesn't matter to them, so don't expect a serious presentation of choices.
The Clintons had to accept speaking fees because they were stone broke. I gather that problem has now been solved. Going to Trumps wedding was part of the solution.
There are times that I think the most fundamental problem with presidential politics is that a willingness to go though the necessary stuff to become president is convincing evidence that the candidate is nuts. Kissing babies is one thing, but I would draw the line (red or blue or whatever) at going to Trump's wedding.
I realize I don't really have anything original to say here.
Trump is right on the most important issue of our time, illegal immigration. His policy is spot-on: Trump's Immigration Plan
He also isn't bought & paid for like the rest of the corporate-media-supported candidates.
As for the rest, who knows & who cares. If he's got a 5% chance of turning America around, I'll take that over the 0% chance that Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton have.
"Maybe we should all get together and buy Kaitlyn a box set of "All in the Family" for Chanukah. Archie didn't think he was a racist, the problem was with all the chinks, dagos, niggers, kikes, etc. ruining the country." ~ barmar
Trump is right on the most important issue of our time, illegal immigration. His policy is spot-on: Trump's Immigration Plan
He also isn't bought & paid for like the rest of the corporate-media-supported candidates.
As for the rest, who knows & who cares. If he's got a 5% chance of turning America around, I'll take that over the 0% chance that Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton have.
But what if he also has a 50% chance of crashing America, versus 10% for Bush or Clinton? Not every alternative is better than the status quo.
His "immigration plan" is nonsense, and really does not even deserve the name. He proposes very expensive things with no hint of how to pay for them. A border wall is useless, and trying to make Mexico pay for it is laughable. He wants to end birthright citizenship, but offers no alternative definition of a citizen. He is appealing to ignorance and racism, and apparently caught you in the net. The whole thing smacks of Poe's law.
Again, he is not a serious candidate, just a showman who loves the attention. You are falling for it.
Life is long and beautiful, if bad things happen, good things will follow.
-gwnn
Trump is right on the most important issue of our time, illegal immigration. His policy is spot-on: Trump's Immigration Plan
He also isn't bought & paid for like the rest of the corporate-media-supported candidates.
As for the rest, who knows & who cares. If he's got a 5% chance of turning America around, I'll take that over the 0% chance that Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton have.
There is one eeny, tiny, problem with the Trump plan - although he claims we must follow the Constitution, he also wants to abolish the 14th amendment to that Constitution, which resolved the dread Dred Scott decision and gave African Americans born in the U.S. guaranteed citizenship, a question of birthrights for which we happened to fight a long and bloody civil war to decide.
The Republican party has become a farce, a sideshow of intolerance and radical insurgency, owned and paid for by a select few.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
There is one eeny, tiny, problem with the Trump plan - although he claims we must follow the Constitution, he also wants to abolish the 14th amendment to that Constitution, which resolved the dread Dred Scott decision and gave African Americans born in the U.S. guaranteed citizenship, a question of birthrights for which we happened to fight a long and bloody civil war to decide.
The Republican party has become a farce, a sideshow of intolerance and radical insurgency, owned and paid for by a select few.
Whether the 14th amendment applies to anchor babies or not is an open question. But even if it does, the rest of the plan on its own is still leaps & bounds better than what we have now and it's far more likely that someone who isn't owned by his corporate/billionaire donors will get it done than that anybody else will.
The Democratic party, Republican party & MSM have become a farce, a sideshow of corporate funded propaganda, mismanagement & cultural marxism, owned and paid for by a select few. - FTFY
(George Carlin, a couple of F-bombs if you're at work.)
For a more in-depth look at immigration, I recommend this. FWIU Senator Sessions collaborated with the Donald on his plan.
Anyway, I understand that 40+years of brainwashing has worked so I'm not going to go back-and-forth here. Have a nice day!
Edit: Oh alright, here's a nice jpg for Cherdano!
"Maybe we should all get together and buy Kaitlyn a box set of "All in the Family" for Chanukah. Archie didn't think he was a racist, the problem was with all the chinks, dagos, niggers, kikes, etc. ruining the country." ~ barmar
I have not ead the Trump plan, although I have read a bit about it. Some thoughts on immigration, citizenship by birth, etc.
14th amendment. There was a problem. Slaves were freed, beyond that what was to be their status? This was an entirely different problem than the current one. Africans were brought here against their will, they did not decide it would be a really neat idea to hop a ship and come here to pick cotton. I gather the 14th amendment proclaimed that if someone was brought here as a slave and now freed, he was still not a citizen but his children, if born here, were. A reasonable solution to a massive problem of status.
Whether or not I am right about how the 14th amendment came into being, clearly there is a distinction between saying that the children fo former slaves who were here legally but unwillingly are citizens, and the children of people who are here illegally are citizens. At the very least, the difference should be acknowledged.
Now should we redo the 14th amendment to something along the lines of "children born in the US to mothers who are legally entitiled to be in the US are citizens by birth". It seems reasonable to me to do so. The current situation means that we can deport the mother but not the child. I understand that current policy is to d, but this seems out of whack. The mother comes illegally and has a child. We can't deport the child because s/he was born here and then we can't deport the mother becuase a child needs his/her mother. No one would intentionally set things up this way, we have stumbled into it and it should be addressed.
Now there is always past, present and future to be considered. Past is past. That's that. The present has to be addressed realistically, which to me would be accommodating the presence of the parents but I see no reason to bestow citizenship. It's the future that we can do something about, and dealing with the problems caused by having citizenship bestowed om the children of illegal immigrants would seem sensible. What's done is done, I would not support taking the citizenship away from those who already have it, I doubt that many would support it. But "what's done is done" doesn't mean that we have to keep doing it. .
And jonottawa returns to remind everyone that he is still a xenophobic arrogant pr**.
(I am sure I'll be chided for not engaging him in a discussion of the issues. That would be an argument if anyone had ever successfully engaged this fellow in a discussion.)
Interests:Bridge, golf, wine (red), cooking, reading eclectically but insatiably, travelling, making bad posts.
Posted 2015-August-20, 16:47
barmar, on 2015-August-20, 12:20, said:
But he's also a very successful businessman.
That is not necessarily true. He inherited a vast fortune, but has seen his net worth increase at a rate significantly lower than if he had just invested in some reasonably well managed mutual funds. I wish I could embed a link to the article on which I base this, but I can't recall the source, other than that it was a fairly respectable one.
One of the realities of life once wealth becomes very disproportionately distributed is that it becomes extremely difficult for very wealthy people to not get richer.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
Interests:Bridge, golf, wine (red), cooking, reading eclectically but insatiably, travelling, making bad posts.
Posted 2015-August-20, 16:52
jonottawa, on 2015-August-20, 11:42, said:
Trump is right on the most important issue of our time, illegal immigration.
what a truly, truly bizarre view of the world you must have to believe that illegal immigration into the US is the 'most important issue of our time'.
How would that compare to the fact that right now we are living through what is possibly the faster-occurring mass extinction event of all time, other than the (probable) asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs (other than the ones that evolved into birds)?
Personally, I think that global warming (the real term, not this mealy-mouthed, neutral sounding 'climate change') is the most important issue of the past 50,000 years, but that's just me, I suppose. It is nothing to compare to the possibility that that dark-skinned fellow cutting your neighbour's yard lacks a visa.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
That is not necessarily true. He inherited a vast fortune, but has seen his net worth increase at a rate significantly lower than if he had just invested in some reasonably well managed mutual funds. I wish I could embed a link to the article on which I base this, but I can't recall the source, other than that it was a fairly respectable one.
One of the realities of life once wealth becomes very disproportionately distributed is that it becomes extremely difficult for very wealthy people to not get richer.
On September 12, 1975 (earliest date I can easily find and approximately when Trump inherited his money, the S&P 500 was trading at $83.30
Close of business today, the S&P was at 2035.75 (A 24.43 fold increase)
Trump's father provided him with roughly 200 million about the same time.
If Trump had been able to equal the performance of the S&P, he would have ended up with a little under 5 billion dollars, which is about a billion more than the usual estimate for his net worth
Trump is right on the most important issue of our time, illegal immigration. His policy is spot-on: Trump's Immigration Plan
He also isn't bought & paid for like the rest of the corporate-media-supported candidates.
As for the rest, who knows & who cares. If he's got a 5% chance of turning America around, I'll take that over the 0% chance that Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton have.
Trump is a deeply corrupt individual. (I recommend taking a look at the scandal ridden history of "Trump University")
I can't believe anyone is silly enough to believe that this self promoting can or should be allowed anywhere near the reins of power.
About the best things one can say for the bloviating idiot is that, for a change, the republican party isn't relying on dog whistles to hide their racist clap trap.
The fourteenth amendment nowhere mentions slavery or slaves. The relevant (to this discussion) text is: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
Are illegal aliens subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? IANAL, but I believe they are. Are the children of illegal aliens, born in the United States, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? IANAL, but I believe they are. If so, they (the children, not the aliens) are by the quoted sentence above, citizens of the United States and of the State in which they live. The only way to change that is via a Constitutional Amendment. I would not support such an amendment.
--------------------
As for tv, screw it. You aren't missing anything. -- Ken Berg
I have come to realise it is futile to expect or hope a regular club game will be run in accordance with the laws. -- Jillybean
what a truly, truly bizarre view of the world you must have to believe that illegal immigration into the US is the 'most important issue of our time'.
How would that compare to the fact that right now we are living through what is possibly the faster-occurring mass extinction event of all time, other than the (probable) asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs (other than the ones that evolved into birds)?
Personally, I think that global warming (the real term, not this mealy-mouthed, neutral sounding 'climate change') is the most important issue of the past 50,000 years, but that's just me, I suppose. It is nothing to compare to the possibility that that dark-skinned fellow cutting your neighbour's yard lacks a visa.
Quite appropriate for this thread, as the UNFCCC/IPCC scam about the catastrophic effect of [CO2] on global temperatures/weather is a direct threat to democracy in general and our individual liberties and freedoms in particular. Much ado about nothing as the Bard would say, but it has been very effective in brainwashing a large number of caring, credulous individuals into forking over their cash for pretty much the worst "science" (non-falsifiable theory so not really science by definition) this side of Lysenkoism.
The Grand Design, reflected in the face of Chaos...it's a fluke!
Help
Winstonm, on 2015-August-17, 09:11, said:
