President Trump Addresses the Joint Session of Congress

[Teddy B 17,251]

1 minute ago, eieio said:

Read his book. The Art of the Deal. To many people underestimated him and are still doing so. 

I don't think too many people underestimated Trump, I think too many people over estimated the intelligence of the American voter.

[smilesammich 10,727]

1 minute ago, Teddy B said:

I don't think too many people underestimated Trump, I think too many people over estimated the intelligence of the American voter.

[eieio 1,594]

3 minutes ago, Teddy B said:

I don't think too many people underestimated Trump, I think too many people over estimated the intelligence of the American voter.

I agree partially. Look how many voted for Clinton.

[Teddy B 17,251]

1 minute ago, eieio said:

I agree partially. Look how many voted for Clinton.

Touche

[eieio 1,594]

6 minutes ago, bcking said:

When I publish in scientific journals, my methods section always reads:

 

"There is a method. Read my book about it."

 

Saves me on the word limit so I can focus on other areas!

Either you want to understand Trump better or you don't. The choice is yours.

[bcking 3,157]

3 minutes ago, eieio said:

Either you want to understand Trump better or you don't. The choice is yours.

There are far too many books worthy of the paper they are written on that I want to read.

 

My focus is just merely to survive him. I'm lucky since I'm white and my immigrant wife is white. If she was any other skin color we would be readdressing our options of moving elsewhere (and still may in the future). By elsewhere I mean out of the country. We will survive only because of the luck of our birth. We know it won't be as bad for us as it will be for many other people. America will not stand for the same ideals it was founded on in 4 years if things continue the way they are going.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

1 hour ago, CaliCat said:

 

MDRs run on pure 98 octane Kool-Aid.  LOL

MDR and MDL are licensed trademarks and pure genius.  Really great I might add. Normally I charge , but I like you so go for it 

[yuna628 9,646]

2 hours ago, Dilorena said:

I watched it. He was trying to remain calm, he looked a little more put together and he seemed to have listened to some of the advice given,  that just complaining about everyone that disagrees with him is not the correct way to go. I feel that he might be starting to understand that the country is indeed divided and he is trying to rectify it. Wether it is because of his ego and the need to be liked, or that he genuinely cares for the country, only time will tell. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. 

Having said that, the damage has already been done.  It's understandable that people don't believe what he is saying or how good his intensions are. Republicans and liberals have been increasingly attacking and calling each other names and the tension is palpable. 

 

He seems to genuinely believe that immigrants are way more dangerous than they actually are. I am not saying that there hasn't been a case of an immigrant (ilegal or otherwise) committing a crime. Just that it is not the gigantic threat that he thinks it is. And if we are following that logic, there has recently been more crimes against immigrants than otherwise. From his reactions, watching other countries deal with refugees has him scared for the United States, and he is trying to find any means to justify his actions. In his quest to put the  ''american people first'' and make ''America great again'' he is (hopefully unintentionally) alienating the  legal, law abiding, tax paying immigrants amongst the actual criminal, illegal ones. Giving intolerance a VOICE. (sorry couldn't help myself) 

 

So then there's VOICE. Not only this requires funding, planning, man power,  if I understood correctly the purpose of it is to protect americans from immigrant crimes. It's a very specific niche, and a grey moral area at that. Not only immigrant crimes account for a very small portion of violence compared to crime in the country overall, but it actually works against its original intentions by segregating us more and even actually promoting hate crimes (speculation from my part, but take Kansas for example) 

In my opinion, it fuels the idea that immigrants are in fact so evil, that drastic measures have to be taken to protect americans from it.  

 

Almost everyone in this forum is in the process of legally migrating to this country that we will now call home, that we will learn to respect and love as our own. We are following the rules and every step, paying and waiting for months and even years. It breaks my heart thinking that after such a long journey, we face not a land of opportunities but fear and division instead, were something as preposterous as ''not looking white enough'' can make your life a living hell... Or even take it away.

 

 

I would like to know how VOICE protects a person from crime. A person going into it would, theoretically already have committed a crime. A database isn't going to tell anyone anything other than we already know and won't keep anyone safe. Furthermore, why is it that 'immigrants' get picked to put in such a database? The majority of crimes happening in the US are happening to US citizens by US citizens. So how exactly does this help? Are those families somehow more deserving of info than others?

 

But while I would argue that being in America while not looking 'white enough' is a problem for some immigrants (sad and disgusting a thought as it is) it's a problem for any immigrant no matter how white they are. In my town, being white and English speaking earns you nothing if you are an immigrant. I'm serious about that. You can find similar attitudes toward 'white' immigrants in various parts of Europe. Non-white immigrants will bear the worst of it, but the white ones will be in that same line too, just as they always have been. It all boils down to making immigrants - even legal ones into nothing short of a second-class citizen. It's a slap in the face to our Constitution and American way of life. It is indeed giving intolerance a voice.

1 hour ago, eieio said:

 

You need to stop listening to the fake news. Trump will bring more opportunities for legal immigrants such as yourself. The "not looking white enough" is not at all true. I think you will be pleasantly surprised that how Trump supporters will treat you. You will find out where the hate comes from….and if is from the left. Liberals will treat you as someone who is only qualified to pick fruit and clean houses.  Give it a year and you will see.

We've seen how some Trump supporters treat immigrants. Do they get their own special database when they continue to shoot, threaten, harass, and assault immigrants?

1 hour ago, bcking said:

Unfortuantely she is not alone in her worries. My wife is a white Christian from England waiting to immigrate and even she is worried to move to Texas. She has friends who have already moved here in her industry who are not white, and they have been verbally abused on the street (The common "Go back to your country" type language) despite being legally in the country on work visas for highly skilled jobs. 

 

I also have friends from when I lived in San Diego who are of Mexican heritage, but born and raised in the United States, who get yelled at on the street. They have lived there for over a decade and it has only started to happen recently. 

 

The extreme "anti-immigration" population is feeling emboldened in the US (as they are in the UK) and while I realize Trump doesn't necessarily support everything they believe, they support him and find strength in having him as our President.

During the height of Brexit, not even white, English-speaking Americans who had lived in the UK for years were safe from the wrath of hatred. It's pathetic really. Americans will continue to be ignorant of the immigration system and continue to believe these policies are a good thing. Shoot, these days kids don't learn civics, history, the Constitution, or even anything about their own heritage or ancestors. They don't understand what their grandparents fought and died for.

50 minutes ago, eieio said:

Read his book. The Art of the Deal. To many people underestimated him and are still doing so. 

A charlatan's book about selling ''truthful hyperbole'' to sheep, tells us nothing about what is going on in this WH right now.

48 minutes ago, Teddy B said:

I don't think too many people underestimated Trump, I think too many people over estimated the intelligence of the American voter.

True. But we're in a ''me me me'' society right now. The yuppie elites have come back to 'rule'. I wonder what will be the consequences of this little experiment?

34 minutes ago, bcking said:

There are far too many books worthy of the paper they are written on that I want to read.

 

My focus is just merely to survive him. I'm lucky since I'm white and my immigrant wife is white. If she was any other skin color we would be readdressing our options of moving elsewhere (and still may in the future). By elsewhere I mean out of the country. We will survive only because of the luck of our birth. We know it won't be as bad for us as it will be for many other people. America will not stand for the same ideals it was founded on in 4 years if things continue the way they are going.

You won't find any safe haven in the UK unfortunately, if it came to that. We're all going to be in for a rough ride in that regard. The world is slowly becoming a miserable place filled with demagogues, something our founders warned against. Too bad everyone forgot about that. Reap what you sow I guess. Hamilton warned us about these things. Wonder why no one seems to want to take the founders seriously anymore. Celebrating the nation or what this nation stands for has long become a time to have backyard bbq parties rather than reflect on the principles of this country we once fought so hard to protect.

Edited March 1, 2017 by yuna628

[OriZ 3,157]

5 hours ago, Teddy B said:

I don't think too many people underestimated Trump, I think too many people over estimated the intelligence of the American voter.

 

5 hours ago, smilesammich said:

Now see that's where my problem comes in, every time people start bringing other people's intelligence into question just because they don't agree with them or their choices. That's why I made it a point earlier to mention my PCP who again, I consider to be incredibly intelligent even though we don't see eye to eye politically. I know many brilliant people who like Trump. I also know many brilliant people who like Bernie, hell I even know some smart people who like Clinton. I don't think insulting people is the answer. I get that it might have just been tongue in cheek, but still.

 

4 hours ago, yuna628 said:

 

We've seen how some Trump supporters treat immigrants. Do they get their own special database when they continue to shoot, threaten, harass, and assault immigrants?

During the height of Brexit, not even white, English-speaking Americans who had lived in the UK for years were safe from the wrath of hatred. It's pathetic really. Americans will continue to be ignorant of the immigration system and continue to believe these policies are a good thing. Shoot, these days kids don't learn civics, history, the Constitution, or even anything about their own heritage or ancestors. They don't understand what their grandparents fought and died for.

 

I was for Brexit, and still am. I think many people misunderstand what Brexit was really all about. I’ve long been concerned over what I see as an untenable structure underlying the European Union. There’s certainly merit in promoting flexible trade among European nations, and in the ideal of a common European identity. But the additional fact is that Europe is virtually unequalled in its economic and cultural dispersion. It includes some of the strongest but also weakest economies in the developed world, with diverse languages and deeply held cultural identities that are immediately invoked by the names of each country - the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Spain, and many others. These individual national identities are not unanimously seen as insignificant relics, and it is a source of greater discord, not less, to imagine that they don’t exist. Nor is it reasonable to assume that the same fiscal and monetary policies are appropriate to all of them.

 

Probably the most poorly structured element of the EU in this regard is the euro, which binds many (though not all) of these members together under a common currency. A stable common currency requires that its member states pursue common fiscal policies, and presumes that a common monetary policy is appropriate for all of them. This has been a disaster for Europe. The clearest symptom of this untenable structure is the European Central Bank under Mario Draghi. The blindly frantic “anything it takes” monetary dysfunction promoted by the ECB has enabled the development of massive sovereign debt burdens, Humpty Dumpty banks (with Deutsche Bank being the most leveraged among major institutions, and Credit Suisse not far behind), and negative interest rates across Europe, with the ECB now buying the bonds of even private corporations.

 

Given that Britain has its own currency, part of the support behind the Brexit vote relates to the relatively free migration of workers under the Common Market. While I do believe that every country has the right to immigration policies that contribute to the relative stability of its own culture, I don’t defend the ugly leap to intolerance that some have demonstrated in Britain, and that has also become an unfortunate and offensive element in the US political debate. My own concern with the structure of the EU is primarily focused on the misguided structure of the common currency, and the underlying requirement for fiscal and monetary harmony that it imposes on countries that desperately need the flexibility to pursue substantially divergent policies. Those constraints have brought Greece close to a depression, while at the same time shoveling default prone sovereign debt onto the balance sheets of European banks and the ECB.

 

Compared with what might result from the exit of another major EU member, Britain actually has a relatively easy course over the next two years. There is every reason to expect provisions that are mutually beneficial to each side to be preserved. The transition will be substantially eased by the fact that many of these provisions have broad public support in Britain across a wide range of sectors. Despite protests that “everything has gone back to square one,” it’s not as if all of those mutually beneficial provisions have suddenly gone up in flames and have to be redrafted from scratch. The discord will be among provisions that have “political” features; those that might benefit one group within Britain versus another.

Any country that shares the euro as a common currency would have a more difficult exit course, because currency uncertainties would suddenly be introduced, disrupting a wide range of securities and private contracts. That’s not to say that Brexit will be easy, but the main risk of Brexit is actually the risk of a domino effect that might encourage defection of other EU members, particularly those that share the euro. Also, some EU members, particularly Germany, look at the unrestrained behavior of the European Central Bank with increasing dismay. Once Europe experiences another round of economic weakness, soon, there may be increasing strains on this passive acceptance by Germany, which is currently required to preserve the euro.

 

The dignity of a united European identity can survive without forcing each member country into an inappropriately identical fiscal, monetary and political shoe. Think of the EU, in its current ill-structured form, as a kind of Ponzi scheme, and Britain as the guy who just asked for his money back. The hallmark of a Ponzi scheme is the attempt to use progressively greater distortions in order to preserve a structure that is fundamentally unsound and increasingly bankrupt. Of any large country that could leave the EU, Britain was the best first mover. I have no immediate concerns about a domino effect, but if one was to emerge, my view is that the exit of Germany, France, and the Nordic countries would be preferable to the exit of Greece, Italy, Spain, or Portugal. It would be better to leave the euro intact and capable of steep devaluation among the weaker members than to sustain a system where the stronger and larger members of the euro become even more deeply entrenched in its flaws.

[Dianalorena 1,153]

4 hours ago, yuna628 said:

I would like to know how VOICE protects a person from crime. A person going into it would, theoretically already have committed a crime. A database isn't going to tell anyone anything other than we already know and won't keep anyone safe. Furthermore, why is it that 'immigrants' get picked to put in such a database? The majority of crimes happening in the US are happening to US citizens by US citizens. So how exactly does this help? Are those families somehow more deserving of info than others?

 

But while I would argue that being in America while not looking 'white enough' is a problem for some immigrants (sad and disgusting a thought as it is) it's a problem for any immigrant no matter how white they are. In my town, being white and English speaking earns you nothing if you are an immigrant. I'm serious about that. You can find similar attitudes toward 'white' immigrants in various parts of Europe. Non-white immigrants will bear the worst of it, but the white ones will be in that same line too, just as they always have been. It all boils down to making immigrants - even legal ones into nothing short of a second-class citizen. It's a slap in the face to our Constitution and American way of life. It is indeed giving intolerance a voice.

We've seen how some Trump supporters treat immigrants. Do they get their own special database when they continue to shoot, threaten, harass, and assault immigrants?

During the height of Brexit, not even white, English-speaking Americans who had lived in the UK for years were safe from the wrath of hatred. It's pathetic really. Americans will continue to be ignorant of the immigration system and continue to believe these policies are a good thing. Shoot, these days kids don't learn civics, history, the Constitution, or even anything about their own heritage or ancestors. They don't understand what their grandparents fought and died for.

A charlatan's book about selling ''truthful hyperbole'' to sheep, tells us nothing about what is going on in this WH right now.

True. But we're in a ''me me me'' society right now. The yuppie elites have come back to 'rule'. I wonder what will be the consequences of this little experiment?

You won't find any safe haven in the UK unfortunately, if it came to that. We're all going to be in for a rough ride in that regard. The world is slowly becoming a miserable place filled with demagogues, something our founders warned against. Too bad everyone forgot about that. Reap what you sow I guess. Hamilton warned us about these things. Wonder why no one seems to want to take the founders seriously anymore. Celebrating the nation or what this nation stands for has long become a time to have backyard bbq parties rather than reflect on the principles of this country we once fought so hard to protect.

I agree. It doesn't make a lot of sense right now, i, I don't see how it would protect anyone either.  It sounds like a weird sex offender database, but for immigrants. And if something like this becomes public (as you can search and find people online) would that make them more of a target? I'm just speculating since I have no idea how this is going to work or the details. 

And you're also right, it isn't only based on the color of the skin but the fact you're coming from a different country an ''taking a spot'' in the United States. Second class citizen says it, and honestly I am worried. I believe many people are, and understandably so. 

[smilesammich 10,727]

29 minutes ago, OriZ said:

 

Now see that's where my problem comes in, every time people start bringing other people's intelligence into question just because they don't agree with them or their choices. That's why I made it a point earlier to mention my PCP who again, I consider to be incredibly intelligent even though we don't see eye to eye politically. I know many brilliant people who like Trump. I also know many brilliant people who like Bernie, hell I even know some smart people who like Clinton. I don't think insulting people is the answer. I get that it might have just been tongue in cheek, but still.

 

it isn't about questioning intelligence over disagreeing. i believe trump is a con. what do you think of people who fall for cons?

[OriZ 3,157]

4 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

it isn't about questioning intelligence over disagreeing. i believe trump is a con. what do you think of people who fall for cons?

I believe anybody can fall for cons. There are people falling for cons every day. Smart people, too. Quite prejudicial to judge someone or gauge their intelligence on the basis of that don't you think?

[smilesammich 10,727]

Just now, OriZ said:

I believe anybody can fall for cons. There are people falling for cons every day. Smart people, too. Quite prejudicial to judge someone or gauge their intelligence on the basis of that don't you think?

im sorry, does this line of argument mean we're backing off the snowflake nonsense? anyway, anyone can fall for a con but it takes a special sort to fall hook line and sinker for an obvious con, exposed even.

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

2 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

im sorry, does this line of argument mean we're backing off the snowflake nonsense? anyway, anyone can fall for a con but it takes a special sort to fall hook line and sinker for an obvious con, exposed even.

well it worked the last 8 years 

[OriZ 3,157]

7 minutes ago, smilesammich said:

im sorry, does this line of argument mean we're backing off the snowflake nonsense? anyway, anyone can fall for a con but it takes a special sort to fall hook line and sinker for an obvious con, exposed even.

I still don't think that it necessarily has anything to do with one's intelligence level but we all have our own pov. I'm not sure what snowflakes have to do with this. If someone is acting like a snowflake they can be called out on it. If someone is acting like a fool who fell for a con they can be called out on that too. But to insinuate that there's an underlying intelligence factor is wrong imo. Again I'm sure Teddy didn't even mean it the way that it may have come across, we know Teddy and he likes to joke around, but I know there are some who genuinely believe that "Trump got elected because people are stupid" and I think that's ignorant.