Good luck with that. We have the world reserve and it won’t end well for them.
The SOB truly doesn’t know the difference between an illegal immigrant and a refugee
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I find the “who will pick the crops, who will clean the toilets?” crew to be some of the more despicable people in American life.
Continually importing an illegal underclass of menial laborers to work in de facto indentured servitude is absolutely evil. You are evil.
If what you describe comes to pass (it won’t), then that is the price we will have to pay for returning to rational immigration policy.
If you haven’t noticed by now. Tariffs are a club Trump is wielding to gain concessions. Not something that he is ideologically attached to so much that he would allow them to seriously harm the American consumer. That’s the benefit of a President who is transactional and not ideological and only cares about success.
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For crying out loud it wasn’t a “trap”.
Trump sent a plane full of criminals home. Criminals wear chains.
People who break US law as their first act on American soil have some respect?
This wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card. Dr. Phil? Life comes at you fast.
Oh, you don’t have to convince me. We have a ton of economic heft. But it’s not unlimited.
But one of the great Achilles Heels of our policymakers is the misconception that we have no limits.
Of all the posters on the board, you’re the last one I’d expect to hear that from.
You don’t think Trump etal expected countries to balk at receiving these folks?
I do.
lol…I didn’t say I liked the system, but it is one of the perks of being the WRC.
For folks like Farva, everything is simply happening organically because Trump is just that awesome.
There are existing repatriation agreements in place and unless the U.S. was somehow in violation, which I doubt, I don’t see what Columbia or any other country is doing by denying flights.
I don’t even know what that means. Presumably these are all hard working, decent folks that Columbia should want back.
Trump has been crystal clear there would be repercussions for countries denying repatriation flights. One country was dumb enough to do it. It’s a Machiavellian plan in the same way a parent telling their child not to touch the hot stove is a Machiavellian plan.
You seem often perturbed at an administration enforcing the law and taking action. And you might need to ask yourself why.
I'm not perturbed by any of this. Just amused by you.
And it's Colombia.
No way in hell Trump finished 3 under par. 😂
Foot wedge for the win.
Curious doc, why do you feel different about refugees and illegal immigrants? Is the legal distinction that important? Are the violence threats that much greater for those in asylum granted areas than parts of central or South America?
I feel compassion for almost all of them, but the refugees are (mostly) fully vetted and come through by legal means, which is important because believe it or not I think the rule of law is important
I was in high school at the beginning of the 90s and in the effort of full disclosure I voted for Clinton in the first two presidential elections could vote in.
I remember there being murmurs of infidelity with Clinton and there being some debate over whether those claims were valid. The White Water stuff was around too, but the whole Monica Lewinsky stuff and his what “is” is didn’t blow up until he had already been elected a second time. We’ve also learned a lot about him post-presidency too.
All that to say I do think he’s a slime ball now and he’d have to be running against someone like Trump for me to vote for him now, but I don’t think we all knew the full scope of his personal character in real time.
I think in the age of the internet his presidential aspirations might’ve gone the way of John Edwards, but who knows? I do think Clinton and Trump share a sense of invincibility/teflon-ness, so maybe he would be able to weather storms the way Trump has.
I voted for Bush and thought the world had ended when Clinton won
Each of us is the only person with a window into our own hearts, so I'm (earnestly) going to say this impersonally and as a general thing. In other words, I'm perfectly fine to take you at your word with this.
But, in general, I'm pretty convinced that most people who supported Clinton through all of that didn't so much disbelieve those "murmurs" as devalue them respective to other priorities. In other words, I believe they were doing what I copped to doing in the post you were responding to: they put a higher value on the prospect of him being in office, as opposed to the alternatives, than they did on his character defects.
There are some, like you, who supported him when he was active but have come to think poorly of him today. There are others who supported him and still revere him. But taking any sort of position on him today related to his character is easy to do. He's out of the arena. He's yesterday's news. He's not running for anything -- he's not put up against an alternative.
Donald Trump is the man I've long thought him to be. I had a good understanding of his character when he was just a tacky "billionaire" character on Letterman and elsewhere in media. And that same understanding was in place in 2016 and is still in place today. He's a narcissistic lecher and a complete huckster. At no point since I've known his name would I trust him around a daughter or my wife. As a contractor, at no point would I want to do business with him.
I voted for Donald Trump in spite of all this. I won't sit here and try to say that I just didn't believe what was being said about him (although I would say that there's a great deal of hyperbole about him, separate and distinct from his debauched character, too). Not only did I believe it, I had known about it for a long time.
I voted for him because I believed the benefits of having him in office, as opposed to Hillary Clinton, outweighed all that.
Thanks!
If there's any one thing in political discourse I've come to despise, it's pretense. Defending some action or position by citing X, Y, and Z reasons...when the actual reasons are A, B, and C. But we don't want to say it's A, B, and C because we're afraid it exposes us as hypocrites or something else along those lines. So we come up with some alternative explanation for why we have this or that position or why we voted as we did in an election.
I think this practice is rampant. And I also think that it's ultimately unhealthy. To me, it's one of the key ingredients in the tribalism that has paralyzed our body politic.
Interesting hunch, but that’s all it is.
The Clintons were, at the time, aggressively discrediting the women who came forward. Gennifer Flowers, Hillary said, was “a failed cabaret singer with not much of a resume to fall back on.” The NYT reported that an investigator was hired to dig up dirt and “impugn her character.”
The Paula Jones sexual harassment case was pending when Clinton ran for reelection, but his defense initially went well on substantive motions and procedural matters.
Monica Lewinsky was, according to Hillary at the time, a “narcissistic loony toon.” Allegations of an affair, per the Clintons, were part of “a vast right-wing conspiracy.”
The Clintons were convincing. Many believed the various allegations were bullshit.
Ohio is correct. The full truth regarding these matters wasn’t revealed until after Bill’s reelection.
Perhaps. A lot of people are disingenuous -- which extends to them being disingenuous about being disingenuous. Such people are never going to admit they were ever being less than forthright. What else would we expect?
And, yet, his approval ratings remained high. In fact, they went higher after he came clean about Lewinsky. I can remember some lamenting he couldn't run for a third term -- which, if he could, he may well have won.
If that's right, then doesn't it underscore what I'm saying?
I honestly don't think all that many Clinton supporters ever cared about his character. I think they cared -- or, at least, cared more -- about him winning and advancing his agenda. Such people exist, of that I'm confident. There just aren't that many who ever felt the needed to be honest and open about that.
One other thing on this, Bowlmania.
You say that the Clintons were "convincing" as they were lying about Bill Clinton being, er, sexually prolific (and let's not forget that there was one allegation of sexual assault). So, essentially, you're saying that people believed their lies over the allegations made by others...until he finally copped to one dalliance with Monica Lewinsky in 1998.
OK. One question: what would you guess is the percentage of people who bought their lies, continued to support Bill in 1996 in disbelief of the allegations....and then ultimately declined to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 as a result of her having been in on propagating those lies?
I also think it's worth noting that Clinton seemed interested in governing to help people, and for better or worse that interest in helping people seemed to extend beyond his presidency. Maybe it's just that he's better at curating his image and/or working within the brackets of traditional norms, I don't know.
For all of Clinton's moral shortcomings, I don't think they hold a candle to Trump's. By mostly his own admission, Trump has an adult lifetime of screwing over and cheating people for his own personal gain. The list of people from his first administration that have a grievance against Trump - or flat out hate him - is pretty long. I firmly believe there is a level of megalomania in everyone that has run for president in my lifetime - it's almost a prereq for the job at this point - but there is little doubt that Trump's narcissism and megalomania is in a class it's own. And morals aside, I do think Clinton was better at the job of being president and his ability to communicate his message ran miles and miles of circles around Trump's blundering and dumbassery. I actually think if Trump was more deliberate about trying to be communicate better he'd be way more palatable to a lot more people.
All that said, I wouldn't feel comfortable with any woman I know and care about interning for either Clinton or Trump.
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So, you're saying that people supported him in spite of his character defects -- which were by then established as factual.
Hmm, doesn't that sound a lot like what I'm saying wrt my support for Donald Trump?
Yeah, I'm absolutely sure there are people out there who will put a candidate's character somewhere very high on their list when casting a vote -- maybe even at the highest spot on their list.
But I genuinely believe these people are the exception, and not the rule. What is very common is for people to be animated by character defects of candidates they oppose (who they also actually oppose for reasons other than personal character). And the desire there is the hope to convince other people who may be on the fence to vote against the candidate they oppose.
I think your last question is a good one. I honestly don't know the answer and wouldn't even begin to know where to guess, but I do remember people wondering if Bill was an asset or liability to Hillary in her presidential campaign.
I do think Bill Clinton set us all on the path of viewing people running for high office with a high level of cynicism. Gary Hart was run out of politics because of the photos of him on the boat, Monkey Business but by comparison to Clinton and Trump, he was a relative choir boy.
I also think George W. Bush and Obama brought an air of personal decency to the White House with them. Any number of people had a large number of political/policy disagreements with both, but remove the R and D from behind their names and most would agree that they're both good men beyond their presidential legacies.
In some ways, yes. I don't think there is a truly apples-to-apples comparison between Trump and Clinton though. I don't think there is a precedent in presidential politics for the way Trump lies and acts in his own self interest.
Trump is the Michael Jordan of extreme narcissism and moral depravity in presidential politics. Clinton is more akin to Dominique Wilkins. Maybe even Spud Webb. They're in the same league and played the same game, but there is little doubt who is miles and miles ahead in this argument. I'd put W. down as the Jeff Hornacek and Obama as AC Green in this comparison.
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Now, Ohio, how exactly would you expect me to respond to this comment?
Because, in reading this, I simply can't help thinking that your thoughts about allegations about his personal conduct were colored at least somewhat by your belief that he "seemed interested in governing to help people." Another way to put this is that you supported his agenda -- or, at least, how he presented the agenda, came across, made you feel, etc.
I would say that just about anybody who has cast a vote for any politician believes, at least at some level, that the candidate was interested in governing to help people. Why the hell else would they vote for him/her?
But there's another response to this that I simply cannot pass up. And that's to say that I think you're giving politicians, in general, way too much credit. Maybe Clinton stood out to you in this regard. I don't know. And I'd guess that you're not the biggest fan of Thomas Sowell -- but I'm going to put this up anyway. Because I think he's 100% right and I think it's something that everybody would gain by considering:
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But I'm not even asking the question in relation to how much of an asset or liability Bill was to Hillary's campaign.
I'm asking it in relation to Hillary Clinton herself -- with the context that she was well aware of her husband's sexual tendencies and was an active participant (a leader, really) in the effort to publicly call all of his various sex partners who came forward liars.
I honestly don't think too many people voted against her because of this. There may have been lots of people bringing this up about her. But they would've voted against her if she and Bill were total choirboys. They didn't actually care about these things. They just wanted to defeat her -- and hoped that bringing these sorts of things up would contribute to that.
I agree with virtually all of what you're saying about Trump, very much including this. Both of these men have obviously crossed many lines in their sex lives -- with simple infidelity being one of the lesser ones they've crossed.
Anybody who truly defends Donald Trump's general character as a human being pretty much has to be engaging in the pretense that I'm saying I despise so much.
If you don't care about it or you put other things above it, then just say that. It may open you up to some valid criticisms. But at least it's being honest.
The poor character of Harris and Biden allowed many to disclaim trump’s shitty character and move on to policy. When Biden lies about inflation, the entire team lies about his condition, Harris lies on national tv about abortion and is publicly fact checked voters think ehhh they’re all just shitty politicians. Let’s vote for whose policies we prefer. Had the left had an Obama type without those faults it would have been interesting to see if the contrast with trump on overt character matters would have made a difference
I don’t necessarily disagree with Sowell’s take, but I do think that only addresses part of the statement I made regarding Clinton. Regardless of what we think of his personal shortcomings, his work post presidency has been commendable, especially his work with HIV/AIDS and his work with Bob Dole helping 9/11 families. There are other charitable endeavors, but those came to mind first.Now, Ohio, how exactly would you expect me to respond to this comment?
Because, in reading this, I simply can't help thinking that your thoughts about allegations about his personal conduct were colored at least somewhat by your belief that he "seemed interested in governing to help people." Another way to put this is that you supported his agenda -- or, at least, how he presented the agenda, came across, made you feel, etc.
I would say that just about anybody who has cast a vote for any politician believes, at least at some level, that the candidate was interested in governing to help people. Why the hell else would they vote for him/her?
But there's another response to this that I simply cannot pass up. And that's to say that I think you're giving politicians, in general, way too much credit. Maybe Clinton stood out to you in this regard. I don't know. And I'd guess that you're not the biggest fan of Thomas Sowell -- but I'm going to put this up anyway. Because I think he's 100% right and I think it's something that everybody would gain by considering:
It’s hard saying, but I’d venture to guess Trump won’t outpace any former president in post-presidency work. If 2021-January 2025 are any indication, he’ll spend his final days bitching on social media about everyone who doesn’t talk about how awesome he is and hawking garbage products to enrich himself.
