Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Opus131]

So he is risking everything, including possibly his own life, for what amount to something like pocket change to him?

[Giest118]

I'm reasonably sure Trump is actually a front for the Insane Clown Posse, who just wants to pump faygo through the pipes instead of tap water and render our new national pastime as having type 2 diabetes.

[Xyga]

He is the Messiah.

[Mischief Maker]

So he is risking everything, including possibly his own life, for what amount to something like pocket change to him?

You forget this isn't the first time he actually ran for president.

He is the Messiah.

[Opus131]

Yeah but wasn't that a joke campaign? I barely spoke any English at the time and have scant memories of that election.

[Mischief Maker]

Yeah but wasn't that a joke campaign?

EXACTLY.

[Opus131]

Well, jokes on him then if he went into this as a joke as well. Shit has gotten serious yo.

[Giest118]

The thing that would make this election the best is if Hillary won the democrat nomination, and Trump won the republican nomination, and then Trump decides to fuck with absolutely everyone by naming Bernie Sanders as his VP.

[Xyga]

You're an immigrant Opus ?

[Rob]

Who isn't though?

The people we elect to represent us, I'd hope.

this is pretty much what you have to do. The question is why do we need to have a system where you have to destroy the country in order to make money,

You might think so if your only conception of business is a man sitting on top of a mountain of money and snapping his fingers. So, no, that is not "pretty much" what a business person has to do. People can make a comfortable living in business working the old-fashioned way - by actually working and by paying local people a fair wage to work. This isn't China.

[Opus131]

You're an immigrant Opus ?

I'm Italian. I lived in the states for about 12 years, but i had to come back for family reasons. I have a long list of relatives who immigrated to America. Also, my sister married a Mexican, and as a result i have some experience in that department as well (including several visits to Mexico itself).

[quash]

Let's call a spade a spade, dude. There's nothing to interpret here. It doesn't offend; it hurts when people assume (and they have told me so to my face) that I am a rapist or a thief because I'm Mexican. (I may be stealing your SSN as you read this, btw.)

But hey, what could you possibly know or understand? You're surely one of those privileged, entitled, never-knew-strife, white trash rich kids with a six figure-making father who calls all black people "n*ggers". It's a fact there are white people like that, though there are some, I guess, who are okay. Does the food during Thanksgiving taste better with the blood of all the natives that got slaughtered by your ancestors?

Rationalization of Self Pity: The Post

[Ed Oscuro]

PSA for "independent" Californicates:
http://static.latimes.com/american-inde ... ia-voters/

[GaijinPunch]

Let's call a spade a spade, dude. There's nothing to interpret here. It doesn't offend; it hurts when people assume (and they have told me so to my face) that I am a rapist or a thief because I'm Mexican. (I may be stealing your SSN as you read this, btw.)

But hey, what could you possibly know or understand? You're surely one of those privileged, entitled, never-knew-strife, white trash rich kids with a six figure-making father who calls all black people "n*ggers". It's a fact there are white people like that, though there are some, I guess, who are okay. Does the food during Thanksgiving taste better with the blood of all the natives that got slaughtered by your ancestors?

Rationalization of Self Pity: The Post

US Military: America's Ambassadors.

[BryanM]

You know how Those People like to argue only people with "skin in the game" should be allowed to vote? (The definition of "skin" being "pays federal taxes"? Which I guess is supposed to be a way to disenfranchise the entire south and let California and New York control congress?)

I pretend that they mean literal "skin". IE, that foreign citizens should be allowed to vote in our elections. Because our government has a larger impact on their day to day lives than their own, and they literally might lose their skin, among other pieces of meat, thanks to our public policy.

It really is like arguing with an insect or a squid tho. It takes a completely alien, inhuman logic to come up with lines like "net neutrality is the obamacare of the internet."

Fuck us. Tomorrow's judgment day. Stock up on kerosene, we're gonna have to burn this place down before the face-hugger infestation gets too bad.

[BulletMagnet]

Muh safe spaces.

Boy oh boy, I was hoping you'd (re-)step on that particular ideological land mine: if there's any side of this whole mess which is absolutely obsessed with their precious "safe spaces" it's the Trump crowd. Even self-styled "values voters" are willing to put aside the reams and reams of glaring contradictions that come with supporting him for one reason, namely his valiant march against "political correctness". They want to be able to say and do what they want, to who they want, whenever they want, and nobody should be able to tell them it's wrong or they're not allowed to do it. The way it used to be.

Tell me: what, exactly, is this most coveted state of affairs if not an enormous, society-spanning safe space? And what does it say about this group that, when the faintest possibility that their default state of complete and utter dominance within society might not be quite as dominant as it once was, they immediately soil themselves and start throwing haymakers left and right, shrieking inconsolably all the while? And are so desperate that they would put their trust in someone who's yet to put together a single competent policy position, and only got where he is in the first place via the scads of "insider" advantages he was quite literally born with?

Quite frankly, I'm not sure how your type manages to get out of bed in the morning, considering how many monsters are invariably whispering horrifying things from under it.

Huh, yeah. Right. Citation needed bro

Here you go. Trigger Warning: it comes courtesy of those commie hippies at the Wall Street Journal. Feel free to pick nits if you like (just how much means you get to use TWO muches? Huh? Huh!?), but the numbers, as they so often do with Trump, simply don't add up on a single front.

So he is risking everything, including possibly his own life, for what amount to something like pocket change to him?

Trump isn't risking jack shit; he, as so much of his cohort have done for decades if not centuries, is offloading that "risk" onto millions of his fellow Americans who will have vital benefits and services slashed (which will still not even come close to balancing the budget, not that the "fiscal hawks" ever care as long as they get theirs) so he and the rest of the upper-upper class can add another layer of patina to their crowns. If there's one thing that proves decisively that Trump is a card-carrying member of The Establishment, it's the fact that neither of them ever truly put up their own money.

If there is a selfish element, it is a psychological one which is interesting in itself, for it means he really wants to fix America and he wants to be the one to do it for his own personal glory.

If anyone truly wants to do something like that, it sure as hell isn't going to be someone who ran such a bald-faced scam as Trump University, and utterly refuses to come clean.

[Xyga]

You're an immigrant Opus ?

I suppose you were a strong supporter of Berlusconi back then, Trump and him are the same type after all.

[quash]

Rationalization of Self Pity: The Post

US Military: America's Ambassadors.

I dream of becoming a business expat, that way I could make more money while doing less work than my peers, act self righteous while doing so, and constantly tell others how fucked up their country is and how they should be more like the US.

Compared to preventing the cannibalistic zombies of the Chinese Politburo from taking over an entire continent, that just seems like a more fulfilling existence.

[Ed Oscuro]

DAYUM this is passive aggressiveness on a whole...'nother...level!

I'm reminded of James Clavell's strange libertarian subtext to Noble House (he sent a copy to Ayn Rand). HK tax rates were (are?) something like 15% (but there's some wrinkles to it), but Clavell spends more time making sure that we feel bad for the fictional millionaires by killing them off in random landslides and boat restaurant fires, while the socialists are all impetuous, damaged traitors.

[Opus131]

You're an immigrant Opus ?

I suppose you were a strong supporter of Berlusconi back then, Trump and him are the same type after all.

I was in America at the time and wasn't much into politics either, so i didn't really pay attention to him. Can't imagine he was any worse than our current idiot in chief:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtMiH9UjtXM

But this is another reason why people like Trump have a chance. The opposition isn't really any better. Does anyone believe Trump could possibly do a worse job than Dubya, or Obama?

[quash]

DAYUM this is passive aggressiveness on a whole...'nother...level!

That's how you know I'm playing softball, otherwise it'd just be regular aggression.

I don't hate any of you, honestly. I just wish some of you would stop hating yourselves. It's a phenomenon I witness in most people I know and it makes maintaining personal relationships more difficult knowing that a person you hold in high regard harbors resentment towards you.

[Xyga]

I was in America at the time and wasn't much into politics either, so i didn't really pay attention to him. Can't imagine he was any worse than our current idiot in chief:

I don't believe one bit any Italian wouldn't know much about 'Il Cavaliere' since he ran the country so many years since the mid-90's, aside from Mussolini there's hardly any leader who has dirtied the image of Italy more than he did.

[Opus131]

What image? Italian politics was always a circus.

And i know all about his shenanigans, as well as what the media has written about him, which looking at what is happening with Trump i'm certainly going to take with a bit of a grain of salt. But not having lived in Italy at the time and being completely disinterred in politics by nature i just can't really value what his performance was like.

[BulletMagnet]

I don't hate any of you, honestly. I just wish some of you would stop hating yourselves.

Nice of you to worry, but I can guarantee you that absolutely nobody here hates himself; some of us are more inclined to take both our innate limitations and the lessons of history into account when making important decisions, as opposed to simply bellowing "yeeeah, I'm gonna kick ALL your candy asses, yeeeeah" and hoping that sheer force of will can overcome all other factors, but methinks that hardly qualifies as self-hatred.

Does anyone believe Trump could possibly do a worse job than Dubya, or Obama?

By leaps and bounds.

[Mischief Maker]

Does anyone believe Trump could possibly do a worse job than Dubya, or Obama?

Yes! His goddamn website proposes a series of tax cuts worse than Dubya's infamous budget-unbalancing cuts. It's right there in black and white.

[quash]

Nice of you to worry, but I can guarantee you that absolutely nobody here hates himself

I don't see any other reasonable explanation for phenomena such as socialist dogma, white guilt, etc. Perhaps you'd like to provide a different line of reasoning?

some of us are more inclined to take both our innate limitations and the lessons of history into account when making important decisions

Which I presume is why you want to put a socialist (but a democratic one, so it's cool) in the White House? Because socialism in any capacity has always been wildly successful?

[quash]

And then you insinuite that I haven't thought through my choice in presidential candidate, that I just want to see the US enter as many wars as possible. If that were the case, I'd be voting for Hillary.

It's kind of cute how you still cling to Trump being some kind of shill for the establishment, even now that the near universal disdain for him from that camp is on cable news. Not to speak of the ongoing shadow war between Trump and Soros & co.; do you really think Trump didn't attend that rally in Chicago out of concern for safety?

[Xyga]

nevah forget 7/11 ya beta commie cucks lot

[Giest118]

Because socialism in any capacity has always been wildly successful?

You're right. Public schools are fucking garbage and have never and will never have any positive effect in any real or hypothetical set of circumstances.

We should kill all public schools to do away with their socialist mark on our society forever.

[EmperorIng]

I still need to explain to Mischief Maker my opposition to the "free college" proposals, but this thread moves so quickly in different directions that it is hard to keep up, honestly.

It is a fact that a great deal of criminals cross the border

If it's "facts" you truly want to talk about, if memory serves the official numbers on the issue state that 1) Even when you correct for proportions, illegal immigrants are far, far less likely to commit crimes than "native" white people

Well, excepting for the fact that by their very definition they are breaking the law and through that status have to break several more laws... This article in the Atlantic points out the problems with dismissing the issues with illegal crime, or as you might be claiming, "the whites are really the bad guys, honestly!" If that's not race-baiting, what is?

In 2009, Lopez crossed the border into the United States again, was caught, and was sentenced to four years in federal prison. After his federal sentence was served, Lopez-Sanchez was handed over to San Francisco authorities to face trial for a local drug charge. The local court dismissed the charge and ordered the Lopez-Sanchez released into the community. Nobody notified federal immigration authorities, because San Francisco law forbids such cooperation. [emphasis mine]

As Senator Ted Cruz pointed out during a July 21 Judiciary Committee hearing on crimes by illegal immigrants, in 2014 alone, immigration authorities released into American communities 193 illegal immigrants with homicide convictions, 426 people with sexual-assault convictions and 16,000 with drunk-driving convictions. Altogether, 104,000 people who by law should have been deported were instead allowed to remain on American soil. The director of the agency in charge of the removals offered as a partial excuse that immigration courts faced a backlog of 500,000 cases.

Whatever the cause, there’s no doubt that removals of immigrants convicted of criminal acts have tumbled in Obama’s second term, after a sharp rise in his first term. Federal immigration authorities removed more than 216,000 such immigrants from the United States in fiscal year 2011, more than double the removals of fiscal 2007. But in fiscal 2014, only 178,000 were removed—a 17 percent drop from the 2011 peak.

I encourage you to read further where it dives deeper into the statistics collected by government agencies regarding unauthorized-immigrant crime. The fact of the matter is that politicians don't care enough about enforcing our immigration laws, and the result of this crime committed by illegal immigrants remains a significant problem, especially in states with high populations of illegals. To deny this, or to literally whitewash the problem as "not as bad as white crime lol" is ludicrous - you're falling into the opposite fallacious argument: "it's exaggerated so it must not be a problem." Even if you deny that line of reasoning, that is the net result of the argument itself.

Which brings me to...

2) Over the past few years the amount of illegal immigrants crossing into the USA has actually gone down; in fact, quite a few who were already here have headed back south. Why? Because our economy, and thus the job market, isn't as good as it used to be.

This is another intellectually dishonest argument. By conservative estimates, there is still a net gain of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the border every year. Just by saying the process has slowed down does not negate the fact that it is indeed a problem; it merely feels as if you are attempting to paint pro-border control people as hysterical.

Illegal immigration is a net loss for nearly everyone involved, except for two groups of people: big business and politicians. Big business, because they have access to exploitable labor; and politicians, who can moralize and pose as "humanitarian" to get votes (when in fact they also get something back from said businesses). It is a net loss for people in poverty, who now have to compete with people who can work for far cheaper (it's no secret that illegal immigration exacerbates income inequality). It is also a net loss on taxpayers, who do have pick up the tab for the social services (hospitals, education, etc.) that illegal immigrants use. It is further a net loss on the middle class who are also vulnerable these days, because such a unstable fluctuation in the labor market usually has negative ramifications into the middle class.

Unfortunately, for some pseudo-intellectuals, to argue against any of this is enough to accuse people of being racist. If we want to stabilize the economy and improve the job market, it's natural that immigration, both legal and illegal, will have to be curbed. In fact, the period of the 1930s through the 1970s saw the historically lowest percentages of immigration to the United States. I am not willing to commit or comment on limiting legal immigration, but it's simple to see that if we don't secure the southern border, we are going to continue to see economic fluctuations and wage suppression. Adding to that, we also have to address one of the largest blocs of illegal immigrants, those with expired visas. The fact that the system is piecemeal has always struck me as unfair. If one of my friends had to leave the country because of an expiring visa, why should there be so much spotty application of visa laws. Some people can stay and others have to leave? Simply put, it is too much of an economic burden (and in these days, a potential security burden - several of the 9/11 hijackers had expired visas, after all) to listen to the shrieks of uninformed people crying wolf, or in this case "racism! bigotry! think of the children!"

And before you go on another "Trump doesn't make sense!" dump, please note that he does not factor anywhere in this post.

You're right. Public schools are fucking garbage

I remember reading a statistic that shows the inverse relationship between public money spent per-student and academic achievement. Public schools are garbage, generally. Where I live it's something insanely high, like $10,000/student, and only getting higher, despite the numerous deficiencies of the public schools system...

Especially when corrupt union bosses find a way to fleece taxpayers and pension funds until your school system is $20 Billion in debt, because lawmakers allowed schools to borrow more than they could feasibly pay back. Thus, most of that money per student is left paying off the unions and politicians' money-making schemes. At least the teachers' union has the decency to accuse tax-payers who don't want to support their crony system anymore as "hating children" and being "anti-education." God forbid you actually hold teachers and schools accountable for how they spend their money.

If anyone is ever tired of living in their Republican-controlled hellholes, they are more than welcome to move to Illinois and taste the glories of a Democratic paradise. In fact we need people, since 100s of thousands have moved out over the last several years.