2016 USA Presidential Elections

TC said:
For me it's not simply a financial issue. We could legalize child porn and tax it, making money, rather than spending money hunting down and imprisoning perverts. But that doesn't mean we should. Some things are worth spending money on. And since I believe that one of the main reasons for Government existence is national defense and the rule of law, I think it's worth spending money on. Now I'm not sure if the wall is the best option either. I've heard stories about what our satellites could do with thermal imaging. We could go high tech instead.

As far as illegal immigrants working hard and paying taxes, I wouldn't object to a fast track system to let them stay. But if someone enters our country illegally, commits additional crimes, and gets deported, I wan't to know that they'll stay deported. Some of those people murder our citizens and it's kinda hard to put a price on a human life.

The other issue with illegal immigrants and how much taxes they might be paying is the fact that our country can only handle so much immigration each year. So the more illegal immigration, the less legal immigrants we can allow, who would have also worked hard and paid a lot of taxes. So the tax benefit of illegal immigration has never struck me as a particularly strong argument.
Click to expand...

Fair point, and I did mean ROI on the wall not securing the border itself, just the specific method
 
CD82 said:
A) Massive wall between Mexico and the US: Benefits the US while Mexico ends up with people that it doesn't want to have and that don't want to stay there. Not exactly ideal for Mexico. Incentive for Mexico to support said wall: Zero.

B) Improved southern border protection in Mexico: Benefits both the US and Mexico (because according to your own words the people illegally crossing Mexico are the problem here) by keeping those people out of Mexico (and therefore out of the US). Incentive for Mexico to support such a project: *probably* greater than zero.

Sometimes it's just better to work together and think about what you could do to encourage cooperation instead of threatening people with punishment. If you really think that people from South America coming into the US through Mexico are the major problem, then it would probably be best to encourage Mexico to stop those people at its southern border, and not at its northern border (because that would be no-win scenario for Mexico, and having them pay for a wall that doesn't benefit them at all is just the icing on the cake.)
I'm not saying either scenario is better from a humanitarian point of view, but if we are talking cold real world mechanics, then yes for US-Mexican relations it would be better for both countries to run a joint effort to keep people from entering Mexico in the first place. I'm sorry that I can't explain this any different, and probably I'm more of a cooperation-instead-confrontation-kind-of-guy, and when I want people to do something for me I usually tend to give them an incentive instead of threatening them, and I also respond better to being motivated by gaining something instead of being threatened.
Click to expand...

Shouldn't the possibility of a US wall keeping all the illegals in Mexico be an incentive to Mexico to secure their southern border?
 
Cellos88GT said:
If people don't think immigrants are being smuggled through the Canadian border (and that the rates won't increase if a wall along the Mexican border were to go up), I have some beachfront property in Alaska I can sell them...
Click to expand...
So, about that Alaskan property of yours....

Yes, this is me asking you to back up that outlandish statement of Canadians entering the US (and staying) illegally.
 
I may know of two.
 
JimCorrigan said:
So, about that Alaskan property of yours....

Yes, this is me asking you to back up that outlandish statement of Canadians entering the US (and staying) illegally.
Click to expand...

I think he's talking about the possibility of non canadians possibly avoiding the mexican border, instead arriving in canada by plane/boat then driving down.

I mean come on, let's be honest, why would a Canadian WANT to come here? :lol:

Personally: The wall is a gigantic waste of money, Mexico won't pay for it so we'll be stuck with part or all of the cost somehow. People will find ways over/under it just like a fucking fence (but a fence is likely far cheaper - an earlier poster had a point: build the same border around your yard with a chain-link fence then do the same thing with brick and mortar....The chain-link fence is probably more cost effective.) Yes it's a "make work" project but when other parts of our infrastructure are falling apart and shit, building a wall sounds like the least of our infrastructure worries.
 
Last edited:
Canadians come here for work. It is common in cities near the border.
 
GRtak said:
Canadians come here for work. It is common in cities near the border.
Click to expand...

Sure, people commute to work across the border all the time. And fine, I guess one could theorize that yes, a few down on their luck Canadians may try their luck at living in the US illegally for a better life. But the numbers have to be so slim (we're talking single digit percentages if that) considering the wider variety and depth of social safety nets that Canada likely has compared to the US.
 
JimCorrigan said:
So, about that Alaskan property of yours....

Yes, this is me asking you to back up that outlandish statement of Canadians entering the US (and staying) illegally.
Click to expand...

Judging by the grilling I got from Canadian border patrol last time I went to Toronto (like 5 years ago) it's actually the other way around...
 
Funny how thoroughly this prediction came true:

http://www.chadwhittle.com/whittle-...dent-trump-101716-a-whittle-bit-of-commentary
Chad Whittle said:
Each time a new president is elected, the media provides them with a ?media honeymoon,? or grace period. Whatever you wanna call it. The length of this honeymoon can vary from a few months, to 8 years if you?re Barry O. During this time the media isn?t super critical of the new guy or publishes a bunch of hit pieces on him. They give him time to settle in the White House and the job. This unprecedented election we are living through will bring an unprecedented amount of criticism to President Trump (if he wins). If Trump wins, there will be no honeymoon. The media from day one will be posting critical analysis of him from the minute he takes his hand of the Bible on inauguration day. Each day he will have to respond to hit pieces in the papers and on the nightly newscasts. If you thought the disrespect they gave George W. Bush was bad, just wait until President Trump.
Click to expand...

The honeymoon is now a foreign concept . . . or, rather, a purely partisan one. Trump will never see anything like it, while Obama's is likely to continue indefinitely even after he leaves office.
 
rickhamilton620 said:
I think he's talking about the possibility of non canadians possibly avoiding the mexican border, instead arriving in canada by plane/boat then driving down.
Click to expand...

This is indeed what I meant.
 
kunedog said:
Funny how thoroughly this prediction came true:

The honeymoon is now a foreign concept . . . or, rather, a purely partisan one. Trump will never see anything like it, while Obama's is likely to continue indefinitely even after he leaves office.
Click to expand...

If it weren't for the forum rules, I'd be striking a far less conversational tone.

Trump had a grace period. It was about 36 hours, give or take. His victory speech was, on the whole, rather conciliatory and unifying, including that he "will be a president for all Americans...For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people...I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country."

Much less inflammatory than the campaign trail, and honestly kind of hopeful that perhaps he would do just that. The papers the next day were the usual post-mortem on how the favored candidate lost, international congratulations, the usual baseline op-ed ideological disagreements caused by seeing the opposing party take power, etc etc. The protests that started were not much different than the ones after Bush defeated Gore and should not be surprising given the differing viewpoints on the Electoral College.

Then Yam Saddam started tweeting again, calling the protestors "unfair" and accusing the media of inciting them. Back to the campaign rhetoric, honeymoon over, descend back down to where we now find ourselves.

Don't pretend that Trump is blameless and was robbed of a honeymoon period by the media; he's half the reason it ended so soon.
 
From CNN to SNL, the post-mortem was entirely about the "racist" and "angry" and "stupid" half of the country (including the "traitorous" white women) voting for Trump. This never stopped and (if anything) intensified right after the vote (as reality set in), even as they were preparing the "Russians Hacked the Election" narrative. The MSM also gave coverage to a fake pro-Trump hate crime wave (as already documented here) with zero evidence of violence while continuing to downplay anti-Trump violence backed by indisputable proof.

If Hillary had been elected, we'd've gotten thousands of fluff pieces by now, and we'd be looking forward to tens of thousands more in the coming years. And, holy shit, can you even imagine what the news would look like if anyone were on film beating/torturing some person while screaming about how much they hated Hillary.

Hillary's presidency was owed to the MSM by divine right, and they've been furiously thrashing about since the loss in a desperate attempt to sabotage Trump and blame ANYONE but themselves for it. IMO saying they gave him any grace period (even a laughable day and a half) sounds like throwing a rock and hiding your hand.
 
prizrak said:
Shouldn't the possibility of a US wall keeping all the illegals in Mexico be an incentive to Mexico to secure their southern border?
Click to expand...

Sure it would, but some incentives are better than others. For instance if I told you I would give you <random amount of money> for <random activity>, or if I threaten you if you did not do <random activity>, which of the two would work better?

And also, lets assume that Mexico actually sees a wall at its northern border as an incentive to do something about its southern border and actually stops everybody at its southern border. Suddenly the wall in the north (god that sounds so like Game of Thrones) becomes useless and a giant waste of money. Instead a lot of headaches and moneys could be saved by directly going for "improving the southern border of Mexico together with Mexico".
 
CD82 said:
Sure it would, but some incentives are better than others. For instance if I told you I would give you <random amount of money> for <random activity>, or if I threaten you if you did not do <random activity>, which of the two would work better?
Click to expand...
Highly depends on threat and your ability to carry it out. If you tell me you'll kick my ass if I don't do X, you will be told to fuck off. If you show me a live stream of my family strapped to a bomb that can only be stopped by you, I'll be quite motivated.

And also, lets assume that Mexico actually sees a wall at its northern border as an incentive to do something about its southern border and actually stops everybody at its southern border. Suddenly the wall in the north (god that sounds so like Game of Thrones) becomes useless and a giant waste of money. Instead a lot of headaches and moneys could be saved by directly going for "improving the southern border of Mexico together with Mexico".
Click to expand...
That logic only works if the *only* problem we are facing are S American immigrants, Mexicans do still cross the border illegally and you still have the possibility of people entering MX legally and getting into the US illegally.
 
kunedog said:
The MSM also gave coverage to a fake pro-Trump hate crime wave (as already documented here) with zero evidence of violence while continuing to downplay anti-Trump violence backed by indisputable proof.[...]
Click to expand...
As always, you are highly selective in what you consider to be true or not.

https://www.theguardian.com/society...ate-crimes-report-southern-poverty-law-center

No one here is denying that there is "anti-trump violence". Yet you are blind to what some few of their fellow supporters do despite the also indisputable facts. You demand the honeymoon period for Trump? Try some honesty first yourself. This sort of selecting facts and ignoring what happens on the other side that leads to this partisanship that divides this society - but you sir, you are a part of the problem.
 
prizrak said:
That logic only works if the *only* problem we are facing are S American immigrants, Mexicans do still cross the border illegally and you still have the possibility of people entering MX legally and getting into the US illegally.
Click to expand...

For the latter case: And whose job is it to do something about that? Whenever I travel in Europe, not one country gives a shit about me leaving, only about me entering the country. When I drive into Germany there is no checkpoint on the Swiss side, the only checkpoint is at the German side of the border (although basically it's never occupied). And when I come back to Switzerland, nobody would ever stop me on the German side.

Recently I drove from Denmark to Sweden, and again no being stopped when leaving Denmark, only when I entered Sweden they wanted to see some paperwork.

This is why the idea of a country wanting to see my credentials when I *leave* the country seems so weird to me. And this whole "Mexico should keep the border to the US safe" idea seems so alien to me. If you don't want certain people in your country, fine, but don't expect somebody else to do that job for you.
 
But for different reasons... they didn't do it to protect the rest of Germany, but because they were basically one big prison.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top