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Cont: The Trump Presidency 11: Insert something funny

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newyorkguy said:
The human cost from a New York Times article in 2004:
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Leon Stroud, a Border Patrol agent who is part of a squad that has the dual job of arresting illegal immigrants and trying to save their lives, said he had seen 34 bodies in the last year. In Border Patrol parlance, a dead car and a dead migrant are the same thing -- a ''10-7'' -- but Mr. Stroud said he had never gotten used to the loss of life. ''The hardest thing was, I sat with this 15-year-old kid next to the body of his dad,'' said Mr. Stroud, a Texan who speaks fluent Spanish. ''His dad had been a cook. He was too fat to be trying to cross this border. We built a fire and I tried to console him. It was tough.''
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That was 2004. Now his successors in the job destroy caches of water intended to prevent that.
 
Michel H said:
I am far from being an expert in American politics. However, it seems to me that, if Democrats could be a little clearer about what you are explaining here (that they would be ready to fund new barriers), that would perhaps help solve the current stalemate (with a partial government shutdown).
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No, it wouldn't. Ther Democrats were perfectly clear during that peculiar event with Trump : they'll fund border security, including barriers where appropriate, which is business as usual. The problem is that the Trump Wall is not meant to be business as usual, it's meant to be a unique landmark event in US history. Trump will hold out for that as long as he can. Which won't be much longer, of course.
 
Trump's wall would be a monument to racism and Republican authoritarianism, it won't be an effective deterrent to illegal immigration.
 
Lurch said:
I just don't understand why the Right has suddenly got this bee in their bonnet about erecting *right bloody now* this monument to stupidity called a Wall.
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Perhaps it means they have a more realistic attitude to climate change in private than they do in public?

Is the situation *now* all so frightfully different from that of years past? (Nope; we observe a decrease in the numbers of illegals.)
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The developing situation is different, and pretty frightful.
 
CapelDodger said:
Perhaps it means they have a more realistic attitude to climate change in private than they do in public?

The developing situation is different, and pretty frightful.
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Your responses seem curiously disconnected from the questions you quoted. Could you clarify your perceived connection between Trumps wall and climate change?
 
Why not just build a canal instead? Then our ships wouldn't have to go down all the way to Panama! And think of the fees we could charge!!!
 
Michel H said:
But Trump seems to be evolving somewhat. During his Christmas day message, he said:

(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/us/politics/trump-border-wall-shutdown.html )
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That's just Trump backing down. It's not "whatever they want to call it". He's said "wall" and he meant "wall". He corrected people who said it wouldn't really be a wall wall but was meant to mean border barriers of various sorts.

He then went to big spikey post thing, which is just the result of asking for cheaper alternatives which he should have done originally instead of taking theoretical bids for prefab steel and concrete wall sections.

He is now preparing, I'm sure, to ameliorate big spikey posts thing to "okay, fence with barbed wire". And after that it'll be "well, fence with barbed wire where we can get the rights cheap enough, and okay we can't build fences in the middle of the Rio Grande or up and down chasms, but it's still a wall, right!


This is all political. He needs to win this, so by the fifth of the month it might be "shorter and made out of bouncy castle material but hey, it's still a wall like I promised". Part of the politics is the turning away of the alt-right who nearly lynched him, but the other part is that come 2020 he needs to be able to pose on a section of an actual "wall". He promised and delivered! MAGA! MAGA! MAGA! So even if we wind up with 3000 km of porous hedgerows some friendly conservative will sell him a hundred yard section of land where he can build the 2020 Trump Wall for photo ops.(He tried showing other already planned construction areas as The Wall Starter Kit via Huckabee Smith at one point but got caught at it.)

It's not about security. It's about optics and campaigning.
 
Steve said:
Your responses seem curiously disconnected from the questions you quoted. Could you clarify your perceived connection between Trumps wall and climate change?
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Climate refugees. In public the Right denies there'll ever be such a thing, but perhaps in private they recognise that there will.


Pure whimsy, of course : the wall gratifies their racist and nationalist desires. Also the Democrats are agin it.
 
CapelDodger said:
Climate refugees. In public the Right denies there'll ever be such a thing, but perhaps in private they recognise that there will.


Pure whimsy, of course : the wall gratifies their racist and nationalist desires. Also the Democrats are agin it.
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Thanks. I get it now. No doubt there will be climate refugees. However that is not the reason for current refugees at the Mexican border and has nothing to do with Trumps obsession with the wall. The more sensible republicans may see a wall serving that purpose in the future but most of those old men will be dead by then.

Eta - so I doubt they really care
 
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thaiboxerken said:
It's truly sad that racism has such a large role in Republican politics.
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It's not even the racism as it is the absurdity of it. It's like a parent offering some kids cake for dinner every day, except even more ridiculous because also "we can afford it because the neighbours will pay.

And grown men and women take this seriously, to the point where it's become the centrepiece of his presidency to some of his supporters.

50-100 years ago, "I will wall off Mexico and they will pay for it"will still be a running joke, the way we today use "-gate" as a suffix for scandals.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
It's not even the racism as it is the absurdity of it. It's like a parent offering some kids cake for dinner every day, except even more ridiculous because also "we can afford it because the neighbours will pay.
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Honey, I just got the bill from the cake shop. I thought you said the neighbors would pay?

Well, they are paying but we have to take the money out of Emily's college trust fund first. See, there's an easement coming through out back and we're going to get ten thousand dollars for it because the neighbor needs egress to the alley for service vehicles. We're making enough off him to pay for cake for three years!

But that easement was ordered six years ago. What does that have to do with free cake?

Hey, I said they'd pay and it amounts to the same thing. They're paying, see?
 
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smartcooky said:
And that figure itself is truly terrifying... that between 3 and 4 out of every 10 American adults is a racist who actually believes the crap Der Trumpenführer spews out.
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I think you have to now wave a live chicken in a sack around your head three times in a graveyard at midnight. Otherwise Emily's Cat shows up with "You Can't Call Them Deplorables, The Director's Cut for 2020".

I do like to point out, though, that USAians now self-identifying as Republicans are now about 28%. Gallup still shows GOP supporters at 88% "favorable" for Donnie Johnny. So that base of deplorables is likely closer to 25% than to 40. There's also the "I'm not deplorable I'm brain dead bloc" people who will vote Republican if they run Trump, Ted Bundy or Oona Chaplin... they just vote Republican. If caught by a pollster I'm sure they answer "approve". I still place the deplorables at 15/17%, right around the number who polled as "we're not ready for a black president" mid-term in the Obama administration!!!
 
Foolmewunz said:
I think you have to now wave a live chicken in a sack around your head three times in a graveyard at midnight. Otherwise Emily's Cat shows up with "You Can't Call Them Deplorables, The Director's Cut for 2020".

I do like to point out, though, that USAians now self-identifying as Republicans are now about 28%. Gallup still shows GOP supporters at 88% "favorable" for Donnie Johnny. So that base of deplorables is likely closer to 25% than to 40. There's also the "I'm not deplorable I'm brain dead bloc" people who will vote Republican if they run Trump, Ted Bundy or Oona Chaplin... they just vote Republican. If caught by a pollster I'm sure they answer "approve". I still place the deplorables at 15/17%, right around the number who polled as "we're not ready for a black president" mid-term in the Obama administration!!!
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If indeed the hard number of the GOP base is nearer to the 20% level, then it's all the more astonishing that that few can and do hold the whole country in thrall. When I hear the Trump sycophants on the talking head TV shows say crap like, "The American people voted for (whatever batcrap crazy Trumpian nonsense is under debate)", I wanna scream into the screen that those "American people" are a distinct *minority.*

I guess Kelly had it right, but in the wrong setting... The empty barrel does make the most noise. And the emptiness apparent among the "barrels" steadfastly clinging to Dump makes for a mighty din of hollowness.
 
Molinaro said:
Captain_Swoop said:
China's soybean imports from the US plunged to zero in November, marking the first time since the trade war between the world's two largest economies started that China, the world's largest soybean buyer, has imported no U.S. supplies.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-imports-zero-u-s-soybeans-november-first-time-trade-n951556
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That no big deal. Republican supporters much prefer that the government give handouts to farmers instead of them selling their products to commies.
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These handouts are financed with money the US borrows from (among others) the Chinese.

Makes perfect sense ...
 
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Firestone said:
These handouts are financed with money the US borrows from (among others) the Chinese.

Makes perfect sense ...
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See, we told you China would pay for them beans!

I mean, it's not like Trump ever pays back a loan, right?
 
smartcooky said:
1. As acbytesla said, much of the border (at least those parts that are easily accessible) is fenced anyway.

[qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/s/y8ab6onhgul2zcl/Mexico-US-border.png?raw=1[/qimg]

2000 miles (3000 KM).
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I can't help but notice that whole chunk of coastline that isn't going to be fenced off. Cue the Coastguard fishing migrants out of the Gulf of Mexico and bodies washing up along the Gulf Coast.
 
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