Trump

For immigration, Trump is for enforcing the laws. That's not evidence of being racist. Part of one way of enforcing the laws is to build a wall. That's not racist either; it's enforcing our immigration laws.

For "rapists", some of the illegal immigrants across the Mexican border have been rapists. Trump didn't say that all the illegal immigrants were rapists.

More generally, our legal immigration system was well designed and very careful about who gets admitted. The flow of illegal immigrants across the border with Mexico has everyone who is able physically to cross the border at all. That includes people from Mexico, from elsewhere in Central and South America, people from Cuba, and, now, some people from the war areas of the Mideast, likely including ISIS soldiers. Stopping that illegal immigration is important for US public health, US public safety, US drug enforcement, the US economy, and US national security and is not racist.

The Mexican border is also a source of illegal drugs -- a good wall would greatly slow that. Again, a wall to slow the flow of illegal drugs is not racist.

For Mexicans, Trump has said over and over that he has hired thousands of Mexicans and regards them as excellent workers. So, clearly Trump is not a "racist" on Mexicans.

There is good evidence, e.g., in Arizona, that a lot of people from Mexico and now US citizens will be voting for Trump because they agree with Trump that we should not have illegal immigrants from Mexico. Apparently those US citizens do not regard Trump as racist against people from Mexico.

> His proposed policies have even gained him an endorsement from the KKK.

A political candidate can't keep some dirt bags from saying they like the candidate. But when some dirt bags do so say, then the candidate can reject the support, and Trump did that right away. There was a delay of some seconds, but there are some explanations of that that do not cast a bad light on Trump.

Actually, there is a lot of quite positive evidence that Trump has been a leader against racism. IIRC, Trump was a leader in letting everyone in to his high end golf club in Florida.

I'm still looking for evidence that Trump is racist. So far I like Trump -- if there is something wrong with him, then I want to know it.

For your last paragraph, my view is that for ballpark 2/3rds of the content of value on the Internet, searches people would like to do, and results they would like to find there is no good search engine or search means. Part, much of, the challenge is your substantive, that is, how to find (suitably) substantive content. I haven't said my work is for substantive content; the word I have used is content with the meaning the user has in mind, but your substantive is a special case of my meaning. So are entertaining, artistic taste, level of detail, etc.

Sounds like you stand to be an eager user of my startup! Maybe another 3 billion people will also!

Just how to build such a tool is a challenge. I worked out how, but the crucial core internals are some original applied math I derived based on some advanced prerequisites. Some of the prerequisites are astounding -- wouldn't believe that any such things could be true, but they are, and they are astoundingly powerful.

But the user interface is dirt simple -- even a boy of 10 in Thailand who knows no English should be able to learn to use the English language version of the site in five minutes from someone who knows and in 15 minutes on their own. The user experience stands to be fun, something of an addictive adventure.

The code, intended for production, is running and in alpha test.

Ah, YC turned it down!

It isn't just a religion, it's a paramilitary group. Exclude them because their part of a paramilitary group, or part of a sect of Islam that carries out illegal actions where a majority participate or support those actions. And if the group is large enough that it's hard to get a good idea on the numbers that support, that's a good clue we aren't identifying the factions well enough.

> Your description of how refugees get vetted on their way into the US conflicts with my (casual) understanding of the process.

My description also provided a reference, a politifact article, which directly linked to the state department's own guidelines.

> Indeed, supposedly we have already admitted refugees from Syria or nearby after less delay than you mention. Besides, there are reports of the refugees bringing TB and, what was it, measles into the US. Good vetting would stop at least TB and likely measles.

References? I can't address a "supposedly" without something more substantive to go on. All to often, headlines about things like those are alarmist on purpose, either by media agencies to drum up attention (and thus money), or from people with a specific agenda who don't look too closely at the details (or worse, purposefully omit relevant information). It happens to both sides, and it's why it's important to really look at the situation, not go off headlines. For example, the results I'm seeing about Syrian refugees and measles are the problem they are creating in the Middle East and Africa, not the US. Perhaps you would be interested to know that 10-15 million people in America are already infected with Latent Tuberculosis[1], which is what the reports of Syrian refugees is referring to.

> I hope you don't believe that that spirit means we necessarily should admit people.

No, but not doing so isn't economically in our best interest. I'm merely stating that if people are allowed in, filtering by religion seems to have real constitutional problems to me.

> pro-Mexican political causes that conflict with some of Trump's campaign positions

If you're talkign about the La Raza group he was a member of, perhaps you'll find this[2] of interest (I'm not a regular reader of Politifact, but it keeps coming up as what looks like a less biased source in my searching). Here's a snippet:

Our search of the Nexis newspaper database found an episode in 2004 when the association wrote a letter calling for the cancellation of a popular Los Angeles reality television show in which illegal immigrants competed for the free services of an immigration lawyer to apply for a green card. The show "functions as a magnet to encourage people to enter this country without documentation," the letter said.

How do you classify a statement that jumps to race as the reason behind actions when the evidence to support it is shaky at best?

> We don't want new ghettos where police are afraid to go. Supposedly there are such in Europe now.

Europe often has a very different view of and attitude towards immigration and refugees. Wall them off, keep them from affecting the country and culture. The US has historically had a very different approach, which is to integrate them as much as possible. There will be some cultural cross contamination, but it's ended up being a very successful, useful, peaceful and economically profitable approach so far. Ghettos happen when a population is repressed and constrained (and that's how it happened here with black ghettos too).

> Of course, we don't want to target all of Islam.

If you aren't planning to target all of Islam, then don't throw around the terms Islam and Muslim without futher qualification as to what type of this larger group you are referring to. Please reread your prior comment's paragraph that begins with "Second, Islam is a long way from being just a religion." How, when you've explained all the problems with Islam as a whole, as you see them, am I supposed to assume you're only referring to things we should do to stop certain groups? This is the problem with the rhetoric. People would be justifiably upset if in a conversation about white supremacists, all of a sudden the discussion shifted to the problems with white people.

> Of course there is the issue of the open border with Mexico: Anyone who can get to Mexico can just walk across the border -- no vetting of any kind.

Whether it's true or not, and I take issue with the characterization of the process and how easy it is, there appear to be less Mexicans immigrating, and less South Americans immigrating as well (which would likely come through the Mexican border). I'm finding it hard to square it being so easy to cross with the industry of people that charge multiple thousands of dollars per person to get them across safely. Why would people pay for something if it was as easy as you make it sound? Also, to clarify, we do not have an open border. It may be policed less in some areas than in others, but it is not open. There are plenty of numbers at the DHS's Yearbook of Immigration Statistics site[4].

> You seem to be for immigration unless there is some really strong reason to say no.

Yes, because there are many benefits. There's only debate whether illegal immigration is more of a draw or a gain, regular immigration is almost always viewed as a net positive from an economic standpoint.

> For Muslims, I'm especially eager to say no if only because their culture is so darned different that they typically are darned slow to assimilate.

Do you have a basis for that belief? It doesn't appear to be true[5]

1: http://www.aafp.org/afp/2009/0515/p879.html

2: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/...

3: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/what-we-know...

4: https://www.dhs.gov/yearbook-immigration-statistics

5: http://www.factcheck.org/2016/06/trumps-baseless-assimilatio...

All I can say is I heard it in the media and suspect that some Google search of recent weeks should show some examples.

Your interest in examples is excellent -- now if we could get NYT, WaPo, CBS, ABC, NBC, etc. always to do that ....

I hope the info is sourced, well. It's not just about how much info you have, or what it says, it's about how trustworthy and accurate it is and how unbiased it is together. It's relatively simple to have completely correct statements that through simple omission of relevant info can complete change the calculus. I find locating trustworthy information is the real challenge, and even then, it's rarely without it's problems if you find a good source from the other side.

> For immigrants or refugees from the Mideast, for now, mostly for what I want just say no and otherwise be quite careful.

That's your prerogative, and obviously you aren't along in that view.

> But I don't think that Trump is racist.

Well, to clarify, I don't think he is either. I do think he's pandering to people that harbor feelings bordering on racism. I think his persona is carefully calculated and does not reflect his real thoughts and opinions. I think Trump University was a complete scam (the documents they didn't want shown are fairly damning). I also think if was not a good omen as to what his presidency might entail (and completely inappropriate) that he decided to use his pulpit to go after a judge who he disagreed with.

If you want the liberal side of this, I recommend John Oliver's show Last Week Tonight. He likes to go fairly in-depth on things (but of course it's going to be biased). He goes quite deep into the Trump University topic[1]. It's worth a watch, if for no other reason than it's amusing, and gives you the liberal points on the issue, which you can use to research whether there's something relevant that was left out so you have an answer to the questions raised (if you don't already).

To me, he comes across as a very, very successful con man. Even if I agreed with more of his stances, I just don't feel I can trust him on anything. I truly believe he will say whatever it takes to become president, with little or no intention of following through. Or, to be clear, far, far less intention on following through than your run-of-the-mill career politician. I think his speech is damaging to the nation as it creates divisions and fear-mongers. To me, he's everything I dislike and mistrust about the media dialed to 11. Needless to say, we've come away with fairly different opinions of the man. ;)

> IMHO your contributions here are exceptional, in particular way above the content of all the mass media I've ever seen.

I appreciate that, but really all I did was respond to your specific points and try to keep it civil. :) I enjoy rational discourse, and I was actually far less versed on the specifics of Trump before our back-and-forth. All the items I cited were found as I tried to look up the items you presented. My default stance is that all stories presented by the media have an agenda, so they rarely present an accurate picture of events. I try to remember this to keep me from making strong statements regarding issues where my primary source of information is the media, and if I want to use them in some statement here in a strong way I'll try to do a quick search for what looks like a good less biased source (because unbiased is a pipe dream. Even if you find it, you can't be sure).

Have a nice day! :)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcID-LxYFwA