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Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

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Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#311

Post by dragonwriter »

jbmorgado wrote: post #199
dredmorbius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, roughly 63 million votes, of a population of 325 million, were cast for #45. That is 19% of the total population. Reliable sources inform me that this may in fact be significantly less than half of all Americans. The notion of the nutcase fringe in politics has been around for a while -- there's about 20% of the vote you've got to be very aware of. Where other voters are insuff…

Are you actually putting newborn children in the mix to pretend that only 19% of Americans wanted Trump there?

Since newborn children are Americans, they were in the mix from the time the claim was made that nearly half of Americans voted Trump into office. Setting the correct universe of comparison is the responsibility of the person making the claim.

Of course, even if you mean "Americans eligible to vote" or the slightly smaller number of "Americans registered to vote", the claim still isn't even approximately true.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#312

Post by yodon »

bubinubn wrote: post #298
yodon wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect I'm not alone in wishing you had cast your vote in a way that mattered. Hopefully in hindsight it's clear no one "listened" to your deep moral convictions (or whatever) that led you to vote for that third party or to led your friends to vote blank top of ballot entries. You simply fell prey to a focused disinformation campaign that actively tried to prevent intelligent voters from voting and that worked, pr…

This logic doesn't really work out...it seems to also hold that everyone who voted for HRC also voted in a way that didn't matter, so they might as well have just stayed home (the outcome would be no different). Also, it really reads as just a not-very-thinly-veiled accusation that people who do not vote for the candidate that you want to win are stupid and/or naive. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying t…

The election had two candidates that together received just shy of 100% of the vote and that split that vote very nearly 50/50. The rest of the names on the ballot were spoilers, not candidates. That outcome was not a surprise and no one seriously expected anyone other than those two candidates to win or have any other impact than spoiling the vote of one or both of the winners. Which of thse two candidates would win was not known until the election, because polling is difficult and presidential races in the US tend to be close, so the voting was necessary and no votes for either serious candidate were wasted. All of that is true for every US presidential election in recent memory.

And just like in every previous election, no one "listened" to the voters who voted for the spoiler candidates. No one said "if HRC or DT had just done x they would have gotten more of the Green Party or Libertarian voters." People who vote for spoiler candidates self select themselves into a group where they guarantee the winning and losing major parties don't care at all what they think. Voting for a spoiler candidate means the major candidates don't have to care what you think, and they don't, so you end up with even less influence than if you had voted for one or the other of the potential winners.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#313

Post by yodon »

dllthomas wrote: post #303
yodon wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect I'm not alone in wishing you had cast your vote in a way that mattered. Hopefully in hindsight it's clear no one "listened" to your deep moral convictions (or whatever) that led you to vote for that third party or to led your friends to vote blank top of ballot entries. You simply fell prey to a focused disinformation campaign that actively tried to prevent intelligent voters from voting and that worked, pr…

Before you get lecturey, maybe make sure parent was voting in a place where casting a different vote had a chance of directly mattering? My third party vote in CA arguably has a bigger effect than a major party vote in CA, for the presidency in the general election.

Most parts of the US are close enough that a "major victory" or a "guaranteed outcome" is measured at the level of a few percentage points. Even in the hopelessly gerrymandered house elections coming up in 2018 there may be as many as 70 seats in play, precisely because even a "safe" seat is only safe by a comparatively small percentage margin.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#314

Post by dllthomas »

yodon wrote: post #313
dllthomas wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you get lecturey, maybe make sure parent was voting in a place where casting a different vote had a chance of directly mattering? My third party vote in CA arguably has a bigger effect than a major party vote in CA, for the presidency in the general election.

Most parts of the US are close enough that a "major victory" or a "guaranteed outcome" is measured at the level of a few percentage points. Even in the hopelessly gerrymandered house elections coming up in 2018 there may be as many as 70 seats in play, precisely because even a "safe" seat is only safe by a comparatively small percentage margin.

Geographically, "most parts of the US" are fairly close. If you live in one of those parts, vote accordingly.

By population, that's substantially less true - nothing I do in the ballot box is going to make a dent in a 60-40 split in CA, and quite a few will have to think just like me before it does. If you're in one of those parts, vote accordingly.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#316

Post by csomar »

y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #40

This may be unpopular on an US-centric site like HN, but the US looks more and more like they want to isolate themselves from the rest of the world: very strict immigration policy, travelers molested by TSA on airports, ... These conferences where people around the world meet should start to be hosted somewhere else. Not in the USA anymore. Somewhere in a country that welcomes people instead of treating all of them l…

You have data on the refusal rate for Germany? It might be worse than the US (immigration wise). [bold] I'm not saying it is, but without data we can't really know the truth[\bold]

For all the hate that the US is getting, it is still by far one of the largest countries that accept foreigners from all over the world to move in the social ladder and build wealth.

The lottery program alone accepts 45 thousand every year. You can get your mother/son into the US if you are a US citizen. I know many people who moved their entire families to the US this way. Sure the process was a hassle (a multi-year hassle) but it enabled them to access the US infrastructure.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#317

Post by DiNovi »

y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #40

This may be unpopular on an US-centric site like HN, but the US looks more and more like they want to isolate themselves from the rest of the world: very strict immigration policy, travelers molested by TSA on airports, ... These conferences where people around the world meet should start to be hosted somewhere else. Not in the USA anymore. Somewhere in a country that welcomes people instead of treating all of them l…

oh, us citizens are very aware of this new isolationism; some of us like me are terrified, but 46% of use seemingly wanted it.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#319

Post by bzbarsky »

nickserv wrote: post #79
humanrebar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This may be unpopular on an US-centric site like HN, but the US looks more and more like they want to isolate themselves from the rest of the world: very strict immigration policy, travelers molested by TSA on airports, ... Almost all Americans think this sort of thing is nonsense. But the average American has little standing to hold the American bureaucracy accountable for its nonsense. Americans, especially outsi…

> Almost all Americans think this sort of thing is nonsense. But the average American has little standing to hold the American bureaucracy accountable for its nonsense. Sorry but they don't get off that easy when almost half of them voted Trump into office. > Americans, especially outside overcrowded urban areas, are courteous, helpful, hospitable people that are very tolerant of other people and ideas. I've found qu…

While it may feel cathartic to blame Trump for this, unfortunately the situation is much worse than that. The article is about an ESTA denial. ESTA was put in place during the Bush administration (July 2007), and random ESTA denials happened all the time during the Obama administration. Not much has changed on this front since Trump took office, as far as I can tell.

I'm not sure exactly how we're getting away with having this ESTA thing at all for countries that are supposedly part of the Visa Waiver program, without them retaliating in kind. I only hope that we'll come to our senses and stop before they do so. But given that ESTA has now existed for 10 years and both parties seem to support it, I have low hopes of it going away.

Re: Author of cURL denied entry to the USA

#320

Post by dang »

op00to wrote: post #143

Please don't say "Americans" don't want foreigners on our soil. A minority of Americans allowed a hostile foreign government to manipulate our election process to raise a corrupt, compromised bigot to power. Most Americans want our country to be open and free. Painting every American this way does nothing to recognize the misery of this situation.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643644 and marked it off-topic.
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