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U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

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Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#351

Post by downandout »

pjc50 wrote: post #344
downandout wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were Obama’s disapproval ratings not always in the 40-55% range, which are right where Trump’s are? The data suggests they were. Considering how laughably biased the media has been against Trump, relative to the exact opposite treatment that Obama had, he’s actually doing amazingly well in this regard. I think Trump has made a tremendous number of mistakes, but just going by the numbers, he seems to holding better th…

> claimed cheating in the wake of his election You're forgetting the birthirism, the claim that Obama was ineligible for the presidency because he was born abroad, complete with theatrical demands for his birth certificate.

That was a relatively small number of extreme right wingers, and they were quickly branded by the media as nutjobs (and rightly so, as long as Obama had his papers in order). That movement wasn’t mainstream, unlike the Trump cheating/collusion claims.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#352

Post by lazyasciiart »

downandout wrote: post #342
lazyasciiart wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump's disapproval ratings are very different to the usual ratings at the start of a presidency, which tend to be higher, and Obama's average rating was higher than Trump's highest ever rating (even Obama's lowest ratings are about the same as that). It is just nonsense to pretend that Trump's ratings are "right in the same range" as Obama. http://news.gallup.com/interactives/185273/presidential-job-... ?

Were Obama’s disapproval ratings not always in the 40-55% range, which are right where Trump’s are? The data suggests they were. Considering how laughably biased the media has been against Trump, relative to the exact opposite treatment that Obama had, he’s actually doing amazingly well in this regard. I think Trump has made a tremendous number of mistakes, but just going by the numbers, he seems to holding better th…

The data says that Trump's disapproval ratings are already averaging over 50, which is unusual, and so far his highest disapproval rating has been 58%. The exact range for Trump so far has been 44-58, whereas for Obama's presidency his range was 19-56. Only the most partisan analysis can pretend that those look the same. At this point in his presidency, Obama was at his highest disapproval level so far, and it was 46% - Trump hasn't seen disapproval that low since January 2017. (You may not be aware that disapproval ratings are not actually calculated as 100-approval). Obama never hit the net disapproval levels that Trump is at.

I also want to point out that it's pretty facile to assert that if Republicans had disapproved of Obama more strongly, he would have been more strongly disapproved of.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#353

Post by lazyasciiart »

downandout wrote: post #351
pjc50 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> claimed cheating in the wake of his election You're forgetting the birthirism, the claim that Obama was ineligible for the presidency because he was born abroad, complete with theatrical demands for his birth certificate.

That was a relatively small number of extreme right wingers, and they were quickly branded by the media as nutjobs (and rightly so, as long as Obama had his papers in order). That movement wasn’t mainstream, unlike the Trump cheating/collusion claims.

You realize that movement included Donald Trump, right?

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#354

Post by sleavey »

makecheck wrote: post #296

Ugh. First, fake profiles are not only possible , they are trivial . So if you correctly state you don’t have a profile on X, and they find one anyway...do you think they’ll bother to tell you why you were denied? No, you’ll just be silently blacklisted for what “you” do online. Social networks are also run by companies , not the government. They need to just stop expecting us to interact with a tiny number of specif…

The US is not the centre of the world. I'm a researcher and even though the immigration process is smoother for academics, others and I have long since decided not to pursue work in the US. There are many reasons, but amongst them are the populist government, draconian "America first, rest of the world second" policies (that have existed since the Bush era, not just Trump), dropping or stagnant science funding and (obviously only in some aspects) the expert-hostile society.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#355

Post by downandout »

dragonwriter wrote: post #345
downandout wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it always the case that the President has "disapproval" ratings around 50% though? Half the country tends to like the person they voted for, and half the country has sour grapes because their side lost. Obama's disapproval ratings also hovered above 50% at several points in his Presidency [1]. So it isn't Trump's "disapproval" ratings that are new for any President, it's the level of hatred that the press has f…

> Isn't it always the case that the President has "disapproval" ratings around 50% though? No, it's not. From the source cited upthread, here's what other Presidents had at the same point in their Presidency as Trump's current 53.6% disapproval: Obama: 45.3% Bush 43: 17.6% Clinton: 40.2% Bush 41: 15.3% Reagan: 45.0% Carter: 34.5% Ford: 38.6% Nixon: 31.4% Johnson: 15.1% Kennedy: 12.0% Eisenhower: 22.2% Truman: 45.1%

Still, factoring in the unprecedented liberal media headwinds faces by Trump, I’d say his numbers are amazingly good and still within the range of Obama’s after Obamacare began hitting people’s wallets.

That’s either scary or good, depending on your political leanings I suppose.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#356

Post by downandout »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #353
downandout wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a relatively small number of extreme right wingers, and they were quickly branded by the media as nutjobs (and rightly so, as long as Obama had his papers in order). That movement wasn’t mainstream, unlike the Trump cheating/collusion claims.

You realize that movement included Donald Trump, right?

Don’t take my assessment of the numbers as a defense of Trump. I didn’t vote for him or Hillary, and I think he is both way off in the weeds on many issues and making us look bad on the world stage. But that doesn’t mean that we should go painting things as being worse than they are, embracing hypocrisy, or misinterpreting facts like the media does.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#357

Post by lazyasciiart »

coldtea wrote: post #325
HillaryBriss wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think so too. if Trump is still around in Nov 2020, he's overwhelmingly likely to lose. his opposition is extremely motivated and overflowing with a prurient desire to defeat him, while Trump's remaining voters, who have been repeatedly embarrassed and disappointed, have as much motivation to show up at the polls as a child has to show up at a vaccination clinic.

> while Trump's remaining voters, who have been repeatedly embarrassed and disappointed, have as much motivation to show up at the polls as a child has to show up at a vaccination clinic. Have they been? In real life? Or was it rather the inverse (all the impeachment fantasies etc, the collusion stories endlessly appearing and fading, the economy that was "sure" to suffer, etc...).

Yes, in real life https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/1... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/us/conor-lamb-pennsylvani...

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#358

Post by dragonwriter »

opportune wrote: post #221
dragonwriter wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conversely, it makes running an opposition campaign so easy that the opposition won't need to focus on the big issues. Just over 50% disapproval isn't actually that easy to beat; its enough to draw strong candidates of diverse viewpoints into the opposition primary (rather than them sitting out as often happens with a strong incumbent), but not solid enough for opposition complacency. Of course, that number could m…

I don't think being a corporate mouthpiece was the reason Hillary lost; I think it had more to do with her lack of charisma and the many years of media that had engendered a deep feeling of mistrust towards her. Obama was almost as corporate as her, in my opinion, except he was much more well spoken and likable. Biden is along the same lines and it looks like he's gearing up for a run for the presidency. Also as elec…

> I don't think being a corporate mouthpiece was the reason Hillary lost; I think it had more to do with her lack of charisma

Maybe, but her being a corporate mouthpiece combined with her lack of charisma, combined with her 2016 loss is a big reason a sizable part of the activist base of the party is in open rebellion against the dominance of the neoliberal wing of the party, and why it's been able to force concessions (though not won outright) over internal leadership issues within the party. The 2020 nominee will probably be to the right of Sanders , but the party won't hold together if they are as firmly in the corporate camp as Clinton, much less the “biggest corporate bootlicker Democrat we’ve ever seen”.

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#359

Post by singularity2001 »

dboreham wrote: post #58

One thing to know is that apparently the reason for having seemingly idiotic questions on immigration forms ("are you a terrorist?", "are you a nazi war criminal?") is not that the government is stupid but rather that they're there in order to be able to deport someone for answering the question incorrectly in the event that the government wants to deport them but lacks sufficient evidence to pursue a criminal case.…

"are you a nazi war criminal" is still outdated and stupid

Re: U.S. To Seek Social Media Details from All Visa Applicants

#360

Post by lazyasciiart »

downandout wrote: post #356
lazyasciiart wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that movement included Donald Trump, right?

Don’t take my assessment of the numbers as a defense of Trump. I didn’t vote for him or Hillary, and I think he is both way off in the weeds on many issues and making us look bad on the world stage. But that doesn’t mean that we should go painting things as being worse than they are, embracing hypocrisy, or misinterpreting facts like the media does.

We also shouldn't go making up facts in order to paint Trump's approval ratings as better than they are.
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