251–260 of 276 posts
A torture-endorsing leader of the free world is like the meat-eating leader of vegetarians. Trump is simply not part of the free world, and therefore not it's leader.
Wonderfully written, giving my thoughts a word. For me and my wife, the USA, despite all their shortcomings, are a country we really want to live in. It stands for many good things. It is not a country you want to mess with, and we are fine with that. We embrace American culture, we love American companies, we so far respected American politicians. For stuff we as individuals are interested in (which might not be wha…
As an American, I have a lot of respect for Iran. It's a beautiful country with great people. But when I turn on the news and I see "Death to America" being chanted or Iranians trample or burn the American flag the rust is broken. Not to mention the 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing which killed hundreds of Americans and was committed by a group directly funded by the Iranian gov't. The situation feels very strange. Empty…
We're deporting people back to the autocratic regime they've opposed.
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OK. For a while there this weekend, some of your employees/co-workers who had been legally present and working in the United States couldn't gain re-entry to the United States if they happened to have been traveling. But of course that's "just politics". Nobody should talk about it on HN. No business impact whatsoever. Nope. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. A goose egg. No idea why that suddenly got some tech execs to g…
I'm not from America. This doesn't directly impact me. I am interested in the outcome and I post in my communities about the topic with _strong_ opinions, much stronger than you even manage here. Those communities are clearly labelled "POLITICS". This is hacker news. We have a job to do, irrespective of what the electorate choose we build solutions to make the world better. We inform each other as to what problems ar…
One of the lessons learned from history is the danger of professionals considering their actions to be removed from politics and morals, and their jobs to be just implementing whatever their boss wants from them (c. f. Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil": http://amzn.to/2kMX4Wd)
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Iran is not a war-torn country. And this doesn't just ban immigrants, it bans green-card and visa holders too.
So just like Obama did back in 2011 for 6 months and nobody batted an eyelid?
You're falling for alternative facts.
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I can't find any mention of Islam, Muslims, Christians etc in the order: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/27/donald-trump... And are you suggesting it's wrong to prioritise religious minorities who are being murdered? Would you, during WW2, say no to Jews, because it would be a 'religious test'?
The Christian exemption in the EO is evidence the EO is using a religious test to exclude Muslims. Accepting refugees who are persecuted due to religion is quite different.
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That's the problem with political posts. One side sees it as good, one side sees it as a tragedy, and then the remaining 80%+ of the people are subjected to the bickering.
If 80% of people don't care then that's even more reason to have these discussions. There is no excuse for disengagement at a time like this. Disinterest and silence are allies of oppression.
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No, the sad part is that this is getting so much more attention because it's visible here and it's the result of a new party in charge. Obama's administration was quietly murdering people without trials in a country we aren't at war with from drones. I fail to see how a temporary immigration ban is "worse" other than the "out of sight, out of mind" effect that applies to those exterminated by drones.
The administration before Obama started a needless war with a country that was no threat to them, that resulted in the deaths of literally hundreds of thousands of people, the destruction of two sovereign countries, and set in motion a sequence of events that has Europe tearing itself apart. All to get an electoral boost for the 2004 election...
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They're not examples of things Trump would do, they're examples of things neither of the major parties give you a choice over. Nobody knows what Trump will do. Make America Great Again could mean anything. Compare "Hope and Change" -- Obama was the first attempt at this when he defeated Clinton. Change didn't happen so people chose an even more radical option. It isn't that voting for the protest candidate is especia…
We now have a very good idea what Trump will do - literally what he promised to do, which was all about autarky, closing the country off and bringing industry back to the US, and of course to be the most important man in the world (he was on the cover of time magazine 15 times you know). He has been very clear and consistent in his words and actions. Americans first and I think Trump first amongst Americans in a nati…
But we don't. He promises things like "repeal and replace Obamacare." That's fine, except that the important question is replace it with what? If it's a substantially similar bill that still includes expensive subsidies to private health insurance companies with poverty-trap-inducing means testing, that is not going to help people.
The people who heard "repeal and replace" are presumably expecting some kind of meaningful yet unspecified improvement in their situation. In practice that means somehow causing there to be more money in the pockets of patients/working-class-taxpayers and less for medicine-adjacent companies. The current politics doesn't allow that because those corporations have too many lobbyists. You can imagine people holding out hope for some strongman to come in and lay down the law -- certainly that's what the left wanted Obama to do with single payer.
A free market alternative might be putting a stop to the games medical companies play to evergreen patents and generally thwart competition through regulatory capture. But Congressional Republicans may be too corrupt to let anything like that go through, and it would be all too easy to interpret "repeal and replace" as just cutting back the insurance subsidies (i.e. means testing them even more) so they can use the money to give investment bankers a tax cut.
I wrote this today from a similar place. I've never been more furious at my government than now. https://medium.com/@moultano/they-tried-to-ban-green-card-ho...
Never? So you didn't mind when we were bombing weddings and hospitals? Nice.
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"Christians are hardly persecuted in Muslim countries." You mean, for example, a Christian family living on IS territory would be just fine? That seems very unlikely to me. But perhaps I have fallen victim to fearmongering about the IS. "A blanket ban is not due process." I am not saying it was handled well, but it seems an important distinction to note that the ban is temporary. The assumption seems to be that the c…
>You mean, for example, a Christian family living on IS territory would be just fine? That seems very unlikely to me. But perhaps I have fallen victim to fearmongering about the IS. How is this any different from Muslim families fleeing the ravages in Aleppo? Do you really think Muslim families are in any better position than Christian ones? >I am not saying it was handled well, but it seems an important distinction…
Not everybody lives in Aleppo.
"Do you really think Muslim families are in any better position than Christian ones?"
Um - yes? If you live in a state were non-believers are executed, for example?
The point is not that no Muslims are worse off than Christians. Just that "Christian" could be a heuristic for checking "persecution status" in certain countries.
"Hell tell the people who went through the legal immigration process, the ones who have lived in the US for years that suddenly their lives in America was not enough vetting"
You mean green card holders? Sorry, I don't know enough about the process. But sure, it seems harsh. I hope they'll get their immigration status back asap.