Time to Take a Stand

So, $850K in today's money would be a couple of million? A lot to pay someone, but he got what he wanted in not having to admit liability.

I doubt you have watched the Paula Jones interviews from when she was a young woman, since you don't believe that Clinton behaved shamefully in this instance when he was governor. Clinton was an effective president, but he apparently had his bad sides.

In no way way am I defending Trump, but I am willing to wait a few months to see if he can accomplish anything positive. Then, when I am totally disappointed I will probably get active politically again, probably supporting third party candidates after the DNC fiasco in the last election.

Thank the DNC political hacks for a Trump presidency.

I suspect you'll find that it's a minority of people who hold all of the same values and prioritize them the same as you. Don't feel bad, I'm sure I'm in the same boat. That's why it's important to figure out how to work together on our common goals. Expressions like "I can't fathom how" lend themselves to a very close-minded view. On some level, you have an expectation that Altman is reasonable, otherwise I don't think you'd be expressing yourself the way you are. Even if you disagree with him, strive to understand him so you might better be able to engage with him and others who hold similar views, especially if you hope that they, in turn, will take you seriously. Dismissing those who don't toe the line on each and every issue is a great way to get nothing done.

Edit to respond to the above edit: I understand how the points are related in the larger picture, though they are separate points. Altman likely has reasons why he hasn't coupled them in a single blog post. It's not unreasonable for him to address them separately, even though you may wish for him to do so.

If you really believe that doing the "extreme vetting" is necessary for your security, then you have some form of "islamophobia". Just look at the numbers: The number of ISIS soldiers is in the thousands. There is more than 1 billion muslim, though.

The probability of the guy being extremely vetted is a terrorist is a ridiculous 0.000001%. That doesn't take into account that a good number of terrorists are already known, are in war, locked in jail cells or have no passports/documents.

This probability is also probably lower than the guy being from a visa-waiver country where the guy happen to be mentally unstable and go on a killing spree. In both cases, your extreme vetting is very unlikely to detect the bad guy.

However, here is the thing. By alienating the population to the "dangers of islam", you are further separating these people from the American communities and not helping them getting integrated. This will, in the long run, backfires badly as it creates huge "muslim neighbour-hoods" that are not compatible with the fabrics of American society. France is a good example.

I am curious what your ethnicity is. At what point did you ancestors arrive in the United States, or are you perhaps an immigrant yourself?

Did any of your ancestors, at any point, belong to a group of immigrants that was considered by a portion of the US populace as "undesirable", but were let in nonetheless?

Would you consider your own presence in the United States as a benefit of such immigration which took place a while back?

Rio has a reputation as being one of the most violent places in the world. So I guess it'd be hard to stand out against that.

I think Paris is much safer than Chicago: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni...

France overall has a murder rate of 1 per 100K. Paris I believe is slightly above average. Chicago is something like 15.

I wouldn't necessarily consider Paris to be some sort of golden standard either. You should aim for much better.

If you feel that having an x15 murder rate isn't "standing out" and it's just that you've got some bad neighborhoods than IMHO you're deluding yourself.

EDIT: And assuming the murders are not evenly spread out but rather focus in the "bad" neighborhoods is support for the polarization argument. We can look at some stats but I'm pretty sure they would support my notion that the bad neighborhoods in US cities are much worse than the bad neighborhoods in safe cities worldwide. Try comparing violent crime statistics of major US cities to major European cities over 50 or 100 years. This didn't start yesterday.

EDIT2: Don't take all this to mean I support Trump's rhetoric or actions on this topic. I do not. But I do think Americans need to do some introspection here