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US Election: 2016

President carter during the Iran crisis banned Iranians entry into the US.The President has the power to bar any class of people entry into the country.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182#

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.
 
tomahawk6 said:
President carter during the Iran crisis banned Iranians entry into the US.The President has the power to bar any class of people entry into the country.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1182#

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline.
A good reminder - thanks for sharing this.

That said, WAY easier to confirm what country someone's from than what religion they believe ....  As one generall-left-of-centre commentator/comedian said, if Trump is serious about registering every Muslim in the U.S., he'd have to keep all the illegal Mexicans to do all the work required  >:D
Old Sweat said:
Unlikely, but he could also say, "I walked away from a sure shot at becoming the most powerful man in the world because it didn't have enough challenges for ME!"
That presumes a certain level of self-awareness ....
 
Putting things in historical context:

Washington Post

Muslims are to Trump as the Chinese were to President Arthur in 1882

The “Chinaman” was a familiar figure to many Americans in the mid-1800s. His likeness was unmistakable: slit eyes, a perpetual grimace, traditional loose-fitting garb and a long, snake-like ponytail tightly tied to an otherwise bald head.

He looked like an unsavory character — and most importantly, an alien one.

The first major arrival of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s, and with them emerged a strong current of anti-Chinese sentiment. From the very beginnings of their presence in the country, Chinese people were regarded as dangerous foreigners who took jobs and opportunities away from hardworking Americans.

Under those circumstances, it was almost inevitable that a political movement would arise in the name of eliminating a group widely regarded as a social and economic ill. The 1870s saw the formation of the Workingmen’s Party of California, whose motto was simply and succinctly “The Chinese Must Go!”

Within a decade, its campaign succeeded, contributing to President Chester Arthur’s 1882 signing of the Chinese Exclusion Act: the first federal law to exclude a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the country.

The Chinese Exclusion Act is also the closest cousin to what Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed Monday when he called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States.

(...SNIPPED)
 
Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) on why Trum has so much appeal. The warning is also very clear for others, weak, ineffectual and dishonest politicians and the political class give rise to someone or something which does not appear to be weak, ineffectual and dishonest. We see this in the steady growth of nativist and national socialist parties in Europe in response to the Eurocrats and the machinations of European politicians , and one can only wonder how much longer our own political class will be spared from a "Trump" or "Le Pen" (one does not have to look too far to find examples of "weak, ineffectual or dishonest" politicians at all levels of Canadian government). Seen this way, the Ford brothers are not quite so remarkable. Who will follow in their footsteps?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/12/09/glenn-reynolds-liberals-have-chosen-donald-their-destructor/76996298/

Glenn Reynolds: Liberals have chosen The Donald as their 'Destructor'
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 10:23 a.m. EST December 9, 2015
Weak and ineffectual leadership created the vacuum Trump is filling.

“Choose the form of the Destructor,” says the demon in Ghostbusters. Bill Murray, et al., got the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Our political and media elites, on the other hand, got Donald Trump.

Everyone is aghast at Trump’s latest plan, to suspend all immigration by Muslims. But it’s no coincidence that Trump’s announcement came less than a day after a limp, toneless speech by President Barack Obama on terrorism, one that left Americans feeling much less safe.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, then-president George W. Bush made clear that Muslims weren’t our enemy: Radical Islamists were. Because Bush took steps against those radical Islamists that made people feel safer, there was no significant anti-Muslim backlash, though all the bien-pensant types thought it certain that those rubes in flyover country would get violent.

Obama, on the other hand, responded to an attack by Islamic State-linked Muslims with a mixture of pablum and an effort at distraction by talking about gun bans for people on the no-fly list. (Even lefty publications like the LA Times and Slate thought that idea dumb). Before that attack took place, Obama was already polling terribly on terror: According to a CNN/ORC poll taken between 11/27 and 12/1, only 33% of Americans approved of Obama’s handling of ISIL; 64% disapproved. I doubt that Obama’s ratings will improve when the post-San Bernardino polls come in.

And Obama’s public statements have seemed weak and mired in PC, even as many Americans grow increasingly worried about Islamic terrorism.  As Josh Kraushaar wrote in National Journal, “Demo­crats are at risk of polit­ic­ally mar­gin­al­iz­ing them­selves on na­tion­al se­cur­ity in the run-up to the 2016 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, ca­ter­ing to a base that seems dis­con­nec­ted from the grow­ing anxi­ety that the pub­lic feels over the threat from Is­lam­ic ter­ror­ism. ... The signs of a pres­id­ent in deni­al over the threat of ter­ror­ism keep pil­ing up.”

Enter Donald Trump. People who are unhappy with the things Trump is saying need to understand that he’s only getting so much traction because he’s filling a void. If the responsible people would talk about these issues, and take action, Trump wouldn’t take up so much space.

And there’s a lesson for our ruling class there: Calling Trump a fascist is a bit much (fascism, as Tom Wolfe once reported, is forever descending upon the United States, but somehow it always lands on Europe), but movements like fascism and communism get their start because the mechanisms of liberal democracy seem weak and ineffectual and dishonest. If you don’t want Trump — or, perhaps, some post-Trump figure who really is a fascist — to dominate things, you need to stop being weak and ineffectual and dishonest.

Right now, after years of Obama hope-and-change, a majority of Americans (56%) think Islam is incompatible with American values. That’s true even for 43% of Democrats.

In that sort of environment, where people feel unsafe and where the powers-that-be seem to be, well, weak and ineffectual and dishonest, the appeal of someone who doesn’t seem weak and ineffectual grows stronger.

You can see this in France, where the long-marginalized “far right” National Front is now winning elections all over. It’s doing so well because the French people, after not one but two Islamist mass shootings in Paris, feel that their government is not serious about protecting them, and their way of life, from their enemies.

Likewise, it’s a bit hard to take people seriously about Trump’s threat to civil liberties when President Obama was just endorsing an unconstitutional gun ban, when his attorney general was threatening to prosecute people for anti-Muslim speech (a threat later walked back, thankfully) and when universities and political leaders around the country are making clear their belief that free speech is obsolete.

Hearing that Yale professor Erika Christakis won't be teaching at Yale because of the abuse she received over a respectful but non-PC email, former DNC chair Howard Dean tweeted: “Free speech is good. Respecting others is better.” To his credit, CNN’s Jake Tapper responded: “Of course only one of them is enshrined in the Constitution.”

But Twitter humorist IowaHawk had the last word: ”With the exception of POTUS, the Atty General, both leading presidential candidates, the media, and universities, Americans love free speech.”

If you wish to hold fascism, or even just Trumpism, at bay, then we need elites who are trustworthy, who can be counted on to protect the country, and who respect the Constitution even when it gets in the way of doing something they want to do. By failing to live up to these standards, they have chosen their "Destructor." Let’s hope that they haven’t chosen ours, as well.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.
 
Muhammad Ali weighs in on Trump:

Yahoo News


Boxing legend Muhammad Ali responds to Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering US
The Canadian Press
By The Associated Press 10 December, 2015 12:02 AM

WASHINGTON - Boxing legend Muhammad Ali on Wednesday criticized Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, calling on Muslims "to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda."

Ali, one of the most famous Muslims in the world, issued a statement saying, "True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic Jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion."

He added, "I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people's views on what Islam really is."

(...SNIPPED)

 
4 Reasons Trump's Supporters Aren't Going Anywhere — And Why The GOP's Worried

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/11/459274277/4-reasons-trumps-supporters-arent-going-anywhere-and-why-the-gops-worried

Editor's Note: Some readers might find some of the language below offensive.

This post was updated at 11:30 a.m. ET

Donald Trump has made his most outrageous statement yet in a string of beyond-the-pale utterances.

His plan to temporarily stop all Muslims from coming to the U.S. was condemned across party lines as being xenophobic, un-American and detrimental to U.S. national security. But, just like every other outrageous thing Trump has said or done, his poll numbers went up and his supporters have cleaved even more passionately to his candidacy.

Here are four reasons why:

1. Trump supporters don't trust the establishment. At All.

To them, the establishment is everyone they think is patronizing or condescending to them. They hate the Republican establishment. They think the mainstream media sees them as bigots when, in their view, all they want to do is feel safe and see America restored to its former greatness.

In a focus group assembled by Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Wednesday night in Alexandria, Va., 29 current and former Trump supporters said they thought a temporary halt in Muslims coming to the U.S. was a common-sense response to terrorism. They repeatedly dismissed or explained away all of the attacks on Trump and all of the "offensive" things Trump has said. They said:

-"He's not a politician."
-"He's not poll tested or handled."
-"He says what's on his mind, and sometimes that's not politically correct."
-"He's just being funny or outrageous to command the spotlight."
-"He's smart like a fox."

These Trump supporters are devoted to him and deeply invested in his candidacy. They seem to view every attack on him as a diss to them. The focus group put together by Luntz was almost completely white, a reflection of Trump's base, but it included nine women, and all of the participants had some college or higher education. They worked in fields including government, education, law, sales and realty — a little different from the stereotype ascribed to his supporters as downwardly mobile or non-college educated.

2. He's self-funding.

This is both a reason Trump supporters like him and a practical asset for his campaign. Trump isn't going anywhere, because he can afford to stay in the race as long as he wants. And he's spent less than $250,000 on advertising —compared with $33 million by Jeb Bush's campaign and superPAC. Trump's supporters love that.

At Wednesday night's focus group, participants said:

-"He can't be bought."
-"He's not a special interest."
-"He doesn't owe anybody anything."

3. They believe what he says.

Trump supporters are predisposed to believe him and not the mainstream media, which has no credibility with these voters. Large numbers of people in Luntz's focus group said they believed Trump's claim that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the destruction of the Twin Towers in the Sept. 11 attacks.

They also largely agree with Trump that President Obama was not born in America, and many questioned whether he's Christian.

GOP leaders know Trump is a stain on their party; the only question is whether it's washable or indelible.
The animus toward Obama was intense — and ugly.

One focus group participant said, "I wouldn't urinate on him if he was on fire."

Another said, "I would not only not piss on him if he was on fire — I'd throw gas on him."

4. Trump supporters are not ordinary Republicans.

It's hard to overstate how deeply alienated Trump supporters are from mainstream politics. They are viscerally anti-establishment. They feel the political system is broken. Since the recent terrorist attacks, they're even more anxious about the country. Several people Wednesday night said President Obama "cannot keep us safe."

They see Trump as a strong leader who knows how to get things done. They view the Republican leadership's attacks on Trump's proposal to ban Muslims as insulting and ineffective.

"If they couldn't defend themselves against Barack Obama," said one man of the Republican-controlled Congress, "how are they going to defend themselves against Donald Trump?"

These are Trump supporters first, Republicans second. When asked whether they'd support Trump if he ran as an independent third-party candidate, even if it meant paving the way for Hillary Clinton to be president, one man said, "Maybe it's time to blow the Republican Party up."

Why should the Republican Party worry?

Answer: all of the above.

This week, a large number of Republican leaders criticized Trump in a way they haven't done before. Many Republicans agreed with Democrats that Trump had crossed a line with his proposal for a temporary ban on Muslims.

But they also believe that Trump poses a danger to the GOP. They think a Trump nomination would be a nightmare for the party, and not just at the presidential level, but down the ballot, too.

In several polls taken since he rolled out his plan for a ban on Muslims coming to the U.S. (Fox, CBS/New York Times, Winthrop) Trump's numbers have gone up. As the Luntz focus group showed, straightforward attacks on Trump don't work. GOP leaders know Trump is a stain on their party; the only question is whether it's washable or indelible.

Congressional Republican leaders were firm in their denunciation of Trump's idea, but the reactions of the Republican candidates were mixed. Candidates polling in the single digits, like Jeb Bush or Lindsey Graham, condemned him; Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were more careful, saying they disagreed with Trump's proposal, but they wouldn't go so far as to say Trump was unfit to be president.

As a matter of fact, the candidate who's seen the most growth in his support is Cruz , who has now surpassed Trump in at least one Iowa poll. And he has been careful to avoid criticizing Trump. He's having some success positioning himself as the natural inheritor of Trump's support should Trump fade or falter. At the Luntz focus group, Cruz was the top pick for second choice.

Where is this heading? Straight to Vegas.

Next Tuesday night, the GOP candidates will debate in Las Vegas. They will probably be asked whether they still abide by the pledge they took to support the Republican nominee — even if it's Trump.

So far, only Cruz and Carson have reaffirmed their intention to vote for Trump, if he's the nominee. Bush has said he will vote for the Republican nominee, but continues to insist it won't be Trump. The debate will show whether Republican candidates are willing to accept what many Republicans privately say is toxic demagoguery in order to avoid alienating Trump's supporters.

And they have good reason for concern. One poll showed 68 percent of Trump's supporters say they'd stick with him if he ran as an independent candidate, a possibility Trump has begun floating again.

The Republican establishment thinks that's a surefire way to elect Hillary Clinton, but the Luntz focus group participants who said they'd support an independent Trump bid disagreed with that calculation.

They said if Trump ran as an independent, they were certain he would win.

And in other news, a recent study concluded that 1 in every 3 Trump supporters is just as dumb as the other two. [:D
 
Trump's modus operandi: Make outrageous and slanderous statements that would destroy the reputation of the Republicans. Next move? Cause Bernie Sanders of the Communist Party of USA win the presidential elections. I was not born yesterday especially if US signals intelligence decrypts of Russia are riddled with Trump's code name. :rage:
 
georgelunn said:
Cause Bernie Sanders of the Communist Party of USA win the presidential elections. I was not born yesterday especially if US signals intelligence decrypts of Russia are riddled with Trump's code name. :rage:
Thanks, and banned.

Milnet.ca Staff
 
Aww...I wanted to know Trump's code name...  :Tin-Foil-Hat:
 
Dimsum said:
Aww...I wanted to know Trump's code name...  :Tin-Foil-Hat:

Mogul.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/10/donald-trumps-secret-service-code-name-is-less-humble-more-mogul/
 
48d3F8Ll.jpg


There's a bunch of these Calvin Donald & Hobbes out there.  They're eerily accurate.  :o
 
In the spirit of the day here is Darth Trump  :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU_Jdts5rL0
 
tomahawk6 said:
In the spirit of the day here is Darth Trump  :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU_Jdts5rL0

:rofl:

Loved the militaristic and war bit.
 
The 5th GOP debate is tonight: 8:30 pm Eastern, 5:30 Pacific.

Vox.com

Republican debate 2015: start time, schedule, and what to expect

Updated by Andrew Prokop on December 15, 2015, 1:10 p.m. ET @awprokop

Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty

The next Republican presidential debate is tonight, and CNN will begin airing coverage of it at 8:30 pm Eastern. However, CNN is being intentionally vague about when the debate itself will begin — it might start somewhat after a "pre-game show" of sorts, with actual debating probably beginning closer to 9 pm.

CNN's coverage of the earlier undercard debate, with candidates who aren't polling as well, will begin at 6 pm Eastern. Again, the network has not been clear about whether the debate itself will begin at that time. A free live stream will be available to all at CNN.com.

(...SNIPPED)

 
Trump is a problem, but he isn't THE problem. It's interesting to watch some of the more conservative members of this site distance themselves from what are clearly dangerous comments he's made. After all, are this positions really that much more radical than the other Republican candidates?  Are Ted Cruz's or Ben Carson's ideas really more sane?

Conservatives need to take responsibility for the precipice the US finds itself on. A movement that is consistently hostile to immigrants, to labour, to social services, to the very idea of government has only itself to blame for the anger of the vast majority of Americans who find themselves at or near the poverty line, or who are part of an increasingly non-existent middle class. That's before we get into the whole "American Taliban" aspect of things.

There is a thread on this site devoted to "Deconstructing Progressive Thought." Well, the opposite of progressive is the current field of Republican candidates. We haven't been "at risk" of a genuine progressive movement in North America since the 1960s, when we saw the the last real wave of democratization. We've been regressing ever since, and this is what we get. This is a failure of capitalism, of a system that is now an oligarchy rather than a democracy. Progressive policies aren't to blame for this. Americans are starting to realize the game is rigged, but unfortunately many are ill-equipped to understand the slow corporate motion coup d'etat that has been occurring for decades. Corporate money dominates politics, and the result is a reactionary anger against "the system."

But for many conservatives, Trump's bigoted, hateful language is exactly what they want to hear. They can back-pedal all they want on his specific comments, but really he's just taking the dog whistle politics we saw from Harper in our election and saying it openly. If you're a conservative in either country, you have to answer for this. In other words, what the $*@% did you think would happen?!
 
Perhaps, Kilo, if you actually read what was being said you might recognize that you're looking exactly backwards.

Donald Trump's popularity represents (much like Marie Le Pen's popularity in Europe, or the Ford brother's in Toronto) a visceral reaction by the voters, citizens and taxpayers against what they see as a disconnected political elite, a political and economic crony capitalist system rigged against them and the "up your's" attitude of the so called elites who are systematically trying to pull the ladder up behind them to keep the rest of us trapped (taking away the expanded TFSA limits and taking steps which are effectively raising taxes on lower income Canadians are two immediately apparent issues here in Canada, but look up from "The Communist Manifesto" and out the window, you'll see lots of other examples around the world.

And in case you haven't looked at history lately, the "Progressivism" of the 1930's extended the Great Depression by at least 7 years, and all the progressive nostrums that have been implemented since 2008 haven't had much of a track record either. The end of Progressivism will happen for these simple reasons:

Things that can't go on forever, won't. Debt that can't be repaid, won't be. Promises that can't be kept, won't be.
 
Thucydides said:
Perhaps, Kilo, if you actually read what was being said you might recognize that you're looking exactly backwards.

Donald Trump's popularity represents (much like Marie Le Pen's popularity in Europe, or the Ford brother's in Toronto) a visceral reaction by the voters, citizens and taxpayers against what they see as a disconnected political elite, a political and economic crony capitalist system rigged against them and the "up your's" attitude of the so called elites who are systematically trying to pull the ladder up behind them to keep the rest of us trapped (taking away the expanded TFSA limits and taking steps which are effectively raising taxes on lower income Canadians are two immediately apparent issues here in Canada, but look up from "The Communist Manifesto" and out the window, you'll see lots of other examples around the world.

And in case you haven't looked at history lately, the "Progressivism" of the 1930's extended the Great Depression by at least 7 years, and all the progressive nostrums that have been implemented since 2008 haven't had much of a track record either. The end of Progressivism will happen for these simple reasons:

Things that can't go on forever, won't. Debt that can't be repaid, won't be. Promises that can't be kept, won't be.

So if I'm unpacking this correctly, we agree that this is a reaction against "a disconnected political elite, a political and economic crony capitalist system rigged against them and the "up your's" attitude of the so called elites who are systematically trying to pull the ladder up behind them to keep the rest of us trapped."

To address your point about taxes in Canada, the idea that low income Canadians are the primary demographic that use the TFSA is a joke, you have it precisely backwards. The TFSA is only really an advantage if you have a significant amount of money to save. Low income Canadians who are literally living cheque to cheque, hand to mouth do not have this.

However overall, it appears we agree on the source of the anger, and Trump's popularity. I would argue this reality is exactly due to the triumph of capital over labour, our system has become unbalanced in favour of the former. Given what we know about economic/political policy in the West since World War 2, I think you would be hard pressed to arrive at any conclusion outside of this. The policies that benefit the poor are the very policies that have been consistently rolled back.

I'm not sure what "progressive nostrums" you're referring to, but both the Democrats and the Republicans are clearly in the pocket of Wall Street. Similarly, the NDP recently swung to the right of the centre-right Liberals in order to convince Canadians that they were a safe party to vote for.

Ironically, it's tough to label the ideology of the elites in both our countries. It's not really capitalism, because as we've seen, the same rules don't apply to everyone, and we're all for government intervention on behalf of the wealthy (see bailouts). But government intervention on behalf of the majority of the population? No we can't do that because it's socialism.

Which is why I'll reiterate that the ugliness we are seeing in US politics is a failure of capitalism. We've been moving rapidly on deregulation, privatization, the overalll liberalization of the economy since the 1970s. You know, free trade, all that good stuff that was supposed to help the American worker.  This is what conservatives have always called for. They have got what they wanted, and now we have a proto-fascist who might hold the highest office in the world's only "hyperpower."



 
Apparently not to be outdone in the ludicrous department, here's Ben Carson:

Republican U.S. presidential candidate Ben Carson's plan to have the military and National Guard patrol the U.S.-Canada border is being called a ludicrous and unfeasible idea by Canadian border experts.

Carson's call for troops at the border is the sixth point in his "Seven Steps to a Safer America" plan unveiled Tuesday on his website.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/ben-carson-wants-u-s-troops-patrolling-canadian-border-1.3366179
 
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