So the short version is they just become bad muslims? At some point can we just say they are not muslim and don’t include them in the statistics? Its like someone claiming to be catholic that hasn’t been to church in 10 years.
Fantastic, but in my view you ended the quotation one paragraph too soon:
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“Mexico denies that Trump’s remarks were threatening.”
That was a comment I made in regards to the Australia link.
To clarify: Are you suggesting that Muslims who assimilate into American culture are ‘bad’ (in the sense of ‘not genuine’) Muslims, and should no longer even be counted as Muslims? That the only true Muslims are those adhering to ideas antithetical to Western values/mores?
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Yes you are correct I meant that retort in response to the Mexico article. Which is a direct quote.
As for Australia…
If angering our allies is having to accept yet one more crappy Obama deal then let them be angry.
The only real issue I have with raj’s posts is that I always end up skimming over discussions because of how tiresome the uninformative attacks on him get.
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As western countries have become less religious over the past few decades that statement would be true for any religion really.
But there is a good reason for the attacks. It makes the attacker feel better about themselves. They can then march around like big men thinking that they just got the better of someone on the Internet.
And you thought it was just 12 year olds that acted this way.
Thanks for that. In full disclosure, I haven’t been closely following this thread for the past week so I’m not sure what the reactions have been. I did see a comment from somebody about how we now have 3 conservatives here? I wasn’t sure what that means, except that I assume I’m not one of them. Maybe I’m a moderate? An enigma? That would be awesome! I accept!!
Regarding why you aren’t getting constant outrage from Conservatives? I’m not watching Fox, or TV news at all, but the WSJ has been unrelentingly critical of the travel ban, and his treatment of Mexico. People like Karl Rove writing scathing Op Eds about the travel thing in today’s paper.
My opinion? People are watching and seeing how this is going to go. Conservatives aren’t known for their protests. And for conservatives, some good things are happening. Supreme Court, some cabinet picks, maybe Keystone, an intent to pull back some regulations, some indications that he means to pull back the size and scope of the administrative state.
Along with that is a lot of crazy stuff. Bannon in places he has no business. The travel ban, and Mexico. I don’t see how NOT leaving any room for Enrique Nieto to save face is a good thing. SO DUMB! I don’t know a lot about him (except he’s a cutie), and he’s facing a populist candidate in his own country. He’s getting a lot of criticism for “looking weak” right now. Growth there has been very slow. Their economy is hurting. It’s in our interests to see Mexico succeed. No wall can stem immigration if things go south over there, pun intended. I’m no econ heavyweight, but I don’t see how putting 20% tariffs on Mexican goods is “making them pay for the wall.” Don’t American’s pay those tariffs in higher prices? Please correct me if I’m wrong.
As to why aren’t Conservatives with integrity aren’t running around flailing their arms? It may come to that. As I mentioned, I’ve seen a lot of Trump negative press, BUT…
Peggy Noonan put it rather eloquently this past week. “First, put to one side the incendiary comments, which now feel like small and daily data points within a greater cloud of crazy. Put aside the president’s preoccupations with crowd size, popularity, illegal voters - all the things he says that hurt him and not his foes… Amazingly, we’re getting used to it. So is the world. Everything has more give than we think.” She went on to talk about some of the positive things, positive if you are a small government conservative. Positive if you’re a union worker hoping for more jobs, maybe 40,000 jobs out Keystone, and other projects. IMO, average people care about this more than the idea of an Iranian student who can’t travel for a couple of months.
Back to Noonan -
“There’s no playbook for this kind of President… (The Dems) - have a playbook to use against normal Republicans: You’re cold, greedy, racist, sexist elitists who hate the little guy. They don’t have a playbook to use against a political figure like Trump yet, because he jumbles all the categories. Democrats will wobble around, see what works. For now they’ll stick to syaing he’s scary, unstable, right-wing. It’s going to take them a while to develop a playbook against an independent populist, some of whose advisers hate Republicans more than they do.”
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Yep. I look and see, “Oh, Raj and smh are still going around about the quality of intelligence regarding Russian hacks.” I know what I think about it, so I scroll on. No offense to either of you. @smh_23, I’m glad you’re back and I do admire your due diligence. Above and beyond.
It would help if we started new threads more often, but I don’t know if we have critical mass here to keep them going. It would help us keep up with the issues we’re interested in a little bit more easily.
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You’re not wrong. Some people here will tell you that new markets are going to magically open up and that Americans will shop there instead. Yet they’ll conveniently gloss over the fact that the tariffs won’t be collected if that happens, so Mexico isn’t going to pay for the wall one way or the other. And even if Mexico did agree to eat that 20% tariff, it would hurt their economy, incentivizing even more of their people to immigrate to the U.S.
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Markets take time to adjust and new ones are created in the long term (if tariffs last). With $295B annually imported from Mexico and the wall costing $10-15B, it should probably still work out.
Well, I think @smh_23 will have a field day with this…
One day after Trump-Putin call - for which there is no readout by the way - Russia launches a massive offensive in Eastern Ukraine.
And today…well, this:
Yeah, sure they’re called FSB but they’re really KGB (Chekists for friends)
“Thanks for the Wikileaks and everything else, guys”
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About the Washington Farewell Address quote that @BlueCollarTr8n and @smh_23 put up. Thank you for posting that. So much to think about, and it’s incredibly sobering.
Indulging some pessimism here, but honestly, I wonder if the ugliness of partisan politics will be our undoing as a nation. We begin to descend more into party loyalty and tribalism instead of being Americans together. All the social media and tweet effects are a bit like pouring gasoline on it.
We can’t underestimate the power of social capital, meaning the networks or relationships among people in our society that enable it to function effectively. IMO, Trump is burning through A LOT of social capital right now. I’ve never seen so much ill will.
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I didn’t see what he was responding to until now
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I’m just gonna leave this here.
It’s well worth a detailed read - compulsive, corrupt, loved by the common man, hated by the Senatorial elite, prone to outrageous acts, obsessed with the theater (media?) and of course, this illuminating quote:
“Over the course of his reign, Nero often made rulings that pleased the lower class. Nero was criticized as being obsessed with personal popularity”
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