The more I listen to Trump, the more pithy statements I hear that become soundbites that people try to use against him. Some of them are legit crazy things that are pretty brow raising, but others are taken out of the context of what he clearly meant to say. The "They send us their criminals" line is a good example of that. He has a point buried in that blunt poorly phrased statement. Illegal immigrants are going to tend to be less law abiding folk than legal immigrants, which should be obvious since they are coming in illegally. No, that doesn't mean they are all criminals, rather than merely desperate people, but more of them will be than you will find in legal immigrants.
Illegal immigrants are more law abiding than the native population of the US. They have to be, they can't attract the attention of the authorities or they will be sent back. This is why they don't try to register to vote and why they don't try to get welfare, two other pieces of so-called common sense that are constantly leveled against them that aren't true.
If entering the country illegally makes them all criminals then nearly the entire adult population of the US are even more criminal than the people who enter the country illegally. Entering the country illegally is only a class 3 misdemeanor. Automobile moving violations are class 2 violations, more serious crimes than entering the country illegally. There are native US citizens who violate more serious laws on a routine, daily basis by speeding, failing to signal a turn, rolling through stop signs, etc. who by your logic are more criminal and more likely to commit more serious crimes than those who entered the country illegally.
The guy hides a lot of his progressive ideals too I think. I am pretty certain he is pro-choice, but knows he has to say he is pro-life to win the republican primary. What he said on planned parenthood was a case in point. He stands against other republicans and says they do good and he supports them (though he had to say he opposes the abortion aspect).
The problem that conservatives and Republicans have with the abortion problem is that they aren't working to reduce the number of abortions, they are working to make abortions illegal. This won't seriously reduce the number of abortions if pre-Roe v. Wade times are any indication. The rich will travel to places where abortion is legal. The middle class will return to the Catholic abortion, D&Cs preformed by doctors to make the patient's periods more regular and the poor will have to turn to back alley abortionists.
Conservatives are not so much anti-abortion as they are anti-contraception. And widespread use of long term contraception is the only proven way to reduce the number of abortions. Nothing points this out clearer than the campaign against Planned Parenthood.
Essentially what you are saying is that at least a part of your newfound respect for Trump is because you think that he is lying about his support for making abortion illegal again.
He keeps saying politics are corrupt and politicians are bought, and keeps pointing to how lobbyists and people like the Kochs buy politicians, and he keeps pointing out that he has money an isn't taking money from anybody. He'll be selfish and in it for himself, yes, but at least we'd know what his motivations are and they'd be predictable and not bought by special interest groups.
But he doesn't seem to support the idea of taking the influence of money out of politics by limiting money is free speech.
His bluntness is refreshing in a way too. He says what he is thinking, with no filter. That can doom a presidential candidate, but also is amazingly refreshing and sticks out like a lighthouse in the middle of all the other politicians that are clearly trying to win votes instead of address issues they actually care about.
But trying to win votes is the whole point of this exercise. The reason that I don't vote Republican any more is that the Republican policies have become formalistic, a very few ones that make up a set of policies that no candidate can deviate from and that no candidate can question. A small collection of nothing more than shallow slogans intended to inflame their supporters, to generate more conservatives through fear and in my often expressed opinion to accomplish nothing more than the support needed to continue increasing the horrible and society destroying income and wealth inequality that has built up over the last thirty five years and the poverty that goes with it.
, he keeps surprising me with saying things I agree with and didn't expect to. He is a blowhard and an egomaniac, but he is also a pretty smart guy, has been in big business, and feels almost like an outsider actual human being infiltrating Washington.
I don't accept that the government should be run like a business and that therefore we should vote for successful businessmen.
One of the many reasons that capitalism is so successful is that the goal of capitalism is simple and easy to see, to make money. But not all of our problems can be solved by such a simple mechanism. This more complex problems are assigned to government to solve, for example, questions of war and peace, of justice, of education and of health and welfare. Most of the time successful businessmen and women are ill equipped for government because of the very thing that is suppose to recommend them, success in the simple goal of business hinders them trying to juggle the many conflicting interests and different goals that they face in the government.
This applies in spades to Trump. For example he wants to impose tariffs and duties on goods from China of 25%. He wants to punish the Chinese for suppressing their currency to gain a trade advantage. At the same time he wants to devalue the US dollar so that it gives us an advantage in trade. Beyond the obvious hypocrisy, these are conflicting policies. Erecting trade barriers will increase the value of the US dollar. The only way to lower the value of the world's trade settlement currency is for the US to increase our trade deficit.
This is an example of your favored bluntness in action. An example of his completely simple but totally impractical thinking.
And I haven't even mentioned yet that his successful business model seems to be based on exploiting American bankruptcy laws, something that he will have trouble translating to the government. What is he going to do? Follow through on driving the government into an unnecessary bankruptcy as the Republican leadership in the Congress has repeatedly threatened to do?
This makes sense to you when the government of the US can produce any amount of money to pay off any amount of US debt there is in dollars, which virtually all of it is. Debt that represents the entire private savings of the US. Which can't be retired except by destroying all of that private savings.
I prefer Sanders, and don't think Trump could beat Sanders, but I am kind of liking Trump more than Hillary at this point. I think he could have a much better showing against her than everybody who dismisses him out of hand would have you believe.
Sanders and now Hillary are correct in saying that we must reduce the income inequality in the US, not to continue to increase it as is the most sacred position of every Republican presidential candidate. This income inequality is built into the economic policies that every Republican has sworn fealty to in the last thirty five years. Do you believe that a President Trump in combination with a Republican dominated Congress would work to reduce this inequality? Do you believe that continued and even increasing income inequality is a benefit to the whole society?
I also would prefer either Sanders or Clinton to appoint the three or so Supreme Court justices that will be needed in the next eight years. The promise of Roberts to honor the SOTUS tradition to not overturn any long standing precedents without a supermajority of the justices concurring turned quickly into a lie and the simple majority of reactionary justices damaged fifty years of social progress in support of corporate interests over the broader public interests, in support of increased gun rights by declaring the first part of the 2nd amendment to be mere rhetorical flourishes in a document devoid of rhetorical flourishes in its body and always in support of the increasingly minority Republican party and its assaults on voting rights. Imagine what damage they could cause with a super majority of reactionary justices.
The continued support of the Republican party to keep increasing the wealth and the incomes of the already wealthy coupled with their dedication to the hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare in the budget can only turn to three places to keep reducing the taxes of the very wealthy, by increasing the taxes of the poor and the middle class, the so-called fair tax or the flat tax, by increasing the budget deficit and the national debt, as they have done every year that they held the presidency over the last thirty five years or by reducing SNAP, support for education, infrastructure spending, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc, the so-called entitlements that don't go to the corporations. I don't support any of these. .
NOT.
