American Politics

[SkStu]

Good idea actually - its actually an extension of the previous Trump thread because he is at the center of all this nonsense. No doubt the lack of substantiation of all the ridiculous claims posted here will see the thread shut anyway.

Look, I’ll say it again. If we can keep Trump out of this and debate the often times ridiculous issues that are being raised by “both sides of the aisle” (there ain’t two!) we stand a pretty good chance of self policing the thread and keeping it active.

He’s not at the centre of it - the issues that are legitimately dividing people across the globe are at the centre of it. We should be able to respectfully and constructively debate these.

I agree with DaHamsta that claims should be backed up with sources or facts. Stated opinions I think we should be a lot more tolerant of as long as they aren’t belligerent or hate-speech.

I think I’ve made two claims on here that weren’t backed up with evidence.

1) USA and others co2 reductions
2) NI border security issues

Happy to provide sources on these if desired.

In the interests of holding each other to the same standard, I see a lot of unsubstantiated claims in EGs post about Trump that should be fully sourced or fully deleted. And I’d recommend that Mark deletes his claim about 80k MS13 and elimination of air travel as he’s been asked 3 times already and has not provided any source.

[mark12345]

mark12345, do you have any evidence to support your claim that 80,000 MS13 members have made their way into the USA by sneaking across the border?

From my own googling, the figure floating about is 10,000 members in the country, which comes from a 2009 report by the FBI's National Gang Threat Assessment. There doesn't seem to be any more up-to-date statistics than that from the FBI at least.

Can you show us where/how you arrived at your figure of 80,000?

I believe I heard it on talk radio some time last fall. I don't have the time or energy to go digging it out, but I can give you a point of reference.
MS 13 are a gang of El Salvadorian origin.
Now I heard that either one third or two thirds of the population of El Salvador (I can't remember which figure is true but I'm sure it's easily attainalbe) lives in the United States.
So is it that much of a stretch to believe that there are 80,000 MS 13 gang members in the country?
That said, I can tell you I'm not lying to you - I did hear the figure of 80K mentioned.
It is said that many of them were brought to the border as unaccompanied minors, admitted to the country on humanitarian grounds, and then ended up in the gang, admission to which has progressed from rape, to rape and murder, to murder and mutiliation, as I understand it.
I know the Trump administration has been active over the last several months in trying to bring them to heel and the president himself has mentioned them in tweets.

On another note, the Democrats are calling the influx of illegal immigrants on the border 'a manufactured crisis'.
That means that all we are discussing here, illegal immigration in the hundreds of thousands, mountains of drugs on any given day, and the now deadly drug Fentanyl with the capacity to kill millions of Amercians, MS 13 gang memebers and terrorists who have been imbedded in the migrant caravans, are all 'manufactured'.
And then of course there are the hundreds of Americans killed each year by illegal immigrant drunk drivers and criminals. Maybe the Dems should tell the surviving family members that their departed sons and daughters
are 'manufactured'.

Ultimately...........we have all heard Donald Trump call Washington a swamp many times. Some people tend to take that with a grain of salt. But Trump has never been more right. I predict (hope I'm wrong, but I would be very surprised if I am) that the swamp will face its acid test in the coming weeks when they are forced to vote on the Emergency Declaration bill by the president (ie relative to building a wall on the border). What way will they vote? Well, shock of all shocks, the Dems will oppose it and, predictable as they always are, the anti-Democrats who are supposed to represent the interests of those who voted for them (otherwise known as the Republicans) will side with the Democrats against the president.

[Eminence Grise]

Given that I never named Trump but you immediately knew to whom I referred, the evidentiary threshold seems somewhat lower than some posts here. Which assertion in particular have you not heard or seen reported by journalists before? Actually, you don't need to answer. We've had good engagement in other threads (books and reading especially) so let's acknowledge that our politics will never align, and drop it. This is my last post in the thread. To be honest, I'd suggest locking it and starting with a similar title.

[mark12345]

Look, I’ll say it again. If we can keep Trump out of this and debate the often times ridiculous issues that are being raised by “both sides of the aisle” (there ain’t two!) we stand a pretty good chance of self policing the thread and keeping it active.

He’s not at the centre of it - the issues that are legitimately dividing people across the globe are at the centre of it. We should be able to respectfully and constructively debate these.

I agree with DaHamsta that claims should be backed up with sources or facts. Stated opinions I think we should be a lot more tolerant of as long as they aren’t belligerent or hate-speech.

I think I’ve made two claims on here that weren’t backed up with evidence.

1) USA and others co2 reductions
2) NI border security issues

Happy to provide sources on these if desired.

In the interests of holding each other to the same standard, I see a lot of unsubstantiated claims in EGs post about Trump that should be fully sourced or fully deleted. And I’d recommend that Mark deletes his claim about 80k MS13 and elimination of air travel as he’s been asked 3 times already and has not provided any source.

Since my name is mentioned here I probably should respond (admitting at the same time that we have strayed quite a bit of the original topic).
I hope I have addressed the MS 13 issue below in a reply to osarun.
As an aside, is there some significance to the number of gang members?
Someone (osarun I believe) said that his figures were from 2009. This is nine years later (or eight when I heard 80 K).
Think I said it before, but I listen to / watch about 23 hours of American political news and commentary each week - I suppose I should get a life.
How did I get to spend so much time on politics, a thought which I would have laughed at just a few years ago - witch hunts and demonstrable lies from the media (think Paul Manafort, the Parkland school shooting and its aftermath, and Brett Kavanaugh).
And the commentators I listen to are pretty reliable as far as I am concerned, notwithstanding the fact that I know all the TV networks have bills to pay and ratings to keep.

One last thing I would like to say to Stu. The following statement puts you head and shoulders above millions of others out there because you can actually see the forest for the trees:

"the issues that are legitimately dividing people across the globe are at the centre of it. We should be able to respectfully and constructively debate these."

[dahamsta]

mark12345, provide sources for your claims or you will be suspended / banned from this forum, depending on your infraction history. You have 24 hours.

[mark12345]

mark12345, provide sources for your claims or you will be suspended / banned from this forum, depending on your infraction history. You have 24 hours.

I have done Dahmsta, see above.

Dahamsta - Just a thought. You can tell me to go jump in a lake if you like, but hear me out for a second if you will.

I detect a real lack of trust among the posters on this topic. No one seems to believe anything anyone says anymore. It wasn't always like this but the world is a far more acrimonious place now and I suppose the folks on here are just a cameo of that.
We are all at each other's throats (that's no one's fault but our own as we have allowed ourselves to get sucked in by the forces out there which are trying to divide us, and I would think many on here would agree with this).
Put it this way, if the topic was football or rugby game, there would be minor or even major disagreement for a brief period, but eventually people would come back to their senses.
That doesn't happen when it comes to this topic.

And when the proverbial baby gets thrown out with the bathwater, I always try to revert to logic and truth. Truth is more elusive today than it ever has been, so we just have to inject logic and healthy debate in an effort to get to the truth.
Why is this important?
Well it's important to me, and I hope everyone else, because I would like us all to get to UNITY and unity is where the future of civilisation lies.
There is a reason why the major media outlets in America, and I would suspect Ireland, England and most of the western world seem to have forgotten how to spell the word, let alone use it
Because unity of decent, clear thinking people scares them for some reason.
Logic, truth, civility, unity.
Pass it on and we'll be far better off in the long run.

[mark12345]

Dahamsta - Osarusan posts below that he googled the figure of 80,000 and he could only find 10,000.
Notably, all the top sites which are shown for this search are CNN, Vox, USA Today, Washington Post.
I don't know where you live Dahamsta but in America those outlets are all considered to be anti-Trump and true to form, they do question the figure.

My ongoing sources are Jeff Kuhner, radio host, Chris Plant, radio host, Rush Limbaugh, radio host, Larry Elder, radio host, -- Brett Baer, Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Greg Guttfelt, Dan Bongino and Martha McCallum Fox TV analysts. And there are quite a few others which I can give you if you really need them.
Did I record the soundbyte when it said, sometime last year, that there were 80 K gang members. No I did not.

[Real ale Madrid]

My ongoing sources are Jeff Kuhner, radio host, Chris Plant, radio host, Rush Limbaugh, radio host, Larry Elder, radio host, -- Brett Baer, Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Greg Guttfelt, Dan Bongino and Martha McCallum

All you are short of is this guy

NiallBoylan_large.jpg

[SkStu]

https://theweek.com/articles/758360/rise-ms13

Decent and balanced article on these animals here and the only one that brings up a reference to 80,000 MS13 members (in Central America). Restates the 10,000 number that seems more accepted. Some more interesting numbers and data in this article: https://www.680news.com/2018/04/27/a...-up-this-year/
As I said in an earlier post, even one of these thugs crossing the border and adding to the misery is one too many in my book.

Also, learned today about another similar gang called Barrio 18 With an estimated 30,000-50,000 members in the USA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Street_gang

And there’s apparently 1.4m people in the states who are part of a total of 33,000 gangs. That’s insane!

Mark, my advice might be to retract your claim above and be more careful in the future. We all have a responsibility to be extra careful in the claims we make these days given the prevailing mood of society and the proliferation of fake news even in the mainstream media outlets. It will actually serve us well as a society.

On this site, as we can see from the above, there are two standards applied during these types of debates on this forum but it’s DaHams site so we play by his rules, authoritarian as it may seem.

I know that we can all misremember things that we hear or see (kind of the Mandela Effect) so chalk it down to that and hope that DaHamsta will be in a kind, forgiving state of mind tomorrow morning!

[mark12345]

https://theweek.com/articles/758360/rise-ms13

Decent and balanced article on these animals here and the only one that brings up a reference to 80,000 MS13 members (in Central America). Restates the 10,000 number that seems more accepted. Some more interesting numbers and data in this article: https://www.680news.com/2018/04/27/a...-up-this-year/
As I said in an earlier post, even one of these thugs crossing the border and adding to the misery is one too many in my book.

Also, learned today about another similar gang called Barrio 18 With an estimated 30,000-50,000 members in the USA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Street_gang

And there’s apparently 1.4m people in the states who are part of a total of 33,000 gangs. That’s insane!

Mark, my advice might be to retract your claim above and be more careful in the future. We all have a responsibility to be extra careful in the claims we make these days given the prevailing mood of society and the proliferation of fake news even in the mainstream media outlets. It will actually serve us well as a society.

On this site, as we can see from the above, there are two standards applied during these types of debates on this forum but it’s DaHams site so we play by his rules, authoritarian as it may seem.

I know that we can all misremember things that we hear or see (kind of the Mandela Effect) so chalk it down to that and hope that DaHamsta will be in a kind, forgiving state of mind tomorrow morning!

Point taken. I will retract the number. I have no idea where or how to find it at this point. But I will try to source this stuff better in the future.

[Eminence Grise]

Well, in the spirit of peace and reconciliation that has broken out, I'll accept that amidst this list were some items that breached the Goldwater Rule - both in spirit and in that I'm not a psychiatrist.

And now, back to Fox.

[dahamsta]

mark12345, the below is how you provide sources. The next time you make a claim on the current affairs forum, provide actual sources or your posts will be deleted, and you will be banned from this forum. Saying "I heard it" on X, Y or Z is absolutely not acceptable. Link sources, or don't make claims.

And, to be frank, the reason people argue with you, and don't believe a word you say, is because you sound and act like an ignorant, Trump-supporting / anti-vax / flat-earth / flouride-bad lunatic, citing and parroting "facts" without sources, some of which are borderline or actually racist, sectarian or just plain mean. I'm not saying that any of those are actually true, but that's what you sound like. Maybe you should consider that for a little while.

https://theweek.com/articles/758360/rise-ms13

Decent and balanced article on these animals here and the only one that brings up a reference to 80,000 MS13 members (in Central America). Restates the 10,000 number that seems more accepted. Some more interesting numbers and data in this article: https://www.680news.com/2018/04/27/a...-up-this-year/
As I said in an earlier post, even one of these thugs crossing the border and adding to the misery is one too many in my book.

Also, learned today about another similar gang called Barrio 18 With an estimated 30,000-50,000 members in the USA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Street_gang

And there’s apparently 1.4m people in the states who are part of a total of 33,000 gangs. That’s insane!

Mark, my advice might be to retract your claim above and be more careful in the future. We all have a responsibility to be extra careful in the claims we make these days given the prevailing mood of society and the proliferation of fake news even in the mainstream media outlets. It will actually serve us well as a society.

On this site, as we can see from the above, there are two standards applied during these types of debates on this forum but it’s DaHams site so we play by his rules, authoritarian as it may seem.

I know that we can all misremember things that we hear or see (kind of the Mandela Effect) so chalk it down to that and hope that DaHamsta will be in a kind, forgiving state of mind tomorrow morning!

[samhaydenjr]

https://theweek.com/articles/758360/rise-ms13

Decent and balanced article on these animals here and the only one that brings up a reference to 80,000 MS13 members (in Central America). Restates the 10,000 number that seems more accepted. Some more interesting numbers and data in this article: https://www.680news.com/2018/04/27/a...-up-this-year/
As I said in an earlier post, even one of these thugs crossing the border and adding to the misery is one too many in my book.

Ha! Before I read that article I did a top-of-my-head calculation of the number of MS13 members who cross the border. I based it on the figure I cited earlier of 10,000 members, with most joining in the US. Based on that, I assumed that the number of MS13 members who crossed as members to be no more than 4000, and if we assume that's over a ten year period, that would mean 400 MS13 members crossing per year. Wild estimate, I thought. And then I go to that article and it says that the number of MS13 members apprehended in 2014 (the highest in recent years) was 437!

Yes, I know the ideal would be for that figure to be zero, same for the existence of MS13 members at all. But that's not realistic and from a public policy point of view this figure hardly justifies spending $21.6B (Dept of Homeland Security Figures - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_wall#Cost_estimates, I reckon it'll be closer to $50b, if it gets that far) on a wall born out of spite and hatred, especially as there are serious doubts, to say the least, about its effectiveness: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8783721.html. And it certainly doesn't justify Trump's infamous campaign announcement speech.

Quick question to think about - what would be the effect on immigration if the US gave $25b directly to the poorest 2.5m families in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador?

[SkStu]

Sam,

The wall is not just to prevent MS13 members, right? It’s to prevent illegal immigration and as I said above funnel all immigration and asylum through legal ports of entry. It is one part of a solution to a very real problem. To say it is borne out of spite and hatred is lazy and is just parroting media anti-Trump nonsense.

Do you or someone you know own a home? Does that home have a fence or wall? What is the purpose of the fence/wall? Is it an instrument of spite and hatred? Is it to delineate and set out the property you own? Is it intended to keep people from trespassing on and potentially - even unintentionally - destroying your property? Does your wall or fence work 100%? Mine doesn’t but it’s a deterrent and with motion cameras, gates and alarm systems it works quite well. Do you feel that you have the right to decide who can come into your home and onto your property? Would you be willing to let people from a poorer neighbourhood just come onto your property to build a home there or hide out there? Would you not have been better to just take the money that you spent on your fence or wall and given it directly to the families in the poorer neighbourhoods?

[samhaydenjr]

Sam,

The wall is not just to prevent MS13 members, right? It’s to prevent illegal immigration and as I said above funnel all immigration and asylum through legal ports of entry. It is one part of a solution to a very real problem. To say it is borne out of spite and hatred is lazy and is just parroting media anti-Trump nonsense.

Well duh... one of the problems with the wall is that it won't actually manage to do that. The point is, and this goes to the heart of the issue of this thread, MS13 have been presented by Trump and right-wing media as a major threat to US security without precedent as justification for this huge expenditure. Even on this thread, you had Mark12345 presenting a figure of 80,000 MS13 members in the US. He claimed that he heard it quoted on one of his news sources, which include Fox News and Right-wing Talk Radio but couldn't remember where. And you know what? I believe him. Based on what I see of Fox News, Conservative Radio and now, more insidiously, Spectrum Media properties, it's entirely probable that Mark12345 was watching Fox or listening to Talk Radio and somebody threw out a figure of 80,000 in the context of MS13 in the US in a discussion about the Southern Border, wasn't challenged and that's the figure he brought here, which we now know, based on figures both you and I presented, to be massively, massively overstated.

And why do they do this? To rile people up. Because most people are reasonable and if you tell them that illegal border crossings have dropped by 80% since the year 2000, that the number of MS13 members crossing each year numbers in the hundreds and that 99% of people crossing the border are simply seeking a better life for their families and don't go on to commit crimes, then they don't see a need for draconian, extreme and expensive border measures, even though they support sensible border regulation and enforcement.

But there are certain groups of people who are not happy with that. No matter the cost, no matter the futility of achieving their claimed objectives, no matter the pointless misery they cause to people, out of spite and hatred (I'm not just parroting that) they throw out misleading information and figures to get otherwise semi-reasonable people riled up. Sarah Huckabee-Sanders got caught out doing this, ironically enough on Fox News, when she threw out the number of terror suspects stopped by border services in the context of The Wall, only for Chris Wallace to point out that none of these terror suspect were stopped at the Southern Border. But of course the most infamous example of this use of misleading rhetoric is the speech that kicked this whole thing off:

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with [them]. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

If that's not born of spite and hatred, then I don't know what is.