rkbabang

Watching politics now is like watching a Coen brothers movie: Everbody has a dumb plan, nothing works and at the end there are a lot of dead bodies. "nothing works and at the end there are a lot of dead bodies" That has been an accurate description of politics/government for at least the last 5000 years, it is a good thing that people are starting to notice.

I'll make a prediction right now that Trump is re-elected and serves 8 full years. That is as long as he stays healthy, he is 70.

Wow, and that had a zero percent chance of happening!

Agree. We are in the mists of a historic political tsunami, the magnitude of which we will probably never see again. It is the main topic of discussion around the world, and the affect of the power shift on businesses everywhere will be profound. It's so interwoven into every institution, that to think that it can be ignored is unrealistic. +1. For good or ill this is the topic of conversation just about everywhere right now.

You're still obsessing about these political threads? If you had spent more time obsessing about your investment portfolio you would have done better than -9% last year! Nonetheless I always enjoy reading your posts. I just hope you vote next time. Touche! Although I doubt politics had anything to do with me taking a much too large options position and selling too early. That is a temperament problem that I need to work on. Anyway I hope you don't hold your breath waiting for me to vote. I agree with some of the things Trump is doing and am horrified at others. The same would have been likely if she had won. I can live with myself a little easier knowing that I had nothing to do with this mess.

"inheritance". all you need to know, if true Yes, it is the markets way of transferring the money from those who don't have the brains/skills to use it responsibly to those who do. Lottery winners are often subject to the same forces.

This is being discussed on the Apple thread. Like I said there I think it is fake. The rich uncle who no one knew was rich leaves him $2.5M and he blows it all on day trading and blackjack? Sounds like a bad cliche. It's a good story, but I think it is fiction... I hope it is anyway.

A thread is like a room. A thread like this just so happens to attract a whole bunch of people into a room to incessantly yell at each other. This isn't productive discussion, in my opinion, and it also leaves other rooms vacant. This room is more like a gigantic clusterfuck of an argument that naturally leads to posters becoming more defensive and holding even stronger to their beliefs than when they first began. There is no middle ground left. I know many here who have a libertarian bent and believe in freedom everything. But some things just aren't productive. What frank87 said. Also, this forum - for better or worse - is a community (or maybe "was"). Yeah, there are forums where I only read one thread, but not others because these forums are not communities. In these other forums a single thread may be a community. Here the whole forum was for a while. So, the participation was per whole forum and not per thread. It's possible to say that the forum community is gone and just leave this thread (btw, politics is now creeping into investment threads too, so that might be short term solution). It's not very satisfying solution, but I'll consider that as possible choice too. So you read every message? There are hundreds of posts to this forum per day. I'd never have the time to do that. I've been here since 2008 (the old board) and I've always picked only the threads that interest me to read.

I have a question for those who think this should be blocked. Why do you read it? Out of the tens and sometimes hundreds of active discussions on this board there are usually only one or two political discussion going on, if any, which are confined to their own threads. Very easy to ignore and never read. There is no requirement that you read every discussion on CoB&F. For example I have no interest in SHLD so I never read that thread when I see it pop up. You can ignore anything that you feel like not reading. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, and it should be banned because I can't stop myself from reading it!" is a strange position to take.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/politics/donald-trump-administration.html Under Obama, Yates was asked to break the law. She did. Under Trump, Yates was asked to enforce the law. She refused. Not a hero. Her 15 minutes are over. this precisely gets at the wrongheadedness of this thread. any discussion of political differences is a waste of time for an investor, imo. however, any discussion of policy that affects investing is more than called for. any discussion that calls yates a hero can only be based upon politics. if you cant appreciate how dangerous it is to the rule of law, the bedrock to our system of free enterprise, for an acting atty general to instruct DOJ not to enforce an order that is clearly within the executive branch's constitutional authority, as determined by the DOJ in-house constitutional authority, the DOJ office of legal counsel, then it is clear that this thread is a waste of data bits. whether it should be closed i leave to our beloved site administrator. When you openly defy your boss you have to expect that you'll get fired. She should have resigned in protest.

+1 Politics is divisive and therefore discussing it tends to be derisive. It makes perfect sense that it would be that way. There are two ways any person or group of people can interact with any other person or group of people. Voluntarily through persuasion or coercively through violence or threats thereof. Voluntary interactions are usually win-win, because both parties choose to take part. But when you set up a winner take all win-lose system where if you don't win and get to force your ideas on me, then I win and get to force my ideas on you, how could debating such things not be somewhat quarrelsome?

The war on drugs has more to do with gun violence than anything else, but cities with the strictest gun control also have the most murder. Chicago has more murders than NYC and LA combined with less population than either one individually.

Well, if prices go up 20% then the US will find those goods somewhere cheaper I guess, so Mexico will be forced to take a cut on those goods or will not be able to sell them at all. That's pretty naive view of things, but even if it were true, we will still be paying more for those things or we will be buying things of cheaper quality. If neither of those were true, then we would already be buying from those other places and not Mexico. http://reason.com/archives/2017/01/26/the-folly-of-buy-american-and-hire-ameri "Trump is never more certain than when he is completely clueless. The truth is that protection against foreign trade leads away from prosperity and strength. A country that deprives itself of foreign goods is doing to itself what an enemy might try to do in wartime—cut it off from outside commerce. It is volunteering to impoverish itself. Countries don't "ravage" us when they make "our" products; they help us. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the essence of trade—foreign or domestic—is that it makes both buyer and seller better off. Otherwise, they wouldn't bother."

There is just so much wrong with your post I'll try to sum it up briefly. The stats you post are homicide not murder (this includes self defence, police shootings, etc). Also it is only firearm homicide. Does it matter how someone is murdered? Showing stats for murder (no justifiable homicide, no police shootings, and by all methods) would be a more honest comparison. Also take out the top 5 gun-controlled hell holes and the vast majority of the US is pretty damn safe. New Hampshire is safer than Canada, not only in murder, but in violent crime overall. NH, BTW is likely to get rid of its concealed carry license soon, the bill just passed the state senate and is headed for the house now. I plan on buying a few more guns to celebrate! And lastly the US has alway been a more violent society, when there were no gun laws to speak of in either country the US had a much higher violent crime rate than the UK. Actually the UKs violent crime rate has increased dramatically since the gun bans, not murder, but violent crime. You are unlikely to be a victim of murder in the US even with its increased rates of murder, especially if you live outside Chicago, but you are more likely to be a victim of violence in London than NYC. All of that aside, you can not ban guns in the United States without starting a civil war, so it isn't on the table and never will be.

No one is answering because you answered your own question.

How many people were hurt, had their rights infringed, or were killed in 2015 or 2016 by these illegals? Compare that number to how many were hurt, had their rights infringed, or were killed in 2015 or 2016 by guns? Restricting illegals or firearms...which would have more impact on the safety, livelihood and freedoms of Americans? I'm also guessing restrictions on firearms would be far cheaper than the $25B that is going to be spent on a wall! Cheers! Chicago and DC heavily restrict firearms. How is that working out? When you can freely transport firearms between states/cities where it is legal to where it is illegal, having certain cities with gun control helps very little. Yes we need to ban them everywhere, that's how we got rid of drugs from our society.

This is probably the best analysis I've read on the Trump phenomenon. Donald Trump is the First President to Turn Postmodernism Against Itself http://thefederalist.com/2017/01/23/donald-trump-first-president-turn-postmodernism/

Unless there was a way for those already wealthy and in power to institute policies that restrict economic mobility... ::) Yep, that's the downside. There is no way to give government power to anyone and not have problems.

I'm all for shutting down the federal government completely. But if it must exist and voting must take place, then yes. Actually, "rich only" isn't really a fair description. Just people with something to lose voting. Tens of millions of Americans would fall into the category I described. And many younger people who don't now, will later in their lives.

I'm all for shutting down the federal government completely. But if it must exist and voting must take place, then yes.

Not all citizens have passports. My friend did not get one until last year when she was 30 years old. If you want to waive passport fees and give them at birth or age 18, that's fine. Why do you think that social policy should be set exclusively by the rich? Are they just more enlightened than everybody else? As Alexis de Tocqueville correctly observed "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money". That would be less likely to happen if the taxpayers voted and the tax receivers didn't. I'd also prohibit anyone currently holding political office or working for any level of government from voting (along with their immediate family members). Also the 100k ownership in a business is not valid if that business gets any subsidies from any level of government or makes any sales to any government department or agency. The moment you take a direct payment of even one cent from government you should lose your right to vote.

Many non citizens get assistance. The only ID that is only given to citizens is a US Passport, so why not require one to vote? I've said this before, but democracy would work better (still not perfect, but better) if it allowed only stakeholders in society to vote. Maybe require $100K equity in a property or $100K ownership in a business, plus a US passport. Maybe allow someone to get around the $100k ownership rule if they are willing to pay a $500 voting fee for every election they wish to vote in.

Some people are violent criminals. You don't know that they are violent criminals until they have committed a crime. You then deal with violent criminals as you should regardless of where they were born. Unless you have pre-crime technology to figure out who is going to hurt people and sometimes kill them. If you do, why shouldn't we deport American citizens that will be future criminals too? Maybe drop them from helicopters. To your second point "it is the law...", I know what the current immigration laws are, I just disagree with them. For one, they are unenforceable. I wasn't joking when I said "Do Mexicans have boats". There are quite a few Cubans in the US right now and as far as I know not a single one of them walked.

Haha! That's hilarious! Don't tell anyone, otherwise Trump's going to build a wall along Canada's border, and make us pay for it! Do Mexicans have boats? I think we might have to build a wall along our coastlines too. "Libertarians know that a free country has nothing to fear from anyone coming in or going out. While a welfare state is scared to death of every poor person who wishes to come in and every rich person who wishes to get out." --Harry Browne "The people that want big fences and guns, sure, we could secure the border. A barbed wire fence with machine guns, that would do the trick. I don’t believe that is what America is all about. 

Every time you think about this toughness on the border and ID cards and REAL IDs, think it’s a penalty against the American people too. I think this fence business is designed and may well be used against us and keep us in. In economic turmoil, the people want to leave with their capital and there’s capital controls and there’s people controls. Every time you think about the fence, think about the fences being used against us, keeping us in." --Ron Paul

I'm no fan of China and I agree with much of what you say, but the US is not much better in a lot of ways. Why do we have ships over there? Does China have carrier groups in the Gulf of Mexico? Would that be OK with us? It is the US that projects power all over the world's oceans like no other country on Earth.