The Totally Useless, Non-Scientific BBO Opinion Poll for Current Events

[Winstonm]

Feel free to ask you own polling question. Mine is this: If somehow Donald Trump were to win the election and become President, would you consider expatriating, and, if so, to where?

[alok c]

To Mexico? :P

[kenberg]

Minnesota.

 

 

More seriously? No, of course not. To what purpose? (The "?" is not intended to make this a poll question. )

[kenberg]

The idea of this thread matches well with a serious concern. All this stuff about Trump is a distraction from serious questions.

 

A sample: What can we do, what should we do, is there anything practical that we can do to reduce suffering in war torn countries? Syria is foremost in my thinking. Hospitals are being bombed. Food, water and medicine are being denied. The evilness of this is, I assume, beyond debate. Surely Clinton, upon election, will ask herself "We should do what?". I wish I had an answer, but I don't.

 

There are other such questions that we are mostly sliding past while waiting to hear who DT insults next. This distraction, in the long run, may be the most destructive feature of the Trump candidacy.

[The_Badger]

hi Winstonm,

 

Trump's first measure if he won the presidency would be to establish an "Expatriate Tax" to try to stop people leaving. lol!

 

Shame the eagle didn't go for the kill :(

 

 

As you probably gather, I don't like him. Period. (And I'm a Brit!)

[Winstonm]

Minnesota.

 

 

More seriously? No, of course not. To what purpose? (The "?" is not intended to make this a poll question. )

 

My first thought was Texas, then I decided I really would prefer less crazy....just sayin'....

[Cyberyeti]

To Mexico? :P

 

And help them build the wall to keep him in ?

[Vampyr]

Pre-emptively expatriated 20 years ago. Just in case.

[olegru]

To Mexico? :P

Now we know how exactly Trump planned to force Mexican pay for the wall. They will build it themselves to prevent huge illegal emigration from USA after Trump became President.

...

And I heard Canadians thinking about wall too. ;)

[kenberg]

I think I will invest in cement stocks.

 

Is this what is meant by Wall Street?

[patroclo]

Sadly in Europe the walls are already rised. North Africa is in the caos. And the war lords are making their dirty business. And the children die in Aleppo. And ONU is an useless ghost. But till we can, better to watch olimpics in tv.

[awm]

I'll try to get my work to transfer me to the Zurich (Switzerland) office. It's fairly likely I could manage since we collaborate with the team there quite a bit. Having a job lined up would help with visa issues.

[Al_U_Card]

I don't like Trump but I really don't like Clinton. At least Trump will tell you what his latest lame-brain idea is where Hilary will just plain lie. Trump wants to be president. Hilary is obsessed with it (since her "Rodham" days on Bill's coattails).

 

I expect Clinton to win but not by a big majority. Should Trump win, then SNAFU becomes FUBAR.

 

We do live in interesting times...

 

btw the Olympics are not really bread and circuses but mostly just big business and major corruption.

[kenrexford]

I am voting Trump. Not even close for me. So, I will gladly stay.

 

The one irony is that if you vote for Clinton you won't need to take a plane trip to get to other parts of the world because the other parts of the world will be right here. That could be a good thing or bad thing but it is probably a true thing.

[shyams]

The one irony is that if you vote for Clinton you won't need to take a plane trip to get to other parts of the world because the other parts of the world will be right here.

In my view, this statement includes two prominent assumptions:

...A. That the USA is the greatest country in the world (guess what! it isn't); AND

...B. That the "other parts of the world" coming to your shores will degrade the USA thereby rendering it no longer the greatest (guess what! they won't -- not even close!)

If anything, it is the immigrant population of the past few decades that helped make the USA great (vs. what it was before)

[kenberg]

I am voting Trump. Not even close for me. So, I will gladly stay.

 

The one irony is that if you vote for Clinton you won't need to take a plane trip to get to other parts of the world because the other parts of the world will be right here. That could be a good thing or bad thing but it is probably a true thing.

 

I am pleased to see a Trump voter identify himself. I have a couple of questions.

 

1. Are you generally an R voter and, if so, do you see voting for Trump as being similar in reason to your past votes?

 

2. Are you pleased that Trump is the nominee rather than Cruz/Rubio/Bush/yourchoice?

 

Or respond as you think best. For me, for example, I generally vote D and I am reasonably comfortable with Clinton. This is far from saying that I find no fault with liberal positions. I often do.

So what I am getting at is whether you generally vote R and are reasonably comfortable with Trump or of you think Trump is better than you usually expect from the R party.

 

It's true that I don't really understand your point that with Clinton the world will be right here but I am assuming, right or wrong, that this is not the defining feature of your choice.

[kenrexford]

In my view, this statement includes two prominent assumptions:

...A. That the USA is the greatest country in the world (guess what! it isn't); AND

...B. That the "other parts of the world" coming to your shores will degrade the USA thereby rendering it no longer the greatest (guess what! they won't -- not even close!)

If anything, it is the immigrant population of the past few decades that helped make the USA great (vs. what it was before)

The two prominent assumptions that you see are your own. My statement is in no way supremacist. Your assumption that I am, apparently based upon stereotype, is frankly rather offensive.

 

My actual view which was not in any way stated with in that sentence happens to be completely different. It has absolutely nothing to do with Supremacy thinking. It has to do with two realities.

 

The first reality is that whether we like it or not there are people out there in the world who are at war with the United States. Allowing people to come into the United States under those circumstances from those countries is rather silly. Imagine a false but funny parallel. The United States and Britain could have saved a lot of lives If instead of storming the beach at Normandy we had just sent a large number of people into France claiming that these people were just vacationing on the Riviera and that some of them were just exchange students. Just as I don't have an anti-german View based on Supremacy which would be rather weird because I'm part German and just as I don't have an anti Japanese View I would not allow German and Japanese people to just walk into the United States by the hundreds of thousands during war. I would not go so far as internment camps. But on the other hand I would not invite them in.

 

The second major issue that I have is the reality that wages are incredibly low at the moment and that the labor participation rate in the United States is particularly low. It seems to me as if the government in the United States has come up with a new scheme. The idea is to tax the hell out of the 1% in order to pay for maintaining a growing population that we don't really want to employ because it cost too much money to employ them. The only way that we can tax the 1% in order to pay for that is to make sure that the 1% makes a ton of money. The only way that we can make sure that they make a ton of money without having to pay Fair wages to workers is to make sure that they have a lot of workers available that they can pay unfair wages. So you end up with four groups of people. The 1% who pay all of the taxes. A small middle class that figures out how to get ahead in life but not very far. A large lower class that would be too expensive to hire so we just tax the 1% to pay them to keep their mouth shut. And then we have a large number of immigrants some who are illegal and work under the table some of whom will take whatever job they can find because they're Amazed by how much money you can make in the United States in comparison to almost nothing else where. Or because they are desperate to. Two of the groups end up taking advantage of and living a terrible life. One of the group's ends up smaller and smaller. The connected people end up getting extremely wealthy which creates a very strong United States on paper.

 

None of this has anything to do with Supremacy. One has to do with logical War tactics. The other has to do with basic economics.

 

I understand a part of the counter thinking. Or at least I understand a counter thinking that would make sense to me. In thinking as a globalist or more properly a human there is not a whole lot of reason for me to find an attachment to someone who happens to live in California many hours away from me but to feel a disconnection between myself and someone in another country that is actually closer to me. National boundaries are to some degree arbitrary as it pertains to the human race. I get that and I sympathize with that.

 

However as to the first point the people with whom we are at War feel the absolute opposite and do not in any way view things from a human perspective instead of viewing it from a sick perspective based upon a demented philosophy. I might give food to the homeless but not at gunpoint. I certainly wouldn't take food out of my own child's mouth to give it to the homeless at gunpoint simply because the guy with the gun happens to be a human being about whom I care. And that's talking food. This crazy robber with a gun wants me to kill all the gay people some of them are my relatives he wants me to adopt a religion I don't agree with. He wants me to boss my wife around and tell her what she needs to do. That last part is actually more dangerous than getting shot at or blown up.

 

I also do not find any means of dealing with a government that wants to build up to 1% at the price of normal people other than the usual Market forces. Supply and demand. Location location location. A union has absolutely no power if there are twice as many people outside of the Union available to work. If you view the United States as a union then the adoption of policies that allow other workers to come in end up creating a supply glut that forces the union to either give up or to concede. Hence you need to keep the supply Down. I don't care if the supply is white black Asian I don't care what they are it's the supply that's the problem.

[kenrexford]

I am pleased to see a Trump voter identify himself. I have a couple of questions.

 

1. Are you generally an R voter and, if so, do you see voting for Trump as being similar in reason to your past votes?

 

2. Are you pleased that Trump is the nominee rather than Cruz/Rubio/Bush/yourchoice?

 

Or respond as you think best. For me, for example, I generally vote D and I am reasonably comfortable with Clinton. This is far from saying that I find no fault with liberal positions. I often do.

So what I am getting at is whether you generally vote R and are reasonably comfortable with Trump or of you think Trump is better than you usually expect from the R party.

 

It's true that I don't really understand your point that with Clinton the world will be right here but I am assuming, right or wrong, that this is not the defining feature of your choice.

I'm A demented individual as a general rule. I don't fit any stereotypes very well. I'm a criminal defense attorney who works for the street and is very Pro legalization of drugs vary Pro civil liberties. I have been one of the most effective litigators in Ohio on civil liberties including gay rights free speech and the like. And yet I have some very conservative views. This has resulted in some strange aberrant voting.

 

As an example I have voted for Bill Clinton Barack Obama George Bush and Mitt Romney. This of course makes no sense. However it has been an emerging or evolving thing for me.

 

As for my particular support of trump he seems to have a lot of the things I agree with in many respects. I see him as likely as civil libertarian at least compared to any of the Republican candidates. While he may say things related to some social issues I don't believe a word of it. I'm pretty convinced that he would be a social libertarian. I also have wildly emerged on my view of what's going on in the economics world and what's going on in the international conflict front. I am not entirely convinced that Trump is genuine on both fronts. But I am convinced that both the Republican establishment and the Democrat establishment are full of crap. I am convinced that the war Hungary interventionists are controlling things and that both parties are pro 1%. I am convinced now that the pro 1% mindset is one that is actually causing harm. And I don't for the life of me believe the Democrats are opposed to that. Certainly not Hillary Clinton. The only difference between Republicans and Democrats on that front or whether they decide to support the 1% and then pay the regular folks welfare or to support the 1% and expect the lower folks to work real hard for no wages. I don't consider you to be supportive of the middle class if you just say go for it buddy and I don't consider you to be Pro middle class if you say to the middle class you can't go for it buddy but here's a check anyway. All you have to do is drive around in Ohio for a while and you will see the effect of both parties on Ohio. My dad's company the one he worked for many years doesn't exist anymore. I saw firsthand how the company that used to be strong one that you would find reference to on a table at Wendy's back in the day. I saw how that company went under. I saw the incredible Insanity first hand. I saw the desperate attempt to save the company by hiring foreign workers and establishing foreign factories. You can throw a stone in any direction and find it equally disturbing in the next town over what happened to their company.

 

So I was not a big fan of Cruz or Rubio or bush. I actually felt the burn a little bit. But then I realize that the burn was fake. Week and a show. Crazy as a loon just like Trump nicer perhaps but fake. It was a show to make it look like there was actually a counter argument within the Democratic Party. And a little too socialist for me.

[kenrexford]

For what it's worth I kind of liked Rand Paul at the beginning. He lost me after a while though.

[Vampyr]

I don't like Trump but I really don't like Clinton. At least Trump will tell you what his latest lame-brain idea is where Hilary will just plain lie.

 

There is a link above to an analysis of the two candidates' lying. Trump's lying percentage is about three times Clinton's. If the perception is different it is just because he is a much better liar than she is.

 

When I was teaching English as a foreign languages, I had an advanced textbook, in which the chapter on relative clauses was called, "Politicians, who lie..."

 

But even if one erroneously thinks that Clinton lies as much as Trump, one might take notice of the fact that Clinton has worked in public service (not some bullshit bureaucracy but real service) since she was in law school, while Trump's career has been based on losing other people's money, avoiding obligations to his creditors (I wonder how many people have had to go out of business, lose their homes etc as a result) and in some cases engaging in fraud along the lines of Trump University. For the last I honestly don't understand why he isn't in prison.

 

But there will be lots of foolish, deluded and/or weak people who will vote for him. And not people who are interested in facts. Except for facts like that Trump wants to turn back the clock on gay marriage, women's right to their own bodies, and God knows what else.

[kenrexford]

God of love political discussions. I like to think in a reasoned way. Others like to throw out offensive hyperbole and biased nonsense. Hyperbole and bias don't have a tendency to persuade.

 

Question period what do you think the minimum wage should be?

 

Answer number 1. I'm not even discussing this with you because you are a Pinko communist. You want to steal money from people just to give it to whoever you happen to like to buy votes. You also would like to blow up federal buildings probably.

 

Answer number 2. You don't care about poor people. You probably drive over Poor People's Kids toys while driving to the country club. You also probably hate gay people.

 

Answer number 3. I think maybe the minimum wage should be something established by more local government involvement because the cost of living in a small world town is substantially less than the cost of living in a large metropolitan area. A person with a $10 an hour income in a small world town is doing very well for himself. A person with a $10 an hour job and a large metropolitan area is getting hammered. Maybe there should be some sort of standard based upon where you live.

 

Obviously the third is insane. We can't have that. One of the first two answers has to be the better answer.

[kenrexford]

As a complete aside I have now decided to stop correcting when my phone converts the text to speech in two words that don't make any sense and not what I said. At first it drove me nuts. I like for example, when it adds the word comma into a sentence and I said, oh. No it's just funny to me. I figure people can work it out.

[Winstonm]

The two prominent assumptions that you see are your own. My statement is in no way supremacist. Your assumption that I am, apparently based upon stereotype, is frankly rather offensive.

 

My actual view which was not in any way stated with in that sentence happens to be completely different. It has absolutely nothing to do with Supremacy thinking. It has to do with two realities.

 

The first reality is that whether we like it or not there are people out there in the world who are at war with the United States. Allowing people to come into the United States under those circumstances from those countries is rather silly. Imagine a false but funny parallel. The United States and Britain could have saved a lot of lives If instead of storming the beach at Normandy we had just sent a large number of people into France claiming that these people were just vacationing on the Riviera and that some of them were just exchange students. Just as I don't have an anti-german View based on Supremacy which would be rather weird because I'm part German and just as I don't have an anti Japanese View I would not allow German and Japanese people to just walk into the United States by the hundreds of thousands during war. I would not go so far as internment camps. But on the other hand I would not invite them in.

 

The second major issue that I have is the reality that wages are incredibly low at the moment and that the labor participation rate in the United States is particularly low. It seems to me as if the government in the United States has come up with a new scheme. The idea is to tax the hell out of the 1% in order to pay for maintaining a growing population that we don't really want to employ because it cost too much money to employ them. The only way that we can tax the 1% in order to pay for that is to make sure that the 1% makes a ton of money. The only way that we can make sure that they make a ton of money without having to pay Fair wages to workers is to make sure that they have a lot of workers available that they can pay unfair wages. So you end up with four groups of people. The 1% who pay all of the taxes. A small middle class that figures out how to get ahead in life but not very far. A large lower class that would be too expensive to hire so we just tax the 1% to pay them to keep their mouth shut. And then we have a large number of immigrants some who are illegal and work under the table some of whom will take whatever job they can find because they're Amazed by how much money you can make in the United States in comparison to almost nothing else where. Or because they are desperate to. Two of the groups end up taking advantage of and living a terrible life. One of the group's ends up smaller and smaller. The connected people end up getting extremely wealthy which creates a very strong United States on paper.

 

None of this has anything to do with Supremacy. One has to do with logical War tactics. The other has to do with basic economics.

 

I understand a part of the counter thinking. Or at least I understand a counter thinking that would make sense to me. In thinking as a globalist or more properly a human there is not a whole lot of reason for me to find an attachment to someone who happens to live in California many hours away from me but to feel a disconnection between myself and someone in another country that is actually closer to me. National boundaries are to some degree arbitrary as it pertains to the human race. I get that and I sympathize with that.

 

However as to the first point the people with whom we are at War feel the absolute opposite and do not in any way view things from a human perspective instead of viewing it from a sick perspective based upon a demented philosophy. I might give food to the homeless but not at gunpoint. I certainly wouldn't take food out of my own child's mouth to give it to the homeless at gunpoint simply because the guy with the gun happens to be a human being about whom I care. And that's talking food. This crazy robber with a gun wants me to kill all the gay people some of them are my relatives he wants me to adopt a religion I don't agree with. He wants me to boss my wife around and tell her what she needs to do. That last part is actually more dangerous than getting shot at or blown up.

 

I also do not find any means of dealing with a government that wants to build up to 1% at the price of normal people other than the usual Market forces. Supply and demand. Location location location. A union has absolutely no power if there are twice as many people outside of the Union available to work. If you view the United States as a union then the adoption of policies that allow other workers to come in end up creating a supply glut that forces the union to either give up or to concede. Hence you need to keep the supply Down. I don't care if the supply is white black Asian I don't care what they are it's the supply that's the problem.

 

At least you have the courage to explain your silliness. :P

 

As an attorney, though, I would think you would offer a better argument than the first - about countries being at war with the U.S. A terrorist organization is active - in fact, several are active - but them sending a handful of supporters into the U.S. in no way threatens the destruction or capitulation of the U.S.A. We may indeed wish to vet those immigrant applicants more carefully, but I can't imagine banning them totally.

 

What really makes no sense is to allow these terrorists to change our values - banning immigrants because of their country of origin or religion would be contradicting our own values.

 

I am also surprised that you adopt a conspiracy explanation for low wages. There is nothing surprising about wages lowering and stagnating in a country that has changed from a manufacturing based economy to a service industry economy. The end result of years of union busting and globalization and regressive taxation policies is that the ultra rich reap the vast majority of the reward for increasing productivity while workers continue to lose wealth and health.

 

Anyway, your choice of candidates surprises me as I understand the intelligence required to obtain a law degree and pass the bar. I would urge you to re-examine Trump and your position.

[The_Badger]

Let's be honest, as a Brit I have a limited view of American politics. The papers and the media are usually biased, so the only way to gauge US politicians is to watch their performances on YouTube ( which probably have been edited - so they are probably biased too :( )

 

Trump, in my opinion, has that egotistical, megalomaniac edge that is bordering on dictatorial and is a very scary. He's not (from what I can see) a seasoned politician, just a billionaire businessman with an agenda.

 

I listen to his views (for the sake of completeness), as we live in a democracy and free speech is a tenet of this, but I am truly appalled by some of them.

 

He is openly racist, in a country that is extremely multicultural and diverse, especially in the larger cities. What message is he sending to these people?

 

All I am saying is that the Republican Party surely must have a better candidate than this, or does filthy lucre alone determine who stands for the Presidency in the USA?

[Al_U_Card]

It is called "paying lip service" and pols are usually expert at it. Trump doesn't give a rat's ass (due to his professionally diagnosed megalomania, no doubt) because as a boss (You're FIRED!) he is used to getting his way.

 

Elected officials run the gamut and he is, shall we say, hardly the paragon that Hilary pretends to be.

 

If Trump does not get tripped up AND he gets some real dirt (to stick) on Hilary, he could just win.