Are you nervous?

How's it going over there? Any election day observations?

Q> "Are you nervous?" (Title)

A> Yes.

I voted early so I don't have to deal with it. I'm not going to listen to any election coverage until after 6 PM because it's all going to be pointless masturbation until then.

I don't really think Trump is going to win, but I also know that no one ever went broke underestimating the American people.

If Trump loses, he will not concede. In his anger he'll stomp one foot so hard that it will sink into the ground. Then he'll grab the other foot with both hands and tear himself in two. Just like Rumpelstiltskin.

I've watched the returns come in with the same people for decades. Whatever happens, we will get drunk.

Trump no debería gobernar

>5 2wonderY: a sane approach

>6 SandraSaugarSanchez: Es verdad.

I am going to try not to watch until 8 pm.

>9 davidgn: Well, do like the others and go back and try again.

I'm gonna hang out here for a while. The ghost of NSFWCorp (now absorbed by Pando), home to many of the Exile(d) crew, has arisen to take another stab at covering an election. https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/election2016/

>10 RickHarsch: "Vote often and early for James Michael Curley," as my father liked to recite when we drove the Jamaicaway past a certain historical house with shamrock shutters. But that sounds a bit quaint these days. That sort of voter fraud just don't pay like it used to.

>9 davidgn:
Like that one.

I was feeling pretty anxious until the Comey story broke on Sunday. Since then, I've been cautiously optimistic. I also have a cold, so I'm feeling a little too fatigued to get that worked up either way.

>5 2wonderY: "Whatever happens, we will get drunk".

I am envious, I have an infection that prevents me from self medicating at this time.

I am self-medicating.

Looks like the electoral votes are not in the bag for either party - trump has Dow down 500 points according to ABC news

>16 DugsBooks: "Uncertainty" has Dow down 500 points according to CBS news.

Uncertainty = Trump according to the talking heads at CNBC earlier in the week.

Edited in: In North Carolina Trump has an edge but the local news shows people in line at the polls voting still in Charlotte/Mecklenberg the most populous area of the state. Not sure if they can send any votes in before voting actually ends.

Make that 750 points down....ouch, gonna need to pick up cans to sell while walking down the road.

CBS is very subdued.
MSNBC is reportedly exhibiting barely-suppressed panic. I want to see that, so I'm gonna give 'em a whirl.

"Deer Tracks." Yes, Ms. Maddow. "Deer Tracks."

Mark Ames: "Gee, ya suppose running for president against Vladimir Putin rather than against a mobbed-up racist buffoon was the stupidest fucking idea ever?"

ETA:
NYT model predicts 81% probability Trump victory.
ETA: Now >95 rastaphrog:% http://www.nytimes.com/elections/forecast/president

Meanwhile:

Black Mirror (*at*blackmirror)
This isn't an episode. This isn't marketing. This is reality.
TwitterToday at 10:28 PM

https://twitter.com/blackmirror/status/796192757836554240

Right now, Clinton is trailing in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Iowa (with sizeable percentages of those states reporting). She'd need pretty much all of those to win. 538 puts the probability of a Trump win at 58%; Clinton is down to 40%. It's not looking good, in other words. So yes, I am legitimately nervous.

MSNBC desperately searching for Democratic votes in Wisconsin.

Inb4 "Putin did it."

If Trump wins this, heads will roll. And none are more deserving.
http://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton...

Now MSNBC is blaming the third-party candidates.

MSNBC called the entire West Coast for Clinton the moment the polls closed. Funny thing: Trump is now ahead in Washington at 1/3 of the vote in, per Politico

ETA: At 40%, Clinton is back in the lead, and Politico has called WA for Clinton.

I am so out of social media, the sites I went to crashed or were behind an hour & I was the only person posting (public radio station's sites pretty deserted!)

To late to join twitter?

"Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media." Aha, some conflict there.

Never too late.
And here's the real-time Politico map.
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president?lo=ut_b1

>26 DugsBooks: Okay, I'll dig you up the original email. There's no conflict there.
The Democratic Party is getting exactly what it deserves tonight. One ratfuck too many. One goddamn ratfuck too many.

>26 DugsBooks: Here ya go. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120
Look at the attachment. Or here's a direct link. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/1120/251

Oh fuck. Here we go. "Blame Putin" begins on MSNBC.
Believe me: this will get uglier than ugly. Quickly.

Y'know, I think Sanders would have been better. Just a thought.

Just wondering,as has been mentioned by the broadcasters , who didn't vote. Talking heads say rural America DID vote and the contrasts between Obama's voters and Clinton's is pretty dramatic.

I don't have the data, but I can tell you right now: the Millennials.
Shouldn't have screwed over the Millennials.

MSNBC reports Canadian immigration website has crashed.
And that stock futures trading has been halted after hitting circuit-breaker.

Drunken schadenfreude with AfterBerner Stein voters, anyone? https://www.facebook.com/saneprogressive/videos/1280431758673970/

Oh fuck. Here we go. "Blame Putin" begins on MSNBC.

You and some others on the pro-Russian left won tonight. Take your bow.

I thought it was blame Comey.

Very happy for Trump to win.

Christian.

Australia.

I think there'll be a lot of blame. And, yeah, I think Russia and its quislings deserve blame.

But, fundamentally, this was a wave election. Trump didn't merely get all working-class white people out. He got 30% of Latinos—better than Romney. He flipped counties that went hard for Obama four years ago. And Clinton massively underperformed, failing to bring out Latinos or African Americans. I think it's a dreadful, fearful wave—a tsunami of misplaced hostility and suspicion—but it was a wave.

>39 timspalding:

I think Clinton was found out. She is a crook who, despite all of the media on her side, failed to con the American people.

Kudos to Americans.

I might just add that the biggest failure in the Democratic plan, was to let Clinton run with the catacomb like skelton cupboard she has.

But that is establishment pride for you.

>40 LesMiserables: There's probably a seat at Trump U. open for Aussies....

>42 RickHarsch:

Be a good sport, take defeat like a man.

>36 timspalding:
You mean those of us who pegged Hillary as an unelectable candidate half a year ago?
You mean those of us who favored Sanders because he was intrinsically the stronger candidate in this environment?
You mean those of us who pointed out how the mainstream media gave billions of dollars in free advertising to the Trump campaign -- which we now know was encouraged by DNC?

Go ahead, blame Russia. If it makes you feel better to have an external enemy to blame for rotting out this country's political establishment from the top down, that's psychologically understandable. Personally, I follow Bill Binney: I think the leaks came from in-house. Not that it matters: the worst that can be said of whoever leaked those emails is that they held a mirror up to reality.

>43 LesMiserables: Take defeat like a man? How does a man take defeat? By the way, I live in Slovenia and never vote in US elections. But sure, I'll throw a bunga bunga party.

>45 RickHarsch:

By having a few beers :-)

'Trump outperforms in majority-white areas while Clinton fails to fire up minorities' Washington Post

>31 davidgn: & >44 davidgn:

Exactly.
---------
"Oh, Mr. Obama, your legacy phoned."

----------

It has to be a Rooskie plot! ;^)

"Lawyers In Love"

I can't keep up with what's been going on
I think my heart must just be slowing down

Among the human beings
in their designer jeans

Am I the only one who hears the screams
And the strangled cries of lawyers in love

God sends his spaceships to America, the beautiful
They land at six o'clock and there we are, the dutiful

Eating from TV trays, tuned into to Happy Days
Waiting for World War III while Jesus slaves
To the mating calls of lawyers in love

Last night I watched the news from Washington, the capitol
The Russians escaped while we weren't watching them, like Russians will

Now we've got all this room, we've even got the moon
And I hear the U.S.S.R. will be open soon
As vacation land for lawyers in love

>36 timspalding:

There _are_, it is true, self-styled "leftists" (e.g. the morons @ "off-guardian.org") who cannot leap fast enough to Putin's defense. But this "take a bow, Putin-supporters," is your lame attempt to take comfort in a simplistic delusion.

I have zero regard for the murderer Putin and Trump is in for a rude awakening concerning his seeming --if genuine--admiration for Putin.

Clinton has conceded. Trump is set to speak. I want to throw things at the screen. But I will never, never apologize for calling things by their right names or for voting my conscience. If that makes me a Russian quisling, then I grieve for what is left of my country.

Now can all those extremely self righteous and important people called *celebrities* in the US, do as you promised and F### OFF somewhere else!

>51 LesMiserables: Your pantysniffing interest in the US is well-noted.

>50 davidgn: I will never, never apologize for calling things by their right names or for voting my conscience.

I'm sure many of the Left who gave up their ability to stop Hitler by refusing to form a united Left government never apologized, either. Ultimately, Sanders's willingness to play ball is one of the things that will advance his program, and your unwillingness is one of the things that will not advance your program.

If that makes me a Russian quisling,

No, what makes you a Russian quisling is your support of Russian manipulation of the US election system.

>53 prosfilaes: I almost don't want to dignify that with a response, but: Please advise me when I ever expressed support for Russian manipulation of the US election system?

Russians? Don't make me laugh.

America needs to wake up and smell the fightback from the moral right, against decades of icky decadence, sexial perversion and the educational ideological abuse of children.

“El anti-intelectualismo de ahora está creado por los intelectuales, no por Trump. Florece ante el fracaso de los intelectuales”, ha apuntado el filósofo canadiense John Ralston Saul, quien ha asegurado que la puerta del racismo se abre “cuando se eliminan las otras opciones”. Opciones alternativas que sí vislumbra el italiano Lorenzo Marsili, para quien hay fuerzas en el continente europeo que “están intentando reconstruir el centro político y económico que ha fallado”. El director de Alternativas Europeas se ha referido a formaciones como el Partido Laborista de Jeremy Corbyn, en Reino Unido, a la formación de izquierdas polaca Razem o a Podemos en España, un país que Marsili ha destacado por su resistencia al miedo y la incertidumbre de nuestros tiempos: “España es el único país que no tiene un partido fuerte de extrema derecha, aunque sea uno de los que ha sufrido más con la austeridad”.

http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/11/06/actualidad/1478465962_8...

>53 prosfilaes:

"Ultimately, Sanders's willingness to play ball is one of the things that will advance his program, and your unwillingness is one of the things that will not advance your program."

"Ultimately"? Lol! In a _democracy_ there is no "ultimate" result. Rather, there is "doing things fairly and democratically" and "everything eslse" : the point is always first and foremost how affairs are handled--if the "how" is "fair, honest, open & democratic" ("one voter, one vote" not "one hundred dollars, one vote"), then the "what" (result) is always secondary.

Sanders' "program" became "Hillary at any cost, no matter the harm to democratic principles" because he made it that way when he endorsed the person the oligarchy was determined to shove down the electorate's throats. That their (the DLC's) billions of dollars in election-buying funds and their stupifyingly biased mass-media weren't enough to make their "sure-thing" stick is nothing short of miraculous. But it's no proof that important lessons have been learned. It tells us really nothing. The system is of course still corrupt, still a disgrace, still the play-thing of the rich elite. No one can say that these results show that the electorate "wised up" or that things are now different and fairer.

But we can say that a certain very particular case of the system's corruption has stalled here--perhaps only temporarily.

You've got _zero_ in lessons to give us this morning, Pal.

Good fucking riddance to Hillary and Bill Clinton, to John Podesta, David Axelrod, James Carville, David Plouffe and to the Obamas. May they all go into permanent obscurity.

As relevant today as when recorded (and last posted).
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_chris_hedges_john_ralston_saul_neolib...
Those looking for lessons might look here.

>58 davidgn:

True. But it's as wasted on them now, as they shake their bewildered heads at the news of a president-elect Trump, as it was when you first recommended it. These people can't learn, won't learn --that's exactly why president-elect Disaster is necessary.

It seems that Trump was not as much of a loose cannon as so many of us thought. This analysis seems to indicate he went after the 'Archie Bunker vote' right from the start, deeming them as the angriest and most-ignored of all American voters (which they probably were):

https://www.quora.com/What-IQ-level-does-Donald-Trump-have-Is-he-really-a-politi...

I wonder if fox news will die off now that they have no one to lie about????

Fox News is the only reliable mainstream media channel out there in the US.

The end of the world as we know it!

>62 LesMiserables: You're living in a Dreamworld--watch out for the Thunder River Rapids Ride

President Elect Trump = PET of the year? Or PET of the next four years.

>53 prosfilaes:, 54 davidgn, you failed. I re-read post 53 and it had no more dignity after you answered than it had before. In fact, it is the most asinine post I've read in quite some time, bearing the thought level of a trumpchild.

>62 LesMiserables: The only reliable thing on fox is the that you're guaranteed to see cleavage and legs.

President Trump may well only be a 1 term President. He'll hate the job, and find out he can't simply walk away from it.

Hillary Clinton is a poor campaigner (as was observed by several people during the election). Whatever your opinion of her, it's very unlikely that she'll ever be considered for the nomination again. (Whether she retires from politics is less certain.)

>39 timspalding:

"a tsunami of misplaced hostility and suspicion—but it was a wave."

This. But although Trump certainly appealed to that wave, he didn't create it. Both parties have worked towards making Americans fearful and angry, never thinking that someone besides them could take advantage of it.

Money has been creeping up in politics since the late 19th Century; blame that, and Citizens United, rather than Russian infiltrators.

>55 LesMiserables:

America needs to wake up and smell the fightback from the moral right, against decades of icky decadence, sexial perversion and the educational ideological abuse of children.

Hey, moral right, you're quite on the raving drunk roll there. The Fuglies just voted in a poster boy for icky decadence and sexual perversion--but I give you that we can forget about further educational abuse of children, as the most logical conclusion to the catastrophe visited on American education since Reagan is simply to dispose of it altogether.

The things that are crawling out of the woodwork... but that's right, all come out, let the sun shine on you!

I don't know what it is with some people---but it's as if some here would like to recreate the conditions of the Cold War with Russia and there is no fucking point. This has been going on for a few years now. It's wonderful for beat your chest politicians--it's even better for the military industrial complex and as a justification for keeping military bases all over the globe up and running--but this is shit that eventually comes back to bite you in the ass. Instead of comprehensive health care for everyone we have this smoke and mirrors bullshit about defending NATO and isolating Putin. We're in the middle of every frigging conflict around the globe and our infrastructure is falling down and apart. Putin's not nearly our biggest problem.

Hillary is giving her consolation speech now. I voted for Hillary with good conscious respecting her skill set and confident that she would continue to improve health care..BUT... I felt an unease with the Presidency becoming a "political royal succession" with the Bush's starting a Presidential lineage along with the Clintons.

I guess that gut feeling of unease was universal and exploited by Trump who used that to fill in the margins around the conservatives with single issue agendas that formed his core. I expect Trump to either go down in huge flames in one term or simply change everything he said to suit the situation - I am leaning toward the latter.

Will Pussy Grabber the First pay his overdue taxes before or after he's sworn in, or is there a plan afoot to abolish the IRS?

I hear he owns property in Russia, Turkey, "former ex-Soviet republics"... Is that a good look on a POTUS, even one as curious as Rump? I thought all that phantasmagorical railing about Clinton "corruption" and "greed" meant that people were concerned about, well, corruption and greed.

>72 LolaWalser:

Election's over, Toots. Your ("man") (woman) lost. Take it like a big girl feminist-- chalk it up to misogynist white men and never move on.

;^)

>73 proximity1:

One misogynist, racist, Islamophobic, Hispanophobic, dinosaur in particular, I think you mean.

>71 DugsBooks:

I voted for Hillary with good conscious respecting her skill set and confident that she would continue to improve health care...

...for everyone except the babies murdered in the womb at any time up to and including partial birth.

In good conscience.

Welcome to Zika virus city where that will be explored to a further extent. I agree with Roe vs Wade

Now that the election is over we can get back to the really important things in life.

Pizza, football, and Katy Perry's hot body.

Money has been creeping up in politics since the late 19th Century; blame that, and Citizens United, rather than Russian infiltrators.

No, that doesn't wash. Clinton vastly outspent Trump and her proxies—the gap is estimated at 2 to 1. And, all-in-all, the election involved less money than 2012. Citizens United didn't cause Trump's victory—it narrowed his margin, if anything.

>78 timspalding:

And are you saying that every purchase a politician makes is going to be for the best? As early as the 1960s, astute commentators were pointing out it was possible to buy the nomination of a major party (although not, at that time, the Presidency itself).

Vastly outspending someone doesn't help if you don't spend the money wisely, and Senator Clinton is not an effective campaigner.

>74 Tid:

No, I don't and never did buy into any of that about Trump. Ask his current and former wives if he's a misogynist and then ask them why, if so, they married him in the first place.

"Islamophobic"? Why and how? I suppose you mean that he's demanding stricter oversight and control over Visa-applicants from a few nations notorious for being the social sources of fanatical mass-murderers in the name of Allah. That's your Islamophobia? Then I want it! Why am I obliged to give every religion--or any religion-- and its faithful equal--or any, for that matter-- respect?

Foreign nationals' entering a country not their own is not a right--it's a privilege granted with conditions by the host country. I believe that's as it ought to be even though I don't necessarily always agree with the conditions set out. In this case, I damn well do agree with them. Islam as it's practiced in much of the world is irreconcilable with a free, democratic and open society. That's not our fault or our problem unless we're too stupid to understand it's truth.

There are, strictly speaking, no truly "non-racist" people.

"Hispanophobic"? Seriously? Trump is categorically opposed to all Hispanic people? Do you actually believe these things and reflect on them or just repeat popular nonsense?

>79 BruceCoulson:

No, I'm not really saying anything. I do think money in politics is often a problem. But THIS election doesn't show it--this election is practically an argument that money in politics doesn't matter at all. Trump raised a historically small amount of money, and spent it very poorly indeed. It didn't matter.

>81 timspalding: You could argue, and some have, that he was given billions in free media coverage, at least in the primary.

>80 proximity1:

Misogynistic? Why, most certainly. Trump himself had to apologise publicly for some of his past statements about women, or did you miss that news item?

Islamophobic - yes, in the sense that he spouts soundbites and fury about "Muslims" without even pretending to attempt a proper analysis into the causes behind Da'esh and the Middle Eastern troubles and America's (far from solitary) place among those causes.

Hispanophobic? Yes. Where do the vast majority of Spanish speakers in the US come from? Mexico. There's nothing more needs adding.

Popular nonsense? Nonsense or not, the crowds converging on Trump Towers today ("NOT MY PRESIDENT") don't indicate any sign of 'popularity'.

Just curious about how would you go about modifying, getting rid of, the electoral college votes? Whoever most recently won an election would resist doing that is my guess. Were any efforts made to do that during the Obama administration, after the Al Gore loss, to do that?

>84 DugsBooks:

"Were any efforts made to do that during the Obama administration, after the Al Gore loss, to do that?"

LOL!

As official (everything & everyone, press not least) Washington sees things, the Clintons, Obamas, the DNC and news media did everything right, ran flawless campaigns and the public utterly failed to do as instructed. Thus, the stupid voters screwed up a great election and now they ought to sit up and learn to pay better attention.

>84 DugsBooks:

Exactly the same thing applies in Britain - the LibDems have promoted "proportional representation" for as long as, and forced a vote on the issue as a condition of going into coalition with the Tories in 2010. Of course, neither of the main two parties had any interest in getting rid of the "first past the post" system (similar to your electoral college system : a candidate can win by a single vote over the next rival - if several parties put a candidate up, the resultant MP could get only about 30% of the vote) so the vote was lost convincingly. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

>86 Tid: The 2011 referendum was about introducing the 'alternative vote' system (ranking candidates by preference), rather than PR. It's interesting to imagine if a vote for PR would have turned out differently.

>87 konallis:

The LibDems wanted full PR. The 'alternative vote' system was a watered down thing, but even that was tromped on by Cameron and the Tories. However, it WOULD have ensured no-one could become an MP without 50+% of either 1st- or 2nd-choice votes ... it would also have provided an opportunity for many voters of all parties to put the Greens second, which in some places really could have happened.

Of course, the downside of PR is that UKIP would have had a big bloc in the Commons, more than the Scots Nats for example.

Speaking of UKIP...

Nigel Farage jokes about Trump's alleged sexual assaults

In a jubilant interview with TalkRadio from Spain, before he was due to fly to the US, Farage joked several times about the idea of the US president-elect sexually assaulting Theresa May when he met her.

...

Farage continued: “That Obama creature – loathsome individual – he couldn’t stand our country. He said we’d be at the back of the queue, didn’t he?”

>80 proximity1: "...demanding stricter oversight and control over Visa-applicants from a few nations notorious for being the social sources of fanatical mass-murderers in the name of Allah. That's your Islamophobia? Then I want it!"

I want it, too...more to the point, every American should require it of their elected officials and no presidential candidate should differ from this. There should not be a spectrum of political opinion on this - you are required to protect us.

>80 proximity1: "Foreign nationals' entering a country not their own is not a right--it's a privilege granted with conditions by the host country."

Unfortunately, this rather simple truth (which, by itself, could have prodded some sensibly self-interested American voters to choose Trump, given HRC's contempt for the idea) is regarded as tantamount to hate by the too-well intellectually insulated (which isn't to say 'stupid'; they aren't that at all) and gentle souls who prefer danger to any responses to that danger.

>90 St._Troy: ••• "you are required to protect us."

There's a very popular view common since the advent of the Cold War that the president's first and most important duty is always to keep Americans physically safe from dangers and threats to their lives. I don't personally see it that way.

Instead, I think it's the president's first duty to defend Constitutional liberties and rights--even if doing that means exposing the public to otherwise unavoidable risks to their life and property in the process. We should accept those risks to defend our freedoms--which ultimately ought to be more valuable than life or property.

But nothing about defending our rights and liberties requires us to admit any and all those unconditionally who'd like to enter the country. That's absurd. Whether we like it or not we have enemies who see us as their foes and who are interested in coming to the US specifically to carry out an attack. We don't owe them help in their missions just because they are members of a religious faith and it's difficult to sort the dangerous from the harmless. Again, no alien non-resident has an unconditional right to enter the country any more than he'd have an unconditional right to enter these wacky pc kooks' own homes.

You could argue, and some have, that he was given billions in free media coverage, at least in the primary.

Right. Which argues against the idea that campaign contributions are determinative. Many in the Democratic party thought that their money advantage--and their consequent "ground game" advantage--would win the election for them. They were wrong. Clinton might as well have cancelled half her fundraising events, and focused on getting out the sort of simple, entertaining high-concept-low-integrity viral message that Trump used.

Just curious about how would you go about modifying, getting rid of, the electoral college votes?

This just ain't going to happen. Whether you go through the House and Senate, or state by state, the Constitutional amendment process gives states the same sort of outsize influence as the Electoral College. Smaller states are never going to go for a change. As it is, Trump visited small states and even, in the case of Maine's second district, small slices of states. If it were a simple national vote, the candidates would ignore such places, and focus on getting every vote they could out of California, New York and so forth.

>89 LolaWalser:

Speaking of UKIP

I do try not to, and you've given me one more damn good reason not to.

>90 St._Troy: We have a moral obligation to save the Syrian refugees. This amuses me, because this is the part of my Christian upbringing that stuck with me the strongest; that we should reach out our hands to our neighbors (not fellow co-religionists, but, you know, Samaritans) and love them as we love ourselves. For a group that so often exalts martyrdom and persecution, it's appalling how craven so many of them are to take some risk to help the poor and hungry.

As an American citizen, why on Earth should I let some pipsqueaks like ISIS stop me from doing what's right? Because if they're lucky, they might get in a terrorist attack that statistically speaking, will barely budge the meter on how many people are killed in the US?

Illegal immigrants from Mexico are a different matter. But Trump repeatedly attacked American citizens because they had Mexican ancestry, both the judge in his Trump University case and the citizens voting at a Mexican supermarket in Las Vegas, a polling place that was held open hours beyond stated closing time because there will still people in line waiting to vote. Besides American citizens, Trump bore false witness against the illegal immigrants themselves, who statistics have shown to be less criminal than citizens, not more.

>84 DugsBooks: WHile I haven't seen anything lately calling for a complete getting rid of the EC, I was reading an article about a movement to modify how states allocate their votes. It wants to get enough states to total the 270 needed EC to pledge their votes to the winner of the whole countries popular vote rather than who won that state.

I remember when we studied elections and the EC in middle school. We argued that one candidate could win the popular vote and still lose the presidency. Our teacher explained that the EC was a sort of safeguard "to keep people from electing Mickey Mouse."

Or Bozo the Clown... :-(

>91 proximity1: "Instead, I think it's the president's first duty..."

I actually don't see those two priorities as "either/or," but as both being on the "must" list. My point was that, in matters involving non-citizens, citizens must take priority as it is to them, and only to them, whom the President is responsible, as in this obviously correct statement:

>91 proximity1: "...nothing about defending our rights and liberties requires us to admit any and all those unconditionally who'd like to enter the country."

...as opposed to a statement such as:

>94 prosfilaes: “We have a moral obligation to save the Syrian refugees.”

No such obligation exists on the part of the US as a nation. While assisting refugees is a nice thing to do, to the extent that it carries any risk at all to stateside American citizens, it should not be considered at all by American leadership.

>98 St._Troy:

'No such obligation exists on the part of the US as a nation. While assisting refugees is a nice thing to do, to the extent that it carries any risk at all to stateside American citizens, it should not be considered at all by American leadership.'

Least of all would we want the US government to acknowledge any responsibility in creating a situation that leads to millions of refugees fleeing a war that would not have happened without the US attacking Iraq and later undermining the Assad regime and supporting rebels with views clearly antithetical to the US.

>98 St._Troy: No such obligation exists on the part of the US as a nation.

Why not? How can a responsibility of the people not extend to a nation of the people?

to the extent that it carries any risk at all to stateside American citizens, it should not be considered at all by American leadership.

This is With Folded Hands, if the robots in that story were bigoted about which humans they were sent to serve. That's a science fiction story where the robots could not allow humans to come to harm, and took away our knives and cars. Conservatives will toss out huge amounts of crap about banning large sodas when heart disease kills 610,000 a year or banning guns that kill 33,000 a year, but when it comes to saving non-Americans, "any risk at all" is too much.

>94 prosfilaes:

Thanks for that. It seems to me to be a lot more Christ-like attitude than that espoused by many of the self-identified "Christians" who voted for Trump, whose motto would seem to be more along the lines of "I got mine, fuck you" (gee, don't remember running across that sentiment in the gospels) than "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".