US Politics - A Society in Meltdown

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The leaked transcript of Trump’s interview with the WSJ editors is amazing

“So I deal with foreign countries, and despite what you may read, I have unbelievable relationships with all of the foreign leaders. They like me. I like them. You know, it’s amazing. So I’ll call, like, major — major countries, and I’ll be dealing with the prime minister or the president. And I’ll say, how are you doing? Oh, don’t know, don’t know, not well, Mr. President, not well. I said, well, what’s the problem? Oh, GDP 9 percent, not well. And I’m saying to myself, here we are at like 1 percent, dying, and they’re at 9 percent and they’re unhappy. So, you know, and these are like countries, you know, fairly large, like 300 million people. You know, a lot of people say — they say, well, but the United States is large. And then you call places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and you say, you know, how many people do you have? And it’s pretty amazing how many people they have. So China’s going to be at 7 [percent] or 8 percent, and they have a billion-five, right? So we should do really well.”

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I’m having a good laugh at him ringing the prime minister of malayasia and asking him the population. Presumably he lets out a low whistle after hearing and goes wow-weee never knew there was that many of ye

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That Ivanka is very very beautiful. She is flawless, pretty much perfection.

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Top notch Czech

Good breeding.

Looking at her here, you just can’t bate good breeding

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I gave up on that transcript half way through. You know? Right?

The man hasn’t a fucking breeze what on earth is going on around him.

Genuine question fitzy. What should Australia do here? I think in aome ways they are correct in point blank refusing refugees by boat. If they allow some in now, the floodgates may open, leading to the open lawlessness we are seeing currently in the med, which is surely a scale worse than the situation Australian policy has allowed.

Trump has been very quiet the last couple of days. Wonder what crazy fucker is up to?

Isn’t he on his 17 day holiday? He’s only just got over his probation and is now a permanent employee and fucks off on vacation. I hate fuckers like that. Surely there’s a question on the application form, have you holidays planned in the coming months?

Ah right that explains it. I thought he was like and kid and when they are quiet you know the little fuckers are up to something. :grinning:

Flatty, there is merit in stopping the boats. About 50000 refugees tried to land in Australia by boat during the last Labor government, many drowned on the way. But what we’ve done is stop the boats (mainly coming from Indonesia) through a hard line, military style operation. I have no problem with that. What we should be doing is enabling processing of refugee claims in Indonesia and then moving successful applicants here.
The problem is what we have done with the people who have managed to get to Australian waters by boat. We have warehoused them offshore in Papua New Guinea in these horrible concentration camps. Then attempted to resettle them in other countries, generally through Asia. With no success as no one wants them. So these poor people have been kept in terrible conditions with huge mental health and developmental problems. The way they have been treated is nothing short of disgusting.
There is a perception that they are all free loaders, something that’s been proven to be bollocks time and again. Many are from countries that Australia started wars in, with their pals in the US, like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the meantime, over 70000 people in the last few years, who came here by plane, have outstayed their Visa and the authorities don’t know where they are. Now a fair proportion of them are British and Irish backpackers, but mainly Chinese and Asian economic migrants. No on here seems to care a fuck about that.
This government is spending billions, up to $9 billion a year to torture a few thousand people, all of whom would have been granted asylum by now if proper processes had been observed. Instead, we’re slowly killing them in terrible conditions. Another one died today on Manus Island. They’ve been there for years.
Just because you stop people coming here by boat (and there’s a lot to be said about that policy as it has prevented thousands of deaths at sea) doesn’t give you the right to torture people to death. But we have a horrible, racist, right wing government here and it’s not surprising. Labor introduced the policy as a panicked political move, to show they were just as racist as the Liberals. Once the Libs got in, they went to town on refugees.
The way ministers here talk about refugees and especially Muslim refugees is beyond disgusting.

What a horrible country you live in.

It could be worse…

Has it stopped them arriving by boat?

It has.

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It is a good thing in that it has prevented many people drowning at sea. However, it still leaves the question of the thousands of people we torture and also how many refugees we take in. Which is two fifths of fuck all for a developed country like Australia, again, disgraceful.

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I wasn’t saying it was right, just genuinely wondering what you thought. Given that all you can look for is the least worst solution to something like this.

I know what you were saying and there is no easy answer to this, no matter what you do it’s going to be wrong, so the trick is to minimise the problem and the suffering. Australia has taken an action that minimises deaths at sea. But it continues to take a totally unnecessary action to maximise the suffering for thousands of people.