The U.S. has contained everyone without a physical wall for decades. If you visit a Communist country, which is illegal, an FBI interview awaits your return, to decide what to do with you. If you aren't prosecuted or worse, you'll at least lose your job. Republicans in Congress are stonewalling Obama's attempt to normalize relations with Cuba.
That is ONE example. My father's been to China numerous times on business, and he's never once been questioned by the Feds. But I will agree with you that I wish Republicans in Congress would give the whole "Bad Bad Cuba" thing a rest. They are insignificant today.
Things changed for China. I used to do travel accounting for some of the first business visitors in the 1970s, after Nixon opened it up. But trying to escape is still illegal for a number of countries. Read your passport for the list. Anyway, there's a nonphysical wall to prevent Americans to see the other side, return, and tell their countrymen that the "enemy" isn't so bad. The ordinary people of Mosul--oops, I'm suppose to say the ISIL militants there--like their new system enough to fight us to their deaths. Our controlled media won't say that.
Repeal would look even worse than Obamacare By Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View November 9, 2016, 11:20 PM Can Republicans pass a bill repealing President Barack Obama's health-care plan lock, stock and barrel? Technically, yes. They have control of the House and the Senate. Democrats in the Senate could filibuster, but I doubt the filibuster survives Trump's term in any event, so I don't see this as a permanent obstacle. I have no doubt that Republicans would like to vote for something they can call "repealing Obamacare." The problem is that repealing Obamacare will involve getting rid of two provisions that are really, really popular: "guaranteed issue" (insurers can't refuse to sell insurance to someone because of their health status) and "community rating" (insurers can't agree to sell a policy to some undesirable customer for a million dollars a year; the company has to sell to everyone in a given age group at the same price). These two provisions are consistently popular with voters across the spectrum. Unfortunately, they tend to send health insurance markets into what's known as a "death spiral": People know they can always buy insurance if they get sick, so a lot of them don't buy insurance until they get sick. Because the sick people are really expensive to cover, insurers have to raise the price of the insurance, which means that the healthiest people left in the pool drop their insurance, which means the price of the insurance goes up. … After a few rounds of this, everyone has a guaranteed right to buy insurance -- but the sticker price is astronomical. Obamacare is built to counter this problem -- with subsidies to bring down the price for many Americans, with a mandate for individuals to buy insurance or face tax penalties, with rules on enrollment timing to complicate "gaming the system." These are the unpopular parts of Obamacare. Repeal will involve getting rid of the unpopular bits. But it will also involve getting rid of the popular bits. Republicans will be under enormous pressure to repeal just the unpopular parts, which would, of course, make the individual market even more dysfunctional than it is now. I wish good luck to President Trump or to any member of Congress who explains to voters that if they want the popular parts, they need the unpopular parts too. Believe me, I've tried...
...So I suspect that "Repeal Obamacare" will meet the same fate as Social Security reform. Even though his party had control of both the House and the Senate, Bush eventually had to admit he couldn't get it done. His own party would not back him in the face of voter resistance. Repealing Obamacare is not Trump's signature initiative; I suspect he doesn't much care. He won't be pushing as hard for it as the Bush administration was for Social Security reform. A lot of people in Congress want it -- but of course, until now, that's been a free desire; they could pass doomed bills to repeal Obamacare without having to face voter wrath when folks discovered that they'd gotten rid of guaranteed issue and community rating. The calculation becomes very, very different when you're talking about a bill that will actually become law. So I am skeptical that Obamacare will be repealed immediately. What might Republicans do instead? The most obvious answer is: Wait for it to die a natural death. While Trump will not be pushing particularly hard for repeal, he will probably not be pushing to save Obamacare either. There will be no special deals for insurers who stick with the exchanges. His Department of Health and Human Services is not going to have a crack team devoted to coming up with ingenious regulatory tricks and dodgy funding mechanisms to make the exchanges work. Obamacare's market structure is so deeply flawed that even benign neglect will probably prove fatal in fairly short order. Repealing guaranteed issue and community rating is very hard as long as people can still buy insurance. But if we end up in a situation where, say, half the counties in the U.S. have no policies available on Obamacare exchanges (and most of the functional exchanges are in blue states), then Americans are not going to care so much about a theoretical right to buy insurance, which they can't exercise because insurance isn't available. This could be paired with things like capping and block-granting Medicaid benefits into what you might call a "non-repeal repeal."
The fact that you feel no shame at writing this is kind of terrifying in itself. And I say that as an atheist who thinks all religions are stupid.
When jlprk is making good sense you know that 2016 has gone so far off the deep end that it's not visible in the rear view mirror.
Never have understood why you dislike me. I think it's because your #1 cause is gay/feminist issues, and mine are antiwar, rich vs. poor, black people, sexual freedom for all (jealously tearing down the heterosexual side of the sexual revolution does not further the gay side), and drugs...basically, hippies.
Why not use a more recent example. In 2000, despite several percentage points of liberals going to Ralph Nader, Bush still couldn't garner more votes than Gore. After the election, analysts said that he had weak support and would have to govern moderately to get anything through. He turned out to be the most cruel torturing president since Andrew Jackson, ignoring near-unanimous world opinion about attacking Iraq. So yes, do not assume Trump will be moderate or weak due to lack of support. On the other hand, while he wants to fight ISIL more than Hillary, he wants to fight Syria and Russia less. I think. So maybe there will be a net saving vs. Hillary in lives lost. As you say, you can't be sure what will happen.
The smart move would not be a wall.....it'd be a canal......put the Panama Canal out of business now that the Chinese control it and have a canal from San Diego to Texas!.....Let the flagship be the Mar Azul!
you beat me to it.....missed this post earlier when I posted mine.....I opted for canal instead of moat
Are you serious? Banning a religion is unAmerican. And what about the millions Muslim Americans? What would you do about them? And how would you determine if someone is Muslim?
That's a good thing, as it effectively weeds out the stupid and non-creative thinkers. We will have the smartest illegal immigrants in the world.
You know what Muslims think about homosexuals? The vast majority of the Muslim world things you should be punished. In some countries in fact, polls asking of homosexuality should be punished as a crime get yes responses 100% of the time. There was a imam in Orlando calling for the dealth penalty for homosexuals. It's a horrendous and hateful religion. It's easy for you to try and be sanctimonous about it while you're not suffering from it.
