To the moderate/mainstream Republicans who are now "shocked" by Trump's comments and have no idea where they are coming from.

Just a reminder: In the past year, these 16 states have either attempted, or succeeded in at least nominally passing a bill or state Constitutional Amendment to essentially ban Sharia Law in their states.

Alabama (two bills)
Arkansas
Florida (two bills)
Indiana (two bills)
Iowa
Kentucky
Mississippi (four bills)
Missouri (two bills)
North Carolina
Oklahoma (seven bills)
South Carolina (two bills)
Texas (six bills)
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wyoming (two bills)

The mainstream of the GOP said nothing as they stood by and watched this happen. But they wonder where all of this Islamophobic sentiment came from.

Are you Pro-Sharia law? Do you know what Sharia law is?

These state legislatures presented Sharia Law happening in America as a real threat and something we need to be scared of. Obviously because of our Constitution, Sharia law will never under any circumstances become the rule of law in America, but the state legislatures used this as a posturing move to signal to the crazies that they were the ones stopping the bad Muslims from enacting Sharia Law here in America. The mainstream GOP never stood in opposition to this, or said anything against this happening, and are now dumbfounded where this massive anti-Islamic sentiment is coming from within their party.

Okay, just wanted you to clarify. I agree that it's posturing and silly, though the extreme parts of Islam(and the literal interpretations of it) is pretty ****ing scary.

I agree with that, and agree that any interpretation of religious texts used for violent purposes is abhorrent and should be roundly condemned by all societies. But to pretend that our society is under threat of having Islamic Law become the rule of law in America is just shameless pandering and fear mongering.

If you don't readily see how it's the beginning of the end of it and how taking action on things people say privately or publicly isn't disregard then I don't know what else to say but I'll try one more time a different way.

When all speech, public or private, via any electronic medium, is monitored and judged by the government in secrecy on if it is ok or not, that is more than a threat.

Thayer afaik you still haven't listed your preference for president of the candidates running. Who would you vote for? Top 5 candidates? Just lollllling at them all isn't helpful since one of these will be in office.

Why I think you have to vote Dem. And part of why I prefer Hillary over Bernie (elaborated a touch yesterday evening)

I still can't really buy the argument that Hillary is going to be able to get anything done. Republicans despise her and dems don't really like her all that much either. There's a better chance that even though Bernie won't get close to doing everything he wants, he'll be able to inspire the left and middle enough to get some key things done.

Dems are already planting excuses for Hillary. "She won't be able to get anything done. wahhhhhh." It will be 2019 and dems will still be playing the "It's Bush's fault" card. Party of personal responsibility.

She won't. Presidents usually can't. They always get too much blame when things are bad and too much credit when things are good. That goes for all of them, including Bush.

My point was that people probably shouldn't be voting for Hilary based on the idea that she'll "get things done" if they don't also agree with her ideology the most.

Not talking about you I've heard that from tons of dems already, they know she is close to a lock to be elected and they are already blaming repubs for her assumed failures.

Wouldn't her failures to them be wins to republicans? Why would this bother you?

Breaking news from the most prosperous time in history for literally ever single person on earth.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/...losing-ground/

Presidents can get a lot done wrt to foreign policy and that may be where HRC is worst. She's never seen a military operation to be against. The hope is that she's learned from mistakes after having a real foreign policy job, ofc, but there are credibility issues regarding her actions as a senator. She strikes me as someone who surround herself my most trigger-happy voices.

There is legal recourse to challenge a president's actions after the fact. There is non to prosecute abortionists for basic abortions.

When people call abortion "murder", this is calling a private citizen shooting an active gunman a good shoot.

What Trump said really wasn't extreme. If he were running for governor, he would be taking artificial bans of Syrian refugees to a "logical conclusion". Trump just eliminates the slippery slope ambiguity and is forthright with his bigotry.

What does Sharia law say about online poker?

Fire three bullets and pray.

Am I a bad person?

Some kind of mix of Trump Bernie Ron Paul Elon Musk and Thayer. Would really just prefer to end this false dichotomy and the kind of thinking that concludes people to think Hillary #1

pair of queens is the least valuable starting hand

Your evidence does not match your argument

+1.

Furthermore it doesn't really matter what happens in the courts. Any reading of the Snowden situation will tell you that.

It's a losing battle. Even if they can get the big companies to do it, there's no way they can make everyone comply because there's no limit on how many layers of encryption you can use. You can encrypt your data before Google even sees it. Then when Google decrypts it under court order, all the government gets is data that was encrypted by someone else.

so when the median rises (as it has been) it requires your income to grow at 2/3 of that rate if youre on the border. Thus, even if you see wage growth that outstrips inflation you could still fall short.

so the middle class are getting better off and the lower class are getting better off too. Just because they're not improving as much as the upper class doesn't mean they aren't getting richer and gaining purchasing power.


All of this is relative to others in the best and richest country in the world. You're a lot better off living in the 20th percentile in America right now than you would be in the 80th percentile in a 3rd world country. You're also a lot better off living in the 25th percentile now than you were living in the 50th percentile 100 years ago in America. We are already raising the standard of living for all classes on the aggregate. Why do we now need to focus on raising it even more for some classes just because they've lagged behind in growth rate even when that rate has not gone flat or negative over long periods?