Wookie, I don't think you understand. Truefish has met real life Muslims. Not fake Muslims like the one kid who went to your private high school, but real Muslims--you know, the ones that pray and watch Arabic-language television.

Since none of the rest of us has ever met one of those real Muslims, we probably should shut our pieholes.

They said that about the Chinese too, once upon a time.

I've been to multiple Islamic countries for extended periods of time, including one on the ban list, and my experience was that our cultures are completely compatible. Unfortunately, radical bigots like trufish, Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, and Osama bin Laden have made that difficult.

Truefish,

My son's best friend is Muslim (and may have been born outside the US?). His mother immigrated from Pakistan, covers her head, and speaks with a heavy accent. Should I be worried?

He hasn't integrated well. He still doesn't eat bacon for ****'s sake.

I do agree in practice, but why can't they go and visit them instead (since they can come back just fine now)? Look, we can do this all day. I can go into whataboutism and ask you why that people who want to kill us should have a right to just come over and do that, it's not a hill politically you want to stand on--nobody's gonna support you if an attack happens.

The new EO appears to have eliminated most of the initial problems as seen here by everyone's favorite fox news.


You're gonna have to make a concession somewhere and this one has too much downside to fight now and it's not that far off obama's that none of you gave a **** about. Before I get yelled at--I don't like it either but it's not a battle that can be won politically with americans right now.

This is one of those No True Muslim variants right-wing dip ****s love. Even if you've traveled to Muslim countries they'll just say you've never traveled deep into their caves or seen deep into their hearts where they secretly wish to bomb you because of infidels or whatever. ANY answer you might give serves the dual purpose of them getting it out there that any nice Muslims you've met are fakers while simultaneously giving them an opportunity to monologue about the real barbarian Muslims they read about on AllenWest.com or whatever.

Unconstitutional to restrict a U.S. citizen's right to travel, so I don't know what's going on here.

Truefish,

What were you doing in which Muslim majority country?

Truefish should spend a day with IRCO so he can document how dumb people are for thinking refugees are meshing well with American culture

I spent a month backpacking around Indonesia, which is 87% Muslim apparently. A fantastic country full of lovely people. I plan to go back many more times.

I can't believe they removed the country responsible for the Bowling Green Massacre.

Or even better, they can riff on the differences between good and bad Muslims, which is a variant on the favorite argument of old Southern bigots. ("I got no problem with good decent black folks. It's the n----rs that I can't stand.")

Obama and the enemy of the people is wire taping Press Secretary Sean Spicers Gaggle Press Briefing

Arguing about the substance is a lot different than throwing someone under the bus. Take Maddow for example, she gets to say more than one stupid thing or have some of her priorities disagreed with before she gets close to not being awesome.

For my part, I'm reading Walden and wondering if I shouldn't change my political strategy to moving into the woods.

I believe this is only true for states. They certainly can take a passport.

I deleted it because there was a lot of posts about it being very preliminary reporting and more work was needed to flesh out what exactly was going on.

Oh man, you missed in chezland our resident deplorables actually arguing that this and Japanese internment were the right moves.

We won't allow 45* to divide us with a Muslim Ban. We know the facts. Immigrants and refugees aren't the ones committing crimes.

It's still politically targeted to fulfill a bigoted promise, to ban Muslims from immigrating. That doesn't need any concession, it needs fighting regardless of how many times it takes.

Should require due process of some sort imo.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/838801299466506241

Priorities and focus. If that is truely his motivation he is masturbating into the wind. The reality is he has been aggresssively trying to debunk anything Russian from the beginning.

To me his actions speak louder than anything else. He is a provocateur, or a troll or even worse. If his goal was to focus on other things why does he spend so much time trying to dismiss any and all things related to Russia. I don't have the experience and loyalty some here have for him here and I think that is clouding judgment. The last several plus months have exposed him and we probably need to stop making excuses for him. If he was just writing about other stuff than Russia he would not be getting all this criticism. But he actively tries to debunk and minimize everything Russia.

Trump's travel ban attempts remind me of the classic racist-on-an-internet-forum conundrum; the guy who spends all their time floating trial balloons about which racist things they can and can't say without being called racist.

"OK, fine, you say say I can't say Obama is actually Kenyan; I guess the PC police call that racist these days. Can we at least question the veracity of his birth certificate? I'm not even saying which kind of Pretend American he is. It could be that his parents unholy race-traitor miscegenation promoted confusion and they simply forged the birth certificate due to panic, completely well meaning!" Then they get told it's all pretty racist and to STFU and then they pout about the stubbornness of closed-minds who won't simply sit in silence while they just say a bunch of slightly different racist **** than they initially planned.

This must work in some environments or whatever because the practitioners always seem to assume the spirit of compromise compels you to let them continue uninterrupted. Trump's travel ban is kind of like that; there's some percentage of people who are like "welp, he modified it, guess our hands are forced to settle on this!"

Though not politically feasible, I suspect that the best 30 year strategy for fighting ISIS, al Qaeda, etc., would be to relax immigration requirements from Muslim countries.

I asked tfish about why he was in a Muslim majority country. Dunno if he'll answer or if this post will ruin his response, but anyone want to bet against it being either military, military contractor, or working for multinational resource extractionists and that he lived in a community of mostly Westerners in a guarded enclave?