Quote from: The Boo Man... on July 31, 2014, 07:46:29 PM
And that folks is how it's done...

You're too kind. And to think, I didn't even have to mention the million or so potential Americans who fall victim to abortion doctors every year, roughly a third of them via the US taxpayer by way of grants to Planned Parenthood.

Quote from: taxed on July 31, 2014, 07:58:29 PM
This thread reminds me of:

Airplane! Slap

Only because you took it that way... 

There is so much wrong with this thread I can't be bothered. I could list a dozen reasons why we oppose illegal immigration that don't include the obvious.

Quote from: The Boo Man... on July 31, 2014, 09:43:05 PM
There is so much wrong with this thread I can't be bothered. I could list a dozen reasons why we oppose illegal immigration that don't include the obvious.

If you mean there's so much wrong in the OP, I couldn't agree more. Normally, I let SFF slide; I try to pretend he's not there. But every now and then he just shows his ass and.... well, I aim carefully and pull the trigger. 

Quote from: TboneAgain on July 31, 2014, 09:57:11 PM
If you mean there's so much wrong in the OP, I couldn't agree more. Normally, I let SFF slide; I try to pretend he's not there. But every now and then he just shows his ass and.... well, I aim carefully and pull the trigger. 

An impetuous child in need of serious adult attention via the belt.
Wanna bet, mommy even caved on timeouts?

"You're in trouble young person (she hated labels), now you're in timeout for 1 hour."

Ohhh, mommy can't be mad at the most special person since the beginning of time, three minutes was long enough, I'm sure you learned your lesson, now this time, no torturing of little animals, OK special person?"

Quote from: The Boo Man... on July 31, 2014, 09:43:05 PM
There is so much wrong with this thread I can't be bothered. I could list a dozen reasons why we oppose illegal immigration that don't include the obvious.

You mean that part about it being ILLEGAL and all, that, right?

-Darth

Quote from: carlb on July 29, 2014, 03:51:31 AM
Smoking is a personal choice.  Defense of the borders is the #1 responsibility of government.

Smoking is a personal choice, but crossing the borders is not?  Do illegal immigrants cause more damage than smoking?

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If you had a daughter, wife, sister raped and murdered by a foreign invader, you'd understand.

If you had a daughter, wife, sister dying from lung cancer by second hand smoking, you'd understand.  Why aren't we diverting your border patrols to taking out the tobacco companies?  If you were really concerned with addressing the issues that cause the greatest amount of damage in human lives, you would have a completely different set of priorities.

Quote from: taxed on July 30, 2014, 04:00:35 PM
Conservatism isn't an ideology.  It's a way of life.

Do you say that to yourself in a mirror every night, before you go to bed?   

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Government regulation isn't generally bad; over regulation is.

And your criteria for what constitutes overregulation is...?

QuoteThe free market is a wonderful thing.

The free market would suggest that if these illegal immigrants were taking American jobs, it's because they offer greater value at a lower price, ie, they are superior.  It turns out that this is unacceptable to you, and here is where you step in government regulation.  Never mind your opposition to regulations on issues that kill orders of magnitudes more people every year.

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"Apparently"?
False premise, we aren't anti-regulation.  That is something you dreamed up, or your professor told you to think and parrot.

The point obviously sailed over your head - the issue here is the double standard of obsessively regulating illegal immigration and doing comparatively little about smoking or alcohol, despite these killing thousands of times more people.  You've crafted a priority list based on the emotional kneejerk fear reaction rather than any sort of objective danger assessment, and illegals hopping fences scares you more than something as abstract and distant as lung cancer, the statistics be dammed.

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Not up to speed on the Constitution, are you professor?  Read Article IV, section 4.

There's a reason why we have the dictionary word "trespassing" that we do not use as a synonym for "invasion".  Invasion is an organized infiltration by an enemy military force; it is the height of pedantry to equate this to a bunch of teenagers sneaking into the country to work as migrant farmers.

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Government, since it's responsible for both.  It kills innovation, and let's criminals and third-world disease spill in.

This has to be the dumbest thing I've heard in a long, long time.  How many vaccinations and medical treatments were invented without any sort of public funding?  I'm googling the major ones: penicillin, smallpox vaccine, polio vaccine...huh, it turns out none of these were developed by Joe the Farmer living in the wilderness.  It turns out, the National Institute of Health has done a little more for those types of things than private enterprise. 

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Let's start you on the basics.  Maybe you can bring it to your professor and you can educate him.  We aren't anti-regulation, and border security is in the Constitution.  See how easy that is?

The general welfare is also in the Constitution, but you don't seem to factor "general welfare" into your arithmetic at all.  You'd rather pay 500 billion dollars to prevent 2000 Americans from losing their jobs to illegal immigrants than pay 100 billion to prevent 100,000 Americans from dying of lung cancer.  Just a 1% increase in funding to NIH would be a far greater utilitarian benefit to our nation than all the fences and machoistic posturing we can aim at our southern neighbors, and it's ridiculous that you can't figure this out.

Quote from: Walter Josh on July 30, 2014, 08:43:07 PM

Traditional and principled Conservatism has never been an ideology
and transcends party politics.
It was born in Periclean Athens and
represents an idea and an attitude as to how one must behave to
honor the ageless wisdom of the past.

The "ageless wisdom of the past"?  ROFLAMO - you obviously are not a big fan of Newtonian mechanics, vaccinations, or civil rights, since these were all modern, progressive developments only made possible because we realized our ancestors were wrong!  Why the fuck would you base your "principled conservatism" on a city-state that had institutionalized slavery? 

Quote from: Darth Fife on July 31, 2014, 03:24:53 PM
Seat belts  save lives, but is it the Government Job to make sure you wear one since the only one affected by its non-use would be yourself?

Unless if you're a hermit living in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no contacts or relationships, your death is hardly something that only affects yourself.

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If you believe it is the government's job to protect you from doing something stupid, say good bye to any kind of extreme sport or hobby! (Bungee jumping, skydiving, auto racing, and don't even get me started on skateboards, skiing or trampolines)

All of these sports are government regulated, buddy.  And those government regulations save orders of magnitude more lives than stopping illegal immigration ever would.  Would you like to compare the number of deaths caused by automobiles to the number of deaths caused by illegal immigrants?

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Cigarettes. Instead of taxing tobacco products with a "sin tax" why not just outlaw all tobacco products?

Two reasons: 1 Tax revenue (both parties profit from that), and 2 political lobbying by the tobacco industry. While conventional wisdom says that most money goes to Republicans on this matter, a little know fact is that the tobacco lobby gets more bang for its buck by spreading the wealth (to coin a phrase) on the Democrat side.

Outlawing tobacco products is a government regulation on capitalistic commerce, ie, obviously a fiscally liberal policy, the personal conduct of democratic and republican fundraising organizations aside.

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According to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine article 27 Dec 2004, money provided to Democrat politicians by the tobacco lobby, was twice as effective in getting that member to vote in favor of pro tobacco legislation than it would be for a Republican.

Funny thing that you don't just compare how likely the two parties are to back the tobacco companies outright, instead of this suspiciously cherry picked assertion of yours.

Quote

Are you claiming they don't? What statistics/studies do you have to support your assertion?

Are you seriously asking me to prove a negative?   

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I think you'd find yourself hard pressed to produce a death certificate that lists the cause of death "Second Hand Smoke". There is a reason for this. If it takes a 1st hand smoker 40 or 50 years to die from smoking how long will it take someone, who inhales far less smoke to die from "Second Hand Smoke"?

That's...not how it works, at all.  It isn't a question of it taking "40 or 50 years to die from smoking" vs taking, say, 150 years to die from second hand smoking, or whatever ridiculous fantasy you have in your head.  Those exposed to second hand smoking, especially children and fetuses, have been documented to have significantly greater susceptibility to lung cancer and other harmful conditions.  This conclusion has been drawn independently by virtually every reputable medical organization in the world.

Oh, and isn't it so convenient that you think death is the only negative side effect of inhaling tobacco? 

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As for the rest of your sweeping generalization, you will not find a Conservative, especially not on this forum who is opposed to rational and sane regulation of dangerous environmental toxins that are used by or produced by industry.

You seemed to imply above that you were opposed to, or ambivalent of, seatbelt laws.  Not-wearing-a-seatbelt kills far more people annually than illegal immigrants do.  Why does your willingness to bring the government into affairs have more to do with the tangibility and fear-factor of the problem than the actual damage inflicted?

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There is only one president I know who deported children at the point of a gun...

Oh, so you admit that deporting children is a bad thing?  Thanks for the concession, and I guess thanks for the completely irrelevant attempt to shift the topic from ideas to the conduct of individual politicians.

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You are going to have to provide documentation for that allegation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-20/republican-science-cuts-imperil-u-s-prominence-commentary-by-albert-hunt.html

QuoteWhy not? They are. AND "most" will continue to break laws once they get here!

Obviously, because it's a circular argument - the argument assumes that current immigration law is ideal.  By this logic, we should have shut down the abortion debate after Roe v Wade.   

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Okay, why do you lock your doors at night? Why do you lock your car when you leave it in a parking lot? "Most" people who walk by your house or your car are not going to steal anything from it or try to harm you!

Why don't you let just anyone into your home? Are you xenophobic or just racist?

Shitty analogy - the issue here is priorities, not whether or not you should be 100% trusting of all undocumented immigrants.

Quote from: ConservativeMe on July 31, 2014, 03:34:44 PM
I always do a facepalm whenever I see what amounts to because conservatives are against new regulations they must be for zero regulations.  No.  Personally I'd like to see the regulations we have enforced.  Making new regulations usually only makes more paperwork, and generally does not help enforce laws which are already being broken.

So you're in favor of all existing regulation, but oppose adding on any new regulations?  That has a bit of an obvious problem to it- that existing regulation never would have been passed in the first place with your philosophy.

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As for illegal immigration, I'd like to see democrats and liberals actually enforce the laws we have in place?  Is that so difficult?  I know many people who have come here *gasp* legally!  These are people from all over, from Africa, to Europe to Asia to South America.  They all did it legally.

The question is why your party is so obsessed with enforcing those particular laws.  I don't think you'd be able to maintain enough composure to type into your keyboard that you'd host national publicized redneck "we hate you alien children!" rallies to enforce Roe v Wade, or even sanitation laws.  There's obviously something about illegal immigration that irks you above and beyond the actual, documented damage it causes, since that really isn't all that much.

Quote from: Billy's bayonet on July 31, 2014, 06:25:14 PM
I don't know where you get your stats from (please don't quote stats) as a former Stat man myself who developed the fine art of the body count in Vietnam I know what kind of smoke and mirrors the whole business is.

You don't need to manipulate the statistics to point out that more people are killed by DUIs than illegal immigrants, yet I don't see massive republican political movements to crack down on drunk drivers, for some reason.  Maybe it's because DUIs aren't something you can rally your tribalistic herdsvoters around with?

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True conservatives beleive in strict enforcement of MALA EN SE crimes and harsh punishment for those who break the law. LAW and ORDER...Security etc. Liberals, leftists coddle those felons and come up with all sorts of mitigation especially when Minorities such as some illegals who are overhwhelmingly involved.

Not really.  Case study: marital rape was only criminalized after a fairly protracted legal movement by what Rush Limbaugh would call "feminazis".  I did not see the "LAW AND ORDER!!!!" republicans jumping on board that one.

Republicans are obsessed with justice in regards to a very particular set of laws being violated by a very particular set of enemies.  The point is, the magnitude of their outrage has no correlation to the actual damage caused by the crime.

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Now what 'sane' person would choose a hoard of penniless, needy illegals, possibly diseased, likely to be in thrall to vicious drug cartels over "second hand smoke".....I can walk away from some goof smoking a cigarette, I can;t walk away from a bunch of south of the border Vato's who are under the protection of some idiot bastard in the White house.

Putting together a string of adjectives doesn't magically refute the fact that secondhand smoking hospitalizes up to 15,000 infants a year.  [3.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] Oh, I'm sorry, did I mention that children with no ability to "walk away from some goof smoking a cigarette" are affected too?  Funny that you only considered your own options in the most convenient possible circumstances.  Unless if you're going to prove that 15,000 infants a year are hospitalized by illegal immigrants, you've admitted that you care more about what intuitively frightens you than what the actual damage caused is.  You know, my entire point.

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Now pull your head out of your ass and do some real research on the impact of crime, disease and illegal immigration on AMERICAN lives and society.

Take your own advice.  Compare the death rates of heavy industry and illegal immigration, or the fiscal damage caused by financial corruption and illegal immigration, and explain why you think the latter is so much more important.

Quote from: TboneAgain on July 31, 2014, 07:30:31 PM
No, that's not true as a blanket statement, and you know it,

Of course I know it.  I say that right at the end of my post.   

QuoteThese are all verifiable lies. Not surprising. Interesting that you would claim that seatbelts, or government regulations regarding seatbelts, or even opposition to seatbelts or government regulations on seatbelts "kill hundreds of thousands of people a year." I hadn't heard that one before. Provide sources or we'll just toss these into the massive SFF Bullshit Bucket.

The English language is your friend. "Most conservatives oppose government regulations on tobacco, seatbelts, and toxic chemicals emitted by industrial factories.  These kill hundreds of thousands of people a year.  Let the free market handle it, they say."  Obviously, "these" is not referring to "government regulations", since I clearly support them.  "These" must be referring to tobacco, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services attributes to 500,000 deaths annually.  The exact number is besides the point - any remotely reasonable figure is orders of magnitude more severe than any deaths caused by illegal immigrants, let alone undocumented children.

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Conservatives support the federal government actually doing the very few specific things it's suited and authorized to do, and one of those things is securing the nation's borders. Any nation that does not or cannot secure its borders ceases to be a nation.

Funny, because we've obviously done a piss poor job of securing our borders, and yet we're still a functioning nation.  Our debt is going to have a better shot at killing us than all the illegal immigrants in the world, but you still obsess over it, for some reason.

Quote
I'm sure you spend the first half-hour of your day on your knees, wishing away second-hand smoke and illegal immigration. And then you spend a half-hour telling yourself that the two are somehow related, I guess because evil conservatives have spoken about both matters at some point. You can do better than this lame shit, SFF.

I don't think you're managing to follow what I'm saying at all - nowhere did I suggest that second-hand smoking and illegal immigration are related.  I did suggest that secondhand smoking is significantly more dangerous than illegal immigration by any statistical measure, and that conservative policymaking clearly doesn't give a shit about such petty, rational considerations.

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First of all, EVERYTHING government does happens at the point of a gun.

No shit?

QuoteAnd as you well know, the issue at hand with the children flooding the border is not immigration per se, legal or illegal, but control of the border.

Translation: it's not about any sort of rational, tangible harm, but our need to feel safe and powerful.  Because that's obviously a more pressing issue than things that are actually killing us in large numbers.

QuoteFurther, it's an issue of the ongoing lawlessness of the executive branch of the federal government under the Kenyan. EVERY sovereign nation has the right, actually the duty, to control its borders.

Why is protecting one's borders more important than ensuring the health and safety of one's citizens from domestic affairs, if those domestic affairs cause substantially more damage?  You are more concerned with questions of what "type" of threat it is, rather than how big of a damage it can actually do to us.

Quote
Let's be very clear about this. The immigration issue, as it has existed for 60 years or more, is an issue regarding illegal, unwanted Hispanic immigrants. They're not illegal because they're Hispanic. They're not unwanted because they're Hispanic. They're illegal because we have laws that outline how you get to come here legally, and they have broken those laws. They're unwanted because we don't have any need or desire for them to come here. And they're Hispanic because they're Hispanic. We don't have a problem with the borders being overrun by Czechs or Poles or Lithuanians or Chinese or Koreans or Russians or Portuguese or French or Dutch. We have a problem with Hispanics forcing their way into this country illegally from Mexico, or from Central America by way of Mexico. And right now we have a problem with a flood of Hispanic 'children' who are surging across the southern borders -- and immediately surrendering to the first person they see with a badge -- because the current President of the United States -- without the consent of the Congress or the American people -- has all but promised them they can stay.

How does any of this address the observation that plenty of more pressing dangers to the public safety are ignored by conservatives for something that obviously more strongly ignites your moral outrage? 

QuoteCancer research, a laudable, worthwhile endeavor, is not the responsibility of the federal government of the United States.

Bullshit.  The federal government explicitly has the duty to promote the general welfare and fund the useful sciences.  More to the point, you once again focus more on legalities than practicalities or even moral principles.

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Securing the borders IS the responsibility of the federal government of the United States. I can't say which activity kills more people, and you can't either. What a stupid comparison. I would have thought you could see the difference.

Bullshit.  You can say that cancer kills more people than illegal immigrants do, and only a complete idiot would suggest otherwise.

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I already pointed out that they are breaking the law. You are really stretching the patience of the powers that be around here by trying to instruct us how we may or may not respond to you.

You obviously think that children breaking immigration laws should be a greater focus of the federal government than cancer research.  You will now justify this assertion.

Quote from: Sci Fi Fan on August 10, 2014, 09:54:51 PM
There's obviously something about illegal immigration that irks you above and beyond the actual, documented damage it causes, since that really isn't all that much.

Tell that to the American citizens that have bee victimized by illegals. More Americans have died because of Illegals than the Iraq war. Why bare their lives so unimportant to you?

Quote from: carlb on August 10, 2014, 10:21:41 PM
Tell that to the American citizens that have bee victimized by illegals. More Americans have died because of Illegals than the Iraq war. Why bare their lives so unimportant to you?

How many have died, exactly?  Please cite your source, and then I'll compare that death toll to tolls from smoking, DUIs, and the oil industry.

Quote from: Sci Fi Fan on August 10, 2014, 10:23:54 PM
How many have died, exactly?  Please cite your source, and then I'll compare that death toll to tolls from smoking, DUIs, and the oil industry.

Do your own homework.

So, unless we ban smoking we HAVE TO allow violent criminals to come into our country unchecked?  One has nothing to do with the other. I thought you at least tried to be a logical man.  The oil industry? Seriously?

Quote from: carlb on August 10, 2014, 10:49:43 PM
Do your own homework.

Debating 101: the burden of proof rests on whoever makes the assertion.  Prove up or shut up.

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So, unless we ban smoking we HAVE TO allow violent criminals to come into our country unchecked?

No, but refusing to regulate or ban smoking while being obsessed with stopping illegal immigration IS a massive double standard.

Quote
  The oil industry? Seriously?

Clearly the point sailed way over your head: I could rattle off any random assortment of seemingly trivial things that kill more people than illegal immigrants yet receive none of the trademarked conservative self-righteous chest beating.

Quote from: Sci Fi Fan on August 10, 2014, 09:26:33 PM
Do you say that to yourself in a mirror every night, before you go to bed?   

I don't need to.  It's just nature.

Quote
And your criteria for what constitutes overregulation is...?

If it hurts people, or is criminal, then it shouldn't be allowed.

Quote
The free market would suggest that if these illegal immigrants were taking American jobs, it's because they offer greater value at a lower price, ie, they are superior.  It turns out that this is unacceptable to you, and here is where you step in government regulation.  Never mind your opposition to regulations on issues that kill orders of magnitudes more people every year.

Wrong.  You're taking a misinformed, academic position.  We have enough labor within our country and borders.  The free market will find the point where the required skill and wage of a job meets the supply of those willing to work for that wage, with that available skill.  The free market will find the solution, so you don't need to import gang members and third world diseases.  Just quit trying to destroy our country, please.

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The point obviously sailed over your head - the issue here is the double standard of obsessively regulating illegal immigration and doing comparatively little about smoking or alcohol, despite these killing thousands of times more people.  You've crafted a priority list based on the emotional kneejerk fear reaction rather than any sort of objective danger assessment, and illegals hopping fences scares you more than something as abstract and distant as lung cancer, the statistics be dammed.

You confuse American businesses operating in the free market with illegal immigration.  They are not the same.  You are correct about me caring more about illegals hopping the fences, bringing their crime and diseases.  Smokers are allowed to give themselves lung cancer.  I don't care.  One is an invasion, and the other is a choice made by free people.

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There's a reason why we have the dictionary word "trespassing" that we do not use as a synonym for "invasion".  Invasion is an organized infiltration by an enemy military force; it is the height of pedantry to equate this to a bunch of teenagers sneaking into the country to work as migrant farmers.

QuoteDefinition of INVASION

1 :  an act of invading; especially :  incursion of an army for conquest or plunder
2 : the incoming or spread of something usually hurtful

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invasion

Quote
This has to be the dumbest thing I've heard in a long, long time.  How many vaccinations and medical treatments were invented without any sort of public funding?  I'm googling the major ones: penicillin, smallpox vaccine, polio vaccine...huh, it turns out none of these were developed by Joe the Farmer living in the wilderness.  It turns out, the National Institute of Health has done a little more for those types of things than private enterprise. 

Because there has been private innovation doesn't mean the government doesn't interfere with it.  The government hurts innovation overall, and in the medical sector, allows people to die from treatment they otherwise would be able to purchase cheaply over the free market.

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The general welfare is also in the Constitution, but you don't seem to factor "general welfare" into your arithmetic at all.

This is a typical liberal anti-Constitutional position.  The general welfare clause doesn't nullify the rest of the Constitution.  You need to maybe read up a little on Madison, since he was asked about the general welfare clause.  Why would there have been a Tenth Amendment if Congress had all the power to do whatever they want?  Nevertheless, what libs always forget is the Constitution is for Americans, not third world illegals invading our society.

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You'd rather pay 500 billion dollars to prevent 2000 Americans from losing their jobs

No.  The free market determines who loses their jobs.  Outside of academia, that's how it works.

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to illegal immigrants than pay 100 billion to prevent 100,000 Americans from dying of lung cancer.

I don't care if Americans die of lung cancer.  If they smoke, and they get lung cancer, then that is their problem.  Nevertheless, they should be able to purchase otherwise suppressed medicine or biotech solutions created by greedy capitalists in the free market, priced by the free market.  The government needs to stay out.

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  Just a 1% increase in funding to NIH would be a far greater utilitarian benefit to our nation than all the fences and machoistic posturing we can aim at our southern neighbors, and it's ridiculous that you can't figure this out.

No it wouldn't.  It would be more money stolen from us producers that is thrown into a black hole of academia, unions, and bureaucracy.  No money needs to be spent, and the solutions will be created by the free market.

Quote from: taxed on July 31, 2014, 07:58:29 PM
This thread reminds me of:

Airplane! Slap

Oh so that woman was a liberal! Figures, now I get why everyone on the plane, including June Cleaver was bitch slapping her. Rofl