Non-IT News Thread
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#Earthquake: 4.7-Magnitude Strikes Northwest Oklahoma Thursday Morning
The US Geological Survey reported the earthquake hit at a depth of 6.2 kilometers, 13 kilometers outside the town of Cherokee. The region had rain, snow and tornadoes in the previous 48 hours.
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- unlikely
- already happening
- not my problem
- coming to America sooner than you may think
One point here, that is foundational. I am an American citizen. I am NOT a global citizen. I am not killing anyone, and I don't take responsibility for those who do. I grieve for their victims, regardless of race, creed, religion, but I am only responsible for what I allow to happen in my own country. As long as I maintain that I am not a global citizen, and you maintain that you are, we're standing on opposing foundations, and will not find common ground. It's not conservativism vs. liberalism on a national scale. What we're representing is conservativism vs. liberalism on a global scale. I'm not sure where you get the idea that you're conservative. All of your views are diametrically opposed to conservatism.
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@scottalanmiller said:
And you actually think that that is a risk? How many times has this been accomplished that you feel it is a reasonable fear?
@scottalanmiller said:
- What if instead of blowing up a car bomb, they fly a plane into a high rise from outside of the country?
How many times does it take before we say enough is enough? How many times is too many?
I personally think that if they come over here, then they should be offered the help they need to secure a future for themselves. I believe that they should be integrated into our society. However, they should integrate with OUR society and not try to force us to adopt their theocracy. In that same retrospect, we should not be trying to force them to become Christian, or Buddhist or Catholic or whatever other religions are established in the areas where we allow them to locate.
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@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
And remember, Texas has ISIS cells. How do we react when ISIS is already here?
Upstate NY supposedly has ISIS cells as well, just for reference.
It's the ones that we don't know about that we should worry about.
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@art_of_shred said:
One point here, that is foundational. I am an American citizen. I am NOT a global citizen.
Huh? How is that? You are a citizen of NY, that does not make you less American. How does being American make you less of an Earthling?
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So, I hear there's a Super-Bowl gonna happen, or something. I've got my money on Buffalo! ...not to be there.
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@dafyre said:
I personally think that if they come over here, then they should be offered the help they need to secure a future for themselves. I believe that they should be integrated into our society. However, they should integrate with OUR society and not try to force us to adopt their theocracy.
Sure, but our society is religion neutral. How many come over and try to force their religion on us? Any? One or two? More than we've done to them? I totally agree, they should want to integrate - but they have been. There hasn't been any issue with this yet.
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@dafyre said:
How many times does it take before we say enough is enough? How many times is too many?
Depends, enough that it is not us causing the problems, that's one way to look at it.
But more importantly it is, from a safety perspective alone, is when the risk of taking them is greater than the risk of not taking them. Which from what we've seen so far, is a huge number. The risk of turning them away to Americans is dramatically higher than the risk of taking them in. The safest move is to accept them. As long as that fact is true, no number is too many. It's like asking "how safe do you want to be?" The answer is, "As safe as possible."
From both a "how do we protect Americans" and "how do we protect people" perspectives, I believe that the answer is the same: accepting, helping and integrating protects the most Americans AND the most refugees. It is a win/win.
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One important point is that we are talking about Syrian refugees here and Syria is not, say, China. Even if the US took the entire country it would be a drop in the population bucket. So even taking all Syrians, not just refugees, the number would not be something the US could not rapidly absorb and Europe, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada have been taking them too. So the "Max" number is still small, even if we talked about taking them all.
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I'm honestly surprised that, other than Delaware, rust bucket states are not clamoring to get the refugees, NY especially. Educated, thankful workforce ready to accept federal aid dollars and fill empty houses. Many northeastern states could benefit greatly from the influx, especially NY which has the "refugee city" already in it ready with a pipeline to get people from refugee status into the workforce with a huge success rate. NY knows what it is doing, although Syrians are far more educated than the normal refugees that are taken in so that presents a challenge to some degree, but a small one.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
How many times does it take before we say enough is enough? How many times is too many?
Depends, enough that it is not us causing the problems, that's one way to look at it.
But more importantly it is, from a safety perspective alone, is when the risk of taking them is greater than the risk of not taking them. Which from what we've seen so far, is a huge number. The risk of turning them away to Americans is dramatically higher than the risk of taking them in. The safest move is to accept them. As long as that fact is true, no number is too many. It's like asking "how safe do you want to be?" The answer is, "As safe as possible."
From both a "how do we protect Americans" and "how do we protect people" perspectives, I believe that the answer is the same: accepting, helping and integrating protects the most Americans AND the most refugees. It is a win/win.
Wrong. It's not a mathematical equation.
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@art_of_shred said:
Wrong. It's not a mathematical equation.
Why not? More safety good, less safety bad? More is better than less. What makes it not an equation?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
Wrong. It's not a mathematical equation.
Why not? More safety good, less safety bad? More is better than less. What makes it not an equation?
Because geopolitics does not boil down to simple math.
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@art_of_shred said:
Because geopolitics does not boil down to simple math.
Of course not, but we are talking about a pretty simple question: when does taking people in become bad?
And the answer, if the only factor you care about is the safety of American lives, is very simple math. No way around that that I can see. How do you reduce that number? Statistically, by taking in more and more refugees.
Of course there has to be a cap number to that, a billion is far too many. Which is why I pointed out that I felt that the potential number if very small compared to the theoretical cap number. Syria has a total of 17m people. Only a fraction of which can be refugees. Millions of which have already been absorbed elsewhere. Leaving relatively few for any one country to take.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's like asking "how safe do you want to be?" The answer is, "As safe as possible."
That is never my answer. I am unwilling to give up my freedom to be safe. So again, no, no where near as safe as possible.
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I find myself very much on the fence on this discussion. I definitely don't want suicide bombers sneaking with with the refugees, but at the same time we have home grown versions right here. So I have to consider what is more likely - bombers coming from there, or being grown here?
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@Dashrender said:
I find myself very much on the fence on this discussion.
Helping thousands of people create new lives here and contribute to our culture >> danger.
What's to think about here, really?
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All of this is a silly discussion, what we need to talk about is how to best integrate them into our society and how many we can take in per unit of time.
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@MattSpeller said:
@Dashrender said:
I find myself very much on the fence on this discussion.
Helping thousands of people create new lives here and contribute to our culture >> danger.
What's to think about here, really?
Having thousands of new mouths to feed, jobs to find for them, etc. and those are the easy to pick things.
Integration, acceptance by those who they are forced upon, healthcare, etc...
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@Dashrender said:
I find myself very much on the fence on this discussion. I definitely don't want suicide bombers sneaking with with the refugees, but at the same time we have home grown versions right here. So I have to consider what is more likely - bombers coming from there, or being grown here?
As much as this does not support my personal pro-refugee stance, I don't think that the "chances" of one or the other mattes unless we believe that one modifies the other. For example, if there are 1,000 bombers already here and we import 1,000 more.... the only part that really matters is that the action adds 1,000, right? Sure we'd love to depart the ones we don't know about that are here, that's a given.
But I think the number that are here is a red herring. Unless bringing them in from the outside changes how many are here already, in which case does it modify it up or down?
