Mark Davis

I mean I’m willing to do a hot potato type back and forth naming terror attacks over the past 5, 10, 25 years you can pick the length. I’ll choose naming Muslim extremist terror attacks. I’ll give you the field, pick which group you want. Again before we go down this road, not every attack or scumbag person who commits terror is a Muslim extremist, but the problem is very disproportionate in that community specifically in certain regions of the globe. We are being so foolish that we can’t just say that and act accordingly.

Just read this after I responded. My feelings exactly. Is a total misrepresentation of what I’ve said and my feelings at the very least. I’m not saying this of FNord in particular as it’s possible he misconstrued it, but it’s never been my belief every single Muslim is that way. It’s a strawman argument the left in the issue uses frequently so they can give anecdotal examples of legitimately good people to make a case against an argument that never existed on the other side.

The problem people with my view and your view have coming together is you frame it in my point of view needing to show you every single Muslim is this way. Of course they are not. It frustrates me to have that argument constantly used when it’s not the point of view of the vast majority of people who see this the way I do. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or if you fail to understand the viewpoint. See when it comes to terrorism, unfortunately it’s your side that needs to bat 1.000, not mine. If this were a one off incident somewhere of an immigrant becoming radicalized then ok. Thats not what’s happening and statistically you know that. Thats not bigoted, that’s numeric and statistical fact. I’m not willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans for this Pollyanna belief that we can bring in people from these lands and know who the good guys are. It’s never been proven to be so anywhere in the West when it comes to radical Islam.

Sadly, Muslim extremists don't share in that love of liberty and want to replace culture worldwide with theirs. It's one of the basic ideas behind ISIS for instance. They wouldn't hold territory without some buy-in from locals, at least tacit acceptance of it. Sadly, there are large communities worldwide willing to live under that type system, even embrace it in some cases. There's a reason the Taliban can hold land in Afghanistan and we could only rent it with our soldiers lives. Ultimately the population as a whole prefers to live under that system. Blindly accepting people from these regions that you can't vet is playing Russian roulette and a game that statistically you are going to lose.

Which part of that is American/Western culture? I admit I don't follow.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm not calling for an end to all immigration. Immigration can be a good thing if done the right way. But we seem to be hung up on foolishly turning a blind eye to problematic areas of the world when it comes to immigration in an order to not offend anyone. It's costing not just us, but the West at large in lives and a subculture of people who don't want to assimilate, but rather instill their values on us. As a result, we are importing the problems of those areas into our culture and homeland.

I would say that when you bring up who we are as Americans, the last time we were attacked at home prior to radical Islamists was by the Japanese. I'd submit to you that those Japanese citizens who were good people and died from atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki paid a far worse price than simply being denied admittance into the U.S. As someone whose father would have been in the invasion force for mainland Japan, I'm thankful for those decisions. I can still feel empathy for those who lost their lives and had little to no say in what had led to that war. Who we have been in the past is a country who worried about its own survival first, and from that strong base then helping others. We for sure have our warts, but by in large we have been good. But as Americans, I'd be leery of saying we treat people as individuals at our core when it comes to conflicts and threats to our security.

The agreement we have is that individuals from those places can be peaceful, good people. We also appear to agree that we cannot or do not know how to vet people from those areas and populations. The disagreement is that the risk of bringing people from those areas into our country is worth it because some of those people we would be bringing in are good. In cold reality, it's that acceptable error rate question. How many incidents, how many hot pockets of Islamic radicalism within the US is ok for allowing others to be here? I don't pretend to know that fail rate, but it's not near zero and by your statement it is higher in this subset of people than by your example Christians from Denmark. I have the belief that if you bring in too many people who are radicalized or accept that ideology even tacitly, then you are allowing a growth of that cancer within your own borders. If I took 100 people from Afghanistan who wanted to come here, even with some level of vetting, neither of us could assure the other how many of those people believe in radical Islam or anti-Western ideologies. It's not that I don't recognize there are good people in those populations, it's that we can't blindly bring in cancers to our society along with those who may want to come for the right reasons. I wish we could vet them, I'm sure you do too. But it's quite evident that we can't. So, the disagreement becomes is allowing those who want to come for the right reasons a path to get here worth the accompanying acts of radical Islamic violence we will face both today and down the road as we allow that ideology into our borders and give it quarter? Because if we are being fair based on what even you and I mutually agree on, we are admitting both groups or we would have to admit neither.

Statistically these areas produce large numbers of violent radicals. We either cannot vet or do a poor job of vetting these folks as has been demonstrated time and time again. We are bringing in threats to our country by doing so and it's unfortunate for those who may be denied who don't fall in to the bad group so to speak. But we have no way of knowing who these people are and we are sacrificing the lives of Americans for this ideology. By all accounts, the hero of the day was a Muslim man. We should all be thankful and grateful to him. But this goes back to the statistical reality of the situation. Had the bad actor not been allowed in, there would have been no tragedy. So it comes down to what is an acceptable fail rate on migrants from these areas where fail rate is defined as radicals or those who embrace that ideology. To me the question is are you ok with this level of radical Islamic violence within the West? If you are, then you can support these policies as you bring more in, by statistical definition these incidents will increase. I think the fail rate is too high and we should stop bringing in people from these areas that we can't possibly vet. I'm all for treating all Americans as individuals, but I'm also all for protecting those same Americans of all backgrounds from these populations with large subsets of radicalism and an unwillingness to assimilate or be here for the right reasons. The problem with your friend has multiple layers, including that we should have never tried to occupy or make Afghanistan into a western thinking country. We made it far worse within our shores by bringing in folks we had no idea who they are. Even if the primary person in the family is good that we dealt with, we have no idea who the other people are they are bringing with them. This is a way different scenario from the disagreements we may have at the border with Mexico where yes there are criminals, but most of those are economic migrants. We need not keep closing our eyes and hoping this problem goes away, we can stop escalating it by importing more people from these parts of the world, we just haven't had the will.

We may not be able to do anything about the ones here, but we should do all we can to not import more people from problem areas that we cannot possibly vet. If we followed that policy, we wouldn't have had the problem to begin with.

Again it comes down to what is an acceptable, for lack of a better term "error rate". You may well be right that most are not that way. Yet most could be 55% or 95% that aren't that way and there is a huge difference. If it's even 25% or 15% "bad" then it's a problem in the subset of people we cannot possibly vet because the government there, to your point earlier, is essentially non functioning in that way. Similar to the argument over refugees from Afghanistan being admitted into this country we have no way to know. And even if you are correct in your assertion and usage of the term "most" of them aren't that way, you have no way to determine in a group who those people are, and they apparently exist in too large of proportions IMO to justify taking in more people who behave that way. I'm sure that's where we will disagree. It's also a function of where people came from that they accept these types of behaviors even if they don't engage in them because it's the way they were trained in life. That may not be their fault, but it's a problem we don't need here and we are importing security threats to our country. To me, the questions on people from Somalia, Afghanistan, etc is a different one to the illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America.

Pretty easy "Buy Amazon Endlessly"

I personally believe he was going to kill people at some point. Someone this radical was going to kill Americans, it's just that simple. I feel awful for the families of those he shot but it would have been someone else if not them. He shouldn't have been in the country.

Pretty good for a fast food type burger. They have the peanuts there too which I usually have a few of. The problem is you are right about the cost, for just a couple more bucks you can have a better burger at a better restaurant.

You may be right on the ETFs, but my houses and condos I've done for rental income have been a quite lucrative part of my investment portfolio. The deals I regret are the ones I didn't buy, not the ones I did. I sold my old home back in 2008 when I bought my current house, huge mistake to ever sell it. I should have just rented it out and moved on rather than worrying about extinguishing the debt. The rents would have carried the note.

We can, and have, debated the overall impacts of Trump's policies. I'm not as pro tariff as he is so some of that I agree causes inflationary pressures. To me, the problem with Mamdani isn't the overall impact. You are right it's just a NYC issue. But in some ways he's dangerous in that if he doesn't stay long enough to show long term what those short term rent controls for instance would cause, people might not see his term for what it truly is. To me this type of economic message is dangerous to the overall well being of our country. The tariffs you may disagree with, I may disagree with some of them, but rolling those back if needed or negotiating them away can be done. What Mamdani espouses is a philosophy, not just one policy, but rather an entire playbook of policies that have historically failed over time. Like you said, initially these things can look good, maybe even good enough to consolidate some more power, but long term they are catastrophic. He's a talented politician, great at giving a speech. But while the style I have to admit is captivating to the public, when you look at the content, he's quoting Eugene Debs for instance.

Not to mention his policies would be like taking arsenic for the common cold. Are you of the opinion socialist policies reduce costs? Seems out of line for capitalist ideology.

This is the problem with the Palestinians. There's a reason Egypt has that big wall and won't accept them into Egypt. When you come from a radicalized population or family, it's no surprise statistically you'd be much more likely to be an extremist yourself. All of that being said, my biggest problem with Mamdani is he's anti capitalist. I don't really care that he's a Muslim. Anyone who is quoting Eugene Debs in his speeches and saying openly "no problem is too small for the government" is no friend to me or where I want to live.

How is that not overlapping? The reason we have issues with Muslim extremism is they hate the West and it's culture, including the acceptance of gay people.

I don't have all the data, but how about 9/11/01? Does it count if Muslims just imploded the whole building or does it need to be an arm drag over the top?

I voted for Gore but after 9/11 I thought for awhile maybe Bush was the right President for what we were facing. I was wrong in a dramatic way. Likely all caused by one Democratic county in Florida having a confusing ballot format that led their own voters to vote for Pat Buchanan.

Perhaps the politician that has cost our county the most in lives and treasure of my lifetime, if you believe he was the driving force behind pushing GW Bush into Iraq. I don't see him as evil, but he was a hawk who in my mind would stretch the facts to fit that hawkish view and it cost us dearly.

The Republicans don't have any real power in NY but someone made the observation tonight the state might reel in some of this from Albany. The R's would be wise to stand aside and let him put this to the test. I suspect clearer heads from Albany may prevail on the D side. But to be honest, when AOC unseats Schumer they may fear to do so for their own political lives.

I don't think it's going to fix it either. But it's a thing of the past IMO. Our Twin Peaks looks modern, better building, more money in the infrastructure. Most Hooters locations I know of are in need of major renovations. Most of these type establishments are under NNN leases where the tenant is responsible for all upkeep and any renovations. That's just one issue, but back to the food. If the premise is their food is subpar, if you fix that, if you refresh the brand in some way, at what point does it cease to hold it's brand value that remains?

Better food from what I've heard. We have a Twin Peaks near one of the areas I go for lunch sometimes and know some people who eat there. Hooters had some of the greasiest food I've ever tried.