[Jim Moonan]

"I did a number of hallucinogens when I was younger to prepare me for any eventual reality. I have to say, I didn’t see this one coming.” – Lewis Black

[William A. Baurle]

Not bad, Jim! You should have posted it in metrical, just to stir the pot.

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I find the comparisons to Hitler particularly silly. If he starts systematically herding and murdering innocent people, then we can start with the Hitler comparisons. It looks to me that he's probably heading for impeachment at some point.

[Jayne Osborn]

Very sorry to be the bad cop, Jim, but you're not allowed to post your own poem in a GT thread.

Jayne

[Jim Moonan]

But it wasn't me! It was someone else whose shoes I put on!

Oops! That fact slipped my mind Jayne, sorry! I guess I was just so thrilled to have coughed out a metric poem I forgot about the fences we put in place to make this a good place : )

Thanks

[William A. Baurle]

Jayne,

May I ask why it's against the rules to post our own poems in GT threads without bringing out more of the bad cop in ya?

I can understand why that would be frowned on in the workshop fora, but I don't (yet) understand why it's wrong here. Are we allowed to link to one of our poems? I did that in the last thread I started here in GD. I've just deleted the link. Ian quoted me, however, so the link is still in the thread.

I found that my poem (which was workshopped on the Sphere) was a better—and perhaps the best, given the thread's subject—explanation of my thoughts than anything else I might have written.

Apologies for going off topic.

[Jayne Osborn]

No problem, William.
The rule is there to prevent people promoting their own work in a discussion thread (not that Jim was doing any promoting).

Here is Alex's explanation.

People forget, and occasionally post amusing little ditties to emphasise a point they want to make, which is not a big deal in the great scheme of things, but we all agree to abide by the rules when we sign up. The staff are there to make sure everyone does!

Jayne

[John Whitworth]

Isn't Trump's list actually Obama's list? That's what the media say over here. Even the Beeb.

[Julie Steiner]

It's complicated. But all the fact-checkers whose reports I could find remained unpersuaded that this is basically Obama's list, or Obama's immigration policy.

Snopes.com rates the following claim as a "Mixture" of true and false:

Claim: President Trump's executive order limiting travel and immigration from certain countries was made possible under a bill signed into law by President Obama in 2015. [Evaluation here.]

PolitiFact's rates the following statement by Trump "Mostly False":

"My policy is similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months." [Evaluation here.]

The Public Broadcasting System (which, by the way, Trump's advisors want to defund or privatize) calls Trump's statement "a big stretch" because "There are a number of key differences" [Evaluation here--scroll down to the third and fourth fact-checked claims on the webpage].

And of course Obama himself has broken his silence to say he disapproves of the ban. Here's the assessment at the end of yesterday's New York Times article:

Mr. Trump and his aides have contended that the immigration order is not a Muslim ban because it does not affect several predominantly Muslim countries. They have also argued that it is similar to actions Mr. Obama took, including a six-month ban on refugees from Iraq he instituted in 2011, and a requirement his administration added in 2015 that travelers from the same seven countries have visas for entering the United States.

But the 2011 action, which only affected one country, was in response to specific threat information about Iraqis seeking to use the refugee program to enter the United States and carry out terrorist acts. And while it tightened visa requirements for people entering from the seven countries, the Obama administration never sought to bar them.

[Charlie Southerland]

More importantly, the temporary halt to immigration or travel was because several of those countries named had little to no form of organized government or had/has a government hostile to the U.S. which seems perfectly reasonable to me. National security seems to be a legit reason. CIC's try to do that since that's what they've sworn under oath to do.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Originally Posted by William A. Baurle

It looks to me that he's probably heading for impeachment at some point.

Maybe he could be impounded. Like they do in the NHL ... two weeks in the penalty box, perhaps?