ramana, pls don't hit me - I just saw your post and have been working on this one for an hour, no disrespect intended. Please delete if OT for this thread. I need to apologize to hgupta.
Apologies to hguptaji, and Thanks for the explanation. I have lost money on the stock market too because policies/reality did not work out as I had anticipated. I agree with all of this, BTW:
I don’t buy into the theory that all Democrats suck and only support Pakistanis. There are some Democrats that are pro India and they get my votes. Heck some of the republicans are too evangelical for my taste and heck no way I’m supporting those types of people. So I don’t buy into this sweeping over generalizations you guys have seemed to paste on the Democrats.
Unfortunately the 95% of Democrat lawkamers/POTUS candidates are giving the other 5% a bad name. IOW, even if they have some sense they are being crushed by the avalanche of negativity of the Party, which is what Tulsi Gabbard has been citing, but it is like Cassandraji warning of doom for Troy.
Same as Pakis except there it is the 99.99% giving the rest a bad name.
As for H1B, I happen to believe that the system is totally broken and 90% corrupt, and the blame lies as much with the desi big-name companies as with GOTUS. System is no longer based on merit, nor on real family empathy. Quality has crashed. And at least some of the blame for that lies with Indian-Americans who have been milking the system to the detriment of **BOTH** nations but to the benefit of their own pockets.
True that businesses operate by recognizing "opportunities" posed by existing policies, but where those opportunities are seen as loopholes, the govt tries to close them - usually with disastrous effects somewhere else. Whose fault is this? I think it comes under "business risk". Immigration and particularly H1B policy uncertainty is a prime example of this.
Over 1 million ppl are coming into the US from just the southern border each year, claiming refugee status, OUTSIDE the usual legal immigration channels. Empathy and compassion are needed there, along with hard-nosed border enforcement to maintain some semblance of hope to stem the tide. If any leeway is shown the 1 million will become 100 million in no time - and again, that is a body-shopping business, with "businesspeople" reaping obscene profits. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be a border agent with any sort of imagination and empathy.
So like MAD devising a harsh clampdown, the GOTUS also tries to do whatever is needed to keep violence down and still steer towards some sort of sensible process. Leaders who do that get attacked from all sides including business - and the Democrats have NO credibility when they attack. I know people who went through GC / citizenship process while BO was POTUS - and the system was actually even more broken. Due to the 9/11/2001 tamasha, the backlog of POST-INTERVIEW GC and citizenship applicants was around 500K to 1M in 2007. Forget those pre-interview! The Govt claimed to have CLEARED the backlog by end of July 2008 at least for citjen applicants.
So now the Democrats claim they can do better than Trump? Why didn't they, in 8 years of controlling the Executive Branch since 2009?
This BTW is the same rationale of questioning that applied in 2008 when people voted BO in, when Republicans were screaming about the economy. Why didn't they fix the economy when they were in power for 8 years? They inherited a nice surplus economy and turned it into the worst recession since 1929.
Now it is the Democrats who have no case.
Looking objectively, Trump is behaving like a particularly effective executive business leader. Bottom line:
1. He has not started any wars.
2. He has defused several where the US was on the brink of idiocy courtesy of his predecessors.
3. The stock market started zooming when he took over, and in 3 years it is still up (don't Indian American businesspeople care about that I wonder)
4. Employment is up, despite very very tough competitive realities abroad.
5. The dollar is high despite MASSIVE "QE" which should have totally deflated the value of the dollar. I have no clue why.
6. Energy crisis is a bad memory: gasoline prices are lower now than in 2003 I think. This MATTERS HUGELY to American citizens and residents, does it not?
7. Meanwhile, alternate energy strategies are not dead: the automobile and even truck fleets are rapidly switching to EV/fuel cell/natural gas. By business economics, not govt. diktat.
8. Terrible trade deals are being renegotiated to the advantage of the USA. Several "impossible" walls have been broken there.
America's competitors are in shambles: Europe, China, South America. India is very deft to stay out of that, and that is due in no small part to Trump's intelligence about India and Hindus.
9.
Positive Recognition for Hindus is way, way, way up in the US. If someone had told me a Hindu woman would be running for POTUS, I would have laughed some years ago. This is **NOT*** due to Democrat pro-Hinduism - their National Establishment hates her. It is due to Trump showing the way.
10. China's invasive march forward has been checked. I wonder where the Xinjiang and Hong Kong "color revolutions" are heading, but don't think the See Aiyyeh is idle: this is their #1 skillset.
11. And to his credit, Trump boldly disses the Islamofascist entities and has put some looooong-needed scrutiny of their shenanogans to destroy democracy and freedom.
12. From what I see, the true challenge to American Liberalism and Freedoms comes not from the nutcase Republicans but from the so-called "Liberal Democrats". Far from fighting for Equal Rights and the Constitution, what they have been implementing is basically Islamic Law in another name. Campus freedoms are gone, public free speech rights are gone, merit-based evaluations are gone. All controls for basic decency and morality are gone. It is a state of dhimmitude imposed on the American public, and it is getting worse every day. Who would have thought that the Orwellian State would be brought by the Democrats (well, everyone who could think, I suppose).
13. And the way he accomplishes all this is by being an utterly unpredictable, fast-changing, nimble, and extremely sharp leader. IOW Wacko # 1. NO other way to do this. Those who short-sell or speculate based on his future actions, are taking at least a 50-50 risk.
The rest are gutter inspection items. The KKK/other nitwits have always been there: note that the KKK were DEMOCRATS to begin with. Trump can threaten other nations and withhold aid, it is the prerogative of the Executive. Back in ENRON days, Kenneth Lay (pbuh) sultan of ENRON threatened Indian govt that he would get the POTUS (his Texas buddy) to bomb Delhi if India didn't pay up the blackmail payments for the stupid DABHOL SNAFU. This is why POTUSes have telephones in their offices: you saw the kind letter he wrote to Erdogan, as an example of the language that comes out of the Oral Office. Come to think of it, wasn't it Democrat Jimmy Carter who ordered a Cold Blunt Memo to India, even as he was being feted and kissed-up-to by adulating Indians in India?
Trump came promising to shake the pakistan out of the Establishment. That was why people voted for him. Unlike all predecessors who promised that (Carter did, for example) he has actually shown that he KNOWS HOW. And of course those who control the media etc hate him, isn't that to be expected?
Compared to him the Democrat candidates are pygmies, no insult to those brave warriors.
Of course I won't discuss any personal preferences here, what would Mongolians know about US voters?