banner80

Makes sense. Trump's mother was naturalized as an American citizen in 1942, and D. Trump was born in 1946, and by then his mother already called herself American. That would make her first-gen naturalized American in the eyes of the census, and D. Trump second gen given that he was born to a naturalized immigrant.

Technicalities aside, Donald Trump was born in America to a person that just a few years earlier called herself Scottish. He should certainly know about the prevalence of immigration in America, between his own Scottish and German background, and marrying immigrants himself.

Trump is actually second-gen on his mother's side

Trump's mother was born in Scotland. She was a Scottish immigrant and her son is first-generation Scottish-American on her side.

For a presidential ticket https://votevets.org/press-releases/votevets-makes-historic-first-ever-endorsement-for-president

WASHINGTON, DC—For the first time in the group’s nearly 20-year history, VoteVets is making an endorsement in the presidential general election, backing the Harris-Walz ticket in 2024. Tim Walz is a National Guard Veteran, and the group only endorses Veterans, national security professionals, and military family members.

The group will immediately begin fundraising for the ticket, mobilizing its over 1.5 million supporter list.

“The Harris-Walz ticket will defend America and our Veterans,” the group said in a statement. “Vice President Harris already was the best choice for America in this election, but the addition of Governor Walz will supercharge this ticket, and we’re proud to back it.”

The camo thing is a reference to the real mid west. Mid westerners were known for being polite, rugged, and minding their own business, while having that small-town sense of being neighborly. Then the GOP spent years co-opting that small-town blue-collar message with their hate mongering, vitriol, anti-American message and a pro-corporation agenda. The real mid west are people that are more in line with Walz than they are with Trump. People that want to respect individual freedoms and elect officials that support blue collar workers, real American patriotism, and doing right by the American people instead of corporations or billionaire criminals.

The camo thing with Walz is about reclaiming blue-collar mid-west American pride. People that are sick of a NY trust-fund baby that lives in a golden skyscraper telling them he is their voice, when people like Walz are literally mid western blue collar representation from someone that served in the armed forces, worked as a teacher, and has cemented his place in politics by earning the respect of his constituents. Walz stands for real support of the troops, responsible gun ownership, worker rights, supporting American communities, freedom, and minding your own business. The people that are into camo hats should be into Walz, not that MAGA bullshit.

The dog appears to be a celebrity fortune teller: "Babydog says we'll retain the house, the majority in the House. We're going to flip the United States Senate overwhelmingly. We're going to elect Donald J. Trump and JD Vance in November."

https://www.newsweek.com/babydog-jim-justice-bulldog-west-virginia-rnc-elections-1926628

The FBI communicated recently saying they reviewed the (registered Republican) shooter's online logs and found a deep and disturbing history of political commentary on the side of hardcore anti-immigration. Those are the facts.

I'll be happy to consider whatever actually happened that day. Let's see an actual investigation explain to us what happened that day, instead of just taking the Trump's campaign word for it. You might be contented with the first opinion and propaganda spins that came out from that day, but I want to see what the official investigators think happened, and so far it's not looking consistent.

I have enough patience to wait for evidence and facts, and so far it's very hard to explain the storyline as told by Trump's campaign. The Secret Service say they can't justify what happened, the FBI says the whole thing is fishy, the shooter is a Republican without a known motive, Trump wasn't hurt. That's what's on the docket up to this point. I'll give it another beat for the rest of the investigation to advance.

Can we take 3 minutes to simply review what happened? Republican hardcore enthusiast shows up to a Trump rally, takes up an obvious sniper position unimpeded by the Secret Service, and is allowed to shoot the teleprompter. Trump, who is fine and left without a scar, claims he is a martyr and "took a bullet" for America, expecting a surge for his campaign.

Those are the facts. The FBI themselves say they can't corroborate Trump's versions of the events and can't explain the story from the angle of "shooter there to kill Trump." Are we sure that the known facts point to "assassination attempt" as the only possible conclusion of what happened that day?

It would make a big difference if the investigation ultimately reveals that the shooter wasn't trying to hurt Trump.

It's easy to feel adrift in the sea of nonsense we've had to deal with the last few years. Let me recap some important developments:

Trump is easily the most hated man in America and possibly the world. He is a convicted felon on 34 counts, and the only reason he is not convicted of several other things is that Republicans are doing their darnest to jam the wheels of justice at least until the election. He is credibly accused and expected to lose trials on election interfering in Georgia, and the theft of classified documents, at the minimum. He is likely to be given severe prison sentences next year, after he loses the election and continues suffering the long list of legal troubles ahead of him.

In 2020, Trump lost by 7 million votes, and has only become more hated since then. His base shrinks by the minute and it has for a while. The number of people that call themselves "Republican" is at a generational low, not because the country has that many fewer conservatives but because so many people are done with MAGA and the Trump circus and no longer feel represented.

Do not go by polls or by mainstream media “reporting” on how Trump is doing in terms of the campaign. Polls have been a mess since the Trump era and they are far from accurate, and these days the MAGAs do everything in their power to appear as loud and supported because they know they are decidedly a minority in this country. During the GOP primaries, Nikki Haley was getting a third of the vote even after she had already abandoned the race, and that was Republicans showing up to vote against Trump for anyone, even a candidate that wasn’t running.

To recap, Republicans are a political minority in this country, and Trump doesn’t even have the support of all Republicans. No progressive would consider voting for the GOP in the current state, so all the GOP can draw votes from is their minority base, which is also splintered because of how many of their own people have grown to hate Trump and the disgusting MAGA politics.

Trump’s path to winning is to whip up every single voter he still has in a frenzy, and otherwise try to get most of the country to FEEL apathetic and defeated and stay home. Because if we all had our say on even terms, Trump and the GOP in general are going to get thoroughly rebuked by the overwhelming majority of the country that is done with their shit.

The MAGA have a vested interest in making it seem that they are proud and many. The media lets Trump get away with lies and publicity stunts because they are lazy, entangled in corporate interests, and they want the views. The reasonable people in politics don’t say clownish BS and spew vitriol, so they don’t make the big headlines. So Trump shows up everywhere in politics and that makes him look larger. The MAGAs are the only ones excited to pick up the phone when a pollster calls.

There are severe consequences for the kind of dirty, disgusting “politics” from MAGA and the GOP. They are holding on for dear life with the fraction of the electorate they still hold, and they only hold those people through malicious propaganda, by lying, misrepresenting the issues, aggrandizing single-issue voting, and keeping their base irrationally angry and hateful. And through gerrymandering and voter suppression and every dirty tactic they can muster.

The GOP is on a death spiral. MAGA has almost fully destroyed the party from within. The last few years have had deep and lethal consequences for organized conservative politics. They will not recover from this without a severe reckoning.

We just need to keep our heads cool and up, keep asking for a better quality of discourse and politicians, and vote that in when we are given the chance. Those of us that want a better country with better people at the helm are a large majority. Where we stand today, we’re more likely to send Kamala in with a blue wave than we are to having to suffer Trump again. And we need a blue wave to work on repairing the damage from the Trump admin. I’m tired of hearing a Dem president talk about how they want to do more but they don’t have the power in Congress. Let’s fix that too, and then demand performance from our elected officials. We are very close to retracing course back towards an age of reason, if we just trounce this MAGA nonsense hard this cycle.

This works in 2 levels. If they know their arguments are dishonest, it's important to call them out on it and let them know that their BS didn't work, and that they have further debased themselves in the discourse by attempting a bad-faith argument. We need to dispel the myth that playing dirty and arguing BS has no consequences. It has severe consequences, as the bad-faith actor loses credibility, respect, dignity and their seat at the table.

If they don't know that their arguments are dishonest, calling them out allows an opportunity for progress, by engaging in the discussion to show them how their arguments are BS, and how they've debased themselves, exposing their ignorance, their bad company and sources, and pointing out how they are losing their seat at the table if they don't sharpen up their civics.

Either way, taking the "high road" against dirty politics serves little purpose. Calling them out and holding a mirror to their dirty faces is essential if we are to have real dialog. Bullies only know strength.

The response to a low takedown attempt is a knee to the face, because it says: we saw it coming, you've achieved nothing and impressed nobody, and you are now concussed from the weight of your own ineffective maneuver.

Notice how the "high road" would actually be detrimental because it's enabling. Engaging in discourse with their bad-faith BS only serves to validate their BS, legitimize their argument and show them unearned respect as participants in the discussion. When they act in bad faith, if we don't treat them as bullies deserving of a knee to the face, we've embraced their BS and validated their approach. So, of course, they will do it again and again, and take it further every time. The "high road" people have made our political division worse, not better.

The bully doesn't ponder on their bad string of choices until something shakes them up. If we want our national discourse to regain civility, since we've allowed it to get this bad we now must teach a bunch of people how to behave, by the way of corrective blows in response to each of their BS attacks.

And we must teach the "high road" people to cut it out and smarten up in how they deal with bullies and cultists. You are not going to Kumbaya a cultist away from racism, misogyny and religious adoration for their orange crimelord - because there's no time and space to sit down with each broken, indoctrinated mind and cuddle it back to health. We need to set firm boundaries on how much BS we'll tolerate (and at this point it should be near none), we need to hold a mirror up to their BS to show them how we see them and how much they've lost the argument and the respect, and we need to clarify why they are dead wrong and full of shit, and stress that they are the largely responsible for turning our civics into a mess and we demand that they cut it out.

An economics expert... with the Republicans? That's hilarious. The party of horse and sparrow, massive debt and deficit, and wealth inequality. Also, what would a medical doctor bring to the administration of a government or geopolitics? These Democrats trained for the job: history, politics, economics, law. What would be the advantage of welcoming unqualified people?