homersapien

I hope someone from Biden's campaign is recording these clips. Would make for great campaign ads.

Unsurprisingly, Trump is 9 for 9. What's alarming is how many Republicans are going along. You have to believe that many - if not most - of them know better. As for your common MAGA's, they're just stupid and gullible.

Cultists

Son of a ____ is apparently a "snowflake".

"If you needed any more evidence that MAGA is a cult, here it is. Insanity."

That says more about Alabama than it does Tuberville.

Direct vote initiatives are no more common in cities "run" by Republicans. Face it, you're just a mindless hater.

Which is hardly unusual throughout our country.

The Washington "Examiner" clearly is more interested in pandering to their targeted audience rather than simply reporting the truth.

And even those go through his MAGA filter. Just look at the OP title and compare it to what Kamala actually said.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/ James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution In an extraordinary condemnation, the former defense secretary backs protesters and says the president is trying to turn Americans against one another.

Like many Trump supporters, you are in denial. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/ Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

Last time I checked, California residents can vote.

How about Putin?

A derided Wall Street Journal article about Biden “slipping” warrants a reset of 2024 coverage. By Jennifer Rubin June 9, 2024 The widespread media condemnation of a shoddy front-page Wall Street Journal article about President Biden “slipping” with age suggests we may have reached a journalistic inflection point. The Journal article relied almost entirely on the views of two highly partisan Republicans to support its Biden-is-slipping thesis: House Speaker Mike Johnson and former speaker Kevin McCarthy. Maybe the overwhelmingly negative response by other journalists to what was essentially the promotion of a right-wing meme will reduce such irresponsible reporting as the election year continues. The issue, certainly, goes beyond being influenced by MAGA narratives or failing to adequately examine the mental and emotional state of felon and former president Donald Trump. (But, given Trump’s innumerable unhinged rants, it just might be time to rethink whether a candidate’s psychiatric state is journalistically out of bounds.) Rather, the Journal’s faceplant should lead to a much larger discussion: to what extent and in what way age matters to the performance of the chief executive. Frankly, it has nothing to do with the sort of factors Biden’s critics obsess over (e.g., verbal slips, how fast he moves). Political journalists tend to deal heavily in the realm of politicians’ quips and comebacks, as well as horse-race politics and presidential “visuals.” They naturally then come to think of a president — with whom they interact in debates, news conferences and interviews — as a media performer. Does he misspeak? Does he physically stumble? Focusing on such relatively superficial subjects has come to define political journalism. But let’s stop for a moment. A president’s gait, verbal tics and minor recall errors have virtually nothing to do with the job of being president. The White House occupant is not a “Jeopardy!” contestant, a stand-up comic, a talk-show host or guest; the president is the head of the executive branch and commander in chief. The job of being president is executive management, something with which political reporters (as opposed to business reporters) have virtually no expertise. We should be asking whether a candidate can absorb necessary details, make good personnel decisions, reach sound conclusions, evaluate risk and consider the consequences of actions. Can the president separate personal interests from the interests of the nation, of allies or even the planet? That is what the president does, day after day. And we do not need to be armchair psychiatrists to evaluate that sort of presidential fitness. As I have written, Trump’s closest colleagues tell us that he is willfully ignorant, cannot grasp basic concepts, cannot absorb written material. As for his hiring decisions, by his own admission, he has hired a slew of dumb or incompetent people. He gloms on to ridiculous quack theories, and he channels the ideas and rhetoric of America’s enemies and of historical villains. Trump cannot keep national secrets — or understand they are not “his.” He is incapable of grasping the values and ethos of military service. Because he is so susceptible to flattery and so thin-skinned, he cannot tell friend from foe. And as his former national security adviser John Bolton put it, “Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.” Part and parcel of good decision-making is impulse control. If one cannot refrain from lashing out in anger at allies, spilling secrets to U.S. enemies, or launching personal attacks and threats against fellow Americans (in defiance of court orders, no less), one cannot be entrusted with the immense responsibilities of the presidency. (There might also be something seriously wrong with you, but that is beside the point.) Moreover, we know how Trump’s decision-making turned out. He downplayed the coronavirus, and hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily. He concocted the “big lie” about the 2020 election and, unable to admit losing, incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol. He didn’t want to reveal embarrassing sexual impropriety, so he broke the law in New York — 34 times. You don’t need to make a specific medical diagnosis to see that the essential aspects of the presidency — judgment, reading comprehension, discretion, unselfish decision-making, appreciation for military sacrifice — are utterly beyond Trump. At the most basic level, Biden, while three years older, can discern friend from foe, reveres the military, understands the value of alliances, generally hires capable advisers, puts together complex legislative deals and exhibits inexhaustible empathy for others’ suffering. He complies with the legal process (e.g., sitting down with special counsel Robert K. Hur), follows Supreme Court decisions (and then explores alternatives, as he did on student debt) and engages in successful international diplomacy. He talks in depth about policy. It’s reasonable to conclude that, with age, Biden has gained immense experience, formed relationships and absorbed data that helps guide his current decision-making. Should we care that he walks more stiffly than he did 10 years ago? (FDR served 12 years in a wheelchair.) In sum, the measure of a president — regardless of that officeholder’s level of spryness or eloquence — is the capacity to perform a singularly important job: making good decisions on behalf of others in keeping with our laws and national values. No reasonable person would conclude, based on all available evidence, that Trump can do so; no fair person would conclude that Biden’s age impedes him from doing so. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/09/wall-street-journal-biden-slipping-article/

And make them ranked choice voting.

Trump - the Christian champion.

Surely, you - of all people - can recognize satire coming from me.

Those who can see the good in the former president should look harder at everyone else. by Elizabeth Bruenig After Donald Trump’s recent guilty verdict, the internet has seen a meme deluge analogizing Trump to Christ on the grounds that they both experienced trial, conviction, and criminality. This meme template actually dates back to Trump’s civil fraud trial last year, when Trump himself shared courtroom-sketch-style fan art of Jesus seated next to him. Another meme, this time referring to Trump’s guilty verdict, features Jesus standing behind a seated Trump with his hands on the president’s shoulders above loopy script reading “It’s okay. They called me guilty too.” Another captions a diptych of Trump’s mug shot and the portrait Christ Crucified by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez with the text: “If you don’t think you can vote for a convicted criminal, remember that you worship one.” But I care. If all it is is a thin notion of Trump-as-Jesus, that doesn’t amount to anything interesting. But it seems to me that there’s some accidental radicalism here, a case of insight without intention, and that meaning flows from the association of Christ with criminals. Scripture certainly makes that association plain. Jesus is said to have spent his time with criminals and outsiders—people such as tax collectors, who were at the time notorious thieves. Tradition holds that the apostle Mary Magdalene was a former prostitute who found a place at Jesus’s right hand. The prophecy that Christians believe Jesus carried out predicts that the Messiah “will be numbered among the transgressors,” which was evidently fulfilled in Jesus’s execution with two thieves at his side, his death among the criminals. And in the narrative of the sheep and the goats, Christ famously declares that the righteous will serve him by serving others, saying, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Jesus is especially close to those who need him. I wonder if the denizens of Trump’s online fandom realize how explosive this idea really is. If Christ is present even in those who’ve done the greatest evil and made the worst mistakes, that means there’s an indelible value inside of people that can’t be abraded by wrongdoing. It means people who’ve committed even the most egregious of crimes are worth the same as anyone else, and deserve the same dignity and human decency that we all do. Some of Trump’s evangelical advisers seem aware of this. They were among the supporters of the First Step Act, a bill signed into law by Trump in 2018. In theory, the law was meant to reduce recidivism, credit prisoners for good time served, improve conditions for some prisoners (for example, pregnant and menstruating ones), and lessen some mandatory-minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes. But Republican critics resented the act, blaming it for rising crime during the COVID era. Then Trump himself turned on the legislation, angry that he’d signed it and that he’d listened to those who had pushed it. As for evangelical prioritization of criminal-justice reform, the journalist Megan Fowler writes in Christianity Today that “practicing evangelicals are … slightly less likely than fellow Christians to say an elected official’s stance on criminal justice reform would influence their vote,” and that “less than one in four (22%) evangelicals report that their churches have engaged in raising awareness about criminal justice in the past six months. By comparison, 65 percent of evangelicals say their churches have raised awareness of the sanctity of life, and 46 percent homelessness.” According to the Pew Research Center, white evangelicals also favor capital punishment by a higher margin than any other religious group, with 75 percent in support. Trump has called for more executions and public executions, and he put to death 13 federal prisoners at the end of his first term in office, an effort he means to continue if reelected. Members of Trump’s religious contingent should embrace a broader and more radical vision of their memes. That any of this will ever happen is doubtful, but the following exhortation is worth making just to complete their logic: If they believe what they say, they should press their electoral weight behind complete prison overhauls, shifting the intent of incarceration toward rehabilitation and reentry. They should take up urgent projects such as restoring voting rights for prisoners, as well as those of ex-prisoners. They should make criminal-justice reform a top priority in the way that they have so-called culture-war issues; they should demand the elimination of mandatory-minimum sentences so that judges can take individual factors into account. And they should shun the death penalty, which is the most extreme form of dehumanizing a prisoner. If Trump indeed wins the 2024 presidential election, he’ll have more discretion than ever to execute federal prisoners at will, something evangelicals ought to punish him for electorally if he goes ahead with his plan. If the lives of prisoners are as valuable as Jesus suggests, then everything must change. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/trump-conviction-evangelical-memes-jesus/678617/

That sounds sort of "clueless" Salty.

Post Covid inflation wouldn't have happened if Trump had won........er, I mean hadn't had the election stolen from him.

And why do you suppose it's that way, Salty?

Attacking the source instead of the argument itself?? Really? Facts are facts. Disprove any one you'd like: An Analysis of the Senate Border Bill The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act (H. R. 815) Summary If passed in its current form, the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act would be the most sweeping immigration bill of the twenty-first century. It would overhaul the process for seeking asylum in the United States—and impose an “emergency authority” that would leave asylum fully out of reach for those crossing between ports of entry for much of the next three years. It would attempt to address issues like work permits and years-long waits for asylum seekers, and also raise the initial standard a person must pass in order to access our asylum system. It would expand additional visas and future green card availability and offer a pathway to citizenship to Afghans, while also significantly increasing detention capacity. It is a mixed bag. Overall, the bill represents a serious attempt to acknowledge, and solve, some of the key problems with current border and asylum policy, and to address the federal government’s failure to manage migration in a way that supports American communities and respects humanitarian needs. In particular, it aims to reduce the frequency with which people wait years for a final outcome on their asylum case. However, its positive steps in this direction are smothered by a new “emergency authority” that repeats mistakes made by the Trump and Biden administrations: making protection much less available for those in need, while failing to send a clear message to future arrivals. The Problem The U.S. system of border management and humanitarian protection has been allowed to languish and decay for decades. Instead of investing in durable, efficient and responsive infrastructure that would allow the country to handle changes in how many people seek protection in the U.S., where they come from, and what their demographics are, successive administrations have relied on temporary crackdowns that have resulted in only short-term reductions in the number of people encountered by agents at the U.S./Mexico border. We are currently in the midst of a global refugee crisis. In the Western Hemisphere, over 7.5 million Venezuelans have been displaced since 2014—with 6 million of them living in countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, rather than coming to the U.S. Continued humanitarian crises in Cuba and Haiti, natural disasters in Central America and the Caribbean, and threats to security and democracy in countries from Guatemala to Nicaragua to Ecuador have put millions of people at physical risk in their home countries or left them facing an unstable future in an unstable country. Compounding this issue, a smuggling infrastructure has grown dramatically in the last decade, feeding demand for migration by word of mouth and social media and making it easier than ever for vulnerable and threatened people in countries around the world to come to the Western Hemisphere and travel northward to the U.S. The number of people who are apprehended by Border Patrol agents on the U.S./Mexico border—most of whom turn themselves in—has hit levels never seen before. Existing infrastructure, laws, and policies are not sufficient to process people, assess any claims for protection efficiently and fairly, or allow them to support themselves in the United States while waiting for a decision on their cases. Instead, communities along the border and in the interior of the U.S. have been forced to accommodate large numbers of new arrivals, without coordination from the federal government—and, in some cases, with governors such as Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis deliberately undermining efforts at coordination and support. What This Bill Would Do A “Border Emergency Authority” Adding a New, Restrictive, and Opaque Process until Border Crossings Reach Very Low Levels The “trigger” authority—called the “Border Emergency Authority”—would enable the administration to summarily deport migrants who enter between ports of entry without permitting them to apply for asylum. The new emergency authority could be activated if border “encounters” reach a daily average of 4,000 over a period of seven days and would become mandatory once border encounters reach over 5,000 over a period of seven days or 8,500 over a single calendar day. However, there are several other rules governing the use of the emergency authority, rendering it much less straightforward than the simple mathematics of crossings (for example, the so-called “discretionary” authority at the 4,000/day level would in fact be mandatory for the first 90 days at that level after passage). In addition, the bill defines “encounters” to exclude apprehensions of unaccompanied migrant children. The bill gives the federal government significant discretion over exactly when to implement this new emergency summary-deportation process and does not require it to be publicly announced. The upshot is this: on any given day, a would-be asylum seeker would have no idea whether they would be allowed to seek asylum in the U.S. or not. The government would be allowed to opt people out of summary removal for a variety of reasons, including operational constraints such as overcrowding. Non-Mexican unaccompanied children would also be exempted. Those set for summary removal could receive a screening for non-asylum humanitarian protection by affirmatively “manifesting” fear of persecution or torture to a border official—volunteering without prompting that they fear return or showing an obvious sign of fear. People summarily deported under this authority could be sent to their home countries, or if the Mexican government is willing to accept them, sent to Mexico instead. A second deportation under emergency authority would trigger a one-year bar from obtaining a visa. Crucially, the emergency authority does not “close” or “shut down” the border. It does not prevent unauthorized migration entirely: legislation cannot physically prevent people from crossing between ports of entry at all (it can only assess consequences for what happens after). Furthermore, the bill requires the government to allow people to seek asylum at ports of entry even during a border emergency and requires the government to maintain capacity for 1,400 daily entries in this manner—ensuring that asylum will not be wholly unavailable. By creating two different sets of border policy depending on whether the emergency authority was in effect or not—without declaring whether it was in effect at any given time—the bill would increase confusion at the U.S./Mexico border. Border Patrol agents, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officers and migrants themselves would be left uncertain on a day-to-day basis about which set of rules was in effect. Confusion about border policies is easily exploited by human smugglers, who encourage people to come to the U.S. quickly if there are threats that the border is about to be “shut down.” A Quicker, More Restrictive Non-Custodial Asylum Process for Border Entrants The bill includes several provisions that would overhaul asylum in the U.S. independently of the “trigger” —in other words, changes that will happen regardless of how many people are trying to come to the United States. The bill raises the standard for being able to claim asylum as decided at the initial screening interview stage when an asylum officer determines whether an individual can progress to making an asylum claim. Instead of being required to establish a “significant possibility” that their asylum claim would prevail, asylum seekers would need to establish a “reasonable possibility,” which is a higher bar to meet. This standard is already used for other forms of humanitarian relief, in what’s known as a “reasonable fear interview.” In 2023, 65 percent of people passed their “credible fear interviews” for asylum, while 44 percent passed “reasonable fear interviews” subject to the “reasonable possibility” standard. The bill would add a new bar to asylum if there are “reasonable grounds for concluding” that a person could avoid persecution by moving to another location in their country of nationality, or if they have no nationality, by moving to another location in their country of “last habitual residence.” While a version of this bar is currently in place under federal regulation and case law, this would enshrine a single version of it in statute. The bill requires asylum officers to consider certain potential bars to asylum at the screening interview stage, giving the asylum seeker less time to prepare evidence to counter them. Currently, these bars are assessed as part of the asylum claim itself. However, the bill does not require the asylum officer to conclude that the person is ineligible for asylum as a result at this stage. The bill creates a new process into which people can be placed who come to the U.S./Mexico border without papers, as an alternative to expedited removal. This “protection determination” process is designed to take six months, during which time the asylum seeker would be allowed to live in the community in the U.S., while monitored under government Alternatives to Detention programs. Under this process, the government would have 90 days to conduct a fear screening, at which an asylum officer can deny or grant asylum or other protections on the spot—or can pass people through to a full “merits interview.” Those granted protection, referred to a merits interview, or who couldn’t be interviewed within 90 days, would become eligible for work permits. All steps in the “protection determination” process would be conducted by asylum officers, with no role for immigration courts and very little judicial review of final decisions. At the same time, it would be almost entirely non-adversarial. The bill ultimately requires virtually all asylum seekers encountered at the border to be placed in either expedited removal or in this process. Changes to Detention and Alternatives to Detention The bill requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to ensure consistent policies for alternatives to detention across all sectors. They would need to put these policies into place within 90 days and make them public. However, it also provides funds for ICE to keep at least 50,000 detention beds available—an increase of 47 percent from the 34,000 beds allocated in 2023, 2022, and 2021. A Path to Citizenship for Afghan Evacuees and Allies The bill includes language similar to the Afghan Adjustment Act introduced during the last two sessions of Congress. It would establish a streamlined but rigorous process for Afghan evacuees who have not obtained asylum to have their legal status adjusted to Conditional Permanent Resident Status (CPRS). CPRS status would be retroactive to when applicants were initially paroled into the U.S.—giving beneficiaries a shorter wait to become eligible for citizenship. Additionally, the bill would mandate the Department of State to designate an office in lieu of an embassy to provide consular services for Afghan applicants still residing in Afghanistan, recognizing that many Afghans who are eligible for certain protection programs cannot travel to a third country to receive consular services as is currently required. The bill would also establish an “Afghan-Ally” referral program to expand eligibility and streamline applications of at-risk Afghan allies to the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The bill would authorize some additional Special Immigrant Visas for certain family members of Afghans who served in the armed forces or are veterans who supported the U.S. mission. However, it would authorize 2,500 per year—and no more than 10,000 in total—which is far fewer than previous versions of the Afghan Adjustment Act had attempted to provide for. The First Increases to Legal Immigration Since 1990 Notably, for the first time since 1990, the bill would allocate additional immigrant visas—green cards—to expand legal immigration to the U.S. The increases would amount to a 13 percent increase for employment-based visas and a 7 percent increase for family-based visas for the next five years. The bill would also ensure that spouses and children of highly skilled workers, as well as people who come to the U.S. on fiancé visas, are eligible to work legally in the U.S. And it would fix immigration law so that children who are waiting for green cards along with their parents would not lose their path to citizenship when they turn 21—providing a solution for “documented Dreamers.” Congressional Funding for Asylum Officers and Lawyers for Kids Appropriations in the bill include funding to USCIS to hire up to 4,300 new asylum officers to take on the additional workload of the bill’s new asylum processes. While the new system would go into effect upon enactment—at least, unless superseded by the emergency authority—hiring of those asylum officers would likely take years, running the risk that short-staffing will continue to slow down processing of asylum seekers and other immigrants and would-be immigrants. Furthermore, the bill prevents USCIS from funding its asylum operations through the application fees that it uses to fund most of its work—taking the burden off immigrants to fund humanitarian processing, but instead relying on future Congresses to pick up the slack. Additionally, the bill includes funds for a program that would guarantee access to counsel for children who arrive in the U.S. without parents and are 13 or younger—a key innovation which could open the door in future to universal representation for all immigrants at risk of deportation. What This Bill Would Not Do Just as important as what the bill does require is what it leaves out. Most importantly—with the very welcome exception of Afghan evacuees—it does not resolve the status of millions of immigrants in the U.S. without legal status or with only discretionary, temporary protections. While the bill preserves the president’s authority to grant humanitarian parole as needed to preserve U.S. and humanitarian interests, it does not offer any permanent path forward for those parolees. The bill also expects the US to deter future migration without any significant attention to the root causes of migration, ignoring the issues that have led people in this hemisphere to ever-higher levels of displacement. It also does nothing to support people who are waiting in Mexico for their chance at a CBP One appointment—to come “the right way” for asylum—or who have been deported there from the U.S. The conditions facing migrants in northern Mexico continue to pose humanitarian and security dangers. Finally, the bill does not do enough to support American communities who are trying to support and welcome new arrivals. It offers some grants through the Supplemental Shelter Program, but the total amount available under the bill could be under $1 billion. And it does nothing to improve information-sharing and coordination between border and interior communities. As a result, asylum seekers who are released into the U.S. under this bill could be as unsupported as those arriving now. What We Really Need at the Border The changes proposed to border and asylum policy in this bill can be over-simplified into two principles: Making it harder for people to be allowed to start the asylum process upon entering the U.S.; and Making that process itself faster. Notably, this bill would not stop anyone from being allowed to set foot on U.S. soil. It would not, therefore, do anything to bring down “the numbers” on its own. The bill’s proponents hope instead that it will reduce the number of people who are allowed to stay in the U.S. outside of immigration custody, and therefore, through word of mouth, reduce the number of people trying to come to begin with. What we have seen, time and time again, is that adding additional penalties or complications to the process for asylum seekers once they arrive in the U.S. immiserates those asylum seekers without having a lasting impact on overall border arrivals. This is especially true when the process is made longer and less certain, contributing to bottlenecks throughout the system including dangerous border overcrowding. What is instead needed is a way to resolve these cases quickly and certainly—taking months, not years—without railroading claimants. This bill takes steps in that direction, but overwhelms them with the imposition of an opaque emergency authority, which would undermine any deterrent effect by providing inconsistent outcomes to people attempting to enter the U.S. without warning or rationale. Efficiency also can’t go so far as to fully sacrifice any meaningful, independent review of decisions. Making a process quicker does not require cutting corners on due process. The U.S. can’t solve a global displacement crisis just by deporting people to other parts of the world. Cooperation with other countries on migration management to support people in their home countries and in countries they settle in is not a nice-to-have or a long-term goal, it is an essential part of any plan—especially one that expects Mexico and other countries to shoulder the responsibility for taking deportees from other countries.

I 'll see your opinions and raise you with facts: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/analysis-senate-border-bill And as for the politics: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-vote-bipartisan-border-bill-next-week-schumer-says-2024-02-01/ ......But some Republicans take issue with fellow party members who have attacked the legislation without knowing what is in it. "There are some in the Senate and in the House who are desperately trying to sabotage it," Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, told reporters, suggesting that blind Republican opposition was mainly about not helping Biden escape the issue in the November election. I'd be a little judicious with leveling the charge of "ignorance" if I were you. It makes you look like you've been brainwashed.

IM4 is becoming progressively crazier at an increasing rate. (Kinda reminds me of Trump in that way.)