US Election 2016

[Lucifer]

You're infuriatingly close to understanding the ridiculousness of it all Now, I don't know what kind of security checks you guys are subjected to on cross-country flights, but if I were an illegal immigrant, an airport with all the security buzzing around would be the last place you would find me. Heck, even here, we got our bags of medicine for Z-Girl checked by guys with machine pistols on our last flight out.

I believe the TSA has to pull people who can't prove that they're authorized to travel out of the flights. That's literally their jobs. They're also trying to find people who are authorized to travel, but are dangerous, because that's how the 9/11 attackers were. But they definitely pull people who aren't authorized to travel in this country, and being here without permission from the government means you're not authorized to travel in this country.

That's point 2 on my conspiracy checklist. Do you really think THEY, by which I assume you mean the government in this case, would be able to coordinate such an operation? Them? Those clowns? Without anyone down the chain of command ratting them out?

Normally I'm with you on this one, but this time, I'm not. There is a definite "they" here, it's the Texas government. Greg Abbott has been pulling a stunt where we round up illegal immigrants, put them on buses, and send them to sanctuary cities in other states. It's a way to say "You want them, you can have them."

However, the policy is executed in a very racist way, meaning that people who are here illegally but are white don't get sent, while people who were born here but are brown are getting forced onto these buses and shipped away. This is far more important than it sounds, at first. Because when you start considering how a mass deportation would look, this is how it will be executed. "Born in East LA" is supposed to be a joke song with a silly rom-com attached to it. Now, it's a documentary.

Another series of data points that Kyle and other Trumpers are ignoring: crime rates in neighborhoods that are predominantly filled with illegal immigrants are lower than anywhere else. This is because most people who are here illegally understand that if you're already committing a crime, you don't want to call attention to yourself by committing another crime. This data isn't just based on police reports, either. There are lots of other studies that use various survey methods that come to the same result. The conclusion is that illegal immigrants commit crimes at a significantly lower rate than citizens and legal immigrants. In fact, the cartels aren't dumb. When they send operatives over here, they go through the government and send them here legally. And, of course, 99% of people who commit hate crimes are white. That's logically connected, but not as important as it may look. Not that I'm trying to support hate crimes or anything, just that while they're on the rise, they're not happening at rates that suggest they're a significant problem that requires a federal response, so not relevant to a federal election.

Except that a lot of people committing hate crimes are also Trump supporters. I haven't seen any data to support this, so this is just a hypothesis, but I think that the rate at which people commit crimes is higher among Trump supporters than it is in the general population.

But the democratic view is let them all in, let them rape your kids, and don't punish them for that

Name one example of someone raping a child and then getting out free at any point in the process, be it at the time of arrest, in court, or getting a pardon later, because they were an illegal immigrant. Just one.
Riight, your next thought after "oops, I can't actually cite an example" is going to be "But it could be true! It could happen! I would not put it past them!". That is the standard coping mechanism. I had it happen to me the other day, when a colleague announced they would be installing security cameras at our offices. (It was just a joke, not misinformation)
But no. It could not happen. But you know who really gets away with sexual assault and rape? Rich white guys.

Ironically, when a politician gets caught raping anybody, it's usually, but not always, a conservative. And Trump has been proven to have raped some people. SO this is also just classical Freudian projection.

And that's the problem, too. When you call Kamala Harris a puppet, you show that you're stuck in your own media bubble. Why do I know that? Because liberal media generously covered senate hearings where she grilled, like the prosecutor she is, anybody testifying at these hearings. She didn't save her most savage grilling for conservatives, either. She wanted the truth, so she went for it. Puppets don't do that. Trump certainly doesn't do that. He agrees with everyone talking to him. We could turn Trump liberal by just putting liberals around him.

Likewise, when you say democrats are in favor of rape, you have lost all rights to criticize wokeness, because wokeness includes understanding the sexual harassment and threat of assault that women deal with all the time, and tries to put an end to that. You can't be anti-woke and somehow anti-rape at the same time. If you're anti-woke, you're pro-rape and racism, because those are things the woke crowd are trying to stop. And who's woke? Democrats, for the most part. It's actually a movement that's not really associated with any party, and a lot of independents like me are woke.

And here's a fun one. By being woke, and going through the effort to understand how other people live who are not like me, I understand that a rapist doesn't need to wear a costume to go into a bathroom and rape someone. So all these bathroom bills trying to stop transgender women from using a safe public restroom are doing nothing to protect "women" and instead endangering transgender women. Which is the point, of course. In fact, I can point to actual women I have known that have been raped in a public bathroom who can testify that their assailant did *not* wear a costume.

The biggest problem here is that Trumpism isn't new. The innovation here, if you want to call it that, is that conservatives are now saying the quiet part out loud. They're being open with their racism, and the hate crimes are increasing.

There have been a number of studies on the subject, and the finding is that liberals are generally motivated by hope, and conservatives are generally motivated by fear. That's why when Kamala talks about how dangerous Trump is, she doesn't move the dial very much. But when Trump talks about immigrants, he moves the dial quite a bit. Kamala's supporters want to hear how wonderful she's going to make the country, that's how she moves the dial.

So, traditionally, in America, the liberals and the conservatives have had an uneasy alliance where liberals check conservatives' worst fears, and conservatives check liberals most amibitious an impractical projects. The country has always done its best when this uneasy alliance was in force. Trump broke the alliance completely. True, it was already in the ICU, in part because of Bush's policies and stupid wars, and also in part because we elected a black guy, which conservatives hate. But it was still in place in 2015. Now it's gone.

The last thing I want to point out is the futility of science deniers who think they can win a civil war. I don't think Trump losing is going to cause a civil war, and if Trump wins fairly, that also won't cause a civil war. But if Trump is able to win unfairly, well, leftists are quite capable of violence. The radicalization that's happening isn't just on the right, it's just the most visible on the right. I don't think we should have a civil war, but because I live in Texas, I hear a lot of talk about it.

[Lucifer]

I have a lot I want to say, but I want to talk about tariffs for a moment. And the fact that Biden has, for the most part, continued Trump's economic policies.

Let's talk about that second thing first.

Biden's economic policies have been a disaster, right? The thing is, a majority of his economic policies have been a continuation of Trump's policies. He did that because he's a True Leader. He's not a great leader, I certainly never wanted to vote for him, but he is a True Leader. So, there are three buckets into which you can put a particular policy.

Bucket #1: It's a good policy, even though your political adversary dreamed it up. In this case, keep doing it, because it's a good policy.

Bucket #2: It's a bad policy, but reversing course on it will cause a great deal of disruption. So continue the policy, but taper it off.

Bucket #3: It's a bad policy, but half of the country supports it, and when you're president, you represent the entire country, not just the ones who voted for you. Trump doesn't understand this, but Biden does, so he's continued some policies he doesn't support simply because half of the country voted for them.

The result is that Biden has mostly continued Trump's economic policies. So if Biden's economic policies are such a failure, you can actually blame Trump. You can still blame Biden, because he should know better and do better and so forth, and this is why liberals don't support Biden. This is why he had to quit the race. So yeah, let's hold him accountable for that. Oh wait, we already did, we forced him out of the election and now we're voting for Kamala. But Trump supporters don't have that ability, because the broken Biden economy is literally Trump's economy. The tariff situation hasn't changed, the trade wars have continued, and that's all Trump. I don't know why Biden continued it, but in the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden built in Trumpist policies.

So you don't actually get to say that Trump's policies would be any better, because Biden has been trying to represent you and he's been doing the things you want done. If you get out of your conservative media bubble, you would see that. Biden didn't quit the election because he thought he was too old or whatever, he quit because he didn't have the support of liberals, and without that, he couldn't win. I was prepared to vote for him again, but I didn't want to. I was proud to vote for Obama--twice!--and I was proud to vote for HIllary Clinton, although I definitely preferred Bernie Sanders. I was never proud to vote for Biden. I was proud to vote for Kamala. This is how you win elections. You get people to be proud of voting for you. Trump certainly has that, mostly from racists and sexists, but he definitely has that.

So, tariffs.

I had this weird conversation with a guy a couple of months ago where he told me we needed to be taxing China. He really believes tariffs tax other countries. I told him that no government has the power to tax other countries, and he didn't believe me. But it's true. Governments can only tax their own citizens. This means that tariffs are paid by Americans.

Here's how that works, for the rare person on these forums who doesn't actually know this. The only tax on goods that you see is the sales tax. All other taxes are factored into the price. There's about 12 taxes on everything. Sales tax is just one of them. I'm not going to go into details, because when I last had to worry about it, I hired an accountant to deal with it. This is what accountants do, they make sure you pay all of your taxes. You know, so you don't go to jail or whatever. So cigarettes are a popular taxes item. I smoke, and I'm paying about $5/pack for the shittiest cigarettes available. Probably about $2 of that actually goes to the cigarette company. The rest is taxes. The company who makes them is taxed, and the company who sells them is taxed, and this is all before sales tax. Again, sales tax is the only tax that actually appears on your receipt. Side note for Americans: in other countries, sales tax doesn't appear on the receipt. That's a uniquely American thing. It's also not required. Businesses can factor in sales tax in their pricing and *not* put it on your receipt. They just don't because it would be hard to compete if their prices were 8% higher than their competitors (or 5% if you live in a state with income tax).

So here's how importing works. By law, any company operating in the US must be majority owned by US citizens. That means that Samsung can't sell directly to Americans, because they're Korean. They have to go through another company that is majority owned by US citizens. That would be Samsung USA, which is "independent" of Samsung. Same with Kia and Hyundai, which are actually the same company nowadays. So Samsung makes a phone and they want to sell it in the US. They ship it across the ocean and sell it to an American company, Samsung USA. At that moment, Samsung USA has to pay a tax on the imported item. Maybe it's 100% (tariffs can be huge, they're not small like sales taxes). So a $50 phone costs Samsung USA $100 to import it, because they pay $50 for the phone, and then the 100% tariff means they pay $50 to the federal government.

This is all fine so far, right? Well, that means that when Samsung USA sells the phone in the American market, their cost for the phone is $100. To earn a profit, they have to charge more than that.

That's how tariffs work. The actual tax ultimately gets paid by whoever buys the product in America. It's not paid by Korea or China or whoever. It's paid by Americans.

Obviously, that means that raising tariffs drives inflation in an economy that relies a great deal on imports.

The problem here is that Trump says he wants to tax China, and his supporters agree. That sounds good to me, too. It's just that that's not how it works. The US government does not have the power to tax foreign governments, just like foreign governments do not have the power to tax the US government. But Trump supporters don't know that. Most of them are part of the anti-intellectual movement that's been going on for a few decades now, so they haven't bothered to find out how things actually work, because that's what the elitist intellectuals do.

On a side note, that's how T-Mobile USA came into being. Americans don't know this, but T-Mobile is actually the cell phone arm of the German state owned phone company (or at least used to be). But they couldn't do business in the US, so they created T-Mobile USA, which does operate independently of the parent company.

I don't have a firm opinion on tariffs. Nothing that I've said negates their value in protecting American-made goods, and I liked Biden's idea that lithium batteries should be made at least 50% from American manufacturing/mining/whatever. It's in the INflation Reduction Act. But I am seriously frustrated by Trump supporters who think we're actually taxing other countries with our tariffs. No, you pay those tariffs out of your own pocket.

It actually means that the federal government gets more money from tariffs, and theoretically could reduce income taxes because of that. In fact, that's one of the places Trump's "tax cuts" were able to work in the first place. One of the reasons Biden has kept the tariffs in place is because without them, he'd have to change income taxes, and people would notice that. It would be too disruptive. It's in the second bucket I mentioned.

So, Biden's terrible economic policies are due in large part because Trump shit the bed, and Biden had to live with it. So Trumpers whining about Biden's economic policies are just projecting, because the specific policies they hate (on the rare occasion you can get someone to point to an actual policy, because the conservative media bubble doesn't discuss actual policy) actually came from Trump.

And liberals agree that these policies are terrible. That's why we weren't excited to vote for Biden again. And if conservatives had given us someone other than Trump to run against Biden, they would have had a serious chance of winning the election with a huge margin. I know that if you'd have had another McCain to bring out, I would have voted for him over Biden. This election has always been yours to lose, because you brought out the worst candidate you could possibly think of.

[Z-Man]

That's point 2 on my conspiracy checklist. Do you really think THEY, by which I assume you mean the government in this case, would be able to coordinate such an operation? Them? Those clowns? Without anyone down the chain of command ratting them out?

Normally I'm with you on this one, but this time, I'm not. There is a definite "they" here, it's the Texas government. Greg Abbott has been pulling a stunt where we round up illegal immigrants, put them on buses, and send them to sanctuary cities in other states. It's a way to say "You want them, you can have them."

Oh, right, the Martha's Vineyard thing, among others. I head about that. That wasn't secret, so it doesn't count

Is sales tax the same as "value added tax"? We do have that displayed on our receipts in the EU, but the prices shown on store shelves and adverts are with it included, so it's a "yep, that much of what you paid goes directly into the government's pocket" information.

I wanted to add a paragraph about projection, but skipped it. Yeah, it's strong on the Right. Practically everything they ever accuse anyone of is either something they are already actively doing, think about doing, or would be doing given the chance.

[Lucifer]

Well, we knew it was going to be a long shot anyway. I'm blaming Biden. The most important campaign promise he made in 2020 was that he wasn't going to run in 2024, he would only be a one term president. The knock on effects of his decision to run are just too much. If Kamala were going to win, she needed to build a 50 state campaign like Obama had in 2008, and for that, she needed to compete in the primaries. But since Biden decided to run again, there wasn't much of a primary, and of course the VP supported the P running for reelection.

So, by depriving Democrats of a solid primary, they couldn't find their best candidate and put them forth. On top of that, upwards of 2/3 of voters decide who they'll vote for during the primary, and those same people made their decision when they thought Biden was their choice. Most of them didn't change their minds, so there's an unmeasurable number of people who decided not to vote for Biden who didn't change their mind and vote for Kamala. The reality is that most people don't change their minds after they decide who they're going to vote for. But Kamala needed the Obama coalition, and she couldn't have a lot of them because they already went for Trump. Not the whole coalition, mind you, basically the same ones that went for Bernie in 2016, regardless of whether or not they ultimately voted for Trump back then. I'm aware that the Bernie/Trump voter is more fiction than reality. Or at least, was in 2016.

I still don't know if Kamala could have beat Trump even given a victorious primary, mostly because I don't know if she could have won a primary this year. But she inherited a campaign that was setup to reelect Biden, not a campaign that was setup to elect her. While the pivot was pretty solidly executed, the organization itself just wasn't big enough for what she needed. A lot of endorsements came too late. She failed to properly differentiate herself from Biden over some pretty important things, like Gaza.

So yeah, this is all Biden's fault. Trump would have been less dangerous getting a second term starting in 2021 than he is now that his cronies have had four years to prepare for it. And honestly, Trump isn't the biggest danger. The biggest danger is that he enables other republicans to do things they wouldn't be able to do without him.

I'm curious to see how well voter suppression efforts worked. Georgia was tight four years ago, and they've implemented measures to suppress democratic votes, and Trump won Georgia. I'd like to know how much influence those efforts actually had, because they didn't need much to go red this year again.

So here's my prediction for what's going to happen next. Biden is going to suddenly approve a bunch of aid for Ukraine that he wasn't going to do before. The purpose is going to be to stockpile US aid in Europe/Ukraine directly, so that when the aid dries up under Trump, the rest of Europe that's helping won't have to step up their efforts too much initially. Zelensky will try to do something decisive to Russia that'll hopefully end the war while he still has Biden to support him, but it's probably going to fail. I hope it doesn't overextend Ukrainian forces in a way that loses them the war. Additionally, backroom deals are going to made so that US aid can be "laundered" through other European countries so that Trump might just let that aid continue while still being able to publicly deny aid to Ukraine. While I do generally think Putin will stop with Ukraine and not risk a more general conflict, I still don't know that for sure.

Israel is going to attack Iran some more because why not? What's Biden going to do during his lame duck period? He won't have support for dragging the US into a war in the middle east, but then again, neither will Trump.

China is going to leave Taiwan alone. if they're going to do anything, they'll do it after Trump's in office. Biden will have support for defending Taiwan, but Trump may not. I still don't know if China is going to do anything with Taiwan, to be honest, I just think that if they're going to, it's not going to be while Biden's still in office.

I don't know how many pardons Trump is going to be able to hand out. Most prosecutors going after his friends have been trying to use state laws, so Trump can't pardon them.

Federal agencies are going to knuckle down and put as much in place as they can to prevent Trump from doing the worst of the things he says he wants to do. The DOJ will make efforts to prevent the kind of investigating political enemies crap Trump says he'll do. The DoD will put as many safeguards in place as possible to keep Trump's meddling down. I don't know what all they can do, overall, but Trump isn't going to take over an executive branch that's open for business. They can't completely shut him out, but they can put bureaucratic measures that'll make stuff he wants to do particularly difficult.

There's also going to be a shitload of lawsuits initiated by liberal groups. They'll challenge the election results, of course, just like they did in 2016. There will be protests, just like there were last time Trump won. They might even be bigger. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a 24/7 protest in front of the white house for the next four years.

Someone's going to move the Doomsday Clock to 11:59.

[sinewav]

It's too bad Americans weren't able to shake off the negative stereotypes. Really embarrassing.

[kyle]

It's too bad Americans weren't able to shake off the negative stereotypes.

We did Just that, We said no to a controlling government wasting money, We said no to politically weaponized court system. We said no to the liars. We said no to Government deciding what was misinformation. We stood united to bring Freedom back to the people and uphold the constitution of America.

[Word]

How is threatening to send the military for your political opponents constitutional?

Let's look at what you're saying yes to, e.g. more of this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... iscarriage

That's the team you're on, kyle. Still hope you don't drink aquarium cleaner when Trump tells you to do so next time.

[kyle]

How is threatening to send the military for your political opponents constitutional?

You've been brainwashed by the media's sound bites. Yes there is a clip with trump talking about her getting fired at, but in the full context of what he said, he was arguing that she has no clue what it is like to be in a war, but yet has no problems just telling people they need to go fight wars. More context in this https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1852225240723509267

Let's look at what you're saying yes to, e.g. more of this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... iscarriage

Yes, the Republican laws around abortion are a little too strict at the state levels, that's something states need to fix and not the country. The country does not need to have this much power over the people, and all the lies in the media saying this will be the US policy are wrong. Trump said several times he is leaving that as an issue to the states.

[Monkey]

We said no to the liars

Of course Donald Trump not only speaks the truth all the time but he also upholds the law.

We stood united to bring Freedom back to the people

What freedom are you talking about?

and uphold the constitution of America.

I hate to be the one to say this but the American constitution is flawed. I can give two examples:
1) People having the right to bear arms.
2) Presidents can only serve a maximum of two terms in office.

[kyle]

What freedom are you talking about?

The bill of rights basically:
freedom of speech, which allows for open discourse and the exchange of ideas without fear of government retribution;
freedom of religion, ensuring that every individual can worship or not worship according to their beliefs
the right to bear arms for self-defence and as part of cultural heritage
protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, safeguarding our privacy;
the right to a fair trial, ensuring justice through due process;
freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, promoting humane treatment.
freedom to assemble peaceably, petition the government for a redress of grievances, and maintain protections for privacy, property, and personal autonomy.

and uphold the constitution of America.

I hate to be the one to say this but the American constitution is flawed. I can give two examples:
1) People having the right to bear arms.
2) Presidents can only serve a maximum of two terms in office.

The right to bear arms is so if the government does mess up we can fight back, not a flaw. Mental illness is the leading reasons for gun violence.

The initial constitution did not limit the number of terms a President can serve, it was ratified with the 22nd amendment, in 1951, this was because Washington had set president to a two term limit and most presidents had kept with that. We should add term limits to senate and house as well, the jobs were not meant to be life long.

[Z-Man]

Mental illness is the leading reasons for gun violence.

Really? So if there is about ten times as much gun violence in the US as in other rich places with similar general culture, i.E. Canada and most of Europe, and there is, that means there are about ten times as many crazy people in the US? While that would explain a lot, you might want to recheck your assumptions. (Using harsh language to make a point, of course I don't equate mental illnesses with the crazies)

How is threatening to send the military for your political opponents constitutional?

You've been brainwashed by the media's sound bites. Yes there is a clip with trump talking about her getting fired at, but in the full context of what he said, he was arguing that she has no clue what it is like to be in a war, but yet has no problems just telling people they need to go fight wars. More context in this https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1852225240723509267

Well, first off, that is still pretty bad, he is still invoking violent images against an opponent.
But on the topic of cherry-picking soundbites to make someone look bad, well, that is a bipartisan tradition. It's not pretty.

Say, what do you honestly think was the worst falsehood told by Trump or anyone on his team (actual team, not just randos who support him) or any Republican told in the last couple of months? Falsehood can be an outright lie, or just something stupidly wrong, someone in their position should know better.

[Monkey]

Mental illness is the leading reasons for gun violence

No it isn't. Not even close.

The right to bear arms is so if the government does mess up we can fight back, not a flaw.

Fight back against who? Mentally ill people I presume...

We should add term limits to senate and house as well, the jobs were not meant to be life long.

If the best person for the job wants to run for more than two terms in office then they should be allowed to try to do so. Although looking at the US, the worst person for the job seems to get in so maybe this rule isn't so bad after all...

[Word]

You've been brainwashed by the media's sound bites.

We did Just that, We said no to a controlling government wasting money, We said no to politically weaponized court system. We said no to the liars. We said no to Government deciding what was misinformation. We stood united to bring Freedom back to the people and uphold the constitution of America.

Kyle, I know you're at heart a good person but just by reading that, you sound like a cult member in that whole post. There's a lot to unpack there and a lot of that sounds like some QAnon-inspired way of thinking. Yes, we obviously live in different realities at the moment. Speaking of guns and the brainwashing liberal media, what did you think about Alex Jones saying those poor parents of massacred schoolchildren were really actors and him getting sued out of business for that?

What I'm trying to get at is, you guys ******* HATE real journalism whenever you encounter it. Ask yourself what the opposite looks like. There are enough historic and contemporary examples. The whole point of journalism and free press is to keep facist/extremist propaganda and lies in check. Of course journalists tend to be liberal in the original sense of the word. That's what the job description is when someone attacks the scientific establishment during a pandemic or makes baseless claims about immigrants eating pets. Take a look how even someone like Tucker Carlson, who has zero morals or backbone and will do just about anything for money, privately laughs about the ignorant doofus that is Trump (who isn't that different from Carlson at all in that he's actually disgusted by the people who vote for him).

When did Russia become the friendly pal that can manipulate, annex, rape and slaughter half of Europe (assuming they're interested in Eastern Europe only, which they are not) if it so pleases? You come here and say "oh why economics of course, it's all part of Trump's/God's plan to let Ukraine/Poland/Moldavia/Taiwan/Iran/North Korea/China/global climate go to hell and to take the whole post-world-war-II order/planet with him, but at least someone gets to pay less taxes and he has promised to magically keep the gazillions of people out that he'll make seek refuge with his approach to foreign policy."

Yes there is a clip with trump talking about her getting fired at, but in the full context of what he said, he was arguing that she has no clue what it is like to be in a war, but yet has no problems just telling people they need to go fight wars. More context in this https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1852225240723509267

Please, "Enemy within" for the "radical left" was like his favourite catchphrase shortly before election day. I've seen the context.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/t ... -reelected
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... er/680327/
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/01 ... meone-else

(Not the first to ask that but does he know some of those generals tried to kill Hitler? Why would a normal person even say that?)

[Lucifer]

Kyle, please stop accusing people of being brainwashed by the liberal media, unless you can actual evidence. I think this is something we should be considering moderating, because it is not civil behavior.

/mod hat off for rest of post

You've been brainwashed by the media's sound bites. Yes there is a clip with trump talking about her getting fired at, but in the full context of what he said, he was arguing that she has no clue what it is like to be in a war, but yet has no problems just telling people they need to go fight wars.

This is a common tactic, but I'm drawing a blank on the name. Let's look at the original claim.

How is threatening to send the military for your political opponents constitutional?

The correct answer to this question is "Because the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 6-3 vote, decided it is." The case is called Trump v United States, and it was decided this year. In the actual opinions written by the court, the 3 dissenters cited numerous specific examples of Trump saying he would do exactly this. Because it's in the dissents, the majority opinion addresses it, as well. Of course, it all made it into the case because this was literally Trump's legal team's argument. The justices grilled hard on this specific subject, and for a little while, it looked like it was going to go 5-4 the other way.

This is not the liberal media, this is a 6-3 conservative supreme court as a source for this information, with three of the justices appointed by Trump himself, Kyle. How was this case reported in your so-called legitimate media? Did they tell you about the arguments made? Did they include quotes and/or actual audio of the oral arguments? Because the brainwashing liberal media absolutely included all of this. In fact, if you'd to know more, LegalEagle covered it pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXQ43yyJvgs&t=699s

Now that I've cited the highest court in all of the land as a source, Kyle, would you kindly find a comparable source that can demonstrate that Trump has not made these statements or that he didn't mean them?

The right to bear arms is so if the government does mess up we can fight back, not a flaw.

No. This is a common conservative talking point, but every single time you make this claim, you show your complete lack of understanding of how our government was set up, how it works, how our military was originally set up, and how it's changed over time.

We do have the right to a peaceful overthrow of our government. It's called elections. Specifically, the entire House of Representatives is up for election every two years. That is how our right to overthrow our government is expected to be exercised.

As for the right to bear arms, it's all about how the federal military was setup starting with the Constitutional Army led by George Washington (You *do* know who he was, right?) and ending right after World War I. The idea was that we'd have a small federal army that provided leadership and logistics. Actual troops would be provided by the states in the form of state-run militias. Those militias would be raised as needed and slotted into the federal leadership structure. In order to serve in those militias, you needed to bring your own firearm. The states would provide the cannons for the artillery units. Of course, to bring your own firearm, you needed to be able to own one. There were a lot of ways to approach how to ensure that enough people owned guns to provide for the national defense (not revolution, defense!), but this particular way ensured that states would be able to field militias, protect themselves from local threats, like native raids and stuff, and otherwise function independently of the federal government.

That's why the first part of the second amendment talks about the need for a well-regulated militia. You know, the part of the actual second amendment that your average second amendment nut hasn't actually read.

The development of mechanized warfare during WWI is what made this amendment obsolete. As of that war, the federal military needed to become not only mechanized, but technologically advanced to the point that it was no longer reasonable to expect soldiers to bring their own guns to war.

My source here is literally any high school or college level textbook on American History, ignoring the recent efforts by conservatives to rewrite these textbooks so that they can tell their own highly propagandized version of the american story.

[kyle]

Mental illness is the leading reasons for gun violence.

Really? So if there is about ten times as much gun violence in the US as in other rich places with similar general culture, i.E. Canada and most of Europe, and there is, that means there are about ten times as many crazy people in the US? While that would explain a lot, you might want to recheck your assumptions. (Using harsh language to make a point, of course I don't equate mental illnesses with the crazies)

First off I believe that majority of mass shooting have the shooter has had some sort of mental issue. You might argue that domestic shootings are likely not the same, but I would argue they are, anyone wanting to take the life of someone else has a severe mental health issue. weather it's cause by drug deals gone wrong, or disputes, the act of taking someone else life, unless you feel that they are going to take yours, is a mental problem.

But on the topic of cherry-picking soundbites to make someone look bad, well, that is a bipartisan tradition. It's not pretty.

I agree, this is wrong to do, but both sides do it, and to make matters worse, most the media has a very left leaning bias, so the lies spread by the democrats get filtered and anyone standing up against them, the media claims is misinformation, I mean look at the whole hunter Biden situation, they filtered out people telling the truth about it in 2020, but now they came out to confess that those people were actually telling the truth.

Say, what do you honestly think was the worst falsehood told by Trump or anyone on his team (actual team, not just randos who support him) or any Republican told in the last couple of months? Falsehood can be an outright lie, or just something stupidly wrong, someone in their position should know better.

I think the stance they put out on deporting all illegal immigrants will turn out to be a big lie, economically we cannot support that, but they will attempt to deport the violent ones, which is a much smaller percentage.

Kyle, please stop accusing people of being brainwashed by the liberal media, unless you can actual evidence. I think this is something we should be considering moderating, because it is not civil behavior.

This is one of many reasons why I support Trump over Kamala, if you moderate or filter out content, you cannot see the full story, plus it adds unneeded bias. I like the principal of X's community notes, keep the content, but show the proof how they are wrong. wish essentially how this open discussion is working on this forum.

Now that I've cited the highest court in all of the land as a source, Kyle, would you kindly find a comparable source that can demonstrate that Trump has not made these statements or that he didn't mean them?

I linked to the conversation right around it, I could link to more of the follow-up interviews where he clarifies how they took his statement out of context.

Kyle, I know you're at heart a good person but just by reading that, you sound like a cult member in that whole post.

What I said is what every American should be fighting for, individual liberties, were a government cannot control of sensor the information you receive, or remove your rights.

There's a lot to unpack there and a lot of that sounds like some QAnon-inspired way of thinking. Yes, we obviously live in different realities at the moment. Speaking of guns and the brainwashing liberal media, what did you think about Alex Jones saying those poor parents of massacred schoolchildren were really actors and him getting sued out of business for that?

NO I don't believe that bul****, that's a problem QAnon is the far far right conspiracy theorists that come up with insane clams, but people want to think everyone agrees with them if you are on the right, that simply is just a small minority of the right.

What I'm trying to get at is, you guys ******* HATE real journalism whenever you encounter it.

Because of media lies all the time. If it were honest I'd be find with it, but when you follow something very intermittently like I do with both SpaceX and Tesla, you start seeing all the bull**** lies that they put out. Even Jeff Bezos, owner of Washington post has admitted that people no longer trust them and that she need to change.

When did Russia become the friendly pal that can manipulate, annex, rape and slaughter half of Europe

It happened when a weak leader took over as president in the US, that thinks that putting US men and equipment on ground would help the economy to be in a forever war, rather than aid in facilitating a truths.

If the best person for the job wants to run for more than two terms in office then they should be allowed to try to do so. Although looking at the US, the worst person for the job seems to get in so maybe this rule isn't so bad after all...

Exactly there is a kind of corruption that goes with having great power, that corruption still very much exists, that is why the worst people are always the two people that you have to decide on who will be the better of the two. this is all because of the same people spending years and years in the government, getting kickbacks. that's why congress should also have term limits as well, this should help fight the corruption in the system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXQ43yyJvgs&t=699s

If you want to link to the relevant part, or tell me the timestamp I'll watch, but where you linked looks like an advertisement for a lawyer and I got bored after 20 seconds