OK, we can throw out the 14 GOP-led states that have refused that federal food aid, right? That sounds pretty disrespectful to the poor, Dutch. I'm sure your very real compassion for those poor and volunteering to keep those benefits has kept you extremely busy.

On the military front, I certainly don't disrespect veterans, and I fully understand that conservatives have to honor them vocally, since they actively vote against their pay, support and benefits, have nominated and elected a draft dodger & regularly denigrate them from their grandstand, but I am also a pacifist and my respect extends as far as contributing my fair share towards their wages, food and housing without complaint.

Service can be commendable, especially if you are sacrificing something else to do it. At the same time, I don't know that short stints should automatically grant a lifetime pass for reverence.

Enshrined in the constitution that the Vice President is in charge of securing the border. Shouldn't you be comparing Kamala's border work to what JD Vance will be doing on the border?


Taking photos of people in Iraq isn't some shield against criticism for your beliefs and disloyalty 20 years later. Nor is any kind of military service. Timothy McVeigh isn't a loyal American because he served in Iraq.

You're literally defending a guy who wrote a best selling book that shits all over the flyover states. Nothing anyone has said in this thread is anywhere near as negative as what JD wrote about them in his book.

You can absolutely criticize Eddie Gallagher, Charles Graner, and Lynddie England's service record if you didn't serve. It's the cornerstone of a civil controlled military.

He brought his service into the campaign. He is the one that thinks being a photographer for 4 years in Iraq should make you immune from criticism over taking the rights away from millions of Americans. That it gives you the right to discard the constitution and the votes of millions of Americans.

If you gave a shit about any soldiers instead of the faux-patriotic platitudes, you'd be furious over them being in Iraq in the first place and for those who had to lose their life or be irreparably injured in vain.

Sorry for pointing out that the thing you said would be horrible if it happened, is already happening in the other direction.

The rest of your post is baseless speculation of my motives and not worthy of a response.

Funny, I go from this comment to seeing this. I have been using Peacock, and it is somewhat confusing but everything is there.






Wrong thread, but I'm making the same face reading that tweet as reading some people's posts in this thread.

I have a hard time listening to Vance talk about his service when he's supporting a draft dodger with a history of talking shit about veterans, called General Mattis overrated, and called General Kelly dumb.

He doesn't respect the military or veterans so it's difficult to take anyone supporting him seriously when they play the vet card.

I’m sure Trump will enjoy watching Fox today as they review their latest polls. pic.twitter.com/8GbIap6Erh

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 28, 2024

Wait...are we seriously arguing that veterans are some sort of super-citizen who, dependent on the circumstances of their service, can only be evaluated and/or criticized by other folks of the same status?

I'm old enough to remember that all of my buddies who joined the military after high school were broke, had no prospects for getting into college -- or no interest in going to college -- but looked at the personal benefits (i.e., I can afford a new truck with the money I bank after basic training) and made a decision that might create the best future for themselves.

Just like the rest of us who had different options we wanted to pursue.

(For context, I graduated HS in 1989, so that was pre-Kuwait and a time of relative peace. I might feel differently if we'd have had an active war going on. But "patriot" and "service to country" weren't the words my cohort was using. The weightiest thing on their minds was having to cut their heavy metal hair and whether that investment in their future was going to be worth losing out on all the female attention they'd lose along with their hair.)

I think both of these are spot on. He fired all 3 generals who served under him because they wouldn't DO what he wanted, and wanted him to READ and LEARN about the places we had our military so he would understand more and make better decisions. He didn't like that, he thought they were slow, and boring, and talked too much. All three (Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster) all ended up hating him and he them.



He's a shill, out there using the military rah, rah, rah, to drive up votes. The party of trump has more in common with McVeigh than they do with the Democratic party. That's the real shame in all this. Look at what McVeigh stood for, what he wrote about. This is the new heart of the party of trump now.

Isn’t Trump going to fire all the generals anyway and replace them with NASCAR drivers and football coaches?

Jeff Fisher definitely has Trump Energy.

I mean, this isn't that hard to explain. Arizona and New Mexico get a ton of federal funding to support the border. I'm guessing it's a little more expensive to protect Arizona's southern border than it is to protect New York's. Even Maine spends some on the northern border. Texas and California have similar costs but a much bigger population to spread that out against. Montana and the Dakotas also have a pretty substantial federal park bill (that ends up being a higher % when you account for their smaller population and average salary).

All this graph shows is the states on the border, with more parks or with very small median salaries (Bama - 41K, LA - 41K, MS - 37K) use a higher percentage of federal funding that places like New York (57K) and Massachusetts (61K). It's just math.

This is funds given directly to the state for funding, so things like the border, National Parks or military instillation aren't included. This is Medicaid, housing assistance, education, transportation, etc. And you are right, it shows states with lower incomes,which usually correlate with lower education levels, which means more Red voters.


Which states rely the most on federal aid?

I hear the University of Southern Mississippi has a nice volleyball facility through federal funding.

Goodness, those facts again!

This is way better messaging than the "Love Trumps Hate" crap from years past.

THESE GUYS ARE JUST WEIRD.

JD Vance and his Project 2025 weirdos want to control your bedroom. Will you let them? pic.twitter.com/JnNbuRzkAH

— Won’t PAC Down (@wontpacdown) July 29, 2024

Does Brett Favre know about this!?!?!?!

Today, I'm guessing Doug Burgum had a chicken salad sandwich on white bread for lunch while he read over some white papers on business tax reform proposals.

Might have been a touch harder to make these ads stick if Trump had given some thought to his choice.

That is a high level creepy ad.

Also, it is . . . I don't even know what that the Dems have spent since 2016 trying to attack Trump and MAGA a thousand different ways and none of it breaks through.

And Walz is just like "Hey. Have y'all noticed that they're weird?" and it feels kind of game-changy.

I am seeing a lot of pro-Walz stuff on the very online left. And I think they are missing something. Their argument is that he is actually very liberal (which I think is true). But he looks like an old white Midwestern guy so all of the moderate and conservative leaning swing voters are gonna go for him. Basically, they are painting themselves at the people smart enough to vote for policy, but painting moderate and conservative swing voters as too naive to look past the packaging.

Seems like the new line of atatck from the right is to paint Kamala as 'thee most liberal Senator'. I wish, but sure go ahead and make the Dems sales pitch for them.

The thing with Walz is he's not afraid of his positions. A lot of liberal politicians are terrified to admit what they support and constantly play defense. It's kind of refreshing to have a politician just come out and say "I support free school lunches" or "I think everyone has a right to health care" and be passionate about it.

"We're not gonna stay in their frame... We're not gonna play their game. We're gonna call them out for the weird stuff they believe and we presented a different argument to the American public. One where everybody matters." 🙏 make this man VP #wewantwalz pic.twitter.com/5lSC76p1cH

— Evan Sutton (@3vanSutton) July 28, 2024

It was something that people have been asking Democrats to do for awhile. They focused too much on cringe-worthy stuff that just didn't hit. That you're better off just saying "hey, it's weird how obsessed they are with children's genitals" then trying to find some cheesy motto.

Some of this also comes from polling and analysis of suburban voters since 2020. What they found is that people in the suburbs hate weird. They just want to vote for the more normal candidate, even if they don't necessarily agree with their policies.

I do think laughing at them instead of treating them like a boogey man is the way to go. The obsession with bathrooms, genitals, porn, birth control, etc is weird.

They had a weeks long meltdown because they couldn't jack off to the green M&M anymore.

This. Just make a mockery of them. It’s what Trump and people like him hate the most.

I'm really happy as a clam that Harris is pretty much an unknown I mean before she was VP.

Hillary had so much baggage to contend with because of her name that made her easy for moderates to hate.

Harris is pretty much a blank slate and I think thats a great thing. It's really what we need especially with how good she is and speechmaking and staying on point what's wrong with things (and esp trump)

One thing I've noticed is that prior Dem attacks have also roped in the GOP supporters, which makes them more defensive. "Cling to guns and religion." "Deplorables."

A crucial difference with "they are weird" is that the "they" refers to the politicians and NOT the supporters. It makes people want to distance themselves from the GOP, not get defensive about it.

The first ad above highlighted their weird voters voting


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

True. It is subtle. And different outside groups are all going to approach it somewhat differently.

Personally, I do think that there's space to say "Hey, you don't want to be like those guys who want to inspect the genitals of high school chess teams, right?" that works in a way that "Hey, you don't want to cling to religion, right?" does not.

I still think this a key reason why Tim Ryan lost to JD Vance in the Ohio Senate race.

The messaging was basically

Ryan - "I am technically a democrat but not really"
Vance - "This guy is definitely a democrat"

Also Tim Ryan's ads had him throwing footballs at TVs for some reason.

Obama is the only Dem politician who should go within 100 feet of sports equipment when cameras are around.

Here’s what you should know about her senate record. The most leftist of all senators, not according to Fox News or CNN, but this non-partisan review where they used the same logic against all senators (that landed Ted Cruz one of the top senators to the far right). So it seems legit.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200816...port-card/2019

You know what's not on her record? Trying to overthrow election results to remain in her position, repeatedly lying about an election being stolen to this very day, and already stating that the only way she won't win in November is if the other side cheats (which Trump is doing to set up another likely meritless challenge and sow the seeds for further inflaming a bunch of right-wing gun nut/anti-government/revolutionary types in preparation for not having another J6 failure).

Pretty much all that matters to me. And I'll go on record as stating that from a personal perspective, I think I'm still in the middle enough that neither side is going to really hurt or help me greatly, but from a professional/job perspective, I'd be much better off with the GOP in charge of the executive branch. But that pesky business about making up stuff about a stolen election, losing every legal challenge, and still wanting to prevent the rightly elected person from being certified the winner kinda complicates things, ya know?

Also, as "liberal" starts to mean "ok with kids getting school lunch."

And "conservative" starts to mean "the government, not parents or children or doctors, should make health care decisions for families," I wonder if "liberal" will continue to be the smear that it has been for the last 30 years.

Probably why Dutch chose "leftist." More evocative of, I dunno, Che Guevara than FDR I guess.

(Unless he sees kids being fed as "leftist", which he very well might.)

C'mon we know kids that eat lunch are to lazy to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

Put them to work in factories and they'll be able to afford school lunch.

I'm old enough to remember when Obama was a radical, "most liberal Senator" in history. That crazy leftist, Obama, sure was radical.

So legit you had to pull it off the web archive.

GWB threw that heater after 9/11. Possibly his greatest achievement.

...now watch this drive.

Wasn't there a state legislator who recently said something in defense of pulling the state free food school program (or maybe opting out of the federal program) that they didn't want kids to get too comfortable, or something along those lines, and another argument is that there's already too much obesity? Any excuse to keep poor/unhealthy people poor and unhealthy while distracting them with shiny culture war objects.

I still remember back in 2015 when Bevin was elected governor in KY and had run on an anti-Obamacare "socialist healthcare" platform and promised to dismantle KY Connect (which was put in place under Andy Beshear's dad as the previous governor). And when word got out to eastern Kentuckians through local media showing up about a week after the election to ask what they thought about losing their healthcare, all of them were horrified to learn what was about to happen, and practically every one of them voted for Bevin.

Dutch just copy and pastes from twitter. This is funny:

We retracted our single-year legislator report cards after warning about their unreliability - GovTrack.us

Work study! They can put on a hair net and dish out the food, then eat their own during recess. Or apprentice to the janitor. Safety patrol? Required, if you wanna eat.

The take us backward thing is 100% spot on and the right doesn't even want to do it for the actual reasons parts of America was better. They look at gay people in the closet, black people knowing their place, women not having rights, and children having jobs as the reason the country prospered.

The reality is it had more to do with new deal socialism, strong unions, child labor protections, job safety regulations. All things their parents fought for to make their lives better. They want to undo all of it mostly out of bigotry and fear.