Whenever I feel like skipping work, I'll just say that I have a concept of a valid excuse

@SumKindaMunster So a dentist kills a lion from a sanctuary purely for sport and republicans shrug their shoulders at it

But an immigrant kills a wild animal for food and suddenly you all want to draw a line in the sand?

@TinyViolins You serious with this rebuttal? I'll respond but just want to make sure you are sincere...

@SumKindaMunster It's just very baffling for me, as someone that doesn't drink the Trump Kool-Aid, how the guy auditioning for president decided to use his national platform to complain about some ducks being killed for food.

Of all the issues going on in this country, the Republican nominee ends up sounding like Grampa Simpson rambling about some rage-bait he saw on Facebook. I genuinely don't know how almost half of the country thinks someone like that is serious enough for the responsibilities of office

@TinyViolins It's not the ducks. It's the reason behind the ducks. His signature pitch is closing the border and revamping the immigration system. Pointing to incidents like this help define what he means when he calls out the current administration for their complete neglect of the southern border. I mean this is America...you want people like this as your neighbors? We expect people to assimilate.

@SumKindaMunster Personally, I don't want any neighbors. And I do want a stronger border presence to stem the flow of drugs and sex trafficking. But I don't see illegal immigrants as any worse than native citizens. I don't mind their presence any more or less than any other group.

Data out of Texas, which is unfortunately the only state that collects data on criminals' immigration status, suggests that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a significantly lower rate than citizens do. Personal experience tells me that most of these people are far more likely to be kind, hardworking, and respectful. It's just better clickbait when you can attach a person's immigration status to their crime because social media algorithms only care about engagement. Killing ducks is far from the worst thing people are doing out there.

There are absolutely people crossing the border who commit crimes, and we need better ways of vetting them. But data, both from Texas and the FBI, doesn't support the presumption that illegal immigrants are criminally insane the way Trump paints the issue. His narrative is being driven purely by extreme cherry-picking. There are humanitarian options on the table that can help immigrants better assimilate and contribute in ways that benefit the country like they always have

@TinyViolins That's fair. Personally, I have a problem with it. I can understand why illegal immigrants come here, but I am tired of this country enabling it. Every major city in this country has tent cities filled with homeless people. We can't house and care for who we have now, and we want to bring in millions more? No. Close the border and let's take care of what we have. Enough.

I'm sorry you don't see Trump as being motivated on this. For what its worth, politicians have been promising to close the southern border for decades. They won't do it. Trump was the first President in my lifetime who actually seemed to care about this and want to put a stop to it. What's wrong with closing the Southern Border to stem the tide of illegal immigrants? They can still come here, they just need to wait their time. It's not my problem if that is inconvenient.

As far as caring for illegal immigrants, my rebut is the same. Have we taken care of our tax paying citizens? Are we looking to help the homeless, drug addicts, mentally ill people, veterans who suffered an injury in a war? All of those people get preference over illegal immigrants in my mind. Let's take care of Americans first. Seriously.

@SumKindaMunster It's interesting that you use the word "can't" when it comes to taking care of homeless people instead of "won't". A lot of cities use harm reduction policies that enable a culture of drug use within homeless population. The US as a whole isn't doing much of anything to address the mental health issues, high cost of living, or medical debt that drive people to homelessness in the first place. It's not helping those with criminal records to become contributing members of society. That's a whole hot mess unto itself.

But unlike the homeless, the vast majority of illegal immigrants become self-sufficient really quickly. Studies I've seen put it around 95% employment rate for undocumented immigrants. They don't really displace US workers, instead falling into jobs the average citizen has no desire to do. Without them, we'd have even less affordable food and housing. They prop up our agriculture and construction industries. Restaurants too.

For all practical purposes, it's a lot easier to take care of people who can take care of themselves, and who don't have so many underlying issues. Homelessness is complex. States spend billions on homeless services and the problem's only gotten worse. If we spend money on undocumented immigrants, their benefits to the economy has a long record of proven success.

I get that Trump is trying to position himself with the xenophobic crowd. It's how he got started as a political figure. First it was Obama's birther conspiracy, then it was the Muslim ban, then it's telling US-born congresswomen to go back to their own country, calling Mexicans rapists, saying immigrants are poisoning the blood of America. That's his core base.

But when push comes to shove, he's useless. He spent $15 billion to build only about 80 miles of new fencing around the Mexican border, and the remaining walls he did build were easily crossed by migrants who could go over, under, and in some cases through the new structures. There's countless videos online showing how pointless those walls are. And to make things worse, drug runners are using the roads left behind by construction companies to more easily peddle their products into the states.

When his buddy Steve Bannon embezzled private donations pledging to continue construction on the border wall, Trump spit in the face of his duped supporters by granting him a pardon for crimes.

Then in the midst of an immigration crisis, Trump went out of his way to instruct members of Congress to kill a bill that would have greatly boosted security at the border.

The only thing he accomplished was traumatizing innocent children that he threw in cages and separated them from their families for years.

I'm sorry you can't see Trump for the grifter he really is. His own sister is on tape saying he's a liar that has no principles. His college professor said he's the dumbest student he ever had. His former VP said that he cannot "in good conscience" support Trump. His chief of staff said he has contempt for the Constitution. One of his defense secretaries said he's actively dividing the American people. Another said he puts himself above the country. His AG called him a consummate narcissist. One of his security advisors said Trump repeatedly compromised American standing for his own personal gain. Another said that Trump is seen as a fool by other world leaders. A senior director for his national security council said he was easily manipulated by other world leaders, including Putin.

And now he thinks immigrants are eating cats and dogs and taking over cities. He's completely detached from reality. All he does is latch onto social media misinformation and anti-immigrant scapegoating despite having access to any kind of expert he wants

@TinyViolins
I use that word because that is the reality of the situation... you believe its a matter of will? I say its resources and money. Money being spend bringing in more illegals. That's money that could be used to address this situation.

I'm not going to spend my time picking apart your partisan screed against Trump. It's readily apparent it was forged in the crucible of left wing and MSM propaganda. You believe what you wish sir.

My only other comment on the matter is this:

The same people that you have chosen to believe regarding Trump are the same people that insisted that the origin of the Covid 19 virus was not the Wuhan Viral research lab, they lied about the effectiveness of the Covid19 vaccine, they lied about the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop, and most recently lied about the mental accuity of Joe Biden until they couldn't any longer.

Believe what you wish. But spare me your condescension and shame regarding Trump and his supporters. We don't believe the same things. It's unfortunate that this is the reality of politics in the US in 2024, yet here we are.

@SumKindaMunster Absolutely. At least in the cities I've lived in, which all had sizeable homeless populations, there's always been sharp criticisms of the way that local government decides to deal with the problem. You say that money is an issue, but in San Francisco they spend an average of $60,000-$70,000 per homeless individual per year. That's several times the average rent for an apartment there and the number of people on the streets is increasing.

Many of the homeless on the West Coast are displaced from other places in the country because they were given one-way bus tickets to relocate instead of being given help. Cities also perform homeless sweeps that end up displacing people and destroying property, as well as routine arrests that make it harder for the homeless to get back on their feet.

There's many other criticisms I can point to, but it will end up taking far more time than I can spare.


That's what's always so consistently disappointing about responding to your posts, is that you refuse to engage in any level of critical thinking when it comes to the facts. All you do is dismiss the other person's pieces of evidence entirely and choose to substitute your own reality over the truth. There's nothing of substance to talk about when you willingly ignore the facts being presented to you and undermine the position of the person you're talking to.

I don't get my information from mainstream sources. I always corroborate the points I use against multiple sources with different biases. If I present something as factual, you can be guaranteed that it is easily verifiable. Every single one of those criticisms against Trump can be looked up and agreed upon. You're purposefully choosing to be ignorant in this conversation and insulting my intelligence by assuming I can't be objective. You're shooting the messenger to avoid hearing the message. It's easy to see why so many people block you. You don't want to listen.

I get that you want to discuss your feelings about Trump and your beliefs, but there's no dialogue at all to be had when you present zero facts of your own and disregard every single one the other person brings up. The truth matters a great deal to me, and it's unfortunate that I'm the only one of us appearing to hold that value. Honestly, what kind of reaction do you expect when you refuse to acknowledge what the other person says and only present opinions devoid of any basis in reality?

I can pick apart your arguments easily. The lab-leak theory has very little scientific evidence behind it despite covid being one of the most heavily scrutinized and studied viruses in the world. Most of the evidence points to the wet market. I can give you several reasons supporting the wet market origin, but this post is already very long. The lab-leak theory you believe is primarily rooted in conjecture and conspiracy. And by the way, these are global scientists and research groups coming out with this assessment, not journalists or intelligence agencies looking to grind an axe with Trump.

It's true that the CDC was overzealous in their support for COVID-19 vaccines, I'll give you that. Many groups, particularly children, would probably have been fine without a vaccine. The risks associated with vaccination were not as publicized as they should have been and the transmissibility failed to highlight it's effectiveness against different strains.

However, when you weigh the risks and benefits when it comes to the vaccines, things like myocarditis, pericarditis, hospitalizations, long covid, respiratory infections, death rates, etc. all perform way better in groups that received vaccinations versus the unvaccinated. Just like seatbelts don't always save you in a car accident, your chances of making it are still way better than not wearing one.

Hunter Biden's laptop was never dismissed by the CIA. Those 51 people who spoke out specifically said that they couldn't authenticate whether there was any truth to the theory or not. They only said that they were suspicious about the origins of it. Furthermore, two separate investigations by House Republicans couldn't find Joe Biden guilty of any wrongdoing despite Trump's repeated allegations that Joe Biden was corrupt.

Joe Biden's mental decline is overblown, in my opinion. Without an official diagnosis from a doctor specializing in neurocognitive decline, his actual mental well-being is pure speculation. But I do know that Joe Biden has been in politics for a very long time and has decades worth of him speaking on camera. You can go back 40 years and still see him making the same kind of stumbles and gaffes all the way back then. I mean, he grew up with a stutter. He's never been a naturally gifted speaker.

Still, it's your prerogative if you want to put your faith behind the guy that insisted for years that Obama was born in Kenya, that Haitians are eating people's dogs and cats, that states are performing post-birth abortions, that 107% of new jobs were being taken by illegals, that he had covid under control, that it was going to miraculously disappear, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, that windmills cause cancer. Personally, I can't really trust someone that tells such stupid lies nearly every time they open their mouth.

Look man, I don't want to have to block you, but you put so little effort and energy into your opinions that I genuinely groan seeing your name pop up in response to my posts

@TinyViolins My goal in refuting other people's propaganda is not to convert the spewer of said propaganda, its to test my beliefs against that propaganda and whether or not I can logically refute it using what I have learned over the years.

I get that you and those like you need to feel superior and your goal is not to refute anything, its to confirm that you hold the superior opinions and beliefs and to put others down to make yourself feel better.


Of course you do. You're opinion dovetails with the mainstream. I guess you are saying that is just a coincidence? I disagree.


It's laughable to me that you believe you have the facts on your side when it comes to Trump. How many falsehoods and gross exaggerations have you witnessed on this? A Russian asset? Calling White supremacists "fine people"? Telling people to inject bleach?

None of those things happened. I would imagine you will either justify those things because Trump is so horrible, or deny it.

No, the evidence is pretty strong that Covid leaked from the lab.
There is no reason to take another Covid booster if you have had Covid or a previous booster. I hope you don't have kids, particularly young men in your household.
While the CIA did not comment on the Hunter Biden, over 51 former intelligence officers, including some from the CIA claimed, without evidence, that the Hunter Biden laptop bore the likeness of Russian disinformation. Not that they had any evidence for that. In fact the Hunter Biden laptop was already in the FBI's possession when this occurred and they had an active investigation on it.
Joe's mental status is not the issue. The issue is the lying, which you conveniently overlooked.

Why should anyone believe the same authorities who have been caught lying repeatedly?


Knock yourself out, you aren't a genuine debater, or responder. I've learned everything I am going to learn from you. 👋

@SumKindaMunster

It's laughable to me that you call yourself logical when you choose to completely ignore the substance of the argument and instead attack the person making the argument using lies and assumptions. You have no idea where I get my information from yet you dismiss my sources as propaganda. You bring up claims other people make as representative of my own while ignoring the claims about Trump I did make. You offer no specifics when it comes to the "people" making claims you disagree with yet propose that I blindly take their word at face value.

That's not using logic. That's the motivated reasoning of an arrogant ideologue to dismiss the validity of the claims being made. There's no attempt on your part whatsoever to verify the veracity of what's been said, yet you mock the intelligence and integrity of the people you pick arguments with by lumping their beliefs with those of a liberal strawman.

Using your logic, I can make the claim that your opinions come from social media clickbait because everything you say tracks with the low-information reactionary partisanship that other Trump tribalists assume as gospel.


Is it really that big of a shocker that people with political agendas bend and obfuscate the truth in order to promote and maintain their beliefs? That's why I read more than just the headline and get my information from multiple sources, not just talking heads pandering to partisans on the 24-hr networks or grifters mining for clicks with rage-bait on social media. If you bothered to do a tiny bit of digging on your own, you'd actually have something resembling a nuanced point of view instead of relying on parroted propaganda.

Don't act like conservative media is anywhere close to objective. Saying the 2020 election was stolen. That millions of illegal immigrants are voting. Peddling the Joe Biden corruption theory. Saying there were Islamic prayer rugs at the border. Serving as a platform for climate change deniers.

That's why it's important to me, and it should be important to you, as someone claiming to be logical, to investigate the source and not simply go with whichever neatly fits our worldview. To dismiss my claims as propaganda without an ounce of research on your part is textbook cognitive dissonance.


That's because you're not an objective or reasonable person. Why should I bother making a genuine effort with an arrogant idealogue who consistently argues in bad faith? Have you seriously never bothered to consider what the common denominator is among all the people who block you?

I would put all my money on them growing tired of your derisive dismissal of their words using the false pretense of logic. I suppose I'll just be another one on the list of people who grew tired of your BS too. But go on pretending that you're logical. I just won't be a part of your delusion anymore

@SumKindaMunster
If you haven't figured it out yet, that's the problem. You paint me and others as brainwashed and we're not allowed to be angry and frustrated about that.

If I'm telling a falsehood, then you disprove that with evidence. That's how logical arguments work. Simply insisting that it's propaganda because you don't like it is a stupid tactic and derails the entire conversation. Things were going fine until you decided to disrespect me by implying I can't form my own independent view

Seems to me like you have no interest in conversation. You just go around looking to poke holes in other people's perspectives to make you feel better about your own. Otherwise you'd bother to refute a claim instead of deriding the poster

@TinyViolins
You can have whatever emotional reaction you choose. I don't care. I think the problem is as I said. You are frustrated because I won't take your propaganda seriously. I can understand why that's frustrating, but here's some shocking news for you...

I too am frustrated by dumb do gooders who seem to believe the issue is Trump. It isn't Trump. It's what Trump is standing up against. That's the issue. And you choose to believe them. I'm not going to waste my time trying to prove to you that the people you choose to believe are lying. That's your journey to make. There are about a billion phony fact checkers and millions of phony "studies" that demonstrate what they want you to believe. I don't have time to go through all that and show you what you should be paying attention to.

Perhaps we are both being lied to. At least I am willing to admit I could absolutely be wrong and am believing the wrong people. But I don't believe I am. I told a lot of people on here Joe Biden would be replaced because he clearly was suffering from some sort of degenerative neurological issue. I was called many unflattering names for making that prediction. Yet here we are.

I'm happy to have conversations with genuine people who chose to have genuine conversations. This isn't one of those. This seems to be about your ego and getting me to respect your opinion.

@SumKindaMunster Respect is a cornerstone of conversation. It was your decision to disrespect me first and then you cry foul when someone does it to you. The words I said about Trump come directly from people who have known and worked with him, albeit paraphrased for the sake of brevity. If you can't trust the closest sources possible, then you clearly don't want to be reasoned with

@TinyViolins
Disagree, you chose to be insulting first. See below:


It's fine by me if you chose to believe those things. But don't act like you aren't a condescending scold, correcting me for liking the bad orange man.

You have shown me no respect for my beliefs and opinions either. If its a two way street, then show me the way. You want to be a dick, but then get mad when I don't respond with thanks and praise.

You mean cherry pick the ones that promote what you already believe? Plenty of people praise Trump, but of course, they are idiots and their opinions are invalid, right?

Oh is that what you call hectoring me with propaganda I've heard a million times? K.

@SumKindaMunster
I showed you the words of people who can personally attest to Trump being a grifter. A lot of things get lost in the media circus. There were people who thought Biden was mentally fit until they saw otherwise. Were you disrespectful by pointing that out to them?

Likewise, there are people who think Trump is great until they start to look at his actions. If I wanted to disrespect you, I wouldn't have bothered providing that evidence. I would've done like you did and just called all your beliefs propaganda.


Lots of people in politics say what they need to say to get ahead. Look at what Tucker Carlson said in leaked texts about Trump. Look at what JD Vance said about Trump in 2016. Nikki Haley, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, etc. I tend to trust people who have the least to gain from lying. There are many who threw away careers in politics for speaking their truth against Trump.

@TinyViolins

My offense was from your comment where you showed fake pity for me because I chose not to care about what some people said. People can disagree, you don't have to make it like I'm morally deficient because you don't like who I support.


I'm talking about the people, pundits, politicians, media all colluding to dismiss and shame those that rightfully pointed out Biden's affliction. Like a flip of a switch, they changed the narrative, forced Biden out, and propped up Harris. Don't believe your lying eyes, and forget all about it, here's Kamala and "Joy" I can't unsee that. What is the greater evil here? Trump or the faceless bureaucrats and officials actually running this country. While we risk nuclear war with Russia and all out war in the middle east. While they open the border and resettle waves of 3rd world immigrants all over the Midwest. Who's actually running this country? Joe Biden? Jill Biden? Kamala Harris?

It's clear what I believe. I don't care about Trump's character references. There's larger things at risk here.


They all support Trump now, including Nikki Haley. So you going to listen to their endorsement now? That is, if you are taking what they say seriously and not just cherry picking stuff from 8 years ago that supports your political agenda...