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Your top choices for VP all present complications. The complication with Gov Whitmer is that she has taken herself out of the race with a firm NO. Too bad, because she’d be terrific. But would this country accept TWO women? I can’t see it. Then there’s Gov Shapiro. He has negatives with young people because of his strong “pro Israel” stance this past year. That could be a big problem with some voters. I think can help deliver PA (🤞 ) whether he’s on the ticket or not. As for Secretary Buttigeig, he’s a brilliant communicator and the best of the bunch. But a woman and a gay man? All at once? I worry.

My guess is either Shapiro or Kelly.

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I read the Atlantic article and it is most certainly chilling. The image I had in my head while reading it was the "golden" life-size statue of t***p from the CPAC meeting a few years back. This is what they worship now, the golden idol, not God.

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Although I am late to the party, I do want to comment on Will Satelan's piece today. I see the logic and recognize the positive intent, but I believe he has this exactly backwards.

The biggest risk we face is not Trump evading justice. Nor, is it his presence in the White House for more than another 4 years. Those are bad, but the truly existential risk is the potential for authoritarian rule that is irreversible, at least not for many years.

Trump was speaking to a committed group of "christian" nationalists who are well aware that they now are a minority (and not even a plurality) of our country's citizens. Yet, they are passionately devoted to acheiving/maintaining of their concept of a traditional and "real" America, which is a white, "christian," feudal patriarchy (much like Russia, apartheid South Africa, or the Jim Crow south).

The notion that Trump's audience will not have to bother with voting again is alarming. It cannot mean anything other than Trump will turn the USA into an apartheid state. The only reason his audience will not have to bother with voting again is that the fundamental nature and structure of our country's governance will have been altered to ensure that apartheid cannot be reversed through the electoral process. This is what is truly alarming about Trump's statement.

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Exactly right. Trump implies that he can fix everything in a permanent way. A final solution, if you will.

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I see that CFT has disavowed Project 2025 rather vociferously. Methinks he doth protest too much.

Comes across like a kid you caught in the act doing something bad.

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Seems to me that if we "ain't goin' back", we can nominated any goddam critter we want!

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What JVL and his promotion of Fetterman is that what America wants at second in command is someone who is down to earth working class blue collar who got there by hard work Fetterman codes this way. So does JD Vance just with a think hidden layer of masogeny which is attractive to trump people who feel the world left them behind in the name of equality of outcomes not equity in effort. We need to counter the narrative of DEI cost you your lively hood. Any Suggestions. I will be bringing a few.

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Trust me the only people that feel DEI cost them a job are the ones that thought they deserved an head start, mostly white men. I worked with lots of them. It never occurred to many of them that they should have to "compete" against anyone. The one thing Harris does not need is identity politics. Let the republicans play that.

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Vance is about as blue collar as a guy who worked in venture capital... oh, wait, he did.

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I didn't say he was I said his family background codes that way

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So does mine. Doesn't actually mean much. I even actually held blue collar jobs for half my life, unlike Vance.

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His jist is hold your nose and vote for me as we have common enemies I do not beleive as you do but I can get what you want done ( I e I overturned Roe V Wade, with a majority supreme Court)

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Excellent, excellent point! To me, just illuminating. Thank you.

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It's tough to figure out the psychodynamics of the Trump Evangelicals, but they seem to adore Trump the way that very young children revere their parents. Perhaps arrested emotional development plays a part.

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That does seem to be part of it for many of them. I think also there are a lot of people who relish him giving them permission to say and do mean things without guilt.

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Absolutely true! I was there - born in 1950 - all those innovations (Space travel! Polio cured!); watching helplessly as blacks confronted tru evil at Little Rock, Selma; actually discovering that blacks were human and Jews didn’t have cloven hooves, etc., etc.

And now back to the cloister? Been there, done that—thank you, NO!

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Trump’s statement that he has now repeated again without explaining it, “get out and vote, just this time—you won’t have to do it anymore”, is being dismissed too casually by you. You have to put it with all the other comments he has made suggesting something far more nefarious: the big lie, words to incite an attack on the Capitol to what he knew was an armed crowd, advocating terminating the Constitution, and even suggesting being dictator for a day. Trump has no filter. He says what he thinks. And when challenged by Laura Ingram to give explanation to these latest provocative words, he didn’t tell us your explanation. So don’t dismiss them as a nothing burger. When Trump spoke well before election day about how he could only lose if the election were rigged, would you ever have considered that they would lead to what happened on January 6?

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Granted it's all part of a piece. But I think Will is suggesting that we pick our battles and focus on the quotes that have unambiguous meaning. There are a gazillion of those. Election denial for example. Forcing his justice department to drop all charges against him. Vengeance. Trump is an expert at tempting us to divert our focus to things where the interpretation can be credibly refuted. To succumb to it diminishes our credibility.

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I agree, Ira. I think Trump is feeling ignored and he’s desperate for attention; more so than we’ve probably seen before (scary). It’s a very good time to pay close attention to what he says.

Right now, one spotlight is on Kamala, his enemy, who is lighting up the world, and one spotlight is on Vance, his handpicked protege, who keeps shitting on the world, and there’s no spotlight on Trump.

He’s a narcissist and is dying to tell everyone, all the time, everything he intends to do if he is re-elected but even he knows there’s certain things he really, really should keep to himself.

But Trump is so desperate for attention right now, I think that off-limits stuff he knows he shouldn’t talk about is now the stuff that he knows will send up the red flags, get everyone all wound up, and get him back in the headlines and back to being the big controversial show.

Because he’s not what everyone is talking about Trump’s getting upset and very stressed. Because he’s mentally unstable, that stress will demand he do whatever it takes to be back front and center.

It’s a great time to parse his words and game out what kind of Election Day maneuvers he might be ratting himself out about.

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I resonated on that too. I'm trying to think of a good analogy and am really struggling to come up with one. Here's one but it doesn't really do it.

It's like saying that I hate Midwest because it's always has sub-freezing temperatures in December...and some guy saying "Hey that's not true because I remember once in 1936 it was above freezing. You need to be careful about what you claim"

Do we need any more proof that Donald Trump isn't going to be interested in holding a Presidential election in 2028 if he's the POTUS? That sounds just as outrageous as when I was concerned in 2020 about Trump not transitioning power peacefully. How'd that turn out?

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Your last point is absolutely true. When my Republican/Trumpster friends tell me I have TDS because of my concern about a future Trump presidency and issues like what happens in 2028, I remind them that they would’ve accused me of having TDS had I suggested years before January 6 that Trump would try to steal an election and incite the insurrection.

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I am an outsider to this whole evangelical Christian thing - not a Christian at all; never read the New Testament - but it just seems to me less about religion, more about control and strict conservatism … the Church of Whites Only.

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I can tell after years of posting on the FoxNews website...that it's pretty clear to me that my interpretation of the bible vs many of the MAGAs is in stark contrast. There are a lot of verses they tend to focus on and a lot that they tend to ignore.

The other thing that I see that scares me is that when "Faith" is usurped by an unscrupulous leader. Faith is believing in something you can't see (i.e. God) but the MAGAs have morphed it into ignoring what you see (i.e. Trump being a dangerous idiot) because it's all in God's plan.

Sorry...probably more than you asked for but I thought you might be interested in someone who was very into Christianity but has been completely turned off by Christian Nationalism.

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While I truly believe that both Josh Shapiro and Pete Buttigieg are excellent candidates for vice president (both are so eloquent and intelligent, speak in full sentences) … I also truly believe that today’s USA is sadly not ready to support a gay man or a Jew as a heartbeat away.

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Yeah. Especially when running with a woman. People will faint ….

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Sadly, so true.

The irony is that the MAGAts who want to return to the "white-oriented" late 1950s and 1960s, have no clue that for we children of that era was that it was an era where a kid didn't have to feel bad about being friends with a "colored," loved the idea of scientific breakthroughs: Space program, polio vaccine, women taking control of their own lives, as corny as it seems now, "Star Trek" was not a "pop culture phenomenon" it was a mirror of a nascent embodiment of the cultural shift.

The series had enough battle/fight scenes for the male adults, alluring fashions for the adult women and cross-gender models for the kids.

Unfortunately, because the show wanted to compete with the "campy" shows of the 1960s, it fell toward the wayside wanting to compete with "The Monkees" and "Batman."

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Yay! "BREAKING NEWS Led by Simone Biles and Sunisa Lee, the U.S. reclaimed the women’s gymnastics throne, winning gold with a dominant performance. Tuesday, July 30, 2024 2:33 PM ET A victory in the team final helped erase memories of the silver won in Tokyo after Biles withdrew."

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"Govs. Tim Walz and Andy Beshear and Sen. Mark Kelly are impressive in various ways, but none has really been considered as a presidential possibility."

I hope Walz is considered.

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Two are (look) too old, one is too Kentucky. Got to be under 50 & fluent with the youth

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