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#1 | Posted by BellRinger at 2026-09-02 11:36 AM
The Democrat party is the party of illegal immigration. They need to own it.

Trump has no success even with legal immigration, even when he wants it - his "Trump Gold Card" and H-2A program to help farmers have been a bust.
investigatemidwest.org - Trump's labor department struggling to deliver on H-2A 'one-stop shop' promise

In fact, for the first time, his policies (including reinstatement of his first-term bigly failed "China Initiative") are inflicting severe "brain drain" from the US already.

#13 | Posted by BellRinger at 2026-09-02 12:43 PM
It turns out border enforcement is popular with voters.

It was popular during campaign, when caravans were rolling in, and people waving Mexican flags in May Day and Labor Day parades demanding "special rights" for migrants, images of "immigration crisis" on the border have been on the news daily, and flailing Biden/Harris administration had no idea how to handle it, trying to work something out with Congress.

But what Trump and ICE have been doing since he took office went well beyond border enforcement or deportation of criminals.


Some things do, in fact, change.

Indeed, they do... and things did change!

www.newsweek.com - Trump's Approval Rating On Strongest Issue Hits All-Time Low - NW, 2026-08-30

|------- Trump's handling of immigration has fallen to its weakest position in an Economist/YouGov tracker, a striking reversal on the issue that powered his return to the White House.

Trump's immigration approval fell to 40 percent in August, while 53 percent disapproved, leaving him 13 points underwater...
-------|

People were promised and voted for detentions and/or deportations of illegals with criminal records; they didn't sign up for the Gestapo tactics of ICE wholesale roundups in immigration courts or offices, detaining brown people on "suspicions" of being illegal, harassment of elected representatives or attempts to bend state and local LE agencies to involuntary assistance.

Obama was "Deporter-in-Chief" without all the insanity and faux drama of ICE roundups or NG deployed to "defend" and "clean" the cities of "crimes" allegedly committed by illegals.

Maybe MAGA-hats kept falling for and have enjoyed the "tough guy" s**tshow, majority of normal people were repulsed.


For all of its faults, and they are legion, the GOP is now the party of border enforcement.

And they're going to live with those "faults" and the images of ICE abuses, "we (ICE, DHS, DOJ) can do no wrong" lies and cover-ups of mistakes and intentional, deliberate cruelty, attempts to turn it into a for-profit enterprise, and the revolving door of "strongmen" in charge of ICE promising rounding up and "tough, rough" enforcement of detention and deportations, often of people who had been here legally under [Trump's capriciously-revoked] TPS or in process of obtaining permanent resident legal status or citizenship... only because Trump needs a quota to show "success," beating Obama's "numbers" of deportations.


Some things do, in fact, change.

It's the "constant change" that both GOP and Dems should remember, especially with short fleeting "populist" zeitgeist campaign themes that both parties try to exploit, usually big on promises to economic illiterates and blaming the "others" or "other side" for problems, but absent firm convictions and actual realistic policies addressing the crux of the issues.
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Dan,

"You forget some of us were around at the time. The Obergefell decision came out. That was the day YOU went loco."

Gay marriage didn't offend me. I thought legal recognition of gay relationships could encourage commitment, stability and lasting relationships. I was more inclined toward civil unions. That's water under the bridge.

Same sex marriage became legal in VA on Oct 6, 2014, after the US Supreme Court declined to review a lower court's decision.

Gavin Grimm's lawsuit against the Gloucester County School Board was filed June 11, 2015. The ACLU represented Grimm, a 16 year old student who was born female and identified as male, seeking access to the boys restrooms.

Fifteen days later, on June 26, the Supreme Court issued the Obergefell decision recognizing a constitutional right to same sex marriage nationwide.

Supporting legal recognition of gay relationships didn't mean I supported replacing sex based rules for restrooms and changing rooms with rules based on gender identity.

Those developments brought that distinction quickly into focus for me. The legal disputes extended beyond marriage, and I became concerned about how the current Supreme Court might approach other questions involving sex and gender, and just how far other rulings might go.

I worried that future rulings could actually require schools and other institutions to allow people born male access to women's restrooms and changing rooms based on gender identity instead of sex. I was concerned the same Court that decided Obergefell might uphold those requirements as well.

Then, by the 2016 election, Scalia's seat was already vacant. Kennedy's was another potential vacancy. Both were Reagan appointees. If Hillary had the opportunity to fill both seats and her nominees were confirmed, she could replace two Republican appointees with justices of her choice and move the Court 2 more seats further to the left.

That was THE reason I voted for Trump. No other...Dan. Those appointments could shape the Supreme Court and its decisions for decades.

I feared a further shift to the left could have devastating consequences for society.

More FTA: Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who have represented the Army, Navy, and Air Force have all been fired, resigned, or replaced under Hegseth.

General Charles Q. Brown, Jr., a Black fighter pilot who served as the Air Force's chief of staff and later became the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was fired last February and replaced with a white man. Admiral Lisa Franchetti, a white woman who also served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff as chief of naval operations, was also fired that month, replaced by a white man. General Randy A. George, chief of staff of the Army, was fired in April of this year. General David Allvin, the Air Force chief of staff, retired early last year. . . .

Heads of intelligence services too have left. Lieutenant-General Jeffrey Kruse, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was fired last year after his agency reported US air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities had not been effective.

Other high-ranking personnel who have left under Hegseth include: General Chris Donahue, US Army commander Europe and Africa; General David Hodne, US Army commander of transformation and training command; General James Mingus, US Army vice chief of staff; Lieutenant-General Joseph McGee, director for strategy, plans and policy at the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, US Navy representative to NATO; Rear Admiral Milton Sands, commander of Naval Special Warfare Command.

The sidelining of top-ranking women and minorities, experts say, will make others below them question whether they should be devoting decades more of their lives to an institution that could get rid of them because of their identity.

"It is far past time for President Trump to recognize the lasting harm that Pete Hegseth is inflicting on the Department of Defense," Senator Jack Reed, a former Army officer himself, said in a statement in response to news of Driscoll's resignation this week. "Secretary Hegseth is cultivating a culture where dissent is punished and competence is secondary to personal allegiance."

Related ...

Government borrowing costs rise anew, adding to pressure on global policymakers
www.reuters.com

... A selloff in global bond markets deepened on Tuesday, reflecting investor angst over inflation and government debt levels that stand to inflict fresh pain on consumers and businesses.

Japan's 10-year yield hit 3% for the first time since 1996 as the rout hit bond prices, driving up yields, in major economies around the globe. Yields hit their highest in 15 years in Germany and their highest since 2008 in the UK. In the U.S., the 10-year yield rose 3.8 basis points to 4.796%, putting it in range of its highest level since 2023.

Some of the world's leading economies, notably the U.S., have sharply increased their debt loads in recent years through deficit spending, with the U.S. debt hitting $40 trillion -- a shift investors warn is likely structural rather than episodic and will be difficult to remedy without tough choices at the national level. Meanwhile wars from Russia-Ukraine to the Middle East have sent oil and gas prices higher, adding to pressure on interest rates and the cost of living.

"This is likely primarily a U.S.-specific story, though global currents are amplifying it," said David Krakauer, vice president of portfolio management at Mercer Advisors.

"The core drivers are largely domestic: deficit spending, the cost of servicing a rising debt load, and shifting Treasury auction dynamics," in which price-sensitive buyers such as hedge funds and other private firms have in part supplanted price-insensitive official buyers such as central banks.

Governments are jittery. The U.S. Treasury stepped into markets last month in a bid to cap a rise in borrowing costs, which can spill over to higher loan rates for everything from household mortgages to business loans. Yields on 30-year Treasuries are close to the highest in 19 years. ...


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