Except Trump’s famous “They’re eating cats and dogs” line came from JD Vance. The craziest part of the debate wasn’t even Trump’s to fully own. JD Vance quite possibly is worse than Trump in regards to likability.

So if Trump drops out, who the fuck in the Republican field replaces him? Ron Desantis?

That Abdul situation completely surprised me. I can’t believe how bad a flub that was.

That’s what I’ll be meming moving forward. Not only did Trump admit to working with the Taliban, he made up fake people while doing so.

This needs to get memed and shared everyfucking where.

This is it people. We need to meme this debate. Otherwise, the fucking Republicans will forget this shit.

Thank fucking God that Kamala knew she had to be the first person to bring up Fentanyl in the debate. It was a bit round-about, but she got there and made sure to make the first strike early.

Its not quite a policy platform, but it counts. She’s recognized the importance of appearances on this very, very important matter.

Whether you agree with me or not, I think I can trust Kamala on it. I figured I should get back to you after I saw that moment in the debate early.

That’s not even a program and it certainly isn’t a link to the DNC platform either.

We don’t need catchy names.

Yes you do. This is fucking politics. Which is 99% about appearances. If you don’t look like you’re doing something, the sheep don’t notice.

You have the fucking stupid mindset that loses elections.

Morally, ethically, and pragmatically, it’s the right call to move to an actual solution.

Cool. Name the DNC’s solution.

I promise you its not as well named as “War on Drugs”.

The article points out that not a single fentanyl speaker was at the DNC.

So there currently is an appearance where it looks like Democrats don’t care.

Saying that you’re against the war on drugs in a decade where Fentanyl/ illegal drugs is the #2 killer after COVID-19 is a bad strategy that’s all I’m pointing out.

The war on drugs only wasted shit loads of money to fuel the prison labor industry.

Sounds like we need to do it better.

For all the gun deaths liberals like to talk about, these newer drugs are more dangerous and are the #2 killer after COVID-19 (and now that vaccination is widespread, Fentanyl is probably #1 now).

This can very well become a Democrat / Liberal weakness if y’all let it faster. Some kind of acknowledgement or even policy to address this large scale killer of Americans is needed.

This is it. Republicans doubling down on authoritarianism.

This is the wind we needed. JD Vance confirms that Trump’s gonna cut off Ukrainian aid and a lot of other important issues. This is a huge mistake for Trump. Trump needed someone (like Pence) who could be seen as a kinder gentler kind of conservative. Not a firebrand like JD Vance.

Not as much as the 7 million emigrants who left Venezuela for other countries.

I keep coming back to the power outages of recent years in Venezuela because they’re indicative of everything that’s going wrong. Venezuela doesn’t have enough technicians who even know how to fix the energy grid, because the vast majority of them left for other countries. Yes, some of them are migrants who are entering USA, but also countries like Panama or Mexico.

When your country suffers from huge emigrant waves, especially emigrants who were statistically the smartest and most well-educated of the country… bad shit begins to happen.

I mean you can point to like… maybe all of US policy towards Venezuela post 1998 in this same light.

And completely ignore Hugo Chavez? Why? Hugo Chavez actually was in charge of Venezuela for the bulk of the period you’re talking about.

I know that Lemmy is filled with Marxists who want to have as favorable of a viewpoint of Communism as possible. But… uhhhh… Hugo Chavez and his successor haven’t exactly made Venezuela into a utopia.

What I do know, is decades of Hugo Chavez (and now Maduro) rule has led into Venezuela’s current predicaments. And that’s directly led, as in these are the people who actually controlled the country and built it up for what it is over the last nearly 30 years.

USA has foreign policy influence for sure, but the bulk of Venezuela’s problems are Venezuala’s alone to deal with. We aren’t responsible for the vast majority of decisions over there.

But whatever. If those migrant waves are coming to USA looking for hopes, dreams and opportunity, I’m on their side. There’s benefits to accepting the dreamers who make such a long trip. We have housing issues to deal with (and other population issues), but we can probably afford letting some of them in.

I mean, the biggest thing indirectly being caused by the USA is maybe climate change, which has caused waves of famine, drought, hurricanes… and further disasters like Volcanic Erruptions wrecked the Northern Triangle in the 2010s. This all culminated in a temporary migrant wave under the Trump administration.

But that is not Biden’s issue today. Biden’s issue is largely one of Venezuelan in origin because of all that other crap happening totally elsewhere for completely different reasons.

I know people want to pretend that the USA had some major role to play in all of this, but its just bullshit. We had some major events about 100 years to 50 years ago. But we all know where the bulk of modern USA has been (and that’s in the Middle East, at least since 2000s).

What fruit company existed in Venezuela that’s related to today’s (largely) Venezuelan migrant population?

Hint: you’re talking about the wrong portion of the world if we’re focusing on today’s migrant crisis. Venezuela was oil and has a completely different set of circumstances than you might believe.

2018 was Northern Triangle that at least is somewhat related to fruit company (albeit a hundred years later, but whatever. If you want to ignore modern history so much so bet it, at least you’re somewhat correct for the Northern Triangle migrants). But 2024 is Venezuelan migrants under a completely separate issue.

The “Northern Triangle” migrants of 2018 (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) had nothing to do with any US Policy. We had to deal with the major wave of immigrants anyway. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF11151.pdf

Today’s wave of migrants is the 2024 ongoing collapse of Venezuela. Which is everything to do with shitty Venezuelan politics, and again nothing to do with the USA.

I’m well aware of Banana Republics of decades ago. But its rather stupid to blame everything on the USA when the recent migrant wave has more to do with local issues like MS-13 (2018 era), or the handoff of Hugo Chávez to Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela).

USA doesn’t control the source of the problem, which are random-ass civil wars that occur in Central America or South America.

What we do control are the legal limits of accepting immigrants. But remember that while the jobs market can likely accept more bodies, our housing market doesn’t have enough housing for a population boom.

Immigration law exists so that we can better plan jobs/housing/etc. etc. it’s a good thing in the abstract to control, no matter how sad the stories are of the people we turn away.

That being said: I’m overall supportive of more immigrants in this economy. Jobs are a major factor and it’s really 'Just Housing’s that’s a practical consideration. If we can get Congress + States to pass housing starts laws, then we can absolutely accept more immigrants in a way that’d benefit our country.

Lemmy, the social network, started off as a leftist hangout spot.

From the perspective of “Open Source developers who are anti-Reddit pro-Fediverse”, it makes a lot of sense for Leftist/Communist and anti-corporation leaning people to hang out.

After all, the more extreme the viewpoint, the more driven to action (ie: write tens-of-thousands of lines of code and release for free) people get. In some regards, its the nature of Open Source + volunteer effort to attract a more extreme ideology. IE: Free Software is driven by ideology, not by money. So you get ideological people, especially when the software is small and niche.

The July 2023 Reddit Blackout was a big challenge for Lemmy’s old community and the new community, as the new community basically “invaded” a large scale leftist hangout spot. But hopefully we all learn to work together and the nature of our neighbors moving forward.

I think anyone here (likely everyone?) is at least on the anti-corporate anti-Reddit side of the discussion. Which is enough of an alliance to keep us together, for now.

It does mean that we’ll have to keep up with the far-left old-timers on this network who wish to push their viewpoints. But they are the legacy and the start of Lemmy in some respects, even as the hypergrowth (starting in July 2023) has moderated the community pretty severely.