trumpty plumpty

[Sparko]

Tough guy made up shitty pants toddler. Who is now so far gone he is ducking NRA speaking. Look up Doug Hamlin though--

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

Paging randy and JK.....

[KUTradition]

those watches though

https://newrepublic.com/post/187289/tru ... strip-mall

[japhy]

The fat old man is running on fumes, and/or fuming uncontrollably, take your pick.

With less than three weeks to go before the 2024 presidential election, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have been doing a barrage of media interviews and political events in addition to their campaign rallies.

But several interviews that Trump had scheduled this week were scrapped, including an interview with NBC and an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box. And a sit-down with the Shade Room, a cultural website with a predominantly young Black audience that recently interviewed Harris, was reportedly nixed because, according to a Trump adviser, the Republican nominee was “exhausted.”

And your lord and savior gave up golf for the month, this he does for you, his loyal rubes!

The least you could do is buy some shoes or bibles or DJT stock or NFT cartoon images of him.

The rash of cancellations comes on the heels of Trump backing out of a scheduled appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes over a dispute about the newsmagazine’s plan to do live fact-checking of the former president. He also refused to agree to a proposed second debate with Harris on CNN.

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association announced Thursday that it has canceled an event in Savannah, Ga., that was set to feature Trump as its keynote speaker due to a "campaign scheduling conflict".

Trump has participated in numerous live and taped events in recent days, including a campaign event that turned into a bizarre dance party in Pennsylvania, a Fox News town hall with an all-female audience in Georgia, a contentious live interview with Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago and an embarrassing meltdown at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City, in addition to various podcasts.

He probably has a bad cause of diaper rash. It is a common thing amongst toddlers.

I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the rubes for their debt service. My tax cuts would not be possible without your enthusiastic financial support. I am humbled by your confidence in my ability to spend this largesse in your best interest, or something.

[KUTradition]

thankfully, some have come back to reality

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna176025

[KUTradition]

Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/18/trump- ... views-2024

hmmm…wonder why?

[jfish26]

Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/18/trump- ... views-2024

hmmm…wonder why?

In part, it may be that he believes the Polymarket hokum his media people are pushing, and thinks he's actually winning.

[defixione]

[KUTradition]

it’s his sport coat

[Sparko]

Sports tux? I would have him stand myself.

[japhy]

Huh, imagine that.

Last month, Donald Trump announced that he was selling limited-edition, gaudy watches ranging from $499 to the bargain price of $100,000, bragging about their Swiss-made precision.

But a CNN investigation traced the watches’ origin to a shopping center in remote Sheridan, Wyoming, where TheBestWatchesOnEarth LLC, the company behind the timepieces, is based. There’s no indication that a watch company is located at the building listed at the address, only a daycare. Its neighbors include an H&R Block, a Wendy’s, and a “vape and hemp smoke shop.”

CNN couldn’t find the people behind the company either, because the business’s location allows it to legally hide those details from the public. The news network found that knocking on the door of the business’s supposed address didn’t answer those questions. Interestingly, the limited liability corporation behind Trump’s infamous gold sneakers is also based at the address, along with other random businesses. The watch company was registered on July 29, only two months before Trump announced the watch line.

A lobbying firm that represents Montenegro’s government is also based at the Wyoming address, along with a company, Kingdom Honey LLC, that sells “male enhancement honey” products that the Food and Drug Administration has warned against consuming. Curiously, that honey venture also goes by TheBestHoneyOnEarth on its online retail store.

CNN could not find a direct connection between the honey venture and Trump, although it did reach a spokesperson for Kingdom Honey, who called it “a highly reputable company” but didn’t respond to a list of questions, none of which mentioned Trump. However, the spokesperson told CNN, “We’ve received direction from our leadership in the US not to engage with any news agencies (specifically CNN) until after November 5,” which happens to be Election Day.

When CNN followed up by asking if the company had connections to the former president, the response from the company was that it “cannot provide any information or details at this time.” There was one link among the myriad companies based at the address, an “organizer” named Andrew Pierce, who has an office in Sheridan. When CNN contacted it, they were told he spends most of his time at the company’s headquarters in Puerto Rico.

Pierce’s business partner, his father, Mark Pierce, did respond to CNN, and told them he had no idea that two of their clients were connected to Trump. The older Pierce, an attorney, also criticized the former president’s track record, telling the network, “If Mr. Trump or anyone in his family were on the same side of the street I was on, I would cross the street.”

It’s telling that Trump would put his name on a product that has unclear origins, connected to a business that isn’t particularly transparent. After all, his presidential administration wasn’t particularly transparent, either, and his business activities led to a massive fraud judgment against him. Perhaps it just goes to show how desperate the former president is for cash.

But he is a billionaire, he doesn't need the money.

[KUTradition]

Asked by a 10-year-old who his favorite president was when he was “little,” Trump began by saying he “liked Ronald Reagan.” (Note: Trump was 34 when Reagan first took office, and 42 when he left.) Then he turned to Lincoln, who he believes was a great president—but could’ve been better if he’d “settled” the Civil War.

“Great presidents?” Trump said. “Lincoln was probably a great president, although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled? You know, I’m a guy that—it doesn’t make sense we had a Civil War…. You’d almost say, like, why wasn’t that [settled]? As an example, Ukraine would have never happened, and Russia, if I were president. Israel would have never happened; October 7 would have never happened, as you know.”

It’s not exactly clear what Trump thinks Lincoln should have done to “settle” the dispute between the North and the South, the latter of which seceded from the Union largely because it wanted to keep enslaving people. Does Trump think Abe should have come to the negotiating table, Art of the Deal–style, and let the South keep some slaves? Because that’s what it sounds like...

[twocoach]

https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/m ... tennessee/

This is the shit that Trump stirs up.

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

it’s his sport coat

Well, I admit I am torn and we have a big conspiracy on our hands. I'll chalk chalk this up to the ill/s of social media and it's ability to fuck with people's brains, depending on which side of the political fence they are on.

[japhy]

Absolutely normal, every politician does it.

Trump was campaigning in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Palmer was born in 1929 and learned to golf from his father, who suffered from polio and was head pro and greenskeeper at the local country club.

Politicians saluting Palmer in his hometown is nothing new. But Trump spent 12 full minutes doing so at the top of his speech and even suggested how much more fun the night would be if Palmer, who died in 2016, could join him on stage.

“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women,” Trump said. “This is a guy that was all man.”

Then he went even further.

“When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump said with a laugh. “I had to say. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold as a man.”

When campaigning in Latrobe, it is customary for a candidate to talk about Palmer's dick, cuz....OK, that shit was kinda weird.

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

Absolutely normal, every politician does it.

Trump was campaigning in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Palmer was born in 1929 and learned to golf from his father, who suffered from polio and was head pro and greenskeeper at the local country club.

Politicians saluting Palmer in his hometown is nothing new. But Trump spent 12 full minutes doing so at the top of his speech and even suggested how much more fun the night would be if Palmer, who died in 2016, could join him on stage.

“Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women,” Trump said. “This is a guy that was all man.”

Then he went even further.

“When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump said with a laugh. “I had to say. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold as a man.”

When campaigning in Latrobe, it is customary for a candidate to talk about Palmer's dick, cuz....OK, that shit was kinda weird.

[japhy]

I'm glad I put a metal roof on my house in the Springs last summer, it doesn't rain there, but better safe than sorry. Should last 30 years minimum, I will be gone by then.

The rest of you need to get ready to start roofing your own homes. And taking turns mowing the golf course as part of your membership dues.

Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.

Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.

“It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems,” said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, “a vital and flexible source of labor” to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.

Nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants were living in the U.S. as of 2022, the latest federal data shows, down from an 11.8 million peak in 2007. The construction sector employs an estimated 1.5 million undocumented workers, or 13% of its total workforce — a larger share than any other, according to data the Pew Research Center provided to NBC News. Industry experts say their rates are higher in Sun Belt states like Florida and Texas, and more pronounced in residential than in commercial construction.

For Brent Taylor, home building has been “a very, very difficult industry the past few years, and it seems to only be getting worse.” His five-person, Tampa-based business hires subcontractors to perform all the labor, and if those firms’ employees “show up on my jobsite because they work for that company, I don’t know if they’re legal or not,” he said.

The labor pool is tight already, with the U.S. construction industry still looking to fill 370,000 open positions, according to federal data. If work crews dwindle further, “now I can only do 10 jobs a year instead of 20,” Taylor said. “Either I make half as much money or I up my prices. And who ultimately pays for that? The homeowner.”

Rhetoric or reality?

Trump hasn’t detailed how his proposed “whole of government” effort to remove up to 20 million people — far more than the undocumented population — would work, but he has made it central to his housing pitch. The Republican nominee claims mass deportations would free up homes for U.S. citizens and lower prices, though few economists agree. The idea has also drawn skepticism on logistical grounds, with some analysts saying its costs would be “astronomical.”

Doubts also run high among homebuilders that Trump would deliver on his promise.

“They don’t think it’s going to happen,” Stan Marek, CEO of the Marek Family of Companies, a Texas-based specialty subcontracting firm, said of industry colleagues. “You’d lose so many people that you couldn’t put a crew together to frame a house.”

Bryan Dunn, an-Arizona based senior vice president at Big-D Construction, a major Southwest firm, called “the idea that they could actually move that many people” out of the country “almost laughable.” The proposal has left those in the industry “trying to figure out how much is political fearmongering,” he said.

But while Trump has a history of floating outlandish ideas without seriously pursuing them — like buying Greenland — he has embraced other once-radical policies that reset the terms of political debate despite fierce criticism and litigation. That is especially true with immigration, where his administration diverted Pentagon money to build a border wall, banned travel from several Muslim-majority countries and separated migrant children from their parents.

Trump has emphasized his deportation pitch on the stump, at times deploying racist rhetoric like claiming thousands of immigrants are committing murders because “it’s in their genes.” This month he accused immigrant gangs of having “invaded and conquered” cities like Aurora, Colorado, which local authorities deny, saying they need federal assistance but want no part in mass deportations. Still, recent polling has found broad support for removing people who came to the U.S. illegally.

“President Trump’s mass deportation of illegal immigrants will not only make our communities safer but will save Americans from footing the bill for years to come,” Taylor Rogers, a Republican National Committee spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement, referring to undocumented people’s use of taxpayer-funded social services and other federal programs.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that the former president’s remarks about genetics were “clearly referring to murderers, not migrants.”

Tobin said the NAHB has real concerns about the deportation proposal but is engaging with both campaigns. It has called on policymakers to “let builders build” by easing zoning and other regulatory hurdles and improving developers’ access to financing.

“The rhetoric on immigration, it’s at 11,” Tobin said. “We have to have a serious conversation in this country about immigration policy and reform, and we can no longer delay it.”

Marek, who has long advocated for more ways for undocumented people to work legally in construction, said reforms are decades overdue. As an employer, “I do everything I can to make sure everybody’s legal,” he said, even as the industry’s hunger for low-cost labor has created a shadow economy that he says often exploits the undocumented workers it depends upon.

“We need them. They’re building our houses — have been for 30 years,” he said. “Losing the workers would devastate our companies, our industry and our economy.”

‘The math is just not there’

There is evidence that foreign-born construction workers help keep the housing market in check. An analysis released in December 2022 by the George W. Bush Institute and Southern Methodist University found U.S. metro areas with the fastest-growing immigrant populations had the lowest building costs.

“Immigrant construction workers in Sun Belt metros like Raleigh, Nashville, Houston, and San Antonio have helped these cities sustain their housing cost advantage over coastal cities despite rapid growth in housing demand,” the authors wrote.

But builders need many more workers as it is. “The math is just not there” to sustain a blow from mass deportations, said Ron Hetrick, a senior labor economist at the workforce analytics firm Lightcast. “That would be incredibly disruptive” and cause “a very, very significant hit on home construction,” he said.

Private employers in the field have been adding jobs for the past decade, with employment levels now topping 8 million, over 1 million more since the pandemic, according to payroll processor ADP. But as Hetrick noted, “the average high school student is not aspiring to do this work,” and the existing workforce is aging — the average homebuilder is 57 years old.

Undocumented workers would likely flee ahead of any national deportation effort, Hetrick said, even though many have been in the U.S. for well over a decade. He expects such a policy would trigger an exodus of people with legal authorization, too.

“That’s exactly what happened in Florida,” he said.

Past as prologue

Last year, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, enacted a series of restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers. Many immigrant workers hastily left the state even before the policies took effect, with social media videos showing some construction sites sitting empty.

“These laws show that they have no idea what we do,” said Luciano, a carpenter who is originally from Mexico and has worked on residential builds across South Florida for the past decade.

“No one else would work in the conditions in which we work,” the 40-year-old said in Spanish, asking to be identified by his first name because he lacks legal immigration status, despite living in the U.S. for over 20 years. Workers on jobsites “have an entry time but no exit time,” often logging 70-hour weeks in rain and extreme heat, he said.

Taylor recalled fellow Florida builders’ panic at the time of the statewide crackdown but said he reassured them, “Look, just give it six months. We don’t have enough people to enforce it, so they’re coming back.”

Republican state Rep. Rick Roth, who voted for the measure, later conceded that Florida was unprepared for the destabilization it would cause and urged immigrant residents not to flee, saying the law “is not as bad as you heard.”

Some workers returned after realizing the policies weren’t being rigorously enforced, Taylor said: “Sure enough, now things are more normal.”

DeSantis’ office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

When Arizona in 2010 enacted what were then some of the toughest immigration restrictions in the country, Dunn was working in Tempe as an executive at a construction management firm. As the legislation rolled out, he said, “a lot of people moved away, and they just never came back.”

By the time much of the law was overturned in 2012, he said, “Arizona had a bad rap” relative to other states that “were a lot more open and just less of a hassle to go work in.”

Dunn, a Democrat, said he’s “definitely” backing Vice President Kamala Harris, but other construction executives sounded more divided. Marek, a “lifelong Republican,” declined to share how he’s voting but noted that “a lot of Republicans aren’t voting for Trump.”

Taylor also wouldn’t say which candidate he’s supporting but praised Trump’s ability to “get things done.”

“There are many other issues with the economy that we are fighting daily that have nothing to do with immigration reform,” he said. “I am not a one-policy voter.”

On the plus side, this will drive up home prices and the time frame for selling my place in KC should coincide with the rise.

It would be a good time to cut capital gains taxes too as long as we are making a wish list.

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

Bunch of Trumper assholes driving around in my hood honking their horns by the hospital.
Guy who seemed to be a little "off" was yelling at them to go home to the suburbs.
My guess is most of them came from Indiana.

Forgetting all that, I'm convinced more and more each day that Trump is going to win.
If there is a God and God has control over people, I can't help but wonder why either of them are probably going to be our next President.

[KUTradition]

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/w ... about/amp/

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

Yesterday, I gave a +1 to Donald for his PR stunt. Musk gets a +1 too. "Illegal" or not.

Musk with his daily million dollar giveaway and Donny making fries and working the drive thru got me thinking. They should tell people it you vote for Donny it's free fries at McDonald's (at their expense) during his term, and once a month Donny or Musk will work at a McDonalds and give away a million dollars to a customer.
Maybe pay to rename all McDonald's to just - Donald's? Or MusKDonald's?