Posts for: slatten49
Apr 2, 2024 15:44:35 #
(Main)
XXX wrote:
https://renewedright.com/donald-trump-couldnt-believe-his-eyes-when-he-saw-this-shocking-new-poll/
And before you down it because it's a fox poll I will say this. Fox polls where the most accurate in 2020.
And before you down it because it's a fox poll I will say this. Fox polls where the most accurate in 2020.
Really
https://www.google.com/search?q=themostaccuratepollingin2020&rlz=1C1VDKB_enUS1017US1017&oq=themostaccuratepollingin2020&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTEzMDMwajBqNKgCALACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1
https://www.google.com/search?q=howaccuratewerefoxpollsin2020&rlz=1C1VDKB_enUS1017US1017&oq=howaccur&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggAEEUYOzIGCAAQRRg7MgYIARBFGDkyCQgCEAAYDRiABDIJCAMQABgNGIAEMgkIBBAAGA0YgAQyCQgFEAAYDRiABDIJCAYQABgNGIAEMgkIBxAAGA0YgAQyCQgIEAAYDRiABDIJCAkQABgNGIAE0gEINjg5NWowajSoAgCwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Apr 2, 2024 11:50:28 #
(Main)
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/baltimore-bridge-collapse-immigrant-deaths-20240328.html
A ship crashed into a Baltimore bridge and demolished the lies about immigration, and despite the right's ridiculous DEI conspiracy theories, the Baltimore bridge disaster reminded us that immigrants are what makes America great.
by Will Bunch...Published Mar. 28, 2024
From the day in the mid-2000s when a then-20-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval crossed the border into America, he never stopped working. The youngest of eight children, Suazo was fleeing numbing poverty and a dead-end career path in Azacualpa, a small rural village in the western mountains of Honduras.
The undocumented Suazo wound up in Greater Baltimore, a magnet for Central American refugees with its relatively cheap housing for the bustling Eastern Seaboard, a friendly climate toward migrants, and lots of opportunity. With American dreams of entrepreneurship, he took menial jobs like clearing brush, then launched a package delivery service, and when C****-** ended that, started working overnight construction for a Baltimore contractor, Brawner Brothers.
Suazo was described by friends and family as happy, outgoing, and tireless. He had to be. While supporting a wife and two kids, he was also sending $600 to $800 a month back to Azacualpa, enough to help family members buy a small hotel and even support youth soccer. In Baltimore, he was what his brother called “the fundamental pillar” for a growing number of relatives who made it to Maryland. Home from the grueling construction work at 5 a.m., he was out working again by noon, picking up extra dollars cleaning yards, painting houses, or landscaping.
“He always told us that you had to triple your effort to get ahead,” his brother, Martín Suazo Sandoval, told the Associated Press from Honduras. “He said it didn’t matter what time or where the job was, you had to be where the work was.”
At 1:28 a.m. Tuesday, the work was on the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Suazo and seven men with stories very much like his — migrants from the neighboring countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico — were filling potholes on the region’s major span on a raw March night. They were doing a backbreaking job at a wretched hour, one many other Americans simply can’t or won’t do ― all so their neighbors could drive safely to their warm, comfortable office cubicles in the dawn’s early light.
When the captain of the massive container ship Dali radioed that the vessel had lost power and was careening toward the bridge, police had just enough time to block traffic, saving an unknown number of lives. But they ran out of the split seconds needed to rescue the Brawner Brothers crew.
Suazo, 38, has yet to be found in the frigid Patapsco River and is presumed dead, along with five of his coworkers. Late Wednesday, recovery workers found two of those men — Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, originally from Mexico, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, a Guatemalan immigrant — in a red pickup, suggesting a frantic effort to get off the bridge as the ship approached. Incredibly, two men survived the plunge, including one who refused medical aid and walked away — either a statement about his fortitude or his immigration status.
In normal times, the deaths of these six migrants would serve as a tragic parable about how our American landscape was etched into existence by the big dreams, hard-earned sweat, and occasionally the sacrifice of each new generation of Maynor Suazos as they came from Ireland, then from Italy, then from Honduras and all over the globe.
But these are not normal times. Even before the first divers had arrived on the chaotic scene, an army of pampered coffee shop keyboard commandos and a few overpaid TV hairdos were denying the reality that the Baltimore bridge disaster was a tragic disruption of the diversity that keeps America running. Instead, lacking not just evidence but basic sanity, the worst people on your screen claimed the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) took out the Key Bridge.
“This is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the wellbeing and security of citizens,” tweeted a GOP Utah state representative, Phil Lyman, who is running for governor, atop a post hailing a new Baltimore port commissioner who is Black. A former Republican lawmaker in Florida, Anthony Sabatini, posted a video of the bridge accident with the bizarre caption, “DEI did this.” Another right-winger posted the dead-of-night news conference by Baltimore’s Black, youthful chief executive, Brandon Scott, and called him a “DEI mayor.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. Over the coming months, we’ll learn who’s really to blame for the bridge collapse, and those questions won’t center on DEI but the modern plagues of capitalist cost-cutting and a diminished government that’s long ignored critical infrastructure like the Key Bridge. We should be asking the cargo giant Maersk, which leased the ship, about its safety record after it was sanctioned for blocking whistleblowers from talking to the Coast Guard. Or why state and federal officials did little or nothing to modernize the bridge supports as the cargo ships entering Baltimore Harbor kept getting bigger and bigger.
One of the biggest t***hs about 21st-century America is that while our corrupt institutions fail us, the strength of everyday people nevertheless persists. The many heroes in Tuesday’s dead-of-night darkness were the ones we rebranded as “essential workers” in 2020: the ship’s crew members who calmly warned about the looming crash, the cops who raced out in seconds to block the road, and, yes, the dads out filling potholes at 1:28 a.m.
But why praise this, dare I say it, diverse collection of American heroes when you can score some cheap internet points against DEI? The problem runs deep. The Baltimore bridge tragedy came at a moment when the broader U.S. e*****rate is ranking “immigration” as the number one issue in the 2024 e******n. That’s fueled by fearmongering over a humanitarian crisis at the southern border by GOP candidates, led by standard-bearer Donald Trump, and by Fox News hosts like Maria Bartiromo, who insanely questioned if the ship crashed because of “the wide-open border.”
The immigration debate America ought to be having is one that safely manages asylum-seekers at the border while creating a more efficient pathway to citizenship and the American dream for the likes of Suazo, who was said to be close to gaining legal U.S. residency and making plans to return to Honduras to complete the process.
Instead, an ex-president who launched his political career in 2015 by claiming Mexican migration was larded with murderers and rapists — and who doubles down as he seeks to return to the White House by telling his mostly white rally crowds that today’s refugees are “not people” — is echoing the worst tyrants of the last century by inventing demons to gain power.
In reality, it’s hard to imagine how the D.C.-Baltimore Beltway region where Trump so desperately seeks to return could even function without immigrants. Gustavo Torres, executive director of the Baltimore-based Latino and migrant support group Casa, told me on Wednesday that some 39% of the region’s 331,000 construction workers are immigrants, most from Central America or Mexico.
These new arrivals are willing to take some of the most dangerous jobs in America, with construction ranked “a high-hazard industry” by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration because of risks like falling or getting crushed under heavy equipment. It’s revealing that while Latinos comprise about a third of the U.S. workforce in construction, they accounted for more than half of those who died in falls in 2022, 286 out of 423. The way Suazo and his five coworkers died was both shocking and yet numbingly routine.
Casa’s Torres, who knew Suazo and one of the other missing men, El Salvadoran native Miguel Luna, now mourns not only the loss of his friends but also the toxic climate in which they died. “Our families and these workers feel under attack all the time by media and people angry about immigration,” he said, “and the reality you see is the contributions from our families and community — not only in construction but in health or education and other areas.”
When the Dali cargo ship demolished that bridge support on Tuesday, it also obliterated all the ridiculous lies and myths our demagogues have been spreading around immigration. There were no sex traffickers aboard the Key Bridge that night. Nobody was dealing f******l. They were not “animals,” but fathers and husbands like Suazo and Luna, whose wife occasionally showed up in her food truck to bring the men tacos and pupusas. They were filling potholes so their children could have an even better life.
These six workers who perished were not “poisoning the blood of our country,” they were replenishing it. This is a moment of clarity when we need to reject the national disease of xenophobia and restore our faith in the United States as a beacon for the best people like Suazo. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.
A ship crashed into a Baltimore bridge and demolished the lies about immigration, and despite the right's ridiculous DEI conspiracy theories, the Baltimore bridge disaster reminded us that immigrants are what makes America great.
by Will Bunch...Published Mar. 28, 2024
From the day in the mid-2000s when a then-20-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval crossed the border into America, he never stopped working. The youngest of eight children, Suazo was fleeing numbing poverty and a dead-end career path in Azacualpa, a small rural village in the western mountains of Honduras.
The undocumented Suazo wound up in Greater Baltimore, a magnet for Central American refugees with its relatively cheap housing for the bustling Eastern Seaboard, a friendly climate toward migrants, and lots of opportunity. With American dreams of entrepreneurship, he took menial jobs like clearing brush, then launched a package delivery service, and when C****-** ended that, started working overnight construction for a Baltimore contractor, Brawner Brothers.
Suazo was described by friends and family as happy, outgoing, and tireless. He had to be. While supporting a wife and two kids, he was also sending $600 to $800 a month back to Azacualpa, enough to help family members buy a small hotel and even support youth soccer. In Baltimore, he was what his brother called “the fundamental pillar” for a growing number of relatives who made it to Maryland. Home from the grueling construction work at 5 a.m., he was out working again by noon, picking up extra dollars cleaning yards, painting houses, or landscaping.
“He always told us that you had to triple your effort to get ahead,” his brother, Martín Suazo Sandoval, told the Associated Press from Honduras. “He said it didn’t matter what time or where the job was, you had to be where the work was.”
At 1:28 a.m. Tuesday, the work was on the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Suazo and seven men with stories very much like his — migrants from the neighboring countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico — were filling potholes on the region’s major span on a raw March night. They were doing a backbreaking job at a wretched hour, one many other Americans simply can’t or won’t do ― all so their neighbors could drive safely to their warm, comfortable office cubicles in the dawn’s early light.
When the captain of the massive container ship Dali radioed that the vessel had lost power and was careening toward the bridge, police had just enough time to block traffic, saving an unknown number of lives. But they ran out of the split seconds needed to rescue the Brawner Brothers crew.
Suazo, 38, has yet to be found in the frigid Patapsco River and is presumed dead, along with five of his coworkers. Late Wednesday, recovery workers found two of those men — Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, originally from Mexico, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, a Guatemalan immigrant — in a red pickup, suggesting a frantic effort to get off the bridge as the ship approached. Incredibly, two men survived the plunge, including one who refused medical aid and walked away — either a statement about his fortitude or his immigration status.
In normal times, the deaths of these six migrants would serve as a tragic parable about how our American landscape was etched into existence by the big dreams, hard-earned sweat, and occasionally the sacrifice of each new generation of Maynor Suazos as they came from Ireland, then from Italy, then from Honduras and all over the globe.
But these are not normal times. Even before the first divers had arrived on the chaotic scene, an army of pampered coffee shop keyboard commandos and a few overpaid TV hairdos were denying the reality that the Baltimore bridge disaster was a tragic disruption of the diversity that keeps America running. Instead, lacking not just evidence but basic sanity, the worst people on your screen claimed the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) took out the Key Bridge.
“This is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the wellbeing and security of citizens,” tweeted a GOP Utah state representative, Phil Lyman, who is running for governor, atop a post hailing a new Baltimore port commissioner who is Black. A former Republican lawmaker in Florida, Anthony Sabatini, posted a video of the bridge accident with the bizarre caption, “DEI did this.” Another right-winger posted the dead-of-night news conference by Baltimore’s Black, youthful chief executive, Brandon Scott, and called him a “DEI mayor.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. Over the coming months, we’ll learn who’s really to blame for the bridge collapse, and those questions won’t center on DEI but the modern plagues of capitalist cost-cutting and a diminished government that’s long ignored critical infrastructure like the Key Bridge. We should be asking the cargo giant Maersk, which leased the ship, about its safety record after it was sanctioned for blocking whistleblowers from talking to the Coast Guard. Or why state and federal officials did little or nothing to modernize the bridge supports as the cargo ships entering Baltimore Harbor kept getting bigger and bigger.
One of the biggest t***hs about 21st-century America is that while our corrupt institutions fail us, the strength of everyday people nevertheless persists. The many heroes in Tuesday’s dead-of-night darkness were the ones we rebranded as “essential workers” in 2020: the ship’s crew members who calmly warned about the looming crash, the cops who raced out in seconds to block the road, and, yes, the dads out filling potholes at 1:28 a.m.
But why praise this, dare I say it, diverse collection of American heroes when you can score some cheap internet points against DEI? The problem runs deep. The Baltimore bridge tragedy came at a moment when the broader U.S. e*****rate is ranking “immigration” as the number one issue in the 2024 e******n. That’s fueled by fearmongering over a humanitarian crisis at the southern border by GOP candidates, led by standard-bearer Donald Trump, and by Fox News hosts like Maria Bartiromo, who insanely questioned if the ship crashed because of “the wide-open border.”
The immigration debate America ought to be having is one that safely manages asylum-seekers at the border while creating a more efficient pathway to citizenship and the American dream for the likes of Suazo, who was said to be close to gaining legal U.S. residency and making plans to return to Honduras to complete the process.
Instead, an ex-president who launched his political career in 2015 by claiming Mexican migration was larded with murderers and rapists — and who doubles down as he seeks to return to the White House by telling his mostly white rally crowds that today’s refugees are “not people” — is echoing the worst tyrants of the last century by inventing demons to gain power.
In reality, it’s hard to imagine how the D.C.-Baltimore Beltway region where Trump so desperately seeks to return could even function without immigrants. Gustavo Torres, executive director of the Baltimore-based Latino and migrant support group Casa, told me on Wednesday that some 39% of the region’s 331,000 construction workers are immigrants, most from Central America or Mexico.
These new arrivals are willing to take some of the most dangerous jobs in America, with construction ranked “a high-hazard industry” by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration because of risks like falling or getting crushed under heavy equipment. It’s revealing that while Latinos comprise about a third of the U.S. workforce in construction, they accounted for more than half of those who died in falls in 2022, 286 out of 423. The way Suazo and his five coworkers died was both shocking and yet numbingly routine.
Casa’s Torres, who knew Suazo and one of the other missing men, El Salvadoran native Miguel Luna, now mourns not only the loss of his friends but also the toxic climate in which they died. “Our families and these workers feel under attack all the time by media and people angry about immigration,” he said, “and the reality you see is the contributions from our families and community — not only in construction but in health or education and other areas.”
When the Dali cargo ship demolished that bridge support on Tuesday, it also obliterated all the ridiculous lies and myths our demagogues have been spreading around immigration. There were no sex traffickers aboard the Key Bridge that night. Nobody was dealing f******l. They were not “animals,” but fathers and husbands like Suazo and Luna, whose wife occasionally showed up in her food truck to bring the men tacos and pupusas. They were filling potholes so their children could have an even better life.
These six workers who perished were not “poisoning the blood of our country,” they were replenishing it. This is a moment of clarity when we need to reject the national disease of xenophobia and restore our faith in the United States as a beacon for the best people like Suazo. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.
Apr 2, 2024 07:20:27 #
(Main)
LogicallyRight wrote:
All of that from a long winded lying blow hard Tro... (show quote)
A truly introspective assessment of who/what you are, LR...a troll of the worst magnitude. But, in your defense, you're not the only one on OPP. Hopefully, you'll keep looking inward for improvement.
Hopefully.
Apr 1, 2024 12:11:06 #
The philosophy professor was standing in front of his class and had some subjects in front of him. When the class began without a word he picked up a large empty glass bowl and began to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the bowl was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then took a box of small pebbles and poured them into a bowl, shaking it lightly. The pebbles rolled and filled the open space between the golf balls. He asked the students again if the bowl was full. They agreed that it was.
Then he took a box of sand and poured it into a bowl. Of course, the sand filled everything else. He asked once more if the bowl was full.
The students answered with a unanimous "Yes".
The professor then pulled two beers from under the table and poured all the contents into a container, filling the empty space between the sand. Students laughed…
"Now," the professor said when the laughter subsided, "I want you to imagine that this glass bowl represents your life. Golf balls are important things: your family, your children, your health, your friends and favorite passions, even if all the rest is lost and only they are left, your life will always be fulfilled.
Pebbles are other things like your business, your house and your car. Sand is everything else, little things.
"If you put sand in a glass bowl first," he continued, "there will be no room for pebbles or golf balls. The same is true in life."
If you spend all your time and energy on small things, you will never have room for things that are important to you.
Pay attention to the things that are most important for your happiness.
Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit grandparents. You go to dinner with your spouse. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.
Take care of your golf balls, put them first.
Set your priorities. Everything else is just sand.
One of the students raised his hand and asked what is beer?
The professor laughed and said: "I'm glad you asked that. Beer only shows that no matter how fulfilled and full of obligations your life is, there is always time for a couple of beers with friends."
The professor then took a box of small pebbles and poured them into a bowl, shaking it lightly. The pebbles rolled and filled the open space between the golf balls. He asked the students again if the bowl was full. They agreed that it was.
Then he took a box of sand and poured it into a bowl. Of course, the sand filled everything else. He asked once more if the bowl was full.
The students answered with a unanimous "Yes".
The professor then pulled two beers from under the table and poured all the contents into a container, filling the empty space between the sand. Students laughed…
"Now," the professor said when the laughter subsided, "I want you to imagine that this glass bowl represents your life. Golf balls are important things: your family, your children, your health, your friends and favorite passions, even if all the rest is lost and only they are left, your life will always be fulfilled.
Pebbles are other things like your business, your house and your car. Sand is everything else, little things.
"If you put sand in a glass bowl first," he continued, "there will be no room for pebbles or golf balls. The same is true in life."
If you spend all your time and energy on small things, you will never have room for things that are important to you.
Pay attention to the things that are most important for your happiness.
Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit grandparents. You go to dinner with your spouse. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.
Take care of your golf balls, put them first.
Set your priorities. Everything else is just sand.
One of the students raised his hand and asked what is beer?
The professor laughed and said: "I'm glad you asked that. Beer only shows that no matter how fulfilled and full of obligations your life is, there is always time for a couple of beers with friends."
Apr 1, 2024 07:17:46 #
Apr 1, 2024 07:11:06 #
(Main)
proud republican wrote:
3 topics that I have posted are my last.. It's time for me to quit this site.. I appreciate all of you for your comment to ALL my topics.. I will miss you ALL and maybe I will return some day soon, not sure.. But for now, I say GOOD BYE!!
Take care of yourself, PR. At some point life, everyone needs a break.
Enjoy your time off. Come back if and when you're ready.
Mar 31, 2024 10:06:20 #
(Main)
Liberty Tree wrote:
You are describing yourself. You think opinion is fact. Of course, you always believe you are higher than anyone else.
I'm devastated. 
Mar 31, 2024 09:53:40 #
(Main)
Rose42 wrote:
That goes for both sides of the aisle
Things sure do get silly.
Things sure do get silly.
Fair 'nuf, Rose...and, they surely do.
Mar 31, 2024 06:49:06 #
(Main)
Kickaha wrote:
Trump has promised to return our liberties. Biden and the Democrats have been working to take our freedoms from us. But that's okay, they tell us it's for our own good. Forget that BS. I stand with Ben Franklin, he who would trade freedom for temporary security, deserves neither freedom or security.
Sir, with your recent flurry of postings, it's good to see you back on the forum.
Mar 31, 2024 05:55:24 #
AuntiE wrote:
Damn, HHIC, I knew you were a party animal...but, to what extent, I hadn't known. 
Mar 31, 2024 05:49:39 #
(Main)
AuntiE wrote:
Yeah, and you never danced one time with me! 😳🤓😎😂 That is forgiven because you made sure my hydration level was where it should be.
I do regret never dancing with you.
But, in all fairness, you seemed to be okay dancing with every other guy in the room. You never gave me an opportunity to cut in.Yet, I was proud to share that time with you.
Mar 30, 2024 23:00:38 #
(Main)
Lily wrote:
So he shouldn’t concern himself that he disrespected Vietnam Veterans by declaring they had low IQs.Youre as bad as he is if not worse.
As AuntiE is a long-time friend of mine and I read above that he hurt her feelings, I checked into his latest postings and read his comment about "low IQ" recruiting. Wrong as he was, he did apologize. Trump has never apologized for his "suckers and losers" comments...
https://www.pghcitypaper.com/podcasts/lynn-cullen-live-kelly-confirms-trumps-suckers-and-losers-comments-10-03-23-24687116
AuntiE was a guest of mine at a Veteran's Honor Flight get-together in Washington D.C. in October of 2022. She knows full well that I stand proudly with my Brother's-In-Arms of that conflict and always have.
At that gathering, I was able to hook her up with men who served with her brother.Mar 30, 2024 22:39:50 #
(Main)
RascalRiley wrote:
To any I have offended I apologize.
To those that want Trump to take over, when he does I hope you appreciate less freedom and liberty, but hey, he will own the libs, aka everyone.
And to those that see the insanity of choosing a narcissists, v**e blue.
To those that want Trump to take over, when he does I hope you appreciate less freedom and liberty, but hey, he will own the libs, aka everyone.
And to those that see the insanity of choosing a narcissists, v**e blue.
You shouldn't concern yourself if you offended the snowflakes and cupcakes that frequent the other side of the aisle, Rascal. Many only know how to dish it out, but can't take being challenged with t***hs, facts, logic and/or reason other than their own.
Mar 30, 2024 22:16:03 #
Mar 30, 2024 22:13:00 #
(Main)
LogicallyRight wrote:
Sounds pretty good to me. And I lived in those days.
Yeah, so did I.