… A sunny disposition?

It’s correct, as much as any English is correct, but not typically spoken naturally like that.

The press (newspapers) has an idiosyncratic grammar, probably born of maximising space in a newspaper column. Headlines are often grammatical nightmares, body copy less so.

One could think of it as a form of semantic compression.

Yeah, doing that alone is incredibly stupid. She’s probably luck not to have been shot.

“There’s only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.” – Nigel Powers

I too am an etymology geek, I had to look up “aptronym” (I already knew there was a word for it, but couldn’t remember it) but already knew “patronym”. I can occasionally work out the approximate Latin roots of words and take a stab at what to search for.

Regarding names’ positions moving around… that’s just people. People name their children all sorts of stupid things that eventually become normal.

Actually no, I’ve not heard of them. I’m not American, can I get a TL;DR? From connect in guessing some kind of “think tank”?

Jackson is a patronymic last name: Jack’s son.

Smith is an aptronymic last name: a smith.

So yeah, bang on.

I set up a panel of people that I can fire when they don’t tell me that I should fire the people I already want to fire.

chef’s kiss

Like that orange idiot would take anyone’s advice ;-)

Doesn’t the Commander in Chief already have that authority?

“Somebody shit in my pants.”

That all sounds like it’d negatively affect my market capitalisation indexed quarterly bonus.

LOL, which one?

Perhaps they kept asking questions that the irritated the PM.

American electorate takes a shit with its pants on

American electorate: “Somebody shit in my pants!”

Needs more plants.

… the US doesn’t have a monopoly on such behavior.

Of course! Though I can’t think of another democratic country that quite as readily and enthusiastically wear political affiliations on their sleeve (literally).

It’s a dedication to a team that I personally only experience in terms of the dominant sports.

It’s asinine how plausible this is.

My take from the outside (i.e. not American), so hopefully I can be objective.

American politics and therefore the American electorate appears almost entirely tribal: you’re either on the red or the blue team (or a third party team that is sufficiently small to ignore.)

The swing states just happen to be states where the balance between red and blue is pretty even, allowing outsized impact of relatively minor variances in voter turnout.

Tribalism within the red team appears far far stronger than within the blue team. Strong enough that anti-democratic actions that support the team are acceptable; e.g. voter suppression, gerrymandering, failing to adjust the electoral college based on asymmetric population growth.

The states’ electoral systems are corrupted not by anti-democratic actions, but because such actions are possible. The crisis is that the system that was required when states had to send representatives in person by rail or horse to the capital is obsolete.

TL;DR: y’all need some constitutional amendment and electoral reform.

That’s why you need to earn a living, because you don’t deserve to exist unless you sell your labour.