Donald Trump tweets tonight, since he has nothing else to do:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 8 hours ago
In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 4 hours ago
Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
EVERYTHING has to go his way.
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Very good. No labels attached, no diagnosis imaged but right on the dot.
I have heard about people being their own worst enemy, but never to this extent.
Russia has absolutely no need to hack his email.
trump makes his own disaster series quite well without help from any one.
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So do you, Rudy.
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He has to set up an alternative narrative should the recount not go his way.
as he would say, “sad. So sad.”
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He always has to win “BIGLY”! Can’t wait until the public gets to tell him “You’re Fired” in a few short years. Wonder how he will take that?
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As I said before, someone ought to take his Twitter account away.
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you worried about him pressing the buttons on his cell phone
Let him play with twitter as much as he wants keeps him away from other buttons
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Instead they are going to give him another Twitter account with a handle POTUS on January 20th. It is expected to double the number of his followers.
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Is there anyone who can keep a leash on this delusional narcissist? God help America.
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Although I support the recount because it is important that we are all certain that no votes are missing or that Trump’s votes do not total 105% of the registered voters in that precinct, I did not expect it to change the outcome. Trump’s tweets make me wonder if there was hanky panky. He certainly went on about the election being “rigged” enough to make you wonder if he knew something.
We now know that the “crooked Hillary” meme was right out of the Karl Rove playbook of turning your own flaws against your opponent. And I can’t help recalling Rove being so certain in 2012 that Romney would win that he embarrassed himself on Fox News. Did he know something that didn’t work out last time?
I am glad there will be a close look so that any weird anomalies are publicized. If a district without any paper trail votes 90% for Trump and the district next door with paper ballot receipts is only 50% Trump, something is off.
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Finally — the beginning of the end? Even if the recount bears no fruit in terms of ridding us, perhaps the members of the Electoral College will see their way clear to not vote him in, Lawrence Lessig and others have written.
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The GOP electors are chosen by Republicans. They will go along with the party and vote for Trump. In NJ, there are 28 electors with equal amounts of Ds and Rs. What, no independent electors? Yet another flaw in the anachronistic electoral college.
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And the Democrat members of the EC are chosen by??? independents? Green Party members? Europeans? And they vote for whomever they please?
Who else would select the Republican EC members but Republicans? Not all states have the same process. In some, nominees are accepted during the State Convention…
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Rudy: Are you a troll?
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Rudy has a great day job. He spends all day posting on this blog. Must be one of those bureaucrats that Trump wants to fire.
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I have a responsibility to spend 8 hours a day on my job. I have a time tracking system on my computer that tells me my efficiency is at 93%. Any issues with that??
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Rudy,
You seem to post every five minutes. How can your time tracker be correct?
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Never having had a job where a computer could tell me I was performing it efficiently, I am not sure how to respond to your statement. I hope you were being facetious.
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Diane: Rudy didn’t get the memo–he sounds like he’s reading from the same one he got a few months back. It’s a one-horse method: Someone criticizes Trump, and he retorts with some version of: “But look at Hillary!” And he’s not reading anything on this blog either that has to do with learning anything–like, for instance, what false equivalence means. Nothing but planned distraction. It’s become predictable, Rudy.
But about Trump, this morning he says he will rescind agreements with Cuba if they don’t blah blah blah. This is a different stage of totalitarianism–as the totalitarian gains more and more power, their “retrospective alibis” turn to extortion-type promises and threats. “If you do this, then, I will do that.” In education, it will start with withdrawing federal funds. The turn to violence has already started in his followers (see Inside Higher Education below)–they still have the law to deal with, but the totalitarian can use the law for now. Later, as he absorbs power . . . what he says is automatically the law by him saying it.
Again, it’s not set in stone, but it has a definite pattern that does more than resonate with what’s going on now.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/28/two-jewish-professors-different-campuses-are-harassed-anti-semitic-threats?mc_cid=2bd3ceee8b&mc_eid=f743ca9d07
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No, Ms. King, I am not a troll. I have stated many times that I am a Republican, but recently one who feels ashamed of what his party is doing. I have as much dislike for trump as many others. But I do not equate all Democrats with Clinton, either. Democrat politicians are as dishonest (Obama has proven that, clearly, as has Hillary Clinton). But because both of these candidates have made promises they never intended to keep, have made statements that needed to be retracted, I do not paint all Democrats with the same brush – as many here do with Republicans.
I reacted to a silly statement with a silly question. What was the reason to write, “Republican EC are selected by the Republicans…” Democrats are selected by Democrats… It’s one of the Duh things… But to make it sound like a bad thing that Republican members of the EC are selected by Republicans??
And I do believe that members of the EC have to follow the rules that each party has in place for the process. Like Clinton wanted to “bind” the super delegates and made impossible for Sanders to get into that mix.
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Rudy,
I would be happy to be equated with Hillary Clinton. I consider her one of the most accomplished women of my lifetime. She is brilliant and she would have been a great president. I don’t recall any promise she made that she couldn’t keep, unlike Donald Trump, who began forgetting his promises as soon as he won a majority of the Electoral College.
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Rudy–you write: “It’s one of the Duh things… But to make it sound like a bad thing that Republican members of the EC are selected by Republicans??”
I didn’t think that; and my guess is neither did many other here who are also familiar with the elections process. So in my case and possibly in many others, what “sounded” to you like the comment was meant to be a bad thing may not have been. It doesn’t even make sense–why would Republicans be allowed to attend the process if Democrats didn’t also have the option or requirement?
It seems to me that it’s the “sound” of your assumption: of ignorance in writers/readers here, that may be the problem? But a troll would do that–always go to the other extreme–instead of conversation, the creation of controversy just for the sake of diversion and needling. And that’s what it “sounds” like to me much of the time.
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Get a grip, Rudy. Sometimes there is no hidden horror behind a comment.
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Rudy: I was responding to another comment, a sincere comment sincerely offered by Nancy Rose. I was not trying to be disrespectful to her. I don’t expect that there will be any faithless GOP electors. We are talking about Trump, and he does belong to the R party, if that’s Ok with you.
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Rudy: The Republican party is NOT a normal party. It stopped being that quite awhile ago. It is a radicalized insurrectionist party hell bent on delegitimizing the Democrats and screwing up government, crippling government so that they (the GOP) can have an excuse to kill off all those social programs that help ordinary Americans and the poor. The GOP has adopted a far right wing libertarian/Tea Party/Ayn Rand ideology. In short, the GOP is an extremist party. Not so the Democrats who have serious faults but they are no where as radical as the GOP. Again, I was responding to someone else that I did not think GOP electors would be faithless or go against Trump. How can you do your job and spend so much time here?
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I will go into this kicking, biting, and screaming by saying that I agree with Rudy’s premise that the GOP is gravely disappointing and the Democrats are just as bad.
BOTH parties need to implode and new political revolutions need to arise. But the American people are the biggest impediment and yet the biggest source of strength and effectiveness of doing so. It will be up to them and their learning curve when it comes to informed, collectivist thinking and pro-activism.
DeVos is the devil. Hillary is a shill. Trump is a chump. The GOP are some alien species, and the Democrats have trunks, large floppy ears, big thick legs, and tiny tails and eyes stocking out of all parts of their arthritic, mutant donkey bodies . . . .
The Democrats USED to represent working class people. They are unrecognizable presently, save for a handful, like Sanders, and he’s not even a real “Democrat”.
Hillary would have been a medium paced poison; Trump and the GOP are a fast acting poison that makes you skip the ER and go right into the morgue.
Lots of work to be done.
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With all due respect, if you think there’s no difference between the Democrat and Republican parties, you are woefully ignorant about American politics.
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I’m with you, Flerp, nor do I think it would serve the American people to destroy their system of government.
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Nancy,
What is CCC-SLP mean? TIA, Duane
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C.C.C. is an abbreviation for Certificate of Clinical Competence. Speech pathologists that have passed a national exam and did a clinical fellowship year with proper accreditation from the American Speech Language and Hearing Association will have those letters after their name.
S.L.P is an abbreviation for Speech-Language Pathologist, a certification awarded by the Americah Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)
If I got it wrong, my apologies in advance.
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Thanks, Joe!
For those of us self-diagnosed as AIID* (will be in the DSM VI) it is very difficult to figure out acronyms, an especially egregious disorder for teachers.
AIID = Acronym Identification Impaired Syndrome
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I have started an organization called NOFEOA, the National Organization for the Elimination of Acronyms. As yet we do not have a POA.
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This is classic abusive behaviour and DT will discredit anyone or anything that challenges him. He’s now grooming us to ignore anyone that stands up to him.
“…Grooming a child to believe that the child is the problem and communicating that publically serves several purposes one of which is that it discredits the child to other family members and friends of the family way before the child ever tries to stand up to abusive treatment which serves to insure that the abuser will never be questioned by other people. .”
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I have to wonder (seriously) if there are lawyers in Washington already taking a hard look at the 25th amendment (i.e. presidential disability.) Lawyers and lawmakers on both side of the aisle.
What if Trump becomes even more deranged while in office? The 25th amendment could be invoked, right?
I had a step-father when I was in high school. He became mentally unbalanced. He had hardening of the arteries or whatever it’s called now. When the hospital did an autopsy, they found the blood flow to his brain seriously blocked with like a chalky substance. Trump is our oldest elected president ever. And, he really does not look healthy.
Here’s a guy writing about the 25th amendment BEFORE the election: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/290204-better-brush-up-on-the-25th-amendment-if-trump-wins
Of course, then would we be stuck with President Pence?
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If Trump has credible proof of voter fraud, he should disclose it. I have no doubt that voter fraud is a much bigger problem than many people and all Democratic activists want to believe. Absent strong voter ID – like other democracies have – and absent credible auditing of election results, no one can claim that voter fraud is almost non-existent. If you don’t audit for irregularities, you won’t find it – in elections, in defense contracting, in public school financial operations, in everything. Election officials always tell us that voter fraud rarely happens, but how can they say that when no one ever audits the process, and when weak internal controls – no Voter ID – exist? I did professional audit work for 12 years, and every organization I audited had much stricter procedures to prevent fraud than does our electoral machinery.
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They do audit the process. It’s done by county election boards. Anyone can sit in on the audit too- you just have to ask. We regularly have observers of the audit in this county.
They do the audit before they certify the vote to the Sec of State. The vote total you see on election night isn’t certified.
“Fraud” has a specific meaning. It includes intent to deceive. The vast majority of votes that are invalidated are not “fraud”- they’re voter error. People vote in the wrong precinct or don’t file a change of address when they move.
People like Donald Trump do a real disservice to the public when they don’t know what they’re talking about and spread misinformation.
He should get off Twitter and visit a Bd of Elections in NYC. They can tell the President how voting works.
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I agree the Bush / Cheney administration must really have been more incompetent than we thought . They knew there was massive in person voter fraud. They went looking for it for years and found none .The only thing they found was a few dozen felons who voted when they were not entitled to vote .
Delusion and incompetence seem to be the hallmark of our Right wing party.
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“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.” [variously attributed]
True enough. But mix in malice with incompetence and delusion and you get…
The subject of this posting.
😎
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I’m dreading the anti-public school political campaign that will be coming out of DC. They’re all marching along lock-step with DeVos. It will be epic. The full weight of the federal government + the ed reform echo chamber all busily working against schools in the “public sector”.
Do we have to let these people into public schools when parachute into town to sell an anti-public school agenda? It seems unfair to allow them to campaign against public schools IN public schools. What exactly do they contribute to public schools that justifies our serving as their hosts and photo op props?
Would charter schools host politicians who are anti-charter? Why do public schools have to?
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How funny is it that the President who just paid out 25 million to make a fraud case go away is accusing other people of fraud.
They should check his vote. He’s got a history of defrauding people.
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He has a history of projecting his acts and thoughts on others.
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Chiara: which brings to mind the question…
What does a very old and very dead and very Irish guy have to do with a very old and very dead and very French guy?
They knew Donald Trump before there was a Donald Trump.
“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
And when there is $ucce$$ involved [$tudent or otherwise], payouts and payoffs and pay to play and pay-to-go-away is just part of the cost of doing bizness, especially when you are doing your bidness on everyone else:
“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing. ” [Edmund Burke]
Question answered.
😎
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Fits CLinton like a glove… Fits many politicians like a glove, actually. Not sure why only one is picked on for this…
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Rudy: in case you missed it, Trump is the president elect and a vicious demagogue.
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Have I ever denied that??? I wholeheartedly agree with the descriptions! I compared his speeches to early 1930’s speeches by Himmler and Hitler BEFORE the State caucus
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I play no favorites.
But when The Donald BIGLY makes HIS OWN BAD SELF stand out from the pack…
I answer the call of duty and give him credit for caricaturing himself in the most self-wounding way.
He’s a WINNER in being a LOSER!
If only, only, he had paid even a little attention to Homer [the Greek bard] and not just Homer [Simpson] he would have done himself a world of good—
“Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.”
Still good advice from a very old and very dead and very Greek guy.
😎
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KrazyTA: Here’s the thing: If you get caught in the corner with your pants down, just open your wallet and pay them off. And if you don’t have the money, too bad for you, loser. It’s the little people who go to jail and, BTW, who don’t write the laws but must be governed by them. “Not me.”
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Catherine Blanche King:
How times have changed! Remember when one of the exemplars of bad attitudes and behavior was Leona Helmsley: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes”?
Well, under the category of “it takes one to know one” is this other bit of wisdom from the Queen of Mean:
“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue was notarized.”
😎
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Yes–it was a deliberate reference to the Helmsley quote.
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Where did you find that quote?! Perfect!
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Trump is no dummy and his tweets are not funny but, rather, part and parcel of his fascist agenda. Reasonable people and the mainstream media will read and report on these tweets and point out their lack of any factual basis, but millions of Trump’s supporters will accept at face value his assertion that “millions” (read: Illegals, African-Americans, Hispanics) voted illegally. This racist appeal, along with Trump’s admitted love of war and appointment of retired generals to every possible position he can think of, the Rights politicization of the FBI and the Republicans’ embrace of voter suppression laws which he supports, all of these actions clearly brand him a fascist. Will our Constitution protect our freedoms in the coming years? One wonders.
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Symbolic gestures are all that matter in a post-fact world.
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“. . . a post-fact world.”
Surely a post-meaning phrase, eh!f
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A constructed world view where facts are incidental. Here’s a good example:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2016/10/speaking-truth-power-journalism-post-fact-era-161016112831614.html
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Post-fact = what I call “idiology”
Idiology (n.) Belief based in error, falsehood and superstition, e.g., religious beliefs. The state of mind of most modern Americans. The ideology of idiots (see below).
IDIOT, n.
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line. (from Brother Ambrose and his Devil’s Dictionary)
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Lying is Trump’s con. The negative attention elicits outrage & umbrage from his enemies that disturbed individuals thrive on. This will be an administration of lies & more lies & outrage. Floyd Brown, an associate of Trump’s consultants, runs fake news sites w/more traffic than NPR via Facebook links. Brown produced the Willie Horton ads. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/laura-ingraham-lifezette/
It seems like the legit media outlets are falling by the wayside as these crazy fake ones are coming up. They are like kudzu taking over everything.
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EVIL!
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@Real Trump is KIDISENT. It’s a president-elect who acts like an unreasonable 6-year-old appearing in “Donaldvin & Dumbs.” I bet Alec Baldwin will have more time to feature a Trump impersonator.
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It’s post-fact but it’s worse than that: it’s also the concerted creation of future “facts” that fit the needs of the totalitarian. Trump’s Tweets are a more examples of what Hannah Arendt calls creating a “retrospective alibi.”
But here’s the main thing–Trump is nothing without the willingness and complicity of his followers–some of whom are just overwhelmed and ignored and have been for a long time. Trump’s delusional and narcissistic mentality is directly related to the needs of those followers (some based in the reality of the times, some not–many are just hard-working Americans but fishes out of water when it comes to political malfeasance); and, of course, his mentality is directly related to the sycophants who surround him, some of whom are well-meaning and some who are just downright evil.
Trump’s present tweets are feeding the present vacuum of his followers with a narrative that they want and even need to believe–the one they can depend on LATER when events unfold in ways that could confuse them (with real facts) if they had no “retrospective alibi” to fall back on. With the alibi in place, however, and the denigration of his “enemy,” (real truth and those who purvey it when it emerges), he thinks he cannot lose.
From my previous note referring to her text: The totalitarian is “the greatest” and will “do the greatest things;” (the future: none of which can be proven or dis-proven) and so sets out doing so by denying, denigrating, and destroying all of the evidence and competition that would or could prove otherwise. The totalitarian speaks the language of a nonscientific science and makes for himself a “retrospective alibi.” The death of truth, or in today’s language, the emergence of a post-truth or post-fact universe. And “those who are not in my camp are worthless anyway” (Hitler 1939/p. 361).
Whether Trump knows it or not, and though written in and for another time, Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” is his playbook. But like all playbooks, within such movements are the inherent weaknesses and ways to head off it’s maturation. It just needs to be adapted to our time.
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You are so popular, popular, to me……can’t you seee…
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Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter for his Art of the Deal best-seller that was the basis for his reality TV show “The Apprentice,” answered Trump’s Sunday tweets with:
“Trump loses it whenever he feels vulnerable, which is often.
Must recognize reality: We have a president-elect who is mentally unbalanced.”
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Allen: It’s interesting too that the “alt”-right (aka fascists) and the oligarchs like the Koch Brothers and DeVos all want the same thing: to dismantle democracy, in particular, this one.
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The far right xtian conservative evangelicals have been at this from the 70s onward. One can admire their long term strategies and goals and “grit” in accomplishing those goals. This election is the fruition of that xtian desire to install an xtian caliphate in the US of A. Trump being the useful idiot to accomplish these goals. Just look at his(sic) picks.
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Duane: “Strange bedfellows,” but also a powerful and dangerous mixture. The end of it, whenever it occurs and if it occurs (which it likely will considering the explosive characters involved, God being one of those characters) is reflected in the fact that the whole thing got away from Carl Rove who talked against Trump at least just after the primary. Be careful what you wish for, Carl, lest the Gods decide to provide.
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Minor correction:
“Both parties have been driving the country in the same direction for decades now SINCE UNCA RONNIE RAYGUN, and towards the same destination.”
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“Only a handful of fanatics were actually voting “for” anyone.”
Hmmm, I guess I’m a fanatic then as I voted my conscience and voted for the Green Party and Jill Stein.
Pretty sad that voting for someone makes one a fanatic. Should I expect any different thought in modern American political discourse? I’d be stupid to!
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Mr. Trump:
Makes statements with no factual proof or evidence and the media reports it. Shame on them.
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I think this most recent Twitter eruption by Trump is to deflect from the very real concerns about his conflicts of interest. Notice that no one is talking about that now–just his tweets.
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