The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe and other media report that Trump’s private lawyer paid $130,000 to a porn actress to assure her silence during the 2016 campaign about their relationship in 2006. He married Melanie in 2005.
Surely this will not bother his evangelical base, which is devoted to family values. It does, however, require a redefinition of family values.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump’s base believes whatever he says. If he says he didn’t do it, they will believe him. If he said he did it for them, they’d worship him even more. To them, Trump walks on (polluted) water. Who needs health insurance when they have a “stable genius” as president that is great at everything. If he said he was Jesus Christ reborn and could heal the sick, they’d believe that too.
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You denigrate those of us who profess Christ as Savior and respect Donald Trump as a “man” who serves as President of the United States. We do know the difference.
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Polly,
You don’t seem to know the difference between “serving” as President and denigrating the highest office of the land. Most Americans understood this when they strongly supported Richard Nixon’s resignation after it was clear he used the office to obstruct justice and cover up the misdeeds and illegal activity of his campaign. And the fact Nixon might have won without his campaign engaging in illegal activity was irrelevant to all but the most corrupt Americans.
I’m sure there were a few Americans who professed Christ as Savior who continued to insist that Richard Nixon should be able to obstruct justice and break any laws he wanted to. And there were even more Americans who professed Christ as Savior and who understood that Nixon — and no President — should be worshipped as if he were Christ and can do no wrong.
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Polly,
Do you note a difference between DJT’s “Do unto others” and New Testament “Do unto others …”?
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If you really knew who Christ was, there is no way you could respect Donald Trump.
Conclusion, you have no idea who Christ was.
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Polly: “You denigrate those of us who profess Christ as Savior and respect Donald Trump as a “man” who serves as President of the United States.”——
Respecting Christ is in no way a directive to respect DJT. He is openly ignorant, denigrates blacks and brown people, abuses women, makes fun of disabled people and can’t take any kind of criticism without Tweeting horribly abusive comments back. Our highest office in the land should have a person whose vocabulary is higher than that of a fourth grader.
……………………………
From The New York Times:
Trump’s Threat to Democracy
He is unique among American presidents in the last century, two Harvard professors say.
Two political scientists specializing in how democracies decay and die have compiled four warning signs to determine if a political leader is a dangerous authoritarian:
The leader shows only a weak commitment to democratic rules. 2. He or she denies the legitimacy of opponents. 3. He or she tolerates violence. 4. He or she shows some willingness to curb civil liberties or the media.
“A politician who meets even one of these criteria is cause for concern,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors at Harvard, write in their important new book, “How Democracies Die,” which will be released next week.
“With the exception of Richard Nixon, no major-party presidential candidate met even one of these four criteria over the last century,” they say, which sounds reassuring. Unfortunately, they have one update: “Donald Trump met them all.”
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Polly, with all the lies, and the overt racism, and undermining of democratic values, and the repudiation of the teachings of The Gospels, what – exactly – is there about Trump for ‘Christians’ to respect?
Your hypocrisy runs deep.
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Did Trump respect Obama as a “man” who served as president? NO! Trump spent years promoting that despicable birther nonsense and lies. That alone should have disqualified him from being president (in a rational society without the *****y electoral college).
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Joe,
Thank goodness for the electoral college and for those “irrational” voters for Trump – it prevented us from Hillary. I would expound further but Diane did request that Hillary’s loss as a thread here come to an end.
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Anyone who respects Donald Trump as a “man” who serves as President of the United States should be denigrated. Their Christianity is beside the point.
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Wasn’t JC born in a “stable”, too?
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That’s what his p.r. team would have us believe.
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From what I’ve read about JC, yes, but there is a huge difference between being born a baby infant from a virgin mother and allegedly being the son of God or God and a pile of dung that ends up being named Trump that was dropped by a rutting pig or donkey as a blob of steaming crap on a hay-strewn, dirt floor.
“The only place that Joseph and Mary can find to stay is in a stable, where donkeys and other animals are kept. Jesus is born there. Mary wraps him in strips of cloth and lays him in a manger, the place where food for the animals is put.”
If it was a donkey in heat that dropped tRump, then I’m sure Mary and Joseph kicked the dung piles as far from the newborn JC as possible. Then I’m sure that Mary and Joseph had to stand guard over the infant JC to protect him from being eaten by the infant pig or donkey named tRump that crawled out of the pile of dung after it was born.
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So sensitive and eloquent, Lloyd. Took my breath away.
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I don’t recall Lloyd’s version of the manger story, but maybe I went to the wrong church.
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That’s not my version. I found that one through a Google search, but I’m not surprised.
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of October 2017 the full Bible has been translated into 670 languages, the New Testament alone into 1521 languages and Bible portions or stories into 1121 other language.
And every translation comes with the risk of errors. For instance, if a comma is added where no existed before, that can change meaning too.
Then there are thousands of Christian sects and even major divisions.
“The degree of difference in belief is hard to describe. For example, most of these denominations would have similar beliefs about major Christian doctrines such as God, creation, Jesus, salvation, Holy Spirit, forgiveness, etc, and the differences would mostly be on less essential matters. How much these differences matter is subjective.” …
“Jesus said his followers should be “one”, and many of these separate organisations are the result of serious divisions. It would be better if we emphasised what we have in common more, and worried less about these divisions.”
https://theway21stcentury.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/how-many-christian-denominations-worldwide/
Let’s not forget that Jesus was never a Christian. He was born a Jew and died a Jew and all 12 of his apostles were Jewish. The Christian religion was born several centuries later thanks to the Roman Emperor Constantine.
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Am I permitted to copy and paste this blog/email to my Facebook account?
Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
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Yes, you may reprint at will
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Thank you!
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Wow! Respectfully, Is Polly a “troll?” Not everyone who lives in America is a Christian.
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Polly might be a cracker.
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Suggested reading: Cracker Culture, by Grady McWhiney. Scholarly and eye opening where old southern culture is the subject. But I get the joke.
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GregB
As usual we are in sync . , Before I decided that Polly had been responded to . I thought , does Polly want a cracker?
“The study, released to reporters by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and to be published in December in the Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, found that roughly a third of the 168 adult film actors who participated in the research project were found to have a previously undiagnosed STD.”
Well so much for the I am germophobe defense .
“Does anyone really believe that story?,” Trump asked at a news conference at Trump Tower in New York City.
“I’m also very much of a germophobe, by the way,” he said. “Believe me.”
“You’d better be careful or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television. I tell this to people all the time. I was in Russia years ago with the Miss Universe contest, which did very well, Moscow, the Moscow area, did very, very well.”
“And I told many people, be careful, because you don’t want to see yourself on television. Cameras all over the place.”
Amazing what you learn when Putin gives you a private viewing of the “salacious” piss tapes and you are one of the stars .
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Roy, I’ve had that book recommended to me before. Will have to look into it. For a more optimistic view of the South from an interesting angle, I like John T. Edge’s “The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South.”
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Joel, contemplating our Dear Leader and sex is one bridge I refuse to cross.
And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Polly was a paid Russian troll.
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Surely this will not bother his evangelical base, which is devoted to family values. It does, however, require a redefinition of family values.
LOL.
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LWYOL (with you)
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NYC Teacher,
I hope you were happy about Clinton when he denigrated the office with Monica, I guess you would say he was in the act of servicing at the same time – and I know you were saddened that the Senate did not concur with the House when they impeached him!
Nixon – If and I say if, what is falling out in the news about Hillary, and the dossier story rings true I bet you’ll be glad she wasn’t President at this time. This story makes watergate a fairy tail in comparison – but one should wait for the fallout to be completed.
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jmscheidell,
“You denigrate those of us who profess Christ as Savior and respect Bill Clinton as a “man” who serves as President of the United States.”
Just kidding. I’m not Polly, the self-professed Christian who respects Trump as a man because of his manly and Christian actions. The rest of us think Polly is insulting Christianity and is probably a Putin troll.
But since you now agree to recognize that the dossier was information that was revealed when both Republicans and Democrats hired a well-respected research firm to look into Trump, no doubt you are praying hard that Trump resigns before he brings his enablers in the Republican Party down with him and they all end up in jail.
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Polly,
An adult film actress who reportedly received a $130,000 payment from Donald Trump’s personal attorney shortly before the election has denied allegations that she had an affair with Trump or received hush money in order to keep quiet.
Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, released a Jan. 10 letter purportedly written by Stormy Daniels, a retired adult film star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
On Friday, The Wall Street reported that Cohen paid $130,000 to Clifford in Oct. 2016 in order to keep her from talking to the media about a consensual sexual encounter that occurred at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. (RELATED: Report: Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment For Adult Film Star’s Silence)
“These rumors have circulated time and again since 2011. President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels,” Cohen said in a statement.
He also provided a copy of a statement signed by the actress.
“I recently became aware that certain news outlets are alleging that I had a sexual and/or romantic affair with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago,” Clifford writes in the letter, which Cohen provided to news outlets, including The Daily Caller.
“I am stating with complete clarity that this is absolutely false,” she continued, adding that she considered Trump to be “gracious, professional and a complete gentleman.”
“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” she wrote.
“If indeed I did have a relationship with Donald Trump, trust me, you wouldn’t be reading about it in the news, you would be reading about it in my book. But the fact of the matter is, these stories are not true.”
Letter from Stormy Daniels (via Michael Cohen)
This is just another Dem effort to get rid of Trump.
They tried collusion, they tried the idea of impeachment, they tried mental imbalance, they try and try – don’t forget they look at the 25th amendment, hhis health and his non presidential behavior and comments. The outsider is a winner.
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Read the account in the New York Times.
Stormy was ready to tell her story to the New York Times and go on national TV when Trump paid her off.
Maybe she got another payoff to retract her story or was warned that she would have to repay the $130,000.
The Wall Street Journal broke the story and it is not a Democratic paper.
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She was certainly threatened with a lawsuit for breaching the confidentiality provisions of the settlement agreement. She got a letter and received a phone call from one of the most expensive law firms in New York City. I know this. And when you aren’t extremely wealthy, the normal reaction to a phone call like that is absolute terror.
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FLERP,
When a billionaire threatens to sue you, It is very intimidating, unless you too are a billionaire. It happened to me after I got a letter threatening to sue me from a rep for a Texas Billionaire because of something I wrote. I would have won in a trial, but I would have been impoverished.
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I understand. This woman deserves our sympathy.
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Diane,
I guess and until further lights are focused on this – it becomes a – he said she said issue
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jscheidell,
So now the Wall Street Journal is fake news, too?
The only news you trust are the sources that told you Obama was born in Kenya and faked his birth certificate, that Ted Cruz dad helped assassinate JFK, and that the 20 children killed by a right wing gun lover never existed.
Shame on you. Truly, shame on you. The parents of Newtown are disgusted with you and your ilk who prefer to believe any fake news from the same sources who told you their children never existed. Yes, those are the sources you believe. The same ones who told you Obama was born in Kenya. And the Sandy Hook shooting never happened. Ugly, ugly people who shout fake news whenever any of Trump’s many, many lies is revealed.
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NYC
Shame on you for assuming what news sources I trust – and neither of those items you mention did I believe
Shame on you – a teacher – ugly ugly ugly
I will tell you I do not trust MSNBC – and CNN – I watch while riding the bike the gym for an hour – which is too much – is at times hard to take and they have been fact checked as well – shout fake news many times –
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NYC,
Never said I believed any of those stories – nor have I posted any comments alluding to those stories – don’t put words in other peoples mouths –
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I just posted a fairly long comment that totally disappeared.
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His base will either turn a blind eye or cheer him on.
I’m completely stunned by the Republican’s “I don’t recall him saying that” response to the “sh*#holes” comment.
How low can these people really go in order to retain their definition of “power”?
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gitapik: At least one Congressman has some guts. Is it a ‘coincidence’ that it happens to be a Democrat?
……
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said on Friday that the president did use the term “shithole,” repeatedly, during the course of the meeting on immigration — which Mr. Durbin attended. The senator described Mr. Trump as saying “things which were hate-filled, vile and racist.”
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Right…and the Republicans will claim he’s trying to smear Trump, crying “Partisan politics!”.
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I have never heard that term at all. A..hole is common, but s…hole has escaped me. Before someone accuses me of being sheltered, I would warn you that I have broad experience in various cultures and their vulgarities. I used to have a job working in the sewer all across the southeast and I have studied vulgarities informally, part of that intellectual curiosity described by Mercedees in another post. But I had never heard of the term s…hole to describe anyone. Who said Trump is not a great president?
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Roy, we now have an area where Trump excels in creativity. As you say, “Who said Trump is not a great president?” Here’s to our Great SH**hole president!! I’ll not be bowing or loyal, however.
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Roy:
“Shithole” is a location.
“Asshole” is a person (or a location on a person).
Oh…and here’s one a lot of people don’t know:
“Bigly” is actually, “Big League”, as in the “Major League” vs the “Minor League”. If you’re into something, “Big League” (or “Bigly”, as the oft time user will say), then you’re in the real show.
Trump supporters sneer at people who make fun of his using that term.
If you’re interested in learning more about the finer nuances of American profanity and general language usage, please feel free to enroll in Gitapik University, a non profit educational institution that will fleece you of all your savings and provide little to no benefit, whatsoever.
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gitapik; Tell me how I can sign up! I haven’t been fleeced enough yet because the year is so young. I got royally screwed over last year and want to see if I can top it this year.
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Roy Turrentine
It’s a NYC thing . Often used to describe a place that others have recommended that has not lived up to your expectations . I tend to think of Trump Tower that way. A gaudy S….hole.
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I would like to thank this group for my education in vulgarities.
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Inspired by our illustrious Commander in Chief, Roy.
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Evangelical acceptance of the immoral is certainly not new to Christianity. Human beings of all faiths have routinely accepted behavior that contradicted the ethics implied by their faith for ages. Others have pointed this out. Spanish conquistadors were accompanied by missionaries who committed grave atrocities which were pointed out by Another Christian, Las Cassas. The British, themselves Christians, ruthlessly pointed out the Las Cassas criticism to gain the upper hand in geopolitics. This would stand as one of the best instances of one Christian group pointing out the mote in the eye of another.
The modern problem for evangelicals is to reconcile the idea of personal responsibility with the idea of social responsibility. Evangelical approaches to Christianity emphasize the personal responsibility of the individual to accept the tenets of the faith. This plays to those who see each individual as personally responsible for his life. For Christians who view God as a dominating force, this is an anathema, suggesting that the Christian goal of helping people out extends far beyond persuading to make the correct personal decision. Thus many Christians prize missions to the poor as the vital behavior of the faithful. Wesleyan theology ran close to this view, although the second Great Awakening on the American frontier changed many of Wesley’s intents.
We find ourselves where we are today more because of the Moral Majority political movement than any fight over theology, but the evangelical tendency to accept anything that labels itself as Christian is problematic for that group.
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Thoughtful comment, Roy, and I learned something since I don’t know much on this subject.
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What a great man!!! One all should admire and follow. Trump should start using his creative degenerate names on himself. [I hope this isn’t true. It’s just plain trashy.]
…………………….
Additional Adult Film Star Says Trump and Stormy Daniels Invited Her to Hotel Room @alternet
…“Stormy calls me four or five times, by the last two phone calls she’s with Donald [Trump] and I can hear him, and he’s talking through the phone to me saying, ‘Oh come on Alana, let’s have some fun! Let’s have some fun! Come to the party, we’re waiting for you,’” Evans told the Beast.
She ultimately turned down the offer, but learned more about Daniels’ encounter with the real estate mogul the next day.
“She tells me, ‘All I’m going to say is: I ended up with Donald in his hotel room. Picture him chasing me around his hotel room in his tighty-whities.’ I was like, ‘Oh I really didn’t need to hear that!’ Then she said he offered her keys to his condos in Florida, and I was like, ‘Wow guess you had a good night,’ and that was the last we ever spoke of it,” Evans said.
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/additional-adult-film-star-says-trump-and-stormy-daniels-invited-her-hotel-room#.WloIKkFZwGw.gmail
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Polly,
Lloyd seems to say he is an expert on who Christ is and you don’t – I didn’t note anywhere he became a minister, priest, rabbi etc. He has to denigrate people with opposing thoughts and beliefs contrary to him – name calling is his forte. He is sharp but at times one would expect more from this brilliant individual.
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One doesn’t have to be a minister, priest, or rabbi to read and learn from the Bible (take your choice because there are many interpretations of the original that doesn’t exist anymore). One doesn’t have to belong to a religion to learn from the Bible. One doesn’t even have to belong to a religion to learn from the Jew Jesus Christ’s teachings.
And it isn’t name calling when it is based on the facts available. Anyone that supports tRump is subject to being called what they are, and that is “deplorable”.
Deplorable definition: shocking bad in quality; deserving strong condemnation.
For instance, members of the Ku Klux Klan are deplorable and they call themselves Christians and even had a prayer they used when they were burning crosses and/or hanging minorities from trees and going after Jews and Catholics.
“Members of the KKK swore to uphold American values and Christian morality, and some Protestant ministers became involved at the local level. However, no Protestant denomination officially endorsed the KKK;[109] …
“No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan, but it became a symbol of the Klan’s quasi-Christian message. Its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by prayer, the singing of hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism.[123]”
“KKK’s official newspaper supports Donald Trump for president”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11/01/the-kkks-official-newspaper-has-endorsed-donald-trump-for-president/?utm_term=.49850edcd9f4
Poly clearly supports Donald Trump too and also thinks she/he is a follower of Christ just like the KKK.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows.
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Lloyd,
“Poly clearly supports Donald Trump too and also thinks she/he is a follower of Christ just like the KKK.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows.”
I see with all your readings that the term deplorable fits you as well. Denigrating another for their belief and linking them to your favorite fallback – KKK – and at the same time liking her President Trump at the …doesnt make you above another. You must have missed a few of His teachings….
You know, 48 hours ago, the Drive-By Media — the Anderson Coopers, the Jim Acostas, the Wolf Blitzers, — are beside themselves over the Wolff book. They can’t believe it. “It’s so outrageous! It’s so horrible! How could Trump be so bad?” And then they learn that Wolff made some of it up and they get a little worried about that. Now 48 hours later, they’re acting like kids over a comment they did not hear. You know, Anderson Cooper almost broke down crying talking about this.
Wolf Blitzer is tongue-tied, could barely get the word out. These people on CNN cannot stop using this word. They cannot stop putting it on their chyron graphics. They can’t stop their guests from using it.
This word probably has been uttered hundreds of times since last night and this morning, and they can’t stop, and they claim to set the standards! They claim they are the primo journalists of the world.
The FCC didn’t cut their cord for using it time after time – hmmmm
It’s based on the presumption that virtually everybody finds Trump reprehensible and this is just the final straw. And I don’t believe that people here are sincerely outraged. They are sincerely excited because it is yet another opportunity to get rid of Trump.
Well, there must be more bigots in America than we thought. There must be more racists in America than we thought. So I guess half of this nation, Lloyd are bigots and deplorable
Those who voted for Trump are people who have been bombarded for decades with the media and Hollywood.
So the United States, in these people view, is always the problem. So we have sinned against Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti, we have sinned, and in order to pay for it, to make up for it, we owe the people from these countries a free ride in the United States. It’s the least we can do. Because the United States is a nation that has committed sin every day since its founding, because this country was founded in sin. This country was founded in injustice and immorality, and we still haven’t corrected it or fixed it. They set out to make as many Americans victims of this mean-spirited America as they can.
And so the Democrat Party is there to take care of it. there to punish their enemies. there to get even with the people who have been unkind, racist and sexist and bigoted and vicious to these poor American victims unwilling to stand up and defend themselves. And that’s the thinking that leads the Democrat Party, that claims to want to improve our country and grow it, but really have no desire to.
These people jumping all over Trump, these are the people that trash this country every day. These are the people focusing on what they find wrong in this country every day. These are the people building a political future on hatred. These are the people that comprise the biggest hate group in America today, the Democrat Party. They are the ones who are consistently trashing what they think is the injustice and the racism or what have you with this country.
And now they even bemoan and belittle genuine economic progress. Where people in this country see their lives vastly improving day by day, they mock it, they belittle it, and they condemn it, claiming it isn’t real. Yes, the Hollywood crowd and the leader Pelosi – calling bonuses “crumbs” – yea they are the ones surrounded by walls preventing those illegal criminals from entering -= they who have body guards with guns for protection.
You talk about hellholes, you talk about impoverished places, take a look at the places they run! Take a look at places they have run for who knows how many decades! Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Chicago and the murder rate there. Take a look at what’s going on in St. Louis.
The colleges and universities you send kids to have been trying to inculcate your kids with all kinds of rotgut, perverted junk under the guise of enlightenment.
Polly – or anyone else, do not have to sit around and listen to their religion be mocked or laughed at, your religion is made fun of and criticized, openly and with malice, and it is done with impunity. People who mock and applaud and insult you and your religion are praised as brilliant artists. You are called hicks, white racists. bigots, Bible thumpers, idiots, small-minded , a moral twit. And these are the people having a fit over Trump saying something? These people who have put themselves in charge of infiltrating crap throughout our culture and our society?
These people who have been responsible for injecting drivel and bilge throughout our society claim to be upset and outraged and offended over the use of a word — slang for a toilet — by the president of the United States, in a private meeting? I avoided using the word for possibly offending any sensitive ears.
You go anywhere where they have run the show with no checks and balances, and you know what you find? You find people leaving. You find people leaving New York, people are leaving New Jersey, people are leaving Illinois, primarily Chicago, people are leaving even parts of California, and where are they going? They’re going to states that have no income tax.
With their move they take their destructive liberalism that created the circumstances they’re now fleeing. Don’t tell me these righteous people are offended and upset over what Trump may or may not have said about some impoverished foreign countries.
And they are impoverished. It’s our fault that they are? Maybe in some minds here on the blog, but not mine and Not America’s.
#MAGA
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In the history of the US, Trump is far and away the worst president. He embarrasses our country in the eyes of the world. I am in Asia, meeting people from many nations. They all wonder how such a stupid man got elected.
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Well, all I can say is that I’m glad to see that you and the Donald are taking the moral high ground and setting things right, finally,
jscheidell. Your trusted news sources, too (whatever they may be), are obviously so much more informed and unbiased than the bottom feeders that so many of those nasty brainwashed liberals so desparately need to cling to.
You’re not going to change anyone’s mind and nobody’s going to change yours, j. Takes two to tango and you’ve been practicing your steps.
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“With their move, they take their destructive liberalism that created the circumstances they’re now fleeing.”
List the destruction liberalism and progressivism caused and then prove it with links to reputable sources. Before creating that list, watch this video first to help you learn what liberalism means.
Here is a snapshot of our world before liberalism and/or progressivism stepped in to improve the world that the next video reveals.
You call me deplorable for calling Trump’s supporters what I think they are. Okay. After all, you have the freedom to express what “you” think.
In that case, I will be deplorable to you, because I don’t plan to back down and be bullied into silence when I run into a deplorable Trumpist.
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This was published in the Wall Street Journal, hardly a liberal paper. It has a paywall so I couldn’t get the whole article:
….
Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence
Agreement just before election required woman to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter say
By Michael Rothfeld and Joe Palazzolo
Updated Jan. 12, 2018 3:13 p.m. ET
A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter…
Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.
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I can’t get on my serious soapbox about this one. I’ve always thought that people’s sex lives and preferences are their own business. I didn’t understand all the hoopla over Bill Clinton and Monica, and got into a few arguments about it at the time. So, regardless of what I think of Donald Trump, it would be hypocritical of me to torch him on this one.
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“$MeToo”
130k
Is really change for chump
It’s not a lot to pay
For folks like Donald Trump
She could have gotten more
If only she’d held out
To even up the score
Much more, without a doubt
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A fine poem, indeed, Sir Poet!
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Worthy of a Pukelitzer, no doubt.
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If we are calling the other side “liars” why are “we” peddling lies?
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Toby, what is the “lie”? The WSJ is not a left leaning paper.
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He won’t be the first or last president to have his “fun”.
What I want to know is why anyone is surprised – he all but admitted it on the bus with Billy Bush. If the pro-Trump voters didn’t mind enough then, why would this bit of news change their minds now?
While I personally find this behavior reprehensible, that’s not the reason I didn’t vote for Trump. I felt he didn’t have the experience or credentials or, yes, the ability to run the country. Once he was elected I hoped I was wrong, but it appears I actually over rated him. He’s not just an outspoken buffoon, he’s also mentally unstable. Despite our system of checks and balances (although I question the Republican lead Congress’ ability or desire to keep Trump in check) I fear that his actions might result in some un repairable damage not just to the United States but to the world. (Not to mention our reputation)
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How the Media Protects a President Unfit for Office
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog
13 January 18
ow that Trump has been president for almost a year, it’s time the media called his behavior for what it is rather than try to normalize it. Here are the six most misleading media euphemisms for conduct unbecoming a president:
Calling Trump’s tweets “presidential “statements” or “press releases.” “The President is the President of the United States, so they’re considered official statements by the President of the United States,” Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, said last June when asked during his daily briefing how his tweets should be characterized
Wrong. Trump’s tweets are mostly rants off the top of his head – many of them wild, inconsistent, rude, crude, and bizarre.
Normal presidential statements are products of careful thought. Advisers weigh in. Consequences are considered. Alternatives are deliberated. Which is why such statements are considered important indicators of public policy, domestically and internationally.
Trump’s tweet storms are relevant only to judging his mood on a particular day at a particular time.
Referring to Mar-A-Lago as “the Winter White House.” The White House says the term is accurate because Trump does official business from there, and, besides, Mar-A-Lago’s former owner wanted the Palm Beach estate to become a presidential retreat.
Rubbish. Unlike the White House and Camp David, the traditional presidential retreat, both of which are owned by taxpayers, Mar-a-Lago is a profit-making business owned by Trump.
The White House is open for public tours; Mar-a-Lago is open only to members who can pay $200,000 to join.
Mar-a-Lago, along with the other Trump resort properties that he visits regularly, constitute a massive conflict of interest. Every visit promotes the Trump resort brand, adding directly to Trump’s wealth.
Normal presidents don’t make money off the presidency. Trump does. His resorts should be called what they are – Trump’s businesses.
Calling his lies “false claims” or “comments that have proved to be inaccurate.” Baloney. They’re lies, plain and simple.
Early last year the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief insisted that the Journal wouldn’t label Trump’s false statements as “lies.” Lying, said the editor, requires a deliberate intention to mislead, which couldn’t be proven in Trump’s case.
Last fall, NPR’s then news director, Michael Oreskes defended NPR’s refusal to use the term “liar” when describing Trump, explaining that the word constitutes “an angry tone” of “editorializing” that “confirms opinions.”
In January, Maggie Haberman, a leading Times’ political reporter, claimed that her job was “showing when something untrue is said. Our job is not to say ‘lied.’”
Wrong. Normal presidents may exaggerate; some occasionally lie. But Trump has taken lying to an entirely new level. He lies like other people breath. Almost nothing that comes out of his mouth can assumed to be true.
For Trump, lying is part of his overall strategy, his MO, and his pathology. Not to call them lies, or to deem him a liar, is itself misleading.
Referring to Trump’s and his aide’s possible “cooperation” or “coordination” with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.
This won’t due. “Cooperation” and “coordination” sound as if Trump and his campaign assistants were merely being polite to the Russians, engaged in a kind of innocent parallel play.
But nothing about what we’ve seen and heard so far suggests politeness or innocence. “Collusion” is the proper word, suggesting complicity in a conspiracy.
If true – if Trump or his aides did collude with the Russians to throw the election his way – they were engaged in treason, another important word that rarely appears in news reports.
Calling Trump’s and Paul Ryan’s next move “welfare reform,” as in “Trump has suggested more than once that welfare reform might be the next big legislative item on his agenda.”
Rubbish. They’re not going after “welfare.” Welfare – federal public assistance to the poor – was gutted in 1996. Trump and Ryan are aiming at Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Nor are they seeking to “reform” these programs. They want to cut them in order to pay for the huge tax cut they’ve given corporations and the wealthy. “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform,” Ryan said recently, “which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.”
So call it what it is: Planned cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Describing Trump’s comments as “racially charged.” “Racially charged” sounds like Trump doesn’t intend them to be racist but some people hear them that way. Rubbish.
Trump’s recent harangue against immigrants from “shitholes” in Latin America and Africa comes only weeks after The New York Times reported that at another Oval Office meeting Trump said Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” and that Nigerians who visit the US would never “go back to their huts.”
This is the man who built his political career on the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Africa, who launched his presidential campaign with racist comments about Mexican immigrants, who saw “fine people on both sides” in the Charlottesville march of white supremacists, and who attacked African-American football players for being “unpatriotic” because they kneeled during the National Anthem to protest police discrimination.
This is the same man who in 1989 took out full page ads in New York newspapers demanding the return of the death penalty so it could be applied to five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park – and who still refuses to admit his error even though they were exonerated by DNA evidence.
Stop using terms like “racially charged” to describe his statements. Face it. Trump is a racist, and his comments are racist.
Words matter. It’s important to describe Trump accurately. Every American must understand who we have as president.
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I’m not a subscriber to WaPo but found this opinion on a different site. I believe in respecting whole cultures. There are individuals in every culture who are not worthy of respect but even they can be helped, if help is available.
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Opinion WaPo | ‘Shithole’ wasn’t the most offensive part of Trump’s Haiti comments
The vulgarity and the insult to other nations are surpassed by a deep disrespect.
TWO MONTHS ago, the Haitian Roundtable, a nonprofit organization based in New York, handed out its annual awards to Haitian Americans who have succeeded in the United States. Among them were a police chief, a museum curator, a hospital director, two Olympic athletes, a college chancellor, a poet and a state senator.
Their achievements are impressive — but in some ways no more impressive than those of 700,000 other Haitian immigrants who are teachers, taxi drivers, nurses, janitors, firefighters and other hard-working, law-abiding contributors to U.S. society and the U.S. economy. Every one of them struggling honorably every day to make a better life for their children is a reminder of what President Trump fails to understand about this country.
What is most offensive in the president’s comment on immigration to a group of senators on Thursday is not the vulgarity. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, referring to Haiti and countries in Africa and Central America. “Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out.” What is most offensive is not even the insult to other nations, though that is certainly unacceptable from a president of the United States.
No, what should sadden every American is to have someone living in the White House with so little respect for the courage of women and men who have been coming here from “shithole” countries for centuries — and who have built the United States into the great nation it is today. The Jews who fled the shtetls, the Irish who escaped the potato famine, the Italians who left hardscrabble farms in Sicily, the Vietnamese who crammed onto rickety fishing boats, the Afghans and Eritreans and Nicaraguans who ran from bloody civil wars — each and every one of them could have been turned back to their “shithole” native lands had U.S. leaders then been as obtuse as Mr. Trump is today.
President Trump is under fire for referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries as “shithole countries.” But the U.S.’s influence on Haiti’s affairs span hundreds of years. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)
But they were welcomed, or at least tolerated — and thank goodness, because what they brought with them was far more valuable than what this country gave them, as generous as that often was. What they brought was not, in most cases, college degrees or fat bank accounts. What they brought was moxie and gumption. A refusal to give up. A belief in opportunity and in an American dream that was available to everyone, to black Haitians and blond Norwegians alike.
Shortly after The Post reported Mr. Trump’s comment, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol reminded us on Twitter of Emmanuel Mensah, who immigrated from Ghana five years ago and joined the Army National Guard. He was home in the Bronx last month when a devastating fire broke out in his apartment building; he lost his life as he rescued others. “He brought four people out,” his uncle, Twum Bredu, who lives next door, told the New York Times. “When he went to bring a fifth person out, the fire caught up with him.”
Most Americans understand how fortunate we are to attract such heroes to our shores.
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Carolmalaysia,
The US hands out millions in monetary aid as well as needed supplies. we have problems here, we have poor here as you previously pointed out. Should we cut back aid to them and focus it back to fixing our problems. Yes, there are political issues tied to the aid to consider.
The problem of immigration lies in a couple of areas, no border security, not having the “wall”, chain migration, vetting and a need for a merit based entry system. Back in 2005 the Dems were for and voted for the wall on southern border – Now that it is Trump they have a brain flatulence regarding their memories. They are not interested in the DACA kids/adults or Dreamers except that they are potential voters for them.
The Center For American Progress (CAP) Action Fund circulated a memo calling illegal immigrants brought here at a young age — so-called “Dreamers” — a “critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”
CAP Action’s memo says protecting DACA is not only a “moral imperative” for Democrats, it also key to getting votes.
I qoute:
“The fight to protect Dreamers is not only a moral imperative, it is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success,” reads Palmieri’s memo, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond,” reads the memo. “In short, the next few weeks will tell us a lot about the Democratic Party and its long-term electoral prospects.”
Everything becomes racist – even chain migration Chain migration has no relationship whatsoever to slavery or African-Americans. It is a specific term related to a certain type of result that happens from allowing illegal immigrants amnesty. It’s a way for one person being granted amnesty to all of a sudden become five or six. And it is used purposely to subvert American immigration law. And here’s Dick Durbin trying to twist it and say that it is a racist term used by Republicans.
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jscheidell: “CAP Action’s memo says protecting DACA is not only a “moral imperative” for Democrats, it also key to getting votes.” This is obviously someone’s opinion, and a bad one at that. You seem to put everything the Dems do as something evil.
I wrote a letter-to-the-editor of the Times of NW Indiana that was published on Sept. 8, 2017. There are definite reasons for DACA to remain in the US. The main one is just plain decent human caring. They came to the US as children and know no other country. They are totally acclimated to this culture.
Headline: Many DACA recipients are productive members of our society
“DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) has 800,000 people who are either actively in the workforce or getting schooling. Removing these people will cost $433.3 billion in GDP loss over a decade.
Six percent of DACA recipients already have businesses that employ American citizens. Almost 55 percent of DACA recipients have purchased a vehicle, and more than one in 10 have purchased their homes.
They speak English and have acclimated into this culture because they came as children. It would be a crime on humanity to send them back to a place in which they are no longer familiar.
I am counting on Congress to right this wrong and give these people a path to citizenship. According to two polls, 78 percent of American voters support letting them stay permanently in America.
Everyone in the program has passed an extensive background check, paid a fee and is a student on service member or has a job.
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This is HORRENDOUS and shows that Trump is a SH**hole president.
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Ten actions that hurt workers during Trump’s first year: How Trump and Congress further rigged the economy in favor of the wealthy..Economic Policy Institute
The tax cut law that President Trump boasts will make his wealthy friends “a lot richer” is just the latest in a series of betrayals of working people by the administration and Congress since Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017. In addition to passing a massive tax cut for wealthy business owners, Trump and Republicans in Congress have rolled back important worker protections, advanced nominees to key administration posts who have a history of exploiting working people, and taken other actions that further rig the system in favor of corporate interests and the wealthiest Americans.
Here are the 10 worst things Congress and Trump have done to undermine pay growth and erode working conditions for the nation’s workers.
http://epi.org/140073
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