64 Comments

saw a documentary last night. she was compelling.

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Fdr's struggles re polio were monumental. When did you get polio. Were you ever in an iron lung. I wish you the very best.

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Coming from someone who lives in a house full of men, whom have been Chiefs fans for decades, (I personally have only ever claimed to be a Patrick Mahomes fan because I love to watch him play - fantastic athlete - but the Chiefs are not my team), however my guys have been Kelce brother fans for years, there is nothing T can do to persuade the men in my house with their votes.

If in fact anything his Mr. Pfizer commercial has soured them against him as a person a little, yet they understand why he did it - the $. Yet, as men are able to do, they compartmentalize better than I & they separate the player from the man off the field.

They will not do anything he says off the field. Not a chance! Even though they love him on the field he will not persuade their vote after what Biden had done to our country & yes, they are past Biden voters. Never again they said. Most people I talk to where I live are so soured on the party some have said it will take a decades before they ever vote blue again.

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What "had Biden done to our country?" I gotta know. Thanks.

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I meant “has”. Thanks for pointing out my grammatical error. I appreciate ya. 😁

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Good journalists care about humanity. There you probably can't resist a murder mystery https://www.thedailybeast.com/chuck-philips-reporter-who-probed-biggie-and-tupac-murders-dies-at-71. Chuck Philips is dead. Safe travels, Chuck.

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spread far and wide. We know and love him.

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Jonathan-- I know OK politics all too well, and the willingness to work on anything bipartisan rarely does an Okie pol any good. Still, with Lankford being an ostentatiously devout Christian, I felt that the lack of equivocation in his soulless reply to Brennan could not go without comment.

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You're right about that, Mark. I shouldn't judge Lankford on a sliding scale.

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A billionaire to fund independent expenditure effort to take on No Labels and third party candidates. Bloomberg?

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We don't quite know yet which third party candidates will be on the ballot. RFK Jr. might run as a libertarian, which would assure him on being on the ballot everywhere.

Cornel West, on the other hand, is having trouble getting on the ballot in most states. We'll know more by summer.

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Some of the major players that were in the Trump administration, need to come out more forcefully and vocally “together”. John Kelly, James Mattis, Mark Esper, etc.

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Agreed!

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I believe that, in order to "perfect" an appeal of the $83 Million verdict, IF the court's judgment confirms the verdict, Trump will be required to post the ENTIRE judgment amount as an appeal BOND, or his appeal cannot be noted UNLESS a court waives such an appeal bond.

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Thanks for the good news!!

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There's another group that will be influential in taking Trump out: disabled Americans, or preferably differently abled Americans, which includes veterans with prosthetic legs such as the one Trump disparaged mentioned in General Millie's book. It's beyond indecent for a man with prosthetic hair to mock fellow Americans who are differently abled. And we are not about to forget it. I would love to have a legion of disabled Americans as poll workers! I'm signing up! As a polio survivor, I ain't scared.

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Good for you!!! I have myotonic muscular dystrophy and I am hopping mad. When I was young, I was a tad brazen, bellicose and brilliant and I got my rocks off my putting my feet down loudly and proudly. Now my feet are hobbling. And the way people treat me and other people who are differently abled is nauseating and infuriating. They look upon you as a Geriatric Version of Jerry Lewis's MDA poster boys. I would love to go to a demo of the handicapped in which we could really raise hell. Give me an enemy. I am dying to fight. AS LA PASSIONARIA -- A GALLANT COMMUNIST OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR -- SAID, "IT IS BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET THAN TO LIVE ON YOUR KNEES."

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Glad to know you,David. Only five years ago when I developed post polio syndrome did I get a disabled label. To help me cope I did a deep dive into learning how FDR managed. When he started to lose the strength in his thumbs he practiced signing his name in private for fear he could not do it in public. If I had a publisher I’d write about this!

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If organized, disabled voters could be a potent force.

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Let me be clear: I absolutely abhor Trump. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature can list several reasons why he is a malevolent and stupid man who cares not a whit about the welfare of the American people and only about the glorification of his sleezy name.

And the tens of millions of Americans who are supporting Trump most certainly don’t have IQs beneath room temperature (Only about 1 to 3 percent of the populace have IQs beneath 75 as that is one of the proposed cut off points for a diagnosis of mental retardation.)

In other words, plenty of people who hate Trump are supporting him because they hate the people who hate Trump.

Among other things, they hate the legal system. First, the suits that pertain to sex (I know the Stormy Daniels suit was supposedly about a violation of campaign finance law reporting requirements, but no one outside of Manhattan Island, WDC and Berkeley see it that way) provoke a galvanizing, infuriating, incendiary response: “Those fancy pants elitest lawyers could not get him for treasonous conduct visa vis Russia so now they are going after him for having a hard pecker”

With regard to the other suits, they are, of course, meritorious and show Trump’s overwhelming guilt However, many people will still gravitate to Trump, even though the suits underscore his guilt, because they hate the legal system and because so often the legal system renders grotesque verdicts. In the law, we do not try to ascertain truth. We try to manipuate the facts and the law to win. Have you spent any time with lawyers? We are highly cynical, often vengeful and we obtain a special delight in using esoteric, formalistic rules to eviscerate justice.

For example, are you familiar with the doctrine of the “negative pregnant”? This rule provides that

A) If Plaintiff says “You owe me 100 dollars,” and

B) Defendant says, “I don’t owe you 100 dollars,” then

C) Defendant must cough up 99 dollars and 99 cents because the intellectually sadistic law reasons that the denial of a debt of 100 dollars is “pregnant with the admission” that one owes 99 dollars and 99 cents. The doctrine of the negative pregnant is dead now, but kindred forms of formalistic rot pervade the Law.

Indeed, why do you think Judaism has such a rich and liberating prophetic tradition. This was a rebellion against the arid legal tradition which, in is patient deference to precedent, often seemed to patiently defer to hidebound notions shot through with tyranny and injustice.

In March of 2023, De Santis was leading Trump in the polls. However, Trump pulled ahead. Why ? Because of the sex suits. Today, colleges are close to 60 percent female. (The growing disaffection and alienation of blue collar men is assiduously ignored by the Martha Vineyard’s branch of the Democratic Party.) E Jean Carroll has won a judgment of close to 100 million dollars for groping that allegedly took place in the 1990s. Usually, the statue of limitations forecloses old suits because after so much time witnesses are no longer available, records are no longer recoverable, and vindicative, malevolent parties can get away with murder.

When the working class men and women of America look upon E J Carroll, they see of privileged little prig of a princess (Sort of like the subject of Bob Dylan’s song “Like A Rolling Stone), cossetted and comforted by East Side snobbery and bitchiness and platoons of lawyers, and they are ready to drown blue American in an avalanche and tsunami of angry, quasi fascistic rage.

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I think in general, it seems to me anyway, many people have lost faith in our justice system in anywhere from Johnny Depp and Amber heard, to Gwyneth Paltrow on the ski slopes, to Hillary Clinton losing emails, to the Obama‘s chef drowning allegedly at their home and Martha’s Vineyard, to Trump‘s constant indictments, whether you support him or not, there have been many things which have taken place which seem to favor heavily on one side or the other.

We are seeing a blatant disregard for the law and justice and people are upset about it. They are throwing it in our faces and telling us they don’t care what the system says, they are playing by their own set of rules, which we all suspected in the first place, but the pure blatancy of which it is all taking place is almost fantastical in of itself.

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Thanks for weighing in, David. I think DeSantis lost because he ran a lousy campaign. I agree that hatred of the legal system and of elites--especially elite women--is at least a partial explanation of the rage of the Trumpists. But you don't mention that there is also a lot of plain old misogyny.

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Quite frankly, I did not mention De Santis in my essay.

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You did, David..."In March of 2023, De Santis was leading Trump in the polls. However, Trump pulled ahead. Why ?"

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P.S. A new poll shows women deserting Trump in droves, so while his attacks on women may please his male base, it alienates women and could cost him the election.

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The election is about 9 months away. Anything can happen.

I submit to you that a very high proportion of Americans vote for candidates because of phenomena that have nothing to do with ideology (they can't define the word ideology), issues, etc.

The preceding might make me seem like an insufferable snob (which I probably am) but look at the raw reality:

EG

A) A huge proportion of working class whites supported RFK in the Spring of 1968, and most of these working class whites supported George Wallace in the Autumn of 68. RFK and Wallace were DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED ON RASE. Theodore White said that these voters were attracted to a certain anger that animated bofh RFK and Wallace. Most pol scientists and anchorman and mavens of elections are oblivious to the psychosexual storms, within peoples minds, whick make them like one candidate or another.

B) At the close of Gulf Storm, Bush had an approval rating of 91 percent. It was below 40 percent by election time.

C) I would wager good money that one third of the populace can't mouth the barest, most elementary definitions of the words liberal and conservative.

If Woman are flockng away from Trump, they can flock back to him. Remember what the poet Sylvia Plath, and the novelist Erica Jong, said, "Every woman loves a Fascist." Besides, women knew Trump used women for sport ages ago and still many of them put up with it.

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I wish I had a suggestion other than a quibble about Lankford, who yesterday had the following exchange with Margaret on Face the Nation:

Brennan: Before I let you go, I want to get your reaction to the news that he was ordered to pay $83 million to a person that a jury found he defamed after a separate jury found that he had sexually assaulted her. Does it give you any pause about him returning to office?

Lankford: It doesn't.

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Thanks, Mark....He had to say that or he would be finished in Oklahoma politics--a sad comment on where we are. They already tried to censure him in OK just for daring to work with Democrats.

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Well Mark, I think he has to appear to support Trump or there will be menacing thugs following him and his family members everywhere they go.

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possibly so--another sad comment on where we are.

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Each of us must speak up when we are witness to talking points generated by those who deliberately spread misinformation and lies. Calmly, respectfully, and directly we can all make a difference in every-day moments. And then, be prepared to listen because even the bat-shit crazies need to be heard.

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Agreed, John.

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Hi Jonathan- I happened to catch you on Cobert the other night. Your comments about “bearing witness” resonated, on many levels. Thank you for your extraordinary work that informs those of us who care deeply about the health of our hard-fought republic, but can’t be in the room.

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I would add Nikki Haley to the list. With daily media coverage of the ping pong match between her and Trump, she looks stronger and he looks weaker. Don’t quit Haley Hive, march on!

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As much as I dislike Haley's politics, it would be good for the country if she does well...

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Greg Abbott, because he may cause Biden to take control of Texas National Guard.

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Interesting.....So you're arguing that Biden federalizing the National Guard would make him look strong and would help him? Likely so.

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As you make clear, Jon, the 2024 U.S. election will be existentially dramatic and historic. Who doesn't believe so?

Certain non-Trumpy former presidents should speak now or live forever in shame (Geo. W. Bush, I'm looking at you).

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Thanks, JoAnne!

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