A few years ago I met a woman who told me that she was scheduled to speak at a business convention in Las Vegas, but cancelled her engagement when she learned that the venue was the Trump International Hotel. “To get me to enter that building, I would need to be held at gunpoint,” she said.

There are plenty of people who feel the same way about the entire state of Florida (and Texas).

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An old classmate of mine asks, “Doesn’t Trump get some credit for Israel? The current lunatic favors Iran.”

Re: the U.S. policy on the Middle East, I don’t know enough to address your question.  I’ve read, from Canada-based CTV  News, rated and unbiased/neutral, “Trump is not pro-Israel; he’s pro-Trump.”  That rings true, but again, I’m not your guy here.

However, I do note that you seem to be a garden-variety Trump supporter, and, accordingly, you appear to have overlooked the fact that the former president is a cold, calculating criminal who a) represents a huge risk to national security, and b) tried to overthrow the U.S. government.

To me, if he happens to deserve credit for some aspect of what he did when he was in office, that’s negligible in comparison to his status as a traitor to his country.

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My #1 thought about American education is that Ben Carson can only worsen it further.
A reader, Margaret Morris, asks: How do you improve education?
I respond: Though I’m not an expert, here are three ideas.
1) Proper funding for teachers’ salaries.
2) Keep teachers (and students) safe from being murdered due to the proliferation of assault weapons in the hands of the mentally ill.
3) Stop threating teachers with removal if they don’t conform to what the ultra-right-wing thinks about re: race, sexuality, and other Republican hot-button political issues.
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Many conservatives are upset that only liberal ideas are presented on college campuses. My view:

As in most cases, this is a gray issue.

If you take, for example, the subject of affirmative action, which is as alive today as it was when it arose in the late 1960s, you have, IMO, a decent topic for debate on a college campus.  Conservatives will say that they (those living today) had nothing to do with slavery, that modern America is under no obligation to integrate the descendants of slaves in society, and that any governmental action taken to swing wealth from rich whites to poor blacks is essentially robbery.   Progressives will claim that, based on the way that wealth in the United States was established, and given that we continue to live in a land in which systemic racism is the rule of the day, that affirmative action is ethically required.  Colleges wanting to present these ideas can, and I think should, offer both sides a platform on which to present their viewpoints.

Re: the rest of “conservative values,” it really comes down to what you mean.  If you want someone to come on campus and say, without any basis in fact, that the 2020 election was stolen, that the FBI is corrupt, and that Donald Trump is the true U.S. president you have a problem.

I’m even more concerned about matters of science.  If I wanted to go back to my alma mater and make a play for climate denialism, or the flat Earth, or the lack of efficacy of vaccinations, the science departments would laugh me off the campus, and I think they have the right—and obligation—to do exactly that.

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In its quest to generate and retain our attention, the American news media continues to remind us that Trump could be re-elected U.S. president in 2024.  As proof they offer the fact that he’s far ahead in the polls taken of Republicans.

But what threat does he actually pose to win the general election–even supposing that his legal situation doesn’t continue to bring him closer to prison? I agree with the analysis of the former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who believes, in essence, that we need to consider that Democrats form a (slight) majority of voters, and, on top of that, we must add in all the third-party registrants and independents, as well as a significant number of Republicans who will refuse to vote for a career criminal who clearly tried to overthrow the government.

It’s just not possible.

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We commonly hear that the two major American political parties are virtually indistinguishable from one another, and perhaps that was true a few decades ago when centrism was the rule of the day.

But, as illustrated in the meme here, this is most definitely no longer the case.

There is a limit to what Democrats can achieve, even if they control the White House and both chambers of congress, due to the power of the lobbies. If that weren’t the case, within a few months, we’d have common sense gun laws, women’s right, universal healthcare, quality education, and a plan in place that moves this country in the direction of environmental sustainability.

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Sadly, no.  If I had to take a guess as to the percentage of the world’s people, 10 years old and up, who “hate” Trump in some sense, I would say:

Americans: 65%

Those living in other developed countries: 85%

Those living in developing countries who have access to world news: 90%

 

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Being a fake human being is certainly not what we want in a U.S. president.

Yet the reason we need Trump out of our lives and behind bars isn’t his spray-tan, but rather his criminality.

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The judge here makes an excellent point, which raises the question: Why were these documents so valuable to Trump that he would force the Justice Department to indict him?

I’m not given to make speculations that I cannot prove, but the only theory I can come up with here actually came (I believe) from Robert Reich: these documents are worth a fortune to certain foreign governments.  Imagine you know that you’re soon to be charged and convicted of attempting to overthrow the U.S. government, which will result in a lengthy prison sentence.  But before you’re detained without bail, you’re planning to leave the country in favor of a place where you’ll be safe, and free to live the rest of your life in luxury.  You’re in possession of something of incalculable value to the leaders of these nations, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Russia.

This is what makes me believe that Trump represents a huge flight risk.

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I’ll take a stab at answering yet another rhetorical question, this one posed by Lawrence O’Donnell.

He’s a pathological liar for whom lying is as natural as breathing for you and me.

Lying has taken Trump to the very top of the food chain in terms of money and power.  It’s a way of life that he has never thought to question, nor has he had the reason to.

It works because there have always been, regardless of how things may be going for Trump at any given moment, tens of millions of Americans who are intellectually incapable of distinguishing truth from lies.

Fortunately, this is all in the process of coming crashing down, as some of even the dullest minds are gradually catching on, and quietly disappearing from the ranks of his support base. How many hateful idiots showed up to support Trump while he was being arraigned in Miami?  About 1500.

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