Archive for the ‘Editorial, Opinion’ Category

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“[I want to] remind our base constituency to stop whining: epic fail obama

September 29, 2010

Pigs are not only wearing lipstick, they are flying!

With friends like these… “People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up. … If people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place. … It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. … The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.” –Barack Obama hammering his own base in an interview with Rolling Stone

“[I want to] remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. This president has done an incredible job. He’s kept his promises.” –Joe Biden on the same talking points

“And so those who don’t get — didn’t get everything they wanted, it’s time to just buck up here, understand that we can make things better, continue to move forward and — but not yield the playing field to those folks who are against everything that we stand for in terms of the initiatives we put forward.” –Joe Biden

“We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.” –Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), another snotty elitist lecturing voters

The GOP’s best friend: “[I]f we allow this to be a referendum on whether people are happy where they are now, we’ll lose.” –Joe Biden

But on the other hand: “I guarantee you we’re going to have a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate. I absolutely believe that.” –Biden

Patronizing: “There are strains in the Tea Party that are troubled by what they saw as a series of instances in which the middle-class and working-class people have been abused or hurt by special interests and Washington, but their anger is misdirected.” –Barack Obama

“[Fox News has] a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.” –Obama in the Rolling Stone interview

On fiscal responsibility: “What I’m seeing out of the Republican leadership over the last several years has been a set of policies that are just irresponsible, and we saw in their Pledge to America a similar set of irresponsible policies. … [Although GOP leaders] say they want to balance the budget, they propose $4 trillion worth of tax cuts and $16 billion in spending cuts, and then they say we’re going to somehow magically balance the budget. That’s not a serious approach.” –Barack Obama, who must consider Republicans amateurs when it comes to blowing money.

SOURCE

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Immigration, Law, News, Politics, States Rights, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »

Jerry Brown for Govenor of California: Can you say STUPID? I knew ya’ could!

September 28, 2010

California, my state of birth… (Oceanside, California, Camp Pendleton.) Somehow, survived the years that this God forsaken idiot was Governor there. Jerry Brown, caused, via his leftist policy’s and non-leadership; The worst times that the Golden State had ever been through. PERIOD!

He kissed ass to the Unions, to the illegal immigrants, raised taxes beyond belief, held gun owners in contempt, and pissed on the California Constitution as well as the Constitution of the United States of America so many times that I will not even bother with citation! He makes the epic failure obama look like a lightweight!

Now, to be honest? I don’t know an awful lot about Meg Whitman. But what I do know, is that Jerry Brown, is nothing at all like his Father.

Having lived under both, I know well what it is that I speak of.

More HERE.

Vote NO for Jerry Brown Jr!

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Immigration, Law, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 10 Comments »

Team Donkey: led by an epic failure; becoming an epic failure

September 28, 2010

“As Democrats head for what promises to be a midterm election fiasco of historic proportions, a pre-emptive excuse has begun to circulate: It’s all because of Citizens United. Team Donkey fans claim the Jan. 21 decision, in which the Supreme Court overturned restrictions on the political speech of corporations, triggered a flood of negative advertising by what President Obama calls ‘shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names.’ … In his weekly radio address [last] Saturday, President Obama complained about ‘special interests using front groups with misleading names’ who are saying mean things about Democrats on TV, a development he attributed to Citizens United. Yet similar complaints have been heard from both major parties in every recent election cycle. … Toward the end of his speech on Saturday, Obama accidentally told the truth. ‘You can make sure that the tens of millions of dollars spent on misleading ads do not drown out your voice,’ he said. ‘Because no matter how many ads they run — no matter how many elections they try to buy — the power to determine the fate of this country doesn’t lie in their hands. It lies in yours.’ Exactly right, Mr. President. No matter how shadowy or flush with corporate dollars an interest group is, the only thing Citizens United allowed it to do is speak. Advocacy has no impact unless it persuades people. So why not talk about the issues instead of impugning the motives of people who take a different position on them than you do?” –columnist Jacob Sullum

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Immigration, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 4 Comments »

Ready for a Democrat / Communist bloodbath..?

September 28, 2010

“The refutation of Crist, Murkowski and Castle is a wonderful thing, regardless of how it plays out in November. … In three primaries Republican voters decided they didn’t like what they saw in the three candidates presented by the establishment. In all three cases, the instincts of the voters were completely confirmed — by the subsequent actions of the hacks they drummed out of the party. Crist, Murkowski and Castle have made it abundantly clear they are devoid of anything resembling principles or party loyalty. All three have made something else clear as well: contempt for the average American has revealed itself to be far more ‘bipartisan’ than ever before. Such contempt has become so transparent and pervasive that the term ‘ruling class’ resonates like it never has: many Americans have become completely alienated from their representatives, regardless of party affiliation. Here’s a scary thought for Democrats: think what’s happening to the Republican party can’t happen to yours? Think again. A Congress with an approval rating of 23.6% while your party’s in charge can’t be reassuring. In November, if the public purges Democrats from the majority less than two years after Democrat political strategist James Carville’s proclaimed they would rule for the next forty, expect the kind of finger-pointing and blood-letting that will make the current Republican purge look tame by comparison. Americans may not agree about many things but one thing is certain: they are sick to death of selfish phonies selling themselves as ‘servants of the people.'” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Immigration, Law, mysandry, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 3 Comments »

“The Rubber Band Syndrome vs. The Mental Depth Charge”

September 28, 2010

This piece from Downsizer is great!

Quote of the Day: “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

Surely you’ve had this experience . . .

* You marshal your evidence
* You deploy powerful arguments
* And you thereby convince a friend to drop his or her support of some government policy.

But then, you don’t see your friend for a while . . .

* He or she is left for weeks or months, swimming in the river of Statist propaganda that streams from every media outlet
* So that when you meet again you find that his or her mind has snapped back to where it was before

It’s as if the two of you had never talked. He or she has completely forgotten . . .

* The evidence you marshaled
* The arguments you used
* The fact that he or she ended up agreeing with the case you made

Jim Babka calls this the “The Rubber Band Syndrome.”

* Visualize yourself stretching a cartoon brain to a larger size
* Visualize the brain snapping back to it’s former shape as soon as you walk away

This Rubber Band Syndrome makes a mockery of our persuasion efforts. It causes us to waste time, energy, and money. But here at Downsize DC we consider it part of our mission to prevent wasted effort, to make difficult things easy, and to constantly accomplish more with less. That’s why . . .

We want to find a cure for The Rubber Band Syndrome.

Is there a cure? We think there is. In fact, we think there may be two cures . . .

Cure #1:

It seems clear to us that we have to equal the river of Statist propaganda that streams from every media outlet every day. One way to do that is something we talk about constantly . . .

Operation Everywhere.

For those who are new to this list, Operation Everywhere is our plan to reach a size that will enable us to make our ideas seen and heard by everyone, everywhere, every day. In other words . . .

We can solve the problem of minds that snap back to their previous dimensions as soon as our arguments are no longer being heard, by creating conditions under which our arguments are ALWAYS HEARD. This is clearly a full-proof solution to the problem, BUT . . .

It’s not an easy solution. Operation Everywhere will be hard to execute. It will take time to get there. So, this particular cure doesn’t meet one of our most important criteria . . . making difficult things easy. Which brings us to . . .

Cure #2:

This Oliver Wendell Holmes quote is very famous: “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” But the experience we’ve all had with The Rubber Band Syndrome tells us that it’s actually very difficult to stretch a mind in such a way that it REMAINS EXPANDED. So what we need for Cure #2 is obvious . . .

* We need ideas that are so large and powerful that they do not allow the mind to shrink back to its former dimensions.
* We need ideas that EXPLODE the dimensions of the human mind to vast new boundaries.
* I call this kind of idea . . .

The Mental Depth Charge

You’ve probably had this experience too . . .

* You say something powerful to someone, but it seems to have no immediate effect
* Days, or months, or sometimes years pass, until . . .
* Eventually the person you said the powerful thing to comes to you and says . . . “I’ve only just now understood what you said way back when, and . . .

Understanding it changes everything.”

You see, your idea needed time to sink-in, just like a “depth charge.”

But for this to happen the idea has to be something that will actually stay in your friend’s mind for the time required, and not be popped out by The Rubber Band Syndrome.

We’ve all had these experiences. We’ve all laid mental depth charges in the minds of others, and had them placed in our minds too. Often these explosive ideas come about by accident, in the flow of conversation, but the trick we want to master is to create Mental Depth Charges by design!

This means we need a laboratory to conduct experiments, and a factory for production.

I have good news! If financing permits, we’re days away from unveiling our new factory/laboratory for creating Mental Depth Charges. This is the first of the 43 new tools we’ve promised to create, each of which is aimed at helping us to add at least 1 new net recruit per day to the Downsize DC Army. As you can see . . .

Our aims are modest. We believe this new tool can accomplish even more, but we don’t want to over-sell it. After all, it’s an experiment — a laboratory. Fortunately, it’s also something that can be funded with TAX-DEDUCTIBLE donations, because the new tool we’re about to unveil is also . . .

A new home for our non-profit educational organization, The Downsize DC Foundation!

To be clear, most days, the Downsizer-Dispatch comes from DownsizeDC.org, Inc. But this new project is part of the educational mission for the Downsize DC Foundation.

We’ve put our staff and vendors to work so that we can deliver this exiting new tool, quickly. Thus, part of the team needed to complete this project is is already hard at work. Now, we need to activate the rest of the team — and that’s YOU.

Organizational forward progress and timely delivery of this new tool requires about $6,400 in new income. Look . . .

That amounts to just twenty one cents per member of the Downsize DC Army. Or, just one person could pay it off in one big bite by contributing $6,400. More likely, we will need something like the following . . .

* 2 people to give $1,000 = $2,000
* 4 to give $500 each = $2,000, bringing us to $4,000 total
* 4 to give $250 each = $1,000, bringing us $5,000
* 10 to give $100 each = $1,000, bringing us to $6,000
* And a few dozen 10s, 20s, and 50s to round us out at $6,400

Thanks to monthly pledgers, we’re able to get started. But to keep growing, we really need 21 new pledgers. Please consider making or increasing a monthly pledge.

Can you be one of the people who make this happen?

If so, we will publicly say “Thank you,” by publishing your name in an upcoming Downsizer-Dispatch, as well as on the new website. Of course, if you wish to remain private, you can indicate so on the secure contribution form.

Thanks in advance for your confidence and support.

Perry Willis
Vice President
The Downsize DC Foundation

The brief essay contained in this message is copyrighted by Perry Willis — (c) 2010. Permission to re-distribute or reprint this message for non-profit educational purposes is granted and encouraged, as long as proper attribution is given, and you provide a link to the original source. Permission to use this message for commercial purposes is denied.

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Posted in Blogroll, Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 2 Comments »

DOW RESEARCHER PRESENTS PLANS FOR MULE DEER STUDY

September 28, 2010

If only other agency’s from more state’s were this thoughtful, and informed. Yes, I know, Whitetail Deer are the number one game animal hunted, but, I am, and always will be a dyed in the wool Mule Deer fan!

KREMMLING, Colo — The Colorado Division of Wildlife is preparing for a large study of buck mule deer survival in Middle Park to improve the Division’s ability to manage deer populations around the state through more informed modeling and harvest decisions.

The study plan will be explained by lead researcher Eric Bergman at a meeting of the Blue Valley Sportsman Club on Wednesday, Oct. 6. The public is invited to attend the meeting which will begin at 7 p.m. at the Blue Valley Sportsman Club.

Management of deer populations has become more complicated since the state responded to mule deer population declines by moving from over-the-counter deer licenses to limited licenses in 1999.

During the initial two to three years of the study, the Division will establish a baseline by monitoring mule deer in Middle Park. Then the Division will temporarily adjust the allocation of hunting licenses in the area in an effort to change the ratio of bucks to does in the herd. During this period, Bergman and his team of researchers will monitor the population to assess how the license allocation actually affects the population of deer in the area.

“It’s extremely important for managers to know if there are differences between survival rates of bucks, does and fawns when we manage herds for different objectives,” said Bergman. “For instance, in some areas we may be managing for a post hunt ratio of 45 bucks per 100 does while in other areas we may be managing for a post hunt ratio of 25 bucks per 100 does. We’ve learned that we can effectively accomplish this, but we don’t know if the over-winter survival of bucks under these two conditions is different.”

Those who are interested in hearing more about the research project are encouraged to attend the meeting on Oct. 6. The Blue Valley Sportsman Club is located 11 miles south of Kremmling at milepost 128.1 on Colorado Highway 9.
More information about the Division’s mule deer research may be found at:
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Research/Mammal/Deer/

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Hunting Fishing and the Great Outdoors, News, Politics | 4 Comments »

Draft DOJ Report Faults BATFE, But Not Gun Control

September 25, 2010

A draft report prepared by the Justice Department Inspector General’s Evaluation and Inspections Division calls into question the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (BATFE) performance in carrying out the mandates of its Project Gunrunner program, established in 2007 to combat the trafficking of firearms to Mexico. The report also contradictorily suggests that BATFE’s ability to meet the program’s objectives might be enhanced by federal laws requiring the filing of multiple sales reports on long guns, and requiring some or all private sales of firearms to be screened by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

One contradiction is that the report complains that BATFE’s “focus remains largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than on higher-level traffickers, smugglers, and the ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns.” But requiring multiple sales reports on long guns and requiring private sales to go through NICS would mainly facilitate even more investigations of straw purchasers. And there’s another contradiction. If, as some claim, straw purchasers are the primary source of firearms bought in the U.S. for resale to the cartels, and that straw purchasers can defeat NICS checks, the smuggling of firearms from the U.S. to Mexico can’t be significantly reduced by requiring that private sales be subject to NICS. After all, a straw purchaser who can pass a NICS check can pass it regardless of whether the gun is being bought from a dealer or someone who is not a dealer.

Also, BATFE doesn’t follow up on most of the multiple sales reports it receives on handguns, so there’s little reason to think it would do things any differently with reports on long guns. Theoretically, more multiple sales reports and NICS checks would make it easier for BATFE to conduct commercial record traces on firearms, but as the report points out, “most trace requests that are submitted to ATF from Mexico are considered ‘unsuccessful.'” Only 27 percent of traces between 2007 and 2009, on firearms seized in Mexico, were successful.

BATFE traces are of such dubious value that, the report notes, “Mexican law enforcement authorities do not view gun tracing as an important investigative tool. . . . One Mexican official stated that U.S. officials talk of eTrace as if it is a ‘panacea’ but that it does nothing for Mexican law enforcement. An official in the Mexico Attorney General’s office told us he felt eTrace is ‘some kind of bad joke.'”

To its credit, the draft report correctly points out that Mexico requests BATFE to trace only about one quarter of the firearms that it seizes from the cartels, a fact which implies that a significant share of the cartels’ guns come from countries other than the United States. To put it simply, if the Mexican police recover a machine gun with Communist Chinese markings on it, they know it didn’t come from the U.S., and they are not going to waste time requesting a trace from BATFE. The Mexicans are interested in squashing the cartels, not in racking up trace numbers to spruce up BATFE press releases.

SOURCE

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Immigration, Law, mysandry, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on Draft DOJ Report Faults BATFE, But Not Gun Control

“Nice Try, But No Cigar” For Brady Campaign’s Paul Helmke

September 25, 2010

“The NRA is wrong again,” said Brady Campaign president Paul Helmke on Tuesday, in his 176th (and counting) blog post on the left-wing Huffington Post website. Helmke was upset because of three things we pointed out in our annual “More Guns, Less Crime” fact sheet and Grassroots Alert last week.

First, the number of guns has risen to an all-time high. Second, for decades Brady Campaign has repeatedly predicted with unfettered confidence that more guns would necessarily cause crime to rise. But third, the nation’s violent crime and murder rates have instead fallen to 35- and 45-year lows, respectively.

Our fact sheet and alert didn’t say that crime has gone down because the number of guns has risen. And we didn’t even mention that crime has gone down in large part because in the 1990s many states adopted laws that NRA called for, to require violent criminals to spend time behind bars, to increase the length of violent criminals’ prison sentences, and to reduce their ability to obtain parole and probation (we’ll do that in next year’s fact sheet.  Thanks for the reminder, Paul).

All our fact sheet and alert pointed out was that, contrary to Brady Campaign predictions, an increase in guns didn’t cause crime to go up.

Nevertheless, Helmke whined, “The NRA is misleading again.”  The NRA is trying “to wave and shout and dance and steal the credit” for crime going down. NRA’s leaders “treat us as fools.”

Helmke didn’t deny that there is less crime. And he didn’t deny that there are more guns. Instead, he paraphrased some of Violence Policy Center’s hogwash, saying, “the average number of guns per owner has gone up, but the percent of American households with a gun? That’s right: it’s gone down.”

What Helmke didn’t mention is that polls measuring the percentage of households that acknowledge having at least one gun don’t accurately measure gun ownership by household or the number of Americans who own guns.

In its 1996 National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms in the United States (NSPOF), the Police Foundation identified one of the limits of surveys attempting to measure gun ownership by household.

“For households headed by a married couple, 49 percent of the husbands report a gun in the home, compared with just 36 percent of the wives. Since this difference is far larger than can be explained by chance, it appears that many wives either do not know about their husband’s guns or are reluctant to discuss it with a stranger. The NSPOF estimates based on a respondent’s report of all guns in the household is 107.2 million working firearms. The NSPOF estimate based on a respondent’s report of his or her own firearms is 192.1 million working firearms.”

Similarly, criminologist Gary Kleck has noted that in his and Marc Gertz’s landmark survey of defensive firearm use, “50.1% of married men reported a household gun, but only 37.4% of married women did. . . . Fourteen consecutive General Social Surveys found married women to report household guns at lower levels than married men.”

Kleck added that a person is more likely to acknowledge that he or she own guns, than to acknowledge the ownership of guns by someone else in the household, but that while “it is most commonly a male who owns the household guns . . . . [M]arried women make up around 31% of the usual adult survey samples.”

Helmke also didn’t note (but Kleck did) that the percentage of people telling pollsters that they have guns in their homes dropped precipitously during the years of the Clinton Administration’s war against gun owners, from the 40+ percentage range, down into the 30s.

And there is one other, factor that Helmke didn’t take into account: The population of the country rises by about one percent, or three million, every year. Surveys began showing a decline in “household” gun ownership in the 1980s, but since 1985, for example, the population of the country has increased 30 percent, from 239 million to 310 million. That’s more than enough to compensate for the decline in “yes” responses to pollsters asking whether people have any guns in their homes.

So, we’d say we hate to be the one to tell you, Paul, but that wouldn’t be honest. We’re glad to tell you. There are more Americans owning more guns than ever before and, as we both agree, violent crime is way, way, down.

SOURCE

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Law, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, States Rights, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on “Nice Try, But No Cigar” For Brady Campaign’s Paul Helmke

Oh give me a F**king Break! : Judge clears way for California’s first execution since 2006

September 24, 2010

I sat on a jury, way back in the day. I was still in California and a proud citizen of said state at that time.

At the time I was an auto Mechanic, with a basic Associates degree, and an ASS in Automotive Technology. Somehow, I ended up the Jury Foreman.

We deliberated long, and hard. Our Jury was in fact multiracial, with a slight bias toward Asian’s. It wasn’t the verdict, but the penalty that caused us to deliberate for so long… One Juror, was a devout Catholic that was very opposed to any harsh penalty. Another just didn’t trust the government. But, after a week, we, the people, decided that this miscreant that we were Judging? Needed to die…

Two years later, USSC decided that they, knew better than we the people…

This total miscreant, “fell” from a tier in a California State Prison. I am no fan of the Aryan Brotherhood, but hey guys? Ya’ got that one right! Broken Clock Justice perhaps..?

READ ON


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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Immigration, Law, mysandry, News, Politics, Uncategorized, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on Oh give me a F**king Break! : Judge clears way for California’s first execution since 2006

A Tale of Two Journalists : Make fun of Christians and Jews all you want, but thou shall not inflame Muslim ire.

September 24, 2010

Molly Norris used to have a life and a career in Washington, as a cartoonist for Seattle Weekly, an alternative paper. But not any longer. She has now — at the urging of the FBI — gone underground, forfeiting her identity and her job. Is Norris a criminal? No. She just had the poor judgment to draw a cartoon entitled “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” which led to the issuance of a fatwa — or Islamic death sentence — against her. Perhaps she had forgotten the 11th Commandment: Make fun of Christians and Jews all you want, but thou shall not inflame Muslim ire.

The fatwa was issued by imam Anwar al-Awlaki, a man The New York Times described in October 2001 as “a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West.” Al-Awlaki, who was born in the United States and headed a mosque in Virginia, is now conducting his dirty work from a hiding place in Yemen.

Barack Obama has remained silent on this matter, conspicuously so because only recently he lectured all of us on the freedoms afforded by this country. Of course that was in relation to the building of the Cordoba House mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. When it comes to the injustice that has befallen an average American like Molly Norris, he has nothing to say.

While some in the field of journalism are threatened with death for making a joke, others are rewarded for their hatred. Recall Helen Thomas, the poster child for women in journalism, who was canned after making incendiary comments at a conference celebrating Jewish heritage. Thomas’ statement that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and “everywhere else” was caught on tape so that not even leftists could defend her.

Even after her weak apology, no one would touch her with a 10-foot pole. No one, that is, except the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Next month the 90-year-old Thomas will be given a lifetime-achievement award at CAIR’s Leadership Conference & 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet in Arlington, Virginia. Clearly, her final flourish as a “journalist” was appreciated by someone.

SOURCE

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 3 Comments »

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