Maine Writer

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My blogs are dedicated to the issues I care about. Thank you to all who take the time to read something I've written.

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Donald Trump loyalty: memories of 60's mobs

An echo opinion letter published in the Minnesota newspaper, Pine and Lakes Echo Journal.

William Barr whitewashed the Robert Mueller report about Donald Trump- Moral character or job qualifications mean nothing to Mr. Trump. 
Republican U.S. Attorney General William Barr lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee, run by South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham

Moreover, Barr also lied about what Special Counsel Republican Robert Mueller thought about Barr's "summary" letter, which attempted (and failed....) to exonerate Republican Donald Trump, current occupant of our White House.

The attorney general's job is to represent the interests of the U.S. people, not whoever's in our White House! We people most definitely need someone who speaks for us. Because corporations and the wealthy took over so much of how our democratic government is run, by using the Republican Party, the people have too little voice these days. It's why so many of us are frustrated.

Trump wants only one thing from anyone he hires: total and complete loyalty. When I lived in New Jersey in the '60s, this was the rule of the mafia; the mob. But, Trump gives no loyalty in return, but is clever enough with his mouth to string people along well past the time when they've hurt their own lives or ruined their reputations.

Moral character or job qualifications mean nothing to Trump. Do what you want, he tells them.

Trump tried to get out of paying his own attorney, using the White House Attorney Don McGahn instead. But the White House attorney answers to the people, not the president, so there is no client-attorney privilege!

No one told Trump, or in his arrogance and hubris he didn't listen, so he ended up telling McGahn a lot of things he wished he hadn't.

A. Martin, Merrifield, Minnesota

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Donald Trump launches fear as a failed campaign strategy



Trump launched his re-election campaign with fear-mongering
Opinion echo published in the Texas newspaper the El Paso Times

When a candidate is insecure in his electability, fear-mongering and hateful, divisive rhetoric becomes their hallmark. 

Unfortunately, and possibly due to the interference of foreign governments in the 2016 election, this was a winning position for our current president.


Apparently utilizing the theory that “if it works, don’t fix it,” and building upon a well-documented history of lying to the American people, Trump has launched his re-election campaign with the same fear-mongering and hateful, divisive rhetoric that colored his prior campaign and tenure as our nation’s leader.

He began by escalating tensions in our international alliances; separating from time-honored policies that won our nation’s title and reputation of “leader of the free world,” creating more hostilities between the U.S. and our collaborating allies than at any time in history.

Now, we are at odds with Iran, threatening further destabilization of already fragile relations with the majority of Middle Eastern nations. By deploying more troops to the near-Middle East in advance of his campaign rally, it is likely Mr. Trump has created and will continue to create the appearance of aggression on our part, leading us into yet another unnecessary and endless military conflict.


With continuous diatribes against our sister nation of Mexico, the brutal treatment of refugees, asylum seekers, and unaccompanied migrant children, and threats of economic sanctions and disruption of trade with Mexico, Mr. Trump continues to treat Mexico, and the 22 other nations south of the U.S., as enemies. By calling immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers and unaccompanied migrant children “criminals,” referring to them as a blight upon our society, Mr. Trump continues his creation of an imaginary army of people bursting across the border to take over our nation, our culture and marry our daughters and sons.

But, people migrate from all over the world, both legally and without complying with the immigration processes. 

Moreover, people have historically sought refuge from persecution, poverty, violence, and civil strife by coming to the United States and applying for asylum. It is their right to do so under existing laws and has been for over seven decades. It is the Trump administration violating the existing laws with the “Remain in Mexico” policy, the blockade from approaching the port of entry by Customs and Border Protection officials at the top of the international bridges, and the refusal to timely process asylum applications once received.

And then, he announces that there will be roundups of every undocumented immigrant in the U.S. Good luck with that. The following day, officials from the Department of Homeland Security advised that there is insufficient staffing, detention facilities, and travel accommodations to do so. Agents are focusing on people under recent removal (or deportation) orders — who may not actually even be deportable.


So, Trump tweeted his campaign announcements from a “throne” of power — threatening war with Iran, threatening immediate and massive raids of the homes and workplaces of undocumented immigrants, falsely portraying his accomplishments. And he used these talking points in his campaign rally, lying as is his wont, about his administration’s accomplishments. This is the tone of his campaign — receiving rousing cheers from his supporters.

No surprises here — he has lied to us over 10,000 times, including at least six times in his Tuesday (campaign kick off) speech. He called people inappropriate nicknames, demeaned international leaders. As revealed in the Mueller investigation, he, his family, and his closest political allies have engaged in conduct to subvert the orderly process of elections in our country. He and his family, through their corporations and business entities, have enriched themselves at taxpayer expense. He whips up his base, calling forth the most frightening and hateful aspects of human nature.

All of this to the detriment of our republic. Pay attention, America. We are surely in for another wild ride. 

I hope the result is different this time.

Ouisa D. Davis is an attorney at law in El Paso. She can be reached at Ouisadavis@yahoo.com.

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Saturday, June 29, 2019

Donald Trump earns the media coverage he complains about

If Donald Trump wanted to get positive news from the media then he would act accordingly, an echo opinion letter published in the California newspaper The Mercury News


Excuse my crocodile tears, but the Donald Trump cult supporters are always complaining about how the media writes about their supreme leader.
Donald Trump supporters are a sorry cult. They complain about their leader's media coverage, all the while they know that the man they follow is a bigot, a philanderer, a sexual predator, a liar, a Putin hugger....tax evader....
However, if there is one thing (and the only one) that Donald Trump succeeds at, it happens to be "self promotion". Therefore, since Donald Trump excels at self promotion, he is getting just the kind of media coverage that he has earned and deserves.

Obviously, he must revel in the media coverage and news he receives. Otherwise, he would do something to change his behavior and become a positive, rather than a negative, creature.

Trumpzi followers who complain about their leaders' media coverage are the people who voted for him all the while knowing how he was hiding his tax returns for a sinister reason, he is a sexual predator (Access Hollywood tape) and puts his own self interest first.

Donald Trump thrives on controversy and chaos and to have people talking about him.

Americans deserve better. At a minimum, voters require a presidential leader (POTUS) to competent, compassionate and smarter than me.

Seriously, if Donald Trump really wanted a different narrative being reported, he would change his actions accordingly.

A Maine Writer paraphrased letter.....the original content is from Jerry Gudeman, in Santa Clara California

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Twenty-two women who dared to come forth - the brave ones: Donald Trump and rape

Thank you Jia Tolentino! Essay echo published in The New Yorker.


E. Jean Carroll is bravely among the litany of women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct including rape.
One of the things I have feared most since the night of the 2016 election is the inevitable hardening of my own heart—and what such hardening might lead to, especially if it were experienced by many other people as well. 

Specifically, I feared that the Trump era would bring a surfeit of bad news, and that I would compartmentalize this bad news in order to remain functional, and that this attempt to remain functional would itself be so demoralizing that it would contribute to the despair and distraction that allowed all this bad news to occur.

When I imagined specifics, back in November, 2016, I pictured something like last week—or part of it. I imagined that undocumented families would be openly and cruelly persecuted in America, and that there would be plans of mass raids and internment, and that as this was happening I would not be rioting in the street as I ought to but depressively checking things off my Google Calendar to-do list and probably writing a blog post about a meme. What I didn’t imagine, though—and what actually occurred last week—is that a respected and well-known writer would accuse the President of raping her, and that I would be so sad and numb, after years of writing about Trump’s many accusers, after watching Brett Kavanaugh get confirmed to the Supreme Court in the face of credible sexual-assault allegations, that I would not even have the courage to read the story for days.

E. Jean Carroll, now seventy-five years old, is a longtime advice columnist for Elle. Her approach to life is distinctive: brisk, stylish, tough, compassionate. Her columns provided an early and crucial model for me—when I was little and waist-deep in the mistake of trying to understand life through women’s glossies—of never giving my personal problems more weight than was absolutely necessary. 

The essay that she published last week, in New York, titled “My List of Hideous Men”—it’s an excerpt from a forthcoming book—performs the tremendous and awful feat of bringing her sharp-edged breeziness to bear on a story about being raped. Carroll’s “hideosity bar is high,” she writes. A boy who shoved a stick or rock up her genitals when she was a girl doesn’t make the list. Hunter S. Thompson, slicing her pants off with a knife in a hot tub, doesn’t make it either, because, she writes, “to me there is a big difference between an ‘adventure’ and an ‘attack.’ ”

Carroll goes on to detail multiple sexual assaults: by a college suitor, by a boss who chased her down a hotel hallway, by the former CBS president and C.E.O. Les Moonves. (Moonves denies the allegation.) “By now, Silent Generation aside, the question has occurred to you: Why does this woman seem so unfazed by all this horrible crap?” she writes. “Well, I am shallower than most people. I do not dwell on the past. I feel greater empathy for others than for myself. I do not try to control everything.” Plus, she adds, she’s a born cheerleader: she was a cheerleader in grade school, in high school, and was even the winner of a competition called Miss Cheerleader U.S.A. For years, in her advice columns, she cheered for each correspondent to “pick herself up and go on.”

But there are two men, she writes, whom she wishes she’d spoken about sooner. One is a camp director who repeatedly molested her when she was twelve. The other is Donald Trump. The incident happened in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996, she writes. She and Trump ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman; Trump convinced her to help him shop for a present in the lingerie department; Carroll—“and as I write this, I am staggered by my stupidity,” she states—went into the fitting room with him; Trump shoved her against the wall, unzipped his pants, and forced his penis inside her. Eventually, Carroll fought him off and ran away. She still carries around the shrapnel of this encounter, myriad pointed details lodged in her mind—such as the fact that, at the beginning of the struggle, she was so shocked that she was laughing. There is a limit, for everyone, to the uses of compartmentalization. Whether it’s “my age, the fact that I haven’t met anyone fascinating enough over the past couple of decades to feel ‘the sap rising,’ as Tom Wolfe put it, or if it’s the blot of the real-estate tycoon, I can’t say,” Carroll writes, closing her essay. “But I have never had sex with anybody ever again.”

A lot of hearts seem to have hardened, not just in response to Carroll’s story, but in the long lead-up to it. When the piece appeared online, there was an immediate unspoken sense, I thought—although it’s certainly possible that I’m projecting—that it would tell us only what we already knew. Trump accused himself of sexual assault, on tape, in 2005, while filming “Access Hollywood,” and we found out about it just before the election, and, because any man who boasts about grabbing women by the pussy is likely to have done so and worse, repeatedly and with no compunction, it’s all been extremely, deadeningly predictable from there. The White House said in a statement that Carroll’s story was “false and unrealistic” and was “created simply to make the President look bad.” Trump later stated that Carroll was just trying to sell books, and claimed that he had never met her, despite New York running a photo of the two of them talking at a party. “It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations,” he said. On Monday, in an interview with The Hill, Trump, deploying a blatant grotesquerie that was surely intended to play to his base, said, “Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened.”

But a public figure accusing the President of rape is news. Even though Carroll is at least the twenty-second woman to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct, she is only the second to accuse him of rape. (The first was Ivana Trump, who later downplayed her story.) Though Carroll received the pride of place at New York that she deserved, appearing on the cover of the magazine, her story did not make the front page of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune. The New York Post deleted a story about Carroll’s allegations on Friday. The Times was slow to feature the story online and didn’t run its piece in print until Sunday. Weekend talk shows mostly ignored the topic; on Sunday, Brian Stelter, on CNN, discussed the lack of attention the story was getting, citing the possibility—the reality—of media fatigue. There have been so many accusations against Trump that none has been able to receive the undivided attention that it ought to, Stelter suggested. And the news cycle itself is so quick-moving and chaotic that every important story, regardless of its subject, is metabolized too fast.

There are other explanations, too, though none of them are particularly satisfactory. Newspapers tend to prioritize stories that they’ve broken in house. There are also good journalistic reasons for seeking independent confirmation of a story before giving it prominence. But, on Monday, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the Times, acknowledged that the paper had “underplayed the article.” Though Carroll’s account was vetted by New York—two friends confirmed that she told them the story contemporaneously with the event—it was a first-person account rather than an investigative report. And it gets harder to tell this story over and over and over, as a lesson we learned in 2016 only becomes clearer: there are many people in this country, including, apparently, the majority of Republicans who hold national office, who don’t believe that rape is that big of a deal
As we saw during the Kavanaugh hearings, a portion of those people may grow to like a man better after he is accused of sexual assault. In her essay for New York, Carroll acknowledges the risk that she might make Trump more popular by telling the story of how he raped her. In these cases, the accuser is not so much disbelieved as conscripted into a narrative of women attempting to victimize men by arousing public sympathy. The powerful solidify their power by pretending that they have been threatened and attacked. This dynamic is central to both fascism and abuse. 

It has felt impossible, in the Trump era, to hope even for a second that our governing systems will operate on any standard of morality. What we have instead is a standard of consistency. If the President had ever convincingly espoused ideas of respect for people who are not like him, or of equal rights for women, it’s possible that he would be held accountable for his actions. Instead, he promised mass campaigns of cruelty against undocumented immigrants, and he is delivering. He said that he grabbed women by the pussy, and many women—twenty-two, so far—explained that, yes, he did that, or something like it, to them. 

Carroll’s essay—exceptional, devastating, decades in the making—has made me consider how hard it is to understand right away that you’ve been exhausted into submission, especially when submission and endurance feel inextricable. It’s reminded me of how high I’ve let my own hideosity bar get lately, and also of the fact that no one can lower it again but me.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

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Friday, June 28, 2019

Donald Trump's memory deficit disorder - another Oklahoma echo


"If you are still a Trump supporter after all the negative things he has done to degrade our country, then you are part of the problem."

Enough is enough!
TULSA, Oklahoma- Donald Trump has hearing and memory problems when it comes to his own presentations. He certainly exhibits an attention deficit disorder.

It is now a fact that Trump has made more than 10,000 false or misleading claims (PolitiFact and FactCheck.org).

How can anyone trust Trump? World leaders cannot depend on what he says; it will either be false or he will change his mind within a few hours or days.

When a reporter questions him, he snaps back, “I did not say that,” “You misunderstood," “You took it out of context,” or his old standby, “That’s fake news.”

Never once have we heard him say, “I was wrong” or “I made a mistake.” I don’t know about you, but I have never met a person who has never made a mistake.

Trump told an interviewer it was OK to lie because “people believe me.” No, it’s because we took him at his word he would make America great again.

He let us down.

If you are still a Trump supporter after all the negative things he has done to degrade our country, then you are part of the problem.

The good news is that polls show that Trump is slowly losing a percentage of his hardcore base.

It took awhile, but enough is enough!

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Thursday, June 27, 2019

A new rat- America has been down this maze before: Trump's war path

Again? Raise your hand if you smell a rat.

Does that rat smell a lot like the argument used to go after Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction we later confirmed did not really exist?

We saw and heard high-level government officials do their best to convince the American public the threat was real, imminent, and we needed to strike hard and fast.

The weighted rhetoric was force-fed through media outlets, and counterarguments were greatly muted.

The invasion of Iraq took place, and American troops and treasure were locked in a prolonged conflict based on an embellished lie.
The new rat is being paraded as an effort to justify a new military action against Iran.

We see grainy images of a small boat and several individuals floating next to a giant oil tanker. The action is being labeled as a military strike against shipping in the region.

It appears to be a weak attempt by someone who wants to draw America into another expensive war and keep us entangled in the Middle East.

If the attacks on tankers were truly an act of war, those tankers would be resting on the bottom of the ocean. There are special interests at play here.

America has been led down this path before, and the results do not work in our favor. War should only be a response to an undeniable threat, and it must also include a well-defined end game.

Soldiers will die for political reasons - again.

Bob Warterfield, Tulsa

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Trumpzi opinion summary - one mistep after another

"....Lies are the new truth, after all...."
Stupid is as stupid does
An echo opinion letter published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Dear Editor:  It was an eventful week: Trump welcomed opposition intel from foreign governments, including Russia and China, to get himself get re-elected. Sarah Huckabee Sanders quit (couldn't she figure out how to lie her way out of this last pile of Oval Office offal?). The Federal Election Commission advised Trump that soliciting or accepting dirt from a foreign country on political opponents is a felony. Trump then claimed he would, of course, turn such intel over to "somebody" in the Justice Department, but not before "looking at it" (and benefiting from its contents--still a felony).

In the meantime, the Special Counsel's Office recommended firing Kellyanne Conway for using her office to electioneer for Republican candidates, which violates the Hatch Act. Trump refused to enforce the latter law, while advertising to all foreign takers that he's willing to break the former (Oh, wait, he's already been down that road--"Russia, if you're listening ...").

What to do? Well, a nice war would be just the thing to rally the base, silence all the critics and get re-elected. Unpatriotic to attack a "war president," don't you see? And if stepping up the pressure on Iran doesn't cause the ayatollahs to do something rash, one can always fabricate an incident (Gulf of Tonkin) or declare an imminent danger (weapons of mass destruction). 

Lies are the new truth, after all--an alternate reality, crafted daily by our Supreme Leader. And real wars, like trade wars, are easy to win, right? Just need a catchy name. Operation Iranian Freedom, anyone? 

From Alex Mironoff in Fayetteville Arkansas

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Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Republicans submitting to Donald Trump's serial lies


Where the rape allegedly happened: The Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City

What she said: In excerpts in her new book, Carroll claims that she encountered Trump at the department store where she says he attacked her in one of the dressing rooms after pressing her to try on lingerie and pulling her toward the dressing room. She alleged he "unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway -- or completely, I'm not certain -- inside me." She says she fought against Trump.


Asked by reporters about E. Jean Carroll’s accusation that President Trump raped her, Senator Lindsey Graham replied, “He’s denied it. That’s all I needed to hear.”
This seems like an inappropriately high level of credibility to grant a man who has made over 10,000 documented false statements just since taking office. Even aside from the president’s general propensity to lie, though, there are a number of reasons to disbelieve his denial of this specific charge.

Trump began his denials by claiming he had “never met this person in my life.” This denial was pre-refuted by a photograph that The New Yorker ran with the story, showing the two of them together.
Donald Trump attending a party with E. Jean Carroll
He proceeded to insist “she’s not my type.” (Words to throw up on.)

Even aside from the insinuation that Trump does have a type of women he would rape, this denial echoed a line he has used before. After Jessica Leeds charged that Trump had groped her on an airplane — a story Leeds shared with four people at the time of the alleged incident — Trump public dismissed her with the same argument (“Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you”).

Trump also privately used the same argument to dismiss allegations that he slept with Stormy Daniels. Trump called her story a “hoax,” and as the Washington Post reported last year, “The president even has griped to several people that Daniels is not the type of woman he finds attractive.” Trump turned out to have signed checks compelling Daniels to keep quiet. Not even his most fervent defenders still deny she had relations with him. So it would seem a little strange for Trump to be now refuting a false allegation by using the same terms he previously employed to refute a true one.

For that matter, one might also consider the fact that 16 other women have made credible charges against Trump of sexual assault or other inappropriate touching. Trump was caught on a live mic bragging about his regular habit of committing sexual assault. He also boasted in a radio interview of barging in on beauty contestants in their dressing rooms to spy on them naked.

Some of Trump’s allies have questioned the motives of Carroll, who does have a new book that is bound to attract more attention in light of her accusation against the president. “I know that she’s selling a book,” says Senator James Lankford. 

However, Carroll shared this story at the time it happened with two journalists, predating both her book and Trump’s presidential campaign by two decades. If she was lying at the time, she had no obvious motive to do so. If all three of them are lying about Carroll having said this at the time, her two friends are taking a large professional risk — they’ve confirmed their accounts to New York and spoken to other media outlets, putting their professional credibility on the line — with no discernible upside for themselves.

Obviously, Carroll cannot prove her charge. But the standard of proof used in the court of public opinion is not the same as that used in a court of law, especially when the crime — a rape 23 years ago — is virtually impossible to prove, and cannot be prosecuted due to the statute of limitations.

And Republicans seem happy to default to the standard Graham is using. They’re taking at face value the word of a man who has lied at unprecedented rates about everything, has already lied about this specific case, who has faced credible accusations of similar behavior by other women, and has indeed boasted about his own propensity to do it.

And this is not even to mention the general fact that Trump is extremely comfortable undertaking actions that most people would consider, well, bad.

This list of actions runs from small things like refusing to pay his contractors to asking a foreign dictator to steal his opponent’s emails. He is facing several current investigations at the state and federal levels for a number of alleged financial crimes. Before they completely abandoned all pretenses of the concept of morality for their posture of tribalistic relativism, conservatives used to be comfortable making judgments about the character of people who habitually lie and steal. Their decision to place their faith in Trump, against a mountain of circumstantial evidence pointing in the other direction, is a perfectly fitting emblem of their posture of submission to the Trump (failed!) presidency.

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Pennsylvania point of view - Trump never served our nation

Donald Trump will never learn!
Trump’s actions put many in harm’s way

Opinion echo letter published in the Johnstown by J.R. Deleva

Friedens Pennsylvania

I hope our president has learned a valuable lesson. By his reckless words and actions over the past 21/2 years, he finally has painted himself, and our nation, into a (failed!) corner.

Unfortunately, his carelessness has put not only himself, but our country and our allies, in a degree of jeopardy that is unnecessary. The tensions in the Middle East have escalated to alarming levels.

Unnecessarily, lives will be put in jeopardy. Soldiers and civilians of many countries will be put in harm’s way.

Ironically, Donald Trump and his family have never served in the defense of this nation. Words have consequences. Maybe he should have this tattooed on the forearm of his tweeting hand.

J.R. Deleva,  Friedens

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Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Fort Sill Oklahoma became a migrants concentration camp

Opinion letter echo published in Tulsa World by Brandon Rule, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.


Fort Sills protestors

Regarding the use of Oklahoma's Fort Sill to detain migrant children, we are creating concentration camps for people in need of humanitarian aid, and it is wrong.

The border crisis, to the extent it is not completely manufactured, is a humanitarian crisis created by the president's policies, not a threat to our nation.

These are desperate people who need aid, not detainment. I expect U.S. Rep. Kevin Hern and Sens. James Lankford, and James Inhofe to be doing everything in their power to mitigate this humanitarian crisis.
And, that doesn't mean locking up kids. It means providing aid and intervention in their home countries to eliminate the cause of the refugees, not using their desperation to gin up fear, anger and xenophobia in Americans.

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Donald Trump - learning to tell the truth

The Herald Bulletin in Anderson Indiana, an opinion echo. 


For thinking people, the thoughtful, by Trump refusing to turn over a full Mueller report, tax filings, business records and telling people not to testify, qualifies as obstruction of justice in a free democratic nation under constitutional law.

But, if you (incredulously) believe our pathological liar President is telling the truth, here is how you can help him.
  • Push him to release all the filings, records and full Mueller report 
  • Plus, don’t stop people from testifying (under oath!). 
This will rub Trump’s claim of innocence in the faces of the people he calls fake news, elite liberals, corrupt FBI, corrupt CIA, politically guided Justice Department.

Also, by demanding accountability Trump will prove he’s not guilty of double-digit felonies, the crimes he’ll face once out of office. You know, insurance fraud, tax evasion, blackmail, corrupt business practices, bribery, election fraud, etc., are all serious crimes with long prison terms for all involved.

Throw in treason with a foreign enemy, and the death penalty is on the table for all involved. So, if you want to see justice be served, then go to your next Trump rally and start chanting “Show them everything.”

From 1985 to 1994, Trump lost well over a billion dollars and only paid income tax two of those 10 years. 

Reality check~ The real art of the deal is the con.

Tim Mahaffey, Middletown Indiana

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Monday, June 24, 2019

Fallen Journalists Memorial echo opinion

Journalism tragedy anniversary. In fact, the deadliest assault against journalists in U.S. history occurred on June 28, 2018, when a gunman opened fire at the offices of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, killing five and injuring two. Echo by David Dreier:

Ernie Pyle Memorial Ie Shima Okinawa


At the Capital Gazette newspaper, we will always remember 

  • Rob Hiaasen 
  • Wendi Winters
  • Gerald Fischman 
  • John McNamara and 
  • Rebecca Smith 
They were the mortality victims along with the brave women, and men who survived the attack and immediately went back to work serving their community.

Their deaths are not isolated. Every year, hundreds of journalists are attacked, imprisoned and murdered around the world. Some are killed because of what they do. The Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi and the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl are among the victims. Sadly, as we saw last year at the Capital Gazette, American journalists are vulnerable to reprisals for their work on U.S. soil. Other tragedies have included the 2015, fatal shooting of reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward of Roanoke, Virginia’s WDBJ TV and the 2001, anthrax death of photo-journalist Robert Stevens of The Sun newspaper in Boca Raton, Florida.


Others have perished because of where they are. 


Throughout history, journalists have been on the front lines of conflicts from World War II to Iraq. 
  • Ernie Pyle
  • Michael Kelly and 
  • David Bloom are among the journalists who perished in the quest to keep the public informed about the movements and actions of our military.
No matter the circumstances of their deaths, these journalists and their sacrifices deserve to be remembered. In a free society, a free press is a basic tenet. The fourth estate acts as both an expression and a guardian of liberty. That’s why we are beginning a campaign to erect a monument to fallen journalists in our nation’s capital.

The Tribune Publishing family is grateful to Senators Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat; and Ohio Republican Rob Portman, along with Representatives Grace Napolitano, a California Democrat; and Kevin Hern, an Oklahoma Republican, who have introduced legislation to establish the Fallen Journalists Memorial in Washington, D.C. 


Journalists who have sacrificed their lives in the name of a free press will receive an everlasting tribute in the memorial.

We have established the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation under the auspices of the non-profit National Press Club Journalism Institute. The Foundation will build support and plan for the design, construction, operation, maintenance and preservation of the memorial. Initial funding is being provided by the Annenberg Foundation and the Ferro Foundation.

The safety of journalists in the U.S. and around the world must be a priority because bigger values are at stake.

"Murder is a form of brutal censorship that is disrupting the flow of information,” said Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “People around the world are increasingly recognizing what's at stake. Political leaders must stand up, speak out, and deliver justice on behalf of the journalists who gave their lives to bring us the news."

This is a call to action. We must honor the memories of the journalists who have perished so that they can serve as a reminder of the essential value of journalism to our democracy.

David Dreier is Chairman of Tribune Publishing Co. and the Fallen Journalists Memorial Foundation, fallenjournalists.org.

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Sunday, June 23, 2019

Mueller report 101- Russia made ongoing attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election


Opinion published in the Idaho Press

Russia was listening! Debate about what the Special Counsel Robert Mueller Report concluded, with regard to Russian interference in the 2016 election, has only intensified since May 29, when Mueller spoke to the nation. In his sphinx-like manner, the special counsel summarized what he had found, declining to go beyond the confines of his written report.

Mueller was unequivocal on one point--the Russians engaged in “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election.” He began and ended his presentation with that stark warning, apparently confounded by the fact that the U.S. has not seriously mobilized to stop it from happening again in 2020. Normally, there would be an all-hands-on-deck effort to warn off the Russians, prepare strong counter measures, and harden our election systems, among other things, but these are not normal times.

Because Mueller declined to give his personal views on the report findings, all sides have stepped forward to give their particular slant. The Attorney General has repeatedly claimed that the report found no “collusion” between the Russians and the Trump campaign. That is absolutely correct but beside the point. On pages 2 and 180 of Volume One of his report, Mueller clearly states that he did not look into the question of whether there was collusion.

Mueller’s inquiry was concerned with whether the Trump campaign committed the crime of conspiracy, which he describes at page 181 as “an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law — including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws.”

The report details over 140 Russian contacts with the Trump campaign in pages 66-173 of Volume One, concluding that Russia made offers of assistance to the campaign and that the campaign was receptive to some of those offers. However, Mueller said on May 29, that “there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.” At page 2 of the report he clarifies: “A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In other words, there was evidence of conspiracy, but not enough to support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

Proving criminal conspiracy is no easy task because of the reasonable doubt standard. During my tenure as Idaho Attorney General in the 1980s, I spent many hours trying to pinpoint price-fixing among gasoline dealers. It generally requires either court-approved electronic surveillance or a credible inside source to make a try-able conspiracy case. A phone tap won’t help if the conduct is not on-going, and credible inside sources are hard to come by, as Paul Manafort clearly demonstrated.

I often explained to the public that it was not a price-fixing conspiracy for gas retailers to charge the same price all over town. It was only an unlawful conspiracy when there was an agreement to set prices. In the case of the 2016, election, there would have had to be strong proof of an agreement between Russian actors and the campaign in order to establish a conspiracy. Mueller implies that such evidence existed, but he apparently was unable to obtain enough documents or credible inside witnesses to prove it.

A preponderance of evidence exists to support the Trump campaign's 2016 collusion with the Russians. Nevertheless, we may never know whether the Russian interference helped Trump win the presidency. The President hinted in that direction when he tweeted on May 30 that, “I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” He later denied that Russia helped him get elected.

What we do know is that Russia gave the President substantial help in the 2016 election. Putin admitted in Helsinki that he wanted Trump to win. All honorable and patriotic presidential candidates should loudly and clearly tell the Russians and every other foreign country that the United States will not tolerate interference in our elections in 2020 or ever. Indeed, Idaho's Congressional delegation should demand severe consequences for those who try to pervert our democracy.

Jim Jones’ previous columns can be found at https://JJCommonTater.com.

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Physician refugees - the" weaponization" of health care


Excellent report in the Idaho Statesman newspaper
Dr. Abdullahi Mohamed recently learned that he will begin a residency in Internal Medicine at the Boise VA hospital, the final chapter in his 16-year quest to practice medicine in the U.S. Mohamed would have been targeted for death as a doctor in Somalia, and he came to the U.S. as a refugee in 2013.

By Timothy Floyd

They escaped certain death as refugees. 

Now they study every Sunday to become Idaho doctors- published in the Idaho Statesman by Timothy Floyd

As Dr. Dhuha Ali stepped out of her dormitory, a glint of light on her chest caught her eye.

It was the tiny red dot of a laser sight. She looked straight ahead at the hospital doors and kept walking.

A loud explosion two feet above her head on the wall to her left shattered plaster all around her. She kept walking.

She thought about all the physicians who had been kidnapped or assassinated – colleagues and professors – after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime.

The wind from the sniper’s fourth bullet caressed her face as it flew past and exploded into the wall.

She stopped, torn between her commitment to the sick and injured patients in the hospital and her own life. But what good would she be to them dead?

She turned around slowly and walked back to the dormitory, determined to return to work another time.

Ali, who now works in research at St. Luke’s, is one of a group of refugee physicians who have made Boise and the Treasure Valley home.

These physicians from widely different global regions have found each other and formed a collaborative study group to further their common dream of becoming a licensed U.S. physician. Most of them say they escaped oppression and certain death in their home countries.

The murder of health care workers, especially physicians, in politically unstable countries is surprisingly common. It is a “force multiplier,” because fewer health care workers will result in fewer injured people receiving treatment.


Even worse, the end result is a higher death rate for adversaries. The red cross becomes a convenient crosshair.

The Weaponization of Health Care
In March 2017 the British medical journal, Lancet, reported on a United Nations analysis of attacks on hospitals and medics in Syria, referred to as “the weaponization of health.” 

In fact, the NGO website for Physicians for Human Rights reported a total of 553 attacks on medical facilities during the Syrian civil war, resulting in the death of nearly 700 physicians, according to a March 2017 report in The New Yorker. The website IraqiNews.com reported that more than 2,000 Iraqi doctors had been killed between the invasion of 2003 and 2015.

The secondary effect of this violence is to force the survivors ultimately to flee the country, often to neighboring countries, where they become political refugees. As refugees, these physicians often are relegated to the status of second-class citizens. The governments take advantage of their education and training.

“We made $200 per month working full-time in a clinic,” said Dr. Ziad Alsaifi, a physician from Iraq. He and his wife, Sally Naser, also a physician, lived in a tiny apartment in Damascus with their baby daughter, Sara, for five years. “But it was better than the $2.50 we were making per month during the period of Saddam,” he said with a smile.

Alsaifi and Naser live in Boise where Alsaifi works as a medical interpreter. They decided to leave Iraq when he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.

Aware that they were not Muslims but Mandaeans, a religious group that follows the teachings of John the Baptist, one of the homeless Muslim extremists who loitered outside his clinic ominously told Alsaifi, “Now everything will come back to the Muslim people.” Shortly after that, Alsaifi said his colleague was assassinated at his clinic in Baghdad.

“I was supposed to be working that day,” Alsaifi said. “The clinic had my name on it. They targeted me, not only because I am a physician, but because I am Mandaean. He filled in for me and was killed.” It was a case of mistaken identity that convinced Alsaifi and Naser to leave all of their possessions and flee to Syria with Sara.

In addition to Alsaifi and Naser, Idaho has welcomed several refugee physicians, including Ali, her husband, Dr. Salwan Swidan and his brother, Dr. Marwan Sweedan. Salwan was a cardiologist practicing in Baghdad while the younger Marwan was a trauma surgeon in Ramadi, a lawless city west of Baghdad.

The brothers work in the two major hospital systems, Salwan at St. Luke’s and Marwan at Saint Alphonsus.

“The police were killing many people in our neighborhood,” Salwan said. “One day a friend told me he had seen the list of people to be killed that night and our names and pictures were on it.”

Salwan said he called his brother and told him that he needed to come to Baghdad that afternoon to settle some of their father’s business. The threat was all too real to Salwan because he said their father recently had been executed by Shia militia, but he didn’t want to alarm Marwan.

“I didn’t tell him the real reason why because I didn’t want him to behave in a way that could raise suspicions among the people who were watching him,” Salwan said.

After Marwan arrived in Baghdad, he said his brother told him about the plot to kill them. They met a family member after the curfew to get forged passports. Later that night, the family joined thousands of physicians who have been forced by violence out of their home countries and fled to become refugees.

The Challenges of a New Country

Refugee physicians are not always welcome in the new country, however. They risk deportation back home where punishment or death may await them. Those who are able to stay temporarily may not find work and consider themselves lucky to find low-paying work as physicians like Ziad did. Citizenship is difficult in the new country, where they face discrimination. During this time, they become eligible to apply to the United Nations for refugee status, a process that can take five years before finding a new home country.

Tara Wolfson, director of the Idaho Office for Refugees, is familiar with the refugee process. She and Lisa Cooper co-founded Global Talent, a program of Jannus Inc., to address employment barriers.

“We can’t help these doctors with their studying,” she said, “but we do provide support by connecting them with other doctors and services they can use to achieve their goals. For example, we connect them to resources for obtaining loans because they often come to this country with nothing and no credit so it is difficult for them to get a conventional loan to complete their studies."

Through coordination with Global Talent, the Boise refugee physicians formed a study group that meets for three hours every Sunday, to study for the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination that U.S. medical students take. These grueling all-day exams are divided into three steps taken sequentially and take a minimum of three years to complete. Refugee physicians must demonstrate mastery of the same knowledge that U.S. students must learn.

Dr. Scott Smith, a physician at the Boise VA Medical Center, has been working with and helping this group for several years.

“These people are extremely bright and motivated,” he said. “At the end of every Sunday study session, they take a mock exam under time pressure, just like the real USMLE. The average U.S. medical student scores around the 60th to 70th percentile. These guys are always well above the 90th percentile.”

Finding Successes Amid Shortages

Smith and the group are doing something right. So far, all four physicians who applied for a residency have matched and have started the final phase of their training. Smith feels that the program’s 100% success rate is a testament to their high intelligence and strong determination.

The American Association of Medical Colleges predicts a physician shortage between 42,000 and 120,000 by 2030.

Idaho now is ranked 49th in the U.S. of physicians per capita.

Refugee physicians can help fill that void, but it is going to require great determination on their part.

Refugees do not need a visa, may apply for work immediately upon entry to the U.S. and may apply for a Green Card (Permanent Resident Card) after one year. They are referred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Those who make it through the lengthy UNHCR process to come to America still face an uphill battle. Since they do not possess a medical license, they must find employment in other fields. Several become medical interpreters, which helps them learn the American way of practicing medicine. They are unaccustomed to electronic medical records and medical jargon that may be unique to the U.S.

Between the purgatory as a refugee, time spent taking exams and then years of residency training, it can take up to 15 years before these physicians can practice medicine again, despite being some of the best and the brightest in their home countries.

“In Iraq, all high school students take an aptitude test,” Marwan said. “Those who score at the top go to medical school.”

Even Non-Refugee Physicians Face Challenges

Sanda Karunathilake loves to help people and make them happy. As a 9-year old girl growing up in war-torn Sri Lanka, she was impressed when a heart surgeon saved her father’s life after a severe heart attack.

“He made my family so happy that I decided that I wanted to make people happy, too,” she said. “So I became a doctor.”

When she graduated from medical school in 2016, she was looking forward to helping the poor people in her country. However, her husband received a full engineering scholarship at the University of Iowa, so she came to the U.S. to be with him. He then was offered a job in Boise, so they moved again. Her husband is happy working as a bridge structural engineer for a Boise firm, but Karunathilake is frustrated with her situation.

“He has a F1 student visa, I have a F2 spouse visa, which prohibits me from working or even from volunteering,” Karunathilake said. Her husband is applying for an H-1B visa, which will then allow her to apply for a visa that will allow her to work or go to school.

“I may try to become a registered nurse* or physician assistant while I am studying for the USMLE,” she said with a smile.

“This will allow me to gain more clinical experience and sharpen my communication skills.”

Karunathilake says she hasn’t been tempted in the past three years to get a job or volunteer.

“I really like this country, and I want to play by the rules,” she said. “I don’t want to risk being deported.”

Despite Challenges, There Are Success Stories

Abdullahi Mohamed was born in Somalia in 1986. The government collapsed into anarchy in 1991 and Mogadishu became a violent city, the site of the infamous battle chronicled in the book and movie, “Black Hawk Down.” In this time of chaos, war and famine, Mohamed’s family constantly moved from one apartment to another. Warlords rose and fell in power, making the neighborhoods of Mogadishu their battlefields.

“It was not possible to go outside to play because even if you escaped robbery, rape and murder, the snipers high on khat shot anything and anyone that moved,” Mohamed said. Whenever violence suddenly erupted near their home, Mohamed and his brothers would frantically remove bars from the windows, allowing his siblings and his pregnant mother to jump down to the alley and run to a cousin’s or an uncle’s house far enough to be safe.

Despite having to constantly move their children from one small apartment to another, his parents stressed education and reading to the kids. They had been educated before the civil war and understood the value of knowledge. Although institutions and services such as schools, police, sanitation services and water supply had been destroyed, Mohamed’s parents managed to find books for their children to read.

Study paid off for Mohamed. At 17 he was accepted into medical school at the University of Jordan. At first his classmates poked fun at him because he spoke only an ancient dialect of Arabic used to study Islam. Lectures were in modern Arabic and textbooks were in English, so Mohamed had to learn medicine as well as new languages simultaneously.

He excelled and eventually graduated, which was somewhat bittersweet because his education made it impossible to return home.

Mohamed’s family came from a tribe of poor farmers. Other armed tribes and militias dominated his tribe, and part of that dominance was to deny them goods and services, including health care.

Were Mohamed to return home, he could have been killed, he said. His mother told him it would be best for him and for the family to stay away.

But after graduation, Mohamed lost his student visa and entered refugee status in Jordan, which meant he had to find a home country. He worked as an intern and then as a general practitioner in a clinic while going through the arduous process of applying for refugee status. Eventually, the U.N. granted that status and asked which country he would like to go to.

"America,” he told them. “I had a dream to go to America because of the freedom and respect for each other that Americans have.”

Although he had no family or friends in Boise, he landed here in 2013, and immediately got busy making friends and trying to figure out the system.

“I thought I would maybe take an exam and then start practicing,” he said. “I did not know about the USMLE and the residency.” This was a time before the study group had formed, so Mohamed obtained study materials and went to work on his own. He scored high on Steps 1 and 2, which made him eligible to apply for a residency.

The hard work paid off in March when he received notification that he had matched in the Internal Medicine residency offered through the University of Washington at the Boise VA Medical Center, nabbing one of 12 slots out of 1,600 applicants.
“When I hear people on the news complain about certain things, I have to laugh,” Mohamed said. “Where I come from, you are happy each day just to be alive.”

Almost There

Dr. Ali Makki was working at a Baghdad hospital when the statue of Saddam came down.

“We wouldn’t let ourselves believe the Americans had finally toppled this brutal regime,” he said. “We were afraid it would be like 1991. No one would speak freely until Saddam was captured later that year.”

As part of his obligation to the state for his education, Makki began working in a rural province in the violent Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad. By 2005 he spent a lot of his time taking care of trauma victims, working 24-hour shifts sometimes seven days a week. He occasionally traveled to Baghdad to see his wife, also a physician. They felt the same threats that other physicians were feeling.

“People were constantly asking if I was Sunni or Shia,” Makki said. “My name is ambiguous that way, so I would first assess who they were before answering. Physicians were kidnapped, ransomed and killed.”

Swedan agreed.

“This was especially bad for professors because they were hunted down since, as educators, they could produce an entire new generation of doctors,” he said. Finally, Makki and his wife decided to take their son, leave the country and become refugees.

They found a sponsor who set them up in a rural practice in an undesirable area of Oman, but after two years they learned that Omani law required that they remain in that location unless they could find replacements for themselves. Ultimately, the family applied through the International Organization of Migration for re-location to the United States. It was helpful that Makki had lived in Alabama for the first three years of his life, although he was not born there. His father was accepted to a prosthodontics master’s program at the University of Alabama and his wife followed shortly after Makki’s birth.

Makki and his family finally arrived in Twin Falls in 2009, just after the economic downturn, which made it difficult to find any employment. He eventually found work as a medical interpreter and spent three months in Arizona taking a senior-level medical school rotation to gain experience with the American system.

Working full time and studying all night was not easy for him or his family (by then he had three sons), but it paid off when he passed the USMLE exams with high marks. Armed with that, and some strong recommendations, he was admitted to the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho in Boise, where he is in his second of three years.

Responsibilities weigh heavily on Makki.

“I came from a strong family name in Iraq,” he said. “My grandfather was in the military, eventually becoming Minister of Defense before the time of Saddam. We had an obligation to maintain and uphold the family honor, so my brother and I studied hard. My parents both were prominent dentists in Baghdad.” He also feels an obligation to the other physician refugees in Idaho.

“I feel a responsibility to my colleagues to do a good job as a resident to show the medical directors that refugee doctors are valuable and capable of doing good medicine,” he said.

Marwan feels responsibility as well and has been a powerful force in organizing the study group. He and his brother, Salwan, came from a prominent Iraqi family as his father had served as a general in the Air Force. At the time of the 2003 invasion he was working as a trauma surgeon in Ramadi. After spending five years as a refugee in Jordan and going through the UNHCR application process, Marwan came to the U.S. and joined the Army as a combat medic.

“I felt this would be the best way to learn the American culture,” he said. “Half of my uncles had received their education in America. It is the best country on Earth.”

“When the contractors came to Baghdad, we became familiar with them and realized how generous the American people are,” Salwan said. “I thought, America is where I want my son to grow up.”

Although, for the most part, these refugee physicians have felt welcome in Idaho, occasionally, they have faced disparaging remarks or behavior. Salwan feels this is just human nature, fear of “the other,” and tends to ignore it. However, he does admit to occasional frustration.

“Sometimes I get upset when I hear people complain about refugees,” he said. “When refugees come here, they are survivors, they are hard workers. The don’t come here by laziness. They don’t have high expectations. They work hard, they don’t mind starting from scratch. They appreciate this life, and they realize they have to work for everything they get. Refugees are what you want in this country.”

“There isn’t a problem big enough to cripple us, because we have been through the worst,” he said.

Dr. Timothy Floyd is a spine surgeon and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. He practices in Boise Idaho.

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Saturday, June 22, 2019

Echo opinion - more evidence about Donald Trump and sexual abuse

Donald Trump's first wife Ivana's accusation of having been raped should not be overlooked in this echo opinion, although the author does not reference the incident. Ivana later renamed that accusation, but I'm confident she was telling the truth about how Donald Trump raped her.  Rape never ever-ever happens once.  
A litany of reported evidence about Trump's sexual misconduct is reported. Ivana's accusation is reported at this link here, for information

Trump is the Hollywood Access abuser he claimed to be.

An echo opinion published in the Washington Examiner should be a viral news report:  


“I just thought, it’s time, I owe it to my beloved readers,” E. Jean Carroll said of the assault allegations she has made against Donald Trump and other men in her forthcoming memoir. “I can’t keep up this facade.” Credit Joe Schildhorn/BFA

Phillip Klein Echo opinion:

Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll is coming out with a new book, and in a bombshell excerpt appearing in New York magazine, she tells a horrific story that President Trump raped her in a department store in 1995 or 1996.

In the piece, she says that though she never went to the police, she told two friends about the incident at the time, and that they confirmed that to the magazine. The White House is saying that the story is false.

I have previously argued that while we shouldn't reflexively believe all accusers, I do believe that sexual assault accusers deserve to be taken seriously. Ideally, the credibility of the accusations should be viewed independently of any partisan blinders. We should all consider this story carefully and avoid jumping to quick conclusions one way or another.


In the story, part of a book describing encounters with "hideous" men in her life, Carroll writes that Trump approached her in the upscale Fifth Avenue store Bergdorf Goodman, having recognized her from her advice show. After exchanging introductions, she agreed to help him search for a gift for a girl, which eventually led them to the lingerie section. According to the account, he coaxed her into the dressing room with an article of lingerie. 


That's when the story becomes especially difficult to read:
The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.

The White House issued the following response to the account: "This is a completely false and unrealistic story surfacing 25 years after allegedly taking place and was created simply to make the President look bad."

In the early going, skeptics of the story are questioning the timing, and dismissing it as a clear effort to boost book sales. Why didn't she say anything at the time? Or why didn't she raise the issue during the 2016 campaign, when it could have done more damage?

Carroll writes that she didn't report the incident to the police at the time. She told two close friends, she said, and while one of them urged her to report it, the other said, "Tell no one. Forget it! He has 200 lawyers. He’ll bury you.” According to the article, "Two decades later, both still remember the incident clearly and confirmed their accounts to New York."

As for why she didn't come forward earlier, she wrote, "Receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun. Also, I am a coward."

It is worth remembering, in light of Carroll's story, Trump's statements in the notorious "Access Hollywood" tape: "You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."

We should hear more from Carroll in the coming days and weeks, and the friends who confirm her account should come forward as well. If there are a lot of inconsistencies, this would be another case of major media malpractice. 


But if more reporting bolsters her account, (Ahhh? How much more?) this should be significant concern to Republicans, and all Americans.

Maine Writer postscript - It's incredulous that the preponderance of evidence from a series of first person sexual misconduct encounters are not enough proof for Trumpzi cultists to acknowledge how Donald Trump is a sexual deviant and unworthy of leading America.

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