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One of the many things that I hate hearing is about Trump and his business degree from Wharton. You know what it took to get into any business school in the 1960's? A check---from the student or Daddy or some Corporation. In Trump's case his brother was a fraternity brother of the assistant to the Dean of admissions. And, Daddy Trump (Fred) gave a million to the school, which may have helped /s/. I'm sure his Fordham (which accepts just about anybody; 90%) grades were immaterial.

BTW, Wharton won't release his grades w/o Trump's OK. I suppose reporters could ask his college buddies---but wait. There aren't any.

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There's no way Trump sat for his exams. People were paid. He is profoundly ignorant and uneducated.

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". . . profoundly ignorant and uneducated." Absolutely no question about it. It's readily apparent every single time he opens his mouth. He can't speak intelligently without a teleprompter and even with one he can't read especially well. When has he ever uttered a complete, intelligible sentence? I've never believed he legitimately graduated from any institute of higher learning. His refusal to share his grades more or less proves it.

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I'm sure he has someone writing his more coherent remarks. There is often such a difference between those and the incoherent, frothing rants he tweets in the middle of the night when there's nobody there to untangle his hysterical ravings.

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Bet he was really surprised by the crowd's reaction to his saying "retribution" which he probably had never heard of before it was put in his speech.

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So true, Judith, so very true. He's incapable of writing coherently just as he's incapable of speaking coherently.

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Didn't his sister allude to that? Or was that his SATs?

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At age 81, I've seen a lot of dumb fuckery in my lifetime, but Mark Meadows (I keep thinking Muddles) wins the World Cup. I'm imagining a theater audience composed of active and retired prosecutors kicking back in their center aisle seats, spilling their drinks and popcorn laughing themselves breathless over Muddles serial admissions against interest, voluntarily tanking whatever legal defense his lawyer might have concocted for his upcoming trial. Chief of Staff to the president of the United States of America, and he turns out to be a Tar Heel Tarbaby who sticks to every piece of shit that comes his way. The Dunning-Kruger Dumbass from Durham, or wherever in North Carolina he hails from, he's got the sensibility of Trump, and the cunning and guile of a rabbit in heat. This was the guardian of the inner sanctum of the White House. Unbelievable!

I can see now how that cabal of bozos got close to Trump's ear, and how their hare-brained scheme got traction out there in Republican Cuckooland. All those renegade Federalist Society-recruited lawyers and conspirators had to find some way in the door, and Muddles was the President's concierge. It's just awful, awful to contemplate how close they got to succeeding.

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the worst part of this, Arthur, is that Meadows was the one he kept. the CHOSEN ONE.

and none of this is actually BELIEVABLE, even if it all really happened.

the more awful thing to contemplate is the fact that the "cabal of bozos" might actually be somewhat capable of learning from their mistakes.

it's definitely a done deal that from here on in, every time a Repug loses an election, the whole cheating is going to be invoked.

so many reasons to weep for this country.

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We have better mojo. A positive message elicits cooperation. Russians don't know what cooperation means Creating hope beats hatred and anger. That's why Russia lost the cold war. That's why Germany lost World War II. Don't forget, with our allies, we won in Europe and the Pacific.

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Did he even have a Wharton degree?

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actually, my understanding is that his degree is from Penn, even though he supposedly "attended" classes at Wharton because Wharton doesn't grant undergraduate degrees. if TFF has ever claimed to have an MBA, he's lying. but after all, he does that every time he exhales.

and I hope everybody knows how MBA programs work...nobody actually LEARNS anything useful. they use a so-called "case study method," which amounts to lots of schmoozing, the theory being that the important thing is the connections you make during this schmoozing. I suppose it's a valid theory since in business, it really does amount to "who you know."

but that's me talking...I have a built-in contempt for "business," which might account for my lack of anything resembling material success.

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Wharton does grant undergraduate degrees, and IIRC it did so when I was a Penn undergrad (CW '74). I'm pretty sure a couple of my student government cronies were in Wharton, but hey, that was 50 years ago so I wouldn't swear to it.

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I've heard this from several people in several different places. but it's certainly true that Penn's been the prestige school of choice for the wretched family (so much easier to throw money to ONE place instead of many) and that back when TFF was looking for somewhere to attend after he decided that Fordham was too tough to manage (when I was in HS, NOBODY applied to Fordham...that my HS was overwhelmingly Jewish might account for this on a few levels), business school was in no way the "desirable" option it has since become.

and again, my understanding is that his DIPLOMA says it's from Penn even if, on some level, Wharton was what he attended.

again, I'm just repeating what I've read and heard...it might be incorrect.

it changes NOTHING, of course. I remember a few years back, getting into an argument with an old HS friend about the extent of TFF's "education." the old friend claimed that he had "training in Economics," while I maintained that I didn't give a flying fuck what his degree is supposed to be in because he studied nothing (remember the dyslexic Rockefeller hiring classmates to read for him? or Tony Schwartz maintaining that he's never read a book?) is in no way intellectually qualified to be other than what he's always been. and I'm not talking about the normal "senior" attrition that, say, renders me incapable of working with quadratic equations. I mean he never knew anything except maybe that he was supposed to like blondes and to tell the world that he'd somehow managed to avoid STDs (which he didn't quite manage).

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No, it doesn't matter, but IIRC my diploma (which is probably in some box somewhere) had "University of Pennsylvania" ornately inscribed across the top but down in the body it included my name, school (College for Women), graduation year (1974), and "magna cum laude" (OK, I'm bragging). It might have mentioned my major (history) but I'm not sure about that. If Wharton was an undergraduate school at the time, as I think it was, the diploma would have noted it.

When I was there, plenty of people considered Penn a sort of stepchild of the Ivy League. They'd go nuts when it was confused with Penn State (which it often was).

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One line in the ruling that should send shivers down the spine of Trump:

"The Constitution does not provide any basis for executive branch involvement with State election and post-election procedures."

DEAD

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Evidently whatever was being taught at Wharton - especially to grad students like my own cousin - Donald J. Trump didn't learn any of it, if this evaluation by one of his professors is accurate:

"It’s rare for a professor to disparage the intelligence of a student, but according to attorney Frank DiPrima, who was close friends with professor William T. Kelley for 47 years, the prof made an exception for Donald Trump, at least in private. “He must have told me that 100 times over the course of 30 years,” says DiPrima, who has been practicing law since 1963 and has served as in-house counsel for entities including the Federal Trade Commission and Playboy Enterprises. “I remember the inflection of his voice when he said it: ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!'” He would say that [Trump] came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything, that he was arrogant and he wasn’t there to learn.” Kelley, who passed away in 2011 at age 94, taught marketing at Wharton for 31 years, retiring in 1982.

The magazine also reported that, contrary to Trump’s boast that Penn was “one of the hardest schools to get into in the country,” the admissions officer who interviewed him (a friend of Trump’s father Fred, James A. Nolan) said that the school was taking 40 percent of all applicants. Nolan also described him as “definitely not a super genius.”

“I wish I hadn’t interviewed him,” Nolan also said. “In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t done that.”

SOURCE:

www.truthorfiction.com/trump-was-the-dumbest-gddamn-student/

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No edit option so I will add here: the emphasis in the quote from Professor Kelley appears in the truthorfiction.com reporting, as "Donald Trump was the DUMBEST GODDAM student I EVER had!"

Is there a shred of credible evidence Trump ever did have a sound grasp of basic business principles - not the bullying, threatening, extorting fraudster tactics he learned from the infamous Roy Cohn, but how to obey the corporate laws, pay what's owed to sub-contractors and employees, make sound investment decisions, any of that?

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Substack has moved the Edit/Delete tricon to flush right under the comment.

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Thanks difny! In other updates, no Ukrainian language studies (as such, anyway) offered at the U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Chinese is too much for me to deal with at age 71, Russian is a more than sufficient challenge - they do offer the entire standard language majors in Scandinavian languages, a legacy of the immigration patterns in Minnesota.

So I could, if it made much sense, start studying Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish. If it was 1968, I was 18 and trying to prepare to go overseas rather than be drafted into the most unpopular and senseless war the USA ever fought, sure, those options would have made sense! ANY options would have made sense, except sneaky "National Guard training in an air wing" subterfuges like Dubya's, trying to have it both ways.

Also, the Internet Archive not only has the Whibberley book archived in readable digitized form, but THIS:

ia804703.us.archive.org/19/items/TheSwordAndTheShield-TheMitrokhinArchiveAndTheSecretHistoryOfTheKGB/The%20Sword%20and%20the%20Shield%20-%20The%20Mitrokhin%20Archive%20and%20the%20Secret%20History%20of%20the%20KGB.pdf

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I remember everything about watching that first draft lottery. my roommate and songwriting partner (who's probably reading this) got number 37. I got 280-something, which felt--and was--pretty safe. another friend had already taken great proactive pains to play-act being insane and ended up being (this is the kind of thing you CANNOT make up) number 366 (it was, of course, a leap year). and if you're trying to start learning Russian, hats off. my best friend is a Harvard Russian scholar with a real gift for learning languages and he says that Russian is incredibly difficult.

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To current questions I have about what the fork to do about which path to follow first: -it's in part, but only in part, that Russian is so damned difficult to learn ( I mean learn well, enough to go beyond basic conversation, asking for directions, that I want to try it as a challenge as I age) beyond deploying stock phrases like, (Looking soulfully into her eyes) "Et voulez vous allons avec moi (pause, as if yearning tragically already!) ce soir, Michelle, I mean, Marina, Marina!... vous-etes (too early for `tu,' but maybe not for two!) tres belle, voulez vous allons au cinema, et peut-etre..." (Open-ended invitation, requires actual sincere interest in her too or what, I ask, is the freaking point???)

(Hell I could try that NOW in Russia, to Russian expatriates , although not while the GENOCIDAL INVASION is ongoing, or still seriously mangling natural human connections.

War and Peace is filled with French - cannot have totally abolished that as implying "White Russian revanchist counter-revolutionary anti-Slavic anti- Putin tendencies and must be watched by NKVD/ FSB!" Plus, isn't French by consensus, the language of love? I think I just talked myself out of studying Petrograd and St. Petersburg and Dostoyevsky, into studying le chute and Camus, to the Gallic roots of Galahad!)

I got a number in high 220s, we were watching all around the Macalester campus, many people were high on pot, as I was noticing that immediately since it was present in the pungent aroma and laughter followed by serious discussions, jokes, mild curses.

Had a very slight buzz and at that juncture, "fatalistic" attitude, since it was random. That #366 IS beyond belief, damn, the irony too! What a stupid process suiting the by then obvious stupidity of that particularly stupid war, as if a flotilla of sampans was going to voyage across the Pacific. No East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, no Rape of Nanking, nothing like Pearl Harbor - and Gulf of Tonkin lies already being laughed at, mocked, cursed.

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as I've said elsewhere among these posts, TFF was never a graduate student ANYWHERE. he has a bachelor's degree in business from Penn because Wharton itself only grants graduate degrees. all the talk about his stupidity and arrogance apply to the undergraduate work his family paid for. notice I resisted saying he "learned" anything.

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Exactly! The cousin I referred to ( she's now a dean at Harvard) mentioned the association was widely considered a kind of stigma by the alumni, she's likely even more conscious of the absurd taint, however unfair, of Wharton's rep based on Vladonald's preposterous falsehoods now, since that remark was made in September 2017! Trumpski was just getting started!

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Oh, be there fools in this world who think they are entitled to a free pass because they work in the government.

Be they fools like Mark Meadows who believed that his job was to be Chief of Staff of getting Donald Trump re-elected no matter what.

I guess it's just gonna suck for him to defend himself in Georgia and then you have all those other people like Donald J.(which is actually Jerk) Trump who thought he'd fly in on the contrails of Meadows' high flying balloon which has now crashed.

I would hate to be the wall paper of the place where Trump is living right now (Bedminster), it's running red with ketchup.

No severance of cases, no excuses of "I was just following orders" (which didn't work in Nuremberg, either..) and no way are you gonna say the dog ate your homework.

Show up in person and sit down while Fani Willis takes all the criminals to town. Thank goodness the trial will be televised because I want to see them all sweat.

And for Trump, just one trial of many coming up. He's going to be a busy boy for the next 6 months, and after that-he might not want to see what happens.

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I wonder if that stuff he paints on his face will run like Rudy's hair dye.

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I think not. he's sweating like crazy at those "rallies," but the orange remains. Noel Casler (who's in a position to know) says that he uses it because, without it, his face looks like Spam.

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Lol!

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Six hearts for your post, Mary Hilton.

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based on the way they shot that hearing the other day, it'll be very difficult to see anybody actually SWEAT, but I can live with that.

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I'm glad to support you delving into the minutiae so that I can get well written (with attitude!) updates on the plethora of legal maneuvers (as well as military maneuvers) so I don't have to.

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Wish I could draw the world’s smallest violin playing hearts and flowers😎😎

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Now that is the best news I've heard all day, topping "subpoena what subpoena" Navarro's conviction with whipped cream and a cherry.

Been waiting to hear which way this one would land, and it's firmly pointed in the right direction for others, one would hope, to follow.

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Precedent after precedent is falling into place and it bodes ill for the Mango Mussolini of Mar-a-Lago, thus promising better days ahead for American democracy and the rule of law, as column after column by Lucian has emphasized repeatedly!

A Friday night celebratory dance anthem on that exact theme:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DUXp2kT2Do

The Tyrrel Corporation Better Days Ahead. 1995 single charting at #29 in the UK in January 1995. From the album 'Play For Today'. Official music video HQ 90s 90's here's to and an end to all your sorrows cheerful yesterdays and confident tomorrows.

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Great, great column. If you could bottle it as syrup, Hershey's would try to buy you out for boh-koo bux. Former President, now Defendant, Trump to Proud Boys, "Stand back and stand by." Current Federal Judge Jones to Mark Meadows, "Stand still."

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BFH indeed!!!

Their illegal, unethical, immoral behavior is just staggering and sadly (frighteningly) they've got so many sycophants and liddle helpers just drooling to jump in and join them. We need K-12 and 1st to 4th year mandatory remedial education on Civics and Ethics ASAP

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Good point. Making Dick Cheney look good to me simply for not being a subversive traitor to the country is quite a feat. Have been enjoying watching the news again lately and this is one of the reasons why.

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I think, Patris, Dick Cheney was a traitor. He and Bush 2 got us into Iraq by lying, and then Dick cleaned up on the war contracts. He's a real Grim Reaper.

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Dick Cheney's one redeeming(?) trait is his hatred of t-Rump. (And maybe his having fathered Liz should be counted in his favor as well.)

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Don't cheer too loudly for Liz. She supported Trump until Jan 6th, and then she turned on him.

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I keep telling folks that...

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Agreed—and she mostly voted with him. But—like Pence— she has retained that one shred of morality and decency.

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Liz a lot more than Pence, who seems to have tried the passive-aggressive thing until a genuine contempt citation threatened him with jail time. but let's face it, it's a dead party. unfortunately, it's always going to be around, and in pretty much THIS incarnation.

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Not the elephant in the room, then-- but the corpse of a DEAD elephant rotting in the room!

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This caught my eye: "(Meadows was) canoodling with the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee about fund raising for the non-billionaire president when he ran low on campaign cash ..."

I believe, in common parlance,

"canoodling" is, at the very least, kissing. Meadows is a married man.

And "canoodling" to whatever degree he was doing it with Ronna McDaniel, tells you he would do absolutely *anything* to help the boss.

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Here me-thought canoodling was a Chef Boyardee canned cuisine.

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Where he’s going Chef Boyardee is going to be considered Haute Cusine, they are all going to hate the food. Sweet!

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LOL, literally!

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If, without hallucinatory stimulants, you can actually picture in your mind's eye Mark Meadows canoodling with Ronna Romney McDaniel, I strongly urge an immediate visit to a hybrid psychologist-optometrist practitioner, after which, for medicinal purposes *only*, a bottle of any one of the Cru Beaujolais.

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Trump does not have an MBA from Wharton. He has an undergraduate BS from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Bought for him by well known racist KKK loving Nazi Fred Trump

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That's my understanding too: a BS in economics. That sounds like a degree from the College, not from Wharton -- although when I was at Penn (1972–74), Wharton had an undergrad program as well as a graduate one. As an undergrad, he could have taken Wharton courses without being enrolled in Wharton.

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Trump gives the impression high did the hard work and has an MBA. No one ever corrects this. They just keep repeating his false claim. He has an undergraduate bachelor degree. I went to Harvard once for a summer program but I never say “ I went to Harvard” because it would be misleading.

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I've never once heard him mention Penn. He refers to Wharton exclusively as his alma mater.

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What makes the credulity surprising is that Trump lies, distorts, and/or exaggerates so routinely that anything he says should be suspect. Maybe there's a statute of limitations on lies?

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Lots of BS...

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And ANOTHER one of the background culprits, exposed for enabling Russian ships to guarantee the terroristic strikes on Ukraine's cities continue:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-ukraine-starlink-twitter-b2408081.html

Excerpt :

In response to the claims in the book, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, blasted Musk, given that Russia uses its ships in the Black Sea to fire long-range missiles and also to provide an effective blockade of the Ukrainian coast in the area.

“Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake,” Mr Podolyak wrote on X. “By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via #Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” he added.

“As a result, civilians, children are being killed,” Mr Podolyak said. “This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. However, the question still remains: why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realise that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?”

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Sorry Mark. The duties of WH Chief of Staff do not include participation in seditious conspiracy against the United States. Or, for that matter, any number of other crimes Agent Orange may have ordered.

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These mf's must think we are completely stupid. That's certainly what I think of all of THEM. Hoping they are tried, convicted and jailed for long sentences. Amen.

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Kinda obsessed with the image of Mark Meadows "landing the plane." And thought I was bad, making my first landing in a cornfield while taking flight lessons.

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I thought that Meadows had the best case of all the 19 defendants to move his case to federal court. If his appeal was denied the rest shouldn't waste their time.

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But Eric, "waste their time" is the whole point!

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