165 Comments
Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

It's all about controlling women as they are getting too much power and the Trumplicans don't like that at all! If they really cared about life, they would ban assault weapons and have more gun control! Once the child is born, they don't give a shit! No health care etc.

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They don't want women to have sex unless it's for procreation within marriage!

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Or, like Trump, outside marriage whenever the man wants. After all, for these reactionaries, women exist to meet men's needs. So pathetic.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

Barefoot and pregnant,as they used to say out loud, about a woman's place.

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founding
Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

I don’t think they care about marriage just sex.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

Just control, so their ED is covered up by their macho authority.

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Angry right wingers getting no sex is their dilemma!

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

One element nobody seems to be picking up on is the part about maintaining a majority white work-force. This is one of the reasons behind the change in age limitation for child labor....as young as 12 or younger....white/brown/black .....almost all within southern/red states. Otherwise they would have to hire immigrants who have reached the 'right' age because there just aren't enough white workers available at the right age to do these jobs.. Of course this won't stave off the need for a larger work-force but like everything driven by racism, Republican solutions just don't make sense. This is all just history repeating itself.

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It's also about the very little talked about thing about keeping a underclass available for them to use as the hired help or in the worst case scenario, prisoners. The prison business is very profitable and you got to keep feeding it victims.

The underclass has always been there, just not seen by anyone who keeps their eyes averted.

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I'm sure the private prison business is quite lucrative. Plus if the people granted the contracts are well connected to say a Trump administration they'll likely do quite well. In red states I'm sure, prisons have been quite lucrative rather private or not.

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The Arizona Supreme Court justices and so may of these fanatical Republicans are the American Taliban - backward thinking. a middle ages mindset, so insecure that they are deathly afraid of women obtaining equality with men, and not one considers the fact that but for a woman none of them would be here if a woman a had not endured nine months of discomfort to bring them into the world. Lastly, how stupid do you have to be to not realize how many Republican voters are you going to alienate by your stupid ruling.

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What a gift by those fools, Trump back pedals last night...too late, Donnie!

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

What really astounds me is how the "pro-life" people can want to force a woman, even at the risk of her life, to bear a non-viable fetus as long as it remains alive in her womb. (I'm thinking of Kate Cox among other victims of "pro-life" people.) If the fetus is never going to be a child, then what does banning abortion have to do with life? Or does "pro-life" refer to the lives of non-viable fetuses while they are in the womb? The forced birthers are not just evil. They are insane.

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Yes, they are just insane.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

100 million women are poised to vote and they ain't voting gop...

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And the best part about it is that quite a few of them have voted GOP in the past. ;-)

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founding

Your words to God's ears! 🤞

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Apr 13·edited Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

I'm currently squatting on lands tended not too far from Chief Pontiac. Exactly 1 and 1/2 blocks from my house is a Planned Parenthood location. Today as in 5 or 6 hours ago, I see one of the pro lifer's and his sandwich board. I honked and rolled down the window and gave him the finger. Then as I was turning off Woodward I see a young woman rushing to get to her appt. I stopped the car and waited to see if she got in safely. I used to walk my leashed Cavlier King Charles right through the picketers. She barked like hell. She knew.

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Dogs always know.

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So, you're just another of those commie elitist breed droppers. [Insert winking, lauighing emoji here.]

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Funny :)

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Good for you!

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

David French is just one of many reasons I canceled my subscription to the NY Times.

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Don't get me started.

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Amen. I bailed after Bret Stephens was appointed not long after the 2016 election.

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The NYTimes pretentious conservative “grab and brag” of their own. Dropped mine when the Repugnicans used the paper as a resource for their righteous quotes.

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deletedApr 13
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Like Maggie Haberman

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Apr 14·edited Apr 14

And Ross Asshat

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

It's not really about babies, reproduction, or women's bodies. Instead, for the GOP it's about getting as many votes as possible to win elections, made easier if they can get votes from low-information, ideological based followers. If abortion doesn't work for the GOP, they'll find something else. Perhaps claiming election fraud? Even better, they now get free talking points from Putin.

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So, what you’re saying is they’re opportunists. Their ideology is not really based on pro-life; it’s whatever gets them votes.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

And there’s proof of that. The Southern Baptist Convention realized in the 70s that *abortion* could be a great political point, i.e. POWER! That’s all it stood for. Nothing moral about it!

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You are correct. Evangelicals came late to the anti-abortion party—long after they opposed Catholics on that very issue. But in the 1960s and ‘70s, they seized an opportunity for a political alliance with Catholics who also had private schools. Nixon awakened the “silent majority” that has plagued us since.

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Where is the vomit emoji?

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Yes, that's what I'm saying.

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And control

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You're almost there, Lucian! The "messiness of abortion" is part of it, but the big lesson, the unlearned lesson that *fingers crossed* is gonna sink the GOP, is that WOMEN HAVE MINDS OF OUR OWN. Notice how in several state referendums, white women have parted company with "their" men? After all those depressing elections where 60% of white women voted Republican?

Those guys, those brilliant (mostly) white guys who think they know best for everybody have blown it big-time. And I am goddamn glad I'm alive to see it happening.

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I’m there with you! Please let me live long enough for it!

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

Wish I had originated this, but someone else — unsung and unnamed — did: Roevember Is Coming.

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Wonderful!

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Just designed a bumper sticker of this, using the Game of Thrones font: Roevember is Coming. Black bumper sticker with white, drop-out type. Ordered the first of them to see how it looks. Maybe we can get a trend going.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

While I’ve often enjoyed or even admired David French’s writings, this one left me…heading for the bathroom to drive the proverbial Porcelain Bus. I had no idea he was so intellectually vacuous.

In any case, maybe now’s a good time to point out that, up until the mid-1960’s, abortion wasn’t a major political issue at all. And it all changed with the civil rights movement and Bob Jones University. BJU took the stance of denying admission to Black students, and they were shut down by the Supreme Court. So, rather than moving forward and embracing the new reality that even colored people ought to have a decent education, the reaction was to use abortion as a proxy for their underlying racist intentions. And if a few poor white women got swept up in their frenzy, well, them’s the breaks. Nearly 60 years this same long-lived albatross is finally coming home to roost, and tether itself to the necks of these feckless proto-fascists known as Republicans (to be clear, I do not include those that have left the party like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinziger, etc.).

That’s the problem with denying reality: You will persistently make poor choices. And, eventually, that pile of poor choices is dumped on you like raw sewage stored up for a half-century in the septic tank of Republican orthodoxy that finally breaches the dam.

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Really? My recollection is that it got seriously under way after Roe v. Wade was decided in January 1973. The GOP was already picking up the Southern Democrat (white) vote after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the mid-1960s, but they needed more. So after Roe v. Wade they went after the anti-abortion (also anti-feminist, anti-gay, etc.) vote. Which was primarily Catholic at the time, not especially evangelical (that developed in the years to come).

This was actually good strategy because the Catholic vote, especially the working-class labor-oriented part of it, had been reliably Democratic up to that point. A wedge was driven into the Democratic coalition -- aided by the school-busing battles in places like Boston, which pitted liberal civil-rights-oriented Democrats against socially conservative labor-oriented Democrats.

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Nothing’s ever crystal clear, but this article from Politico is worth a read: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/. Like Joyce Vance says, we’re all in this together, and that’s exactly how I feel.

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Splish Splash, bob jones un-university was just around the corner from a home my parents built in ‘64, it was built a couple years later I think. Remember what the 60’s looked like, well nobody that went to or was part of that religious scam looked like they had ever heard of the 60’s. Those people truly did need sex education because they would never figure it out on their own, that they might have been part of a southern evangelical anti abortion movement doesn’t surprise me in the least. Once again I hear the splish splash of the repugnantkins looking for something to grab onto in the midst of the cesspool of lies they have been spouting like diarrhea upon the American public. 👍

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See my reply up above to William Barnett looking for the vomit emoji.

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Yes, to the detriment of all of us. Vote those bastards out. Roevember!!

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

"Boo fucking hoo," is right.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

You sound angry, Lucian. I LOVE it when you sound angry👏👏👏excellent piece.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

As Oscar Wilde might have put it: the unspeakable publishing the unreadable. What always bugged me is the silence from antiabortionites about miscarriages, which are quite common and painful enough with having to answer to cops and assistant D.A.s.

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This is a repeat. But i was one whose very religious doctor felt that even though the fetus was not viable, it would be better for me to go home and wait for it to “naturally” abort. Do you know how traumatic it was to wait for several days? Emotional pain was far greater than the physical. I cried for a week. And if HE (doctor) had just performed a d&c the day, he sent me home, we could have been spared the anxiety.

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Christina, I'm sorry that you had to experience that abuse at the hands of that "very religious" doctor. No excuse for him.

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One of my two daughters has had three difficult, painful miscarriages, as well as two beautiful children, one of which was safely carried to term after those three miscarriages. I can’t even imagine what she would’ve gone through had she been in one of the fifteen-or-so Red states where a natural miscarriage might’ve led to her going into sepsis and possibly even dying because of it. Thank God she lives in a Blue state. Anyone who thinks it can’t happen to them—meaning, including their family or friends—is simply delusional. But, that defines the right-wing anti-abortion stance, after all.

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founding
Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

I hereby declare that in Alabama life begins at egg and sperm so men who wh*ck off or get bl*w jobs must go to prison.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

Well said. The Rethugs have painted themselves into a corner and are now standing there, paintbrush in hand, looking dumb and puzzled.

I’ve tried to calm down some friends and my wife about the two stunning, regressive “A & A decisions” by saying that this simply rips the lid off the Republicans’ stinking garbage can of hypocrisy (akin to LKT’s point here) and TRULY reveals, for all the world to see, what their “pro-life” position really is: a putrid little lie. Those hideous rulings were, in their perverse way, a good thing —NOT for any woman or family that suffered or will suffer because of them but because they make the rot of the Republicans’ untenable stance as clear as crystal. State Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding, the will of the majority eventually prevails. Prohibition crumbled under the force of popular will. People simply didn’t want it. The GOP’s archaic and ham-handed attempt to control women’s lives and health decisions will fail as well. Unlike Prohibition, there was never anything noble about this experiment.

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Apr 13Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV

Good dissection. The analogy of dogs ‘catching the fucking car’ is gold, because as we know - what can they do about it now?

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Wimmin and Democrats best be grateful Kamala Harris is the first and current VP. And Joe Biden best be more grateful than ever that she is. And love the fact R men are scared chitless of the VP, For good reason.

Can't imagine President Biden or any other man in the administration or the Democratic Party speaking to the totality of wimmins' rights and wimmins healthcare including access to obstetrician-gynecologists, and coming off as authentic.

Will never get over the rich irony of the AZ Supreme Court viewing wimmins reproductive healthcare through the lens of 1864 when AZ was not a state and wimmin could not vote.

Note: David French belongs on the CBN not in the NYT or on mainstream teevee, 99.94% certain he never attended a single pelvic exam of his own wife and his internet browser history would make make Jimmy Swagart cry.

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I do believe that Ms. VP Harris is also helping keep some of those Democrats in line. Not that I'm about to name names or anything . . . ;-)

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KH was my overwhelming choice in 2020 for more reasons than can fit in a single post. My vore in 2024 is far more for KH than it's for Joe Biden. Would be nice if Joe resigned after being sworn in so Justice Roberts would again get 2cracks at administering the Oath as he took for O.

The single highlight during the Trump Adm. was then Sen. Harris carving up Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing, even more so during Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, then reducing AG Barr to marshmallow-infused green Jello during a Senate Hearing.

Truth be told not happy Joe Biden didn't stick to his word to be a transitional President/CinC. In my view he shoulda; called it quits after 3years. Failure to do so truly added to the danger zone the nation finds itself. And I like Joe. It's not the age. It's the disconnect with the population at large due to a style and yes, substance that no longer plays well in these times. Each time he talks about traveling on trains when he now flies on Marine1 or AF1 I wonder if he realizes he is calling attention to the past when a President/CinC needs to be talking about the future?

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Very few men and many women would not vote for a black woman for president. That's why Biden had to hang in there. I believe that he did not want to run again but he did it for the good of the country.

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That seems to be the unspoken and unwritten conventional thinking.

That said, since I come from a matriarchal culture find that conventional thinking conflicts with the natural laws where the female has proven to be the most capable leader due to being blessed with far more equanimity than a male.

Is one reason to cringe when the expression behind every great man is a great woman. Wimmin pull not push. The same holds in nature.

PS: Dunno Joe's motivation was for seeking re-election. Do know it was contrary to his word to be a transitional president. And failed to say words to the effect I said I was going to be transitional however ... . Simply citing Trump's entry into the race long before Trump ever received a single vote in the primaries and not knowing how Trump's civil and criminal legal matters would unfold point to something other than the good of the country.

Oddly, it was a woman who showed Joe the path. That woman is Nancy Pelosi who said it was time for new generational leadership in the House and that included all leaders stepping aside. An act both good for the country and for the good of the Democratic Party. Contrast that in the Senate where both male Leaders have held onto power far too long. Understanding the timing and benefits of the passing of the torch is critical to good leadership. As a reminder, it is exactly what the late Sen. Ted Kennedy did with O.

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founding

Shadow, are you your mother's daughter or her son? ❤️

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Am Me-Mum's oldest son. And learned from my 2Grandmothers, Me-Mum, a dozen or so ClanMothers, and all the Catholic Sisters from around the Blue Marble who educated me, and most of all my late beloved Sephardic Jew wife who showed me what all the aforementioned wimmin worked so hard to teach me everyday of our marriage. Can close my eyes and see every single one and hear their words and wisdom as well as their laughter. And yes, the scoldings most especially their invocation of the word insolent. Am grateful they never gave up on me.

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"either one is in vibration with Mother Earth or is not".

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Thanks Gail. I sincerely hope that you and yourself are safe.

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Agree 90% but I cannot see male America or white America voting for KH or any woman of color for president, even if she's an incumbent -- although, true, the Republican options are so awful that they might come around.

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Agree the numbers don't lie. Do know the numbers are not set in stone. We are seeing a slow-motion realignment of the body politic due to the natural change in demographics.

Cringe when political experts bring up voting patterns or results from prior elections without going deeper than one level. Rarely if ever do they cite the population change in a state or the latest mix of age ranges and genders. They continue to over-focus on the traditional 2party affiliations while ignoring how they are shrinking while non-affiliated continue to grow. It's not like Census data is not available to them which reveals how many are coming into voting age, how many folk died and how many new citizens took the Oath.

Once again the fault rests with the media for failure to properly inform its readership and viewership instead opting to subject people to oversimplification while giving too much time to folk with mere opinions at the expense of much-needed facts.

The same media rushes the election cycle onto its readers and viewers for months if not longer. So, they have the time and resources to break things down but don't try because it is work compared to turning it over to people who babble the same talking points ad nauseam. And they still don't understand how they contributed to the rise of alternative media. DUH!

If any group doesn't take the #1A as seriously as they should, it is today's media all the while ignoring Thomas Jefferson's wisdom on the matter:

-A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.

-If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be

-An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.

-Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

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My understanding is that many polls still rely too much on landlines -- and I don't answer my cell unless I or my phone (!) recognizes the number.

Jefferson's words ring true, but they also help explain why quite a few elected Republicans work so hard to prevent citizens (especially citizens who aren't old enough to vote yet) from becoming informed. It's become clear and clearer over the last few years that they only support "democracy" when the votes go their way. And they seem to be OK with tyranny as long as they get to be the tyrants.

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Agree. Kinda' weird and counterintuitive in the era where tech reigns supreme polling is less and less accurate. Go figure.

Agree. Republicans have for decades targeted and appealed to voters' emotions to the exclusion of facts. Lee Atwater through Frank Luntz are the best known for doing this. Oddly they justified it by pointing to LBJ's infamous ad on nukes and the sight of a little lassie making Goldwater into a nuke-happy candidate, From that point forward Rs pivoted to primarily dark ads (including literally by use of black and white or darkening the faces of POC). Then some Rs act surprised when Trump took it to a different level even after ignoring decades of warnings of being on an accelerated slippery slope.

At the same time, mainstream media became too timid and allowed Rs to speak without pushback or challenges while allowing themselves to be interrupted or filibustered. That too was part of the modus operandi because they knew mainstream media fared being called the liberal media more than the media cared about adhering to the rules of good journalism.

Agree. Although I don't go as far as your word tyranny by preferring the word strongman due to Rs long history of supporting such leaders that w/time became an affinity. And this goes WABAC to pre-WW2 era straight up to this moment in history. Besides the obvious of kissing up tp Putin and Orban, the presidential immunity argument in front of SCOTUS claims no Court can challenge or check an American President, then cite James Madison on the subject.

FTR: Norm Ornstein to be the person who first cataloged the Republican Party's downturn and kept waving yellow and red flags.

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Likely your numbers are off. Many of us white males think pretty highly of KH. Don't give up so easily.

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Those aren't *my* numbers. Last I looked, most white males voted for Trump.

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I didn't realize we were quite so much in the minority..... Are the numbers from 2016 or 2020?

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Nostalgia and fond remembrance of things past.

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It also seems probable that at the time it was enacted, there were no doctors in Arizona. So should not the textualists have to say, Well, there were no doctors then in the Arizona territory, so it can't be doctors they were talking about. They won't say that.

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To currenyltly understand men and women in Arizona and Utah politics you have to ask the white salamander epileptic dude Joe Smith. Opps i forgot the nut jobs like fundamentals, Mike Johnson murdered him and his bro

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