PLAYING WITH DOLLS: A warning about that Rand Paul doll!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15, 2014

Part 4—With praise for Ferguson’s kids: Yesterday morning, Joan Walsh took out her Rand Paul doll, as she has sometimes does.

Presumably, piddle like this is good for business. It makes us the clueless feel good:
WALSH (8/14/14): [Sherilyn Ifill] made the important point that the militarization of the Ferguson police is something entirely new and enormously disturbing...

[G]ood journalists have been reporting on this for a while. I apologize for not writing about this sooner. This is a bipartisan disaster that ought to be inspiring a renewal of bipartisan cooperation between civil libertarians of every political stripe. Yet local and national political leaders have been under-involved.

Alderman Antonio French has become a folk hero on Twitter for his on-the-ground reporting. But Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, has been mostly AWOL, and Sen. Claire McCaskill belatedly tweeted that she’s communicating with the Justice Department Wednesday night. (While her tweet seemed belated, I should note that McCaskill had been in touch with the Justice Department before that.) Missouri’s other senator, Republican Roy Blunt, has said nothing. In this obvious libertarian moment, Sen. Rand Paul has been silent, reportedly fundraising in the Hamptons this week.
Walsh likes to toy with her Rand Paul doll. In this instance, she even treated us to the silly fundraising snark that is so common when the other team plays with Obama dolls.

Uh-oh! A few hours later, Paul posted a column for Time magazine. Warning! In this morning’s hard-copy New York Times, Jeremy Peters reports what he said:
PETERS (8/15/14): These reactions point to a larger debate inside the conservative movement today as Republicans struggle with how enthusiastically to embrace an ascendant strain of libertarianism within their ranks. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a likely candidate for president in 2016, starkly laid out one side of the argument in an op-ed published on Time.com on Thursday.

[...]

Mr. Paul, quoting from research by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute and the conservative Heritage Foundation, noted the trend of police departments’ buying military-style vehicles and weapons, condemning “the cartoonish imbalance between the equipment some police departments possess and the constituents they serve.”

“When you couple this militarization of law enforcement,” he added, “with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, preconviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.”

[…]

Another question raised by the unrest in Ferguson—one that poses far more discomfort for Republicans—is how race plays into unequal treatment under the justice system.

On this delicate issue, Mr. Paul went a step further than many other conservatives this week. With a system so broken, he wrote, it is no wonder black people in Ferguson feel singled out.

He added a personal aside. “If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off,” Mr. Paul wrote. “But I wouldn’t have expected to be shot.”
Before we offer our warning, let us say this about that:

Personally, we’re pleased and thrilled to see Rand Paul saying things like that. In part, we feel that way because of the party to which he belongs, which may let these thoughts spread into new precincts.

This isn’t a first time for Paul. Last September, Lawrence O’Donnell praised a remarkable set of statements Paul made in a Senate Judiciary hearing.

As Lawrence correctly saw, those statements were worth recording:
O’DONNELL (9/18/13): What you are about to hear Rand Paul say is absolutely extraordinary. What he said is all true. His reasoning is simple common sense.

But virtually every word you are about to hear can and will be held against him in the court of Republican presidential politics. What you are about to hear is the politically bravest thing said in Washington today.

PAUL (videotape): If I told you that one out of three African-American males is forbidden by law from voting, you might think I was talking about Jim Crow 50 years ago. Yet today a third of African-American males are still prevented from voting because of the War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs has disproportionately affected young black males. The ACLU reports that blacks are four to five times more likely to be convicted for drug possession, although surveys indicate that blacks and whites use drugs at the same similar rate.

The majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white. But three-fourths of the people in prison for drug offenses are African-American or Latino. Why are arrest rates so lopsided? Because it is frankly easier to go in to the urban areas and make arrests than it is to go into suburban areas.

Arrest statistics matter when applying for federal grants. Doesn't take much imagination to understand it's easier to round up, arrest and convict poor kids than it is to convict rich kids. The injustice of mandatory minimum sentences is impossible to ignore when you hear the stories of the victims.

Edward Clay, 18 years old, was a first time offender when caught with less than two ounces of cocaine. He received ten years in jail for a mandatory minimum sentence. Weldon Angelos, who the chairman mentioned, was 24 years old and was given 55 years in prison for selling marijuana.

There is no justice here. It is wrong and it needs to change. Federal judge Timothy Lewis recalls a case where he had to send a 19-year-old to prison for conspiracy. What was the conspiracy? The young man was in a car where drugs were found.

“I don't know about you,” and this is Judge Lewis, “I'm pretty sure one of us might have been in a car in our youth at one point in time where there might have been drugs in the car.”

O’DONNELL: You just heard a Republican senator quoting an ACLU report on how the war on drugs visits disproportional suffering on black men—an ACLU report. You just heard a Republican senator say, quote, “There is no justice here.”

You just heard a Republican senator quoting a judge saying, I’m pretty sure we have all been a car at some point in our youth where someone had drugs. What other Republican senator would say that?

But Rand Paul wasn't finished. He improvised something that wasn’t in his written statements, something about President Obama that his Republican rivals for the presidency will never let him forget.

PAUL (videotape): Imagine this. And I’m glad the president has great compassion because he has admitted, like a lot of other individuals who are now elected to office, that one time he made mistakes as a youth. And I think what a tragedy it would have been had gone to prison.

What a tragedy it would have been if America wouldn't have gotten to see Barack Obama as a leader. I just don’t know why we can't come together and do something about this.

O’DONNELL: “What a tragedy it would have been if America wouldn’t have gotten to see Barack Obama as a leader.” Rand Paul’s words.
O’Donnell went on to say that these comments mean that Paul will never get the GOP nomination for president. Warning:

For months on end in 2011, O’Donnell insisted that Tim Pawlenty was going to be the Republican nominee in 2012. No one else would be able to get the nod, he constantly said.

Warning! O’Donnell was completely serious. He was also crazily wrong.

We aren’t warning you that Paul could be the Republican nominee in 2016. Our warning is more far-reaching.

Personally, we’re thrilled to see Paul say what he said about the lives of America’s black kids. It’s dangerous, though, when we liberals keep enjoying our Rand Paul dolls as these themes emerge.

Other liberals—we think of Frank Rich—like to play with their “American population” dolls. They tell us that demographics will sweep us liberals into power by the year 2042.

Warning! When you see figures like Rand Paul articulating these important new themes, you are seeing one of the ways the plutocrats could possibly fashion new coalitions and thereby hold onto power, demographics be danged. If liberals can’t learn to speak the American language, that could conceivably happen.

We’re full of praise for the things Paul has said about the lives of the nation’s black kids. We’re sick at heart when we see people like Walsh dumbing young liberals down through the use of her stupid-ass dolls.

Having said these things, let’s mention something we saw last night on our TV screen. As we watched the Chris Hayes program, we were struck by rare words of praise for the nation’s black kids.

The words of praise didn’t come from Hayes. Live and direct from Ferguson, Hayes spoke with Stefan Bradley, a professor at Saint Louis University. At one point, Bradley referred to the young people who stood behind him:
BRADLEY (8/14/14): When you think about these young people, one of the things—

I’m glad you’re here and it’s designed the way we have these young people behind us, because the images of the young people that have been going out around the world haven’t always been so positive.

When we talk about Mike Brown, the police officer had an image in his head of what black men are. I wouldn’t say that these young people represent that kind of image. And most of the young people around here don’t. And so I think that’s very important.

I’m part of the Young Citizens Council and that’s one of the major things we’re trying to push is the idea that young people, you ask what's going to happen next, maybe we’ll find out what the name of the officer was that shot Mike Brown.
We don’t know what kind of image the officer had in his head. That said, we were glad to hear what Bradley said about the young people who stood around him.

It’s amazingly rare to hear someone say good things about the nation’s black kids. Since Bradley also mentioned the desire for better schools, we looked to see how Missouri’s black kids have been scoring in eighth grade math.

Scores in Missouri on the NAEP are way, way up. Black kids in the generation of the late Michael Brown are scoring much better than their parents did.

(That’s the way it’s supposed to be. The same is true of Missouri’s white kids.)

Many things have been getting better in the past few decades. It’s amazing how rarely anyone tells the public.

We were pleased to see someone go on TV and say good things about the nation’s black kids. Regarding those math scores, you never hear this good news on the cable arm of NBC News, which has been pimping “education reform” for years.

In a move which surely tracks to Bill Gates, NBC News keeps trashing our public schools and their fiendish teachers. Its cable stars constantly sidestep this topic, which is so widely discussed in so many counterfactual ways.

That said, you never hear this kind of good news at Salon neither. Warning:

How much do you want to bet? That Rand Paul learns how to deliver this news before the Walsh gang does?

We’re concerned about Rand Paul. We’re more concerned about Joan Walsh and her love for that Rand Paul doll.

55 comments:

  1. The video is out and it appears Brown was just another strong arm bully roughing up people who won't let him steal from them. "But still" say liberals, who want the store clerk to let thugs steal and they want the cops to let thugs beat them up. Stupid, stupid people.

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    1. As predicted at 7:52 pm yesteday. Thug calling commences.

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    2. As predicted when the story broke. Innocent teen would turn out to be a violent thug.

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    3. He was a gentle giant. Didn't you see how gently he shoved that store clerk into the rack and how gently he moved him back with the force of intimidation using his gentle two foot height and 3x weight advantage? Poor kid. He had a right to those smokes.

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    4. Yes, indeed, 1:35, or should I call you Nostradamus.

      The Zimmerman Defense Team has returned.

      And after being reminded that their first story was that Wilson initially stopped Brown because Brown was walking in the street and not the sidewalk, the Ferguson police are trying to walk back the robbery suspect motive.

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    5. The video destroyed the argument that Brown was a mild-mannered college bound innocent gentle giant who would never do anything that would necessitate the use of deadly force by a police officer. We now know Brown was a thug who committed a violent felony shortly before ("in the past" his defenders say) and was all too likely to impose his size and strength on innocent people.

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    6. Don't you hate when it turns out that innocent blacks were not victimize by brutal whites? We liberals are nostalgic for the good old days when innocent blacks were victimized.

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    7. He had to, he got dissed.

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    8. Too bad the policeman who shot the unarmed 18 year old in the back and with his hand up knew nothing about him being a robbery suspect according to the police Chief in an afternoon follow up press conference.

      "Shot me a big old buck and it turns out he was a thuggish one too!"

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    9. He didn't have to know anything about it for it to be useful in proving the character of the criminal who robbed the store. WE know the thug was the type to rough up people who don't let him get away with committing crimes. This new knowledge supports the officer's contention he needed to use deadly force to stop someone who had both committed a felony robbery and attacked him prior to causing his own death.

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    10. Progressives had to stop playing with their Blind Side dolls today after the unfortunate truth emerged. Groundhog Day for Rev. Sharpton.

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    11. In that case, the First Amendment (Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of the Press) are suspended.

      Berto

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    12. I didn't realize how many of Lionel's relatives can type.

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    13. Not good to jump to conclusions. Two conflicting accounts. Is the "eyewitness" his backup during the prior shakedown? I feel bad for the guy trying to earn a living having to put up with that. Fact is both can be true, the cop could have acted criminally AND the young man may have been a bully and a criminal. It might be a mistake to make the victim, in this case, out to be an "inspirational" figure.

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    14. @ 1:22 the problem with your assertion is that another eyewitness just happened to drive up to pick up a co-worker when the officer was shooting the fleeing cigar filcher in the back, then repeatedly after he turned with his hands in the air.

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    15. It has to shake someone up to be attacked and forced to take the life of someone, even a violent criminal. Hopefully the officer is recovering well and knows the law abiding public appreciates the sacrifice and courage of people like himself.

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    16. 10:57 omits "violent bully" and settles for "cigar filcher." They always do because their stories of martyrdom never end up working out without lies of omission.

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    17. What's the wording of the statute about being subject to execution without a trial for not getting on the sidewalk fast enough in Ferguson?

      Berto

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    18. 12:44 omits I called his previous comment problematic.
      Instead he suggests I use terminology used in the opening comment to this thread. OK. My apology.

      Only a "stupid, stupid" person would ignore there was more than one witness to the merciless execution style shooting of an unarmed person fitting a description the executioner may or may not have heard about.

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    19. At 1:38 we see Berto omit violent felon and bully Brown's attack on the police officer who defended himself and others against this criminal menace. He has to omit it. Martyrdom for Brown won't work without lies of omission.

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    20. We only find out they are unarmed after the fact but it's a liberals' favorite term to employ in defending thugs, meaningless as it is.

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    21. "Merciless executions" are never preceded by an attack by a 6'4" 320 lb violent felon against an "executioner."

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    22. Still compounding the stupidity or your original comment, eh
      @ 1:22?

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    23. I gather there is no need for the facts to be sifted out over time in order to know exactly what happened right now.

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    24. Anonymous August 16, 2014 at 3:12 PM,
      Oops. I didn't feel I needed to point out the officer as a violent felon (or "thug", if you will) and bully.
      Thanks for correcting my oversight.

      Berto

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  2. Libs should take heart. Al Sharpton has been on a quest to find his Great White Defendant for decades and not once has he found a case that didn't end up exposing a black "victim" that was perpetrating a fraud of false allegation or committing a violent crime.

    It should hearten libs that it has been impossible for Sharpton to find a case that proves blacks are perpetually imperiled victims of whites and that black mothers need to agonize over what to tell their teen sons.

    For some reason this good news profoundly upsets them. For some reason they crave stories of real black victims.

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    1. I'm constantly amazed at how quickly Sharpton's name comes up whenever some white guy tries to talk about race.

      Black Dude: "You ought to see 'Twelve Years a Slave".

      White Dude: "Oh yeah? Al Sharpton."

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    2. Libs love Twelve Years a Slave because it lets them get worked up about conditions in the past they wish existed today to support their civil libertarian white knight fantasies.

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    3. 1226 & 717: your head must really hurt when you try to put on a hat.

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    4. What "good news" has come out of this?!

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    5. Why the good news is that the officer deserves a medal for saving us (or the good taxpaying citizens of Missourri) the lifetime of criminal justice expenditures necessary to manage this animal.

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    6. Libs never tell thugs that if they rough up store clerks and attack cops, they will likely end up dispatched, if the law abiding public is lucky. Instead they say "You might end up a martyr for the cause we're trying so hard to resurrect from the pre civil rights and slavery eras because it makes us feel purposeful and superior. Think of it!"

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    7. Hey, @ 3:26. I am talking to you. I will never tell you if you troll a liberal web site you won't get satisfaction many of your ilk get from playing with themselves or their handguns.
      Instead I will say you might get a laugh or two.

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    8. Anonymous at 3:26 pm is a troll.
      Anonymous at 11:08 am is the conservative id.

      Berto

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  3. "In a move which surely tracks to Bill Gates, NBC News keeps trashing our public schools and their fiendish teachers."

    Link please!

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    1. What? Somerby is playing with his Bill Gates doll?

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    2. Yes, and fashioning a virtual Chucky doll at the same time.

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  4. OMB (Lessons on Good Timing From the OTDH)

    "Walsh likes to toy with her Rand Paul doll. In this instance, she even treated us to the silly fundraising snark that is so common when the other team plays with Obama dolls.

    Uh-oh! A few hours later, Paul posted a column for Time magazine. Warning! In this morning’s hard-copy New York Times, Jeremy Peters reports what he said:


    "Uh-Oh!" said the man who gave us:

    Governor Ultrasound still hasn’t been charged!

    as a headline either just before or right after a 14 count indictment was handed down. And let it stand unamended to this day.

    We look forward to"deadrat" consulting his Rolex and defending BOB's timing once again.

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    1. I consulted the timestamp on the post. Is there really any honest reason to imply that that I'm making that up?

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    2. Well Lordy, Lordy, roll me over and call me a schizo. "deadrat" seems to have one of the few Rolexes with a chain rather than a wristband.

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    3. Take your meds. The question was whether TDH posted his famous headline before of after the indictment was announced. I checked the timestamp on the entry; it was after.

      Now concentrate on the question: is there any honest reason to imply that I'm making that up?

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    4. All our implications are as honest as BOB's. That said, we never implied anything. We predicted something. We were right. Must be a side effect of the meds.

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    5. I'm not asking about TDH or comparing you to TDH; I'm asking about you. Is there any honest reason for you to claim that I'm consulting my own peculiarly-faulty timepiece when I report that the blog entry in question was posted before the announcement of the indictment?

      Are the side effects of the meds so bad that you can't answer a yes-or-no question?

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    6. Is it possible? We'd say yes. You results may differ.

      But you'll have to figure out by suggestion or implication which question we are answering in good faith.

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    7. I'll take that to mean that in the Galaxy Schizophrenia, the answers to my questions are (in order) no and yes.

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  5. I can't stand Joan Walsh, but this post is unfair. Joan wrote her piece on August 13, 2014, not August 14. After Paul wrote his piece, Joan updated hers with a link to his article.

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    1. Being the Bob means never having to say you are sorry.

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    2. And of course, that means Somerby is as wrong now as the trolls were then for condemning Walsh for not mentioning an article that Paul hadn't written yet.

      But are you going to call him on it? Of course not! He's your hero. He's never wrong. And good lordy if he were ever wrong, who would do your thinking for you?


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    3. Whoops! The above went in the wrong thread. That comment was meant for Dead "Bob Can Do No Wrong" Rat.

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    4. Bring in the trolls;

      Sometimes I agree with TDH; sometimes I don't. That actually part of the reason I read his blog. For a troll, however, if you agree with TDH at any time, it means you let TDH do your thinking for you.

      There ought to be trolls;

      So, let's see what the trolls are up to now. Anonymous @4:37A has got his trollery a little bit entangled with his sentence structure, but I take it he means:

      Somerby is as wrong now [in criticizing Walsh for her premature criticism of Paul] as the trolls were then [in criticizing Somerby for his premature announcement that Gov. Ultrasound hadn't been indicted].

      As TDH says, can we talk? Is this really about jumping the gun and being undercut by events? In twitting Darlin' Rachel about the indictment, TDH was hitting one of his favorite notes: it's tribal and unseemly and poisonous to our system to root for the destruction of your political opponents' personal lives. Is that true? I don't know, but for my part, I'm not that evolved. I like to see bad things happen to stupid people in power. (Does that make me a bad person?)

      What about Walsh and Rand Paul? It's not so much that Walsh's criticism of Paul was a day early (and petty); it's that she's missed Paul's attempts to reach across the racial divide his party has been instrumental in digging. TDH mentions Paul's statement about the war on drugs. I'd add his attempt, however clumsy, to connect with black students at Howard University. There's a political point here, not a calendrical one. What does it mean for our politics if idiots like Rand Paul learn to talk sense about race, while idiots like Walsh are too wrapped up in their image of Paul to notice (what TDH calls "playing with the Rand Paul doll)?

      Perhaps Paul will never learn or never become effective. Perhaps his party will drive him out. Do you want to take O'Donnell's assurances on that? His crystal ball is so clear that he predicted that Tim Pawlenty would be the Republican nominee in 2012.

      Where are the trolls?

      Don't worry, they're here missing the point while playing gotcha! on trivia.

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    5. We can. It is. It does!

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    6. deadrat sez:

      "Do you want to take O'Donnell's assurances on that? His crystal ball is so clear that he predicted that Tim Pawlenty would be the Republican nominee in 2012."


      deadrat'z right. We remember it like it was yesterday when O'Donnel said:

      "Here at The last Word (THE HOWLER), we’ve never doubted that Pawlenty gets the nomination ( has WMDs). In fact, we’d be surprised if he didn’t."

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    7. So no substantive comment then? Just the trollish pretense that because TDH thought there would WMDs when the WPE invaded Iraq, TDH must think the same thing now. Or something.

      Don't worry; they're here.

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  6. A few years ago, a co-worker told me and another employee that her son had been stopped formfailing to use his directional signal at a corner. She was white, her husband was black, and her two sons were brown. The son told her that he had in fact used the blinker. She was fuming but I was in a panic, which was somewhat eased when she told me that her husband had instructed the sons

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  7. to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times, at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, unless otherwise instructed. So yeah, they do give the talk, and so yeah, it's necessary, as we have seen many times over.

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