The new fuss over the Clinton emails

Although the media is in a lather over the latest news about the FBI director James Comey’s letter that there have been new emails regarding Hillary Clinton, to be quite honest, I cannot see that there is anything there. After all, the emails are not to or from her. I do not expect this news to create a major shift in people’s decisions on how they will vote because the news is vague and the whole email story so old. It does seem that Comey seems to be too anxious to hold press conferences and put out statements on issues, contradictory to the usual protocols. I commented on this tendency back in July.
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Authoritarians tend to flock together

Donald Trump has the habit of effusively praising anyone who supports him or says something nice about him. So when in the last debate, he spoke about meeting with “high representatives of India”, people scratched their heads wondering whom he might have been referring to, since there seemed to have been no meeting with any representatives of the government of India.
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Trying to understand the Trump voter

The excellent radio program This American Life on their show today tried to understand how it is that the voters who identify as Republicans seem, in this election, to have ditched all their traditional concerns about small government, less regulations, and lower taxes and replaced it with an overwhelming concern about stopping the immigration of Mexicans and Muslims and how this change is threatening to split the party apart.
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Another rule for Catholics to ignore

The Catholic church seems intent ion creating rules based on convoluted doctrinal reasoning that its followers are likely to ignore. The latest involves cremation, a practice allowed by the church in 1963 and that is increasingly favored by people over burial. The issue is what to do with the ashes. Up to now, people have had the freedom to choose, according to the wishes of the deceased or of the relatives of the deceased. This has led to some unusual methods of disposal.
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Why can’t more campaign ads be like this?

When I was in Boston over the last few days, I was in a waiting room for about two hours and, as usual, they had a TV set on. I noticed that no one, neither the staff nor the visitors, was watching the TV and so I asked the person at the desk whether it could be turned off or the volume at least lowered so that I could read my book. I was seated as far from the TV as possible but it still distracted me. When the person tried to comply, it turned out that the volume setting was fixed.
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Why women keep silent about sexual assault – and how Trump may be changing that

The boasts of sexual assault by Donald Trump has triggered a wave of many women who have said that it was not mere ‘locker room talk’ but that he actually carried out those actions. Trump’s defenders have suggested that the women are not credible because they did not make these charges public at the time the assaults occurred, though many did confide in friends and relatives.
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Trump’s disgraceful attacks on the Central Park Five

Lost in the hoopla surrounding Donald Trump’s recordings boasting of sexual assault were the vile remarks he made about the Central Park Five. For those who don’t recall the case, Wikipedia describes what happened. On April 19, 1989, a female jogger was brutally raped and beaten almost to death. That same night, five teenagers were arrested as part of a sweep in response to a large number of young people who had been randomly attacking people. They were wrongfully convicted of the rape and assault but later the actual guilty person was found. The convictions of the five were vacated in 2002 after all had served their sentences and the city settled a lawsuit against it for $41 million.
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