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[Trump reviewing campaign contributors] Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. EDROSO!!! You traitorous bastard, ante up!

He *sees* you, you know.

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He knows when you've been bad or good so be good for goodness sake!

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And what else could you expect from a man who has been Our President for more that a century? (2016-3030 and counting)

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More than a millennium actually.

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author

Thanks for the correction.

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Hilarious. But since nothing is over-the-top any more you're probably giving them ideers! It's like trying to invent a conspiracy scam or other insanity they couldn't possibly believe in. You end up with Louis Gomert saying his mask gave him COVID and a doctor trotted out by Trump as vindication of his own medical expertise who believes in demons and witches.

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To be fair, trotting out a doctor who believes in witches, demons, and alien DNA is really about as modern as the current GOP ever wants to get. After all, the Party is right now rejecting the germ theory of contagious disease! So getting us back to a time when illness was caused by foul humours, incorrect bile, and/or demons is just a natural progression for them. I wouldn't be surprised if someone like Louie Gohmert started pushing legislation that allows Medicare to cover poultices and patent medicines.

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Leeches they've always had enough of (just from campaign staff for example)

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Trump's re-election campaign promises to be the biggest grifting and embezzlement scheme in political history even exceeding the amazing thievery during Bloomberg's short-lived primary campaign.

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Oh lordy, here I've been thinking the problem is my asthma when it's really been MIASMA.

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That was awesome. Well done.

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"Sucks to My-assmar, Piggy"

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One of the stranger phenomena of recent decades is how many of the weirdest, anti-science GOP politicians have actually been medical doctors (oh, and one "dentist" from KY too).

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If you’re referring to the junior senator, he is actually an “ophthalmologist,” and “board-certified,” no less. By a board of his own creation. I can’t recall, exactly, but I think he may have required the services of a dentist, or of an oral surgeon, after his neighbor finished working him over.

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Yeah, Rand thought the actual board certification test that every other ophthalmologist had to pass was unfair. So he created his very own licensing board which, amazingly enough, said he was good to practice. These fucking people!

As for his neighbor dispute, I think ol Rand suffered a bunch of broken ribs. I'm sure he was more than happy to let the guy up the block, who had stayed at a Holiday Inn Express 6 years ago, examine him and read the x-rays before discharging him with a manure poultice and a prescription for branch water.

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Oops, you're right. Guess I need new glasses.

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It was an organization of his own founding. Can't recall his issue with the official board. Likely some paranoiac horseshit but I'm guessing on this.

What I want to know is why his neighbor held back whilst giving Dr. Paul a very well deserved beat down.

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This amazes me. It does convince me never to allow a doctor from KY to treat me for anything if they can set up their own board to decide if they are competent to practice or not.

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Hey, I believe in witches, demons, and alien DNA. (As in, I believe there are aliens out there somewhere and they're made up of DNA of some kind.) But I also believe in doctors, modern medicine, and clinical studies.

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I love ya D.Sidhe, but I wouldn't want you to be my pediatrician. I've had terrific doctors who were very religious, which I've never figured out, but I would not want to wake up from surgery to find my cardiologist and his team screaming "The power of Christ compels you!" at me.

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Oh, that would be the other difference: I have more sense than to be in charge of peoples' healthcare. I don't, actually, think witches are very powerful, demons are very common, or aliens have been to earth. Even in my chemistry classes, I was not terrible at it because I only believe in five elements. I was terrible at it because I'm bad at math. Which makes sense, given that compartmentalization is my bag.

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Not that anybody mentioned medieval doctors:

An interesting factoid about medieval doctors is that they were popularly reputed to be atheists, since they picked up all of their training out of Aristotle's natural sciences writing, which was picked up, translated, and improved by Arab doctors.

(The re-introduction of Aristotle to Western Europe in the 12th century ignited a serious culture war within the Church and the fledgling universities. Some theologians were excommunicated, and stuff...)

Also, whatever else medieval doctors knew that was efficacious was most likely derived from wise woman herb lore and pagan practices

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Well, listen, if you're long past entrusting yourself to some deranged Druid who gives her professional address as One Dunghill Mansions, Putney, I guess you can just enjoy your leeches in peace.

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“Listen, strange women hanging around sacred oak trees and distributing poultices is no basis for a sound national health care policy.”

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I believe I was conceived via demon sperm.

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Look, up in the sky! IT’S POE’S ASTEROID

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Jesus Roy this is up in SJ Perelman territory. Turn off the paywall.

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Hey - nothing from 2190? What gives? We know WHO doesn't.

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If Trump finds theories about demon sperm worth pondering, someone should ask him about trepanning, and watch him pretend to know what it is, and say it "sounds interesting." Of course, WE know that we need it like we need a hole in the head...(ducks, leaves room hastily)

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I spent part of last night watching self-trepanation videos (Yes, this is a thing). Opinions are mixed as to whether it would help the migraines, but sometimes I get a little optimistic, I guess.

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Dr. Peter Venkman: Hey Egon, you know, this reminds me of the time that you tried to drill a hole through your head.

Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.

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It probably *would* have worked if someone hadn't stopped him. Seriously, don't watch the videos.

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author

Sorry for your trouble! Can the docs do nothing?

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Dunno. Not much has worked, considering we've been at this for basically thirty years, but there's always a chance of new stuff. I'm right now between neurologists because of the coronavirus and my disinclination to get on a bus or sit in a waiting room with sick people. There's a couple new treatments that might work, when I can actually meet the new guy. In the meantime, there's weed. I admit it, I like weed. I especially like edibles, because I never was all that fond of the smell. But in doses large enough to render me kind of dysfunctional, it's kind of a mild euphoric. Since I no longer have to be functional, I'm happy to exploit that side effect.

Beyond that, I just bitch a bunch, and am grateful to be tolerated while I do it. :-)

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Hey, at least you bitch in an entertaining way. You write better high than most Republicans do sober.

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If I'm not mistaken, Maturin does that somewhere in the Aubrey-Maturin series. He's definitely fond of trepanning other people.

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He does (the incident made it into the movie adaptation, MASTER AND COMMANDER). I haven't read the book in years, but that scene stayed with me. I believe the ship's carpenter hammered a silver coin flat on an anvil and shaped it to contour the human brain, then Dr. Maturin slipped it under the scalp to replace the shattered section of skull. In the film, the way the sailors watched the operation reminded me of the morbid fascination with which my wife watches repulsive true crime shows on the ID Channel.

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Please change your twitter screen name to Empty Envelope Edroso

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What I don’t get are the Trump ads on sites like Lawyers, Guns and Money asking, “Are you voting for Trump?” Don’t they know that’s an open invitation for “U.R. Dumm” and “Ima Phake” to vote “No”? What does this accomplish except to add phony Gmail accounts to their lists?

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They're on Roy's page too. I also see them on MSNBC. I figure if they want to waste their money spamming people who know they're lying, that's better than some other stuff they could be doing with it. Ditto the NRA ads I keep seeing.

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You guys are getting them because of the linkbacks to Trump/conservative stuff. The algorithm is dumb and thinks because you look at stuff (or look at stuff that looks at stuff) from the right, you must be rightwing too.

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Yeah, I figured. I get suggestions for Trump books at amazon, too, because I have occasionally made the mistake of looking up authors there if I'm unfamiliar with them. Right now, amazon really wants me to buy the new "Twilight" book or whatever.

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It's like youtube, that thinks because I like something that a right wing jerk makes much content for, I must want to see Ben Shapiro lose a debate to an empty chair

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Hey they have run a bunch of campaign TV ads in South Dakota, which is likely to be a 20+% win for Trump

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I have no inside information, but I know that a lot of campaign consultants get a percentage of the money spent on TV commercials, which encourages them to book a lot of TV commercials even if it's not the smartest use of money. Trump campaign has a lot of money (and yet, absent cheating, is doomed), so the task for a campaign consultant is to get as much of into their own pockets as possible.

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Donald Trump literally just killed Herman "9-9-9" Cain, since old Herman went to the Tulsa Death Cult Rally and promptly got the virus. Ok, it was pretty stupid of Herman to go to the Rally in the first place but still.

My wife gets these Trump emails and is the biggest liberal around. I never have. (She's a beekeeper; could that be it?) Yeah, they're really just that stupid.

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They're threatening telecom companies, trying to get them to allow the campaign to spam people who did not sign up to get their texts, emails, robocalls, etc. This is less a campaign than a grift.

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Thoughts and prayers.

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I notice how very careful all the media outlets are to say that there's really no way of knowing where Cain contracted Covid-19. They even all used identical language.

It would have been better for America if they had added "but Cain was diagnosed 9 days after the rally, which is squarely in the middle of when he would have been expected to show symptoms if his had contracted it at the rally."

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Completely off topic: Y'all may have heard this, but I only just found out that Mike Adams, practically a headline feature at World O'Crap back in the day, committed suicide by gunshot a few days ago. First Bob Owens, now this. Maybe there's something about being a pathological gun nut that leads one to such a demise*. I hope Doug Giles is still finding strength in his testosterone Jesus.

https://www.wect.com/2020/07/27/uncw-professor-mike-adams-death-ruled-suicide-deputies-say/

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I found out in a long eletter from David French about how persecuted the guy was. He was really trying to suggest that liberals made him kill himself.

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Which is weird, considering how the guy got everything he wanted!

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Well, he got everything he wanted other people to have: the consequences of their actions. And he only got that after decades of being terrible.

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You know, if we were really as good at "cancel culture" as David wants to think we are, it wouldn't just be MIKE ADAMS.

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Wait--Dr. Professor Mike Adams did WHAT?

Hoo boy. So it seems he was facing a forced retirement from UNCW after racist comments about the pandemic. He was living alone at the time he shot himself and his body was only discovered because the neighbors noticed his car hadn't moved in days.

I don't know why this makes me feel so bad. Maybe because I read so much of his stuff over the years that it felt like I knew him personally. Enough to know he was a terrible person, but a person nonetheless.

I missed the Confederate Yankee news entirely.

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Racist *and* sexist. It doesn't make me feel bad. I in fact have a whole bunch of cancel culture and gun safety jokes. Considering the dude spent his career trying to get other people to shut up because he didn't like them, I'm okay with this. I would be very, very surprised if he never told someone to just kill themselves.

Whining about snowflakes and oversensitivity to his jokes, and then killing himself because he'd finally, eventually, after a shitload of effort, managed to step completely over the line and was forced to face some consequences? You make your own choices. Maybe if he hadn't been such a "Just suck it up" asshole, he might have gotten some psychological help. Whatever. He has his safe space now, doesn't he.

(Yes, this is awful of me. But I'm many things but rarely insincere, and my assessment that suicide is an option people should have, even if it's not the best option, plays into my thoughts on this.)

I can understand why you feel bad, as a personal thing, and I can see sadness for a human being who couldn't find another way out of his trouble. And he has family, so I feel bad for them too. But I don't give a shit about him, personally, and I will make more jokes, I'm sure.

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Wow, I hadn't heard that -- Acadenic Twitter pretty much stopped giving a shit about him after his "retirement"

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"Aug. 12, 3030"? And here I thought I just had to hold out until November! I better lay in more booze.

This is not only hilarious, but eerily evocative of the whiny threats I receive from the NRA (they've got me confused with another Scott Clevenger, a lawyer from Little Rock, Arkansas, who must be wondering why his inbox is lately bereft of finger-pointing, flaming-haired alarmism from Wayne LaPierre). Wayne is DISAPPOINTED in me, and can't BELIEVE I would LAY DOWN MY ARMS and ABANDON THE FIGHT after all the YEARS he and I have spent STANDING SHOULDER TO SHOULDER against the gun-grabbers.

I don't know how to tell him he was just a summer fling, and I've moved on...

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author

Thanks for the correction.

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I thought it was deliberate and I was missing the joke. Time to lay off the pot, maybe.

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Nah

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Right now, it just 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘴 like Trump has been President for a thousand years.

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I'd rather be confused with Wally Clevenger, who at least made some good music

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"In the year three thousand and thirty, everybody wanna be an emcee.

In the year three thousand and thirty, everybody wanna be a DJ.

In the year three thousand and thirty, everybody wanna be a producer.

In the year three thousand and thirty everybody want to tell ya the meaning of the music."

-- "Madness" from Deltron 3030 (words by Del the Funky Homosapien, music Dan the Automator and Kid Koala)

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Given penny-ante dictators' relish of ubiquitous portraits, these campaign emails are even more creepy than they seem. He really wants these rubes to believe he's watching them and cares about their compliance

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This is very close to the ConservativeDirect and other weird email I get from the right-wing horses' asses.

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All good fun, yes, but the fact is I get the same "your name is MISSING" emails from left-leaning sites too, so, Both Sides Do It, time for a shower.

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This is eerily realistic (and I hope not prescient). I get the same emails somehow (I assume some shitheel signed me up on a lark). Anyway, I got one today and, just as you predicted, there's some escalation going on. Now, today the 500% match got boosted to a 600% match, but it's a slippery slope, man!

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