Click here to view this media Kelley Williams-Bolar, the mom sentenced to jail for sending her children to an adjacent school district, is now out of jail, but her story is far from over. In the NPR interview above , she talks about why she sent her children where she did, and why she believed she was entitled. Her father is a homeowner in the Copley-Fairlawn School District (which means he is also a taxpayer). Look at the timeline of how events unfolded, as laid out in this interview: 2006 – Williams-Bolar’s home is robbed and trashed. September, 2006 – Williams-Bolar enrolls her daughters in the Copley-Fairlawn schools using her father’s address. To comply with district requirements, she applies for a grandparents’ Power of Attorney, which the district has told her will meet the requirements for her daughters to attend school in their district. June, 2008 – The court denies the grandparent’s Power of Attorney because the biological father of the girls did not sign off on it. June, 2008 – At the end of the school year, Williams-Bolar withdraws her daughters from the Copley-Fairlawn school district. December, 2010 – Charges are brought against her by the District Attorney, and in January, 2011 she is prosecuted for Grand Theft. Here are a couple of uncontested facts: While the girls were enrolled in the Copley-Fairlawn School District, Williams-Bolar was operating on the belief that she had complied with residency requirements by getting the required grandparent’s Power of Attorney. When that Power of Attorney was denied by the court, Williams-Bolar withdrew her children from the district. Williams-Bolar’s children did stay at their grandfather’s house. That’s not in dispute. The only question is what their legal residence was for purposes of school attendance. Here’s another fact: The prosecutor in this case is dead-determined to nail Williams-Bolar and her father to the wall for this. What’s interesting to me is to watch how they do it. After seeing the rolling wave of public outcry to her prosecution, the Summit County DA’s office actually published a FAQ about the case on their official website. Among other things, there are multiple references to “her fraud”. And then there’s this: This same prosecutor released taped telephone conversations Williams-Bolar had with family and friends while in jail. There was only one reason to release these snippets, which are helpfully excerpted at Ohio.com, and that is to make Williams-Bolar appear to be a money-grubbing grifter who was always in it for the publicity and possibility of a movie deal. Evidently the prosecutor doesn’t understand the concept of dealing with adversity through humor. Or telling the whole story. Some telephone calls have been withheld, supposedly to use against her father when they prosecute him. Who wants to bet there won’t be any phone calls from jail used in that trial? Ten bucks, right now. There is a bit of good news to tell: The superintendent of Akron schools says she can come back to her job as a teacher’s aide. Whether or not she’ll ever have a chance to be a teacher? Well, that’s something else entirely. In the meantime, the felony charges against her father will proceed. Contrast the crusade against Williams-Bolar with another Ohio family, the Ebners Mark Ebner is a resident of Columbus, Ohio. He owns a home in that area valued at more than $1 million, but he rented an apartment in the Bexley school district and says that is where his children live. His wife lives in the big house, according to Mr. Bexley; he and the boys live in the 3-bedroom apartment in the Bexley school district. The district was suspicious, so they hired someone to tail him, just like the Copley-Fairlawn district did to Williams-Bolar. Here’s what the investigator discovered: The investigator hired by the district watched the apartment and the house 14 times in April and May. His report to the district said he saw Ebner come or go on occasion but never Julian. The investigator concluded that Ebner and his family spent most of their time at the house, not the apartment. In June, the private investigator watched Ebner again. He saw him at the house in a T-shirt and sweat pants and that he left later in a dress shirt and tie. Bexley’s attorney concluded that Ebner had “abandoned all pretense of living” at the apartment by then because school was nearly out for the summer. “It strains credulity to suggest – as the Ebners have done here – that Mr. Ebner voluntarily lives in a small apartment while maintaining a very comfortable family residence nearby,” school district attorney Gregory B. Scott told the state Education Department in a letter. The state rarely steps in to settle a residency dispute. It did so only four times in 2008 and once so far in 2009. In Ebner’s case, Delisle sided with Bexley. “Mr. Ebner has submitted very little documentation supporting his claimed residency at the Bexley address,” Delisle’s ruling said. Why didn’t Mr. Ebner go to jail? Well, they hired a lawyer and fought back. And won , by swapping around houses with another family member. Because that family member had a house. And they all had the money to do that. All in the family only works if you have money and are the right color, evidently. Race aside, there is too much inequality in our education system Cynthia at K-12 News Network : That parent, being white, male, and wealthy, didn’t spend any jail time but instead sued the Bexley school district which had hired a private investigator to have him tailed, much like Copley-Fairlawn had an investigator follow Ms. Williams-Bolar. And the Ebners used the legal system to fight back , engaging in some complicated house-swapping and lease arrangements with relatives who live in the district to finally enable their two younger sons to attend Bexley District schools. Where is the justice for Williams-Bolar, a divorced mom, woman of color, and person of much more modest means? Other stories suggest that school residency fraud may be on the rise. See below. In which case, this is not an isolated case of one person who can’t seem to follow the rules or decides to treat school requirements like a scofflaw, this is a larger problem that reflects increasing desperation on the part of all parents to do what they can to make sure their children attend good schools. She’s got several other examples of residency fraud in her post. Her bottom line: The solution is to make every existing school excellent and open to all . Stop heightening scarcity and unequal distribution of resources, and allowing racial and economic inequality to play out over real estate. Making great public schools scarce is anti-democratic. It goes against what this great nation is about: America is about equality of opportunity, if not equality of circumstance. If we don’t address this issue, we’ll have invisible gated communities–minds and lives locked in according to the neighborhood where you live–and a quality education for just a few who can afford it. That’s not America…that’s how China works. Totally agree. Also, let’s start kicking prosecutors out of office who bully the accused with half-edited recordings of phone calls, and hammer people who can least afford it but who are trying to get ahead in this life with piles of felony charges for daring to want their children safe and educated.
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In his lifetime, Princeton economics professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has published 20 books, over 200 papers, and since the year 2000 two columns a week at the New York Times. Clearly without understanding the irony of his question, the man once accused by the Gray Lady's ombudsman of possessing a “disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers” asked his readers Monday, “How can voters be so ill informed [sic]?”: The key point to understand is that while many voters say that they want lower spending, press the issue a bit further and it turns out that they only want to cut spending on other people. That’s the lesson from a new survey by the Pew Research Center, in which Americans were asked whether they favored higher or lower spending in a variety of areas. It turns out that they want more, not less, spending on most things, including education and Medicare. They’re evenly divided about spending on aid to the unemployed and — surprise — defense. The only thing they clearly want to cut is foreign aid, which most Americans believe, wrongly, accounts for a large share of the federal budget. Pew also asked people how they would like to see states close their budget deficits. Do they favor cuts in either education or health care, the main expenses states face? No. Do they favor tax increases? No. The only deficit-reduction measure with significant support was cuts in public-employee pensions — and even there the public was evenly divided. How can voters be so ill informed [sic]? Readers should note the “[sic]” after informed, as the proper spelling is ill-informed, unless of course one is talking about a medical professional. But the sentences that immediately followed were the real treasures:
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Click here to view this media Oh, I am so tired of these political minions who talk out of both sides of their mouth — and their media enablers. Have you noticed how few journalists even think about our point of view? The Iraq and Afghanistan wars continue to drain the national treasury and beggar our nation , and the president just signed a trillion dollar tax increase FOR MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES. Hell-o? And somehow, we’re supposed to pretend that those things do not contradict this “austerity” blitz from a Democratic president . We’re supposed to nod and agree when they justifying it by saying stupid things like, “We’re cutting back on spending, just like Americans do around their kitchen tables.” As if we all pay cash for our homes and cars. And now, at a time when new college graduates face record levels of unemployment , we’re going to add this to the average family’s economic burdens. Why should we believe anything they say about the deficit “crisis” when they don’t address the ten-ton WAR and TAX CUT elephants in the national living room? WASHINGTON — In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama promised that investment in education and getting the next generation of Americans ready to face their own “Sputnik” moment would be a focus of his administration. But at least one component of his FY 2012 budget, which will be released tomorrow, will likely pile more debt upon students who decide to pursue graduate school, potentially making the dream of higher education even more unattainable for many Americans. The move, say administration officials, is needed to ensure that a popular financial aid award stays available at current levels. In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew said that interest on graduate school loans will begin building up while students are still in school. Currently, interest does not begin compiling until after students graduate.Host Candy Crowley questioned Lew about whether this would make graduate school less accessible for many Americans: CROWLEY: Here’s the problem, I guess. If you are a graduate — let’s take one of your examples. You’re a graduate student; you are, right now, getting loans. You don’t have to pay those loans or any interest on them until you graduate. But now you have to pay — or it accumulates, I’m assuming — you have to pay interest beginning on day one of grad school, and that makes it so that you can’t go to grad school. LEW: Well, let’s just be clear. Interest will build up, but students won’t have to pay until they graduate. So it will increase the burden for paying back the loans, but it will not reduce access to education. That’s, I think, part of how you can responsibly have a plan that deals with the challenge of solving our fiscal crisis , getting out of the situation where the deficit is growing and growing, but also investing in the future. Unbelievable. Don’t these economic wizards have any friends or relatives outside that Beltway bubble, someone who could knock some sense into them?
Continue reading …On Monday's Hardball Chris Matthews, who devoted much of last week's shows to Egypt, got caught up on some conservative bashing as he mocked those who attended CPAC last week as “zany” and likened the conference to a “carnival act.” The MSNBC host, who was joined by fellow liberals David Corn of Mother Jones and Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, led the show by describing the event as a “right wing jamboree that puts the zany in the same room as the zanier.” The following Matthews outbursts were aired on the February 14 edition of Hardball: CHRIS MATTHEWS: The Right goes wild! Let's play Hardball! Good evening and Happy Valentine's Day. I've got a tie for the occasion. I'm Chris Matthews in Washington. Leading off tonight – the far side. Whenever you think progressives need to calm down and get real you should head over to something called CPAC. It's the right-wing jamboree that puts the zany in the same room as the zanier. Where Ron Paul wins the presidential straw poll. Where Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld get booed, a rare moment of sanity over there. And where a real life Mitt Romney shows up, only to be upstaged by a fake Sarah Palin. Talk about switcharoos! Usually it's Romney doing the pretending. We missed a lot of the fun last week because of the revolution in Egypt. Well tonight what you need to know about how the Right plans to run against President Obama. If this is the starting lineup I can only imagine what characters they've got sitting on the bench. … MATTHEWS: Let's begin with the right wing jamboree called CPAC. David Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones and an MSNBC political analyst and Josh Marshall is founder and editor of Talking Points Memo. Here's a taste, a little collage or montage, of what we heard at CPAC during what – while interesting things were happening in Cairo, this is what we missed. Let's listen. (Begin clip) HERMAN CAIN: The American dream is under attack. But the good news is we are fighting back! ANDREW BREITBART: I don't know why I decided to make my career trying to destroy the institutional left. I thought that it would just be a fun thing to do and it would look good on a resume. And it's so fun. JOHN BOLTON: We do not accept an America that is weak and declining. ANN COULTER: What do you mean knowing that there are jailed journalists? I think there should be more jailed journalists. (End clip) MATTHEWS: You know sometimes it's better not to comment but I'm asking you guys to comment. David and Josh, that, you know, there's some people that you don't want to meet in a bar that's for sure even, if you're watching Star Wars. But what, what an amazing group of people there, David. And I think what you're seeing there is it's almost like a levitation, like in some carnival act. Like they're levitating. It has nothing to do with reality over there. DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: Well maybe it's like the side show at a carnival where you go in and you see all these creatures that you don't know if they are real or not. I mean this is like, this is like a zoo where are allowed to feed the animals. In fact you're expected to feed the animals. So while you and I and Josh and others were spending Thursday and Friday thinking about Egypt. What were they doing? They were attacking Obama for being a socialist, for believing America is evil, for causing the economic downturn. … MATTHEWS: And here's former Governor Tim Pawlenty who's doing more kiss-butt than anybody I've ever seen. They're cracking birther jokes. He'll do anything to prove he's insane. And I – actually he's not. This is the sad thing about the Republican Party. Credible people, like Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota have to act zany to get the nomination. … MATTHEWS: Well here's Ron Paul. He won the CPAC straw poll. They think he should be president. And actually I respect his basic libertarianism. I don't think it really applies to real life but I like the sentiment at least, but it's not real. Here's Mitt Romney. Let's take a look here. He took second. Look at these numbers. We're looking at the numbers now. It's interesting there how poorly Palin did, Josh. I mean among the zanos. She couldn't even win among the zanos. —Geoffrey Dickens is the Senior News Analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here
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Click here to view this media The jury in Shawna Forde’s trial for the murders of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul, spent nine hours deliberating the case before delivering its verdict today in Pima County Superior Court, and it was clear there was little doubt in their minds: Forde was found guilty of all eight counts in the case, including two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder for the shooting of Brisenia’s mother, and an assortment of burglary, robbery and aggravated assault charges. enlarge Credit: Presente.org I was there to observe. The jury’s verdict came in relatively short time this morning in Tucson, and it was an efficient affair: Forde, wearing a light plaid suit jacket and pants, entered with her attorneys, looking confident and smiling. The jury then filed in, and delivered their verdicts to the judge. The court clerk then read them aloud, along with the jury’s findings: guilty, guilty, guilty, with no doubts at all about any of the qualifying issues. Strangely, Forde was almost perfectly emotionless: She looked straight ahead, chatted with her attorneys, and even smiled occasionally. Indeed, she continued to exude the bravado that has been her style from the outset — even as she was led back out of the courtroom to her awaiting prison cell. There were plenty of emotions flowing, though — much of it directly in front of me. As the verdicts were announced, Brisenia’s mother, Gina Gonzalez — who not only survived the shootings, but delivered damning testimony in the trial — began weeping softly, as did her sister and mother, who accompanied her. Now the trial heads to the penalty phase, with a hearing tomorrow to discuss mitigating factors in the sentencing, which will be followed by deliberations to determine whether or not she ends up on Arizona’s death row . (Arizona currently has only one other woman facing the death penalty — Wendi Andriano, convicted in 2004 of murdering her husband. (Arizona’s preferred method of execution is by lethal injection.) As Presente observed in its press release praising the verdict: Though we received a verdict that condemned these atrocious murders, we also recognize that the Brisenia Flores’ case is not the isolated incident that some media reports make it out to be. Rather, it has galvanized the attention of the entire Latino community across the country as it reflects the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino hatred organized by extremist groups. Latinos – the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority group in the U.S. – understand and experience the phenomenon of hatred that has rapidly expanded in the nation. In fact, Latinos are closely watching media outlets that provide a platform for hatred promoted by extremist groups like MAD and the Federation for American Immigration Reform – a group Forde represented on a PBS show, for instance. Latinos are closely watching those media outlets that irresponsibly allow hateful groups attack to Latinos and immigrants, fanning the flames of fear and violence in our communities. The details revealed in the murder trial have touched us all in a deep and unique way. These important details reflect the deepening and mainstreaming of the most noxious and dangerous strands of hatred in the United States. They move us to continue efforts to make sure there are no more hate-crimes and to take action in condemning media outlets that help disseminate hatred. Kim Smith at the Arizona Daily Star has the complete wrapup.
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Discussing the state of the Republican Party with political analyst John Dickerson on Saturday's CBS Evening News, anchor Russ Mitchell concluded: “…it has been a tough week for House Republicans.” On Friday's NBC Today , co-host Meredith Vieira made an identical observation, declaring : “It has been a rough, rough week for the Republicans, to say the very least.” Mitchell explained his assertion: “Of the four bills planned for votes this week, only one passed. You also had a Republican congressman resign in a scandal.” Speaking to Meet the Press host David Gregory on Friday, Vieira made the same points and wondered: “How big of a setback is this for the party?” On Saturday, Mitchell saw the possibility for more GOP difficulties: “As Republicans gear up for this budget battle with the President, do all these problems this week lead to trouble down the road?” Dickerson predicted potential Republican division on the budget: “A deal is going to have to be made between Republicans and the President, and if that deal is made, those Republican freshmen, are they going to be the ones watching their Republican leaders and saying, 'Don't cut an easy deal or we'll bolt.'” Prior to their discussion of the “tough week” for Republicans, Mitchell asked Dickerson about the straw poll of possible Republican presidential candidates at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Despite the fact that no candidate has even announced yet, Dickerson preemptively declared that “the GOP field is…confused with no real clear front-runner.”
Continue reading …Karl Rove flip-flops on reconciliation: Now he’s all for using it to undo health-care reform
February 14, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media If the name of my site, CrooksandLiars, refers to anyone in the world, Karl Rove would be among the top 10. He just wrote an op-ed in the WSJ saying that Republicans can use “reconciliation” to repeal our new health care law: Former Bush strategist Karl Rove is urging congressional Republicans to use Democrats’ own tactics against them to force the repeal of President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law. Rove said Thursday that he wants to see the Senate GOP use the budget reconciliation process to repeal the law with a simple majority, not the 60-plus votes they would need to pass a separate repeal bill. “Democrats cannot complain if the GOP uses reconciliation after Democrats used it to pass ObamaCare through the Senate,” Rove wrote on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page . If Republicans are able to pick up at least four seats in the 2012 election — which would give them a simple majority of 51 and allow them to take the chairmanships of all Senate committees — Rove said he thinks the party will be able to roll back health care reform. Under reconciliation, “the Senate Budget Committee could instruct the Senate Finance Committee to reduce mandatory spending on insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These two items make up more than 90 [percent] of spending in ObamaCare,” he wrote. “All the changes from all the committees” could then be “bundled into one measure and voted upon” as a budget bill, meaning it would only need 51 votes to pass. Because reconciliation is protected by the rules of the budget process, it doesn’t take 60 votes to overcome a filibuster threat, and it requires a simple majority to pass. Jonathan Chait finally writes something that I agree with: Karl Rove has an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal today — and, yes, I admit that merely typing those words involuntarily triggers my saliva glands — that is entirely dedicated to urging Republicans to use the budget reconciliation process to repeal the Affordable Care Act: Fear not, sayeth Speaker Pelosi, all will be fixed with the magic dust known as “reconciliation”—a process that allows budget and spending bills to move through the Senate with 51 votes instead of 60…House Democrats would be foolish to trust a process that has deeply alienated the American public. No, wait, sorry! That’s his March 11, 2010 column entitled “The Trouble With ‘Reconciliation.’” Here is Rove’s pro-reconciliation column: Legislation that looks anything like the bill moving through the House will contain deeply unpopular provisions — including massive deficit spending, tax hikes and Medicare cuts — and create enormous ill will on Capitol Hill. This will be especially true if Democrats rely on parliamentary tricks to pass a bill in the Senate with 51 votes. Argh. Whoops. That turns out to be a Rove column from September, 2009 denouncing the use of reconciliation. Let’s see if this is it: MR. BROKAW: But the fact of the matter is we don’t know the exact definition of the final bill because it’ll go through this complicated process, get to reconciliation, some of the costs will be addressed then. MR. ROVE: Right. And, and isn’t that amazing? We’re asking people of the U.S. House, House of Representatives not to vote on the bill but to vote on a placeholder. And the final terms of this huge measure affecting one-sixth of our economy will be defined later, perhaps in a, in a bill in the Senate designed to circumvent the normal order of business. That’s a pretty remarkable way to try and go pass a big piece of legislation without bipartisan support. Darn it! That’s Rove appearing on “Meet the Press” last March. Republicans like Rove lie with impunity, and it’s up to us to always try and set the record straight. The MSM should do the same, but since conservative misinformation is permitted they usually don’t. I did think David Gregory sufficiently called out John Boehner over his refusal to set the record straight for the Birthers.
Continue reading …Fox Nation Posts Video Asking if the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse Appears in Cairo
February 14, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Okay, this is pathetic by even Fox’s horrible standards. From Fox Nation — Horseman of Apocalypse Shows up in Cairo? . This is an incredible piece of video. At the 1:20 mark you clearly see some greenish figure moving through the crowd. Between the crowds of protesters and barricades, the video shows a flowing, pale green image that resembles an erect rider atop a horse in Medieval-like barding. The ethereal figure remains for a few moments before floating over protesters’ heads and off the screen. Is this the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse?” I await Glenn Beck airing the clip on his show some time this week. In case they pull the post or the video the video can be watched here as well, and here’s a screen shot of the post at Fox Nation. enlarge h/t todayspolitics
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rFactor F1 2010 Full Mod – Bahrain Circuit Logitech G25 Lap Desert Scan: Bahrain news! – Part 3 Desert Scan: Bahrain news! – Part 2 » Bahrain opposition groups call for protest rally > > Ethiopian News The official Bahrain News Agency has also launched a new multimedia service that includes social media applications to seek more outreach. Activists and rights groups have often had to contend with widespread blocks on websites and … EA WorldView – Home – Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Asserting Command? Media monitors began talks yesterday with publishers and others to draft new rules to limit state controls, and the official Bahrain News Agency launched a new multimedia service that includes social media applications to seek more … Sakana posts loss for 2010 | Sakana | AMEinfo.com Country News. Bahrain News · Jordan News · Kuwait News · Qatar News · Saudi Arabia News · UAE News · Middle East News · Business Services » · Jobs · White Papers Library · Businesses for Sale · Toolbar and Tools · Currency Converter … Comfortable MBT Sapatu Shoes On Sale For you | Bahrain Business … Complete Guide for doing Business in Bahrain. Home · Bahrain Guide · Blogs · Business Directory · Bahrain News · Contact. User login. Username: *. Password: *. Create new account · Request new password. Navigation … Bahrain Deploys Police Officers as Opposition Calls for Day of … to ease the burden of rising food prices, the Bahrain News Agency said Feb. 3. He also ordered the payment of 1000 dinars ($2653) to each Bahraini family. The Information Affairs Authority began talks yesterday with the media on a new … MariamMeshikhes says: #Bahrain news in #Aljazeera top news…details after egypt;s news #feb14
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“Visit of the Termas de Huife and ride to Chillan” Esbjorn’s photos around Chillan, Chile Brége praet in Terwispel Ellos – Cerca EMU FinMins Nominate Belgium's Praet To ECB Executive: Press … FRANKFURT (MNI) – The European Central Bank’s Governing Council will become a men’s club, at least for the time being, if a German newspaper report. United States of Europe: Open Europe Meanwhile, FAZ reports that diplomatic sources have confirmed that Belgian Central Bank official Peter Praet will be appointed to the ECB board of directors at the expense of the Slovak candidate, Elena Kohútiková, who may have been … BCE, per stampa sarà belga Praet nuovo membro Consiglio | Finanza Blog Terna: al 2015 investirà 5 mld di euro sulla rete · Terna: nel 2010 mol di 1,17 mld (+17%), ricavi 1.580 mln (+14%) · Terna: conferma politica dividendi per 2011-2015 · BCE, per stampa sarà belga Praet nuovo membro Consiglio … Un Belge au directoire de la BCE « Money Invest Le Belge Peter Praet qui semblait la semaine dernière, être le mieux placé pour remplacer l´Autrichienne Gertrud Tumpell-Gugerell au directoire de la Banque centrale européenne, la BCE, a été, selon nos informations, élu à l’unanimité … Hacking http status codes | Software Development Reviews Posted by: Dirk Praet at February 2, 2011 4:47 PM. @Justin Long–. I installed NoScript shortly after getting an extremely annoying advertisement; NoScript was simply the simplest way to block it from ever happening again. … ForexInfinity says: Belgium’s Praet chosen for ECB board seat: Bloomberg: I can't remember who's term is up…I think it is Trumpell… http://bit.ly/fWYvVI
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