A Classy Boss

What was your favorite informal moment as President Obama's press secretary? By @joshearnest quora.com/Are-there-any-… https://t.co/07XhZ6EEQL

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Quora Sessions (@QuoraSessions) August 27, 2017

You Have To Stand For Something

"The one unifying principal of congressional GOPs…has been instinctive, reflective opposition to everything Obama."… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…

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Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 27, 2017

Chat Away

Picture Of The Day

Pete Souza: President Obama says hi to Walker Earnest, son of White House press secretary Josh Earnest and Natalie Wyeth Earnest

The President’s Day

President Barack Obama speaks during the 22nd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting at the Yanqi Lake International Convention Center in Beijing. Asia-Pacific and world leaders gathered for the annual summit, with free trade at the top of the agenda as they sought to narrow differences on how to open commerce across the vast region.

President Barack Obama shakes hands with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, third left, as China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi, second right, stands by during a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping

President Barack Obama talks to Vladimir Putin during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Beijing

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Zients, @PennyPritzker in OpEd explain why visa reforms - secured by POTUS on Asia trip - are big deal for US economy tinyurl.com/mdtrxuy

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Eric Schultz (@Schultz44) November 11, 2014

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President Barack Obama readies his shovel as he takes part in a tree planting at the International Convention Center at Yanqi Lake during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit

President Barack Obama talks with Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet after taking part in a tree planting at the International Convention Center at Yanqi Lake

President Barack Obama walks with China’s President Xi Jinping, at the Zongnanhai leaders compound ahead of a dinner

Agendas?

A tweet from last year by Cody Full (@CodyFNfootball), the RW media star leading the campaign of vilification against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.

There are lots more, like his ceaseless venom towards President Obama, his support for Cliven Bundy, his regular use of ‘Libtard’ – and his scrubbing of his social media offerings that included ‘a N****r’ pic once he began his Twitter campaign against Bergdahl.

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And this, a screenshot from a fundraising site for the other RW media star leading the campaign of vilification against Sergeant Bergdahl, Josh Korder:

That’s right, he is looking for money to help him tell the ‘truth’.

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Both soldiers are everywhere in the media at the moment, casting Bergdahl – and, ultimately, their President – as a traitor, and so far, absolutely nobody has questioned them about any possible agenda.

Korder, for example, appeared on Britain’s Channel 4 news yesterday where he was interviewed by the usually excellent Krishnan Guru-Murthy – but not once was he questioned about a possible personal agenda, or about his efforts to profit from his media tour.

So, I tweeted this to Guru-Murthy, and to his credit he replied:

@TheObamaDiary thanks – will look into it

— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) June 3, 2014

If he does look in to it, that would be great, but I don’t see any US media big guns promising to do the same

No reply, needless to say, from Mr Tapper:

Is it not also your job, @jaketapper, to check agendas of those whose words you report? @MinortyMajority @HalpernAlex pic.twitter.com/s27sVamXKv

— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) June 4, 2014

Just this:

Another firsthand account on #TheLead today: the first TV interview of Bergdahl’s squad leader, there that night he vanished. Tune in!

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) June 4, 2014

So, anticipate yet another unquestioning chat with Cody Full, a far right racist with a seething hatred for the President – one who was particularly alarmed by Sergeant Bergdahl’s habit of reading books and desire to learn languages other than his own. Which he thought made him weird

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This, incidentally, is the guy who is pimping Cody Full to the media:

Ah yes, @MrBradChase, the guy pimping @CodyFNfootball to Fox, etc, insists he’s not a Republican, he’s neutral …… pic.twitter.com/YJWaCG3DEP

— TheObamaDiary.com (@TheObamaDiary) June 3, 2014

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Are Cody Full and Josh Korder telling the truth?

Maybe they are. Maybe Sergeant Bergdahl does have serious questions to answer – no one knows for certain yet.

But before the media present ‘witnesses’, shouldn’t they at least vet these people to check for motives? You know, a simple Twitter search would do the job.

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My own hunch, for what it’s worth (not much): Sergeant Bergdahl is a thinking man, unlike Cody and Josh, who was horrified by what went on in his unit, and was utterly disillusioned and depressed by it all and the pointless war he had signed up for. He was, I think, just 23 at the time, and had witnessed unrelenting carnage, much of it committed by his own unit. And, so, he broke down. And wandered away.

A traitor?

No. A broken human being.

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Interesting:

Few people considering possibility that soldiers from his unit are slamming Bergdahl because there’s something he could expose

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) June 4, 2014

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From Rolling Stone:

As his tour dragged on, the hellish reality of war – including seeing an Afghan child run over by an American truck – weighed on Bergdahl, who came to see America’s presence in Afghan as “disgusting.”

“I am sorry for everything here,” Bowe told his parents. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid…

“We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks.”

Cody Full says he’s lying. But why would he lie about something like that in a personal email to his parents?

He can’t have known then that those personal emails would become public.

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Is that what’s behind the campaign against Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl?

He knows stuff.

Stuff the racist Cody and profit-seeking Josh really, really don’t want anyone to know – so, best brand Bergdahl as a traitor, with the the help of an unquestioning media.

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Love and best wishes to the Bergdahl family. The hate they are enduring is simply beyond belief.

Rise and Shine

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Gail Collins (NYT): …. Every country has a sizable contingent of mentally ill citizens. We’re the one that gives them the technological power to play god. This is all about guns – access to guns and the ever-increasing firepower of guns. Over the past few years we’ve seen one shooting after another in which the killer was wielding weapons holding 30, 50, 100 bullets. I’m tired of hearing …. that the founding fathers specifically wanted to make sure Americans retained their right to carry rifles capable of mowing down dozens of people in a couple of minutes.

….. We will undoubtedly have arguments about whether tougher regulation on gun sales or extra bullet capacity would have made a difference in Connecticut. In a way it doesn’t matter. America needs to tackle gun violence because we need to redefine who we are. We have come to regard ourselves – and the world has come to regard us – as a country that’s so gun happy that the right to traffic freely in the most obscene quantities of weapons is regarded as far more precious than an American’s right to health care or a good education.

We have to make ourselves better. Otherwise, the story from Connecticut is too unspeakable to bear…..

Full article here

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Josh Marshall (TPM): …. I generally have no interest in writing things that amount to counsels of despair or suggestions that there’s no possible solution. But I have a hard time not doing that in this case….

… there are some 300 million guns in the US. Just under half the population owns a firearm. Let’s assume some truly radical shift in public opinion in the country and new regulations and laws get that number down to 200 million. What does that accomplish exactly?

…. I’m hearing a lot of people saying we need to talk about guns, restart that conversation. And I agree, at least in the abstract. But what exactly are we talking about? And how we propose to get from here to there? How do we make our country less of a moral embarrassment.

…. I’m not trying to stop the discussion. I want to start it. But I’m looking for some guidance on how it can be about more than words.

Full post here

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Gregory Gibson (NYT): MY wife and I learned about the Connecticut school shootings on our way home from the cemetery, where we had just finished observing the 20th anniversary of our son’s murder. Our son Galen, who was 18, and a teacher were killed on Dec. 14, 1992, by a deranged student who went on a shooting rampage …

In the wake of Galen’s murder, I wrote a book about the shooting. In it I suggested that we view gun crime as a public health issue, much the same as smoking or pesticides. I spent a number of years attending rallies, signing petitions, writing letters and making speeches, but eventually I gave up. Gun control … inexplicably became a third-rail issue for politicians.

I came to realize that, in essence, this is the way we in America want things to be. We want our freedom, and we want our firearms, and if we have to endure the occasional school shooting, so be it….

…. Children will continue to pay for a freedom their elders enjoy.

Full article here

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Liberal Librarian (The People’s View): ….. The fetishistic devotion to “gun rights” among the NRA and its supporters lead inexorably to tragedies like [yesterday’s]. When it’s easier to legally purchase a gun than to legally acquire a driver’s license, it’s way past time to step back and consider a nation’s priorities.

…. Among gun rights advocates, the 2nd Amendment has become a totem with no meaning, a dead letter. They focus on half of the bill, ignoring that bearing arms was a conditional right, written into the Constitution for a republic that did not plan on having a large standing army, where militia units would make up a large part of its armed strength during any war, and thus citizens had to have the means to participate.

…. The NRA is one of the most influential lobbies in the country, with influence among both Republicans and Democrats. The only hope to counter it and neuter it is a mass movement of people who answer those who bray about their right to own guns with the even more emphatic response that we have a right not to be shot. Until that happens, events like [yesterday’s] will be repeated at a sadly regular clip.

Full post here

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Charles Blow (NYT): …. How many more deaths and mass shootings will it take for Washington to begin to lead the country in a deeper conversation about sensible gun controls? What will it take for our politicians to take firm and principled positions on gun policies and stand up to the gun lobby in this country? Surely this is a moment that calls all of us to reckoning.

…. while gun control advocates grow more quiet, the gun lobby grows stronger and louder ….. “For gun rights groups, 2012 was the most active election cycle since 2000. They contributed a total of $3 million to candidates, 96 percent of them Republicans.” ….

…. Where are the voices for those who choose not to – or are not old enough to – own guns? Are the gunless to have no advocate? Will our politicians forever cower before the gun lobby?

Full article here

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From Cagle

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Morning everyone.

evening all

The Week

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Charles Pierce: …. my fellow Papists … if you all would be so kind, please shut the fk up about birth control, abortion, and this neverending madness about what ladies do with their lady parts without the pope’s permission.

….. please stop going on my television set and telling me what “the Catholic position” is on the fact that the president has told various Catholic institutions – and told them quite gently, too – that, yes, if they want all those nice juicy tax advantages, they must abide by the federal law and, in their capacities as employers, make contraceptives available to their employees under the new Affordable Care Act.

There is no “Catholic position” on this issue. There are the opinions of the clerical bureaucrats and the members of the Clan of The Red Beanie, and then there is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of Catholic laypeople, who stopped listening to anything the Vatican said on the matter of birth control back in 1965.

…. For that matter, there is no real “Catholic vote” out there to be mined, either. A breakdown of how American Catholics vote on one particular issue or another pretty much tracks with how the country in general breaks down … Catholics made up their mind on this issue long ago. They stopped listening to Rome, and to the Chancery, and most of them are much better off.

Full post here

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Kevin Drum: …. I guess I’m tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises (hospitals, schools), hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars – and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy …. I imagine the “religious community” in the United States would be a wee bit more understanding if the Obama administration refused to condone the practice.

…. if Catholic hospitals don’t want to follow reasonable, 21st century secular rules, they need to make themselves into truly religious enterprises. In particular, they need to stop taking secular taxpayer money. As long as they do, though, they should follow the same rules as anyone else.

More here

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Josh Kraushaar (National Journal): If President Obama wins re-election, he’ll point to the last couple of weeks as a turning point. He’s sharpened his economic message, emphasized fairness for the middle class, and most importantly, he’s benefited from an economy that’s showing some signs of improvement.

But the most underplayed development are signs that the president’s approval rating is ticking upwards with the group most resistant to him, non-college educated, working-class whites. Over the last week, several surveys have suggested that Obama is gaining some ground with this group, in both national and statewide polling. If these gains stick, it’s something that should be very concerning to the Romney campaign, which is dependent on winning overwhelming support from blue-collar white voters as part of a winning GOP coalition.

…. As Buffalo Springfield once sang: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Pay very close attention to Obama’s numbers with the white working-class. The assumption was that they were hardened against the president.  But there’s some fresh evidence that could be changing.

Full post here

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Bloomberg: President Barack Obama nominated Air Force Lieutenant General Janet Wolfenbarger to be the service’s first female four-star general and the military’s second woman to reach the highest rank.

Wolfenbarger, the Air Force’s top uniformed official for weapons development, was also nominated as commander of the Air Force’s Materiel Command, according to a Defense Department statement today. The positions are subject to Senate confirmation.

The first woman with four stars in the U.S. military, Army General Ann Dunwoody, was confirmed in 2008 and is commanding general of that service’s Materiel Command.

More here

Thanks Jovie

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Obama Foodorama: Expect some hilarious Let’s Move! hijinks on Tuesday night when First Lady Michelle Obama cameos in a video segment on NBC talk show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The comic visited Mrs. Obama last week at the White House to film the outing, which will air as part of this week’s celebration of the second anniversary of the Let’s Move! campaign. Among other fitness activities, the First Lady had Fallon running up and down the historic White House stairs, he said when he announced the upcoming cameo…..

More here

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Haven’t posted this in a while, love it:

catching up

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PolitiFact

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Jamelle Bouie (Prospect): …. If political courage is defined by the willingness to suffer politically for the sake of good public policy, then Affordable Care Act stands as a testament to the president’s political courage.

Which is why I also have no idea what National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar is talking about when he writes the following: “One of President Obama’s political weaknesses in his first term has been that he’s all-too-willing to avoid making tough decisions…..” …. Even if you don’t include the Affordable Care Act – and I don’t see why you wouldn’t – this is demonstrably false….

…. One of the strangest things about the current political moment is the extent to which mainstream pundits routinely act as if crucial moments in the Obama presidency never happened … Chris Matthews demands more ambition from Obama, despite the fact that he ran hard to pass a piece of social legislation that rivals the Great Society programs in size and scope.

It’s one thing for pundits to err in their judgment – it happens to the best of us – it’s something else entirely for them to ignore reality and blame the president for his failure to conform to their magical world.

Full post here

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Steve Benen: Honestly, is there any entity in politics more effective in slamming Mitt Romney than Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign?

In this new video, Team Huntsman not only draws additional attention to Romney’s awful interview with Fox News, but also fact-checks Romney’s denials about flip-flops.

More here – the video:

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John Avlon (Daily Beast): Mitt Romney’s Campaign Is Becoming a Sinking Ship – New polls show that Newt Gingrich’s surge is hurting Mitt Romney where it counts. The game isn’t over, but time is running out for Mitt to turn it around.

The horses are getting spooked in the Romney camp. His poll numbers are plummeting in state after state, while Newt Gingrich is soaring across the board.

One reflection of the rising tension was an awkward interview with Bret Baier, in which the normally unflappable Mitt Romney got rattled by fair questions. It revealed the irritability of a man accustomed to being in control who’s watching his plans fall apart in public.

Mitt’s aura of inevitability is fading because his strategy is failing.

Full post here

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TPM: There appears to be a very different definition of “small” in the Romney clan.

In an appearance at a Mitt Romney campaign office in Iowa, one of the candidate’s sons, Josh Romney, recalled a cozy Thanksgiving with the family at his parents’ “two-bedroom house, pretty small”.

…. the family spent Thanksgiving in San Diego, where he owns a two-bedroom house that’s reportedly 3,000 square feet and valued at $12 million.

More here

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Joe Klein (Time): …. Romney’s press office has just put out this statement about the President and Israel: (see post) …. The other inaccuracy is the notion that Obama wants Israel to return to its 1967 borders. He doesn’t. He wants the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed upon land swaps, to be the basis for peace negotiations. Somehow, Romney neglects to mention the land swaps.

The fact is, Obama’s policy toward Israel has been in line with that of every US President since Nixon …. The fact is that US-Israeli military and intelligence cooperation, especially when it comes to sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program, has never been greater.

…. It is very much unprecedented for a candidate for President to side with a foreign leader against the American President. But given their warped disrespect for this particular President, it has become disgracefully common among Republicans this year. One would hope that Romney, as one of the few plausible Republican candidates, would eschew such cheesy behavior … would not misrepresent Obama’s positions on foreign policy so gleefully. But, if this race continues to slip away from him, I suspect that’s exactly what we’ll continue to see.

Full post here

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Protect the Vote

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a ghoulishly good evening

Original video here

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First Lady Michelle Obama waits with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg in the Green Room of the White House before making remarks to the White House Historical Association, Oct. 31. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

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This is excellent:

GOPolitico: Anchors from nine local television affiliates will spend a day behind the scenes at the White House on Tuesday, meeting with top officials and getting brief individual interviews with President Obama before broadcasting evening newscasts from the South Lawn.

“Live from the White House” is a 21st-century update to the “radio row” tradition, which brought talk-show hosts to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to interview West Wing officials going from microphone to microphone during their drive-time shows.

The White House is building risers on the South Lawn for the evening newscasts, which are being spread out by time zones – three from the East, two from Central, one from Mountain and two from Pacific.

The anchors will get to ask White House press secretary Jay Carney a question during the daily press briefing; have lunch with senior adviser David Plouffe; interview a White House staffer from each station’s home market; get an on-camera tour with a White House curator; and tour the White House kitchen garden with Sam Kass, White House assistant chef and policy adviser.

The ringmaster is Josh Earnest, principal deputy White House press secretary, who said the mission is “to increase interest and raise the profile of the president’s efforts to strengthen the economy and create jobs in local communities across the country, and explain to Americans how their communities will benefit from the president’s agenda.”

The stations and their anchors will be from Portland, Ore. (KGW, NBC, Tracy Barr); Phoenix (KSAZ, Fox, John Hook); Denver (KUSA, NBC, Adele Arakawa); Minneapolis (WCCO, CBS, Amelia Santaniello); Houston (KTRK, ABC, Dave Ward); Omaha (KETV, ABC, Rob McCartney); Tampa (WTVT, Fox, Mark Wilson); Hampton Roads (WAVY, NBC, Tom Schaad); and Philadelphia (WPVI, ABC, Brian Taff). A 10th participant will be Nikole Killion, representing Hearst stations.

“The highlight of the day will be an opportunity to briefly interview the President from the Cabinet Room about the American Jobs Act,” Earnest said. “The anchors will also interview Cabinet secretaries … about how the bipartisan proposals included in the president’s American Jobs Act would create jobs in their community and put money in the pocket of every single American worker and small business owner.”

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Also tomorrow: The President has a ceremony at which he’ll sign a proclamation – which the White House will identify later tonight …  discusses legislative strategy with House Democratic Leaders ….. welcomes the crew of the final space shuttle mission to the Oval Office ….. The First Lady holds a Let’s Move event for children In New Orleans and does fundraisers in New Orleans and Houston ….  On Wednesday the President will push for $60 billion in new spending in an 11:25 am ET speech in front of the Key Bridge at Georgetown’s Waterfront Park in Washington, DC.

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AP: President Barack Obama is in excellent health and tobacco free, his doctor said Monday in the results of the president’s second physical exam since taking office.

In the two-page report released by the White House, Dr. Jeffrey C. Kuhlman also said Obama is physically active, eats a healthy diet, stays at a healthy weight, and on occasion drinks alcohol in moderation.

“The president is in excellent health and ‘fit for duty’,” Kuhlman wrote. “All clinical data indicate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency.”

….. The president is 6-foot-1 and weighs 181.3 pounds, according to the report. His blood pressure was recorded at 107 over 71, up from 105 over 62 in February 2010, but still well within the normal range.

…. The president also has “periodic physical therapy” to deal with recurrent upper right back pain, and he had benign skin tags removed from his neck.

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Eugene Robinson: Responding to his insurgent campaign’s first crisis, Herman Cain was upbeat and defiant. “To quote my chief of staff and all the people around this country, ‘Let Herman be Herman,’ ” he said Monday. “And Herman is gonna stay Herman.”

I was afraid of that.

Cain’s policy positions range from the ignorant to the unworkable to the just plain goofy – and yet he is running first or second in most polls for the Republican presidential nomination. He trumpets his utter lack of government experience as a selling point and boasts of not knowing foreign leaders’ names. If through some bizarre series of events he were actually elected president, the result would surely be an unmitigated disaster.

It’s not yet clear whether this remote possibility has been made even more unlikely by reports that Cain faced allegations of sexual harassment from two female employees when he headed the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.

…. He needs to answer more questions about the alleged harassment …. I hope he does, because we’re running out of bandwidth. Cain’s famous “9-9-9” tax plan would be ruinous. He wants to privatize Social Security. He believes that “extensive foreign policy experience” is not something a president needs, since when he was named chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, “I had never made a pizza – but I learned.”

So many reasons to oppose this loopy candidacy, so little time.

Full article here

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😆 – thank you Marlz

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Nothing more to say

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