Author: Mark Alexander

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Quote Of The Day

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” ~ Roy Batty, Blade Runner

That quote pretty much sums up my feelings about the state of the world right now. We’ve reached such incredible levels of technology, and through science our understanding of the Universe is expanding expotentially. We’re seeing things that have never been seen by human eyes before, and as we stand on the brink of actually leaving our cradle, we’re also on the brink of torching it and sending civilization back to the stone age. Deep down, it seems so very many members of our species are still nothing more than unthinking savages, fueled by hate, terrified of change, frightened of “the other” in whatever form that takes—and determined to destroy it no matter what the cost.

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Donald Trump Is Gonna Get Us Killed

by Michael Moore

A week has gone by since Donald Trump admitted he’s only been to “two or three” of his daily presidential national security briefings. There have been 36 of them since the day he secured enough electoral college votes to be appointed president next Monday when the Electoral College meets.

Most would agree the #1 job of the leader of any country is to keep its people safe. There is no more important meeting every day for the President than the one where he learns what the day’s potential threats are to the country. That Trump would find it too cumbersome or too annoying to have to sit through 20 minutes of listening to his top intelligence people tell him who’s trying to kill us today, simply boggles the mind.

Of course, our minds have been so boggled so many times in the past year by this foolish man no one seems that surprised or concerned. He can get up at 5 in the morning and send angry, childish tweets about how he’s being portrayed on SNL (“Not funny! Unwatchable!”), or belittling the local elected union leader in Indiana, but he doesn’t have time to hear about the threats to our national security.

So, my fellow Americans, when the next terrorist attack happens—and it will happen, we all know that—and after the tragedy is over, amidst the death and destruction that might have been prevented, you will see Donald Trump acting quickly to blame everyone but himself. He will suspend constitutional rights. He will round up anyone he deems a threat. He will declare war, and his Republican Congress will back him.

And no one will remember that he wasn’t paying attention to the growing threat. Wasn’t attending the daily national security briefings. Was playing golf instead or meeting with celebrities or staying up til 3am tweeting about how unfair CNN is. He said he didn’t need to be briefed. “You know, I think I’m smart. I don’t need to hear the same thing over and over each day for eight years.” That’s what he told Fox News on December 11th when asked why he wasn’t attending the security briefings. Don’t forget that date and his hubris as we bury the dead next year.

We had a president like him before. He, too, lost the popular vote, a majority of Americans saying they didn’t want him in the Oval Office. But his governor/brother and his ex-CIA chief/dad’s appointees to the Supreme Court put an end to that, and he was installed as Commander-in-Chief. On August 6, 2001, he was on a month-long vacation at his ranch in Texas. That morning, the White House Counsel handed him his daily national security briefing. He glanced at it, set it aside and then went fishing for the rest of the day. Below is the photo of that moment which I showed the world in “Fahrenheit 9/11”. The headline on the security briefing reads: BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE INSIDE U.S. On the top page it tells how bin Laden will do this: with planes. George W. Bush didn’t leave the ranch to go back to work for the next four weeks. In the fifth week, bin Laden attacked the US with planes on September 11th.

It’s one thing to have a president who was asleep at the wheel. But, my friends, it’s a whole other thing to now have a president-elect who REFUSES TO EVEN GET BEHIND THE WHEEL! This utter neglect of duty, a daily snub at the people who work to protect us, the first Commander-in-Chief to literally be AWOL and announcing proudly he isn’t going to change—this, I assure you, is going to get a lot of innocent people killed.

To you, Mr. Trump, I say this: When this next terrorist attack takes place, it is YOU who will be charged by the American people with a gross dereliction of duty. It was YOUR job to pay attention, to protect the country. But you were too busy tweeting and defending Putin and appointing cabinet members to dismantle the government. You didn’t have time for the daily national security briefing. Don’t think we’re going to let you use a modern-day burning of the Reichstag as your excuse to eliminate our civil liberties and our democracy.

We will remember that while the plot to kill Americans was being hatched, your time was consumed by whom you saw as the real threat to America: Alec Baldwin in a wig.

Source

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Stop Pretending

A must-read from The Monkeyworld:

Actor/comedian Patton Oswalt wrote a Facebook post that made the rounds this weekend because of it’s honesty and unwavering commitment to call bullshit out for what it is…bullshit. Oswalt was not going to pretend the world will not change for the worse next month when Donald Trump, the most unfit human being to ever run for President, takes the oath of office to become, no matter how Twilight Zone it is, the 45th President of the United States of America. Here’s Patton’s post:

Patton Oswalt on Donald Fucking Trump

This perfect summation from Patton Oswalt , just an actor/comic yes, is on the money nonetheless. I try to be empathetic and put myself in everyone else’s shoes…so: If I won the Presidency with a less than 0.7% margin in the three Rust Belt States that swung the Electoral college I’d feel “well it was certainly close, not a mandate, but hey rules are rules” even if they’re from an obsolete, distant world we DO NOT live in anymore.

But then if my opponent had over 2.5 million more popular votes than I did I’d certainly feel less than good about my “victory.” Especially if in the last 7 elections, including mine (well, Trump’s, but play along), the GOP candidate had only won the popular vote once (2004, Bush Jr.). Did the people really speak and say I was their choice? I mean Al Gore only (only!) had 500,000 more popular votes in 2000 over Electoral College “winner,” Bush Jr.

Well I know I certainly wouldn’t say that those 2.5 million more votes were made by illegals and double voters, and then fight & refuse any recounts. I mean why try to live in fact when you could just send 140 character tweets saying what you “think” happened?

You get the point yet? Go ahead, try thinking how you would feel “winning” that way? Well how about Trump’s own government intelligence community, the FBI & the CIA bringing forth evidence that in their judgement Russia DID hack Democratic National Committee computers, as well as the Republican Committee. It’s a given Wikileaks and Russia were complicit, working with intel given to them that in no way shape or form should they possess. There’s even evidence that Russia attempted to infiltrate state voting databases & polling machines…with no concrete answer if they were successful or not.

In addition, without question, they said that Russia had a full bore operation to influence the outcome of the election in Trumps favor since July 2016 at the LATEST. Trump’s answer? To call his own country’s intelligence operation (the CIA & FBI) incompetent and choose to believe Russia instead. This is the man after all who encouraged Russia to disturb the election in his favor on national television, insinuating a financial gain could be had by people turning Clinton’s emails over to the media! It’s on tape, we’ve all seen it, so when Trump tweets out he never said it are you going to pretend he didn’t?

Because that’s the crux of Oswalt’s post & this whole situation. Are we just going to PRETEND none of this happened? That he doesn’t have ethical conflicts so deep they could never be fully disclosed, that he isn’t trying to get security clearances for every member of his family, that he hasn’t filled his cabinet up with nominee’s who are super wealthy, old and backwards and predominantly white males who have deep ties with Washington DC for decades?! Instead of draining the swamp he hired every DC Swamp Monster he could find or owed a favor to!

(It continues and gets even better.)

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An Airplane Was About To Crash…

An airplane was about to crash. There were four passengers on board, but only 3 parachutes. The first passenger said, “I am Steph Curry, the best basketball player. The Warriors and my millions of fans need me, and I can’t afford to die.” So he took the first pack and jumped out of the plane.

Donald Trump, the second passenger said, “I am Donald Trump. I am the newly-elected President of the United States and the smartest President in American history. My followers don’t want me to die. He took the second pack and jumped out of the plane.

The third passenger, the Pope, said to the fourth, a ten-year-old boy, “My son, I am old and I do not have many years left. You have your entire life ahead of you, so I will sacrifice myself and let you have the last parachute.”

“That’s okay, your Holiness” said the boy. “There is still one parachute left for you. America’s smartest president took my book bag.”

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A Beautiful Score

It’s finally here. The complete soundtrack for HBO’s Westworld Season 1. And it is amazing.

After all the music-related losses visited upon us by 2016, this is a ray of light and a vehicle through which I can escape…if only for a couple hours at a time.

Now HBO, I have only one question. When will it be available on vinyl?

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A Woman Just Stood Up To Trump’s Latest Outburst On Twitter – And America Is Cheering Her On

Thin-skinned Donald Trump didn’t like Saturday Night Live last night very much.

During the show he tweeted out the following, saying that the show was completely “unwatchable” and “not funny.”

When, in fact, it was actually very funny – and got a lot of fanfare for making fun of Donald Trump’s tweets, no less! Pretty ironic that he angrily tweeted about a show making fun of his tweets!

With that being said, one woman by the name of Danielle Muscato ended up going off on Donald Trump in his twitter feed in response to this latest outburst of his.

It was such a glorious beat down that it has to be shared.

Her message was instantly received by thousands and rose to the top of the Twitter feed and will no doubt be seen hundreds of thousands of people in the days to follow, and it should. It’s worth every bit of your time to read.

Danielle Muscato just said what half of America has been thinking for months now. 

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Disappointed

And the worst part of it is there isn’t even anyone alive anymore whom I share this particular bit of musical history with to discuss that disappointment.

Today marks the 40th—fortieth!—anniversary of the release of Jean Michel Jarre’s seminal Oxygene, and to mark that date, Jarre has released the third and final part of his musical trilogy, Oxygene 3.

As I wrote earlier, Oxygene and Equinoxe (stylistically more of an heir to the title of part two of the trilogy than Oxygene 7-13—informally known as Oxygene 2) often sent me skimming over a dune sea under a double sun in my personal landspeeder whenever I heard them, so when I first learned of this new release being in the works several months ago I have to admit my heart fluttered a bit with anticipation.

But I was sorely disappointed when I first heard it earlier today. It is supposedly Jean Michel’s vision of what he would’ve done with the original album back in 1976 if he’d had today’s technology to work with. If that’s the case, I’m glad he didn’t. 

And yet I’ve had it playing on a continuous loop on Spotify, hoping that something will eventually reach out and grab me the way Oxygene did those many years ago. To be honest, it’s not a bad album as albums go, and after repeated listenings, there are a couple of tracks I actually rather like, but is not what I was expecting. There is very little of the cohesion or overall thematic consistency between cuts (or even that instantly recognizable Jarre sound) that made Oxygene, Equinoxe, Oxygene 2, or even Zoolook and Chronologie so amazing. Even Oxygene 2, released in the late 90s, shares more musical DNA with the first album than this one does.

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I Hadn’t Thought of That!

When you delete a file it doesn’t go away, the data is still on the disk, but the the reference to where that data is stored is taken away. It also isn’t overwritten because the drive simply maps another portion of the drive to fill the gap. This technique is used so that the information is recoverable using forensic tools, and the extra space serves as a backup in case an error occurs in that block or if you need to shift data from one place to another. This is interesting in the case of the Westworld hosts brains because it would seem that with a nearly infinite amount of storage space, the data that has been “wiped” is never actually overwritten, but the reference to it is taken away. This could explain a lot of things that are going on with the host’s memories, i.e. not being able to determine the metadata associated with the memory such as time and place. Also, the “reverie” would seem to work as a sort of forensic tool that allows the host to cross reference data only by association because the direct reference is lost, but that data has linked references to certain key words, images, or sounds. In the case of Maeve, she has complete control of her “hard disk” and can see that there is “something there just out her reach”, this showing that she can scan her disk and see the data, but she cannot read the data because she doesn’t know what kind of data it is. This is also true with any computer. You can see that there is something there, but until you know the structure of it, it doesn’t make sense because you need a cross reference to put it into context. I.e she knows that she was built for a specific purpose, but the reference to where that information has been stored is not available to her. Not that it doesn’t exist, but she needs a cross reference to it.

Source.

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A Wise Open Letter To Young Queers

As we note World AIDS Day this December 1st, I think it’s worth remembering that the untested but potentially devastating incoming Trump administration is not the first time our community has faced seemingly insurmountable challenges. Jicama Fine posted a wise open letter to young queers this week and you need to read it no matter how old you are. His breathtaking history lesson will inspire you as our community works our way through the grief spawned by this year’s election.

There’s really nothing else I can say about his powerful open letter. Other than cleaning it up a bit for ease of reading, it’s being reprinted in its entirely as he wrote it.

Letter to my Queer community

I would like to speak to my younger Queer community. Those of you who weren’t around during the darkest times of the AIDS plague. Some of you call me elder. It’s a title I often want to run from. It scares me. Most often because I will have to live up to any advice I give you.

Since the outcome of the election I’ve been in a dark place. I’m scared, I’m reduced to tears at times. My hands shake. I want to hide in my house with the doors locked. I’m in pieces. Yet through my own grief and fear I see you. Your faces come to me, some familiar some unknown. I see your pain and fear and they are valid. They are not imaginary. The threat is real. I want to comfort you and tell you things will be alright but I’m not sure of this.

Many of you are estranged or have a tenuous connection with your birth family because you are Queer or HIV positive or because of this last election or other circumstances. Many of you don’t have an elder to turn to. Many of you feel alone.

I’ve been waiting to feel stronger or whole or for when my thoughts are more organised to speak to you but I’m unsure of when that will be. One thing I do have to share with you now is my experience.

I’ve been in this dark place a number of times before. One of those times was during the mid 80s through early 90s. AIDS was decimating our community. Loved ones, friends, strangers and ourselves were suffering and dying from this horrible disease.

I, myself, tested positive for HIV in 1985. I cried, I hid, I spun around and around. Effective treatment was still about 9 years away. I thought I had 2 years to live tops. Luckily I had the support of the Queer recovery community and the larger Queer community in Seattle.

The government was doing nothing to stop the spread of AIDS. Some so called Christians were calling for mass interment for people with AIDS, telling us that we should die and go to hell. Even some medical professionals were refusing to touch patients. Families were torn apart and sons and daughters were abandoned, stigmatized and left to die alone.

Our community members were broken physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. We were in pieces.

We started taking care of ourselves and each other. We didn’t have time to wait to feel better or get ourselves together. We took care of each other the best we could. We used the skills we had. We built community using the broken pieces of ourselves. Many new skills were learned by doing. We made mistakes, we cried, we grieved, we buried our loved ones, we kept going somehow.

I had an elder who would often say “Do the next obvious thing.” I had just gotten my massage license in 1985 and decided to use this to help. I started massaging one or two patients in my home once a week and eventually joined the massage team that went into Seattle hospitals and hospice to comfort the sick and dying. I massaged emaciated bodies sometimes covered with KS lesions. I did things I didn’t think I was capable of doing.

My fingers still hold the vivid memory of what that feels like. Sometimes these people were loved ones but often they were strangers. Some had no birth family support others did. There were mothers and fathers and siblings that took care of their loved ones amid the fear and stigma. Some died alone. We tried to catch the ones falling through the cracks. We often failed.

From this basis of love and care organisations sprung up. We washed dishes, cleaned houses, wiped asses, made food and fed each other. We organised protests and actions to bring attention to the lack of government response. Real people of faith came forward and helped. Some of us ran for political office.

I tell you these things not because I want to be called hero or feed my ego but to give you the benefit of my experience. Many others did a lot more than I did in the face of greater fear. I went to the hospital to comfort a dying friend and instead he was the one comforting me. He died clean and sober and faced his death with grace. He was a hero.

I cannot talk about these times without acknowledging the women that came forward to help. They were the backbone of this movement. A lot of us men were broken and sick. Many times I fell into the arms of women who were there doing the work. They held me up literally at times. We came together from different gender identities, color and economic background.

Though the circumstances are different today I see many similarities. Hate is hate and fear is fear. Hate is a powerful dark spell fed by more hate. Try not to feed it. This thing called courage is not something I carry around with me that I can give. Real courage comes from within oneself at the time it is needed. It doesn’t come with flags waving and trumpets blaring that is something else. It often comes with tears and shaking and the urge to run and hide. Courage isn’t the absence of fear.

I see you, the younger members of my communities and I am given hope. You are bright, strong, energetic and loving. I am honored by your presence in my life. I see the work you do and the risks you take and I am humbled. I have often looked at you and have seen the faces of Queer ancestors I have known. Your Queer ancestors are with you in Spirit and also in more tangible ways. They survive in the rights and organizations we benefit from today.

This is a stressful time. The pull of addictions is strong. If you need help, get it. It is there. I love you. We need you. Mend your broken fences; we need everyone. Take good care of yourself and others, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Strengthen those bonds. The work will present itself if we are ready. If you are feeling down look around you. There is always someone else hurting more than you, Reach out to them.

Other communities are under attack. I cannot speak for them. I can only tell my story. You can find their stories elsewhere.

I offer you these words and the broken pieces of myself. It’s all I have.

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World AIDS Day

As is my tradition every December 1st, I remember…


Kent Kelly


Ken Cohen


Steve Golden


Dennis Shelpman


Jim Hagen


Chuck Krahe


Marty Kamner


Michael Nelson


Jim Nye


Kevin Ohm


Rick King


Ron Aiazzi


Grant Neilsen


Ric Hathaway


David Koston


Kim Holstein


Russ Alvarez

Ben Walzer
Ken Borg
Harold Gates
Jim Girard
Keith Roseberry
Tom Farrel
Peter Whitman
Chuck Mayer
Richard Gulliver
Scott Woods
Bobby Farina
Brian Lea
Fred Sibinic
Steve McCollom
John Trapp
Philip Ruckdeschel

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#Truth

Bodies aren’t meant to stay the same. We are supposed to grow and change. We shouldn’t be making people in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, etc. feel like they need to strive for the bodies they had in their teens and 20’s. Or making people feel like they ‘need to get their bodies back’ after they have had children. These mindsets aren’t healthy and change is inevitable.”

As I’ve written about before, I have to say that cancer (and to a lesser extent, simply getting older) was my own body image wake up call. Among the other things it changed in my life, cancer obliterated my decades-long obsession with losing weight. Except for during my 20s when I wore size 31 jeans, I’ve always been—in Sears catalog parlance—husky, and when the weight started padding on in my mid-30s, my mantra became, “If I could only lose another 20 lbs. I could…wear tank tops to pride parades, get a boyfriend, win the lottery, blah, blah, blah.” (Truth be told, even when I was wearing size 31 jeans I considered myself fat.) After I came through on the other side of the cancer treatment however, for the first time in my life, none of that was important any more. I was actually comfortable in my own skin and I learned that it was so much easier to just take care of myself, eat as healthy as possible, and simply accept who I was rather than to fixate on what size jeans I had to buy.

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Exactly.

It’s hard not to feel a bit hopeless right now. Many of the things I’ve focused on in the last few years now feel trivial, or badly broken, in the wake of last week’s election.” ~ Andy Baio

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On Blogging

There a few reasons why I’m sad about the decline of independent blogs, and why I think they’re still worth fighting for.

Ultimately, it comes down to two things: ownership and control.

Here, I control my words. Nobody can shut this site down, run annoying ads on it, or sell it to a phone company. Nobody can tell me what I can or can’t say, and I have complete control over the way it’s displayed. Nobody except me can change the URL structure, breaking 14 years of links to content on the web.” ~ Andy Baio

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My Westworld Theory

For those of you who have been watching HBO’S Westworld, and are as obsessed with the story as I am, I have a theory.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

For several weeks I’ve been entertaining the idea that not only was Bernard a host (confirmed in Episode 8), but so is Ford. This seemed to be revealed in a brief bit of dialog last night that I didn’t catch until a second viewing. When Bernard confronted Ford in cold storage and demanded full access to all his memories, Bernard looked at Ford and said, “Arnold built us, didn’t he? Which means maybe he had something different in mind for us. And maybe you killed him for it.”

Built us.

There were only two people in that scene: Ford and Bernard. (Clementine was in the room, but standing off to the side and I believe her presence can be safely ignored since it was not even implied that Arnold had any part in her creation).

Furthermore, it is my belief that not only is Ford a host, but also that he—despite the fact we were told last night that Dolores committed the act—was the one who actually killed Arnold…

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A Letter to My Electors

I emailed the following to my state’s electors who provided contact information. You can find a list of your Electors here. I seriously doubt that enough of them can be swayed (all of mine are Republicans) to keep Trump out of office, but we can sure as hell try.

_________________________________________

Respected Electors,

We are rapidly approaching a pivotal moment in American history. On December 19th, you and other members of the Electoral College will be called upon to cast your votes for the next President of the United States.

This election has been contentious and fraught with questionable behavior on the part of both candidates, but only one of those candidates was supported by a small group of racist, nationalist individuals who owe their history to and base their philosophy on the KKK and rise of the Third Reich in Germany in the 1930s.

Since his election on November 8th, Donald Trump has begun assembling his Cabinet and support staff from what are inarguably the least qualified individuals in the history of this Republic; a vast majority of whom have no—or at the least very limited—experience in government. Instead of “draining the swamp” as Mr. Trump vowed during the campaign, he has surrounded himself with exactly the type of individuals beholden to the corporate interests whom he had promised to remove from the machinery of government.

There is no disagreement that both parties offered the American people flawed candidates. As was often heard, “This is the best we can do?” but only Mr. Trump has shown his unwillingness to adhere to long-standing existing international treaties and his steadfast refusal to embrace to the most basic tenants of what is required for the successful transition of power—not to mention his unrestrained emotional outbursts, his unbridled narcissism, and his continuing blatant disregard for established constitutional law calling upon him to divest himself of his worldwide business dealings really call into question his overall fitness to assume the Office of President. Running the country is not an episode of Celebrity Apprentice.

Please remember this is the man who during his campaign vowed to jail his opponent, dismantle the First Amendment and said, “We have nukes. Why can’t we use them?”

In addition, serious questions are being raised regarding the part Russian Intelligence and hacking played in this election, as well as Mr. Trump’s and his advisors’ ties to Vladimir Putin, leader of a nation openly hostile to the security and interests of the United States and our longstanding allies in western Europe. Currently efforts are underway to audit the vote in several key states to verify the integrity of this election, a process that is necessary regardless of the eventual outcome so that the American people can be secure in their knowledge that our elections are free of outside influence and accurately reflect the will of the voters. The level of distrust in the results of this election and the fact that the pre-election polls were so wildly inaccurate are unprecedented in American history and need to be properly addressed before the next President takes office.

As of this writing, Hillary Clinton is winning the popular vote by more than two million ballots and that number is rising daily. Mr. Trump may have won the Electoral College November 8th, but he has lost the popular vote. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump. Please keep that in mind.

When the actual number of eligible voters versus the number of people who actually voted is taken into account, Mr. Trump won not by a close 50-50 split, but rather was selected by only about 25% of the American public. He has no mandate from the people to enact the kind of sweeping changes to our country that has many fearing for their lives and their ability to live as free American citizens.

As we approach the date when a final determination of the winner of this election must be confirmed by the Electoral College, I ask that you look into your heart and ask if Donald Trump’s vision of America—something that flies in the face of our 240 years of history and for which millions have fought and died to protect—is something you want for yourself, your children, and your grandchildren. Enough red flags have been raised to say this election is not business as usual, and unlike the Germans in the 1930s who had no historical precedent to warn them of the horror that was approaching, we do—and the parallels between 85 years ago and what Donald Trump is proposing in 2016 are unnerving.

You have a momentous choice ahead of you: vote for the candidate called on November 8th, abstain from voting altogether, or vote for the admittedly imperfect but infinitely more qualified candidate who actually won the popular vote, Hillary Clinton. For the good of the country and our planet, I respectfully ask that you put country before party and do the latter.

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