Online discussions are dominated by a surprisingly small, extremely vocal, and non-representative minority.

from the www.Idealist.org (thanks to Put B.)

Research on social media has found that, while only 3 % of active accounts are toxic, they produce 33 % of all content. Furthermore, 74 % of all online conflicts are started in just 1 % of communities. and 0.1 % of users shared 80 % of fake news.

Not only does this extreme minority stir discontent, spread misinformation, and spark outrage online, they also bias the meta-perceptions of most users who passively lurk online. This can lead to false polarization and pluralistic ignorance, which are linked to a number of problems including drug and alcohol use, intergroup hostility. and support for authoritarian regimes.” (From a scholarly paper by Claire E. Robertson, Kareena S. del Rosario, and Jay J. Van Bavel.)

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January 11 7:30 PM at Benaroya Hall – Resounding Love Gospel Choir

     

Resounding Love Center for the Arts was born in early 2020 out of a simple desire to bring the best aspects of a church-based gospel music experience to a radically inclusive, open-and-affirming global space.

Our work of healing and activation is more important than ever.   Joy is an act of resistance. – Toi Derricotte   Two months from today we will be on stage at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall, sharing our music and message of inclusion, justice – and yes, joy. We’ll sing to the rafters. We’ll dance with abandon. We’ll tell stories of transformation. We’ll remind ourselves that love will win.  

Tickets are now on sale. Join us on January 11 and be a part of this community that is changing the world, one song and one healed heart at a time.   Buy tickets here         Member Lisa H says:   As an interfaith, open and affirming space committed to anti-racist and social justice work, Resounding Love is what I have been looking for my entire life, but didn’t know existed. The biggest parts of me and all things that I value are represented here – community, love, and music. I am surrounded by kind, warm, and funny people who accept and celebrate ALL parts that I bring to this space and who also happen to love to sing this music as much as I do.   I love this group and feel profoundly fortunate to have stumbled upon it. I found my people.    

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The turkey went to join the flock

Thanks to Pam P.

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Imagine

Thanks to Mike C.

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In control?

Thanks to Pam P.

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A note from Robert Reich

Thanks to Mike C.

Friends,

What do card sharks, magicians, pickpockets, and tyrants do to hide their tricks? They deflect your attention. “Look over here!” they say, as they create a commotion that preoccupies your mind while they bamboozle you. 

At first, I thought Trump’s gonzo nominations were intended to flood the zone — overwhelm us, demoralize us, cause us to lose our minds. 

Alternatively, I thought, they had a strategic purpose: Smoke out Senate Republicans who might stand in Trump’s way on other issues — such as allying with Putin and destroying NATO — so Trump could purge the holdouts through primary challengers and angry MAGAs. 

But while flooding the zone and purging recalcitrant Senate Republicans may be part of it, I’ve come to think there’s a larger plan at work. 

Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow billionaires loot America. 

As he consolidates power, Trump is on his way to creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires. 

Trump intuitively knows that the most powerful and insidious of all alliances is between rich oligarchs and authoritarian strongmen. 

Two billionaires are leading his transition team. The richest person in the world and another billionaire will run a new department of “efficiency.” Other billionaires are waiting in the wings to be anointed to various positions. 

America is now home to 813 billionaires whose cumulative wealth has grown a staggering 50 percent since before the pandemic. 

Apologists for these mind-boggling amounts argue they’re not a zero-sum game where the rest of us must lose ground in order for billionaires to prosper. Quite the contrary, they say: The billionaire’s achievements expand the economic pie for everyone. (continued)

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Trump, health, science, and the next 4 years

The Lancet (thanks to Ed M.)

Donald Trump’s decisive re-election as US President on Nov 5 puts many aspects of health and science in a deeply concerning position. Although there is broader alarm about his openly authoritarian intentions, his imminent return to the White House has left much of the health community in particular feeling dread and uncertainty about what comes next in the USA and globally.

The Trump campaign made few, if any, detailed promises on health policy but there can be no illusion about Trump’s attitude and chaotic approach to government. The Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era described his first term as “singularly damaging”. He is proud to rely on his instincts rather than any expertise, disdainful of scientists and the scientific process, and unpersuaded by any evidence that does not serve his agenda. He has fomented disinformation and misinformation even in moments of national crisis and is the figurehead of a Party with overt antipathy towards public health agencies and clear desires to radically reshape them. Robert F Kennedy Jr, tipped to have a prominent advisory role on health, if not a cabinet position, has made many misleading or false health claims and says that several departments at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “have to go”. Weakening the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and FDA risks creating a scientific vacuum for states, not to mention other countries, that rely on these agencies for guidance, but such hostility also serves to further undermine public trust in science at an already fragile time. These are grave developments for one of the world’s scientific superpowers and can only harm US health and medicine. The Senate, albeit now firmly in Republican control, must do its duty to safeguard the wellbeing of US citizens by rejecting grossly unsuitable or unqualified candidates for cabinet positions, including the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. (continued)

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Trouble with reservations?

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It Can Happen Here: Reckoning with Donald Trump’s 2024 Election Victory

Everyone who realizes with proper alarm that Trump’s reelection is a deeply dangerous moment in American life must think hard about where we are.

By David Remnick in The New Yorker (thanks to Ed M.)

On the morning after Donald Trump was elected President for the first time, in 2016, the White House was a funereal place. For weeks, Barack Obama and his inner circle had worried about Hillary Clinton’s campaign—the failure to visit crucial battleground states with sufficient frequency, the snooty crack about “deplorables,” James Comey’s last-minute letter to Congress about her e-mails. But, for all the troubling signs and missteps, they were optimistic that, in a tighter-than-expected race, America would elect the first woman to the Presidency. A legacy, a continuity, would prevail.

Trump’s shocking victory shattered those assumptions, and that day, as many young, stricken staffers crowded into the Oval Office, Obama tried to raise their morale and convince them that the election of an aspiring autocrat did not spell the end of America’s long, if profoundly imperfect, experiment in liberal democracy. History does not move in straight lines, he told them. Sometimes it goes sideways, sometimes it goes backward. It was a solemn, pastoral performance, and, on some level, Obama was also engaged in a form of self-soothing. Two days later, in an interview with The New Yorker, he again tried to keep despair at bay: “I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world.” (continued)

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AARP Network Bolsters Local Communities

From the AARP website

Barb Williams of Seattle is always on the go, not letting two hip replacements slow her down. From walking in her First Hill neighborhood, to teaching tai chi, to volunteering at the Seattle Aquarium, Williams, now 80, knows the importance of getting — and staying — active. She’d like to see more older Washingtonians doing the same.

So she was excited to see that her state had joined the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities, which aims to make neighborhoods more walkable, recreation more accessible and public transportation more convenient.

“To have both the city and the state aware of those kinds of needs is super helpful,” says Williams, noting that the city of Seattle is also a member of the network. “As one of these aging persons, I think there’s a misunderstanding of what options are available and how to take advantage of them.”

In addition to Seattle, Renton, Puyallup, Tacoma and White Salmon are part of the network. Nationwide, more than 900 towns, cities and counties are members, as are 11 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. AARP launched the network in 2012 to help local, regional and state governments prepare for the nation’s changing demographics.

In May, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced that Washington was joining the network.

“These programs advance Washington’s commitment to inclusivity for all,” he said at the time.

The state said its decision to join the network was part of its commitment to ensuring that the voices of people 50 and older are included, and to promote policies and initiatives that enhance longevity, health and engagement. (continued)

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The four horsemen – and more to come

Thanks to Pam P.

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Trump Nominates Head of CIA

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In his latest major appointment, on Thursday Donald J. Trump nominated a new chief of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Speaking to reporters, Trump praised his nominee’s “extensive experience with Russia.”

“I have phone conversations with him every day, and he knows everything I know,” Trump told reporters. “Plus, the CIA won’t be the first spy agency he’s worked for.” Citing another qualification of his nominee, Trump said, “He already has a great working relationship with Tulsi.”

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Masterpiece Story: Statue of Liberty

Anastasia Manioudaki (thanks to Ann M. who notes I think the Lady must now be weeping. Please note her imagined damage (head knocked off) in the WW1 poster on display in our Art of the Month + her history below.

By 1883, the statue was almost finished when Laboulaye died. He was succeeded in the French committee by Ferdinand de Lesseps, famous as the developer of the Suez Canal. Finally, the following year, the statue was finished and presented to the American ambassador in Paris in a formal ceremony on July 4th, 1884. However, it remained in France for another year, pending the construction of the pedestal, because things weren’t looking as good in the United States.

The funding committees on the other side of the Atlantic were facing great difficulties and had remained inactive for several years due to intense public criticism. The Americans didn’t like the statue’s design or the fact that they would have to pay for the pedestal.

In the U.S., fundraising efforts for the pedestal included theatrical events and art exhibitions; poet Emma Lazarus wrote and placed into auction the now-famous sonnet The New Colossus. The poem was inscribed on a plaque and placed on the pedestal in 1903. Fundraising took a turn for the Americans in 1885 when Joseph Pulitzer placed an ad in his paper, the New York World, inviting readers to donate to the cause. In exchange, Pulitzer printed each donor’s name in the newspaper. (continued on Page 2)

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Go for the Blue Zone!

Thanks to Mike C.

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Need a distraction?

Thanks to Bob P.

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A job!

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Against Panic: A Survival Kit

A photograph of a pond with a single small tree at its edge, reflected in the surface. Behind the tree is a field of grass. Flowers are in the foreground. A blue sky is above.
Credit…Tanya Marcuse

By Margaret Renkl in the NYT (Thanks to Ed M.)

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who reports from Nashville on flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

I had an elaborate itinerary for Election Day that I took to calling the Panic Abatement Plan. I’d walk in the woods early because temperatures are still breaking records down here. I’d stop by Parnassus Books, which would be full of kindred souls, and pick up my special order, Rachel Carson’s “The Sense of Wonder.” I’d visit the puppy room at the Nashville Humane Association. I’d have lunch with one friend, and I’d talk on the porch with another. I’d take my new book out to the yard and read while sugar maple leaves fell in golden drifts around me in the last light of day.

There were other items in the Panic Abatement Plan that looked more like a traditional to-do list for a day away from work — writing thank-you notes, cleaning bird feeders, deadheading zinnias so they’ll make new blooms to feed the bees in this summer that will not end. Maybe I’d get to that part of the list, or maybe I wouldn’t. It didn’t matter either way.

I voted early, so the Panic Abatement Plan was really just a daylong distraction project to keep me calm while my fellow Americans decided what sort of country we will all be living in. The whole point was to spend the day in the company of beauty and friendship and something that, if you stood way back and squinted, might look a little bit like peace.

I’m so glad I gave myself that day of sweetness. By the next morning, my eyes were sandpaper and a rock was lodged in my throat. Sweetness seemed lost from the world forever.

I am 63 years old, a liberal child of the Jim Crow South. For my whole adult life, I have been fighting for a world where a man like Donald Trump would never be elected — not once, much less twice — and I am tired of fighting. A lot of us are tired of fighting. A different result last week would have been, at best, a temporary reprieve, and I knew that. I wanted the reprieve anyway. I wanted to wake up on Nov. 6 and breathe a sigh of relief.

But Donald Trump is not a blip or an aberration. That should have been clear long since. From the moment the carnival barker in chief came down a golden escalator, through his first outrageous campaign of lies, through the nightmare of his first snake-oil presidency, through his murderous silence during the assault on the Capitol, through the hearings and the trials that only shored up the support of his base, the MAGA fever dream was never even close to breaking. (Continued on Page 2)

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The prescience of H.L. Mencken

Thanks to Mary Jane F.

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Message from the ACLU

Thanks to Pam P.

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Stll There

Thanks to Mary Jane F.

Photograph by Peter Ralston [Maine photographer]

Titles are very important to me and given recent events I wanted a deeper title for this image…..but I really wanted it to be perfect…..it had to be. Yesterday I printed out The Star-Spangled Banner and read it more carefully than I ever have before. In doing so, the title found me…..

And the rocket’s red glare,

the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night

that our flag was still there

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No, democracy isn’t dead

by Steve Iskeep in Substack

My mailbox this week included a note with the subject line, “Democracy Without America.” The writer was sharing a link to an article with a slightly less stark headline, given its punctuation: “Democracy without America?” It was an attempt to survey the global state of democracy in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.

I don’t mean to single out that article. We could choose many articles, social media posts or cable TV riffs that express similar thoughts. And it’s reasonable to ask what the U.S. election means for the state of democracy worldwide—the article talks of a “democratic recession” in recent years with the rise of various authoritarians and would-be strongmen.

What I would reject, as a citizen and as a journalist, is any notion that Tuesday’s election signals the end of democracy in America. As a journalist, I can report that what happened on Tuesday is that a majority of voters chose a candidate. That’s part of the democratic process.

Granted, it might have been otherwise. The comedian Bill Maher says he had scheduled extra episodes of his show for after the election, anticipating that if Trump had lost there would have been a “shitshow” and “the reason why we’re sitting here so peacefully now is because the one party that still believes in conceding elections lost.”

We’ll never find out what would have happened if Kamala Harris won. My NPR colleague Miles Parks reported that election officials entered the contest with confidence that the system had been reinforced since the efforts in 2020 to tear it down. Few experts expected a rerun of January 6. Kari Lake, the Trump supporter who refused to concede her 2022 loss in Arizona’s governor’s race, admitted this time that the process was fair. (She trails in her Senate race against Ruben Gallego, with a bit of counting still to do.)

Many fear that the majority chose a presidential candidate who is determined to knock down the foundations of democracy. He did try to overturn the election he lost in 2020. He has made a lot of statements in 2024. But whatever any official’s intent may be, as a citizen I decline to abandon the Constitution. It’s my country. I’m not going anywhere. I have rights and freedoms. I have no interest in surrendering my rights and freedoms, nor those of my fellow citizens. Some official who wins a mere majority in a single election has no legitimate power to take those rights.Subscribe

The people whose side lost the election in 2024 have exactly the same recourse as the people whose side lost the free and fair election in 2020. The rights of free speech and assembly. The freedom of the press. The power of the Senate minority to block legislation through the filibuster. The power of states to assert their rights in court and elsewhere. The power of independent judges. And the next election.

An election winner may try to knock down these protections—or degrade them when it seems convenient. The protections are certainly porous. Several judges Trump appointed ruled in favor of his interests in the past several years (though not always); and a president’s party in Congress tends to act at the president’s direction rather than upholding the power of their institution. The president-elect has associated for years with people who openly admire Viktor Orban of Hungary, whose program included undermining the free press.

Beyond that, an extraordinary concentration of money and power is on display. Elon Musk, who oriented Twitter toward Trump’s election and then became one of his top campaign contributors, joined the president-elect on a phone call with Ukraine’s president. The world’s richest man was already deeply entwined with the United States government on space travel, satellites and the war in Ukraine. Trump has talked of a federal position of some kind for him.

These facts and trends will bear watching and discussing and reporting on. I will use my rights and freedoms to ask questions, learn what happens, and talk about it fairly and dispassionately. My fellow citizens will be able to do the same.

It will not surprise you that a quote from Lincoln comes to mind. I think of it often; I shared it with people after Biden won, and I also share it with you now. It shows the proper relationship between a president, the people, and the law.

Lincoln said this at Lawrenceburg, Indiana in February 1861, while he was on the way to his inauguration, after an election that Southern slave states rejected, leading to civil war. He pointed out that this response to a single election was not only wrong, but needless.

My fellow-countrymen. You call upon me for a speech; I have none to give to you, and have not sufficient time to devote to it if I had. I suppose you are all Union men here, (cheers and cries of “Right”) and I suppose that you are in favor of doing full justice to all… (Loud cheering and cries of “We are.”) If the politicians and leaders of parties were as true as the people, there would be little fear that the peace of the country would be disturbed. I have been selected to fill an important office for a brief period, and am now, in your eyes, invested with an influence which will soon pass away; but should my administration prove to be a very wicked one, or what is more probable, a very foolish one, if you, the people, are but true to yourselves and to the Constitution, there is but little harm I can do, thank God!

That is the right view for us to have as citizens. And it is up to us to insist that our presidents adhere to this view, no matter how hard they may try to do otherwise.

Thanks for reading Differ We Must; it’s good to have you along. I have a little news: Differ We Must, my book on how Lincoln built political coalitions in a divided nation, is now due out in paperback February 11. The Penguin Press is planning some really exciting events around this release and I look forward to sharing details with you. We go on.

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The history of Veteran’s Day

notes from Heather Cox Richardson

In 1918, at the end of four years of World War I’s devastation, leaders negotiated for the guns in Europe to fall silent once and for all on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was not technically the end of the war, which came with the Treaty of Versailles. Leaders signed that treaty on June 28, 1919, five years to the day after the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand set off the conflict. But the armistice declared on November 11 held, and Armistice Day became popularly known as the day “The Great War,” which killed at least 40 million people, ended.

In November 1919, President Woodrow Wilson commemorated Armistice Day, saying that Americans would reflect on the anniversary of the armistice “with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations….”

But Wilson was disappointed that the soldiers’ sacrifices had not changed the nation’s approach to international affairs. The Senate, under the leadership of Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts—who had been determined to weaken Wilson as soon as the imperatives of the war had fallen away—refused to permit the United States to join the League of Nations, Wilson’s brainchild: a forum for countries to work out their differences with diplomacy, rather than resorting to bloodshed. 

On November 10, 1923, just four years after he had established Armistice Day, former President Wilson spoke to the American people over the new medium of radio, giving the nation’s first live, nationwide broadcast. 

“The anniversary of Armistice Day should stir us to a great exaltation of spirit,” he said, as Americans remembered that it was their example that had “by those early days of that never to be forgotten November, lifted the nations of the world to the lofty levels of vision and achievement upon which the great war for democracy and right was fought and won.”

But he lamented “the shameful fact that when victory was won,…chiefly by the indomitable spirit and ungrudging sacrifices of our own incomparable soldiers[,] we turned our backs upon our associates and refused to bear any responsible part in the administration of peace, or the firm and permanent establishment of the results of the war—won at so terrible a cost of life and treasure—and withdrew into a sullen and selfish isolation which is deeply ignoble because manifestly cowardly and dishonorable.” 

Wilson said that a return to engagement with international affairs was “inevitable”; the U.S. eventually would have to take up its “true part in the affairs of the world.”

Congress didn’t want to hear it. In 1926 it passed a resolution noting that since November 11, 1918, “marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed,” the anniversary of that date “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”

In 1938, Congress made November 11 a legal holiday to be dedicated to world peace. 

But neither the “war to end all wars” nor the commemorations of it, ended war. (continued)

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A finale?

Thanks to Mike C.

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“Never Words” that should not be used by clinicians

Ed note: How should we talk to each other when there is serious life-threatening illness. This article is for clinicians, but how about talking to a fellow resident or loved one? What is your approach? Please comment.

new article in Mayo Clinic Proceedings identifies “never words” that clinicians should not speak to patients. The list includes:

  • “There is nothing else we can do.”
  • “Withdrawing care.”
  • “Circling the drain.”
  • “Do you want us to do everything?”
  • “Fight” or “battle.” 

In another study specific to cancer care, clinicians were asked for words or phrases they would never use with a patient, with the top results including:

  • “Let’s not worry about that now.”
  • “You failed chemo.”

‘“Let’s not worry about that now’ is not only a non-answer to a patient’s legitimate concern, it’s dismissive.” And patients do not fail chemo; chemo fails patients.

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Borowitz — “What Happens Now?”

Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 made him appear invulnerable. He wasn’t. (Cindy Yamanaka/MediaNews Group/The Riverside Press-Enterprise via Getty Images)

Maybe you’ve been asking yourself:

1. “How could Donald Trump have won 51 percent of the popular vote?”

2. “How hard is it to immigrate to New Zealand?”

3. “What the actual fuck?”

Fair questions.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Could Tuesday’s election results have been any worse?

Well, what if, instead of 51 percent, the Republican nominee had won 59 percent? Or 61 percent? And what if he had won 49 states?

Those aren’t hypotheticals. Those were the results of the 1972 and 1984 landslides that reelected Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

With thumping victories like those, what could possibly go wrong for the winners?

If history’s any guide, some nasty surprises await Donald Trump.


In 1972, the Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, won just 37.5 percent of the vote, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for a total of 17 Electoral College votes. He didn’t even win his home state, South Dakota.

In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale did carry his native Minnesota, but that was as good as it got for him. In the Electoral College, he fared even worse than McGovern, with a whopping 13 votes.

In the aftermath of these thrashings, the Democratic Party lay in smoldering ruins, and Republicans looked like indestructible conquerors.

Now, some might argue that those GOP victories, though statistically more resounding than Trump’s, weren’t nearly as alarming, because he’s a criminal and wannabe autocrat.

But Trump’s heinousness shouldn’t make us nostalgic for Nixon and Reagan. They were also criminals—albeit unindicted ones. And they were up to all manner of autocratic shit—until they got caught.

The Watergate scandal was only one small part of the sprawling criminal enterprise that Nixon directed from the Oval Office in order to subvert democracy. For his part, Reagan’s contribution to the annals of presidential crime, Iran-Contra, broke myriad laws and violated Constitutional norms.

The hubris engendered by both men’s landslides propelled them to reckless behavior in their second terms—behavior that came back to haunt them. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency; Reagan was lucky to escape impeachment. (continued on page 2)

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