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Tag Archives: current-events

Black Enough?


Many people of color have criticized President Obama for not addressing Black issues directly and being more pro black. Thinking about the current Congress, there is no way the President could spend much if any capital on specifically Black issues. Coming into office with an ongoing war and unrest in the rest of the world while some world leaders essentially took a wait and see attitude towards him. Looking at reality not much of his strategy to improve America as a whole came true due to a multitude of reasons or causes if you will. We have an overall innate bias in America which was fueled by many of our elected leaders(?) who rather than do their jobs (legislate for us to makes our lives better instead of feathering their own nests). There are several if not many other barriers to his completion of his agenda that cannot be covered here but to address the Color issue: this is one if not the first President who has made a specific attempt to preside over the entire United States of America which includes all of us no matter ethnicity, religion or race. Remembering that being even-handed in this situation carries great risk because many still cannot get beyond race and other stuff to understand what the real issues are that face ALL of us. Now the spotlight is on seemingly Racially motivated shooting of unarmed citizens and the murder of several law enforcement officers by a mentally unhinged individual. We find our selves in a time when information moves quickly and is often incomplete and by time the real facts are known the wrong information is seen as truth and unchangeable. We can ask a question about being black enough or too black from now on and still not understand or accept our role in government. Our role as voters is to provide for our selves the best government we can by properly vetting the candidates who purport be the best choice for the job. We have become so obsessed with debates as to lose site of what counts in a candidate. The major political parties have used buzz words , sound bites and slogans to sway our allegiance while delivering nothing in return for that allegiance. Until we (all) demand and get good candidates for representation we will have what we have now a media circus with clowns as the main event.

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NRA Revolt-At Last?


There are 2 parts to this post, first part is generic statement by Top man at the NRA and second part from the rank and file. First part highlighted in yellow.

VICE PRESIDENT & CEO WAYNE LAPIERRE

(FAIRFAX, VA) – The following statement was issued this morning by Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Rifle Association of America.

“On behalf of the more than five million members of the National Rifle Association, and especially on behalf of our members from the law enforcement community, I want to express the deep anguish all of us feel for the heroic Dallas law enforcement officers who were killed and wounded, as well as to those who so bravely ran toward danger to defend the city and the people of Dallas.

With heavy hearts, NRA members honor their heroism and offer our deepest condolences to all of their families.”

The NRA’s internal revolt over Philando Castile
2 / 27
The Washington Post
Brian Fung 15 hrs. ago
© Eric Miller/Reuters

Diamond Reynolds weeps after she recounts the incidents that led to the fatal shooting of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, by Minneapolis area police during a traffic stop on July 6 at a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration…
After a fatal shooting in Minnesota, it wasn’t just gun control advocates criticizing the National Rifle Association.
Some blowback, surprisingly, was coming from within the organization.
People claiming to be lifelong members of the NRA challenged the group’s stance on gun rights after the organization appeared to drag its feet in addressing the police-involved shooting in Falcon Heights, Minn., of Philando Castile, a law-abiding gun owner, which had already garnered national attention.
The organization released a statement on the shooting following the attack in Dallas that left five officers dead. Although the NRA obliquely referenced Castile’s death by referring to “reports from Minnesota,” it neither named Castile directly nor took a position on the matter.
“It is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing,” the organization said. “Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.”
From the organization’s Facebook page:
“As the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NRA proudly supports the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.
“The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated. In the meantime, it is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing.
“Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.”
The NRA statement does not mention the officers killed in the line of duty, emphasizing instead the “right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others.”
In tone, the NRA’s approach bore a close resemblance to its statement in the wake of last month’s mass shooting in Orlando. Two days after the massacre, a lobbyist for the gun rights group wrote an op-ed in USA Today going on the offensive against stricter firearms regulation.
“Destroy radical Islam, not the right of law-abiding Americans to protect themselves,” wrote Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.
Cox’s broadside against greater restrictions was viewed as tone-deaf by many gun-control advocates, while gun proponents lined up on the other side.
This time, however, the NRA faces an internal division as its members argue that the group did not do enough to defend gun owners’ rights by speaking out on behalf of Castile.
Castile had a valid permit to carry a gun. He also reportedly informed the officer who shot him that he was armed, in an attempt to head off a misunderstanding.
Still, Castile was killed by police — prompting outrage among some Americans that following the rules was not enough to save Castile from a violent death.
The delay in addressing Castile’s death, as well as the promptness with which the NRA spoke out after the Dallas shooting, has prompted complaints of a double standard in the way the organization defends gun owners.
“Your lack of message concerning the Castile case disappoints me and makes me question my membership,” wrote one user, Marco Gallologic, on the NRA’s Facebook page. “…What do I pay fees for if you do not represent gun owners and our rights?”
“Your silence is causing NRA members such as myself to question/wonder what exactly you do and don’t stand for,” another user, Bruce Johnston, wrote.
© Provided by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
That sentiment was reflected across social media this week, with members and non-members alike demanding that the NRA voice its support for Castile.

Dallas Shooting


Sportscaster Dale Hansen: Dallas shooting was an ‘attack on our basic humanity’

Michael Walsh

Reporter
July 9, 2016

 

 

Texas sports anchor Dale Hansen gave a blistering speech about the state of violence in the United States as the nation mourns the loss of five cops who were killed in an ambush Thursday night.

The WFAA sportscaster told his viewers that he was almost embarrassed that he knows the Texas Rangers lost to the Minnesota Twins 10 to 1 that night — because news of the tragedy should have drawn his attention away from the game.

“It was another shooting in America. It was in our city this time and police officers were being killed, but it was a couple of blocks away and the Rangers were being shut out. This is what I have become. This is what too many of us have been for a long time now,” he said in a segment called “Hansen Unplugged.”

Hansen said that people will fly their flags at half-mast, say the rights things and make promises they won’t keep. In the end, he said, nothing will change.

“Our lives will go on, while the lives of so many others won’t, because we expect it now and we accept it. It wasn’t this way when I was a boy, but it is life in America now,” he said.

Hansen said police officers are great people because they run into buildings we run from and look for people we hide from, but they cannot make mistakes because they have the power of God in their hands in the form of guns. For this reason, he said, we cannot and should not defend all police officers.

“A white man in America doesn’t die for selling cigarettes on a street corner, he gets a ticket,” he said. “A white man in America doesn’t die for driving with a broken tail light, he gets a ticket, too. And the officers who abuse the badge and the power they have should be punished, but too many times they are not.”

But, he said, opening fire on the city streets of Dallas does not do anything to right the wrongs that people deal with every day and that the shooter might have killed good cops in the process.

Hansen said that minority communities hate to suffer the indignity of stereotypes but that the killer did the same exact thing by shooting at any cops “because don’t we all really know, they’re all the same.”

“It was not just an attack on the Dallas police; it was an attack on our basic humanity and the common decency we used to cherish in America,” he said. “But that’s all gone now —we lost that a long time ago.”

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Gowdyism


The Dupublicans are at again, the recent expenditure of 7 million dollars (our money)  on an investigation in to Hillary Clintons Emails on top of Benghazi is ridiculous. This reminds me of the McCarthy hearings which bore no fruit and cost a ton of money. The chairman of the committee (Trey Gowdy) has spent money on this in spite of having no concrete information and being told there is no criminal issue. The FBI has determined that there were issues but no legally pursuant issues. The Dupublicans are in pursuit of some kind of ban on the Scamocrats candidate having access to classified information but they are supporting a loose cannon (quite reluctantly) who will have access to sensitive material. Apparently we (America) are still in a pre civil war mindset where people of color, women, other religions and ethnicities take a backseat to traditional “white” people. These  are commonly called “haters” but unfortunately we as voters have elected so many of them to represent us (at least  some of us). If you are a Racist then that is your choice (or option) to live with. If you are the person who thinks your religion is the best, your heritage is the best or your race(?) is the best then you are more a bigot than Racist (which is a bit different). If we continue to elect people who carry these biases into an elected office, then we have failed as a free people. Our elected officials should reflect ALL Americans while leaving the personal  biases out of the process. Our laws should be as neutral as possible with an edge of humanity. The Constitution which is often quoted out of context is a living document which means it has the ability to change with the times not at the will of an interpreter’s personal views. If we as modern citizens do not pay attention to the people we elect prior to voting for them we will continue on a path of poor government. Bear in mind that News outlets are not necessarily the whole story nor are the words of elected officials, that leaves the research to the individual which is as it should be. Remember we incarcerated millions of American citizens out of fear and panic, we imported and setup former Nazis while denigrating native-born Americans.

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Division or Just Hate?


The recent murders of Police and unarmed Black men is at once atrocious and insane. Peaceful Protest has always been a way to garner attention for a cause but we have arrived at a 60’s type protest which involved looting, riots and innocent folks being killed and injured aside from the subjects of that protest. These actions play into the irresponsible actions and rhetoric of the haters in America. Many of these folks are disenfranchised but fail to understand that their energy would be better used to correct the disconnect that is fomented by the very people we elected to represent us in Congress . This may seem to be unrelated but if we follow the trend from the 50’s until now we will realize that we  as voters have blamed everything and everyone else for Government failures. The failures sit squarely on our shoulders as we do not  (or will not) look beyond the politispeak of our representatives. We have come to hang onto the long held beliefs and misconceptions of other Races and ethnicities and our elected officials have used that to gain for themselves and mouth homilies that seemingly appease us. It is OUR responsibility to wade through the half truths and lies that have been fed to us by the very people who have conned us into voting for them. These folks occupy seats from the city level up to the Federal government. I am suggesting that as voters we read more and avoid taking the opinions of the talking heads as fact. There is no lack of truth available to all of us if we just read between the lines and look at several sources before making decisions . In the words of a now deceased victim of riots” Can we  all get along?”, if we can then we can collectively elect a better class of Office holders from top to bottom.

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Divided America?


There have been statements made that America is being split or was split by President Obama. If that were true then why have we had the Racial and ethnic divides before his election. What has occurred is a highlighting of an existing divide. This divide has been pointed out overtly and covertly time after time in our Congress, in the Justice system and in too many other areas to mention. In a general sense that Mr. Obama caused the divide is at once ludicrous and absurd! If you have not been paying attention , the newest divider we have is running for the Oval office, Mr Trump has consolidated the Racists of America including the ones who serve in Congress. The Dupublicans have been more divisive than any one group in that they have not made many attempts do their job which is to legislate. In lieu of work they have blocked legislation for all of the people in America because their “backers” do not want the status quo to change. Look at who they (Dupublicans, et al) are backing to be President while not reading the real issues his backers have (which are the same as many other Americans of all ethnicities and religious views). The division of America is just a rehash of the past 100 years in a different form. My opinion is that as voters we ALL need to begin the process of electing a new Congress and be prepared to do over and over until we get real legislators and not long time neer do wells.  The term “Divided America” is just another invention of the real dividers who serve(?) in our elected offices. Just as an aside: The Party that so badly wants to control the Government is the one that has brought us to this point where we have no good options for President and they just barely support their presumptive candidate. Is it possible that the backers of that party have been mislead?

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Brexit Results


Brexit Effects?
The conversation on the “Brexit” and its effect on the U.S. is all over the place as to for and against. Several  of our own States (Texas in particular) have wanted and (still do) advocate for leaving the United States. Their reasons are more of the Government being too big and in some cases want the Government to mind it’s own business. Looking at what is provided by the Government, are the states that want to opt out willing to establish diplomatic relations in any or all of the Countries that the Federal government  now cooperates with? This involves establishing and maintaining embassies, having some sort of army to protect those outposts. The Dupublican’s upset in the Congress gave heart to the anti Obama and Scamocratic factions. The issue not recognized is the rise of the Tea party within the Dupublican party. The thing to consider is that the separatists are acting in anger with no thought of the future. Actions taken in anger now without careful consideration of the long view will cause  effects that are difficult to overcome. These vocal sectors have caused an already weak Congress to act (or not) in ways that do more harm than good and have allowed the rise of Donald Trump as the front runner that the Dupublican party doesn’t  want but are accepting because they are afraid of losing votes and thereby their Congressional seats. None of pro Brexit group have looked far enough ahead to understand what the long range effect of their voting will bring. The result that none of the pro exit supporters have looked at are that Russia and IS are loving the separation because they can slip in and deliver their own messages . Other major players on the world stage who could benefit from this are not as happy with as this affects their connections world wide regardless of the other issues they may have with the so called ‘Free World” or the West. It is worth watching or listening to our own Presidential candidate and his followers hailing the ‘Brexit’ without understanding what it really means and the accompanying baggage.

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‘What Evidence Do You Have?’


By Eugene Kiely

It’s a simple question, one that we ask candidates, campaigns and political committees all the time: “What evidence do you have?” We almost always get an answer. But that has not been the case with Donald Trump’s campaign, which typically does not respond to fact-checkers or provides scant information when it does.

That’s why we were heartened to see NBC’s Lester Holt ask Trump “what evidence do you have” to support two of Trump’s claims in a June 22 speech that we and other fact-checkers found contained numerous false claims.

Holt asked Trump about his claim that Clinton’s private email “server was easily hacked by foreign governments.” Trump went on to say “our enemies” probably even have the emails Clinton deleted, meaning they have a “blackmail file” on her. “This fact alone disqualifies her from the presidency,” Trump said.

But it is not a fact. As we wrote, there is no evidence that Clinton’s server was hacked — let alone by hostile foreign governments. We have written that the private server was not approved by the State Department, and it was the subject of security concerns within the department and a target of attacks outside the department. But there’s no evidence at this point that any of the attempts were successful.

Holt asked Trump, “What evidence do you have?” that her server was successfully hacked. When that didn’t elicit a response, Holt asked again, “But is there any evidence that it was hacked other than routine phishing?” Trump finally said that he heard or read about Clinton’s email being successfully hacked. Asked where he got that information, Trump said, “I will report back to you. I’ll give it to you.”

Holt asked Trump how he could make his claim “with such certainty” without evidence. Trump replied, “I don’t know if certainty. Probably she was hacked.”

Similarly, Holt pressed Trump on his claim that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens “was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed.” As we wrote, there is no evidence for that, either. We know that Clinton was involved in the government’s response to the attacks, which began at about 3:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, and we know that she sent the last of two emails about Stevens’ death at 11:38 p.m. EDT.

We also know that she went home at some point during the attacks. She testified that she stayed up all night, but as we wrote, we cannot independently verify whether Clinton did sleep that night — but neither can Trump, and he admitted as much to Holt. Trump said “who knows if she was sleeping … she might have been sleeping.”

Holt isn’t the only one who has demanded evidence from a presidential candidate.

CNN’s Jake Tapper did the same earlier this month when he asked Trump to provide evidence to support the claim that Trump was opposed to the Iraq war before it started. There is no evidence of that, either, as we have written. Trump responded to Tapper by saying, “I think there is evidence. I will see if I can get it.”

And CBS’ Charlie Rose, reading from one of our articles, asked Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders in April about his claim that Clinton relies heavily on campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Sanders’ response to Rose was misleading, so we wrote about that, too.

But these are exceptions rather than the rule. As Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler has written, “astonishingly, television hosts rarely challenge Trump when he makes a claim that already has been found to be false,” adding that Trump’s campaign “does not even bother to respond to fact-checking inquiries.”

We, too, would like to see more TV news anchors challenge the presidential candidates on statements that fact-checkers universally agree are false and misleading, especially those that are made without any evidence. It just takes a simple question, “What evidence do you have?”

Categories:
The Wire

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Jesse Williams’ Full Speech From the 2016 BET Awards


Exceptional speech covers the still innate Racism in America. This in its tone does not demean the ordinary folks who suffer as much in many cases as the non white Americans .

Jesse Williams accepts the Humanitarian Award onstage during the 2016 BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater on June 26, 2016 in Los Angeles.

Kevin Winter/BET/Getty Images for BET

It’s safe to say that 34-year-old Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams stole the BET Awards on Sunday night with a wildly inspirational, confrontational speech that is bound to become a cornerstone of the Black Lives Matter movement. Later in the show, Samuel L. Jackson said he hadn’t heard a speech like it since the 1960s.

Williams has appeared in multiple films, but he was honored with BET’s Humanitarian Award for his activism. In October 2014, he joined protests in Ferguson, Missouri to protest the shooting of Michael Brown. He was also an actor and executive producer of Stay Woke, a documentary about the movement that premiered in May. He has written extensively on Black Lives Matter and met with President Obama earlier this year to discuss his humanitarian work.

BET CEO Debra Lee presented his award “for his continued efforts and steadfast commitment to furthering social change.”

He began by thanking BET and all involved in the video that preceded his appearance, his wife and his parents “for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career, they made sure I learned what the schools are afraid to teach us.

“This award is not for me,” he continued. “This is for the real organizers all over the country, the activist, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. It’s kinda basic mathematics: the more we learn about who we are and how we got here the more we will mobilize.

“This award is also for the black women in particular who have spent their lives nurturing everyone before themselves — we can and will do better for you.

“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours. [Standing ovation.]

“I got more, y’all. Yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday so I don’t want to hear any more about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television, and then going home to make a sandwich.

“Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner, Sandra Bland.

“The thing is though, all of us here are getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. Dedicating our lives to getting money just to give it right back to put someone’s brand on our body — when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies?

“There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There is no job we haven’t done, there is no tax they haven’t levied against us, and we have paid all of them.

“But freedom is always conditional here. ‘You’re free!’ they keeping telling us. ‘But she would be alive if she hadn’t acted so… free.’ Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter, but the hereafter is a hustle: We want it now.

“Let’s get a couple of things straight. The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander — that’s not our job so let’s stop with all that. If you have a critique for our resistance then you’d better have an established record, a critique of our oppression.

“If you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do: sit down.

“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil — black gold! — ghettoizing and demeaning our creations and stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.

“Just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real. Thank you.”

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Working Hard On A Poor Cause.


The Dupublican leadership who have done nothing to help the “American People” they always cite (without our consent) are struggling to tone down their (unwanted) candidate have closed ranks only because some are worried about their own re-election chances. The old saying about “chickens coming home to roost” applies here. Read carefully and you will get the distinct sense of opting out or throwing their candidate to the wolves which will cause a national fallout (if we are lucky).

AP Laurie Kellman
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are sprinting to shape up Donald Trump’s presidential campaign before the party’s national convention in three weeks, even as leading members of the party carry a deep antipathy or outright opposition to his claim on the GOP nomination.
His campaign chairman said Sunday there’s a hiring spree in 16 states and the campaign is working with the Republican National Committee to solidify other matters. Paul Manafort said Trump is not all that involved in the race to organize an offensive against Democrat Hillary Clinton and catch up to her massive fundraising advantage.
“The good thing is we have a candidate who doesn’t need to figure out what’s going on (inside the campaign) in order to say what he wants to do,” Manafort said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” ”We have our campaign plans in place. We have our budgets in place.”
What Manafort described as a “new phase” for the campaign — a shift from the primaries to the general election — was a forced reshuffling of an effort hobbled for weeks by infighting, Trump’s statements about a judge’s ethnicity and a massive fund raising deficit to Clinton’s cash-raising Goliath. Trump began June with $1.3 million in the bank, less campaign cash than many congressional candidates. The $3 million he collected in May donations is about one-tenth what Clinton raised.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday that Trump can’t win the presidency unless he can compete with Clinton on the financial front.
“He needs to catch up, and catch up fast,” the Kentucky Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”
McConnell refused to say whether Trump is qualified to be president. And he suggested that the GOP platform would not reflect Trump’s ideas, including restrictions on Muslim immigration to the U.S.
“It’s my expectation that the platform will be a traditional Republican platform, not all that different from the one we had four years ago,” McConnell replied.
A few hundred delegates to the Republican National Convention are pushing to change the rules and make it possible for them to vote for someone other than Trump. The Cleveland gathering begins in three weeks.
Some rebel delegates and other anti-Trump party operatives held a 40-minute conference call Sunday night that was monitored by The Associated Press in what was a combination pep talk and strategy review. A leader of the effort, Colorado convention delegate Regina Thomson, said around 2,000 people were on the call.
Besides their uphill fight to win enough delegate support to change the rules, the coalition of anti-Trump groups are raising money to hire parliamentarians and lawyers to attend the convention, run TV ads and protect recalcitrant supporters they say face threats of retaliation.
One participant in Sunday’s call was James Lamb, a fundraiser for the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Lamb said that he’d been with Rubio Sunday, and while the two men didn’t discuss the anti-Trump efforts, “Marco does have some concerns about the way that we’re going” in the presidential race.
Another speaker, former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.H., supported the presidential effort of Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Humphrey called Trump “just about the worst candidate you could think of, for the country first and for the party second.”
The Trump campaign and many top GOP officials are working to defeat the anti-Trump forces, including lobbying delegates and making sure that establishment party supporters dominate the convention’s crucial rules committee.
Ed Brookover, Trump campaign liaison to the GOP, said Sunday the defiant delegates’ chances of winning are “almost zero.” He said so far, “approaching 75 percent” of the rules committee’s 112 members oppose changing the rules — nearly enough to prevent a convention vote on the rebels’ proposal to let delegates support any candidate they want.
The Trump campaign and the RNC are still laboring to set up staff in what Manafort said were 16 states in which the campaign aims to compete heavily. He said the campaign will announce more about staffing this week, an effort to reassure people that Trump’s unorthodox campaign is viable.
On Sunday, Manafort sought to calm the angst, describing a partnership between Trump’s campaign operation and the Republican National Committee that goes beyond the RNC’s traditional role of raising money for the GOP nominee. He said the transition to the general election is complete — but the details have not necessarily been made public.
“We are fully now integrated with the Republican National Committee,” Manafort said. He said this week the campaign will announce “people who are taking over in major positions in our national campaign, as well as in our state campaigns.”
McConnell and other Republicans said they got the first glimmers of reassurance this week when Trump fired former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in what Trump described as a change of direction from the GOP primaries to the general election.
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Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.
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Follow Laurie Kellman on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman

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