What Trump supporters say amongst themselves

On July 30, I was driving my daughter from Boston to New Hampshire to attend a wedding when we noticed a long convoy going in the opposite direction. The convoy consisted of large vehicles, trucks and SUVs and the like, all flying American and Confederate and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flags, never a good sign because it signaled that they were hyper-patriots and likely white supremacists and xenophobes.
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The new Trump team

There has been a shake-up in the campaign of Donald Trump with Steve Bannon coming on a chief executive and Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway as campaign manager and the seeming demotion of Paul Manafort who will retain his job title. Such changes so late in the game are rare and are usually taken as signs that things are not going well in a campaign, so the Trump campaign has taken some pains to paint these changes as mere trifles.
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Unexpected ending in third Test between Australia and Sri Lanka

Yesterday I predicted that the third and final Test match between Australia and Sri Lanka in Colombo was poised for an exciting finish on the last day with either team capable of winning and the result possibly going down to the wire at the end of the final day’s play. The final result, though, was that by the mid afternoon, Sri Lanka had won easily by 163 runs.
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What does it tell us when terrible people abandon Trump and back Clinton?

As a result of Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination and his subsequent behavior and pronouncements, we are seeing a great deal of uncertainty amongst Republicans on what to do, with over one hundred of them signing a letter calling on the party to abandon Trump. The Los Angeles Times has published a list of traditionally Republican supporters under various shades of support: those actively campaigning for Trump, those issuing a clear endorsement of Trump but not campaigning, those saying they support ‘the party nominee’ but won’t be campaigning, those wavering or backing Trump with caveats, those not saying they will vote for Trump but saying they definitely will not vote for Hillary Clinton, those who are staying quiet altogether, those who reject both Trump and Clinton, those who reject Trump but are not backing Clinton, and those who have rejected Trump and are voting for Clinton.
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A fascinating day of Test cricket ahead

The fourth day’s play in the third and final Test match between Australia and Sri Lanka being played in Colombo has ended, with the game poised for a fascinating final day that contains all the strategy and tactics that Test cricket aficionados live for. Although the outcome of the rubber has been decided with Sri Lanka winning the first two Tests, each team is highly motivated to win the third, Australia to avoid the humiliation of a clean sweep at the hands of a low-ranked team and risk losing their top-ranked status, and Sri Lanka to enjoy the taste of sweeping the top-ranked Test team. So you could be sure that neither team would be phoning it in.
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When the bully becomes the bullied

The contortions that spokespersons for Donald Trump have to go through in order to explain away his controversial statements can be quite comical in the way that they brutalize language. For example, Katrina Pierson, when questioned by Fox News about Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, called the practice of presidential candidates releasing their tax returns a ‘novelty tradition’. Even the Fox News host seemed bemused by calling something that had been going on since the 1970s a novelty.
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