Name Your Sources, Trump

Letter to the Editor published in today’s local newspaper:

President Trump said that all information put out by the press should have a named source attached to it. Why doesn’t he show the way by naming the sources of his “information?”

• Who counted the votes for him and told him that he won the popular vote in November?
• Who told him that most undocumented Mexicans were “bad hombres?”
• Where does he get his information about Muslims?
• Who told him that torturing suspects is ethical and really works?

When asked why he incorrectly claimed that his Electoral College victory was the largest in modern history, he simply said “Someone told me.”

I think sources are important and, if Trump thinks so too, he should show us how it’s done.

The Doctrines of Republicanism

Andrew Sullivan said this in a blog posting on The Daily Beast:

That’s how I explain the current GOP. It can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked.

The idea that a Republican could get elected as president in 2012 and we would have to live by these doctrines scares the living sh__ out of me!