Trump is a fighter. He fights hard, and he fights dirty. Some people may think he fights like a lunatic, but if one is fully committed, then the style of fighting is not important. Winning is important. Trump likes to win, even though he hasn’t won much in the last few years, but he does like to win. He keeps trying. He is tenacious. He is like the cobra—he strikes fast. His mouth is poisonous. But he is majestic in his snake-like qualities.

He likes to belittle his rivals. I wanted to say that he is like Muhammad Ali, in that he likes to taunt his opponents, but then, Ali was Black, and Trump would never like me to make that comparison. At the same time, I don’t think Muhammad Ali would be too happy either. Trump calls his opponents names, gives them derogatory titles, and insults their families. By the standards of civility, that may be wrong. But Trump has to be Trump. Civility is not his thing. It is actually beneath him to be civil, to show respect, or to be nice—especially if his opponent is a woman, even worse, a woman of color, who may be doing well in the polls and drawing larger crowds than him.

You see, crowd size does matter. Trump can’t have someone running against him who can claim to have a bigger crowd. That hits his masculinity where it hurts the most. He has to do what every man has done since the beginning of time. He has to inflate, enhance, and enlarge his crowd size via artificial means. He has to claim that it is much bigger than it really is because his followers are not going to question it, and those who are questioning it are not going to ask him to whip out his proof. Even then, he will just keep insisting that it is 10, 20, even 30 times bigger than, say, Martin Luther King’s. He just has to say it. Even if it is wrong, and even if it is not physically possible to stretch his crowd to such lengths, the news will make it to all corners of the world. If he repeats his claim enough times, it will echo throughout God’s kingdom, and people would only hear how big it is and believe it. Religion is all about blind faith, and he is our Messiah, the patron saint of imaginary crowd sizes.

He has to call her stupid. He has to say that she has a low I.Q. I can bet my bottom dollar that Trump does not even know what the acronym I.Q. stands for, but he is smart enough to know that saying someone has a low I.Q. is probably some sort of insult. He has no qualms about calling her dumb because he knows very well that his followers are dumb enough to just follow along. Even though she has two degrees, is a lawyer, a prosecutor, a senator, and the Vice President, it is okay to call her dumb just because she is running against him. Only a dumb person would run against Trump, knowing full well that Trump is going to say stupid, crazy, unhinged, irrational, outrageous, baseless, racist, sexist, and even borderline lunatic things about her. His followers would put all of her credentials aside and believe his rhetoric because that is what they want to believe.

It is not just his rivals that he likes to insult and belittle. He likes to extend that courtesy to our troops as well. He likes to say really obnoxious and insulting things about our bravest soldiers. Recently, he said that the civilian “Medal of Freedom” is better than the military “Medal of Honor,” our nation’s highest military award for bravery in combat. According to him, the “Medal of Honor” recipients are “… soldiers who’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead,” while “Medal of Freedom” recipients are “beautiful and healthy.”

There are Marine veterans of almost 40 years who whine endlessly about Governor Walz and what they call his “stolen valor,” but they won’t say a thing about Trump’s complete lack of valor. Our soldiers literally put their lives on the line for our freedom, and the recipients of the “Medal of Honor” have actually given their lives for this nation, but that means nothing to Trump. He can’t really sell their lives and make money from them. Instead, those who give money to his party are better because they enrich Trump, and in return, Trump bestows upon them a “Medal of Freedom” to make them feel special and to thank them for their donations. An empty but profitable gesture from Trump. All in all, a vanity project that fits well with Trump’s personality.

Trump has every right to [S-word] on the bravery of our wounded and fallen soldiers because he was their Commander-in-Chief at one time, which gives him every right to disparage their sacrifices. If Trump were in their place, he would have never been hit by a bullet or been killed in combat. If it wasn’t for those darn bone spurs in his heels, he would have shown the world how to stay “beautiful and healthy” while fighting in a battle or trying to save your fellow soldiers. Oh, wait! As a matter of fact, he did show us exactly that when a young kid tried to take him out. The bullets didn’t even graze him.

If Trump were in Vietnam, he would not have been captured like that pesky naval aviator John McCain. He would have single-handedly won the war for us, and our military history would have been so much different, so much better. If Trump had ever been a soldier during the Civil War, as some of our “Medal of Honor” recipients were, he would have ended that war quickly and decisively. Even though it would have been the Confederacy that prevailed, Trump would have played an outsized role, as he is doing nowadays.

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LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Foreign Office abandoned many of the nation’s allies in Afghanistan and left them to the mercy of the Taliban during the fall of the capital, Kabul, because of a dysfunctional and arbitrary evacuation effort, a whistleblower alleged Tuesday.

In devastating evidence to a parliamentary committee, Raphael Marshall said thousands of pleas for help via email were unread between Aug. 21 and Aug. 25. The former Foreign Office employee estimated that only 5% of Afghan nationals who applied to flee under one U.K. program received help. He said that at one point, he was the only person monitoring the inbox.

“There were usually over 5,000 unread emails in the inbox at any given moment, including many unread emails dating from early in August,” he wrote to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which is investigating Britain’s chaotic departure from Afghanistan. “These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’.”

Marshall said some of those left behind had been killed by the Taliban.

One of Marshall’s most explosive allegations is a claim that British officials spent time and energy arranging the evacuation of almost 200 dogs and cats from a Kabul animal shelter run by Nowzad, a charity founded by former Royal Marine Pen Farthing.

Marshall claimed Foreign Office staff had “received an instruction from the Prime Minister to use considerable capacity to transport Nowzad’s animals.” He claimed British soldiers were put at risk to get the animals out of Kabul.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman, Max Blain, said the allegation was “entirely untrue” and neither Johnson nor his wife Carrie, an animal-welfare advocate, had been involved in helping the animals leave.

He said Farthing and his animals left Afghanistan on a privately chartered plane which was given clearance by British officials.

“We are confident that at no point clearance for that charter plane interrupted our capability to evacuate people,” Blain said.

As the Taliban took power in August, the United States, the U.K. and other countries rushed to evacuate Afghans who had worked with Western forces and others at risk of violent reprisals.

Britain managed to airlift 15,000 people out of the country in two weeks, and the government says it has since helped more than 3,000 others leave Afghanistan.

But an Afghan Resettlement Scheme announced by the government in August with the goal of bringing another 20,000 people to Britain has yet to get underway.

Former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was moved from the Foreign Office to become Justice Secretary after the crisis, defended his actions.

“Some of the criticism seems rather dislocated from the facts on the ground, the operational pressures that with the takeover of the Taliban, unexpected around the world,” he told the BBC. “I do think that not enough recognition has been given to quite how difficult it was.”

Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative lawmaker who heads the foreign affairs committee, said Marshall’s testimony “raises serious questions about the leadership of the Foreign Office.” The committee is due to quiz senior Foreign Office civil servants later Tuesday.

The Taliban stormed across Afghanistan in late summer, capturing all major cities in a matter of days, as Afghan security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. and its allies melted away. The Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15.

Tens of thousands of Afghans attempted to leave by air or land, fearing the country could descend into chaos or that the Taliban would reimpose the harsh interpretation of Islamic law that they relied on when they ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. At the time, women had to wear the all-encompassing burqa and be accompanied by a male relative whenever they went outside. The Taliban banned music, cut off the hands of thieves and stoned adulterers.

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Feeling the “Bern” in the cold, Bernie Sanders supporters go door-to-door to rally support

On Sunday, January 26, members of the community in support of presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, gathered at the Democrats of Hemet San Jacinto at 530 ½ E. Florida Ave., Hemet, as part of their campaigning efforts to mobilize Sanders voters.

Volunteers from all walks of life, who’d like to see Bernie Sanders as the next President of the United States, were gathered Sunday for a canvasing event called “Knock for Bernie.”

Vanessa Castro Scott, a public elementary school teacher of 17 years, was present with like-minded supporters as she dispensed Bernie posters, voter registration forms, vote-by-mail forms, literature, scripts, and other Sanders paraphernalia to help inform potential voters in the area.

“We are knocking on doors of those registered as Democrat or no-party preference, and we’re asking if they’ve made a choice in who they’re going to be voting for in the California primary, March 3rd. If they’re not registered to vote, we register them; and if they’re not registered as Democrat, we try to register them as such in hopes they will consider voting for Sanders,” says Castro.

Participants don’t just go randomly knocking on doors, they are using technology via an app to hone in on potential support, explains Castro: “We use PDI, an app that informs campaigners through a survey-that is where we keep track of whether or not they are leaning towards Sanders, if they are planning on voting, and if they’d be willing to request a Democratic ballot,” said Castro.

Each Sunday, participants meet up and fulfill two shifts: the first stretch from 10am to 1pm and the second shift from 2 to 5pm.

Today, Castro and her husband knocked on 43 doors during their first shift and canvassed approximately the same amount during the second shift – another couple managed 55 doors.

“We go out and volunteer our time.  We don’t get paid for this and we talk to registered voters,” says the elementary school teacher, adding, “Bernie is the candidate; he’s the only candidate with a comprehensive, equitable plan for public education called the Thurgood Marshall Plan, and so he has my support for that 100%.”

Castro first got involved with campaigning for Sanders through the local club, “Feel the Bern Democrats of Riverside County,” here in Hemet, and continues to do so, tirelessly. Her love for teaching, the climate, and higher education harmonizes well with the political policies that Sanders proposes, and believes it is imperative for young people to get involved.

Castro encourages those interested in campaigning to visit berniesanders.com, click on “Events” and enter zip code for a list of events from phone banking to crowd canvasing and knocking on doors.

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