“Just a Thought” from Don Clucas...August 24, 2016...

 Is Trump Really Changing?
There are some who are hopefully, and desperately, looking for any change in the behavior of Donald Trump which will give them an indication he is turning into a “good guy.”
Sorry to disappoint you, friends, but is just isn’t so. The following is from an article I sent out earlier this year (February 27). It was originally written and published by U.S. Congressman Ron Paul in Ron Paul Forums: Liberty Forest. It was last edited five years ago on May 1, 2011.
From what Ron Paul and “many others,” including myself can see is someone who has been a spoiled bully since he was young, and still remains a spoiled bully to this day.
I believe the article is worth reading again or, perhaps, for the first time for some. Please think about what Ron Paul has to say here..... “Just a Thought.”

Donald Trump Was a Horrific Spoiled Schoolyard Bully By Ron Paul

After I reported on the ex-Trump employee Julian Long’s account of extensive on-the-job harassment suffered under the extraordinarily abusive Donald Trump, the editor-in-chief of one of the world’s premiere yachting magazines read my article and said “I saw an extreme example of this in person at one of our events. He wasn’t even trying to be discreet. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg.” What are the origins of Donald Trump’s sociopathic behavior? Cursory internet research reveals that Trump as an early teen had “troubles” at the private Kew Forest School in Queens, New York. Trump publicity materials would have you believe the young Donald got switched to the New York Military Academy merely because his parents wanted to give good direction to his “energy and assertiveness.” Yet the truth apparently is that young Donald Trump was a bullying menace. The attitude and behavior that feed his adult bullying and harassment of employees and others were already visible when Trump was 13.

Trump does not want the public to know the specifics of his bullying at the Kew Forest School. One can imagine that school officials would fear retaliation from him, were they ever to put a reporter in contact with people who witnessed Trump’s despicable behavior when he was there. After all, when the New York Times’s Gail Collins published things about Trump that Trump did not want published, he sent her the newspaper with her picture and wrote “The Face of a Dog!“ on it. I e-mailed Trump’s longtime secretary and PR contact Rhona Graff-Riccio, telling her I was on deadline for this article and wanted to know specifics of how Donald Trump as a Kew Forest School student had given the school community such nightmares. It would be interesting to know,

additionally, whether Trump feels any remorse over what he inflicted on his victims. Graff did not give me the courtesy of a reply. Jerome Tuccille’s book Trump; The Saga of America’s Most Powerful Real Estate Baron gives us clues, despite Donald Trump’s efforts to cover up the profound character defects he exhibited when a youth, character failings that only festered and increased and later caused him to behave like a wretchedly-mannered, f-bomb-spewing, shameless bully as an adult. Tuccile describes Trump and his siblings as having grown up in a “plantation era mansion with more rooms than they could count.” Trump’s father Fred Christ Trump was on the Board of Directors of the Kew Forest School. He not only was one of the school’s most generous financial donors; he helped his tyrannical little bully’s school with construction projects – giving the institution free building materials – Tuccile says that daddy “lent” the materials – and then when the school was

building a new wing, Trump, Sr. “lent” a work crew to the construction project. Tuccile writes “the question of disciplining Donald was one that had to be handled delicately; Fred Trump was too valuable an asset to risk alienating him.” Tuccile produced a sycophantic account of his wealthy subject’s life. He portrays Trump’s bullying and harassment of students, teachers and staff at Kew Forest School in unjustifiably euphemistic terms. He describes Trump’s bullying and harassment, for example, as “antics” and “hijinks,” as if the victims of the bullying and harassment had been having a regular good ol’ time. Tuccile the Trump apologist even describes Trump by saying he was “Overflowing with energy and a need to assert himself among his fellow students.” Yet he gives us just enough specific information to confirm the suspicion that Donald Trump made life a living hell for others at the Kew Forest School. He states that Trump “squirted sodas at girls” and “flung erasers at teachers.” Consensual play is very different from bullying and harassment. The girls whom Trump squirted with sodas did not want him doing it, and the teachers at whom he flung erasers did not want to be the targets of that violence, either. One or two instances of consensual in- school play would not have caused Trump to be, essentially, expelled from a school where his father was a board member and top donor. That is to say, what we know of Trump’s bullying at the Kew Forest School is with certainty only the tip of the iceberg of his sociopathic behavior there. A juvenile delinquent who had gone on to become an exemplary citizen could of course be forgiven the bullying and harassment of others he carried out in his childhood and teenage years. Yet Trump, far from having rehabilitated himself, continues harassing his chosen victims in ways that society should consider absolutely intolerable. His current public bullying of LGBT Americans, grand- standing against their civil rights would alone be bad enough. That he uses President Obama as a proxy for bullying and harassing all African-Americans sets a new recent low bar for contemptible public behavior in the United States. Whereas President Obama’s innate intellectual capacities and

his academic merits and accomplishments remain unimpeachable, Donald Trump has yet to give a full and honest accounting of how he tortured the victims of his bullying and harassment at the Kew Forest School, leaving his parents no choice but to send him to be disciplined at the New York Military Academy.

“Just a Thought” from Don Clucas August 15, 2016.... Come on America, Leave Gabby Alone

Come on America, let’s get off Gabby’s back! She’s a wonderful young woman who has poured her heart and soul into representing her country in two Olympics (my apologies to all my teachers who told me not to use so many clichés in my writing).
She stood politely at attention when the national anthem was played, and didn’t do anything to show even a hint of discourtesy or lack of patriotism. So what if she didn’t place her hand over her heart. There are no hard and fast rules to say we must do “this or that” when the anthem is played or the pledge of allegiance is recited...as long as we are not being discourteous. Yes, the military has its rules of etiquette, but those rules do not apply to civilians.
Even in our religious life in this country, there are no set rules to the position we take when we are praying....seated with hands folded and palms together, or standing with hands clasped behind our backs? Standing in a group holding hands with those next to us? Kneeling on a bench? Lying in a bed? Driving on a steep mountain road with one hand grasped tightly on the steering wheel and the other hand wiping sweat off our forehead?
In his book Praying Jesus’ Way, Curtis Mitchell addresses the subject of “the procedures of prayer.” In the section “Posture in Prayer,” he quotes the poem entitled “The Prayer of Cyrus Brown” by Sam Walter Foss:
“The proper way for a man to pray,” said Deacon Lemuel Keyes,
“And the only proper attitude is down upon his knees.” “No, I should say the way to pray,” said Reverend Dr. Wise,
“Is standing straight with outstretched arms, And rapt and upturned eyes.” “Oh, no, no, no,” said Elder Slow, “Such posture is too proud.
A man should pray with eyes fast-closed, and head contritely bowed.” “It seems to me his hands should be serenely clasped in front,
With both thumbs pointing to the ground,” said Reverend Dr. Blunt. “Last year I fell in Hidgekin’s well headfirst,” said Cyrus Brown,
“With both my feet a stickin’ up and head a-pointin’ down;
And I made a prayer right then and there, the best prayer I ever said,
The prayingest prayer I ever prayed, a-standin’ on my head.”
So, if Cyrus Brown could pray “a-standin’ on his head,” what’s the big deal (oops, another cliché) about Gabby courteously standing at attention without placing her hand over her heart?...Just a thought.