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1 week ago | 
smirkingchimp.com | Pierre Tristam
— from Flagler Live The democratic moment is over. We haven’t had a Rubicon crossing and we’re not about to. The country is not in the hands of Cesar but Caligula. If I were to game-theorize this nuclear winter of an administration wishful media still refer to as “presidential,” I’d say there’s a 70 percent chance that Emperor Selfie will, before the legal end of his lawless reign, suspend the Constitution across the dominion for the first time in its 237 years.
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2 months ago | 
smirkingchimp.com | Pierre Tristam
— from Flagler Live In his March 25 executive order rewinding voting rights a century, the shah of maga alleged “dilution by illegal voting, discrimination, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error.” The order requires that all votes be counted by the end of Election Day. It also requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The order relies on a lie: that fraud is corrupting American elections. Let’s not look far and take Flagler County’s recent elections to test the claim.
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2 months ago | 
smirkingchimp.com | Pierre Tristam
— from Flagler Live Over the years I have changed my nationality, my name and my religion. Some of that caused problems with a few members of my family and lesser others, at least for a while. They got used to it and respected all the changes. Anyway it really wasn’t their business. One’s identity is one’s own and would mean nothing if it were dependent on others’ approval. Fortunately we live in a country that compulsively pledges allegiance to liberty for all. Or so you’d think.
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Feb 9, 2025 | 
smirkingchimp.com | Pierre Tristam
— from Flagler Live The blitzkrieg of Donald Trump’s furious if not führerish opening days has salt-pillared his party and as if disappeared Democrats in concrete walls.
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Feb 1, 2025 | 
flaglerlive.com | Pierre Tristam
Let’s examine why Saudi Arabia’s Islamists are so aroused over the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling by June that using public money to fund religious madrassas is perfectly fine. The court took on the case last week from Oklahoma, where an online Catholic school, St. Isidore of Seville, but really more of 7501 NW Expressway in Oklahoma City, across from Home Depot and the Mattress Firm Clearance Center, sued after it was denied a charter and tax dollars.
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Jan 25, 2025 | 
flaglerlive.com | Pierre Tristam
On Oct. 3, 1995, after a trial that had lasted as long as a presidential election campaign, a jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Blacks cheered. Whites were horrified and angered that Blacks cheered. Blacks cheered even louder at whites being horrified. All they saw was white derangement syndrome.
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Dec 30, 2024 | 
smirkingchimp.com | Pierre Tristam
— from Flagler Live In January 1977 the nuns where we used to attend church in Lebanon gifted me the only dog I ever owned, a mutt they’d called Jimmy, after the newly elected American president. American politics was the world’s most accessible entertainment even then, so Jimmy Carter was big news in Lebanon. To those Antonine nuns Carter was something of a sex symbol. He wore his Christianity on his sleeve with a leer worthy of Mary Magdalene, allowing them to lust for him in their heart.
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Dec 29, 2024 | 
flaglerlive.com | Pierre Tristam
In January 1977 the nuns where we used to attend church in Lebanon gifted me the only dog I ever owned, a mutt they’d called Jimmy, after the newly elected American president. American politics was the world’s most accessible entertainment even then, so Jimmy Carter was big news in Lebanon. To those Antonine nuns Carter was something of a sex symbol. He wore his Christianity on his sleeve with a leer worthy of Mary Magdalene, allowing them to lust for him in their heart.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
flaglerlive.com | Pierre Tristam
In 2011, when I had reached the age that took my dear father Fouad’s life (46), I wrote a piece about one of my fondest memories with him: our rare trips to Baalbek, city of Roman ruins at the northeast edge of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The Bekaa is Lebanon’s granary, a vast flat Great Plains in miniature, a high plateau of Iowa-grade arable land for millennia given over to growing the hashish that gave the Assassins their name, but also wheat, citrus, veggies and grapes for Lebanon’s great wines.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
flaglerlive.com | Pierre Tristam
Sheriff Staly very considerately gave me a call the morning after the end of the world to ask if I needed a Baker Act. It was close, I told him, but I wasn’t quite there yet, and that authentic champagne I bought in case Harris won isn’t going to drink itself. It’s not like I didn’t see it coming. Five days before the election I predicted the outcome down to the electoral vote count, which is proving nauseatingly accurate. It’s like when you’re at a dying beloved’s bedside.
