Paul Scanling (@pscanling) header
Paul Scanling (@pscanling) profile picture

Husband, Father, Music Director @atlconcertband & Mars Hill Pres, @Braves fan, @FloridaState alum, @Pompey supporter.

Marietta, GA
Joined March 2010
Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)Photo by Paul Scanling (@pscanling)
Replying to @ajc
Seen a classroom crammed with 30 students? How about the hallway during a class change? The cafeteria? Social distancing is impossible.
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A long list of reasons to no longer pay attention to college football.
The last 5 years of College Football: The implementation of NIL. The popularization of the transfer portal. Eroded conference regionality. Devalued regular season games. Eliminated conference title games. Popularization of “meaningless bowl game.” Got rid of the fun OT (ex: 2018 LSU-A&M). Teams declining to play in bowl games. Allowed transfers immediate eligibility. CFP says fans opinions don’t matter. Players suing for extra eligibility. NCAA legally can’t enforce its own rules. Corporate sponsor logos on fields. Corporate sponsor logos on jerseys. Corporate sponsor logos on helmets. Players staying at one school is rare. Cross-country travel for conference games. NFL players attempting to return to college. Tampering galore, highest bidder wins. Tamperers reported = nothing happens. Group of 6 schools’ best players taken. 2-minute timeout (extra commercials). Eliminated clock stopping after 1st downs. Rivalries eroded by realignment. ESPN solely propping up the SEC. FOX solely propping up the B1G. 13-0 FSU left out of 4-team CFP. 2-loss teams ranked ahead of 9-0 UCLA. 1-loss Georgia ranked ahead of 9-0 Utah. BYU went 11-1 in reg. season, left out. Rankings completely rigged for the SEC. SEC rigging = declining interest elsewhere. Declining attendance. Normal fans getting priced out of games. Parking’s exponentially more expensive. Home-and-homes moved to neutral sites. Constant roster turnover with the portal. Fans lack personal bond to 1-year transfers. Your favorite player probably transfers out. Recruiting matters a lot less (they’ll leave). Landing a big recruit doesn’t feel the same. The word “committed” means nothing. Preseason rankings/ratings skewing things. Portal window overlapping with CFP. Coaches have to recruit their current players. Players “re-signing” during the season. What is targeting? What is a catch?
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Paul Scanling retweeted
9 Nov is called Germany's Schicksalstag, Day of Fate. It's the day of the Kaiser's abdication (1918), Hitler's Munich Putsch (1923), the Nazis' "Kristallnacht" pogrom (1938), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). A good day to remember that democracy should'nt be taken for granted.
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What is a catch?
elijah lofton mannnn
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Hey @YouTube I pay for Premium Lite, it says that on the screen, yet I’m seeing more and more ads the last two days? I don’t want any ads.
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This is me.
BREAKING: Sleep researchers confirm that when an ADHD partner stays up until 1:30 AM scrolling or playing games even though they have to wake up at 6:30 AM and are exhausted—it’s called "Revenge Bedtime Procrastination," and it is triggered by Daytime Autonomy Starvation. If you get frustrated watching your partner stay up way too late and wake up grumpy every morning, here is what is actually happening inside their brain: 1/6
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Paul Scanling retweeted
Just your reminder that Andor was PEAK Star Wars
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I laughed way too hard at this.
Pachelbel's Canon in D, P 37 played by countless trains, the sounds of which were recorded and assembled by the Czech machinist Pavel Jirásek.
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I wonder how much alcohol was involved in discovering this was possible?
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Congrats @KeishaBottoms on being elected Governor. Georgia spends 14¢/person on the arts. Every state arounds us spends more, some considerably more. We should be a leader in the South in the arts. Please make that a priority!!!
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Paul Scanling retweeted
Holy fuck this is so fire
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We have to say “Mississippi” after each number
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Paul Scanling retweeted
What an absolute, unmitigated, motherfucking disaster. We got our asses kicked. We got politically disemboweled. We got dragged through the electoral wood chipper, and the Republican establishment stood there with its collective thumb up its ass wondering why the fucking machine was running. And now, right on schedule, the excuses are pouring in. The war. Gas prices. Bad candidates. Historical trends. Voter frustration. Bad messaging. Jesus fucking Christ, SHUT UP. We had the majority. We had the presidency. We had the opportunity to deliver. And these incompetent, spineless, self-serving Republican bastards managed to turn political power into a fucking participation trophy. Let's start with John Thune. You spectacularly useless son of a bitch. You had the Senate majority. You had an election integrity bill conservatives desperately wanted passed. You had millions of voters begging Republicans to demonstrate that winning elections actually meant something. And what did you deliver? A fucking master class in legislative impotence. The SAVE Act became another monument to Republican paralysis while the people who elected you watched Washington's favorite collection of overpaid assholes explain why accomplishing anything was just too goddamn complicated. You had power, John. HAD. And now Democrats get to enjoy the congressional authority your leadership helped squander. What a magnificent fucking achievement. You couldn't have served Democratic interests more effectively if you'd shown up to work wearing a DNC name tag. And don't think the rest of the Republican establishment gets a free pass. Every useless bastard who spent these last two years hiding behind parliamentary excuses, protecting his precious committee assignments, and treating the Senate like a retirement community deserves the same political eviction notice. Get the fuck out. Then there's Iran. And this is where I have absolutely zero patience for the Monday-morning military strategists pretending the nuclear threat was some imaginary problem. IRAN MUST NEVER, EVER GET A FUCKING NUCLEAR BOMB. Not tomorrow. Not ten years from now. Not under some worthless diplomatic agreement held together with wishful thinking and another round of international bullshit. Never. We're talking about a regime with a long history of sponsoring terrorism, threatening Israel, brutalizing its own population, and pursuing nuclear capabilities that could fundamentally alter the security of the Middle East. A nuclear-armed Iranian regime is a nightmare America has every reason to prevent. And if military action was necessary to eliminate that threat, then the mission needed a clear objective and the determination to achieve it. Destroy the nuclear weapons capability. Prevent its reconstruction. Make damn sure the regime cannot simply wait out another American administration and resume the same dangerous ambitions. Finish the fucking job. Because if Americans endured war, economic disruption, and soaring gasoline prices only to discover Iran could eventually rebuild its nuclear weapons program, then what the everlasting fuck was the point? I can accept political costs for a mission that makes America and its allies safer. I cannot accept strategic confusion, endless uncertainty, and politicians who seem incapable of explaining what victory actually means. And here's the part Republican leadership should have understood before this election became a political slaughterhouse. Americans were paying the price at the pump while Democrats were pounding them over affordability. Groceries. Gas. Housing. Insurance. The cost of keeping a fucking roof over your family's head. Democrats hammered those issues relentlessly. And Republicans? Apparently they were too busy measuring the drapes in their offices and scheduling another goddamn television appearance. How fucking stupid do you have to be to watch voters struggle with household expenses and fail to understand what they're telling you? Then came the candidates. James Talarico winning Texas. Abdul El-Sayed winning Michigan. Susan Collins losing Maine. An electoral fucking earthquake. And the Republican establishment somehow managed to look surprised. Surprised? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? You could practically hear the political foundation cracking for months. Warning signs were flashing everywhere, and these arrogant, complacent jackasses behaved like victory was something they were entitled to receive in the mail. At some point, incompetence becomes so breathtaking that you begin wondering whether anybody in Republican leadership has ever successfully managed anything more complicated than ordering lunch. And now comes the part that really makes my fucking blood boil. The conservative influencer circus. Bannon. Tucker. Candace. Megyn. Flynn. Alex Jones. Jack Posobiec. And every other self-appointed political messiah whose microphone somehow became more important than winning elections. Here come the emergency broadcasts. The finger-pointing. The infighting. The hysterical accusations. The endless fucking circular firing squads. Another catastrophe, another opportunity to turn conservative frustration into a revenue stream. How many fucking subscriptions does it take to rebuild a political movement? How many podcasts does it take to pass a bill? How many goddamn livestreams does it take to win a Senate race? Apparently nobody knows, because we've spent years watching people get rich explaining why conservatives should be furious while the actual machinery of Republican politics keeps breaking down. Enough of this shit. And spare me the conservative celebrities who spend more time attacking other conservatives than figuring out how to defeat Democrats. Your personal feuds are not a political strategy. Your fucking podcast ratings are not election results. And your ability to scream into a microphone for three hours doesn't qualify you to lead anything. Meanwhile, Democrats just demonstrated that winning elections is still considerably more useful than winning internet arguments. Imagine that fucking revelation. And speaking of Democrats, can we appreciate the sheer comedic absurdity of what just happened? Donald Trump, the man they've spent years calling a dictator, fascist, authoritarian, monarch, and existential threat to democracy, just watched his party lose control of Congress through an election. A fucking election. The most terrifying dictator in American history apparently forgot the most important chapter in the dictator's handbook. CANCEL THE GODDAMN VOTING. What a fucking embarrassment for the professional hysteria merchants. Apparently American democracy was healthy enough to deliver Democrats a massive victory after all. Somebody call the Nobel Committee. Democracy has miraculously survived another Tuesday. But here's where the laughter stops. Because this defeat is serious as hell. Republicans lost power. Democrats gained it. And the people who spent years warning us about the consequences of losing these midterms now have to explain why they were so spectacularly unprepared to prevent it. And I don't want to hear another fucking word about how everyone needs to unite behind the same failed leadership. Unite behind WHAT? More excuses? More broken promises? More leadership elections where the same collection of useless bastards rearranges the nameplates and congratulates itself on a fresh start? Fuck that. I want a political reckoning so thorough that every complacent Republican incumbent starts checking whether his local voters are recruiting a primary challenger. Every single one. I want records examined. Promises compared with results. Leadership positions challenged. Failed candidates replaced. Party organizations rebuilt from the ground up. And I want Republican voters to stop treating incumbency like some sacred fucking birthright. You want loyalty? EARN IT. You want donations? SHOW RESULTS. You want another term? EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK YOU ACCOMPLISHED WITH THE LAST ONE. Because the era of handing out political participation trophies to career Republicans needs to end. And don't give me that tired bullshit about how difficult Washington is. We know Washington is difficult. That's why we elect people who promise to fucking fight. If you wanted a comfortable career collecting a government paycheck while accomplishing absolutely nothing, you should have applied for a job as a congressional office fern. At least the fern produces oxygen. Now, I know what some people are thinking. It's over. MAGA is finished. Trump is politically crippled. The country is lost. BULLSHIT. Absolute, defeatist, self-pitying BULLSHIT. Yes, we got our asses kicked. Yes, Democrats are celebrating. Yes, the next two years are going to be harder than they needed to be because Republican leadership apparently couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel. But since when did one election determine the permanent fate of the United States of America? Obama's Democrats lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats in 2010. Did the Democratic Party disappear? Did progressives pack their bags and surrender? Of course fucking not. Political movements survive defeats when they have the courage to confront their failures and the discipline to rebuild. And that's exactly what conservatives need to do. Because here's what I refuse to believe. I refuse to believe that millions of Americans who love this country, believe in secure borders, want safe communities, demand responsible government, and expect their elected officials to put American interests first suddenly ceased to exist because a bunch of Republican politicians fucked up an election. I refuse to believe that the people who stood by Trump through investigations, indictments, impeachment battles, media hysteria, and years of political warfare are suddenly going to surrender because Democrats won Congress. And I sure as fuck refuse to believe that the future of American conservatism belongs to the same failed political establishment that helped create this mess. Maybe this election was the wake-up call. Maybe God looked down at the Republican Party, watched the arrogance, complacency, backstabbing, cowardice, and endless fucking excuses, and decided these people needed a lesson in humility delivered with a goddamn sledgehammer. Maybe the message was simple. YOU AREN'T GOOD ENOUGH. Your leadership isn't good enough. Your candidates aren't good enough. Your organization isn't good enough. Your results sure as hell aren't good enough. FIX IT. And maybe that's precisely what needs to happen. Tear down the complacency. Destroy the culture of excuses. Replace failed leadership. Recruit candidates who actually know how to win. Build organizations capable of turning conservative principles into electoral victories. Stop expecting Trump to carry every worthless Republican politician across the finish line like some exhausted political pack mule. Trump has already done more than enough heavy lifting for people who seem incapable of carrying their own fucking briefcases. And guess what? TRUMP IS STILL PRESIDENT. That little detail seems to have escaped the champagne-soaked Democrats dancing on MAGA's supposed grave. He still occupies the White House. He still has constitutional authority. He still has the ability to shape foreign policy, defend American interests, and pursue the priorities that brought him back to office. And if Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions can be permanently eliminated, that achievement will matter long after every smug political analyst has forgotten the election-night graphics. But Trump also needs a Republican Party capable of surviving politically without him. Because 2028 is coming. And when it arrives, the movement needs more than nostalgia, slogans, celebrity endorsements, and another fucking collection of candidates who think putting MAGA in their social media biography qualifies them for public office. We need competence. We need discipline. We need courage. We need people who understand that winning an election is a responsibility, not a fucking lifetime achievement award. And we need Republican voters willing to hold their own side accountable with the same ferocity they direct toward Democrats. That means primaries. That means challenging incumbents. That means getting involved locally. That means demanding actual accomplishments instead of accepting another round of bullshit fundraising emails promising that victory is just one more donation away. I'm sick of the excuses. I'm sick of the cowardice. I'm sick of watching Republican politicians campaign like warriors and govern like frightened little bureaucrats terrified of upsetting the Washington cocktail circuit. And I'm especially fucking sick of being told that criticizing Republican leadership somehow makes you disloyal to the conservative movement. No. The people who squandered their opportunities owe voters an explanation. The people who made promises and failed to deliver owe voters accountability. And the people who believe Republican voters should simply shut up, open their wallets, and keep electing the same failed leadership can go fuck themselves. We've got two years. Two years to clean house. Two years to rebuild. Two years to recruit candidates who can actually win. Two years to prove that conservatism is bigger than any one politician, any one election, or any collection of self-important assholes occupying leadership offices in Washington. And yes, I'm furious. I'm absolutely fucking livid. I'm disgusted by the incompetence. I'm embarrassed by the squandered opportunities. I'm enraged that so many people who demanded our trust treated that responsibility like a goddamn inconvenience. But I'm still here. And so are millions of Americans who believe this country is worth fighting for. We're still breathing. We're still voting. We're still organizing. And we're still perfectly capable of telling every useless politician in Washington exactly where to shove his excuses. America has survived wars, depressions, assassinations, national catastrophes, and political upheavals far worse than one disastrous election. We'll survive this. But surviving isn't enough. We need to learn from it. We need to rebuild. And we need to make damn sure that the next time Republicans are entrusted with power, the people holding it actually know what the fuck they're doing. So congratulations, Democrats. Enjoy your victory. Pop the champagne. Dance on the political graves. Write your obituaries for Trump and MAGA. You've earned your celebration. But don't confuse a devastating electoral defeat with the permanent death of a political movement. And to the Republican establishment, here's your message. The fucking gravy train needs to stop. No more automatic loyalty. No more free passes. No more protecting failed leadership because somebody has been warming a Senate chair since the invention of electricity. No more treating voters like gullible idiots who can be placated with a flag pin, a campaign slogan, and another goddamn promise. You wanted power. You got it. You squandered it. Now answer for it. And to every conservative wondering whether to give up, I have one final thought. FUCK GIVING UP. Fuck surrender. Fuck political despair. Fuck the idea that one election gets to decide whether we still believe in our country. The fight for America's future didn't begin with Donald Trump, and it sure as hell doesn't end with a Republican defeat in 2026. We lost a major battle. We haven't lost the country. And we haven't lost the right to fight like hell for its future. So bury the excuses. Fire the failures. Challenge the incumbents. Build something stronger. And when 2028 comes around, make sure the Republican Party has learned the one lesson its leadership apparently needed an electoral ass-kicking to understand: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON'T OWE YOU A GODDAMN THING. Earn their trust. Earn their votes. Earn the right to govern. Or get the fuck out of the way.
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I have been holding my tongue about something that happened during the Ohio gubernatorial race. I refused to speak while the election was underway because I did not want my words mistaken for an attempt to influence anyone’s vote. But now that the election is over, I have something to say. For nearly twenty years, my ministry has taken me among the homeless, the abused, the exploited, and the forgotten. I have sat with victims of sexual violence and witnessed the lifelong wounds of childhood trauma. What Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign did to Amy Acton was among the most morally repulsive things I have witnessed in American politics. They took a woman whose stepfather was indicted for raping her when she was twelve years old and featured her mother, from whom she had been estranged for nearly fifty years, in a political advertisement attacking her credibility. The advertisement challenged Acton’s account of her childhood without mentioning the sexual abuse allegations or the circumstances of that estrangement. When people expressed their horror, the campaign defended it. Imagine examining another person’s childhood suffering and fractured family relationships, then deciding those wounds might help win an election. Anyone who has worked with survivors of childhood sexual abuse understands the painful realities of denial, betrayal, shame, and estrangement. A child growing into a successful adult does not erase what happened. Nor does a parent’s denial make that suffering disappear. I find it equally disturbing that an elderly mother, whom Acton herself described as unwell, was brought into this spectacle. Whatever her own struggles or responsibility for the past, exploiting that fractured relationship was grotesque. To everyone who defended this, consider the message you sent to survivors. To the young woman whose family refuses to believe her. To the man who has carried the shame of childhood abuse for forty years. To the frightened child who has yet to tell anyone. What did you teach them about the value of their suffering? I am a priest. I believe in repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. But none of those things requires me to pretend that deliberate cruelty is anything less than a grave moral failure. Your political allegiance does not absolve you of moral responsibility. You do not get to set aside your conscience during an election and retrieve it afterward. If your loyalty requires you to defend the exploitation of a childhood sexual abuse survivor, your loyalty has become an idol. And if your conscience cannot recognize the wrong here, examine what political tribalism has done to it. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. We have a choice as a people: continue excusing cruelty from our preferred political camp, or summon the courage to condemn it wherever it appears. Amy Acton deserved better. Every survivor who watched this unfold deserved better. And God help us if we have reached the point where winning an election matters more than protecting the dignity of a wounded human being.
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Republicans are going to have a terrible night, and the simple reason why is that Trump has put up perhaps the worst *performance* this term of any president in a century or more. Remember that he entered with an actual mandate: the House and Senate, a popular vote victory and a swing-state sweep, and 6-3 Supreme Court. Democrats were afraid enough to vote for mild but real immigration restrictionist legislation in the Laken Riley Act. Everyone wondered how far the "Vibe Shift" would go. Trump managed to turn that into essentially zero durable wins whatsoever. He personally *hates* the very idea of legislation, the notion that he would have to spend time going back and forth with Congress, learning details and making compromises. So he simply didn't do it! He didn't make a compelling case for abolishing the filibuster. He didn't try communicating clearly to the public in support of popular bills to get to 60 votes. He just decided not to do it at all. So they passed an unpopular tax cut, some funding for ICE, and a sop to the crypto industry, and that was basically it. Least productive Congress in decades, due to the tastes of one man. Trump adopted one of the worst macro policies we've ever had: high deficits, high tariffs, and attacks on central bank independence. We managed to pay higher interest rates while still having high trade deficits AND weakening the dollar. Just a total failure. On immigration, perhaps THE signature issue, Trump essentially min-maxxed effectiveness and backlash. Instead of trying to leverage the political moment for new laws and a self-deportation agenda (that is, walling off the economy to remove the benefit of irregular presence in the US), he opted for a maximally aggressive approach. The administration spent attention, funds, legal manpower on stunts like deporting random people to Salvadoran prisons with essentially no due process. ICE and Border Patrol were encouraged to be aggressive and confrontational, which helped contribute to the shooting deaths of American protestors. It turns out, that's extremely unpopular! What about the approach of going after employers? The obvious vector? Trump hated that idea! He repeatedly has said he doesn't want to target businesses (especially farms) that use large amounts of illegal labor. This is just an incomprehensible position. Instead of charging a few dozen businessmen and removing the incentive for millions of illegal workers to be here, you arrest people off the street one by one at the cost of thousands of dollars in manpower per each, while their crying wives and kids post TikToks about it. Upshot on immigration: electoral strength turned into a crippling electoral weakness in exchange for deporting maybe 6% of the illegally present population. The tariffs were a total shitshow. Embarrassing rollout, no underlying theory of action at all. No targeted focus on key industries. Our country tariffed products we can't grow. We tariffed *inputs* of our own valuable exports. The schemes and amounts changed constantly, sending the stock market reeling and presenting scenes of chaos to the world. Trump's messaging throughout has been generationally bad. While facing nearly 2:1 unpopularity, he spends his days posting AI slop, saying he'll rename New Mexico or invade allies, among other bizarre remarks. He brags about a ballroom and a pool repainting while gas hits records. At no point has he ever attempted any kind of message discipline. Then there are the deeply unpopular attacks on rule of law, his "game-recognize-game" pardons for all manner of scammers and criminals, the crypto schemes that he and his family engage in, the evilly conceived and embarrassingly executed legal attacks on Comey, Jerome Powell, and others. With his monthslong stand on NOT releasing the Epstein files, he became maybe the first president ever to stake out a 99-1 issue on the 1% side. That's not even getting into Iran, DOGE, his candidate recruitment choices, or countless other things. Simply put: Trump has managed to royally screw up virtually every single facet of his presidency. It's been undeniable, voters have noticed, and there's really no escape from it. This is what the GOP base chose in early 2024, and this is the world they're living with now. Where they handed the reins of history to a fat, vain, washed-up old man and let him drive.
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Paul Scanling retweeted
In a weird way, everybody is rooting for you. When you go to a job interview, the interviewer wants you to be amazing so they don’t have to look anymore. when you go on a date, the person wants to have an amazing date with you. If you make a piece of content, people want to see amazing pieces of content and they have no problem if it’s yours. the instant you get into the mindset that people want you to do well, your entire world gets better. And you’ll be shocked to know this pattern keeps repeating in different areas of life.
Hit me with the harshest reality truth.
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Paul Scanling retweeted
Some things never change. 🫠 Don’t forget to cast your vote, bish. 🗳️💙
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So much better than voting for concubines, marrying your brother’s widow, smashing babies on rocks, or any of that other OT culture.
Someone told me to "vote according to Biblical values!" So I voted for welcoming immigrants, helping the poor, feeding the hungry, bringing healthcare to the sick, forgiving debts, caring for our planet, laying down our swords, and loving all our neighbors.
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Simply retweet if you agree 👍
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Can I still have falafel? I like falafel.
As your governor, I’ll protect Tennessee from Sharia law and the spread of Islamization.
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