Who is the Real Criminal?

It’s prime time opening night at the Republican National Convention and a quaint, well dressed, possibly fragile, seventy-something woman is helped to the podium.  There she begins to deliver a heart-exposed recounting of the death of her son, which soon evolved into a spewing of vitriol…like a homeless person who starts with a soft plea for a touch of generosity and ends with unloading her AK-47 across a line of bank tellers.

Patricia Smith appeared by all accounts to be displaying her true feelings.  It was this quality of genuineness that makes the accounting of her words all the more serious and revealing.  Commentators who likely disagreed with her entire story only reacted with compassion and sympathy rather than criticism.

Unfortunately they were at a loss for words, which a sad commentary in itself.

At the end of her heated moment on a National stage, Mrs. Smith began a theme that remained as one of the few constants across the remainder of the Convention: that Hillary Clinton was personally and totally responsible for her son Sean’s death, and, as such, is a criminal and should be in prison.

Picked up by Chris Christy the next night, the crowd, adorned in their stars and bars, began to chant “lock her up”, several times interrupting Christy, leaving him only to smile and nod his head encouragingly.

There was a mob feeling about it, like the old fashioned, pre-lynching enthusiasm we’ve all seen in movies that recount a darker past.  Instead of repulsed or angered, I primarily felt embarrassed for our Country, not unlike how I felt when Trump decided to discuss his genitals during a Presidential Debate.

I will not give an account here of the absurdity of Patricia Smith’s claim that anti-Western Islamic extremists were bit players in Hillary Clinton’s conspiracy to have her son murdered.  The wasted resources of the Federal Government over four years of investigations have already done that. What I want to discuss is the real crime itself, as displayed Monday night.

 A mother likely shattered by the sudden and violent death of her son has the potential of being as unmolded clay.  Any of us would be desperate to seek answers to explain what is impossible to understand in a state of intense grief.  Although true of any parent losing a child, the national attention, the reporters, the cameras, and more must have made the intense need for reason and rationality more acute.

Every set of parents of the 20 first-graders murdered at Sandy Hook must have gone through it. Despite a simple explanation of insanity, most have sought accountability to explain how such psychosis can manifest itself into such tragedy.

Patricia Smith showed clearly Monday night that not only had she sought accountability for her son’s death but that she is wholly tormented by what she has concluded.  That was also undoubtedly the reason she was recruited to the podium. 

Who gave her the tools of her torment?  She did not independently arrive at a set of conclusions that the longest, most expensive, most driven Republican Congressional investigation in the history of this Country couldn’t obtain.  She was fed a scenario for purposes unrelated to the death of her son.

Just as the House Special Committee to investigate Benghazi was, as publicly admitted by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, created to drive down “Hillary’s numbers”, just as the fictional movie 13 Hours is used as a quasi-historical explanation (most notably by Donald Trump, Jr.), just as Fox Television and talk radio have eliminated any facts regarding Benghazi other than Hillary Clinton being the Secretary of State, so did Patricia Smith become a pawn to use in the Republican’s desire give Clinton to the mob. Lock her up.

The real crime we saw Monday night was the public use of a tortured woman who has been manipulated in such a way as to leave her plagued with sadness and anger for the rest of her days…because she can no longer assimilate the truth. Think about what that must be like. The real criminals were standing behind the stage at the RNC.

The crime committed on this woman is as ethically wrong as any con job, only more so.  Like Christy’s Tuesday night kangaroo court, the crime against Patricia Smith and the rest of the conservative Republican base can only be tried in the public forum and ballot box. Fortunately (and hopefully) that will cause the Republican Party to move to a better place.  Sadly, I doubt there is much hope for Patricia Smith.    

Holy War?

Political contributions are not tax deductable, and they shouldn’t be.  Although in the past there have been short periods which allowed small amounts to be deducted from taxable income these tax rules were soon discarded. The reason is obvious, but frankly the understanding eludes most Americans.

When an item is deductable it effectively joins the general tax-paying public to participate in the contribution. For example, Mitt Romney, who touted his large charitable contributions, gave most of it as a tithe to the Mormon Church.  The hundreds of thousands of dollars he gave to his church reduced his taxes by hundreds of thousands (probably about 40% Federal & State). Therefore the US Taxpayers and the Taxpayers of California essentially contributed to the Mormon Church through a loss in revenue.  Every dollar he gave to the Mormon Church cost him about 60 cents and the Taxpayers 40.

This is one very public way the congressionally driven US Tax Code engages in social policy, no different than milk supports, oil depletions, carbon credits or five thousand other lesser known pork barrel rules. State tax codes are no different.

In 1954 then Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson led a change in the tax law to address political activism by charitable organizations (called 501(c)3 organizations), whose receipt of a contribution allowed the contributor to take an itemized charitable deduction.

Churches in particular had been acting as quasi-political arms of certain candidates and the taxpayer was picking up the tab generated by the contributions of wealthy donors.

The so-called Johnson Amendment became tax law.  It disallowed any 501(c)3 organization from participating in any partisan political activity at threat of losing their tax status.  It has remained, for the obvious reasons, an unquestioned part of our tax law for 62 years, until perhaps…now.

In Donald J(erkhead) Trump’s disjointed and rambling introduction yesterday of Mike Pence as his running mate, he unveiled for the first time (to my knowledge) his new policy to attack the Johnson Amendment if he became President.

I had to get past the humor of ineptness which he obviously had in misunderstanding what he was talking about.  He initially inferred the law was created by Lyndon Johnson as President, then said; “(because of the amendment) you are absolutely shunned, if you’re evangelical…if you want to talk religion, you lose your tax-exempt status.”  Gosh, all those shunned evangelicals.  I wonder what they’ve been talking about all these years.

What Trump probably thinks and what his uninformed listeners hear is that a violation of this tax law somehow leads to Churches paying taxes.  Churches currently can preach politics as much as they want; it’s just that if they do you can’t take an itemized deduction when you give money to them. They’ll still pay no taxes.

What Donald was actually trying to cram into his little pea-brain is an effort, currently championed by Jerry Falwell, Jr., which is making it onto the Republican Platform this go-around.  It is an effort to remove the Johnson Amendment from the US Tax Code.

Of course Trump has no more understanding of the rule than a Kansas chicken plucker, but those like Falwell know that elimination of that rule will not only free them up to start campaigning for Conservative candidates from the pulpit, but it would begin to bring in contribution revenue to these “churches” by the tractor trailer full. 

All of sudden the Koch brothers will become born again (and damn it I thought once was enough!). Why would anyone want to give money to some super PAC when he can give it to the Holy Trump Tower of Babble and get a tax deduction to boot!

Keep in mind that the Johnson Amendment to the US Tax Code affects all 501(c)3 organizations which includes, among other organizations, all schools.  As with Churches, Universities cannot engage in partisan politics (favoring a particular candidate or candidate’s campaign), but like Universities, Churches currently can openly discuss general public issues as they affect their faith.

Trump repeatedly and exclusively addressed this issue of the Johnson Amendment as something he wants to accomplish “for the evangelicals”, he did not mention Churches generally.  He’s right, although he may not know it. 

His motive is support and votes. There’s no question he’s non-religious and has been his whole life.  The Right-Wing Christian Conservative movement is all about money and power. They don’t simply collect funds from their local parish, but their hands are outstretched nationally and internationally. 

They essentially want a Holy War against the Muslim religion as much as the religious nut-jobs in the Middle East and they see Trump as the man to bring it home.

Therein lies why Donald J(erkhead) Trump is the perfect candidate for the Christian Right, even though his history on their favorite social issues (abortion e.g.) and his patent ignorance of Christianity (making Ronald Reagan look like an Apostle) is so contradictory.

We ask American Muslims to speak out against radical jihadists.  Well I’d like to hear moderate American Christian leaders speak out against the efforts of the Republicans and extreme Christian Conservatives to politicize their faith for the same reasons…or are their wallets a bit too close to their Gospels?

The Back Door You Want to Go Through

Conservative pundits like to claim that Obama had a majority in the House and a “super” majority in the Senate when he took office in late January 2009 and, therefore, he could do anything he wanted. That would earn a mostly false from Politifact. 

Due to the six month delay in seating Sen. Al Franken and the illness (and eventual death in Aug 2009) of Ted Kennedy, the Obama Administration only had a couple of short windows in 2009 to get accomplished what 8 Presidents had tried and failed before him, a universal and comprehensive health care law. This had to be done concurrently with keeping the Nation from falling into another Great Depression.

The windows were permanently closed as of January 2010.

Complicate that with 2 Conservative Democratic senators (Nelson of Nebraska and Lieberman of Connecticut), who generally opposed health reform, and a unified Republican Senate which was on record from the very beginning to oppose anything that Obama proposed or supported. Yet a health care bill was signed into law.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (aka Affordable Care Act, ACA), ironically a law conceived by Conservative Republicans (Heritage Foundation in the late 90s), became Obamacare, the scourge for Conservatives for the next 7 years.  Nevertheless, when the smoke cleared the Obama Administration had still failed.

Thanks, in good measure, to good ol’ Joe Lieberman, the only thing truly Progressive and Universal about the ACA was thrown out of the bill in order to get his vote: that was the Public Option. Without it the entire “Affordable” part of the law evaporated.  What was left was a health care insurance reform act which does almost nothing to control health care costs.

It should be a befuddlement to anyone with half a brain why the Republicans didn’t embrace this new law as opposed to spending nearly all their time in Congress over the following 5 years (2011-2016) passing bills to repeal it.  It has funneled more money into the health industry than they could have ever hoped for.

You see, the thing that makes Universal Health Care possible is reasonable and controllable costs. Simply put, Health Care is a service where the demand (for that service) does not drop when the price goes up.  Therefore, the “free market” approach cannot work. The rest of the world has figured this out. It is why we pay multiples more in health care cost for less (and poorer) coverage, as the only developed nation on earth without Universal Health Care.

Recently, and very much belated, Obama announced his support to revisit the ACA to reintroduce the Public Option.  Also, the addition of the Public Option was the compromise reached by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in how the Democrats plan to advance health care reform in 2017. Bernie, in particular, has finally realized that this is the only back door to bring this Country something like Single-Payer Universal Health Care, a path he couldn’t define during his campaign.

If you care anything about Universal Health Care or even just about your wallet, you’ll support those who support the Public Option.  Here is my simplistic explanation on how this back door opens:

Along with the participating private insurers the Federal Government would offer a choice to the public to essentially buy health insurance from the Federal Government instead of from a private insurer. It would be as if (and not far from) opening up Medicare to the general public, but instead of the premiums paid for by the Federal Government as they are with those over 65, the premiums would be paid by the insured.

It is generally no more complicated than that. However, implementation in the face of Conservative opposition would not be uncomplicated.

If the program was successful and enough people joined the Public Option three major things would happen (apart from insurance provided to the poor or destitute). 

First, providers (doctors, hospitals, pharmacy companies, etc) would be loathe to refusing services to those in the program because the loss in business would be too great. Such is already the case with Medicare participants.

Second, if enough people were in the program, combined with existing Medicare participants, the Federal Government would have the leverage to force reductions in cost. That reduction in cost would be reflected in reductions of insurance premiums, as there is no profit incentive. 

Third, in order to remain viable and continue to exist, private insurers would have to reasonably match the Government’s level of premiums and payouts to health care providers. They would generally need to mirror the same restrictions in cost, which would make such costs more consistent and transparent.

Overtime it is reasonable to conceive that the United States health care system could turn into something that resembles the current and successful Japanese universal health care system, a system ironically conceived, developed, and implemented for the Japanese by the United States after WWII. Look it up.

The US health care system continues to be crippled. The ACA got it up out of its wheelchair and on to a walker, but it is still quite sick and it affects every non-wealthy American. Frankly, big business Republicans and inane Conservatives want to keep it that way (or push it back into the wheelchair). It is a sad commentary that so many people that need this Public Option the most continue to shoot themselves in the foot by supporting those Republicans politicians who live in the back pockets of business interests, those that keep the front door locked.

Wise up America, especially the young. If you hear the word “yes” next to the words “public option” then vote for that person. They are opening the backdoor for you to enter a better life.

Do Women Get It? Not Enough of Them.

Every candidate running for political office is by definition flawed. After all, they’re human. It comes with the territory.  Still, just as the excitement in supporting a candidate can mask obvious imperfections from that supporter, so also the scrutiny applied to a candidate can magnify or even concoct imperfections a voter might not even have considered.

The higher the office sought, the more we get of both – adoration and imperfection.  There’s nothing new and nothing different regarding the candidates that are in the arena this political season.  Therein lays the importance of listening and reading what the candidates actually say and less about what is said or written about them. 

Unfortunately most of the American electorate goes to the polls with that homework incomplete. Such promotes an entrenchment of opinion that leaves Presidential elections pretty much decided by a handful of people in a handful of states. 

However, this Presidential Election is different…or at least it should be.

Without regard to policy differences, party loyalties, temperaments, history, or personality quirks there is one monumental difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – gender. Trump writes off the difference like it was just another card in a campaign poker deck – the woman card he pronounces it.  Clinton has only just started to address this reality.

The fact that a woman is running for the Presidency of the United States, representing one of the two competing political parties, is more than a big deal…it is a mammoth, colossal, gigantic, enormous deal.  It is even more consequential than Obama’s historic ascension to office as an African American, and it impacts the entire world. That it is being given short shrift is driving me nuts.

The subjugation of women has its origins at least beginning with recorded history, who knows before that.  Since that time women have been the chattel of men and still are throughout much of this planet’s civilizations.  Vast population centers in the Far East, India, Central Africa, the Middle East, and underdeveloped social pockets frozen in time still engage in total control or even misogynistic behavior toward women as an acceptable standard.

Enlightened “free” nations, notably in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, tout their record of equality between the genders.  Oh really?  Women were barely allowed to even participate in the governing process until well into the last century, despite that they represented more than half of all nations.

The US, considered by “patriots” the most freedom loving of all, has been a bulwark in resisting equality for women throughout its history. To this day Conservatives fight the transition to female equality on the floors of nearly every legislative body in the land, refusing to address or outright opposing economic and health care discrepancies.

In the US Congress today women represent less than 20% of both the House and Senate.  There are only 5 elected female governors, and state legislature percentages are equally dismal. This is not an accident or simple choice.  It is caused by a restriction of opportunity and historical inertia.

The gender deficit in business is appalling in the US, yet that fact is consistently delivered as ho-hum news. What does it take in this Country to embrace the fact that human social development regarding the equality of women is far from complete?  Why is it so easy to ignore the obvious?

The head scratching part for me is that the problem is not gender specific. It is not just Conservative men that want to retain the status quo. A significantly large subset of women in the US is indifferent to Clinton becoming President or opposes the idea because she is a woman!! I am not making this up.

“I’m not crazy about Trump, but I’m not going to vote for that Hillary” said a woman I know in her late 60s (who I happen to like a lot). “Why?” I asked. “I can’t see her as President.” she answered “She’s too conniving.” Conniving??  Clinton conniving, Trump not?

Donald Trump is a fool, with a dangerous narcissistic personality disorder.  However, he gets a pass from a major segment of the American electorate, including a wide swath of women. Why? He does because he sells his persona as the authoritarian male.  Frankly, it is a dated model that in recent decades has had little success and needs to be put out on the village green, like an old Sherman Tank, as an historical relic.

Why are women in the United States so tacitly accepting of the suppression of women around the world?  You attack that repressive and discriminatory behavior by seeking to eliminate it in the culture you live in.
 
Every woman in the US should start with the assumption that she is going to vote for Hillary Clinton if only because she is a woman, then build the case why Trump is the better choice (good luck with that). 

I have four granddaughters, the oldest only three, and I will only consider them growing up in a nation where they view their opportunities at any level to be no different from their male counterparts.  A female American President is a giant step in that direction, and the time to take that step is now.

Another Perfect Storm

In my gym’s locker room a fellow, I’d say in his 40s, was spouting off about radical Muslims being a universal scourge as he related it to the killings in Orlando. He didn’t use the term radical  but I’m “sure” he meant it.  Given his further pronouncement that if the other patrons in that nightclub had been armed the tragedy wouldn’t have happened I could guess he wasn’t a Hillary supporter.

It was an interesting and perhaps predictable encounter given that I had watched Morning Joe (MSNBC) earlier, while on the treadmill, seeing the blanket coverage on the shooting was almost entirely on Isis, based only that the killer had apparently made verbal reference to the “Islamic State”.  The topic was enhanced, of course, by inane rhetoric from Donald Trump.

It is entirely disturbing to me that politicians, the news media, and nut jobs like the nice fellow in the locker room can so blithely focus on a single issue when the horrific event that precipitated the news is so obviously more complex.  However, even within its complexity it can be dissected, primarily because of the similarities that have occurred in so many other like events.

There are (at least) four factors that create the perfect storm for man-made, violent tragedy on any scale, not just a large massacre as what occurred Sunday morning.  It’s too bad we seem to only pay attention to the big catastrophes.  Perhaps though, as in this most recent heartbreak, it can be more easily illustrated:

First. In any society there is a lunatic fringe, and in a society of 330 million that number is not small.  This is irrefutable and unchangeable.  Mitigating this reality is an issue of health care. To the extent a free society does nothing to make health care readily available and accessible to the society as a whole then we do little to nothing in addressing the malady. 

Mentally ill individuals will often attach their twisted thoughts and actions to external events to carry out anti-social behavior.  To attack the external circumstance as a way to curb mental behavior is misguided and unproductive.  Perhaps Trump would have us ban marriage and cohabitation in order to curb domestic violence.

Second. The hate that has its origins in the fear individuals have of people not like themselves is too often buried under simplistic rhetoric.  This hate and fear is quite different from the natural tendency that all humans share in their desire to gravitate toward other individuals who they feel are like themselves.  It is a fear of loss of identity which they are taught, at a young age, is being perpetrated by people who are different.

There is now coming out some evidence that this Orlando killer was himself a latent homosexual.  True or not, it would make sense that the pervasive hate that Conservative, often religious, homophobes broadcast (remember, Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on gays) is consuming for some, and in the lunatic fringe dangerous. Add to that the conflict of one such individual unable to reconcile his own homosexuality in that toxic atmosphere and it becomes explosive.

That kind of hate pervades Conservative America and it takes generations to purge.

Third. What is the simplest way to make a mentally ill, dangerously hateful individual into a catastrophic living time bomb?  Well…how about giving him a semi-automatic assault rifle with, say, several 30 round magazines?  Yeah, I think that’ll do it.

Even the conservative nut cases that think (as per Trump) that Hillary Clinton is single handedly going to erase the second amendment to the Constitution and collect the 350 million guns that are awash in America know, at some level, the folly of their concern.  Further, the liberals who believe they can somehow legislate instant retraction of gun violence know, at some level, they are blowing sweet nothings across desert air.

Those foolish yet seemingly intractable positions need a champion to address the real problem; that the United States needs to change its collective attitude toward guns. It needs to change, not to eliminate what we’re currently experiencing in both mass and minor gun violence, but for the next generation, or possibly the one after that.  The die of what we experience now was cast at least two generations ago.

We do need legislation (sorry Trumpsters), but even as we begin to make changes that everyone hates (for Conservatives too much, Liberals to little) we start to alter the national perception of what gun ownership means.  Perhaps my grandchildren will become adults who will find it queer that any civilian should want to own a high capacity assault rifle, and within that generation there will be mentally ill adults who will, not surprisingly, feel the same.

Fourth, and lastly. The least important, yet the most media grabbing is the evolving reality of Terrorism.  The major problem with Terrorism is the collective inability to understand and disseminate the definition of it.

Terrorism is the manufacture of either a threatened or actual act of violence which creates a reaction disproportionate to its actual threat.  Unfortunately, the only combating of and victory over terrorism is not to be terrorized.   That statement should not be viewed as silliness or stupidity.  No act of Terrorism in the US to date, including 9/11, has directly affected government or business in any significant way, nor posed a threat to any one given American greater than swimming pools or ladders.

In 2004 John Kerry made the statement during his Presidential bid that this Country had to reduce terrorism down to an acceptable level.  He was viciously lambasted by a wide swath of voters, including Democrats.  Acceptable?  Yes, he was correct.  The more we view terrorism, domestic or international as a problem to be solved (not a war to be won), like car safety or infant mortality or drug overdose or whatever, the more we neuter the perpetrators. 

The Donald Trumpsters in this Country feed Terrorism. It’s like we all lived in some kind of Terrorist Jurassic Park, knowing some of the beasts are going to escape (because we’re shown the trailers).  They ignore their illnesses, they supply them with weapons, and they perpetuate their hateful objectives.  As a result they keep multiplying, the carnage doesn’t end, and the anxiety has no limits.

Trump Prediction

I’m not one to publish predictions.  Speculate yes, publish no. More than seven months ago I predicted that Tim Kaine would be named as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in this year’s election.  I’m still feeling pretty good about that one.  Yet, as far flung as that one might have seemed then, making predictions about Donald Trump is probably even more precarious. 

It seems the national media grinder has been engaged in endless predictions about the Donald since he entered the race only to end up incorrect and with the facial egg treatments to prove it. The atmosphere has been more like a game show than political analysis.

That said, I’m going to throw my prognostication into the ring anyway. I can’t help it, though in my case I base my prediction not on some in-depth understanding of political science, but rather on a simple (albeit non-professional) understanding of human behavior. Here it is:

For personal reasons I am somewhat familiar with the psychological condition known as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).  The characteristics of this disorder, in part or in whole, are not uncommon.  However, when the characteristics of this disorder seriously impact both the psychological and physical well being of an individual, or those around them, it is relatively rare.

The conclusion that the “disorder” actually exists in an individual really requires diagnosis by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist.  Of course that requires that the individual with NPD submit to treatment, which the condition itself makes unlikely.

 Frankly, in my layman’s opinion (and because of it) I believe Donald Trump has a NPD. It may be based only on the common-man axiom of; walks like a duck, smells like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc., but I feel it is close enough that to consider otherwise could be catastrophic for the Nation or the entire World…wow! Really??

Here are the characteristics of NPD that I pulled off the Mayo Clinic website. Other sites post characteristics that are essentially identical:

• Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
• Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
• Exaggerating your achievements and talents
• Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
• Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
• Requiring constant admiration
• Having a sense of entitlement
• Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations
• Taking advantage of others to get what you want
• Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
• Being envious of others and believing others envy you
• Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

Picture Donald Trump and read each one of these characteristics again. Can it get any closer?

Okay, there is a really scary part to this and, I believe, an interesting reason not to find it frightening.

The scary part is that the individual with NPD cannot psychologically take responsibility for his or her actions that are in conflict with the condition. In other words, if something goes wrong they cannot see their role in the problem or failure.  Bold face lies are standard fare.

As such they can become paranoid, looking to blame others for the predicament. In failure to find others to accuse (which is likely) they create imaginary villains. That’s where things get really dicey.  Existing in someone with power is dangerous, in a President….well; I don’t even want to go there.

So what is the not-so-frightening aspect of Donald Trump having NPD?  That’s where my prediction comes in.  I am predicting, at this point a full 6 weeks before the Republican Party Convention, that Donald Trump will not be his party’s nominee.

I believe Trump is already showing an inability to cope with the criticism being leveled against him.  His responses are becoming increasingly defensive and erratic.  All of us would have a problem with this, but for someone with a NPD it is like a poison IV, literally.  I am predicting that Trump will find someone, something, or a combination of both as a reason why he has no choice but to drop out of the race.

If I’m wrong is my prediction dead?  Not really. If his ego is sufficient to carry himself into the general election, then I further predict he will drop out of the general election before November for the same reason, to avoid the highly public pain and erratic behavior associated with having a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 
 
What will that mean? If my predictions are correct it will be political dynamics that even the most fanciful writer for reality TV could never dream up. But if they try, I’m sure the Donald will audition for the lead role.

Elizabeth Warren through Me

If I could choose a dream job this year it would be to work on Elizabeth Warren’s speech writing staff.  There is no politician left-of-center in this country who can match her ability to present concepts with both conveyed understanding and honest compassion.  Frankly, I feel it is likely there is no one, left, right, or center, who can match her, but then…I have a bias.

That said, no such dream job is coming my way.  However, I figured I could play my little role anyway.  I’d write her a short speech, maybe more than one, and post them to this blog.  

Right now she has chosen to expose early the unstable nature and character of the Republican Presidential Nominee and in doing so expose the Republican Party itself, as their candidate is of their creation.  I want to join in, even in this very small way.

"Elizabeth Warren" on Trump, May 2016

Broadcast May 17^th, Donald Trump ended his friendly Megan Kelly interview with these words; “…if I don’t win, I will consider it to be a total and complete waste of time, energy, and money”. Think about it. What is this man saying? You could not find a more shallow narrative, in this great land, for someone seeking its highest office.

Why do any of us do anything?  Sure we want prosperity, we want security, we want to raise our children to survive our lives, hopefully with joys that far surpass our own. We want to feel our labors have value. Conservative and liberal, black and white, rich and poor, or the middle class, we all set our goals and expectations. In this we have more in common than we have differences.

With these efforts, or even struggles, there are successes and failures.  Ya win some and ya lose some. Who’s not familiar with that? But who are the real losers?

The young single mother who strives to raise her children using whatever help available is not a loser, the banker who lost his deal on principal is not a loser, the news producer who suffered a loss in ratings by choosing to ignore untruths is not a loser, the student saddled with debt who struggles to find a career is not a loser. 

We are supremely blessed to live in a nation with almost incalculable success relative to the rest of the world and history.  We still fail and often, but the resilience by which we struggle and manage the many changes we face become our finest moments.  It is why I believe that America is greater today than whatever time it is that Donald Trump thinks he wants to take us back to.

Make America Great Again is really only a slogan fashioned for reality TV.

Trump may end up being one of our finest moments.  To the extent the voters of this Country rally behind all his opponents and also against those that support him at every level of Government we may be entering a new era of optimism and unification…a grinding end to a Cold Civil War.

Like most Americans, I am tired of systemic and heartless discrimination, tired of people convinced to be scared of anyone not like themselves, tired of the denial of science, and tired of feeling apprehensive with those who may not think just as I do.  This tiresome American is what Donald Trump would take us back to. It isn’t winning.

What Trump was saying in his final comment to Megan Kelly was if I don’t win, then screw you America, you weren’t worth it. I’d have done better using my time, energy, and money picking up a few more foreclosed properties.

Donald Trump, considering his current position as leader of the Republican Party and nominee for President, is the ultimate loser.  He's a loser because he has no concept of what winning is. In fact, his narrow, caustic, narcissistic personality will never…never allow him to actually win. He personifies the lowest, most hideous human characteristic short of sadism – insatiable self-interest.

The greater sadness, even danger is to those who are choosing to emulate what Trump represents.  Please pay attention and realize that all your efforts have meaning, as do the honest efforts of those you encounter. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing in life.