Trump Selling Opposition of Establishment Vision

 

Trump is running a campaign empty of substance, which are the claims from the Establishment and the other Republican candidates opposing him. Trump getting red faced and frustrated when attacked simply feeds the everybody is out to get him, the same exact feeling which much of the populace also feels as their health costs have tripled, the coverage is so limited that it is the cause of much of the increased health costs because the system is not designed to deliver healthcare but to transfer funds to the lower third or even half of the population, the people on public support and who pay no taxes. Even if Trump or a Republican President with a Republican Congress redesign Obamacare into Republicare, the system will still become cumbersome and loaded down with regulations and impossible hurdles to get proper care because government does not do healthcare. Government does regulations and compartmentalization all of which is the antithesis of good healthcare which requires everyone to have access to one another and their opinions. Government had proven to be very poor at interfacing differing areas of every agency and healthcare will end up being no different. The lack of interconnectivity is a large part of the problem in Veterans Healthcare and the public version will be even worse as there will be that many more patients to tangle up in forms, requests and what we from the military knew as SNAFUs, Situation Normal All Fouled Up.

 

One of the main reasons that Donald Trump has won three primaries in a row and might well outperform his rivals today, Super Tuesday, has much to do with the Republican Party deciding that it was best to front-load many of the primary elections when states clamored to place their voting as early as possible. This was seen as important because everyone wanted their race to be the one which put the candidate over the threshold thus making their state appear to be the important and pivotal primary state. It was the race to the front a number of years ago which pressured the parties to change their primary as nobody wanted to have their state primary elections after one candidate had necessarily won making their election results meaningless. This has allowed Donald Trump to make a grab for delegates a viable stratagem by simply playing to the crowds as the one being ganged up and mugged by his apparent closest rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Their tactic to reveal Trump as an empty suit would have had far greater effect had they started earlier and had the time to reveal his lack of any form of plan, as Trump has basically made a campaign around his phrase of, “I’m going to make America great again.” He is basically running a campaign as this election’s Hope and Change candidate offering change we will all hope will change the stuff needing change or the people will lose all hope. The other candidates would have served themselves far better had they come up with a theme around which they actually built their argument as that would have given them a rivaling theme and one with substance and not relying on hot air, something which has lifted Trump like a hot air balloon. The other two main rivals attempting to poke a hole in Trump’s balloon has left them standing on the ground while he soared to apparent victory.

 

 

Trumps Vehicle to the White House
A Hot Air Balloon
Filled With Hot Angry Rhetoric

 

Again, it is really possible that there will emerge a winner by the Ides of March and the United States will be left fearing two-thirds of a year of Trump being Trump. What is even more astounding has been the Republicans and not so insignificant number of Democrats who have claimed they want a president with substance and grit with an actual and explained plan to move the United States back to its preeminence in the world, and Donald Trump has captured their minds and left them giddy filled with some intoxicant. The intoxicant is a slogan which expresses the electorate’s desires which claiming “I’m going to make America great again,” fills that need and many believe that there is a real plan behind the slogan. The frightening thing is that President Obama had a plan to go along with his “Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can” sloganeering in 2008 elections. Those slogans and electing the first Black United States President simply intoxicated the American public and here we are two terms of Hope and Change later. The one thing many Americans are now claiming is that those Changes were not what they had Hoped they would be. Eight years ago nobody challenged President Obama to define the Change we were presumably Hoping for so that left it up to each individual to define the Change and that gave them Hope. Here we are eight years later and it appears that the presumed thinking party had fallen for a phrase and no plan, which may prove just as intoxicating as President Obama’s sloganeering. The question the Republicans need to ask themselves is will “I’m going to make America great again,” as a campaign slogan last through to the elections or will the balloon burst and the Republican hopes of taking the White House dwindle and completely blow away on the wind, the same wind they had hoped would change the ownership of the White House.

 

We have been hearing an argument that we do not need another sloganeering campaign despite its appeal and they have claimed that nobody has won based on a slogan before President Obama attempting to pin his election on Hope and Change as an illusion the nation cannot afford another such President. The sorry thing is there have been numerous Presidents elected simply due to an inspirational catch phrase, though often also filled with actual plans and positions deeper than “Make America great again.” President Eisenhower had a slogan which was festooned across the country and it proved accurate that, “I Like Ike,” won the nation’s hearts. The fact General Eisenhower managed the victory in Europe during World War II probably aided his run for the White House. There were cryptic slogans such as Theodore Roosevelt whose single word slogan, “Bully” both won him the White House and redefined that word to mean a winner, a successful achiever and to have the advantage in speaking giving us the terminology “Bully Pulpit.”

 

 

 

Through American history there have always been slogans, some of which proved memorable enough to outlast the campaign and even the candidate such as: ‘Don’t Change Horses in Mid-Stream,’ ‘All Power to the Imagination!,’ ‘Better Dead than Red,’ ‘Four More Years,’ ‘Vote for a Change,’ ‘Remember Pearl Harbor!,’ ‘Remember the Alamo!,’ ‘He Kept Us Out of War,’ ‘Think Globally, Act Locally,’ ‘We are the 99%,’ ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,’ ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,’ ‘The Buck Stops Here,’ ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch,’ ‘Workers of the World Unite,’ and one which sounds eerily applicable to one of the current campaigns, ‘No War but Class War.’ The idea of finding a catch phrase which resonates is as old as politics and even predates elections as slogans can be used to start or end revolutions or can be used to win wars and get the public roused. Rosie the Riveter was used to sell war bonds along with an entire and ongoing campaign which came from an actual advertising agency contracted by the government. Without slogans much of politics would simply be dry rhetoric stating facts, lying about facts, stretching and mutilating facts leaving at least a shred or two of truth in them and the other things as old as politics, mud-slinging. During the 1796 elections between Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams, Jefferson supporters described Adams in an article run in Philadelphia as, “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” In 1828 Presidential election Andrew Jackson was described in a Cincinnati newspaper by John Q. Adams supporter wrote, “General Jackson’s mother was a COMMON PROSTITUTE brought to this country by British soldiers. She afterwards married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which General JACKSON IS ONE!!!” and lastly from the 1800 Adams-Jefferson campaign we get this gem describing John Adams as a, “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” The name-calling today is tame and respectful compared to the early years in politics where anything was fair game including big whoppers of lies.

 

The way to prevent sloganeering of winning the primary campaign in a single burst of well-planned buffoonery would be to spread the primary elections out with the states with sizeable numbers of delegates evenly spaced with them slightly weighted towards the middle to end of the season as they are the likely states where the fight will be the most revealing as we really need to know which candidate has the right stuff to survive an attack calling them a, “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Such a lengthening of the campaign such that it represents a solid four month campaign where the people could really get to compare and contrast the candidates and they will be pressed to give greater insight and depth, not that such things tend to actually matter any longer. Now the elections are decided by the media and the operatives with the people caught in the middle. “I’m going to make America great again.” That is a great slogan and would be even better if we knew how. With President Obama who won not just one but two Presidential campaigns on little if any substance we do not need another sloganeer. The first was sold as Hope and Change. Well, we all hope for better days to come and change is inevitable as the laws of physics explain all too muddled in the math for many of us to understand. Who doesn’t understand this Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann formula from Analytic Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory shown below?

 

 

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann
formula from Analytic Algebraic
Geometry and Number Theory

 

The problem is obvious; most of us will start to pay attention to the primary elections in our respective states, if we even bother to vote, about a week, maybe two, before the election is held. Then we see who our equally clueless friends are supporting, maybe look up something on-line and then as all too many people too busy to take the time and carefully analyze each candidate’s positions and other pertinent items, not like all who read articles here as they obviously have done and followed since the first person announced over a year ago, thank you Dr. Ben Carson, and finally turn on the radio to hear the news and vote for whoever is ahead in the polls as they want to vote for the winner (yes, I knew somebody who voted with that exact reasoning, voted for the winner). This election in the United States, and if everything does not collapse, or worse, implode, then also the next few Presidential and Congressional elections will decide the fate of more than the United States. They may decide whether the world enters World War III before the United States has redeployed her military so as to have them dispersed and thus many surviving a preemptory strike which simply destroys the power generation grid leaving the people to die a slow death of starvation and Americans shooting each other over a piece of bread or a jar of peanut butter, chunky, of course. That also might decide where the remnants of Europe escape to as the tensions in Europe begin to boil over and fighting breaks out in the streets. What is important for all in the free world to remember was a one singular shameful event where people stood and watched and some shot pictures but nobody stepped forward to lead and prevent this gruesome event from the afternoon of May 22, 2013, a British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was attacked and killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London and beheaded.

 

 

Fusilier Lee Rigby
of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers
Honored Posthumously in Parade

 

That a crowd watched and did nothing will be the critical moment when many of us discovered that the world we thought we knew was dead and soon a critical question will be imposed on the Western World, the question of will you stand for your privilege and way of life or will you as well surrender before the coming storm, before Islam. So, which will it be? We and many fear the answer might just be silence, the worst kind of silence which comes right before the storm, and it will be a storm like has been unheard for a very long time.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

The Inevitable Democrat Disaster and Conundrum

 

Hillary the Inevitable is looking more and more like Hillary the Impeachable with a date with a different kind of contest where the inquisitors are Senators and Representatives. Or worse, things could be slowly creeping towards an indictment resulting in an incarceration instead of a coronation. But even if Hillary the candidate Clinton avoids becoming Hillary the convicted Clinton, she still has a very dubious future in taking the Democrat nomination to run for President starting late summer or early fall. Should Hillary escape the ominous clouds roiling on the horizon, she is facing an uphill battle against Bernie Sanders who basically tied Hillary as it took her winning six coin tosses in six different caucus locations. Imagine the buzz about such unbelievable luck had these very same six-for-six coin tosses gone for Bernie Sanders. New Hampshire there was no need for tie breakers as Bernie Sanders won over Hillary by twenty-two points and his campaign received a healthy influx of donations which will all spell additional advertisements and other efforts boosting Sanders’ campaign and possibly bury Hillary’s campaign. Hillary was not expecting to be challenged, especially by a self-proclaimed Socialist, with a capital S, and a Jewish one at that, who always ran as an independent from Vermont and caucused with the Democrats. Where having a first Jewish President would be some worthy accomplishment which would in this day and age come with some expectations, especially for a liberal, concerning Israel and even more-so should this Jew be running under the Democrat banner in this election year where the Democrat candidate is expected to continue President Obama’s policies.

 

Regarding Israel, Bernie Sanders could be one of the few who could out-despise Israel and do far more damage and still for the hard-core anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Bernie Sanders being Jew would still be accused of supporting Israel and bowing to their demands on policies. Please believe that nothing could be further from the truth. We believe that the full extent of Bernie Sanders Jewishness consists of his parents were non-practicing Jews and he claims no real affinity with the fact that he was born as a Jew yet he had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony. “These were working class assimilated Jewish-Americans, and that culture is very deep in his bones,” Abbey told JNS.org regarding Sanders’s upbringing. Sanders also spent time on an Israeli kibbutz following his graduation from the University of Chicago in the 1960s. Yet in Congress, Israel has been far from the forefront of his agenda, taking a backseat to issues like income inequality. Meanwhile, Senator Sanders has been rather averse to some things concerning Israel, was first to boycott Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and other disparities which indicate that Bernie Sanders very well may throw Israel under the bus if it serves his ambitions to reach the White House. More can be read here at JNS.org.

 

We believe that he has already adopted the BDS side of the political street especially since he has chosen to use J Street, an anti-Israel group of Jews who use the bludgeon of “Peace in their time” to bash Israel into unrecognizable pieces claiming Israeli Zionist and nationalists are the sole impediment to peace and claim peace would already have been achieved if only Israel would offer the Arabs a deal which gives them their area of land and half of Jerusalem. J Street also claims that Israel is lying about not having ready access to the Jewish Holy Sites as Abbas has stated there is no problem for Jews to visit such places as Joseph’s tomb if they simply get permission from the Palestinian Authority (PA), something the PA claims had never been done, a lie as numerous times such has been sought and the answer was silence and claims that no such request was filed with them to visit these sites because the sites Israel claims are their Holy Sites are actually recognized Mosques and are all under consideration by UNESCO to be granted recognition as such as Islamic Holy Sites. UNESCO was the organization which recognized PA statehood and admitted them as a member state after their United Nations status was upgraded by the General Assembly two years ago. This is the J Street which will be referred to as a Zionist and pro-Israel group which is prejudicial against Palestinian statehood when push comes to shove.

 

 

 

 

The Senator’s other foreign policy advisors according to the candidate himself is the Arab American Institute as well as Jim Zogby as his Middle East and other foreign policy advisers. These bring his support for Israel even further into question and one might conclude that Israel is a non-Issue and that Senator Sanders was truthful when stating he would take a balanced approach to the Israel and PA issue as well as other problems concerning Israel. Where that leaves us is looking straight at “take a balanced approach to the Israel and PA issue” as the bromide solution which means he will come down on Israel as the problem and expect little to nothing from the PA when it comes to making peace as Israel, particularly Prime Minister Netanyahu and anybody not on the leftist approach are the real problem. He believes that if Israel would simply see the problem from the Arab side they would understand that it is a religious attachment they have to the land and that they would be open to sharing any of the Jewish sites from antiquity. This is a position which Bernie Sanders likely has been advised is an honest appraisal of the situation as this is close to word for word the J Street and PA answer over peace and claim that such discussions should be left for the two governments to discuss but first there must be a settlement acceptable to the Arabs.

 

What such a position leaves out is that according to the Arabs and the PA there are no Jewish Holy Sites for the Jews to visit. There never was a Temple, Jewish or otherwise before the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were built on the site where Abraham almost sacrifices Ishmael and the story claiming it was Yitzhak is a Jewish deceit they have claimed for years so as to steal a Muslim Holy Site. According to the PA there exist no Jewish Holy Sites because the Jews never lived in the Middle East and that they have been the only residents of the area going back many thousands of years. Islam is based partially on the ‘fact’ that the Jews (and the Christians after them) have blasphemed by altering the Quran, the true Bible as given by Moses, an Islamic Prophet, to their ancestors and that Mohammad came to correct the corruptions of the Jews and Christians who attempted to steal their holy faith and use their own bastardized version to make claims on all the Islamic Holy Sites and was one of the reasons for the war between the Muslims and Jews which started with the surprise assault by the Jews which the believers in Islam prevailed by the will of Allah and is further proof of the falsity of Judaism. This side of the argument has likely not been completely and honestly given to Bernie Sanders as that would make what they believe untenable Senator Sanders. Before anybody accuses me of calling the Islamic view as liars, allow me to explain that they are simply being good Muslims and observing the Islamic command of Taqiyya, nothing more and nothing less.

 

Still, there are those in the silence of the backroom control over the political machine who would wince at the proposition that a Jew be allowed to represent their party in an election for President and so have serious issues with Bernie Sanders. These are the sources seeking an answer to the inevitable crash and burn which is the Hillary campaign and had first pushed for Vice President Joe Biden to run so there would be another candidate where Hillary could place her delegates upon bowing out of consideration when her problems catch up with her. There have been numerous rumors and rumors of rumors that any numbers of other candidates were approached but none wanted to appear to be taking on running against Hillary. The Democrats appear to be stuck between a security risking felon and a Jewish candidate for President, leader of the free world. We can expect every stop to be pulled out to prevent what may end up an unstoppable runaway campaign barreling down the last legs of a race which was apparently unbeatable campaign once again laying in shattered pieces along the path to victory. Thusfar that is what appears to be in the cards. Bernie Sanders opted to run against a certitude that the candidate was going to be Hillary Clinton with almost every super delegate in her pocket. All she had to do was go through the motions, make a few speeches and appear to be actually actively campaigning when in reality the decision had been made that this time the candidacy belonged to Hillary and it was hers to lose. All that would be required from her would be to give the same almost identical stump speeches and perhaps allow an interview with the media who would be carefully chosen as would be the questions they would ask, each of the chosen feeling great privilege to ask that one question from the anointed one. One can almost imagine Hillary Clinton singing that Beatles classic song, “Yesterday,” and particularly these lines from the song,

 

“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday.”

 

Now we get to watch how the Democrat Party will treat a situation where their choices for placing on the ballot are between a clean elderly Jewish Senator or a possibly criminally indicted former First Lady who was married to President Clinton which the party rewarded her standing by their man with a Senatorial seat from New York, a place she needed to buy a house with the money they did not have after leaving the White House dead broke possibly needing to sell the silverware which disappeared along with the letter ‘W’ key on most of the computers. When she basically was lack-luster at Senator and she demanded a shot at the top position she was favored in 2008, the initial “inevitable tour” which crashed and burned as Barack Hussein Obama beat her like a drum and “stole” the nomination. Now, eight years and a disastrous run as Secretary of State we are witnessing the “inevitable tour, take two,” which appears will also crash and burn as Bernie Sanders has all the magic attracting the youth and will also have the standards of a Democrat candidate gets and putting the two together, a viable and believable shot at winning. It will depend largely on who survives on the Island where they appear to vote people off by not voting for them and the show is down to the final six. So stay tuned and see if Hillary finally grabs the ring or does Bernie steal it from her having her slowly burn and demand possibly to be his running mate and who will survive the Island where one wishes he could simply tell his competition, “You’re Fired,” but this is no reality show. This is the real and only reality show where the winner gets to face the barbs and scorn of the media as they try to destroy your life in any way they can. This could become the comedy sensation of the fall lineup, we will just have to wait and see. Imagine a Bernie does the Trump tour on Presidential Island race, what fun.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Iowa Results and Insights

 

The biggest lesson we learned was that the media placed far too much emphasis on the caucuses. What we learned was that in cases where there was no definitive winner, then the entire choice would come down to a coin toss, how perfectly random. In the six instances where these rules were applied it was apparent that team Hillary got to call the coin-toss and call them they did. Apparently Bernie Sanders was perfectly happy to allow her team to call it, “Heads we win and Tails you lose.” And in six caucuses that appears to have been the call as Hillary either won each or Bernie lost, either way, Hillary went forth and declared a great victory while Bernie, being Bernie, claimed he and his supporters gave it a good fight and promised to continue the “Revolution” on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and beyond. When one looks beyond the primary delegates to the “Super Delegates” which are more or less decided by the Democrat Central Committee, one sees the reality of the delegate race as Hillary has 357, Bernie has 14 and O’Malley has 2 all going towards garnering the 2382 delegates needed to win.

 

We learned that Hillary can place way too much emphasis on her phantasmal ability or luck by her precinct chairs abilities to call coin tosses. Her grand claims of victory soon turned to sand in her mouth and she probably sputtered and spurted still insisting she had a mandate. Perhaps she was looking at the super delegate count which is made up of party hacks and people of whom Hillary had their FBI files on another server which was not used for State department e-mails but whose contents would be just as interesting to the voting public but has zero chance of ever seeing the light of day as it would be burned as soon as it was taken in as evidence. There are far too many people the files held there could damage and who have the power to destroy evidence just as well as Bill and Hill have proven capable. We also learned that Bernie has excited and tapped into an interesting voter group, the young and first time voters. Some of these first time voters have been of sufficient age to vote before but have now found their candidate. This is a large part of the voters eight years ago which propelled Obama into the White House and are just as likely to spoil Hillary’s last chance saloon and give her a really bad case of déja vu hiccups as she watches another upstart, this time a seventy-four year old hippie socialist who never let go of the dream from his college days, or is it daze? Should Bernie Sanders pull this off he will have proven that Hillary is fated to never grasp the golden ring in politics and Bill will never hear the end of how it was supposed to be hers but that Obama beat her and then Bernie the crazed lunatic stole it and it just was not fair. I guess nobody ever had the nerve or the suicidal tendencies to tell Hillary that life quite often is not fair. We learned also that Bernie had a solid and faithful following and that his challenge to the chosen one is real and very possible no matter how many delegates Bill can line up on Hillary’s side as in this day and age of the voters, as a collective intelligence, choose the candidates and the final elevations of a President. We also have seen the inside of the “Feel the Bern” generations and they are coming on strong and this might make Bernie Sanders the more electable Democrat and the real candidate the Republicans should fear facing.

 

The Republicans gave us a different message. The evangelicals, the Christian Right, was supposed to decide the Iowa vote and put one of two candidates on the short list for failure; they did not come through that way but have written the last swan song for Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz needed to corral, he is from Texas you know, the Evangelicals but he somehow lost about half the herd which left him limping into first place by a small margin, though it was a landslide by Hillary standards. Ted Cruz did do well as many had predicted claiming that the majority of the polling numbers for ‘The Donald’ (Donald Trump from here on) were mostly fictitious and when the time came to actually support a candidate, these polling numbers would prove to be a phantasm and disappear. Well, they actually did but not as far as predicted and Donald Trump has proven he is for real and will become a viable and potential winner should he start to actually express serious steps and reasons for his bombastic statements and clarify them into a reasonable platform people can stand behind. Ted Cruz, as wonderful as his supporters claim, will very likely fall flat in New Hampshire and rebound in South Carolina and Florida though it will remain to be seen if that is sufficient for him to remain in the race. After the caucuses in Nevada and Colorado it will be definitively decided who is the acceptable alternative to the establishment choice which appears currently to have fallen from Jeb Bush to Chris Christie to John Kasich and now on the Marco Rubio. Other than Cruz, Trump and Rubio who finished in close proximity to one-another, the rest should start taking stock of how much is this worth pursuing and what actually are your actual chances of emerging from the background in a positive manner. The media will ignore you until you make a mistake, and then they will crucify you until you fall on your sword; trust me, I’ve been there. For a good number, probably larger than those willing to vote for him, Ben Carson leaving will be heart-wrenching. We want so much to just once have the nice guy who refused to go negative and was an exemplary person whose life reads like a storybook where underprivileged youth from the worst part of town rise to prominence and was not only a success but also a solid positive force and contribution to society become Mr. Smith Goes to Washington except with a much happier result as he rises above the political machinery and does great and wonderful things lifting the nation by his inspirations. That would have been Ben Carson but perhaps this is better as the media have not torn him to shreds which would have come next had he shown he might succeed. The media will praise you to the hills and as soon as you start to succeed, partially due to their building you up, they will tear into you until you let out a personal secret, say that one time you lost your temper, we all have at least one such moment, and then that will become your defining moment as if nothing else you ever accomplished really made up for the momentary weakness when you were eight years old.

 

 

Mr. Carson Goes to Washington

 

 

So the result in Iowa placed Ted Cruz momentarily in the cat bird seat with Donald Trump close behind and Marco Rubio in tightly behind Donald Trump. There being merely 8,500 votes between the three out of close to 175,000 they finished in a photo finish which their margins only looked large compared to the difference, or lack thereof, between the top Democrat candidates who basically resulted in a dead heat. The reality hopefully will become obvious to the three that for the race to be determined honestly then one of the non-establishment candidates will need to bow out if the other will have even a chance of taking the nomination. Should all three remain in the race and the contest continue to have similar results then there will be the definite possibility that at the Republican Convention there will be no definitive winner and as long as the three remain holding their delegates to their vote then there will be an arranged result which is basically a fixed convention where a candidate is chosen in some back room with some establishment and insiders making a choice and then bringing their golden boy forward and sweeping the convention as the party machinery steamrolls any opposition and presto, Jeb Bush is brought forward as the great hope of the party and we end up with the potentially lowest turnout election percentage in American history as we end up with that dreaded Clinton-Bush family rerun of the 1992 election without the drama or concern as the people show their disgust by staying home. Should this scenario become reality, then there need be a slight Constitutional Amendment making every Federal elected office have an additional choice at the bottom such that the people can demand better choices than the party line who has scratched the most backs and it is decided to reward them by making it their turn for the House of Representatives and then later the Senate and finally, for the real party hardliners, the Presidency by voting for “None of the Above” and if “None of the Above” receives the greatest plurality then the parties must find new candidates and a reelection will take place six weeks later, so they better choose well and somebody the people would rally to or they could face embarrassment after embarrassment and perhaps allow a primary if it is a Senate or House of Representatives for unaligned people to attempt to gain ballot access and allow the highest independent vote getter to also be on the ballot as it is doubtful such a person could do any worse in the performance than some of those currently in office. We really need to get better quality candidates and until the parties are forced to consider that they have to win over the people or face challenges from what are usually referred to as Joe-six-pack meaning it as a pejorative label when actually that may be a person who would do a far better job of representing the people with their being from amongst them. Still, there are the gems amongst a sea of party functionaries and the quality, or lack thereof, of the candidates on the average ballot simply proves George Washington correct when he claimed, “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Enough said.

 

We regret that nowhere in the conglomerate of offerings is there a single candidate with military service in their background. Some of the candidates I doubt could reduce their self-worth to a sufficient level to survive basic training nor would they know when to stand on principle and when to stand down as that is also something they test in basic training and for the select few who respond accordingly they offer them to attend OCS which is the one way that an enlisted man can become an officer, and maybe a gentleman. The world stage being what it is, we believe would be best served by somebody who has served and our first choice would be Lt. Col. Alan West.

 

Beyond the Cusp