I have seen this exact style and lack of truth in an election built entirely on one overriding misdirection repeated ad-nauseum. I reserve the right to keep you guessing and in the dark, just as the media coverage of the American Presidential Election has and will continue as they have chosen and scripted their coverage for one side, Hillary Clinton’s coronation. One might ask why there has been so little a cry from the Republican elite and leadership. The reason has much to do with their complete lack of pushback against Donald Trump’s initial success while their golden candidate, Jeb Bush, completely crashed and burned without any Republican emergency response team to douse the flames. They were assisting and even secretly arranging in quiet ways Donald Trump’s victory as this was necessitated for a Hillary Clinton victory in the general election. Any honest and readily supportable Republican candidate with the possible exception of Ted Cruz, unsurprisingly the sole Republican who had any hope of toppling the Trump nomination, would have beaten Hillary like a drum. That was the requirement the Republican Party power brokers delivered upon just as directed in the Hillary coronation directive handbook which everybody appears to be playing by except The Donald. Thankfully The Donald is extremely well adapted for the role of the unscripted wildcard.
There was an excerpt from the comedy show “Third Rock from the Sun” where John Lithgow’s character boils over (normal for his character) about the election and the anguish mixed with insanity he suffers over how to decide through all the lies and confusion (see video below) and Jane Curtain’s character quotes, rather loosely, Winston Churchill about the horror that is Democracy as a form of government. If you are a Lithgow fan, as am I, then you will love this. This is also unfortunately how all too many voters in America are likely feeling and this confusion does not stop at the shores, it extends to wherever people are involving this election into their lives. Unlike Lithgow, many will not be burdened with having to make that fateful choice; only Americans can be so cursed. Some have defined this election as between a crook and a megalomaniac. Well, it could always be worse; they could both be megalomaniacal crooks which some claim is also the case. Our solace is that even if we still resided in the United States, our state is the second most extreme such that there is no chance of countering the overwhelming majority which makes all predetermined. What makes this election so beyond most not overly familiar with American political theater and how most of the states are all but preordained to vote one party or the other with near 100% accuracy. What this produces is the election will rest on as few as five swing states to a maximum of a dozen potential swing states. As Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida alone could elect Hillary Clinton if she wins all three, the election may be all but decided early. If not then after Ohio, Illinois, and a remote Michigan swing will end all expectations as after that Colorado and New Mexico are unlikely to make the difference, but one can never be too sure. Imagine if it has been announced that Hillary will win and then, against all the odds, California goes for Trump. There would be a lot of news anchors with egg on their faces at that.
The nicest thing about the American election is that the tense and shrill back-and-forth screaming and accusations being exchanged blow for blow will all be decided within two and a half weeks. The less than nice thing is whoever wins will be the President of the United States for, at a minimum, four years. Whichever candidate prevails, the media will be filled with either criticisms or adulation every day from inauguration through their run for reelection. The one thing of which we can all be assured is that the next President of the United States will take office facing more than the usual set of challenges facing them immediately as they take office. The world has seen perilous times with ominous omens and exceedingly high threat indexes but rarely at the levels as all indicators press are rapidly approaching. The state of the world begs the question of why anybody would actually seek the Presidency at this time. The obvious answer would be either an inflated, larger than life ego or an overbearing feeling of being preordained and whose time has finally come though overdue. Looking at the two candidates we find that we have one of each, imagine that. Who could have imagined such an interesting election where only two personality types would seek the Presidency and then get both personalities? Usually one candidate appears so much more fitting the times and they rise to the office but here we have two. With both fitting one of two differing profiles, the voters will need to decide which candidate as well as which profile and then which is more necessary to face the coming difficulties and possible scenarios which will likely present themselves in the upcoming months and years.
This is not an election to envy the American voting public as if they were to choose poorly, the world will pay a horrific price, perhaps things which completely change the world as we know it today with massive change of the progressing of civilization and the laws by which we are governed. There are few points throughout history where the right person is in the right position when their world needs their type, style or quality of leadership. Even more unlikely has been the right person elected where they ward off a coming threat. Probably the most obvious example was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as having the worst possible qualities for leadership facing the rise of Nazi Germany. Fortunately the British made a better choice once they realized that a war for survival was upon them choosing Winston Churchill. We can only hope that the world does not face a repeat of such as what led to World War II. The world would be far better off avoiding any war which would sink any sizeable parts of the world if at all possible.
Centers of World Conflicts
There can be little doubt that the world is once again approaching another central pivoting point where a future for the foreseeable future will be determined. If one were to plot out a logical future, it would point to a failing of technology to prove decisive in a coming conflagration. The main and possibly only hope the advanced Western technological edge would have to preserve the underlying social structures of passivity, full equality, gender blending, sexual independence, complete tolerance and the abhorrence of the use of force is if their technology can circumvent the fierce religious observance and intractability following the strictest interpretations of their religious dogmas as possible, demanding the conquest and submission of all who are in any way different. Their strictness in observances leads to intrareligious inflexibility forcing rejection of those following even the slightest difference of interpretation or of historic views of the passing of leadership such as the detestations which existed in Christianity during the reformation. The world is shrinking in unprecedented ways and rapidity which is forcing the disparate religions, societies, governances, philosophies and every other predispositions that separate the varying formations of humanity closer and into competitions which forces clashes in every manner of difference possible. The resolutions of these conflicts will determine the future, or even if there is a future, of humanity. This makes every election worldwide and especially in the West, especially the United States as the flagship, and the manner of succession in undemocratic lands and the resolution of wars before their effects spread endangering other lands, as with Syria, and in such a manner as to advance peace and not more conflict. Bringing conflicts to an end and preventing future conflict while advancing intersocietal tolerance are the most important of the coming challenges we are going to face as a planet. Whoever can advance strong, flexible, determined, intelligent, intuitive leadership with an understanding of the needs and respects demanded by others and being capable of incorporating such in their negotiations and even more urgent and feverish emerging engagements and confrontations would prove to be the most intelligent of leaders. Such a leader would also be required to choose wise and capable advisors with diverse backgrounds so they can present the widest of potential venues and paths forward. As the ancient Chinese curse read, “May you live in interesting times,” and we most certainly are doing exactly that.
Oh, and where have I seen this campaign before? In a comic book come television show then movie series, Batman. There was an election in Gotham City between Batman and Penguin. Penguin ran a campaign based on how you always saw him in the company of police while Batman was always in the company of arch villains asking, who would you prefer as Mayor, one who keeps company of the police or someone who is always in the company of arch villains and criminals? (see below) Plot killer, Penguin won the election, of course. The result, well, that is the question after every election, isn’t it.
Let’s talk Clinton, Hillary that is. She was supposed to be The Candidate, the Unstoppable One, but nobody told Barack Obama and he spoke so much more eloquently and was smooth as a well-aged single malt scotch. He glistened and his words were lilt with a little jazz and simply reminded all of other great communicators, except Obama had magic that excited the youth, a group not normally excited by Presidential politics and thus they are a game changer. So the queen was put off for yet another eight years and she has reached the now or never point. Let’s face the truth, Hillary is well passed her sell-by date and only Bernie was more stale on the shelf, except he was so stale that it actually rang as new to those young idealists and he could have won had the decision already been made, Hillary or Bust. So the fix has been revealed, nobody was shocked, and nobody other than some still feeling the Bern even after the Bern, Bernie that is, had sold his soul and backed Hillary for a few slots on the Platform Committee which made the news as Cornel West, James Zogby, and Rep. Keith Ellison who demanded that the BDS and pro-Palestinian anti-Israel planks be part of the Democrat Platform but the fix was in and they had none of that. There was not going to be a repeat of voting down the mention of the Divine and recognizing Israel as an ally this time around as in 2012. The Convention was planned right down to the last snap shot and television camera angle, well, all except the one below which got by the planners somehow, or maybe it was photo-shopped (see image below). Even the demonstrations outside the convention were tame compared to what some expected. So, yes, they burned an Israeli flag and a Palestinian flag was presumably held up front and center and was caught by cameras (see image below). And then there was the demonstrations outside by largely Bernie Sanders supporters some of which chose to burn an Israeli flag while chanting “Intifada, Intifada” which is another way of chanting Murder Jews Murder Jews but even this was not condemned as far as we were able to confirm by anybody from the Democrat Party inside (see video below).
Hillary Liar Shot From Convention
Palestinian Flag Waved Democrat Convention Floor
Enough though about the fixed, or apparently fixed primary as both parties had their preferred candidate list and one succeeded in procuring their candidate the nomination and the other failed miserably by, as some have claimed, nominating the biggest buffoon and clown from a field of seventeen, but enough about the Republicans as they were talked over yesterday. Back to the former First Lady from Arkansas, former Senator from New York, and former Secretary of State also from New York and now the Democrat Party candidate for President of the United States. So far her campaign has been seamless and smooth as long as one ignores the little glitch where an aged politician independent not even a Democrat but a self-proclaimed socialist almost pulled the rug from beneath the anointed one to once again spoil her coronation. But with that almost put behind her and soon to be forgotten, bigger challenges of the actual race for the White House now begins in earnest. The polls have been showing Hillary Clinton receiving a bounce from her convention while Trump’s polling has flattened as his bounce wore off and the Democrat Convention took all the air time out from under him. Hillary Clinton has what many are calling an unending cash flow to do any campaigning she desires and in as big and wide of markets as her campaign deems necessary. There are some who have claimed that Hillary Clinton could buy so much air time between now and the elections that the studios might have little if any prime time spots available should Trump ever decide to try and purchase ad time for his spots. There probably are rules concerning amounts of time which one candidate is permitted to take before scheduling begins to appear as solid wall to wall advertising for a single candidate for President with the other candidate basically out in the cold, which would be an interesting situation for research. There may be no limitations on advertising or requirements to make equal time available to the other candidates. The law may simply be the time must be available and for the candidates and first one buying gets the prime times and then the breaks. As near as we were able to research there are few limitations which would prevent one candidate from purchasing significantly greater broadcast time even to the point of nudging the other candidates from purchasing time if they were to put up the predominant amount of advertising time available though with the number of networks and with cable and satellite broadcasts that would be a very difficult and likely impossibility any longer. Still, one candidate could still purchase such a majority of the time that their advertisements would far outnumber the other candidates and that would apparently just be too bad. So, one has to wonder exactly how much television advertising time Hillary and associated interests will be able to purchase before anyone else gets started in thinking of their broadcast dollars and how best to use them. Even with the unusual manner and amounts of funds collected by the Clintons while she was Secretary of State which they knew they could use to finance a Presidential campaign, it is difficult to churn up any pity for Donald Trump on this front as, in his own words, he is rich, don’t you know.
The problem with trying to judge Hillary Clinton on many of what are often displayed as character faults is that it is next to impossible to honestly claim the high moral ground as how does one place themselves even theoretically in her place to claim they would have handled the position any more honorably. It is easy to claim that her lying to the families of those who died in Benghazi when we were not working for a President who was pushing hard to win reelection and who had demanded that nothing be permitted to counter the claims of ending terrorism in Libya and much of the world just a few weeks before that very election, a crucial point before the election bearing down on everybody pressing all the President’s people to follow the given script. How can any of us claim we know for certain that we would have done the noble and correct thing and turn against the orders of the President who had appointed us. The same is true in many of the instances where people have claimed that either or both of the Clintons, remember that they are a two for one deal, you vote for one and get both when they win, had acted immorally or even illegally. People get kind of weird when you start talking billions and possibly trillions of dollars sitting right there for the taking if only you commit this one little favor, tell this simple ‘white lie’ or even just look away for a moment when everything is on the line. Would we really act any differently knowing that if we can just hold everything together for a few more months, weeks, whatever and we could very well get ourselves a return trip all expenses paid return to the White House, the biggest prize we have always aspired to hold. Can any of us even begin to understand the temptations? We ran a unicorn’s dream of a campaign for simply a Congressional seat in the House of Representatives and you like to believe you ran a perfectly honorable campaign but even when in the thick of the race without a prayer’s chance of winning you still tell yourself that you could be the real Mr. Smith Goes to Washington if only the right opportunity presents itself and you get enough traction that all the voters get to hear you and really get to decide on some fair manner what you stand for. You know in the back of your mind that your fifty thousand dollar campaign cannot honestly compete against two candidates spending around five million dollars each on their campaign but when an interviewer asks you if you really and honestly think you have any hope of winning, you bet the answer is, “Yes, all I need is a fair chance and a moment of clearly stating my principles.” You know that is a dream and a step beyond reality, but you tell yourself that the possibility is out there, and maybe there really are such miracles. We look at the elections of 2010 and realize our shot was only a decade out of step with the right conditions and who knows, maybe our campaign was the flapping of the right butterfly’s wings that brought on the tsunami politically a decade later as in that election there were people rising from obscurity to win seats in the House of Representatives and even the Senate. But when being outspent two-hundred-times-over you honestly cannot hope but against hope and reality that you can come from nowhere and make it on the big stage. We should be honored that we even made it onto the ballot, and we are now, but then we hoped to dream the big dream, even if only for that moment. So, trust us when we claim that it starts with that little lie to yourself that you are the anointed one who will start the revolution and bring integrity into politics and afterwards realize that politics makes anything possible even if only in your own mind. The Clintons just happen to operate in a different world than the one we live in and they do dream and believe they will make it happen, and who knows, maybe they will be the first husband and wife team to have both spouses serve as President and maybe even Chelsea with make it a family trifecta some day. They do dream big and who knows how we ourselves would act in similar circumstances.
The Benghazi affair is but one of the misdeeds being leveled against Hillary and the Clintons. Then there are the e-mails where she used an unapproved server and mail system from which to operate her time as Secretary of State. There are claims that by doing so she endangered the United States and allowed sensitive, top secret information to be potentially leaked to America’s enemies. There may be validity to this charge but it also remains to be revealed if the servers utilized by the Clintons were any more or less secure than the servers at the State Department. The first admission that need be made is that there is no such thing as a secured computer or especially secured system. Hillary’s e-mails may have been more easily protected on her private server than they would have been if she had used the State Department servers and secured devices. Think Edward Snowden and the NSA files and other data he procured while in government service and how he is now safely ensconced in Russia and playing with American secured information and we must assume that he gave the Chinese and the Russians a copy of every bit of information he has. Were any of the government servers safe from his prying little keyboard? Obviously, they weren’t, not one iota. Further, many former Secretaries of State had also used their own private servers for their e-mails and their use of such was never called into doubt over their security, so why is Hillary Clinton’s use of the same type of systems becoming such a serious breach of protocols? Could it be because she is a serious candidate for the Presidency and this is just more political opportunism? Again, this is a difficult judgement call and many will make the call for or against the Clintons directly parallel to their political leanings. Can any of us honestly claim to be completely impartial when things concern the Clintons; the most powerful and strongly liked and hated couple on the planet? Are we really able to be that fair and just judge that even many of the Judges from Biblical times failed at being, can we claim to be any better than these? We are all playing politics to some degree.
Finally we get to the one item where we just might be capable of being that honorable judge, let’s get to the money collected by the Clinton Foundation whilst Hillary was Secretary of State and is now potentially the next President of the United States. Can we honestly hold to claim there is the stench of impropriety stemming from many of the donations which coincided with favorable decisions made by the State Department as well as others appearing right before, during or immediately after one or both Clintons visited certain Middle East oil sheikdoms? Obviously there is the smell wafting on the air that there is a good deal of smoke, but is there actual fire at the center of all the smoke? We will have to again admit that our politics plays a role in our suspicions and the degree to which we claim where there is smoke there is fire. We cannot honestly claim that there is no smoke, only that the amount is less than being touted by the Clinton’s adversaries. So a closer inspection of these fundings should be investigated and are being investigated by the FBI. Right, we hear you screaming that we cannot trust the same FBI which has found nothing more than potentially unprofessional and careless activity by Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State concerning the e-mail scandal which was possibly nothing more than a partisan swipe throwing charges at the wall and none of them stuck. Perhaps it is time to move on to the next scandal de jure. Perhaps all of these charges are simply political maneuverings to discredit Hillary as a candidate for President and just a blatant use of the investigatory arms of the government to make so much noise it blots out the quiet whispers of truth floating innocently on the air hoping to be heard above the din of political maneuverings. Perhaps all of these charges are simple power politics with the media feeding on the juiciest tidbits found all over the ground around these charges. If there was impropriety and cash to play monies donated to the Clinton Foundation, one would be tempted to claim that such should be evidence comparing certain “favors” against the donations made to the foundation, a school child could determine such with even a cursory inspection. Either there are direct linking dates on deposits corresponding to immediately before or after State Department actions which are also easily traced back to the Secretary of State or there are none. That part of the investigation should have easily been determined and if there are then perhaps this is one which demands a Special Prosecutor to be appointed as there have been claims that the Justice Department has worked with the State Department to obscure misdeeds and clear the Clintons of any suspicious activities. Somebody somewhere has to have made a date chart showing the correlation of deposits to State Department interventions or decisions and show either the slight odor of impropriety or there is little if any real evidence that monies were spent to curry favor from the Clintons, really, somebody, a simple chart is all we need and let the people see what the evidence shows. We all know that there will likely never be a trial with Hillary and/or Bill being marched off in handcuffs.
Things in real life rarely echo movies that closely, and talking about movies, the release of the Dinesh D’Souza movie, some would claim hit piece containing more fancy than fact, titled, “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party,” (it should be Democrat Party and not Democratic Party) sure was released at a time when it could peak right before Election Day. If nothing else, this was great market timing for maximum effect and highest possible cash for the making. I guess the Clintons are not the only capitalists capitalizing on political events. Perhaps they could hold movie night for Congress and have an official viewing and then get quotes the day after, it would make for a great review of the film just as unbiased as any other critique. Talk about movies reflecting reality or reality reflecting movies, it is difficult to judge here, but does not the descriptive title of this movie not but reflect a campaign piece produced for the Republican Party or is the movie more balanced than the title. There are numerous versions of this movie or book reading found on You Tube through a simple search of the title.
Finally we get to the central fact and the meat to the whole fiasco. We will not learn the truths about Hillary and William Clinton in our lifetimes as it will take at least a century to place sufficient distance between the politically driven legacy of this political couple and even then it will take either a saint or a truly disassociated individual to present just facts with proof and a detailed accounting of everything these two touched. Such a production should be interesting but what is required is something far less titillating, the real and honest truth. That is what at least a few of us would like to see but too many interested parties would preclude such an eventuality. Perhaps such an accounting will be made in the future but for the immediate, well, the coming election will be a huge indicator of how the average American voter feels about Hillary and trusting her with the power of the Presidency. If somebody as imperfect and flawed as Donald Trump who has thusfar yet to even pretend to run an national campaign and instead appears to be making cameo appearances around the country to raving fans where his appearances resemble more an AC/DC concert than political theater, or perhaps this is how elections will be run in the future or at least our immediate future. The Republicans are lamenting that if they had even a flawed politician facing off against Hillary there would be no contest and that Hillary Clinton presented the most easily defeated candidate the Democrat Party could have fielded and they may have missed the boat. Meanwhile, there have to be Democrats feeling the same about Donald Trump as the Republican standard bearer who could only win against a corruptively flawed candidate such as Hillary Clinton and that is whom they are stuck with representing them in what should have been the most lopsided victory in political history. The United States had both parties look through their rolodexes and seek out the least probably of candidates and they both found just what they were looking for, the most easily defeatable candidate from their stables and that was who they each chose. Both sides in the coming election for President will be running campaigns that basically say less about their candidate and stress more on would you really want their candidate in the White House? So what we have is the anti-Trump candidate against the anti-Hillary candidate, you choose. Sometimes it is less laughable to be an Israeli and we thought our election system was unacceptable, the Americans are making the case for monarchy; at least then you know who is coming next and how to prepare. How does one prepare for Hillary or The Donald? It really is not all that recommended to elect a President when they are running on their first name and that makes them identifiable by the majority of the world and well past the United States. Any combination of these two people’s names works to identify them. Remember when we were worried to death of having another Bush vs. Clinton race for the White House? How does that choice sound now? Right, not exactly better but far more predictable. Saddle up as we’re in for a wild ride to November and the real rough ride begins the third week of January 2017; prepare for the worst and what best can we expect?
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 