News You Can Use and For You to Abuse

 

News today is written not so much to inform as it is to support your cause or side. We hear claims that the other news sources are using “Fake News” and that the stories they carry are not to be believed. What we do not read is that our side is purported to be putting out “Fake News” simply written to support our narrative. The reason for this is simple, we tend to read news sites which support those ideas and ideals that we believe and ignore news sites which ridicule our innermost thoughts and beliefs. We are all to a large extent guilty of reading only the partisan news sites which echo what we already know and poke at those things of which we disapprove. Think that Planned Parenthood is a wonderful service provider and that the abortions they perform would be done in back alleys with clothes hangers and the number of deaths due to botched abortions would be an abysmal reflection on our society, then you read papers or sources which support the “Woman’s right to choose” and avoid those which do not. On the other side you believe that Planned Parenthood is performing infanticide and is an abortion mill pretending to offer a full range of services you read those articles at sources supporting the position that “Even the unborn have a right to life and are protected and loved by G-d” and avoid those which do not. That is the simple truth for all too many people who literally choose their news such that it pleases them, strokes their pet beliefs and infers that the other side is “all wet” and “contain no facts as we do on your side.”

 

We must confess that even we provide some news which fits this definition as we are self-admitted Zionists and support Israel and what is defined by treaties which many others claim hold no relevance in the world today yet we refuse to retire those treaties which delivered and defined the Mandate System as even the United Nations accepted those definitions in its Charter. The opposite side is obvious; they claim the “Palestinian” Arabs have resided on the lands where Israel stands since long before Jews ever existed. Where the debate is never really held is for their side and ours to sit in a court of International Law and present each side’s argument and proofs and then let reality and law decide the validity of each cause. This will never be allowed to occur as neither side feels assured of victory. Our thoughts on that are that many supporters of the Israeli claims for the Jewish People to posit their claim to the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea suffer timidity and lack faith in their proofs fearing that anti-Semitism would win the day in any tribunal where the Arabs and Europeans present a majority view and place judges to decide cases. The other side fears that the Jewish claims are too well documented to challenge and that their best route to victory is to force through political and societal pressures Israel into signing away sufficient amounts of land which will make Israel indefensible and then finish off the remnant that remains with one swift war sealing their fate. We, of course, will present the promise that a new breed of Zionist leadership is forming in both Jewish Home Party, the Likud Party and new parties or reestablished parties and will soon take their place leading the nation of Israel and then that better day where we assert our Zionist and valid claims to our lands and end the sorry state of affairs we are presented with today. There is your supportive news you can use, provided you are a Zionist, otherwise we just pressed your buttons and you are seeking a news site that supports your side and explains why we are “all wet.”

 

That is the unfortunate reality and also part of why the United States and much of the world have become so partisan and each side is unable to compromise. Both sides believe they have the mandate from the people to lead and impose what they believe is right. Those supportive of the Trump agenda point to the crushing victory he received through the election and the Electoral College. The other side argues that the Electoral College was a system put in place by slave owning white men in order to further their domination over what they believed were inferiors and that the United States needs to go to a modern system where the popular vote wins the President and that as Hillary Clinton won the popular vote she should be President. Both arguments are simple with obvious points which define where each stands. Both sides are mutually exclusive and only one can stand. What is frightening is that both sides are ready and willing to back their position with force if need be and some on either side are ready to confront the others with force immediately. Such a situation is what germinates revolution and not the good variety as whichever side wins such contests in the past have then sealed their rule and sent the others off to be reeducated, which actually should read indoctrinated, submitted or murdered.

 

This was especially validated by the French Revolution where two factions joined forces to overthrow the monarchy and then turned on one another and started using their form of justice, the guillotine on their respective sides until one of them triumphed which led all but directly to the next revolution where Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor of France and virtually of Europe from Paris to Moscow. The French are on their Fifth Republic established by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on October 4, 1958. Then there were the other two revolutions which followed near exact routes and brought the world two of the most lethal, repressive and totalitarian systems of governance since Rome itself turned into a dictatorship after they went through a cataclysmic series of civil strife upon the murder of Julius Caesar which began the series of transitions which led to naming the leader of their dictatorship Caesar as a title. The other two are the German and Russian revolutions.

 

After World War I the Germans were facing a failed government which had lost the war and been ravaged in peace by a treaty which all but guaranteed there would come a next great war. The Germans attempted to install a democracy, the Weimar Republic, which floundered and was ineffective. This led to great need for new leadership which could promise the sun, the moon and the stars. Then German people turned to a great orator with a gift for speaking and making grand promises sound achievable and they allowed this leader near total power which he turned into complete power under his elite guards. The fact is it has been shown that his own party had been the author of those exact acts he promised to thwart and save Germans from. These were his goons and thugs run loose in the streets and his secret core force which started the Reichstag fire. Then he sent a new secretive force into the streets and his new SS murdered much of the SA which were not its commanders who simply were folded into the SS and the Nazis rose to power.

 

Just before World War I there was a revolution in Russia where the Communists and the forces supporting democratic governance joined forces and overthrew the Czar and the privileged ruling elites. Once they had purged the governance, they formed the Russian Provisional Government (Russian: Временное правительство России) which was first led by Prince Georgy Lvov and then by Alexander Kerensky with this government eventually being known as the Kerensky Government despite it being a democracy. This was largely due to this government not even lasting a full year as the Communist Revolution overthrew them and established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The first Revolution was named the February Revolution (March outside Russia as their calendar was different) which was followed by the October Revolution or Soviet Revolution.

 

Czarist Russian Flag, Provisional Government Flag
1917 Russian Flag, Soviet Union Flag 1923
Soviet Union Flag, Current Russian Flag

 

History may one day reveal that a similar fate befell the United States after a political upheaval resulting in the election of an unsuitable President, who was illegitimate in the eyes of his opponents, in Donald Trump which led to a coup in which he was overthrown and a socialist democracy was put in place where the popular vote ruled and the Trump core supporters were arrested for treason and sent to reeducation centers where they were kindly reoriented into productive members of the new governance. This core of workers served the ruling elite and never returned to having a vote in elections as they had proven unworthy. Well, that is what the extremes on both sides are reporting and is one of the few universal articles of opinion passed off as news. One side holds this line as there being hope and the other side is warning of a disastrous revolution run initially by the “Deep Government” or “Shadow Government” which were left in place by the previous administration and are the real power in Washington.

 

Sure most readers are claiming that we have simply murdered and butchered their side’s opinions and facts making a mockery of their honest and truthful points and arguments. We confess, yes we did and will continue to ridicule both sides until they decide to work for the benefit of all the people together instead of heading headlong into a civil war. The two opposing sides in the United States today refuse to cooperate and each blames the other for the lack of civility. One side claims that Trump supporters are just like Trump, ignorant, boastful, loudmouth, arrogant imbeciles. The other side claims that the Hillary supporters are just like Ms. Clinton and are aggravating, screeching, obnoxious totalitarian socialist leftists who if permitted power would be worse than Stalin with their reign of terror. The fun thing is that both sides are correct but are pointing to a small minority on the other side which can be used to pump their supporters up to believing they have the moral high-ground and that the other side is full of bullies who are absolutely going to destroy everything worth saving for the future of the nation and that the other side needs medical help with their obsessions. So, you say it is not really that bad and things will calm down given a little more time. Will they now?!

 

With two diametrically opposed views in the nation and a split where both sides claim the other is being aided by forces from outside the country, how can this end well? One side is yelling about Russian collusions to out Hillary with false reports on her record and that she never committed any crime with her e-mail server and was not directly responsible for Benghazi and further they purport that she was instrumental in mounting the effort to get Osama ben Laden. The other side is accusing the disrupting forces at conservative candidates’ town hall meetings as being out of state actors hired in many cases to disrupt and that these are professionals who are paid by George Soros, the bogey man on the other side, and that they are fabricated astro-turf and not a grassroots organized group and thus are breaking the law and need to be kept from destroying the nation. Some are defending Trump not on what he says but by pointing to what he is doing. Here is the one item both sides might actually agree upon; Trump is intentionally baiting people, especially the liberal and leftist media establishment, with his Tweets and that ruse works every time. Where the left are concentrated on everything Trump says or Tweets, along with his two livewires, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon, the conservatives are more concerned with what Trump actually does and whether or not he is keeping his promises, well, at least those promises of which they approved. These viewpoints will never be capable of meeting in the middle as they have absolutely no overlapping middle on which to meet, and that is a very big problem.

 

Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon

 

When two sides of a political fight have grown so far apart that there exists no middle ground then the only solution found throughout history has been revolutions. The “Revolution” group will never agree with anything that Trump does or says and will take any opportunity to shout their message and call for storming the ramparts. These extremophiles are geared-up and ready to rumble and would not require much to spark an incident which would lead to riots in the streets across every major city in the country. There would not be much time from such rioting to calls for the military to be utilized to quell the disturbances and restore order. How far the nation is from such an eventuality depends on where you live and which viewpoints you hold dear. If you are a conservative residing in a major city in the north or along either coast or if you are a leftist caught in fly-over country, then you sit amongst a majority population holding opposing view to your own and may not have many friends or acquaintances who share your views. The rare few such friends you do have are just as concerned as are you as to the path the nation is traveling towards. The fact that your everyday experiences place you in constant contact with people who loudly proclaim the merits of something you see as meritless. You feel desperate and fear you are losing your country and may soon find oneself residing in a desperate place. The problem will exacerbate should people begin moving in numbers to places where their views are in the majority and then each side will be residing in an echo-chamber with their beliefs simply amplified and that is a situation where succession becomes a viable option.

 

So let us seek to find a happy place where there is some degree of reconciliation between the two sides. We all know or have read about Republicans agreeing to work with the Democrats on a balanced or centrist series of legislation which might mitigate some differences. One glaring individual in this group is Senator John McCain. The problem with people like Senator McCain and others of his ilk is that they have long played on the left side of the aisle while campaigning at home as a great and strong conservative man of principle. He is rumored to be in possession of a war chest worth billions of dollars in campaign funding which makes his reelection nearly guaranteed as he can outspend any opponent. Many of the Republicans who are offered as potential arbiters for a middle ground are actually more of a false flag group of RINOS who continue to be reelected time after time and have become entrenched and supporting the leftist dreams of more government with government running the lives of its subjects simply because these entrenched politicians honestly believe they are far more intelligent and know what you need better than you know.

 

These people and their counterparts on the right and anybody in political office anywhere and at any level who believes they are better suited for deciding any other individual’s life better than they can do for themselves given the opportunity are a dangerous force. These are the big government progressives and whether they believe government should provide for your care in all things and even dictate a healthy life style for every individual (usually except them and their fellow superior peoples) or they believe it is upon the government to force a moral lifestyle on every American even if that means forcing them to a particular religion or to accept particular set of moral code. Both groups want a huge behemoth of a government with absolute power and they will between them beat out the definition of what makes one a human and then they will enforce exactly that form of body and mind over every person in the nation, the world even given the opening. These are a dangerous sort of people and the saving grace is that they disagree on some very basic principles which means they will eventually have a falling out and will become one another’s opposition.

 

The problem will come when one extreme takes power and believes they must retain power at any cost as allowing the other side to be in power will destroy everything they believe in and will make the nation ungovernable in the future. This is the kind of thinking which leads to a megalomaniac taking over the government, dissolving the Congress and proceeding to rule with a pen and a phone. This is what one side believes their opposition is trying to install right now. The question becomes which side is feeling that way about the other side. Here is the good news, which in reality is bad news, the two opposing sides agree on this point and they both are pointing at the other side as the culprit. The supporters of President Trump even go as far as to quote President Barack Obama having stated, “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward…” The other side simply point to the great number of executive orders already signed by President Trump and to his Tweets as his pen and a phone where the Tweets are the new phone for getting out the messages spurring his side into action. And perhaps the problem is we are all looking at this as my side and your side and there is no our side where we all gain something.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

The Trouble that Trumps Trump

 

Simply put, Trump Trouble Trumps Truth. That’s more than an exercise in alliteration, that’s an assessment of all the hyperventilating from both sides. The Democrats are afraid that their hand railroaded candidate might come up short against a second populist candidate without just as much liberal vote counting and prearranged delegates reserved by any means necessary. This is not to claim that the Democrat Party is any more the cheats than the Republican Party, just this time the Republicans got the candidate the party leadership was most aggrieved over while the Democrats all but closed the selection process before the voting had opened. But, as this article is supposed to be about the Trump candidacy and the trouble so many appear to have with his running for and possibly becoming President and not about any Hillary problems in the same categories, let us address the Trump-phobic reactions from both the Republican and Democrat party elite representatives and commentators. The first thing we must add is that in any election where the media is present, in other words, and free and presumably open elections such as those in the United States, the media might not be truly detached, independent, neutral or unbiased. Yes, there are media outlets on both sides and one could probably make a reasoned argument that they are equivalent in size and numbers, but the reality is as long as PBS, television and major print newspapers are only competing with talk radio to balance them, then the media is definitely slanted in favor of echoing any and all things anti-Trump. Further, any talk radio who have sold their soul to the company store, aka the Republican Party elites, are also more than willing to repeat every doubt, criticism, accusation, reservation, dispute, misquote, allegation or other disparaging commentary coming from the less than liberal, or even from leftists should the tidbit be juicy enough, will repeat and amplify the information far and wide over the airwaves. Trump is facing pretty much what any third party candidate would all but kill to receive, negative reports from every end of the political spectrum and everyone in between (we can report from experience that third party candidates get next to no press coverage and when included it is usually in the next to the last paragraph as they know some people read the last paragraph along with the first paragraph if the title caught their eye but the first paragraph did not give the expected thrill).

 

So, we have the guns from all sides armed, primed and firing on all cylinders. It does remain to be seen if the negative reporting will continue on the right but the left we can guarantee will continue and accelerate all the way to absurd. But up to this date there have been insults, innuendo and recriminations emanating from all sides. The only things of which there is a dearth is common sense, courtesy, and the kindness of giving someone the benefit of the doubt until they have proven themselves. There have been claims, unsubstantiated claims, galore from political pundits, party elites, former failed Presidential candidates and even entertainers who once took part in a Comedy Central roast of the candidate. The consensus was that Donald Trump’s smiles that night were forced as he was really steamed inside and, as one entertainer stated, “At no point did I think he was actually enjoying himself.” They even went on to claim that Trump was thinking ahead and had a “game plan,” and “He volunteered for it and it seemed smart in a way. Like, let’s get the pros out here and really tear me a new one and then in five years when I start to run, these things will kind of punch themselves out…” Such a plan so far ahead of things that he must not be the bumbler without a plan on how to repair anything in America which so desperately needs repair that Americans cannot rely on such an amateur with no ability to work through any problems. The hypocrisy and faulty logic in many of the attacks on Mr. Trump make most of those piling on simply get much of the public to take a closer look at Trump who were not considering giving him any consideration simply because they get the feeling that there must be something about Trump that scares everybody so badly that they would go to such lengths to disqualify him as if he was ever remotely as bad as is claimed he would self-destruct on his own and nobody would need warn the public of this menace.

 

Then there is a further reason, the effort to show the presumably glaringly obvious reasons the voting public should disqualify Trump from receiving their votes is beginning to be counter-productive; the majority of the public, voting or otherwise, are merrily (or not so much) going on with their daily lives completely oblivious to the fact that there is a Presidential election this fall and would not be paying any real attention to the brouhaha surrounding all things politics. Suddenly they are hearing all this buzz and criticisms of Donald Trump and even those who would not have given his candidacy a second look are looking not just twice, but thrice and more just to see if he really is such a bumpkin so completely unprepared and unqualified to become President of the United States and they see and hear a man who gets their attention and they note he deserves a look-see and return to taking care of life and put off everything until a few, likely three, weeks before the elections. Many of these people are the middle of the road Democrats who would have voted Hillary simply because Donald Trump is the Republican and they give both candidates a fair evaluation election after election and always vote for the more qualified Democrat (my father is one of those). Now they fist hear Democrat criticisms and there is so much their radar starts listening and now they are aware that the Republican establishment also hates Trump and all of a sudden Trump appears to be an answer to many a voters’ prayers, a candidate that both parties hate as anybody raising the ire of both party big-wigs deserves a serious look and the benefit of the doubt. All this free publicity is one reason Trump has not worried about having a war chest of money to counter the millions available to Ms. Clinton, possibly billions or trillions after the super PACs and the Clinton Foundation war chest full of Saudi and other Gulf State oil money and other foreign monies yet to be disclosed, as the media is lapping up every syllable uttered to his presumed detriment blasting it over the airwaves ceaselessly. As goes the old adage by Brendan Behan “There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.” Some might point out that if anything that is being proclaimed about Donald Trump proves true that just might be his political obituary. Thus far the only result of attacking “The Donald” has been his rising poll numbers and votes in the next primary and thus far it looks like the current ranting may just have a similar result.

 

The interest in election rhetoric thus far, as our trip to the United States proved out, has been entirely looking at two points, one for Hillary Clinton and another for Donald Trump. The interest shown Ms. Clinton has been in the e-mail potential to have provided easy access to some of the United States most secret plans and information being easily hacked by America’s enemies, her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, funneling of monies and higher than normal speech payments funneling monies into the Clinton Foundation during Hillary’s time as Secretary of State and favorable decisions by the State Department and other government favors and decisions. Many are bothered by the lack of Congressional hearings or Special Investigator appointed or lastly a Grand Jury reviewing the accusations and evidence. The lack of all these has forced people to react either by believing that everything was actually politics as usual and the innuendo and accusations must be baseless or that the Obama administration is knee deep in the cover-up proven by the meeting between Bill Clinton and the current Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch less than a week before the FBI report was turned over to Congress and the media finding that Hillary Clinton’s use of a non-Government e-mail system on her own server kept at her residence outside government safety, where being dangerous, was not sufficient to prosecute and despite her e-mails provided easy access by America’s enemies was not of sufficient level to prosecute and everything about the e-mails, where highly questionable and irregular, were not prosecutable offences. These and other reported irregularities have bothered many just as much of not more that Trump’s shortcomings.

 

Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton

 

The Trump receipt of excessive media coverage often for seemingly minor gaffes or manufactured gotcha reporting such as the Khan affair has largely served to at least put his name out linked with being a Presidential candidate who is despised by both parties’ elites. This has afforded him the mighty title of outsider, the only questions being, is he a real outsider and is he the right outsider. Still, the majority of the electorate is putting off their decision until from one to three weeks before the election when they will weigh the two candidates, and some the third party candidates, on their advertisements and other campaign coverage. The final two weeks seems like the mean with three and a half weeks being the average. Were you to walk into the average shopping mall in the United States and simply ask, ‘Who will you be supporting (voting) for in the coming elections for President?’ without providing any names or parties you can bet that the winner would be Hillary Clinton hands down by anywhere from 4 to 9 points. This is unsurprising because if you were to visit that same mall and ask the people who are the two main candidates for President from the two main parties you would get a measurable percentage who would name Hillary and not name Trump against a far smaller number who would only know of Trump. Contrary to what is being sold of both candidates being from outside politics is a lie though the claim that Hillary has held high office and knows all the maneuvers and how to reach consensus and get things done while Trump will face opposition from both parties’ voters and will be unable to accomplish anything and more-so he will not be capable of even passing a budget. When people are faced with the fake outsider who is the ultimate and an outsider so real everybody in politics are aghast at his being a candidate for President; the truth is that those who know only one candidate split heavily to that candidate being Clinton and a huge number, almost all, of Trump supporters know that Hillary Clinton is his adversary.

 

This election has drawn definitive battles for more than just the several battle-ground purple states but the red and blue states as well. This election could portend a realignment of the states with some formerly purely red or blue states which are now becoming purple. Some states entering the unpredictable plane include Texas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Louisiana. The Presidential election threatens to blow away all preconceived understanding of the electorate. Donald Trump has risen riding on a populace phenomenon coming completely out of nowhere making them unseen. There have even been pollsters arguing one another’s integrity, formulae, accuracy and methodology. Some pollsters are even explaining that the anger of the public or the wide use of cell phones which are protected against robo-caller tracking only people with ground lines, people’s dishonesty when polled, sunspots, the orbit of Pluto and anything else to explain why it has become impossible to judge this election using any of the older techniques as the public is in a special mood this election. The keys to this election teeter precariously on whether the Clintons end up facing charges due to the e-mails, Benghazi or any of the myriad of other abnormalities surrounding the Clintons; the occurrence of a high casualty terror attack anywhere in the world, especially in Europe or North America, Trump self-detonates falling to pieces, Hillary loses her kewl and starts screaming and is caught on tape or any of for too many to list actions by the candidates, their staff, their supporters, appearance of complicity in low blows against one’s opponent or any outside events with some not directly tied to the election. Even should one pollster actually get the Presidential numbers near perfectly, such a person would likely do horrifically on the Senatorial and House elections. This election will serve to challenge how campaigns will be run in the future but otherwise it is unlikely to alter our politics itself, just the way it gets to the same points just using different paths. Some people we talked with described the election for President as being a contest between a crook and a megalomaniac. The reality is we have a contest between a system manipulator and insider especially with the banks and Wall Street and another a novice at politics who has the ability to insult everybody but like Don Rickles, he does so in a way you can laugh about along with everybody else. As far as whom we can endorse? Well, probably a write-in for Daffy Duck which is one choice which would go well with the rest of this election thus far.

 

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