Tax Plan Will Put Icing On GOP Identity Crisis Cake

In a search for fair and balanced political criticism, it's increasingly difficult for many of my Republican voting friends to read anything I have to say as it relates to politics. Maybe they DO NOT find my strong support of Donna Brazile as enough of a rebuke on Barack Obama, the guy who caused most of this mess to begin with.

Yes, Barack Obama did bankrupt- in more ways than one- the entire DNC leaving it in a situation where Hillary Clinton had to save it or go it alone. Clinton sort of did both if we take Brazile at her word. Obama hasn't opened his mouth once in defense of himself and most people who dislike the decision of Donna describe her book as a money grab, not a lie.

I quickly echoed the concern about Hillary long before she announced she'd run, just as I've acknowledged how Obama left the DNC in a position to do very little work down ticket, forcing Clinton to trust that black people would simply obey the Obama's and fear Trump way more than we eventually did. I voiced concerns during the DNC succession war that left boring Tom Perez as the head while forward thinking Keith Ellison (the first man to predict Trump btw) was designated co-chair as a white-flag concession. And I've written, on several occasions, my concern with progressive messaging. ( I'm A Socialist Who Doesn't Believe In $15, Warning!! Trump's Guilt Is Not A Campaign Message )

And then Virginia and Alabama happened.

Despite the apparent possibility of this moment, I am still of the mindset that it's vital for Democrats to recognize their own identity crisis and not misread what happened in Alabama as probable anywhere else in America while forgetting that black people apathy in the 2016 presidential election might have lead to a p***y grabbing nincompoop of a president. We blacks don't openly take blame for Donald, yet we indirectly accepted blame when we refused to worry about it being our fault with that pedophile in Alabama. In record numbers, black people came out to vote in Alabama overcoming major impediments- intentional or not- that typically thwart our participation.

While I would love to see this black voter participation trend continue, I don't blame black folks for our apathy all alone. Once again, I blame Obama for disappointing the lazy black voters who wanted him to deliver 40 acres and/or a mule.

I certainly blame him for bankrupting the DNC.

But, I also blame him for scaring the shit out of way too many white people with that smile and charismatic way of his. I thank him immensely for living a virtuous life with a virtuous wife and kids, but that doesn't take away the blame we have to give Obama for passing a healthcare plan designed to placate Republicans, who mostly found the whole idea of universal healthcare objectionable back in those days anyway.

I blame Barack Hussein Obama for having the audacity to become our glorious 44th president with such a Muslim'y name. I don't blame him for racial intolerance and stuff like that, but I have no option but to blame Barack Obama for not having the courage, or the core principles, to demand single-payer healthcare when he had the chance to do it.

Does Little Marco actually have big hands
and big courage, or is he just igniting a trend
that can only explode the deficit further?

As a result of Obama's willingness to concede to the Republican plan, despite obstructionism from day one, we are now at a place where progressive voters are described as such because calling yourself a Republican or a Democrat has no value when each party's ideas, policies and plans all end up leaving regular people in the same spot WE started.

Black Democrats in America, and in Alabama, have very little reason to expect Hillary Clinton, Doug Jones or any other so-called Democrat to fix the issue with wages. In fact, despite what will inevitably add more to the overall deficit scoring of their tax plan, it is a Republican that is fighting to retain that same old Child Tax Credit that occasionally makes you wish you were Mormon (Thanks Marco Rubio).

Rubio's rescue, combined with doubling the standard deduction, never amounts to more than an extra few bucks or so that you will only see during tax season, and doesn't actually apply to the 44 million people who itemize their deductions anyway. So, if you are poor without children, you had better pray the GOP wage increase promise pans out because their tax plan has nothing at all in it for you.

Someone should remind Rubio and the Republicans that Child Tax Credits, doubling the standard deductions and things like that used to be a dangling carrot that only Democrats used. In reality, Democrats or Republicans could offer to quadruple the standard deduction and it wouldn't dramatically change the way tax liability or tax return checks work. Unless you are still willing to game the system by illegally claiming charitable donations as a way to squeeze out a tax return check, the GOP tax plan does little to truly benefit the average Joe or Josephine.

In fact, the corporate tax cuts don't expire but Josephine's and Joe's cuts will expire sooner, not later. It's as if congressional Republicans can't truly forecast a vibrant future economy their tax plan depends on and understand the long-term deficit risk of giving cuts to everybody based on potential growth. The problem they have is that they also can't begin to pretend they are helping everyone fairly without shining too much light on the fact that they are not. So, the message becomes, " ignore your expiring tax cuts, Joe and Josephine, and trust that bad companies will finally be good to you after WE give them lots more money to be good to you with"

Also, try to forget about the fact that the corporations will see their benefits starting this February, but WE will have to wait until 2019 tax time to get our one-time $1,000 Christmas present. In the long run, the tax cuts that they insist are for us might afford you a couple of cool family nights at the football game, so long as your car is already in good shape and you live in a city like Atlanta where the Mercedes Benz stadium has foot long hot dogs that are only $2.50, and the inexpensive soft drinks ($2-$4) come with free refill stations all over the stadium.

Everywhere else in America, the average game ticket starts at $150. Car repairs can be ten times that amount.

The truth about both parties are that neither has fixed inflation's deflation of our income and savings. Way too many of us already put off those car repairs waiting for the Republicans and Democrats to throw us an inflation sensitive bone each spring. Yet, no matter how many different ways they attempt to throw those tax time bones, it is never hard to recognize how little meat remains for the immense amount of ravenous dogs attempting to scavenge for their share.

So yes, Obama is to blame for the skepticism of a voting block that was already too skeptical for him to concede as much as he did. Assuming he conceded at all?

Maybe Obama has overtaken Russia and is controlling
Putin as a devious plot against Trump and America?

I am still of the mindset that me, Hillary and Obama are way too conservative for the taste of many progressive voters who hate the flavor from the last 8 years and demand entitlement sharing much more than empowerment plans. Aside from his single payer mistake, which is actually more or less a mistake when viewed from hindsight than an actual mistake, I generally supported Obama's pseudo-liberalism. Whether the policies of Obama were concessions of a much too kind demon or true ideology might be resolved one day in his own version of Revelations. He might even snap back at Brazile and create an East Coast, West Coast type political battle of biblical proportions, like we had with rap music in the 90's? Or he will concede that she was right.

As for my personal concession? 

My Obama rebuke is all that I can offer to my Republican friends who accuse me of not being even handed when sharing too many comical postings against Trump and his team. If you try to Google something funny and fair about Barack, Hillary and Democrats, the pictures of demonic horns don't seem funny enough, even the few that have a smiling face attached to them.


No matter how easy a target Donald's ducklings are, Democrats can't rest on Huckabee humor, pedophile hatred or whatever a laurel might be. They need to replicate the ground game that swept through Virginia and Alabama even if it was a pedophile that motivated them to press harder in Alabama, a place Democrats rarely waste money. Now, the DNC is forced to find enough money to throw at every Southern wall just to see where their message actually sticks.

Oh yeah, they also need a believable economic message to avoid the risk of relying on their own Grand Old Philosophies that no one cares to believe anymore. Hopefully, they are fashioning a message of economic hope that sounds a lot better than "Trump Sucks".

Whether this guy who is proving to be politically toxic to his own party actually survives Mueller and wants to give this horrendous job of his a second go, has little to do with the necessity for each party to clean up from the Trump-era fallout and establish a firmer identity in an era beset with identity politics.

Despite an image of desperately wanting to help people, the results of Democrat policies have done no more than Republican policies at closing the widening gap between rich and poor. In the end, both parties can only tinker with wage minimums or give you a small check each spring.


What Is Identity Politics?

If you are raised to see Democrats as much more reprehensible than pedophile's, it isn't difficult to confuse one man's reprehensible behaviors as a political assassination attempt.The sad but true reality of identity politics is that Roy Moore had way more support than any civilized human should be comfortable with (I did not say deplorable). Identity politics made it absolutely necessary for 97% of black women, and 92% of black men (eligible voters), to show up in Alabama.

Thanks to identity politics, black people were begged to assume their identity of Democrat in numbers never seen before in Alabama. While it saved their state from being culpable in pedophilia, the stench of those who laid down with the skunk, and the p***y grabbing president who endorsed pedophilia, will be smelled for years to come. As we reminisce on this, WE the People will also recall the visuals and imagine the smell of body sweat and oppression left behind in those Democrat precincts where budget cuts killed voting locations and lengthened lines in Alabama, but only stiffened the resolve of those identified as US.

For a party that is currently making folks question their identification of Christian and Republican, the Roy Moore debacle might be the largest relinquishment of a party's identity save for the one they are proposing to do next week.

Assuming the Republican Tax plan moves forward without another Marco Rubio hero stunt- which only further inflates the cost of doing the entire thing- the GOP will be on the hook to prove that adding 2 trillion dollars (and rising) to the deficit can be deficit neutral, or deficit reducing from increased incomes and consumer spending that increases tax revenues.

"Have I got a gift for you!"

Disregard the blind eye Republicans have turned towards our Soviet sympathizer-in-chief, or the desperate desire to take your healthcare away just because they promised to. If the GOP was interested in you and I, or interested in keeping their image as the fiscally conservative party, they would all get behind Paul Ryan's proposed cuts of entitlements, a move that will surely get them all sent packing but would at least retain the last remnant of a party identity that they are essentially scrapping by adding 2 trillion (plus) to our deficit.

The blurred lines between the two parties will grow even blurrier after tomorrow when every Republican Senator and his mama will seek to do the Rubio and get their last minute pork barrel add-on's at the stage when the pressure of the holiday season conspires to make another legislative failure the first present the GOP opens.

Assuming they get so lucky.

Much like Roy Moore, losing will be a special form of winning for the GOP who can actually avoid some of the public backlash of this terribly unpopular president and tax plan if they are fortunate enough for it- and Trump indirectly- to go down in legislative flames just as Repeal and Replace did. As for the average Joe or Josephine? Aside from remembering who passed it, there's just not enough in it for most of US to worry about it passing or failing.


 
     

Independence Must Be More Than Another Political Label

The recent book release announcement of former DNC chair, Donna Brazile, has ignited a firestorm of debate verging on a Civil war that the Republicans have to be enjoying, even if only for its diversion from their own problems. I, unlike Brazile, am no longer a registered Democrat but an Independent, which I realize is somewhat a joke even though I (independent voters) might be the reason Brazile wrote the book in the first place, not reliably voting Democrats.

If you are someone truly open to the notion of change in America, you realize that more of the same is unlikely to garner the change WE seek. Sure, we’ve accomplished much in our history as a nation, but seldom with a bi-partisan accord.  When the Senate voted 98-2 to sanction Trump and Putin for disrupting the sanctity of our overly partisan attempt at democracy, it felt like the beginning of change. Those two Senate hold-outs, however, must be confused about the seriousness of this moment, or maybe I am confused about the change.

An article about a poltical change in America is tough because our partisan reality typically means getting the other side to finally see how they are flawed as the change most of us seek. Afterall, who really wants to take another chance at trickle down economics?

People who have a reasonable excess of resources but want more, that’s who still believes in trickle down.

Conversely, hand-outs that barely keep poor people above water seem to drown more people than they teach to swim. The conservatives who read that last sentence applauded while the progressives frowned at the notion that our collected taxes can also be considered a handout.

My view is, who cares what you call it, it simply is not working well enough. No plan that lacked sufficient agreement at inception ever really does achieve its purpose in general perception or reality, which are invariably the same.

In other words, political change WE seek is never going to be achieved absent bi-partisan agreement because the other side will nitpick the bad to prove a point they already believed. Each of our perceptions becomes our collective bi-partisan political reality....facts be damned.

My knee-jerk reaction to the Brazile indictments against Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the DNC is to defend Brazile- who just so happens to be echoing criticisms I made long before she did, so take my view with that disclaimer in mind. Those currently defending Clinton have mostly done the same as me, which amounts to the challenge WE face in politics and society overall.

How do we achieve lasting change when we’ve made partisan decisions on what change looks like?

Brazile might be seemingly the starter of a fight, but reasonable people think that fight started with the progressive movement led by Bernie Sanders during the campaign and Brazile is simply pointing it out. This problem amongst progressives is much deeper than how we vote and what labels we allow ourselves to be connected with. In many ways, the intense effort for independence as voters- and people- has inspired the massive effort to toss each of us in a bucket whether we want to be there or not.

Search engines and website cookies leave crumbs of evidence about who we are and how we might vote even when we choose to not use our face on Facebook, or log into social media at all.

Today, simple GPS tracking can decide who we are, how we vote, purchase products and everything else. We have to turn ourselves off altogether to hide what we do because everything we do speaks- in part- to how we are likely to vote.

Unfortunately, whether we choose to carry party labels or not, our partisanship is predictable, even for those who think they don't care one way or the other. Our ability to challenge the GPS tracker of our lives and frequent the untracked street vendor versus the retail outlet that speaks to our tendencies is just as difficult as telling the people we support they are wrong and probably need to see things another way. Disrupting the grid and challenging our own orthodoxy are both needed practices for political and societal change.

Was Brazile declaring an intention to join Bernie or become an independent if the Democrats don’t figure things out? She says she considered Joe Biden, who wasn’t running, over Bernie who was as a replacement for a potential health stricken Hillary, so I doubt that Brazile's book is a threat of secession.

As for me?

I am not a Democrat. I’m THE Conservative Socialist who registers independently.I don’t care to be predictable to the unseen trackers in life or politics if I can help it because there is very little hope for change in that approach. I love street vendors and yet to be discovered entrepreneurs. I also hate political labels even though I realize my political voice labels me just as all of our thoughts, opinions, shared memes and websites visited tell a story we wish could remain unknown at times. 

          If change is what we seek, being a truly independent thinker and not just another predictable partisan can help, but it must involve real examination of issues including self-examinations and incriminations in the face of failures.

More of the same is unlikely to work.

WARNING!! Trump's Guilt Is Not A Campaign Message

As FBI special investigator Robert Mueller moves closer to something there there, Donald J. Trump, president, is behaving more and more like a man in full blown meltdown mode.

It isn't necessarily his awful handling of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson and his grieving family. It's not even his inability to be nice to a room full of reporters and their kids, pointing out how SHOCKED he was that any of them were cute based on their horrific parents, and then questioning the kids if they get tough interviews and coverage at home like he often gets from their parents.....or something silly to that effect.

Besides the moment being as awkward as Trump's last so called "fun" press event, the Obama era correspondence dinner in 2011 that turned into a not so impromptu roast of "The Donald", a moment that is believed to be the animus for his eventual presidential pursuit, it was a clear sign to me of the crumbling infrastructure of a presidency that has yet to be fully formed.

Disregard his inability to be decent to kids or to get it right with Gold Star families. The notion that this man would let the evil press disrupt and denigrate his image and disrupt the life that afforded him so much time to grope and golf makes the prospect of a second run at the presidency less likely than avoiding the brunt of this Russia mess. Especially after today.

Today, Trump's fired campaign chair, Paul Manafort, and Manafort's top aide, Rick Gates- who stayed on the campaign team even after his boss was let go- have both been charged with multiple crimes, crimes that most of us anticipated against someone even if we had no clue exactly who would be charged first.

The shocker was that the first charges came months ago when campaign aide George Papodopolous was secretly indicted on a question of collusion that he lied about twice. Papodopolous has been sharing details with Bob Mueller for months, presumably to assist with his guilty plea and to calm a prosecutorial pit bull who just sent a message to potentially uncooperative testifiers.

The discovery of the Papodopolous news seems a shock to everyone, including team Trump. Whether this trail of tears and indictments reaches the very top is a matter of speculation still, though it seems clear that Mueller is using concealed weapons to blow open the reluctant truth in this matter as multiple Trump subordinates have lied, some while under oath. Insiders believe these verifiable crimes and lies should have been enough for the courts to unseal Trump's taxes too, which might be another weapon Mueller now has at his disposal.

Regardless of the criminal outcome, Trump, Pence and Putin will not be able to collude for another election effort, something that appears to have been vital to Trump's victory.

WHY SO SAD??!!

Meanwhile, Democrats are so hell bent on ousting Trump, no matter what Meuller uncovers, they seem unaware that they still need to wait for 2020 to find a way to replace him with a president progressives prefer.

The murkiness of the Russian involvement question doesn't change the results of our last election or point a path towards the next. If Trump goes, he will be replaced by Pence and Paul Ryan, not Hillary Clinton. If Mike Pence, the lying head of the Trump transition team goes too, Ryan and President pro tempore of the Senate, Orrin Hatch, will take over. This could be why Hatch announced he's not returning for reelection last week (stay tuned on that).

Pussy grabbing and wall building was never a winning message, except for the small caveat that it still worked, or didn't hurt bad enough for a little collusion to do the rest.

Whether the Democrats message got lost in the slimy sauce the Donald cooked up is hard to know because most of us simply can't remember what their message was in the first place. Actually, I recall so many messages to so many people that I am not sure which group of voters Hillary Clinton and the Dem's thought could sway the election in their favor.

Now, the same messaging problem remains minus the notable face to deliver it. They may find someone noteworthy, but has our electorate grown weary of familiar political faces anyway? Were millineals really ready for the Socialist, Bernie Sanders, or is anything except more of the same likely to gain traction in today's political climate?

Republicans might be forced to pass some kind of tax plan just to deal with the Socialist reality that has now made universal healthcare permanent. If Democrats need a silver lining, the wages WE all deserve will soon happen, or the last scoop of dirt will go on top of trickle down economics, killing the theory forever.

Before you liberals gain comfort in that thought, gerrymandering promises functional control of politics for Republicans at every level below the presidency for years to come. Unless progressives find a person and a message, today's indictments won't do much to swing upcoming presidential elections either.

Putin Plans Bigger Than Hillary Or Donald Trump

Apparently, Mitt Romney is either not loyal enough or just too swampy to avoid the drain plug that Donald Trump promised to pull within the first 100 days of his administration. Not only that, Trump also promised to implement term limits on the very people he'll need to pass the bill that will limit their terms in office. I've lost track of the other million broken campaign promise' that Trump has either already renigged on or intends to real soon. Should we wait until he get's sworn in to be so critical?  We would wait if those cabinet appointments could wait too.  As it stands, they are the clearest signal of how he intends to Make America Great Again.

As for Romney? He's among the too sane or too unloyal that Trump is being challenged to steer clear of as he forms his cabinet. Indirectly, Trump is deciding that many of the most important jobs in American politics will either be filled by inexperienced novices who will need a fair amount of time to ramp up to their job description, or it will smell a little swampy in a few rooms while looking eerily familiar to the all white male America that used to rule our political landscape.

What America never seems to accept- especially as our future president crosses the dividing line between cronyism and full-fledged corruption in our government- is that WE are our government. Those of us who work in politics (media and lobbyist) or directly for the government become the learned body of knowledge that guides the way through the jungle WE've created for ourselves. The social necessity of finding cabinet workers sufficiently learned in a particular area of government can not be intertwined with some hand slapping agenda of punishing people who campaigned to ensure that you'd lose.

To Trump's credit, Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO tabbed to become the Secretary of State, was not chosen because he is a Washington insider, but he is also someone with a dubious history relative to Putin.  Once honored for his innovative efforts while doing oil related business in Russia, Tillerson is now going to be asked to hold Putin to task for war crimes and the like. Is he looking to nurture an existing relationship or test one with the understanding that you too could become a target of Putin if you cross him.

Rick Perry might actually get a job too, because the plethora of people on the list of Trump enemies is much too vast for Trump to function like someone looking to hand down repercussions as well.  Other than Omarosa and a couple of political talking heads, Trump never really had sufficiently learned supporters anyway, so his selection pool of people to put in key positions was depleted from the moment he won. As it stands, he would much rather use his children- the only people he really trusts much at all- and not have to do any business with people who could be hustling him the way he's hustled so many others in his lifetime. If only it weren't the biggest conflict of interest in political history; one so huge, it could threaten his office before it ever get's underway.

Has anyone stopped to think if Putin understands Trump's potential conflicts of interest too?

The Art Of The Deal

Trump is soon to learn that you really can't drain the swamp unless you restock the damn thing with some fresh fish when you are done.  Keep in mind that the new fish will need a little time to grow, so you must implement a catch and release policy for the newbies, or they may never survive to fix our public school problem, much less Putin. Nothing Trump's new swamp creatures do for 2-4 year's can really be counted against them anyway as they learn to replace those knowledgeable swamp critters he promised to get rid of.

What he is really going to learn the most is that Putin is not his friend and certainly not a man to be played with in a friendly manner.  He may not be the devil for his retaliation against Hillary Clinton- someone he loathed- but he is hell bent on restoring the former Soviet Union to Cold War era size and strength, and he needs a weak America to assist with that agenda. His restoration of the Soviet Union started in Crimea, but it surely won't end there.

So whenever Trump repeats the refrain about "is it so bad if Russia and America got along", he must be reminded that it is okay, so long as he's prepared to deal with a dictatorial president inspired by everything damaging to America and helpful to the restoration of Soviet dominance.

Dave Chappelle Says "Give Trump A Try". But Why?

Nobody is happy that president-elect Trump used every raw wound in America to run a campaign of toxicity that incited his own while suppressing the rest.  Although his supporters seem to be, they are only happy they won. They denounced all the toxic parts of our new president weeks ago before voting for him anyway. Why be so mad at his supporters when they told you they would "Make America Great Again" with their crotch grabber just like We promised to be "Stronger Together" behind fear mongering Clinton?

Chappelle and I not only look alike. We think alike too.

When I started chronicling this campaign, I said some time ago that one person didn't want the job and the other didn't even get in it to win. Today, I slightly modify that view.

While I won't fully abandon my theory of Hillary sending Trump to dismantle and mangle the GOP field for her, I am more inclined towards my belief that Trump, Hillary, Obama and I (plus many of you) are all really no different politically. You might have come from a christian evangelical church root like Hillary, Obama and I, or you might be simply respectful of religion while terribly skeptic of its motives like Trump and I are now, but most of US have found a way to love our churchy family and friends just like we love our LGBTQ friends and family too.

By percentage, very few of us really want to jail women who get abortions, nor do we want to arrest our undocumented neighbors. Even the people who say they want all of that don't want the regulatory state or the cost of making it happen. What they want is enough personal income opportunity to not care about the undocumented people and what they might be taking away from them, like they used to be able to do.

WE- those who aren't doing the deplorable dance all in the face of the skeptics- are enraged by the extremity of how far Trump went to win the White House while ignoring his sanguin relations with Russia (is it so bad that they get along?) and how their relationship contradicts the extremity of those God-awful nuclear war commercials Hillary kept running to scare us into giving her the job.

My Modified View of Things 

My signals say neither of these long time friends really wanted the job quite as much as they didn't want to lose and endure the embarrasment of losing. They both ran afraid to lose and reacted to one another like scaredy dogs, not cats since cats have 9 lives and fight with confidence. Trump seems to be the man of many lives, but he's really just the bombastic old guy who finally listened to the regular folks and answered back with hope and change.

How do I confirm my view of things?

No prospective winner would ever delegitimize his own post like Trump did realizing that he would (and still will) need the electors that he crucified to elect him president. Hillary, on the other hand, could not have believed herself a truly worthy winner while relying on NOTHING but fear of Donald to do it.

Donald peddled fear too but we've already established that he was afraid to lose. He was poised to become the poster child for "afraid to lose" politics if our fear of women and status quo politics did not far exceed our fear of him. We could try to complain about low voter turnout, but that's more status quo politics too, so deal with it or fix it.

With those truths rising to revelation, I'm less and less sorry that the grandma- who's taken lots of bullets on the battlefield of politics- lost to the grabby grandpa who was virtually bullet free going in to all of this.

One of these days we simply need to accept that the rich are just too rich not to look out for the rich. If we think tax breaks for them won't remain the only truly republican idea, then we enter the negotiation confused.

Can WE meet ALL goals with tax breaks for everybody? Only if we have the kind of sustained GDP growth that accomplishes stuff like that. Whether we can raise boats without the rich raising theirs or the poor getting drown should no longer be a body of water we tackle in such a fashion.

The travesty of the republican blockade of Obama is that he's always been one of them and their block of him was only one of princple. Our economy would have already reached president-elect Trump's promised goals if not for this over abiding republican principle.

The Principle?

Losing Sucks!

Now, the former republican party has won. They lost everything else including their identity and control over their own agenda and electorate, but they didn't wake up on the day after the election getting autopsy report questions from the media, questions only reserved for the losers.

Republicans still need an autopsy now that the GOP (Grand Ole' Party) seems to be the Generally Old Policies party. They'll need a whole new list of policies to identify themselves by, but they get 2-4 years to realize it fully if they choose not to accept it now.

In that time, how much so-called republican stuff can you accomplish when your number one task is fixing universal healthcare?  For goodness sake, could there be anything more non-republican than universal healthcare no matter what name you replace it with? And for goodness sake, if you have something better than universal healthcare, can you give it more details than just the word REPLACE?

The campaign stuff, except for rich people tax breaks and repatriation of rich people's off-shore money, will be challenged by more than an ideological congress, it will be challenged by means of rallies and riots. Those rallies and riots are so certain, that they've already begun as a way of pre-warning president-elect Trump about the risk of trying to govern like he campaigned. These rallies and riots are likely to go on for several more days if Trump can't reassure people that his Gestapo for rounding up immirgrants was kind of a joke.

Under his republican anti-regulations rhetoric, president-elect Trump has threatened to free up the banks so they could go back to the stuff they did before Wells Fargo got busted. Wells Fargo, however, got busted and fully revealed what happens when bankers are automatically assumed righteous, so even that bill won't be regulation free. If there is something else uniquely GOP, anything else, let me know?

Aside from their new mantra for an old plan, 'a rising tide raises all boats', which offers a wetter scenario for common folks to relate to- the same common folks who don't own a boat or never got wet while waiting on the trickle down rains of old- the republicans have nothing. Not even an explanation for how to replace a socialist healthcare system with anything other than a better name and a firmer hand on the insurance industry, code for regulatory measures that nobody seems discouraged by except the health insurers themselves.

I'm thinking on some of these things and becoming more resolved with seeing the potential good from president-elect Trump because I also recall the last days of the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King. I recall the fact that MLK moved away from his version of Black Lives Matter by realizing that ALL poor people bear a similar plight.

Are You Helping Too?

With that in mind, there really is very little that Donald J. Trump, our president-elect, can do for the poor people in the rust belt that won't help me and you too.  If a president can fix poor peoples problems anywhere, sit back and watch how much those changes positively impact blacks and browns.

Assuming the poor whites, alt-rights, regular right and center left whites are asking for the exact same realized relief that progressive democrats have been wanting. The only difference now will be 
"What Makes It Happen"? 

An America that is fed up and crazy enough to elect Trump, that's what could make it happen. His selection alone is a 'cut the bullshit' mandate, because he's the only person that ever really claimed he could fix so much of it, whatever it might be.

Even if he can't fix it, at least it could be worth watching him try. If he can fix it, it would be even better to give him a hand.

I'm looking for ways to help.

Can Trump Change America's Fear Into Hope?

What started out as a wall building joke is no longer funny.

First of all, I would like to apologize to all women for our significant fear of you. Many of you are significantly afraid of yourselves, but that's a conversation for another post.

Hillary Clinton- for all the good she's done and all the cracks she keeps putting into that dreaded glass ceiling- earned that ass kicking Donald Trump gave her last night. You can blame misogyny or Comey or whatever Russian Wikileak you'd like. The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton hoped like hell that WE were way too afraid of that pussy grabbing outsider to ever take a chance on someone never elected to public office before.

The same populist movement that elected Donald Trump
will now be anxiously waiting for certain dividends that
will pit him against his own kind, the rich and powerful.

In the end, she ran a race on fear with commercials feeding into the fear we should have of Donald's decision making, or lack thereof. In the end, she was dead wrong.

Not that she was wrong about Donald.....sorry, president-elect Trump's dastardly ways. She was wrong to use them as a way of stoking the fears of human beings. Fear might be a motivator of sorts, but it is most commonly known to invoke hesitation and doubt, not clear-eyed certainty.

To Trump's.....sorry, president-elect Trump's credit, his campaign of fear was not one that he needed a television ad or any real effort to sell. After all, WE have long since doubted the intentions of the Washington elite, and he waged a campaign of retweeted anger that did nothing more than tell US what WE already felt enough to tweet.

Nothing is sweeter than the sound of your own name or being retweeted, and president-elect Trump used the oldest sales tool in the book to display the art form of negotiation and close another deal.

He listened.

Hillary Clinton spent way too many days wondering how in the hell she was so close in a race that she should have been winning in a landslide while ignoring the fact that she barely beat Bernie for the nomination and never really convinced the Berners that she was really interested in what mattered to them even while desperately needing them to show up at the polls.

In reality, she was terribly interested but listened to the wrong voices (insiders) and took an early victory lap when she decided to drive the down ballot bus instead of focusing on her own. All the pollster deserve the same ridicule I'm leveling at Hillary, but none of them were running for the highest office in the land, and the successor to a president MANY did not consider their own and said so, over and over and over for 8 years straight.

Forget about President Obama's approval ratings right now. Those were one part Michelle Obama and two parts disgust with the two candidates campaigning to succeed him.  Pollsters might have been dead wrong about president-elect Trump's level of voter enthusiasm, but they were totally right about the lack of it for Clinton. She tried to ride the enthusiasm of everybody in the world including Jay-Z and Beyonce in the final days, but no surrogate could transplant their charm into her.

I'm not thrilled about getting someone other than who I circled on my ballot, but I was never going to get the person I preferred anyway.  He (Jeb Bush) got rubbed out early on in the same name smearing fashion that finished off Hillary too.

Will Paul Ryan live to regret opposing
Trump?  Will Hillary Clinton?

The more I reflect on my journey in this election, I recall the question I had a year ago. Why would someone who is able to do so much good around the entire world while making shitloads of money from speeches- in between spending lots of precious time with her grandkids in the waning years of her life- be willing to give all that up for a job she knows is not really that cool anyway?

Hillary Ran For US.

I'm not happy for you sad or afraid voters, but I'm thrilled by all of those quiet people who either didn't vote or didn't take it seriously with that silly write-in name you chose.  Their lack of comical posts right now speaks volumes to the impact this election shall have on all of those who quietly hoped the rest of US could elect Hillary while they maintained the role of sideline ridiculers. Some of you really petty people are more than happy to pretend to relish in your Illuminati theory of the whole system being rigged, but even you thought the system was rigged for the insiders, not pussy grabbers.

I will be more thrilled when WE all get to see what happens when you try to push forward Wall Building Acts or Infrastructure Bills given the reluctance of congress to invest in anything worthwhile. Maybe they were just blocking Obama for 8 years and now understand that they will get Trump'd too if they aren't listening to the voice of America. And maybe president-elect Trump always realized that he was proposing non-republican populist stuff that America is looking for him to achieve, and must now truly roll up his sleeves to get it done. Either way, we are now wide awake and fighting for a front seat at the table of this divine civics lesson we are receiving.

No Trump TV?

President-elect Trump has a 100-day plan promise that involved implementing term limits on the same people he will ask to pass the bill. It involved finally fixing our failing roads and bridges (I guess you can pork-barrel a wall into that bill, but then Mexico doesn't pay for it), and dealing with the income disparity in whatever way first-time presidents who used to run businesses do it.

If he can do it, he and WE are all the big winners. Until he does, even the winners are losers with a difficult mandate ahead. Both insider parties are losers too as Trump systematically proved WE are tired of them all. Both republicans and democrats needed total reconstruction and will be putting out new autopsy reports soon enough.

As for today's true winners?

Saturday Night Live, CGI and Chelsea's children.

God Bless America, and president-elect Trump.

Did Donald Trump Just Tell America To Stay Tuned For His Concession To Hillary Clinton..........Or Not?

We know that George W. Bush will not be a guest on Trump TV. Will Putin?

It would be so great if we could do what we did in the last two debates this time around, but we can't. We can't spin the results of this debate into some kind of convincing reason for the candidate we prefer because Donald Trump did the unthinkable.

On the stage, in his final televised presidential debate, Trump said we would have to wait to decide if he would concede the election or not. He didn't spin the statement to mean, so long as it's not close and a disputed count like Al Gore had. Trump ran with the torch he lit days ago, to start these games he 's playing with our nation, and he intends to carry this torch to the finish line even if it means he'll burn down the entire party and portions of our nation along the way.

Trump's inability to lose is so well documented in his own writing about himself that any person who is voting for Trump but unwilling to read and recognize that he is a self-proclaimed whiner, might be a whiner themselves.

Trump is not tough like he keeps pretending, and neither is Vladimir Putin for hacking personal emails to try to influence an American election. He's especially not tough for his inability to call an email stealing punk like Putin exactly what he is. People who promise you they are tough are notoriously the least tough of them all. We've known this since elementary school even if it took until middle school for you to finally do something about that fake tough guy.

Why is Trump scared to take Putin on as he should? Probably because Trump has business dealings in a nation that could freeze your funds or simply take them and make you do something about it. There is no way that Trump will move from his company line on Putin, in fear that Putin might be listening. So, no matter what you ask Trump on the question, he won't get all Mike Pence on stage and mess around with his own foreign bank accounts or whatever it is that he's hiding in those taxes. He's going to say the same thing over and over again.

"I don't know Putin. But would it be so bad if the U.S. and Russia got along?"

Yes, Donald! If Putin is messing with our free and fair elections, getting along now without retaliation would be bad. It will get even harder if they shoot down one of our planes in that smokescreen of a 'no fly zone' that Russia created as a shield to keep the Syrian president safe from an American drone gone astray.

It's true. President Obama is the king of drone killings and deportation. Trump actually admitted that Obama is the king of deportation, but he also seems to be auditioning for the chance to outdo him in deportations while forgetting that immigration and wall building won't be the only job. He'll also have to deal with America's mortal enemy and Donald's pretty good friend Putin. Russia needs to prop up Syrian president Bashir Al-Assad and save him from an untimely death, but what are the chances that Turkey or an American manned flight doesn't "accidentally" take on Russian air defense fire?

Republicans are interestingly concerned that America and its president should not be talking too tough to Russia when it's already too late for what they've done within our election. Weakness is to ignore Russian Wikileaks without retribution. Weakness is to disregard your own counter-intelligence so you're not cornered into disrupting your own family income.

Donald Trump has done so much to avoid conceding the inevitable that he is conceding the inevitable indirectly. He's conceding that he is nothing more than a television hustler with a bigger agenda towards television than leading this country. He's conceding that the cliffhanger concession he's making of our election is juicier than the admission (or not) of a president's birth, and a perfect teaser to launch a new television network. He's also conceding that he doesn't understand the process of putting his mistakes to bed. As our leader, every misstep he'd make would become a presidential dark cloud that would never leave and never stop raining.

Trump could do a whole lot more not to leave us in suspense on the concession of this election, but that would not be good marketing. It would be presidential, but that's not his problem. At one point he accidentally interrupted Hillary with a "good luck with that" sarcastically referring to something she said she would do as president.

Even in his own twisted mind, he doesn't do a great job at lying. It could be the cause of his sniffy nose and not some other nefarious reason that requires urine or blood to uncover. Trump not only subconsciously congratulated his opponent on winning this election, weeks in advance, he's consciously telling his supporters to prepare for a tainted loss, which is a twisted version of a victory in the mind of Trump.

What Trump may not get, is that his angry alt-right supporters probably won't waste their time standing in line for a rigged election instead of drinking a lot of beers after work and waiting for the results to come out on their living rooms tv's.  One- maybe two- will let anger and those beers push them to behave badly in response to the rigged election that they didn't bother voting in. They'll find liquor induced inspiration for their revolution even though they hadn't the gumption to vote.

Trump's rigged election claim was set ablaze by his unwillingness to say he'd concede the election. For the next three weeks, he'll fan this flame and watch it grow and glow from all of his handy work.  At best, nearly half of America will buy into the tainted election theory and work to delegitimize the first woman president, much like they did the first black one.

At worst, someone will die from this idiot.

Millions "Taking A Knee" On Presidential Vote. Aren't They Making US Choose For Them?

How will that "don't vote for any
of them" plan work out actually?

I had a rather heated response to this question that I posed when I posed it in a FB post, but I think it deserves to be asked again, and in a more thoughtful way.

In order to frame this question, it's important that I ignore the defense of Hillary because I'm doing my darndest to be more sensitive to those of you who've decided that nobody is worth your vote this time around.

I'm going to disregard that Bush (the son) had 13 embassy attacks resulting in 66 deaths including 3 American diplomats and 22 embassy workers. I'll do the same ignoring of the 10 attacks under Ronald Reagan resulting in 318 deaths including 1 US Ambassador, 18 CIA officers and 254 Marines. I can even forget the fact that Bush never had an investigation as a result of the deaths, and Reagan only had one.

None of that matters when the people telling you that Hillary is a murderer are convinced that she is the reason they are dead. The 13 investigations have taken these Hillary haters off of her email trail for the purpose of finding blame over Benghazi, but they still need a Wikileaks to prove some form of pay to play with their very charitable organization, CGI (Clinton Global Initiative).

Keep in mind that the email Hillary's opponents are seeking for pay to play proof is a connection only made possible because THE CLINTON'S HAVE RELEASED THEIR TAXES AND THE BOOKS TO THE CHARITY.

Let me say this again in another way.

In order for me to believe what you are saying about that evil Hillary and her horny husband Bill, I have to connect some yet to be found email, or yet to be authenticated Wikileaks, to the open books that they've provided for everyone to see, just like most presidential candidates do.

I am suspending belief in all that I've just mentioned about Hillary's open documents, and I will equate this yet to be found open book crime with whatever Donald has told us about his closed books. For the sake of argument, I am trusting what a Russian dictator has shared from people's private files (will it be okay if they release any nude photo's since some of you are okay with the rest of this stuff?) and I am scouring through all of it like the gospel truth, trying to connect it all back to THE OPEN DOCUMENTS THAT THE CLINTON'S PROVIDED TO EVERYONE.

For the purpose of this article, and this question, I am ignoring the obvious differences between these two candidates and taking them to be the exact same Bozo's that some dear friends and family have called them.

Now that I've separated myself from my own distorted reality in exchange for your more realistic one, I am now truly, really and sincerely ready to consider the idea of doing the exact same thing as some of you and not vote for anyone as well.

My question is- before I make protest posters or write up blogs to sell the rest of America on the value and virtue of this approach- what is the value and virtue of this approach?

What would be gained if only me and about 600 more people that I can convince join in the "No Vote" ideology? What happens if every American finally see's the light and bows out of the presidential vote too? Other than the Congress being forced to choose for US, doesn't the process of bowing out allow the remaining voters- whoever they may be- to decide which president the rest of US lives with?

That's not really a question because the answer is obvious. Of course, the people that vote are the people that choose for all of us.  That is not really a debatable topic even though it sounds like extortion if you are as firm about the right to "Not Vote" as Colin Kaepernick is about taking a knee.

I am not debating the right to take a knee on an anthem or an election. I am asking the value of it so that I can decide if I will join in myself.  As it stands, I am willing and ready to sell the benefits of not voting just as I've sold the value of taking a knee and every other protest that came before it.

I'm not personally interested in taking a knee against the flag as my way to improve it, but I appreciate the knee people for the conversations and the situational awareness that must happen every time someone gets into another heated debate over the virtue of saluting the flag versus protesting the ways in which the flag has failed.

Protest is important, and comes in many forms and fashions.
I just don't understand this "Not Voting" protest, very much.

I can advocate for this not voting thing in the same vein of free expression if I could just put into words what this decision expresses. With barely 50% of Americans voting these days, how does reducing those numbers to less than 50% and allowing less than a majority decide for all of the rest make sense? What is the magical percent of lack of involvement that will finally make bureaucrats listen and respond to our frustration?

Like it or not, we are all stuck with the president that the majority (or plurality) selects. voters who sit out might hope for more obstructionist government, but even that doesn't change the impact and direction of the Executive Orders that will ensue or the Supreme Court selections that are still the privilege of whoever wins the presidency.

Should Bashir Al-Assad be removed and what happens with Russia if we do it.
Our next president must soon decide if America will honor the Syrian no-fly
zone that Russia claimed to establish against ISIS.......who has no aircraft. 

No, you do not have to exercise your privilege to vote because freedom provides you that privilege. You will, however, have to accept Roe v Wade if the wrong side wins but you want abortion to become a crime. Conversely, your gay friends who recently got married may have their nuptials annulled by the results of this election, depending on who wins.

You don't have to choose from the best of the bunch or write in your own choice if that seems like too much of a long shot. You don't even need to show up if none of this seems like it's worth your time, but you will live with whoever WE choose for you, so please don't curse and whine at friends and family that choose your next president for you. WE invited you to come to the store with US and pick out the best watermelon available. Sorry if we choose the sour one over the seedy one.

We'll be heading back to the store in four years, just so you know.
 

Trump's Rigged Election Claim Is Heard WorldWide

Will nations that normally censor US choose
to broadcast Trump's rigged election claims? 

I'm not sure if I can really write an expose more significant than my headline, but I'll do my best.

Donald Trump's rigged election claims are the most damaging blow to the image of America and our potential for future greatness since Donald Trump won the nomination. No really. The world, manipulated by hacked information from Russian president Vladimir Putin himself, laughed at US just for allowing that television show hustler to get this far. Now even Putin isn't laughing because Trump has essentially declared that the democrats and Hillary Clinton are about to win the election the exact same way that he would do it.

What Trump is way too uneducated or unsuspecting to understand is that his newest rhetoric is only likely to suppress his own voters by giving them very little cause to believe that waiting in the line will matter very much.

I won't attempt to connect this dot back to my nearly year old claim that Trump is Hillary's plant who doesn't really want to win, though documents have been wikileaked showing that Hillary at least encouraged his running and spoiling of the GOP well. Regardless of the impetus, Trump is here, but he is either way too dumb to understand which vote gets suppressed by tainting the legitimacy of an election that he's losing in the polls, or he understands oh too well and intends the results he's influencing.

Disregard the very smart election experts that work for Trump, who have to know the truth about Trump's approach. Remind yourself of the broadcast people that are his key consultants, and remember that Trump's son in law has been reported as seeking an initial contact towards creating a media network.

To win any presidential election, you need a team of people called surrogates and subordinates who speak on your behalf via various media outlets, and they make media productions, also on your behalf. In other words, running for a political office is the equivalent of building a media production organization. The process of transferring that highly functioning organization into a working entity involves paperwork and naming. That's it.

Win or lose, Trump has an alt-right ready media organization and a gang of people motivated to stay on the Trump payroll either way.  It explains why so many people are willing to risk their reputations while supporting things that are ambivalent to the very word democracy.

Things like calling our elections rigged and then hoping to legitimize that same election when it's over. Keep in mind what exactly Trump is saying here. He is saying that our elections are so flooded with illegal votes, that the only way for him to win is for....for what? More illegal votes than expected from the other side or more real voters than expected? And how does Trump gain those real voters while making rigged election claims that hardly appeal to the people he's got? What is the remedy for this inevitable illegality and how in fact would we consider Trump a legitimate winner if he insists he can only win by getting votes from his own millions of dead people just like Clinton has?

Isn't this the statement that political spectators from South Africa- who've fought to gain free and untainted elections themselves- are hearing? We know Russian and Chinese citizens are typically censored from American media, but wouldn't it be rather smart for these countries to broadcast this nonsense uncensored? Doesn't it make those fascist countries look a little less wrong if America no longer has an unrigged election? Doesn't all of this make the world a less hopeful place in the minds of foreign citizens who believe Trump? How hopeful will those who admire US be if even one person decides to take this revolution into their own hands as a result of Donald's dumbness? Was there truly only one Dylann Roof with the balls to stop talking and do something?

How long have conservatives been
so comfortable with Putin?

If alt-right talk show hosts on radio and television have sold the notion that Hillary has a body double- someone who plays her when she is not healthy enough to do it herself (another odd conspiracy that dumb Donald keep's trying to sell, among others), I actually hope that the alt-right is right this time. I am hopeful that Hillary's body double is the unfortunate soul that takes the bullet that, we'll pray, doesn't kill her. I am hopeful that plans are well underway to deal with the toxic situation that no person, who really plans to win the presidency, would ever create.

I repeat. There is no way in the world that any person who plans to win the most distinguished office in the world would ever taint the job before getting it. The only reason you taint that post is not because you don't believe you can win it, but because you never really wanted it.

Maybe he'll have the nerve to admit it one day during an exclusive interview on Trumpivision. While embarrassing, could you imagine his ratings?

Kaine v Pence Outake: WE Can't Stand To Watch

Did Tim Kaine really just do his best Trump impression?
Did Mike Pence ever answer the actual question asked?

For the few of us who cared to watch the VP debate, my immediate impression was the same as the rest of your impressions- tainted by the emotional desire that we all have towards seeing the other side take a beating.  In that regard, I got exactly what I came for. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's running mate, beat Donald Trump to a pulp while constantly challenging Trump's running mate (Mike Pence) to stand up and defend the many indefensible and inflammatory statements that have come from the top of the GOP ticket.

Mike Pence never tried to answer the unanswerable. Instead, he did what politicians are supposed to do, pivot, spin and control the conversation regardless of previous errors from the campaign.  Pence doesn't deserve too much credit for controlling the conversation, however, because it is way too hard to be in control when you are spinning and pivoting so much. For that reason, I not only missed that Kaine beat on Trump without laying a hand on Pence- the actual man onstage last night- I also misunderstood how pundits would view Kaine's effort, forgetting that Pence came into the debate with his own questionable record that made him worthy of deserving a few direct blows himself. He got away mostly unscathed.

I cheered and jeered at the aggressive attacks, even some of the flailing swings from Kaine, and I happily rejoiced at the reality that he was doing more of what Hillary couldn't do in her recent debate because Trump refused to let it happen. I appreciated the fact that the important remarks were being stated and placed on the record even if you had to listen over multiple voices (including the moderator) to hear what was being said sometimes.

I enjoyed the dismissive giggling and dodging that Pence was forced into doing while running from the direct opportunity he was given to actually sell us on the values of Trump or defend him from Kaine's attack that ignored Trump's pawn and went straight for the king himself. Pence never really stood up for his boss, and appeared to lose his way to me if for no reasons other than his intense condemnation of Putin (something Trump seems terribly hesitant to do), and for Pence's inability to build a case for his boss other than "we need change". Conversely, Kaine made Hillary's case from beginning to end.

Did Mike Pence just dodge enough poop to
elevate himself to top of the GOP field for 2020? 

And then I listened to hours upon hours of breakdown of the VP debate, in which every station and pundit conceded, in some form or other, a victory to Pence. By virtue of the standard set in the first debate, pundits handed the victory to Pence in the same manner it was given to Hillary, rewarding the person who seemed most polite and thus presidential. A victory by default if you will.

After hours of flipping channels and watching the video outtakes from the VP debate, a few very distinct revelations came to me. Hillary is so serious about not losing this race that she is treating her debate victory as if she had lost. Not by reviewing the entire debate all over, but by making sense of the televised outtakes that followed.

It's important that we recognize how Trump has not only lowered the bar on political decency, he has lowered the bar on his own expectations and that of the party he currently heads.  How can they clean up so many ugly soundbites when they are already on the record, along with the ones he adds each week? Thanks to Trump, his entire camp is now only expected to avoid land mines while begging voters for change. Anything more is way beyond their current expectation, and probably doing too much by virtue.

Despite her brilliance, I wasn't always ready to give Hillary as much credit as I give her now. It is now time we watch, learn and decide. If you are watching, you will easily learn how Hillary has decided to run her campaign. She is showing herself willing and able to adjust to the demands of the undecided electorate, that segment of society that can still be convinced to vote for her. Trump has hit his ceiling some time ago and can only hope to bring dismay to the process and the people Hillary needs for a decisive victory.

Hillary is going about things with reflection and humility, allowing herself the chance to see her own campaign through the eyes of those hesitant to choose her.

It is truly the time to save our children from Trump or with him. As such, it is vital to recognize that the home stretch kick has begun now that voting has started in many states.  In my opinion,those questions I once had of Hillary are laughable compared to the question of what happens under a president Trump. Right now is not the time for any of us decided ones, on either side of this battle, to be confused about who WE support, nor wavering in our efforts to help our side win.

To his credit last night, Mike Pence was neither confused or wavering, though he didn't fully show himself on team Trump. Otherwise, the 2016 VP debate

If Trump is the current face of the GOP, who takes
that position if republicans lose the presidency?

performance from Pence was an excellent example of what it will take for Trump to close the widening gap Hillary has opened in the polls and give himself an electoral chance in hell to win this race.

To enhance that chance, he must do exactly as his running mate displayed by masterfully side stepping all of the piles of poop Trump leaves on the campaign trail for himself and his surrogates to deal with each day. When it comes to big piles of poop, Trump is the head elephant in the GOP arena now, and the primary reason for all of the perfect poop dodging that Pence did last night, providing a clear blueprint for Trump to follow.

Trump's big bombastic poop droppings are part of the reason why MOST Americans have stopped listening to all of this a long time ago.

Not just months ago when Trump first demanded Mexicans leave this land of immigrants, but decades ago when the voter turnout numbers proved that barely 50% of eligible voters in America care to vote in the first place.

WE seem to much prefer television stars over politicians, and our long standing apathy towards politics is doing an awesome job at making a circus out of something so many described as a circus long before now.

 Most importantly, Trump is the ring master of circus outtakes. He not only knows how to talk the kind of talk that fills arenas and sells overpriced, useless swag, he knows how to insure the news programs will play his outtakes no matter how irrelevant or damaging they are to his mission, the subject at hand or the country at large.

You see, nothing that actually happens in politics will ever supersede the hot video outtake television uses to thrive.  While Trump seems stupid to continue saying silly things like "maybe Hillary is cheating on Bill...but why wouldn't she?", he is brilliant enough to know what it takes to make the outtakes.  In the end, there are only so many minutes available to every televised program, and every minute spent on useless but spicy outtakes, is a minute that can't be spent on something substantive.

If So Few Are Voting, How Many Are Not Even Watching?

For those who didn't have the time or energy to endure Hillary v Trump (live or video recording), your only understanding of what happened must be chewed and fed to you in digestible bites for you to swallow and regurgitate to the others who also haven't the teeth for all of this, and demand pre-digested food as well.

Trump understands our fickle digestion like no other presidential candidate before him, and uses bombastic outtakes to drown out the substantive stuff that only 20-30% of us try to chew on our own. That's right. Even if a little more than 50% actually vote regularly, almost half of those people to do it out of civic obligation, and don't necessarily study like they should. As most of us have been watching this foolish circus for months, millions upon millions are slowly and reluctantly taking their seat at the table.

Clinton Changes The Game With Kaine

During her own debate, Hillary mostly kept her poise and was told she won the night, but watched while most of the outtakes were of Trump being an arse, not of her style and substance that were lauded, but was only captured by those who watched the debate themselves. As a result of the slanted soundbites, Hillary and her team have not only caught on to Trump's game, they sent Kaine out to test the game first.

Actually, Hillary's stump speech was the first sign that she has started to display a little more style and way more Johnny Cochran than ever before, and she is now using it to drive the conversation in a way she has not done in previous weeks. Although the most palatable outtakes from the presidential debate were of Hillary tripping up Trump with a few pre-planned lines of attack, Donald's bombastic blast backs and constant interruptions ended up controlling the news streams and forced the pundits to explain to the viewers what the camera wasn't showing.

Consequently, close viewers on either side of each of both of these debates could easily claim a victory. One side based on keeping their cool, and the other for so many hot outtakes, because keeping cool usually ends up on the editing floor.

Whether you watched the VP debate or not, this is what you need to know about last night, and about the Clinton campaign to follow. Hillary has decided to hit a little harder and she intentionally used Kaine's and a few canned phrases to help get it started. On behalf of the democrats, Kaine jumped in the circus ring and left behind piles and piles of seriously unanswerable questions as well as the message that WE all should continue asking Trump the same. Hillary has decided to help us stay on the question even when Trump tries like the crazy to say something new and soundbite worthy for an outtake that might switch the subject and make us forget just how crazed he's been.

Trump's assessment of US is legitimate.  How do I know?  Raise your hand if you live with, or know someone who often says, "I'm so tired of this campaign. I can't wait until it's over"?

Trump has preyed on our politically fatigued and made victims of the politically handicapped who stay in the back of the pack of society, hoping to be fed digestible morsels of information to aid in their voting and to relieve that empty grumbling in the belly caused by civic guilt.

All of this simply because WE can't stand to watch anymore.

I'm not sure if Trump is doing business in Russia, but based on
his choice in wives, I damn sure can't simply assume he is not.

Trump knew it, but now, so does Hillary Clinton. Now, Clinton and her surrogates will proceed to take advantage of every opportunity to blast Trump and his trumpeting Trumpians with the one question that makes very little sense, but was the most resonating outtake from last night's debate.

How can Trump demand Pence release his taxes to qualify as a running mate, but he won't do the same for US?