2016 Oct 31^st

I wrote this exactly a year ago. Tomorrow I will bring you up to date on the saga of “Bill” and “Ann” and where they are one year later.

Oct 31^st

True story! On Oct. 20^th Bill Simons, a 56 year old unemployed college graduate, is sitting with his wife in their very low rent apartment in Denver listening to the radio. He turns to his wife and babbles something. The right side of his face sags and Ann, his wife, suspects a stroke. She calls 911 and an ambulance arrives within two minutes.

 They take Bill to Denver General Hospital but Ann is not allowed to go with him in the ambulance. Ann does not drive so she calls a cab but it is sometime before she can get to the hospital. Meanwhile the hospital physicians cannot treat Bill because they don’t know his medical history or what medications he might be taking; consequently, the clot busting drug, Actephase, is delayed in its administration. The longer the delay the less effective the clot busting drug.

Within the next 24 hours it is determined that Activase is not busting the clot which has been located “deep in the brain.” Cat scans have determined its location and surgery has been performed to successfully remove the clot. Unfortunately the brain is now beginning to swell probably due to bleeding into the brain. When the clot was surgically removed the tissue behind the clot, not having received a blood supply, had died so the blood could not take its usual route and had begun to pool. More surgery was required; it was successful and a shunt was installed to drain off any accumulating blood.

By the next day after many CAT scans surgeons determine that the brain is swelling again. Ann has gone home to their apartment for some sleep and does not hear the phone requesting permission to do the necessary surgery to reduce the pressure; the neurological team does it anyway because the increasing pressure, if not reduced, will kill the patient. The surgery, called a craniectomy, involves the removal of a section of skull above the part of the brain which is the locus of the swelling. The removed potion of the skull is stored with the hope that it can be replaced before it deteriorates too much for replacement, in which case a plate will be put in place to protect the brain. This remedy for swelling is rarely used but in this case it is successful. The swelling stops. Bill has various tubes entering his body and he responds to little but he is alive. He is said to have “global aphasia” in which the patient can respond to very little stimulation.

Bill has been in the hospital’s ICU for a week, been through several complicated and dangerous surgeries and is at last beginning to recover some function. He can squeeze Ann’s hand and obviously recognizes her. The hospital personnel have gotten Bill up and in a chair so he can look out the window of his room. He wears a helmet to protect his exposed brain.

Now, at eleven days post stroke, Bill has improved enough to be moved to a step down unit and out of intensive care; speech therapists and other therapists have begun treating him. He is drinking small sips of thickened orange juice from a cup and responding well to verbal commands. Much of stroke recovery occurs in the few months immediately following the event so Bill seems off to a good start.

Why post this story on a political blog? We have mechanism in this country to provide excellent care for indigent people like Bill. From the time the ambulance was called to now Bill has not been refused care or received the least inferior care because he had no money…and believe me he had no money and no insurance. If that other party wins what do you suppose will happen to this wonderful example of caritas?

2016 Oct 30^th

From time to time I have referenced something I retrieved from “Morning Joe,” an MSNBC three-hour-long morning program. The host, Joe Scarborough, a former member of Congress, is a devoted foe of Donald Trump and a devoted supporter of all other right wing causes. On his morning program Scarborough is an overbearing, loud-mouthed bully who does not hesitate to shout down anyone who expresses an opinion with which he disagrees.

The “guests” on the program, usually people of some import, such as Willie Geist, Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post and former congressman Harold Ford, now a University of Michigan professor, usually have something to say that is worthwhile listening to--provided they can say it without being interrupted by Scarborough. He believes that because it is his program he can interrupt anyone he pleases and no one dares interrupt him.

The program begins at six in the morning and the principles are surely there earlier than that. Even if you arrive by chauffeured limo, that schedule requires a serious paycheck, a paycheck   large enough to compensate for the humiliation of being cut off in mid-sentence by Joe boy.

An interesting sidelight in this playbill is Mika Brzezinski. Mika is a ferocious feminist who has written several books focused on women being paid what they are worth. Mika is also a staunch liberal. Mika is the second banana in the Morning Joe show. Mika’s job is to read the news of the day if she can sandwich that task in between Scarborough’s constant interruptions. We have the curious phenomena of this very actively feminist woman tolerating the interruptions of this bullying alpha male simply because she is paid enough. She also has opinions of her own. She is furious with the Republican big wigs who will vote for Trump in spite of claiming that he is unfit to be president.

Scarborough has been elected to Congress four times. He mentions his time in Congress at least once in every program.  Here are some of Scarborough’s more notable contributions and attempted contributions to our country’s laws. There are others but these give you a picture of the man’s thinking.

Scarborough sponsored a bill to force the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations after a four-year transition and voted to make the Corporation for Public Broadcasting self-sufficient by eliminating federal funding. He also voted for the "Medicare Preservation act of 1995, which cut the projected growth of Medicare by $270 billion over ten years, and against the "Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996," which raised the minimum wage to $5.15.

There really isn’t anything else to say about Joe Scarborough.

2016 Oct 29^th

James Comey, Director of the FBI, is in a very hot seat. Comey has an interesting history and, possibly, a very short future. He was appointed to his position by President George W. Bush and re-appointed by President Obama. He was a Republican for many years but is no longer a registered Republican. No one knows if dropping his Republican party registration is an astute career move given his position in a Democratic administration or if it the result of disgust with the Republican’s nomination of Donald J. Trump for President. Comey isn’t saying and as far as I know no one has asked him.

Comey had served as an assistant to Attorney General John Ashcroft during the second Bush administration. Ashcroft had denied a request by White House insiders, Alberto Gonzales, then White House counsel and Andrew Card, Bush’s Chief of Staff, to re-authorize the wiretapping requested by the National Security Agency. Ashcroft was hospitalized with pancreatitis at the time and was a very sick man. Who cared if Ashcroft was sick? Gonzales wanted Ashcroft’s signature permitting NSA to prowl about in citizen’s affairs without a warrant and so they came calling.

Comey was the Deputy Attorney General at the time and given that Ashcroft was indisposed, Comey could have signed off on the request. He did not. He and some other J.D. officials got to the hospital to support Ashcroft. Subsequently the White House re-authorized the program without the support of the Justice Department and many letters of resignation were written and ready to be submitted. When Bush learned of this, he backed down and the troublesome sections were reexamined and eventually modified. Comey, at least on that occasion, showed himself to be a man of principle. (As a footnote, John Ashcroft, once he recovered and left office founded a very lucrative lobbying firm.)

There is considerable debate about the wisdom of Comey’s decision to announce his new “evidence” at this time. The Clinton team is furious and the Trump team is ecstatic. Of course the Trump team has very little to be ecstatic about, although the denial of reality does help, “All the polls show that we're winning.” Not really, although the ability to deny reality is always a big help. The esteemed 538 website that combines data from many sources does have the Clinton lead shrinking…from an 88.1 percent chance of victory about a week ago to an 80.6 percent chance this evening. Nobody is going to bet the farm on Trump’s chances based on that change. The chances of Democrats taking the Senate are 72.6 percent and holding steady.

Comey’s decision to talk about this new information was not well received by his Justice Department colleagues. Here are some comments:

While there was no explicit order not to send the letter, department officials expressed concern that what Comey wanted to do was contrary to how the department does business given how close this was to the election. They added it was contrary to department policies and procedures, one law enforcement source said.

Comey decided to disregard their concerns and sent the letter Friday anyway, shaking the presidential race 11 days before the election and nearly four months after the FBI chief said he wouldn't recommend criminal charges over the Democratic nominee's use of the server.

I guess Comey does as he pleases.

2016 Oct 28^th

FBI Director Comey tells us he has “new evidence” in the form of more emails that he must look into. While he is doing this, he thought he should inform congress, not that he had come to any new conclusion, but that he had some new information.

A long time ago, when I was a working college professor, I had a colleague who had a new doctorate in a field in which we were interviewing candidates. This professor expected to be included on the interview committee. She was famous for her spectacularly witty and equally caustic comments. I was on the interviewing committee and I asked the Dean if she would be included, He replied the he would not have her pissing in the soup. Yes, I know; this is farmyard humor but the Dean was a farm boy and the expression was apt.

A similar situation exists with this election. The Russians are able to penetrate the private email accounts of anyone and so they dribble information from those accounts, some of it mildly incriminating but none of it criminal, out into the public domain. The upshot is that many people believe more damaging information about Hillary Clinton is on the way.

The Trump campaign is now in ecstasy over the Comey comments because they believe this revelation might stop their plunge in the polls. The Clinton campaign is furious with Comey for deciding to reveal the resumption of the investigation at this time. You may remember the tongue lashing Comey directed at Clinton over her handling of confidential emails some time ago. Perhaps this Clinton scolding then helped to calm the conservatives who thought Clinton should have been prosecuted. Comey may believe that he is on a tightrope here; if this is news that would have had an impact on the election and Comey decided to hold it until after the election, he is in deep trouble. If the news is trivial but Comey’s discussion of it now impacts the election, he is in deep trouble.

The Russians are not responsible for this bunch of emails. It happens that the FBI was investigating Huma Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner, who is being prosecuted for sexual interaction with an underage girl. The laptop used by Weiner was also used by Uma Abedin, Weiner’s wife at the time, to communicate with her boss Hillary Clinton. It is those emails that the FBI is now reviewing. The result will almost certainly not be available until after the election.

Comey, the director of the FBI, is besmirched no matter how he handles this mess. The Trump supporters who are sure the election is rigged will have more ammunition even if they still lose…and they likely will. The result, regardless of who wins, or how the down ballot races turn out, is a citizenry convinced that the system is rotten. The Russians haven’t done it this time; this time we’ve contaminated our own soup.

2016 Oct 27^th

Cal Thomas is playing “constitutional scholar” again and he hasn’t done his homework. He tells us that Trump will “propose a constitutional amendment to limit terms. One can safely predict that isn’t going to happen because in order for a constitutional amendment to be considered for ratification by the states it must first pass congress. Most members are not about to limit their own power and position.” The last sentence is likely accurate; the sentence before that is not.

The founders were certainly not perfect when they set up the constitution but they were well aware the congress would never vote to limit their power so they provided an alternative route to amend the constitution and it requires no congressional action. A constitutional convention can be called once two-thirds of the state legislatures want one. Not a single congressional legislator is required to assent to that.  Any change in the constitution proposed by such a convention must be approved by three quarters of the states to become part of the constitution.

Constitutional scholars tell us that a constitutional convention is opening a can of worms because anything can be presented, from an insistence on a balanced budget to “you name it.” There are even now, a number of states that have called for such a convention. There is no time limit so once enough states agree we’ll have such a meeting. Right now we are just six states short.

Thomas tells us that Trump wants to introduce a five-year ban on federal officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service and also proposes a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.” Exactly why the Speaker of the House, third in line for the throne, can eventually lobby on behalf of foreign governments but the Presidents third assistant chief of staff can’t, is nowhere made clear.

I have been over the issue of defining a lobbyist and why any legislative effort to restrict this activity will not work. It is pointless to cover that ground again. Thomas reiterates a previous columnist’s claim that Trump would “cancel every unconstitutional executive order.” As I said before, if they were unconstitutional the right wing would have already moved against them. Trump claims that he will cancel the visas of countries that will not accept the return of their citizens if we deport them. If these countries tell Trump what he can do with his visas, what will Trump do with these deportees. Trump is not big on planning a step or two ahead.

2016 Oct 26^th

The happy news for Trump today is that premiums for the Affordable Care Act are going up… way up. There are multiple reasons for this; insurance companies, by law, must cover all applicants, even those already diagnosed with cancer whose treatment can cost thousands. There is also no restriction on how much drug companies can increase their prices once they know their customers have the insurance to pay whatever the company wants to charge. The result is that many insurance companies drop out and those that remain increase their premiums.

Trump, in his rallies (all televised for free by the biased media) has declared that he has an alternative plan…and he does. One commentator, savvy about these matters who has read the plan, claims that he is certain that Trump, himself, has never read it. Kellyanne Conway who has read it says that adult children who can now stay on their parent’s plan won’t be able to do that on the Trump plan. She wasn’t sure about the preexisting condition issue. There are far too many issues involved for a blog like this to take a serious look at the plan; moreover, there is no guarantee that the plan would survive the carving it will face in Congress.   

Thomas Swell has a typical column this morning’s paper. This time he is complaining that for the last seven years the Republican Congress has not had, “…the incentives and the guts to remove the President from office.” Dr. Sowell seems to fancy himself a constitutional scholar far superior to any member of congress. Do you suppose he remembers what happened the last time the house impeached a President?

Sowell continues his rant about the really, really awful candidates running for the presidency. He finally settles on Donald Trump for president. He believes that Hilary Clinton would be harder to impeach because of, “….howls of sexism from the media across the country that ugly sexual bias was behind any opposition to anything she did….Donald Trump has no such exemption.” The upshot of this cynic’s view of the candidates is to vote for the one who is more impeachable.

Sowell talks readily about impeachment. I don’t believe he understands that impeachment is a process by which the House of Representatives makes an accusation and is similar to an indictment. There still must be a trial by the Senate and two thirds of the Senate must vote to convict the President for the President to be removed from office.

At this time only 54 percent of the Senate members are Republicans so any effort to convict a Democratic President has about the same chance as the 50+ bills sent by the House to the Senate to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The leaders of the House, unlike Sowell, know perfectly well that impeaching the President would be an exercise in futility and simply increase the number of people laughing at them.

Once again, Sowell should stick to economics.

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2016 Oct 25^th

Fox News continues to rely on WikiLeaks for its program content; it now claims that the Clinton campaign had the material on the fat shaming of Alicia Machado in their arsenal for months before they used it. Of course they did. That should only be surprising to a campaign priding itself on never planning ahead, and to the media outlet covering them.

Trump’s complaint that the “mainstream media” is rigged against him stumbles against the fact that his multiple daily rallies are always covered from beginning to end by this same “mainstream media.”

That’s all the detritus today. The detritus just a day less than a year ago, on Oct 26^th of last year, follows:

Oct 26^th

Yesterday I watched Chuck Todd interview Ben Carson. Todd covered a lot of ground in that interview; we heard Carson speak about gun control, he opposes it (sort of) and abortion, he opposes that in all situations except imminent risk of death to the mother which he claims is very rare. Dr. Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist, a group that believes the Biblically appointed day of rest is Saturday not Sunday, that the Bible is literally true on every point and that Jesus’ return is imminent. They also believe that the dead are just asleep and will remain in that state until Jesus returns.

Carson’s demeanor though out this interview was the soul of calm attentiveness. His eyes were half closed and I thought it might be caused by the glare of television lights but Chuck Todd sat in the same lights and his eyes were wide open. Maybe Dr. Carson has found a tranquilizer that keeps him calm but alert. Several beta blockers are known to do that. In any event Dr. Carson and Mr. Trump present an interesting contrast.

Trump is clearly concerned about his loss of first place in Iowa polling.  He was commenting on this while hunched over his lectern telling his audience that he was a Presbyterian and that was “mainstream folks, that’s right down the middle; Seventh Day Adventist, I don’t know what that is.” Then he got around to those poll results about which he had recently been so proud. Not anymore, he isn’t.  It seems that one is from a newspaper, The De Moines Register/ Bloomberg News poll has him trailing Ben Carson as does the Quinnipiac poll. These polls have him trailing Carson by more than just a couple of points and oh is he upset. He is quick to assure one and all that he still has the lead nationally and he has the lead in New Hampshire; that’s all true but there is now a tear in his cloak of invincibility and he isn’t able to respond to that realistically. If he hadn’t crowed so loudly when the polls had him ahead he could acknowledge the fact that poll results fluctuate; now he’s trapped by his own hubris.

Jeb Bush showed more than a little frustration. He said, "I've got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that," Oh dear, temper, temper, temper! Trump set out determined to provoke Bush and Bush let him do just that. Then the other Bush family members showed up to provide aid and comfort and Trump hit him again with something like, “Now he runs back to Mummy and Daddy.”

Skipping to Marco Rubio who is very discontented with being a junior senator; he can’t stand the Senate. His problem there was that he tried to offer some legislation and some of it was defeated by Democrats and some defeated by his own party. The result of this frustration is that he won’t run again for the Senate; it’s the Presidency or nothing. Old poker players, and I am one, have a saying, “Bet ‘em high and sleep in the street.” Good luck Marco.

Now it is a year later. As you all know “little Marco” has changed his mind again and is now running for the senate. Hey; a guy needs a job!

2016 Oct 24^th

Donald Trump gave a speech in Gettysburg in which he said some things that need to be examined; immediately on taking office he will cancel all of the unconstitutional Obama executive orders.

If the executive orders that remain (some were found unconstitutional) were unconstitutional you can be sure they would already have been challenged by Republicans and if the challenges had been successful the orders would have been overturned. So good luck with that effort.

He will amend the constitution to impose term limits on congress. This require two thirds of the state to agree to call a constitutional convention and then three quarters of the states must agree to any amendment for it to be ratified. What do you think the senators and congressional representatives will be doing if you try to pass an amendment restricting how long they can keep their jobs, particularly when many of these politicians hate the guy who is proposing the change.

Then he wants a five-year ban on lobbying. This proposal is simply naïve.  Who is a lobbyist? There have been several attempts to define lobbying and none of them has been successful. Newt Gingrich, one of the richest influence peddlers in Washington manages to skirt the definition of “lobbyist” just enough so that he doesn’t even have to register. You can be president of an “interest group” and go around to see your old congressional buddies to let them know your views on upcoming legislation…and by the way, you tell them, “My organization will be making a generous contribution to your election campaign."

 No lobbying going on here.

He is now delivering some of his opinions to the usual adoring crowd at a Florida rally. We are smashing ISIS caliphate by attacking Mosul, their capital. The fact that ISIS is gradually being destroyed doesn’t make Trump happy because it doesn’t fit with his rant about our incompetent leadership. He tells us that cleaning out Mosul is more difficult because we advertised that the attack was coming. He believes that we should have surprised them. Look at the terrain; how could you bring an army of a hundred thousand to bear on Mosul in a surprise attack?

Trump’s most recent performance makes clear that he is really getting the excuses ready for his now near certain loss. He claims that the press is rigged against him (he’s no longer even happy with Fox.); the polls are rigged against him (but they were great back when he was winning the primaries.); and the election is rigged against him. His son says that he will accept the election results if they are fair.  

2016 Oct 23^rd

Kellyanne Conway was on the tube this morning trying to cover for her boss’s remarks at Gettysburg about suing the women who have accused him of groping them. Trump had been on message for much of the time but then came the petulance we have all come to expect late in his speeches. This always happens toward the end of his performances; on a couple of occasions it was a pesky mosquito; really he did, he spent rally time  telling his audience how much he hated mosquitos…and his handlers are not worried about his mental health?

There is no doubt that the accusations of “unwanted sexual advances” have gotten under his skin and we know that he has to respond to any irritant; but why say at this point that he is going to sue the accusers? He has every right to sue them if he wants to, but why advertise that you plan to do it? Why not wait three weeks until the election is over and do it then without talking about it in advance? His threat just serves to keep the issue alive and keeping it alive hardly helps him.

Kellyanne held to the party line that the women just wanted their fifteen minutes of fame, or were paid by the Clinton campaign, or…you name it. Kellyanne was great; she can rattle on…and on without ever pausing. She can turn instantly from defending Trump to attacking Hillary Clinton. Some might question Kellyanne Conway’s sincerity because prior to August 17 Kellyanne Conway was working for the Ted Cruz campaign and giving Donald Trump a good going over. Here is some of that:

”Conway praised anti-Trump messaging, saying it’s “gotten better” because people are “starting to talk about victims of Trump University, victims of Trump in Atlantic City.” Conway also continued highlighting Trump’s hypocrisy in claiming that he is “for the little guy,” when really he has built his business “on the backs of the little guy.” (From the March 8 edition of CNN’s At This Hour.)

So much for adherence to personal loyalty and to principle; Kellyanne’s loyalty is obviously for sale.

Trump’s speeches are full of promises: He will produce 27 million jobs over the next ten years; he will replace Obama care with “something better;” he will cut taxes for just everybody; he will reduce the national debt; he will strengthen the armed forces; he will cancel trade deals he doesn’t like….and he will not explain in advance how he will do any of this. Will he start buying his neckties and hotel towels from US suppliers? I wouldn’t bet on it.

It is very clear that a principle beneficiary of Trump’s tax plan is Donald Trump. One premier part of that tax plan is the complete elimination of the estate tax, a second part is to cut the income tax top rate from the current 39.6 percent to Trump’s 33 percent. At Trump’s income that will help him get a nice new golf course.

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2016 Oct 22^nd

There is nothing new under the sun, or in this election. Trump threatens to sue women accusing him of groping them. If he did that he would have to testify under oath so I believe these women are quite safe.

Then his one really good gag at the Al Smith dinner, one that even Senator/comedian Al Franken believed was good, the one where he complains that Michelle Obama’s speech got applause but when Melania, his wife, gave the same speech later, the unfair media wasn’t nice to her. That line was plagiarized from a cartoon in Roll Call.

Then his transition team factotum, Governor Chris Christie, is about to be indicted over the bridgegate scandal. Couple that with a high level campaign official deciding to take some personal time off with just over two weeks to go before the election.

Just less than a year ago, this was the detritus; it was for October 21st 2015 You can see that what happened then has little relevance for our concerns today. A year from now I’ll bet we’ll be saying the same thing about today’s concerns…I hope!

Pregnancy week! Oct 21^st

This title means that a lot is happening this week; some of it has happened in the few hours just before I began writing this. It begins with the announcement by Joe Biden that he won’t be running for president.  The Vice President made it clear that while he wouldn’t be running he wouldn’t be silent. Anyone who knows Joe Biden will not be at all surprised by that. Eventually I’ll bet he’ll support Hillary Clinton.

Tomorrow we have the next Benghazi Committee hearing: Trey Gowdy, the Chairperson will need a durable scraper to get the accumulated egg off his face. We have two Republican committee members coming forward of their own free will and telling the press that the committee’s purpose was primarily to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s reputation. Then there was the staffer who claims he was fired because he wasn’t digging up enough dirt on Clinton. Now we have Gowdy castigating Clinton for revealing a CIA source, Moussa Koussa, a Libyan. His name appeared in an email to Clinton from Sydney Blumenthal; then Trey Gowdy said that his name was among, “Some of the most protected information in the intelligence community.” Well, not really, because when the emails were released the name wasn’t redacted. Then Gowdy’s committee released the name themselves before recognizing their error and quickly removing it. This is the parade of clowns which govern our country!

Of Course there is the problem the Republicans have with selecting a Speaker of the House:  Paul Ryan former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate on the Romney ticket said he would take the job, but only under certain conditions. He has made it clear that he doesn’t want the job, so if the conditions aren’t met he’s outta there! His conditions are straightforward: there will no longer be a “motion to vacate.” This is a procedure to bring the Speakership to a vote essentially holding the office captive if ever the speaker should temporarily displease enough members of his party. One of the tea party forty has already claimed that this is a “non-starter.” What other members think about that is not on the record. Ryan also wants the approval from all of the Republican caucuses.  The Freedom Caucus consists of 40 staunch tea party members many of whom don’t trust Paul Ryan and they had their own candidate, Daniel Webster. Late this afternoon Ryan got a super-majority of that caucus to approve him but that’s not the 80 percent he requires. Maybe the Freedom Caucus will come to the 80 percent by the deadline of October 28^th. It turns out that according to the rules, the Speaker of the House need not be an elected member of Congress. (Although electing a non-member might be a problem.) There is just no end of fascinating complications in American politics.

2016 Oct 21^st

We now have the results of the Al Smith Dinner in New York. For those who don’t follow the arcane ways of politicians, Al Smith was the first Catholic ever nominated for the presidency by either political party. He lost and lost badly, partly no doubt because of anti-Catholic prejudice, and probably for some other reasons as well. Catholic politicians have been viewed with suspicion because many believe they will be agents for the Catholic Church’s agenda rather than representing the views of their constituents.  John Kennedy faced this problem and gave a remarkable speech asserting that while he was Catholic his thinking was independent of his church.

The dinner was to raise money for Catholic charities. The attendees were supposed to put political rancor aside. The major candidates were invited to speak and were expected to produce some humor, preferably self-deprecating, for the amusement of the audience. As you might imagine self-deprecating humor is not Donald Trump’s long suit. The result was that he didn’t give it much of a try, instead he stuck to deprecating Hillary Clinton. There were no physical assaults, primarily because Cardinal Timothy Dolan was sitting between Trump and Clinton. One curious fact: Trump’s wife, Melania, was seated next to Trump but Bill Clinton wasn’t invited at all. That wasn’t very ecumenical; Oh well.

Trump’s best line was to complain that while Michelle Obama had given a great speech and been applauded for it, when his wife gave the very same speech she was criticized. This  was as close to self-deprecating as it was possible for Donald Trump to get. We’ll never know what his wife thought of it.

Then Trump got multiple boos. This came when he said that, “Hillary Clinton was pretending not to hate Catholics.” The man is supposed to be a showman and he should have known that such a comment would do more harm to him than to Hillary Clinton. It’s possible that he did but the opportunity to deliver what he thought was a zinger was just too overpowering and he couldn’t resist.

His comment from the last debate that Clinton was a nasty woman has spread and has been welcomed by many women as a rallying cry. But one politician is on record as saying that, “Sometimes a lady must be told when she is being nasty.” This comment gets Brian Babin a Republican congressional representative from Texas on the map. Way to go Brian; now turn in your “southern gentleman” credentials.

2016 Oct 20^th

Donald Trump did not help his cause last night. There will be debates about who won the debate but the important aim of the contest is about attracting new voters and keeping the voters you have. If that is the aim, I’m afraid Trump missed it by a mile. He needs women voters and his antics aren’t attracting any more of them than the devotees he has.

Trump claimed that he would “wait and see” before accepting the results of the election. This didn’t help him except to solidify his base which is quite solid enough already. He has been claiming for some time that the election is rigged and now many of his supporters are joining that chorus. Just this morning columnist Cal Thomas chimed in on that theme. Of course Trump has the right to challenge the result of the election and he has that right even if it isn’t close. But if he challenges the result of a landslide loss he will reinforce the image of himself as a thin-skinned, sore loser. He has very few Republican supporters in high places now, and this rhetoric threatens the loss of even their support. The graceful submission to the will of the people is an important election tradition and Trump seems to be preparing the electorate for his refusal to acknowledge it.

He certainly played the alpha male by winning the who can interrupt whom more often. I don’t have the figures but he was way ahead of Clinton on that count. He nicely played the role of the overbearing male. Trump polished off his debate performance by calling Hillary Clinton “such a nasty woman.” Did he believe that would attract more women voters? Of course not and he didn’t care. He was having fun, posturing and mugging for the cameras. Later he made a joke of his earlier remark about perhaps contesting the election by saying that he would absolutely abide by the election results (pause…) if he wins. That brought done the house and that’s why he said it.

He is very good at pleasing and getting applause from his fans at these rallies. That is the reason he will lose this election: he is addicted to the cheers from his fans and the things he has to say to get those cheers often alienate everyone else.

Another woman came forward today to tell her story of being grabbed by Trump and when she resisted he said, “Don’t you know who I am?” This now makes ten women with plausible stories of Trump’s lechery. It won’t make any difference. His devoted followers have heard it before and they either don’t care or they believe all of these women are lying, put up to this by the Clintons They believe in Trump and they will distort any new information so that belief can be maintained. Psychologists call it dissonance reduction.

In three weeks this mess will be over….I hope!

2016 Oct 19^th

Pat Buchanan has a column today telling us that the electoral system is rigged. He quotes Newt Gingrich who claims that, “…without the unending one-sided assault of the news media, Trump would be beating Hillary by 15 points.” Wishful thinking is endemic to Trump and his supporters and this is an excellent example of exactly that. What Gingrich fails to recognize, or if he does recognize it he won’t admit it, is that the ammunition powering this assault is provided by Donald Trump himself. The examples of Trump helping the media to damage his case are surfacing daily. He says that he can grab women by the “crotch” and they won’t object because he is rich and powerful.

He needs a ready supply of tic-tacs because he gets just overpowering urges to kiss attractive women. Apparently, self-control is, for him, unthinkable. Thus does Trump arm the media whom Buchanan demonizes for reporting what Trump has said, done and plans to do..

Buchanan believes that Clinton’s emails should get equal time. That isn’t likely when networks charge by the number of “eyeballs” on their programs. They have a duty to stockholders. Buchanan complains about these media companies, except for Fox News; perhaps he doesn’t know that Fox News is wholly owned by two men, a Saudi prince who has claimed publicly that what harms America is good for Saudi Arabia, and Rupert Murdoch. There are no other Fox News shareholders and these owners are both billionaires who can do as they please,

Then Buchanan leaves his lead to complain about SCOTUS. He says, “Where did these unelected jurists get the right to impose their values upon us and remake America in their own secular image?” Article 2 of the Constitution requires the President to nominate a person whom the Senate can then confirm. The fact that these jurists are unelected comes directly from the Constitution; whether they are “imposing their values upon us” is a matter of Buchanan’s opinion. Nothing in his background qualifies him as a constitutional scholar.

Buchanan claims that SCOTUS has “systematically de-Christianized and paganized American society and declared abortion and homosexual marriage constitutional rights.” Buchanan is a Roman Catholic and believes everyone should share his theological views. He has been very unhappy with Pope Francis’ position on a variety of theological issues because the Pope is too liberal to suit Patrick Buchanan. Maybe Buchanan will start his own really, really Christian splinter church.

2016 Oct 18^th

No quiver in the polls is too minor to escape the mathematically trained eye of Nate Silver, the head honcho of 538, a blog devoted to predicting election results. The polls now show a 87.4 percent chance of Clinton winning the election whereas a few days ago it was just over 88 Percent. Well, not to worry.

Trump is worrying considerably and like the prudent man he is, he is taking out insurance. His insurance is to claim that the election is rigged. He wants poll watchers but he doesn’t understand that poll watchers are not just armed Trump supporters who look over the shoulders of voters. Poll watchers must apply for the job in advance and then they are trained to do what watchers need to do.

Other Republicans do not buy into this rigged election complaint. Senator Marco Rubio, speaking of Florida, maintains that rigging the election in the 67 independent Florida counties would be impossible. Even Governor Christie claims that the rigging isn’t about the voting (although Trump disagrees with him) but about the disproportionate media coverage.

Of course there is disproportionate media coverage. Trump believes the media is against him. He might be right but the media has only one real concern, and that is making money. You would think that Donald Trump could understand that.

It is a matter of which TV coverage gets the most “eyeballs.” If you are a TV producer and your choice is between covering Donald Trump claiming he can enter the dressing room of half-naked teenagers on an inspection tour; or covering another batch of WikiLeaked Clinton emails, which coverage would you pick? If you are a producer who wants to keep her job you’ll cover Trump’s shenanigans. Let’s face it, sex trumps emails every time. (Yeah, I know about the pun.)

Trump is losing and he knows he is losing.  The result is that Trump will get farther and farther into the gutter and talk less and less about the national issues. The last debate he had four women seated in the audience who had affairs with Bill Clinton. All of them must have known he was married. Trump’s ploy didn’t rattle Hillary Clinton. Now he is bringing the mother of a man killed in the Benghazi raid who blames Hillary Clinton personally for her son’s death. She will also be seated up front but probably with no more effect than the four he produced last time.

2016 Oct 17^th

Three weeks and a day to go; can it get any uglier? I’ll bet it does.  Now the Republican headquarters in Hills borough North Carolina was firebombed; graffiti called on the Nazi loving Republicans to go home. Never mind that the Republicans were not immigrants. In short order Democrats had contributed 13 thousand dollars to help repair the firebomb damage.

In an interview, a cowboy hatted man said that if Hillary Clinton won the election she should be “taken out.” When asked if that was a threat he replied with a line taken straight from his hero Donald Trump, “You tell me.” The Secret Service folks are surely earning their pay this year.

Sometimes it is instructive to watch Fox News, their reporting is predictably anti-Clinton. (But of course it is fair and balanced.) The big news was that Under Secretary Kennedy had wanted the FBI to change the classification on some Clinton documents in return for nice career opportunities. That’s a stupid ploy if it’s true. We’ll hear more of this line of chat.

Fox gets some interesting ads. One of these in particular is a serious minor actor who explains that these are perilous times. That the world is awash in paper currency and that the prudent person will convert their paper assets to gold or silver.  The advertised dealer will provide the buyer with hard assets at the cheapest possible price and will help you convert your IRA  so you can hold gold and silver in that too. OK, you can make a case for having some gold and silver in a retirement account, but it is curious that I’ve never seen this ad on any but the Fox News channel. I wonder why that is. Could there be more folks with a paranoid streak watching Fox News? (You tell me.)

This morning we have a column by the ever-unhappy Mona Charen. She says, “It has been only a week since the Hollywood tapes… persuaded key parts of the nation that Donald Trump might have a character problem. Would you vote for a sexual predator? asked the New York Magazine. ‘Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton, choose your sexual predator,’ headlined the Federalist.” Choose your sexual predator? Really? And the evidence that Hillary Clinton has grabbed men by their privates is what? Oh, I see; she’s a more ladylike predator.

What is “The Federalist” that headlines this smear? According to Domenech, a founder, the site has "a viewpoint that rejects the assumptions of the media establishment" and says it is dedicated to discussing "the philosophical underpinnings of the day's debate" instead of focusing on what he calls "the horserace or the personalities". Labeling sexual predators is now part of “the philosophical underpinnings of the day’s debate” My, how philosophy has changed.

Meanwhile, poor Julian Assange has had his email blocked at his long-time temporary residence at Ecuador’s London embassy. The blocker was the Ecuadorean Government which might have had enough of their guest after over four years of hosting him. If Julian can’t get continuing feeds from his Russian buddies how will he continue to fuel WikiLeaks? Let’s face it. Julian isn’t digging out these emails all by himself.  Assange is violently opposed to Clinton because he sees her as likely to start wars; he isn’t happy with Trump either, but he reserves his attacks for Hillary Clinton. Now he might go after Ecuador!

2016 Oct 16^th

Mr. Trump just keeps on digging…and digging. His skin is getting thinner and thinner; now he finds it necessary to tweet criticisms of Saturday Night Live’s parody of his last debate. Nothing said about him is too trivial to produce an outraged response. Prioritizing is not a possibility for Trump and it is showing as his poll numbers decline.

The esteemed 538, a blog that amalgamates various polls and comes up with an election forecast that can change daily, gives Clinton an 85 percent chance to win the election and Trump a 15 percent chance. The Trump people will dispute this and claim that it massively underestimates their chances. The Clinton people are delighted with this approach because while the Trump people are arguing about the reality of the polls they are doing nothing to change them.

While 538 is interested primarily in accurate prediction, Paddy Power, a Brit betting outfit is concerned entirely with getting the odds right. For them it is entirely about money, principle plays no part at all. There have been some interesting changes in the odds Paddy Power has provided over the last month. On Sept 15^th Clinton’s odds of winning were close to 1 to 2, specifically, 8 to 15. Those are good odds. The numbers mean that you must bet 15 dollars on Clinton to win and if she wins you’ll be 8 dollars richer. On Oct 15^th Paddy Power changed Clinton’s odds to 1 to 6; now you must risk 6 dollars and if you’re right you will be one dollar richer. On Sept 15^th Trump’s odds of winning had been 1 to 1.5. Now, a month later, they are 5 to 1. In short, Paddy Power now believes betting on Trump to win is a much riskier business than it was just a month ago.

There have been several obvious changes: foremost is the tape of Trump’s comments about how he perceives his entitlement to assault women because of his wealth and fame. As a result of that tape nine angry women have come forward to accuse Trump of doing exactly what he said he could do. They came forward because they didn’t want to see a sexual pervert become President of the United States. Others whom you would think might agree with that, fundamentalist preachers like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell Jr. and others, don’t care.

There might be even more women willing to come forward but for the venom hurled at them by Trump surrogates. One of these surrogates, just yesterday, Lou Dobbs, published the phone number and email address of a 74-year-old woman who was abused by Trump on an airplane over thirty years ago. That kind of treatment will inhibit all but the very courageous from complaining about Trump’s perversions.

One very interesting criticism of the stories these women tell is that there are no corroborating witnesses. That criticism is absurd: if you are a sexual predator is it likely that you will be grabbing women by their genitals in public? I doubt that even the rich and famous Donald Trump could get away with that. Of course he does his assaults out of the public eye.

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2016 Oct 15^th

Trump’s problems are compounding at a splendid rate: Yesterday on Morning Joe Dr. Ben Carson, one of Trump’s most loyal, if often badly confused surrogates, was interviewed about the new accusations of sexual indecencies by his hero, Donald Trump. Dr. Carson is not easily fooled; he has recognized, and publicly stated, that evolution is literally the work of the devil to discredit God. One would think that with a mind like that Carson could immediately spot subterfuge in any comments by Trump’s detractors.

Katty Kay, a BBC reporter, was one of Scarborough’s guests and she asked Carson if he believed the women who had just, in the last few days, accused Trump of groping them. Carson, apparently not given to quick thinking, began a discourse on something else. She interrupted him and asked again, “Do you believe these women? Yes or no please.” Now Carson is becoming very agitated because Scarborough chimes in as well asking for an answer to the same question. Everyone is talking at once but Carson can be heard over the bedlam saying, “Cut off her microphone.” It seems he cannot tolerate a woman pushing him for an answer. Scarborough was pushing him just as hard as Katty Kay but Carson focused his anger on the woman questioner. Carson never answered the question and soon left the program.

Today we have another woman claiming she was groped by Trump…and a previous victim says she is moving out of the country because of fear for her safety. A gun carrying Trump supporter spent eleven hours staring into a Democratic office in Virginia. He claimed his protest was peaceful but then why did he feel the need to display a weapon. Can we say intimidation? Trump now tells us that Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire and New York Times shareholder is a major part of the conspiracy against him. This conspiracy, he tells the faithful, is everywhere. It includes the networks. These are the same networks that broadcast his frequent rallies, who provide reporters to cover those rallies. Now Trump says the reporters are complicit in the conspiracy against him. It has gotten bad enough that the reporters have to have a police escort away from these events to keep from being attacked by Trump’s fans.

Perhaps the answer to Trump’s obvious paranoia is to stop televising his rallies and for news organizations to stop sending their reporters to cover him and provide him with targets for abuse.

Jessica Leeds, now 74, told her story about being groped years ago by Trump to the point where she left her seat and retreated to the back of the plane. Lou Dobbs, who runs a business show for Fox News thought it would be a good idea to publish her email address and her phone number. He thought she had some connection to the Clinton campaign. She didn’t, and then he apologized. That apology made everything this ***** did OK. Where does Fox find these people, or does Fox convert ordinary humans into people like Dobbs.

2016 Oct 14^th

Thomas Sowell’s recent column tells us yet again about the evils of ISIS. He carefully avoids describing the shrinking of the so-called Caliphate under the relentless attacks by our Air Force and that of our allies. As far as Sowell is concerned it seems that America can’t do anything right. He brings up once more the President’s labeling of ISIS as the JV team, but he doesn’t mention that this was said over two years ago when ISIS was not the potent force it subsequently became.

He also claims that Clinton’s “own announced agenda strikes at the very foundation of American Constitutional government on which our freedom depends.” Clinton will do this, he says, by appointing judges who will overturn certain recent SCOTUS decisions. He doesn’t tell us that his Republican friends in the Senate have also decided to appoint only judges who will hue to their agenda: they will repeal Roe v, Wade, they will outlaw same sex marriage and they will, in general follow the Republican Party line.

The President has already nominated Judge Merrick Garland, a well-qualified centrist juror, but hoping to get all of the rightwing goodies an appointee from a Republican president could produce, Judge Garland will not even get the courtesy of a vote. Now whose agenda “strikes at the foundations of American Constitutional government”?

Sowell does not understand that the states and not the federal government decide the charter school–public school issue. He says the Clinton wants to “stop the expansion of charter schools” but that is done by individual states, not by the federal government.

His last appeal is to demonize an increase in the minimum wage. He claims it increases unemployment particularly among poor black men. He provides no evidence for this assertion and hopes you will not ask for any. I guess he wants to keep incomes below the poverty level so that the government can provide food stamps to men who are working full time at the federal minimum wage.

Cal Thomas, another columnist, takes issue with Judge Richard Posner who sits on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal and is on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School. President Reagan appointed him to the Seventh Circuit.  Judge Posner is not properly in awe of the Constitution to suit Cal Thomas.  Posner says that he sees no value in spending years studying the constitution given its many amendments. Thomas says, “This is the arrogance of some judges who think they know better than the founders.” Unfortunately for Thomas the founders have since the founding have had to rethink a few things.

There was the Bill of Rights which specifically listed certain freedoms. These ten amendments guaranteed a number of thing not precisely covered by the constitution. The Federalists, by the way, claimed the Bill of Rights was unnecessary. Check Federalist paper #84 for Alexander Hamilton’s opposition to the Bill of Rights. He claimed that it wasn’t necessary, that nothing in the constitution gave the government the right to restrict the freedoms that the Bill of rights made specific.

Then it took 132 years after the constitution was ratified before the 19^th amendment gave women the right to vote. Hey, just a little oversight by the founding fathers.

Could Cal Thomas, the old Moral Majority VP, be just a shade out of his depth here?

2016 Oct 13^th

 The right wing columnists will have to wait another day. Trump’s past is gaining on him and nothing he can do will block it out. The groped women just keep coming and they are a much more potent weapon against Trump, particularly given his need for women’s vote, than anything the Kremlin’s hackers can do to shake up Hillary Clinton.

Trump is flailing away at these new accusations that he groped/kissed/fondled a number of women. The NYT has carried stories about several of these women, one of them claims she was groped in the first class section of an aircraft and as a last defense got up and went back into coach to get away from Trump’s attention.

Trump, as is his wont, has claimed that he will sue the “Times” and anyone else who publishes such stories. The “Times” is quite safe because if they are sued by Trump there will be a discovery period (Legalese for a time when the facts in the case are determined.) and during discovery, Donald Trump will have to testify under oath. Can you imagine Trump testifying about his behavior under oath? Not gonna happen folks; not gonna happen.

He had a rally in Florida today and he used it to harangue his audience about how everything was stacked against him. He was incensed about the media, all of whom hated him and treated him unfairly. The debate monitors gave Clinton more time than they gave him and they interrupted him if he went even a second over his time but they let Clinton go on and on. Apparently he didn’t grasp the fact that the “mainstream media’ he was condemning as unfair and biased against him, was carrying his rant from beginning to end. On second thought maybe exposing what he says to a wider audience doesn’t do him any favors.

He appealed to his audience about the improbability of the events involving Natasha Stoyanoff, the People magazine reporter who had to fight him of at his Mar a Lago mansion when she was doing a story about the first anniversary of his marriage. He said, ‘Look at her; you tell me.” The clear implication was that the woman wasn’t attractive enough to get his attention. When the transcript of his rally came out that comment did not appear. And he wonders why he continues to lose the votes of women.

He said that he had evidence that these women were lying and that he would reveal this evidence at a time and at a place of his choosing. With this comment he has guaranteed that reporters will keep the story alive by continually asking him and his surrogates, “Where is this evidence? When will you talk about it?”

2016 Oct 12^th

There are some columnists worthy of mention today but they’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

First, consider Trump’s recent advice to his playmates in Florida at a rally on Tuesday: He told them to be sure to vote on November 28^th. Oh dear! By that time Hillary Clinton will be selecting her cabinet because the election, which is occurring in some states right now, will have happened back on November 8^th.

It’s easy to see what probably happened here: Understand that the aging brain is inclined to conflate things because it takes focused attention to keep separate those thing that should be separated. On the Tuesday when Trump gave this interesting instruction, there were exactly 28 days until the election. He conflated the number of days until the election with the date of the election…oh well!

Moving right along, we find that stalwart Christian conservative, founder and head of the “Family Research Council,” Gary Bauer, being interviewed on the CNBC talk show, “With all due Respect.” The show wanted to get Bauer on the record about Donald Trump’s very un-Christian self-described, “locker room” talk. Bauer immediately went into the Christian forgiveness mode. Of course what Trump said was just awful but as Christians we must forgive him…besides Hillary Clinton has done far worse. And then came the zinger, “If you forgive Donald Trump why don’t you forgive Hillary Clinton?” Poor Gary Bauer; he came up with some tortured logic that explained nothing. The poor man had been nicely hung out to dry. He kept talking over the other guest until one of the moderators told him he had to stop doing that because the audience couldn’t hear what anyone said. He complied.

Trump lives in a bubble and he brings his fans in with him. He claims that all of the polls show him winning the last debate but he doesn’t tell us what polls those are. Then 538, a political forecasting site, has maps showing which states would be won by each candidate if only men voted and if only women voted. If only men voted many states go to Trump; if only women voted almost every state goes to Clinton. So now we have Trump waving the “if only men voted” “map at his rally as if this map represented the current status. When Trump loses, as he surely will, he has prepared his followers, by such chicanery, to believe the election was stolen.

Hillary Clinton has to contend with WikiLeaks, the Kremlin’s entry in the election. About the only cudgel WikiLeaks has is some old Clinton emails. These are made available to counter Trump’s crotch grabbing remarks. Who do you suppose wins that battle?  A couple of problems are obvious with this strategy: The first is that there is no way to verify the accuracy of these emails; the second is that Trump can be pegged as the Kremlin’s candidate for the presidency. That isn’t a helpful label for any candidate, much less one who is already sinking in the polls.

2016 Oct 11^th

Joe Scarborough about leaped out of his chair this morning. His guest was economist Jeffrey Sachs, a Harvard professor of economics and one of the really, really smart academic types.  Dr. Sachs responded to Scarborough’s constant lament about the cost various entitlement programs and how they could bankrupt the country; prominent among these were Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. His response was to tell Scarborough that a drug to fully combat and cure Hepatitis “C” was available through Gilead pharmaceuticals, but at a cost of a thousand dollars a pill. Gilead had bought the patent from the developing drug company and the cost of producing the pill is just one dollar each. Then Sachs dropped his bombshell; Medicare and Medicaid are prohibited by law from negotiating with Gilead on the price of the drug.

Joe went ballistic. He wanted to know how it was possible that one of the largest purchasers of drugs in the country was legally prohibited from bargaining about the price of what they were buying. Sachs told him that in 2005 the drug companies had made bargains with legislators to contribute to their election campaigns in return for this kind of legislation; it’s just what lobbyists do. The kicker occurred when Sachs told Scarborough that Gilead had relocated their home office so that their home office was now in Ireland and their tax debt to this country was near zero. Joe was as outraged as I’ve ever seen him. He had his producer put the phone number of the House of Representatives on the screen and asked his listeners to call their legislators to complain.

Of course this kind of lobbying influence has been going on for years and it is one reason that citizens are disgusted with Washington. Trump, although he hasn’t addressed this particular issue, owes part of his popularity to just these sorts of problems.

Trump has been in “tweet heaven” lately. He is upset that Speaker Ryan has told his folks to campaign on their own, paying no attention to Trump. Trump claims that he is now free to be himself. Who he has been heretofore is not clear, although nothing in his demeanor has changed. Now his war with the Republican party seems beyond repair.

Senator McCain says he will not vote for him but instead will write in Senator Lindsey Graham’s name. This got the expected eruption from Trump. Given that there are now about 50 prominent Republicans who have rejected Trump, he will be very busy tweeting insults at

 all of them over the next several days.

I hope the recipients of those tweets save them to hand down to their descendants just to demonstrate that they were on the side of righteousness, motherhood and apple pie when their party imploded.

2016 Oct 10^th

The second debate is history and that’s a good thing too! It is hard to believe that these are the two top candidates for the job held by some of our previous presidents. Naturally, everyone wants to know who won; that depends on whom you ask. A CNN/ORC poll gives Clinton 57 percent to Trump’s 34 percent. Other polls have the race closer and surely, a careful search will turn up a poll that has Trump on top.

Trump even went so far as to invite four women, three of whom had accused Bill Clinton of various sexual offences. They were Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Wiley and Paula Jones. Kathy Shelton had been raped and Hilary Clinton had been assigned to defend her rapist who pled to a lesser charge. Trump hoped that the appearance of these women at the debate would rattle Hillary Clinton. That didn’t work very well because many people saw it as a cheap trick and Hillary didn’t seem concerned about their presence.

Trump wanted to seat them in Trump’s VIP family section where they would be very close to Bill Clinton but Fred Fahrenkoph, the debate co-chair, told Trump’s people that if they did that security would escort the women out of the building. Now Trump wants this official removed before the next debate. Maybe Trump is laying the groundwork for refusing to show for the third debate.

It doesn’t matter who won the debate because the voters who have been polled on their preference are moving even more in Clinton’s direction. An NBC/WSJ poll taken after the smutty tape release, but before the debate, has Clinton beating Trump by 11 points, 46 percent to 35 percent among likely voters. Among all registered voters it’s even more lopsided, at 52 percent for Clinton and 38 percent for Trump. These polls were taken before the debate but it is unlikely that the results would change much after watching the performances of the principles.

Mike Pence, the apparently reluctant Trump running mate, has surfaced in North Carolina with a full-throated endorsement of Trump. This is in spite of their disagreement on what we should do about Russia’s role in the Syrian massacres. Forgetting Russia for the time being, Pence, although admitting that the Trump sex tapes were inexcusable, is now, after Trump’s debate performance, willing to do some excusing. Pence casts this in terms of “forgiveness,” a major part of the Christian canon. He pushes mighty hard for Trump’s forgiveness because he claims that he is contrite and has apologized.

 A necessary condition for Christian forgiveness is the sinner’s sincere contrition, or sorrow for having committed the act in question. We hear none of that from Trump, who really just forgives himself by saying that this was just “locker room talk” and that while golfing with Bill Clinton he had heard far worse. Trump is really saying to those who were offended by his comments, “Get over it. I’m just me being me.” He is absolutely right about that.

2016 Oct 9^th

Tonight is the big kahuna, the debate that is predicted to settle the issue of Trump’s chances to win the presidency; well, maybe. Many believe that Trump’s chances are already zero unless Hillary Clinton has a grand mal seizure before a national audience.

Many have given up on the Donald who will, nevertheless, depart the debate stage while feverishly chewing the curtain. The answer the Republican faithful hope for is to somehow elevate Mike Pence to the top of the ticket. That won’t work because Trump will not drop out and because voting has already begun. Absentee ballots in many jurisdictions have already been mailed even if they haven’t yet been counted.

But what about Pence? Conservative believe that he would have been a better choice, at least more electable, than Donald Trump. I doubt that; Pence has a ton of baggage that he can tote in Indiana but under which he would sag badly in a general election.

He has a record as a Congressman of supporting cutting Social Security, raising the eligibility age, and of attempting to privatize the program. He has always been eager to cut social programs if it meant saving money. He was also eager to cut Medicaid and provide a voucher system in its place. For Pence, it seems that saving money is far more important than providing for the needs of the people. In that regard he fits well with Michigan’s Governor Snyder who amassed a 500 million dollar budget surplus while providing cheaper lead-tainted drinking water to the citizens of Flint.

His championing the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” produced an uproar because it allowed any business person who claimed that they had a religious objection to the lifestyle of any citizen to refuse service to that citizen. The NCAA objected as did a host of major industrial companies, some declaring they would move their operations to another state.  This bill was signed by Pence on March 26^th 2015; by April 2^nd 2015, the uproar had increased to the point that Pence had to alter the bill to provide protection to members of the LBGT community. Now Pence began getting unhappy noises from the religious right that had pushed the original bill.

 Pence now has a problem with Trump’s less than Christian attitude toward women as expressed in the video of last Friday afternoon. At first Pence was in hiding and refused to comment, then, a full day later on Saturday afternoon he finally said that he couldn’t condone or defend Trump’s comments but noted that they were “eleven years old.” The evidence that Trump is different now is what? Pence is in much more trouble than Donald Trump, Pence has nothing going for him but his political future and that future is dimming very fast.

2016 Oct 8^th

Donald Trump’s past has resurfaced and bitten him on the kiester. By now everyone has heard his latest insulting remarks about women, particularly about how rich and famous men like himself can do anything he likes with them. Not all of them it seems, one woman resisted his advances, and lo, Donald Trump admitted that he had struck out with her. Of course he pointed out that she didn’t look nearly as good now as she did when he was “putting the moves” on her. What a gallant fellow.

This unfortunate conversation was taped about mid-September of 2005. Trump was just over nine months into his third marriage to Melania Knauss, which occurred January 22, 2005. Perhaps his newlywed ardor for Melania had begun to fade just a bit, maybe helped by Melania’s now three month old pregnancy with their son Barron who would be born March 20, 2006…but who knows.

There are some who claim that Trump has changed since 2005 but there is no evidence of that. These tapes are so believable primarily because they confirm what everyone already knows about him. His socially conservative base will not abandon him because he is the only thing standing against a very liberal SCOTUS.

There have been calls for an apology and Trump has presented us with a halfhearted effort in that direction. He read his apology from a teleprompter and he was obviously more angry than contrite at having to make the effort. It was one of those classic, “if anyone was offended… yada, yada.” As if he could not believe that anyone could possibly be offended by claiming he could grab women by their genitals and they wouldn’t mind because he was rich and famous. Then he did himself more damage by claiming that he had heard Bill Clinton say far worse. There is no evidence that Bill Clinton ever said the things about women that Trump has said; more importantly, he isn’t running against Bill Clinton. Melania, his wife has just announced that he has apologized and that she has forgiven him so we should forgive him too. That is very nice of her and like his “apology” surely orchestrated by his hired handlers but it won’t help.

Many prominent right wingers are now withdrawing.  Speaker Ryan who was planning a get together with Trump has just withdrawn the invitation. We have not heard from his seriously religious Vice Presidential pick. Governor Pence isn’t talking. Some feel that Trump should remove himself from the ticket but that has no chance. Others have suggested that if Pence expects to have any political future he should remove himself from the ticket. That is more likely.

One of the more hilarious comments came from Washington State party chairperson, Susan Hutchison, who said that Trump’s comments didn’t matter because in 2005 when he made them he was a Democrat.

2016 Oct 7^th

This morning while most television stations were focusing on news of the hurricane, I thought to find out what Fox News was talking about. I tuned in to “Outnumbered” a Fox format in which four slim, short skirted, young women are seated two on either side of an honored guest, typically male. We all know that Fox News is fair and balanced, just not this morning. The guest was a Wall Street Journal editorial writer named Daniel Henninger. Mr. Henninger produced a nonstop indictment of President Obama’s policies in Syria. When he had finished it was clear that the President was entirely responsible for all of the Syrian deaths. I heard no dissenting voices from any of the women present. Dissenting from an anti-Obama tirade from such an august personage as a WSJ editorial staffer might well risk unemployment for the dissenter. Fox does not take kindly to unhappy campers; Andrea Tantaros, formerly of “Outnumbered,” knows about that. She sued Fox and now she’s gone.

Given Fox’s predisposition to favor Trump and all things Republican, one wonders how the pretense of “fair and balanced” can be maintained. There are other more obvious examples. Matt Drudge in his Drudge Report claims that the Obama administration is telling lies about the severity of the Hurricane that has devastated the Caribbean and now is threatening Florida. This, Drudge tells us, is because the Obama administration wants to make a stronger case for the perils of global warming. Just forget the three hundred plus deaths the hurricane has caused across the Caribbean; those are just government lies.

The premier conspiracy theorist is Alex Jones. This guy has his own radio show in Texas and he’ll broadcast some amazingly unbelievable stuff. Even so there are lots of gullible people who will believe whatever Alex says.

We begin with his assertion that the government was behind the Oklahoma City bombing. Tim McVeigh was convicted of this crime that killed 168 people but Alex Jones is sure the government had a hand in the crime and, apparently some people believe him

You will be happy to know that no children died in the Sandy Hook school shooting. The 27 fatalities were not fatalities at all because these were all actors, just young kids coached to play dead. The scheme was designed to push a global initiative to stop Americans from owning guns and make it easier for these globalists to take over our country. Lots of people believe that but none of the parents of the dead kids and not all that many other sane citizens.

How about that moon landing; you know that was faked. Alex Jones says so and that’s good enough for many folks.

Trump had assured us until very recently that the President wasn’t born in this country and so his presidency was illegitimate.

Why do people fall for so many simply ridiculous stories? I have no idea but when we find out we’ll understand why so many want to vote for Donald Trump.

2016 Oct 6^th

Everyone is recovering from the sleeper that was last night’s debate. It didn’t draw much of an audience and for Clinton fans that was just as well for Tim Kaine did not distinguish himself. Kaine spent much time trying to interrupt Pence to point out Pence’s misunderstanding of Trump’s positions on various issues. That was a loser because whatever Trump’s position was, say, on keeping out Muslims until, “…We can find out what the hell is going on,” Trump apparently now knows what the hell is going on so he has changed course on Muslims. Trump changes his position on most issues daily so it is hard to attack him on much of anything. He does stay constant on his border wall and on Mexico paying for it.

The Pence performance was interesting on several counts: he doesn’t agree with his leader on how to deal with Russia and his evaluation of Putin. Pence proposes a much harder line than does Trump. Trump tells us how nice it would be if we just got along with Russia and that he admires Putin. Pence, during the debate, called Putin a small bully and claimed that if Trump was elected we would deal with Russia from a “position of strength.” Here is another Pence comment about Aleppo: “If Russia continues to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the US needs to be prepared to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from [taking part in] this humanitarian crisis taking place in Aleppo,” These strikes would involve military action against Russian forces.

Did Pence deliberately undercut Trump’s make nice response to all things Russian? You may remember the sudden removal from the Republican platform of a plank authorizing arms for the Ukraine when Trump had secured the nomination. Pence’s position here is not Trump’s position; why?

Is it possible that Governor Pence is preparing for the inevitable defeat of Donald Trump in next month’s election. The man is 57 years old and may be pushing himself toward a more traditional Republican position on Russia than Donald Trump holds.

Nevertheless, Pence comes with some heavy baggage of his own. As Governor he pushed for the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act; sounds great but it was a license to discriminate against serving anyone whose sexual preferences you found religiously unacceptable. An explosion from the business community followed when many organizations decided to leave Indiana. Pence capitulated and modified the bill.

In 2000, Pence stated, “Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexual’s [sic] as a ‘discreet [sic] and insular minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.” He called for “an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus” and instead advocated that resources be directed towards Conversion Therapy programs.

Not only is the man a sexual bigot but hopelessly ignorant as well; Conversion Therapy is not only punitive, but also worthless.

2016 Oct 5^th

Dr. Thomas Sowell offers us a “Peek behind the ‘Academic Curtain.’” The title should have been a, “Peek behind some selected Academic Curtains” because Sowell carefully confines himself to Ivy League schools and a few other elite universities.

This is not a new rant for Sowell; periodically, he feels compelled to tell us how upscale schools deny their students the splendid right wing wisdom that would move them toward a sound right wing political view, or even a view not so leftist leaning.

Sowell has a near reverence for the Federalist Papers. This is interesting on two counts at least: First, Federalist paper #84 specifically argues against the necessity for a Bill of Rights, which are the first ten amendments to the constitution. Accepting that argument there would be no Second Amendment and a very upset NRA.

Sowell excoriates the Ivy League for excluding the Federalist Papers from reading lists and including the Communist Manifesto; but many of the Federalist papers are aimed specifically at the American government while the Communist Manifesto is much more broadly targeted. Then Sowell’s rant about these liberal Ivy League institutions come up against the fact that the Federalist Society, the premier organization pushing a wider belief in the political philosophy of Federalism was founded by students at Yale, Harvard and the University of Chicago in 1982.

Sowell’s own bias is obvious. There are colleges where Democrats are demonized but Sowell can’t bring himself to mention these. At Biola University in Los Angeles, the issue for discussion recently was whether or not it was possible to be a Democrat and a Christian. (Biola University was once the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Perhaps they found it helpful to have a more secularized name for their institution.)

When a faculty member applies for tenure at Biola he, or she, must include a description of how their Christian faith informs their scholarship. It seems obvious that there will only be Christians on their faculty, and that there will be some interesting applications for tenure from those in the mathematics department whose field is Riemannian manifolds. But Biola University enrolls only a little over 6 thousand students. What about larger schools?

Liberty University has an enrollment of nearly 85 thousand students. That’s a higher enrollment than all of the Ivy League colleges put together. Liberty University has decided that its Democratic student organization no longer has a place on campus, Why is that? That’s because the values of that political organization do not agree with the values of Liberty University. Perhaps Sowell can show us a left wing college or university that has removed a Republican student organization because the college doesn’t agree with the Republican organization’s principles. I’ll bet he can’t name even one.