What is Wrong with America that Trump Can Clinch the GOP Nomination?

With Ted Cruz dropping out, The Donald has essentially clinched the GOP nomination for the Presidency. Not bad for an on again and off again Republican. But what is wrong in America that some one like Trump can be a threat to taking the Presidency. Last year I wrote a piece that predicted Ted Cruz losing the GOP bid for the Presidency. As a total whack-job, theocrat, I knew Ted didn't stand a chance in a general election, and I sincerely thought he was encouraged to run to make ol' Jeb look more electable. But then the Donald happened. No one could have predicted Donald Trump.

I will not go into Trump's politics, nor his lack of public speaking skills (George Takei already pointed this out in the most perfect way). The reason I will refrain from this is because Trump's politics have nothing to do with his success. Yes. I just wrote that the politics of the GOP Presidential candidate's success is irrelevant. What has America come to? Well, it's a long story, one that began with the spouse of one other potential Presidential Candidate.

The Clinton Presidency was a soap opera. It was as entertaining since the first time Bill played his sax. Yes, there was scandal, but it was of a personal matter. It's not like he was selling illegal arms and getting away with it. However, the Clinton Presidency was the first neo-liberal Presidency whose economic guru was Alan Greenspan, who suckled at the tit of Ayn Rand and was a member of her cult, "the Collective." Thus began the purchase of America by corporate interests.  Furthermore, his policies opened the door for successor to rape the Middle Class in America, leading to the Great Recession.

When li'l Bush stole the Presidency in 2000 he began continuing Reagan-esque trickle down policies. He gave tax breaks for the rich, privatized (AKA segregated) schools along racial and class lines, and lied to the American people to start an illegal war. And that's not to mention the unethical, and un-American detention camp in Guantanamo Bay. The Bush Administration continued the purchase of the American government by the corporate elite as the GOP rose to even greater power. With the marriage of the religious right to the political right now old hat, the Bush presidency led the country into a scientific back-slide. At the national level, climate change was denied, stem cell research suppressed, and creationism, now renamed "intelligent design," was allowed to be taught in schools along side evolution. These things became business as usual. Fortunately, Presidents have term limits, unfortunately, the next one was another neo-lib.

In 2008, Obama upset the DNC by sweeping Hillary Clinton out of the race, thus ending her first bid for the Presidency. He promised hope and change, and while the country hoped, his changes weren't spectacular, when they did occur. His first major change was to implement mandatory health care that was similar to what Hillary Clinton advocated during her husband's Presidency. The ACA, or Obamacare, passed, but not before the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies gutted the bill to the point that it was a mockery of its former self. In fact, States that did not expand Medicaid like they were supposed to have seen rate hikes and poor coverage for the very people the ACA was designed to protect. Added to this debacle, Obama expanded US military interests in the middle east which further destabilized the region. Also under Obama's watch, a corporation's religious belief trumps family planning, and corporations are now people who are allowed to vote with their wallets. Neo-liberalism looks less like liberalism, and more like old-fashioned conservatism.

The funny (or sad, per your perspective) part, is that the Party of Lincoln was hijacked twice in our little story. The first time was when the Moral Majority took controlling influence back in the 80s. This married Gilded-Age economics with religion. From a political point of view, this is brilliant because socioeconomic status is often an indicator (and much more so in the 80s than today) of a person's education. Poorer people tend to be more religious. Less educated people are less likely to question authorities they respect. Like preachers, church elders, priests, what have you. How else do you get an entire demographic to consistently vote against their own interests?

The second time the GOP was hijacked came not from the 1%, but from the product of their political tampering. A grassroots movement sprang up in Red State areas calling for a return to more Constitutional times. The Tea Party: poor conservatives convinced that it was the liberals that were destroying the country. You remember them, they were the ones chanting "Keep the Government out of my Medicare!" The Tea Party exists not to keep the GOP conservative, but to oppose Obama specifically.  Once the Republicans took control of the House and Senate they have stonewalled any left-leaning legislation introduced. This includes shutting down the Federal Government for not getting the 1% friendly tax breaks into the budget. Their obstructionism is so rampant, that the GOP controlled Senate is refusing to hold hearings on a Supreme Court vacancy.  They want to fill the seat, they just don't want Obama to do it. Before the 2016 election, this had become the state of US politics, the party in the Majority, refusing to work at the job they were hired for out of simple hatred for the other aisle, and the brown man in the White House. The only person Tea Partyers hate more than Obama is Hillary Clinton.

Enter the 2016 Presidential Election. When candidates announced their running in 2015, there were two political dynasties in the running. On the right you had Jeb Bush, son of Big Bush, and older brother to li'l Bush. Not even the GOP was having him. A dim-witted theocrat, Ted Cruz polled better than Jebbie. That's saying something. On the Left, you has Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and Secretary of State. Billing herself as the first woman President she stole the hearts of DNC hardliners. Of course, it helped that the DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was helping Clinton by making it hard for other candidates to be heard (I'm being nice, she flat out tried to rig the election). Add in that in many of the states Clinton won, there have been severe election issues that smell like purposeful election fraud (funny how it always benefits Hillary). Unfortunately, due to half the states barring independents from voting, hard-line neo-libs in the DNC are giving Clinton a lead over her competition in the polls. But it is her competition, and The Donald, that are defining the Presidential race.

Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are outsiders to the status quo. Clinton has many of the same employers donors as Republican candidates. Just like Bush, Kaish and Cruz, she is a whore to Wall Street too afraid to release her $200K-$400K speeches lest they be used against her during the campaign. The reason why those speeches are so important is because shucking Wall Street is so important. You see, the people are tired of business as usual. We know the game is rigged and we have two candidates that are not beholden to Wall Street. Sanders, like Clinton also works for his employers: the thousands of small donors, formally known as The People, who have financed over 99% of his campaign. Trump, on the other hand, is a Wall Street insider that may belong to the 1%, but he doesn't work for the 1%.  We have Sanders, who is grumpy, and Trump, who is crude. Trump the racist, and Sanders the activist. Two very different candidates, two very different people, two very different visions, but the most important thing is what they both share: Neither are under the thumb of the plutocracy. And THAT is why Trump is able to not only win the GOP nomination, but should Clinton win the DNC, have a good chance of becoming POTUS 45.

Either way, the next President will not be one of the usual crowd. It will be either a Social Democrat from the Bronx, or a sometimes Republican, sometimes Democrat from Queens. But the Witch from Chicago is out. The people are tired of the moneyed ruling elite ruining what was the most prosperous country in the world. The lives of the people are being sold to fatten the fat cats, and we are not going to take it any more.  The election of 2016 is a quiet revolution as The People are trying to use the system to get out Republic back. This is a test to see whether the American Experiment can survive our brush with the nouveau-Aristocracy that has arisen in America today. If not then in a generation or two the revolution may not be so quiet.

I think a little ditty from the 80s can sum up the attitudes of the oft ignored independent voters this election cycle:

Sanders Facebook Support Pages Shut Down on Facebook

It started out good enough. A quiet evening watching the Simpsons and idley swiping through Facebook. Then I noticed that one of the Bernie Sanders supporter pages I was in went from public to private. Later, I see the following post on my time line.  I tried to reply to it, but according to Facebook:

Post Has Been Removed

The post or object that you were commenting has been removed by its owner and can no longer be commented on.

Fortunately, I hadn't closed out the thread so I was able to copy and paste it below.

NAME HIDDEN FOR PRIVACY

39 mins · 

We are connected in spirit and will not be silenced!!! New Bernie groups will form in an instant!

See original post for comments!!!

Please share this to any Bernie groups you're in. The "online activist" group Hillary's super PAC hired (basically paid trolls) are striking tonight. By spamming the "report post to Facebook" feature on posts in Bernie groups, they've successfully shut down 3 of the largest Bernie groups within the past 20 minutes. Bernie Believers, Bernie Activists, and Bernie Sanders is my Hero had over 120,000 group members.

Don't panic! This should only be temporary until Facebook reviews the situation. Forgetting for a moment that this is easily one of the slimiest tactics I've ever seen in politics, you can still go to reddit to keep current on what's going on in the campaign. They hit us the night before tomorrow's primaries for a reason. Stay organized and stay informed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/

Bernie Sanders 2016 • /r/SandersForPresident
REDDIT.COM

So far, according to the above thread on Reddit, the following pages have been taken down:

• Bernie Believers
• Bernie Sanders is My Hero
• Bernie Sanders Discussion Group
• Bernie Sanders Activists
• Bernie Sanders 2016 - Ideas Welcome
• Bernie Sanders for President 2016
• Bernie Sanders or Bust

This is a horrible abuse of power from the Hillary camp. While she herself may not have ordered the attack, as the leader of her campaign she is ultimately responsible for it. I, myself, am conflicted. Part of me, the social studies teacher side, hopes she will call out her minions that would do such a cowardly act and hand them over to the authorities (the legality of this in uncertain) or at least flat out fire them. Another part of me wants to see this added to the growing stockpile of unethical deeds the GOP would use against her in the general election. If she gets the nomination that is. Sadly, she is already behind when it comes to millennials, and it is exactly this crowd that know what this kind of attack is!

I will write more as this unfolds, but as far as unethical campaign practices go, this is a new one.

Update: As of 11:30-ish 4/25/2016 the pages were back up thanks to the staff of Facebook looking into the matter as fast as possible.

While this attack may seem minor, it only is so because of the fast acting staff of Facebook, and the thousands of FB users that counter-reported the pages being shut down. This could have been far more serious because the attack happened on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary. This was a coordinated attack by people in the Hillary camp. Redditor, jdkon, was able to procure proof:

On the left you have a $hillbot saying to keep ip the good work shutting down the pages, and on the right are the masses of $hillbots patting themselves on the back.  The attacks were successful thanks to FB's algorithms which look at the frequency of reports an a page or a post. If a mass of people report a page in quick succession, the algorithms give FB's automated systems the go ahead to shut the page down. Better safe than sorry. And that's OK. But the Hillary camp exploited this safety feature to silence a political opponent.

This behavior is exactly why a political revolution is necessary right now. We have lost what it means to be a democracy. In a democracy that values free speech, you NEVER silence your opponent. You engage them, you debate them, you out politic them, but you never silence them. If your positions are genuinely superior to your opponent's positions then the voters will silence them at the ballot box. Anyone who tries to silence political discourse is a failure as a citizen.  This includes anyone in the Bernie camp that is thinking about retaliation. 

Sanders does not have to resort to dirty tricks to beat Clinton. Bernie is the leader of our little revolution, but only because he was in the right place at the right time. It just as easily could have been Elizabeth Warren. Sanders is doing so well because he is there for us, not the other way around. That is something Clinton and many of her supporters are blind to, because Clinton is only there for her. Her supporters that launched these attacks are only in for Clinton as well. Clinton is a demagogue who's only objective is to obtain the power of the Presidency. That power is an ends for people like her. For Sanders, it is only a means to implement policy that makes our democracy fair at the polls and fair at the work place.

"Bernie or Bust" Will Get Trump Elected, and That's OK.

Once again it is an election year, and once again there is infighting aplenty within the Republican and Democratic parties. What is different this year is that there is a schism within the Democratic party that may hand the GOP the Presidency. That may not be a bad thing. As a Democratic Socialist I never thought I would ever say that.

How, you say?  The Bernie or Bust campaign.  Pledges to the campaign promise to either write in Sanders or vote Green Party if he loses the Democratic nomination. Clinton supporters argue that not voting for Clinton in the election would be the same as voting for Trump.  Naturally, they assume, much like main streammedia that Clinton will get the nomination. The outlook on that in dubious.  The GOP got rid of their royal line, little ol’ Jeb, but many Democrats are reluctant to give up their queen.  However, Sanders has not only split the DNC, he also has a large, grassroots following among independent voters who now outnumber both the Republicans and the Democrats. While the battle rages for the post March 15^th primary States, the Bernie or Bust campaign is growing.

The reason why I say a Trump win wouldn’t be that bad is because of Congress. 34 Senate seats and all 434 House seats are up for election. The past few years of Republican dominance in Congress has shown the electorate how defunct the Republican party is. They refuse to work with the Democrats or the White House, they have shut down the Federal Government more than once just to get their way, and now are refusing to do their job by refusing to even hold a hearing for Obama’s SCOTUS appointee. This year most of them will be fired. Capitol Hill will turn Blue next January when the 2017 Congress convenes, and that is why a Trump victory wouldn’t be so bad.

If Bernie wins the nomination, he is a shoe in for the Presidency. Clinton, perhaps not. Many voters, like myself, would find themselves voting for the lesser of two evils and Trump would be the lesser.  Clinton voted for the Patriot Act (Sanders was the in the House and voted against it), spread the racist stereotype of the “super predator,” and is in the back pocket of not only the bankers who destroyed our economy eight years ago, but also the private prison lobby which in instrumental in lobbying for laws that promote the school to prison pipeline. That pipeline is devastating the black and Latino community. Yes, Trump is a bigot, and it’s working for him, but he is blatantly a bigot. Clinton is an accomplished politician employed by some of the biggest lobby groups in the country. Trump is not.  Hell, trump used to be a Clinton supporter. Clinton’s support for the private prison system indicates a subtler, hidden form of institutional racism.

As an accomplished politician, Clinton knows how to get things done. With the country in dire straits and the probable takeover of Congress by the Democrats, Clinton will accomplish much.  For the first two years at least. A win for Clinton is a win for the status quo which would put Congress back in the Red in 2018. With Trump in office, I think there would be sufficient outrage over his leadership that Congress will stay Blue until at least 2020. As Trump is not an experienced politician, he will struggle getting anything done in office.  That means he will probably be a one term President, and he will definitely join the ranks of the Do-Nothing Presidents. Both Trump and Clinton will keep us at war with some one or another.  However, at least Trump is against free trade agreements that Clinton champions. You know, deals like NAFTA and the TPP.  Deals that have cost Americans jobs and shrunk the middle class.  While Clinton says she has "reevaluated" her views on the TPP to mirror Sander's views, anyone who thinks that she isn't just saying that to appeal to Sanders' supporters is delusional. The TPP will be a money maker for everyone at the top of Clinton's donor list. You know, the people she works for.

If Sanders lands the nomination his first hundred days will be a smaller version of FDR’s first hundred days, thanks to a Blue Congress. With Sanders we have a chance to fix a broken political system.  Neither Clinton nor Trump will do so, they will maintain the status quo. The difference between Clinton and Trump is that Trump won’t be able to get anything done, good or bad, unless it originates on Capitol Hill, and then it is just a matter of Trump staying out of the way. Which, for most of US history, is exactly what Presidents did. With a Clinton nomination it's four years of a Do-Nothing Trump.

Josh Duggar has Arkansas Cops in His Pocket.

Michelle, it's not gays molesting children, it's your son.

*** UPDATED (5/23/15)***
You may have heard about the scandal with the Duggars.  No, not the anti-gay bigotry, or their cult, Quiverfull, but Josh Duggar's molestation of his sisters among other minors.  I won't go into the fact that their little slice of Christendom told the Duggars that it is their daughters to blame for being molested, that has already been covered.

What you may not know, is that the Springdale police knew about the molestation since 2002, but an official accusation in 2006 resulted in a police investigation. Then the records were destroyed after Josh was given a "stern talking to". The records of the 2006 accusation was destroyed to protect the victim (this is somewhat backed up by TMZ).  But that is just one official report.

But is that the real reason: to protect the victim? The Duggars are heavy into Arkansas politics, and even Mike Huckabee has come to the defense of little Joshy-poo, with a Facebook post this past Friday:

Janet and I want to affirm our support for the Duggar family. Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, 'inexcusable,' but that doesn’t mean 'unforgivable.' He and his family dealt with it and were honest and open about it with the victims and the authorities. No purpose whatsoever is served by those who are now trying to discredit Josh or his family by sensationalizing the story. Good people make mistakes and do regrettable and even disgusting things. The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand—that being a minor means that one's judgement is not mature. No one needs to defend Josh’s actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family’s authenticity and humility. Those who have enjoyed revealing this long ago sins in order to discredit the Duggar family have actually revealed their own insensitive bloodthirst, for there was no consideration of the fact that the victims wanted this to be left in the past and ultimately a judge had the information on file destroyed—not to protect Josh, but the innocent victims. Janet and I love Jim Bob and Michelle and their entire family. They are no more perfect a family than any family, but their Christian witness is not marred in our eyes because following Christ is not a declaration of our perfection, but of HIS perfection. It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness. We have been blessed to receive God’s love and we would do no less than to extend our love and support for our friends. In fact, it is such times as this, when real friends show up and stand up. Today, Janet and I want to show up and stand up for our friends. Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.

- Mike Huckabee. Facebook. 22 May 2015

Mike and Josh: Bosom Buddies

 I emphasized that segment for a reason.  Huckabee is talking about Josh, not the victims.  Here is a GOP Presidential candidate that is defending a pedophile!  But the Duggars have been in Arkansan politics for some time. Jim Bob Duggar (never a more Arkansan name has been given) has even ran for office.

Being a leader in a the Christian cult, Quiverfull, Jim Bob has friends in high places including Ted Cruse (who I've already pegged as a GOP throw-away candidate).
The tragedy here is that Arkansas politics are ran not by the righteous, but the self-righteous GOP. And one thing that can always be said about the GOP is that it is the ultimate good-ol'-boys club. Unfortunately, that is to the detriment of Josh's victims. If the rapist was anyone else but a Duggar, they would already be in prison.  But not in Springdale (which is just an hour and a half from my front door).

But not only are two Presidential hopefuls busy kissing up to Josh Duggar, but blogger Matt Walsh is passing off the backlash of Josh-the-Rapist by saying that he doesn't "believe they are upset about it, or that it offends them, or that they are morally troubled by it," Walsh wrote. He continues,"I don’t believe them. I just don’t."  The basis for this is that One person, he calls a "liberal hero" who  admitted to taking a peek at her sister when she was 14, and of course, Walsh brings up Clinton. But since Duggar is a Christian, he is persecuted by the hypocritical left.  This is more of the "persecuted Christian" crap that only Christians buy into.  Everyone else just laughs.  It is like the Koch brothers crying business persecution because they ave to pay their employees.  It just sickens everyone outside their little circle. But, Walsh gets paid cor how much readership he brings.  Fine, I don't believe he's really upset that everyone's upset that Josh Duggar is a rapist. But that is just raging at the sky and misses the real point.  And that point is that because of scum like Duggar, the cult he is in, and his apologists, he was able to get away with rape for a decade.

For a decade, Josh's parents have failed to protect their daughters, and the police have failed them too. One has to wonder if Josh's wife knew of his crimes, if so, she's an accomplice. The judge who ordered the records destroyed did nothing to "protect" the victim, it was assuredly a measure to protect Arkansas' favorite family.

Ted Cruz: A look at Republican Tactics for the 2016 Election

Ted Cruz will not be President.  Let that sink in for a second. Are you breathing easier now?  I did when I came to that realization. Then once the reality of that hit me, I went into full on panic mode. Why?  Cruz is still getting press.  He is still in the running.  He is still getting backers.

The GOP is the largest political machine in the country with three main divisions within the party. The Tea Party, the Libertarians, and the Evangelicals.  Yes, there are the few "moderate" Republicans that do not fit into either of those groups, but they are a vast minority and are ignored by everyone except the Democrats.

The Tea Partiers are the politically illiterate, extreme conservatives in the GOP.  These are the people who do not get why everyone else laughs at them when they yell "Keep the Government out of my Medicare".  They are often poor people who want tax breaks for the rich.  The Libertarians aren't officially GOPers, but vote along Republican lines most of the time. These are the people who worship Ayn Rand and her adolescent-minded "mine-mine-mine" economic philosophy.  Their unofficial motto is "F*¢k you, I got mine!"  Next are the Evangelicals, who are the descendants of the Moral Majority. They use the Bible and their version of Christianity to rob the poor, discriminate against gays, insert their deity into everyone else's life, usually through schools, and to get rich.

So why the anti-GOP rant?  Remember Ted Cruz?  He is the epitome of the polarized right. And he still has backing.  He still has donors, and the GOP has not taken him aside and said, OK, enough, you're making us look bad.

And what is so bad about Ted Cruz?  For one, he is the epitome of the dishonest politician. PolitiFact.com rated 87 of his statements and only one was "true" and very few others "mostly true."  In other words, he lies constantly.



Imagine if you will what the liberal version of Cruz would look like.  She would be a Wiccan, anti-vaxxer, anti-GMO, Maoist, and a radical feminist (the man hating kind, not the equal .rights kind). They're out there, but they're not running.  Why? The Left wouldn't back such an extremist.  So why is the Right backing someone like Cruz?

The initial response is that the GOP is made up of idiots.  This is not the case.  Out of all of the parties, the GOP is the most politically shrewd.  They know how to play politics to get what they want.  As a minority, they almost defeated the Affordable Care Act. in 2009.  While they were not able to defeat it, they were able to gut it, making the AFA a shell of what it could be.  This has made their campaign contributors quite happy.

But in the past four years, four states have legalized marijuana, and several others have decriminalized it in moderate amounts.  The country is more secular with the number of religious "nones" at just under 20%. The gap between the highly rich and the highly poor is not only widening but the number of poor is growing.  Yet we are a wired nation.  We KNOW about these things, and we are tired of the inequality.  Just a few years ago, it was unthinkable to give gays the right to marry, but now, most people support it.  This is proof that the GOP is losing touch with the heartbeat of America.

Then why the hell are they supporting Cruz?  One of the chief tactics the Republicans have used successfully is to argue the extreme right of a position and demand to be "met in the middle".  But by then, the middle is no longer a moderate position, but a solid conservative position.  Ted Cruz is the GOP pawn to be sacrificed in 2016, when the primaries conclude, and the GOP can say, "Hey at least our guy isn't a whack job like Cruz!"  This is because whoever wins the GOP ticket will seem moderate compared to Cruz; like he is not such a bad pick.




And who could such a candidate be?  He would have to be a moderate conservative, a relic from the '90s and early 00s. He would have to have some minor support for things like immigration reform, recognizes gay marriage, is all for Common Core, and is somewhat environmentally friendly. A spouse who's a minority would get some swing votes, and so would if his own party lambasts him as being a Republican In Name Only. But which candidate could that be?  One who would be un-electable because his father and brother were President.