So Why Exactly DO We Have Donald Trump As One Of Our Prime Nominees?

 

As we ponder our daily feeds, either rejoicing at an inevitable victory in November, or cringing as a Republican, knowing defeat is almost certain, it might be time to consider making some changes to society so that this type of thing (Donald Trump) doesn’t happen again.

Why exactly do we have Donald Trump as a real possibility of becoming president?

• Democrats don’t want him.
• The Republican leadership doesn’t want him.
• Hispanics don’t want him.
• Muslims don’t want him.
• Women don’t want him.
• Blacks don’t want him.
• Big Business doesn’t want him.
• Investors don’t want him.
• Catholics don’t want him.

No Republican has ever run alienating all of the above. Yet this one is! So the question has to be asked since it IS obvious that he got the most votes and  often by rather large margins….. how did so many Americans get fooled into voting for someone so unqualified and so unbalanced they are unable to handle the office at hand?

The most likely answer is that they voted for something else they thought they were getting, but like Trump University students, they got shafted.  We can be dismissive of them,. calling them stupid “whatevers”…. But the reality is that most of them aren’t stupid. They have decent brains and they know how to use them, just lapsed in this one solitary case… In the real world they run businesses, they run state governments, they perform difficult tasks for their employers; no, they are not stupid as measured by a psychologist.  But somehow they all got duped….

I was curious as to how. How could so many Americans get this wrong?  Trump received 13,406,108 votes by someone’s calculation… Many were members of my extended family.

I saw a glimpse today as to why…..when Sean Hannity just showed us why the upcoming blowout Trump loss, wouldn’t end the GOP’s civil war..

“On his radio show Wednesday, Hannity rather amazingly sought to pre-blame the Republican establishment for a Trump loss in 2016.

“If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz — if he won’t endorse – and Jeb Bush and everybody else that made promises they’re not keeping,” Hannity said.

He added: “I have watched these Republicans be more harsh towards Donald Trump than they’ve ever been in standing up to Barack Obama and his radical agenda … . They did nothing. Nothing.”

Right here, even after a disastrous convention, even after the def-con 5 week afterwards, Sean Hannity is blaming moderate or actual working members of the Republican Party for Trump’s ultimate upcoming blowout in November. How silly is this?  Did those 7 Republicans he mentioned by name, pick on a Gold Star family? No, all seven were blindsided by the affair and had to quickly distance themselves from Trump’s controversy because most of their constituents do love and support the military.  Did those 7 Republicans throw out a crying baby?  No, all seven of them love babies, albeit better when they aren’t crying. Did those 7 ask 3 times why we couldn’t use nuclear weapons?  No, all seven of those already know why…….

Yet Hannity is blasting these members of the Republican Party for not standing with Trump while he appears to be grasping for the detonator on his explosive suicide vest….

Who is this Hannity,  … the freaking devil?

And that’s when….. I understood….

IF YOU ONLY SEE ONE SIDE OF EVERY ISSUE, THAT IS ALL YOU ARE GOING TO BELIEVE……

So instead of ignoring all the Republican memes today, I asked most of them,  “do you ever watch the Fox Network?”  And all of those posting memes still supporting Trump, said “yes”…  I said, “how often?”  and as you would expect, usually the answers paralleled “all the time.”

So here’s the problem with Free Speech.  When you give only lies not balanced by truth, you will get people who’ll believe the lies.  For how could they not?  If you reach a lot of people, you have a lot of people who’ll believe the lie over truth…because to them, what they know, they deem IS the truth.

It correlates to this:

“Sean Hannity’s ratings boost, on the other hand, has been phenomenal. Hannity now comes in third in the demo, right behind Kelly, and fifth overall. His audience grew by over a third since last April, and it seems very clear where that dynamic originates. While Bill O’Reilly has been somewhat sympathetic to Donald Trump, Hannity has been outright enthusiastic about Trump.”   POSTED AT 2:01 PM ON MAY 9, 2016 BY ED MORRISSEY

Hannity with 1.8 million viewers versus 1.3 million votes for Trump? Any correlation?

One thing about television viewing is that you can’t watch two screens at once. You can read two newspapers one after another, you can read multiple reports on line one after each other, you can switch stations on your car radio driving home from work.  But if you want to see news told to you by a human face sometime between dinner and bed, you are going to watch one channel, the one you feel most comfortable.  And a good network, is going to profile itself to your demographic so you will feel compelled to watch and thereby help it boost its ratings.

Thus, you will only get news you want to hear.  Most likely what you hear will be a fabrication. It may even have no truth.  They may leave out several vital points in its telling and put blame on other’s actions to provide a possible reason which explains the gap over what they purposefully hid. (Example: Hannity’s spout above). If you only watched that one channel or network in an alternate universe, you’d never know about the real world.

Trump’s ascendancy makes this a national crises. Instead of having two choices for president, we now realistically only have one. Up to this moment we thought we had enough safeguards in place to protect our liberties so we wrung our hands in exasperation, but never thought we’d ever look at doing something about it. But the idea of a Trump presidency makes many of us think our nation is about to end.  After Trump’s nuclear exchange, some think the whole world is about to end.

Yet on my social media, I see there are still many people who “don’t see it”. Every counter argument or piece of additional evidence handed to them is ignored as coming from the “liberal” media. And no doubt this is very bad for a democracy. You need discussion. You need opposing views.  But we have large numbers of people who willingly support a tyrant solely because he won’t moderate or soften his views under any criticism (or reality).

That veteran actually gave him his purple heart? (I’m betting at some future point in his life, he’s going come to his senses and want that back).  In his own mind, or in his own fabrication based on what he’s been told about America, he obviously believed that his gesture was magnanimously going to change America’s opinion of his hero. “We veterans support you, Mr. Trump.”  That is not something one does flippantly or lightly. I bet he has no idea that most of America right now is thinking him the biggest deluded fool on our planet.

We must ask how can that be?  What brought us to this point? How can someone so attuned to what makes America great, be so deluded?  I looked to find collaboration. I remembered the often quoted PEW study on the polarization of America’s views.  We heard a lot about this in 2014 leading up to the mid term election.

Democrats and Republicans by this study were more ideologically divided than in the past.

Prior to Gingrich’s revolution, we could all get along for the most part. In 2014, everybody was the bad guy.  What could have created that?

Political intransigence for one.  Gingrich’s revolution after 1994 was based on not compromising with anybody; it was either his way or the highway… (When it went negative after they shut the government down, he softened his approach). But back in 1994 uncompromising was something brand new and prior to him we’d never seen the likes of it before.  Some blame both sides (Republicans usually) for intransigence, but when one blindsides you with a sucker punch, you don’t respond with, “oh, dude; looks like your hand accidentally impacted my face. Let’s have a beer and talk about it”… You punch them back with every intent on hurting them as hard as they hurt you.  (It’s how wars get started.)  Gingrich probably was the catalyst that started the migration to the poles instead of remaining happily congregated together in the center.

But that could not have happened in a vacuum. Had the same occurred in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s, Gingrich would have lasted just one term and no one would have supported him.  Prior to that, being recalcitrant was simply unelectable. It had been tested by fringe candidates, all who were never elected. No, something was different in the nineties that insulated this group of iconoclasts and allowed them to continue with impunity.

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine—which had required that stations provide free air time for responses to any controversial opinions that were broadcast—by the FCC in 1987 meant stations could broadcast editorial commentary without having to present opposing views. Daniel Henninger wrote, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987 … and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination. —Wikipedia

When the Republican Party won control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, the freshman Republican class awarded Limbaugh an honorary membership in their caucus.

On October 7th, 1996, Rupert Murdoch launched the Fox News Network  to just 17 million subscribers. He publicly announced its formation on January 31st, 1996. In February he wooed Roger Ailes from NBC”s “America’s Talking” to run it. At its October 7th launch, only 10 million households were able to watch Fox News, none in the major media markets of New York City and Los Angeles. Many media reviewers concentrated in those two cities had to watch the first day’s programming at Fox News’ studios because it was not readily available. By the 2000 presidential election, Fox News, which was available in 56 million homes nationwide, saw a staggering 440% increase in viewers, the biggest gain among the three cable news television networks…. Wikipedia

Strange things began happening according to the Pew Study.

We became more antagonistic to the other party. In 1994 almost no one thought the other party was a danger to the nation’s well being. Of course they may be misguided, but a danger? Ha. Even in 2004 there were statistically none feeling such. But that has significantly changed in the past 10 years.  Now the others’ unfavorables hover around 40% with 3/4ths of them in each party considering the other party to be an enemy to the nation’s well being. In light of this almost all of us would be willing to fight for our country to protect it from danger. So if we are being teased into thinking our country is sinking into mortal danger by “those other people”, then it very likely that among some of us, our emotional fight or flight propensities would be liable to surface easily.

Have you ever noticed how well people get along, until politics get mentioned?

That is because more and more we have little in common.  Not in reality. In the real world we have quite a bit in common. Most of us belong to the 99%. Most of us have some type of spiritualism or religion.  Most of us graduated through public school. Most of us watched the same shows growing up, heard the same musicians on our radios, and read many of the same books our schools insisted we should.  We have a lot more commonality now due to media’s intrusion in our lives, than did our ancestors living in the last century.  So why is there no middle ground?

And I think Sean Hannity showed us exactly why today.  Which would be just another media grab for his persona, if it weren’t for the following news items going on at the same time.  Question of Trump quitting?  News of Trump letting Pence run both domestic and international policy while Trump concentrates on “Making America Great Again”?  I love babies; get that baby outta’ here, what was she thinking? For the third time, can you tell me why we can’t use nuclear weapons? I’m just not there yet with endorsing possibly my future House Speaker for his Congressional seat up this November… Not to mention his continuing obsession with Khan’s DNC mentioning his name.  And if you do follow conservative media posts, you saw as recent reality begins to dawn that they’re about to lose big, their posts have begun filling up with talk of armed civil war, as in the Bundys-on-steroids….

Sean Hannity showed us exactly why today…. There was no rationality in his statement. None. It was a complete fabrication, a complete misinterpretation, and totally and completely irrational.  Yet it was said, to the Wall Street Journal even.

It was “Fire” in a crowded theater!  Courts have ruled that saying “fire” is not an exercise in free speech and such can be deemed to be criminal and damages can be leveled against it perpetrators.

So, if we survive after this November, for the future how do we fix it?  I sweat thinking what could happen. I really don’t think we ever want this to happen again,  do we?  I would rather we have more civil public discourse between ideas and values, instead of Jerry Springer fist fights, slurs, name calling, and massive societal “unfriending”‘s…. Am I alone here?

If we choose to fix this, we will need to come up with a line over which one cannot cross, one that separates free speech from yelling “fire” on our public airwaves. We will need to come up with some way that holds our news celebrity people accountable for what they say.

• Opening them to lawsuits, could be one option.
• Forcing equal time, could be another.
• A daily fact check of the night before, available to all, might work.
• A revocation of a necessary license if caught in a lie just once.

But these come with their own problems. Just imagining the opposition leveling these against us should give us pause in pursuing any of the above to curb future harm.  If not very careful, we could be creating more harm towards the free exchange of ideas.

Other options could include posting a Madow or similar report following a Hannity or similar report and vice versa on the other side’s channels.  Imagine after hearing Ted Cruz, you got to hear Bernie Sanders?

Or placing such equal time laws and responsibilities only on our most successful characters… Perhaps starting at over 1 million regular viewers, you do have to have some fair and balanced reporting on the same channel, even the same show… That would still allow for legal unlimited expression on cable among everyone else without moderation. Those independent shows no matter how extreme, never were a problem. There are so many of those, I never watched; nor does anyone else except their mother perhaps. Therefore whereas Bill O’Reilly must have someone pointing out his inconsistencies right after he utters them, so should Rachel; but Jamal the Reggie Bandmaster can say anything thing he wants at 3:30 am.

Or perhaps only allowing even numbers of opposing-view stations in a market at a time. You have Fox, you must have another to enter at the same time; just that you can’t have large areas under only one network.

Yet these two ideas also have their problems with enforcement and creation. Whatever reasonable solution we eventually find, it will need to stand up to court challenges against anyone’s misconception over what the First Amendment allows.

When television first landed, we had restrictions, particularly the Fairness Doctrine. Reasons being for one, we were a lot closer to WWII and saw a once great and noble nation (one fourth of us were German too) go down a path of someone’s senseless power addiction and their nation’s ultimate destruction.  Also we knew well how the Soviet Union kept their population from rebelling against what no American would accept as status quo. We had seen under totalitarianism the power of a single voice in media and we only allowed television if it agreed to benefit all its citizens, not just titillate them.  By today’s standards, heavy censorship was applied and enforced.

Can we go back to that?  Doubtful as it seems right now, we may not have heard the last of Trump’s crazy utterances. Our future may dictate that option again be available to us, reluctant as we are right now to accept it.  But to stave that off, this topic now becomes one more thing we need to consider during this election cycle…

When Hillary wins, what are we going to do with the Fox News Network to make sure such disinformation or manipulation never happens on such a scale to harm our nation again?

We hate each other… not because of who they are, but because of what we are told they want to do to our country.  Even Cowboys and Eagles fans get along better than Democrats and Republicans once Fox News becomes the topic of conversation. We should not be in such straits.  Our uppermost levels of animosity should always remain in sport’s fan-ship; not in whether our democratic nation can last as a democracy.  On that topic we should all be working together towards a common goal. We need to kill that messenger who keeps dividing us, even when deep inside we really don’t want to be divided……

Violence And How To Stop It

51% of the country cheered when they first heard police were shot by snipers in retaliation for the unnecessary shootings making the rounds these past two days.  The other 49% reacted with regret.

But those other 49% cheered the two blacks being killed.. Ha, take that, Obama!….. (referring to Tea Party Congressman Walsh’s currently calling for both Black Lives Matter leaders and Obama’s assassination).

Social media today is full of everyone’s pontifications. The point lost however, is that shaming is ineffective when the people you are trying to shame, are proud of what they did.  Just as when you are proud of what you do, you care little about how your enemies try to paint you, probably because their reaction, justifies your original action.

True “Wisdom” calls both sides out for being wrong… Because if there is one lesson taught by world history, it is that violence  begets violence and the only way to stop it, is for one side to completely disappear, as in down to zero, or… both sides become so tired of the costs they negotiate a solution,… the latter which could have just as easily been wrought WITHOUT all the costly violence transpiring.

War’s only solution is to stop it cold prior to the very first provocation.

To understand this train of thought, one first needs to understand violence. Violence occurs when people become frustrated that justice is being ignored by a majority of the status quo.  Whether you are ISIS, black, or a Republican Christian like Timothy McVey, you resort to violence because you can express your anger on that playing field, whereas you are completely boxed up on all others….

In study of conflict after conflict, there is roughly a six month window in which solutions acceptable to both sides can occur.  The first violence is a surprise. Neither side is mobilized and interior battles are still ongoing between the moderates and extremists of either position.

If things quickly change for the better, in each group it is the moderates who gain more followers as extremists lose them: “Whew, good thing we didn’t start fighting; everything worked out well”. BUT, if nothing quickly changes, it becomes the extremists who gain the upper hand in each organization, simply because what they offer is something different than inaction:  “not fighting the bully” is not working; “fighting the bully” is the only viable plan left.”

It is at these points where controlling governments make their mistake.  They respond reactively instead of proactively. They are reacting logically which does nothing to appease the rampant emotions surrounding the issue. If they prosecute these officers and prosecute the police murderers (the logical solution) they do nothing to stem future racist officers from killing other blacks or other angry blacks from killing future police officers… the violence continues which conveys the frustrating message that nothing has changed

When the perception appears that nothing has been done, the attraction to more violence, grows.

Today’s events blatantly illustrate this.  Louisiana’s Democratic Governor turned the Baton Rouge case over to the Feds. who we all know could never be persuaded to white wash what happened and lie to protect the police officers.  That should had ended the controversy behind the first shooting. Over! Done! Justice will be served…  But that reaction was dwarfed by another event, a totally unrelated video shot a thousand miles to the north.  And now that video just got overshadowed by the sniping at cops in Dallas.  Are we done yet?  Or will another video surface today?

To prevent chaos, you have to jump over the crises of today and intercept tomorrow’s crises before it happens.  This usually requires an illogical action that is so bizarre, it puzzles the will and stops all in their tracks while they analyze what in the heck you just did. Successful tyrants have done this across history. Imagine for example if we arrested and imprisoned without bail, the Koch Brothers and the officers of the NRA, and shut down Fox News.  This shock would be enough to stop the violence.  You reacted and stopped cold the root cause of the violence; instead of just treating the symptoms.

Were you to do this, those racist officers intent on starting a race war, would be afraid that doing so would put their superiors in jeopardy, which would be harder for them to live through than going through what has now become the standard acquittal process. Particularly those superiors feeling the threat, would seminar those in the streets with daily reminders to shoot no one for any reason, lest the “real Law” comes for the boss to take him away….

This immediately changes the culture in police departments everywhere.  Within hours. You go from being afraid for your life, to being afraid of losing your job which to a police person, is a far greater fear than that of losing ones life, a risk you accepted when you took the job.

Admittedly, this would be difficult to do in America because we are a nation founded on the principle of moving slowly by consensus. But it was quite effective in Soviet Russia during Stalin’s tenure and in North Korea today.  That is how autocratic nations are run. Grab someone randomly who is no more guilty of crimes than were those dead police officers or the two black gunned down, and punish them.  Since you don’t know who your actions will hurt, you don’t propagate any. Here in America, the equivalent would be to arrest the Koch’s…. and since they’d be a flight risk, … no bail.

But just imagine if the NRA, Koch’s, and Fox News were suddenly leaderless.  Silence on the NRA’s part, no secret money funneled to hate groups on the Koch’s part, and no propaganda on Fox News Part..  Instead we would see it for what it is: crazy people doing crazy things and being punished by the calm rule of lawt.  We would be told such was the cost of freedom and shown fractions like 7/319,000,000 to drive home the point that 318,999,993 of us have little to worry over… We would be reminded of how there are 900,000 police officers in the United States, and how only 3 of them killed with no provocation these last two days.  We could be told that if you get pulled over you have an 899,997/900,000 chance of having no life threatening situation occur.

And if we become convinced that we have little to worry over, the costs of instigating violence to ourselves and our families far outweigh any gain we would otherwise see….

 

Because when you deal with people who access to weapons, you can’t stop violence with force… Iraq’s occupation was one example.  Britain’s domination of Ireland is another. Palestine versus Israel is a third.  You only stop violence by making those individuals who are armed, not want to hurt anyone….

And that will require a lot of changes… A police force can offer free hugs in a university town all it wants, but until you stop the posts of:  Like and Share if you support Police Officers killing Blacks for no reason, it is just one molecule in an ocean.

When you have a fire, you don’t add gasoline… Arresting the Koch Brothers, the NRA leadership, and Fox News would do a lot to remove gasoline which we all know, shouldn’t even be near a fire to begin with…

As anyone who has dealt with terrorism knows, if you build a hospital to display goodwill and the terrorists come in and kill everyone there, no one goes to that hospital anymore… no matter how sick. You have to take-out those who call for violence and arresting the Koch’s, NRA leadership, and silencing Fox News, would take 98% of those promoting this insanity, off the streets and out of the public eye in 24 hours.

We need to focus on the REAL problem, not the symptoms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donald Cruz Killed JFK With A Knife In The Conservatory

Donald Trump just accused Ted Cruz’s dad of being with Oswald before the killing of JFK.

The press in up in arms over how to treat this.

Trump has once again said something wacky that the media can’t refute with total certainty (this is an ongoing problem). The Cruz campaign has said the man in question is not the candidate’s father, but there is no easy way to prove a negative. So the media are left to point out the lack of credible evidence supplied by Trump and the Enquirer without actually asserting that the report is fiction.

It’s a dance that has been repeated many times over, but perhaps never has it been so difficult.

====

So, let me teach the press how this get handled.

You put a picture of Donald Trump on your front page with the headline

LIAR

Then you tell his accusation.

That is all.

If he wants to counter the name-tag you just gave him (and as a political animal he will), he has to prove it.

If he can, you issue a correction.  If he can’t, he’s done.

 

End of lesson.

 

 

 

It’s The One Percent, Stupid…….

Today the Republicans will get up for their first show..  I well remember the last one in 2012’s race, actually held in 2011. What a joke…  As was mentioned on Allan Loudell’s noon hour show, the only thing anyone, even those of us who are political aficionado’s from any of those debates was then Governor Perry’s “oops” moment… 13 seconds out of 48 individual 2 hour debates…

89% of America can’t even remember the “oops” moment…  So for the most part it is a waste of time…

However, listening for the party’s messaging makes it all worthwhile… If the message is consistent between all the debaters  and if they quibble among themselves over only how much they are allowed to quibble, you get an idea down which track the election will run regardless of how wins the nomination….

My guess is they will be groveling to the one percent.  Their problems will be rich people’s problems; their solutions will be rich people’s solutions… Make workers take less; make workers pay more for their benefits; increase competition among low rates and drive down wages; rule out unions so employees can be intimidated with firing if they request more money…

Sadly the same will hold true in the upcoming Democratic debates:  groveling to the one percent. It’s required since the legality of Citizen’s United.  

So unless something surprises us all, nothing will change; the one percent has everything sewed up…   Just look at our problems where their is trouble… it’s the one percent creating the issue.

Anti- Global Warming… funded by the 1%

Anti-Planned Parenthood… funded by the 1%

Anti Tax…. funded by the 1%

Keystone II…. funded by the 1%.

TDC…… funded by the 1%

Common Core…. funded by the 1%

Smarter Balanced Assessment…. funded by the 1%

Charter Schools …. funded by the 1%

School Vouchers….. funded by the 1%

Blatant re segregation (Don’t want those blacks mixing with OUR kids) … funded by the 1%

Pro Israel lobby…. funded by the 1%

ISIS… funded by the 1%

Anti Iran…. funded  by the 1%

50 Year Cuban Embargo… funded by the 1%

Priority Schools Closing…. funded by the 1%

SB 51…. funded by the 1%

HB 165… funded by the 1%

Rampant gun violence…. funded by the 1%

Shoot to kill laws… funded by the 1%

Police Brutality… funded by the 1%

Unarmed Black Men and Women Gunned Down… funded by the 1%

NRA… funded by the 1%

Abortion Repeal… funded by the 1%

Anti Obamacare movement… funded by the 1%

Global Depression of 2008… funded by the 1%

TPP…. funded by the 1%

Government Shutdowns…. funded by the 1%

Banghazi… funded by the 1%

Fake IRS Crises… funded by the 1%

Death to Women Movement… funde by the 1%….

If you haven’t figured out, just about every single one of your problems comes from the money being funded to change policy against what the majority wants.   The 1% is to blame…

Trust no one richer than the 99% of the rest of us….

If you want politics to mirror your lives and not the 1%, you need to vote for candidates who appeal to the 99% and not those employed to funnel more of your money into the pockets of the 1%….

Vote for the poorest candidate…. whoever that may be….