Investing in Trump

In the beginning. the main reason to support the Trump campaign was that he was truly independent. That his billionaire status meant he would not have to grovel for donations like the other mere mortals in the race. He was above all that. He is rich, Filthy rich. Or maybe spotlessly rich. Whatever. The main point is that he would never have to lower himself to beg for money, thereby subject himself, like he accuses the others, to trading for favors. Because we all know the root of all evil in politics is rich people trying to game the system with their big money, kind of the way he so proudly admitted doing himself. But as a candidate, he was going to be different. No outside money was needed because he had all the money in the world, billions and billions and who needs to lower themselves to raise money when you have that kind of dough? Not Trump. No sirree.

Donald Trump

Except a funny thing happened on the way to the pedestal which he thinks he belongs on. He "evolved" on the subject of fundraising. The word "evolved" is a euphemism in politics to mean "flip-flop" or changing one's mind, doing a 180 degree turn, or in his case, lying. And of course, since we are talking about the Donald, he would never ask for assistance. Every dollar you give him is an "investment," a solid business concept. Except in Trumpspeak investing in his campaign comes with no return, a rather unique form of investment most of us would call charity. So he is now reduced to begging. No amount is too small, or too big. He seemed proud of the fact that he bilked a woman for $7.23, probably her lunch money. So the multi-billionaire has no compulsion about taking charity from poor people. What a guy! But he also said he had no problem taking big money as well as long as it was understood that the big money investments came with no strings attached. No sirree, don't expect any returns on your investment if you give Trump a big chunk of money because he is pure as the driven snow and would not be moved to give a break to any rich guy asking for favors. Not Trump. Trust him.

It is indeed rather plausible that the lady who gave her $7.23 would not expect any particular favor, but someone giving Trump $10 million might feel differently. I know if I would give that kind of money I would at least expect to be named Ambassador to a tropical island or something. Or even maybe Secretary of Agriculture. But that's me. Maybe I'm just greedy. People who will give Trump millions are probably the kind of people who expect very little if anything for their investment, only be thrilled that Trump will finally rid ourselves of all those pesky Mexicans.

Come to think of it, maybe Trump's appeal was not his declaration of independence from the well-to-do but rather his promise to wipe Mexico and China off the map. Oh yeah, and he will personally take care of Iran's nuclear bombs. I almost forgot. And he will cherish women. Yeah, right.

The Other Trump

People like to think that Donald Trump is a unique figure in American politics. Some people even allege that he would be the first President never to have held elective office. But alas, as much of what is being said about the Donald is manifestly not true, so is this canard.

There was once a President who was a very successful businessman. One who believed that government should be run like a business. That what government needed was more efficiency. Also, he was not much of a partisan. He flirted with Democrats as well as Republicans, but ultimately ran for the Presidency as a Republican because of his strong beliefs about the virtue of Capitalism.

His reputation as a savvy businessmen was so great that he was made Secretary of Commerce by that bastion of integrity, President Warren G. Harding.Those more astute of you have already guessed who I'm talking about:

Herbert C. Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Yes, that Hoover, not to be confused with the vacuum cleaner of the same name. Hoover famously said, "Given the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation." Yes, those policies which lead to prosperity for everyone. Sound familiar? He also famously said, "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land."

A few months later the stock market crashed, ushering the greatest Depression the world had ever seen. The year was 1929.

Now, I am not suggesting if Donald Trump becomes President we will have another Great Depression, but I am suggesting that business acumen, no elected political experience, and a constant bragging posture about the future is no guarantee of success for our country.

Citizens of the World, please take notice.

The Duality Bind: Trump vs. Bernie

It seems like in most of journalism everything has to come in two flavors. I suspect it comes from the good and evil duality that many religions espouse. If there is a God, then there must be a devil. It must be nice to have everything reduced to black and white like that.

What happens in real life, though, is that journalists in their quest for duality in the world, create many false equivalents. For example, if some people believe in the science of evolution then there must be an alternative - one that comes from a book thousands of years old written by ignorant nomads who didn't know of the existence of the solar system or ever heard of (less saw) a dinosaur. Yes, journalists would have you believe that these two conflicting opinions should form the basis of political discourse to determine what to teach our youth. Ignorant nomads vs. hundreds of years of scientific research. That this may make sense to those with atrophied brains is bad enough, but why must the media, who collectively know better, go along?

The answer, of course, is ratings or circulation, in other words, money. Didn't someone once say that love of money is the root of all evil? But I digress.

The story today is Bernie Sanders, the Donald Trump of the left. Oh my, now I'm doing it too! How in the world has the press degenerated so much as to compare the Donald, the Elmer Gantry of our time, the ultimate flim flam man, to a serious public servant like Bernie Sanders?

Bernie Sanders

The press like these duality narratives because it entertains the public. If the right has an extremist wacko, then it stands to reason that the left must have one too. It's a kind of rule of journalism, apparently. Truth be damned, facts ignored, the story is king, and nothing should get in the way of a good story.

Except we are talking about people's lives, and the future of our country.

We all know that Trump is having a huge good time at our expense, but Bernie actually cares about regular Americans. Trump, like the con artist that was Gantry, is only pretending to care.

Trump's experience with politics has been with buying politicians to serve his purposes. We don't have to guess about that. He's proud of it. He even paid Hillary Clinton to come to his wedding. How pathetic is that? For Trump, politics is a game, like everything else he does.  Doesn't how he manages his real estate empire sound like Monopoly to you?

Now Bernie, on the other hand, (I'm doing it again!) has been fighting for the middle class for years and years, without making nary a profit on it. I need to pause here for a second and let folks know that Bernie, in spite of himself, is not a Socialist. I know Socialists, some of my friends are Socialists, and he ain't one. Unfortunately for Bernie, we don't have Social Democrats in America. We just have Democrats and Republicans. (there's that duality again!) In Europe, Social Democrats occupy a space on the left that is just to the left of our Democrats, but not as left as Socialists. So Bernie is without a real party since he is in reality a Social Democrat.

Trump, on the other hand, really needs no party. He is his own party. Kind of like Juan Peron, the ex-dictator of Argentina. He is a Trumpista. In English, he might be a Trumpeteer, but that sounds too crass, even for Trump, so he has contented himself to try and hijack the Republican Party. Whether he is successful or not is dependent on the strength of the Party leadership which at last look is close to nonexistent.

Most pundits believe that the Sanders campaign is doomed since Hillary does look like she finally has the upper hand this time around. But make no mistake, Bernie is a real candidate, with a real record of accomplishments in the political arena.Trump has no record to run on, just platitudes designed to channel some people's frustrations with the system. One can say that Bernie is also channeling people's frustrations but here is where the comparison ends. Bernie brings with him a lifetime of concern and solutions for average Americans whereas Trump is simply an opportunist with no meaningful experience with public policy and no solutions except empty slogans.

Members of the media, please pay attention.

GOP Race to the Bottom

No political observer thinks that either Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, or Carly Fiorina has any kind of shot to become the next president of the United States. But unbelievably, these are the candidates who sit atop the polls in the GOP primary race.

So what is going on here?

Predictably, the entry of Trump into the race has turned what should be a discussion of issues facing the country into a tawdry reality show. The cat fight between the Donald and Megyn Kelly is more reminiscent of trash TV than a political campaign. Ted Cruz, who should be in the cellar is sitting pretty in second place. This is the guy who wrapped bacon around  the barrel of semi automatic and called it machine gun bacon. He even used a fake machine gun to make who knows what point. Ben Carson is not even qualified to be a candidate (See Ben Carson Disqualifies Himself on this blog). And Carly Fiorina has never held any elective office and has the dubious distinction of having been fired from the only upper management job she ever held.

All the experienced candidates are at the bottom.

Politician has to be the only profession whereby the least qualified is the most popular. Imagine someone preferring to have cancer surgery by Joe the Plumber over a board certified surgeon. Or much less dramatic, getting your hair cut by a bartender. What is it about politicians that some people think that the less experience you have, the better you might be?

Come to think of it, this phenomenon is only occurring among Republicans. On the Democratic side, the race is between Hillary Clinton, a very experienced candidate and Bernie Sanders, also a politician with tons of experience and accomplishments. There is even talk of Joe Biden entering the race, another experienced politician.

The inescapable conclusion is that the Republican primary voter does not believe in government in the first place. Democrats seem to want to accomplish positive things for the people, and the few Republican candidates, like Bush, Walker, Kasich, Perry, Graham, Christie who also wish to take a stab at governing, and who actually have governed, are not doing so well with the GOP electorate at this time.

I get the anger. Right wing media has done its job, vilifying the President and all his accomplishments. They've done it so well that the GOP base is turned off at all politicians, including the ones in their own party. And Fox news, the leader of the slime machine, is getting its own desserts. The chickens are indeed coming home to roost. How else does one explain a buffoon like Trump getting away with trashing a professional broadcaster like Megyn Kelly? It would be so easy to smirk at the thought of Megyn getting a taste of her own medicine. Getting knocked down from her prissy perch by the wannabe bully-in chief.

Megyn Kelly

But no, we should not rejoice in Kelly's slap down by the obnoxious and odious Trump. He represents a serious disease in America. A disease that has been spread by the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Coulter, and the like. People who make a living trashing those who try to make our country and planet a better place. They trash anything that alleviates poverty or helps save the planet. They are a cynical bunch who make money off people's prejudices and fears and Megyn Kelly has participated -albeit to a minor degree - in these despicable acts.

But we should not rejoice in Megyn's take down by Trump for he is Frankenstein's monster come to life and his fellow non-politicians are his minions.

Yes, the ugly spawn of Reality TV and right-wing media has produced these monsters and the top monster is all too willing to devour his master, much to the delight of the clueless. Some of the professional pundits, who barely understand this phenomenon try to convince themselves that this is but a phase, a cruel hoax perpetuated by an angry public looking for blood. Trump is their hero, their bull in the china shop that is electoral politics, smashing everything in his way.

It is hard to tell how much of this damage is permanent or shall the GOP primary voters at some moment wake up from  their collective nightmare and and start thinking with their head instead of their intestines. Time will only tell.

Ben Carson Disqualifies Himself

The highlight of every Presidential inauguration is when the newly elected President swears that he (or she) will uphold the US Constitution. The exact words are : “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Dr. Ben Carson

There is no mention of God, Religion, Jesus. But when asked by Chuck Todd of Meet the Press, whether the Bible had authority over the Constitution, the Presidential candidate Dr. Carson, responded with, "That is not a simple question. I think probably what you have to do is ask a very specific question about a specific passage of the Bible and a specific portion of the Constitution," Carson said. "I don't think you can answer that question other than out of very specific context."

This answer disqualifies him for the office. You cannot swear an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution with your fingers crossed, thinking that at certain times the Bible may take precedence over the law of the land. I don't think for a minute that Dr. Carson is willing to allow parents to kill their children based on the Bible:

“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” 

[Deuteronomy 21:18]

 There are many passages of the Bible that exhort people to do all sorts of things. But the good doctor was very reassuring in that he told Chuck Todd only in very specific cases. Trust me. And that is all the anti-gay, anti abortion folks have to hear. They hear that when it comes to their issues, Constitution be damned, we'll play the Bible card to deny civil rights to gays, and play the Bible card when attempting to end legal abortions.

Maybe these positions have merit, maybe they don't, but bringing the Bible into resolving Constitutional issues is not – if you pardon the expression – Constitutional.

Here is a candidate for President who is telling us in advance that he has a prerogative to invoke the Bible when it suits his purpose, essentially overriding the Constitution when he thinks it is necessary. That is not what the Framers had in mind and it excludes Ben Carson from seeking the Presidency.