“What have you got to lose?”

This second debate and the November election is all about Donald Trump. You are either for or against him. It is Donald Trump’s election to win or lose. Votes for Hillary Clinton are really vote against Donald Trump. Trump has put himself front and center.

The first 30 minutes of the second presidential debate was VERY nasty. Donald Trump’s effort to deny he is an abuser of women was a failure. I cannot imagine that any women in America is willing to support him based on his comments about a Miss Universe contestant and the video recording of him on a bus at Universal Studios in Studio City. Billy Bush has been suspended from the Today Show based on that tape.

Examples started from the first question asked by Anderson Cooper:
“You called what you said locker room banter. You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”

TRUMP: “No, I didn’t say that at all. I don’t think you understood what was — this was locker room talk. I’m not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people.”

Later in the debate

TRUMP: “Well, you owe the president an apology, because as you know very well, your campaign, Sidney Blumenthal — he’s another real winner that you have — and he’s the one that got this started, along with your campaign manager, and they were on television just two weeks ago, she was, saying exactly that. So you really owe him an apology. You’re the one that sent the pictures around your campaign, sent the pictures around with President Obama in a certain garb. That was long before I was ever involved, so you actually owe an apology.”

The remainder of the debate saw Trump hold his own against Hillary Clinton. Some have thought one of them won the debate but to me it was a tie.

Both Trump and Clinton may have liked each other at one time (the Clinton’s were at Trump’s last wedding) but it was obvious that they have developed a real hatred.

Donald Trump’s response to the American Muslim women looking for a reason to support him was not given a shred of response that would encourage her to give him any support. Likewise the Black man was not given any reason to give him support. In both cases Trump was short on details on how he would reach out to those communities.

Hillary Clinton smiled through the entire debate and remained unflapped by Trump’s attacks.

I doubt that many people changed their view of these candidates as a result of watching this debate.

I predict Donald Trump will win the election. The reason is that Hillary Clinton has offered nothing new. Many people have lost their jobs. Trump may not bring them back but “What have you got to lose?”

The Astonishing Donald Trump

Name calling is a trade mark of Donald Trump. He uses name calling to further his political ambitions (crooked Hillary, lying Ted, etc.). He makes fun of people with disabilities, calls women names, and thinks that Mexicans are mostly rapists and drug dealers.

Donald Trump’s history of remarks about women is not something that he stopped doing a decade ago. Just this past week he tweeted in the wee hours of Friday morning, August 26. The impulse-control-deficient Republican nominee let loose a torrent of tweets, calling former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado “disgusting” and accusing her of having a sex tape.

Then there were Trump’s remarks about Megyn Kelly, a Fox News anchor, after she questioned him about his derogatory remarks she said the GOP hopeful had made about women, from “fat pigs” to “dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”

So without listing anymore of Trump’s commentaries my question is When has Donald Trump stopped making crude remarks about women?

The answer is he has not stopped making remarks about women. Perhaps the latest reaction of some leading Republicans will begin to have an impact on the Trump campaign. He has been dis-invited to a Wisconsin event on Saturday, October 8. Jason Chaffetz, a leading Republican congressman from Utah and Utah’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert having both withdrawn their support for Trump.

I do not agree with the conservative views of most Republicans but I do respect their insistence on the upholding of their moral views. Donald Trump has to be an insult to them.

When Facts, history, logic don’t matter

As an Independent I find my self listening to the words of some conservatives even though I think of myself as a progressive. Thus I do read Charles Krauthammer’s columns. The following column appeared in this morning’s Los Angeles Daily News. We all know that Mr. Krauthammer is no friend of Hillary Clinton but he is obviously no fan of Donald Trump. Like a moth Donald Trump took the bait laid out by Hillary Clinton. Can you imagine what a Vladimir Putin would do to Donald Trump?

By Charles Krauthammer, September 20.2016

And now less than six weeks from the election, what is the main event of the day? A fight between the Republican presidential nominee and a former Miss Universe, whom he had 20 years ago called Miss Piggy and other choice pejoratives.

Just a few weeks earlier, we were seized by a transient hysteria over a minor Hillary Clinton lung infection hyped to near-mortal status. The latest curiosity is Donald Trump’s 37 sniffles during the first presidential debate. (People count this sort of thing) Dr. Howard Dean has suggested a possible cocaine addiction.

In a man who doesn’t even drink coffee? This campaign is sinking to somewhere between zany and totally insane. Is there a bottom?

Take the most striking moment of Trump’s GOP convention speech. He actually promised that under him, “the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon – and I mean very soon – come to an end.”

Not “be reduced.” End.

Humanity has been at this since, oh, Hammurabi. But the audience didn’t laugh. It applauded.

Nor was this mere spur-of-the-moment hyperbole. Trump was reading from a teleprompter. As he was a few weeks earlier when he told a conference in North Dakota, “Politicians have used you and stolen your votes. They have given you nothing. I will give you everything.” Everything, mind you. “I will give you what you’ve been looking 50 years.” No laughter recorded.

In launching his African-American outreach at a speech in Charlotte, Trump cataloged the horrors that he believes define black life in America today. Then promised: “I will fix it.”

How primitive have our politics become? Fix what? Family structure? Social inheritance? Self-destructive habits? How? He doesn’t say. He will it. Trust him, as he likes to say.

After 15 months, the suspension of disbelief has become so ubiquitous that we hardly notice anymore. We are operating in an alternate universe where the geometry is non-Euclidean, facts don’t matter, history and logic have disappeared.

Going into the first debate, Trump was in a Virtual tie for the lead. The bar for him was set almost comically low. He had merely to (1) suffer no major melt-down and (2) produce just a few moments of coherence.

He cleared the bar. In the first half-hour, he established the entire premise of his campaign. Things are bad and Hillary Clinton has been around for 30 years. You like bad? Stick with her. You want change? I’m your man.

It can’t get more elemental than that. At one point, Clinton laughed and ridiculed Trump for trying to blame her for everything that’s ever happened. In fact, that’s exactly what he did. With some success.

By conventional measures – poise, logic, command of the facts – she won the debate handily. But when it comes to moving the needle, conventional measures don’t apply this year.

What might move the needle is the time bomb Trump left behind.

His great weakness is his vanity. So central to his self-image is his business acumen that in the debate he couldn’t resist the temptation to tout his cleverness on taxes. To an audience of 86 million, he appeared to concede that he didn’t pay any. “That makes me smart,” he smugly interjected.

Big mistake. The next day, Clinton offered the obvious retort: “If not paying taxes makes him smart, what does that make all the rest of us?”

When gaffes like this are committed, the candidate either doubles down (you might say that if you can legally pay nothing why not, given how corrupt the tax code is) or simply denies he ever said anything of the sort.

One of the remarkable features of this campaign is how brazenly candidates deny having said things that have been captured on tape, such as Clinton denying she ever said the Trans-Pacific Partnership was the gold standard of trade deals.

The only thing more amazing is how easily they get away with it.

Hillary Clinton Won the First Presidential Debate

I watched the entire debate and have read the transcript. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump struck a blow that was the equivalent of a knockout. Lester Holt did an outstanding job.

That being said Donald Trump wasted his time repeating the same things he has said repeatedly during his campaign. He brought nothing new to the table. He provided nothing to explain his contention that jobs would be returning to America after renegotiating NAFTA or how he would induce companies to return their manufacturing from China and other Far East nations. He never mentioned the wall he plans to build on our southern border. Those are his two biggest reasons to obtain the presidency.

This counter argument is a great example of how the debate went.

CLINTON: And maybe because you haven’t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years. (APPLAUSE)
And the other thing I think is important…
TRUMP: It would be squandered, too, believe me.

Or this:

CLINTON: And when we talk about your business, you’ve taken business bankruptcy six times. There are a lot of great businesspeople that have never taken bankruptcy once. You call yourself the King of Debt. You talk about leverage. You even at one time suggested that you would try to negotiate down the national debt of the United States.
TRUMP: Wrong. Wrong.
CLINTON: Well, sometimes there’s not a direct transfer of skills from business to government, but sometimes what happened in business would be really bad for government.
HOLT: Let’s let Mr. Trump…
CLINTON: And we need to be very clear about that.
TRUMP: So, yeah, I think — I do think it’s time. Look, it’s all words, it’s all sound bites. I built an unbelievable company. Some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world, real estate assets anywhere in the world, beyond the United States, in Europe, lots of different places. It’s an unbelievable company.
Hillary Clinton continued hitting him throughout the one hour and 40 minute debate in the above manner.

Trump’s reference to law and order were, in my mind, an attack on minorities.

HOLT: All right, Mr. Trump, you have two minutes. How do you heal the divide?
TRUMP: Well, first of all, Secretary Clinton doesn’t want to use a couple of words, and that’s law and order. And we need law and order. If we don’t have it, we’re not going to have a country.
Law and order is really the code words for continuous harassment of minority people in the United States by using programs such as Stop and Frisk.

One of the most powerful moments of the debate came when the conversation focused on the so-called birther debate following Trump’s recent acknowledgment that President Barack Obama was born in the US — a fact that has been evident for years. With Trump standing just a few feet from her, Clinton blasted him for perpetuating a “racist lie.” “He has a long record of engaging in racist behavior,” Clinton said as Trump shook his head.

Hillary’s best line was “I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate. And, yes, I did. And you know what else I prepared for? I prepared to be president. And I think that’s a good thing.”

Both campaigns will undoubtedly raise lots of money after the debate and supporters of each candidate will continue holding their views. Mr. Trump may have learned a lesson about preparation and we might see another Donald Trump in two weeks at the second debate.

This Is When You’re Going To Die

Arnold Palmer, the King of Golf, just died at age 87. Apparently he really was on Xarelto. As I have grown older I have become concerned with how long I will live. My father died at age 86. It appears to me that many men die in their mid 80s. The statistics listed below confirm that fact.

Everyone will die someday, and it is only a question of when.

Business Insider provided the following charts and remarks about when we will die.

Through the power of actuarial estimates, it is possible to figure out approximately how long you are likely to live. We made a set of charts, based on data from the Social Security Administration’s cohort life tables, that show, given your gender and current age, the probability that you will reach some particular later age.

Naturally, these are based on averages for a particular age group — health conditions and lifestyle choices like diet, exercise, and smoking can vastly alter one’s life expectancy.

Regardless, this is important information for anyone who has to think about things like retirement and estate planning.

Here are the charts, in descending order by present age:

Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from Social Security Administration

If you are an 80 year old man, your long-term odds are not great. There is a 30% chance of making it to your 90th birthday, and only about 14 in 1,000 will see 100. The average life expectancy for 90 year old females of all races is 0.83 years greater than that of males.

Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from Social Security Administration

70 year olds have a somewhat better prognosis. Almost 2/3 of 70 year old men and almost 3/4 of 70 year old women will live at least another ten years, and over 1/5 of men will make it to 90, as will 1/3 of women.

For 60 year olds, we see some of the benefits of modern medicine kicking in. The overwhelming majority of 60 year olds will live until at least 70, and majorities will get to at least 80.

Similarly, very few people who make it to 50 die before they turn 60. As we look at younger and younger cohorts, we see better and better long-term odds as well.

The Impact of Technology on Blue Collar Workers

We are about to select a new American president in a world that is rapidly becoming more technically advanced than anyone could have imagined in the year 2000. Remember that as the year many of us were concerned that clocks would stop, power grid systems might fail, and commercial aircraft might fall from the sky. Of course none of that happened. What has happened is the rapid advance of technology and a globally connected society. Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” (Published April 5, 2005) was not only a recognition of a changing world economy but the need for America to look forward and plan for the new economy.

Take just one new technology, autonomous (self driving) cars and trucks, that is predicted to be launched by the year 2020 to 2025 and consider the impact and you will understand that no one – no president of the United States – can stop the impact on the public in either the United States or other countries.

Don’t Tell The Teamsters: But Driverless Trucks Are Already Here. Driverless trucks are operating in an Australian mine. When those trucks arrive in America the Teamsters will fight with everything they have to stop those autonomous trucks. Feather bedding will be a prominent part of their strategy. There are currently 900,000 active working Teamsters in the United States and Canada. There are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States, according to estimates by the American Trucking Association.

What will all those families that rely on those truck driving jobs do when they are replaced by self driving trucks? As a nation we have not looked forward. We have looked back. Technology’s impact on the trucking industry is simply one example of the changing work environment.

Donald Trump promises to bring back the jobs that have been lost due to out sourcing. It is not clear what will motivate the return of jobs other than tariffs that could start a trade war.

Hillary Clinton says she will propose investing in infrastructure, manufacturing, research and technology, clean energy, and small businesses. The costly $787 billion spending bill that President Barack Obama signed into law soon after taking office had little effect. It was argued that it was insufficient.

In all of the Trump and Clinton ideas there is no consideration of the future.

Another Republican Newspaper endorses Hillary Clinton

Washington (CNN) The Cincinnati Enquirer, one of Ohio’s largest newspapers, is backing Hillary Clinton after supporting Republican presidential candidates for nearly a century.

“Trump brands himself as an outsider untainted by special interests, but we see a man utterly corrupted by self-interest. His narcissistic bid for the presidency is more about making himself great than America,” the Enquirer board said. “Trump tears our country and many of its people down with his words so that he can build himself up. What else are we left to believe about a man who tells the American public that he alone can fix what ails us?”
“Our country needs to seek thoughtful change, not just change for the sake of change. Four years is plenty of time to do enough damage that it could take America years to recover from, if at all,” it wrote.

Sadly newspaper endorsements do not have the influence they had in past years. Mrs. Clinton has one serious strike against her. Too many Americans will not vote for a woman under any circumstances. Mrs. Clinton’s various baggage makes her an even less likely to win candidate.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Dilbert: September 18, 2016

The message from Scott Adams is abundantly clear. Ask Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for a solution and you will not obtain a logical answer. Those factories and offices coming back to the United States will provide some new jobs but not as many as were outsourced. We are supposed to be happy.

What does love mean?

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds , ‘What does love mean?’

The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined.

See what you think:

‘When my grandmother got arthritis , she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore.. So my grandfather does it for her all the time , even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.’

Rebecca- age 8

‘When someone loves you , the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.’

Billy – age 4

‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.’

Karl – age 5

‘Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.’

Chrissy – age 6

‘Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.’

Terri – age 4

‘Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him , to make sure the taste is OK.’

Danny – age 7

‘Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing , you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss.’

Emily – age 8

‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.’

Bobby – age 7

‘If you want to learn to love better , you should start with a friend who you hate. ‘

Nikka – age 6

‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.’

Noelle – age 7

‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.’

Tommy – age 6

‘During my piano recital , I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.’

Cindy – age 8

‘My mommy loves me more than anybody You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.’

Clare – age 6

‘Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.’

Elaine-age 5

‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.’

Chris – age 7

‘Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.’

Mary Ann – age 4

‘I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.’

Lauren – age 4

‘When you love somebody , your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’

Karen – age 7

‘You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.’

Jessica – age 8

And the final one:

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry , the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard , climbed onto his lap , and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor , the little boy said , ‘Nothing , I just helped him cry.’