“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.

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 Congress May Choose the Next President of the United States

This would be a frightening situation. 270towin is a web site that provides a map where you can guess which states will be won by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. By accident I entered the states shown here as won by the two candidates. The result came out to 269 for each. The scenario I suggest is not beyond logic.

What happens if there is a tie? Congress will make the choice. The Congress meets in joint session on January 6, 2017 to count the electoral votes (this count happens whether the election is close or not). If no candidate has reached 270 Electoral Votes, then the House and Senate take over and elect the President and Vice-President, respectively. Note that the newly elected Congress will be sworn in on January 3, 2017. It is that new Congress that takes on this responsibility. If each states gets one vote the winner would be Donald Trump as more states have a majority of Republican congressional districts in the current session and that is unlikely to change.

Age and the American Presidency

Ronald Reagan was the oldest president of the United States. He was the oldest to be inaugurated for his first term, 69 years old and consequently was the oldest when leaving the office eight years later (77 years old). It was rumored that he fell asleep during briefings in his second term.

Now we have the two oldest people who have ever run for presidency. Donald Trump is 70 years old and Hillary Clinton will be 69 in this coming October.

For the population to accept the idea that these two people, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are as fit as Barack Obama who leaves office at a 55 is utterly ridiculous. If his hair color is any indication, Obama took a serious physical beating.

A young Barack Obama, 2008

August 20, 2014 Barack Obama

The likelihood that Clinton or Trump could experience a serious health issue is very high. Mrs. Clinton will undoubtedly insist she has no consequential health problems. Mr. Trump will make similar comments. The public deserves to know both Clinton’s and Trump’s health condition.

If the question of candidate health becomes a significant campaign issue I anticipate that will be a deciding factor on November 8. It shouldn’t!

Look at the vice presidential candidates. Mike Pence as president would be pushing and enforcing his conservative views that include discriminatory views against the LGBT community and his total opposition to abortion under any circumstance. Tim Kane has a record of inclusiveness. The choice between them is clear.

This is a frightening election season. We are forced to choose between a loud mouth, bully, racist, know-it-all and someone who has no other campaign slogan than “I’m with her; Stronger together.”

Maybe best not to vote for either candidate.

“What the hell have you got to lose?”

A report from the Daily Beast, September 7, 2016

Dallas Paper Backs 1st Dem Since WWII

The Dallas Morning News has endorsed Hillary Clinton—the first Democratic presidential candidate backed by the Texas daily standard in more than 75 years. “Résumé vs. résumé, judgment vs. judgment, this election is no contest,” the editorial board wrote. While the paper acknowledged that Clinton’s party, in general, is “at odds with our belief in private-sector ingenuity and innovation,” the endorsement noted that her experience and record of service outweigh those differences. Notably, the Morning News wrote, “We reject the politics of personal destruction… Trump’s values are hostile to conservatism.” The editorial reads: “He plays on fear—exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism, and misogyny—to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control.”

When a renowned Republican newspaper endorses Hillary Clinton you can only realize how flawed Donald Trump really is as a candidate for commander-in-chief of the United States. Those of you reading this that are devoted Republicans should be evaluating your preference of Mr. Trump.

We Didn’t Get the Sarcasm

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 05: Donald Trump attends the "Celebrity Apprentice" Red Carpet Event at Trump Tower on January 5, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic) — NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 05: Donald Trump attends the “Celebrity Apprentice” Red Carpet Event at Trump Tower on January 5, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic)

It was all a big joke.

Donald Trump didn’t really mean he would build the greatest wall along the Mexican border.

Mexicans aren’t all thieves and rapists.

Trump doesn’t really want to stop all Muslim immigration.

Trump doesn’t really want to renegotiate NAFTA.

Trump doesn’t really intend to deport all illegal aliens.

Trump actually thinks TPP is a great idea.

NATO is an important treaty.

Putin is not our friend. He has never met him.

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

Trump really does not want to be president of the United States.

You are all fired for believing his sarcasm.

“Why the hell can’t you take a joke?”