The risk to our security resides in the White House

If anyone should have his security clearance lifted, it is Donald Trump.

Who in America's intelligence community can trust what might happen to highly classified information passed on to Trump?

Where do Trump's true loyalties lie? Do they extend beyond his own all-consuming ego??

Is he a captive of Putin and Russia's own intelligence apparatus?

His behavior and mounting evidence point to the answers.

No, the Trump Oval Office should be quarantined as off-limits to US intelligence findings.

Titrating Trump

I, like a multitude of others, chose not to watch tonight’s State of the Union address.

Mine wasn’t a political protest as it was for many. Donald Trump, I have concluded,  is not good for my health. To put it bluntly he literally makes me sick.

And if he so unsettles me — and I’m pretty healthy — what does he do to thousands of others who are less healthy?

I can still handle reading about him. I’m even OK with seeing his words in print, as disgusting and deceitful as they usually are. But if they — or he — get to be too much, I just avert my eyes, say a small prayer, take in the beauty of my surroundings or give thanks for the goodness in the world.

A mental health counsellor I know says that I have learned to “titrate” Trump. I'm told this is good. I take him in very, very small increments — drop by drop — until ... well, until I can’t tolerate any more.

I tune him out if I feel my blood pressure rising ... if I begin to react with anger at the disgust ... if I’m creeping up on wanting to throw something at his televised image.

Still photos of him even set me off.

This man is not just divisive, he’s sickening. A poison. He’s a poisonous and poisoning president.

And lest we forget, he is sickening even to himself. And that sets off another kind of sickness — melancholia, a sadness — for him.

Trump and the Apocalypse

From the beginning, the biggest problem with Donald Trump has been his deranged psychological state.

As numerous psychologists will tell you, Trump is a textbook malignant narcissist.

As noted repeatedly, but not enough, Trump’s existence is devoted to Trump, period.

Trump suffers (and he clearly DOES suffer) from “narcissistic personality disorder” or NPD.

Here are the manifestations of NPD. Judge for yourself whether they apply to Donald Trump:

• a grandiose sense of self-importance
• a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love
• a belief in one’s specialness or uniqueness such that one can only be understood by associating with others of unique high status
• excessive self-admiration – arrogance and utter lack of humility.
• a sense of entitlement
• an exploitative personality
• a lack of empathy and unwillingness to  recognize or identify with the feelings
 and needs of others.

Since he arrived in the White House,  Trump as become even more obsessed with self. As he becomes threatened by his own frantic undoing and hubris, he grows ever more defensive, deceptive, unstable and angry. Growing paranoia is likely in the mix.

 His response is to lash out at not only his perceived “enemies," but those around him, those who don’t bow and scrape before him.

And so we anticipate more firings to come.

If it weren’t for his fragile mental health, we might survive the demise of a merely incompetent Donald Trump.  But with a deranged president faced with defeat and public humiliation, we are threatened with his power to take us all down in a fit of madness.

And by “us” I mean humanity.

Think no further than a mad man (in both senses of the word) who has a doomsday nuclear arsenal at his disposal.

We can only hope that sane minds in the nation’s capital are thinking along these same lines. 

How could they NOT be?

Trump, in a lesser, but still dangerous, scenario of madness and anger, could brandish presidential threats to protect his all-consuming ego by holding hostage the rule of law.

We have yet to learn whether last year his arrogance played a direct role in undermining our elections.

Some weeks back I wrote eight Republican senators who have been identified as possibly willing to put the nation (and humanity) before their partisan interests. I asked that they initiate the removal of Trump from office on the grounds of his mental instability.

Only John McCain responded. His short letter was largely political boiler-plate that, predictably, avoided the question of Trump’s mental health.

Since then, the president’s behavior has become all the more ominous.

It is not alarmist to say that a mentally unstable Donald Trump is a threat to humankind. It’s time for Republicans and Democrats, for those closest to the president, for his family, for all of us, to insist on and force his resignation or impeachment.

MOAB hits home — mine and yours

Just to make the power of the GBU-43, aka “Mother of All Bombs,” up close and personal…

Dropped on our Portland neighborhood of HIllsdale, with 8,000 residents, the bomb obliterates every man, woman and child and all structures.

It would leave behind a wasteland.

If this is “conventional,” as in “conventional weapon,” we better rethink our conventions…fast.

A few other results from a search of the web. Two miles from where the bomb hits here in Southwest Portland, victims could be rendered deaf.

That takes us from Hillsdale to the Willamette River to the east, and to the Portland-Beaverton border to the west.

For several miles beyond that victims may suffer bleeding ears, to say nothing of trauma and the loss of family and friends.

Five miles away from the blast, the ground would shake and windows be broken. Question: Could this bomb trigger a massive earthquake?

Then there is the fiscal damage already being inflicted by the development and construction of this bomb. Each MOAB costs $16 million. That doesn’t include the cost of the planes needed to drop it.

To put that number in perspective, Portland Public Schools estimates its budget shortfall for next year to be $18 million, resulting in a projected loss of 70 teachers.

And what are the consequences of accepting the use of this weapon as “acceptable." The military-industrial complex, and our power-mad president, have at the ready so-call “tactical nuclear weapons.”


Russian, by the way, has a similar "conventional" bomb, and we know about the nuclear weaponry of North Korea, whose leader is as unpredictable and crazed as Donald Trump.

Breaking News! The Pilgrims were undocumented aliens!

Just a heads up.

The Pilgrims were undocumented aliens.

So were all the colonists. The very idea of a colony was alien. So too, property ownership.

We might add to the list of “illegals,” all the Europeans who “settled” in the Americas bringing with them disease and violence.

Most of us are the descendants of those undocumented intruders. What does that make us?

When I recently shared this slice of history with a friend, he noted that all human beings who came to these American continents were undocumented aliens, including the “native people” who originated in Asia and, prior to that, in Africa.

So when the “native people” arrived here, did anyone check in with the buffalo?

And so it goes.

My Birthday Wish in a Time of Crisis

I was born 75 years ago on this date. Two and a half months before my birth, on Dec. 8, 1941, the President of the United States declared war, and my father enlisted to fight in it

He became a flight surgeon on B-29s bombing Japanese targets is China.

Among his duties was salvaging the charred remains of his buddies after their battered “Super-Fortresses” crash landed on their home runways. He watched as the planes exploded, burned and consumed his friends.

Back in the States, I was a toddler, the approximate age of three of my four grandchildren today.

Many years later, my mother told me my father came home from war “a different man.” “Not the man I married,” she said. Only on rare occasions did I see the man I presume she fell in love with.

Today, the President of the United States has declared war on me, a journalist and a former teacher of journalism. He has declared me, my former students and my colleagues the “enemy of the American people.”

He has also, in effect, declared war on millions of others far more vulnerable than we are.

The battles in this war are already changing me … and you. We are already witnessing the flaming, hate-filled wreckage of his deeds.

My own engagement certainly is not and will not be as an “enemy of the American people.” I seek to be the “enemy” of no fellow human, but I will fervently oppose the nefarious deeds of this deranged president.

My father came home from war embittered and hardened. There are already days when I myself feel consumed by bitterness and even hatred. I must not surrender to these feelings if I am to help create a world of peace for my grandchildren.

Today these children know me as the old man who reads and sings to them, who pushes their swings in the park and holds their hands firmly as we cross the street.

I want to remain that man even as I fight to secure a future of promise for them, this nation and this planet.

I want these and other children to remember me — and us — for hope and change, for joy and love.

This is my birthday wish.

‘Enemy of the People’ wants to meet with Trump’s ‘finely tuned machine’

At his press conference on Thursday, President Trump made two assertions. I want to test both.

Assertion 1 was that my fellow journalists and I are “enemies of the people.”

Assertion 2 was that his administration is running like a “finely tuned machine.”

If the president believes that I am an enemy to the American people, I demand that his “finely tuned machine” immediately arrest me before I cause any irreparable damage to the my fellow Americans.

If I am not arrested, or at least questioned, in the next week, perhaps some representative in the president’s finely tuned machine can tell me were I can turn myself in so that “the people” will be safe again.
 
Mr. President, I look forward to talking with one of your representatives about my allegedly criminal behavior.

I will pack my toothbrush.

If nothing happens in the next week, I will assume that both assertions are lies, and that, accordingly, the real enemy of the people is you, Mr. President. In which case, I demand that you turn yourself in. Frankly, I'd settle for a simple resignation.

Trump: Our Homework Assignment

You can credit the President Trump for one thing: He's put us back to work...fighting him.

If only we could bill the billionaire bilker and his plutocrat friends for our labors.

Unfortunately, we are paying taxes to him (He-who-does-not-pay)...and them. April 15 will be its own "Day of Infamy."

We should be sending the Trump and the plutocrats a bill in the form of steeply progressive taxes to correct the shameful inequality that is to blame for so many of our problems.

Here in our part of Portland, a rapidly growing volunteer group has set out to help maintain stability in our public schools. There, thousands of immigrant and minority students (and their families) are vulnerable to Federal arrest, possible deportation and/or worse.

I fear we are but one terrorist attack, or Bannon-inspired agent provocateur attack, away Armageddon.

Meanwhile, back in the world of the old "normalcy," these same students are expected to put fear aside and do their own work: Homework.

In the new Trumpian world, we have our own "homework" to do. Our "home" is a shambles. Frankly, it has been for years. We have been grossly neglectful.

A reminder: when were you ever paid for homework? The price you pay is for not doing it or doing it poorly.

And the payment for cleaning our house of Trump and his ilk, is called FREEDOM. The price, as always, is sacrifice.

My quest for sane adults in Congress

In this time of national need, I have recently embarked on a search for sane adults in Congress.

The logical place to look seemed to be among the dozens of Congressional caucuses.

In particular I was looking for a few legislators devoted to adult, sane, non-partisan behavior.

The Senate, I have learned, has no caucuses at all. In the upper house, gatherings of like-minded solons are called “coalitions.”

So let’s mine the lode of caucuses in the “People’s Chamber” in our quest for sane adult nuggets.

The Wikipedia entries were instructive but not particularly reassuring. Vis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucuses_of_the_United_States_Congress

There were the predictable “single-issue” caucuses. So we have “The Atlantic Offshore Energy Caucus,” and the “Carbonated and Non-alcoholic Caucus,” the “Direct Selling Caucus,” the “Electromagnetic Caucus,” the “Cut Flower Caucus” and the “Hockey Caucus.” There’s even a “Baby Caucus,” which is bracketed alphabetically by the “Azerbaijan Caucus” and the “Bangladesh Caucus,” which itself is followed “The Baseball Caucus” and “The Battlefield Caucus.”

As Dave Barry would say, I am NOT making this up.

If this swarm of caucuses are anything more than accounts for campaign contributions. it’s a wonder that Congress gets anything done at all.

Here’s the closest I could come to a caucus for adult sanity:

Congress has three mental health caucuses. The generic “Mental Health Caucus,” the “Men’s Mental Health Caucus” (particularly useful in weighing Trump cabinet nominees and Trump himself) and the “Military Mental Health Caucus” (also known to insensitive, politically incorrect wags as the “Catch-22 Caucus.”)

There is also the timely “Sexual Assault Prevention Caucus” and the “Caucus to End Bullying.”  In a just, sane and adult world, much needed presidential impeachment initiatives would emerge from these groups.

Other promising groups are the “Problem Solvers Caucus” “the Peacekeeping Caucus,” “the Innovation and Human Condition Caucus,” (“innovative” hacking alert!} and, the “Invasive Species Caucus” including, one would hope, invasive species of the human kind.

One obvious problem exposed by my research is a lack of focus. Accordingly I’m recommending an emergency consolidation of some of these groups into the “Sane, adult legislators caucus.”

I predict it will be a small group, but you have to begin somewhere — and FAST!

Was Trump involved in Russian hacking?

The news of the last week has been dominated by Russia and Putin’s influencing the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

The news all seems to be about Putin, Russian intelligence and collaborating pro-russian trolls.

But very little has been said about Trump himself. Was Russia’s support of Trump part of a two-way deal? Does Putin’s animosity for Hillary Clinton fully explain why the he would devote so many resources on behalf of Trump?

Who is the “Hillary” in Germany and France, where the Russians are using the same methods of deception and hacking? Are there quid pro quos between the insurgent right-wing leaders and the Russians?

What’s needed from the US intelligence community and the Senate hearings are answers regarding Trump’s own possible direct involvement and cooperation with Putin and his regime.

Beyond possible political manipulations is still another world worth investigating — the criminal underworld is rife in Russia.

Does Trump have US and possibly Russian links to organized crime? One doesn’t conduct business on a Trumpian scale without dealing with underworld forces wherever they might be…and Trump’s involvements span the globe.

In Friday’s Washington Post, opinion writer Kathleen Parker made a start to prying open some of the unanswered and politically incorrect questions.

Under the headline reading, “If Obama is a Muslim, is Trump a Russian Spy?” she raises the question of whether Trump himself could be a treasonous spy and concludes: “…when the president-elect persists in a state of denial, siding with the enemy against his own country’s best interests, one is forced to consider that Trump himself poses a threat to national security…In Russia, they’d just call it treason.”

A side note: I’ve often thought that Trump’s trademark red caps should really read: “Trump. Make RUSSIA great again!” because that seems to be where his presidency is headed. Another version might carry the words: “Trump: From Russia with Love!”

Trump's 'Gifts' to America could spell impeachment

One great “gift” that Donald Trump has given "We the People" forces us to break the mold on how we think about political divisions in this country.

In the weeks ahead we will forget Republicans and Democrats and the seemingly rigid divide between the two, particularly in Congress.

We will forget Liberals and Conservatives.

And yes, with time, we will even be able to put aside “Red” and “Blue” states.

The last to fall will be our growing class, racial and educational divisions although our history tells us that those will be a long, long time coming.

(Note in passing: we have already forgotten Hillary Clinton. That clears the air and leaves Trump to be judged free of Clinton baggage and fake news “distractions.” )

So what will end these divisions?

Two words: Donald Trump — but not in the dictatorial way he would imagine.

The answer to the question brings us to Trump’s greatest gift. The realignment is going to be over the values of Trump (if they can be called that) versus the bed-rock values of the large majority of Americans.

Trump and initially his Russian friends are forcing us to rediscover and defend our values.

Welcome to a world divided into pro-Trump versus pro-democracy. Pro-dictatorship versus Pro-Freedom.

And finally: Pro-Lies and pro-Truth.

The first place the divide will become obvious will be in the confirmation hearings in the Senate. The Senate is packed with people with very large egos who have been deeply and personally offended by the President-elect. One does not forget insults to one’s military service, to one’s wife or father or the size of one’s privates.

Those senators, all of them Republicans, have not forgotten.

And so we have Lindsay Graham and John McCain stepping up.  Can Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio be far behind? If they and a few of others join in, initially on concerns about national security and Russian subterfuge, we suddenly have an anti-Trump majority in the Senate.

Knowing Trump, he will proceed with further ad hominem attacks. Expect the anti-Trump Senate majority to grow and solidify, possibly killing the whole Trump agenda and rejecting virtually all of his cabinet nominees.

That will only infuriate the self-obsessed Trump more. He will dig his hole deeper and deeper.

Did anyone say “Impeachment”?

The Election and Fox's 'Ocean of Light and Love'

On the eve of this frightening election, words spoken more than 350 years ago have helped me.

They come from George Fox, who founded the Quakers.

England was in the throes of a tumultuous, bloody civil war at the time. Fox was a young, uneducated, deeply troubled man. He was literally adrift in the war-torn country, and searching for “Truth.” He could not find it anywhere. Not among the “professors” (read “pastors”) nor in the Bible.

Nonetheless, in this time of peril, he had a vision (one among many) of an “Ocean of Darkness and Death” being covered by an “infinite Ocean of Light and Love.”

He continues in his journal that the “darkness" compelled him to learn the “conditions" of all so that he could speak to them. From this darkness, the Light leads him, and us, to “openings”  — leads us to love.

This 2016 political campaign, terrible as it has been, terrible as its outcome could be regardless as who wins, may be the “opening” we all need.

Strangely, many, perhaps a majority, of us are united in voting not for one candidate but against the other — the lesser of two “evils” as we see it.

For there to be reconciliation, it’s not helpful to argue over which candidate is which. Our pain in the darkness of negativity is shared regardless of how we voted.

If we can move beyond finger-pointing and blame, yes beyond hate, we have the opportunity to draw closer together, to find unity and even agreement on the nation’s needed course.

Clearly we all suffer from our “bubble” lives….from our isolating “conditions” as Fox described them. His vision tells us that Light will lead us to explore our differing “conditions” and find healing in understanding and love.

It’s worth reading the “Ocean of Light” passage in his journal: If it helps, you can embrace, or merely accept or read past Fox’s religiosity.

Here is the passage:

"I cried unto the Lord, saying, “Why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit these evils?” and the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions? and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings….”  1652

'Pathway' campaign metaphor blinds us

The media’s coverage of the 2016  presidential nominating campaigns is wedded to the “pathway” metaphor. Like all metaphors, this one locks us into unchallenged and misleading assumptions.

Pathways are “narrow,” “wide,” “closed” or “clear of obstacles.” They promise inevitability.

Oh really?

Has Bernie Sander’s “pathway” now disappeared? End of story?

Are the anti-Trump candidates on the Republican side also left with no path to nomination? Or a very, very “narrow” path?

Beware the metaphorical story line; reality has its own narrative.

For instance, there’s just enough vitriol and talk of violence in this campaign, that some insane act could alter events. In these United States, it has been known to happen. Think Bobby Kennedy. For that matter, think JFK.

Then, as a friend pointed out, the whole course of the campaigns could be upended by an act of terrorism here. What would a 9-ll, or worse, heaven forbid, do to the campaigns and voter sentiment?

Nor is mayhem all that could change the story line.

Consider that the Democratic Convention will be held in late July, three months from now. What might happen if the intervening polls show Trump actually beating Clinton in November? Suppose that with each new poll the gap between the two widens?

Frankly, it’s not hard to imagine. Clinton has all the charisma of an Oregon slug. Her surrogates are nearly as offensive as Trump. In an anti-establishment year, her ties to the political elites (financial and otherwise) become more and more suspect. What DID she tell those folks at Goldman-Sachs?

Meanwhile Trump, for all his ignorance and bigotry, seems impervious to criticism largely because he is the darling of frustrated, irrational and angry hordes who are weary of political elites of all stripes.

And then there is Trump’s media-savvy theatrics. Who draws the bigger audience and the largest media profits? Clinton or Trump? No contest. Schedule him!

Meanwhile disaffected, despairing Sanders’ supporters might support Trump (a "new Trump"). Any appeals for their votes by a distrusted Clinton could be seen as insincere pandering.

Trump is at least sincere, foremost about himself.

And so Democratic Party super-delegates may witness a widening polling spread between a tanking “weak” Clinton and ascendant “strong” Trump. Couple that with polls continuing to show Sanders clobbering Trump in November.
That scenario could well inspire some serious rethinking at the Philadelphia Democratic convention.

How do any of these narratives fit with the “pathway” metaphor? They don’t.

A "Good Trump" should endorse Garland for the Supreme Court

If Donald Trump were just a fraction as smart as he claims to be, he would endorse the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to be on the US Supreme Court.

Say what?

Trump needs to prove there is indeed “another” Trump, as ex-candidate Ben Carson claimed in endorsing Trump. If there is a “Good Trump,” it's time for him to step up, and there's no better way than by endorsing Garland.

Trump could certainly benefit from the “halo effect” that surrounds the eminently qualified and virtuous Garland. No senator in either party argues that Garland is anything less than a prudent, thoughtful judge who would bring much to the Supreme Court.

In supporting Garland, Trump would once again set himself apart from the hide-bound conservative Republican establishment. That would prove that he can at least be consistent in his willingness to buck the hide-bound orthodoxy of the Republican Congressional leadership.

He would take a stand against partisan gridlock. In short, he would be seen as rising above politics, something many yearn for.

He would prove that he knows character when he sees it and that he believes it should be rewarded.

He could wrap himself in that holy of holies, The U.S. Constitution.

He could, at last, begin to be seen as a healer rather than the terrible divider he has been for the past year.

And finally, he would begin to expand his base, which he desperately needs to do to win in November.

The problem is that so far Trump has given no evidence that there is a “Good Trump,” except apparently to Carson.

Trump's Narcissism and the Suspension of Disbelief

If you search “Trump” and “narcissist” on the web you get dozens of hits linking the two words. Many posts are from therapists.

(Vanity Fair recently posted an overview story on the subject.)

But a therapist I know says dismissively, “Every politician is a narcissist.” It comes with the turf, she maintains.

The difference is that Donald Trump is a pathological narcissist. He lies, he bullies, he is self-absorbed, he has little or no empathy…and he flaunts all of that in public. None of that “comes with the political turf,” at least not publicly.

Clearly Trump is not fit for polite or political company, let alone the oval office.

But significant numbers of people don’t see it that way.

He has the backing of roughly 30 percent of polled Republicans. One poll has him winning 41 percent of the vote in a match-up with either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.  Thankfully, Democrats “win” over Trump in the poll. (Interestingly, Sanders draws more votes that Clinton against nearly every other Republican hopeful…but that’s another story)

So what’s the deal?  Why doesn’t Trump’s extreme public narcissism sink his candidacy? Indeed why does it seem to have contributed to his being the Republican front-runner.

The list of reasons is long, but right up near the top I’d put our media-manipulated culture.

Much of the public “understands reality” from what it gleans from TV and radio. A media fantasy world becomes “reality.” "The News" is a distorting mirror of politics (and crime, and success, and war, and health....)

Celebrities (and Trump has made himself one) are unquestioningly worshipped. For the media, they attract audiences and that attraction translates into advertising dollars.

What Trump and other celebrities say is taken as a priori truth, often because of their perceived “success.” Fans relish celebrity errors…and forgive them: “My celebrity, right of wrong.”

Deception becomes the stuff of plot lines, humor and scripts. When Trump demeans others he seems serious. But then he answers criticism by insisting he was “joking” or “acting” or “misunderstood.”

The public is willingly being gamed, largely to be entertained. (The absurdly popular Rush Limbaugh exhibits much of the same narcissistic public profile. He too is entertaining, particularly if you harbor prejudice and tolerate lies. Like Trump, he is self-obsessed, dangerous and panders to and feeds hatreds.)

When we enter the world of entertainment and fantasy we sometimes knowingly, but more often unknowingly, “suspend disbelief.” In other words, we let down our guard. We make ourselves vulnerable. And that’s what a sizable portion of the American public has done with Donald Trump…to everyone's peril.

The world of politics and governance is no fantasy and no game. It should be no place for celebrity worship and game-playing. Frankly, governing is not much fun, but it is important, vitally important.

Think global warming, war and peace, terrorism, poverty, inequity and injustice.

Now think of Donald J. Trump and his pathological, posturing, psychological state.

Second Debate: Trump's advantage, trimming the field, history mangled

Three observations about Wednesday's marathon GOP debate:

Trump wins again on his ‘Home Field’

In true celebrity style Donald Trump lives by pictures. His split persona is made to order for the split screen.

Someone playing it straight, like Jeb Bush, is inevitably undercut by Trump with his simultaneously shown grimaces, flailing arms, frowns, fake sincerity and winking dismissals.

And so while we are vaguely listening to one (Bush), we are entranced by the other (Trump).

What message gets through? The indelible ones, Trump’s visual reactions. Who today can remember anything that Bush said last Wednesday? Something about Casinos in Florida….

Looks deceive, and Trump is nothing if not a deceiver. He maintains that what he says isn’t what he means. So which are we supposed to believe? He wants us to believe both although they are diametrical opposites. So we end up believing what we want to.

Trump is relying on a whole demographic steeped in media of the rapid, thoughtless, often rude, responses. They are the same group that listens to and admires the smarmy attacks of Rush Limbaugh.

Even Bernie Sanders, with his hashtag comments throughout the so-called Republican debate has bought into it, until, with a half hour of the “debate” remaining, he gave up and went to bed.  He realized that he had joined a fool’s game.

I often yearn to resurrect the late media guru Marshall McLuhan to get his take on Trump and the current level of political discourse. McLuhan pried apart the Nixon-Kennedy debates by describing Nixon as a “hot” politician trying to use a “cool” medium, television. Kennedy had mastered TV cool.

Now the terms “hot” and “cool” have taken on entirely new layers of meaning, but at the time, McLuhan hit the mark.

Trump is beyond hot and cool and has been successful because the dominant medium today is neither hot nor cool. It is fragmented, insincere, spontaneous, and unfair.

Those are characteristics that exactly define Trump.

Trump’s opponents are simply no match for him on the playing field he has mastered so well.

Time for GOP candidates to self-cull their herd

If those in the Republican presidential field are worried about the skyrocketing candidacy of Donald Trump, why don’t all but two or three of the 15 simply get out of the race and quit dicing up Republican voters into candidacies with minuscule support?

One thing about Trump, he’s a polarizing figure. You are either vehemently for him or repulsed by him. The repulsed need one or two candidates they can rally around.

This isn’t to say that the anti-Trump candidates are in complete agreement on the issues as was evident in Wednesday’s “debate.” But it does mean that they have common ground in realizing that Donald Trump would be a disaster for their party, to say nothing of the nation.

A grateful party and nation would salute those candidates with the wisdom to withdrawn in order to save Republicans and the Republic.

The problem is that the candidates are in the race to affirm their egos, rise to their level of their incompetence, and seize power for their own special interests…or all three.

If they could see beyond those motives, they would realize that any remaining, dominant candidate other than Trump would certainly share the spoils of victory, should he or she attain it.

One way or the other they will benefit.

Rest assured that Trump will not share the spoils of victory with his competition. Even if he did, who would want to work for the likes of him?

When History is the victim so are we

It is said that history is what we make it. But there is more truth in the statement that history is what we make OF it.

The Republican candidates at Wednesday’s debate mangled history. Is the Iran of today the product of the Iranian Revolution? Did that revolution emerge out of thin air, with no involvement by our own CIA with the Shah’s regime and the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government? Apparently.

Did George W. Bush protect this nation by toppling Saddam Hussein in order to retaliate for 9/11, an event in which Hussein and Iraq had no role? Could our dependence on and ownership of oil in Iraq have had something to do with our “salvation”?

Did the rise of Al Qaeda happen for no reason? Were training camps in Afghanistan there simply by chance? Or could the US support of anti-Soviet “Freedom Fighters” in Afghanistan, including the leadership of Al Qaeda, have had something to do with the history that followed?

Does anyone remember Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about this nation’s “Military-industrial Complex” as candidates on Wednesday called for more and more defense spending. Would someone please remind this nation that America spends nearly as much on defense as all other nations combined?

Oh, and while we are at it, it’s time to officially and repeatedly “out” Israel as possessing nuclear weapons. Iran’s nuclear policy might be seen differently if we added that fact to the mind-bogglingly complex situation in the Middle East.

History will show that ALL the great religions of the world have at one time or another produced brutal terrorists. If ours is a Judeo-Christian nation, as candidate Mike Huckabee maintains (pointedly excluding Islam), what are we doing torturing people? What are we doing killing defenseless citizens in drone attacks? Why are we allowing “law enforcement” in this country to terrorize citizens based on their skin color and their religious beliefs?

I recommend to Huckabee and any other self-proclaimed Christian the book “Constantine’s Sword,” written by a Catholic journalist James Carroll. War and atrocities (including those of war) seem hard-wired into all religions — the teachings of their sages not-withstanding.

Finally, we are developing a history with Global Warming (it started with the Industrial Age) and we can see where we are headed. Addressing the Climate Change issue will not be a job killer as Marco Rubio maintained. If anything, it will create entirely new industries. In fact, under the do nothing scenario, plenty of jobs will be created, but they won’t be the ones that we want. The jobs will require massive government spending as a huge work force builds the dikes needed to hold back rising waters in order to save coastal cities. Whole new communities for climate refugee will need to be built. And on and on it goes.

The old line about those ignoring history being destined to relive it needs amending. Those who distort or “cherry pick” history’s lessons are delusional and destined to fail.