A malfunctioning psche

AMATEUR HOUR AT DEMOCRATIC HEADQUARTERS

Posted on October 31, 2016 by halviv

One must first recognize that all of politics is basically a sales job. The better the salesman (or woman), the more likely that he or she will prevail in the general election. In 2016 there’s no question that through the use of demagoguery, bombast and bullying, Trump is far more effective at salesmanship than Clinton. The fact that unlike husband Bill, Hillary’s natural political skills are sorely lacking, especially when campaigning before large audiences, is obvious to even the most casual observer. While, for Trump, his abilities in exciting large crowds to buy into his demagogic and delusional promises is virtually unmatched in modern times. One has to go back to Hitler and Mussolini, almost a century ago, to find comparative skills in unbridled demagoguery. Thus, the only thing holding Trump back from enjoying a commanding lead in this race is Trump himself. His vile, vulgar, disgusting, and pathologically narcissist personality, shines through loud and clear, and tends to offset his natural salesmanship talents. His lewd and pornographic remarks about women, his inherent racism toward Hispanics, Chinese and others, his serial lies about the current administration and the state of world affairs, plus other nasty characteristics do tend to be rather off-putting. His unhinged and delusional mind-set might also give pause to those imagining his fingers on the nuclear trigger.

All that would tend to create a plausible explanation as to why Hillary had, until recently, a rather commanding lead in most polls. With this latest kerfuffle, however, initiated by FBI chief James Comey, concerning her entire email debacle, that lead seems to be shrinking rapidly. But let’s start at the beginning. When she was Secretary of State, Hillary decided to set up a private server in the basement of her residence in New York, to correspond by email. Which would have been fine if only private emails were conducted through those servers. (There were more than one server.) If the only thing being sent or received were recipes for chicken pot pie, or arrangements for daughter Chelsea’s upcoming wedding, etc., no scandal would have emerged. But Hillary, in reckless disregard for the reality of American politics, allowed emails concerning official State Department business to also be processed through those unprotected servers. Some of those emails supposedly contained highly classified information. Not only was this a clear violation of State Department protocols, but it created a situation whereby foreign enemies could have easily hacked into her servers and obtained that info.

It would have been one thing if Hillary was planning to retire from politics when she stepped down as Secretary of State. No one would have given this a second thought. But knowing that she had presidential aspirations, it was beyond recklessness to establish such an email arrangement. The first rule of politics is to never knowingly hand your opponents a weapon they can use against you in upcoming elections; and she deliberately handed the Republicans a beauty. As I’ve said, this is reckless in the extreme. Thus, when the GOP started a nonstop drum beat about Clinton’s unprotected private servers, the FBI was more or less forced to investigate. After a lengthy study, FBI Director Comey made a public announcement that while Clinton had been extremely careless and irresponsible, the FBI believed there were no grounds for criminal prosecution. This, of course didn’t stop GOP stalwarts from denouncing the FBI conclusion, or from wearing tee shirts with a “Hillary For Prison” pronouncement on them. Comey was routinely denounced as an Administration lackey by Republicans, while being lauded by Democrats for his honesty and objectivity. A collective sigh of relief was breathed at Democratic headquarters.

However, just 11 days before the nightmare election of 2016 would come to an end, Comey reversed course. He had obviously been taking too much heat from the Republican Congress and others on the right, to make living bearable. He, thus, announced that the FBI would re-open the Clinton email investigation based on new evidence that came to light. To make matters worse, this evidence, he stated, consisted of thousands of newly discovered Clinton emails found on the computer of one Anthony Wiener, who is the spouse of one of Hillary’s closest associates. The same former ex-congressman who is under investigation by the FBI for child pornography. Fresh emails, a disgraced ex-congressman, kiddie porn- all mixed together in the same narrative. It’s like one Republican congressman stated- “Christmas has arrived in October.” Of course, at Democratic headquarters, there was nothing but panic and dismay as they watched Hillary’s lead in the polls begin to evaporate like the morning mist.

Being the pathetic rank amateurs that Democratic operatives usually are, they could come up with no better response to this sudden turn of events than denouncing Comey (who they had previously praised) and calling for a more detailed explanation of this new FBI initiative. No ringing protestation from Hillary that while she may have erred in judgement regarding her private servers, no laws were broken. No U.S. interests or security had been compromised, etc. That she was, by far, the better candidate. Of course Trump, who had denounced Comey’s previous decision to end the investigation, was now singing his praises to the roof. Thus is the day-to-day nature of politics. And people wonder why only half the eligible population shows up to cast a ballot for president on election day. Even less in an off year contest.

The reason that Republicans win so many elections is not because they have a superior agenda. If anything, their platform appeals to the most narrow-minded of the U.S. populace. They reason they win, however, is that their campaigns are organized and run by political pros who actually know what they’re doing when playing the game of politics. While the Democrats have rank amateurs orchestrating their so-called political operations. It’s like a major league baseball team playing against a minor, bush league class AA team. So unless the Democrats can come up with another tape of Trump bellowing additional profanities, the election seems to be headed toward a GOP victory. With all its ensuing horrors.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Ben Franklin, The Constitution, Monarchies, Brexit, Donald Trump, Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, human affairs, Isis terrorist attack in Paris,, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China | Leave a comment

THE LAST STAND OF THE WHITE VOTER

Posted on October 24, 2016 by halviv

Political conventional wisdom dictates that when individuals decide to run for president, they swing far right ( for the GOP nomination), or far left (for the Democratic nomination), in order to appeal to the base voters in their respective parties. Then, once securing the nomination, they move back toward the middle, to seek the votes of moderates, independents, and undecided voters that don’t adhere to any particular ideology. But in 2016, Donald Trump has defied this supposed political theory. He did swing very far right in order to become the Republican presidential nominee. But once the GOP convention was over, he has gone even further right during the general campaign. He has doubled down on building that hideous monstrosity on the Mexican border that will become known as the Trump Wall. ( Although he has backed away from the ludicrous notion that Mexico would pay for such a wall.) He’s still asserting the policy of throwing all undocumented individuals out of the country, and refusing to allow Muslim refugees into the country. Reversing his previous positions, he has become anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and anti-free trade. He strongly advocates for trickle-down economics, as well as tax -cuts for the rich, while slashing government assistance to the poor, the sick, and the elderly. As well as for using “nukes” when he feels it’s necessary.

This calculated decision to go as far right as humanly possible is based on the assumption that he, Trump, can garner such a heavy white vote, especially among older white males, that it would more than offset black, Latino, Asian, Moslem, and other minority voters that will undoubtably vote heavily against him in the general election. An interesting theory, as white voters still comprise a major, although shrinking share of the electorate. Consider this election to be the last stand of white voters who fell the special privileges of being Caucasian in the U.S. is slipping away from them. And they’re very unhappy about that. There’s even a new book on the market, written by an extreme right-winger, called “The Angry White Male” that espouses and solidifies this political phenomena. As I’ve written previously, this “Whites Only” political thrust became reality when Trump decided that his overall campaign chief would be a guy named Steve Bannon. Who was previously affiliated with a neo-fascist group known as Breitbart News. It’s Bannon who’s directing this white majority campaign thrust; but it was Trump who hired him and decided on this direction in the first place. Trump, who used to be pro-choice, “but now has become anti-abortion for all of 15 minutes.” That last quote was from a column written by George Will, a conservative Republican newspaper pundit.

The last time a “whites only” reality existed in the U.S. was in the early 1970s, in the Jim Crow segregated South. There were “whites only” schools, lunch counters, bathrooms, water fountains, and every other public institution and facility that existed. When the federal government tried to intervene to break down these segregated barriers, Southern states began to howl that it was a question of “states rights” and the Feds had no business interfering in such matters. Eventually, sanity and human decency did prevail, as the walls of Jim Crow segregation finally started to crumble. But not before the lives of many black people and civil rights workers were lost along the way. And keep in mind that the Ku Klux Klan, the chief advocate for the segregated South and its practices, the murderer of many civil rights members, still exists to this day. And guess which candidate the KKK is supporting, the one it says is their kind of guy.

But, to me, the most worrisome aspect of the 2016 campaign is who will have his or her fingers on the nuclear trigger. While our founding fathers wrote numerous “checks and balances” into the U.S. Constitution, it’s unfortunate that they couldn’t foresee a nuclear armed world. Hence there is no check on a U.S. president that wants to launch a nuclear attack against some perceived enemy. It is solely at his or her discretion. Bobby Knight, a former Indiana basketball coach, and an avid Trump supporter, has stated that with the election of Trump, “at least we’ll have someone in the White House that won’t be afraid to to drop a few nukes.” Trump, himself, has indicated he wouldn’t hesitate to launch nuclear missiles when called for. The world would never be the same. His election would put the nuclear trigger in the hands of an unhinged, deranged, pathological narcissist. Abuse his ego, and bammo.

Current polls show Clinton in the lead, with 2 weeks to go. But at this same time in the 2012 election, polls showed Mitt Romney headed for the winners circle, and we all know how well those predictions turned out. I prefer to check what odds the bookies are giving, because unlike the pollsters, the bookies have to put their money where their mouths are. The bookies are giving more favorable odds on Trump victory, meaning they expect Clinton to win. (One can actually bet the election on-line with bookies in England.) But there’s an unfortunate sense of over-confidence in the Clinton camp, which could prove disastrous. As it did to Mitt Romney in the last go-round.

Since I’m an old guy, there’s not much a Trump presidency can do to me these days. Even if the worst scenario occurs, at least I’ve had a life. (Some may view it as a so-called life.) But for you younger people out there, I would imagine that there would be oceans of worry, should the narcissist wind up sitting in the Oval Office on January 20, 2017.

POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS AS THEATER OF THE ABSURD

Posted on October 3, 2016 by halviv

In “Macbeth” Shakespeare wrote that: “Life is a tale told by an idiot…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Now, centuries later, the 2016 political campaign for the presidency of the U.S. is unfolding with the same absurdity as Shakespeare had described in his theater production of “Macbeth.” It has degenerated into a low art form of theater with various characters, besides the two main actors, playing out their various and highly predictable roles on center stage. For example, you have characters such as Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, who heretofore had fairly decent political reputations, but are now forced to pick up Trump’s dry-cleaning by twisting themselves into pretzels in trying to explain away each of Trumps incredibly moronic statements, uttered every time his ego becomes abused. Other players include the political pundits on the various TV news stations who analyze to death, every meaningless piece of drivel uttered by the theater production’s two main actors.

Of course, the highlight of this theater of the absurd is the debate performances between the two staring candidates. The first presidential debates go back to to the campaign of 1860 between Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephan Douglass. The primary topic of the day at that time was slavery. Presidential debates then fell out of favor for a century, until the advent of a television set being common in almost everyone’s home resurrected them in 1960. Now, everyone could watch the candidates perform from the comfort of their living rooms, and theater of the absurd was thus born. In 1960 the contest was between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. Interestingly, those that watched the debate on TV felt that Kennedy had given the stronger performance; while those that listened on the radio believed that Nixon had prevailed. The reason- Kennedy’s handsome, charismatic persona had won out over Nixon’s rather drab looking appearance, while on the radio Nixon’s delivery appeared so much more reasonable than Kennedy’s. Since more people watched the debate on TV than listened to it on the radio, Kennedy won the election by the narrowest of margins. After he was sworn in Kennedy stated that if he accomplished nothing else, he had saved the country from a Richard Nixon. As it turned out, however, he had merely delayed it.

So last week we had the first of three presidential debates, with a mind-boggling 84 million people tuning in to watch this theater performance. As if they would learn anything new that hadn’t been repeated hundreds of previous times. But it was showtime, and the show must go on. Trump started off predictably strong, hurling every malady the Universe has ever known as being caused by the Obama Administration, and Hillary Clinton in particular. But somewhere during Clinton’s other wise drab performance, she managed to toss a few good zingers where it hurt Trump the most- in his ego. Being the supreme narcissist that I’ve previously written about, Trump could not let this effrontery go unanswered, and thus went off script and began to lose it. The debate then degenerated into such pressing issues as to whether Trump had called a former Miss Universe who had gotten fat, Miss Piggy. Certainly one of the most immediate and urgent problems of the day on the minds of most of the American populace. It went downhill for Trump from that point on, and Clinton was generally declared the debate winner in contest where the bar is set exceedingly low. If there is such a thing as a winner when watching the theater of the absurd.

The next day, of course, all the political pundits sallied forth to verbalize their views of what was said that shouldn’t have, and what wasn’t said that should have. There was a general consensus on the Trump side that he should have brought up Bill Clinton’s sexual proclivities, and Trump has promised to do just that for the second debate. Why bother watching when you know in advance what the main characters will pontificate on. And, as if the fact that Bill Clinton couldn’t keep his zipper shut is, in any way, germane to the world we live in in 2016. Nevertheless, the name of the game is how much mud one candidate can sling at the other, and how much of it will stick. By all means, never discuss in the theater of the absurd, the actual problems and issues affecting large numbers of people on a daily basis.

The current polls show that the election is extremely close, almost a dead heat. As I’ve written before, in such cases the outcome is usually decided by the people that don’t bother to vote versus those that do. For example, in 2008 and 2012, large numbers of Democrats were motivated to turn out to elect Barack Obama as president. But in the 2010 and 2014 congressional elections, many Democrats stayed home on election day, and Republicans overwhelmingly swept those contests. So, in the end it all comes down to who will show up at the ballot box. There is one other factor that should also be considered.

Current polls also show that about 5% of eligible voters are still undecided. Hard to believe after all the shenanigans that have already taken place. My theory is that these are the same people that wait until about 11:pm on April 15 to go rushing down to the post office to file their income tax returns. In other words, these are people who, by their very nature, hate making decisions or taking required actions until the bitter end. In the 1980 race between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, the polls also showed a virtual tie, until the final week when the undecideds for some inexplicable reason, broke for Reagan and he won in a landslide. A dismal viewer of the current landscape might believe the Universe has the same perverse fate in store, not only for the U.S., but the entire planet, by having the undecideds break for Trump.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Brexit, Donald Trump, Alan Greenspan, Economics, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, The Kingfish,Donald Trump, human affairs, John Kennedy, politics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

FROM CALIGULA TO TRUMP: A TALE OF NARCISSISM

Posted on September 19, 2016 by halviv

Eugene O’Neill, the famous American playwright, said that: “There is no present or future-only the past happening over and over again.” Never has the validity of this wisdom been better demonstrated than in the 2016 American political campaign unfolding before our eyes. One has to go deep into the past, back to the days shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus, to find another prominent figure whose narcissism matches that of today’s probable winner in the U.S. presidential race. I’m talking, of course, about Caligula, the emperor/tyrant that ruled the ancient Roman Empire for a brief period before he met an untimely death.

Caligula’s bloodline was that of the Caesars that so despotically governed Rome when it was at its acme of power, around the time that Jesus was preaching his sermon on the Mount. He thus inherited the throne in 37 A.D. but only ruled for 4 years. For the first few months of his reign, Caligula was considered almost a breath of fresh air by the Roman populace because they had been treated so cruelly by previous despots. But there was one problem. Caligula was a total narcissist who could not by abide having his ego bruised. He lashed out at those that offended him. After those first few months of goodwill, he became known for his focus on cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversity, and as a person who would kill his perceived opponents, often on a whim. He unconstitutionally further concentrated the political power of the emperor to the point where his proclamations became absolute law. He was described by scribes of that era as an insane, power hungry emperor, constantly angry and self-absorbed, who treated any criticism as treasonous that subjected the critic to execution. His despotic reign became so poisonous that even his inner circle could no longer tolerate his erratic behavior. He was finally murdered in 41 A.D. by his own guards, after 4 years of tyrannical rule.

But, if, as Eugene O’Neill said, the past keeps repeating itself, we see it happening in the U.S. 2000 years later when another total narcissist is just weeks away from becoming the most powerful figure on the planet. That Trump’s narcissism was established early on during this presidential campaign is beyond dispute. That he lashed out at Megyn Kelly, Ted Cruz, the parents of a dead soldier who died in Iraq fighting for the U.S., a sitting judge because of his Hispanic heritage, and many, many others, is beyond dispute. That, once in office, he intends to concentrate all political power in the office of the presidency, the way Caligula did as emperor, is also quite evident. How do I know this? Just look at the people Trump has surrounded himself with.

His new campaign manager is a man named Steve Bannon who has a history of spousal abuse and anti-semitism. He was hired from an extreme right-wing fringe group known as Breitbart News. Years ago when his wife, (now his ex-wife) wanted to send their children to a certain private school, he refused saying the school had “too many fucking Jews.” She also claims he was physically abusive toward her. Trump’s second in command is a fellow named David Bossie who made his extreme right-wing chops by singularly pursuing and publicizing the extra-marital affairs that Bill Clinton supposedly had over the years. Some were true, some were pure fiction. Previously, Trump’s campaign manager was Corey Lewandowski, whose ties with Trump goes back to the 2012 campaign, when he advised Trump to seek the White House by becoming a “birther,” i.e. someone who believed that Barack Obama was born in Kenya rather than in the U.S. When that effort fizzled, Lewandowski was back in 2015 urging Trump that his path to the presidency lay in demonizing undocumented Mexicans as “rapists and murderers.” In that, he appears to have hit the nail squarely on the head. Taking the lowest possible mud-slinging road finally paid off for Trump. Although Lewandowski was ostensibly released from the Trump campaign after the primaries were over, he is said to still provide input and advice.

You think that men such as those, once they’ve acquired the taste of power inherent in the Oval Office, would ever agree to relinquish such power? Look for 2016 to be the last ostensibly democratic election to occur in the U.S. Once Trump plops his body down on the bed in the Lincoln bedroom, even the faux democracy we live under now in the U.S. will come to an end. Rather Trump will emulate his buddy, Vladimir Putin, that I’ve written about earlier in a piece called “A Fine Bromance.” As I’ve stated before, Putin rules Russia Mafia-style, where he’s the godfather or boss of bosses. He runs a system of crony capitalism, where his cronies get all the capital and the rest of the populace is left to drown their sorrows in Russian vodka. He’s responsible for the deaths of thousands in the Ukraine, and outright took the Crimea from that hapless country through military adventurism. Just last week, Putin also threw into jail a blogger that was critical of his actions. Yet, Trump, on several occasions has expressed his admiration of Putin’s leadership style. To reciprocate, Putin has also expressed his fondness for Trump.

Russia does have presidential elections, but they are so fixed that it’s a forgone conclusion that Putin will be re-elected each time. Look for that same system of phony, rigged elections to be incorporated into the American electoral process once Trump becomes president. After all, he has to reserve access to the “throne” for sons Eric and Donnie Jr. when he decides to finally retire. Hence the Trump dynasty will begin.

Of course, the Democrats are making easy for Trump’s ascendency, as they seem to be coming apart at the seams. Hillary Clinton is probably the worst political campaigner of all time. Mired in a bundle of political scandals and health issues, which she has failed to properly address, she also is lackluster on the campaign trail. She totally lacks husband Bill’s easy-going facility in connecting with masses of people at political rallies. That she’s even remotely in the game thus far is a minor miracle in itself. But in the end, the total narcissist will probably win. And remember, like Caligula, he really, really hates to allow his ego to be bruised.

WHITE PRIVILEGE

Posted on August 1, 2016 by halviv

When Richard Nixon ran for presidency for the second time, 1968 had already become one of the most turbulent periods in American history. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had brutally inflamed both white and minority citizens across the country. Although the walls of Jim Crow segregation had finally began to crumble, blacks and other minorities, for the most part, still found themselves confined to the rat infested ghettoes of the inner cities that were riddled with crime, drugs prostitution and other horrors. During protests over the MLK killing, these slums in most cities were set afire in protest over the horrible living conditions that blacks still had to endure after 250 years of slavery in America, followed by another 100 years of of Jim Crow semi-slavery. There were also massive marches and protests over the growing unpopularity of the Viet-Nam war which had already claimed tens of thousands of American lives in addition to the hundreds of thousands Viet-Nam dead. To say that for most Americans, the world had been turned upside down would be an understatement. But for Richard Nixon, a golden opportunity had presented itself.

During the election that year, Nixon developed two strategies that would propel him to the White House. The first was his Southern Strategy. Ever since Republican Abe Lincoln had set the slaves free during the Civil War, the South had voted solidly Democratic in election after election. Even though Southern Democrats were usually highly conservative and generally racist, especially compared to their more liberal Northern counterparts, Southerners kept pulling the levers for for the Democratic Party through Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and into the 1940s. That began to change in 1948 when a young Democratic Senator named Hubert Humphrey induced his party to begin championing the civil rights of blacks and other minorities. (Humphrey would eventually become his Party’s nominee in 1968 and lose to Nixon.) While the black population in most southern states was significant, and would generally vote Democratic, they were no match for the white majority in these states that began to vote as a bloc for Republicans. This would give Nixon and his party an assured 200 or so electoral college votes in all future presidential elections, in a system where it takes 270 to win. Today, in the 2016 election, Nixon’s Southern Strategy is still in full blossom.

Nixon’s second strategy was to appeal to the nation’s “Silent Majority” which was primarily comprised of older white people that had become fed-up with massive anti-war demonstrations and the arson being committed in most inner city slums. Sound familiar? Today at almost all the GOP rallies, you’ll see people holding signs saying “The Silent Majority Stands With Trump.” As the song goes- “everything old is new again.” And, of course, this so-called silent majority is almost exclusively white. And why shouldn’t the majority of whites favor the GOP. It’s not whites, for the most part, that have to inhabit inner-city ghettoes. It isn’t whites that still face residual racism and discrimination in housing, employment, wages, social mobility and other areas. Hence, it’s primarily older whites that are propelling the Trump candidacy and placing a highly deranged, vulgar, obnoxious snake oil salesman peddling a neo-fascist and xenophobic elixir, within hailing distance of the Oval Office. The GOP is betting that the white majority in this country is still large enough to get The Donald the 270 electoral college votes he needs to be the next president. Even with hardly any support from minorities or younger white people. And since the Democrats have such a damaged candidate in Hillary Clinton, the Republicans are probably right.

As for Richard Nixon, he won 2 landslide elections and had many accomplishments; but his volatile and narcissistic personality, similar to Trumps, eventually did him in. He did end the Viet-Nam war to a great sigh of relief from the American public. He initiated diplomatic relations with China, which was a huge foreign policy initiative. Probably one of the top five foreign policy achievements of the 20th century. He significantly raised spending levels for health, education, and welfare. He even tried to legislate for universal health care; but, ironically, it was the Democrats that foiled him in that attempt. It didn’t go far enough, they said. But like Trump, Nixon had a fragile personality disorder. He kept an “enemies list” of people he thought were out to get him or do him in. If you were on Nixon’s enemies list, you were likely to receive a visit from an IRS agent seeking to audit your tax returns. He got involved and sought to cover up a break-in by some GOP low-level thugs of of Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in D.C. Nixon was re-elected in 1972 in a massive landslide, winning 49 out of 50 states. However, the Watergate scandal, as it came to be known, seemed to mushroom from petty larceny by some Republican hacks to presidential felony cover-up.

Two reporters from the Washington Post, Woodward and Bernstein, gained huge reputations for themselves by uncovering the sleazy details of the Watergate cover-up, and Nixon’s involvement. The air was steadily seeping out of the Nixon presidential balloon until, one day, Congressional members of his own party came to the White House and told him he had to resign the presidency or face impeachment. Nixon thus became the first president to resign from the Oval Office and lived out the remainder of his days in disgrace and humiliation.

Today, thanks to a majority of white voters, we’re on the verge of putting into the White House, a man that has an almost exact replica of Nixon’s personality disorder. As Yogi Berra might have put it, it’s like deja vu all over again.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Brexit, Donald Trump, Alan Greenspan, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, human affairs, Isis terrorist attack in Paris,, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, John Kennedy, Redstone Arsenal, NASA, Black Lives Matter, Recent Cop Killings, Ronald Reagan, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

THE LAST STAND OF HUMAN DECENCY

Posted on July 25, 2016 by halviv

How many of you believe that Fox News host Megyn Kelly “had blood coming out of her whatever,” when she grilled Donald Trump during an early Republican debate. Do you further “like people that weren’t captured,” in reference to John McCain’s hellish 6 years as a POW in the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” during the Viet-Nam war. Do you believe that Rafael Cruz (Sen. Ted Cruz’s father) was complicit with Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Speaking of Ted Cruz, do you believe that calling him “Lyin’ Ted” is appropriate or that maliciously maligning his wife on Twitter was the decent thing to do. Do you agree that we should torture captured terrorists “just for the fun of it.” Do you further believe that an American born Judge will be biased against Trump because of the Judge’s Spanish heritage, when ruling on the law suit against that swindle known as Trump University, which is now defunct. As defunct as Trump’s four casino fiascos in Atlantic City that also went belly up, leaving all the investors except Trump, holding the financial bag, as the case wended its way through bankruptcy court. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

If any of you answered yes to any or all of the above questions, you’re definitely a Trump supporter. There are millions of you out there. Welcome to 2016 America, where common human decency has taken a leave of absence among the American electorate. In another time, when at least some vestiges of human decorum were still evident in the American psyche, any one of the above statements would have been a disqualifier when seeking the office of the presidency. But not this year. Instead the media has been lapping up each of Trump’s brutish pronouncements, like a thirsty puppy lapping up it’s water. Trump’s candidacy only took hold because of the tons and tons of free media exposure of his uncivil bloviating comments. And it will likely play out this way right up until election day. If this wasn’t troubling enough, lets take a look of some of the characters jumping on the Trump bandwagon.

David Duke may not be a household name, but he does have a distinct claim to fame. He used to be the Grand Master of the Ku Klux Klan, before he resigned some years ago to run for the Senate on the Republican ticket in Louisiana. He came within an eyelash of winning that election; and upon his loss he went into “talk radio.” From that vantage point, he has had the freedom of speech to not only daily castigate blacks and Jews, but all people considered as “foreigners.” Last week he announced that he would once again run for the Senate in Louisiana as a Republican. He stated that Trump’s candidacy gave him the inspiration to take this course of action. He was lavish in his praise of Trump’s run for the White House. Earlier in the campaign when Duke was out and about praising Trump, The Donald was asked by the media if he would dis-avow David Duke’s support. It took Trump two days of hemming and hawing before he finally choked out an “Okay, I dis-avow.” But that hasn’t stopped the current leadership of the KKK from formally endorsing Trump as “their kind of guy.” Also coming to Cleveland last week to protect Trump from any possible harm was an outfit called Bikers of America, which is basically a collection of motorcycle gang thugs, who also consider Trump to be their kind of guy.

Trump supporters will tell you that while The Donald may have numerous and serious flaws, it’s still better having him in the Oval Office instead of Hilary Clinton. And there is no question that Hilary has run up voluminous political baggage over the last 30 years or so. The worst being sending and receiving classified government e-mails on an unprotected server in her own home. This type of action was especially reckless in that she had presidential aspirations when the servers were set up. One could call it felony stupidity. But on the other hand, if stupidity was a felony, they couldn’t build jails fast enough to house all the inmates. My sense is that she will have to publicly deal with both the e-mail and the Benghazi fiascos if she has any hope of winning the election. She needs to point out that none of the e-mails on her server compromised U.S. security, and that the lax response to the Benghazi crises was more the result of the CIA station chief’s failure to request immediate help and support. If she can’t do that she’s finished politically.

So there you have it. The two most unpopular and disgraced people in public life have somehow made off with their party’s nomination for the presidency. One of them will be entering the Oval Office come next January. It’s somewhat understandable when one watches the mindless chanting and banner waving at the two political conventions. As if nirvana will prevail if their candidate wins the election. As if, everyday, when we get up in the morning, the sun will shine, the birds will chirp, and we’ll all go tip-toeing through the tulips in carefree abandonment, with bliss and joy in our hearts.

Dream on America. Because the reality is that 2016 may be the year that human decency in America finally expires, and what’s left in its place is a swampy wasteland.

IN MY LIFETIME….

Posted on June 20, 2016 by halviv

Although this planet is billions of years old, and life on this planet is measured in at least hundreds of millions of years, what is considered the beginnings of civilized society goes back a mere 10-12 thousand years. Barely a thimble of water in oceans of time. Therefore, the way I figure it, we’re still pretty far down on the evolutionary totem pole. Which explains why those 12 thousand years of of recorded society have been replete with bad behavior, mass killings, barbaric practices, evil despots and tyrants ruling over kingdoms built by using slavery, and, of course, ever-ongoing brutal, savage war-mongering. Although there were undoubtedly armed conflicts during the entire history of man on this planet, the first recorded war occurred just under 5000 years ago. It took place in Mesopotamia, (today’s Iraq, Syria and Kuwait), and the carnage has being going strong ever since.

So, just to pass the time of day, I was thinking about all that has transpired just in my lifetime. I was just a tot when a supremely gifted demagogue used his immense powers of preaching hatred to the populace to rise to power in Germany and eventually launch what came to be known as World War II. Which was really just a continuation of WWI with a couple of decades of respite. Before that confrontation was over, 60 million people would lose their lives throughout Europe, including millions of Americans. Several million more would die in the Pacific at the hands of Imperial Japan, Germany’s ally. Also, for the first time, the mass extermination of an entire ethnic group was just about successfully accomplished through the use of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. About 6 million Jews, and other opponents of Hitler’s Nazi empire, lost their lives in what came to be known as the Holocaust. In a history replete with evil savagery and barbarity, the Holocaust was probably the single most evil act of all time. And it wasn’t just Hitler and the Nazi’s that made the Holocaust work. It took hundreds of thousands of European bureaucrats to establish the network of railroads bringing prisoners to the death camps, and to provide the immense amount of logistics it took to make the camps functional. Hitler’s willing accomplices as one writer called it.

Toward the end of WWII, the Nazis had supposedly developed rockets that were capable of hitting the U.S. East Coast. As a child growing up in New York, I remember being subject to air raid alarms and warnings which required everyone to turn off all lighting. During these air raid drills my parents would bring chairs into my bedroom as we sat there silently in the dark until the all clear sign was given. Most people aren’t aware that Hitler was just days or weeks away at the most before he fell, from developing atomic bomb capabilities that could be employed on rockets that could reach U.S. soil. Or that if Japan had invaded our West Coast immediately after Pearl Harbor, it could have gobbled up at least two-thirds of the U.S. before the Roosevelt Administration was prepared to take a military stand around Chicago. Such was the precarious nature of the freedoms we take for granted today.

After the war, the U.S. quickly demobilized as it appeared that peace would be on the horizon for decades. In the meantime, the most advanced electronics in everyone’s home was a radio and a land-line telephone. When television started coming on the market shortly after the war, it was like the 8th wonder of the world. Our first black-and-white TV had an immense 13 inch screen, and only 3 stations which broadcast only during certain parts of the day and night. But to actually view what one could only hear on the radio, was considered beyond the pale. Also some kind of contraptions they started calling “computers” entered the American vocabulary. But as people learned, they were about as big as a Sherman tank and could be used only for business purposes. The thought of having this contraption in one’s home was considered ridiculous. Until suddenly, something called the “internet” became a hot topic of conversation and they figured out how to downsize computers so they fit comfortably in people’s residences. But telephones always had to be hooked up to a cord, didn’t they? Until they further figured out a way to get rid of the cord and turn the phone into a mini-computer. And thus, on-and -on marches the electronics revolution. All in my lifetime.

In the meantime, the peace-in-our-lifetime dreams that Americans had with the conclusion of WWII evaporated as quickly as the morning mist. With the rise of Communist Russia and China, Americans became highly fearful of the “Red Menace.” When both countries acquired nuclear bomb capabilities deep fears and anxieties spread throughout the land. After a mere 5 or 6 years since the end of WWII, the U.S. was back on war-footing; this time fighting Communists on the Korean peninsula. More death and destruction. Meanwhile a Senator from Wisconsin named Joe McCarthy saw a huge opportunity to demagogue the “soft-on-communism” issue. He was sort of like the Donald Trump of his day. He claimed that the U.S. government, as well as Hollywood and other institutions were riddled with Communist spies working for Russia. To be labeled a Communist by the McCarthy committee was equivalent to seeing ones life turned to ashes. McCarthy eventually went down in flames but not before he had destroyed countless lives.

The Communist scare, known as the better-dead-than-red mentality, eventually led from the stalemate in Korea to the huge loss of life in the Viet-Nam fiasco. Almost 60,000 Americans died in the hell-hole jungles of Viet-Nam before we lost the war and called it quits. To say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese that died during that fracas. And it wasn’t all that much later, that a new barbarism had come upon the landscape in the form of Islamic-Jihadism. Which has us militarily bogged down once more, this time in the Mid-East. It seems as if evil is like wild-fires. You douse one, and two more crop up somewhere else. In the meantime, in mid-2016, it’s as if the re-incarnation of Joe McCarthy has rose to power and he is now one step away from the White House. All of this, in my lifetime.

To say that I’ve lived through a fascinating panorama of events during my life would be a considerable understatement. But I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Ben Franklin, The Constitution, Monarchies, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, Great Depression, The Kingfish,Donald Trump, human affairs, Isis terrorist attack in Paris,, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, John Kennedy, John Kennedy, foreign policy,terrorism, lack of U.S. response to terrorism,, politics, Ronald Reagan, the Depression, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

TRICKLE-DOWN HATRED

Posted on June 13, 2016 by halviv

The latest massacre in Orlando, with about 50 dead and the same number wounded, is just the latest in what has become an ever-growing list of atrocities being committed with greater frequency in the United States. It follows the recent slaughter of innocents in San Bernardino by lone-wolf Islamic Jihadists; the butchering of 20 innocent children in Connecticut by a young man who just couldn’t cope with life; the killing of black church-goers in South Carolina by another deranged individual seeking vengeance for the South’s loss of the Civil War 150 years ago; the murder of about 30 people at Fort Hood, Louisiana by another Jihadist lunatic; the murder of movie-goers in Colorado by another mentally-ill delusionist; and ultimately back to 9/11/01 where almost 3000 lives were lost thanks to fanatical Jihadism; and finally all the way back to Columbine where modern day mass murder in the U.S. seemed to originate. Whether committed by religious fanatics or loners seemingly rejected by society, all these events had the same thing in common. Namely, a deep-seated hatred by the perpetrators toward their victims.

Lets start with the Islamic-Jihad brand of murder, as seems to be the case now in the Orlando slayings. There are about 1.3 billion Moslems currently living on this planet. The vast, overwhelming majority are peaceful human beings, going about their business every day of trying to earn a living, raising a family, taking care of the bills, etc. The problem is, however, that a small minority of Islamic fanatics would like to turn the clock back to the seventh century, when, (in their minds) Islam was untarnished by Western values and modern culture. Fanatical Imams preach a violent interpretation of the Quran which translates into a non-stop hatred toward anything Western, and urge young Moslems to martyr themselves by killing infidels and blowing-up Western society. While most Moslems reject this spewing hatred, there are always those lost souls looking for meaning in their worthless lives, and hence, only to eager to follow the dictates of Islamic-Jihadism. There are no easy answers toward resolving this condition, since there seems to be an endless supply of down-and-out, usually poverty-stricken, mostly young men who feel that sacrificing their lives for a cause, no matter how deranged, is preferable to the way they currently live. It would take world leadership in the Moslem community, as well as high-ranking Imams to denounce this spewing hatred of anything Western. This might, perhaps begin to turn the tide of Islamic-Jihadist vitriol. Thus far, however, this type of moderate leadership is not showing up on the horizon.

Of course, speaking of spewing hatred, the U.S. has its own long, rich history of violent hate-mongering. From its earliest days as a series of colonies in the 1600s, Americans believed what a neat idea it would be to enslave an entire race of people based on their skin color. Slavery lasted in the U.S. for about 250 years before it took a costly and deadly Civil War to end this barbaric practice. When the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution gave black people the same rights as everyone else-it proved to be a bridge too far for most whites in this country, especially in the South. A series of Jim Crow segregation laws were quickly enacted through the entire South which forced black people back into a state of semi-slavery. To make matters worse, whites in the South, after the Civil War, formed an organization that came to be known as the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, to deal with those blacks they felt had become “uppity.” Those that had actually sought to exercise their full rights as a U.S. citizen. The Klan dressed themselves in white hoods and costumes and rode through and intimidated black communities. They engaged in cross-burnings, whippings or lynching of blacks based on the perceived severity of their transgressions. Even as late as the 1920s, the KKK had a huge following in the tens or hundreds of thousands, throughout the entire country. The murderous lynchings of blacks in the South continued as late as the 1970s.

Today, despite the belief by many Americans that the Klan has just about disappeared, the KKK is indeed still active throughout most of the U.S. They may not wear white hoods anymore, but they still spew forth a message of deep hatred for blacks and Jews, or for that matter, anyone whose skin-color isn’t pinkish beige. The former Grand Dragon of the KKK, a fellow named David Duke, has come out and publicly stated that any white person that doesn’t support Donald Trump for president is a traitor to his race. The current KKK leadership has formally endorsed Trump’s candidacy, stating that the Donald is their kind of guy. And, as for David Duke, he currently has a radio program based in Louisiana, where he gets to spew his racial, religious, and ethnic hatreds to a large audience, 5 days a week.

When Trump was recently attacking by racial bias, the judge who had the temerity to release the papers involved in the law-suit against that crooked, sham enterprise known as Trump University, he was finally called out by many that had previously stood on the political sidelines throughout Trump’s prior bigoted tirades. Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, stated that Trump’s attack against the judge because of his Mexican heritage, was “a classic case of trickle-down racial bigotry.” Nevertheless, Speaker Ryan stated that he would continue to support Trump for president because they were of the same party. Sort of like selling one’s soul to the company store. Aren’t politics wonderful? Meanwhile, because of all this hatred, more atrocities will likely be coming our way and at a faster pace.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, Ronald Reagan, the Depression, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

VICTIMOLOGY

Posted on May 9, 2016 by halviv

There appears to be a near universal psychology that impels most people to play the role of victimhood. The desire to be a victim is like bathing in a shower of self-absolution. As I’ve written before, when events take a wrong turn in a person’s life, it can’t possibly be their fault. External forces or other people are to blame for the misfortunes of their personal existences. Living a crappy lifestyle, stuck in a dead end job that pays very little, having nothing but grief in your relationships with the opposite sex or even with so-called friends? It can all be blamed on other people, on devious, selfish individuals, on dishonest commercial enterprises, on the universe, or best of all on foreigners. The theme of foreign exploitation as the cause of personal victimhood has been propelled with great success by many tyrants seeking dictatorial power throughout the 20th century, and is now in full throttle in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

To say that Donald Trump’s entire campaign has been based on a narrative of victimology would be a considerable understatement. According to Trump, the U.S. has become a victim of unscrupulous entrepreneurs that have moved their businesses to Mexico or China in order to take advantage of cheaper labor rates and hence, reduced manufacturing costs. It has nothing to do with the fact that these businesses are merely following the rules of basic capitalism, which, by the way, has made Trump a billionaire. The U.S. has become a victim of our neighbor to the south, because those dastardly Mexicans have not only deceitfully lured U.S. businesses to its country, but they have also dumped about 11 million illegal aliens into the U.S., many of whom are”rapists and murderers.” It’s a miracle that we’ve been able to survive, thus far, from this onslaught of illegals, who comprise a terrifying 3% of the U.S. population. And we’re a victim of China’s currency manipulations which results in significantly more imports that we receive from China, than we export to that country. Imports, I might add, that considerably benefit lower income citizens through cheaper prices on clothing and other consumer goods.

Even our supposed allies are causing us to be victims. It’s NATO countries such as Britain, France and Germany that are failing to contribute their fair share of military forces to this joint enterprise, causing the U.S. to make up the difference in additional military expenditures. Left unsaid, of course, is the fact that European countries are allowing U.S. military bases to occupy their lands, thus making it far easier for the U.S. to engage in military forays in the many Mid-East countries that we’re currently involved with. It’s a lot easier and less expensive to carry out bombing raids against ISIS and other Jihadists using planes stationed in Europe, than if our planes had to take off from bases in the U.S. So, is there any country left in the world that isn’t causing us to be victims within our own borders? Perhaps Belize or Trinidad, although even that’s questionable.

This narrative of the U.S. being a victim of dishonest foreigners took a curious turn last week when Trump stated that it was time to “put America first.” Whether he realized it or not, the term “America First” has an unsavory fascist history. It was used by supposedly isolationist politicians to advocate that the U.S not become involved in WWII. Stay neutral and don’t become entangled, was their imperative. However behind this veneer of isolationism, many of those advocating “America First” were actually Nazi sympathizers rooting for Hitler and his fascism to win the war. Charles Lindberg, the famous aviator, was one of the most prominent America Firsters. Their main argument was that because the U.S. was surrounded by 2 large bodies of water to the East and West, and by 2 friendly countries to the North and South, there was no need to join a fracas that involved nothing but foreigners killing each other. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, of course, proved how absurd that line of reasoning was. It was later discovered that Lindberg and other prominent America Firsters were actually Nazi sympathizers.

Trump, with his message of American victimhood, is now just one step away from the presidency. He has the Republican nomination all but locked up, and just has to get by a weak and damaged Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Thus far, Trump’s victimhood snake oil elixir seems to be selling with great success among the American populace. He has talk radio and Fox News shilling for him to a greater extent than they have for any previous GOP candidate. Clinton, with about 30 years of previous scandals, to say nothing of her current e-mail fiasco, has a very difficult road to travel in her quest for the White House. While current polls show her in the lead, Trump is unquestionably the better snake-oil salesman.

To get an idea of what a Trump presidency would mean for America, and for the rest of the world, go back and read some of my more recent entries. Add to them the fact that a President Trump will get to put at least two, and probably more, justices on the Supreme Court, that will be strongly anti-abortion. Roe V. Wade will become history, as will legalized abortion throughout almost all of the U.S. Then, many women in America, seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, will be able to legitimately claim that they ARE being made victims of our political system.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Ben Franklin, The Constitution, Monarchies, Economics, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, the Depression, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

THE RABBLE AND THE RIFF-RAFF

Posted on May 2, 2016 by halviv

July 4th will mark 240 years since 1776 when the United States declared its independence from England. The way the election of 2016 is going, however, perhaps we should re-apply to join the British Commonwealth. Our founding fathers fears that the rabble in our citizenry would eventually come to dominate the election process, and put someone wholly unfit into a position of power, is on the cusp of becoming a reality. When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 finished its work, a woman asked Ben Franklin, one of the key players in formulating the Constitution, whether the Convention had given us a monarchy or a republic. “A republic, if you can keep it,” replied Franklin. Now, after more than 200 years, we may very well find that the American people can no longer keep it together as a republic.

Our f0unding fathers were highly skeptical about giving the “common man” the right to directly elect those that would govern them. Founders such as John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton (currently of Broadway musical fame), and others,believed that those they considered the riff-raff of society could not be trusted to vote intelligently, i.e. to not be beguiled into electing a demagogue that would appeal to their basest instincts. Hence, instead of the people directly electing our president, the founders concocted a system called the electoral college which has the sole power of putting a candidate into the Oval Office. To this day, that Constitutional provision has never been amended. It reared its ugly head in the 2000 presidential election, when Democrat Al Gore received a majority of the popular vote, but Republican George W. Bush won a plurality of the electoral college, and hence, the presidency.

A lot of really bad stuff ensued from that nasty 2000 election. Bush decided to invade Iraq on the pretense that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, which he did not. Al Gore would have never made that decision. As a result of that invasion, over the years, Iraq has degenerated into a multi-split territory, with barbaric Islamic Jihadists such as ISIS, unfortunately controlling a significant portion of this territory. Yes, Saddam Hussein was pure evil, and the world is a lot better off without him sucking in oxygen. But he held his country together and prevented the Jihadist terrorists from gaining a foothold. I guess the lesson to be learned is that when faced with nothing but bad choices, the least worst choice is your best option. In any event, the electoral college continues to exist, ever ready to inflict further damage.

Another example of our founders distrust of the average citizen’s wisdom during the election process, was the method of electing someone to the Senate. Many founders believed that only those citizens that owned property, or were otherwise well financially endowed, should be allowed to vote. Other founders were in favor of allowing everyone to cast a ballot. (Everyone, of course, that wasn’t a woman or a Negro.) So a compromise was reached whereby the House of Representatives would be directly elected by popular vote, but it would be only state legislatures that could put Senators into office. It took until 1913 for a constitutional amendment to pass that allowed the people to directly elect its Senators. Women were finally allowed at the ballot box in 1920, after another amendment gave them the right to vote.

The point to all of this is that many of our founding fathers had a deep mistrust of allowing the average citizen to participate in the balloting process. They believed that those that were basically penniless with nothing to lose, the riff-raff as they were called, would put any smooth-talking con artist or snake-oil salesmen into positions of power, if sold the right bill of goods. Whereas land-owners or people of wealth had too much to lose to be so beguiled. Where they right? We’ll find out in a few months when the republic that Ben Franklin and the other founders labored so hard to give us might no longer be keepable. When the rabble of today, although usually not penniless, nevertheless, seem to be mostly ignorant of relevant issues, and susceptible to being sold the elixir of a smooth-talking snake-oil salesman. Ironic, isn’t it, when there’s a wealth of information at everyones finger tips to be obtained on each candidate, in this computer age.

That the general election in November will come down to a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, is now a foregone conclusion. That Trump has a huge, enthusiastic fan base is also a given. This base is built on Trump’s snake oil salesmanship of a neo-fascist, xenophobic vision of America that basically demonizes all foreigners, and throws all undocumented Hispanics out of the country. And builds a near 2000 mile long wall to keep them out. Also, not to allow any of the 1.6 billion Moslems that populate this planet into the country. So fierce is the rabble’s enthusiasm to demonize all things foreign, that Trump is correct about one thing he said. He could stand on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and shoot someone dead, and there would, nevertheless, be no diminishment of his followers. Which is tragically true.

Of course, Clinton and the Democrats are not exactly great prizes either. The Democrats have become so pathetic that their only hope to retain the White House rests on the shoulders of an aging woman who has been involved in a multitude of scandals over the past 30 years or so. Like the recklessness of using a personal server in her home to send and receive classified government e-mails. An unprotected server that could have been easily hacked by any foreign power. To say nothing of Bill’s sexual proclivities from the 1990s that the GOP will blame Hillary for.

So there you have it folks. The choice comes down to highly unpopular candidates from each party. The difference is, however, that if Clinton wins, the the Constitution, and the republic that the founders strove to give us, will likely stand. But if Trump wins, we can kiss our Constitutional freedoms goodbye, and devolve into a tyrannical dictatorship. And you can thank the rabble and the riff-raff amongst us for that delightful end result.

Categories: A malfunctioning psche, Ben Franklin, The Constitution, Monarchies, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, presidential polls,, Economics, ELVIS PRESLY, MARILYN MONROE, MICHAEL JACKSON, WHITNEY HOUSTON, THE STATE OF HAPPINESS VS. UNHAPPINESS, human affairs, Joe McCarthy, McCarthyism, World War II, Viet-Nam, Anti-Communist Witch Hunts, Army-McCarthy hearings, Islamic Jihadist terrorism, Soviet Union, Red China, politics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment