DONALD TRUMP, FROM COMEDY TO TRAGEDY

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs in polling: people often respond to a poll differently depending on how the poll is conducted.  If a poll is done by  a person, whether door to door or by phone, respondents often exaggerate or outright lie because they don't want to disappoint the poller, whereas polls done anonymously get different, more honest answers from people. This makes sense: let's face it, no one likes admitting to another human being that they, say, never exercise or eat healthy food.
This difference in honesty is often called the Bradley effect, named after Tom Bradley, an African American gubernatorial candidate in 1982 who led every poll leading up to the election and then lost, because, it was surmised, white voters didn't want to admit they weren't going to vote for him in polls.  The Bradley effect has made itself known again recently because Republican voters may have been lying in phone polls about which candidate they support, not wanting to openly admit that they support Donald Trump.
When Donald Trump first announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015, he was happily egged on by late night TV show hosts and pundits, who realized that having  a reality TV star with a huge ego and a penchant for blunt statements  in the race would make for interesting stories and easy satire.  And Trump's initial lead in the polls was seen as just a momentary blip for someone with lots of media coverage. Remember that a similar candidate, Herman Cain,  led the polls for a short time back in 2012 before the far more experienced Mitt Romney took over.  Everyone predicted that Trump would fade soon.  Well, as of January 8th, 2016, Trump doesn't look like he's going anywhere: according to the website Politico, Trump, while losing to Ted Cruz in the state of Iowa, is leading the field nationally, at at resounding 35 percent, a full fifteen points ahead of the second place Cruz.  How did we get here?  How did a man who's never held any political office at all in his entire life, and who offends Latinos, women, and Muslims with nearly every speech, wind up as a likely candidate for the office of the leader of the free world?
OK, let's all take a deep breath here.  Donald Trump will not be president next year.  How do I know this?  Well, first let's examine his popularity:  as of 2015, according to a Pew Research poll, 23% of American voters are registered  as Republicans, which translates to about sixty seven million people, and of that number, he's getting a little more than a third, which puts him around twenty two million total voters.  That makes him a big fish in the pond of the Republican candidates. but in a country of 270 million adults, it hardly makes him hugely popular beyond his outspoken base.
Furthermore, in the aftermath of the 2012 election, the Republican party took a long hard look at itself and realized that they had no chance of holding the white house in the future without finding some way to appeal to non white voters.  Gone were the days when those voters could be ignored, as Ronald Reagan had done so successfully in the 1980's; part of the reason Mitt Romney lost was because President Obama received a whopping 77% of the Latino vote.  The party was going to have to change or face becoming more and more irrelevant on a national scale.  This common sense advice forgot about one thing: actual Republican voters.  The overwhelmingly white, mostly rural and southern based party had no desire for any kind of appeal to nonwhite voters, and opposed any kind of immigration reform beyond building a wall with Mexico, and Trump has, of course, completely capitalized on that sentiment. This may help him in getting the Republican nomination, but it will definitely hurt him in a national election, where Obama's 77% of the Latino vote will probably increase for whomever runs against him.
So not only will Trump never be president, Republican party officials are worried that his name on the ballot will drive turnout against the Republican party in general election, threatening their hold on the house of representatives and the Senate.  As a progressive, this doesn't bother me a bit.

Now drink from the trough of race baiting and spray it on the crowd

In many ways, Trump is a monster of the Republican party's own making, as the party has become increasingly right wing over the years.  It all really began in 1987 when the Federal Communications Committee ended the so called "fairness doctrine" that stipulated equal time for opposing editorial opinions in broadcasting.  This brought about the rise of right wing media, spearheaded by Rush Limbaugh.  Soon Limbaugh and his ilk found a large audience (of mostly angry white men)  for extremely conservative politics mixed with race baiting, homophobia, sexism and crazy conspiracy theories, in other words, many of  the same elements that are propelling Trump to the top of the Republican heap.  It's reasonable to say that what's happening with Trump is what would happen if someone like Limbaugh were to run for office; like Limbaugh, Trump says outrageous things, brags constantly and rarely apologizes, and is loved for it by a certain base of people who reflexively agree with every statement.  Just as Limbaugh has often said things that you think would get him fired, only to continue as popular as ever, so Trump has continually lead in the polls despite making one absurd, offensive or outright wrong assertion after another.  (Politifact, a non partisan fact checking organization has rated a stunning 78% of Trump's statements as false).   Don't forget that Trump's real entrance into modern politics came when he repeatedly stated his belief that President Obama was born in Kenya and not in Hawaii, a theory that continues to be promoted in right wing media to this day, despite it being completely disproven.
So if the Republican party does nominate Trump and lose in a landslide, they have only themselves to blame, they've been playing to the extreme for so many years that they've lost any idea of moderation in their party and play only to people who honestly believe that a Muslim born Kenyan somehow stole the presidential election.  If, on the other hand, Trump should happen to somehow win, oh man would we be  in trouble!  He would probably prove to be such a divisive and crazed president that the Republican brand would be ruined for good, but, the damage he could cause getting to that point....is downright unthinkable.

IS DONALD TRUMP A PSYCHOPATH?

PARIS

The horrific attacks in Paris on Friday are almost impossible to understand.  How can people in our modern, civilized world just start murdering innocent strangers?  The terrorist attacks claimed the lives of dozens of people and injured dozens more.  How did the world come to this point?
The hatred and the anger behind the attacks actually have their roots in a violent schism that occurred centuries ago.  After the death of the prophet Muhammad in AD 632 his followers were divided as to who should be his successor.  This division led to the formation of the majority Sunnis and the minority Shias, a division that has been compared to the Protestant and Catholic division in the Christian faith, and one that has, like that Christian one, tragically sometimes led to violence over the centuries.
So what does this have to do with Isis?  Well,  Saddam Hussein, the former leader of the country, was a Sunni.  Although he mostly ran a secular government, he used his position of power to favor his fellow Sunnis, even though the Shias were in the majority in the country.  Not surprisingly, when he has thrown out of power in the US led invasion of 2003, the first post war election put a Shia, Nouri Al-Maliki. Equally unsurprisingly, he was perceived as favoring Shias over Sunnis, which lead to the sadly inevitable rise of Isis.
So now that we know how Isis began, how do we get rid of them?  Fighting terrorism is incredibly complicated due to the fact  that bombing attacks often kill innocent civilians, which is not only morally wrong, but also leads to the radicalization of otherwise non violent people.  But we can't do nothing! Even a peacenik like me  has to accept that a brutally violent group like Isis must be brought to justice, so I support continued ally bombing that is careful and targeted, which can and will be increased.  In many ways these horrible attacks may sow the seeds of Isis's destruction in their boldness and brutality. 
Sadly, another effect of these attacks is the Republican party has grabbed onto the chance to demonize all Muslims by saying America should not allow in the 10,000 Syrian refugees that are fleeing Isis and were scheduled to come here.  This is typical right wing fear mongering; all those refugees will be carefully vetted, and they themselves are running from the very terrorists we claim to hate.  When western leaders spread fear of all Muslims, they are inadvertently giving them propaganda victories that can increase their numbers.  The US can simultaneously attack the terrorists  and aid the victims.  It's the right thing to do. 

A RACE TO THE BOTTOM ON IMMIGRATION

As Donald Trump continues to lead in the polls for the Republican Presidential nomination, while also garnering most of the media attention (all without ever running a single political ad) other candidates have resolved to trying to outflank him on the issue of immigration by going even further to the right.  While it seems impossible to believe that anyone could go beyond Trump's plan to build a "beautiful" wall with Mexico that they would somehow pay for, and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, danged if two candidates haven't come up with something even less plausible and more stupid than his ideas.
First, there's New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who said that he would hire the president of Federal Express to devise a way to track immigrants that come to America so we can know when they overstay their visas.  While he later said he wasn't actually comparing immigrants to packages, the analogy is inescapable.  Dehumanizing immigrants  is the name of the game for most of the Republican party today.  Not to mention the fact that such a system is unconstitutional and immoral.  It's also unworkable.  Does he really expect every person visiting the US to get some kind of microchip implanted in themselves?  I can't possibly imagine that he thinks such a plan is possible, but considering the most recent NY Times polls put him at 12th. place out of 16 candidates in Iowa and 6th. in New Hampshire, this kind of desperate  grab for some of Trump's anti-immigrant thunder is to be expected.
An even possibly dumber plan came from Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker recently: during an interview on Meet the Press,  he honestly suggested that he was open to the idea of building a wall along the American border with Canada. Seeing as how the US border with Canada is over 4,000 miles long, more than twice as long as the one with Mexico, this seems more than a little crazy.  Although a Walker spokesman inevitably tried to walk back his comments after they were roundly mocked (another candidate, Rand Paul, called the idea "pretty dumb"), they were spoken during a national interview and therefore can't be easily denied.

While it's easy to laugh at such ridiculous propositions, the sad fact of the matter is that these are two men running for the chance to be the most powerful person in the world.  And that, sadly, instead of taking the high road against the crazed candidacy of Donald Trump, they have chosen to play up to the xenophobic and racist elements of their party in their attempt to gain the presidency by spewing crazy ideas that they must know are never going to happen.
While I think Trump's campaign will sputter out before he wins the nomination, part of me thinks that the Republican party deserves a standard bearer with no political experience, a massive ego and a propensity to tell lies without apology.  In fact, he just may be the perfect embodiment of the party.

AMBUSH VIDEO & PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Although I tend to agree with his politics, I'm not a big fan of  left wing  filmmaker Michael Moore; too often, in my opinion, he seems to be a progressive version of Rush Limbaugh. Like Limbaugh, he dumbs complex issues down, plays around with facts, has a healthy ego, and claims to speak for the average Joe, despite having a lucrative media empire. Moore first became famous when he starred in and directed the documentary ROGER & ME, and that film featured what would become his trademark: the ambush interview.  With camera crew in tow, Moore pursues someone he doesn't agree with (in that movie's case, it was Roger Smith, CEO of General Motors), hoping to shove a microphone in their face and ask slanted and difficult questions.  It's a technique that provides  a win-win situation for Moore: if the person speaks to him, he gets to make them  squirm  on camera, and if they don't talk, he  can paint them as  a coward.  Now while I'm all in favor of public and political figures having to give unfriendly interviews, Moore's unplanned  style often seems more like bullying than actually interviewing, especially in the film BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, which found him bluffing his way into an awkward interview with an ailing Charlton Heston.  Not surprisingly, Moore's style has been picked up by others, especially Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, who sends out camera crews to try and humiliate political figures who choose not to be  yelled at by him on his show, proving that bullies have no political preference.

But how could you say no to that face?

Along with ambush journalism, I also have a problem with the hidden camera videos that pop up from time in our political discourse (for whatever reason, they mostly seem to be coming from the right).  The inevitable problem with these videos is that they are skillfully edited to confirm the point of view of the people filming. The most horrible example of this was when Shirley Sherrod an African American state director of rural development, was filmed talking in front of the NAACP making comments that at first look appeared to admit that she favored black people in need more than white people; those comments lead to her being fired.  Sadly, it wasn't until later that the complete context of her comments, which showed her  completely refuting her biased statements were released, but the damage was already done.  More recently, an anti abortion group secretly recorded a conversation with a member of Planned Parenthood in which she discussed the donation of fetal tissue for research.  While the members of the group claim that she is seen negotiating the sale of fetal organs, which is illegal, the reality is she's only discussing being reimbursed for the cost of the shipment of the organs.  (A complete version of the video reveals that she specifically went out of her way to mention that no profit would be made).  Although the graphic nature of her conversation may be stomach churning to some, it should be pointed out that the fetal tissue in question was donated by the women getting the abortions.  Furthermore, the research being done with the tissue could lead to breakthroughs in diseases like Parkinsons.  So, to put it another way, a member of Planned Parenthood discussed sending donated tissue from a perfectly legal procedure, to aid in disease research.  To me, this is no scandal.

But, of course, conservatives don't see that way.  Planned Parenthood has been around for years, from the first birth control clinic opened in America by Margaret Sanger in New York in 1916, to its modern incarnation, which started taking Government funds in 1970.  Although abortions are only about three percent of its total mission, and none of the government money it receives goes towards providing those abortions, it still remains on the conservative chopping block.  The frustrating thing about this is  that, through its birth control services, Planned Parenthood prevents far more abortions than it provides.  The raw numbers are: in 2009, it provided around 300,000 abortions while providing over four million birth control services.  It's safe to say that, without that birth control, there would be many unwanted pregnancies for low income women that would have ended in abortions. 

If that's the case, why has Planned Parenthood become such a lightning rod for conservatives?  Part of this is because while directly overturning of Roe vs. Wade seems unachievable,  every possible road block to abortion is being put up by conservative legislatures across the country, and also bashing an obviously pro choice organization like Planned Parenthood also offers an easy way for Republican politicians to play up to the religious right that is still so important in their party.  It should be mentioned that, while condemning Planned Parenthood, Republicans will often vaguely mention that their funding should  to go to other health care health organizations, without actually saying how that would happen. 

To me, the Republican desire to defund a government organization that helps poor women with health care needs shows the lie at the heart of the so called "pro life" philosophy.  Why do these people who claim to care so much about human life have no interest in making sure that every pregnant woman gets pre and post natal care, to ensure a healthier pregnancy? And why not fight for health care coverage and national daycare for every child in America?  Instead they demonize people on food stamps and resist expanding Medicaid coverage to more poor people.   Some culture of life!

While I do think there are some anti-abortionists who truly oppose the procedure because they think its murder, I think the real heart of the matter is that many of them think that women shouldn't be having sex for any reason other than married procreation.  For example, in his 1995 book PROFILES IN CHARACTER, in a chapter entitled "The Restoration of Shame", future Presidential candidate Jeb Bush wrote that:" One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame."  Yes, here in 2015 we have a Presidential candidate who honestly wants to return to the days of THE SCARLET LETTER. There's a reason why no Republican Presidential candidate has won a majority of the women's vote since 1988, and it doesn't look likely this time either.

THE OUTLIERS

Recently, the absurdly premature and mostly dull 2016 presidential campaign (which may seriously result in a Bush versus a Clinton!) has become more entertaining by the emergence of two candidates from both parties who are pushing  buttons on both the left and the right: first, there's Senator Bernie Sanders.  Although technically an independent, Sanders has decided to run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination.  The Vermont Senator is the only member of congress to proudly call himself a European style Socialist, and his populist message of dealing with the nation's great issue of economic inequality has caught on.  The number of people at his rallies has steadily increased, as has his ratings in the polls.  With his often unruly crest of white hair and frequently hectoring style of speech, Sanders often comes across as part Old Testament prophet and part crazy uncle (if your uncle were left wing), and at almost 74 years old he's probably too old to put in a serious run for the presidency.  Given all that, I'm still a big fan of the guy, especially when he honestly states that he thinks America can improve and learn from European Socialist ideas, and if he pushes Hillary Clinton into adopting more progressive views, all the better.  Clinton has, for the most part, mostly ignored Sanders, which makes sense: despite his surge in the polls, she still retains a healthy lead over him and all the other Democratic candidates.  Not to mention the fact that, sadly, the very thing I like about Sanders over Clinton is what will doom his quixotic campaign: he has turned down all Wall Street and corporate campaign donations, and, after the misguided Citizen's United Supreme Court ruling, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy donors is the only way to the white house in our modern system.  And Clinton already has a huge money machine running that she could drown Sanders in if she needs too, and that should end things.
Or will it?  Being an independent, is it possible that Sanders will run as a third party candidate?  I certainly hope not.  I can still remember what happened in the crazy 2000 presidential election when Ralph Nader ran as a Green party candidate and succeeded to siphon enough votes away from Al Gore to give the white house to George W Bush.  I myself voted for Nader because after 8 years of Bill Clinton going along with the Republicans on one issue after another, I felt there wasn't enough of a difference between the parties.  I now see the error of my ways!  Bush was far more conservative than Clinton, and the damage his presidency did to both the country and the world are still being felt. So while I'm an admirer of Bernie Sanders, I sincerely hope that he doesn't push the election towards whatever Republican candidate is running.

Ah, and then there's Donald Trump, the loud mouthed, boastful man who has elbowed his way into the Republican candidate clown car through sheer force of will and ego.  Amazingly, this real estate and media mogul who has never held any political office ever is working his way to the top of the polls over the 15 other Republican candidates running.  His main claim to fame is that he is a rich, successful businessman, which of course has nothing to do with running a country and ignores the fact that he's declared bankruptcy more than once.
But that's not the worst of it.  The real horrible thing about him is why he's leading in the polls. During his campaign announcement speech Trump made this inflammatory, offensive and factually incorrect statement:

  "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best..they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people(!), but I speak to border guards and they're telling us what we're getting."

Sadly, these statements, no matter how false, represent the racist and xenophobic attitudes of many people in the Republican party.  His current popularity shows that.  And that fact that most of the other Republican candidates have given only tepid criticism at best over these comments reveals that they all know it.  Which may spell doom for the future of the party.
It's hard to believe, but it wasn't always this way; after Barak Obama won reelection  in 2012, partly due to the fact that he got a whopping 77% of the Latino vote, there was a movement in the Republican party to compromise on the issue of immigration reform, simply out of self preservation.  Wise party members realized that alienating the fastest growing demographic members of the country amounted to political suicide.  But nothing happened, and three years later and here's Trump with a razor blade to the party's wrist.  And he's exactly what the Republicans deserve.  While Trump's candidacy may bring back memories of Ross Perot, the billionaire who ran for president back in 1992 with a similar platform of wealth = power, I also can't help but be reminded of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan who was briefly popular in the in the 1990's in the Republican  party, much to it's chagrin.  (As Duke himself was proud to point out, when he ran for the office of Governor of Louisisana in 1991, he won a majority of the white vote). Although Trump's personal history isn't as loathsome as Duke's, like Duke, Trump isn't really saying anything that other Republicans aren't saying, he's just more blunt about it.  The fact of the matter is that, it is now as it was in the 90's, Republican presidential candidates can't win the party's nomination without playing up in some part to it's base of white Southern men who grew up at a time when segregation was the law of the land and who miss those good old days.  Look, I don't want to say that all older white Southern men in the Republican party are racists, but at the end of the day, the proof is in the poll numbers.

3 SIMPLE IDEAS

Ok, let's take a break from politics for a moment and talk about common sense.  Here are three things that America could change about itself that would make the country better, and that, for some dumb reason, we can't seem to do.

#1. STOP JUMPING BACK AND FORTH WITH DAYLIGHT SAVINGS.

Daylight savings first began around a hundred years ago as a move to preserve daylight and save fuel.  It began in Germany and is now used in 70 countries around the world, including, of course, the US.  While it may have saved some fuel a long time ago, we live in a much different world now (for example, an extra hour of sunlight in many places means an extra hour of using air conditioning).  Even worse, that lost hour of sleep makes a difference: every year the number of car and work related accidents go up the week after the "spring forward", and worker productivity goes down.  Although the percentage of change on these things is small, so what?  Isn't avoiding any increase of potentially dangerous accidents a good thing? So why go back and forth?  Why not pick one time setting and stick with it?  This seems to be one of those things that has been going on for so long that most people just accept it and don't much think about it.  But it's just plain silly.  One argument I've heard against keeping daylight savings year round is that kids will eventually have to go to school in the morning in the dark, which leads to my next point...

#2. QUIT SENDING KIDS TO SCHOOL ON FARMER'S HOURS

Making schooling mandatory began as far back as 1852 in the US.  To accommodate the fact that many students lived on farms and needed to get home early to help out, schools began and ended at early hours.  To this day, most schools follow the schedule of starting between 8-8:30 AM and ending between 3-3:30 PM.  But most children today don't work on farms, and this set in stone schedule is hurting our educational system overall.  Although the effort of getting up early is not such a burden on younger children, it's very difficult for teenagers.  Multiple studies have shown that teens need more sleep than adults, and that they are essentially programmed to stay up late and sleep in.  Over the years, when attempts have been made to push back school schedules for teens to deal with this, the results have been positive: according to the Center for Public Education's website, pushing back the school day results in higher attendance, less sleeping in class, and even less student depression.  Not to mention the fact that teens tend to get in the most trouble in that time period after school before their parents get home, when there's no real adult supervision of them. Pushing back school hours would for less unstructured time for teens and less general chances for mischief.  Now making this change would require teachers, school administrators and custodians to alter their own work schedules, but since happier students would make their jobs easier, I don't see why they should object to it so much.  So, once again, why not do something that would clearly have a positive benefit? 

#3. SWITCH TO THE METRIC SYSTEM ALREADY

Recently. long shot Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee mentioned something in his campaign launch speech that was a bit surprising: "Here’s a bold embrace of internationalism: let’s join the rest of the world and go metric".... "Only Myanmar, Liberia and the United States aren’t metric and it will help our economy!"  He was inevitably mocked for bringing up an issue few Americans feel strongly about.  And yet he had a point.  The metric system is an easier and more logical system than our current one(often called the British Imperial system), yet we cling to it except for a few things here and there(like in the pharmaceutical industry).  Part of our rejection of the metric system comes from the fact that it was developed by the French in late 1700's at a time when French-American relations were not good.  Centuries later, in the 1970's, there was a definite attempt to convert America to metrics (I can remember TV commercials promoting it from my childhood).  Laws were passed, but because they were voluntary, little changed.  Part of the problem is that there would be some expense involved in altering maps and such, but the main reason seems to be what some people call "American exceptional-ism". That is, the strong, often stubborn feeling Americans have that we have to be different.  Just as Americans shrug their shoulders at thousands of hand gun deaths annually as "the price of freedom", so do they defiantly resist a system of weights and measure used by other countries.  But the metric system is better, and our continued usage of our outdated system often puts the country at odds with others.  In an amazing example, back in 1999 NASA lost a 125 million dollar Mars orbiter because Lockheed Martin, the company that created it, used the American system while NASA used the metric system, causing confusion.  Can't a waste of over a hundred million tax dollars because of flummoxed rocket scientists be seen as some kind of clarion call for the country?  Apparently not since it happened over fifteen years ago.....grrrr!

A recent study from Northwestern University builds on this research, finding that high school students performed better later in the day than early in the morning, and most high school schedules contribute to sleep deprivation among students (Tonn, 2006). - See more at: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Organizing-a-school/Copy-of-Making-time-At-a-glance/Making-time-What-research-says-about-re-organizing-school-schedules.html#sthash.ObShZR0n.dpuf

A recent study from Northwestern University builds on this research, finding that high school students performed better later in the day than early in the morning, and most high school schedules contribute to sleep deprivation among students (Tonn, 2006). - See more at: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Organizing-a-school/Copy-of-Making-time-At-a-glance/Making-time-What-research-says-about-re-organizing-school-schedules.html#sthash.ObShZR0n.dpuf

A recent study from Northwestern University builds on this research, finding that high school students performed better later in the day than early in the morning, and most high school schedules contribute to sleep deprivation among students (Tonn, 2006). - See more at: http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Organizing-a-school/Copy-of-Making-time-At-a-glance/Making-time-What-research-says-about-re-organizing-school-schedules.html#sthash.ObShZR0n.dpuf