Some Senator used that line against Dan Quale to devastating effects. That Senator was inducted into his cabinet by Bill Clinton, I think for using that line.
And now we have the gutter politician Trump University chancellor (left, right, center, gutter) suggesting he is Jack Kennedy. He is not being as direct. He is merely suggesting his wife is like Jackie Kennedy.
I don't qualify for anyone's cabinet and I am no Senator but, Donald, you are no Jack Kennedy.
But nice try. And beautiful wife.
In politics there's the left, there's the right, there's the center, and there's the gutter. Donald Trump is in the gutter with his racist, sexist, xenophobic talk.
Donald Trump's number one crime is Climate Change denial.
In a worst case scenario Climate Change kills more than six billion people. Humanity is back in the stone age. And this is in the future. And it is preventable.
The path the earth is on right now leads to the worst case scenario. There is some serious steering to do.
But if the steering is done, the best case scenario has solar meeting 100% of the energy needs by as early as 2030, and the world ends up with almost free, limitless clean energy.
The best case scenario is The Age Of Abundance on all fronts.
Step one is a genuine world government. Barack Obama needs to play George Washington.
In short, there is a bend in the road, probably one of the most important bends in human history. To use one of Obama's favorite phrases, the arc of history bends towards justice, but it does not bend on its own.
There is work to do. There are choices to be made. There is a guy with horns and a tail to be vanquished. His name is Donald Trump.
The world government charges an annual membership fee of 1% of GDP from all countries. There are two chambers to its parliament. In the lower chamber each country's weight is in proportion to its population. In the upper chamber each country's weight is in proportion to its GDP. There are three branches to the government. The UN sees a sunset. A world government is born.
It is. Half of New Yorkers can't even vote in the city elections. Taxation without representation is going on, big time. The capital city of the world has full fledged colonial rule.
Mexicans pretty much run this city. As in, take away the Mexicans and the city grinds down to a halt. And Mexicans are almost all Christians, devout ones too. That does not seem to help. There is full throttle anti Mexican racism. Every brick of the Trump Tower has some Mexican's name written on it.
Name calling is the tip of the iceberg. Structural racism is the iceberg. Like, denying voting rights. That is the mother lode of structural racism.
A functioning democracy is like a functional marketplace. Demand and supply takes care of things.
NYC is the biggest bastion the Democratic Party has. But it is under colonial rule. So in a functioning democracy the way it would work is the opposition party would step in. The Republican Party would pick up the cudgels to end colonial rule and spread the love of voting rights.
But no. The Republican Party would like to take away whatever little voting rights there are.
That is dysfunction. That is a dysfunctional democracy. It would not be that big of a problem, except there are quite literally existential implications.
America is the number one culprit behind global warming. The planet is hurtling towards the stone age at breakneck speed.
The very first step to applying the breaks is a world government: one person, one vote, one voice, 24/7, local to global. The UN is a joke. It is no world government. Every country should pay 1% of its GDP as a membership fee. That would be a small price to pay to not go back to the stone age.
Imagine Donald Trump's day job as a stone breaker. It could happen.
There is a campaign underway to thoroughly discredit Ronald Reagan, the Republican gold standard, and, surprisingly, it is not coming from the Democratic side. There are conservatives out to prove Ronald Reagan was exactly like The Donald before he got elected president. Reagan also supposedly hosted a talk show. Trump talks of Mexican rapists, Reagan supposedly holds the copyright on the phrase "welfare queen," an intentional gross exaggeration of the facts. There seem to be quite a few such parallels.
Facts-free racism, as directed against Barack Obama by a recalcitrant Congress, and facts-free sexism, completely unhinged from facts and logic, as directed against Hillary (for the umpteenth time, it is the Department Of Defense, not State, that has been tasked with protecting embassies) is a slippery slope. When you lack political mojo, but you practice it, then, it is a slippery slope. You keep falling. If it were evidence based decision making, data based, subject to logic, deliberation, and such, then you have something to hold on to, and you don't fall. But facts-free is slippery. You fall.
There is a very real possibility Donald Trump is the last of the Mohicans, I mean Republicans.
Lincoln moved above party, even country, a long time ago. He is not thought of as American, let alone Republican. Reagan was all you had. Trump is busy knocking out the facade. Emperor Reagan, it seems, was naked. Supply side economics is voodoo. That was Reagan fishing in the murky waters of the Cold War. It was voodoo from the outset.
I am for small government. There's stuff a government must do, and only the government can and should do, and I want all that to be done with as little money and people as possible. Efficiency is good for business, it is also good for government. But learn from the Chinese to respect bureaucrats.
I am for a total spread of democracy, but you get there by allowing everyone who lives in New York City to vote in the city elections. NYC is under colonial rule right now. Almost half of New Yorkers can't even vote in the city elections.
I am strong on defense, but the best way to get there is through a total spread of democracy and, yes, a world government, one person one vote one voice 24/7 local to global. Every country should pay 1% of its GDP as a membership fee. The world government is what will bring about a total spread of democracy, it's not the other way round. People are born equal, all people, everywhere.
Donald Trump went all the way to New Mexico to denounce the Republican Latina governor of the state for "not doing her job."
I wonder if he thinks the wall is her job. That there is no wall means she is not doing her job.
New Mexico is a border state, is it not?
That the way to eliminate abortions in society is by making abortions illegal, I have no idea who wrote those laws when they existed, but if I had to guess, those laws were written by men. Only manly genius could have come up with such a thing.
Like some dude said only a few years ago, the way to stop rape was for women to "shut the whole thing down," which takes us right down to Anatomy 101, back to the basics, as they say.
You could not make poverty illegal and thus end it. You end poverty through economic growth and public policy. That there is any trace of poverty on earth is a failure of public policy.
Abortion is the same way. You have to tackle it through a wide range of policy initiatives. Helping women attain purchasing power parity with men tops my list on abortion. Treating domestic violence as the top global security threat is right up there. Universal and easy availability of family planning services is a no brainer, and by universal I mean global. Sex education (yes, that would mean Anatomy 101) for men has got to be top priority, but not just sex as biology, but broadly speaking gender, with the social, cultural aspects. A sex educated man will not crack sexist jokes, will not make demeaning sexist comments, will complain about a sexist media, etc. Sex illiterates should not be able to survive a primary season.
(I am starting to sound more and more like Elizabeth Warren. I guess I do admire her. She is the only person who seems to know how to absolutely demolish Trump. When Warren goes after Trump, it feels like Mike Tyson stepped into the ring. The fight might be over in a few minutes. She is so good at it, many Republicans wish she had her on their side during the primaries. And to think once upon a time early in life, she was a Republican indeed, just like Hillary was.)
My position is that abortions should be extremely rare. But that is like saying I want to see an end to poverty. You can't make poverty illegal and thus end it. But poverty can be ended through economic growth, and public policy. Abortion is just like that. And I think Hillary has the best set of policies that, if implemented, would make abortions rare. It might be to do with the fact that she is a woman. A woman knows a woman's body best. Women across party lines should give her a majority in the House so she may show results in the first two years of making history as a woman president.
I personally know very little about the policies that will drive the abortion rate down. I mean, I have some idea. It is not like I know nothing. More the reason to support Hillary. She knows.
When Clinton rolled out a progressive set of policies for families at her May events in Lexington and Louisville, her explanation went something like this: We need a national system of paid family leave because too many women don’t even get a paid day off to give birth; workers don’t have a federal requirement for paid sick days; meanwhile, many dads and parents of adopted children don’t get any time off at all, and sons and daughters don’t get time to take care of aging parents. We also need to establish voluntary home-visiting programs, where new parents, especially those facing economic adversity, can get assistance in learning how to care for their children and prepare them to succeed in school, thus taking aim at unequal outcomes in the earliest years. Relatedly, we need to raise wages, because two-thirds of minimum-wage workers are women, which has an impact on single-parent and dual-earning homes and, when combined with high child-care costs, inhibits women’s ability to earn equal benefits, save for college, and put away for retirement. Minimum-wage workers currently spend between 20 and 40 percent of their income on child care; Clinton has a plan whereby no family would pay more than 10 percent on child care, but she also believes we need to increase pay for child-care providers and early educators, who in some places are paid less than dog trainers and who have their own families to take care of. All of this is tied to the need to strengthen unions and make health care more affordable through revisions to the Affordable Care Act as well.
When Donald Trump went all the way to New Mexico to berate the top Latina in his party, he knew exactly what he was doing. He was being racist with a clinical precision. And it was a double whammy, because she is also a woman. He was able to be racist and sexist at the same time. And it worked. His poll numbers went up a little.
That sums up the next few months. This election will not be fought on policy, or ability to deliver. There is a cultural nationalism - if it can be called that - that is being peddled in the most naked way in the history of the republic. Granted it was always there, but now it is out in the open for all world to see. As I see it, it is bleeding pus. The Donald is bleeding out the pus. Hillary is going to heal the wound.
Racism, sexism and xenophobia have to be countered with clinical precision. That would be all.
Humanity is a chain, only as strong as its weakest link. To you personally every single human being matters. Heaven On Earth is not possible unless every single human being is on board.
The big picture is, I am for a total spread of democracy, and I am for using every possible weapon of nonviolence to that end.
God is the one authority. And since the only place a human being can connect with God is in his/her personal space, the people collectively are the only legitimate source of earthly power.
That political proposition is urgent and global. If that means Arab countries need to switch to constitutional monarchies, then so be it. If that means the Chinese Communist Party needs to offer the people two candidates for president, governor and mayor, then so be it.
Every human being has a right to free speech. Free will is a gift from God to people. Every human being has a right to religious freedom. You can pray to God the way you choose to. Peaceful practice of religion is a political right.
Violence is not allowed. A legitimate state curbs possibilities of violence through threat of force.
This global political infrastructure with the right to free speech, and the right to peaceful religious practice firmly in place makes room for advanced spiritual undertakings. Advanced spiritual undertakings, as well as advanced economic and social processes.
