Make Your Vote Really Count – Vote Twice!

First, go to your computer. Find the sample ballot identical to the one you will have given to you when you go to the polling place.  You can find this by completing an application form.  It may be available on the computer or it may have to be mailed to you.

Now, you vote the first time. You can do this over the next day or two.  Take your time.  Enjoy some coffee, tea or beer or wine.  Sit down and reflect.  There will be a few long choices (some with over 100 words - and up to 15 “ands” and several “ors”).  You can think about some of these for a day or two, even pick up the phone and play auditor, or ask questions on Facebook or Twitter or Whatever. 

There may be some positions you have never heard of and a lot of names you have never heard of.  But now you have time to think about all this, even get with your friends and ask questions, get a conversation going, get a dialog, talk about your problems.

Finally, you vote the second time.  This time in your polling place.  You are ready!  Even with a completed ballot you have worked on for the past day or two.  AND you can make this vote REALLY represent you, AND you will move through the voting process quicker than anyone else who has not already voted for the “first time”.

The Real Problem is Not Trump

“I will keep you in suspense!”  Those words from Donald Trump.  Said like he is pretending to decide how he will vote in a beauty pageant or something similar.  What he apparently does not understand is that there are other people running for the office he also seeks, and if he does not get the most votes, it will be because another has been selected by the will of the people.  Yet, by his own words, he may not concede even then.  

Yet there WILL be a tally of the votes.  There WILL be celebrations and despair – by some – at least.  There WILL be an announcement by some “Certified Official”.  There WILL be an inauguration and a moving out of the White House and a moving in by the victor.  If the one who officially lost the election will not concede, he will not be permitted to assume the office.  That is a matter of regimen.

Now comes the binding issue.  The issue created by those who voted for the loser.  Those who voted in what they now might claim was a “rigged” election.  What will these “masses” do now?  A lot of that might depend on the “leadership” they might get from the one they are now choosing to follow.  But there is a much greater danger.

Trump is not a leader.  He is a disrupter, an agitator.  He is one who stirs things up, but he cannot walk a straight line.  Yet there is a magic in stirring,  It creates a force that can attract power and form a center, and if there is some form of coherence that appears with that attraction, some surrogate with persuasive rhetoric, then the stirred center can take on a life of its own.  

Trump's Deplorable Values

The Republican Party is wobbling in its attempts to seek limited form of government, particularly as the world, and the united States also, begins shifting from a mostly rural environment into an urban development.

    

Now comes Trump.  He was nastier than any of his 18 rivals and wound up as the “GOP Choice” for President.  It was a rough coronation, as a brand new guy wandered on to the stage in Cleveland and was “chosen” by the masses.  Two things became immediately apparent:  1)  The self-praise of Trump for Trump, 2)  and the slowly increasing numbers of people either positing they would not vote for Trump, and an increasing number announcing their preparation to leave the Republican Party.  

Arizona Senators Jeff Flake, and John McCain were early departures from Trump, NH Senator Kelly Ayotte, NY Governor Pataki, Carly Florian, SD Senator John Thune, Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tim Pawleenty, Kasich, Murkowski, Lindsey Graham, Condoleezza Rice, and so on.  (See https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/updates/2016/05/04/conservatives-rebuke-trump-as-he-captures-republican-nomination/   for an amazingly long list of others)   He has exchanged the intellectual  bright lights for the riffraff who show up at his rallies.  

Also represented in the departures from voting for the GOP nominee are Elliott Abrams, Bill Kristol, George Will, Jeb Bush and both former presidents named George Bush. Now comes even Charles Krauthammer with his own list of Trump’s deplorable values:   habitual mendacity, pathological narcissism, profound ignorance and an astonishing dearth of basic human empathy.  And then the threat, if he is elected, to put his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in jail.

The Republican Party, in its moment of death is visited by a Grim Vetter who has come to scatter its ashes.      

Not Fit to Print

The second debate, or “Town Hall Meeting” was a discussion devoted to Donald Trump.  Hillary couldn’t really change the topic because it would look like she was evading his questions or trying to change the subject.  She did try a couple of times but it didn’t work.

The result was there was no discussion of anything that matters to the American people or the world at large.  There were no questions or comments about international affairs, climate change, gun control, infrastructure, or anything other than Donald Trump and his relationship with women who had gotten to know him.  

It was as if Trump was a little boy, perhaps from English history, with incredible power.  He was leering, menacing scowling and stalking.  He even said that Hillary would be investigated if he won the presidency and she would probably be put in jail.  

Now the New York Times has gotten involved in this event, largely due to the income tax information they published.  Trump has promised to sue the nation’s greatest newspaper over this information.  Too bad, because while he will have little chance of carrying through with this, the New York Times has become famous for disclosing “All the news that’s fit to print”.  Now Donald Trump is leading them into a rabbit hole they would normally not find very fitting.

Trump has Grabbed the GOP by Its Pu$$y

He’s got more people voting for him than the Republican Party has and so it is all over now.  Even if the Party wants him to step down, he’s got the power and they don’t.  Republicanism is shattered and is now morphing into a powerful money machine.   Trump didn’t plan this out, ‘cause he can’t plan anything, but he is a very useful tool.  He doesn’t know what is going on and neither does the Party, and they are each looking in the opposite direction for help.  Trump is not the leader of this takeover, but he is the best bait in the world for the real fishermen.