Why Is Trump “Punking” America?

What is going on in the United States in 2016 when it comes to politics? I have watched Presidential campaigns and voted in Presidential elections for many election cycles. I have also seen many versions of comedy parody over the years and I am convinced that Donald Trump is perpetrating a grand, nationwide political parody in the United States with his Presidential campaign, in other words, we are all being punked!

The moment I realized Trump was punking the nation was when he emphatically asserted multiple times that President Obama and Hillary Clinton were the co-founders of ISIS and then a few days later he stated he was being satirical. Trump’s string of outrageous statements from building an almost 2,000 mile border wall, second amendment people stopping Supreme Court appointments and banning an entire religion from the United States, make no sense. Trump is doing the equivalent of a mass dial prank phone call to over 300 million Americans and millions of people are still playing along thinking his campaign is legitimate. Some of you may be asking if we are being punked, when will the guy jump from behind a fake tree and let us in on the joke and what is Trump getting out of the entire charade?

Trump is running a grand social experiment and exposing the fault lines in the nation along racial, economic and social factors. Trump is trying to determine how outrageous he can get and how far he can go before his supporters and the Republican Party reach a breaking point and pull the plug on his candidacy. Trump surrogates are performing triple back flips on live television trying to justify his senseless statements. The strange thing is that Trump himself is jumping out and shouting ‘You’ve been punked’ every time he says just kidding about some over the line statement he made previously. 

Trump has raised campaign funds he is not spending and has virtually no on the ground organization in any states, so is he doing what it takes to win a Presidential race, no he is not.  Donald Trump, do us a favor, if you will not get serious about running to be the President of the United States, stop it and get out.

If Beyonce Lip Syncing Is A National Crisis - We’re Doomed

Whether a singer performed live or used a recorded voice track at the Presidential inauguration has taken over the news for days and it illustrates how easily we are distracted by shiny objects while other things go to hell in a hand basket. Think of latest hot news items, Lance Armstrong’s doping, Manti Te'o’s fake girlfriend and Beyonce.

With all of the things going on in the world such as many hostages dying in a raid to free them in Africa, shootouts on college campuses and the upcoming debt ceiling fight, lip-sync gate took over the news cycle. What this shows more than anything is the erosion that has occurred inside news organizations over the years. What passes as hot news today would have been left off the list of items to pass across the lips of a hard news anchor in years past.



As we get carpet bombed with Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian stories some pliable minds actually start to believe that knowing every move these individuals make is really what matters and why shouldn’t they given the amount of precious airtime devoted to covering them. The current news coverage exposes how network news divisions have just become extensions of the entertainment side of media companies.

Even coverage of politics has become slanted towards an entertainment and sensationalism angle. Over the last four years much of the political coverage focused on the outrageous and outlandish and politicians took notice. Some borderline competent politicians became media stars because of their looks, over the top statements and offbeat behavior. We only really seem to focus on hard news during a crisis such as an outbreak of war, a national tragedy or a natural disaster.

Our culture has created a population of distracted individuals that on the surface does not seem to be a problem, but not everyone is distracted by shiny object. Some individuals are very focused on their tasks. One of the clues to being a good pickpocket is to distract your intended target and that has been accomplished on a massive scale. A few are focused and becoming very wealthy from the pockets of those engrossed in lip sync gate and whatever the next shiny object that will be thrust upon us as a crisis. 

Second Amendment Pimps



The Second Amendment has become a marketing slogan for the gun industry and gun lobby to continue to rake in huge profits by using it as a shield to escape accepting any responsibility for their product’s role in escalating violence in America. This pimping of the Second Amendment to pump up gun sales is perverse and borderline immoral.

Any amount of reflection will reveal the response after almost every mass shooting from gun advocates and the gun lobby to any mention of improved gun controls is a sharp 2nd Amendment knee jerk reference to weakening the Second Amendment. Guns are a unique product in that they are designed to cause great damage to any object it is fired at. The reference often cited for automobile deaths is invalid because cars are designed for transportation and not penetration injury by a projectile. Outside of war, the primary legal uses of guns in civil society are for protection, sport and collection. Criminals have long used guns in commission of crimes such as robbery and unfortunately some conflicts often involve guns with deadly consequences. The one area that guns seem to be used in an increasing manner is mass shootings such as in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado when heavily armed assailants burst onto the scenes with semiautomatic weapons equipped with high capacity ammunition magazines and slaughtered innocent Americans. Any mention of lowering the kill capacity by even limiting ammunition magazine capacity are met with cries of weakening the 2nd Amendment and gun sales increase. This automatic response to avoid the gun industry taking responsibility amounts to a pimping of the 2nd Amendment for profit over pain.

Is asking some to “suffer” by only being able to only fire 10 rounds at their targets instead of 30 or 100 before reloading in the name of giving people that may come under attack a better chance of surviving such a huge hardship? Why hasn’t a firearm manufacturer come out after a mass shooting and announced that they are embarking on at least making their guns more secure from use by someone that takes an owner’s gun without authorization or incorporating technology that makes a gun easier to track if stolen. The gun lobby protects firearm manufacturers and they keep producing the equivalent of 1929 automobiles in the 21st century. Suppose automobile manufacturers operated that way, modern cars would not have airbags, antilock brakes or ignition keys so that anyone could drive you car away by pushing a button. We would not tolerate an automobile that anyone could drive away without needing a key or at least have to break into and hotwire the ignition, yet we have guns that anyone can take and fire at will by flipping a switch or pulling the trigger hard to fire the first round.

The pimping of the Second Amendment for profit is the cause of the laziness of gun manufacturers and all they have to do is put big fins on their old jalopy version products by making it look like the versions sold to the military. Maybe it’s time to face the reality that some in society have placed their love of this product with an attached false measure of freedom, defined as having unregulated access to a dangerous product, over any other public safety concerns. If that is the case they we are headed back to the Wild West where shootouts could break out at any moment as it did on a college campus near Houston, Texas on January 23, 2013 when an argument between two men erupted in gunfire and sent 3 people to the hospital.

Let’s get real and stop allowing an industry to continue to fatten its pockets without making any proactive efforts to improve even the basic safety of its offerings. If it were any other industry it would be shut down for gross negligence.

“Your Child Is Dead”

“Your child is dead.” Imagine that those words are said to you. Those are the most chilling words parents can hear and after going into shock they want to what happened. If the answer to that question is they were shot while they were at the mall, grocery store, restaurant, movie theater, church, college, high school or in their elementary school classroom by a disturbed individual with a lethal arsenal of guns, there is no understanding and it is unacceptable.  How many parents have to hear those chilling words before we become fed up enough to do something about it?

Newtown, Connecticut marked a new low in what someone will do to inflict pain on others to draw attention to whatever demons or issues he was dealing with. First he took the life of the person that brought him into the world and then extinguished the futures of 20 children just venturing into the outside world and scarred others across the nation with his actions. Six educators gave their lives during his rampage. How could a man walk into a room full of small children and do what this person did? This so-called man with premeditation put on body armor, loaded multiple weapons with ammunition and decided that on December 14, 2012 he would enter history as America’s greatest modern child killer.

If this does not throw cold water into the faces of those in positions of power to take action to put some kind of parameters on our out of control culture of gun worship, then we will just slide into the abyss. These little children had no chance in this situation. Some that will always say that there should be no restrictions on personal gun ownership are already trotting out the tired old response that the teachers should have been armed and they could have ended this earlier are just lost causes. When these determined human killing machines come on the scene suited up with body armor and military levels of firepower it is not a contest, because they have the element of surprise in an unexpected venue.

If we can’t grow enough of a spine now to stand up to the gun lobby, National Rifle Association and the money it threatens politicians with then nothing will ever change. The answer is not for everyone to walk around armed to the teeth. I don’t want to feel I need a machine gun in my home and on my person to feel safe. Hunters don’t need battlefield level weapons to hunt game. There is no need for what is going on in the name of a constitutional amendment written over 200 years ago by men that could not even conceive of modern weapons that would allow one man to kill so many so quickly.

Please, don’t tell me how many people are killed in car accidents annually and ask if we should we outlaw cars because that is a false comparison because cars are not specifically designed to kill. Car accidents are due to a number of factors, but usually mass murder intentions are not one of them. Spare me the guns don’t kill people, people kill people statement. People with guns kill people and people with assault weapons kill a lot of people quickly.

Everyday someone is getting a call informing them that their child, husband, wife or other loved one is dead at the hands of someone in possession of some mass killing machine that should never be wielded in civilian society. This horror should be enough for action and if it isn’t then there never will be enough. Pray for the families that lost their children and other loved ones during this horrific event.

Obama’s Rope A Dope On Romney

President Obama must have taken his debate strategy from Muhammad Ali’s 1974 fight against George Foreman in Africa. Ali leaned against the ropes in the early rounds and allowed Fore to used his entire arsenal before coming back to knock Foreman out. Obama laid against the ropes during the first debate and Romney unloaded the kitchen sink. The second debate feature a different President Obama and he pummeled Romney.

I would have been almost impossible for President Obama to be as bad as he was during the first debate without trying. With Vice President Joe Biden taking the undercard fight against Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan the week before, Obama took on Romney and connected with shot after shot. Romney exposed his entire flip-flop and deny debate fight plan during the first debate. Every time Romney tried to slip away from a previous position President Obama would nail him with the facts of his prior position compared to his stated current position.

 

Romney was staggered several times during the debate. Romney may have coined a new phrase during this debate with his description of a “binder of women” when referring to his efforts to find women to work in his administration when he was Governor of Massachusetts. Romney took a George Foreman like haymaker swing at President Obama with his comments that the President did not call the attack on the American Consulate in Libya a terrorist attack when he made his statement the next day in the rose garden. Romney thought he had connected, but the referee told him he only hit a glove as the transcript showed that the President did label it a terrorist attack the first time.

The final punch may have been the best as the debate ended. As the final round was coming to a close President Obama hit Romney with a reminder to the nation about Mitt Romney’s comments about 47% of the country see themselves as victims. Romney bounced back against the ropes and was dazed. Romney wanted to take an swing, but bell rang and this round was over. The only thing President Obama didn’t do was drop the microphone on the floor and walk away in triumph.

News Media’s Lust For Debate Ratings Over Facts Fail America

 The first Presidential debate of 2012 confirmed that the news media has vacated it role as the fourth estate. The press was once respected and feared as an entity that would delve into missteps, misstatements and deceits on the part of those leading or seeking to lead the nation, but that has changed in 2012.

On October 3, 2012 a Presidential candidate from one of the major political parties was spontaneously reinventing himself for public consumption by changing or refuting every policy position he held before the event began. Mitt Romney must have felt safe that he would not be held to account for his sudden metamorphous by the news media because of the heightened interest his performance would create for follow on debates.

Romney made the right determination because after the debate ended news media outlets gushed about the energy, tone and style of Mitt Romney’s debate performance and did little to hold him accountable for the sudden policy changes that were often the opposite of long held positions. The news media had become another spectator and acted as a hype machine instead of truth filter.



The Sunday morning news programs after the debate featured dueling opinions from advocates of Mitt Romney and President Obama, but the media figures themselves have become dwarfs compared to the giants of the past. Would something on the scales of Watergate every come to pass again with the current crop of soft news personality types staffing newsrooms nationwide? Could it be that the diminished state of print media combined with broadcast news divisions finding themselves burdened with ratings expectations and some combined with the entertainment wing of networks have combined to gut the journalistic integrity of the business?

Can it be that an overtaxed, overworked and harried public is left with no one that will call out the blatant nature of deception being thrust upon the American public because they fear being shutout from interviews and access more than outing falsehoods that could harm us all in the end? At its worst the behavior of the current media borders on cowardice and is flirting with being unpatriotic.

Romney Counting on Honey Boo Boo To Win

“If you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit,” was a quote used by actor W.C. Fields and Mitt Romney used that as his strategy for the first debate against President Barack Obama.  In August a Romney pollster said, “We're Not Going to Let Our Campaign Be Dictated by Fact-Checkers.” Romney gave fact checkers whiplash and finger cramps as he twisted and contorted away from positions he had held for months.

President Obama seemed unprepared and rightly so if he had expected that his opponent would stand on positions he had been campaigning on during his entire run for President, but a different Mitt Romney showed up. The Mitt Romney that denied his economic plan, tax plan and just about everything else he said he had believed previously was counting on public distraction and media laziness.



Mitt Romney knew there would be a huge viewing audience for the first Presidential debate and figure most of the viewers had not been paying close attention to the Presidential race up until that point. Romney has some reason to believe the public is too distracted to care if what he said was true given the Republican National Convention drew fewer viewers than an episode of the reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. As for the news media serving as a source of fact checking, that ended when the fight for ratings became more of a priority for broadcast news divisions than journalistic purity.

Romney decided to introduce himself to over 60 million of the American electorate as a completely different politician than he had been during his prior months of campaigning. The next day when the focus was off his staff and spokespeople started to correct some of the policy shifts feeling that the information would not filter out to the voters that would not tune back in until the next debate. Welcome to the big top of reality television politics where style may rule over substance. Come on Honey Boo Boo, Mitt is counting on you.

Don’t Make President Obama The Republican’s Garbage Man

The Presidential election is coming up in November. In October the jobless rate, the lowest in 44 months,  is back where it was when President Obama took the oath office. That means President Obama has cleaned up much of the prior damage done by Republicans, now they want to move back into the White House and tear things up again with the same behavior that destroyed everything the last time around. Don’t allow President Obama to be the Republican’s garbage man.

It is a tried and tested practice in business and politics for one group to destroy something and then get out of the way and hire someone else to clean it up while they point fingers from the sidelines. Once the turnaround artist has finished getting things back in order the old guard wants to take over again and claim credit for the good results that were created by the just disposed of fixit man.



What is taking place with Mitt Romney is not a new game, but event timing is not always in the control of those trying to replay this old scam. In 2008 the economy collapsed so quickly that it was not able to be pushed until Obama won the election and took office. It is a matter of record that the financial meltdown occurred under the Republican administration of President George W. Bush. Now it is also a matter of record that the unemployment rate is now back where it was when Bush left office under President Barack Obama.

Romney’s big claim is that things should be improving faster and that is a bold assertion from someone that wanted to allow the American automobile industry to go bankrupt. The Republicans knew that their brand was bankrupt and that is why we don’t see Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and the like at the top of the ticket. Romney was a functional selection and his primary opposition was near laughable. The one shot Republicans had was to embark on a four year campaign of obstruction, demonization and rooting for American economic failure to have a chance to win the Presidency in 2012.

It’s time for the shell game to end. One of the statements Romney made during his secretly recorded fundraiser speech was that the economy would improve when he became President without him having to do anything. Romney knows that President Obama has already set the United States economy on the right track and he just wants to be able to convince the voting public to put him in office so the looting of America can happen all over again.

This should be a new day when the person that did all of the heavy lifting to clean up years of damage to America is rewarded for his hard work instead of once again watching someone else accepting accolades for something he didn’t do. Unless we vote for substance we will allow President Obama to become the Republican’s garbage man.

Romney Targets Big Bird but Obama Got Bin Laden – You Decide

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama stated that he would go after Osama bin Laden even if he was found in Pakistan. Mitt Romney, among others said that they did not think it was a good idea to go into Pakistan to get bin Laden. In 2011 Mitt Romney has stated multiple times that he would go after Bid Bird and cut his funding. It seems that Big Bird needs to relocate to Pakistan if Romney becomes President. What a contrast.

Maybe Romney thinks that singling out a beloved children’s character like Big Bird is an example of how he can make tough choices even if it sounds harsh. Romney’s calculation is based upon this notion that government support for effort like children’s television programming, education or the arts is a waste of money because there is no profit in it for his supporters. Obama targeted Osama bin Laden because he was the head of an organization that carried out the largest terrorist attack ever in the United States.



Defunding PBS would just be a blip in the national budget and would be mostly a move to pleas certain elements on the right. Expending government funds on children’s and art programming does not generate billions business in government contracts for defense contractors even if some of the weapons are not wanted by the military.

You see there is something more fundamental at work in the Big Bird versus bin Laden point of view and that is the degree of seriousness that each candidate is taking in relation to the job at hand. Fast talk, showmanship and throwing out red meat to a political base makes for great theater, but the rubber meets the road on what each man considers to be the most important issues for the country. Saving the automobile industry or allowing it to go bankrupt when there was no private equity to be found is another distinction

The bottom line is that Osama bin Laden was in trouble when Barack Obama became President, but now Big Bird had better watch his back if Mitt Romney moves into the oval office.

Obama’s October Surprise - 7.8 % Jobless – Conservatives Angry About Good News

Choosing substance over performance is a novel thing in a world fixated on drama, flash and shiny objects. Mitt Romney unleashed a tsunami of animated policy reversals during the first Presidential debate. On Friday October 5, 2012 President Obama answered loudly when the September unemployment rate came in at 7.8%, the lowest in 44 months.

As soon as the lower unemployment rate was made public some conservatives lost their minds and accused the Obama administration of cooking the books to make the President look good right before the election. Some highly respected business leaders, politicians and journalists went berserk with conspiracy theories. One even said that Obama supporters were misrepresenting their employment status to lower the jobless rate.



Now the picture is crystal clear. President Obama has been trying to bring the economy back from the brink of depression with an opposition party that is admitting it was in their best interest to keep unemployment high until after the 2012 election. Will a political party be held accountable for not doing everything it could to help get Americans back to work? It seems that the tantrums being thrown because it appears that more Americans have found work is a testament that many have placed politics above the needs of the people.

Some need to take a hard look into the mirror and consider their vote. Why would you cast your vote for someone rooting for a higher level of suffering among your fellow citizens because it served their political ambitions? Some may say they would have made things better after they took office, but when you hold public office it should be the American people that come first, not your political party. Delaying any efforts that would have put more people back to work as quickly as possible meant more lost homes, hungry children and despair. There should be a price to pay if anything was intentionally done or not done in order to delay the speediest economic recovery possible.

How Did President Obama Screw Up The Great Economy He Inherited?

I only have one question as I listen to Republicans talk about how badly President Obama has screwed up the economy and that is how did he mess up the great hand he was dealt? You know with the 24 hour news cycle we have today and short attention spans it’s hard to remember how things were when President Obama assumed office January 20, 2009. I decided to rent a time machine from the local Home Depot and find out how great it was.

In order for me to make a proper assessment I decided to go back a few months before the election and see how prosperous the economic picture was in order to get a feel for the economic momentum that was taking place. I plugged in the time machine and had to hurry because it was rented for just half a day. I decided to travel back to September 2008. When I arrived, I was shocked by the chaos. All hell was breaking loose and on September 15, 2008 the largest bankruptcy in United States history took place when the investment bank Lehman Brothers sought chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. I started to think that things were not going so well back then.

I decided to cruise through September 2008 and saw banks merging, credit markets freezing and a near collapse of the entire financial system. I also saw President George W Bush standing in front of a microphone addressing the nation on how dire the economic situation had become. When I got to October 2008, there was a $700 billion taxpayer bailout of financial companies that brought the economy crashing down. In October 2008, 240,000 Americans lost their jobs and the unemployment rate hit a 14-year high.

As I continued forward through 2008 towards 2009 the economic carnage continued as job losses for November 2008 were 533,000 and 632,000 jobs were lost in December 2008. I could only guess that a miracle took place in January 2009 before President Obama was inaugurated and the economy took off into the stratosphere, but I was mistaken. In January 2009 the economy lost another 598,000 jobs. The U S Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that payroll employment had declined by 3.6 million since the start of the recession in December 2007; about one-half of this decline occurred in the 2 months before President Obama was sworn in and January 2009 the month he took office.

So wait a minute, so the economy was not in great shape when President Obama took office. What are these people talking about? The U S automobile industry almost failed and President Obama intervened to save it or we could have lost another 1 million jobs. By most accounts the economy has added around 4 million jobs since President Obama took office.

I’m confused about how President Obama screwed up so badly. It seems like he actually saved a failing economy. It must be the short attention spans we have today. Oops, I’ve got to get this time machine back before they charge me for another 4 hours.

Hostage Taking Politics Have To End

What we have seen is the exercise of hostage taking politics by the Republican minority since President Obama took office. The Tea Party and Republicans are perfectly willing to repeatedly kidnap any segment of the American economy and hold it with threats of destruction unless they get their way.

The latest hostage was the hard earned credit rating and global economic standing of the United States unless they got what they wanted. This type of politics is no way to run a country and hopefully voters will realize who was willing to take the United States into default to get their way and take away Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Education programs are seen as wasteful spending by this all or nothing group. Bridges falling, roads crumbling and transportation projects stalling may be in our future.

You see, small or no government spending may sound ideal until you need something you once took for granted and it is no longer there. One city got a fast lesson in how things work when they voted down a tax increase and were later informed that there were not enough funds to provide school bus service and it would cost $400 per child. That is how things work. Smooth public roads, the military and national parks all come from government spending.

Most people are too young to remember almost guaranteed poverty and suffering during old age before Social Security and Medicare came into being. Do we really want to go back to that old life? Why don’t you ask your parents or grandparents if that is how they want to live?

President Obama Shows His Birth Certificate And …

Barack Obama Birth Certificate

The thing that so many have clamored for has finally been produced. President Barack Obama produces his long form birth certificate and the reaction to it was shocking.

One of the first responses was, “He’s still a Muslim.” Of course, this is a hypothetical situation, but is exactly the type of response that would come from those with 10, not 1 reason they don’t support President Obama. Those ingrained attitudes are also exactly the reason President Obama should not show his long form birth certificate.

Barack Hussein Obama is the legitimate President of the United States. He was voted in by the people and sworn in by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. President Obama met all of the requirements of the Constitution, election commission and every states requirement for inclusion on ballots for President of the United States.

The other reason the President should not buckle to calls to produce a long form birth certificate is that the satisfaction it would provide to the faction pushing the “He is an other” conspiracy theories. The satisfaction that group would get from having the sitting President complying with their requests would be immense. The symbolic damage of President Obama showing his birth certificate would be like he was pulled over and asked for his papers and that image would never go away. The individuals riding on the birther bandwagon are in a world of their own making and President Obama showing his long form birth certificate will not grant him acceptance into that club.  

Now some of these states have bills coming to the legislature that require a birth certificate as a part of qualification to be included on their ballot for President. It is questionable if any of these measures will become law. An article titled “Ga. latest state to propose "birther" bill” by the Associated Press March 2, 2011 and published on the CBS News website goes into the details on the measure in Georgia. These laws seems to like rules change imposed in some sports when a player comes along and takes a quantum leap beyond everyone else participating.

This is the state of American politics today with code words, finger pointing and fear mongering as the order of the day.

Michele Bachmann Says She Will Show Birth Certificate If She Seeks Presidency

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann, Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota, said the first thing she would do if she ran for President is offer her birth certificate. This could be considered a very transparent appeal to the birther crowd that she is on their side.

There is not a shortage of serious issues to be dealt with in the world today, but talk of presenting a birth certificate seems to be to of mind for Representative Bachmann in importance. Will the constant attempts to undermine the legitimacy of President Barack Obama never end? If an elected politician really does not believe that the President was born in the United States, then come out and say it in no uncertain terms and stop the wink and nods to the fringe elements. An article titled “'First thing I would do is offer birth certificate'” by Bob Unruh March 11, 2011 and published on the WorldNetDaily website goes into Bachmann’s statements to a talk radio show host.

As the time for candidates that will run for President of the United States to declare their intentions fast approaches, the field could range from veterans like Newt Gingrich,  mainstream types such as Mitt Romney and fringe candidates like Michele Bachmann. What is interesting is the prospects of televised debates with such a wide variety of personalities sharing the same stage. Will Bachmann present her birth certificate on live television and challenge the other candidates to do so as well.

In any event, veiled references that continue to challenge the validity of President Barack Obama should be replaced with direct statement or end altogether. Elected officials that feed into the paranoia for political gain without stating if they believe the President was born elsewhere are being dishonest and lowering the importance of their office.

Nancy Pelosi Hospitalized While In Rome

U S House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

U S House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi was hospitalized while leading a Congressional delegation there to celebrate the 150 year anniversary of the nation. Pelosi was reported to have checked into an emergency room for a two hour period and later returned to her hotel room. Reported the former Speaker of the House suffered what was described as “fainting spells.”

This trip to Rome followed a stop in Afghanistan to meet with President Harmid Karzai and U.S. military personnel.

An article titled by ABC News details the incident.