As Al Pacino said in The Godfather Part III:

Seriously, how could I not comment on the fact that in last night’s Republican Debate…

Donald Trump Defends Size of his Penis

Seriously?  Apparently so…

I fear for this country…I seriously do.

As Woody Allen said, Eighty Percent of Success is showing up.

At this point, it appears we have what looks to be -barring any unforeseen circumstance- a Hillary Clinton versus Donald “The Duck” Trump race and the simple fact that he’s there (see Woody Allen’s quote, re-read Woody Allen’s quote, be Woody Allen’s quote) scares the living crap out of me.

Anything can happen once the race is down to one Democratic and one Republican candidate and that’s reason enough to fear for this country’s future.

There are those that have welcomed Donald Trump and his possible formal nomination to being the Republican Presidential Candidate.  These people are certain his candidacy will be such a flame-out and the Republicans will suffer such loses that they might finally wake up and throw the extremists from their party.

I can’t help but re-read that Woody Allen quote and shake my head.

I hope they’re right.  I hope the Republicans finally, finally realize they’ve gone too far and, further, I hope this election proves such a paddling to them that they have no choice but to reject the extremists.

I really hope so.

Ok, maybe not quite yet.  On this “Super Tuesday”, I found this fascinating article by William Saletan which, in my opinion, presents probably the clearest description yet of the strange (to my eyes anyway) anti-Obamaism going on in the Republican Party and why it may have helped in the creation of a Donald Trump, “serious” candidate:

Ross Douthat says Obama Created Trump.  That’s Nuts.

A great article and, again, one that I feel goes a long way in explaining the strange (to many pundits) rise of Donald Trump.

One element I believe was lacking from the article was this: Say what you will but Donald Trump -and there are plenty of negatives to say about him- he nonetheless has a fiery energy about him that none of the other Republican candidates are able to match.  Understand, I’m not advocating Donald Trump for President (indeed, should he become president I fear for this country), but let’s face facts here: As childish, bigoted, and churlish as he is, he’s run laps around many of the other candidates in terms of energy and fevered emotion.

He took down Jeb! Bush without breaking a sweat and now Marco Rubio appears to be trying to fight Trump on his own level…a big mistake.

The way it looks from here and now, it appears we’ll have a Trump vs. Hillary Clinton race (barring any unforeseen events).  What’s most curious and coincidental about this whole election is that as “good” as Mr. Trump has been within this Republican nomination process, arguably he’s faced his absolute roughest times against strong women (whether journalists or candidates) and wouldn’t you know it, if he does become the Republican Presidential Candidate, who might he go up against?

A very strong woman.

If that’s the case, then my prediction is that Hillary Clinton will become the first female President of the United States.

But we’ve still got a long way to go…

I’ve noted before I don’t like to talk politics.  Often, no good comes of it.  Those who disagree will disagree, those who agree will agree and lines will be drawn…

This election cycle feels so different from others, though.  There is so much anger that’s been fostered for so very long and for so very little, IMHO.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m most certainly a liberal in most of my ideology, so those who are conservative will likely discount everything I have to say from this point onwards.

Unlike many others, I’ve had the opportunity to see first hand most (not all) political systems.  I was born in a Soviet era communist country and my parents fled this.  We landed in a European socialist style country.  We then moved to what was a right winger’s “wet dream” of a country (very few regulations, almost no taxes, and a strong Catholic leaning), before moving permanently to the U.S., which I’ve felt works because it tended to find middle ground between politics and policy.

Of the systems I’ve seen first hand, clearly the worst was the communist style country, at least when it was that (With the fall of the Soviet Union, it gained its independence).  The second worst, easily, is the right wing “wet dream” country.  While its nice to not have to pay taxes to any great degree, it is most troublesome to experience: Large numbers of beggars (many of whom are nothing more than children) on the street.  Wild dogs running wild (no taxes=no animal services).  Shitty roads (no taxes=very little public works).  Military often used for police (no taxes=very little public works).  Spotty fire service (did I mention no taxes=very little public works?!).

Yet that seems to be where a sizable contingent of the conservative thought process wants to take us.

And the election of Barack Obama (twice!) has fanned flames of hatred that, at least to me, are hard to understand.

Especially given the fact that not all that long ago -and as I’ve mentioned several times before- Barack Obama would have been looked upon as a moderate Republican.

Which brings me back to this election cycle.  One of the previous Republican candidates, Lindsey Graham, appeared at a roast yesterday and made some “humorous” comments regarding politics and his own party:

Lindsey Graham Jokes About How To Get Away With Murdering Ted Cruz

I’ve always felt the problem with Mr. Graham, and the reason he didn’t get anywhere near the nomination for president, was that he was too bland and didn’t appear to have much of a spine.

In this roast, however, he let almost all hang out.  Not only did he jokingly state “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” but he also noted his party had gone “batshit crazy”.

While I believe joking about murdering someone, even someone you may not like at all, is in questionable taste, I agree with him regarding the later statement.

However, Mr. Graham, like all the other Republicans in his party who may feel the same as it now appears -of all people- Donald Trump might just be the Republican Presidential Candidate, bear great responsibility for the mess they’re in.

I suspect people are tired of the constant bickering and one-upsmanship many in the Republican party have engaged in in the recent past and this may be in part why Donald Trump looks to be on the verge of getting the nomination while “establishment” Republicans are having so much trouble doing the same.

Recently, when Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia passed away, was it really necessary for the Majority Leader of the Senate Mitch McConnell to, less than an hour after the official announcement of Scalia’s passing was made, to publicly state that as far as he and his fellow Republicans in the Senate were concerned President Barack Obama had no say in choosing his successor?

Considering Mr. Obama has almost a full year left of his term in office (11 months at that point) and was elected to do exactly that (ie pick Supreme Court judges which the Senate then has to approve), the statement appeared both absurd and, frankly, nasty.  At that point and, indeed, even now, Mr. Obama has yet to nominate anyone to the bench and McConnell’s already stating this person will have no chance at all?

I know there will be those who say “well, if the shoe were on the other foot…” and, you know what?, you’re probably right.

Yet I don’t see the Democratic party doing something this…out there.

Lindsey Graham wonders why his party is acting so “batshit crazy”…maybe they’re finally reaping what they’ve sown.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m loathe to get into politics on this blog yet, let’s face it, with the presidential nominee race heating up, its tough to ignore.

Like many liberals, I’ve been severely turned off by the right wing and their policies.  In many ways I have a rather unique reason for my opinion.  I was born in a Soviet era communist country, then experienced a near-European socialist country, then what I consider a hard-right Republican wet dream of a country, before settling into the United States which, for most of the time I’ve been here, has been relatively moderate.

To put it bluntly, I’ve experienced it all and am not shy about saying that near-European socialist country (Canada, natch), was, along with the more moderate United States, my favorite places to live.  Sure the taxes may be high but given the public services you get, I felt it was very much worth it.

I’ve grown very concerned with the lurches to the right within this country.  When I lived in Venezuela in the 1970’s to the very, very early 1980’s, that country was essentially a Catholic right-winger’s wet dream.  There were almost no taxes at all.  There were also crumbling roads and infrastructure, packs of wild animals roaming the streets (I can’t tell you how often I saw the corpses of very large dogs lying in the middle of streets…there were no public services to remove them and they just rotted there until someone finally decided to take the corpse away.  I was also one day actually attacked by a pack once…not fun), a great deal of poverty (nothing like seeing impoverished children your age dressed in rags begging for money on the streets), a military presence in lieu of a regular police force, absolutely no legal abortion/parenthood services (how many women were victims of botched abortions I will never know), etc. etc.

I will give the right wing within this country their props: They know how to advertise their product.  To beat down what in the past would be considered moderate Republicans like (yes) Barack Obama and Bill Clinton takes a unique talent for spin and, one hopes, the party is finally reaching a point where hopefully people will finally realize they’re going too far.

Or will they?

Who knows.  This article by Dylan Byers for CNN points out how the Donald Trump candidacy is now putting what had been (I thought, anyway) a reliable right-wing mouthpiece in the crosshairs:

Donald Trump Tap’s The Right’s Anger Against Fox News

I mean, if this group of people think Fox News is too “mainstream”, I wonder what they’ll think is appropriate.  Or perhaps the ultra-conservatives are reaching for an ideal which doesn’t exist.

Strange times, my friends.

I’ve mentioned before I don’t like to get into politics on this blog.  Especially nowadays when whatever you say becomes “fightin’ words” to those who are on the other side.

Having said that (you’ve been warned), there is no way I’d spend any of my limited free time in watching the Republican debates.  Based on the high level of crazy talk just about all the candidates have made, there is little point: I will not vote for any of the Republicans.  Not in a million years.

Sadly, there was a time not all that long ago when elections came up and I was interested in hearing from each candidate.  I would even give them proper consideration.

No longer.

The fact is that the strongest voices of the “right” wing have moved politics so far toward their direction that they’ve dragged almost every other candidate/politician with more moderate views their way.  I’ve mentioned this before and it bears repeating: In another time, Bill Clinton and (yes) Barack Obama would be considered moderate Republican politicians ala Dwight D. Eisenhower or Richard Nixon (minus the paranoia).

My great hope is this election finally knocks some sense into the public and the hateful, paranoid, backward politics get rebuked.  It happened before in the 1950’s and I’m hoping (praying!) history repeats itself.

We’ll see.

Alright, I’m getting off my soapbox now…

I really, really don’t like to get into politics on this site.  I mean, most authors use their blog to talk about their latest works and promote them.  I do as well, though not as much as I could.  Frankly, I prefer to do so when I have concrete news to tell you regard a new work…more specifically when it nears completion/publication.

Getting back to politics, of late I find the whole thing so damn depressing.  A few years back when George W. Bush was president and pundits were ripping him and his policies, conservative mouthpiece Charles Krauthammer stated that Bush’s opponents were suffering from “Bush derangement syndrome”.  In other words, they could not see past their hatred of the man to more reasonably look at his policies.

However, there is little doubt that many of Bush’s policies, including the disastrous (and arguably justified by outright lies) decision to invade Iraq, the pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina, and the way the economy crashed during his watch, created a sense the critics were more right than “deranged”.

When Mr. Bush left office there were very few -and that goes for today as well- who spoke kindly about his term in office.  Rather than defend him, most in the Republican Party or those who espouse conservative values, chose to ignore his time in office and, instead, focus venom on the current officeholder, Barack Obama.

And yet, if there is any case of a “derangement syndrome”, it would have to be regarding Obama’s term in office.  Say what you will about his time in office but at least we have had a continuously improving economy, health care legislation (good or bad, the fact is that we are one of the last of the first world countries to move in this direction and we should applaud this legislation even as we work to make it better), and no new (idiotic) wars.

Before you start screaming, let me say this: Is all milk and honey?  Absolutely not.  There are many things I’ve felt Mr. Obama should have done but hasn’t.  At times I feel he is too meek and wish he had (yes) George W. Bush’s backbone.

But what bugs me the most about the people who so despise Barack Obama’s presidency is the fact that they don’t realize he, like Bill Clinton before him, are most akin in policy to yesteryear’s Republicans.

Indeed, the patron saint of today’s Republicans, Ronald Reagan, would probably be derided as too leftist to these new conservatives which goes to show just how far the right in this country have moved.

Most worrisome to me is the level of hate they project.  At a family dinner, I was amused to learn, and subsequently mentioned, the news that during a Republican Jewish Coalition speech Republican Presidential contender Ben Carson (no brain surgeon…oh, wait) talked about Hamas yet referred to them, over and over again, as…Hummus.

Yikes.

When I mentioned this, my relative almost jumped down my throat, first saying something to the effect of “well, I hope they (I’m assuming Hamas?) are insulted by being called that” before realizing what Mr. Carson said was yet another boneheaded line (of which there are more) and defending him by absolutely ignoring what he said and focusing instead on just how much Obama has ruined this country.

The wide-eyed hatred spewed was, frankly, startling, as was the lack of specifics as to just how Mr. Obama had ruined the country.

Naturally, I’m not the first person to go to a family function and get involved in a political spat nor will I be the last, but I was surprised at just how much this individual bought into the conservative Obama “derangement”.

As I already mentioned, there most certainly are things to criticize about Mr. Obama’s presidency (as there are for most presidencies), but I don’t and can’t see his failures as being anything on the level of “disastrous.”

There is no moral to this story and there is no clever conclusion to offer except this quote, which I’ll reproduce here from memory and therefore may not be verbatim, regarding the current state of Republican candidates for presidency:

“I hope one day the candidates turn to face the camera and say ‘April Fools!’.”

We’re a little less than a year from the presidential elections and, frankly, its been nothing short of a horror show.

There was a time I could look at a Republican or Democratic candidate and, because back then I wasn’t fixated on parties, consider each for their own merits and choose which felt like the better leader of the free world.

This was a very long time ago.

There is no chance I’d consider any of the current crop of Republican candidates for the presidency.  Well, maybe John Kasich but the way he’s polling, it’ll be a really cold day in hell when he becomes the Republican candidate.

That’s not to say the Democratic side is looking all that much better.  While I’m perfectly willing to support Hillary Clinton (considering the Republican alternatives, she’s looking at this moment like a combination of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), it bothers me that in a nation this large and with so many people willing to serve we have only one legitimate counterpoint to her candidacy in Bernie Sanders.  Now, I like Bernie Sanders.  I like his passion and like many of his ideas, but I never felt he’d have a chance of snatching the nomination from Mrs. Clinton.  In the end, I like to see competition as this brings out the best in others and offers us choices.

So at this moment in time and obviously subject to change, we’ll likely have Mrs. Clinton as the Democratic candidate for the presidency, and TBD as the Republican candidate.

The Republican party, quite unlike the Democratic party, have a surplus of candidates.  I’m thankful for this because we are seeing all kinds of opinions…almost all of which run the gamut from just plain idiotic to Texas Chainsaw Massacre frightening.  The good this creates, of course, is making my choice all that much easier regarding who to vote for when the elections come around.

At this moment, the TBD candidate for the Republican party is Donald Trump, a man whose greatest superpower is his ability to zing others (his takedowns of Jeb! Bush, IMHO, are the sole reason Jeb! has languished in the polls and his candidacy is, to now, stillborn).  And just like almost all the other Republican candidates, he’s presented us with plenty of soundbites and, of late, some outrageous lies, none greater than the amusing one Brendan O’Connor for Gawker feels is his most “outrageous”…

In His Most Outrageous Lie Yet, Trump Suggests His Supporters Are Smart

Ok, I only presented this link for the headline.

Trump supporters may not find it quite as humorous… Oh well.