Shameless John McCain

Americans elected Donald Trump their president last November. Not John McCain. Not squeaky Lindsey Graham.

Arizonans elected McCain to represent their interests in the senate. I don’t know why. However, that should constrain McCain from his hyperbolic antics and speech-making. It doesn’t. McCain believes he has some kind of mandate to thwart the reasons Americans elected Trump: to stem the flow of illegal immigration; to stem the flow of Muslim terrorists into the United States; to win the war on terror against ISIL; to help create millions of more jobs by relocating factories back to the U.S. or by helping to build new ones here; to take care of our vets; to repeal and replace Obamacare; to lower taxes; to rebuild and strengthen our military; to help restore law and order nationwide.

McCain isn’t a maverick; he’s a deep-rooted, toxic weed hellbent on strengthening the establishment and weakening Americans and our Constitution. I’d call him a shameless political whore, but that would be incorrect; McCain is a stout narcissist who only finds a worthy cause when he looks into a mirror.

The Arizona senator’s power grab will impede the will of American voters, but my recommendation is that President Trump smack down him and establishment sock puppet Lindsey Graham as quickly as possible, relegating them to meaninglessness. They do not speak for Republicans any more. They do not speak for conservatives. They do not speak for Constitutionalists. They do not speak for Americans.

McCain and Graham speak only for themselves and their cherished establishment, and stridently so, and it’s time to begin to nullify them. McCain’s resume is littered with failure. Was McCain able to win the presidency in 2008? No. Loser. Was he able to enact serious, significant campaign reform? No. Loser. Did he strengthen the U.S. Military his last eight years in the senate? No. Loser. Did he enact or enforce legislation to protect Americans from terrorism? No. Loser. Did he help to balance the budget at all? No. Loser. Did he stop the national debt from increasing by trillions of dollars the last eight years? No. Loser. Did he cut taxes for the middle class? No. Loser. Did he stop the enactment of Obamacare? No. Loser. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, did he prevent huge cost overruns on the F-22 and the F-35 programs, among others? No. Loser. Did he save or create jobs? No. Loser.

Why would such a loser want to pick a fight with a winner like Trump? Call it political penis envy. Old man McCain wants to call the shots, but he’s worried because someone with real success credentials has been voted onto the scene and placed into his sandbox, and McCain will be damned – let’s hope not – if he is going to let someone else call the shots, even though he laid down for Obama all these years.

If you want to accomplish something, don’t bring John McCain and whiny sock puppet Lindsey Graham along. Don’t even try. They won’t cooperate unless they can plunge their mouth-holes into the special interest trough and gobble away like a couple of porkers!

Let McCain try to thwart Trump. Mr. President, we elected you and your ideas and your plans, not loser McCain’s. If he won’t help, cast him aside and work with other, smarter people who want to make this country safe, who stand for America First and not for globalism, who place the interests of American citizens and their culture and their Constitution first and not the interests of illegal aliens and refugee terrorists and strange, violent religious beliefs.

I am so sick of the moralizing social engineers in this country, the people like McCain and Obama who think they get to decide how Americans are going to be shaped and dictated to and who spit on the elections results, our American election results! Get out and go somewhere else!

Pundits Like Rachel Maddow Well Inaugurated into Dishonesty

President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech broke new ground for Americans when he stated emphatically he will put their interests and the interests of the nation as a whole first in every policy and law he wants enacted.

Abandoned by a globalist special interest view of the world, Americans suffered loss of jobs, of income, of property, of finances, of freedoms, and of dignity in the years since the Ronald Reagan presidency. Instead of a federal government driven by the will, defense of, and welfare of the American people, Americans were driven by the will, defense of, and welfare of the establishment, its special interests, its media machine partners, and the perverse left-wing globalist philosophy that sought to extinguish our Spirit of ’76 and to reshape the individualist, liberty-loving thinking of Americans to conform to establishment principles and practices.

The establishment has been executing an ongoing pacification of the American people, training them in the docility of political correctness and socially engineering the acceptability of profane, anti-religious norms and the unacceptability of individuality and Godly instruction.

President Trump’s inauguration speech is a massive poke in the eye of the establishment. It breaches their constricting wall by giving the president’s word that American patriotism, life, liberty, prosperity, and defense are the only things that matter. Americans come first. America comes first. Indeed, that is the constitutional mandate of all three branches of our federal government.

Naturally, the establishment and its media machine have been doing and will continue to do everything they can to torpedo Trump’s efforts to Make America Great Again. They will lie, dissemble, mix truth with their lies to confuse and mislead, mis- and disinform, calumniate, and create the illusion that Trump is either evil or mentally unstable or so far out of the mainstream, or some combination of two or more. They will never acknowledge any thing good he does or proposes. They will paint it as something that happened because of forces or circumstances outside of Trump’s control or that happened collaterally, unintentionally.

Here is a case in point: MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow’s dishonest take on President Trump’s meaning of “America First” in the inauguration speech. Maddow is another media minion who painted President Trump and his supporters nasty reds and blacks with her anti-objective rhetorical graffiti. Like Martha Raddatz, Maddow’s eyes welled with tears election night when it became clear the country favored Mr. Trump as its president instead of the candidate she preferred, Mrs. Hillary Clinton.

Former President Ronald Reagan used the slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again”, and President Trump wanted to promote that quintessence in his own campaign, though reports vary on when he actually learned that Reagan had used it.

So Maddow does not look through President Trump’s eyes to see what he saw that prompted him to set Make America Great Again as his campaign’s slogan: Americans out of work and out of opportunities and out of money, factories shuttered across the country, a country whose policies its own citizens no longer liked or respected, a country with nearly $20 trillion in debt and adding to it every day, a country whose deep and vast unemployment was masked by bogus government statistics, a country giving away benefits to foreign nations and their illegally migrating people while denying benefits to its own.

No. What Maddow sees in the phrase “America First” is something that Donald Trump is not referring to: an obscure committee formed to keep the United States out of World War II (75 plus years ago before Mr. Trump was born), infiltrated by some Nazis and holding some anti-semitic views.

“It was militant and it was dark”, Maddow sputtered about the speech after the president finished. “The crime, the gangs, the drugs, this American carnage, disrepair, decay – you can’t imagine the outgoing president giving a speech like that.”

She added that President Trump established “our guiding principle will be ‘America First’. We know how he has used that as a campaign slogan. That also has very dark echoes in American history. There was an America First Committee that formed in this country… formed by some of the richest businessmen in this country… who were part of it. They were formed to keep us out of World War II, they were infiltrated by the Nazis. Many of them were anti-semitic, part of why they weren’t alarmed by Hitler’s rise in Germany. The America First Committee is something that means a specific thing in this country. To re-purpose it now is not that far down the historical path. Uh, it’s hard, hard to hear.”

Let’s dissect Ms. Maddow’s baloney. First, the speeches Mr. Obama gave aren’t the bar by which anyone judges the value of other speeches, except, perhaps, for Mr. Obama’s most flattering fanatics.

Second, despite the best efforts of the incredibly untruthful media organs, and Ms. Maddow in this case, when they weren’t covering the elections, and sometimes when they were, the media acknowledged the problems of which President Trump spoke: the lethal and catastrophic effects of drug use on communities around the country, but particularly in places like New Hampshire, the tsunami of murders in Chicago, the horrific damage done by the Mexican drug cartels here and abroad, bloody acts of terror here and around the world that have claimed scores of innocent human lives, factories and lost businesses all across the country, etc.

Third, even the former president, Mr. Obama, has acknowledged the carnage of ISIL and related terrorists and spoke of how we are tirelessly at war with them (dark and militant, Ms. Maddow?), and he himself has stated our national infrastructure had fallen into disrepair and decay. In fact, during his second term, Mr. Obama chided Republicans for the poor state of our country’s infrastructure, and he invoked Reagan’s description of it and his proposal to remedy it to persuade Republicans to enact his (Obama’s) own plan to upgrade it!

That’s the reality, Ms. Maddow. The hope and change Mr. Obama so casually promised never materialized for tens of millions of Americans and for the country as a whole. You didn’t notice their plight, and if you did, you ignored it. President Trump acknowledged to those Americans that he had seen and heard what they had experienced, and he gave his word he would do something about it. One has to take stock, take inventory before proceeding with action. President Trump did that. If the reality was darker than you cared to admit, yet you ignored with malice aforethought the light of the action President Trump said he would take to overcome it: placing Americans first in all policy considerations.

Not only did you ignore President Trump’s action plan, Ms. Maddow, you contrived to link his guiding principle to something you knew was a false connection: a Nazi-influenced committee that happened to have a similar name formed to keep Germany free from American opposition so the Nazis could win WWII! You knew it was false because President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law and their children, his grandchildren, are Jews, Jews who are leaving their businesses to become senior White House advisers. You knew it was false because President Trump has said it may be time to move Israel’s capital to Jerusalem, something I disagree with, but I still love what the guy is trying to do over all.

Which brings us to the fourth point: President Trump has never “re-purposed” anything from the America First Committee, nor can you tie him to the AFC. Fifth, “not that far down the historical path? Really? You failed to supply any signposts or benchmarks that might demonstrate President Trump’s use of America First is powered by the influences or reasoning of anyone who formed the America First Committee of WWII. Do you know why? That’s right, because there aren’t any, none, zero, zilch! Absolutely no connections exist between President Trump’s policy principle of America First and the significance of the same two words in the WWII body called the America First Committee.

How can you be so dishonest, Rachel Maddow?

Unfortunately, that’s what we as citizens must expect from the privileged and prejudiced pundits of the media machine. Lying has become second nature to them. They will tell us what they think we need to know, how we should adjust our perceptions so we “understand correctly”, and how we should judge what we know, ceding all authority and individuality to them.

Ain’t gonna happen!

I am willing to listen to what the new president has to say, what he thinks is dark and light, and to make up my own mind about what the problems are and the solutions he proposes to rectify them. America First has NOTHING to do with Nazis and antisemitism, so keep your lies to yourself, prejudiced, privileged pundits.

Hacking the Russian Hack Story

• Problems with the Press Accounts of the Intel ‘Report’
• Tangible Media and Intel Animus toward President-Elect Trump
• If the Russians Hacked the DNC, Could It Have Been for Bernie?

Like an arrogant rhinoceros waving its wand and puckering its starfish to piss and crap all over the jungle, the media continues to spew and drop faux and fraudulent news and statements and headlines about soon-to-be President Donald Trump and his administration, angling their themes to paint him with dark or doubtful stains.

The dishonest media isn’t alone. At least some of the heads of our American intelligence agencies, and their minions, have compromised the integrity of the agencies they run, polluting the operations with a thoroughly toxic left-wing, selfishly anti-democratic, anti-transition, and anti-collegial spirit. Amid this boiling toxicity, these heads have cooked up intel reports and summaries to damage the president, his cabinet and staff, his program, and our country.

That’s the way establishments are: see things our way and do them our way… or else.

One more day!

I cannot wait until Mr. Trump’s intel, military, and justice (as well as all the others: Go Wilbur Ross!) heads take command on Jan. 20 and CLEAN house of all the lying bastards who have polluted our intelligence and our intelligence agencies with their Buzzfeed mentalities.

Let’s tackle – again – the 35-page report presented by overall intelligence chief James Clapper to the president-elect, the president, and a few members of Congress. We know only what the unclassified version says, not the classified, so we are missing valuable pieces to the puzzle that could confirm what the intelligence agencies allegedly surmised or could disconfirm or cast doubt on those impressions.

In essence, Clapper’s report alleged that Russia conducted a cyber attack on servers run by the Democratic National Committee and used the information they gleaned to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump get elected.

Is that true? Let’s examine the story as it appeared in The New York Times online edition on or about Jan. 7. Adam Goldman, Matthew Rosenberg, and Matt Apuzzo authored the piece.

What The NYT gives us first is:

“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation’s top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday [Jan. 6] to Trump.”

That’s the lead paragraph in the story. Make a note that The NYT labeled the report “extraordinary”. Two paragraphs later, The NYT adds:

“Soon after leaving the meeting, intelligence officials released the declassified, damning report (emphasis mine) that described the sophisticated cybercampaign as part of a continuing Russian effort to weaken the United States government and its democratic institutions.”

That’s heavy stuff. The report is damning, presumably for Mr. Trump, and Russia seeks to weaken our federal government and our democratic institutions.

The problem is twofold: 1. how is Trump damned by the report? The Russians have been interfering with our government for decades, and we have been interfering with theirs and with many other governments for decades. Trump isn’t damned by the report; the intelligence and defense communities are damned by the report for failing to adequately deal with any cyber threat from a foreign power! Why were the Russians able to catch them napping?

Second, the Democratic National Committee that was hacked is NOT a democratic institution. Political parties come and go, evolve and morph and become totally different over the course of years. No particular party is an institution. The Democrat Party did not even exist at the dawn of our republic. The DNC is part of the current political fabric, but it’s not one of our democratic institutions.

Now consider the following two points which The NYT buried deeply in its article. The first occurs around paragraph 27, at which the article stated:

“Yet the attacks [by Russia], the report said, began long before anyone could have known that Mr. Trump, considered a dark horse, would win the Republican nomination. It said the attacks began as early as 2015… .”

The article adds that the Russians maintained a presence on the DNC server for another 11 months, perhaps even after the private firm Crowdstrike thought it had them booted off.

Two final points to note: First, the DNC denied the FBI permission to look at its servers. This point does not appear in The NYT article but has been reported extensively elsewhere. It isn’t clear whether the DNC allowed any other federal agencies access, but isn’t it suspicious the DNC denied the FBI access when Democrats were complaining about an illegal hack?

Second, the evolution of Russian purposes reported by The NYT doesn’t add up. Overly eager to lay blame on Mr. Trump, the intel heads and the paper admit the Russians began to hack the DNC server in the summer of 2015, when Trump was one of 17 Republican presidential candidates, and the Brits first alerted American intel ops about the DNC hack in the autumn of 2015, but the CIA and other agencies are just writing a report about it now. Why didn’t they do something then!?

So the Russian purpose for the hack was, and always has been, to hurt Hillary Clinton. This stands as a vital point, because it would not have made any difference who the Republican nominee was. The Russians did not know who it would be.

Trump was part of a large pack of candidates in the running at the end of 2015, with commentators and pundits repeatedly saying he had hit a ceiling and would never win the Republican nomination. Five of the 17 Republican candidates dropped out of the presidential race just before the Iowa caucuses; still, Trump lost the Iowa caucuses on February 1, 2016. Although Trump picked up steam afterward, he also hit a rough stretch punctuated by a stinging defeat in Wisconsin on April 5. It could not have been clear to the Russians he enjoyed any significant chance to win his party’s nomination until he took every delegate in the May 3, 2016, Indiana primary.

Even then, with talk bubbling about a contested convention, the Russian mindset about Trump’s chances likely exhibited a similarity to that of Julian Assange and other foreign onlookers (Assange’s quote is from website ZeroHedge):

“My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side. Trump does not have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment. Banks, intelligence, arms companies, foreign money, etc. are all united behind Hillary Clinton. And the media as well. Media owners, and the journalists themselves.”

By the time Mr. Trump won Indiana, the alleged Russian hack of the DNC server was almost over.

The Russians must have figured, as did every political pundit in this country, that Mr. Trump would never defeat Mrs. Clinton. If they did plan and execute the DNC hack to release Democrats’ own secret, damaging information, they wanted to undermine her presidency, as the NYT story and other stories have reported. They may have chuckled that collaterally, at some point, they were “helping” Trump, but NO ONE outside of his supporters thought he had any chance of winning against Hillary Clinton.

In fact, what the media are deliberately NOT writing and talking about is the possibility that Russia, if it hacked the DNC, intended its damage to Mrs. Clinton’s already eroded reputation to help Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders is the socialist candidate who had visited Russia years before when it was communist and whose policy proposals most reflected the way Mr. Putin wields centralized power in Russia.

The hypocrisy of it all is that American intel agencies spy on their fellow citizens, the citizens whose privacy and dignity they are sworn to uphold and respect. Even as Clapper excoriates Russia, his agencies gobble up every minute detail about Americans and their lives, analyze it, and store it forever in case it is needed. They intrude into Americans’ computers, tablets, phones, GPSes, TVs, microphones, and every communication. In cahoots with big business, they have become the all-seeing eye!

It is so wrong and so unconstitutional.

So stop your calumny of Mr. Trump, intel agencies. Do what you are supposed to do: obey your commander-in-chief and the will of the American people. Collect accurate intelligence and present it without passion or prejudice. Keep your mouths shut on domestic political issues. Don’t talk and write about hacks after they have happened; stop them from happening!

Do You Want Hillary to Sell Out America?

I have been telling you about the need to peel away the layers of BS that cocoon the candidates and which isolate you from the truth, crippling your ability to vote wisely.

This need to peel away the layers applies to both the candidates and the people who speak for them, as it does to the media which filters the information that reaches you.

Some of you may be aware already of the comments of legendary journalist Bob Woodward, who broke the Watergate story for The Washington Post in the 1970s. That story led to the downfall of then President Richard M. Nixon. Others of you will not be aware, because most of the media seem to have ignored or to given the most cursory play to what Woodward said in an interview Sunday with Chris Wallace of Fox News.

Please keep in mind that I think most people and journalists would consider Woodward a reporter who looks through a liberal lens.

So on Sunday, with news out from Wikileaks that the King of Morocco gave $12,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for a visit from Bill and Chelsea Clinton, and perhaps other considerations, Wallace asked Woodward for his take on the accusations that the Clintons used their foundation as a pay-to-play scheme.

“It’s corrupt. It’s a scandal”, Woodward said in a quote provided by mostly secondary news sources but which was included in a story that appeared in the left-leaning Huffington Post. “The mixing of speech fees, the Clinton Foundation, and actions by the State Department, which she ran, are all intertwined. And it’s corrupt. You can’t just say it’s unsavory.”

That’s a damning judgment based on the facts, coming from a veteran, legendary journalist like Woodward.

We can extrapolate two things from Woodward’s judgment.

First, we see how the standards of journalism have changed. Forty years ago, the pattern of facts demonstrated by the Clintons, Hillary’s campaign, Hillary’s operation of the State Department, and their “charitable foundation”, would have undergone massive, relentless scrutiny by the press. Newspapers and TV networks would have pursued the story until they had uncovered everything. Character, or ethos, the ethical attitude given off by the person being examined in the public light, possessed a significance to news people and voters that it does not today. Hence, we see little meaty reporting on the Clintons.

Nonetheless, we arrive at our second and most important point, and it comes to you in a question: Do you really want to elect Hillary to sell out America?

Hillary is not going to change. She is not going to uncorrupt herself. She is not going to stop using elected office to enrich herself by selling what she can of her country. She cannot. Her habits have grown long, thick roots into her soul. She does not want to change. She could not change even if she wanted.

You can change, however. You can look the facts straight in the eye. You can acknowledge you have been misled, that a person you thought was good and well-meaning in fact was not. It’s a tough admission to make to yourself. I get it. The facts aren’t going to change for us, though.

Hillary says all the right things, but she does something different.

You can exercise your reasonableness and your foresight and say, “I cannot vote for someone of such weak and poor ethical character. I cannot vote for someone who bases her decisions on what will enrich her. I cannot allow Mrs. Clinton to expose our national security and our American lives to unnecessary danger. I cannot allow Mrs. Clinton to sell out my country.”

Join Americans of all political stripes, some who have not even voted in thirty or forty years, and take a stand.

“I won’t let Hillary sell out my country!”

Is Accepting an Election Outcome a Sacred American Tradition?

Most of the media is buzzing about just one of Donald Trump’s answers to the many questions posed at last night’s debate in Las Vegas. Moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump whether or not he would respect the outcome of the election, whatever it might be. Wallace asked the question because of statements Trump has been making on the campaign trail that the election process is rigged. So Trump answered from his heart that he would have to wait until the election was over to judge whether the contest had indeed been fair and democratic.

The puppet masters, and the commentators and reporters in the media they own, immediately attacked the answer like dogs that hadn’t been fed in a week. They hoped to take down the Republican nominee and his America First message once and for all.

Baring their sharp fangs and drooling puddles of sticky, rabid goo out of every side of their mouths, the establishment elites and their minions claimed Trump had disavowed a long-held tradition of the peaceful transition of duly elected democratic rule. They commented and reported that Trump had refused to accept the 2016 election’s outcome and labeled Trump’s answer as a shattering breach of political etiquette and democratic values. Trump’s otherwise stellar performance against a debate veteran like Hillary Clinton was completely blown up and disintegrated into nothing by that one answer, or so they claimed.

Well, that’s one way to give your candidate, criminal Hillary Clinton, a win; but what are the facts? Keeping in mind that I incline toward Trump and away from Hillary, read and judge for yourselves whether I am providing you with facts. Then make up your own minds.

First, did Trump say that he would NOT accept the outcome of the election? No, he did not. He said he did not know yet whether he would or would not and that he would have to wait and see how the process played out. Review a recording of the debate for yourselves to see and hear that fact.

Strike one against the elitist reporting and commentating.

Second, did Hillary answer the question one way or another? No, she did NOT. Wallace asked both candidates the question, but when it came time for Hillary to answer, she launched a matronly tirade against Trump for his indefinite answer. She never affirmed nor denied that she would accept the outcome of the election. Yet the media has not reported that!

Strike two against the elitist reporting and commentating.

That kind of avoidance-answer typifies Hillary and her deceptions. She used it elsewhere in the debate, perhaps most notably when Wallace asked her if she would consider using ground forces in the Middle East. Listen carefully to how she phrased her answer: she said, no, she would not use boots on the ground “as an occupation force”.

If you like equivocation and dissembling, then you have to appreciate her masterful phrasing. If Hillary is elected, she can decide to use boots on the ground and simply say they will not act as an occupation force but will … blah blah … simply engage in fighting for some purpose. We can have troops in a war without them being an occupation force. Wallace failed to qualify Hillary on her answer, as the media routinely makes such failures because they prefer to paint Trump with their sensational labels.

Third, are the establishment elites and their media minions correct? Do Americans have a sacred, inviolable history of the peaceful transition of power in our republic? They said it so loudly and clearly and repeatedly in their post-debate analyses. Is it not a sacred, never violated truth???

No, it isn’t, and the repeated claim that it is shines a light on the fundamental, perhaps deliberate, dark ignorance of the media. It also spotlights their shameless, whorish partisanship.

In a post-debate interview on Fox News, former Secretary of Education William Bennett utterly destroyed this repeated claim.

Strike three! Here are just a few of the facts that relate to this media prevarication.

Does anyone remember the hotly, bitterly contested election results of 2000? Did not presidential loser Al Gore, the Democrats, and every organ of liberal orthodoxy fight the election of George Bush? Does not the Constitution itself contain instructions on how to deal with contested election outcomes? And did not the Supreme Court have to render a decision to settle the matter?

Does anyone remember the Civil War? Do any of the clowns who report and commentate on the news know that within three weeks of Abraham Lincoln’s election as president South Carolina took up its articles of secession and passed them? The secession articles specifically cite the election as a spur to their action:

“A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the states north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”

Correctly or incorrectly, many southern states contested Lincoln’s election, not on the basis of fraud, but on the basis of the unconstitutional character of the officeholder and his policies.

Whether the basis for contesting the outcome of an election is the belief a counting error has occurred, fraud, or the unconstitutional character of the president-elect or his policies, or some other reason, election outcomes have been contested in America, and the transition of power has not always been peaceful; in fact, it’s even been bloody.

America was born in a bloody transition of power from tyranny to liberty, republican democracy, and self-determination. Our Forefathers warned us in the Declaration that there may be other times beside the one they faced that would call for such action:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government… .”

None of the above is written to suggest that now is the time for such a change but rather to put the lie to the assertion that some sacred, inviolable principle prevents a candidate from contesting what he or she believes is a faulty election outcome.

In baseball, we cannot exceed three strikes. For this piece, however, we will to illustrate the deeply flawed message that is being propagated, especially to the exclusion of reporting on the substance of Wednesday night’s debate.

So, fourth, why does the media continue to say Trump’s position on the election outcome is unacceptable if it really isn’t? The reason the media takes the stand it does is because it has little ammunition against his actual positions and statements (yes, they did have ammo in regard to his statements recorded on the Access Hollywood video).

What the media does is to hang up what are called “straw men”. Straw men are arguments an opponent can attack, but they are not the actual arguments the other candidate is putting forward. The person erecting the straw arguments hopes to create the impression that they are the actual arguments of his or her opponent.

So, Trump states that some of the illegal immigrants are murderers, rapists, drug dealers, etc., and that he will kick them out of the country. Hillary says Trump insults Hispanics because he calls them murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. Thus, Trump’s position appears to become a xenophobic one (or racist, though that term is misapplied) when in fact it isn’t. Same with his desire to enforce America’s immigration laws. Deportations happen all the time and have been for decades, and other countries deport illegals, too. It has nothing to do with the ethnicity or race or whatever of those being deported.

It’s the same with the election outcome. Let’s rephrase the election outcome question another way. When you pose it to yourself, help yourself by thinking about it without reference to Trump or Hillary:

Would you support an election outcome, even if no one had ever before contested an outcome, if the winner employed fraud to obtain that outcome?

Would you support an election outcome if you knew the votes had been miscounted?

Would you support an election outcome if the candidate achieved office unconstitutionally?

For example, suppose Ted Cruz had won his party’s nomination (forget whether you like or dislike him), but a person filed a lawsuit arguing Cruz was Canadian, not American. A day before election day, the Supreme Court rules Cruz is Canadian and does not meet the constitutional requirement to hold the office of president. It’s too late to take his name off the ballot, and Cruz wins the election anyway.

Do you support Cruz’s election anyway? Do you group yourself with those who think it cannot be allowed and must be opposed? Do you think the Democrat nominee would settle for the outcome for the sake of an alleged “time-honored, peaceful transition of power”? Should he? Or does he have the right, even the responsibility, to challenge the election outcome?

Whichever way you answered these questions, I hope you can see the inherent difficulty in a wildly broad brush stroke that eliminates any and all challenges to an election outcome.

Strike four against the puppet masters and their media minions.

Finally, is Trump’s reservation about endorsing any election outcome, based on his claim the process is rigged, without any merit?

In light of the massive number of hacked emails from Hillary, her campaign, and the Democratic National Committee that Wikileaks has provided, have facts not come forward which lend credence to both Trump’s claims and Bernie Sanders’ claims that the nominating and general election process is rigged?

I can barely stand Megyn Kelly, but last night she grilled Donna Brazile, a Democrat who appears on CNN, and Brazile stuttered and stammered through the interview, utterly refusing to answer who gave her the debate questions ahead of time and which she told the Clinton campaign she had. Other emails detail a synergy and a cooperation among Hillary, the Democrats, media elites, and media members to give Hillary an advantage and to disadvantage Trump. While these particular actions may not constitute fraud per se, they constitute a raw attempt to manipulate the outcome of an election. At the least, what’s going on is anti-democratic.

Strike five against the elitist reporting and commentating.

In my next post, I will review discussion on this morning’s (Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016) Morning Joe program which adds to the impression of an elite ruling class hellbent on imposing its will on the electorate.

Media Dishonesty Continues

The dishonest media barrage against Donald Trump and his bid for the presidency continues. The self-appointed monitors of righteousness continue to make a mountain out of the mole hill of locker room talk on a secret videotape. They follow the lead of Big Mother, the crone, Rotten Crooked Hillary, who should be singing from behind bars.

Unfortunately, too many voters can be duped. They will focus on sensationalism, pushed repeatedly by the media as if it amounted to anything, while the media ignores the substance of Hillary’s criminality and incompetence: vicious intimidation of sexual assault victims, reckless and criminal violation of the laws of handling classified information and both intelligence and presidential protocols, and causing, by reckless neglect, the deaths of an American ambassador and three Americans protecting him, and persistent, committed lying to the American public and a hiding of her corrupt relationships with greedy Wall Street.

Today MSNBC is running ticker tape “reports” that Trump’s “objectification of women” disqualifies him from becoming president. Really? Some bad language and objectification of women disqualify Trump in an election about Muslim terrorism, illegal immigration, massive job losses and personal and public debt, trade deals that facilitate job losses and loss of financial strength among common Americans while benefiting a few wealthy.

At least half the country objectifies men and women, and probably much more than that. And you can hear as filthy or filthier language at our deteriorating high schools.

Should women be objectified? No. Should we employ filthy language? No. But the sound and sight of Big Mother Hillary Clinton wagging her finger at Trump and everyone else to declare her self-righteous judgment is sickening enough to make one use such filthy language!

If that is the society and the country you want, Christian law replaced by Hillary’s profane social engineering law of fascist feminism, the entrenchment of special wealthy interests to the crushing of the common man and his loss of all self respect, and endless pandering to every minority she can find to the alteration of our genuine, long-held American values, then vote for the most corrupt candidate in American presidential history: Hillary Clinton.

Go Trump!

Trump Reveals the Hypocrites

I am so glad for the reality of Donald Trump! I am so glad for his advent onto the American political landscape! Nobody, or nothing, has revealed the corruption and rottenness, the cancer, that afflicts the American political system like Donald Trump and the establishment’s reaction to him.

Like moralizing imams, Crooked Hillary and her army of political pundits are rejoicing and screaming at the top of their lungs about Donald Trump’s taxes. I’m laughing. Let them screech and howl and wag their bony fingers at the Donald, hypocrites that they are. After all, if Donald Trump was able to pay zero taxes for the last two decades or so, and do so legally, then the problem isn’t Donald Trump. The problem is the tax system!

Crooked Hillary was a senator for, I don’t know, far too long. That makes it interesting to hear her moralize about paying a fair share of tax when her tenure was marked by not one whit of concern about or reform of the national tax scheme. The establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike, have allowed and supported such a scheme for decades, knowingly enabling the wealthy to escape sometimes any share of the tax burden. So to hear Hillary wail about the Donald, or the other moralizing imams, like Chuck Todd, knead up their righteousness and bark out their questions, can do little more than stimulate roaring laughter.

I can hear or see the headlines now in a big red and white banner or scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen repeatedly: “New questions about Trump’s zero tax payments.” “Breaking news: Trump hasn’t paid a dime of tax in 15 years.” That breaking news headline will run for several days, by the way, like it will just keep breaking. “Hillary demands Trump apologize to America for paying no taxes.”

Then the pundits will get critical analysts like, say, the Hillary campaign manager, or a spokesman from the Jeb! Bush campaign still stewing in bitter defeat, or Ted Cruz’s father, to comment on it all. It’s hilarious. No, it’s Hillaryous! Everyone will look stern and moral, imam-like, and finish with a dour pronouncement of incredulity that Trump has made this campaign so, what’s the word, evil!

Forget that the tax system was built and sustained to do just what Trump used it for and has been safeguarded for years by all the politicians from both parties!

And thank God for Hillary that she made so much money from the Clinton Foundation and from secret Wall Street speeches she is too ashamed to release the transcripts of that no amount of tax could make a dent in her influence peddling self-enrichment schemes!

It’s grand, I tell you, to hear liars decry others for lying. To hear cheaters decry others for cheating. To hear hatefaces decry others for hating.

Hateface Hillary and her moralizing imams – so glad to see and hear their hypocrisy in full bloom!

Conservative Newspapers Betray Themselves

Let’s examine the reasoning of conservative newspapers that have endorsed Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump the last week-and-a-half or so. The papers in question are the Dallas Morning News, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Arizona Republic. All three have a long history of endorsements for Republican presidential candidates. The Arizona Republic has never before endorsed a Democrat. This examination is based on a USA Today article that can be found at the web address below:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/arizona-paper-faces-death-threats-cancellations-after-clinton-endorsement/ar-BBwKJck?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=wispr

In the article, the newspapers, collectively, cited the following reasons for endorsing Hillary instead of Trump:

1. he is not conservative;

2. he has an “inability to control himself”;

3. he has a “long history of objectifying women”;

4. he lacks a presidential temperament;

5. he is “a clear and present danger to our country”;

6. he “plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best.”

Let’s take the first point and ask which of the two candidates is more conservative, and please remember that I am not agreeing with the Donald on all his positions, nor with any particular “conservative” position but only seeing whether the newspapers’ explanations make sense

Donald Trump wants to lower taxes; Hillary wants to raise them. Trump wants to build a stronger military; Hillary doesn’t. Trump wants immigrants and American citizens to abide by our country’s immigration laws and to suffer the consequences if they do not; Hillary wants to violate our immigration laws, probably with executive orders like her potential predecessor, and she doesn’t want illegals to suffer any consequences for breaking our immigration laws. Trump wants to improve the care for our veterans; Hillary does, too. Trump supports the development of new energy technologies but wants to use the existing resources we have to create or maintain jobs and establish energy independence; Hillary wants to get rid of existing energy resources, even if it means job losses and withdrawal from energy independence. Trump rejects climate change caused by man; Hillary accepts climate change caused by man. Trump wants to keep and secure citizens’ Second Amendment rights; Hillary wants to begin to modify those rights, if not ultimately remove most of them. Trump supports the right to life; Hillary fights for the right to slaughter babies, including the right to crush their skulls after they are partially born. Trump wants our military to be able to stand up to and defend against enemy acts, including firing at our boys and girls, playing chicken with them, boarding their vessels, and humiliating them by making them kneel in front of enemy soldiers. Hillary laughs and scoffs at that, claiming it would cause another war: Our weakness and humiliation are okay to her.

More could be said, but you get the point. Trump is, at the least, more conservative than Hillary and, conversely, Hillary is more liberal than Trump. On that basis, the newspapers should have endorsed Trump, not Hillary.

Let me skip to No. 3 and I’ll return to No. 2. Number 3 is the claim that Trump objectifies women. For some, an important proof of that is Hillary’s recent assertion that Trump told Alicia Machado of Venezuela that she was fat prior to her winning the 1996 Miss Universe pageant, it appears. Some accounts detailed the fat remark as specifically being “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping”. In an interview on Inside Edition in May, Machado herself said that Trump called her an “eating machine” and told her to lose weight before her win.

If Trump walks up to just any woman who happens to be overweight, and he begins to make remarks like that, then, yes, he is being intrusive and rude. However, Machado entered into a beauty contest in which looking your best is the goal. Coaches tell football players their playing weight is excessive or insufficient, that their playing habits stink or get the job done. It’s a coach’s responsibility to communicate those negatives, even harshly or angrily, to the players so the players will improve or lose their jobs. It was Trump’s responsibility to tell Machado what she looked like and how she could correct it. Seems like it worked. Machado won the 1996 crown.

Yet Hillary herself damned the women who claimed her husband had harassed or molested them. Hillary tried to destroy their lives, creating the so-called “War Room” to crush them. She or her mercenaries frequently intimidated, threatened, or possibly attacked those who accused or who aired their accusations. Here are a couple of articles to reference:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/02/25/the_trashing_of_bills_accusers_what_did_hillary_do_–_and_why_did_she_do_it_129787.html

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-04-02/news/9704020023_1_trailer-parks-unkempt-homes-manufactured-home-communities

So much for standing up for women, eh, Crooked Hillary!?

Presidential temperament is so vague, but if I take a stab at it, I’ll approach it from this direction: I appreciate Trump’s blunt honesty. I don’t care for Hillary’s well-oiled pretenses. It has been well-documented by former secret service agents, former military men, and former White House or other staffers what Hillary really behaves like where and when American citizens cannot see her. She is nothing short of haughty, arrogant, and vicious, but she hides that lack of presidential temperament. If you are cool with that, I can’t help you. If you’re a newspaper reporter, editor, or columnist, how can you accept that? Why would you take greater umbrage at a propensity for casual, off-the-cuff remarks, usually directed at people Trump believes have attacked or offended him, and which have little to no impact on governance, than Hillary’s angry venom towards those who work for her, towards those women whom her husband has sexually harassed and abused, and towards the people she hates and about whom she keeps a list of in her little black book?

Hillary has never demonstrated a presidential temperament but a mask. What we know about Hillary is that in the pressure cooker of the White House, her insecurities and latent anger undermine her equanimity and leave her seething, imbalanced, and often out-of-control.

Presumably, the high-sounding notion that Trump presents a “clear and present danger” is based upon his temperament, and that’s been answered. I’ll just add that if Trump’s temperament was out of whack, he could not have built the multi-billion dollar business he had.

Ask yourself, “Whose temperament has led to criminal behavior, has exposed our country to cyberhacking and loss of secrets, and has led to the unnecessary deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and the subsequent lies about what happened to their survivors?”

Finally, let’s address the claim that Trump plays on fear, using racism, xenophobia, and misogyny to exploit an electoral advantage.

Trump wants to deport illegal aliens, prevent the flow of illegal aliens and illegal drugs across our borders by building a wall, and end the drain of our public treasury to give benefits to illegals. Are any of those goals illegal? In fact, don’t Trump’s proposals merely enforce our existing laws and provide the means to accomplish that, regardless of where the illegals are from? Every country in the world has immigration laws, and most have barbed wire fences or walls and checkpoints along their borders. So how can proponents of border control be racist, xenophobic, or misogynistic in any way? Aren’t Republicans and conservatives the upholders of the Constitution, in whose Article 1, Section 8 lies the genesis of immigration law and the enforcement of it?

Trump’s comments on a few, particular women may have been out of bounds or over the top, but his family and professional history exhibit a strong appreciation of and for women: he employs more women in the upper echelon of his companies than men, he pays women in his company as much as or more than men (perhaps because of better performance?); thus, women enjoy the same opportunities for advancement as men in a Trump company; he has provided a safe, pleasant, stimulating environment for his employees, and his female employees in particular view him as their champion; he deeply cares about his wife and his daughters.

Trump routinely values women highly, and he owns a long, long track record that manifests he has treated them with respect and has honored their meritorious business accomplishments. That’s not a misogynist.

On the other hand, it can easily be argued that Hillary married a misogynist, that she aided and abetted his acts of misogyny, and that she engaged in misogyny when she tried to crush her husband’s accusers, her fellow women.

Look, each citizen has to vote his or her conscience. If you prefer one candidate’s resumé over another’s, one’s ideas over another’s, or just like one candidate more than another, that’s fine.

News organs, however, claim to have examined the facts and to have made sense of them and then held them up to a standard they claimed guided them to their conclusion. In that light, the newspapers cited above erred and failed.

Which of the candidates is more conservative? Trump.

Though each of their arenas of development has differed, which of the candidates has demonstrated greater success and efficiency? Trump.

Which of the two candidates has actually been a chief executive? Trump.

Which candidate brings business and financial expertise to the table? Trump.

Which candidate brings the most experience in successful negotiations? To be fair, we must break this down. Trump earns the most consideration for experience in successful negotiations; Hillary’s experiences in negotiation are much closer to what a president ‘s would be, and that gives her the edge there.

Who has the more presidential temperament and ability to control himself/herself? Trump. The behind the scenes accounts of Trump’s behavior are vastly more favorable, even if his public persona appears a bit harsh or jagged: calm, patient, listening, learning, a quick study – all adjectives used to describe the Donald.

The under-the-mask descriptions of Hillary are much less than flattering, and they paint a picture of an anxious, insecure, volatile, secretive, take-no-prisoners person immersed in self-absorption and enrichment and willing to punish anyone she perceives crosses her.

Your choice, but let’s not pretend that Hillary is the “better” or “more “qualified” or “conservative” candidate.

Shame on the shameless conservative newspapers! They’d rather have an establishment candidate than one that represents American people and puts America first.

Trump Wins First Presidential Debate

Donald Trump won Monday’s presidential debate against libertine Hillary Clinton with his characteristic blunt spirit of America first, business savvy, and common sense, and he did so despite facing tougher, tilted questions designed to place him in a negative light and Hillary in a glow.

While Hillary’s sophistry appealed to conventional debate graders – we are all so used to seeing and accepting the masks politicians ties around their characters – she lost because her plans amount to a continued crippling of America.

In short, Trump generated more substance if not more details. Here are the concrete reasons – not stylistic nor conventional debate scoring points – that Trump demonstrated:

1. Resume: Trump’s successes vs. Hillary’s “bad experiences”. Once again, the Donald enumerated his business successes in building a multi-billion dollar empire and doing so by coming in under budget and ahead of time on various construction projects. Meanwhile, he pointed out Hillary’s resume of economic incompetence: her and her party’s standing by in the Senate as jobs fled the so-called Rust Belt, an area whose workers had placed their blind faith in Hillary and other Democrat leaders even as empty, decaying homes and factories littered the landscape of the Midwest, Mid Atlantic, and Southern states, killing the spirit of urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods of whites and minorities; failure not only to improve or deter the stagnation and suffering in Americans’ economic life, including wage stagnation, but to actually provide her support for trade deals and economic policies that ripped jobs out of the hands of Americans and shoveled them overseas to the non-Americans she loves and the few she favors, crushing working Americans.

It’s simple to ask: which candidate demonstrated at the debate that he or she has the proven track record of financial management and efficient productivity? The answer is simple, too: Donald Trump.

2. National Security: Which candidate exuded a spirit of America first? Hillary gobbledygooked about her “plans” and the need to follow treaties contracted more than half a century ago and make our allies feel secure in their relationship to us, even though we are footing the bill to protect them. She spouted a platitude about nuclear nonproliferation, even though nonproliferation has been a failure. Trump clearly stated – again – that he will destroy ISIS and he will not take guff from Iran. He’s a fighter. Hillary made fun of his desire to protect our ships and our men from being threatened, boarded, captured, and made to kneel to their captors. Trump reiterated that his plan was to protect and defend America. Which is the posture of a commander-in-chief? He demands that our allies do their fair share. Isn’t that the posture of a leader who places our interests first?

We all understand that one must be careful acting in the international arena. Within that context, however, do we act with courage or do we act with submission. You have seen what has happened during the Obama administration. Hillary wants to continue his legacy.

And Hillary deliberately exposed our country’s secrets to our enemies, though she tried to downplay it last night as only “a mistake”. Can we afford mistakes like that? Is that a sign of competence or incompetence? Good judgment or bad judgment?

Add in Trump’s brilliant line he delivered last night about the cyber war being waged successfully against the United States during the Obama-Hillary time: “We’ve lost control!”

Would you rather have Trump looking out for our boys and our security or Hillary? The answer that comes out of the debate is clear: Trump.

Hillary gave us no reason to trust her on national security and kept telling us to read the lawyerly fine print in her plans. That’s not bringing substance to the debate.

3. Race Relations: Although I think Trump has had a good message to the black community, he did not articulate it as well as he could have last night. In my opinion, he should have emphasized and detailed the economic relief and opportunity he wants to bring to everyone, including blacks. Economic strength solves a lot of issues. The financial suffering and lack of opportunity blacks have undergone spurs much of the anger and violence that afflicts their communities and the extremely difficult situations in which police officers find themselves. Ironically, the trade and immigration policies Hillary has been supporting actually fuel that misery. Her proposal to “retrain” police officers is itself prejudiced and discriminatory, and it utterly fails to address the multi-sided perspective needed to sort out and improve race relations.

Unfortunately, Trump did not explicitly reiterate all the things he said during the economic segment of the debate when the issue turned to race: he will use the power of tariffs against American companies that abandon America and Americans to prevent jobs from leaving and to bring jobs back, and he will spur job creation through tax reform that will entice investors to bring back more than $2 trillion dollars they have stashed overseas. Those things are not merely “trickle down” as Hillary calumniated. They are proposals that give rogue American companies the financial push they need to act as if they had some civic spirit, even if they don’t.

The Moderator’s Questions

If anyone watched the MSNBC feed, as I did, they saw moderator Lester Holt before the debate: nervous, running out of air, gulping, clipping off words. He’s NBC’s national news anchor. Could it be that he felt the weight of the bias his questions were about to evince?

Holt did not ask Hillary any tough questions. Did not challenge her record. And only once did he mention the emails that violated our national security protocols, as if they were nothing. Yet he asked Trump about Obama’s “birther” issue, a sidetrack that has no practical impact on the policies in question to improve our country’s financial and military position. Who cares whether Trump believes Obama was born in this country? Some leaders believe in UFOs, the Illuminati, no God, God, etc., questions that are likely to have far more impact than what a person believes about Obama’s birth. Same with questions about Trump’s businesses and remarks about a woman from decades ago.

Of course, Holt tied the birther issue to race, though there is no connection. Whether a presidential candidate was born in the U.S. isn’t a racial question, it’s a question of fact that relates to constitutional law. Trump also asked about Ted Cruz’s birth in Canada, and when that came up, I heard pundits, like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’ Donnell, say they had spoken to experts who said it was a legitimate issue. The contexts of the Obama and Cruz birth questions were not the same; however, Obama himself exacerbated the birther issue by refusing for quite some time to produce his birth certificate to put the matter to rest.

Meanwhile, not a peep about Hillary’s secret, expensive speeches to Wall Street, which should have come up during the economic segment, especially when she suggested Trump was favoring the rich. Not a peep about her continuing lie about what she told the relatives of the honorable Benghazi Americans she got killed in Libya. Not a peep about her lie about coming under fire at a European airport. The list goes on. Trump stated recently that he believed Obama was born in America. But Hillary has never admitted nor apologized for her lies. Holt, and NBC, want to shape the election by the framework and details they, and their rabid pundits before and after the debate, want to funnel your vision through.

One candidate demonstrated passion and honesty last night by body language, facial expression, and articulation. Donald Trump.

Viewers saw the same old slick, veteran dissembler Hillary has refined herself into being, hiding behind a pastiche of “plans” and pre-packaged catch phrases.

And viewers saw the same establishment media, rigging the system, tilting the questions, and trying to get a toehold in viewers’ minds by applying their “conventional wisdom” onto an unconventional candidate, Donald Trump.

Govern yourselves accordingly.

The Racial Chasm

The chasm between white and black views of racism widens. The perspectives from which Americans are viewing the drama playing out between police officers and some members of the black community on city streets and in neighborhoods move further away from each other. Each side looks at the spectacle from a different frame of mind, and the intellectual editing produces divergent understandings and feelings.

The politician Hillary Clinton, whose currency of falsehood and deception anchored in her selfish interests and self-absorption, and the profoundly superficial media that craves explosive stories and moralizations, exacerbate the conflict with their pious platitudes, race-baiting, and incendiary reporting and commentary.

What is happening in Charlotte, North Carolina, stands out as a perfect example. The cacophonous and premature protests drown out reason and sober investigation. The story about the protests eclipses the story of a police shooting. Without any investigatory results, the screecher Hillary Clinton pours flames on the crowds’ fires and declares that the shootings of black people are intolerable. She wants to appear the moral judge, even as she issues a verdict before all the facts are known. Will she retract her statements for all the cases about which she is wrong?

What Clinton does and says compromises the effort to create a society and a body politic not merely free of racism but one of citizens who hold and behave toward each other with genuine goodwill and equity.

That’s where some of the problem lies. It lies in the phraseology and the imagery often used. Who wants to object to the “shootings” or the “killings of black people”? I don’t. Does the phrase not seem to imply that police officers drive around looking for black people to pick off? Yes, phrased in that way, I object and refuse to tolerate the shootings or killings of black people, walking by the street, getting out of their cars to walk up the path to the front doors of their homes, shopping, getting an ice cream cone at the drive-through window of Dairy Queen, strolling through the park, etc. In fact, I object to and will not tolerate the shootings or killings of anyone engaged in such activities.

Let’s change the phrasing. Should we tolerate those instances in which police shoot people engaged in criminal activity, particularly violent criminal activity, when they are black? When a person attacks a police officer, leaves, and returns to attack him again, and that person happens to be black, does the police officer have the right and the duty to shoot him? When the police ask a citizen to exit his vehicle with his hands in the air or clasped behind his head, and instead he exits his vehicle with his fist wrapped around a gun, does the police officer have the right and the duty to shoot him, whether he is black or not?

Is not the blame for the situations just described squarely on the shoulders of the person who made the decision to attack or threaten to attack?

Sometimes, perhaps many times, a predisposition to ascribe police actions to racism itself produces racism in the person who feels that way. The converse remains true, too. White people often hold an emotional view of black people that effects and confirms the violent characteristics they just “know” exist in “those people”, and nature’s Oedipus effect generates the self-fulfilling prophecy to which such people clung.

This may have been the principle that operated in the case of a South Carolina state trooper in 2014 who shot a 35-year-old man, who was black, as the man complied with the officer’s command to get his license, and in the case of a deputy in North Charleston who shot and killed a black man as the black man ran away from him during a traffic stop. The former was arrested and charged with what appears to be the most serious form of aggravated battery under South Carolina law (the victim recovered, and the charge carries a maximum 20-year sentence upon conviction). The latter was arrested and charged with murder.

In spite of appearances, every case should be soberly and fully investigated. Every case should be soberly and equitably prosecuted, without passion or prejudice. The process and the verdict should conform to law, and the law should conform, in my opinion as best as possible, to a higher integrity. The presumption is innocence, whether the defendant is black, a police officer, oriental, Middle Eastern, a Ku Klux Klanner, a black panther, a creepy looking fellow, a person with a disreputable or disagreeable personality, a Muslim, a communist, rich, poor, or somewhere in between, etc.

We need – all of us – to live up to the standards embedded in our Declaration and in our Constitution, standards we claim to cherish. We may need to discover some synthesis or refinement of those moral and legal principles that most everyone can accept and support and live with; not a perfect synthesis, but an acceptable and supportable one that contains shared ideals. Then, we have to start living those standards in our hearts, in our minds, with our tongues, and with our actions.

If the protests are meant to push for a lively, open, and honest debate from all sides about racial attitudes, let them be kept peaceful, and let us heed the protests and get to work. If the protests are little more than police baiting or an opportunity to engage in or support criminal activity, then conflict will ensue and discussion be derailed. In the latter case, the chasm would only grow.

Both sides, or the many sides, have the obligation to come to the table and listen. Both have truths to convey and both have illusions to dispel. While I reject the notion of “white privilege”, I do accept the notion that more whites have enjoyed a more advantageous position in American social, political, legal, and economic structures and more blacks a less advantageous one.

I would be classified as “white” (I am half Hispanic and half Celtic), so I will say this: It is incumbent in a special sense for we whites not to blow this opportunity to help bridge the racial divide and heal this nation’s wounds. We’ve been patching them up for too long. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., appealed to white people through our faith, the Western faith, of Christianity and our Western philosophy of the Greeks and Romans via the Renaissance with great power and eloquence. We rewarded him with disdain, twisted our own faith to accommodate our biases and bigotries, and we attempted to discredit Dr. King by labeling him a communist and an adulterer.

It makes no difference whether he was or wasn’t. If you can find a perfect man outside of Jesus Christ (and some would disagree with me there), please let me know. We have accepted or allowed plenty of blemished leaders, even among our Founding Fathers. The question is whether Dr. King spoke truth and love and reason. Did he have America’s best interests at heart? He did, and we foolishly and mulishly rejected his pleadings for peace, equality, and unity.

In spite of our foolishness and mulishness, we made progress. We elected a black president. More blacks than ever are involved in political bodies across the nation and nationally and in our economic, legal, and social structures. While this is good, some stress too much the quantity of blacks involved or black involvement. What has really been missing is the quality of our civic life. Races will relate well and equality be achieved when hearts are right and goodwill is expressed routinely. When that happens, the effects will be more profound and longer lasting.