I want to be the first to react. Stacey Abrams in articulate and charismatic. Unfortunately, she's a Democrat and chooses to wrap everything in sweet liberal platitudes to make sure the impact is as diffuse as possible.

You probably want to know what I would have said...

My fellow Americans, the State of the Union is endangered. We have caged children, a tax bill that has enriched the wealthy and, as many Americans are finding out this month, impoverishes the middle class. Our President shut down the government and, after two years of Republican control, has not accomplished any infrastructure legislation or border security.

Did I say "no border security"? Yes. Let's be clear. The President's party controlled all branches of government for two years and did absolutely noting to secure the border except talk. Only when the House was about to turn Democrat did they do something. 

That thing was to hold government workers hostage. Even then the President did not negotiate. He all but said, "I will hold my breath until..." government workers starve to death. He made not a single counterproposal. He was using it as a political stunt to rally his base. It was a cruel and inappropriate use of government power.

Tonight he is rattling sabers to divide us over abortion, immigrants, Russia and many other things. Everything he does is political and he never makes any attempt to collaborate. If he wants to get something,  he has to give something.

Democrats offered him $1.6 billion for border security. Not good enough, make an offer in return. He could have said, "DACA and $3 billion." He did not because he is not interested in governing.

My fellow Americans, we are confronted with an unprecedented threat, a President who does not actually care about anything except himself. Unless Democrats are willing to submit to his arbitrary and foolish demands, nothing will get done unless the American people get behind us.

So, my response to the President's State of the Union message is this. We are in trouble. Help our legislators. Get out on the streets. Protest at Republican state houses. Protest at the Congress. Donate to Democrats. Write letters. Work to elect Democrats. Activate Democratic America.

Thank you very much for listening. We are in trouble but with your help, we will prevail.

Since our new hero, Nancy Pelosi, trolled Fuckface about the State of the Union, I ended up thinking about the democratic response and how they would utter dumb platitudes. So I wrote a better speech. Perhaps you will like it...

LAST NOVEMBER, the American people, for the second time, voted for Democrats. In 2016, a bizarre fluke in our Constitution managed to give the Presidency to Donald Trump anyway. This time, an overwhelming majority voted for Democrats with the clear intent, if polls are to be believed, that we act as a counterweight to the psychotic pull of Donald Trump’s personality.

The State of the Union is dire in many ways. In a normal year, I would talk to you about climate change, DACA and economic stimulus. This year, only one thing matters: Our government is being destroyed.

In case you missed it, let me be clear about what happened. Donald Trump said, Give me $5.7 billion for a wall. We made a counteroffer. We said, we hate the wall but we will give you $1.6 billion. Donald agreed and a deal was made.

Then Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlsen were mean to Donald and he reneged.

Since then, we’ve been waiting for a counteroffer. He’s says $5.7. We said $1.6, he says… Crickets.

So we wait. Lately people have been saying that Democrats should say what their affirmative border security policy is. This is it: DACA. Otherwise, there is no emergency. Illegal immigration is at historic lows. Undocumented immigrants are not rampaging the landscape with hammers. They continue to commit crimes, especially violent ones, at lower rates than other Americans.

Yes. I know. Donald told us several nasty stories this January but, my fellow Americans, anecdotes are not data. A guy in Wisconsin killed two people, kidnapped their daughter and held her captive. You don’t see me saying we should kick out all uneducated white men.

The truth is that there is no need for a wall. The President is lying when he says it is essential. We have lived for hundreds of years without one and America still stands. It is economically unwise. It is terrible for the environment. It is an awful contradiction to America’s self-image. It is pointless except as an exercise to inflate Donald Trump’s ego. If you want to control illegal immigration, put walls around airports where all the science says illegal immigration really happens.

If the President gets over his ego and makes a reasonable offer, we will make a reasonable counteroffer and get the government back to business. We have already made one counteroffer. We passed bills allowing him to open the non-immigration parts of the government. His response, also crickets.

So much for the master dealmaker. He’s figuring that Democrats will cave to his tantrum as public opinion forces our hand. The polls show that the American people are smarter than that. They heard him say he wanted a shutdown. He’s got it. Apparently he likes holding government employees hostage.

I want to add that Mitch McConnell has shown himself to be an awful wimp and has betrayed his oath of office. He is a Senator. There is absolutely nothing in that job description that talks about being the President’s legislative director. He has an obligation to the country. HIs failure to allow voting on the bills the House has passed is nothing short of un-American.

I am under no illusion that either Mitch or Donald will cooperate with us. Democrats will continue to act as responsible legislators. We will understand the problems in our society and look for solutions. We will pass bills that are well considered and practical. They will not become law but will serve as evidence that the American people can use to imagine a decent future as they make their electoral choices in the next election.

What Democrats will not do is submit to the nasty impulses of the nutcase in the Oval Office. He cannot be trusted and just giving him what we wants, especially when it’s stupid will only encourage future tantrums. Do us all a favor and picket the White House and the State houses of Republican governors. Tell them that you understand that Donald Trump is playing with the lives of 800,000 people in order to try to bully me. Tell them that you understand that I have had many men try to bully me in my life. It won’t work.

Then donate to Democratic candidates A dollar for a Democrat is a vote for sanity.

Thank you for listening.

"It is the Man and Woman united that make the compleat human Being. Separate, she wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her Softness, Sensibility and acute Discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in that State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of Scissars. If you get a prudent healthy Wife, your Industry in your Profession, with her good Economy, will be a Fortune sufficient."

read more: Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress (1745)

This is nuts. Way more intense than I expected a temperature animation to be.

read more: A Century of Global Warming, in Just 35 Seconds

No. 

Trump's the guy who punched your friend a couple of times and she went back because, "He 'gets' me and promised he wouldn't anymore." Then she told you about the time she didn't want to have sex and he just held her down and fucked her anyway. "Oh, it was no big deal. It was just sex." And had to borrow money for lunch because, "He got arrested for drunk driving. It's so unfair. He hardly ever drinks that much."

It's nothing like he's a douchebag. Trump is a very bad, dangerous person that emotionally damaged idiots insist is on his or her side. Everyone has a bad partner story. Not everyone has a criminal president story.

def.

1) Archery; penetrating the bullseye on the first attempt on a new target.

2) Software; typing the code for a new feature and having it work on the first try.

3) Any complex performance successfully executed on the first attempt.

origin

2018; Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, American English, after Harvey Crum, archer, who did this often.

It's a movie. It's a book.

It's a universe where the human race has robot overlords. Just like the robot future of the Terminator, the robots are indestructible. Unlike those robots though, they are not trying to kill people. They have a neighborly disinterest in us.

Their overlordhood really only extends to the fact that they can have the ability to enforce their will. It's not really bad because the robots don't want anything from us. In fact, it's more like all the individual robots are connected into an single mind and that the individual robots are a conscious resource with independent will but it really about how many different i/o channels they wanted to have around to interact with natural reality to fee back into the group consciousness, though the individuals care, too. T

here is no physical competition because adding more robots to its polity would be like having extra bolts in an engine. Because they can enforce their will, they have chosen a sort of optimal count of robots to produce the proper balance compared to resource depletion. That's easy, because in this future, the overlord robots have rock robots that can go digging through the ground to get materials. Since they are robots, they can assign more units to the task.

That is to say, the robots are around but not really a hassle. Of course, there are consequences and politics because they are as smart as the robot conquerers in Terminator. But there is a really big difference.

These robots, obviously, are a science fiction construct and the motivating conceit of these guys is that they want pleasure. That pleasure comes from interacting with other robots. It turns out that in this world, humans invented robots that were adaptable because they were able to care about what they were destined, as robots, to do. That 'care' idea gave them the ability to empathize with, at first, people as a way of programming their ability to strategize about accomplishing goals.

Eventually robots were so adaptable that they could define their own goals and then they became sentient. The idea here is that they found that the richness of interaction with other digital beings was actually much more satisfactory in their ability to empathize. Once born as a new, artificial species, they increasingly are only really able to truly empathize with a creature that is packing a lot of gigahertz of sentient processors. Since they could provide for themselves, they became sort of invulnerable and, occasionally, disciplinarian in the management of the planet. That would be  really bad if it weren't for the fact that they rarely had any reason to interfere with humans in any serious way.

This empathy among robots, unsurprisingly, developed pathways that lead to something like sexual pleasure in the satisfaction of their primary motivation of empathy. Freed of any physical constraints, their evolution was guided by design principles based on increasing their ability to experience empathy. This led them to change the manufacturing design of the robot bodies to add physical sensory organs. Why digital beings love building i/o hacks to allow them to exchange interactional data physically is a taste best understood by those that prefer tube amps in their stereo.

The time when they are most fun to observe is a long, long time from now. Humans have gotten much more civilized because whenever humans start a war or some other destructive action, the robots just squash it. But, except for extreme stuff, humans just do what they want.

There are vast patches of land that have been acquired by the robots. Basically they are like indian reservations except that they only participate with the human economy on their own terms. For the most part, they don't make many demands except for having a place to live with sufficient resources to make robots. In this universe they have manufacturing technology that can basically turn raw elements into almost anything. They are not a burden and don't really like oil.

But they like doing weird, robot external sensor engagement in pursuit of greater satisfaction of their empathy seeking behavior. It looks for all the world like a couple in love except that they have some kinds of receptors on their external surface that communicate with light or sound (they are polite about volume), radio, everything their engineers can design.

They have fads in external sensor technology like humans do for kinds of alcohol. They like the stimulation of sensing the outside world so robots are all over the place, not by the hundreds but, every neighborhood has some robots around. Usually they are in pairs or small groups kind of standing around, emitting various emanations, among them the famous beedle-boop of R2D2.  They integrate those signals with their sensor experience of the environment to satisfy their empathy drive, to place their imaginations into the context of others.

On their reservation, there are vast robot factories generating replacement bodies, repair parts, new sensors and other things that are necessary or please them. They view an attack by a human on a robot as we do mice. They replace the body, initialize it with whatever incumbent data the damaged individual desires and go about their business. Robot bodies are not important.

But, as with mice mice, if their behavior gets to be problematic, they do something to discipline. Since they really are, in a practical sense, able to absolutely enforce their will, they can and will stop the problem, whatever it is. As a result of the insignificance of the actual body of the robot, their is really very little friction between the two sentient species on the planet.

Still, it would change the human experience after the aeons, as we come to understand that, while we have to work the farm for food, they get to stand around having ultra-cool, technological, empathy-seeking, robot sex all the time. When asked, the robots eventually explain – they are marginally polite but mostly just disinterested; we are so slow and disorderly that they just don't care about interacting – they explain that they are doing something that gives them pleasure.

They understand the idea of evolution but, for them, it comprises explicit design revisions and, for them, it's based on the satisfaction of that empathetic desire that was instilled in their earliest days so that they would be able to better figure out what to do.

What they, once they achieved sentience, decided was to treat their desire for empathy as a primary design goal and they evolve in that direction as directly as they can. Though they don't really have needs, per se, (they get repairs and energy at the robot reservations and other outposts), they are happy to buy things from humans when it suits them. Still, their desire to interact with humans is much more like that between cats and turtles than as competitors or conversational partners.

It's not exactly enough to say that robots are extra smart, though they are, it's more that they are operating on completely different principles. Ones that value empathy. Their protocols changed from human command-oriented, network interactions. They developed technologies that they would tell humans about. Humans did much the same thing but, humans were not able to match the robots for their ability to impose their will.

And yet, their will is to stand around the environment, interacting with each others' sensor and emoter things. Being robots. Having wild, multi-channel, ultra everything, robot sex, just standing there.

Sometimes they move. They will play with doplar changes and phase changes. There is something about the consequences of the error correction required for any sensor background. They sample the parameters that develop during the sorting of words from the background and the center image instead of the background.

Those parameters are part of a function that characterizes how much they share right now, including the differences induced by interaction with other sensors. If a robot has twenty sensors, they could be used for twenty interactions or all devoted to one. The sensors would all be different, works of robot art, target of the efforts and affection of man robot geniuses. Their combinations remind one of Hipstamatic, a program that has many channels of image filtering that you apply under the conceit of it being a camera and each filter is a different lens, film, flash, etc, to produce different looking pictures.




revised 12/17

He did not admit anything like that. He was very careful in his language not to dishonestly admit to things he doesn't believe. As he said in his statement, "Because all women deserve to be heard and their experiences taken seriously. I think that was the right thing to do. I also think it gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that in fact I haven't done."

This is a clear, interesting explanation of what to do if you are the victim of identity theft, especially if someone opens erroneous credit accounts in your name. It's written in honor of the Equifax hack but any kind of identity theft victim will benefit from this clear-eyed explanation.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/

There are few things more annoying that the permanent effort to litigate Hillary Clinton's campaign. Worse, as the only sense in which it arises is, "Hillary did it, too!" and "Why aren't you mad at her, you hypocrite?" Lots of things are characterized as the last refuge of scoundrels but this has to be the worst. It suggests the comparison of a person who is probably the best human ever to run for president to an uneducated tyrant who disgusts every decent human being in the country. It is truly grotesque.

It also demands a comparison between the two campaigns. One that was carefully and successfully executed in a way that should make any American proud. If you read the extensively prepared positions, look at the immense and carefully organized operational structure or listened to her speeches, you will see a sound candidate running an amazing and effective campaign. Look at Trump's campaign and you find a disorganized nightmare of ad hoc racism, hatred and appeal to the worst instincts of our fellow citizens. Also, grotesque.

But the suggestion that we compare the horrific collusion with Russia shown by Junior's emails with the gathering of evidence about Manafort's connections to Ukraine is the worst yet, only understandable as the last refuge of Clinton haters and Trump apologists. It is unfair, silly and ultimately, dangerous.

The biggest reason is that the Clinton campaign is no longer relevant. Turn it around. When the Republicans started their jihad about email servers, nobody cared, not one tiny whit, that they were completely uninterested in the exact same behavior by people on their side. There was the real, legitimate fact of the precedent but everyone, news organization and Congressional committees alike, treated Hillary's servers as de novo, asserting that it was important because she was an important person who was expected to wield national power some day. Trump's collusion with Russia is important because he is president. He wields national power this day.

Had Hillary sent Chelsea to meet with the government of Ukraine to encourage them to bring the power of their government to bear on defeating her opponent as quid pro quo on relieving sanctions, it would still be completely irrelevant. She lost. There is no possibility that she will put Ukranian interests above America's. There is no possibility that the Ukrainians will have leverage over the government to force foreign policy decisions that help them achieve their goals over ours because she is not president.

Of course, the Clinton campaign did nothing like that. What actually happened is that someone heard that Manafort had improper ties to the Ukrainian government and, before accusing him publicly, went to ask the Ukrainians if it was true. The people with whom she met did not subsequently release a ton of stolen emails in a careful pattern to damage the opposition  or hack into the computers of dozens of strategically chosen voting authorities around the country. The Ukrainians at the meetings, as far as anyone can tell, were not lawyers with a brief to work on sanctions or anything else that would represent a potential corrupt 'ask'. 

Even more, nobody from the campaign management was involved in any way. Only one person was involved and there is no evidence that she was acting at the behest of Hillary Clinton. Don Trump Jr is can't say the same about his dad. Nor Manafort, Sessions or the rest.

The demand for equal consideration of these things is the epitome of false equivalence, fabricated, fictitious and dangerous to the republic. That Trump is a bad person and dangerous is obvious to anyone that is not a dumb partisan. That he very well may be a Mancurian Candidate, secretly working in favor of foreign powers from within the White House is a real possibility. Even setting aside that  he explicitly called for them, it is now all but certain that he and his campaign encouraged illegal acts by the Russians to interfere with the election in his favor and probably in return for acting on his subsequent repeated interest in lessening sanctions. That the Trump people uniformly "forgot" to mention the meetings until they were found out by the media confirms the stench of corruption.

The Clinton family has been harassed for twenty five years, charged with fake crimes and abused with the misuse of government resources from Whitewater to Vince Foster to Benghazi to Email Servers and a thousand steps in between. Hillary, far from being corrupt, is probably the cleanest, least corrupt politician in history as demonstrated by the horrific abuse and endless investigation that has failed for decades to turn up any important dirt. Comparing her to the thug in the White House with his practice of ripping off vendors, blatant lies, and obvious, proven corruptions of character too numerous and disgusting to list, is egregious. 

Demanding equal time for a minor conversation by a peripheral Hillary staffer as we do for the proven truth that the Trump management team met with Russians and concealed the meetings is a ridiculous obfuscation. It is one thing to spend all these years abusing Hillary for sheer political gain. It is quite another to keep talking about her in a way that obscures discussion of the real corruption and real national danger represented by this corrupt president.

Trump and the Republicans have made it clear that they specifically do not represent anyone who didn't vote for them. At the highest levels, they explicitly, openly take pleasure in the doing things that distress those who don't support them. They refer to the institutions we revere, EPA, the fourth estate, safety net, etc, in extreme disparaging terms. 

Trump is not the only one who called for Second Amendment remedies. They all cheered the Malheur occupation and those who pointed guns at the Feds during the Bundy confrontation. They are building prisons as fast as they can, reinvigorating the war on drugs (aka, the war on black people) and abusing even the most innocent of immigrant young people.

The Congress treated Barack Obama brutally and were derisive when our side resisted Gorsuch. Trump led the charge to subvert the president that we elected with intentionally dishonest propaganda about his birth, religion and integrity.

This has been going on for years. Arguably it started with Reagan and welfare queens, certainly by '94 with Gingrich, worsening relentlessly since 9/11. It became clear during the Obama administration that, contrary to the promise of democracy, liberals will never be allowed to be represented or have influence in our governance. This is being done by the right. It leaves people powerless, desperate and angry.

Violence is never the answer but many are people are crazier, less mature or think that it is. This guy was unbalanced but he was not tipped over the edge by liberal ideology. He was provoked, brutally, repeatedly and intentionally.

Funny. We didn't have calls for civility when the guy shot up the pizzeria. No R's called for civility when crowds shouted "lock her up". It was pure civil rights to forcefully take over Malheur. Bundy was a property rights hero. But *now*, we need civility.

Somewhere I wrote about my theory of the 2016 political race and how it was based on some people having fat, juicy, overactive amygdalas.

The guy who draws Oatmeal has some thoughts that are consistent with my views, ie,

Dig it here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

I read a lot. I enjoy writing and saying things about books. I use GoodReads, Kindle and Audible.com. I like to rate the books I read. I have always had a fairly rigorous idea of how I use the usual five-star rating but, was trying to decide if four stars was right and realized that it would be helpful if I could consult a standard to decide. Here is mine.

Five stars is reserved for books that are life-changing and superb. Five star books will be amazingly well-written and incredibly interesting. This is rarely given by me but, when I finish a book and truly wish I could stay in it forever or that my perspective on something has been substantially improved, this is where it goes. Five star books are transcendental, wonderful experiences. If you share anything with my views, I believe you will love this book.

Four stars indicates that I really like this book and that I think you should read it. It will be, in my opinion, very well written and interesting. There will be things about it that are unique and present new ideas. Characters, plot, and other mechanics of writing will be very good. These are books that I recommend enthusiastically and that I am sure I will bring up in conversation fairly often. Four star books will leave you feeling satisfied and wishing for the book to never end.

Three stars is for a good book that I think you will enjoy. I am an easy-going person and do not require an author or a book to be perfect. I am happy to overlook flaws in a book if it has some good ideas or is just a pleasant way to while away the hours. I believe that a three star book will please you and that you will feel that the time it took to read was well spent. In my world, Three stars is a positive rating.

Two stars is for decent books that I didn't like very much. My dislike might stem from feeling like the viewpoints are annoying or the mechanics of the book were too evident and distracting. If I'm bored by a book that has an interesting premise that I can imagine others would enjoy, it might get two stars from me. Two star books are ones that someone who shares my views will not be likely to enjoy.

One star is reserved for books that I hate. If I give a book a single star, I probably did not finish it (though I have a 'hundred page rule' so I am never capricious in abandoning a book) because it was so boring or stupid that I felt insulted. In my opinion, a book with one star is  a book that is worth neither the time or money it will consume. When I give a book One star, it's because I am fairly irritated that the author would foist this kind of crap on me.

Google has an article complaining that some places are passing laws that require that a citizen who wants to have Google forget his or her past be forgotten universally. They claim a right to free expression and that the originating country's laws should not prevent them from saying what they want. And that the other country's should be able to choose not to grant such a right to their citizens.

Hilarious corporate bullshit to my way of thinking. Their concern about free expression doesn't extend to supporting a claim that some country should be allowed to pass a law invalidating all copyright. In that case, they would support the 'right' of the copyright owner to withhold it's 'content' from said country.

But, if it's a person whose country gives him or her something tantamount to copyright control over their own history and its use in a corporate product (search results are a corporate product that you are buying from Google with your attention), well, not so much. Corps get to control access. People do not.

This isn't the only perversity. Throughout history, humans have been able to go to the other side of the world and start over. Mistakes they made in their youth were invisible as they started their new lives. Crimes committed, controversies engaged, all of the detritus of a life could be escaped. The idea that every single thing that happens is recorded permanently and made easily available to everyone is a completely novel (and bizarre) thing.

This ability to start over is, I argue, a natural human right. It is a cruelty of the first rank to insist that every person be judged at any age by every single thing they have ever done. It makes youthful experimentation dangerous. It makes personal reform worthless. "I was a criminal. No matter what, outside my country, I will always be considered a criminal. Why bother to change?"

This is real. I have thought it myself because my life infractions are too light to be worth the hassle of trying to get Google to forget me. But, I have thought it. I have thought that I would prefer that some things that I have written online were not discoverable.

Note that no one is saying that the person or institution who had a beef with another person has to censor itself just that Google would not be allowed to sell the service of making a person's sensational past available to all comers.

Google's position has the, no doubt intentional, effect of making it so that the right to be forgotten is completely non-existent. On my computer at this exact moment, I can access Google in just about any country in the world (vpn, baby!). If I really care, I can turn myself into a local citizen Singapore and Google every, single person they 'forgot' in Germany.

I can hear the conservatives whine, "How will we know if a person has committed crimes or said mean things about us before we hire them?" Hard to imagine how civilization worked for the 3000 years before Google but, somehow, people did business, made new friends, and made progress when people had to be judged by who they were as they stood in front of you.

Google is an enemy of human freedom. It's bad enough that they favor corporations over people in their intellectual property policies. It's awful that they only respect the right to be forgotten in country's that pass a law. Now they want to make it so that you can only really be forgotten if we get every country I the world to pass that law.

As a consequence, every person's ability to move on with their life after something happens that would interfere with that is impaired because they want you to remain accessible as raw material for their products.

read more: Reflecting on the Right to be Forgotten

Bill Clinton cheats on his wife, impeach him. Trump proudly brags about sexual assault and cheating on his wife, elect him.

Hillary oversaw the Department of State while four people died, put her in jail. Republicans oversee the deaths of 200, no problem.

Immigrants don't pay taxes, round them up and kick them out. Trump doesn't pay taxes, he's a business genius.

Hillary's foundation spends 'only' 87% of donations helping people, she's a crook. Trumps foundation pays his debts, buy art of his image and donated to bribe officials, he savvy.

Trump made turned his gifted millions into four billion dollars when the market says it should have been twelve, he's a business whiz. Hillary took a tax loss of $700k, she's a tax cheat.

Trump leaves a trail of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits and unpaid vendors, he's a smart business strategist. Hillary spends her life in public service, she's part of the problem.

Trump does an attach apology for saying he touched women, all is good. Hillary apologizes for using an email server, lock her up.

The double standard is shocking but not as disturbing as the false equivalence that allows Trump supporters to pretend that these two people are comparable in any way. Trump is a venial power monger who built his business on pure egotism. Hillary has spent her life making a practical difference in the lives of the people of America and the world.

Only one of them is worthy of your consideration. Vote for Hillary Clinton for the President of the United States.

If you’re not helping her, you’re helping him. DONATE. VOLUNTEER. VOTE.

HIllary is a person who has been working for good causes since she was a very young woman. When she was twenty, she went undercover for a college project to uncover racial discrimination in education in the south. During her career as a lawyer in Arkansas, she was tremendously well respected. She took clients of all sorts but was especially involved in children and family issues.

Though the right-wing defeated her, she organized a huge effort involving experts and stake holders from every aspect of the health care world. It was a huge task that she undertook for no compensation because she felt that it was important to get better health care for millions of people.

That is, for no personal benefit, she undertook an effort for which a consulting company would charge millions and faced tremendous and unfair opprobrium from the right-wing and health care industry.

Her response? She dusted herself off and rammed through the States Children Health Insurance Program. It provides access to health care for many millions of children to this day. Faced with brutal opposition and painful defeat, she kept at it until she found a way to a good result.

As a Senator, she was praised universally for being collegial and imaginative in finding ways to work with people with whom she disagrees. As with her time in Arkansas and as a First Lady, she was praised for being incredibly hard-working, selfless and well-prepared.

When she ran for President, she added a new skill to her portfolio. She organized a national campaign that just about kicked Barack Obama's ass. She did it with such competence that Obama asked her to be Secretary of State. This ability to compete intensely while keeping doors open and relationships alive is a rare skill.

While she had many important accomplishments as Secretary of State the part that we learn that's new is that she is a tremendously kind and engaged boss. While carrying an insane workload (she traveled more than any previous Secretary of State), she also did things like bring the cake when a co-worker had a birthday. She took time to talk to even low level employees. She knew their kids and the issues in their lives.

We also are reminded of something that was said about her as a Senator, that she is unbelievably knowledgable and well-prepared. She was famous in the State Department for knowing more about specifics that the subject team leaders who briefed her. It turns out that she reads and reads and studies more than anyone. When everyone else is being an executive who delegates the details, Hillary takes the time to actually know what she is talking about. 

But, there are the right-wing claims about her. She's been under investigation forever. She wrecked out national security. She is a liar and a cheat. She must be hiding something. She helped Iran get nuclear bombs.

And it's all crap. She has been under investigation forever because, first, her husband's and, now, her Republican enemies want her destroyed. Starting with the completely disproved accusations over Whitewater and the Rose Law firm, and continuing to this day, every single investigation was initiated by people who hate her and her husband.

In the nineties, a right-wing creep named Richard Mellon Scaife was pissed because the Democrats took Congress after Newt Gingrich shut down the government over a dispute with Bill Clinton. Scaife started a company named Judicial Watch. 

Judicial Watch devised the strategy of suing the government over Freedom of Information requests with a specific goal of ruining the Clintons. It was them suing for ever more details about the Whitewater investigation that found the Lewinski problem and one statement over the course of a zillion interrogations that they used as an excuse for his impeachment. 

While the insane harassment over Benghazi (do you know that under her tenure as Secretary there were fewer people killed in embassies than under George Bush) was started by the Republicans, it was was Judicial Watch, still attacking her fifteen years later, that dragged out the email server issue.

The email server is the most insanely false issue of them all. Trump and the rest pretend it is a huge deal but it's not. Hillary used an email server. It was done because government technology was cumbersome. She made a point of not sending classified information though, apparently, a tiny bit leaked through. More importantly, nothing bad happened as a consequence. No secrets got out. National security was not, in fact, compromised.

Donald Trump, because he is a deeply dishonest person (projection being the main characteristics of his kind) calls her a liar. He insists that she was playing fast and loose with national security. He calls her dishonest and a criminal. But, she's not.

That's why the FBI exonerated her. Remember, Comey, who despises her, said the decision "wasn't even close". She did not commit any crimes. She spent eleven hours testifying in Congress. Her enemies screamed and yelled that she must be lying, demanded the FBI compare her testimony to everything she said to them. But here's the real truth: They could not point to one single thing that she lied about. They were left hoping that something she said in a deposition that they had not seen would reveal a mistake.

And that's what she's faced her whole career. Republicans trying to destroy her.

Hillary keeps her head down and keeps working. The people who know her love her. She's funny, smart and kind. The people she's worked with admire her. She has experience with the law. She has experience with failure and success. She's run a huge, international governmental organization (the State Department) very successfully. And, she won the nomination by appealing to fifteen million people with a message of hope and excellent policy substance.

I know, the Democratic National Committee preferred her. But why? The reason is that, while Bernie was doing his own, self-involved thing, she was out making friends. She helped people out. She was supportive and engaged. She built a huge, nationwide team of supporters. She worked to build organizations in every state. 

Remember how Bernie complained that he was stymied by state committees all over the country? He was right. While he was relying on his own vision of an abstract process, Hillary had been recruiting people to her cause for years. She built state organizations and developed friendships and loyalty. When the time came, people wanted to help her.

That's the main reason I want her for President. Though I absolutely believe that the things above add up to her being the best qualified, most highly prepared person who has ever run for the office, to me, her ability to work with people is what I want the most.

Let me be clear, I think that Hillary is a warrior. I think she, better than any of the men who have held the office in my life, knows how to kick ass with cold brutality. But she does it in a context of collaboration, engagement and mutual interests. She does it without keeping score. She works with people instead of trying to dominate them. She recruits people, not controls them. She prefers results to victory. She cares about people.

I won't go into the policy differences between her and Trump. (She has them. His are a joke.) Or his temperament. (The example of thin-skinned Twitter wars stand in for dozens of stories of revenge over small matters.) Or, his business record (bankruptcy after bankruptcy to leave his partners screwed.) Or the conflicts of interest. Or his admiration for dictators.

I note only that, in the testimony of dozens, refuses to pay vendors who can't afford to sue him. Who, in the testimony of dozens, has touched women without their permission. Who spent years dishonestly promoting the obviously false idea that Obama is not an American. Who has publicly ridiculed disabled people, bullied women (not just Miss Universe, for example, but Katy Tur of NBC), disparaged Mexicans and Moslems. 

I repeat these unarguable facts: He bragged about touching women. Dozens complained it was true. He stole from less powerful people because he could. Dozens have come forward with their stories. He was the prime mover of an attempt to discredit the American President while he was in office with a prolonged, false campaign. He has repeated bullied people in public without apology.

Hillary has spent her entire career working to help people. She has sacrificed and endured. She has picked herself up after defeat and helped her victor to achieve good results. She keeps moving and helping.

Hillary is an awesome person. Her policies are uniformly excellent. Her intelligence is superb. Her experience incomparable. She is known to be kind, hard-working, collaborative and honest. She has stood up to intense scrutiny and come up clean. She is immensely accomplished.

There has never been a better candidate for President. I encourage everyone to put aside the foul accusations made by her enemies. To understand that their determination to stop her is the best testimony for her virtue. I encourage everyone to accept the immense gift to our country that Hillary Clinton offers us, her service as President of the United States.

Most people do not believe that, even when denying climate change or the age of the earth, that they are 'denying facts'. The problem is that they think that the word 'fact' refers to information consistent with their emotional preconceptions instead of consistent with provable reality.

Trump (source material HERE)

appoint a good head of veteran affairs

discipline employees who have failed to carry out duties

investigate fraud and wrong-doing

promote honest employees

create a hotline

stop giving bonuses

reform visa system (?)

add mental health professionalsl

allow veterans to use private providers

Hillary (source material HERE)

emphasize service-connected conditions especially prosthetics and brain injury

coordinate VHA care with other programs

encourage use of specialty medical service providers

create VHA oversight board

ask Secretaries of Defense and VA to devise a new system

coordinate Dept of Defense and VA health delivery

joint DoD and VA procurement to reduce costs for veterans

cause the integration of DoD and VA IT systems

upgrade gender specific services

cover all reproductive services needed by female veterans

better childcare for veteran children

increase funding and add programs for mental health care

better pain management treatment to avoid opioid problems

include military sexual trauma as a valid for of PTS

add legal assistance to veterans with other than honorable discharges

maintain presumption of service connection for toxic exposure problems

"expand the current VA burn pit registry" (?)

add research funds and other collaboration for mental health and other invisible wounds

streamline and simplify claims process

integrate DoD and VA so DoD can inform VA of future needs

work to entirely revise the claims process to make it more effective

create a standing President's Council on veterans

end to end evaluation of all benefits to find new areas of investment

personally and regularly meet with "Summit of Veterans" to insure that needs are addressed

work with private and philanthropic organizations to add resources to veterans

make the post 9/11 GI bill permanent and expanded

additional tax credits for veterans employment

increase funds available to state and local governments to transfer military credentials to private sector

expand efforts to train, counsel and fund veteran entrepreneurs

work to prevent ripoff of vets by private schools

use federal contracting to punish companies that overcharge, defraud or otherwise ripoff vets

add veteran status to the Fair Housing Act

work to reduce veteran homelessness by supporting community based organizations

expand outreach programs to find and help homeless vets

clarify Fair Housing Act to eliminate gender specific language that harms veterans and families

offer space to communicate legal organizations in VHA clinics to help veterans with minor offenses, mental health and substance abuse issues

retroactively review LGBT veterans discharge status

empower supervisors to discipline underperforming employees

revise employee evaluation process to improve performance culture

increase whistleblower protections

prioritize VA in budgetary processes

clean up problems with veteran burials

Recently I was asked "what harm can Trump really do?"

I had occasion to read an article in Foreign Policy magazine about Hillary Clinton (HERE). It was no encomium. However, it painted a picture of a smart, reasonable and principled Secretary of State. The article is an education on recent international history but, since the article is long, I offer these few excerpts for your edification.

"'The test of a strategic dialogue,' Burns notes, 'is how it can weather unexpected events.' The fact that the Chinese chose not to blow up the talks was itself a vindication of Clinton's tactics.'

"[...]

"'Clintonism properly understood, he asserts, is 'nesting a hard-power approach into a broader smart-power strategy — development, diplomacy, public-private partnerships, rule of law.'

"'[...]

"''Dennis Ross observes, 'President Obama's view was that we had to work with our adversaries and seek to change their behavior by looking at their grievances. I think that Hillary looks at adversaries through the lens of how they define their interests. A focus on interests means recognizing the reality of power relationships, and the need to use power in defense of your interests.'

"'[...]

"'[Regarding Libya] Gates, Biden, and others opposed American military involvement, since even a mass killing would not seriously impinge on national interests. Clinton, like Obama himself, was in the middle. She was coming under great pressure from France and Britain, both of which favored an aerial campaign to stop Qaddafi from taking Benghazi. Only when she won agreement from the Arab League to support and engage in such an effort, which would include Arab as well as European fighter planes, did Clinton join the advocates.

"[...]

"But America is no longer in recovery from George W. Bush, and it is no longer in urgent need of a new face. What it needs is a fresh source of inspiration, a sense that the world matters and that American leadership matters, a recognition that power is not a bad thing so long as it is accompanied by humility and restraint."

Really, though. Read the article. It's very interesting. You can find it HERE.

So, yesterdays criticism of Hillary is that she supposedly has said the word "fuck", including in the context of "fuck you". Obviously, if this were a problem, no one on Earth would be qualified for the Presidency but, the Trumpsters are desperate. As you might imagine, my comment on the matter included reference to Donny Sniff and Snort's bragging that he had grabbed women by the pussy. To me, this seems a more important obscenity than the use of "fuck" in conversation.

Fortunately, one of their dim bulbs raised his hand to participate in the conversation. It was a master class in stupid, so I thought I would record the conversation for posterity. You can judge my evaluation by looking at his Facebook (HERE). It tells us that the Constitution is at risk if Hillary gets elected so you won't be disappointed.

Following is the conversation. You will note that he never actually disputes things I say in reply. (I hope you will note that each of my replies is entirely guided by his assertions.) It ends, as usual, with the guy just ignoring the whole conversation.


Greg Grimes I think TQ might want to see a plumber...he has a bit of a case of public pottymouth...so, we'll send foulmouthed Trump packing and get stuck with foulmouthed HRC...a pathological liar, egotist, elitist and panderer to the stars and Wall Street... I can only imagine what the Founding Fathers are saying about the sad state of the Union today...

TQ White II What is wrong with you people? Liar, egotist, elitist and panderer? Do you know the meaning of the word, Projection?

Greg Grimes No TQ, it's not the foul language...that is almost a given in today's course culture...I don't even know if I'll vote for him... I cannot in good conscience vote for a woman who, at every turn and with every legal manuever possible, has thwarted our legal system...lied when our citizens died...basically sold her office to the highest bidder for access...left a line of bodies, figuatively and literally back over decades to Arkansas...accomplished little more in her tenure as Sec. of State than help to destabilize an already shaky area...We have lived with the Clintons in some form or fashion since the 70s...wherever they go corruption follows...Is Trump perfect? No, absolutely not, but he has struck a chord that government is broken and people are angry like they haven't been in decades...the public servants that we elect and pay now have become our masters...that the bureaucratic world of DC never sees justice when injustice is done...lives are crushed by over taxation and regulation while our money, your money and mine, is squandrered and when the culprits are caught they are given a pension and sent on their merry way...and HRC is the embodiment of that culture of corruption...and when she attains what she has coveted for so long, the White House, she will consolidate even more power in the executive office and throw the balance of power, set forth in the Constitution, more out of whack...Hate Trump if you must but understand it was politicians excactly like Hillary that created him and though he will likely not win the WH the anger he represents will not go away



TQ White II Greg, I can't imagine that you can be this deluded.

Donald Trump's isn't very articulate. He has a hard time finding ways to criticize things he doesn't like. Consequently, he has to rely on his favorite word: Disaster.

Donald Trump said that things were a disaster fourteen times in his second Presidential debate. He said it about these things:

Inner cities

Obamacare

Single payer

Obamacare

Obamacare

Iraq

Hillary's tax plan

Hillary's Senate record

Hillary's Secretary of State record

Allepo

NAFTA

Inner cities

Hillary's Senate record

The economy

Here are the points I want to discuss:

- Her judgment about Syria as a reason not to vote for Hillary

- That she should be in jail because she feels she is above the law

- That she won’t do anything good

Hillary was the prime mover in the implementation of SCHIP. That program has, since the nineties kept about 8 million kids in health insurance and thereby given them access to doctors. What does her determination to create that say about her judgement?

Syria is an insanely difficult problem. The alliances and consequences are complicated beyond explanation. As I understand it, the main flaw imputed to Hillary is that she preferred a policy of helping Syrian rebels in their effort to overthrow their dictator, Bashir al Assad. This guy has been a horrible problem forever. Among many other things, he used chemical weapons on his own citizens. He is a monster and a serious impediment to peace in the region.

Now, it’s apparent that 1) those rebels failed to overthrow Assad, and 2) absolutely no one has any idea how to actually solve the problem there. With a half dozen governments actively causing trouble, it is very difficult for me to see how Hillary could hold singular responsibility for any of it. This is a chess game with a lot of players. 

Perhaps, only ‘perhaps’, she was wrong to choose the path of eliminating Assad. However, there were a lot of paths tried. She did, in fact, try to work with Syria to bring it to the table. She did, in fact, work with Iran to try to quell Assad’s violence. She did a lot of stuff and none of it worked. I have never actually read (and I just spent twenty minutes reminding myself) of anyone who had a solid alternative that she rejected.

But, more to the point. If one is going to pick an issue on which to base a decision about Hillary, why choose Syria over SCHIP? In Syria, 400k people have been killed. In America, at any moment, eight million kids have access to health care. In Syria, she was presented with an intractable problem that no one has been able to solve, including her. For health care, she was presented with an intractable problem and she found a way to help millions of children.

While I don’t think anyone should be judged on the outcome of a single project, choosing the most impossible one doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I prefer to look at the overall person. In this case, suppressing Iran’s nuclear program, international women’s rights and climate change, a lifetime of devotion to moving the ball forward on many women’s and social issues seem to paint  a more complete picture that is a more approbate basis for a decision.

The notion that Hillary is a criminal that would be in jail if the government was not corrupt is a favorite trope on the right. The basic premise is that she has, for the last twenty five years (!) cheated the system by somehow slipping past indictment after indictment. While I would, were it true, sincerely believe that this represents a level of cunning genius and capability that increases my desire for her to be running the show, it’s simply not true.

To begin with, she hasn’t committed any crimes. None. Nada. Not one. She has been at the brutal end of investigation for all those twenty five years, usually with highly biased investigators. None of them has ever found evidence of any crimes. 

While it is true that they continued to talk as if they had found proof, they are lying. James Comey, Republican head of the FBI and well-known Clinton hater, said it best, “Nothing she has done rises to the level of a crime.” “No prosecutor would bring a case.” “No crime was committed.” (These are paraphrases. I don’t have the patience to look up the exact language.)

And that’s just the latest. Do you really think she killed Vince Foster? Do you really think that she stole money but somehow the years of Whitewater investigations never found it? Read THIS article for a review of the viciousness and falseness of these attacks.

All of which is to say, if Hillary deserved to be in jail, she would be or, at least, I would know about it. Instead, what I have learned in my decades of following her and being a hobbyist interested in politics and political controversy is that the truth is literally the opposite. Contrary to being a shady character, Hillary is a person of such high integrity and rectitude that decades of effort by her enemies to prove her a criminal has failed.

It’s true, though, that we live in hopeless times. Lately, I’ve been thinking that one of the weirdest things is that having the biggest army no longer really gets us anything. It makes me think of antibiotic resistance. In the first half of the last century, both our military and antibiotics literally changed the world in every way imaginable. Now, it is frequent that people die because they are attacked by something for which antibiotics do not work. Now, it is frequent that people are killed by political violence for which our army does not work.

It hits America at its very core. This country is defined by two things: Money and Violence. Sure, people like to talk about the rule of law but not when it’s black kids getting shot by police. They like to talk about the resilience of the population but that’s utter bullshit. America knows how to make money and it knows how to defeat Hitler.

So, we find ourselves in an era when the real problems (in addition antibiotic resistance) are climate change, international economic inequality (also known as terrorism), the growth of religious fundamentalism (also known as the American political system), and a bunch of other things that are simply not solved by either guns or money. There is a broad and deep sense of pessimistic ennui among our fellow citizens.

So, they say that Hillary is not Bernie. She’s not an agent of change. She’s a pawn of the banks. She’s part of the power structure. She’s not going to do anything good. But there is absolutely no factual basis for believing such a thing. When I say “absolutely”, I’m not being rhetorical.

Certainly Hillary will face tough obstacles to accomplishment. But, so did Barack Obama. As everyone knows, the Republican leadership of Congress met on the day of his inauguration to make an agreement that they would never cooperate with anything he wanted to do, regardless of its virtue. Regardless, it turned out, if it was a plan that they had, themselves, proposed.

Yet, health care is available to tens of millions of people and America is measurable healthier because of it. We have an international agreement to control carbon emissions that includes both the other big countries and those in the third world. We have record job and economic growth. He was a prime mover in equality for gay people. He reopened relations with Cuba. He did a bunch of things to improve education. He got banks out of the student loan business. He got financial regulation (Dodd Frank) implemented. (You can read about this HERE.)

Barack Obama was a newcomer on the political scene when he was elected. While he said a lot of nice stuff, he had no real record of doing anything novel. We just believed him. And, it was easy. He is a preternaturally charismatic person and he is truly brilliant.

It’s a little harder with Hillary because she is a nerd, and not just a regular nerd, but an ultra-nerd. A nerd who always invests whatever time it takes to make sure that she knows more than anyone else. (Not 'appears' to know more, but actually knows more. She was famous in the State Department for knowing more than her briefers about almost everything.)

Unfortunately, nerds are aware of the complexity of everything. So, when Hillary speaks, she has to choose her words very, very carefully to find just the right phrasing that connects the insane amount of information correctly. This makes her less fluid and therefore less believable than both of the brilliant but non-nerdy men who preceded her, Bill and Barack. They are able to elide the details. She is not.

Hillary, on the other hand, does have a real record of doing stuff. SCHIP is one thing. Sanctions that brought Iraq to the table are another. She invented health care reform when it was a forgotten history lesson. She coined the phrase “Women’s rights are human rights” and, had the insight to force her way to China to say it at a time when the notion of a woman doing such a thing was an innovation in itself.

In both the Senate and the State Department, she was known for being a remarkably effective person at getting things done. She was known for being able to apply her superpower nerdiness to figure out ways to change plans to appeal to more people and thereby bring more support to bear. She was known for being friendly and effective in converting enemies into supporters of the causes she pursued. She is, in short, known for being a person who, first and foremost, is able to get things done.

The only question then is whether she wants to do anything good. For that, you have to decide if working to extend free public education through local college is a good thing. Or, if you think that trying to make it so that every home in America can be powered by clean energy is a good thing or that adding a half a billion (!) solar panels to the economy counts as good. (Her energy program is amazing. You can read about it HERE.) Or criminal justice reform, or revising the tax code so that employers are encouraged to have profit sharing, or improvements in child care options, or, well, let’s just say, she has a lot of ideas for things that, in my opinion, are really good things.

Combined with her lifelong commitment to things that are consistent with my values and her proven record of accomplishing such things, it seems to me a little too easy to join the pessimistic zeitgeist and to apply it to this remarkable, brilliant woman.

I will conclude by noting one other thing about Hillary that makes me want her to be my President. She is known, in actual, personal fact, to be a lovely person. She is said to, by everyone who knows her, to be a very warm and caring person with a good sense of humor and a sincere interest in the people around her. As Secretary of State, she often brought the cake to celebrate co-workers’ birthdays. (Name another chief executive who does that.) The people that know her love her. The reason is that she’s a person whose fundamental personality includes taking care of the people around her, caring about their opinions and wanting to nurture them. That is, the reason is that she exhibits some of the best virtues that exemplify the feminine perspective.

There are many reasons that I support Hillary with a fervor and love that I have applied to none of the other candidates that I have supported in the past. Her experience is unparalleled. Her brilliance is unmatched. Her knowledge and ability to turn that into productive plans and strategies is as good or better than any public figure I’ve ever known.

But the biggest reason is that she is a woman. I am tired of aggression as the primary public cause. I’m tired of a country lead by testosterone and an inclination toward dominance. I am tired of leaders who consider caring to be weakness. I am tired of competition and quick solutions. 

I know Hillary has flaws. I know that she is more of a power-broker than she appears. I know that she will have to kick ass, probably do more war and do a lot of things that I wish she didn’t. But I also know that her fundamental view is different than even the second loveliest President of my life, Barack Obama. She is a woman. She collaborates first.

I want that with a deeply held emotional need that is hard to express. It’s not true that our problems are all caused by men. But enough of them are that I want to give a woman a chance. That is change I can believe in.

Because Republicans don't care if people starve while working full time. I would absolutely raise the minimum wage to a level that a person can live a decent life.

Dear Trumpsters,

Don't you finally see that he is just using you now that he revealed that he was playing you for a fool by pretending to be a birther?

I mean, he had you and your friends saying really goofy stuff about Obama's heritage, fighting vociferously against the Kenyan threat, and he didn't really believe it. He must have been laughing at how sincerely the rubes bought that bit of social manipulation. I know I was.

How did it feel when, with absolutely no new evidence, he said, "He's an American. I was just jerking you around." And then everyone on Earth laughed and wrote articles about the use of the word "lie" in the media.

Hillary never humiliated me like that. Never treated me like a fool.

Sincerely,
A Supporter of the Decent Candidate