Trump Wins, To The Dismay of Half The Population

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but Donald Trump won the electoral votes. The whole electoral college issue will get dredged up again but I'll save that analysis for another day. (I wrote something on the electoral college in 2008: The Electoral College: Is It Necessary? )

The people have spoken, but the outcome was not what the majority of the people wanted.

Everyone put a lot of energy, heart, and soul into this election.  But it seemed to lack BRAINS. It’s hard to fathom how a candidate whose messages were tinged with bigotry, exclusion, and misogyny could have been elected to the highest office in the United States.

But here we are, and the cold hard fact is that we now have to live with it.

After spending the last 8+ years reading the repeated hateful rants of strangers, friends, and family about their dislike of Barack Obama as a candidate and as a president, I refuse to let the outcome of this election get me down. I don't want to be like those people who could never get over that election loss and who went out of their way to put down people who voted for Obama.

This doesn’t mean that I will be silent on things that I don’t like about our new president. My expectation will be as high as always. But I am not going to go into this new presidency with a chip on my shoulder from day one. I don’t have the energy for that and I don’t think it serves any good purpose.

I don’t know what this new leadership will bring but only hope that millions of Trump voters don’t find that they’ve been sold a 4 year supply of “snake oil.”  This country simply can't afford it. 



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Hillary Clinton For President – I’m With Her

I’m with her. The choice is easy. Her decades of experience makes Hillary Clinton perfect for the job as president. Some may think she is polarizing but I do not; if anything, she’s the only person with the political savvy to be able to bridge the gap between all parties. Any baggage that she carries mostly comes from her husband Bill’s past, and he isn’t the one running for president. She’s consistently demonstrated calm and rational thinking, plus grace under pressure.

I could have had a full time job the last few months simply focusing on Donald Trump’s gaffes. But why spend my time on an over-saturated topic? At first, the media trotted out Trump like a side-show freak, normalizing his outrageous behavior and comments. Finally, they realized they may have helped this buffoon actually reach the highest office in the country, and now the floodgates have opened. Trump, of course, isn’t smart enough to see this happen and with each day, he keeps digging himself deeper in a hole. This pleases me greatly and only helps my candidate more.

Donald Trump should have never been nominated. The end result of his nomination is a Republican Party in a state of implosion. If the Republicans want to be considered seriously in the future, they need to have a far better vetting process before they even present any candidates for consideration for president. The first qualification should be for any potential candidate to submit their tax returns for review, something that we are still waiting for Trump to do.  (Thankfully, someone leaked  one of his old returns, and it was a damning picture of Trump's business losses.) 

Here’s hoping that November will bring a win for Hillary Clinton. Our country needs her.




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Trump’s Outrageous Florida Press Conference

Donald Trump held a press conference today at the Doral Resort in Florida. I rarely watch these types of press conferences but I happened to be flipping through channels and landed on MSNBC just as it began to air. While watching, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or be very afraid. In the conference,  Trump urges Russian hackers to find Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails; he doesn’t seem to know the difference between the Geneva Conventions and NATO; and he tells a female reporter to “be quiet.” And this is only the tip of the iceberg. I watched the entire conference as Trump went on a stream of consciousness rant which seemed very angry, peppered with name-calling. I found myself wondering if he could even hold up under the pressures of a debate with Hillary Clinton? I continue to be concerned that someone with his apparent lack of verbal control has come so far in a presidential election. What kind of people are seriously thinking of voting for Trump? Is this reflective of what some think is the dumbing down of America or the world? Is Trump speaking to the lowest common denominator in human beings?

Clearly I won’t be voting for him in November. If you missed the press conference, it is embedded below. It’s long but once you start watching, it’s hard to stop as Trump seems to go off the rails many times with rants. There is nothing presidential about his behavior in this press conference.

Note: skip forward about 33 minutes to the actual start of the conference






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We Must Find A Solution to the Gun Problem

Last August, I posted my opinion on gun control ( The Frequent Critic: “Guns Plus Mental Illness – A Recipe For Disaster” ) I had no answers but said we must find a solution.

The recent mass shooting in Orlando Florida where 49 people were shot and killed by a lone gunman – who also ended up dead at the hands of police – has brought the whole issue of gun control to a head. The Boston Globe published a powerful front page with an AR-15 assault rifle like the one used by the killer, with the headline “Make It Stop.”

It is a succinct but powerful message.

I do believe in a person’s right to bear arms, but I am sure that the framers of The Constitution never had assault rifles in mind.

We must make these senseless killings stop, and the best way to do it is to control access to these weapons. I still don’t have all the answers here but there must be enough great minds in this country to come up with something.

We need to MAKE IT STOP.



Check out my blog home page for the latest information, The Frequent Critic, here.

Deflect & Evade: Donald Trump’s Idiotic Strategy

I’ve been trying to keep out of the political fray until the Democratic and Republican candidates for the president have been selected. But the wackiness of Donald’s Trump’s candidacy is making that impossible.

How this person, who does nothing but deflect and evade issues or questions, can get this far in the race is beyond me. How this person, who has made headlines by making demeaning comments about women, can be supported by any woman is a mystery. How this person, who preaches nothing but intolerance toward people of other faiths or nations, can even be considered for the highest elected office in the United States is frightening.

Yet here we are. While Donald Trump hasn’t as yet been crowned as the Republican nominee, it is shocking that someone can even make it into the lead this late in the game. It make me wonder about the intelligence of the people who are voting for him.

It appears that the media, which gave Trump so much coverage early on and handled him with kid gloves in order not to alienate him, has realized that possibly they helped create this monster by not calling Trump out earlier on his outrageous statements. But today, and on The Today Show, it’s clear that the gloves are off and the media is now challenging Trump for his statements. In an interview this morning on the Today Show, embedded below, it clearly shows that Trump’s strategy of deflect and evade won’t work anymore. Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie challenged Trump’s statements and it was obvious that Trump was flustered, angry, and painted into a corner. I can only hope this is a turning point for his candidacy, and that voters in primaries and participants in caucuses will cast their vote for someone other than Donald Trump, driving the choice of the Republican candidate to the convention in Cleveland Ohio in July 2016.

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The Frequent Critic, here.

Supreme Court Vacancy: The Republicans Go Off The Deep End

I’ve been absent here for several months. I got tired of the political rhetoric coming out of the Republican Party. So much craziness was coming out of the mouths of Donald Trump and the other candidates that if I started writing about it, it would never end.

But the death yesterday of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the tipping point for me. Not his death per se, but the Republican response that says President Barack Obama should defer making his recommendation for replacement and leave that for the next president. Some Republicans stated openly that they would not vote on, or they would block, any appointment that President Obama recommended.

This is garbage, pure and simple.

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... Judges of the Supreme Court." This means President Obama is well within his rights to put forth his nomination for Scalia's replacement. Members of Congress swear to uphold the Constitution. If the President makes his recommendation, Congress should vote on it. Of course, they do not need to approve The President’s selection, but in my opinion, NOT to vote on it should not be an option.

Those Republicans who want to block or delay the appointment of a replacement Supreme Court Justice in order to allow the next president to do so should remember that there are no guarantees a Republican will win the next presidential election.

I grow tired of Republicans, who are behaving like petulant children who throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. Those already in Congress should be aware that they represent the people - ALL the people, not just their own party or their own self interests. And those candidates running for president who are not currently members of Congress better get used to the fact that, if elected, they also have to represent ALL people AND uphold the Constitution.


The Republican presidential candidates continue to make themselves look more foolish by the day. It’s embarrassing.



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The Frequent Critic, here.