SCARED TRUMP

Donald Trump is scared, really scared. How else do you explain his actions not only during the campaign but especially in the last few weeks? From the beginning he has done things that no politician has ever done before. And he has got away with it! He attacked his rivals for the nomination, not their ideas, but their personal traits. He alienated large groups of people: women, veterans, Hispanics. The Republican establishment hates him because of his attacks on Republicans as well as for what he is doing to the GOP.

But now the nomination is all but in hand. This would be the time for Trump to start mending fences, making nice with the groups that he has been insulting, to unite the Republican Party behind him. But he’s doing just the opposite of that. At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he lashed out at the governor of the state, Susana Martinez. What did Trump have against her? She did not show up for his rally. Martinez is not only the governor of New Mexico; she is also head of the Republican Governors’ Association, a group that can do a lot to turn out the vote for the GOP. In one fell sweep the Donald further alienated women, Hispanics, and the Republican hierarchy.

But he didn’t stop there. Later he went on to attack another female Republican governor, Nikki Haley of South Carolina because she endorsed Marco Rubio. While he was at it, called Jeb Bush low energy and called Mitt Romney a choker “who walks like a penguin.” Their sins? They failed to endorse the Donald. One major Republican says he doesn’t fear Trump losing; he fears that Trump will win and an indelible scar on the GOP.

Talk of pushing someone else into the nomination through a brokered convention seems to have died out. There is talk of a third party candidate who would take some votes from Trump. Recent surveys have shown Donald and Hillary neck and neck. As horrible as the thought is, it seems possible that Trump could be the next president. And it is possible that no one is more frightened by that thought than Trump himself.

According to speculation that is going around, the idea of running for the presidency grew out of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2011. At that occasion Trump was the butt of jokes by President Obama and comedian Seth Meyers. A man who combines an over-inflated ego with deep personal insecurity, Trump, according to the speculation, decided to get revenge by running for the presidency.

At first Trump never thought he would actually win; he just wanted to show those professional politicians a thing or two. Doing everything “wrong” at a time when the public was sick to death of the politicians, he probably surprised himself as much as anyone as he won primary after primary.

But now the day of reckoning is approaching. What if he is actually elected? What would he do then? Even he must have some inkling that he is no way capable of doing the job. And worse: the president make $400,000 a year. That would be a cut in pay for the tycoon. His ego wouldn’t allow that.

PREDICTION

PREDICTION

The next president of the United States will be a Democrat, and for that the Democrats can thank Donald Trump. No matter how the political campaigns go over the next 11 months, Trump will play a major role in the Republican camp, and whatever the outcome for the GOP, the Democrats will come out ahead on Election Day.

Even though he has been held a strong lead in national polls for months, the Republican leadership is desperate to push him out of first place, resorting to a brokered convention if necessary. If the convention opens with Trump holding a plurality of the votes, the electors representing those ballots will be legally bound to vote for him on the first ballot only. On subsequent ballots the electors can vote for anyone they want. The situation opens itself up to three possible scenarios, all of which would lead to a Democratic victory in the general election.

SCENARIO ONE

Trump arrives at the convention with a majority of votes or is able to overcome opposition at the convention and become the Republican candidate. His support comes primarily from older white males with limited education. Twenty-six percent of Republicans have negative feelings about him. Many GOP leaders have said that Trump does not represent Republican or even American values. Most of them, no doubt, like Paul Ryan, will hold their noses and vote for him. However, the Donald will not gather enthusiastic support from the Republican party.

The reality show star cannot expect much support outside of his core followers. He has insulted each of his rivals for the Republican nomination. He has alienated huge groups with his put-downs and gratuitous insults. Fifty-nine percent of the American public has negative feelings about him. If he runs, the Democratic candidate will win the election and possibly win both the House and the Senate at the same time.

SCENARIO TWO

The Republican establishment is able to deny Trump the nomination. In revenge he runs as third-party candidate. In such a case Trump would get votes from people who would otherwise vote for the Republican candidate. Result: a win for the Democrats.

SCENARIO THREE

Trump does not win the nomination and for whatever reasons decides not to run as a third-party candidate. He has been in the leading position for so long that his core followers will still feel that he has been cheated of his rightful prize. Those mendacious Washington politicians, along with the lamestream media swindled the Donald. His core will not then vote for Democrats. Heaven forbid! They will just stay home on Election Day and throw the election to the Democratic candidate, whoever he or she is.

REPUBLICANS ON HEALTH CARE

Rush is screaming that the proposed health care logo looks like a Nazi symbol. What is the point of that? Does it mean that the attempt to spread health care to more Americans is somehow related to the Nazis? Others are yelling that the ideas being put forth by the Democrats are really socialized medicine. So which is it? Are the Democrats supposed to be Nazis or Socialists?

Now the Republicans are sending goons to disrupt meetings where members of Congress are trying to get ideas from the people about health care. That’s really democracy in action: disrupt exchanges of information on one of the most important issues of the day.

And Sarah—God bless her—is charging that the president’s health plan is “downright evil.” She says, "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

Where do these people get their ideas? How could anyone think of her as a plausible candidate for the presidency of the United States?

CHENEY? WHO’S HE?

Republican strategists are at a loss about how to deal with Dick Cheney at the GOP convention. Even though the vice president appeals to a small group of extreme right wingers, rank and file Republicans as well as Independents blame him for much of what has gone wrong in the Bush administration.

To ignore Cheney entirely might turn off right wing nuts who approve of the man’s secretive, extralegal, behind-the-scenes maneuvers. To acknowledge him, on the other hand, will remind everyday Republicans of who is to blame for the problems and challenges facing their party. If Cheney speaks at the convention, Independents will question John McCain’s independence.

Our inside sources tell us that party decision-makers decided that GOP conservatives are not going to vote for Obama—no matter what, so it will better to slight the conservatives in order to keep the moderates and the Independents.

A couple of days before the convention the vice president will be whisked away to one of his secret, undisclosed locations for the duration. No convention speaker will be allowed to refer to Cheney or even admit that the man is Vice President of the United States. If anyone asks about Cheney, they will deny that the man even exists.

IS PERRIN PLANNING TO RUN FOR CONGRESS—AS A REPUBLICAN?!

Inside sources tell us that Dr Carl Perrin is beginning to see that he has no hope of winning that Democratic nomination. He may even be thinking of dropping out of that race and entering another race—as a Republican!

This is a bad year for Republicans. Between the war and the economy, voters are blaming the GOP for everything that’s wrong with Washington and the country. The party is finding it difficult to find candidates to run for congressional seats.

According to what we hear, the Republican leadership is trying to recruit some erstwhile Democratic candidates to run as Republicans. "Once you get in office,” they say, “you can vote your conscience. We will help you get elected because we want to have some nominal Republicans elected, so we won’t look so bad in November.” Insiders tell us that Dr. Carl Perrin is one of those who has been approached by the GOP.

We have been told that Perrin is considering the offer. The job pays $169,300 a year. That’s a lot more than he ever made as a teacher. Beside that, there are a lot of benefits that he finds appealing.

Perrin denies that he is considering a run for Congress and insists that he is still in the running for the Democratic nomination .

DO REPUBLICANS HAVE A CLUE?

George Bush has been the most clueless president ever. After the UN declared that they had found no weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, George didn’t let facts or logic stand in his way of invading the country. Then nearly five years ago he flew onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to stand in front of a banner that proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.”

We have become so used to Bush’s misstatements that we don’t bother anymore to ask if he is misinformed or lying. We just ignore what he says because for whatever reason, we no longer believe him. Unfortunately George Bush is not the only Republican who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Mike Huckabee, while running for the Republican nomination for president, revealed that he didn’t know where Afghanistan is. This almost five years after the U. S. invaded the country to try to find Osama Bin Laden. Doesn’t the man even read the newspapers?

Huckebee is just a good ole country boy. Maybe he just doesn’t know much about what’s happening outside of Arkansas. But recently John McCain showed a similar lack of awareness of what is going on in the world. McCain has been in Washington since 1977, first as Navy Senate liaison, then as congressman and senator. He is a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. But he recently stated that Iran was training members of Al Qaeda and then letting them slip back into Iraq where they could attack coalition forces. Iran is suspected of training Shi’ite militias, and these militias have attacked Iraqi police and military, but they are not Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is Sunni, not Shi’ite. Conflict between the Moslem sects is part of the problem in Iraq.

Senator McCain doesn’t know the difference between these two groups. Yet he is sitting in the Senate and the armed forces committee and making decisions that affect us all. He is running for the presidency and urging that we “stay the course” in Iraq. He wants to continue George Bush’s clueless war policy.

Don’t these people even read a newspaper? They are unaware of things that every citizen should know. It is about time that candidates for public office be required to take a current events test before they are allowed to make decisions for the rest of us.

PEACE AND PROSPERITY

Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday, President Bush said, "The stakes in November are high. This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance.” That is true, but not in the way he means it. We can’t help but wonder what kind of Orwellian logic leads him to suggest his party is offering peace and prosperity.

The country is on the brink of a recession. Perhaps the major cause of the impending recession is the implosion created by sub-prime mortgages, which has caused thousands upon thousands of foreclosures, a credit crisis, a falling stock market, and a loss of jobs. The mortgage industry needed some supervision, which the Republican administration was unwilling to give, because that would have been an interference in the market.

And peace! How dare he talk about peace? The country went to war in Afghanistan to try to take out the people who were responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center. But then, instead of pursuing that war with the intensity it deserved, the Bush administration opened another war, an unjustified war that they tried to justify with lies. That war has been an unmitigated disaster for the United States in countless way. George Bush should be ashamed to talk about peace!

REPUBLICANS BATTLE

Huckabee says Thompson didn’t accomplish much of anything in his years in the Senate. Thompson calls Huckabee a liberal. Mitt and Mac go after each other in Michigan. We love it when Republicans beat each other up, violating the commandment of Saint Ronald, that Republicans should not say nasties about other Republicans. (They should leave that kind of dirty work to Democrats.)

The automobile industry in Michigan has lost more and more jobs as buyers in the U.S. and elsewhere purchase cars made in other countries. McCain gave some of his straight talk to Michigan voters: Those jobs are “not coming back.”

Romney called McCain’s statement defeatist. He also criticized the senator for voting for increased fuel efficiency standards in American automobiles, which Mitt said would help foreign auto makers but hurt American car manufacturers. The guy is so full of empty rhetoric. He is somehow going to entice people to buy more Detroit-built cars and revitalize the Michigan auto industry. At the same time he criticizes a measure that might actually lead people to buy more American cars: increasing fuel efficiency and economy. He ignores the threat to the country of greater dependence on foreign oil and the threat to the world of increased emissions from Detroit gas guzzlers.

McCain countered that he would be “ashamed and embarrassed” if he were to promise that the lost jobs were coming back. Romney, on the other hand, does not seem to be embarrassed by empty promises.

GOODBYE, KARL ROVE

Is Karl Rove the evil genius behind all the extralegal White House shenanigans? Is he the one who hatched all those plots that led members of the Bush administration around, above, or beyond the law? Is Rove the author of all those assaults on the Constitution?

In a word (Rove’s word), the answer is no. In a series of TV appearances over the weekend Rove said it was all the fault of others. He was just following orders. If tactical mistakes were made, they were not his fault.

He was not blame for revealing that Valerie Wilson was a covert CIA agent. He wasn’t even sure to this date that she was in fact an agent. What about his role in firing those closet-Democrat U.S. attorneys? Rove accused Fox News Chris Matthews of being an agent of the enemy (Congress) in even asking such a question. Why didn’t Congress pass the administration’s immigration reform bill? It wasn’t because conservative Republicans in Congress fought the bill so fiercely, according to Rove; it was because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid didn’t push it hard enough.

Rove hadn’t even wanted to do the hip hop performance “M. C. Rove” at the White House Correspondents’ dinner in March. “They dragged me up there,” he said.

Now we’re really worried. If Rove wasn’t responsible for all those behind-the-scenes dirty tricks, will anything change when he leaves the White House? Will some other evil genius continue to mastermind misguided policies and assaults on the Constitution after Rove goes home to Texas?

"DUMB AS HELL"

ANOTHER FLIP-FLOPPING REPUBLICAN

When Fred Thompson was on Senator Howard Baker’s staff in 1973, President Nixon said the staffer was “dumb as hell.” That may be too harsh, but Thompson does seem, like so many Republicans, to have memory problems. As a senator himself, Thompson told the Concord Coalition that he would back a balanced federal budget, but when it came up for a vote, he evidently forgot his promise and voted against it.

But Thompson is really wishy-washy on the subject of abortion. In 1994 he said, “The ultimate decision on abortion should be left with the woman and not the government.” But as a senator he voted to ban the so-called partial-birth abortion. Recently the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association hired him to lobby the Bush administration to help clinics get federal money for abortion counseling. Never before in history has a politician managed to take so many mutually exclusive positions on one issue.

In contrast to wishy-washy Republicans, Democratic candidate Carl Perrin is steadfast in his political outlook. He has always been a liberal and was always in favor of cheap beer.

REPUBLICAN STRATEGY

REPUBLICAN SHARKS

As Jon McCain’s candidacy floats bleeding—some say dead in the water—other leading Republican candidates smell the blood and are circling for the kill. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson are facing off, each one hoping to pick up the conservative, family-value voters. Guiliani supporters are hoping that Thompson and Romney divide the conservative Republicans and leave the field to Guiliani, who stands to pick up some of the moderate and independent voters who would have gone for McCain.

If Guiliani wins the Republican nomination, he will be likely to face Democratic nominee Dr. Carl Perrin. Neither man is going to get many conservative votes. Both have been married three times. At heart Guiliani is a moderate-liberal, but lately he has been kissing up to conservatives, for example, trying to get on all sides of the abortion issue. It’s hard to know where he really stands.

Perrin, on the other hand, has always been a liberal, and he has never kissed up to conservatives, hoping to get their votes. He is confident that the beer drinkers of American will vote for him.

BLOOMBERG FOR PRESIDENT?

BLOOMBERG AN INDEPENDENT?

New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has been a Democrat and a Republican, and now he announces he is an Independent. Can’t the guy make up his mind? He went to California to make his announcement. Why couldn’t he have declared his change of party back in old New York? People naturally began to speculate that the mayor is planning to run for the presidency. With only 47 people running for that office now, there seems to be plenty of room for another candidate. When reporters asked him if he was going to for that high office, he said he plans to serve out his term as mayor of New York City. What about Bloomberg and California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger running together at the head of an Independent Party? Bloomberg answered that he “had no plans” to run. Yeah, right.

As expected, pundits around the country began to talk about a Perrin/Bloomberg ticket. Reporters went to Perrin for President headquarters to ask the candidate if he would consider running as a vice presidential candidate in an Independent Party. Perrin was having his afternoon nap, so he could not be interrupted to talk to the press. However, a spokesperson said that Perrin is a life-long Democrat. Unlike Bloomberg, who changes parties as often as some people change their socks, Perrin is not going to shift parties for some kind of political opportunity. Further, he is a candidate for the presidency, and he will not consider running as vice president. Anyway, why should he even think about running as an Independent? He is sure to win the Democratic nomination.

CANDIDATES ATTACK BUSH

The candidates meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire, on June 5 to debate did not have much good to say about George Bush. Three of them criticized his handling of the war. One of them criticized his diplomatic style, saying, “I would not send him to the U.N.”

One of them quoted Karl Rove, who had said to him, “Never darken the door of the White House.” This congressman would say the same to George Bush. Another, a former governor, said that the Bush administration had “lost credibility” after Katrina.

That’s the kind of thing you would pretty much expect from a bunch of Democrats, but these critics of the Bush administration were not Democrats. They were the men running for the Republican nomination for the presidency.

Tommy Thompson (who said he was the candidate, not the actor) was once a member of Bush’s cabinet. He was the one who criticized the president’s diplomatic style. John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee all criticized Bush’s handling of the war. Romney said, "I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein." Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo was the one who would tell Bush “Never darken the door of the White House.”

How can the Democrats criticize the president when the Republicans are already doing for them?

DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN INDICTED

Congressman William Jefferson (no relation to William Jefferson Clinton) has been indicted on several charges, including taking bribes. It’s amazing that the feds were able to catch him since he cleverly hid $90,000 in cash in his freezer. (We just looked in our freezer to see if we had stashed a few loose dollars and forgotten about them, but we didn’t even find any loose change.) One of the charges against Jefferson is that he bribed an unnamed “Nigerian Official A.” Wait a minute! Nigerian officials—aren’t they the ones who send us e-mail, telling us that they need our help in getting several million dollars out of the country? They just need our bank account number so they can stash the cash in our account for a few weeks. Then for our trouble we can keep $1 million. Jefferson is bribing them—for what?

This is all so confusing. Democritic Congressman indicted for taking bribes? Democratic Congressman? Republicans are supposed to do that. Jack Abramoff bribed all those Republicans, and he’s in jail. Duke Cunningham had his hand out. He’s in jail too. Democrats aren’t supposed to do that. Democrats are supposed to be involved sex scandals, not money scandals. Democrats are supposed to do like William Jefferson Clinton and fool around with bimbo interns or Gary Hart with Donna Rice. If Congressman Jefferson can’t get involved in the right sort of scandal, he should be thrown out of the Democratic Party.