Don’t shake your head, Trump is headed to the White House

Fear of The Donald is tempering news coverage, and he's driving the Republican campaign bus.

Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, is a narcissistic, thin-skinned bully whose blunt talk and often offensive rhetoric has captured a segment of the population sick and tired of politics as usual, frustrated with what they see as an “un-greatness” of America, and over-scripted politicians and their issue-dodging speeches. In short, some people are enamored with the Trumpster because he’s a loud mouth. His campaign is on fire.

While amusing at times, Trump’s view of the world is based on only his own reality, which has nothing to do with any other reality. He’s a hater on many levels, slamming opponents, reporters, immigrants, women . . . darn near anyone with whom he disagrees on any level. And forget it if he feels someone was “unfair” to him. He’s not used to being questioned.

So I get at some level the appeal of this spoiled brat, but there’s no way on this earth I’d want him anywhere near the White House.

Let’s take a look.

You want his finger on the “nuke Russia” button? You want him working on a health care system? Or leading us through the Middle East messes? Making sure people in this country are fed? Children educated?

He doesn’t have a clue. He’s a big talker, but not a big thinker, despite his constant talk about how bright he is and how successful he is. He may be bright and successful, but those do not necessarily a good president make. His plan? “I’ll hire people that know about that stuff.” That’s not a plan. That’s a sound bite. He’s very good at that. And he’s very good at public speaking and firing up his crowds.

While we pretty much know what he doesn’t like . . . The question remains, what does he like? Is nothing working here? Is nothing good? Or of value in America? Apparently not. It’s a trap the Republican Party has stepped in. That has turned the party has into a very negative, glass half empty outlook on the country. We have very short memories, it appears.

Need I remind you that Bush the Son was widely viewed as reining over a terrible administration. Though hailed after 9/11, Bush and his administration (with the support, by the way, of most of Washington) got us into two never ending wars, a budget that spun out of control, never addressed immigration, rising unemployment, the fabulously complicated tax system, a banking crisis, the flow of jobs and business out of the country, or (along with Congress) an understanding that trickle-down economics had failed.

The good news for Republicans in many ways was that Obama was elected (twice). That enabled Republicans to blame the black guy from Hawaii (or some still believe not from Hawaii) for nearly every ill in the world. Whew . . . (All that Obama bashing, though, prevented Republicans from framing their own policies, philosophies and legislation that would have served them well as Obama headed out of the White House . . . That would be now, kids.)

So we have Donald Trump, in part the result of a weak party struggling to find its voice, despite being dealt favorable hand after favorable hand. He rises out of a huge field that was said to be broad and strong. Trump, the polished chrome hotel guy, stands head and shoulders above the pack. He is outdistancing the herd by tons. He’s killing his rivals, whether you think he’s a serious candidate or not . . . he’s headed for primary win after primary win, according to the current polls.

What happens when the voting starts? Who knows? But if we’re not a bit wiser The Donald will have his finger on the button and the White House will have a polished chrome sign that reads, “Trump’s White House.”

Reading is more than fundamental . . . It can fill a life

I read a lot.

Books, newspapers, magazines, news stories . . . fiction and non-fiction . . . history, current events, fantasy, business books and articles, how-to books, and on and on. All right, I’ll admit it . . . I’m a bit of a book addict. And while most of my news reading is via my computer (I subscribe online to the New York Times and Washington Post) I still manage to check at least half-a-dozen papers a day as well as on-line news outlets like Huffington Post and Politico, CNN, Fox and other networks. 

I love to read.

I guess I was lucky. My parents read to me (and my sister) a lot. Always a story at bedtime when I was a kid. Reading was easy for me. It’s not for everyone. Some people just don’t like to read, others have more serious issues like dyslexia, which can make reading a tough challenge . . . or an eye or ear issue, which can delay or hamper one’s ability to enjoy the escape many books for kids offer . . .or a challenge with comprehension, which can make reading and understanding what’s being read more difficult.

So what’s the point?

A couple . . . Reading at any age is important, and reading a variety of things, I think, is also important. Read more than one newspaper and one gets more than one perspective. It’s like watching TV . . . watch Fox and you get one take and watch MSNBC and you might get another. Information from multiple sources makes us better informed. I grew up in a family that gathered around the table every night and discussed not only what we kids did during the day, but also current events. It made us pay attention.

Of course we didn’t have video games, wide-screen high-def TVs connecting to streaming movies and hundreds of TV channels, or smart phones. Probably a good thing.

So we read.

Today, as I said earlier, most of my news reading is online, but I struggle with real books vs books on my Kindle. I do subscribe to several real, printed on paper magazines . . .

My girls gave me a Kindle a couple of years ago and I use it regularly, take it with me when I go out and download a number of books every month. Digital versions of my magazines are also downloaded to the Kindle.

My conflict is not that I don’t like the Kindle, but that I also like the touch and feel of real books. They make me feel comfortable, filling the shelves in my living room and office. I’m in the process of giving a number of them away . . . books I won’t read again . . . but carefully keeping many of the military and history books as well as a few fiction series (and admittedly a few books kept for their cover art . . . like Frank Frazetta’s Conan the Barbarian covers on the Robert E. Howard series and the complete set of Tarzan paperbacks highlighting a variety of artists, like Boris Vallejo, Joe Kubert and others). Most books I just won’t read again and again, so off they go overseas to troops, or the local hospital and a senior living facility down the road, as well as to a local used-book shop with my credit going to a school. Not at all noble . . . I’d never throw books away, and giving them to people that will read them seems a natural course.

So online, Kindle or off the shelves, reading, in large part thanks to my parents, remains a major part of me. Do parents today read to their kids enough and encourage them to read? Probably not . . . There are many more distractions nowadays, and that’s too bad . . . Reading has taken me to places real and imagined and to times past and times in the future, put me in a tank in North Africa during World War 2, on a farm in the Midwest, in New Orleans after Katrina, and a million other places.

Those are the places we should encourage our kids to go.

Grab a book and find a comfy spot . . .

A damaged Clinton leads, but Sanders draws strong support from voters tired of the same old game

Hillary Clinton, once seen as the anointed one, seemed a shoo-in not only as the Democratic nominee, but a fairly easy walk down the Yellow Brick Road to the White House. No longer. She and her campaign are in trouble, seriously damaged by self-inflicted wounds over her computer server and her emails.

While she’s tried to spin those two things into “not-so-bad” and “I’m innocent” issues, thus far that hasn’t worked. Having her own private server was a monumental error from the start. Never mind that it had been done in the past, before rules changed prohibiting it. When those rules changed, she should have switched to a government server and packed up the home office. She didn’t . . . so now she’s paying the price. Her campaign is stalled over the ongoing investigations and the drip, drip, drip that can kill any political campaign’s momentum.

So Hillary’s coronation is looking a bit shaky. Now Vice President Joe Biden may jump into the fray. With Bernie Sanders nipping away at Clinton’s polling numbers, Biden could prove a game changer, but only if he can raise the money, put together campaign staff and primary network. His coming into the race would probably be the death knell for the campaigns of former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, and ex-Virginia Sen Jim Webb. The money will dry up, and they haven’t managed to catch much voter interest between the Hillary and Bernie shows.

Biden may have a bit going for him . . . including the fact that people on both sides of the aisle have praised him for his straight talk, honest and open connection with all types of voters and his sense of humor (though sometime a bit off-color). So he has advantages over Clinton, but he also has weakness, including two failed presidential runs, his sometimes creepy touchy-feely too close for comfort photo ops, and his attachment to the Obama administration. (Something that’s hard to avoid when you’re the vice president.)

Tactical issues aside (and the fact the he’s not in the race . . . yet), that final point may be a tough one. If he enters, can he distance himself enough from Obama to draw some of the Obama haters to him? Maybe . . . but that’s a tough lot and there’s no indication, at least so far, that they’re interested in anything on the Democratic side. They’d rather stick with the conservative Republican flock. Of course do Republicans or Democrats really cross-vote much? I think some do, depending on the issues (or frustrations) or overall appeal of a candidates . . . and Latinos and women have been two groups that have fluctuated between the two parties (percentagewise) in recent national elections. The fight for both parties is in the middle and with younger voters. If they aren’t drawn by a candidate, they won’t vote.

One has a feeling, though, that Latinos, given the hateful Republican rhetoric, will flock to a Democrat.

The bigger concern is that young voters will just stay home.

If Democrats fail to garner support from young voters, that could spell defeat . . . I can’t see Republicans pulling more Latino voters than they did the last time around (27 percent of Latino voters voted for Romney in 2012 . . . McCain got 31 percent in 2006, and George W. Bush got 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004).

Poo-poo the importance of that if you will, but Latinos are the country’s fastest growing minority and now comprise over 16 percent of the population. Those are voters Republicans can’t afford to lose, but, despite their own analysis of the 2012 election results that urged a better focus on immigration and other Latino issues, Republicans have taken a decidedly anti-Latino stance.

It seemed it might have been the Democrats to lose, with Clinton looking nearly unbeatable a few months back, but that game has changed. Trump has led the Republican charge, and pundits are starting to take him more seriously than the sideshow they thought he was at first.

People are tired of the same old party lines . . . So Trump, and to an extent Sanders are drawing big crowds and enthusiastic support. The initial Clinton-Bush match-up looks pretty boring from here . . . Too predictable, campaigns lacking much excitement and maybe just too mainstream.

But the Democrats have to figure it out. Either Clinton climbs out of her email/server mess or the party tail spins after the primaries . . . Those self-inflicted wounds may cost her the nation’s highest office. She needs to transform herself into a less practiced, more spontaneous, more relaxed and more “human” instead of rehearsed. I’m not sure she can do or be those things. She’s been in this political game so long her character is pretty well solidified. Say this about Bill, he’s relaxed, relates well to all types of people, seems at ease in blue jeans and a polo shirt shaking hands with people in a diner and equally at ease on a stage talking about global issues. Whether you like him or not, he’s got that ease and wit about him. She does not.

If we’re judging on “trust” issues, Hillary Clinton is in trouble. Sanders and Biden win that by a long shot. The Democratic debates are coming up, and we’ll be watching carefully . . . Clinton can still pull this out . . . She remains the big gun on the Democratic side.

But we’ll see in the coming weeks whether she has fatally wounded herself with bad, dumb and ego-centric decisions regarding something so simple as a computer server.

Republicans Adrift . . . Show us you can govern, not just whine

(Part 3 of 3 . . . It’s time for Republicans to show us how they would govern and lead us forward, not backwards. Stop kicking funding a couple of months down the road and look at the long term. Stop the political bickering, and threatening to close down the government and get to work proposing legislation that helps the country, builds the jobs base, better feeds and educates kids and protects instead of harms the environment. The middle class is struggling, so stop pandering to the 1 percent and big business, fix and simplify the tax code, end failed trickle down economic policies and encourage investment here, not abroad. Show us you can lead, not just bitch,)

Trump has captured an audience with his plain, tough (and often offensive) speeches and interviews. Eventually he needs to tell us what his policies are . . . instead of simply saying “I know how to get stuff done.” That’s not good enough. But do people care, Not in August 2015 they don’t. Pundits had Trump fading soon after he announced, but instead he has improved in the polls. He’s a celebrity accountable to no political interests, at least as far as we know. People love his off-the-cuff remarks, unadulterated opinions and willingness to take on everything that he sees wrong with America.

The problem is most of his off-the-cuff ideas aren’t possible . . . A wall along the Mexican border would cost a trillion dollars (which, he said Mexico would pay for) . . . How could we possibly round up 11 million of so undocumented immigrants? . . . Couldn't. Not even with Dog the Bounty Hunter. . . . And on and on. They all sound good to some people, but we need someone who can lead, not just talk. He has also pulled most of the GOP field even further right than they were. That, according to even Republican analysis of the 2012 election, is not a winning strategy.

Therein lies the problem for now . . . Who can govern and lead the country forward through an ever-changing world?

To me, the current Republican tone is much too negative. There’s not one voice trying to lift voters up . . . There’s too much of “This is what’s wrong with America.” I might remind people that much the same thing was said when Bush the Son was in office, getting us in to two endless wars and spending a few trillion dollars in the process.

We need more jobs, better educational systems, stronger protections for food-insecure families, support for broad-based women’s health care, a trade agreement with Cuba, protection of voting rights for everyone, fewer tax breaks for large corporations and a tightening of tax loopholes that let companies avoid U.S. taxes by moving operations overseas, an end to trickle-down economics that just don’t work, a continuation of a health care system that enables the middle class to afford health care, an ongoing and long-term approval of funds to maintain and repair our highways, transportation systems, rails, bridges and tunnels, and less talk about how you want to spin us back into the 50s . . .

Obama’s not running for office . . . He already won twice . . . So you need to stop beating that dead horse, pull up your big boy pants and show us some vision.

Republicans Adrift . . . Continued infatuation with strict social legislation drags the party back into the caves

(Part 2 of 3 . . . By continuing to focus on the bad things they see about Obama’s Presidency, Republicans are missing the points they themselves noted in their own analysis of the 2012 election. A continuing hard shift to the right, led mostly by Donald Trump's fire breathing speeches and interviews, won’t help. The right turn didn’t help in 2012, and a continued focus on social issues is losing them support from women and Latinos, two groups they need if they are to win the nation’s highest office.)

Oh well . . . so much for self-analysis. The Republicans have bashed immigrants (legal and illegal), continue to hype failed trickle-down economic policies, steadfastly refuse to reign-in domestic companies dodging taxes by moving operations overseas, have made social issues a key part of their campaigning.

Some of those stands will kill the party, although clearly there’s a festering frustration with government that has manifested itself in a long, warm embrace of Donald Trump and his fire breathing rhetoric. Never mind that up until now he hasn’t offered any policy papers on any issues, though he keeps saying he knows what to do. Trust him. Candidates, including Trump, want to “fix” the immigration “problem” by throwing every undocumented immigrant and his or her family out of the country, building a trillion-dollar wall along the Mexican border, and killing the Constitution’s 14^th amendment that says kids born here are citizens and entitled to all that entails, including equal protection under the law. (The amendment includes a wide range of other issues.)

All that sounds good to some people, but politicians saying they want to change the Constitution scares me more than a little. They are feeding on fear and loathing, not making good policies.

Remember, to paraphrase Cameron, a party has to prove it can govern. Republican have lost that edge. When Obama won his first term, the stated Republican strategy was to defeat him so he wouldn’t win a second term. They offered no big legislative ideas, but instead focused on trying to kill every bill or proposal Obama made. It didn’t help. Obama won his second term and the Republicans are still pissed. Unfortunately all that prissiness begs the question as to whether or not Republicans can govern.

They obviously have in the past, and while some of the philosophical benchmarks of their party have been thrown into the gutter (small, less intrusive government and budget restraint as examples), there’s still hope. Not with the current tone, though.

It’s not a leadership tone. It’s not a tone of building businesses, resolving immigration, education or health care challenges. It’s a small-minded tone of  . . . We kind of don’t like anyone.

They should have defeated Obama in his first run . . . but they imploded with McCain and the party going insane by picking Sarah Palin as his VP . . . and then Romney and the party failed to capitalize on Obama’s perceived weaknesses and the shaky economy. Romney came across as an out-of-touch rich guy, failed to gain the full support of his own party (members of which continually questioned his “conservativeness.”) Romney, through his political career, had a pretty moderate record, but he threw that aside during the primaries and tried to take a hard right turn to better appeal to more conservative primary voters. The end result was another win for Obama . . . despite the shaky economy, a rise in unemployment, continued bleeding of jobs and companies moving operations overseas, falling economic confidence, rages against the Affordable Care Act, endless babbling about Obama’s religious beliefs, birthplace, and “socialist” policies . . . Oh yes, and the color of his skin. Despite all that AND an almost unbelievable disrespect for the office by other elected officials . . . Obama won a second term. And the Republicans haven’t recovered, found their own clear voice, or given us a vision of how they would lead and govern.

Instead, they took their eyes off their own solutions and kept hammering Obama. That has been a losing strategy. Because now we have no idea where candidates or the party really stand on any policies. It’s a mushy mess at this point, though as the field dwindles, some will start to stand out for their policy promises, not just their rhetoric. I hope.

Republicans Adrift . . . How? Why? What the Hell?

(Part 1 of 3 . . . We take a quick look at issues facing Republicans as it tries to win back the White House. Even with such a large field, the only voice people are hearing is Donald Trump, who continues to shine in the polls. Don't worry, next week we take aim at the Democrats.)

Let’s be honest here: The Republican Party has lost is focus and is adrift in the middle of the ocean somewhere.

How? Why? What the hell?

The GOP path to never-ending election success seemed pretty clear, but between here and there, Reagan to Clinton through Bush and Bush, the party hung some pretty respectable national numbers and some pretty reasoned and largely sensible policies (OK . . . that whole “trickle down” theory thing turned out not to work so well . . .)

But now, with so much national anger over Obama and the Republican goal of doing nothing except focusing on denying him a second term, Republicans moved to the right and are ignoring their own analysis of national election results.

That analysis pointed out several Republican failures in the general election (for instance focusing on Obama’s record instead of laying out a clear direction for future national direction). By avoiding that strategy, Republicans (Romney) never got into a cage fight with Obama over economic policies, despite bad number on unemployment, Obama’s health care bill and other key issues. (I’m avoiding personalities here). Voters said they didn’t really like Obama, but they liked the Republican directionless.

On economic policies, Republicans were hurt by several things . . . insistence that the rich deserved tax cuts and the middle class didn’t (even though most voters thought tax cuts would help the economy), Republicans lost women voters and didn’t attract Hispanic or young voters, and Republicans couldn’t move voters away from Obama despite voter dissatisfaction with him. (The Winston Group).

“What Republican campaigns need to develop is the ability to win issues and prove their candidates are ready to govern. David Cameron in his effort to modernize the Conservative Party redefined its purpose as not to win elections but to prove the party is ready to govern. The implication is that once you have proven you are ready to govern, you will win elections.

At a broader level, Republicans have to become the party of economic growth again, and effectively engage in developing and advocating policies that reflect that. This is essential if Republicans hope to grow as a party,” according to an analysis of the 2012 election by The Winston Group.

The Republican take on 2012 was that the party had to broaden its appeal to young, women and Hispanic voters, focus clearly on economic policy and avoid focusing on social issues.

The numbers are in and CVS takes a hit, but dropping cigarettes doesn't kill profits

Wow . . . CVS has stopped selling cigarettes, a move that will cost the company over $2 billion a year in sales. Bravo. I smoked pretty much all my life, but clearly there's no good that comes from it. It contributed by my health issues a couple of years ago, probably cost one of my best friends his life, and is responsible for thousands of deaths every year (realizing that people make the decision to smoke or not).

According to ABC, “CVS Health runs 7,870 drugstores. The front-end figure from those stores would have been flat if CVS hadn’t pulled tobacco products from its shelves nearly a year ago. The drugstore chain actually helped profitability by dumping thin-margin tobacco products, but its executives knew they would take a sales hit because smokers often grab other products when they stop in for their next pack.”

That was my experience in my liquor store. We contemplated dropping cigarettes (my father never liked the idea that we sold them), but not only did they generate revenue on their own, but only rarely did people come into the store just to buy cigarettes. They almost always bought wine or liquor, or at least a 6-pack. So in a store with sales of about $1.5 million, cigarettes generated maybe $50,000 to $75,000, but the overriding issues always was, “If we drop cigarettes, how many customers do we lose and how much do we lose in sales of other items when they come in?”

So CVS customer are probably tracking the same spending habits. But there's no doubt that cigarettes probably don't belong in a store of a company trying the steer its image into that of a health care company. Not only that, smoking's expensive. Even here in New Hampshire, cigarettes are $5-plus a pack, so a pack a day's going to cost you $40 a week, $140 a month and at least $1,700 a year. While one can reasonably argue that the CVS move was a business decision made in the face of increased competition and lower national cigarette sales, the move was still bold. They should be commended for it.