World Rape Record

If Donald Trump means anything, it's that he's made a whole cohort of ignorant people feel important, feel they have a seat at the table, feel like their voice and their opinions, however ill founded, matter.

You can see it on Fox News every morning: Dimwits who do not have enough RAM in their short term memory to capture data and to use "facts" in developing an argument are now on equal footing with all those smart boys and girls who can do all that.


The President has made the declarative sentence sufficient in and of itself. In speech, there is logic.


So that band of a thousand illegal immigrants from Honduras and Guatemala making its way across Mexico toward the US border raping at "levels never seen before in the history of the world" is just that, whatever Mr. Trump says it is.

So, are they raping the women in this group or are they raping Mexicans along the route of their path or are they raping each other?  And are they raping once daily, twice daily? And does their rape rate exceed that of the  Mongol hordes and Genghis Khan?  Do they rape more than the Red Army as it swept across Germany? Do they rape more than the Rwanda rapists?  Does Mr. Trump have a rape index to compare world rape numbers over the world's history?

Just consider that: Rape at levels never seen before in the world's history. It's breath-taking really. And Mr. Trump knows this.
Wow!

Who Votes?

Since the advent of the age mass communications, which Mad Dog would date to roughly to the dissemination of the radio in the early 1930's, no public figure has dominated the public consciousness in America as does our current Donald Trump.
Roosevelt had his fireside chats and Kennedy his suave press conferences, and movie stars had their faces all over Life magazine and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were wildly popular, but for none of them did ever news broadcast begin with their names, and none of them popped up on the morning paper or on the radio the way Donald Trump now does on Twitter and Fox and CNN and virtually everywhere.


When Orwell imagined Big Brother on the TV set in the corner of every bedroom, he was predicting the Donald, but not even Orwell could imagine the ever presence of the Trump hole.


He is on every screen, all lips, and he dominates consciousness as no other modern leader. Not even Hitler, who was heavily marketed for his time, had the penetration into the every day consciousness as Trump.


There may be some very closed societies, like North Korea or one of those "Stan" countries where the personality/personage of the dear leader, the Fuhrer had the Omni presence of Trump, but for a country our size, this is new.


Every American knew who Lincoln was, but they did not think about him all the time and he chose his appearances, crafted his remarks, refined his thinking and from that we got the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address and some of the best writing of the 19th century--and that says something given who was writing in the 19th century (Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, among others.)


The only way we may rid ourselves of this meddlesome tyrant toddler is by voting him and his rascalions out of office. But that would require a coalescence of a disparate group, a coalition of people who vote one way primarily because they are Black, or gun control, or gay or Hispanic or labor or militant feminist or just plain fed up.  Against that is the army of white, less educated males and their female mates.


The thing about an army is it works as a unit. This is how an army of 100,000 can take control of a population ten times as large. The big group is disorganized, fractured, but the army moves as one.


Many have noted Blacks did not turn out in sufficient numbers to tip the balance to Hillary; those who voted, voted for her, but too many simply didn't bother to vote.

But look at the charts: Fact is, yes, had all Blacks got out and voted for Hillary we'd not have Donald today, but the same can be said for every other group; whites still are the majority and it's how they vote that determines elections:

And, fact is, all those kids who marched on the weekend to protest lunatic shootings at school, they don't vote much. They may threaten to vote, but they get distracted, get on Facebook, or go to the beach or do whatever adolescents do other than vote.

Until and unless folks are motivated enough to go stand on line, we'll have Trump.
Obama was different enough, and folks knew he was fighting uphill.


For now, we are toast.

Should Democrats Run on Unity, Restoring Comity and Seeking Common Ground?

Democrats have for generations tried to cobble together coalitions. Had Hillary won, it would have been with the most amazing coalition of immigrants, gays, transgenders, women, labor unionists, you name it. 

Not Interested in Reaching Across the Aisle to This Guy

All Trump needed was white, high school educated men and their wives and girlfriends. That's maybe 35-45% of the nation.

Republicans have not run on bringing us all together, we are stronger united, stronger together. They have run on "take America back" and "make America great again," which translates into, let white guys take control again and suppress everyone else.

Democrats should, I would argue, have to, run as a force not interested in compromise or reaching across the aisle or ending gridlock by being willing to talk and shift positions. That worked for Barack Obama, but that was before Trump.

Now it's simply us against them. 
We should not be interested in going to Washington to compromise in the interest of getting things moving again. 
We are only interested in overwhelming this Neo Nazi Republican party and replacing them, not talking to them.

Beyond Trump: The Long Game and Ben Sasse Republicans

This morning, walking the dog, I listened to "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me," on NPR, the news quiz/comedy show and to my surprise, they had on air a Republican United States Senator, Ben Sasse. This is NPR, after all, and when they have Republicans on it's usually to skewer them, but they were very friendly and the biggest surprise was how funny, self deprecating and all around wonderful this guy sounded. 

Ben Sasse: Trump's Replacement?

They mentioned he had grown up in Nebraska, gone to Harvard where he was on the wrestling team, to which he added, "I didn't go to Harvard for the academics; I went there because their athletics were crappy enough that I could make the team."

They also mentioned this Republican had opposed Trump as a Republican senator. He attacked Trump for refusing to decry the Ku Klux Klan. Sounds like a good guy, right? But how can  a good guy be a Republican?

Lebensborn

So now, I was all on Google to find out more about this good Republican senator.

Reality slammed home:  "One abortion is too many," the man says. He has a top rating from the NRA and he was a determined foe of Obamacare saying, "If Obamacare lives, then America, as we know it, dies." His children are home schooled. Oh, my.

His background is almost entirely academic:  After Harvard, and a year at Oxford, he got his PhD at Yale, in history, became, at age 37, the president of a small Luthern College and served George W. Bush as an advisor on Homeland Security and healthcare isssues. Like so many of the most effective Right Wingers, he has spent years in bastions of liberal thought, Harvard, Yale, Oxford and he took the time to learn their positions, to dissect out the weaknesses and to learn how to attack. Patton, after all, read Rommel's textbooks on tank warfare.

The United States Senate is his first elected office, having won his seat in 2014, he's due up for re election in 2020.

This is exactly the sort of Republican who, once Trump is gone, in 2024, could ascend to the Presidency. And that is a dismal prospect.

Funny, impeccably intelligent and well educated, he is some of what Trump is (funny and good on media) but he is a conservative with deep convictions about conservative issues, like abortion, killing government involvement in healthcare, defending the rights of every child to have a gun.

Republicans are growing their own replacements right now, their Lebensborn. You remember Lebensborn, which means, "from the font" and was the name for the children who the Nazis cultivated, bringing together blonde, Aryan looking SS officers and blonde, blue eyed women to breed and produce the really Master Race.

While Republicans take their time, think, refine their responses to controversial issues, Democrats continue doing what they have done time and time before, i.e. train to lose.

Lots of Blue Eyed Blonde Master Race

We simply do not sit around a room and argue positions enough. Even Deaglan McEachern, who is a lot like Sasse in terms of education, still could not answer a straightforward question about abortion. He had his well rehearsed sentence, but he could not really expand on his position. He said there is a rhetorical risk to saying too much about abortion. He wanted to say only something most people could agree with: Women should have the right to control their own bodies. But when pressed: Well, does that men you can meet the baby on the way down the birth canal with a scalpel? he was flummoxed. 

Deaglan McEachern 

Republicans are all about expanding on positions. Just listen to Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones and you hear the product of think tanks.

O'Rourke: Still Thinking 

Captain Terence O'Rourke

Democrats are afraid of offending anyone, and everyone can hear that fear in their parsed answers. Democrats have to be willing to offend, to sound sincere and not slippery. You can say, "I am against infanticide. I am willing to permit abortion. The line between the two is where you get into fights. I might draw it earlier than Roe v Wade, but I think Justice Blackmun provided the right approach. I will say one thing: I am deeply offended by those who claim to have God's private cell phone number, who have been told by God that a two cell zygote is a fully en-souled human being and that I am an accomplice to murder if I agree to allow that zygote to be destroyed. Disagree with me. Debate me. But call me a murderer? That's where all discussion ends."

And all like that.

Democrats Can Learn: Stealing a Page/ Opposition Research

Republicans are masters at creating boogie men and running against them.
So Donald Trump continues to run against Crooked Hillary and President Obama.
Jim Jordan of Ohio runs against all those tax and spend Democrats who are coming to get your guns.
Kris Kobach of Kansas runs against all those Hispanic rapists, aka undocumented Mexicans flooding across the border taking jobs away from real Americans, white men.
And Louie Gohmert runs against all those godless dark skinned Hispanics who have slipped across the border to rape white Christian American women.

Democratic candidates ought to be fully equipped and rehearsed in using these guys as the very image of Republican politicians.
When someone speaks about reaching across the aisle and undoing "gridlock" my candidate will say that's a fantasy: You can't pet a hyena on the head and expect him to purr.

Next time we hear someone ask the candidate what he intends to do to work with Republicans to get things done, I'd like to hear:


"Well, I look forward to going down to Washington to face Jim Jordan of Ohio, who of course would much rather be working with Roy Moore, for whom he campaigned so ardently, than to face me across the aisle. No, I don't look to reach across the aisle to work with Jim. There's nothing to work with there. The guy still thinks he's on a wrestling mat somewhere--wears the closest thing to a wrestling singlet he can find on the floor of Congress, just so we won't forget. But you know, he's like a lot of tough guy Republican: He's all about placing AR 15's in the hands of teenagers but he's never had a bullet fired at him in anger."


Or


"You talking about negotiating with the Republicans? Which Republicans are you talking about? Louie Gohmert of Texas who thinks the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting was the result of God being angry at our godless American society, who thinks Mexicans are all dark skinned rapists intent on sneaking into America? Who thinks God speaks directly to him and tells him a two cell zygote is a fully ensouled human being and anyone who hasn't received that word just doesn't have God's private cell phone number and is an accomplice to murder?"

And all like that.
Every time anyone suggests accommodation, we need a Winston Churchill type who is not about appeasement, but about fighting them on the beaches and in the fields.


Terrance O'Rourke, speaking of Trump's remark that some of the Charlottesville Neo Nazis were "fine people" remarked, "Even in this supremely divided, partisan nation, I would think there would be one thing Americans can agree on, and that is that Nazis are never 'fine people.' Nazis are bad people, period."

Now that was a well thrown punch.


We need a little repertoire like that which every Democrat candidate can recite, a patter, the way the Republicans have.

This is what Ray Buckley and every Democrat who is getting a check from the DNC should be working on: "Talking points." More than talking points, but shared jabs. "Fact is, General Motors is alive and Osma Bin Laden is dead." That was Biden. We need a few dozen ditties like that.

Until we have those nifty little punch lines, we'll never get through to Joe Sixpack, or for that matter to anyone else.

Mindi Messmer: Going all Erin Brockovitch

We all want safe drinking water. Just ask the folks in Flint, Michigan.
We are all appalled whenever we learn some factory has dumped toxic stuff into a Love Canal or its equivalent in New Hampshire.
But we are also suspicious of people who develop a "passion" for causes which somehow works for them, personally.

Mindi Messmer

Anyone who lived through the 1960's remembers the folks who organized rallies and marches against the war, against poverty, against racism, who clearly felt they had found their calling. We looked at those people, who were doing good work, but who were "cashing in" on some cause.


In "The Wire," (yes, I'm guilty, alluding to "The Wire" again) an ambitious journalist at the Baltimore Sun finds himself in the middle of the investigation of a serial killer and, at one point, one of the cynical Baltimore homicide cops listens to the journalist say how dreadful this ongoing succession of murders must be for the homeless out there on the streets, and the cop says, "Oh, I don't know it's all that bad. It's worked for you, hasn't it?"

Erin Gone Hollywood

By which he means, you've made your career on the back of this story. Gus Haynes, the journalist's editor, who has been following the progress of the story looks at the cop and betrays just a wisp of a knowing smile.


So it is for me, with Mindi Messmer, who has been campaigning about ground water contamination on the Seacoast, which we all abhor.

Contamination was Good for Me

But she has tried to tie it to a "cluster" of pediatric (and now adult) malignancies. The problem with these "cancer clusters" which may or may not actually be related to environmental contamination is they have been devilishly difficult, nay impossible, to scientifically verify and only two or three cases--one being the Erin Brockovitch story--have ever been convincing to a jury.
I've heard Mindi raise the issue of an adult with pancreatic cancer who lives near what may well be a contaminated site, and she said something to the effect that Tom Sherman, MD, who we all love and respect, has said the cancer might be a product of the contamination.
That is called "anecdote" in medicine. It is anything but science. It is where science may begin.  And Mindi is trying to sell herself as a "scientist" and not just a scientist, but a woman scientist and we all know we need more of those. Fact is, Mindi's behind the times. We have, happily, lots of women scientists now, if you count physicians and surgeons and even PhD's and engineers. Times have changed. You can't run on being a role model for girls who might want to be scientists. That's so 20th century.

Hate That

Mindi's campaign material now says "send a woman scientist to Congress." She also has posted stuff about how women present differently than men with respect to a variety of diseases, the point being that women are being short changed by uncaring male doctors. Of course, this neglects the fact that the American medical profession is just about half and half female and male now. Women are not being neglected, or victimized and do not need a woman in Congress to champion their rights.
I do note that when a woman is passionate about a topic she's often criticized as being "emotional" where a man is "passionate." And that is unfair and unwarranted. But you don't get a free pass if you are a woman when you try to stoke up support for your ambitions by pointing to a cause like water pollution as if only you are pushing that.

Let's Get All Dramatic

As I hear it, Ms. Messmer has done a great job in the state legislature, but I think we've got better people (both of whom HAPPEN to be male, but that should not count against them.)


And, she is a Democrat and if she is the ultimate Democratic candidate, I'll be all in for her and work for her.


Some say we ought not be criticizing Democrats, giving Republicans ammunition for November. That is, of course, ridiculous. There is nothing we can think of saying about any Democrat they will not have thought of and more. During the primaries is where we shake out the problems, identify weaknesses, find the strongest candidate. That's what the Republicans did in 2016--and they got a guy nobody would have predicted would be a formidable politician, difficult to beat.


I think we need to send a warrior to Congress who nobody will look at and say, "Oh, she's trying to cash in and sound all passionate. Works for her."


We've got better folks, and their lack of "experience" is no longer an issue, not in these times when having political experience may simply make you appear to be a candidate from the Deep State.

The Almost Perfect Candidate (s): Deaglan McEachern + Terence O'Rourke

"Listen to every single one of them," my savant, Democratic guru keeps telling me.
There are eight candidates for the seat now held by Carol Shea Porter in the New Hampshire First.
This is a lady who knows of what she speaks: She's worked Democratic campaigns for years, knows the state and Congressional representatives and she knows New Hampshire. A product of Manchester's Central High School and Keene State, she can see and hear things I miss cold, when we go out canvassing.


After slogging through, listening to one candidate after another at the monthly Hampton Dems meeting and at the weekly Exeter meetings, there was only one who struck me as the real article: Terence O'Rourke. But last night Deaglon McEachern spoke at Exeter and he was interesting.

He is polished, articulate, speaks the Queen's English (American accent) and holds a degree from Cambridge (MA in history) and he is every bit the physical specimen you'd expect from a guy who spent a lot of college (and some post college) in the rowing/crew world.
Fact is, he had the time and money to indulge his passion for rowing, to go off to Cambridge for a little more polishing, and the polishing shows.




He said a few important things:
1/ To address the problem of mass shootings we should not only outlaw the sales of AR 15 assault rifles; we should focus on the bullets, the high capacity magazines.
We're never going to get back those weapons already out there. Forget that.
2/ We should focus a lot more effort on training plumbers, electricians, carpenters, the trades which will support families, allow them to buy homes and which will never be replaced by robots.
That definitely struck a nerve with me. Much as I loved Obama, he was wrong about insisting on sending everyone to college. He was uncritical of the data suggesting that is the path to prosperity. He should have focused on those "blue collar" jobs and so should the Democrats.

McEachern

Like most Democrats, McEachern is for shifting the tax burden from the poor to the rich, and he's in favor of single payor, Medicare for all.




When pressed about abortion he simply said he's for the woman's right to control what happens to her body, end of discussion.
After the talk, when I pressed him on the argument he'll hear from his Republican colleagues: "So, it's not a choice: It's a life. When the kid is 28 weeks and you do a late term abortion, or when he is on the way down the birth canal and you meet him with a scalpel, is that not infanticide?" McEachern explained that when you start drawing lines like that, you concede too much to the other side. But I insisted that abortion is all about line drawing, as was true in Roe v Wade, and he listened and said, "Ask me about abortion next time. I think you may have changed my response a little here."

O'Rourke

When asked about endless war, he said he could not see pulling out of Afghanistan until we'd built a better nation there. O'Rourke basically said fye on nation building. Don't send American troops in where there is no clear mission beyond winning the hearts and minds. We saw how well that worked in Vietnam. No more endless war.


Other than that, McEachern is right on most of the big things. I'll scour his website for his positions, but on most things, he's a Democrat. He's correct.


The differences between him and O'Rourke come down to style and experience.
On style points, at least for the moment, McEachern will stand out in an 8 candidate debate. He's tall, chiseled, vigorous, articulate and he speaks well, articulates where O'Rourke tends to mumble and get all staccato. And he's clearly very bright and well educated. He's so very polished, all smooth edges and gloss; O'Rourke is a work in progress--the guy with something to prove.


Both have clearly been told to appeal to women voters by talking too much about their young children.


McEachern ended his talk by saying he's not important, that none of the candidates are, that it's the folks like us in the audience, who come out to hear the candidates who are important.
Nice sentiment, but to these hard ears, sounded like a kiss up, like a guy who is trying to get all warm in fuzzy in times when we don't need warm and fuzzy.
We need tough and sharp elbows and someone who can throw a punch.
Not sure if McEarchern is tough enough. There's a tough you need to be a world class rower; there's a different sort of tough you need to hump through the dust in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Who can speak to this guy?

But where he draws on the experience of the arguably most physically demanding of all sport--rowing--O'Rourke was a combat officer in Iraq, and is now a prosecutor. McEarchern is a rich high tech entrepreneur. He is from a family of New Hampshire political royalty my savant/guru tells me. He's a JFK, where O'Rourke is a street fighting man, more a Joe Biden, only way smarter. 
O'Rourke would enjoy the gritty "Wire" where McEachern would be watching "Downton Abbey."


I can see O'Rourke taking on Jim Jordan, Mitch McConnell and all those loud mouth, bullying Republicans and not taking one step backward. O'Rourke is Ulysses S. Grant. McEachern is right off PT 109, a young Jack Kennedy.

He fights

If you mixed the two of these guys together, taking the best characteristics from each, you'd have the next rising star in national politics.  Fact is, either or both may be that anyway, if they can get their minds around the issues, figure out an image to project and hammer away at the opposition.