Red State/Blue State

I've been thinking about the bipartisan messaging we have been hearing all week long.  There is some strong indications that we are getting ready to hear a backlash to the extreme partisanship that has taken hold of not only Washington, but has infiltrated all of our politics over the last ten or twenty years. The rise of the internet, and the extreme partisan political fights that have taken root from the days of Watergate through to the impeachment of Bill Clinton and on into the Bush years have contributed to this partisan divide. It didn’t help matters when we had the 2000 election debacle with hanging chads and the too close to call Election night and on into the years of Obama and finally the 2016 Election, which was filled with online back and forth bickering and gerrymandered districts and another indecisive win where the popular vote and the Electoral College were out of sync, All of these things were factors that have brought us to this pass. In this atmo...

Here’s the list I have for those who are on the other side of the aisle from me regarding politics this season. I have come up with a list of outstanding values and things we have in common with those who we feel we cannot talk to from ‘the other side’ of the political aisle. 1)        Your Respect for our common values: If you are truly a friend, you will recognize that we all have ideals and values that we are working to protect when we decide to vote and to support candidates. These are part of who we are and why we feel passionate about certain subjects. 2)       Your values and core beliefs: In this same vein, not only the common values we share, like love of country and belief that the country we support is great and continues to be great, we have core beliefs in basic things like love of family and hope that we will leave our world a better place for our children. 3)       Th...

Nancy Pelosi has finally said something about what Dems will do when and if they take control of the House. The laundry list should begin to get awfully long by now. The Ethics concerns should have begun to pile up from Day One of the Trump Presidency. At present, there is no mechanism of checks and balances on the insider trading, the cronyism, the government waste, fraud and abuse, the corruption and flagrant spending of taxpayer money for personal expenses within this corrupt administration. Steve Schmidt, former Republican strategist, is correct in saying the Democrats should have been better at hammering home this message. And frankly, the Dems have never been good at messaging and they aren’t getting any better now. But the Trump Administration is so bad, so corrupt and over-reaching, that they may win in spite of themselves. The list should include: ·          Hearings on ALL Trump Administration officials to restor...

Globalization is not a concept but reality I keep thinking of the rock song: “Hang on....Help is on the way!”....We need the cavalry out. And the elephant in the room is Globalization. It’s the dirty word for the 38% crowd. The odd thing is that these protectionist policies are going to hit them as much or more as it will everyone else. These are not the elitists. The Elite of the GOP want free and fair trade. The only small group that is cheering are the steel workers and their union leaders. Everyone else is screwed in this. And the idea that we are going to go back to the 19 th Century coal mine and aluminum and steel based economic models is laughable. There are books written, classes held and studies showing that automation is going to eliminate a segment of the work force. Preparing for the New Economy is going to take a Manhattan Project effort. We need a leader that we can get behind that will shove home this message every day of his or her campaign. ...

This summit -or photo op for Fat Boys- is a waste if we are going to simply expect Trump to go in and sit down and ‘charm’ the delegation or to use the old Harold Hill “Think Method” to try and stun them with our brilliance. Trump is a buffoon and a madman with a big stick, thanks to the 38%. The question now is how far will he go and how far will we let him go? The one thing the GOP is good at is fake outrage. And they would have had plenty of ingredients to stir them up as we keep speculating ‘what if” this was OBAMA doing these things. What if....Obama had trashed our allies!? What if....Obama had dismissed the press as fake news and an ongoing FBI investigation plus Special counsel looking into his campaign and possible obstruction of justice as a ‘witch hunt?’ What if...Obama had – and the list goes on. The answer is he wouldn’t be able to get away with it, and the next question is where is the outrage? Where are the people storming the Bastille? Why don’t the Demo...

One thing I have not heard of late was the reminder that the first model for Obamacare was  based on a proposal originally made by two Republican Senators way back when Bill Clinton was President. That's how far we've come, or how low the bar has dropped, as we trudge through this messy fight that began when the Tea Party hit the streets en masse to protest Obamacare. Now we have come full circle, as the left and the rest of the health care advocates are taking to the streets and flooding the air waves to stop the repeal of Obamacare. A few things missing in the fight are honesty and candor, both on the part of the political operatives and the media as this fight continues.... It's well known inside the beltway that when and if Obamacare goes down in defeat, the Democratic Party will have no choice but to embrace the single payer system. The Republican Party realizes that this is not really a fight about health care, but about taking the money that is in Medicai...

Former Vice President Al Gore asks three vital questions during the course of his TED talk: Do we really have to change?; Can we change?;  and Will we change? He explores these questions through some anecdotes but mostly with a daunting barrage of statistical data from around the globe. The statistics not only highlight the need for change, as he lays out the predicate in his opening remarks, but they also serve as a Call to Action as we are watching this TED talk. Gore then goes to the more hopeful and relevant points that list the ways we are changing. Not only is the reality of climate change not a political issue, nor is it even a scientific question at this point, but it has become a major economic issue and one that even the greatest military force ever assembled, the United States Military, has conceded is a real challenge. So there are many hopeful elements listed in this presentation from Al Gore. Gore has made it his mission, since losing the Pr...