Good-bye politics..... let's get back to New Homesteading!

I restarted posting here during the Presidential election. I felt this election was critical for the world.

Somehow, in a choice between the lesser of two evils and evil itself, a very angry, confused and searching America chose evil itself........ that is for now.

So while the misguided minority that gave an abomination an Electoral College victory celebrate and clean their guns, those of us concerned about the future of the entire planet, must continue to do our best to mitigate the effects of 7.3 billion humans. Humanity itself must deal with the extreme over-population, resource depletion and sixth mass extinction event that is resulting from our population crisis. The cure is not "Brexiting" our way out, the cure will be reducing our impact on the planet and our numbers.

I am changing the focus of this blog away from politics, but understand I remain what we call a Progressive and support our ability to choose what we do and how we care for our bodies. I won't mention much about politics, unless there is a piece of legislation that affects sustainable living and New Homesteading......... we all know the 49 month nightmare that has begun, no sense re-hashing the senseless motivations of an ignorant populace.

So....... here at the Eco-Ranch, we have changed our main building material for the living quarters from empty bottles to raw, native rock. There was a large rock fall off one of the mountains our main highway cut through and there are hundreds of tons of fantastic building material right there! Since using rock will require about 1/4 of the mortar of glass bottles, the switch is a good decision!

There will be a lot more posts on that subject and more, but for now, pass this URL on to your friends and let's create a sustainable life, together!

(The photo is of a rock wall I am building from this rock fall. It is the wall of our guest bathroom.)

No Posts For The Forseeable Future

No Posts For The Forseeable Future.............................

We Are Better Than Trump! (My Last Post Of This Cycle)

Pundits across the board are talking about the "election tightening" and some Democrats are running around with their pants on fire. Despite the Newsweek revelation that positively connects Trump's campaign to Russian hackers trying to influence the election, the talk is going toward "the economy" as the source of whatever strength this unqualified buffoon has in the election. The scary thing is that some 70% of America really believes ONE person, whoever it is, with all the checks and balances to the Executive Branch, can really put a "chicken in every pot". It took FDR FOUR elections and a World War to revive the American economy after the Great Depression and it was not as complex nor corporate controlled then, as it is now.

The real truth, the one those rabid Trump supporters and "disenfranchised" minorities on the other side, choose to ignore, is that the majority of the control over our lives, income and wealth, lies with OUR CHOICES, not a Government policy! Our Nation was founded on the PURSUIT of happiness, not on guaranteed happiness! Most already know that buying a home, at whatever the cost, having credit cards and sharing a new vehicle with the finance company, does not create happiness.

Our Founders, our ancestors, the "Greatest Generation" and our parents all knew that to be happy was to be secure and security starts at home! My Father (and I) built PAID OFF homes and drove vehicles we actually owned. Americans have been tricked into thinking that a "credit score" is the secret to happiness and a new vehicle, most likely a resource vampire of an SUV is what makes you whole!
You, all you wanting to tear up trade deals and "Make America Great (hate, white, able to do as we please without consequences) Again", as well as those wanting free EVERYTHING provided by the Government need to take another very hard look at our forefathers. THEY did with what they had.

They not only lived within their means, they SAVED a portion of their means for a "rainy day". They bought new shoes not because some gender-obscure fashion designer said the old shoes were out of style, they bought new shoes because their toes were out of the old ones! They bought a new vehicle when the old one could not be repaired any longer. They bought a house when they could afford it : CASH or 40-90% down! No money, no shoes... darn the socks.... put cardboard in the shoes..... live with the parents (my parents did until my Dad bought his first house: CASH)....... faded pants, buy a packet of RIT..... $2.00 in your pocket, no meat this week, buy potatoes...... can't pay the rent, light bill (now called the electric bill), insurance and buy food? Sell something and MOVE INTO WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD WITH 70% OF YOUR INCOME AND SAVE 30%! Dave Ramsey has it right when he teaches to cut costs, eliminate all credit and live within your means. "Live like no one else now, so you can live like no one else later" (WHILE SAVING MONEY)!

Being American does not give you the right to have everything some corporation says you need to buy. Being American insures we all start on a level playing field to strive for what is possible within our abilities. If you do not possess the ability to live in a McMansion and drive a BMW, live on the "East SIde" or "Downriver" save until you can and be happy some King doesn't come to your door to "claim his right" to your wife or daughter! Or a military squad does not kick in your door and take what you DO have! Don't whine because you cannot afford the newest thing some advertisement says will make you whole or sexy!


Wake up you ignorant fools!!!! Politicians did NOT put YOUR economy in the condition it is in!!!! YOU DID! YOU APPLIED FOR AND RAN UP THE CREDIT CARDS! YOU LIED AND BOUGHT THE HOUSE YOU COULDN'T AFFORD, YOU "NEEDED" THAT PICKUP WITH THE 4WD YOU WILL NEVER ENGAGE! YOU PLACED YOURSELF WHERE A SMALL CHANGE IN YOUR INCOME OR INFLATION IS CATASTROPHIC!!! YOU, NO ONE ELSE!!!!

You were suckered by corporations and now you are considering being even more stupid and hiring someone with zero political experience as your President. This is someone whose ass you would kick for the things he says about women and more.... remember what you told your high school friends when they said they thought your younger sister was cute! Even the most ignorant and stubborn out there would NEVER ask someone who never spent a day in medical school to remove a brain tumor, why would you consider a politician who never read the Constitution or spent a day in any political office AND filed bankruptcy SIX TIMES to run our economy and control our military & its weaponry?

Consider this: what if despite the very best efforts of professional politicians world-wide, this is the BEST they could accomplish with their skills? What if where we are IS the best possible today? Could YOU do a better job? You have to answer that because you are looking at the possibility of placing someone in control of the world's largest economy who has been bankrupt SIX times. How many times were you bankrupt? Could you do a better job than the pros? You cannot even pay your bills and control your spending! What makes you thing a six-time-bankrupt, politically inept, 70 year old could do better than you, let along the professionals? Do you want to risk that?


"America is in the sewer", you say? I cannot disagree, but our FREEDOM to pursue (win or lose) our happiness remains intact and you have a choice to continue the lifestyle that has you considering brain surgery from a golf course designer, or you can use your brain to change your lifestyle to one you CAN sustain! But make no mistake, whomever becomes our next president is NOT going to change anything if you continue living as you are. You need to change and the bottom line is that you know it!

I have faith in America. Faith in the people that took, in SIX MONTHS, an isolationist country and turned it into a mechanized powerhouse that saved the World in 1945. I have faith that what Richard Nixon called the "silent majority" will come through once again with sanity and maintain the oldest democracy in the world. First, we must learn to control our consumption and live within our means again.


That is MY America! We are out there still, some shouting in anger at their own frustrations at their own shortcomings. But shouting  "Lock her up"and "build the wall", to someone who grew up watching the 1940's newsreels, sounds scarily like "Sieg Heil" did in those newsreels. Worse, "Jew-S-A" invokes images of the Berlin businesses where "Juden" was painted on the storefronts of people of one particular religion that Hitler blamed for Germany's economic woes. We all know how THAT ended!


American citizens who happen to believe in the SAME one god as we all do, just a little differently, are now as frightened as those "Judens" were in the 1930's. Remember, Hitler was a christian. So were the Crusaders who slaughtered more than a million Muslims.

Are we now prepared to go there......... again? With HIM???????

A Message To "Millennials"

I know it is hard to get excited about this election! For many, it is the first you will vote in. For most, the excitement that Barack Obama gave us in 2008 & 12, is gone now, replaced with the rather mundane "status quo" of normal politics and the relatively new obstructionism of the very sore losers. Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders were, are, exciting and give us hope. But that hope does not reside soley inside them, or any single politician! It resides in every human on this planet! It is the hopes and dreams of a better set of circumstances and a better life that we all share, regardless of any race, religion, or country of origin. It is a shared human emotion that allows us to get up each and every day and "go kill something and drag it home"!

So you are faced with the" lesser of two evils" in this election and both are undesirable? Welcome to life! I first heard that expression in 1960 when Richard Nixon and a CATHOLIC John Kennedy were our parents' choices. We survived. So far, we have always survived, though most elections are touted as a choice between" the lesser of two evils".

It does not help that both candidates are 70 years old and not very relevant to you. I know this too, at 64, I am not relevant to you either. Every generation of Mankind has been through this Life from being helpless at birth, to needing to know everything at 10 years old, to 20 years old and knowing everything, particularly those things we know nothing of..........  to (with luck) irrelevancy!

Your time will come, sadly. But it is a very long time off and you need to, you WILL live and savor every moment until one day you realize that the next generation, whatever it is called, has taken over.

This is "OUR" last hurrah, the "Baby Boomers". Time has moved us forward on Life's journey, robbed us of our unbridled energy and moved our leadership position in "the village" to one of sitting by the fire dispensing wisdom, welcome or not. It is not so bad, but it is inevitable!


Next election will be your turn. Next election will be yours to command and the world will be molded into YOUR vision. But that is next time. We still have this time and though there are several choices, the chance of leading this country and the world, rests in one of two people. We, YOU, must choose one, the right one for this moment, for this moment is all we have to determine our choice. History can look backwards at past choices, like the "Monday morning quarterbacks" do after the Sunday football games, each saying they would have done it differently. But on Sunday, or on November 8th, you don't have the benefit of hindsight.

Sure, you can choose NOT to vote, but in doing so you forfeit your right to complain about the outcome and the country's direction afterwards. You may also, allow Supreme Court justices to be appointed AND confirmed that will legislate away your right to choose what happens within your body. Old, white men will be telling women what they can and cannot do, as if they had any clue what it is like to BE a woman! Money will continue to be interpreted as "free speech" and those with lots of it will continue to be allowed to purchase politicians with their "free speech" (Citizens United). Uncle Charlie with his red-faced hypertension, who just lost his job because of it and the single Mother down the street with the epileptic daughter, won't be able to get insurance coverage AT ANY COST, because we will return to being the only developed country in the world without a national health care plan. Your chance to fix the flaws in the vehicle that is the Affordable Health Care Act will be gone! Had we stopped trying to build airplanes because Orville Wright crashed on the first attempt, the vehicle would never have been improved to the point it is today. Had we slammed the door on immigrants, at ANY point in our history, we wouldn't even be having this conversation!

This is the last time WE,  "boomers" will dominate. In four years the torch passes to you! It seems like yesterday that we were protesting an unpopular war, marching for equal rights, fighting in vain for the Equal Rights Amendment, lowering the age of majority, choosing a university, a spouse, a name for our first child....... but is was not yesterday!

You get the challenges now! You get the decisions now! YOU, get to be the adults now! One of your first adult decisions that will affect the rest of your relevant life, will be this election. There is the "lesser of two evils"....... then there is just evil.

Bigotry, prejudice, hatred, racism, mysongeny and narcissism have no place in the world that YOU will be relevant in! You would never consider having someone who never touched plumbing, repair your leaking faucet, someone who never looked under the hood of a car repair your brakes, or someone who never went to medical school remove your appendix. Do you really want someone who never spent a day in politics to step into the most difficult governing job on earth?

I spent 47 years working in this world. I voted for the first time in 1972 for the candidate whose vision of the world best suited my vision for the years that followed. Each election, I voted for the candidate who pledged to continue moving toward that goal. Now it is your turn! Vote on November 8th for a professional politician who can interact with all the other professional politicians in the world to solve the major problems facing the world, like man-made climate disruption!


Sure, it has been said that professional politicians are the reason we are in this "mess". But also ask this: had it not been for professional politicians working together, how much WORSE might it have become? Globalism was inevitable and difficult to manage for anyone! But how someone manages their own finances is a good indication of how they will manage the country's!


During the Nixon campaign of my first ever election, Nixon's slogan was: "This time, vote like your whole world depends on it!" In my 64 amazing years of life, that NEVER applied more than it does right now! Put Hillary Clinton in the White House and as my generation has done since Nixon, keep striving for a better candidate every time!

"Locker Room Talk"

Growing up in the Detroit area and stepping right out of High School into "blue collar" jobs, gives me a great perspective on coarse, crude, "locker room" discussions between men. Driving truck on and off for nearly 45 years AND working in the retail automobile business also gave great insight into how "unrefined men" talked about women.

I spent several years working in warehouses and driving a "day cab"......... a truck without a sleeper that did fairly local deliveries......... as well as working in bush camps operating heavy equipment. Many afternoons and most payday afternoons, were spent in the local watering holes where we could cash our paycheck, drink a few beers, eat a hamburger and engage in "boy talk". I never once in my life heard any man talk about forcing himself on a woman in any sort of sexual or "romantic" way.  What I did hear and what definitely IS said, from men like this (I was one of them then), in these circumstances, were phrases like: "I would love to throw her face down on this table and.....", or, descriptive types of every sort of sexual act imaginable. As a reality check, there was always that one, or several guys who would say something like, "Oh yea, her wildest dream is to have some sweaty, beer belly ravage her on a bar table".  Of course there was and IS a majority who completely refrain from this conversation entirely.

In other words, while many men will talk a big game, that game.... one they will never get to play anyway..... it is predicated on the woman's imaginary consent. NO ONE EVER TALKED IN A WAY THAT JUST AGGRESSIVELY TOOK WHAT THEY IMAGINED, let alone trying to take it in reality!

These are not "basket of deplorable" men that are irredeemable. You would see these guys in church, at the grocery store with their families and at Kiwanis Club picnics. Yet they would talk a huge game "in front of the boys", then go home and behave themselves! It lets off steam and frustration. Women do it too. Fantasy helps deal with the real world. The difference is that they always assumed consent in their fantasies!

So when those rocket scientists guiding Donald Trump have him and surrogates diminishing the violent, disgusting and illegal comments about real actions of sexual assault, admitted on tape by their candidate, referred to as "locker room talk", they are enabling sexual violence against women & encouraging those out there that are truly deplorable to "go right ahead", Trump does! REAL MEN DO NOT TALK ABOUT SEXUALLY ASSAULTING WOMEN AGAINST THEIR WILL! We didn't in Detroit and we don't in America!

As more women emerge, emboldened at last by "safety in numbers" against humiliation, to tell their stories, we are seeing the picture of a dysfunctional man who has felt for decades that he is above societal norms, as well as the law.  Acting and thinking in this manner, he would never have been hired to work in one of those Detroit warehouses! Why would anyone consider hiring him to be our President?

Something Very Personal........

I am a man. Men don't often open their hearts and feeling to anyone unless they are extremely psychologically wounded. But I will in this article, at the risk of others seeing “weakness” in doing so.

I have chosen to be a non-Republican over the years. This started with the attack and eventual impeachment of Bill Clinton by Republicans, continued by the theft of the 2000 election by GW Bush and solidified with the total obstruction of the Obama presidency that started in clandestine meeting between top Republicans BEFORE Obama was even inaugurated.

This is what made me a non-Republican. What made me a Progressive Liberal are the opinions, feelings and morality my Mother, a single mother instilled in me and those I have developed over the years. My Mother, who I still worship today after she died almost 25 years ago, was a bigot and what is now called a Conservative. She was not a hater of Blacks, she felt she disliked (she never used the word “hate”) Jews, intensely. My older brothers were not really bigoted. They felt that "Black people were great and everyone should own a few"..... that overt/covert white suburban bigotry that persists to this day.

So did my Father who I never met. He was even worse, forcing my eldest sister to stop seeing a man she loved, because his skin was too dark. He was of Mediterranean descent and olive-skinned.

Publicly, he never showed this prejudice I am told, he died when I was just over a year old, but my sister and my Mother made his feelings abundantly clear through their recounting of his actions and words. My Mother however, never quite explained her dislike for Jews. She had a story, told to her by her Mother, that took place during one of the 19^th century European “purges” of Jews during the Franco-Prussian war. It is a long story, but the take-away I got from it, was that my Great-Grandmother was Jewish. Judaism runs down the maternal line, similar to the way Islam runs down paternal lines, thus making Barack Obama, in fact, a Muslim in the eyes of Islam, but not America where we accept one's faith by declaration. This “lineage religious identity” also made my Mother one-quarter Jewish and myself one-eight Jewish, still a Jew in the eyes of the Talmud, IF, my interpretation of the story is correct!

Since 1890's America was overtly anti-Semitic, I can see how through three generations, my Mother would develop these feelings, particularly since she was a young woman during the rise of Hitler. I don't agree with these feelings, but I can understand them.

So I should be an avid supporter of the Republicans. I should be out there waving “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” banners, due to my upbringing! What happened? David Canada happened. Here is the story:

I did very well in the retail automobile business, rising to become a General Manager of a Houston car dealership by age 30. I still made the deals, hired & fired and ordered cars as a GM. While still a salesman, I disagreed with how the dealership was being run. One thing led to another and I quit, going to work immediately for a competitor as their sales manager. There, I “inherited” a couple salesmen. One was a young Black man. This guy was big, he was black, he used “Afro-sheen”, he had extremely long thumbnails, a sign of a street fighter, spoke with the unmistakable accent of a non-college-educated Black man. In short, he was everything I was raised to dislike. But he sold cars and he LISTENED to everything I said about selling.

My old dealership was ordered to turn their sales around and it was “strongly suggested” that they bring me back, as General Manager, or lose the franchise. They made me a lucrative deal and I went back. A couple days later, my “midnight-alleyway nightmare”, David, showed up dressed in a $500 suit, asking for a job. I needed two salesmen, but not “him”, so I sent him away. Once a month for five months, David showed up smiling and asking for a job, every time, I had “no opening”.

It was June, Summer now in Houston, 95 degrees and 95% humidity. David showed up again, wearing the $500 suit. But this time, the suit was soaked through with perspiration as if a hose had been turned on him. He was flushed, hot & thirsty. I asked him what happened. “It is really hot out there,” David started, “Walking 23 miles up here I worked up a sweat.”

This man, unemployed, living in his Mother's house with a wife and two small children had WALKED FORTY-SIX miles once a month to ask me for a job. I asked him why he wanted to work for me so badly and why he didn't hitchhike. “I want to learn from the best. You are the best I ever saw,” he started, “.... and here in Houston, Black men don't hitchhike!”

Once recovered, David left me with a new job, a “demo” car, a $300 advance and the respect he deserved, but was forced to earn. He was my best salesman ever. One day a huge redneck farmer came in, angry that he felt he was charged too much for his new truck and screamed he wanted to “kick the sales manager's ass”. I came out from the office, expecting a fight. As he approached me, the world went dark and I heard that familiar “street Black” accent say, “You can kick his ass, right after you kick mine!”

David had put himself between us and was glaring DOWN at this redneck who lost his nerve and silently left. I told him I had it under control and the man would not have succeeded. “I know that, but he didn't! You are my friend, so I helped!”

Last I heard of David was over 20 years ago. He was a sales manager at a Ford dealership in Houston, still crediting me with his success.

I wan never sure why I needed to dislike those not “like me” anyway, but David cured me forever and I now look for the best in everyone and most often find it. But he did much more that I can never thank him enough for! David quietly made me climb out of the “box” I lived in and look down at it. He made me question everything I believed and reexamine my “soul”.

No man and no woman has the right to dictate what another thinks or does, so long as their actions do not affect the lives of others, PERIOD! Your “right” to swing your arms, ends where my nose begins. Literally and metaphorically. No one has the right to hold back another based on perception of appearance. Everyone has the moral obligation to lift up those in need and in pain and to leave the world a better place for Humanity in general, not just those in Humanity with the same skin color or deity.

That is a lot to learn from a Black man walking through the hot streets of Houston!

I was wrong then and in many other cases since. But I have done my best to learn from each occasion and David always comes to mind when faced with a crisis or decision.

So how does all of this tie into this contentious Presidential election?

I have had not only the experience of being a bigot and liberated from it, but also of being both rich and poor...... several times. I have been a parent. I have had failed relationships. I have fought in the streets and worse. My friends over these nearly 64 years have included surgeons, lawyers, truck drivers, underground miners, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, even a murderer...... or several. I have spent a few days in local jails, learning enough from those experiences that I NEVER wanted to see more than that and mended my ways fast! I once formally debated a Catholic Archbishop who later became a Cardinal, TWICE, to a draw both times. I also “debated” an ex-con boxer in a sleazy bar to a bloody victory he never recovered from.

I have been blessed or cursed, depending on your point of view, to have seen more of Life that most and I have to admit, that was my goal! I have talked to countless men and women from more walks of life than the majority of people will ever see and had inebriated “discussions” with other men from seminarians, to Congressmen, to actors, to murderers, to actors who murder their craft and I NEVER, EVER even ONCE heard a man or boy admit to any form of sexual assault. NEVER, has a single male human I spoke with say they grabbed random women by the crotch and kissed them!

I have met men, most men, who claim to have gigantic genitals, even claiming that myself on occasion. I have met men who claim to have had CONCENTUAL sex with every women they have ever seen. I have met men who describe their sexual antics as more intense than ANY “X” rated movie ever produced...... liars, all of us of course, but NEVER one admitting to sexual assault! Oh and I have been in more than a few “locker rooms” during these discussions!

What kind of a man admits to, even in private untaped conversation, just walking up to any woman he pleases and start kissing and groping them? In all the men I have met, I never met one! My very limited time in local jails has, however, shown me how men incarcerated for these crimes are treated! I don't think I need to describe the reception they get at night from fellow inmates!

In my bigot days, in my young Republican days.....where I once sat with then Vice-President George HW Bush at a “Young Republican” event in Houston, in my remote mining camp days, my truck driving days, my Sales Manager days, my unemployed days and my few days in a County Jail, I NEVER EVER, said or heard another man say he was a sexual predator and then describe his offenses. This is NOT “locker room talk”. This is mentally disturbed individual talk! It, when taken in context and with all the other talk we have heard from the mouth and thus the heart of the person (cannot call him a man) who manipulated the Republican Party into allowing the corporate take over of it and his subsequent Presidential nomination, MUST be considered fit for only one job in this country: making license plates.

I am NOT writing this as a Democrat, I am not one. I am an Independent voter. I am not writing this from a perceived position of superiority, I am highly flawed! I am not even writing this as an American, though I am an American patriot! I am writing this as a MAN. I am writing this and sharing these deep secrets, feelings and emotions as a man who revers women, children and the society we have built. I am writing this in hopes we all realize that as flawed as Hillary Clinton is and has been, there is but one choice that can win this election, protect our society, protect our wives and children and our way of life from those who would use it for profit, control and power and would think NOTHING about preying on our daughters and wives and she is the one who has dedicated her adult life to doing just this...... whatever other flaws she has.

To those Conservatives out there who would vote for this predator to “preserve the Supreme Court” or to return us to being the only First World country with no national health care plan to improve on and tweak to American excellence, I say this:

No matter who is appointed to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will never force YOUR women to get an abortion. It will never force your sons to marry another man. These things are OUR choices and wholly dependent on YOUR influence and on YOUR version of Faith. The Supreme Court will never allow the reversal of the Second Amendment. Constitutional Amendments require 2/3 majorities at both the Federal AND State levels and a lot of us Liberals would never allow that!

To those who get their news from Alex Jones, Breitbart and the like: WE, WE are the Government, WE will NEVER allow ourselves, through the military, to come to your house and “take” your guns, let alone fire upon you. The very thought is ludicrous!

Wal-Marts are stores, not staging areas for an assault on your trailer! YOU KNOW THIS, really you do. I get your thoughts, I understand your fears, but do you really want “one of you” sitting in the Oval Office with nuclear codes? I have been where you are a few times in my life, unhappy with “the way life has treated me”, blaming everyone BUT me for my failure and listening to Coast-To-Coast AM, INQUISITR, BEFORE ITS NEWS and Alex Jones, desperately wanting a change! But the cause of your, our problems...... is US and we must change us, not destroy America's political system. I had to realize what you all need to realize before becoming at peace with myself! You must too! You must stop making Jones and the like wealthy off your misery: “Wherever you go, there you are!” We are the source of our success and our failures. No matter how far we run, we catch ourselves.

Donald Trump is an admitted sexual predator or worse: he WANTS to be one. Don't give him any more opportunity than his Father's money already has! ! I know disturbed thinking and his is disturbed!

Put Hillary Clinton and sanity in the White House and if you are unhappy, plan and work for 2020. At least with Hillary Clinton as President, we can be fairly certain we will see 2020!

(You have my permission to share and cross-post this as you wish. My only request is that you leave my name and contact info on the share)

Take a knee? Hail Mary? BOTH!

I am one of those rare men who doesn't like football. However, in this case a football analogy is in order....... Last night we saw a debate that took place in the election cycle equivalent to the last minute of a football game.

Team Trump is down by 15 points and has the ball. There is one choice, they need two touchdowns AND a conversion. There is only one choice, a "hail Mary" pass, an onside kick and repeat, trying to get in the end zone three times.

Team Clinton is up by 15 points and has the ball. Do they hand off the ball or pass it, risking an interception or fumble, or take the safest way and have the quarterback take a knee, run out the clock and win? Not particularly entertaining, but certainly the safest way to insure victory.

Hillary took a knee and the "hail Mary" worked, at least well enough to stop Trump's bleeding. Hillary still won the debate as far as debates are scored and Democrats are pleased. But also, now the Republican base is excited and the leadership has a choice: do they ignore the sexual assault tape and the ones that are coming, endorse their nominee and by proxy sexual assault on their wives and daughters? Do they endorse banning a religion from the world's beacon of freedom, deport 15 million people who WANT to be Americans and are doing jobs many Americans won't do, etc., etc., etc........... or do they plan to fundamentally change their party so that in 2020 they have a relevant candidate America can be proud of and the world can look up to?

The same can be said for the Democrats. But their candidate is not a danger to the world, is a professional politician, like those that lead the rest of the world and someone who understands how we must interact with the world.

Suddenly, my generation is losing it's relevance, our two main Presidential candidates are "baby-boomers". We all remember when that meant we were young, fresh, engaged and out to change the world. It was a GREAT time to be us! But that was in the '60's & '70's. Now WE are the ones who want you to "ask us about our grandchildren", listen to 40 year old music, take fiber supplements, Viagra and search for more effective pain relievers.

Our "baby-boomer" candidates are the oldest ever to run for president. Jimmy Hendrix is further away from us, than Jimmy Dorsey was to the "Greatest Generation". This election is the end of OUR relevance. Gen "X" & "Y" will outnumber the "baby boomers" for the first time and from now on. BUT the "new guard's" rise will also mean the end of such thinking as women as objects, Blacks as shoe-shine boys & domestics, Mexicans as stoop laborers, Asians as enemies, Muslims as odd & inconsequential misguided pagans, oil & coal as the way to power the world and of treating the world and Her gifts to us as infinite.

Our replacements, those who will stand for the next election cycle "get" this. BUT THIS CYCLE, our last, must be used to pass on what remains of this great Nation to them to nurture and move forward. We cannot do this with a President who gets lucky with a "hail Mary". We need one whose understanding of the game allows her to "take a knee"!

OCTOBER SURPRISE????

During Presidential elections in years past, people looked to a surprise revelation in mid to late October about one candidate that would swing the election one way or another.

Actually, today is the day that "WIKI-LEAKS" promised one such "campaign ending" revelation about Hillary Clinton. That may or may not happen. However, like the Vice-Presidential debate, and Bill Clinton's gaffe about the Affordable Health Care Act, it may well be lost in the real October surprise that is churning off the SE coast of Florida! We have yet to hear what the damage to Haiti & Cuba has been and won't until our crisis passes. and our crisis is strengthening and moving inexorably north and more westerly.

No, the real surprise will be how the current Government and the candidates react to what could, with just a slight shift west and 25 more MPH, become the largest disaster yet to strike the Nation in these man-made climate disruption times.

While I join the rest of the world in hoping for the best, the reality may well be a Katrina/Sandy type disaster that taxes our Nation. There have been 15 years with "M" storms in the Atlantic. TEN OF THESE have occurred since 2000! Once the danger has passed and injuries treated, we need to assess which potential Presidential candidate will best address this 99% proven "theory" that has already run the alphabet once since 2000.

We also need to look at how the party in power deals with the aftermath and how those asking to BE the party in power move to help the clean up and rebuilding that we all hope will not be necessary! Will our candidates bring comfort, medical aid, buy water & supplies.......... or will they bring rhetoric and buy damaged properties for pennies on the dollar?

It is one thing to be the outsider pointing out all the problems. It is another to be the one responsible for dealing with the problems. I, like so many Americans am frustrated by the "system", particularly by Senators that vowed in December of 2008 to block EVERYTHING America's first Black President tried to do. We must consider that the way things run are the "best" way things can run and still maintain the Country. That what we have, as flawed as it is, may be the best available.

We must wonder what may happen if an "outsider" were to upset the "status quo" of politics that has been millennia in its evolution and whether we really want to try something that could make our lives worse........... or eviscerate the ability to react after a Category 4-5 hurricane runs it's eye-wall along the east coast of America! The besieged children, devastated buildings and dead bodies we see next week on the news, may not be in Aleppo, they could be in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Savanna, or Norfolk. Cleaning up after Matthew and the NEXT Matthew, Katrina, or Sandy won't be a time to test out a new way to respond and it won't be a time for "on-the-job" training or chants. It will be a time for action and America will look to our Government to use its resources to protect her!

Have We Become THAT Dumbed Down??????

With the Presidential debate a few hours away, a shockingly surprising thing has happened...... the polls in America and "swing states" have tightened dramatically. As if by some magic, Donald Trump has erased his treatment of grieving parents of a dead soldier, his comments about the reckless use & proliferation of nukes, treatment of women..... even demeaning their appearance with a dead raccoon atop his head, that Black & Hispanic voters have now decided that they "don't have anything to lose" since their lives are so bad in the first place (doo-dah, yas boss) and the myriad of other outrageous and untruthful things that spout from his mouth every "3:15 minutes" have somehow all been forgotten by America!


Yes we are a "dumbed down America" from the 1960's, but not that dumb! So who would profit from a tightening Presidential race? Pollsters can sell more polls. Networks can get more viewers and charge MORE for their advertising because of it. America stays interested & concerned over the outcome, watching MORE television news and commentary, who then charge MORE for advertising. Newspapers, the few people still buy, will sell more. Magazines will sell more. On-line blogs & news sources like the Huffington Post, get more hits and MORE MONEY.

There is a trend here. The race may well be tightening, but not to a "dead heat" just in time for the first debate! Are we now THAT dumb?

Many years ago, in my "political infancy" a "pundit" whose name I have forgotten said very wisely, something to the effect that: "One Party could nominate a turnip and the other Party could nominate a pumpkin and they EACH would get 47% of the vote because that is where the American electorate sits. 94% are set in their party! SIX PERCENT of America is undecided and it is these Americans who decide the election."

That statement made me determined to always be one of the six percent and I was...... until the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the theft of the 2000 election from Gore, the hijacking of the Republican party by christian radical fundamentalists and the total obstruction of the entire Obama Presidency, cured me forever of Republicanism!

So up to 100 million Americans will watch the "Great Debate of 2016". This will earn millions of dollars for many people, not during the debate, but for the few days after and leading up to the election. I predict the polls will remain tight and will move back and forth between now and then and in January we will have not just a new President, but cable news networks, newspapers (on-line and traditional), networks and all the "sellers of soap" that advertised between now & then, will report record fourth quarter earnings...... thanks to these polls and the concern they generated!

Republicans will pray for for a rainy day nationwide on November 8th, because Democrats don't vote in as many numbers as Republicans do when there is inclement weather. Democrats will hope that as in 1968, Nixon's "Silent Majority" will again rise up and the six percent of us that decide elections, will move to the saner of the two candidates as they did then and again in 2008.

Whatever happens, America again has been done a disservice through the media being a "controlled media", this time and every time..... driven like so much in this new millennia, by the bottom line!

The Biggest Club

The way politics works, world-wide, is essentially the same below those with "absolute" powers (e/g: dictators). The struggles for power and the interactions between political operatives remains the same as it has been since we began to form communities back in pre-pre-history. This involves classic, though evolved, primate behavior. It cannot and will not change unless and until humans evolve further, which is not going to suddenly occur in the span of one election. It is a multi-millennial adaptation.

Thus, the actions to preserve and maintain power that we see, criticize and would like to change (e/g: "politics as usual"), are inherently impossible unless human thinking changes. What we have, is what we get as far as the way politics operates.


With the challenges facing the world right now, part of which ARE an evolution in human thinking (terrorism instead of conventional war for example), what this country does NOT need, is an experiment in a change of thinking that is not a change, but a return to the biggest man in the clan brandishing the biggest club and daring all others to challenge him. We need someone who can demonstrate the power of combining those clubs, metaphorically speaking,  to show how more can be accomplished by cooperating instead of bullying.

This was demonstrated by the fact that the person who has "brandished the biggest club and stood on high ground a distance away from a potential opponent", rhetorically speaking, seemed to be reluctant to even show his "club" to the leader of Mexico, a so-called "Third World" country.

This is also classic primate behavior! Bluster, swell up, make noise a retreatable distance from a potential adversary. Then in the face of a challenger who does, or MAY do the same, back down if you are not willing to risk defeat. We saw this in Mexico City and will see it in the world should we lose our collective minds and put Donald Trump in the White House.


Few have ever challenged the bully with the big club (money in this case), because they want to use the club to their own benefit (get some of the money). But in a world, a GLOBAL society & economy, with America having 4.8% of the world's 7.2 BILLION population and comprising about 7% of the world's land mass, cooperation rather than confrontation is required. DIALOG is required and not from someone whose negotiating skills are limited to bankruptcy and defaulting on remittances! Many, including a very experienced "club-wielder" with the same size club (Putin) will call Trump out, or worse, stroke his expansive ego to gain concessions. If he shrinks in the face of MEXICO's leader, what will he do in the face of the leader of a super-power?

This is why, with all her flaws..... flaws that are part of this "classic primate behavior"..... the WORLD needs Hillary leading America. She won't brandish a big "club" a safe distance from danger. She will brandish the power of the combined "clubs" of all Americans face-to-face and will do it WITHOUT the noise and bluster that demands a "club-waving" response from the adversary.


So yes, e-mails, foundation donations, secrecy and "connections" aside, we will be safer and fare better IN THIS TIME with an "alpha female" statesman reminding the world quietly we possess the biggest combined club that when combined with their club, can do wonders, than with the "omega male" waving his and making noise from a safe distance, that may back down and turn away from a confrontation, as he did in Mexico City when he had the chance to voice in person, what he has said from a distance while brandishing his club and howling!

We do not live in a perfect world. But I would like there to BE a world in four years that we can continue to try to improve!