kanesrealm

Well, here I am again. But really, why bother? In nine short days this election will be over, maybe. I don't know who the winner of the Presidential race will be, I've given you my prediction, including the percentages but  no one really knows. Here's what we do know, Donald Trump is completely ignorant of how our election system works and he continues his chant of corruption. What Trump fails to understand is that if he wins, the American people, including me, will accept the outcome because our process is sound and honest. Whatever irregularities that occur are from innocent mistakes, not corruption and the numbers are not significant enough to alter the election. It starts with your friends and neighbors, do you trust them? They are the front line of our elections, volunteering their time to serve on precinct election boards. I was once a Precinct Vice-committeeman and then a Precinct Committeeman, I have seen our system up close and I know how it works. I have parti

The internet is filled with abandoned blogs. Some have many posts, others none or very few. The ones with many and then suddenly stop have left me wondering, what happened to the writer? The self evident conclusion is boredom, frustration or it simply had served it's purpose. Rarely is there a final post saying goodbye. There was a blog I used to read that ended in 2012 with a final post that touched me deeply. The writer had Alzheimer's and was no longer able to give all that he wished. He thanked his readers and said farewell with the heart wrenching poem "The Long Goodbye." From early 2007 to late 2009 I wrote a blog that mainly covered the Presidential election of 2008. By 2009 I had reached a plateau, it had met it's purpose and a restlessness had descended on me. When I launched Kanes Realm I had no specific direction in mind, though clearly politics became the focus. I have called this Presidential election a season of disgust and it has been so because

Conflation is a favorite tactic in politics, blending together things that have no relationship and pretending that they do. Trump's sexual misconduct charges are a perfect example of this as he attempts to use Bill Clinton's past as an issue when it is Hillary Clinton he is running against. Then to illogically say that people should not consider allegations against him from ten years ago, then immediately ranting about Bill Clinton over events from forty years ago. But there are other uses of conflation that are more disturbing. Throughout social media there are attempts to join together Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and whistleblowers in general. None of these belong in the same topic. I have written about my view of Edward Snowden, he released confidential information that he legally had access to and came to believe it's proof of wrongdoing should be released to the public. A gifted lawyer could certainly assert that Snowden's actions were those of a whistleblower

WikiLeaks has begun dumping thousands of emails surrounding Hillary Clinton. Before you get too excited about this, let's consider some things which are of more than a little importance. The founder of WikiLeaks is Julian Assange, an Australian computer programmer, publisher and editor. He is a hacker and is affiliated with numerous hackers across the world including Russians who act directly at their governments behest. Hacking is a crime no matter how much we may enjoy what comes from that criminal act. Assange has spent the past few years living in the Equadoran Embassy in London. He took this measure because he is a fugitive. He is wanted in Sweden for questioning in a case where he is alleged to have committed rape. He tried to squash that warrant for his arrest while living in London. When he failed he was granted asylum by Equador. A Swedish court just recently made it clear that warrant remains in effect. If he steps one foot out of that Embassy he will be arrested and re

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It's just one non-revealing revelation after another. This time it's about Hillary Clinton and leaked excerpts from those Wall Street speeches we've heard so much about. The focus is on her saying that people get nervous about what goes on in behind closed doors discussions and that to get anything done in Washington you have to take a "private and public position." That is a factual statement about politics going back thousands of years. But for the sake of this discussion we'll stick to our country going all the way back to it's founding, that's the way it is folks, if you don't like it tear down the Republic and replace it with a dictatorship, then you won't have to worry about any of these things. The simplicity of legislation is this, when it's working, negotiations between legislators and the executive involve bartering. If you vote yes on x, I won't oppose you on y. Public policy is created by give and take. Each party sets at

I was not going to write another commentary until after Sunday nights debate but resistance is futile. In light of the Access Hollywood dump of Trump's vulgarness about women many Republicans have unendorsed him. Speaker Ryan disinvited him from an event in Wisconsin and Ryan was booed by Trump supporters at that event. In leadership only Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded that Trump issue a real apology. You will recall that early Friday Trump issued a written statement using the words "if anyone was offended" I apologize. Which of course was not an apology, it's a phrase used when you wish to convey contempt for your audience. Trump's ninety second video released at Midnight Friday was no better but it was Trumpian. Senator Mike Lee said this morning that it was "time to act". No Senator, the time to act was a year ago. All of the speculation about Trump dropping out of the race is total fantasy. The Party cannot force him out, he would h

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "here I go again." Two days ago Bill Clinton was on the stump and made comments about the Affordable Care Act and the problems in it. His use of "craziest thing" is all the media is talking about and so, of course is Donald Trump, who is the craziest thing to ever come along. I'll get back to the media but let's stay focused. Americans say they want to hear the truth but when it gets said by prominent political figures they either lose their minds or miss the point, largely due to a T.V. media incapable of offering a serious discussion on anything. If you've read a lot of my commentaries you know that I have honestly stated that the Affordable Care Act as it exists has major problems and must be fixed by the next President. Hillary Clinton has also said this but you probably missed it because of poor reporting. My position does not come from an elite penning op-eds from my summer home out of a sense of liberal guilt or genu

The worst Vice-presidential debate in my life time and it's a very low bar because they are meaningless. No one votes for Vice-president they vote only for the top of the ticket. A V.P. pick can hurt but never help. Last night Tim Kaine and Mike Pence had their one and only debate and we are all greatful for that. Kaine should have had decaf leading up to the event and Pence should have consulted his good back about not being a lying douchebag, oh that's right it tells him he can be. The entire ninety minutes was a nonsense driven talking over each other mish mash of gibberish. You can find other interpretations of the debate and I say knock yourself out but you're wasting your time, you shouldn't even be reading this. Mike Pence repeatedly lied through his teeth and refused to defend Donald Trump. Pence accepted the V.P. slot because he knew that he was going to lose his re-election bid for Governor in Indiana and he did not want to deal with the humiliation. His sp

I just watched Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio talk show host, a lawyer and a very intelligent man make a ridiculous statement. Hewitt used to be, not in the never Trump Movement but in the I can't believe it's Trump group, now he has drank the kool-aid and wants a Trump Presidency. On the issue of Trump's taxes Hewitt says no one will care about the New York Times article just released and he's right about that but then he shifted to say the media isn't fairly covering the campaign by not talking about the recently released audio tape from earlier this year at a donor event at which Hillary Clinton talked about the Bernie Sanders supporters having to move back into their parents house and living in the "basement". Excuse me Hugh, I've heard it over and over again and also Hugh I've heard the whole recording and she is right. By the way Hugh, Bernie Sanders also heard the recording in full and says she was right. Don't be a hack and shill

Over the weekend The New York Times dropped what should be a bombshell with the publishing of Trump's 1995 tax returns showing over nine-hundred million dollars in losses and setting the stage for not paying federal income tax for up to eighteen years. His unwillingness to release his returns raises eyebrows with those who have a fully functional brain but no so much for others. He has bragged about exploiting the system and paying as little in taxes as he possibly can so I've never understood his reluctance to release his returns. One important thing that I hope we have all learned is that real estate developers apparently have major loopholes provided for them, maybe we should do something about that. His hardcore supporters, the poor to middle class, don't care that he hasn't paid federal income tax, they think it's cool that he's stiffing the "man", of course he's really stiffing them but good luck making the argument. His chief surrogates Rud

The case for voting against Donald Trump is YUGE, but it doesn't matter. The people who are paid to sit around at think tanks and compile data and analyze polls tell us that the backbone of Trump's supporters are poor to middle class uneducated white people. Trump himself has said at his own rallies that he "loves" the uneducated. I'm poor, white and have no formal education to speak of and Donald Trump could not sway me to do anything but run away from him. So why has he sucked in so many people? Because he is an excellent salesman or conman, you can choose your own words, the result is the same. He has been called a P.T. Barnum for over thirty years and it is a perfect description. Barnum famously said, "there's a sucker born every minute." It's been asked why isn't Clinton miles ahead of him? The answer is shamefully evident, given a choice between a night at the circus or a day at the library, most Americans want the circus. But when it

No matter how many times well funded lobbyists and political organizations say it and no matter how gravely wrong the U.S. Supreme Court got it, money is not free speech. The Citizens United case brought the subject directly to the highest court and the majority, including Antonin Scalia got it wrong. They essentially took a position that says money in and of itself is an expression of free speech, irrespective of how much of it is dumped into an issue or political candidate and no matter how fact free the message is. It says that free speech isn't free, it's for sale to the highest bidder and that those who have no money to combat those messages are equal because you can still stand on the corner, in your legally designated space, and see if you can get someone to listen. Hillary Clinton has said that she would fight for a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United but that is highly unlikely to happen and it isn't necessary. Congress can take legislative actio

Aesop, Grimm, Tolkien, Rowling and countless other writers have portrayed the ageless troll. Cute and diminutive to ugly and giant, no matter the demeanor, always entertaining. Our modern trolls on the other hand, are anything but entertaining. They don't have pink fuzzy hair and sit on the end of a pencil or ten feet tall with stone faces living in caves. They look just like you and me on the outside. On the inside they are filled with a poison that leaves a vitriolic poop trail all through the internet. These trolls live in cyberspace, a world that we spend more and more time in. There are mercenary trolls paid by corporations and governments to sow seeds of misinformation, discredit or frighten those who voice an opinion that is not liked or threatens to reveal something. Then there is the garden variety troll that just likes to walk through your little corner of the cyber world and wipe their ass all over your thoughts. They're not interested in constructive dialogue, they