kanesrealm

I smell confusion, a confusion spread by the media and politicians who either need a Constitutional refresher or are deliberately pretending the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is easy to trigger. Section 4 is what matters in the case of removing Donald J. Trump for alleged mental deficiencies. It reads exactly as follows: "Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office of Acting President. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall r...

Well isn't this sweeter than Grandma's peach pie! At least six Whitehouse advisors, Federal government employees all, including Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Steve Bannon used their private emails to conduct official business. Do you suppose the Trump supporters at his rallies will start chanting LOCK THEM UP? They sure loved saying it about Hillary Clinton throughout his campaign and are continuing to do so, all at the urging and to the delight of Donald Trump. Will he silence that rhetoric now? Of course not, he wouldn't dare interrupt the mad rantings of his loyalists, he can't afford to. Like Victor Frankenstein, he cannot control his creation. So what to do? Trump will simply ignore it, call it fake news, say there's no comparison and tell his fans to just trust him, he and he alone is their saviour and can do no wrong and since he can do no wrong, neither can his minions. Rience Priebus, the now fallen Chief of Staff, knew this was going on and tried to ...

I am returning to blogging. No, you're right, an explanation isn't required but I'm going to give you one. I tried, I really tried, but engaging in political dialogue on Facebook is pointless. When I reactivated my account I chose not to launch political statements from my homepage but I did try participating in other threads. In written dialogue, one person puts down their thoughts, the next person reads that person's thoughts, digests them and then responds directly on point, right? Not on Facebook. With only a few exceptions, I have found that what I write isn't being read, based upon the responses I often received which have nothing to do with what I said. My problem appears to be that I actually read what people write and respond to their words and that's not how it works. It's just random thoughts and in the case of active thread presenters, their main interest seems to be basking only in their own glory, which is fine but don't invite commenting ...

Donald J. Trump is now the 45th President of the United States and make no mistake in your thought process, his Presidency is legitimate. True, he won because our electoral system failed but that does not change the facts. The Russians did not steal our election, Americans are responsible for the outcome. No evidence of any kind has been suggested or proved that a foreign power directly placed their hands on our voting machines and changed votes to guarantee Trump a victory in the Electoral College. If you feel the need to assign blame, put it on F.B.I. Director James Comey, who went out of his way, in contradiction of Bureau protocols, to smear Hillary Clinton with false innuendo. First in the early summer of 2016 and again two weeks prior to the General Election. Blame the Democratic Party as a whole for believing, like the Republicans, that Donald Trump was not a serious threat to them. Blame the hundreds of millions of Facebook users who love to share lies over and over again. Blam...

Donald Trump received his briefing on Russia's hacking activity from the big four intel officials of the United States. Trump said it was "constructive" and "he likes these guys", but, yes there's a but, "it didn't effect the outcome of the election". Further, Trump continues to basically not believe any of it and continues to be an advocate of Vladimir Putin. First let's state the obvious, the anger that all Americans should feel is over a foreign power deliberately attempting to interfere in our elections and the failure of the man about to become President not condemning it and calling out the actors responsible. Donald Trump is such an insecure person that the only thing he can focus on is the suggestion his Presidency is illegitimate even though that suggestion hasn't been made by anyone in government. You could certainly state as fact that Donald Trump spent eight years trying to delegitimize the Presidency of Barack Obama, you ...

Writing is like using a muscle, if you stop it atrophies. My problem as it relates to our current political environment in America is that I am not shocked by anything Trump is doing. Absent outrage over an unexpected atrocity makes it hard to crank out a regular commentary. Now, if I were being paid to produce this little plop of crap for you, I most certainly would muster the energy necessary to do so. But I'm not. What is there to say. Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump in the popular vote by 2.7 million, proving the Electoral College needs to be abolished, but I yawn. Trump has Mike Pence by his side waiting to implement a national assault on gay people and the reproductive rights of women, a Christian Jihad if you will, is Trump going to allow it? Trump has appointed a conspiracy theory nutbag, General Michael Flynn, as National Security Advisor but fortunately is nominating General James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, yes I support the waiver because he will be the san...

In politics it's standard operating procedure to attack the media, if your back is to the wall just change the topic to the media is bad and dishonest. A free press is necessary for the survival of democracy but now more than ever people are turning from traditional news sources to websites that traffic in fantasy and conspiracy theories or radio personalities that simply echo what their audience wants to hear. Many are accepting these false stories as fact and not bothering to take the few minutes necessary to discover the truth. Case in point are the reports that a lot of Americans are getting their information from Facebook. In their news feed they read a truckload of fake stories and take it as fact. Your news feed on Facebook is not the news, it's what your "friends" are posting and sharing intermixed with advertising and fake news sites deliberately spreading misinformation. The founder of Facebook dismisses this by saying we're not a news site, which is a ...

How ya feelin' champ? A little better? Just take a spoonful of Pepto and a sedative at bedtime, you'll be fine, mostly. Let's start with a deep breath, now on to some useless analysis. We'll begin with draining the swamp. That phrase actually means nothing. Swamps encompass an entire ecosystem and the creatures living there are amazingly adaptable, so it is in politics. Most of the names being floated for the new Trump Administration are old well known names and insiders. Rience Priebus has been appointed Chief of Staff, there is no greater insider in Republican politics than it's current Party Chairman and it is a direct olive branch to the Republican leadership in Congress. Steve Bannon of Breitbart News and a former senior executive of Goldman Sachs has been named Chief Strategist, which simply means advisor, although President-elect Trump says he will be equal to Priebus which is, strange. All Presidents have paid advisors. It seems the long reach of Goldman S...

That's the percentage of eligible American voters that didn't. This bizarre phenomenon is unique to the United States. In most other countries of the world where citizens have the right to vote they show up in immense numbers. Still other countries are dictatorships and their citizens long to be free and want to vote. But here in the United States nearly half the voting population stays home and that is not a recent development, it has been the same for many decades. The most common reason someone gives for not voting is that their vote doesn't count. A reason that is easily proved wrong when you focus on that number, 46%. If all of those voters showed up on election day they could quite literally chart the course of the nation. I believe the real reason they stay home is because they think the United States will always be a free nation with a McDonald's and a Walgreen's on every corner. That there will never be armed troops patrolling the streets. That there wil...

Well, how you doing today. Feeling nauseous? Feeling giddy with joy? Feeling like the Republic is now under the control of a Sith Lord? Feeling like the saviour of the nation has arrived? I guess it all depends on where you stand. I said in this little forum from the very beginning that Donald Trump could get the Republican nomination and go on to win the Presidency. I was hopeful that he wouldn't but never delusional that he couldn't. Forget about the polls which got it wrong and forget about the professional pundits who got it wrong and are still getting it wrong in their analysis. Trump won in the Electoral College because of rural America turning out in large numbers. As I write this Hillary Clinton still has over 200,000 more votes than Donald Trump and that number will likely grow by the time the count is complete. The irony is that the same people who voted for Donald Trump are the ones who rail against the Electoral College. Let me repeat again that millions of Amer...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

According to some polling, yes polls again, millennials are being drawn to support Gary Johnson. This is supposed to be because their guy, Bernie Sanders didn't get the Democratic nomination. That makes absolutely no sense. Bernie Sanders and Gary Johnson could not be further apart on the issues. Putting aside Johnson's funny and somewhat goofy personality which is endearing, the only thing he shares with Sanders is a belief that marijuana should be legalized nationally. We're told through that polling that this young millennial generation is the most engaged, compassionate, inclusive and caring Americans to ever come along and they are motivated by serious issues and want to get things done. Logically, Johnson should not be their choice. Johnson doesn't believe in any kind of free college or reducing existing college debt, nor does he believe in Government guaranteed college loans. He doesn't believe in doing anything about climate change except for admitting it e...

Last night was the first of the three Presidential debates. You can listen to the analysts of your choice but reality cannot be escaped. If you want a competent, coherent and well prepared person to be President of the United States the choice is crystal clear, vote for Hillary Clinton. If you want a spoiled, petulant, incoherent five year old who wants to kick over all the ant hills and employ chaos as a substitute for policy, vote for Donald Trump. Clinton won the debate by every logical measurement of a debate but it doesn't matter in the long run. Trump's performance was horrible but his supporters won't care because they want chaos, they think they're going to get salvation but it is chaos that Trump will unleash if he wins. Trump has been complaining that there was something wrong with his mic, there was nothing wrong with his mic. He says he could have gone after Hillary and her husband's private lives but he didn't because Chelsea Clinton was sitting i...