The Communist Origin of the Modern Conservative Movement VI

The right wing think tanks version of how social security works is far different than the social security official version:
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“The Social Security Act provides that the funds are maintained “on the books of Treasury.” The Treasury manages the Social Security accounts in much the same way that a bank manages a checking account. Accurate accounts are kept on cash deposits and accruing interest; cash (plus interest) withdraws are allowed whenever needed; and in the meantime, the bank can put the cash to other uses. Thus the treasury uses procedures that fully and accurately account for the cash from the trust fund tax income deposited with the Treasury and the interest that accrues on those deposits. Until the invested amounts are needed to pay benefits, the cash is intermingled with the Treasury cash operations for the rest of the government. The size of the accumulated reserve is tracked by special Treasury Securities. Those securities are issued to the trust funds both when cash from tax income is deposited and when interest is paid on the invested reserves. When Social Security benefits are paid, trust fund securities are redeemed for cash to pay beneficiaries.”

“Although these procedures do not affect the budget accounts of the rest of government, they do affect the Treasury’s cash operations. When the trust fund tax income is deposited Treasury, the amount of cash that the Treasury must borrow from the public for its operations is reduced. During the period in which the trust fund holds the Treasury securities, the cash that the Treasury must borrow from the public to make interest payments is reduced as well.”

From the Official web site of Social Security

A bank does the identical same thing it takes in your deposits and lets you write checks on the account when you need to. Once you deposit the money in your account the bank can put it to other uses. What is next? Will the right wing declare all bank deposits as “worthless IOUs” In fact that is all you really get when you deposit $20,000 in the bank. They give you an IOU for $20,000. Our entire banking system is based on IOUs, if they did what the right wants the government to do and stopped honoring those IOUs the banking system would collapse overnight. The rich would be extremely upset if they went to the bank to get their $5 billion out and after the cashier refused, they showed him their deposit slip for $5 billion. The cashier would look at that deposit slip and say that is just a worthless IOU. The American workingman has paid into his social security account every payday and he got a statement showing all his deposits. Baby Bush and the conservatives want to say all those yearly social security statements are worthless paper. While some people use a gun or knife to rob people others just con them out of their life savings.

The Silent Generation, later known as the Greatest Generation, was confronted with the same problem with social security as the conservatives. The social trust fund was needed to pay social security. Between 1975 and 1981 social security had to be paid out of the social security trust fund. There was no President Bush and no battalion of right wing think tanks to claim the social security trust fund was worthless IOUs. The social security was paid out of the social security trust fund for six years with no question asked.

The social security trust fund stood at $202 billion (2015 dollars) in 1975 by 1981 it was down to $65 billion but no one missed a social security check. Now the social security trust fund has a balance of $1.7 trillion dollars. The lying conservatives point to that $1.7 trillion trust fund and say sorry we have already stolen that $1.7 trillion and elderly will never sees a single dime of it. There are two competing versions of reality the truth and the lies of the conservatives, which will the American people believe? This election will likely determine the fate of social security. If the democrats win the election there will be social security for generations, If conservatives win you will see a fleet of semi-trucks lined up at the Treasury Department taking that $1.7 trillion paid in social security tax to the richest billionaires in tax cuts.

In yesterday post the fleet of semi trucks hauling off the $1.7 trillion in social security trust fund was symbolic in nature but this actually what happened in Iraq during the Iraq war. A Several convoys of semi-trucks loaded down with twenty billion dollars in US social security dollars were taken to the airport to be shipped to Iraqi central bank. Some of the money was used to bribe local political leaders. Conservatives who have no morality believe you can buy allies, money is their only value. Over $2 billion of the $20 billion was stolen and has been traced Lebanon. Some of the $20 billion was used to bankroll the insurgency, buy IED and other weapons after it was paid out in bribes to Iraqi. Because there was almost no over site over the money some of the money was stolen by US troops and sent home in the bodies of dead soldiers much of that money was stained with blood. There was little to no over site over the money. The official name of the program was called the Commander’s Emergency Response Program. One pilot returning from Iraq got caught after making 91 bank deposits of under the $10,000 dollar limit.

If you had put $100,000 of your IRA in a bank and the bank loaned that money to someone to build a house. Then that person takes bankruptcy and can’t pay for the house should the bank be able to tell you sorry about your $100,000 but it is spent? That is what the conservatives want to do with $1.7 trillion dollar social security trust fund just say it gone we are sorry, please send more cash.

When the smoke settled in Iraq and the baby Bush administration turned control of the country back over to the Iraqi provisional government $11.7 billion of the $20 billion in cash flown over to Iraq had been lost or stolen. At the same time the $11.7 billion was being stolen in Iraq baby Bush was working on a much bigger theft and telling the American people that the $1.7 trillion social security trust fund was nothing but worthless IOUs. Career Treasury officials realized early on the scope of the theft in Iraq and realized that nothing could be done with Bush appointees in control. They decided with the lack of controls and wide spread theft going on Treasury officials left Iraq in disgust.

You would think $11.4 billion in theft and incompetence would have received widespread publicity but the Bush administration just said the money was used for the benefit of the Iraqi people. The administration tried to whitewash the theft by appointing a political ally to investigate the thefts. Stewart Bowen, a lawyer was appointed Inspector General to investigate the widespread theft in Iraq. The trouble was he actually investigated the thefts but when he went to report his finding the Bush administration tried to abolish his job. On Bowen first trip to Iraq he overheard a conversation between two Coalition Provisional Authority employees, “We can’t keep doing this. There is an Inspector General now.”

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“Soon Bowen and his investigators began to hear bizarre stories about the way the coalition Provisional Authority was doing business. Bowen’s people heard about boxes of cash being carried out of CPA’s offices, with no records where it went. They heard of contractors being paid millions of dollars for projects that were never built. There were rumors of massive kickbacks and bribes, of foreign workers bought to Iraq in slave conditions, of US Army officers slipping cash meant for reconstruction projects into their footlockers to take home. With huge amounts of cash being poured into the war zone there was signs of the American enterprise in Iraq was being transformed into a kleptocracy.

In June 2004, in the last two weeks before the CPA went out of business and handed the country over to a new interim Iraqi government under Prime Minster Ayad Allawi, the CPA ordered between $4 and $5 billion in cash be flown to Baghdad from New York in a rapid-fire series of last-minute jingle flights. More than one thousand contracts were awarded by the CPA that month according to the Los Angles Times. The CPA was shoveling money out as fast as it could be flown into the country, and there were no controls on where that money went.”

From the book “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War” by James Risen
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After what happened in Iraq is it any wonder that the conservatives targeted the $1.7 trillion social security trust fund? Though 35 lower level officers were caught and prosecuted not one high level Bush appointee was ever convicted. Do you believe that none of them were guilty? When people vote for president they think they vote for a man but they vote for thousands, they vote for a whole administration and all those that were involved in the Iraqi theft are waiting in the wings to get back into office and rip off social security just like they ripped of $11.7 billion in Iraq.

One cannot help but notice the sharp contrast between what was happening in America and what was happening Iraq at the same time. In America baby Bush was telling the American people that America was broke and would not be able to repay social security trust fund the $1.7 trillion it was owed. Meanwhile in Iraq billions of dollars were being squandered. The Coalition Provisional Authority (conservative ideologues) decided one day that Kurds should get some of the money and promptly loaded down three Chinook helicopters with $1.6 billion in cash and headed Erbil, Kurdistan. The helicopters arrived unannounced and the bank officials had no idea what to do with such a massive amount of cash. The money was unloaded in piles into the bank building until the bank officials could figure what to do with it.” No one ever knew what happened to that $1.6 billion. When the bank was contacted later they simply said they took care of it. It is believed that the $1.6 billion simply ended up in the bank accounts of the most powerful Kurds.

The Iraq war waged by the conservatives was probably the most corrupt war in history. Typically in a war the country that loses is looted but this war was different the conservatives looted both the country that was winning and the country that was losing. Some of the billions that were stolen came from Iraqi frozen bank accounts but a lot came from the Federal Reserve banks. Once the conservatives stole $11.4 billion in Iraq it is no wonder that they came after the $1.7 trillion social security trust fund. They called the flights, loaded down with cash, from the United States into Iraq “jingle flights.” In the beginning they wanted to fly in smaller bills to stock the Iraqi central bank but found out it would take 7 times as many planes. Iraq had no part in 9/11 and there should never been an Iraq war but when it was over it made a bunch of conservatives rich.

The Iraq war cost the United States $1.7 trillion dollars, the figure should sound familiar that was the same amount in the social security trust fund. The Iraq war was an elective war, there was no legitimate reason to start a war in Iraq. In addition to the $1.7 trillion spent in Iraq we owe $490 billion in benefits to war veterans that may grow to $6 trillion over the next four decades. If we have a conservative president you can bet he will swindle the vets out of their $6 trillion and tell them you should have stolen your share in Iraq.

The American people didn't elect baby Bush in 2000. his connections with the Supreme Court helped shut down the recount in Florida. The wisdom of the American was denied by the electoral college and a corrupt Supreme Court. Some of the Supreme Court Justices wives were involved in the Bush campaign and their wives were offered jobs in the Bush administration if Bush won. The Supreme Court Justices that had obvious ties to the Bush campaign should have recused themselves. The electoral college was necessary when the fastest form of transportation was a horse and it took months to get the results of a national election to Washington but now votes are counted within hours and be reported to Washington.

If baby Bush had not stolen the election there would have been no war in Iraq. When baby Bush arrived in Washington his biggest objective was how to get America in a war with Iraq. The Republican Neocons had tried to push Clinton into a war with Iraq and he rejected their immoral war. At the very first Bush security council meeting the subject was about how they could manipulate the American people into going to war with Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld told the upper level of the Bush administration that in order for the American public to go to war with Iraq there would have to be an "incident" and eight months later there was an "incident" it had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq but the Saudis who staged the attack were Arab and that was close enough. It was easy for the baby Bush administration to manipulate the blood lust to start a war with Iraq.

The Project for a New American Century is the organization that bought us the Iraq War. The Iraq War was just to be the first of many wars America was going to fight in the Middle East. The republicans were going to remake the Middle East in a title wave of blood. Of course most of the neocons were chicken hawks, they advocated all kinds of wars but like baby Bush they were confirmed cowards who avoided going to war themselves at any cost. The neocons never saw a war they didn't like as long as they didn't have to participate.

The Iraq War was a tragedy that should have never happened. The one issue voters helped make the Bush presidency possible. Without them Bush would not have been elected and there would have been no war with Iraq. The cost of the Iraq War has been put at between $1.7 trillion and $6 trillion dollars depending on the accounting method (what cost are attributed to the war), The medical care cost of those who were injured by improvised explosives will be paid for the next six decades. Better medical care kept soldiers alive with severe injuries that did not survive in past wars. America will be paying for the Iraq War for generations.

Elections have consequences, and sometimes they are tragic.

Grover Norquist is considered the second most powerful republican in America. Yet even most Republicans have never heard his name. Norquist has never run for political office and is unlikely to get elected even if he did. Norquist like thousands of others work behind the scene but Norquist has managed to amass more power working behind the scene than most politicians in elected off. While you may not have heard of Grover you have probably heard of his tax pledge. Ninety-five percent of the Republicans congress have signed Grover's tax pledge. The Republicans in Congress signed the pledge not to increase the marginal tax rates on individuals or businesses, as well as net reductions or eliminations of deductions and credits without a matching reduction in tax rate. It makes no difference whether the country is going broke or a $10 trillion war is being waged none of the Republicans will raise a dime in taxes to pay for it and they didn't and now the National Debt over $10 trillion. This is war debt. The wars were fought on IOUs because taxes could not be raised.

There are two types of people in the world, the ones that would raise taxes to pay for a war when it is a necessary war and the second type who will make war against a country for oil and put the $10 trillion on a credit card and not raise one dime in taxes to pay for it and in fact gave huge tax cuts to the rich when the money was desperately needed to finance the war. Grover Norquist and the Republicans put all of the two wars expenses on the national credit card. Instead of being responsible and saying we want more from government therefore we expect to pay for it. Norquist and his crowd decided to swindle those on social security and future generations. Again it is a question of morality. The republicans wanted an elective war with Iraq but of course they had no intention of paying for it. Make war now make someone else pay later. Grover is famous for saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it in the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." This was his way of drowning our government in the bathtub.

The right is always against welfare but the biggest freeloaders in the world are the right, the $6 trillion squandered in Iraq would have funded welfare for the next hundred years. The right is always looking for something for nothing like the $11.4 billion stolen in Iraq.

This week a gun advocate’s 4 year old shot her. She boasts that, “Even my four year old gets jacked up to target shoot the .22.” Seems she has made a gun nut out of her four year old. She also has a post on her face book account showing a picture of two burglars breaking into a house with the caption: guns are not the answer, call 911 and wait….. The reality of guns is the four year old shooting her. That is the statistical reality of guns the most likely people to be shot with the owner’s gun are the gun owner or family members. As for the burglars in her picture they are actors, imagined boogiemen, just ghosts made of ink. She is right though the four year old is getting jacked up shooting guns just as she is. Neuroscientists have known for a long time that drugs get people jacked up but there are other things that also get people jacked up without the use of drugs, gambling, sex addiction, and overeating. “and risk taking in the form of bungie and base jumping, sky diving, extreme skiing, race car driving, and others to stimulate their reward pathways.” At this point I think we can add putting a gun within reach of your four year old. Shooting and gun ownership are providing a high for gun owners. Like jumping out of an airplane, gun ownership puts you in perpetual danger. Will your wife discover your girl friend and shoot you, will you teenager get the gun and shoot the family, will you depressed and kill yourself with the gun, burglars might even break in to steal yours guns and kill you. Holding a gun is like holding the power of life and death in your hand. That is as valid a high as taking a needle and shooting heroine into your veins. Taking guns away from gun nuts is like taking heroine away from a drug addict. This may be why it is so hard to deal with the gun problem in America.

Neuroscientists know that people have a reward system built into the brain. This system rewards us for activities such as eating and having sex. By making those activities pleasurable we insure that we survive and that the species survives. The dopamine pathways are the pleasure pathways in the brain. When those pathways are deficient people look for other ways to stimulate their production of dopamine. Neuroscientist can watch the brain in action with a functional MRI and watch the dopamine system in action. If you were to give a gun nut a gun to handle while he was being monitored on functional MRI I you can bet the dopamine production would go up significantly. Gun ownership, in the spite of the known fact that you are far more likely to be hurt or killed by that gun than ward off any danger, is much like extreme skiing or other dangerous sports. An experiment was done where the dopamine receptors on mice that were hooked on alcohol were genetically altered. The alcohol consumption went down 64% after the mice dopamine system was modified. It worked on mice maybe it would help Jamie Gilts, with the four year old sharp shooter. The problem is it is like other drugs it wares off in a few days.

Gun nuts may have much more in common with drug addicts than they would like to admit. Like drug addicts, gun nuts are just trying to get their high. To be sure their paths are different but the objective is the same. Statistics don’t lie the people most likely to be shot with a gun are the owner and the owner’s family. If only rational thought was involved no one would ever own a gun except for those whose job required it. No rational being would ever want to purposefully endanger their family. So something else other than facts enters into the calculation of gun ownership. The gun advocate who was shot by her four year old say that four year old gets all jacked up when he shoots the .22. In other words he is getting a contact high out of shooting the gun. Gamblers do the same thing they have been studied and they get a high when they are gambling. No doubt she put the four old in the back seat with his favorite gun.

People who have a Reward Deficiency problem seek out unnatural ways to stimulate their reward system. Most of these ways involve dangerous activities, drugs, alcohol, gambling, guns, or extreme sports among others. The percentage of people who own guns is going down in America but those that own guns own more guns and they are usually bigger and more dangerous guns. A typical gun owner might own a pistol 50 years ago now he is likely to own military assault weapons. The sh** and giggles guns. The high is referenced by giggles. As with drugs you need bigger and bigger doses to get the same affect.

Guns are marketed as hero makers. Go to your nearest gun store and purchase a gun and overnight you are Dirty Harry shooting the bad guys where ever you go. This generation grew up on shoot them up westerns. Most had six shooters cap pistols when they were children. The Westerns taught us that problems were always solved at the point of a gun. The gun manufacturers know who is most likely get shot with guns they are selling despite their marketing claims. If any other product was marketed as protecting you and ended up killing you or your family it would be quickly sued out of existence. .

One of the employees I worked with took his shotgun and tried to blow his head off his aim wasn’t good and he only managed blow off only a portion of his head. When he got out of the hospital he managed to blow what was left off. Standing in line at a vets office one day the man behind me had done the same thing. He was a mess but he lived. That is the true nature of guns. Guns are made to kill and for no other reason.

Donald Trump thinks that any protestor who interrupts him should be arrested and taken to jail. Before someone can be arrested they have to break an actual law. At this point there is no law against interrupting a public speaker, punishment is limited to being removed from the event. Trump belief that he can ruin their lives by having them arrested shows how little he understands about our laws and their enforcement. Free speech is one of our foundation values and at a private venue, like a political rally, there is no right to free speech but on the other hand it is not an arrestable offence either. Once the fist start flying that is another matter and both sides should be arrested. The Trump red neck that attacked the protestor being led out of a Trump rally was arrested. When the Trump red neck followed up his attack by saying that they might have to kill the protestor if he came back he had gone beyond the limits of free speech.

Trump’s campaign has been based on riding a tidal wave of anger and bigotry and that is type of people who are drawn to him and attending his political rallies but anger like a coin has two sides and it was only a matter time before the angry people on the other side of Trump’s issue would start showing up. The violence at the Trump rallies is going to get worse. Trump’s political style personifies anger and his success was do to attracting those who anger was in tune with his but anger begets anger and many of angry people he is attracting now are on the other side of the issue. Trump now says he would like to do more town meeting and get away from the large rallies.

The violence Trump has seeded in the American political scene is the most since the 1968 Chicago Democratic Political Convention. The Vietnam War was raging and the country was coming apart. The idea that it was baby boomers generation duty to fight and die in Vietnam for the paranoid delusion of the right was being questioned. The given justification for Vietnam War was that if Vietnam fell to communism the whole world would follow. It was called the Domino Theory. A generation was coming of age and coming to terms with the fact that they were being lied to by Military Industrial complex. Both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther king were both assonated in the months preceding the convention. The anger had reached the boiling point on both sides and unarmed college students were gunned down by the National Guard on Kent State campus.

Trump has no idea what is about to happen in America. Trump and his followers represent bigotry and anger and he has ridden that horse to several political victories but they will get much harder from here on out. This election, like the one in 1968, is going to be another generational confrontation. Ever since 1980 when Reagan was elected the right has been raping generation after generation by defunding higher education and giving bigger and bigger tax cuts to the rich. At first the rich needed a front man like Reagan to do their bidding because the rich were too unpopular to ever be elected but now one of the richest people in America is running for election. The middle class is beginning to realize how they were swindled by the right but Baby Boomers reaching retirement age can no longer summons that righteous anger that ended the Vietnam War but the next generation is being made aware of how the right ripped off the middle class and the righteous anger is beginning to surface. Trump represents everything that was wrong in America over the last 35 years. It is the twilight of the right. There is a major political shift ever 30 years or so in America and we are overdo for a political correction.

George R Will column in Sunday’s editorial page was highly critical of Donald Trump. Will is a radical right columnist, who enjoys impressing his readers with words seldom used by anyone else. But evidently he cannot stand Trump. First came the traditional Republicans whose main reason for existence had been to destroy social security. In the 50s you saw the first stirrings of the next wave, the conservatives shaped by Ayn Rand political philosophy so beautifully expressed in her book “The Virtues of Selfishness.” Rand launched a generation of politicians who governed America on the principals of selfishness. By the 80s Rand’s disciples like Alan Greenspan had assumed political power and the conservatives had working control of the Republican Party. The Tea Party was the third wave starting in 2009 was a reaction to Obama being elected. This attracted the most extreme conservatives and other mal contents. Their stated goals were reduce the national debt and lowering taxes. They would reduce government to a shadow of itself if they could. The republican party courted the Tea Partiers and that helped them win congress in the 2012 elections but the Republicans believed that they could co-opt the Tea Partiers but just as the conservatives had taken control of the old republican party the tea partiers are now taking over for the conservatives. You don’t hear the term tea party anymore, they got tired of being called teabaggers, but tea party was founded on anger and what they were against. What the tea party lacked was a charismatic leader to focus their anger. In 2012 the republican party decided to dance with devil and now they are reaping the whirl wind. Any time a political movement decides to take over another political movement they there is a danger that they can be taken over themselves. “Any time you look into abyss the abyss looks into you.”

Will’s column seemed disjointed and disorientated he is a leader with no one left to lead. His former political followers are marching to beat of a different drummer. Trying to mix the political philosophies in the republican party has been like trying to mix oil and water. The mal contents who make most of the tea party, the home schoolers and the holy rollers can never be really be assimilated into society as a whole but they can be united in anger. The tea partiers are a lynch mob looking for a victim. They can be united only in anger, it is the only emotion they understand. Trumps early display of anger against immigrants resonated with those who were already angry and frustrated but in the end anger just destroys. Anger is a negative emotion and you cannot build on negative emotions.

When you sell your soul to devil you can count on one thing for sure, the devil will collect. The Republican Party sold its soul to the devil in the 2012 election and now the Republicans just can’t believe the devil has come to collect. Police in North Carolina are considering whether to arrest the devil himself (Donald Trump) for inciting violence during a political rally in Fayetteville on Friday. At the rally a 78 year old man punched a demonstrator that was in custody. At several Trump rallies Trump has made illusions to the old days when protestors would not be able to come back again. In the past Trump has made remarks like he would like to punch the protesters in the face. This may be the first time that a presidential candidate becomes a convicted felon. There is no doubt that Trump incites violence, it surrounds him. Whether he will be convicted of his crimes remains to be seen. Trump has a long history of inciting violence and is very lucky Rosy O’Donnell didn’t beat the hell out of him after he called her rude and crude but people with body guards pay a professional to do their fighting for them. They can run their mouth without consequences.

The Republican Party is having fits contemplating the possibility that Trump might get the republican nomination. Today may determine the nomination. If Trump wins in Ohio, Florida, and Illinois it may give him a death grip on the nomination. If he loses Florida or Ohio it will be a brokered convention and likely one of the most-bitter fights in convention history. Whichever sides loses will resent it and be looking for pay back in the general election. There is a very distinct possibility that the republican party will splinter. Trump is a divider not a uniter. The republican party has long been under the control of the rich and any fracture in it will benefit the middle class. Let the free for all begin the winners will be the American people.

Yesterday was a dark day for the Republican Party last night they conceded the 2016 Presidential election eight months before the election. They realize there is no way Trump can win a general election and if he did there is no way they would want him to. Trump would be an absolute disaster that would damage the Republican image for generations. The Republican money is already being shifted away from the Presidential race to concentrate on trying to keep from losing as many seats in the Senate and House as possible. When a Presidential candidate losses big there are big losses all the way down the political pyramid but especially in the House and Senate. With Trump at the top of the ticket the likely scenario is that the Republicans will lose control of both the House and Senate.

The Republican establishment has pinned its last hopes on a brokered convention. This would allow party leaders to swindle the republican primary voters out of their vote. A simple majority does not decide the presidential nominee in a political convention. Republican primaries are no more than beauty-contests no delegate is bound by the primary vote. When they reach the convention they are free to vote for anyone they so chose. So if Trump does not reach the magic number of 1237 before the convention it is a brand new race that anyone could win. The Republican power brokers know that they will decide, not the primary voters. The problem is that the Republican power brokers despise Cruz and hate Trump. Kasich would be acceptable to the power brokers but it would be hard to justify his nomination when he only won his home state. So the Republican power brokers have decided to sit this one out and try to salvage what they can of the House and the Senate.

Trump said that if he falls short of the 1237 delegates needed to win the Republican primary elections by 20 or 30 delegates requiring a “brokered convention” that there will be riots if the nomination is awarded to someone else. A major riot at the Republican Convention would be the best of all possible outcomes for the American people. A major Trump riot that required the riot squad to put down would no doubt cancel the Republican Convention. For years the Republican Party, the party of the rich, the anti social security party, has been coalition building. The rich are too few to mount a major political challenge to the middle class but they use cubic dollars to buy elections. They needed votes and votes are people. A coalition had to be formed and the Moral Majority was one of the first groups to join the coalition. The bible thumpers wanted what all bible thumpers always want, to encode their religious beliefs into law so everyone had to obey their religious beliefs. The Republican rich were all to happy to divide the spoils of victory, the rich would take huge tax and the bible thumpers could have prayer in school and nativity scenes on the Court House lawn. The next group to join were the anti-abortionists they wanted to make sure the 13 year old down the street was required to carry her daddy’s baby to full term. Next the anti-gay bigots joined the republican coalition. They just want to be able to crucify an occasional gay on a country fence. Then the Tea Party joined the Republican Coalition. They were just angry at everybody and everything unable to manage their own life they blamed government, the next door neighbor and aliens from outer space for the mess they made of their life. It is always easier to blame someone else for your life than it is to do something about it.

These people don’t like each other to start with and they all want their side to be in charge. Putting all these bigots in one place under one roof is likely to be a powder keg and the Trump supporters are going to be the fuse that ignites the powder keg. There will not be enough police in Cleveland to control this riot when it starts.

Trump is telling the American public that if he does not get the Republican nomination that his followers would be justified in using violence to insure that he gets the nomination. If Trump does get the republican nomination and runs for president and loses he will believe he was cheated and his followers should use violence to make him president.

The Republicans are trying to get organized to stop Trump but the problem is many Republicans don’t like the alternative, Ted Cruz. Let’s face it Cruz is the type that you would walk down the other side of the street to avoid. The conservatives have lost working control of the Republican Party and they don’t know how to regain control. The Republican Party is like a woman who just washer her hair, she just can’t do a thing with it. The conservatives should have realized with all this coalition building with fringe right that the fringe right would want their own slate of candidates who reflected the fringe right’s political views. After all the mainstream Republicans once built a coalition with the conservatives and hadn’t the conservatives taken over the mainstream Republican Party putting in a senile old B movie actor as President who tripled the national debt? How could they not see it coming? It was just history repeating itself.

There was a saying in racing that, “You can beat cubic inches but you can’t beat cubic dollars.” And in politics that almost always holds true. At the end of the day the candidate that raises the most money wins the election. But this year Jeb Bush raised three times as much money as the other candidates and could not even compete. The conservative political machine had put its money where it mouth was and lost. Jeb could not even last long enough to run his home state primary. When the republican electorate rejected Bush they rejected the conservative agenda. The columnist George Will could not believe that the conservatives couldn’t even buy the election.

Will used Jeb Bush as the poster child of his argument that money can’t buy you elections. Jeb’s brother successfully bought the 2000 with over $500 million in oil money and promptly raised the price of gas six times returning a $100 for every $1 the oil industry contributed to his campaign and you can bet big oil, with gasoline below $2 a gallon, wanted Jeb in the Whitehouse. They would be more than willing to spend a billion or two to own the Whitehouse again. Jeb’s problem wasn’t money it was that his brother lied us into a major war, doubled the national, debt and caused the biggest depression in nearly 80 years. Even the most uneducated voters does not want a repeat of that. But baby Bush cannot take all the credit for that disaster the conservative political machine was as much at fault as Bush was. It is no wonder that even the fringe right want to put an end to the conservative political machine that lied us into a major war and gave us a great depression.

Fox News Channel was not started to be a news channel it was started as a propaganda station to push the conservative agenda and conservatives candidates. But this year Fox News Channel decided they would go from supporting the conservative candidate to deciding who the candidate would be. A debate usually has a moderator who asks the questions about political philosophy. Meagan Kelly, serving as the moderator in the first Republican debate clearly used the forum to political attack Trump. Had another candidate made this political attack it would have been acceptable but for the debates moderator to choose to attack certain candidates clearly shows that Fox does not intend to limit itself to political propaganda but intends to use its unique position to destroy republican candidates that it dislikes.

Megan Kelly said that in the past “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and other ‘disgusting animals’…. This was a clear attempt by Fox News to be a participant in the debate not to moderate it. Trump has refused this week for a second time to participate in a Fox News debate but Trump has not refused to be in a debate hosted CNN, CBS, and CNBC. This shows the deep fissure in the Republican Party.

I would never support Trump as a candidate but what was done to him by Fox News was wrong. A moderator is to be neutral and Fox News used Meagan Kelly as attack dog. It shows they had an agenda and intended to use that forum to further their agenda. It is fitting that this weeks Republican Presidential Debate hosted by Fox was cancelled when Trump refused to participate. It was a smart move on Trump’s part. Fox news is absolutely desperate to derail Trump now. Fox News would do absolutely anything to cost Trump a few delegates.

Trump called for a boycott of Meagan Kelly show on twitter. Kelly show is the number two-news show and a Trump led boycott could cost Fox News major bucks. Let the infighting between right and the fringe right commence. The middle class can only benefit.

A 100 day stop Trump campaign was announced yesterday but it wasn't the Democrats who are mounting this campaign it is the powerful Republicans who are going to do everything in their power to stop Trump from being the Republican presidential nominee. Trump has made some powerful enemies on his march to the Whitehouse and those are just his fellow Republicans. This has occurred only once before in the last 100 years when Barry Goldwater managed to secure the Republican presidential nomination against the wish of the Republican Party. Goldwater not Reagan was the conservative first attempt to take control of traditional Republican Party. It would be 16 years later before the conservatives could wrestle control of the party away from the traditional Republicans.

It is unlikely that Trump will be elected president with both the Republicans and the Democrats working against him but it portends badly for the future of the Republican Party if history is repeating itself the next fringe right candidate to come along will be even more extreme. If the Republicans are successful at stopping Trump in the next 100 days the fringe right will think they have been robbed and they will be right. The anger they use to beat the devil out of protestors will be redirected.

The only reason that the stop Trump movement hasn't come together sooner is that many Republicans dislike the second place contender, Cruz, just as much if not more. Romney said he would vote for Cruz in the Utah primary but did not endorse him. The conservative strategy is to make sure their is a brokered convention which neither Trump or Cruz can secure enough votes to win the required majority at that point the Republicans would introduce a third candidate of their choosing that can get enough votes to win the nomination. Either way it goes it will be a nightmare scenario for the Republicans.

The violence at the Trump rallies continued over the weekend. One of the Trump supporters made an attempt to beat to death a protestor. Trump believes that anyone that protests at one of his rallies should be beat to death and as said as much. When he says that in old days a protestor would not have been able to return it is clear instructions to the thugs in his audience to take care of any protestor in the audience. Donald insists that the protestors are interfering with his free speech rights. Free speech is a right granted a citizen from the government. The government will not interfere with the free speech of a citizen. If the government sent police into a Trump rally to keep Trump from speaking then his free speech rights would be violated. Political rallies are paid for by the candidate and there is no such thing as free speech. No one in the audience has any free speech rights, they have no right to express their opinion. Trump can have anyone removed from his political rallies he chooses. But when he encourages his followers to get violent he is crossing a line.

One of the most important principals of our government is that citizens do not take enforcement of the laws into their own hands. No one doubts that Trump can have any protestor removed from one of his rallies but having physically punished for being there is not allowed. If Trump now advocates having protestors beaten so badly that they couldn't come back what would happen if he got elected President and there were protestors at one of his speeches? Would Trump believe that he could send any protestor to Siberia or just have his Secret Service agents beat them to death on the spot. If Trump were elected President those protestors who criticize him would have the right to free speech and I don't think Trump will ever understand that anyone has rights except for him.

The conservatives believed that the main issue of this election would be repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act (Obama Care) but repealing health care is not drawing large crowds anymore. The conservative position is I am healthy and don’t need health insurance and if I do get sick someone else will pay for it. We had a guy at work that used his sick time like it was vacation time. We got two days a month so that gave him an extra five weeks vacation each year. When asked what he would do for time if he got sick? He said he would depend on others giving him their sick time. Sure enough he got lung cancer and others gave them their sick time to cover him till the day he died. That is the same attitude conservatives have about healthcare if I get sick someone else will pay the bill.

Ben Carson, one of the Republican Presidential candidates who has since dropped out, advocated medical saving accounts. Carson believed that the Medical Saving Accounts would work so well that Medicare could be eliminated. One bout with cancer can take a lifetime earnings. Does Carson actually believe that all earnings can be placed in a Medical Savings Account? Trump thinks this is a good idea and says he will look into it. Carson earned hundreds of thousands dollars a year as a doctor and could afford to put a few hundred thousand a year in a health saving account but most of the middle class Americans couldn’t afford to place more than current medical expenses into the account.

Trump solution is more “free market healthcare” even though there is nothing about healthcare that lends itself to a free market solution. For a free market to exist you have to have the option of refusing to buy a good or a service which keeps cost under control. With healthcare often the only choice is to get healthcare at whatever cost or die. That is not a free market that is a market held hostage. Trump believes that your child cancer is just another opportunity for someone to make a bigger and better profit. Another feature of the Trump plan is unlimited freeloading no one will ever be required to buy health insurance and everyone else will have no choice but to pay for the freeloader’s medical care. Trump would return us to the same failed policies that let to medical care to increase of 30 times in forty years. In 1974 a good 100% medical insurance policy cost $720 a year. Now an 80% insurance policy costs over $21,000 a year. Free Market insurance will lead to insurance policies that take your total paycheck to purchase.

Yesterday we woke to yet another terrorist attack. It did not take place on American soil but nevertheless it had its intended chilling affect on Americans. Each terrorists attack on innocent people makes everyone feel less safe. In a war you have two opposing armies attacking each other on a battlefield. Each side wears uniforms that designate them as participants in the war. The target of the hostilities is the opposing army civilian causalities do occur but are avoided if possible. Terrorism is psychological warfare where civilians are the targets not the military. In a war the object is to destroy the other army’s military capabilities. The object of terrorism is to destroy the population’s sense of psychological well-being. The actual chances of being injured in a terrorist attack are similar to the odds of being struck by lightening. But when watching the report of an attack the possibility seems much larger. The randomness of the attacks leave us with no zone of safety, we feel exposed all the time. Most of us do not feel threatened by a thunderstorm but we would not go jogging. Our buildings and cars keep us safe from lightening strikes.

We foster and revere religion even in this country even though most of us are aware, even if it is only in the back of your mind that we harbor doubts, that religion cannot be true. Somehow it is important to preserve the monster called religion and breath life into it. Religion preserves mystery and softens the bright glow of reality. If you are poor religion consoles you telling you that “the meek will inherit the earth” and that “it is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” Yesterday in Belgium true believers set forth to carry out “God’s will.” Who among us really knows the mind of God? Maybe God really is a terrorist after all he destroyed the world before. Gods and monsters are one in the same they populate our nightmares and cause us to commit atrocities. Neuroscientists have discovered the God zone in the brain an electrical stimulation to that area of the brain will conger God in all his magnificents. The person will see whatever he believes God to be. People with epilepsy in that area of the brain have intense religious experiences. Neuroscientists believe that western religion may have been based on the religious visions caused by epileptic seizures of influential people. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) is associated with rich religious experiences. In the bible Paul’s descriptions of his conversion from a Christian hunter to a Christian is the classic description of someone experiencing Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. “As Paul neared Damascus a light from heaven surrounded him and he heard voice.” These types of experiences are common with TLE. Influential people can and do convince others to believe these types of experiences are real. Religion was started and born on the shoulders of people who were subject to these seizures. Since the visions of God are vision of an invisible being it easy to believe in that that is not there. An electrical malfunction in someone brain thousands of years ago results in mass murder today sort of like the flap of a butterflies wings half a world away resulting hurricane. Now into the airports and subways come the true believers of epileptic seizures.