What Obama Needs To Do Before He Leaves

Lots of people are re-hashing the election and pointing to this factor or that factor, blaming one small slice of Democratic voters over another small slice. But I choose to put the bulk of the blame on the 47% of the electorate who voted for Trump. You know, the ones that were blatantly lied to for decades.

Now, some are pointing to fake news on social media as one reason why so many Americans had a complete and total brain-fart on November 8th, but let's be honest: fake news has been around forever, and the conservative propaganda machine has been around since the early 90's. So while Mark Zuckerberg is pondering how to separate the real-news wheat from the fake-news chaff, I think our current president has at least one thing he can do to rectify the situation first.

Bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

For those of you who aren't aware, the Fairness Doctrine was a standard set by the FCC which required broadcasters airing controversial opinions to represent both sides of a contentious issue. This meant that if an editorial was given regarding gun rights, an opinion would have to be given about gun control as well. Or if a pro-life argument was given, the pro-choice side had to have its side too.

Well, in 1988, all that changed. President Ronald Reagan allowed the Fairness Doctrine standard to expire in his final year in office. No input from Congress, no vote taken on the floor. Just a simple whisk of the pen, and any requirement for balance on the radio went out the window.

It was a few years before conservative pundits realized just how much power they had been handed. With religious radio having entire stations at its disposal, the conservative side of any argument already had a head start. Now it could begin to pummel the rural countryside - which still relied primarily on radio for all its news and information - with non-stop conservative propaganda. No equal time would ever be given to the other side again. From now on, all radio op-ed would be lopsided in the wrong direction.

Well, Reagan allowed this crap to happen with the mere flick of his pen. Obama can do the same. He can reinstate the Fairness Doctrine before he leaves office.

And for two glorious months, conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh will have to have their illogic shredded by the superior economic arguments liberals have to offer.

Okay, Donald Trump, assuming the Electoral College ever allows him to take office, will reverse the executive order almost immediately. But he can't do so before the whole world takes notice of the Fairness Doctrine itself, and the importance of what it means.

I think it's well worth it.

I know, I know, the odds of Obama doing this are slim. Hell, during his time in office, he not only didn't bring the Fairness Doctrine back, he strengthened the hold conservatives have over the airwaves; just one more example of the concessions he gave to a Congress who wouldn't give him the respect they gave to their kitchen staff. But if he does do this, it will be one awesome final blow that he can give for truth, for fairness, and for journalistic integrity.

Please Barack? Please?

Requiring broadcasters to be fair shouldn't have to hang on the outcome of Jill Stein's recount efforts.


Eric

*

Never Drink Miller Again!

When Schlitz Brewing Co. insulted Milwaukee by leaving the city in response to a workers' strike back in the 1970's, Milwaukee made its voice heard. The entire city boycotted the beer for good, and at the next Summerfest, the Schlitz tent was abandoned. The beer was a pariah, and no self-respecting Milwaukeean would touch it again.

Well, times have changed. Schlitz came back to Milwaukee in a sneaky way during the 90's when Latino immigrants began to populate the city's south side in greater numbers. Schlitz was marketed in clever billboards written in Spanish, and sold mostly in 20 ounce bottles. But now Schlitz belongs to the Pabst Brewing empire, and it's welcomed back in Milwaukee again. Well, if you're a college kid who just wants to get drunk on a Monday night, that is.

Now it's time to boycott a beer again. And this time, it's Miller. Yes, the last great Milwaukee brewery to avoid collapse has betrayed America. Pete Coors, the chairman of Miller Coors, not only endorsed Donald Trump, but held numerous fundraisers for him.

Milwaukee needs to send a resounding message that Brew Town will never accept that bullshit! And so, with that, I am now saying two words I never thought I would utter:

Fuck Miller!

This means I am boycotting Miller Coors and all its products. And this is going to hurt! Because Miller Coors encompasses a lot of beverages I like!

Miller Lite
Leinenkugel's
Redd's Apple Ale
Henry's Hard Soda
Crispin
Smith & Forge
Molson
Keystone
Hamm's
Grolsch
Blue Moon

Goodbye to them all.

That means I'll have to find different local breweries to support. Maybe one of the Pabst products will be to my liking. But there's also Lakefront Brewery, which makes Klisch pilsner beer. (And so far as I know, the Klisch brothers did not support Trump.) There's Angry Orchard, Woodchuck Hard Cider and Foxbarrel Pear Cider are pretty good. There's always Strongbow and Corona, but I still have a Milwaukee Brewery pride streak in me. Sprecher is therefore a good choice. They brew a hard Root Beer and a line of really tasty hard sodas. Randy Sprecher posts nothing political on  his Facebook page and employs a lot of African-Americans, so I'm assuming that even if he voted for Trump, he at least wasn't a fundraising dick about it like Pete Coors was.

How pissed off does a Milwaukeean have to be in order to give up his favorite beer? The answer, of course, is unbelievably pissed off! You fundraised for Trump? You're out of my city as far as I'm concerned!

Who would have ever thought that the proper way to support Milwaukee business would be to shun Miller and drink Schlitz again! Next thing you know, the Cubs will have won the World Series, and the Packers would totally suck!

Oh. Yeah.

Trumpsters are doing their own share of boycotting. Due to a recent showing of Hamilton, the cast members decided to hit Mike Pence over the head with a dose of reality, and now Trump is demanding an apology, and Trump supporters are calling for a boycott. Good! More tickets for the rest of us! But there are other products Trump people are boycotting. Make sure to buy them!

For example, Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi remarked that Trump's victory made some people feel unsafe. Trumpets are now boycotting Pepsi. So drink Pepsi, everybody!

It is literally the drink of the next generation.

PepsiCo also owns Lays, Ruffles, Doritos and Mountain Dew. Netflix, Apple and Dreamworks are also targeted by pro-Trump people for boycott. How about a Netflix party? We'll watch How To Train Your Dragon!

For an assault on Washington.

Is this just one liberal desperately looking to lash out at anything he can for a travesty that embarrasses America? You bet your ass it is! But it's a way for me, and you too, to not take it lying down! You fucked America over? Well, I'll be damned if you get any of my money afterward!

More effective than protest marching, I think.


Eric

*

The Most Effective Protest You Can Do Is...

Protesting? Good. You should be. This election is an even bigger wake-up call than the attacks of September 11, 2001. But let's make sure that the protests are done right, and most effectively. After all, protesting in front of a federal building or one of Trump's towers is one thing, but the people who need to hear our voices aren't there.

The people who need to hear us are out in the suburbs and the countryside.

What really got Donald Trump elected wasn't merely Hillary's shady past, or young people staying home. They aren't the real problem. The real problem is that 47.3% of people actually found it in their hearts to vote for an unqualified, bluntly racist, chauvinistic lunatic. That didn't happen because Bernie Sanders wasn't the candidate. It happened because they were all lied to! Someone told them it was okay to vote for him, and they actually believed it.

Fucking how?

There is a disconnect between rural America and the truth. It's been happening for years, but there is a blackout curtain drawn across the deep suburban and farming landscape. Perhaps Tom Brokaw said it best when he pointed out that there seems to be a "wall of separation" between the media and rural America. He was talking about how the media misread the polls and the potential likelihood that Donald Trump might win, but if there's a disconnect between the media and the Heartland, it is also true that the Heartland is disconnected from real media. This blackout happened through the takeover of local airwaves and newspapers by major corporations such as ClearChannel and Newscorp, leaving almost no real local reporting in its place. Newspapers came to gradually rely on skeleton crews dedicated only to sports, business and the crime blotter, and little else. Radio stations came to preach nothing but right-wing hatred whenever they weren't covering a major sporting event or a major weather event.

And we let them get away with it.

Social media didn't help. Both sides unfriended people they couldn't agree with, and so the only Facebook friends left were the ones who agreed with us, thus lending the illusion among Trump supporters that everyone else accepted the guy, so why shouldn't we? It never, ever reached them how unspeakably immoral it was to vote for the son-of-a-bitch.

And so now we're protesting. Great, but why protest in Milwaukee? Or Chicago? Why protest where Hillary won? Take your protest out to the countryside! Protest where the red areas are! Protest in Waukesha! Protest in New Berlin! Protest in Oak Creek and Mequon!

Protest out to the farmland!

It's tempting to think that Trump's campaign swam upstream against a riptide of common sense. But if you look at the electoral map, you see that it's only the major population centers that went blue. That's great for the coasts and the Great Lakes transit hubs of Chicago and Milwaukee, but the farmland is untouched. Those are the areas that never hear Rachel Maddow or Bill Maher. They don't have access to MSNBC or even CNN. They don't have time for Stephen Colbert or Saturday Night Live.

So why should we be shocked when the only people who can be adequately informed about our elections are the ones who can afford cable television?

Out in the countryside, or in our nation's suburban workplaces, people stay informed by listening to the only source of news available in a handy way, and that's A.M. talk radio. Yes! Still! They can listen to it in the factories, while driving trucks or tractors, or working at home. Let's face it, even people like me who love NPR are bored to tears at times with its content. And so the A.M. radio outlet is the most convenient way to stay informed. It's not an outmoded media outlet yet!

And it's all right-wing hate, all the time. Over 91% of the talk radio format is ultra-conservative.

The genius of it all is the recognition that A.M. radio is still the number one means that rural Americans access to get and stay informed.

So here are the unbelievable assholes who you should be protesting! You know their names well!

Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Bill O'Reilly
Laura Ingram
Mark Levin
Ann Coulter
Michael Savage

We should be protesting in front of the Fox News building the most, angrily insisting upon equal time. The names above should be feeling our white-hot rage right now, and not kicking back in their comfy condos! Barack Obama didn't give us the fairness doctrine back, and in spite of my hopes that he will (future blog post on that), I don't expect him to. That means that WE have to be the new fairness doctrine, as perhaps we should have been from the very beginning.

Imagine all the billions of dollars that went into this year's election. Hillary out raised and out spent Trump by leaps and bounds, and yet it did little good, as television ads generally fail. That money was wasted! It would have been better spent buying up radio stations or building new ones, especially in the farm counties in both swing states and red states.

The idea was tried before, but not in a tactically smart way. Air America Radio was launched in the mid-2000's as a counter to right-wing hatred, but its format was merely satellite radio. This had the advantage of being an effective means of side-stepping ClearChannel, but it was also quite expensive. It went under after only a few years, but not before Al Franken and Jeanine Garofolo did great shows.

We can do this again, only better! There are already great talk shows which can be syndicated to local radio stations for free, thanks to the Internet, if only we bothered to buy or build the sticks to broadcast the signals. Jim Hightower is still around. So is Thom Hartmann. And it can be done relatively easily! A.M. radio stations are reasonably cheap. ClearChannel won't sell, so for the most part, we will have to build our own. But all we'll need is a patch of land, a shack, and some steel. These stations can be manned by a skeleton crew, and would-be hosts would do local shows for very small stipends. The trick is making sure they're good. They might prove their worth through podcasting beforehand, and there are more and more podcasts every year. There's a wealth of content! This year's elections prove that we have the money to do it too. Now all we need is the willpower.

It will take time to buy or build all the radio stations we will need. Ratings will be low at first. The brand name must be built up over many years. We'll have to be patient. But for once, the talk radio monopoly will be broken. Remember that conservatives have been blasting their shit for over three decades! That damage won't be undone overnight! A few will listen at first, and then many more. And those who don't listen will and should be met with protests and publicity stunts which descend down from the big cities into the rural countrysides. Imagine a Black Lives Matter rally at a State Fair! (Contrast this with the Wisconsin State Fair over the last several years, when the Democratic Party didn't even have a booth in the pavillion!) Or an anti-Trump flash mob at a rodeo! It can work!

THAT'S how we protest! We come down from our ivory towers and meet the rednecks where they live!

We've spent too much time focusing upon elections, and not enough on the electorate, while conservatives have zeroed in on the electorate like a laser-guided targeting system. That's what got Trump elected, and what led to over 60 million people being infected with the utter insanity of being pro-Trump!

So that's our mission! Go forth and win the red patches on the map! Turn them blue! Build radio stations! Bring in new talk-radio talent!

I want Waukesha!


Eric

*

Was It A Mistake To Nominate Hillary?

Well, one thing's for certain: we all underestimated how unlikable Hillary Clinton is.

Was it a mistake to nominate her?

I've got a number of friends of mine gloating on social media about how they were right all along about Bernie Sanders being the better candidate. It's hard to look back and not wish we'd done things differently. But if Bernie had been the nominee, would he have won?

I don't know, and neither does anybody else. Whenever I play it out in my mind's eye, I see Bernie getting attacked as an atheist. Even the DNC toyed around with the idea, according to hacked and leaked emails (although nobody followed through on the idea, and the RNC surely would have). True, he's a secular Jew, but the redneck caucus doesn't know the difference. All it would take would be for one reporter to ask, "So, Senator Sanders, when did you last go to Synagogue?" The answer would likely be something along the lines of "not recently," or "my nephew's bar mitzvah last year," and that would have been it. It would have been over. Maybe the stigma against atheists would have been weakened, just as the stigma against socialism was weakened, but that would have been a small victory in the face of stunning defeat. On the other hand, hindsight is 20/20, and because we don't know for certain Bernie would have lost, it's tempting to think that he would have won had he been the nominee instead. Maybe even made atheism cool. The argument has literally nothing to lose.

Do I owe my fellow liberals an apology?

I think it's a good idea to go back and recount exactly why so many Democrats felt Hillary was the better pick, and to do that, we have to go all the way back to the 2008 elections. Obama won the nomination over Hillary back then, but not until after a bitter and contentious primary that was every bit as divisive as the one that pitted Bernie against Hillary eight years later. There were many Democrats who were saying, "I don't know if I'm even going to vote now," after Hillary lost. There was no email scandal back then, and no Benghazi argument, but even so, there was plenty of baggage and sleaze attacks to be made against Hillary. She was damaged goods, and so the majority picked Barack Obama, pretty much for similar reasons so many flocked to Bernie later on. Plus, there was the immense benefit of having the first African-American president. The Democratic majority went with a black male over a white woman.

So then Obama won, largely thanks to Republicans having thoroughly fucked up the economy. It was happy days, was it not?

Well, not quite. Almost immediately, there was a racist backlash the likes of which we'd never seen before. The dog-whistle racism was becoming an actual whistle, and many heeded the call. The Republicans obstructed literally everything Obama did, regardless of how rational, or even conservative, the proposed legislation was. They brought the national budget on the brink of collapse more than once.

And Barack? He kept extending the hand of friendship. He kept insisting that we can and should work together.

And all the Democrats could do was scream, "Dude! Fight back! Counterpunch! Play hardball! If you want the Republicans to work with you, you have to win your respect!"

But Obama was just plain too nice a guy. It was his greatest virtue, and also his biggest fault. He should have brought back the fairness doctrine Reagan destroyed back in 1988. But instead of bringing it back, he gave orders which strengthened its removal.

So we were justifiably pissed off at the lynching of our first president. To make matters worse, in 2014, under the mismanagement of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic platform ran away from Barack Obama, and the economic successes he achieved in spite of obstruction.

Fight, Barack! Fight! But there was no fight. Barack met his lynching with the stoicism of Socrates.

So, by the time the 2010 election had been lost, we Democrats looked back on the 2008 election with a pang of regret. We wished it could have been Hillary instead, and Obama the vice president, so that her ruthlessness could bring the Republicans to heel, and then pave the way for Obama's nice-guy approach to have tremendous success. In retrospect, that would have worked out much better. But instead, we got Obama first.

Hey, we could get Hillary back for the next eight years, and then really let the Republicans have it!

And so the campaign began, almost as soon as 2010's election was over, to draft Hillary and make her the nominee in 2016. Fundraisers were launched on Facebook and other social media sites. I was one of the ones who supported this. For four solid years, we asked Hillary to run.

This is the part that gets forgotten. From 2012 until late 2014, Hillary gave no indication that she even wanted to run, in spite of countless hordes of her fans begging her to do so. During that time, her popularity soared in the high 70% to low 80%. Even Republicans praised her accolades during unguarded moments. Eventually, she caved in to her demands, and prepared to run.

We drafted her.

And then, in early 2015, when it looked like Hillary might finally announce her bid, the email thing hit.

I don't know how much I can describe how it hurt to see Hillary's numbers go from 80% approval all the way down to the high 20% range in only a few months. But I can say this much: we all - ALL - felt it was a hatchet-job.

And we were right. While it was dangerous for Hillary to set up a private email server, it was not illegal. And we have to remember, the very reason she insisted on having a private server was to prevent Republicans from launching exactly the sort of hatchet job upon her time as secretary of state which they did! Back then, it made perfect sense, if she wanted to run for president again, to have that extra hedge of deniability if she needed it!

And boy, did it backfire!

Those of us who really knew what was going on saw it clearly, and we were going to be damned if we would let Republicans destroy a good woman's name over nothing.

Then, along comes Bernie Sanders. Another nice guy.

"Oh, no!" we thought. "Not again! Four more years of a Mr. Goodbar president getting walked all over? No way!"

But Hillary's old chestnuts kept coming back to haunt her. When you've been a target for decades, you build up a lot of scars. Whitewater, travelgate, the suicide of Vincent Foster... so many bogus and yet effective character assassinations had been levied against her that the entirety of the youth vote rejected her. Democrats who valued positive branding over experience and strength flocked to the Bernie Sanders camp. And, let's be honest, they valued straight-forward liberal honesty instead of measured and guarded remarks that reeked of insincerity.

And ultimately, they may have been right.

But what then followed, you all know. The divide in the Democratic party was close, but a clear majority chose Hillary because of everything I just described above. Those who supported Bernie screamed at us that we were wrong. They began hurling all the Republican attack-points at Hillary in an effort to dislodge her hard-won support. Some of them, such as Lee Camp, even sided with crackpot conspiracy nuts, like Richard Charnin, or Election Justice USA, or even that bogus "Stanford" study. With no consideration whatsoever to the damage it would do to Hillary come November, they lent credence to the Republicans' worst character assassinations.

Do I owe my fellow liberals an apology for backing Hillary after all that? Hell, no!

But I do owe an apology regarding one thing, and that was believing so fervently that it was not possible for Donald Trump to beat Hillary. I was wrong. He had to cheat to do it, and he had to (again!) win by gerrymandering a minority of the vote through the electoral college instead of winning a true majority. But he did it. I underestimated the power of branding, and misjudged how easy it was for Republicans to resurrect old hatreds toward the Clinton legacy. I apologize for that.

I hope my fellow liberals will forgive me, even as I forgive them for attacking Hillary more viciously than Rush Limbaugh ever could. And even for resorting to regurgitating the conspiracy theories of the tin-foil-hat people to do it. I forgive you.

But what I will never, EVER forgive, is the Bernie Bros staying home in disgust! It was bad enough assaulting Hillary's character with Republican false attacks. It was another to fuck over the entire country, and put millions of innocent people in abject terror, by not voting for "the lesser of two evils" as it was so wrongly put. Many of those who stayed home are now feeling the guilt as they march in protests denouncing the Trump presidency.

Fuck. You.

Was it a mistake to nominate Hillary? Ultimately, I have to conclude that yes, it was. But we wanted the first woman president so badly, we could just taste it! We wanted a ruthless fighter so badly, and we needed it! It was really the only conclusion we could come to at the time. Can you really blame us?

No matter which woman we nominate for president (and I believe we will do so again very soon), she will be character-assassinated the way Hillary was by James Comey. Or swift-boated like John Kerry. Or misquoted like Al Gore. So we have to realize that the truth doesn't matter. All that matters is whether it sticks. And if it does, we have to reject that candidate, no matter how qualified or loved. It hurts, but that's how slanted the field is in the Republican's favor right now.

We couldn't elect Lady Titanium. Next time, we need Lady Teflon.

We learned the hard way. We learned that branding is more important than truth. We learned that Old Blood is unacceptable in politics anymore. We learned any Democratic presidential candidate has to be so clean he/she squeaks. And we also learned that we can't count on young people to vote when the choice is unpalatable.

And we also learned that the focus should not be on the elections, or the candidates, but the electorate. Republicans have focused on the electorate for decades, and been allowed to gain a monopoly over the A.M. talk-radio airwaves with no counter-argument from the left to balance them out. And so cities, the only places left with alternative voices, are the only territories left where liberalism thrives. That must stop! The farmers, the coal miners, and the small towns have GOT to hear our message about how to really create jobs, and why abortion really isn't murder, and why racism is unacceptable.

AND we can poison the Republican and conservative brand forever. Trump can and should be the ultimate pariah! The dog whistle became a referee whistle, and now it's a klaxon horn! Republican equals racist! It's now official!

We have two years, assuming Trump doesn't destroy it all by then. Let's get the word out to the countryside and the suburbs as well as the cities.


Eric

*

Hillary Won The Popular Vote! Now It's Up To The E.C.

Here's the latest from CNN: Trump has 59,354,286 votes. Hillary has 59,589,612 votes. That gives Hillary a lead of 235,326, meaning she actually won the election.

But she didn't win the electoral college. The election was gerrymandered!

Now, the totals keep changing. For example, earlier in the morning, the election totals stood with Trump at 59,215,401, and Hillary at 59,391,000. These screen-captures off of CNN.com prove what I mean. The top one is from earlier this morning:

But although the numbers keep changing, they are moving in Hillary's favor. The earlier one shows Hillary with a popular vote lead of 175,599 votes. The totals keep coming in, and the margin for victory for Hillary keeps growing!

This isn't some disputed outcome like the one which happened with Bush v. Gore back in 2000. This is clear-cut, and undisputed, even by the Trump camp.

Holy shit! The election was gerrymandered!

Hillary has given her concession speech, Obama has given his congratulatory phone call. But let me remind you, it isn't over until the fat lady sings, and she doesn't step on stage until the electoral college casts its vote, and that doesn't take place until January 6th of 2017.

So I'm calling upon all 538 members of the electoral college to exercise the power that the Constitution grants you. The electoral college was established for this very purpose and reason: to keep demagogues like Donald Trump out! The founding fathers were afraid that the people might just be stupid enough to pick a buffoon. And now that we know that Hillary won the popular vote, it has become a mandate for the electoral college to work the will of the people, and not the gaming of states and districts. Let the voice of the people be heard!

And I'm calling on all of you, my fellow citizens! Make your voices heard! We're not done yet! We're not defeated yet! Call your congressmen, call your senators! Let them know that they need to enforce the popular vote of the people, which Hillary Clinton clearly won.

I daresay some of you who voted for Donald Trump are now feeling pangs of regret, just as many did in England after the Brexit vote several months ago. Maybe you thought your protest vote wouldn't matter because Hillary would win anyway. Well, now's your chance to undo that damage! Join us!

Don't just call or email your congressmen and senators, pester them! Don't let up with sending them emails, tweets, and most importantly, physical letters written on actual paper and sent by snail-mail! Their staff really takes notice when their desks get buried!

Let the people's true vote be heard! Hell, even if the E.C. votes for Mike Pence or Paul Ryan, I'll take that over Trump! And many of you Republicans out there might agree with me on that!

Let's do this thing! Hell, this election has broken all kinds of precedents, already.

Let's break one more!


Eric

*

Beware What You Wish For

Well, America, you've gone and done it. You've replaced Camelot Black with your own, private Nazi. And I'm going to have to spend the next two to four years scolding you and cleaning up your mess.

The final results are so skewed from expectations that I strongly suspect vote theft. I may never fully accept these results. But in the final analysis, I have to concede that there are enough morons in this country to render it possible. You all spotted an iceberg, and decided it looked pretty, so you elected a captain who would drive the ship right into it.

But enjoy your Pyrrhic victory while you can, conservatives. Cheer while your 401K tanks as the stock market crashes the very same day. Pop the cork on the champagne while it all burns down. Because the backlash against Trump will be fierce! He will be the worst president of all time, and his ineptitude, his cowardice, and his crass disregard for anything good and just will come back to haunt you. Expect a complete flip of House and Senate in 2018, because we're going to make the Tea Party look like, well, an actual tea party.

Beware what you wish for. Because you got it!

Trump may be a presidential victor, but he is also the death of conservatism, of right-wing dominance, but mostly, of Trumpism. Congratulations, I hope you choke on it. But in the meantime, we need to be on our guard to make sure that nobody is rounded up like Jews to Hitler's gas chamber. We need to watch this asshole like a hawk to make certain he doesn't burn down the House of Representatives like the Reichstag. And we need to prepare ourselves to pick up the pieces.

If there are even any pieces left to pick up.


Eric

*

Help Us, Electoral College!

As I look at the election results with ever increasing horror, I am struck by how exaggerated the results are opposite to expectations. The polls, which gave Hillary a tenuous but clear five-point lead, seem to be off by a factor of ten points or more in the opposite direction. That DOES NOT happen when the breaking news in in her favor. I am truly and completely baffled, unless...

The results are wrong.

That's the only way these results make sense. For so long, Donald Trump complained that the system is rigged. As such, many have apparently taken it upon themselves to rig the system in a way which favors him instead. Either that, or everyone's early ballots have gone missing somehow, which is essentially the same thing.

The only way these bizarre results make sense is if the early voting totals were somehow wiped out. I don't even want to contemplate what that means, but I must.

It's finally happened. Our votes truly don't count, anymore. They've gone from gerrymandering to outright vote theft.

Even if the results are genuine, which I very much doubt, I must now call upon all members of the Electoral College to fulfill their Constitutional responsibility. Demagogues like Donald Trump were exactly the reason the Electoral College was put in place. It exists solely to prevent some two-bit entertainer from duping the American public into destroying the entire system.

And so, I call upon you, every member of the Five Hundred and Thirty Eight, to reject these bogus election results. which have either been skewed, hacked or both. Reject them and install anyone else. I don't care if it's Hillary. Put in Pence. Put in Johnson. For Christ's sake put in Paul Ryan, but keep Trump out!

You are our last line of defense, now.

I'm begging you. Please. Put ANY other Republican in charge.


Eric

*

It Wasn't James Comey!

Well, big shock, James Comey's unopened box has been opened, and it contains - nothing. That's right, nothing against Hillary Clinton at all. And now that this non-story has been exposed as the non-factor I suspected it was from the beginning, the media's line is something as follows:

"FBI Director James Comey says, 'Sorry! My bad! Nothing here!' But the damage may already have been done over nine days in which suspicions over Hillary's emails had been resurrected."

OH NO YOU DON'T!!! You clowns in the media don't get to shirk your responsibilities off on James Comey, as if he were somehow the reason you all lost your journalistic integrity and were falling over yourselves to mis-quote the FBI Director, saying that Hillary's email case was being re-opened, which it wasn't. Comey wasn't the reason you missed Huma Abedin, not Hillary, as the person who was really in trouble. And Comey wasn't the reason you wrongly said that this raised new questions about Hillary's email use, which it clearly didn't! YOU, the collective mainstream media, just plain blew it! And that wasn't James Comey's fault!

If you want to report the truth, report how Donald Trump blames everyone else for his own misdeeds and offensive slurs. After all, it takes one to know one!


Eric

*

The Only Responsible News Story Is...

There is only one responsible news story the media should be covering. If any of it were fair and objective, if it were doing its job at keeping the public informed about what they need to know in order to be responsible citizens, it would report this. From the Left, the Right, and the Center, there is only one responsible news story, and it is this:

"Oh, my god! Donald Trump is completely insane!"

That's the naked truth, and it has needed to be the number one headline for a year and a half. But the media seems to have decided to ignore the fact that Donald Trump is a raving madman.

Why? Because doing so does not appear to be impartial. The truth, this time around, is completely partisan. One of the two major parties has picked a total Loony Tune for a candidate, and saying so looks like taking sides. But the media can't afford to ignore it anymore. The balanced and objective truth must be told.

Donald Trump is mad as a fucking hatter!

It's the story of the century! A madman is the prime candidate of the Republican party! And this little blog has the scoop? No, it really doesn't. We've known it since early 2015. We've known it since Trump led the birther movement, and Jon Stewart's reaction to Trump's candidacy was to thank God Above for providing him with a bevy of jokes. All this little blog has done is pick up the news story all the behemoths have somehow ignored, and run with it.

Donald Trump is as nuts as Howard Beale! (See the movie Network, 1976.)

Donald has proved it yet again, with a complete misrepresentation of what happened when Barack Obama had a pro-Trump protester appear at one of his rallies. Obama handled the Trump-fan with dignity and respect, reminding the crowd that we live in a nation of free speech, and that we shouldn't boo, we should vote.

By contrast, Donald Trump cast this event in a totally inaccurate light. "If I yelled at this protester the way he did, they would call me unhinged," he said. And then, in a bizarre twist, he said, "You have to go back and look and study and see what happened."

So we all did. And Trump IS unhinged!

Donald Trump is fucking insane!

I have something of a retraction to make, and a pivot. I was convinced that the news story from Politico.com about Trump International Tower & Casino going bankrupt would be the story that woke the media up. But what blunted the story, apparently, was the fact that this tower was not owned by Trump himself. As such, the media dropped the ball, in spite of my pestering everyone I possibly could on Twitter about it.

But the actual owner of the Trump tower was a Russian businessman who made his money off Ukranian steel. This should make the story even bigger, because it raises the awful specter, yet again, of Trump's business ties to Russia influencing his decision making should he actually get into the White House.

Donald Trump is a madman, and a Russian Manchurian candidate!

And this is before we get to his consistent misogyny, his abuse of women, his infidelities, his bullying, his hiding of tax returns, and his current status of being on trial for being a sexual predator.

Say what you will about Hillary, but at least her guilt is buried in innuendo and technical jargon. Trump, by contrast, has given us empirical proof by belching his disqualifications into microphone after microphone.

Trump is a madman, Russian Manchurian candidate, misogynistic sexual predator and tax dodger. Where. Is. The. Media?! 

And now, the FBI has a faction which has essentially declared war upon Hillary Clinton. They have given out a mystery box which contains nothing, and the media has fallen over themselves covering it as though it were a Malaysian airliner downed in the Indian Ocean. This is much more than a media failure. It is what amounts to a military coup, with the FBI and James Comey assuming the role of a Praetorian Guard!

Trump is killing democracy! Where. Is. The. Media?!

The balanced opinion is, and must be, partisan in favor of the democrats. But the media doesn't want to appear partisan, because they've mistaken being partisan for being biased. And so they have not only dropped the ball, they have stomped on it, kicking it full of holes with their cleats until it is deflated, and then standing on it saying, "There's no ball, here."

And because the media has done this, the madness has spread. Regardless of the outcome, Trumpism must be defeated long afterward. And it's their fault.

Yes, we get it. Clear-cut winners in elections are bad for ratings. But cutting it this close is playing chicken with the survival of our democracy. And once we lose power to a demagogue like Trump, we will never get it back!

It's all on the verge of collapsing if people are dumb enough to support Trump. Yes, there has been hyperbole about men like Mitt Romney and John McCain in the past, but they were at least honorable men who would have respected the rule of law. Not so with Trump. It's gone beyond the ability for hyperbole to exaggerate how dire the situation will be if he wins. This is not fearmongering - it is FEAR! And this time, no exaggeration, and NO JOKE!

Where. Is. The. Media?!


Eric

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Trump's November Suprise Just Broke!

Like a cat chasing the red dot of a laser pointer, the media has been doggedly over-covering the James Comey letter to congress. And, like a laser pointer's dot, there just isn't anything substantive there for the media to grab on to. But they just can't stop trying.

Well, now there's a nice fat mouse for kitty to chase instead. According to several sources, including Politico.com, the Trump Tower Hotel and Casino in Toronto, Canada has just gone bankrupt! That's right, five days before election day, Trump's utter failure as a businessman has just been made front and center.

We knew it had to happen sooner or later. We probably thought Trump would say something bad on the campaign trail, but so far, he's managed to stick to the usual lies. We might have even thought there would be another tape, perhaps akin to the devastating Access Hollywood video which brought him down to record lows, but so far, that hasn't been forthcoming.

Now we have it! The story that the media should be over-covering day and night, if it is at all capable of doing its job. Trump's only resume item, his prowess as a businessman, just got handed a big, fat "F" on its report card. Once again, Trump's ineptitude at handling money is front and center.

You can bet your ass that the Hillary camp will clamp its teeth around this one and not let go! And that means the media will have to cover it, even reluctantly. The Trump Train has been derailed!

And this is actually the second such Trump scandal that reveals him to be an utter failure as a businessman. As the chances of Trump being elected have improved, the stock market has tanked! This, as reported recently by NPR. This is because the free market recognizes that Trump is a liability to everyone's pocketbook. His unpredictability, his poor temperament, and frankly his bat-shit-craziness are portents of doom for nearly everyone's portfolio.

It's just the sort of caffeine we need to wake the fuck up. The Comey email thing was an unopened box full of nothing, and even if it contains anything at all, only Huma Abedin is on the hook for it, as I pointed out on the blog earlier. So the media can finally stop pretending it was ever a big deal in the first place.

And maybe, just maybe, I can stop trying to do their job for them.

Sing it loud! Sing it long! Trump's bankruptcy should be everyone's song!


Eric

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I Know How Hillary Can Win!

Everyone in the Hillary camp is frantically looking for a way to shift the debate away from the non-existant, non-scandal that James Comey broke the law to foist upon the American public. And, like a cat chasing a laser-pointer, the media is jumping all over that little red dot, even though there's nothing there to get their claws into. How can Hillary shift everything back to the state when she practically had it in the bag, and the debate was not whether Hillary would win, but whether she would take the House with her?

I know how.

She needs to go to Cannon Ball, North Dakota, and stand with the Sioux who are protesting there.

This does much more than force the media to give this stand-off the coverage it deserves. It forces Donald Trump to say something about it. And there's almost no chance he will say something that isn't violently offensive.

Up until now, Hillary's support of the Sioux and Standing Rock has been tepid at best. But a firm commitment from her on this issue does much. It completely erases her gaff over the Keystone XL pipeline. It fires up the liberal base. It makes sure the debate is about protecting people and not corporations.

Everything shifts back towards Hillary again, the vote becomes a referendum against Donald Trump, Hillary wins, and takes the House with her.

Play it out in your mind's eye, and you'll see I'm right.

And then ask yourself why Alex Jones has a TV show, and I don't.


Eric

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