Left Ahead

No one in this house or family leans or even looks to Trump. We've had fascinating meals and drinks based on Bernie vs. Hillary. Some hve been uncomfortable, as one of us is solid for Clinton, when at one point the other 7 at the table were all Sanders.

I'll chat up our experiences, including a daughter-in-law who bundled up her wee bairn to fly to Sanders campaitning and events aroud the country. No animals were hurt in the campaign, but feelinga were.

I'll welcome calls on tis one. Just don't block your number and I'll pick up, at 718-664-6966. Press 1 when the nice robot lady welcomes you.

The magic of Prez Obama's first campaign had enchantment of first-time voters via social media. He learned how from MA Gov. Deval Patrick. That was a one-off. Yet we heard resonance in aged, white cotton-candy haired Bernie Sanders.

The Dem convo is on and we have tangible proof that the DNC did in fact spit on the voters and rig the process for Hillary Clinton. The noble slight Jew from Brooklyn via Vermont is playing neither victim nor Eris. Sanders called for unity to defeat the certain horrors of Donald Trump, both in interviews and his address to the party convention.

Will it hold? Will it work? Will it inspire his millions of minions?

The new Nate Silver figures conclude voters trust Clinton vastly more in almost all areas. Yet, he has maybe a 1-in-3 shot at victory. What gives?

We know historically maybe 40% to 49% of voters will go with a Prez candidate in a binary election. Yet Trumps history, actions and words leave a strong stink across all aspects, a stench his supporters ignore or claim is sweet. While Ronald Reagan earned the epithet Teflon President, this phenomenon is beyond credibility.

I'll talk about Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements as it concerns Trump. His people are beyond eager to forgive his huge flaws. In fact, they seem to claim these are virtues.

It's pretty much a name-your-city thing for unarmed civilians killed by cops. In a few places, like the most recent Dallas sniper murders of five police officers, it's the opposite.

Whether it was the 20 elementary kids or hundres of young Black men or those LEOs, each was supposedly the death(s) that would change it all. Let's talk today:

Shall we outlaw military, mass-murder weapons for civilians?Will police departments, prosecutors and judges stop shielding rogue cops?Can we tunnel down to the underlying unemployment, bad schools and other factors causing unrest in the underclasses?Can the horrors of Dallas be a catalyst for itrospecxtion by legeislators, LEOs and others in the chain?Can we finaly begin reforming law enforcement and the rest of the criminal justice system?Can we give the poor and most people of color reason to respect and work with cops?Can we mmigrate to massive cultural changes in this crisis?

I can look at that (pardon the pun) bullet-point list and think, "Oh, how anti-police." Instead, let's get real on this show, as usual. Only a miniscule minority would want a race war (think NYPost and Klan creeps). Are we finally at our Basta! moment?

Democratic nominee for sure Hillary Clinton got the no-surprise ruling from the FBI this AM. After a year of their investigation...on top of over two years strum und drang courtesy of the Benghazi hearing torment, the feds won't recommend any charges in her private email server use. They just concludes that she and her staff were careless, sloppy, inefficient.

For most, that is the expected result. Fortunately for the election process, this comes in time for all Parties and parties to get to the real business of campaigning and differentiating.

I rather doubt the many Twitter and FB posts I've seen for months guaranteeing she'd go to jail won't have penitent I-blew-it follow-ups. Instead they, including adversary Donny Trump will surely write this proves she, her husband, the AG, and likely (why not) the media are all corrupt. wingers are no-responsibility bluster machines.

I'll muse on the meaning of the investigation process and results.

Winger delusions aside, my U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren very quickly became the conscience of the body and its most effective, most candid member. Now scuttlebutt has her as Hillary Clinton's VP choice.

We can look at this several ways, and I shall.

She'd turn off voters already hesitant to vote for a woman for PrezShe'd be too Hillary-esque as yet another white woman, a Northeast pinko at thatShe'd bring in progressives and true lefties who see Clinton as a compromiser and warhawkShe'd damage the ticket by not bringing in more diverse voters

Up front, i don't want to lose my favorite lawmaker to the mire and ignominy of te VP office. Were it to happen, Warren might effectively become permanently ineffective. Let's discuss.

With this weekend's Orlando massacre of at least 50 at the Pulse gay nightclub, let's add another fatality. Tha's the death of the fantasy that we alone here are the ones safe from terrorism. Those who fantasize that the 9/11 attacks were one-off can bury that, even if they'd pretended the other mass murders hadn't happened.

This morning's murders and woundings (another 50-some) were certainly domestic terrorism. They are extremely likelyk to be found to be anti-gay hate crimes as well.

Our magic shield of pretending each of these events is by a lone wolf won't protect us anymore than concomitant delusions. Oh, if we only had more gaurds or sanners at all buildings or more armed guards or if we somehow kept this or that class of tourist or immigrant out, all will be well.

We can't return to safe, halcyon days. Those didn't exist. I'll start with a quick recap of the past 200 years of U.S. domestic terrorism. The stereotype enemies like Germans (WWI) or Japanese (WWII) or Muslims (right now) are jive and extremely rare. Instead we have to deal with the monsters around and among us. 

Yeah, yeah, the French, English, Israelis and Russians got hit more frequently and sometimes earlier, but we can stop pretending we are on homebase andd OK.

In early teen years, we'd hang out at the Romney Rexall Drug Store. Comics, detective magazines and women’s weeklies filled the rack with the benches by the big bay window. There was no problem we couldn't resolve or wisdom that together we lacked. We were drugstore psychologists and pundits.

Now I hear of GOP lead dog Donald Trump as authoritarian or narcissistic or blah blah. I'm a simple man from the land of the maple trees (Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera) and sincerely believe the talking heads make too much of too little. 

I state my position that Donny-poo is simply a mommy's boy. Some journos write his dad told him he was destined to be a king. I look to the immigrant Scot, his mom instead. He never had to do without. He never had to consider the welfare and thoughts and feelings of others. Even as a teen when his immaturity and lack of self-control were intolerable, he got shipped to nearby military private school as a brat holding tank rather than have to straighten up and behave.

I raised three boys to adulthood. It is not always easy, but it is one of two key jobs of a parent to train children for society. The other job is to show that by example.

Look instead to his incessant whining about how unfair everyone is to him, hundreds of people in business, government, the legal system, politics and on and on. My boys could be like that when they were three and four. They wanted, needed to have the same as everyone else, or maybe a little better. Fair/unfair are concepts a four-year-old related too. Nearly all of us transcend those needs and adjust them to the larger world.

At the most extreme, rogue cops urder unarmed, sometimes handcuffed ccivilians. Some of those murders are on video, with sound, and yet most have no prosecution or penality of any kind. Financial overlords in investment banks and other speculative quasi-monopolies crash markets and bilk billions from individuals and institutions...again no penalties beyond a sliver of fines and only for the money houses.

Down to the mundane plane, in city after town, one motorist before another crushes a pedestrian or cyclist to death, only to find the police and DA report on the unfortunae, unavoidable accident from the red light passed or crosswalk ignored.

In the political arena, candidates and officeholders openly and repeatedly lie and alter their ser of facts on the fly. Generally the media is as complicit as the legal types in those other cases.

Are we a nation or a world in time without responsibility? Do we now live in situation ethics? If we can get awayk with amoral or immoral words and deeds, do we, can we, should we?

Boomers as a group were not raised that way. On the other hand, the leaders from the Boomer cohort got the nation into dreadful straits. Maybe they have thought the following generations how to game the system.

What is to be done and what should be done?

The allged Hub of the Univese is not the center of the new. Despite marketing itself as innovatio central and having more area colleges than anyone, Boston seems terrified of nearly anything new. Even things otehr cities have long implemented are just too damned hard.

Consider:

Summer OlympicsMore, easy-to-get liquor licensesA single F1 car raceIn town casino24-hour mass transitLate-night mass transit

What's the attitude behind the schizo attitude. We want to be sophisticated, world-class, happening, vital, blah blah, hen given the choice, no we don't?

Centuries ago, Boston was linked to the other Blue-Law center, South Carolina. Is the Hub still stuck to the old-school?