Donald Trump cannot understand artificial intelligence because the "A. part" and the "I. part" are too complicated for him to understand

 A.I. Is Now a Major Election Issue- Published in The New Yorker

(So, will Artificial Intelligence be able to outsmart its opponents?)

As Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s newly elected Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, put it, “People really effing hate data centers.”
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

This summer, as the ideologically fractious Democratic primaries begin to recede and the politically pivotal midterm elections edge nearer, candidates and voters alike have had their attention drawn by vast, humming edifices newly constructed on the outskirts of towns. Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former public-health official who finished a deft insurgent campaign by becoming Michigan’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, sounded a theme that helped decide primaries in his state and in Kansas last week. “People really effing hate data centers,” he said.

That kind of consensus is rare in politics right now. About seventy per cent of Americans, including sixty-three per cent of Republicans, oppose building the hyper-scale centers that power the A.I. boom in their area, according to Gallup, but more than four thousand centers have been built across the country, and about four thousand more are planned. Politicians, first from the left and then from the center and the right, have spent the past few months hastily distancing themselves from them. 

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a federal moratorium on new data centers in March, and the pragmatic Governor Kathy Hochul enacted the first statewide one in New York in July. The rallying cries against A.I. can themselves sound a bit as if ChatGPT wrote them. “It’s time to press control-alt-delete to put a stop to this A.I.-data-center crisis,” a closing ad for Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who is the front-runner in this Tuesday’s primary for Wisconsin governor, announced. Still, when something is this unpopular, blunt talk can work.

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, always on high alert for political opportunity, set conditions on new data centers in his state in May. But the surprise in recent weeks has been a reversal on the issue by business conservatives who not long ago were touting A.I. projects as the cornerstone of a new prosperous age. 

Just eight months ago, Governor Greg Abbott, at a news conference with the Google C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, bragged, “Texas will be the centerpiece for A.I. data centers for Google in the entire world.”

Then, last week, Abbott abruptly announced that all such projects would be suspended, pending an “audit” of their costs and potential benefits. Even the brashest, most pro-tech Republicans are sounding defensive. Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Presidential candidate and DOGE co-chair, who is now the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, insisted that “despite my opponent’s claims, I’m not ‘pro-data center.’ ”

Part of the issue is simply that the facilities are so huge and tend not to provide many jobs once construction is complete. 

Microsoft’s announcement of a new site in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, enumerated “46.6 miles of deep foundation piles, 26.5 million pounds of structural steel, 120 miles of medium-voltage underground cable and 72.6 miles of mechanical piping.” The tech journalist Jasmine Sun noted, about a center being built for OpenAI and Oracle in the same state, “Opponents time how long it takes to drive past one at highway speed (1 minute 42 seconds for the Port Washington site).” The resources required for such facilities—electricity for power and water for cooling—have sometimes stressed local systems: after two recent data-center-related electrical surges in northern Virginia, an expert from the Union of Concerned Scientists said that utility companies had fielded “complaints about flickering lights and strange noises coming from refrigerators.” 

Protests spread, and, according to Data Center Watch, at least seventy-five data-center projects, whose costs totaled roughly a hundred and thirty billion dollars, were stopped in the first three months of 2026, alone.

But this summer, some politicians detected a deeper unease, and  began asking more basic questions about whether A.I. infrastructure will benefit ordinary people, or just the billionaires behind the technology, and why it has taken mass protest to force public consideration of these issues. 

As El-Sayed put it during a campaign stop at a data center in Saline, Michigan, “Unless and until we protect local communities from the power of corrupting money and politics, we’re going to continue to see projects like this get pushed onto local communities despite themselves.”

What makes data centers interesting not just as a local issue but as a national one is that they might allow Democrats to highlight the duplicity of Donald Trump’s politics of populism and his embrace of futuristic tech billionaires. Whereas the President’s 2016, run focussed on Rust Belt themes of economic decline, his 2024, campaign featured the presence of Elon Musk, who brought with him a roster of Silicon Valley allies—one of whom, David Sacks, became the President’s A.I. and crypto czar—and the promise of a transformed future. But, as the A.I. boom and the data-center build-out have accumulated momentum, the statements from the tech industry about widespread job displacement have grown increasingly dystopian. In May, Microsoft’s A.I. C.E.O., Mustafa Suleyman, said that the technology would be able to automate most white-collar tasks within twelve to eighteen months. Even if that’s an overstatement, or corporate hype—there’s little evidence of job loss so far, and Suleyman later walked back his remarks—it should have been obvious that the public might need some reassurance that the economy would still require human beings.

But Musk and Sacks have become less visible in Washington, and although A.I. has been the major business and social topic of the past year and a half, the President has barely addressed it. The White House’s most memorable foray into the A.I. debate is still the very weird press conference that Melania Trump held in March where she walked onstage side by side with a white-plated, faintly Stormtrooper-looking robot called Figure 03, which said in a mechanical female voice that it was grateful to play a part in revolutionizing education. For the Trump Administration, the A.I. backlash is at once a source of political trouble and an expression of its second-term rudderlessness, in that the Donald Trump has helped unleash a future that he does not seem to understand.

The moratoriums themselves may not be particularly consequential to the advance of artificial intelligence—many data centers have already been built, and others can be constructed in friendlier jurisdictions, or even overseas. In May, the Anthropic C.E.O., Dario Amodei, waved away the political challenges. He said, “We’re going to find that ideology will not survive the nature of this technology. It won’t survive reality.” The things he was talking about, he added, “are gonna become bipartisan and universal because everyone will recognize the necessity of it.” On the campaign trail, in Michigan and elsewhere, something like the opposite is happening. ♦

Published in the print edition of the August 17, 2026, issue, with the headline “Reading the Data.”

Senator Susan Collins clutching her pearls in "concern" about Mr. Graham Platner but her voting record is dangerous maga

I must make a post about Mr. Graham Platner. Democrats are ☘lucky to have Mr. Platner in the Senate race running against maga Senator Susan Collins.

Echo Facebook essay by Joel Johnson: 

First of all, that stupid tattoo. I have made three films about the holocaust, looked at more than 5,000 still photographs of the Holocaust in the German national archive in Koblinz, spent two weeks in the photo archive at Yad Vashem in Israel looking at thousands of photographs, did a 90 minute PBS special about the French resistance against the Nazis, and I have an entire book about German military uniforms and I did not recognize his tattoo as an SS Totenkopf insignia when I first saw it. The actual Totenkopf insignias are small and silver, and when I saw the large black version on Platner’s chest I did not recognize it. I wish I had a dollar for every tattoo I ever saw that was a bad choice.

But really, and most important, what this guy is about is challenging the very foundations of American politics and economics, which favor the corporations and the rich and leave the working Americans behind. The same message as Bernie Sanders and AOC. This message is very threatening, not just to republicans, but to many main stream democrats as well. His genuine talent as a retail politician is truly remarkable and if American politics is going to change we need guys like this. People love him and Maine voters are going to make him their nominee, and he will probably beat Susan Collins.

As for the piece in the New York Times, whose shocking reveal is that ex-girlfriends are not always the best character references—especially if they are republican operatives—I just think it is shabby journalism. Not a word about his policies, which are the entire reason the guy is running and why Mainers are supporting him, no matter what bullshit is thrown at him. If you got about a thousand men together in a stadium somewhere and asked them “Have any of you ever been an asshole in your life?” I am afraid, everybody who was honest would say “yes”.

So let’s just keep our eye on the ball. If you are a liberal democrat, or better yet, a progressive democrat, you should be grateful that this guy and his long suffering wife are willing to stand out in the force 10 shitstorm being directed at them in order to make America a better place for working people.

And for all the “liberals” clutching their pearls in horror over this guy’s behavior or background, just ask yourself whether you want to have a democratic senator in Maine (and maybe a democratic senate) and a new force in American politics that is less worried about what Yale graduates think and more worried about what the majority of Americans thinks. We are lucky ☘to have this guy in the race.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans causing Americans to move to beautiful Canada

God bless Americans❗ Thank you Canadians🍁. 
Echo opinion letters published in The Globe and Mail, , in  Ontario Canada. 

Re “Don’t lose sight of the Americans trapped in the Donald Trump nightmare” (Opinion, Jan. 24): My wife (80) and I (81) were born in the United States and have experienced 14 and 15 presidencies respectively. Some were good, others, not so much. However, we have now clearly reached a historic low. 

Therefore, we want to express our profound apologies to our Canadian neighbors. We love our country, but have never been so ashamed of the behavior engendered by Donald Trump and his cult enablers. There seems little we can do to change the brutish, bullying, immoral behavior of the U.S. government led by Mr. Trump other than to protest and hold our breath until the midterm elections in November.

In the meantime, we will visit Canada frequently (if you’ll have us), and spend as much as we can afford. We also encourage our Canadian friends to boycott all things U.S. and hold off visiting us until the stench clears. And kudos to Prime Minister Mark Carney for standing up to the neighborhood bully.

From Bill and Jane Gehring Upstate New York

We in Vermont are requesting that Canada seriously consider buying our state. It is a good deal. For only $647,464, a dollar for each of our citizens, Vermont would become the 11th province of Canada.

In return, Canadians would get unfettered access to great skiing, hiking and boating, a thriving maple syrup industry, Bernie Sanders as an addition to your Parliament, and a population within the only state to defeat Donald Trump in the 2024, Republican presidential primaries.

And, you might ask, what’s in it for Vermonters? That would be the freedom from tyranny and oppression, and a return to the rule of law that no longer exists here.

Oh, Canada❗ Please give this consideration.🙏

From William Gay in Montpelier, Vermont

How long will Donald Trump allow Elon Musk to be the president elect?

Bernie Sanders criticizes ‘President Elon Musk’ over effort to derail funding plan‘Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government,’ Sanders says after Musk derides bipartisan deal to prevent government shutdown.  (IOW who is on first?)

Bernie Sanders criticized “President Elon Musk” over the billionaire’s efforts to derail a bipartisan spending deal that would keep the government running for another three months.

“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” said Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont who votes with Democrats, in a statement.

“The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it❓ Will Republicans kiss the ring❓”

He added: “Billionaires 💲 must not be allowed to run our government❗”

Sanders was referring to the deal reached by Republicans and Democrats this week to prevent a government shutdown, which would otherwise begin on Saturday. The bill would extend the deadline to 14 March.

With less than 48 hours to go, however, the bill (incredulously❗) came under attack from Donald Trump and his allies, including from JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy and Musk (the Trump cult trumverate) BTW- Musk is a native of South Africa) 

The spending bill also includes $100bn in disaster aid, economic assistance for farmers, a commitment to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, potential pay raises for Congress members and a stadium site for the Washington Commanders, among other things.

On Wednesday after the deal was announced, Musk, who is set to co-lead an agency Trump claims he’ll create, the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), opposed the funding bill. He called it “criminal” and said that it “must not pass”. 

Musk posted about the bill more than 100 (insanity❗) times on /X on Wednesday, according to NBC News.

Among his statements, Must threatens that “any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” (But, unelected Leon Musk is not in any position where he can make such false accusation toward anybody❗)

In one post, Musk alleged the bill was “funding bioweapon labs”, even though the screenshot of the text that he linked to refers to “biocontainment laboratories” that aim to conduct biomedical research to support public health and medical preparedness to combat infectious diseases.

In another post, Musk claimed erroneously that the bill includes a 40% pay increase for members of Congress. The Associated Press reported that the bill would remove a pay-freeze provision that could allow for a maximum adjustment of 3.8% – not 40% – and noted that the last time members of Congress got a pay raise was in 2009.

Musk, who has an estimated net worth of $350bn, spent more than $200m to help elect Trump in this year’s election.

Andy Barr, a Republican member of Congress from Kentucky, said his “phone was ringing off the hook” after Musk began criticizing the bill. “The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk.”

Maxwell Frost, a Democrat member of Congress from Florida, echoed Sanders and decried Musk’s influence, calling him “Republican Unelected Co-President Elon Musk”.

“All he had to do was make a few social media posts,” Frost said.

“The US Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government,” Sanders said in a social media post on Wednesday. “Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected.” He added: “This is oligarchy at work.”

Donald Trump nominates an incompetent cabinet without reqirement for background check? But many nominees are unqualified.

Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe:

RFK Jr.? Seriously?
Some of Donald Trump’s nominees are real (loooosssy❗) doozies. The Senate must publicly vet them via thorough background checks, committee hearings, and floor votes.

Senate Republicans must be thanking their lucky stars that former representative Matt Gaetz withdrew last week as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be attorney general. 

In doing so, Gaetz rescued the Republicans, who will take control of the Senate early in January, from having to oppose his nomination and thereby incur Trump’s assured wrath.

That rejecting Gaetz might have seemed a profile in courage says much about the state of Republican politics today: He was among the least qualified nominees to run the Justice Department in memory and had been one of the most scandal-scarred and disliked men in Congress before he resigned earlier this month. One of his staunchest defenders was former representative George Santos, who was expelled from the House last year as an ethical embarrassment.

Now comes the truly hard part. More than two dozen Trump Cabinet secretaries and other top administration officials will require Senate confirmation early next year, and some of them are (looooossy❗) oozies. For the integrity of their own institution and the good of the nation, the Senate must not simply rubber stamp them all, as Trump and his most vocal supports will demand.

This process must begin by not acceding to Trump’s suggestion that he should be allowed to choose his Cabinet through so-called recess appointments, which would circumvent the gauntlet of Senate approval. The Senate must instead move with dispatch to publicly vet all of Trump’s nominees via thorough background checks, committee hearings, and floor votes.

Though he would be the last to admit it, Trump himself would benefit if his most dubious nominees were forced to answer hard questions about possible ethical issues and policy positions. They should show competence beyond the ability to please a Fox News audience. If nothing else, the process might save him from his own worst impulses.

So where to begin? Start with former representative Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat turned Bernie Sanders independent turned MAGA enthusiast, who is Trump’s choice to be director of national intelligence. The job entails overseeing the 18 agencies that collect and analyze information from human spies, satellites, and other foreign and domestic surveillance sources. The DNI is the chief intelligence adviser to the president and his national security leadership, the keeper of the nation’s most classified secrets.

Gabbard is justifiably criticized for her lack of experience (and incompetence❗)  in intelligence policy, beyond her service in the Army National Guard. 

But, far more troubling is her bizarre coziness with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard blamed the United States for provoking the aggression, an absurd apology for Putin’s unsubtle expansionist ambitions. And during the Syrian civil war, she accused the United States of supporting terrorists there, even as Assad — an avowed ally of not just Russia but also Iran — was massacring his own citizens. It should come as no surprise that Rossiya-1, a Russian state television channel, called her a Russian “comrade.”

Next up is Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense. Though he has little experience managing a large organization, he did serve with the Army National Guard,  in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of greater concern: He is accused by an unnamed woman of rape during a Republican event in 2017; he asserts he had consensual sex with her. Democrats can be counted on to question Hegseth about this accusation.

But,  Republicans must also look hard at Hegseth’s policy statements, including his vigorous defense of troops accused or convicted of war crimes; his opposition to women serving in combat, though they have been for years; and his being a hyper-partisan Trump loyalist who seems eager to politicize the armed services. The latter would be a dire subversion of t  US military’s long tradition of nonpartisanship.

And then there is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s  (incompetent) pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The sprawling agency is nearly as large as the Pentagon and oversees the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For all his support for quack theories, Kennedy has called for improving the nation’s diet. But his obsessive and scientifically refuted skepticism about vaccines is deeply alarming, given the clear benefits of inoculations against not just COVID-19, measles, and the flu, but also once-deadly diseases that have been nearly eradicated, like polio. (HELLO❓ But, wait, wait❗ What about the hypocritical picture taken with RFKjr eating a MacDonald's hamburger with his new master the 😡cult leader DJT❓)

The department not only delivers crucial health care funding to individuals and institutions, it also helps direct the nation’s medical research. At the very least, the Senate must closely interrogate his views on the research and development of potentially life-saving vaccines and other curative treatments.

No one should be surprised if Senate Republicans assist Trump in pursuing his (incompetent) policy agenda, whether sharply reducing immigration, shrinking the regulatory state, reducing US military commitments, opposing Chinese expansionism, reinvigorating domestic manufacturing, or cutting taxes  (for the rich).

If ever there were a magistrate in need of restraint, it is Donald Trump. Who among the Senate Republicans will stand for the good of the nation and integrity of the Senate itself against blind loyalty to the (tryant) president?

Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by the newspaper's Editorial Board. 

What the Senate should vigorously oppose are Trump’s worst inclinations toward retribution and overreach😥😞. Never mind that the nation’s security will be threatened by corrupt, hyper-politicized, or incompetent oversight of the military and intelligence agencies. Trump’s own MAGA base will be among the first to be hurt if the nation’s health care system is shipwrecked by bumbling leadership.

In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton argued that the great benefit of requiring Senate approval of top administration jobs was to prevent “the appointment of unfit characters.” He added: “The necessity of its co-operation, in the business of appointments, will be a considerable and salutary restraint upon the conduct of that magistrate.”

If ever there were a magistrate in need of restraint, it is Donald Trump. Who among the Senate Republicans will stand for the good of the nation and integrity of the Senate itself against blind loyalty to the president?

Medicare for All- opinion in the Mississippi Clarion Legder

Bernie Sanders: Trump lies about 'Medicare for All' and he's made health care worse- an echo opinion published in the Mississippi newspaper Clarion Ledger.
The American people have a very clear choice in the upcoming elections. On one side is Donald Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress, who made throwing 32 million Americans off of health insurance their number one priority in Washington. On the other side is my "Medicare for All" plan supported by 16 senators and 122 House members. It would guarantee everyone could get the health care they need without going into debt at far lower cost than the current dysfunctional system.
And Americans are very clear about which side they are on. In a poll last summer, 70 percent said they support expanding and improving Medicare to cover everyone in our country. They understand that there is something profoundly wrong when our current dysfunctional health care system is designed not to provide quality care to all, but to enable the private health insurance industry and drug companies to make billions in profits.

Despite spending almost twice as much per capita as any other country, 30 million Americans have no health insurance and many more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. Further, the pharmaceutical industry charges us, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. It is insane that today it costs an average of $28,000 a year to provide health insurance to a family of four. It is equally insane that one out of five Americans cannot afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe.

Medicare is the most popular, successful and cost-effective health insurance program in the country. Today, only people 65 and older are eligible for it. Americans shouldn’t have to wait that long to get the high-quality health care they need and deserve.

As president, Trump has made our health care system worse. While we were able to defeat his budget which proposed a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, a $500 billion cut to Medicare and a $72 billion cut to the Social Security disability fund, we were unable to stop other very harmful measures.

As a result of his efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, 13 million more Americans will become uninsured over the next decade while millions more have seen their premiums rise. Further, his administration is working alongside 20 Republican state attorneys general to end the protection that the Affordable Care Act now guarantees to people with pre-existing conditions, such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. No one can estimate how many thousands of those people will die if they can no longer purchase affordable insurance.

We have a different idea: Expand Medicare to all. My bill would provide comprehensive and cost-effective health care for everyone — without out-of-pocket expenses.

Study after study shows that when we eliminate private insurance premiums, deductibles and co-payments, the average American will pay substantially less for health care than he or she currently pays. For example, a recent study by RAND found that moving to a Medicare for All system in New York would save a family with an income of $185,000 or less about $3,000 per person a year, on average. Even the projections from the conservative Mercatus Center suggest that the average American could save about $6,000 under Medicare for All over a 10-year period.

Medicare for All not only benefits individuals and families, but it would also benefit the business community. Small and medium-sized businesses would be free to focus on their core business goals instead of wasting precious energy and resources navigating an incredibly complex system to provide employee health insurance. Equally important, with universal health care, workers would not have to stay at jobs they dislike just because their employer provides decent health insurance.

Given the president’s propensity to lie about almost everything, it is not surprising that Trump is grossly distorting what the Medicare for All legislation does.

Our proposal would not cut benefits for seniors on Medicare, as the president and his Republican allies claim. In fact, we expand benefits. Millions of seniors today cannot afford dental care, vision care or hearing aids because Medicare does not cover them. Our proposal does. In addition, Medicare for All would eliminate deductibles and copays for seniors and significantly lower the cost of prescription drugs. Medicare for All allows seniors and all Americans to see the doctors they want, not the doctors in their insurance networks.

Trump claims that Medicare for All is not affordable. That is nonsense. What we cannot afford is to continue spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other country on Earth. We can’t afford the $28,000 it currently costs to provide health insurance for the average family of four. 

We can’t afford to have 30 million Americans with no health insurance and even more who are under-insured with high deductibles and high co-payments. We can’t afford to have millions of Americans get sicker than they should, and in some cases die, because they can’t afford to go to the doctor.
Here is the bottom line: If every major country on earth can guarantee health care to all and achieve better health outcomes while spending substantially less per capita than we do, it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the United States of America cannot do the same.

Bernie Sanders is an independent senator from Vermont.

Republicans have a counting problem

It makes no sense to me how Republicans called their Iowa caucuses a victory when three of the candidaates earned less than 30 percent of the party's support. In my mind Cruz-28 %, Trump = 24% and Rubio claiming 23% were medicore results. Nevertheless, "Cruz to loose" the junior Senator Ted Cruz from Texas was popping champagne because he led the pack of 20 percenters. Makes no sense to me. Of course, post the FITN New Hampshire primary (first in the nation= FITN) there is now another famous front runner. Donald Trump received 99,839 votes, or 35 percent of the Republican support. 

It made for a pretty pie chart picture....Senator Bernie Sanders took a huge chunk of the "pie chart" in the New Hampshire primary.

At 35 percent, Trump hardly received whole hearted GOP endorsement for his presidential candidacy; yet, his win was a significant margin over the second place John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, whose campaign stump speech was about "being nice". Kasich received 44,595 votes, or 16 percent of the Republican vote. Hmmmm, I don't see 16 percent as anything to get excited about and it's not likely to carry him into Cleveland's national convention hall.

In fact, if counting "counts" in an election, the winner of the FITN New Hampshire primary election was unquestionably Senator Bernie Sanders!

Although Secretary Hillary Clinton received an impressive 94,770, usually enough votes to carry a winner in a New Hampshire primary, her competitor for the Democratic nomination, Senator Sanders, wolloped everybody with 150, 403 vote count.

In summary, the Republicans have a counting problem.  It was Senator Sanders who won the FITN New Hampshire primary. All the other candidates came in behind hs amazing tally!

As for Trump's 35 percent....he has yet to claim even close to 50 perecent of the Republicans' support.  Certainly, he's not a national candidate until he can bring in votes the way he claims to fill stadiums for his Trumponian rallies. 

Democratic candidates philosphically won Iowa Caucus

Although the Iowa Caucus is the first one in the US primary process, the "caucus" does not pick a winner. Candidates are not elected in the Iowa Caucus. Rather, the caucus goers get to select "delegates", who will vote for them at the political conventions. Nevertheless, the outcome of the Iowa 2016 Caucus was a "win-win" for Democrats, who showed up to demonstrate how proud we are of our two top tier candidates, being Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders. 

Indeed, Democrats split over two highly qualified, intelligent and progresssive candidates. It was a win for Senator Sanders, who wasn't considered as a viable candidte; it was a marginal win for Secretary Hillary Clinton, whose experience in campaigning really showed strong in Iowa, and it was a win for America, because Democrats were organized to "win".

Obviously, congratulations are deserved for the excellent turn out and support for Hillary2016 and Bernie2016.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 2016!  Shared the results of the Iowa Caucus with Senator Benie Sanders. Both candidates are Democratic supestars.

On the other hand, the Republicans should be worried about the outcome of their caucus, because the three way divide between Senator Raphael "Ted" Cruz, Donald Trump and Senator Marco Rubio, proved nothing at all. None of them were able to break 30 percent of the support. In my opinion, the Republican Iowa caucus showed a low level support for the GOP candidates.  

Rather, the GOP caucus goers showed voter ambiguity about the Republican "line up" for th 2016 presidential nomination.


Hoopla about the Iowa Caucus is now political history. It wasn't even worth the enormous amount of money spent to gain "statistically" zero, when the results are measured against who eventually wins their party's nomination.

Nevertheless, Democrats are the ones that, in an enlightened philosophical way, and emotionally, won the Iowa Caucus. 

In fact, Democratic caucus goers showed up and demonstrated solid support for intelligent candidates with progressive policies, so needed to improve the human condition for all Americans.

Iowa Caucus 2016- No winner just five victories

Five presidential candidates split their supporters in the February 1st, 2016 Iowa Caucus. 

There was no clear winner but maybe five loosers, depending on your point of view. A lot of attention for no clear outcome.

.

Democrats split their caucus support.

First of all, a caucus is hardly an election. Rather, it's a grass roots meeting where registered voters select delegates who will vote for a presidential candidate. Iowa has inflated the importance of it's first in the nation caucus to a process totally out of proportion to its actual significance. Nevertheless, since the outcome of the 2016 Iowa caucus was highly hyped, the perception of a "winner" was anticipated. Except, guess what? There was no winner. Instead, the Republican caucus goers split their support three ways, while the Democrats divided their support (statistically) right down the middle. Of course, looking at the caucus jug as "half full" the outcome could also be assessed as having five winners because the three Republcians nearly equaled each other in percentage of support while the Democrats were staatistically tie.

So, here's the dilemma? 

1.  Were there five loosers becasue no one candidate received a clear majority of support? 

2.  Or were there five winners, because each of the candidates equaled their party competitors in percentage of support?

In other words, the Iowa caucus proved absolutely nothing.  In my opinion, it's ridiculous for any of the lead candidates to claim they either "won", or "placed" or "showed". Obviously, a ton of money and energy was spent (wasted) in Iowa to reach a "non-conclusion" about who voters will support when they vote for President in November.

Republican caucus goers divided their support nearly equally three ways.

As Rachel Maddow said, the Iowa Caucus 2016 produced four victory speeches. Only Donald Trump was the outlier. Although Trump lost just because he didn't receive the highest percentage of support; but, in fact, his supporters prevented a clear Republican winner.

There must've been a time in the not so distant past when the Iowa caucuses were held in neighborhood barns, in the days when results were telephoned into party headquarters,without much  attention to the hoopla around the process. Frankly, it's time to return to those good old days, because, clearly, the Iowa Caucus was an event not worth the hoopla created about the ambiguous outcome.  

Here are the non-winning results worth noting:

Republicans

Senator Raphael "Ted" Cruz   28 %

Donald Trump                         24 %

Senator Marco Rubio              23 %

Democrats (still counting)

Secretary Hillary Clinton        50 %

Senator Bernie Sanders           49 %

Secretary Clinton shows world leadership at Democrat debate in Charleston SC

Democrats are justifiably impressed by the excellent trio of candidates running for the 2016, nomination to be president of the United States. Compared to the chaos in the Republican line up of free for all "right and righter-wing" candidates, the trio of Secretary Hillary Clinton, Governor Martin O'Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders look like a triumverate of judicial scholars.   Secretary Clinton demonstrated experience and leadership in the fourth Democratic debate on January 19th, in Charleston, SC.

Although the three Democratic candidates are well spoken, intelligent, progressive and experienced, the world class leadership of Secretary Hillary Clinton rises to the top of the triumverate.

In fact, at the debate, Senator Sanders of Vermont was expert at promoting his vision of how to resolve income inequality, wealth re-distribution and protection of the middle class safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. In fact, the Vermont senator denounced a "corrupt" political system and cast himself as a break from it, while Hillary Clinton tied herself tightly with President Barack Obama
On the other hand, Governor O'Malley was eloquent when speaking about traditional liberal values and how he was successful as Maryland's governor.  

By a short read of her impressive resume, the former first lady of Arkansas, former First Lady of the Free World, former Senator of New York State and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is the best qualified of any of the presidential candidates to lead the free world. Her domestic and international leadership  experiences are exemplary. America is abolutely fortunate to have Mrs. Clinton running to be the first woman to be elected leader of the free world.

In my opinion, the following is the Q & A exchange that gave the January 18th Charleston SC debate to Secretary Clinton; and exemplified her international experience over the other two Democratic opponents, from The Washington Post- it's a short discourse, but to  the point and demonstrates extraordinary insight:

NBC Moderator Lester Holt asked about Mrs. Clinton's experience with Russia.

"As president, would you hand Vladimir Putin a reset button?"

CLINTON: Well, it would depend on what I got for it and I can tell you what we got in the first term, we got a new start treaty to reduce nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia. We got permission to resupply our troops in Afghanistan by traveling across Russia.

We got Russia to sign on to our sanctions against Iran and other very important commitments. So look, in diplomacy, you are always trying to see how you can figure out the interest of the other to see if there isn't some way you can advance your security and your values.

When Putin came back in the fall of 2011, it was very clear he came back with a mission. And I began speaking out as soon as that happened because there were some fraudulent elections held, and Russians poured out into the streets to demand their freedom, and he cracked down. And in fact, accused me of fomenting it. So we now know that he has a mixed record to say the least and we have to figure out how to deal with him.

HOLT follow up: What's your relationship with him (Putin)?

CLINTON: Well, my relationship with him, it's -- it's interesting.

(LAUGHTER)

It's one, I think, of respect. We've had some very tough dealings with one another. And I know that he's someone that you have to continuingly stand up to because, like many bullies, he is somebody who will take as much as he possibly can unless you do.

And we need to get the Europeans to be more willing to stand up, I was pleased they put sanctions on after Crimea and eastern Ukraine and the downing of the airliner, but we've got to be more united in preventing Putin from taking a more aggressive stance in Europe and the Middle East.

Maine Writer summary- Americans can't wait to train another leader of the free world.  Secretary Clinton has the experience to begin leading the free world on day one of her administration. America will benefit from seamless and experienced leadership by a well vetted world respected stateswoman.  

Americans must elect Hillary Clinton 2016 to be president. By the way, in the process of electing her, we must also rid our nation of right wing extremists, so to protect the Democratic progressive policies advocated for by Senator Bernie Sanders.  

Burlington Vermont and Budapest Hungary

Trump's campaign is past the point of no return. Trumponians and his crazy followers are now crossing the line of being "Storm Troopers" by using violent intimidation to get their own way.

Perhaps it's only an eerie coincidence that Donald Trump would throw rally protesters out into the Burlington Vermont cold, reminiscent of how the Hungarian Nazis threw Jews into the Danube River in January 1945, even when it was clear that Germany was loosing the war. As though "throwing them out" were not enough, he called for their coats to be confiscated and they be thrown into the "gulf"....(I'm assuming the geography challenged Trump really meant to say "river", ie Winooski River.)

Jews were also thrown into the cold and deliberately drowned in January 1945 in Budapest, Hungary

It's impossible for me to believe that "Trump the Chump" did not rehearse his "throw them out" script before entering the rally.

Trump To Burlington Vermont Hecklers: "Throw Them Out In The Cold! Confiscate Their Coats!"
Later, more protesters began chanting in the balcony in support of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who got his political start as Burlington's mayor. This time, Trump appeared irritated.

Trump tell security in Burlington VT to take protesters' coats: "Throw them out into the cold". 

"Get 'em out. Get 'em out," Trump ordered his security staff from the podium.

Later, he said "I respect what they're doing — unless they have a substance-abuse problem, which they probably do."

Several minutes after that, when another demonstrator interrupted, he told staff to throw the man out but confiscate his coat, which the campaign would return in a few weeks.

Izzy Miguel of Essex, Michaela Coleman of Underhill, and Lucy Sophonak of Essex, all 18, were thrown out of the Trump rally for not being supporters. They waited for several hours in the cold before getting inside.

"It's about 10 degrees below zero outside," Trump said.

The temperature was 25. (I've no  idea what the temperature in the Winooski River thru Burlington was; but obviously it was at least as cold as the air.)

In my opinion, the Trumpoian rally in Burlinton Vermont was a deliberate attack on Senator Bernie Sanders, because he is Jewish.

Donald Trump is a dangerous person who's now completely lost in his ego trip to take over the world. He won't stop with his carnival presidential campaign because he inflates like an out of control parade balloon. Unlessss his politics is given "wake up therapy", Trump will continue to create an America that's contrary to the nobel principals our founders envisioned in the Declaration of Independence.  

Voters who are responsible and intelligent citizens must wake up the Trumponians before Americans become the victims of "Storm Troopers".

Social Security beneficiaries need a defense budget

Americans are subjected to daily news about how our US military are fighting Middle Eastern terrorists, using many millions or billions of dollars of super-duper techologies. Meanwhile, the US Congress spent eleven hours of taxpayer paid time on October 21, 2015, drilling Secretary Hillary Clinton about a tragic September 11, 2012 murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans, in Benghazi, Libya. 

Yet, the Social Security cost of living allowance in 2016 is zero.

Millions and probably billions of dollars are spent on defense technologies and useless Congresional probings (like the Benghazi inquisitions), while our American Social Security beneficiaries and military retirees are told the low inflation market basket doesn't justify a 2016, paltry cost of living raise. In the past, this cost of living raise has been decreasing to about 1-2 percent.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks about how millionaries, and billionaries are taking money away from the American worker and padding their own greedy pockets.  

Much of the moneies the millionaires and billionaries earn are received through multi million dollar defense contracts awarded to their friends. 

In fact, the millionaires and billionairs are benefiting from the American tax money spent on building strategic equipment for the American military. The military seldom accounts for how the tax money received is actually spent. Maybe, Social Security beneficiaries should sign up to serve in the US Military.  

Of course, many US military veterans receive retirement income as compensation for the years they gave, in their youth, when they defended their nation, while on active duty. Military retirees will not receive a cost of living adjustment in 2016, either, because the US Congress felt the inflation index didn't justify a raise.  

In my opnion, many US miltiary retirees would gladly volunteer to defend our nation again, if asked. Maybe, in so doing, their earned retirement income would justify exemption from Congressional cost of living oversight. In other words, US military retirees would give their lives again for our nation. They deserve a cost of living raise today.

Our nation's Republican driven US Congress talks vehemently about cutting taxes. But, in so doing, the politicians are putting at risk the safety net programs, relied upon by hard working people, to pay for their cruel austerity. Nevertheless, the military budget hardly receives any scrutiny. Moreover, only a few who serve in the US Congress have ever even served in the American military.  

It's time the US Congress puts aside the money needed for a cost of living increase for Social Security beneficiaries and military retirees. These hard working beneficiaries and military retirees have earned their benefits.  On the other hand, the US Congress that decides about authorizing the cost of living raises have only earned scorn for their inability to accomplish anything to help average American citizens. Still, there's a chance to help Social Security beneficiaries and military retirees with a COLA, but the Republcian Congress is planning, instead, how to shut down the American government. It's time Social Security beneficiaries and military retirees take action against the wrong minded decision about no 2016 cost of living increases. 

If the Congress doesn't think these hard working beneficiars earned their cost of living increases, maybe they can ask us where can we sign up to serve in the US military? There's no problem with their budgets. Retirees need a defense budget!

Call the American Associaiton of Retired Persons (AARP) - 1 (888) 687-2277, to insist they use their influence on Congress.

Likewise, let's call our US Senators and Congress to demand the COLA!

Democrats enjoy tremendous depth in the political list of qualified presidential candidates

Democrats should be justifiably proud of the candidates running for 2016 President of the United States.  

On the other hand, Republicans are struggling to support even one qualified presidential candidate.

News media, and others who're focused on politically damaging Hillary Clinton's 2016 "electability", with the trumped up email brouhaha, can't offer an alternative candidate. In fact, Republicans have completely failed to demonstrate a qualified choice for President and leader of the free world.

Republicans have only a few qualified candidates and none of them seem to be conservative enough to meet the purity criteria of the radical right wingers. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, is one qualified candidate, but he sounds more like a man campaigning for the role of Tony Soprano, in a remake of the popular TV series, than a presidential candidate. Another qualified candidate is Jeb! "Bushy Boy", son of George '41. Unfortunately, Jeb! has been unimpressive on the campaign circuit. He seems to wait for the front runner circus performer, Donald Trump the Chump, to make a serious mistake, rather than risk showing Americans his questionable leadership skills. Jeb! Bushy Boy believes speaking fluent Spanish, now and then, somehow makes him a world leader. (I don't think so!)

Governor John Kasick of Ohio is another qualified presidential candidate, but he recently seems lost in the maddening crowd. 

Meanwhile, while disorganized Republicans are struggling to find the "right enough" candidate, the Democrats are proudly supporting several highly qualified presidential candidates. 

This line up is a masterful and impressive list:

1.  Hillary Clinton:  world humanitarian, first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, a US Senator and Secretary of State.

Secretary Hillary Clinton

2.  Senator Bernie Sanders- the US Senator from Vermont.

Senator Bernie Sanders

3.  Governor Martin O'Malley - former mayor of Baltimore and two times elected Governor of Maryland.

Governor Martin O'Malley

4.  Vice President Joseph Biden - former US Senator from Delaware and current Vice President of the United States.

Vice President Joe Biden former Senator from Delaware

All four Democratic candidates have the qualifications to be President of the United States. 

Obviously, Secretary Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden are the most qualified on the list of four.  

Indeed, Democrats are deservedly proud to have such depth in the quality of presidential candidates.  Republicans are most concerned about having to run a candidate from their political clown car against Hillary Clinton. Therefore, the Republicans are doing everything in their collective power to drive up Mrs. Clinton's negatives.  Moreover, the news media has completely ignored Mrs. Clinton's attributes and presidential qualifications. 

Instead, the media is obsessed with the politically driven Clinton "non" email news, by looking at every morsel of private and professional messages, to scoop something terrifyingly awful. Nothing gripping yet and I doubt anything of substance will be discovered.

Frankly, I'm completely confident the Clinton email news, being muckraked by Republicans, is less controversial than the poor qualifications of candidates like Carley Fiorina (she's the failed leader of Hewlett Packard) or Donald Trump "the chump" (a showman, rather than a politician). Dr. Ben Carson is running a campaign obsessed with our nation's deficit, but he has little understanding of world markets and economic theories.  Rather, Carson is a surgeon. As a nurse, I can tell blog readers, without reservation, that a surgeon knows how to run a surgical suite extremely well. Yet, Dr. Carson is acting like his expertise in brain surgery will somehow translate into being an expert leader of the free world.  (Hmmmm....yet another, "I don't think so".)

It's about time for news media to recognize the depth of the Democratic presidential leadership. At the same time, the media should be comparing the qualifications of the Republicans with those of the Democrats. Seems like a "no brainer" comparison.  Democrat candidates have stature and experience. Most of the Republican craving the Presidential 2016 office are on an ego trip.

Thoughtful Americans will pay attention to the qualifications of who we elect to be President of the United States and fire all those wanna-bees who clearly do not have the right stuff.