http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil Mon, 09 Nov 2026 14:54:58 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/2057/restoring-a-political-system-that-appears-to-be-irrevocably-broken-how-we-got-here-and-some-ideas-about-moving-forward http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/2057
This too will pass. At least, most of us who have followed the inconsistencies and foibles of American politics still believe that the best instincts of the American voter will eventually win out over the greed, narcissism, and cowardice of those we have temporarily placed in charge of our nation. The problem is that we have elected those people who are absolute toadies and loyalists to a rogue President. Thus they become the problem because their very survival rests with convincing the American people that they are working in the people’s interest, while they actively advocate positions that they don’t believe in and kowtow to a leader whose malignant narcissism and transactional Presidency is designed to harm the majority of Americans. 
To understand the problem, we have to look deep inside ourselves. How did a plurality of Americans vote willingly for a man who ran for the presidency without a single credential that would qualify him for the office? How did our nation become so bifurcated and how do we return to being ONE nation in the truest sense of the word. There are many factors here, but a few of them stand out: 
Trump, the candidate, was indistinguishable from Trump the entertainer. The man who famously announced “You’re fired” in a “reality” setting, had tremendous name recognition, and had dabbled on the edges of fringe politics for years. Both his campaign and his presidency have been “reality” shows brought on to the world stage by a man whose skill set is still one of a reality host, albeit on a greater stage. We thus live in an age of conspiracy theories and game show gimmicks. They may be entertaining but they are political poison. 



Trump, the President, was lucky enough to be running against a Democratic candidate who had disapproval ratings as low as his. That along with a conflation of events including investigations {or non-investigations} by the Comey team, attempted {or actual} election  interference by foreign agents {Russia}, and the worst political blunder in history {ignoring rust belt states in the last month of the campaign} allowed Mr. Trump to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. 



Trump, both as a candidate and a President, has subscribed wholeheartedly to the  mantra in Nazi Germany. He has lied often and with increasing grandiosity. Those lies have become such an intregal part of the national discourse, that they appear to be the truth to a large percentage of the population. After all, everyone in the administration says the same thing, so it must be true. Thus. we now have debates over fake news versus real news and true facts versus alternative facts. Suffice it to say that over 15,000 lies have been documented by this President in under 1500 days in office. This is astounding. 



Trump, by his nature, projects all of his own shortcomings onto those he sees as a threat. He feared Joe Biden, so he accused him of wrongdoing in the Ukraine.....the very transgression that had Trump impeached by the House and tried in the Senate. The lead prosecutor, Adam Schiff, became Shifty Schiff {with the implication that the prosecutor was lying} throughout the prosecution. This coming from the man who has lied over 15,ooo times. During his first campaign, we all remember “Crooked” Hillary. This sobriquet coined while Mr. Trump was conspiring to cheat and steal his way into the Presidency. 



The last area I’ll discuss is probably the one that places our great nation in the most difficult position. We have never been a nation of perfection, though all nations should strive for that. We have been, fortunate enough, to have a succession of Presidents who recognized that they couldn’t be all things to all people. They were smart enough to surround themselves with people from both sides of the political aisle and who represented all variations in political thought. They all, in essence, surrounded themselves with a “team of rivals”. This was not to say that every President ceded his authority to those rivals all, or even a majority of the time. Presidential wisdom did, however, frequently did allow his advisors to temper the President’s instincts with either calming or midpoint positions. The input was always considered an important part of governance. This President, however, has chosen to surround himself with a “team of toadies”, Cabinet and advisors who allow, and yes abet, the President’s worst instincts. Subservience, at the White House and in the Republican halls of Congress are the only appropriate responses in this bully’s eyes. If you dare to disagree or testify, or even tell the truth when under subpoena, you become subject to the wrath of Presidential vengeance. 


So what is the solution to the problems we face? The answer, as always isn’t crystal clear or easy to define. Part of the reason for that is that we have begun to see flaws in our entire electoral and oversight process that the founders could not have predicted. They saw the possibility of a rogue president or a rogue sector of Congress, but not of both.They believed that checks and balances would solve most of our problems. That is no longer true. We need to do something. 
What follows are some suggestions. Not all are possible, nor are all excellent ideas, but they should all be up for discussion. Therefore, without comment, are some of the ways we might go about bringing a sense of normalcy back to our governance. 
Presidential primaries should be compressed into a much shorter period of time. Having four regional primaries {north, east, south, and west} should provide a more realistic vision  d set of choices for the voters. 



We should consider term limits on Representatives and Senators. Ten years for Representatives and twelve years for Senators should be a jumping off point for discussion. This would loosen the bind that any President has on oversight. 



No judge should have a lifetime appointment. Ten years for lower court justices and 15 years for Supreme Court Justices would appear to be a good jumping off place for discussion. 



Impeachment should be consistent. A simple majority in the House and 2/3 in the Senate makes it both too simple and too complex to remove a President. It would appear to be a fairer test if the threshhold would be 60% in both chambers. 



It is impossible to fairly serve as both judge and jury. Either the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court take on all the roles of the judge in an impeachment trial or there should be a requirement that the Senate must reach the 60% threshhold to override the Chief Justice’s opinion. 



Separate the Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections. This could further enforce the separation of powers in government. The Vice-President has a single Constitutional task. That is to be the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. We should be giving that role the dignity it deserves and not make it an afterthought in the electoral process. 



Finally, the Electoral College should be recognized as the historical artifact that it is. We elect every other national representative by popular vote. Every office requires direct election, not weighted elections. The Presidency, the most important of representative elections should be decided on a one man, one vote system. 


 
Not one of these recommendations would affect the current President. That fate will be decided by the voters in November. We do, however, need to get back to the concept of citizen legislators that the founding fathers so earnestly desired. Our electoral system has to be updated to meet the needs of the 21st century.We must get back to legislators being in D.C. or state houses in order to meet the needs of the people they serve, rather than becomng cash cows for lobbyists and worried only about the next election cycle 
 
I realize that this is a very long blog, but hopefully it has enough meat in it to get a lively discussion going. 
 
 
]]> Thu, 13 Feb 2020 20:31:25 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/2037/living-a-nightmare-how-long-can-we-survive-as-a-rogue-nation http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/2037
All rhetoric aside, this nation is in trouble. We seem to be inextricably divided into two opposing factions that can not or will not reach common ground on almost any issue. 51% of the nation believes that this President and his administration are rogue or illegal actors on both the international and national stage, while a fairly stable 44% of the population believes wholeheartedly that the President and his administration are heroes and heroines of American democracy.
What has happened is that provable facts are believed by only half of our populace. Facts do not have weight assigned to them. It has become de rigueur for individuals to say that there are facts for one side and alternative facts for the other. One of the things that we know is that in just over 1000 days of this administration, the President, by conservative estimates, has stated at least 8000 untruths. This is a number that has made America the laughing stock of the world.
As one of the 51% who believe that we live in what has become a rogue nation, facts matter. There is that which is provable and that which is a perversion of the truth. The question is "What are the provable facts that have set our country apart as a rogue nation? How do those facts affect this country's future?:
A)   President Trump is an IMPEACHED chief executive. Whether there is a real  or a sham trial in the Senate, President Trump will remain one of only three Presidents who have actually been impeached {Nixon was never impeached......he resigned from office prior to impeachment}. Nothing this President says or does will change the view of history about this President.
B)   The two articles of impeachment had both indirect and direct evidence that supported the articles. This was a limited set of articles. Most (over 85% of legal scholars asked) believe that there could have easily been 2 to 5 more articles presented that had sufficient evidence of support.
C)   Information from the Mueller report was presented as evidence and were considered relevant to, at least, the article dealing with abuse of power.
D)   The President, for the first time in history, prohibited his highest level staff from testifying at the House hearings.  This action, in itself, would be reason to call individuals such as Bolton and McElvaney to testify before the Senate. Over 70% of Americans support having these individuals testify.
E)   The President has seriously eroded the principle that there are three co-equal branches of government. This executive branch has refused to share critical information with the legislative branch.
F}   This president and his staff has forgotten that everything that is said is now on some type of video feed. You can no longer state that the comment was not made or was taken out of context when there are pieces of evidence that directly contradict follow up lies.
G}   The evidence of a " Quid Pro Quo" has been stated by not only the President, but the Chief of Staff; and the President's envoy to the European Union and the Ambassador to the Ukraine. Those quotes don't lie.
The facts that will be recorded by history of these items and hundreds, if not thousands, of other facts that the Administration has lied about will be a damning indictment of both this President's domestic and foreign policy. 
The bottom line is that this Administrations, lies, obstructions, and deceptions will ultimately be decided by the electorate in 10 short months. There is no doubt that both sides will be energized and active during the election cycle. We are entering a time where facts should count. We have to look at the facts, not the alternative realities that are out there. It is the only way that this nation will re-establish it's place as the premier nation in the world. We have to become what we have always been..... the ethical, the most honest, and the most caring nation in the world. The ball is in our court. If we hit the ball out of bounds, we might be finished as the greatest country in the history of the world,.
]]> Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:41:32 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1505/we-must-be-americans-first-and-political-partisans-later http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1505
It totally amazes me that there are actually people defending this president for using profanity to denigrate entire groups of people. The president's defenders are falling into two categories; those who state that adults use profanity and that we should all put on our big boy and big girl pants and suck it up, and those who are arguing that the president is saying only that which most Americans feel.
The problem is that both defenses are wrong and totally missed the outrage that the president's attack speech has caused throughout the nation and the world. Presidential speech has frequently been profane, but it has rarely,if ever, been overtly racist. The president is the diplomat-in-chief of the  United States. In that role, he is responsible for maintaining America's role in the world as the receiver of the world with open arms. We are the country of inclusion,not the purveyors of hatred.
The greatness of this country lies in its soft power.  That is the power of acceptance and the recognition that out of many, we have become one. There is no black, brown, white, red, or yellow. There is no Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Atheist once they are citizens. They are Americans.
Now our national debate centers on  denigrating entire people's. We argue about the president's fitness for office. We worry about the chaos that many believe has brought the nation to the brink of Armageddon. And what do we get......not an honest discussion of policy issues......but....a hateful, bigoted, racist rant by the man who should be held to the  highest standard. This is unacceptable.
Perhaps we should let Trump rave and rant.  What we can't do is allow the rest of our government fall into the same cesspool our president has created. The soul of the nation is at stake. Our leaders have to stand up and be counted 

]]> Fri, 12 Jan 2018 23:30:26 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1431/how-low-can-we-go http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1431
John Conyers has resigned. That was good. Not for the Democratic party but for the nation. Representative Conyers isn't the only one, however. Our government is rife with people for whom the evidence is overwhelming that they have either been sexual harassers or sexual predators. That includes President Trump, Senator Franken, and Representative Blake Farenhold. Being honest, perversion and disgusting behavior doesn't have a preference for political party. There have been enough democratic and republican pigs to fill two complete sties, and possibly two complete prisons. I am therefore starting this blog with the unequivocal statement that if there are credible allegations and credible proof, the person who is being charged should at least be suspended from their position until an investigation into the allegations is performed on a non-partisan basis.
That said, there has been a qualitative difference between the reactions by republlcans to allegations against them and the reactions by the democrats who have had allegations made against them. In the case of Al Franken, there was an immediate admission and apology offered. This is not to pardon his behavior, but it at least demonstrates some recognition of his guilt and an attempt to assuage his guilt. It does not make him any less guilty, but it does make a difference. In the case of John Conyers, it led to the immediate condemnation by his own party and enough pressure to force his resignation. Might it have been too little too late? Possibly. But action was taken and his stain has been removed from the House of Representatives.  A democratic member from Nevada is now under the same pressure to resign from his democratic colleagues.
Compare this to the republican response to allegations, often more serious and numerous than those brought against the democrats. The response has always been to deny and deflect. Smear the accuser and swear in the face of either their own words or damning evidence that they are innocent and their accusers are liars or whores or democratic plants.  Blake Farenhold just denies his transgressions. President Trump, even in the shadow of an Entertainment Tonight video {which he first apologized for and now is arguing it's authenticity}, fifteen accusers that had extremely credible allegations which demonstrated a pattern of assaultive behavior, and an on-going lawsuit against him, continues to deny everything and attack the women who have accused him as unworthy of his advances.
And then we come to the lowest of the low. Judge Roy Moore, a man who was removed from his position on the Alabama courts for defying federal court orders, indicated that he believed that Muslims had no right to serve in Congress, and that this was a Christian  nation with rights that only extended to his co-religionists, is running for a Senate seat from the state of Alabama. During the campaign, nine women came forth separately claiming that Moore, when he was a 30 something year old district attorney in Alabama had been involved with them, either in a forced or unforced manner while each of them were still in their teens. This was punctuated by a credible allegation of sexual assault of a woman who was fourteen at the time. That action alone would classify Judge Moore as a pedophile. These women's accounts were bolstered by written documentation that included Moore's signature, corroborating testimony of others who were knowledgeable of the events at the times they occurred, and even the explanation that Moore had been expelled from a local mall at that time because of his lascivious behavior toward women.
At first, I thought the republican party had grown a backbone. The RNC pulled funding and personnel out of Alabama. Members of Congress distanced themselves from Moore and there was a republican push for expulsion should Moore win the election. It appeared that it was a bridge too far that Moore had crossed.
But that all changed in the last week. The new mantra of the republican party is that they would rather encourage their people to vote for a pedophile rather than a democrat. It made no difference how morally repugnant the senator would be, if he voted for tax breaks for corporations and the rich, he would be welcomed with open arms. First, President Trump, then many Senators and Congressmen, and finally the Senate Majority Leader threw at least tacit support behind Judge Moore. The RNC then followed suit and put money and personnel back into Alabama to work for the upcoming chief pedophile of the senate.
There was a time that the Republican Party prided itself on being the party of family values and morality. They argued that the democrats didn't care about families or the moral state of their elected officials. But that has flipped 180 degrees. It is now the democrats who are forcing those who violate accepted moral codes to either step down or be publicly humiliated and isolated. It is the republican party that keeps finding a deeper and deeper cellar. They have left family values in their rear view windows for the sake of the almighty dollar. They are telling Americans loud and clear.....Give us your vote and you can run for office no matter how repulsive you are.  Let's face it, only in 2016 America could a pedophile be favored to win an election against a person with an impeccable public record who prosecuted and won the biggest case against the KuKluxKlan in Alabama history. 

]]> Tue, 05 Dec 2017 18:36:37 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1430/when-will-this-insanity-end http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1430
I'll promise never to bitch about why Donald Trump won the election in 2016 again. He won. The democrats lost. That is now ancient history. The fight isn't over the popular vote or the electoral college. That may be a fight for the future. The fight isn't over Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. They both sucked as candidates, but the people spoke about which candidate they thought sucked less. The fight isn't over WikiLeaks. We all know what they did. The fight isn't even about Trump's prior misogyny. That battle was debated in the court of common opinion and didn't rise to a disqualifier. So where does that leave us?
The problem is the current administration and the way they are going about attempting to govern, or if you will, rule, this nation. The problem is that we have become so polarized post-election that we don't see the forest for the trees when those trees totally surround us. The problem is that we are now encouraging the rule of law to be applied selectively, and that we now have a President, a Department of Justice, and, increasingly, a section of the population calling for selective application of the law.  The problem is that, as a nation, both sides have forgotten that our government is an arm of all the people, not just a small slice of that population. The problem is that we live in a world that is getting smaller by the day, and therefore more dangerous by the day. That world can only be made safer by expanding our alliances, not shrinking them.
It's not enough to identify problems. That is the purview of the whiner and the perennial loser. Every problem comes with a solution. Some societies have developed solutions that have been brutal. The Americans under Andrew Jackson initiated the Trail of Tears to solve their "Indian Problem".  The Nazi's initiated the "Final Solution" to solve their Jewish and Gypsy problem. The Turks sought to eliminate the Armenians in the first 20th century genocide. The list goes on and on. None of these "solutions" inevitably worked. You can't improve problems through the elimination of the source. The same principle applies in America today. We are a nation that is beset by problems. We are worse than split into political camps, we have always been split into political camps. Now we are getting to the point where we are split into warring factions. Everything that one side says or does is an anathema to the other. If a member of one "tribe" accepts a proposal from the other, that person is viewed as a pariah, a traitor, a criminal. If a piece of legislation is introduced by one side that was originally supported by the other, it now becomes the opposite of what it was when it was first introduced. Liberal legislation is considered conservative, conservative legislation is immediately considered liberal.
How do we solve the problem. The first thing is to understand that we are all entitled to our own opinions and that our opinions are not necessarily relating to governance. We need to understand that our governing bodies are not designed or intended to be our moral compasses. We need to come back to allowing our religious institutions and social/moral institutions to provide that. The role of government is to insure that all people have equal rights under the law. That includes those of us who believe differently then we do, those of us who love differently than we do, or those of us who have different views about the role of religion in our lives. We need to allow issues of morality to be changed in hearts and minds, not by government edict. We can then go to houses of worship that agree with our moral viewpoints, while maintaining a far more integrationist mood in other environments.
Concurrently with this, candidates for public office should not be allowed to make religious issues campaign issues. This is definitely the most divisive political issue we face in our nation today. Hatred of those with different religious beliefs, or no religious beliefs does nothing but divide rather than unite our nation. Our candidates should also have to keep issues that are inherently non-political, but definitely moral out of the political debate. Abortion rights is a personal moral issue. LGBT-Q issues are human rights and moral issues, not issues of the political debate. We can opt to go or not go to religious facilities that support those rights, but our government must support those rights because no matter what the orientation or religious belief of the individual, they are all Americans.
We must also find ways to return the judiciary to it's rightful place as an independent, third branch of government. The originalist interpretation of the third branch of government was to provide an independent check and balance on the other two branches of government. The best way to do this would obviously be a non-partisan judiciary. Both political parties are guilty of just the opposite. When in power, at any level of government, the party in power almost always seats jurists who agree with their political philosophy. This leads to a judiciary that is far from impartial. This is bad for the nation. We should get back to an independent judiciary. The only way to do this would be to force confirmations for judgeships to require three quarters vote for approval. That would require nominated judges to be centrist and not indebted to either political party. Doing this would de-politicize the judiciary in a manner that no other solution would.
The final area that I want to discuss is that of the law of the land being equally applied to every American. This would appear to be almost an oxymoronic statement. The first thing that comes to most of our minds is "of course the law applies to everyone, that is what America is built upon." We may think so, but events over the past few decades have proven that equal application of the law is a myth rather than a reality. Whether we were a working guy who cheated a bit on his income tax or a politician, or big business tycoon who illegally laundered millions of dollars, the outcomes if we were caught were going to be very different. No one should be allowed to flaunt the law. It should make no difference if you are a panhandler or the President of the United States, a teacher in Atlanta or a former General of the Army. A crime is a crime and they should be treated equally.
I do not understand  why there is such an uproar over what is happening in the Office of the Special Counsel. He is a legally empowered investigator, who is looking into governmental malfeasance. He was appointed by an Assistant Attorney General who works under an Attorney General nominated by the sitting President. Just because the investigation is not going in the direction that the administration and supporters of the President would like it to go is not a reason to either condemn or end the process. It is a legal issue. It must be allowed to proceed to a conclusion and allow the rule of law to work impartially. Take the politics out of it, it would be good for all of us.
We've been a nation falling into the depths of insanity. Luckily, it's not an insanity that can't be cured. We just have to come to an understanding that not everything is political. Let's bring politics back into the political vein and allow the other issues to fall back into the realms that they belong in. If we do that, we'll be well on our way to curing our national insanity, and going back to being "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".
]]> Mon, 04 Dec 2017 12:53:40 -0500 http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1428/the-next-time-someone-identifies-themselves-as-a-conservative-this-is-how-to-gently-bring-them-back-to-reality http://thenewstalkers.com/docphil/blog/1428
The final nail has been driven into the coffin of American Conservatism with the passage of the Senate's latest "tax reform" bill. As a liberal, I spent my life debating true conservatives about our differing points of view. We rarely came to agreement but we were able to respect each other's positions on the issues. One of the reasons for this was that both liberals and conservatives were true to their beliefs and practiced what they preached.
Unfortunately in the twenty teens, there is no clear line between liberalism and conservatism. There are those who espouse sections of each philosophy, but there are many others who utilize the identification of a philosophy as a method of using a cudgel on the rest of the population. Let's look at what Conservatism says about some issues and what the "modern conservative" frequently supports:
National Debt:  The truly conservative position, and the key principle on which conservative philosophy is based is that the government should be as debt free as possible. When looked at in terms of budget and debt reduction, the conservative position would be to approve only budgets with a surplus which would then be used to decrease the national debt. Of course, this has not been the case in recent conservatism. Republican Congresses and Presidents have not passed a balanced budget in my lifetime {70 years}, nor have they ever decreased the deficit once. That is not conservatism. The new "tax reform" is going to add 1.2 TRILLION dollars to the national debt. Why? To give their donors and the richest Americans a huge tax cut. Not conservative.....just greed.

Moral Authority: One of the basic tenets of nineteenth, twentieth, and even early twentieth century conservatism was the concept of "family values" and the support of politicians who were paragons of the moral values that conservatives held. Oh how the times have changed. We now have a self-identified sexual predator as President, the party of Lincoln is perched to elect a pedophile to the senate from the state of Alabama because "a pedophile is better than a democrat". It seems that a democrat that prosecuted and got convictions against ku klux klan murders isn't moral enough.

Religious Tolerance: One of the most important conservative principles that came out of World War II was tolerance for all religions. Having seen the horrors of that war toward human beings solely on the basis of their religion, conservatives in the 1950s were among the most religiously tolerant and accepting in the world. Today, conservatism is actively attacking the "other". Religion means political identification to many conservatives. They are unwilling to mix with those "others" or even engage them in discussion. This is definitely not conservative.

Value of Education:  Traditional Conservatism placed a great emphasis on the conservative intellectual. The leading lights in the conservative movement were intellectuals who were the lynchpins and face of the movement. That is over. There is no place in the modern conservative movement for intellectualism. Intellectuals are considered part of the elite, or even worse, part of the mainstream media. Conservative intellectuals are not welcome in the party any more and are leaving in droves. Modern conservatism is eschewing traditional education and is encouraging their followers to home school, attend doctrinaire schools, and go to higher education institutions that foster a narrow world view. This is not what traditional conservatism ever espoused.

Compromise:  While there are many other areas that I can talk about, I will end with a short discussion about compromise. There was a time, not long ago, when there was an understanding in both the conservative and liberal communities that they were the outliers and that the majority of the American people were centrists who on various issues leaned either slightly right or left. Those of us who held strongly liberal or strongly conservative views understood that it was our role in the political discourse to move legislation and public opinion toward our viewpoints, not by leaps and bounds, but by degrees. Modern conservatism has totally lost this belief in compromise. It is now a zero sum game. Politics is an all or nothing approach. It is either the conservative way or the highway. You can work with us only if you accept everything we want to do or say. This is not conservatism. This is not even Americanism.
The next time you speak to a modern American "conservative", please be certain to remind them of the reasons why they are not what they claim. They are nationalists. They are Trumpists. They are authoritarians. They are not moving us in directions that are good for this country. Remind them that if they want to try something really conservative, try to be conservative. Then we can have a legitimate debate.

]]> Sat, 02 Dec 2017 11:21:07 -0500