The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

This just in: Donald Trump's name has been mentioned more in the news these past few weeks than the word and has appeared in news articles in that same time-span. While most in the media have agreed that Trump is loud, oddly entertaining, and good for sound bites, not many seem to be in agreement on just how seriously we should take the businessman's presidential run and how serious of a contender he is for the 2016 election. Late-night talk show hosts have loved every minute of Trump's presidential run to this point. His big announcement even brought David Letterman out of retirement for a single night to read off a Top Ten List at the Republican candidate's expense, and had The Daily Show 's Jon Stewart pondering whether it was the right decision to leave the show just yet. To such personalities, Trump is comedy gold, nothing more, nothing less, and they'll milk his often times comical campaign for as long as time will allow. However, I've heard more se...

I didn't think I had any issues with Washington Post writer Chris Cillizza, but then again, I never read much of his material either. After reading and rebutting his April 27th article, "Cecily Strong was wrong about Hillary Clinton's appearance being off limits," I feel the need to go that route again with his most recent article, entitled, "Can we please stop acting like campaign finance is a major voting issue?" No, we can't, and no, that's not the end of my rebuttal. Cillizza starts his piece with this: "There are two seemingly contradictory data points in a new New York Times-CBS national poll. 1. 84 percent of people -- 80 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats -- believe money has too much influence in American politics. 2. Less than 1 percent of people said money in politics or campaign fundraising was the most important issue facing the country. How can the public hold both notions in their heads simultaneously? ...

There's a distinct difference between just loving oneself and loving one's country, yet it appears as if the wealthiest among us, as well as the most conservative of politicians, have been able to increasingly blur those lines over the past several years. For some strange reason, when a wealthy or powerful person loudly declares that they love this country or that it's the country in the world, people tend to respond, "They're such good, patriotic Americans! Nobody loves this country more than they do!" However, as the old saying goes, "Actions speak louder than words," and their actions tend to tell a different story. The extremely wealthy, and many far-right conservative politicians for that matter, live in a different world than most of us. They may all have loved this country at one point, but in their minds, they've made it, so now they can afford to stop looking after the country and simply just look after themselves. Many even deny the...

Most importantly, as I've written about previously, the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010 was awful for this country. Think people were fed up by big money in politics before the ruling? Of receiving seemingly countless fliers in the mail? Of seeing nothing put campaign commercials during dinner? Of thinking their voices meant little to nothing? Well, after the ruling, things just got worse on all of those fronts. Campaign spending increased, and with that, so too did the release of fliers and television ads, not to mention people's voices began feeling even smaller than before. But, while the ruling was awful for the country as a whole, it's also been awful for the Democratic Party. The Republican Party wasn't phased a great deal by the ruling. They've increasingly become the party of the top 1%, so to them, what would better give them a chance come election day than providing that very top 1% unlimited contribution capability? For the Democratic P...

With each and every election cycle, I begin to increasingly wonder if the Republican Party will change its name to the Oligarch Party. For as pro-freedom and liberty as their rhetoric typically is, it amazes me how anti-democratic the Republican Party has become. Allow me to compare the two parties on this front: Democratic Party - Wants to overturn Citizen's United so that corporations are limited in their campaign donations - Doesn't believe corporations are people - Wants to expand voting efforts to maximize voting on election day - Believes a strong economy is build from the base up - Doesn't believe in repressing certain demographics of voters Republican Party - Wants to maintain the Citizen's United ruling so corporations aren't limited in their campaign donations like people are - Believes corporations are people - Wants to restrict voting on election day - Believes in trickle-down economics - Believes in repressing certain demographic...

After $4 billion was spent this election season and under 38% of eligible voters voted in the midterm elections yesterday, with control of the Senate swapping parties as a result, I think it's safe to say our political system is broken. We can try to call this a democracy all we'd like, but when between roughly 1/3 and 1/2 of eligible voters tend to decide this country's future, and are often times influenced by millions of dollars corporations spend misleading them, I'm sorry, but this isn't a democracy. For the most part, the people no longer decide; money decides. With a big helping hand from the Supreme Court and the Citizen's United ruling, this once proud "democracy" (or republic, I suppose) is becoming an oligarchy, and as sad as it is to say, it appears as if most people don't seem to realize or care about this. Many have given up any hope of having a legitimate voice in the election process, because their voice counts for just one vote, ...

It's only February, and already, billionaire Tom Perkins is trying to stake claim to Douche of the Year honors. Not long ago, he compared progressives' desire to increase taxes on the top 1% to Nazis going after Jews during the Holocaust. He then decided to increase his odds of winning the before-mentioned award by saying the following during a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last night: "The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes. But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?" While it's debatable that Perkins was joking around, it doesn't seem to be debatable that he's a major league jerk. He also seems to be clueless about the real world. Unfortunately, due to the Citizens United ruling, corporations can spend countless dollars on ads to influence people's vote. In other words, if you pay a milli...