O'Malley did a good job of pushing at the front runners, now and then.  And he had some smart little soundbites, here and there.

But Clinton and Sanders ran 41 to 40 percent interest all night, in CBS polling.

About what I expected.

What I walked away with, tonight, is that Clinton is great, but Sanders is doing almost as good in the polls and opinions.  What I walked away with, tonight, is that people ARE taking Bernie Sanders seriously....including Hillary.

Thoughts?

I just don't think people can get their heads around how ridiculous it is that Donald Trump is saying he is going to deport 12 million people.   So ... let's put things in perspective, shall we?  I mean, the logistics of this 'grand event' should make everyone laugh this moron back to his gold lame penthouse in Trump Tower.

Deporting 12 million people is the equivalent of deporting every person at 30 Woodstocks.  That's right, THIRTY times the number of people that attended fucking WOODSTOCK! There were only 400,000 people at Woodstock.  This is 30 times that number!! 

In 538's summary of the GOP debate, I was struck by this item:

In his closing statement, Ben Carson said that since the debate had started, 200 abortions had been performed. That stat caught our ear. Turns out, he’s right. In 2011, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate in the U.S. was 121 per hour, or 242 over the course of the debate.

According to the CDC, there were 730,322 legal abortions in the U.S in 2011. That breaks down to about 83 per hour, or close to 170 for the two-hour debate.

Reactionaries abhor change. When minority groups demand the rights guaranteed by the Creator or simply as being human, reactionaries push back. Reactionaries stand athwart history yelling "Stop". For reactionaries things are the way they are because that is the way things were supposed to be. When change occurs, reactionaries demonize the people seeking change. Minorities are criminals or terrorists. Women are emasculating or FemiNazis. Gays are depraved individuals who will rape children and destroy the institution of marriage.

In last night's attempt by Murdoch and Ailes to clear the brush around Marco Rubio, the boy candidate who doesn't know which end of a screw driver is the handle flashed hard working Americans with the Full Welder, and believe me it wasn't pretty. I have spent the last week with a friend and neighbor putting up fence and welding farm gates, and I can tell you that Rubio's glib, uninformed, contrived comments about welders, philosophers and wages are worth about the price of two cow pies. The canned junk speech which Rubio has been spouting all week---comparing welders to college philosophy majors---is an insult to workers as well as to those who have worked hard to earn a college degree and are spending a big chunk of their income paying down student loans.

The recent statistics revealing increases in the mortality rates of middle aged white Americans during the period 1999 to 2013 seem to defy easy narratives as to why it's happening now here while the reverse--lower mortality rates--is true in other countries. It also appears to be more of a white problem than a minority problem. The factors of personal responsibility, equality, freedom, declining wages and morality are all included in various diagnoses of this peculiar white illness. There are criticisms of the statistical methodology employed but all agree that the rate is going up, disturbingly so. Less education, lower wages and general hopelessness are common descriptors of this endangered group.

Omission is one of the most powerful tools the media has at its disposal. The media can't control what we think, but they can control what some of us think about. The deafening silence in light of the facts about corrupt Officer Gliniewicz on conservative talk radio and Fox news is telling. I've spent more hours than I care to admit watching Fox, and listening to talk radio. I forced myself to watch The Five, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. Sheppard Smith was the only person who addressed the way the networks on air personalities tacitly linked the "murder" of Officer Gliniewicz to the Black Lives Matter Movement. It doesn't make me want to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, but after watching several hours of their programing over a two day period: I felt somewhat vindicated that a day after the story broke someone made my time worthwhile.

Part 2:  Political Convenience.

In the first democratic debate of 2015 Hillary Clinton Claimed ‘I have been very consistent over the course of my entire life ’ and that she has ‘always fought for the same values and principles’.  This is simply not true.  Hillary has a history of taking positions of political convenience.

If you recall the times during the 2000 campaign when Bush claimed to responsibly hand back tax cut savings, with moderators never noting the discrepancies, these modern times should give you pause. What you might not have realized is that Bush's $1.9 trillion spend-fest is dwarfed by the current candidates' $6 to $11 trillion cost. [If only a Socialist wanted to break the budget by that amount, they'd be howling.] You'd be excused for not realizing this, how wacky their plans are, as this basic detail isn't much revealed by either the press or the media brainiacs moderating the "debates". You would think that part of a debate, as you learned somewhere around 8th grade debate class, was a "rebuttal", a point drilled home by references we'd crammed on, pre-internet, to fill 3x5" index cards in cardboard files to prepare for the fierce drilling of our opponents.

If you want to start a fight, ask a bunch of Americans whether 9/11 was a conspiracy. Most will say no. If you then note that 19-20 people working together is by definition a conspiracy, they'll get pissed and say they thought you meant "government conspiracy". Which is not what they thought, since we don't know what individual gov workers from the FAA or INS or FBI might have helped the hijackers, eg who let them through the airport with boxcutters or who helped them scope out security. What they really mean is "not a HIGH government conspiracy" or some coordinated renegade group of spooks, no Ollie North and gang.

I am having trouble getting my head around all of this.

The repubs just continue to piss me off.

Except Kasich of course.

Let us pray that we shall find and subsequently exile or incarcerate all 'illegals'.

Let us pray that we might put stars upon those illegals; on their chests and with gps monitors within their skins so that we might more easily hunt them down.

Let us pray that we might abolish the FDR/commie idea of Social Security and do the same for Medicare