TRUMP

Statement: The Billy Lee Pontificator Editorial Board

This essay is a collection of Facebook rants that Billy Lee wrote and later deleted, because he is a coward and feared readers might turn on him; even stone him to death. Billy Lee deleted his tantrums from Facebook, yes, but he copied and pasted them into what he thought was a secret file on his blog site.

Billy Lee has no secret files; not any he can hide from us, anyway — his Editorial Board.  Nuh uh…No way…. We got to reading his ”secret” files the other day, and guess what? His Trump file was pretty good.  

We decided to tell Billy Lee to stand up; to act like a lion, not the mouse he so often seems to be. Publish this stuff, we told him. Even Billy Lee Junior and Fannie Jeane agreed. They talked him into it. They really did. It was them two, not us.

So here goes: Billy Lee said we could publish his warnings about the orange-man — who he fears will destroy the country we love if he doesn’t make some changes to his deplorable personality. Billy Lee insisted that we encrypt the name of ”orange-man” to protect our site from harassment by Trump trolls and bots. No problem.

The Editorial Board


Note: On September 18, 2016 Billy Lee removed the encryption we used to hide his essay from web search-engine spiders. He told us that he wants to stand (or maybe crash and burn) on the words he wrote. NO FEAR!  he choked between bouts of episodic projectile vomiting. NO FEAR!

Note: On November 9 (11-9) news outlets declared Trump the winner of the 2016 presidential election. We wish our new president the very best. We pray that he will reassure all Americans that he loves them and will serve with the humility and respect for human rights and freedoms that his high calling demands. One way to start is to apologize to the civilians (non-politicians) he insulted and falsely accused of crimes and human failings during his campaign.
The Editorial Board


Trump

Ted Cruz of Texas took many evangelicals away from Trump. For this, we must thank him for his courage. His sacrificial act at the Republican National Convention brought wrath from the Trump goons, but he was trying to save America from making the worst mistake in our history. God is good.


Editors Note: (November 19, 2016) Exit polls now show that Trump received the largest percentage of evangelical votes, ever. 81% voted for him; Hillary Clinton received 16%.


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Senator Ted Cruz says he is a follower of Jesus. A Trump surrogate called Cruz a ”Zika virus.” Cruz refused to endorse the GOP presidential candidate because the orange-man slimed his wife, among other insults.

A top Trump super Pac leader called Senator Ted Cruz a Zika virus. The GOP doesn’t want him. Good riddance to the Zika virus. The rhetoric reminds me of Hitler: the way he painted his detractors.


Editors Note:  On Friday September 23, Cruz tweeted that he would vote for Trump to honor a promise he made before the GOP convention to support the nominee; Hillary Clinton was too liberal. His ”non-endorsement” lasted two months; it ended two days before the first presidential debate. The Pontificator endorsed Hillary Clinton on February 10, 2016. 


I’m feeling good vibes about America tonight. Our neighborhood sounds like the happiest war zone anyone could ever imagine. [from a July 4th Facebook entry. The Editors]

God is healing our country, apparently, even when we can’t see it, some of us.

All we have to do is love and forgive. The rest is easy. Be confident and do what’s right. That’s the goal for summer and fall and into the elections. All else is up to God, whose angels protect us twenty-four seven.

Ted Cruz, you are a beautiful man. Thank you for what you said and did at the GOP cross-burning. They called it a convention, but you knew better. 2,500 delegates showed up; 18 were black — less than one percent.  

Nobody in leadership attended; not the Bush family; not the McCain’s; nor the Romney’s — not anyone of integrity, good will, and national stature. It took bravery, Mr. Cruz, and you showed it. May God bless and protect you.

My take away is this: these are very sad days for Trump and his family. He loves America, he says, but he’s lived inside a bubble of privilege his entire life. He doesn’t understand which way the wind blows, and he seems dangerously close to a heart attack every time he speaks. (He’s 70 years old.)

Despite his words, which some take to be patriotic, he and his friends plan to wreck America (much like Bush W. almost did) by making the country a hostile, unfriendly place for people who want to use the freedom granted by its Constitution to warn us of our follies.

The people who support Trump, many of them, behave on the internet like vicious animals (apologies to my furry friends in the animal kingdom). Team Trump seems to carry a lot of race-hate in their hearts as well as hatred for my gal, Hillary, who I love. Log onto the Internet and go to their Twitter feeds, anyone who doesn’t believe it. Hillary Clinton is Mother Teresa compared to many of them.


Editor’s note:  On January 6, 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report (click this link), which concluded that agents of Russian intelligence created bots on social media to intimidate and suppress Hillary Clinton supporters. Billy Lee received threats on Twitter from a few of them.


Despite all this hate, many Christian pastors and opinion leaders have jumped on board the Trump train — if you ask them privately, which I have. It disturbs me to hear pastors defend Trump; they say he ”accepted Christ” a few months (or years) ago; yes, he behaves badly; we must give him the benefit of every doubt — he’s a ”baby Christian” after all; he needs time to grow.


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It reminds me of the excuses religious leaders gave Hitler, who not only claimed to be a Christian tasked to carry out God’s Holy Will but encouraged his minions to stamp the words, “Gott mit uns” on their military-issued belt-buckles.

God is with us, Team Hitler chanted as pastors and congregants alike took the world to war and caused the deaths of nearly 100 million people in a futile and absurd quest to exterminate the progeny of ”those people” they blamed for the Crucifixion of Christ. To add context, the crucifixion was a state-execution by the Roman Empire of a rogue rabbi carried out over two-thousand years ago.

Today the Jesus-haters are Muslims, they tell us. We are supposed to elect a candidate who says he will exterminate them — the really bad ones anyway plus their families — at least for right now.  Later … well … we’ll see about that — after we figure out just what the hell is going on.

What is going on — what’s wrong with America — Is this: our elites aren’t carrying their weight; they aren’t supporting the people in the countries that protect them. They are — many of them — decadent, immoral, insensitive, and entitled.

Trump is a billionaire. No matter how well-intentioned, he is the last person we should pick to lead our country.

On the RNC twitter feed, a trumper challenged me for posting the following:

A few minutes ago on Fox News Congressman Darrell Issa said Hillary was 72 years old. She is 68; Trump is 70. Turn FOX NEWS off.”

The emotions of the haters are high right now. It’s probably a good time to get off the Internet and let these lunatics implode on their own. I’m a coward anyway. Until today, I didn’t have the guts to challenge them. I was too scared.

I must have blocked at least 100 tweeters so I could follow the Democratic convention on Twitter without seeing grotesque images and reading threats in the feeds.


[As of the day of this posting, Billy Lee has blocked over 3,000 Trump lunatics.  The Editorial Board]


The amazing part for me was to learn that Twitter was also blocking crazies. What I blocked were trumper-nazis who were somehow getting by the censors.

What I learned is that it doesn’t matter if Trump is good or bad. Who knows? — he might be a Christ follower — some Christian leaders say he is. What matters is that he and his movement are unleashing the dogs of war on the American people. These dogs stalk the Internet; they worship guns; some have tens-of-thousands of followers.

They say vicious things; they make veiled threats and not so veiled threats. They post disgusting images. They rally around Trump with confederate and American flags; they carry guns; they ride hogs and choppers. They’ve got it all figured out.

The cure for what’s wrong is violence, they believe. They embrace the cure. They worship cruelty. They behave like bullies. They take no prisoners. They show no mercy — at least on Twitter.

In the real world outside Twitter they might be little-old-ladies in combat boots texting away on iPads inside nursing homes for all I know, but I block them anyway and pray that their hero never makes it to the White House.


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Trump supporters worked themselves into a frenzy at the GOP convention. They chanted, ”Lock her up! Lock her up!”  They never explained why.

After the GOP convention, I felt more confident he won’t win.  

Lock her up! Lock her up! his delegates chanted. It sounded to me like, Crucify her! Crucify her!

Only haters scream words like these. Sometimes they get their way. Haters locked up Christ Jesus and killed him, right? Some people said, he did nothing wrong. Some said, he loved others. He healed people. He lived a perfect life.

To paraphrase Hillary Clinton: What difference did it make?  Right now, I’m not sure about the results of the approaching election. Some polls show that Trump will be president.

The Russian mafia is working with the GOP to take down Hillary, some people in the intelligence community report. It’s a nightmare scenario.

During a debate last year, Trump explicitly said that he’d met Putin while the two of them sat backstage waiting to appear on 60 Minutes.

”I got to know him very well because we were both on 60 Minutes; we were stablemates,” Trump said at the time.

Trump insisted this summer that he doesn’t know Putin. He’s never met him.

Trump married two women from communist countries — his first wife, Ivana and his current wife, Melania. The one non-communist he married, Marla Maples, bore him a child out of wed-lock. He later married her.

Marla and Donald divorced before a sunset-clause in their prenuptial agreement expired. Marla got nothing — a reported 2 million dollars out of the many thousands-of-millions Trump had accumulated.

Has anyone visited Trump Twitter feeds to see who his acolytes are?  I did.  I saw thousands of bots with 5 followers and 25 tweets flooding feeds with pro-Trump, anti-Hillary nonsense. It was annoying and scary.

I also found Trump worshippers, some with tens-of-thousands of followers. I blocked the worst of them — the ones with pornographic images of Hillary, or assault weapons, or threatening messages in their bios.

People are afraid of Trump and his rabid cult of followers; he promises to enable cops to become even more aggressive than some already are.

Is it any wonder that the Donald has zero-percent support among black citizens who must endure a militarized police-state that the USA has engineered to suppress righteous rage?



People are afraid to advocate for what they know in their hearts is right, because GOP thugs scare them. Most white Americans are not accustomed to being scared; to experiencing fear; they aren’t in the habit of self-censorship to protect the people they love (except at work, where disagreements with owners can cost folks their jobs).

We can’t let fear stop us from speaking out. We can’t let Trump thugs terrorize us into silence — not while we still have a chance, no matter how slim, to stop them. 

Here’ something to remember:

After the Russians captured Hitler (to be historically accurate, no one ever claimed responsibility for finding him), German citizens said they knew nothing about concentration camps; they were shocked when the allies forced them to walk through the slave-labor camps where six million people toiled and died, many by poison gas and immolation.

After Trump is elected, we won’t hear about the bad things that are happening in our country. It isn’t going to be on television. People are going to disappear, and we won’t know why or how.

Trump will muzzle the press (some are saying that his surrogates already have), but we won’t know. A nation that can’t figure out FOX NEWS is not going to understand sophisticated attacks against democracy by people who are truly evil.

It’s why we have to speak up and vote. We have a chance to stop the rise of fascism in America. We have to take the chance we still have.

Tony Schwartz wrote Trump’s Art of the Deal.  He spent 18 months at Trump’s side following him around to listen to conversations, phone calls, and observe relationships. He wrote the book; Trump signed it. Trump and Schwartz split the money 50/50.

Like Trump, Schwartz is a ”tweeter” who I started following recently.


tony-schwartz-art-of-the-deal-2
Tony Schwartz made millions from the sale of the book he wrote for Trump: The Art of the Deal. He is warning voters that Donald is a sociopath.

Schwartz now says: I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.

Schwartz says he wishes he titled his book, The Sociopath.

What bothers me is that people who have read Art of the Deal believe they know Trump. The writer says no — they read a book designed to sell a lot of copies and make money, which a ghost writer penned. (The writer was Schwartz himself.) 

Tony Schwartz didn’t seem to believe that Trump would run for president someday. He now regrets the bad thing he did for money.

It’s too late. But it’s good that he is sorry.

Can I spend a few moments discussing the race riots that occurred in Milwaukee this summer? Milwaukee is relevent to this essay. 

I spent four weeks in 1974 living within the limits of this Wisconsin city. Being a Navy kid, I had spent time in many places both inside the USA and outside — in Europe and Asia. I remember thinking at the time that Milwaukee was the most racist place I’d ever seen. I couldn’t understand why people didn’t object.

Here are some reasons:

In 1974 socialist Germans who hated minorities ran the city. They would have loved their fellow German, Donald Trump, if they knew him, which is possible  because he was the son of Fred Trump, the German billionaire developer who built 27,000 segregated rental units in Queens NYC and was rumored to be the richest American. His son — in his late twenties at the time — was already wealthy and making a name for himself in Manhattan.

The people I worked for in Milwaukee told me that the police were able to prevent blacks from coming into the white areas by using traffic stops. I never saw a black person while I was there. But I heard a lot of racist talk from whites.

Blacks made nearly half the city’s population.  I heard white people talk about how bad they (the blacks) were, but I never saw any in the month I lived and worked in Milwaukee. Remember: 1974 was six years after an assassin murdered Martin Luther King and  ten years after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Segregation was illegal.

Today — 43 years after — only one city in America has more poor or more homeless than Milwaukee. It doesn’t shock me that the city experienced race-war this summer. It doesn’t surprise me that the city crushed the insurrection and that we no longer remember it, most of us.

America’s beer supply remains safe and sound. 

I am afraid for the black people in Milwaukee, because as bad as the national-socialists mistreated minorities when I visited, the current leadership demonstrated this summer that they are capable of worse. 

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency will reduce risk to racist supporters who hope to suppress minorities. 

Like I said earlier, I’ve been on Twitter. I’ve read the feeds. Under the right leadership, a genocide is possible. Some would say we have a slow-burning genocide unfolding right now.

Trump is unleashing the dogs of war; dogs who destroy civilizations. With almost three months to go, how will anyone patch the breach in the dam that holds back barbarians armed to the teeth with weapons of war? Go to any gun range and watch Americans practice. 

Wake up. Everyone. Take a stand now. It will be impossible to make a difference once we are standing behind razor wire waiting for our turn in microwave ovens. These monsters are not going to stop with blacks.

They will move on to the journalists and people they think are radicals. Eventually, they’ll burn the unfit, the retarded, the disadvantaged and of course, the Muslims.

Then they’ll show their true colors: they’ll go after the Jews; people with birth defects; autism; bad breath; body odor; torn jeans; the list of defects and moral failings that bother them will get longer, not shorter.

Somewhere along the line, the attacks on Christians will begin. Some say the attacks have already started. The take-downs of Ted Cruz and John Kasich were the first of many to come; operatives will sprinkle the suppression of Christians into the mix like salt; no one will notice — not until it’s too late to do anything about it.

We’ve seen this movie before. It is the natural course of empires like Germany, Japan, Russia, ancient Egypt, Persia; and of course, ancient Rome — the list is long. We in America will be living in it soon if we don’t vote to stop it.

A billionaire candidate staffed by paranoids to advise him doesn’t need GOP money; he doesn’t need anyone’s approval; he doesn’t need to buy television time.

He has access to communication networks involving AM radio stations, private mailers, internet ads, and e-mailers to spread whatever conspiratorial excrement he chooses to dispel; he can easily discredit and defame reasonable people who might dare to defend our country and the shared values enshrined by our constitution.


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Evan McMullin, ex-CIA official and presidential candidate.

Fox News, OAN, and Rush Limbaugh among others in this network have driven their stupid listeners into a psychosis of evil. It’s disturbing; I would say it’s terrifying. Even our CIA worries.

Evan McMullin, former CIA officer who is running for president, told Thomas Roberts of MSNBC that providing security briefings to Trump …is a threat to [national security], because he has been co-opted by Vladimir Putin, he is aligned with Vladimir Putin; he would not be able to secure a security clearance at even the lowest levels…he doesn’t know the first thing about fighting terrorism…

David Preiss, former longtime CIA briefer to the presidential candidates, told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC that after the 2000 election the CIA continued briefings to Al Gore who they believed won, and suspended briefings to George W. Bush until a few weeks later when the Supreme Court stopped the election-law mandated recount of votes in Florida to give the presidency to Bush who CIA analysts believed was the loser.

If the CIA was correct about the election, it must have irritated its directors when Bush falsely claimed that the CIA told his staffers that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — a lie that some believe began the unraveling of our country. The Great Recession that followed the stolen election and illegal war wiped out one-third of the accumulated wealth of the middle-class; you know, folks like me and my life-partner Bevy Mae.

I hope our readers will have the common sense to vote against Republicans at every level of government so we can set things right.

This summer in Dimondale, Michigan Trump told white confederate militia members from nearby Charlotte about black people. Speaking directly to blacks, none in the audience, he said: You live in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. What the hell do you have to lose?

The answer is: everything. The New York Times reported a few weeks later that Trump might be 650 million dollars in debt. No one really knows. Could they be right?  If true, it means that every black person in the USA has a higher net worth than the Donald.

Aren’t folks tired of predators running everything, ruining everything, wrecking everything, taking everything, and playing everyone?

As our Editorial staff has advocated for two years now, the United States must establish an internationally enforced limit to personal incomes and estate sizes — for the simple reason that unlimited wealth destroys self-governance, democracy, and the benefits of civilization which ordinary citizens want and deserve.


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Billy Lee believes incomes and estates should be limited to some reasonable ratio of the minimum wage. The reason: to prevent legalized looting of our institutions. People could easily buy expensive homes and remain well within the limits proposed by the Pontificator. The Editorial Board

The limits can be very high and do no harm. My suggestion has been to link the minimum wage to a maximum income and estate size; my recommendation is 1,000 to one for income and 20,000 to one for estate size; we’re talking about an estimated $20 million per year income limit; $400 million maximum estate sizes; inheritances might be limited to $5 million per inheritor.

Limits like these will encourage entrepreneurs but discourage looting like the kind we see going on in our financial sector. During the Bush administration a director of one of the stock exchanges drew an annual salary of $150 million. That’s crazy wicked.

Limits prevent isolated individuals who lack supporters from unduly influencing elections. Wealthy men like Trump won’t be able to get off the ground their drive-for-ultimate-power unless many other (hopefully reasonable) people get behind them at the start. Healthy democracies don’t need a Lone Ranger to rescue them.

The process we are witnessing now — where fawners and sycophants leap on board the choo-choo train after it has already left the station — shouldn’t happen in a democracy like ours. The stakes are too high.

The apparent nepotism of the Trump campaign demeans and insults the brave and free people of the most exciting country on Earth — the one country where ordinary people govern themselves; where the wealthy and the powerful don’t rule over us until we are able to thoroughly vet them; until they earn our consent by becoming transparent under scrutiny.  

Otherwise, it’s not right. We all know it.

Possession of wealth beyond certain agreed-upon, international norms should be a felony enforced by national and international courts. People who exceed limits could be given one (or possibly two) grace-years to turn over the excessive portion of their wealth to charities or the government — otherwise they spend a year in prison while the courts trim their assets to the lawful limits.

No one runs for public office after a lifetime of plundering and taking until they divest themselves to the lawful limits. 

How can anyone trust someone to hold high office who says they have accumulated 14,000 piles of a million dollars each? The person is either a liar or they aren’t. If they are telling the truth, someone should be asking, how does a person accumulate that much money without cheating people; without hoarding; without recognizing the needs of the poor and miserable who are all around; who refuses to help by sharing what they plundered?

The truth is — for anyone who has the courage to face it — behind every great fortune is a dark secret; sometimes many dark secrets. It’s true. Folks can believe it, or not.

How can anyone who understands the difference between right and wrong even consider casting a vote for the current GOP candidate? How heartless are some Americans?  Very, according to some polls. Yes, more than a few people are uninformed. So what? Ignorance is not an excuse. For those who don’t have time to investigate the candidates, I do. Take my word for it.

We are on the precipice of bad things. Unimaginable things. Men like Trump get worse after victory, not better. People are going to die. Seriously. Many of the people who support this sicko are gun nuts who are still fighting the Civil War. Consider the movement behind the Donald when making the decision to participate, to vote, and who to vote for.

Who leads America is a serious issue. Election is no joke. People who don’t vote share the blame if we get a bad result. We can’t elect men who cheat on their wives; who hate minorities; trash the environment; hunt endangered animals; lie compulsively; build casinos; fleece contractors; steal, cheat, and take revenge on anyone who dares to refuse to worship them and the ground they walk on.

We can’t elect men who are unable to tell truth from fiction; who won’t apologize to people they’ve hurt; who spread preposterous conspiracy theories; who destroy people they think are disloyal to their self-centered vision. We just can’t.

The candidate’s children stand to inherit windfalls — if they stay on message; if they hang on to their seats on his train. We are not going to hear dire warnings from them — though they know better than anyone what a hairball he is.

Billy Lee

AFTER INDIANA: THE ELECTION SO FAR

As of May 4, 2016, 28 states have held popular-vote primaries; nine states and one territory have conducted caucus contests, where both parties participated. Two states held mixed elections, where one party conducted a popular vote; the other a caucus. Thus far, the Democrats have participated in 12 caucus contests; the Republicans, 10. 

To summarize: A total of 39 states and one territory have completed their 2016 primary process.

After the Indiana primary, the popular vote totals in the 28 voting primaries are:

Clinton    12,242,884       14 wins / 7 seconds

Trump       10,329,397           6 wins / 11 seconds

Sanders       8,955,271          6 wins / 6 seconds          

Cruz            6,673,520          1 win / 4 seconds

Kasich         3,649,845          1 win / 0 seconds

Rubio           3,168,147          0 wins / 0 seconds

Caucus state elections work differently than simple popular vote elections, which makes comparing the performance of GOP vs. Democrats in caucus states a little like comparing apples to oranges; the comparisons are not very useful and can be misleading.

For what it’s worth, Bernie Sanders has won 9 Democratic caucus states; Hillary Clinton, 3.  On the GOP side, Ted Cruz has won 6 caucus states; Donald Trump, 3; Marco Rubio, 1.


John Kasich
As I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life. John Kasich, May 4, 2016

After the Indiana primary yesterday, Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the race to make Donald Trump the lone candidate for the GOP nomination. Barring an unusual event, Trump will be the GOP candidate in November. He said today that he will pick a Washington insider with close ties to Congress for VP; he says he wants to be able to move legislation through Congress.

Hillary Clinton has not said who she will choose for VP. It is known that she likes Elizabeth Warren, who our Editorial Board has advocated for and endorsed.

Is Trump going to be president of the United States in January? The results so far say no, because Hillary Clinton has demonstrated that she can outperform Trump with those sectors of the electorate essential to victory in past elections.

Some people on the left hope that Bernie Sanders will overtake Clinton and become the nominee, but his numbers show that the electorate is not ready to elect a socialist over a business leader; he can’t win a general election against Donald Trump, not in the United States.

This liability is one reason why 522 of the 561 party-appointed delegates support Clinton. Another, perhaps more important reason, is that Bernie Sanders is a junior senator from a small state (Vermont) who didn’t join the Democratic Party until 2015; he was an independent in Congress, though he tended to vote with Democrats on most issues.

Some party leaders believe he joined the Party for the simple reason that he wanted to run for president; it may have been more personal ambition than love of Party that motivated him. Who knows? He may decide to run as a third party candidate to help Trump defeat Hillary, if he gets angry enough. Then again, he might think he can win a three-way race against the two of them. Stranger things have happened in politics.


Donald and wife Ivana Trump
Donald Trump married Melania Knaus of communist Yugoslavia, now called Slovenia, in 2005. They have one son. Trump has two previous marriages; one with Marla Maples of Dalton, Georgia, who he married after fathering a child out of wedlock; his first wife was Ivana Zelnickova of Communist Czechoslovakia. the marriage lasted 15 years; she bore him three children.

Anyway, Donald Trump is an extremely attractive candidate for an electorate that worships celebrity. He is like the poison apple in the garden of Eden. Many Americans—like Eve—may be unable to stop themselves from taking their first bite. As the story in Genesis reveals, that first bite can start a cascade of events, which could ruin America.

Billionaires, like the Bush family, already have too much influence; worse, they live in a bubble, which renders their decision-making into a game by blind-fools. The Bush family, for sure, loves America, but they nearly destroyed it; they certainly unraveled the Middle East and precipitated the financial collapse of 2008.

Trump is surrounded by yes-people; let’s admit the obvious; he doesn’t tolerate dissenting voices very well. When Trump starts making foolish decisions—as he most certainly will—he will have to suppress dissent to carry his asinine visions to fruition. It won’t be a good time for people who think for themselves; it won’t be a good time for diversity. Donald Trump strongly advocates the use of harsh techniques against enemies. Should he turn his contempt on free-speaking Americans who oppose him, we could be in for a rough ride.

If history serves as a reliable guide, one component of the electorate Donald Trump can count on will be the evangelicals. Since they became an organized voting block in the 1970s, right-wing evangelical voters seem to have voted against self-identified Christian candidates more times than not. They opposed Jimmy Carter; they united against Barack Obama; and they are fighting against Hillary Clinton, who stood by her husband after he betrayed her; she continued to love him—something Jesus admonished Christians to do.


Jerry Falwell Jr.
Jerry Falwell Jr. is leading the evangelical movement to elect Donald Trump. He is president of Liberty University and the son of the late Jerry Falwell Sr.

Some evangelical voters tend to be legalists; many care nothing about love, forgiveness, charity, or non-violence. They pay lip-service to those qualities, but only when it serves their legalistic views; some could care less. And they will be voting for Trump in droves. Trump says he is honored by the evangelical support he is getting.

From where I’m sitting, Donald Trump seems to represent the New Confederacy. Some of his supporters who I’ve met paste Confederate flags on the back of their trucks and display Old Dixie in their living rooms. I can foresee a time under a Trump presidency (I would say it’s already started) when Americans aren’t going to see black faces on television anymore. We won’t be watching street demonstrations or riots or anything else that might threaten the social fabric on television, either. The technology of suppression is simply too advanced. Trump won’t hesitate to use it.

For people who aren’t directly involved; who watch television and live inside their own bubbles of safety, the world is going to seem like a pretty good place, at first, under a Trump presidency. The droning insects of right-wing media will stop flapping their angry wings; optimism will be projected from every billionaire-controlled media outlet; sighs of relief will be heard throughout the land; and once again the exhilarating drums of war will beat hypnotically as we take on the stragglers around the world who refuse to follow our vision; who refuse to dance in lock-step to our new tune.

It will be an exciting time to be alive, especially for those billionaires who own defense-industry businesses; for those who have a talent for building walls; for those who enjoy controlling and manipulating large groups of (sometimes non-cooperative) people. But will anyone permit me to interrupt this wonderful dream for a reality check?

Bad things happened under similar presidents, like Reagan and the Bushes. Reagan entrenched the power of billionaire families by changing the tax codes; he allowed the wealthy to earn unlimited incomes for the first time; the middle class hasn’t had a raise in pay since, because the wealthy keep the excess profits for themselves.

The wealthy have no tax write-off advantages or other financial incentives to encourage them to invest in their workers; in fact, it’s the opposite. Since the rich are no longer taxed at 92% on the unreasonable part of their unreasonably high incomes, they set aside their windfalls for their own families instead of upgrading their company infrastructures and raising the standard of living for their work-forces; neither do they pay the taxes that would solve so many of our internal problems—like the deterioration of our roads and bridges, our power grids, and the quality of education.

The Bush family took us into wars, which history shows were completely avoidable. The First Gulf War was a living nightmare, in case anyone has forgot. Remember the oil-well fires? They were terrifying. Remember our troops donning gas masks and hazmat suits during the Second Gulf War?

The wealthy refused to pay for these insane escapades, which is why our country can’t shake off its huge debt. We got into these predicaments, because our wealthy folks seem to be out of touch, arrogant, and financially tied to companies who do business with the military. It’s pretty simple, when anyone takes the time to think about it.

Donald Trump has devoted his life to building safe spaces where the wealthy can live large, play hard, gamble, and entertain their friends; nothing is so terribly wrong or unusual about that. But he lives in a part of America that 99.9% of Americans know little or nothing about. He isn’t one of us. He never will be.


Hillary Clinton 6
Hillary Clinton is arguably the most qualified candidate to make the run for president, ever. A successful attorney, she married “Bill” who became Governor of Arkansas and a two-term president; she served two terms in the United States Senate for the state of New York. President Obama appointed her to lead the State Department as his Secretary of State.

We are a freedom loving people who can take care of ourselves. We don’t need billionaire baby-sitters to tell us where to sit and when to use the bathroom. We can fix our country by ourselves, thank you, and we have Mama Clinton to help us do it. She is one of us. She was raised poor and will never be a billionaire.

A billion is one-thousand millions, for anyone not good at math. It is a ridiculous amount of money. Were it a felony to possess a billion dollars, many of the problems caused by greed in this world would disappear over-night. Think about it.

I’m praying that the Good Lord will keep Hillary Clinton safe. I pray for all the candidates; that they and their families will be protected from all harm. It is a courageous act to run for president. Every single candidate has been threatened at one time or another.

Most qualified people won’t run for president. It’s good that a few capable people dare to step up to lead the fight for freedom and fairness. Hillary Clinton is one of those heroic people. She isn’t just another pretty face.

Billy Lee 

PRIMARY ELECTION SO FAR

March 23, 2016

The Election Primary results so far: In the four caucus states where both parties have caucused, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz have won them all. Those caucus states are Kansas, Maine, Idaho, and Utah.

Results in voting primaries where both parties have voted, the popular vote is:

Hillary Clinton….8,728,430
Donald Trump…..7,496,166
Bernie Sanders…6,033,140
Ted Cruz………..5,147,202
John Kasich……..2,699,438

Marco Rubio dropped out. He gathered 3,168,147 votes but did not win or come in second in any primaries.

The result of popular voting in the twenty states where both parties have voted is as follows:

Hillary Clinton……9 wins; 6 seconds
Donald Trump…….5 wins;  9 seconds
Bernie Sanders…..4 wins;  3 seconds
Ted Cruz…………..1 win;   2 seconds
John Kasich……….1 win;    0 second

These popular vote win totals don’t include the four victories in caucus states, which both Sanders and Cruz won in their respective parties. It’s not clear who took the most popular votes in those caucus states, because the popular votes aren’t usually published. All that can be said for certain: Bernie Sanders has won 4 for 4 in Democratic caucus states. Ted Cruz’s results in GOP caucus states are exactly the same.

Four of the next five Democratic primaries will be caucuses, where Bernie has yet to lose a single contest to Hillary. During the next few weeks we will be hearing about how well Sanders is doing as he wins (presumably) these caucus states. The Republicans won’t be caucusing as much from now on — and many of their primaries will be winner-take-all; winner-take-all primary elections are something the Democrats don’t do.

So the narrative in the media during the next month will be how well Sanders is doing; will he catch Hillary? The narrative about Trump will be: what an awesome juggernaut this Batman from Gotham City has become; can he save us from the dreaded terrorists who hide under every bed in our beloved country? Will Trump rise in triumph to save us from all the bad people?

Here are some worrying statistics, depending on your point of view. The GOP popular vote turn-out is running 25% higher than the Democrat’s. Of the 33 million-plus votes cast thus far, Hillary Clinton has received 26%; Donald Trump, 22.5%. The bottom-line is this: a large majority of GOP voters are casting their ballots against Trump.

In a general election between the two candidates, some of the GOP primary voters who don’t like Trump are going to have to break for Clinton in order for her to win the general election. Trump’s high negatives in recent polls, if they continue, will make her win inevitable. Based on the current trends in the electorate, if Sander’s voters go to Clinton and 10% of GOP voters stay home (or if 5% cross-over to vote for Hillary), she will win the popular vote in the general election.

What is going to happen is this: Trump and Clinton will win their party nominations (barring any violence of the kind that plagued our elections in 1968), and Hillary Clinton will go on to win the election in one of the most lop-sided landslides since the Goldwater debacle in 1964. The extent of the landslide will depend on how many GOP voters stay home or cross-over to vote for Hillary. If the cross-over exceeds 10%, it’s possible she will carry all but a handful of states. If it exceeds 15%, she might very well carry every state.

History has a way of repeating itself. We have seen this movie before, but never with a highly qualified female candidate opposing a thrice-married seventy-year old businessman with no political experience. The election is going to get interesting.

Billy Lee


EDITORS NOTE: (2 Feb 2017)  Hillary won the popular contest by 5.5 million votes. Trump received 3 million votes less.  Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders siphoned 2.5 million votes. Hillary carried 88 of the 100 most populated districts. Only one person has ever received more votes in an American election: Barack Obama.

Hillary lost the popular vote in three traditionally Democrat-voting states: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — by less than one-hundred-thousand votes out of thirteen-million total votes cast. The margin was tiny — about one-half percentage point.

The GOP successfully stopped or prevented recounts and vote audits in all three states. Had the recounts and audits gone forward, The Editorial Board believes Clinton would have carried the three states; she would have won the Electoral College and become our first female president.

Despite serious statistical anomalies, Russian meddling, systemic voter suppression, and an unusually heavy influx of volunteer evangelical poll workers, the Republican guardians of our democracy saw no reason to make sure we got the vote right.

We wonder how they would have behaved had the shoe been on the other foot. Based on their history during the Al Gore debacle in Florida in 2000, we believe that some of their extremist followers were prepared to start an armed and violent revolution.

Civil war is the worst possible outcome, if we judge by the carnage of the last one. Barring a financial collapse or a world war, maybe Hillary losing was the best outcome for our beloved country — even if someday we learn that thugs in dark suits and shiny shoes really did steal our election.

Time and God will provide the answer.

The Editorial Board