2016 USA Presidential Candidates Race to the Bottom

How did we end up with two, completely awful, bone-headed jerks running for President of the United States in 2016?  Is it a testament to how utterly stupid USA has become?  Is it a testament to our anger? Our bigotry? Our complete lack of empathy?  Or is it a system that is designed to be statistically aligned on the 50-yard line, to keep America divided.

Let me remind America just how awful these two major-party candidates for president are.

Hillary Clinton

Do you not remember… that Bill Clinton pardoned over 200 hard-core criminals (some in exchange for charitable donations) on his last day in office before George W. Bush was inaugurated?  These criminals included serious felons, including cocaine smugglers, people who scammed the healthcare system, government, welfare systems, and banks, as well as wall-street criminals, and even criminals convicted of bribing public officials.

1. Verla Jean Allen (1990 false statements to an agency of the United States)^[6]
2. Nicholas M. Altiere (1983 importation of cocaine)
3. Bernice Ruth Altschul (1992 money laundering conspiracy)
4. Joe Anderson Jr. (1988 income tax evasion)
5. William Sterling Anderson (1987 defraudment of a financial institution, false statements to a financial institution, wire fraud)
6. Mansour Azizkhani (1984 false statements in bank loan applications)
7. Cleveland Victor Babin Jr. (1987 using the U.S. mail service to defraud)
8. Chris Harmon Bagley (1989 conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine)
9. Scott Lynn Bane (unlawful distribution of marijuana)
10. Thomas Cleveland Barber (issuing worthless checks)
11. Peggy Ann Bargon (violation of the Lacey Act, violation of the Bald Eagle Protection Act)
12. David Roscoe Blampied (possess with intent to distribute cocaine)
13. William Arthur Borders Jr. (conspiracy to corruptly solicit and accept money in return for influencing the official acts of a federal district court judge (Alcee L. Hastings), and to defraud the United States in connection with the performance of lawful government functions, corruptly influencing, obstructing, impeding and endeavoring to influence, obstruct and impede the due administration of justice, and aiding and abetting therein, and traveling interstate with intent to commit bribery)
14. Arthur David Borel (odometer rollback)
15. Douglas Charles Borel (odometer rollback)
16. George Thomas Brabham (making a false statement or report to a federally insured bank)
17. Almon Glenn Braswell (1983 mail fraud and perjury)
18. Leonard Browder (illegal dispensing of controlled substance and Medicaid fraud)
19. David Steven Brown (securities fraud and mail fraud)
20. Delores Caroylene Burleson, aka Delores Cox Burleson (possession of marijuana)
21. John H. Bustamante (wire fraud)
22. Mary Louise Campbell (unauthorized use and transfer of food stamps)
23. Eloida Candelaria (false information in registering to vote)
24. Dennis Sobrevinas Capili (filing false statements in alien registration)
25. Donna Denise Chambers (intent to distribute cocaine)
26. Douglas Eugene Chapman (bank fraud)
27. Ronald Keith Chapman (bank fraud)
28. Francisco Larois Chavez (aiding and abetting illegal entry of aliens)^{[citation needed]}
29. Henry Cisneros (former HUD Secretary)
30. Roger Clinton, Jr. (cocaine charges, half-brother of President Bill Clinton)^[5]
31. Stuart Harris Cohn (illegal sale of commodity options)
32. David Marc Cooper (conspiracy to defraud the government)
33. Ernest Harley Cox Jr. (defraud of federally insured savings and loan)
34. John F. Cross Jr. (embezzlement)
35. Rickey Lee Cunningham (intent to distribute marijuana)
36. Richard Anthony De Labio (mail fraud)
37. John Deutch (former Director of Central Intelligence Agency)
38. Richard Douglas (false statements to a government agent)
39. Edward Downe, Jr. (wire fraud, false income tax returns and securities fraud)
40. Marvin Dean Dudley (false statements)
41. Larry Lee Duncan
42. Galen R. Elmore (convicted of cattle theft)
43. Robert Clinton Fain
44. Marcos Arcenio Fernandez
45. Alvarez Ferrouillet
46. Henry O. Flipper – guilty of “conduct unbecoming an officer” (1882)
47. William Dennis Fugazy
48. Lloyd Reid George
49. Louis Goldstein
50. Rubye Lee Gordon
51. Pincus Green
52. Robert Ivey Hamner
53. Samuel Price Handley
54. Woodie Randolph Handley
55. Jay Houston Harmon
56. Rick Hendrick
57. John Hemmingson
58. David S. Herdlinger
59. Debi Rae Huckleberry
60. Warren C. Hultgren Jr.
61. Donald Ray James
62. Stanley Pruet Jobe
63. Ruben H. Johnson
64. Linda Jones
65. Preston King (Civil rights activism)^[7]
66. James Howard Lake
67. June Louise Lewis
68. Salim Bonnor Lewis
69. John Leighton Lodwick
70. Hildebrando Lopez
71. Jose Julio Luaces
72. James Timothy Maness
73. James Lowell Manning, (1982, aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false corporate income tax return)
74. John Robert Martin
75. Frank Ayala Martinez
76. Silvia Leticia Beltran Martinez
77. John Francis McCormick
78. Susan H. McDougal
79. Howard Mechanic
80. Brook K. Mitchell Sr.
81. Samuel Loring Morison
82. Charles Wilfred Morgan III
83. Richard Anthony Nazzaro
84. Charlene Ann Nosenko
85. Vernon Raymond Obermeier
86. Miguelina Ogalde
87. David C. Owen
88. Robert W. Palmer
89. Kelli Anne Perhosky
90. Richard H. Pezzopane
91. Orville Rex Phillips
92. Vinson Stewart Poling Jr.
93. James G. Powell
94. Norman Lyle Prouse – former Captain for Northwest Airlines, imprisoned for flying while intoxicated
95. Willie H. H. Pruitt Jr.^[8]
96. Danny Martin Pursley Sr.
97. Charles D. Ravenel
98. William Clyde Ray
99. Alfredo Luna Regalado
100. Ildefonso Reynes Ricafort
101. Marc Rich
102. Howard Winfield Riddle
103. Richard Wilson Riley Jr. (cocaine and marijuana charges, father was Clinton’s Education Secretary)^[5]
104. Samuel Lee Robbins
105. Joel Gonzales Rodriguez
106. Michael James Rogers
107. Anna Louise Ross
108. Dan Rostenkowski – former Democratic Congressman convicted in the Congressional Post Office scandal
109. Gerald Glen Rust
110. Jerri Ann Rust
111. Bettye June Rutherford
112. Gregory Lee Sands
113. Al Schwimmer
114. Albert A. Seretti Jr.
115. Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw
116. Dennis Joseph Smith
117. Gerald Owen Smith
118. Stephen A. Smith
119. Jimmie Lee Speake
120. Charles Bernard Stewart
121. Marlena Francisca Stewart-Rollins
122. Fife Symington III – former Republican Arizona governor
123. Richard Lee Tannehill
124. Nicholas C. Tenaglia
125. Gary Allen Thomas
126. Larry Weldon Todd
127. Olga C. Trevino
128. Ignatious Vamvouklis
129. Patricia A. Van De Weerd
130. Christopher V. Wade
131. Bill Wayne Warmath
132. Jack Kenneth Watson
133. Donna Lynn Webb
134. Donald William Wells
135. Robert H. Wendt
136. Jack L. Williams
137. Kavin Arthur Williams
138. Robert Michael Williams
139. Jimmie Lee Wilson
140. Thelma Louise Wingate
141. Mitchell Couey Wood
142. Warren Stannard Wood
143. Dewey Worthey
144. Rick Allen Yale
145. Joseph A. Yasak
146. William Stanley Yingling
147. Phillip David Young
148. Keith Sanders
149. Darren Muci
150. John Scott (not a full pardon)
151. Amy Ralston Pofahl (drug money laundering, distribution and manufacturing Ecstasy)

In addition to these 151 criminals, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 41 others, including a federal death-row inmate on his final day in office.  These weren’t guys who got too many parking tickets, these were serious criminals, many of whom paid large sums of money to Clinton “charities” to get their pardons. Whereas it technically is within the realm of the law that a president be able to pardon any criminal, no president in the history of the country has pardoned so many hard-core criminals at a single time.

It has been widely reported on the internet that Bill Clinton has always had nose for cocaine and special relationships with cocaine smugglers, and even personally authorized deliveries of entire jet-loads of cocaine for his own personal use or whatever while he was president.

As a teenager in the 90’s, I remember Bill Clinton’s presidency very vividly.  It was a presidency marred with scandal after scandal after scandal and war after war after war (a.k.a. “police action”).  It seemed like every week there was a new scandal to deal with.  Where there may have not been enough physical evidence to prosecute the Clintons on a number of points,  the information out there seemed to show a pretty persistent pattern of unethical and illegal activities perpetuated by the Clintons and their associates.   From Travelgate, to Whitewater, to Monica Lewinski, to missing emails, there were/are dozens of investigations into the Clinton’s.   Why on earth would anyone back another Clinton?  Why would the media?  Where’s the investigative journalism presence these days?  Oh wait, they’ve bought the Clintons already.

And what’s the big deal about the email server anyway?  Let me tell you something about email servers from the perspective of an “IT guy”.  Email servers.. are NOT secure.  Your IT guy has access to ALL of your email.  This is just the way it is and always was, by design.  If I’m the IT guy at a big corporation, I can see all the emails that all the major execs are sending to each other, to other companies, and that they receive from other companies… period.  I can even see emails that get bounced and rejected.  It’s not like the post-office where your letters are sealed in little envelopes. Email, is actually wide-open, more like sending postcards that can be read, copied, and copies transferred to anyone who touches them.. just sitting there in nice neat little individual text files, in plain, readable text.

This brings me to make another point… if it is truly so easy to read and copy all the emails on an email server?  Why did it take weeks and weeks for Clinton’s IT guy to hand over the information?  You can literally just copy the hard-drives and be done with it.  It isn’t like there’s any complicated process that needs to occur to make this stuff happen.  My guess is that the Clinton camp did a “document dump” and printed out a bunch of stuff, thereby forcing the investigators to page through hundreds of thousands of documents by hand or that the IT guy spent weeks building a clone of the email server to destroy the forensic evidence.

It is speculated that Clinton kept control over her email server so that it could be abused by the Clinton foundation.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump is easy cannon fodder.  In fact, he is such easy cannon fodder, one must wonder why the media doesn’t attack him harder than they do.  If you turn on your TV and start flipping channels, you’ll inevitably find some news station somewhere talking about what an utter dufus this guy is.  But from my perspective, they seem to be soft-balling him.  This guy has mountains of dirt in his closet.   Clearly this is a man who has done nothing with his life but line his own pockets in the most shrewd ways possible.  How can a billionaire claim the the rights to the throne of public service who hasn’t given a dime of his billions to charity unless it was in the form of a free round of golf?  Donald Trump cares about himself and his business interests.  If he’s in office, he will make sure that his business interests are protected and not much else.

Not only that, but he’s clearly a total idiot.  But how can an idiot be a billionaire? Well, lets think for a second about the life of a billionaire.  Does a billionaire actually do any real work?  No.  Donald Trump has business managers, lawyers, and assistants that do all the real work for him.   He, like many politicians, doesn’t even write his own speeches and instead has a “team” of writers do it for him and his wife.   It has been suggested that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, nor does he even post his own tweets on twitter.

Donald Trump has already violated his own campaign promises in his election.  He began running for president saying that he wasn’t going to raise money, wasn’t going to take money from special interests, and instead he was going to spend all his own money on his campaign because he “didn’t need anyone else’s money”.   Well first of all, this statement was patently false at the time he made it.  Through some accounting gimmicks, Donald Trump was able to loan his campaign his money.  His campaign, therefore would be obligated to pay Donald Trump back the money he loaned it in-full, (maybe even with interest).  Now that he’s the won the Republican nomination, he is looking to raise over 1-billion dollars to battle Hillary Clinton (and pay back the loans he made to himself)… his campaign promise is already shattered into a million pieces, but the American public doesn’t seem to care.

Does the American public simply not care about all the body-shaming crap Donald Trump has said numerous times on the Howard Stern show?  Is his behavior the mark of a man fit to be a leader?  No.  He is a spoiled child with a dozen servants to wipe his ass for him after he shits all over everything.

Does the American public simply not care that he referred to his future supporters as “idiots who would vote for anyone”.  That, while he might have had a few successful businesses, he also had a ton of failed businesses which resulted in huge layoffs and the taxpayers getting stiffed with his bills?  Donald Trump is not the problem solver, Donald Trump is the poster-child for the problem.

But then, so is Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is the poster child for the corruption in politics… the bribery, the hypocrisy, the blatant out-of-touch liars that have been running our country into the ground.  Does the American public simply not care that her campaign disenfranchised millions of voters in Brooklyn and Arizona?  Do they not care that she speaks as if she is for the people while catering to her wall-street business cronies?  Do they not care that she and her husband essentially created the problems that we’re dealing with today?  The very problems that the Black Lives Matter protesters are protesting about?  The very problems that plague our economy due to deregulation started by the Clintons?

America, wake the fuck up.  You were offered an authentic choice for president,  his name is Bernie Sanders… unfortunately, it is not really possible to write him in, and impossible for him to actually win in our rigged election system where the only viable candidates are chosen by two huge soulless corporations: The Democratic and Republican “parties”.

Why are we stuck here?

I believe the reason we are stuck where we are has nothing to do with the issues that people are talking about on TV news and in presidential debates.  The stalemate and gridlock in Washington is by design.  They want the American public arguing with each other about gun control, abortion, jesus, gays, and transsexuals so as to pull their eyes over the damage that politicians do to the country, routinely every day.  The real issues are the ones that don’t get prime-time exposure.  Issues such as gerrymandering, campaign finance, the federal reserve, and the rules of house and senate committees, and election rules need to be solved before USA can  move forward towards any meaningful progress.   The public needs to stop taking the bait surrounding these “wedge issues” that are merely designed to provoke attacks on each other.  The 2016 presidential race is the most wedge-driven race in American history where more than 50% of the people are completely dissatisfied with both candidates and are simply trying to vote against the candidate they hate the least.

It is true shame that the Democratic and Republican parties allowed themselves to nominate such candidates.   I intend to vote 3rd party for President.  I figure if Hillary Clinton isn’t a strong enough candidate to beat a dufus like Donald Trump, how is this my fault?  Why is it not the fault of the people who set-up this failed election system to begin with?   This is why I pushed for the democratic party to adopt support instant-runoff voting as part of its national platform.  Is it part of the national platform now?  Of course not.  The party cronies would never let something like that through.

We all smell it in the air.  Revolution is coming.  We can only hope that it is a peaceful revolution.