Just say no to TOC & Vote for Smart Power as defined by Hillary Clinton and embodied by Tim Kaine!!!

(M)an: Dude! Why is it that the Republican Party and Donald Trump can engage in corruption alongside their sycophant accomplices within the American Press Corps and get away with policy proposals centered on eliminating government stability and democracy through privatizing federal agencies in the United States of America?  

(D)ude: Man! Donald Trump and the current congressional Republicans and their sycophant accomplices within the American Press Corps are proponents and financiers of the growing threat to national and international security known as Transnational Organized Crime. Let me refer to the National Security Council’s online executive summary addressing the “Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime.” According to this National Security Council, or NSC, online executive summary—and I am quoting the parts I found alarming in the sense that, knowing Donald Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, the American Press Corps may just be exposing its own seedy history of fanning the riotous flames of prejudice and hate for the sake of complying with organized criminals that pose as white collar chief executives on the outside as Donald Trump does, but are truly the most coldblooded perpetrators of violence, including terror, around the world, as Donald Trump doesn’t want to reveal about himself and his Republican cronies through the release of his tax returns—

Transnational organized crime (TOC) poses a significant and growing threat to national and international security, with dire implications for public safety, public health, democratic institutions, and economic stability across the globe.

In countries with weak governance, there are corrupt officials who turn a blind eye to TOC activity. TOC networks insinuate themselves into the political process in a variety of ways. This is often accomplished through direct bribery (but also by having members run for office); setting up shadow economies; infiltrating financial and security sectors through coercion or corruption; and positioning themselves as alternate providers of governance, security, services, and livelihoods.

M: Dude! Great Britain’s David Cameron is an example of a corrupt official who turned a blind eye to TOC activity, such as 2016’s Brexit, or Britain’s exit from the European Union, which has resulted in empty-headed sellouts like Theresa May and Boris Johnson coming into power as England’s latest Prime Minister and her Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The congressional Republicans in the United States are an example of corrupt officials who turned a blind eye to TOC activity, such as 2010’s Citizens United decision playing alongside the sudden rise of the Tea Party Caucus, which has resulted in empty-headed sellouts, and chief architects of gridlocking obstructionism, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, coming into power since both houses of the United States Congress were hijacked by Tea Party Republican Majorities that actually facilitated the rise of Donald Trump through the same financiers as Brexit, like tabloid media specialist Rupert Murdoch, BP and its oil producing partners like TNK. 

D: Man! I agree with you. Plus, corrupt officials are positioning themselves as alternate providers of governance, security, services, and livelihoods in Great Britain as a result of people being confused into either voter apathy and not voting or misled deliberately by the tabloid media into casting protest votes against Britain maintaining its membership in the European Union without seriously considering the consequences of such an exit.  

M: Dude! The consequences are grave for the English, having been confused into not voting or casting protest votes against their country’s sovereignty by inviting corrupt officials like the intellectually compromised Theresa May and Boris Johnson to misguide them towards that pivotal vote severing England’s ties with the EU.

D: Man! The American Voter must not get confused in this year’s presidential election cycle propaganda by the American Press Corps and Donald Trump and the Congressional Republicans encouraging the same level of apathy and protest votes as in Brexit, emphasizing falsehoods like there are no reasons to turn out and vote or that your vote will not make a difference because of the state you’re living in or that Hillary Clinton has not facilitated any change in the United States of America nor the world. These are outright lies being fed to the American Electorate in the final days of early voting and right before Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2016, by the American Press Corps, Donald Trump, and the Congressional Republicans for the purposes of making this election result in one of the lowest voter turnouts in the history of American politics, which has always been the vehicle that drove Republican candidates into the White House. 

M: Dude! Regarding the American Press Corps, Donald Trump, and Congressional Republicans’ allegations that Hillary Clinton has done absolutely nothing constructive in her many career roles, I noticed the printout of a photograph from June 9, 2010 in your hands showing this year’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Juan Manuel Santos with the then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. What was Hillary Clinton’s role in the Colombian President’s success in settling the dispute between the guerrilla warfare entity FARC and the Colombian government?

D: Man! Juan Manuel Santos’s story is indicative, again, of the importance of high voter turnout in the United States of America and the subsequent installment of a Democrat as President in the Executive Branch in the new millenium. 

M: Dude! How so?

D: Man! Santos became Colombia’s Minister of Defense in 2006 during the Administration of President George Walker Bush in the United States. Within 2 years as Defense Minister of Colombia, Santos’s decision-making capabilites were criticized regarding the 3,084 cases of extrajudicial executions that had taken place since 2002 when Santos was concluding his term as the Minister of Finance and Public Credit, the year the then-President of Colombia Andres Pastrana broke off a negotiated treaty for a demilitarized safe zone for Colombian guerrilla warfare entities like FARC.

M: Dude! Did I just hear you say that the coming of the Republican President George Walker Bush threw off the negotiations between the Colombian government and guerrilla warfare groups like FARC?

D: Man! Malevolence is the way of the Republicans in foreign interventions since Richard Nixon’s presidency. Beneficence in foreign interventions is the way of the Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency.

M: Dude! Why?

D: Man! Again, I’d have to refer to the National Security Council’s online executive summary. According to the NSC’s Strategy To Combat Transnational Organized Crime, or TOC,

TOC threatens U.S. economic interests and can cause significant damage to the world financial system through its subversion, exploi­tation, and distortion of legitimate markets and economic activity. 

TOC activities can lead to disruption of the global supply chain, which in turn dimin­ishes economic competitiveness and impacts the ability of U.S. industry and transportation sectors to be resilient in the face of such disruption. Further, transnational criminal organizations, leveraging their relationships with state-owned entities, industries, or state-allied actors, could gain influence over key commodities markets such as gas, oil, aluminum, and precious metals, along with potential exploitation of the transportation sector.

M: Dude! Hillary Clinton’s “smart power” tactics, as outlined in her book Hard Choices, saved lives around the world by reestablishing the lines of communication purposely manipulated and then blacked out by Republican operatives like George Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. 

D: Man! George Walker Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld indulged in TOC, ruining peace treaties in Colombia and the careers of politicians like Pastrana and Santos. And Cheney and Rumsfeld are ready to reign again within a Donald Trump and Mike Pence White House, one not releasing his tax returns and both denying recorded evidence, which only confirms their unsuitability for the office of president and vice president.  

M: Dude! There is an inherent goodness in the American people, but Donald Trump and Mike Pence are the direct result of the Republican Tea Party and the Congressional Republicans importing Third World hellishness upon the United States of America as a result of American voters not turning out to vote in the midterm elections, hence the transition of American government from a checks and balances system to an oligarchy. When Americans do not vote, they sever their rights and humanity to the likes of the Waltons of Wal-Mart, Helen Walton once reiterating monopolistic dynastic stagnation within societies like those in the Third World, in a quote insisting that, “It’s not what you gather, but what you scatter that tells what kind of life you have lived.”

D: Man! Let the American Electorate gather their historic strength in numbers and show up at the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine and checks and balances beneficence and transparence, not the monopolistic dynastic stagnation and all-out TOC of the Trump and Pence ticket, a reinstitution of not just arms industry extortionists Dick Cheney (Mike Pence’s role model) and Donald Rumsfeld, but malevolence and uncertainties like just how many American soldiers will lose their lives in the intolerance of segregationists and genocists like Trump and Pence and the Republican oligarchs who will be financing carnage at home and abroad.

To soldier on until the work is done... Vote for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine... For the sake of our sons and daughters in uniform...

(D)ude: Man! I must bring up the ten crucial minutes of Retired General David Petraeus’s interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe right before the cyberattack on the East Coast of the United States on Friday, October 21, 2016. 

(M)an: Dude! How was the transcribing process? You said that you wrote up a transcript using the DVR recording of the General Petraeus interview.

D: Man! It is unedited, but that doesn’t mean I did not have to search over the Internet and make sure that I had spelled out the names of the individuals that General Petraeus brings up, correctly. Listening to General Petraeus, you get a sense of how military greats in history must have maneuvered through battles and warfare. It is a shame that the Republican Party and Donald Trump and Mike Pence cannot recollect the heroism and selflessness of the men and women in uniform in recent history, always going back generations to the times of Douglas MacArthur in World War I and George S. Patton in World War II. The Republican Party and Donald Trump and Mike Pence believe in indiscriminately bombing the region and promoting nuclear warfare in the new millennium, even going so far as to inadvertently admit their own ignorance about the region’s geography. Remember how Donald Trump actually did not know that Mosul was in Northern Iraq during the second presidential debate? Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, like General David Petraeus, are brilliant to the point of dissolving party lines between the Republicans and the Democrats in their outlook to move the United States into the next industrial revolution, which will be global and green and humanitarian, not divisive and dangerous. Just listen to the sheer genius in General Petraeus’s thoughtful and thorough answer to what constitutes a success in the fractured Middle East.

Yes, there is no question about that. We have reconstituted the Iraqi forces — retrained, reequipped, remanned them. We are advising and assisting in providing an armada of manned and unmanned aircraft over them with precision strike. Great leaders like Lieutenant General Steve Townsend, who fought in Mosul during the surge, knows that area. By the way, I spent the first year in Iraq there as commander of the great one hundred and first airborne division then. No question. It will be a tough fight. We’ve seen what ISIS is willing to do: they use suicide bombers and tunnels, explosives — all of that. But at the end of the day, the Iraqi forces will clearly prevail. That’s not the real battle. The real battle comes after the Islamic State, and after they clear out of the rest of the Nineveh Province all the way to the Syrian border. And that’s about politics in the most complex human terrain in all of Iraq: Sunni Arab majority but Shia Arabs, Christian Yazidis, Halabja Kurds.

M: Dude! General Petraeus’s assessment is the most compassionate of all. The American Press Corps is misleading and misdirecting readers to the point of denigrating itself to tabloid status. 

D: Man! The American Press Corps is divisive and biased, clearly favoring the irrational Congressional Republicans and their obscene frontrunner Donald Trump. But, fortunately, I caught General Petraeus’s nonpartisan insights into the situation in Iraq and its many provinces. According to General David Petraeus, 

They are all united in the desire to clear the Islamic State from Mosul and, again, the rest of Iraq. There are Iraqi security forces — army and police units, the counter-terrorist forces that they bring up every time they need something particularly difficult done. There are Shia militias that are really sponsored in the sense, directed to a degree, by Iran. There are Kurds working for the Kurdish regional government leaders, and there are even some Sunni militias from the tribes in Nineveh Province as well. So you have a big grouping of these. And that’s, indeed, what the challenge is going to be after the Islamic State is done. That unifying force now becomes much more a case of them all struggling to achieve power and resources, which is what Iraq has always been about at the national level as well. As you know, in Baghdad right now, the Prime Minister who is focusing the attention of the country on Mosul — he has got to watch his own back politically because the former prime minister is coming after him and has votes of no confidence that have taken out his ministers of interior, defense, and finance. So this is, you know, a full contact sport here and Mosul will be a microcosm of that and there will be also further political wrangling in Baghdad as well. The U.S., a great ambassador, Doug Silliman; again, Lt. General Steve Townsend; and others — in fact, the commander of the hundred and first airborne division now is there as well, Gary Volesky. They are all going to have to help nudge this along and encourage it and cajole it but, at the end of the day, it has to be Iraqis who come together and achieve governance in Mosul that is representative of all the different elements, responsive to them, and guarantees — most importantly — minority rights as well as majority rule.

M: Dude! Irrational and obscene leadership as displayed by the congressional Republicans and Donald Trump is the direct result of 2010’s Citizens United. The American Voter must understand that. And the American Voter must accept responsibility for being gifted the freedoms that the United States of America has afforded them all throughout our 240-year history. The American Voter must exercise the right to vote during this election cycle because this is the last chance to guarantee those liberties that our forefathers and foremothers fought for throughout the tumultuous history of our country to mobilize as many of US as possible to realize our God-given potentials. This is the time for US to honor that ancestral greatness and sustain our values and the highest standards in the face of such wretchedness that Citizens United and a sellout American Press Corps have brought upon the American Electorate, upon US.

D: Man! An issue of Smithsonian Magazine had an interesting article about the diet of gladiators, describing how humans are able to penetrate layers of past civilizations via computer technology that enables us to excavate historical sites without physical excavation techniques, which lead to undesired damage that future generations of archeologists must address alongside their findings. The process was cumbersome, but not anymore. An excellent example of how computer technology has enhanced and sometimes even opened doors to discoveries that otherwise would remain unforeseen is, as I said, the diet of gladiators. According to Frank Lidz’s article in the July/August 2016 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, gladiators were reportedly disciplined vegetarians in history, but scientists could not make sense of a chicken bone left behind in one of the arenas where they had fought. Turns out, the chicken bone wasn’t indicative of a lapse in the dietary habits of a gladiator or gladiators, but more about the dietary demands of the public spectators who came to watch them fight. You see, there were commissioned vendors in the audience who made their way through the crowds offering snack items like chicken drumsticks just the way people in the United States today have an inexplicable appetite for chicken wings. 

M: Dude! Does General Petraeus think we are doing enough in the Middle East? What is his assessment of our situation with Putin and al-Assad?

D: Man! Well, according to the General, 

Well, increasingly, we are doing enough and more. I’ve said for some time that the sooner you could show that the Islamic State is a loser, the sooner they are no longer effective in social media where they really distinguished themselves in addition to having a caliphate. So that was important and it has taken time to develop this momentum, to be sure. One of your other guests, General Mike Hayden, used to say that this was under-resourced and over-regulated. I don’t think that is the case now in Iraq. There is also development in North Africa, Afghanistan, Syria. In Syria, though, I think there has to be more done because there has to be a change in the military context. Secretary [John] Kerry says, for example, that there is no military solution. I’m not sure Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad got that memo because they seem intent on that. But he [John Kerry] is undoubtedly right at the end of the day. But there has got to be a change in the military context or there is not going to be any negotiation that is meaningful. So, I think, a safe zone — built on the now-existing Turkish safe zone that they are establishing — then, where we are — over in the Northeastern part of the country — there are no fly zones, telling Bashar al-Assad that if his forces drop barrel bombs on the people then we will ground his air force. Now, you have to do this very, very carefully because Russian air power is in there and we don’t want to be provocative and start world war three over Syria. Having said that, if we don’t show this kind of additional toughness and firmness, I don’t think we’re going to have a context within which we can get anything appreciable negotiated.  

M: Dude! The process General David Petraeus describes requires restraint and respect, characteristics that are deplete inside the Republican Party and Donald Trump. Like the technical breakthroughs that you detailed above, restraint and respect must be exercised with our men and women in uniform. They see the day-to-day realities being faced by civilians and infantries, hence, they are the best brokers of peace in the world. We need them to return home to solutions to their traumas and a celebration of their triumphs and a future filled with the opportunities to bond communities across the United States and globe. 

D: Man! I think physical warfare is an appendage that the Republicans and Donald Trump exploit while plundering treasuries all over the world. The reality is that we must sever with this grotesqueness within the Republican Party. General David Petraeus is exceptional strength for the United States of America as are our sons and daughters in uniform deployed all over the world. The new millennium is different and diverse and directly connected to the human forum that is the Internet. I think we must explore and expand this human forum towards beneficence. General Petraeus also brings up the need to reflect before reacting and addresses the Republican and Democratic divide that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are trying to suture without forgetting the everyday working poor like us. 

I think there are some understandable issues here. I’ve sat at that Situation Room table. I’ve had the, “And then what?” And then what do the Russians do? And then do the Iranians have the Shia militia attack us in Iraq? So these are very, very legitimate questions and they are being asked. I can assure you, I was with Brett McGurk the other day, the Special Presidential Envoy for the fighting against the Islamic State — who was back then a Bush — and now an Obama — appointee, working very, very hard as well. And again, there are very, very legitimate, “And then what?” kinds of questions.

M: Dude! Going back to that article you read, about the dietary misunderstanding about the gladiators that was clarified through scientific breakthroughs via noninvasive excavations of historic sites that have proven even more efficient and effective in the long run, I wonder whether physical warfare, an appendage of today’s post-Citizens United Republican Party, is the downside of the kind of monopolistic capitalism that Republican donors like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson and the Waltons of Wal-Mart want to implement for the sake of remaining exorbitantly wealthy. 

D: Man! The exorbitantly wealthy went after the Supreme Court of the United States in 2010 and got the verdict they wanted in Citizens United. Plus, the RSLC Redistricting Majority Project or RED MAP ambush that year, to focus on the down ballot races in order to turn local and state governments red in a census year via gerrymandering, cost Republican financiers hundreds of billions of dollars, not the thirty or so million that Rachel Maddow reported on her evening show on MSNBC when describing one of the architects of RED MAP as “a genius.” Underhanded manipulative tactics like RED MAP, reportedly costing millions when in fact hundreds of billions were invested into it for it to become the success it became, are the first steps towards downgrading the United States to Third World status. Listen to the praise that David Petraeus had to give to Silicon Valley techies for assisting in anti-recruitment materials to obstruct the Dark Net that ISIS depends upon so heavily.

There is momentum building there as well. There is an element created at the State Department to oversee all this — very impressive guy who is in charge of that — and what is most heartening is that groups like Google and Twitter are now much more active there as well. Jared Cohen at Google Ideas, now Jigsaw, has unveiled something that when you type in a certain phrase or word that would be extremism or ISIS or what-have-you, you not only get back the stuff you’re presumably looking for — if you are a would-be jihadist, you get other items back as well. It is like — they say it is what the cyber folks have done with respect to suicide. If you type that in, it says, “Yeah. You can do that. You can slit your wrists but, you know, it really is painful and doesn’t always work. So you may want to sit under a tree until the thought passes.” Same now with ISIS — and on bit more serious note, if you will.

M: Dude! Our sons and daughters in uniform deserve far more than what they get when they return home. The publishing houses and the press corps are all slanted heavily toward the status quo and, as a result, the American Voter only gets exposure to that status quo perspective in print and on television. It is at its most chronic state right now with celebrity and the objectification of girls and women. The old money folks were shown the door during the Reagan Administration while the disenfranchised were made to turn against their own. As a result of these aftereffects of Reaganomics, we had the rise of a certain class of new money folks who deluded themselves into thinking highly of themselves via adopting the meaningless lexicon of William Buckley.   

D: Man! We have the meaningless lexicon of Bill O’Reilly today, a relative of William Buckley’s. Like William Buckley, Bill O’Reilly spews forth utter nonsense that has degraded significantly through the generation separating the distant uncle and nephew. Likewise, within the Republican Party, there is a visible deterioration in successive generations where there is exorbitant wealth. And even General Petraeus agrees that bureaucracies must be dealt with, not privatized like Donald Trump and the GOP plan to do if they win the executive and legislative branches this election cycle. General Petraeus said the following in his concluding remarks, 

I think we have to grapple with the bureaucracy — the caregivers, as you said, are wonderful at the V.A. The doctors and nurses and mental health professionals — they are exceptional, truly selfless. But to get to them, you have a lot of bureaucracy. You have to penetrate that — to get your bills paid and get outpatient treatment — whatever — and that has to be attacked. And I think that Congress working with the Secretary of the V.A. [Robert McDonald] — again, [Robert McDonald], a fellow veteran, can take this on but they [the United States Congress] are going to have to give him some nonstandard capabilities, if you will, so that he can take the kinds of actions necessary to improve that aspect of the V.A. 

M: Dude! The exorbitantly wealthy today are the Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin of yesterday.

D: Man! Vote for the Clinton and Kaine and Democratic ticket America! Vote for your children’s children’s futures and our sons and daughters in uniform to advance beyond combat roles and into the realm of globalized diplomacy through rebuilding of world economies from the bottom up and the middle out, as Hillary Clinton has reiterated at rallies and in the book she coauthored with Tim Kaine! Clinton and Kaine have the knowhow to effectively renegotiate all the trade deals for a brighter tomorrow for all the world to cherish, not perish as the GOP and Donald Trump and Mike Pence and their Republican donors would like us all to do for the purposes of them plundering the world economies for personal wealth.

The Long Term Effects of Citizen's United 2010 on Blue Collars and Working Poor 2016

(M)an: Dude! The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare is not being broadcast fairly anywhere on television and radio. Aetna has withdrawn from providing coverage through Obamacare and the American Press Corps is blaming the Obama Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services for premium hikes in the entire medical insurance business. Obviously, this divisiveness that the American Press Corps constructs between everyday working poor people and probably the most transformative Executive Branch since the Clinton Administration’s achieving an economic surplus that was drained by the subsequent Republican Administration of George Walker Bush and Dick Cheney, is a throwback to the days of the cruel press corps during the Reagan Era who constructed the stereotype of the welfare queen.

(D)ude: Man! I found some articles that place the blame of the premium hikes upon the providers, like Aetna, themselves. According to today’s online article by Maggie Fox on nbcnews.com entitled Obamacare premiums are going up. What does that really mean? 

Health officials and other experts pointed out that most Americans do not get their health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. Not only that: health care costs have been going up for years — that's why health reform started in the first place.

More than 60 percent of Americans get health insurance through an employer. Another 16 percent use Medicare or Medicaid and 9 percent are covered by individual insurance plans — including Obamacare. Another 2 percent are covered by military plans such as Tricare or the Veterans' Administration.

M: Dude! But how specifically are providers like Aetna responsible for the premium hikes?

D: Man! According to Maggie Fox’s above-mentioned article,

What any health insurance company wants to do is get more healthy people paying premiums, so they can subsidize the relatively small percentage of people with high medical costs.

Pearson and other experts say they can do this by subsidizing people with higher incomes. "A future administration needs to figure out how to restructure the premiums and coverage to make it attractive to a medium-income person," she said.

M: Dude! But, again, how specifically are providers like Aetna responsible for the premium hikes?

D: Man! For an answer to that question, let me refer to National Public Radio’s Alison Kodjak’s online article from August 16, 2016,

Most insurers selling plans through the exchanges have been losing money because the people getting insurance under Obamacare have been sicker than forecast.

But Aetna, which lost $430 million on the Obamacare plans in the first half of the year, said it may re-enter the markets in the future.

"We will continue to evaluate our participation in individual public exchanges while gaining additional insight from the counties where we will maintain our presence, and may expand our footprint in the future should there be meaningful exchange-related policy improvements,” CEO Mark Bertolini said in a statement.

Aetna, which covers about 900,000 people through the exchanges, is the third major insurer to pull back from the Obamacare marketplaces. UnitedHealth Group said in April it planned to pull out of ACA marketplaces in most states, and just last month Humana, which covers about 800,000 people, said it will cut back its offerings to just a handful of counties.

All the companies said they are losing money on the plans. The Department of Health and Human Services has argued that companies have themselves to blame because they set premiums too low. The companies will be able to adjust the premiums in the future.

"Aetna's decision to alter its Marketplace participation does not change the fundamental fact that the Health Insurance Marketplace will continue to bring quality coverage to millions of Americans next year and every year after that,” Kevin Counihan, CEO of HealthCare.gov, the federal insurance exchange.

In all, about 11 million people have bought insurance through the exchanges.

A spokesman for HHS said Aetna's decision was an about-face from its earlier statements about the Obamacare exchanges.

In April, Bertolini called the marketplace plans "a good investment" because it would have cost the company far more than $430 million to try to attract that many customers.

"If we were to build out 15 markets, it would cost us somewhere between $600 million to $750 million to enter those markets and build out the capabilities necessary to grow that membership," he said on the company's April earnings conference call with analysts.

Aetna's announcement comes less than a month after the Justice Department sued to stop the company's planned merger with Humana, arguing that the combination would hurt competition. 

At the same time, the government also sued to block Anthem from purchasing Cigna.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, suggested Aetna's change of heart was in response to the Justice Department's action. In a post on her Facebook page last week, Warren questioned the company's motives after it first hinted that it was considering cutting its participation in Obamacare.

"The health of the American people should not be used as a bargaining chip to force the government to bend to one giant company's will," she said.

Aetna spokesman T.J. Crawford didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Warren's statement.

M: Dude! Who is in charge of the decision-making processes at Aetna besides its CEO Mark Bertolini? Doesn’t Aetna Inc. have a political action committee or PAC? What’s the PAC’s role in America’s political process?

D: Man! According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ online portal opensecrets.org, the Aetna Inc Political Action Committee or Aetna Inc PAC has made $563,000 worth of contributions to federal candidates, meaning members of the United States Congress, both the House of Representatives and Senate. However, only 33% of the $563,000 was allotted to Democrats while 67% of the $563,000 was allotted to Republicans, clearly indicating a political bias favoring the GOP over the Democratic Party. 

M: Dude! Who is in charge at the Aetna Inc PAC? 

D: Man! The treasurer of the Aetna Inc PAC is listed online as James R. Ricciuti. He is a Republican operative from the years of the Reagan Administration and George Herbert Walker Bush. From 1982 to 1988, Ricciuti, according to linkedin.com, was a budget examiner at the United States Office of Management and Budget, a role in which Ricciuti claims he reviewed and made policy recommendations on federal government budget and legislation for education, job training, and health care programs. Then, from 1988 to 1990, Ricciuti took on the position of a senior staff member in the United States Senate’s Committees on Finance and Budget, describing his role as handling budget and legislation for health care, social security, child care and nutrition programs. 

M: Dude! Where does James R. Ricciuti reside nowadays? What does he do? Is there a female equivalent to him at the Aetna Inc PAC?

D: Man! Riccuti conveniently resides in Washington, DC nowadays and describes himself as a health care executive at Aetna. A female equivalent to him would be Susan Stoner Zook, the Senior Director of Government Affairs at Aetna since April 2015.

M: Dude! Is she from the Reagan Administration or George Herbert Walker years too?

D: Man! No. Susan Stoner Zook was a Legislative Correspondent for Republican Congressman Tim Murphy from January 2003 to August 2004 and a Legislative Assistant for the Office of Republican Senator Mike Crapo from February 2011 to August 2013. 

M: Dude! What states do the Republican Congressman Murphy and Republican Senator Crapo represent?

D: Man! Republican Congressman Timothy F. Murphy represents Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district and has been in the position since 2003. Republican Senator Michael Dean Crapo has been the senior senator from Idaho since 1998.

M: Dude! Come to think of it, it is not blue collars or the working poor in Pennsylvania that are resisting the Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine ticket. It is the downright lies of the American Press Corps alongside white collar criminals with a Republican trickle down bias like Aetna’s James R. Ricciuti and Susan Stoner Zook who are indulging in dark money via PACs like Aetna Inc’s in states like Pennsylvania post 2010’s Citizen’s United decision by the John Roberts Supreme Court that flooded American politics with an unaccounted for cashflow. My nieces and nephews asked whether the United States of America could crumble into a third world country. I told them yes, if Donald Trump and the Republican Party were to take over the White House and reclaim Majority Party status in both houses of the United States Congress this election cycle. 

D: Man! Corrupt people are a burden on the working poor like us! The lack of universal medical insurance for so long in United States history brought us to the truth about just how sick we really are. I was recently diagnosed with glaucoma and you finally got the chance to get dental braces in order to relieve the soreness in your gums due to overcrowding of the teeth. Unfortunately, in my case, there will be no relief from the constant threat of losing my peripheral vision because the eye doctor informed me that there are no eye drops on the market to help assist with easing the deterioration from glaucoma.

M: Dude! What about the doctor prescribing the eye drops—that they administer when you do develop the changes in your peripheral vision—beforehand?

D: Man! I made that argument to the eye specialist and she recommended I get my eyes checked every three months in order to guarantee prompt intervention if my eyesight begins to deteriorate. It is frustrating. You’d think there was a far better answer in the 21st century. 

M: Dude! I think the insurance companies are to blame for such frustrations. Your eye specialist could probably be dropped from the insurance plan altogether if she were to administer medicine for the purposes of preventing the onslaught of future medical crises. 

D: Man! It is frustrating. You’ve got these bigshots on Wall Street aiming for the personal wealth that mirrors Anthony Hopkins’ billionaire lifestyle in the 1998 film Meet Joe Black. Remember how Brad Pitt is given a tour of that estate? I certainly do not think a helicopter pad and an indoor Olympic-size swimming pool are necessary to personal fulfillment.

M: Dude! I believe the objectification of women and girls derives from that unnecessary overstock of material wealth. Don’t you?

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

Dignity in the face of Adversity 2016: Madeleine Albright and Donna Brazile and Voting for the Democratic Ticket

(D)ude: Man! Donald Trump and Mike Pence live in an alternate reality where videotaped and recorded audio evidence of what they did and said doesn’t stand up to their outrageous denial of the realities captured on videotape and audio. Donald Trump and Mike Pence are inept, a characteristic that defines liars and bullies. Trump and Pence are bumbling media personalities, Trump having made a career out of pretending to be a billionaire on television and Pence having made a career out of pretending to be a political commentator on the radio in his home state of Indiana. 

(M)an: Dude! Mike Pence is just as big a threat to American democracy and diplomacy as Donald Trump. American voters must become aware of the fact that there is no moderate journalism in the United States today. Look at how MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell has begun mimicking Fox News’s Megyn Kelly. Mitchell’s remarks of ridicule and rudeness towards Madeleine Albright on Monday, October 24, 2016, paralleled with Kelly’s remarks of ridicule and rudeness towards Donna Brazile on Wednesday, October 19, 2016.

D: Man! Fox News and MSNBC are Republican commodities and American Voters must understand that what they see and hear on television and radio are essentially tell-tell signs of what sinister policymaking is in store for US if organized criminals like Donald Trump and Mike Pence and the Congressional Republicans overtake the White House and Congress in this election cycle. Look at the state and local level Republican Majorities as well as Congressional Republicans and you find that they are getting ready to wreak havoc upon Main Street by aligning themselves with Wall Street if Trump and Pence take the White House and Congressional Republicans maintain control of the United States Congress.    

M: Dude! Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and the Republican Party buttressing Wall Street deregulations are criminals. Not white collar criminals, but mobsters who are planning to bankrupt social services across the globe for the intent of scoring big in terms of personal wealth for themselves and their crony accomplices. American Voters who remain undecided must know the facts of the 2016 presidential election cycle and the facts are that Hillary Clinton has evolved brilliantly over the course of the last year and a half of campaigning and she and Tim Kaine actually wrote concrete plans of actions in the first-of-its-kind paperback book entitled Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future. In fact, Bernie Sanders has clearly stated many times his intension to write the legislation as a Senator from Vermont that will favor Main Street over Wall Street. So American Voters mustn’t hesitate over who they will be casting their ballots for in this election cycle. Early voting is underway in Texas this week and the American Voters must elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine if they wish to see the changes that Senator Sanders has vowed to write up and send through the United States Congress and to the White House.

D: Man! That is if Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine and the Democrats win the White House and reclaim Congress. New York Senator Chuck Schumer and California Representative Nancy Pelosi are relying on US to vote for the Democratic Ticket so that there is a Democratic Majority in both houses of Congress. We have a lot to lose if we do not vote, an action that guarantees a loss for the Democratic Ticket as well as Clinton and Kaine, which means that Senator Bernie Sanders will not get the opportunity to rewrite all the wrongs done by an inactive-for-the-purpose-of-obstructionism United States Congress under the as-inept-as-Trump-and-Pence Republicans like Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan.  

M: Dude! Speaking of Mike Pence’s stint on talk radio before being elected as a United States Representative from Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District in 2000, he actually got the chance at being Representative due to his predecessor deciding to run for the governorship of Indiana instead. But going back to his talk radio days, Pence admired Rush Limbaugh to actually call himself a weaker version of the obnoxious nilwit. Mike Pence is as cruel a legislator as one can get. Pence is a strong proponent of dark money in campaign finance as allowed by the Citizens United ruling from the John Roberts Supreme Court in 2010 and declared outright lies himself about how Citizens United protected free speech. Pence was a co-sponsor alongside Michigan Republican Representative Justin Amash of a constitutional amendment in 2011 that would place a cap on federal spending. According to Richard Kogan at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 

The amendment would force radical shrinkage of the federal government, taking the nation down the road toward antigovernment activist Grover Norquist's vision of "starving the beast." If the proposal were in full effect today, for example, the spending cap for fiscal year 2012 would be 14.7 percent of GDP, a stunning $1.3 trillion below projected spending for this fiscal year.

Under the proposal, the spending cap for any year would equal the average level of revenues for the three prior fiscal years, adjusted for inflation and population growth since those years. As a result, whenever the economy weakened and pushed tax revenues down — and whenever Congress cut taxes — the spending cap would drop automatically and force still deeper budget cuts.

To waive the cap would require a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate, even in the midst of a recession. (The two-thirds requirement would also apply during wars and other military conflicts.) In other words, a determined minority such as the Republican Study Committee (a group of strongly anti-government House Republicans) would have the votes to ensure that massive budget cuts be instituted regardless of the state of the economy or to demand other concessions in return for their votes.

To secure budget cuts of this extraordinary magnitude, Congress would almost certainly have to severely cut or dismantle programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. To illustrate: if Congress fully protected Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid but total expenditures had to be $1.3 trillion lower in 2012, all other programs would need to be cut 70 percent, on average. Everything else — veterans' health, basic research, education, law enforcement, transportation, defense, and the safety net for low-income children, parents, and elderly and disabled people — would be at serious risk.

Moreover, the proposal places no limitation whatsoever on tax cuts. To the contrary, it invites antigovernment crusaders to propose unlimited tax cuts because, the amendment is designed to guarantee that all tax cuts — no matter how large or how tilted toward high-income households, powerful corporations, or other special interests — would eventually be paid for by cutting government programs.

This is why the proposal comes as close to, or closer than, any other in embodying Grover Norquist's dream of huge tax cuts and massive shrinkage of government. The proposal is essentially a "starve the beast" spending cap as a matter of Constitutional law.

D: Man! Republican Representative Justin Amash continues to represent Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District today! A vote either for Donald Trump (and Mike Pence) or third-party candidates like Jill Stein and Gary Johnson will only bring out the worst in American political theory. American Voters must understand that Hillary Clinton is the only candidate in this presidential election cycle who has evolved in the direction of defending even more everyday folks like us with specific action steps that we can hold her accountable for! The American Press Corps has essentially blocked coverage of Hillary Clinton’s book, Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future, that she coauthored with Tim Kaine in midst of a severely difficult election cycle. To write a book and be ready to be held accountable to your campaign promises by the American people is a first in our nation’s history. Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are indeed the most transparent and exceptionally brilliant candidates for the American presidency and vice presidency since George Washington and John Adams.    

M: Dude! The choice is very clear as to who we can entrust to get us growing and to a surplus as a consumer economy again. Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are ready with breathtaking details as to how to empower the most vulnerable Americans while keeping Wall Street in check by continuing the stringent regulations on the financial sector whose unbridled greed led the United States into recession. In fact, American voters need to understand that they can change the course of history this election cycle since all the members of the House of Representatives are up for reelection as well as all the Tea Party nilwits in the United States Senate. According to Richard Kogan of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

If the proposal [set forth in 2011 by Republican Representative Justin Amash of Michigan and cosponsored by Mike Pence, then a Republican Representative from Indiana] had been in full effect since 1954, for example, the armed forces would still have 1954 standards of weaponry; unemployed people or those in poverty would receive the equivalent of 1954 levels of benefits (yet housing and food cost substantially more, even adjusting for inflation); there would be 1954 standards of Medicare and Medicaid coverage (that is, zero, since neither program existed in 1954) and 1954 quality of health care for veterans; there would be 1954 levels of aid to education (near zero); there would be a 1954 interstate highway system (none, as the system had not yet been started); and so on.

D: Man! Andrea Mitchell and Megyn Kelly join the same league of female sellout journalists as Tina Brown and Arianna Huffington and Mika Brzezinski? That is the truth. But I am not surprised. MSNBC has deteriorated significantly since Microsoft abandoned it. Did you know that I have to program my DVR every morning before leaving for work in order to catch the programs on MSNBC? Some days there are no hourly designations as to who will be anchoring the daytime newscasts and other days there are very specific hourly designations. The net effect is that I either have to fast forward through 8 hours of continuous coverage or actually go hour-to-hour and fast forward through every individual daytime anchor.

M: Dude! Just record CSPAN and then search for specifics on the Internet! MSNBC only provides full coverage of Donald Trump’s stump speeches. Or Rudy Giuliani’s. Very wretched.

D: Man! But I actually caught ten crucial minutes of Retired General David Petraeus’s interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe right before the cyberattack on the American East Coast Friday, October 21, 2016. I wrote a transcript of what General Petraeus said using my DVR. Apparently, every time I tried to stop and write down a line or two using the YouTube clip of General Petraeus on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, I was redirected elsewhere online.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)