To Vote or Not to Vote, That is Not the Question

The Schloss-Blog is carefully monitoring the fall of the traditional political system in the United States, and it's not pretty.

And it's everybody's fault, or should I say problem?

The American voter, in this Millenium, has expressed a preference for the non-traditional candidate. Who was Barack Obama before his dynamic keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention? He was an Illinois State Senator and constitutional scholar at the time. He knocked it out of the park. And when Republican Jack Ryan dropped out of the Illinois Senate race when his seedy divorce file from sexy actress Jeri Ryan was opened via media lawsuit, it left Illinois Republican voters with unheard-of Alan Keyes, and, well, that was that. Ryan, a wealthy banker, might have beaten Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton almost certainly would have been John McCain's 2008 opponent.

I didn't always support what Obama did, but he was certainly an American citizen. Thank goodness Donald Trump proved that, right? Obama, at least, had a conscience. Trump no longer has a charity from which to embezzle funds for personal use. Now he takes them from his campaign funds, another illegality.

Despite that, his womanizing, his cheating, his tax secrecy, his ties to Russia, his immorality, his groping of women and his affairs with a porn star and a Playboy model, as alleged by those women, the American electoral college made him president. Again, outside the political mainstream.

Now, here we go again. The Joe Bidens and Elizabeth Warrens of the world are being beaten back, so far, by the nontraditional Pete Buttigiegs and Bernie Sanders of the world. We'll see if that holds. Of course, that was in Iowa, where farmers have taken a beating that it will take decades from which to recover thanks to nontraditional Trump's trade war. And now the coronovirus war will knock down the world economy again.

But here's what none of the candidates are talking about: the deficit. Trump has blown a record hole in what was already a disaster after promising to wipe it out in his 2016 campaign.

I can assert that if anyone reading this ran their household budgets the way politicians have run the U.S. budget this Millenium, they'd be homeless, living on the streets after their houses had been foreclosed upon. But in Washington, D.C., meh, who cares? It's not our money - we can spend all we want.

Our kids - our grandkids, our nieces and nephews, will pay the price for this when Social Security and Medicare get wiped out to pay for the debt. We haven't addressed national infrastructure, even after a deadly interstate highway collapse in Minnesota that killed 13, injured many more. I mean, are we waiting for the next one? Are we waiting for the train tubes between New York and New Jersey to collapse before we do something? Hundreds of thousands travel these every day.

Do you think Trump cares? Do you think Moscow Mitch cares?

Shout outs on my Radio Free Phoenix show this weekend to Ofelia and Donna, who I met while we were all waiting for our cars to be serviced. And to buddies Dwayne and Margaret Heidtbrink. And I thought I had health crap to deal with. Dwayne is a true soldier.

Arizona, I'm coming home.

Good night Mrs. Calabash. I am Spartacus.