The Press has Broken Our Presidential Elections

2016 Republican Presidential Primary Ballot

The United States Presidential Campaign is starting to ramp up. Republican Donald Trump is running his first ads of the election season, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has been amassing a huge campaign money chest. We wanted to reprint this article that sums up how Americans got stuck with two unlikable candidates in the race for the Presidency. The piece was originally posted on September 18th, 2015.  

Well the idiots in the national media have gone and broken our presidential elections. Should we be surprised? They have had the duty to report on the news of presidential politics for over 200 years. They have rarely been competent, and lately they have become down right destructive. The national press just kept trying and trying to break our presidential elections, and 2016 looks to be the year that the morons will finally be successful.

Donald Trump will not be the next President of the United States. You would not know that by watching and listening to the half brained celebrity sycophants on the national news. Trump is hateful, opportunistic, and not very intelligent. He has locked into a loud base of the republican party who lives under the delusion of white male christian victim hood. The scholars on talk radio, and at Fox News, have been feeding the dangerous lie of white male christian victim hood for a very long time.

The people who subscribe to the idea of white male christian victim hood have usually been swept away from polite society. They are now taking hold because the never ending news cycles need a "balanced debate", but what these organizations really want is clicks and ratings. The news producers know that the idiots who subscribe to anti-science and racist ideas will watch, and read, the news that provides there own wrong confirmation bias. Since the media decided to act as an anti-intellectual institution, we now have to have discussions on women's health, global warming, and being human to the less fortunate. People, and our planet, are needlessly suffering because non-intelligent hatemongers are allowed equal footing on  the news.

The CNN epic Republican Debate was a showcase for the destruction the media is bringing onto society. Donald Trump irresponsibly linked autism to vaccinations. This line of thinking has caused a lot of damage, and real deaths. Nearly all thinking people hear about the vaccination / autism link and immediately tune the conversation out.  The moderators for CNN said nothing, because they know that the discussion of wrong science will bring the morons into CNN's viewership. The need to be on the absolute wrong side of the vaccination discussion has even captured supposed "smart" doctors like Rand Paul and Ben Carson. The media's never ending praise for Ben Carson's intellect looks incredible wrong now that the good doctor questioned the methodology, and effectiveness, of vaccines.

The anti-science of the Republican debate continued with failed CEO, and newest media obsession, Carly Fiorina outright lying about Planned Parenthood. In order to get in good with the people who can not think, Fiorina pandered by discussing a video that showed Planned Parenthood doing something incredibly unethical and illegal. This video does not exist. The moment she described never happened. CNN was once again silent. Allowing their newest superstar to lie, and hurt a lot of people with her lie, the media has decided that money is better than being responsible journalists.

The media's destructive wake does not end with the anti-intellectuals. CNN allowed a discussion to go on about how white Christians are more persecuted than an arrested Muslim teenager whose crime is being good at engineering. Leading this defense of poor white people is dog but not man lover Rick Santorum (sorry for cursing), inept Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and soulless Mike Huckabee. All three of these defenders of the white race were crawling over each other to embrace racial profiling and make sure religious hate is well defended. The constitution means nothing to these opportunists , but thankfully none of them have a shot at being President. We still have to hear their ignorance and divisive rhetoric because CNN cannot spell journalistic integrity.

I hope you are happy media. You wanted a great story, and you gave us the Trump Presidential Campaign. You wanted attention, and you have helped accelerate global climate change. You wanted wealth, and you have allowed us to not care for the neediest in our society. We gave you the privileged to report on our presidential politics, and you broke it into a million pieces because you have no idea how to care for the privilege.

Go to your room the media. Your mess needs to be cleaned up. We can do this with out you.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the host of the X Millennial Man podcast. He encourages you to not watch any of the media (even PBS), they will only act out again if we give them attention. Let your ideas be heard, write for us.

Donald Trump and the End of a Center Right Nation

Our political compass has no direction

No matter how many times the political experts predicted the end of Donald Trump (see the many, many times I have said so) , the New York businessman is going to be the Republican nominee for President in the 2016 national election. This means we will have six more months of Donald Trump and his great ideas to make America great again. Six more months of the national press treating these ideas as credible ones. Six more months of the liberal pundits on HBO and Comedy Central being apoplectic about Trump's ideas.  We have six more months of Donald Trump's Republican Party. A party that can in no way claim to be conservative or center right. The days of a center right nation are gone.

Shortly after the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008, the professional media class started to use the term "center right". Center right meant that Americans did not fully subscribe to the ideals of the far right or far left, but sat somewhere in the middle. Americans sat in the middle, but were leaning more to conservative ideas. The media class thought that Americans were moving away from supporting social safety programs, moving towards national defense, and wanted to slow down on changing excepted social norms. The term center right was used to make it look like the country still believed in the brand of conservatism that President Reagan and Bush II practiced. Barack Obama may have been elected President, by a very large margin, but the country was not willing to embrace the Democratic party's plans to implement health care reform and to scale down on military intervention around the world. 

The media was invested in the idea of the United States being a center right nation because of the disaster that was the George W. Bush presidency. By the end of 2008 the US was mired in an endless war with no real purpose, an economy that had crippled the middle class, and public confidence that was at an all time low. The media of the early 2000's was built to cater to Bush and the conservatism of John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell. The tea party had not been given a national platform in 2008. Fox News gained strength in the first part of the 21st century because they embraced the notion of being the "news channel" for the right. The other media outlets quickly raced away from journalism and into republican propaganda to try and catch ratings on the coat tails of Fox News. NBC, CBS, and ABC used their nightly newscast to gin up support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Journalism was replaced by ratings friendly war mongering. The same "fair and balanced" media were also defending the destructive economic ideas of the republican party. Story after story of a booming housing market were being fed to the Americans, while no one was talking about the obvious coming collapse. Vice President Dick Cheney made secret deals with the energy industry, there were no investigative stories until after 2008. The media was an accomplice to the bad policies of the Bush administration, and they wanted to cover their own rear ends. Saying America is a center right nation took the blame off of the media, and put the blame on the voters.

The idea of America being a center right nation was wrong in 2008, and it is wrong today. The Republican party may hold the US House of Representatives and the Senate, but that has more to do with shady manipulation of the electoral process and general incompetence of the Democratic Party. In 2008 and 2012, President Barack Obama easily beat his republican challengers. Neither of those races was even close. Obama still won with the media allowing the right wing to paint the President as a foreign born communist who hates America. Rights for the LGBTQ community have grown at a fast, and much needed, rate. The press keeps giving the bigoted side a voice, but the large majority of Americans are on the correct side of history. Hillary Clinton is having trouble sealing the deal on the 2012 Democratic Presidential nomination because most Americans are not supportive of protecting the wealthiest of our citizens at the expense of everyone else. The media has tried to marginalize Senator Bernie Sanders, yet here in the middle of May and Clinton is still not the nominee. America was not center right in 2008, and we have been moving further and further left since then.

Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee, the center right lie can finally be buried on the ash heap of history. The story surrounding Trump's ascension has centered around how much everyone got the New York businessman's rise so wrong. Even liberal darlings like Nate Silver and the people at fivethirtyeight.com have egg on their face. The real story should not be how wrong everyone was, but how in the world did the Republican party nominate someone who has held mostly Democratic Party ideas his entire life. Trump has a history of being pro-choice, pro raising taxes on the wealthy, and pro healthcare reform. The Paul Ryan's and Mitch McConnell's of the Republican party have used their entire careers railing against these ideals. Ohio Governor John Kasich could only win one state, and rarely broke 10% of the vote in any other state. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the poster boy of Republican obstructionism, only gained traction in the primaries once he was deemed the true Republican alternative to Donald Trump. No one in the classically defined Republican establishment could take Trump down. One could say that Trump's win in the 2016 Republican primary means that the GOP is becoming a center left party.

The rise of Trump is unfortunately not the rise of a center left Republican party. In hindsight it is very easy to see how Donald Trump was able to beat the rest of the Republican field. The blind hatred of the GOP towards Obama and the Democratic Party has created a lot of tiny fractures in the national Republican party. The tea party was built on blind racism. Radio and television personalities like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity demanded purity in the philosophies of elected republican officials. The right wing worship of the founding fathers (most of them were slave holders) and the original Constitution (where African-Americans were counted as 3/5ths of a person) started to show the party as being unreasonable and not have the ability to properly govern in the 21st century. The national identity of the Republican Party was split into many pieces. The fiscal conservatives never found their candidate, and that hurt voting. Kasich, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush could never gain any unified support. The religious conservatives had incompetent buffoons as their choices. Former Governors Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, and former Senator Rick Santorum were so idiotic even the media could not shield them. Ted Cruz was hated by most of his party, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson were so bad that they helped bring the GOP brand further into the dirt. The only unique option int he filed was Donald Trump. His persona appealed to the angry white man. His ideas fueled the racist, misogynists, and bigots, in the Republican party. Donald Trump was the only Republican in the field that had a voting block to himself. This voting block turned out in high numbers, and Trump was able to survive the cage match that was the 2016 Republican Presidential Primary. His victory is actually quite easy to understand, now.

A minority of the Republican Party was able to nominate a life long Democrat to be their 2016 Presidential candidate. White male christian persecution complex has replaced conservative social and economic philosophy in the GOP. Donald Trump may be a Republican now, but many of his ideas lean to the left. The professional media created Donald Trump, and helped destroy their own narrative of a center right nation. For better or worse, America is stuck with Donald Trump and his new Republican Party. For at least six more months.

RD

RD Kulik is the Head Editor for SeedSing. Hear RD and Ty talk about Trump and the 2016 Presidential election on the latest episode of the X Millennial Man. 

Why do the Republicans love losers so much?

How most of America watches the Republican Presidential debates

Another pointless Republican debate, another stage full of idiots, another lost night for America. The Republican party doesn't care, they love losers. The modern party embraces the failures and quitters of the political world. The current crop of national republican leaders are the height of failure. When your policy is to avoid real leadership at all costs, the biggest losers will become your leaders.  Good thing that none of these never been Republicans will be President of the United States. They are losers. They lose.

It may seem harsh, and Trump like, to ascribe the loser label to the entire Republican party. Well take a look at their nominees. Donald Trump is an ill prepared hate monger who lost money because he tried to be a business man. Dr. Ben Carson may actually be a stupid person. Carly Fiorina is one of the most comically bad CEOs in history, plus she is a pathological liar. Marco Rubio is a lazy opportunist, oh and he is also a lying about his family history. Jeb Bush is an entitled spoiled brat. Ted Cruz is a crazy person who hates the very idea of America. The rest of the cast doesn't matter because they will be lucky to win a single delegate. There is not a uniter in the group. They learned to only be dividers, like a dog learns to shake. Do a simple task and then get your reward. So not only are the Republicans losers, they do not have intelligence beyond the common dog.

How did one of our major political parties come to embrace and celebrate losers? Is it racism? How about sexism? Is the current republican white male (that  is the large majority of the party) so insecure that they have to embrace known losers? The Republicans claim to be the tough ones, yet Vietnam was lost on Nixon's watch. They claim to be tough on terrorism, yet Reagan illegally sent weapons to known terror groups. They claim to have America's safety front of mind, yet George W. Bush admitted to not being that concerned about Al Qaeda or Bin Laden just a month before September 11th. The modern Republican party has been a colossal failure in nearly every aspect of foreign policy.  Even the idea that Reagan ended the cold war is comical in how much his administration over estimated the strength of the Soviet Union. The Americans had next to nothing to do with the fall of the Soviet empire. People like Reagan were very lucky to be around when history was taking its inevitable course. The war in Afghanistan had more to due with the downfall of the Soviet Union than any US military build-up. Once the Iron Curtain came down the Republican party had no idea how to handle post Soviet Russia. Years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Reagan disciple George W. Bush gave Russian premiere Putin a pass. Good old George saw into Putin's heart, and he thought all was good. Another Republican getting it horribly wrong.

Now the question becomes how can these incompetent losers still rule much of our political landscape? We have discussed many, many, many, times about how the Democrats have ceded the US Congress and state governments to the Republicans. We have also discussed how a lazy, greedy, and overall incompetent media likes to prop up the failures in the republican party. Any Republican candidate is given a head start because we have been force fed this idea that the GOP is tough on terror and good with money. The facts show a completely different story. The current Republican Party has no bold leadership, look at the folly of errors leading up to Paul Ryan reluctantly accepting the honored position of Speaker of the House of Representatives. The party has horrible when it comes to fiscal policy. George W Bush inherited a strong economy, fiddled with it, drove it into a massive recession, and then President Obama fixed his mess. The Republican parties work in foreign policy led directly to the creation of ISIS, and America's overall sense of isolation from the rest of the developed world. All of these actions are not the mark of an intelligent and winning direction for America. The debate on Tuesday night had a bunch of losers continuing to embrace philosophy that has failed.

It must be incredibly frustrating for many republicans that the competent members of their party have to be shoved aside for all the losers. Ohio Governor John Kasich is very popular in a state the GOP must win, yet the national press and his own party treat him like a pariah. Rand Paul may very well be the only one on that stage that can actual create votes, yet he his sabotaging his own campaign by trying to dumb down to the rest of the group. Mitt Romney is the best candidate the Republicans have had in a generation, but he had to cower to the zealots on Fox News and therefore ruined any chance to reach new voters. Failed Governors like Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, and Scott Walker recieve more respect than viable candidates like George Pataki and the aforementioned Kasich. The entire Republican party is not a bunch of losers, just the people who lead them.

While the media treats the Republican party with kid gloves, and the white male Christians claim to be victims, America can feel good about itself because no one on stage last Tuesday will ever win the presidency. The GOP primary debates are entertaining in their chaos, and infuriating in their lack of truth. Americans like success, the Republicans are lacking. Americans like practicality, the Republicans fail to deliver. Most importantly, Americans like winners. The Republican Presidential candidates are losers. They lose.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the host of the X Millennial Man podcast. He enjoys the idea of political debate and welcomes any one who disagrees to write for SeedSing. Make sure you get all of our great thoughts by follow us on twitter @seedsingrdk.

How Kentucky's Low Voter Turnout will Become a National Headache

I will need a lot of Kentucky's best product to get through these election results

Yesterday the Commonwealth of Kentucky elected only the second Republican Governor in 40 years. Business man Matt Bevin crushed Democratic nominee Jack Conway with a margin of victory over 8 percentage points. Democrat Conway had never trailed in the polling leading up to election day, yet he could not even muster over 45% of Kentucky's participating voters. In August the Bevin campaign was cut off from national money because the Republican Governor's Association thought his defeat was inevitable. Within two hours of the polls closing, the AP declared Bevin the winner. Kentucky will have a governor the nation did not expect, and the nation will have a large headache because of this.

How did Matt Bevin win by such a large margin when the polls, and money, were constantly against him? The candidate himself was very problematic. Matt Bevin made his money on Wall Street, missed paying his taxes (a few times), refused to release his tax returns, defended cockfighting (then lied about it), and has been fighting with his own party for years. Most candidates with this kind of baggage could not win a primary much less the Governor's Mansion. How is it that another false Constitutional Christian Conservative can beat the polls. There have been many excuses, and the professional media has tried to protect their interests with these excuses. The Democratic party uses the excuse of an outsider wave created by Donald Trump and Ben Carson. The correct answer tends to be the most obvious one, low voter turnout.

Kentucky's voter participation for their statewide races will come in just over 30%. Less than one third people eligible to vote did end up voting for their state elected offices.  Low voter turnout always benefits the Republican Party. People who subscribe to white Christian male victimhood will always vote for their Republican savior. Rich, mostly white, business men will always make time to vote for the Republican who will cut the taxes of the wealthy. The people who rely on state aid tend to vote in very small numbers. People who work multiple jobs have trouble getting out to vote. Many millennials do not think voting in non-presidential elections is that important. These groups tend to make up a majority of the Democratic base. Thirty percent of the eligible voters came out and strongly supported Matt Bevin, and the rest of the country will now have to pay for that apathy.

The broken political media has already used Bevin's election to create a narrative of tea party reemergence. These media personalities are invested in creating a political horse race culture. The truth of Kentucky being a small state, with historically low voter turnout, does not work with the media's horse race narrative. Bobby Jindal has been a disaster as Governor of Louisiana, and he is treated as a credible presidential candidate. Carly Fiorina was an awful CEO and comically bad senate candidate, yet she is treated by the media as someone who could be a successful President. The entire Republican Presidential field is littered with incompetence, and Matt Bevin as President will become their newest cause celebre. The press will use the charismatic Bevin as a placeholder for tea party competence. His star will keep rising until he inevitable feels the "calling" to run for president. Once that day happens, 2020 I predict" Governor Bevin's record in Kentucky will be conveniently forgotten about.

 How do we know that Matt Bevin's policies will be failures? Governor elect Bevin's ideas are on par with those of Jindal and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. Destroy the state health system tied to the Affordable Care Act, privatize all public education, alienate minorities and the LGBT community, and cut taxes for the wealthiest of residents. In Louisiana, Kansas, and many other red states these policies have amounted to record deficits, horrible schools, and national ridicule. Matt Bevin has defended and promoted those ideas as good for Kentucky. He defended Kim Davis, a person who is anti-constitutional. He wants to destroy a successful system that insures nearly half a million Kentucky residents. He wants to starve the public schools and enlarge the religious ones with state money. Every single one of Matt Bevin's campaign promises has ruined other states economies.

Thirty percent of Kentucky's eligible voters felt the need to come out and elect a governor. The voters who participated got the governor they wanted. The voters who stayed home will see their beloved commonwealth race to the bottom and join states like Kansas and Louisiana as cautionary tales. When Bevin runs for reelection, if he runs, the nation will already be familiar with the "outsider" Governor from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The press will have begun the hagiography of Republican savior Matt Bevin. 

It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He thinks polling may be a good career, because success seems to not be a requisite skill. Come join the conversation by writing for SeedSing.

The Constitutional Conservatives Have No Clothes

I am not interested in looking at naked republicans

Let me be the one millionth and first person to call out the hypocrisy of the "constitutional conservative" crowd. The ones who wrap their rhetoric around the infallibility of the US Constitution are some of the most unpatriotic Americans in our country's two hundred plus year history. They are afraid to call them selves republicans because the constitutional conservatives have built an unmovable, pure, ideology. There is no room for compromise in their feeble minds.

The latest news surrounding a bigot who refuses to grant any marriage licenses because of her hateful views on gay marriage has once again exposed the constitutional conservative charlatans. Kim Davis took an oath as an elected official to follow the law of the land, not the law of a god. She may now be a "born again" christian in fidelity to her fourth husband. In her brain, a god's law may be bigger than the US Constitution. That is ok by me, but it is not ok with the constitutional duties of her elected position. Kim Davis should not be in jail, she should be removed from her job. The details may not yet exist to remover her, yet I believe the means to remove her do exist. She took an oath to follow the law, she has broken this oath. She is unfit to execute the duties as clerk. There I just let Kim Davis be hateful and out of jail, and I used the US Constitution.

So Sean Hannity, Rick Santorum (sorry for the crude language), Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, and any other self professed constitutional conservative, what is your solution to solve the Kentucky clerk problem? I understand you use the term constitutional conservative as  code for your white christian male victimhood. I understand you only care about the constitution when it can justify your misogyny, racism, and greed. I know you want to make sure that power can be consolidated into the hands of a small group of white men who can rule over like monarchs. Just please stop dragging the poor US Constitution in the mud with your ignorance and hate. If you want to live by the word of the King James Bible (a book manipulated by a rich white king), then I suggest you start forming your own theocracy. America does not need your hate and ignorance.

Over one million and one people know these constitutional conservatives are frauds. Unfortunately the national media will still treat their ideas as part of a credible debate. The media is broken, but the constitution is not. Kim Davis is constitutional unfit, and her conservative supports are equally unfit. There is no debate. Look away from the constitutional conservative crowd. They are marching through the streets naked in their white male christian victimhood.

RD Kulik

RD is the Head Editor for SeedSing and host of the X Millennial Man podcast. He keeps his pocket US Constitution handy so he can remember how many amendments exist. Have thoughts on society today? Write for SeedSing.