Green Party candidate requests official recounts in three states in an effort to raise questions about the legitimacy of the 2016 Presidential Election.

Just when you thought that the burdensome, depressing 2016 Presidential Election was finally over, Green Party candidate Jill Stein has reminded us just how much the Liberal political establishment disrespects our electoral process.  Stein raised and spent millions of dollars on a campaign which was destined to never reach the five percent mark.  I can only assume that the money Ms. Stein spent on her exercise in vanity would have provided tens of thousands of poor Americans with food and clothing as winter approaches, but even Stein has her priorities, I suppose.  Stein has decided to pursue recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, states won by Donald Trump by very thin margins. According to Hillary for America attorney Mark Elias, "we believe we have an obligation to the more than sixty-four million Americans who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings so that an accurate vote count will be reported."  Why is Mr. Elias commenting on Green Party nominee Jill Stein's request for recounts?  Because, not surprisingly, the Hillary campaign has jumped on the recount band wagon as well.  But lets be honest, the Clinton campaign has been in cahoots with Jill Stein since the idea of a recount was broached.  The idea was to encourage Stein and the looney Green Party to request the recounts, so that if the results remain the same (which they should, notwithstanding Democratic shenanigans), then Hillary wouldn't appear to be a sore loser.  This entire development is full of bits of comedy.  The Democrats have so much confidence in our electoral system and the honesty of the American voter, that they fight tooth and nail against any voting identification requirements.  So if the Democrats have so much confidence in the system, then why do we need a recount in three states?  Can the system that is so foolproof that voter fraud is impossible, screw up in all three states that basically decided the election?

The insincerity of the recount circus is truly disturbing.  The Democrats will have us believe that they are attempting to ensure that every vote is counted, especially in the states which were decided by small margins.  Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were decided by small percentages, but in the end, they voted for Donald Trump.  What about New Hampshire and Minnesota?  Clinton won New Hampshire by less than four thousand votes (forty-seven point six to forty-seven point two), and Minnesota by less than forty-three thousand votes (forty-six percent to forty-five percent).  Colorado, Maine, and Nevada were also within a few percentage points.  But these states were won by Hillary Clinton, so the concern for the sanctity of the individual vote goes right out the window when a Democrat has been declared the winner.

When the leaders of this effort discuss the process and their motivation, they always mention the "popular vote".  They assume that the average American is so easily distracted, that they can create a national wave of anger around the idea that Hillary Clinton was the "legitimate" winner in the 2016 Presidential Election.  We went through this once before, in 2000, and many people were reminded regarding how our electoral system functions.  We have an electoral system to prevent large urban agglomerations from single-handedly picking our president every four years.  Enough people live in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, to arguably decide each and every national election.  Many years ago, persons much wiser than myself decided that each state should have an impact on national elections, and candidates should not focus their entire campaigns on just three or four urban areas.  I like the electoral system, but I can understand why someone wouldn't; fortunately, because we live in the United States of America, you can change the process through legislative action.  If you believe that the popular vote should decide the winner of our presidential elections, then get involved, build a movement, seek out like-minded persons and politicians, and draft an amendment to the Constitution.

As for persons who continue to disseminate the idea that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, therefore she should be president, I can only suggest a simple review of recent history.  Both Clinton and Trump earned their nominations after successful but contentious primary campaigns.  After earning their respective nominations, both candidates huddled with advisors and created plans to accrue the two-hundred seventy electoral votes necessary to be declared the winner.  Neither candidate discussed what steps would be needed in order to win the popular vote.  During the campaign season, the talking heads on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and everywhere else, continually analyzed the map of electoral votes, not of population.  If the popular vote were the deciding factor in the presidential election, Donald Trump would have made more than one trip to Texas.  In fact, he would have made quite a few trips to California, New York, and Illinois.  Trump did not need to make repeated trips to Texas, because Texas is a solidly red state.  But if he had campaigned heavily in Texas, I am convinced he would have added another one million votes to his total.  Trump did not campaign in California or Chicago, but regular visits could very well have added an additional million votes to his popular total.  But Trump didn't need to visit Bakersfield, or Cicero, or Syracuse, New York.  His team realized beforehand that he needed electoral votes, not the popular vote, so a plan was crafted by which Trump would sweep the bell-weather states of Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and either Michigan or Pennsylvania.  Trump campaigned hard in those states, and for that reason, he is the President-Elect.

I watched a fifteen year-old girl burn the American flag on the news last night.

I recall Barack Obama beating John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, and I remember quite well in 2012 when Obama did the same to Mitt Romney.  I didn't vote for Obama in 2008 because I didn't believe he had the life experience to be president.  By 2012, I had determined that I did not share Obama's perspective on the history of our nation, nor did I agree with his economic and foreign policies.  I was particularly disturbed by his use of Executive Action, and by the doubling of the national debt to the astronomical amount of twenty trillion dollars.  I was not happy in 2008, and I was equally disappointed in 2012.  Almost half of America voted against Obama in 2012, so I assume that they were just as frustrated.  Interestingly enough, the folks who lost in 2008 and 2012 are the ones who support the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.  If you didn't know better, you might have some fears that after losing two consecutive elections to a president who openly supports draconian gun control laws, armed Republicans might be rioting in the streets.  But you know better.

Instead, the election of 2016 will be remembered for the riots, looting, property burning and physical assaults that took place in many U.S. cities on the nights immediately following the election.  While its true that Hillary Clinton will likely win the popular vote by a tiny percentage, no one can reasonably argue that Donald Trump did not win the election.  Our electoral system awards the candidate who wins the most electoral votes.  After they get around to calling Michigan, Donald Trump will have won 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232.  IF our elections were decided by popular vote, Trump would have spent a great deal more time in Texas and California.  But our system is not keyed into the popular vote.  Both candidates knew this fact, and both put together strategies which would ideally accrue 270 electoral votes.  Trump's strategy was successful, Clinton's was not.  It really is that simple.

The day after the election, President Obama and Secretary Clinton both acknowledged Trump's victory, and asked the American people to put the disagreements behind us, and work together for a better future.  For some reason, tens of thousands of Clinton supporters chose to ignore this request, and instead decided to express their frustration by rioting and destroying personal property.  My first reaction was to be pragmatic.  Let these people release their anger, and then, after a few nights, we can get back to life as usual.  It was about this time that I saw the news story on public High School teachers in California who were leading their students to the demonstrations.  The students were then provided U.S. flags, lighter fluid, and matches.  One fifteen year-old from an obscenely expensive private school in the San Francisco area, announced to the camera, "I'm queer and I'm not going to take being oppressed anymore by this fascist government".  She then proceeded to light up Old Glory is a sea of flames.  You can't imagine my anger at that moment.  My father earned three Purple Hearts fighting for her freedom, and the soldiers that have died in various conflicts made the ultimate sacrifice, so this spoiled, selfish, piggish child could burn a flag.  She wasn't alone- groups of teachers from numerous public schools directed their students to the nearest television crews, so they could heap scorn on President-Elect Trump and the fascist, racists who voted him into office.

I don't have any resentment to the young kids who were out in the street protesting.  I save all my disgust and anger for the political activist educators who have no qualms about using children to express their particular political perspective.  Fifteen year old students should not self-identify as "queer activist soldiers", nor should they leave a perfectly good classroom to join a protest that they really don't understand.  The only people who are screaming about deportations are those on the left.  Its reprehensible to scare people for political gain, especially when the issue involves families.  No doubt immigration is an important issue as far as I'm concerned.  I've spent more than enough time in foreign countries to know that secure borders are necessary in order to have national security.  We can't continue to allow foreigners to cross our border at their discretion, without proper documentation.  In addition, our social welfare net can't support the entire population of Central America.  Its called Entitlements, folks, and its the main reason we have twenty trillion dollars of debt.  Everytime I pick up a newspaper, I find another article referring to sanctuary cities and their determination to provide undocumented aliens with access to social aid/programs.  It's a nice idea, but  it's just not feasible.  Just like every family has to live within a budget that is dictated by income and expenditures, so the Federal government is supposed to spend money equal to its revenue.  Politicians no longer worry about the national budget; they just sell more debt to China, and provide more benefits to just about anyone who has the time to apply.

This country is filled with angry people.  On the left, everyone hates Donald Trump, and on the right, people are determined to undo some of the accomplishments of the Obama Administration.  It would be so much simpler if the folks on the left just accepted that Donald Trump is the president-elect, and  in four years you will have the chance to boot him out, if you like.  I for one don't want to see any more people disrespecting the flag.  The left seems to have a real problem with a radical element within its own tent, that espouses violent revolution and threatens to assassinate elected leaders.  The left needs to address this problem, just as conservatives must on occasion distance themselves from milita groups.  I hope that this mess can be cleaned up quickly, because I don't think a Trump Administration will accept this type of civil disobedience forever.  Leaders of the Democratic Party need to come out and publicly disavow the rioting, the destruction of property, and the burning of the flag.  We have sixty-one million people standing on opposite ends of this last election, but we have only one nation to embrace, heal and improve, and we have to be united to make things better for everyone.

Its time to put this election and all its associated bad behind us.

Last night, the candidate who I voted for and strongly supported, Republican Donald Trump, was elected the forty-fifth President of the United States.  Don't be surprised if there isn't much celebrating coming from my house.  While I'm relieved that my candidate won, I'm not particularly thrilled with the manner in which he conducted himself during the campaign.  In fact, Donald Trump was my last choice amongst the list of Republicans running in the presidential primary.  As odd as rhis may sound, both the Republican and Democratic nominees were hugely unpopular, even in their own parties.  It will take someone with a bit more time than I'm willing to commit to determine exactly why these two persons were selected by the voters.  I just hope and pray that we don't ever have to go through another election like this one.

I find Donald Trump to be arrogant and dismissive, and I'm truly shocked by his lack of communication skills.  Wnile I don't believe he is a bigot, he has a tendency to show a pronounced lack of respect to women and at times minorities.  I voted for Trump because I agreed with his stated positions on the issues that I find important.  He appears determined to improve immigration enforcement in one way or another, and he shares my opinion that no citizen is safe when border security is ignored.  Trump is a Republican, and is likely to nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who will properly inferpret and enforce the law.  Trump's opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, would nominate liberal activists, at a time when the Court is likely to require four, maybe five new members.  One important reason why I and I'm sure the majority of other folks voted for Trump, was our shared opposition to Hillary Clinton.  I have no intention or revisiting the list of reasons shy I did not support Clinton, but I can assure you my decision was not made lightly.  I'm a firm believer in the rule of law as it is enforced equally on all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, sex, or financial status.  Also, I have a difficult time looking in the other direction when a U.S. government employee uses their access for personal enrichment.  The term is "Influence Peddling", and it is practiced by both Republican and Democratic civil servants with frightening frequency.

The last eight years have been a nightmare of fewer jobs, lower wages, abuse of Executive Authority, loss of international stature, and a frightening breakdown in the relationships between Americans of different ethnicities.  For many Americans, Hillary Clinton represents a continuation of the Obama Administration.  This is an unfair characterization, even though Clinton was Obama's Secretary of State from 2010 to 2014.  I don't know if any Democrat would have stood much of a chance in this election, as voters were motivated to express their anger and frustration to the Obama Adminstration in the only way on hand, which was at the ballot box.

It is time to turn the page, folks.  This election should be considered the last page in the review of the Barack Obama Administration.  President-elect Trump must rise to the occasion, and never forget that he represents all Americans.  I can't be the only person who has had their fill of the Clinton email scandal.  I believe that once he takes office, President-elect Trump should take steps to either pardon Hillary Clinton or instruct the Justice Department to immediately end all investigations related to the email matter.  What is to be gained by continuing any collateral investigations?  Take my word for it, Hillary Clinton has been punished.  She will never have another opportunity to become the first female president, which was obviously a life-long ambition.  Talking about reaching across party lines is one thing, and actually doing it is another.  Letting Clinton retreat into retirement with discretion and grace, without the concern of continued criminal probes, serves the best interest of the nation.

Isn't the integrity of our political system worth a voter identification requirement?

During my life, and not just during my career with the CIA, I have lived in a variety of different countries.  I was basically raised in Europe, and as soon as I graduated from college, I accepted a job in Africa.  Exposure to so many different cultures has been a tremendous blessing.  The languages that I picked up have proven useful time and time again.  As a Federal Agent working on the border, I became very familiar with Mexico and its history of political instability.  Once I joined the Agency, I had the opportunity to visit a number of third-world countries, including Iraq, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Nigeria, and Kenya.  I truly enjoyed experiencing life as it is lived in other countries, and I'm pleased to say that the great majority of people I encountered were happy, kind and generous.  I experienced true humility every time someone who had next to nothing invited me to share what little they had.

I often found myself feeling very frustrated that so many people, hundreds of millions, from different religious backgrounds and speaking different languages, all were caught in the same prison of political corruption.  A quick glance through a few history books indicates that almost every poor nation in the world at one time or another, has had an opportunity to experience an election based on the principles of representative democracy.  But electoral fraud in the third-world is almost as common as poverty.  I recall countless times when (with a bit of pride) I would think to myself, "thank goodness we don't have to worry about election fraud back home".  It's true that the political history of the United States includes LBJ getting elected to the Senate with a ballot box full of dead people, and John F. Kennedy benefitted from some questionable votes in his razor-thin victory over Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.  But these examples are very much the exception.

The 2012 election between Republican Mitt Romney and the incumbent Democrat Barack Obama, made me realize that the United States is no longer immune to voter fraud.  I recall more than a handful of instances in which Democratic precinct representatives were accused of various examples of fraud.  A few people were actually prosecuted, even though the Justice Department makes no bones about its unwillingness to investigate voter irregularities.  The 2016 presidential election ushered in a number of streamlined methods of voting, designed to encourage participation.  Unfortunately, a disturbing number of voter fraud allegations have cast a shadow on these efforts.  Accusations of ballot-box stuffing, voter substitution, and the participation of dead folks only seem to involve Democrats.  Is it a surprise that investigative filmaker James O'Keefe was able to provide a video in which Democrat election workers discussed how to commit voter fraud, and even went so far and to provide examples of how new volunteers are taught methods of voter substitution and ballot box stuffing?

Because of the documented episodes of voter fraud in 2012, a number of states passed laws requiring all voters to present valid identification.  Immediately, the Democrats, cried foul, claiming that racist Republicans were attempting to intimidate minority voters.  I was stunned by this development.  Am I wrong to think that we should do whatever we can to protect the integrity of our electoral process?  You and I need identification to do just about anythimg today, from driving a car and cashing a check, to picking up a prescription for toe fungus.  What is so intimidating about showing identification before voting?  From my perspective, it's very simple.  Anyone opposed to the idea of requiring I.D. before voting, is intent on committing fraud.  I'm sad to say that so far, the courts have sided with the Democrats.  Texas was the most recent state that was obliged to scrap its voter I.D. law because of a ruling by a Federal Court.

The effort to keep the voting process free of personal verification is part and parcel to the Democrat's intent to move the United States closer to becoming a one-party state.  If Hillary Clinton is elected President on November 8, she promises to sign amnesty legislation that will almost immediately provide twenty million foreign nationals with U.S. citizenship.  The great majority of the twenty million are ethnic Hispanics from Mexico and Central America, so you can bet that once their citizenship is in place, they will be voting Democrat.  Since the last few presidential elections have been decided by seven million votes or less, you can understand the importance of blocking amnesty in its present form.  I don't fathom why it's necessary to adjust the twenty million illegal aliens directly to citizenship.  Wouldn't it make more sense to process these individuals for Permanent Resident status first, so they could pay taxes, register their kids for school, and not panic each time they encounter a Police Officer?  They would then have the option of completing the Nationalization process, just like other Permanent Residents.  The idea of fast-tracking these imdividuals, whose entire presence in our country is predicated on breaking our laws, should be repugnent.  At the least its terribly unfair to all the persons who have applied legally, and are sitting in Mexico City, Tegucigalpa, San Salvador, Lagos and New Delhi, patiently waiting for their name to be called.

The Democrats and Hillary Clinton go off the deep end when this change in the proposal is mentioned, and its easy to understand why.  For the Democratic Party, this entire issue is about adding a game-changing number of new voters to the list of registered Democrats.  Don't fall for the crocodile tears and speeches about families being separated.  Sure, there have been some isolated instances when family members "sin documentos" have been returned to Mexico, but it's only the politics of distraction, my friends.  This is about votes and political power; nothing more, nothing less.

Why I can't support Hillary Clinton.

So what is my problem with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, anyway?  Although I did have a very short, pleasant conversation with her once. I won't pretend to be a confident.  A review of Bill and Hillary Clinton over the past four decades, convinces me that they are obsessed with power and money.  With Bill you can add "sex" to the list, but with Hillary you can add "ideology".  The Clintons are elitists, but who isn't in DC politics these days?  Members of Congress begin raising money and running for re-election the day after they are sworn in.  Almost immediately the focus turns to lobbyists, entitlements, and most importantly, committee appointments.  For some reason, people who are able to find a place in the DC political scene, always eventually become millionaires, and never seem to leave.  Who can blame the Clintons for wanting to stay part of the elite, especially after Bill spent eight years as President at a young age, relatively speaking?

For Hillary, its not all about money and influence.  Hillary is a political ideologue.  She believes that she knows what is best for the world, and she is determined to leave her mark.  Its not wise to disagree with her perspective, because she is dedicated to the principle that "the ends justifies the means", esepcially when you've earned your place amongst the elites.  We've seen it time and time again.  Hillary will obfuscate, confuse, and break the law to reach her goals.  In a recent manifestation of this habit, Hillary decided that security regulations did not apply to her (one of the elite), therefore she was going to install a private server and use it to occasionally (giving her the benefit of the doubt here) send and receive classified information.  Once the server was discovered, the goal became to survive the controversy without jeopardizing her run for the presidency.  Again, evidence destroyed, laws broken- actions justified because the end goal, becoming president, was what mattered.

Keeping all this in mind, my problem with Hillary Clinton has more to do with timing than anything else.  She is running for president at a very delicate time in our nation's history.  Our economy has ground to a halt and we are no longer create jobs, our immigration system is an invitation to all the needy of the world, and terrorism continues to knock on the front door (but now the knock is coming from the inside).  I don't believe that I have the luxury to whine and complain about Hillary's willingness to destroy people who stand in her way, or her willingness to lie about the cause of the Benghazi riot that cost us the lives of four brave Americans.  I'm very worried about the survival of our political, social, and economic system.  Hillary's bad habits will have to wait for my attention.

Simply put, we can't exist as a soveriegn nation as long as our borders are unprotected.  The effort to encourage foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally is nothing short of treason, but I'm no longer interested in talking about Barack Obama.  If Hillary Clinton wins the election, she will inact an Amnesty program (with or without Congress) that will provide between fifteen and twenty million persons who have been living in this country illegally, with the right to vote.  Amnesty is nothing short of rewarding people for breaking our laws, and punishing those who attempt to become US citizens legally.  But Hillary's goal is not to provide relief to twenty million people who, through their own actions, are caught in a very difficult place; her goal is to create millions of more Democratic voters.  The end game will morph the United States into a one-party nation.  Where will the GOP go to find millions of voters to balance the new political equation?  I guess the Republicans could accuse the Democrats of racism, and falsely claim that Democrats are going to take away a woman's right to choose and make old people eat out of trash cans, but that example of fear politics has already been perfected by the Democrats themselves.

Aside from immigration, I am concerned with the future of the Supreme Court.  The next president will be able to impact the Court in ways that the country has never experienced.  If Hillary Clinton is allowed to nominate four, maybe five leftist activist Justices in the mould of Sonia Sotomayor, what impact do you think this will have on the Constitution?  It brings us back to Ideology.  No doubt Hillary wants to be President so she can "encourage" government to interpret the Constitution as she does.  What does that mean for persons concerned about the Second Amendment?  How long will it be before Bibles are outlawed in public, and Churches instructed to alter their appearance, so as to not offend persons of other faiths who might be driving by?

Certainly I'm bothered by Hillary Clinton's attitude and history of deceit and corruption.  But this election is more about who she will become as opposed to who she is today.  She wants to be the President who ushers in a new era of Amnesty and open botders, and she wants to be Commander and Chief who finally succeeds in taking all the guns away.  These are the reasons why I will do everything I can (legally of course- I'm a Republican), up until the morning of November ninth, to see that she is not elected President of the United States.

Media attempt to distract voters from Clinton email scandal falls flat.

Just as we predicted, the arrival of Halloween this year was accompanied by a determined effort on behalf of the mainstream media to change the political comversation.  Late last week, the FBI announced that its imvestigation into Hillary Clinton's use of an illegal email server was actually ongoing.  The investigation, which most of us believed was no longer active, received a new jolt of adrenaline with the discovery of hundreds and thousands of emails on the laptop Clinton Campaign Vice Chairman Huma Abedin shared at home with her husband.  Given the media's obsessive and blatant determination to see Hillary Clinton win the Presidency, we surmised that a full-blown effort would be made to launch a personal attack against Clinton's opponent, Republican Donald Trump.  Actually, the press dropped two separate attacks on Trump today.  On CNN, in the Washington Post, on ABC, and in the New York Times, voters were reminded that the FBI was interested in Trump's connections to Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Before you could take a breath, some of the same media organizations were rehashing the issue of Donald Trump and his unwillingness to release his income tax returns.  Surely one of these stories would catch hold and quickly push the Hillary email scandal from the minds of voters.  Guess what, folks?  It didn't happen.

It didn't take long for the Trump Campaign to remind the various media outlets that the FBI had already cleared Donald Trump and his campaign of any connection whatsoever to the Russian government and efforts by Russia to create havoc with the presidential election.  With regards to the income tax issue, Trump has explained time and again, including in the first debate, that he is presently being audited by the IRS, and as soon as the process is complete, he will be happy to disclose his tax records.  To be honest, I expected something better from the press.  Is this all they could come up with over the weekend?  No doubt they have a few more shots to take, and they may be saving their best shot for last.

Today's effort, I'm pleased to say, fell flat.  The electorate seems to have made up its mind as to the integrity and honesty of both candidates.  I don't think that the Clinton Campaign, or the media for that matter, will have much success with headlines accusing Trump of innapropriate behavior with women- that line of attack has used up its usefulness as well.  On the other hand, Trump seems to be sitting in the catbird seat, because his campaign doesn't have to attack Hillary Clinton's character or truthfulness.  History and the FBI are doing the job already.  Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have established particular reputations in Washington, not only with rank-and-file government bureaucrats, but with White House Staff and the Secret Service.  During their years as civil servants, they enriched themselves through the abuse of access to people with ample resources and influence.  They created an army of sycophants whose best interests are directly tied in to continued Clinton access to the tools of government.  The Clinton Foundation is stuffed full of former Clinton aides, support staff, legal advisors, and political workers, who receive a fat paycheck because of the donations Hillary was able to solicit durimg her time as Secretary of State.  Probably for the first time, average Americans are beginning to see what the Clintons are all about, and many former supporters are deciding that retirement is in order.  The next seven days will determine if the long ride on the back of the American people is finally over.