The presidential race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump is simple, when you get past the rhetoric.

It is a race between those who get from the government represented by Hillary Clinton and those who give to the government represented by Donald Trump.

President Barack Hussein Obama has greatly expanded the number of people who receive benefits from the government. It is no accident that the number of people in this country receiving food stamps under Obama has increased by 14 million. Obamacare, for all its faults, accomplished the goal of making more people dependent on the government.

If the Republicans had had a business-as-usual primary and nominated a professional politician such at Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio or Gov. John Kasich, the race would already be over. They are all part of the problem of ever increasing government handouts. The Republican professional politicians want to slow the ever-increasing rate of the federal government doing more for more people, but they show no will for cutting it back or even stopping the growth.

Trump is not. Trump can actually come in with a clean slate and make the kind of changes that are needed if this country is to move forward. If we continue on the current path, at some point in the not too distant future, and a lot of it depends on the world economy, those working simply will not be able to pay the bills for those who aren’t working anymore. At that point, nobody knows what happens. We could end up with the government taking over the remaining industries. We could have some kind of civil war. We could be quietly taken over by some other country that knows how weak we have become.

When you’re the top dog, and the US has been the top dog since World War II, everybody in one way or another wants to take you down; even your friends are jealous.

But if the country continues to choose to spend its wealth, not on infrastructure, not on the military, not on scientific advancement, but on paying the bills for people who don’t work, it cannot survive.

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It’s no surprise that the mainstream media are once again putting words in Donald Trump’s mouth. He seems to make more than enough controversial statements. You would think they could quote his actual statements and that would be enough.

Trump in none of the statements I have found ever asked Russian President Vladimir Putin or the Russians in general to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. Trump asked them to release the emails they had already hacked.

It seems asking them to hack into Hillary Clinton’s email server while she was secretary of state – using an email server either in her basement or perhaps in the bathroom of an apartment office in Colorado depending on which of her stories you believe – would be asking Putin to go back in time to 2012. Although Putin is powerful and seems to have the ability to take over any country he wants without serious consequences, I have seen no indication that one of his superpowers is time travel.

Perhaps the Democrats think that Putin is even more powerful than he is, or perhaps they have been watching too many superhero movies and have trouble separating fact from fiction. Whatever the case, what Trump is asking makes perfect sense. If the Russians have Hillary Clinton’s emails, so the Russians know what she was up to when she was secretary of state, don’t the American people have a right to the same information?

Is it possible that Hillary Clinton was telling the truth and during her time as secretary of state she sent and received more emails about yoga, her daughter’s wedding and her mother’s funeral than she did about State Department business?

If it weren’t for the wedding it would seem impossible, but wedding planning can get pretty intense. Would 1,000 emails about the flowers for the wedding be too many? What about 1,000 emails about her dress? And then 1,000 emails about her mother’s funeral? The problem there is even if those numbers prove to be accurate, that still leaves 30,000 emails about yoga, and that one I just can’t swallow.

But if Hillary Clinton is telling the truth about the emails that were deleted from her server then no national secrets are at risk. If Hillary Clinton and her attorneys are being honest, then all the emails that were deleted are personal. Hillary Clinton might be embarrassed at some of them, but no national security intelligence will be released. What is fascinating and disturbing is that nobody, not even her supporters, seem to believe that there is any chance that Hillary Clinton was being honest about her emails.

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The Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails have attracted the most attention for revealing that what Sen. Bernie Sanders said was correct – the DNC was working with the Hillary Clinton campaign against him. The DNC is supposed to be neutral in primaries and the emails revealed it was anything but neutral.

But what the emails reveal that is even more disturbing is how the mainstream media are in bed with the DNC. Everyone with any sense knows that the mainstream media are extremely left wing and support Democrats over Republicans in nearly every race, and on every issue. But the idea that a reporter for the formerly well-respected national publication Politico would allow his article to be vetted by the DNC before he turned it in to his editors is going too far.

The fact that the DNC tries to control the news cycle is nothing new. What is new is the effect that it has. There is nothing wrong with the DNC emailing journalists and newsreaders in an attempt to get them to alter their stories in favor of the DNC. Everything is wrong with those journalists and on air newsreaders following the directions of the DNC.

Does anyone for a minute think that a Politico reporter has ever even considered sending an article to the Republican National Committee (RNC) to get it approved before turning it in to his or her editors? Does anyone think that the RNC attempts to get the journalists and newsreaders to be fair to Republican candidates has any effect at all? If you do then you are living in la la land.

One of the great things that Donald Trump has done in his campaign time and time again is go on the air and confront these liberal political operatives posing as journalists.

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It’s official because our president said it was: Hillary Clinton is running for a third Obama term. This is good news for Republicans, and for Trump in particular.

Only 17 percent of Americans think that the country is on the right path. I hope all 17 percent vote for Hillary Clinton, but it’s hard to see why any of the 83 percent who think the country is not on the right course would vote to stay on that path.

We know that Hillary Clinton has no ideas of her own, so it would seem that Obama is right – if elected she will try to stay on the same path that Obama has laid out. This course involves maintaining open borders, signing trade agreements that greatly benefit other countries and penalize companies for manufacturing in the US, depleting the military while at the same time promoting foreign policy that creates wars all over the world, and raising taxes so that hardworking Americans, those lucky enough to find jobs, can send more of their money to the federal government to be distributed to people who don’t want to work.

There is a huge difference between having a social safety net for people who find themselves down on their luck and need temporary help, and creating a whole class of people who don’t work, have no intention of ever working and expect the government to give them everything including cell phones.

*****

Watching Hillary Clinton give her acceptance speech I was once again struck by what a terrible public speaker she is. Hillary Clinton is notoriously bad one on one, uncomfortable in small groups and, even with the best speechwriters money can buy, she can’t give a speech well to save her life.

Look at a few minutes of Hillary Clinton speaking and then Sen. Bernie Sanders, who speaks with real conviction.

Hillary Clinton reads her speeches poorly off a teleprompter. It would be interesting to see the actual speeches she reads and see just how many stage directions are on them. How many words are underlined or in bold to give emphasis? The speechwriters must have learned not to give directions like “sigh” because when they did she said, “sigh.”

It almost would have been better if Hillary Clinton had given the speech in her fake Southern accent that she uses when she speaks in the South. It would have added a little more personality.

The other big question I had in her speech involves all the things that Hillary Clinton said she was going to do to improve the economy and defeat ISIS. These are continuations of Obama’s policies. He has had seven-and-a-half years to try these measures and they have failed.

The economy, as recent figures show, is getting worse under Obama’s policies, not better. If dramatic changes are to be made in the economy, we can’t continue the policies of Obama that aren’t working; something new has to be tried.

If ISIS is going to be defeated, we can follow the policies of Obama that aren’t working or try something new. Perhaps it’s time to follow Russia’s lead and have our bombers actually drop bombs, rather than fly around looking for some site, somewhere, that poses no threat of a single civilian casualty.

Perhaps we need to ignore the wishes of Turkey, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and actually arm the Kurdish forces with weapons that are superior to those that ISIS has. The Kurds have had far more success against ISIS than the Iraqi army, which provided many of the arms to ISIS when they ran from the battlefield. We should be supplying the Kurds with whatever they need, if the goal is indeed to defeat ISIS.

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The Obama foreign and military policy has demonstrated that peace through weakness doesn’t work.

Remember when Obama came into office promising to pull all US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan? He did pull all US troops out of Iraq and that led to the rise of ISIS, forcing Obama to send troops back and resulting in more war, not less.

Obama rejected the lessons of the past. When the Allies won World War II, all the troops didn’t come home. The US still has a major military presence in Germany and Japan. The same is true of South Korea. And if you go back further, does Obama think it’s an accident that the former Confederate states that rebelled against the country over 150 years ago still have the most military bases today?

After World War I, the troops did come home. The League of Nations was going to prevent another such war from ever occurring. But a little more than 20 years later American troops were sent back to Europe for World War II.

When Obama drew a red line and told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that if he crossed it there would be consequences, and then ignored his own ultimatum, Obama let Assad know that Assad had a free hand to do what he wanted without consequences. Obama at the time said that it didn’t make much difference because Assad wouldn’t be in power much longer anyway. Now there is every indication that Assad will still be in power after Obama has none. Assad’s power, with Russia’s backing, is growing not diminishing, and in some ways the US is now on Assad’s side because we are both fighting against ISIS.

*****

Mitt Romney has said that Donald Trump can win. What Romney needs to do now is find his big boy pants, the ones that Candy Crowley stripped off of him in front of a national audience in the second debate with Obama. Maybe Crowley had them laundered and they’re hanging in her trophy case, but wherever they happen to be, Romney needs to get them back, swallow his pride and help Trump do what he couldn’t do – win the presidency.

Romney knows full well the danger of a Hillary Clinton presidency and he knows in his heart that as much as he personally dislikes Trump that Trump would be better for the future of the country than a lying, conniving candidate who is only out for herself.

Can you imagine what Trump would do if a moderator stepped forward and interjected herself into the debate, helping Hillary Clinton out of hole she couldn’t get out of on her own. The explosion would be earth shattering, the tongue lashing so severe that the moderator would have to go to commercial break to compose herself. Except there is no way that Trump would allow a moderator who so clearly allowed her own personal political opinions to intrude into the debate to continue.

It’s as if the referee of a basketball game gave a player a second shot when he missed a critical free throw and then cheered when he made it.

Romney did the opposite, he melted like the witch on The Wizard of Oz hit with a bucket of water. His hope of winning ended that night. The American people will put up with lying, cheating, bragging and stupidity in their presidents, but they evidently won’t tolerate a man who won’t stand up for himself in the face of adversity.

The good news is that presidential debates have made a difference in presidential races over the years and Trump is masterful at taking over debates.

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Trump claims to be smart. Let’s see if he’s smarter than the other Republican presidential candidates and insists on unbiased debate moderators. Someone who has written a complimentary book about one of the presidential candidates and stands to make big bucks if that candidate is elected president should be eliminated. Gwen Ifill, who had written a book on Obama, was allowed to moderate the vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.

As noted above, Crowley was so intent on Obama winning that she inserted herself into the debate to help Obama when he was floundering.

Those are more egregious examples, but if the Democrats are going to have one of their operatives moderate a debate then Rush Limbaugh should get to do the next one.

There is no doubt that Trump is certain he will rip Hillary Clinton apart on the debate stage. Trump was in eleventy-seven debates in the Republican primary and he won them all. He understands the medium. Hillary Clinton is a terrible speaker and is much worse without the teleprompter than with it, and she’s not very good with it.

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It is accepted as a given that Hillary Clinton has been working for the rights of women and children her entire life. So what has she done? She was in the Senate for eight years; what legislation did she get passed to help women and children?

She was secretary of state for eight years. There are a number of countries around the world that still treat women like cattle. Saudi Arabia is one of those and they are a close ally. What did Hillary Clinton do to get more rights for women in Saudi Arabia? Did she negotiate some deal or agreement where the Saudis agreed to start giving more women rights? Not that was ever announced.

All I’ve been able to find is that Hillary Clinton has been on some committees and won some awards for her work protecting women and children. She’s won awards, but awards for what?

*****

I admire Hillary Clinton for being such an outstanding liar. She is incredible. Her statements have not even a hairsbreadth of truth in them. Everyone knows it and yet she persists.

Hillary Clinton is still claiming that she never sent or received classified information on her email server. FBI Director Jim Comey testified that she did send and receive classified information and documents that were marked classified.

But you don’t have to believe Comey. Maybe he was lying. If that is the case, why is it that some of the emails on Hillary Clinton’s server are still considered so classified that no part of them has been released to the public? Some have been released with the classified information redacted, but some the State Department refuses to release at all.   They acknowledge the existence of these emails but won’t release even a heavily redacted version.

So the State Department says there was classified information on the server, and Comey has stated categorically that classified information was sent and received, but Hillary Clinton continues the lie that there was none.

It is an amazing example of Hillary Clinton’s long held belief that the American people are complete and utter idiots, and if she says something enough times people will believe her because she keeps repeating it. The amazing thing is that so far it has worked.

*****

So Trump made typical Trump-like statements about Khizr Khan, whose son was killed while serving in the US Army in Iraq, and who spoke about his son and used his son’s death to attack Trump.

When Khan spoke at the Democratic National Convention about the death of his son and his own feelings about Trump, Khan willingly entered the political arena; it’s wrong for him to imply that Trump started all of this.

Khan could have given a moving testimony about his son, a Muslim immigrant who died for this country. He didn’t have to politically attack Trump. In fact, the statement would have been stronger without the silliness of accusing Trump of never reading the US Constitution.

Khan should know that the Constitution is written for US citizens; it does not protect the rights of those who live outside the US and want to come here. The president does have the right to restrict immigration from any group he deems a threat to the country.

But Khan handed Trump an issue to put Trump and his campaign on the front page when the front page should be Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Convention. Trump played this same game throughout the primaries. He knows what will put him on the front page and he says it.

Khan should have known that if he attacked Trump he was going to be attacked back. As far as Ghazala Khan, considering the rights of women in many Muslim controlled countries, it is not out of line to ask if she didn’t speak because she is a woman. In Saudi Arabia women aren’t even allowed to drive a car. In many Muslim countries they must cover their heads and most of their body when they appear in public.

Hillary Clinton is supposed to be fighting for equal rights for all women, but she ignores Muslim women. If Ghazala Khan was too upset to speak, why was she standing at the podium? She could have just as easily been sitting in the audience. Most of the speakers at the Democratic National Convention did not bring their spouses to stand beside them. Since she was there, it was assumed by many that she would also be speaking.

Then there is the fact that Khan is not just any Muslim speaker. He worked for a law firm that worked for both Hillary Clinton and Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.

He also worked to let Muslims buy their way into the US.

It’s interesting that Khan has now taken his website down, so this information about him is no longer available.

*****

It’s early in the general election season, but so far Hillary Clinton is making the same mistakes Trump’s primary opponents made in state after state. First she gave him the front pages after the convention by allowing Khan to attack Trump, who, as expected, counter attacked. And now the headlines are about Republicans that the Republican base has rejected, like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan, joining forces against Trump.

You can’t run against the establishment if the establishment agrees with everything you say, a lesson Trump knows well.

Hillary Clinton is also spending her time going after Trump’s base – working class white men. If she gets mired down in going after his base, Trump wins. Trump, as has been his practice, is delighting his base and infuriating everyone else. It’s an intricate dance and too early to tell if this is a stumble, but the timing makes it appear to be one. Hillary Clinton is coming off a week where she got more free television time than her campaign will get between now and November. She should be shoring up her base, not wasting her time trying to convince people who have already made up their minds to support Trump to come over to the side of lies and corruption.

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Much is being made of the ability of Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine to speak Spanish. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio also speak Spanish. How well did that work for them?

Bush had dropped out of the race long before the Florida primary, but Rubio, a sitting senator from Florida with parents born in Cuba and who is fluent in Spanish, was clobbered by Trump in Florida.

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According to Hillary Clinton, the Clintons left the White House “dead broke.” Taking her at her word, which not advisable, she and her husband started at zero in 2001. Now, in 2016, they are worth $111 million. Officially, Hillary Clinton is worth $31 million and Bill Clinton is worth $80 million.

Consider the fact that for eight of those 16 years Hillary Clinton served in the Senate, which has heavy restrictions on outside income, and four of those years she was the secretary of state, which also heavily restricts outside income. So for 12 of the 16 years she was a government employee making between $150,000 and $200,000 a year. That’s a lot of money to most people but is chicken feed for the lifestyle the Clintons live.

So Hillary Clinton had three or four years where she could make unrestricted income and in those three or four years she didn’t make $31 million, she put aside $31 million. After all her expenses and taxes were paid she was able to invest $31 million.

Consider one more factor in this amazing success story: She didn’t have three or four years, because she started campaigning for the presidency in 2015. So she had, at most, three years, and she managed to sock away $10 million a year. But who knows, it may turn out that Hillary Clinton invested in cattle futures again. The very first time she tried that she borrowed $1,000 and, in less than a year, walked away with profit of $100,000. At that rate it would be easy for her to make $30 million in three years.