Bump's Stump

I'm a very slow reader. When a blustering Trump first hit the political road I thought he was some kind of joke with his ridiculous red hair mop and a Jersey boy gutter speech pattern. During  the following weeks he firmly, and not very politely, proceeded to accuse the establishment of gross corruption and dereliction of duty. He put his clumsy and angry voice to all of the national problems he could think of.  He focused on very progressive liberal Democrats whose actions have led us to the mess we find ourselves in. So sayeth Mr. Trump.   He went on to establish his (Starwars) ambitious  plan to:   1. To take back the White House from the      Obama/Hillary types 2.  To shake up and remove the corrupt politicians from the establishment 3.  Return America to invincible stature among the worlds nations. 4.  Bring back monetary support of our enemies. (Egypt, for example?) 5.  Withdraw our military protection of nations...

Hi Rain     Now and then I make a mistake. A couple of years ago you took issue with one of my blog notes. As I recall it involved a few things a "righty" (Greybeard?) sent to me, not something I wrote. I usually avoid comments about comments - and set the matter aside. That was my mistake.  I don't remember why you got mad at Greybeard, but you said that you decided not to write about politics for a while. It sounded like you didn't want to stay in touch with me either so I dropped out of sight.  I had enjoyed our contact now and then, it was my loss.   You now have several good blogs. I still read them and wish I could write as well. Perhaps I can get back in your good graces. I hope so.  ps: I just read one of your excellent books, "Round The Bend", and thought it was excellent. I plan to order the other three in the series.   Take care. dw

The Republican Party is almost out of business and they deserve to be gone.  Something happened to the Grand Old Party that turned them into dust. They slowly became corrupt (like the Democrats) decided; "you can forever spend more than you have". They swallowed idiot pills and our entire Federal Government went wacky.  Now days the tendency is to blame President Obama for all of the ills we are facing. That's not fair or even close. He may contributed a little to the problems, but there have been many others before Mr. Obama. Where to start? Not Long After 1776:  Who first decided that we could borrow from future tax collections to finance the problems of the day.  No one seems tot know, but if the Revolutionary War was financed with money from the public treasury, that may have been the beginning. Regardless, certainly by WWI the practice was normal and approved. It had become the normal way to finance spending money we didn't have but expected sometime in th...

FREE LUNCH President Obama has done us all a favor by finally proving 'there is no free lunch'. He's gone a long way to establish that big government, big debt, and more bureaucrats is a poor substitute for the government established by our founders. He's convinced most of us that the meaning of the words of our Constitution can't be changed without destroying the basis of the finest government system yet devised. The Constitution, somewhat like The Ten Commandments of the Christian religion, is complete now, with few if any, changes necessary.  TRIPARTITE OVERSIGHT  F.D.R. wasn't the first to try to unbalance the our government but he's the first within my (born 1936) memory. Neither was F.D.R. the first to say 'if congress won't do it's job, I will'.  Under somewhat different circumstances, Obama said the same thing almost as soon as he was elected. What both of these Presidents were really saying is that Americas tripartite system o...

I just read a most disgusting article written by a clown in New York named Cody Cain in the Huffington Post. He claims that Fox has destroyed the Republican Party by blatantly supporting anger biased reporters pushing the Conservative, Libertarian, and radical right wing pressure groups like the Tea Party. This guy is just terribly upset that America has been, and continues to be, inflamed by right wing biased opinions. What a jerk. It's as if the entire media spectrum isn't even more biased toward a radical left wing agenda.  The Huffington Post apparently approves of this Cody Cain defaming more than 50% of the American population that is, desperately now, trying to return honesty and integrity to our government. That's right. More than half of our population has been steamrollered by our broken political system and the corruption of our elected representatives. The system over time is self destructing because it has allowed greedy self interested pressure...

Just read a most interesting book, "Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande. The author discusses the aim of medicine today -  and makes a significant suggestion to improve it. 1. The aim now, so to speak, is to preserve life as long as possible . 2. The author makes an excellent case for preserving a reasonable quality of life as considered by the patient, close family, and the medical people involved. The Author, a Medical Doctor himself, has noted a trend developing as the scientific community is experiencing an exponential growth of pharmaceutical products, nuclear medicine and other curative treatments that are increasingly able to extend life, but with essentially disastrous consequences. The advancing fight against cancer illustrates what he considers an undesirable trend. It is now possible to extend a persons' life to a non-reversible point where the patient is no longer aware of his existence, surroundings, family or friends. The patient is technically alive in t...

Americans are avoiding the obvious. We are thoroughly enmeshed in a  religious war with the Religion of Islam that threatens us and most other nations of the world. It's guerrilla type war rather than a conventional one, but  war nevertheless. Battles usually involve a small number of victims, but not always. The attack on 9/11 for example, resulted in a very large death toll. There are have been several other large and vicious attacks as well. Usually they involve a few perpetrators led by an independent leader and designed to murder as many people as possible. Americans persist in referring to each attack as an "isolated terrorist incident" , or some other even less disturbing woods.  Actually, they are the attacks of a singularly vicious enemy. An enemy like no other we've seen looking back in time several centuries.  It is a large war that has two alarming characteristics:  1. The support and attacks are largely coming from people who have nothing to los...