There’s one thing avid Donald Trump supporters—I call them “Trumpeteers”—and obsessive Bernie Sanders supporters—I refer to them as “Berniacs”—have in common. Both groups have an intense hatred for the New York Times.

I know a Donald Trump supporter who during both the primary and general election campaigns made every excuse in the book to defend his candidate’s indefensible comments and outright lies. He always had an explanation—it wasn’t what he meant to say, or what he said was taken out of context—and he used these excuses even when The Donald was caught on video spouting his hatred and mendacity. He consistently refused to believe anything that proved the lies. When confronted with statistics that were beyond debate he’d say, “Do you really believe that?”

I sent him an excerpt from a recent column by a New York Times opinion columnist:

“With the Trump presidency, truth will be a commodity more precious than the gold lining his throne in Manhattan. He no sooner won the Electoral College than he started the Trump era with a big lie, saying he’d achieved “a historic electoral landslide.” For the record: His victory ranked near the bottom, 46th out of 58 presidential elections. But it was historic — no president has ever lost the popular vote by a larger number, almost 3 million votes. And yet half of Republicans believe that he won the popular tally.”

What was the Trumpeteer’s response? He wrote, “Of course. The New York Times is Trump’s enemy.”

This is what we’re up against. Even if the Times was Trump’s “enemy,” it doesn’t disprove anything the columnist wrote. Trump didn’t win a “historic electoral landslide”—far from it. He did make history by losing the popular vote by the largest margin ever. What’s most troubling is the statement that “half of Republicans believe he won the popular tally.”

But a zealous Trump fan can negate and disregard facts by attacking the person or institution that supplied those facts.

The disciples of Bernie Sanders are no less rational. Many of them insist that everything printed in the New York Times is a lie, and they hate the country’s number one newspaper because it supported Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary election. They feel the paper was biased against Mr. Sanders and for the establishment Mrs. Clinton.

Berniacs have trouble understanding the difference between hard news and opinion. The editorial page and the opinion columnists of any newspaper, including the Times, are not violating journalistic ethics by writing of their preference for one candidate over another. This in no way compromises the paper’s reporting of the news, which must be impartial, fair, and balanced.

Sanders supporters became so blinded with outrage by the Times’ opinion pages they began hurling accusations that the regular news was falsely reported, and they repeated it so many times they’ve convinced themselves it’s the truth. They seem to be emulating the wacky Sarah Palin’s “lamestream media” complaint.

The opinion columnist who vexes the Sanders people the most is Dr. Paul Krugman, who happens to be one of the most influential economists in the world. He’s been a professor at MIT, Princeton, and NYU, and in 2008 he won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Bob Dylan’s response aside, the Nobel Prize is the highest award anyone can hope to win.

Throughout the campaign season and ever since he announced his run for president, Paul Krugman has been highly critical of Bernie Sanders and his economic proposals. He pretty much implied that they make no sense and can’t be achieved, and that they’re too far out in left field to be taken seriously. If the Sanders folks want to feel better about Krugman, they can take solace in the fact he thinks Jill Stein is even more unbalanced with her ideas.

Wouldn’t it make sense to heed the economic advice of a Nobel Prize winner over an Independent socialist senator from a small northeastern state?

For Berniacs that’s not bloody likely. Instead they parrot Trump’s line about the “failing New York Times.”

Both groups delude themselves about newspapers that editorialize in a negative manner about their ideology and the pronouncements of their candidates.

If they’re waiting for the New York Times to fail, they’ve got a long wait.

I found this on my Facebook feed the other day. I wrote it five years ago. Five years, and what’s striking is that absolutely nothing has changed. I could have written it this morning. It’s rather depressing. I need a single malt to cope.

RELIGION, ECONOMICS, AND POLITICS

Posted on December 20, 2011

At this festive time of year one can’t help noticing how religion, economics, and politics intersect. The entire premise of Christmas is the belief that the son of god was born of a virgin mother who was impregnated by a “holy ghost,” and that a star that astronomers say appears in March shone brightly in December and led three wise men (nobody ever explained why they were wise) to his location where they brought him gifts of gold and incense.

We should give a shout out to the retailing genius who took this mythological story and convinced religious believers that rather than giving gifts to the Baby Jesus they should give gifts to each other to celebrate that blessed event. Christians observe Good Friday in the spring and Black Friday in the fall. Our retailing establishment is held hostage by the amount of money spent on Christmas gifts. Stores rent space in malls for twelve months so they can be there in November and December. That period is the make or break time for their bottom lines.

Americans max out their credit cards to buy gifts for people they don’t like and travel thousands of miles to spend the holiday with family members they can’t stand. Our entire economy is desperately in need of the consumer’s continuation of this fiscal insanity. Anyone who points this out is accused of waging “war against Christmas” or categorized as a “sneering atheist.”

Politically speaking, if you can believe in “holy ghosts” you can believe in “trickle-down economics,” that the super-wealthy deserve tax breaks because they’re job creators, that corporations are people, and that labor unions, which created the middle-class, are evil. You can believe that candidates who think they can “pray away gay” and pray for rain have the potential to be the president of the United States.

Religion, economics, and politics are all connected, and the connections are completely irrational. What are you gonna do?

Donald Trump’s election to the presidency in November was simply a bad ending to an unbelievable political campaign, but even if he’d lost the damage had already been done.

Trump bragged that he “told it like it is,” and he scorned “political correctness.”

Republican conservatives hate political correctness. I’ve always felt they were disgruntled because they couldn’t refer to Black people with the “N-word,” gay people with the “F” word, Latinos with the “S” word, and women with the part of their female anatomy beginning with “C,” the hardcore version of Donald Trump’s “pussy.” After all, their reasoning goes, there is a First Amendment right to free expression, so why do we get penalized, even fired from our jobs, for exercising our constitutional rights?

But these slurs were only the tip of the iceberg because Trump’s go-for-broke, nothing-to-lose rhetoric opened the floodgates to much more. People we thought we knew unwittingly told us how they viewed our world. Just as a gay person who has been “in the closet” comes “out” and embraces his sexual orientation, Trump supporters were emboldened enough to “out” themselves, and they felt they could do that with impunity.

Here’s a comment from a New York Times reader:

Annette Magjuka

“My problem with the election is that I now know how neighbors, “friends,” and some relatives really think. I have heard that health care is not a right, that CLEAN WATER is not a right, and that privatizing education and everything else is good because then incompetent and overpaid people can be fired. I have heard that teachers are actually OVERPAID since they have the summer “off.” I have heard that black people are lazy, Mexicans are stealing our jobs, and Muslims are not to be trusted. My sadness is that this is the America I live in and the people who think all of the above will now be in power–all three houses! They already overturned the protection of LGBT workers on federal contracts. I will have to watch as each one of the progressive gains over the past 50 years is overturned, and a dog-eat-dog, heartless country is created. I am beyond sad. I am terrified.”

The following quote is from the 82-year-old Bill Moyers, a journalist and political commentator who served as White House Press Secretary for President Lyndon Johnson:

“If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He [Trump] says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.”

Donald Trump may not have been the “divider,” but he was the catalyst for an incredible amount of divisiveness. Friendships and family relations have been shattered because those who embraced Trump could no longer be tolerated. One women commented in the Times that she had severed ties with six friends and three relatives over this election, and she had no intention of ever repairing those breaks.

During a talk show on National Public Radio, a woman called in and said her husband, a Trump supporter, had “unfriended” her on Facebook, just until the election was over. She was amused, but a young man called who was rather sad because his fiancée, also a Trump supporter, had broken off their engagement because they were “incompatible.” On a national level, stories like this are all too common.

The last time this many Facebook friendships were terminated was after the verdict in the George Zimmerman case. You remember George, the wannabe cop who stalked the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin and shot him dead by “standing his ground.” Those who supported Zimmerman were cut loose by people who felt Trayvon had been murdered.

I know a couple who for two decades have owned a winter home in Southwest Florida, a bastion for conservative Republican snowbirds, but this year people they had known all that time were so aggressive and obnoxious about Donald Trump, so openly racist and sexist, that they’re planning to sell their condo and relocate. They had no idea these friends and neighbors were so full of hate. They can’t even look at them anymore.

Donald Trump’s campaign, not his election, has caused irreparable damage to human interactions and relationships in this country. It remains to be seen if it can ever recover.

In the bottom half of the eighth inning of the seventh game of the 2003 American League Championship Series (ALCS) between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, the Sox had a 5-2 lead.

Cy Young Award winner Pedro Martinez was on the mound for Boston, and he convinced manager Grady Little that he still had his stuff after throwing 100 pitches. But he gave up a double to Derek Jeter and a single to Bernie Williams, prompting Little to go out to the mound. The next batter was the left-handed Hideki Matsui, arguably the most clutch player in baseball. In the bullpen was a left-handed reliever named Alan Embree.

More than 50,000 fans in Yankee Stadium as well as millions watching on television knew the right move was to take Pedro out. But Little left him in, and Matsui hit a rocket double followed by Jorge Posada’s bloop double, and the game was tied.

The Yankees won the game in extra innings and went on to the World Series.

Grady Little, although he managed his team to within six outs of the fall classic, was fired. Had he brought in the reliever and Matsui hit one into the stratosphere, he would have kept his job because he played by the book. But he didn’t so he paid the price.

This brings us to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and their efforts to give the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton. They were playing by the book. Mrs. Clinton was the most famous woman in the world who Barack Obama praised as the most qualified candidate in history: eight years as First Lady, eight years as a New York senator, and four years as Secretary of State. She had massive political support and the ability to raise astronomical amounts of campaign dollars.

By contrast Bernie Sanders, an eccentric senator from the small state of Vermont (the whitest state in the country), had 3% name recognition and was a self-identified socialist. He wasn’t even a Democrat, only changing his affiliation from Independent to run for president, and this only because Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden decided not to run. He was 74, the numerical reversal of Obama’s 47 when he ran in 2008. His speeches were repetitive and filled with promises he couldn’t possibly keep.

Hillary had played by the book, accepting her defeat by Obama in 2008 and then serving as his Secretary of State, never once upstaging or embarrassing him. She campaigned for Democratic candidates and was a loyal member of the party.

If the people running the DNC had allowed Sanders to obtain the nomination and he became the 21st century’s version of George McGovern, heads would have rolled.

Mrs. Clinton ran an excellent, by the book campaign. She won all three debates and was unflappable in the face of Donald Trump’s relentless insults. Even her periodic absence from the campaign trail was calculated and came at a time when Mr. Trump was dominating the news in a negative way by fat-shaming Miss Universe Alicia Machado, insulting a Gold Star mother, and defending the Billy Bush tape as “locker room talk.”

Napoleon said, “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.”

Her vice-presidential pick was also by the book. The Democrats were looking to control the Senate. If she’d picked Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker, senators from blue states with Republican governors, they’d have lost a senate seat. Two women on the ticket, a Black man after this country couldn’t get over eight years of a Black president, or the socialist Bernie Sanders as VP would have been risky choices. Tim Kaine was from Virginia, a swing state with a Democratic governor. Kaine was a perfect, by the book choice. He would do no harm and ruffle no feathers.

Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, but no one could have accounted for DNC e-mails hacked (by the Russians, according to the FBI and CIA) and distributed by Wikileaks, 53% of internalized white women voting for Donald Trump, FBI Director James Comey sending a letter to Congress with 11 days left in the race implying that something illegal might be found in new Hillary e-mails, Sanders supporters masochistically voting for Jill Stein, and white working class, reliably Democratic voters in Rust Belt states voting for Trump because they believed his racist rants that Blacks and Latinos were responsible for their job losses and that he would bring those jobs back.

There was nothing wrong with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It was by the book. She wasn’t a flawed candidate. She lost because of a deeply flawed electorate and a series of mishaps bordering on fiction that really happened.

To those who insist this was a “change” election—what greater change could there have been than electing the first female president in 227 years?

Democrats never run out of ways to shoot themselves in the foot.

My wife is Black and I’m white, but it’s never been a problem in our 25-year marriage. I’m nearly two decades older than she is, but the age disparity has had no effect. She’s a church-going Christian and I’m a devout atheist, but she understands my skepticism and that is also not an issue.

But if I suddenly adopted Republican values and attitudes, there is no doubt she would kick me to the curb and our relationship would face an impossible-to-fix obstacle.

Some of you understand this perfectly, while others are scratching their heads in wonderment. Let’s do a little bit of analysis.

“Former talk show host Jon Stewart slammed the “hypocrisy” of the left for supposedly rejecting stereotypes while painting Donald Trump voters as racist.” Washington Times, November 17, 2016

Mr. Stewart makes a good point. One stereotype that irks liberals is the one directed toward Muslims, i.e., that they’re all “terrorists.”

Republican conservatives see Muslims as monolithic, and they see Blacks, Latinos, gays, and illegal immigrants in the same way.

They deny they’re like that, but consider this: If you vote Republican, putting the zany Donald Trump aside, you’re voting for, contributing to, and aiding and abetting a political party that believes:

1. A woman should not have reproductive freedom, i.e., the right to choose an abortion. It wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, defund Planned Parenthood, give “personhood” to a fetus, and restrict women’s access to birth control. It is also adamantly opposed to equal rights and equal pay for women.

2. That Black Lives don’t Matter as much as White Lives and Blue Lives, and that “stop and frisk” and “Driving While Black” are viable law enforcement procedures. White police officers shooting unarmed Black men and boys are never wrong and the shootings are always justified. Racism is a myth and anyone who talks about it is a racist race-baiter. Everybody is treated the same and has an equal chance in this society regardless of skin color. All people of color need is to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and there won’t be any problems.

3. That marriage is between a man and a woman and a constitutional amendment is necessary to protect that belief. Supreme Court justices must be appointed to overturn the Court’s decision sanctioning same-sex marriage. Anyone can deny services of any kind to people just because they’re gay based on “religious freedoms.”

4. Muslims are terrorists, Latinos are illegal immigrants, and both groups should be registered. Register people, not guns and assault weapons.

If a person claims to be in favor of women’s rights, gay marriage, untroubled by treating people of color equally, desires immigration reform, approves of sensible gun control, and isn’t Islamophobic, then how can he contribute to and vote for Republicans? It’s completely counter-intuitive.

It’s comparable to a member of the Ku Klux Klan saying he likes Blacks, Jews, and Catholics but adores the hooded outfits he gets to wear as a Klan member.

It’s comparable to a Catholic who attends church regularly and puts money in the collection plate but says he believes in the rights of women to have reproductive freedom, the rights of gays to marry, and that women should be allowed into his church’s priesthood.

It’s comparable to someone in the 1980’s claiming they’re in favor peace but donating money to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), knowing full well that donation would be used to bomb English soldiers and Irish Protestants.

If you’re supporting with your votes and/or your money the KKK, the IRA, the Catholic Church, or the Republican Party, you’re supporting all the vicious and venomous oppressions these organizations embrace.

Jon Stewart aside, your protests ring very hollow.

I’d say that 99% of Muslims don’t donate money to ISIS. They don’t vote for leaders like Osama Bin Laden. They’re nowhere near as bad as Republicans, Catholics, or Klan members, at least by this yardstick.

Let’s assume that all Republicans aren’t racists. But if they financially support and vote for Republican leaders and a Republican Party that has racism as its core value, then what are they? Aren’t they guilty by association?

If you hold up a bank with two other robbers and one of them shoots and kills a guard, then you’re guilty of murder as an accessory even though you didn’t pull the trigger.

If you identify as a Republican, you’re an accessory to racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and a host of other very bad things, regardless of how nice a person you think you are. That’s the way it is.

What are you gonna do?
.

A television news commentator traveled to a red state and interviewed a voter who had cast his ballot enthusiastically for Donald Trump. The commentator asked this white, non-college educated voter if Trump’s promise to build a wall around the border was important to him. The Trump voter said, “Yes, it was very important.”

Then the commentator asked about the importance of Mr. Trump’s promise to deport 11 million illegal immigrants.” “Yes,” the man replied, “that was also very important.”

The commentator said, “Well, you know he’s not going to do either one of those things, so how does that make you feel?”

The Trump voter said, “I just know he’s gonna make America great again.”

Sigh.

A Trump fan was crowing about the increase in his IRA account and the recent rise in the stock market, all of which he attributes to Donald Trump’s “policies.”

“What policies?” I asked. “He hasn’t taken office yet. How could the market go up based on that?”

“People are buying stocks and have confidence in all the things he promises to do, like lower the corporate income tax and get rid of regulations,” he said.

“That’s crazy,” I said. “He has to get his proposals legislated through Congress, and his own Republican Party disagrees with many of his ideas, like the 35% tariff. He’s not a king, he can’t just do what he wants.”

The guy got visibly irritated with me, as if I had blasphemed Jesus.

You know what? He’s crediting Trump for the market going up, but I’ll bet when the market inevitably goes down he’ll find a way to blame someone other than his hero.

This is nothing new. In Obama’s first term gasoline prices shot up to almost $4 a gallon, and Republicans screamed about how incompetent the president was and blamed him for the high prices. Not too long after the price came down to nearly $2 a gallon, but did you hear them praise Obama for the decrease? Of course not. The truth is that a president can’t make gas prices go up or down. There are many market factors at work that make this happen. I would say the same holds true for the stock market.

Oh, and the Carrier corporation in Indiana where The Donald allegedly saved 1100 jobs? It turns out 300 of those jobs weren’t leaving, anyway, so he saved 800 jobs. But Donald is a prone to exaggerate as he is to molest a woman foolish enough to get within arm’s length. There are 1300 jobs that are still going to Mexico, but let’s not talk about that.

In order to “save” these jobs he had to promise the corporation $7 million in tax breaks, so it was more or less a bribe using government funds to “encourage” a company to keep jobs in the United States.

Here’s the problem. In 2009 after Barack Obama took over a country teetering on the edge of a depression due to eight years of Bush-Cheney deregulation, the new president did something very similar and saved 1500 auto industry jobs.

Republicans in Congress went crazy and leveled a barrage of criticism at him. Mike Pence, an Indiana congressman at the time, stood up in the Capitol and denounced Obama for what he did, i.e., using government carrots to save jobs.

Eight years later Governor Mike Pence, now the Vice-president elect, is full of praise for himself and the Trump team for spending the tax money of his Indiana constituents to save 800 jobs.

This type of action is anathema to the Republican Party, and it sets a precedent for other corporations to hold up the government for perks in exchange for keeping jobs here.

My stock market friend says I don’t give Trump credit for anything.

That’s not true.

I want to commend him for being extremely consistent with his cabinet picks.

You see, Donald Trump knows nothing about anything and is completely inexperienced and unqualified to be president.

His cabinet picks are also inexperienced and unqualified, to the point where if you look at their resumes and philosophies they become laughable…an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief who doesn’t believe in climate change, a billionaire Education Secretary who knows nothing about public schools, the narcoleptic Ben Carson as Housing and Urban Development (HUD) director, whose main experience was that he lived in a housing project for a while, etc. etc.

Trump’s cabinet picks come under the heading of “YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP.”

And what do Trump supporters have to say about this? Nothing. It’s as if the cat has got their tongues.

Or would it be more appropriate, given the President-elect’s penchant for colorful language, to say the “pussy” has got their tongues?

The definition of the informal phrase “cold turkey is “the abrupt and complete cessation of taking a drug to which one is addicted.”

It’s unclear as to what constitutes addiction. There are addicts of different levels. For example, I know an alcoholic who drinks 30 beers a day along with a half-pint of Dewar’s scotch (he’s a multimillionaire), and I know another who drinks a six-pack every day. Both are highly functioning and never miss work, but the former is certainly more of an addict than the latter.

I can’t say I was a political junkie, but I did spend an hour in the morning watching “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, an hour in the late afternoon watching “Meet the Press Daily” on the same network, and perhaps another hour during the day while working out, gardening, or stacking wood. These three hours were all done with the use of headphones connected to the television, so I was doing other things in other places proving that two things can be done simultaneously.

I’m just trying to make myself feel better here.

Add to that next to nothing on Saturday but 2 ½ continuous hours on Sunday morning: “This Week with George Stephanopoulos from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM, Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (my one masochistic action for the week), and the last half of “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM.

If you add all this up it comes out to approximately 17 ½ hours per week—uh, add another 2 ½ hours because I might catch a half hour of Chris Matthews now and then and maybe a wee bit of TV on Saturday, so call it 20 hours a week.

Is that an addiction? I report, you decide.

I had decided well before Election Day that if Ted Cruz, John Kasich, or Bernie Sanders became president I would disengage. As a dutiful Democrat I would have voted for Sanders, who gets on my last nerve, but that would be my last contact with him.

For some reason Donald Trump didn’t disturb me as much, probably because he’s certifiably insane and isn’t responsible for what comes out of his mouth.

The night of the election I was watching the early returns come in, and although I was still sure Hillary would win I made a vow to stop watching politics. If it could even be this close, I reasoned, there was no point dealing with an American electorate so obtuse it would even consider voting for someone like Trump.

The outcome of the election cemented my resolve. In the immortal words of Roberto Duran, “NO MAS” when it comes to watching politics on television.

I went cold turkey. At AA meetings alcoholics get up and announce how long they’ve been sober. Today is my one month anniversary. I haven’t looked at MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News even one time.

If I was addicted, then all addicts should be so lucky because I haven’t even been tempted, and I don’t miss it a bit.

How have I replaced it? I followed the advice of my son, a Berklee-trained guitarist, and began listening to music.

My cable subscription provides “Music Choice,” a group of commercial-free stations that operate 24/7 and include 50 different genres of music for my listening pleasure.

I favor R&B classics, 70’s, smooth jazz, and light classical, but mostly R&B.

When it comes to a choice of listening to Marvin Gaye or Joe Scarborough, Diana Ross or Rachel Maddow, James Brown or Bill O’Reilly, the decision is a no-brainer.

No more agita, no more aggravation of my colitis, and I’m much happier and more relaxed.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage Italian.

Before the November election I made the keen observation that if Hillary Clinton won she would be the first female in American history to win the presidency, and being the first, whether it applies to the man on the moon or the ascension of Mount Everest, is something that can never be taken away from you.

In a similar vein, being the last person to do something cannot be taken away. You could be the last man to die in World War II or the last person to talk to Abraham Lincoln before he was assassinated.

On October 27, 2016, along with thousands of other drivers, I made history by driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike during its last day before the elimination of toll booths and toll collectors.

All those formerly secure, good-paying jobs on the toll road are gone with the wind.

It was not illegal immigration that took them away. It was not importing or NAFTA or anything but the march of technology.

Last week I went to visit a patient at the Veterans Administration (VA) hospital in Bedford, MA. I pushed the elevator button and the doors opened up revealing a robot that looked very much like R2-D2.

The robot said in its mechanical voice, “Exiting elevator.” It came out and hung a right down the corridor. A hospital employee told me it delivers medication to the patients..

Restaurant chains like Applebee’s are eliminating wait staff jobs by installing a small computer in booths. Patrons type in their food orders, “servers” deliver the meals to the tables, and when finished customers use the same computer to pay by credit card.

A headline in “Futurist Speaker” states:

TWO BILLION JOBS WORLD WIDE WILL DISAPPEAR BY 2030

Many of those jobs will be in the United States. Five critical areas are cited:

(1) Power industry (2) Automobile transportation (3) Education (4) 3D Printers (5) Bots

Numbers 1, 4, and 5 require too much explanation for this space, so let’s look at automobile transportation:

DRIVERLESS CARS

“With over two million people involved in car accidents every year in the U.S., it won’t take long for legislators to be convinced that driverless cars are a substantially safer and more effective option.

JOBS GOING AWAY

Taxi and limo drivers, bus drivers, truck drivers, gas stations, parking lots, traffic cops, and traffic courts.

Pizza and other food delivery drivers, mail delivery drivers, FedEx and UPS delivery jobs, all will be gone.

Fewer doctors and nurses will be needed to treat injuries.

As people shift from owning their own vehicles to a transportation-on-demand system, the total number of vehicles manufactured will also begin to decline.”

On the bright side there will be no more DUI’s and old folks will no longer be driving through the front windows of CVS stores.

Here’s what Futurist Speaks says about my former career in education:

“The OpenCourseware Movement took hold in 2001 when MIT started recording all their courses and making them available for free online. They currently have over 2080 courses available that have been downloaded 131 million times.

These can be accessed by Apple’s i Tunes U. This platform offers over 500,000 courses from 1,000 universities. They’ve recently moved into the K-12 area.

All course are free…so how do colleges that charge steep tuitions compete with free?…Teachers only need to teach once, record it, and then move on…transitioning from a teaching model to a learning model accessible at any time from home.”

The move is to a teacherless education system.

JOBS GOING AWAY

Teachers, trainers, and professors

Manufacturing may come back to the Rust Belt states, but jobs won’t come with them. Nearly everything will be done with robots. Steel won’t come back, and coal is competing with natural gas that is cheaper and cleaner. In the future there won’t be any coal miners’ daughters.

Technology will create new jobs but nowhere near as many as it replaces. This is comparable to the Industrial Revolution where agricultural jobs were eliminated and caused workers to move from the farm to the factory. It’s déjà vu all over again.

Ironically for the party that hates government, the United States is going to be like ancient Rome—everybody on the dole, lots of entertainment (think the Coliseum) to keep the voting masses happy, and “Uncle Sugar” in charge of our lives from cradle to grave, white people as well as people of color getting “FREE STUFF.”

“Oh, the humanity.” As Nobel laureate Bob Dylan wrote, “The times, they are a-changing.”

I was listening to the radio in my car the other day, and I heard something that made me shake my head with laughter.

John King, CNN news anchor, was being interviewed on National Public Radio, and he said Donald Trump was considering Gen. David Petraeus for the position of Secretary of State.

Now if you’re a Trumpeteer, you’re saying to yourself, “What’s wrong with that? Petraeus is a wonderful man.”

That’s largely true except that the general has had his security clearance taken away from him. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for giving classified information to his mistress so she could use it in a book she was writing. What he did reminds us of the Seinfeld episode about the “little head overruling the big head.” He could have been convicted of a felony, but Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder let him off the hook by allowing him to cop to a lesser charge.

Trump screamed long and loud throughout the whole presidential campaign that Mrs. Clinton should be in jail for her carelessness with classified information on her personal e-mail account. Much hue and cry was made about this, but she has neither been indicted nor convicted of anything. After months of concerted effort, the FBI could not find enough evidence to charge her.

Now Trump is considering someone who would need a waiver from Congress or a presidential pardon to obtain a security clearance.

Donald Trump is completely unaware of the hypocrisy of his actions. Correct that: Donald Trump is completely unaware.

Wait, there’s more. Another potential choice for the position would be Willard Romney, the unsuccessful 2012 candidate The Donald referred to as “a loser” and who was violently opposed to Trump’s nomination and candidacy.

Here’s what Willard said about Donald in a nationally-televised press conference he called earlier this year:

“Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers…

His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president.”

Here’s what Mr. Trump had to say about Willard and the 2012 election:

“Mitt Romney would have dropped to his knees to get my endorsement.”

Can somebody explain that comment? Was he saying that Mitt would kneel in prayer as a devout Mormon, or was this an allusion to Monica Lewinsky? Nah, it can’t be the latter. Donald is way too classy to make a remark like that.

Wait, wait, wait, there’s one more choice—“America’s Mayor,” the hysterical, hyperventilating Rudy Giuliani. As Trump’s most vocal supporter during the campaign he’s looking for a reward, and he’s on the list. But Giuliani is certifiably insane, and he’s the most repulsive man in America.

I’d go with Petraeus. Barack Obama should pardon him and give him back his clearance to save us from Willard or Rudy.

John King went on to say that Mr. Trump, in another wacko tweet, called for the punishment of anyone who burns a flag to include a year in jail and loss of citizenship.

How could he not know that the issue has already been settled by the Supreme Court as far back as 1990? Flag burning is protected under the First Amendment.

Perhaps that’s not so surprising. During the campaign season Mr. Trump opined that “Belgium is a beautiful city.” When asked about Brexit he replied, “Huh?” When his aides scolded him for insulting a Gold Star mother they found out he didn’t know what a Gold Star mother was.

His other cabinet picks and aides are from the bizarro world: an avowed racist, a white supremacist, a climate change denier, an Islamophobic general, an education secretary who has no experience with public education, and after promising to “drain the Wall Street swamp,” five multibillionaires who desire to shred the safety net for the middle and lower classes.

The only way to survive the next four years is to have a great sense of humor, kick back, relax, and get your daily chuckle from this presidential unreality show.

Donald Trump isn’t going to make America great again. He’s going to GRATE America.