Sold $6.24 million at Sotheby’s
Ya, it sold. Trump sold. My God how could we have let our families, neighbors, and fellow citizens go so bananas??
As my wife said, “what world do you live on?”
Richard Kimball
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Comments closedSELFISH: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself
Long, long ago in a world now far, far away, I was reading of an eighteenth-century Scottish historian who suggested democracy would always eat itself. A people starting in bondage would develop great courage, he said. That would lead to liberty, in turn liberty would lead to abundance, abundance to selfishness, selfishness to complacency, complacency to apathy, apathy to dependence and thus back to bondage.
I had thought him wrong then and gave much of my life to prove him so, but I would not now. Age has given me clarity; a clarity I wish I did not have. Selfishness takes primacy in all beings and is particularly evident amongst human beings. How else could it be that we have ended the existence of so many other species and now stand on the precipice of ending our own.
Or as H. L Mencken, a devout conservative wrote, “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissist moron.”
Richard Kimball
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Well, the day has come! Are you nervous? Are you looking forward to it finally being over, or like me, feeling anxious about what cometh?
For me, likely on some “enemies list”, well, I’ll be catching a plane into the Mexican Sierra Madres early in the morning and as I joke with my Trump supporting friends and family, I’ll be taking with me my old rusty Red Rider and a can of shot.
Could be that I’m just going on a vacation but I’m a bit relieved that I am. To parody the Woody Alan joke, “I’m not afraid democracy will die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens!”
My two simplistic takes on why this has all come to be:
Public education has been under successful attack for decades, with civics education rendered almost non-existent resulting in the first measurable declines in civic knowledge and history, even as it must be clear to the most challenged amongst us that after thousands of years of bumbling, our country brought a democracy anchored in public awareness that exploded human freedom, knowledge and advancements throughout the globe making us and much of the world the brain blowing success that we are.
Discussion of public education, where we once led the world and now lead the decline has been non-existent for decades.
So very many politicians, over the years have been manipulative, twisted truth, hollow promised this and that never to bees, that it bores the now cynical masses.
Along comes the jester, who magnifies the manipulations, lies and promises to such an entertaining, dreamy, cartoonist level that it imprisons the attention of every media news outlet and in turn each citizen, “What the Hell” many think, “He’s different!”
Anyway, I can be found crouching amongst the boulders high in the Siera Madras with my trusty Red Rider thinking of the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression and a couple of World Wars when America survived much worse.
Richard Kimball
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A pup named Democracy was found abandoned, dehydrated and covered with fleas and ticks floating on a pile of garbage in an Arizona canal today.
Saved by the Human Society it found a new home elsewhere!
Richard Kimball
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Beating both CNN and FOX NEWS, Kimball projects that Harris has won the 2024 Presidential race.
“With an impressive ground game to get out the vote, Harris overcame her ‘just another standard politician’ history, sweeping in gains in both the House and the Senate,” said Kimball.
A remarkably, premature projection, from a gifted researcher that has not accurately forecasted any Presidential race since his hero Jimmy Carter’s a half-century ago.
“I ‘am due, I ‘am due, this time I ‘am due,” insisted Kimball. “It cannot be that so many won’t fight for the righteous Grand Old Party by expunging this pretentious conservative pustule.”
Richard Kimball
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If you are an honorable person, a lie is hard to excuse. In fact, every single time you don’t tell truth, the slam on your conscience tells you all you need to know.
When any normal person lies, there’s no excuse, no “misspoken”, there is only the instant slump shoulder of depression.
That is of course if you are not running for office. Then, and only then, does a political conscience take the bench and find comfort in lies that might meet a desired end.
Today, lies take center stage and separates us on opposing sides of the truth, imagining there are opposing sides of truth.
All work in the murk of obfuscation. Curing that was the purpose of Vote Smart.
Richard Kimball
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I do not like Kamala. She represents the kind of politics that I have railed against my entire life…changing positions for political expediency, cloaking positions that a citizen struggling to self-govern is required to have to do so successfully.
But I HATE TRUMP. As I said privately to friends when he inexplicably became President in 2017, “Get me into the Oval Office, I can kill him, and all I would need is a pencil.”
Condemn me as you will, but as with the rise of Hitler or Atila the Hun, I would have willingly slammed the breaks on the evil that from time to time grabs a grip on the discontented and leads them into the darkness trashing kindness and lives.
It is unlikely that you have lived the horror that vindictive tyrants can bring to your world and that is how from time to time they repeat themselves.
Welcome to your moment in history with nothing more than a pencil on November 5th
Richard Kimball
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It must be evidence of my aging; I am just not able to register the seething hate broiling under so many that Trump has exposed and tapped into.
Why don’t I get it?
Why am I not one of those captured by whatever it is that Trump has or says?
Why am I not primed to revolt?
Why don’t I get it?
I have no answers, no excuses, no understanding.
So many are unfamiliar to me, foreign, other worldly.
My bewilderment must find aspiration and anchor in faith and then hope that my hero was on this one occasion wrong:
“Having faith is believing in something you just know ain’t true.” Mark Twain
Richard Kimball
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Comments closedToday, no one is a greater danger to Americans than Americans.
American’s worry each other, don’t trust each other, blame each other, condemn each other because there is no common ground for truth.
We are fully capable and with immense ease able to turn this around. “Everyone has a right to their own opinion but not their own facts,” an old, dead boss of mine once said. All it takes is a place for facts, one untainted source, one unopinionated source simply a factual accounting of what was, or precisely what Vote Smart once attempted.
Great changes, important movements that change civic culture and destiny almost always take place when people are in pain, either physical or fiscal pain. They do not happen when people are clothed, housed and fed or at least not until now, when the people’s slightest misgivings are kneaded into anger amongst their greatest good fortunes.
Long ago when I was a State Senator, I opened a letter, and a .44 caliber slug dropped out. Without a note, return address, or any sense of what I was condemned for, it seemed such a silly threat I saw no need to report it.
Today, fear sells. Fear-peddling politicians, Hollywood producers, the media, all get paid if we pay attention. And nothing gets our attention like screaming FIRE in the theater of anywhere.
Vote Smart’s worries were consumed with what was happening to us from within, most acutely by the changing character of the politicians trashing truth we had to select from. It has been an inferior crop of candidates, less distinguished, less principled, less devoted to the nation than to themselves.
Every generation of Americans has had some battle to sustain freedom.
Know it is this slowly chewing cancer dinning on truth and reality, where every fact is twisted and tortured for selfish gain that is our generation’s challenge. It was why we were building Vote Smart.
All politicians today, rant about our horrible world, and how much worse it’s going to be if their opponent wins. All while we wallow in lives that would be the envy of our grandparents and every generation of beings going back through all millennia.
How is it that we can be so whiny, holding this year’s long party of grievance. A party that has harvested most of the fruit grown by past American generations along with the buds that would have belonged to future generations. What the Hell, if we are going to do it, don’t we have some moral obligation to enjoy and party instead of complain?
Or, OR, we could do a simple thing, create a trusted source of just facts, facts without interpretation, in the dream that most, both conservative and liberal, will again find footing in truth and extend this glorious “experiment” that has brought so much advance to the world.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder 1988
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If you are getting on in years, do you worry about having a bad ending, a long and painful one. Does it trouble you that you cannot find a peaceful means to pass on, on the internet? If you look, what you will first find is some message that amounts to “Don’t Do It!” followed by a jaw droppingly number of (cover my ass) equivocations, and finally a listing of the two gruesome options most of the 49,000 annual U. S. suicides are funneled into: blow your brains out or hang yourself.
This is due to the power of cults or what we think of as religious leaders. A power given by most of us seamlessly devoted to those claiming to be God’s representatives on earth, all of whom insist that regardless of your agony you suffer through it.
So silly is the notion that God is all powerful but cannot get it up to talk to each of us without some self-anointed mediator.
I for one hear God’s messages every day: pleasure, guilt, contentment, misery, happiness, sadness, anxiety, longing, pride, humility, jubilation, terror, sorrow, hope, on and on. Messages bounce off me like my tennis ball on the backboard.
But I digress. All I asked the internet was a simple answer to what are the most peaceful methods for ending one’s own life should one enter terminally agony.
NO! I have no interest in taking my own life, but many suffering do, and I may one day. Many elderly, such as I wonder about it, think about it and worry about it for a multitude of unselfish reasons. Do you know the answer?
Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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Some weeks ago, following Waltz’s performance at the Democratic Convention I unfortunately wrote this:
“It is that precious thing, the real thing, that I finally saw tonight in politics when Tim Walz spoke. There is no mistaking the real thing. If you see it, you know it. It is a thing no human can counterfeit. So thrilled with finally seeing it in my life it dampened my eyes just as it did with his teary-eyed son. Something else you just can’t counterfeit.”
Then as so often, disappointment and embarrassment set in. My endless need to find purity in someone, anyone in politics found my shoulders adjusted and now slung low:
WALTZ: “As the events were unfolding, several of us went in (to Tiananmen).”
WALTZ: “Donald Trump’s asking for a nationwide abortion ban.”
WALTZ: “When (Trump) left office, we had more people unemployed, percentage-wise, than the Great Depression.”
Waltz did not “misspeak,” he was not taken out of context or confused. He had simply been swallowed by the whale that has become the accepted, even required deportment in the politics of our day.
Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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Some days I wake up and answer with a very big NO! I am the kind of guy that catches indoor spiders to set them free outdoors. So, I don’t want to play a part in the ending of any living thing.
On other days, I wake up and answer with a very big YES! Abortions should be required of every pregnant woman and post-birth abortions should be the law of the land for anyone not obeying. Only in that way can we rid the earth of this human befoulment. Now I know, on those YES days, all people are aghast at my position, but I feel confident that every other life form on the planet would stand in ovation.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
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In politics, as in all life your fans can become your biggest maligners.
You do not know what people really think of you until you are seen as used, vulnerable and expendable, which gives courage and makes bold those that were never at your side.
But also, for those lucky enough to have them, there stand naked are your friends.
Richard Kimball
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Back 40 years ago, when I was a State Senator and had something meaningful to say about abortions, I was a knee jerk. That is to say, I believed it was none of my business, even on the Senate issue I am currently recalling (should a teenager seeking an abortion be required to tell her parents) I was a NO as long as the rules set by Row vs. Wade, (the wisdom of its day) were applied.
Now a half century later, knowledge (wisdom) has adjusted somewhat. And now, as then, I turn to those in the business of knowing for a knowing of what to believe and a what to do.
Most involved in prenatal medicine believe there’s clear evidence that a fetus – a developing baby in the womb – can’t feel physical pain until after the 24th week (6th month) of pregnancy. But many others say it’s possible for a fetus to feel pain as early as 12 weeks (3 months) into its development.
Today 93% of abortions were done at or before 13 weeks. While 5.5% were done between 14 and 20 weeks and less than 1% were performed after 21 weeks.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (RCOG), say that a fetus isn’t capable of feeling pain until at least 24-25 weeks.
The conclusions say these lifelong experienced, in what I know nothing about is:
Today 93% of abortions are done at or before 13 weeks. While 5.5% are done between 14 and 20 weeks and less than 1% are performed after 21 weeks.
The lack of consensus is as confounding for me, as it is for the “experts.”
Bottom line: Where do you draw that line between life’s urge to fornicate and the growing life that results?
It has become harder for a thoughtful someone, anyone, even me who is careful not to step on an ant not to sympathize WHEN two bodies share the resources of one. WHENEVER that is!
How about you?
Richard Kimball
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Comments closed Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy |
For some of you receiving this email, we may not always agree on politics, but I always respect your opinion and reasoning and your right to disagree with me and think differently about things. Many people don’t know, but I have deep Republican roots on my Mom’s side. My Grandmother Peggy Hurley was good friends with Barry Goldwater and served as an alternate delegate for him at the 1964 Convention. Nana’s house was covered in GOP inspired memorabilia. There was an elephant piggy bank, elephant coasters, elephant coffee mugs, GOP ashtrays, lighters, plaques, hand towels, coins, you name it, the house was a GOP museum. I’m sure some of you can relate… My grandmother was the kindest, smartest, most loving person you would ever meet, and she was also a proud, right wing Goldwater Republican. So, I understand and respect traditional, Old Republican Party values like: hard work, free markets, individual responsibility, self-determination, lower taxes, less regulation, less bureaucracy, strong defense, fiscal responsibility, etc.
If you are a Republican reading this, I’m not trying to convert you into a Democrat and I think that having a strong, principled Republican party is a necessary component of a stable democracy here in the U.S. In other words, we (all of us) need the Old Republican Party back. The problem is that the Fake Republican Party under Trump is trying to undermine democracy as we know it and if Trump succeeds, we won’t have any policy issues to argue about.
So, I have made a few videos in hopes that I can help shift the paradigm back to what it used to be and persuade maybe just a few undecided voters to reject Trump and vote for Vice President Harris. And if you are a Republican, then maybe it’s just this once because the times call for it.
If you agree with what I’m saying about Trump and you think that someone else would benefit from seeing the videos, please feel free to forward or post them. Also, if you are interested, the long version on my Youtube channel is more persuasive, but fairly long at 20 minutes.
Thank you,
Pat DeConcini
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Preview YouTube video Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy
Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy
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It’s just not possible to comprehend the hate being injected into those crushed but still surviving in Gaza or struggling for freedom in Ukraine, if you have not suffered as they do.
Gaza and Ukraine are the best modern-day examples of human vengeance and greed before us.
I, for one, have never experienced such horror, which leaves me without any tools or experience to guide my empathy.
The best I can do was during my 14th birthday, a year when some communist named Khrushchev said he would bury us and started shipping nuclear missiles off our shores to do just that.
I was scared, particularly my Senator, a guy named Barry Goldwater said if you lived in Tucson, (my town) and they fire you might as well sit on your roof and watch the show. Tucson was surrounded by a dozen or so Titan nuclear missiles of our own.
That was as close as I got to worry about bombs landing in my backyard. But they never came and I went right back to my pleasant life in Lala Land.
What would you do, if the lives you loved, your town and home were just splattered about you?
For me, like most of you, I would instantly learn hate and be engorged with a desire for blood boiling, vicious, vengeance.
Then there are those that don’t react as me, won’t kill, can’t kill, yet run into the horror of it all to save lives, offer comfort, sanity and hope. Where are the monuments to them?
Richard Kimball
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Comments closedThat was the furious, in my face, response to a speech I once gave about the need to provide voters with easy access to accurate relevant facts about candidates that anyone, conservative or liberal, could turn for the truth in absolute confidence.
That quote was from Arizona’s representative on the Democratic National Committee, the “The oldest continuing party… leading with its values…” says their website. It is exactly that horror of hypocrisy that has led to the frustration that Trump feeds and grows on.
Are you going to be a problem
It is not too late. Do your homework. VoteSmart.org, the organization I had been referring to in that speech, is still a place that can help you do it.
Richard Kimball
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Comments closedTHE EVIL WITHIN US ALL
Much like me, “I never met a person I didn’t like,” said Will Rogers a century ago.
It’s a sad lesson learned by life’s end that, that feeling is not always reciprocal. As such, it was with Will who later said, “There ain’t nothing that breaks up homes, country and nations like someone exposing (what they really think of you)”
A slap me in the face awareness of this, first smacked me when opening my mail as a State Senator and this dropped out:
Turns out that the slug was from my campaign manager who thankfully also threatened then President Jimmy Carter, bringing in the Secret Service to hog tie him.
People you trusted can be taught to blame or hate from sources you never realized existed for reasons so foreign to your experience, you never, even in your darkest thoughts, fantasized where there.
So it is that most of my fellow Americans, who I trusted and have been so proud and encouraging of, MAY turn to the dark side on Election Day and unleash the lesser, angrier, more hateful selves that nests within us all.
Richard Kimball
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Comments closedI once heard a Political Science professor arrogantly brag that he never voted, because the chances of HIS vote making the difference was infinitesimal.
It infuriated me that someone with a doctorate, teaching others would say such a stupid thing.
His self-aggrandizing argument completely ignored what was even obvious to the simpletons amongst us. His power to vote was not tossed away. It did not evaporate with his pomposity.
A vote is a little hard nugget of power each one of us is given. Its power cannot be thrown away, when tossed, it lives on, on its own. If it is not used, it simply moves on and doubles-up the power of someone that does vote.
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder — Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org or Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
Comments closedDebate performance may earn your vote for an Academy Award but not something as precious as your vote for President.
Tonight’s Presidential debate is the first Presidential Debate I have refused to watch since Nixon (who sweated too much) vs Kennedy. Largely won because Kennedy’s people recognized Kennedy never sweated and had the heat turned up on the debate stage.
Presidential debates have nothing to do with being President and everything to do with theater. So, if your vote depends on theater, presidential debates to professional wrestling matches are for you. All are choreographed by dozens of experienced manipulators of you, the duck they hope to shoot.
Richard Kimball
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