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A guest commentary from a friend worth hearing: Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy

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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Air Force Veteran Speaks Out; Why Republicans Must Vote For Democracy

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Love vs. Hate

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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“It is not our job to educate but to win!”

That 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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THE 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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VOTING HAS STARTED FOR ALL BUT THE PROFESSOR!

I 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

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THE DEBATE

Debate 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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TIM WALZ

The real thing is so rare that the only time I ever saw it was on an early episode of West Wing when Leo McGarry asked a cynical Josh Lyman to travel up north to see some Governor speak. What he saw was the real thing. You instantly wanted him to become President and in TV land he did.

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 cannot fake.

Richard Kimball

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NO ONE IS QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT

.

There are only the unqualified, some grossly more so than others.

You learn to be President when President. Well, not everyone, but it has been our good fortune that many have risen above themselves to learn and tough out the task honorably. Presidents like Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt (yes both) and Reagan are rated amongst the best by historians, while the likes of Buchanan (led us into the Civil War), Trump and Harrison (Corrupt) amongst the worst.

This is to say nothing about the lower politicians, you know little about, now peddling their elixirs to seize your vote.

I offer myself as example: My first job after college was as an Automative Manager “in training” at Kmart.  I knew nothing about cars, had never even owned one, but there I was one day, giving advice to some customer complaining that their car was losing power going up hills. My response, “Did you check your battery,” became a company joke.  Well, that was until I bested myself when my garage crew became overloaded, and I decided to sell four of our best radials and put them on myself.  I did a good job.  I put on a green smock to keep my clothes clean, used one of those lug nut guns, zapped the nuts off, slapped the tires on and sent them on their way with a sense of newfound pride.  It took less than a minute for one of the mechanics, to ask, “What or those?”  At my feet were the five lug nuts belonging on the right rear tire.  My whimpering sprint was Olympic, toward the freeway entrance I flew just in time to see the tire crumple and bend out the fender of that shiny new Cadillac.

 I used to enjoy telling that story AFTER citizens elected me to the Arizona Corporation Commission, where I became chairman and eventually led Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona in its efforts to regulate the countries largest nuclear power plant, something I knew far less about than changing tires.

Flogging myself with that story should worry you about how little you really know about most of the candidates you will choose from this November.

As it turned out, I learned on the job, studied hard and did a pretty fair job defending consumers.  But the vast majority won’t know that, nor about most of the candidates they select from this November.  Not because they cannot know, but because they are busy and comfortable enough with the way things are.  Most will select based on what they’ve been told by whatever media source soothes the whatevers they already think.

There is a cure for this.

Richard Kimball

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YOU’RE NOT LIKELY TO KNOW HIS NAME,

but Tom Matthews was the Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth wannabe clipping Trump’s ear.  Had he been an inch closer to center, what would have happened?

Would MAGAS go supernova and attempt to dismember all the fantastical goblins Trump has fingered in the “Dark State?”

Would one of the Trump wannabes grab his banner and carry forth or would they just feed on one another?

Would the Republican Party be regained by lifelong conservatives riveted on reducing spending but for military protection?

Would the ebbs and waves of politics return to that world of responsible give and take that has so continuously inched America and the world forward toward fairness?

I don’t know, but it is my guess that Trump is the one Gorilla Glue that holds MAGAS from each other’s throats.

Richard Kimball

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In Politics, Even the Weird Call the Weird, “WEIRD!”

Campaigns are like Swap Meets only where opinions are traded for votes……….well, ya, sometimes cash!

Who amongst you would quickly flip and then flop on the opposite side of yourself?  Say on:

A fracking ban?

Medicare for all?

Decriminalizing immigrants?

Defunding the police?

Eliminating private insurance?

A politician would!

Richard Kimball

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Getting Old

It was the late 1970s, I think. Ed, Tim and I, college buddies, returning for our university’s Homecoming were just getting on with our careers in business, law, and politics. As we walked a street popular with college students a group looked at us and passed by mumbling to each other, we picked up on a single line, “Ugg, old people.”

That was 45 years ago. Now they, if they have been lucky enough to live as long as we have, are in their mid-sixties wondering where all the time went and wondering why their pee pees have to wee wee all the time.

Even with the wrinkles and sags glaring at them each morning they won’t yet get it with a brain insisting, “You’ve got this, you’ve always had this,” while their bodies cringe and mumble, “What the fuck were you thinking.”  

After a recovery of a month or so that once took a few days, they might consider their brains inability to adjust to their bodies slow decay. Not likely yet, as they struggle to hold on to what they once knew.

It is not until the brain starts giving them hints, like the time at breakfast not long ago when my wife suddenly remembered that she promised to call someone.  Not knowing the number, she jerked up from her seat went to the counter asking, “Do you by any chance have a phone book?”  “Well no,” they responded but went into the kitchen to check.  A few minutes later, delivering a small miracle, they had an old phone book and handed it to her. She fumbled through a few pages and then with that puzzled look known to all of us in our 70’s, she returned to our table to ask, “Who was I going to call?”

Or that favorite example of me, when I needed to rush to the bank before it closed to get a document notarized for a grant request.

 I frantically looked around my desk. Couldn’t find it. I went up to the bedroom, thoroughly searched the car, the patio, the living room, the kitchen, both bathrooms and storeroom. Nothing!  I then did it all again. When it was too late to make it to the bank even if I found it, I flopped down on the couch spewing every vile expression I had collected in life, just as the document appeared.  There it was in the one place I had not looked, flailing in the air in my very own hand. 

No, it would not matter if I ran into those youngsters calling Ed, Tim and I old and tried to tell them how their bodies and brains were trumpeting that the end was coming.

But it is, and I just feel lucky to have lived long, known many, enjoyed much, besides, like Mark Twain, “I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Richard Kimball

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The Lost Chapter

Chapter 53.5

 Like Biden, I am old now. Well maybe not that old, but close and like him, no one much thinks about coming to me for council.  I make silly mistakes. Like not long ago toward my end at Vote Smart, when I needed to rush to the bank before it closed to get a document notarized for a grant request.

 I frantically looked around my desk. Couldn’t find it. I went up to the bedroom, thoroughly searched the car, the patio, the living room, the kitchen, both bathrooms and storeroom. Nothing!  I then did it all again. When it was too late to make it to the bank even if I found it, I flopped down on the couch spewing every vile expression I had collected in life, just as the document appeared.  There it was in the one place I had not looked, flailing in the air in my very own hand. 

That is my excuse for having bypassed a chapter I wrote many chapters ago, but somehow overlooked in my countless revisitation to the things I wrote.

So here it is the lost chapter:

 NATIONAL POLITICAL COURAGE TEST

 Land disputes with well-educated Oregonians soiling themselves over the thought of darker peoples were not the only distractions.

 More fateful was the growing number of less accomplished, self-serving political applicants muddying elections with misinformation.

 It would be an expensive effort and called The National Political Awareness Test. A stupid name for the crucial test of any applicant for any job, only applied to in this case to those that wanted to run citizen’s lives.

We began the effort as the means to gather the issue positions of the candidates during our early testing back in in 1990 in North Carolina and Nebraska. Back then, our staff of one, Lorena O’Leary, and I contacted each congressional candidate or their campaign and asked them to respond to questions, polls showed voters were interested in. But it was not until the news media picked up on what we were doing that most candidates were scared into doing the right thing and responding.

 It gave us the notion that it took a certain amount of courage for a candidate to take the test and we should be calling it a Courage Test.

 By the time we set up our offices at Oregon State, in 1992, the staff and students were applying the test to all congressional candidates including the presidential election.

 The staff put on the most amazing full court press to pressure every candidate to do what we called “the right and honorable thing” by answering the people’s questions.

It was an exhausting effort, to ensure that every campaign was well pressured, we convinced the media and all our board members to participate.

The test was meticulously designed:

First, for an issue question to make it on to the questionnaire it had to overcome a number of hurdles.

  1.  At least one polls over the prior three-year period would have to show that the employer (the people) thought it was of importantance.
  •  Party leadership comments had to be gathered showing the issue was likely to be dealt with in the coming congress and the various interests concerned with the issue had to state that it was a key concern.
  •  Questions for the test then had to be reviewed by a cadre of Political Scientists, representing every state. Their jobs were to make sure the issues were germane in their state and that the language of our questions was in proper form and staff was not tripping over some sub-conscience partisan prejudice.
  •  Finally, each question had to be reviewed by our entire Founding Board to make sure they did not see some advantage or disadvantage to their Democratic or Republican parties or any other party. We had several independents and third parties on our Board.

 When the questions had passed this extensive muster, staff were set free to test each candidate’s willingness to provide what we considered essential information to voters.

 The staff was not just told to send out the questionnaires. Oh no! The demands placed on them were of a standard that had never been seen before and would never be equaled again.

 They first had to organize over 200 daily newspapers and national media to partner with and help apply pressure to the candidates along with key members of both parties from our Founding Board.

 In the mix of demands to take the test would be those by national leaders of the candidates own party, a national media outlet (CNN, Fox News, PBS, National Journal, etc.) and a key one from their own district.

If the candidate did not respond to any of them, they received a final written red warning card saying the deadline was up and they must respond or be listed as having flunked the test.

 Furthermore, every communication had to be documented. If a staff member or student talked to a campaign they had to report when they communicated to the campaign, who they talked to, and what transpired in the conversation.

 From Vote Smart’s standpoint everyone took the test whether they answered questions or not.  It was a measure of their courage to answer the voter’s questions. If they passed, they made our Honor Roll, if they failed, they were put on a Flunk List.

 Most of the candidates, even most of the presidential candidates, some angrily. However, the two that actually won their primaries:  Bill Clinton responded by sending us four creates of position papers saying you can find my answers in here, while Jeb Bush, helping to run his father campaign said, “Yes he definitely going to answer. It is on the President’s desk.”  But the answers never came.

Criticisms were expected and immediately dealt with:

“The test is to long.” We shortened it to 20 minutes or about .0001% of the average time congressional candidates spend collecting money.

“True and false or multiple-choice questions are too confining.” We allowed them to just comment on the question, any response was considered passing. One commented, “This is a dumb question, and you are a dumb ass organization.” That answer passed our test. The answers did not need to be germane to the question. All we wanted was a response that we could print word for word.

“I am campaigning now and too busy.” – We gave them six weeks to answer.

“I have not considered all these issues.” –  We let them leave 30% of the questions blank and still pass the merits of the test.

 We treated all candidate responses just like any other factual data we collected:

  1.  It was entered into a hidden database verbatim.
  2.  It was proofed and verified by the person  

 data entering.

  •  Like in all of our systems, supervisors

   put in intentional errors forcing proofers to catch       them all and no other.

With the responsibility to ensure voters the facts, just the facts, and to protect the candidates with precise accuracy about what they said, did and their histories the data had to be perfect.

We did not make mistakes.  In fact, when the Markle foundation did an independent study using one thousand randomly selected families to review the political databases of the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, Harvard University and a half dozen other institutions they discovered that Vote Smart was by far the best, most accurate and most useful.

 Sometimes candidates would try and contort the test for political advantage.

 There were hundreds of examples. Here are a few:

 A long-term Democratic congressman from Michigan had passed the test as did his opponent. Michigan being a strong NRA state they both reported opposition to any gun control measures.  However, a massacre had just occurred at Columbine High School, so two weeks before the election with polls showing the incumbent in danger of losing, he called to say he had made a mistake on that gun control question. He demanded to be allowed to change his position and state that he was opposed to guns like those used in the massacre.  Well, we cannot say a position is other than what the candidate is now saying. With new knowledge a candidate can have a change of opinion.  So, we changed his response in our records and then, within a matter of hours, he saturated TVs with ads condemning his opponent for “His heartless support of such deadly firearms.”

 Or then there was this: Both George W. Bush, running for governor against the Texas incumbent Ann Richards took and passed the test.  Allegedly reviewing Governor Richards responses, Bush put out advertising condemning Ann Richards for supporting the status quo on welfare reform and adding, if you don’t believe me call the non-partisan, non-profit Project Vote Smart.

 There was no record in our data that showed Richard’s had said any such thing. Many Texans, including supportive Vote Smart members got very upset with us, thinking we were taking part in his campaign. I called the prominent republicans on our board and asked if they would stick with and defend our staff, students and volunteers or would they defend Bush? To a person they agreed to put out a letter condemning the Bush ads as a willful effort to mislead.

In several cases, candidates threatened lawsuits should we not remove them from our records. We did not. Thankfully they never filed. We could not afford to hire attorneys to defend ourselves in every state.

Attacks like these ended up requiring us to have two letters at the ready.  If a candidate was using Vote Smart in an attack ad and the information the attack was using was false, we condemning the attacker for a willful effort to mislead voters. If an attack used Vote Smart’s name and what they were saying was true, a made a more modest response saying the candidate was not authorized to use our name and should emphasis their own credentials for office.

 It was Vote Smarts naive view that if you would not accept such attracts from someone applying to be your babysitter, perhaps you shouldn’t accept it from someone applying to run your life. It was of course a completely ineffective letter.

 Occasionally candidate efforts to avoid us became truly goofy as in one student’s sixth effort to compel a democratic congressional candidate:

Intern: “…You said you were going to provide your answers. Tomorrow we are announcing the California results, you need to get them in today or we must report that you would not.”

Candidate: “Oh, is the Vote Smart. You guys are so terrific and so long overdue in this country.  I am going to get my answers in, I promise. But I just cannot focus on it today.  My mother passed away last night, and I am just not able to focus on politics right now.”

 Vote Smart is not heartless, so we announced the results but did not include this race to give her a chance to respond later. After two weeks passed the intern noticed that the candidate was making campaign appearances and called her again.

Intern: “Hi, I’m with Vote Smart, we noticed that you were again campaigning and to be fair to your opposition we really cannot wait any longer for your responses. Can you send them in today?”

Candidate: “Yes, Vote Smart. I got up this morning thinking about all of you and got my check book out to contribute to your terrific work.  I am going to get those answers to you right away, but I cannot do it today.  My mother isn’t feeling well, and I have to take her to the doctor.”

 That story became staff famous as “The Resurrection!”

 The real problem was becoming clear: The candidates were scared, not of Vote Smart but of opposition research, their opponents would review their answers find vulnerabilities and attack them.  Back then, many candidates still naively thought that for an attack to be effective it had to be grounded in some measure of reality. Not so! Today, you can say anything you like and find partisans defending the absurd.

 But back then it was different. Jim Sasser, a Tennessee U.S. Senator with a would be Majority Leader future took the most irregular route to flunking the test, he decided to cheat.  We had some experience with candidates suing us, for simply reporting that they would not answer questions, but this guy had a head too big to fit outdoors.  When his campaign heard that we announced the results of each state delegation’s response rates at each state’s capital, he had his press secretary call our Oregon office. “If you guys come to Nashville and announce that Senator Sasser refused to answer your questions, we are going to take you in front of the IRS and strip you of your non-profit 501-c3 status.”

 It was nutty but intimidating. All we did was ask questions and report responses. But a week later Sasser’s guy called again making the exact same threat only, this time, following it up by demanding that we send copies of our Articles of Incorporation, our IRS 990’s and copies of any letters validating our tax-exempt status, all in an effort to bully one of our interns and the organization.

 Sasser was a Democrat, so I conferred with some of the prominent democrats on our board and asked, “Are you going to stick with the staff and students here or are you going to back this guy.”  To a person, they all agreed to tell Sasser to take a leap.  Well, they didn’t exactly say that, but that is the way I interpreted the conversations and conveyed it to our staff and students.

 A few days later I found myself in the Nashville state capitol holding a press conference.  I simply gave a standard report on the results on Tennessee candidates and then closed by stating that we had this threat from a Sasser staff member, that I thought was probably just a “lose cannon” on his staff.

 Sensing blood, the media sharks bolted from the newsroom over to the Sasser campaign headquarters. Unfortunately for  Senator Jim Sasser, he was in and came out trying to find some room for his head and claimed that his campaign had never heard of Vote Smart, that we were lying, that no one had contacted them, that we were “probably part of the right-wing Christian Coalition.” His press secretary chirped in with some comment about us being just a bunch of young students, “Yah, they’re lying.”

 The young students, who had worked so hard on the test went supernova because they had been extra careful “With this Sasser guy.”

They rushed to me, in an overnight all their documentation.  Even I was impressed. They did not have just the 6 required documented contacts; they made a dozen documented contacts because they were pissed about the threats. In the box of documentation, they had all their notes on each contact, even the fax receipts from the times Sasser’s campaign manager asked to have more information or additional copies of the questions sent. Plus, one very interesting item that was about to make national news and make Bill Frist, not Jim Sasser your future majority leader.

The day after the press conference, I invited any media that was still interested to meet with me in my hotel room at noon. The room was packed. There, on the bed, I laid out all of the evidence. Notes from calls with his campaign manager, press secretary and two or three other staff, the fax receipts and copies of all the letters and emails that had been fired back and forth. When the media was finished looking it all over, one reporter who clearly was there to defend Sasser asked, “How do we know you didn’t just manufacture all this junk? Senator Sasser’s press secretary would never have made any of the calls you claim.” I gave him a baleful look and asked him if he knew Sasser’s Press Secretary?  He said, “Yes, very well, I went to school with him “he wouldn’t lie like this.”

  “Well then, you won’t have any trouble recognizing his voice, will you?”  His jaw slackened as I hit the play button. The voice making the threat on the tape was so arrogant and nasty most of the media just chuckled and off they went, a day or so later Sasser issued us an apology which the national wires picked up on and a month or so later we took both credit and blame for the victorious new Senator Bill Frist.

 In the early years of Vote Smart most candidates did take the test with both republicans and democrats doing so at about the same rate. The major parties grew uglier, more vicious and far less able to reconcile anything. They found success in making each other look like pigs but they both grew up on the same slop in the trough.

 These ignoble behaviors would become increasingly despicable in the years ahead and become accepted, expected even required attributes of America’s elected leadership. Honorable conduct was leaving the building and would become a detriment to any candidate that wanted to win.

 This behavior and the anger it engendered would come to defile mainstream media where traditions of dispassionate objective reporting would fall victim to more entertaining, more lucrative, partisan political preachers who happily exchange responsible journalism for twisted impressions of the truth to gain the mobbish loyalty of whatever viewer group they can muster to sell products.

 At Washington’s Mayflower Hotel, I sat down with the Wall Street Journal which said they were interested in a story we had about an astonishingly deceitful organization called the Club for Growth.  The group had stolen our logo, stolen our name, then did a mock-up of our web site and fabricated nasty facts about a candidate they did not like.  They stuck this entire fiction in a television attack ad.

 I went over all this with the Journal, showed them all the proof that made for a solid piece on the disintegrating conscience of America’s political culture. Turns out that fear of any penalty for maligning facts, honor or principle was no longer a coin on the table. In part this was due to the fact that today it is hard to find the difference between politicians running for office and politicians masquerading as journalists.

  Things could be said and done without regard for truth, it simply no longer mattered what one said. Reality was becoming expendable, even a liability if you wanted to win office or win an audience.

 Dishonesty had become so common place that it garners little interest. Viewers rivet their attentions to more siliceous stories, whether they be true or not true.

 Not long ago this Club for Growth, with its millions spent manipulating voters’ fears, now caught with its pants down, would have gotten some media attention. But only the Wall Street Journal fainted any interest at all.  At the Mayflower the facts were laid out and the “journalist” sent to consider the story pretended real interest and concern in the meeting and assured me he would follow up.

 Nothing came of it.  Turns out that Steve Moore, one of the Journal’s golden boys, the one assigned to meet with me that day at the Mayflower was a founder of The Club for Growth.

 A hundred years earlier, Mark Twain noted that “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”  Today the lies are so many, fired with such rapidity and with an effect so alarmingly instant, that the truth no longer bothers to get out of bed.

(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder 1988

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LIE TO YOUR POLLSTER !

I have been saying that every election for years.  There are all sorts of polls of course and some, like say in health care, can be good, good for all of us.

But think about it, are those done by candidates used to find out what you think so they can thoughtfully represent you, or are they used to learn what you want to hear and tailor messages to fit?

If you think those polls are not used to manage you, manipulate you, well then, you are in the modern La La Land of every disingenuous candidate’s dream.

So, I say, lie to political pollsters!  What fun it would be if they couldn’t finger who you are and were forced to be what they are?

Richard Kimball

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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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THE MEEK REAP WHAT THE STRONG SOW?

The well-educated, compassionate, loving are always the least likely to defend themselves, throw a punch, and fight.

With heads in the warm comforting sands of the way they wish things would be, should be, they succumb to a beckoning dreaminess that somehow things will be made right. Somehow?

It is a rare, glorious moment when the meek turns and stands. It takes the greatest of evils:  The Revolution, The Civil War, Women’s Suffrage, Hitler, Civil Rights, all brought a divided country together by the quietly hopeful finally deciding to stand.

Now no one knows that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” more than the Grand Old Party gone under the foot of a strong man.  It would be hard to miss the truth of that old 19th century axiom as we witness the GOP’s leaders abandoning their principles and falling like dominos under the weight of a single boot.

Absolute corruption can subdue the entire known world when the meek fail to stand up.  My favorite example: Genghis Khan, another megalomaniac who essentially rode into a town one day with his friends and said, “Give me everything you have.” When they refused, he and his friends slaughtered every man, woman and child and rode off to the next town. Again, he said, “Give me everything you have.” When they refused, he hacked them to death and rode on. Eventually towns got the message and had readied for him all they possessed. It was just in that way the largest contiguous empire ever known was made. In his homeland they still find in him a source of adulation.

Is it too early to dread the day when that coiffured, self-obsessed effigy is towering over the Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson monuments?

Richard Kimball

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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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BIDEN OUT HARRIS IN?

PLEASE SAY IT ISN’T SO!

That has the Trumps sending out inaugural invites.  She has been more attackable and less appealing than Biden from day one.

Now you toss Michelle and Al at them, and you can send out the invites instead.

Or if you really want to be inventive, exciting and assure a win, do what Aaron Sorkin suggests and have the Democrats nominate this guy:

Richard Kimball

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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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GETTING MY PILL FROM THE CUCKCOO’S NEST – EPILOGUE

The truth is I think everyone else is cuckoo, but I am the one taking the pills.

When that thought hit me, now 36 years ago, in that palapa in Yelapa, it was a jolt of reality I was certain everyone would be able to see.

I felt like Moses on the mount only my burning bush suddenly revealing an obvious solution sure to defeat the conquering hordes of self-serving killing our democracy.

All that needed to be done was to create a source, devoid of and protected from partisanship, one definitive source for the relevant facts that would be expected from any applicant, by any employer, for any other job.  In politics that meant the creation of one at least one secure source that could be turned to by any thoughtful citizen, conservative or liberal, wanting the facts about any political applicant. I thought it a given that actual histories and factual records would be used by a relieved citizenry.  They then could make knowledgeable judgements on what would be done for them or to them by those applying to for the job of ruling their lives.

Now the world has changed, major information outlets have all lost the people’s trust and the adventure of creating something new and necessary like Vote Smart has ended.  As one major Vote Smart supporter wrote about what remains of my idea: “There wasn’t the friendly were-all- in-this-together excitement of what was being achieved.”

More importantly, as I described in the prologue to this book:  I and you have been given such a fantastically improbable chance of being alive for such an infinitesimal amount of time, in time, you would think we would make more of it.

I don’t think I wasted my time. The idea was worth a shot but better perhaps from a lesser dreamer, one whose passion did not drive him and everyone around him to distress.

So now I take my daily lobotomy pill. It makes me less passionate about everything. My interest in politics gone, as with my interest in most other things, all now cloaked in a kind of fog.  I am thankfully subdued and resting in peace.

                        THE MIRACLE OF ME    

                    AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A NOBODY

                              Richard Kimball

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I must confess my guilt.

ME

Hardly a day has gone by these past nine years when I haven’t gotten up in the morning, opened my computer and hoped to hear news of Trumps fatal heart attack or brain aneurysm. He has represented all that I have opposed in life – honor, truth and decency.

He is a danger to all that I believe.  I can’t say that my feelings do not border on hate, which is exactly what he has generated, not just against him but against each other, which for me is unforgiveable, both for him and for me.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder 1988

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A NOBODY AFTER ALL

OK!  I have given myself something to do with this writing about my life. It has entertained me most, but also been a kind of therapy that works about as well as the “lobotomy pills” I now take each day.

I have enjoyed my life. It’s adventures always exciting to me, at least in hindsight.  I haven’t written about my two stepsons because they think so little of me, much the same as that wonderful love of my life has recently revealed about her feelings.

But those things as disappointing as they would be, should I write about them, would simply give evidence and I guess rightful cause to all about their ending of my life’s passion, Vote Smart.

I began seeking applicants to replace me but the difference between the salary our board approved for me so long ago, that I never took and my insistence that we were all essentially volunteers caused many candidates with substantial fundraising experience to turn away.  So, I recused myself from any involvement in the Executive Board’s selection of my replacement.  Then my full-blown liberal, giving, trusting, dreamy La La Land I wanted for everyone and Vote Smart came into full bloom. I decided to announce I would drop off the Board for one year to help build confidence in whomever replaced me. After all, I would be remaining on staff for that year to train and advise.

I then let the board know I would not withdraw the $1.7 million owed me in back wages but instead donate it to Vote Smart. I only requested $30,000 annually for my retirement, that could be easily paid from returns on a small endowment a foundation had created, decades earlier that could not be used for operations thus holding Vote Smart’s funds and my contribution unaffected. They all said that my proposal was much too generous, but agreed since that was the only way I would take it.

Then one of our Board members who was leaving his academic position suddenly announced that he was interested in taking over for me.  He was a good guy, someone I had selected earlier to serve on the Board, someone who had done good work for me in one of our research departments two decades earlier before entering academia.  I was excited about the possibility and strongly supported it.

But then, over some days it became known that he had no intention of moving to Vote Smart’s offices but instead would operate it from his home in Pennsylvania.  He also wanted twice the actual salary that I had been taking.

I was certain that the Board would not accept either condition.  It had taken me 30 years of living at Vote Smart’s offices, leading staff,  implementing programs, guiding, course correcting, hiring and settling and raising some $50 million to learn all that I knew.  Turning Vote Smart over to someone managing from afar would be like hiring a brain surgeon to operate on cancer without ever taking the trouble to attend medical school. His fellow Board members, knowing him, liking him, as I had hired him anyway.

I remained hopeful, but knew that such distancing and that salary increase for a single administrative position would place administrative costs at well over a fourth of Vote Smart’s entire budget. Without some plan to make those cost up could be lethal to major givers, while also killing one of Vote Smart’s key legs (no one is here for the money). 

To alleviate the issue, that liberal, trusting, goodie two shoes of my nature chose not to complain but simply go off salary for my last year and donate my time instead.

 THE LOCK OUT

The day my staff position changed to teacher/advisor I was gone in every way my replacement and Board could make me gone.

I was kept from participating in every important decision.  At first, I was just fuddled, but soon panicked. New budgets were being created with plans to spend but not to raise.  The fundraising plan so successfully tested was retired in exchange for one created on a whim that I knew was certain to fail and they would have zero experience to tell them why.

 I wrote long emails to the Board, reminding them of how we had accomplished what we had, particularly with fundraising in step-by-step, how to’s, in hopes of getting through. Not my replacement or any board member would respond, nor a thanks for my having donated my final year’s salary.

I never had the chance to introduce my replacement to some members of the full Board (who weren’t members of the Executive Committee), a few of which contacted me with concerns about decisions the Executive Committee was making which they were no longer party to, causing some, since I was gone to simply drop away.

With the new leader’s decisions to ignore the past, I was certain that what I and my wife had created would simply bleed out the money I left them and die.   So, I did what I do.  I EXPLODED!

My anger was blistering, particularly against the Alpha on the Executive Committee, a Viet Nam war pilot and longtime personal friend who I called a coward for his unwillingness to respond to any of my concerns.

Over the days ahead they cut me off from any contacts with staff, all current financial information, and they refused to approve the tiny retirement package I requested, deciding to keep all the money for themselves.  I threatened to sue–my legal counsel was sure it would force them to accept my modest terms of retirement, but I had no stomach for suing what I had created.  In the end they offered me a pittance if I signed this:

You will not at any time discuss or disclose … the substance and/or nature of any dispute between Vote Smart and any employee or former employee, including you.

You will not at any time directly or indirectly make, or induce any other person to make, derogatory or disparaging statements (whether or not you believe the statements to be true) of any kind, in any manner or by any method – whether oral, written, electronic (including but not limited to social media), or otherwise.

They all knew me, I had selected each to serve on the board, I would never sign away my rights in return for money, no matter how deserved.

In the year that followed, I would get zero information. When the year I agreed to stay off the Board to support my replacement was up, the Board refused to let me back on the organization I had created.  After two years of pleading with them to let me know their condition and their refusal to give me any information the organization I birthed and loved, and had continued to support, lost my support, which I informed each Board member in a personal message. 

The only response from the Board was from the Alpha who wished me well with one word: “Hooray!”

So, it ended.  The organization I bet a life on withered, I never existed and was a nobody after all.

    THE END

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder 1988

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