When the phone rings and a pollster asks if I'd be willing to answer some questions, I refuse.  I've got other things to do.  Even clipping my toenails is preferable to listening to a pollster asking about how I regard issues and politicians.  I wonder about people, their days interrupted by pollsters, finding it worthwhile to respond to strangers about whether or not Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton are human beings acceptable enough to run the country and command its military forces.
     Is Rand Paul acceptable to you?
     Does Ted Cruz strike you as a stable individual?
     Would you like Jeb Bush to make decisions impacting the natural environment?
     If God is just, does He really want Scott Walker to be president?
     Hillary Clinton, dropping in the polls, is handicapped by the nature of this premature presidential election cycle.  She must compete for news media attention with Donald Trump, the clear gossip-favorite among those who sit behind clear plastic desks and offer opinions on camera.
     Trump, we're assured by MSNBC mouths, will not secure the Republican nomination, nor will Bernie Sanders secure the Democratic one.  Fifteen months before the election, they pretend to know what will happen.  The roiling changeability of social media-driven information exchange being what it is, it's amazing that anyone could believe in accurate predictions regarding next summer's political conventions.
     When Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for president, the first prominent person to do so, he received a great deal of news coverage.  Now, he receives coverage for calling Mitch McConnell a liar, an act unprecedented, it's claimed, by a senator speaking on the Senate floor--but do most people give a shit about this?  Cruz, more importantly, needs to get attention in the Trump-dominated news media world, so he called McConnell a liar.
     The Fox News Channel Republican debate this August stipulates that "only" the top ten candidates, in popularity according to latest polls, may participate.  This may explain why one of the polls' bottom feeders, Mike Huckabee (former Arkansas governor, Fox News Channel star, man of God, con artist), said of the Iran nuclear deal that "it will lead Israel to the door of the oven."
     Holocaust rhetoric is tricky.  A cynical person, like Vic Neptune, might think Huckabee has used the murders of approximately six million people to advance his place in polls, earning him a spot on a debate stage with another bomb-first-ask-questions-later type like Donald Trump.
     Huckabee strikes me as a vicious political opportunist lacking the humane Christian ethics spoken of by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.  He combines the surface personality of a wise and sober minister offering common sense, but tainted by nasty statements and hyperbole designed to shiver the backs of those vulnerable to fear-talk.
     The Fox News debate will act as a funnel for those low-numbers candidates desperate to stand on that stage, as if it's one of the most portentous events of their lives.  It will be, rather, a mindfuck-fest run by pollsters and a propaganda-driven cable news channel, elevating Donald Trump further as he self-promotes circles around his competitors.
     We live in a dystopian science fiction novel.

                                                                                Vic Neptune