Jeb Bush's hapless campaign let it be known that their man is contemplating hitting Trump hard.  Bush apparently hasn't decided yet if it's a good idea to announce he's not going to endorse the asshole billionaire, who has his own growing cadre of stormtrooper followers.  He has to spend time wondering if he should endorse a nominated Trump?  It isn't clear to Bush by now that the piece of shit who ruined his chances of becoming president, browbeating him for months even unto the present day, shouldn't receive his endorsement?
     Republican politicians view Trump carefully, not speaking harshly of him.  Most of them condemned his insane idea to prevent Muslims from entering the United States, but they also didn't condemn the man who uttered the unethical proposal.  Finally, Congressman Reid Ribble of Wisconsin spoke out against Trump, saying he will not support him if he's the nominee.  Ribble is the only Republican politician in Congress I know of who's had the guts to say, in effect, "Fuck you" to Trump.
     I've heard often the phrase, "They're afraid to go after Trump," referring to Donald's opponents who struggle for second, third, fourth, fifth places in the polls.  Trump does slam whoever criticizes him.  His impulse control is like that of a hyperactive child.  He tweets compulsively, literally phones in interviews to cable news programs, the hosts of which listen to his narcissistic Napoleon complex fantasy talk as if they're hearing the golden sentences of a respected historian.
     Vladimir Putin, Russia's strongman, praised Trump, calling him "brilliant" and "colorful," and the "absolute leader" among Republicans running for president.  This has been interpreted in American news media as an endorsement by Putin.  I see nothing saying "endorsement" here.  Trump, calling in to Morning Joe on MSNBC, said he liked being called "brilliant" by Putin.  He praised Putin in turn, calling him a "strong leader."
     "Strong" in the Mussolini sense?
     Joe Scarborough, the show's eponymous co-host remarked to Trump that Putin has had journalists killed who disagreed with him.  He said it twice to Trump, who doesn't like to respond to issues involving the real human cost of violence.
     "America kills people, too."  He seemed blasé about the subject.  There may have been a time ten years ago when I would've disagreed with anyone stating that Trump would like to order the deaths of millions, but now I accept that idea readily.
     There may be another reason why Trump likes Putin: the latter's wealth.  Reportedly, Putin is the world's richest man, an achievement brought about by decades of calculated graft.  The figure I heard by one Putin expert puts the Russian leader at around a hundred billion dollars in net worth, compared to Trump's self-claimed eight plus billion.  Trump's praise of Putin fits with a relatively insignificant billionaire nestling inside the rectum of the world's wealthiest man.
     The last Republican debate showed the usual collective hard-on for war, the military, and killing "bad guys."  They say this crap because they think they have to.  None of them have any military experience.  None of them have been shot at.  Some of them want a no-fly zone over Syria, speaking about that as if Russia would go for it, and Governor Christie insisting he would order the shooting down of Russian planes violating the zone.  He and the others seem to have missed Aristotle's ideas about cause and effect.
     Living in America now, watching the money-corrupted political process unfold, feels like waiting for something uncomfortable to end.  Ten and a half months until the election.  Citizens United made this prolongation of capitalistic democracy possible, and its supposed benefactors, the candidates, show strain.  Bush looks like he's trapped in a cave.  Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Lindsay Graham, Rick Santorum for God's sake, none of them, and a few above them in the polls like Fiorina, have no  chance of gaining the nomination.  Why don't they stop?  Trump, meanwhile, doesn't have to surf the Citizens United wave, due to his own cash.  He gets free publicity every day on cable news.  He campaigns with Twitter.  He doesn't give a shit about the American people, or the people of the world.  He's a negative zone where those who don't want to hold their worst natures back anymore can enter and feel good about themselves because their leader is a nihilistic shit, like the man who runs ISIS.
     "Political correctness" is supposedly, in Trump's view, "destroying America."  Horseshit.  He uses the term in the same way some of his hate-monger predecessors like Joseph McCarthy used the word "Communism."  He's not the only one of his fellows on debate stages who condemns political correctness.  One of the candidates (I can't remember who) said we've been fighting "politically correct wars," a meaningless sentence, except that it contains the words "politically correct," sounds that stimulate the non-thinking reptile brain.  I suppose that Chris Christie's idea of a politically incorrect war would be one with Russia.
     I'm not unconvinced that some tenth graders would make smarter and more humane presidential candidates than most of the line-up we're faced with.
     As Devo put it, "Are we not men?"