It is probable that Mariner has harped too often about how important the 2016 election is. However, it is true. And in a few days Iowan readers will participate in phase I of the election process – the Iowa Caucus. Soon thereafter until July, all other states and territories will participate as well.

To let the mariner rest assured he has done all he can to help voters understand the importance of their vote and the issues that the voter is actually deciding, whether directly or by inference, the mariner provides the final countdown list for casting the voter’s most influential impact in the caucus/primary and in November.

1. Identify the key issue that you want to promote in this election. The broader it is, the better it is. For example, a narrow issue is whether to provide a path to citizenship for resident immigrants. Many voters stop here and cast an emotional opinion based on racism or on conscientious treatment. Mentally step up a level and think about cultural, historical and economic ramifications; how will the immigration issue help or hinder each of these; what subsequent issue may emerge; will that subsequent issue be on a path to improvement for our country?
2. What legislation, government attitude, or new action must be changed to help the key issue in number 1?
3. Quickly research each candidate on websites, news sources, and use your computer search engine to search the candidate’s history and future commitments that will affect you key issue. This task, though a quick one taking minutes to an hour, is not usually used. Instead, a voter usually listens to friends, talks with co-workers and family. In 2016, however, it is true information about the candidate, not gossip or news broadcasts that will magnify the accuracy and influence of your vote.
4. Disregard incumbency, appearance and popular personality. Too many popular, attractive, schmaltzy incompetents are elected on these characteristics alone. Avoid evaluations like “With which candidate would you feel more comfortable having dinner?” Instead, ask a similar question: “With which candidate would you feel more confident when you hand your key issue to them?”
5. Consider political ramifications. Any elected President will need at least one Congressional house to successfully adopt your issue; on the state level, which candidate will address gerrymandering, or infrastructure, or unions, or health care – all are local issues that will promote or defeat your key issue as the near future plays out.
6. Finally, ask yourself whether a candidate wants to promote new, modern solutions that will move the US and your key issue forward or whether the candidate berates current conditions with a desire to stabilize or remove ‘troublesome’ programs to return to solutions that have existed in the past and denies exploratory opportunities for uses of budget, civil service, and unanimity among classes, races, education – and perhaps your key issue.

The last point is the key issue for the mariner. The broadest level is addressing all our nation’s antiquated solutions that have not helped the nation to date and likely will block progress when progress is the answer. At this moment in US history, the only important question is “Will the nation and its population experience a fresh wind in the decade following 2016?”

Ancient Mariner

REPORT TO READERS

This is a quarterly report of transactions on iowa-mariner.com for the last ninety days. A reader in each city has read the mariner’s website at least once each month; the exception is Phoenix where the mariner’s family spent several days. Many readers read several posts on each visit.

Readers were from 15 nations:

United States (240 readers)             Belgium (1 reader)                Kenya (1 reader)

Brazil (14 readers)                            Canada (1 reader)                Cambodia (1 reader)

United Kingdom (2 readers)             Algeria (1 reader)                  Philippines (1 reader)

India (2 readers)                              Ecuador (1 reader)                 Sweden (1 reader)

Italy (2 readers)                               Indonesia (1 reader)               Venezuela (1 reader)

Readers were from the following cities¹

The highest daily access was 120 readers with an average of 87.

¹ 23% of readers were not included because they did not access the website three months in a row.

REFERENCE SECTION

The mariner has been searching for a reasonable voice to add to coverage of this strange 2016 campaign. There are many who qualify but the mariner has settled on Tavis Smiley. Smiley is a voice inadequately heard on mainstream news analysis (if one considers PBS not mainstream). Tavis is not a name in the book world; he has published none save a biography that was ghost-written. However, he has made short subject videos about many issues and hosts his own daily show on PBS as well as a weekend show. Periodically, Tavis Smiley may appear on CNN and MSNBC. To those who are unaware of his political/cultural contributions, his claim to fame is that he is married to Fredricka Whitfield, an anchor on CNN.

For example, as a pundit Smiley offers insights that dig into the rhetoric of Donald, he leaves the candidate looking like the empty box he may be. Tavis is African American; many of his topics reflect African American priorities but not out of context with the larger citizen issues of our time. He states as a matter of fact that Donald will carry “few if any black voters.”

Tavis Smiley is sensitive to the cultural crisis that exists in politics today and judges candidates on their intent actually to break the many roadblocks and step into the future. For sample shows and website, see:

Website: http://www.tavistalks.com/

PBS videos: http://www.pbs.org/show/tavis-smiley/

Smiley comments about campaign: http://www.bing.com/news/search?q=PBS+VIDEO+Tavis+Smiley&qpvt=pbs+video+tavis+smiley&FORM=EWRE

Ancient Mariner

The Van is docked for three days near san Antonio – south of San Antonio to be precise; a different biome from the one above San Antonio that shares weather with Dallas. Drop in latitude to Corpus Christi (Latitude 27.7°N) and one approaches the influence of the equatorial zone (Latitude 23.5°N). The Equatorial zone includes the Caribbean, Jamaica, Cancun, Mexico, and Costa Rica. When warm leaves Iowa, it turns up in the Equatorial zone similar to the monarch butterfly.

The mariner and his wife are resting under blue skies, temperatures near the seventies and a wafting breeze. The first mate was able to return to her tradition of walking while talking on her cell. The grounds at this Hyatt Residency encompass a golf course and 400 acres full of trails. The first mate was nearly bonked by a golf ball. It is as winter should be.

Tomorrow we weigh anchor and head to Greater Dallas (Latitude 33°N) to visit relatives. Sadly, this is the first leg of our journey back to the frozen north.

On to another subject, mariner is disturbed that the media cannot be sued for donating its air time to Donald’s campaign. Donald has a role, of course, and likely, it is a needed role if the US is to shed the remnants of a political culture incapable of leading the country forward. Nevertheless, the mentally retarded news media will take a nickel instead of a dime every time because a nickel is larger than a dime. In other words, the candidates, both republican and democrat, are virtually unknown as to what they stand for because Nazi campaigner Donald is entertaining – if not substantive. God forbid the news media would want to share substantive news.

Even so, Donald can brag that he doesn’t have to buy ads on TV. They already are paid for. The real cost is a public that remains confused about the real issues and how each politician will deal with them. Meanwhile, we watch a Donald event cheerfully abuse and throw out a Muslim. Now that is news – or it should be. Donald’s retort, dutifully reported by news media without noting underlying, serious consequences, is “They really hate us!”

REFERENCE SECTION

Mariner has a sweatshirt that says “eschew obfuscation.” He laments the demise of clarity and specific meaning in our English language. Every day words disappear that would have helped clarify. Mariner suggests that the reader reference the dictionary more often; the mariner double checks the nuance of words several times while writing a single post. Perhaps Donald has latched on to something: It isn’t content that matters – it’s just easier not to bother.

Buy a dictionary.

Ancient Mariner

Listening to Donald (with only one ear, mariner promises), it seems he is using the original Constitutional language defining “natural born citizen” and disregarding centuries of footnotes attached to this language by Congress and the Supreme Court. Providing a very general interpretation of his own, the mariner finds that the mindset of the founding fathers – freshly independent of European and especially British oversight – wanted to assure that only an American born on American soil would be eligible to be President. Section 2, Article 1 states simply and directly:

“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

Strictly interpreted, Donald may have a slight chance at defending his opinions with a Supreme Court case on the subject. However, the Supreme Court (we hope) will take into account the subsequent “clarifications and exceptions” For example, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

“The Citizenship Clause of Section 1 in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This clause represented Congress‘s reversal of a portion of the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision which had declared that African Americans were not and could not become citizens of the United States or enjoy any of the privileges and immunities of citizenship.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had already granted U.S. citizenship to all persons born in the United States “not subject to any foreign power”. The 39th Congress proposed the principle underlying the Citizenship Clause due to concerns expressed about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act during floor debates in Congress. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment sought to entrench the principle in the Constitution in order to prevent its being struck down by the Supreme Court or repealed by a future Congress.”

In the abstract, African American issues aside, the United States has been a magnet for waves of immigrants since the Puritans. Continuously, even today, citizenship continues to be an issue between liberals (Send me your poor…) and conservatives (Send your poor back where they came from). Modern commerce has a way of amalgamating necessary skills and education in the US regardless of citizenship via green cards and work permits – which is a different issue but still clouds citizenship for the likes of German scientists moved to the US at the end of the Second World War (only one of many obfuscating examples). Further examples are rampant in show business – Trevor Noah from South Africa, John Oliver from Britain, and Craig Ferguson from Scotland just to mention late show comedians.

Strictly speaking, one must be born in the US and its territories to be President. The point in all this is that citizenship in the US is a changing phenomenon as the nation has changing needs. For the moment, several significant world organizations have said that the West has aging populations to the point that economic futures will be affected (consider our concern about the solvency of Social Security). Perhaps the US should welcome as many immigrants as possible to protect the future economy of our nation. That’s one way to assure solvency in our Social Security system.

To wrap it up, Donald is wrong about Obama’s citizenship although one’s political party weighs in: A poll finds that 53 percent of Republicans still doubt Obama’s citizenship. At the same time, an overwhelming 70 percent don’t have any doubt Cruz is American and eligible to be president.

The Naturalization Act of 1790, which didn’t deal with presidential eligibility but provides that “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.” They argue that Congress was clarifying what “natural born citizen” meant.

But University of San Diego School law professor Michael Ramsey says no one in Congress at the time said that the purpose of that statute was to define the term used in the Constitution.

“If children born abroad to American parents were natural born citizens, there would be no need for the 1790 statute,” Widener University law professor Mary Brigid McManamon, who agrees with Mr. Trump, told Law Blog. For a full accounting of the subject see:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/01/13/the-cruz-eligibility-question-legal-scholars-weigh-in/

Donald has raised a pesky legal issue for Cruz. Given the conservative nature of the Supreme Court, this case may never reach the Court or the Justices will patch-quilt a decision in Cruz’s favor based on the ever changing definition of “natural born citizen.”

Ancient Mariner