Every time there’s a Supreme Court Justice nomination, the nation must endure a long, drawn out battle in the Senate. Why must we go through this agony? It’s time to update the Constitution and make the nomination a onetime 10-year term. If someone wants to add a couple of years to that number, I would be OK with that. I’m confident that change would make the nominations proceed more quickly and without so much conflict. No, it won’t go smoothly, but it should help dramatically scale back the level of antagonism between the parties.

If we had one ten-year term, a legal genius named Clarence Thomas would have been off the Supreme Court 15 years ago, and from a legal perspective, the country would be much better off . Instead of 25 long years of silence on the court, we would have only had to endure 10.

I believe in order to make this change, we would need an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would be quite an arduous task. I think it would be worth it.

Today we’re going to concentrate on Americans. We all have a wide array of options on how we choose to live our lives. For example, one can be fiscally irresponsible, depend on others for their daily existence, treat those around them with disdain and/or literally steal from those who worked hard for their tangible items. In America, we have a significant class of people who never go to work and obtain almost everything they have by stealing from others. That’s one of the reasons we have the largest prison population on the planet.

One luxury of being American is the wide array of news and information available to those who want to make the effort. We have fabulous newspapers in many towns and cities, plus numerous mass media options which allow us to stay current on national and global news.  You may not agree, but I think the majority of Americans fail to take advantage of these resources and instead rely upon others to tell them how they should feel about various issues. They don’t  read and do their own research, they listen to famous broadcasters or news networks which are actually political shows where the news is used as the vehicle to get across their political messages. In essence, they are told how they should feel about certain issues.

This was on display for the entire country during the 2016 Presidential campaign. If you watched the large Trump rallies, every time he mentioned the TPP or NAFTA, his blue-collar crowd would boo vociferously. I would bet every penny I have that 95% of Trump’s supporters don’t know what the TPP is and how it does or doesn’t impact their lives. Don’t know about you, but I find that terrifying. How can be adamantly opposed to something when they don’t even know what it is?

Conservative TV political commentator Joe Scarborough said for the first time in many years, Appalachia voted Republican.  He then added, millions of Appalachians depend on Obamacare for their health and survival, yet they voted for a man who promised to do away with the program which keeps them alive. I realize Hillary was a terrible candidate so their choice wasn’t easy, but how can someone vote against their own interests?

In the future, we’ll talk about other issues, both mundane and important. We hope you’ll continue reading and provide feedback.

• Many surveys reveal almost 2/3 of Trump supporters believe President Obama was born in Kenya.
• Almost 40% of Trump voters believe the value of the stock market went down during the 8 years of the Obama administration (It more than tripled)
• 2/3 (67%) of Trump voters believe the unemployment rate rose during the Obama administration while we know it went down significantly.
• Surveys reveal the majority of Trump supporters approve of the Affordable Care Act but disapprove of Obamacare. Please don’t tell them they are one and the same.

If you watched Trump’s campaign rallies, he always brought up the TPP and the crowd roared with loud rounds of booing. Hello! I would bet every dollar I have that 95% or more of Trump supporters don’t even know what the TPP is, let alone how it would impact their lives. During those same campaign rallies, Trump told his supporters Hillary wanted to take away their guns, and if elected, she would abolish the 2^nd Amendment. Both statements are false, but the second one is pertinent to my argument. Trump voters are too dumb to understand that a President cannot abolish an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Although he eventually changed his message, Trump repeatedly told his supporters he was going to expel 11 million illegal immigrants and the crowd would cheer. How in the world could anyone possibly believe such a lie? If Trump tried to implement this program, it would tie up the federal court system for more than a decade, cost countless billions of dollars, and would almost certainly be a complete failure.

Of course, we remember Trump’s favorite lie his supporters believed. He’s going to build a 22-billion-dollar plus wall on the Mexican border and Mexico would pay for it. Are you laughing, because I am. By the way, Trump supporters don’t know the following two facts.

• Almost half of all illegal immigrants currently in our country came here legally and overstayed their visas. Obviously a wall won’t change that.
• Per the FBI, most terrorists don’t come in via Mexico, they come across the Canadian border.