2016 And Why Jeb Bush Should Forget About Being President

Most people (even  some members of the Bush family) agree that Jeb Bush would have been a better President than his brother. But that doesn't mean Jeb will be, or should be, the next President. Time moves on. Opportunities lost are often, if not always, lost forever. That's the way it is in life, whether you are an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley or a politico Presidential wannabe.

We are hardly into the 2016 Presidential election cycle, and we are already witnessing the sad spectacle of Jeb trying to defend his brother's administration's disastrous foreign foray otherwise known as the Iraq War and other unwise policies--e.g., the Patriot Act.

Florida already has one candidate in the 2016 race--Marco Rubio, and some would say that even that is "one too many." The US appears to be in a "leadership vacuum." The Republicans don't have anyone, save for possibly Rand Paul, with real Presidential leadership potential and a chance to win in 2016. The Democrats seem to be stuck in Clintonialism and gender politics--"Hillary should be elected President because she is a woman and would have been elected in 2008 but for Barack Obama!" or "we need a woman President--the first in history!" However, despite the negatives and the baggage, Hillary will probably be the "safe choice" and elected in 2016. The celebration will seem subdued in comparison to the jubilation accompanying Barack Obama in 2008, but the nation will move on.

In the meantime, Jeb, for the sake of the nation, his party, his family, and his own personal integrity, should gracefully exit the race.


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Rand Paul, Berkeley, San Francisco, Silicon Valley

Rand Paul, The Next President?--not as far fetched as some might think--

Rand Paul, Republican presidential hopeful, finds support in Berkeley, of all places - San Jose Mercury News: "....Director of National Intelligence James Clapper [broke] the law by lying to Congress, Paul said. The nation is under watch by "an intelligence community that's drunk with power, unrepentant and unwilling to relinquish power," he said. "The sheer arrogance of this: They're only sorry that they got caught. Without the Snowden leaks, these spies would still be doing whatever they please." Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich watched from the back of the room. "There are not too many people who can get a standing ovation at CPAC and a standing ovation at Berkeley," said Reich, now a UC-Berkeley professor...."

Rand Paul and the techies: A love story: "..."People were impressed," said 29-year-old Garrett Johnson, the founder of SendHub and the organizer of the event. Wooing the Patagonia-wearing, Blue Bottle coffee-sipping denizens of Silicon Valley, and especially San Francisco, may seem like a fool's errand for much of the GOP, but not for Paul, who recently made his second swing through the Bay Area in as many years. Indeed, his libertarian leanings, which can rankle Republican Party pooh-bahs, resonate in the Valley, where folks are messianic about private enterprise's potential to solve all the world's challenges. (Exhibit A: Google CEO Larry Page saying he'd rather bequeath his wealth to entrepreneur Elon Musk than to philanthropy.) Among the technorati, Paul's willingness to engage ideas outside the mainstream isn't a liability -- it's his strongest virtue...."

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Rand Paul opens a crack in the Facade

"Plaintiffs, on behalf of themselves and all other similarly situated United States citizens or permanent residents who are or have been customers, users, or subscribers of phone service in the United States since 2006, bring this action for declaratory and injunctive relief against Defendants' mass, suspicionless, non-particularized collection, storage, retention, and search of telephone metadata related to every domestic or international phone call made or received by Plaintiffs and class members ... under the auspices of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, 50 U.S.C. § 1861, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution .... Plaintiffs and class members seek a declaration that the Mass Associational Tracking Program is unconstitutional, an injunction forbidding the government from continuing the MATP, and an order to the Defendants to purge from its MATP databases all of the telephone metadata related to the communications of Plaintiffs and class members." - Rand Paul v. Barack Obama, a class-action lawsuit over NSA spying, taking on President Barack Obama; Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency; and FBI Director James Comey. (source: http://www.politico.com/playbook/)

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