America's WWF Championship 2020 is upon us, 2016 seeming a long democracy ago. 

Among last year's contenders we had a Socialist, Tony Soprano, a brain-dead brain surgeon and a pants suit.* The winner and defending champion?

Hitler :The Sequel. 

CLICK HERE if you think the Hitler reference is still out of bounds.

Who does the reigning champ have to do battle with this go round?
Let's take a look at the top 5.

JOE BIDEN:We all know Uncle Joe. Not much background to go over here. He is the messiah. He is the Obama Era personified. He is not too far left or right for the public. All bets are that he can take on Trump's brash personality and win.

I am having my doubts.  First, Biden is the reluctant hero. I see no fire in his belly. A look at his personal life will tell you he has every right to want to quietly enjoy the rest of it outside the political arena. This feels like a pity run, an act of duty rather than exuberance.

Second, I am not sure he has the personality to best Trump. He is obviously more intelligent, educated, compassionate, seasoned, experienced and liked by both parties, but the maverick attitudes of old that people are counting on to best Trump  seem absent now.

Look at the last debate. Kamala Harris rocketed to second place in the polls after doing no more than dressing Biden down for less than 90 seconds. Uncle Joe looked liked a contrite child after her tongue lashing. Then the segregationist scandal crippled him again. He did well defending himself but he explained nothing. Biden could have used this debate with Harris as an opportunity to explain how government works, how opposing sides need to communicate for the greater good, how being a representative of the people means hard choices, unpleasant choices, and how he is the one to be able to piggyback off the scum to rise up the oppressed...or something of that nature. But he didn't. Number one thing in politics, you turn everything to your advantage. Biden dropped the ball. He got past this because his media supporters bailed him out. 

Before that there was the inappropriate touching thing. I have deep opinions on this but that is for another time. I honestly cannot tell you any more than that he apologized. That is how badly this was handled. People who know him were everywhere in the media, explaining that Joe is a warm, demonstrative person and what he did was expected, accepted, and these women screaming harassment are politically motivated. So why didn't Joe add to his apology that this is part of who he is? A warm, loving human and he will rethink his actions in the future because he would never want to offend. BUT HE DIDN'T. Again, turning a setback to your advantage. 

Finally, I came across this today and for me, this is the third strike. Now I would love to see him as president. I think middle of the road is what we need to bring the country back together, I think his poise and his age can help bring confidence in the US back to the world. But right now the game is about beating Trump. WATCH THIS,add up everything else so far and think about it. Does he have what it takes to face off the schoolyard bully?It begins at marker 1:30. 

ELIZABETH WARREN: Warren has been the darling of liberal women from the beginning. She is a powerful speaker, thanks to her law background, and seems to be about to best Biden in the polls. However, Warren is not the favorite among moderate liberals, who make up half of the democratic voters. Her ideas on college and healthcare for everyone ring true to her base but leave everyone else wondering how that will be accomplished. She is a strong speaker and very quick on her feet. If Trump had stalked and tried to intimidate her on the debate floor AS HE DID TO CLINTON I image her response would  have been a head on confrontation. the above link, less than a minute to watch the relevant part, shows you how Trump's essence intimidates even a strong woman like Clinton. However, Warren is not to be taken lightly and I have seen her go from an impassioned lawyer  to an enraged badger quite effectively.

But Warren has some credibility issues with many voters. How important you think this is or isn't, she was caught in a lie about being Native American. I personally have looked up her background and found 3 different stories on how she got engaged and five different educational histories, from having her starting poor and going to community college to getting a debate scholarship to having graduated from high school at age 16 going on to Rutgers Law School. No one questions her education, experience or intelligence, and perhaps these confusing histories can be ironed out. The fact is, if she has a history that is not ironclad, it will become a very weak spot to exploit. Lastly, the voters who really matter are the undecideds, the voters who are moderate. Some of Warren's extremely leftist views and inconsistent history, no matter how benign, could cost her the nomination.

BERNIE SANDERS: The Anti-Trump, Sanders has his own unwavering base, mostly radical liberals/socialist collage age voters and aging hippies who think he can do no wrong. Like Trump, he is where he is in the polls because of his base. How does he get votes outside his base? I don't think he does. His opinions are so far left most people cannot see him winning over any new voters. Remember, Sanders has a base from his last rodeo. 

KAMALA HARRIS: Her 15 minutes of fame beating down Biden in the Democratic debate has catapulted her into a frontrunner. She is a good speaker, a powerful speaker, and neither her gender nor her race seem to help or hurt her, an anomaly in our political system. She is poised, educated and articulate. Only occasionally  does the drone of candidate-speak come out of her. She comes across as genuine, and a person of the people. I have no doubt that she would break the Trump spell, her normalcy in stark relief to his bizarre personality. 

It bothers me that she rose in the poles by using the pity me card during that debate, the issue being that she personally was bussed. Her dispute with Biden during the debate was over his political association with segregationists which led to her little girl story about busing. Impressive, but hardly anything there to base a vote on. When you dig deeper she is a bit left of the middle on the issues that are the most divisive between the candidates. She is for universal healthcare and free college plus free kindergarten. Those issues are what separate the dems from each other. Once again, the undecideds are the ones who need to be catered to and this hardline position on these issues can be a huge negative. Unfortunately, her being both black and female may hurt her to some voters. Not the PC thing to say, but the sad reality and yes, even among liberals.

"MAYOR PETE" BUTTIGIEG:Let's get the important things over with first. The best I can do to help you pronounce his name is boo deh jedge, Jedge rhyming with edge. Thankfully he goes by "Mayor Pete". This is a difficult one for me because he has been my personal favorite since day one. Here we go.

At 29, he was elected mayor of South Bend, Indiana when it was in the top ten list of dying cities. He has turned South Bend into an up and coming city with poverty and crime at record lows.  He is currently 37 years old which would make him the youngest president in history. This could be seen in either a positive or negative light.

He is a Rhodes Scholar, a Harvard graduate. A Lieutenant in the Navy reserve and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.

He is a concert pianist and speaks seven languages, including Norwegian, which he learned so he could read Norwegian books on Viking history.

He is a newlywed and openly gay.

In his own words," This is the only chance you will get to vote for a Maltese-American, left-handed, Episcopalian gay war veteran, mayor and millennial".

I have seen him speak. He is extremely intelligent, coherent, concise, he leaves out the spin, is measured, thinks before he speaks and never waivers. He will not only tell you what he wants to do he will tell you how he will do it. I have only once see him get angry and his face turns from American Apple Pie to a stern Do Not Tread On Me. Do not let the baby face fool you. The most impressive thing I have heard him say was during the debates, when he was getting shot down for not improving the racial bias in the South Bend police force (directly after a race-based shooting in his town) Buttigieg said "Because I couldn't get it done". Yes, you just heard a politician admit he failed. He spoke after that more on the subject but what really solidified it for me was his honesty. In fact, he dropped out of the presidential race for several weeks to deal with this issue, stating that he did not know if this was strategic or not, but it is his city.

Here HERE IS WHERE I found info on him all in one place. Its an entertaining few minutes that gives a look at Mayor Pete speaking.

As far as his ability to deal with Trump's bullying, Here is an example:

When Trump nicknamed him Alfred E. Newman, Mayor Pete came back with a smart, subtle yet cutting reply. " I'll be honest. I had to google that" he said. "I guess its just a generational thing. I didn't get the reference. Its kind of funny, I guess. But he's also the president of the United States, and I'm surprised he's not spending more time trying to salvage this China deal". Nice one.

Can the voters get over his age? His sexual orientation? His lack of experience? I hope so. He has something to offer young and old. He is one of the millennials yet has a war record and classic education for the over 50 crowd. He is middle of the road yet has ideas the far left will embrace.

So there you have it. Our current democratic frontrunners in a nutshell, through my eyes, but hopefully somewhat unbiased.

No matter who wins the nomination, if it is one of these five, it is heartening that only one is an older, white, hetersexual male. 

If you want to know more about each candidate, CLICK HERE 

or look up their individual websites.

*Bernie Sanders, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Hilary Clinton

FACT: The food you eat today has lost 57% of its nutritional value since the 1950's.

FACT: The food you eat today has lost 57% of its nutritional value since the 1950's.

The first time I read that I was shocked. I had assumed that as technology progressed, so would the quality of our lives, food being the most basic of things. I began to research today's food and learned so many shocking and horrifying things that to try to convey them to you here would not give the subject the detail it deserves. 

Many people know that the situation is bleak for our furry and feathered friends but we do what we can, and the biggest movement by consumers today concerns eggs.

Everyone knows by now that corporate egg farms are cruel to the hens, but most of us do not realize how cruel. If we can afford it we try to buy from the humane companies. we struggle through labels, hoping to find one that supports happy hens.

We assume companies selling eggs that say things like "cage-free" and "raised without antibiotics" raise the hens to live like this photo. Oh and if they are brown eggs, well those are even better.

The truth is that this photo is  of a businessman who has a nice home in the country and raises chickens so he and his friends can have fresh eggs. Nothing wrong with that. The problem arises when we think this picture is how the hens live on farms with the happy labels.

In case you are still buying eggs at $1.25 a dozen, take a look at the conditions your inexpensive eggs are laid under. 

The photo on the right is a typical shot of the entire life of an egg hen. They do not have enough room to turn around. The typical farm has an 18x22 inch space for every ten birds and has 250,000 to 500,000 hens. They pick out their own feathers out of frustration and some of the feathers come out from malnutrition, induced on purpose. When they are chicks, without any painkillers, their beaks have the ends burned or cut off to reduce pecking damage. The smell and disease is so bad, an outfit akin to a HAZMAT suit is worn when entering the coup. Space is so cramped the birds defecate and urinate on each other, and the dead ones are not found much of the time so the live ones around it live with the rotting carcass.

 Hens usually live about 8 years.

However, they only lay eggs for about 2 years. So what happens to them after that? Usually, they are all the same age so they can all be disposed of at once since all of them stop laying at around the same time. CO2 is usually pumped into the barn and all quarter million of them are killed at once, then put in a landfill or sold off to be rendered for animal food. This is what the more humane farmers do. 

Many times they get tossed into grinders while still alive. 

 Some farmers will pack them even tighter into wooden crates where they will die from the stress or the heat or simple suffocation on the way to a pet food plant. These birds are emaciated and at the beginning of the trip their leg bones snap. Virtually all of them. They suffer from severe osteoporosis and most have extreme deformities that are painful their whole lives. At the plant, they are shackled by the leg, hung upside down and fastened onto a moving line where their throats are slit. They are alive until they bleed out, about 5 minutes. Male chicks are suffocated because they are useless.

Not only is all of this terribly cruel, but do you really want to eat the eggs that come from these hens? Its no wonder salmonella runs rampant in grocery store eggs.

This photo is of some "fortunate" cage-free hens. They have room to walk and the area looks relatively clean, although you can see from their condition this farmer practices the same farming techniques the ones with cages do.

Here is a photo of a more common environment for a "cage-free" hen, hens that lay the eggs you pay an extra buck fifty for because "cage-free" sounds humane. All of these hens have broken bones, usually the breastplate. Why? Farmers manipulate the light and feed them low-grade food which (somehow) induces them to produce more eggs. Eggshells are made of calcium so the hen's body pulls the calcium from its own bones to make the eggs. Their lives are a series of broken bones, and you can see the conditions are not much cleaner than the caged birds. Below is the best photo I could find of a cage-free environment. But again, you will see most of them sitting, due to broken bones and lack of energy. They have their feathers for the moment, which hides their bodies. 

The next level of eggs at the grocery are "free range" eggs. You may think this is about the best you are gonna get, as far as living space. This phrase makes you think "ok, now THESE birds roam the fields and eat worms and live happily". 

Nope.

Free-range simply means they have access to the outdoors. This can be a cramped area like the cage-free hens, only with a screened in area instead of solid walls, or it can be a closed coup with holes drilled in the sides for them to stick their heads out of. It also can mean they actually do have access to green pastures, it depends on the company.

This is what the U.S. allows to be called free-range(left)...almost anything. You have to do your homework. Companies want your business and the more we complain and buy from truly humane farms, the more farms will comply and the lower our prices will be.

Write down the names of the eggs your grocer sells and search the internet to see how they really operate. If there are no photos beware. Be an educated consumer and you can find what you want. Of course, finding a local coup with a dozen or so hens is the best. 

You know exactly where your birds are from and how they are being treated. It should go without saying by now that the quality of the eggs you feed your child is affected by the environment the hen is raised in. 

Look for the Animal Welfare Approved label. This label means there was no forced molting through starvation, (a practice done to increase egg production) they have not had their beaks cut or burned,  they have continuous access to the outdoors, and are able to nest, perch and dust bathe.  Certified Humane is another label you can trust. Standards of other programs vary.

Here is a link to The Humane Society page that lists, by food, companies that meet the standards of and carry the above labels. This is not comprehensive so if you are interested in a brand at your store I still recommend doing your homework.

Humane Society Food List

I did some research and found that Mercy For Animals meets my criteria for an active, worthwhile charity. These folks are very busy but are not extreme like PETA can be.

Egg production is probably the least appalling food process there is. It gets worse from here. More on that later, or you can pick up any book on the food industry and learn.