So did Donald Trump pose as his own spokesperson back in the 1990's? Certainly sounds like it.

Here is the entire Today show video from this morning.

Trump: Wow. You mean you are going so low as to talk about something that took place 25 years ago, about whether or not I made a phone call? I guess you’re saying under a presumed name. 

Guthrie: Yes, under a presumed name. 

Trump: Okay. The answer is no. Let’s get on to more current subjects. I know it’s wonderful for your listeners, but we have more important things to discuss.

I disagree. If a person running for President is so unhinged as to fake being an entirely different person so that he can brag about himself, without seeming arrogant (A pretense that he has completely dropped these days by the way.), I think THAT is something the voting public deserves to know.

And it appears that we actually do know that is was him.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:
   
A recording obtained by The Washington Post captures what New York reporters and editors who covered Trump’s early career experienced in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: calls from Trump’s Manhattan office that resulted in conversations with “John Miller” or “John Barron” — public-relations men who sound precisely like Trump himself — who indeed are Trump, masquerading as an unusually helpful and boastful advocate for himself, according to the journalists and several of Trump’s top aides.

So apparently in the minds of the journalists who covered him and his own top aides, there was no question that this was indeed Trump.

And that could prove problematic. Just get a load of some of the things this "spokesman" said about himself Trump: 

“Actresses,” Miller said in the call to Carswell, “just call to see if they can go out with him and things.” Madonna “wanted to go out with him.” And Trump’s alter ego boasted that in addition to living with Maples, Trump had “three other girlfriends.”

Yeah that should really help Trump with the female voters.

The other Trump alias, this John Barron, is also a name that pops up quite frequently in Trump's life: 

A “John Baron,” described as a “vice-president of the Trump organization,” appeared in a front-page New York Times article as early as 1980, defending Trump’s decision to destroy sculptures on the facade of the Bonwit Teller department store building, the Fifth Avenue landmark he was demolishing to make way for his Trump Tower. Barron was quoted variously as a “Trump spokesman,” “Trump executive,” or “Trump representative” in New York magazine, The Washington Post and other publications. 

Trump’s fascination with the name “Barron” persisted for decades. When he was seeing Maples while still married to Ivana, he sometimes used the code name “the Baron” when he left messages for her. In 2004, when Trump commissioned a dramatic TV series based on the life of a New York real estate mogul like him, his only request to the writer was to name the main character “Barron.” And when Trump and his third wife, Melania, had a son, they named him Barron.

You know just when I think I have seen the oddest think imaginable in this election cycle, I get proven wrong.

I literally have NO idea what comes nest, but I am certain it will not be boring. 

Rachel Maddow: "As a gay person, I did not feel Bill Clinton had my back."

Courtesy of Real Clear Politics:  

MADDOW: As a self-proclaimed liberal, people talk about the liberal media and they say the whole media is liberal and the whole establishment is liberal, it's not true. If you really are a liberal it's been a long time in this country that you felt that mainstream politics had nothing to say to you. That mainstream politics was just not about you. 

And I look at all the young people, particularly at this Bernie Sanders event. I was 19 in 1992 when Bill Clinton was running on the Democratic side and at the 1992 Republican convention, Pat Buchanan got up there and gave this culture war speech where he basically declared a crusade against minorities and particularly gay people. And as a gay person watching that in 1992 I didn't feel like Bill Clinton had my back. I didn't feel like the Democratic party had my back. 

He was talking about agreeing with Ronald Reagan that government was the problem and all that stuff. If you are a liberal, you are not in the majority in this country and you know it and it always feels that way. 

But this Democratic race with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigning this way against each other, that happened because Bernie Sanders got into this race and all these kids who are enthused about this race, whether or not they're supporting Bernie Sanders directly are never going to feel like mainstream politics isn't about them.

I thought this was an interesting interview.

I have been a liberal my entire life, even though typically my demographic, middle aged white male, is supposedly most often attracted to the conservative mindset.

I guess I did not get the memo.

Anyhow I am often quite aware that there are uniquely American experiences that I will never partake in, nor will I really ever understand them completely.

Being female is one. Being a non-white minority another. And being gay yet another.

So for me the Clinton presidency was full of hope and possibilities, and it seemed to deliver on a great number of promises.

Now I am aware that my experience is by no means universal among my liberal fellow travelers.

So I am interested, these many years later what are YOUR feelings about the Clinton administration.

And secondly does it impact your view of a potential Hillary presidency either positively or negatively?

One of my favorite responses from last night's debate.

.@BernieSanders is annoyed https://t.co/2uyOmzwGht pic.twitter.com/nxZ4IS5oby

— POLITICO (@politico) January 18, 2016

Andrea Mitchell had asked Bernie Sanders about his response to a question about Bill Clinton's infidelities, in which he responded that they were "totally disgraceful, and unacceptable."

This was his response: 

"That question annoys me," Sanders said. 

Sanders complained that the media put too much pressure on him to attack the former secretary of state. 

"I can't walk down the street — Secretary Clinton knows this — without being told how much I have to attack Secretary Clinton. Want me to get on the front page of the paper? I make some vicious attack. I have avoided doing that, trying to run an issue-oriented campaign." 

"You didn't have to answer it that way, though," Mitchell said, referring to Sanders answer about Bill Clinton's indiscretions. 

"Then if I don't answer it, that's another front-page story," Sanders responded. 

He added: "His behavior was deplorable. Have I ever said one word about that issue? No I have not. I'm going to debate Secretary Clinton and Governor O'Malley on the issues facing the American people, not Bill Clinton's behavior."

I think my favorite part of his response was Hillary nodding her head in agreement to everything he said.

Yes, we know that Bill did a bad thing.

We also know that it was over twenty years ago and everybody else has moved on.

Well everybody except for the conservatives who are desperate to use it as an attack against Hillary that is. 

Mitt Romney has referred to President Obama as the "outsourcer in chief." However in the nineties Romney invested heavily in companies that SPECIALIZED in outsourcing. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

In recent weeks, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have accused each other of being an "outsourcer in chief," as their campaigns have tussled over Romney's past at Bain Capital and the (non)release of his tax returns. But all this scuffling hasn't taken into account an until-now unreported fact about Romney's days at Bain: When he was running the private equity firm, he invested tens of millions of dollars in a pair of companies that specialized in outsourcing high-tech manufacturing and that developed offshore production facilities in Mexico, China, and elsewhere to build electronics for US firms. 

In March 1999, shortly after Romney left Bain to take over the troubled Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Brookside Capital Investors Inc., a Bain-related entity wholly owned by Romney, filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission that listed dozens of companies in which Brookside held a stake the previous quarter. The roster included investments in Singapore-based Flextronics International ($13 million) and Florida-headquartered Jabil Circuit Inc. ($41 million), two companies that were leaders in the fast-growing field of outsourcing electronics manufacturing and offshoring production to low-wage countries. Together, these two investments represented almost 10 percent of Brookside's $559 million portfolio. 

For much of the 1990s, most overseas outsourcing involved unsophisticated products like apparel. But in the second half of that decade, US high-tech companies producing computers, telecommunications equipment, and other electronics began contracting out their manufacturing to firms that had established production facilities both in the United States and in overseas locales where labor was cheap. 

Such was the case with Flextronics and Jabil Circuit. They were two of a handful of companies that, according to the Los Angeles Times, "exploited the boon in high-tech outsourcing, or 'stealth' manufacturing," producing components or products for American businesses including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft. When Romney was acquiring stakes in these two companies, they were hot tickets for investors. During the second half of 1998, the leading electronics manufacturing contractors—including Flextronics and Jabil Circuit—averaged an 85 percent boost in stock prices. That year, Flextronics doubled its revenues.

You know this is the thing that REALLY nags at me when I hear Romney surrogates talking about how this country needs HIS expertise on creating jobs to turn our economy around.

Somebody really needs to sit me down and explain to me how somebody who made his money in this manner:

As the founder of Bain Capital, Romney became a brilliant LBO buccaneer who specialized in buying up firms by taking on a lot of debt, using the target firm as collateral, and then trying to make the firm profitable -- often by breaking it up or slashing jobs -- to the point where Bain and its investors could load up the firm with even more debt, which Bain would then use to pay itself off. That would ensure a profit for Bain investors whether or not the companies themselves succeeded in the long run. Often, burdened by all that debt, these bought-out companies did not succeed, costing thousands of jobs as they were downsized, sold off and shuttered. Other times they did phenomenally well, as in the case of Sports Authority and Domino's Pizza.

Has ANY insight into how to create jobs for hardworking Americans in THIS country.

After all you cannot load up a country with piles of debt just to ensure that IT'S top one percent make a profit, with no consideration for the middle class workers that are the foundation for its ability to prosper?

Or can you? And did I just describe all eight years of the Bush administration?

So it appears that Joe Biden was right, Mitt Romney is essentially "George Bush on steroids."

Personally I think that if THAT comparison is made over and over again, that President Obama should have this election in the bag.