Admittedly, I haven’t posted much about current political events recently, but it’s not for lack of topical material. If anything, Donald Trump has so polluted the race that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the latest twists in the disgusting torrent he’s become. If anything, it’s hard to maintain a big picture and there’s a danger of becoming numbed by his long list of offenses. Remember, Hillary Clinton is not the cause of anything he’s said or done. He needs to own up to his own decisions, come clean, fly straight, stop hedging with nasty, even violent innuendo.

Quite simply, Trump has yet to accept responsibility for anything he’s said or done. It’s always someone else’s fault. Or makes you “smart,” the way shafting the public with your tax “losses” does in your eyes. He wants us to believe “they all do it,” which gives him permission to do whatever he pleases.

No, Donald, your despicable acts and words against women have nothing to do with Bill Clinton. And, by the way, if you had any grounds for a real lawsuit against the New York Times for airing women’s allegations against you, the former president would be doing the same to you for your television episode with those from his past. You’re the one running for public office (your first and only campaign, by the way), and as the Times notes, it’s your record that needs scrutiny.

By the way, I can’t fault Hillary for what many married women have done in a situation of a wandering spouse – faulting the rival. She defended her turf, apparently unlike your wives. Think about that.

As a bigger issue, your charges of Hillary’s “lies” fails to acknowledge that the majority of what comes out of your mouth is out-and-out false. Or, as the meme says, you can lie faster than anyone can fact-check. Not so, Hillary, who actually has solid facts and detailed policies rather than vapid generalizations.

We can start with your big lie of claiming to be a successful businessman and counter that with your miserable string of bankruptcies, failed enterprises, unpaid contractors, and lawsuits. Have any of your projects not involved loopholes, public subsidies, or political favors? Would you have been in business at all without the family funding? You’ve never had to face the grilling of seasoned board members on a publically traded company, have you? Much less the competition of ambitious challengers climbing the corporate ladder around you. We know you’re too thin-skinned for that – or for building lasting alliances. You would have been torn apart and tossed out, no doubt about it.

Remember, too, we’ve learned that your lawyers always meet with you two at a time, one as a witness for the other when you forget what you’ve told them or claim to have said something counter to what you did, in fact, say. When your own lawyers can’t trust you, what about the rest of the world? Are you nothing but hot air and smoke?

So far, your basic strategy has been to portray Hillary Clinton as, well, a successful woman. And that’s led to a lot of grasping at straws, from Benghazi, which can be blamed far more on Republican cutbacks to State Department security or the George W. Bush role in the creation of ISIS or which fail in comparison to attacks on embassies during W’s or Ronald Reagan’s administrations, to the emails, which are dwarfed by those of W’s administration or the unexplained death of a young secretary who had access to the missing 18 minutes of tapes during Richard Nixon’s Watergate travails. Missing emails? We haven’t even delved into your missing income-taxes, which apparently cover most of your adult years.

And then there are all of the unsubstantiated allegations of the deaths of people close to Hillary and Bill’s work. Look, if there were anything to this, a legion of young Republican prosecutors would have staked their careers on such a challenge. Nobody, but nobody, has turned up anything to go on. In the news business, I learned long ago not to run on anything like this until charges were filed. We couldn’t use the word “murder,” for starters, unless a jury had agreed the case was homicide. Until then, neither should any Republican. If you said these things against a “private person,” your claims would be libelous and cost you, the accuser, plenty. As it is, the “hit list” is simply out-and-out untrue. That is, a lie.

Or, more accurately, a stream of endless lies.

By the way, regarding those Clinton colleagues, we might also look at the depressing nature of much of what we’ve been facing, especially from the right-wing, and the impact of long demands on what might otherwise be personal time – that is, relationships and friendships – in the face of a high-pressure career. For anyone of an idealistic bent, suicide begins to look like a preferable option to all of the lunatic bombast.

As for the Clinton Foundation? It’s squeaky clean next to the Trump setup. Nobody I’ve heard has found donor money going to the Clintons, while quite the opposite is true of you, Donald. Just what has your “foundation” done for other people, anyway?

By the way, donations to Trump’s campaign seem to be paying him a salary! And that’s even before getting to the inflated prices being paid by donors to his various enterprises, including real estate. Has any previous presidential nominee run to so enrich himself, win or lose?