One real lion killer and another trying metaphorically to down a few lions are in the news.

First we have a dentist who’s about to see his practice go belly up because he went all Robin Hood on a lion in Africa who was a popular zoo exhibit, beloved by many. Frankly, I’d never heard of that lion before this story broke. Then again, I never heard of the dentist either. Now, that dentist has hired a PR firm to help him climb out of the mess he (and his African hunting leaders who made 50 grand on the deal) created by killing Cecil. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this. I’m not a hunter or a fan of guns or bows and arrows, at least as far as hunting goes. Target shooting is another story  (A tangent: I shot a hand gun one time on a shooting range. Aimed at the target. Missed completely. Shot it again and nipped the target’s edge. The thing was, though, as I recall the episode, I literally could watch the bullet leave the barrel in slow motion and make its way to the target’s very edge. Such a feeling of power! Such a feeling that I never shot a gun again. End of tangent.)

               We also have a tiger who also is a bear. Donald Trump who is enjoying his, and about 100,000 other people’s 15 minutes of fame as a presidential candidate. He is a tiger on the attack of his GOP opponents and a bear too. And not the cuddly type. He is espousing positions of a sort that he espoused completely opposite a few years ago. Says outrageous things because that’s what he’s always done to get attention. This time, though, his alleged goal is to be president of the United States. Even he has to know he can’t get there from here but there has to be a reason – beyond an outsized ego – that he is doing it. Why, I have no idea. Don't really care either.

               The GOP debate should be “fun” to watch and we’ll wait to see which candidate is the first to say to Trump “you’re fired.” That candidate won’t get my vote either. Jokes about “you’re fired” and his hair are just too easy, and not worthy of anyone’s uttering them. Especially a candidate for president.

               Then again, the GOP nomination is like a clown car, with person after person climbing out of it in a seemingly never-ending stream. Now, the folks who aren’t making the Top 10 cut imposed by Fox News are scrambling to increase their poll numbers to try to get in the main debate (there is a second debate for the “losers” the same night but who cares really. If they aren’t the first out of the clown car, do they really matter? At least as far as Fox is concerned?)

              As I said, sort of, dentists and hunters and Trump. OMG!

Random thoughts:

•  Donald Trump seems to get bigger the smaller he gets. I mean, he trashed John McCain, saying a guy who endured five years of torture and passed on his early release for heroic reasons is a loser and not a hero because he was captured. I guess those thousands of men and women wounded or killed in war weren't heroes either or they would not have allowed themselves to be shot or killed.
  
• Heroes aren’t captured, Mr. Trump seems to believe. Though he’s been captured by the need to “brand” oneself and say outlandish, stupid things to grab headlines. And make money. He seems to believe more money means more intelligence and more success. He thinks building a wall will keep out those pesky illegals who bring rape and robbery to our homeland. He seems to think he really should be president of the United States when most people are attending his rallies to see how big a buffoon he can be. Let me save those people the trip: he’s a huge buffoon.

• Politicians who are hesitant to say what they believe are also not being honest (shocking!). Why be afraid to take on the above mentioned Mr.  Trump, for example? For fear of losing, as Sen. McCain called them, the “crazies” who seem to hunger for Mr. Trump’s rhetoric? As also stated above a chunk of his popularity and poll-leading numbers is a combination of celebrity-seeking folks who want to see him up close (ahh…television) and a not-so-thrilled sentiment yet for the other 999 GOP candidates trying to get attention. After all, in spite of the pundits and political creatures so focused on the 2016 race, not a lot of people are really paying attention to the race now.
  

• So maybe these aren’t random thoughts.

• But another thing: We do have to measure Mr. Trump with a new yardstick. The “game” of politics is changing even if we don’t fully see it y yet. Social media and “celebrity/branding” are new kids on the block. Heck, I read where Mr. Trump makes tens of millions of dollars by doing nothing, just lending his name (brand) to projects. Politicians and pundits/press are judging him by the old rules and what was “fair” and expected 10, 15 years ago. The world has changed. I’m not saying I like it, but it’s changed and there are new boundaries at play. Social media has played a big role in that change. A week ago, everyone was saying his bubble burst with the McCain remarks. But not yet, though a Washington Post poll did indicate some slide in his numbers the day after he made those comments. Polls over the next week should tell a fuller story.
  
• Oh, did I mention Mr. Trump publicly gave out Sen. Lindsey Graham's cell phone number? So courageous!!! Look, I give out private phone numbers. For senators! I'm tough enough to be President! Oh, you thought that was petty?
  
• And, I while Hillary Clinton’s bubble hasn't burst, I talk to a lot of Democrats who will be holding their noses when they have to vote for her. As the polls are showing, people do not view her as trustworthy and honest. When was the last time we elected a President who folks didn’t, before they voted for him (they were all hims then) think the candidate was honest and trustworthy? But, that day's a-coming.
  
• So, all these random thoughts I guess add up to – it’s a new world with new measurements and new ways of communicating, and we don’t really know how to interpret it all yet.
• Except that, by any measurement, Donald Trump should not and will not be president.

     With nearly 20 men and woman seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, TV news  stations have struggled with how to stage a debate that would be informative, real and, of course, entertaining. The answer to that question is, you likely cannot be all those things. Then again, is a presidential debate supposed to be entertaining, in TV measurement anyway?

               No, but that’s what traditional TV demands – entertainment, movement, holding an ADD audience’s interest for more than 15 minutes so the advertisers get their money's worth.

               Enter, C-SPAN, that “boring” little network that for nearly 40 years has held tight to providing straight information and letting the American people willing to endure it, make up their own minds without glib -sometimes inanae - talking heads in the way. Now, C-SPAN will join with regional newspapers to make available everyone seeking the GOP nomination on the same stage at the same time. Will it be entertaining? Probably not in conventional TV terms. Will it be informative? Absolutely. Rather than just reading headlines or edited sound bites, the audience will see unfettered candidates.

               What it also will be is fair. The way Fox News, which was to host the first of the 2016 primary debates next month but will be beaten to the punch by C-Span, was approaching that debate, they were only going to allow 10 of the candidates to be included – those with the top averages among a selected set of national polls. I don’t remember the numbers from two election cycles ago, but if that were the case then, and we’d had this many candidates on the Democratic side, we likely would not have seen Barrack Obama included in the cast for the first debate. And we know how that election turned out when people were exposed to him.

               Do I think Carly Fiornia or Lindsay Graham will win the GOP nomination? I do not. But I’ve been wrong before and who knows, maybe Ms Fiorina or Sen. Graham catch fire and pull it off. They should not be knocked out because a cable news channel set arbitrary criteria for inclusion thus influencing who becomes competitive in the race.

               What Fox and others should be doing is putting all the supposedly creative minds they employ together to come up with a format that is fair and provides the American public with a forum that offers each candidate time to make an impression, good or bad, on the public. If people can watch The Donald and think he makes sense, then he deserves a seat at the table – not just because his name ID and curiosity level are so high that people think he’d be fun to watch. We’re electing a president, not a TV reality show host.

               So, thank you C-SPAN for stepping up to the plate again and doing the right thing. C-SPAN decided long ago it wasn’t going after ratings or advertisers, so it has freedom to do this type of thing where a commercial network, under pressure to be entertaining and make money, can’t put the public good ahead of its self interest.

               And thank you Brian Lamb, founder of C-SPAN for having the foresight to see what our TV world would become and know there is a niche for doing the right thing. I'm only sorry doing the right thing has become a niche.

Donald Trump.

Do egos get any bigger? Do bank accounts? No to the former, yes to the latter. I’m late to the game commenting on Trump because, well, I didn’t want to. But now that he’s near the top of the GOP polls (hello, Michelle Bachman!), I figure I should contribute my 2 cents.

Can anyone reading this imagine Donald Trump as President of the United States? I didn’t think so. But he is the King of Media Coverage at the moment. Which, along with his high name ID, has put him at the top of the popularity polls that serve as (silly at this time) measurements of who the GOP will choose as its candidate for 2016. Enjoy your moment, The Donald (Trump is so rich, he gets his own definite article – “the”!!) because when it’s over, I’m not sure what you do to repair the business abandonments you’ve experienced. You can’t take back words like:

"The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. It’s true. And these aren't the best and the finest. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime; they're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

But then again maybe you can. I mean, Trump was saying exactly the opposite of these things a few years ago when he only toyed with the idea of running for president. Changing one’s mind is allowed but you’re changing everything about yourself, except your over bloated ego. The one thing that could use a makeover.

Bye-bye contracts with Macy’s, the PGA, chefs for his new DC hotel, NBC and Univision. They will not come back. Not that he needs their money (though those who work for him may). But he does need the exposure they gave him because if Donald Trump says stupid things in a forest, can he be heard?

I read a column by someone who said that despite the complaints by Republican leaders, Trump is merely mirroring many of the things people perceive that party to stand for – no immigrants, no abortions, no gay marriage, no…well, just write “no” and fill in the blank after it. Because the conventional wisdom is the GOP is against whatever “it” is.

You reap what you sow, GOP, and you sowed these beliefs getting a megaphone beyond their true numbers of votes. For you might win a primary election with those votes, but not a general. And, by the way, those views are wrong for a democratic society.  Now, we see 16 or 20 or whatever number of Republican presidential candidates trying to not alienate those voters but also keep their options open to move to the middle for the general election. Well, except for Jeb Bush who says he won’t do that. The proof is in the pudding, Puddin’, and we’ll see if he can walk the talk and resist the temptation to out-right the rightest of his opponents.

Meantime, before the Big Event really gets rolling, the campaign is being overtaken by Trump. Well, we all could use a good laugh right now. But let's keep Trump in perspective.