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Well, it was a good week for the 1% on the Tweedle-Dum side of the Republocratic Party, as the FBI decided (Surprise! Surprise!) not to indict Tweedle-Dum candidate Hillary Clinton. While FBI director James Comey called Mrs. Clinton and her associates “extremely careless” in their handling of sensitive government information, he said they lacked the “clear intent of wrongdoing”. This writer wonders if he, too, could use this excuse for, say, avoiding paying a speeding ticket. “But Your Honor, I was only being extremely careless. I had no intention of doing anything wrong.” Oh, wait; unlike Mrs. Clinton, this writer is a member of the 99%, and the rules, as we all know, are different for us.

Now, it is reported that Mr. Comey did not advise anyone, even Attorney General Loretta Lynch, of his decision to let Mrs. Clinton off the hook. We all know that the candidate’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, had a private tete-a-tete with Ms. Lynch just a few days earlier, when their private planes were sharing a tarmac. However, we are assured that the chat was entirely social, comparing notes about children and grandchildren. You know, the typical things a shady politician with a prominent wife under a cloud of an FBI investigation and possible indictment while running for president would be expected to discuss with the highest lawyer in the U.S. government. Oh yes! I’m sure they had a nice chat about babies.

So the Clinton campaign breathes a collective, and possibly premature, sigh of relief. The candidate can now, it will say, get down to the serious business of defeating Satan incarnate, Tweedle-Dee candidate, Donald Trump. The fact that, if either of the candidates were to look into a corruption mirror, they would simply see each other, is unimportant. Mrs. Clinton is duty bound to save the nation from Mr. Trump, as he feels called by the people to be their savior from another Clinton administration.

Let’s see where they differ. Well, Mrs. Clinton does not seem to be as blatantly hostile to minorities as is Mr. Trump; she hasn’t criticized Muslims, although, like her opponent, she is happy to drop bombs on them indiscriminately. And for reasons that escape the comprehension of this writer, Black voters flock to her side. This could be partly because Mr. Clinton was sometimes referred to as the ‘first Black president’, a tribute to the skill of public relations campaigns, and partly because Mr. Trump is so frightening to anyone who isn’t white.

Yet all is not well in the people-of-color camp at which Mrs. Clinton hopes to pitch her tent. Black Lives Matter activists have criticized the candidate for statements she made during her husband’s reign, supporting his crime bill and apparently condemning young Blacks. She has, since then, been less than clear in her explanations.

Needless to say (although this writer will say it anyway), both candidates support apartheid, worshiping at the AIPAC (Apartheid Israel Political Affairs Committee) altar, praising Israeli savagery and condemning Palestinians for having the temerity to suffer under it. And let’s not forget Mrs. Clinton’s comment during her first try for the White House in 2008, that if Iran were to dare attack her beloved Israel, she, as U.S. president, would “obliterate” Iran. This is not inconsistent; the suffering of innocent men, women and children is nothing to Mrs. Clinton, as indicated by her unqualified support for all Israeli cruelty and genocide in Palestine.

Condemning any violence when perpetrated by Palestinians, Mrs. Clinton welcomes it when done by Israelis. And she has strongly condemned the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) movement, a peaceful and effective means of combating apartheid, as demonstrated a generation ago in the human rights struggles of Black South Africans. Apparently, any methods used by Palestinians and their supporters, peaceful or violent, are criticized by Mrs. Clinton. The alternative is simply to become slaves and murder victims of Israelis, which seems to be just what Mrs. Clinton endorses.

Human rights are obviously disdained by both candidates, since the human rights struggles of the Palestinians are criticized and condemned; therefore, can international law be far behind? United Nations efforts to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israel are stymied by Israel’s refusal to allow U.N. investigators to enter Gaza. If that rogue nation has nothing to hide, why would it not welcome such an investigation? Israeli spokespeople say that Israel has conducted its own investigation, and found nothing amiss. The fox, when leaving the bloody hen house, said the same thing, exonerating itself of any wrongdoing. The chickens all committed suicide, and ate themselves.

Daesh, generally called ISIS in the U.S. media, probably to keep the fear of Islam at the forefront of the minds of the lemmings-like citizens, is condemned for its barbaric practice of beheading prisoners. Yet oil-rich Saudi Arabia, which has one of the most dismal human rights records on the planet, enjoys full diplomatic relations with the U.S. In the first three months of this year, 82 people suffered execution by public beheading in that country; in 2015, the entire total was 158, indicating that the rate of this particular barbarity is growing. We hear nary a word of protest from Tweedle-Dum or Tweedle-Dee, yet let a Palestinian youth throw a stone at a U.S.-provided, Israeli tank that is rumbling down his street when he is simply trying to get to school, and they will scream about the horror of Palestinian terrorism.

It has been said that in the U.S., people often vote against their own best interests. This is why candidates vowing to let everyone in the country have guns, remove health care and raises taxes on the middles class while reducing it for the wealthy, are sometimes victorious. The very people most victimized by gun crime and who can’t afford a trip to the doctor, seem to vote for these politicians because they represent ‘values’ appealing to them, such as opposition to marriage equality. The poorest voters seem to support those who barely know of their existence, and this year many feel they must choose between two candidates, neither of whom knows or cares about them.

The campaign for president will begin in earnest, as soon as each branch of the Republocratic Party holds it nominating convention. They will then offer the nation a choice between a charter member of the 1%, and a charter member of the 1%. How far the nation has come from its lofty, but never actualized, vision of ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’!

However, all is not lost (well, maybe it is, but let’s try to look on the bright side). There are dozens of third-party candidates running for president, most of whom come from the ranks of the 99%. By their very existence as presidential candidates, these men and women threaten the power of the oligarchy, and every voter has the opportunity to make that threat a reality, by voting for a third-party candidate.

Doing so is not ‘throwing away your vote’. Voting for Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump is, however, because they are basically the same, just dressed a bit differently. Ronald MacDonald and Bozo are different characters, but they are both clowns. And it is long past time for this particular circus to pack up its tents and leave town; it attracts a very unsavory element.

A third-party candidate is unlikely to win this year, but as more people eschew the two-party system, the power of those running the nation will decrease. A greater percentage of votes received by third-party candidates will send a message to the powers-that-be, informing them that their time in the sun is drawing to a close. With a Trump-Clinton match-up, there is no better time to send that message.