The Donald Trump phenomenon is something the pundits keep trying to explain away. Maybe after enough explaining, he'll go away. So far he hasn't.

David Brooks tells this weekend that Trump will keep his number in the polls, but the "real" candidates will rise. And now Rick Perry is having trouble paying his people in South Carolina. But Trump? He's rolling on.

And this brings us to why Trump stumps the pundits as Trump gets on the stump.

It's the money!

Money is king, and Trump is the king of the money. We've heard or the rich being job creators? Well one of the "jobs" they have created is The President of the United States along with a host of other jobs such as senator, house member, and governor to name just a few toward the top of the list. They interview people for the "job," give the candidate the marching order, and then lots of money to obfuscate and message the message.

Citizens United open the doors to a class of people who are the now and future kingmakers. Alas for them, they have not read history nor do they want to. Cardinal Richelieu and Prince Metternich and even Bismarck knew enough to make sure the king did not bow down to them, but the egotistic billionaires make a show of having the candidates come to Canossa. That might be great for the ego of billionaires, but Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Voter sure as hell think that that sucks. And they've seen it in action. They'll say anything and then do what the billionaires tell them to.

Trump has tapped into a deep resentment that the voters are feeling about how billionaires are running the show. They've seen the results of voting for people who feel they owe the voters alright, but voters are down the food chain.

What Trump brings to the table is an unvarnished persona. Crude. Yes. Bought by others? No. It's why a billionaire connects with the non-billionaire class. In a world where the kingmakers no longer hide what they are doing--even if it's legal--it throws it in the face of the electorate. Trump throws it in the face of the "top government job creators" and dares them to say otherwise.

The number of seats in the US House of Representatives was set at 435 in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. With the additional of Alaska and Hawaii to the Union, the number went up to 437. The 1910 census put the population at 92.2 million people or about 211,000 people per congressman.

We understand that the Senate is not based on population, but under Article One of the original US Constitution, the House is based on population. Today the United States population is 320 million. That means that strictly speaking each House member should represent about 730,000 people, more than three times that of a hundred years ago. So far, so good. We have better communication and infrastructure and staff, so maybe a century later a House member can represent more people.

But what about Wyoming, which is a state with a population of 584,000, yet it has one representative. The Wyoming House member has an equal vote to the lone Montana representative who represents close to a million people. Like Pluto that slipped out of the status as a planet (at least for a while) maybe it is time to get serious about the House being represented according to population, or better said, if the state cannot come up with a sufficient population, maybe its time to take statehood away.

I like Wyoming and its people and I do not think it would be very nice to revert them back to being a territory. So what to do? A couple things come to mind. Using Wyoming as the minimum district size, that would increase congress to about 550 members, up from the current 437. This increase the size of congress for the first time in 100 years. About time!

Increase the number of members in the House, but damn! that's expensive--all those extra seats and staff in the House. I'm sure that one is a non-starter, plus it would throw the electoral college all off and possibly bust up the gerrymandered congressional districts up, but good. And who wants that!

The other idea would is to join Wyoming to Montana into a single new state, and with the combined population of one and a half million, it would have two congressional seats that are proportionate to population as Article One states. Of course there is the matter of dropping the number of senators to 98, but hey, that's democracy.

One man. One vote. Even if the House doesn't want to change their number after a century.

Last night's airing of Makers on PBS got a lot of attention, in part for what it didn't include: Feminism in the last 20 years or so, especially what's been happening online. But that's okay. Feminism has a deep and profound history too big to fit in a 3-hour documentary.

The story starts before the 1950s. The story continues on through today. And the story is far more diverse than the mostly-white narrative shared in the film. In the Washington Post, Annie Groer writes:

For activists of a certain age, “Makers” is a sentimental journey back to the days of big ideas, big dreams, big hair and big glasses. For GenX and Millennial women who still may not know that single “girls” of yesteryear could not get credit cards, birth control or even an apartment lease, “Makers” is a crash course in, pardon the expression, herstory.

Yes, the film is quite sharp in its portrait of feminism from the 1950s through the 1980s. What struck me in watching it, though, was how half-silent the movie seemed to be regarding feminism happening today.

It’s no surprise that “Makers” ends with several prominent younger women chewing over the work life/home life balancing act, and defining 21st century feminism as whatever they want it to be.

Missing for me were the prominent feminists of the younger generations. The women who are active online, on blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook. The Makers story ended with "today" without really showing us today.

Okay, snark aside: The onus isn't on the Makers filmmakers. They did an exceptional job telling their stories. No, the onus is on all of us.

Trigger Warning, a documentary film

A few weeks ago we were among several bloggers who received information on a remarkable new short documentary posted online: "Trigger Warning," by Nicole Louise Melleby, a 23 year old filmmaker from New Jersey. In this she takes on a subject that anyone who's touched it can tell you is red hot and difficult to take on: rape culture.

And yet take it on she does, head on. And she does through reasoned discussion among young men and women. And it ends up being quite compelling and easy to watch, despite its difficult topic.

In an email, she explains how the film came about:

My senior year at my university, I decided to make this my big project. However, the school was not as receptive to the idea as I thought they would be. I had to have a bunch of different meetings with different administrative personnel, and they were all very wary to the idea. They talked about different rules, and how I needed to walk a fine line, and how I was not allowed in any way to interview “a bunch of rape victims telling their stories”, which, while that wasn’t what my doc was going to be, I still couldn’t understand why not. There were a lot of hoops to jump through and red tape to break, and it only angered me more. Here I was trying to make a documentary on rape culture, and it was that exact culture that tried to stop me from doing so.

I did have a professor who had my back, and we managed to do this anyway. After a semester of planning and research, I spent the next semester filming. Getting together groups to interview wasn’t difficult – my brother was in high school so I grabbed him and a bunch of his friends, knowing that they used terms like “you totally raped that exam”, and the students on my campus were very willing to help. My professor introduced me to Rochelle Keyhan from Hollaback! and my filmmaking team and I contacted PCAR for an interview, which is how we met Liz Zadnik. With a small crew of filmmaking students from my classes, we conducted the five separate interviews, and my D.P. Dan and editor Liz both worked hard to figure out our introduction shots. It was a lot of teamwork, and I’m very grateful to my entire crew for all their work. The best part for me was seeing how excited everyone else became about the topic at hand.

Nicole is not done.

We need a lot of help. We ask that if anyone knows of a sexual abuse organization that would love to use our film to send them our way. We also want to get as much press as we can to generate interest. We need people to blog and write about us, as you were so kind to do.

Mostly, we are in need of funds. Submitting to film festivals costs anywhere from $20-$100, which we just simply cannot afford. Any little bit helps, and we ask that anyone who can visits our donation page on our website.

For those who can’t, we ask that people start talking about the film. Talk about rape culture. We want people to start understanding that rape jokes are never okay, and we want to try and start making a change.

Watch the film. If you like it, "like" it, share it, link to it. Worth noting is that the Makers website has more online videos with more stories, more perspectives. Are there other stories you know about?

Some Republicans are looking to change the way the President of the United States is elected. It is a simple plan reported by the Washington Post, Rachael Maddow, and other media, but I think the article in Center for American Action Funds lays it out well.

Simply put, in the present system, the US electoral college delegates are selected by a winner-take-all system based on the states. Some Republicans are calling for a revamp of the winner-take-all system and replace it with electors based on congressional districts. Had such a system been in place during the 2012 election, Mitt Romney, who did not have a majority of the popular vote, would have won the Presidency, and not Barack Obama.

However, I would posit, had the system been in place, Romney still would not have won, for Romney would not have been the nominee. Why do I suggest that?

What I suspect would happen is that the electors would become the de facto the congressional representatives. That is, if a district elects House member, and that district also has an electoral vote, it is logical that the elected House member would likely also become the elector. If that is the case, is there any need for a national convention? Is there a need for a primary? Just let the House of Representatives meet as the neo-electoral college and guess who wins? The Speaker of the House.

The United States moves to a parliamentary system. Perhaps someone will put into law that a Congressman can't be an elector. Maybe the courts will rule that it is reasonable, but somehow I think it won't stand up.

There is a perception, right or wrong, that the American People are electing a President chosen in a very closely watched contest. When the House of Representatives gets involved in electing a President, it just feels wrong. It's like the checks and balances are way outa whack.

For sure, the Speaker of the House is third in line for the Presidency.

Under the Republican plan, that'll move him two spots closer to the top and likely lead to the elimination of Presidential selection as we know it.

In my undergraduate class in anthropology, one of the texts related how during World War Two, soldiers in the US Army were given vitamins. But there was a religious denomination that opposed taking medicine. The answer? Change the name of the pills to "food supplements," and sure enough the soldiers in question went ahead and took the pills.

Calling things by different names can change acceptance.

The text went on to say in 1949 that the War Department's name was changed to the Defense Department, possibly less bellicose.

How has this played out? Well, if you are defending yourself, it sounds a lot better than if you are having a war with someone.

So I thought about this a bit.

Instead of World War One and Two, what if it was World Defense One and Two. And it could be said the world was defending itself against tyrants, dictators, and aggressors, and making itself safe for democracy.

What if we say the Korean War was the Korean Defense? We were there defending Korea.

The American Civil War becomes The American Civil Defense, or if you like, the War Between the States becomes the Defense Between the States.

The Revolutionary War is the Revolutionary Defense. Other Wars soften their names. The Defense of 1812. The Mexican-American Defense. The Spanish-American Defense. The Vietnam Defense. The Middle East Defense.

We can look elsewhere. The Napoleonic Defenses. The Franco-Prussian Defense. The Defense of the Roses. The 30 Years Defense.

When angered, some will go on the defense path.

Those whose actions are illegal go before a defense crimes tribunal.

Closer to home, we have a Defense on Drugs. A Defense on Poverty. A Defense on Terror.

Tolstoy's great novel will be Defense and Peace.

In this Orwellian world of Newspeak, an all-out war becomes double plus defense.

Already we have a series of United States Presidents going back to Truman who do not declare war, but who ask for money or political coalitions that allow the President to defend US interests.

It's been 72 years since Congress declared war, and 68 years since that war ended. And ever since, all we've been doing is defending ourselves, despite the fact that many thousands have fallen.

Ever since, as Scarlett O'Hara might exclaim, "Fiddle-dee-dee! Defense, defense, defense; this defense talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream."

But no one is screaming as the drones drone on and peace loving America wages defense against its enemies.