2016 Election: Wounded political warrior vs. playboy showman

/Image via pbs.org

With the broadcast of "The Choice 2016" this week, the PBS Frontline crew has produced yet another outstanding investigative report on the Democratic and Republican candidates for president of the United States.

Presidential Endorsement: Voting for Hillary Clinton

/Image via pbs.org

Editor's Note: Bullwork of Democracy was founded on the firm belief that an informed citizenry is a bulwark of democracy. As much as morally and professionally possible, this one-man-show blog strives to provide information, not advice. Although this post amounts to an endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, the focus is mainly on why I am voting for the New York Democrat, not advice to other voters.

From the beginning of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the most redeeming quality of the real estate magnate's candidacy has been his candor.

For millions of voters who are frustrated over a host of unmet challenges such as decades-long economic stagnation for all but the wealthiest Americans, Trump openly sharing his mind has been refreshing.

I am grateful Trump revealed his thoughts during the GOP primary season, rather than reading carefully vetted remarks off a teleprompter. If Trump had been under the influence of Paul Manafort, Stephen Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway from the beginning of his presidential campaign, the public likely would be unaware that the New York Republican is an uninformed and bigoted narcissist with strongman tendencies more fitting for dictatorship than democracy.

(A special thank-you to fellow Granite Stater Corey "Let Trump Be Trump" Lewandowski, who led the Manhattan-based businessman's GOP presidential primary run until he was fired on June 20.)

Elections are about choices.

In November, I will not choose to vote for the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson or the Green Party's Jill Stein. The stakes are high in this election, with policy challenges galore, including racial tensions, crumbling infrastructure, foreign and domestic terrorism, healthcare reform, and North Korea's growing nuclear weapons arsenal. For me, Johnson and Stein represent pointless protest votes compared to the risks associated with a Trump presidency.

Clinton is clearly my best pick.

For a centrist who is admittedly left-of-center, there are many reasons for me to vote for the Democrat. To name a few, I favor finishing the healthcare-reform job President Obama started with the Affordable Care Act, I favor Democratic president's appointees to the Supreme Court, and I favor the Democratic Party's commitment to environmental protection.

There are even more reasons for me to vote against Trump.

A lot of folks are frustrated and angry. I get it. Getting ahead, one of the essential ingredients of The American Dream, has become a struggle for 99 percent of the people in most parts of the country.

But I cannot have a hand in the risky bet of handing the White House keys to Trump.

While it is admittedly hard to peer into the heart and soul of any politician polished enough to seek the presidency, I believe Trump revealed himself during the hotly contested Republican primary:

Trump taints Mexicans

Regardless of whether Trump is racist, he is a race-baiter

Trump maligns Muslims

Trump mocked disabled New York Times reporter

Draft-dodger Trump belittles sacrifice of U.S. prisoners of war

Trump loves himself

Trump's loose nukes policy in Asia

Trump treats women like caveman

Trump banking on ignorance

Trump's view of black people is jaded and faded

Trump is clueless about important topics

Trump tells Big Lies

STOCK UP ON POPCORN: The presidential debates should be revealing, but PBS Frontline's "The Choice 2016" documentary on Clinton and Trump set to broadcast on Sept. 27 at 9 p.m. EST should lay the candidates' shit bare.

North Korea reaches nuclear-tipped tipping point

North Korea tests a ballistic missile in December 2012, deploying "an object" in Earth's orbit, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The three-stage rocket could be capable of delivering a warhead to Alaska or the West Coast of the United States. /Image via AP

City-buster nuclear bomb: Check!

Intercontinental ballistic missile: Check!

Miniaturized nuclear warhead: In development.

With Friday's test of a Hiroshima-scale nuclear bomb, North Korea has firmly staked the totalitarian country's claim to nuclear-power status. The South Korean military estimates the explosive yield of the blast at about 10,000 tons of TNT. The nuclear bombed dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 packed 12 to 15 kilotons of explosive yield, leveled 90 percent of the city and killed 80,000 people in a flash.

The nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945 reduced the city to rubble. Dubbed "Little Boy," the American nuclear bomb had about the same explosive force as the atomic device that North Korea tested last week, according to the South Korean military. /Image via www.nbcnews.com

North Korea has either successfully tested or is actively developing enough elements of a fully capable nuclear-weapons arsenal that the time has come to seriously face the reality that the world's most powerful totalitarian nation will soon be threatening at least half the Earth with atomic Armageddon.

With last week's Earth-shaking blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, the Orwellian regime of Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang has proven the ability unleash Hiroshima-scale destruction with atomic bombs. To become capable of threatening at least half the world with thermonuclear blackmail, all that North Korea has to prove now is the ability to miniaturize atomic bombs to equip nuclear-tipped missiles.

The North Korean military is actively developing and testing missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to regional neighbors such as Japan, including truck-mounted and submarine-fired ballistic missiles. Just as disturbingly, a North Korean statement on last week's atom bomb test says the outcast country can produce "at will, and as many as it wants, a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power."

The Kim regime's intercontinental ballistic missile capability ambition is also nearly within grasp, with multiple tests of the three-stage Unha-3 missile, including the successful delivery of a payload into space in December 2012. While it is unclear whether the Unha-3 is presently capable of accurately delivering a warhead to Alaska or the U.S. West Coast, which includes the technological challenge of a nuclear-tipped warhead's fiery plunge into the Earth's atmosphere from space, the Russians proved with Sputnik in 1957 that the ability to place satellites in orbit is a relatively small technological step away from launching nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.

According to North Korea state news agency Rodong Sinmun, these images show a successful test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in August 2016. The North American Aerospace Defense Command confirmed and assessed the missile's 300-mile trajectory, which was tracked from the North Korean coast east toward Japan. /Image via CNN

The maturation of North Korea's nuclear weapons program begs an existential question: How do you contain a rogue totalitarian regime that is capable of incinerating the cities of its regional neighbors and half the world? The containment policy that most of the international community has relied upon for more than half a century to limit the North Korean regime's threat to the rest of humanity is on the verge of collapsing.

The governments of regional and world powers such as China, Japan, Russia and the United States can either rise to this challenge, or humanity will slip back into the nuclear-weapons-fueled terror of The Cold War.

/BBC graphic and Geoeye image