Hey Dems…the Boogeyman is Coming…and his Name is…

Michael E. Horowitz.  He is the Inspector General for the Department of Justice.  He is turning over a bunch of rocks and actually telling the truth about what lies beneath.  You can read about Mr. Horowitz and check out his job and background here @ https://oig.justice.gov/about/meet-ig.htm.

Here’s the deal: Mr. Horowitz doesn’t seem to care that he came into his current position under the Obama Administration, he seems to take his appointment duties and mission seriously, he has an impressive skill set suited to the investigation of government abuse, and he has an impressive body of resources with which to investigate said government abuse.  From all indications, Mr. Horowitz may prove to be the truth-teller that Mr. Mueller and his merry band of partisan Democrats was supposedly intended to be. 

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On a passing note, there have been quite a few quotes attributed to retired Obama Administration officials over the last few weeks; most of them reflective of their sophomoric, narcissistic, and naïve attitudes about this country and the world.  Do you ever wonder where ex-Administration officials go when they are turned out of office?  Why can’t they just…go away?  Not sure if it is valid (probably not, but you never really know with this bunch…), but here’s a story that is making the rounds and was supposedly overheard during a recent power lunch in WDC…

Ben Rhodes: Hey….Strzok has come up with a great idea for a new type of umbrella.  He ran across this old military research project that was discontinued.  Maybe we can all form a Partnership and make some money off this thing?

Andrew McCabe: I could check with McCauliffe if we need some startup funding?

John Brennan: Exactly what is this great new idea and has it been cleared through intelligence and military channels?   You know, I could help with that…

Loretta Lynch: If not, I can take care of that with them between flights.  Both our planes will be together on the tarmac for a few minutes somewhere and I’ll just pop over to talk about “golf and the grandkids”.

Sally Yates: You know…I have always harbored a secret ambition to appear on the Home Shopping Network.  This might be just the right time.  What color do you all think I look best in?

Rhodes: Here is the deal…this umbrella looks just like an ordinary umbrella except that it has three big holes in it so…voila’…you can look up to see the sun and tell when it stops raining!

James Clapper: My Gosh…that is freaking brilliant!  I will get a team on research and make sure there is no existing patent.  If there is, it will be gone by next week.  It…never…happened.

James Comey: I have a great idea.  We could put inscriptions on each umbrella; something motivational and uplifting.  Maybe we can kinda print it around the holes.

Lois Lerner: Let me handle the finances.  I see great possibilities here for a favorable tax situation.

Eric Holder: Look folks, I have some concern about the product liability possibilities in this deal.  Has anyone considered that?

Hillary Clinton (via teleconference from Chappasdljojererer…): Hey…just leave the legal issues to me.  NOT a problem.

Rod Rosenstein:  Wait a minute, you guys.  If there are holes in the umbrella, won’t that let the rain come through and make it rather useless?

Comey: I don’t see a problem; you can still read the inscriptions.  Maybe we could even make them in a fluorescent color….

Rhodes: Listen…we can line up some product trial research.  I’ve got some old frat buddies that can take care of it.  We’ll throw in a few kegs and they will tell us anything we want.

Susan Rice: The holes are not a problem.  I can arrange some Sunday Morning talk show appearances with the networks to explain how the benefits far outweigh the shortcomings and make this sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread.

James Baker: You know…this is the kind of thing that would benefit greatly from a strategic leak or two to the media; you know…just to tease it a bit.

Rhodes: One last thing.  Who will we pick to be the face of this product; the one with the big personality for all the billboards and ads; someone with a bright smile that won’t question the realities of the situation?  Somebody who would actually believe that this thing could work?  You know what I mean…Someone who is believable even though what they say is totally ridiculous?

All Together as One:  Our old Boss…Barack!!!

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What Is Really Troubling the Democrats?

What is to be made of this nonsensical, irrational, inexplicable, and monotonic resistance of the Democrats, the Liberals, and the Mainstream Media (ah, but I repeat myself) to all things Trump?  It reminds one of the new television commercial that features people who perversely enjoy activities that inflict pain on themselves.  For some unknown reason, they continue to touch the hot iron…and pull away a throbbing finger each time.

Many, if not most, of the Democratic voters know that Obama was a colossal failure.  His only accomplishment of note was breaking the skin color barrier to the White House.  So…they know that he left behind eight years worth of mistakes, mismanagement, administrative anarchy, and departmental/agency politicization.  They know this was wrong.  They were uncomfortable with it.  They know it has to be cleaned up.   But…they wanted, at best, one of their own to clean it up.  At worst, they wanted a very moderate Republican (RINO?) to clean it up.  They sure as hell did not want a rank outsider like Donald Trump to clean it up.

And that, my friends, is exactly what is eating away at the Democrats.  They knew from the beginning that Hillary was a terribly flawed candidate and they strongly suspected that she likely did not represent their best chance to win the Presidency.  Yet they could find no way to derail the Clinton train that was being constantly fueled by money and influence.  And one by one, as the election neared and as public opinion coalesced around the notion of an ultimate Clinton victory, they leapt aboard the Clinton Express.  Some leapt with some trepidation; but most leapt with anticipatory glee of what her eventual rise to power would bring to them in terms of patronage goodies.

And then…the unexpected happened.  Lo and behold, Donald Trump was elected President.  The American voters clearly recognized Hillary Clinton as the despicable and corrupt individual she is and turned instead to a reality TV star; the obvious lesser of two evils.  The imperfection of Trump as a presidential political candidate simply adds credence to the notion that Clinton may very well have been the worst presidential candidate in history.  As thick as the American electorate can be at times, they damn sure recognized Hillary for what she was (and they scored an encore with their rejection of Moore in Alabama).

Now it was bad enough that the Democrats lost a presidential election that they and everyone else thought they had locked up.  It was exacerbated by the Republicans gaining control of the House and the Senate and a Republican wave sweeping across the nation in state houses.  The thought of having a…dare I say it…a Republican cleaning up this Obama train wreck, with all of its hidden and  secret collateral doings exposed for all to see was simply unacceptable…totally UNACCEPTABLE. 

And then, who should be in the center of the perfect electoral storm but Mr. Personality himself, the Donald; a man who is literally a caricature of their worst Republican nightmare.  They could have lived with a Bush, or a Romney, or just about anyone but…Donald Trump.  “We lost to this…this blow-dried, pompous, loudmouthed, inexperienced, born with a golden spoon in his mouth, immoral, unethical, media personality? “   Oh, the horror…the horror; the indignity; the…EMBARRASSMENT.

It is a tragic pile of pathetic, immature, selfish, irresponsible, and unforgivable feelings upon which the Democrat/Liberal-sponsored “Resist” movement is based.  And ultimately, it comes down to being embarrassed.  Well, it is time to get over it.  It is time to jump in with the amateur President, help him and his able-bodied appointees to clean up the Obama civil carnage, put this Humpty-Dumpty government back together again, and restore some effectiveness, efficiency, and integrity to our nation’s structure.  If the Democrats continue to allow the Republicans to single-handedly uncover the accumulated corruption of the Obama carnage, it will not end well for them.  They would be much better served to jump into the clean-up effort, use their limited power as the minority party to its maximum potential, and be a part of setting this government back on its rightful bipartisan course.  And then, when (not if) they transition back to the majority status, they will be in much better position to implement some of their own policy initiatives.

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This whole “Trump Campaign/Russia Collusion” deal is daily dissolving while the “DNC/Clinton Campaign/Obama Administration/Russia Collusion” thing is steadily gelling.  The page of blanks that tells the story is beginning to fill and the dots are becoming easier to connect.  There are three years left in this Trump Administration and that is more than adequate time for the remaining mysteries to be revealed.  As much as I have despised Obama and how he operated as president, I now fear that the unethical and corruptive nature of his ilk ran far deeper than I thought.  If the web of deceit that surrounds the “Steele Dossier” ends up where it increasingly appears to be heading, this will likely prove to be the worst political scandal in the history of our nation.  As Andy McCarthy has so clearly pointed out, the Democratic Conglomerate was so convinced of Trump’s unsuitability for the presidency and Hillary’s impending victory that they threw all caution to the wind and transformed our government into nothing less than a full partner with the DNC/Hillary Clinton Campaign.  The cast of characters who sold their professional soul to the partisan devil is long…Lynch, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Yates, Rhodes, Rice, Comey, all their numerous underlings and, god forbid…maybe even Mueller and Obama themselves.  The details yet to come will doubtless be breathtaking in their sheer arrogance and shamelessness.  I believe it will be very interesting indeed to see at what point the few mainstream media institutions that still retain a glimmer of integrity choose to leap off of this Democratic Titanic and begin to actually report and investigate this historic abuse of power.

Let’s say you are living in a house with someone that you might not like a whole lot.  You find a snake skin in the basement, which tells you that somewhere in the house, there is likely a bad character lurking about.   Now even though you might not think a whole lot of your housemate, you damn sure will jump in and help find the snake in your midst.  Looking at you, Democrats. 

Merry Christmas 2017

As the thermometer drops and the stress levels rise,

The blitzkrieg of Christmas dances across your eyes.

And as you rush about to get your chores done,

You’re planning that Christmas that is “second to none”.

That list with the items that runs on and on,

Has way too many blanks and not enough done.

The days are ticking down to that ole twenty-five,

It will be here soon…in a blink of an eye.

And as you approach that moment where everything slows,

It might be exhaustion or it might be the close…

You notice those about you have a bit of a glow,

A twinkle in the eye like they’re “in the know”.

And what is this secret that everyone keeps,

The one that is with us, even in our sleep?

The one that lightens our steps and softens our ire,

That makes us more generous than we usually are?

Is it the peace of the Savior, the reward of faith’s way?

Is it the truth that we’re better than we are most days?

Is it the good we see from others that’s typically hidden and coy?

Or is it the laughter of the children and their essence of joy?

There’s just something about the Holidays that makes it all …pure,

That makes it OK to be something other than…sure.

To readily admit that all the answers aren’t there,

And to live a few days without a fret or a care.

To look for the best in others, and find the best in us.

To agree without dissension, to dispense with the fuss.

To see the treasure beneath, through the turmoil above,

To recognize the terrible cost of hate, and the magical healing of love.

And so from me to you, and those that you cherish,

May your dreams be filled and never, ever perish.

Have a wonderful season full of peace and family,

And save some for the year to come…it might come in handy.

Be Careful When Choosing Your Yardstick.

This past week should serve as a watershed moment for many of the mainstream media stalwarts; it probably will not.  CNN’s colossal and shameless reporting error on the September 14 (4?) email to Don Jr. from the mysterious Michael J.  Erickson was a terrible indictment on the journalistic standards that the mainstream media have been applying recently.  I can do no better job of addressing this specific incident, and the broader question of media misbehavior, than Glenn Greenwald.  And for those not familiar with Mr. Greenwald, let us simply say that he is certainly no bastion of conservative advocacy.  His words are wise @ https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/the-u-s-media-yesterday-suffered-its-most-humiliating-debacle-in-ages-now-refuses-all-transparency-over-what-happened/ . 

The political schisms that have occurred in our society and culture are cancerous.  I do not use that term lightly and I do so with the full intent of placing the most onerous perception possible on this insipid disease that is enveloping our people from the Thanksgiving dinner table all the up to the halls of Congress.  If we might use this embarrassing screw-up event by CNN, etc. for a teaching moment, perhaps we should pose the question: Do we really want ourselves to be defined by our politics?  The universe of politics is at its best (the ideal) a soaring and edifying place of high ideals and human efforts directed towards improving the predicament of American citizenry and peoples of the world.  At its worst (the art), this same universe is a sleazy, immoral, and unethical bog of endless greed and corruption; whose only interest is the perpetuation of itself.  If we look at the world of politics, the substance of policy and administration and not the science of winning and losing, there are very few universal truths.  Most policy questions have varying and often diametrically-opposed positions that have both merit and demerit.  How you approach a particular political question typically hinges on how it affects you and yours, not how it affects everyone else.  In other words, the main driver for most of us in political motivation is greed.  Now is that the yardstick we wish to be measured by?   Speaking for myself, I recognize all too well my own foibles and infallibilities; but please…judge me by my few good deeds and ideals and not by my baser instincts.

Most every elected official has a mix of the ideal and the art mixed up inside of them.  At various times, like during a campaign, the art takes over and is the prime motivator.  At other times, like during substantive debates on the Hill, the ideal will take over and the better angels of the politician will shine through.  And aren’t we all like that?  After all, politics is more than just Democrat or Republican.  It is more than just liberal or conservative.  It is the essence of the game called “us against them”; it is the central theme of the coalescing of one ideal above another.  It is the consolidation of like thinking to achieve a situation in the future that is better than the present.  It is how we win arguments with our partners, how we compete with our co-workers, and how we make a point to our children and grandchildren.  As long as we can keep the mix healthy and maintain the ideal portion at a level well above the art, things should get along fairly well.  But when that art quotient becomes dominant and the ideals become subservient, then we are headed into a dangerous territory.  The ideal should always be worthy of the art.

This political cloud of poison that has settled over our nation and divides family, friends, and acquaintances is destroying us.  Our government cries out for a leader who can somehow rise above the pettiness of politics and begin to steer our electorate back towards some semblance of civility and integrity.   Each and every one of us needs to get back to the point where we evaluate each other and our elected leaders by the “content of their character”, their good judgment, their record of performance, and the ideals they promote rather than whether or not they can win the race, stay faithful to the cause, and help to maintain the upper position of leverage for our team.  At best, the political metric should be several notches down the list of redeeming characteristics when evaluating an individual. 

If we, each of us, are totally honest with ourselves, we will admit that a person’s political leanings are one of the first things we strive to decipher when we meet someone.   Well, maybe not the very first thing, but certainly one of the topics we will get around to rather quickly.  The impulse itself is nothing to be ashamed of; after all, our environment grinds that instinct into us with every waking hour.  How we deal with that instinct will be the important factor in where we as a people end up in this great and bold experiment called America.

Stuffing the Sack with Goodies.

College Football Playoff.  Well, were you offended when the almighty NCAA Committee selected Alabama instead of Ohio State for the College Football Championship series?  I was.  I don’t really care for either team; they are arrogant, entitled, and have way too much influence on the college game.  I would have rather seen UCF go into the Series as the fourth team.  Is UCF better than the other two?  Not likely; but they did go undefeated and Cinderella in the Series would be interesting.  My beliefs aside,  here is a real plan from a professional sports writer that makes a lot more sense than the current system… https://sports.yahoo.com/heres-make-college-football-playoff-even-better-032144320.html.  Once again…championships should be settled on the field and not in a board room with old gray-haired men sitting around a table.  Additionally under this plan and as Wetzel points out, a much larger share of the playoff revenues would go to the schools and not to the corporate bowl conglomerates.

The Shadow DOJ Persists.  And now we are discovering for a fact what has long been suspected about the Department of Justice under Obama; it was corrupt and politicized to the max.  Can any objective person put any faith or trust in Mueller, Comey or any other individual coming out of that politically-biased morass?  The Obama Administration politically-weaponized any governmental agency that proved useful to it and its agenda; the corruptive stain will take a long, long time to remove.  Trump was a fool not to get rid of Mueller early on when he had the opportunity.  Now he must deal with the idiocy that springs forth from this special-prosecutorial theater of the absurd.  With the mainstream media breathlessly waiting to slurp up every idiotic, anti-Trump morsel his team leaks or discloses, this special counsel foolishness will continue to hemorrhage tax money and political poison for who knows how long.  And now Republicans want their own special counsels to investigate this or that…Really?  Please…no more special counsels!!  Congress; do your job.

The Distinction between Product and Service.  As the SCOTUS continues to hear the baker’s case, we are presented with the question of discrimination applied to products versus discrimination applied to services.   Some would say that while banning discrimination from the sale of off-the-shelf products is fair and proper; it is nonetheless acceptable to discriminate, based on one’s personal beliefs, in the sale of professional services.  To me, this is very thorny issue and I am very interested in the SCOTUS decision.  I can see logic in allowing one to abstain from participating in a ceremony that they object to in principle; but I also see the danger in that logic traveling down unanticipated highways.  If a service provider can discriminate against gays; what is to keep this discrimination from expanding to gender, race, ethnicity, hair color, shoe size, college alma mater…you get the point.  If one’s profession entails providing service, should that service not be available to anyone seeking said service; the same as a cake on the shelf is available to anyone having the means to purchase it?  On the other hand, perhaps a provided service is the equivalent of an unbaked cake.  If a baker objects to a male wedding, he or she will not bake a cake with only male figures on top.  No decision has to be made whether or not to sell such a cake because such a cake is never created.  Might it be reasonable to say that a service provider’s cake is not baked until the service is provided; thus giving them the option to select which type of cake they choose to bake with their talents?   This is not an easy question.   Where do the rights of an individual to practice their personal beliefs as they see fit end and the obligation of a merchant not to discriminate begin?

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Obamacare Redux.  The Republicans have passed their tax reform legislation packages in each body of Congress.   They have done this in the first year of the Trump Presidency.  They have done this after failing to address the health care crisis in America.  They have done this after failing to pass and approve the required appropriations bills for our government’s normal operations.  They have done this in an unorganized, chaotic, insufficient, and irresponsible fashion.  They have done this in a clearly partisan way.  It is fair to observe that the passage of these tax reform packages by the Republicans is eerily similar to the passage of Obamacare by the Democrats.  The Republicans had time to do this the right way; using normal rules of order.  The Republicans had campaigned for eight years that this tax reform was one of their top priorities.  The Republicans caved into every single potentate Senator who dared, at the last minute, to threaten a desertion of the unified Republican tax message.  No matter how much this nation needed tax reform and how effective this possible reform may prove to be (once reconciled), this manner of legislating is shameful.  There can be little doubt that just as Pelosi’s Obamacare claim of “having to pass it to see what’s in it” was true; the same likelihood of unanticipated consequences will rule in the eventual passage of this Republican tax reform. 

Who Shall Judge?  And as a final note, let us turn to the fates of Al Franken, John Conyers, and Roy Moore…and others both present and yet to arrive.  Specifically; what standing might Congress have to judge whether or not a person is suitable to serve in its hallowed halls? Without addressing the merits of each of the mentioned politicians’ alleged transgressions, I will suggest one clarifying point at which to begin.  The appointed Congressional powers-to-be, be they the Ethics Committees or whatever, should restrict their resources and jurisdiction to the actions and behavior of its members while they are members.   Once a politician leaves Congress through defeat, death, or retirement, there is obviously little cause for any type of ethical judgment to be passed.  However, if the actions or behavior in question occurred prior to the individual assuming their elected office in Congress, then there appears to be a temptation by some within Congress to determine whether or not that particular individual is fit to serve in Congress.  Without going into the low altitude that the moral and ethical standards of Congress reside at, suffice it to say that matters that occur prior to assuming political office should be left to the auspices of the law, the people, and the Lord.  It is simply too ridiculous to consider the good members of Congress sitting in judgment on the wisdom of any particular state’s voters.