He Is Risen

You want hope?  You want change?  You want salvation for this messed up world that we all live in?

Look not to WDC.  Look not to your state capitols.  Look not to the UN or the various alliances of different global nations.  Look not to your mayor, or your judges, or your neighbors.

Look inside yourself.  Look to the heavens.  Look to God.  Therein lays the solution.

Loose Lips Overseas and More Mueller Madness

Joe Biden recently stood before an audience in Germany and blatantly criticized the President of the United States.  Joe Biden is an ex-Senator, ex-Vice-President who has previously run for President 3 times (‘84. ‘88, ’08) and is a likely 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate.  He has absolutely no business standing on foreign soil in today’s mixed up world and sowing confusion among foreign leaders about who the legitimate leader of America is and what is America’s policy.  Biden’s claim to fame is that among the 20 plus potential Democratic candidates for president, he appears to be the most moderate.  Whhhaaaat??  That’s like being the sharpest knife in a drawer full of dull blades.  To me, the definition of a moderate is one who will compromise on practice but adhere to a rigid set of clearly defined principles.  History has shown us, repeatedly, that Joe Biden has no principles.  He is a shallow, rudderless, old school politician that is frantically grasping for one last moment of glory. 

Nancy Pelosi recently addressed audiences in England and openly disagreed with a trade policy that had been publicly supported by the President of the United States.  President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election that was held nationwide across our country.  Every eligible voter in America had the opportunity to participate in that election.  Nancy Pelosi was elected by a portion of a single county in California and is one of 435 Representatives in the House.  If you are not a resident of that portion of San Francisco City and County in California identified as District 12, you can’t even vote for Nancy Pelosi.  She bizarrely considers her position as House Majority Leader to be co-equal to the Presidency.  This deluded attitude has emboldened House Democrats to openly and stubbornly resist every single Trump initiative since the mid-term elections.  Nancy Pelosi is living in a fantasy land of pure spite and partisanship and should not be openly contradicting our President’s policies on foreign soil.   Nancy Pelosi is much better suited to be mayor of San Francisco rather than the House Majority Leader. 

Now…to the Mueller Report.  As with many who bloviate about such things, I would like to think that this will be my final remarks about Robert and his Merry Band of Democrat Lawyers.  Time will tell.  Mueller’s Report is basically split in two parts; the first part dealing with the issue of collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia and the second part dealing with possible obstruction of justice regarding the investigation into the first part.  The fundamental question that occurs to any rational being is how can there be possible obstruction in the second part when the first part clearly states that there was no collusion?  Tell me once again…What exactly are we obstructing here?  The President could, and did not, fire Mueller.  The President could, and did not, utilize Executive Privilege to shield information from Mueller.  The President could, and did not, refuse to accommodate all of Mueller’s requests for documents and interviews.  Heck…the President even allowed his White House Counsel Don McGahn to be interviewed.  The only time the President dug his heels in is when he refused to sit for an interview himself; instead submitting written answers to questions received from Mueller.  And, as Mueller himself stated in the Report, the Trump interview was unnecessary because he already had all of the information he needed to close the matter.  Now ask yourself: Does any of that sound like obstruction to you?

Part one of the Report repeatedly makes it crystal clear that even though Russia attempted to meddle in American elections; they did so without the complicit cooperation of any American, much less one associated with the Trump Campaign.  Like every other sentient human being on planet earth, the Russians had absolutely no doubt that Trump would lose the election to Hillary Clinton.  They were just trying to stir up ish; that is what they do.  Consider that their meddling also featured some anti-Trump and anti-Sanders initiatives. 

Part two reads like an op-ed out of the New York Times or Washington Post…or perhaps a panel discussion from CNN or MSNBC.  It seems to me abundantly clear that Mueller allowed his partisan band of Democrat lawyers to author part two and it is a disgrace to any person who holds any respect for the rule of law and fairness of self-defense.  It reads like a tabloid piece on juicy, one-sided details from inside a President’s inner circle which should properly be considered privileged and private.  That is not even considering the fact that the Report is presented with no provision for a defense or alternative version from those accused in the Report.  Let’s impanel a dozen heavyweight lawyers that vehemently disagree with you and your political ideals.  Let’s give them $25-$30 million to operate on.  Let’s give them complete freedom with no oversight and no accountability.  Let’s give them the services of the U.S. intelligence agencies and allow them to wiretap your friends and business associates…present and past.  And let’s give them two years to dwell on this exercise.  You gonna come out of this without a blemish?  You think you might have an embarrassing moment or two in the report?  You think Trump had a legitimate reason to be frustrated and angry that he had to deal with this bogus investigation for the first two years of his Presidency?  Read this again … http://centerlineright.blogspot.com/2018/07/

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Can there be any doubt that the Mueller Report Part Two is nothing more than a sop to the House Democrats to be used as fodder for their continuing investigations into all things Trump?  Robert Mueller started this sad episode as a WDC fixture that apparently had some gravitas on both sides of the political aisle.  Immediately prior to becoming Special Counsel, President Trump had interviewed him for the position of FBI Chief.  He has now been exposed as a tool of the partisan lawyers on his team and will serve out the balance of his public career with this monstrous stain on his record.  If Democrats want to make their 2020 Presidential Campaign centerpiece the impeachment of Donald Trump for this hot mess, I believe they are making a serious mistake. 

To close out this sad, pathetic, embarrassing chapter in American politics, let us consider three items.

What, exactly, was the origin of the Mueller Report?  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-primordial-ooze-of-the-collusion-conspiracy/

What, exactly, does the Mueller Report say? https://www.scribd.com/document/406725805/Mueller-Report#from_embed

What, exactly, did the Mueller Report involve and cost? 

Time: 22 months (or 675 days). The Justice Department appointed Mueller on May 17, 2017. The investigation ended on March 22, 2019.

Length: 448 (redacted) pages

Indictments: Mueller ultimately indicted, convicted or got guilty pleas from 34 people and three companies.

Team: Mueller employed 19 lawyers, who were assisted by a team of about 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants and other professional staff.

The investigation: The Mueller team issued more than 2,800 subpoenas and executed close to 500 search warrants.  The team also obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers to monitor electronic communications, and made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence. The special counsel interviewed approximately 500 witnesses, according to a letter sent to Congress by Barr.

Cost: The total cost of the investigation is still unknown.  But so far, Mueller’s office has released three expenditures statements. Direct and indirect costs totaled $25.2 million through Sept. 30, 2018, from the start of the investigation (May 17, 2017). Although Mueller turned in a proposed budget to the Department of Justice in July 2017, officials declined to make it public, instead committing to releasing reports of the team’s expenditures every six months.

One and Done, Student Athlete Stipends, and NCAA Championships

Congratulations to the University of Virginia Basketball Team.  The Cavaliers have won the 2019 NCAA Championship by defeating a valiant Texas Tech Red Raiders team.  If my Kentucky Wildcats could not win it, then Virginia is just fine with me…as would have been Texas Tech.  I must say, the players and coaches performed far better than the officials.  The administrative clown show that is the NCAA must be recruiting from within to get the level of incompetence we saw out of this year’s referees.  I do not know what must be done to improve the performance of NCAA basketball referees, but it sure needs to be done before next season.  I will note one more thing regarding this year’s tournament…it is probably not smart to pick Virginia to repeat as champion next year.  If they were a cat, they would have used up about seven of their nine lives by this point.

Whether or not your team did well this year, there is no denying that the NCAA Basketball Tournament is an exciting event.  We can all disagree about the selections and the seedings; but at the end of the day, there is one team left standing and they are there because they have not lost.  This is how you decide a championship.  You can quibble about the last four in and the first four out, but with this many teams  from this many conferences all across our nation; there is no doubt that this tournament is one worthy of crowning a national champion.  Now…if only the NCAA could get its act together and come up with a bonafide NCAA Football Tournament that is equally worthy of deciding a champion.  Dan Wetzel presents the solution: https://www.yahoo.com/news/college-football-playoff-plan-132100316--ncaaf.html

With the shoe company questions swirling about college basketball these days, there is much discussion about how the sport at the collegiate level needs to be revamped.  The one and done (OAD) phenomenon in college basketball has been an evolution of the sport that has outrun the administrators.  It has made wealthy individuals out of several young men; but it has also cost the sport in fan allegiance and public support.  Without addressing the ongoing argument about the competitive value of an older, more seasoned team versus a group of freshmen, there can be little debate that the OAD process has made it difficult for college fans to develop a solid relationship with their school’s players when they are only on campus for one year.  Factor in the inordinate influence of shoe company dollars and AAU teams and we have a dynamic and explosive situation surrounding the sport of college basketball.  The mix of financially and socially immature kids with corrupt, devious, and ambitious adults is a deadly brew.  It appears that the NCAA, after consulting with the NBA, is going to address the OAD rules.  We can only hope that the solution does not exasperate an already bad problem. 

Part of that problem is trying to redefine the term student athlete.  Without wandering into the weeds for specific statistics, let us simply acknowledge that a very small percentage of those young men who participate in college basketball will end up with an NBA career.  I can assure you that if you were to examine the optimism of incoming college freshman basketball stars, you would be led to believe that an overwhelming percentage of those college basketball players would be successful professional ballplayers one day.  Just as college basketball fulfills and creates many wonderful dreams come true; it is equally devastating to the unrealistic expectations of many high school athletes. 

There is a fundamental and dual question that must be addressed in any discussion about current college sports.  That question is the value of the star athlete to the university that the athlete represents.  Equally important is an examination of the fact that the athlete is given a free ride in pursuit of a college degree in return for their participation, and performance, in a particular sport.  So we must ask…Who’s zooming who?  Is the whole thing a joke because most of the star players fail to get their degree or even legitimately pursue an academic career while at college?  Or, is it a case of a university unfairly profiting from a gifted individual that they choose to showcase while confining them to non-profit status on the basis of their amateur stature?  Somehow, someway, we need to reestablish a true and authentic link between the athletic pursuits and the academic pursuits of a college student. 

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There is something terribly wrong with this picture.  We have so many young adults in our society carrying monstrous post-graduate financial debt into their early careers because of student loans.  At the same time, this farce about providing free room, board, and tuition to athletes who are using the school as a springboard to the professional ranks is rendering the college system little more than a developmental league for professional sports teams.  It is easy to see to see that the obligations between the universities and the student athletes flow both ways.  It is much more difficult to determine what might be a fair and equitable solution that addresses this equation. 

Regardless of how much we all love college sports, there is really no persuasive argument that supports the function of college sports as a training ground for the professional leagues.  It is equally clear that the obscene amounts of money being circulated in and around college sports by those entities who have a vested interest in the young athletes is creating a culture of corruption that is anathema to what we should all consider the proper role of higher education. 

I believe any solution to this issue must contain at least two components.  First, there must a tangible obligation of the incoming athlete to college in terms of commitment and academics.  There must be a pragmatic and enforceable GPA requirement for all student athletes and it must be uniformly and transparently enforced by the NCAA.  There must be legitimate progress towards a degree. That obligation should be more than one year.  It might be two, it might be three, and it will likely be coupled with a change that will permit a high school graduate to move directly to the professional league at a minimum age.  At the same time, we must all come to grips with the unrealistic scholastic demands placed upon many student athletes in today’s college sports.  If their scholarship depends on their athletic performance and if that sports participation is going to take a huge swath of their personal, non-classroom time; then we must acknowledge that it is not realistic for them to pursue part-time employment.  There must be some type of formula arrived upon to furnish student athletes with a modest stipend that compensates them for not only the profits they help earn for the university sports programs, but also for the time and dedication they are mandated to devote to their sport.  This stipend does not need to be calculated to allow the athletes to live like royalty on campus.  They simply need sufficient pocket money, comparable to a part-time job paycheck, that will permit them to lead a normal student life.  This arrangement will also diminish, not eliminate, the opportunity of outside interests to financially influence the athlete in an improper fashion.  

The breathing space between the NCAA, the nation’s colleges, and the professional sports leagues has become far too small.  It is impossible to know at any moment who is whispering in whose ear.  A realistic reassessment of each one’s primary purpose and function should give us a guide as to how their mutual future dealings should be handled. 

What to Do When Congress Comes to STOP?

The Democratic Party continues in denial about the election of President Trump.  There is little to say about this that has not already been said.  Nobody believed he could win and when he did, no Democrat believed it could have been legitimate.  Now comes Mueller and his immaculate job of stone-turning and needle-searching with a final verdict that says….well, yes….he did win legitimately. 

For over two years of this President’s term, the Democratic Party has engaged in a Resist movement that was designed to accomplish either all or part of the following: delegitimize his election, remove him from office, impede any leadership efforts he might make, sabotage his legislative agenda, make him unelectable for a second term, and place him in prison.  While failing on most counts, they have been remarkably effective at one collateral impact: they have rendered Congress absolutely and completely dysfunctional. 

Republicans too were shocked at Trump’s victory and many of them are refusing to embrace him as their Party’s leader.  This selective and timid approach to governing led them to a decisive defeat in the mid-term elections and the loss of House leadership.  That event made the Democratic efforts to compromise President Trump exponentially simpler.   We now come to a crossroads for many voters who are registered as Democrats.  Like him or not, President Trump has now been cleared by Mueller and should be considered by his harshest critics as our President.  Does the Democratic Party now pivot from Resist to Debate?  Do they follow their merry band of clownish Presidential candidates into the fantasy land of extreme liberal thought or do they begin to seriously propose reasonable alternatives to Trump and Republican policy initiatives?  Will they run the obvious risk of blind resistance to anything Trumpian for another two years and be exposed for the shallowness and irresponsibility that strategy possesses? 

We are now a government that has lost its way; a system of rule that is riddled with trivialities, futility, and senselessness; a hot mess of spite and malice.  This government needs to find its bearings and quickly.  In order for our nation to continue to be the place we all would like it to be, all three branches of our government need to rediscover their true purpose.  The President must restore dignity, respect, competence, and civility to the Chief Executive’s office.  Whether they accept him or not, he must become a Leader for all Americans.  The Judiciary must return to its role as chief interpreter of law and not the creator of law.  And Congress…Congress must find a way to understand the fruits of majority without destroying the rights of minority.  They have to step up, make hard decisions, and do their job. 

I wailed to the heavens when Obama abused his powers with Executive Privilege.  I continue to wail when Trump does the same.  As sad as it is and reasonable though it may sound, the inability of Congress to do its job is no excuse for the President to bypass or circumvent the Legislative Branch of our government.  A huge part of the blame for this transference of power from Congress to the Executive lies with Congress itself.  Because it has been either unwilling or unable to make the hard decisions, it has abdicated its responsibilities through the legislation that it writes.  Congress has passed too much authority to federal agencies.  Read https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/state-legislatures-bureaucrats-administrative-agencies/.   Through its inaction and procedural failures, it has allowed the Presidents, both Democrat and Republican, to usurp its rightful authorities and distort the fashion our government operates in.  The Executive Branch has taken that purloined authority and parceled it out to the various Lords of all the federal agency fiefdoms.  Congress must get its act together or we, as a nation, will be in some treacherous straits.  Here are some areas that will be explosive landmines in the complex nexus that connects our three branches of government; issues that will ultimately filter down into our everyday lives.

Terrorism and FISA.  There is little doubt that domestic terrorism is a real and critical threat to our well being.  It is essential that our intelligence agencies have the tools and resources they need to protect this nation from that threat.  But as for me, I am not convinced that our government has the integrity and sufficient safeguards in place to be trusted with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Read this: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/end-of-robert-muellers-investigation-leaves-unfinished-business.  The absurd abuses we have witnessed in FISA relating to the Obama DOJ misbehavior in the Trump/Russia Collusion Confusion should be sufficient warning that government officials, regardless of Party, cannot be relied upon to act in good faith when vested with authority to surveil U.S. citizens.   

Immigration.  I do not like Trump’s use of executive power in addressing the southern border crisis; but I can understand his frustration.  With repeated opportunities to pass good-faith and bipartisan legislation over the past couple of years, the Democrats in Congress have pig-headedly refused to deal.  Something certainly needs to be done and I have no problem with the President using his duly appointed powers to try and solve this problem.  But the real solution to the immigration issue lies with Congress passing broad immigration reform that looks carefully at laws, resources, dreamers, and illegal and legal immigrants.  If we are waiting for the train to wreck in order to fix the railroad, the train just ran off the rails.

Health Care.  Obamacare was a debacle from day one.  It was the ultimate ego trip for Obama and he sacrificed his entire presidential agenda to get it passed.  Now it has been gutted by the Courts, Congress, and the President and the nation is left with a hollowed-out shell of Obamacare.  We now have a mishmash of a health care industry that is driven mainly by corporate greed and government over-regulation.  Forget repeal of Obamacare; just come up with a good, solid health care reform package that recognizes the obvious principles of allowing the free market to offer different plans for different people, varying coverage at multiple pricing levels, provides coverage for people with pre-existing conditions (albeit in consideration of higher premiums), permits selling across state lines to maximize consumer choice, addresses the astronomical pricing of drugs, and permits the health care industry to do what America does best…compete and innovate.  Individuals should be allowed to purchase the level of health insurance they are comfortable with, including none, and then be held accountable for their choice to over-insure or under-insure.

Federal Spending.  This is the single issue that showcases Republican hypocrisy better than any other.  When a Democrat is in the White House, all we hear from Republicans is cut spending, deficits are ballooning, and balance the budget.  When a Republican is in the White House, all we hear are…crickets.  Democrats hardly even waste their breath to put forth any concern about runaway federal spending.  It has never been their priority and it never will be.  But make no mistake about it.  Even if you can print your own money, a day of reckoning will come when spending so far exceeds resources and real production that we will become a bankrupt nation.  You and I will not have to deal with those consequences; but our children and grandchildren will.  I do not advocate for one of these balance the federal budget in ten years fairy tale plans; they are as foolish as the spending habits that spur them.  But we must begin to exert some commonsense control over federal spending and make progress towards bringing our expenditures more in line with our receipts.  The very security of this country is at stake when other global powers hold our debt in their hands; for they will ultimately choose to use that against us.  

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Democrats…it is time to step up.  It’s time to dispense with this self-serving and debilitating Resist nonsense.  We had total Democrat control with Obama and it failed.  We had total Republican control with Trump and it failed.  Like it or not, the two national parties need each other if this government is going to work as the founders intended.  If the Democrats cannot find leaders who can return them to some sense of civic sanity, what are we to expect? Another six years of what we’ve had for the last two?  Can our nation sustain that kind of atrophy?  What will that type of environment do to our social fabric, our global standing, our fiscal stability, and will it lead to the type of country that can prosper and sustain itself?  If Congress continues on its current path of dysfunction, authority will continue to accrue to the Executive and Judicial Branches of our government.  And that will be to the detriment of our nation.   America does not need a King, be they Democrat or Republican.  Nature, and civics, abhors a vacuum.  If Congress won’t do its job; somebody else will.