Three Things on a Sunday Morning.

Well, the world is a happening place these days…is it not?  The dissonance that was ushered in with Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency has not abated and, in fact, seems to be gathering steam each and every day.  The struggles across the face of the globe for power, wealth, and influence play out in their own little theatres and the ripples from each form a complex and unpredictable mosaic of intrigue, disaster, and tragedy.  And here in America, it appears the flavor du jour for effective governing is to put our high school students in charge of domestic policy.  Judging from their incredible abilities (wink, wink) to manage mass events in support or opposition to various causes, they would all appear to have bright futures in event management or crowd organization.  But then again, once they ascend to the podium and we begin to actually hear their words, the luster falls from their shining images and we are reminded that they are likely closer to playing the role of useful idiots than they are of being prophetic revolutionaries.  So…on to a comment or two…

First off, please allow me to address the Storm (pun is absolutely intended) that is gathering around our President regarding his apparent previous relationship with an ex-porn star.  I have stated in this column before and I will say it again: Based on his history, behavior both current and past, and his rhetorical theatrics, the President is a pig.  He appears to harbor a snarky, chauvinistic attitude that is unworthy of a person in his leadership position.  It matters not that we have had scoundrels before as President.  It is irrelevant that Clinton likely did more of it and Kennedy did it a lot smoother.  What matters is that we have every right to expect a higher standard from our President.  I do not pretend to sit in judgment of our President’s behavior; I am not qualified to do so and that obligation lies with another.  But don’t we all occasionally marvel that we as a people select some of the worst amongst us to lead our government?  Whatever traits we as voters find appealing in our candidates, strong morality and character are certainly not near the top.  It seems that when we get candidates on the ballots that appear to exhibit those traits, it becomes more of a liability for ridicule than an asset for selection.  Do we want a saint in elected office?  I don’t think that is a good idea.  Do we want someone in office that has demonstrated a grasp on decent standards of behavior and living?  Well, yes.  No matter how strongly one may support his policies, all the wise leadership decisions in the world will not cancel out the fact that Trump was a hound and seems to remain unchanged to this day.    We can, and should, do better.

Don’t miss the next post!  Follow on Twitter @centerlineright.  If you enjoy the blog, pass it on to your friends.

Now…how about that big budget that Congress just passed and the President will, or has, signed?  What…a…freaking…joke!  This budget is for federal fiscal year 2018.  This federal fiscal year runs from October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018.  Federal fiscal year 2018 is nearly fifty percent over.  The primary role of Congress is to fund our nation’s government.  Now in fairness to the Republicans, any budget action under current Senate operational rules would require 60 votes.  There are not 60 Republicans in the Senate.  Therefore, it is disingenuous to blame this budget fiasco on the Republicans simply because they hold a majority status in the Senate and the House.  However, it is not disingenuous to blame the Republicans for (a) failing to use all of the administrative tools at their disposal to arrive at a more responsible budget in a timely fashion or (b) voting for such a ridiculous fiasco.  The prevailing argument amongst the Republican apologists who have voted for this bill is that they had no choice.  Look at the good it does…in spite of its pitfalls!  We were up against a wall!  There would have been a shutdown of the government!  The Democrats made us do it (Trump’s favorite)!   All of these pathetic excuses have been used before and are just as lame today as they were then.  The plain, simple, and unavoidable fact is that the time to write, complete, and pass a federal budget is prior to the beginning of a budget year; thus the term…federal budget.  It is designed to be a blueprint for future government spending, which should reflect government policies.  As has been the pattern for several past administrations, it is now routine for our government to operate on seat of your pants continuing resolutions for the majority of the time.  The first words out of every…single…professional…personal financial advisor is…prepare a budget.  That concept is so universally accepted that it is actually the law of the land in America for our government.  Is it really any surprise that so much of our government is helter-skelter and dysfunctional when it operates for most of the time on a week-to-week, month-to-month budget?  The Republicans own this budget.  They controlled the organizational levers of the Senate for the majority of fiscal year 2017; the time period when the FY2018 should have been completed.   Congress…Just do your job.  Do it in a timely fashion.  Do it in an honest and transparent fashion.  Spend the federal dollars in a responsible and efficient way. 

And finally, what do you think about our school administrators deciding which political causes should be worthy of excused student absences due to participation in support rallies?  And, apparently, in a few selected cases, that excused absence might be coupled with financial assistance…from your local tax dollars.  As a father, I have celebrated my children’s participation in the political process.  I have not, and do not, always agree with their positions; but I always celebrate their willingness to engage in the process.  However, the one thing I have always encouraged in them is the obligation to educate oneself on the issue prior to publicly taking a position on it.  This requires a careful consideration of not only defining exactly what the issue involves, but also the differing opinions and ideals surrounding the issue.  I submit that this essential precursor to intelligent issue debate and discussion is missing in many of the great policy debates that are currently ongoing; including, but not limited to, the gun control debate.  Most parents and school administrators have viable and constructive alternatives to giving students the green light to skip school, carry signs written by others, shout out slogans they did not author, and pledging blind allegiance to politically correct causes when they are patently unfamiliar with the details and substance of the issues themselves.  Dinner tables and school classrooms are fertile ground for debates and discussions about the facts surrounding gun control; but that ground is obviously not being cultivated when the majority of the school students protesting in these marches cannot even define the term assault weapons while marching to ban them.  Educators need to educate; not agitate.  Parents need to foster; not co-opt that privilege to others.  Gun control is a serious, complex, and extremely pertinent issue that should be addressed by our young adults.  But that approach should be a reflection of the lessons we have learned over the ages involving going off half-cocked about things that you don’t know shit about.  As I mentioned previously regarding the selection of leaders with good moral fiber; it is an eternal mystery why we as a culture look to Hollywood for our moral standards, look to WDC and the Judiciary for ethical behavior benchmarks, and turn our children over for raising to an educational system that is riddled and dominated by a liberal philosophy which is rotting the foundations of our nation and society.

Russia Puts Its Fingers in Our Election Pie.

With all signs indicating that the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian Meddling in the 2016 Election is coming to a close, it might be time to reflect just a bit on the matter.  Now the House Intelligence Committee will not be the final word on the subject; there is another Committee or two in the House that might have something to say about it, there is a Senate Committee looking into the matter, and heaven only knows what Mr. Mueller and his merry band of lawyers are diddling with these days.  But this indication of a coming final report from the House Intelligence Committee may be the first movement, among several more, towards some closure in this episode.  What conclusions might we draw from the facts in this case?

First off, it is pathetically disingenuous for any person associated with the U.S. Government to ceremoniously condemn a foreign nation for openly or covertly supporting a particular candidate in another nation’s election.  We have done it ourselves many times, and we will undoubtedly continue doing it.  The most recent and blatant example is the Obama Administration’s very public efforts to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu as the Prime Minister of Israel.  Obama and Netanyahu’s world views did not jibe and Obama did everything within his power and authority to remove Netanyahu from Israeli leadership in hopes of replacing him with someone he might be better able to work with.  There is nothing unusual or significantly improper about t his.  Obama was the leader of our country and in his quest for serving our nation’s best interests, he did what he could do to influence the leadership of other global nations with whom we do business.  Perhaps the biggest distinction of the Obama meddling was the public nature of it.  The venom between he and Netanyahu was poorly concealed by both parties and the fact that it played out in the media as opposed to behind the scenes did little to serve the interests of either nation.  But the larger point is that there is nothing unusual about one nation’s interest in who leads another nation’s government.  America meddles, right along with all the rest of the global society.  The proper source of attention should be the prevention of the meddling; not the meddling itself.

Don’t miss the next post!  Follow on Twitter @centerlineright.  If you enjoy the blog, pass it on to your friends.

Secondly, it is extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to assess the effectiveness of foreign nation meddling in another nation’s elections.  Heck, it is evident from U.S. polling performance and analysis that even domestic meddling in domestic elections is a very inexact science.  It is foolish to think that the amount of money available to a candidate has no influence on their chances of winning.  However, a significant advantage in campaign funds never has, and never will, be a guarantor of victory.  It is one of many important factors in the election process.  

From all indications, the Russian meddling effort took place through the auspices of an entity called the Internet Research Agency (IRA).  Reports tell us that the IRA spent up to $247,100 on Facebook and Twitter in an effort to influence the way American voters perceived the candidates and their positions.  Reports indicate that Clinton and Trump spent a combined $81 million on Facebook.  It is useful to note that the Clinton Campaign and associated PACs spent $1.2 billion in their quest for the Presidency while the Trump Campaign and associated PACs spent around $617 million to win.  The IRA’s social media efforts were not always targeted in the same direction.  They were, over time, taking different policy positions and promoting/disparaging different candidates.  It is also interesting that a significant portion of the IRA expenditures in this election exercise actually occurred after the election was over.  Points being: the amount spent by Russia is a drop in the bucket when considering the overall amount of money spent by the candidates and the parties themselves in the election efforts.  The influential effectiveness of the IRA efforts is also highly questionable; their conflicting positions and timing had to compromise their intended purposes.  We must also remember that the paltry expenditures of the IRA were spent across as many as 27 different targeted states. 

Finally, we should focus on what our true concerns should be in foreign election meddling.  Russia’s gonna be Russia.  America’s gonna be America.  Everybody else is gonna mimic us.  If we get the chance to screw around with a nation who is hostile to our global interests, we are going to do it.  We are doing it.  As long as a foreign nation does not actually develop a method that is sufficiently sophisticated to reach into our precinct voting machines and materially change vote counts, the meddling will amount to nothing more than a clumsy effort to tilt the scales in a contest where the rules are poorly understood by the meddler.  In politics, the law of unintended consequence is a great mitigator.  The very real threat associated with foreign meddling is in the corruption of a selected individual by a foreign government; a quid pro quo arrangement that can actually alter policies that impact the security of our country.  The successful implant of such a Manchurian Candidate into our national leadership would be the ultimate coup for our global enemies.  There can be little doubt that this effort to orchestrate the election of such a person has been attempted by the Soviets/Russians over time and quite possibly, with some success at lesser levels of U.S. government leadership.  But as long as their sole venue for pursuit of this goal is the attempt to influence the decision making process of the individual U.S. voter and not the material manipulation of U.S. vote counts, the efforts will continue to be futile and marginal at best. 

In lieu of further and significant evidence coming out in this matter, there is little doubt in the mind of any objective person that Russia did make a feeble and pathetic effort to meddle in our 2016 election; but their aim was not to elect Donald Trump because he was their Manchurian Candidate.  Their aim was to sow chaos in our election process, distrust in our form of government, and general conflict among our peoples.  As long as we take reasonable steps to prevent high-tech intrusions into our material vote count processes and do all within our power to insure the integrity of our voting laws and regulations, Russia will continue to meddle but fail to materially impact our elections.  One thing is for certain, however.  The inability of our government to address this issue in a pragmatic, bipartisan, and honest fashion has rendered them as nothing less than useful idiots in Russia’s aims.  The Trump Administration and the Democratic Party have spent much of the first year since the 2016 election chasing the ghost of the Manchurian Candidate.  The House Intelligence Committee has stopped chasing this ghost.  It is time for the rest of the ghost chasers to wake up.

Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

Not at all sure, Ms. Franklin.  But for certain, there is a lot of zoomin’ going on.  For the next few moments, I want to focus on the zoomin’ taking place in WDC; most of it surrounding our President.

The mainstream media is zoomin’ the President.  Every step he takes, every move he makes…you know the lines.  As the old saying goes…if he walked on water, they’d complain about his inability to swim.  It is a pretty natural thing for the press to zoom the President; but this Trumpobsessionthang that the media has submerged into is a new level of frenzy and infatuation never before seen.  He is the shiny object they simply cannot resist.

The Donald is zoomin’ the media.  He drives them nuts with his tweets.  He infuriates them with his off the cuff remarks and jibes.  He stutters their orbits with his irreverence about the way things should be in WDC.  He wins a few and he loses a few; but there can be no doubt that one of the things he just loves about being Prez is the ability to jerk the journalists around and mess with their heads.

The Republicans are zoomin’ Donald Trump.  He was never one of them and he will never be one of them.  He is, though, extremely fortuitous for the Republican Party.  He gives those on the right sufficient red meat to curb their conservative appetite and even manages to tweak their noses on occasion, just because he can.  He flirts with the moderates about his willingness to compromise, only to yank away the football as they approach for the kick.  Truth be told, most Republicans in WDC don’t think much at all of our President.  But…he is a Republican…and…he beats the hell out of President Clinton.

The Democrats are zoomin’ the media.  Their insatiable hatred for all things Trumpian has driven the media into the arms of their treasonous lovers in the liberal community.  And they are being played royally.  Their exquisite performances as useful idiots for the self-titled progressive community has not only exposed them as the ethical and hypocritical charlatans that they are; but their momentary lapse of reason since Trump’s election victory has exposed them as pathetic ideologues hiding behind paper-thin masks of the Fourth Estate.  I am sure that having once envisioned themselves as the puppeteers behind the machinations of the DNC and liberal America; they now wallow in the self-acknowledging pity that they have become mere lapdogs for the left.

Don’t miss the next post!  Follow on Twitter @centerlineright.  If you enjoy the blog, pass it on to your friends.

The Trump family is zoomin’ the President.  Who knows what is true or false when we consider the reported chaos in the White House;  but there can be little doubt that there is some high drama going on between the children, the parents, the in-laws, the out-laws…pretty much the whole Trump clan.  The only person who seems oblivious to the turmoil and has somehow managed to maintain a certain level of grace is the First Lady.  She has thus far managed to hover above the daily fracas and present an image of dignity and respect.  If history has taught us anything, it tells us pretty reliably that the appearance of Presidential kinfolk in the White House is typically followed with pages that are better left out of the family album.

The elected officials of both major parties are zoomin’ the people. People are being trampled and cast asunder daily in the politicians’ zest to leap upon the most recent locomotive leaving the station.  Be it the Immigration Express (permission only to illegal aliens in America, U.S. Citizens prohibited; ridership occupancy running very high), the New Bullet Train (must pass background check to ride and cannot wear clothing that makes you look scary or tough) , the Tax Cut Special (most recent tax forms should reflect that you spent at least two multiples in expenses as compared to your gross adjusted income),  or the one that really stacks ‘em up on the platforms…the Soviet Collusion Phantom (the ridership bar is very low...anyone can board anytime to go any place...and yet, all of the cars are running less than half full).    Every one of these gleaming projectiles of impressive mobility offers the ambitious and ever-watchful worldleaderwannabes the opportunity to thrust themselves into the breach of that fifteen minutes they are all seeking. 

The President is zoomin’ all of us.  As he bounces through each new day like the silver ball working its way down the machine to the dual flippers at the bottom, he sets off the lights and the bells and the whistles and he is loving every minute of it.  Captain Chaos in an Uncle Sam suit, dancing a jig to the national anthem, tweeting gloriously when the urge strikes him, playing the fool today, playing the sage yesterday, and playing us all for tomorrow.  Announcing to no one’s surprise that yes…he will in fact see about sticking around for another term.  And why wouldn’t he?  In a life that has been full of entitlement, excess, all the happiness that money can buy, and pretty much free reign to do as he damn well pleases; he has now stumbled miraculously into the best gig he has ever known, or even imagined.  Those few things he had given up on acquiring…respect, honor, prestige, being a man of consequence...have come to him in a rush.  People stand in line to heap upon him the praise and adulation he never envisioned for himself.  He is an extremely non-serious man in an extremely serious position.  He is surrounded by people who either despise him openly and are for that reason dismissed or worship him without reservation and are for that reason taken for granted.  With no reason from his friends to grow up and reevaluate his fantasy life or from his enemies to reconsider his spontaneous agendas and actions of consequence, he will simply continue to live chapter after chapter of this contemporary novel about a reality TV personality becoming President of the United States.

Who’s zoomin’ who?  There’s a lot of zoomin’ going on, but where it all leads is anyone’s guess. 

Honest Talk About Gun Control.

Every time it happens, the radicals on both sides of the gun control issue come out of the woodwork.  The anti-gun folks go on the offensive and the pro-gun people gird up the defense.  If…if…we can somehow move to the center, there is much that can likely be agreed to. 

The President has the bully pulpit, and therefore the opportunity, to put together a group that can try to address this gun issue in a rational, responsible, and sane fashion.  It needs to be comprised of reasonable people from all sides of the argument; professional people who first know what they are talking about and secondly, can understand the threat of unintended consequences of actions taken in haste and without forethought.  The group needs to include a couple of legislative aides from Congress who can assist them in putting their findings in some type of legal context;  ready to be taken up by the Senate and House.  Oh…and the group needs to have the authority to put anyone who wants to behave as a radical idiot out of the room.

We all need to agree on some clear definitions.  Most of the public hears assault weapon and thinks machine gun.  We need to ditch both terms.  There are automatic and semi-automatic weapons.  Just because an AR-15 looks like something GI Joe carries, that doesn’t make it an assault weapon.  There are a lot of four and six cylinder cars out there that look fast sitting still; but can be outrun by a hopped-up moped.  The AR-15 is semi-automatic, only shoots once per trigger pull, sells like hotcakes because it looks badass, and can’t generate any more fire than my Winchester Model 94 lever action in the hands a capable marksman.  An automatic weapon, on the other hand, will shoot continuously as long as the trigger is depressed.  It is hard to see a place for this type of gun in our civilian population.  There are many civilian applications for a semi-automatic weapon.

Gun control laws alone are not the answer.  Crime statistics clearly show that some of the areas (Chicago, WDC…looking at you) with the strictest gun laws have some of the highest incidence of gun violence.  Good, well considered gun laws are appropriate; but gun laws by themselves cannot solve the complicated problems of gun violence.  Some think that a greater quantity of and more restrictive gun laws are the panacea to this problem; some would tolerate no restrictions on gun ownership whatsoever.  The reasonable position is somewhere in between.  It is true that someone must pull the trigger in order for a firearm to kill.   It is also true that there are people who should never put their hands on a firearm.  The common argument that “if they didn’t have a gun, they would have used something else to kill” may be valid, but there is no denying that most of us would rather face off against a maniac with a Louisville Slugger than a maniac with a 30-06 rifle.   People with evil intent will find a way to harm.  But as long as firearms continue to be their occasional weapon of choice; we need to figure out a better way to keep firearms out of the hands of these people.

There must be recognition that there are different needs for different types of firearms.  As mentioned before, it is very hard to envision a need for automatic weapons in the civilian population.  However, it is insane to expect our law enforcement personnel to do battle holding only semi-automatic weapons while criminals are wielding automatics.  Of course, we want our military to have state of the art firearms that are the most efficient available.  There are whole classes of security personnel whose special weaponry needs should be addressed.  Who should be allowed to own what kind of firearm is a big part of this issue. 

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.  So reads the Second Amendment.  You can wordsmith it any way you like; it will not be undone.  Each of us has a right to bear arms in the defense of ourselves, our families, and our freedoms.  That is never going to change.  Now the type of arms that we, the People, can bear is certainly up for discussion.  But anyone…anyone…who honestly believes that our government could compel its citizens to voluntarily surrender their arms is living in a fantasy world that far exceeds even the most sophisticated video game out there.  Consider for a moment that if Congress and the President were to pass some type of law that involved confiscation of existing arms; how on earth would they ever even begin to enforce such a law?  The Second Amendment comes about as close to the stone tablet analogy as anything out there.

Many of the anti-gun control crowd take the position that many of the less restrictive proposals presented by the pro folks are the equivalent of the camel getting its nose under the tent.  Its goes without saying that the entire camel will follow the nose.  For instance, some would say that if gun owners were required to register all of the firearms and report all transactions involving those arms, then that is simply laying the groundwork for the government to know where to go when they are ready to confiscate the arms.  As I mentioned earlier, I think confiscation is about as far-fetched as (insert your own simile).  But, any person who does not harbor some reservation about giving our government new and broad authorities over our personal liberties is naïve to the extreme.  Any new law relating to firearm registration and tracking is fraught with the possibility of evolving into something far more restrictive than was ever intended.  This is one area of the gun control discussion where middle ground will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. 

Registration aside, there is a large area between the gun control factions that is fertile ground for agreement.  Background checks, limits on the size of clips and magazines, outlawing certain accessories and modifications (bumpstocks), specific ownership restrictions for unstable individuals, and the distinction between types of weapons that has been previously mentioned; these are all items where compromise should be reachable by reasonable people. 

Something needs to be done.  Not something that is shallow and not carefully considered.  Not something to serve a political agenda.  Not something that violates the fundamental rights of every American citizen.  But the citizenry of our country is largely ignorant when it comes to firearms, the mechanics of firearm science, and the existing laws pertaining to firearms.  Somebody… somewhere…somehow… needs to stand up and become the voice of reason in this debate.  The publicity surrounding mass shootings has become such that the public outrage demands that, at a minimum, our Government recognizes the problem that exists about how we as people handle our arms.  The President is correct in saying that the one common thread running through these episodes is mental instability.  That must be addressed.  But there just as clearly needs to be a reconsideration of our gun laws and how they are administered.  

The FISA Question No One is Asking.

I am intrigued by the absence of a question.  In all of this FISA discussion, there has been much ado about whether or not the security benefits of the program exceed the loss of personal liberties that an abuse of the system might entail.  There are smart and sincere people on both sides of the issue and each bring very good concerns to the fore.

The ticklish area of FISA, as I understand it, is not when the DOJ/FBI want to monitor the phone conversations and other communications of non-US citizens; it is when a US citizen gets caught up in the surveillance web by communicating with a non-citizen.  This is when we get into the sticky wickets of unmasking individual identities, expanding surveillance based on conversational content, and broadening out the scope of Big Brother’s peepshow tendencies. 

The proponents of FISA set forth that the danger of this intrusive, and possibly abusive, overreach is effectively eliminated by the need for the snooping party to obtain a warrant from a FISA judge in order to include a US citizen in the effort.  And, as I understand it, the threshold for obtaining this warrant is very high; requiring essentially the evidence of clear wrongdoing in the legal environments.  If one is to believe what the FISA proponents espouse, the program has been quite effective, perhaps to the point of being essential, to this nation’s anti-terrorism efforts.  If one is to believe the FISA opponents, the system is overly broad, too susceptible to abuse by unprincipled participants on the administrative end, and is a weapon too powerful to be placed in the hands of government.

Don’t miss the next post!  Follow on Twitter @centerlineright.  If you enjoy the blog, pass it on to your friends.

In the current episode that is unfolding, it seems obvious that there were some bad characters in the DOJ/FBI that abused their FISA privileges in an effort to further their preferred agenda and possibly influence the past presidential election.  The paper trail that is now being slowly exposed may one day reveal exactly where the system failed and how it was subjected to such misuse by these people.  But for the present, is it not alarming that the system remains in place, as it was before and during said abuse, and is clearly open to continued abuse of this nature?   Shouldn’t we find it troubling that both Parties have just recently extended the program without much transparency or public discussion?  Isn’t it just a bit disconcerting to find out through the accounts of the current FISAGate episode exactly how vulnerable each and every one of us is to the Orwellian desires of our government?  And for me, here is the clincher.  Here is the one question I am truly anxious to hear the answer to….

The system was supposed to have adequate safeguards built in to protect US citizens from unlawful violations of civil liberties.  It is reasonable to accept that for all of the safeguards that might be in place, it is impossible to guarantee the integrity and honor of the individuals who administer the program.  But even in the (hopefully) rare occurrence where an individual or a group of individuals figure out a scheme to use the FISA program in an abusive fashion, there is always the ultimate firewall; there is the pure and sacrosanct, beyond suspicion, almighty and all-knowing FISA Judge, without whose consent a warrant cannot be approved and the spying on a US citizen cannot occur.   This, claims the FISA proponents, is why we can afford to surrender a significant portion of our personal freedom in order to obtain additional security from those who would harm us as a nation and as a people.  But if this firewall of imperial FISA Judges is so damn smart…and so damn pure…and so damn ethical…and so damn reliable, then how in the devil did a bunch of yahoos like Sidney Blumenthal, Cody Shearer, Christopher Steele, James Clapper, John Brennan, Sally Yates, Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Ben Rhodes get multiple FISA warrants issued based on transparently thin and partisan suppositions?  Who are these Judges and where did they come from?  

The Stench is Becoming Palpable.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Obama Administration, through its partisan supporters in the FBI and DOJ, and in cooperation with the DNC and Hillary Clinton Campaign, improperly used the FISA surveillance system to spy on and violate the privacy rights of the Trump Campaign, the President Trump Administration, and many individuals associated with them, both closely and tangentially.  The exposure of wrongdoing is so apparent, blatant, and supported by factual data that it is a disgrace to view the way it being reported by the mainstream media in this country.

Even people like myself, who have not been fans of Obama, are literally shocked by the arrogance, brazen ambition, and disregard for law that has been exhibited by a sitting President and his minions.  This is the kind of stuff that one expects to occur in Russia…or China…or some South American country that is bordering on dictatorship.  Read for yourself @ http://www.nationalreview.com/article/456287/grassley-graham-memo-affirms-nunes-memo-fisa-steele-dossier .  Read anywhere and anyone you like.  The facts are out there.  It is not a liberal thing or a conservative thing anymore.  It is pure and unadulterated lust for power and the sacrifice of honor to achieve it.

Now I have no doubt that there is sufficient insulation, absence of paper trail and communications trace, and incontrovertibly plausible deniability to separate Obama from the doings of his FBI and DOJ.  But if you believe that President Barack Obama had no knowledge of the Hillary Clinton Classified Data Investigation and FISAGate, then you possess more naiveté than a newborn babe in the cradle.  Whether it be Democrat or Republican, serious s&*# does not take place in the Executive Branch of Government without the President knowing about it.  As The One himself might say…I guarantee it.  Full stop.

I have been thinking for weeks now that at some point in this unfolding and depressing drama, a voice from the Democratic Party would emerge and condemn Obama and all of those he has enabled in this nefarious enterprise as the despicable characters that they are.  That voice has yet to be heard.   Simultaneously, I have been fervently hoping that the NYT or the WP might shock us all to enlightenment by bursting on the scene with a front page, above the fold, expose of all the ESTABLISHED FACTS in this unprecedented case of Executive abuse.  That print has not occurred.  In both cases, I must admit to a feeling of…not anger, not partisan pique, not journalistic objection; but of simply disillusionment.

As rabid a “rah rah for Trump” cheerleader as Fox News can be, they are a damn sight closer to the center than are CNN, MSNBC, and the other main venues of the mainstream media.  I honestly and sincerely held out hope…I really did…that the NYT or the WP might somehow find their way back to some semblance of journalistic integrity and self-respect and crawl out of this ever-widening and deepening anti-Trump abyss that they have been sucked into.  Now more than ever, our nation desperately needs a healthy and robust Fourth Estate to pull back the sheets on what has become a government and media culture that is simply out of control and free from any ethical inhibitions.

The intransigence exhibited by the Democrats and the mainstream media in continuing to ignore the obvious rot of the Obama/Clinton cabal may be giving them a “feel good moment”  for the time being; but those chickens will be coming home to roost in the not too distant future.  The Democrats and their media cohorts are now no different than these entertainment industry award shows and events where everyone is flitting around inside a glitzy bubble, speaking in circular fashion to each other, and oblivious to exactly how very out of touch with reality they are.  After having so obviously and irresponsibly abdicated their primary duties and functions in the defense of Hillary and Obama, do they honestly think that once their Party resumes power and majority status, they can simply erase the current morass from history and return to the fairy tale neverland of liberal thought?  

Yes, history has shown that the memory of the American people is short and selective.  We all choose to recall that which serves our agenda and our purposes, while ignoring the facts that we find…inconvenient.   But this time around…this rancid hubris that serves private ambition with a blind devotion; it is hard to fathom how this type of behavior can be airbrushed from the pages of the past.  It is really becoming increasingly difficult to see a way out of this political dysfunction that we find ourselves in.  I suppose that if Mr. Mueller were to soon close up his shop and disappear quietly, with a perfunctory indictment or two in hand…and if the rotten and corrupted individuals from the prior Administration are effectively removed from power, held to account, and exposed for what they are…and the President could somehow shut his mouth, lose his phone, and focus entirely on being the Chief Executive…and the media, all of the media,  could return to a coverage of facts as opposed to the promotion of an agenda…then perhaps our political equilibrium could begin to stabilize and move back towards a center position.  Who knows; it might not even take all of these things, but just one or two to return some semblance of sanity to our civil affairs.  But if a duly-elected President and his Administration can pull off the kind of disgrace that Obama has, and get away with it without consequence through the cover of deceit, denial, and media complicity; then there is little hope for a future government with any conscience whatsoever.   The stench is becoming palpable, but I suppose we can get used to anything…Can’t we?

The Sometimes Tragedy of When Ambition Comes to Fruition.

Wayne Gretzky dreamed of someday hoisting the Stanley Cup.  Willie Mays, in his youth, dreamed of making a great over-the-shoulder catch in a big game someday.  Tom Brady played in his backyard, pretending to take the snap in the final consequential moments of a future Super Bowl.  You have to know that Michael Jordan spent hours and hours shooting solo at a hoop while visions of NBA greatness danced in his head.  Just as certain it is that all of these great sports legends harbored ambitions of greatness, there is no doubt that all of the ambitions tucked away in the recesses of other wannabe’s minds were not, and are not, of such honorable quality.  Ambition in and of itself is not a redeeming quality.  It is the goal of that ambition and how it is orchestrated that makes it admirable.

From the beginning of our great nation, United States Presidents have unquestionably wrestled with the balance of their immense power and the ethics of exactly how, when, and to what degree that power should be exercised.  The ambitions of Nixon, who was drunk with power and ravenous for more of it, were effectively tempered by Legislative and Judicial counterweights.  It is revealing of exactly how far the integrity of our government has eroded that many of the unsuccessful efforts made by Nixon have been fully realized by subsequent Presidents with little or no consequence.  Articles of Impeachment were drawn up for Nixon accusing him of attempting unsuccessfully to weaponize the IRS for political purposes, while Obama successfully weaponized pretty much the entire Executive Branch to a good deal of celebration and fanfare.   Watergate was simply a ham-handed and unsuccessful attempt to steal the game plans of Nixon’s opponents; Nixon never ordered the break-in, but he orchestrated the attempted cover-up.  The Obama Administration used the power of the Justice Department and the FBI to steal the game plans of their opponents; even when “their” opponents weren’t even “their” opponents.  The acts that resulted in Nixon’s Articles of Impeachment and ultimate resignation hardly made a dent in the media-hyped gloss of The One.  Why have the ethical standards of government depreciated so badly and what does it mean for our country’s future?

In Nixon’s days, the Democrats and the Republicans fought tooth and nail for political supremacy.   But each Party had leaders who exhibited some modicum of statesmanship, foreign policy always enjoyed bipartisan efforts, and Congress took its role as a co-equal pillar of our tri-column government seriously.  Today, WDC is bereft of statesmanship, foreign policy is as politicized as domestic policy, and there are damn few serious people in Congress.  Nixon’s improper efforts to abuse his power were tamped down by the systems put in place by our founders.  Congress embraced its oversight role regarding the Executive Branch and both Parties joined in the effort to fulfill their appointed duties.    Today, both Parties eschew bipartisan efforts to serve in their proper oversight role and end up splitting  two ways; the Party that controls the White House acquiesces with the President to pursue the Party’s agenda and the Party that does not control the White House seizes every opportunity to obstruct the President’s initiatives. 

Just as the NCAA College Football Championship system is an aberration; so too are the Special Counsel provisions of the Justice Department.  Rather than deciding a championship on the field of play,  which I believe is the penultimate definition of championship,  a few individuals of overrated value and skill sit around and usurp the essence of competition to deign exactly who shall compete for the big prize.  Is it really so different when a Special Counsel is selected to operate on an unlimited budget of taxpayer funds to pursue legal ambitions that may wander far and wide with no boundaries while paying no mind whatsoever to time constraints?  Is this not the usurpation of the Congressional oversight mandate that the founders built into our government? 

When we as a people, when we as an institution, when we as nation put our complete faith and trust in individuals; we are condemned to disappointment.  Yes, there are honorable people amongst us and on various occasions, those honorable people are in the right place at the right time to help make the system work as it should.  These are the people whose ambitions met fruition in a good way.  Unfortunately, and all too often, we discover that when we allow the system to overly rely on the judgment or quality of a single individual, that individual turns out to one whose ambitions were meeting fruition in a fashion that provides a disservice to all involved.  We as people are inherently flawed and if we fail to embrace that truth, repeat that truth faithfully, and incorporate that truth in our daily lives, we do so at our own peril.  We need look no further than the lifetime appointments of the Federal Judiciary and how the rulings and legal misadventures of partisan and rogue judges have created havoc throughout our nation.  The current scandals surrounding FISA surveillance is another example of the corruption that excessive power cultivates.

There is a delicate and ongoing balance between national security and personal liberty.  We live in a world that contains dangerous people who want to harm us, our families, our communities, and our way of life.  But if we surrender our liberty…the very essence of this country…for the sake of added security, have we not forfeited the very thing that makes our lives worth living?  Not only is FISA questionable on the basis of its cost in loss of personal liberty, but the FISA system has been exposed as being highly susceptible to corruption.  Once again, if we rely on individuals to maintain the integrity of a system, we are bound to be disappointed.  Patronage appointees and high-ranking civil servants many times mistake their positions and/or tenure as a license to exercise personal judgment notwithstanding which actions are proper and which actions are improper, regardless of how the law impacts their decisions. 

Don’t miss the next post!  Follow on Twitter @centerlineright.  If you enjoy the blog, pass it on to your friends.

The oversight Committees of the House and the Senate are composed of men and women who will make mistakes.  But these people have been chosen by We the Citizens and they are subject to recall.  When they abdicate their duties to a Special Counsel, the process is distorted.  All of the proverbial eggs are put in a precarious position; a position that was unintended by our Founders.  Just as that NCAA Committee is a “less than optimum” option compared to a broader playoff system; the Special Counsel is a “less than optimum” option compared to orderly and responsible Congressional oversight of the Executive.

Nixon’s unholy ambitions came to fruition with Obama’s ability to somehow implement institutional abuse of Executive Power and escape (at least so far) accountability for that abuse.  Both men sought inordinate power in their office; Nixon simply for the love of power and Obama because of his narcissistic idealism.  Obama could not have done this if the Democrats in Congress had not colluded with him by surrendering their equal and rightful role in government administration and if the mainstream media had not turned a blind eye to his misbehavior because they bought into his mantra.  Obama was enabled by his Party in Congress to corrupt our government.  Nixon was not enabled by his Party in Congress to corrupt our government.  If and when President Trump ever seeks to co-opt the Republicans in Congress to corrupt our government, the Republicans in Congress must break the downward ethical spiral that our balance of power government is locked into and refuse to relinquish their role of co-equal party in control of government.  Failure to do so will only further solidify the entrenchment of Executive abuse of power, the corruptive and rogue behavior of federal agencies, and the dysfunction of this nation’s civil affairs.