It's Only A Crisis Because Pelosi Is Afraid To Impeach

     Donald J. Trump, America's current President, wants to be impeached just as Nancy Pelosi says, and he will stone-wall his way into making it happen if he must. Pelosi wants to win even if it means not doing her job, as if Trump will impeach himself for her. 

     So the war is underway. Impeach him and run the risk of helping him get re-elected, or try to beat him at the ballot box while fighting back the morality cops, like Elizabeth Warren, who see this as a clear matter of integrity.

     
 I agree with Warren and I believe Pelosi and the Democrats are joining Republicans in a really dangerous game of wanting to win the politics of the day so badly, they are running from the spirit of justice in a nation much too passionate about honoring that spirit.

     Wantonness is not a great emotion to plan around, but it is the driving force for everything Democrats talk about these days. They want Trump gone so badly, but they are afraid to listen to the Mueller report and just "Do Their Jobs" because of the potential political backlash.

     Instead of simply reading the report- which, I am starting to question if many in Congress have- Democrats want to chase down Bob Mueller and former White House attorney, Don McGhan, who might be forced to testify, but will never be able to say anything that isn't already contained in the report. No matter how much Democrats want their way on this, they will look silly having McGhan turn to pages in the report to read it out loud on television for them. In essence, they want Mueller and McGhan  and Trump to do their jobs for them.

     In fact, Pelosi said as much when she recently resorted to stuttering her way into a weird explanation of Trump trying to "self impeach", a term nobody in the world understands but Pelosi. Even her attempts to clarify herself only amounted to saying that "Trump is building the case for his own impeachment".

     Translation: Pelosi wants Trump to do her job within Congress of whipping up support for impeachment by convincing individuals who are too lazy to do their jobs, to do their jobs and finally read the report. Pelosi herself is more willing to claim that we are in the midst of a Constitutional crisis rather than do her job and accept the answer the Constitution has given for this crisis moment.

     Because of the Providential perfection of our amendable Constitution, you can never have a Constitutional crisis until you run into a problem that the Constitution has no answer for. The problem right now is that the politics are historically horrible on impeachment, which has nothing to do with a crisis at all. This is about Pelosi wanting to have her cake and eat it too. But, everyone wants to have and eat their cake right now, and it's not a good look for any of them.

     Progressive Democrats say they want a woman to be the next President of the United States, but can't find one the masses seem willing to support yet. In addition to their Medicare-for-all plans, these progressives really want America to finally get serious about climate change vis a vis their Green New Deal, which is currently just a cool name and not quite a deal or a plan yet.

     Many of the new progressives in the party came to Washington D.C. on a commitment to impeach this President, but they have been quieted by Pelosi even though the Mueller report gives them more ammunition to impeach than they had when they arrived.

     Republicans have their own wants, but they are limited because they got that tax cut that turned out to be 4-5% bigger than anyone ever wanted or asked for. As it stands, way too many Republicans simply want Democrats to move on from Mueller's findings and turn a blind eye to the outlined obstructions and impeachment instructions messaged in the report. If you read between the lines on Pelosi's "self impeachment" comment, she seems willing to comply.

     Unfortunately for the GOP, moving on from Mueller means moving on to a huge spending bill that Trump negotiated directly with Chuck and Nancy (Schumer and Pelosi) realizing Congress is hardly the right place to make agreements anymore. This odd trio have agreed to a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that will probably get jammed by the politics of deficits, special interest add-ons, or a combination of both

     But I am mostly upset with Pelosi who is convinced the impeachment process will "die at the Senate's edge" and has fended her party away from the process, even though she seems more and more willing to discuss the option herself after the controversial AG Barr Senate testimony recently.  If Democrat voters start to feel this President deserves more than he is getting, they will stop pressuring this President and start pressuring his enablers instead- Democrats included.

     Pelosi is correct in her view on the dead end road impeachment faces in the Senate, but she is dead wrong in her overall analysis of the benefit to detriment because justice can never be about politics. Whether every Senator in America chooses to align themselves on the right side of history or not doesn't diminish the importance of making them have to. 

     In fact, this is not the time to run from the process and suggest the ideal of a Constitutional crisis. This is the time to use the process and make every person in Congress have to place their marker in the history books for our grandchildren to study. This is a time to shame those who haven't read the report, and this is also the time to better explain what the word impeachment means.....because, in the minds of many, the word means removal, and Americans don't like removing people WE voted for unless we have no other choice. The first Democrat to own the process of explaining impeachment to US all will help drive the process to its proper conclusion, and they might even win the White House for their efforts.

     An impeachment is a trial.  Period. It is a fact finding process intended to investigate cabinet officials who could be immune to such an inquiry if not for impeachment. Anyone geeky enough to be reading this already understood that. Many Americans do not. The only crisis currently is that Congress is at a stand still in getting documents from the White House for every current congressional investigation, including Russian election interference, and Congress can't begin their duty of oversight without compliance from the Trump administration.

     Insert AG Barr, who runs the Justice Department and is the key lineman blocking out front for all of Trump's obstruction efforts. Ultimately, someone in the Department of Justice will have to decide to indict their boss if Democrats attempt to hold Barr in contempt for not testifying before the House as requested recently. Lying to Senators about the letter he had received from Mueller is also perjury, which is an impeachable offense. As with Nixon, obstruction of a congressional investigation is also an impeachment worthy offense. 

     At the very least, Trump and his administration have promised to obstruct and are presently living up to the promise. The reasons to shut up and do something about this administration are recent, ongoing, and exist outside of the Mueller report, a report which also begs for something to be done.

     Impeachments alone have never resulted in the removal of a President because they were not necessarily intended for that. Before the Senate ever gets a chance to vote to remove a President via impeachment, a majority vote has to happen in the House first. The Founding Fathers intentionally designed an impeachment to be just as difficult as it should be. 

     Despite popular perception, the politics of impeachment are much more damaging to the party of the President, but that is beside the point. The impeachment process is the point and it is a provision designed for scenarios that demand it. It is part of the oath of the office that Congress promises to fulfill when the President and his cabinet fails to fulfill their own oaths.  History has painted impeachments as toxic, but politics themselves are naturally toxic and occasionally corrupt. By reinforcing the toxicity of an impeachment, Pelosi and Democrats are blaming the remedy.

     A concerted push for a better understanding of the process would offer better clarity to the word itself and to the necessity for invoking it when the Constitution demands. The Democrats anxiously screaming for impeachment need to acknowledge the confusion about the process and clarify it enough to tilt public perception and force Pelosi's hand. 

     The reason impeachments have never removed a President is because our hope-filled dream of Democracy in this fractured Republic typically intervenes. In reality, the standard for removal has always been higher than"... high crimes and misdemeanors", even while the standard for impeachment is not. Until Nancy Pelosi gets that and gets the courage to do what is right and not what is politically expedient, she is failing her country, her party and herself.

     I hate to beat a dead horse, but this horse deserves a beating. Pelosi asking for hearings with Mueller is the equivalent of asking him to slap her and the rest of the Democrats over the head with the obvious before they do what the report begs of them. All of this because everyone in D.C. wants a political victory even if America loses along the way.

     Until political wantonness changes, beating Trump at the ballot box is the only trick the Democrat pony can pull off, and Joe Biden is the best option to do it. Yet, beating Trump in 2020 is what Nancy needs. It has nothing to do with integrity, justice or addressing the reason Trump won in the first place. Trump happened for a reason and his approval ratings have never been low enough for me to think that mysterious reason has changed.

     Yeah, Russia is the easy answer, however, I tend to believe that Russia tipped a scale that was waiting to fall over from eight years of the racial uneasiness from a black president that millions refused to call their own. Now, we have millions on the other end of the political spectrum unwilling to do the same with Trump although the underlying issues from both sides are bigger than either men.

   It might be time for each of US to take ownership of our own part of this problem. We all want the America WE dream of but can't see how we become our own worst enemies screaming to the winds for the America we want instead of pursuing a nation that fulfills the wants of many, Trumpians included. The Trumpian army isn't confused about what's wrong even if they have a fully distorted view of who to blame or how to fix it. 

     Because the "Lord Is My Shepherd" I loathe the word want and wantonness, and I run from the use of the word as often as I can. It is a selfish emotion.  It defies my spiritual upbringing and denotes a desperation that defies the constant provisions of God. It screams desperation, yet, some needs are desperate, and I too want this rightfully elected dude gone just as passionately as the rest of you.

     What I don't want is to use want as a strategy to get him out. I don't want an elected president to lose his job without the full benefit of a due process too politically risky to touch. I would like for Trump to get everything he deserves, even if the process results in a real exoneration and not a fake news variety.

     What I also don't want, is for Democrats to pursue a political gain and
short circuit the process and the pursuit of democracy intended by the Founding Fathers who created the impeachment to properly adjudicate the misdeeds of a President gone array. If the misdeeds are unfounded, only the process can fully investigate and set the record straight, either way.

     No matter how Trump fights it, history will be forced to sniff out the truth. No matter how Pelosi fights it, the impeachment process was meant to deal with certain presidential matters and everyone in Congress currently playing politics instead of doing their job to clarify the historical record will be held accountable by history as well.

     No, this isn't a Constitutional crisis because there is an answer for this moment and it lives in the Constitution. One day in the future, Republicans and Democrats will regret not reading the report soon enough, and they'll regret trying to take this moment to use it as an opportunity for their own political gain.  Every American who lets them get away with it will feel the same regret.

If Oprah Winfrey Isn't President Material, Who Is?

If Oprah Winfrey isn't qualified to
be president, then no one is.

I've tried for a few days to listen objectively and understand the views of many people that I respect as it relates to the conversation of Oprah Winfrey running for president, but I simply can not bite my tongue on this topic any longer as a deep divide is building between those who say she can and those who think it's over her head.

Either too many of us are lost in the sauce and simply can't look back at history to determine the ingredients of a good president, or too many of you skeptics have grown weary of Donald Trump's act and simply haven't done the same thing.

Sure, it may seem reasonable for people that are in politics to actually aspire towards them and to chase after a Political Science or Law degree along the way despite knowing of those who arrived in the realm of politics after traversing various non-traditional pathways. Ronald Reagan is fairly famous as an actor turned president, but Reagan is also credited for several years as a Governor before taking on the bigger role.

Apparently, Governors are great options for future presidents even though the history of Governors who have done it is no more or less flattering than the history of former Senators turned president or any other professional person who pursued politics later in life. The notion that Colorado saloon owner, John Hickenlooper, is now a worthy presidential candidate begs the question of what made him worthy to be Governor?

I know, I know. Hickenlooper was the mayor of Denver before becoming the Governor of Colorado, but what exactly made that saloon owner worthy of running a city as booming as Denver was? How could a business owner truly understand the complexities of local government given the complex nature of running any city in America? Nothing we learn in civics gave us the nuances of local government that are much more complex and varying than the simple framework of our nations Constitution.

And what about my dear friend Senator Rhonda Fields, also of Colorado? She became a member of the state House of Representatives before winning her Senate seat on the back of grief and being the champion for her late son Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiance, Vivian Wolfe, who were both murdered by gang members as they prepared to testify to a gang murder they witnessed. 

What made Rhonda worthy of such a serious and important job that she had ZERO experience with?

Her heart.

In reality, the only thing that any person who has ever succeeded in the role of the president ever really brought to the table was an undying love for this beautiful country of ours.  I fashion my statement that way to clarify between those who succeeded and those who failed at being the president.

I- and apparently a whole lot of other people- am not particularly interested in what a politician offers up as his or her list of qualifications as much as I am interested in why it is they want the job. The recent firestorm over the book "Fire and Fury" makes us further question whether Trump really wanted this job, although he won it by letting us all know that he wanted this job so he could Make America Great Again. I'm not exactly sure if I know why Hillary wanted the job. It could be my clouded memory or her foggy message.

If my memory is still useful, Barack Obama was considered the totally unqualified community organizer who hadn't served as a committee chair in the Senate before being pegged as "next up" on the back of his rousing DNC convention speech in 2004.

Once again, a rousing speaker has roused the masses into looking at her and saying to themselves, "now that lady could be our president". We did it to Michelle Obama and if my now overworked memory serves me right again, we did it to a very cool and dignified Hillary Clinton who handled her husband's infidelity crap in a way that made us see her in a presidential light. Did raising Bill and Chelsea actually make her worthy of a Senate seat in New York? Of course, it didn't. In fact, the Senate and Secretary of State thing were both positions of an unqualified person who was hoping to remove that stigma en route to a return visit to the White House.  Hillary killed those jobs she was previously unqualified for, so much so that the GOP needed to tag Benghazi to her and not the sitting president just to taint her record a bit.

The unifying aspect of every leader from Mayor to President that actually does the job well- and I'm not really interested in a conversation about electing more qualified hustlers to hustle us after we elect them- is that they were probably asked to lead, just like Oprah was, and they probably said yes because they love this country and would do anything to see it thrive including taking down of an orange baffoon if America needed her to answer that call.

Why do we blame the entertainers for being more believable
then the politicians we elect to deceive us over and over?

Now! If Oprah is no longer qualified to be president based on the merits of everything that I've just said.....no one is.

No really!! 

God, Black People, Democrats Must Fix Their Mess

As a Father and a man of African descent, I have come to accept that some messes in this life fall squarely in my lap.

Within the fictional land that we commonly call the "black community" (blacks don't really like each other enough to be communal anymore), there is a mess of spiritual angst against the tenants of Christianity and the behavior of black church leaders seen as exceedingly money hungry and doctrinally flawed in order to intentionally grab said money while simultaneously subjugating blacks, the original man, to whites, the creator of the plan.

I couldn't properly begin to debate the flaws within the Christian Bible well enough to change anyone's problem with Christianity, especially since human perception is a human reality, and Jesus hates religion too.

Besides, this angst of angry black people, pointing fingers at God and rich church leaders, is as legitimate as the angst of the Atheists, who are mad at the notion of God (the leader of all creation) being a man and/or that She (is it better if She created all of this mess?) would allow for a world of so much disarray. If you acknowledge these indictments with your defenses down, you see that angry black believers and Atheists actually have a  reasonable ax to grind. 
Who else to blame but the creator of all things for the existence of all things, including Satan?

While you are debating in your mind whether that comment constitutes blasphemy, I'll double down by conceding the accusation against money grabbing pastors, who clearly exist, even if to the chagrin of the noble pastors. Tough questions of every sort exist for reasons worthy of discussion, and when you aggressively embrace these hard questions, the questions themselves can give birth to the answers.

So, I'll ask again.

If God created everything, isn't She responsible for everything including war and the failure of trickle down economics caused by the unquenchable greed of man? And when does man assume responsibility in this mess? Somewhere in Africa at the beginning of creation or do man's problems begin when white people come to exist?

As a proud God lover and defender of Christ, I humbly concede on the blame pointed at God, as long as my black friends and family are willing to acknowledge blacks as the original man, and also the origin of every subsequent race of man that followed. Assuming ALL races descended from one race, who else can we blame for the division that produced race, religion, and politics if not the original man?

Who Is To Blame When NO ONE Is To Blame?

Will the NFLPA wield leverage to win  guaranteed
money while so many NFL fans stand ready to
boycott over Colin Kaepernick and concussions?

These inflammatory questions are questions with no definitive answers, but I offer them as poignant examples of the roots of the division and the remedy.

As WE struggle to attain agreement politically, our strained personal economies are the only problem we agree about, because economically we all feel basically the same as we've felt for years despite a booming stock market and our government insisting that things are better. Even with better budgeting, WE the People are still being slowly price gouged by inflated housing prices, at the gas pump, or wherever they can get US.

WE have allowed ourselves to be placed on a treadmill to nowhere, chasing a seemingly unreachable dream simply because WE've abandoned one another along with the formula for economic advancement. When our voices spoke loudest, they were collected and poised to bargain, not to beg for rights or wages.


Over the span of an industrialized half century or so, corporations, unwilling to operate in good faith, have tanked our economy more than once while waging their war against the collective body of collective bargaining. The disintegration of the livable wage America once knew is directly connected to the deliberate destruction of unions and of collective bargaining.

Whether you consider the benefits of paying union dues worthwhile, or you consider paying dues to be socialism, the political right has succeeded in pegging nearly every collective human action as the exact same thing as socialism, something mostly viewed as bad in the eyes of the unlearned.

Instead of potentially winning the presidency as a Socialist, even Bernie Sanders fearfully ran from the tainted label and lost while being undermined by a political party he didn't belong to.

The truth is, we'll never really know if America was ready for a Socialist president, nor do we know what exactly Socialist policy looks like even when it's staring us in the face. Whether collective bargaining qualifies as true Socialism is inconsequential so long as the ideology remains demonized and tagged to anything that involves collective agreement among the masses. Haters of capitalism have besmirched its image fairly well too, even though both economic philosophies remain fully co-dependent on one another.

As Democrats take a short vacation from the Donald Trump debacle, they are finally realizing that they represent the haters of capitalism, and it's an image they must shake if they hope to win the White House or a majority in Congress instead of hoping like Hillary that America is too smart to elect deplorable dummies again.

In the annals of gerrymandering, the Democrats are just not in a winning position to overtake Congress. Their popular vote advantage will never matter much so long as poor people pile on top of each other within big cities while begging suburban big wigs for $15 per hour and better ObamaCare. They must improve their economic message and it needs to make sense, even to the average Joe.

I'm not personally in favor of negotiating for fair wages through D.C. mandated minimums, or for waging the wage war through Washington against the same companies that must thrive for the collective to realize their wage demands.  The reality of our wage future is that some companies can afford $15, or more......and some can not.

That is why collective bargaining matters. It forces the books open and finds a wage that is fair, not just wanted. Collective bargaining doesn't beg, nor does it function like two parents divided over proper parenting, allowing their toddler to assume full control in the vacuum created by their division. Collective bargaining and the resurgence of unions is a time tested, reawakened answer to America's wage issue. Most importantly, collective bargaining is not some pointless platitude that progressive voters will tune out. It is also far from fingers pointed in the wrong direction.

While Republicans have never embraced unions, Democrats have almost abandoned them and are not currently promoting any viable plan for our economy that distinguishes them from the Russian-loving Donald or the GOP. Despite the "more of the same" stuff Senator Chuck Schumer is backing as an economic plan, America mostly views mandated handouts (Medicaid, welfare, once a year tax credits) as progressive band-aids on a knife wound that will never stop the bleeding or address the increased cost of healthcare and education worsened by stagnant wage growth.

Happy days for wealthy folks, however, is not really a positive economic indicator or even a point they need to keep mentioning so long as wages remain unchanged. But that doesn't let Democrats off the hook in the least, even though they keep thinking it does. Although no one believes in the trickle-down theory anymore, they also don't expect incremental government handouts from Democrats to close the earnings gap either.

Within any organized community, the challenges you face are the ones you created for yourself via proactive or reactive choices. Hatred, division, and Donald Trump are alive and kicking, in part, because the party for the common man has been way too busy pointing fingers towards who they think is responsible instead of directing the fingers and responsibility towards themselves.

WE- the believers in the power of collective agreement- are responsible for embracing the power of our unified will, or accepting the results of the division WE've allowed. 

God and black people bear a similar responsibility.