Normal Voters Really Want Normalcy To Return

Apparently, denying something happened
is all that matters to Donald Trump.

It used to be normal that we defend the actual victims of domestic violence.

Not the accusers! Those liars remain exactly what they were ten years before the #metoo movement decided to be. I know we would like to pretend that WE are a new America poised to give a damn when women insist we should, but this is Real Talk...For People Who Need It (SquareBiz), and I'm not convinced that enough abusers or women are ready to vote for a woman or believe her claim of abuse.

This matter of America's foremost leader being an unrepentant misogynist works because plenty of men remain just like him and plenty of women voted for this man with complete knowledge of his history with women. Those women- who shall primarily remain anonymous, for obvious reasons- are excused for their support of president Trump because the bulk of the evangelical community has also joined him and are clearly going to vote for him again if given the chance to do so.

It used to be normal that we'd fight against the efforts of the Soviet Union.

That nation is now simply called Russia because they fought the United States beyond their ability to afford the war, and it cost them an entire union. Yes, that Russia is the same Russia that is now happily fighting us in other ways, including automated bots that disseminate spoon fed information to the same list of people that I mentioned above:  my oldest brother, women who question #metoo and other women but not Trump, prominent evangelicals and the Trump base, aka, the Trumpians.

It used to be normal that certain standards of operation like having a presidential staff with security clearances or obvious obstruction efforts of an ongoing investigation would draw the ire of a Congress that most of us were raised as children to understand had an equal balance of power within the three branches of government. It used to be normal that Congress eagerly jumped upon opportunities to show the president their equal level of power like they did when overwhemingly voting in favor of sanctions against Vladimir Putin and Russia.

This Congress wont even force Trump to enact those sanctions that were voted upon with a veto proof majority, further conceding their equal level of power to a president that wants our military to give him a parade.

If you've seen this meme, maybe normal is just an illusion
Click here to compare the actual 1956 platform to this meme

It used to be normal that going through background checks, vetting, bonding or anything of the sort was considered "due process".

Now we have presidents- and supporters of the president- willingly defending a man who can't get permanent security clearance due to domestic violence issues. Instead of questioning why he remained in that job and who gave the call to keep him there every time his interim clearance lapsed over the past year (they last for 180 days with an option for another 180 days), this conversation has devolved into a question of due process with no trial under way and no reason to invoke the idea of due process unless you are confusing Rob Porter's issues with your own, Mr. President.


Even with acknowledgement for the sharing of platforms planks when politics demand, it used to be normal that Republicans behaved like Republicans and Democrats like Democrats.

Now, we have  a president that has control over both houses of Congress and is embroiled in a debate with his own party over immigration and increasing the deficit. If the signs of the death of political normalcy aren't clear enough, what more do you need?

I am personally a bit weary of those who keep seeing the obvious but continuously ask themselves the most obvious, thus rhetorical questions imagined. Yes, there are plenty of people that continue to support this man despite all the reasons "you" think they shouldn't. His issues with style, delivery, focus, empathy and a history twice as bad as his present gaffs are not enough to run off prominent preachers who either see something beyond the ability of the rest of us, or they see a puppet who they can get stuff from. Either way, they are with him and by default against you, Bob Mueller and normalcy.

They are also not against Russians because they are not dumb. What most of you people wishing for your normal back don't quite get is that smart people don't discount the fact that Donald Trump probably did benefit from the Russian intrusion into our election. They also don't automatically look at the polling numbers and tell themselves that he could win again without Russian involvement.

What you people who need your normal back also don't quite realize is that these are the same people who willingly gerrymander as well as obstruct voters for the sake of keeping their slipping grip on power, so why not Russians?

I still think exiling the spiritual understanding of forgiveness and Grace away from our schools because it offended people while letting everything else in was stupid. But that's the conservative me talking. Mostly, I am too proudly Socialist and too against the two-party hustle to care that the Democrats could be begging for a problem if they keeping frowning in disbelief over the notion that people support Trump.

Get over it and get over your wish for normalcy. If our lazy voters had a chance to do it all over again, they would have voted Bernie Sanders into office. I would be dancing, but we would all be trying to figure out how a Socialist will govern without any Socialist driven legislation coming out of either branch of Congress. While people like @RachelMaddow try to keep a calibration of what normal used to be so that we don't allow this administration to confuse us when normal finally returns, I say she and everyone else is dazed and confused and probably won't see things clearly until their concussions symptoms clear.

Our old normal only involved the participation of less than half of the country, and that was at the best of times, not mid-terms when turnout is significantly less. Several citizens have to watch, listen or actively ignore our embarrassment of a president while they rethink their previous belief that their vote didn't matter, but many citizens turn on this circus and feel more than justified of their decision to wash their hands of all of it. Whether we have an electorate more motivated to do their civic duty is still a wait and see proposition that has apathy, gerrymandering and suppression efforts it still must overcome.

Mitch McConnell looked flabbergasted as he stared into the camera and tried to explain to a section of Trump's current support how Barack Hussein Obama became our 44th president. His only recourse was to promise them that he would block Obama at every turn and make his effort to preside over this country as difficult as one human being possibly could. Now, all of that energy is being recalled and renewed against Trump, except Republicans have a political majority so the parallel isn't quite the same even if the sentiment is.

The new normal is likely being evidenced at anti-Trump protest rallies and with recent special election results. Governor Scott Walker, in Wisconsin, is refusing to hold a special election because the last one he allowed went for the Democrats. Right now, the generally motivated as well as the generally interested but hardly motivated voters are running off of the same energy, and that is a good thing. Whether it shall be an enduring thing is something to worry about when you realize that our president- who loves his freedom and Russia way more than your sense of normalcy- has decided that the best way to protect himself and Putin is to flood the waters with more press than the average person can endure and hope it makes them downright weary when it comes time to vote.

His plan seems worthwhile given the fact that the media is stuck in a paradigm of unprecedented ratings and interest in the latest news while simultaneously being disgusted by the person they are giving so much shine to each day. Trump's presidency may be saving a few dying newspapers across the country as we speak. Although his rhetoric continuously drives those he disgusts towards further hatred of him, it gets spin'd and retold by FOX news and by those Russian bots that keep generating half-truth memes to keep Trumpians motivated and fully on board.

If Russia is still as against America as it was when it was a union too, they have NOT only reignited the Cold-War that we declared victory over, they are winning the damn thing from the inside out with Donald Trump in office.

I write to you today because our president is also a Russian bot who refuses to denounce or fight back against Putin and quite possibly colluded with him to win the job. Our Congress is loathe in their responsibilities because they are unsure of how to do their job and keep their power at the same time. Meanwhile, WAY too many of you are looking for normal again while the war for our ability to still be called a union rages on.

What many of us see- including Facebook, finally- is that the necessity for nuclear war has been usurped by the simplicity of a digital one. WE are currently engaged in a war that WE don't understand so we can not be winning it. By the time we fully discover the extent of this war we will have endured internal damage that will never allow us to return to whatever normal used to be. In fact, when you think of it, old normal is probably to blame for this mess.

So please, stop looking for it.

Denying Donald's Dumbness Questions Intelligence

Donald J. Trump might actually want to follow the lead of his three previous presidential predecessors who all managed to achieve two terms of leadership over America and the free world with minimal changes over those 32 years in leadership of the intelligence community.

WE all understand the current skepticism in the two-party system and the lack of congressional leadership that made way for the dissolving of the faith from the American electorate, ie., the reason why we've got Trump. WE even understand this war with the media even if we can't see a positive outcome for anyone waging war against the fourth estate.

Where I am personally struggling is understanding how you impune an entire community of intelligence that has been trusted by 32 years worth of presidents, evidenced by minor changes in leadership over the years preceding Trump.

Every professional within the community of gathering intelligence has a duty to the other intelligence entities, and to the president that they serve, to do what it takes to keep Americans safe. The notion that any one of them would intentionally act in a way to harm Americans is absurd.


Speaking of intent, our press is an intentional aspect of the intelligence community, one with a great deal of intelligence gathering ability of their own. Rich and powerful media outlets can hire whoever they need to hire to get to the bottom of a Watergate, Bridgegate or whatever scandal we add the word "Gate" to next.

If no one objects, I'm pegging this one DummyGate while we watch Trump attempt to impune everyone he might need to keep America safe and also get elected to another term, something that won't happen if he doesn't truly keep us safe. Inciting radical recruiting efforts while publicly taunting those same radicals to see if they can beat your public declared travel ban will not keep us safe. The problem with DummyGate is that Donald is likely just the fortunate beneficiary of a whole lot of people who would rather play dumb than accept some of the signs of the walls surrounding Trumpland crumbling like Jericho.

Trump can try to create excessive doubt of the intelligence community just as he can try to win the presidency while not revealing his taxes. While one- if not both- has already worked for him, neither effort will stop people who make connections professionally from connecting the dots on both of these questionable behaviors. What Dumb Donald and his Trumpians don't quite understand is that hiding the truth is sort of unreasonable if the truth you are hiding is not a real or significant impediment to your goals.

Which is why I remain fairly certain that Trump had no real plan of winning the presidency, making the shock of his victory as equally impactful to the Donald as it was for each of US. If you don't expect you can win the presidency while revealing your taxes, you certainly question winning re-election with them. If this steady march towards uncovering those taxes, be that by Trump himself or congressional subpoena (whichever comes first), Trump needs to work on a really cool explanation for what the intelligence community is about to uncover in those taxes before they uncover it. Otherwise, he had better demean and impune American intelligence gatherers in advance just to diminish the value of what they could eventually reveal.

And there you have it folks. At this current pace of growing distance and discord between Trumpians, intelligence, and the media, Trump remains on a collision course with professional bloodhounds. From my perspective, why Trump would want to test the ability of bloodhounds chasing the scent of a trail speaks to the enormity of what they could someday find.  Nothing even close to equivalent to a pussy grabbing admissions on tape would be worth this war he's waging.

All of this ultimately leaves me to look at every so-called republican that doesn't have the courage to at least talk like John McCain or Lindsey Graham. Either you could care less what happens to the republican party after Dumb Donald quits this game and goes back to his business hustle, or you question that trickle-down identity that few republicans stand by very much anymore.

If those bad guys can get in despite current vetting measures,
nothing in your recent measure would stop them either.

In one minute, Trump claims that you can't announce a travel ban or all the bad guys would rush in during the week prior to the start date, and in the next, Trump announces the date of the new ban in the hopes of not causing such erratic travel disruptions around the world as he did with his last spontaneous combustion.

Forget the fact that his new order is just like the last in that it can only work to disrupt a bunch of people needlessly while never achieving the goal it purports to accomplish.  People don't tell you if they intend to harm you if they know you'll stop them, and the years it currently takes to properly vet bad immigrants is already enough time to uncover their intentions.

The current radicalization of immigrants who live in America is happening while in America and to the children of immigrants, not the parents who bring them or give birth to them on our soil like the Tsarnaev brothers (Boston bombers). Sometimes radicalization happens via online websites, while other times it is via other radicalized people already radicalized and living in America.  

Trump just can't understand that he looks stupid while trying to impune the intelligence community while leaking information (some involving him) that they share in confidence. In doing so, Trump is behaving like that sibling in your family who doesn't want to admit to breaking the rule of eating in his room so he hides the leftover food under the bed until it starts to smell revealing the missing dishes, broken rules and an inability to navigate something so trivial. Forget that WE somehow elected that sibling into office. In one way it's just his turn finally.  In another way perhaps, it's his punishment for being such a rule breaking prick all of his life.

Quite frankly, the only thing worse than our dumb, stinky-food hiding, rule breaking sibling are those who support him, turn a blind eye to him or keep pretending that his room doesn't smell so bad.

Putin Plans Bigger Than Hillary Or Donald Trump

Apparently, Mitt Romney is either not loyal enough or just too swampy to avoid the drain plug that Donald Trump promised to pull within the first 100 days of his administration. Not only that, Trump also promised to implement term limits on the very people he'll need to pass the bill that will limit their terms in office. I've lost track of the other million broken campaign promise' that Trump has either already renigged on or intends to real soon. Should we wait until he get's sworn in to be so critical?  We would wait if those cabinet appointments could wait too.  As it stands, they are the clearest signal of how he intends to Make America Great Again.

As for Romney? He's among the too sane or too unloyal that Trump is being challenged to steer clear of as he forms his cabinet. Indirectly, Trump is deciding that many of the most important jobs in American politics will either be filled by inexperienced novices who will need a fair amount of time to ramp up to their job description, or it will smell a little swampy in a few rooms while looking eerily familiar to the all white male America that used to rule our political landscape.

What America never seems to accept- especially as our future president crosses the dividing line between cronyism and full-fledged corruption in our government- is that WE are our government. Those of us who work in politics (media and lobbyist) or directly for the government become the learned body of knowledge that guides the way through the jungle WE've created for ourselves. The social necessity of finding cabinet workers sufficiently learned in a particular area of government can not be intertwined with some hand slapping agenda of punishing people who campaigned to ensure that you'd lose.

To Trump's credit, Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO tabbed to become the Secretary of State, was not chosen because he is a Washington insider, but he is also someone with a dubious history relative to Putin.  Once honored for his innovative efforts while doing oil related business in Russia, Tillerson is now going to be asked to hold Putin to task for war crimes and the like. Is he looking to nurture an existing relationship or test one with the understanding that you too could become a target of Putin if you cross him.

Rick Perry might actually get a job too, because the plethora of people on the list of Trump enemies is much too vast for Trump to function like someone looking to hand down repercussions as well.  Other than Omarosa and a couple of political talking heads, Trump never really had sufficiently learned supporters anyway, so his selection pool of people to put in key positions was depleted from the moment he won. As it stands, he would much rather use his children- the only people he really trusts much at all- and not have to do any business with people who could be hustling him the way he's hustled so many others in his lifetime. If only it weren't the biggest conflict of interest in political history; one so huge, it could threaten his office before it ever get's underway.

Has anyone stopped to think if Putin understands Trump's potential conflicts of interest too?

The Art Of The Deal

Trump is soon to learn that you really can't drain the swamp unless you restock the damn thing with some fresh fish when you are done.  Keep in mind that the new fish will need a little time to grow, so you must implement a catch and release policy for the newbies, or they may never survive to fix our public school problem, much less Putin. Nothing Trump's new swamp creatures do for 2-4 year's can really be counted against them anyway as they learn to replace those knowledgeable swamp critters he promised to get rid of.

What he is really going to learn the most is that Putin is not his friend and certainly not a man to be played with in a friendly manner.  He may not be the devil for his retaliation against Hillary Clinton- someone he loathed- but he is hell bent on restoring the former Soviet Union to Cold War era size and strength, and he needs a weak America to assist with that agenda. His restoration of the Soviet Union started in Crimea, but it surely won't end there.

So whenever Trump repeats the refrain about "is it so bad if Russia and America got along", he must be reminded that it is okay, so long as he's prepared to deal with a dictatorial president inspired by everything damaging to America and helpful to the restoration of Soviet dominance.

Did Donald Trump Just Tell America To Stay Tuned For His Concession To Hillary Clinton..........Or Not?

We know that George W. Bush will not be a guest on Trump TV. Will Putin?

It would be so great if we could do what we did in the last two debates this time around, but we can't. We can't spin the results of this debate into some kind of convincing reason for the candidate we prefer because Donald Trump did the unthinkable.

On the stage, in his final televised presidential debate, Trump said we would have to wait to decide if he would concede the election or not. He didn't spin the statement to mean, so long as it's not close and a disputed count like Al Gore had. Trump ran with the torch he lit days ago, to start these games he 's playing with our nation, and he intends to carry this torch to the finish line even if it means he'll burn down the entire party and portions of our nation along the way.

Trump's inability to lose is so well documented in his own writing about himself that any person who is voting for Trump but unwilling to read and recognize that he is a self-proclaimed whiner, might be a whiner themselves.

Trump is not tough like he keeps pretending, and neither is Vladimir Putin for hacking personal emails to try to influence an American election. He's especially not tough for his inability to call an email stealing punk like Putin exactly what he is. People who promise you they are tough are notoriously the least tough of them all. We've known this since elementary school even if it took until middle school for you to finally do something about that fake tough guy.

Why is Trump scared to take Putin on as he should? Probably because Trump has business dealings in a nation that could freeze your funds or simply take them and make you do something about it. There is no way that Trump will move from his company line on Putin, in fear that Putin might be listening. So, no matter what you ask Trump on the question, he won't get all Mike Pence on stage and mess around with his own foreign bank accounts or whatever it is that he's hiding in those taxes. He's going to say the same thing over and over again.

"I don't know Putin. But would it be so bad if the U.S. and Russia got along?"

Yes, Donald! If Putin is messing with our free and fair elections, getting along now without retaliation would be bad. It will get even harder if they shoot down one of our planes in that smokescreen of a 'no fly zone' that Russia created as a shield to keep the Syrian president safe from an American drone gone astray.

It's true. President Obama is the king of drone killings and deportation. Trump actually admitted that Obama is the king of deportation, but he also seems to be auditioning for the chance to outdo him in deportations while forgetting that immigration and wall building won't be the only job. He'll also have to deal with America's mortal enemy and Donald's pretty good friend Putin. Russia needs to prop up Syrian president Bashir Al-Assad and save him from an untimely death, but what are the chances that Turkey or an American manned flight doesn't "accidentally" take on Russian air defense fire?

Republicans are interestingly concerned that America and its president should not be talking too tough to Russia when it's already too late for what they've done within our election. Weakness is to ignore Russian Wikileaks without retribution. Weakness is to disregard your own counter-intelligence so you're not cornered into disrupting your own family income.

Donald Trump has done so much to avoid conceding the inevitable that he is conceding the inevitable indirectly. He's conceding that he is nothing more than a television hustler with a bigger agenda towards television than leading this country. He's conceding that the cliffhanger concession he's making of our election is juicier than the admission (or not) of a president's birth, and a perfect teaser to launch a new television network. He's also conceding that he doesn't understand the process of putting his mistakes to bed. As our leader, every misstep he'd make would become a presidential dark cloud that would never leave and never stop raining.

Trump could do a whole lot more not to leave us in suspense on the concession of this election, but that would not be good marketing. It would be presidential, but that's not his problem. At one point he accidentally interrupted Hillary with a "good luck with that" sarcastically referring to something she said she would do as president.

Even in his own twisted mind, he doesn't do a great job at lying. It could be the cause of his sniffy nose and not some other nefarious reason that requires urine or blood to uncover. Trump not only subconsciously congratulated his opponent on winning this election, weeks in advance, he's consciously telling his supporters to prepare for a tainted loss, which is a twisted version of a victory in the mind of Trump.

What Trump may not get, is that his angry alt-right supporters probably won't waste their time standing in line for a rigged election instead of drinking a lot of beers after work and waiting for the results to come out on their living rooms tv's.  One- maybe two- will let anger and those beers push them to behave badly in response to the rigged election that they didn't bother voting in. They'll find liquor induced inspiration for their revolution even though they hadn't the gumption to vote.

Trump's rigged election claim was set ablaze by his unwillingness to say he'd concede the election. For the next three weeks, he'll fan this flame and watch it grow and glow from all of his handy work.  At best, nearly half of America will buy into the tainted election theory and work to delegitimize the first woman president, much like they did the first black one.

At worst, someone will die from this idiot.

Is Christian Hypocrisy Destroying The World & U.S.?

Before Pope Francis addresses America, I thought I
would offer this great nation a religious address of my own.

Gay marriage, or the war to stop it, is a religious one.

The war against aborted babies that may or may not be kicking on a table while clinging to life that is ironically, only being sustained for the proper harvesting of the brain from this particularly described- unwilling research donor- is a religious war as well, even if Carly Fiorina tells you its about the decency of all Americans.

Marijuana? Religious, even among  Catholics (Mexican, Irish, Italian...etc.) who drink for sport but abhor dope heads and question marijuana's medicinal value over that prescribed medicine waiting to potentially be recalled or over prescribed to a depressed PTSD soldier who is likely to die from the depression or the pill addiction but not the weed.

God knows that those hooded folks used religious justification to terrorize long before Dylann Roof thought it could kick off that religious race riot that way too many so-called religious folks promised was sitting on the edge of inevitability 20 years ago or more.

Religiously conservative Jews are now promising us all that Iran is the worlds great Satan while religious Iranians say similar things about Israel and America.  Regardless of who might be right, the mere references are a tug at the heart strings of religious folks who understand man's historical journey towards a manifest anti-Christ destiny, and the unwitting preemptive strikes from all sides that only help to prepare the necessary smokescreen for his comfortable arrival.

I could have titled this post, "Religious Hypocrisy" but that's not an accurate depiction of America's reality or my particular grievance.

Jews are already on record as describing JESUS AS A HOAX while anxiously waiting for the REAL Christ to please stand up and prove that previous Jewish rabble rouser a liar.

Love 'em or hate 'em, the Muslims are too deeply engaged in their own religious disagreement as a tenant of religion itself.  Sharia law could never come to exist without a faction of Muslims insistent on this caliphate mission. How gracious can Islamic Sharia Law pursuant's possibly be towards other religions while struggling to be tolerant towards the very people that they pray with every day and in the same way.

Although Muslims don't quibble with one another over the day, the necessity and quantity of prayer, worship and fellowship, they are at war over the importance of their religions founding prophet, Muhammad, whose family lineage and rebellious life journey pointed one direction for some Muslims, a different direction of thought and behavior from other Muslims, and that inevitable "third" group who can empathize with both sides of this war.

Islam and Judaism are Exempt from Grace

These two confused and thus confusing religions are actually free from the unequivocal call of Grace that asks but one thing from each and every Christian;

Exercise your faith in the gift of Grace by exercising your giving of Grace.

It puts Christians in the cat bird seat of religious pecking order relative to who and whom God expects to be the most gracious.

Might that be religious piety for a Christian (Me) to place a higher expectation upon the behavior of Christianity over every other religion?

I dare any Muslim or Jew (or atheist and agnostic for that matter) to battle EVERY Christian in a war to be gracious. I'll bring my crew and you bring yours, and we'll battle it out near the performance stage at Denver City Park next weekend.

As it stands, American Christian lawmakers, and the people they think they represent, aren't necessarily kicking butt in the battle to be gracious, especially towards desperate middle eastern refugees and migrants praying to God for a little American Christian Grace.

Long before Ben Carson's recent stupidity towards Muslims, Muslims questioned the full divinity of the prophet who inspires Christians to be gracious. Yet, this historically tolerant capacity of people inspired by Grace must have influenced a few of these refugees and migrants into death tempting sea voyages towards western/Christian refuge instead of more Islamic disagreement and violence.

For times like these.

At times like these, I often find myself confident that God needed black slaves in America.  Not so much for the reason that whites found valuable, but for value that would manifest itself in years and days after the scars solidified their shape on our backs.

The necessity of blacks in America and the necessity for America in the world is similarly linked, ordered and scarred to achieve tenacity and temperance when a balance is needed from both powerful forces. Insensitivity and intolerance on a macro or micro level is an entirely understandable human policy for the selfish, the weary or the scarred.

It's just not gracious.

For the Grace of God, trees made to nourish a nation have to grow up and take their place in the forest. Not only to realize the value of their purpose, but to stave off the proliferation of the selfish trees that evil uses to overtake the landscape and swallow up the rain and the sun from the rest of US.

If that analogy doesn't quite make sense to you, its likely because I'm talking to a different kind of Christian.

Dealing with Vladimir Putin Means Doing Everything We Can Except Something Stupid

When political disagreements involve doing nothing in congress, (or as little as possible) you have political polarization.  As it relates to our current political climate, we can debate the root of it all day long, but it amounts to nothing more than the politicians we elect doing whatever we allow.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is hardly concerned about a president who is not serious about his words.  He watches FOX news just like the rest of us do.  He knows exactly what congress and all of those who oppose this president are saying.  Putin is certain of very little except America’s unwillingness to support the decisions of this president, no matter what those decisions might be.

The common refrain from those who vowed to make Obama a one term president, is that he has not followed up on his warnings against certain nations with consequences, that includes Russia.    

When it came to Syria, it looked for a moment that the president was ready to strike, but congress quickly declared that America’s imminent threat was not involved.  In response, president Obama encouraged congress to vote on the matter, in which they abstained long enough for Russia to intervene and force a deal to be made.

President Obama could do what other presidents have done.  He could have moved on Syria and forced congress to stop him.  Given the characterization of the republican designed Affordable Care Act being  rammed down the throat of America, it makes a lot of sense that he would challenge the resolve of congress instead of adding to his dictatorial image.

Personally, I would have said to hell with congress and done what I believed to be correct, even if FOX news hardly needed another distorted story to help drive their ratings.  President Obama chose political expediency when it comes to Syria, but Barack Obama has always been a political pragmatist who most resembles the republicans that despise him. 

Barack Obama did not fight tooth and nail to save the food stamp cuts or the cancelled unemployment benefits.  Obama did lean far to the right on things like surveillance and the use of drones. Obama did not rush to join black organizations like My Brother’s Keeper when many of those who elected him begged for such support early in his presidency.  He is joining his support to his version of NAFTA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP which is seen as a clear challenge to American jobs and opposed by most of his party. He is driving down the deficit with his plan to cut the military, but in classic form, republicans are attacking him for cuts that they themselves have proposed.  He had the voting majority to install a single payer insurance plan but decided upon RomneyCare 2.0 instead.

President Barack Obama is a fantastic American.  He is Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King with a side dish of Bill Clinton.  Each of these great American’s, despite their awesome stature, are as humanly flawed as is every president who ever assumed the role.  Rather it be in deed or perspective, no president can make every decision, with such a vast list of them, correctly.

So now the decision on Russia and the Ukraine is at hand……..allegedly.  Whatever he does, Obama will have critics as most presidents do, but there is a right answer to this no matter what the critics declare.

Many will remind you that Bush warned Putin back when he put troops in Georgia without consequence just as we have now done in Syria.  As a result, Putin does not believe there is any consequence to his actions.  

When you raise kids and don’t give them consequence, you may inherit a problem much like Putin is to America right now.  Unlike children, adults, and nations of free adults are not subject to the consequence of a disapproving nation who dislikes your 19^th century diplomacy.  Ukraine fought over trade allegiance and engaged in a 19^th century governmental overthrow which Russia allowed without interruption.  If America can offer a billion dollar loan to the Ukraine without a duly elected government, Russia clearly has a duty  to support their Ukrainian allies (which they did not do during the upheaval) or insure a democratic Ukraine moving forward for the sake of their relationship with that future regime.  Like it or not, this is clearly a matter of Russian  geopolitical, and thus, economic concern.

Sometimes the proper consequence of 19^th century diplomacy is boots to the ground.  Our 21^st century approach may result in future boots on the ground, but it certainly should not begin there.  Absent of such a punitive response, Barack Obama is doing exactly what he can do, which is everything except something stupid.

Winter Olympics In Sochi Get An Avalanche From Colorado

The Avalanche have sent four players to the Olympics in Sochi

If Vladimir Putin needs any help with security he might be on his own.  If he runs short of snow, Colorado sent an Avalanche to Sochi. Actually, we have sent four Avalanche players to the winter Olympics this year, and it begs a few important questions.

First of all, why would the NHL risk injury to their most valuable players by sending them to the Olympics in the middle of a season?  The mere privilege of playing for your own country is incentive enough to risk a lot. I realize that this has been the Olympic standard forever, but my team hasn't had such a likelihood of littering Olympic lineups in a while.

This year we have 4 players that did make it.  Matt Duchene, Semyon Varlamov, Gabriel Landiskog and Paul Stasny.  If you are watching the Avs, it should be clear that the rookie, Nathan McKinnon could  soon become an Olympian as well as Ryan O'Reilly. But what about P.A. Parenteau, or Jan Hejda?  What about Erik Johnson.  These guys could help any team win games, and when America gets to know all of these Av's, we will lose a few to free agency.  Those that remain will join this years group of Olympians four years from now.  It is possible that the Av's will bum rush the league with a deep run in the playoffs this year. They will certainly do it before the next winter Olympics return.

That is good from the standpoint of prestige, but bad when you consider the physical demand a long run in the Olympics will require, and the physical risk that you incur while doing it.  The most difficult part of being or having young players is the adjustment to such a long season.  Those who make the adjustment with lots of rest and proper diet can overcome the mental walls that challenge young players. Typically, you won't know what you don't know.

I am excited and concerned for all of our Olympians.  They are deserving of the honor they've received.  A couple of them have teams that could win the whole thing, so Av's fans might have a rooting stake late into this tournament.  I will also find myself watching to see if they make it through safely, and if they return to the team with the inspiration of an Olympian, or the legs of a noodle.

Socialism .vs. Capitalism. Is this a war or a marriage?

I love to smile inside at times when I think about the years of my early adulthood when I was raising babies and trying to find my way.  At the time, my very dear friend was raising his own babies, so we often spent time together raising our babies and exploring the joy of beer.

John Sherffius is the creator of this.

We were close, close friends from middle school, so our influence on each other is immense.  I can recall how he came to be deeply involved with unions.  As a politically charged young person, I found myself standing outside of a grocery store during a strike and I jumped right in with the workers to fight the good fight.  At the time, I don't think my friend cared much about stuff like that but he joined me anyway.  As we departed I explained to him what I believed about unions then, and what I believe about them now.  Unions dictate work standards for everyone, even those who do not pay the cost for their existence.

Unions rose out of a natural reaction to capitalism run amok.  A great example of the importance of unions is our current insurance debate.  The reason that 85% of the insurance market is employer based insurance is not because employers are so considerate of people, but because companies who did not have unions ran the risk of becoming unionized if they did not move to meet union level standards.  They still do.

As a result of unions in this country, every company tries to stay ahead of employee dissent that could result in a unionization effort.  The rise of unions and the cost of having them does not and did not destroy companies, it just forced them to see the cost of doing business in a broader perspective.  This broader perspective allows 85% of America to currently work for a company that subsidizes each employee in order to pay for the current socialized health insurance program called group insurance.

If companies can justify paying this expense right now (it will go away in 2015 for most ), do you think it will be hard to pay for increased wages when this expense goes away?  Companies take any expense, increased supply cost, increased wages or whatever and treat it like all expenses; as a cost of doing business. That's it.

Most socialism is just a cost of doing business that we disperse among the masses to ease the pain.  Sometimes we call it taxes, other times we call it fee's, but in the end whether its paid out in the form of group insurance or military spending, or food stamps, it is socialism nonetheless.

Socialism demands pragmatism.  Group insurance is pragmatic.  Generally American socialism is not pragmatic but reactionary and therefore expensive as hell. As a result of American socialism, the forces of capitalism and competition have learned to lurk for opportunity to consume  the crumbs and waste from this reactionary beast.  The big crumbs fall from military and healthcare socialism.  Other forms of socialism nip at the edges of our wasteful government but don't consume nearly as much as the big two.

Military waste abroad will be consumed by private security firms and other corporations (have you heard about camp leatherneck). The rest needs to go away to deal with our deficit a bit.  Since war is such a major industry in this world, the military has become an example of socialism and capitalism playing twister. Good luck unraveling those two lovers.  Before the ACA, that's what was happening in healthcare.

In the end, socialism and capitalism are like a husband and wife.  Both compete for power even though they already know who is the boss............s/he is.