Is Biden Making The Same Mistake Obama Made?

  

                         Because progressives in Congress are typically far less vindictive and calculating than their conservative counter parts, progressives typically discover the error of their ways long after the error. On that note, I think it’s important for Democrats to take a moment- a moment much like the vindictive Republicans in the Senate right now, who are stalling and delaying the coronavirus relief bill.....just because, well, they can- and talk about what they might be overlooking with this "go it alone" stimulus bill they are soon to sign into law.

                 Similar to the days of ObamaCare, before, during and after the negotiations died, Democrats are still struggling and striving for bipartisanship that was simply never going to happen in the first place. Our collective efforts as a nation to recover from this pandemic will need to cover all 50 states and territories and be all encompassing even though Republicans seem to believe it can and should be highly targeted and somewhat limited. 

Or do they? 

            Why Mitch McConnell and his party have, once again, taken the posture of block everything Democrat, no matter who gets hurt, is a question only he and they can answer. 

 ONCE AGAIN  

         As it was with Obama, the challenge of knowing whether Republicans are interested in governing or obstructing is, once again, something only they can answer. Because, once again, the signs all say obstruction of any Democrat agenda, even ones both parties have in common, is in fact the GOP agenda. If limiting the president's accomplishments is, once again the name of the game, it’s time for Democrats to place all options on the table, including the filibuster. It's also time to put pressure on their own obstructers- Senators Joe Manchin (WV), and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)- to get them to stop helping McConnell and the GOP, and start doing what’s right for U.S. by not publicly negotiating against your own party, once again. 

        Like they did with ObamaCare, some Democrats are blocking their own party's agenda by pursuing the bare minimum they can pass despite already failing in the bipartisanship efforts that warranted bare minimum thinking to begin with.  If Republicans' insist on making Democrats go it alone, and are not putting forth the time it takes to draft a reasonable alternative, doing anything less than everything WE the People need seems silly to me.

        Because I don't want to leave anyone lost over this very important subject, let me say this another way. If you are negotiating with a good faith partner, you both simply ask for what you want, and nothing more. However, if you have no faith in who you are negotiating with, you double, maybe even triple what you ask for so that, despite the give and take process of negotiating, you are still likely to arrive somewhere close to what you actually wanted originally. 

        Truth be told, some of you would negotiate with your own parents in that same manner, and personally, I'm not mad at you for it. But I digress.

        In this situation, are Republicans actually saying they are not pushing a better alternative, so they want no credit or blame for whatever happens to their own constituents in this time of need? If Republicans are truly willing to do nothing but wait the generally accepted timeline of two years for jobs to recover to pre-pandemic levels while trusting tenants and landlords in their voting district will figure it out but not hold any of them accountable, there is no way in hell I would get in their way. 

        Additionally, there is also no way I would continue to think so small or in such a conciliatory manner on a "go it alone" piece of legislation. After all, 1.9 trillion is almost the exact number Republicans gave to rich people and corporations with their "go it alone" tax cut in the height of an economic boom no less. Taking the risk of this bill not being enough and having to try and do it all over again could prove to be the same political mistake Obama made with the Affordable Care Act, more affectionately known as ObamaCare. In that scenario, strategically withheld support from Republicans and the insurance industry itself kept Obama from making healthcare more affordable even if he was able to make it much more accessible to millions.

        Although Obama was able to win a second term despite the foolishness of using the GOP plan exclusively without getting any GOP votes to pass it, it's worth considering if he might have done the same thing if he had a do-over? Or, maybe he would have opted to call his plan the Accessible Care Act instead of the Affordable Care Act knowing what he knows about the strategic attacks against the laws affordability and its' name? 

        If Obama would have thought in advance to focus the name of his healthcare plan on the only achievable goal he had an actual chance to pull off by himself, accessibility, we might still be calling it the ACA instead of ObamaCare, the name Republicans forced on us all when they were convinced they could demonize the name to help kill the law. 

        The accessibility of a cheaper, single-payer option (aka., Medicaid) along with the strict enforcement of payments that limits the value of certain procedures, will eventually drive down prices creating affordability over time. Relative to medical costs, this had been the case for years until recent years when the healthcare costs started to rise again. The increase in use of things such as requiring referrals before covering payments, Duo billing, double billing and even fraudulent billing all seem to me like the healthcare industry's somewhat recent responses to previous years in which we witnessed medical costs in the United States actually going down. 

       Like a batter that swings but misses, even if Biden doesn't intend to run for reelection, he'll be handing the embarrassment over to his VP in waiting or his party nominee if he signs a go it alone bill into law but it fails to do enough soon enough. Desperation has many U.S. citizens sounding like starving college kids, saying, 'send whatever you can, quickly', but prudence should be saying to Biden and the Democrats, do what's right the first time because doing too little, too late was already tried by Trump and it barely helped the people who needed it the most.

               What only a few Senators are mentioning thus far is, under our current scenario; a one-time check of $1400 or $2000 that takes too god-damn long to arrive, will be gobbled up in late fees alone. The only segment of America that these late arriving stimulus checks could possibly benefit is the segment of America not teetering to close to the edge the late-fee abyss that every poor person knows about oh too well. For way too many struggling Americans, two or even three insufficient and delayed stimulus checks are not at all what the doctor ordered for our current health and economic crisis, which essentially are one and the same.

            Unless this is an effort to make ourselves believe people living paycheck to paycheck never existed, I’m confused about what we hope to achieve with a $1400-2,000 check that arrives too late? Maybe this opinion seems like an opportune moment to promote former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s philosophy of Universal Basic Income, because I am 100% Yang Gang, but I genuinely think it’s time to focus our  attention on where it matters most. Increasing access to food stamps as well as revving the engine that produces food in America is a step Biden can and did already kick into action. The other thing that matters most, keeping people in their homes so they have a place to cook and eat their food, takes a little more thinking.

            In a way, it’s clear to see we knew keeping people housed during a pandemic mattered quite a bit because, immediately, city states and the federal government invoked eviction moratoriums to save people from the inevitable impact of this pandemic. For a moment, it seemed everyone understood what was at stake and was ready to respond to America’s paycheck to paycheck reality. Now, it’s as if we believe every one of those pay check to pay check people took the past year of pandemic shutdown to dig out of their old debt scenarios and get their finances totally in order.

         Without question, millions of Americans have increased their personal savings during the pandemic, many whether they wanted to or not. The challenge of not being able to go to movies or eat food at someone else's dinner table as readily as we used to has proven to be a financial benefit most never expected or had the discipline to try out. As a result, the notion that everyone is suffering the same is totally wrong. In reality, targeting does have merit, but it's difficult in the middle of a crisis to do it, and, as we learned from this pandemic, if even one percent of 330 million people get missed by the targeting approach, it means a lot of people will suffer who probably didn't have to.

        Many are doing well right now, but for million of others, the pandemic has forced them to survive off of unemployment level wages (which vary state to state) subsidized by stimulus checks mostly talked about and not actually received. In our effort to focus on economic stimulus and bailouts for so many, how is it we are invoking moratoriums while excluding support for landlords, the people most negatively impacted by that word?

        Aside from ignoring America’s paycheck to paycheck reality, WE are also behaving as if most landlords are Donald Trump and his late father, which is far from the truth. The truth is, most landlords are regular people who came into a small amount of money and took a chance on themselves via real estate so they wouldn’t have to work  for people like Donald Trump and his father for the rest of their lives. 

        While a handful of landlords are regretting the decision to get into the business right about now, all of them need to be considered as a significant focus of how we deal with the worst of this pandemic. Said another way, if we are not focusing on landlords we are ignoring them and the desperate constituents the moratorium is forcing them to house. a half of million dead people and counting is a tragedy. Millions upon millions of evictions without a plan to mitigate it from happening will be a travesty.

          I envision the time- similar to the moment when Democrats looked back on Obama care and wish they’d pushed for the single-payer option sooner, not later- when Democrats will wish they’d gone even bigger than 1.9 trillion to fix this mess as well. Although they have mentioned this bill as step one in a multi-step process, step one resulted in 11 hours of bipartisan Senate aids reading 600 pages of a bill way too many people needed yesterday, not tomorrow. If they don't see a clear enough sign of what to expect from the GOP in steps two, three and four, Democrats will have already failed during step one.

         Because courthouses are finally opening all across the land, there is a day soon to arrive in which, by legal necessity, the word moratorium will be laughed out of the courthouse. Unless Congress moves to save landlords in particular by paying them the back-dated rent and late fees that so many of US can't right now, there may not be any way to target support to save the beneficiaries or the victims of the moratoriums.

         The best case scenario for everyone involved is the House rejects the Senate changes, (especially the change that lowers the eligibility threshold to $80k per year income) and all of the Democrats decide to go big or go home realizing they look dumb has hell right now continuing to reach across the isle to make this bill fair when no one is standing on the other side to shake their hand.

        No, I'm not over here closing my eyes and holding my breath hoping Democrats suddenly wake up and realize they are negotiating all alone.  This particular motionless, lying down, eyes closed thing I'm doing right now is apparently called dreaming.

  https://soundcloud.com/silkeee1/recording-45

GOP Rescue of MTG Will Restore Truth. Here's Why!

                If you caught that half-hearted apology that #MarjorieTaylorGreene (MTG) gave on the House floor, (video above) you might not have realized the significance of the moment, so I thought I would explain it more clearly.

                On the face of it, (R) #KevinMcCarthy (CA), a very weak House minority leader, displayed his characteristic weakness by broadcasting how sincere and apologetic MTG was with him when he and the Republican conference confronted her about all of the stuff she said before she was a member of Congress.

                It’s important we characterize The Spineless One’s misunderstanding of the #MTG transgressions as pre-Congress, something he probably didn't thoroughly research, because McCarthy seemed to not understand that most of what MTG said when confronted with her own pre-Congress words and actions, she held ground or doubled down on days before he finally dealt with it, and a five minute Google search would have provided the pertinent facts to Kev' the Spineless.

(the worse of MTG's pre-Congress comments, below)

                It's actually hard to say if Kev' the Spineless knew or didn't know about #MTG's ardent stance in the days before she relented because there was a moment in which, he with no spine, seemed to try to address it all and quiet the party infighting that was building between the #Trumpian right he's vying to lead,  and the moral majority which included a handful of Republicans who voted in favor of #impeachment. The group of #Republicans who voted to impeach included #LizCheney (WY) who was personally taking friendly fire on her committee seat too for her decision to hold #DonaldJTrump to account for his role in the #insurrection. Spineless Kevin seemed most interested in no one in his party becoming the villains over this, even though McCarthy was more than willing to demonize the House #Democrats for doing the exact same thing #Cheney and the other Republicans did. #Trump most certainly would have made villains out of the 10 Republicans in the #House who voted to impeach him. Kev' the Spineless let them all off the hook.

                Constant retaliation and demeaning labels like Kev' the Spineless abounded under Trump, whereas relenting to the moral majority was unlikely to have happened had #DJT still been the party leader orchestrating the response. The willingness of MTG to hold strong for days when confronted by reporters about her pre-Congress behavior and ongoing post election justification of herself, only to eventually relent, was a misstep and a clear sign of the beginning of the end of an era, the era of unrepentant lying.

                Displaying weakness with a closed door Republican conference and a secret vote over MTG's and Cheney's committee status via a closed door Republican conference, Kev' the Spineless allowed MTG to temporarily keep her committee seats, although, by not removing MTG himself, he forced Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of his House colleagues to bring the matter to the floor for debate and a vote. The vote didn’t end well for Greene. In fact, some reports have suggested, if Pelosi had decided to make her floor vote against MTG a secret just as Kev' the Spineless did, even more Republicans would have voted to remove her.

                Either way, it didn't really end well for Republicans, MTG or McCarthy either who was summoned to meet with Trump days before of all of this came to head, probably to tell Kev' the Spineless that he needed to be more relentless and relent less.

Did McCarthy come back with
marching orders after meeting  
with Trump in Mar-A- Lago?

                At least, that's what seems to be the case because, in the aftermath of his Trump meeting, McCarthy came out in public with a piece of paper containing a list of Democrats and a warning (possibly written in sharpie) that, if he (McCarthy) is ever the majority leader, he will go after specific Democrats on committees (Eric Swalwell (CA) and Maxine Waters (CA) were the only names he mentioned) as retaliation for what was done to MTG. While not-so-spineless Kev' had a clear warning for Democrats, it's not apparent what punishment would be doled out to the 11 Republicans who voted along with the Democrats, an element of  his spineless response to all of this,  something Trump would not have overlooked.

                Nonetheless, Trump and all those who still love him probably appreciated the new and improved spine Kev' tried to display after meeting with the GOP's recently deposed party boss.  However, much like the results of Nov. 3rd and the ensuing GOP response that followed, McCarthy's retaliation speech felt like more of the same sour grapes complaining we'd heard following the presidential election loss as well. Whatever you call his attempt to warn and complain, once again, it was too little, too late. (video below)

                When given a final chance to save herself from what was clearly becoming her inevitable fate, MTG blinked. In that brief moment, she appeared sincerely interested in retaining her committee assignments, at least interested enough to try and kiss ass like we had never seen her do before. By relenting, as she was likely advised to do, neither MTG nor the person who advised her to relent had any clue what they were doing to the brand in that moment, and I believe it was bad advice. 

                In one last ditch effort, MTG did her level best to avoid being stuck in Congress for two years with nothing to do except peddle more odd conspiracies and oppose Democrat legislation whenever possible, and it failed. Perhaps the residents of Forsythe County, GA won’t see their rebellious rep as nearly as useful to them anymore and will consider a recall themselves, especially since MTG did not rediscover her own stripes until the morning after her committee assignments were gone?

(video below)

               

                 When relenting didn't stop her removal from her committee assignments, the same person who once refused to relent until she had little choice, decided to go back on television the following morning and tell the world “I feel free [to speak as I want again]". Apparently, it took mirrors that only exist in MTG's house, a good night of sleep and freedom from committee assignment confusion to remind her of who she really was and what she had done to the brand, because, like that ugly person you take home for a one night stand, the morning after was nothing like the night before. 

A snake eating its own tail.

            What MTG is saying in this twice revised walk-of-shame is, the position she claims to feel free from she also was willing to stand naked in apology before the world, and agreed to enslave herself and bridle her slithery tongue if her colleagues in Congress would have only allowed her to stay in her position of power; a position that provided the pressure to deal with her awful behavior in the first place. 

                What MTG also doesn't recognize is, once you denounce your own lies, you no longer have the “freedom” to lie the same again. MTG might think she is more free minus her committee seats, but her tongue has already been clipped by a moment of weakness from herself and Kev' the Spineless, and there simply is no way to repair a clipped tongue or walk again once you've been cursed to crawl.

                For the rest of her days in Congress, everything MTG says will have that familiar hissing sound of self destruction- like a vicious snake that pounces but doesn't even recognize it's eaten its own tail. Right or wrong, that snake we called Trump could drown out all the hissing noise by standing firm behind the lies and the liars and redirecting the blame or chewing on the tails of anyone and everyone but himself. After this recent matter involving MTG, it appears as if Trump's "never relent" posture left the GOP when he did.

                        Why does this matter? If the true facts of the JFK assassination can still be debated, and they are, 911 and Sandy Hook don’t have to be considered real events to everyone either, which is the place we have found ourselves after a four year war against truth. Every war is based upon a series of battles, and truth won its first battle in this war when it removed Trump from office. By voting to remove MTG from her committees, the House of Representatives handed truth another battle victory while simultaneously declaring that certain agreed upon truths must be treated with the level of respect they deserve while you are serving in Congress, assuming you want a committee assignment and plan to stay in D.C. for more than two years.

                Losing access to all committee seats will not be helpful to MTG's reelection efforts, so the likelihood is, this moment of truth is both the beginning and the end of MTG. It's possible she'll run for office again in two years given her bulldog disposition, and it's even possible she could win in her redder than red voting district that must be a bit peculiar place if they voted for her to begin with. It's more likely that her own constituents have seen enough from her and will be ready to move on from the MTG experience and controversy given the lack of committee influence that now comes with the package.

               While the pandemic and the recent election make most of this MTG madness sound like no big deal to a whole lot of people, the universal space in which we could once agree on any basic truth evaporated over the past four years into a matrix of conspiracy theories and lies that used to exist only  in the National Enquirer or The Onion. What we have now, even Snopes couldn't fix. 

                If describing the punishment of one very ardent Trump supporting representative as a victory and restoration moment for truth seems like a big declaration, consider this?

                From this day forward, any Trump-like allegiance to lies can and will burn you in an institution where people are elected to represent true lives and real life situations such as pandemics and the economic recoveries they cause. Mischaracterizations of certain facts is a normal, unfortunate part of politics. Disagreeing about essential truths like birth certificates of an elected president, or death certificates of massacred school children makes the hope of collaborative governance extremely difficult, to say the least.

WE The People, have spent far too long trying to establish a more perfect union based on our divided perceptions of agreed upon truths for us to come to this moment of  allowing ourselves to become lost in a jungle of confusion over clearly proven lies and conspiracies. By way of this punishment of MTG, the House of Representatives at the very least has declared that events like 911 really happened despite all the memes and videos you can find on the internet to the contrary. They also decided threatening fellow members of Congress is not allowed and peddling conspiracy theories will endanger your ability to thrive in Congress even when your own party refuses to hold you to account the way both parties used to do pre-Trump  If you need a point of reference to my last comment, Google the names Steve King or Al Franken).

                WE ejected Trump out of office at the same time that WE elected MTG and a handful of other QAnon friendly types in. While that felt like a bit of a contradiction at the time, in hindsight, the devil we knew seemed much more important than the ones he inspired. Despite the fact that D.C. is now overrun with Trump's little inspirations, genuine demons don’t relent nor do they give a damn about the value of universal truths such as, all of our elections all over the land have, for a very long time now avoided election fraud by employing high integrity election handlers from both sides of the political isle, and those people used to be trusted and respected by ALL of us who cared to vote regularly. 

               Trump set US up for this moment from the moment he first ran for office because he never really thought he would win and instinctively created excuses to deal with any possibility of losing. In reality, the goal of being president was never as valuable to our 45th president as the goal of running. In running for president, Trump could add to the legend and mystery he created around himself. In being president, he could only expose his immense need to golf, his true self-serving nature, and expose himself to way too many institutions designed to ensure America wins no matter who our president is. In the final analysis of what WE've endured, there simply was no way for both Trump and the U.S. to come out victorious in this. One of us or both of us were always destined to lose.

                What Trump had to lose by winning the presidency was the somewhat normal freedom that allows powerful people to do lots of illegal stuff an evade the law, but he also lost the perception of self-made wealth that was shattered by the revelations about his family, mostly from his family. What WE the People had to lose by electing a lying, immoral person was our connection to truth and our universal acceptance of right and wrong. 

                We decided pussy grabbing, caged children, anti-Semitism, homophobia and political retaliation against friend or foe were all okay until the day we said "enough already". Now, with the committee removal of MTG, we've added false conspiracies, threats of harm and other unwarranted colleague confrontations done by any current committee members of Congress to our collective list of "enough already". 

                Of course, this doesn't entirely undo all the damage done to the concept of truth that occurred over the last four years, but it helps.

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.

What Exactly Is A President For If Not Reassurance?

First it was just one old guy recalling his boxing days, Now 

he's actually the president with an influence on steroids. As he

calls for civility, will he change his stump speech attacks?

A time consuming writing project forced me away from my typical opining on current events, which has worked out fine because my Super Bowl 50 champion Broncos suck almost as much as our president, and there are only so many ways you can ridicule John Elway or Donald Trump before YOU start to look like the idiot and not them.

My two Trump loving followers who read that previous paragraph are thinking to themselves, Trump doesn't suck, CNN sucks. Even they, however, are smart enough to keep those words inside at a time like this. Our president is not. He is too small a man to simply call the targets of terror and offer his words of sympathy.

As it stands, Trump has postponed his own verbal attacks on CNN and the rest, but he smiled and listened to the ritual chant- "CNN Sucks"- of his campaign crowd,  just one day after FBI agents arrested the pipe bomb terrorist who targeted CNN and others declared enemies by Trump himself.

If news is nothing more than what WE find interest in, these recent acts of terror and violence are mostly news worthy out of decency for the victims not because they are unique, irregular or terribly interesting. I've forced myself to opinionate on this "way too regular" fringe violence crap because I find myself- once again- a normal, Regular American longing and waiting for my president to comfort me into rationalizing away America's violent nature, like presidents usually do. 

I'm still waiting.

If the president of our country were simply capable of saying the right thing at the right time, WE could all feign sadness and quickly return to whatever television show we binge watch over the weekends so we can mentally recharge for our understaffed, underpaid work weeks.

Despite the 11 people murdered at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, following 5-days of pipe bomb terror all over America, President Trump continues to do and say everything except the reassuring words regular Americans need right now.

In reality, there will always be extremists behaving extremely. Regular Americans understand this even as WE wait the 2 hours of post-tragedy grief that is customary before we argue over gun rights, the NRA or just return to our television binging for mental health escape.

WE, the regular People of America, don't blame George W. Bush for wars or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan even if we believe Saudi Arabia deserved the brunt of our anger, and maybe still does. Some of US might blame Bush, but the lion-share of America understands the industry of war, the necessity of war and the hair-triggers that cause violence of all kinds.

WE also understand that, sometimes, we war with ourselves whenever weapons of war become tools of terror in our streets, because Regular Americans understand the parable about living by the sword and recognize the inevitability of all this. When things grow beyond our ability to explain, Regular Americans know enough to follow the trail of money to clarify confusion. War an violence bring tons of money even as they bankrupt those who overuse them.

When it comes to war of any sort, presidents are often nothing more than the guys who listen to the advice of the generals and sign or decline their documents to proceed- especially now that Congress has abdicated that role among a few others. A president can choose to fight another day or in another way, but the industry and the machinery chugs along with our without their 4-8 years of consent. Violence in our streets is a byproduct of war in our world. It is a sad reflection of our inner-most nature to confront difficult challenges with rage.

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, predicted

 the end of American greatness. Is he right?

And if so, what will be our demise?

As it relates to violence in general, WE, the People, are a peculiar lot. We continue to market our land with milk and honey even though guns like the AR-15 have long since become the item most reflective of modern America and its nightmarish Dream.

The eerie connection between the Dream of America, our gun lust and that caravan from Latin America is a lengthy conversation all by itself.
(The Latin American gun leak. -- LA Times. Jan. 6th 2015)



Any notion that people willing to walk over 2,000 miles for a dream could be lazy is even more silly than the idea that ISIS would fly to the Guatemala just to join their death defying journey. The Trump administrations attempt to stoke fear of migrants by claiming Middle Easterner infiltration of the caravan. Making descendants from the Middle East analogous to terrorists is possibly more shameful than his refusal to be a president for Real Americans when Real Americans need it.

In some ways, WE are a land of type-A personalities who breed, attract and inspire those same personalities from near and far to come, live in our land and argue alongside US about what it means to be American, or how America can ignore the dangers of our violent compulsions, yet, still remain the best country in the world and not just a nation conforming to one man's distorted view of greatness.


WE will never lose our partisan divide even if the lines get blurred by another flawed, reactive socialized program or two that Regular Americans discover they need too much to let go of, flawed or not. Regular Americans want our degrading social programs to be replaced with sensible, dignified hand up legislation because Regular Americans realize that the sacrifices of the American Dream are also the exact formula for achieving it. Regular Americans still believe in the dream and see their dreams as clearly as they see the obstacles because regular Americans understand what it takes to keep ALL of our dreams alive.

On the fringes of American society, we will always have pessimists who think all this a nightmare. Because fear and misery demand company, those on the fringes have no choice but to bring the rest of US into their nightmares just to legitimize their own miserable fear induced realities. The reasons for those on the fringe are numerous and real, but no more real than the fact that the extreme fringes are not the majority. The majority of US love this land for what it is and can be, and are enjoying our chase of the dream the best WE can.

WE the People, know quite clearly what happens if we remain silent when they come for the Jews, so we depend on the civility of our president whenever those on the fringes terrorize our neighbors until we no longer understand how to feel about our country, or ourselves. 

While Democrats focus on the rhetoric of the pipe bomb terrorist, 

Republicans deflect by pointing to his Native American race.

Maybe this pipe bomb terrorist is not a Nationalist like our president recently  announced himself to be. And hopefully this Pittsburgh killer doesn't avow himself to Trump either. Regular people don't really care about the political leaning of killers who terrorize US even if our debate over weapons of war makes it look like WE do.

At moments like this, WE need to be reassured that WE are much more similar than different.

According to Trump, some 

of these are fine people.

Trumpians might have found a feeling of reassurance in the words Trump robotically read before he stepped all over them with some weird attack on the media and a few false equivalencies about congressman Steve Scalise, but Regular Americans are still empty.

Whatever Trump called his moment of reassurance only stoked terror and the debate further. With every shallow call from our president for "all sides" to improve, I am hard-pressed to understand what Trump wants to see from the media, or what he intends to change himself? I am beyond baffled as to who will change first when our president hasn't even declared what change should look like...."on all sides".

If there's anything the media should change if they could, what exactly should it be Mr. President? Lead US! Reassure US, if you can.

I will give Trump this concession on behalf of the media. If Congress was at all worthwhile, guns wouldn't be so rampant and presidents wouldn't be allowed or expected to send troops to war because war would only happen as the Constitution prescribes- via congressional order.

If this current Congress was at all fulfilling it's coequal duty, they might consider this president guilty of yelling fire in a theatre from campaign speeches that have stoked his fringes to act against a hit-list of opponents and other undesirables. It is perfectly legitimate to question the impetus of recent radicals. It is unthinkable that any president would call for civility while running so hard away from it at the same time.

Let me say this once more, for effect! The day after catching the pipe bomb terrorist, our current president was not wise or courageous enough to discontinue the "CNN Sucks" rant while campaigning. Is that a high crime or a misdemeanor? Did those two black people at Kroger die from just being black in Trump's America and or did they die from Trump's inability to promote the very civility he calls for? 

Will  there continue to be more unexplained terror stoked and promoted by our Nationalist president until a seemingly clear connection is no longer avoidable? 

If the next pipe bomber goes a step further after a Democrat mid-term takeover of congress, Trump could easily be considered a cause of this and could be impeached from the deadly toxicity of his presidency alone.

In reality, high crimes and misdemeanors can mean whatever Congress wants it to mean when they are convinced that a president is no longer fulfilling the call of the office. And what is more vital to the call of the office than what WE need from a president at moments like these?

Americans don't like the impeachment of a president, so smart Democrats like Nancy Pelosi won't let her party forget that truth. Unless, of course, the next wave of pipe bomb terror comes at her. How Pelosi managed to avoid pipe bomb terror is as mysterious as why none of them exploded.

Trump: "You should have had an armed guard in your 

church....and capital punishment. God bless all."

From military to economic, Trump has waged war with his own advisers and appointees, yet, none of them seem to care or seem compelled to follow his radical lead in areas of such vital significance. Republicans in Congress have tried to cater to his whims, but even they could only pull off a tax cut for themselves and a controversial Supreme Court pick that might work against them come November 6th.

The quandry for the GOP is that they will either l retain their majority and have to explain why they still can't agree on anything useful enough to turn into law, or they will lose their majority and have to fend off the kind of congressional oversight of the president that used to be part of co-equal governance. Anything left to be accomplished in America can not pay for itself, something Republicans promised their tax cut would do.

The bully pulpit of the president has always mattered because it is essentially their only weapon. Presidents function on influence alone, although nothing is more powerful than being able to influence the media cycle and popular opinion. Congress used to be powerful, but those days are a distant memory.

Presidents don't write the bills they eventually sign, and they obviously can't even force their own party to buy a wall they promised Mexico would pay for. Obama used his influence to complete universal healthcare, but he did it using the Republican plan based on pressure from his own party even though he didn't get a single Republican vote for his conciliatory effort.

Unless the president of the U.S. is attempting to comfort US with their yearly State of the Union- or a monthly address from another act of terror- presidents don't really have a whole lot they can do but comfort US when our world appears frenzied.

Until WE all screwed up and allowed Russia to suppress and influence enough voters into our orange accident, WE had always elected a president with the capacity to speak words of reassurance to the bulk of US and not just those fringe folks who terrorize or tacitly approve.

Now WE have a president incapable of rising above tough coverage, Saturday night live spoofs or the  insults about his spray tan to still do the only thing WE need presidents to do.

And it's sad.