What a Small, Small, Small Man

At first I thought it was fake news, something you might see on the Onion or Babylon. As I scanned it, I discarded it into the this can't be real category. But I was wrong, this one was real. And it paints out what a hateful, petty and vindictive schmo we have sitting in the governor's mansion in New York State.

The story is, of course about Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoing the Democrat-sponsored Senate and Assembly bill passed by a wide margin that would have expanded the ability of all Federal judges in New York State to perform weddings. Some Federal judges in certain districts can already officiate at weddings and this bill would have simply added all of them to the list of recognized officiants.

Andrew Cuomo's veto was a surprise, and his comments afterward were despicable.

"I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by Federal judges who are appointed by this Federal administration," said Cuomo after his Christmas eve veto.

"President Trump does not embody who we are as New Yorkers. The cornerstones that built our great State are diversity, tolerance, and inclusion. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill."

Really? Diversity, tolerance and inclusion? By vetoing it, you just put a fork into diversity, tolerance and inclusion, Mr. Governor. And by giving such a shallow reason for your veto (it's not about the judges, it's a dig at Donald Trump) ... you showed how intolerant you are. Your hate oozed out and vitriolic hate has no place in government. Party politics are okay during the election, but the election is over and now you're supposed to represent both sides, Republican and Democrat. Republican judges are not worthy of performing a simple wedding ceremony? You should be ashamed of yourself, but like your brother Fredo on CNN, you're not. If the Cuomo clan is to be compared with the Corleone family of film, I guess you'd be Sonny, the hothead. Spoiler alert: Sonny's hot temper didn't benefit him well in the movie, and Fredo's attempts at being a big shot didn't work out for him in the end either.

The legislation was sponsored by Democratic Sen. Liz Krueger, who had this to say in response:

"Four years ago we gave the Governor the ability to perform marriages. Two years ago we gave legislators that ability. Marriage in New York is inclusive, equal, and open to all who want it. So when it was suggested to me that we expand it to Federal judges, I thought, 'Why not? The more the merrier!'" ... "I'm certainly no fan of the judges this president is choosing to appoint - but since any New Yorker can become a minister online for $25 and legally perform weddings, I didn't consider this to be a major issue.

And you are correct, Senator. On the big scene, it's small potatoes. Seriously, how much harm can a Federal judge do at a wedding ceremony?

Sadly, by using the governor's office as a bully pulpit,  Andrew Cuomo again showed us what a pezzo di merda he really is. A hateful, intolerant one at that.

I'm ashamed to live in New York State, and Mr. Cuomo, you're the major reason why. With luck, we'll be out of here before you're up for election again.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

December 18, 2019... A date which will live in shameful infamy. Today, the hateful Democrats in the House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on trumped-up charges. Americans expect such vitriolic hate from the likes of AOC, Rashida, Ilhan, Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi and others. But the supposed blue-dog Democrats eking out a living in Republican territory displayed how weak and meaningless their representation really is. They know what's right and wrong. They know this is a partisan hack job the Democrat leadership has had on the drawing board since November 2016.

They know this is wrong, and they probably suspect history will judge them as such when the dust settles in a few decades. But when you sell your soul to devil in the form of outside money, standing up and doing right by the country is not on their menu. You don't get there unless you take their money, and when you take their money, it comes with strings attached. Once you cash their checks, you've become Howdy-Doody with some power, and the puppeteers are the rich donors. If you cut the strings, you cut the influx of money and ... it's good-night, Irene ... Suddenly, the money is donated to somebody else more suited to their needs.

This sham-impeachment is their method of trying to embarrass the President they've never really recognized as the President. Sadly, they embarrassed themselves and worse, the entire country. Trump's numbers have grown considerably since this began, and I expect the increase to last for a while, probably through the election.

They claim he cheated, and still do to this day. They tried using the special prosecutor law to remove him from office. When that failed, the whistle blower system was used. Never mind that Joe Biden brags on video about blackmailing the Ukrainian government by threatiing to withhold well over a billion dollars in aid unless they fire a prosecutor unfriendly to them, it's Donald Trump's sin that he wondered if that rose to the level of a crime. I think we can all figure that one out, espcially when his son, with -zero- credentials in the energy field, is suddenly appointed to the board of a Ukrainian gas company and made well over a million dollars for basically selling the Biden name to protect them.

This will come back to bite the Democrats in the ass. First, they have to get by the November 2020 elections, and what they did today is not going to help them. The Democrats for Trump numbers are growing. Toss-up areas that lean Republican are most likely going to fire their Democrat Congressmen this coming fall. The representative in my area most likely should be taking a lot of pictures to remember Washington by because the district clearly thinks this is an abuse of power and will give him the pink slip this coming November.

District 22 in NYS is certainly not the only one that is upset with their representative. I predict not only will the President be re-elected with a strong margin, but the house will also return to a Republican majority.

Someday there will be another Democrat President, and I pity that person. The precedents being set today in DC are going to come back and haunt the Democrats. Whether you like it or not, politics does have a revenge factor to it, which we are seeing played out today.

Someday this is going to be used as the model against a Democrat President, and the howls, screams and protests are going to fall on deaf ears. Because as we all know ...

What comes around, goes around.

Conflict of Interest

When an elected representative stands to gain anything personal as a result of their vote, the ethical thing for that person to do is to recuse themselves from voting on that issue. Anything, of course means such things as money, a better position, more power, and similar.

As it becomes obvious the Democrats are going to impeach Donald Trump in the House of Representatives and send the articles to the Senate for trial, it also becomes obvious there are some that stand to personally gain from this.

These are the people currently serving in the US Senate that are running for President. Currently, they are Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet and Bernie Sanders.

Sitting in judgement of the person whose job they want and are actively campaigning for is clearly a conflict of interest; by removing the biggest obstacle to their ascending to the Presidency, they clearly stand to personally gain. Trump is a formidable opponent to face in an election, and voting to tarnish him while simultaneously running against him is unethical. And we all know how these people want to show how ethical they are. (cough, cough...)

Considering this, these people should do the honorable thing and recuse themselves from sitting in on the trial and voting afterwards. Honest and ethical people would see this obvious conflict and step aside.

Of course, we are not talking about honorable and ethical people when we talk about jackals like Booker, Warren, Bennet, Klobuchar and Sanders.

Looking at things from the top down, let's add Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris to the list of conflicted also. While they have officially dropped out of the race, the fact that they even entered the race and stayed as long as they did jaundices their ability to look at the facts fairly and render an unbiased judgement. They've clearly heard Hail to the Chief played too many times and thought it was for them.

Also, we ought to have a short list of Democrat Vice-Presidential candidates currently sitting in the Senate, because they also stand to personally gain by voting on this.

Any US Senator that votes in the impeachment trial should remove themselves from consideration in the 2020 Presidential/Vice Presidential election.

That is, if they really, really want to show us how ethical they are.

Don't hold your breath on these people recusing themselves. Why, it's their duty, of course.

Which, of course, makes us wonder why all the missed votes on other things wasn't also their duty to vote on.

Oh, of course! They were too busy running for President!

It's Been About Impeachment From Day One

As I look at the political divide in America, I wonder how it got to where it is. Politics used to be somewhat polite, excepting the occasional kook from one party or the other. Political opponents in Congress were diplomatically tactful when they referred to a member of the opposite party as my esteemed colleague even though in real life they didn't really like them much. In the 2016 election, the Democrats were feeling pretty good about things as election day neared. They figured Clinton was a shoe-in and all the polls seemed to agree. CNN even put Clinton up by about 10 points a week or two before the election.

It didn't go well for the Democrats. They lost, and they lost pretty good. Trump surpassed the minimum electoral college number (270) by 34 votes (total of 304) and would have had 306 if two electors kept their promise and didn't defect. Hillary Clinton fared worse with the electors, 5 bolted from her and voted for somebody else.

Since then, it's been total political warfare on the part of liberal Democrats. Refusing to acknowledge that Trump won, they came up with a plethora of excuses, everything from Fox News playing on the TV in corner bars and uneducated rednecks voting for Trump to James Comey wrecking Clinton. Never mind that Clinton wrecked Clinton, the excuses kept coming. Impeachment resolutions were introduced even when the House was still under a Republican majority; these early attempts at impeaching Donald Trump went as far as the Speakers waste basket. They attacked the electoral college and vowed to get rid of it (good luck with getting 37 states to pass an amendment getting rid of Article II, Section I). Seriously, do you think the states with a small number of electors are going to give up their say in a Presidential election to a handful of populous blue states?

But then the Democrats took back the House of Representatives in the 2018 election, and the soup de jour since then has been getting rid of Donald Trump. They were pretty sure the Mueller-Russia collaboration investigation was going to bear fruit, and when it didn't, they dedicated themselves to finding something else to pin on him.

Donald Trump certainly has his share of enemies in government and after the Russia-Mueller disaster, it didn't take long for one of them to don an anonymous cloak while proclaiming himself to be a whistleblower; now we see the results of what was a forgone conclusion: The Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is going to impeach Donald Trump and send the articles to the Senate for trial as prescribed in our constitution. Never mind the lack of facts, witnesses that gave hearsay testimony (somebody told me somebody said ...), and never mind that Joe Biden is on video bragging about forcing the Ukraine to fire a prosecutor or withhold more than a billion dollars in aid (quid pro quo, if there ever was one).

Never mind the tepid performance put on by Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. Never mind that they blew their chance at convincing the American public that Donald Trump committed a high crime. After 3 years of constantly attacking Trump, they blew it. Americans are getting tired of this dog and pony show and they're showing it. The good news is, weak Democrat Congress reps in Republican territory are going to get their ass kicked in 2020 for going along with this circus and the likelihood that the House will return to Republicans is a pretty good bet as it stands today. Could change tomorrow, but as it is now, Trump is gaining strength off of this theater in the absurd. And Trump isn't stupid, it's another pretty good bet he will campaign in the Republican toss-up districts which will help Republican candidates retake the House.

In the meanwhile,we have to sit back and watch the Democrats waste time and truckloads of money while things that need real attention are pushed aside. We could have had a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico by this time, we could have had an infrastructure bill to rebuild our highways in progress ... but no. This is how the Democrats wish to use their power in the House and there is -nothing- we can do about it right now.

Oh, but in November of next year, there is something we can and will do about it. And that is to send another shock into liberals by kicking as many of them as we can out of office... all while sending Donald Trump back for a second term.

I'll close by telling another tale of why I believe it was always about impeachment from day one:

My family members are all liberals (I apologize in advance for their stupidity) and my nephew is a rabid liberal. I mean a Trump-hating foaming at the mouth liberal. Other than politics, we get along. A month or two into Trumps Presidency, I ran into him out and about and of course, Trump came up. After offering his opinion of him, he offered a bet that Trump would be impeached by March 2019. It was his idea, not mine, but I accepted the bet knowing more than a year would elapse before we knew who would win. We both took a $20 bill out of our wallet, signed and put them in a sealed envelope in a very secure place and waited. On March 1 of this year, I went and opened the envelope. I won; the money is mine. (I'll happily take doubling my money in ~2 years). I even started a internet time countdown clock to periodically remind him I was not only going to take his money, but I was going to enjoy taking his money, especially seeing as it was his idea to begin with.

But we both knew that the Democrats were eventually going to impeach Trump ... on trumped-up charges, no less.

Someday, there will be an unpopular Democrat in the White House, and the precedents being set now are going to come back to haunt them when Republicans turn the tables on them.

So, I'll take the both the money and the lesson learned from my nephew:

It's been about impeachment from day one.