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.

Stupid Quote of the Week 16November2019

Stupid is as stupid does says and this week, UC-Berkeley instructor Jackson Kernion blew the bell off the top of the stupid post with these baubles of insanity:

This is the short version. He also said we should live uncomfortable lives and that we should pay more for health insurance. I'm not sure why rural Americans should pay more, but he thinks so. And if he thinks rural Americans, especially farmers aren't already living an uncomfortable life, perhaps he ought to spend a couple of weeks milking the ladies twice a day, 365 days a year. Or 366 days as the leap year comes around. ... Not to mention plowing, planting and harvesting all while playing the weather lottery. That is, if the equipment doesn't break down at the worst possible time.

Jackson supposedly teaches philosophy.  I've got a theoretical scenario for him: Why doesn't he philosophize what it would be like if rural America didn't grow the food he eats every day. Maybe after a few days of not having food, he might appreciate rural America a little more, and not wish us misery.

Who am I kidding? This is Berkeley, California ... the home of liberal brainwashing and probably its capital. 

Perhaps I'm being a little hard on Jackson. I've lived next to a dairy farm in Upstate NY for 41 years and counting, and I'm wondering what Jackson has in mind to make life more uncomfortable than it already is for my farming neighbors. The last time I saw my farm neighbors take a (real) vacation was ... oh yeah, never.

I have to compliment him on his unique choice of words The adverb unironically seems rather ironic in this instance. Nostalgia for some imagined pastoral way of life is another combination of words I hope I never hear again. First of all, nostalgia is not a crime or bad thing, and if we're talking about imagined pastoral things, all the paintings of heaven I've ever seen are ... imagined and pastoral, if I'm not mistaken. If heaven turns out to be like South Chicago or East LA (or the Berkeley campus), please put me on the down escalator. I'll take my chances.

When the tweet went viral, Jackson apologized (sort of) and deleted it. Maybe being held up to ridicule had something to do with that. But the damage was done, and again we get a glimpse of how higher education really thinks. Jackson, if you think rural America is going to forget this one, think again.

In case you need something else to think about, give this some thought:

The big cities need rural America the hell of a lot more than rural America needs the big cities. Ideally, we both need each other, but I'm quite sure that if push comes to shove, we'll last the hell of a lot longer without you than you will without us. I'm not thinking those amber waves of grain have much to do with 1/4-acre inner city vegetable gardens.

Oh, and thanks for assuming some of us are good people. Unironically, we think the same thing about some of you.

PS: About the shaming part... Shame on you for being such a cluck dimbulb. 

I Can't Figure Out if I'm Honored or Insulted

I usually write when I'm motivated; if I'm forced to write, I turn out pulp. When I began a weekly blog about stupid things people said a while back, it quickly became a chore when the weekend arrived and I drew a blank.

Oh, that doesn't mean the week passed without stupidity, it just means nothing rose above my threshold of stupidity that week, or I missed something I shouldn't have. I confess I'm a tad sarcastic in my writings because ... I don't suffer fools easily.

One of the nice things about writing a blog is that the toolset of the blog host is rich; it gives me information on hits, sources, rough locations and the like. Occasionally, I peruse them mostly out of curiosity to see if real numbers are reading my writings. Some blogs are blah and some have some real good numbers. Publishing my work to Facebook brings many readers and if the blog is contentious (as some of them are), it also brings comments. Some are favorable, some are not. Either way, I don't censor them. If people honor me by reading my words, I honor them by letting them tell me I'm a bastard if that's the way they feel.

So it was with surprise that after my last blog, I saw a source visiting my blog I had not seen before: plagscan.com. Curious as to what that was, I googled and visited it. It turns out it's a plagiarism checking website; one with both single-user and business/education subscription tiers. I looked into their rates and it looks like they lean heavily towards educational subscribers to make money.

I asked myself "Self, what is somebody doing running my blog writing through a plagiarism scanning website?"

Initially, I admit I was somewhat miffed that somebody thinks I'm not the author of my written thoughts; so much so that they would check my work to see if it is/was plagiarized. Maybe they were hoping to call me out on it because they vehemently disagreed with my words. If it came back as plagiarized (and looking at how the scanners work, they start with three sequential words and go from there), maybe they could finish their comments with Go to hell, you plagiarizing &*!#@.

Let me assure you: My writings are original and the product of my ideas and work. If I embed somebody else's work inside them (as I did once when I credited Stilton.com for nicely phrasing my exact thoughts), I give them credit.

I've written some unpublished books and don't think I'll bother to ever get an ISBN number for them. I'm working on my third book and that one, I will probably publish. (It's about small town politics, my 12 years on the Town Board I live in and how 5 seemingly good and decent people can reveal what utter fools and sometimes outright crooks they are.) I also construct crossword puzzles when an idea tickles my fancy.

But I don't steal other peoples work, and that's why I'm confused when I see somebody, probably with educational system ties run my work through a plagiarism scanning website. Do they think I'm not capable of writing what they just read? Do they think I'm a word thief? Are my ideas so unoriginal that they deserve to be called out as old news?

I don't know. But now that I'm tuned up on plagiarism scanners, I decided to run my last blog through one of the free scanning websites to see if in fact I was a plagiarizer. It turns out ... I'm innocent.

Here's a snapshot of some of the referring sites that hit that blog including plagscan.

I trimmed the picture to not display now many hits came from plagscan, but I will say it was more than one.

So, should I be insulted or honored that my words motivated somebody to run one or more of my blogs through a plagiarizing scanner? As I jokingly tell people when I'm answering an obvious question ...

I'm ... so ... confused.

Crimes Against Humanity, Then and Now

One of the first decisions of the Nazi war trials held after WW2 was what crimes the defendants were to be charged with. In the first Nuremberg trial, 21 high-ranking Nazis were tried for crimes that fell into 4 categories:

• Conspiracy to wage aggressive war
• Waging an aggressive war
• War crimes
• Crimes against humanity

Nobody seriously disputes that the Nazis conspired and waged an aggressive war and also committed war crimes. Sometimes history softens as time goes by, but not in this instance. Ironically, war crimes weren't limited only to the Nazis; for example American GIs machine-gunned 50 unarmed German SS prisoners of war in a barbed-wire enclosure and the Russians committed many atrocities as an act of revenge as they advanced into Germany. Nobody was ever charged with crimes in those instances.

Crimes against humanity is rather broad and is certainly appropriate for the indiscriminate killing of millions. Humanity definitely suffered, but the question of whether or not crimes against humanity are actual laws or were made up on the spot to address genocide was never asked. Humanity has always suffered during wars and still does to this day. Seeking justice, we tried them, sentenced 11 of them to death and 7 to lengthy prison terms. Three were (surprisingly) acquitted. Goering cheated the hangman a few hours before he was to be hanged and the rest of them walked to the gallows. In 103 minutes, 10 top Nazis were dead.

In total, there were 13 war crimes trials at Nuremburg; 199 defendants were tried, 161 of them were found guilty and 37 of them were sentenced to death. Not all of the 37 were actually put to death and in most cases, the prison sentences were commuted early. For what it's worth, the British were the most prolific at hanging Nazis; between 1945 and 1949 they hung 210 war criminals including quite a few women. Their skilled hangman Albert Pierrepoint practically turned their gallows into a (dis)assembly line.

Ah, but I digress; something I often do. Let's get back to the subject.

To be sure, the Nazis committed war crimes, but crimes against humanity are usually used to address large-scale genocide. 60 years later, Saddam Hussein ended up on the wrong end of the rope for the same charge.

To see how this could even come to pass, you have to look at the rise of National Socialism in Germany and what quickly ensued when they took the reins of power in 1933. First, consider how bad things were in Germany as the Nazis rose to power. The German people were so desperate they ceded power to these extremists (lesson learned - never give power to rabble-rousing rioters or extremists) and that set the stage. Also consider the irony that Adolf Hitler ran in 1932 and lost the only election he ever ran in.

In that same election the Nazi party took a fair number of seats (about 1/3) in the Reichstag and under pressure, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. Shortly after that, the Nazi juggernaut began rolling towards absolute dictatorial control. Things happened fast after that, very fast. A little more than a month later, the Dachau concentration camp began construction in March 1933, which coincidentally is the month the enabling act was passed. The enabling act gave Hitler and his cabinet power to enact laws without the Reichstag. With this power, Hitlers edicts, laws and decrees set Germany on the path to the holocaust and global war. When Hindenburg died in 1934, the last obstacle to Hitler's total power was gone. In September 1935 the Nuremberg decrees took rights away from Jews and other untermensch. (He wasn't the first head of state to take citizen's rights away with pen and paper; Abraham Lincoln did pretty much the same thing during the civil war when he suspended habeous corpus and imprisoned newspaper editors who opposed him, which clearly wasn't constitutional and still isn't.)

Throughout the 12 years of the Nazi Reich, more laws were implemented that simply made stealing property and killing legal. To them, they weren't breaking any laws at all. They just made what they were doing legal with words on paper as they deemed necessary.

Why am I boring you with all this WW2 Nazi trivia when the subject is crimes against humanity?

What the Germans did was in fact a crime against humanity; also consider that they thought it was perfectly legal. And that is the crux of what I want to emphasize here: Laws may make something legal, but it doesn't always make them moral.

Clearly, laws should always be cloaked in some form of morality. Otherwise, what's the reason for enacting them?

That was the then part, let's talk about the now part.

Fast forward about 3 decades after WW2: In 1973, Roe v Wade made abortion legal by washing the Federal government's hands of the issue. Abortion is legal as I write this, but that doesn't make it moral. Since then, most estimates agree that over 60+ million viable human beings in America have been aborted.

I've heard the arguments on both sides. Women's rights are the motto of the pro-abortion advocates. (They prefer to be called pro-choice and I prefer my description. Since I'm the author, I get to choose the words.) I only ask one question when I hear this: Since when did anybody get the right to extinguish a human life?

Crimes against humanity can take different forms, it seems. What did I say about the indiscriminate killing of millions before? Oh yes. It fits the description pretty close.

America is suffering major political dissension as I write this. In recent years, about 120 million or so take the time to vote in a Presidential election year and it's pretty close as to the split. What's not said is that about 90 million do not vote and not only is that sad, it makes a statement about how much apathy there is in our country. Things are heating up and political parties are now being aligned and weaponized in an attempt to subvert the constitutional election and power of the President; one big reason is that the appointment of conservative judges to the judiciary has the possibility of reversing the big issue liberals really care about, and of course I'm talking about abor, er, infanticide which currently appears to be legal regardless of which side of the uterus it occurs on.

I've seen predictions of civil war a few times already, and I'm not sure what the outcome of this is going to be. I'm approaching old age and the last thing I want is to see the country suffer (and myself along with it) in large-scale civil unrest. If it happens, I hope I'm not around to see it. If I am, I hope to sit it out. If that's not possible, then I will follow my moral compass wherever it leads me.

Looking at it from the top down, I'm not sure those 90+ million are going to sit it out if it happens. I'm betting the radicals are not going to prevail because its an easy guess most apathetic people aren't radical; rather, it just takes a lot to stir them to action. But if it happens, a new day is going to dawn after and I'm betting a whole bunch of people are going to be held responsible, just as they were 75 years ago.

And that brings us back to the question of crimes against humanity. Remember, legality is not always morality.

If the Germans thought passing laws to make mass extermination legal justified it, how is the United States different when well over a million viable human beings are legally slaughtered here every year?

The question begs: If the extermination of over 60 million human beings since abortion became legal isn't a crime against humanity, what is? Worse, if we don't recognize it for what it is and fix it ...

Then we're no better than the Germans were 75 years ago.

Good Riddance

It's rather ironic that NY Governor Andrew Cuomo tweeted good riddance after he found out Donald Trump filed papers to change his domicile from New York to Florida ... especially after uttering words quite contrary to that earlier this year. Of course, I'm talking about when he said  God Forbid the Rich Leave  when he was talking about the problem of wealthy people fleeing New York State.(click on the link to read my previous comments).  Here's the tweet, and may I add it's a toss-up as to whether it's a Halloween trick or not.

That's a classic, Mr. Cuomo. Last February you pissed and moaned about rich people leaving NYS. Now it's good riddance? And do you really think he escaped paying your highest-in-the-nation NY taxes? I'll take odds that he's paid far more than you have cumulatively, Andy.

It's not just the rich leaving, it's a good cross-section of New Yorkers. Individual reasons may vary, but inevitably they all end up at the same square in the flow chart: Liberal Democratic policies. Paradoxically, good riddance is something 47 out of 62 counties in NY State tried to tell you when you ran for re-election last time, seeing as you only won 15 counties ... but they were the populous ones (downstate, NYC) and that put you back in office. Meanwhile, upstate still suffers from atrophy and the result of that is a large population loss, the likes of which NYS has never seen before. For example, in one recent year alone, NYS lost somewhere north of 50,000 people. In reality it was over 125,000 long-time NY residents because you imported more than 75,000 from other countries to become proud NYS residents ... and eventually, they'll even pay taxes. But for 5 or so years... they won't. Integration takes time, as well you know.

I love the upstate rural area where I live, but I hate how NYS has been ruined by liberal government. When 2 major things keeping my wife and me here are resolved, we plan on joining the thousands of New Yorkers who leave NYS every year - for good. Oh, we'll come back and visit as we desire, but the lifetime of money and assets we've accumulated are going south with us.

So, Andy ... Another billionaire leaves NYS and you somehow conclude that's a good thing. Let us know how that works out at budget time and how you plan on making up the difference. As you are well aware, he's not the first billionaire to leave and I'm wagering he won't be the last, either.

Also, remember plenty of us poor folks take our money with us when we leave.

As Everett Dirkson, the renowned Senator from Illinois used to say ....

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money.

Seriously. WTF, Over?

When something bizarre becomes reality before your very eyes, often you pause. Maybe you wince, maybe you pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming, or maybe you just shrug your shoulders and chock it up as another sign of the times we live in.

I'm talking about the people we empower who (sooner or later) display signs of insanity by adopting nicknames or aliases. Some are self-named and some inherit their new name from the public at large for something they said or did. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised; this happened centuries ago in America with the likes of Publius, Silence Dogood and others.

Let's take a closer look at some of them. We'll start with the latest revelation and work backwards.

Oh, Senator Mitt, er, Pierre Delecto. This is truly a WTF moment in your life if there ever was one. It wasn't enough that you occupy a position very clearly opposed to the President on just about everything, you had to add a fake voice to the conversation. Was this sour grapes for losing an election to Barack Obama that you should have won? You'll never live this one down. Pierre Delecto will be your moniker long after you're dead and buried, and the kicker is you chose it yourself. Mitt Romney will soon be forgotten, but Pierre will live on in infamy. You -do- know what infamy means, don't you? Famous for a bad reason... This one is better than strapping your dog to the roof of your car for a 12-hour vacation drive, something we learned about during your failed Presidential campaign. Thanks for the laughs, Mitt, er, Pierre.

But he's not the only elected Federal legislator to have taken a juicy alias. Anthony Weiner (remember him) chose Carlos Danger as his mask when he was sexting females with pictures of his ... muscular body, yeah, that's it. Anthony was a Congressman who was shamed out of office and then NYC Mayoral candidate until he doubled down by repeating what got him kicked out of Congress (sexting an underage teen) and ... spent a while in jail as a result. His wife (Huma, Mrs. Clinton's top aide) forgave him the first time but couldn't take the embarrassment twice, so she divorced him. I'm still trying to figure out if that was a punishment for him or not. As usual, their kid is the real victim here.

Then we move down to those representatives that earned a nickname for something they said or claimed to have done ... That list includes:

Senator Cory Booker, aka Spartacus. He brought that name upon himself when he thought his actions during the Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings made him some sort of folk legend (it didn't). What Booker doesn't realize was that Spartacus may have started out with honorable intentions, but his army quickly turned into looters and pillagers and those that survived were crucified not only for being rebel warriors, but also for being thieves. On second thought, maybe there is a comparison between Booker and Spartacus's army.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, aka Fauxcahontas. She earned that nickname with her false claims of having a native American (Cherokee) bloodline, which of course a DNA test proved is completely bogus. As more documents turn up (besides her plagiarized Pow Wow Chow cookbook), it appears she used the claim to first further her career in law, then to give herself a leg up as a Professor at Harvard, and finally to get elected to the US Senate from Massachusetts. If there ever was a candidate for Masshole of the century, she'd be in the running. Of course, as she campaigns for President as a closet socialist, she keeps stacking lie upon lie as she goes. Even when her lies are debunked (the latest one being pushed out of a teaching job for being pregnant), she keeps making it up as she goes along. God help us all if this female gasbag ever makes it to the White House.

There are others. How an Irish white man in Texas gets a Latino name of Beto merits mention. Pete Buttigieg now owns the moniker Alfred E. Neuman. Hillary Clinton goes by Killary, mostly due to the surprising number of people in her circle of current or former acquaintances that suddenly and prematurely end up on a table in the morgue. And although CNN's Chris Cuomo isn't elected (big media is a power of a sort), he earned the moniker of Fredo for spazzing out on camera when somebody called him that.

If you're wondering why America is so fucked up, just take a long look at mental midgets like these with power (or formerly with power) and it should become clear to you in no time at all. You just can't make this shit up.

In Defense of Felicity Huffman

I'm not a bleeding heart liberal; in fact, I'm rather conservative. But I also understand that human beings are imperfect and sometimes we lose sight of things we shouldn't. Such is the case of actress Felicity Huffman, Hollywood celebrity and parent of college-age children. She's also politically left-leaning and isn't a big fan of Donald Trump. She pretty much fits the description of a liberal activist, if a definition were ever to be printed in a dictionary. Sitting in my ivory tower, it would be easy for me to sling ha-ha-on-you mud at her with the best of them. But I won't, and here's why.

When the college-payoff scandal broke, she was among 50 people indicted. The other high-profile couple indicted with the group was actress Lori Loughlin and her husband. They have pleaded not guilty and are fighting the charges, something I deem a major mistake. Time will tell; as my mother used to say, The wheel of justice turns slow, but it grinds exceedingly fine.

Huffman, to her credit, never uttered a word of denial. She knew what she was doing was wrong and we can safely bet that if it wasn't an act to help her daughter, she wouldn't have done it. She came to the bar with clean hands almost immediately and pleaded guilty pretty much just as fast as she could. And she made no bones about it - she publicly admitted her guilt without making excuses for her behavior.

I'm a parent myself and I know plenty of other parents who have gone a little further than they should have in acts to protect or help their children. I'm not saying I would have paid somebody off to change their grades, but I damn well used every resource at my disposal to keep them on the right path. This includes using a friendship with a local police chief while I sat on the municipal board that oversaw him to locate a runaway stepson 3000 miles away a few decades ago. I'm sure he would have investigated it anyway regardless of my position, but personal conversations letting him know his mother was besides herself over it didn't hurt either.

Some people think Huffman got off too easy. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't. Opinions vary. She was sentenced to 14 days in jail, a year of probation with 250 hours of community service and a fine of twice what she paid ($30,000). I'm not a judge and I don't know if the sentence matches the crime.

But I do know parents will go to far lengths to help their children, sometimes further than they should.

The biggest thing that motivates me to write about this is her complete and timely admission that what she did was, in fact, wrong. It demonstrates 2 things: One, she has a conscience and two, she knows she is not above John Q. Public in regards to the law.

So, Ms. Huffman, you are in jail as I write this. 14 days will probably turn out to be 10 or 11 days (I understand there are jail credits average people like me don't know about). You will have a year after that to perform your community service and report to probation as required, and that will be your real sentence. I'm reminded of a petty criminal who was our town supervisor 25 years ago and was caught using highway department employees to remodel his own house. He got community service also (besides being kicked out of office) and that was the biggest thing he hated. Friends told me he said he'd rather go to jail than have to go to the soup kitchen and hand out food. As a side bar, his crime was what motivated me to run for office and eventually serve 3 terms on the board, so I guess it wasn't all bad.

So, Ms. Huffman, while our politics are 180 degrees apart, I actually admire you for showing us how to be penitent when we screw up.

And we all have screwed up at one point or another. Somebody else said it better: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.