The Campaign

Several things have happened recently in the race for the Presidency. First, Bernie Sanders announced that he is now supporting the candidacy of Joe Biden. This has been described as an indication of Bernie’s maturity and an example of how adults should behave in defeat. The reality is, I think, that it’s closer to an act of pure political pragmatism and Trump hatred. Bernie Sanders is pure political ideologue. His goal is to turn the United States of America into a socialist workers paradise. Make no mistake. But fewer people will listen to him and he will have less influence if he isn’t working from inside the Democrat party. If he’s going to work within the Democrat party then he has to support the Democrat candidate. But there may possibly be more to it.

Also, Barack 0bama finally announced his support for Biden. You can read into it what you will, but he had no choice if he wants to be active in democrat circles, and he does.

The “possibly more to it” from the first paragraph is this. Barack 0bama knows better than anyone else that Joe Biden isn’t the man he was in 2008 or 2012. He’s likely had wandering personal conversations with him that made it clear that Joe Biden is incapable of serving as president. It seems almost likely that if quarantine hadn’t confined Joe to his basement that he would have collapsed on the campaign trail already. Post quarantine, the DNC will hold him up for the crowds like Punxsutawney Phil while maneuvering to keep him away from the podium as much as possible and refusing to allow any unscripted questions or rope lines where he might assault another voter. They will also lobby for a virtual convention to shield him. It may not help. The added stress may simply be too much for mister Biden to take and it may become obvious to the DNC that he’s just not able to accept the nomination.

So what then? Well, if that were to happen then the runner up in the primary would be the obvious substitution, but only if he hasn’t bolted the party and bad mouthed the entire operation. Even in the two months after the convention he may physically or mentally collapse. The same scenario holds. Bernie would be the obvious stand in.

So Barack’s reticence and Bernie’s continuing to play the game may make sense, not as impartiality and civility, but as cold political calculation. Either way, they have to be in a panic, because it’s becoming obvious to everyone that if Joe Biden wins the November election, whoever he’s chosen as his running mate will be running as the incumbent in 2024.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks

The Biden Murders

Just a hypothetical here. If Joe Biden was rumored (and there was some circumstantial evidence to indicate that it could possibly be true) to have murdered someone in Ukraine in order to protect his son's employers and thus his son's job would it then be improper to ask the government of Ukraine to investigate that even though Joe Biden were your political adversary?

Now of course Joe Biden didn't kill anyone (at least directly. It's hard to know if anyone died trying to defend themselves from a Russian AK with a box of MREs because they didn't get the weapons or any of the lethal aid that they begged the Obama administration for) but there is some evidence to suggest that Hunter Biden was given a very high paying managerial position (for which he hadn’t a shred of qualification) with a Ukrainian natural gas company solely to provide some political cover from corruption investigation as his father was then the Vice President of the United States who had control over if, when, and how much money would flow from the U.S. to Ukraine.

Is public corruption and bribery a crime anymore? Or are those only crimes relative to who happens to be in office at the time?

Is it unethical to investigate your political opponent for specific crimes possibly committed while in office? If the answer is maybe (depending on how serious the crime is) then how serious is serious enough? How far along the Jay Walking to Murder spectrum does that point lie? What will Joe Biden have to have done in order to warrant an investigation?

But that's just what an average guy thinks

Hunter Killer Team

So what the HELL just happened here?? Here’s what it looks like from this corner of the universe.

A lot of people despise Donald Trump. I don’t care for him myself and I’ve made no secret of it, but during the heat of last presidential campaign some people took things a little too far. It appears, and I think it will be made clearer that the Clinton campaign hired a law firm to collect opposition research on Donald Trump. How hard could that be? That firm then hired a retired Trump hating British intelligence operator (Christopher Steele) who then bought some dirt from the Russian government (whose motives were pure) and put together the “Steele Dossier”. They shopped it around to the press, but had no immediate takers. Then somehow John McCain (another Trump hater) and his staff got hold of it and it wound up in the hands of a group of Trump haters over at the FBI.

This was going on at the same time that the 0bama administration was outing anyone who had ever been tangentially involved with any secret investigations (unmasking they call it) and spreading their names all over town. Susan Power, the United Nations Ambassador requested the unmasking of 260 individuals during her last year in office. You might ask, (we all might ask) why would the UN Ambassador be so actively involved in any counter terrorism investigations? Don’t we have spooks for such things? In any case, some folks in the Department of Justice and the intelligence community saw an opportunity that didn’t seem to have a down side. They would make the public aware of this information to try and effect the election. But it hardly mattered, Hillary was favored to win by a mile, so this was just a little insurance. Then after the stunning upset of November 7, 2016 they shifted gears. They would end Trump’s tenure as president prematurely or cripple his administration so that he would be unable to accomplish any of his stated goals in regards to immigration, healthcare, the economy, or foreign policy. He was accused of colluding with the Russian government to rig the outcome of the election.

A Special Prosecutor was appointed. He assembled a “Hunter Killer” team of 19 Trump hating, Hillary donating criminal prosecutors, 40 FBI agents, forensic accountants and enough professional staff to serve them. Together, they issued almost 3,000 subpoenas, executed 500 search warrants, issued over 200 orders for communications records, issued 50 orders for the use of “pen registers” to spy (err…. Investigate) who investigative targets were talking to, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence and interviewed 500 witnesses, to paraphrase the new Attorney General.

And what did this team of ultra-partisan political assassins come up with in the way of collusion with the Russian government?? Absolutely nothing.

What Robert Mueller did say that they found was evidence that Trump and his administration may have tried to commit obstruction of justice. But they also noted that in any case they were unsuccessful. That they freely made all of the requested witnesses and documents available. They did, however loudly and frequently complain that they were innocent of any wrong doing and that the investigation was a partisan witch hunt.

So let’s get this straight, because it’s important. Donald Trump and his administration on the basis of opposition research were essentially charged with treason and no evidence of that was found. They also complained about the legality, fairness and partisan nature of the investigation and indicated that they might try to stop it, but nothing they ever said or did had any affect. So, no obstruction either.

And now the clever people in the House of Representatives like Adam Shiff, who for two years has claimed that he had seen evidence of collaboration between Russia and the Trump administration and the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelsoi have backed off of their impeachment mantras. But others like Eric Swalwel and Maxine Waters remain adamant. So now we know what the democrat party will be using as a talking point during the coming election season. It won’t be the Green New Deal, because that’s a farce, and it won’t be the childlike birthday wish list of giveaways that would make Greece look austere. It won’t be the economy because growth is good. Unemployment is down. Real wages are rising for the first time in many years. People are keeping more of their own money. No, they are going to use in their own public hearings and provide to a complicit media all of the evidence gathered by a crack Hunter Killer Team of political apparatchiks where it will be handed over to a crowd of equally zealous, but far less qualified “news anchors” and “comedians” so the material can be massaged and used to retry this case in the court of public opinion.

And in the end what will the product be? Impeachment? No, that’s been taken off the table. What we’re going to find out is that Donald Trump is a loud mouthed boorish braggart. Exactly what we knew three years ago. And in the meantime, democrats have sworn not to work with the President on anything. And so our borders are being overrun by Central Americans and nothing is being done about our broken out dated immigration system. The opioid crisis continues. Suicides are increasing. Life spans are decreasing, and the hysterical Balkanization of our culture continues apace.

And it should be noted that at any given time, the goal of the Russian government, led by a ruthless former KGB operative, is to undermine American any way it can, either geopolitically, or culturally. And when they sold that opposition research to Christopher Steele that’s just what they did, and why they did it.

Good job democrats.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks.

Five Stages Of Progressive Grief

Sometimes it’s enjoyable to sit and think. Today, not least because it’s the last snowy day of the year and it’s comfortable to sit, safe and warm inside, and enjoy the precipitation outside.

While sitting my mind wandered around to the subject of grief and so before it wandered off again it seemed reasonable to jot a few thoughts down.

What started it was thinking about how quickly progressives have turned from believing that the Mueller report would finally provide them with the evidence needed to impeach Donald Trump and remove him from office in favor of Vice President Mike Pence and must be accepted as gospel, to claiming that the investigation was a sham and demanding that they not only receive the work product of the Special Counsel, but also all of the materials that went into its making. From demanding that republicans accept the conclusions of the report to loudly proclaiming that the conclusions of the report announced in the Attorney General’s four page letter stating the report’s principle conclusions can’t be trusted and that the public must have all of the materials in order that the matter be tried in the court of public opinion. Of course, the latter isn’t what they say, but that’s clearly their intention.

It got me to thinking about the five stages of grief. As promulgated by Ms. Kubler Ross those stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. There is a modified version of the grouping that includes Shock at the beginning of the series and Testing between Depression and Acceptance that implies some rational thought in the later stages of the process, so that might not be applicable in this situation. But it seems to apply easily not only to the progressive reaction to the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, but also to the release of the Mueller report even though that report hasn’t been seen as yet. And anyway, it hardly matters what the report does say, as everyone already knows what it doesn’t say and that’s what’s causing all of the emotional distress. So the devoted are now transitioning from Anger into Bargaining. Chairman Nadler is trying to Bargain for some snippet of information he can use to fulfill his publicly stated promise to impeach the President made just after the 2018 elections. But the courts will leave them unsatisfied, and at some point it seems logical to think that they will have to move on to Depression and then Testing a way forward into Acceptance. But if the past is prologue this will not be the case, partly because of the progressive mindset, and partly because of our perpetual election cycle.

A more applicable version of the grief progression series is that every stage is Anger, and given the election year shocks of the Trump election and the Mueller Report, one can possibly have some sympathy.

Anyway, it’s interesting to see them twisting. The anticipation heightened by the soon to be released Department of Justice Inspector General reports regarding conduct of DoJ personnel in the run-up to the 2016 election.

But that’s just what an average guy thinks