A Man Hears What He Wants to Hear

This song lyric has never been truer than it is today.

"A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest." ~ Paul Simon, The Boxer

There is indeed a segment of the electorate who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election because his rhetoric matched their own wants and desires, hope and fears. He said he'd Make America Great Again and the people wanted to be on the great side. He altered the phrase to be "Safe Again" and they wanted to be safe. The only thing is America has never been any more or less great than it is today nor is it any less safe than it has ever been. Trump's rhetoric implies that foreign nationals are a significant threat to American's safety even though zero refugees have committed a serious crime against any Americans. Comment below if you have facts to challenge that assertion.

The anti-gun safety lobby and their NRA followers love to point out that automobile drivers kill more Americans than anyone with a gun. No argument there. They love to point out that Cheeseburgers are far more deadly than a gun with the annual death toll counted in the hundreds of thousands. Again no argument. Even hospital stays kill more than 400,000 people every year due to sepsis. This post is not a gun legislation debate but one to point out that Legislators and Chief Executives typically focus on the wrong aspects of an issue. They do it because the misdirection gives them a better position.

Voters heard the cry of the desire to bring back jobs to Americans. While that is an admirable goal, the part that was not heard was those jobs would be paying less than the living wages needed to live in the United States. GOP-controlled Legislatures are adamantly against the minimum wage or increasing it from $7.35 per hour. They are strongly against organized labor which could help workers get better pay, health insurance and necessary time off. They want to make it legal for a business to discriminate against employing certain people due to an alleged religious basis. All those jobs will be no better and sometimes worse than being on the welfare rolls.

They heard the hue and cry that "government regulations were crippling small business". The Trump Administration remedy is to repeal two regulations for every one new one. What they fail to see is that those government regulations were actually protecting them in their home and on their properties. Consider the chicken farmer who finds that treating the chicken manure is too costly. Without regulations he merely flushes the chicken crap into the local stream and leave it up to the downstream neighbors to deal with it.

Cutting environmental regulations is paramount to the GOP Legislatures across the nation. But each of those regulations has previously brought us back from a cataclysmic degradation of the air, land and water. Every one of the existing regulations lowers the cost of cleanup that must be borne by the taxpayers as the result of allowing a profit making business to neglect his wastes and dump it in his neighbors' yards.

In short, every call to limit a "bloated big government" is dog whistle for making it easier to foist the cost of doing a profitable business onto everyone else in the name of a "thriving economy." Everyone can drive twice as far on a tank of gas if they are not planning to return home. 

Cutting immigrants from SNAP (aka Food Stamps) sounds like a great cost savings until you consider that one, immigrants don't get Food Stamp, and two the food Stamp program is less that 1.55 of the national budget. Drug testing recipients of welfare funds get the knees jerking but previous implementation proves the cost of testing exceeds the savings.

Securing the vote is what Republican voters heard to keep non-citizens from voting but the practices put in place actually stopped upwards of 7 million qualified voters from casting their ballots legitimately.

None of the misleading rhetoric was a mistake. It was all part of the PLAN, the Plan to get more GOP led states contrary to the diminished population of voters and constituents who need government assistance to challenge the hurdles put before them by business interests who want the money for themselves. 

Trumpian Wrecking Crew

Here is my considered opinion. During the campaign run up to the 2016 Presidential Primaries both major parties sought to put their better foot forward. The DNC decided that Hillary Clinton was their strongest hope of maintaining a Democratic Administration. They threw everything they had at her and marginalized Bernie Sanders who seemed to have quite a following. Whether he could have won over Donald Trump will forever be a matter of political debate by minds greater than mine. At the time, the candidacy of Donald Trump was far from certain.

With in excess of 16 nationally recognizable Candidates to choose from, the RNC threw all the candidates against the wall to see who sticks. The one who was al dente was Donald Trump. For better or for worse, HE was their man.

All throughout the whittling down of the pool of also rans, the Republicans were only looking for the man who could beat "Evil Hillary". They made sure that their 25-year War on Hillary continued with the most outlandish fabrications ever to be devised in the annals of American politics. Mudslinging and Muckraking were not unknown to our forefathers, but the machinations of the Conservatives in this election would have made the lot of them gag and avert their eyes lest they be drawn in and squashed too.

Donald trump acted like a man on a suicide mission or a one-way trip to Mars. He would go. He would be hailed as a hero. He would face near indomitable odds. And though he may land on the Red Planet, he would die there. All along his journey Mr. Trump burned all his fuel in reckless abandon on the outbound trip knowing that he needn't hold any in reserve for a return trip. And when the tank was empty he would coast on his mighty momentum until he hit the wall, an asteroid or the ground at the end of his ballistic trajectory.

I am reminded of the Ballad of Poncho and Lefty where "all the Federales say, we could have had him any day. We just let him go so long. Out of kindness, I suppose." The Republican "federales" have a purpose for the "useful fool" as a one-man wrecking crew to dismantle everything they hate and want to dispose of without fear of the backlash for proposing it in the first place. It is one thing to try to dismantle the ACA, Medicare and Social Security, but all together another if the actually do it. President Trump can gut all the regulations, programs and governing oversight with the stroke of his pen while leaving the GOP untarnished.

Donald Trump has served his purpose. He used the most vulgar approach to win his office for the GOP over Hillary. He has set in motion the dismantling of multiple safety net programs, the EPA, USDA, FDA, Free Press, BLM and many more. He has placed completely incompetent and unqualified appointees in high office where each of them can scuttle their departments in favor of privatization and shareholder value. Consider the placement of Steve Bannon in the role of Presidential Adviser. His stated goal is the dismantling of the American governmental system. But in order for the GOP to have any hope of dodging the ire of the electorate they must put an end to the tyranny engendered by President Trump. They will have to move to impeach and then remove him from office for the good of what remains of US Democracy.

Appoint and Confirm: The New Hot Political Potato

The recent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has certainly whipped up a firestorm of partisan politics. Republican Mitch McConnell almost immediately announced that the GOP controlled Senate will not confirm any appointee that President Barack Obama submits to them. Imagine that. The Republicans will not act to stabilize the country, the legislature or the Constitutional issues until they get their way.

People like Lindsey Graham have piped up with the rhetoric that no confirmation should be made in an election year even though Ronald Reagan, for one, did submit and have confirmed his conservative appointee in an election year. GOP Presidential hopeful, Ted Cruz, has already publicly announced that he is willing to appoint a Justice who is equivalent to the deceased Scalia in his conservative opinions.

Radio hoax and Internet purveyor of endless conspiracies, Alex Jones, has gone as far as to suggest that President Obama had Justice Scalia murdered in order to leave office with a legacy of change by flipping the 5-4 split of the court toward Liberal interpretations. I'd like to suggest if that conspiracy were true it should have been implemented 6 or 7 years ago and we would have avoided all the anti-human and pro-corporation rulings we will have to live with for decades to come. I call "Hogwash" on Alex Jones' tinfoil rhetoric.

The Senate will be taking a huge gamble in stymieing the confirmation of one or two appointees that Barack Obama could submit for the vacant position. They will be gambling on winning the White House in November 2016 in order to not have Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders inherit the duty and make whatever Liberal nomination they choose. If the GOP succeeds in tossing Obama appointees until November, they risk making major alteration to what the voter turnout and voter affiliation will otherwise be. The calculation will need to be very carefully considered and not be predicated on spurious polls.

Whoever the next President is, he or she will undoubted have the duty of appointing two additional replacement Supreme Court Justices. Not resolving the Scalia vacancy now, might lead to a GOP loss in November and thereby the opportunity to appoint the next two Justices. By age alone, Thomas - R and Ginsberg -D are the two most probable next vacancies. A President replacing both of them would not alter the pre-disposition to opinion of the 9-member court. Which ever way the election turns out, this Supreme Court Justice confirmation process WILL alter the outcome. Place your bets and take your chances.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding the reluctance of the 8-member court to address major issues, the math shows only a small difference. Any case presented will need to be a 5-3 to pass or reject the issue at hand. "In the event of such a tie, the court typically issues what's known as a per curiam decision. The opinion in such a decision is issued under the court's name, as opposed to consisting of a majority and a minority opinion." ~ Slate.com  This typically means that a lower court ruling stands.

However, as with several recent rulings of the court, the 5-4 vote included a defection from the Conservative camp to side with the Liberal minority. Those defections were rarely made by Scalia anyway. Getting one of Kennedy, Thomas or Alito support is all which is needed to rule in the Liberal direction.

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Author's Note: The book cover images in the side margins of this blog are my own publications of eBooks available at both Amazon and B&N. Please take a moment and go to the sites and read about them. Then if you like it, buy one or two.

Finicum's Last Stand

Robert LaVoy Finicum. What can I say? There was a man who knew his mind and saw his destiny unfolding before him even as a small portion of the American people came to know him as Blue Tarp Man. Now better known in ignominious death than in life, he sacrificed all in the hopes of a glorious demise at the hands of the evil Federales who were bound and determined to take him down.

I am reminded of the legendary Pancho, the one who "met his end, you know, on the desert down in Mexico." As with Pancho, for LaVoy "nobody heard his dying words. But that's the way it goes." Surely Lavoy knew that country-western song and internalized it to his life and his plan for immortality.

LaVoy, a rancher from Chino Valley, Arizona, hooked up with two Bundy boys from Nevada and took over the isolated location of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Warner County, Oregon. Right from the beginning he positioned himself front and center in the lights of news camera crews to proclaim his position. From under a blue tarp he participated in interviews regarding his stance on the occupation and his willingness to die for his cause. With a sheathed rifle and two sidearms at his hips, he announced that he would rather die than be caged. At that point in time there was only two outcomes from his actions: be caged or be killed. There was no opportunity for the FBI to opt to waive arrest and prosecution of Lavoy Finicum.

Although LaVoy repeatedly said that he would not shoot first, he did assert that if anyone pointed a gun at him he would point his back. Thus the lethal conditions were set in stone. After the federal, state and county authorities worked 23 days to reach a peaceful resolution to the standoff at Malheur, the FBI staged a roadblock on an equally isolated stretch of Highway 395 where only the perpetrators and the law enforcement officers would be within bullet range.

Two vehicle traveling from the Refuge to the town of John Day were stopped at a roadblock. One vehicle containing several of the leaders of the occupation of Malheur surrendered and were taken into custody. After a few minutes of being stationary the second vehicle driven by LaVoy Finicum sped away from the scene of arrest only to ne sidelined by a secondary roadblock further down the road. He swerved his vehicle and left the pavement ending up stopped in a snow drift on the left side of the road. Although there were three male adult and an 18 yo girl in the vehicle, LaVoy was the only person to exit the vehicle and stop about 10 yards from the snowbound vehicle only to be shot while doing what looks like reaching for a weapon at his hip.

Left-handed or right-handed draws notwithstanding, the Officers all knew LaVoy wore two guns as part of his daily attire and they he repeated vowed to not be taken alive. Now LaVoy was not an evil man, even if he was delusional about his importance and had a death wish, he did not want to jeopardize the lives and safety of the other people in his truck. They had to choose for themselves their fates. Even misguided criminals have a sense of propriety.

Lavoy moved a reasonable distance from the vehicle that contained co conspirator Ryan Bundy, another adult male and a young girl before making his last act of defiance. Finicum's Last Stand played out as it was destined from the first day of his arrival at the failed insurrection at the Wildlife Refuge. Even Butch Cassidy and Sundance knew they would end up in a cold grave at the end of their run. All the militants occupying the bird sanctuary buildings a Malheur sought enduring accolades, but all any of these three people could really hope for is a paragraph in an American History textbook. Well, they could hope for more, but the state of American education is such that nobody reads long enough to get to the denouement, let along even know what that is.

For now the jury is out on whether or not the protest yields any positive outcomes. The saying that to a hammer everything looks like a nail, is true in this case. These "Constitutional Patriots" believe they are taking back the country from the government. They fail to realize the government they seek to fight is the one they keep electing by voting for the "Conservatives" who want to wrest control of the land so it can be sold off to the very entities they seek to keep it from.

LaVoy Finicum will be far better remembered as the Blue Tarp Man than for any political stand he made. Or even the manner of his death.  R.I.P. LaVoy, may others see the folly of your convictions.