Of Yosemite Sam and Gun-Sniffing Dogs

 Guns ahoy! Anybody remember that varmint-killing cowboy known as Yosemite Sam? Didn't he give us a load of laughs as he chased Bugs Bunny around, trying to eradicate the rabbit but instead getting more gun powder in his own face than any human (I mean, cartoon character) has ever endured in all history?

Inocculous. Harmless. Just good Saturday morning humor.

Nope. Not innocuous. This Yosemite Sam was actually one of the myriad of influences that have shaped our nation into a gun-totting society. Just one, and perhaps just a small one. And, yes, he was a laugh a minute, good for all the humor you needed to set you off on a good day.

But, Same is also a reminder of that there are subtle influences around us, hundreds of them.

My mind shifts to a news story today about a gun-sniffing dog named Bolt that the Granite School District is employing. Place a gun in a desk, or wherever, and Bolt will sniff it out. Bring a weapon on campus, and Bolt is going to find it.

But, a lot the guns coming on school campuses are brought there by students who just want to protect themselves. They've learned from their parents and society that you need to defend yourself -- and you often need to have a gun to do that. Guns are good, guns are good, guns are good.

Is there be any question but what that is a value in today's society?  Every one from your mom and dad to the neighbbor next door teaches us that, everyone from Yosemite Sam to Clint Eastwood.

There's Such a Thing as a Level 4 Voter

 Introducing the four levels of voting. In which class are you? Are you a Level 1, a Level 2, a Level 3, or do you go all the way to the top as a Level 4 voter?

Level 1 is easy. All you have to do is show up at the polls, or mail in your ballot. You don't need to study or have any reason for voting for the people you do. Draw straws, go eenie, meenie, miney moe, or whatever.

Level 2 requires you to have just a little bit of reason for who you voted for. Maybe they sent you a political flyer, or you saw a yard sign, or they belong to the Democrat or Republican party. You don't need to know anything personal about the person, just their spending money or being the representative of your party is enough for you.

Level 3? Now we are getting somewhere. If you are a Level 4 voter, you study the candidates. You know their stands. You vote on the individual.

And, that brings us to the ultimate level, Level 4. Okay, I confess this is where I insert my own opinion of what is important in picking among the candidates. You go beyond just knowing their political views; you pick your person by -- get this --  his or her, morals, character, and integrity.

The candidate is going to face a lot of influences once elected. Lobbyists will try to coax them to vote their way based on contributions or personal gifts (did I say bribes?). They will face pressure to extend favors to family and friends. They will be tempted to use their office for personal gain. They will be drawn to wield domain over others. And, they might certainly be inclined to unjustly censor others, to condemn and be spiteful and hateful of others, to bicker and fight and demean.

Of course we should demand character of our candidates. If it is not important to us, we cannot expect it to matter much to them. We need leaders who will do what is right, regardless, and we won't get them if those things don't mean a lick to us.  

Who is the Greatest, Mohammed Ali or Donald Trump?

 "I am the greatest," said Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest -- if not the greatest -- boxers of all time. "Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee."

Ali could back up his boastful, arrogant words. But, what of the current champion of such proud and boastful language? Can Donald Trump back up his words?

Yes, I said Donald Trump. And, if you don't know it, he has, indeed, proclaimed himself the greatest president of all time. "In the history of our country, nobody has done more than I have." "The most presidential person ever," "He's got me down as the greatest president in the history of our country," he once said, basking in the statement of a pundit, "including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln."

"I am going to be the greatest job president that God ever created. Remember that."

"In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country," he said, drawing a sprinkling of laughter from the audience.

"The greatest president of all."

Then, there are the pundits who agree with him:

"A man brave enough to stare down the sun."

"Not just America's greatest president, but the greatest leader of every country in the history of the world."

Float like a  butterfly, sting like a bee? His words are not beautiful, to me, but they do sting.

Through all the Years, There's still no Direct Evidence

Burisma, Burisma, Burisma. Republicans won't let it go. It echoes down through the years, the Republicans screaming at how corrupt, corrupt, corrupt the Bidens are. 

No, no, don't hang up. This is a story that needs repeating. Republicans need to know the full of the facts. If you let it go, well, they won't, and their version will win. The truth does not always have the loudest voice, but the loudest voice is usually taken as the truth.

So, we've got to make our voice loud.

Let's start back in the day when one Viktor Shokin was prosecutor in the land of  Ukraine. Yes, our story shall begin with Viktor, Viktor Shokin. They hired Vik to investigate crime cases, large crime cases.

But, he wasn't doing much of a job.

Much of the international community could see he was derelict of his duties. Indeed, the public could see he was derelict. They raised up in protest, filling the area in front of the presidential palace to demand that Shokin be fired.

Oh, this will need to be checked out: "He never went after any corrupt individuals at all" and "never prosecuted any high-profile cases of corruption." That's according to Mike Carpenter, an advisor to then-Vice President Joe Biden. 

Surely, there is a record of his cases. Someone should check it out to see if he did prosecute any high-profile cases.

Enter a man named Joe Biden, who, as we said, was then the vice president. Joe went a visiting to Ukraine and got himself in trouble by demanding Ukraine fire Shokin. Biden didn't like Shokin. He, just like everyone else, wanted him canned. Now, Joe had some money to give Ukraine -- $1 billion -- so he decided to leverage it. Either the Ukrainians fire Shokin, or they didn't get the money.

Yes, Biden took heat and has been taking heat ever since for "bribing" the Ukrainians. And, as the story goes, Joe sought to get Shokin fired because Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, a company of which Joe's son -- that would be Hunter Biden -- sat on the board of directors.   

And, there is much of the tale of how Biden "bribed" Ukraine. All in a nutshell.

Time for a quote. We need to know if Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings. Word is he was and word is he wasn't. We need the truth, here.

Here's what a CNN story had to say: "While there had been an investigation of the company, Shokin's former deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, has said that it was dormant at the time of Joe Biden's intervention. (The former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, George Kent, testified in Trump's impeachment inquiry that Shokin was corrupt; the US and its allies had made a coordinated effort to oust him.)" 

Kasko would have known if the investigation had went dormant. He said it had. That is pretty good evidence. 

It all leaves you wondering, doesn't it? And, hasn't this been investigated time and time again? 

Yes.

Republican Senate committees in 2020 found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden. Nor has the current Republican House committee investigation turned anything up as of this month, per Wikipedia.

"There's no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed to do something so that Hunter could get the money," one GOP lawmaker told CNN. "There's just no evidence of that."

After Shokin was fired, Ukrainian prosecutors went back and audited the old cases, including Burisma, and found no evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.

There are tons of voters who don't like Biden. That's cool. But laying an accusation on him that has no evidence behind it is not fair. Just say you don't like Biden, and leave it at that, without smearing him with false accusations.

Trump Praises Dictators, but Degrades Washington and Lincoln

 It is possible that Donald Trump does not believe in democracy, but has been cast into a land filled with it. I think of how he has spoken highly of Vladimir Putin, and of other dictators.

1. Of North Korea's Kim Jong-un: "We fell in love.”
2. Of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: "He’s become a friend of mine. . . . He’s running a very difficult part of the world. . . . He’s getting very high marks.”
3. Of Chinese President Xi Jinping: "I like President Xi a lot. I consider him a friend . . . a strong guy.”
4. He quoted Benito Mussolini in a tweet: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” The tweet ended with "#MakeAmericaGreatAgain." Nice to know what "Make America Great Again" means to the guy who created the phrase.
5. He boasted of how he "made a lot of money" working with Moammar Gadhafi and suggested he should explore more business ventures with him.
5. Of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi: "We agree on so many things. . . . We are very much behind President el-Sisi."
6. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Hannity three times asked Trump if he thought Vladimir Putin was an evil guy, and each time Trump dodged the question and failed to say.

   After reading all the praise he has heaped on foreign dictators, don't you wonder how many times Trump has been so quick to laud George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? He's done the opposite; he has degraded them. When on tour of Mount Vernon, he criticized Washington for not naming it after himself. “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said. He has questioned Lincoln's legacy of helping Blacks, suggesting that he, Trump, has done more for them than Lincoln. Why does he not at least throw in a comment of what great leaders Washington and Lincoln were? He has offered such kind words for dictators, but has not offered them for American's greatest leaders. 

Biden has Nefarious Plan to Dictate how Much Alcohol is Too Much

Americans are being told how many beers they can drink, reports Fox News, citing a far-right conservative congressman who says the government has no business doing that.

You know those cans of soup you buy? And how they list the daily recommended amounts you should eat? My can of Campbell's Chunky Old Fashioned Vegetable Beef tells me it contains only 5 percent of the fat I should hold myself to in a day, but it has 83 percent of the sodium. (Whew, I'm in trouble on that one.)

Well, its the same way with beer. the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has cut the amount of beer it recommends you hold yourself to. Two cans a day has been fine up till now, but now "Biden's beer czar," as Texas Republican Troy Nehls calls him (making sure you know it is the Biden administration doing this to you) "has no business advising 'guidance' on alcohol consumption."

Two cans of beer? That's all? Someone is going to accuse me of being sober. That's like sticking your toe in the water once a week, but never being allowed to go swimming.

And, it is not just the Biden administration that is inflicting this on us; it is all the democrats. "This is who the Democrats are," Nehls says. "They want to control every aspect of your life."

Okaaay. 

I wonder if I could take my can of Chunky Soup to Nehls and tell him I agree. It says it has 83 percent of the sodium I should hold myself to. Do you hear me? It is trying tell me how to run my life; it is trying to control my life. I will not be marginalized like this.

Forgive me, Rep. Nehls. I know I am mocking you. I do dismiss what you are saying as silly. The idea that your freedom is being lost because somebody tries to warn you not to imbibe too much alcohol is, well, silly. 

Will Trump Use the Constitution as a Wedge Against Democracy?

Donald Trump plans to return to power as "an elected king who has power over everything but can be prosecuted for nothing," writes Brynn Tannehill of The New Republic.

Dismiss the idea not too quickly.

He's coming with a vengeance. He fell from power, and he's not going to let it happen again.

Tannehill suggests the next Trump presidency will reach to justify their actions with what is called the "unitary executive theory." You've heard of that, I guess. No? Well neither have I. But, I read it takes its roots in the Constitution. "The executive Power shall be vested in a President," says the Constitution. "The President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed," says the same Constitution.

Sounds fair, sounds right, sounds wise and makes sense, right? Who would question the Constitution?

But, is Trump planning to use the words of the Constitution as a wedge to break apart America as we know it?

"In practice," writes Tannehill, "this could mean, for example, the president personally instructing the Department of Justice and the IRS to investigate and prosecute anyone he directs them to. According to people who study how democracies die, this would serve as a big, flashing neon light that says the democracy is either dead or dying. But the American public doesn't seem to notice, or care."

Trump could fire any military officer standing in the way of his using the military for his personal ambitions. He could fire anyone under the roof of the Executive Branch and exert his influence to overthrow the Judicial Branch, as well. The Legislative Branch? It is within range that Republican majorities could be achieved in both cameras, and be loyal to Trump.

Confessedly so, there is speculation in all this. One of the writers on this topic has said, "This is not just speculation," but it is. Or, is it? It is based on Trump advisors saying they plan to draw on the power of the unitary executive theory. That Trump will actually use it to fire everyone and bring in his minions and henchmen is yet to be seen.

Drain the swamp, Trump promised long ago. Tannehill notes that, "In the run-up to the 2020 election, Trump repeatedly talked about a third and fourth term." He will not willingly relinquish power ever again, Tannehill writes.

Where there's smoke, there's fire, it has been said.