In Our Humble Opinion

So, after two weeks of public testimony in the House and the House close to voting on Articles of Impeachment against the President, I thought I would write down what I have seen in my crystal ball. Understand, this is my crystal ball and there really is nothing special about it. Nevertheless, here it is. T he house will vote along partisan lines to submit Articles of Impeachment to the U.S. Senate; the U.S. Senate will take up the Articles of Impeachment as required under the U.S. Constitution; The U.S. Senate will hear all the evidence against the President put together by the House but the fact will remain that the republicans in the Senate all already made up their mind – the President is innocent.  After two weeks of hearing overwhelming evidence that the President improperly used his office for personal gain, the Senate will vote not to remove the President along party lines.  Now, what will the vote look like will be hard to tell. There are currently 51 repub...

Some more fact checking, courtesy of factcheck.org: Rep. Steve Scalise spun two keys facts about Ukrainian aid to defend President Donald Trump against accusations that Trump withheld that aid to pressure Ukraine to i nvestigate the alleged Ukraine interference in the 2016 U.S. election, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Scalise claimed, “The law required that before any taxpayer money go to Ukraine, the president had to ensure that they are rooting out corruption, which ultimately they did.” Actually, the law required the Defense Department to certify that substantial progress had been made toward fighting corruption before releasing some of the money. That was done in May. Scalise argued that Trump did nothing wrong because “Ukraine got the money.” It’s true that the aid was released, but only after diplomats privately and the media publicly had begun to raise questions with Trump officials about the aid being tied to investigations, after t...

So does anyone still believe that the huge tax cut that Trump got passed really did the middle class a favor? Look at FedEx…in 2017, FedEx owed and paid more than $1.5 BILLION in federal taxes. However, the company, and more specifically Founder and CEO Frederick Smith lobbied for a huge tax break based on the ‘promise’ that if corporations paid less taxes, they would invest more in the US, i.e. build factories, employee more people, improve benefits, etc. So what happened the next year? FedEx’s tax liability went from 34% in 2017 to less than 0% in 2018 – the Federal Government technically owed FedEx money all as the result of the new corporate federal fax code passed by Trump and the Republican party. Did FedEx invest more in the US as the result of all this tax savings? Nope – they didn’t. In fact, a review of the largest corporations showed that there was “ no statistically meaningful relationship between the size of the tax cut that companies and industries recei...

November 15 th public impeachment hearing featured the former ambassador to the Ukraine, Maria Yovanovitch, a seasoned diplomate for the United States for 33 years of service and experience. One of the focus points of the GOP side of the committee kept insisting that the President of the United States as the untether right to assign and re-assign ambassadors and they are correct. Let’s be clear it is the right of the President to assign and reassign ambassadors at will. The critical point, in the discussion, however, was lost. The issue was not if the President has the right to re-assign ambassadors, but, in this case, what was the President’s motive or reason. Now, under normal circumstances, the President does not need to justify why an ambassador gets re-assigned, however, this situation is much different. The case was made by the Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Schiff, that if Ambassador Yovanovitch was re-assigned in order to get her out of the way because she was an...

So, I am accused to robbing a bank but insist I am innocent. There are a number of people that can vouch for my where abouts and prove my innocence but I am refusing to tell law enforcement who those friends are. What am I hiding? That's the question I have for Mr. Trump - what are you hiding? If there are members of your staff which could testify that the phone conversation you had on July 25th was a "perfect call" why don't you let them testify instead of claiming 'executive privilege" - unless you are afraid those individuals may let some dirty little secret slip out and make things worst? So, what are you hiding?

So there is this theory that if the Trump administration can out the Whistleblower that they can attack his (or her) creditability and discredit the whole Ukraine/Impeachment “Witch Hunt.” So, let's look at this logically in a different context. Lets say that citizen A calls Crime line and says that he suspects that Citizen B murdered someone. In response, the police department goes out and investigates the lead. Their investigation indicates that the victim was murdered with a 22 Cal gun which was found in the house of Citizen B. Furthermore, upon fingerprint analysis, they find Citizen B’s fingerprints on the 22 Cal gun, and gun powder residue on Citizen B’s hand. When the police department went to see Citizen A to find out what else he knew, they found Citizen A in a back-ally high on drugs and alcohol. By the Trump administration logic, because Citizen A was so unreliable and failed to be a fine, and upstanding citizen, that Citizen B in fact did not kill the person desp...

According to the Associated Press: TRUMP: " It was just explained to me that for next weeks Fake Hearing (trial) in the House, as they interview Never Trumpers and others, I get NO LAWYER & NO DUE PROCESS. " — tweet Thursday. THE FACTS : The hearing is a hearing, not a trial, and it is unfolding according to the usual process. Trump is correct that he and his legal team are excluded from public hearings that begin next week, but he hasn't been charged with anything and has no constitutional right to be represented by a lawyer in this proceeding. In that sense, his position is not much different from criminal suspects who are being investigated but haven't been charged, or from past presidents at this stage of impeachment proceedings. *Associated Press, 11/07/19

Per the Associated Press (AP): SEN. RAND PAUL: "Enshrined in the 6th Amendment is the right to confront your accuser." — tweet Tuesday. SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee: "We're not going to try the president of the United States based on hearsay. Every American has a right to confront their accuser." — interview on Sept. 29 on CBS' "Face the Nation." THE FACTS : Graham and Paul are omitting key words from the start of the Sixth Amendment: "In all criminal prosecutions." Trump is not facing an accuser in a criminal proceeding. The hearings are a political proceeding. *Associated Press, 11/07/19

The lastest White House tactic that it has been instituted to delay the House Impeachment Inquiry is the issuing of a letter in which the White House states, among other reasons, that the house committees is not giving the president the opportunity to call witnesses or present a defense. The trouble with this excuse is that the White House is looking at impeachment as a criminal proceeding, which it isn’t. It is a congressional procedure that is govern by the rules of the House (and Senate) and the Constitution. Under the constitution, impeachment is treated as a non-criminal procedure as evidenced by the fact that the President can only be removed from office, if the Senate so votes, and not Removed and placed in jail. But let us assume that the argument is valid, and this would be considered a criminal procedure. The House investigation is akin to a grand jury investigation in which the defendant is never given the opportunity to present their defense – NEVER ! The grand ...

Rick Scott, and his staff, are not doing their job by representing the interest of their constituents. More specifically, an attempt has been made twice through the email site of Senator Scott, and twice on Facebook, for his assistance in finding out the status of my father’s cremains which were sent to Mayport NAS in Jacksonville for Burial at Sea. NO ONE – INCLUDING HIS STAFF – HAS MADE ANY CONTACT WITH ME OR WITH THE US NAVY TO ADDRESS THIS ISSUE .It has now been over 18 months and my father has still not been buried at sea and they have no idea when it will be accomplished. Now, the US Navy in Mayport NAS did finally after 5 weeks respond to my letter, but Senator Rick Scott has saw fit to get his bald head mug plastered in the media for various reasons, rather than show compassion and interest in a veteran and his family. SENATOR RICK SCOTT NEEDS TO BE ELECTED OUT OF OFFICE ASAP for failure to perform.   With any other company, he would have been fired or de...

Until recently I was not a supporter of the impeachment of Mr. Trump solely based on the premise...why? Even if it passes the house, there is no way that the Republican control Senate will allow the President to be impeached because they fear for their jobs and positions in the Senate. After all where can you go, get $170K plus benefits, and not do your job? (See related article on Senator Rick Scott (R-FL)). However, this whole thing with Ukraine and asking for them to investigate Joe Biden, one of his competitors for the position of President in 2020 went too far. It clear it was a swapping of favors for political gain. Now some say that there is no different between that and what other Presidents have done by negotiating deals with other counties. Well it is in ONE and only ONE very important way…It was deal between President Trump, to discredit a potential presidential nominee and competitor for the sake of securing his re-election to the office of president. It is not...

I am not sure if I am in favor of “Medicare for All” and think that more investigation and thought needs to be given to the issue. On the flip side, however, I do not feel that the rendering of needed medical care should be based on the ability of the person/patient to pay. So, what is the solution? I have a couple of ideas. Granted I do not know the cost, but some bean counter probably can come up with something. Emergency treatment for all. We have this already in the form of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) which requires hospitals and emergency providers to evaluate and stabilize any patient that presents themselves for services. The pitfall of this program has been that less than 40% of it gets reimbursed for the services. This causes “cost-shifting” - -increasing the cost to those that can pay to pay for those that do not or cannot pay. This cost shifting on the part of the hospital includes increasing the cost of certain test or procedures or even...

Okay, so it has been a while since I have posted anything to this blog. Often my post on this blog go unseen or unheard and that’s okay. At least I can get something off my chest and just maybe someone will one day read it. Today my subject is health care – AGAIN!!! This time it is about what has been proposed by the Democrats. Now don’t get me wrong, I switched from Republican to Democrat solely because of the asshole of a President we have in the form of Donald Trump. He is a rich, spoiled, misogynistic, self-center, paranoid, egotistical, idiot of a President that is an embarrassment to the United States of America and what we stand for. But the Democrats have pushed one of my buttons that I find myself having to take the time to speak up against them. HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS !! What in the hell are the democrats trying to do!?!?! We can not even provide cost effective health care to native born citizen of the United States and we are wanting to offer FREE healthca...