The State of the Union

“Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan and Clapper! Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!”
President Donald Trump describing Representative Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

“Impeach the mother—-er.”
Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”

President John F. Kennedy

House Speaker Pelosi has suggested to President Trump that he not deliver the State of the Union speech until later or perhaps not to Congress at all, instead just issuing some sort of written report, citing “security” issues. REALLY? Does the Speaker REALLY fear for the safety of the President because security has been compromised because of the shutdown?!?! I doubt it. I don’t believe that the State of the Union message is enshrined in law but it certainly is enshrined in tradition. Why would Speaker Pelosi do such a thing – such a partisan thing? Because she fears that President Trump will use the platform to advocate HIS partisan position, belittling the Democrats, blaming them for the government shutdown and all the ills of humanity. He might get an upper-hand for a few moments. And she is probably right – that is probably exactly what President Trump will do. After all, he just reciprocated by revoking the Speaker’s military air transportation for an important tour of Afghanistan and then outing her intention to utilize alternate commercial aviation. Is the leading country in the free world being run by four-graders?!?! It’s all just another tit-for-tat episode in the toxic environment that is our nation’s capital. Above, I cited just a couple of examples of the rhetoric that passes for normal these days. Representative Tlaib’s quote is cruder but I wouldn’t have to look very far to find a Trump-quote that would make that one pale by comparison.

My Pop was hardly a liberal but he consistently voted Democrat. He revered FDR and that carried over for a long time. That is until 1960 – “I mean Kennedy IS a Democrat but he is …. well, you know he IS a Catholic and you know that they are told what to do by the Pope.” This might be hard to comprehend in 2019 but it was an issue for some Protestants in 1960. But then on the morning of October 25, 1962 I listened while my parents debated if they would send us to school because they thought a nuclear bomb might be dropped that day. The compromise was that they would send us because they thought they would have time to get us from school before the mushroom cloud overtook us. Imagine how much greater their fears would have been if they had known that at the same time their 18-year old son was confined to barracks at Fort Sam Houston preparing for a possible transport to Cuba. They were ultimately ordered to stand down. Let me tell you, Pop was 1,000% behind President Kennedy.

So, what is my point? After Kennedy was elected, he was criticized by the media and roasted by comedians and his actions were questioned. But he stayed the course and maintained enough bipartisanship to get things done. In JFK’s day and others, when we were in trouble and needed to act, we circled the wagons. When things HAD TO BE DONE, we didn’t care who was a Republican and who was a Democrat and who got the credit or who got the blame. We don’t have the immediate threat of nuclear war that we had in October,1962. But we may be approaching an existential crisis that is also threatening the Union – the paralysis of our elected federal officials. And it is all because our elected representatives – Congress AND the President – STILL REALLY DO CARE who gets the credit and who gets the blame. In fact, I think that is ALL many of them care about.

The Washington Post’s Bob Costa sent out this tweet earlier this week speaking of the governmental “shutdown”:

“Couple senior Republican lawmakers tell me the only way this breaks open is if TSA employees stay home and Americans get furious about their flights. That’s the only out, they say. And they’re close to the WH.”

This underscores what I have been feeling over the last few years – MY representatives are willing to INJURE ME AND MY FELLOW CITIZENS to the point at which we cry out before they will be willing go to work with each other to find a compromise – this, all in the interest of making their political opponents look bad. They are apparently powerless to act until we reach a point of induced national crisis – totally avoidable national crisis. This infuriates me and this very much concerns me, because I fear THIS is the sad State of the Union.

They are toying with my day-to-day life and the lives of those that I love. The national and world economies tremble and waffle while they watch these shenanigans play out, with the welfare of ALL our citizens hanging in the balance while these people PLAY their political games. STOP IT!!! Get to work. You say you don’t think a wall is worth the money, propose paying for HALF of it and swallow your pride. You say you made a campaign promise to build a wall and have somebody else pay for it, compromise for half of what you asked for, declare victory and move along. After all, none of this really is about saving money OR for that matter having the best border security. Seriously, you have already done a lot more damage than $5 billion. I don’t want to hear any more of your rhetoric. A pock on both of your houses. Just get it done and move along to working on our country’s other real problems. There has been precious little of that going on for the last several months.