We hear the terms leader and leadership tossed around a lot. Some are good leaders and others, not so much. And some, like Trump, are a frigging disaster.

But what is a leader? What does it take to be a leader and more importantly, what does is take to be a really good or even great leader? The answer is simple. People, it takes people. Every enterprise on this planet is created by, run by, and improved on by people. As a leader, you will only be as good as the people you are leading.

You don't teach leadership. You can teach techniques for dealing with various issues that might come up in the role of being a leader. You can teach things like developing mission statements and strategies for accomplishing a mission. You can teach budgeting, and accounting, and capital investment and ROI kind of stuff, but none of that leads people; it merely gives them the tools to execute certain tasks.

I dare say that if most people had won the Powerball game that just dropped a billion dollars in someone's lap last night, before taxes, most of us would not suffer an damn alarm at 5:00am any longer, or spend our morning in a traffic jam eating a pastry and sipping coffee while we worked on our profane vocabulary.

Work is a necessary evil of a society. If you quit your job and sold all your worldly possesions and moved into the forest as far away from people as you could, you could be free of bosses and schedules and mandatory tasks. You could get up when you felt like it, or if you heard a bear trying to get into your cabin.

You would be your own boss. Still, there would be things you "had" to do. If you're where the winters are cold, you would have to stockpile firewood and food stuffs to supplement what I assume you would eat according to your hunting and fishing.

Survival would be the only boss you had to salute. That life in the wild is neither practical or maybe even possible for a majority of us, especially with the shrinking wilderness areas in our country. If we all tried to do this, the wilderness would have the density of Manhattan.

So, we work out of a necessity; that is also true for the leaders. Each of us, then, tries to find something in our job that motivates us to answer that alarm every morning. We look at our jobs and try to find a way to see what we do in our jobs as making a contribution to something more than just us. That's human nature. That's what drives most humans. Unlike most of the rest of the animal world that seems content with munching grass or licking termites off of a stick, we humans tend to strive for something more than just being part of the herd.

And, this is where true leadership comes in. As the leader, you need to get to know your people. You need to understand, and I mean truly understand their specific skills, talents, and ambitions. Not as a collective, but on an individual basis for those people you interact with daily. It is not enough to broad-brush the situation and say something like, "Oh, I have a bunch of talented people in my organiztion. You need to know what each of them brings to the party; how each of them makes a special contribution to the success of your operation and subsequently to your own success.

And, once you acknowledge their talents, and you do have to mean it when you say they do a good job, you are on the right track. You have to truly believe that last statement and see the value they bring to the whatever the mission is that you are responsible for as the leader. If you don't respect and value the people closest to you as well as those more removed, then you're in the wrong job. You need to get an individual-contributor position where it's just about you. These exist and you can still make a lot of money and perhaps even gain significant recognition, but for chrissaske, do not take a job as a leader if you don't like and believe in people.

That, among other problems, was where Trump failed so miserably. He doesn't like people, except maybe his children. He respects no one. He does not see people around him as having value unless they are committed to making him look great ,and if they fail at that, he slams the door on them quicker than on an encyclopedia salesman. Trump is a lot of things, most of which require a degree in profanity, but he is definitely not a people person.

Leadership is about people. It requires liking people and taking the time to know them, at least those who are our direct reports, well enough to appreciate, respect, and embrace their unique talents as employees and has human beings. You should be able to project at least some of them into moving up in the organization and perhaps beyond you in your particular enterprise. You should take pride in the fact that as their leader, you may have helped them rise to be your boss someday; nothing in your mind should be seen as a greater accomplishment than helping to develop the next generation of leaders.

You will not be a leader forever. You will grow old and your skills and knowledge will gather dust and rust. You will become obsolete and the people you have worked with and mentored will step into your slot. They have watched and learned from you the way a young lion watches the alpa male in their pride and when their turn comes, they will reflect what they learned from you. If you can embrace that view of being a manager, you will become at least of good leader.

I feel confident that Joe Biden is a good and probably great leader. I think he brings out the best in people and clears a path for them to succeed to their individual maximum potential. President Biden is a people person and I think we'll find that people will go to the ends of the earth to help Biden succeed and in so doing, help our nation and as a byproduct of that, succeed themselves.

Expectations! OMG! Don't get me started!

Expectations are both the driver behind our evolution from tree-swingers to space-travelers and it is also the biggest boogeyman in our arsenal of tools that we use to completely screw things up.
We create expectations without even having to think about it. Our morning coffee; our commute to work; celebrating an anniversary with our partner, or a dish we've ordered in a restaurant; you name it and it comes with a trainload of expectations, both wonderful and horrifying about how these and all events might play out in reality and they can make us crazy.

Needless to say, with a Democratically controlled government, we all have some expectation of our incoming president, Joe Biden and his VP, Kamala Harris.
We progressives are dancing like hippos in a Disney musical and the conservatives are cowering under the bed with their assault rifles convinced the end days are at hand.

I suggest we both take a deep breath and look at reality.

Biden is not a democratic socialist, period. True, he has been driven a bit to the left during the campaign in order to garner the votes needed to get elected. Biden is more a moderate than anything else. A compassionate moderate to be sure which may cause him to be sympathetic to those on his left, but as a moderate, he's not likely to fly off the handle and nationalize any industries; that's not his shtick and hasn't been for some 40 years in government.

So, progressives, don't expect miracles from Biden. He's not likely to jerk far left and institute free housing for everyone and redistribution of Bezos' unseemly wealth. We were jerked far right by Trump and that turned to shit so we don't need the trauma of being jerked to the other extreme.

And you conservatives can relax as well. No doubt, Biden will enact some stuff that you think you oppose because all you've heard for the last four years is how evil the democrats are. Biden will try to reinvigorate the ACA (Obama-care) to make it work better and reach more people affordably. He has already indicated that he will take a full-court press approach to beating this damn pandemic. He has plans to help students with mountains of student-debt and to make higher education more accessible to all students.

Biden has said he favors raising taxes on those making over $400,000 a year ($800,000 for couples). Trust me when I say that is not going to affect most of us. He wants an infrastructure program that will, in addition to repairing our crumbling highways and bridges, provide great-paying jobs for thousands of people. In that same vein, he has proposed plans to address a better education system and pursuing renewable energy, both of which should also improve the job market.

In foreign affairs, he has proposed that we try to reignite the nuclear deal with Iran to foster a better chance for peace in that part of the world. He wants to reenter the Paris Accord and work with all the world to move away from fossil fuels and all the problems of climate change, and air and water pollution that fossil fuels aggravate. I believe he will take a firm approach to dealing with our traditional adversaries like China, North Korea, and Iran while seeking better relations with them and a return to more of a detente approach if not bilateral agreements.

In summary, what I am suggesting is that both progressives and conservatives should tamp down their expectations. Biden is neither a savior or a demon. He is a longtime politician with tons of experience, intellect, and a determination hardened in the fires of personal tragedy that presents us with a man of wisdom and compassion and the ability to get things done.

I see nothing in his presidency that should be seen as a threat to anyone and if my analysis holds true, we will all benefit from his administration of our great nation whether we lean left or right.

Voltaire said, "The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination." When the founders set about designing our democracy, they chose to avoid using an assassination in favor of citizens voting to rid ourselves of an overbearing, under-performing, and totally incompetent idiot with orange skin, but then who could I possibly be referring to.

As we learned in 2016, even our democratic approach does not guarantee that the victor will in fact govern benevolently or even competently once in office. Voltaire's point, I believe, is that with a dictator of any stripe, be they royalty or simply the guy with the most guns, is that if they care about the people they are to govern, if their focus is always on the 'customer' chances are they will make a good leader and governor.

Which brings me to the point of this piece, Amazon. Amazon, the nation builder. Amazon, the slayer of businesses small and large. Amazon, the tyrannical behemoth of commerce. Is it good, bad, or something else?

I am an unabashed Amazon customer. I think what Jeff Bezos, as much as I might distrust him has built is a better mousetrap. He has created a towering and overpowering online business model that (a) caught most people by surprise and (b) has ballooned into only the fourth company in history to have a wealth in excess of $1 trillion - I believe that is twelve zeros as in, $1,000,000,000,000. And, they have done that in just twenty-five years. The other three are Apple, Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Microsoft. That's some pretty heady company.

People don't seem to be as concerned with Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft as they are with Amazon - have you noticed that three of the four names all start with an 'A'? I'm not sure that that has any bearing on anything - it's just an interesting observation or bit of trivia.

I've heard people railing on the radio about how Amazon is too big and somehow that makes them evil. I'm not convinced of that. Concerned? Perhaps a little, but not panicked, yet. When I look at what Amazon has put together, they are to be admired. First of all, they employ some 800,000 people, give or take a couple. Do they have some labor issues? You bet they do. And while they have put enormous pressure on companies like Nordstrom and Penney's, they have also opened up worldwide markets for small business whose previous customer base was limited to Des Moines, Iowa.

I have no idea what the vetting process might be to get on Amazon, but it appears to me that if you have a food chopper unlike anything else on the market, instead of trying to sell it at the state fair, if you can get it on Amazon, your customer base can now include places like Novosibirsk, Siberia. That alone opens you up to almost 1.5 million customers that you would never have reached in a thousand years.

I'm not naive. I know that companies like Amazon can lose the focus that made them what they are. They can become so obsessed with profits and stockholder dividends that they start screwing everyone in sight. That is why there must be regulations and consequences for bad corporate behavior. This applies to companies like Boeing, Facebook, Ford, and Cartier and many others.

Any company, large or small that engages in dishonesty and deceit needs to be taken to the woodshed. That, notwithstanding the conservative cries of "big government" and socialism and communism is why we have regulatory committees and laws. A few companies or products that went astray are;
Takata: Forced to recall millions of automobile airbags from 19 automakers because some of the airbags could inflate explosively
Wells Fargo: 2 million phony accounts to meet company sales quotas
Monsanto: Has taken a lot of heat in recent years related to its genetically modified seeds and the environmental impact of several of its products
Volkswagen: Automaker’s diesel emissions cheating scandal
Those are just a few examples of corporations behaving badly and without government oversight, regulations, and investigations, who knows how much more harm they might have done.

Back to my point. Just being big like Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft is not a bad thing. Being big and misbehaving by lying, cheating, and intentionally doing harm is a bad thing. The bigger the country and economy, the bigger the government. Just try to run a university with 30,000 students with a staff for a university with 5,000 students; it just can work.

So far, Amazon has more or less behaved like a benevolent tyrant. As long as they continue to balance their efforts between success, profits, and serving the public good, they'll be okay.

So, for now, I'd say the balance is in favor of Amazon for all they have contributed to the world, but we can't go to sleep at the switch and look the other way. When you are the owner and guardian of over $1 trillion dollars of value, you may be tempted to pull some shit and we will have to take you down a notch.

The theme song of democracy is: "We will, we will regulate you!"

This is simply a discussion. I'm not trying to convert you to anything but simply discuss something I probably understood, but that took on more meaning to me as a result of this experience. A line in the TV series Madam Secretary hit me like a bolt of lightning.

Gale and I had been binge-watching Madam Secretary on Netflix for a couple of weeks. We were in season five; there are six seasons and each season seems to have about 23 episodes; that's a shitload of episodes, 138 by my count.

The good news is that it is one of the best series we've seen. Any TV series that isn't simply a bunch of idiots falling in a vat of chocolate or trying to eat bugs without puking presents a challenge to keep the stories varied and interesting. A few that we think have hit the mark are The Wire, Shameless, Homicide On The Streets, West Wing, and now, Madam Secretary. I'm sure there are others, but my goal here is not to review TV series.

In the episode we were watching, the brother of Elizabeth, the main character, is Will. Will is an adventurer, and a bit of a rounder. His marriage is on the rocks because he's always off doing some stupid damn thing and his wife, who professes to still love him, is fed up with raising their child alone.

Will is living with his sister, Elizabeth and her husband, Henry, between adventures while trying to sort out his life. Elizabeth and Will's parents were killed in a car accident when Will was 13 and Elizabeth was 15. As Will is explaining why he has had so much trouble managing and maintaining relationships, he said something like, "I thought a relationship was simply about going out to dinner, working and paying the bills, and producing children. Hey, what the hell, I lost my role models when I was 13."

That line stopped me in my tracks and my brain went into blender mode and started processing that in terms of my life, and my relationships over time and especially my now 46-year marriage, and it was like some sort of release, or explosion, or, hell, I don't know what it was. All I know is that I had no parental role models as a child and Gale had some pretty lousy role models with her cold and distant parents.

I've talked about growing up in the Boys Home in Omaha in any number of posts and pieces, and that it was an okay childhood given that it was a little like growing up in a boarding school or military school. I've talked from time to time about having all the proper education, training, and moral guidance a kid could want. And, I've said what was missing in my upbringing was love. There was no love; no hugging at the Home. True, the adults who took on the job of trying to herd upwards of eighty boys must have been doing it for a good reason, or reasons, and maybe love was one of them. But that was not demonstrated love or anything you could model later in life. It was just a lot of well meaning adults trying to take care of a bunch of boys who were basically homeless. But, that line in Madam Secretary added another dimension to what I have said or tried to say about my childhood.

At other times, I've made reference to how a baby duck that has lost his mother will glom onto a dog or cat, bond with it and follow it around and adopting the behavior of its adopted parent. You see this in nature all the time. We humans are no different; children need a role model, or maybe several. Even a child from a broken marriage can have one parent there as a role model. If that parent starts dating again, even if they don't remarry, the children watch the interaction between the parent and a partner, or several partners over the years. They watch and they learn how to either enter into and nurse a relationship, or how to turn it into a disaster, but one way or another they are learning the people skills that will someday hopefully let them fulfill their part in the social contract of marriage.

At the next break we took during the series, I said to Gale, something like, "I'm amazed that we have made our relationship work as well as it has given that neither of us had decent or even any role models to draw on, to use as examples in a relationship. In my case they didn't exist and in her case they behaved more like roommates than husband and wife.

I guess I've always known the importance of children having role models, but it never quite hit home with me how my young life was almost devoid of those influences the way that line in the series spoke to me. I guess the most important role models for kids would be parents if they are lucky enough to have at least one in their lives.

We are born with instincts. Babies who have never fallen, are fearful of falling; that's instinct. They jump at a sudden loud noise, and wrinkle their noses at strange smells. We're born with those instincts, but just about everything else in life is learned through teachers, mentors, and role models.

​It can also be other family members, an Aunt or Uncle, siblings, teachers and coaches, there are any number of people, usually adults, who can play a role in a child's life and give the child the life lessons they will need in order to coexist with other humans. Children spend a great deal of time in that first ten or fifteen years watching and listening to the adults around them in order to gain the people skills that will shape them later in life. We don't always accept what the role models offer us, but at least we have a choice after witnessing behavior.

There is nothing Gale or I can do about our childhoods, and we have both grown and developed many of the social  skills needed in a relationship as adults through reading, study, and communication with others. Sometimes it is a friend at a bar describing something in one of their relationships that  give you information. It can be a movie, although you have to be a little careful about accepting everything as fact that pops up on a screen.

I truly believe that there  are  synopses in the brain that are formed and connected when you are a child that help you to develop as a loving, caring, and compassionate adult. It's no guarantee - for all I know, Ted Bundy came from a loving family - but in general, that is how the young in any species develops into an adult. They watch and listen and learn from their parents and other adults.

I know this is a difficult topic for some people to discuss or listen to with an open mind. I keep trying to explain why I am not a believer. My purpose is not to convince believers to abandon their beliefs but to try to help them understand why I believe what I do just as I try to understand their views. And, obviously, those who think the way I do know where I'm coming from. I think I do understand why those who embrace one religion or another do so. Humans over history have shown a need to believe in a higher power to get them through the tough times and to explain the inexplicable. Something happened when we grew this big brain we have, and part of that was a need to hold someone else responsible for events we seem unable to control. As we have learned to control certain circumstances in life, such as some diseases, we no longer thank God for a cure; we thank modern medicine.

For me, I would pose this question to others, "Why should I believe in this God, the modern God of many religions, any more than all the gods who proceeded him or her?" The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, and people all over the planet back then all had a belief in multiple gods whose existence was as provable as the modern-day God of the major monotheistic religions. I think the Egyptians had eleven gods, the Greeks had twelve gods and goddesses, and the Romans had twelve though it seems they may have added a few others later.

It seems to me that all the gods throughout history were written about and explained to a frightened populace, typically by the elders. The elders were viewed as wise and all-knowing. Their explanations went a long way to explaining the many events, both natural and phenomenal, that affected the lives of the average human. Many elders claimed a kinship with one god or another or, at a minimum, clamimed a direct line to the god. We were, in no small part, a frightened species that, with a tendency to cower in fear when threatened. Being able to talk to someone closely connected to a god gave us confidence that everything would be alright.

Today's God, and his or her predecessors required a couple of things from their adherents. One was the suspending of logic or critical thinking, and to exercise their imaginations so that they might believe in the proclaimed miracles and powers of the gods that ruled their lives. There was no proof of any of this. There were legends about the gods told by those privileged individuals who claimed to have a direct line to the gods. They served as the interpreters of the god's wishes and desires and thus became the religious leaders.

The second requirement of the followers was an unquestioning devotion to the gods, often under the threat of expulsion, or in earlier times, denouncement and physical torture or death for questioning the teachings of the leaders of the dominating religion. Religion requires that you accept as fact whatever tales are in the religious texts. Regardless of the degree of improbability or incredulity such events may give rise to in the human mind, they are doctrine.

In their time, many of the people of Rome, Greece, and Egypt were just as devout and certain of their beliefs as any modern Jew, Catholic, Muslim, or Hindu. I see absolutely no difference in the rantings of Pat Roberts today and his claims of speaking with Jesus than those of a Roman Emperor or Egyptian Pharaoh who claimed to be in touch with the gods.

At any point in history, with any religious or spiritual cult, you might find, they have several things in common. They were all based on mythology about the deities and the founders of the religion. They have or had their sacred texts as "proof" that all of this had indeed happened. That same holds with modern-day faiths like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They all have their tales that have been duly recorded by various authors down through the ages in the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran, and since it is written down, it must be true, right? Would that also be true of everything written down in the Inquirer? Or at Breitbart? The Drudge Report? Or the New York Post?

The fact that something was written down and sworn to be accurate, and supposedly witnessed means little these days. Until you have hard evidence and all the facts, along with both numerous witnesses, you are going out on a limb by declaring something to be unquestionably true. The fact that most religious texts were written down a thousand or two thousand years ago by people who believed in witches calls the credibility of such accounts into question, in my opinion.
 
I believe in what I can see and what can be demonstrated to be true. I deal in fact-based proposals, not dream interpretations or other types of mysticism. I can accept a well-formed theory that is backed by several fact-based deductions. The definition of the word theory is: "a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena."

The keyword in that definition is "plausible," meaning that it is likely to be true or believed, as opposed to implausible, which can mean far-fetched, fanciful, or to stretch the imagination.

​For instance, the theory of evolution first proposed by Darwin 150 years ago was plausible. His theory was based on direct observations and logical deduction. Darwin stated, "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed." (On the Origin of Species, ch. 14) Darwin's theory of evolution stated that:

• Nature's imperfect reproductive methods regularly produce mutations, so that there are always unique individuals.
• Individuals, which, as a result of those mutations, are better adapted to their environment will have more offspring, either because they survive more often or are better able to attract mates.
• Those more suitable adaptations will be prone to spreading through an entire population.
• Over time, as those adaptations accumulate, populations are modified into new species.
• Given the immense amount of geologic time on this earth, this process, known as "natural selection," has produced all life on the earth from one or a few parents.

Over the last century and a half, Darwin's findings have been validated over and over. Now, with DNA testing, Darwin's theory is becoming science fact.

The notion of gods or God remains unproven by any scientific proof. There is no evidence that God exists. But, that doesn't mean that religion isn't real, or that individual beliefs in a God are not both actual in their minds and a significant part of their lives. Faith is a belief, and that belief relies on the existence of God. To be devout, one has to believe that God exists, and if you think it to be true, then in your mind, it is true. That is not proof of a God, merely evidence that your beliefs are real.

As for me, as I think I've stated before, I believe that I will live on in the lives that come after me. It won't be anything I'm aware of, and I won't see my grandmother or my first pet dog or any of the rest of that. At this point, I intend to be cremated. My wife will decide what to do with my ashes, and whatever that choice, it will release those elements of my existence back into our world to be absorbed in some manner by other living things. The gasses from my pyre will be absorbed into the atmosphere. Blending with the surrounding air, all will be breathed in by living organisms. I will, in a sense, live on but without any knowledge of an afterlife.

For now, that is the best explanation I can offer of my beliefs. If I find another, more 'plausible' explanation, I'll either revisit this post or write a new one.

As the Impeachment proceedings drone on, it's easy to space out with all the jawboning being done on both sides. As you might have guessed, I like politics and I like watching political grass grow, and I profoundly dislike Trump. That being what it may, I would like to be a voice of clarification and reason in all this legal and political wrangling.

The GOP is trying mightily to drive home the point that there is no evidence that Trump "ordered" anyone to commit bribery or extortion in any way. They seem to want us to believe that Trump was an innocent bystander while those sitting at the feet of power were pulling these shenanigans without his knowledge.

And, of course, the Democrats are doing their best to point out that Trump and virtually his entire cast in the Trump palace were in on all this extortion of Ukraine and that they all knew full well what was expected of them and what had to happen to keep the king pacified.

What this really comes down to, barring a revelation like the Nixon tapes, is what the intent was of Trump, his dealing with Ukraine, and the orders he issued to his cabinet and attorney's in regard to withholding critical funds in exchange for the announcement by Selinsky of an investigation into the Biden's and their role in corruption inside Ukraine. 

We first need to understand the meaning of intent, and for that we'll go to a couple of definitions from legal sites.

First, let's look at what The Free Dictionary says about "intent". 
"A determination to perform a particular act or to act in a particular manner for a specific reason; an aim or design; a resolution to use a certain means to reach an end.
Intent is a mental attitude with which an individual acts, and therefore it cannot ordinarily be directly proved but must be inferred from surrounding facts and circumstances. Intent refers only to the state of mind with which the act is done or omitted. It differs from motive, which is what prompts a person to act or to fail to act. For example, suppose Billy calls Amy names and Amy throws a snowball at him. Amy's intent is to hit Billy with a snowball. Her motive may be to stop Billy's taunts.
In criminal law, the concept of criminal intent has been call mens rea, which refers to a criminal or wrongful purpose. If a person innocently causes harm, then she or he lacks the mens rea and, under this concepts, should not be criminally prosecuted.

The Legal Beagle site says: "Malicious Intent or Negligence"Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes defined malice as acting intentionally with knowledge of the harmful consequences. The difference between a malicious act and a negligent one can be subtle, however. Someone who deliberately hits someone with his car has acted intentionally, or with malice. The same person who injures a pedestrian because he lost control of his vehicle on a wet road is merely negligent. The difference lies in the mental state of the actor -- a bad driver on a wet street most likely harbors no intent to injure anyone."

Back to our eye-bending impeachment hearings. Based on the testimony of the witnesses to date, there can be no question as to the intent of President Trump. Whether by direct order, or insinuation, he made it clear to those around him that he wanted President Zelinsky to take certain actions that he knew would harm the candidacy of Joe Biden in return for the sorely needed funds that were being withheld by the President and his staff, funds critical to the security of Ukraine. This action was a direct threat of harm to Ukraine.

The second part of my analysis deals with the term "High crimes and misdemeanors". What did the founders mean by this? While we can't ever know what was in their minds, we know that they had watched the King of England and other monarchs behave quite badly under the assumption they had total power and free reign to behave anyway they wanted.

From The Free Dictionary, we again get a definition: 
​"The phrase high crimes and misdemeanors is found in the U.S. Constitution. It also appears in state laws and constitutions as a basis for disqualification from holding office. Originating in English Common Law, these words have acquired a broad meaning in U.S law. They refer to criminal actions as well as serious misuse or abuse of office, ranging from tax evasion to obstruction of justice. The ultimate authority for determining whether an offense constitutes a ground for impeachment rests with Congress."

"Considerable debate occupied the Framers of the Constitution over the issue of impeachment, and the wording of the 
grounds for impeachment was itself controversial. A proposed offense of maladministration was rejected as being too vague and susceptible to political abuse. Finally, they chose to use a phrase from English common law that had no precisely settled meaning at the time yet at least connoted serious offenses."

​"The reason for the choice lies in the Framers' approach to the larger question of impeachment. Although borrowing language from the law they knew best, they explicitly chose not to imitate the English model of impeachment. Traditionally, this approach had allowed the British Parliament to conduct a simple review of charges and then remove officials by a majority vote. Instead, the Framers intended for removal from office to be the final step in a two-part process that began in the House of Representatives and, if charges should result, ended in a trial-like hearing before the U.S. Senate. Thus, two goals would be achieved: a full public inquiry into allegations, and, if necessary, the adjudication of those charges requiring a two-thirds majority for removal."

It seems to me that any right-minded American would agree that abuse of the power of the presidency to advance their own political agenda fits the definition of abuse of power. Idol worship and fanaticism is not justification for standing by any person who has offended society by their behavior. We are a nation of laws, and not outlaws. We live by the rule of law, not by mob rule or the unfettered power of a monarchy.

What is unfolding right now in the Congress is what was intended by the Founders. The House will gather evidence and testimony from individuals with direct and indirect knowledge of what was said and done by Trump and his crew. The preponderance of this evidence, if justifiable, will be entered into what is called Articles of Impeachment and sent on to the Senate where they have the Constitutional responsibility to conduct a trial with the charges and witnesses both for and against the accused and they will have to render a verdict. That is their constitutional responsibility and we can only hope that McConnell and a GOP dominated Senate will take their responsibility seriously.

In the insanity that is our electoral process, we are hearing one person after another (pretty much only  Democrats) bashing big corporations. Right on! They are a bunch of assholes! They are screwing our brains out while getting filthy-fucking rich and the politicians won't do diddly-shit about it.

But, you know what? The fucking corporations are people. Not in the sense of that stupid-ass SCOTUS Citizens United decision permitting them to buy every fucking politician on the planet (that must be reversed somehow). But in the sense that corporations are giant buildings full of people; people just like you and me trying to pay the mortgage, get braces for their kids, the whole enchilada. The people at the top of the pile of people working inside the building are simply taking advantage of a situation that was handed to them. Oh, and they are making a shitload of money.

​What is happening is that corporations are taking advantage of a system designed to allow them to make as much money as possible without regard to who is getting hosed in the process. This has been going on for almost 40 years when someone dropped a giant turd on the balance scale favoring big business.

Let's be sure to give credit where credit is do, Ronald Wilson Reagan the lead actor from the famous movie, Bedtime for Bonzo who manage to get elected president. Reagan is the one who poisoned the well of democracy and started us on the path to a fucking plutocracy. He despised collective bargaining and made infamous the economic theory called 'trickle down'.

Reagan spewed shit like this; “As government expands, liberty contracts.” 

• “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
• “Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.”
• “Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
• “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
• “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”
• “Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.”
• “Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them.”
• “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don't need it and hell where they already have it.”

That is just a sampling of Reagan's vile attack on our democracy. With that kind of rhetoric, he took a nation that, while critical at times of their government (as we should be) and who were patriots and believed that the people they sent to D.C. were good people trying to do the right thing by their country and turned them against America. When he was finished, he had created the alt-right we see today who detest "our" government.

And, while he was vomiting his government-is-awful crap, he was fucking up the economy with something called "supply-side economics". As a story in Forbes reported, "Make no mistake—things most assuredly became harder for all but the wealthy who, as the primary beneficiaries of the across-the-board 24 percent tax cut, watched their net worth skyrocket as those less fortunate or less successful took a major hit."

​Reagan went on to rail against labor unions and fired the Air Traffic Controllers rather than look for a solution to their grievances. When he was Governor of California, he fought efforts to organize grape pickers. UNCOMM blog states, "Reagan’s Presidency marked the end of a bi-partisan union movement and moved the Republican Party far closer to big business. It also established a number of anti-union precedents within federal agencies that have taken decades to fix."

What's done is done, and we can't do fuck-all about it. If we can agree that the system is fucked up worse than a soup sandwich after the last 40-or-so-years (the corporations may be a little reluctant to concede that point). We can start to move toward a balanced system that allows everyone from the largest corporation (probably Amazon at this point) to the guy parking cars at a hotel to not only survive but to thrive relatively. We don't need to punish corporate American, only rein it in a little so that everyone is living the dream.

What we need is people in government who will bring the scale back into balance without fucking everything up, again. Who are these people? That's why we're having these eye-bender debates and listening to candidates drone on day after day making the same fucking speeches. We are hoping to find a nugget of wisdom in one or more of them that signals a chance to right what is wrong with America.

I'm not saying don't be bold. Fuck yes, be bold! Be bold on climate change, ripping families apart at the border, and quit dithering the fuck around on healthcare; without it we fucking die.