The Flaccid President

 

When I last contributed my opinion in this space, I criticized Priest-King's amateurish

handling of the crisis in Syria which, as of this writing, has still not been resolved to our satisfaction: Bashar Assad is still in power and blasting the opposition with barrel bombs and long-range missiles, Syria's chemical weapons stockpile has yet to be completely controlled and destroyed and Russia continues to hold the

initiative in Syria and in the United Nations. This situation by itself would be embarrassment enough for the world's lone superpower but we must now add the ongoing humiliation in Ukraine. For about one week

in February, the Ukrainian people exulted in an historic victory, the deposition of the Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych from the presidency, and the prospect of genuine democratic reform and closer relations with the West. The transformation of their country from Cold War satellite to modern liberal democracy and free-market economy, started in the Orange Revolution, was within reach, but then the

iron hand of Vladimir Putin slammed down hard. Russian forces overran Crimea, seized Ukrainian military bases, destroyed Ukrainian naval vessels and ensured approval of a popular referendum proposing secession of Crimea from Ukraine which led to prompt annexation by Russia, and are now massed on the Ukrainian frontier with the apparent intention of invading Ukraine proper and restoring their puppet to his former office, all in defiance of Priest-King's protests that this was "Cold War thinking" and Putin was "on the wrong side of history" and sanctions against a handful of his senior aides and exclusion - temporary exclusion, I might add - from the G8. Vladimir Putin is delivering a lesson in geopolitics that Priest-King is apparently too smart to understand, that soft warnings, half

measures and limp-wristed professors' lounge idealism are no match for men with guns.

Preventing an independent, pro-Western Georgia from integrating with the European Union and NATO was a strategic priority for Russia in 2008 so Vladimir Putin invaded that country, overwhelmed Georgia's military in five days, installed pro-Russian governments in the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and was bombing the capital of Tbilisi before he decided to stop, demonstrating that he would act in his own interest, world opinion be damned. President George W. Bush, though he had started military cooperation with Georgia in the mid-2000's and invited Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to the White House, was too distracted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the presidential campaign
and the burgeoning financial crisis to offer more than lip service to the embattled Georgians, which was exactly the circumstance that Putin had sought - a preoccupied America, exhausted by seven years of war and unwilling to interfere in his plans. He followed this calculus again to throttle the West's plans to stop Iran's nuclear program and again to prevent U.S. military action against his ally Assad in Syria, exploiting the West's disinclination for conflict to protect Russia's strategic interests and flex his political

muscle, because for Vladimir Putin, power is what matters. Winning is what matters. He lost heavily when President Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and again when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. He bungled an assassination attempt against pro-reform presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine in 2004, bungled rigging an election, looked foolish congratulating his stooge Yanukovych on television and is determined never to lose like that again. He wants to restore Russia's former greatness and power, he was lionized by a preening liberal media during the Sochi Winter Olympics (hello, Bob Costas) and now he owns Crimea. Who's to stop him now?

And that is the crux of it. Our European allies shrink from confronting Russia for fear of losing a major energy supplier and inviting Russian military retaliation. Priest-King himself, besides being annoyed by

Putin's open disrespect and confused by his boorish behavior, sees the Ukraine crisis as a

distraction from his goal of deconstructing America into a Scandinavian free-love commune and is disposed to hang back and let the situation play out, which means death for the Ukrainian people. Really stopping Russia would be risky, something Priest-King studiously avoids, it would alienate his base of America-hating Left-wing intellectuals, and the possibility of protecting freedom and democracy is outweighed by his craven need for popularity. In contrast to the swaggering former KGB colonel, Priest-King has amassed a nearly unbroken record of failure where foreign policy is concerned, failure to secure Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran, failure to secure Chinese
protections for human rights and intellectual property rights, failure to defeat AI Qaeda, failure to secure our border with Mexico, scorn from Hugo Chavez, retreat in Iraq, a reluctant, half-hearted surge and then a retreat from lithe war we have to win," indecision during the Arab Spring and the Egyptian uprising and of course, the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that left the U.S. Ambassador and three others dead. He is furiously cutting our military at the same time that Iran's nuclear program is accelerating, that North Korea continues to launch missiles, that AI Qaeda is surging across North Africa and that Russia is massing 80,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, so he has given the Russian dictator
absolutely no reason to treat him as anything besides a ridiculous weakling, so he will continue to lead from behind while Ukraine burns to cinders.

But it doesn't have to be this way. If actually deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine is off the table, there are steps we can take that will put Vladimir Putin in such a twist that he will beg us to let him quit and go home:

• Freeze all Russian assets in the United States and Europe so Putin can't get his money and neither can anyone else.

• Immediately send combat materiel to Ukraine, especially anti-tank and air defense weapons, so the Ukrainians will have the substance to defend themselves.

• Deploy strong U.S. air and naval forces to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, forces capable of

bloodying Putin's nose, and insist that our NATO allies do the same.

• Cancel the planned cuts to the Defense Department.

• Guarantee Ukraine and Europe itself that we can meet all of their energy needs at a cheaper price than Putin can, and then actually do it. Cut Putin out of his biggest market and then watch the Russian economy sputter and die.

These measures would send the strongest signal short of war that we won't tolerate Russian mischief in Ukraine or anywhere else, without losing more lives or territory. They would bolster our allies' confidence in us that we'll come through in the clutch, they would put that whiny little mobster in his place and they would demonstrate once again why the United States won the Cold War. Unfortunately, these measures would have to be implemented by a strong, determined leader and Ronald Reagan's been dead for ten years, so we're stuck with the skinny pipsqueak currently living in the White House: Ifthere were ever a situation where one of those little blue pills would come in handy, this is it.

 

 

Selective Outrage

Even a casual observer of politics and popular

culture would notice that liberals are an angry lot and usually angry about a lot of things at the same time: Saving the planet, social justice, income inequality, the “war on women,” charter schools, racial profiling and the list goes on into infinity. If it isn’t meryl Streep testifying to Congress about the dangers of alar (there weren’t any), it’s Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon protesting for the Sandinistas, for Ralph Nader, against Ralph Nader, with Cindy Sheehan and Jane Fonda  about the invasion of Iraq, against Governor Scott Walker and for Occupy Wall Street. Liberals rant and rave and storm about until, sometimes, their opinions collide with each other, which brings us to Boko Haram.

The kidnapping of 276 girls in Nigeria is rightly judged an abominable act, compounded by the threat of Boko Haram’s psychotic leader, Abubakar Sharam, to sell the girls into slavery and a life of prostitution, misery, abuse, disease and early death.  All civilized people should be shocked by this outrageous crime and everything should be done to find the girls and rescue them before it’s too late, but this situation also shines an unflattering light on liberals, who, I suspect, aren’t aware of it:

·         Non-intervention in other countries’ affairs has been a hallmark of liberal theology since the Vietnam War.  The aforesaid Ms. Sarandon and Ms. Fonda bitched about the invasion of Grenada and American support for the Contras in Nicaragua, liberals protested the deployment of American forces  to Saudi Arabia in 1990 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Code Pink protested at George Bush’s ranch over the Global war On Terror.  However, as with the protests against apartheid in South Africa, the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines, the invasion of Haiti to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power and the bombing of Libya in 2011, liberals who demand American military intervention in Nigeria (#BringBackOurGirls) demonstrate that non-intervention as a principle is rather flexible when it concerns one of their pet causes, in this case, two causes: Feminism and Africa.  Thus Sheila Jackson-Lee can wave $12 in cash at the gate of the Nigerian Embassy, angrily referencing the price Boko Haram would accept for one of their victims, insists on a powerful and immediate American military response and doesn’t grasp the hypocrisy – they’re girls, they’re black, so anything is justified.

·         Abubakar Sharam’s threat, “Allah commands me to sell them,” referring to the girls he kidnapped at gunpoint, underscores that he is a psychotic Muslim thug leading an army of psychotic Muslim thugs, a stereotypical representative of the militant Islam that has waged war on Western civilization for the past forty years and the very reason we have been at war since 9/11, yet haven’t liberals like John Kerry, Dick Durbin, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Priest-King himself accused the United States of a baseless anti-Islamic hatred?  Did not Priest-King begin his reign by apologizing to the Muslim world for American “mistakes”? (A gentleman was arrested in London last week merely for quoting Winston Churchill’s remarks on Islam, the authorities charging him with making “insensitive remarks,” this in the city that was savagely bombed by Muslim terrorists in July 2005.) Demanding that the U.S. military should forcibly rescue his captives ought to bring a blush to liberals’ cheeks but they’re apparently unaware of the contradiction.

·         Many of the kidnapped girls are Christians, a fact omitted in most of the mainstream media coverage of this event.  Militant Islam has persecuted Christians for 1400 years but especially since the 1970’s – Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, East Timor, South Sudan, everywhere in the Muslim world – have we seen a committed, vengeful, robust campaign of anti-Christian hate, compassing the full range of human depravity: Kidnapping, rape and slavery are just the latest manifestations.  Usually, the Left mocks and insults Christianity, blaming the Church for every ill in the world but now liberal commentators and politicians, Michelle Obama included, urge the immediate rescue of these innocent girls, confirming what we already knew to be the truth: Christians are overwhelmingly the victims of Muslim violence and prejudice, not the other way around.

It is reported that two of the girls have died of snakebite, that another girl has escaped and that about 100 girls have been forcibly converted to Islam and exploited on Youtube.  As the days roll by and no substantive action is taken, it becomes less and less likely that the girls will ever be recovered and one of the issues that will have to be confronted in the aftermath of this tragic episode is the utter futility of liberalism as expressed in foreign policy. The fact is that we should intervene in the affairs of other countries when it is in our national interest to do so.  We fight militant Islam because it threatens us, because it is a crude, violent and repressive ideology that seeks to enslave the world and to destroy whatever it cannot enslave.  Muslims attack and kill and kidnap and torture and rape and enslave Christians because they hate their very existence and if these facts contravene every principle of liberalism known to Man, then so be it, because what is more important: Dealing with the world the way naïve liberals want it to be or dealing with the world the way it really is?

Justifying the Means

When I was ten years old, I cheated on a geography test. I didn't need to cheat and I was foolish to do it but

I wanted to get 100% so badly that the temptation overwhelmed my better judgment and I got caught by my teacher, Mr. Azar. Mr. Azar was really cool, he was the only male teacher I had in elementary school and I liked him a lot, so the fact that I deliberately disobeyed his instructions only amplified my embarrassment. Even worse, Mr. Azar had been one of my father's students at Indiana State University so they knew each other and Mr. Azar knew that my father would be deeply disappointed when he learned of my behavior, so he wrote a synopsis of my cheating on the test sheet and told me to bring it home for my father to read and sign and then return it the next day. Needless to say, it was a thoroughly humiliating experience that has stayed with me my entire life as an example of how much dealing falsely with others can cost me.

Bill Clinton never gave a damn about dealing falsely with others or embarrassment or humiliation but he cared a lot about what he wanted at any given time, whether it was money or marijuana or sex or dodging the draft or getting elected. After six terms as Governor of Arkansas, he left his state just as poor and hopeless as when he found it and then went on to continue his sociopathic behavior for eight years in the White House where he ruined the careers of the Travel Office staff, drove Vince Foster to suicide, enacted the largest tax increase in history at the time, groped Kathleen Willey, passed on Osama bin Laden, lied about Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky and pardoned Marc Rich. Obeying the law or social norms or even being nice to people were meaningless concepts to him because what he wanted was more important than anything else but in one respect, Bill Clinton's amoral and boorish behavior was less threatening because it was amoral and boorish. We were appalled and disgusted and shocked and we cheered his impeachment but we understood that what we were witnessing was the conduct of an egomaniacal boob driven to gratify his base desires. That is not what we are witnessing now.

Priest-King is committed to creating the model American commune that he has envisioned since his youth. From Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayres and Jeremiah Wright he has received a seething hatred of traditional America and the radical revolutionary doctrine needed to change it, because America was founded by rich white racist European men for their own selfish and greedy purposes and deserves to be broken up and rebuilt. He sees himself as the champion of all the people who are left out, ignored, cheated, deceived and bullied by traditional America, all the people who don't have a chance in a meritocracy where individual freedom, enterprise, self-reliance and limited government are supreme. The poor, feminists, minorities, homosexuals, unions, radical environmentalists, drug users and illegal immigrants all lose in such a meritocracy so traditional America has to be smashed and its broken bits and pieces swept up and reshaped into a fairer, more just society, a society that Karl Marx would be proud of. So, if this society would be not only a dramatic improvement over the original but a model for all societies across the globe, and reforming its health care system is a step toward that society, then anything Priest-King does is justified in achieving it, including brazenly lying to the American people, but here's an important distinction: Priest-King wants to lead the American people into the socialist sunrise and he empathizes with some of them but he doesn't love them and he certainly doesn't trust them. Obamacare is all about rigid state control of health care which by definition eliminates personal choice over which plan vou have or how high the premium may be. Heretofore, the majority of Americans have made choices with which Priest-King vehemently disagrees so he cannot allow them to continue making those choices in the future, else the New America will never be achieved. HE DOESN'T TRUST US TO MAKE OUR OWN DECISIONS, PERIOD. He alone has the knowledge, the wisdom, the expertise, the understanding and the insight needed to decide the fate of 313 million Americans and no-one can gainsay him, he has a sense of mission and an epic self-image that drives him so when he deliberately, consciously and repeatedly lies as to the effects of Obamacare, it is not to gratify some base physical desire but to accomplish a grand design and thus his lies are far more dangerous. Priest-King sees our freedom as an impediment to the America he wants to build and we can't be trusted to make our own decisions, so if he has to mislead us in order to accomplish his goal, then that is perfectly acceptable to him and perfectly antithetical to his oath as President.

As of this writing, over 3.5 million Americans have had their current health care coverage cancelled as a direct result of Obamacare. They can't afford the stratospheric premiums and deductibles of the new plans and they have no idea how they will get the care they need. There is real human pain being inflicted by Obamacare yet Priest-King insist that he didn't lie when he assured the public that, "lf you like your plan, you can keep your plan," and implies that the public should have known that their plans might be changed or even eliminated under the new regime. So it's our fault or the fault of the evil insurance companies who cancelled your plan, even though Obamacare requires them to cancel plans that don't comply with the new standards. The fact that millions of people are now exposed to medical and financial peril, and tens of millions more in the next year, is actually a good thing, he expounds, they'll find that Obamacare is sooo much better than their old defective plans so the lies continue, the suffering and the pain expand and deepen and the country slides toward catastrophe. After witnessing the horrors caused by Vladimir Lenin and Benito Mussolini, by Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler, by Mao Tse-Tung and Ho Chi Minh, by Fidel Castro and Danny Ortega, you would think that Americans would be smarter than to fall for the same shopworn charms of socialism but we're not. Over sixty-six million of my fellow citizens thought they could get something for nothing from a Leftist demagogue weaned on Chicago goon politics and only now do they realize the depth of their mistake. Maybe it's not too late, maybe Obamacare can be stopped, maybe the damage can be contained and maybe America can be saved, but if it is indeed too late and the damage is irreversible, then we will know exactly when our doom was sealed and why: The moment we cast a vote for Barack Obama and because we believed a lie.

Misery Loves Company

Here's some more grist for the mill:

• The White House and Kathleen Sebelius promise that the HealthCare.gov website will be completely functional by 30 November. Meanwhile, the site continues to crash and when it's available, people cannot complete their applications for coverage and submit them. In fact, HealthCare.gov was unavailable during Secretary Sebelius' testimony to the House on Wednesday the 30th, at the same time she assured the Representatives that it was working.
• During her testimony, Secretary Sebelius also refused to provide an estimate for the number of Americans who have actually purchased health insurance through HealthCare.gov, promising that the administration would publish that estimate by 15 November. Her refusal was consistent with administration policy since White House spokesman Jay Carney and Priest-King himself decline to provide that information, likely because it is an embarrassingly low number.
• FoxNews reports that the major private health insurance companies in the United States are being intimidated by the administration into remaining silent on the entire Obamacare issue, also likely to prevent embarrassment for the President's signature legislative achievement.
• Appeals from a growing number of Democrat politicians notwithstanding, Priest-King refuses to grant a waiver for the individual mandate for any length of time, understanding of course that he has no legal authority to delay or alter any part of the law.
• Those states that are operating their own health care exchanges refuse to publish ratings for the various health care plans that would help citizens make more informed choices about the coverage they buy. The information is readily available but the refusal to provide such ratings seems intended to lure citizens into buying more expensive plans unwittingly.
• As of 29 October, about 1.5 million people have had their individual health insurance policies cancelled. One woman's monthly premium rose from $54 to $557, others have seen their premiums rise 800% with deductibles of $24,000, clearly unaffordable for the average American. This evidence directly contravenes Priest-King's repeated assurances that nobody who preferred their existing health coverage would lose it and that the average American would save $2500 under Obamacare.

The issues with the HealthCare.gov website are bad enough but eventually they will be solved - the administration will spend whatever they have to spend, hire whomever they have to hire and even blow it up and start over if necessary but the technical problems will be fixed. The website is merely the symptom of the law it implements, however, so if premiums and deductibles climb to stratospheric levels and millions of people lose their insurance and people are being herded blindly into health plans they cannot possibly afford and buying coverage they don't need, then the law is working as intended. Obamacare was designed to drive private health insurance providers out of business, forcing their customers into a single government-run construct where they would be trapped forever in a hopelessly wasteful, corrupt, unfair, unjust, complicated, socialist true believer's wet dream of a health care system, so the disintegration ofthe private health insurance market is expected. Imagine! Every American enrolled in Obamacare whether they like it or not, charged whatever premiums the government sees fit to charge, resources shifted from the healthy and the young and the industrious to the sick and the old and the indigent, everyone receiving the same mediocre level of care as slowly and inefficiently as a disinterested government can provide it: Rapture!

This end state - the elimination of the private health insurance market in favor of a massive government program - has been a goal of the Left in this country for decades. John Dingell advocated for the cause as early as the 1950's, Ted Kennedy (bang the drum slowly) championed it in the 1970's and of course, more recently, Priest-King himself predicted and embraced a single-payer system at a meeting of the Service Employees International Union in San Francisco in 2003. To the Left, the only way to ensure that everyone in America receives a nominal level of health care is to eliminate every other possibility and channel everyone (and their resources) into a government system that distributes those resources more fairly, from a healthy, middle-aged and prosperous businessman at the height of his earning potential to an 85 year-old illegal immigrant with tuberculosis and emphysema, for example. Government-controlled health care is an indispensable component of the socialist society that Priest-King envisions and is such a lofty goal and moral imperative that any means are justified in achieving it - requiring the aforesaid businessman to purchase prenatal coverage is one example and Priest-King repeatedly and deliberately lying to the American people is another. (We know, courtesy of NBC News, that the IRS briefed Priest-King in July 2010 that as many as two-thirds of those Americans who buy their own health insurance would lose their coverage as a result of Obamacare, amounting to some 16 million people, yet he continued to assure the country that "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period.") And make no mistake: As millions of people lose their insurance and choose to pay an annual fine rather than pay exorbitant premiums, Priest-King will resort to any means to ensure Obamacare's survival. The IRS will become the henchmen of the Sheriff of Nottingham, garnishing wages, condemning property, seizing tax refunds, confiscating retirement funds and savings accounts, grabbing America by the throat and choking every possible penny out of the unrepentant scofflaws because by God, America will be bent to Priest-King's will and nothing is going to stop him.

And what happens when the (illegally granted) waiver for the business mandate expires in September? Businesses across the country have already been cutting hours and staff to compensate for the extra burden imposed by Obamacare and when faced with certain doom, they will pink-slip their employees in the millions and muddle through as best they can. When Priest-King dictates mandatory minimum standards of coverage for each person whether they need something or not, driving up costs, what are private insurers to do but pass those costs on to their customers, and what are the customers to do but shed workers as fast as they can? The same IRS document obtained by NBC News indicates that as many as 93 million people will lose their employer-provided health insurance as a consequence of Obamacare yet Priest-King presses the accelerator to the floor, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. The entire health care system in the United States could collapse and it will be absolutely unnecessary. This is the new paradigm, America, and if you were stupid enough to vote for Priest-King once or even twice and you thought you would sail through a radical Leftist administration untouched, then you're not only a fool but a damned fool, but look at the bright side: You've got plenty of company.

Surrender Dorothy

As tough and unyielding as Americans tend to portray themselves to be, the real genius of the American character, especially in politics, is the ability to compromise. I'm hardly the first commentator to make this observation but it's useful to remind ourselves of this fact. Very, very rarely does anyone side demand and get everything they wanted on any one issue or other and in no small part because our system was designed that way. Democracy American-style is cumbersome, slow, purposely inefficient, a system in which cooperation, partnerships and negotiation are emphasized over brute power, a system designed to ensure that the views of as many people as possible are respected before decisions are made. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the competing plans of Virginia and New Jersey to determine Congressional representation were resolved by the Great Compromise, wherein the House of Representatives would be based on a state's population while in the Senate, each state would be represented equally, and the support of Southern states for the new Constitution was obtained by compromising on slavery. True, compromising on slavery merely postponed the violent resolution of that issue but   not compromising would have meant the failure of the Convention and likely the dissolution of the Union itself, so the compromise was made, the Constitution was adopted, the new country was provided a unique and amazing form of government and hope for an ultimate and peaceful resolution was placed in the hands of future generations.

Thirty-three years later, Henry Clay of Kentucky led the Compromise of 1820 in which most of the territory gained from France by the Louisiana Purchase was designated as free with the exception of Missouri, which was designated a slave state. The free Northern states didn't want to allow the expansion of slavery west of the Mississippi River but the slave-holding Southern states were threatening to secede from the Union if it were not, and rather than let the Union dissolve, those Congressmen and Senators from the North took what they could get - a mostly free land in the West and accepted something they didn't like - a toehold for slavery beyond the Mississippi. This legislation helped hold the Union together for another thirty years until Mr. Clay's services were once again called upon, this time to broker the Compromise of 1850. Disposition of the land gained from Mexico during our war with that country was the bone of contention in this case, again because the Southern states wanted to expand slavery into the western territories and the Northern states wanted to stop it, and again, the Southern states threatened to secede from the Union if their demands were not respected. Unfortunately, the compromise that Mr. Clay negotiated was a bad one, as the responsibility for deciding the status of new territories was passed from Congress to the territories themselves in a policy called "popular sovereignty," which encouraged slaveholding Southerners to move west and vote for slavery and which also led to violence between the factions. The Compromise of 1850 also included provisions strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act which required all citizens regardless of their political views to actively assist the authorities in capturing runaway slaves, a move that was immensely popular in the South and immensely unpopular in the North, but nonetheless, it bought the Union ten more years before the storm actually broke. When that storm broke, President Abraham Lincoln decided to allow free blacks to serve in the Union Army with the proviso that their officers should be white, which, although resented by the black regiments themselves, put 150,000 additional soldiers into the fight,undoubtedly shortening the war. Lincoln's ability to see the end result - the end of the war - allowed him to accept the criticism and resistance sparked by his decision and ultimately saved lives.

During the Cold War, President Nixon initiated the policy of detente with the Soviet Union which recognized the Soviets as a global superpower but which also reduced the tensions inherent in the previous policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. Nixon realized that if nothing changed, the Americans and the Soviets would eventually destroy each other and much of the rest of the world. Detente would come at a price - the Soviets would amass a huge nuclear arsenal, would dominate Eastern Europe, would establish Communist beachheads in Africa and Latin America and invade Afghanistan - but would reduce the immediate threat of a cataclysmic nuclear war. People may differ on the wisdom of Nixon's policy but if the goal was to prevent war, then the compromise succeeded. Within the current administration, Priest-King compromised in December 2010 by extending the Bush tax cuts and to revise estate taxes in order to prevent a shutdown of the Federal government. It was no coincidence that this compromise followed the "shellacking" delivered by the Republicans in the midterm elections that year but it nonetheless demonstrated that Priest-King himself is willing to compromise when it is in his interest to do so, so for him to flatly refuse to negotiate with the Republicans in our current crisis is a patently ludicrous position to take. To insist that the Republicans simply surrender their principles, their constituents and their interests flies in the face of 237 years of American history as well as political reality: The House Republicans cannot govern without Priest-King and Priest-King cannot govern without the House Republicans. Both sides need each other and cannot execute their duties without each other. Compromise should not be a dirty word.

But how did we get here? Why did the Federal government shut down for sixteen days? What was so important that 313 million people lived without a government for a fortnight plus two? One word: Obamacare. Conservative Republicans took a stand against Obamacare because it is a disaster and because their constituents demanded its defunding. Despite the criticism from the leftist Democrats and RINO Republicans, the conservatives insisted that fighting Obamacare and the associated colossal level of spending was worth a government shutdown. The initial evidence proves their claim:

• Creating the HealthCare.gov website and associated health care exchanges was supposed to cost $93 million. We now know that it actually cost $634 million, nearly seven times as much.
• Despite the massive resources lavished to create it, the HealthCare.gov website is dysfunctional. Users are required to create an account, divulging their personal information, before they are allowed to browse the available health care plans. The website also obscures the actual cost of the health care plans until the user has created an account, meaning the user is committed before they know how much they will have to pay. The website also frequently crashes.
• Premiums under Obamacare are 6-8 times what people previously paid for their health insurance, and deductibles for family coverage are as high as $10,000 per year. Consumers are liable to have their tax refunds seized to pay the premiums, their cars, their 401k retirement funds, even their homes.
• The Priest-King administration refuses to disclose how many people have actually purchased health insurance through Obamacare but the UK Daily Mail newspaper reports that only 51,000 people nationwide have signed up. If Obamacare was intended to cover 30 million uninsured Americans, this represents a colossal failure for the program, on top of the 2000± businesses and unions that have been exempted for a year.

So stopping Obamacare and stratospheric Federal spending was worth a bloody fight, even if we didn't win. For me, I would rather go down swinging than lamely accept the status quo. (Are you listening, Senator Corker? Are you listening, Congressman Peter King?) This law will ruin America and it is the obligation of our elected officials to stop it, slow it down or at least kick it in the knees. The fact that Priest-King and his cronies in the Senate defended it so desperately is an indication of how shaky they think it is. For example, the offer that the House Republicans made - a delay of the individual mandate for one year - was perfectly reasonable given that Priest-King had already unilaterally delayed the business mandate for the same period, but was absolutely unacceptable to the Emperor of the Americas. Why would he refuse to consider something so modest? Because such a compromise, though reasonable, would kill the plan. Obamacare hinges on tens of millions of healthy young Americans paying painfully high premiums in order to defray the health costs of an aging population (and 21 million illegals). Even a short delay would drain Obamacare of the billions of dollars it needs and would expire coincident with the midterm Congressional elections, magnifying the political danger the Democrats would face, so Priest-King refused, and refused, and refused again.

So if he defended Obamacare so ferociously, why couldn't Priest-King relent on government spending or the debt ceiling or entitlement reform? Why did he instruct Harry Reid to refuse to consider any of the eleven bills that the House passed that would have funded the government by parts, which is perfectly within its authority to do? To insist that Republicans give him everything he wants before he deigned to negotiate with them only enfuriated the opposition, stiffening their resolve to fight him, so why take such an intractable position when we were only 24 hours from the first default in our history? It is part of Priest-King's character to demand absolute obedience to his will and it was that part of George Ill's character that led the American colonists to rebel. His election and reelection confirmed in his mind that he has a mandate from the people to transform the United States from its corrupt and unjust founding to a true socialist model, that his word is holy writ, beyond question and to be obeyed. Skepticism and -God forbid it - open resistance to his leadership are treachery, even treasonous, and deserve to be crushed, and he discards evidence that his signature legislative achievement is failing just as his critics predicted. Preventing a default of the Federal government is not his primary objective so he will defend Obamacare to the last, watch the country he has twice sworn to defend slide into financial abyss, damn the Republicans to hell and then go play golf. To those Leftist Democrats and moderate Republicans who urged caution, who attacked Ted Cruz and Mike Lee as too extreme, who would rather go along to get along, who would rather quit than try, who oppose Big Government but just not today, I would ask two questions:

1. When ordinary Americans have their wages garnished to pay an $18,000 health insurance premium they cannot afford and they are driven to food stamps to feed their families,because you thought fighting like hell to prevent their ruin wasn't worth it, how exactly will you answer them?
2. Exactly where are your balls?

Theater of the Absurd

It would be funny if it weren't so serious:

• April 2007: Nancy Pelosi meets with Bashar Assad in Damascus in a deliberate attempt to undermine President George W. Bush's Middle East policy. She declares that, "The road to Damascus is the road to peace."
• John Kerry meets with Bashar Assad repeatedly between 2007-2011, stating that Assad is a "very generous" man.
• In 2011, Priest-King states that "Assad must go."
• On 20 August 2012, during a press conference, Priest-King states that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would constitute a "red line," implying that strong U.S. military action would result. This comment followed press leaks regarding the Osama bin Laden raid, the Flame virus used to cripple the Iranian nuclear program and aggressive Predator drone strikes to kill terrorists abroad, all designed to burnish Priest-King's reputation as a strong defender of U.S. national security during the Presidential election campaign.
• On 19 March 2013, chemical weapons were used against a rebel-held district in Aleppo, Syria. At Russia's urging, Syria asks the UN to investigate the attack, then Russia delays the investigation for a month until Great Britain and the United States confirm that sarin gas was used to kill 25 people and injure 86 others. Although his "red line" has been crossed, Priest-King does nothing.
• On 21 August 2013, chemical weapons were used against a rebel-held district in Damascus, killing over 1400 people including 400 children, in the middle of the night. Although it appears that the Syrian regime carried out the attack, Priest-King does nothing. The same day, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, sends a letter to Congressman Eliot Engel stating that American military intervention in the Syrian civil war would help rebel forces that do not support U.S. interests. It is estimated that foreign fighters linked to AI Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood constitute as much as one-third of the rebel force trying to overthrow the Bashar Assad regime, thus arming the rebels would also arm America's sworn enemies.
• On 30 August 2013, the British House of Commons sternly rejects a resolution on the use of force against the Assad regime for the chemical weapons attack on the 21st. With that setback in mind, Priest-King states that he has the authority to order an attack against Syria without Congressional approval and orders Navy warships to the eastern Mediterranean, but reverses himself the next day, announcing that he would request Congressional authorization for any military action. Public opinion trends heavily against any strike as the American people are exhausted after twelve years of war, a fact that Priest-King leveraged when he ordered the withdrawal of American combat forces from Iraq and Afghanistan the previous year, and support in Congress is tepid.
• While in Stockholm for the G-20 summit on 05 September, Priest-King states, "I didn't set a red line" concerning Syria's chemical weapons, contradicting his statement of the previous year and the emphasis he had placed on Congressional authorization, and confirmed that if Congress rejected the resolution on the use of force, he could still order an attack on his own authority. This was apparently an attempt to shift responsibility for any action - or inaction - to the Congress and the international community at large while still appearing assertive.
• 09 September 2013: As an overwhelming defeat of the Congressional resolution appears imminent, John Kerry states that Syria can avoid an attack by relinquishing control of its chemical weapons stockpile to the international community within a week, apparently as an offhand remark, but adds, "It can't be done." Within hours, Russia prompts Syria's foreign minister to accept Kerry's offer, forestalling the threatened u.s. strike, yet Priest-King still sends his senior national security staff to Capitol Hill to press for Congressional authorization anyway. The following evening, Priest-King addresses the nation, urging the public and Congress to support a military strike against Syria but announces that he was asking for a postponement of a vote on his resolution and that such a strike was also being postponed in favor of negotiations regarding the Russian plan.

In technical terms, this is called a Mongolian goatrope. It is an absolutely gorgeous train wreck, a confused, twisted, incoherent mess that laughably passes for foreign policy. No consistency, no plan, no single person in charge, nobody knows really what the objective is, not even the President. We embrace Assad, we demand his ouster; we toss out bluffs and throwaway lines that turn into policy, then follow them or ignore them as the wind blows; we do nothing, we threaten massive reprisal, we threaten "unbelievably small" reprisal, we do nothing again; we'll go it alone, we'll ask for Congress' authorization, we'll go it alone even if Congress declines authorization, we'll ask Congress to postpone a vote on authorization; we refuse to arm the Syrian rebels because many of them are Al Qaeda terrorists then threaten to attack the regime they are fighting to overthrow. And let's not forget that all this confusion is piled on top of hesitation to support the overthrow of the Tunisian government during the Arab Spring, followed by air strikes in support of the Al Qaeda-backed Libyan rebels (without Congressional authorization), followed by more hesitation regarding the protests in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, followed by full recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt, followed by confirmation of U.S. recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt as it was being overthrown by a popular revolt against their imposition of sharia law, followed by refusal to call the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in Egypt a coup.

Nobody, absolutely nobody knows what's going on and the result is a drifting, unmanned ship of state at a time and in a situation that demands firm, resolute American leadership, but the question we have to ask is, what is behind this Chinese fire drill? Why can't the American people have a firm, clear, consistent foreign policy? Well ...

1) Priest-King's focus has always been reshaping America into a socialist commune with foreign policy, to the extent he is interested at all, limited to diminishing the United States internationally. If the United States behaves less like a superpower and more like a big, amiable neighbor willing to loan a million cups of sugar, deferring all problems to the United Nations, goes his childlike logic, then other countries will stop acting so aggressively and settle down.

2) With that naivete in mind, Priest-King, like most post-Vietnam radicals, detests the U.S. military and the unilateral use of force to further American national interests. The thought of using the military to punish another country, even a thug like Bashar Assad and even to reinforce American credibility, disgusts him and he does everything possible to avoid it.

3) ...but thugs respect force and failing to follow up on a threat invites disrespect. If we know anything about Priest-King, it is that his ego is boundless and the idea that another leader disrespects him is unacceptable, thus ordering a military attack became more palatable. (Note: I am sure that Priest-King intended his "red line" remark as a bluff and believed he would never have to enforce it. His words alone, as Nobel laureate, Emperor of the Americas and Keeper of the Secret Flame, should have been enough for the dictator of
Damascus.)

4) Trying to reconcile points 2 and 3 is impossible for many of Priest-King's allies. They share his disgust for using the military for our own interests yet they want to remain loyal to the nation's first black President, thus they splinter: Dianne Feinstein allies herself with Ted Cruz, Dick Durbin sides with Jeff Flake, and for poor Ed Markey, voting "Present" in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was all he could muster.

5) Priest-King vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq when Saddam Hussein had gassed 5000 of his own people to death in Halabja in 1988 and had gassed tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers during Iraq's war with Iran in the Eighties, and when Congress had expressly authorized such invasion. Yet he bombed Libya on his own authority in 2011 when Muammar Ghaddafi had used chemical weapons on nobody, so it seems that Priest-King's transient political interest is the governing principle where chems are concerned.

6) Having deliberately lowered American prestige and power abroad during his first term, having vacillated on Syria and having "reset" relations with the Russians (withdrawing missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, shifting the focus of American strategy from Europe to Asia, promising more "flexibility" regarding missile defense after his reelection), Priest-King should not be surprised that the Russians would quickly step in. Minus strong American leadership, that was bound to happen and Priest-King should have seen it coming. The plain fact is that the Russians want to win. Vladimir Putin could care less about international opinion or how badly Priest-King wants his approval but he cares intensely about winning and increasing Russian influence in the Middle East. He punked Priest-King at their summit a few months ago, he gave Edward Snowden asylum over our objections, he lectures us in The New York Times and holds Priest-King in contempt. He seized on John Kerry's stupid remark as manna from Heaven and ran with it, boxing Priest-King in and seizing the initiative. I'm glad that the likelihood of American soldiers dying in Syria has been diminished and I'm glad that we will likely not be dragged into yet another Middle East war, but the reality that Russia is controlling the agenda in Syria and not the United States should scare the bejabbers out of anyone.

7) Priest-King's "national security team" is staffed with the greatest cast of incompetents assembled since It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Samantha Power as our U.N. Ambassador, who sees the American military as a sort of Peace Corps with guns? Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary, who vigorously opposed the surge in Iraq in 2007 but wouldn't acknowledge its success, who publicly embarrassed himself so thoroughly during his confirmation hearings he has yet to recover? John Kerry as Secretary of State, who was for the $87 billion in supplemental funding for Iraq before he was against it, who flipped-flopped on trade, on the Israeli security fence, on the Patriot Act, on the death penalty for terrorists, on everything, who
invented the "global test" for American military action? Susan Rice as National Security Advisor, who brazenly and repeatedly lied to the American people over the terrorist attack in Benghazi last year that killed four diplomats including the U.S. Ambassador? It's a surprise that these people even know how to get out of bed, so trusting them with the security of the United States is like giving a shotgun to a muskrat.

This is mediocrity masquerading as statesmanship. Priest-King doesn't know what he's doing. He can't make up his mind what to do because he can't reconcile his leftist principles with the strategic interests of the United States. His philosophy is being exploded right in front of his eyes and he has no clue how to proceed, he's being completely outclassed and humiliated by Vladimir Putin, he's been played for a sucker and he's always two steps behind. His advisors are idiots. We are witnessing an inept, weak, inexperienced, bush league excuse of a President fail on the global stage and if we emerge from this crisis without going to war with Russia, or Syria, or Iran, we should fall down and praise God for His mercy in sparing us. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have three more years of this nonsense to go.

Shoulda Woulda Coulda

If George Zimmerman had stayed in his car, the whole sorry episode could have been avoided.

If George Zimmerman had obeyed the 9-1-1 operator's instructions, the whole sorry episode could have been avoided.

Although George Zimmerman got out of his car and ignored the 9-1-1 operator's instructions, those actions do not constitute criminal activity. He had a right to be where he was and to do what he was doing.

Trayvon Martin also had a right to be where he was and to do what he was doing.

If Trayvon Martin had walked to his father's fiancee's apartment, the whole sorry episode could have been avoided.

Trayvon Martin resented being followed by George Zimmerman. He called George Zimmerman a "creepy-ass cracker" while he was speaking on his cell phone.

George Zimmerman suspected that Trayvon Martin was associated with criminal activity. He resented that young black males avoided punishment for criminal activity in his neighborhood, generalizing that "these f-ing punks always get away." He was intent on following Trayvon Martin and preventing whatever crime might have been planned, regardless of the instructions he had received from the 9-1-1 operator.

George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin racially profiled each other and resented each other but Trayvon Martin used a racial slur to refer to George Zimmerman while George Zimmerman did not reciprocate.

Trayvon Martin decided to escalate the situation by ambushing George Zimmerman, knocking him to the ground, climbing on top of him, slamming his head into the sidewalk and pummeling him with his fists. The injuries inflicted were recorded by the Sanford, Florida, Police Department and were consistent with the physical assault that George Zimmerman reported.

While he was pinned to the ground and being beaten by Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman felt that his life was in jeopardy. He was aware of Florida's Stand Your Ground law (though he would later state otherwise) and he could not physically retreat, so he unholstered his pistol, which was registered and for which he had a concealed carry license, and fired one shot at Trayvon Martin at near-contact range, killing him. Although he had ignored the 9-1-1 operator's instructions not to follow Trayvon Martin, at no time did George Zimmerman surrender his right to defend himself.

George Zimmerman called 9-1-1 immediately after the shooting, waited for the police to arrive and cooperated fully with their investigation, which included five hours of interrogation during which he did not ask for a lawyer. Over the course of the next sixteen months, his version of events remained consistent.

At the time of the shooting, George Zimmerman had a police record, having been previously arrested for drug possession and assaulting a police officer. Since his arrests, he had attended community college where he excelled at law enforcement classes and learned about the Stand Your Ground law. He wanted to become a police officer himself and joined his neighborhood watch program because he was concerned about a series of recent burglaries and acts of vandalism.

At the time of the shooting, Trayvon Martin had been suspended from school for the third time that school year, his offenses including spray-painting graffiti on school property, possession of a burglary tool and suspected stolen property (women's jewelry) and possession of a plastic bag in which marijuana residue was found.

The Sanford Police Department's investigation concluded that George Zimmerman was justified in shooting Trayvon Martin and the Seminole County state prosecutor declined to press charges.

Six weeks after the shooting, Bill Lee, chief of the Sanford Police Department, was forced to resign and was replaced by Cecil Smith , who was black. Also, Florida Governor Rick Scott and Attorney General Pamela Bondi forced state prosecutor Norm Wolfinger to recuse himself and replaced him with Angela Corey, a more politically-reliable prosecutor and an ally in the Florida Republican Party.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appeared with Al Sharpton at a rally in Sanford on 11 April 2012, promising Federal support for the state investigation and to investigate George Zimmerman independently. The Department of Justice also provided taxpayer funds to support anti-Zimmerman protests intended to pressure Florida to charge George Zimmerman with murder, yet after interviewing 36 witnesses, the FBI concluded that George Zimmerman had no history of racism and thus charging him with a Federal hate crime was not justified.

On 12 April 2012, George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. In a television interview, he denied knowing about Florida's Stand Your Ground law and later lied about the value of a legal defense fund he had accumulated, perhaps to prevent seizure of those funds and to ensure that he could defend himself adequately. His bail was subsequently revoked.

During the trial, Judge Debra Nelson denied a number of defense motions and overruled a number of defense objections, the effect of which was to help the prosecution. Ben Kruidbos, an information technology employee at the state prosecutor's office, was fired for leaking information to the press, information that indicated that the prosecution was withholding evidence from the defense. Judge Nelson also instructed the jury prior to deliberations that they could consider convicting George Zimmerman of manslaughter if they could not convict him of second-degree murder, although Zimmerman had not been charged with that crime, in an apparent attempt to facilitate Zimmerman's conviction of something. However, the jury acquitted George Zimmerman of all charges.

Since the verdict, George Zimmerman has gone into hiding because of threats to his life. (He did, however, help rescue a family that had been involved in a car accident two weeks after he was acquitted.) Riots and protests broke out across the country after the verdict, property was vandalized, stores were looted, people have been assaulted in Trayvon Martin's name. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Priest-King himself and assorted other race baiters have poured gasoline on the fire. Stevie Wonder refuses to perform in Florida as long as the Stand Your Ground statute remains in effect, and the NAACP insists that George Zimmerman be charged with a Federal hate crime, but what really does all this mean?

a) The case against George Zimmerman should never have been brought. Unrelenting political pressure from weak-kneed Republicans in Florida and hardcore Leftists across the country overcame experience and professional judgment. Eric Holder and Priest-King focused Federal attention on what was simply a local police matter, Bill Lee and Norm Wolfinger were sacked to ensure that George
Zimmerman would be prosecuted regardless of the merits of the case, that the prosecution would focus on race and only race and The New York Times would invent a new term, "white Hispanic," to shoehorn Zimmerman into the liberal template of violent white-on-black racism.

b) The evidence and the verdict disproved the racism theme. For all the politically-driven machinations to portray George Zimmerman as a deranged racist white cop wannabe who stalked and murdered a helpless Trayvon Martin, the prosecution simply couldn't prove their case. They had no witnesses, no testimony, absolutely zero proof that George Zimmerman acted out of racial hatred, and neither do the Feds: Their own investigation came up empty.

c) Trayvon Martin wasn't the innocent, cherubic teenager that the prosecution, the Leftist media and the politicians portrayed him to be. He was a discipline problem at school who liked to smoke dope, burglarize people's homes, steal their property and beat people up. (Text messages and photos found on his cell phone that confirmed his violent, anti-social behavior were suppressed at trial, as were his school records.) He thought George Zimmerman was a "creepy-ass cracker" who had no business following him that night so he jumped Zimmerman and was beating him senseless when he was shot. As with the illegal immigration debate when the Left purposely omits the word "illegal" to frame the people in question as innocent working-class victims of a heartless society, the Left is purposely omitting proof of Trayvon Martin's true character to press their theme that he was killed because he was black, yet another hapless victim of white racist America, and it insults our intelligence. Maybe the hard truth is that Trayvon Martin didn't deserve to be followed but deserved to be shot.

d) For the Left, America is and will always be a black-hating racist country. Nothing can be done to expunge the sins of slavery and Jim Crow racism. Three hundred-sixty thousand Union dead in the Civil War fighting to end slavery, sixty-five years of legal and social breakthroughs including the first black  President are wonderful facts but prove nothing. America's character is still unchanged, America still resembles 1925 Indiana, the Ku Klux Klan runs the country, flaunts its power, and lynches, shoots, burns and terrorizes blacks (and recalcitrant whites) into submission. The Supreme Court's recent nullification of that part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required states of the Old South to submit their election laws to the U.S. Attorney General for review and approval, recognizing that racial progress has indeed been made since the law's adoption, has caused an uproar among the Left because in their minds objective evidence can never be enough. America will always be guilty, will always be prejudiced, will always need strict policing and thus the law should never, ever be changed, and the Trayvon Martin verdict just fanned the flames. The evidence - Zimmerman is Hispanic, not white; Trayvon Martin had a history of criminal behavior in his neighborhood and discipline problems at his school; had marijuana in his system at the time of the shooting; had a history of violent behavior; used a racial slur to refer to George Zimmerman while Zimmerman had to be prompted by the 9-1-1 operator to describe Martin as black; Martin initiated the physical confrontation - is angrily dismissed by the Left because it conflicts with their template of a cross-burning lynch mob America.

e) Fifty years' worth of social programs have destroyed the black community in the United States. Although they represent only 13% of the general population, blacks account for 38% of all murders and 48% of all murder victims and blacks are far more likely to be murdered by other blacks than by any other racial group. Alcoholism, drug abuse, homelessness, poverty, bankruptcy, divorce, fatherless children, illiteracy, suicide, unemployment, every metric of human misery has skyrocketed under the well-meaning but destructive oversight of the Left and there is a seething outrage and frustration among the black community at their state: How did this happen to us? Who did this to us? But these are rhetorical questions. Intelligent African-Americans know very well that socialism has ruined them but to admit it would invalidate everything they believe in, so they march, they protest, they riot and they search for someone else to blame than the liberal politicians and race hucksters who promised them the moon, they condemn the verdict, they condemn George Zimmerman, they condemn Stand Your Ground laws, they want revenge. But what would they have preferred to Trayvon Martin's shooting? If George Zimmerman had been left beaten and bloody on the sidewalk, it would hardly have made the news, and if Trayvon Martin had killed George Zimmerman, it would have been reported as simply a neighborhood dispute gone bad and it would have been forgotten. After all, that sort of thing goes on all the time - people die violently by the hundreds in Chicago every year and the Feds don't descend on the city the way they did upon tiny Sanford, Florida. What made the Zimmerman case different was George Zimmerman broke the rules by retaliating when Trayvon Martin attacked him. George Zimmerman was supposed to have allowed himself to be beaten and if he had been in his own apartment when Trayvon Martin was burglarizing it, he would have been expected to run away rather than defend his person and his property. The status quo was upset, and if this is really the reason why people burned cars and smashed store windows and looted businesses, then my friends, we need to change the status quo.

When people can't find jobs to support themselves, they turn to crime. When people think they're not responsible for themselves, they father and abandon their children. When they have no hope, they turn to drugs or the bottle. Socialism destroys the very people it claims to help. Jobs are replaced by subsidies, responsibility is replaced by bureaucracy, hope is replaced with dependence and an entire culture takes root. The fatal confrontation between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin absolutely could have been avoided but it wasn't, in large part because Trayvon Martin (despite a history contradicting it) thought that he was exempt from suspicion and once suspected, that physical violence was acceptable. His culture accepted that behavior, a culture anathema to a healthy, functioning society, and it has to be changed. Priest-King and his cluster of confederates earnestly believe, in the face of piles of empirical evidence that proves otherwise, that socialism will turn America into a paradise if only we abandon the traditional values of self-reliance, responsibility, hard work and free enterprise.  Socialism has begotten the culture in which Trayvon Martin was raised and if we are to prevent other teenagers from suffering the same fate, we have to dig up the root of the problem, so let's mourn Trayvon Martin, learn from this sad episode and grab a shovel.That would be a proper legacy.