Marc Liebman's Blog, page 35

My Most Memorable Super Bowl

As someone who grew up in Europe, I wasn’t a football fan until later in life. To put things in perspective, when Super Bowl I was played, I was a junior in college. As a ski and auto racing and soccer (Europeans call it football because it is played with one’s feet) fan, I didn’t start following football until we moved to Texas.

When we move to the Dallas area before NFL free agency, the Cowboys were really good and I learned there were five seasons in the year – draft, training camp, preseason, regular season, playoffs. Now, with free agency, we’re up to six seasons because “free agency” is added after the Super Bowl.

The primary reason I became a fan was so I could have a meaningful conversation on Monday mornings with my co-workers. Being a football fan took up more importance in the weeks leading up to training camp and tailed off a bit after the Super Bowl. To be able participate in the social discourse, one had to be knowledgeable about the Cowboys or one of their arch enemies like the Giants, Eagles or the Redskins.

Many of us can remember times in our lives by Super Bowls. For me, the one that brings back the most memories is Super Bowl XXV. It was those hated Giants against the Buffalo Bills.

On January 27th, I was on the U.S.S. Ranger again participating in a war. Desert Storm was in full swing. The good news was that the Super Bowl was played in Tampa which was eight hours behind the Persian Gulf. Kick-off was at 6:19 Tampa time, or 0419 on the Ranger. We were flying strikes between six p.m. and six a.m., and generally secured from flight quarters around 8 a.m.

Thanks to the foresight of our battle group commander and the carrier’s captain, the Ranger had a commercial satellite antenna installed near the top of the island that could down link U.S. TV stations. Knowing that allowing the Super Bowl to be broadcast live throughout the ship while we were launching and recovering aircraft might result in an accident, the game was taped. Then, at 0900, after flight operations were secured, it was played on the ships internal TV network. Spaces on the ship where TVs were located were packed with officers and enlisted. For those who were on watch, the game was replayed several times during the day.

I vividly remember sitting in the flag mess, with everyone on the staff not on watch, staring at a 48” projection screen everyone one on the staff contributed to pay for that was bought primarily for this purpose. We downed sodas, buckets of popcorn, hot dogs and hamburgers. Oh, yeah, the Giant’s won 20 – 19 when Scott Norwood missed a field goal from 47 yards out with 7 seconds left.

History tells us this game was the first of four consecutive Super Bowls the Buffalo Bills lost. The last two were to the Cowboys and I can remember a joke going around before the 1994 game (Super Bowl XXVIII). What is the difference between the Buffalo Bills and Rice Krispies? Rice Krispies know what to do in a bowl. Enjoy the game.

 

America’s Longest War

Way back in the beginnings of our country, our Founding Fathers fought the British for eight long years. Our involvement in World War I was less than two years. We were involved covertly an overtly for five plus years for World War II.

The Vietnam War was the first shooting war that lasted longer than the American Revolution. The first combat death occurred on July 8th, 1959 and the last on April 29th, 1975 making it a 16 year war.

Several pundits claim our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq which began in 2001 and continues to this day is, at 18+ years, our longest war. However, those who say it is the longest shooting war are wrong, by a long shot. It is simply a theater in a much longer war that began when our embassy was taken in on November 4th, 1979. Sometimes our conflict with Iran has come out in the open, most of the time it is covert. By my math, that’s 31 years and covers the terms of seven presidents – Carter Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama and Trump.

What we saw earlier in the year was just the latest flare-up in what has been a series of political crisis and outright combat. The Iranians jab at the country they call the Great Satan pushing right up to the brink of a major conflict. Mostly they prefer to use proxies, i.e. Hezbollah and its terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad to strike at the U.S. and its allies.

Several times, the U.S. has slapped the Iranian’s hand and the Ayatollahs pull back, rethink their strategy and then jab at us again. Here’s a brief and incomplete summary:

1979 – Embassy seized, U.S. citizens held for 444 day and released on January 20th, 1981.

1982 – 1988 – U.S. provides diplomatic and intelligence support to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. We also covertly provided weapons through third parties to Iran.

1983 – Terrorist organizations supported by Iran bomb the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, kidnaps and kills a senior CIA officer, blows up the Marine Barracks bombing. Over 320 Americans are killed, hundreds are injured.

1984 – Second bombing of the U.S. Beirut embassy.

1987 – U.S. seizes and seize several oil platforms used by Iran to support attacks on ships in the Persian Gulf.

1988 – On April 12th, the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts is severely damaged by an Iranian mine. The U.S. destroys two Iranian frigates.

2008 – Islamic Jihad, a terrorist arm of Hezbollah attacks the U.S. Embassy in Yemen

2003 – the present day – Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Quds Force continue to actively support attacks on U.S. servicemen and facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the five other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the U.A.E. Since 1983, the most accepted estimate is that Iranian tactics, leaders and advisors have caused about 17% of the U.S. casualties.

2020 – Militants incited and supported by the IRGC/Quds Force attack the U.S. Embassy in Bagdad. Two days later, the U.S. kills General Qasem Suliemani who was sanctioned as a terrorist by the European Union, the United Nations, the U.S. and Israel.

The point is that the U.S./Iran conflict is not over and will not end until the Iranian’s change their behavior. They are, by far and away, the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

Where’s the Outrage?

The watchword in Washington should be “hypocrisy is us.” Both sides could open a store in one aisle could be quotes and sound bites by the Democrats and another by the Republicans. Then we could have separate aisles from members who consider themselves conservatives, progressives, liberals, libertarians and the list goes on.

But what galls me is that when the people take to the streets against a totalitarian regime such as run by the mullahs in Iran, the left is strangely quiet? After the shoot down of the Ukrainian airliner, when the protests turned from anti-American to anti-regime, they said nothing.

It is almost as if it is o.k. for Iran to be, by far, the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. And, be governed by a regime that has pursued policies that have left its economy strangled and a pariah in the world, unless of course you live in one of those wonderfully free and open societies governed from Moscow and Beijing. Or, in Myanmar or many African countries.

The point is this, when protests break out against totalitarian regimes, no matter how they started, we should be cheering and supporting them, not ignoring them. Which brings this post to the shoot down of the Ukrainian airliner that killed 176 people.

Some accept Iran’s the apology that it was “human error.” No kidding! If that is Iran’s excuse, the country is telling the world that near a major international airport, Iran’s national command structure does not have firm control of its surface-to-air missiles.

The shooters were not some yahoos with shoulder mounted missiles. Tor is a sophisticated designed to shoot down cruise missiles and is normally deployed in batteries of four, self-contained launchers, each with their own radar. It is operated by a crew of four.

To shoot fire a missile, one, the target has to be detected by its radar or infrared tracking system. Two, to avoid shooting down a friendly or neutral aircraft, one uses technology known as IFF – identification, friend or foe – to determine whether the aircraft is an enemy, friendly or neutral.

Three, the aircraft has to be tracked by a search radar. Four, the missiles turned and then five, someone has to pull the trigger. In this case, twice because two missiles were fired.

Granted, all five steps can take place in a matter of seconds. I find it hard to believe that missile system crew weren’t aware that neutral airliners were taking off from nearby Tehran’s international airport because they’d been doing so for years. So, whomever fired the missile, did so deliberately. The question in my mind was it the missile crew who decided to fire the missiles or someone higher in the chain of command who authorized the shoot.

Here in the U.S., the leaders of the Democratic party and their allies on the left were strangely quiet. There was no righteous condemnation of the killing of 173 innocent people, many of whom were Canadian citizens. Rather, they preferred to condemn the killing of an Iranian general who had a hand in killing hundreds, if not thousands of American men and women. Therein lies the hypocrisy.

Qasem Suleimani was a general in an army at war. He was the commander of the Iranian National Guards Corps and the Quds Force and made himself a target the moment he put on his uniform. The fact he was arrogant enough to think that he could drive around the streets of Bagdad without risk was, in my mind, stupid. He’d been on the Israeli and U.S. target list for months and he got what he deserved.

Happy 2020 – Historically Good Numbers for the U.S. Economy

Have you looked at your investment portfolio lately? Assuming you are not a dunce and were an average investor in the stock market, you’ve done well. How well? It depends on your investment strategy but you should have been able to ride the Dow Jones (and other indexes) increase from November 2016 to today.

As an investor, along with my investment advisor, we look at the market in 90 day blocks. Even then, the numbers are pretty significant. On the day before the 2016 election, the most quoted index, the Dow Jones, sat at 18,334.74. Pundits predicted that if Donald Trump was elected, the market would plunge and we would enter another recession, worse than the one we’d just endured.

So what happened? The market rose steadily and closed on January 10th, 2020 at 28,956.90. For the record, that’s a 37% increase and is indicative as to what is happening in the U.S. economy.

Across the board, unemployment rates are at historic, as in 51 year lows. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that as of October 31st, 2016, the overall (men and women) unemployment rate for Hispanics was 6.6% and for African-Americans, 7.0%. Today, its 3.8% and 5.4%. While the difference in percentages is relatively small in raw numbers, it represents a 25% drop for Hispanics and 23% for African Americans and hundreds of thousands more in those groups employed. In other words, its significant.

The overall unemployment rate stood at 4.7% on the day of the election and had been dropping slowly, but steadily during Obama’s eight years from a recession high of nearly 9%. Again, media pundits forecast a new recession that would send unemployment back up. The real numbers tell another story. The current unemployment rate is 3.8%, or 19.2% lower. Why? Those who are unemployed are finding jobs and wages have increased.

Consumer confidence is also at new highs. For the last three years of the Obama administration, it lingered below 100 and on10/31/16, it stood at 98.6. Three years later, on 10/31/19, it was at 125.9, an increase of 21.7%. For the record, values above 100 are considered economically good, below, not so healthy.

There are many more statistics that show the U.S. economy is very healthy. Of course, there are the naysayers who are predicting a recession, or a slowdown. So far, events and the data has proven them wrong.

One can keep digging, but the underreported story is that the U.S. economy is doing really well. A Canadian friend once told me that “when the U.S. economy gets a cold, we get pneumonia.”

Heading into 2020, the U.S. economy doesn’t have the sniffles and that usually means that the economies of the rest of the world will do so as well. Looking at the International Monetary Fund’s data, almost across the board, it shows countries, even those one would not suspect, to be growing. That forecast along with a healthy U.S. economy is something to be happy about.

Background Checks and Firearms Purchases

Much is made by anti-gun activists about the need for “universal background checks.” This claim shows the speaker’s ignorance of the law and the facts. Let’s start with the basics. Anyone who goes to a sporting goods store or a gun shop and wants to purchase a pistol, rifle or shotgun, must fill out Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agency (BATF) form ATF 4473.

The prospective purchaser has to show a valid government ID before he or she fills out the form. Once it is completed, the form is run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to see if the prospective purchaser can legally purchase the firearm.

Any individual who has been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison; or for which there is a warrant for their arrest; is an illegal alien; is addicted to a controlled substance; received a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. military; has been the subject to a restraining order that keeps them from harassing, threatening an intimate partner or child; and the list goes on.

Failure to provide accurate information on a Form 4473 is a felony for which, if convicted, can put you in jail for up to five years. According to GAO Report 18-44- (https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/694290.pdf), in 2017, 8,606,286 Form 4473s were run through the NICS. Of these, 112,090 were denied for one reason or another. The BATF investigated only 12,710 and a paltry 12 resulted in prosecutions.

The point is that there is a background check system in place and it is working. However, it is not perfect because the NCIS can only check a Form 4473 against what is in the database. So, if healthcare professionals, the U.S. Military and other government agencies don’t do their job and feed the NICS with accurate data, people who shouldn’t be able to purchase a firearm legally will be able to do so.

Many murders and two recent mass shootings – at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and the Sutherland Church in New Braunfels, Texas – may have been prevented if those responsible for reporting data to the NICS fulfilled their obligations.

Dyan Roof’s conviction for unlawful possession of the drug Suboxone a month prior made him ineligible to own a firearm under the Gun Control Act of 1968. Devin Kelly would never had been able to legally purchase a firearm if the U.S. Air Force reported that a court martial convicted him for domestic violence.

Today, the validity or even value of the NICS is being compromised by states offering drivers licenses to illegal aliens. An illegal immigrant in the state of New York, New Jersey or California can now get a driver’s license. This will allow the individual to walk into any gun store and fill out a form ATF 4473. Even though as an illegal alien, he or she is not eligible to legally purchase a weapon, the transaction will be approved. Why? Because the individual is not in the NICS.

My point is this. Most, if not the vast majority of gun owners agree that background checks are needed. However, in order to make them effective, the database on which the check is made, must be up to date. Actions by several states, many of which have restrictive gun laws, are literally shooting themselves in the foot because by issuing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, they are helping facilitate the very thing they are trying to restrict, which is gun ownership.

Meaning of the Words Sole and Chutzpah

According to the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary, when the word “sole” is used as an adjective, it means “one and only.” The word “sole” occurs only twice in the U.S. Constitution. Both are in reference to legislative powers which suggests how careful the Founding Fathers when they wrote the document.

The first use is in Article 1, Section 2, paragraph 5 with the words: The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. In Section 3, Paragraph 6 of Article 1, our Founding Father’s used it a second time when they wrote: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all impeachments.

Speaker Pelosi has not sent the two articles of impeachment to the Senate because she wants to negotiate the rules by which the trial in the Senate should be conducted. Obviously, she has not read Article I, Section 5, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution which states in its first words, “Each house may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, …”

These words give Senator McConnell and its majority leader every legal right to tell Speaker Pelosi to go pound sand. Her response is to stamp her foot like a spoiled brat and withhold the articles. This is called chutzpah which is defined by Merriam-Webster as “supreme self-confidence, gall, nerve.” The dictionary lists 18 synonyms for this Yiddish word – audaciousness, audacity, brashness, brass, brassiness, cheek, crust, effrontery, face, gall nerve, nerviness, pertness, presumption, presumptuousness, sauce, sauciness, and temerity. Most of which apply to Speaker Pelosi.

Her refusal to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate is another example of the Speaker’s failure to execute the oath of her office which requires her – and every member of the Congress – to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Speaker Pelosi doesn’t have the constitutional right to do so which begs the question as to why. Let’s start with a few maybes, as in the Democrats:

Don’t want their evidence or lack of it exposed for what it really is?
Realize that a fair and open trial in the Senate will cost them seats in the House, maybe even its majority?
Expose their witnesses to cross-examination (which didn’t happen in the House hearings) and cost them credibility?
Know that their chances of getting a conviction in the Senate is somewhere between zero and slim. Slim left town the day after the Republicans increased their majority in the Senate.
Can now say to their left wing base that they have impeached the president, now let’s move on.

Whatever Pelosi’s reason, it is galling and insulting that she (and the Democratic leadership) assumes that We the People have not read the Constitution. Many of us had and we vote.

Nancy, What’s the Rush?

It appears now that the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives are in a hurry to send the two articles of impeachment voted out of the Judiciary Committee to the floor for a vote.  Assuming that it passes, it goes on to the Senate for a trial.

Rather than take their time and fully investigate the charges, Representative Schiff and Nadler limited the number of witnesses to only those that they wanted called.  Why?  Again, why?  The whistleblower has not made an appearance in front of either committee.  Again, why?

There are four plausible reasons.  One, the more debate, the more their lack of evidence gets exposed.

Two, polls show that their impeachment process is not doing well particularly with independent voters.  So the Democrats want to get this over as soon as possible and move on.  Cynically, they have served their base, delivered articles of impeachment that everyone knows are dead on arrival in the Senate.

Three, there are 31 Democratic seats in the House from districts that were carried by Trump.  Many are now in play and could imperil Pelosi’s majority so she needs to get those representatives on the campaign trail so that they can work to protect those seats.

Four, they, i.e. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler strongly suspect that Durham/Barr are close to sending indictments to a grand jury.  When the charges come out, the Democrats are going to be embarrassed.  Some individuals from the Obama administration charged might even go to jail.  Even worse for Pelosi and company, the criminal trials, assuming that the media bothers to cover them, will continue during the summer and fall leading up to the election and could cost the Democrats votes and seats in the House.  Oh, oh!

Senator McConnell has an interesting choice when the articles of impeachment officially arrive in the Senate.  He can bring it to the floor and have a lengthy debate to expose the weaknesses of the Democrats’ charges.  Or, he can have a quick vote and be done with it.  Either way, if a trial happens, the chances of a conviction are between slim and none and slim left town months ago when this circus started.

The real risk to Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and company is the longer the impeachment process drags on, the worse it will look for the Democrats.  Almost every American knows a kangaroo court when he/she sees one.  The Democrats own this impeachment process lock, stock and barrel and it has not gone well.

What the political cost of a very partisan impeachment process to the Democratic Party is unknown at this time.  We’ll find out on November 3, 2020.  And, if the Democrats lose the presidency and a large portion of their House majority or worse, control of the House, was it worth it?

Revisting Pearl Harbor

Seventy-eight years ago, the Japanese attacked U.S. bases on the island of Oahu.  It was one of the biggest military disasters in U.S. history and occurred despite the fact that President Roosevelt and his closest advisors knew the attack was coming, just not when and where.

Could the Japanese been stopped?  No.  Once the Japanese striking force left the home islands, we had no way of locating them until they came within range of long range patrol planes operating out of Wake, Midway or Hawaii.  The Japanese carefully planned the route they took to arrive northwest of Oahu undetected.

In the 1920s and 1930s, most of the naval leaders of World War II participated in war games at the Naval War College where scenarios for the start and prosecution of a war with Japan were ‘gamed.’  Plus, beginning with Fleet Problem V (1925) and in Fleet Problems XIII (1932), VVI (1935), VXVIII (1937), XIX (1938) and XXI (1940), the Navy simulated attacks on Hawaii.  These showed a strong force of aircraft carriers could easily conduct a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

What could or should have been done on the days leading up to December 7th to mitigate the damage.  Let’s start with Admiral Kimmel’s rationale to keep the battleships in port was that they were easier to protect.  Had they been at sea and engaged the Japanese, Admiral Nimitz said most would have been sunk.  Instead, six (California, Maryland, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia), of the nine battleships damaged on December 7th, 1941 returned to service.  Only Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma were beyond repair.

On December 7th, only three of the Navy’s seven carriers were in the Pacific – Lexington just delivered planes to Midway; Enterprise ditto Wake Island; and Saratoga which was in San Diego.  The rest – Hornet, Ranger, Yorktown and Wasp – were in the Atlantic.

Would it have helped if Kimmel ordered his ships to maintain a higher state of readiness?   Maybe.  It may have enabled us to shoot down more Japanese airplanes.

Where I fault both Kimmel and Short was their failure to disburse the airplanes to the airfields fields and use the assets they had to protect Hawaii.

General Short, who was a not a pilot nor a combat veteran, was more concerned about sabotage even though there was no credible intelligence that the American citizens of Japanese descent living on the island were planning to turn traitor.  Hence, his aircraft were lined up in neat rows so the Japanese pilots could use them for gunnery practice.

General Short, why no combat air patrol despite written orders issued on February 7th, 1941 to do so?  By the fall of 1941, based on direction from the White House, you knew the Japanese were coming.

The attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized the nation to fight.  The Germans did us a favor by declaring war on us on December 11th, four days after the Japanese attack.  Until they did, Roosevelt had a declared war in the Pacific and an undeclared war against Germany in which our servicemen were being killed.  The German declaration made it easy for Roosevelt to make the battle against Germany that had already begun in the Atlantic official.

Dealing With a Bug

Disease is never a pretty thing.  It becomes easier to deal with when one knows the end game, i.e. either death or a cure or a disability.  But, when the outcome is uncertain – just being sick, long term antibiotic treatment, possible loss of a limb – all just play in your mind.  And, if one has a vivid imagination, then all sorts of possibilities run through your conscious and sub-conscious at odd times during the day, but mostly when one is trying to go to sleep.

The story begins in December 2018 when I had a sack of fluid on my right elbow drained.  Antibiotics were prescribed to prevent infection and I was told not to worry.

Only the sack returned in late May 2019, bigger and if you are the bug, better.  A sample was taken for a culture to look for common bacteria.  None was found.  This time I went to an elbow specialist who drained it again, prescribed antibiotics and said come back in a month.  In early July 2019, the sack returned, again larger and this time it was drained and a steroid injected to reduce the inflammation.  More antibiotics and was told that if it returns, surgery may be required.

A month and a half later, the sack hadn’t returned but the skin where the sack had been started cracking and a pale yellow fluid, not blood was leaking out.  Back to the elbow specialist who said you’re having a bursectomy tomorrow, we’ll remove any other diseased tissue and take a culture.

When opened my elbow, the bursar sack was infected but also the muscles, tendons connecting my hand at the end of the ulna bone just below my elbow were infected along with the periosteum – the hard outer shell of the ulna bone.  He cut away the diseased tissue and bone and sewed it closed leaving four drains in my arm to allow fluid to come.  Starting week three, the drains were slowly pulled out and by week six, they were all out.

Two weeks after the surgery, the first piece of bad news.  The bacteria was identified as a member of the mycobacterium avium complex.  Translation, it is one of those rare, hard to kill bacteria transmitted through bird feces.

You get infected if you are working in soil into which a bird carrying the bacteria poops and you get a fleck of dirt in a cut, your eye or mouth.  You’re now infected with this slow growing, but potential deadly bug.  We have a garden and flower beds so we’re pretty sure this is how I was infected.

The next steps were waiting for (a) the drains to close so antibiotics that could attack the bug could be prescribed; and (b) for the results of the susceptibility test.  Then my infectious disease doctor could prescribe the perfect drugs to kill it which takes eight to 12 months.

More bad news.  This family of slow-growing bacteria are incredibly antibiotic resistant and often develops immunity to antibiotics.  Over the course of treatment, we may have to switch drugs once or maybe twice.

Three weeks after starting on the combination of three antibiotics, I had an allergic reaction to one.  It was the one the susceptibility tests showed to be the most effective.  It took two weeks of steroids and antihistamines to get my system back to “normal” so I could return to taking a different combination antibiotics in the beginning of November 2019.

Between my system fighting the bacteria and the mild side effects of the antibiotics, I run out of energy quickly.  Somedays the area under the scar is red and swollen, some days it is not.  Naps are a daily event and I’m lucky if I can make it to nine-thirty at night before going to bed.

Finally, I’ve started walking and am up to five miles.  On days I walk, a nap is not an option.  Next step is adding a light workout in a gym.

Next steps now are blood tests every month and another MRI/X-ray in late December to see if the damaged bone and muscle continue to heal.  In late January, they’ll run tests to see if the bug has developed immunity.  If it has, we go to plan B which is a different combination of antibiotics.

Until then, it is a matter of taking drugs, trying to rebuild my strength and stamina.  That’s the easy part.  The hard is dealing with a vivid imagination that runs with the worst case scenarios explained by both the surgeon and my infectious disease doctor.  I will beat this, but it will take awhile.

Adam and Nancy’s Dilemma

One of the joys of being retired is that if one is interested, one can spend hours in front of the TV watching Congressional hearings, or in this case, the farce that are the impeachment hearings.  It doesn’t matter which side one sits, several “facts” have become clear.

One, the Democrats changed House rules on the impeachment process to make it easier to go forward.  In the past, the effort had to be bi-partisan.  This has been hardly that.

Two, the witnesses spent their time in front of Schiff’s committee whining about how they weren’t consulted, the president went around them, I was fired for no reasons, ya de da de da…  So far, not one witness has offered a smoking gun or a shred of evidence that there was a quid pro quo, even Sondland who listened to the conversation.

So what has Schiff done?.  Two things, one he’s gone the conspiracy route and called witnesses who testified that within the administration, there was a concerted effort to go around the laws and pressure the Ukrainians to investigate Hunter Biden.  So far, while there was a lot of discussion, the Democrats have not presented hard evidence that there is a quid pro quo.

What we do know is that while Vice President Biden was in office he strong armed the Ukrainians to end an investigation into the activities of his son.  The Ukraine is one of the most politically corrupt countries on the planet and one could infer that if the Ukrainian government was going to investigate the actions of the U.S. vice president’s son, it must have been pretty bad.  Yet, we hear very little about this particularly since it took place at a time when the significant chunks of Ukrainian territory was being gobbled up by the Russians.  It should also be noted that the Obama administration only offered “non-lethal” aid to the Russian action that resembled the German reoccupation of the Rheinland in 1936 or its invasion of the Sudentland in 1938.

Three, Schiff is inventing charges to throw at President Trump.  The latest is that the president is going to be charged with “Obstruction of Congress.”  Unfortunately for Schiff, there is no basis in U.S. law for such a charge.

There are more questions that need answering about the hearings which even some Democratic commentators admit have not gone well in the most important court – the one of public opinion, i.e. how is the impeachment hearings going to play out in the 2020 election?  This is Adam and Nancy’s dilemma, not the impeachment vote.

The Republicans only have to reclaim 18 seats to return Ms. Pelosi to her role as the minority leader and there are many vulnerable Democrats who won seats in districts that voted for Trump.  Already polls are showing that the impeachment hearings are not playing well with independents.  The strong economy, the hearings and the well left-of-center agendas being outlined by the current Democratic presidential candidates may spell trouble in November 2020 when the real vote on impeachment happens.