Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Wishing and Hoping

I never was into fishing. Because my dad could neither eat, smell, or look at a fish, he never went fishing and consequently I never really got interested in fishing. In the distant recesses of my mind, I vaguely recall having a bamboo pole and sitting on the banks of the Columbus Park lagoon with some of my young buddies . . .  fishing, or perhaps I should say, throwing my hook into the water, expectantly wishing and hoping for a bite. On the other hand one of my long-time friends loves fishing, or perhaps I could better say that he loves his yearly Canadian fishing trips. He marvels about the solitude, the scenery, and the camaraderie. I don’t recall his regaling me with stories detailing the many hours spent sitting in the boat with his fishing line limply hanging in the water . . . wishin’ and a hopin’. Last week took our young granddaughters for a stroll at Santee Lakes. As usual there were a few guys sitting in lawn-chairs with their fishing poles propped up and their fishing lines stretched out into the water. In the past whenever  I have queried them about what they were catching, I almost always got a shrug of the shoulders in reply. When my three year old granddaughter asked me what these men were doing, I responded, “a wishin’ and a hopin’!”

Why this discourse on fishing, or perhaps better said, this discourse on the sport of “wishin’ and hopin’? The segue is that it occurred to me that fishing now appears to be a sport of the Democrats in Congress . . . throw a hook into the water and hope that you catch something. 

“What specifically do you hope to catch?” 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, if we wait long enough, we’ll get some sort of a bite, just like with the Mueller probe, and Paul Manafort and General Kelly. Of course our hooks were not baited for them, but oh well!”

As fate would have it, this morning I was reading an op-ed about the present focus of some Democrats in Congress on President Trump’s tax returns. The author of the op-ed, a CPA from Atlanta, went through the history of making tax returns public, dating back to the 1924 Revenue Act, which was most frequently utilized by women in divorce settlement proceedings and by fiancés wanting to know the income of their prospective husbands . . . both wishin’ and hopin’. This initial attempt at publicity was repealed in 1926, but the story doesn’t end there as most recently in 1976, Congress passed a law making tax returns confidential, but with a caveat – “except in limited situations when an agency’s need for information exceeded the citizen’s right to privacy.” So in my mind, does a fishing expedition or the wishin’ and hopin’ of some Democrats in Congress exceed the citizen’s right to privacy, i.e. Donald Trump’s right to privacy. Needless to say the scope of a congressional committee’s wishin’ and hopin’ has never been litigated. 

Oftentimes I just do not understand the thought process of some of these Democrats. The country finally got the results of the fruitless two year “wishin’ and hopin’ investigation” into Trump’s possible Russian collusion. The nation was bored and close to exhaustion  . . . about this big nothing-burger. Why do they think the the people want them to go fishing with another expensive “wishin’ and a hopin’ boondoggle? My advice, as I am wishin’ and hopin’ to get Trump again in 2020: “Go for it, Dems!”, as it will come back to bite them in the butt before the next election!

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