Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

One of the many benefits of growing older is that when people tell you a self-serving lie about the past, you can call them on it by reminding them that you lived through that part of history.

A case in point was the recent death and state funeral for Jimmy Carter. I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, especially when their coffin is still settling into the earth, but I’m the type of a guy at a funeral who would raise their hand during the eulogy and ask for equal time.

Carter was a man who while given a state funeral for his public life as president, was largely eulogized for his post-presidential life. The man was a disaster as a president and not just because of the condition of the country after he left office. The man did not understand at a fundamental level the job he held. Instead of being the chief executive and leader of a great republic and nation, he thought his job was to act as a puritanical scold. Instead as seeing his office as a public trust of leadership, he saw the moral authority of the office as a private possession.

While I wish the current occupant of the White House a long and healthy life, the past week reminds us that some day Joe Biden will also be given a state funeral and that more than likely his many faults (let alone his evil) will be interred with his bones.

I was also reminded this week of the final days of the Clinton presidency when outgoing Clinton White House staff engaged in “damage, theft, vandalism and pranks” designed to troll the incoming Bush administration.

Given the vandalism the outgoing Biden administration has been doing during its final days, those acts 24 years ago seem almost cute.

In the last few weeks of its life, the Biden administration has been taking specific actions designed to thwart Trump and his policies. Keep in mind that Trump’s victory was a repudiation of Biden. The Biden administration might have authority but it has no mandate, it simply is letting its ideological freak flag fly.

Trump ran on and gained a mandate to expand drilling in order to secure America’s energy future. Biden has signed executive orders in the last two weeks to ban off-shore drilling in most federal waters.

Trump ran on and gained a mandate to enforce the southern border and deport illegal immigrants. Biden in his last hours decreed that the “Temporary Protected Status” for a million immigrants be extended for two more years.

Let’s not forget that Biden, or more accurately those in his regency, have three more days to issue pardons to administration officials and supporters. If you remember the day Trump was inaugurated in 2017, Susan Rice was still on the White House grounds to the last possible moment pushing the Russian Collusion hoax.

In addition to those specific acts by Biden, I see another example of legal vandalism by his administration:

“The plans that many major college athletic departments are making for how they will distribute new direct payments to their athletes would violate Title IX law, according to a memo published by the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday.

The NCAA and its power conferences have agreed to allow each school to share up to $20.5 million in direct payments to its athletes via name, image and likeness deals as one of the terms of a pending antitrust settlement. Many schools from those power conferences have developed plans to distribute the majority of that money to athletes in sports that generate the most revenue — mostly football and men’s basketball players.”

Got it? In college sports, football is the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to revenue. The Ohio State University athletic department pulled in nearly $280 million in revenue last year with the football program providing 45% of the take. It is common-sense that the vast majority of any lost revenue (NIL or otherwise) covered by the anti-trust settlement would have been incurred by high-revenue sports such football or even basketball.

Yet when it comes to actual revenue-sharing football players at Ohio State will be paid the same as members of the women’s rowing team because the Biden Department of Education (DOE) in its last few days of power decided to term the money as “athletic financial assistance.”

Why did the Biden DOE do this?

”There are multiple pending Title IX lawsuits related to NIL compensation from third parties. The memo published during the final two days of this department’s time in power could provide some fodder for future potential lawsuits if any athletes sue their school over the way future direct payments are made to athletes.”

This ridiculous, last-minute memo was designed not to be policy, but to provide juice for Left-favored Title IX lawsuits which will tie up the NCAA and college athletics for the foreseeable. It is yet another stink bomb cast by a discredited administration that has one foot out the door.

The specific office at DOE that issued this memo, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), should sound familiar to conservatives. It was the OCR which issued the infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter” which informed colleges and universities that Title IX required them to strip those accused of sexual misconduct and violence of their due process rights during campus judicial procedures.

Keep all of this last-minute vandalism from the past few weeks in mind when Trump goes toe-to-toe with the DC establishment.