3-18-25

I don’t if you’ve seen someone try to avoid eye contact…..it can be humorous…..it

can also be a sign of great weakness…..it can also be driven by a deep desire not

to be held accountable…..”Don’t make eye contact! Maybe it will all go

away!”…..My dog used to do that…..I miss my dog……we lost him a few years ago

but he was our third child….a big ol’ black Doberman Pinscher……average is 60-70

pounds…..my dog Ranger weighed in at 120 lbs! ……he could look fearsome

too…… but Charlene……well I like to say that she turned him into a 120 lb lap

dog……he was smart….you could speak to him in a conversational tone……and he

smiled!......Big ol’ black Doberman with scary teeth standing almost waist high at

the shoulder and Charlene could just look at him and say “who’s pretty?....” and

he would wag that stubby tail and get all beside himself……and he was a good

dog…..but he could be mischievous too…..he was a prankster…..he loved to knock

a book or newspaper out of the way if you were reading……he would go get a sock

or something he knew better than to get and just come stare at you to see what

you’d do……but sometimes….sometimes he stepped across the line and he was

smart….so smart….and he knew when he’d gone too far…..because he would stop

making eye contact……”Ranger, what did you do?’’…….dog looks away like you’re

talking to someone else…..”Ranger, look at me” ….grab his face and turn him to

look right at me and his eyes would roll off to the side……”nothing to see

here…..don’t make eye contact it’ll be alright”

I miss my dog.

But avoidance is never really the best strategy……that was my dog….but people

do that too….and what’s really aggravating is when it is deliberate….with an intent

to deceive…..and they even hide it…..because you’re not allowed to know what

they know……even when they are the ones who did something wrong…..well, let

me suggest that transparency in government is an issue that needs to be

enhanced……because sunshine is the greatest disinfectant……

The late great Charlie Daniels was an icon……a country music crossover who could

play just as well on a classic rock channel as any country channel……and wow, that

man could skin a fiddle!.....when you’re hearing the epic fiddle battle in his classic

song, The Devil Went Down To Georgia, you’re hearing ol’ Charlie himself pulling

that rosined bow across the strings……But as much as he was a music legend

Charlie Daniels was also a patriot…..and a conservative patriot at that…..despite

having openly supported Jimmy Carter in the 70’s because he was from the south

Daniels went on to become an ardent and very outspoken critic of all things

liberal…..he loved troops, he loved the flag, he loved he 2 nd Amendment, he

believed in the sanctity of life, and he loved this country…..all of which he spoke

out on regularly…..

He had some amazing quotes…. he is quoted as saying “I couldn’t care less about

politically correct”….He was always on social media, especially Twitter, and ran his

own account from what I understand….. I started following him early on and I will

never forget one morning around oh-dark-thirty sitting down with a cup of coffee

and a Tweet from Charlie Daniels hit my Twitter feed saying something that I

thought was good……the tweet was only seconds old when I saw it and so on a

whim I tweeted right back and wished him a good day…..to my shock just seconds

later Charlie Daniels replied back and wished me a good day as well…..made my

day!

But something that Charlie used to Tweet on a regular basis…..just a regular

occurrence that you could count on seeing on his Twitter several times a

week……he would simply type, “Benghazi Ain’t Going Away”…….I always

appreciated that…..he may not have had the ability to see much done about the

lack of accountability for the Benghazi disaster but he was also not going to let it

be forgotten……and rightfully so…..

Today, the news broke that 23 ½ years later newly minted Secretary of Defense

Pete Hegseth is ordering that all Benghazi files be declassified…..really!.....nearly a

quarter century later one of the greatest coverups in modern US history is

ordered to a place of transparency…..will we find out? Will we see any smoking

gun that says Hillary and Obama let them burn?.....I don’t know….I kind of doubt it

because I suspect that those files have been purged or were on Hillary’s personal

server that she had destroyed…..but who knows? Maybe that one thing….that

one email, that one document, that one after action report is still sitting there in

some archive, or some file cabinet, and we’ll get to see it…..but at the very least I

appreciate it……because sunshine is the greatest of all disinfectants…..

We lost some good people in the Benghazi attack……an attack that resulted in the

deaths of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean

Smith, and two highly decorated former Navy Seals who were serving as security,

Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty……if you haven’t seen the movie “13 Hours”

then I highly recommend it……men who were abandoned by their government in

the midst of a thirteen hour long running gun battle…. an epic account of bravery

and the sacrifice of good men and at the same time it is the living embodiment of

political fecklessness and responsibility avoidance……

Keep in mind who was in charge during the Benghazi affair……Barack Obama was

President, Joe Biden was Vice President, and Hillary Clinton was Secretary of

State….. When asked about security at Benghazi on Sept. 11, Mrs. Clinton

repeatedly asserted her lack of responsibility….at Senate hearings Secretary of

State Clinton threw her arms in the air and yelled, “What difference at this point

does it make?!”…I’ll tell you what difference it makes…..those were your

men…..your responsibility…….your actions and omissions resulted in their

death……and we want to know…and maybe we will now…..

Keep in mind that secrecy begets secrecy…….ten years after Benghazi Joe Biden

recruited the former White House counsel who had steered the Obama/Biden

response to Benghazi to be his new White House Counsel again….that’s the same

Joe Biden that then presided over the debacle in Afghanistan…..because some

lessons are never learned……oh by the way……it is understood that Secretary

Hegseth has now ordered a complete investigation into the Afghanistan

withdrawal…..in his words “there will be accountability”……I hope so…..why?

because good people died and no one ever said boo about it!......and once again,

sunshine is the greatest disinfectant…..

But there’s more……we’re hearing that over 2000 pages of Epstein files have been

“found” in the Office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New

York….they had been withheld…..they are now with the AG’s office and I suspect

they will be revealed soon……They need to be…..the only reason they are not

already open is widely believed to be because of who they are protecting from

embarrassment…….

While we’re on it……President Trump announced yesterday that the John F.

Kennedy assassination files as well as the Robert F. Kennedy assassination files

will be released today……over 80,000 pages of documents withheld from public

view for over 6 decades…..why?....what would be the point?.....sixty years

later?.....hopefully we’ll find out…..and again, transparency washes away

doubt…..sunshine is the greatest disinfectant…….

Memories are too often short……especially when news cycles have moved on to

other things……but there is a reason why transparency is needed…..for one thing,

Americans are a generally curious and sometimes suspicious group of folks…..we

want to know…..we believe in free speech but we also believe in not suppressing

speech which means that we generally speaking believe that information should

be shared……and I will be the first to admit that I fully understand that some

things deserve classification……open investigations, matters of national security,

questions of personnel data…..sure…..for over 20 years I carried a TS-SCI

clearance…..I worked special access programs….where you have to be “read on”

and then “read off”…..I get it…..but this is not that…..classifying information to

keep it from prying eyes is not what you do to merely cover up what someone did

wrong……classification should only be used in matters of such a sensitive nature

that their release could cause actual harm to the nation, or to key

individuals…….classification and the squirreling away of knowledge should never

be used as a means of avoiding accountability……

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way!