But At Least I've Never Been a Lawyer...

                 "The first thing we do, 

                let's kill all the lawyers!"                               

                                                                             - William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Act 2

Let me start with an apology.  An apology for everything I've ever done for which proud I am not (with apologies to Yoda).  Some stuff I did that was even illegal, maybe.  Just slightly.  And definitely immoral.  Oh yeah.  Joyously so.  And altogether off-pleasing among a mixed company of those professing a higher level of breeding.

Which would definitely not include me.

Yeah, I've been a pool hustler (billiards professional to you!) of the First Magnitude.  And a poker pro.  And a "Street Outlaws" type car racer.  And an entrepreneur (some "Progressives" believe that's a pejorative).  Yeah, some pretty unsavory endeavors, I'll admit.   

And a lion tamer and bassoonist and a part-time archeologist who identifies as "Black," if reparations are to be paid. 

But I've never been an attorney, thank God.  And there were times way back then when seeking a law degree seemed attractive.  You know, work little, earn a lot.  But then I began to meet lawyers as a businessman in "real life" and came to know that the day I decided to inhabit grungy pool halls instead of the hallowed halls of some law school somewhere, was truly a great day. 

For me, and for the world. 

(You know what they call 100 lawyers lashed together and marched into the sea?  A good start...)

What brings me to opine on this lofty subject right about now was sitting through hours and hours and hours of the Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS confirmation hearings.  Excruciating.  Like nails on a blackboard.  That's the nicest word I could find to describe the farce that unfolded over the past few days.  In short, the confirmation of a fully qualified judge - perhaps the most qualified in our Country's entire history - to a seat on the Supreme Court, having already been established as a foregone conclusion, and one fully sanctioned by the Constitution, was an exercise in futility.  And a disgrace.  Not just for the Judiciary Committee, for the entire Senate.  Even shorter, I got to watch a bunch of senators make complete and utter fools of themselves...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.  She'd been dying for years.  And she knew it.  She'd suffered through numerous bouts of cancer of various types and in various locations.  She has basically been rebuilt over the past few years.  The coroner was following her around.  However, even knowing this, she repeatedly refused to step down and permit then-POTUS Obama to appoint her successor while he still could.  She hung on with her fingernails until the end, presumably hoping that the end would never come.

And the end came during POTUS Trump's term.  Right after he'd already appointed TWO other SCOTUS justices...

So, even though her passing was only a few days ahead of a contentious General Election, Trump appointed Judge Barrett to succeed her.  As the Constitution required.  Nay, demanded!  And the Democrat's heads exploded.  In unison.

Anyway, we watched her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings unfold this past week.  For three days we got to watch senators talk.  And talk, and talk, and talk.  Mostly about themselves, or to themselves, or to each other.  Almost never to Judge Barrett.  They were obviously afraid.  Her having an intellect as big as the Great Outdoors, and themselves proving to have the intellect of, well, lemme' see here... knuckle-dragging, self-serving, mouth-breathing, indolent hypocrites, they mostly just pontificated about the scourge of back alley abortions and that global warming's gonna' kill us all in a fiery Hell!  

And it would all be her fault!

So I resurrected Shakespeare's quote above to help draw your kind attention to the fact that something has gone seriously off the rails!  Of the 535 members of Congress, 57%, or 249, are lawyers!  Annnnnnd, fellow Pilgrims, 66 of the 100 members of the Senate are Attorneys!!!  That's two-thirds!  Whoa, Nellie!  Isn't the Congress supposed to reflect the general makeup of The People?  If not by statute, by common sense then?  Is this some sort of slow-motion takeover of the U. S. by lawyers?  They even have their own special language by way of which they talk in terms of "litigants" and "briefs" and "motions" and "objections."  Oh yeah, and enormous hourly fees.

How long with it be before ALL the members of Congress are lawyers?  Like the creeping crud, might they one day overtake us all?  And then what?  Will nobody "normal" be around to represent the wishes and needs of ordinary Americans?

(Do you know why sharks don't attack lawyers?  Professional courtesy...)

Are you aware that lawyers do not make anything?  They don't invent, or create, or manufacture.  Or even repair stuff.  They just try and take away that which was made by somebody else.  Any lawyer worth his or her (or its...California, remember) salt will argue a case on either side of an issue.  They don't care.  They just thrive on disunity.  They neeeeed people to run into each other in the supermarket parking lot and beat the crap out of each other and steal from each other and lie to each other and screw each other's wife/husband/"other."  If folks were pristine, law-abiding citizens, lawyers wouldn't have anybody to sue.  

Did you know that there are more lawyers in Orange County, California than in the entire country of Canada?  It won't be long, I'm guessing, before there will be so damn many of them they'll be forced to sue each other if only for something to do.  

So by definition lawyers have no core values.  They will sue anybody for anything, anywhere, at anytime of day.  Or night.  They're vultures.  They feast on the "death" of others.  The "death" of a marriage, the "death" of a deal, the "death" of a contract.  The "death" of a company.  

Back to the confirmation hearings just finished.  I don't know how the citizens of the states represented by the Democrat senators who grilled Barrett the other day feel about those undertakings, but I'm ashamed for them.  They beclowned themselves.  They may have law degrees, but they have no common sense.  Or a sense of self-awareness.  An awareness that they look like buffoons.  And their glaring lack of that all-too-rare commodity was on display for three full days...

I've leave you with this.  My best friend from way back when decided one day to become a lawyer.  He then came back from law school a changed man.  He'd been brainwashed into thinking and acting and looking and talking like a "lawyer."  My friends know who he is.  He knows who he is.  As I've told him, if he hadn't been my best friend before he went to law school, he surely wouldn't have been after...